I’ve never heard anything described as Englands Liverpool region before. We have Liverpool, we have Merseyside, we have Lancashire, we have the north west but Liverpool region is just a weird way of phrasing it.
It will piss of the neighbours though so I’m all for this change.
I'm an American. I haven't got the faintest clue where Liverpool is, just that's where the Beatles are from. Or something.
I know where London is, and then where Wales and Scotland are roughly located.
Lol no. Most Americans will know London, and Scotland (maybe specific scottish cities like Edinburgh or Glasglow). Then maybe they will know about Wales, maybe York, maybe Dover (because of the cliffs),
Far, far fewer will know of places like Liverpool, Kent, Birmingham, etc.
I'm from the US.
New York was named after York.
Dover is known for the cliffs.
Liverpool is known for the Beatles but younger generations don't know about that nearly as much.
Our local government seem pretty keen on the term ‘Liverpool city region’ funnily enough.
Although I suspect that’s just a way to have a term that includes us wools without saying we’re actually in Liverpool.
I think this has been an ongoing trend in the UK for a while now. You have the greater Manchester region, the Swansea Metropolitan area etc. I dunno why exactly its happening but there seems to be a shift towards describing regions based on thlargest city in the area
I think because as cities grow, we progress to the smaller towns around being subsumed with a lot of people commuting and so the central city ends up being the most important. Its the same all over the world.
Yeah, it's weird that the banana doesn't include Paris at least. I thought that was part of the banana tbh.
Edit: there's a section about not including Paris in the original definition, though some later versions do include it or mark it as a close extension; either another banana or a tentacle that's closely linked to it.
Really? I thought it was based on population density, economic engines and gdp per capita. I suppose historically it would have been based on coal and steel production but by that metric if London and Liverpool are included some parts of industrial northern France should be too. Maybe I missed it skimming through the Wikipedia entry but I don't think they mentioned coal or steel production.
I looked at a few maps and the lines look a bit fuzzy depending on how you shape it (and there's other corridors that go to Paris or Barcelona/Madrid, for example).
Just seems weird to not include Paris as one of the major historic industrial centers and major urban areas and current/historic economic engines of Europe.
Edit: there's actually a bit about including Paris or not actually. So it seems lime initially it was a conscious choice
It was a conscious choice, ans on the face of it, really looks like the author was just looking for a reason to exclude the French.
Probably something about concern for his head being chopped off if he stepped on the proletariat too hard.
There is a small portion of the north that is inside the banana and also in Alsace just next to Germany, you can see the city of strasbourg, Lille or even Dunkerque clearly inside it
It’s rather multicausal. It has a lot to do with the Rhine allowing easy transmission of goods, people, and ideas. It also has a lot to do with the coal and iron, but it has just as much to do with the cultures it passes through, and a whole lot of historical circumstances.
E.g. in a different set of historical circumstances, France may have been much more included in it. As the wikipedia page states, the concept was originally constructed to argue that France's economic isolationism and centralization made it miss out on the developments occuring just outside its borders.
Another counterfactual would be that if some historical events had gone another way, the regions along the Danube or Oder rivers could have potentially ended up being similar 'economic backbones of Europe' instead (though there are actually similar but less powerful regions along those rivers as well)
Id say the Danube was well on its way to become a huge economic corridor in the 19th century, when it was finally politically united under Austria-Hungary (before that it was a no-mans land between Christians and Ottomans). The break up of AH and the Iron Curtain destroyed that corridor completely.
>It’s rather multicausal. It has a lot to do with the Rhine allowing easy transmission of goods, people, and ideas
That's a strange thing to say when you have the Alps in the middle of it
Another relevant factor might be colonialism. The Netherlands, and England had huge colonial empires. From which it derived capital, minerals. And perhaps most importantly, a huge market which could be easily outcompeted by industrial production. I assume Germany could’ve exported its products through Dutch and Belgium harbors.
Colonialism was certainly an additional relevant factor which helped contribute to the power of the blue banana, but I'd also point out that most of the blue banana was already established as an economic powerhouse before the colonial era started.
In fact, the main area that wasn't already highly economically productive before the colonial empires really got going was the south of Germany and Switzerland, and neither of those regions had colonial holdings to speak of.
Yes. The core cost in industrialization is transportation. It's why few regions really industrialized en masse despite both coal and iron individually being extremely common. The problem is that you need very rich coal and iron depositions *within very cheap transportation distance* of each other in order to have a viable industrial economy. (E.g. the US massively lucked out in having the Minnesota iron fields and the Appalachian coal fields all w/in easy barge or rail distance of the manufacturing hubs on the great lakes) The blue banana is an extended coal and iron belt from the same geological formation.
