The exact definition of "Europe" as a geographical space has proven mercurial over the years. Ancient Greece was the first culture to use the term - Europa was a Greek mythological figure. They divided the world between Asia, Africa and Europe, but were a bit hazy as to there the latter ended in the east; around the River Don in Ukraine was often cited. The Romans continued with this distinction, bringing the term clearly to the Atlantic. However, the important frontier for them was between Rome's Mediterranean world, including North Africa and Western Asia, and Europe north of the Empire.
Going forward to the 1700s the Swedish geographer Philip Johan von Strahlenberg proposed the Ural Mountains and the River Ural as the geographical boundary in the east. That convention survives more or less to today.
However, cultural questions in the past have eroded the boundaries. Notably, in the Middle Ages, the idea of Europe became associated with Christianity, excluding many Europeans. Later, during the second half of the 20th century, we had the beginnings of European integration, including the Council of Europe's formation in 1949. At the same time, Europe was divided by communist dictatorship in the Cold War. The result was "Eastern Europe" and "Western Europe"; very often when people spoke about Europe and unity they meant only the Western part.
Along the banks of democracy
With the return to democracy in some parts of Southern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall in the end of the 1980s, the Council of Europe expanded. Today it counts 46 member states. It stretches from the Caucasus almost to Canada, from the Arctic to Malta.
There is no fuller expression of modern political Europe
No other organisation can speak so clearly with the voice of 46 member states for Europe's values: democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
The Council of Europe's wider basin
The Council of Europe's geographical scope doesn't begin and end there. The European Convention on Human Rights, for example, applies (at least in part) in many of the extra-continental parts of European countries, such as Greenland next to Canada in North America, New Caledonia in the Pacific, Curaçao in the Caribbean, Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, and Réunion in the Indian Ocean.
But even that's not the geographical limit. The Council of Europe's observer states - Canada, the USA, Mexico, Japan and the Vatican City - further add to the enormous range of places the organisation flows into.
Furthermore, some individual treaties (the Council of Europe has a remarkable 230 of them) are open to non-member states. This means that, for example, the Council of Europe's constitutional advisory body the Venice Commission can meander to places as diverse as Peru and Kyrgyzstan as members, while the Bern Convention, which protects wildlife, has been signed by countries like Burkina Faso and Tunisia.
The Council of Europe truly is Europe and a whole lot more.
