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PRINCIPLES
of
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
BY
Hans W. Weigert
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Henry Brodie
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Edward "W. Donerty
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
John R. Fernstrom
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Eric Fischer
GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Dudley Kirk
THE POPULATION COUNCIL, INC.
New York: APPLETON-CENTURY-CROFTS, Inc.
Copyright, © 1957, by
APPLETON-CENTURY-CROFTS, INC.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission of the publishers.
653-5
Library of Congress Card Number: 56-9859
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
E-92967
Introduction
This study of political geography is not an ordinary textbook. The sub-
ject is both in the field of political science and of geography, and being
both it must be analytical in all its aspects; for the attempt to show the
interrelationship and the blending of political and geographical factors in
power relations is analytical in nature. The result is a book which con-
fronts the reader with the facts and problems of political geography,
stating the facts and posing the problems without, however, attempting
to find easy answers for the latter. It aims, above all, at making the reader
realize the importance and magnitude of the problems that arise from the
interrelationship of political and geographical factors. The emphasis on
problems accounts for our statement that this volume is not an ordinary
textbook.
It is not a well-paved and easy road that we propose to travel in our
effort to link the two realms of geography and of man's political authority
and organization within his natural environment. The view, and the
review, of this relationship is characterized and complicated by the
dominant fact that the realm of political geography is subject to constant
change and fluctuation. We have become used to the phrase that ours is
a "shrinking world." In no phase of history has this shrinking process
progressed as rapidly as in our time. In this rapid revolution of change,
instability has become a main characteristic of our political world. The
factor of instability renders the task of exploring the synthesis of political
activity and natural environment both difficult and challenging. The
rapidity with which the shrinking process progresses creates a cultural
lag, for man, in the words of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, "has learned to change
the face of nature but not to change his own mind." We have been
trained to interpret the laws of nature as they reveal themselves in our
natural environment, but with this knowledge we have not acquired the
wisdom to discern the relationship and the conditioning effects of natural
vi INTRODUCTION
environment and man's political behavior within it. The wisdom of the
Bible still rings true (St. Luke, XII: 54-56):
And He said also to the crowds: "When you see a cloud rising in the west,
you say at once, 'a shower is coming,' and so it comes to pass. And when you
see the south wind blow, you say, 'there will be a scorching heat,' and so it
comes to pass. You hypocrites! You know how to judge the face of the sky and
of the earth; but how is it that you do not judge this time?"
Aware of the problems and difficulties awaiting the student of political
geography who is not afraid of taking a hard look at its realities, the
authors of this book found themselves in full agreement on one basic issue
of organization: they decided in favor of a functional rather than regional
approach to political geography. Only in Part 3, on "The Economic
Factor in Political Geography," did it appear advisable to stress re-
gional groupings. Mindful of the uneasy balance of political power that is
the product of varying geographical and economic conditions, the au-
thors follow the regional approach in the part mentioned to provide a
useful assessment of the aggregate economic capabilities characteristic
of certain major countries and regions.
It is not our intention to present the reader with all the politico-
geographical facts of each country, or of all political groupings, on the
globe. Such encyclopedic enumeration of facts and figures, available from
many published sources and providing a helpful tool in our task, is not
enough if one tries to penetrate to the roots of the subject. The func-
tional approach, as we see it, does not supply the reader with easy
answers to the manifold problems in our field. Nor does it try to illuminate
each and every scene where political geography has a legitimate place.
It does, however, tend to sharpen our geographical "view," or what has
been called "geographical sense," of the world's scene. It undertakes to
forge the tools with which the political geographer applies general func-
tional findings to whatever political area he desires to bring into focus.
That this book is the common labor of six authors requires an explana-
tion. The borderlines which separate our subject from other related fields,
as for instance economic geography and demography, are often extremely
thin and difficult to define. Thus the student of political geography is
often compelled to step beyond the narrow confines of his realm. The
necessity to deal with problems requiring specialized skill and background
INTRODUCTION vii
convinced us that the co-operation between a number of authors with
complementary fields of study and interest in the general area of political
geography would result in a more definitive and constructive product
than one man's labor could create. On the other hand, this book is not
a mere symposium. The target of our common venture was a uniform
and integrated work. The authors have made a conscientious effort to
write their contributions in close co-ordination. To achieve this task
it was essential that they subscribe to certain basic principles or to
what might be called a common philosophy in their treatment of political
geography. The reader will detect this "philosophy" in and between the
lines of our book. It is essentially a devotion to objective analysis. It is
also to be found in the absence of a negative quality (for which the
pseudo-science of geopolitics has rightly been criticized), namely of
partisan politics: the authors have no political axes to grind. That their
target of ideal integration has not always been reached seems to be the
price one must pay in the endeavor to produce teamwork. The critical
reader will discover easily that the authors' attempt at reaching uni-
formity in their presentation has not been carried to the extreme, and that
no effort was made to suppress their individualities and to harness their
style and general approach to their specific problems. Whether or not
they have succeeded in traveling safely the hazardous path between
the devil and the deep blue sea is for the reader to discover.
This book presents its material in three main parts, following an in-
troductory section on the meaning and scope of political geography. These
distinguish between the spatial, the human and cultural, and the eco-
nomic factors in political geography. This final part does not attempt to be
a substitute for a text in economic geography but is limited to the dis-
cussion of those economic factors in power relations the understanding of
which we consider essential to the study of political geography. Their
absence from a book of this kind would make our approach to political
geography impractical and unrealistic.
In order to identify the responsibilities of the individual authors it
may be stated that Mr. Weigert has served as general editor with re-
sponsibility for the over-all organization of the book and the integration
of its various sections, and that Mr. Fernstrom has undertaken the
cartographical work. In particular, Part 1 ( The Spatial Factor in Political
Geography ) has been prepared by Mr. Fischer and Mr. Weigert ( Fischer,
pp. 26-208; Weigert, pp. 3-25, 209-290); Part 2 (The Human and Cultural
viii INTRODUCTION
Factor in Political Geography ) , by Mr. Kirk, Mr. Fischer, and Mr.
Weigert (Kirk, pp. 291-341; Kirk and Weigert, pp. 342-382; Weigert,
pp. 383-404; Fischer, pp. 405-439; Weigert, pp. 440-445), and Part 3
(The Economic Factor in Political Geography) by Mr. Brodie and Mr.
Doherty (Doherty, pp. 449-566; Brodie, pp. 567-712).
It is inevitable that in spite of our endeavor to avoid when possible the
discussion of temporary developments, certain findings and statements in
this book, as well as details of the political maps, will have become ob-
solete by the time this book is published. Therefore, it should be noted
that the authors have considered events only until early 1956.
Most of the authors are associated with work for the United States
Government, and all of them have at some time been in public service.
For this reason it is pointed out that our book presents the thinking of
the authors as private citizens only and does not reflect the views of the
government agencies with which they are, or have been, connected. Our
materials are based on open sources and no use whatsoever has been
made of classified documents.
The authors wish to express their sincere thanks to Professor Kirtley F.
Mather, who, as Editor of the Century Earth Science Series, guided us
with patience and wisdom; to Mrs. Claire Brogan, who bore the main
burden of typing and retyping our manuscript; to Mrs. Mary Dyer, who
helped us greatly in editing some of our chapters; to Richard P. Joyce
who contributed generously in the preparation of the index and to Mrs.
Joyce T. Lutz who typed the index; last but not least, we feel obligated
to mention gratefully the long and (mostly) silent sufferings of our
wives, who had to endure the labor and birth pains surrounding this
effort.
H.W.W.
Contents
CHAPTER
PAGE
INTRODUCTION V
PART 1
The Spatial Factor in Political Geography
1 The Meaning and Scope of Political Geography 3
2 Size 26
3 Shape 58
4 The Nature and Functions of Boundaries 79
5 The Impact of Boundaries 110
6 Political Core Areas, Capital Cities, Communications . . . 142
7 Location 174
8 The Impact of Location on Strategy and Power Politics . . . 209
PART 2
The Human and Cultural Factor in
Political Geography
9 Population Growth and Pressure 293
10 Migrations 342
11 The Political Geography of Languages 383
12 Religions : Their Distribution and Role in Political Geography 405
13 Supplement: Other Cultural Factors 440
ix
x CONTENTS
PART 3
The Economic Factor in Political Geography
CHAPTER PAGE
14 The Importance of Economic Factors in Political Geography . 449
15 The Growing Economic Strength of the Sino-Soviet Bloc . 471
16 Japan's Economy 519
17 The Economic Capabilities of Western Europe . . . . . 531
18 The United States and Canada 567
19 The Challenge of the Underdeveloped Areas 601
20 Southwest Asia 624
21 South and Southeast Asia 643
22 Latin America 665
23 Africa: The Last Stand of Colonialism 689
index 713
List of Maps
PAGE
2- 1. Danzig-1919-1939 32
2- 2. Short-lived City-states at the Head of the Adriatic Sea ... 33
2- 3. Portuguese and French (1954) Colonial Holdings in India . . 35
2- 4. The Ukrainian SSR (1955) 41
2- 5. Comparative Size of France (superimposed on Minnesota, Iowa,
and Wisconsin) 42
2- 6. India and Europe at the Same Scale 43
2- 7. Comparative Size of U.S.S.R., United States, and Brazil ... 44
2- 8. Effects of Projections on Appearance of Size: Greenland and
South America; Ellesmere Island and Australia 45
2- 9. Canada: Population Density per Square Mile 48
2-10. Australia-Continental Shelf 49
2-11. Encircling Growth of Metropolitan Area: Detroit .... 55
3- 1. Pakistan: A Non-contiguous State Area 59
3- 2. Basutoland: An Enclave in the Union of South Africa .... 61
3- 3. Berlin: An Exclave 64
3- 4. British Influence around the Indian Ocean between World Wars
I and II . . - 68
3- 5. Indonesia, an Example of a Contemporary Circum-marine State . 70
3- 6. The Caribbean Sea: An American Mediterranean .... 72
3- 7. Portuguese and German Expansion in Central Africa .... 75
3- 8. The Map as a Weapon of Geopolitics: Czechoslovakia, a "Threat"
to Nazi Germany 77
4- 1. The Boundaries of Poland since World War II 82
4- 2. Antarctic Claims 84
4- 3. Rub'al Khali, "The Empty Quarter" of Southern Arabia ... 88
4- 4. The Argentine-Chilean Boundary 91
4- 5. The Minnesota-Canada Boundary 92
4- 6. The Bratislava Bridgehead on the Danube 98
4- 7. The Louisiana Extension on the Mouth of the Mississippi . . 98
4- 8. The Geometrical Line as Boundary: Alaska-Siberia .... 103
4- 9. Boundary Disputes between States in the United States . . . 106
4-10. Germany Divided (1955) 108
5- 1. The Saar: Coal and Steel Industries 113
5- 2. The Congo Territory: Exchanges between Belgium and Portugal 123
xi
xii LIST OF MAPS
PAGE
5- 3. State Boundaries in the Continental Shelf: Louisiana and Texas 125
5- 4. The Sector Principle in the Arctic Ocean 126
5- 5. The United States-Mexican Boundary 129
5- 6. The Satellite Countries of Eastern Europe 133
5- 7. The Break-up of the Hapsburg Empire after 1918 .... 139
6- 1. The Shifting Core of Turkey 144
6- 2. The Core Area of Israel 147
6- 3. Core Areas in South America 150
6- 4. Brazil: Shift of Capitals 152
6- 5. Capitals of China . 154
6- 6. Core Areas of Japan According to Population Density per Square
Kilometer 155
6- 7. Post Roads of France 159
6- 8. Railroad Pattern in Western Europe 160
6- 9. Ineffective Rail-net of Czechoslovakia at the Time of Its Forma-
tion 162
6-10. Shipping Lanes Radiating from United Kingdom Ports . . 164
6-11. The St. Lawrence Seaway and the American Manufacturing Belt 166
6-12. The West Coast Area of the United States Centered on California 170
7- 1. The Boer States in Relation to British and Portuguese Territories . 177
7- 2. The Buffer States of Iran, Afghanistan, and Siam before the Par-
tition of India 178
7- 3. The Buffer State of Ethiopia before 1935 179
7- 4. Boundary Conflicts in South America ........ 180
7- 5. Bolivia to the Sea via Brazil 181
7- 6. Central Africa: Railroad Competition between Belgium, Portugal,
and British Rhodesia 186
7- 7. The Palestine-Syria Corridor 192
8- 1. Mackinder's Heartland (1904) 210
8- 2. Relationship of Heartland and North America on the Azimuthal
Polar Projection 216
8- 3. Marginal Lands to the West of the Heartland 225
8- 4. Succession of Marginal and Enclosed Seas— from North America
to the Indian Ocean 230
8- 5. The South China Sea 232
8- 6. The Sea of Japan 236
8- 7. The Baltic Arena and Its String of Soviet Military Bases . . . 238
8- 8. The Mediterranean 240
8- 9. Drake Passage in Relation to the Panama and Suez Canals . . 246
8-10. Air Routes and Strategic Bases in the Arctic Mediterranean . . 248
8-11, Sea Routes and Bases in the Arctic Mediterranean .... 252
8-12. The Partition of Tordesillas: The World Divided .... 254
8-13. The Shrinking of Main Water Bodies in the Light of Tech-
nological Progress 260
LIST OF MAPS xiii
PAGE
8-14, The Boundary between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres
According to V. Stefansson ... 264
8-15. Greenland and Iceland between the Eastern and Western Hemi-
spheres . . 265
8-16. The "American Quarter Sphere" 266
8-17. The American Perimeter of Defense: Winter 1955 .... 274
8-18. The Western Security System 280
8-19. Strategic Railroad Extension in Turkey and Iran 284
8-20. The Columbo Powers 287
8-21. Bandung Conference, 1955 289
9- 1. World, Relative Land Areas 294
9- 2. World, Relative Population and Birth Rates 296
9- 3. Population Growth, 1900-1949 315
9- 4. World Regions by Demographic Type 322
9- 5. World Population Growth: Actual, 1650-1950; and United Na-
tions Medium Estimates, 1950-1980 323
9- 6. Population Growth in the World and Its Major Regions: Actual,
1920-1950; and United Nations Medium Estimates, 1950-1980 . 324
9- 7. India: Composition of Population 328
9- 8. Japan: Composition of Population 328
9- 9. United Kingdom: Composition of Population 329
9-10. People, Land, and Food Production 333
10- 1. Mass Migration of Ethnic Germans into West Germany after
World War II 360
10- 2. Net Postwar Overseas Migration, Europe 1946-1952 (in thou-
sands) 368
10- 3. Chinese Settlement in Malaya 378
11- 1. Linguistic States of India 386
11- 2. Canada: "Les Canadiens" 391
11- 3. China: Areas of Languages and Dialects 404
12- 1. Distribution of Religions 410
12- 2. Distribution of Roman Catholicism 416
12- 3. Distribution of (a) Protestantism and other non-Catholic Chris-
tian Churches; (b) Buddhism; (c) Hinduism; (d) Judaism . 420
12- 4. Countries with Islamic Majorities and Significant Islamic
Minorities 424
12- 5. Islamic Countries 426
13- 1. World: Daily Newspaper Circulation per 100 Persons . . . 442
13- 2. World: Radio Sets per 100 Persons 444
14- 1. Atomic Energy Resources 456
14- 2. World: Arable Land 462
14- 3. World: Economically Developed Countries 468
xiv LIST OF MAPS
PAGE
15- 1. Railroads, Resources, and Industrial Concentrations in European
Soviet Union 476
15- 2. Railroads, Resources, and Industrial Concentrations in Asian
Soviet Union 478
15- 3. Railroads, Resources, and Industrial Concentrations of Northern
China 498
16- 1. Japan: Industrial Areas and Selected Railroads 520
17- 1. Railroads, Resources, and Industrial Concentrations in Western
Europe 540
18- 1. The Westward Course of the United States as Shown in the Ten-
Year Shift of the Population Center, 1790-1950 572
18- 2. Anglo- America: Railroads, Resources, and Industrial Concentra-
tions 574
18-3. Regional Extent of TVA Activity 579
20- 1. Middle East Oil Fields and Pipelines 628
21- 1. Southeast Asia: Railroads, Resources, and Industrial Concentra-
tions 652
22- 1. Central America: Resources 670
22- 2. South America: Resources 674
23- 1. Resources, Railroads, and Political Structure of Africa . . . 690
Part
1
THE SPATIAL FACTOR
IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
CHAPTER
1
The Meaning and Scope or
Political Geography
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Political geography is a legitimate child of human geography. Both deal
with the interplay of physical and human factors, with the interrelation-
ship between earth and man. Both try to discover and explain the in-
fluences of the physical world on human society and the limitations it puts
on human activities; they deal with diverse manifestations of a symbiosis
of nature and man.
The life patterns revealed in this symbiosis are the subject matter of
human geography. Out of the study of human geography evolves a better
understanding of human groups within their natural environment, of
civilizations formed and grown in a variety of environments, and of the
physical causes which influenced this growth.1
It is, perhaps, the roots of human groups in their natural environment
that most influence their development. These are, however, not the only
formative factors in human society. Historical and sociological motiva-
tions, as well as cultural influences, cannot be discounted. Yet to be
rooted in a natural and cultural landscape and environment is the essence
of life to the individual and to the group. The roots are manifold; so strong
and interwoven is their net that man and his natural environment are
inseparable. Human geography, in its many manifestations, draws its
1 P. W. J. Vidal de la Blache, Principles of Human Geography (London, 1926),
p. 19.
3
4 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
inspiration from this complex symbiosis. It focuses our attention on man
and his environment, on man as a geographical factor, thus growing
beyond descriptive narrative. Human geography evolves as a discipline
whose primary target is "the study of human society in relation to the
earth background." 2 As such it ranks alongside of other social sciences
whose common purpose is to study the structure and behavior of human
society.
By this definition of the scope of human geography we have, by im-
plication, excluded geographical speculations which are not borne out
by scientific research. Numerous concepts have been developed over the
last fifty years. These range from "environmental determinism," which
postulates a causal relationship between the characteristics of the earth
and the activities of man, to modified theories of "possibilism." which
grants man and human groups a number of possible choices among the
limits set and the opportunities offered by the physical environment. In a
philosophical vein and in lofty language the concept of "possibilism" was
expressed by Alexis de Tocqueville: 3
I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never
their own masters here below, and that they necessarily obey some unsurmount-
able and intelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or from
the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false and cowardly;
such principles can never produce aught but feeble men and pusillanimous
nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely dependent or entirely
free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced beyond which he
cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free;
as it is with men, so with communities.
These theories of determinism and of possibilism, developed mainly by
geographers in Europe, especially in Germany and France, were also
accepted readily by several geographers in the United States. Later a
healthy reaction occurred, primarily based on the realization that al-
though significant changes in the physical environment will often strongly
condition human affairs, a positive determinism cannot be demonstrated
in a relatively stable environment. The general concept commonly ac-
cepted today is "that the physical character of the earth has different
meaning for different people: that the significance to man of the physical
environment is a function of the attitudes, objectives, and technical abili-
ties of man himself. With each change in any of the elements of the
human culture the resource base provided by the earth must be re-
2 C. L. White and G. T. Renner, Human Geography, An Ecological Study of
Society (New York, 1948), pp. V, VI.
3 Democracy in America.
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 5
evaluated." 4 We shall re-examine these ideas later, when distinguishing
between political geography and geopolitics.
Political geography, a subdivision of human geography, is concerned
with a particular aspect of earth— man relationships and with a special
kind of emphasis. It is not the relationship between physical environment
and human groups or societies as such that attracts us here but the re-
lationship between geographical factors and political entities. Only where
man's organization of space and historical and cultural influences upon
geographical patterns are related to political organizations, are we in the
realm of political geography. In contrast to the "natural regions" of
physical geography, the area units of political geography are those of
states and nations. To determine how these organizations are influenced
by and adjusted to physiographical conditions, and how these factors
affect international relations, is the aim of political geography.5
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND GEOPOLITICS
Since all political landscapes are man-made, they are subject to con-
tinuous fluctuations. The politico-geographical realities of today may
easily become the myths of tomorrow, and vice versa. Geography, it has
been said, does not argue— it simply is. When we examine the changing
relationships of territory and people, either within a state or between
states, we are confronted with artificial, because man-made, structures.
The analysis and evaluation of the problems of political geography are
definitely not in the realm of natural science.
Our approach to a field in which physical geography, political science,
and economics meet should be distinguished from the school commonly
identified as "geopolitics." The latter goes beyond the objective study of
politico-geographical factors and is an applied pseudo-science with very
questionable objectives. As such, it has an axe to grind. The French
geographer Demangeon correctly labeled geopolitics "a national enter-
prise of propaganda and teaching." At the point where geopolitics be-
comes a philosophy ( or rather pseudo-philosophy ) of geographical deter-
minism, meant to justify the political aims of a specific nation, the
curtain is drawn which separates it from our field of studies.
The philosophical basis of geopolitics is rather crude. It tries to draw
its strength from an identification of state and individual. Like any other
4 P. E. James, American Geography, Inventory and Prospect (Syracuse, 1954),
pp. 12, 13.
5 Cf. W. Fitzgerald, The New Europe (New York, 1945), p. 1.
6 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
living being, the state is endowed with a will and even with passions of
its own. Like man himself, the state goes through the stages of birth,
growth, maturity, aging, and death.6 Hence, as seen through the glass of
a "philosophy" of geopolitics, there are in the lives of states "laws" of
growth and "laws" of decay. Out of these concepts grow terms which
readily become political slogans, such as "Sense of space," "Folk without
space," or the one which proved most effective as justification of German
and Japanese expansionism, "Living space."
At the risk of somewhat oversimplifying the issues, it can be said that
the basic difference between political geography and geopolitics exists
in the emphasis on the effect of geography on the dynamics of states and
nations. The radical representatives of the German geopolitical school
held that geographical factors so entirely determine growth and decline
of states that no room is left for a course which contradicts the alleged
geographical commands. From a concept which looks upon geography
as the inalienable cause of human events, it is but one logical step to a
political philosophy that claims for itself the right to predict the course
determined by geographical factors, and thus to lead statesmen and
soldiers alike in the making of strategic decisions. Hence it is not surpris-
ing to find the German geopoliticians proclaiming that geopolitics "is the
geographical conscience of the state." But the factors of change and
fluctuations which daily write anew the map of the world belie the pre-
tensions of a narrow determinism. More realistically and more modestly
than the prophets of geopolitics, most students of political geography
hold that geography does not determine but merely conditions the course
of states. Geography is but one of many tangible and intangible features
which form the pattern of a state. A significant note to this concept of
political geography has been added by French geographers who stress
the possible modification of geographical features as a result of man's
technological achievement.7
6W. G. East, "The Nature of Political Geography," Politica (1937), p. 259. It
should be noted that not only Germans have inclined toward this biological outlook.
The French geographer Ancel (see the preface to his Geopolitique, 1936) and the
American geographer Van Valkenburg (Political Geography) were equally impressed.
"The thesis," R. Hartshorne (in American Geography [Syracuse, 1954], p. 185) writes,
"has been widely criticized not only because of a lack of demonstration that the life
processes of any state have led inevitably to the characteristics that can be called old
age and ultimately to dissolution, but, even more fundamentally, on the grounds that
it is false to reason from a superficial analogy between a biological organism and a
social organization operated by men, since men collectively through successive gen-
erations are at no time older than their predecessors."
7 In our efforts to distinguish between geopolitics and political geography, a note
of caution is in order which is due to the semantics of the term geopolitics. Both terms
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 7
To the reader who has been taken in by the fading glamour of the
catchword "geopolitics," this brief attempt to distinguish between geo-
politics and political geography may appear superficial in view of the
amazing fascination which geopolitics evoked during, and following,
World War II. To a large extent American interest in, and preoccupation
with, geopolitics dates from the time of Hitler's military victories. Amer-
ican acceptance of geopolitics perhaps resulted from the actual and
seeming successes of the German grand strategy by what then appeared
to be a doctrine and science on which the Germans could claim to have
a monopoly.
It is not without irony that even before Americans looked with anxious
fascination upon German geopolitics, its German monopolists conveyed
to their own countrymen the idea that geographers and statesmen in
Britain and the United States, and even in France, had mastered the
principles and application of geopolitics much more skillfully than was
true in Germany. In a symposium by the editors of the Journal of
Geopolitics, published in 1928, as well as in many editorials, General Karl
Haushofer sadly commented that geographers like Mackinder and Curzon
in Britain, Semple and Bowman in America, and Brunhes and Vallaux in
France had not only understood the teachings of Friedrich Ratzel, the
father of political geography in Germany, much better than the Germans
themselves but had also succeeded in utilizing these lessons "for the sake
of power expansion." 8
To Haushofer and his school, it was a matter of serious concern that
German leadership, both in the German Foreign Office and the General
Staff, excelled in geographic ignorance and overemphasis on legal train-
ing. Hence the necessity to create a new "science" for would-be statesmen
and conquering generals, a borderline science with a practical political
purpose. Borrowing heavily from the disciplines of "geography, history,
and politics," it would supply statesman and officer alike with the neces-
sary tools for making political and strategical decisions.
While the godfathers of geopolitics in Germany cited with admiration
and envy the achievements of political geographers in the Anglo-American
countries, to convince their countrymen that a thorough revision of geo-
are frequently used interchangeably and it cannot, therefore, be assumed that the use
of the word geopolitics is in itself indicative of the author's subscribing to the beliefs
of geographical determinism.
8 Bausteine zur Geopolitik (Berlin, 1928), p. 61; see also, in rebuttal, I. Bowman,
"Geography vs. Geopolitics," in H. W. Weigert and V. Stefansson, eds., Compass of
the World ( New York, 1954 ) , pp. 40-53. Bowman branded Haushofer's philosophy of
power as "utterly dishonest."
8 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
graphic thinking and training was overdue in Germany, the early vic-
tories of the German war machine prompted a similar train of thought
in America. As one American geography professor put it in 1943: "The
airplane has created a new geography of the world. Axis leaders knew
this several years ago and have been taking advantage of it, but few
Americans are yet really aware of it." 9 Believing that the Germans were
more than a step ahead of Americans in supplying statecraft and strategy
with tools from the realm of geography, the American proponents of
geopolitics argued, even as the Germans, that it was high time to learn
from the enemy and to make geography fashionable by calling it geo-
politics. Thus the American vogue in geopolitics had its roots less in the
discovery of a new ( German-grown ) branch of political geography than
in nebulous conceptions and in the realization that the study and appli-
cation of geography in America was in anything but a perfect state.
Viewed against this historical background, the struggle between political
geography and geopolitics can be seen in its proper perspective. Much
less than a competition between two clearly discernible schools of human
geography, it reflects in Germany the efforts, during the ill-fated latest
phase of German totalitarianism, to use, and often abuse, geography as
a political device to justify acts of aggression and expansion. At the same
time, the awareness, in this country, of weaknesses in our own arsenal
of geographical knowledge and training led to often nebulous and mis-
guided attempts to bring geography into focus by dressing it as geopol-
itics. If one visualizes the theme of geography versus geopolitics against
the historical setting of the years surrounding World War II and the
ideologies underlying its power struggle, we shall not fail to realize the
temporary nature of the vastly overblown controversy. This realization
should make easy the return to the less glamorous but more solid grounds
of political geography.10
9 Actually, the history of World War II teaches the opposite to be true and shows
the German and Japanese High Commands as prisoners of a fatally mistaken Mercator
world view which caused them to misjudge completely the geographical relationship
of the United States to the rest of the world; cf. R. E. Harrison and H. W. Weigert,
"World View and Strategy," in Weigert and Stefansson, op. cit., pp. 74-89.
10 For a more detailed discussion of German geopolitics, see H. W. Weigert, Gen-
erals and Geographers (New York, 1942); R. Strauss-Hupe, Geopolitics (New York,
1942); E. M. Walsh, "Geopolitics and International Morals," in Weigert and Stefans-
son, op. cit., pp. 12-40; I. Bowman, "Geography vs. Geopolitics," Geographical Review
( 1942), pp. 646-658; and Weigert and Stefansson, op. cit., pp. 40-52. See also the dis-
cussion between M. A. Junis and J. O. M. Broek, "Geography and Nationalism," Geo-
graphical Review (1945), pp. 301-311. All of these authors try to explain and to de-
bunk the strange phenomenon of geopolitics in Germany as they saw it from the United
States and hampered by the fact that their critical evaluation was undertaken during
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 9
Despite its obvious fallacies, geopolitics in Hitler Germany flourished
as one of the main roots of a philosophy which almost succeeded in
becoming a powerful political reality. The British historian H. Trevor-
Roper has highlighted geopolitics as understood and practiced by Hitler
in an analysis which we quote in order to emphasize the challenge of
Hitler's brand of geopolitics: "
Hitler, like Spengler, saw history as a series of almost geological ages, each
characterized by a special "culture" and separated from the others by crucial
periods of transition in which the old era, the old culture, gave way to the new.
There had been the ancient era of Mediterranean culture, the medieval era of
frustrated Germanic culture, the post-Renaissance era of wicked capitalist cul-
ture dominated by the maritime powers; and now at last— did not all the omens
show it?— that era had in turn reached its fatal period and must be replaced by
a new. But what would this new era be? Whose culture would dominate it? How
would it be brought to birth out of the dying convulsions of the old?
To all these questions Hitler had thought out his answer. The new era would
be a "geopolitical" era, for the conquest of space had rendered the old maritime
empires obsolete— that was why he could afford to "guarantee" the irrelevant
British Empire. It would be dominated— the geopoliticians had said so— by who-
ever dominated the mass of Central and Eastern Europe. That might, of course,
mean the Russians, who were more numerous, powerfully organized under a
totalitarian genius whom he admired, and already there. But Hitler did not want
it to be the Russians: he wanted it to be the Germans; therefore, in answer to
the third question, he declared that it would come about not by a natural eco-
nomic process but by a violent change, a crusading war of conquest and coloni-
zation, a war of giants in which he, the demiurge of the new age, would bv
sheer human will power reverse the seeming inevitability of history and plant
upon conquered Eurasia that German culture which would dominate the world
for the next thousand years.
Such was the vast, crude vision which inspired Hitler's demonic career— the
vision for the sake of which he had revolutionized and rearmed Germany, ruth-
lessly and cunningly solved all intervening problems, created an elite of mystical
crusaders, and now, in June 1941, suddenly launched what would be for him
the ultimate, the only relevant campaign: the Armageddon that was to decide,
not petty questions of frontiers or governments, but the whole next era of human
history.
One further note of warning appears necessary. It would be a serious
mistake if we minimized the dangers, to American thinking, of a geo-
political doctrine and ideology so firmly rooted in German soil. It would
World War II when another Iron Curtain separated Hitler Germany from the Free
World. It is therefore indispensable for a better and unbiased understanding of Ger-
man geopolitics to consult a "critique and justification" of geographic science in Ger-
many during the period from 1933 to 1945, written in 1941 by a ranking German
geographer, Carl Troll, who had been an uncompromising foe of National Socialism
(Annals of the Association of American Geographers [1949], pp. 99-135; translated
and annotated by Eric Fischer ) .
11 "Hitler's Gamble/' Atlantic Monthly (September, 1954), p. 42.
10 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
indeed be fallacious to argue that the issue of geopolitics versus political
geography is purely academic in America for the reason that geopolitics
was, after all, a German product and not exportable to America. That
in a few exceptional cases American writers and students of geography
had been unduly influenced by concepts of geopolitics, it could be argued,
should not detract from the fact that America is no fertile ground for
the alien credo.
However, a comparison between the basic ideas of German geopolitics
and of the American creed of Manifest Destiny ( extending into Theodore
Roosevelt's era) rampant between 1830-60, shows that the German mind
has no monopoly on the kind of argumentation typical of geopolitics.
Although the two concepts were conditioned by their different environ-
ments, it appears that similar centrifugal forces have cast them off-
similar, but not identical, for Manifest Destiny, if one disregards some
of its more radical proponents, was in its original pronouncements not
based on militarism. The manifest destiny of the American Republic was
to expand over the continent of North America by peaceful process and
by the force of republican principles of government. Yet the similarities
are striking. Geopolitics, with its basic concept of "Living space," and
Manifest Destiny alike embraced expansionism as a biological necessity
in the lives of states and justified it by the conception of the state as an
organism. Both fed on the theory of "economically integrated large space
areas." Even as the idea of an economically integrated Central Europe
( Mitteleuropa ) was part and parcel of German geopolitics, so the ter-
ritorial expansion of the United States westward, southward, and north-
ward became a battlecry of Manifest Destiny and found its theoretical
justification in the principle of geographical unity. In their arguments,
the proponents of Manifest Destiny embraced geographical determinism
and vague geopolitical concepts of "natural" frontiers. These played a
role in the discussions in 1846 over the Oregon question and recurred
during the Mexican war. They found their strongest expression in the
geopolitical beliefs of Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H. Seward,
beginning in 1860 with his speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, in which he
envisioned the peaceful expansion of the United States over the whole
continent of North America as the fulfillment of the will of Providence.
After the Civil War, Seward's geopolitical ideas revolved around an even
greater American empire. They included the strategic islands in the
Caribbean, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Looking forward to possessions in
the Atlantic and Pacific, he made plans for a canal route through Nica-
ragua by ensuring transit rights in the treaty of 1867; he hoped that the
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 11
United States would annex the Hawaiian islands; he favored the annex-
ation of Canada. As the lone lasting result of his expansionist endeavors
he was able to show only the acquisition of Alaska from Russia.12
With the naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan, expansion overseas was
added to the credo of American Manifest Destiny geopolitics which,
except for Seward's dreams, had remained essentially continental. Mahan's
influence went far beyond the American scene. It is difficult to say whether
it was more instrumental in promoting Manifest Destiny concepts in the
United States, leading her toward world power through sea power, or
whether it was strongest in stimulating German expansionism, based on
geopolitical teachings in which Ratzel, influenced by Mahan, had pointed
to the sea as an important source of national greatness. The concept of
space, so essential since Ratzel and so distorted and overdrawn since
Haushofer and his disciples, was also a keynote of Manifest Destiny,
beginning with the purchase of Louisiana by Jefferson. Coupled with
large-space concepts we find in latter-day German geopolitics an un-
healthy contempt for the rights of the small states which stood in the
way of the expansionist drive of their large neighbors. In a similar vein,
Henry Cabot Lodge stated, in truly geopolitical fashion, that small states
had outlived their worth in the progress of the world. Even the racial
and cultural superiority slogans, which should not be charged to the
gospel of German geopolitics but which were, however leluctantly,
accepted and adopted by Haushofer and his group during the Third
Reich, have their counterpart in the pronouncements of the most radical
prophets of Manifest Destiny in the United States. For example, Burgess
foresaw the establishment of a new Christian order through a world
dominion of Anglo-Saxons. The "philosophical" basis of his prediction
was the concept that the Teutonic nations, including those considered
Anglo-Saxon in culture and population, were alone equipped to assume
leadership in the formation and administration of states and that they
therefore had not only the right but also the duty to subdue other nations
and to force organization upon "unpolitical populations." 13
Both concepts, then, have in common the popular use of environmental,
especially spatial, factors for the justification of power-political, expan-
sionist aims. Since their similar creeds mushroomed in different periods
of history and in different national and natural environments, dissimilar -
12 F. Parella, Lehensraum and Manifest Destiny, MA thesis, Georgetown University,
pp. 88-101; our discussion of the relationship between German geopolitics and Manifest
Destiny is based on this thesis.
13 J. W. Burgess, Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, Vol. I
(Boston, 1890), pp. 30-39, 44-46.
12 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ities are obvious. But the most important distinguishing fact is that basic
concepts of geopolitics in Germany became the official policy of Hitler's
Third Reich, whereas Manifest Destiny was never adopted as an official
policy by the United States; it never went beyond the stage of a popular
conviction.14 Yet the readiness with which it was absorbed by the public
and by many in positions of power should give us pause. The history of
the Manifest Destiny movement in the United States should warn us not
to disregard as irrelevant the pseudo-philosophy of geopolitical schools
abroad, on the theory that this brand of geopolitics was tvpical only of
the half-forgotten Third Reich in Germany.
THE IMPACT OF CHANGE AND STABILITY
Although statistics and other evidence can be assembled to serve the
study of political geography, we must not lose sight of the fact that its
realm is affected by constant change and fluctuation. In the first place,
the physical environment itself, the geographical framework within which
the destinies of states and nations unfold themselves, is changing every
day. Changes in climate, for instance, and the resulting effects on vege-
tation, have affected man's adjustment and consequently his civilizations,
although the degree of these influences is still an open question.15 At
least as significant is the fact that man's response and adjustment to his
environment has, throughout history, undergone constant change and
evolution. Man, organized in social and political groups, has learned
increasingly to adapt himself to the conditioning effects of geography.
He has countered more and more successfully the influences of geograph-
ical factors by making the best use of the opportunities offered him by
his environment. He has gone farther, and by what has been described
as "geographical surgery," he has molded the landscape to fit his needs
or wants.
At the same time, it should be remembered that the manner and degree
of human adjustment to the natural environment follows no uniform
pattern. Rather, human societies, whether primitive social groupings or
highly developed modern states, have always varied in their reaction to
their environment. To account for the basic differences between nations
in their response to environment requires an examination of sociological
and psychological characteristics which are beyond the province of geog-
raphy. However, an awareness of these factors helps us to realize that
14 Parella, op. cit., p. 103.
15 Cf. E. Huntington, Mainsprings of Civilization (New York, 1945); White and
Renner, op. cit., pp. 240, 241.
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 13
geographical influence is but one of many conditioning factors; geography
does not act as an "agent of determinism."
While "man has found it easy to change the face of nature, he has
found it difficult to change his own mind" ( V. Stefansson ) . It has become
a truism to speak of our shrinking world, yet man individually and
collectively, has proven his inability to adjust his thinking and ideas to
the changes that have taken place in environmental conditions. The more
mankind has succeeded in overcoming barriers of terrain and distance,
thus erasing isolation and bringing about a closely-knit society of nations,
the less unity has the "one world" of ours produced. It is this cultural
lag which is a major cause of political instability in our time. One main
reason for the cultural lag can be seen in the difficulties we encounter
when we attempt to adjust political realities and ideals to the continuous
change in the relationship between man and his natural environment.
Clearly the study of political geography concerns itself with the descrip-
tion and analysis of the features of instability and change which permeate
the pattern of relations between earth and state. That necessitates con-
tinuous re-examination and re-evaluation of only seemingly established
facts in the spatial relationship between states and political organizations.
We shall deal on many occasions with the changes that have altered
the face of the earth and we will find again and again that these changes
have affected vitally the lives of nations and the power relationships of
every state in war and peace. It does not matter whether they are the
result of physical processes or of the activities of man himself. The latter
include changes that are man-made, such as canals, or man-caused, such
as the depletion of forested lands or of natural resources, as well as those
that indirectly result from technological progress. The full impact of these
transformations, which in our time have succeeded each other more
rapidly and have shaken the foundations of the globe more terrifyingly
than in any other epoch of history, defies human imagination.
We can think of no better illustration of the magnitude of the problem
of comprehending the changes which our planet is continuously under-
going than the words spoken in 1827 by the great German poet Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe. With prophetic imagination he envisaged geo-
graphical surgery which would alter the face and structure of the earth
and thus revolutionize the relationships of nations. These are Goethe's
reflections as expressed in a conversation with his secretary, Eckermann:
... a passage through the Isthmus of Panama has been suggested. Other points
have been recommended where, by making use of some streams that flow into
the Gulf of Mexico, the end may be perhaps better attained than at Panama.
14 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
All this is reserved for the future, and for an enterprising spirit. So much, how-
ever, is certain, that if they succeed in connecting the Mexican gulf with the
Pacific Ocean, innumerable benefits will come to mankind. But I doubt whether
the United States will pass up the opportunity to get control of this undertaking.
I predict that this young state, with its decided westward course, will, in thirty
or forty years, have occupied and peopled the whole tract of land beyond the
Rocky Mountains. Along the entire coast of the Pacific, which nature has en-
dowed with the most capacious and secure harbors, important cities will gradu-
ally arise, for the furtherance of much trade between China and the East Indies
and the United States. In that case, it will become desirable and even indis-
pensable that a more rapid communication be maintained between the eastern
and western shores of North America, both by merchant-vessels and by
men-of-war, and far superior to the tedious, unpleasant, and expensive voyage
around Cape Horn. So I repeat, it is absolutely indispensable for the United
States to effect a passage from the Mexican gulf to the Pacific Ocean; and I am
certain that the United States will accomplish it.
Would that I might live to see it!— but I shall not. I should like to see another
event— a junction of the Danube and the Rhine. But this undertaking is so gigan-
tic that I doubt the possibility of its completion, particularly when I consider
our German resources.
And third and last, I should like to see England in possession of a canal
through the Isthmus of Suez. Would that I could live to see these three great
works. It would be well worth the trouble to last some fifty years more. . . .
This is indeed the future in retrospect. Viewed through the glass of
an imaginative observer of the world's stage, a scene unfolds which has
become so obvious a reality in our day that we fail to grasp easily the
changes which these geographical surgeries have caused. They have not
only altered our physical world but have transformed basically the power
relations of the great national states. To foresee the potentialities and
possibilities of change in state-earth relationships, as Goethe did, is an
even more vital task today than it was 150 years ago. "Is not the crisis
of today, which penetrates into every human activity and almost every
larger thought, essentially geographical in origin?" Halford J. Mackinder,
an outstanding British geographer, raised this question in 1935. He tried
to answer it by emphasizing the elementary facts of our shrinking world.
Mankind, he suggested, has suddenly become world-conscious and has
taken fright. The nations have run to their homes and are barricading
their doors. They have realized that henceforth they must live in a closed
system in which they can do nothing without generating "repercussions
from the very antipodes." To grasp the world-wide scope of modern
geography and the pattern of interrelationships which is still growing
in complexity is one thing. To apply the lessons of this geography, so that
they will be accepted by statesmen and nations, is altogether different.
Man finds it easier to change the face of nature than to change his own
mind.
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 15
Although we have emphasized the role of change, which precludes an
easy explanation of how geographical factors change the course and
destinies of nations, we must now equally stress certain basic geographic
characteristics that possess the quality of stability. They have remained
unchanged throughout history, and an understanding of these unchange-
able geographical features is indispensable to statecraft and military
strategy. Historical geography verifies that the cost of geographical igno-
rance, one facet of which is lack of appreciation of these unchangeable
factors, is immeasurable. Also immeasurable is the cost of geographical
ignorance due to lack of understanding of changes in the environment and
their effect on power relations. Especially eloquent are those instances
where nations fell because of their failure to grasp the size of enemy
territory and of the manpower of their foes. Such ignorance explains the
downfall of the Greeks when attacked by Persia, the Jews in their struggle
with the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the ultimate defeat of Napoleon
and Hitler in the vast expanses of Russia. If we discount the often re-
markable changes in the structure of smaller powers occasioned by geo-
graphical surgery, as in the case of Egypt ( Suez Canal ) or Colombia and
Panama (Panama Canal), the physiographic foundations of state power
will in most cases remain unchanged. Foreign policy and military strategy
will have to accept these foundations as basic; ignorance of these factors,
both at home and abroad, can prove to be fatal.
It is a truism that the history of Britain since the Norman conquest
and her political and military decisions have been clearly based on her
island fortress position; her world power in the Victorian age and the
decline of this power since the advent of the submarine and the airplane
are linked to this geographical fact. In contrast, the geographical position
of France has always been one of extreme vulnerability. Her exposure
to invasion has always tempted her neighbors, like the Hapsburgs, who
laid an iron ring around France and later invaded her territory when her
internal stability collapsed in the turmoil of the French Revolution. The
utter insecurity of France because of geographical location— in contrast
to the security which, until yesterday, characterized the location of the
British Isles and of the United States— is documented on every page of
her history. To counteract it, France has always been forced to establish,
often at high expense, a friend in the rear of her most dangerous enemy,
so that if war came the enemy would be compelled to fight on two fronts.16
Thus the alignments of France with Sweden, Poland, and Turkey to check
the expansion of the Holy Roman Empire and, after the First World War,
16 C. Petrie, "The Strategic Concept of Modern Diplomacy," Quarterly Review
(1952), pp. 289-301.
16 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the creation of the Little Entente in Germany's backyard to meet a future
German threat, go back to the simple facts of her regional location
vis-a-vis her neighbors. Similarly, Germany's strategy in war and peace
since the nineteenth century has been dictated by awareness of weakness
stemming from her open frontiers in East and West. Statesmen like
Bismarck who knew their geography designed a foreign policy for Ger-
many to insure her against war on two fronts; criminal dilettantes at the
helm of Germany, like Hitler, disregarded this basic policy and led their
people into disaster by attacking their neighbors on all fronts.
These examples can be multiplied, and later we shall discuss the factors
of size, shape, and location in more detail. They serve here merely as
illustrations of stable geographical features which in the past have con-
ditioned internal and external policies of states and which are likely to
affect the same decisions in the present and in the future. We must view
a country against this background of geographical fundamentals in order
to understand its role within the concert of nations.
THE NEW FRONTIERS
The study of fluctuating frontiers, boundaries, frontier zones, and "no
man's lands" is a most important field for the student of political geography.
The day seems to be distant when nations will have become so inter-
dependent that separating frontiers will be allowed to wither away. Until
such time, the study of frontiers remains a vital prerequisite for the under-
standing of the internal conditions of a state and nation as well as of the
international relations of states.
"The Old Europe is gone. The map is being rolled up and a new map
is unrolling before us. We shall have to do a great deal of fundamental
thinking and scrapping of old points of view before we find our way
through the new continent which now opens before us." These prophetic
words, spoken by Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts before the Empire
Parliamentary Association in November, 1943, deserve a much broader
application. The old world is gone and we must find our way through
the new continents across new frontiers.
It is impossible to describe with any degree of stability the contours
of political boundaries. In studying problems of boundaries and frontiers,
the focus is therefore on instability, expansion, and retraction. We must
visualize two radically different world maps of political boundaries: one
based on the boundaries which are internationally recognized, and the
other whose lines of demarcation are in dispute, even though they may
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 17
be affirmed in legally-recognized treaties. The boundaries on this latter
map reflect the extension of national power by aggressor states.
The new political map of the world that is unrolling before us is indeed
so basically different from the map of, for instance, about fifty years ago
that a comparison of the boundaries of existent "independent" states
speaks for itself. Nothing illustrates the fluctuating foundations of political
geography better than the fact that in 1902 the number of "independent"
states in the world was forty-seven and that, in 1952, it had increased
by thirty-seven to eighty-four. The following list records these relatively
new additions to the family of nations. However, in tracing their contours
on the map we should remember that their inclusion in the list does not
reveal, and in fact does in some cases cloud, the vital issue of whether
these states have by their legal recognition achieved true independence
or, if so, will be able to maintain it.
In the Americas, two: Canada, Panama.
In Europe, ten: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Finland,
Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Poland, Yugoslavia.
In Africa, three: Egypt, Libya, South Africa.
In Asia, twenty -two: Afghanistan, Australia, Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon,
India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Outer
Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Syria,
Viet Nam, Yemen.17
The end is not yet in sight, as is illustrated by no less than three
territories (Morocco, Tunisia, and the Sudan) winning independence
during the first quarter of 1956. Beferring to the more than 500,000,000
people of Asia now living in territories which have achieved national
recognition since 1945, the Secretary-General of the United Nations wrote
in 1951 that "one-fourth of the population of the world has gained inde-
pendence within the span of only six years. The pressure of other depend-
ent peoples toward freedom and equality has become much stronger since
the war and continues to increase."
THE STUDY OF STATE-EARTH RELATIONSHIPS
Although the limits that distinguish political geography from other
fields of human geography cannot be clearly defined, we secure a firmer
basis for our study if we realize that we are primarily concerned with
the relationship between the state and its natural environment. Territorv
17 Cf. H. W. Briggs, "New Dimensions in International Law," The American Polit-
ical Science Review (1952), pp. 680 f.
18 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
and people are the foundations of the state, but they are much more than
that because the complex interrelationship between the two molds the
structure of the state into what distinguishes it from other state organ-
izations. The physical environment blends with the manifold tangible
and intangible features which characterize a nation, and out of this legion
of mosaic stones emerges the picture of a state with an individuality of
its own.
The study of political geography deals with the internal geographical
factors which contribute to the state's individuality and, at the same time,
with the geographical factors which condition the external relations be-
tween states. In a "closed system in which any major action within a state
system must generate repercussions from the very antipodes" (Mackin-
der), any attempt to differentiate between the two sets of geographical
factors creates a highly distorted picture. The patterns of internal and
external political geography are complementary.
If we then explore the geographical situation of a state, or what is
often even more important for the understanding of international power
relations, the geographical situation of a number of states bound together
by ideological and other bonds, we must probe their main geographical
characteristics. Among the most important, we may list size (in combi-
nation with related factors such as productivity of the land, accessibility
through communications, and climate); location (distinguishing between
the regional location of a state and the world location' of a state ) ; and the
influence which shape and topography, in particular the impact of land
and sea, have on national and international power.
Although the violent fluctuations affecting areal differentiation of the
earth's political entities prevents the construction of a pure science system
of political geography, its study offers one significant advantage compared
to evaluation by regional or other factors of geography. This advantage
is one of technique. Statistical and other evidence needed for the appraisal
of the world's political units can be gathered only within political bound-
aries. Even where the available data are compiled by international
agencies, they are nevertheless classified by national units; a population
census, for instance, cannot be obtained for a natural or cultural region.
In spite of its man-made and often irrational and fortuitous qualities,
the state structure of the world, like its physical structure, offers therefore
a rationale for geographical analysis and interpretation. The presence of a
political boundary is as significant a geographical factor as are soil, relief,
or climate. One illustration is the "railway state" organized by Japan in
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 19
southern Manchuria. When Russia, in 1905, transferred to Japan control
of the Southern Manchurian Railways, coal and iron mines, and a narrow
strip of land, 700 miles long but only 100 square miles in area, Japan
transformed this zone into a new political entity in which industries,
villages, and towns mushroomed.18 Similarly, the Soviet Union in 1954
stepped up its plans to assist Communist China in the development of a
new industrial base in North China, which, with the help of railway
construction, would draw Northern China, Inner Mongolia, and Sinkiang
closer to the Soviet orbit.
If we thus focus our attention on a political territory within the confines
of its boundaries, we will understand what distinguishes the study of
political geography from that of regional geography. Political geography
deals with the human and physical texture of political territories, whereas
regional geography concentrates on the features which together create a
physical and human landscape,19 achieving, both physically and humanly,
the characteristics of regional uniformity.20
It is important to remember that the "political territory" which we
have in mind as the basis of politico-geographical investigation does not
need to be identical with or limited to a state area and its internal political
subdivisions. International relations and politics are shaped by the exist-
ence of political units and regions which bind together, sometimes firmly
but more often loosely and on a very temporary basis, a number of
individual states professing to share national and economic interests and
ideologies. Within such political areas, there always exist both unifying
factors and elements of disunion and diversity. To explore both and to
arrive at a balanced view of a political region composed of sovereign
states with common interests is part of the endeavor of the political
geographer. Here we must distinguish between areas whose physical
geography alone justifies their study in terms of political unity or disunity,
and others which as the result of alliances or international agreements
have been forged into political areas with characteristics of their own
to complement those of the component states. In the first category belong
such "units" as Latin America or South East Asia, "Western Europe," the
Eastern European satellites bloc, the Balkan countries,21 or such a polit-
ical grouping as the new British dominion of Central Africa consisting
18 East, op. cit., pp. 254, 267; but compare the remarks, on p. 19, on the political
geography of zones not identical with political territories.
19 Ibid.
20 White and Renner, op. cit, pp. 638-657.
21 See Hartshorne, op. cit., pp. 186, 187.
20 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.22 To the second
group would belong units such as the NATO countries, or the wide
expanse of nations extending from Pakistan to the Philippines which are
committed to the South East Asian Collective Defense Treaty (SEATO),
or the political realm of the United Nations.
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND RELATED FIELDS
The close relationship of historical geography and political geography
is evident. The political geography of today will be the historical geog-
raphy of tomorrow. A sound evaluation of politico-geographical factors
is impossible without consideration of historical factors and fluctuations.
Essentially, the boundary line between the two is one of emphasis only.
We are concerned with those facts and events of history and politics
which can be described as "geography set in motion," but which have
not yet become petrified sufficiently to permit us to appraise them mainly
from a historical viewpoint.
More important than the distinction between historical and political
geography is the intrinsic value of historical geography to the student
of its sister discipline. For while history may not repeat itself, it is equally
true that geographical factors repeatedly influence the destinies of nations.
To follow the pattern of geographical influences historically facilitates
the task of the political geographer in exploring the relationship of state
and earth as it exists today and may evolve in the future. We must,
however, re-emphasize that what in the early stages of human history
appeared as unchangeable physical facts have been, with more and more
rapid revolution, altered by human action. Whether we consider major
accomplishments of geographical surgery, through inland canal systems,
or the opening of new territories through railroad and highway construc-
tion, or the clearing of forests and the resulting effect on the conservation
of moisture, and thereby fertility, in many regions, we will always dis-
cover new documentations of human action modifying the physical en-
vironments. Alongside such changes we must consider the development
and exploitation of natural resources, as well as the settlement of empty
spaces, in particular the phenomenal effects of colonization policies of
the major powers— all factors which contribute to affect earth-state rela-
tionships.
These changes and their impact on history remind us that we would
22 See pp. 186, 706.
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 21
be seriously mistaken in taking for granted that the geographical factors
which conditioned earth-state relations in a given area in the past will
have the same conditioning effect today. At the same time, the appraisal
still holds true by which a British geographer, more than thirty years
ago and before the advent of modern aviation, summed up the relative
significance of the permanent factors of geography and the man-made
changes of the earth's surface: "Real as are all these modes in which
human action has modified the influence of physical factors, they are
obviously but trifles in comparison with the natural forces which they
to a slight extent counteract. The Alps have lost their mystery, but they
still form a barrier which must be crossed: they affect the cost of every
parcel of goods conveyed into or out of the valley of the Po. Civilized
enterprise may seek out new localities in which valuable products can be
made to grow; but the steady working of the great natural forces still
determines climate, with all its boundless effects on human history. Man
may drain and plant, redeeming a little space here and there from barren-
ness or from malaria: but all he has done or even can do is infinitesimal
beside the influence of the North Atlantic drift, which is only one fraction
of the world's system of ocean currents." 23 Thus it becomes imperative
for the student of political geography to view his scene through the glass
of historical geography; the lessons of the past which explain the con-
ditioning effect of a country's geography on its inhabitants will often— not
always— illuminate the clouded scene on today's stage.
To illustrate the close bonds between historical and political geography,
enough examples could be cited to fill a voluminous book. The one ex-
ample we select should lead us to evaluate in retrospect the internal and
external geography of the United States over a period of less than one
hundred years.
In his message to Congress on December 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln
spoke of the "Egypt of the West." He defined this region as "the great
interior region bounded east by the Alleghenies, north by the British
dominions, west by the Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along
which the culture of corn and cotton meets. ... A glance at the map shows
that, territorially speaking, it is the great body of the Republic. The other
parts are but marginal borders to it . . . [it] being the deepest and also the
richest in undeveloped resources. . . And yet this region has no seacoast
—touches no ocean anywhere. ... [Its people] find their way to Europe
by New York, to South America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia
23 H. B. George, The Relations of Geography and History, 5th ed. (New York,
1924), p. 19.
22 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
by San Francisco." What Lincoln thus described as the great body of
the Republic, the Egypt of the West, is the same Middle West which since
his day has been destined, by the strength of the natural wealth of its
broad plains, to play a pivotal role in the internal political geography
of the United States. To emphasize the decisive part which the Middle
West has always played in national politics would be to stress the obvious.
More involved are the problems which confront us if we view the Middle
West, that region that "has no seacoast— touches no ocean anywhere,"
as a factor in the external political geography of this country, both in
retrospect and from the ramparts of the atomic age. When Lincoln
addressed Congress in 1862, this heartland of the Republic was indeed
safe in its splendid inland isolation. It did not need to fear attack from
without as long as it wisely refrained from stepping beyond its ideal
natural frontiers. It is this historical geography of the United States which
accounts for an isolationism deeply and justly rooted in the country's
geography of yesterday and therefore a live and a powerful force in our
national and international policies until yesterday.
At the height of the last World War, Bernard De Voto,24 himself no
isolationist, summed up the atmosphere of the Middle West by saying that
it is so deep in the vastness of the American continent that it cannot believe in
the existence of salt water. Still less does it believe that beyond the oceans
there are other peoples or that what happens to such peoples in any way affects
what happens to the Middle West. It knows the marginal borders of its own
province, the States east of the Alleghenies and west of the Rockies; for they
also belong to its political system. Rut its awareness stops there, somewhere
inland from tidemark. In its own province it lives an intensive local life, remark-
ably integrated, absorbing, so rich that it instinctively judges all other variants
of American life to be less substantial. If the rest of America is insubstantial,
Europe and Asia and Africa are phantoms or perhaps rumors. The Middle West
is indifferent to them, even skeptical. Like blizzards and droughts, foreign na-
tions and foreign wars are temporary and peripheral. When they require action
we will take action— temporarily and on the periphery. We will take action as
militia rising to repel a raid, minutemen dropping the plow in ignorance of
whence the raid came and why, and returning to the plow doggedly uninter-
ested in any reasons or causes that have made us soldiers, killed our neighbors,
and burned our crops.
De Voto, after thus evaluating the frame of mind of the Midwestern
heartland as he saw it conditioned by its natural environment, ventured
to predict that the geographical foundations which had shaped the
political climate of the Middle West in the past would remain the same
24 Harper's Magazine, June, 1943.
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 23
in the future. Even as these lines are written, it appears premature to
pass final judgment on the correctness of these predictions:
Some day the fighting will stop, the war will, temporarily, be over. On that day,
with a high and singing heart, with the relief of long-impounded energies com-
ing back to their own at last, the Middle West will pick up its interrupted
pattern. It will resume its way of life. It will turn toward the fundamental valley
of the Mississippi, away from the oceans, earthward from the planes which its
own sons fly on great circle courses across its own sky to all the continents of
the globe. It will turn back to the only reality it recognizes and let the rest of the
world fade out beyond the margins of its consciousness.
John Smith, in his Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the
Summer Isles, in 1624, memorably phrased an enduring truth: "Geography
without History seemeth a carcasse without motion, a History without
Geography wandreth as a Vagrant without a certain habitation." And
W. Gordon East, in an inspiring book,25 succinctly defines the bond
between history and geography in these words : "... in studying the
inescapable physical setting to history, the geographer studies one of
the elements which make up the compound, history: he examines one
of the strands from which history is woven. He does not assert foolishly
that he can detect, still less explain, all the intricate and confused patterns
of the tapestry. He does assert, however, that the physical environment,
like the wicket in cricket, owing to its particularities from place to place
and from time to time, has some bearing on the course of the game."
And "Since history must concern itself with the location of the events
which it investigates," it must continually raise, not only the familiar
questions "Why?" and "Why then?" but also the questions "Where?" and
"Why there?" It is primarily to the solution of the latter questions that
geography can contribute, "for it has been Nature, rather than Man,
hitherto, in almost every scene, that has determined where the action
shall lie. Only at a comparatively late phase of action does Man in some
measure shift the scenery for himself." 26
As in the case of historical geography, it seems of relatively little
importance to define the boundaries which separate our field from other
areas of human geography. Studies in social, cultural, economic, and
military geography as well as in demography are legitimate parts of our
explorations of politico-geographical patterns. Without a discussion of
the factors accounting for population growth and decline, the picture
of a state area or the comparison of such regions remains colorless. With-
25 The Geography Behind History (London, 1938).
26 Ibid., pp. 13 and 15.
24 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
out a description of the economic resources of a nation, its strength or
weakness, internally and in relation to other powers, cannot be under-
stood.27 This volume, therefore, includes in its chapters an analytical
treatment of economic factors which form an essential part of the intri-
cate pattern of political geography ( in spite of the fact that some of them
appear to be but indirectly related to geography). Without an appraisal
of the geographical foundations of military strength, as expressed in land-,
sea-, and air-power, the political area as such remains an empty shell.
And the manifold manifestations of social and cultural geography,
whether they are ethnic, linguistic, or religious in nature, form in a mosaic
the characteristics of a political region whose people in their tangible and
intangible ways of life account for innumerable features of the region
not to be described in terms of physical geography. We cannot escape
the necessity of including these various patterns in our analysis, but we
must not, by overemphasizing them, lose sight of our principal target.
We will have to be careful not to be led astray by psychological patterns
of behavior only remotely related to a subject which, although political,
still remains essentially geographical.
There is a fashionable temptation to speculate on the "character" of
nations and to relate it to their natural environment. We find such dis-
tinctions as "Latin realism," "French ingenuity," "English tenacity,"
"German discipline," "Russian mysticism," and "American dynamism." 28
Actually the concept "national character" is part and parcel of a way of
thinking typical of the age of nationalism. Its generalizations and over-
simplifications are, from a scientific viewpoint, worthless, the more so
as they are usually made with the faulty assumption that the character
of nations has the quality of stability.29 No safe formula has been found
by which distinguishing personality traits governing the behavior of
nations can be measured. It seems more likely that "those nations en-
danger world peace which, having the necessary demographic and eco-
27 The blending of political and economic geography is well illustrated by the
change of a book's title to An Outline of Political (instead of Economic) Geography
because, as the author pointed out in 1941, some of its chapters lay less stress on the
relative economic resources of the great world powers, and more on the question of
the political organization of the world (J. F. Horrabin, op. cit., XI).
28 A typical example is A. Siegfried's The Character of Peoples, English translation
L London, 1952).
29 C. J. Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy (Boston, 1941),
p. 23; see also the critical essay by G. J. Pauker, "The Study of National Character
Away from that Nation's Territory," in Studies in International Affairs (Cambridge,
Mass., June, 1951).
MEANING AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 25
nomic resources, are governed by men for whom maximization of power
is the supreme value, than that the danger comes from 'national character.'
The threat came from Frenchmen led by Napoleon at one time, from
Germans led by Hitler, Italians by Mussolini and Japanese by their
militarists at another time, from Russians and Chinese governed by
Communist Politbureaus at present." 30 It must therefore be concluded
that no useful purpose in the exploration of politico-geographical factors
will be served by the introduction of such nebulous features as "the
character" of nations.
