The Power of Geography Quotes

“In previous centuries dominance of Terra relied on placing land and sea forces in strategic positions, jealously guarding the sea routes and entry and exits of choke points such as the Straits of Gibraltar or Malacca Strait. The twentieth century saw air power added to the requirements. In the twenty-first century, positioning assets in Earth Space is a necessity unless a state is prepared to fall far behind its rivals (and allies).”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“There is a view that assumes the great powers will seek to dominate space to achieve commercial and military dominance. This is realpolitik for space – astropolitik.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“Geography is not fate – humans get a vote in what happens – but it matters.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“Many people dislike the idea that the USA played the role of ‘world policeman’ in the post-Second World War era. You can make a case for both the positives and negatives of its actions. But, either way, in the absence of a policeman various factions will seek to police their own neighbourhood. If you get competing factions, the risk of instability increases.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“In October 2020 the USA, Japan, UAE, Italy, UK, Canada, Luxembourg and Australia were the first spacefaring nations to sign the Artemis Accords governing the exploration of the Moon and extraction of its resources. Signatories must inform each other of their activities during the operation to land the first woman, and thirteenth man, on the Moon by 2024.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“The UK says it will abide by the wishes of the Gibraltarians. In 2002, when they were asked if they wanted to share sovereignty with Spain, 99 per cent said, ‘No thank you’.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“EU has to factor in these scenarios and act accordingly – in the first instance by supporting Spain’s territorial integrity, and, if that fails, by keeping its options open both to block China and to prevent a stronger EFTA.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“Balearic Islands – all 151 of them. They form Europe’s largest archipelago but only five are inhabited: Majorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Formentera and Cabrera.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“less-known border – with Morocco. This is due to its coastal enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“Ethiopia was, famously, never colonized but, having built its own empire, it has similar problems within its borders. Ethiopia has nine major ethnic groups among its population. There are nine administrative areas and two self-governing cities, all based on ethnicity. More than eighty languages are spoken, which spring from four major groupings, and all enjoy official state recognition. The Oromo are the biggest group with about 35 per cent of the population, followed by the Amhara with 27 per cent, and then the Somali and Tigray, each with approximately 6 per cent.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“Time is not on anyone’s side. Africa has the fastest demographic rate in the world. Between now and 2050 the population of the continent is expected to double from about 1.2 billion to 2.4 billion, and the Sahel is no different.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“as drought makes the land increasingly arid and unfit for grazing cattle and sheep, these nomadic people move into new urban and rural areas, where they’re seen as outsiders and their interests clash with others such as farmers, leading to violence on all sides. In this one of the major driving factors is climate change, and, just like terrorism, it has no regard for borders.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“This was indeed the case, especially among the non-Muslim populations. The current tensions across the Sahel can partly be traced to this history: people equate the rise of jihadism among the Fulani with them seeking to re-establish their empire and forcibly convert Christians.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“There have been Fulani empires even though the people are mostly nomadic herders who have always seen the region as an entity in which they roam and not divided into nation states requiring pieces of paper to move from one place to another. That they once ruled the area is a fact deeply embedded in their collective memory; the Macina Empire (1818–62) is considered a golden age. The empire was centred on parts of what is now Mali and stretched hundreds of kilometres east and west. Its capital was Hamdullahi (from the Arabic ‘Praise to God’), which speaks of the strict Sunni Islam religious beliefs of the Fulani whose leaders banned dancing, music, smoking and alcohol. The Fulani were among the first Africans to embrace Islam. Hamdullahi alone garrisoned over 10,000 soldiers, with thousands more in regional outposts such as Timbuktu.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“Understanding the history and demographics of the Fulani is a key to understanding the current issue, especially as large numbers of Fulani are involved in the insurgencies. Their history, geographical distribution and cultural practices have had a major impact on the crisis. The Fulani are a nation without a state. There are at least 23 million of them spread across the Sahel, the West African coast and as far south as the Central African Republic. For example, there are roughly 17 million in Nigeria (about 9 per cent of the population), 3 million in Mali (16 per cent), 1.6 million in Niger (7.6 per cent), 1.2 million in Burkina Faso (6.3 per cent) and 600,000 in Chad (4 per cent).”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“Atatürk was the first president of the newly proclaimed Republic of Turkey, established in 1923. Ankara was chosen as the capital and Constantinople’s name was officially changed to Istanbul (it’s thought that the name comes from Greek speakers referring to visits as eis ten polin – ‘into the city’ – which transmuted into Istanbul).”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“We are still in a time in which the Americans will fight for Saudi Arabia to keep the black stuff flowing to grease the wheels of the world economy, but we are approaching a time in which there is no way the Americans will fight to defend Saudi Arabia’s solar panels.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“As one of the Middle East’s foremost political analysts, Mina Al-Oraibi, told me: ‘The Chinese model of “state capitalism” is appealing to most Arab politicians. “Economic liberalism” decoupled from political liberalism is a model most governments in the region pursue, and in the past two decades the Chinese model is lauded as a success.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“The Americans, exhausted by their losses, could get Iran to do some of the fighting against ISIS in Iraq. Tehran knew that agreeing to the nuclear deal would open the door to discreet co-operation with the Americans; President Obama desperately wanted a foreign-policy success – and the nuclear deal could provide it. So Iran agreed to give up 98 per cent of its highly enriched uranium. It was an example of how a marriage of convenience to solve a short-term problem can override deeper differences – temporarily.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“Persian (Farsi) is spoken as a first tongue by about 60 per cent of Iranians and is the official language of the Islamic Republic. However, Kurds, Balochis, Turkmen, Azerbaijanis (Azeris) and Armenians all use their own languages, as do a host of smaller groups such as the Arabs, Circassians and the semi-nomadic Lur tribes. There are even a few villages in which Georgian is spoken. The tiny community of Jews (around 8,000) can be traced all the way back to the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BCE.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“It has abundant natural resources including many that are perfectly suited for selling around the world. Its wool, lamb, beef, wheat and wine industries remain world leaders; it holds a quarter of the world’s uranium reserves, the largest zinc and lead deposits, and is a major producer of tungsten and gold, as well as having healthy deposits of silver; and it is a key supplier of liquefied natural gas while also still producing large quantities of coal. And there we see how the country is caught between an Ayers Rock and a hard place.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“During this period, ‘Brits’ were still the main source of labour, but gradually the demographic of the country began to change as world events drove increasing numbers of Europeans to Australia, opening the floodgates and gradually relaxing the White Australia policy. Italians, Germans and Greeks arrived to join the communities established in the late 1900s. Following on were many Hungarians who had escaped after the 1956 revolution, then Czechs after the Soviet occupation in 1968. Gradually people from South America and the Middle East came, many fleeing persecution. In the 1970s thousands of ‘boat people’ from Vietnam were allowed in, and in the 1990s refugees from the Yugoslav Wars. This resulted in a pronounced cultural shift from what was essentially a British, or perhaps Anglo-Celtic, society to a multicultural country. It was a remarkably rapid conversion into what we see now in modern Australia – a nation of people whose heritage can be traced back to 190 countries. In the 2016 census the proportion of the total population born abroad was 26 per cent, but where they come from shows the changes in policy, attitudes and global economics since the start of the twentieth century.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“They and the others were ‘Poms’, shortened from pomegranate, sometimes spelt pommygrant, which was close enough to the word ‘immigrant’ to be incorporated into Aussie slang.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography

“8 ETHIOPIA Lucy Welcomes You Home —National Museum of Ethiopia poster Many things come from Ethiopia—for example, humans. A long time ago, in the Awash Valley, a humanlike ape hominin lived. She could walk on two legs but also hung out in trees; indeed, a fall from one may have caused her demise. Some 3.2 million years later, in 1974, one of her descendants, the paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, came across her skeleton, and subsequent research suggested that this may be the region from where we all originated. Our ancestor was named Lucy due to the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which played at Johanson’s campsite that night. It certainly catches our imagination better than her scientific name: AL 288-1. The National Museum of Ethiopia’s poster “Lucy Welcomes You Home” is a clever piece of marketing, as is the national tourism slogan “Land of Origins,” which has helped boost visitor numbers in a country putting itself on the map in many ways. Tourism accounts for almost 10 percent of Ethiopia’s GDP, with close to 1 million people a year venturing into an epic landscape of high mountains, tropical forests, burning deserts, nine World Heritage sites, including thousand-year-old churches hewn out of solid rock, and breathtaking waterfalls.”
― Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World

“A fegyverkorlátozás ősi problémája az, hogy senki nem tárgyal a fegyverek korlátozásáról olyanokkal, akiknek nincs fegyverük.”
― Tim Marshall, Future of Geography : How Power and Politics in Spac will Change Our World

“Everything in our history tells us we cannot resist the call of the unknown.”
― Tim Marshall, The Future of Geography: How the Competition in Space Will Change Our World

“There’s a fine line between giving away your secrets and deterring your opponent by letting them know how strong you are.”
― Tim Marshall, The Future of Geography: How the Competition in Space Will Change Our World

“Each time humanity has ventured into a new domain it has brought war with it.”
― Tim Marshall, The Future of Geography: How the Competition in Space Will Change Our World

“Gagarin, Buzz Aldrin and many others are the descendants of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, pioneers who pushed the boundaries and who changed the world in ways they could not have imagined in their own lifetimes. Whether for better or worse is not the point; they discovered new opportunities and new spaces in which peoples would compete to make the most of what nature had put there. It will take generations, but in space, too, we will plant our flags, ‘conquer’ territory, claim ground and overcome the barriers the universe puts in our way. When we are reaching for the stars, the challenges ahead are such that we will perhaps have to come together to meet them: to travel the universe not as Russians, Americans or Chinese but as representatives of humanity. But so far, although we have broken free from the shackles of gravity, we are still imprisoned in our own minds, confined by our suspicion of the ‘other’, and thus our primal competition for resources. There is a long way to go.”
― Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography

“All the sovereignty issues stem from the same desires and fears – the desire to safeguard routes for military and commercial shipping, the desire to own the natural riches of the region, and the fear that others may gain where you lose. Until recently the riches were theoretical, but the melting ice has made the theoretical probable, and in some cases certain. The hunger for energy suggests the race is inevitable in what some Arctic specialists have called the ‘New Great Game’. There are going to be a lot more ships in the High North, a lot more oil rigs and gas platforms – in fact, a lot more of everything. However, there are differences between this situation and the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the nineteenth century or the machinations of the great powers in the Middle East, India and Afghanistan in the original Great Game. This race has rules, a formula and a forum for decision-making. The Arctic Council is composed of mature countries, most of them democratic to a greater or lesser degree. The international laws regulating territorial disputes, environmental pollution, laws of the sea and treatment of minority peoples are in place.”
― Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography