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Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World
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Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World

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In this New York Times bestseller, an award-winning journalist uses ten maps of crucial regions to explain the geo-political strategies of the world powers—“fans of geography, history, and politics (and maps) will be enthralled” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram).

Maps have a mysterious hold over us. Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location or where we are going but about the world in general. And yet, when it comes to geo-politics, much of what we are told is generated by analysts and other experts who have neglected to refer to a map of the place in question.

All leaders of nations are constrained by geography. In “one of the best books about geopolitics” (The Evening Standard), now updated to include 2016 geopolitical developments, journalist Tim Marshall examines Russia, China, the US, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan, Korea, and Greenland and the Arctic—their weather, seas, mountains, rivers, deserts, and borders—to provide a context often missing from our political reportage: how the physical characteristics of these countries affect their strengths and vulnerabilities and the decisions made by their leaders.

Offering “a fresh way of looking at maps” (The New York Times Book Review), Marshall explains the complex geo-political strategies that shape the globe. Why is Putin so obsessed with Crimea? Why was the US destined to become a global superpower? Why does China’s power base continue to expand? Why is Tibet destined to lose its autonomy? Why will Europe never be united? The answers are geographical. “In an ever more complex, chaotic, and interlinked world, Prisoners of Geography is a concise and useful primer on geopolitics” (Newsweek) and a critical guide to one of the major determining factors in world affairs.

Editor's Note

A satellite view…

When we think about who and what shapes political policy, we rarely think about all the ways in which geography plays one of the biggest roles. A deft and concise explanation of geopolitics that will give you a satellite view of world order.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherScribner
Release dateOct 27, 2015
ISBN9781501121487
Author

Tim Marshall

Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than thirty years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News and before that worked for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from forty countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. He is the author of Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World; The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World; and A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols. He is founder and editor of the current affairs site TheWhatandtheWhy.com.

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Reviews for Prisoners of Geography

Rating: 3.9260869217391305 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The only thing that would have made this book better was if it was a little longer, a little more detailed. That said, for a book that could easily be 1000 pages long, or even 10 or 12 separate and lengthy tomes, this 'version' was a very informative tour-guide.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Best for: Anyone interested in a basic understanding of how the earth has influenced politics across the world.In a nutshell: Author Tim Marshall breaks the world into ten regions and gives an overview of how different geographic and cultural components (rivers, deserts, mountains, harbors, tribes) have affected different political decisions.Worth quoting:“The better your relationship with Russia, the less you pay for energy; for example, Finland get a better deal than the Baltic States.”“China has locked itself into the global economy. If we don’t buy, they don’t make. And if they don’t make there will be mass unemployment.”“Amazing rivers, but most of them are rubbish for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall.”“The notion that a man from a certain area could not travel across a region to see a relative from the same tribe unless he had a document, granted to him by a third man he didn’t know in a faraway town, made little sense.”Why I chose it: I don’t know near enough about the world and the motivation behind some actions, and this looked like a great 101-level introduction. And it is.Review:This book could have gone one of two ways in my mind: impossible to slog through or difficult to put down. I find that often with non-fiction surveys: in an attempt to fit loads of information into one small book, the density can lead to dry writing and a list of dates and names that rivals the Numbers book in the Bible.Mr. Marshall does, in my opinion, a great job of parsing some of the most critical bits and connecting them to other critical bits. Obviously the 40 pages on the Middle East won’t be able to get into the nuance of everything, but it’s a starting point. The Ten Maps include: Russia; China; USA; Western Europe; Africa; The Middle East; India and Pakistan; Korea and Japan; Latin America; and the Arctic. Obviously that doesn’t cover all of the world; Mr. Marshall points out right up front that it leaves out Australia, for example, and much of the south pacific. But it’s a start, and was eye-opening for me.I think starting with Russia is a smart move, especially since (from my perspective as someone from the US) Russia has been a bit, shall we say, active in the business of other nations as of late. The edition I had included information as late as summer 2017, so its quite a current book. Each chapter looks at the geography of the region and uses it as a jumping off point to get at how that might influence the decisions each nation makes. It doesn’t make moral judgment; it just explains. So, for example, if your country relies on water from a river that flows through a neighboring nation, you’re going to be VERY interested in how things are going in that nation.As I said, this is a survey, not a deep analysis of any one nation, but still, I feel much better informed about the world than I did a week ago.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I was impressed how much information was packed into this deceptively short book. While it isn't highly technical, it is detailed enough to still be interesting no matter what level of knowledge the reader brings. Using ten maps (Russia, China, United States, Western Europe, Africa, The Middle East, India and Pakistan, Korea and Japan, Latin America, and The Arctic) Tim Marshall explains clearly and concisely the basics of how geography defines the limits of power and influences political strategy. This probably should be a required read for pretty much everyone. It's well written, accessible, and at our house, led to more research on side topics like The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Better than his flag book. There were a few things it made me think about that I'd not previously, not necessarily things I'd not have been able to conclude, but sometimes one needs prompting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A useful, brisk, engaging primer on geopolitics, especially if you (like me) are not a foreign policy expert.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Well researched and clearly presented. This is a book that will make just about anyone smarter about the world we live in. Highly recommend.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A good journalists romp through the geopolitics of the modern world. Well written and entertaining, albeit somewhat flippant.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A succinct summary that demonstrates a nation's success (we're looking at you USA) may be less a product of its political and economic system and more tied to the accident of it's land (and water) forms. If I were a high school geography student wanted to turn back the tide of geo-ignorance, I'd use this for crib notes.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Pretty good geopolitical analysis.

    There's a hint of laziness to the book. The author claims adding a chapter (which all seem to be about 25 pages) on Australia or Malay/Indo/Micronesia would excessively bloat this 265-page book. The maps appear to be pulled straight from the CIA World Factbook, and the author doesn't bother to add labels for areas that he refers to in the text as important. A couple of the two-page maps lose a significant amount of territory to the binding.

    One is left with the feeling that there were maybe six or seven areas the author wanted to cover in-depth, and the publisher talked him up to ten.

    Still, it's good, and very much worth the time.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    He got everything about Brazil wrong. Very superficial analysis. Should rewrite the chapter.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Horrible as an audio book. Why did they even make an audio version? You need the maps!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A good bird's eye view/roundup of the major conflicts in every region and how geography is sometimes a cause and sometimes a limiting or even exacerbating factor in each of these conflicts. A central theme seems to be the fact that humans in earlier times were more limited by geography than today leading to formation of smaller, more homogenous groups with distinct characteristics bound by geographical features like mountains or rivers or oceans. The world is in conflict because colonialists liked to draw random lines in the sand or on a map with no basis in reality. It would have been nice had the author also spent some time on how the internet and other conveniences of the modern age are removing some of these barriers. For if the internet is truly making the world smaller, then as a species humans must be becoming more homogenous, if not in appearance then definitely in habits and mannerisms and attitudes. How does geography figure then?On the whole, I think this is a good fast read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A pretty much excellent book with good (not great!) maps to reference during reading. Many areas of the world are included (Australia/New Zealand, SE Asia, and the Pacific islands are not) with good information although if a person travels much, much of this is obvious. The area of the world I thought most useful for me personally was South America with a few gems I had not thought about previously, but was subconsciously aware of. So that may be the value in a book such as this....to think about the world from alternate points of view. Finished 17.04.2020 in Malta, during the plague.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I would describe this as a documentary level overview of world politics with an attempt to explain how they are influenced by geography. It is fairly up to date with the latest updated edition published in 2019. It is ambitious to explain geo-politics in one book, but it gives a reasonable overview. A few of its key premises are that a region's development is influenced by:- the navigability of its river network - availability of arable land- abundance of natural resources in general- abundance of energy resources in particular.An entity will depend on its geography for defence. A key example given is Russia. The Russian heartland around Moscow is protected to the East with a moutain range and a vast expanse of sparcely populated land, while it is open to the West because of the North European plain which would be an open path for Western powers to advance on the heartland.The access to energy resources is identified as an indicator of a nation's foreign policies. China has to import much of its energy and must strive to protect the sea routes used to provide it with fuel, seek to befriend nations that can provide it with energy, and seek more secure routes for its energy imports.The USA's exploitation of shale oil is making the country energy self-sufficient which explains its loss of interest in the Middle East as it no longer needs oil from that region. As the oil-shales will be providing the USA with energy self-sufficiency it is easy to see why the current government is reducing or eliminating environmental regulations that hinder its exploitation.All in all this is a good overview of geo-political activity as influenced by geography/geology.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this book at the suggestion of a friend who thought I would find the perspective interesting, and indeed I did. The author has been engaged in observing geopolitics as a journalist for some time so he is knowledgeable. In addition his perspective as a Brit is refreshing to an American. He ends the book by acknowledging that great ideas and great ideas are part of the push and pull of history. That being said his point is geography is what the leaders and ideas need to work with when developing their strategies. As much as the book is about geography it is also about the history of power and its manifestation. I found the part about the arctic particularly interesting since it is so little in the news. The reopening of the northwest passage is clearly going to have a growing impact. He demonstrates one of the reasons international flashpoints are flashpoints. He also makes clear that one of the reasons both Africa and the Middle East are such challenging areas is that the colonial powers drew lines on maps without regard to underlying geography or populations.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There are many interesting perspectives provided well beyond the evening news. Now I get why Russia wants Crimea. They want access to a warm water sea and dont have it. The arctic is the worlds last frontier and Russia builds ice breakers at significant cost. South America lacks roads to connect its countries. American politics are simple compared to the China, Russian and the Stans and India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book's title keeps its promises, showing how physical geography shapes and constrains geopolitics. The subtitle, however, does not: the maps are distinctly disappointing, and don't illustrate the (excellent) premises of the text nearly as well as they ought to do. This doesn't spoil the book, which is an excellent geographic/historical/current events review of key points of conflict in our world. I learned a lot from it, and it made some things very clear, like why Russia can't tolerate a NATO-leaning Ukraine. It would have been a five star book for me had the maps measured up to the rest of it.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Joy's review: This is an excellent overview of the impact of geography on nations, politics, and the world as we know it today. Light on scholarship, but solid on insight and explanation into events and situations that are shaping today's world. If you want a better understanding of current events around the world, this is a great place to start.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Subtitle: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World - or in U.K. editions: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global PoliticsI’ve always been relatively good at geography, and yet I wouldn’t say I’m particularly interested in or fascinated by the subject. Until now.This was a selection for my F2F book club and I’ll admit I went into it with some reluctance. So, I was pleasantly surprised at how very readable and understandable Marshall’s work is. I quickly became engaged in the way he outlined the benefits and challenges of various geographical features. A lack of a warm water port, or a mountain range border, for example can make or break the fortunes of a nation. Not to mention the happy coincidence of finding a wealth of natural resources within your borders – oil, gold, diamonds, copper, rubber. My husband is retired from a career in international business. The only continent he has not visited is Antarctica. After he left the corporate world he took consulting assignments, including working for U.S. AID. He still reads widely about world affairs, global economics, and geopolitics. So, much of this book was not news to me; I’ve been listening to my husband talk about these topics at the dinner table for years. But Marshall organizes and presents the information, along with some instating conclusions (or suggestions) in a way that really captured my attention. I recommended the book to my husband; after about ten pages he said, “Haven’t I been saying this to you for years?” Yes, Dear, you have; but NOW I understand it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Despite the title, this isn't really a book about maps at all, it's a thumbnail guide to the geopolitics of the mid-2010s written by an experienced foreign correspondent. His "ten maps" cover parts of the world where there are important military or economic conflicts, which seems to mean everywhere except the central Pacific, Antarctica and Australasia. An ideal book to put on your shelf if you were (for instance) a bumbling Old Etonian suddenly promoted to Foreign Secretary of a former global power and hadn't read anything more recent than Xenophon. Marshall has the journalistic gift of serving up all the relevant facts in a very compact and efficient form that can easily be read through in the taxi on your way to the meeting, as well as giving you two or three slightly more obscure items you could safely drop into a conversation to convey deeper levels of knowledge. Nothing very profound, but a useful primer if you don't read the foreign news very often.With the hindsight of six years since the book was last updated, Marshall made some good but perhaps obvious calls — in particular his view that "Russia has not finished with Ukraine yet" (ch.1) and his prediction that Afghanistan would have to be handed back to the control of the Taliban sooner or later (ch.7) — but he also seems to have let himself be misled by Brexit rhetoric into predicting the imminent collapse of European unity, and he failed to reckon with the USA's four-year holiday from grown-up (geo)politics and the collapse of the Nicaraguan Grand Canal project.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another one I waited too long to review and don't recall all the specific anymore.