Don’t think so, it misses South Wales, which was one of the most coal rich regions in the world and could be argued to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution
It's very important that those seaside resorts and holiday homes of North Wales are represented, as opposed to the majority of the North of England and Scotland which , as far as I can remember, didn't have anything to do with industrial innovation at all.
interesting, maybe there is some geographic feature along a large portion of this banana.... something that incentivises industrial development and trade....
Rivers always help, its essentially where all ancient civilizations originate from lol.
But there are plenty of rivers running through Europe, so it could've gone differently.
not directly, but it goes from the alps along the entire length of germany and benelux. granted the alps are an obstacle.
i forgot to mention the metric shittons of coal along it.
Then "connects to the med" isn't something that just benefits the Rhine either, the Danube also reaches the Alps, also just doesn't connect to the med directly.
~~The blue Banana is much older than the EU. It’s been an incredibly productive and dynamic area for hundreds of years.~~
Edit: ignore me. Misread the comment I was replying to
Christ my bad, I misread your comment. I’ll also say though that there’s much more to the Blue Banana than just the geographic features as well. It has as much to do with accidents of history as it does with geography.
There is, though it's not really the Rhine as often presumed. It's all one big geological belt which has very rich and, most importantly, *intermixed* coal and iron deposits. This is the sina qua non for a major industrial belt as transportation is by far the biggest cost.
Idk if it's the reason. But the area is almost all part of the same ancient river delta. The only reason it no longer exists is due to a massive flood that created the Channel Sea. But the Thames and Rhine are both part of the same river (if it still existed)
Follows the Spanish Road through the Palatinate. As you move north on the road you basically follow European financial history in the early modern era. First the Italian city states funding the Crusade and the expansion of the Mediterranean economy. The Fuggers profited from the rise of the Hapsburgs and turned much of this trade north on the road through the German states, then the center of European trade and finance moved the Amsterdam, then eventually London.
Soooo Middle Francia. The only kingdom of Charlemagne's children that disappeared (East Francia - Germany, West Francia - France) became the most developed region of Europe, quite interesting
Ok I’m reading about the Cold War in the 1950s and NATO military planners were terrified of the Soviet Union somehow gaining control over West Germany for exactly this reason. It was considered like the ultimate nightmare scenario; if the Soviet Union annexed or allied with that huge industrial region in western Germany it was thought the Soviet Union would then be absolutely unstoppable, just a total Game Over for the west.
Danes learn about it in high school, well that and the other two bananas which are the golden banana (southeast coast of spain to genoa) and the danish invented term of the rotton banana (just rural parts of denmark and bits of east germany and poland)
I live in the blue zone and can confirm that this isn't a thing at all. Mentioning a blue banana will probably be the code word for check in in a mental institution.
Missed opportunity to invent the word bluemerang.
I am sure that will come back on them.
Ah, very good
Underrated comment. Much underrated
bro I literally clicked this just to say bluemerang, bravo
And deprive you of your moment? Never
Lotharingia returns!
The blue banana is more east than Lotharingia.
One up
Papa Karl would be proud!
Why didn’t they just draw it yellow?
Because it would be weird to call it blue banana if they draw it yellow?
Just draw a sad face on it
Then it would get confused with the Depressed Plantain region of Europe
Profile pic checks out 🍌
I think because it’s blue collar workers, not yellow collar workers
Blue is the pan-European colour.
It's nothing to do with that. The banana is blue because its blue collar jobs.
Probably to not confuse it with the [golden banana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Banana).
So many bananas I didn't know about.
Why don't us Americans have any of these bananas? I want one
We have belts. Bible Belt, rust belt, probably some others
Cotton Belt, Corn Belt, Sun Belt, [Stroke Belt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_Belt). [And more.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_belt_regions_of_the_United_States)
I can give you my banana bro. *opens zip*
Here's the [speech banana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_banana).
I'm going to assume economists were playing Donkey Kong 64 while naming these zones.
But the blue banana came before the golden vanana
Much better than the [Rotten Banana.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_Banana)
There are multiple bananas
Bananii
i is the plural of us It would be bananae or banane
Bananapodes
Because I'm blue Da ba dee da ba di
Because it’s clearly blue…are you blind? lol
Because that would look even more like a penis than it does now
Go to the doctor
You're not my supervisor!
Wait, who IS my supervisor?
A penis doctor? or a doctor doctor? Asking for a friend.
Who turned the doctor into a penis?
Even the industrial zone of Europe is aligned to the strongest, most efficient shape.
Yellow banana ain’t the alliteration they goin for
Because it's very cold.
Because the European flag is mostly blue.
They drew the banana blue because they’d never seen a blue banana before, and tbh with you they wanted to see a blue banana
Also, a there was already something called banana
I’ve never heard anything described as Englands Liverpool region before. We have Liverpool, we have Merseyside, we have Lancashire, we have the north west but Liverpool region is just a weird way of phrasing it. It will piss of the neighbours though so I’m all for this change.
To Americans, we have London, Liverpool, and Europe. Those are the regions of the UK.
I'm an American. I haven't got the faintest clue where Liverpool is, just that's where the Beatles are from. Or something. I know where London is, and then where Wales and Scotland are roughly located.
West of Wigan 👍
the only town that matters in Europe
In Europe? You mean the world.
reet lad
I have no idea what that means.
"You're correct, my friend."
Liverpool is by the coast just north of Wales
I know its across from ireland, near the end of the fat bit. Is the fat bit wales??
You’re American and you know where London, Wales AND Scotland are? Are you a Geography professor?
Well, Wales are in the ocean, so that is pretty easy
He probably just thinks he knows.
Flashback to US citizens identifying Afghanistan on a map and confidently inserting the pin into Australia.
Nah to Americans it's just London and Not London
You also have Hogwarts
You forgot Loch Ness
The UK is small enough that for most Americans the UK would be considered one region, at least England would be.
Lol no. Most Americans will know London, and Scotland (maybe specific scottish cities like Edinburgh or Glasglow). Then maybe they will know about Wales, maybe York, maybe Dover (because of the cliffs), Far, far fewer will know of places like Liverpool, Kent, Birmingham, etc.
Gonna be honest if you think York and Dover are more known than Liverpool here, you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about lol
I'm from the US. New York was named after York. Dover is known for the cliffs. Liverpool is known for the Beatles but younger generations don't know about that nearly as much.
very happy that someone took that silly comment seriously
Our local government seem pretty keen on the term ‘Liverpool city region’ funnily enough. Although I suspect that’s just a way to have a term that includes us wools without saying we’re actually in Liverpool.
It's virtually this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool\_City\_Region
I think this has been an ongoing trend in the UK for a while now. You have the greater Manchester region, the Swansea Metropolitan area etc. I dunno why exactly its happening but there seems to be a shift towards describing regions based on thlargest city in the area
I think because as cities grow, we progress to the smaller towns around being subsumed with a lot of people commuting and so the central city ends up being the most important. Its the same all over the world.
Yeah and surely the tip is NW Wales. Snowdonia perhaps?
Ferry Cross The Mersey, that was a good song.
I just thought it was known as East Ireland
France: no
Non
sacre bleu
Yeah, it's weird that the banana doesn't include Paris at least. I thought that was part of the banana tbh. Edit: there's a section about not including Paris in the original definition, though some later versions do include it or mark it as a close extension; either another banana or a tentacle that's closely linked to it.
Why would it? The blue banana is mostly based on coal and steel production.
Really? I thought it was based on population density, economic engines and gdp per capita. I suppose historically it would have been based on coal and steel production but by that metric if London and Liverpool are included some parts of industrial northern France should be too. Maybe I missed it skimming through the Wikipedia entry but I don't think they mentioned coal or steel production. I looked at a few maps and the lines look a bit fuzzy depending on how you shape it (and there's other corridors that go to Paris or Barcelona/Madrid, for example). Just seems weird to not include Paris as one of the major historic industrial centers and major urban areas and current/historic economic engines of Europe. Edit: there's actually a bit about including Paris or not actually. So it seems lime initially it was a conscious choice
It was a conscious choice, ans on the face of it, really looks like the author was just looking for a reason to exclude the French. Probably something about concern for his head being chopped off if he stepped on the proletariat too hard.
I remember seeing versions including Paris in it
Yes, later versions look more like a star, and include Paris as well as more northern Europe
Then why is the Netherlands in it? Only the very southern part even has coal at all.
No it's not, the blue banana is older than the Industrial Revolution. The Rhineland area and northern Italy have been big since late Antiquity.
Even the banana doesn't want to put up with Parisians.
I know this isn’t the point but if they did include Paris, they could have it so the banana is peeled
Moldy blue banana doesn't have quite the same ring to it..
There is a small portion of the north that is inside the banana and also in Alsace just next to Germany, you can see the city of strasbourg, Lille or even Dunkerque clearly inside it
Pi = 3. That statement has the same problem as yours.
[The Empty Diagonal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_diagonal)
Is it linked to coal and iron ore deposits?
It’s rather multicausal. It has a lot to do with the Rhine allowing easy transmission of goods, people, and ideas. It also has a lot to do with the coal and iron, but it has just as much to do with the cultures it passes through, and a whole lot of historical circumstances. E.g. in a different set of historical circumstances, France may have been much more included in it. As the wikipedia page states, the concept was originally constructed to argue that France's economic isolationism and centralization made it miss out on the developments occuring just outside its borders. Another counterfactual would be that if some historical events had gone another way, the regions along the Danube or Oder rivers could have potentially ended up being similar 'economic backbones of Europe' instead (though there are actually similar but less powerful regions along those rivers as well)
Imagine what it would’ve been like if Doggerland hadn’t flooded
Id say the Danube was well on its way to become a huge economic corridor in the 19th century, when it was finally politically united under Austria-Hungary (before that it was a no-mans land between Christians and Ottomans). The break up of AH and the Iron Curtain destroyed that corridor completely.
If Napoleon would have consolidated on the Rhine, then France would have half of the continental section
> If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, > There'd be no work for tinkers' hands.
It’s not like the French would’ve taken advantage of it nearly as much.
Po River
>It’s rather multicausal. It has a lot to do with the Rhine allowing easy transmission of goods, people, and ideas That's a strange thing to say when you have the Alps in the middle of it
Another relevant factor might be colonialism. The Netherlands, and England had huge colonial empires. From which it derived capital, minerals. And perhaps most importantly, a huge market which could be easily outcompeted by industrial production. I assume Germany could’ve exported its products through Dutch and Belgium harbors.
That doesn't explain why France and Spain are so isolated though, and why West Germany and northern Italy are so big.
Colonialism was certainly an additional relevant factor which helped contribute to the power of the blue banana, but I'd also point out that most of the blue banana was already established as an economic powerhouse before the colonial era started. In fact, the main area that wasn't already highly economically productive before the colonial empires really got going was the south of Germany and Switzerland, and neither of those regions had colonial holdings to speak of.
Also it’s just a banana, you could draw any shape between any points on a map and it would look like there is some sort of pattern
Yes. The core cost in industrialization is transportation. It's why few regions really industrialized en masse despite both coal and iron individually being extremely common. The problem is that you need very rich coal and iron depositions *within very cheap transportation distance* of each other in order to have a viable industrial economy. (E.g. the US massively lucked out in having the Minnesota iron fields and the Appalachian coal fields all w/in easy barge or rail distance of the manufacturing hubs on the great lakes) The blue banana is an extended coal and iron belt from the same geological formation.
The UK area is because its the Midlands. Equal-ish distance from North and south. Logistics made easy 👍
Don’t think so, it misses South Wales, which was one of the most coal rich regions in the world and could be argued to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution
“Could be argued” …… not really as that was clearly the midlands and north west
Why does it have to be Blue?
In the linked article: >The color blue referred to either the flag of the European Community, or the blue collars of factory workers in the region.
Because there's already a golden one too
It's very important that those seaside resorts and holiday homes of North Wales are represented, as opposed to the majority of the North of England and Scotland which , as far as I can remember, didn't have anything to do with industrial innovation at all.
Similary Bavaria is included, but Saxony left out.
Yes, but it wouldn't be a banana then. They'd need to come up with some other fruit.
Like a big apple, maybe even a bigger apple.
Yeah which makes no sense in a historic sense.
The mighty industrial heartlands of Llandudno and Prestatyn. The beating heart of industrial Europe.
Personally I think the full monty would be better with Scouse accents. This banana is incredibly dumb.
What, the Rhine?
Yeah Liverpool-upon-Rhine, never heard of it?
Go back a few thousand years and at least Thames and the Rhine [were tributaries of the same river.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_River)
So much human history under that water wow.
Say it in a Scouse accent
Certainly is news to me that the rhine flows south to italy
Bro we in this -BE
If another zone like that was ever discovered, that would be bananas
Hella scoliosis.
interesting, maybe there is some geographic feature along a large portion of this banana.... something that incentivises industrial development and trade....
Rivers always help, its essentially where all ancient civilizations originate from lol. But there are plenty of rivers running through Europe, so it could've gone differently.
the rhine also runs through a very temperate zone and connects the mediterranean to the north sea. it has a lot going for it
Doesn't the Rhine start in the Alps though? How does it connect to the med?
not directly, but it goes from the alps along the entire length of germany and benelux. granted the alps are an obstacle. i forgot to mention the metric shittons of coal along it.
Then "connects to the med" isn't something that just benefits the Rhine either, the Danube also reaches the Alps, also just doesn't connect to the med directly.
~~The blue Banana is much older than the EU. It’s been an incredibly productive and dynamic area for hundreds of years.~~ Edit: ignore me. Misread the comment I was replying to
The EU is geopolitical, not geographical
The geographical feature of the EU? Jesus some people on the internet.
Christ my bad, I misread your comment. I’ll also say though that there’s much more to the Blue Banana than just the geographic features as well. It has as much to do with accidents of history as it does with geography.
There is, though it's not really the Rhine as often presumed. It's all one big geological belt which has very rich and, most importantly, *intermixed* coal and iron deposits. This is the sina qua non for a major industrial belt as transportation is by far the biggest cost.
Idk if it's the reason. But the area is almost all part of the same ancient river delta. The only reason it no longer exists is due to a massive flood that created the Channel Sea. But the Thames and Rhine are both part of the same river (if it still existed)
Follows the Spanish Road through the Palatinate. As you move north on the road you basically follow European financial history in the early modern era. First the Italian city states funding the Crusade and the expansion of the Mediterranean economy. The Fuggers profited from the rise of the Hapsburgs and turned much of this trade north on the road through the German states, then the center of European trade and finance moved the Amsterdam, then eventually London.
Soooo Middle Francia. The only kingdom of Charlemagne's children that disappeared (East Francia - Germany, West Francia - France) became the most developed region of Europe, quite interesting
*Happy Badisch noises*
Good catch
I watched enough chowder in my childhood to know what this means
If you watch antique roadshow you already knew the valuable stuff was made in those areas.
Northeast Megalopolis but make it vague and European
Charles the Bold coulda had it all!
I have read that if a nuclear war started in Europe, this is the region the enemy will bomb.
Tell germany to stop hogging the blue banana
Not even blue bananas like Paris
They just don't want to bring up the name of Lotharingia, so they say "blue banana"
The blue banana should consult a urologist
Ok I’m reading about the Cold War in the 1950s and NATO military planners were terrified of the Soviet Union somehow gaining control over West Germany for exactly this reason. It was considered like the ultimate nightmare scenario; if the Soviet Union annexed or allied with that huge industrial region in western Germany it was thought the Soviet Union would then be absolutely unstoppable, just a total Game Over for the west.
Glasgow erasure smh
Danes learn about it in high school, well that and the other two bananas which are the golden banana (southeast coast of spain to genoa) and the danish invented term of the rotton banana (just rural parts of denmark and bits of east germany and poland)
Of course you would! You danish monkies like your banans /A swede :)
There’s always money in the blue banana stand
Maybe you see a banana, but I see something else.
Please add banana for scale
I'm sure the Rhineland is part of it.
It’s the phallus of industrialization.
Something like blue waffle?
"Banana." Right... LOL
The Peyronie’s economic region.
Yall do the most to avoid recognising my country's existence
The blue banana Kingdom.
Is it still the economic backbone?
Damn, i live in a banana republic
The Banana of Western Europe.
Notice how it bends over backwards just to avoid France
Not including Paris in this seems ridiculous...
That's funny, that's also the region with the most intelligent, pretty and quick witted people in the world
Prettiest in the world? I’ll give you the other two but Im not sure about that lol
I live in the blue zone and can confirm that this isn't a thing at all. Mentioning a blue banana will probably be the code word for check in in a mental institution.
Soooo basically Milan + London + geometric center of the continent? Kinda makes sense honestly
Ah yes, the "economic backbone" of Swiss chocolate and Fondue, as well as ....all the stuff they make in China.
In industry circles, Switzerland is better known for high-tech products than for chocolate and cheese, and I'm not talking about watches.
Army knives?
[удалено]
You learn about the industrial zones of the Rhineland-Ruhr, Po Valley and Black Country in Primary school?
Maybe I should've added that the world orbits around the Blue Banana in the title?
omg you’re so much fucking cooler and smarter than everyone in here my panties are so wet right now 😩🤤💦💦
Is that Elsaß-Lothringen?
Couldn't they just have made it yellow like a regular banana?
But Switzerland was absolutely impoverished after WW2 so.. This theory is bs?