geography is destiny essay

Geography Is Destiny

An epochal new book argues that the events of history we think consequential and monumental are, mostly, trivia

Worlds collide Hellenistic images on the dome of a Thracian tomb in Bulgaria

G reat archaeologists are often at war with themselves. They aim to explain seismic transformations—social and cultural, economic, demographic, even genetic. But they do so by sifting (literally and figuratively) physical evidence that’s scant and (literally and figuratively) fragmentary. These methods mean that nearly all their publications are narrow and exceedingly dry, even by academic standards. And even on those rare occasions when they venture beyond the journal article or monograph, their writing seldom tempts even the most archaeologically besotted general reader. For instance, although the great archaeologist of Mesopotamia Robert McCormick Adams has revolutionized scholars’ understanding of the origins of urban civilization, his oversize tomes, with their detailed maps of watercourses and settlement patterns and meticulous charts of pottery types, resemble field reports, not works of history. But because archaeology addresses the most basic questions and explores the most profound changes in human history by means of a grossly incomplete record—and perhaps because it was long the province of aristocrats and buccaneers—it has invited the sort of bold interpretations in which speculation can too easily become untethered from evidence. When archaeology is done right, it’s frequently dull; when it’s fascinating, it’s frequently wrong.

So Europe Between the Oceans , at once compelling and judicious, is an extraordinary book. In a work of analytical depth and imaginative sweep, Sir Barry Cunliffe, the emeritus professor of European archaeology at Oxford, has synthesized the voluminous recent record of excavations from Iceland to Turkey, the burgeoning scholarship on DNA and ancient populations, and research on topics ranging from Stone Age shipbuilding to trade in Muslim Spain and from salinity levels in the ancient Black Sea to state formation in Early Iron Age Denmark. This all serves to elucidate the “complex interaction of human groups with their environment, and with each other” in Europe from 9000 B.C. to 1000 A.D. —10,000 years of cultural, social, and material development, starting at the close of the last ice age and ending with the emergence of the European nation-states.

Cunliffe’s approach will jar readers accustomed to being informed of the epoch-making quality of every inauguration speech. Not for him “the events and personalities flitting on the surface” of conventional history. Rather, he focuses resolutely on the underlying forces—primarily geography and climate—that influenced societies, and specifically on the ways those forces shaped and constrained the “intricate social networks by means of which commodities were exchanged and ideas and beliefs were disseminated.” Cunliffe is intellectually indebted to Fernand Braudel and the Annales school of French economic and social historians, which emphasized largely static environmental influences and long-term historical continuity and regarded political events as little more than trivia. The Annales approach works better for the millennia Cunliffe examines, in which very, very few individuals can even be identified, than for the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the periods Braudel assessed.

Geography forms the essential basis of Cunliffe’s history. The waters encircling Europe, the transpeninsular rivers that penetrated it, and its topography, currents, tides, and seasonal wind patterns all determined millennia-old sailing routes, and thus the goods and beliefs transported along them. From Cunliffe’s perspective, even the Roman Empire was just an interlude, and perhaps its main achievement was to institutionalize through its ports, roads, and market centers Europe-wide networks of exchange that had been operating since the Middle Stone Age.

By stressing historical continuity and adroitly employing a wide-ranging archaeological record to highlight mobility and interconnectedness, Cunliffe draws a startling picture. Europe, he demonstrates, was geographically and culturally merely “the western excrescence of the continent of Asia.” His archaeological and topographic analysis shows how for thousands of years the steppe lands linked central Asia to the Great Hungarian Plain, thus providing “easy access” from China to the Atlantic Ocean. Here was a corridor for trade and migration, starting with nomadic groups deep in prehistory and continuing through the preclassical, classical, medieval, and early modern eras with great hordes of Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Huns, Magyars, Bulgars, Moguls, and Tatars. Knowledge of, for example, the chariot seems to have moved from the Russian forest steppe (the earliest known examples date to 2800 B.C. ) to the Carpathian basin in Hungary and, by the 16th century B.C. , to Mycenaean Greece and Sweden. Sarmatian horsemen, originally from central Asia, served in northern England as mercenaries in the Roman army.

By water and over land, through far-flung webs of trade and tribute, the most disparate cultures reached and changed each other. The beliefs and technologies behind megalithic tombs found along Europe’s Atlantic coast as far north as the Orkneys spread to Minoan Crete by 3000 B.C. Identical amber jewelry is found only in southern Britain and Mycenaean Greek sites, strongly suggesting direct contact between the societies of Homeric Greece and prehistoric Britain. Images of the same type of warrior are found in Sardinia, Egypt, and Scandinavia by about 1300 B.C. Archaic Greek building techniques were used in southern Germany in the sixth century B.C. At a Dark Ages trading center in central Sweden, active from the sixth through ninth centuries A.D. , archaeologists have excavated coins from the eastern and western Roman empires, a ladle from Egypt, a bishop’s crosier from Ireland, and a bronze statue of Buddha from India. In the Byzantium of the 900s, the Varangian guard was made up wholly of Scandinavian mercenaries. “It may have been a member of the guard,” Cunliffe notes, “who scratched his name, Halfdan, in runes … in the church of Hagia Sophia, leaving a poignant reminder of the confrontation of two very different cultures.”

L avishly illustrated and replete with a sumptuous array of creatively conceived color maps, Cunliffe’s book is further proof that its publisher produces the most beautiful and intelligently designed works of scholarship in the humanities. I can’t think of a better gift this year for the historically minded reader. No book so well exemplifies what Cunliffe joyously calls “the vibrancy of archaeology.” More important, its focus on what Braudel called the longue durée will jolt the temporally complacent (and aren’t we all?), just as its bracingly materialist approach—which leads to the inescapable conclusion that trade has always laid the foundation for the exchange of ideas and beliefs, indeed for most cultural transformations—nicely tempers our blather about the power of ideas and the individual.

To splurge, give this book with Norman Davies’s panoramic, stylish doorstop, Europe: A History —a work that takes the Continent’s story up to the end of the Cold War and is as sensitive as Cunliffe’s to the linkages between geography and history—and Peter Spufford’s gorgeously and informatively illustrated Power and Profit , the definitive history of medieval commerce, which continues the specific story of Europe’s exchange networks where Cunliffe leaves off, and which similarly conveys the topographic and climatic backdrop of and hindrances to trade.

These books contain hardly anything about the great deeds of Great Men, and none offers much to flatter our images of ourselves. But in their marriage of exactitude and far-reaching vision, they clarify the scale of the human enterprise and remind us that the events that seem so significant today are, as Braudel put it, little more than “surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs ... we must learn to distrust them.”

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Americans lost a "sensibility about time and space," says Robert D. Kaplan. His new book seeks to restore it.

A t the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, we read the circular Robert Kaplan e-mailed around with surprise and some apprehension. In it, he announced that he was saying good-bye to his career as a foreign correspondent in order to become chief geopolitical analyst for the private consulting firm STRATFOR. We wondered if someone so idiosyncratic, so used to being his own boss, could adjust to working for corporate clients under the direction of STRATFOR’s formidable founder George Friedman. But inasmuch as Kaplan had been globetrotting for 35 years and just turned sixty, who could fault him for choosing more regular employment, predictable income and more time spent at home in the Berkshires? This book, an armchair tour d’horizon as opposed to Kaplan’s trademark rugged travelogue, may well reflect the renowned author’s passage to a new phase of life.

In the interest of full disclosure, I confess to a friendly predisposition toward this review. One reason is my love for geography dating from early childhood. Indeed, a fascination with globes, atlases, maps, books, magazines and programs about far-away places initially stoked my interest in history. Over the course of a long teaching career I have sadly observed the decline of geographical knowledge among American youth and have done my small part to try to reverse that. 1 I have observed even more sadly the ignorance or contempt of geographical and cultural realities by U.S. policymakers prone to believe either that “the world is flat” or else can be made so by American force. Hence my prejudice in favor of a book that loudly reminds liberal internationalists and neoconservatives alike that they are but Shakespeare’s players on a stage that they did not build and that they cannot readily redesign.

A second source of my favorable predisposition is the book’s dedication to the late Harvey Sicherman, FPRI’s beloved president from 1993 to 2010. A disciple of Ambassador Robert Strausz-Hupé, Harvey never pronounced on a foreign policy issue until he had “done the map” and recited Talleyrand’s motto, “above all, not too much zeal.” 2

A third source of my favor is Kaplan’s track record over 14 previous books and eighty articles, all original and many prescient, warning of crises before they were on anyone’s radar screen. Moreover, unlike most foreign-policy pundits, he admits his mistakes (such as helping Paul Wolfowitz’s inner circle sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq). 3 To judge by his subsequent trilogy about his experiences embedded with U.S. armed forces— Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (2002); Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (2005); and Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, At Sea, and on the Ground (2007)—few civilians identify more closely with our military heroes and wounded warriors.

All that said, I don’t much like Kaplan’s title, The Revenge of Geography , because it commits the “pathetic fallacy” of endowing an abstraction with human purpose. Geography is far too mighty to stoop to mere vengeance. In the 1790s, Immanuel Kant defined it as the very “foundation of history.” His successors Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Ritter made geography an academic discipline based on the Zusammenhang (“hanging together”) of all human and physical nature. Americans first learned geopolitics from two émigré Central Europeans, Strausz-Hupé and Hans Weigert, who declared that geography “does not argue, it simply is”, and embodies “the way things are, not the way we imagine or wish them to be.” Thus, geography does not take vengeance on those who ignore it so much as it consumes them like the “sullen white surf” that swallowed Captain Ahab’s ship of state. Nor is Kaplan’s subtitle, Battle Against Fate , quite accurate, since he repeatedly insists that his real battle is against fatal ism .

On the other hand, the book’s stated purpose draws no quarrel: to restore “a sensibility about time and space” that many Americans lost when a principal landmark of their lifetimes, the Berlin Wall, collapsed in 1989. Euphoric Americans and Europeans imagined all barriers were ephemeral and globalization “nothing less than a moral direction of history and a system of international security, rather than what it actually was, merely an economic and cultural stage of development.” To be sure, history, culture and geography played havoc in the failed states of what Kaplan called zones of chaos. But the first Gulf War in 1991 demonstrated the apparent invincibility of U.S. military power, while the Clinton Administration’s belated interventions in the Balkans, especially the lethal and bloodless (to us) 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia, seemed to demonstrate American power and will to police a new world order. “The 1990s saw the map reduced to two dimensions because of air power”, writes Kaplan, which is why, following 9/11, the George W. Bush Administration forgot its initial doubts about nation-building and launched two utopian crusades in decidedly bumpy countries. By 2006, “the three-dimensional map would be restored: in the mountains of Afghanistan and in the treacherous alleyways of Iraq.” Kaplan assures us that the architects of the War on Terror meant well, but their ham-handed, “insanely expensive” wars betrayed their intentions and on the home front risked stoking the very isolationism they deplored. Kaplan means to navigate between these extremes, he tells us, in the hope that sober geopolitics may “curb excessive zeal in foreign policy” and enable future American interventions to succeed.

Kaplan then proceeds to guide his readers on two world tours that include, for those trained in history and strategy, visits to several old friends. First up is my own mentor, William H. McNeill, whose grand architecture of history treats clashes among and between civilizations and barbaric frontiers as episodes in a transcendent process of gradual fusion through spatial convergence and cultural exchange. But accelerating homogenization by no means implies some irenic teleology, Kaplan warns. If anything, competition for space will grow ever more fierce in a crowded world of finite land and resources.

Another University of Chicago historian, the Islamicist Marshall Hodgson, is Kaplan’s chosen expositor of what the ancient Greeks termed the oikoumene , that Levantine nexus “from the Nile to Jaxartes” where trade routes, empires and the cradles of monotheism formed the busy, grand stage of history’s tragic drama. Then enters the father of history himself, Herodotus, whose narrative of the Greek-Persian wars postulated the necessary variables of geography and culture, as well as contingent variables such as virtue and folly, exemplifying “the partial determinism we all need.”

Kaplan’s next batch of authorities, he suspects, may “make liberal humanists profoundly uneasy.” He’s right. These are the classic geopolitical theorists beginning with the Briton Halford Mackinder, who taught that, while man initiates, “nature in large measure controls.” Mackinder coined the terms “World Island” for the landmass of Eurasia-plus-Africa and “Heartland” for its core region of Eastern Europe. His (usually oversimplified) formula, that he who controls the Heartland controls the World Island and, by extension, the World, inspired the German geographer Karl Haushofer and the Nazi exponents of Lebensraum who twisted his theories to suit their own apocalyptic purposes.

Geopolitics might, as a result, have been permanently discredited in the United States but for European transplants Strausz-Hupé, Hans Morgenthau, Henry Kissinger and Nicholas Spykman. The latter’s wartime publications (he died in 1943) analyzed the geopolitics of the Western Hemisphere to explain the U.S. rise to local hegemony and world power. It was Spykman, Dutch by birth, who first called the Caribbean basin “America’s Mediterranean”, and Spykman who identified the Rimlands of Japan, China, India, the Middle East and Western Europe as the real keys to power in Eurasia. Thus did he anticipate the geopolitical logic of Cold War Containment. Spykman even foresaw that a “modern, vitalized, and militarized China” and a united Europe would become serious rivals of the United States.

The last stop on Kaplan’s first tour reveals the scary contemporary panorama of an Asian “crisis of room”, as described in Paul Bracken’s seminal 1999 book Fire in the East. Simply put, power of all sorts—demographic, economic, military, informational—has been growing exponentially all around the physically fixed spaces on Asia’s littoral. The results already include an unbroken belt of nuclear and aspiring nuclear powers from Israel to North Korea, the proliferation of medium- and intermediate-range missiles, the spore-like spread of megacities whose alienated, penurious millions are overwhelmingly young, and fierce competition among authoritarian, democratizing and failing states. Projecting these trends into the onrushing future, Kaplan concludes:

A Eurasia and North Africa of vast, urban concentrations, overlapping missile ranges, and sensational global media will be one of constantly enraged crowds, fed by rumor and half-truths transported at the speed of light by satellite channels across the rimlands and heartland expanse, from one Third World city to another.

n that ominous note, the reader then embarks on Kaplan’s second intriguing tour, one that takes him around Eurasia’s great oval from Europe clockwise to Russia, China, India, Iran and the Middle East. What we get, in each case, is deep background on the region’s geography and history (if not always culture), followed by coolly objective prognoses of their likely trajectories in the 21 st century.

Most of this tutorial concludes in a surprisingly sanguine manner. Kaplan thinks the European Union, its demographic stagnation and financial woes notwithstanding, will not dissolve, or morph into a new German empire, or be overrun by Muslims, but will remain “one of the world’s great postindustrial hubs” and “a truly ambitious work in progress.” Noting Mackinder’s vision of a Europe whose natural southern frontier is the Sahara Desert, he even endows the European Union with a mission “to encompass the Arab revolutions” (though what that means is unclear). 4

Kaplan also thinks a threatening new Russian empire unlikely despite the revisionist ambitions of Vladimir Putin and the 26 million Russian irredenta in the Near Abroad. The present Muscovite state may possess the same potential to exploit its lack of natural frontiers and abundant natural resources as did its Czarist and Communist predecessors, but it also confronts new competitors for influence in Central Asia, especially China and the former, booming Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Kaplan also reports that Russia’s population of 141 million is just half that of the former USSR and may fall another 20 percent by mid-century. But he then drops the subject in the evident belief that demography is not destiny, or at least not so much as geography.

China, by contrast, will “stand at the hub of geopolitics” even if its stormy economic growth subsides. Free of the ideological agenda and moral scruples that constrain American statecraft, China is “an über-realist power” whose demographic and economic weight make Central and Southeast Asia its natural spheres of influence. But China will not try to change formal boundaries by force, hence a big Asian war is unlikely. Its maritime frontier is another matter entirely because the Yellow, East and South China Seas comprise an Asian “Mediterranean” the domination of which is a prerequisite for Chinese world power. Kaplan explains that, while Chinese projection of hard power in this century will be primarily maritime, they “still think territorially” inasmuch as their goal is control over what they call the First and Second Island Chains.

That makes Taiwan, Douglas MacArthur’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and the buckle on the first island chain, a geographical pivot. One sure sign of a truly multipolar world order, Kaplan declares, will be the “fusing” of Taiwan with mainland China. But another such sign, in his shrewd estimation, may be the development Americans devoutly wish for: the liberalization of China. For unlike the Soviet Union, which was undone by perestroika and glasnost , a more democratic but still fiercely nationalist China could become even more dynamic. In any event, the U.S. Navy’s anomalous domination of China’s coastal seas is finally ending, which means Oceania recovers the geopolitical significance it possessed for American strategy during the Pacific War. 5

India, the quintessential Rimland power, is Kaplan’s “ultimate pivot state” because of its status as an emerging Great Power whose core region on the Gangetic plain is inextricably linked by history to the Punjab of present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan (the old Northwest Frontier of the British Raj), and Persia (Iran). Suffice it to say that the aristocracy of India’s Mughal Empire of the 16 th to 18 th centuries was a mix of Rajputs, Afghans, Arabs, Persians, Uzbeks and Turks, in addition to India’s Hindus and Shi‘a and Sunni Muslims. The unhappy partition of the British Raj in 1947 turned India and the artificial nation of Pakistan into existential threats and implacable rivals for control over Kashmir and Afghanistan, while the Cold War tempted Russia and China to make mischief in the Indian subcontinent. But in the fullness of time, Kaplan argues, India has no tradition of rivalry with the distant Chinese civilization across the world’s highest mountains. So even as the swelling Indian navy patrols Southeast Asian choke points soon to be contested by China, New Delhi’s abiding focus will be the Af-Pak frontier, where the departing Americans will soon leave behind the same “Pushtun nationalism, Islamic fervor, drug money, corrupt warlords, and hatred” they encountered 14 years before.

Predictably, the most unstable stop on Kaplan’s tour is a Middle East defined by, as he puts it, a “disorderly and bewildering array of kingdoms, sultanates, theocracies, democracies, and military-style autocracies, whose common borders look formed as if by an unsteady knife”, and where, not at all incidentally, 65 percent of the region’s populations are under thirty years of age. Indeed, in a tossed-off sentence sure to raise hackles, Kaplan predicts the greater Middle East in the near future “will make the recent era of Arab-Israeli state conflict seem almost like a romantic, sepia-toned chapter of the Cold War.”

Moreover, the one state that stands out in this region for its relative homogeneity, permanence, coherence, imperial vision and cultural sway is… Iran . Its population, 75 million in 2012, is equal to Turkey’s and dwarfs those of its other neighbors. Its place on the map is the intersection of Eurasia’s Heartlands and Rimlands. Iran alone borders both the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, whose basins contain more than half the world’s oil reserves. The great Persian plateau has been a seat of empire for 2,700 years (the suffix “-istan” attached to surrounding provinces is Persian for “place”). We learn that even a foreign dynasty, such as the Abbasid Caliphate based in Baghdad, was permeated with “Persian titles, Persian wines and wives, Persian mistresses, Persian songs, as well as Persian ideas.”

To be sure, Shi‘ism was a 16 th -century import, but Iranian clerics domesticated it according to Persia’s bureaucratic traditions, thereby adding religious sanction to its pretensions of empire. Indeed, Kaplan’s account (based on specialists such as Olivier Roy) implies that Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s royal reign was the true aberration in modern history, whereas “the regime ushered in by the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution was striking in its élan and modernity.” Kaplan provocatively declares that “everything about the Iranian past and present is of a high quality”, including its “postmodern military empire” based on a network of proxies, asymmetrical weapons and jihadist appeals. He does harbor hope that Iranian genius may yet serve the cause of moderate reform, perhaps via a Green Party revolution inspired by a democratic Iraq. Too bad the next chapter argues that no country is more burdened by history than Mesopotamia, and that a Lebanese-style civil war is more likely in Iraq than stable democracy.

Which brings us at last to Israel, in whose military Kaplan briefly served back in the 1970s and whose geopolitical dilemma worries him deeply. “While Zionism shows the power of ideas, the battle over land between Israelis and Palestinians—between Jews and Muslims, as both the Turks and the Iranians would have it—is a case of utter geographical determinism.” But here again Kaplan appears to subsume demography into geography, because what immediately follows that sentence is a chilling paragraph of population statistics. So wildly differential are the birth rates of Israelis and Arabs that Jews may soon be reduced to 42 percent in the lands they currently occupy, undermining their legitimacy and eventually their power to govern the sullen Palestinians. The latter, in turn, have no incentive to drop their “right of return” even for the territorial concessions Kaplan hopes the Israelis will offer. He resorts, in the end, to prayer.

hroughout my career, I have tried to avoid the herd instinct”, Kaplan justifiably boasts on his web site. In The Revenge of Geography , four idiosyncrasies, in particular, demonstrate that claim.

First, Kaplan seems highly self-conscious, even conflicted, over questions of historical causation and the roles of structure versus agency. Thus, while his method is to demonstrate the fundamental importance of spatial relationships and physical features to the distribution of power among human groups over time (the historian’s fancy way of saying “geography matters”), Kaplan insists he is not a determinist and that “geography is merely the unchanging backdrop against which the battle of ideas plays out.” But it seemed to me that the more compelling his structural analysis (for example, “the ultimate geographical truth of the Cold War”), the more urgent his insistence on free will. I cannot resolve this conundrum for him. Life has its mysteries precisely because history has no fixed epistemology. I can only hold up the example of Abraham Lincoln, who famously said, “I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”

It also seems idiosyncratic that a book on geopolitical theory by an American author, written after two damaging land wars in Asia, has so little to say about maritime strategy. Kaplan’s chapter on “The Allure of Sea Power” treats it as just that: alluring, like the siren’s call. He is certainly right to warn that Alfred Thayer Mahan’s “command of the seas” doctrine could prove as risky for China as it did for Imperial Germany. He is also right to suggest the best model for the U.S. Navy today is probably that of Mahan’s contemporary Sir Julian Corbett, whose Royal Navy had to adjust to relative decline amidst peer competitors. But readers hoping for a “takeaway” relevant to the current debate about offshore balancing may be frustrated.

Indeed, the book’s surprise ending goes someplace else altogether—idiosyncrasy number three. For 314 pages, Kaplan’s readers have scaled mountains, crossed deserts, traced rivers to their sources, galloped over steppes and marked the spread of pipelines and railroads as well as religions and empires, from one end of Eurasia to another. But on page 321, after a briefing on Fernand Braudel’s theory that the truly meaningful forces in history operate imperceptibly over la longue durée , we suddenly learn that the crisis most in need of urgent U.S. attention is the threat of a failed state in Mexico! In fact, Kaplan lists three principal challenges: Mexico, a chaotic Middle East and an assertive China. But he suggests that the United States will be far more able to promote its interests in Asia if it first puts its North American house in order.

Mexico’s current disorder would appear once again to be a potent mix of geography and demography. And yes, it is true that Mexico’s population bomb, grinding poverty, corruption, drug violence, anarchy and illegal immigration threaten to subvert American law, order and culture. Kaplan even imagines the United States shedding its Southwestern states (like a glacier calving under global warming?). Yet he notes that in our Northeastern states “Mexico registers far less in the elite imagination than does Israel or China, or India even.” Citing Andrew Bacevich, he asks what Americans might have accomplished had they spent a trillion dollars on fixing Mexico rather than failing to fix Iraq and Afghanistan. One way or another, Kaplan prophesies, Mexico and the United States will be conjoined. 6 If Mexico can be raised over time to First World status the United States will be immensely empowered. If it cannot, then the United States will go the way of the Roman Empire—only the barbarians will come from the south.

A final idiosyncrasy of Kaplan’s Weltanschauung is his abiding conviction that the purpose of American empire is to prepare its own demise. As early as 2003, when triumphalists were enjoying their heyday, Kaplan cautioned: “In many ways the few decades immediately ahead will be the trickiest ones that our policymakers have ever faced: they are charged with the job of running an empire that looks forward to its own obsolescence.” 7 In 2007, while discussing the prospects of reform in China, he wrote: “My point is only that an age of democracy will give free rein to an array of vibrant new forces that make it unlikely America’s global role will be as dominant as it is now. That could turn out to be a good thing. . . . There may be nothing healthier for running an empire-of-sorts than to look forward to its own obsolescence.” 8 And now in 2012: “Rome’s real failure in its final phase of grand strategy was that it did not provide a mechanism for a graceful retreat, even as it rotted from within. But it is precisely—and counterintuitively—by planning for such a deft exit from an hegemony of sorts that a state or empire can actually prolong its position of strength. There is nothing healthier for America than to prepare the world for its own obsolescence.”

Kaplan does not mean by this trope a United States as impotent as Britain following its imperial sunset. He means a vigorous United States engaged as “a balancing power in Eurasia and a unifying power in North America”, but guided by Hans Morgenthau’s wisdom that the way to improve the world is to work with geography and human nature, not against them. Does that imply that Kaplan is a member of the offshore-balancing school after all? If so, then perhaps his new tasks as geopolitician for STRATFOR will include drawing a map to show us how to move U.S. grand strategy safely from where it has been to where it needs to be. Such operational wisdom would, in the American context, be idiosyncratic indeed.

1 See, for example, my essay “The Best of Both Worlds: Blending History and Geography in the K-12 Curriculum”, published as “Geography, History and True Education” in the 2001 Yearbook of the Middle States Council for the Social Studies, Pennsylvania State University College of Education. An abridged version is “Why Geography Matters…But Is So Little Learned”, Orbis (Spring 2003).