    A good primer on the history of why certain regions of the world ended up the way they are today, specifically Russia, China, United States, Western Europe, Africa, The Middle East, India & Pakistan, Korea & Japan, Latin America, and The Artic.

    It should not be thought that the book goes into much detail for any specific region as each region only gets ~20 pages, but within each section you get an understanding of how and why things happened, how and why Russia desires a warm water port so badly, why the US can project its power so far, that Africa is divided by the Sahara, and more and how they impact those regions.

    It is a book I'd recommend and worth rereading every once in a while (especially if it gets rereleased with updated current events)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Should be required reading to understand world politics. Engaging and very well written!
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Geopolitics for dummies? YA foreign affairs? I don't know who this is aimed at, but not anyone who reads a newspaper. Severely lacking in any depth, new information, or insight.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Who knew how important the geography of a land is in explaining its history and predicting it future success. I was very impressed with the author's amazing research and geographical knowledge and insights into the how and why a country/continent has evolved over time. It will be my go to reference guide as a refresher when I travel to different areas of the world.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is quite interesting and informative, at least from the point of view of the areas that it covers. Early in the book, he comments that Putin probably wishes that there were mountains between Russia and the Ukraine. I would guess that most if Eastern Europe wishes the same thing -- that there were more mountains between them and Russia. I am reminded of a book I read that praised King So-and-So the Great, who destroyed his Neighbors, who posed a real danger to his kingdom. I bet that the Neighbors had a different view of who was dangerous to whom. The Neighbors were a people that I had never previously heard of, which pretty much sums up the situation.It is good to know how those areas highlighted see the world, and it gives us a better understanding of their wishes and motives, but I wish that Marshall had exhibited at least a little awareness of how The-People-Who-Must-Be-Conquered see it. My uncle was part Indigenous American, and the family joke was the great things that they were going to do when the US government paid them for their treaty lands.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book looks at the political geography of ten countries or regions and examines the factors that brought them to their current state of political and economic success or otherwise. The ten are: Russia; China; USA; Western Europe; Africa; the Middle East; India and Pakistan; Korea and Japan; Latin America; and the Arctic. We sometimes assume that a country's success or otherwise is determined wholly or mainly by the political and economic choices it makes; while of course these are always a big factor, the basic objective reality of geography is often underestimated. It is at the heart of why historically, the USA and Western Europe have been generally economically successful and politically stable through, for example, wide networks of navigable rivers that enhanced transport and trade from an early age. So too it is the heart of why Russia and China have sought to create buffer states around them due to their fear of invasion across the plains of North Europe and central Asia. Russian policy in the Balkans and Chinese policy in Pakistan have been partly driven by the need for warm water or deep sea ports to expand trade. The physical reality of the Himalayas has prevented any major conflict between the great civilisations of China and India. And Africa's lack of development as a continent has been partly caused by having few natural harbours and rivers with many waterfalls which make them much less useful as trade routes. The list goes on. This is a great introduction to this important dimension for understanding the world and its future, especially, for example, competition between nations with a stake in the Arctic to the increasingly greater accessibility of natural resources such as oil and gas previously trapped under the ice, as the polar cap melts. Fascinating stuff.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting Concepts. Marshall presents an interesting case of geopolitics from a geographical perspective, and while quite a bit of it makes perfect sense, there are also times where he presents an idea as perfectly obvious... when it actually isn't/ wasn't. For example, he claims that once America gained access to the Pacific Ocean in the 19th century via the Oregon Territory, it was destined to become a great world power simply because it had direct access to both of the world's great oceans. If it was so perfectly obvious, why did it take another century or so - for this barely century old nation at the time - to achieve such supremacy? But the cases Marshall does make, he makes many interesting points on that even I had never considered, and I consider myself a fairly learned and analytical person. He also does so with great humor, which makes what could have been a much drier, more academic treatise into a much more enjoyable read. So read this thing. It has some good ideas and you'll be entertained. Just don't believe every word it says, and keep a critical eye on all things at all times. Recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Some great points but didn't age well. Mentions nothing of race in America, which is ripping the country apart, or more specifically white supremacy and patriarchy. Issues that might have surfaced in 50 - 100 years came about much sooner with the Covid 19 pandemic. Regardless, you shouldn't mention America without