Although this warning appears necessary to avoid the introduction of
sociological and psychological considerations which are but loosely, if
at all, related to the realm of political geography, it would be equally
fallacious to take too narrow a view of the geographical confines of the
study of political geography. Its scene is not necessarily, and not limited
to, the political area of a state or of interrelated states. Looking beyond
shifting political boundaries, we will profit from exploring connections
between physical environment and national groups or nations as distin-
guished from states. Political geography, if limited to the study of land-
scapes affected by the activities of a state or of states, would produce
incomplete and often distorted pictures. As especially a number of French
geographers have emphasized, the structure and the activities of states
within their natural setting can be better evaluated if we include in our
studies the nation and such national groups which account for the strength
or weakness of a state. The political boundary of a state represents there-
fore no boundary for our explorations. The ethnic, linguistic, religious
affiliations of national groups are not altogether halted by political bound-
aries. In many respects the cultural landscape, which is formed by zones
of religion, of language, or of ethnic relationships, even of common
denominators of literacy and illiteracy, acquires the characteristics of a
political landscape. As such it belongs to the domain which the student
of political geography will have to explore.31
30 Pauker, op. cit., p. 99.
31 Q. Wright, The Study of International Relations (New York, 1955), undertakes
in a chapter on "Political Geography" a critique of what he claims has been the hope of
some geographers that because of the apparent permanence of geographical conditions,
geography might become the master science of international relations. He states, cor-
rectly, that this hope seems to be in vain. We agree with his conclusion that political
geography, in order to develop a general theory of international relations, must be
combined with demography and technology as well as with "social psychology, soci-
ology, and ethics." In other words, it contributes, together with other equally signifi-
cant disciplines, to the understanding of internal and external power relations.
CHAPTER
2
Si
i^e
SIZE— A BASIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Political geography deals with the political organizations of men on the
face of the globe. As the globe has only a limited surface, the division
of this surface between political units— their size— becomes a basic factor.
Some geographers have shied away from recognizing size as a basic
factor in political geography.1 There is however, no escape from the fact
that political units are of different size and that their political behavior
is in part determined by the size of their territories as well as the size
of other, especially of adjacent, political units. In order to understand
political behavior, it is therefore necessary to evaluate the size of the
political unit.
"SPACE" IN GEOPOLITICS
In the terminology of geopolitics, it became fashionable to talk of space
(Raum) rather than of size. This concern with space had become, even
before the Haushofer school achieved prominence, a veritable obsession
of many German geographers who felt that Germany had too little
"living space" (Lebensraum). The proponents of geopolitics were con-
vinced that British and American geographers had come to take for
granted the spatial advantages of their countries and were apt to overlook
the importance of space for other countries. However, this dichotomy
between German and Anglo-Saxon political geographers should not be
1 R. Hartshorne, "Functional Approach in Political Geography," Annals of the
Association of American Geographers (lune, 1950), p. 99.
26
SIZE 27
overrated.2 It was an American geographer, Ellen Churchill Semple,
inspired by Ratzel and in full agreement with what was to become the
gospel of the Haushofer school, who wrote: ". . . for peoples and races
the struggle for existence is at bottom a struggle for space." 3 On the other
hand, not all students of political geography in Germany succumbed to
the emotional connotations of the geopolitical school and some continued
to use the term space (Raum) as a synonym for territory, stressing the
intimate connection of state and territory.
The emphasis on "space" in Germany can be traced to Friedrich Ratzel,
but in his writings it has not yet the character of a slogan and of a political
battle cry which it acquired with Haushofer. The concepts of space and
size are not entirely interchangeable, because space is boundless and is
therefore not mathematically measurable, while size is determined by
known dimensions. Geographic space, however, implies a definite location
and an area of a certain size. There is also the mystical and emotional
connotation which clouds the meaning of "space" in geopolitical liter-
ature. Because the term space can equally be used both loosely and lit-
erally, it is possible to use it vaguely and still with the pretension of
accuracy. From this ambiguous use the mystical connotation of the terms
space and living space evolved. For this reason, we prefer the use of the
term size, even where it would be possible to speak of space, and shall
thus, aware of the semantic implications, use the term space only cau-
tiously and where it has a definite meaning.
MOTIVATION FOR EXPANSION IN SPACE
The size of political units varies within rather wide limits. For a number
of states the available space within these limits seems too confining. One of
the motivating impulses in man, though not necessarily the dominant one,
is the "will to power." 4 Individuals, becoming leaders of nations, often
try to exert their "will to power" through enlarging the power of their
nations; in the international sphere the will to power expresses itself in
the desire to dominate large areas. Even where this motivation can be
discounted, the fact remains that nations generally strive to improve their
living standards, or at least try to maintain them despite a growing
population. From the geographer's point of view, there are three pos-
sible ways to accomplish such a goal. One is to utilize space within a
2 See pp. 7 f.
3 Influences of Geographical Environment (New York, 1911), p. 188.
4 The German philosopher Nietzsche built a philosophical system around the as-
sumed pre-eminence of this psychological trait.
28 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
country's boundaries which was heretofore unused. However, the possi-
bilities of internal colonization are limited, unless the colonization is
accompanied by technological progress and a corresponding expansion
of communications. Internal colonization is therefore often possible only
in connection with the second method, intensification of available space.
This second method has been used in all of the great periods of human
history, from the time when Egyptians and the nations of Mesopotamia
united to devise their grand river regulations and irrigation canals to our
modern period of industrialization and urbanization. But nations and
their leaders have at many times also tried the third alternative and have
often preferred to reach the desired goal by expanding their territories
through war, by taking the lands of their neighbors and expelling or
exterminating the inhabitants, or forcing them to work for their con-
querors.
This third method of maintaining and improving living standards
seemed the only one available to nomadic herdsmen in times of drought
or when a major population increase and the consequent increase in
number of their cattle forced them to migrate or to expand. In nomadic
society there is generally little or no unused space available; intensifica-
tion of animal husbandry is generally impossible on the nomadic level
of civilization and technology. Conquest as alternative to starvation thus
appears as the only solution. In our time, nomadism as a power factor
has practically disappeared. However, expansion -of territory through
conquest never was limited to nomads. Whether under the slogan of
"conquest for living space" or with some other justification, it has re-
mained the most usual weapon in the struggle to maintain or to improve
living standards. Because conquest, even if undertaken for the sake of
escaping starvation, results in increased power, conquering nations have
often gone much farther than can be justified by their original aims.
Successful conquerors are led from one goal to the next. Hitler the con-
queror, and Communism the conquering ideology are embodiments of
age-old phenomena.
THE WORLD STATE
The theoretical extreme limit of size which a political unit can attain
would be a state embracing the entire world. Whether such a state would
still belong to the legitimate field of investigation for the political geogra-
pher is an academic question. However, the problem has some meaning
in historical geography, if applied in a restricted sense to such world
powers as the Roman Empire, the ancient Chinese Empire, and possibly
SIZE 29
such empires as the Incan and Mayan empires. These occupied what
indeed was at their time known as the entire world, or what appeared
worth conquering, thus excluding inhospitable regions, thinly settled by
despised barbarians. Today the known world coincides, for all practical
purposes, with the whole surface of the globe. Thus size can never be
valued absolutely but only in relation to the conditions prevailing in a
given period.
POLITICAL UNITS WITHOUT TERRITORY
On the other end of the scale from world statehood are political units
without any territorial extent. It is open to question whether such a unit
can accurately be named a "state"; most political geographers, however,
will regard a discussion of the geographic problems surrounding such
organizations as the League of Nations or the United Nations as within
the scope of their interests. Actually in such organizations the idea of the
global state and of political bodies without space meet and merge into
one.
THE PAPAL STATE
The organization of the Roman Catholic Church presents another
interesting marginal problem. There is nothing comparable in any other
religious organization, not even in the often compared state of the Dalai
Lama in Tibet. The Pope, as head of the Roman Catholic Church, is
also the head of a state in central Italy. His temporal power goes back
to the days of the declining Roman Empire. In 1871, the Papacy lost its
worldly dominions and these were not restored until 1929, when the
Church and Mussolini concluded the Lateran Treaty. Since then the Pope
has ruled again as spiritual head over the Catholics of the world from
the tiny, independent state of the Vatican City.
HISTORICAL REMNANTS
The Papal state can be regarded also as a historical remnant. In
Germany, until its occupation by Napoleon's armies, many tiny ecclesiastic
states existed. Very often the secular territory of an archbishop, bishop,
or abbot was looked upon as the indispensable basis for his spiritual
dominion. All these ecclesiastic and feudal states have disappeared. Only
the Papal state remains.
Other historical size-power anachronisms include the still-used power-
suggestive titles of emperor, or king of kings by rulers of such countries
30 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
as Ethiopia, Iran, and Annam. Equally disproportionate in terms of size,
at least, is the position of Taiwan-based Free China among the Big Five,
those states which alone exert veto power in the United Nations.5
EVOLUTION OF STATE POWER AND THE FACTOR OF SIZE
In general, military and economic power, size of territory, and rank
are commensurate. There are states whose size has remained constant,
but whose power has grown in spite of the lack of territorial growth.
These are the countries whose spaces have been filled with people, as
in Argentina; or countries in which new resources have been discovered
and their use organized for the good of the country, as in Mexico and
other countries with exploitable oil resources; or in countries such as
Canada and the U.S.S.R. which succeeded in transforming prairies into
wheat lands and in extending northward their limits of agricultural
activities. There are again other nations which, established for many
centuries within their present boundaries, have maintained the size of
their territory to the present day. Denmark and Switzerland have almost
exactly the same size as they had five centuries ago, although their pop-
ulations have multiplied. Whereas once her territory was sufficiently large,
populous, and rich to warrant a significant position in European or even
world affairs, Switzerland's political power potential today has significance
only because of the defensive possibilities of its mountains, and Danish
statesmen in the 1930's liquidated their military establishment completely
because, within the country's small territory, it did not seem possible to
defend it against aggressors. Both Denmark and Switzerland still rank
as important members of the European community of nations, but only
because of their high cultural standing and strong economic position, not
because of the size of their territory or population.
REMAINDERS OF SMALL FEUDAL STATES
Feudal states still exist in Europe essentially in the same form as
centuries ago. Some of these are tiny sovereign monarchies such as
Monaco (370 acres), and Liechtenstein (62 square miles). Some are
republics, such as San Marino (38 square miles), and Andorra (191
square miles). In India, scores of such small feudal states have disap-
5 The island of Taiwan ( 13,890 square miles ) is about twice the size of Massa-
chusetts (7,867 square miles) or New Jersey (7,522 square miles). Its population,
in 1950, totalled 7,647,000 which equals that of Texas (263,513 square miles).
SIZE 31
peared only since the country gained independence in 1948 and merged
them into princely federations. Others are administered centrally. Even
after this consolidation process, the Saurashtra Union has a territory of
only 21,062 square miles in spite of the fact that it succeeded not less
than 222 states, including dwarf states of several acres. The Patiala and
East Punjab States Union is still smaller ( 10,099 square miles ) . However,
a new reform program proposes to wipe out these remnants. Among
other, centrally-administered, territories, such small states as Tripura
(4,049 square miles) have not completely lost their identity. Within
Pakistan a few states, such as Chitral (4,000 square miles), Swat (1,000
square miles ) , and Khairpur ( 6,050 square miles ) , have retained approx-
imately the same position they had under British rule.
In contrast to the consolidation process under way in India and Paki-
stan, we find in the Malayan Peninsula native, essentially feudal sultanates.
These have successfully resisted consolidation in their effort to protect
themselves from Chinese and Indian immigrant communities such as have
become majority populations in other parts of the Peninsula. In Europe,
the complicated pattern of close to one hundred dwarf states which once
constituted the political map of Germany, has changed radically since
Napoleon I erased most of these states from the map. A few managed
to survive into the period of the Third Reich and were then finally in-
corporated into larger political units. It was their very smallness that
contributed to their preservation for such a long time; their smallness was
also a factor in the preservation of anachronistic feudal features. The
smallest modern state which is more than a feudal remnant is Luxembourg
(999 square miles), which is distinguished for its iron ore deposits, its
highly-developed steel industry, and its dense population of 290,000.
Despite its small size, and due to its economic and constitutional devel-
opment, Luxembourg has been able to preserve its independence, but
only as a partner of other states in customs and economic unions. At
present it is one of the three members of the Benelux combination,
Belgium and the Netherlands being the other partners.
FEUDAL STATES OF LARGER SIZE
Where feudal states of larger size have carried over into the twentieth
century, we can generally observe a process of transformation or breaking
up into smaller units. In India, the more progressive princely countries,
such as Mysore and Travancore, survived in but slightly changed form.
The largest and strongest feudal princely state, that of the Nizam of
32 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Haidarabad, became a victim of the Indian transformation. This process
is not limited to Asia. It is paralleled by what happened two decades
earlier in Europe when the semi-feudal Austro-Hungarian monarchy of
the Hapsburgs broke up in the turmoil of the defeat of the central powers
in 1918. The semi-feudal nature of the Hapsburg realm is obvious from
the fact that in spite of parliamentary institutions it was still regarded
as the personal estate of the emperor.
CITY-STATES
Historically of great importance, and by far the most notable of all
small states, are city-states. Greek city-states formed the geographical
basis of the political philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, who extolled the
advantages of the small state. The failure of the Greeks to develop polit-
ical power on a scale commensurate with the wide sphere of their cultural
influence is in part due to their inability to free themselves from the
10 20 30 40 50 Mi
0 10 20 30 40 50 Km
Fig. 2-1. Danzig— 1919-1939.
SIZE
33
Fig. 2-2. Short-lived City-states at the Head of the Adriatic Sea: (1) boundary after
World War I; ( 2 ) boundary after World War II; ( 3 ) boundary in 1955.
limitations of the city-state concept.6 We can trace city-states in various
parts of the world, in Phoenicia and Greece, in India, in some American
Indian areas, and in medieval Germany and Italy. Among many German
city-states, only Bremen and Hamburg have survived as constituent mem-
bers of the German Federal Republic. In spite of their great historical
importance, city-states have largely disappeared as sovereign states.
In recent years attempts have been made to revive small-sized city-
states, the express purpose being to avoid creating a state which could
exert power of its own. Danzig (708 square miles) (Fig. 2-1) and Fiume
(8 square miles) (Fig. 2-2) were set up after World War I in order to
give their overwhelmingly German and Italian populations freedom from
6 Semple, op. cit., pp. 195-196.
34 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the rule of Poland and Yugoslavia, for which countries the cities served
as main harbors. Their smallness was expected to remove any danger
that they would ever be able to cut off these countries from the sea.
When these city-states did not fulfill the hopes placed in them, they soon
disappeared. Nevertheless, the experiment was repeated after World
War II in Trieste. The turbulent history of this experiment illustrates the
manifold problems resulting from such constructions.
In an interesting experiment in West Africa, British colonial rule is
making an effort to preserve the threatened unity of Nigeria by the
establishment of an autonomous city. Lagos, the capital as well as the
port of the Nigerian federation of conflicting provinces, was in 1953
separated from the Western Provinces and given autonomous status, in
order to preserve its vital services for all members of the federation.
CITY-STATES AND COLONIZATION
The declining power of the city-state on the political map of the
twentieth century should not overshadow the importance of dependent
city-states in historical geography and in the geography of colonization.
For a long time, such autonomous city-states with an independent basis
for trade and navigation have played a significant part as advance posi-
tions for colonial growth. When the Portuguese, after a voyage of many
months, reached India, they established along its coast fortified places
which were destined to carry on trade with the hinterland during the
long periods between visits of the fleets. These Portuguese factories in
India were in the medieval tradition of the Italian factories in the Levant.7
They eventually grew away from their distant places of origin and as a
result of various sociological factors and of the ability of the colonizers
to mix with the native population, a distinctive non-Indian national feeling
developed, at least among the Goanese, the native inhabitants of the
largest of these city-colonies. The new India, growing into the role of
an independent nation, has become apprehensive about what she con-
siders an outdated continuation of Portuguese colonial rule on Indian soil
(Fig. 2-3).
While only Goa, with its population of about 700,000, appears to have
developed a distinctive individuality of its own, we find along the Indian
7 The Italian cities Venice, Genoa, and Pisa founded autonomous colonies in Pal-
estine, in Syria, and on Cyprus, and in the Byzantine Empire at the period of the
Crusades.
SIZE
35
^3?
p.,
I
«
V
,.*/v.
u
USSR \
V
AFGHANISTAN ;' 7 N—./
*J ( Kmm C'
/
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X
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\. NEPAL "^-Tj/lHUTAN* ly /,'
> V"<> }
X EAST f/l y.<J
? PA VICT AM \ ., ' 4
f
,4 BURMA
Fig. 2-3. Portuguese and French ( 1954 ) Colonial Holdings in India.
Coast other city-colonies, small fragments of Portuguese territory which,
as remnants of trading stations in India, have ironically survived the
greater empire of Britain. s Other, and more significant, examples are the
endangered British gate-city to China, Hong Kong, the Soviet Union's
8 W. G. East and O. H. K. Spate, The Changing Map of Asia (London, 1950),
p. 152.
36 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ice-free harbor in Manchuria, Dairen,9 and the British guardian of the
south entrance to the Red Sea, Aden. The Hong Kong situation, in par-
ticular, is one of instability in the light of constant and growing tensions.
Pressure for a plebiscite may eventually revert the crown colony to China;
its population which had totalled 850,000 in 1931 and which as a result
of the influx of refugees from China was estimated in November, 1952,
at 2,250,000, included only a total of 13,000 British subjects of European
race.10
Thus, while the balance of power between the major Asian and
European nations has maintained the city-colony beyond other forms of
dwarf states, these, too, tend to disappear gradually from the political
scene. Some city-states have served as the basis for larger colonies and
states, as Rome did in ancient times. Bombay has expanded into one
of the largest provinces, now states, of India; the little city-colony of
New York, because the entrance gate, to a powerful state of the Union.
This trend toward larger political units is evident if one compares the
distant past with the present. Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Tyre, and Sidon in
ancient times, and Venice, Genoa, and Pisa in the Middle Ages, ranked as
big powers. Today, no nation with so small a territorial basis could be re-
garded as a great power. Even such states as Portugal or the Netherlands,
though great powers in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, could not
play an analogous role today.
The discrepancy in size of territory in these instances is much more
striking than the discrepancy in size of population. Athens in the 4th
century B.C. finally succumbed to the Macedonian territorial state. How-
ever, it might be fairly doubted whether Athens ( including its dependent
island cities in the Aegean, or even without them) was the inferior in
population of the two powers. Throughout Greek-Roman antiquity 1X in
the Mediterranean area, the majority of the free population lived in city-
states. Probably only since the time of the declining Roman Empire has
the population of territorial units grown, while that of the cities, with
few exceptions, proportionately shrank.
9 Dairen was returned to China in May, 1955.
10 The Statesman's Yearbook, 1955, p. 238; Focus (November 3, 1953), Hong Kong.
11 It should be noted in passing that antiquity and the Middle Ages had also their
overlarge states, such as the Persian, Roman, and Mongolian Empires. Nobody, so far,
has based on the disappearance of such empires ( which embraced most of their known
worlds) a theory of a trend to a proliferation of independent smaller states.
SIZE 37
THE METROPOLITAN CITY
Far into the nineteenth century urban populations constituted a small
proportion of the world population. The rapid growth of the modern city,
which made the largest of them more populous than some medium-sized
nations, has not found a political expression in the international field.
Paris, London, or New York have a larger population than Norway, Den-
mark, Switzerland, or Uruguay— greater New York even more than Bel-
gium, the Netherlands, Portugal, or a majority of the Latin American or
Arab nations. Historically, such metropolitan areas sometimes have been
given the status of provinces or member states. Berlin became one of
the Prussian provinces, Vienna one of the nine constituent states of the
Austrian federative republic. Neither can be called a genuine city-state.
Still less is this true of Washington, D.C., of the City of Mexico, or of
Canberra, the capital of Australia.
All this points to the conclusion that under modern conditions the
growth of metropolitan areas is rather a function of the development of
the country than an independent phenomenon. However, while the
growth of metropolitan areas is a function of a growing country (as in
the doubling of the population, in ten years, of the twin cities of Delhi
and New Delhi), the decline of a nation is not necessarily indicated by
a decline of population in its main cities. Only in extreme cases does
such a development occur, such as in the case of Vienna and Istanbul.
Both had been capitals of empires of 30 to 50 million inhabitants and
both went down in World War I. Both cities lost up to 25 per cent of
their population, with Vienna becoming the capital of the new Austria
with a population of 6M million, and Istanbul becoming the main port
city of a country of 12 million.
THE SUPER POWERS
The global scene of our time is dominated by the emergence of the
United States and the Soviet Union as super powers. Both extend over
large continental areas and both have expanded beyond these boundaries.
The forms of these expansions are manifold. As in the case of the Soviet
satellites, they may have taken shape by forcing smaller states to accept
the leadership of the super state in a manner differing only to a small
degree from outright subjugation. In contrast, the acquisition of military
bases overseas plays an important role in the security situation in which
38 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the United States finds itself. This is an unimportant form of expansion
in the Soviet Union.12
REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
In the face of the power exerted by super states, smaller states have
increasingly attempted to safeguard their independence and to increase
their influence by drawing together in unions, regional organizations, or
federations. Some of these, such as the Pan-American Union, also embrace
one of the big states, the smaller members hoping thereby to influence
their big neighbor's policies. Other organizations, as for instance those
of the Colombo Plan 13 or of the Arab League, try to keep out of the
U.S.S.R.-United States disputes. Regional organization of smaller powers
are not all-inclusive, however. We find a number of states which have
remained uncommitted to some larger organization, in each case for
peculiar reasons. Austria, for instance, was occupied by four powers until
1955 and was given no freedom of choice; nor can she join any organ-
ization now as the result of the terms of the Peace Treaty which reinstated
her sovereignty. Israel cannot join any organization without making her
partners unwilling supporters of Israel's unresolved war with the Arab
bloc. Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, and Eire try to remain independent
and uncommitted to any bloc. The vast majority of states, however, are
in one form or another partners in some political grouping of continental
size.
The significance of this trend is not challenged by the important fact
that some of these supra-national organizations are far from being stable.
It is probable that their size and membership will change rapidly in the
near future. What connections will the Sudan make after attaining sover-
eignty? Will the Gold Coast join the British Commonwealth as a do-
minion? How long will the Union of South Africa remain a member of
that commonwealth? How long will these small nations that are trying
to maintain a neutral attitude be able to pursue that policy? Above all,
will the Soviet Union and the United States be able to win over to their
power combinations and to their causes member states of the other bloc?
In any case, the emergence of political bodies of continental size has to
be accepted as permanent, even though their structures and the extent
of their boundaries are and will remain subject to change and fluctuation.
12 The vital role of the strategic base net along the American perimeter of defense
in the security picture of the United States is discussed in detail in Chapter 15.
13 See pp. 286-290.
SIZE 39
CONSOLIDATING AND DISRUPTIVE FACTORS IN THE
EMERGENCE OF MODERN STATE SYSTEMS
The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century and modern colo-
nialism have supported the emergence of large state structures. The
British Empire, the Russian Empire of the Czars, and the Soviet Union
have no equals in size in the past. The United States and France are not
far behind. Canada and Brazil are about to organize and penetrate their
wide unoccupied spaces as the United States did a century earlier. Some
states, however— Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Rumania— became large
through the consolidation of several small states. Such consolidations are
seldom primarily effected for the sake of greater economic efficiency, as
has often been the case in the industrial field. It is true that the customs
union was the pacemaker for German national unity, but at the same time
Italy accomplished her national unity and still has not succeeded in weld-
ing her territory into a uniform economic unit. The problem of the impov-
erished south, the Mezzogiorno, plagues Italy continuously. In the unifi-
cation of Germany and Italy and in some more recent cases, it was not
the consideration of economic efficiency, but the irrational power of
modern nationalism which was the driving force.
Modern nationalism which has become effective since the French
Revolution has not only contributed to enlarging the size of many political
units, it has also been a disruptive force. This was the case in the nine-
teenth century in Europe and the same trend is evident in the twentieth
century in other continents. The breakup of the Hapsburg and Ottoman
empires, of the Scandinavian and the Dutch-Belgian unions is followed
by that of India and the creating of an Indian Union; Pakistan, Ceylon,
Eire, Burma, the Arab states, preferred to establish themselves as in-
dependent states, though they had to forego the many economic advan-
tages of belonging to large empires. The creation of Israel is another
illustration of this recent trend toward national states, however small.14
It is still more significant that the Soviet Union felt it necessary to create
autonomous national states, even though the autonomy was in many
respects only make-believe. Although the Soviet Union could suppress
these autonomous states, even as she has curtailed their function, to do
so might well mean that she would deprive herself of much of her appeal
to the colonial nations of Asia and Africa. A new organization of Africa
is in the making and it is possible, if not likely, that the large African
14 The area of Israel is 8,048 square miles.
40 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
colonial empires will be replaced by some smaller national or pseudo-
national political bodies before the twentieth century draws to an end.
Size is a variable factor in the life of states and there is no uniform
trend toward larger or smaller states. There is no optimal size for states,
not in our time nor in any period of the past. There have been, however,
very few instances when leaders of nations have regarded their country
as being too large; the Gladstonian Liberals in Great Britain in the 70's
and 80's of the nineteenth century are the only well-known case. Striving
for larger size is, on the other hand, a common historical phenomenon.
TERRITORIAL AGGRANDIZEMENT AS PRIZE OF WAR
It is typical of the high value placed on the size of states that territory
is almost invariably the prize in a conflict between nations. Even in those
cases in which a war broke out for reasons other than conquest, or in
which the attacked nation won the victory, the victor commonly asks for
expansion of his territory. The United States entered the war with Spain
in 1898 because of the feeling that the strengthening of any European
position in the Americas would be intolerable, and not for reasons of
territorial aggrandizement. The war resulted, however, not only in the
temporary occupation of Cuba, but in the annexation of Puerto Rico and
even of the remote Philippines, which in no way had been an object
of contention. Belgium in 1914, the Netherlands in 1941, would have been
content to be left alone in the conflict of the great powers; nevertheless,
at the end of the World Wars, they demanded, and obtained, territory
from defeated Germany. In many cases such demands are disguised as
compensation for damages suffered. The case of Bismarck who, after
Prussia had won the war of 1866, persuaded the King of Prussia to
conclude a peace treaty with Austria without territorial cessions (in
order to insure Austrian neutrality in the coming conflict with France)
is a rare exception to this general rule. In a power bloc as large as the
Soviet orbit which includes many contending nationalities, we find such
internal territorial changes benefiting one partner at the cost of another.
The Ukrainian Republic within the U.S.S.R. has a total area of 232,625
square miles, of which not less than 25 per cent was acquired after World
War II from Soviet satellites: Eastern Galicia, 34,700 square miles, from
Poland; Subcarpathian Ruthenia, 5,000 square miles, from Czechoslo-
vakia; Northern Bukovina and part of Bessarabia, 8,000 square miles,
from Rumania. In February, 1954, the Crimean peninsula ( 10,000 square
miles) which had lost its autonomous status at the end of World War II
SIZE
41
77777a ?
■belorussian s.s.r.
2
*&
Fig. 2-4. The Ukrainian S.S.R. (1955): (1) present Ukrainian territory; (2) pre-
World War II Rumania; (3) pre-World War II Czechoslovakia; (4) pre- World
War II Poland.
because of the alleged co-operation of its people with the Germans, was
incorporated into the Ukrainian Republic (Fig. 2-4).
An important motivating power for territorial aggrandizement is the
prestige with which size endows a country. The mere fact of size gives
to a state a certain standing in the community of nations. The occupation
of the western Sahara by Spain, or the claims of Chile, Argentina, and
other countries to Antarctic wastes, spring partly from this source. If
the large state is united in one continuous territory, this factor gives to
its citizens a feeling of security and importance. Being removed from
contact with other nations, a deceptive feeling of independence, protec-
tion, and security develops, especially among persons who live in the
interior. Out of this feeling grows a powerful concept of "splendid iso-
lation" which clearly has its roots in geographical ignorance.
THE MAP AS A CAUSE OF GEOGRAPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS
A contributing factor to the growth and survival of these geographical
misconceptions is the map: the average school atlas depicts a student's
own country, his own continent, in larger scale than other countries and
42
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
. 1>
\
(
100
I —
200
i
300 Mi
100 200 300 Km
J.R.F.
Fig. 2-5. Comparative Size of France ( superimposed on Minnesota, Iowa, and
Wisconsin ) .
continents. Independent countries are given more prominence than even
large constituent parts of still larger states. Many people have the im-
pression that France is a very large country, while actually it is about
the size of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa combined (Fig. 2-5). On
most maps showing individual continents, Europe is presented in larger
scale than Asia, although non-Soviet Europe is only slightly larger than
India ( Fig. 2-6 ) . It is seldom realized that Brazil with its 3,288,000 square
miles is larger than the 2,977,000 square miles of the United States, and
that both together are still much smaller than the Soviet Union ( 8,700,000
square miles). (See Fig. 2-7.)
This reference to the map as a primary cause of common misconceptions
of size factors would be incomplete without mentioning the misuse of
the (in many respects extremely valuable) Mercator projection as largely
SIZE
43
Fig. 2-6. India and Europe at the Same Scale.
responsible for such errors. Although it shows true compass directions
and therefore is still the ideal map for ship navigators, the Mercator map
has serious shortcomings. Except in the vicinity of the Equator, it does
not even pretend to show the correct relative size of the land areas of
the globe. The nearer one comes to the North Pole, or to the South Pole,
the more distorted are the factors of size as shown on the Mercator map.15
Richard E. Harrison, with European geographers, has called attention to
the elementary, yet to most of us surprising fact that on a Mercator world
map Greenland appears larger than the continent of South America. But
when shown in its true relative size, we discover that it is only about one
tenth of the area of South America. An even better example (Fig. 2-8) is
offered by Ellesmere Island, northwest of Greenland. On a Mercator
world map with its typical distortions in the polar regions Ellesmere
Island appears to be almost as large as Australia. Actually, when it is
15 R. E. Harrison, Maps, 2nd ed. (Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, 1943),
p. 7; R. E. Harrison and H. W. Weigert, "World View and Strategy," in H. W. Weigert
and V. Stefansson, eds., Compass of the World (New York, 1945), pp. 74-88.
44
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
J.&.F.
Fig. 2-7. Comparative Size of U.S.S.R., United States, and Brazil.
shown beside Australia in its true relative dimensions, Ellesmere Island
dwindles to dwarf size (Fig. 2-8).
THE VALUE OF SIZE AS A SECURITY. FACTOR
It is obvious that size is an important factor in the determination of
economic and political power. However, whether it evolves as an asset
or as a liability depends on many factors. In a general way, it can be
stated that size tends to be an asset to military power. Only a large
country, such as the Soviet Union in World War II, can trade space for
time and win, after retreating— voluntarily or by necessity— for hundreds
of miles. The time needed for the enemy's advance is used to build up
new industries, to train new troops, and to prepare a counteroffensive.
Only in very large countries can areas still be found which are sufficiently
remote from enemy bases to be relatively safe from air attack. Only in
a large territory can an air raid warning system function efficiently. On
the other hand, large size, coupled with other factors, can pose serious
problems to military strategy; for instance, outlying parts of a large
country, if thinly populated and if lacking adequate communications lines,
are difficult to defend— a problem Russia experienced in the war with
Japan in 1904 to 1905. For similar reasons, the defense of Alaska is a
problem to military planning in the United States.
SIZE
45
MERCATOR
GREENLAND
TRUE
COMPARATIVE
SIZE
ELLESMERE I
ELLESMERE I.
m
Fig. 2-8. Effects of Projections on Appearance of Size: Greenland, South America,
Ellesmere Island, Australia (after R. E. Harrison).
In a country of small size, this factor always is negative if contemplated
in terms of external security. If invaded, even if ultimately on the winning
side, the small country will suffer damages affecting its entire territory,
whereas a large country, even if forced to accept defeat, may still retain
large areas untouched by the direct effects of war.
We must always be aware that evaluations of size factors with reference
to military planning and security can not lead to more than observations
of a very general nature. This note of caution has never been more timely
than in our age of potential hydrogen bomb warfare. The development
of thermonuclear weapons, and the problem of radioactive "fall-out, ' have
shattered our concepts of security. In a territory of small size, there will
no longer be left any areas of refuge or safety. But even for areas of larger
46 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
size, spatial factors such as remoteness and depth have lost much of their
meaning. The horrifying effects of nuclear warfare make it imperative
to reappraise the size factor wherever, in yesterday's thinking, it appeared
to be an asset to the defense position of a nation.
EFFECTS OF SIZE ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION,
ECONOMIC POWER
There is a relationship between the size of a country and the costs and
management of its public administration. A large country will have to
spend relatively less for all centralized services, such as the administration
of foreign relations, legislation, and the administration of justice. A large
country may also have more diversified natural resources within its bound-
aries, thereby reducing its dependency on other nations. The larger a
country the better are its chances of approximating self-sufficiency. In
the actual conditions of present-day nations there are, however, important
exceptions to this general rule. Spain and Czechoslovakia have more, and
more diversified, natural resources than many countries of much larger
size; Italy and Norway have fewer than other countries of smaller size.
Luxembourg, a dwarf state if measured by size alone, has no great diver-
sity of natural resources, but its wealth of coal and iron, two of the
modern key resources, make it a valued partner in the Benelux Union
and a by no means negligible factor in West European power politics in
peace times. In war its small size prevents it from playing a significant
role, even as an ally of some other power.
SIZE AND POPULATION
The most important factor tending to offset the importance of mere
size is population. A thinly populated, sprawling country is handicapped
by the necessity of maintaining costly transportation organizations;
whereas efficiency is easily attained by much smaller countries having
similar population figures. On the other hand, the needs of a large pop-
ulation may tax too heavily the resources of a country and weaken its
influence among the nations of the world. Only in this case would we
speak of overpopulation. India and Egypt are cases in point. Densely
populated Belgium is, without its colonial empire, a small country of
12,000 square miles, but it is culturally, economically, and even militarily
of much greater importance than, for instance, larger Austria (32,375
SIZE 47
square miles) or Bulgaria (42,796 square miles). That Ethiopia, a country
one and a half times the size of France, is of almost negligible influence
and power, is due not only to the scarcity of its population of 11 million
but also to its relative cultural backwardness. Cultural and technological
underdevelopment are factors which can hardly be measured, but their
influence can nevertheless offset completely the influence of large size.
Apart from the actual numbers of people, their distribution within a
state is of decisive importance. A striking example is Canada which has
areas of relatively dense population but also other extensive areas which
are for all practical purposes uninhabited. Not the map picturing the size
of Canada but one showing the distribution and density of its population
of 14,000,000 explains its political geography (Fig. 2-9). This shows
clearly that Canada's settled areas are along the southern, American
border, and that they are separated into two groups by the large un-
inhabited Laurentian wilderness. Each of these groups is divided again
into two areas of dense population, separated in the western provinces
by the thinly populated areas of the Canadian Rocky mountains, and in
the eastern provinces by the thinly settled hill country of southeastern
Quebec. Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to think of Canada as a
group of four loosely connected areas strung out north of the 42° parallel.
The unpeopled spaces between the populated areas are like the tissues
in the human body between the vital organs. Frequently the sparsely
settled areas have yielded unexpected natural resources and have thus
offered new possibilities of development. A Canada without its hold over
these spaces would not reach the Arctic Ocean except at a few points,
its role among the world powers would be altogether different.
Similar conditions exist in other areas. The Australian Commonwealth
(Fig. 2-10), if it included only the well-settled coastal areas would be
only a number of barely connected, hardly defensible small settlements.
Australia is at present a rather influential power because of its continental
size (2,975,000 square miles), despite its small population. Comparable
in population ( 8,500,000 in 1951 ) as well as in cultural and technological
development to Belgium (8,700,000 in 1951), its size among other factors
gives it a different weight in international affairs. As in the case of
Canada, the recent discovery of mineral resources ( in particular uranium
and oil), in hitherto "empty spaces," has had a profound effect on Aus-
tralia's internal and external political geography.
Among the major regions of "empty spaces" the Sahara with an area
of over three million square miles is certainly as much an anecumene as
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SIZE
49
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INDONESIAN REPUBLIC
110
■ 1
120
130
1 45
„L_
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\^jf' 150
Til
Fig. 2-10. Australia (Continental Shelf: unshaded water portion).
is the ocean. However, without its firm grip on the Sahara the French
African colonial empire would lose much of its compactness and defen-
sibility.
The political map may grossly mislead the unwary by showing size
without the necessary qualifications. Political geography cannot rely on
the political map alone; the physiographic map, presenting deserts, moun-
tains, swamps, virgin forests, lakes, and large rivers has to furnish the
necessary qualifications and limitations for the evaluation of size; the
population maps and maps of resources are other indispensable adjuncts.
Location, another limiting factor, will be discussed in another chapter
in more detail.
THE RISKS OF OVEREXPANSION
It is obvious that small countries are susceptible to pressure from large
and powerful nations, but the size of large nations does not exempt them
from pressure. It is less obvious, perhaps, but large size itself entails
50 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
certain weaknesses. Countries in the process of vastly expanding their
territories will eventually enclose national groups which cannot be recon-
ciled with their absorption into the large states. Whether this is a national
minority problem in the modern sense, or the stage for the rebellion of
an ambitious satrap, as happened so often in the old empires on Indian
and Iranian soil, is of little importance in this connection. In former times,
due to slow and undeveloped communications, the cultural influence and
the power of the core area (as for instance Latium in the center of the
Roman Empire) diminished the farther away from the center a province
was located. But even today the interests of a dominant central province
may lead to the neglect of divergent interests of marginal provinces. The
Iberian peninsula is a case in point. Here the maritime, commercial, and
industrial interests of Catalonia, Asturia, and the Vascongadas have been
neglected by a central government which is dominated by the land-locked
vision and the agricultural interests of the Castilians of the interior. In the
British Empire not only subject colonial people strive for independence,
but peripheral English-speaking areas aim at increasing their independ-
ence as dominions or as loosely federated partners of equal standing.
Owen Lattimore has shown 16 that Chinese expansion finally reached
a zone of diminishing returns, where people could no longer be converted
to the Chinese way of life— to adopt the language, houses, and social
system of the conquerors— primarily because the adoption of Chinese
agricultural methods in arid areas proved unprofitable. There was even
a strong incentive, in these areas, for the Chinese immigrant to become a
herdsman and to become "barbarized" by accepting the way of life which
went with nomadic herding. As a result, Chinese political rule in such
areas did not last long. Lattimore also traced a corresponding limiting
trend for the Russian expansion in Inner Asia.
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL FACTORS RELATED TO SIZE
Large countries breed often a mental attitude which is inimical to an
understanding of foreigners and may ultimately lead to fatal mistakes in
dealing with other nations. It is not necessarily narrow-mindedness and
stress of the particular local interests, it is a geographically induced and
unavoidable lack of ability to understand others. Even in the shrinking
16 O. Lattimore, "The New Political Geography of Inner Asia," Geographical
Journal, Vol. 119 (March, 1953), and more in detail for the Chinese, Inner Asian
Frontiers of China, American Geographical-Sociological Research Series, No. 21, 1940.
SIZE 51
world of today it holds true that part of the population never has the
opportunity to come in contact with foreigners, or only with a few
individuals. The mass of the population, therefore, do not develop real
understanding of foreign thinking and attitudes. Strange as it may appear,
the larger a country, the less diversified tend to be its foreign contacts.
The United States is an extreme example, with only two countries as
direct neighbors. The number of Americans who are continuously aware
of conditions in a foreign country, even of Mexico or Canada, is very
small. Both these countries are sorely neglected in most of the textbooks
on American history used in American schools and the small space and
time allowed to matters Canadian or Mexican in the average local news-
paper or radio station illustrates the lack of interest, in the United States,
in the affairs of the two neighboring nations. However, radio and tele-
vision and especially the fact that millions of Americans have served
overseas during and since the war have prompted a greater awareness of,
and interest in, foreign affairs.
In contrast, Switzerland borders on four countries, Hungary on five,
while the U.S.S.R. borders on nine, and the British Empire through its
colonies on many more. There is hardly a Swiss or Hungarian who is not
aware in one way or another of happenings in two or even three foreign
countries. There are none who live farther away from a foreign country
than sixty-five miles. Cultural interaction is pronounced, knowledge of
foreign languages— the best means of cultural contact— much more wide-
spread than in the United States. Thus we find that lack of cultural
contacts, as a natural consequence of the large size of a country, causes
the outlook of its citizens to be often more parochial than is true in
countries of small size. Again this general observation is not without
exception.
An oddly similar parochial outlook exists in many small countries where
the citizens live under the illusion that their co-nationals have done more
than their share for world civilization. It is a distorted perspective which
sees things close to home as much larger than remote ones. Most history
books of small countries depict national inventors, artists, and writers as
people of international fame, while actually their contributions may be
unknown abroad.
In internal politics the size factor has important ramifications, especially
in large countries where the normal concentration of political activities in
the capital usually results also in drawing most of a country's cultural
activities toward the political center. Such concentration is apt to promote
the development of a provincial, if not backward, outlook among the
52 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
population in regions remote from the cultural and political nucleus.
Sometimes we find, as a usually healthy reaction, the growth of several
and competing cultural centers. Again the size of the country is a sig-
nificant conditioning factor in this process. The multiplicity of cultural
centers in the numerous capitals of politically divided Germany in the
fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, in Italy from the thirteenth to the eight-
eenth century, or in the many states of India at several periods, as com-
pared with the overwhelming concentration of intellectual, artistic, and
scientific activity in Paris, Madrid, Peking, or Tokyo are illustrations.
A modern example of a deliberate attempt to avoid what was considered
undesirable political and cultural concentration in one capital is the Union
of South Africa. South Africa has two capitals, the legislative in Cape
Town, and the administrative in Pretoria. Even in a federal state like
the United States, cities such as New York, Washington, Boston, and
a few others tend to draw all cultural activities into their orbit. A
French geographer, Jean Gottman, observed that an American "mega-
polis," four hundred miles long and populated by thirty million persons
in not more than a half-dozen states, influences thinking, fashions,
manner of speech, and social relations, as well as political concepts.
"Although dependent upon the rest of the nation for food and communi-
cation, this megapolis is becoming an area 'outside' of the United States,
just as Amsterdam, Naples, Rome, and to a degree, London and Paris
are entities." 1T
SIZE FACTORS IN INTERNAL POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Large or small size of a country plays an important role in shaping a
country's internal political geography, especially in regard to internal
divisions of states. When the French Revolution abolished the historical
provinces, and organized rational, but artificial administrative subdivisions
(departments), it was decided that the size of each unit should be
determined by the consideration that each citizen should be able to visit
the seat of the administration and to return to his home on the same day,
after having attended to his business. The development of modern com-
munication forms has since rendered this basis for the size of the depart-
ments meaningless. That they have survived, and that France's internal
political geography is still basically unchanged, shows how well these
units became established in French life. Ratzel in his time stressed the
point that it is much easier to change internal borders than international
17 New York Times, January 25, 1953.
SIZE 53
ones, and gave a great number of examples.18 It seems remarkable, there-
fore, how seldom such changes of interior boundaries occur, and then
usually only under revolutionary or other unsettled conditions. In France,
after World War II, when everything seemed unsettled, it was decided
to replace these departments by larger administrative units, more in tune
with technological advances and the need for larger economic grouping.
However, before action was taken, life had reverted largely to the accus-
tomed ruts and nothing was done.
It can be observed that within states subdivisions tend to be larger
the thinner the population is spread. The western provinces of Canada,
the northeastern subdivisions of the U.S.S.R., the southern regions of
Algeria, are some of the best known examples. Such large subdivisions
are characteristic of areas that lacked a dense indigenous population in
the first stages of colonization. The western states of the United States
were carved out of immense territories, such as the Northwest Territory
and the Kansas Territory. In Brazil, a similar administrative pattern of
more recent date is evident, following the progress of colonization. In the
normal trend of consolidation, boundaries, local loyalties, and the pattern
of administration become crystallized and no further subdivisions take
place, or they occur only under extraordinary conditions, as in the sepa-
ration of West Virginia from Virginia during the Civil War when these
two states adhered to the Union and to the Confederacy respectively.
Size as such is no sufficient motive to prompt the breaking-up of admin-
istrative units. Neither California nor Texas are expected to split into two
or more states because of the large size of their territories. Thus the
different size of subdivisions bears and maintains the imprint of con-
ditions which prevailed when they were formed or which shaped them
during a revolutionary period. The formative influence may have been
that of railroads as when the mountain states were formed or that of
carts and pack animals as when the New England states were colonized.
The need for defense against sudden attacks across borders accounts for
the creation of marches, that is, larger territorial units than the usual
units such as counties or dukedoms. Relics of such medieval marches in
England are the large counties along the Scottish and Welsh borders;
similar marches existed in Eastern Germany, and survived as large polit-
ical subdivisions to the end of World War II. They are the historical basis
of the independent state of Austria.
Smaller political subdivisions are, generally, easier to change than large
18 F. Ratzel, Politische Geographie, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1920).
54 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ones. They command fewer emotional loyalties and in many states their
functions are not important. As a rule, it has been easier to create new
counties than to change state boundaries. It is true that local loyalties
exist also in counties, but they exert influence only when they coincide
with material benefits.19 With the development of modern communica-
tions these cases have become rather infrequent.
On the other hand, larger units have increasingly come into being
because they alone were able to cope efficiently with the complicated
problems of modern economic life. The Tennessee Valley Authority is
perhaps the best-known example of a large territorial unit created without
replacing traditional state boundaries. The New York Port Authority is
another example. In the international field the Caribbean Commission
is one of several examples. It unites American, British, French, and Dutch
possessions for explicitly defined social, economic, and cultural purposes.
None of these examples proves convincingly that there is a trend
toward larger administrative units. In the Soviet Union the Communists
replaced the large administrative divisions, the gubernivas and their
subdivisions, the volosts, by oblasts and rayons. Industrialization and
the increased need for political and economic administration and control
led to a decrease in the size of these new subdivisions as compared
with the subdivisions of Czarist Russia. This is another example showing
how a revolution can overthrow traditional forms no longer fitted to
modern conditions. While in the first decade of the Soviet state the
boundaries of these oblasts and volosts remained flexible, the number
of such transformations shows a decreasing trend as the U.S.S.R. acquires
traditional values of its own.
Contradictory tendencies toward increasing and decreasing size can
even be observed in the size of cities, despite the undeniable world-wide
trends toward urbanization. Only a few years ago there seemed to be
no question that cities were growing and that incorporation both of for-
merly rural areas and adjoining cities constituted a general and inevitable
trend. Where older communities retained their separate existence, even if
surrounded by a growing metropolitan area ( such as Highland Park and
Hamtramck in Detroit (Fig. 2-11), or Brookline in Boston), this was re-
garded as a temporary delay, which could be explained by special socio-
logical factors. Even the actual shrinking of some cities by war destruc-
tion, as in Germany, or by revolutionary change, as in the case of Vienna
19 Changes of voting districts, the so-called gerrymandering, does not quite belong
in this category, as in many ways voting districts do not have a separate life or any
function except during election time.
SIZE
55
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Fig. 2-11. Encircling Growth of Metropolitan Area: Detroit.
which lost its position as the capital of a great power, seemed not to con-
tradict the general trend. This belonged in the same category as the
destruction of Pompeii and St. Pierre by volcanoes, of Yokohama by earth-
quake. Only recently, and especially pronounced in England after the de-
struction caused by World War II, the construction of satellite towns
around metropolitan agglomerations has set in. In most other countries
such a tendency is still in the discussion stage. However, we witness in the
United States a novel and recent trend by which suburbs are developing
their own community life. Distance from the city centers, overcrowding of
public transportation, lack of parking space, and so on, are the tangible
causes. The development of suburban shopping centers and cultural facil-
ities leads to the gradual transformation of "dormitory towns" into com-
munities fulfilling all administrative and sociological functions of the
cities. It is interesting to observe that, while this development goes on,
larger territorial units are created for certain functions better served on a
broad metropolitan basis. Such functions may be public services, as tele-
phone, water, sewage, fuel distribution, or sanitary provisions. The United
States' Census recognized the latter development in 1950 by establishing
metropolitan areas and thus supplementing the census data usually ob-
tained only along lines of incorporated city limits.
56 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
PHYSIOGRAPHIC FACTORS IN THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE
SIZE OF POLITICAL UNITS
At first German geographers and later those of other nationalities
elaborated on the idea that the size of states is largely conditioned by
their geographical environment. On extensive plains without natural bar-
riers large empires have developed. They have mushroomed in this en-
vironment with surprising rapidity; they have also been shortlived in
many instances. Clearly it is easy to conquer large, uniform plains; it
may also be easy to organize such uniform spaces, although this statement
requires qualification. It is by no means certain that such plains will
eventually be consolidated in large states. The East European plain and
the Indo-Gangetic plain have not only seen the Russian, the Maurya,
and the Mogul Empires, but also centuries of political division. The
plains of the Sudan and of Inner Asia have supported large empires
during relatively short periods only. No such empire has ever arisen in
the Mississippi lowland. In the case of the Aztec state of Mexico, and
of the Inca empire, high plateaus substituted for plains. The Roman and
the Persian Empires are instances of large and long-lasting empires which
did not develop around nuclei of large plains.
There are regions, especially in mountains and on islands, where small
natural units such as valleys or basins tend to provide a good frame for
small political units. These may be political units -of secondary impor-
tance, such as the minute cantons of Switzerland, twenty-two of which
co-exist in an area not larger than Massachusetts and New Hampshire
combined. Or these units may be independent countries, such as the
small states of the Himalayas, the Alps, or formerly of the Caucasus.
Large conquering nations from the surrounding lowlands have been able
occasionally to conquer these mountains, but the periods when these
mountains belonged to large states were short in comparison with their
long histories as small independent states. However, the Rocky Mountains
and associated mountain systems will warn the political geographer to
seek in these physiographic conditions more than a single favorable
condition. In the mountainous American West not even the political
subdivisions have tended to be small.20 Of the ten independent republics
of South America, three are small countries; however, only one of the
20 Semple, op. cit., p. 95, speaks of "28 different Indian stocks . . . between the
Pacific coast and the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range," but she
speaks neither of states, nor can her historical statement be used as an argument in
Dolitical geography.
SIZE 57
three, Ecuador, is a mountain country; neither Uruguay nor Paraguay
are in the Andes.
It has been said that the existence of small or large political units is
a function of physical geographic factors. This statement can be main-
tained only in a very generalized and qualified form. Latin America
seems to present a good case for such a contention. Many small political
units exist in the islands and the mountainous isthmus of Central America;
several medium-sized states are in the Andine West; the only two large
states are in the eastern plains of South America. Even the mountainous
Central American islands are not entirely politically united. The partition
of Hispaniola between Haiti and San Domingo may find some justifi-
cation in both human and physical geography. However, this is largely
a result of historical accident. History rather than physical geographic
conditions will explain the irrational mosaic of the political map of the
Lesser Antilles, or the division of tiny St. Martin between the Dutch
and French. It may be said that the nature of small islands, like that
of secluded mountain cantons, makes it easier to administer them as units
than as parts of larger units. But no conclusion is warranted as to whether
this unit should be an independent state, an autonomous region, or an
administrative unit on the same level as other similar units.
Even such a limited dependency of the size of political units on
physical geographic conditions can be established only for certain periods.
The Greek islands were independent kingdoms in the time of Homer,
they are not even administrative units today. It is undeniable that tech-
nological progress has made possible the consolidation of larger states,
and within states, of larger divisions, leading to more efficient political
and economic administration. Nevertheless, to establish a connection be-
tween technological progress and a trend promoting units of increasing
size is possible only with numerous qualifications, as has been shown
above. Despite technological progress there are also strong tendencies
in the opposite direction. The size of political units and structures is
shaped by the action and counteraction of all these diverse forces.
CHAPTER
3
Shape
CONTIGUOUS AND NONCONTIGUOUS STATE AREAS
While few people will question the political significance of the size
of a state, many more will be in doubt as to whether its shape deserves
special attention. The shape of a state is in many respects a haphazard
characteristic without much significance. However, in other respects,
shape has a definite meaning. An obvious example is the distinction
between states which have a contiguous area and those which have not.
The average educated person might be inclined on first sight to regard
a state possessing a contiguous area as the normal form, and noncontig-
uous state territories as inherently weak. He will probably remember
states consisting of noncontiguous areas (Fig. 3-1) because they are
anomalous. Pakistan, with its outlier in East Pakistan, and Germany be-
tween 1919 and 1939, with its outlier in East Prussia, will come to mind.
The latter has not survived, and was during its existence a continuous
source of irritation and complaints. The soundness of the Pakistan solution
has still to stand the test of history.
These two examples are widely known. Perhaps it is also still remem-
bered that an attempt was once made to create the new state of Israel
with several non-contiguous areas and that this attempt miscarried from
its beginnings. Forgotten, except by a few specialists, are other conflicts
such as those connected with the Portuguese area— often called an enclave
—of Cabinda, north of the Congo mouth. As a result of the creation of
the Congo state, Cabinda was separated from the main Portuguese colony
of Angola.
58
A.
DISPUTED KASHMIR
AND THE
CEASE FIRE LINE
ti
N
-1
i
v
4
TIBET
4a3b
WEST ;MW
i
Lhasa
/■— V
\
Delhi
v-^\ r*- — - * / /
BURMA
Fig. 3-1. Pakistan: A Non-contiguous State Area.
59
60 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
The German and Pakistan examples of noncontiguous territories have
in common the fact that communication between their disconnected parts
is possible by sea, that this connection is devious and slow, and that land
connections via the territory of other states, although more convenient,
were impeded by the irritating restrictions usual to political frontiers.
The memory of the hostile clashes which gave impetus to these recent
creations adds to the irritating features of such noncontiguous areas.
ENCLAVES AND EXCLAVES
It is striking that little irritation appears to be present in certain small
areas that are completely surrounded by the territory of another state.
This lack of conflict is due mainly to the smallness of these areas and
their lack of importance, but also to the fact that they have been in
existence for many years and have developed satisfactory ways of co-exist-
ence. The best known examples are the state of the Vatican City and the
Republic of San Marino, both within Italian territory. The creation— or
perhaps better re-creation— of the Papal State ended a period of friction
going back to 1870 and in some respects to the Napoleonic seizure of
Rome. The Swiss canton Appenzell (161 square miles), which is com-
pletely surrounded by the territory of the larger canton St. Gallen (777
square miles), might be considered a purely internal administrative
arrangement, if it had not existed before Switzerland became a relatively
close-knit federation.
Another case in point is that of the Rritish protectorate Basutoland
which, with a native population of over half a million, is completely
surrounded by the Union of South Africa. Originally an organization of
small Bantu tribes united in defense against the advancing Zulu, Mata-
bele, and other Kaffir tribes, Basutoland played its role on the frontier
between Boers, British, and Bantus ( Fig. 3-2 ) . The creation of the Union
of South Africa left it an enclave in the midst of Union territory. Over-
grazing, soil erosion, mountainous terrain, as well as government by
reactionary tribal chiefs and the desire of the Union to annex it make
the future of this unusual configuration rather doubtful. Similar is the
position of Swaziland (with a population of close to 200,000), also a
British protectorate. Although it borders with Portuguese Mozambique
for a short distance, it is for all practical purposes an enclave and at the
mercy of the Union of South Africa. The "Apartheid" segregation policy
of the Union of South Africa government is increasingly changing the
political map of this country into a checkerboard of white-man territory
SHAPE
61
^
Pretoria (V-
Johannesburg
0 50 100 200 Km
IE
3
Lit.
Fig. 3-2. Basutoland: An Enclave in the Union of South Africa.
and reserves and compounds of the native population. By strict regulations
which require travel documents for African males who wish to move
from district to district, or who want to leave their reserves, or want to
enter a proclaimed labor area, the separation of white and native within
the Union has been accomplished to a point where, internally, the native
territory is composed of noncontiguous enclaves which are firmly and
centrally supervised by the central government.
Other enclaves, because of their small area and the lack of international
friction involved, are likely to escape notice. Within Swiss territory,
Germany owns the tiny enclave of Biisingen east of Schaffhausen, and
Italy the enclave of Campione on Lago di Lugano. Spain retains the
enclave of Llivia in the Pyrenees. Even the tiny Portuguese possession of
62 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Damao, its main part itself not a true exclave because it lies on the coast,
includes two outlying territories, Dadara and Nagar Aveli, which are true
enclaves in Indian territory and are separated from Damao by approxi-
mately six miles of Indian territory. A modern development is the Swiss
airport of Basel which is an enclave near the French city of Mulhouse.
Because no suitable area could be found on Swiss soil a treaty was con-
cluded which left the sovereignty with France, but ceded the area for the
airport to Switzerland in every other respect. Still less known because not
recognizable as exclaves of one country or enclaves of another are the
areas of Jungbluth and of the Kleine Walser Tal. They belong to Austria
and seem on the map connected with it; however, due to high mountains
they are accessible from Austria only via Germany territory. After the
"Anschluss" in 1938 Germany annexed these two areas to Bavaria, which
move was only an administrational reorganization under the circum-
stances. The emergence of Austria as an independent country in 1945
restored the previous conditions.
More frequent than on the international scene is the fragmented shape
of provinces in federal states or other political subdivisions. In its frag-
mentation into some twenty parts, the German state of Braunschweig
was an extreme case. It lasted into the Hitler period. India before 1948
is another area where numerous examples could be found. Here British
rule had frozen the conditions of the eighteenth century, which had
resulted from the collapse of the central authority of the Moghuls. This
anarchical situation, characterized by the breakup of India into a crazy
quilt of mostly small political units, would not have lasted long if India
could have solved her problems without foreign interference. Baroda was
split into five major and some thirty minor parts, some of them still sur-
viving as exclaves of Bombay in the Saurashtra Union. Cases of frag-
mentation can be found elsewhere, even in countries that are generally
and rightly regarded as uniform. In Spain the area of Ademuz is an
outlier (in the province of Teruel) of the province of Valencia. In Eng-
land, Dudley, a town of Worcestershire, is an outlier within Staffordshire.
Exclaves of one political unit are not necessarily enclaves in another—
they do not always result in a perforated outline within the map of
another political unit. It is not so in the case of East Prussia or of East
Pakistan. On the other hand, the existence of enclaves does not necessarily
imply that they are exclaves of another state. The City of the Vatican and
San Marino are completely surrounded by Italian territory; they are true
enclaves without being exclaves.
Two outstanding examples of enclaves in recent history are the cities
SHAPE 63
of Berlin and Vienna, the latter until recently occupied by troops of the
Western powers, and in part by Russian troops which also occupied the
surrounding country while in Berlin the satellite East German state rules
one half of the city and the surrounding country. Public services are
common to both parts of these cities, and in Vienna the boundary was
invisible most of the time for the natives. Throughout this period, Vienna
remained still the capital of Austria and the Austrian government and
parliament had their seat there. Vienna exerted also in other respects its
central function. It was an exclave only for the Western occupying forces.
As such it had the further anomaly that two airfields constituted tiny
exclaves some distance from the city, administered by the British and
Americans respectively.
West Berlin comes closer to the concept of a genuine exclave,1 both
for the occupation forces and for the (West) German Federal Republic.
As its contacts with the surrounding territory have been more and more
restricted, the boundary of West Berlin has become a true international
boundary (Fig. 3-3).
Within provinces, counties, and so forth, perforation frequently results
from the autonomous administration granted to urban centers in the midst
of rural areas. This last feature is seldom noticed by the observer not
directly concerned with local municipal problems and is hardly regarded
as an anomaly. It may date as far back as those other truly anomalous
configurations on the international map, but now such features emerge
continuously as natural by-products of modern economic and political
developments. Under the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, settle-
ments become incorporated cities with administration distinct from that
of the county as soon as they attain a certain size. Similarly exclaves and
enclaves have developed quite recently in rapidly growing metropolitan
areas by incorporation of noncontiguous pieces of land for public utilities,
or by the resistance of old established communities against incorporation
(Fig. 2-11, p. 55).
In contrast to these developments are some exclaves which originated
far back, in history in some cases several centuries. They are relics of
what have become obsolete political concepts : princes acquired territories
for their states in the same manner in which they would have acquired
private property. As a result a political unit, like an estate or a farm,
might consist of several unconnected parts. Like modern farmers, sover-
1 G. W. S. Robinson, "West Berlin: The Geography of an Exclave," Geographical
Review, Vol. 43 (October, 1953), pp. 541-557; P. Scholler, "Stadtgeographische Prob-
leme des geteilten Berlin," Erdkunde, Vol. 7 (March, 1953), pp. 1-11.
64
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Fig. 3-3. Berlin: An Exclave.
eigns of such states might try to accomplish contiguity as a convenience,
but not as a matter of principle. Under feudal conditions traveling from
one property to another across "foreign territory" did not involve pass-
ports or, necessarily, customs. In other cases noncontiguous areas have
been acquired by chance heritage, or in order to get a foothold in an
area which was desired because of its richness. In time, a deliberate
policy of acquiring connected territories was pursued. An example in the
United States is the Western Reserve in present northern Ohio, belonging
once to Connecticut. In Europe, history records many such incidents: e.g.
the Hapsburgs, counts in northern Switzerland, became dukes of Austria
far to the East. This acquisition was a by-product of the elevation of
the first Rudolf to the royal throne and of the need to replace the domain
lost during the preceding period of anarchy. The descendants of Rudolf I
worked consciously to build a land bridge between Austria and their
Swiss dominions. Carinthia and the Tyrol were acquired, but a gap
remained and the Swiss territories were finally lost. More fortunate were
the Hohenzollerns of Rrandenburg who acquired outlying territories on
SHAPE 65
the Rhine and in East Prussia by inheritance in the seventeenth century;
they succeeded in forming a contiguous state territory extending from
the Rhine to Memel after two centuries of struggle.
In the feudal age in Europe or India, or wherever a comparable stage
existed, political allegiance was a personal matter and not a territorial
one. The Germanic tribes and heirs of their legal concepts carried this
idea to an extreme. Every person carried the laws of his origin with him.
The same idea was modified in the system of "capitulations," according
to which Europeans in many states of Asia and Africa, even if born there,
could be tried only before the authorities of their country of origin. Only
twenty years ago a map of Asia would show large areas where the
sovereignty of the countries was not complete because of the extraterri-
torial status of foreigners. In the Byzantine Empire and later in Turkey
it was customary for communities of non-Islamic faith to live in separate
quarters under autonomous administration (millet). Following this cus-
tom, the privilege of living together was given to merchants coming from
the same city, from Venice, Pisa, or Genoa. These quarters maintained
their own separate laws and were often surrounded by a wall. They
became a kind of territorial enclave. Turkey never relinquished sover-
eignty over such areas as did China and India over the factories of
Portuguese, Dutch, and other Western European powers. Here finally
the transition from the personal to territorial status was completed and
enclaves developed.
The establishment of such extraterritorial trading posts signifies the
beginnings of modern European colonial imperialism. These colonies
distinguish modern empires, except the Russian Empire, from ancient
empires in that they are characterized by a fragmented shape. Fragmen-
tation of this kind comes clearly into focus when colonies shake off their
colonial bonds and become independent partners. Then the manifold
problems of dependent outlying possessions are superseded by the prob-
lem of equal rights under different conditions. This has led to the breaking
away of the American republics from England, Spain, and Portugal, and
in our time threatens with dissolution the British Commonwealth of
Nations in many parts of the world.
