political geography

1. Md. Firoz Al Mamun
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Islamic University, Kushtia
Bangladesh

2.  Long lists of distinguished historians from ancient time to the
present have pointed out the relationship between geography and
political and social events. It was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a
German, who won the title of father of political geography, and
is even known as the founder of modern geography itself. Karl
Ritter (1779-1859) was the first to assert that certain parts of the
world, for geographical and other reasons, were pre-destined to
play particular historical roles.

3. Friedreich Ratzel
 Friedreich Ratzel (1844-1904): Ratzel was a Professor of
geography at the Polytechnic Institute of Munich and later at the
University of Leipzig. His theories carried political geography to a
point where geopolitics could materialize. According to him, the
state as an organic entity in itself and who might get involved in an
endless struggle for space. In 1879 he published Politische
Geographic, the first book really to embody the principles of
political geography as they had been developed up to that time.
Throughout the book, appears the theme that the land area of
a state is the best indication of its political power and

4.  that citizens should become conscious of their countries'
spatial requirements. The idea of Lebensraum or living space is
associated with the theory of organic state. To make his law
clear, Ratzel said that, "there is on this small planet sufficient
space for only one great state".

5. Rudolf Kjellen
Rudolf Kjellen (1864-1922): Kjellen, a Professor of History and Government of the
Swedish University of GotÙburg, decidedly pro-German in his views, is
customarily considered as the next leader after Ratzel in the evolution of
contemporary geopolitics and is looked upon as the father of that subject. A
somewhat modified concept of the state as an organic being was offered by
Kjellen. He advanced a step beyond Ratzel's thinking in that he envisioned the
state not only as a living organism, but also as a conscious being equipped with
moral and intellectual capacities. He agreed with Ratzel that the final objective of
a state's development was the attainment of power; however, Kjellen held that in
its quest for power the state need not follow the simple organic laws of territorial
expansion. Instead it might employ modern cultural advances and techniques in
the achievement of its desired goals.

6.  Kjellen was the first writer to use the term geopolitics in his
book The State as Form of Life (1916). His book The Great
Powers became the acknowledged bible of German
geopoliticians. He foresaw the emergence of a few giant states
in the world, with Germany as the great power in Europe,
Africa and West Asia.

7. Three Schools of Geopolitics: THE SEA POWER SCHOOL:
 A distinguished American naval officer and a great proponent of
sea power, Admiral T. Mahan (1840-1914) was the first to
recognize the importance of geography to state planning and to
foreign policy. No other single person has so directly and to
profoundly influenced the theory of sea power and naval
strategy as Mahan. His doctrines gave a lift to military and
political planners throughout the world who readily adopted his
formula for the achievement of world power through sea power.

8. "Mahan is best known for his numerous publications on sea
power: The Influence of Sea Power upon History 1660-1783
(1890), The Influence of Sea Power upon French Revolution and
Empire 1793-1812 (1892), The Life of Nelson (1897), and Sea
Power in its Relation to the War of 1812 (1905). These volumes,
considered together, are an entity in which successive maritime
events are strung upon a slender thread of general history with
frequent digressions into questions of naval policy, strategy and
tactics".

9. Mahan advanced the doctrine that control of the sea was the prime
prerequisite of world power. He believed that sea power in all its
ramifications was the royal road to national wealth and prestige. For
this reason he asserted that the most essential geographic factor of
national power was not the number of square miles of land in a country
but the length of its coast line and the character of the harbors.
According to him, the nation that controls the seas will control the
world.

10. How to achieve Naval Authority
 According to Mahan Naval Authority depends on Six
elements:
 1. Geographic Position
 2. Physical conformation
 3. Extant of Territory
 4. Population
 5. National Character
 6. Governmental Institution

11. THE LAND POWER SCHOOL:
 The most famous geographer of the age was British scholar Sir
Halford J. Mackinder (1861-1947). He was a Professor of
Geography at the University of London and Vice-President of
the Royal Geographical Society.
 On January 25, 1904, he read a paper titled "The Geographical
Pivot of History" before the Royal Geographical Society. This
paper encapsulated the relations between national interests and
geography. Mackinder contended that certain geographical
factors explained much of history, and he presented the
geography of the world in novel map form. The large land mass
of Eastern Europe, all of Asia and north of the mid-Asian
mountain belt was designated the Pivot Area

12. Mackinder’s Concept of Pivot Area and Heartland, 1904-1943

13.  which was surrounded by an Inner or Marginal Crescent
outside of which lay the rest of the world called the Lands of
the Outer or Insular Crescent? The pivot area was entirely
continental, the inner crescent was mixed continental and
oceanic, and the outer crescent was largely oceanic. The pivot
area, Mackinder believed, could not be made the victim of sea
power and would prove impregnable to attack from any
quarter. Mackinder called the pivot area the Heartland. He
stressed that the resources and the space of this area were
so vast that if properly organized they would enable the
owner to conquer the world.

14. Since the gateway to the Heartland lies in East Europe, and since
the Heartland is a natural fortress capable of development and
expansion,-
Mackinder formulated his famous hypothesis:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
 Who rules the Heartland commands the world-island;
Who rules the world-island commands the world.

15. THE GEOPOLITICS OF HAUSHOFER:
 Karl Haushofer (1869-1946) was an army general, geographer,
geologist and historian. He developed German geopolitics. His
geopolitics began with the Heartland theory of Mackinder, and with
Ratzel's and Kjellen's concepts of space and of the organic state. He
organized the "Institute of Geopolitics" in Munich after World War I,
from which he and his followers propounded their ideas on
geopolitics. Haushofer, the Third Reich geopolitician, looked upon
German possession of the Heartland as the key to Nazi control of the
world. Under his guidance Nazi leaders made specific applications of
geopolitical principles to further Nazi expansionism.

16.  His objective was that Germany should and must
command the world according to Mackinder's
formula. This policy was given practical application
when the German forces attacked nation after nation
during the Second World War.

17. Eurasia Physical

18. SPYKMAN AND THE VALIDITY OF HEARTLAND
THEORY:
 A leading student in the development of the American
geopolitics was Nicholas J. Spykman (1893-1943). Professor
of International Relations at Yale University, Spykman's most
outstanding work from a geopolitical view was The Geography
of Peace (1944). In this book he questioned the validity of
Heartland thesis, doubting whether this area would be, at
least in the immediate future, a center of world power
potential. In justification of this conclusion he pointed out

19.  that limitations of climatic conditions and low agrarian productivity;
the inadequate distribution of coal, iron, oil, and water power; and
the geographical obstacles along the north, east, south and south-
east boundaries of the huge Pivot Area all militated against the
validity of Mackinder's thesis.
 Spykman accepted Mackinder's perspective as a valuable
analytical framework but concluded that both recent history
and perspective strategic patterns of the postwar world would
indicate that Mackinder's Inner of Marginal Crescent, rather
than the Heartland was the critical zone.

20.  Spykman renamed this periphery the Rimland. The Rimland
was considered largely a buffer zone between sea power and
land power. Spykman stated that the geopolitical slogan of
the world should read: "who controls the Rimland rules
Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the
world".
 During the Second World War, Spykman felt that the Allies
should base their future policy in preventing any consolidation
of the Rimland. In the cold war era that was to follow, this
prescription became part of American containment policy aimed
at preventing the Soviet Union, and later China, from spreading
their influence into new areas anywhere within the Rim land.

21. THE AIR POWER SCHOOL:
Contemporary geopolitics has evolved in addition to the land and
sea power schools a new concept built around air power. "This
constitutes a significant departure from the older ideas and
necessitates a recasting of geopolitical theories". The
technological innovation afforded by air power in many minds
revolutionized global power structure.

22.  G.T. Renner stated that, "The airplane has created a new geography
of the world". In 1942 he suggested that the air lanes had united the
Heartland of Eurasia with a smaller Heartland in Anglo-America,
across Arctic ice fields to form an enlarged Heartland. This polar
world as an arena of movement would hold the key to the Heartland
and hence to the over lordship of the world.
 Geopolitics is a science employing geography in the service of
political ends. Basic conditions for a nation's life and livelihood
are fixed by the factors of geography. These factors become
related to the attitudes and decisions which, in the aggregate,
comprise a state's foreign policy. Napoleon once said, "The
foreign policies of all nations are based on geography".

23.  According to a French diplomat Jules Cambon, "The geographical position
of a nation... is the principal factor conditioning its foreign policy". The
reason for geography's vital role in foreign policy is that it fixes the material
position of a nation, its strength, wealth, and economy. Nicholas J. Spykman
wrote that, geography "is the most fundamentally conditioning factor in the
formulation of national policy because it is the most permanent". It must be
admitted that not one of the present states has succeeded in eliminating
completely the effects of geographical factors in its foreign policy. The
subject matter of geopolitics includes location, size, shape, topography,
frontiers and boundaries, climate and vegetation, natural resources, and
population. Location, natural resources and people are important factors in
the strategy of both war and peace.

24. Thank You