2 For celebrations (including my own) and selections of Sicherman’s work, see the special issue of Orbis (Summer 2011).

3 Robert D. Kaplan, “Iraq: The Counterfactual Game”, The Atlantic (October 2008), and “The Wounded Home Front”, The American Interest (January/February 2011).

4 For a decidedly pessimistic prognosis, see my “Will Europe Survive the Twenty-First Century? A Meditation on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome”, Foreign Policy Research Institute (August 2007). I conclude with a winsome speculation that while Charlemagne would bless Europe’s unity, he would surely wonder how long it can survive “without arms, without faith, without children.”

5 The unlikely decisiveness of Oceania, or Australasia, as the southwestern Pacific lands and seas are often labeled, became obvious within months after Pearl Harbor, when maintaining secure links to Australia and New Zealand became the top priority of Admiral Ernest King. The urgency of control over those islands and seas will become equally obvious as the U.S. Navy, Marines and Air Force draft the logistical and operational parameters of their “Air-Sea Battle” concept meant to contain Chinese maritime power. When I mentioned this to my colleague David Eisenhower he quipped that the (otherwise crude) board game “Risk” taught him long ago that the best strategy for victory in a war for the world is to seize uncontested control of North America and Australia while the other players fight over the World Island.

6 David Eisenhower and I also foresaw such conjoining as the natural, if unspoken, historical logic of the NAFTA. In retrospect that is sadly ironic. During 2000–01 we fantasized that George W. Bush’s hidden agenda was to effect the annexation of Mexico (call it a “friendly takeover”) in cahoots with his good friend, Mexican President Vicente Fox. Alas, that whole agenda, including a deeper NAFTA, immigration reform, suppression of drug traffic and cross-border economic development got lost after 9/11, with the result that Kaplan’s Third World “zone of chaos” and “coming anarchy” now cross our own borders.

7 Kaplan, “Supremacy by Stealth”, The Atlantic (July/August 2003).

8 Kaplan, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts (Vintage 2008), pp. 386–7.

Walter A. McDougall is Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

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Geography Is Destiny

The assertion that “geography is destiny” is a significantly valid statement that can be said about the shaping of earlier civilizations including Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. In each of these early civilizations, the people that entered into these areas were forced to adapt and build in a certain way due to the geography surrounding them which in return chose their destiny. The Egyptians adapted their way of life by building their civilization around the significant advantages of the Nile River. The Mesopotamians were not as lucky to have a river with such stability as the Nile; they were left with the Euphrates and Tigris River which forced them to alter and build their civilization countering the disadvantages they faced. The Indus Valley also adapted, but took advantage of their location which was surrounded by mountains, ocean and desert opening up many possibilities for trade, growth and urbanization.

According to the journal entry written by J.G Manning, It was once said by a Greek historian whose name was Herodotus that early Egypt could also be referred to as the “Gift of the Nile”. This, in so many ways is very true. When the Egyptians began to build there civilization, they examined the geography around them and all the benefits that the Nile River provided. The Egyptians learned that this river provided very minimal, steady and predictable flooding. They revolved their agriculture patterns around the fact that the Nile only flooded at certain times of the year which happened to be at a very convenient time for their crops and produce. Compared to other early civilizations, the Egyptians did not have to build a sophisticated irrigation system in order to water their crops and bring water to the people. They could rely on the Nile to do this with assurance that nothing catastrophic could happen. The Nile also provided the Egyptians with an easy and safe way of transportation. The wind which blew in the opposite direction to the current, allowed them to drift downriver as well as sail up river against the current with ease. The geography of the Nile was not only important to the way their civilization formed but also to the way they organized their culture. The Egyptians created and formed their calendar correlated to the Nile. According to H.E Winlock in his journal The Origin of the Ancient Egyptian Calendar, “Primitive man in Egypt regulated their lives entirely by the cycle of the Nile’s stages. Nature divided their years into three well-defined seasons-Flood, Spring, and Low Water or Harvest, with the Flood Season, following the hardship of the Low Nile, the obvious starting point for each annual cycle.” The Egyptians way of adapting to the Nile River’s geography and other surroundings chose the direction of their civilization, culture and destiny.

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Unlike the Egyptians who were provided by nature with a great beneficial river, the Mesopotamian people had to adapt in a completely different way to the geography around them because of the hardships they faced. The Mesopotamians were surrounded by two rivers called the Tigris and the Euphrates. These two rivers differed from the Nile River because they brought uncontrollable and unpredictable flooding to the areas surrounding them. The flooding could happen at any time and was very catastrophic when it did, ruining crops and other things putting the people in danger. Because of this, they had to build a significant amount of canals as well as a very intensive irrigation system to control the water flow that was happening. They were forced to create totally new structures and ideas to keep their civilization alive. This adaptation to the geography around them brought positive results. According to Joseph Dellapenna in his journal The two rivers and the lands between: Mesopotamia and the international law of transboundary waters, “Had the Mesopotamians people not been between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, they would have never worked together to build irrigation systems and the civilization would have crumbled.” What Dellapenna is saying is that without the flooding of these rivers, the Mesopotamians would have never come together adapting to their surroundings and urbanizing their civilization creating cities and governments. While the Mesopotamians had to accommodate to the geography around them in a completely more sophisticated way than the Egyptians, their destiny was chosen by the way these rivers acted and because of the way they responded, they survived.

The people of the Indus Valley were very similar in ways to the people of Egypt due to the fact that their geographic advantages helped them adapt easier. Their terrain was very stable and housed the Indus River. Luckily, their river did not have intense flooding problems like the Mesopotamians. They were surrounded by highlands, desert and ocean bringing lots of possibilities for trade and growth. The size of the Indus Valley was also a major contribution to its success being one of the largest civilizations of its time. The large population and amount of land made it possible to have several “city-states” in different areas creating diversity in crops being produced and other necessities which opened up trade. The Indus Valley developed into a huge trade market within its “city-states” as well as reaching out to Mesopotamia. Because of these benefits, they were able to focus on the future and how they would advance and urbanize. The people of Indus Valley managed to build a very sophisticated irrigation system. According to the findings from the journal Irrigation and Development in the Upper Indus Basin, “The Indus Valley had snow- and glacier-fed irrigation systems in the tributary valleys and a different system in the main valley, where water is directly abstracted from the Indus River.” (Nüsser, Marcus, Susanne Schmidt, and Juliane Dame, 2012). Technology like this was nothing that you could find in early Egypt or Mesopotamia. They had public baths, homes with toilets and sewer systems; things that were simply unheard of to surrounding civilizations. The beneficial characteristics of the Indus Valleys geography produced the urbanization and successfulness of the people and their destiny.

These examples of early Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley are all great examples of why geography is destiny. The people of Egypt had to adapt and build civilization around the Nile River, the Mesopotamians had to adapt to the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to survive and build civilization together, and the people of the Indus Valley worked with the perfect terrain that surrounded them creating a massive empire full of trade and urban civilization. Not one of these civilizations would have formed and been successful the way they did had they not adapted to the geography that surrounded them.

References: Manning, J. G. 2005. “[The Gift of the Nile].” Classical Journal 100, no. 3: 322-325. EducationFull Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed February 4, 2013).

Winlock, H. E. 1940. “The Origin of the Ancient Egyptian Calendar”. Proceedings of theAmerican Philosophical Society. 83 (3): 447-464. Education Full Text, EBSCOhost(accessed February 5,2013).

Dellapenna, Joseph W. 1996. “The two rivers and the lands between: Mesopotamia and theinternational law of transboundary waters.” BYU Journal Of Public Law 10, no. 2: 213.Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 5, 2013).

Nüsser, Marcus, Susanne Schmidt, and Juliane Dame. 2012. “Irrigation and Development in theUpper Indus Basin”. Mountain Research and Development. 32 (1): 51-61. AcademicSearch Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 5, 2013).