The nineteenth and twentieth century concept of nationalism has
had a strong influence in changing the shape of many states as well as
in determining what constitutes a desirable or undesirable shape. Two
major instances of fragmented shape are mentioned above, East Prussia
and East Pakistan. If the concept of nationalism were applied consistently
to shaping of state territories it could become of immense importance
66 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
in federal states such as those of the Soviet Union. But despite the Soviet's
proclaimed adherence to the principle of national autonomy, economic
advantages of contiguous areas weighed heavier in shaping the feder-
ated autonomous and constituent republics. Even the subordination of
Nakhitchevan to the noncontiguous Azerbaijan Soviet Republic does not
really contradict this fact, as Nakhitchevan is a mountain canton having
little contact with neighboring Soviet Armenia.2
ISLAND STATES
In a looser sense, noncontiguous states are also those states the territory
of which is composed partially or entirely of islands. Where such islands
are coastal islands, or clearly belong to one group, as do the four main
islands of Japan, lack of contiguity of the political area is hardly felt.
Where islands are no more than— usually— three miles distant from the
mainland or each other, they are legally contiguous, because they are still
within the so-called territorial waters. Norway, with its numerous coastal
islands, offers a good illustration.3 Groups of islands such as the Tonga
Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, the Azores, and many others also form
obvious units, although the distance between individual islands may be
scores of miles. It does not matter whether such groups have a history
of political unity— as do the Hawaiian Islands and the still functioning
kingdom of the Tonga Islands— or whether they have attained political
unity only since they were "discovered"— as have the Cape Verde Islands
and the Azores.
Large bodies of intervening water constitute a problem which is
aggravated if other sovereignties are actually nearer to the outlying area
than the country to which it officially belongs.
The long-drawn discussions concerning statehood for Hawaii and
Alaska are an example. Though other issues, such as the racial composition
and political party inclinations of the inhabitants may be the main cause
for delay in extending statehood, these factors would not carry weight
in a contiguous area. On the other hand, the Azores are regarded by
Portugal as an integral part of the mainland. France even regards northern
Algeria as part of metropolitan France.
2 A few small autonomous oblasts, those of the Adyge, Cherkess, and Nagornot-
Karabakh, are enclaves in other administrative units. The two national Okrugs, the
Aginskoye Buryat-Mongol and the Ust-Ordyn Buryat-Mongol, are actually exclaves
of the Buryat-Mongol autonomous Soviet Socialist Bepublic.
3 Norway, like all the Scandinavian countries, claims a belt of five nautical miles
as territorial waters.
SHAPE 67
THE FACTOR OF COMPACTNESS
In countries which include island territories and yet constitute a fairly
compact unit— such as Great Britain, Japan, the Philippines, and to some
extent Greece, Denmark, and Norway— contact between islands or be-
tween island and mainland may be easier than between adjacent parts
of the continental territory. Intercourse was never difficult across the
Aegean Sea between the Greek Islands and Greece. Even continental
parts of Greece are today in many cases more easily accessible by boat
than by mountain trails or winding roads. Similar conditions exist in the
Japanese Islands, where contacts across the Inland Sea are easy and were
so before the age of railroads. Yeddo, the northernmost island, though
separated by the narrow Strait of Hakodate, was joined to the other
islands very late because, among other reasons, navigation across the
strait was difficult under the frequently adverse weather conditions. On
the other hand, intercourse over land routes becomes a difficult problem
in countries where deserts take the place of a dividing ocean. Such deserts
are the Sahara between French North Africa and the Sudan, and the Inner
Asian deserts between Russia proper and Turkestan. In these areas maps
which do not stress physical features are misleading. Physical factors play
a part in much smaller countries over short distances. Until a few years
ago, Vorarlberg, the westernmost province of Austria, could not be
reached directly from the rest of the country when snow blocked the pass
route over the Arlberg. Similarly, the canton Tessin was separated from
the rest of Switzerland when the St. Gotthard pass was closed. In all
these cases only modern communications have rendered the apparent
compactness a reality. Powerful governments had also in other cases
to develop and protect communications across difficult terrain such as
mountains, forests, and deserts. However, only constant vigilance and
investment of capital can keep open such routes.
CIRCUM-MARINE STATES
Under such conditions it would hardly be justifiable to overlook the
role of sea transportation in defining the idea of a compact state. It makes
understandable the fact that circum-marine states can have a fundamental
compactness. We can envisage the ancient Roman Empire as a compact
unit, with the Mediterranean Sea as an integral part, if we take into
consideration that sea lanes in general were more efficient in antiquity
than land routes, until the Romans built their military road-net. If we
Fig. 3-4. British Influence around the Indian Ocean between World Wars I and II:
(1) British colonies; (2) Dutch colonies; (3) Portuguese colonies.
68
SHAPE 69
insist on regarding only the terra firma as constituent part of the Roman
Empire, one of the oddest shaped territories would emerge. The same
is true for other circum-marine empires, such as the former Swedish
empire around the Baltic Sea, and the Turkish empire around the
Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean. In this category belong even
countries of shape as familiar as the British dominion around the Irish
Sea, and in the Middle Ages the British realm on both sides of the British
Channel. In modern times such circum-marine empires have become rare.
The British domination, between the two World Wars, of most coastal
territories around the Indian Ocean is the most recent example, especially
if one regarded the Dutch and Portuguese colonies, though nominally
belonging to foreign independent states, as practically at the disposal
of the British (Fig. 3-4). Today this circum-Indic empire is rapidly dis-
solving, and the dominions, despite their official ties to the Common-
wealth, are apparently less closely bound to the policy of the United
Kingdom. Their territory is not as unquestionably at Britain's disposal
as those Portuguese and presumably also Dutch foreign colonies once
were. The only true circum-marine state of today is Indonesia, a state
around the Java Sea (Fig. 3-5). Its peculiar character is underlined by
the lack of railroads and highways on all islands except Java. Indonesia
is dependent upon sea lanes.4
SHAPE AFFECTED BY A STRATEGIC BASES CONTROL SYSTEM
These circum-marine empires have been superseded by a different type
of control based on the possession of skillfully selected and strategically
distributed bases.5 The Mediterranean became a British sea as the result
of a combination of these bases with political controls. Britain acquired
Gibraltar in 1704, the Maltese islands in 1800, and Cyprus in 1878. These
footholds were augmented by two powerful political supports— political
control of Egypt from 1882 to 1936, fortified by the military base in the
Suez Canal zone, and "a skilful diplomacy which produced allies and
neutrals within the Mediterranean basin." 6 These factors are what made
the Mediterranean a British sea in the nineteenth century, not territorial
possessions along the Mediterranean shore. In the post-World War II
world, the growing threat of airpower and submarines has altogether
4W. G. East and O. H. K. Spate, The Changing Map of Asia (London, 1950),
p. 217.
5 See also pp. 70, 157.
6 W. G. East, "The Mediterranean: Pivot of Peace and War," Foreign Affairs,
Vol.32 (1953), p. 623.
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changed the role of the Mediterranean area, especially of the Mediter-
ranean-Red Sea route, in world affairs. In recognition of these basic
changes, we witness today the evolution of a new circum-Atlantic power
combination of the NATO countries in which the United States and
Britain are the main partners, and which is based on a broad European
and African defense. The American Mediterranean, the Caribbean Sea, is
dominated by the United States from Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands,
Guantanamo on Cuba, Panama, and the leased bases on Trinidad, in
British Guiana, on Jamaica, the Bahamas, Antigua, and St. Lucia (Fig.
3-6). An American Pacific dominion is taking shape, with Okinawa and
the bases on the Philippines as westernmost outposts. The Soviet Union
has tried to create a Baltic dominion, more in the form of the older
empires, occupying all coasts from Leningrad to Riigen, but also using
the bases concept by the acquisition of Porkkala-Udd on the Finnish
coast, which, however, was returned to Finland in 1956.
THE VALUE OF SHAPE
Political and military geographers have tried to blame certain unhappy
events in the history of some countries on the shape of their territories.
In recent decades it was fashionable to compare such states as France
and Czechoslovakia and explain the relative stability of the French state
by its compact, almost pentagonal shape, and blame the endangered
position of Czechoslovakia on its elongated form.
Even if it were possible to separate the factors which make for the
stability or instability of France and Czechoslovakia, and to isolate the
influence of shape in itself, this influence would still need explanation.
There was a time when French kings felt that their country was sur-
rounded by Spanish-Hapsburg possessions and that in order to break the
threatening encirclement it would be advisable to acquire territory in
Italy, which would indeed create a tongue-like extrusion from the com-
pact area of France, but would make encirclement more difficult. Simi-
larly, the Czechs felt that a compact Bohemian state (plus Moravia)
would be in constant danger because of being surrounded by the ter-
ritories of two German-speaking countries, Germany and Austria, whereas
the odd-looking eastern extension through Slovakia and Podkarpatska
Rus would provide territorial contact between the main part of their
country and a friendly power ( Rumania ) , bring their territory into close
proximity to another potential ally against Germany (U.S.S.R.), and give
them a long boundary with another Slavic state ( Poland ) .
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It seems fair to state that shape in itself has little meaning, but that it
has to be taken into consideration as one factor which, together with
other factors, constitutes the political geography of a country.
The problem of shape is especially devoid of meaning if it is regarded
as a problem of geometrical shape. The claim that a compact and, ideally,
a circular shape is the best for the safety of a country is a theoretical
deduction without confirmation in experience. The only meaningful ques-
tion is, whether and in how far the political shape parallels certain natural
features and factors of human geography. Chile and Norway have an
extremely elongated shape, more so than Czechoslovakia, but both have
displayed a persistency and stability of shape less subject to changes
throughout the centuries than the compact outline of France. Before
World War II the idea of boundaries along natural features was much
used and misused; recently it has been too much discounted. Norway,
Chile, an island state such as Iceland, or a mountain state surrounded
by deserts such as Ethiopia or Yemen, are largely congruent with a natural
geographical region— Norway and Chile to a slightly lesser degree. Where
Norway reaches in the southeast across the mountains, it includes all
Norwegian-speaking areas. Czechoslovakia did not attain this unity, its
physiographic features almost nowhere being congruent with the areas
of languages and nations in this area. For this reason, and only for this
reason, its elongated shape is so vulnerable. The same problem of vulner-
ability has arisen in Spain, and for the same reason, although it is an
outstanding example of adaptation to physiographic features. Spain had
to wrestle with repeated attempts at dismemberment in its Catalonian
and Basque provinces. Its human geography does not fit its theoretically
perfect shape.
"FORWARD POINTS OF GROWTH"
A shape often regarded as a handicap to the economic development
and military safety of countries is that involving an area connected with
the bulk of a country only by a narrow neck of land. Such shapes have
been compared with peninsulas and promontories. An outstanding ex-
ample of such a shape, and of its almost perennially endangered position
is that part of Sinkiang known as Chinese Turkestan. For long periods
this area was connected with the main bulk of the Chinese Empire only
by the narrow corridor of semidesert Kansu between the desert of Gobi
and the mountains of Tibet. Some geographers have spoken in this
connection of a prompted shape.7 At one time, long ago, this area
7 C. L. White and G. T. Renner, Human Geography (New York, 1948), p. 588.
74 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
was acquired by China as a base for further westward penetration.
German geographers, and not only those of the geopolitical school, spoke
therefore in this connection of Wachstumspitzen— "forward points of
growth." They compared such forms with the shoots of plants, or even
with the advance force of an army. Thus, instead of indicating weakness,
it appears that such "proruptions" may under certain conditions signify
an aggressive vitality. If one looks at the former Chinese forward points
of growth through Chinese glasses, from China's core area, one under-
stands how, under changed political conditions, such areas can become
political liabilities and economic liabilities as well. This is especially true
in the absence of rail and road communications, without which overland
outposts can scarcely be an integral part of a core area. Sinkiang (which
has twice the area of France but a population of only about four million )
illustrates the withering-away of the "forward point of growth" when an
expanding neighboring power (the U.S.S.R. ) drives its railroad and high-
way net closer to the disputed area, in an effort to expand.
The case of Kashmir has been interpreted as an illustration of a "forward
point of growth or aggression" being established against the resistance
of a competing power, in this case Pakistan. It may well be that this is
rather an attempt to hold on to a "point" which has high emotional value
and might serve as a sensitive observation post in an area where Pakistan,
the U.S.S.R., Chinese Sinkiang, and Afghanistan meet. As a Wachstum-
spitze, the value is probably very small, because communication from
Pathankot, the nearest important station of India, to the valley of Kashmir
leads across extremely high, roadless passes that are closed by snow many
months of the year.
The tiny princely state of Sikkim (2,745 square miles; population in
1951, 137,000; cf. Fig. 3-1) offers another example of how such a "forward
point of growth" degenerates into a proruption which is hard to defend.
Pointing like an arrowhead toward Tibet (470,000 square miles; popula-
tion about three million), the Himalayan mountain state dominates the
main trade route between India and Tibet and thus is the gateway to
Tibet. From here the British made their successful attempts to win entry
into Tibet. Today its demographic composition, linguistically and reli-
giously closely related to Chinese-held Tibet, makes it a weak point in the
Indian perimeter. On the other hand, the example of the prosperous and
democratic Indian protectorate may make itself felt in poverty-stricken
Tibet. The successful agrarian and tax reform in Sikkim, which super-
seded absolute rule and oppression by autocratic landholders, provides
SHAPE
75
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Fig. 3-7. Portuguese and German Expansion in Central Africa.
arguments against Communism in the ideological struggle over the future
of Tibet.
In some instances, proruptions have been intentionally created for
purposes of aggression. Several examples of this are the so-called Caprivi
strip, which extends as a narrow strip from the northeastern corner of
Southwest Africa— a German colony, when it was devised— to the Zambesi
river; Portuguese Mozambique expanded inland along the Zambesi at
about the same period in order to meet Portuguese colonization advanc-
ing from the Angola West African coast (Fig. 3-7); the narrow coastal
landscape of Tenasserim, a southern extension of the then British Burma
toward the northward-growing Malay States and Straits Settlements offers
another illustration; the Alaskan panhandle, recording the Russian ad-
vance toward California, is an example from America.
In each of these cases the Wachstumspitze, the forward point of growth
or of aggression, lost its essential character at the time when the core
area and its people underwent basic changes, or when their outlook
toward the forward point was reversed. The Alaskan panhandle is an
illustration; its quality as a Wachstumspitze vanished when Russia lost
interest in American expansion.
All these examples should make it abundantly clear that the same shape
may indicate an area of weakness or a forward point of growth or even
76 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
of aggression. The answer cannot be found by focusing attention only on
the shape of a political region. Configurations which on the political map
resemble a Wachstumspitze may be not only a relic, but may actually be
the result of a flanking or encirclement movement of a neighboring
expansionist nation or group of nations. This is best illustrated by the
unhappy spatial relationship in which Czechoslovakia found itself prior
to 1939 in regard to Germany and Austria, but especially after the Ger-
mans had occupied Austria, thus closing the pincers on Czechoslovakia.
To the uninformed, or politically misinformed German onlooker, the
outflanked or almost encircled small country could be presented as a
dagger pointing threateningly toward the encircling Nazi Germany. The
map published in General Haushofer's Journal of Geopolitics in 1934 with
the caption "Ein Kleinstaat Bedroht Deutschland" (A Small State
Threatens Germany) offers a good illustration of a complete distortion of
facts by abusing the map as a weapon. The umbrella of airplanes fanning
out from the alleged Wachstwnspitze of Czechoslovakia brought home
to the Germans, fed by the geopolitical propaganda of the Third Reich,
what seemed to be an imminent danger of German cities being bombed
by the air force of Czechoslovakia. Haushofer did not stop to think of
how the same map, with a reversed air-umbrella, would impress the
citizens of the small nation which was watching helplessly while the
ominously progressing flanking expansion of the Third Reich reached out
for more and more Lebensraum (living space) (Fig. 3-8).
Clearly the mere shapes of Czechoslovakia and Germany on the political
map of Central Europe do not supply the answer to the question of
whether and where in their spatial relationships forward points of aggres-
sion can be detected. The answer can be found only if one weighs the
manifold historical, cultural, ethnic, and economic factors which have
contributed to the spatial relationship of neighboring nations and have
become crystallized, even temporarily, in what the map reveals as odd-
shape relations. It should be added that the study of mere physical
expansion deals with but part of the problem. The policy of flanking
or encirclement can be carried out by means of physical expansion or
by the conclusion of treaties or alliances.8 The case of Czechoslovakia is
not an unusual one. Historical geography supplies many similar illus-
trations of basic changes of the political map as the result of flanking
movements of expanding powers. The Mongolian advance on India, the
Roman drive toward western Germany show the aggressor nations in
8 N. J. Spykman and A. A. Rollins, "Geographic Objectives in Foreign Policy,"
American Political Science Review ( 1939 ) , p. 394.
SHAPE
77
Fig. 3-8. The Map as a Weapon of Geopolitics: Czechoslovakia, a "Threat" to Nazi
Germany.
their flanking operations against the attacked nations, just as classical
encirclement moves can be seen in the drives of Carthage, and later Rome,
against the Iberian peninsula, and of the Romans against the Germans.9
If a forward point serves the purpose of establishing contact with
another area it is called a corridor. Such corridors have been established
by Colombia and Bolivia in order to win access to the Amazon and the
Parana rivers. Neither of these corridors so far has attracted much traffic.
Far more important, both politically and economically, was the Polish
corridor, designed to serve as a real corridor between landlocked Poland
and the sea in the period between the two World Wars. A large part of
Poland's overseas traffic passed through this corridor to Danzig and
Gdynia, as well as some traffic which would have gone more directly
over land routes but thereby would have had to cross foreign territory.
A similar function was served by the Finnish corridor of Petsamo, which
opened a route to the fishing grounds of the Arctic Sea. In the event of
9 O. Maull, Politische Geographic ( Berlin, 1925 ) , p. 96.
78 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the closing of the Baltic by ice or by war, Petsamo provided Finland
with an opening to the west via the open ocean.
It is obvious from the foregoing that the political geographer will find
a study of odd-shaped nations— those having noncontiguous areas or
extenuated shapes— in some cases fairly rewarding. Other shapes have
little significance and any effort to fit them into a system would be
artificial.
CHAPTER
4
The Nature and Functions
or Boundaries
BOUNDARY LINES AND BOUNDARY ZONES
We have discussed political units under the tacit assumption that they
were bordered by sharp, definite boundaries. This is a condition which
applies at present, at least in theory, to most political boundaries. Yet it
is in sharp contradistinction to conditions which existed in most of Europe
in the past and in some non-European continents into the twentieth
century. Frontier zones, belts of no man's land, and even overlapping
sovereignties were then the rule. A rather extensive literature 1 deals with
the development of boundary lines out of such zones or related vague
features. Somewhat less attention has been paid to the development of
boundary lines from old property, especially field boundaries. The Romans
1 No complete list of publications on this subject shall be given. Among the more
important are S. B. Jones, Boundary-Making (Washington, 1945); P. de Lapradelle,
La Frontiere (Paris, 1927); O. Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (New York,
1939); S. W. Boggs, International Boundaries (New York, 1940); K. Haushofer,
Grenzen (Berlin, 1927); O. Maull, Politische Geographie (Berlin, 1925); J. Ancel, La
geographie des frontieres (Paris, 1927); B. Hartshorne, "Geography and Political
Boundaries in Upper Silesia," Annals of the Association of American Geography,
Vol. 23 (1933), pp. 195 ff.; E. Fischer, "On Boundaries," World Politics, Vol. 1, No. 2
(January, 1949), pp. 196-222; G. N. Curzon of Kedleston, Frontiers, 2nd ed. (Oxford,
1908); J. Soldi, Die Auffassung der natiirlichen Grenzen in der wissenschaftlichen
Geographie (Innsbruck, 1924); Thomas Holdich, Political Frontiers and Boundary
Making (London, 1916); C. B. Fawcett, Frontiers (Oxford, 1918); A. E. Moodie,
Geography Behind Politics, Ch. 5, "Frontiers and Boundaries" (London, 1947);
A. Melamid, "The Economic Geography of Neutral Territories," Geographical Beview,
Vol. 45 (July, 1955).
79
80 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
in the time of the republic used the plow to draw the boundary (limes)
of a newly founded colony or city. With the development of the Roman
city-state into a territorial state the concept of strict delimitation spread
and became basic in Roman law. Though these problems will be men-
tioned, wherever pertinent, the main interest in this chapter is not the
historical development of the boundary line, but rather the description
of the presently existing boundary lines, their functions and problems.
A later chapter will deal with boundary zones in the political conflicts
of nations today. Although we maintain that there is a basic difference
between boundary lines and boundary zones, we shall not insist on re-
garding as boundary lines only the mathematical line of one dimension.
For all practical purposes a wooden barrier, having a width of a few
inches, a grassy path between fields, having a width of a few feet, or
even a lane cut into a forest, having a width of a few yards, are boundary
lines. Roundary zones exist only where the space between two countries
is wide enough to permit man to live within it, either actually or poten-
tially. In lands that are inhabited by sedentary populations, this distinction
is satisfactory. In the rapidly shrinking areas of nomadism, this distinction
between boundary zones and boundary lines may lead to border incidents,
or at least account for a gradual transition from a zone to a line. It is
sufficiently accurate to serve as definition.
There is another difference between the boundary line and the bound-
ary zone. The latter is almost always a feature which has developed from
the conditions of contact between adjacent countries. In the few cases
where a boundary zone has been determined by law, actually three inter-
nationally recognized units exist, sharply divided from each other by
boundary lines. An example of this is the zones of the Pays de Gex and
of Haute Savoie surrounding the Swiss canton of Geneva, which are
outside of the French customs boundary and subject to Swiss military
occupation in wartime, though in all other respects being genuine parts
of the French republic.
On the other hand, a boundary line is always a legally established and
defined feature, though its legality may not have found recognition in
international law. The United States has declared that it does not recog-
nize the incorporation of the three Raltic States, Lithuania, Latvia, and
Estonia, into the Soviet Union, nor does it recognize several other bound-
aries drawn after World War II. Nevertheless, these boundary lines exist
and function as instituted by Soviet action and Soviet law, unaffected by
international recognition or nonrecognition. The boundaries of the Baltic
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 81
States function today as internal, or purely administrative boundaries, and
have been changed in some parts.
TYPES OF BOUNDARIES
We have, therefore, to distinguish several types of boundaries: (1)
boundaries that are recognized in international law, as is normal with
most boundaries; (2) boundaries that are recognized only by some coun-
tries, especially by both adjacent countries, (a) This may be the result
of a shift of the boundary without altering its legal character. The eastern
boundary of Poland and the northeastern boundary of Rumania are such
boundaries, (b) On the other hand, the boundaries of the Baltic countries
are regarded by the United States as de jure international boundaries,
but are de facto and according to the legal concept of the Soviet Union
internal boundaries. The practical effects of such a nonrecognition are
very restricted, and will pertain to passport procedures, immigration
practice, and similar functions. The term "disputed boundaries" is correct
for these boundaries, but applies in general usage rather to (3) de facto
boundaries, the legality of which is not recognized by one of the adjacent
countries. Parts of the Ecuadorian-Peruvian boundary and of the Indian-
Chinese boundary belong in this category. Often the two adjacent coun-
tries claim two different lines as correct, of which only one exists de facto
(the disputed boundary), while (4) the other can be found on maps but
has no counterpart in the field. Such a fictitious boundary is the boundary
between Germany and Poland as it existed before 1939 and is still re-
garded by the nations of the West as legally valid until such time as a
peace treaty may change it (Fig. 4-1). Most American maps show this
line and designate the territory west of it as under Polish administration.
On Polish maps, and on maps printed in countries which are emotionally
less involved in this conflict, this boundary has disappeared.
Both the de facto and the claimed boundary may be recognized or not
by third powers, strengthening thereby the legal and political position
of one of the contesting countries, but not immediately affecting the
material situation. In Trieste from 1946 to 1954 there existed three bound-
ary lines (cf. Fig. 2-2). One, claimed by Italy, incorporated the whole
territory of Trieste, including areas administered by Yugoslavia. De facto
this is an internal boundary. Another part of the boundary line divided
Yugoslav territory from that administered by Great Britain and the United
States, though claimed by Italy. A third boundary, which separated the
82
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
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Fig. 4-1. The Boundaries of Poland since World War II.
same territory from Italy, was a de facto boundary, but with a different
status in the eyes of the different powers. The occupying powers regarded
it as a fully recognized international boundary. The Yugoslavs agreed to
its designation as an international boundary, but claimed it as their own
and not that of a Free Territory of Trieste. The Italians finally regarded
it at best as a temporary de facto demarcation line which has no legal
standing as boundary. In the same category belongs the 38th parallel in
Korea which served as a de facto boundary from 1945 to 1951; all par-
ticipants regarded it as a temporary solution, an armistice line rather
than a boundary.
Claimed (fictitious) boundaries are also those on the Antarctic con-
tinent; 2 but it can hardly be said that they run through a foreign territory
as all claims are equally theoretical and none fully recognized internation-
ally ( Fig. 4-2 ) . The United States has not recognized the claims of several
states on Antarctic territories. Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand,
France, Norway, Argentina, and Chile have made such territorial claims
2 Cf. L. Martin, "The Antarctic Sphere of Interest," H. W. Weigert and V. Stefans-
son, eds., New Compass of the World (New York, 1949), pp. 61 ff. (71-73).
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 83
and fixed by proclamation exact boundary lines. Those of the five first-
named countries have been mutually recognized, while in the case of the
Palmer Peninsula, where Britain, Argentina, and Chile are established,
these three countries continue to dispute their mutual claims.
These Antarctic sectors have their counterpart in the Arctic. Here, how-
ever, it is not the discovery of uninhabited territories which forms the
basis of claims, but an extension of the areas of the countries surrounding
the Arctic Sea. Though in a different form and more or less assertive,
Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the Soviet Union rely on the "sector
principle" (cf. Fig. 5-4, p. 126). Only the Soviet Union went so far as to
fix the boundaries of its Polar possessions in accordance with the sector
principle, by decree of April 15, 1926. 3
The sector principle serves as a good illustration of the intimate relation-
ship which exists, particularly in the realm of boundary problems, be-
tween basic concepts of international law and political geography. The
student of political geography is concerned mainly with the definition
of the area between the base line which links the meridians of longitude
marking the limits of its frontiers in the east and in the west, and which
extends as far north as the final intersection of those meridians in the
Pole: this is the geographical definition of the sector principle as primarily
a geometric method to measure the geographical extent of a sovereignty
claim in the Arctic. To understand the legal, or quasi-legal, foundation
of this principle one has to turn to basic principles of international law.
The sector principle, legally, is an expression of basic concepts of sover-
eignty resting firmly upon geographical foundations, or supposed to rest
on them. Sovereignty over a territory presupposes normally that a state
exercises authority over certain territory. Normally, this authority is estab-
lished and maintained by what is called "effective occupation." In exten-
sion of this principle, attempts have been made to establish sovereignty
by contiguity; this concept has been used mainly to determine if islands
which are relatively close to the shores of a country should belong to the
country controlling the shores in virtue of their geographical location.
The sector principle represents a further expansion of the contiguity
principle.
If one realizes these features of international law which are at the
bottom of the sector principle, it is not difficult to find that a basic dif-
ference exists between the Arctic and the Antarctic in regard to the sector
3 E. Plischke, "Sovereignty and Imperialism in the Polar Regions," reprinted in
H. and M. Sprout, Foundations of National Power, 2nd ed. (N. Y., 1951), pp. 727,
729.
Fig. 4-2. Antarctic Claims.
84
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 85
principle; for this principle, as an extension of the contiguity concept,
does not make sense in the South Polar regions.
Here we deal with a continent detached from any other and separated
from other lands by broad expanses of water from the territories that are
acknowledged to belong to claimant states. "Inasmuch as there are no
'contiguous' territories extending into this area, as Canada and Russia
extend into the Arctic, these Antarctic sector claims must rest upon a
different theory from the Arctic principle." 4
The United States has subscribed always to the theory that "effective
occupation" is required as the basis of a claim of sovereignty over newly-
discovered lands, including Polar lands.5 The technological achievements
of our times lend support to the concept that the principle of international
law under which "effective occupation" is a prerequisite for the acquisition
of "title" over a territory merits validity also in the Arctic and Antarctic.
THE FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES
There is a real gradation in the effective functioning of a boundary
from serving as an almost absolute barrier through several stages to the
purely theoretical function of a claimed boundary. The barrier function
is best exemplified in the Iron Curtain around the countries of the Soviet
Bloc at present. It is, however, not an absolute barrier. There are not only
those refugees who escape; more important is that trade is being carried
on all the time. There are sensitive areas where countries bordering the
Iron Curtain are not completely identified with either East or West, such
as Finland and Iran. A big hole appears where until 1955 the Iron Curtain
crossed Austria, a country that had retained its unity despite the fact
that parts of it lay behind and others in front of the Iron Curtain. It thus
appears that the Iron Curtain has not achieved, and, at least as long as
peace can be preserved, is unlikely to achieve the strength of the walls
which Japan and China erected around their borders from the seventeenth
to the nineteenth century. We know, however, that even at the time of
the most perfect seclusion of Japan, the tiny Dutch foothold in the harbor
of Nagasaki was sufficient to maintain a certain osmotic exchange. Japa-
nese artistic influences filtered into the West, as did Western medical
knowledge into Japan, to mention only two important features.
4 Hackworth, Digest of International Law (1940), p. 461. The official positions of
Argentina and Chile are in conflict with the above and their claims are based in part
on the contiguity concept; at best, a geological but certainly not a geographical con-
tiguity can be claimed in this case.
5 Miller. "Rights Over the Arctic," Foreign Affairs (1925), pp. 49-51.
86 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Boundaries are often closed for certain functions only. Barriers to
immigration or to the import of merchandise are more frequent than
those to emigration and exports. The closing of the American border to
liquors in the era of Prohibition is well remembered. Newspapers and
books are sometimes excluded from crossing a border. Such barriers may
be absolute or may be partial. Under the so-called quota system a certain
merchandise may be allowed across the border in specified quantities only,
or prohibitive customs may reduce the quantities which would come in
without such taxation. The high value of a currency may act as a deter-
rent. It is obvious that the restricting influence of all such factors can
vary in wide degrees. The system of immigration quotas in the United
States is based on a general principle, the proportion of resident alien-born
from each country at a given date. In practice, this law opens the borders
to any average Englishman, but closes it to the majority of prospective
immigrants from many other countries such as China or Italy.
Though almost all degrees of exclusion may be found, there is no
international boundary which does not constitute an obstacle of some
kind. Legal systems differ even between countries very close to each other
in sentiment aid practice. No two countries have the same system of
taxation. Unavoidably, the teaching of history in schools has slightly
different emphases. Allegiance is required to a specific flag. The American-
Canadian boundary is an example of such a minimum function which
still, in many tangible and intangible ways, has a separating effect.
It is obvious that such international boundaries do not have a much
different function than do certain internal boundaries, especially those
between the states of the United States. In other countries internal bound-
aries may mean less. In the United States state boundaries have stronger
separating functions than county boundaries or city boundaries; still less
important is the function of boundaries of townships or city wards.
However, there is no boundary which is not separating some feature,
no boundary without function.
The modern state is characterized by the great number of functions
it exercises, functions distinguishing it in all its constitutional forms from
its earlier predecessors, especially the feudal state. This multiplicity and
the complexity of organization related to it is one of several reasons why
accurate, linear boundaries become necessary, and are now the rule.
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 87
BORDER ZONES
The status of border territories has been more and more defined and
transitional border zones have almost disappeared from the map, even
in South America where they were the rule along the borders only fifty
years ago. Also the number of undemarcated boundaries is rapidly shrink-
ing, though as a matter of course not as fast as the number of undelimited
boundaries or unallocated territories. The only sizeable land area under
this last category would be— and this only for official American opinion—
the Antarctic continent. There are a few more undelimited areas in the
Arabian peninsula, along the land boundaries of China, and those of
Thailand. Not quite in the same category are disputed areas, such as
Kashmir, the southwestern corner of Ecuador, and a few others of minor
importance at present. Among the undemarcated boundaries are several
African boundaries, such as most boundaries of Ethiopia, or the boundary
between the French and Spanish Sahara, Libya, and others.
Even if a boundary has been agreed upon, the old separating zone
must not disappear. There is still the little known and little exploited
forest between Brazil and its neighbors to the north and west, the desert
between Libya and its neighbors, and the high mountain belt between
Burma and its neighbors. It is, however, the agreed boundary line, and
no longer an unpassable belt of forest, desert, or swamps which minimizes
the danger of border clashes. An interesting example is offered by the
Rub'al Khali (Fig. 4-3), the Empty Quarter of Southern Arabia, which
serves as frontier or boundary zone between Saudi Arabia to the north
and west and the Trucial emirates, Oman and Hadramaut, to the east
and south. In 1913 Turkey and Great Britain agreed to a boundary
through unknown areas. This boundary still appears on some maps,
though the outbreak of World War I prevented ratification of the treaty
and Saudi Arabia never recognized its validity. This was still no matter
of concern for Britain until Bertrand Thomas in 1927 and St. John B.
Philby the following year crossed this desert. From this moment the
dwindling barrier character of the Rub'al Khali became obvious. How-
ever, Saudi Arabia felt strong enough to press its claim only after it had
granted oil concessions to the Arabian-American Oil Company ( Aramco ) ,
hoping thereby to force the United States to back her claims. The recent
conflict over the Buraima oasis between Saudi Arabia and Oman, the
claims of both the tiny but oil-rich Sheikhdom of Qatar and of Saudi
Arabia have highlighted a developing dangerous situation in this desert
88
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
^ia^lo*** V' Baraimi
SiiP Dl A RA8IA
Fig. 4-3. Rub'al Khali, "The Empty Quarter" of Southern Arabia.
area.6 Without the establishment of boundary lines,. bloody conflicts may
become more and more frequent.
A similar situation existed in the north of the Arabian peninsula. Since
World War I boundaries have gradually been established and largely
demarcated between Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, Jordan, Iraq, and
Kuwait. In two places, where no agreement could be reached, two neutral
zones between Saudi Arabia on the one side and Iraq and Kuwait on the
other are policed by both adjacent powers. They are themselves bordered
by definite lines and owe their continued existence not as much to their
barrier character as to rivalry and jealousy. They are more closely related
to buffer states or condominiums than to frontier zones of a primitive
character. A much discussed area is the tribal area or the frontier region
of the North West Frontier, an area included by the international bound-
ary between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the administrative boundary
6 A. Melamid, "Political Geography of Trucial Oman and Qatar," Geographic Re-
view, Vol. 11, No. 3 (April, 1953); and the same author: "Oil and the Evolution of
Boundaries in Eastern Arabia," ibid., Vol. 11, No. 4 (April, 1954).
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 89
of the North West Frontier Province proper, the Durand line of 1893.
The British gave only a minimum of administration to this area.7
The only other surviving zones lie between India and Tibet in the high
uninhabited mountains of Himalaya and Karakorum, and between China
and Burma in the broken plateaus inhabited by Shan tribes. Both adjacent
countries claim sovereignty over each of these zones and some day some
delimitation will have to take place. During the nineteenth century many
countries agreed to draw boundary lines through such unexplored bound-
ary zones. Such boundaries were drawn on the conference table and
either used assumed physical features or geometrical lines as boundary
lines. Assumed physical features were selected as a rule in South America,
geometrical lines more frequently between European colonies in Africa
and occasionally in other continents. This method has been denounced
as artificial and arbitrary. However, it is often unavoidable. Geographers
refer to this type of boundaries as "antecedent" boundaries, antecedent
to actual occupation or even exploration.8 It cannot be denied that this
method resulted in especially unfortunate results in regions of densely
settled, somewhat advanced civilizations, though the area might have
been unexplored by Europeans. Some of the boundaries of Thailand and
of the western Sudan belong in this category. This applies only to densely
populated areas, and fortunately they were a minority. One should,
furthermore, keep in mind that in most of these instances the only
alternative was either to defer delimitation until demarcation on the
ground should become possible, or to designate some suspected physical
feature. To defer delimitation would actually mean to wait until interest
in the hitherto unknown area materialized and friction evolved. This way
has rarely been selected, and where it has, results were unfortunate.
UNDEFINED BOUNDARIES
The history of the boundaries of Afghanistan throughout most of the
nineteenth century is an example of frictions which a not clearly defined
boundary line may cause. The Russian-Afghan-British-Indian relations
were in a state of nearly open conflict throughout the second half of
the nineteenth century; the temporary weakness of Russia and world-wide
political activity enabled a settlement of the boundary conflict in the
7 There is a large literature on this area starting with G. N. Curzon of Kedleston,
Frontiers (Oxford, 1907). The latest review is by J. W. Spain, "Pakistan's North West
Frontier," The Middle East Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1954), pp, 27-40.
8 R. Hartshorne, "Suggestions on the Terminology of Political Boundaries," abstract,
Annals of the Association of American Geography, Vol. 26 (1936), p. 56.
90 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
eleventh hour. However, the solution along the Afghan-British-Indian
boundary proved workable only as long as the British power in India
stood on solid foundations. Instead of the usual boundary line to which
all state functions extend, three lines were established. This resulted in
the creation of two boundary zones of which only that adjacent to India
was administered effectively. Even here not all state functions were
exerted. Another zone adjacent to Afghanistan was not administered but
was supervised by the British. Since Pakistan has taken the place of India,
Afghanistan has voiced more vocal claims than ever before for this area,
which is inhabited by Pushtu-speaking tribes; Pushtu is the language of
the ruling group of Afghanistan (cf. Fig. 3-1, p. 59 ).9
The undefined boundary between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland
opened the road to the war of 1935, when both parties advanced into
no man's land and clashed at Ual-Ual.
DEMARCATION OF BOUNDARIES
Designation of unexplored physical features such as water partings,
mountain crests, and rivers, has caused many conflicts in South America.
The Argentine-Chilean conflict was ended by arbitration of the British
monarch who assigned the disputed territories to the contestants. The
conflict area was described in detail by the British geographer-states-
man 10 who was engaged in investigating the topographic background.
In this case it had been agreed that the boundary should follow "the
highest crest which may divide the waters" (Fig. 4-4). Unfortunately,
and unknown at the time of the agreement, the highest crest and the
water-parting do not coincide for a distance of many hundreds of miles.
The final award found a compromise solution.
A river was designated as the boundary between French Guiana and
Brazil, another, the St. Croix river, between Maine and the adjacent
provinces of Canada, both rivers no longer identifiable 12 when settlement
advanced and fixation of the boundary became necessary. The nonexistent
"northwestern corner of the Lake of the Woods" on the Minnesota-Canada
boundary (Fig. 4-5) required at least sixteen additional conventions12
until all the questions were resolved which arose from the original peace
treaty formulation.
9 See p. 394.
10 Holdich, op. cit.
11 Jones, op. cit., p. 200.
12 Boggs, International Boundaries, pp. 47-50.
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES
91
Argentine Claim
Chilean Claim ___^
Boundary Fixed
0_ 100 200 300 Mi
Fig. 4-4. The Argentine-Chilean Boundary.
On the other hand, none of the geometrical lines in Africa has led to
serious conflicts. It was possible in several cases to create a satisfactory
boundary by means of exchange of territory and other adjustments. The
Congo State (cf. Fig. 7-6, p. 186) originally established as a quadrangle,
at present has a river boundary with French Central Africa, rivers and
lakes as boundaries with most of the British areas, and very irregular
boundaries with the Portuguese possessions, the latter created by ex-
change of territories.13
Because each boundary is a result of human selection and action,
13 Ibid., p. 186,
92
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
MANITOBA):
MINNESOTA
Fig. 4-5. The Minnesota-Canada Boundary: Large inset shows location of Lake of
the Woods, as used at Paris 1782-83. The lake in its true position is cross-hatched.
After Boggs, International Boundaries.
boundary lines are always artificial throughout.14 A boundary between
states can exist only where and if man establishes a boundary. Boundary-
making is done generally in several steps, which Stephen B. Jones 15
distinguishes as delimitation and demarcation. Some authors 16 distin-
guish three steps : ( 1 ) allocation of territory in general terms, ( 2 ) delim-
itation, and (3) demarcation. Only demarcation, though actually only
the last step, will be considered here. This is the work of the surveyor
in the field, directed by a commission composed of the diplomatic repre-
sentatives of the two states concerned, sometimes accompanied or even
headed by one or several neutrals. The agreement which has been made
14 Maull, op. cit., p. 143, was apparently the first to stress this point.
15 Op. cit., p. 5.
16Boggs, International Boundaries; and A. Hall, "Boundaries in International Rela-
tions," in G. E. Pearcy and R. H. Fifield, World Political Geography (New York.
1948), pp. 521-524.
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 93
at some conference table as to the site of the boundary has to be trans-
ferred into the landscape. Whoever has observed the slow, painstaking
work of a surveyor fixing the limits of private property, will not be sur-
prised to learn that demarcation of state boundaries takes months or even
years, not counting delays due to disagreement. Mountains may be
unscalable, but they are generally less difficult to demarcate than water-
boundaries. A meandering river with its continuously shifting banks and
changing channel is a much more difficult problem. Even a stream con-
fined by rocks to a definite channel poses demarcation problems. Bound-
ary markers can not be put in the middle of a stream, but must be set on
the banks and serve only as indicators from which to look for the actual
boundary. Thousands of soundings had to be made to determine the
thalweg of the St. Croix river on a short stretch.17 Decisions of a peace
conference or boundary conference to use villages as boundaries may
sound very simple. This may result, however, in dividing the adjoining
fields of a single proprietor or in a boundary with many protruding
corners or irrational vagaries.
Generally boundaries have been demarcated by carefully surveyed
intervisible markers. In the once valueless, now oil-rich but featureless
desert in Arabia behind the town of Kuwait the desert is strewn with tar
barrels deposited by sheiks as local landmarks.18 On some boundaries,
where roads or railroads cross them, roadblocks are not uncommon.
Sometimes a path is cut through forest and bush, a grass strip left between
fields, or even a fence erected along the whole length of a boundary. This
is usually regarded as a last resort, if for no other reason than because
of the high cost of erection and maintenance. The Great Chinese Wall
and the Roman Limes are unrivaled today. The so-called Teggart Wall
on the northern border of Palestine, an electrically laden wire fence, was
a last attempt by the British to keep undesired intruders out. This was
due to the explosive situation in the last years of the mandate. Such
fences, only shorter ones, have been erected where boundaries cut through
towns, such as through Italian Fiume and its Yugoslav suburb Susak
before 1940, today reunited as Rijeka, or even along the United States
boundary with Mexico through the city of Laredo. The minefields along
large stretches of the "Iron Curtain" are less visible but more vicious
barriers.
All these devices, however, follow predetermined boundaries. They
make the boundary visible, but do not establish it. Demarcation is the
17 Jones, op. cit., p. 117.
18 The Economist, March 28, 1953, p. 882.
94 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
legitimate process to make a boundary visible. Sometimes demarcation
follows allocation of territory and its more detailed delimitation on the
conference table as soon as possible. That is often the case after wars
when territories are shifted from one sovereignty to another. Hartshorne 19
speaks of superimposed boundaries and contrasts them with antecedent
boundaries which were established long before the land was actually
taken possession of, or even before it was known.
"NATURAL" AND "ARTIFICIAL" BOUNDARIES
Many political geographers have fought against the popular distinction
between artificial and natural boundaries.20 The latter are supposed to
follow natural features such as mountain ranges, rivers, or deserts, the
artificial ones being created by man without regard for physical features.
Actually all boundaries are made by man. Whether or not the boundary
followed or could follow a natural feature depended on many different
circumstances. It has been suggested that such boundaries should rather be
called "naturally marked" 21 or "borrowed from nature" (naturentlehnt) ,22
They are often opposed to straight-line boundaries. The cause for the
selection of straight-line boundaries may be ignorance of the topograph-
ical features, as is true of many of the claimed boundaries in the Antarctic
continent. In other instances, such features as linguistic affinities, popular
loyalties, or existence of communication lines, seemed far more important
than the course of a river or a mountain crest. There is little reason to
call this latter type more artificial than a diplomatically selected mountain
boundary which perhaps cut off alpine pastures from the villages which
used them. This happened when the Austro-Italian border was drawn
after World War I separating German-speaking South Tyrol from North
Tyrol; and it was claimed that the coincidence of a high mountain
crest with a parting of waters and strategic favorable circumstances made
it a perfect "natural" border. The same happened in the Carpathians
between Poland and Czechoslovakia and a similar situation was described
for an old established border, that following the Pyrenees.23
Interest in boundary problems as a geographical problem was first
19 "Geography and Political Boundaries in Upper Silesia," loc. cit.
20 Solch, op. cit.; Hartshorne, "Suggestions on the Terminology of Political Bound-
aries," loc. cit.; Jones, op. cit., pp. 7-8.
21 D. Whittlesey, The Earth and the State (New York, 1944), p. 5.
22 R. Sieger, "Zur politisch-geographischen Terminologie," Zeitschrijt der Gesell-
schaft fiir Erdkunde, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Berlin, 1917-18).
23 D. Whittlesey, "Trans-Pyrenean Spain, The Val d'Arran," Scottish Geographical
Magazine, Vol. 49 ( 1933), pp. 217-228.
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 95
awakened by Ratzel. Living and writing in Germany, he knew thoroughly
the problems and artificial character of the boundaries of the German
states. Indeed, they were to a large degree a product of the Napoleonic
period and their delimitation was mainly a result of considerations which
had nothing to do with geography or historical tradition, but aimed to
give every prince a state of carefully balanced size and taxable income.
Nevertheless, these artificial boundaries have disappeared only since
World War II in many parts of Germany and some still survive.24
Often the term artificial boundary is used as the equivalent for bad
boundary. Jones 25 has shown in a very great number of examples that
any boundary may be good or bad according to the difficulties inherent
in the type of boundary as well as in the circumstances of the time. While
mountain ranges are generally regarded as good boundaries, the inter-
national commission appointed to fix the boundary between Turkey and
Iraq in 1921 agreed unanimously that the Jabel Sin jar should be allocated
as a unit.26 This mountain chain in a semidesert is practically a group
of oases on both sides of the range, remote from any other permanent
settlement.
In conclusion, "there are no intrinsically good or bad boundaries ... all
international border lands are potentially critical. A boundary may be
stable at one time, unstable at another, without a change of a hairsbreadth
in its position." 27
BOUNDARIES MARKED BY PHYSICAL FEATURES
Because of the widespread preference for such naturally marked bound-
aries, those physical features shall be briefly reviewed which are most
often quoted and used for such purposes, especially mountain crests,
water partings, and rivers. Mountain crest boundaries exist in all con-
tinents with the exception of Australia. It has been noticed that the
perhaps oldest group of political boundaries, the boundaries of the his-
torical eighteen provinces of China, in general follow mountain crests
or traverse other sparsely populated zones; only occasionally do they
utilize rivers. 2S But even in New Guinea the boundarv between the
Australian territory of Papua and the trusteeship territory, the former
24 F. Metz, Siidwestdeutsche Grenzen (Remagen, 1951).
25 Op. cit., pp. 121-162.
26 Ibid., p. 98.
27 Ibid., p. 3.
28 H. J. Wood, "The Far East," in W. G. East and O. H. K. Spate, The Changing
Map of Asia ( London, 1950 ) , p. 268.
96 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
German New Guinea, was placed on the central mountain axis of the
island. Where a sharp crest exists and where it coincides with the parting
of waters, such a boundary line is of the most stable and satisfactory
type. The mountains often have formed an uninhabited and mostly unused
zone between two countries long before a boundary line was established.
One of the few surviving examples of such a state exists in the Himalayas
between India and China. Frequently mountain valleys and high pastures
have been slowly included in the economic system of the adjacent areas
and the actual boundary line developed gradually. Such boundary lines
do not necessarily coincide with the crestline— it may be practical to reach
high pastures by means of a mountain-crossing pass; or, people living on
one side may have used, and be entitled to, areas on both sides of the
crest; or, a common economic way of life may bring together a population
living on both sides of the crestline. The usual small-scale map is mis-
leading because it cannot show small but significant deviations. Thus the
Pyrenees, often cited as a perfect mountain boundary of this type,
separate France and Spain only on part of the actual boundary.29
In mountain ridges which lack sharp, continuous crests, it can be shown
that the boundary line is usually a late development, developing from
an original frontier zone. The mountains may not even be the primary
frontier zone, which may be dense forests.30 Bohemia, often called a
mountain fortress, is surrounded by rather low mountains, mostly short
ridges with gaps between them. One of them, the Ore mountain ( Erzge-
birge to the Germans, Krusne Hory to the Czechs), is devoid of the
original forest cover, and it appears that the very old boundary deviates
almost throughout its whole length from the rather sharp divide between
the gentle north-western Saxonian slope and the steep escarpment leading
into the interior of Bohemia. The boundary is located on the gentle north-
western slope, though it is evident that this slope constitutes the lesser
obstacle to penetration. However, it was not the desire for tillable land
or political expansion which brought man onto the mountain, but the
quest for precious minerals. Mining attracted settlers into the mountains
and the need of timber and charcoal for the mines is responsible for the
disappearance of the forests. The boundary line, however, became stabi-
lized in general where the miners from both sides met.
In general, it still holds true that virgin forests, uninhabited mountain
29 Whittlesey, "Trans-Pyrenean Spain, The Val d'Arran," loc. cit.
30 At least one recent author denies entirely the protective function of the Bohemian
mountain rim, J. A. Steers, "The Middle People: Resettlement in Czechoslovakia,"
Geographic Journal, Vol. 102 ( January, 1949 ) .
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 97
ridges, swamps and deserts fulfill their function as natural boundary
zones, as, for instance, is still the case in the undefined deep boundary
zones which separate the border of Sinkiang from Tibet and the similarly
inaccessible 1800-mile-long border which separates Tibet from India,
Sikkim and Bhutan. At the same time, it is true for many areas that the
intensification of agriculture, technological progress, the improvement of
communication systems, and the spreading population have narrowed
the extent of no man's land serving as boundary zones. Forests have been
cut down or taken under management. Regular policing has extended
far into the largest desert of the world, the Sahara. Permanent meteoro-
logical and a chain of radar stations are ringing the Polar regions. Swamps
have been drained, as happened to the Bourtanger Moor on the German-
Dutch border. Under a five-year plan presented in 1952, the U.S.S.R.
intends to drain about 25,000 square miles, or an area roughly the size
of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Delaware combined, in the Pripet
marshes in Byelorussia and the Ukraine, with the goal of adding about
nine million acres of fertile peat soil lands to the Soviet cultivated area.
RIVERS AS BOUNDARIES
In many cases preference has been expressed for rivers as boundaries.
Boggs 31 and Jones 32 have shown the difficulties arising from the use of
rivers as boundaries. Most boundary conflicts between states of the United
States have been caused by river boundaries.33 Also the international
boundary disagreements of the United States have been concerned with
rivers. There was the question concerning the course of the St. Croix river
which had been designated as the boundary between the state of Maine
and the Canadian Maritime Provinces, and there are the continuing prob-
lems which the continuously shifting Rio Grande has created at the
Mexican border since it was adopted as boundary in 1848. An agreement
in 1934 settled most, but not all controversial points. The conflict over
the use of the waters of the Colorado river by California and diminution
of their volume for Mexico is not strictly a boundary problem.
In Kashmir, a similar controversy lent strength to the claim of Pakistan
for a boundary which would give to that country control over waters it
needs for irrigation. This type of conflict becomes a genuine boundary
case if a river which is necessary for irrigation is used as a boundary
31 International Boundaries, pp. 179-182.
32 Op. cit., pp. 108 ff.
33 See map, Jones, op. cit., p. 109.
' I
Fig. 4-6. The Bratislava Bridgehead on the Danube.
Fig. 4-7. The Louisiana Extension on the Mouth of the Mississippi.
98
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 99
line, as is true of the Jordan river between Syria and Israel. To the use
of waterways for navigation, irrigation, and flood control, recently has
been added their use as a source for power. In all these cases not only
the management of the river along the border, but that of tributaries far
away may influence its usability.
It appears that rivers are less manageable as boundaries than any other
feature. Any tampering with them, even the construction of badly needed
flood dykes, influences the opposite, foreign shore and possibly affects
areas farther downstream. To leave a river alone is not practicable, because
of the general tendency of rivers to undercut portions of their banks, silt
up channels, or shift their beds. Only common management in a friendly
spirit can minimize the frictions resulting from the separating boundary
function.
Actually, rivers unite rather than divide the opposite banks. River basins
are essentially units and the unifying function of a drainage basin is in
many cases indistinguishably joined to the separating function of the
divides. Historians and political geographers have long recognized the
essential unity of the Paris basin of the Seine river, of Bohemia, of the
Danubian basin, the Vistula basin, the Amazon basin, the Gangetic plain,
and many others. On the other hand, where river boundaries have been
established there is frequently the desire to create at least a bridgehead
on the most important crossing point. The Bratislava bridgehead on the
Danube (Fig. 4-6) and the Louisiana extension across the lower Missis-
sippi (Fig. 4-7) may suffice as examples.
Many attempts have been made to unite entire river basins for the
purpose of flood control, irrigation, and power development. Bv the
inclusion of the whole river basin in such a scheme, these projects differ
basically from international river regulation agreements for navigable
rivers such as have been devised for the Danube and the Rhine. In this
context the spectacular success of the Tennessee Valley Authority ( TV A )
project comes to mind (cf. Fig. 18-3, p. 579). But the achievements of the
TVA reveal both the potentials and limitations of this type of river basin
control project, especially if one tries to use the TVA example as a yard-
stick for other river and flood control plans. In the case of the TVA it was
possible to overcome gradually the reluctance of a number of states
within the Union which gave up some of their state rights in favor of the
interstate agency.
Since the TVA came into existence, dozens of 'TV As" have been
planned within the United States and abroad; scores of missions from
foreign countries have studied the American TVA and American experts
100 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
have explored the possibilities for similar projects in foreign countries.
However, while the economic advantages achieved by the TVA in many
respects are impressive, no other attempt to imitate this project has been
successful and political obstacles have proved too formidable to be over-
come. This is primarily true for projects in internationally disputed areas
as along the Jordan river or in the area of the principal rivers of the
Indus Basin which provide water for irrigation in Pakistan and originate
in, or flow across India, Kashmir, or Jammu.34 In spite of the often-
expressed hope that the execution of such river basin projects would
result in significant economic advantages to all contestant powers and
would pave the way for political reconciliation, political issues have
maintained their priority as a separating factor. It appears that such
ambitious projects can be undertaken successfully only if the international
situation between the interested nations is on a firm and peaceful basis.
Even within the United States objections to unification raised by local
and special interests have proved to be a most formidable obstacle.
Neither the Missouri Basin nor the Columbia Basin Authority have
developed beyond the blueprint stage. Most of the international projects
have not even entered the blueprint stage, and some of them, though
entirely sound and important from the economic point of view, are at
this time not more than speculations in the harsh light of political
realities.
OCEANIC BOUNDARIES
A special type of water boundaries are the oceanic boundaries of all
states bordering the sea. The shoreline is often regarded, especially for
statistical purposes, as the boundary of a country. The definition of the
shoreline may lead to difficulties, particularly on low coasts adjacent to
shallow seas with high tides. Should the mean water level, the average
low-water mark, or the mark at spring tide be regarded as the boundary?
Different countries have claimed each of these lines. More important,
however, is the claim of most nations to sovereignty over their territorial
waters. This is a zone of water several miles wide. A majority of countries,
among them countries which in 1950 registered four-fifths of all com-
mercial shipping tonnage, claim a zone three miles wide.35 Another almost
10 per cent of commercial tonnage was registered in Scandinavian coun-
tries which claim a four-mile limit. The remaining countries are by no
34 See p. 97.
35 S. W. Boggs, "National Claims in Adjacent Seas," Geographical Review, Vol. 41
(1951), p. 202.
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 101
means negligible, as they count among them the Soviet Union which
claims a twelve-mile belt.
The United States, on September 28, 1945, proclaimed that it would
regard the "natural resources of the subsoil and the sea bed of the con-
tinental shelf beneath the high seas but contiguous to the coasts of the
United States as appertaining to the United States, subject to its juris-
diction and control" (cf. Fig. 5-3, p. 125). This assertion of rights, which
is based on the geological unity of the shelf and the adjacent land, re-
ceived legislative sanction by the Outer Continental Shelf Act of August
7, 1953. 36 A number of states, most of them in the Americas and around
the Persian Gulf, have followed the American example and claimed cer-
tain rights over the continental shelf. Australia followed suit in 1953, by
proclaiming sovereignty over her entire continental shelf reaching in
places more than two hundred miles off her coast. The Japanese were thus
precluded from fishing for pearl shell in the waters off Australia's northern
coast. Countries such as Chile, Peru, San Salvador, and Honduras have
substituted for the claim to the continental shelf a claim to a two hundred-
mile zone. All these countries border the Pacific Ocean— except the north
coast of Honduras— and the continental shelf under any definition would
be of insignificant width. Many countries have established special purpose
claims of different width, ranging from the six miles claimed for customs
and coastal defense by Poland, to a security zone of at least three hundred
nautical miles around the Americas proclaimed by the Consultative Meet-
ing of Foreign Ministers of the American Republics at Panama on October
3, 1939. 37 The present situation is confusing and gives rise to international
conflicts in many oceanic boundary areas. The International Law Com-
mittee of the United Nations is therefore attempting to clarify the prob-
lems involved by emphasizing that a coastal nation exercises sovereignty
over the continental shelf, but subject to the principle of the freedom
of the seas.
In reviewing such claims, boundary lines emerge which can not be
demarcated but which are nonetheless real. Boggs has shown 3S that except
in the rare instance of a straight coastline, it is not easy to be definite
as to where a line should be drawn. Bays,39 islands and rocks, even curva-
36 See Boggs, "National Claims in Adjacent Seas," loc. cit., pp. 185-209.
37 Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 1 (1939), pp. 331-333.
38 In several publications, among them in International Boundaries, pp. 178-85,
and "Delimitation of Seaward Areas under National Jurisdiction," The American
Journal of International Law, Vol. 45 (April, 1951), pp. 240-266.
39 Boggs, "National Claims in Adjacent Seas," loc. cit.; and A. L. Shalowitz, "The
Concept of a Bay as Inland Waters," The Journal, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Depart-
ment of Commerce, No. 5 (June, 1953), pp. 92-99.
102 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
tures of the coastline justify different points of view. If two islands
of different sovereignty are closer together than six miles, the definition of
the median line is by no means simple. Even an interior boundary, such
as that in Lake Michigan between Michigan and Wisconsin, took long-
drawn litigation and investigation and finally a decision of the Supreme
Court in 1936 to define the line. Presumably this boundary had been well
described in preceding legal acts which were, however, shown capable
of different interpretation under the actual conditions of a complicated
coastline. The situation is particularly difficult if two adjacent countries
claim a different width of their territorial waters. Boggs has tried success-
fully to develop methods to find the best line.40 Whether these will be
adopted in international law seems questionable, at least as long as the
present tension remains.
Even less clear is where the continental shelf ends. The usual definition
of the continental shelf as the area less than a hundred fathoms deep
and adjacent to dry land is only a rough approximation. In some cases,
such as the cited example of Chile, the slope of coastal mountains is
continued below the ocean surface and there is, geographically, no con-
tinental shelf. In other cases, the gradual slope may reach much farther
than the hundred-fathom line before the sharp declivity of the continental
slope starts. Rarely will continental slope and continental shelf join in
such a sharp break that it could be called a line. Even the determination
of the hundred-fathom line, though possible with modern means of echo
soundings, would be a tedious job. We do not even know how stable
this line is.
DIVIDING LINES
A review of maps shows that all these various lines have seldom been
mapped. Occasionally, however, we find simple lines, often geometrical
lines, dividing sovereignties over islands or in narrow seas. Most of these
lines are used as a convenience by the cartographer. Some, however,
have or have had international legal meaning, such as the line separating
Alaska from Siberia (Fig. 4-8), the line dividing the islands belonging to
Indonesia and the Philippines, or the now obsolete but famous dividing
line of the Papal decision and the Treaty of Tordesillas between the
Spanish and Portuguese overseas empires. The Alaska-Siberian boundary
was established by the purchase treaty of 1867, by which the United
States acquired Alaska. It consists of two straight lines joining at an
obtuse angle in Bering Strait. The north-south aligned part follows the
40 Boggs, "Delimitations of Seaward Areas Under National Jurisdiction," loc. cit.
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES
103
Fig. 4-8. The Geometrical Line as Boundary: Alaska-Siberia.
meridian 168° 58' 5" west of Greenwich and is not problematic. The
northeast-southwest aligned part connects the southern terminus of this
line in 65° 30' northern latitude with a point about halfway between the
westernmost of the Aleutian Islands and the Soviet Komandorskie Islands
in 54 degrees north latitude, 170 degrees east longitude. It never was
agreed whether this line is part of a great-circle line or a rhumb line,
probably because no practical dispute arose. It was adopted as part of
the defense perimeter of the Americas at the conference in Rio de Janeiro
in 1947 and was defined there as a rhumb line.41 This Alaskan-Siberian
boundary line appears on many maps not as a true political boundary,
which it is, but as part of the International Date Line. This is the line
where ships— and presumably airplanes— crossing the Pacific Ocean west-
ward skip a whole day, or if bound eastward, start the past twenty-four
41 The Treaty was published and the pertinent article 4 is most accessible in F. O.
Wilcox and T. V. Kalijarvi, Recent American Foreign Policy (New York, 1952), p. 210.
104 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
hours over again. This line follows the 180° meridian except in this area
and east of New Zealand, where it deviates eastward to include several
island groups.
GEOMETRICAL BOUNDARIES
It is no accident that where geometrical lines have been established as
boundary lines, lines of the geographical grid were preferred. They are
the easiest to establish. Other geometrical lines exist but are rare. The
boundary between California and Nevada from Lake Tahoe to the
Colorado near Mohave city, and that between Arizona and Mexico from
the Colorado to Nogales are straight lines but not geographical grid lines
and as such are rather exceptional. Still less common are curves, such as
the parts of a small circle which separates Delaware from Pennsylvania,
and that which limited the former German, later Japanese concession of
Kiaochao (Tsingtao).
It is too little realized that many of the winding boundaries shown on
our small-scale maps are often a series of very short, straight lines. This
may surprise many people, because we are inclined to regard straight
lines in the countryside as unnatural. We expect rivers to be winding,
coasts to have bays and promontories, and the edges of natural forests
to be far from straight. However, new boundaries are often agreed upon
at a conference table by attributing towns and villages to different sover-
eignties. These local boundaries are often boundaries between fields and,
as often as not, are straight lines.42 In other cases a winding line is divided
by the surveying field party into short straight stretches to make it
practicable.
In Africa and between the states of the United States straight lines
originally were nothing more than temporary demarcation lines. In the
United States such boundaries have often degenerated into exclusively
administrative lines. Different laws, especially different state tax systems,
liquor laws, and so on, keep them in the consciousness of their citizens.
In a few instances they have won emotional values comparable to Euro-
pean boundaries— the Mason-Dixon line and, internationally, the 49th
42 Only one interesting illustration will be mentioned to show the interplay of man-
made features and natural features and their influence upon local boundaries. In
eastern and southeastern Wisconsin "in general the small rectangular" woodlot is pre-
dominant, following the lines the surveyor has drawn dividing the quadrangle. But in
central Wisconsin "the rectangular land survey shows only rarely in the present wood-
land cover. . . . Slope and rock outcrop are much more critical in aligning the woodland
location." L. Durand, Jr., and K. Bertrand, "Forest and Woodland of Wisconsin,"
Geographical Review, Vol. 45 (1935), p. 270.