mentioning the massive police state and that we have more prisoners and thus slave labor than anywhere else in the world. We've had a coup since this was written and major role backs on human rights. Furthermore chapter on Africa falls into some racist pitfalls. They didn't have the same weaponry as Europeans, but Africans were not cut off from Europe. They did have the wheel (hello, chariots!!!), built massive pyramids outside of Egypt, and even had the first university (Timbuktu ). They weren't “maybe” as advanced. They were as civilized and smart. The initial downfall of Western Africa was due to greed. Kingdoms in modern Nigeria and Angola got into the slavery business only to have western expansion drive up the need and hence the value for enslaved people up so high that they took matters into their own hands. Additionally, massive value in the continent (which was flaunted by Mansa Muza in his pilgrimage around Africa and into Europe, where he dropped huge amounts of gold- so much gold he broke economies) that western expansion went further into Africa. Really interesting chapters on Russia and China, though- especially considering Russia has invaded Ukraine again (2022) and is threatening WW3. However, it's still a white-centered book which is particularly disappointing given the author's acceptance that all of human race is African.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Prisoners of Geography – A Much needed lessonAs someone whose family has been victims of the Geography of where they lived and who they were in an often much forgotten episode of the Second World War. People forget that when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 their allies Russia invaded Poland on the 17th September 1939. My great-Grandmother was ‘exiled’ to Siberia because her son was fighting for the enemy (the Polish Government) and her husband was an officer in the Polish Police. My Grandfather escaped a Nazi POW camp made his way to France and after its fall to the UK. My great-Grandfather was never heard of again, and members of my family perished at Katyn, when my great-Grandmother was released in 1946 from Siberia, she could not go home, as her home was in the Stalin creation of Western Ukraine and was ‘moved’ to Krakow.Many Eastern European Governments did not speak out when Russia moved in to the Crimea region whereas Western Leaders could not help themselves but make comments. Why the difference? Partly geography and mainly history, Crimea had been Russian until 1964 when Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine, oh and Khrushchev was a Ukrainian. What we have not heard is a lot about Russia’s interference in Eastern Ukraine which Eastern Europe is very concerned about.Tim Marshall’s excellent book Prisoners of Geography which examines ten maps of the world and then given a concise geopolitical history of that region. You will find out why Russian is concerned about Europe’s eastern border countries, and why it sees Poland as the gateway to the Russian plains as well as the European plains, and feels pretty secure with its other borders.There is also an excellent examination on why China has finally come from behind the bamboo curtain and playing an active part with investments across the Asiatic content. That they are not afraid to sabre rattle amongst the USA naval fleet when it sails too close to China.We also get examinations of the Middle East, which is very apt, with some excellent analysis which some of our political leaders could do with and understanding before making crass statements on what is happening there. In the chapter that covers the Middle East the reader is reminded very much of the artificial borders that were drawn up by the Sykes-Picot Agreement in May 1916, a secret agreement that was concluded by two British and French diplomats. The Sykes-Picot Agreement involved itself with the partition of the Ottoman Empire once World War One had ended. The consequences of which are still reverberating throughout the Middle East and people wonder why the British are not trusted by countries such as Iran.There are also excellent chapters that cover Africa, Korea and Japan, the United States as well as the southern Americas. One could go forensically through all the chapters and set them out here but the reader needs to engage this book.What Tim Marshall gives the reader is an excellent lesson and reminders that geography influences political decisions, strategic decisions of governments and the attitudes of the people. This book also can open one’s eyes to the fact that geography gives context to political and historical events such as revolutions or various embargos that happen across the globe.This is an excellent book which students of geography, history and politics should be required to read and those not so bright people that get elected to Parliaments need to read. This book puts a lot of recent and historical events in to context and understanding that context is so important. Buy this book, borrow this book and give this book it is too important to remain on the shelves getting dusty.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is not so much about maps or even geography, but a wonderful essay on world geopolitics. The premise is that geography plays a large part, and the author makes a convincing case. But history and borders, as well as weak and strong leaders, also play a role in how nations behave towards each others.To get a sense of why nations are doing to things that they are doing, read this book. It's very well written, with a nice dose of humour thrown in. I read the 2019 updated version, and it includes the recent events in Venezuela, the meetings between Trump and Kim Jong-un, and the exit of the UK from the EU. It misses out on the falling apart of UNASUR, and of course the COVID-19 pandemic.Two other points: (i) The maps are pretty useless when reading a eBook version - Have GoogleMaps handy. (ii) The last chapters drifts off into space travel; not sure why that was necessary.

