The chapters cover quite long periods of time so that broad
themes can be developed without excessive repetition. The
present geography is seen as the outcome of a desperate search by new nations in the marchlands of Europe to organise their defences and accelerate the processes of modernisation. And in turn the belated manoeuvrings of the inter-war years must be rationalised through the tight grip maintained through the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries by Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian imperialism. But failure to modernise is not only the consequence of centre-periphery antagonisms within the empires but more fundamentally of inability to match the progress of Western Europe with unhindered access to the oceans. The study is continued in a companion volume on The making of Eastern Europe: from the earliest times to 1815, explaining the change in relations with the west as the overland trade routes were eclipsed by the seaways. Furthermore, the Medieval states are seen as the outcome of Dark Age migrations and the prior transfer of technology from the Middle East. In view of this stripping off of overlays there might be some justification for the organisation of chapters in a regressive sequence, working back from the present deeper and deeper into the past. Some work of this kind has been done in France but in Britain there is a strong consensus against such practice.25 J.L.M.Gulley found it appropriate to take his readers backwards through time to trace the origins of the various elements making up the Wealden landscape of southeast England.26 But given the long timespan of most of the periods adopted in this book it seems that the mental leaps required by the reader, to connect the end of one period with the beginning of the previous period, would be too daunting to countenance. And the function of the book as an historical study of Europes shatterbelt also justifies a convential sequence of chapters.