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 105
parallel. Eisenhower has denounced the shopworn use of the slogan of
the "unfortified boundary." He did not intend, thereby, to minimize the
value of this boundary, nor would it be possible or desirable to erase
the connotation of pride in this boundary from the American conscious-
ness. Americans, who are often impatient of geometrical boundaries in
other continents, are often unaware that forty-seven of their states 43 have
such geometrical boundaries and that disputes between the states over
such boundaries have been far less frequent than, especially, those over
river boundaries (Fig. 4-9 ).44
The straight line has definite advantages over a winding line that
follows some physiogeographic feature. This occurs in deserts, where land
values are practically nil. It is very expensive and difficult, if not outright
dangerous, to follow some winding hill range or dry wadi bed. It may
be quite simple to draw a straight line. A curious incident was settled
in 1952 between Italy and Switzerland. The boundary at one place in
the high mountains crossed a glacier. Demarcation by stones on the glacier
was possible, but the moving glacier continuously displaced these bound-
ary markers. Finally a straight line was adopted which needed for fixation
only two intervisible markers on the firm rock on both sides of the
glacier.45
This does not imply that geometrical boundaries are always and every-
where preferable. Apart from other problems they are not even always
easy to demarcate. The 49th parallel is a ready example, especially as its
demarcation was undertaken in a spirit of good will and neighbor liness.
A parallel is, however, a curve and as such not very convenient in the
field. Instead of following such a curved line, the boundary commission
followed the sensible procedure of fixing only the boundary markers in
the astronomically correct position on the parallel and drawing straight
lines between them. It is easily recognizable that such straight lines are
the chords of an arc and shorten not only the distance but cut off small
pieces of land actually north of the 49th parallel.46 Jones has shown that
the area involved is not large but neither is it negligible.47 Probably not
very often can such a spirit of compromise be expected.
43 South Carolina is the only exception.
44 See Jones, op. cit., p. 109.
45 Convention of Martigny, July 4, 1952.
46 Jones, op. cit., p. 154.
47 Ibid., p. 157.
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THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 107
BOUNDARY CHANGES
An unfortunate quality of political boundaries is that they are so
difficult to change. The longer a boundary exists the less flexible become
economic ties of the frontier regions to their respective hinterland. Admin-
istrative practices and legal systems become ingrained in the life of almost
every person, as in the case of inheritance or marriage laws and customs.
Emotional values and questions of prestige are added. Still it is not clear
why boundaries should remain unchanged while man and all his insti-
tutions change. It has been shown 48 that there are, indeed, occasions
when a boundary becomes obsolescent, loses part or all of its functions
and its international status. Such was the case when Italian and German
princely states joined to make a unified or federal state. Created as prop-
erty boundaries of feudal powers, these boundaries crisscrossed the land-
scape in such an irrational way, especially in Germany, that they could
not fulfill their function in a modern state. They degenerated until after
World War II they lost all meaning and were no longer a serious obstacle
for the redrawing of the internal German map.49 Only Bavaria remained
mainly within its prewar boundaries. However, such a change of inter-
national boundaries is rare without resort to war. It is somewhat more
often found in internal boundaries, where a peaceful change in the loca-
tion of a boundary can often be effected. The growth of modern metro-
politan cities shows the frequency of such changes on a low level, but
also the obstacles which exist even on this level.
International boundary changes are usually effected by violence. The
38th parallel in Korea is the most recent example of an unsatisfactory
boundary resulting from war. However, when the 38th parallel boundary
was established, following World War II, it was not thought of as a
boundary line of any duration, but as a momentary demarcation line
between the occupying forces of the Soviet Union advancing from the
north, and the Americans advancing from the south.50 No natural features
would have commanded immediate recognition as outstanding, as shown
by the widely divergent suggestions for regional boundaries which had
been advanced under peaceful conditions.51 Old administrative boundary
48 Fischer, loc. cit., p. 208.
49 Metz, loc. cit.
50 S. McCune, "The Thirty-eighth Parallel in Korea," World Politics, Vol. 1 (Janu-
ary, 1949), pp. 223-225.
51 Review of such suggestions, especially by the Russian geographer V. T. Zaichikov
in 1947 and the German geographer H. Lautensach in 1942, by S. McCune, "Geo-
graphic Regions in Korea," Geographical Review, Vol. 39 (October 21, 1949), pp.
658-660.
108
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Fig. 4-10. Germany Divided (1955).
lines offered another alternative. In the light of experience in Europe it
must be doubted whether any of these alternatives was preferable. The
Oder-Neisse line follows physical features. The boundary line between
Eastern and Western Germany follows pre-existing administrative bound-
aries. Both have been denounced vehemently. If so far they have not
played the same unfortunate role as the 38th parallel, this is hardly to
be attributed to intrinsic merits but rather to political circumstances.
The violation of the 38th parallel could be expected to lead to a conflict
between minor powers, South and North Korea only; as a matter of fact,
despite the activities of the United Nations, and especially of American
troops, the war remained localized. In Germany any clash over the bound-
ary would have meant the immediate outbreak of another World War.
It is to be regretted that immediate independent negotiations for a
boundary to replace the temporary 38th parallel demarcation line, were
not entered into. Again the German example is significant (Fig. 4-10).
Despite all protests there is a strong possibility that the Oder-Neisse line
will remain for some time. Even more ominous is the gradual crystalliza-
tion of the boundary between the two Germanies. The establishment and
development of two totally different economic, ideological, and political
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES 109
systems can no longer be extinquished by a political act of reunion. The
allegiance of the two economies to two different systems is leading to
many competing developments in industry and elsewhere which can not
coexist in a reunited Germany. A youth educated and indoctrinated by a
Communist regime will speak a language which, despite the same vocab-
ulary, will have little meaning in the West. The longer the boundary con-
tinues to exist the more difficult it will be to erase it.
It has been suggested that it is easier to change boundaries that have
not had time to crystallize— to become associated with prestige, historical
traditions, or material interests.52 Geometrical lines as boundaries through
unknown territory correspond best to these conditions. They may, there-
fore, for the purpose of a preliminary division fulfill the purpose. Danger
arises if they are allowed to crystallize before a necessary adjustment can
be accomplished. Such a danger line is the boundary partitioning the
Ewe tribe in Africa between French and British sovereignty and kept
by both powers despite all protests by the Ewes themselves. In the
same area, namely Togoland and the Gold Coast, an early adjust-
ment made possible the reunion of two other tribes, the Dagomba and
Mamprusi in 1946.53
The 38th parallel is no longer used as a boundary in Korea. The new
demarcation line, the armistice line of 1953, has replaced it at least
temporarily. This line follows ridges and associated physical features for
large stretches. It is based on the results of the fighting, and has been
proved by its history as a strategically acceptable boundary. Who would
state, however, that this one factor is so preponderant as to make it a
"good" boundary? At least it does not coincide with any of the lines
suggested previously.
54
52 Fischer, loc. cit., p. 203.
53 G. Padmore, The Gold Coast Revolution (London, 1935), pp. 153-154.
54 See McCune, "The Thirty-eighth Parallel in Korea," loc. cit.
CHAPTER
5
The Impact or Boundaries
THE BOUNDARY AS FUNCTION OF THE STATE
Whether we like it or not, we are living in a period when the state
is assuming more and more functions. Americans, traditionally, do not
like it. Population increase, technological progress, especially develop-
ment of communications, progressive differentiation and stratification of
social groups, increase of population groups of proportionally greater
mobility, rising standards of living, and need for raw materials from all
over the world, have combined to make life more complicated. They
have forced more functions upon the state because the individual or even
the small integrated group is no longer capable of performing them, and
is also incapable of existing without them. At the same time people are
becoming more and more conscious of the omnipresence of the state, its
functions, and its institutions. We have become accustomed to the national
mail service. Today we write and receive more Christmas cards than all
the correspondence our great-grandfathers had in a whole year, or perhaps
in a lifetime. We use money coined and printed by the government.
But in many other respects we regard government as irksome or as an
unavoidable nuisance.
Boundaries are national institutions and fulfill functions that a hundred
or more years ago were unthought of.1 Some of the functions, such as
high tariffs, are asked for by interested groups of the citizenry. Others
are demanded by considerations of national welfare, such as the exclusion
1 An almost complete list of functions is given by S. W. Boggs, International Bound-
aries (New York, 1940), pp. 9-10.
110
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 111
of diseased animals. Some functions are simply taken for granted, and are
hardly noticed by the great majority of citizens. The average citizen is
little concerned with the fact that on the other side of the border different
laws and customs regulate the punishment of crime, inheritance of prop-
erty, and many other things. When he attempts to cross a boundary,
however, many functions are felt and resented as restrictions of his free-
dom and independence. That a passport is necessary to cross most bound-
aries, that a tourist can take out of a country only certain items, and
similar boundary restrictions are resented by the average traveler. These
are, at least potentially, sources of friction.
To remove these boundary frictions two solutions seem possible:
diminution of the functions of boundaries until they finally disappear,
or redrawing of boundaries. Theoretically the first way seems the better;
in practice, it is the second solution which is almost exclusively aimed at.
We must start with the admission that the complete abolition of inter-
national boundaries is a Utopian concept at present. Apart from practical
difficulties, as long as nationalistic ideologies are so deeply ingrained and
are still increasing in many parts of the world, the chances for "One
World" seem very remote indeed. Realistic advocates of gradual dimi-
nution of boundary functions look to results of their work with satisfaction
only if they take a very long-range view. It must be realized that the
current trend of development goes rather in the opposite direction and
it may be that to keep boundaries functioning within traditional limi-
tations is sometimes beyond practical possibilities.
DIMINISHING FUNCTIONS OF BOUNDARIES
Still, it is possible to draw a long list of functions which have been
suspended for the benefit of international organizations, thereby relieving
international boundaries of some of their functions. The most far-reaching
undertakings in this respect are truly world-wide in purpose, such as
many of the functions of separate committees of the United Nations.
Some of the most successful of such organizations antedate the United
Nations and even the League of Nations. The Red Cross, founded in
1859, is still outside the United Nations, as is a late-comer, the World
Council of Churches of Christ.2 Their effect on boundary functions may
be small or intangible; however, the Red Cross has been able to send
rapid help across boundaries in disaster areas without regard of boundary
restrictions, and the recent assembly of the Council enabled Church func-
2 Founded 1948.
112 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
tionaries who would have been excluded by law, to come to the United
States. Some older institutions have become special agencies of the United
Nations, such as the Universal Postal Union,3 the International Court of
Justice,4 and the International Labor Office; 5 but most of these interna-
tional organizations have originated as special agencies of the United
Nations. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organi-
zation, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the International Mone-
tary Fund, and the World Health Organization are the best known.6
Others, aiming at common standards in certain aspects of life, are con-
tinuously added. Only recently a World Meteorological Organization,7
and a few years earlier an International Telecommunications Union,8 have
been founded. These two agencies are remarkable because they include
among their members all states of the Soviet bloc.9
Even where common standards are accepted by several nations or all
nations concerned, the member nations will often continue to perform
their functions differently. For instance, the same standards adopted in
educational matters do not necessarily lead to the different states admin-
istering them similarly. Yet such agreements gradually lead to the simpli-
fication of functions which eventually are no longer irritating and sources
of friction in their differences. Sometimes the diminution of boundary
irritations is not always obvious in the disappearance of functions; their
effects are intangible but not less real.
OBSOLESCENCE OF BOUNDARIES
It seems easier to conclude international agreements between two or
a few states than to make multination agreements. Agreements between
the United States and Canada about the utilization of the waters of the
Great Lakes, or between the United States, Great Britain, France, and the
Netherlands concerning economic co-operation in the Caribbean region
come to mind. However, it should not be overlooked that regional pacts
may carry with them the danger of substituting a larger and stronger or-
ganization for several smaller and weaker ones. There is the danger of
making some boundaries less obnoxious by strengthening the outer bor-
3 Founded 1874.
4 Created 1945 as successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice.
5 Founded originally 1919, reorganized 1944, accepted into the U.N. 1946.
6 Founded between 1944 and 1948.
7 Founded 1951.
8 Founded 1934.
9 For a complete list of organs, special agencies of the U.N., and other international
organizations see The Statesman's Yearbook, 1953.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES
113
10 Mi
□ £D
Fig. 5-1. The Saar: Coal and Steel Industries: (1) coal field; (2) steel mills.
ders of the regional organization. Such development occurred when the
continuously quarreling, but rarely fighting, small German and Italian
princely states were replaced by a strong Germany and Italy. Their wars
endangered Europe and finally the world. Similarly, we can discern that
the replacement of the Arab states by a well-organized league would cer-
tainly end the petty squabbles between them, but might strengthen them
for a great war.
So far it is easier to show for internal than for international relations
that obsolescence of boundaries may be a way of progress. The develop-
ment of the Ruhr industrial area across the boundaries of the Prussian
provinces of Westphalia and Rhineland led to the organization of the
Ruhr Planning Authority in 1920. 10 After Germany's defeat in 1945 the
road was open to unite the two Prussian provinces in one state. Similarly
two cities, the Free City of Hamburg and the Prussian city Altona were,
with several smaller communities, reorganized as a land (state) under the
10 For a detailed discussion of the Ruhr as an integral part of the European economy,
3 N. J. G. Pounds, The Ruhr ( Bloomington, Ind., 1952), pp. 237-239.
see
114 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Hitler regime in 1938, after the boundaries had lost almost all sociological
functions.
There are some slight indications that the increasing interdependence
between the Saar area and France and the old-established close cultural
and social connections between the Saar and Germany are tending to
make the boundaries gradually obsolete (Fig. 5-1). Should these bound-
aries lose further economic and sociological functions they would be
reduced to political and national ones, and a solution of the vexing Saar
problem may be easier.
UNCONTESTED BOUNDARIES
Desirable as the taking-over of boundary functions by international
organizations may be, it is largely a matter of future developments and,
therefore, still outside of the field of political geography. On the other
hand, political boundaries have been redrawn on a large scale all the time,
mostly under pressure by the stronger country and very rarely by mutu-
ally satisfactory agreements. Conquest is still the main factor in boundary
changes. We have to accept as a fact the phenomenon that there are
strong forces working for change of existing boundaries. It is tragicomic
that a stronger country often justifies its expansion with the argument that
for its own protection it needs border areas belonging to a weaker neigh-
bor. If boundaries remain unchanged this may be caused by the absence
of forces which work for change. Although Americans will immediately
be reminded of the United States boundary with Canada, it should be
stressed that stability due to absence of these forces is rather the exception
than the rule. It has been pointed out 11 that the line separating the United
States from Canada is generally referred to as "the boundary," while the
line separating this country from Mexico is called "the border." It is be-
lieved that the distinction stems from the fact that there has been more
friction between the United States and Mexico than with Canada. There
has also been more lawlessness on both sides along the southern line,
which the word border suggests. We may translate it into our terminology
by saying that there has been less pressure against the invisible but rigid
boundary, causing conflicts and violation of laws, than against the south-
ern border, creating along the latter a zone in which the repercussions are
felt.
«W. P. Webb, The Great Frontier (New York, 1952), pp. 2ff.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 115
BOUNDARIES UNDER PRESSURE
More significant than the absence of forces is the presence of conflicting
forces which exert pressure against the boundary from opposite sides.
Working singly, either would tend to displace the boundary; operating in
opposition, they tend to neutralize each other. The attempt has been made
to define international boundaries as the continuously changing line where
the pressure from two adjacent political bodies attains a momentary bal-
ance.12 Last, but not least, there are strong forces at work to preserve
established boundaries. Before discussing these two types of forces, those
working for change and those working for stability, it is necessary to point
out some features of boundaries which are characteristic for a zone of
varying width adjacent to a boundary. This zone is commonly called the
frontier.
FRONTIER AND INTERIOR
It has become common usage to speak of frontiers or frontier zones in
two different meanings. One is the frontier as a border area without exact
delimitations, usually preceding the delimitation and demarcation of a
boundary. This use of the term in the designation of the western frontier
of the United States is well known. We have seen in a preceding chapter
that this type of frontier has almost disappeared. We are here concerned
with the second type of frontier: the zone which extends inland from a
boundary line and generally merges gradually with the interior of the
country. Small countries, of course, have no interior in the sense that there
is an area where the influence of the frontier is not felt at all. However,
even in such a tiny country as Israel the difference between the frontier
and the interior is apparent. The inhabitants of the villages on the border
are not only in daily danger of life by raids across the frontier, but they
also resent the seemingly unconcerned behavior of the big-city dweller.
However, measured by standards of other countries, these same city
dwellers are acutely aware of boundary problems, if for no other reason
than the space they occupy in the daily news.
In large countries the dwellers of interior areas are unaware of and
indifferent to boundary problems. The Middle West of the United States,
once the "frontier" par excellence, has become the prototype of a country
where people do not know anything of foreign countries, are not inter-
ested in them, and do not want to have anything to do with them. Appar-
12 J. Ancel, Geographie des frontieres (Paris, 1938).
116 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ently this type of isolationism is receding; it is still enough of a life force
to illustrate our point.13
In this connection, mention may be made of the fact that the very size
of the country and the basic difference of psychological attitudes in regard
to border problems between the people of the Middle West are, for in-
stance, the people of the Eastern Seaboard regions, account for the fact
that "in the United States the word frontier . . . becomes a concept with
such wide ramifications and so many shades of meaning that it cannot be
wrapped up in a neat definition like a word whose growth has ceased and
whose meaning has become frozen. It is something that lives, moves geo-
graphically." 14
FRONTIER PSYCHOLOGY
Willingly or not, people living near a boundary have their lives shaped
by its influence one way or the other. In past periods border provinces
received greater autonomy because it was impossible to defend them
against a sudden attack if their authorities had not enough power to do so
of their own accord. There are many examples where the population of
a border area was organized in a permanent semimilitary organization,
called a "march" in Europe. The Cossacks, along the Russian and Ukrain-
ian frontiers, were organized against Turkey and the Tatars and are per-
haps the best known. Their semimilitary autonomy survived to the
Bolshevist revolution. Austria, another medieval "march," has survived as
a separate body politic, but its citizens are still unsure how far they have
developed a separate national awareness. At times they liked to think of
themselves as Germans because of their German language and certain
traditions; but every time they come in close contact with the Germans,
they feel vividly the differences in their way of life.15
Inhabitants of frontier zones are in many cases conscious of the fact
that they live in an exposed situation. This is not only true in half-civilized
environments such as the Frontier Province of Pakistan and Afghanistan,
but people of Lorraine and Alsace feel the neighborhood of a potential
attacker very strongly. It is not incidental that some of the most national-
istic, but also most gifted political leaders of France came from this politi-
cally-conscious frontier. Many similar cases can be cited- One may suffice.
13 See pp. 21-23.
14 Webb, op. cit., pp. 2 ff.
15 There exists a voluminous literature on this problem. See especially H. W. Wei-
gert, Generals and Geographers (New York, 1942), pp. 115 ff., and the book of the
chancellor Schuschnigg, Drei Mai Osterreich (Innsbruck, 1938), written before
Hitler's conquest of Austria in 1938.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 117
The population of Finnmark and Troms, the two northernmost provinces
of Norway, suffered most heavily from war destruction in World War II
because of their proximity to the Russian border. Now they are more con-
scious than ever that they would be the first victims of a violent East-West
conflict.
EFFECTS OF THE FRONTIER ON ECONOMIC LIFE
The endangered frontier situation is brought home to people also in
regard to their freedom of movement. Not only the boundary itself but
military installations and regulations affecting so-called defense areas re-
strict this movement. This leads also to restrictions hampering the eco-
nomic life of such a region. Market towns, which normally would be in the
center of an agricultural area, may have a lopsided trading area. In gen-
eral, because of boundary restrictions, a city close to a boundary will be
cut off from "natural," that is, nearby, customers by the boundary. Less
normal, but still quite frequent, is the city that because of differing prices
and money values has a trading area across the border larger than in its
own country. During the last few years we have seen how in Berlin people
from the western sectors of the city flocked into East Berlin because of the
lower exchange value of the East Mark; 16 later this trend was reversed
when wares became scarce and the people from the Soviet sector came
into West Berlin to purchase things unavailable in the East. Eventually
movement in both directions slackened because of the political difficulties
put in its way X1 (cf. Fig. 3-3, p. 64). On a smaller, but instructive scale
it was shown that new businesses concentrated at the points of crossing
from one to the other zone, while at the same time established businesses
—barbers, grocers, cobblers, and others— located along the boundary but
away from the crossings, had to close up because many of their customers
could not reach them across the street, or at least could not pay the prices
in a different currency.18 What happened, dramatically, in Berlin within a
short period and in a small area is but an illustration of what occurs in one
or the other form along almost any boundary. Even if economic conditions
on both sides of a boundary are approximately equal, prices on the same
level, and boundary formalities at a minimum, the unavoidable formali-
ties will influence the mutual movement.
16 P. Scholler, "Stadtgeographische Probleme des geteilten Berlin," Erdkunde,
Vol. 7, No. 1 (1953), p. 6.
17 G. W. S. Robinson, "West Berlin, The Geography of an Exclave," Geographical
Review, Vol. 43 (October, 1953), p. 549.
18 Scholler, loc. cit.
118 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Movement occurs not only in the form of trade, but also in commuting
from the place of residence to the place of work. Some boundaries make
commuting of this kind impossible or difficult; others invite it. Mexicans
come across the border as seasonal labor and their heavy influx has
created the problem of the so-called "wetbacks." On the Canadian bor-
der, especially in the Detroit area where social conditions on both sides
of the border are similar, the problem of commuting across the boundary
is of insignificant proportions. French mines and industries located in
France, but along the Belgian and the Saar borders have attracted labor
from across the border (cf. Fig. 5-1). There is a zone close to the border
where daily commuters live; in a second, slightly overlapping zone we
find commuters who return home only over the weekend; a third zone,
that of seasonal migrants, is not distinctive, partly because of their small
number in this particular area, and partly because their habitation can not
be localized so distinctly.19 We do not have comparable data for the
French side of the border. It can only be assumed that there also a sub-
zone of factories and mines which employ daily commuters can be dis-
tinguished from another wider, but overlapping zone with weekly com-
muters. Similar conditions exist on other boundaries.
FRONTIERS AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATIONS
Among the factors emphasizing the dividing function of the boundary
is, in many cases, a country's communications system, the extension of
which is halted by the boundary. Railroads often have their terminals at
some distance from the boundary, or have more restricted service across
it than in the interior. Good roads may deteriorate near the boundary into
badly maintained secondary roads and trails. Even internal boundaries
may have similar effects. The eastern Rhode Island-Massachusetts bound-
ary was superimposed as a straight line on an area which had already
developed irregular road and subdivisional patterns. Though roads may
not be affected in this case, services such as gas, electricity, and water
end abruptly at the border. School districts may have an inconvenient
shape.20
There are, however, frontiers where the opposite effect occurs. On
heavily fortified boundaries, military roads, built for heavy loads, form
a dense net close to, and occasionally lead to, the very boundary where
19 R. Capot-Rey, La region sarroise (Nancy, 1934).
20 E. Ullman, "The Eastern Rhode Island-Massachusetts Boundary Zone," Geo-
graphical Review, Vol. 29 ( 1929), pp. 41 ff.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 119
they terminate. Before World War II the Italians pursued such policy on
their European boundaries, and extensive road-building preceded their
attack on Ethiopia.21 Another illustration is the six thousand-mile trans-
Siberian railway which was pushed to completion in 1904, mainly for the
purpose of defense. Military considerations also account for other railroad
developments in Soviet Asia after World War II. Another influence of
boundaries can be observed along every administrative boundary. People
in small towns or on dispersed farms have business to transact with au-
thorities, as for instance the tax collector, the courts, the school board, or
the county agent. They will visit the seat of the local government more or
less regularly and, on the occasion of these visits, do their shopping. The
administrative centers therefore attract the population even if other towns
may be in closer proximity.
THE FRONTIER AND ITS IMPACT ON
LOCATION AND INDUSTRIES
Frontier zones are to a certain degree at a disadvantage as far as their
economic activities are concerned. A new boundary is a strong deterrent
to new investments and may even cause some industries to migrate farther
inland. However, mines, primary agricultural production, industries de-
pendent upon raw material, and in general industries whose histories and
needs are closely linked with their geographical location cannot easily
move away from boundaries. Other industries are less intimately wedded
to a certain location, especially defense industries, and will be transferred
to safer locations inland, especially when war or danger of war moves the
frontier too close for comfort. Well known is the example of the Soviet
Union, where whole industries have been moved east from the western
frontier zones into the Volga region, behind the Urals, and into Asia. This
movement reached its climax in the years of World War II. It seems to
have slowed down considerably since then, partly, no doubt, because the
satellite states have largely taken over the boundary functions of the west-
ern provinces, partly also because of the difficulties of this wholesale mi-
gration. In the United States, a trend can be observed to establish new
critical defense installations far inland, in the Tennessee valley, in the
deserts of the western plateaus, but nowhere near the borders or coasts,
which can be easily reached from across the sea. In comparison, Sweden,
21 D. Whittlesey, "The Impact of Effective General Authority Upon the Landscape,"
Annals of the Association of American Geography, Vol. 25 (1935), pp. 85 ff, has
described the formation of defense zones or shells.
120 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
lacking large spaces remote from boundaries such as exist in the United
States, has effected a transfer of critical, especially aircraft, industries to
underground locations offering relative safety against attacks from the air.
The Swedish example emphasizes the limitations, in aerial warfare, of a
policy bent on establishing and transferring industrial plants inland and
far from coasts and borders, since these locations do not necessarily deter
an aggressor striking from the skies.
22
CROSS-BOUNDARY INFLUENCES
Hardly any frontier has escaped being influenced from across the
boundary. The influence may be only a few words of the foreign language
helping to shape the local dialect, or a few borrowed habits in custom and
food. It may lead to a more or less pronounced bilingualism, to likes or
more often dislikes of the neighbor, to rare or frequent intermarriages, or
at least to knowing more than one way of life. Frontier people, consciously
or not, willingly or not, absorb some of the ways of their neighbor.23 Or
they retain and cling to older customs which have disappeared elsewhere,
developing a cultural lag in areas remote from centers of a different and
often more rapid cultural growth. The gaucho of the Argentinian Pampa
has in some respects customs similar to those of his neighbors across the
frontier in Bolivia, Paraguay, or Uruguay— customs which have disap-
peared from the vicinity of Buenos Aires. Sometimes such similarities
across a frontier are remnants of former political alignments. Nobody will
doubt that California is American in its way of life despite the Spanish-
Mexican atmosphere suggested by some missions, churches, or place
names. But few people realize that water rights in California, and else-
where in the southwest, are still governed by law derived from Roman
law in its Spanish-Mexican tradition and not by the Anglo-Saxon common
law.24
CONTINUATION OF FEATURES ORIGINATING FROM
BOUNDARIES NO LONGER IN EXISTENCE
However the frontier man may differ from his co-national in the interior,
he will also differ from the people across the boundary, even if he should
belong to the same linguistic or other minority group. This is due to his
22 See p. 189.
23 Boggs, op. cit., p. 10, speaks in this connection of osmosis.
24 Whittlesey, "The Impact of Effective General Authority Upon the Landscape,"
loc. cit., p. 54.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 121
necessary adjustment to the economy and administration of the state of
which he is a citizen. Economic activity, however, shapes the cultural
landscape so deeply that, should such an international boundary cease to
exist, many former features tend to persist.
One such feature which tends to persist are trade areas. In theory, a
town of a certain size will dominate a more or less circular or hexagonal
trade area. Such circular areas of different radii overlap according to size
and extent of services offered by various urban areas. Political boundaries
tend to distort such trade areas and these distortions disappear only some
time after the disappearance of the political boundary. This is true also of
the road and railroad systems. Although roads and railroads can be built
quickly, it is seldom done as fast as is technically possible. Certain remind-
ers of an old boundary may survive for centuries. The street plan of many
German cities west of the Rhine and south of the Danube is still deter-
mined by the original location of the walls and main streets of the Roman
castle on the site of which the city developed, while north and east of the
ancient Roman boundary other patterns prevail.
Also psychological factors may be very persistent. The open, optimistic,
neighborly ways of the American West are an inheritance of frontier days,
where life would have been impossible without the unorganized but very
efficient help of the neighbors. On the other hand, the aggressive nation-
alism of the French of Lorraine reflects a frontier mentality of an alto-
gether different kind in this much-fought-over country.
In regions which have been fought over through long periods we often
find that the contest has been instrumental in forcing certain characteris-
tics upon the frontier population which distinguish them, in spite of their
linguistic and religious bonds, from their neighbors.25 The Saar is an illus-
tration of a frontier area whose population has been wooed by French and
Germans. As elsewhere under similar conditions, we find here nationality
traits reflecting consciousness of a frontier situation which is precarious
and, at the same time, offers opportunities for bargaining on a political
and economic plane.26
IMPRINT OF THE BOUNDARY UPON THE LANDSCAPE
A boundary becomes more ingrained in the landscape and in the ways
of the people the longer it exists. This, and not special topographic fea-
25 Ibid.
26 C. C. Held, "The New Saarland," Geographical Review, Vol. 41 (1951), esp.
pp. 603 ff.
122 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
tures, is the main reason why old established boundaries seem often so
much better than newly established ones. It has been asserted that if
boundaries retain their locations through centuries, or reassume them
when displaced, this is in itself a proof of the peculiar fitness of their
location. That may be true in a few instances. Usually, however, it is the
very existence of the boundary which shapes the human landscape and
makes it advisable to retain old boundary sites or to readopt them. This
is also the factual background for the argument for "historical" bound-
aries, specious in some cases, but very real in others. On the other hand,
a new boundary, however artificial, acquires separating features of its
own by prolonged existence.27 Boundary-makers, especially those of the
Versailles and St. Germain, Trianon and Neuilly treaties of 1919, have
often been accused of geographical ignorance, of imperialistic greed, or
of callous disregard of the popular wishes. Some of these accusations may
be well founded. However, it should not be overlooked that every new
boundary cuts through some older unit, requires adjustments, and will
thereby cause a painful transition for some groups. In areas of old bound-
aries such birth pains are forgotten; they may even never have been felt
painfully because boundaries had so few functions in former centuries.
The human, if not the physical landscape has changed since the boundary
was established. If there are valid reasons for a boundary change there is
no way out of the dilemma; both the retention of the old or the creation
of a new boundary will hurt.
THE PRESTIGE FACTOR
These factors of human geography, developed over a lengthy period,
are a force working for preservation of an existing boundary. This force
may in some cases be only one of several factors and in itself not very
strong; it is, however, closely connected with nongeographical conditions,
such as questions of prestige. Prestige has often hindered agreement by
nations on boundary changes, even if they did not inconvenience the one
partner and brought obvious advantages to the other. Only where the
factor of prestige does not enter into the picture are such arrangements
possible. It was possible in 1927 for Belgium to give up an area of 480
square miles of the Congo in return for a cession by Portugal of ( Fig. 5-2 )
little more than one square mile near Matadi in the estuary of the
Congo 28— an area of uncrystallized boundaries. But it seems impossible
27 G. Weigand, "Effects of Boundary Changes in the South Tyrol," Geographical
Review, Vol. 40 ( July, 1950 ) .
28 The Statesman's Yearbook, 1953, p. 807.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES
123
OCEAN
DILOLO.BOOT
111^''' j:l::::EiiaabcthviUi
I
^..-_..^jj| NORTHERN |j RHODESIA j
20 jjiiii I&&]
Fig. 5-2. The Congo Territory: Exchanges Between Belgium and Portugal.
for Austria to give up the almost-exclave of Jungbluth, containing a ham-
let in mountainous terrain.29 Other exchanges in colonial regions have
been effected, hardly noticed in the metropolitan area and hardly realized
by the natives of the area. Once a territory has acquired an emotional
value, no economic quid pro quo can satisfy. When Switzerland needed
the headwaters of a tributary of the Rhine, the Val di Lei, for a power
plant, it was possible to reach an agreement over this uninhabited tiny
area concerning use and indemnities, but not concerning the transfer of
the sovereignty from Italy to Switzerland. If boundaries of a lower order,
that is, not international boundaries, are to be corrected, however, such
rectification is no longer uncommon though by no means easy.
EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT
It is difficult to distinguish between questions of prestige and true emo-
tional attachment based on long common history, memories, or symbolical
values. The Italian people have easily forgotten the loss of Savoy, which
was ceded to France as the price for Napoleon Ill's help in bringing about
the unification of Italy in the war with Austria. Savoy was the home of
the kings of Italy, but was not Italian in language or tradition. In most
parts of Italy the identification with the dynasty was never strong. The
2 9 See p. 63.
124 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
simultaneous cession of Nizza was resented more strongly, but still did not
influence Italian politics to a large degree. On the other hand, the question
of Trieste is still one to stir up widespread emotions. Trieste is only partly
Italian-speaking, is economically ill-fitted for a union with Italy, and has
belonged to Italy for only twenty-seven years. However, it had long been
a symbol of success or failure, and any attack on its status evokes feelings
of resentment.
At one time the slogan "Fifty-four forty or fight" could bring America
to the brink of war. It is forgotten. Nothing binds the overwhelming
majority of Americans to the once claimed territory. If there exists some
antagonistic, often unreasoned anti-British feeling, it has other sources.
The Revolutionary War and the colonial period is still fought over in the
schools and remembered at Fourth of July celebrations. In the east it left
a few tangible monuments. Many Americans pride themselves on being
descendants from the fighters of this time. Yet no boundary questions are
involved. In contrast, in Europe, and occasionally in other continents, such
historical memories are usually somehow connected with boundary prob-
lems. This makes boundary changes, except by war, extremely difficult.
COASTAL BOUNDARIES
Despite all these forces working for the status quo there are, on almost
every boundary, also forces which work for change. Stability, stronger or
weaker pressure, and actual change result from the interaction of all these
forces. There is hardly any boundary the stability of which is absolute.
Problems exist even at boundaries such as coasts which by their very
physical nature seem destined for stability. We have referred briefly to
the proclamation by the United States that it would regard the continental
shelf as pertaining to the United States.30 We have mentioned in the same
place that other states took this as an occasion to expand their claims
seaward. In one case, that of Australia, the motive is to keep the Japanese
fishermen away, a very understandable desire in view of the events of the
last war, but a one-sided act subject to challenge at some future moment.
The issue of the ownership of the submerged lands was settled, at least
temporarily, by act of Congress of May 22, 1953. This act gives owner-
ship to the coastal states within a zone of three miles between the low-
water mark and the outer limit of the coastal waters, and ten and a half
miles along the coasts of Florida and Texas ( Fig. 5-3 ) . It does not apply
to tidal land— the zone lying between mean high and mean low water
30 See p. 101.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES
125
TEXAS
MEXICO
J.R.F.
Fig. 5-3. State Boundaries in the Continental Shelf: Louisiana (3 miles), Texas (10^
miles): (1) High Seas of Gulf of Mexico; (2) Continental Shelf; (3) Salt Dome
Oilfields.
which is submerged only temporarily generally twice a day. Fishing rights
have played a considerable role in the development of the concept of
territorial waters. France has retained two tiny islands off the coast of
Newfoundland— Saint Pierre and Miquelon— as bases for its fishing fleet,
and until 1904 clung to the right, acquired by the Treaty of Utrecht in
1713, for its fishermen to land on the coast and dry their catch within
definite periods. France still retains fishing rights within the territorial
waters. Similarly, American rights, cause of many recriminations, were
fixed— and curtailed— only in 1910. Fishing rights in territorial waters and
conflicts arising therefrom have also contributed to acerbate the relations
between Japan and Russia.
One would hardly expect the coast circling the Arctic Ocean to be the
stage for similar problems. Actually, nowhere else have coastal powers
extended their claims so far seaward as here. Starting in 1927, the Soviet
Union proclaimed the sector principle, claiming sovereignty over all the
sea, including undiscovered islands, in a sector with its base on the coast
extending from Murmansk to the Chukchee Peninsula and having its
apex at the North Pole. The United States government has never recog-
nized the validity of this legal construction, although all other powers
126
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Fig. 5-4. The Sector Principle in the Arctic Ocean.
having interests in the Arctic or Antarctic have recognized it 31 (Fig. 5-4).
Coasts are not only a basis for expansion, they are also open to all kinds
of intrusion. It has been said that coastal peoples have a wider horizon,
are more influenced by foreign thought than people inland, not excluding
those on land boundaries. There is a difference, however, between differ-
ent types of coasts. Steep, rocky coasts; straight, sand-dune girded coasts
on shallow waters and mangrove-grown tropical coasts may be practically
inaccessible. High mountains a short distance behind the coast may re-
strict the influences coming from overseas. They may also force the coastal
population to look for their livelihood on the water. Phoenicia and Greece
are the classical examples; Norway, Iceland, and to a certain degree
Japan, the modern ones. However, not every population takes to the sea.
Neither the Indians of California nor the Araucanian Indians of Chile
31 See pp. 82-84.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 127
ever became seafaring, though confined by mountains and sea to an in-
hospitable narrow strip of land.
All these Pacific Indians remained culturally secluded because they
never were able to reach an opposite coast.32 Phoenicians and Greeks
brought home cultural achievements from many coasts. There is no doubt
that any accessible coast is open to varied influences, while land borders
are open only to influences from one neighbor.
The negative factor in such accessibility is that coasts are open also to
military invasions. Great Britain has been invaded by Celts, Romans,
Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Norsemen, and French with results still to be found
in the British demographic, linguistic, and cultural heritage. With the
great outburst of European activity in the period of the Renaissance and
overseas explorations, Europeans invaded the coasts of all other conti-
nents. Following invasion, the course of development depended on physi-
ographic factors in the other continents, political and demographic condi-
tions in the European homelands, and cultural levels of the non-European
countries. Escarpments and rapids in rivers kept the European explorers
on the coasts of Africa, whereas the accessible St. Lawrence and Missis-
sippi led the French rapidly into the interior of America. A low level of
civilization of the indigenous population kept the Europeans between
mountains and sea in eastern Australia, while the advanced civilization of
Peru and Mexico lured the Spaniards across tremendous mountain bar-
riers. Few Frenchmen were available for the penetration of North
America, while the coastal string of British colonies soon became the basis
for westward migration on a broad front. In the highly civilized Asian
countries, colonies along the coasts remained either purely commercial
bases— Hongkong and Macao are relics on the coast of China— or became
bases for political domination but not mass immigration. In India, Indo-
nesia, the Philippines, and Burma this process has run its full course;
political domination has vanished, but not without leaving a deep cultural
imprint.
An interesting example of a country with coastal boundary is offered by
Palestine. Invasions from all directions have penetrated into this country.
Invasions from north and south usually passed through, using this poor
and small country as a corridor between sea and desert to more alluring
goals in the great river valleys. To the nomads from the east, however-
warlike but small tribes— it appeared a "country flowing with milk and
honey." From Abraham to the Arabs these intruders settled there. Less
32 German geographers have a special term, Gegenkiiste, which recently has found
entry into English-language geographical writing.
128 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
successful have been the intruders from the sea, Philistines as well as
Crusaders. Their latest successors are the Jews, whose state in its con-
figuration resembles that of its historic predecessors with its domination
of the coastal plain and odd-shaped extensions inland.
As mentioned before, the successful resurrection of long-abolished
boundaries has been regarded as proof of their location in a geographi-
cally favorable location. Such a statement can not be maintained as a
general rule. The example of Palestine (cf. Fig. 7-7, p. 192) demonstrates
its fallacies especially clearly, but also shows the extent of its validity.
The eastern boundary of Palestine has been the edge of the desert time
and again. However, this desert boundary shows a continuous change, de-
pending upon the mutual strength of nomads and settlers, as well as upon
the changes of climatic conditions, expressed in a series of moist or dry
years. In western Palestine invaders from the sea could penetrate the
plains, while the natives, pushed into a defensive position, held on to the
high plateaus. Saul and David held the Judean plateau against the Philis-
tines; but at the same period the Jebusites still maintained their stronghold
on the least accessible part of the plateau, Jerusalem and Mount Zion.
BOUNDARIES AND POPULATION PRESSURE
It would be strange if ancient boundaries, even those that served well
in the past, would fit equally well into modern conditions. Hardly any of
the human conditions have remained unchanged. Almost everywhere,
population, its increase and its pressure, has undergone basic changes.
Again Palestine— indeed, all the countries of the Fertile Crescent— offers
a good example. In the steppe and desert, living room is sparse. Nomadic
tribes have to migrate as soon as their herds have eaten all edible food in
one locality. They can return to the same place only after the pasturage
has had a long period of recovery. They need, therefore, much space. If
the tribe increases, it has to increase its herds or starve. Increased herds
need more pasture. Soon the size limit is reached and quarrels with other
tribes over pasture follow. Each tribal group alone is small and not able
to conquer the fertile land of the settlers. This land lures them, however,
and finally many tribes unite to conquer the settled land, originally to
convert it into pasture, usually ending by becoming sedentary themselves.
Akkadians and Aramaeans, Hebrews and Chaldaeans, Elamites and Hyk-
sos, all repeated the same story. Mohammed united the Arabs with a re-
ligious idea and his successors led the Arabs farther afield than any of the
preceding waves of nomadic conquerors had been able to penetrate.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES
129
Fig. 5-5. The United States-Mexican Boundary.
The same story is repeated in all the steppe and desert countries of the
world, and in other primitive societies. Overpopulated Pacific Islands
sent their surplus population to people uninhabited islands. The Maoris
reached New Zealand only a short time ahead of the white man.
Under conditions of technological progress countries can occasionally
absorb part or all of a population increase. England at the time of the in-
dustrial revolution is the classic example. But the Greeks, in the period
of their largest cultural progress, sent out scores of colonies. The early
medieval German tribes, at the time when they were adopting the more
productive three-field agricultural rotation, and had started using the iron
ax for clearing the forest, were pushing into the sparsely settled Slavic
countries to the east.
Population pressure is still one of the most powerful forces causing emi-
gration, immigration, and conquest to win "Lebensraum." This urge to
obtain new living space can be abused dishonestly, as it was by Hitler and
Mussolini who, at the same time clamored for new space for their popula-
tion surplus and initiated a program for a more populous nation at home.
This can not disguise the fact that population pressure is a real problem.
In this chapter we do not deal with the question of whether population
pressure can be relieved by other measures than boundary changes; here
it must suffice to point out that population pressure still accounts in our
time for major boundary problems.
An American problem is that of the "wetbacks" on the southern bound-
ary between the United States and Mexico 33 (Fig. 5-5). Mexico with its
34 See p. 377.
130 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
rapidly growing population, especially among the poorest groups and in
the poor provinces of the arid northern part of the country, can not pos-
sibly absorb all its people. In the American states north of the border is a
large labor market for unskilled, seasonal labor. The result is a heavy pres-
sure of would-be immigrants from the relatively overpopulated Mexican
area. The boundary problem is a social, administrative, and local problem
at present, because the Mexican government has not espoused the cause
of the "wetbacks" so far. But the boundary has to be guarded heavily, its
maintenance is costly, and still it remains a problem. We may compare
with this situation the population pressure of Puerto Rico.34 A poor,
poorly educated, Spanish-speaking, landless, agricultural proletariat is
attracted by New York, because even the least paying jobs in the great
metropolis appear as a great improvement compared with the living con-
ditions at home. There is no international boundary to hinder or make
difficult migration or to threaten international complications. That does
not eliminate the problem. It pushes the boundary problem, that of an
administrative boundary, into the background, and emphasizes the prob-
lem of social and racial discrimination and adjustment.
BOUNDARIES AS SOCIAL DIVIDES
Even social boundaries may be mapped. Occasionally a street is a very
distinct boundary between a "restricted" area and one peopled by a racial
minority. However, such boundaries have less staying power than inter-
national ones.
Under the racial policy of the Union of South Africa the native Bantus
are theoretically confined to reservations which have insufficient resources.
The Bantus are forced to migrate into the mines and compounds of the
South African gold fields or, less often, to farms to find their living.
In order to maintain the artificial social order the Union is forced to
strengthen its segregation policy. Enclaves or neighboring areas which do
not conform to the South African pattern are an actual or potential threat
to the social order of the Union. This has already led to the practical
annexation of South-West Africa, despite the protest of the United Na-
tions. There is also a mounting pressure for incorporation of the British
protectorate in Basutoland, Swaziland, and Bechuanaland (cf. Fig. 3-2,
p. 60), and for expanding the Union to the Rhodesias.
Social boundaries of the kind existing in the United States can, politi-
cally and sociologically, be highly disturbing, and the social boundaries
33 See p. 377.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 131
in South Africa which are the expression of the Apartheid principle may
contribute at some future date to explosive developments affecting African
lands far beyond the boundaries of South Africa. Population pressure,
more than ever before, affects boundary structures seriously. It was popu-
lation pressure, combined with an open-door policy of the British colonial
administration, which led to mass immigration of Indians into Burma,
Ceylon, and the Malayan Peninsula; into the latter Chinese came in even
greater numbers (cf. Fig. 10-3, p. 378). World War II and its aftermath
has stopped this migration, and forced many Indians, especially from
Burma, to flee their new home. India and Ceylon are in negotiation about
the repatriation of a large part of the Indians. But in Malaya the creation
of a plural society can no longer be undone.35
STABILITY OF BOUNDARIES OF SPARSELY-POPULATED AREAS
We can not neglect the fact that boundaries between areas of rapidly
increasing population and areas of sparse population are threatened in
their stability. A case in point is the relationship of Australia to the over-
populated lands of Southeast Asia and of Japan. We may agree with Grif-
fith Taylor's assertion that "the empty lands" of Australia are a burden to
the Commonwealth rather than an asset, and their vast potentialities exist
only in the mind of the ignorant booster.36 Although he estimates that
Australia could, mainly in the southeast, sustain twenty million people
under the present standard of living, he admits that with the lower stand-
ards of Central Europe this number could be doubled and trebled. At
present only seven million are living there. Thus it may still, for a long
time, appear an empty continent to the overcrowded Asian nations.37
The villages of France have been depopulated by the combined
effects of low birth rates and migration to the cities. Gradually Italian
and Spanish immigrants are taking the place of the Frenchmen who
are moving into the cities. As long as the cultural attraction of France
is strong enough to absorb these humble immigrants, this process is
healthy and is not likely to cause friction. However, should France no
longer be able to assimilate the immigrants, and large Italian and Spanish-
speaking areas develop on the French side of the boundary, the boundary
35 J. Morrison, "Aspects of the Racial Problem in Malaya," Pacific Affairs, Vol. 22
( December, 1949 ) . The official census of 1947 showed that the Federation of Malaya
had a population of 4,908,000. Of this total the Malays made up 49.5 per cent, the
Chinese 38.4 per cent, and the Indians 10.8 per cent; see also pp. 379, 380,
36 G. Taylor, Australia, 6th ed. (London, 1951), p. 477.
37 On immigration to Australia, see p. 375,
132 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
will become less secure despite its location along the high ranges of Alps
and Pyrenees.
ECONOMIC REASONS FOR BOUNDARY OBSOLESCENCE
Population is not the only factor for change. Significant changes which
affect the economic structure of a country are likely to affect its boundary
structure as well. The development of commercial cities and later of a
capitalistic economy has been responsible to a large degree for the obso-
lescence of the ill-defined boundaries between small feudal principalities.
This process has been going on since the Renaissance, when in Italy a few
powerful cities, republics, or city states, some ruled by military dictators
called condottieri— Venice and Florence, as well as Milan or Ferrara—
established viable territorial states reaching beyond their city limits. This
happened in France at approximately the same period, when autocratic
kings deprived the nobility of their actual rule and left them only titles
and income, but no power. The unification of France in administrative
respects was not complete as long as the kings retained the feudal system
of levying tolls on many stations along the main trade routes. The French
Revolution opened the way for the transformation of the artisan and mer-
chant citizenry into a capitalistic society by sweeping away also these
internal boundary-like obstructions together with other obsolescent insti-
tutions. A continuous boundary around France was established, indicating
not only a common political allegiance but also economic uniformity.
This process has not yet come to an end. Economic and technological
development has made the economic position of the small and weak coun-
tries rather precarious. Immediately after World War II, three small
countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, agreed to enter
into an economic Union, Benelux.38 Although the implementation of the
Union is proceeding at a much slower pace than was anticipated,39 it has
become a reality. Larger unions of the European countries have proceeded
even more slowly, especially if seen with the impatient eyes of many Ameri-
cans who recognize the advantages of such international groupings on an
economic plane but are too distant to appreciate the numerous intangible
38 The agreement was entered into in September, 1944, became effective in October,
1947, and the common customs tariff was activated on January 1, 1948.
39 Among the retarding factors the following are worth mentioning: (a) Belgium's
situation after World War II was much better than that of the Netherlands, which
had to overcome the loss of its colonial empire and had to repair the severe damage
caused by the opening of the dykes by the Germans during the war; ( b ) Belgium,
Luxembourg, and the Netherlands were in many ways competitive economic systems;
(c) the mentality of the Belgian and Dutch nations differs in many ways of life.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES
133
luNITED 0ENttA,B|C
'I f^ \ M UNIOI^F SOVIET SOCIAIIST REPUBLICS
/f\: Poland!: '
■)**■•< west foctf :■);.. . ; . ■
FRANCE .A-v _/ %-:'s.iS<*
,"swiTri^L.AU5TOA /.-"r-'.-y. .-.vt
^~/ HUNGARK >T '• ■
•-'<i>i RUMANIA
■v.:::::::::;X::
VVWXJSUVtA\*t^^:-^:
/BULGARIA'
ALBANIA^ ^ (■- ^—^ '
Fig. 5-6. The Satellite Countries of Eastern Europe.
factors which the unifying process has to overcome. Another important
development in Western Europe was the conclusion of the European Coal
and Steel Community 40 preceded by the Organization for European Eco-
nomic Co-operation ( 1947 ) , and the European Payments Union ( 1950 ) .
OBSOLESCENCE OF BOUNDARIES IN THE SOVIET ORBIT
From an altogether different political, social, and ideological point of
view, the Communist regime in the Kremlin has embarked on an integra-
tion program aimed at drawing closer to the Russian center the satellite
countries of Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Albania, Rumania, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany [Fig. 5-6]). Under this pro-
gram, the requirements of the U.S.S.R. were to dictate the food produc-
tion and the industrial output (including expansion and relocation of
industries) within these countries. This long-range policy has affected in
many ways the boundary system within the Soviet orbit. Economically, it
has expedited the withering-away of economic boundaries within the
Soviet sphere of interest, while tightening the same boundary against the
40 The Treaty, proposed by French Minister for Foreign Affairs Schuman, was
signed on April 18, 1951 and instituted on August 10, 1952.
134 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
West. Politically, the Iron Curtain has affected both external and internal
boundaries; for the same Soviet regulations which strangled the freedom
of movement of citizens desiring to visit countries of the West prevented
them from traveling freely from one satellite country to the other.41
OTHER INSTANCES OF OBSOLESCENT BOUNDARIES
Outside of Europe the obsolescence of feudal boundaries has led to
large-scale territorial reorganization, particularly in India. The emergence
of the new international boundary between India and Pakistan should not
obscure the revolutionary, yet peaceful disappearance of almost all of the
small princely states and of thousands of miles of boundaries. Such bound-
aries often separated areas still retaining the social and economic condi-
tions of a feudal order— some tiny, some quite large— from other territories
of much more advanced social and economic development, areas standing
at the threshold of modern industrial growth. Although the political im-
portance of these boundaries had declined under British overlordship,
local laws, differing systems of taxation, and occasionally varying condi-
tions of access to markets, tended to increase the economic differences on
the two sides of these boundaries. On the other hand, the reorganization
of the internal political geography of India was found to have significant
consequences in the economic field. In the western hemisphere, the at-
tempts of Argentina to eliminate the customs boundaries between itself,
Chile, Bolivia, and Uruguay point to analogous developments.
Differential economic growth changes the value and the functions of
boundaries in other respects also. For instance, from the viewpoint of
Egypt, it has at times been possible to regard the boundary between
Egypt and the Sudan with equanimity. Modern hydrological develop-
ments, such as the construction of dams, reservoirs, and flood control
projects, have made the Egyptians more and more aware that their agri-
culture depends entirely on the water supply systems originating in the
Sudan. It has been said succinctly that Egypt "lives on borrowed water,"
and it is for this reason that the goal of Egypt's policy now is to control
the Sudan, preferably by eliminating the boundary between this area and
Egypt-
Interest in the southern and southeastern boundaries of what is now
Saudi Arabia has been dormant for centuries (cf. Fig. 4-3). Oman, Ha-
41 How difficult it is even for a totalitarian regime such as the Soviet Union to keep
an Iron Curtain truly intact is evidenced by the fact that between 1950-54 not less
than 1,800,000 people, or 10 per cent of East Germany's population, fled to West
Germany! (See also p. 362.)
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 135
dhramaut, and the smaller sheikhdoms were looking toward the Indian
Ocean, the tribes of Inner Arabia were concerned with the west and
north. The wide desert between them was of little concern to anyone.
The discovery of oil has changed the picture. Saudi Arabia now asserts its
sovereignty over the "Empty Quarter," in order to be able to lease its
suspected hidden oil treasures to oil companies.
In this instance modern economic developments often have the effect
of forcing neighboring countries to break up a vaguely delimited border
area by definite boundary. In contrast, established boundary lines can
become an obstacle to efficient management of mines under modern sub-
surface exploitation conditions and as a consequence, new boundary
agreements will be effected between two adjacent countries. Occasionally
in such instances, the new subterranean boundary changes agreed upon
will deviate from the surface boundary. This was the arrangement in the
salt mines of Hall and Reichenhall at the Austrian-German boundary and
in some coal mines north of Maastricht at the German-Dutch boundary.
Expansion of industry leads to the quest for new markets, new sources
of raw materials, and new areas of capital investment. The acquisition of
new markets and new sources of raw materials by colonial expansion and
imperialistic conquest has been responsible for the disappearance of many
boundaries. The independence of quite a few states has been undermined
or impaired by their dependency on foreign capital for development of
their industrial potential. Thus the existence, side by side, of states on a
different level of industrial and technological development has led in some
cases to conquest, in others to a change of the boundary function.
THEORIES OF ORGANIC GROWTH OF STATES
The conditions of differential population growth, population pressure,
differential economic and technological development and the influence of
all these factors upon the political fate of countries attracted attention
very early, and led to the organic theory of the state. Friedrich Ratzel
developed this theory and applied it to human geography.42 He was the
first to popularize the idea that "there are boundaries which change so
fast, e.g., boundaries of expanding peoples that it is possible to speak
directly of migratory boundaries. . . . The apparently rigid boundary is
only the stoppage of a movement." 43
42 The first chapter of F. Ratzel's Politische Geographie (Miinchen and Berlin,
1897), is called: "Der Staat als bodenstandiger Organismus" (The State as Organism
tied to the Soil ) .
43 Ibid. (3rd ed. by E. Oberhummer), p. 386.
i36 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Ellen Churchill Semple, Ratzel's best known American disciple, ex-
pressed the same thought in the sentence: "As territorial expansion is the
mark of growth, so the sign of decline is the relinquishment of land that
is valuable or necessary to a people's well-being." 4i She exemplifies this
idea among other examples by saying: "Japan's recent aggression (refer-
ring to the Russian-Japanese war of 1904/05 ) against the Russians in the
Far East was actuated by the realization that she had to expand into
Korea at the cost of Muscovite ascendancy, or contract later at the cost
of her own independence." 45
Ratzel described the change of boundaries in the spirit of the scholarly
observer. So did Miss Semple. Some of Ratzel's followers, however, tried
to use such geographical observations as guide for political action. They
could refer to statements of the master,46 quoted here in the translation
by Miss Semple: "The struggle for existence means a struggle for
space." 47 Thus emerged geopolitics.48 Its leading exponent, Haushofer,
has incorporated such ideas in many articles and in his book on bound-
aries.49 He writes: "we recognize the boundary through empirical obser-
vation as an organ, a living being, destined either to shrink or to push
outward, not rigid, in no case a line— in contrast to the theoretical con-
cept . . ."
The French geographer Ancel, an outspoken foe of German geopoli-
tics 50 and of the use of pseudogeographical arguments as base for claims
for natural boundaries,51 nevertheless arrives at a concept which does not
differ basically from that of the geopoliticians. He states that "a boundary
is a political isobar which indicates the momentary equilibrium between
two pressures." 52 Like those he means to criticize, he overstresses the
factors working for change and neglects those working for stability. He
also overlooks the fact that the pressure exerted from one or both sides
upon a boundary may not result in a dislocation of the boundary, but in
the change of its function. As important as such a change of function may
44 E. C. Semple, Influence of Geographic Environment (New York, 1911), p. 163.
45 Ibid., p. 66.
46 F. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (Tubingen, 1901), p. 157. Ratzel, however, was
speaking of plants and animals and only by implication of man.
47 Semple, op. cit., p. 170.
48 General problems of geopolitics (versus political geography) are discussed on
pp. 5 ff . Here we are concerned with boundary problems as seen through the
glasses of geopolitics.
49 K. Haushofer, Grenzen ( Berlin-Grunewald, K. Vowinkel, 1927), p. 13.
50 J. Ancel, Geopolitique (Paris, 1936).
51 J. Ancel, Manuel geographique de politique Europeenne, Vol. I: "L'Europe
Centrale" (Paris, 1936), pp. 12 ff.
52 J. Ancel, Geographie des frontieres (Paris, 1938).
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 137
be, it is not always visible on a map, and because of its gradual nature is
not even always realized immediately by the frontier people themselves.
IDEOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATIONS OF EXPANSION
Concepts which helped the conquering white man to forget lingering
pangs of his conscience have found their expression in slogans such as
"the White Man's burden," or "Manifest Destiny." 53 Though it was de-
nounced later as hypocrisy, at one time hundreds of thousands of English-
men honestly believed that it was their moral duty, burden though it was,
to expand the boundaries of the British Empire to include the poor
pagans, to educate them to an industrious life, and to administer their
lands according to the West's advanced concepts.54 In 1900, a great ma-
jority in the United States believed in their divine destiny to spread Ameri-
can civilization westward.55
The communist ideology, also, is a messianic doctrine, bent on "improv-
ing" the whole world. While in the psychological make-up of many of the
Soviet elite the lust for power is stronger than the belief in their aposto-
late, there can be little doubt that among some of the leaders and certainly
within the ranks of communist youth a deep conviction in the messianic
destiny of communism exists.
There are probably very few wars of conquest in which the ideological
factor is absent. Very often, as in the Soviet example, it can not be sepa-
rated from other motives. Some historians and political scientists are
inclined to neglect this ideological factor. Marxian philosophy is inclined
to stress the economic causes and to neglect or to minimize as superstruc-
ture, if not as outright fraud, ideological reasons. In some cases it may be
impossible to come to an agreement. If one primitive tribe raids another,
it may be impossible to refute the claim that the underlying cause is the
opportunity to loot, while it appears that the tradition of the nation does
not accept the young man into the community as a full-fledged member
before he has proved his courage and valor in a fight. The human trait of
aggressiveness has been investigated thoroughly in respect to the indi-
vidual since Freud drew attention to it as basic; its significance as motive
power in international relations is still rather obscure. Fortunately, it is
not necessary in this connection to prove or disprove the claim that certain
53 See pp. 10-12.
54 D. Whittlesey, The Earth and the State (New York, 1944), pp. 127-128.
55 Although a popular slogan since the 1840's, "manifest destiny" was clearly en-
dorsed by a majority of the voters as late as the presidential elections of 1900. From
then on it lost rather quickly its unsophisticated appeal; see also pp. 10-12.
138 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ideological motives are superstructures according to Marx and his follow-
ers, or sublimations according to Freud and his school, or primary facts.
Ideologies are subject to change. The feudal economic and political
order was possible and secure only as long as undeveloped transportation
allowed and even forced every small area to lead an isolated existence; as
long as social stratification was regarded as willed by God; and as long
as loyalty was regarded as a purely personal bond. The feudal order dis-
appeared long ago, but remnants have existed into the twentieth century.
Until 1918 the Prince of Liechtenstein was sovereign in his tiny country,
but subject to the Austrian Empire in his other much larger estates. Polish
noblemen were simultaneously subjects of the Austrian Emperor and the
Russian Czar. Similar conditions survived in India until 1947. In general,
however, the territorial state replaced the feudal state all over the world
wherever it existed.
TERRITORIAL STATE BOUNDARIES AND NATIONAL STATES
Our concept of boundaries is essentially still that of the territorial state,
inherited from the concept that the state belongs to the ruler. Much con-
fusion has been created in our minds by the unrealized fact that this
concept does not fit present conditions. Men regard themselves no longer
as primarily subjects of a lord. The development of the democratic idea
was insolubly connected with that of the nation. Men are emotionally
bound to their nation and feel that they owe allegiance to it. The national
state has replaced the territorial state in the minds of men. It has not yet
replaced the territorial state and its boundaries on the surface of the
earth. Fortunate is the country where state and nation coincide as is the
case in the United States and in most American republics. In Europe,
however, and more recently in Asia and Africa, nation is more and more
identified with a common language.56 Minorities develop a double
allegiance. As long as in their system of values allegiance to the
state, to the people with whom they share common traditions, takes prece-
dence over allegiance to the people who speak the same language, the
inherited framework of the territorial state is adequate. Switzerland in
Europe is the best example of this order of values. The overwhelming
majority of Swiss are first Swiss, and then German, French, or Italian. As
a consequence the boundaries of Switzerland have not changed in this
age of nationalism.
56 See Chapter 11 on the Political Geography of Languages.
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES
139
GERMANY
U. S. S. R.
Fig. 5-7. The Break-up of the Hapsburg Empire after 1918.
Another outstanding example of a state that has won the allegiance of
its citizens of foreign tongue is the United States. Despite individual de-
fections of German-speaking Americans during both World Wars, and
despite the widespread suspicions against "hyphenated" Americans during
World War I, the American community has stood the test of time. Actually
most immigrants desire for themselves or at least for their children to
become Americans not only in allegiance, but also outwardly by adoption
of the English language of the majority. A favorable condition is also that
non-English speaking groups do not as a rule occupy contiguous terri-
tories in the United States.
In many cases, from the time of the French Revolution to the most
recent claims of Franco for Gibraltar, and of Afghanistan for the Pushtu-
speaking areas, the linguistically uniform national state could not be fitted
into borders created under different conditions. Wars and revolutions fol-
lowed. Boundaries were changed, either by unification, as in Germany
and India, or by breakup of large states, such as the Hapsburg (Fig. 5-7)
and the Ottoman Empires, or by conquest of border areas, such as Alsace-
140 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Lorraine or Southern Tyrol and Trieste, to name only a few better-known
examples.
Linguistic boundaries are rarely sharp. Usually a zone of linguistically
mixed areas exists. Nor do language boundaries as a rule follow lines
which for economic or other reasons would be more convenient. Hitler
tried to solve this problem by two devices; first, by asserting that in case
of irreconcilable claims, that of the "higher race," meaning that of ethnic
Germans, had to prevail; and secondly, by transfer of populations. In
other words, the stability of a traditional boundary was regarded more
important than other factors.