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Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History In the wake of Brexit, Ian Morris chronicles the eight-thousand-year history of Britain's relationship to Europe as it has changed in the context of a globalizing world. When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written eight thousand years earlier, when the rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent. Ever since, geography has been destiny―yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means. Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules―for Now , describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain's arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy-five hundred years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer, and more sophisticated continental rivals. By 1500 CE, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one; with the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, however, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and―increasingly―Chinese actors. But in trying to find its place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The eight-thousand-year story bracingly chronicled by Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the coming century is not what to do about Brussels; it's what to do about Beijing. There are no customer reviews for this item yet. 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Store Hours Monday - Saturday: 9am - 11pm Sunday: 10am - 10pm Holiday Hours 12/24: 9am - 7pm 12/25: closed 12/31: 9am - 9pm 1/1: 12pm - 11pm All other hours as usual. Map Find Harvard Book Store » Online Customer Service Shipping » Online Returns » Privacy Policy » Harvard University harvard.edu » Clubs & Services Entertainment Environment Information Science and Technology Social Issues Home Essay Samples History Ancient Civilizations Geography as Destiny and Factors Contributing to Its Success *minimum deadline Cite this Essay To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below Abolitionism Terracotta Army Ottoman Empire Related Essays Need writing help? You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need *No hidden charges 100% Unique Essays Absolutely Confidential Money Back Guarantee By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible. If people don’t like where they live, they have two options. First, they can move. They can go from places that are too dry, too remote, too disease-ridden, too infertile or too crowded, to a new place where the grass seems greener. This is the story of the great human diaspora of the past 50,000 years. Or people can stay where they are and change their surroundings. They can dig irrigation canals, span rivers, control disease-bearing mosquitoes and overcome other obstacles that stand in the way of a better life. This story of man’s efforts to change nature is the underlying theme of civilization. Either way, the subject is geography, a grand discipline that once stood in the front ranks of academia. But over the years, a whole new array of scientific disciplines arose, pushing geography to the sidelines. Today, many regard geography as old fashioned, evoking images of well-worn text- books and grim schoolteachers discoursing before maps in pastel colors. Others even view geography with suspicion, citing its misuse in earlier times to confirm Eurocentric prejudices such as the one linking tropical climates to "inferior races." But the value of geography as an explanatory tool cannot be denied. In the hands of serious researchers, data on topography, soils, climate, population distribution and other factors shed light on why human societies have evolved as they have. While the explanations might be tentative and open to debate, they are based on real facts that exist in the real world. The inescapable conclusion is that where people live does indeed make a difference. But while geography matters, it does not compel, any more than a child’s genetic endowment determines the course of his future development. Geographical conditions do not translate into predictable outcomes. For example, some countries with relatively high living standards are located in tropical areas; a good example is Costa Rica. Conversely, there are poor countries located in the geographically favored temperate zones. The exceptions confirm the fact that the influences of geography act in concert with other factors, such as political institutions, education and technological development. Still, the better a society understands its geographical constraints, the better it will be able to devise strategies to overcome them. For all these reasons it is worth recognizing that many nations in Latin America do, in fact, labor under a series of geographical handicaps compared to the developed countries in cooler latitudes (See graphic at the top of page). This is the conclusion of the newly released IDB report Development Beyond Economics . A chapter in the report, prepared by John Gallup of Harvard University’s Center of International Development, and Eduardo Lora of the IDB’s Research Department, shows that many of the nagging development problems faced by Latin American countries are the result of location. But the report also shows how once these problems are clearly identified and put into context, they can be largely overcome by adopting good policies and employing sound technologies. Standing up to geography. One way a country overcomes geographical isolation is to improve its transportation infrastructure. Better roads, ports, railways and airports provide access to world markets. But a country can only derive full benefits from these investments against a backdrop of good trade and macroeconomic policies. These relationships are well-known, and in fact a central purpose of the IDB over its 40 years of operations has been to finance programs both to build infrastructure and to help reform economies. Because of the enormous geographical diversity that characterizes many Latin American countries, regions within individual countries can also suffer economic disadvantages. But the authors of the IDB report caution against repeating the mistakes of past development programs designed to help these regions. A major problem is that bringing infrastructure, such as electricity and roads, to isolated areas is very expensive.    These investments can be justified only if local residents can be assured substantial benefits. For example, any attempt to attract industries to an isolated area must recognize the need to overcome the enormous competitive advantages a city has in terms of transportation, communications, skilled labor and the proximity of suppliers of materials, equipment and expertise. The report describes it as a chicken and egg problem—firms will not go where there is no infrastructure and services, but it is not cost-effective to provide these enticements unless many firms make the move. Nobody wants to be the first, and many industrial parks in disadvantaged regions have remained empty. "They were built, but nobody came," state the authors. Even when carried out on a gigantic scale, regional development programs have not been able to create the complex economic networks needed to lift regions out of poverty. In Brazil, decades of programs to help the poverty-stricken Northeast have yielded very modest results. In 1960, the poorest Brazilian state was Piauí, with a per capita gdp 11 percent of São Paulo’s. In 1995, the gdp of Piauí had risen to only 16 percent of that of São Paulo. So too with the Amazon. Opening up this vast forested area to settlers has caused major environmental damage while producing very limited economic benefits. Instead of big infrastructure investments, a better answer for isolated areas would be a "basic needs" approach to reducing poverty, according to the report. Programs would emphasize rudimentary feeder roads, electricity and telecommunications—and not just their construction, but their maintenance. Ideally, local people would plan and manage projects to ensure local needs are met. Turning to the area of health, the report describes the serious problems encountered in breaking the link between diseases and climate. For example, a vaccine for malaria is still years away. Even with millions of malaria-related deaths annually, practically no malaria research is being undertaken by private pharmaceutical firms. Much of the $84 million spent worldwide to combat malaria in 1993 came from wealthy countries concerned about their soldiers overseas. A major reason for the scant progress achieved against tropical diseases is that even industrialized countries are not willing to carry out the necessary biomedical and pharmaceutical research. Giant international pharmaceutical firms are not interested in developing cures for tropical diseases, because the markets would not be large enough to justify the investment. What to do? A possible solution has been put forward by Jeffrey Sachs, a Harvard economist and colleague of report author Gallup. Sachs proposes that rich countries pledge a guaranteed minimum purchase price or fixed amount per dose for a malaria vaccine as a way of creating an attractive market for a firm that succeeds in developing it. Similar pledges could spur cures for other diseases. The need for data. Given the complexity of the links between geography and development, good data are essential for making good policy choices. The need is particularly great in Latin America, where geographical conditions vary markedly from one country to the next and from region to region within each country. As a result, the yield from investments in infrastructure or healthcare initiatives, for example, may differ greatly depending on location. Similarly, sophisticated climate and weather information, as well as geologic data, are needed to focus efforts to prevent natural disasters in areas most at risk. While some of the region’s larger countries have world-class geographical and statistical institutes (see graphic at the beginning of the page), such massive data collection efforts are just beginning in other countries. In the smaller countries, geographical considerations are still not being factored into spending decisions involving infrastructure, healthcare, urban development or disaster prevention. Even in countries that do have reasonably good statistical institutions, however, the relevant information often does not trickle down to the levels where it is most needed. While policymakers produce impressive reports, ordinary citizens are often denied timely access to information that could save their lives or their property. People build homes on unstable slopes or too close to river floodplains, for example, because they are not aware of the risks involved. Farmers make costly mistakes in their use of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation because they lack information on soil composition, insect behavior and historic weather patterns. In the worst cases, vital information that can affect the health and safety of millions—such as data on water contamination, industrial pollution or deforestation along riverbanks—is purposefully manipulated or withheld from the public for political reasons. In other words, while gathering and processing statistical information is a costly and complex task best suited to central government agencies, these agencies are not always the ones best qualified to put the information to use. To prevent these distortions, the authors of Development Beyond Economics suggest that both access to information and related decision making be decentralized as much as possible. Armed with good information, lower levels of government such as states, municipalities, and even individual communities, are much more likely to make good decisions about housing and productive activities, for example. There is growing evidence that development projects that are designed and implemented at the local level are more likely to succeed than those imposed from above. How not to decentralize. Are open access to information and decentralized government the key to overcoming geographic disadvantages? That depends. The politics of decentralization in countries with long traditions of centralized government are delicate, and they raise all kinds of questions. Should responsibilities for infrastructure development be vested only in governmental bodies, for example, or can they also be delegated to entities such as regional coffee growers associations