Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics (Politics of Place, #1) in Espionage Aficionados

Jul 13, 2019 Philip rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-stars, history-general, slow-nightstand-reads, science-real, maps-geography, politics

UPDATE: So finally got this out of the library again (had a LONG waiting list, which I take as a good sign), and not only read those bits I hadn't gotten to before, but reread some of the more interesting/relevant chapters, (China/Russia/Africa). Only additional comments are that China's plans for a $50 billion "Nicaragua Grand Canal" aimed at replacing the Panama Canal by "the early 2020s" has since been scrapped (thank God); and Britain - which at the time of the book's writing had no active a UPDATE: So finally got this out of the library again (had a LONG waiting list, which I take as a good sign), and not only read those bits I hadn't gotten to before, but reread some of the more interesting/relevant chapters, (China/Russia/Africa). Only additional comments are that China's plans for a $50 billion "Nicaragua Grand Canal" aimed at replacing the Panama Canal by "the early 2020s" has since been scrapped (thank God); and Britain - which at the time of the book's writing had no active aircraft carriers with which to defend the Falklands - now has two "Queen Elizabeth class" carriers, commissioned in 2017 and 2019.

It was only during this second reading that I realized that three of the world's key trouble spots are the direct results of WWII, even though they have little to do with Europe: the Pakistan/India split, the North/South Korea split and the division of China and Taiwan. So while the war was ultimately "good" (if one can use such a word) for Europe and the U.S...maybe not so much for East and South Asia :(

Otherwise, my two main takeaways are that China still remains a major - and increasingly aggressive - threat, (and unfortunately, the book's claim that "the Chinese are determined to have Taiwan but are nowhere near being able to challenge for it militarily" might not still be true); and King Leopold II of Belgium remains the ultimate colonial asshole, par excellence.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: Just fantastic - this is a book I've really been waiting for. I've long bemoaned the fact that we no longer emphasize geography in our schools - since as this book proves, a knowledge of geography is essential to even the most basic understanding of history. I mean, the word "geopolitical" literally means the confluence of geography and politics. Want to understand why Russia invaded the Ukraine, why China is harassing its Uighurs in Xinjiang, or why the Middle East will never get its shit together? Well…I won't tell you here, because you should read this for yourself. Marshall's subtitle - "ten maps that explain everything about the world" - might sound like braggadocious hype, but for the most part he lives up to his claim.

Unfortunately, while this book was written in just 2015, it is already outdated in several areas. Because geography doesn't work in a vacuum, the unexpected rise of such dangerous buffoons as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have not only thrown the West's moral, military and economic leadership into question, they have (among SO MANY other things) breathed new life into a dying Russia and allowed China to gain the upper hand across East Asia.

Good as it is, this book is a lot to take at once, so while I've already finished the sections on Russia, China, North America, Africa and the Middle East, I'm going to take a break before returning to tackle the remaining chapters on Latin America, Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, and - intriguingly - the Arctic.

NOTE: And in one of those odd bits of synchronicity I love so much, the Washington Post has just reviewed a new book, ORIGINS: How Earth's History Shaped Human History, which not only links directly to this book (almost as a preface, as it deals with much more pre-history than Prisoners does), but also oddly to the last book I finished, Michael Summers & James Trefil's Exoplanets. So guess I should add this one to the list as well... ...more

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Nov 03, 2018 Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog rated it really liked it · review of another edition

About a year ago I reviewed: The Revenge Of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate. At the same mapping conference one year later, I got Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography. Both books maintain what the authors seem to believe to be the novel notion that; the fundamental geopolitical fact of the globe is the topographical map. Ultimately country borders have or will stabilize around aggregations of geography that are defensible. Mountains, Oceans, P About a year ago I reviewed: The Revenge Of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate. At the same mapping conference one year later, I got Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography. Both books maintain what the authors seem to believe to be the novel notion that; the fundamental geopolitical fact of the globe is the topographical map. Ultimately country borders have or will stabilize around aggregations of geography that are defensible. Mountains, Oceans, Plateaus and the rest tend to mark off regions and those regions will tend to come under the national flag of peoples who can defend what they have while exploiting it for what they need. So similar are both book that the chapters almost duplicate each other in respective land masses if not in the sequence.
Prisoners moves from Russian, to China to the US , and so forth ending with Latin America and the Arctic. Revenge begins with Europe, Russia, China and ends with the Americas.

Between the two I prefer Kaplan’s book but I suspect that most will prefer this one. Kaplan’s Revenge spends several chapters on a literary review of prior scholarship on the influence of Geography on national boundaries and history. Marshall jumps quickly into his geopolitical analysis. Kaplan’s work seems to be more strategic with an emphasis on what to expect farther into the future, while Marshall is relatively more tactical seeking to project into a more immediate future.

Prisoners of Geography tends to spend more time on recent events in each of the nations /regions he analyzes and as such he is more likely to consider the effects of the various competing economic and human forces, tribe religions or cultures that may have claims to a region. Kaplan is more inclined to give recent event a shallow mention in favor of his thesis that borders will continue to adopt, representing temporary holds by these competing groups, but the boundaries ultimately reflecting what the topographic map dictates as natural borders.

Under the heading of coincidences, I recently finished Professor’s Golo Manns’s The History Of Germany Since 1789.

He begins by reject the rule of topography over the history of post Napoleonic Germany. I was hoping for a detailed discussion of this counter argument, but, as was Professor Mann’s want he made his statement and offered little in the way of a detailed case.

For the reader with a serious interest in the geographic part of Geo-politics, it is hard to recommend both books. The amount of overlap assumes a reader with a desire to contrast two mostly congruent theses. I am not sure a reader can go wrong with either. Mostly they have the same things to say. Mostly they make the same oversimplifications, if in the name of coming to the same kinds of conclusions.

Having read them both I am not sure that I have doubled my understanding of topology as fate nor am I sure I am twice as prepared to understand, pardon my pun, the facts on the ground. ...more

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Jul 31, 2020 John rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: latin-america, history, mid-east, africa, international-relations, russia, china, cartography, maps, asia

This book is a great world tour of sorts. It dissects the blue marble into the various regions and systematically goes though the geography while explaining how that geography has constrained and impelled history. Understandably, there is only so much you can say about a region in 20-25 pages each, but he does a good job hitting the high points. I would say this is a great jumping off book. If you are drawn to a particular chapter or region, you would need to dive deeper with other books.

Overall ...more

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