IDEOLOGICAL GROUPINGS
While the strife for national boundaries is still spreading to other con-
tinents, a new evaluation of boundaries is developing as a concomitant of
a changing order of values. For an increasing number of people allegiance
to some political ideology— democracy, communism, or fascism— seems to
stand first in their order of values. With Hitler and Mussolini this striving
to unite in one state ideologically-uniform people was not reconciled with
traditional national values. The policy of the two dictators was a mixture
between extreme nationalism and the attempt to regroup nations on the
basis of their adherence to fascist ideologies.
Present-day alignments follow not only ideological groupings, but have
tremendously changed the function of boundaries. Czechoslovakia's
boundaries— with two small exceptions— may be the same as before 1939.
However, the boundary between Czechoslovakia and Western Germany
has become a part of the Iron Curtain and almost all traffic has stopped
across it. Barbed wire barricades on all roads have replaced the old simple
signs announcing the existence of a boundary. On the other side, with the
progressing integration of Czechoslovakia into the Soviet economic bloc,
the boundaries of Czechoslovakia with the U.S.S.R., Poland, and Hungary
are losing some of their functions. We have mentioned this process before
in its economic aspects which lead to the creation of large economic units
in Eastern as well as in Western Europe. With the creation of the Soviet
bloc the boundaries lose also some of their political and military functions.
Soviet troops may not actually cross the boundary into Czechoslovakia;
they could do so in case of need without provoking an international con-
flict.
Perhaps even more significant, education on both sides of the boundary
is organized along the same lines. The Russian language is being taught
THE IMPACT OF BOUNDARIES 141
so thoroughly that engineers and probably other professional people in
the future should have no difficulty in exerting their skill in other countries
of the Soviet orbit without preparatory adjustment. The legal systems are
rapidly shaped after a uniform pattern. The Russification program which
at present sweeps through the lands of the Soviet orbit would, if con-
tinued radically, gradually erase the cultural distinctions within the large
family of nations of the Soviet Union and its satellite nations.
In the tearing-down of cultural boundaries which characterize the
Soviet system, the religious differences that were factors in the conflicts
between Roman-Catholic Czechs and Poles on the one side, Russians and
Ukrainians on the other side, would, according to Soviet planning, gradu-
ally decrease and make way for the uniformity of materialistic-Marxian
philosophy.
This development in the communistic ideological orbit is not matched
in the democratic world. Here the trend to unification has found its ex-
pression, as pointed out before, in weakening certain boundary functions
in the economic and military-political realms. Here the ideological factor
has played a subsidiary role, not vigorous enough to modify strong eco-
nomic considerations. In the United States, tariff questions and immigra-
tion restrictions are regarded by many as of such overriding importance
that their ideological repercussions are hardly taken into consideration.
If, nevertheless, a democratic community of states is emerging, it is mainly
as a result of resistance to the fascist and communist pressures of the last
two decades. Such a state lacks the cohesion which religious communities
have achieved occasionally in the past.
CONCLUSIONS
We arrive, therefore, at the conclusion that human progress and natural
changes are continuously at work to change the functions of boundaries
and their value for the bounded areas. Demographic, economic, and ideo-
logical developments interact in this process. Nevertheless, boundary
changes occur only at intervals and usually as the result of wars, conquest,
or revolution. There are strong forces, economic, historical, and ideologi-
cal, which work for stability. Stability does not mean absence of change;
it includes change of function. An existing boundary may not only acquire
new functions, it may also gradually lose functions to the point, if not of
complete vanishing, of being reduced to the performance of unspectacular
functions, as in the case of internal boundaries which do not give cause
for armed conflicts.
CHAPTER
6
Political Core Areas,
Capital Cities, Communications
INTERIOR ZONES AS "CORE" AREAS
Interior areas form as a rule the main body of a political unit. Only in
small political units of elongated form do we find territories consisting
mainly of frontier zones. Whereas frontier zones play a definite and spe-
cific role in the political geography of any country, interior areas differ
widely and can not in their manifold ramifications be discussed as units
which share the same characteristics. Large parts of the interior are of
interest to the political geographer only insofar as they add bulk to the
political unit, either in size or in population, in raw materials or in finished
products, in distance or in diversity. There are, however, parts of a politi-
cal unit, usually parts of its interior, which have special significance for
the body politic. These parts are called core areas.
THE CORE AREA IN REGIONAL AND POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
In regional geography the core area is usually considered that part of
a region in which the characteristic features of a region can be observed
best because they prevail over other incidental features. Thus the core of
the Middle West corn belt is in areas where other types of agriculture do
not play a significant role and where industry also is dependent on or
serves largely this particular form of agriculture. Hog raising, slaughter-
houses, and farm machinery factories are characteristic of the corn belt.
142
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 143
A political core area is somewhat different. Within its often relatively
small area is concentrated the political power of a state or of a secondary
political unit.1 What happens in the core area has ramifications far beyond
the area itself.
THE CAPITAL
For a preliminary identification of the core of a political unit it is gen-
erally sufficient to identify the capital city.2 The capital city contains the
central executive organs of a political unit and commonly other central
institutions, judicial, legislative, educational, and cultural. A differentia-
tion should be made between those institutions closely connected with
the function of a capital and those that are in an area irrespective of
whether the capital is there. On the other hand, these latter features may
provide the explanation for the location of many a capital in a specific
area.
RELATIONSHIP OF CORE AND CAPITAL AREA
A significant interrelationship exists between the core area of a country
and the location of its capital. But, as is pointed out above, to focus on the
capital city of a country provides only a preliminary identification of its
core area. In the following discussion an attempt is made to trace certain
general trends as they reveal themselves in the comparison of capital and
core areas. Sometimes the two are identical. Sometimes the initial selection
of a place as site of the capital results in the consequent growth of a politi-
cal, and in some cases also of an economic core area. In other instances we
find that a new political and economic core area develops at a distance
from the capital area. Then the problem arises inevitably as to whether
intangible factors, such as tradition and prestige, prove strong enough to
maintain the capital location at its original place, or whether the centripe-
tal forces of the core area are stronger and will eventually result in the
shift of the capital to a new site. The following discussion is limited to a
few outstanding examples that are treated in terms of political geography
only. The reader who wishes to study the role of capital cities on a broader
plane and in its historical and cultural impacts is referred to the stimulat-
ing treatment of this subject by A. J. Toynbee in A Study of History.3
1D. Whittlesey, The Earth and the State (New York, 1944), pp. 2 and 597, de-
fine the core or "nuclear" core as "the area in which or about which a state originates."
2 W. G. East, in his essay on "The Nature of Political Geography" ( Politico, 1937,
p. 273), defines therefore the core, or as he calls it, nuclear region, as the one "which,
lying around the capital, contains the major endowment of the state in respect of
population, resources and political energy."
3 A. I. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. VII (New York, 1954), pp. 193-239.
144 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Fie. 6-1. The Shifting Core of Turkey.
SHIFT OF CAPITAL: TURKEY
In contrast to the situation prevailing during World War II when the
Soviet government, for purely military reasons, evacuated Moscow and
made Kuibyshev the temporary capital, we observe in Turkey the genuine
shift of a capital from Istanbul to Ankara where the government of Kemal
Ataturk moved it. A provincial city began immediately to develop as a
focal point for the Turkish Republic 4 ( Fig. 6-1 ) . This shift can only in
part be explained by what appeared to be an arbitrary decision of the
government to remain in Ankara, even after the emergency that had
caused the shift had passed. The real reason for the shift must be seen in
the fact that the Straits and Istanbul had lost many of the factors that had
4 See E. Fischer, "Southern Europe," in G. W. Hoffman, ed., A Geography of
Europe (New York, 1954), pp. 463-465.
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 145
made them the core of the old Ottoman Empire. They were no longer in
a central position for Turkey (Fig. 6-1). After the loss of the European
provinces Istanbul's bridge position was of no peculiar value. The impor-
tant trade between the Black Sea countries and the Mediterranean since
antiquity came to an almost complete standstill when the Bolshevist
Revolution had replaced a wheat-exporting Russia by a Soviet state striv-
ing for autarchy. Istanbul had never been a manufacturing center. It had
been a gathering point for all the nations of the Ottoman Empire and had
a very strong Greek element. This had been an advantage for the Ottoman
Empire, which used Turks as soldiers and governors but filled many ad-
ministrative positions with Greeks and Armenians. This national composi-
tion made Istanbul unfit to serve as the core of a national Turkish state.
When Ankara was chosen as its capital, a number of favorable factors
contributed to the development of a new core. It was in the approximate
center of the state, in an area of pure Turkish population. To this were
added the governmental functions, and gradually some industry, and rail-
road and road connections were established in all directions.
LACK OF IDENTITY BETWEEN POLITICAL CORE AND
CAPITAL: THE GROWTH OF WASHINGTON, D.C.
We find in the example of Istanbul and Ankara almost all of the features
which are the characteristics of a political core. These stress the degree
to which a capital can serve as the indication of a political core. However,
not every capital is the real core of a country. Newly-founded capitals
may need a long time to attract other than purely governmental functions.
An outstanding example is the development of Washington. It is obvious
that in a federal state the functions of the federal government are of less
importance than in a centralized state. Therefore, the influence of the
governmental functions in creating a political core area is less in a federal
state. Washington's growth as a political center was retarded by these
factors, until during World War I, and later, especially under the New
Deal, the functions of the federal government grew in size and impor-
tance. Never before had the central direction of the armed forces played
such a role. Furthermore, because of the relatively small influence Ameri-
can naval or military power exerted upon relations with other countries,
the actual influence the United States exerted abroad had little to do with
a power-backed foreign policy. This influence originated rather from the
growing economic power of the United States and because it had become
the principal haven for immigrants. Consequently, the area of highest
146 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
political power, the political core, was not centered in the capital but in
the area of the most intensive economic activity, in the coastal belt extend-
ing from southern New England to Baltimore. This was also the area
where many products of other regions converged for export, where the
immigrants landed and a large proportion of them stayed, and where the
population was the densest.
STABILITY OF CAPITAL LOCATION IN THE LIGHT
OF POLITICAL CHANGES
One major reason for the original selection of Washington as the capital
site was its central location between the northern and southern states.
With the expansion of the United States westward and, at the same time,
with the rapid increase of population in the north, Washington lost this
locational advantage. Yet no shift of the capital was contemplated be-
cause a capital has the tendency to remain in the place where it was
founded. This is partly a matter of convenience and the costs involved in
the abandonment of buildings designed for special purposes with the re-
sulting necessity of erecting new ones; mostly, however, it is due to tradi-
tion and prestige. Rome, Jerusalem, and Mecca are prime examples. Mecca
has nothing to recommend it except its religious significance. It is at pres-
ent only the second capital of Saudi Arabia and shares the capital position
with the more centrally located Riyadh. Mecca emerged from periods of
obscurity several times in its long history for no other apparent reason
than the intangible impact of its tradition. It is a moot question whether
Rome would have been selected as the capital of an Italian national state
except for its tradition as the seat of the Roman Empire and the Papacy.
In these eighty-odd years since it became the capital of Italy it has in-
creased in stature, but not solely by reason of the concentration of govern-
ment functions. It became one of the foci of the Italian railroad system,
though Milan and perhaps some other cities are rivaling its importance in
this respect. Subsequently Rome has become a seat of industry, but there
is still little indication that it may become the center of an industrial dis-
trict, as are Turin and Genoa.5
Still more significant is the case of Jerusalem. The capital of the revived
5 According to official Italian statistics, Rome's population has more than doubled
since 1921, when it was 692,000. It has increased ten times since 1850, when it was
175,000. It totaled 1,791,000 in 1954, and is approaching the 2,000,000 mark which
it reached at the height of the Roman Empire when it was the political, economic, and
social capital not only of the Mediterranean areas but likewise of the western world,
including a Transalpine annex extending to the Rhine and the Tyne.
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 147
Fig. 6-2. The Core Area of Israel.
Jewish state of Israel is located in the new part of the city, which has no
real tradition. Its historical prestige is derivative. It is located on the tip
of a salient, surrounded on three sides by hostile Jordan territory, cut off
from possible trade routes and even from a local trade area. Industry is
little developed and that in existence is an artificial growth fostered for
political reasons. To speak of Jerusalem as a core area is only possible in
a psychological sense because of the emotional appeal to the Israelis as
148 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
well as to the Jewish and to the Christian world outside. The center of
economic activity is the coastal strip between Haifa and Tel Aviv; here
we find the actual core of the country ( Fig. 6-2 ) .
These examples show also that the core area of a country or a state is
not necessarily its administrative center nor its area of origin. The Italian
example is one among several others which demonstrate that a country
is not necessarily limited to one core area.
THE RUSSIAN CAPITALS
While the examples discussed above point to the stabilizing influence of
intangible factors, such as tradition and prestige, which account for the
continuation of the capital at its ancient site in spite of drastic political
and economic changes in the domain of the country, we find in contrast
instances where ideological factors and changes motivated a shift of the
capital. Ideological factors, more than any other, have determined the
designation of capitals in Russia and the Soviet Union. The capital which
Peter the Great laid out in 1703 (St. Petersburg) close to the Baltic Sea
as a window to the West, and the transfer of the seat of government from
Moscow in the heart of Russia, gave testimony of a new political philoso-
phy in Russia intent on opening Russia to Western cultural influence. In
Toynbee's words,6 "the seat of government of a landlocked empire was
planted in a remote corner of the empire's domain in order to provide the
capital with easy access by sea to the sources of alien civilization which
the imperial government was eager to introduce -into its dominions."
Peter's decision was, as Toynbee puts it succinctly, both "spiritual and
geopolitical" in purpose.7 It lasted for more than two hundred years.
After the beginning of the war between Germany and Russia in 1914,
St. Petersburg was rechristened Petrograd in an outbreak of Slavophil
nationalism, only to be renamed Leningrad in 1918 by the Bolsheviks.
When the disciples of Lenin transferred the capital from Leningrad to
Moscow, they were motivated not only by the more conveniently located
site for the administrative capital of the Soviet Union as a whole; they
also intended to symbolize the break, culturally and power-politically,
between the Soviet empire and the West.
6 Op. cit., Vol. VII, p. 221; see also pp. 222, 223; 690-691.
7 Ibid., p. 238.
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 149
THE "NATURAL" CORE: CENTRAL AND
PERIPHERAL LOCATION
In some countries (such as France and Portugal in Europe, Argentina,
Uruguay, and Chile in South America, and many others) there exist
relatively simple conditions favoring the development of the core area.
Paris is the undisputed center of French intellectual and social life;
Paris and the He de France have been France's political center for
many centuries; Paris is by far the largest city of France. Furthermore,
the main industrial and mining districts of France are practically adjoin-
ing. All this makes the north and northwest of France together with Paris
the core area of this country 8 (cf. Fig. 6-7, p. 159). This also indicates
that a core area is not necessarily in the center of a country, though such
a location undoubtedly favors the development of a core area.
Peripheral location of a core area is especially frequent among seafar-
ing nations. Lisbon in Portugal, and London in the British Isles are ex-
amples. Where the adjacent sea represents one major field of economic
activity of a nation, such a location of a capital and core area may be even
more significant than a central position.
LATIN AMERICAN CORE AREAS
Slightly different is the case of those South American countries that
were mentioned before. Their capitals and the core areas surrounding
them are the points of entry into these countries and still mirror the history
of colonization ( Fig. 6-3 ) . In general it is true that other parts of a coun-
try are the less advanced the farther they are from these points. In the
areas of old Indian civilizations, the capitals of Spanish vice-royalties and
audiencias, and later of the independent states, tended to replace old In-
dian centers, or at least to stay in the areas of population agglomeration.
These core areas are still surrounded by areas of very sparse population.
Thus Quito, Bogota, and Mexico City became capitals of Ecuador, Co-
lombia, and Mexico.9 In Peru, Lima, the city near the port of entry, be-
came predominant over the older capital, Cuzco, situated centrally in the
densely inhabited Indian highland. However, in the other countries, in
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela, and in almost all of the
Central American countries, the capitals are the center of the only, or
8 Whittlesey, op. cit., p. 429. His discussions of other capitals are scattered through-
out the book.
9 P. E. James, Latin America (New York and Boston, 1942), p. 4.
Cayenne
Georgetown
iramaribo
BR. GUIANA /
Rio de Janeiro
200 400 600 Ml
J.R.F.
Fig. 6-3. Population Centers of South America.
150
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 151
the predominant, population cluster and the boundaries, with only few
exceptions,10 are laid in the extremely sparsely populated zones.
STATE CAPITALS IN THE UNITED STATES
It is interesting to compare with this development the history of many
of the thirteen original states of the United States. The capitals and core
areas of the thirteen states were originally the points of entry, and, there-
fore, with the exception of Hartford, Connecticut, port cities. When the
territories of the states filled up, the capitals moved in many cases to some
central location in the state. It is rather an exception that Boston, because of
its predominance in the small Commonwealth of Massachusetts, retained
its capital position. Neither New York nor Philadelphia continued as capi-
tal cities. Annapolis, still the capital of Maryland, is rather atypical. It
certainly does not indicate the core area of the state.
INDIA AND AUSTRALIA
In India the shift of the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi in 1911, the
creation for this area of a separate status resembling that of the District
of Columbia by the Government of India Act in 1935, and the sudden and
tremendous increase of population of the twin cities Delhi and New Delhi
after 1941, all signify the progress from a British colony, ruled from across
the sea, to a self-governing political body and final independence.11 Here
the political power can no longer be exerted from the periphery.
In Australia, the realization that the interests of a federated state would
be better served by a capital near the anticipated population center of the
country than by one in a peripheral location led to the selection of Can-
berra instead of one of the coastal state capitals when the six colonies
formed the Commonwealth in 1901 (cf. Fig. 2-10, p. 49).
BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA
In Brazil, quite similar considerations have prompted plans to shift the
capital from Rio de Janeiro on the coast to a central inland location. The
new site has been blueprinted on the watershed between the Amazon and
the Parana, in a region rich in mineral resources and coffee plantations;
but it remains to be seen whether the growth and concentration of eco-
10 Ibid., James names the boundaries between Venezuela and Colombia, Colombia
and Ecuador, and Peru and Bolivia as the only ones which run through population
clusters.
11 O. H. K. Spate, Geography of India and Pakistan (London, 1954), pp. 491-493.
152
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Fig. 6-4. Brazil: Shift of Capitals.
nomic interests in the interior will prove strong enough to unseat Rio as
capital12 (Fig. 6-4). Such a change is characteristic of a dynamic and
growing new nation and is not without historical precedent in Brazil.
Brazil's first capital was Salvador, located near the easternmost point of
land in the state of Bahia. Salvador was founded in 1510 and remained
the capital of Brazil until 1792, when the shift of economic interests
southward led to the selection of Rio as capital, about midway along
the coastline.
In contrast to the changing fortunes of the political and economic core
areas in Brazil, Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, has maintained its rank-
since 1580, showing a phenomenal growth in the last 150 years (1800:
30,000; 1950: 3,445,000). The vision and geographical sense of Don Juan
12 In this connection, it is interesting to compare the population growth of Rio de
Janeiro from 1,787,000 in 1940 to 2,600,000 in 1954 with that of Sao Paulo, during
the same period, from 1,323,000 to 2,500,000.
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 153
de Garay who resettled the deserted town of Nuestra Senora Maria de
Buen Aire in 1580 accounts for Buenos Aires' safe position as the country's
core over the centuries, for he understood that not gold and silver but the
agricultural wealth of the city's hinterland assured its future. Although his
party consisted of only 66 persons, de Garay drew plans for a metropolis
large enough to house 4,000,000 inhabitants.13
SPAIN
The political function of Madrid accounts predominantly for its position
as the core of Spain. This is an especially striking example that the politi-
cal core does not necessarily coincide with the economic core or a central
population cluster. Areas of higher economic importance, denser popula-
tion, and, even more significant, very old tradition of political importance,
are ruled from this center. These other areas are handicapped by their
excentric and more or less isolated location, and by their different lan-
guages (Basque, Catalan) or dialects (Andalusia, Asturias, Galicia). These
factors would hinder any attempt by such areas to become the political
core of Spain. The most they could strive for, and for which all except
Andalusia challenged the core area in the Civil War, is some status of
autonomy. In this they have been thwarted. The only principal area
which, on the strength of firmly embedded traditions, retained its inde-
pendence from Madrid and Castile is Portugal.
CHINA
If potential core areas are more equally balanced, the outcome may be
different. In China three core areas have been the seat of capitals 14 (Fig.
6-5) the Wei valley, the Yangtse valley, and northeast China. The Wei
valley, where Sian (today called Changan) is located was placed most
favorably in a China which neither included all of South China nor large
parts of the coasts. Capitals in the Yangtse valley were characteristic for
periods when the north was either lost to inner-Asiatic conquerors or the
south could assert its preponderance for other reasons. Hankow and
Nanking have been capitals in the past and again for short periods in the
seesaw battle of opposing forces in twentieth century China. Nanking as
capital has not only historical associations but as a harbor city symbolized
also the connection with the western powers. Places still farther away, on
Formosa or even the important city of Canton, have never been nor are
likely to become more than local centers. In the north Peiping (Peking)
13 F. A. Carlson, Geography of Latin America (New York, 1952), p. 153.
14 W. G. East and O. H. K. Spate, The Changing Map of Asia, 2nd ed. (New York,
1953), pp. 270-272.
_, —
♦
r
w
Peiping ( Peking);/
11
Changan (Sian)
ISLANDS
Fig. 6-5. Capitals of China.
154
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 155
Fig. 6-6. Core Areas of Japan according to Population Density per Square Kilometer:
(1) over 625; (2) 210-625; (3) 130-210; (4) 70-130.
represents the opposite principle to that represented by Nanking. At all
periods it emphasized the predominance of Chinese interests in Central
Asia and the prevalence of influences originating there or working
through Central Asia, as at present from Soviet Asia. This is the more
remarkable, as Peking is not located on a geometrically straight route to
Central Asia, but on a dominant point of the circuitous route which leads
from China to Central Asian centers without having to cross a desert.
This location makes Peking a convenient capital for a Communist China.
Chinese westernization had caused industrial centers to mushroom in the
coastal cities, Shanghai, Canton, and Nanking. The direct result of the
new industrial developments in the north and in regions which are acces-
sible to the Soviet borders has been that the older industrial centers along
the coast of southeastern China have practically ceased to function.15
JAPAN
In Japan, the transfer of the capital in 1868 from Kyoto, for many cen-
turies the country's major city in the west, to Tokyo or, as it was then
15 C. M. Chang, "Five Years of Communist Rule in China," Foreign Affairs ( 1954),
pp. 98-110 (109); see also R. Murphy, "The City as a Center of Change: Western
Europe and China," Annals of the Association of American Geographers (1954), pp.
349-369 (360-361).
156 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
called, Yedo, on the shores of Yedo Bay in the east, symbolized the end of
Japan's feudal isolation and the nation's readiness to embark on its new
course as a world power 16 (Fig. 6-6). In the Kwanto plain, with its twin
cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, in a core area of only 5,000 square miles,
fifteen million people or less than one-fifth of Japan's population is now
concentrated.
GERMANY
An interesting competition between rival core areas for the location of
the capital is under way in Germany. It is overshadowed by the numerous
and more pressing problems of today's East-West struggle but is still
clearly recognizable. Throughout many centuries Germany had no politi-
cal core, and economically the Rhine core area was only ill-defined.17 In
the Middle Ages kings and emperors came from different parts of Ger-
many and moved with their courts from castle to castle and from city to
city. When the Hapsburgs established a semi-inheritance of the crown,
their residence, Vienna, could not qualify as a core area for Germany be-
cause of its excentric location.18 When in the nineteenth century the kings
of Prussia succeeded in uniting Germany, their capital Berlin dominated
Prussia politically, while the lower Rhine valley around Cologne and
Diisseldorf and the Ruhr area had many characteristics of a true economic
core area but lacked political tradition. In the German Empire politically
favorable conditions tended to strengthen Berlin's position. Not only did
its administrative functions increase strongly with the centralization cul-
minating under Hitler; a railroad net focusing in Berlin was constructed;
more and more banks established their main offices in the capital, and
many flexible industries gravitated to Berlin in spite of its rather incon-
venient location in the northeast of the Reich. Today, despite all that has
happened, Berlin is still regarded as the "natural" capital of Germany. It
may be made the capital again as soon as Germany is reunited. Therefore,
attempts are made 19 to prove the continuing core function of Berlin, even
though its location in present Germany would be very close to what is
now the Polish boundary on the Neisse and Oder rivers (cf. Fig. 4-10,
p. 108).
16 G. B. Cressey, Asia's Lands and People, 2nd ed. (1951), pp. 210-216 (map);
East and Spate, op. cit., pp. 298, 299; see also Toynbee, op. cit., Vol. 7, pp. 220-221.
17 R. E. Dickinson, Germany (Syracuse, N. Y., 1953), passim.
18 Today, Vienna's role as the core of Austria, is illustrated by the fact that one-
fourth of its population of 7,000,000 is concentrated in the capital.
19 Institut fiir Raumforschung, Bonn (ed.), Die iinzerstorbare Stadt (Cologne-
Berlin, 1953).
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 157
When the question of the seat of government for West Germany was
decided, Bonn won over Frankfurt. Frankfurt is much more centrally lo-
cated between north and south and is an important communications cen-
ter; it is also the center of an economically important district. Frankfurt
even has a political tradition as the long-time coronation city of the First
Empire and the seat of its impotent diet. For all these reasons it was feared
that if Frankfurt were made temporary capital it might become a serious
rival for Berlin after reunion. Bonn, on the other hand, was clearly a place-
holder for Berlin. A small university town without much economic ac-
tivity, adjacent to but outside of the Cologne-Ruhr area, it could not
seriously threaten Berlin's expected reappearance as capital.20
LOCATION OF CAPITALS NEAR FRONTIERS
Some political geographers have noted the position of several capitals
near a frontier of conquest or also near an endangered frontier. Berlin,
Vienna, and Peking have been named in this connection. Location near
a frontier may have been an advantage in an era of slow communications.
It is a distinct disadvantage in the era of mobile and air warfare. So far
only the Soviet Union and Turkey, have removed their capitals perma-
nently from an endangered frontier to a safer place; in other cases the
factors favoring permanence, especially ideological factors, have defeated
those favoring change.
THE EFFECT OF COMMUNICATIONS NETS ON CORE AREAS
A core area as an area where the political power of a state is concen-
trated requires the means to make its influence felt in the other parts of
the political body. It needs a well-developed communications net. Stu-
dents of transportation geography have been primarily concerned with the
economic aspects of communications; the political and power aspects have
been treated only incidentally. Without a properly developed system of
communications the prolonged existence of a territorial state— as opposed
to a tribal territory, a feudal agglomeration, or a city-state— is almost im-
possible. It is a common characteristic of most ancient states that they
were strung out along rivers— the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, Wei, and
Hoang-ho. It was much later that ocean shipping was developed enough
to allow the existence of coast-based or circum-marine states. The Athe-
nian and the Roman empires are the best known examples, although older
20 See also p. 156.
158 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ones, like the Cretan and Carthaginian, have existed. Roads, designed
from the beginning for military purposes and administrative efficiency,
were built in the Persian Empire, and brought to a stage of perfection in
the Roman Empire unequaled until modern times. The flagstone trails and
canals of the Chinese Empire and the roads of the Incas should also be
mentioned in this context.
Compared with these long-lived and well-organized empires most other
great states of the past have been either short-lived, such as the Mongolian
Empire, or they were so loosely organized and their communications
systems so disintegrated that their activities as consolidated units in re-
lation to other powers evolved only in rare instances and after long pe-
riods; the medieval states of France or Germany are good examples. Or
they had to be reconstructed periodically because of the continuous proc-
ess of disintegration— such a state was the Assyrian kingdom, whose kings
were continuously on the warpath in order to exact overdue tributes, sub-
due rebellious vassals, and re-establish their control. This type of empire
has survived in a few instances into the twentieth century. To the very
eve of the conquest by Italy, the rulers of Ethiopia were wont to send
tax-gathering and punitive expeditions into such outlying areas as the
Ogaden and Kaffa. Sinkiang, formerly called Chinese Turkestan, had to
be reconquered time and again. It has been estimated that out of about
2,000 years of Chinese rule, this control was effective only approximately
425 years.21
The significance and importance of paved roads for the stability of
states has changed only slowly since antiquity. The compass, sea charts,
and nautical instruments, together with developments in ship designs,
enabled not only the great discoveries since the sixteenth century, but also
the establishment of far-flung colonial empires. Besides these forms older
ones persisted and until the second half of the nineteenth century Russian
rule in Siberia, and also Canada's development, were based on river navi-
gation by small vessels, supplemented by portages.
Hard-surfaced roads— the chaussees of the French (Fig. 6-7 ) —railroads,
canals, and ocean highways are among the indispensable bases of the
modern state. The twentieth century has added the internal-combustion
engine and its use in the automobile and the airplane.
This short historical review permits the conclusion that small states are
far less dependent on internal communications than are large ones. Within
21 O. Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China, American Geographical Society
Research Series No. 21, 1940, p. 171.
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 159
BELGIUM l^ -
IV U
7 V. J LUXEMBOURG
GERMANY
Brest
Mulhouse 1 / O"*— •
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
200 Mi "^■•— I -v.^
23 SPAIN *-*
MEDITERRANEAN
Fig. 6-7. Post Roads of France.
the latter, the political core is strong only if it is served adequately by
communications. We must distinguish between the economic and political
functions of the communications net within a core area and those connect-
ing it with other parts of the body politic. In the Ruhr area, in England's
"black country," in the area extending between Baltimore and Boston, the
road, railroad, and in places the canal net is very dense; indeed these areas
could not exist as economic centers without this highly developed trans-
portation network. On the other hand, Madrid in Spain, or Ankara in
Turkey, are in the centers of a radiating pattern of roads, railroads, tele-
graph and telephone lines, but there is hardly a network, except the
normal communications network within the big city.
It is not incidental that the first important rail line in Russia linked
St. Petersburg and Moscow. The return of Moscow to its role as seat of
the government and political core was heralded by the construction of
railroads to the Volga cities; "they soon established the pattern of radiat-
100 200 300 Mi
— i i 1 '
100 200 300 400 Km
r~\
m.
Fig. 6-8. Railroad Pattern in Western Europe.
160
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 161
ing lines centered at Moscow which became the dominant feature of the
pre-revolutionary railroad geography of the country." 22 The continuous
extension of the railroad network by the Soviet government, especially the
slowly proceeding eastward extension, has not altered Moscow's role as
the main hub of the Soviet Union (cf. Figs. 15-1, 15-2, pp. 476, 478).
Moscow's core quality is further emphasized by its strategical location
within the economic core area fed by the principal inland canals of the
Soviet Union: the Mariinsk system, the Moscow Canal, and the White
Sea-Baltic Canal (see Fig. 8-7, p. 238).
The radiating communications pattern is characteristic for a political
core area. A highly centralized country like France or Great Britain shows
this pattern in perfect form ( Fig. 6-8 ) . Berlin and Vienna are in the center
of radiating communications which, however, are no longer congruent
with the new political map. When after World War I new states emerged,
their political problems were aggravated by the incongruence of the po-
litical and the communication patterns, that is, the lack of a communica-
tion system focusing upon the new political centers. A severe case of
maladjustment because of an inherited communication system developed
in Czechoslovakia (Fig. 6-9). The railroads and roads of Moravia and
even of large parts of Bohemia had been constructed for easy traffic with
Vienna. Some of the main lines by-passed Prague, the capital, at a short
distance. Slovakia's railroads and roads focused on Budapest, the capital
of Hungary, and were only tenuously connected with Moravia and
Bohemia. In Yugoslavia the situation was even worse. In order to
travel from the capital, Belgrade, to some parts of the country detours
were necessary which more than doubled the actual distance. In both
cases, but especially in Yugoslavia, the problems of federalism, and of
provincial autonomy versus centralism, were aggravated by these con-
ditions.
In underdeveloped countries the extent of backwardness is clearly re-
flected in the communications net. Neither Brazil nor Colombia has a
railroad or road pattern radiating from Rio de Janeiro or Bogota ( cf. Fig.
22-2, p. 674 ) . Both countries have suffered from recurring revolts originat-
ing in economically advanced, but politically not well integrated, outlying
areas. Repeatedly Sao Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Medellin, or Barranquilla
refused to accept the policy decreed at the political center. Large parts of
the Amazonian lowlands belong still only nominally to Brazil, Bolivia,
Peru, or Colombia. Some of their Indian tribes have never heard the name
of the country to which they supposedly belong. The advent of the air-
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CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 163
plane has, however, strengthened the influence of the central authority.
Generalized maps, as small-scale maps necessarily are, sometimes give
only an inadequate picture of the actual conditions. On a small-scale map
France seems to be covered with a web of lines, with Paris clearly in the
center. Adequate provisions for direct connections between the provincial
centers apparently exist. But this picture is deceiving, because the traffic
on most of these lines is slow, trains are infrequent, and through-trains
are not everywhere available. A road map shows the generally better qual-
ity of the roads focusing on Paris and the secondary character of most
others. Similar maps of Germany would not easily and unmistakably re-
veal the political core of the country. They would indicate several centers,
among them Cologne, Halle and Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, all of them
as prominent as Berlin. The first three places are also in the midst of a
very dense local pattern, the sign of an economic concentration, while an
analogous pattern is absent from the Berlin area, indicating its predomi-
nantly political role. A similar picture emerges on a communications map
of Italy. The dense network in the Turin-Milan-Genoa triangle, and in a
second triangle, Verona-Venice-Bologna, is clearly distinguished from the
radial pattern of Rome, which is the political core.
In the United States, Chicago is far more important in terms of its com-
munications pattern than Washington. Cleveland, New York, Philadel-
phia, Omaha, and several other places are at a par or ahead of Washing-
ton. Somewhat different is the pattern in Great Britain. London, being a
great economic center as well as the political core, dominates Great Brit-
ain's communications system.
SHIPPING LANES AND CORE AREAS
The picture would be incomplete without the shipping lanes. Once one
includes them in the consideration, the routes between ports of the
United Kingdom are not very prominent. However, the shipping lanes
and also the air routes from other countries lead to a number of British
ports and, though London is the most frequented, the general pattern is
not that of focusing on London (Fig. 6-10). Rather Great Britain as a
whole appears as the core of the Commonwealth. It may be useful to dis-
tinguish between several types of routes radiating from the ports of the
United Kingdom. There are those which serve only or primarily commer-
cial interests. The routes to the United States and most of the routes to the
European continent belong in this category. Other routes serve both polit-
ical and economic interests and it would be difficult to separate those
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functions. The routes across the Atlantic to Bermuda and Canada exem-
plify such a composite function, with the economic function prevailing.
The route through the Gulf of Biscay a, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Med-
iterranean Sea, and the Suez Canal to Southern and Eastern Asia and
Australia has often been called the lifeline of the Commonwealth, stress-
ing thereby its political function. The alternate line around the Cape has
had its phases of strength and weakness; it showed strength especially
when political considerations made it appear safer than the Suez Canal
route.
Another group of routes would never have come into existence if not for
political reasons, though economic interests may be served. The economic
functions, however, are clearly incidental. This is especially obvious in the
case of analogous shipping services of other powers. Why should a French
line extend to Madagascar, Martinique, or Guadeloupe, a Portuguese to
Angola, a Belgian to Matadi on the mouth of the Congo, if not because of
the political affiliations of these countries? The fact that there is no regular
established service between Portugal and Goa or Macao is anomalous.
On the other hand, a number of world routes are frequented by
vessels under many flags and are thereby of major importance in inter-
national trade relations. Such routes are the transatlantic routes from
the ports of Western Europe to North America and also to South
America. The Mediterranean and Suez Canal route is a main artery.
So is the route through the Panama Canal, which is also of greatest politi-
cal and military significance for the United States. When the construction
of the Panama Canal was undertaken, President Theodore Roosevelt sent
the American fleet on a world cruise. Its first lap was from the Atlantic
Coast around Cape Horn to the Pacific Coast of the United States, dem-
onstrating thereby the feasibility— and the disadvantages— of this world
sea route and the strategic-political importance of the Panama route.
The construction of major canal systems leads inevitably to significant
dislocations of economic and political core areas. We can anticipate such
changes and dislocations within the United States and Canada upon com-
pletion of the St. Lawrence Seaway (Fig. 6-11). Involving expenditures of
about $300 million to provide a 27-foot deep channel from the Atlantic to
Lake Ontario, the Seaway is scheduled to be completed in 1958. The bitter
and long fight which preceded the agreement between the United States
and Canada was a vivid illustration of the hopes and fears expressed by
competing coastal and port areas in the two countries. For instance, the
port director of Milwaukee, the waterborn foreign commerce of which
totaled in 1953 only 35,000 tons, has estimated it to rise, after 1958, to
166
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
St Louis
Fig. 6-11. The St. Lawrence Seaway and the American Manufacturing Belt.
over a million tons annually, while the port director of New York fears a
loss of about 3,500,000 tons a year, one-sixth of the port's foreign com-
merce in general cargo and grain.23
The Seaway may also prevent the "American Ruhr" ( Detroit's automo-
bile industries, Chicago's farm equipment plants, Milwaukee's heavy ma-
chinery industries) from losing its economic core area rank as the result
of the dwindling of its iron ore reserves in the mines at the head of the
lake system around Lake Superior. With the completion of the Seaway
iron ore from Labrador, Quebec, and foreign sources could be supplied,
and at competitive prices. The serious blow which the Seaway may deal
to the railways in the eastern part of the United States should also be
mentioned. The future changes in the location and strength of economic
core areas which can be envisaged as the result of the St. Lawrence Sea-
way construction may also make themselves felt in the internal political
geography of the United States and its competing political cores.24
Maritime routes are to a certain degree flexible. They can be relocated
2 3 The Economist, August 28, 1954, pp. 663-4. See also below, pp. 588, 589.
24 See pp. 170, 171 on the development of a political core area in California,
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 167
at short notice. Submarine warfare forced ships to change their course
continuously. Large vessels, with their independence of weather condi-
tions and greater capacity for provisions, can afford direct travel without
use of ports-of-call. On the other hand, they are restricted to fewer har-
bors. Nor can the largest ocean liners use the great inter-oceanic canals.
Venice, once a political and economic center of a far-flung organization, is
unable to serve modern shipping because of its shallow lagoon. No large
seagoing vessels are able to sail up the Potomac. But this development has
not affected the role of Washington as a political core.
AIR COMMUNICATIONS
Air communications have resulted in significant shifts, though none to
the present moment have affected the standing of political cores and
hardly of secondary political units. Alaska and Hawaii have been brought
in closer contact with the continental United States, although, at the writ-
ing of these lines, statehood has not yet been granted to either of them.
SIGNIFICANCE OF RAILROAD SYSTEMS
Least flexible are land communications. It is for this reason that certain
roads and railroads have acquired great political significance. The Soviet
—formerly Russian— empire in Asia would be impossible in its present
form without its strategic railroads (cf. Fig. 15-2, p. 478). The Trans-
Siberian railroad linked the Far East to the distant core; it initiated the
Russification of wide areas; it enabled the penetration of Manchuria and
paved the way for influence in China. The Turkestan railroad enabled,
accompanied, and secured the Russian domination of Central Asia. A spur
from this railroad into the oasis of Merw alarmed the British rulers of
India. The Turksib railroad, connecting the Turkestan and Trans-Siberian
railroads and paralleling the Chinese boundary, was a powerful instru-
ment in bringing Russian economic, social, and political influence to
Sinkiang, the most remote of the provinces of China.
The dependence of Russia, and later of the Soviet Union, on supplies
from its western allies during both World Wars led to the construction of
the Murmansk railroad in World War I and the Trans-Iranian railroad in
World War II. The first of these two lines acquired a critical importance
for Finland and caused the Soviet Union to insist on the cession of
sparsely inhabited, climatically adverse areas which appeared to the So-
viets in too-close, threatening neighborhood to the railroad. The construe-
168 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
tion of the Trans-Iranian railroad threatened to destroy the shaky inde-
pendence of this country, which was occupied by forces of the allied
Powers.
Perhaps in no other part of the world have railroads played such a
political role as in the Near and Middle East. The short railroad from the
Russian boundary to Tabriz signalized one step in the repeated attempts
of Russia to win control of Persian Azerbaijan.
The Republic of Turkey (cf. Fig. 8-19, p. 284) for a long time, was
hesitant about allowing railroad construction by foreign syndicates. Its
reluctance was due to the realization that generally investment of foreign
capital in undeveloped countries has resulted in making such countries
dependent upon the lending country. Investment in railroads— or port
installations— has been in many cases the main instrument by which con-
trol of an area could be obtained, and the railroad lines were built more
in the interest of the lending than in that of the borrowing country. In
pre-World War I Turkey, the Trans-Anatolian and the Baghdad railroads
were constructed to facilitate German expansion southeastward to the
Persian Gulf. British capital succeeded in building a railroad from the
Gulf to Baghdad, bringing lower Mesopotamia under Anglo-Indian in-
fluence and paving the way for the creation of post-war Iraq as a British
mandate.
With the Hedjaz railroad, Turkey attempted to counteract foreign in-
terference in what it considered its own sphere of influence. Sultan Abdul
Hamid II appealed to the religious feelings of the Mohammedans in order
to promote the construction of a railroad which would facilitate the pil-
grimage to the holy places of Islam. Thus he was able to keep foreign
capital out and to build a railroad which allowed him to send troops to
Hedjaz and on to Yemen, thus by-passing the Suez Canal. However, it was
too late to strengthen the ties of these remote areas with the political
center.
MEASURES AIMED AT REDUCING THE INFLUENCE
OF THE POLITICAL CORE
In discussing the relationship of the core to its outlying parts we have
also to consider constitutional problems. In a compact country of some
size the political core in some respects may be compared with the center
of gravity in a physical body. While all parts of the body have weight,
they exert pull upon other bodies through this center of gravity. The de-
cisive difference is that in nations and countries the core generally has
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 169
more weight than any other comparable part of the body politic. How-
ever, in many instances this is hardly reflected in the organization of the
state. Democratic parliamentary countries allow the core area as much
but not more representation than any other area with a comparable popu-
lation. Nevertheless, the impact of the agglomeration of people in the
capital, and of a central bureaucracy, exerts a special influence. Several
devices have been tried to avoid or to reduce this influence. The French
moved their parliament to Versailles on different occasions to remove it
from the influence of the "street mob." In the United States the creation
of a federal district apart from the large cities has fulfilled its purpose for
a long period; but more recently Washington, D. C, as the seat of the
national power, has tended to attract great numbers of people, institu-
tions, central offices of unions, and so on. In several of the forty-eight states
the same device has been used. Annapolis in Maryland, Lansing in Michi-
gan, Springfield in Illinois, Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, and Sacramento
in California are cases in point. At least in the last two examples a devel-
opment comparable to that of Washington, D. C, has set in. The Ameri-
can example has been imitated elsewhere, in Canberra, the capital of the
Australian Commonwealth, in Toronto in Canada, and in Brazil with the
designation of a Federal District, though in this country so far nothing
has been done to move the government.
In other countries an attempt was made to split the central organization
between several cities. The Netherlands has the seat of the court and
some central organs in The Hague, while the parliament convenes in Am-
sterdam. In the Union of South Africa the parliament has its seat in Cape-
town, the government in Johannesburg, and the Supreme Court in Pre-
toria. In Switzerland the seat of the government rotated between Zurich,
Basel, and Lucerne. Despite a long tradition this arrangement was finally
abandoned; however, the distinction between the economic core in and
around Zurich and Lucerne and the political core in Berne remained alive.
COMPETITIVE CORE AREAS IN OUTLYING REGIONS
For countries endowed with large-size territories, the opening-up of
new lands in the outer regions and population growth often leads to the
development of new core areas that compete with the older areas eco-
nomically, without necessarily growing into a competitive political core
except in certain matters of internal politics. California, in its position
within the United States and among the western states of the Union, is an
interesting case in point (Fig. 6-12). California has become an important
170 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
M.
Fig. 6-12. The West Coast Core Area of the United States Centered on California.
economic core area of the West Coast which includes, in addition to
California, the two coastal states of Oregon and Washington and the four
"mountain states" of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. With a total
population of more than eighteen million, this area has come to represent
a clearly defined economic bloc within the economy of the country. This
fact of course has not led to a weakening of the political structure of the
Union but has brought about a strengthening of the specific political in-
terests and viewpoints of this area in national politics, as for instance in the
question of United States policy toward Asia. It is also interesting to note
that the development of an economic core area within California, far from
having found its final center of gravity, is still in a state of fluctuation. The
center is shifting from the north to the south. In 1900 only one-fifth of
California's population was to be found in southern California; at present
its share is more than one-half. The congested area of San Francisco had
to pay the price for its geographical disadvantages in the competition with
the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and San Diego, which nature had
endowed with more ample "living space" and less fog— factors which
attracted especially the new aircraft industries.
The growth of the new core area in California finds significant expres-
sion in the rise of its electoral votes. Their number in a state is based on
the state's representation in Congress, which again is based on the state's
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 171
relative gain or loss in population during a decade. California has pushed
its electoral vote up farther and faster than any other State in the Union.
After the 1940 census it boosted the figure from twenty-two to twenty-five.
After the 1950 census, California gathered in seven more— half of the four-
teen-vote increase registered by all the states. The election of Richard
M. Nixon to the office of Vice President in the Eisenhower Administration
underscored the importance of the California secondary core area in the
internal political geography of the United States.
CHECKS AND BALANCES IN FEDERAL STATES
Another device by which the influence of the core area can be balanced
consists of giving to less populous areas a stronger representation in the
parliament and government. This is done especially in federal states. In
the United States, Canada, Australia, and in Europe in Switzerland, each
of the component federal states has legal representation in one chamber,
thus giving more weight to thinly settled rural states. In some of the forty-
eight states of the United States the "unit system" accomplishes a similar
end. The frequent victory, in Georgia, of a numerical minority of conserv-
ative rural voters over a progressive city population has had repercussions
for the entire United States.
THE POLITICAL CORE IN TOTALITARIAN COUNTRIES
The less democratic a country is, the more pronounced is the impact of
the political core. In absolute monarchies or in dictatorships the core
literally rules over the other parts. Although the Nazi party in Germany
or the Fascist movement in Italy originated outside the political core and
the capital, the victory of totalitarianism brought about the concentration
of power in Berlin as well as in Rome, where the "march on Rome" cli-
maxed the Fascist victory. In other countries also the final success of
revolution has been marked by the fall of the capital. This is true of almost
all the numerous Latin American revolutions, and also of the pattern of
revolutions in Europe. The more than two years of civil war in Spain
ended with the conquest of Madrid, and the Bolshevik regime came into
the saddle with the conquest of Leningrad and Moscow. The years of
civil war which followed did not change the outcome. Neither the Ukrain-
ian breadbasket nor the vital Donets industrial and mining area ever
competed with Moscow as fountainheads of the central political power.
172 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
COLONIALISM AND CORE AREAS
As mentioned before, in colonial empires the metropolitan area as a
whole has to be regarded as the political core. It has been noted by several
authors that colonial dependencies are not necessarily located in other
continents. The Amazonian forests and their little-developed tribes are
typical colonial areas for Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. So are the
cold areas of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego for Argentina and Chile, the
Tundra regions for Canada, Lapland for Norway and Sweden. Chinese
Turkestan (Sinkiang) was a colonial overland possession of China. Con-
stitutional or legal definitions do not always reflect the actual conditions
prevailing in a dependent area in relation to the main body. In some cases
such areas are treated like the usual administrative divisions. In other
cases they are administered as "territories." That is the way in which the
United States administers the undeveloped parts of Alaska together with
its civilized fringe.
None of these areas is officially recognized as a colony. The term
"colony" has become unfashionable, and designations such as Overseas
France or Overseas Portugal have replaced it. For the political geographer
the varying terminology is more confusing than helpful. However, there
is a great variety in the degree of dependency. The Dominions are only
in a very loose connection with the British core. India has led the way
toward a still looser connection, abrogating the symbolic bond of the
common crown and declaring itself a republic. Ireland and Burma actu-
ally left the Commonwealth.
The constitution of the Soviet Union includes an article which grants
to the full-fledged Soviet republics the right to secede. History has yet to
prove if this "right" exists on paper only. What has become a reality in
the British Commonwealth, has so far remained an empty promise in the
Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union has established a whole hierarchy of dependencies
from the national okrug through the national oblast and the autonomous
soviet republic to the sixteen constituent soviet republics. It allows the
satellite people's republics to be designated as independent states, al-
though in fact they are less free than many parts of the British Common-
wealth, especially the Dominions.
CORE AREAS, CAPITAL CITIES, COMMUNICATIONS 173
RELATIONS BETWEEN DEPENDENCIES AND CORE AREAS
It is very difficult to bring the dependencies of Great Britain under a
comprehensive system. Almost every area is somewhat differently placed
from all others. There are crown colonies, administered by London-
appointed officials, and naval bases such as Gibraltar under strict military
rule. In a crown colony there may be an advisory body, wholly or par-
tially elected, and elected by white settlers only or by natives. There are
different types of self-governing colonies, protectorates where native
rulers and native administration govern, guided by British advisers. Some
dependent areas are not dependent on London, but on one or the other
of the Dominions.
Although the colonial structure of other powers— French, Belgian,
Portuguese, or Dutch— is much simpler, they all represent an attempt to
organize large areas, scattered over at least two continents, not because
they form a natural geographic physical unit, but from a core which
dominates by political means. Whatever the economic motives for acqui-
sition and retention of colonies, the political factor is in the end decisive.
There is another group of dependent areas, those territories designated
as Mandates by the League of Nations after World War I, and as Trustee-
ships by the United Nations. Theoretically their overriding loyalty should
go to the United Nations. However, though certainly an object of study
for the political geographer, the United Nations are no political body and
lack any organized area of their own, therefore also any core area. Actu-
ally all the trust territories are dependent on the core areas of their ad-
ministering nations.
CHAPTER
7
Location
INTERACTION OF STABLE AND CHANGING CONDITIONS
AFFECTING THE IMPACT OF LOCATION
For a century the United States was on the periphery of the world; only
in the last generation has it moved to the center of the stage and, on a
world-wide basis, has become a core area. Similarly it is a generally
accepted notion that until the discovery of America, the British Isles lay
on the very edge of the known world, but that thereafter they were at the
world's center for the next four centuries. In regard to their relations with
the European continent a British historian has pointed out that "to invade
Britain was singularly easy before the Norman Conquest, singularly diffi-
cult afterwards . . . safe behind the Channel ... no invasion hostile to the
community as a whole has met with even partial success owing to the
barrier of the sea. But . . . ancient Britain was peculiarly liable to invasion
for geographic and other reasons." 1
From a geographical point of view one should express the same thought
slightly differently: although the location of a place on the earth is fixed,
the political value and implications of this location are continuously
changing. It is this interaction of stable and changing conditions which is
at the basis of political geography. People have been fascinated by the
apparent stability of the "well-grounded earth," as it was called three
thousand years ago by Hesiod. They are apt to look at geographic loca-
tions and their relations without taking account of changes in time.
It is the function of the political geographer to point out this integration
1 G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, Vol. 1 (Garden City, N. Y., 1953), pp. 14 ff.
174
LOCATION 175
of time and space factors and to be aware of the time-conditioned ele-
ments which affect his findings. Certain politico-geographical statements
or, in the true sense of the word, "views" have had great poignancy at one
time, but were relevant for a short period only. Others have kept their
validity over long periods. Both types of statements are of interest, but
should not be confused. Confused thinking on basic concepts of location
in political geography, affecting not only the ordinary citizens but states-
men and military strategists alike, is only due to the failure to distinguish
properly between the time-bound validity of a politico-geographical con-
cept and its, in many cases only seemingly, timeless application. Such
misinterpretation of spatial relationships in location can distort, and has
distorted the outlook of international relations which forms the basis of
the foreign policy of the great powers.
LANDLOCKED AND INTERIOR LOCATION
One of the most persistent concepts of political geography is concerned
with the location of countries in close contact with the sea or far away
from it. This is the long-range basis of the Heartland theory 2 which must
be seen as a special, period-bound example of the politico-geographical
conditions of landlocked or interior location which have been tested by
History time and again. In antiquity a landlocked Macedonia remained
dependent upon Athens, until Philip, the father of Alexander the Great,
conquered the coastal cities. It is generally believed that landlocked loca-
tions are a serious disadvantage to the state concerned. This is correct in
many respects; however, in a strictly strategic sense a landlocked position
may provide a nation engaged in war with the advantage of the "inner
line." Given a system of good communications, a well-developed system
of intelligence, and good armies under able leadership, a country can use
its interior location to shift troops from one front to another and thus win
victories by local superiority. Frederick of Prussia, Napoleon, and also the
Bolsheviks during the Civil War of the Bevolution made the best use of
location factors of interior location which, except for the advantages they
offered in war strategy, were highly disadvantageous.
The disadvantages of interior location are manifold, particularly in that
a landlocked country is deprived of the opportunity to have direct contact
with any country except those with which it has common boundaries. This
is still true, although it must be realized that the great advantages which
2 For a discussion of the relationship of Heartland expansion to marginal lands and
narrow waterways, see pp. 113 ff.
176 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the seafaring peoples enjoyed over those of the interior lands before the
full establishment of mechanical transport on land and in the air are no
longer as distinctive as was the case only fifty years ago. But even though
the progress of technology has aided greatly in the utilization of diversi-
fied land areas and in establishing continuity and compactness of the
territory, the fact has not been altered that every country remains depend-
ent on one or all of its neighbors. Modern industrialization and modern
commerce with their dependence on a great variety of raw materials have
rather sharpened this relation.
BOUNDARIES AND NEIGHBORS
The question has been raised as to whether it is more favorable for a
country to border with many or with few other countries. Experience has
shown that the fact that the United States has only two neighbors has
simplified many problems. Germany, in contrast, has suffered from the
fact that it has had to deal with a great number of neighbors. It requires
a very skillful handling of foreign affairs to maintain tolerable relations
with neighboring countries of different, often contradictory interests. The
situation is aggravated by the fact that a coalition of several of these
neighbor countries is always a possibility. Bismarck, himself a master in
the diplomatic game of coalitions, confessed that during his chancellor-
ship he was continuously plagued by the "nightmare of coalitions." Hitler
thought himself strong enough to neglect this possibility and led a poten-
tially victorious Germany into catastrophe.
For a landlocked state, to have only very few neighbors may equally be
a great disadvantage. The extreme case of a country with only one neigh-
bor, which would mean that it is completely surrounded, is seldom found
in recent history. The Boer states offer as close an example as possible.
Save for a short boundary in remote terrain with an undeveloped Portu-
guese colony, the two Boer states, Transvaal and the Orange Free State,
were at one time completely surrounded by British territory (Fig. 7-1).
In the ensuing struggle the Boers succumbed. However, in this struggle
even the remote connection with Portuguese Laurenco Marques was of
great value.
BUFFER LOCATION
To be placed between only two states is a location which seriously
affects the power position of any state but especially of a weak one. At
best it becomes a buffer state. Its continued existence depends on the
LOCATION
177
Fig. 7-1. The Boer States in Relation to British and Portuguese Territories.
agreement between the two neighbor states or at least on stable relations
between them. Persia, Afghanistan, or Siam in the first years of the twen-
tieth century are examples. All three states owed their continuing inde-
pendence not so much to internal strength, but to treaties between Britain
and Russia, and Britain and France, based on the desire to keep the other
power out of the respective area and still to maintain good relations with
this power (Fig. 7-2). A similar agreement, in this case between three
powers— Britain, France, and Italy— kept the independence of Ethiopia
intact for some time ( Fig. 7-3 ) . When France and Britain were no longer
ready or able to wage war for Ethiopian independence, and when Italy
was ready to risk friendly relations with these powers, Ethiopia became a
victim of Italian expansion in 1935. If buffer countries become strong
enough to be able to defend their independence themselves with some
178
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Fig. 7-2. The Buffer States of Iran ( Persia ) , Afghanistan, and Thailand ( Siam )
before the Partition of India.
chance of success, they cease to be buffers. Switzerland, favored by its
natural and easily defensible environment in the midst of high mountains,
with its people cherishing the tradition of liberty, with its economy geared
to war-preparedness, can hardly be called a buffer state. However, its
favorable position is also due to the fact that it has four competing neigh-
bors. When Germany annexed one of these neighbors, Austria, in 1938,
and occupied the territory of the second, France, in 1940, Switzerland had
to make some concessions which might have compromised its neutrality;
but it was forced to these concessions in order to preserve the essence of
its neutrality and independence.
A country becomes a buffer and maintains this quality not by its loca-
tion alone. An additional and intangible requirement is the will to remain
independent despite powerful neighbors. Finland, between East and
West, is a splendid example of such a buffer state determination. In con-
trast, the chain of states from Poland to Bulgaria were consolidated by
the U.S.S.R. in a bloc organization, and virtually ceased to be independ-
ent states when a relatively large sector of their population, after 1945,
was blinded by the might of the Soviet Union and did not regard national
independence a supreme value. They exchanged their status as buffer
states, which they had maintained in the period between the two World
Wars, for that of satellites.
Not all buffer states are landlocked; neither Iran, nor Thailand, Finland,
or before their inclusion in the Soviet bloc Poland, Rumania, or Bulgaria
can be called landlocked in the strict sense of the word. However, the
coasts of most of these states are on an inland sea, the exit of which to the
open ocean is practically closed. Iran's coast is very remote from the set-
tled centers of the country, separated from them by high mountains and
LOCATION
179
Fig. 7-3. The Buffer State of Ethiopia before 1935.
hot deserts. If it were not for the very short coastal stretch near the mouth
of the Shatt el Arab, Iran despite its many hundred miles of seacoast
would be a maritime state only in name.
A peculiar situation develops if a country is penned in between a large
neighbor country and the anecumene. In this context the ocean can not
be regarded as part of the anecumene as the navies of all countries are
free to approach all its coasts. Thus the above description could with slight
qualification apply to Portugal which, in the past, in a typical buffer-state
position between the larger neighbor Spain, and a British dominated sea,
and in the true spirit of independence, retained its freedom against re-
peated onslaught. Like the ocean much earlier, now deserts and the Arctic
are beginning to loose their true character as anecumene. It is doubtful
whether Greenland and Iceland, with their back to the Arctic, and Lybia,
with its back to the Sahara, will retain this character much longer. Perhaps
Oman and Hadramaut in Southern Arabia are the last perfect examples.
In the not too distant past such countries as England, Japan, or the Philip-
pine Islands were in this position. And Ireland, Australia, and New Zea-
land are accommodating themselves to new relationships under our very
eyes.
180
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
•^' R A Z I L
\ ..-6 y
Rio Branco ,-S
R . ° rr
PERU
~v
BOLIVIA
Cochabamba
"N..-.V •
PA R A G U A ¥
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ARGENT1 NA
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Fig. 7-4. Boundary Conflicts in South America: the Acre dispute; Bolivia's
lost access to the sea.
BACKDOOR" AREAS
The classical example of a basically landlocked country is Russia and
its successor the U.S.S.R. Its Arctic coast and especially its harbors of
Murmansk and Archangelsk have often been called Russia's backdoor.
That designation does not refer as much to the difficult access from the
sea, as to their remote distance from the core areas of the U.S.S.R., indeed
from any economically significant part of the country. Large, almost unin-
habited, and inhospitable areas of virgin, swampy forest, the taiga, and
moss-covered wind-swept cold steppe, the tundra, separate the few coastal
settlements and a few mining districts from the rest of the country.
LOCATION
181
*-n
i
PERU
BOLIVIA 5 ,
Cochabamba
Santa Cruz;^**_^ }
__:. ^"*£:Corumba
/— " NT
ARGENTINA
i
Fig. 7-5. Bolivia to the Sea via Brazil: (1) existing railroad; (2) proposed railroad;
( 3 ) highway link.
In South America every country except Uruguay has such boundaries,
remote, difficult to reach through tropical forest or over towering moun-
tains. Though, seemingly, the exact location of these boundaries could not
be of great value to these countries, their national pride and the hope of
finding hidden natural resources hindered them from compromise. The
remoteness of these boundaries also prevented their exact delimitation and
demarcation and thus caused many conflicts. Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru
quarreled over the Acre territory when wild rubber rendered this hitherto
unknown area a country of great potential value ( Fig. 7-4 ) . Peru, Colom-
bia, and Ecuador for similar reasons competed for the Oriente, an area
which in addition gives access to the Amazon. Bolivia and Paraguay went
to war over the Chaco. Bolivia, for economic reasons, and reasons of pres-
tige, wanted access to the Rio Parana. This would be a typical inconven-
ient backdoor through steaming, practically uninhabited tropical forests
to an undeveloped river port far inland and to an outlet to the sea on the
other side of the continent. It would still be a valuable gate to the outer
world, as the main entrance from the Pacific Ocean is firmly in the hands
of Peru and Chile. The corridor to the ports of Tacna and Arica, once
owned by Bolivia, was lost in the Pacific War of 1884 and seems beyond
hope of recovery ( Fig. 7-4 ) . In 1955, Bolivia at last took a step in easing
its landlocked position, when a highway-railroad link between Brazil and
Bolivia was completed (Fig. 7-5).
Even in densely populated European states such as Portugal, the Neth-
182 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
erlands, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, all of which front the sea, the
backdoor areas are in thinly inhabited inland areas. Much less frequent
is the country facing inland with its coast containing the backdoor. Such
is Yugoslavia. Though the interests of its coastal population are definitely
bound up with fishing and shipping, the main bulk of the country and its
population has little contact with this coastal area. Rugged, karstic moun-
tains are a powerful barrier to settlement and communications.
Neither Chile nor Peru have significant interests on or across the sea.
But Chile is, nonetheless, a coastal country, looking toward the sea, while
for Peru the interior is as important as the coast. In Europe, Belgium's
land boundaries are much more important than its short coast. The one
great Belgian harbor, Antwerp, is accessible only through the Scheldt
river, the mouth of which Belgium shares with the Netherlands.
THE URGE TO THE SEA
It is understandable that interior states try to reach the open sea. His-
tory is full of conflicts between interior states and coastal powers blocking
their road to the sea. Ethiopia has been cut off from the sea by Italian,
British, and French colonies since the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury (cf. Fig. 7-3, p. 179). Only their rivalry kept it from losing its political
independence, while economically its underdeveloped condition made it
less vulnerable to economic pressure. Thus it faced the dilemma of
whether to remain undeveloped and fall prey for this very reason to more
highly developed countries sooner or later, or to slide into economic de-
pendency in the course of its own progress. Many factors contributed to
Ethiopia's involvement in the ideological world conflict, to its conquest
by Italy, and finally to its liberation. Together with its freedom, Ethiopia
won the coveted exit to the sea (cf. Fig. 7-3, p. 179).
A much older and still lasting struggle for free access to the sea is that
of Russia and, since 1917, the Soviet Union.3 Interior location is, in Russia,
usually assumed under the implied or acknowledged supposition that the
ice-barred Arctic coast does not have any practical value. Even today, this
assumption can be accepted as correct in a general way despite the prog-
ress which the Soviet Union and Canada have made in the utilization of
the Arctic Sea and coast by means of icebreakers, aviation, and weather
stations. This utilization has been favored by recent climatic changes. In
the last half century the Arctic Ocean has become warmer and the ice
3 R. J. Kerner, Russia's Urge to the Sea (Berkeley, Calif., 1942), and his chapter
on "The Soviet Union as a Sea Power," in H. W. Weigert, V. Stefansson, and R. E.
Harrison, eds., New Compass of the World (New York, 1949), pp. 104-123.
LOCATION 183
border has receded, making navigation and living conditions possible in
some formerly closed areas. Whether this climatic amelioration will re-
main a permanent feature we do not know. In any event, certain technical
advances, such as the use of radio, radar, and aviation for ice reconnais-
sance, the use of strong icebreakers, and so on, will further contribute to
the utilization of the Arctic. In terms of strategy both the U.S.S.R. and
Canada are interested in strengthening their control of the Arctic coast
(cf. Fig. 8-11, p. 252). Whether this effort will bear economical fruit in
time of peace remains to be seen, despite the spread of settlement north,
which goes forward on a small scale and at great cost.4 We shall discuss
developments in the Arctic "Mediterranean" later in greater detail.5
Located originally in a secluded forest area of Eastern Europe, the state
of the princes of Moscow developed near the source of several rivers,
flowing to different seas. Much of Russia's history can be understood if we
see it as a continuous struggle, kindled time and again by the urge to the
sea. In earliest times this urge was limited to attempts to utilize the navi-
gable rivers. The first time Russia reached the sea it was at the Arctic
Ocean and this proved to be of very limited value, both because of the
inhospitable and remote nature of the sea, and of the long and difficult
access to the coast from the interior. Only since World War I has Mur-
mansk been connected by a railroad with the interior. Gradually, several
seas were reached: in the southeast, in 1557, the Caspian Sea at Astrakhan;
in the east, in 1635, the Sea of Okhotsk; in the west, about 1700, the Baltic
Sea at St. Petersburg (today Leningrad); in the south, in 1713, the Sea
of Azov and through it, in 1783, the Black Sea. All these exits proved un-
satisfactory. Either they led into enclosed seas, such as the Baltic and the
Black Sea, or over immense, almost uninhabited stretches, as to the Pacific
Ocean. Although the frontages at the sea have expanded, they have re-
mained basically unsatisfactory. The Soviet Union, as the heir of Russia,
has established itself as the paramount, hardly challenged power in the
Baltic, Black, and Caspian Seas, but still the exits from the first two seas
are in foreign hands,6 and the Caspian Sea has no outlet. Therefore the
pressure is still mounting, also and significantly in directions where not
4 The fact that the North American nations lag behind the U.S.S.R. in Arctic re-
search and development should not detract from their achievements in recent years.
To mention one significant development, two American and one Canadian icebreakers
navigated in the fall of 1954 the Northwest Passage leading from the Atlantic Ocean
to the Beaufort Sea, thus laying the groundwork for the development of the mineral
and biological resources in the Canadian North, of which the vast iron ore deposits in
northern Labrador are most important.
5 See pp. 246 ff.
6 See pp. 242 ff .
184 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
even a limited success has been achieved so far, as across Iran to the Indian
Ocean. The recurrent pressure on Turkey to deliver the Straits into Soviet
hands and the pressure on the Scandinavian States and Denmark to open
free access to the Atlantic cannot be explained by Communist ideology or
temporary constellations (cf. Fig. 8-7, p. 238); they are inherent in the
disabilities of a landlocked position. A further means to combat the dis-
advantages due to landlocked position is the canal system of the U.S.S.R.
which permits small navy vessels to go from the Arctic Ocean to the Baltic
Sea, and from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
In general each coastal state has potential contact with all other coastal
states of the globe, that is, with more than 90 per cent of all independent
states. In situations where it appeared impossible to establish a route to
the sea over a country's own territory, occasionally the substitute of a free
harbor was chosen, sometimes with shipping privileges secured on a river.
Czechoslovakia owned and still owns free harbors in Hamburg and
Szescszin (the former Stettin), Austria in Trieste, and Yugoslavia poten-
tially in Salonica, a commentary on the above-mentioned inaccessibility
and remoteness of her own coast ( see pp. 33, 198 ff . ) . But only Czecho-
slovakia has the right to dispatch ships or barges on an internationalized
river to these ports. Though few rivers have been put under an inter-
national regime to secure access to the sea from interior states, these few
are of importance, and among them, of primary importance, the Rhine.
Switzerland has a growing Rhine merchant fleet, based on Basel, and even
a few seagoing vessels. Both France and Germany built canals from the
Rhine through their own territory to national harbors; nevertheless, for
both countries the Rhine traffic on the internationalized river to its mouth
in Dutch territory has always remained of greater interest than the canal
traffic to the Rhone and Marne or the Ems and the port of Emden.
The Danube has always played a lesser role. Several reasons account
for this, among them the geography of the rapids which alternate with
sections of shallows and sandbars, its mouth in the closed-in Black Sea,
and the little-advanced economic conditions of much of its drainage basin.
Political causes have contributed to this stagnant condition. Until 1914,
and to a lesser degree from 1919 to 1938, an international organization
controlled the Danube. The post-1945 conditions for a while cut the
river in two parts. Gradually navigation along the whole river has been
resumed, first by Yugoslav shipping. Lately Austrian and German ships
were admitted in parts of the Soviet area, but the eastern Danubian coun-
tries form a separate international organization completely dominated by
the Soviet Union.
LOCATION 185
When the Congo State (Fig. 7-6) was founded, Britain tried to hinder
the creation of this new political body by inducing Portugal to reassert
century-old claims to the whole West African coast from a point north of
the mouth of the Congo. In 1785, the Portuguese had established a fort
at Cabinda, about thirty miles north of the mouth of the Congo. The
French explorer de Brazza reached the Congo near what is today Brazza-
ville and claimed the northern bank of the lower Congo for France.
Finally at the Congo Conference in Berlin, 1884 to 1885, an agreement was
reached which left the newly-founded Congo State, the present Belgian
Congo, with an outlet to the sea on the northern bank of the Congo River,
conceding the southern bank and the territory of Cabinda to Portugal,
and most of the western bank of the lower Congo farther inland to France.
This outlet proved to be so unsatisfactory when a railroad to the port of
Matadi was to be constructed, that in 1927 Belgium exchanged with Portu-
gal 1350 square miles of inland territory for only one square mile near
Matadi (cf. Fig. 5-2, p. 123).
As it turned out, the southeastern corner of the Belgian Congo became
the most valuable part of the colony because of its rich mineral resources.7
Transportation to the coastal port of Matadi is very inconvenient because
of the necessary transloading several times between river and rail and
because of the long distance. Thus, despite the tariff advantages which
this all-Belgian line offers, the Portuguese railroad through Angola and
to the port of Benguela and the connection with British Rhodesia could
tap a large part of the traffic going to either distant South Africa or to the
Portuguese East African port of Beira.
In most of these cases the railroad outlets were constructed with mutual
agreement and to the mutual advantage of the powers concerned. How-
ever, where such arrangements are unfeasible, the blocked state may
force an unwilling neighbor by territorial annexation or by boundary re-
adjustments to supply the railroad outlet. The best known example is that
of the South Manchurian Railroad and the Chinese Eastern Railroad to
Dairen. Here Czarist Russia forced upon China an outlet to the ice-free
sea, only to lose it to the stronger power of Japan.8
The new British dominion of Central Africa, formed as recently as 1953
and including Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyassaland
7 The Congo produced in 1954 more than 50 per cent of the Free World's uranium,
80 per cent of its cobalt, 70 per cent of its industrial diamonds, 8 per cent of its copper,
and 8 per cent of its tin.
8 R. B. Johnson, "Political Salients and Transportation Solutions: as Typified by
Eastern North America and Manchuria," Annals of the American Association of Geog-
raphers, Vol. 39 (March, 1949), pp. 71, 72.
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LOCATION 187
(cf. Fig. 23-1, p. 690) is also a landlocked area. Most of the conventional
political maps do not depict clearly its landlocked quality as they show
Central Africa as well as the British Mandate of Tanganyika and the
Union of South Africa in the same color. The Union of South Africa has
made major efforts to extend its ideology and its economic system over
this area. It is in a position to exert strong economic pressure since it is
the main customer of the Central African territories and because the main
railroad link leads into the Union. Thus the railroad into Portuguese
Mozambique to Beira and even by way of Katanga to Angola wins polit-
ical importance. The river-links to the sea, the Zambesi and its tributary
the Shire— the latter the only direct outlet of Nyassaland— are obstructed
by cataracts and are without sufficient depth during the dry period.
How important a river can be as outlet, if it has no obstacles to navi-
gation, is shown by the Paraguay and Plata rivers. They are for Bolivia
potentially an important outlet to the sea, and function as such for Para-
guay. An even more striking example is the Amazon. Although it involves
long transport from a Peruvian Pacific port by way of the Panama Canal,
Peruvian shippers find this river route a more convenient, cheaper, and
faster way for bulk wares than the difficult and tedious transport of wares
across the high Andes and through the steaming forests to the Oriente of
Peru (cf. Fig. 22-2, p. 674).
The Great Lakes are drained by the St. Lawrence River but the barrier
of the Niagara Falls has enabled other routes to compete as shipping out-
lets. Through the Illinois River ships pass to the Mississippi. Through
Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River, and from Lake Erie through the
Mohawk and Hudson rivers, they go to New York. Gradually canals and
railroads have replaced the ancient portages. The struggle for the St.
Lawrence Seaway (cf. Fig. 6-11, p. 166) is only one phase in the age-old
struggle to direct the area around the Great Lakes inland or outward to
the Sea, to use a favorable coastal position to dominate, or at least to
exploit this area of interior position. This struggle for the domination of
the Great Lakes' traffic has become quite complex. At one time it was suf-
ficient to occupy a coastal station like Manhattan Island or Montreal to
assure control of the access to the Great Lakes. Today a combination of
transportation improvements and economic inducements is necessary to
secure for any port a share in this profitable traffic.9
9 See also pp. 165, 166 on the role of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the develop-
ment of economic core areas in the United States.
188 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
SEA POWER POSITIONS AND EXPANSION INLAND
The domination of large continental areas has been attempted many
times by sea powers. In the past the occupation of a coastal island or of
a headland was sometimes sufficient to assure complete domination of the
hinterland. Phoenicians, Greeks, medieval Italian cities, the Portuguese,
Dutch, French, and British succeeded each other in this type of locational
struggle. Few relics of such sites exist today. The British crown colony of
Hongkong is probably the most important. However, its function has
changed. It no longer dominates China by its trade, but has become the
main point of contact between China and the West. At one time Port
Arthur in Russian hands assumed a similar position in regard to Man-
churia. Portuguese Macao, the Portuguese colonies on the Indian coast,
and international Tangier in Morocco have become fossils without impor-
tant functions.
Other somewhat similar places, especially in Africa, became the starting
points for expansion inland. Mombasa in Kenya and Bathurst in Gambia
have retained their protected location on an island close to the coast, re-
sembling the location of Manhattan Island. So did Lagos in Nigeria on an
island in the lagoons, and Dakar in French West Africa at the tip of a
peninsula. Their present functions, however, are no longer the same as in
the past. These places are no longer the trading posts of a foreign power,
assuring an economic stranglehold on the hinterland. With the strengthen-
ing and political consolidation of the hinterland these coastal sites have
become the trade outlets of what in most cases has become a politically
integrated area. Bombay and Calcutta in India also come to mind. Certain
of these coastal towns have become the capitals of their territories. More
indicative of the real situation are the capitals that have been transferred
to inland cities, as to Nairobi from Mombasa or to New Delhi from Cal-
cutta, stressing thereby the politically subordinated position of the harbor
town.
A similar process, though under slightly different conditions, took place
in the United States towards the end of the colonial period. As the original
colonies expanded, capitals also were moved inland from the first coastal
settlements, from New York to Albany, from Philadelphia to Harrisburg,
from Jamestown to Richmond, from Charlestown to Columbia, and from
Savannah to Atlanta. Of course, these cities were from the beginning the
centers of European agrarian settlement as well as trading posts for the
overseas trade. Dutch New Amsterdam, today's New York, bears the
closest resemblance to the African examples.
LOCATION 189
LOCATION AND NATIONAL SECURITY
A related modern problem concerns the advisability of removing indus-
trial and political centers from frontier zones for security reasons. Political
shifts resulting from such a relocation can not be assessed at the moment,
as most such plans have not progressed beyond the blueprint stage. Ex-
amples of the past show the military and economic implications of such
shifts, but do not reveal much about their influence on politico-geographi-
cal conditions. The history of World War II offers several examples of
countries trying to relocate industries in areas considered safe, or rela-
tively safe, from enemy action and remote from the frontier zones which
were, or seemed to be, more exposed to enemy interference, especially by
air power. In line with this kind of strategy, the Soviet Union withdrew
and re-established important industries behind the Urals and in Western
Siberia during World War II in order to protect them from conquest or
destruction by the German invader.
The new tools of atomic and biological warfare provide mankind with
means of total destruction which stagger the imagination and render
hopeless the task of rewriting the location pattern of a country in order
to create areas of "safety."
Actually, none of the great powers seems to have been able to work out
a new locational pattern for the purpose of meeting the threat of atomic
warfare. It is true that in countries like the Soviet Union and the United
States industrial planning in recent years has attempted to refrain from
making the country as a whole dependent on one or a few vital industrial
production centers. But except for this, preoccupation with the urgent
problems of the day has militated against the carrying out of radical plans
for protecting areas of high concentration of population and industry.
So-called "ribbon developments" along the lines of a grid of transportation
and communication lines 10 or plans to set up small detached production
units instead of a cluster of industries and to assure these units of uninter-
rupted transportation have remained in the blueprint stage. According to
newspaper reports in smaller countries with a more simply arranged and
highly concentrated industrial location pattern, such as Sweden, plans
have been executed successfully to protect strategic industries by relocat-
ing them underground.
10 E. H. Hoover, The Location of Economic Activity (New York, 1948), p. 296.
190 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
LOCATION ALONG NARROW MARINE STRAITS
Another type of dominating location has survived without much change
in function, namely, location along an indispensable route, a route which
cannot be by-passed, especially along narrow marine straits. Istanbul and
vicinity along the Straits (Bosporus and Dardanelles), Copenhagen on
The Sound (cf. Fig. 8-7, p. 238), Singapore at the Straits of Malacca,
Aden at the entrance to the Red Sea, and Gibraltar at that to the Mediter-
ranean have been vital points for centuries and are still so. The Straits
and The Sound are in the hands of relatively minor powers, Turkey and
Denmark, but other powers are vitally interested in their free use. Among
the interested powers, Russia, and now the Soviet Union, has ranked first
for about two centuries. This fact accounts for the continuous pressure
put by this power on the two smaller nations. Great Britain controls the
three other places mentioned and draws part of its strength as a world
power from this fact. The same is true for the interoceanic Panama Canal,
controlled by the United States.
The Suez Canal (cf. Fig. 8-8, p. 240), in 1954, has ceased to be a British
zone of influence and direct power. With the exodus of the British gar-
rison, to be completed in 1956, Egypt will reach one of the goals of her
national ambition. The Suez Canal remains an international waterway
open to all peaceful navigation. Only the future can tell what role it will
play in a serious international crisis in which Egypt may have to take
sides. In 1954, the new power position of Egypt in the Canal Zone was
illustrated by the fact that she was in a position to continue, in spite of
the disapproval of the United Nations, her blockade measures against
Israel, in regard to which a state of war continued to exist.
Turkey, or Egypt, or Denmark cannot help but be interested in these
passages because of their location astride them. In contrast, Gibraltar,
Singapore (cf. Fig. 8-5, p. 232), and Aden are so important only because
they have been transformed deliberately into strongpoints for the protec-
tion of what has been called a vital artery of the British Empire.11 In the
hands of weak powers, they would lose much of their importance.
It is the general area along the waterway which is important, not a
specific point. The straits of Gibraltar (cf. Fig. 8-8, p. 240) were domi-
nated in the past from Cadiz and not Gibraltar, those of Malacca from
the city of Malacca and not from Singapore. In both cases distant, but not
11 C. B. Fawcett, "Lifelines of the British Empire," in Weigert-Stefansson-Harrison,
op. cit., pp. 238-249 (244).
LOCATION 191
too distant bases sufficed for a strong naval power to control the actual
narrow passage. In the same manner the United States supplements its
hold on the Panama Canal by its bases in the Caribbean area ( cf. Fig. 3-6,
p. 79), such as the Virgin Islands, Guantanamo on Cuba, and the leased
bases on Trinidad and other British islands. Similarly the broad connec-
tion between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans south of South Africa is
controlled from rather distant bases on the coast of the Union of South
Africa, especially Simonstown.
Harbors, strategically well-located as they may be, if they are in the
hands of powers without a strong navy have little actual value for the
domination of these waterways. Neither Spanish Ceuta nor neutral Tan-
gier along the Strait of Gibraltar, nor French Djibouti at the exit of the
Red Sea, nor any of the many potential island bases around the Caribbean
Sea, nor the Portuguese Lourenco Marques in South Africa, nor the Indo-
nesian Medang at the Straits of Malacca are comparable to, for instance,
Gibraltar. The city of Hormuz which once dominated the entrance into
the Persian Gulf has found no successor. It is the peculiar combination
between naval power and mercantile opportunities that makes sites along-
side straits so important and that explains why their fortunes change with
the passage of time and changes in world conditions.12
NARROW PASSAGES ON CONTINENTS
Narrow passages for traffic exist also on the continents. Where long
mountain chains cross whole continents, pass routes across these chains
are of decisive importance. As a rule they cannot be controlled from posi-
tions at some distance, but only alongside or astride such passages. Af-
ghanistan is the country of the Khyber Pass, the most important pass
leading from India to its Asiatic neighbor states. Included in this pass
region are also a few less important nearby passes, which all together
form this unique pass zone. The unifying force of this route has proved
strong enough even in the present contest of the great powers to preserve
Afghanistan as a political unit.
Similarly Switzerland grew up around the St. Gotthard Pass and gradu-
ally included some nearby passes. It is significant that Switzerland is also
one of the few multinational states which have withstood so far the infec-
tion of nationalism. East of Switzerland, Austria developed as a pass state
in the Middle Ages and after a spectacular development in the Hapsburg
12 For an elaboration of this topic and its strategical implications see pp. 227 ff.
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192
LOCATION 193
Empire is reduced again to an Alpine pass state. The analogous pass state
of the western Alps, Savoy, disappeared not quite a century ago after an
existence of many centuries. The autonomy, acquired for the Val d'Aosta
in 1945, is a weak aftermath. In contrast it should be noted that in the
long chain of the American Cordilleras no pass state has developed. The
Republic of Panama, of recent birth, comes closest to this concept.
Location around a pass does not by itself signify independence, or even
different development of a region. Quite the opposite, such pass areas are
much sought after and coveted by adjacent countries in the plains. The
easier the route through them, the easier they fall prey. The Iroquois were
able to base their federation on the gap of the Mohawk valley through the
Appalachians, but this political body did not exist very long. Many others
never became the center of states. One such gap, which has long been
a cradle of conflict— the area around Trieste— either belonged to some
strong state or was divided between two of them. It was too important
to be left to the control of the local inhabitants, and too wide and open
for them to preserve their independence against other strong powers.
There are other such pass regions. One of the most fateful in European
history is the gap between the southern end of the Urals and the northern
end of the Caspian Sea which opens into the steppes of Central Asia. Too
broad and flat to be defensible, it proved to be definite enough to channel-
ize movement of nomadic tribes. Time and again Huns, Magyars, Tatars
and many others broke into Europe, and occasionally mass movements in
the opposite direction also occurred. However, the Russian peasants mi-
grated into Siberia in numbers of many hundreds of thousands not
through this gate but over low passes farther north in the Urals. Today
this region, though not very far from the geometrical center of the Soviet
Union, is still a region off the main roads.
The same fateful role which the Ural-Caspian gate plays in European
history was assigned to the Palestinian-Syrian corridor in the history of
the Near East ( Fig. 7-7 ) . It is a narrow piece of cultivable land between
the Arabian desert and the Mediterranean Sea connecting Egypt with the
mountains of Asia Minor and the fertile plains of Iraq. Nomads and other
peoples, forced to migrate, have used it since prehistoric times. Merchants
and other peaceful travelers followed. Armies trod the corridors under
obscure leaders or under world-famous generals and kings from the Ram-
ses and Alexander to Napoleon and Allenby. A number of nations have
tried to make their home in this corridor and defend themselves in its
narrow confines and its rugged hills and mountains. Recurrent wars and
annihilating catastrophes were their repeated fate.
194 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
A much broader corridor that time and again played a role of fateful
importance in European history is the western continuation of the broad
Russian Plain through Poland, Northern Germany, Belgium, and into
western France. Cultural influences, tribes and nations, commerce and
armies have moved through this corridor. Large rivers cross it, and at the
few points where these rivers can be crossed, important cities have sprung
into existence. In its narrowest part— in Flanders— the meeting of diverse
influences has created one of the centers of European civilization. Here
also an unusually large number of famous battlefields can be found.
Parallel to this corridor there is another south of the Alps, the Po valley.
However, the great centers of civilization are neither west nor east of it,
but Rome to the south and the French and German core areas- to the north
of it. The stream of east-west movement in the corridor was crossed by
a more important one on the points where routes over the Alps and the
Appenines open. The great centers tend to lie on such cross routes.
ISTHMUSES
Isthmuses, those narrow pieces of land which connect two continents
or larger land masses, look on the map like natural corridors. Only detailed
maps show that this is rarely the case. The Isthmus of Panama, or even
the whole of Central America, have never served as a corridor between
North and South America. High rugged mountains and the unhealthy
climate of the lower parts account for this. It is still debated whether the
two pre-Columbian high civilizations of the Mayas and the Incas had any
contact over this land route. The Pan-American highway system is still
incomplete.13
Other isthmuses, like that of Kra at the base of the Malayan peninsula
(cf. Fig. 8-5, p. 232), are only slightly favorable for the movement of men
and goods. Cultural influences and invaders entered the Greek Pelopon-
nesus and the Crimea, to name only two examples, as often across the
narrow sea as through the isthmuses which connect these peninsulas with
the mainland.
More important than the negative function of isthmuses as land routes
is the fact that the narrow waist of an isthmus is a minor obstacle for
crossing from sea to sea. The construction of canals only accentuates a
pre-existing favorable condition. The canals of Suez and Panama are the
two main examples.
13
See Fig. 22-1, p. 670.
LOCATION 195
ISTHMUSES AND CANALS: SUEZ AND PANAMA
The Suez Canal (cf. Fig. 8-8, p. 240) cuts through the only isthmus
which is a major historical highway. This canal separates the Eurasian
and African landmasses, connecting the Mediterranean at Port Said with
the Red Sea at Suez over the short distance of about one hundred miles.
This short cut which obviates the necessity of transloading has completely
replaced the old land route from Alexandria to the Red Sea, as well as
that from the Syrian ports to Basra at the Persian Gulf. It has, thereby,
increased the key position of Egypt and Sinai, and made Syria's position
as an intermediary between East and West a matter of the past, impair-
ing its standing among the countries of the Near East. During recent
decades, however, the construction of pipelines from Iraq and Saudi
Arabia to the Syrian and Lebanese ports has tended to return to Syria
some part of its key position.
Constructed by the French, the Suez Canal has been under British
control from 1875 to 1954, a period roughly contemporary with the flour-
ishing of the so-called third British Empire. As long as India was an in-
tegral part of this Empire the Suez Canal was indispensable to it and has
long been an important link in the "life line" starting at Gibraltar in the
West and leading into the Indian Ocean at Aden. During and after World
War II India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon loosened their ties with Great
Britain. As a result, the Canal, though still a valuable asset, is no longer
the indispensable link. At the same time the development of air power has
made the Canal vulnerable to enemy attack. With the transfer of the
Canal to Egypt the Canal and the country on its banks is in the hand of
the same power. Its control has strengthened the position of Egypt, both
economically and politically.
The Panama Canal (cf. Fig. 3-6, p. 72) offers an interesting similar
example. Though of equally great importance, the isthmus of Panama in
the hands of weak and small nations, first Colombia, later of the Republic
of Panama, was rather a cause of weakness for these countries. Like the
Suez Canal, the Panama Canal has great importance for international
commerce. Its role is even more significant than that of the Suez Canal
because of its importance for the commerce and the political position of
the United States. However, while the Suez Canal could justly be called
a part of the life line of the British Empire, the cohesion of the United
States would not be threatened without the Panama Canal. It enables the
United States Navy to operate the American fleet in two oceans and to
concentrate naval strength in the face of the greatest danger. Because of
196 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
this hemispheric defense role of the Panama Canal, the United States has
established bases for the protection of the Canal on the island approaches
in the Caribbean and in the Pacific. This necessitated a change in its
political relations to the areas concerned, which were either British col-
onies or independent states. It has strengthened the economic and polit-
ical ties in all cases, but it has also evoked unfavorable repercussions.
Some groups in the Republic of Panama could base their political prestige
on the popularity of the fight against encroachment by the Americans.
However, nowhere did the opposition take forms of open hostility com-
parable to that shown by the Greek majority on Cyprus since the British
have shifted their Suez Canal installations to this island.
The Panama Canal was not the only canal site which has been con-
sidered by the Americas at one time or another. Canals have been pro-
posed across Nicaragua, Honduras, and across Mexico's Isthmus of
Tehuantepec. Probably earliest was the proposal to use the Atrato River
and on the Pacific side the San Juan River. While this project never
came near serious consideration, primarily because of geographical and
technical difficulties, in all the other proposals political considerations
were at least as important as the technical problems, and all were so inti-
mately interwoven that they can not well be separated in the discussion.
Perhaps the clearest case is that of the Tehuantepec project which would
have put American forces, already deployed along the northern boundary
of Mexico, into the southern frontier zone and would have deprived this
country potentially of all direct contact with any other neighbor. What
was tolerable and even to a certain degree an insurance for its independ-
ence for such a small country as Panama, would have been considered an
impairment of its sovereignty by a larger country with the proud tradition
of Mexico.
THE KRA CANAL PROJECT
The Kra isthmus on the Malayan Peninsula ( cf. Fig. 8-5, p. 232 ) is the
potential site of an interoceanic canal. Though plans for such a canal
never have passed beyond the blueprint stage, their existence alone has
been helpful for Thailand in its struggle to maintain its independent
buffer position against France, Britain, and Japan. Opposed to such a
canal were the local interests of Singapore and the larger interests of
Great Britain, whose supervision of the traffic through the Strait of
Malacca would be challenged. The construction of a canal through the
Isthmus of Kra would shorten the route around the Malayan Peninsula by
600 miles and, therefore, despite canal fees, be a heavy competitor of the
LOCATION 197
Singapore route. The importance of Singapore is only about 150 years old.
Before the advent of the Europeans in the sixteenth century and also
later, as long as shipping preferred routes not too far from land, the route
from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea led this way. The route
was dominated by a site farther north, that of the city of Malacca. When
the Dutch came and ventured a direct route from the Cape of Good Hope
across the Indian Ocean, the Sunda Strait and Batavia grew in impor-
tance. Singapore's importance was finally confirmed when the opening of
the Suez Canal made the northerly straits the more convenient route to
the Far East.
The minor importance of the Kra route, and that of the only other exist-
ing interoceanic canal, that of Kiel in Germany at the base of the Jutland
Peninsula, is geographically caused by the fact that the saving in shipping
time is relatively small compared with that brought about by the con-
struction of the Suez and Panama canals. The latter obviate the necessitv
of circumnavigating a whole continent, the first two only of peninsulas.
PENINSULAS
The importance of peninsulas must be seen in their isolation potential
caused by their semidetachment. This sometimes meant that these penin-
sulas remained culturally backward and politically of little importance.
A striking example is that of the peninsula of Lower California, where
isolation is aggravated by a desert or semidesert climate. As early as in
pre-Columbian times it was inhabited by one of the most backward Indian
groups and this backwardness, in relation to other parts of Mexico, has
remained characteristic. Even in Europe some peninsulas, such as Corn-
wall, Wales, or Brittany, have been able to preserve their identity, even
some remnants of a separate nationality, but have remained somewhat
backward. Mountains, everywhere in the world favored as refuge areas,
accentuate this function of peninsulas— and of islands— because there is no
longer any other possibility of retreat.
In large peninsulas we speak of favorable conditions for development
of separate nationalities and independent states such as Italy, Spain to-
gether with Portugal, Denmark, or Korea. However, this condition should
not be overrated, as the long history of political divisions in Italy, the
Iberian Peninsula, and even in Korea shows. The Balkan Peninsula,
Arabia, and others never accomplished political unification.
However, due to the geographical accident that many peninsulas are
continental protrusions reaching close to some other continent, historically
198 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the most important function of peninsulas has been that of steppingstones
for migrations and invasions. From the prehistoric immigration of man
into the Western hemisphere by way of the Chukotsk peninsula of north-
eastern Asia and Alaska, and into Europe by way of the Iberian Peninsula
—and through the lowland between the Urals and the Caspian Sea— to the
invasion of Europe by the Allies through the Italian Peninsula and Nor-
mandy there is a continuous stream of such movements. Oriental ancient
civilization found its way west along the coasts of Asia Minor and Greece.
This bridge situation has created a psychological and political attitude
which is similar to the buffer-state psychology, but differs in that the polit-
ical bodies on such peninsulas feel— rightly or often wrongly— much more
secure, and very often culturally superior. Koreans, Greeks, Italians, and
even Spaniards have displayed this feeling of superiority, and it has led,
sometimes, to disastrous overestimation of their own political potentiali-
ties. Italy's dream of a mare nostro is only the last instance.
ISLAND CHAINS AND LAND BRIDGES
Much better steppingstones for cultural or migratory movements have
been provided by island chains. As a rule, such island chains are open
from all sides, thus inviting invasion at many points. In Japan, cultural
influences have entered as well through the harbor of Nagasaki at the
southern end as through Tokyo, situated roughly in the center of the
chain. Land bridges, though mostly entered from the end, can be open to
occasional invasion from the sides. People moving through such a corridor
are confined to it by the accompanying mountains, sea, or desert. Thus
they are open to attack from the flank by raiders striking from the desert
or from the sea, who are accustomed and equipped to move through these
inhospitable spaces. Syria and Palestine are the classical examples of such
a corridor, attacked time and again by the wandering nomads of steppe
and desert from the east, and from the west by seaborne invaders. The
days of nomadic invaders are apparently past. However, modern Jews
have followed the path of Philistines and Crusaders who, coming from
beyond the Mediterranean, founded a state based on the coast, but like
their predecessors are unable to control the entire width of the corridor.
SEACOASTS OF CONTINENTS
Seacoasts, depending on their physical character and configuration, are
open to raid and invasion to a smaller or larger degree. Invasion across
the sea is a powerful factor in the history of modern states. Almost all the
LOCATION 199
states of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as most of the
colonies or semi-independent political bodies of Africa bear the mark of
their maritime origin in the distribution of their populations, cities, re-
ligions, and cultural ties. Coasts, of course, differ greatly in terms of
accessibility. The Atlantic coasts of North and South America are easily
accessible and natural harbors are within easy distance of each other. On
the other hand, many African coasts are exposed to heavy surf, have few
natural indentations, and are backed by almost impenetrable, dense, wet
forests. No seafaring nations grew up on any part of this coast. The factor
of distance from other coasts, and especially from any opposite shore at
a reasonable distance, contributed to render these coasts of West Africa
a backwater of history. Even when the Europeans appeared, they occu-
pied only a few coastal points and built forts where slaves were collected
for shipment to America. The invaders were kept from penetrating inland
by the forests, swamps, and diseases of the coastal plain, as well as by the
slopes of the plateau and the cataracts of the rivers farther inland. The
resistance of the natives could be discounted.
It is interesting to compare with these West African coasts those in East
Africa in approximately the same latitude. The general character of the
coast is similar, though there are a few more natural harbors in the east.
The immediate hinterland is similarly uninviting. Well-organized native
states nowhere reached to the coasts. However, West Africa remained
apart from the currents of world history to the end of the nineteenth
century, when the scattered trading posts finally developed into exploita-
tion colonies where raw materials were developed systematically, native
labor trained, and markets for European products found. In East Africa
this condition had been reached almost one thousand years ago and
mass colonization from overseas had even been attempted. The decisive
distinguishing factor is that East Africa is close to coasts where seafar-
ing peoples have developed. Since the times of the ancient Egyptians,
traders and occasionally colonists have come continuously to these
coasts. Though neither colonizing Arabs nor Europeans ever came in
great numbers, the Arabs to the coast, the Europeans to the Kenya High-
lands, they have won a firm foothold. Perhaps numerically strongest was
the invasion of Madagascar by Malayans from the opposite shores of
Indonesia. Though large, the Indian Ocean proved to be not too large
to prevent its crossing by men in considerable numbers even before the
age of the modern ship. Thus it was nothing specifically novel when the
British founded their circum-oceanic empire around the Indian Ocean
in the nineteenth century.
200 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
There are no shores which have no opposite shore, in geometrical
terms. For practical purposes, however, the Pacific Ocean is so wide that
neither Chile nor Peru have ever been influenced in their political think-
ing by the awareness of their opposite shore. The same is true of those
shores of Eurasia and North America which face the Arctic Ocean. In
the days of the "air age," this situation is changing rapidly and Americans
have discovered to their discomfort how close is the opposite shore across
the frozen sea for military aircraft. The importance of new locational
factors in the Arctic regions is discussed in Chapter 8.
COASTS OF ISLANDS
What is true for the coasts of continents is equally valid for coasts of
islands. The British Isles afford an example which is of interest in more
than one respect. The close proximity of the European continent to the
southeastern coast of Great Britain made this coast the repeated entrance
for invaders and the earliest inhabitants were pushed northwestwards
into the mountains. Vestiges of these subsequent invasions can be found
in many peculiarities of the cultural landscape. But politically only the
Irish in Eire have been able to shape the map, and to a slight degree
the Celtic-speaking remnants in Wales and the Scottish Highlands. In
Ireland the struggle between the invaders and the indigenous Celtic
group is still going on. Despite the apparent victory of the Irish, it should
not be forgotten that the English language is spoken by the majority and
that it is far from decided whether it will lose or win ground in the com-
ing decades.14 Ireland's north, west, and south coasts and the western
coast of Great Britain, facing the apparently endless ocean, were a coast
without an opposite coast up to the time of Columbus. It was close
enough to the European continent that Vikings could attack and even
settle here. That remained an isolated instance. After the discovery of
America the west coast of Great Britain lost this character of a back
door, but the Irish western coast largely retained it.
ISLANDS AS AREAS OF REFUGE
Despite this threat of invasion due to their location, many islands have
become refuge areas. The Irish in Ireland, the Ainos on Hokkaido, the
aborigines in a Chinese Formosa, or the Singhalese on Ceylon are island
peoples in areas of refuge and it is little realized that all these peoples
"See pp. 392 ff.
LOCATION 201
once occupied much larger areas. They have tended to develop special
traits, or rather to retain older traits which have disappeared elsewhere.
The language spoken by the people of Iceland is much closer to the
Norwegian spoken a thousand years ago in Norway than is the modern
Norwegian. The Eskimos of Greenland, until quite recently, were able
to preserve old customs over many centuries. Islands have often, and
partly because of these cultural peculiarities, retained a special political
status even when conquered. Such conquests did not always come from
culturally related nations nearby, but from countries far away. Malta,
Cyprus, or Ceylon are bound to the British Isles under different consti-
tutional forms; Madagascar belongs to France, although it is far from
France as well as from any other French colony; Sicily has its separate
status within Italy; Ireland, Iceland, Cuba, Santo Domingo have attained
independence after centuries of foreign rule.
It would, however, be misleading to regard islands as refuge areas by
their very location in the midst of the sea. Many islands are not refuge
areas at all. Others are refuge areas not as such, but because their
mountains have offered the sought-for protection. Ceylon, separated from
India by a strait only some twenty miles wide, is an especially clear ex-
ample. Here the primitive, dark-skinned, small Veddas live in the least
accessible parts; the Singhalese have retreated to the mountains and the
southern parts of the islands, while the northern half of the island was
invaded by Tamils. They in turn were confined to dry, mountainous areas
by Singhalese recovery. The latest to come were people from different
parts of southern India and some Europeans. Like the Irish, the Sin-
ghalese seem to have succeeded in reasserting their preponderance on
the island. However, Ceylon is a refuge area also in another sense. This
is the only part of the Indian subcontinent where Buddhism remained
the dominating faith. The historical background is reflected in its politi-
cal status since 1948 as an independent nation, although retaining some
ties to Great Britain as well as to India. While India was able to absorb
mainland areas of very different background, such as those of the hill
tribes, and gave up other areas to Pakistan only after prolonged struggle,
it permitted Ceylon to go its own way. The geographic factors of in-
sularity, of the physical qualities of the island, and of its prominent posi-
tion on vital shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean account for Ceylon's
being able to chart its own political course, independent of India.15
Another example of islands as the basis of independent statehood,
15 B. H. Farmer in O. H. K. Spate, Geography of India and Pakistan (London,
1954), pp. 743 and 782.
202 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
although it has still to pass the test of history, is offered by the South
Moluccas (also called the Spice Islands), where a secessionist "South
Moluccas Republic" was established in 1950 (cf. Fig. 3-5, p. 70). Indo-
nesia, which had gained independence from the Netherlands in 1949,
recaptured the port of Amboina where the secessionist movement origi-
nated, but the rebels escaped to the island of Ceram and neighboring
islands where they have continued to resist.16 One important feature in
the current struggle between Indonesia and the South Moluccas is the
religious cleavage, since Indonesian nationalism was essentially a Java-
nese movement in its early stages, and as such closely associated with the
Moslem religion, while the pagan population of Amboina and the neigh-
boring islands, isolated from the main islands, had been converted to
Christianity by the Dutch.17 Afraid of mass immigration from overpop-
ulated Java, the people of the South Moluccas have chosen to resist the
substitution of Dutch by Javanese rule in their island refuges.
Another example is offered by Formosa. The native population was
displaced and forced into the mountains by numerically overwhelming
Chinese, and during the Japanese rule, by Japanese immigration. How-
ever, recently, even their hold on their mountain refuge seems to weaken.
Numerically the situation appears hopeless. While the number of the
156,000 aborigines, reported in 1938, remains almost stationary, the
Chinese population increased from 3,156,000 in 1905 to 5,747,000 (plus
308,000 Japanese) in 1938, and to 8,000,000, which is the estimate in
1955. More significant, Formosa now for the second, time has become a
refuge area for traditional China. The first instance occurred in the sev-
enteenth century, after the Manchus had overrun the mainland, the
second in our own time in the face of Communist rule on the mainland.
REFUGE AREAS ON CONTINENTS
The problem of the Formosan aborigines in a refuge area for a primi-
tive group is not so much that of an island as a problem within an island.
In that it is not different from the problems of other primitive groups, such
as the Veddas in Ceylon, the Ainus in Hokkaido, the Dyaks in Borneo, the
Igorots in Luzon, and many others. In all these instances mountains
and forests rather than the islands themselves offered the refuge area
both for culturally backward and for numerically weak populations. On
the continents such mountain refuges and forest areas were sought out
16 See Fig. 3-5, p. 70.
17 See pp. 423 ff.
LOCATION 203
by small groups, and served in a few cases to shelter independent states.18
Ethiopia and Nepal are the best remaining examples, or among highly
civilized nations, Switzerland. More frequent are instances where such
units have preserved some form of autonomous self-government under
foreign domination. The autonomous Soviet republics in the Caucasus,
or the Basque area in Spain are well-known examples. Less known is the
case of the "Autonomous Region" which the Rumanian constitution of
1952 granted to a Hungarian minority in northeastern Transylvania. It
seems significant that this autonomy was not granted to the majority oi
Hungarians within the confines of Rumania, but to these so-called Sziks
(Szeklers) who form only about two-fifths of the Hungarian minority in
Rumania, but have led a separate existence in their mountains since the
tenth century. In the diet of Transylvania they formed a separate nation
from the Magyars (Hungarians) until 1848.
It is improbable that a new state would arise today and receive its
shape from such local conditions of topography. That states formed under
primitive conditions in the protection of mountains and forests have been
able to survive into the present is largely due to the power of tradition
and to the national pride which prompts people to cling to every piece
of land they have inherited, or even to the fact that divisive features in
the landscape have developed because there was a boundary. In con-
trast, Poland offers an example of a nation with very strong national
concepts and traditions but without the benefit of established boundaries
fortified by physical features. The boundary changes which took place
after World War II were the result of its precarious location between the
U.S.S.R. and Germany and of its new status as a Soviet satellite (cf. Fig.
4-1, p. 82). Poland its industrial and agricultural base and its population
were moved many miles westwards in a generally featureless plain. Only
its southern mountain boundary along the Carpathians remained basically
unchanged.
The classical example of a state whose boundaries seem to conform to
a mountain configuration is Bohemia, the western part of the Czecho-
slovakian republic. The Slavic tribes, which coalesced to the Czech people
in the early Middle Ages, settled in the treeless, fertile basin where they
enjoyed the protection of the uninhabited, forested mountain rim. Ger-
man colonists, moving east, by-passed this mountain fortress to the north
or south, moving through more inviting plains. However, these conditions
18 G. B. Cressey, Asia's Lands and People, 2nd ed. (New York, 1951), pp. 138-139;
W. G. East and O. H. K. Spate, The Changing Map of Asia, 2nd ed. (New York,
1953), p. 278.
204 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
disappeared long ago.19 The forests have been cleared in wide areas, the
low mountains are no longer an obstacle for modern road or railroad
construction, and German settlers penetrated over the mountains to the
edge of the interior basin. Nevertheless, the medieval boundary on
the crest of the mountains remained essentially unchanged throughout
the centuries. When Hitler opened the world conflict and attempted to
replace the historical boundary by a linguistic one, this spelled in the
end only disaster for the Germans within this boundary. It appears that
the present location of the boundary is essentially defined by history and
by the different development which areas take on the two sides of a
long-existing boundary, but that the location along ridges has lost all
independent meaning.
THE ROLE OF DESERTS
The physical factors which seem least variable in determining the loca-
tion of boundaries are deserts. The Sahara, the Gobi, the Rub' al Khali
in Arabia determine the location of political bodies even in our day. The
French colonies south of the Sahara are clearly different from the French-
dominated areas north of the desert. The Atlas countries are predomi-
nantly settlement colonies, and areas of political domination, those south
of the Sahara are colonies of economic exploitation. However, even this
clear-cut divisive force of the desert may eventually come to an end
under the impact of modern technical civilization. The oasis of Buraimi
in the Rub' al Khali has become the object of a conflict between Saudi
Arabia, from which it is separated by hundreds of miles of sandy desert,
and Oman, from which it is separated by dry inhospitable mountains ( cf.
Fig. 4-3, p. 88). It is, however, in an area which may contain oilfields.
Its importance for modern technological civilization, and at the same time
the means which this civilization offers to overcome the desert, make this
conflict significant. It is a sign that we may stand at the end of the period
when deserts were a nearly insuperable factor. Whether air or surface
motor transport will play the decisive role in this change can not be
predicted.
Some people believe that the construction of railroads will be more im-
portant than motor or air transport. This idea is primarily advanced in
France by the promoters of the construction of a Trans-Saharan railroad.
In any case the time seems near when three so far quite disconnected
19 J. A. Steers, "The Middle People; Resettlement in Czechoslovakia," Geographical
Journal, Vol. 102 (January, 1949).
LOCATION 205
centers of power can be linked together. These areas of present and
potential power concentration are the French North African territories
(Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia), the Central African Tchad, Ubangi.
and Congo regions, and lastly the British East African colonies. Their
linking would be of special significance since these regions are likely to
play a primary role in a future conflict involving the defense of western
Europe and the Near and Middle East against attack from the north
and the east.
SEDENTARY AND NOMADIC WAYS OF LIFE
To the same degree as uninhabitable, or uninhabited, or at least un-
claimed zones tend to disappear, nations of different ways of life become
close neighbors. Thereby the causes of friction are greatly increased.
Conflicts arising from different ways of life have existed since times im-
memorial. However, the essential features of ways of life have changed,
too. One of the oldest and most frequent sources of conflict has been
the conflict between the sedentary peasant and the nomadic herdsman.
Encroachment of the land-hungry tiller on the steppe and pasture, and
raids on the settlements by the easily moving nomads are a recurrent
theme in all these border zones between "sown and desert." Within the
last half century the roving herder has ceased to be a potential threat
to the peasant settler in any part of the world. Motorized police patrols
and airplanes have reduced this problem in the French Sahara to a mere
police problem. In Arabia King Ibn Saud succeeded in settling large
parts of the nomads by the shrewd employment of new political and
religious ideas. In Central Asia, the Soviet policy of totalitarianism has
changed drastically the ways of life of nomadic herdsmen. In North
America, under different conditions, the once-roving Sioux, Apaches, and
Comanches now live in reservations.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE COMMUNIST AND THE
FREE WORLD IN TERMS OF LOCATION
In place of these ancient problems new ones have arisen. Communist
and non-Communist states must get along as close neighbors. While it
was still possible after World War I to attempt to minimize frictions
between Communism and the rest of the world by creating a cordon
sanitaire around the Soviet Union, this solution has become obsolete
today. The countries of South and East Asia are for all practical purposes
close neighbors of Australia and New Zealand today, as are those of
206 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
North America, Asia, and Europe lying across the Arctic Ocean from each
other. The danger of friction arising from such location in close prox-
imity is great.
ADJACENT LOCATION OF LARGE AND SMALL NATIONS
Adjacent location of a small country and a large or strong one always
influences their relationship. Whether the politics of the small country
takes the form of more or less voluntary subordination to and accommo-
dation of the stronger neighbor, whether it tries to find independence in
coalition with several other small countries in a similar position, or in an
alliance with a distant but strong country, or whether it chooses isolation
and withdrawal from all problems of the community of nations, depends
on many nonlocational factors and on their interplay with the implica-
tions of location. Mexico is a country that has tried different policies in
its relations with its neighbor in the north— from invoking the sympathies
of other relatively small Latin American states, to the more recent at-
tempt to follow a course which avoids antagonizing the United States
without letting the powerful neighbor actively influence Mexican internal
political decisions. A great variety of attitudes is shown by the North
European countries toward the Soviet Union. Finland is trying hard to
accommodate its policy to the whims of Soviet policy, making it clear
at the same time that she is not ready to pay the high price of becoming
a satellite. Sweden tries to steer a more independent, course. She is in a
better locational position as she has no land boundary with the Soviet
Union and takes encouragement from the not too conclusive fact that
she succeeded in remaining neutral during both World Wars. Norway,
on the other hand, chose an alliance with the great powers of the West.
An attempt by Denmark made immediately after World War II to pro-
mote an alliance of the Scandinavian powers was met by failure.
The inland country blocked from access to the sea by other countries
has been discussed in another connection. It remains to mention the less
frequent situation in which a weak country is pinned between the sea
and a strong but landlocked country. The Baltic republics did not re-
main free for long under such conditions. Another example is offered by
the Netherlands. They are located across the mouth of the Rhine which,
although not the only outlet to the sea for large parts of Germany, is
by far the shortest and best. Skillful statesmanship, an obviously peaceful
and sincere neutrality, willingness to fulfill all reasonable German wishes,
and the preparedness to refuse any demands which would impair Dutch
LOCATION 207
sovereignty made the Netherlands apparently secure throughout most of
the nineteenth century and through World War I. Hitler, in World War
II, upset these carefully developed balances.
It may be of minor importance whether two countries have a long or
short common border; the fact that they border at all is of primary
importance at least to the interested parties. In 1954, a flurry of excite-
ment arose when a Soviet newspaper hinted that in the high Pamirs the
Soviet Union had a common boundary with Kashmir, though in almost
impassable terrain and for the length of a few miles only. This would
deny China direct contact with Afghanistan. China, however, seems eager
to retain its common boundary with Afghanistan (cf. Fig. 3-1, p. 59).
ADJACENT LOCATION AND CULTURAL, IDEOLOGICAL,
AND OTHER DIFFERENCES
Sometimes countries of different cultural level face each other across
the border, and these differences can create political problems. Usually
the country of lower economic, technological, or cultural development
will feel endangered, while the neighboring country may embark on a
"mission" to bring the advantages of higher civilization to the under-
developed neighbor. In the not too distant past this took the form of
church missionary activity which in turn called for protection by state
authority. In other instances merchants and planters maintained that by
expanding their occupations they were spreading European civilization,
lifting natives to a higher level by teaching them, or forcing them, into
the habit of regular work. If they met with resistance they appealed to
their national authorities and such disputes often ended in war and
conquest. At present the repercussions of this policy are felt in quite dif-
ferent ways; they range from the relatively minor problems of the United
States with its Indian wards to the serious Mau Mau revolution in Kenya.
There are, however, instances where such conquest led to the acceptance
of the former colonial subjects as equals. India may always have been
spiritually the equal of Europe; today she is also an equal in economic
methods and technological approach, even though much may still have
to be done to spread technological achievements over the country. The
Gold Coast and Nigeria may still harbor primitive tribes, but they are
regarded as ready, or almost ready, to enter the Commonwealth as
equals. There is still an expanding frontier of civilization, and even of
white settlement in the interior of Brazil, in Canada, in Siberia, but this
is no longer a question of war and conquest, but an internal problem of
208 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the countries concerned. For perhaps the last time a Christian power
openly proclaimed its cultural mission as justification for conquest when
Italy attacked Ethiopia in 1935.
The Soviet Union holds or at least proclaims that every extension of
its control is a feat of liberation. From this point or view any such con-
quest, with whatever means accomplished, is justified as a part of
inevitable and preordained progress. There is, however, a decisive dif-
ference between Communist conquest and other conquests accomplished
under the slogan of civilization for backward nations. Amerindians,
Siberian natives, negro tribes in Inner Africa, and even Ethiopians, though
they cherished their own way of life, regarded Europeans as superior,
at least in certain respects. The non-Communist world, on the other
hand, considers its way of life not only equal but in many respects defi-
nitely superior to the Communist order. As participants in this struggle
we may not claim impartiality. However, the Soviets acknowledge at
least in some respects this superiority of the West, spurring on their
workers to imitate and finally to improve American methods, concealing
certain aspects of Western society from their subjects, keeping them away
from Western literature and any contact with foreigners, showing by
this method their actual evaluation of the attractive features of Western
civilization which they could not denounce as inferior if free access to
the knowledge of Western ways were possible.
Thus there exist not only politically enforced but very real though
intangible boundaries which separate people and areas of different politi-
cal ideology. Where there are conflicting ideologies each party is con-
vinced of its superior way of life. Confusion between these two concepts
is old. The ancient Greeks felt dimly that the disparity between their
ways of life and those of the highly civilized peoples of the Persian em-
pire was of another order than the gulf which separated their way of life
from that of the illiterate primitive tribes of most of Europe. They
recognized that Marathon was more than a military-political event, and
that it decided for many centuries to come which type of civilization
should be dominant in Europe. Nevertheless, they persisted in calling
Persians, Egyptians, Babylonians, and others by the same deprecative
name they used for Thracians, Numidians, and Celts— barbarians.
The main conclusion to be drawn from our discussion of factors of
location in the realm of political geography is that location must be re-
garded as a basic factor which, certainly, can not be neglected, but
which never can be considered alone. Its implications are changing con-
tinuously in response to other factors.
CHAPTER
8
The Impact or Location on
Strategy and Power Politics
A. The Heartland and the Rim Lands: A Study in Location
Among the large-space concepts of location which fascinate the student
of political geography, that of the Heartland has been most emphasized
in recent times. It has received both enthusiastic and scornful reception.
Often the disciples as well as the critics of the Heartland theory have
been led astray by their unwillingness to recognize the factor of time
and change that erodes this concept in so far as it affects any other con-
cept of location in the fluctuating realm of political geography.
We propose to deal at some length with the Heartland concept and to
investigate to what extent it has proved its long-range validity, and where
in retrospect it appears to be depicting only a temporary situation. As a
study in location, the interpretation of the Heartland, representing a
significant philosophy of political geography, can serve to sharpen our
thinking on factors of location in general.
INFLUENCE ON POLITICO-GEOGRAPHICAL THINKING
Although often misunderstood and loosely applied by armchair strat-
egists, the Heartland theory has had nevertheless a profound influence on
politico-geographical thinking in our time. In discussing what the British
geographer Sir Halford J. Mackinder termed in 1904 as "the pivot region
of the world's politics" ( Fig. 8-1 ) and later described as the "Heartland"
209
210
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 211
we shall observe the truly revolutionary changes of a world history in
terms of geography set in motion. But while ten-dollar terms such as
Heartland and World Island have been readily accepted in the dictionary
of geopolitics, they share the fate of the American Security Sphere or of
the American Perimeter of Defense in remaining hazy concepts when it
comes to exact geographical definition and evaluation. We must be care-
ful not to be found napping in the nineteenth century when we attempt
to organize our "world view" and to define the political boundaries sep-
arating the globe's land and sea masses which really matter in world
politics. We still like to visualize the political map of the world as a
mosaic, the contours of which follow the boundaries of the national states.
Quite naturally we feel uncomfortable when confronted with a novel map
of the world on which the feeble boundary lines and the colors which
distinguish the national states are minimized, with the emphasis placed on
certain geographical regions which endow the powers controlling them
with the very assets needed in the struggle for world power. In a con-
stantly and rapidly shrinking political world, politico-geographical en-
tities comparable to the American security sphere have achieved a new
meaning due to significant changes in the realm of transportation and
communication. The Heartland of Eurasia is therefore more than a dusty
concept of the historical geography of the Victorian age.
THE HEARTLAND CONCEPT AND THE
VICTORIAN SEA POWER AGE
The new world view evolved slowly. Mackinder, at the threshold of
the new century, began to grasp the fact that the geopolitics of the Vic-
torian age was no longer based on geographical realities. Only if we
project Mackinder's concepts against the panorama of the Victorian age,
with world politics revolving around Britain's successful struggle for con-
trol of the high seas and of the pathways of seaborne traffic, can we
perceive the force of a new way of thinking in which land power out-
flanked sea power and new industrial powers were rising on the con-
tinent of Eurasia. These concepts loomed large enough to challenge the
basic ideas of the political philosophy and the political geography of an
age of sea power. The transition from a political philosophy revolving
around the "age of sea power" concept to one stressing land power re-
flects a new look at basic factors of location.
In the United States, the political geography of the sea power age had
long been dominated by the thinking of Alfred Thayer Mahan, an Ameri-
212 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
can naval officer. His work, The Influence of Seapower Upon History,
1660-1783, is one of the rare books which profoundly affected history.
While his writings lack systematic organization, his political philosophy
clearly preaches the gospel of the new American Imperialism drawing
its strength from sea power, and a new Manifest Destiny based on
America's future role as the leading maritime nation in the world— lead-
ing, because he envisaged the day when the United States would replace
Britain in its rating as the world's supreme naval power. The oceans had
become inland seas of the British Empire, and the trade routes of the
world its life lines. The growing maritime power of the United States was
to inherit these concepts. Coupled with this feeling there was a convic-
tion that power based upon land and its overland transportation systems
could never compete, either commercially or stategically, with movement
by sea.1 There is no doubt that Mahan's doctrines gave a lift to military
and political planners throughout the world who readily adopted his
formula for the achievement of world power through sea power. Even
in Imperial Germany, under Wilhelm II, it kindled a hectic enthusiasm
for what appeared to be a new shortcut for Germany to world power. It
is not surprising to find that Germany's outstanding political geographer
of these times, Friedrich Ratzel, who had received a practical geographi-
cal training in the United States, published a book called The Sea as a
Source of National Greatness which was broadly influenced by Mahan's
thinking.2
From the ramparts of England, Halford J. Mackinder agreed with the
thinking of Mahan in one important aspect: he, too, could not help
realizing that Britain had, in the twentieth century, lost its leading posi-
tion of naval power and control of the seas. In 1901 Mackinder wrote
in his Britain and the British Seas: "Other empires have had their day,
and so may that of Britain. But there are facts in the present condition
of humanity which render such a fate unlikely, provided always that the
British retain their moral qualities . . . the whole course of future history
depends on whether the Old Britain beside the Narrow Seas has enough
of virility and imagination to withstand all challenge of her neighbor's
supremacy, until such time as the daughter nations shall have grown to
maturity."
But aside from agreeing on the future respective parts which Britain
and the United States were to play in the struggle for naval supremacy,
1 H. and M. Sprout, Foundations of National Power, 2nd edition (New York, 1951),
p. 154.
2 R. Strausz-Hupe, Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power (New York,
1942), p. 245.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 213
the basic concepts of political geography of Mahan and Mackinder have
little in common. For it is exactly Mahan's exaltation of sea power which
was challenged by Mackinder who, viewing the growing strength of
Russia and Germany on the continents, became more and more alarmed
by the challenge to sea power in a new age in which land power could
outflank it and in which the mushrooming growth of industrialization
and the extension of railroad nets on the continent were successfully com-
peting with Britain's economic position in the world.
THE NEW ROLE OF ASIA
Mackinder 's consciousness of the passing of the Victorian sea power
age made him see Europe and its political geography as subordinate to
Asia.3 It is in Asia that land power and (as Mackinder did not anticipate
originally) land-based air power have had their greatest opportunities to
challenge established power positions in the world at large. The mobility
of land power (not land power as such), in competition with the mo-
bility of sea power, evolved as a decisive geopolitical feature of the
twentieth century. By evaluating the competition and possible clash be-
tween sea and land power, Mackinder discovered the "pivot region of
the World's politics": the Heartland of Eurasia. He did not hesitate to
project the effects which an increasing mobility of military and economic
power in this area is bound to have on the rest of the world. In 1904,
he saw that "the century will not be old before all Asia is covered with
railways. The spaces within the Russian Empire and Mongolia are so
vast, and their potentialities in population, wheat, cotton, fuel, and metals
so incalculably great, that it is inevitable that a vast economic world,
more or less apart, will there develop inaccessible to oceanic commerce."
This pivotal area Mackinder projected as an organic unit within the
world unit. Inaccessible to ships but covered with a network of railways,
the continental basins of Eurasia are seen as the homeland of a new
Russia which is successor to the Mongol Empire. From its central posi-
tion, Russia can exert pressures on Finland, Scandinavia, Poland, Turkey,
Persia, and India. The centrifugal force which drove the horse-riding
nomads of the steppes westward and southward against the settled
peoples of Europe is still a living force in the Russian Heartland. If ever
it succeeded in expanding over the marginal lands of Eurasia, if ever
it were able to use its continental resources for fleet-building, then,
3 H. W. Weigert, Generals and Geographers (New York and London, 1942), pp.
115-139.
214 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Mackinder felt, "the empire of the world would be in sight." And to
leave no doubt about the direction of his fears, fifty years ago he added:
"This would happen if Germany would ally herself with Russia."
CRITIQUE OF MACKINDER: THE HEARTLAND AS VIEWED
OVER THE TOP OF THE WORLD
When Mackinder, at the close of the first World War, re-examined his
original thesis in his famous address (called Democratic Ideals and
Realities) to the peacemakers about to assemble in Paris, he found that
his "thesis of 1904 still sufficed." He voiced this warning: "Who rules East
Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands
the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."
It became much too smooth a slogan when it was dusted off in our day.
Most of those who used it persistently were fascinated more by the gen-
eral appeal of the slogan than by its geographic realities.
The Heartland of Europe and Asia had essentially the same frontiers
in 1918 as Mackinder's "Pivot Area" of 1904. It comprised the vast ex-
panse of the continental island basins of arctic and continental drainage
which measure nearly half of Asia and a quarter of Europe, and which
are inaccessible from the ocean. As a strategical concept, the Heartland
includes all regions which can be denied access by sea power. Railways,
growing and expanding inward, have changed its face continuously since
1904 and have tested Mackinder's thesis. Above all, the airplane has since
upset the unstable balance between land and sea power; Mackinder
greets it as an ally to land power in the Heartland.
The first World War Mackinder sees as the climax in the eternal con-
flict between continental land power and marginal power, backed and
fed by sea power: "We have been fighting lately, in the close of the war,
a straight duel between land power and sea power. We have conquered,
but had Germany conquered she would have established her sea power
on a wider basis than any in history, and in fact on the widest possible
basis."
The third and final test of the Heartland formula was undertaken by
Mackinder in the article, "The Round World and the Winning of the
Peace," which he wrote in 1943 for Foreign Affairs.* To Mackinder, the
test was positive; he found his concept "more valid and useful today than
it was either twenty or forty years ago."
* Foreign Affairs (1943), pp. 595-605; in H. W. Weigert and V. Stefansson, eds.,
Compass of the World (New York, 1945), pp. 161-173.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 215
Yet while the original concept of the Heartland remained basically
intact, its frontiers were significantly revised. The revisions were re-
quired in order to accommodate certain major changes in the political
geography of the world since 1904 and 1918. The territory of the U.S.S.R.
remains equivalent to the Heartland. But there is one rather important
exception. A vast area within the Soviet Union which begins east of the
Yenisei River and whose central feature is the Lena River has now been
exempted by Mackinder from the original Heartland. "Lenaland Russia"
has an area of three and three-quarter million square miles but a popula-
tion of only some six millions, in contrast to "Heartland Russia" which
covers four and a quarter million square miles and has a rapidly growing
population numbering one hundred and seventy millions.
Heartland Russia, backed by the natural resources of Lenaland, fore-
shadows greater power than the Heartland Mackinder envisaged in dec-
ades past. What earlier had seemed to be mere speculation had now
grown into reality, and Mackinder could state as a fact that "except in
a very few commodities the country is capable of producing everything
which it requires." Again he views the open western frontier of the Heart-
land. His conclusion that "if the Soviet Union emerges from the war as
conqueror of Germany, she must rank as the greatest land power on the
globe'" is slightly less emphatic than his vision of the approaching "em-
pire of the world" ( 1904 ) . Otherwise, the Britisher's view of the geo-
political relationship of Russia and Germany had remained unchanged.
Any attempt at a critique 5 of Mackinder's powerful generalizations
should begin with the acknowledgment of our indebtedness to the man
who did more in our time than anybody else to enlist geography as an
aid to statecraft and strategy. The fundamentals of his closed-space con-
cept stand so firmly today that we almost forget how revolutionary the
concept was when first formulated forty years ago. The same observa-
tion applies to Mackinder's land power thesis which, appearing at what
seemed to be the height of the Victorian sea power age, seemed shocking
and fantastic to many in the English-speaking world. But in reviewing
his thesis today, we should remember that it is the concept of a man
who viewed the world from "England . . . that utmost corner of the West."
Only a Britisher could have written as Mackinder did. Recognizing this
and taking account of the technological changes which have surpassed
even Mackinder's imagination, we should have sufficient perspective to-
day to speak critically of the theory of the Heartland.
5 Cf. H. W. Weigert, "Heartland Revisited," in H. W. Weigert, V. Stefansson, and
R. E. Harrison, New Compass of the World (New York, 1949), pp. 80-90.
J.g.r
Fig. 8-2. Relationship of Heartland and North-America on the Azimuthal Polar Projection.
216
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 217
It is perhaps not incidental that the logic of Mackinder's Heartland
seems to reveal itself best on a Mercator world map (such as Mackinder
used when he first laid out his blueprint). Here the Heartland lives up
to its name. We see it surrounded by a huge arc forming an inner crescent
which includes Germany, Turkey, India, and China. Beyond the crescent
of peripheral states, Mackinder envisaged an outer crescent which em-
braced Britain, South Africa, Australia, the United States, Canada, and
Japan. Again the Mercator projection lent a helpful hand in constructing
what seemed to Mackinder a "wholly oceanic" and "insular" crescent.
However, we find it difficult, if not impossible, to visualize this rela-
tion of the Heartland to a surrounding inner and outer crescent if we
exchange the Mercator map for the globe or any azimuthal-equidistant
map (Fig. 8-2). The concept of North America as part of a chain of in-
sular powers distant from the Heartland now becomes a geographical
myth. In terms of air-geography the Heartland and North America appear
in destiny-laden proximity. As viewed over the top of the world, the
Heartland assumes a location different from that which Mackinder as-
signed to it, plotting it from Britain, and with the destinies of Britain fore-
most in his mind. While time has verified Mackinder's concept of Russia's
growing importance as a land power in a pivotal area, and while the polit-
ical and military control of the U.S.S.R. over the Heartland and Eastern
Europe are at present more firmly established than ever, the skyways of
the Arctic Mediterranean give validity to a new way of regarding the geo-
graphical relations of North America and the U.S.S.R. The inaccessibility
of the vast inland spaces of the Heartland became evident when the
Heartland power was attacked by Germany in the west, where the Heart-
land opens itself to invasion. But seen from North America, and in terms
of new communications reaching out from many points in the far-flung
"perimeter of defense" line, inaccessibility and vastness no longer conceal
the Heartland from us. It no longer lies behind an impenetrable wall of
isolation.
In his article in Foreign Affairs, Mackinder seems to have made major
revisions in his original concept of the relationship of the rest of the
world to the Heartland. We have noticed that the original Heartland
thesis remained basically unaltered, although the emphasis on the thinly
populated Lenaland area has been toned down. But the surrounding
crescents (and particularly North America as a member of the outlying
insular power group ) are viewed by the Mackinder of 1943 in a different
light. This is significant. The original British view which left North
America seemingly isolated and beyond the sphere of power zones di-
218 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
rectly linked with the Heartland, has now been replaced by an Anglo-
American world view.
Has Mackinder thus silenced his critics? Those who questioned the
validity of his thesis 6 stressed uniformly the pivotal importance of the
densely populated regions of the marginal coast lands or rim lands. The
overemphasis, however, on either inland or rim-land location neglects the
complementary character of the two, as well as their constantly changing
values. Mackinder understood these dynamics clearly. He re-examined
and revised his appraisal of the relationship between interior and periph-
eral; he perceived from Britain that the peripheral felt, more than ever,
the shadow of the continental land mass in its expansionist movement.
Thus he projected a new vision of the Heartland in its relation to the
surrounding zones. In doing so, he envisaged the geographic link be-
tween the Heartland and the Anglo-American world in a new light.
From Mercator he turned to the globe. Around the north polar regions
he hung a "mantle" of deserts and wildernesses. From the Sahara Desert,
the mantle extends to the deserts of Arabia, Iran, Tibet, and Mongolia.
From there it spreads out across the "wilderness of the Lenaland" to the
Laurentian shield of Canada and to the subarid belt of the United States.
Thus he constructed what seems to be a new "pivot of history"; a zone
including both the Heartland and the basin of North Atlantic. Thereby
Mackinder reveals a new fulcrum of world power, and a new relation-
ship between the Heartland and the outer world. The enlarged pivotal
area of 1943 is made apparent by drawing a great circle arc from the
center of the Yenisei River across the mid-ocean to the center of the Mis-
sissippi valley. The arc leads across the bridgehead of France, over the
stronghold of Britain— "a Malta on a grander scale"— to the vast arsenal
of the eastern and central United States and Canada. This North
American-British-French-U.S.S.R. bloc comprises a power fulcrum of one
billion people. It neatly balances that other thousand million in the mon-
soon lands of India and China. "A balanced globe of human beings. And
happy, because balanced and thus free." 7
THE BALANCE-OF-POWER FORMULA
This balance was too neat and perfect to be true. The power bloc
within which Communist China and the Soviet Union are allied, has
upset Mackinder's balance, if it ever was a reality. We shall not deal
6 See especially N. J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace (New York, 1944).
7 Mackinder, "The Round World and the Winning of the Peace," loc. cit.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 219
in detail with Mackinder's final balance-of-power vision, a world divided
into two equal hemispheres of one billion human beings each, because
it was from the beginning a structure built upon shifting sand. Like
other neat balance-of-power formulas, it did not work, not because a
North American-British-French-U.S.S.R. bloc appears utterly unrealistic
at this time, but because one cannot, in terms of geographic realities
and of human and natural resources, construe a balance-of-power formula
which can be applied permanently to the world relationship of one
major area, such as the Heartland. The relativity of power relations be-
tween human areas was demonstrated clearly in the history of Mac-
kinder's own thesis. During the fifty years in which he was allowed to
watch and revise his Heartland thesis, new pivot areas have evolved
and still others are due to emerge. New areas and their peoples have
come of age, and will continue to come of age. New lines of communi-
cation will transform international relations.
The revised Heartland concept of 1943 wisely acknowledged a signifi-
cant geopolitical fact by including with the coast land of Europe the
North American rim lands and central regions in the enlarged pivotal
area. Since it is our purpose to clarify in terms of relative location the
relationship between North America and the Eurasian continent by fol-
lowing Mackinder's changing vision of this relationship, we might empha-
size the fact that his enlightened view still remained a view through
British glasses. Britain is the vital link in his concept of the "Mid-Ocean"
as the main artery making the United Nations bloc (without China) a
life force. Does he not try to prove too much? Do not his own lessons of
a phase of history in which land power ( plus land-based air power ) chal-
lenges the remnants of the Victorian age, guide us to additional routes
which extend from North America to the Heartland?
NEW LINKS BETWEEN HEARTLAND, NORTH AMERICA
AND NORTHERN ASIA
These routes do not touch Britain, although they touch, through Can-
ada, life lines of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Mackinder's
latest vision pushes the Lenaland and with it the whole of Soviet Asia
into the background. This seems logical if one views the Heartland from
the British Isles. However, a view of the Heartland from any place in
North America exposes the fact that the mid-ocean avenue is by no
means the only one connecting North America and the Heartland. The
established sea lanes of the North Atlantic are and will probably remain
220 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the cheapest avenues; but, in years to come, traffic will mount on the
new highways and skyways to the Heartland and to Western and North-
ern Europe across both the Alaska and the Greenland-Iceland bridges.
While we are aware of the climatic barriers which always may hamper
an American and Russian expansion northward and a large-scale col-
onization and land-utilization of their Arctic possessions, we can not
eliminate the northern links from the blueprint of a new world view.
These links are represented not only by skyways but also by new inland
communications and by sea lanes, opened by weather stations, planes,
and ice breakers.8
It has been suggested that such emphasis on the frozen, desolate lands
of ice and snow which form the new frontier of contact between the Old
and the New World is unrealistic because "the Polar Mediterranean and
its surrounding territory represent the greatest inhospitable area on the
surface of the globe." 9 Such criticism would be justified were it directed
only at the loose thinking which indeed often ignores the physical ob-
stacles to large-scale human settlement in the American and Russian Far
North. However, the attempts at de-emphasizing the growing significance
of these regions miss their target when it comes to a consideration of
not only (admittedly limited) agricultural potentials but especially the
vast mineral resources and, above all, the tremendous timber resources
of the polar regions; the latter loom even larger in the light of develop-
ments in the field of wood and cellulose technology.
Of greater importance in the evaluation of the global picture of the
Arctic regions is the strategic consideration.10 In case of a military con-
flict between the United States and the Soviet Union, it is obvious that
important military operations would take place north of 50° and a con-
siderable portion, and possibly a decisive one, within the Arctic Circle.
To emphasize that in spite of man's efforts to push northward every-
where, digging for mineral resources in the eternally frozen soil of the
tundra and even growing barley beyond the timber line, the Polar ter-
ritory remains essentially inhospitable to human settlement, is beside the
point when it comes to locating the areas of paramount strategic impor-
tance on the world map. For wars are not necessarily fought and decided
in densely populated regions, as is shown by the role of North Africa
and New Guinea in the history of World War II. Strategic location can,
and often does, outweigh population and resources in determining not
8 See pp. 246 ff.
9 Spykman, Geography of the Peace, pp. 56, 39.
10 Ibid., pp. 43-45.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 221
only battle sites but the over-all importance of a region in a global pic-
ture. It goes without saying that the factor of strategic location would
loom larger than ever in nuclear warfare. For this reason, the link be-
tween North America and Europe across the mid-ocean avenue is par-
alleled significantly by the links to the Heartland across the Alaska and
the Greenland-Iceland bridges.
Similarly, it would be mistaken to view the geographical relationship
between the Heartland and China too much in terms of sea communica-
tions. Of growing importance are the new inland roads, already either
in operation or in the planning state, which together with new airways
bring the Heartland gradually closer to China,11 whose old front doors
on the Pacific coast, in Hongkong and Shanghai, are disintegrating. One
significant achievement in this development was claimed in the Soviet
Union in November, 1954, when Pravda reported the completion of the
easternmost section of the Baikal-Amur railroad from Lake Baikal to the
Pacific near Khabarovsk.12 Equally the growing net of Arctic air routes
between North America and Japan and the Asian continent de-emphasizes
a spatial relationship based in the not-so-distant past entirely on the link
of Pacific sea lanes.
These connections, both actual and potential, disprove any construc-
tion based on an alleged position of North America as part of an outer
crescent surrounding the Eurasian land mass or, as Mackinder postulated
in 1943, based on a maritime link only, leading from the Heartland across
France and the British Isles to the eastern and central United States and
Canada. The new connecting links across the Arctic Mediterranean and
its surrounding regions emphasize the fallacy of any world view focused
on an alleged geographic isolation of the United States within the
allegedly secure confines of an equally mystical "Western Hemisphere." 13
But they also stress the significance of the Heartland zone itself. The
incessantly growing net of interior lines of communication— railroads,
highways, inland canals, and airways across its skies— adds consistently to
the strength of a Soviet Union endowed with the geographic advantage
of a central position and growing interior lines of transportation.
Viewing this growing land power from a Britain whose empire, based
on the control of the sea, he saw declining, Mackinder in his final ap-
praisal found his thesis as sound, and as portentous, as ever; for "the
Heartland— for the first time in history is manned by a garrison sufficient
11 Ibid., p. 42.
12 New York Times, November 21, 1954.
13 See pp. 258 ff.
222 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
in both numbers and quality." 14 He compared the Eurasian land mass,
its central position and all its advantages of interior lines of communica-
tion connecting it with the regions which he had described as the "inner
crescent," with the exterior lines of British naval power "running from
Great Britain through the circumferential highway around the Eurasian
rimlands." 15 The comparison did not favor Britain. The Heartland loomed
larger than ever.
It looms large and is in close and increasing propinquity to the north-
ern borders of North America, a propinquity which renders useless, be-
cause unrealistic, any attempt at picturing the Western Hemisphere in a
state of remoteness and isolation as part of an outer crescent surrounding
the Heartland. As a glimpse of the globe or any world map not inspired
by Mercator makes clear, the two "mainlands" almost merge in their
northern expanses. It is here that the land power and the land-based air
power of the North American nations and of the U.S.S.R. are now maneu-
vering for positions in anticipation of a possible major conflict.
REASSESSMENT OF THE POSITION OF RUSSIA AND U.S.S.R.
Mackinder's new arrangement of the political map of the world— the
Heartland itself, the marginal lands of the inner crescent, the lands of
the outer crescent beyond that of the peripheral states— served (as we
have seen) above all the purpose of reassessing in geographical terms
the position of the Russian empire in the world at large; in political
terms this reassessment was to serve as an eloquent warning to the West-
ern world aligned with British sea power. It recognized as the signal
geopolitical development of the young twentieth century the increasingly
powerful position of Russia due to her central position and steadily grow-
ing communication system of railroads, highways, and inland canals.
These interior lines of communication were seen as a rising challenge to
powers relying on sea communication. On the other hand, it must be
realized that the railroads of the U.S.S.R., while playing the major role
in the transportation economy of the country, are still far from satisfac-
tory,16 in spite of the fact that the Soviet regime which inherited a net-
work of 36,300 miles has since increased the railroad mileage to about
78,000 miles. But especially in Soviet Asia, the railway system is still
skeletal in nature and the supply situation, especially from a military
14 Foreign Affairs, July, 1953.
15 Spykman, Geography of the Peace, p. 40.
16 T. Shabad, Geography of the U.S.S.R. (New York, 1951), pp. 83-88.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 223
point of view, of the far-flung corners of the empire— Central Asia, East-
ern Siberia, and the Maritime Provinces— can be described as crucial 17
(cf. Fig. 15-2, p. 478).
THE RIM LANDS
In this comparison of geographical foundations of land power and sea
power we are taught to distingush between interior lands inaccessible to
navigation, and coast lands or, as they have also been called, marginal
lands or rim lands, which are accessible to the shipmen, sailing from
beach to beach and harbor to harbor round the west, south, and east
coasts of the Old World, and sailing up its navigable rivers.18 Nicholas J.
Spykman has justly criticized Mackinder for oversimplifying the land
power versus sea power conflict. The historical alignment, he pointed out,
has always been in terms of some member nations of the European rim
land with Great Britain against Russia in alliance with other members of
the rim land; or it has been a conflict between Great Britain and Russia
together against a rim land power which, as for instance France or Ger-
many, dared to gamble for the domination of the continent. Hence Spyk-
man's formula in critique of Mackinder's: "Who controls the rimland,
rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world." 19
There are a number of significant geographical factors which justify
the attempt to classify, in terms of political geography, the marginal lands
(or rim lands) as distinctive units differentiated in many ways from the
interior lands that are inaccessible to sea power and form the basis of
the Heartland. These regions have in common three major character-
istics distinguishing them from the interior lands.
( 1 ) With the exception of the Heartland's north, where west winds
carry a considerable amount of rainfall across the plains as far inland as
the Altai Mountains, the inland areas are at a disadvantage in regard
to water supply as compared with the marginal lands which can count
on reliable rainfall sufficient for agriculture.
(2) The marginal lands are centers of population density. It should
also be noted that, within the Soviet Heartland region, the greatest con-
centration of population, agricultural and industrial concentration, and
power potential is in the western regions of the inland area, close to the
marginal lands.
17 W. G. East, "How Strong Is the Heartland?" Foreign Affairs (1950), pp. 78-93,
87.
18 Cf. C. B. Fawcett, "Marginal and Interior Lands of the Old World," in Weigert-
Stefansson-Harrison, op. cit., pp. 91-103.
19 Spykman, Geography of the Peace, p. 40 ff.
224 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
(3) The marginal lands, in terms of political organization, lack the.
political unification and centralization of power which characterizes the
Heartland power. They are broken up into a number of more or less in-
dependent national units which, however, strive in the face of aggression
threats toward new forms of supranational unification.20
Thus we are led to that crucial cradle-of-conflict zone which extends
along the western frontier of the Soviet Union and, continuing westward,
forms in an irregular peninsula the center of the so-called continent of
Europe. As seen from Moscow, or London, or Washington, the nations of
this broad rim-land zone, while politically lacking uniformity and unifica-
tion, share certain basic advantages due to their geographical rim-land
position. To a large extent these account for the concentration and growth
of their population and their agricultural and industrial wealth. They
are the rim lands the control of which, it was claimed, endows the ruling
power with control over Eurasia and, consequently, of the world. Mar-
ginal as these lands are to the Heartland, they must be viewed in their
role of actual and potential extensions of the Heartland itself. We have
seen how Mackinder developed his thesis along strategic considerations;
sea power and land power required new appraisals based on geographic
facts and new lines of communication. Thus the strategic Heartland be-
came the region to which, under modern conditions, sea power can be
refused access by a locally dominant land power.
In the light of this strategic concept, it becomes evident that certain
marginal areas are needed to achieve the security objective of the Heart-
land, namely, to extend its perimeter to a line which would assure the
Heartland of the exclusion of sea power. We shall note immediately that
emphasis on the land power-sea power conflict meant even before the
advent of air power a gross oversimplification, as it is the accessibility to
both sea and land and the power deriving from it which gives the mar-
ginal regions growing importance. In the second half of the twentieth
century, the impact of air power makes a new appraisal of the marginal
lands mandatory, in their relationship to the Heartland as well as to other
areas.
THE HEARTLAND AND EASTERN EUROPE
In attempting to define the major strategic areas forming the marginal
lands to the west of the Heartland and having enough in common to be
treated as entities, the political divide created by the Iron Curtain makes
it necessary to distinguish between the regions of Eastern and Central
20 Fawcett, "Marginal and Interior Lands of the Old World," loc. clt.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION
225
i L L
2 1
3
Fig. 8-3. Marginal Lands to the West of the Heartland: (1) U.S.S.R.; (2) satellites;
(3) marginal lands.
Europe and the rest of Europe (Fig. 8-3). As was stressed previously, a
major distinguishing factor between the lands of the interior and the mar-
ginal regions to the west of them is a negative one and one strictly related
to political geography: whereas in the middle of the twentieth century the
Heartland interior is a politically integrated unit fully controlled by the
Kremlin, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe are characterized
by the existence of politically conflicting structures, with both East and
West attempting to mold them into a unified sphere. In political terms,
this region includes Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Austria,
Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, and on their periphery, Finland, Yugoslavia,
and Greece. It goes without saying that in this pivotal area of centuries-
old clashes between the East and the West any attempt at visualizing this
area as a political unit of some broader meaning defies proper geographi-
cal definition. Its typical state is one of fluctuation and transition; its
human geography was rewritten many times in history as a result of wars
and migrations sweeping westward and eastward. Yet, if only we apply
the term marginal area in a broad sense, we can appreciate it as a large-
space concept complementary to the interior lands of the Heartland.
226 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
It would be futile to try to define the location of the thin boundary line
which separates the Western extension of the Heartland from the eastern
border regions of the marginal lands. Therefore, it is immaterial to deter-
mine whether certain highly important regions in this broad frontier zone
between Heartland and rim lands belong to either category. What mat-
ters is the fact that in spite of the impressive pace of U.S.S.R. develop-
ment in what the Russians refer to as "the eastern regions," the Volga-
Ural region and Soviet Asia beyond it,21 European Russia and certain
areas adjacent to it are indispensable to the Heartland power. Regardless
of whether the Baku oilfields, the Rumanian oilfields, the breadbasket
and industries of the Ukraine, or the coal mines and industries in Upper
Silesia form an annex of the Heartland area or an outpost of the marginal
region, their location is such that they are extremely vulnerable to attack
from without, especially from bases located in the "perimeter of defense"
belt, in Britain, Scandinavia, the Western European mainland, North
Africa, or the Middle East. The result is that the top-heavy concentration
of population, agricultural and industrial assets of the Soviet empire along
the western and most vulnerable border regions of the Heartland reduces
the intrinsic value of the Heartland as a whole and of the power connota-
tions it implies.
The concentration of economic power and power potentials in the west-
ern fringe areas of the Heartland, which is still, in the second half of the
twentieth century, a major characteristic of the Heartland power, has thus
fully confirmed Mackinder's thesis that he "who rules East Europe com-
mands the Heartland." At the same time, we must not lose sight of the
marchlands along the eastern border of the Heartland. As in the case of
Eastern Europe, to focus attention on the Heartland per se, with its cen-
tral position in Eurasia, its physical inaccessibility from the oceans, its
seeming security from attack due to the natural bastion provided by the
frozen waters of the Arctic and the mountain ranges and steppes of Cen-
tral Asia, leads to an underestimation of the rim lands in the east which
play a significant role in linking the Heartland with the rest of the world.
The conquests of Alexander the Great and of the Arabs remind us of the
role of the marginal areas of Southwest Asia in historical efforts aimed at
controlling the Heartland. Even more important was the challenge to the
Heartland by the empire of the Mongols. Its nucleus of power located in
the steppes of Mongolia, it broadened its basis to include, in the thir-
teenth century, China proper.22 In reverse, and as seen from Moscow, the
21 East, "How Strong Is the Heartland?" loc. cit., p. 90.
22 Ibid., pp. 83, 84.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 227
same marchlands, like those in Eastern Europe, provide stepping stones
for the expansion of the Heartland power itself. Lenin's prediction that
the road to Paris leads through China and India still rings ominously. The
slow growth of railroads in Siberia and toward the Pacific coast as well
as in Central Asia links the Heartland more and more with marchlands of
great strategic portent, even more strategic in as much as the correspond-
ing railroad system developed by China and linking its mainland with the
outer regions remained (as, for instance, in the case of Sinkiang) utterly
weak and vulnerable.
THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF HEARTLAND AND
MARGINAL LANDS
It must, therefore, be concluded that the study of location which the
investigation of the Heartland and its physical qualities entails, while con-
tributing greatly to the understanding of its strength, is not enough and
is even misleading if it amounts to a preoccupation with the Heartland
concept. In order to arrive at a balanced view, the study must be extended
to include the marginal lands along all of the frontiers of the Heartland.
In these regions where the Soviet sphere of expansion and influence is met
and challenged by the "perimeter of defense" 23 organized by the Free
World, it is frequently the concentration of populations and the wealth of
resources, rather than geographical position by itself which accounts for
their pivotal role. The combination of power based on the Heartland's
central area and greatly increased control over vital parts of the marginal
belt, not the central nucleus of the Heartland alone, would represent a
unit which could challenge with a high degree of success the power posi-
tion of the rest of the world. However, it must be realized that the impact
of time and change, due to progress in technological achievement, is such
that this formula holds good but in general terms and must be re-examined
whenever makers of policy or planners of strategy put it to test at a given
time.
B. Strategic Implications of the Location of Marginal Seas
and Narrow Waterways
Marginal seas and narrow waterways occupy today, as in past history,
a highly important position in the struggle for powers and rank high
among the geographical foundations of political and military power. In
23 See page 272 ff.
228 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the present conflict between the Soviet orbit and the West, the evaluation
of the opposing power systems makes it mandatory to understand the
effect of the locational factors of marginal seas and narrow waterways on
the respective powers— their geography granting decisive qualities of
strength and weakness, qualities which have molded historical geography
and which define political geography today. A glimpse at the map of
water bodies does not always disclose easily power and control factors of
the nations competing in these areas. The locational impact of these water
bodies on the countries bordering them does not reveal itself on the map
as clearly as is the case in regard to the factors of location which define
the areal situation of a country and its relations to other countries across
land borders. Their role becomes apparent only if projected against larger
space configurations. Both the importance of the location concepts of these
water bodies and the complicating factors which render difficult the ap-
praisal of their geopolitical values make it appear advisable to discuss the
major marginal seas and narrow waterways in some regional detail.
Stretching around the vast littoral of the Eurasian land mass, from
Spitsbergen to the Kuriles, is a chain of islands and archipelagoes, some
delimiting, others within a series of marginal seas and narrow waterways.
These control vital sea communications of the world and are likely to be
pivotal areas in any conflict between the two power blocs that is not im-
mediately decided by atomic-thermonuclear weapons of air power. The
marginal seas are peculiar to the Eurasian continent. The only similar
instance of enclosed sea in the North and South American continent is
that of the Caribbean Sea, which is defined by the Bahamas and the
Antilles.
The significance of these marginal seas and the narrow straits within
them cannot be overemphasized. So long as intermediate bases are main-
tained by the Free World in the coastal regions of Eurasia, they function
as a cordon sanitaire around the expanse of the Soviet domain. Once this
line of sea communications is breached by Soviet penetration, the entire
peripheral strategy of the Free World would be endangered. The sea com-
munications of the Free World are secure only if the seas through which
they pass and the narrow straits on which they converge are secure. The
potential threat of such penetration must not be seen in the possible rise
of the Heartland power to the stature of a maritime power able to chal-
lenge Anglo-American naval supremacy, for geography is prohibitive to
such development. Rather the threat is against the sea lanes from aircraft
based in the Heartland itself and in satellite rim lands. Nicholas J. Spyk-
man's observation still holds true: "there is no geopolitical area in the
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 229
world that has been more profoundly affected by the development of air
power than this one of the marginal seas." 24 The development of air
power has not reduced the importance of these seas and communications
focal points, but it has made them more difficult to defend. Besides the
defenses located in the immediate vicinity of the waterway, it is now
necessary to establish bases hundreds of miles away. A case in point is the
entire Caribbean, which is now a part of the defensive perimeter of the
Panama Canal.
In the period between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries it was pos-
sible to keep enemy ships and troops outside artillery range of a narrow
waterway. This is no longer true, since aircraft can now make the water-
way untenable even to the nation which controls it. Although that nation
remains in a position to prevent enemy traffic from passing through it,
hostile aircraft can render it too costly to send friendly ships through the
channel. Early in World War II Britain did not dare to send its ships
through the Suez Canal because of the threat of German air power. Such
an air threat necessitates the maintenance of distant air bases to provide
adequate aircraft interception. A discussion of these waterways and their
distinguishing geographic characteristics enables us to see in true per-
spective the marginal problems of the Heartland power itself and equally
those of the nations in the perimeter of defense zones.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL PATTERN
If a strip map were constructed extending from the northwestern North
American coastline and the eastern Asiatic coastal area it would reveal
a succession of marginal seas defined by an almost interminable chain of
islands and archipelagoes ( Fig. 8-4 ) . This is particularly true of the imme-
diate continental margin, where from the Arctic Circle to the Equator,
and beyond, there is a regular repetition of the same simple geographical
pattern. The continental mainland is separated everywhere from the open
oceans by a succession of partly enclosed seas, each protected and easily
defended on the Pacific side by curving peninsular and island barriers.
These loop-like barriers, swinging toward the mainland at either extrem-
ity, not only define and separate the marginal seas but lead to a sequence
of straits and narrows that have great strategic significance.
Beginning in the Alaska peninsula, and continuing through the Aleu-
tians, the first arc ties in to the shore of Kamchatka, shutting in the Bering
Sea and covering the most accessible entries into the Yukon and Anadyr
24 Spykman, Geography of the Peace, p. 54.
Fig. 8-4. Succession of Marginal and Enclosed Seas — from North America to the
Indian Ocean.
230
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 231
valleys. Near the Alaskan end the United States has a strong naval base
at Dutch Harbor, while the corresponding Russian base is at Petropav-
lovsk on Kamchatka.
The second unit in this pattern begins with the Kamchatka Peninsula
and is continued without a break by the Kurile Islands, which follow a
running curve and then tie in with the northeastern extremity of Hok-
kaido. The last of these islands, Paramushiro, is a northern Gibraltar in
sight of Kamchatka. These islands are controlled by the U.S.S.R. and
make of the Sea of Okhotsk a virtual Russian lake, controlling the north-
ern access to the Amur basin.
The third arc begins with Sakhalin, which is separated by less than
twenty miles from the continental coast, and extends southward for over
seven hundred miles to the northwestern tip of Hokkaido. From this point
Japan itself forms the outer arc, which at its southwestern extremity ap-
proaches within sixty miles of the Korean coast. Enclosed within this arc
is the Sea of Japan. Mid-way along the continental shore is the Soviet
naval base of Vladivostok, guarding the eastern terminus of the Trans-
Siberian railroad and projecting Soviet naval power toward the chain of
Japanese islands.
The fourth geographical unit can be traced from the Korean peninsula
through Kyushu ( part of Japan proper ) and the Ryukyu chain which ties
in to the island of Formosa. The enclosed China Sea has a secondary inner
basin, the Yellow Sea, and two innermost recesses, the Gulfs of Chihli and
Liaotung, behind the Kwantung Peninsula. This whole outer arc, nearly
two thousand miles long, faces toward the entrances to Manchuria, the
North China Plain, and the Yangtze Basin. Within this arc on the main-
land is the port city and naval base of Shanghai. In the southern entry to
the China Sea the Formosa Strait is narrowed further by the Pescadores.
They are located within the United States perimeter of defense as defined
in January, 1955.
The fifth repetition of this geographical pattern is drawn on a larger
scale than its northern counterparts. Beginning with Formosa, an outer
protective barrier runs through the Bataan Islands (part of the Philip-
pines), Luzon, Mindoro, Palawan, Northern and Western Borneo, Billiton,
Banka, and eastern Sumatra. The last swings in toward Malaya and thus
completes the enclosure of the South China Sea while defining its southern
entry through Malacca Strait. Singapore, Bangkok, Hanoi and Hong Kong
all lie within this barrier. The area is honeycombed with shallows and
treacherous waters which confine ships to well-defined sea lanes.
Thereafter, this configuration of marginal seas is lost in the Indian
INDIAN OCEAN
0 100 ZOO 300 400 500 Ml
l 1 I 1 1=1
0 200 400 600 Km
<^\\ f TIMOR
m.
Fig. 8-5. The South China Sea.
232
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 233
Ocean (unless one considers the Andaman and Nicobar Islands chain as
sufficient to define the contours of a marginal sea ) , only to reappear in a
different pattern in the Middle East and Western Europe, in the Persian
Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Baltic Sea, White
Sea and the Barents Sea. With the exception of the Red Sea and the
Persian Gulf all of these seas wash the shores of Heartland— or Heartland
controlled— marginal territory; the North Sea in this sense is seen as form-
ing a unit with the Soviet-dominated Baltic Sea. As marginal seas they
have immediate importance in any effort by the Soviet Union to gain clear
access to the open Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean.
Such an effort would presuppose control, by the Heartland power, of the
narrow straits which must be passed to reach the open sea.
Scattered along the chain of islands and archipelagoes in the Pacific
and dotting the system of marginal seas in Europe and the Middle East
are those focal points between land masses which provide egress from the
interior or marginal seas. These straits and channels are not as numerous,
however, as one might expect. In many instances where they do exist sea
traffic is impeded or strictly channeled by the nature of treacherous
shoals. A graphic illustration of the importance of deep straits occurred
after the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942. All the deep exits from this sea
were guarded by Japanese vessels, which sank or captured most of the
Allied ships. The shallower craft were able to make the passage between
Java and Bali Island (Bali Strait), and were able to escape the lone Japa-
nese guard. But the larger ships that tried to escape through the Sunda
Strait (between Sumatra and Java) and Lombok Strait (between the
islands of Bali and Lombok in the Indonesian archipelago) encountered
armed forces too large to evade or conquer.25
Most of the strategic waterways— the narrow passages— of the world can
be divided into two general classes: those which are maritime highways
between two of the great oceans; and those giving access to enclosed or
semienclosed seas. In the first group are:
(1) The Mediterranean system, including the Strait of Gibraltar, the
Sicilian Straits, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the Strait of Bab-el-
Mandeb. This is the vastly important water passage through the Eurafri-
can land mass to India and Southeast Asia— vitally important in the
peripheral strategy of the Free World.
(2) The Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,
with its antechamber, the Caribbean Sea and the passages which connect
25 E. G. Mears, Pacific Ocean Handbook (San Francisco, 1944), p. 43.
234 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the latter with the Atlantic Ocean. Of these, the Windward Passage is of
first importance.
(3) The waterways linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans (Fig. 8-5).
These include the Strait of Malacca, Sunda Strait, and Singapore Strait,
which provide access from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea; San
Bernardino Strait and Surigao Strait, which connect the South China Sea
with the Pacific; Lombok and Macassar Straits, which connect the Indian
Ocean with the Java and Celebes Seas; and Torres Strait, which connects
the Arafura Sea to the Coral Sea.26
In the second category— passages providing access to enclosed seas or to
seas which for all practical purposes are enclosed— are the following:
(1) The Turkish Straits, including the Dardanelles, the Sea of Mar-
mara, and the Bosporus, which provide access to the Black Sea from the
Mediterranean.
(2) The Straits at the entrance to the Baltic Sea. These are the Kattegat
and Skagerrak, The Sound, and the Great Belt. The Kiel Canal is an alter-
nate entrance to the Baltic Sea.
( 3 ) St. George's Channel and the Irish Channel, which are the southern
and northern entrances to the Irish Sea.
(4) The entrances to the Sea of Japan. These include the Tartary Strait,
La Perouse Strait, Tsugaru Strait, Tsushima and Shimonoseki Straits.
(5) The Strait of Ormuz, giving access to the Persian Gulf from the
Indian Ocean.27
Perhaps still a third group of vital waterways can be distinguished in
the narrow channels which pass between insular areas and the mainland.
Certainly the most important of these is the English Channel. In addition,
the Strait of Formosa connects the East and South China Seas, Hainan
Strait separates the island from the mainland, Palk Strait separates Ceylon
from the southern tip of the Indian mainland, and the Straits of Messina
lie between Sicily and the Italian toe. The Strait of Bonifacio, between
Sardinia and Corsica, and the Strait of Otranto, between Albania and
Italy, have a secondary importance.
For the past century it has been Britain which has dominated the sea
lanes and sea communications, but it must be stressed that, in the spring
of 1956, the British naval and air base position between Aden and Aus-
tralia appeared to be crumbling: Bombay passed from British control in
26 G. F. Eliot, "Strategic Waterways," United Nations World (September, 1947),
pp. 30-35.
27 Ibid.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 235
1950; the government of Ceylon requested in 1956 an early evacuation of
the British base at Trincolamee; its air bases in Malaya are threatened by
Communist infiltration; and Britain's control of Aden is under pressure
both from within the colony and from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
Britain had established its domination of the sea lanes by seizing all but
three of the strategic gateways or bottlenecks between the oceans. Of the
remaining three, that at Panama remained in the friendly hands of the
United States, while two others in the Indonesian archipelago— then held
by the Netherlands— were also under friendly control. Controlling the
strategic sea lanes in this manner, "not a ton of interocean shipping could
move on the earth without going past British or United States points of
naval control." 28 A globe-girdling chain of strategic naval bases was con-
structed to safeguard these points of control. Although constructed or
acquired in days of the sailing vessels, the foresight in their selection
made them equally valuable once steam and oil-powered vessels sup-
planted sailing ships. As already noted, the most severe challenge to their
usefulness and the usefulness of the narrow waterways is to be seen in the
ability of air power to neutralize them.
Today these narrow straits are still under the dominant control of
Anglo-American naval power or of smaller nations friendly to, or even
dependent on, that power. A discussion of these waterways will point this
up although the precarious position of the British base net and the under-
mining effect of this weakness on the security of the United States and
the free world as a whole must be kept in mind.
THE SEA OF JAPAN
Of the entrances to the Sea of Japan (Fig. 8-6) all except the Strait of
Tartary and La Perouse Strait are wholly controlled, on both shores, by
American forces occupying Japan and South Korea. The northern shore of
La Perouse Strait is formed by the Russian island of Sakhalin. The Tartar
Strait is wholly Russian, but ice closes it during a great part of the year.
Despite the U.S.S.R. naval base at Vladivostok the Sea of Japan is effec-
tively counterbalanced by the United States so long as occupation forces
continue to remain in Japan and South Korea. Whether, and if so, to what
extent, submarine warfare and the mining of port entrances would in a
war necessitate a reappraisal of this situation is in the realm of specu-
lation.
28 G. T. Renner and associates, Global Geography (New York, 1944), p. 618.
I.I I |....»WIWIIII«W»^WW
m
mm
:•:■:■:■:•: •■:-.*.;
:■:•:*:*:■: ••:•:•:■
iiCHINA
Tokyo ^
Cftina Sea
Fig. 8-6. Sea of Japan.
236
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 237
FROM INDIA TO THE PACIFIC
The waterways linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans are still domi-
nated by British naval power at Singapore. In conjunction with United
States naval forces in the Philippines the entire Southeast Asian series of
narrow waterways is effectively dominated. The only immediate threat to
Singapore is a Communist drive down the Malayan peninsula comparable
to the successful Japanese thrust in the Second World War. The network
of sea communications in this area is second only in importance to that
of the Mediterranean. Not only is it the vital hub of communications be-
tween the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but also it controls communications
extending north through the Formosa Strait to the Japanese Islands. The
access of the maritime powers to all of Southeast Asia and a considerable
part of the Far East thus depends on friendly control of this sea communi-
cations hub. The Bering Strait to the north, separating Alaska and eastern
Siberia, is difficult of access both by sea and from the interior.
THE PANAMA CANAL AND CARIBBEAN AREA
This area is wholly controlled by the United States (cf. Fig. 3-6, p.
72). The Caribbean Sea is the key to the Panama defenses and includes
three independent republics and possessions of the United States, Britain,
France, and the Netherlands. As a practical matter, however, it is an
American lake, dominated by sea and air power. The outer zone of sec-
ondary bases stretches from Exuma in the Bahamas to Antigua and St.
Lucia in the Lesser Antilles, both leased bases. The inner zone of main
defense covers an arc reaching from Guantanamo Bay on Cuba in the
west to San Juan in the north and Trinidad in the southeast. On the west-
ern approaches, leased bases in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador protect
the canal from a distance of a thousand miles away. The canal is vital in
the East- West communications of the entire free world, and as such is the
only narrow waterway of great strategic importance in the North and
South American continents. The rest of the world's strategic waterways
are found in the marginal seas ringing the Eurasian land mass.
THE BALTIC SEA
Following the long coast line of the U.S.S.R., from the westernmost of
its Arctic seas, the Barents Sea, and its southern annex, the White Sea
which has become increasingly important as outlet of the Baltic-White
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(Porkkala returned to Finland 1956); (2) neutral; (3) NATO bloc.
238
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 239
Sea inland waterway, we reach the Baltic Sea, Russia's window toward
Scandinavia and the Atlantic (Fig. 8-7). Slowly but systematically, the
Soviet Union has increased its direct control of the Baltic littoral which
had been for a long time limited to the easternmost section of the Gulf
of Finland. Ice-bound half of the year, the old Russian zone seemed
too weak to assure the safety of Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second
city. The Baltic States were incorporated in 1940. With their annex-
ation, the Soviet Union organized new seaports which are more favor-
ably located than is Leningrad's naval base, Kronstadt, which is ice-
bound for five to six months: Tallinn, the main port of Estonia, is
practically ice-free; the important port of Riga in Latvia is icebound
for about three months, whereas the naval base of Libau is relatively
ice-free. Farther south, the U.S.S.R. extended her Baltic power posi-
tion through control of Memel in Lithuania and the port city of Kalin-
ingrad, the former Konigsberg, which is ice-free most of the year. In
satellite Poland, the twin ports of what, after World War I, formed
the Free City of Danzig and of Gdynia, as well as Szczecin (Stettin),
not threatened by ice, are the natural outlets of the Vistula and Oder
basins for the agricultural and industrial products of Poland, the western
Ukraine, and Silesia. In 1955, the Soviet Union's grip around the Baltic
included the coastline of satellite East Germany with its naval stations on
the island of Riigen and at the port of Rostock. Its flanking expansion
along the Baltic littoral ends in sight of the West German port of Liibeck.
This extension of Soviet Union control since the end of World War II
has greatly improved its over-all defensive position as well as its po-
tential role as an aggressor in the Baltic arena. On the other hand, the
strength of NATO prevents further expansion and bars the Soviet Union
from turning the Baltic Sea into a Russian lake from which its naval
power, especially its submarines, could penetrate into the Atlantic. West
Germany controls the ports of Liibeck and Kiel on the Kiel Canal which,
in its length of fifty-three miles, cuts through Schleswig-Holstein and en-
ters the Elbe river, fifteen miles east of Cuxhaven. Denmark, the natural
goal of a Russian attempt to gain full control of the Baltic Sea and access
to the Atlantic, still controls, through land fortifications, the strategically
important island of Bornholm, and through mine fields, The Sound and
the Belts. Sweden, in its important outlet to the North Sea, the naval base
and port of Goteborg, shares with Denmark in the defense of the Kattegat.
Sweden is not as exposed a Baltic Power as is Denmark. Its bases in
Stockholm, Karlskrona, and on the island of Gotland are a strong protec-
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THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 241
tion of its southern lands and have served as an effective deterrent to a
challenge of Sweden's neutrality. Finland, on the other hand, in spite of
the boundary changes effected after the Russo-Finnish war, is in a pre-
carious position because of its close proximity to the Soviet Union's life-
center of Leningrad. Its Aland islands which control the entrance to the
Gulf of Bothnia have been neutralized. In conclusion, we find the Baltic
arena a strategic area of great significance both to the Soviet orbit and the
Free World. Seen from the standpoint of Soviet Union security, the Baltic
defense line protects the vital agricultural and industrial concentrations
between Leningrad, Moscow, and the eastern Ukraine and the increas-
ingly important mining districts of Upper Silesia. In terms of aggression,
the U.S.S.R. position along the Baltic coast could be seen as a stepping
stone for Russian expansion into the Atlantic, with the consequent threat
of dangerous submarine warfare against Allied shipping. Conversely, the
location of NATO strength in its littoral member states and the strong
position of Sweden produce a balance of power which halts further ex-
pansion by the U.S.S.R. and helps to maintain peace because the Free
World occupies strategically favorable positions from which, in retaliation
to aggressive moves by the Soviet Union, air blows or even an invasion
could be started against vital industrial centers and communications lines
in the European expanses of the Soviet Union.
THE MEDITERRANEAN NETWORK
The western entrance to the Mediterranean (Fig. 8-8) is commanded
by the Gibraltar fortress, its British rule being vainly challenged by Spain.
The narrow waist is dominated by the British fortress-island of Malta, and
to some extent by the French base at Bizerte in Tunisia and the American
air base at Wheelus Field at Tripoli. Sicily and other neighboring Italian
islands are de-neutralized under the Italian peace treaty. The most critical
control point in the Mediterranean vital passageway is the Suez Canal.29
The concession of the joint-stock company which operates the canal does
not expire until 1968, but since 1954 the canal is no longer under British
control.30 A possible alternative control point for the eastern Mediterra-
nean is the British island of Cyprus and naval installations in the Isken-
deron area of southeastern Turkey. However, the control over the last
British-ruled bastion in the Middle East, Cyprus, appeared to be seriously
29 A. Siegfried, "The Suez: International Roadway," Foreign Affairs (1953), pp.
605-618.
30 See pp. 639, 640.
242 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
threatened in late 1955 by the mounting hostility of 400,000 Cypriotes of
Greek descent, who were fighting for "self determination". Other narrow
waterways of strategic value in this network are the Turkish Straits, the
Strait of Otranto, the Strait of Messina, and the Strait of Bonifacio. The
latter two are not of critical importance, but are available as convenient
alternate ship routes.
However, such listing of the ramparts that guard the Mediterranean
Sea would be misleading if we lost sight of the fact that the Mediterranean
in its true power connotations, and as a "pivot of peace and war," 31 must
be looked upon as a continuous waterway made up of two unequal parts,
which until 1869 functioned separately— the Mediterranean proper and
the Red Sea— tenuously linked at the isthmus of Suez.32 It should be noted
that the loss of Egypt as kingpin of the Middle East defense position has
accentuated the critical defense position of the Western powers in the
Middle East area as a whole, which is in sharp contrast to their firmly
established security system in the Mediterranean arena itself.
33
THE "GEOGRAPHICAL BLOCKADE" OF THE HEARTLAND POWER
The control of the sea communications throughout the maritime world
and the network of intermediate bases counterbalance the power concen-
tration in the Soviet-dominated Eurasian land mass.34 We have stressed
before that with only one or two exceptions the most vital narrow water-
ways are controlled by Anglo-American naval power. This naval domi-
nance extends to most of the marginal seas as well. The immediate
advantage to the Free World in this pattern of political geography is the
complete accessibility by way of sea communications to the land area
dominated by the Soviet Union. In contrast to the Eurasian land mass,
the shores of the North and South American continents fall into the sea
without a pattern of marginal seas or insular ramparts, which fact accounts
for the vastly superior defense position of the American nations. Geog-
raphy endows with great advantages powers whose naval strength, sup-
ported by air bases, controls the marginal seas and narrow passageways,
as long as this control is not challenged successfully by naval and air
power based on the Eurasian Heartland or rim lands under its control.
31 W. G. East, "The Mediterranean: Pivot of Peace and War," Foreign Affairs
(1953), pp. 619-633.
32 Ibid.
33 W. G. East, "The Mediterranean: Pivot of Peace and War," loc. cit., pp. 631-633;
see especially the observations on the alternative of a British defense-in-depth system
in and around the Indian Ocean.
s* See p. 214 ff.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 243
This observation leads to the conclusion, borne out by history, that the
Heartland power, even if succeeding in the establishment of a firm strong-
hold over the Eurasian marginal lands, will try to extend its perimeter of
defense— or aggression— to include the marginal seas and narrow water-
ways off its shores. In its urge toward the open seas,35 the Soviet Union,
as formerly Russia, meets with formidable barriers: the Soviet Baltic lake
is bottled by the Skagerrak and the Kattegat ( cf. Fig. 8-7 ) ; her Black Sea
outlet to warm waters is choked by the Turkish Straits; the Bering and
Okhotsk Seas are fogbound and icebound a great part of the year; the Sea
of Japan is subject to American naval power in Japanese bases; and the
succession of Anglo-American naval bases along the whole of the insular
rampart to Singapore would serve to nullify potential Soviet naval power
ranging from Tsingtao, Shanghai, Vladivostok, and Petropavlovsk.
If one considers a possible break-out from this "geographical blockade,"
with the factors of geography foremost in mind, the two most likely areas
are the Baltic and Black Seas. The former brings to the U.S.S.R. most of
her imports, while the latter carries most of her exports to world markets.
In both situations the Soviet Union is confronted with a narrow waterway
which is subject to Anglo-American naval control. The acquisition, by the
Soviet Union, of the Finnish coast beyond Viborg, her annexation of the
Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania and also of a strip of East
Prussia which includes Kaliningrad, are evidence that the Baltic is to
become, if it is not already, something of a Russian lake, its security
threatened, however, by air power from the ring of bases which surround
it. Furthermore, a concentration of Soviet naval power in the Baltic serves
no great interest of the Soviet Union unless it can reach out beyond the
Kiel Canal, The Sound, and the Great Belt to the North Sea and beyond.
A similar joining of rival naval forces would occur in the Aegean if the
U.S.S.R. were ever successful in breaking out from the Black Sea through
the narrow Bosporus into the Sea of Marmara, and from there through the
winding channel of the Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea. Anglo-American
naval power would appear to be highly sensitive to Russian intrusion on
the eastern Mediterranean sea lanes, not to mention the neutralization of
Turkey that would result from such a successful breaching of this geo-
graphical barrier. Hanson N. Baldwin stated the case clearly in saying
that "geography is the Russian Navy's undoing" and that, even if the
Dardanelles were to fall to Communist armies, the maze of islands in the
35 See the comprehensive account by R. J. Kerner, "The Soviet Union as a Sea
Power," in Weigert-Stefansson-Harrison, op. cit., pp. 104-122; see also, F. Uligh, Jr.,
"The Threat of the Soviet Navy," Foreign Affairs (1952), pp. 444-455.
244 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Aegean and the closed waters of the Mediterranean would make a sortie
by Russian surface ships or submarines a desperate adventure.36
If one views the Baltic and Black Seas and their narrow passageways
through the glass of the Heartland power that is trying to render the land
mass itself and the marginal lands it dominates secure against attack from
without, it is evident that they play as important a part in the security
system of the Heartland complex as do the marginal lands adjacent to its
borders. These marginal areas, as well as the western territories of the
Heartland, are accessible at both ends from the sea. Any power equipped
with the ships and with air cover to penetrate into the Baltic and Black
seas would create a serious threat to the security of the Heartland-rim
land structure as a whole. Clearly these marginal seas and their pathways
loom large in the strategy of both the Soviet Union and the West. The case
histories of the Black Sea and of the Baltic Sea, as well as those of the
other marginal seas discussed, offer significant evidence that the appraisal
of any security and power position remains incomplete unless the margi-
nal seas, and their passageways, be given proper consideration. As a foot-
note to this general appraisal, it should be added that the strong emphasis
on submarine construction in the Soviet Union— which, in 1955, was re-
ported to have three hundred submarines in service— is clearly its attempt
at partial solution of the geographical problems of the Heartland-rim land
structure. In an appraisal of the geographical barriers which obstruct the
Soviet Navy, Hanson W. Baldwin concluded in 1955 37 that its construc-
tion program
. . . will reach really dangerous proportions only if two or more of the following
developments occur: (1) If Soviet long-range planes with an operational radius
of at least 1,000 miles and a capability for effective attack upon shipping learn
to co-ordinate their operations with Soviet submarines;
(2) If Russia acquires new open- water naval, submarine and air bases on the
coasts of Western Europe by land conquests ( as Germany did in World War II ) ;
(3) If the industrial facilities of Soviet Siberia are strengthened so greatly as
to be capable of the self-sufficient support of a very much more powerful Far
Eastern Fleet;
(4) If a breach in the Western Pacific island chain is achieved by Communist
conquest or political action so as to provide Soviet Russia with a warm-water
port fronting on the open Pacific.
The Achilles' heel of Soviet Russia's deep-sea power today is her naval base
complex. Her most important and best bases are bottled up in narrow seas; the
few that give access to the open ocean are subject to the vagaries of Arctic
weather and are vulnerable to atomic or conventional bombing attack by land-
based or ship-based aircraft.
36 "The Soviet Navy," Foreign Affairs (1955), pp. 587-604 (590, 591).
■« Uiid., p. 604.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 245
Soviet Russia's naval might cannot be dismissed as a factor in her present
global power. But it is not a major factor. Her submarine strength and in par-
ticular her minelaying capabilities deserve increasing respect. But it is still true
today as it was in the days of the Tsars that if Russia is to challenge the United
States or Great Britain for primacy upon the high seas she must, besides
strengthening her maritime power with increased export trade, acquire warm-
water ports fronting upon the open oceans of the world and expand her ship-
building industry and the vast industrial complex to support it.
NARROW MARINE STRAITS IN THE ANTARCTIC
Our discussion of the strategically significant narrow passages would
be incomplete without mentioning the increasingly important role of
the Drake Passage between South America and Palmer Peninsula (Fig.
8-9), ominously important because of the vital role this passage would
assume if in a future conflict passage through the Panama Canal or
the Suez Canal, or through both of them, would be barred. In such a
case ships would have to plough the Antarctic Seas on their way from
the Pacific to the Atlantic, or on their way from the Atlantic to the
Indian Ocean. The political geography of the Antarctic sphere of in-
terest has come into the picture very late,38 but the possible blocking
of the passages through the Suez and Panama Canals has made the
Drake Passage, between Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands
to the north and the outer reaches of Antarctica to the south, a po-
tentially decisive strategic area. Many nations are now competing for
sovereignty rights in the Antarctic arena. Argentina has established
stations at both ends of the Drake Passage. Competing with Argentina
are Chile, Great Britain (which, in 1908, set up her Falkland Islands
Dependencies), and the United States, as well as other nations with
more or less specific claims. Significant battles for the control of these
Antarctic waters were fought in World Wars I and II when in both wars
the Germans succeeded in playing havoc with Allied shipping in southern
waters. Forewarned by the experiences of the two wars, Argentina, Chile,
and Britain have established themselves in the Palmer Peninsula area and
are competing in their sovereignty claims. The United States in 1955 com-
pleted a non-military Antarctic exploratory mission (the U.S.S. Atka
expedition) and has good ground for sovereignty claims of its own in the
Palmer Peninsula. The Soviet Union, in an ominous move late in 1955,
announced plans to establish three bases near the South Pole. These plans
could be interpreted as the possible beginning of a double flanking of
38 L. Martin, "The Antarctic Sphere of Interest," in Weigert-Stefansson-Harrison,
op. cit., pp. 65-73 (65).
246
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Fig. 8-9. Drake Passage in Relation to the Panama and Suez Canals.
Australia and New Zealand by the Soviet Union. It has been argued 39
that a considerable Communist air power might gain a foothold in Indo-
nesia in the next ten to fifteen years, unless the influence of the Free World
prevails. If the Soviet Union would establish Antarctic air bases, Australia
and New Zealand would be vulnerable from the West, too. Forty nations
will take part in the Geophysical Year, 1957-58, with the United States'
expedition under the command of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd as a
major participant. Time will tell whether and in what respects the objec-
tives in the fields of pure science will be overshadowed by strategic,
political, and economic developments in the vast and empty Antarctic
arena.
LOCATIONAL FACTORS OF THE ARCTIC: THE
ARCTIC MEDITERRANEAN
The Arctic Ocean is in actuality a part of the Atlantic Ocean whose
littoral includes the land masses of the Northern Hemisphere. It has been
rightly termed the Polar Mediterranean. When Vilhjalmur Stefansson
39 New York Times, November 20, 1955.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 247
coined this phrase in 1922, he defined it in terms which, if examined in
retrospect, appear to be visionary:
40
A map giving one view of the northern half of the northern world shows that
the so-called Arctic Ocean is really a Mediterranean sea like those which sepa-
rate Europe from Africa or North America from South America. Because of its
smallness, we would do well to go back to an Elizabethan custom and call it not
the Arctic Ocean but the Polar Sea or Polar Mediterranean. The map shows that
most of the land in the world is in the Northern Hemisphere, that the Polar Sea
is like a hub from which the continents radiate like the spokes of a wheel. The
white patch shows that the part of the Polar Sea never yet navigated by ships
is small when compared to the surrounding land masses. In the coming air age,
the. . . Arctic will be like an open park in the center of the uninhabited city of
the world, and the air voyagers will cross it like taxi riders crossing a park. Then
will the Arctic islands become valuable, first as way stations and later because
of their intrinsic value— minerals, grazing, fisheries . . .
The Arctic Mediterranean is an excellent example of an area in which
technological progress, especially in aviation, has caused far-reaching
changes which make imperative a reorientation and a new evaluation of
locational factors of the area. Because of these aspects of location, a review
of some of them is necessary in order to appraise the new role of the Arc-
tic in the relationships of the northern powers.
As the air age has developed, more and more attention has been focused
upon the Arctic, for over the Arctic pass the great circle routes connecting
the United States and Canada and the Far East in one direction and in the
other direction linking the United States with Northwestern Europe. The
great circle is the flyer's short cut, for the arc of a great circle is the short-
est distance between two points on a sphere.
In laying out a great-circle course between New York and Moscow, or
between Chicago and Peiping, the great-circle routes pass over the Arctic
(Fig. 8-10). Until 1954, in most cases, the implications were more
significant for military planning than in the field of commercial avi-
ation. Prior to 1954 the airlines of commerce followed the longer courses
of trans-oceanic flight in an effort to serve an optimum of population
centers. Civil aviation succeeded late in 1954 in making the Arctic
short cut to Europe a regular airline route. The Scandinavian Airlines
initiated scheduled flights from Los Angeles to Copenhagen, with stops
at Winnipeg, Canada, and Sondre Stromfjord, Greenland. The distance
measures 5,085 nautical, or about 5,800 statute miles, being 465 nautical
miles ( 535 statute miles ) shorter than the trip by way of New York. The
timetable calls for the eastbound polar flight to take about twenty-four
40 "The Arctic as an Air Route of the Future," National Geographic Magazine
(1922), p. 205 ff.
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THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 249
hours, a saving of three or four hours over the conventional route. This
regular "over the top" service is likely to be the forerunner of many
more such airline routes and it is reported that the Scandinavian Airlines
has blueprinted a transpolar service from Oslo to Tokyo that would cut
the run from fifty-three hours to twenty-four. This example shows the
impact of new transpolar air routes in civil aviation upon peacetime
relations of the nations which these routes are to link so much more
speedily and, as a result, more firmly. The new links between California
and the Scandinavian countries offer a good illustration of the radical
changes in the locational relationships of "distant" countries as the result
of the opening of new skyways above the Polar regions.
In terms of locational relations of the great powers we are still strug-
gling to grasp the changes which Polar aviation has caused in the loca-
tional relationships of the powers of the West and East, by turning the
Arctic Mediterranean and its frozen lands into a pivot area and strategic
center. This concept reveals itself best on a north-polar version of a great-
circle chart. With its great-circle projections, this is the kind of map the
aviator needs. To him the idea of our Polar Mediterranean is familiar. To
many navigators and to those who have grown up in the shadow of the
Mercator projection (with the poles at infinity) this vision has appeared
strange and almost inconceivable not so long ago. In terms of flying, the
grouping of the nations around the Polar Mediterranean reveals the ele-
mentary truth that the direct route between any of these nations is in some
northerly direction; on the cylindrical Mercator world map (with the
poles lost in its open ends) the logical flight direction is seemingly east
or west.
It is over this Arctic Mediterranean that air strikes upon the United
States and retaliatory raids may be expected. Even the exchange of guided
missiles would take place over the Arctic great-circle routes, not only be-
cause these offer the shortest distance, but also because the Arctic area is
difficult to defend.41
The air distance from New York to Moscow is 4,675 miles by way of
the Arctic. The air distance from San Francisco to Peiping by way of the
Arctic is 6,600 miles, 3,000 miles shorter than the trans-Pacific route. These
distances appear formidable, but this is not the distance aircraft would
have to travel in the event of an East- West war, for the Arctic Mediterra-
nean is being ringed with bases by both the United States and the Soviet
Union (see pp. 249 ff. ). The distance over the Arctic from the important
41 J. W. Watson, "Canada: Power Vacuum, or Pivot Area?" in Weigert-Stefansson-
Harrison, op. cit., pp. 40-60.
250 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
United States base at Thule, Greenland, is only 2,752 miles to Moscow,
whereas the nearest Soviet base at Rudolf Island, one of the Franz Joseph
groups, is 3,800 miles distant from New York City.
This is a reflection of the greater depth of the United States from the
pole as compared with the U.S.S.R. The core area of the Soviet Union is
centered along the 55th parallel. It is 15 degrees closer to the pole than the
United States core area, which is centered along the 40th parallel. How-
ever, it would be fallacious to conclude that this locational relationship
gives North America a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union. It must
be realized that the polar ice pack, and the advance positions it offers to
all Arctic powers, puts the weapon-bearers of our time in closest prox-
imity.
The polar ice pack, although it develops areas of open water, is a vast
ice landing field; a field which also contains floating ice islands more
stable than the pack of ice itself. The first of these ice floes was reported
by the U.S. Air Force in 1946 and named T-l; subsequently, two more
were located in 1950 (T-2 and T-3). According to Soviet claims their
airmen had noted earlier the presence of these ice islands and estab-
lished the identification of certain other floes in the sector claimed by
the U.S.S.R. as "North Pole One, Two," and so on.
These islands may last for years and perhaps even for centuries.
However, the islands discovered by the U.S.S.R. are not as large as the
ones reported by the United States Air Force, and the Soviet Union has
had to make the best of ice floes a mile or so in length and perhaps ten feet
thick. Both the United States and the Soviet Union use the ice islands as
bases of operations for their Arctic research.42
Another vast ice landing strip is the Greenland Ice Cap which is also
a possible refueling base; uninhabited, with the exception of radar sta-
tions in the vicinity of Thule, the ice cap presents a good location for
caching fuel. With the exception of the crevassed edges of the Greenland
Ice Cap aircraft landings can be made almost anywhere, especially on its
ice lakes. The strategic importance of this uninhabitable section of the
world cannot go unrecognized and the long-term strategic implications
are equally significant both for offense and defense. This was demon-
strated during World War II when the Germans maintained a series of
weather stations along the Greenland Coast. These weather observation
stations in the North Atlantic "weather factory" for Northwestern Europe
42 The dangerous overlapping of American and U.S.S.R. ice island zones is illus-
trated by newspaper reports in February, 1955, according to which the Soviet per-
manent research base North Pole Two has drifted eastward toward Greenland across
Canadian waters.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 251
enabled the Germans to forecast conditions to some extent over the Brit-
ish Isles.
Effective means and types of transportation have been sought since
historical times to defend the Arctic and to exploit its resources. It has
been the aim of many explorers to discover northern sea routes across the
top of the Eurasian land mass, as well as the Northwest Passage, which has
been sought for since 1610 as a short cut to Asia (Fig. 8-11). Discovery of
such passages and the opening of new sea lanes have paralleled the devel-
opment of skyways and contributed to the important change in the spatial
relationship of the great Arctic powers. The use of a northwest passage
from the Atlantic to Asia has lagged considerably behind that of the
Northern Sea Route, which the Soviet Union initiated to cross the Arctic
Sea from Murmansk through the Bering Strait. However, in 1954, United
States and Canadian icebreakers succeeded in navigating the passage
leading from the Atlantic Ocean to the Beaufort Sea.
By using more than a dozen icebreakers, several dozen freighters, and
its own aviation patrol, the Soviet Union keeps its sea lane open nearly
three months each year. In this way, it lifts a burden from the overworked
Trans-Siberian railroad, enables the Soviet Navy to move between the
Atlantic and the Pacific, and facilitates the all-out exploitation of the ex-
Finnish nickel mines, the Vorkuta coal mines, and the Kolyma gold fields,
along with the forest and other natural resources of Siberia.
These Arctic sea routes solve one phase of the problem of Arctic trans-
portation. A second solution, and one which may increase in importance
as an aid to the exploitation of the natural resources within the Arctic, is
the use of tractor trains in winter, and during the short summer the use
of barges on the inland waterways of the northward flowing rivers. Both
methods are seasonably limited, however, and in spite of the high cost,
aircraft are used increasingly even for transport of bulky goods in the
Arctic regions.
In the face of the growing strategic importance of the Arctic Mediter-
ranean, the competing powers have been forced to make the extension of
the defensive and offensive capabilities of the Arctic an integral part of
their over-all defense system. The Soviet Union is ringing the Arctic Sec-
tor with air and naval bases, and with radar and weather stations. Simi-
larly, the United States, in co-operation with Canada and the nations of
NATO— particularly Denmark, which owns Greenland— has set up air
bases, weather stations, and a radar net along the coasts of Alaska and
Labrador, in order to establish an Arctic line of defense. The Thule Air
Base in Northwest Greenland is the key to the new strategy.
II. .1 (
New York
Fig. 8-11. Sea Routes and Bases in the Arctic Mediterranean: (1) permanent ice; (2) Green-
land ice cap; (3) land-fast ice, summer; (4) land-fast ice, winter; (5) navigable sea routes;
( 6 ) general direction of ice island drift.
252
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 253
The Danish-American Agreement of April 27, 1951, under which the
Thule defense area was developed, is worked out as a part of the North
American defense of NATO. A concept of the present polar strategy is
to build the interceptor and radar defenses as far north as it is possible to
support them, and to build striking bases in the same areas from which
to mount attacks if the need should come.43 Its fulfillment will continue to
depend on the close co-operation between the United States and its north-
ern neighbors, Canada, Iceland, and Denmark, and on great expenditures
of money to develop this northern defense perimeter.
This sketchy picture of the Arctic Mediterranean as an ominously im-
portant cradle-of-conflict area in which modern technology has changed
radically the locational relationship of the Soviet Union and the North
American powers would be incomplete without mentioning that the Arc-
tic ice-cover provides also a camouflage for Soviet long-range submarines.
