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

“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.” 

Although technology has enabled us to overcome many geographic limitations, geography still exerts a considerable force on national and international relations. Borders will continue to be important into the future, and the mountains, deserts, jungles, rivers, and seashores of the world will continue to provide convenient frontiers between nations.

“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.” 

Geographical features not only form borders between nations and regions but also help determine the political, cultural, and economic life within nations and regions. For example, the natural borders created in Europe by rivers and mountains helped foster the growth of distinct groups, with their own cultures, languages, and governments.

“From the Grand Principality of Muscovy, through Peter the Great, Stalin, and now Putin, each Russian leader has been confronted by the same problems. It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, Communist, or crony capitalist—the ports still freeze, and the North European Plain is still flat. Strip out the lines of nation states, and the map Ivan the Terrible confronted is the same one Vladimir Putin is faced with to this day.”

The North European Plain offers Western European nations easy military access to Russia, while its navy is bottled up by ice in the north and narrow straits elsewhere. In the south, Muslim insurgents or invaders periodically make forays into Russia. Over the centuries, these conditions have dictated Russian foreign policy.