or oil companies? Should certain problems be tackled cooperatively by groups of municipalities? And if so, how are the inevitable political rivalries to be managed? Compounding the problem of cooperation at the local level is the excessive number of political jurisdictions in many Latin American countries. Panama, for example, with a population of three million has just 67 municipalities, while El Salvador, with a population only twice as large, has 262. Political decentralization may be an essential instrument for taming geography, but it is not a simple instrument. The report lists three conditions needed for decentralization to succeed: (1) local decision making must be transparent; (2) the costs of carrying out development projects must be borne by those making them, not by other units of government; and (3) all of the benefits must go to the local community. But according to the report, in most cases these conditions are not met. For example, although municipal governments are now popularly elected in much of the region, decision making at the town hall level is not necessarily transparent, because patterns of political patronage there can be just as corrupting as they are in national governments. As a result, other kinds of democratically organized groups, such as local producers, must often take the initiative to carry out a project. The transfer of central government funds to lower jurisdictions also tends to suffer from a lack of accountability. Such transfers are often made automatically on the basis of reported costs, rather than being based on an independent assessment of the quality and reach of the goods or services being paid for. In some countries the amount of federal transfers is based on precedent, as an acquired right, or on a fixed percentage of central government revenues. Finally, lower level governments in many countries have been allowed to borrow funds with little regard to their actual ability to generate revenue and remain solvent. All of the potential pitfalls of decentralization can be avoided, however. With a better division of responsibilities between central and local governments, improved data collection and dissemination, and the political will to make tough policy choices, countries can work to overcome geographical obstacles and provide better opportunities for their citizens. This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser. To learn more about cookies, click here . Work & Careers Life & Arts Geography Is Destiny by Ian Morris — Brexit’s deep historical roots Try unlimited access only $1 for 4 weeks. Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial. Global news & analysis Expert opinion Special features FirstFT newsletter Videos & Podcasts Android & iOS app FT Edit app 10 gift articles per month Explore more offers. Standard digital. FT Digital Edition Premium Digital Print + premium digital, ft professional, weekend print + standard digital, weekend print + premium digital. Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%. 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International Edition Is Geography Destiny?: Lessons from Latin America DOI: 10.1596/0-8213-5451-5 Corpus ID: 129512707 Is Geography Destiny?: Lessons from Latin America J. Gallup , Alejandro Gaviria , E. Lora Published 1 August 2003 Geography, Economics World Bank Publications 73 Citations Spatial inequality in nigeria: the imperative of geographic perspectives in the development process. Highly Influenced Explaining the Great Continuity: Ethnic Institutions, Colonialism, and Social Development in Spanish America Reexamining the determinants of fiscal decentralization: what is the role of geography, determinants of economic growth of russian regions 1, spatial dimensions of trade liberalization and economic convergence: mexico 1985-2002, enhancing geography's role in public debate*, the environmental impacts of regional disparity in population and wealth distribution in nigeria, the latitudinal tilts of wealth and education in peru : testing them , explaining them , and reflecting on them *, weather disasters, material losses and income inequality: evidence from a tropical, middle-income country, the historical evolution of inequality in latin america: a comparative analysis, 1870-2000, related papers. Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers Stanford University The Europe Center is jointly housed in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Global Studies Division . Geography Is Destiny Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History Member Login Library Patron Login SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTERS Search: Title Author Article Search String: Geography Is Destiny : Book summary and reviews of Geography Is Destiny by Ian Morris Summary | Reviews | More Information | More Books Geography Is Destiny Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History by Ian Morris Critics' Opinion: Readers' rating: Published Jun 2022 576 pages Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion Publication Information Rate this book About this book Book summary. In the wake of Brexit, Ian Morris chronicles the eight-thousand-year history of Britain's relationship to Europe as it has changed in the context of a globalizing world. When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written eight thousand years earlier, when the rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent. Ever since, geography has been destiny―yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means. Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules―for Now , describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain's arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy-five hundred years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer, and more sophisticated continental rivals. By 1500 CE, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one; with the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, however, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and―increasingly―Chinese actors. But in trying to find its place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The eight-thousand-year story bracingly chronicled by Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the coming century is not what to do about Brussels; it's what to do about Beijing. "Beyond the Book" articles Free books to read and review (US only) Find books by time period, setting & theme Read-alike suggestions by book and author Book club discussions and much more! Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months. More about membership! Media Reviews Reader reviews. "England's fateful geographical adjacency to Europe drives a millennia-long love-hate relationship in this sparkling history...Written with verve and wit, this compulsively readable overview of British history is full of fascinating lore and incisive analysis." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Morris provides a very comprehensive history of Britain while keeping readers engaged. It is a skill to cover such a vast timeline and still keep a reader wanting more. A satisfying read for both readers new to British history those looking for a new take." - Library Journal (starred review) "Morris, who is the sort of historian who likes to get out of the office, vividly chronicles his tours around Britain to assess the situation and discovers that, generally, the country is doing all right...A remarkable story told with clear-minded authority." - Kirkus Reviews Click here and be the first to review this book! Author Information Ian Morris is the Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and Professor in History at Stanford University and the author of the critically acclaimed Why the West Rules―for Now . He has published many scholarly books and has directed excavations in Greece and Italy. He lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. More Author Information More Recommendations Readers also browsed . . .. The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson We Refuse by Kellie Carter Jackson Says Who? by Anne Curzan The Swans of Harlem by Karen Valby Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond Around the World in Eighty Games by Marcus du Sautoy Flee North by Scott Shane Those Pink Mountain Nights by Jen Ferguson Beverly Hills Spy by Ronald Drabkin more history, current affairs and religion... Support BookBrowse Join our inner reading circle, go ad-free and get way more! Find out more BookBrowse Book Club Members Recommend This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history. The Stolen Child by Ann Hood An unlikely duo ventures through France and Italy to solve the mystery of a child’s fate. Win This Book Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson A beautifully written, wire-taut debut novel about a murder on a college campus and its aftermath twenty years later. Solve this clue: R is a D B S C and be entered to win.. Your guide to exceptional           books BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info and giveaways by email. Free Weekly Newsletters Keep up with what's happening in the world of books: reviews, previews, interviews and more. Spam Free : Your email is never shared with anyone; opt out any time. Please beware of fraud schemes by third parties falsely using our company and imprint names to solicit money and personal information. Learn More . Book details Geography Is Destiny Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History Author: Ian Morris California Book Awards Master List New Yorker Best Books of the Year INTRODUCTION Fog in the Channel When I was a boy, my grandfather told me – over and over again – that when he’d been my age, weather reports used to say ‘Fog in the Channel – Continent cut off’ (Figure 0.1). Like so many jokes, the humour was in the ambiguity. Was Grandad saying the country had gone to the dogs? Or that the English were comically self-important? Or both? Or neither? He never told. But forty-odd years on from the last time he shared it, the joke feels edgier. On 23 June 2016 the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Before the week was out, the prime minister had fallen (the third of four Conservative premiers in a row to go over Europe), the Labour Party’s Members of Parliament had voted no confidence in their own leader and $2 trillion of the world’s wealth had evaporated. Not funny. I decided to write a book about what had happened the morning after the referendum. I knew that hundreds of other authors would be making or had already made similar decisions, and the first books on Brexit in fact appeared within weeks. What made me think this one was worth writing anyway was that I suspected it would be rather different from the rest. Most Brexit books focus on just the seven years between David Cameron’s announcement that he favoured a referendum in 2013 and Britain’s actual departure in 2020. Some go back to 1973, when Britain joined the European Economic Community, a few to the late 1940s, when the first practical plans for European federation were floated, and a handful start with the Reformation or Spanish Armada in the sixteenth century. My claim here is that none of this is enough. Only when we look at the entire 10,000 years since rising, post-ice-age oceans began physically separating the British Isles from the European Continent do we see the larger patterns that have driven, and continue to drive, British history. I am not suggesting that we will find foreign-policy recommendations or eternal truths about Englishness etched in the rocks of Stonehenge. Archaeologists rightly mock people who say such silly things. However, it is only on a multi-millennium timescale that the forces driving Britain’s relationships with Europe and the wider world make themselves clear. Only when we put the facts into this framework do we see why Brexit seems so compelling to some, so appalling to others and where it might lead next. Figure 0.1. Reg Philips (1906–1980), steelworker, humourist and occasional geographer, as he looked in the early 1930s. Looking at the long run is hardly a new idea. Back in 1944 the part-time historian Winston Churchill advised that ‘The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward’. However, decades then passed before full-time historians took much notice of his advice. Only since the early 2000s have historians really warmed to what we nowadays call ‘big (or deep) history’, studying trends