North and South in Europe: A Fractal Perspective
How the countries within Europe mirror her broader divide.
In my readings of culture and history, I have found that across time and space, peoples and cultures, there is a recurring division between North and South. Some of what I have noticed in Europe:
Europe
The differences between (Southern) Mediterranean Europe and Northern Europe are well worn and well known:
Butter vs Olive Oil
Protestant vs Catholic (and some Orthodox)
Industrious vs Lazy
But what I find interesting is how the line between Northern and Southern Europe often ignores the borders of nations, leading to fractal divides. For example:
France
We see France is divided between Olive Oil users in the South and Butter eaters in the North. This divide seems natural given Southern France’s proximity to the Mediterranean, but the cut runs deeper than just cooking.
Despite the love the French have with French, the official language of the republic only achieved dominance in the 19th Century. For much of its history “French” was splintered into several different manners of speech which could be roughly divided on a North South axis: the Northern Langues d'oïl and the Southern Langues d’oc.
Richard the Lionheart, King of England may never have spoken English, but he did write in the the Langues d’oc. Today many of the non official varieties of French are in distress, but their historical division was real and another marker north south divide which seems to permeate France. No matter how strange.
Italy
In Italy a similar story appears to France and Europe overall regarding cooking. Butter in the North and Olive Oil in the South.
The territory of the Northern Butter users coincides with the Po River Valley and the historical territory of Germanic conquerors such as the Goths and later Lombards.
And like the Germans a common stereotype in Italy is that North Italians are industrious workers. Consistently putting in an honest days work in contrast to the lazy and lay about South.
Economic and cultural differences naturally play out in politics. Italy today is a Republic, but the monarchy was only ended in 1946 by public referendum. The Republic won by a convincing margin, but a regional breakdown shows the election as largely sectarian. The North outvoting the South.
Conclusion
These are casual observations largely based on stereotypes. But some are backed by surveys and numbers and often times stereotypes are based on kernels of truth. There other fractal divisions in Europe, I will probably look at once I study them a bit more in depth. Mainly Great Britain, England itself, and Germany and the German states. If you know of any other cultural and economic North South divisions, not just in Europe, but across the globe, please leave a comment. It’s always interesting.
Any comment about divisions between regions in America, Eastern Europe, or Asia? I don't know that they play out clearly in the US or Eastern Europe, but a wheat/rice division does clearly exist in Asia:
https://cbb.sjtu.edu.cn/~jingli/courses/2018fall/bi372/files/RiceversusWheatScience-2014-Talhelm-603-8.pdf
"We tested 1162 Han Chinese participants in six sites and found that rice-growing southern China is more interdependent and holistic-thinking than the wheat-growing north. To control for confounds like climate, we tested people from neighboring counties along the rice-wheat border and found differences that were just as large. We also find that modernization and pathogen prevalence theories do not fit the data."
For a broad, easy-to-read overview, try: https://www.chinaeducationaltours.com/guide/article-different-chinese.htm
Portugal, with Porto as the business capital; Spain, with the Catalans and Basques (and I think Northerners generally) seeing themselves as more industrious than the rest of the country. Everywhere has a North, as Doctor Who put it