Most of the order listed above was developed by the second edition of Dewey, in 1885 (only the broad outline was in the first edition, in 1876). However, there has been some movement since then, the most significant being that Finland has moved from being part of Russia to being part of Scandinavia (Finland was part of Russia from 1809 to 1917). Other changes reflect the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and changes with the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. So it reflects geography of the late 19th century. However, it has been updated to reflect modern goegraphy – but trying to avoid relocating material, because relocactions always cause proiblems for libraries.
The second point is that Dewey has a decimal notation, so that each topic gets divided up into 9 sections. In this case, you have 8 broad areas of Europe, followed by a miscellaneous section with everything not in the rest – which is a rather mixed bag, including the Low Countries, Switzerland, and southeastern Europe.
In detail (using the history numbers in 941 to 949 because that was where the details were first developed – the geigraohy numbers in 914.1 to 914.9 are parallel to them):
Scotland – 941 in edition 2, and 941.1 now, because 941 is now used for the UK as a whole
Ireland – 941.5 in edition 2: note there has been a litle readjustment, because part of Ireland is now independent
England – 942
Wales – 942.9
Germany – 943
Austria – 943.6
Czech Republic – 943.7 (It was Bohemia, etc., back in edition 2)
Poland – 943.8 (It was a lot smaller back in 1885 than it is now)
Hungary – 943.9
France – 944
Italy – 945
Spain – 946
Portugal – 946.9
Latvia – This isn’t the right place, since it was 947.4 in edition 2, as part of the “Baltic provinces” of Russia, and it’s now 947.96
Russia – 947
Georgia – 947.9 in edition 2, as part of “Caucasia”, and now 947.58
Ukrania – 947.7 (Called “Little Russia” in edition 2)
Estonia – 947.4 in edition 2, and 947.98 now
Lithuania – 947.4 in edition 2, and 947.93 now (so the order or Estonia and Lithuania doesn’t match Dewey here)
Norway – 948.1 (948 is Scandinavia)
Sweden – 948.5
Denmark – 948.9
Finland – 947.1 in edition 2, and 947.97 now (because there was a problem with all the other notation in 948 being used up for parts of Norway and Sweden)
Iceland – 949.1
Holland – 949.2
Belgium – 949.3
Switzerland – 949.4
Greece – 949.5 (but it was called “Byzantine Empire and Modern Greece” in edition 2)
Istanbul (Turkey) – 949.6 (the rest or Turkey is in Asia)
Croatia – in 943.6 in edition 2 (when it was part of Austria), and 949.72 now
Slovenia – in 943.6 in edition 2 (when it was part of Austria), and 949.73 now
Bulgaria – 949.7 in edition 2, and 949.9 now
But there’s another reason for some of the break up. Melvil Dewey tried to use the same notation to mean similar hings in different parts of the classification. If you look at the language break-up, you can see some parallels:
420 – English language
430 – German language
440 – French language
450 – Italian language
460 – Spanish language
469 – Portuguese language
That is obviously parallel with 942, 943, 944, 945, 946 and 946.9. (However, the parallel structure breaks down with 470 for Latin and 480 for Greek). This means that you can associate 5 meaning Italy in 945 with 5 meaning Italian in 450. However, there are costs. It means that the structure of the clkassification of languages is imperfect (apart from its bias towards languages found in late 19th-century American libraries), and the structure for European geography is imperfect – in an ideal structure, the Low Countries would be between Germany and France.