spanning millennia and affecting the entire planet. Most big-history work, including several books of my own, pulls back from the details of what happened in particular times and places in order to tell a story at the planetary scale. Here, by contrast, I want to turn the telescope around, zooming in from the global to the local. History, after all, is made by real people, and the broad-brushstroke stuff isn’t worth the pixels it’s written in unless it helps us make sense of life as we actually live it. So, my plan here is to use the methods of big history to put post-Brexit Britain into the context of post-ice-age Britain’s multi-millennium relationship with Europe and the wider world. Even now, three-quarters of a century after Churchill, looking at the long term remains a minority activity. When, for instance, the highly respected historian David Edgerton said in his excellent book The Rise and Fall of the British Nation that ‘Brexit is a recent phenomenon, with causes in the here and now’, having ‘nothing to do with deep history’, he set off no storm of controversy; but I think he should have done. In what follows, I will try to show that Brexit in fact has everything to do with deep history, that only a long-term, large-scale perspective can make sense of it and that big history can even show us what Brexit might mean in the coming century. The Thing Least Spoken Of Copyright © 2022 by Ian Morris Buy This Book From: Reviews from goodreads, about this book. In the wake of Brexit, Ian Morris chronicles the ten-thousand-year history of Britain's relationship to Europe as it has changed in the context of a globalizing world. When... Book Details In the wake of Brexit, Ian Morris chronicles the ten-thousand-year history of Britain's relationship to Europe as it has changed in the context of a globalizing world. When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written ten thousand years earlier, when the rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent. Ever since, geography has been destiny—yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means. Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules—for Now , describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain’s arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy-five hundred years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer, and more sophisticated continental rivals. By 1500 CE, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one; with the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and—increasingly—Chinese actors. In trying to find its place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The ten-thousand-year story bracingly chronicled by Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the current century is not what to do about Brussels; it’s what to do about Beijing. Imprint Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux 9780374157272 In The News "Educative, stimulating, provocative, and more than worthy of engagement . . . Morris provides fascinating details in these pages, and his command of British history is clear." — Andrew Ehrhardt, War on the Rocks "A treat for the history buff." — Oprah Daily "[An] extraordinary story . . . At his core task of cramming 10,000 years of history into a single book, Morris succeeds triumphantly." — Robert Colvile, The Times "Sparkling . . . Written with verve and wit, this compulsively readable overview of British history is full of fascinating lore and incisive analysis." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) "In this immensely detailed book, Morris effectively combines history, memoir, and current events. A remarkable story told with clear-minded authority." — Kirkus Reviews " Morris provides a very comprehensive history of Britain while keeping readers engaged. It is a skill to cover such a vast timeline and still keep a reader wanting more. A satisfying read for both readers new to British history those looking for a new take." — Library Journal About the Creators This item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location. Please choose a different delivery location. Sorry, there was a problem. Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required . Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web. Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app. Image Unavailable To view this video download Flash Player Follow the author Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History Hardcover – June 7, 2022 In the wake of Brexit, Ian Morris chronicles the ten-thousand-year history of Britain's relationship to Europe as it has changed in the context of a globalizing world. When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written ten thousand years earlier, when the rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent. Ever since, geography has been destiny―yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means. Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules―for Now , describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain’s arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy-five hundred years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer, and more sophisticated continental rivals. By 1500 CE, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one; with the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and―increasingly―Chinese actors. In trying to find its place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The ten-thousand-year story bracingly chronicled by Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the current century is not what to do about Brussels; it’s what to do about Beijing. Print length 576 pages Language English Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publication date June 7, 2022 Dimensions 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches ISBN-10 0374157278 ISBN-13 978-0374157272 See all details Editorial Reviews "Educative, stimulating, provocative, and more than worthy of engagement . . . Morris provides fascinating details in these pages, and his command of British history is clear." ― Andrew Ehrhardt, War on the Rocks "A treat for the history buff." ― Oprah Daily "[An] extraordinary story . . . At his core task of cramming 10,000 years of history into a single book, Morris succeeds triumphantly." ― Robert Colvile, The Times "Sparkling . . . Written with verve and wit, this compulsively readable overview of British history is full of fascinating lore and incisive analysis." ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) "In this immensely detailed book, Morris effectively combines history, memoir, and current events. A remarkable story told with clear-minded authority." ― Kirkus Reviews " Morris provides a very comprehensive history of Britain while keeping readers engaged. It is a skill to cover such a vast timeline and still keep a reader wanting more. A satisfying read for both readers new to British history those looking for a new take." ― Library Journal About the Author Product details. Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 7, 2022) Language ‏ : ‎ English Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 576 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374157278 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374157272 Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.03 pounds Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches #76 in Historical Geography #194 in England History #375 in History of Civilization & Culture About the author Ian Morris is an archaeologist and historian and teaches at Stanford University. Born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1960, he now lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. He has won awards for his writing and teaching, and has directed archaeological digs in Greece and Italy. He has also published 15 books, which have been translated into 19 languages. His newest book, "Geography is Destiny" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Profile 2022), examines Britain's place in the world over the 10,000 years since rising waters began separating the Isles from the Continent--and asks where the story will go next. He is a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society for the Arts. Customer reviews 1 star 0% Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness. Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews Top reviews from the United States There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later.. Top reviews from other countries About Amazon Investor Relations Amazon Devices Amazon Science Sell products on Amazon Sell on Amazon Business Sell apps on Amazon Become an Affiliate Advertise Your Products Self-Publish with Us Host an Amazon Hub › See More Make Money with Us Amazon Business Card Shop with Points Reload Your Balance Amazon Currency Converter Amazon and COVID-19 Your Account Your Orders Shipping Rates & Policies Returns & Replacements Manage Your Content and Devices Amazon Assistant Conditions of Use Privacy Notice Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure Your Ads Privacy Choices Browser does not support script. Publications Executive MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy Geography is Destiny - Britain's Complex Relationship with Europe Hosted by the lse ideas. Online public event Former LSE IDEAS Philippe Roman Chair Professor Michael Cox Founding director, lse ideas. Ian Morris discusses with Michael Cox how geography, migration, government, and new technologies interacted to produce regional inequalities that still affect us today. ‘Geography Is Destiny’ is a 10,000 year history of Britain and its changing relationships with Europe and the wider world. Ian argues that we’re not prisoners of geography: geography drives what people do, but what people do drives what geography means. Based on the latest archaeological evidence, Ian’s book takes the long view of Britain, from its physical separation at the end of the Ice Age to the first flickers of a United Kingdom, struggles for the Atlantic, and rise of the Pacific Rim. As power and wealth shift from West to East, does Britain's future lie with Europe or the wider world? Meet the speakers and chair Ian Morris is former LSE IDEAS Philippe Roman Chair, Willard Professor of Classics, Professor of History and a fellow of the Archaeology Centre at Stanford University. He is the bestselling author of  Why the West Rules – For Now  and has appeared on a number of television networks, including the History Network and PBS. His newest book,  Geography Is Destiny  was published in May 2022. Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS. More information about the event LSE IDEAS  ( @lseideas ) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy. From time to time there are changes to event details so we strongly recommend that if you plan to attend this event you check back on this listing on the day of the event. Whilst we are hosting this listing, LSE Events does not take responsibility for the running and administration of this event. While we take responsible measures to ensure that accurate information is given here this event is ultimately the responsibility of the organisation presenting the event. This event will be streamed live on Facebook   Sign up for news about events £ 0.00 0 items Geography Is Destiny (Hardback) Britain and the World, a 10,000 Year History The story of Britain, from its first moments as an island to its possible future 'Ian Morris has established himself as a leader in making big history interesting and understandable' Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel 'Morris succeeds triumphantly at cramming 10,000 years of history into a single book' Robert Colvile, Times Geography is Destiny tells the history of Britain and its changing relationships with Europe and the wider world, from its physical separation at the end of the Ice Age to the first flickers of a United Kingdom, struggles for the Atlantic, and rise of the Pacific Rim. Applying the latest archaeological evidence, Ian Morris explores how geography, migration, government and new technologies interacted to produce regional inequalities that still affect us today. He charts Britain's geopolitical fortunes over thousands of years, revealing its transformation from a European satellite into a state at the centre of global power, commerce, and culture. But as power and wealth shift from West to East, does Britain's future lie with Europe or the wider world? Publication