Historical regions (or historical areas) are geographical regions which, at some point in history, had a cultural, ethnic, linguistic or political basis, regardless of latter-day borders.
The fundamental principle underlying this view is that older political and mental structures exist which exercise greater influence on the spatial-social identity of individuals than is understood by the contemporary world, bound to and often blinded by its own worldview - e.g. the focus on the nation-state.
Geographic proximity is generally the required precondition for the emergence of a regional identity.
[3] In Europe, regional identities are often derived from the Migration Period but for the contemporary era are also often related to the territorial transformations that followed World War I and those that followed the Cold War.
[4] Some regions are entirely invented, such as the Middle East, which was popularised in 1902 by a military strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, to refer to the area of the Persian Gulf.