What is a continent? We think of it as a large body of land surrounded by the sea, aka, ocean. There are a few continent sized countries. Australia is the only continent that is also one country.
Russia on the other hand is one country that spans two continents. That is, if you accept the European tradition, arrogance, that Europe is a separate continent from Asia. The sea does not separate them, unless you go through Turkey and count the Black Sea. The rest of the separation is just the steppes. By that definition the Rocky Mountains and the West would be a separate continent from North America.
One of the reasons Europe was at war for most of two millennia may have been the diversity of languages that can impair communication and understanding, but European culture was bound together by the Catholic church and the Hohenzollern family of related Kings.
Russia is bigger than the continents of South America, Europe, Australia and Antarctica, which, under the ice, is more of an archipelago than a continent anyway. Some maps count much of Polynesia as part of the Australian continent.
Six countries are so big they dominate their continent with about a third or more of the area. Russia’s 6.6 million square miles is almost twice as big as any of the next four largest and Australia is more than twice as big as number 7, India. Numbers 8 through 233 are progressively smaller down to the Vatican, of less than one square mile.
There are 66 entire countries that are smaller than Hawaii Island. We like to call Hawaii the smallest or most compact continent. Hawaii has more range of elevation than all but 4 states. Eight of 9 world climate zones. One of the wettest and one of the driest places on earth, 8 miles apart and four national parks. Only three states have more and they are much bigger. A trip around Hawaii Island is like a trip around the world. Desert, check; rain forest, check; snow, check; permafrost, check; volcanoes, check; jungle, check; rolling grassland, check; deep canyons, check; waterfalls, check; beaches, double check; rocky rugged shorelines, check; blowholes, check; caves, check. One of the biggest books in my library is Hawaiian Geology. We can have all four seasons at the same time.
Africa is the second largest continent with over 60 countries but has no geographically large country that can show leadership. The largest African country, Algeria, has less than a tenth of the area. Nigeria has only 16% of the population. It is hard for tiny countries to develop significant prosperous economies, or strong influence. To make it worse, whatever latent nationalities existed were broken up by European colonialism. Then they were reassembled according to the colonialists’ commercial interests. Africa has no dominant language either. Dozens of Indigenous languages along with multiple regional trade languages divide it. Worse, political African politics is divided by the colonial languages of English, French, German, Portuguese and Dutch that impair communication and trade between countries.
This is further complicated by the countries being in different climate zones. That’s not unusual for continents. What works in Algeria is useless in Congo. That which is normal in Botswana makes no sense in Nigeria. No African country spans a climate range similar to Brazil, Chile or even much smaller Mexico. Those are things we probably cannot change. On hopeful trend is Nollywood, continentally popular Nigerian movies, all made in English the most widely understood tongue, and the number of them is growing.
South America, almost as big, has only 24 countries, but Brazil spans about half the continent. Much of the rest of the continent was liberated from colonialism by Simon Bolivar and all understand one language, Spanish, at the national level. The common language helps in understanding one another. Brazilian Portuguese is not too different from Spanish. South America has had little hereditary monarchy.
One African characteristic might be changed. Most powerful and influential countries had a charismatic intelligent leader like Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Elizabeth I, George Washington, Otto Von Bismarck or Mahatmas Gandhi. Leaders who stood out at a time of conflict, minimized difference and promoted national unity, wherever they could. Can there be such an African person and can the rest of the world support her, or him?
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Feedback welcome at obenskik@gmail.com.
