Prisoners of Geography
an often overlooked lesson
My father likes to say ‘you can’t be a student of history if you don’t know geography’
The land on which we live has always shaped us. It has shaped wars, influence, politics and development of people inhabiting it.
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall is about the physical realities that underpin the national and international policies of countries. Physical realities that are too often disregarded when writing about history or reporting contemporary affairs.
Take for example China and India - two massive nations with sizeable population, a very long border and little cultural and regional similarities. You’d expect the two giants would have fought multiple wars by now, but they haven’t, apart from a monthlong battle in 1962.
Why? Because China and India are separated by the largest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas, and it is impossible to advance large military columns through or over them. Ofcourse eventually technology can assist with that but the first deterrent will always be geography
Prisoners of Geography take you continent hopping while covering these regions in 10 chapters 1) Russia 2) China 3) United States 4) Western Europe 5) Africa 6) The Middle East 7) India and Pakistan 8) Korea and Japan 9) Latin America and 10) The Arctic.
With the latest maps (as of 2018) of each region, Tim Marshall writes candidly about the role of geography in the complex geopolitical strategies of these regions. How is China’s future and interests being driven by its geography? Why will Latin America never be united politically like EU? What makes America so difficult to invade? Why is Russia so interested in Ukraine? Where is the next big frontier race? (hint: Arctic)
My favourite chapters were on Africa and Middle East. Reading about their interwoven history and geography that shaped the present day geopolitical complexities was eye opening. We learn terribly little of this in the classrooms, and the news reported on media always lacks context and historical nuances. A common theme I spotted in both Africa and Middle East is the political destabilisation resulting from the Colonials carving up continents. Forcing otherwise unique communities to accept an idea of nation state and coexist together is not the best solution as history has shown us on multiple occasions. The West, in its colonial peak and eventual retreat, drew ink lines on maps of places they understood and knew little about.
With middle east these lines are now being redrawn in blood making the region unstable until its constituent ethnicities and religious groups find a sweet spot that everyone is happy with (spoiler - there isn’t one). I felt however the author had a decidedly narrow view of the middle eastern problem watering it down ‘they hate each other you won’t believe how much and they mean it when they hate’. I also think he downplayed the Israel-Palestine conflict as well and carefully avoided calling a spade a spade.
In Africas case - Great beaches, but terrible natural harbours. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are useless for transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems which explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America (although the first human originated from African continent and you’d assume by that merit alone they’d have a head start over others). Compounding their problems are the way their borders have been carved up into nations that ended up struggling with ethnic and cultural tensions.
But Africa and Middle East are not the only regions paying for the artificial borders drawn up by colonials. They echo all over the world such as in Korean peninsula, Central Asia and Latin America.
While he writes really well, Tim Marshall has biases that represent western military strategies and diplomacy. The bias in his writing is subtle and easily missed because he cherry picks information to state them as facts and uses the facts to make predictions about the suture (the insolence).
This book puts a lot of recent and historical events in context. If you’re an expert of geopolitics, you might find the analysis of the regions to be too shallow. But then again, if you’re a casual/curious observer of current affairs, the book will be illuminating. In a world full of opinions we seldom pause to consider some basic facts (which we rarely know) such as where the countries are and what are their people like?
While reading Prisoners of Geography, I also ended up finding about how the maps we used as a reference as kids during geography lessons were wrong in proportions.
Image1: Cartographer Gerardus Mercator designed The Mercator in 1569. You probably saw it hanging in your Geography classroom. However, this mapping style has been heavily criticised because it exaggerates the size of Northern powers like Europe and North America, and shrinks South America and Africa. The Mercator works for its straight line navigation accuracy, which was important back in the day for sea-faring but that no longer relevant today, especially from a geographical perspective.
If you look at the map and mentally glue Alaska on to California and then turn the United States on its head, it appears as if it would roughly fit into Africa with a few gaps here and there. In fact, Africa is three times larger than the United States. Look again at the standard Mercator map and you’ll see that Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, and yet Africa is actually fourteen times the size of Greenland!
Image2: There is no north-south or east-west distortion on the Hobo-Dyer map and is a better visual alternative (but it distorts the poles). You could fit the United States, Greenland, India, China, Spain, France, Germany, and the UK into Africa and still have room for most of Eastern Europe.Â
We know Africa is a massive landmass, but the maps rarely tell us how massive.
I happened to come across the visual comm thesis of BNU and it was really fun browsing through them. I really enjoyed scrolling through the Khandaan - e - Zombie and Microagressions (the process document behind microagressions is also worth reading - takes a bit to load though). You can view all of them here. Each thesis has a detailed abstract and process documentation at the bottom as-well.
It’s a good weekend to have a Back to the Future marathon. Be safe
-Saima
I am now confused if i should read this book. I was interested in reading of middle east. I m more than a casual reader. Know any better books on middle eastern conflicts?