Book preview

Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World, by Tim Marshall. Book One in the Politics of place Series. The Fascinating New York Times Bestseller.

More Praise for Prisoners of Geography

"In an ever more complex, chaotic, and interlinked world, Prisoners of Geography is a concise and useful primer on geopolitics."

Newsweek

A convincing analysis of Russian geopolitical thinking… Also makes clear the terrible price the world has had to pay because European officials decided to create nation states with borders that completely ignored cultural geography.

The Washington Post

Marshall is excellent on some of the highways and byways of geopolitics.

Financial Times

Fans of geography, history, and politics (and maps) will be enthralled.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

This is not a book about environmental determinism—the geography of a region is never presented as fatalistic; but it does send a timely reminder that despite technological advances, geography is always there, often forcing the hand of world leaders.

Geographical magazine

Lively and perceptive political and historical analyses are frequent. The chapter on China is excellent; the chapter on Africa combines geography and history in a convincing way; the chapter on Western Europe… is a brilliant narrative of European relations, particularly between France and Germany. The superb chapter on the Middle East makes for a clear indictment of the Sykes-Picot agreements and of their tracing of artificial borders. The chapter on the Arctic is precise and informative… A very lively, sensible, and informative series of country reports in which geography occupies its rightful place along with shrewd historical reminders and political judgments.

Survival: Global Politics and Strategy

Sharp insights into the way geography shapes the choices of world leaders.

The World, the Financial Times news blog

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Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World, by Tim Marshall. Scribner. New York | London | Toronto | Sydney | New Delhi.

To Joanna Simone: L’histoire de ma vie—c’est toi.

INTRODUCTION

Vladimir Putin says he is a religious man, a great supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church. If so, he may well go to bed each night, say his prayers, and ask God: Why didn’t you put some mountains in Ukraine?

If God had built mountains in Ukraine, then the great expanse of flatland that is the North European Plain would not be such encouraging territory from which to attack Russia repeatedly. As it is, Putin has no choice: he must at least attempt to control the flatlands to the west. So it is with all nations, big or small. The landscape imprisons their leaders, giving them fewer choices and less room to maneuver than you might think. This was true of the Athenian Empire, the Persians, the Babylonians, and before; it was true of every leader seeking high ground from which to protect their tribe.

The land on which we live has always shaped us. It has shaped the wars, the power, politics, and social development of the peoples that now inhabit nearly every part of the earth. Technology may seem to overcome the distances between us in both mental and physical space, but it is easy to forget that the land where we live, work, and raise our children is hugely important and that the choices of those who lead the seven billion inhabitants of this planet will to some degree always be shaped by the rivers, mountains, deserts, lakes, and seas that constrain us all—as they always have.

Overall there is no one geographical factor that is more important than any other. Mountains are no more important than deserts, nor rivers than jungles. In different parts of the planet different geographical features are among the dominant factors in determining what people can and cannot do.

Broadly speaking, geopolitics looks at the ways in which international affairs can be understood through geographical factors: not just the physical landscape—the natural barriers of mountains or connections of river networks, for example—but also climate, demographics, cultural regions, and access to natural resources. Factors such as these can have an important impact on many different aspects of our civilization, from political and military strategy to human social development, including language, trade, and religion.

The physical realities that underpin national and international politics are too often disregarded in both writing about history and in contemporary reporting of world affairs. Geography is clearly a fundamental part of the why as well as the what. Take, for example, China and India: two massive countries with huge populations that share a very long border but are not politically or culturally aligned. It wouldn’t be surprising if these two giants had fought each other in several wars, but in fact, apart from one monthlong battle in 1962, they never have. Why? Because between them is the highest mountain range in the world, and it is practically impossible to advance large military columns through or over the Himalayas. As technology becomes more sophisticated, of course, ways are emerging of overcoming this obstacle, but the physical barrier remains a deterrent, and so both countries focus their foreign policy on other regions, while keeping a wary eye on each other.

Individual leaders, ideas, technology, and other factors all play a role in shaping events, but they are temporary. Each new generation will still face the physical obstructions created by the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas, the challenges created by the rainy season, and the disadvantages of limited access to natural minerals or food sources.

I first became interested in this subject when covering the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s. I watched close at hand as the leaders of various peoples, be they Serbian, Croat, or Bosniak, deliberately reminded their tribes of the ancient divisions and, yes, ancient suspicions in a region crowded with diversity. Once they had pulled the peoples apart, it didn’t take much to then push them against each other.

The River Ibar in Kosovo is a prime example. Ottoman rule over Serbia was cemented by the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, fought near where the Ibar flows through the city of Mitrovica. Over the following centuries the Serb population began to withdraw behind the Ibar as Muslim Albanians gradually descended from the mountainous Malesija region into Kosovo, where they became a majority by the mid-eighteenth century. Fast-forward to the twentieth century and there was still a clear ethnic-religious division roughly marked by the river. Then in 1999, battered by NATO from the air and the Kosovo Liberation Army on the ground, the Yugoslav (Serbian) military retreated across the Ibar, quickly followed by most of the remaining Serb population. The river became the de facto border of what some countries now recognize as the independent state of Kosovo.

Mitrovica was also where the advancing NATO ground forces came to a halt. During the three-month war, there had been veiled threats that NATO intended to invade all of Serbia. In truth, the restraints of both geography and politics meant the NATO leaders never really had that option. Hungary had made it clear that it would not allow an invasion from its territory, as it feared reprisals against the 350,000 ethnic Hungarians in northern Serbia. The alternative was an invasion from the south, which would have gotten them to the Ibar in double-quick time; but NATO would then have faced the mountains above them.

I was working with a team of Serbs in Belgrade at the time and asked what would happen if NATO came: We will put our cameras down, Tim, and pick up guns was the response. They were liberal Serbs, good friends of mine and opposed to their government, but they still pulled out the maps and showed me where the Serbs would defend their territory in the mountains, and where NATO would grind to a halt. It was some relief to be given a geography lesson in why NATO’s choices were more limited than the Brussels PR machine made public.

An understanding of how crucial the physical landscape was in reporting news in the Balkans stood me in good stead in the years that followed. For example, in 2001, a few weeks after 9/11, I saw a demonstration of how, even with today’s modern technology, climate still dictates the military possibilities of even the world’s most powerful armies. I was in northern Afghanistan, having crossed the border river from Tajikistan on a raft, in order to link up with the Northern Alliance (NA) troops who were fighting the Taliban.

The American fighter jets and bombers were already overhead, pounding Taliban and al-Qaeda positions on the cold, dusty plains and hills east of Mazar-e-Sharif in order to pave the way for the advance on Kabul. After a few weeks it was obvious that the NA were gearing up to move south. And then the world changed color.

The most intense sandstorm I have ever experienced blew in, turning everything a mustard-yellow color. At the height of the storm you couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead of you, and the only thing clear was that the Americans’ satellite technology, at the cutting edge of science, was helpless, blind in the face of the climate of this wild land. Everyone, from President Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the NA troops on the ground, just had to wait. Then it rained and the sand that had settled on everything turned into mud. The rain came down so hard that the baked-mud huts we were living in looked as if they were melting. Again it was clear that the move south was on hold until geography finished having its say. The rules of geography, which Hannibal, Sun Tzu, and Alexander the Great all knew, still apply to today’s leaders.

More recently, in 2012, I was given another lesson in geostrategy: As Syria descended into full-blown civil war, I was standing on a Syrian hilltop overlooking a valley south of the city of Hama and saw a hamlet burning in the distance. Syrian friends pointed out a much larger village about a mile away, from where they said the attack had come. They then explained that if one side could push enough people from the other faction out of the valley, then the valley could be joined onto other land that led to the country’s only motorway, and as such would be useful in carving out a piece of contiguous, viable territory that one day could be used to create a mini-statelet if Syria could not be put back together again. Where before I saw only a burning hamlet, I could now see its strategic importance and understand how political realities are shaped by the most basic physical realities.

Geopolitics affects every country, whether at war, as in the examples above, or at peace. There will be instances in every region you can name. In these pages I cannot explore each one: Canada, Australia, and Indonesia, among others, get no more than a brief mention, although a whole book could be devoted to Australia alone and the ways in which its geography has shaped its connections with other parts of the world, both physically and culturally. Instead I have focused on the powers and regions that best illustrate the key points of the book, covering the legacy of geopolitics from the past (nation-forming); the most pressing situations we face today (the troubles in Ukraine, the expanding influence of China); and looking to the future (growing competition in the Arctic).

In Russia we see the influence of the Arctic, and how it limits Russia’s ability to be a truly global power. In China we see the limitations of power without a global navy and how in 2016 it became obvious the speed at which China is seeking to change this. The chapter on the United States illustrates how shrewd decisions to expand its territory in key regions allowed it to achieve its modern destiny as a two-ocean superpower. Europe shows us the value of flatland and navigable rivers in connecting regions and producing a culture able to kick-start the modern world, while Africa is a prime example of the effects of isolation.

The chapter on the Middle East demonstrates why drawing lines on maps while disregarding the topography and, equally important, the geographical cultures in a given area is a recipe for trouble. We will continue to witness that trouble this century. The same theme surfaces in the chapters on Africa and India/Pakistan. The colonial powers used ink to draw lines that bore no relation to the physical realities of the region, and created some of the most artificial borders the world has seen. In the Middle East, an attempt is now being made to redraw them in blood.

Very different from the examples of Kosovo or Syria are Japan and Korea, in that they are mostly ethnically homogenous. But they have other problems: Japan is an island nation devoid of natural resources, while the division of the Koreas is a problem still waiting to be solved. Meanwhile, Latin America is an anomaly. In its far south it is so cut off from the outside world that global trading is difficult, and its internal geography is a barrier to creating a trading bloc as successful as the EU.

Finally, we come to one of the most uninhabitable places on earth—the Arctic. For most of history, humans have ignored it, but in the twentieth century we found energy there, and twenty-first-century diplomacy will determine who owns—and sells—that resource.

Seeing geography as a decisive factor in the course of human history can be construed as a bleak view of the world, which is why it is disliked in some intellectual circles. It suggests that nature is more powerful than man and that we can go only so far in determining our own fate. However, other factors clearly have an influence on events, too. Any sensible person can see that technology is now bending the iron rules of geography. It has found ways over, under, or through some of the barriers. The Americans can now fly a plane all the way from Missouri to Mosul on a bombing mission without needing to land to refuel. That, along with their great aircraft carrier battle groups, means they no longer absolutely have to have an ally or a colony in order to extend their global reach around the world. Of course, if they do have an air base on the island of Diego Garcia, or permanent access to the port in Bahrain, then they have more options; but it is less essential.

So airpower has changed the rules, as, in a different way, has the Internet. But geography, and the history of how nations have established themselves within that geography, remains crucial to our understanding of the world today and to our future.

The conflict in Iraq and Syria is rooted in colonial powers ignoring the rules of geography, whereas the Chinese occupation of Tibet is rooted in obeying them. America’s global foreign policy is dictated by them, and even the power projection of the last superpower standing can only mitigate the rules that nature, or God, handed down.

What are those rules? The place to begin is in the land where power is hard to defend, and so for centuries its leaders have compensated by pushing outward. It is the land without mountains to its west: Russia.

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RUSSIA

Vast, vaster, vastest (adj): of very great area or extent; immense

Russia is vast. It is the vastest. Immense. It is six-million-square-miles vast, eleven time zones vast; it is the largest country in the world.

Its forests, lakes, rivers, frozen tundra, steppe, taiga, and mountains are all vast. This size has long seeped into our collective conscious. Wherever we are, there is Russia, perhaps to our east, or west, to our north or south—but there is the Russian Bear.

It is no coincidence that the bear is the symbol of this immense size. There it sits, sometimes hibernating, sometimes growling, majestic, but ferocious. Bear is a Russian word, but the Russians are also wary of calling this animal by its name, fearful of conjuring up its darker side. They call it medved, the one who likes honey.

At least 120,000 of these medveds live in a country that bestrides Europe and Asia. To the west of the Ural Mountains is European Russia. To their east is Siberia, stretching all the way to the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Even in the twenty-first century, to cross it by train takes six days. Russia’s leaders must look across these distances, and differences, and formulate policy accordingly; for several centuries now they have looked in all directions, but concentrated mostly westward.

When writers seek to get to the heart of the bear they often use Winston Churchill’s famous observation of Russia, made in 1939: It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but few go on to complete the sentence, which ends but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. Seven years later he used that key to unlock his version of the answer to the riddle, asserting, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.

He could have been talking about the current Russian leadership, which despite being now wrapped in the cloak of democracy, remains authoritarian in its nature with national interest still at its core.

When Vladimir Putin isn’t thinking about God, and mountains, he’s thinking about pizza. In particular, the shape of a slice of pizza—a wedge.

The thin end of this wedge is Poland. Here, the vast North European Plain stretching from France to the Urals (which extend a thousand miles south to north, forming a natural boundary between Europe and Asia) is only three hundred miles wide. It runs from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Carpathian Mountains in the south. The North European Plain encompasses all of western and northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Germany, and nearly all of Poland.

From a Russian perspective this is a double-edged sword. Poland represents a relatively narrow corridor into which Russia could drive its armed forces if necessary and thus prevent an enemy from advancing toward Moscow. But from this point the wedge begins to broaden; by the time you get to Russia’s borders it is more than two thousand miles wide, and is flat all the way to Moscow and beyond. Even with a large army you would be hard-pressed to defend in strength along this line. However, Russia has never been conquered from this direction partially due to its strategic depth. By the time an army approaches Moscow it already has unsustainably long supply lines, a mistake that Napoleon made in 1812, and that Hitler repeated in 1941.

Likewise, in the Russian Far East it is geography that protects Russia. It is difficult to move an army from Asia up into Asian Russia; there’s not much to attack except for snow and you could get only as far as the Urals. You would then end up holding a massive piece of territory, in difficult conditions, with long supply lines and the ever-present risk of a counterattack.

You might think that no one is intent on invading Russia, but that is not how the Russians see it, and with good reason. In the past five hundred years they have been invaded several times from the west. The Poles came across the North European Plain in 1605, followed by the Swedes under Charles XII in 1708, the French under Napoleon in 1812, and the Germans—twice, in both world wars, in 1914 and 1941. Looking at it another way, if you count from Napoleon’s invasion of 1812, but this time include the Crimean War of 1853–56 and the two world wars up to 1945, then the Russians were fighting on average in or around the North European Plain once every thirty-three years.

At the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Russians occupied the territory conquered from Germany in Central and Eastern Europe, some of which then became part of the USSR, as it increasingly began to resemble the old Russian empire. In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed by an association of European and North American states, for the defense of Europe and the North Atlantic against the danger of Soviet aggression. In response, most of the Communist states of Europe—under Russian leadership—formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955, a treaty for military defense and mutual aid. The pact was supposed to be made of iron, but with hindsight, by the early 1980s it was rusting, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 it crumbled to dust.

President Putin is no fan of the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. He blames him for undermining Russian security and has referred to the breakup of the former Soviet Union during the 1990s as a major geopolitical disaster of the century.

Since then the Russians have watched anxiously as NATO has crept steadily closer, incorporating countries that Russia claims it was promised would not be joining: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia in 2004; and Albania in 2009. NATO says no such assurances were given.

Russia, like all great powers, is thinking in terms of the next one hundred years and understands that in that time anything could happen. A century ago, who could have guessed that American armed forces would be stationed a few hundred miles from Moscow in Poland and the Baltic States? By 2004, just fifteen years after 1989, every single former Warsaw Pact state bar Russia was in NATO or the European Union.

The Moscow administration’s mind has been concentrated by that, and by Russia’s history.

Russia as a concept dates back to the ninth century and a loose federation of East Slavic tribes known as Kievan Rus, which was based in Kiev and other towns along the Dnieper River, in what is now Ukraine. The Mongols, expanding their empire, continually attacked the region from the south and east, eventually overrunning it in the thirteenth century. The fledgling Russia then relocated northeast in and around the city of Moscow. This early Russia, known as the Grand Principality of Muscovy, was indefensible. There were no mountains, no deserts, and few rivers. In all directions lay flatland, and across the steppe to the south and east were the Mongols. The invader could advance at a place of his choosing, and there were few natural defensive positions to occupy.

Enter Ivan the Terrible, the first tsar. He put into practice the concept of attack as defense—i.e., beginning your expansion by consolidating at home and then moving outward. This led to greatness. Here was a man to give support to the theory that individuals can change history. Without his character, of both utter ruthlessness and vision, Russian history would be different.

The fledgling Russia had begun a moderate expansion under Ivan’s grandfather, Ivan the Great, but that expansion accelerated after he came to power in 1533. It encroached east on the Urals, south to the Caspian Sea, and north toward the Arctic Circle. It gained access to the Caspian, and later the Black Sea, thus taking advantage of the Caucasus Mountains as a partial barrier between it and the Mongols. A military base was built in Chechnya to deter any would-be attacker, be they the Mongol Golden Horde, the Ottoman Empire, or the Persians.

There were setbacks, but over the next century Russia would push past the Urals and edge into Siberia, eventually incorporating all the land to the Pacific coast far to the east.

Now the Russians had a partial buffer zone and a hinterland—strategic depth—somewhere to fall back to in the case of invasion. No one was going to attack them in force from the Arctic Sea, nor fight their way over the Urals to get to them. Their land was becoming what we now know as Russia, and to get to it from the south or southeast you had to have a huge army and a very long supply line and you had to fight your way past defensive positions.

In the eighteenth century, Russia, under Peter the Great—who founded the Russian Empire in 1721—and then Empress Catherine the Great, looked westward, expanding the empire to become one of the great powers of Europe, driven chiefly by trade and nationalism. A more secure and powerful Russia was now able to occupy Ukraine and reach the Carpathian Mountains. It took over most of what we now know as the Baltic States—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Thus it was protected from any incursion via land that way, or from the Baltic Sea.

Now there was a huge ring around Moscow that was the heart of the country. Starting at the Arctic, it came down through the Baltic region, across Ukraine, then the Carpathians, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian, swinging back around to the Urals, which stretched up to the Arctic Circle.

In the twentieth century, Communist Russia created the Soviet Union. Behind the rhetoric of Workers of the World Unite the USSR was simply the Russian Empire writ large. After the Second World War it stretched from the Pacific to

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