目前，全世界一共有两百多个国家。但作为在世界文明历史上占有过重要地位的欧洲，这片与中国土地面积相差无几的土地上，曾经也有过罗马帝国和查理曼帝国大一统的辉煌，但现在却已经大大小小分裂成了五十一个国家。但中国变得越来越统一。导致这种差异的原因是哪些？对此国外网友也感到很好奇，所以提出了这个问题：欧洲和中国都有悠久的历史，两个国家的面积都差不多(370万平方英里)，为什么欧洲被划分为51个国家，而中国只有一个?让我们看看国外网友的回答。
Chinese geography is simpler. Mountains go one way, rivers another. Thus mountains and rivers don’t naturally split up China into multiple chunks they way they do in Europe. Mountains and rivers are natural boundaries for countries.
中国的地理比较简单。山是这样，河是那样。因此，山脉和河流不会像欧洲那样自然地把中国分割成许多块。山川是国家的天然边界。
Also look at the irregular coastline of Europe. Countries like Italy and Spain are accessible only through a relatively narrow stretch of land which also happens to be a mountain area. Britain is on an island making it even less accessible.
再看看欧洲不规则的海岸线。像意大利和西班牙这样的国家只有通过相对狭窄的山区才能到达。英国位于一个小岛上，这让它更加难以接近。
Uniting Europe would thus always be difficult for an army. A lot of smaller areas of Europe are easily defendable against an invading army. This further led to the development of Feudalism in Europe and frequent wars. This caused Europe to be dotted with strong castles.
因此，统一欧洲对于一支军队来说永远是困难的。欧洲许多较小的地区很容易抵御入侵的军队。这进一步导致了欧洲封建主义的发展和战争的频繁。这使得欧洲到处都是坚固的城堡。
It is interesting to compare the significance of this when comparing Mongol invasion of Europe vs China. With the highly centralized power structure, you could invade the capital and take the whole country. Feudalism meant you had to fight down every Count, Earl, Baron etc in the country to win. And each one of them had castles you had to lay siege to for months, and which point your army is vulnuralbe to counter attacks.
比较蒙古入侵欧洲和中原的重要性是很有趣的。在高度集中的权力结构下，你可以打败欧洲首都，占领整个国家。封建主义意味着你必须打败这个国家的每一个伯爵、伯爵、男爵等人才能获胜。他们每个人都有城堡，你必须围攻几个月，而你的军队在这一点上很容易反击。
In Mongol armies each soldier had five horses. They used all of them during the attack, switching horses when one got tired. However this required vast plains of grass. Europe did not have that. Thus Mongol armies faced a shortage of food for their horses, which was made significantly worse by conquering Europe being very time consuming due to the sheer number of castles.
在蒙古军队中，每个士兵有五匹马。他们在进攻时使用了所有的马匹，当一匹马累了就换一匹。然而，这需要广阔的草原。欧洲没有这些。因此，蒙古军队面临着马匹食物短缺的问题，而由于城堡数量众多，征服欧洲非常耗时，这让情况变得更加糟糕。
Spending mounts laying siege to a castly meant you would run out of grass for your horses. This is one of several reasons why Mongols could defeat a much stronger China but had much bigger problems taking Europe. Europe simply isn't easy to conquer.
用坐骑围攻城堡意味着你会耗尽马匹的草料。这就是为什么蒙古人能打败强大得多的中国，却在占领欧洲方面面临更大问题的原因之一。欧洲不容易被征服。
There are been simulations of world history only using geography, which shows on each run that China will end up united but Europe ends up being a patchwork of states. So it is not a random occurence, but very much expected even in simulations.
有一些只使用地理的世界历史模拟，每次都显示中国最终将统一，而欧洲最终将是一个国家拼凑的国家。所以这不是随机发生的，但即使在模拟中也很有可能发生。
如果单单从地理位置来分析的话，你认同他的观点吗？