date: 12/05/2022 £ 25.00 ISBN: 9781781258354 Imprint: Profile Books Subject: Current Affairs , History & Classics , Politics & Economics Geography Is Destiny (Ebook) 'Ian Morris has established himself as a leader in making big history interesting and understandable' Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel 'Morris succeeds triumphantly at cramming 10,000 years of history into a single book' Robert Colvile, The Times For hundreds of years, Britannia ruled the waves and an empire on which the sun never set - but for thousands of years before that, Britain had been no more than a cluster of unimportant islands off Europe's north-west shore. Drawing on the latest archaeological and historical evidence, Ian Morris shows how much the meaning of Britain's geography has changed in the 10,000 years since rising seas began separating the Isles from the Continent, and how these changing meanings have determined Britons' destinies. From being merely Europe's fractious, feuding periphery - divided by customs, language and landscape, and always at the mercy of more powerful continental neighbours - the British turned themselves into a United Kingdom and put it at the centre of global politics, commerce and culture. But as power and wealth now shift from the West towards China, what fate awaits Britain in the twenty-first century? £ 10.99 ISBN: 9781782833512 ISBN 10 / ASIN: B07KJMNFYY Geography Is Destiny (Audiobook) £ 30.99 ISBN: 9781800811225 ISBN 10 / ASIN: B09WW39CJM Read by: Matt Bates Geography Is Destiny (Paperback) Publication date: 02/02/2023 £ 12.99 ISBN: 9781781258361 Reviews for Geography Is Destiny Robert Colvile   The Times Dan Jones   Sunday Times Bernard Porter   Literary Review Praise for Ian Morris: 'A great work of synthesis and argument, drawing together an awesome range of materials and authorities Andrew Marr   Jared Diamond, author   Guns, Germs, and Steel Dominic Sandbrook   Sunday Times Robert Fox   Evening Standard Boyd Tonkin   Independent   Daily Telegraph   Sunday Times David S. Landes, author   The Wealth and Poverty of Nations David Crane   The Spectator Edward Luttwak   Prospect Martin Wolf   Financial Times   Mail on Sunday Ian Morris is Willard Professor of Classics, Professor of History and a fellow of the Archaeology Centre at Stanford University. He is the bestselling author of Why the West Rules – For Now and has appeared on a number of television networks, including the History Network and PBS. Related books Little englanders. Alwyn Turner An authoritative and entertaining history of the Edwardian age, told through its politics and popular culture War: What is it good for? A bold and controversial rethinking of the role of war in human history and how it will shape our future, sure to provoke debate, from the bestselling… The Measure of Civilisation A unique insight into the index of social development that measures change in East and West – and that forms the core of the international bestseller. Why The West Rules – For Now Why does the West rule? Eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing uniquely on 20,000 years of history and archae… RTÉ Archives RTÉ Brainstorm RTÉ Learn RTÉ Radio 1 RTÉ lyric fm RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta RTÉ Weather Century Ireland Policies and Reports Terms & Conditions Individual Rights Guide Privacy Policy Cookie Policy Freedom of Information Latest Annual Report Advertise with RTÉ Newsletters RTÉ Supporting the Arts Leaving Cert Geography reviewed with exam papers Lesley Aslin, Geography teacher at The Institute of Education, shares her reaction to today's Leaving Cert Geography (H) Paper. And we have Higher and Ordinary Level exam papers for you to download too. She says: "Students will leave the Geography exam tired but relieved, knowing that the paper gave them a fair opportunity to display their knowledge and make the most of their preparation." There was something to suit everyone, with opportunities for H1 students to stand out and shine. The biggest challenge will be keeping within the strict timing of the exam and not getting carried away with some of the more appealing questions. You can download the exam papers below: Part 1 Higher Level Part 2 Higher Level Part 1 Ordinary Level Part 2 Ordinary Level And the Irish-language versions and maps are on examinations.ie . Lesley's video and more are part of the Institute's Leaving Cert Review series. While study tips and reviewing what you did is important please remember to mind yourself! There are some tips on sleep, what to eat and de-stressing here ! And don't forget to check out RTÉ Learn throughout the exams. More stories on Senior Cycle Leaving Cert Leaving Cert 2024 Leaving Cert 2024 Review Leaving Cert Geography 246 COMMENTS Geography Is Destiny An epochal new book argues that the events of history we think consequential and monumental are, mostly, trivia. Worlds collide Hellenistic images on the dome of a Thracian tomb in Bulgaria. G ... Is Geography Destiny? What makes these two countries so different is not their geography, but how they manage it. In short, geography alone cannot determine the fate of a society. Yes, it has significant effects on it ... PDF Geography as Destiny Review Essay Geography as Destiny A Brief History of Economic Growth Barry Eichengreen The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rieb and Some So Poor, by david s. landes. NewYork: W. W. Norton, 1998,544 pp. $30.00. In the 1970s Harvard undergraduates used to be offered what was called the Sherwin Williams course. In lieu of a single ... Is Geography Destiny? The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate. by Robert D. Kaplan. Random House, 2012, 432 pp., $28. At the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, we read the circular Robert Kaplan e-mailed around with surprise and some apprehension. In it, he announced that he was saying ... Geography Is Destiny The assertion that "geography is destiny" is a significantly valid statement that can be said about the shaping of earlier civilizations including Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. ... This essay could be plagiarized. Get your custom essay "Dirty Pretty Things" Acts of Desperation: The State of Being Desperate. 128 writers Is Geography Destiny? Is Geography Destiny? Lessons from Latin America is a book written by John Luke Gallup, Alejandro Gaviria, Eduardo Lora and published by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which documents an advanced step of the rediscovery of geography by economists initiated by Paul Krugman in the early 1990s, however in another, more deterministic direction. Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History Format Hardcover. ISBN 9780374157272. In the wake of Brexit, Ian Morris chronicles the eight-thousand-year history of Britain's relationship to Europe as it has changed in the context of a globalizing world. When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused ... 'Geography Is Destiny' Review: The Gap Between Europe and Britain Predictably, a mound of books has been written to explain exactly what happened on June 23, 2016, the day of the vote. Most of them, says Ian Morris, a professor of classics and history at ... Geography as Destiny and Factors Contributing to Its Success "Geography is destiny". Rumored to have been said by Napoleon Bonaparte, this quote has been a source of debate for quite some time. This theme can be applied to some of the earliest civilizations to determine why they were able to become so powerful. IDB Home Is geography destiny? If people don't like where they live, they have two options. First, they can move. They can go from places that are too dry, too remote, too disease-ridden, too infertile or too crowded, to a new place where the grass seems greener. This is the story of the great human diaspora of the past 50,000 years. Is Geography Destiny? For decades, the prevailing sentiment was that since geography is unchangeable, there is no reason why public policies should take it into account. In fact, charges that geographic interpretations of development were deterministic, or even racist, made the subject a virtual taboo in academic and policymaking circles alike. Is Geography Destiny? Is geography destiny? : lessons from Latin America The channels through which geography influences economic and social development can be studied at different levels and perspectives of time. Countries are the basic unit . Is geography destiny? : lessons from Latin America Geography Is Destiny by Ian Morris Geography Is Destiny ends not in 2016, however, but 2103: the year in which Morris estimates eastern development indices will overtake western (a tongue-in-cheek prediction, by his own admission ... Is Geography Destiny?: Lessons from Latin America Focusing on Latin America, the book argues that, with a better understanding of geography, public policy can help control or channel its influence toward the goals of economic and social development. For decades, the prevailing sentiment was that, since geography is unchangeable, there is no reason why public policies should take it into account. Is Geography Destiny?: Lessons from Latin America The channels through which geography influences economic and social development can be studied at different levels and perspectives of time. Countries are the basic unit of observation, and some historical considerations notwithstanding, the horizon of analysis is limited to the past four or five decades. The objective is to establish to what extent geography is responsible for differences in ... Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History Ever since, geography has been destiny—yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means. Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules—for Now, describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain's arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy ... Geography Is Destiny Geography Is Destiny. In the wake of Brexit, Ian Morris chronicles the eight-thousand-year history of Britain's relationship to Europe as it has changed in the context of a globalizing world. When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of ... Summary and reviews of Geography Is Destiny by Ian Morris This information about Geography Is Destiny was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter.Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Y… Geography Is Destiny is a fascinating book, composed in the mode of deep millennia-long history that has become fashionable in recent decades. It explains how the leave/remain dynamic, as determined by Britain's geographical position in relation to continental Europe, has reasserted itself in various guises throughout history. ... Geography Is Destiny Ever since, geography has been destiny—yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means. Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules—for Now, describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain's arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History His newest book, "Geography is Destiny" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Profile 2022), examines Britain's place in the world over the 10,000 years since rising waters began separating the Isles from the Continent--and asks where the story will go next. He is a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society for the Arts. Geography is Destiny Founding Director, LSE IDEAS. Ian Morris discusses with Michael Cox how geography, migration, government, and new technologies interacted to produce regional inequalities that still affect us today. 'Geography Is Destiny' is a 10,000 year history of Britain and its changing relationships with Europe and the wider world. Geography Is Destiny 'Ian Morris has established himself as a leader in making big history interesting and understandable' Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel 'Morris succeeds triumphantly at cramming 10,000 years of history into a single book' Robert Colvile, Times Geography is Destiny tells the history of Britain and its changing relationships with Europe and the wider world, from its physical ... Leaving Cert Geography reviewed with exam papers Leaving Cert Geography reviewed with exam papers. Updated / Saturday, 8 Jun 2024 10:05. Lesley Aslin, Geography teacher at The Institute of Education, shares her reaction to today's Leaving Cert ... assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis