Spacing Europe: What is a historical region?

The focus of this article is the introduction of the category of historical legacy as the most adequate heuristic device in approaching and describing historical regions. Its central argument is that the notion of historical legacy, insofar as it allows more c1early to articulate the dynamism and fluidity of historical change, has numerous advantages over other more structural categories of analysis utilized thus far in the literature, such as borders, space, territoriality, etc. It therefore appears to be the most appropriate category for analyzing long-term regional developments by avoiding the reification of latter-day regions. The case is made for historical legacy as an analytical tool both theoretically and concretely, by applying the category to Europe in general, and in particular to Eastem Europe and the Balkans. Finally, some practical issues of spacing are addressed, both analytically and politically.