Their range of operations could extend from bases within the Arctic to
the trade routes of the Atlantic and the Pacific, to the very shores of the
Canadian Arctic and, perhaps, even into Hudson Bay where they might
launch guided atomic missiles. Submarines enabled by atomic power to
cruise indefinitely under ice, and equipped with machines for cutting
through when they wish to surface, might become a considerable threat
to the northern defense of the American nations. This is only another
illustration of the fact that, as a result of the development of new weapons
of total warfare, the Arctic Mediterranean has grown greatly in impor-
tance as a pivotal area. Both the Communists and the Free World no
longer look only east and west, but northward to the Pole and the danger
that lies beyond.44
C. The "Western Hemisphere" and the United States
"Perimeter of Defense"
THE "CONTINENTS" AND OTHER LARGE-SPACE CONCEPTS
"We think today in continents," wrote Oswald Spengler, the German
philosopher of doom, in 1920; "but that is too little today. We must have
the global, the imperial view." Since these words were written, political
43 "Survival in the Air Age," Report by the President's Air Policy Commission
(Washington, D. C, 1948).
44 A. J. Toynbee paints a dark picture of the consequences which "the approaching
conquest of the Arctic," may have on the destinies of the United States and the
Soviet Union, "the two still standing gladiators of the Christian Era"; A Study of
History, Vol. IX (New York, 1954), pp. 483-485.
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THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 255
and geographical thinking throughout the world have experienced a sig-
nificant trend toward revising and readjusting basic concepts of world
geography. These revisions often cut across established lines of areal and
continental demarcation, in order to keep pace with the shifting relation-
ships of a continuously shrinking world. Often we find the shrinking proc-
ess proceeding at such a rapid pace that the necessary adjustments in
geographical thinking are sadly left behind. As a result of such cultural
lags we can detect a great amount of loose thinking, especially in connec-
tion with large-space concepts, and we can trace seriously misleading
political, economic, and cultural concepts to this difficulty in the redefi-
nition of continental and other space relationships.
What is, for instance, the Western Hemisphere? Where is the dividing
line between Europe and Asia? Where is the not-so-Far East, the not-so-
Far North; do they assume different meanings if seen from Washington,
Moscow, or London? Or, if we look at the problem in terms of the security
position of the United States, what concept should be adopted for the
defense of the United States— should it be continental, or based on what
is called the "Western Hemisphere," or should it be global? Between these
concepts there is a wide range of possibilities, from a strategy of defense
based on the continental United States to an offensive projection of Ameri-
can strength on a global scale.45 While we are not concerned here with
the strategical problems themselves, we must realize that in order to un-
derstand them it is essential to see clearly the underlying factors of
geography.
THE PARTITION OF TORDESILLAS
The present confusion may be correctly compared with that existing in
1493 when Pope Alexander VI issued his famous Bull which disregarded
the basic lesson in geography that the earth is a sphere (Fig. 8-12).
The Papal ruling was indeed one of the most important geopolitical
decisions determining the course of world history. As the final arbiter
of Christian Europe, the Pope was called upon to divide the world
outside of Europe between the rival rulers of Spain and Portugal. One
of his predecessors had already acknowledged Portugal's claims to the
African coast when Columbus returned from his first expedition. In
the Partition of Tordesillas, Pope Alexander drew the line by which
the two great colonial powers of this time were assigned their spheres
45 Major Problems of United States Foreign Policy, 1952-1953, The Brookings In-
stitute (Washington, D. C, 1952), pp. 149 ff. (159).
256 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
of interest: The line was drawn from pole to pole one hundred leagues
west of the Cape Verde Islands. All new discoveries west of this were
to go to Spain; all the new lands east of this line were Portugal's.
No provision was made for what would happen when the two should
encounter each other on the other side of the globe. Under this agree-
ment, which the two Powers formalized in 1494, slightly modifying the
Bull of 1493, all of the American continents (the existence of which
was then entirely unknown to everybody concerned), except for the
eastern part of Brazil, were Spain's, while India and the major part of
Africa were within the Portuguese sphere of influence. Greenland also
would have fallen into the Portuguese sphere had that country's explorers
come so far. The Portuguese origin of the name Labrador shows that they
were not completely inactive in this direction. In 1606, the first Antarctic
sector claim was made in the name of King Philip of Spain.46 These man-
made hemispheres continued to function until, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the British and Dutch settlers successfully put an
end to this arbitrary map-making.
It is useful to recall this not-so-short-lived episode if we are to embark
on the task of trying to draw a map of the world which shows the sensitive
lines— the "perimeter of defense"— of the Great Powers. In so doing, we
find that we need to clarify certain basic concepts.
Where is this hemisphere of ours, and where are all the others that
matter? Which are the realities, and which are the myths surrounding the
"continents"?
MACKINDER'S VIEW OF THE EAST AND WEST
In a memorable lecture, "The Human Habitat," which Mackinder gave
in 1931, he defined what, in the world view of a geographer, are the major
features of humanity and the human habitat, of the East and the West.
His attempt to set in perspective some salient facts is still a classical piece
of geographical definition and is quoted here at some length because it
sharpens our thoughts on a subject of basic importance in the study of
political geography:
47
The monsoon winds sweep into and out of Asia because that vast land lies
wholly north of the equator and is, therefore, as a whole, subject to an alterna-
tion of seasons. Over an area of some five million square miles in the south and
46 Martin, op. cit., pp. 66, 67.
47 H. J. Mackinder, "The Human Habitat," Records of die British Association for
the Advancement of Science (London, 1931), 15 pp.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 257
east of Asia, from India to Manchuria, and in the great adjacent islands, the
monsoon drops annually a rainfall amounting on the average of years to some
18 millions of tons. Half of mankind, 900 million people [1931], live in the
natural regions of this area; about 180 to the square mile. The rainfall is, there-
fore, of the order of some 20 thousand tons annually for each inhabitant. There
is considerable traffic between the regions of this group, and there are the fish-
eries; in order to see it whole let us add three million more square miles for the
marginal and land-locked areas. Then we shall have a total of eight million
square miles, or 4 per cent of the globe surface, carrying 50 per cent of the
human race. The annual increase of population may amount to some seven or
eight millions, and as compared with this figure both emigration and immigra-
tion into and from the outer world are small. In the main we have here vast
stable peasantries, "ascript to the globe," if we may use a medieval expression;
tied to the soil; a tremendous fact of rain, sap and blood. That is the East.
The West lies in Europe, south and west of the Volga, and in that eastern
third of North America which includes the main stream of the Mississippi and
the basin of the St. Lawrence. Europe within the Volga boundary measures
some three million square miles, and eastern North America some two million
square miles. The two together are, therefore, equivalent in area of land to the
group of regions which constitutes the East. If we add three million square miles
for the fisheries and the oceanic belt which contains the "shipping lanes" be-
tween Europe and North America, we shall again have a total of 4 per cent of
the globe's surface, and this is the main geographical habitat of western civiliza-
tion. Within this area are 600 million people, or 120 to the square mile of land.
Notwithstanding the oceanic break it may be regarded as a single area, for the
distance from E.N.E. to W.S.W., from the Volga to the Mississippi, measures
only some seven thousand miles, or little more than one-quarter way around the
globe along the Great Circle. The rainfall on the land is drawn from the same
source both in Europe and eastern North America; it comes mainly from the
south, from the Atlantic, and is of the order of 12 thousand tons per human
inhabitant per annum. There is an annual net increase of population of some
four or five millions and, as compared with this, emigration to the outer world
is small, for the movement of a million emigrants a year from Europe to North
America in the dozen years at the commencement of this century was, of course,
internal to the area.
Thus we have two areas, measuring together less than 10 per cent of the
world's surface, but containing more than 80 per cent of the world's population.
Outside of these areas is some 90 per cent of the world's surface, but containing
only 20 per cent of the population. On some forty million square miles of land,
outside the East and the West, you have an average density of population of
only 10 to the square mile as contrasted with 120 on the five million square miles
of the West, and 180 on the five million square miles of the East. The moisture
upon the land areas, outside the Western and Eastern rain zones, varies from
Sahara drought to Amazon and Congo deluge, but it is a remarkable fact that
South America has upon its six and a half million square miles a population of
only 10 to the square mile, or the average for the world outside West and East.
This vacancy of South America and Africa may be regarded perhaps as a third
great feature of the habitat of man; it must be set alongside the extraordinary
and persistent self-containedness of the East and West. The increase in the
world's populations outside of the "East" and the "West," even though rein-
forced by some immigration, is relatively insignificant. The main growths, the
258 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
spread of the sheet of human blood, have been merely overflows from the
anciently occupied regions into adjacent areas— into North and North-Eastern
Europe, into Eastern North America, and into Manchuria— and in each case the
natural frontiers of drought and frost have now been approached, except for
relatively narrow outlets along the wheat belts of North America and Siberia.
Even in North America the center of population has ceased to move appreciably
westward.
In this continued growth of population in the East and the West in far
greater actual number than in the rest of the world, we have an instance of
geographical momentum. The momentum, though issuing from the past, is a
fact of the present, an element in the dynamic svstem of today's geography.
Mackinder's daring illumination of the East and West as the globe's
outstanding features of human geography displays the kind of geographi-
cal sense which draws its strength from the blending of a profound geo-
graphical and historical knowledge. To Mackinder geography was, to use
his own words, "an art of expression parallel to and complementary to the
literary arts ... it ranges values alongside of measured facts. Hence out-
look is its characteristic."
THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
We shall need geographical sense— outlook— if we undertake to define
the contours of what is perhaps the most important term of political
geography to Americans, the Western Hemisphere.
It should be clear that hemisphere can be understood here only in a
figurative meaning like the "East" or the "West." The hemisphere in a
strictly geometrical sense is untouched by this discussion.- It will remain
an indispensable concept for the astronomer, the geodesist, and the sur-
veyor. Here we speak of the Western Hemisphere as a household term
and a myth. This Western Hemisphere is not a clearly defined concept.
We associate it loosely with the Monroe Doctrine. Because of this associa-
tion we are aware of its important historical and political implications,
which should make it obvious that we cannot afford to define it in nebu-
lous terms. However, if we make the attempt to trace its extent in terms
of unmistakable geographical boundaries, we find ourselves immediately
confronted with insurmountable barriers. We discover that, like the Holy
Roman Empire, which in the words of Voltaire was neither holy nor
Roman nor an empire, this Western Hemisphere is neither western nor a
hemisphere. Political catchwords like "hemispheric solidarity" and "con-
tinental brotherhood" lose some of their glamour in the light of geographi-
cal facts. They must be interpreted according to what, under changing
political conditions, is meant by reference to terms such as the "Western
Hemisphere" or the "American Continent."
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 259
CANADA AND SOUTH AMERICA
North and South America are linked by an isthmus. That strip of land
gives but the illusion of geographical contact, "because of man's odd habit
of thinking that only land is a connecting element." 48 An illusion it is
because there is little or no traffic along that strip of land. If Canadians,
for instance, visit South America, they must travel by water or air; Canada
is farther from most of South America than from Western Europe.49 Be-
cause of this fact of geography it is logical to find that Canada has con-
sistently refrained from direct political association with the Pan-American
movement and "Hemispheric Security." The Canadian outlook has been
summarized as follows: "even in mileage Canada is nearer to Europe than
to South America. So remote a mass of land— unless the poorest geopolitics
were to obscure the richest history— can never match that to which the sea
and air give better access. From the Anglo-Russian or Franco-Russian
alliances, for whose regional aims she has twice sacrificed so much,
Canada abstains; under what compulsion of major policy, simple geogra-
phy or common ideas should she discriminate regionally in favor of a
Pan-American security pact? Her relationship with Latin America is
wholly unlike her partnership in the British Commonwealth and her
entente with the United States." 50
Such thoughts and political conclusions are the logical expression of
geographical sense among British seafaring peoples who look at the sea
and at sea routes as their life arteries and highways. Only to continental
and land-bound nations the sea appears as a barrier to intercourse.
THE NORTH ATLANTIC AS LINK RETWEEN EUROPE
AND THE AMERICAS
In terms of geographical realities, the concept of the Americas allegedly
bound together by a hemispheric solidarity is influenced by such conti-
nental thinking. It neglects the growth, during the last three centuries,
of the North Atlantic Ocean as a core area of western civilization and
the resulting fact that the links across it between northwestern and south-
western Europe on the east and north and South America to the west have
become more important than any of the great transcontinental routes. It
48 V. Massey, "Canada and the Inter-American System," Foreign Affairs (1948),
pp. 693-701.
49 Ibid.
50 L. Gelber, "Canada's New Stature," Foreign Affairs (1946), p. 287.
260
THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
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is not incidental that, in stressing this basic geographical and historical
trend, a British geographer, C. B. Fawcett, emphasized that "there is now
in many cases a greater unity of culture and traditions, and a greater vol-
ume of intercourse, between countries on opposite shores of the Midland
Ocean than between others situated on the same continent and separated
by a shorter distance. Probably both Argentina and Colombia have more
in common with Spain than they have with each other. Norway has more
contacts with North America than with Italy. Portugal is more closely
linked with Brazil than with central Europe." 51 And Portugal and Spain
rank among Iceland's main customers, as the sea is not a separating bar-
rier but a natural link which is important in their respective economies.
ECONOMICS AND THE MYTH OF THE CONTINENTS
Economic sense based on geographical realities has consistently taught
that the oceans are broad highways of commerce serving to connect
rather than to divide or separate. The normal exchange of bulk commodi-
ties between any two political entities with equal access to both sea and
land routes has always been accomplished with the greatest ease and
lowest cost by sea. In terms of "cost distances," the spatial relationships
between, for instance, New York City and either continental or overseas
points appear altogether different from those which present themselves
if we neglect the cost factor and compare distances only.
51 C. B. Fawcett, "Life Lines of the British Empire," in Weigert-Stefansson-Har-
rison, op. cit., pp. 238-249.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 261
The cost of shipping one hundred pounds of wheat by rail from Kansas
City to New York in 1939 was 33/2 cents to 42M cents, while it cost only
13 cents to ship the same wheat from New York to Liverpool, a distance
three times as great. In the same year it cost only $1.50 to ship a bale of
crude rubber from Singapore to New York as against a cost of $1.03 to
ship a similar bale from New York to Akron, Ohio by rail, even though
the latter distance is only y25 that of the former.52
From these examples it is evident that, in terms of wheat and rubber
distances, Liverpool and Singapore are closer to New York than are Kansas
City and Akron. The significance of these relationships in economic geog-
raphy has been summarized by Eugene Staley in the following manner:
"Land connections, which would appear to establish easy contact between
peoples on the same continent, may be barriers as well as connections,
while bodies of water, appearing superficially on the map as barriers, may
actually be the most important connecting links. Because this has been so
distinctly true in the past, the existing patterns of culture, tradition, politi-
cal affiliation, and economic interdependence which confront us in the
world of today are as often oceanic as they are continental." 53 Techno-
logical progress in sea transportation, as indicated in Figure 8-13, has
rapidly accelerated the shrinking process of the connecting links of bodies
of water.
The most vivid illustration of the problem in its application to inter-
American economic relationships was offered by Costa Rica which, "when
it suffered a shortage of rice had found it cheaper to import from Saigon
via Hamburg and the Panama Canal than to get it from Nicaragua, a
stone's throw away." 54 Grotesque situations such as the one described
here served to promote the Inter-American Highway project in which the
unrealized dream of a Pan-American Railway had shifted to the more
feasible goal of joining the existing roads and trails to form a continuous
modern highway.
55
52 E. Staley, "The Myth of the Continents," in Weigert and Stefansson, op. cit.,
p. 93.
53 Staley, op. cit., p. 96.
54 M. E. Gilmore, "Pan-American Highway," Foreign Commerce Weekly (October
20, 1945), p. 42.
55 It should be emphasized that large sections of the highway which will eventually
extend from the United States-Mexican border to the southern tip of South America
are still in the blueprint stage. At the lowest estimate in 1955 at least fifteen years
will pass before the entire route of the Pan-American Highway will be finished. Only
the Mexican section is virtually completed. The next steps are to fill gaps in the 1,590
mile road through Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and
Panama. See also p. 670 and Fig. 22-1, 2, p. 670.
262 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
A clear understanding of the role of the sea in economic terms and an
application of the surrounding principles to the Western Hemisphere
make it easier to appreciate the geographical reality that the North and
South American continents are really overseas in relation to each other,
and that, in terms of shipping distances, their great commercial centers
are respectively closer to Northwestern and Southwestern Europe than
they are to each other. Such an understanding, moreover, helps to explain
in geographical terms why the economic, political, and cultural roots of
the various American states are more closely bound to the soils of Europe
than to each other. It is in the light of such geographical realities as these
that we must view the attempts to define this Western Hemisphere of
ours.
THE MYTHICAL BOUNDARIES OF THE WESTERN
HEMISPHERE: ICELAND
A good illustration of the insurmountable difficulties confronting any
attempt to draw the boundaries of the Western Hemisphere in strictly
geographical terms is afforded by Iceland which, in the spring of 1956,
decided to press for the liquidation of the NATO base at Keflavik, half-
way between Moscow and New York and of vital importance to the Free
World as it controls the northern approaches to North America (cf. Fig.
8-10). When, on July 7, 1941, American troops took over the protection
of the island of Iceland, which at that time, and until June 1944, was
still formally part of Denmark, President Roosevelt declared in a message
to Congress: "the United States cannot permit the occupation by Ger-
many of strategic outposts in the Arctic for eventual attack against the
Western Hemisphere. Assurance that such outposts in our defense fron-
tier remain in friendly hands is the very foundation of our national
security."
We chose this example because it shows how, in the words of President
Roosevelt and in similar pronouncements by American statesmen and
military men in the years that followed, the terms "This Hemisphere" or
"The Western Hemisphere" were used as if they were clear regional con-
cepts, on the basis of which it could be defined geographically how far
the United States should go in defending its security zone. Actually, Ice-
land is a good case in point because in recent years it has been often and
vainly argued among statesmen and geographers whether Iceland is part
of the Western or Eastern Hemisphere. Before, approximately, 1930
nobody doubted that because of the facts of human geography Iceland
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 263
belonged to Europe.56 From a physiographic point of view it belongs
neither to Europe nor America, but is a typical oceanic island; only for
geometricians was it always in the Western Hemisphere. Vilhjalmur
Stefansson has suggested that one "de facto" boundary between the East-
ern and Western Hemispheres should be "the middle of the widest chan-
nel" in the Atlantic Ocean between the American continents on the one
hand and the European and African continents on the other 57 (Fig. 8-14).
This boundary would run to the east of Iceland, but such a geographical
delineation would not conform to the political boundaries of our day. The
Rio Treaty of 1947 tried to redraw the boundaries of the Western Hemi-
sphere by including in its compass the entire American land mass, the
Antarctic, the Aleutians, Newfoundland and Greenland; but Iceland was
left out. The reason for this omission was entirely political. At the time
the treaty was drafted, the danger that these fictitious boundaries would
overlap with those of the Soviet Union seemed even greater here than
elsewhere.
As the map shows, the easternmost edge of Greenland extends beyond
the easternmost edge of Iceland, which fact would tend to refute the
popular assumption that Greenland is within the Western and Iceland
within the Eastern Hemisphere (Fig. 8-15).
Suppose geographers and statesmen alike were to agree on a "middle
of the widest channel" rule for determining the Atlantic boundary be-
tween the hemispheres; what then of the Pacific boundary? Stefansson's
suggestion does not offer a solution because it is based on confusion of the
geometrical and the metaphorical meaning of the term hemisphere. Thus
he asserted that any hemisphere must by definition include one-half of the
terrestrial globe, while overlooking the fact that such a mathematical
hemisphere is always limited by "great circles." His projection of the de
facto boundary of the Atlantic to the region of the Pacific is, geometrically
speaking, not a projection but an attempt to arrive at a symmetrical con-
struction without the indispensable axis. It would result in the inclusion
within the Western Hemisphere of parts of Siberia, the islands of Micro-
nesia and Melanesia and all of New Zealand (cf. Fig. 8-14).
56 Even during the early phase of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt is reported
to have rejected the State Department's view that Iceland was "largely" (?) a part
of the Western Hemisphere. He is supposed to have based this rejection on the inter-
esting theory that "the strain on the public idea of geography would be too severe."
(B. Rauch, Roosevelt From Munich to Pearl Harbor [New York, 1950], pp. 194-196,
as quoted in A. P. Whittaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline
[Ithaca, New York, 1954], p. 160.)
57 V. Stefansson, "What Is the Western Hemisphere?" Foreign Affairs (1941).
Fig. 8-14. The Boundary Between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres According
to V. Stefansson.
264
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION
265
Fig. 8-15. Greenland and Iceland between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
THE HEMISPHERE IN MATHEMATICAL AND
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
The confusion surrounding the proper place of Iceland on the political
map of the hemispheres illustrates the fact that extreme caution is re-
quired in the use of certain types of maps for the purpose of proving
points which are only seemingly geographical but are actually political.
In particular, one should not confuse the metaphorical use of the term
"hemisphere" with the well-established method of dividing the world
into two symmetrical halves for mathematical purposes. The selective
term Western Hemisphere for one such hemisphere defies definition in
terms of mathematical geography. To grasp the term Western Hemisphere
as one of human geography, and especially of political geography, one
must be constantly aware that its human and political connotations ac-
count for the fact that its content is subject to continuous change. If one
realizes this fact one will understand that it is a dangerous fallacy to con-
fuse the Western Hemisphere cliches with the static concepts of mathe-
matical geography. This realization is an important step toward a better
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THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 267
understanding of the politico-geographic factors which govern the foreign
policy and the military strategy of this country.
"THE AMERICAN QUARTER-SPHERE"
In an effort to find a compromise between the mathematical and meta-
phorical concepts of the Western Hemisphere, S. W. Boggs 58 has offered
an interesting solution. It consists in boiling down the "Western Hemi-
sphere" to an "American Quarter-Sphere" (Fig. 8-16). Its boundaries are
arrived at by taking the western half of a hemisphere centered in the
Atlantic Ocean at 28° north, 31° west. The dividing center line deviates
slightly from true north and south, passing through Denmark Strait, be-
tween Greenland and Iceland, and just east of the bulge of Brazil. The
quarter-sphere to the west of the line contains all of continental North
America, the islands to the north, even a piece of eastern Siberia, and all
of South America. Sea power enthusiasts of the Mahan School would be
reluctant to adopt this quarter-sphere as a useful American security zone,
because its arrangements omit Iceland, most of the Aleutians, the Hawai-
ian chain, and Antarctica. They would further object to the exclusion of
most of the Atlantic and Pacific water masses. This may serve as one more
argument in favor of the thesis that no arbitrary imposition of a geomet-
rical form on the tortured configuration of the continents will result in a
usable political and geographical definition. "The atlas makers are the
real creators of this artificial dilemma— they cannot free themselves from
the ancient habit of dividing the world into two symmetrical halves." 59
IDEOLOGICAL FACTORS: ARGENTINA AND THE UNITED STATES
IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
In addition to the geographical factors which argue against the unity
of the Western Hemisphere, the objective of hemispheric integration is
defeated by power factors which are economic, political, and, as a combi-
nation of both, ideological. When, in 1942, Nicholas J. Spykman analyzed
the World War II realities of power relations in the Western Hemisphere,
he focused his attention on United States-Argentine relations and warned
that social, economic, and political forces combined with geographical
remoteness to make Argentina a natural opponent of the United States
58 S. W. Boggs, "This Hemisphere," Department of State Bulletin (May 6, 1945);
see also his reappraisal, in 1954, in "Global Relations of the U. S.," op. cit. (June 14,
1954), pp. 903-912.
59 Weigert-Stefansson-Harrison, op. cit., p. 221.
268 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
and a determined resistant to United States-sponsored efforts at inter-
American co-operation, whatever the surface appearance of harmony
might be at any given moment.60
His observations of 1942 are still true today. Argentina's industrial de-
velopment is blocked by deficiencies in iron and especially coal. However,
her actual and, above all, potential strength as one of the greatest food-
producing areas of the world has developed a proud and power-conscious
feudal society which is determined to build its own power sphere in
South America. Due to her distance from United States power centers,
Argentina is economically and ideologically oriented toward Europe
rather than to North America. Her dreams of empire as expressed during
the Peron regime encompass in a "manifest destiny" area her neighbor
Chile and the whole of the La Plata drainage basin, including the tribu-
tary zones in Uruguay, Southern Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia. The Ar-
gentinians, wrote Spykman in 1942, are determined that their state shall
be the most important political unit on the southern continent and fully
the equal of the United States in the Western Hemisphere.61
The growth of the "manifest destiny" concept in Argentina which mili-
tates against a Western Hemisphere-solidarity ideology reveals itself even
more clearly if one realizes that Argentina is a white man's nation, in-
habited by settlers of Spanish and Italian descent, with ethnic minorities
which stem from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the United
States. It has no Negroes to speak of and there is little evidence of Indian
racial heritage. The fact that Argentina is a white man's land, a "Europe
Overseas," assumes special significance if one compares its ethnic com-
position with that of other nations of Latin America. The contrasting
population patterns of racial inheritance among, for instance, Argentina,
Brazil, and Mexico, together with the related linguistic differences, de-
feats the very idea of a hemispheric solidarity. Looking into the future,
Fred A. Carlson summed up the prospects of Latin America's racial struc-
ture as follows: 62
Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and the great central Brazilian plateau will
become increasingly a white man's land; here the Indians will probably decrease
in number and importance. The Pacific countries, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and
western Colombia, will become the home of an increasingly homogeneous amal-
gamation of the existing Spanish and Indian races, tending toward the predomi-
nance of the Indian. Chile, particularly its central valley, will remain largely
white. The northern and northeastern coasts of Colombia, Venezuela, the Gui-
60 N. J. Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics.
ei Ibid., p. 58.
62 F. A. Carlson, Geography of Latin America, 3rd ed. (copyright, 1943, 1946,
1952, by Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York), pp. 15-16. Reprinted by permission of the
publisher.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 269
anas, and far north Brazil will become areas of increasingly homogeneous
combinations of the prevailing white and Indian races, with considerable pro-
portions of Negro blood, unless the Negroes come in larger numbers from the
Caribbean islands. The eastern coast of Brazil north of Rio de Janeiro will
remain heavily Negro, and the far interior valleys and plateaus will remain
predominantly Indian. There never has been, there is not now, and probably
there never will be a homogeneous race of people on the South American
continent.
This racial pattern, today and in the future, with all its elements of
disunity if one looks at Latin America as a whole, and with all its elements
of unity if one focuses on the "white" nations of what Peron, Argentina's
ex-President, called the "Southern Union," forms a formidable fundamen-
tal of Argentina's separate power sphere and of her ambition to be the
nucleus of a "Greater Argentina"— the big brother in a union of nations
including Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and eventually Chile and Peru.63
Whether or not these plans will take a firm political form, the fact remains
that the elements of cultural, especially ethnic and linguistic, disunity
deepen the gap of geographical divides between the countries of the
Western Hemisphere.
THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE AS A POLITICAL REALITY
If the Western Hemisphere is not a geographical reality, if it is far from
having achieved political unity and cultural uniformity among its nations,
it is still a very much alive political reality. To understand the meaning
of the latter we must accept two essential concepts : ( 1 ) that we cannot
define it in purely geographical terms; (2) that because it is a political
concept its meaning and extent cannot remain fixed but will be constantly
fluctuating. Politically the Western Hemisphere has its strongest roots in
the Monroe Doctrine which is often loosely identified with the Western
Hemisphere. Yet this term was not employed in President Monroe's mes-
sage to the Congress in 1823, and the terms "The American continents"
and "this hemisphere" were used synonymously.64 The history of the
Monroe Doctrine in recent years clearly indicates the extent to which
the Western Hemisphere, as a political reality, is constantly changing,
and the extent to which the two concepts are intimately associated with
what the United States considers to be its major security area.
In theory the wording of the Monroe Doctrine is broad enough to cover
63 Olive Holme, "Peron's 'Greater Argentina,' and the United States," Foreign
Policy Reports (December 1, 1948), pp. 159-171.
64 Spykman, Americas Strategy in World Politics, p. 58.
270 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
both of the American continents. In practice, from 1823 to 1935, interpre-
tations of the doctrine were applied virtually without exception to the
region of the Caribbean. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who inaugurated
the idea of the multilateral extension of the doctrine when in his speech
at Buenos Aires late in 1935 he declared that non-American states seeking
"to commit acts of aggression against us, will find a Hemisphere wholly
prepared to consult together for our mutual safety and our mutual good."
Two years later, in a speech at Kingston, Ontario, Roosevelt gave assur-
ance to the people of Canada that "the people of the United States will not
stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other
empire." 65 By these two executive pronouncements the Monroe Doctrine
was extended over a far greater geographical area than before.
The onset of World War II brought further expansions of "this hemi-
sphere" of Monroe's. In October of 1939 the First Meeting of the Foreign
Ministers of the American Republics was held and from this meeting there
came the Declaration of Panama; a pronouncement clearly associated with
the Monroe Doctrine and the security zone of the United States. The
declaration proclaimed a "safety belt" around the American continents
south of Canada. This "safety belt" ranged from approximately 300 to
1,000 miles in width and was designed to restrict naval warfare on the
part of the European powers within its limits.66 In 1940, Newfoundland
and Bermuda were added to the newly-defined American security area
as a part of the destroyer-bases agreement with the United Kingdom. In
1941 the area was again extended and further fortified by, the occupation
of Greenland. In the same year South America beyond the bulge of Brazil
was effectively brought within the security zone through the negotiation
of agreements with Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina concerning the use
of their ports by ships of the United States Navy. All of these political
actions were taken on the basis of the Monroe Doctrine.67
Towards the close of World War II, the multilateralizing process begun
by President Roosevelt in 1936 culminated, through the Act of Chapulte-
pec, in the establishment of a rudimentary Pan-American defense com-
munity. This act of March, 1945 (which was not initially signed by
Argentina) in effect made all of the American states co-guardians of the
65 T. A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, 4th ed. (New York,
1950), p. 740. Roosevelt later denied that his statement was meant to extend the
Monroe Doctrine to Canada on the grounds that he did not interpret the doctrine as
excluding Canada.
66 Ibid., p. 763.
67 D. Perkins, "Bring the Monroe Doctrine up to Date," Foreign Affairs (1942),
pp. 253 ff.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 271
Doctrine, even against an American aggressor.08 The regional collective
security system first set forth at Chapultepec was formalized two years
later on a permanent treaty basis at Rio de Janeiro. Article 4 of the Rio
Treaty ( sometimes known as the Petropolis Reciprocal Assistance Treaty,
or Inter- American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance) vividly demonstrates
how far the Monroe Doctrine has been broadened since 1936 in terms of
the extent to which the United States, as the major treaty power, is willing
to go to defend "this hemisphere" of Monroe's. Article 4 defines in exact
geographic terms the area to which the treaty applies, as follows:
The region to which this Treaty refers is bounded as follows: beginning at
the North Pole; thence due south to a point 74 degrees north latitude, 10 de-
grees west longitude; thence by a rhumb line to a point 35 degrees north
latitude, 50 degrees west longitude; thence due south to a point 20 degrees
north latitude; thence by a rhumb line to a point 5 degrees north latitude, 24
degrees west longitude; thence due south to the South Pole; thence due north
to a point 30 degrees south latitude, 90 degrees west longitude; thence by a
rhumb line to a point on the Equator at 97 degrees west longitude; thence by
a rhumb line to a point 15 degrees north latitude, 120 degrees west longitude;
thence by a rhumb line to a point 50 degrees north latitude, 170 degrees east
longitude; thence due north to a point in 54 degrees north latitude; thence by
a rhumb line to a point 65 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, 168 degrees 58
minutes 5 seconds west longitude; thence due north to the North Pole.
When one surveys the vast expanse of land and sea covered by the
terms of this article, and considers it in terms of United States security,
one finds that never before "has the Monroe Doctrine been given in prac-
tice the wide construction which its language suggests, and never before
have such wide and varied activities been conducted over so large a geo-
graphical area with the object of endowing it with physical force." 69
It would be improvident to assume that the Western Hemisphere, as a
political concept, has reached the limit of its expansion. It would be
equally improvident to assume that at some future time it may not con-
tract. Its destinies are not "manifest" but are subject to the political exi-
gencies of different times and varying power situations. It should, how-
ever, be realized that so long as the Western Hemisphere concept is
predicated upon the leading political and military position of the United
States, it will fluctuate as a political reality insofar and as often as geo-
graphical relationships between the United States and the rest of the
world continue to change.70- 71
68 Bailey, op. cit., p. 837.
69 Perkins, loc. cit., p. 259.
70 Early in 1953, an American historian, A. P. Whitaker, delivered eight lectures
at University College, London, which were published in book-form in 1954 under the
title "The Western Hemisphere: Its Rise and Decline" (Ithaca, N. Y., 194 pp.).
272 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
THE AMERICAN "PERIMETER OF DEFENSE"
In a sense, such expansions or contractions of the Western Hemisphere
mark "the passing of the American frontier" of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. When ex-President Herbert Hoover, in 1946, used
the phrase "perimeter of defense," which he asked to be extended by hold-
ing on to the strategic bases established during World War II, a new, and
by necessity vague, term in American political geography was established.
It was a fresh attempt to define, or rather to describe, the post-World War
II security zone of the United States, or as many saw it, the pre-World
Wat III zone. As before, the effort produced at best a political term, the
To the historian, the Western Hemisphere looks exactly like the picture which
its; mythical entity presents to the geographer. Whitaker holds that the Western
Hemisphere idea in its original form was based on geographical concepts, po-
litical ideas, and above all an anti-European isolationism, all of which is being
rejected in North-American political thought today. Whitaker also points out con-
vincingly that the Western Hemisphere concept was, after World War II, gradu-
ally replaced by that of the "Northern Hemisphere" which more and more captured
political and strategic imagination in the United States. This is well illustrated by
former Secretary of State Dean Acheson's address of December 30, 1951, in which
he reviewed foreign policy developments in that year. While referring half-heartedly
to the Western Hemisphere as "the foundation of our position in the world," he later
modified this statement by describing the position of the United States as "lying in
both the Western and Northern Hemispheres." In fact, most of his address dealt
with areas of the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres (Whitaker, op. cit., p. 175; see
also the review by G. I. Blanksten, in The American Political Science Review (June,
1955), pp. 536-539.
71 After completion of this text, the authors read what seems to them a most chal-
lenging study of the problems discussed in this chapter, S. B. Jones' Global Stra-
tegic Views (Geog. Review, Oct., 1955) and an unpublished report by the same
author on "The Conditions of War Limitation," November, 1955. In regard to the
strategic concept of the Western Hemisphere, Jones probes the reality of the Western
Hemisphere and its self-sufficiency and defensibility. As a typical example of the deep-
rooted uncritical Western Hemisphere idea as discussed above he mentions a report
by a Senate subcommittee in 1954 (see loc. cit., pp. 503, 504) which, starting with
the premise that "we belong in the Western Hemisphere," demonstrates the present
American dependence on sources of strategic and critical materials outside the
Western Hemisphere but maintains that through stockpiling, exploration, subsidization,
and scientific research the Americas could be made self-sufficient for a period of war.
It is held that sea lanes to South America could hug the shore and be protected from
enemy aircraft or submarines. "In the last analysis land transportation can be im-
proved." Jones attacks the notion expressed by the subcommittee that Latin America
is "our own backyard." He holds that the idea of a defensible Western Hemisphere
rests in part on the use of a world map centered on the North Pole. This projection
greatly exaggerates east-west distances in the southern hemisphere, giving the im-
pression that Africa and South America are far apart. The defense of South America,
Jones contends, "involves the control of Africa, which probably requires the defense
of Europe and the Middle East. Thus the United States cannot contract out of trans-
Atlantic commitments unless it is willing to shrink into North American isolation, and
even that requires that the Canadians go along with us. Whether North America has
the resources for military isolation is questionable."
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 273
meaning of which was subject to constant change from the very start. To
define it geographically proved, because of its quality of fluidity, as im-
possible as was the case in regard to the boundaries of the mythical "West-
ern Hemisphere."
To the student of political geography, the realization of the fallacy of
the Western Hemisphere concept serves also as illustration of certain
more general principles in political geography. What appears to the ob-
server as a constantly moving line, marking the contours of this, the West-
ern Hemisphere, or of the Perimeter of Defense, depicts equally the
broader areas in which, at a given time, the United States is exposed to
external pressure.
UNITED STATES OUTER DEFENSE MARCHES
Arnold J. Toynbee, in his A Study of History,'2 devotes a chapter to the
stimulus of the human environment in cases in which the impact makes
itself felt in the form of continuous external pressure. That chapter he
calls "The Stimulus of Pressures." In it he sets out to show that, in terms of
political geography, the people, states, or cities which are exposed to such
pressure fall, for the most part, within the general category of "marches."
Marches are the outer provinces, or in the case of the offshore perimeter,
the coastal or island defense bastions where the onslaught of the enemy is
expected and where the military planners will select the sites for strategic
bases. Toynbee's work is a study in contrasts, and his survey turns from
the parts played by marches in the histories of the societies or communi-
ties to which they belong, to the parts played by other territories of the
same societies or communities which are situated geographically in their
"interiors." The "law" derived from these comparisons is that the external
pressure of the human environment upon a march provides a stimulus
which gives the march predominance over the interior. The greater the
pressure the greater the stimulus.
It is difficult to apply this concept to the far-flung outer bastions of the
United States. But what is true for a compact land area, with its defense
stations distributed through the marches bordering its perimeter of de-
fense, is also true in regard to the perimeter of defense zones which, in a
shrinking world, constitute the modern marches of the United States.
Whereas the march concept of old is limited to such outer provinces
within the geographical limits of a national community, the new marches,
in which this country organizes its outer defense net and military spheres
72 Vol. II (1934), pp. 112-208.
Fig. 8-17. The American Perimeter of Defense: Winter, 1955.
274
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 275
of interest, disregard national boundaries and extend to every place where
a global strategy and agreement with members of the non-Soviet commu-
nity pinpoint favorable sites for strategic bases. Thus the American perim-
eter-of-defense march, as shown in Figure 8-17, stretches from the Carib-
bean bases to Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland, the United Kingdom,
Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Azores, Morocco, Libya,
Saudi Arabia, and finally to the North Pacific, to Formosa, Korea and
Japan, until the circle closes in the Aleutians and Alaska. However, the
circle, as it appears in the blueprints of the military planners, is far from
complete in the actual picture of the world map of early 1956, as a look
at the gap in the Middle East reveals.
This perimeter extends indeed far beyond the region defined by Article
4 of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance.
UNITED STATES BASES OVERSEAS
The realization that the fictitious boundaries of the "Western Hemi-
sphere" have crumpled and that the frontiers of our national security zone
lie wherever United States interests are at stake compels us to focus atten-
tion on the far-flung, yet fluctuating web of military bases outside the
continental limits of the United States. Clearly the security of the United
States in two World Wars could not have been assured by military bases
already existing or constructed on United States territory or on territory
over which the United States had been granted trusteeship rights. Rather
it became an ever-growing characteristic of the American military bases
system that the protection of the American mainland was entrusted to
bases overseas, the sites of which were made available to the United
States by its allies and friendly nations. After World War II, the fortifica-
tion of the United States' perimeter of defense was continued and intensi-
fied. The greater the distance of United States outposts from its mainland,
the more did they serve their twofold purpose of denying access to the
American mainland to the aggressor nation and of carrying the possibility
of attack close to the nerve centers of the enemy. A security system which
is essentially anchored in strongholds and outposts located in foreign terri-
tory differs of course basically from one limited to strongholds within the
boundaries of one power, even if that power rules as large a territory as
does the United States or the Soviet Union.
The rapid pace at which technological advances in the means of war-
fare have progressed during the last decades makes it necessary to re-
examine and redraw, in shorter and shorter intervals, the shifting bound-
276 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
aries of the perimeters of defense of the large powers. This rapid pace is
in contrast to the gradual development of the British bases system by
which the Mediterranean was slowly made a British sea: Gibraltar be-
came British in 1704, the Maltese Islands in 1800, and Cyprus in 1878.
Before World War II, the United States did not possess a far-flung net
of bases in the Atlantic arena. Its bases in the Atlantic were limited to the
defense of the Panama Canal area. Equally in the Pacific arena, the pre-
World War II string of bases was altogether insufficient for the defense
of the American mainland. Partially developed bases were available in
the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines, and base sites existed in Alaska,
Guam, Wake, Samoa, and other minor islands. Furthermore, Japanese
base establishments in mandated islands neutralized United States base
sites in the Western Pacific, and the provisions of the Treaty Limiting
Naval Armaments of 1922 precluded the development of bases west of
the 180th meridian until after 1936. 73
After the United States entered World War II, and continuing until the
present, the United States undertook to extend vastly and to solidify a sys-
tem of bases overseas, and, in the case of Canada, overland, under arrange-
ments made with that country for the establishment of a future defense
frontier in Northern Canada. But the emphasis of the United States' for-
tification of its perimeter of defense through military bases is on bases
overseas, while the U.S.S.R., in contrast, found ample compensation for
the lack of opportunities overseas by establishing bases in lands directly
adjacent to her, either by military occupation or through the control of
and collaboration with satellite governments in those spheres of interest.
Reaching far beyond the land spheres within its own sovereign territory,
the United States has established an increasingly impressive net of stra-
tegic bases overseas which, in 1945, was reported as exceeding 400 war
bases of various dimensions: 195 in the Pacific area; 11 in the Indian
Ocean and the Near East; and 229 in the Atlantic area ( 18 of which were
in the North Atlantic, 67 in the Gulf of Panama and the Caribbean, 25 in
the South Atlantic, 55 in North Africa and the Mediterranean, and 64 in
Great Britain, France, and Germany).
The important part which military bases of all kinds play nowadays in
the political geography of any major power makes it necessary to define
clearly the term base. A "base" is not synonymous with "port." While many
of the strategic bases held by the United States are located in insular areas
73 Major Problems of United States Foreign Policy, 1948-1949, The Brookings In-
stitute, 1948, p. 124 ff. The treatment of military bases in the text is largely based on
this source (pp. 124-129) and on H. W. Weigert, "Strategic Bases," in Weigert-
Stefansson-Harrison, op. cit., pp. 219-251.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 277
or form a beachhead in foreign territory, the term applies not only to
island bases and beachheads but equally to other foreign territories avail-
able for military operations. Consequently, a complete picture of strategic
bases includes overland bases, as those in Canada, and occupied terri-
tories overseas, such as was the case during and after World War II, in
Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan, and Korea, as well as those bases which
were established under NATO agreements.
As the history of World War II shows, military bases have been estab-
lished in order to serve a number of purposes, such as the protection of
shipping lanes, the establishment of fuel and weather stations, and as
springboards for offensive operations.
After Pearl Harbor, the United States took vigorous steps to increase
and fortify its overseas bases organization to meet actual and potential
threats by the aggressor nations, both against the American mainland and
the shipping lanes which constituted the life arteries connecting it with
its allies. Base sites were granted by friendly nations or were seized. Not
less than 134 base sites were leased in 1939 from Panama (most of which
were evacuated in 1948). In the Atlantic arena, the United States was
forced by the requirements of global warfare to reach out far beyond the
string of bases held in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, in Guantanamo,
Cuba, and eight locations under British rule. Bases were acquired in Ice-
land, Greenland,74 the Azores, and on some minor Atlantic islands. In all
these, the United States encountered considerable reluctance on the part
of the powers whose territory was affected (Iceland, Denmark, and Por-
tugal) to grant long-term base rights.
In the Pacific, the changing fortunes of the war against Japan deter-
mined the course by which the base net of the United States was organ-
ized. When Japan surrendered, the United States was entrenched in
important base positions serving the dual purpose of fortifying the defense
perimeter of the United States off the Asian coast and of preventing these
base areas from coming under the control of a possible enemy.75 Among
these bases are the former Japanese mandated islands. Now called the
"Territory of the Pacific Islands," they were designated in November 1948
a Strategic Trusteeship area of the United Nations, with the United States
as the administering authority.76 This area consists of 650 former Japanese
islands in 96 island groups in the Marshall, Mariana, and Caroline island
74 H. W. Weigert, "Iceland, Greenland, and the United States," Foreign Affairs
( October, 1944 ) .
75 Major Problems, 1948-1949, p. 127.
76 H. W. Weigert, "Strategic Bases," in Weigert-Stefansson-Harrison, op. cit., pp.
226 ff.
278 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
groups. The total population was in 1955 about 62,000. Among these is-
lands, the outpost of Okinawa, an island only 400 miles from the mainland
of China and less than half the size of Rhode Island, assumed primary
importance.77 In the southern Pacific, the United States acquired base
sites from the Philippines Republic for a period of 99 years and secured
further bases in territories under the sovereignty or jurisdiction of Great
Britain, France, New Zealand, Australia, and the Netherlands.
In the Far North, the most significant base developments took place in
close co-ordination between Canada and the United States, once it was
recognized that the rapid growth of air power had made the North Polar
regions and the Arctic Mediterranean a focus of decisive military opera-
tions (cf. Fig. 8-11, p. 248). While it was not the objective of this discus-
sion to list the various bases developed since the war, and often clouded
in secrecy, attention is called to the fact that for the establishment of Polar
bases not only the immediate military targets of offensive and defensive
action against vital areas within the United States and Canada or the
Soviet Union are essential. Equally necessary are considerations aimed at
establishing stations for the maintenance of navigational aids, the collec-
tion of meteorological data, aircraft tracking and warning, and air-sea
rescue systems.78 In terms of geography, the base system in the Polar
regions is, from the United States' point of view, characterized by the fact
that a comparison of the Soviet Union base system in the Polar areas and
that of the United States shows the latter at a distinct geographical disad-
vantage. The Soviet Union is in full sovereign control of' its bases in the
North. Even there, where these bases are on territory not under the sover-
eignty of the U.S.S.R., the control is complete. That applies to the former
U.S.S.R. bases in Manchuria (Port Arthur, Darien), as well as to those in
northern Korea, which loom as an ominous threat to the life lines linking
the United States and Japan. The United States' position is dependent
upon a co-ordination of her base system in Alaska with bases in northern
Canada, Greenland, and elsewhere.
From a structural point of view, we have to distinguish between various
types of bases. Some are permanent operational bases which are fortified
and garrisoned in sufficient strength to hold against a major attack; others
are limited operational bases which need not be garrisoned in normal
times, but can be occupied in an emergency. No such base can be evalu-
ated, as an integral part of the over-all security system of a nation or a
77 Formosa became an operational base for the United States Air Force after the
evacuation of the Taschen Islands by the Chinese Nationalists in February, 1955.
78 Major Problems, 1948-1949, p. 128.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 279
group of allied nations, without reference to other related bases. Thus
the Pacific bases, if regarded as an organic entity, can be classified as
Outposts (Southern Korea, Formosa), Principal Advanced Bases (Oki-
nawa), Main Supporting Bases (Marianas), Secondary Bases (Japan,
Philippines), and Backup Bases (Aleutians, Hawaii). Geographically
they can be subdivided into seven groups (including outposts which
are indirectly, through treaties, part of the United States defense system) :
(1) the Polynesian group (Hawaii); (2) the Micronesian group (Guam);
(3) the Melanesian group (New Guinea); (4) the Northern Alaskan
chain (Ryukyus); (5) the offshore islands along the China coast, includ-
ing Japan; and (6) the Philippine Islands; and (7) Australia and New
Zealand.
In the restless years following the end of World War II, the United
States had slowly and reluctantly adopted a global strategy of defense,
thus repudiating conflicting defense theories which were either conti-
nental or Western Hemispheric in character. The resolution to prepare
for an "offensive projection of American strength by all possible means
in all possible areas," 79 is reflected in the continuously widening perim-
eter of defense which consists of a systematically growing net of American
and Allied military bases. Except for a significant gap in the strategic
Middle East region, this system had in 1954 succeeded in drawing an iron
line around the land mass of the U.S.S.R. As we have shown above, this
line developed, in 1955 and 1956, serious points of stress along its perim-
eter. In carrying out its program, the United States took the lead in
organizing groups of states for their common defense and in establishing
a procedure in the United Nations that would permit collective security
action to be taken upon recommendation of the General Assembly. Conse-
quently, it would be unrealistic if one would view the perimeter of de-
fense of the United States solely in terms of United States bases. Instead
one must consider it as realization of the extensive international commit-
ments of the United States and of the major principle of its foreign policy,
of universal collective security. The result is an intricate system of re-
gional security and of collective self-defense arrangements; military bases
overseas and overland are the visible expressions of such power projection
abroad.
79 Major Problems of United States Foreign Policy, 1952-1953, p. 159.
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INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS AS BASIS OF THE
UNITED STATES DEFENSE AND SECURITY SYSTEM
The following commitments represent the basis of the American defense
and security system:
Under the Rio Treaty of 1947 which we have discussed previously, the
United States agreed that an armed attack on any one of twenty-one
nations in the "Western Hemisphere" would be considered an attack
against all and that each would then assist in meeting the attack. It is a
significant limitation of the obligations, a limitation instrumental in defin-
ing the contours of important sectors of the American security belt, that
it applies only within the security zone defined in the Treaty, which in-
cludes the North and South American continents and several hundreds of
miles of the surrounding areas (Fig. 8-18).
The coming into being, in 1949, of the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion overshadowed completely the defense system which had found ex-
pression in the Rio de Janeiro treaty of 1947. Here, too, the United States
committed itself to far-reaching obligations within a defined security
zone. But in linking, with the United States and Canada, nearly half the
area and more than half the population of America to Western Europe,
an alliance was formed which "is incompatible with the historic Western
Hemisphere idea, an essential element of which was the separation of
America from Europe." 80 As a comparison of the two security zones under
the Rio and North Atlantic Treaties shows, these zones are not set apart
but overlapping, with the North Atlantic Treaty zone in the role of an
extension, however under different conditions, of the Rio Treaty security
zone. The United States is obligated to regard an attack against any of
the signatories within this zone as an attack against all of them. With the
United States, every other signatory power is held to assist the attacked
nation by taking "individually and in concert . . . such action as it deems
necessary, including the use of armed forces." 81 If one follows the line
indicating the extent of the North Atlantic Pact security perimeter, cover-
ing North America beyond Mexico, the North Atlantic Ocean, Western
Europe ( including West Germany which, while still unarmed, had joined
NATO as a partner in the spring of 1955 ) , a part of French North Africa,
Greece, Turkey, and the Mediterranean, one realizes that this line falls
80 Ibid.
81 It should be noted that, as a counterpart to NATO, a Soviet military organization
was established in May, 1955, which formalized corresponding obligations between
the U.S.S.R. and its East European satellite states, as well as a unified military or-
ganization under a Soviet Union Commander in Chief, with its seat in Moscow.
282 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
considerably short of describing the extent of the United States perimeter
of defense which relies on the military bases operated by it and friendly
nations (see Fig. 8-18). To understand this discrepancy, one has to in-
clude in the picture of United States security arrangements additional
obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty as well as certain regional
arrangements.
If, in conjunction with the framework of complementary bilateral de-
fense agreements, we review the geographical extent of the NATO or-
ganization as we find it established in 1955, we see that it has succeeded
in establishing the fundamentals of a united western community of na-
tions, without which, as Toynbee put it,82 this community could not hope
to survive "the siege of the West." In terms of heartland and rimland
concepts, NATO has adopted the rimlands theory as a valid counterpart
to strategic formulas originating in, and conditioned by the control of the
Soviet heartland. If we concentrate on the North Atlantic and European
arenas, as the heart of the NATO organization, we will find that they
secure the vital arteries which link its members across the high seas and
that they bar Soviet naval expansion and infiltration, especially by sub-
marines. On the European mainland, the participation of the German
Federal Republic paves the way for the defense of Europe which, without
such participation, would remain saddled with a serious power vacuum.
The West German membership in NATO will eventually bear fruit in the
vital protection of the northern flank where Soviet expansion from the
Baltic Sea into the North Sea must be barred. In the Scandinavian coun-
tries, Sweden's neutrality and the reluctance of Norway and Denmark to
concede the stationing of foreign NATO contingents on their soil tend to
weaken the structure. In the Mediterranean arena Turkey and Greece are
the vital NATO rimland strongholds which stem Soviet aggression toward
the Middle East, as does, among the Balkan countries, Yugoslavia. Its role
is of greatest importance; in spite of its defense agreements with Turkey
and Greece under the Balkan treaty of August 1954 at the time these lines
are written, it can not be finally evaluated.83 Spain, not a NATO partner
but committed to the United States under a bilateral agreement, occupies
highly important positions for naval and air bases, especially for the de-
fense of the Straits of Gibraltar and North Africa.
Under the North Atlantic Pact, any attack outside the zones stipulated
therein involves no other obligation than consultation. This consultative
82 A. J. Toynbee, "The Siege of the West," Foreign Affairs (1955), p. 359 ff.
83 If the Soviet Union carries out its pledge to withdraw its troops from Rumania
and Hungary after the ratification of the treaty with Austria, such move would
eliminate some of the major reasons for the existence of the Balkan pact.
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 283
commitment, however, is an integral and significant part of the over-all
defense organizations since the interests and holdings of the United
States, Great Britain, and France are on a global scale.84
Additional regional arrangements concluded in 1951 fortified the se-
curity position of the United States in the Pacific Arena. Under the Tri-
partite Security Treaty with Australia and New Zealand and the Mutual
Defense Treaty with the Republic of the Philippines ( expanding the 99-
year military base arrangement of 1947), the United States agreed that an
armed attack in the Pacific area on any one of the signatories would
oblige each partner to aid in meeting the common danger. In the same
year, the United States, under the Japanese Security Treaty of 1951,
established the right to keep armed forces in Japan and to use them for
the maintenance of peace and security in the Far East, while security
arrangements with the Republic of South Korea remained in a state of
fluctuation. In September, 1954, nations from far afield joined in Manila
to sign an agreement aimed at stopping further Communist erosion in the
wide expanse of Southeast Asia. The outcome was a broad defense organ-
ization for Southeast Asia, with its eight signatories (half of them mem-
bers of the British Commonwealth), the United States, Britain, France,
Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan, pledged
to regard an armed attack against any of them, or against a designated
treaty area, as a danger to the peace and safety of all of them. The partners
are also obligated to consult on common defense measures in case such a
danger arises from any other development besides armed attack from the
outside, such as Communist subversion, coup d'etat, or civil war on the
Korean or Indochinese pattern. The geographical pattern of the SEATO
members makes it clear that Australia and New Zealand, because of their
proximity to an overpopulated Asia, are the powers most interested in
increasing the military strength of the SEATO organizations.
This South East Asian Collective Defense Treaty (still called SEATO,
in abbreviation of its original name, South East Asian Treaty Organiza-
tion) is a much weaker structure than is NATO. This is evident from the
fact that among its signatories some of the nations are missing which
would be most directly threatened in their very existence by aggressive
moves originating from Communist China: Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon,
India, and in Indochina, Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. Unlike
NATO, SEATO is consultative, like the Anzus pact. Thus it falls consider-
ably short of the more rigid NATO and in particular lacks a SHAPE as a
unified military command and a combined military force; the treaty or-
is* Major Problems, pp. 88-89.
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ganization is limited to a Council with broad functions in defense plan-
ning.
Large as the treaty area is— comprising Southeast Asia and the South-
west Pacific— its geographical limitations emphasize the fact that this
structure rests on fundamentals which are temporary and far from being
complete. The protected area includes not only the territories of the sig-
natory powers but also the general area of Southeast Asia and the South-
west Pacific. A special protocol provides for the inclusion in the protected
treaty area of the free part of Indochina. However, the treaty area is
bounded in the north by parallel 21°30' and thus passes south of Hong-
kong, Formosa, and of course Japan. In regard to these nations, direct
commitments of the United States and, in the case of Hongkong, Britain,
serve as substitutes for what ideally would be included in an all-embrac-
ing Pacific defense organization. With the passage by Congress of the
Formosa defense resolution in January, 1955, a decisive step was taken
in spelling out even more firmly the American perimeter of defense con-
cept by defining the no-trespass line in the Formosa Strait. The resolution
makes it clear to a potential enemy that there are specific areas which the
United States would defend with force rather than cede, even though at
the time this is written, the issue of the defense of the off-shore islands of
Matsu and Quemoy looms large and ominously.
It is in the nature of a network based on regional agreements with
friendly powers that its strength varies regionally and that the line which
signifies the extent of the perimeter of defense is constantly changing. At
present, the weakest part of the perimeter, from the United States' point
of view, is along the northern tier of nations in the Middle East, between
Turkey and Pakistan, with the weak links of Iran and Iraq between them
(Fig. 8-19).
At the end of 1955 it appeared that some progress had been
achieved in the efforts to strengthen the northern tier by laying the
groundwork for a security bloc which was to include Turkey, Iraq, Iran,
and Pakistan. The groundwork was laid in February, 1955, when, in the
Baghdad Treaty, Turkey and Iraq agreed to establish a mutual defense or-
ganization. Britain joined the pact in April and Pakistan in September,
1955. In October, 1955, Iran announced, in defiance of the Soviet Union
which protested Iran's decision sharply, that it was ready to join the de-
fense alliance.
However, in spite of the progress made in cementing the defense line
across the Middle East's northern tier, through a chain of United States-
supported defense treaty organizations and in particular through the
286 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Baghdad Pact, this 3,000-mile front appeared late in 1955 as an ominously
fluctuating barrier against Soviet expansion into the Arab world. This
Arab world is far from being a united bloc and the issue of "neutralism"
(kindled above all by resentment against the United States' policy to-
wards Israel), has estranged Egypt and her allies (Syria, Saudi Arabia
and Yemen) which have declared their opposition to the Baghdad Pact.
From the standpoint of the United States, a strengthening of the north-
ern tier defense arrangement has been from the beginning an integral part
of a policy aimed at perfecting its over-all perimeter of defense position.
The efficiency and strength of this kind of security system based on col-
lective security principles depends entirely on the degree to which the
United States will have the full co-operation of its partners. As Secretary
of State Dulles pointed out in March, 1954, the bases which serve in for-
eign countries are in general not usable as a matter of law, and as a prac-
tical matter are not usable, except with the consent of the countries in
which the bases are located. Therefore, it is implicit in the United States'
security system that it operates with the consent and acquiescence of the
other partners who have helped to provide the facilities which create a
sort of international police system.85 Against the Soviet bloc of Commu-
nist-controlled countries, representing a vast central land mass with a
population of 800,000,000, able, because of its central position, to strike
at any one of about twenty countries along a perimeter of some 20,000
miles, the United States and the nations allied with her have developed
a system of bases which is an integral part and a physical expression of
their collective security system.5
86
THE COLOMBO POWERS
This discussion of the politico-geographical factors surrounding the col-
lective security system of the United States in comparison with the
opposing security structure of the Soviet bloc is not meant to suggest that
the political world of today can be neatly divided into two power combi-
nations, permitting the mapping, in terms of political and military bound-
aries, of the Free World versus the Communist World. Such oversimplifi-
cation would be grossly misleading. The political world of Southeast Asia,
above all, which cannot be fitted into the not even seemingly neat balance
between the Free and the Communist World, at the time these lines are
written defies any attempt at integrating it, or its major nations, with any
85 New York Times, March 17, 1953, p. 5.
86 John Foster Dulles, Foreign Affairs (April, 1953).
THE IMPACT OF LOCATION
287
Fig. 8-20. The Colombo Powers.
degree of permanency in this scheme. In order not to be unduly impressed
by the structures of base systems and regional security agreements, the
importance of which for the defense system of the United States and her
allied nations we have shown, we must include in our estimates the great
potential power of such state systems as Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Burma,
and Indonesia. In these new states, comprising a total population of about
550,000,000 (Fig. 8-20), we observe in the philosophy of the so-called
Colombo Powers 87 a formative power-political grouping which cannot be
identified with either the "East" or the "West." It is not, or not yet, in the
nature of a bloc or firm alliance, but possesses nevertheless all the ingre-
dients of a potential power combination which may prompt us in the fore-
87 This group should not be confused with the economic grouping of the "Colombo
Plan" which originated in 1950 for the purpose of mutual aid. At this time, the
Colombo Plan embraces all Asian countries, except Formosa, South Korea, and
Afghanistan, as well as Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
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THE IMPACT OF LOCATION 289
seeable future to re-draw the world map depicting the major spheres of
influence of the Great Powers. Named after the city in Ceylon where the
Premiers of the five members of this group first met, the Colombo Powers,
while divided among themselves by many unsolved problems (as India
and Pakistan ) and while taking different positions in regard to their secu-
rity policy toward Communist expansion ( as Pakistan and Ceylon, which
are considerably less neutral than were, in 1955, India, Burma, and Indo-
nesia), these nations have in their policies enough in common to make
them, and other states in Asia and Africa which they may attract in the
future, the potential nucleus of a strong grouping with tangible binding
features. At present, intangibles form the common base, above all the
history of foreign colonial rule in which they share. Inspired by their re-
sentment against colonialism in any form, these states are intent on deter-
mining the future course of Asian political destinies without influence
from the outside. A broad extension of the sphere of nations subscribing
to the general philosophy of the Colombo Plan powers has taken shape
at the conference of Asian-African nations at Bandung, Indonesia. This
meeting brought together delegates from twenty-nine nations comprising
more than half of the world's population, and, in spite of many deep-
rooted disparities in the realms of language, religion, ethnic composition,
and culture, as well as differences in their political alignments and eco-
nomic systems, united them by the common bond of being non-white
nations who at some time in the past had been controlled by white
colonial powers S8 (Fig. 8-21).
The first major combining action of the new "Anti-Colonial" bloc in the
making occurred in October 1955 when the Bandung nations, aided by
the Soviet groups and by scattered Latin American countries, pushed the
issue of colonialism to the front of the United Nations' stage. They suc-
ceeded in having placed for general debate on the agenda of the General
Assembly the questions of French Algeria and of Netherlands New
Guinea claimed by the Indonesian Republic.
We cannot foresee whether and how what appears today as a loose
power structure in the making will in the future affect the collective
security system of the Free World and its perimeter of defense. But
through the mist beclouding the future we can perceive the taking-shape
of new political structures and groupings of great portent and impact.
Their still nebulous contours confirm the need, so persistently stressed in
these lines, for continuous re-evaluation of what on the political map of
today appears seemingly as a firm and stable feature in the realm of politi-
es See pp. 532 ff., 551.
290 THE SPATIAL FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
cal geography. Fluctuation and change are factors which enter invariably
into any discussion and appraisal in the field of political geography. But
certain basic factors of physical geography do not change, even though
their conditioning effect on human affairs is subject to change. This gen-
eral observation, which permeates all our discussions in this volume and
which explains and justifies the study of political geography, has been
expressed lucidly by Abraham Lincoln in his Message to Congress of
December 1, 1862:
A Nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The
territory is the only part which is of certain durability. One generation passes
away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. It is of the
first importance to duly consider and estimate this ever-enduring part.
Part
2
THE HUMAN AND CULTURAL
FACTOR IN POLITICAL
GEOGRAPHY
CHAPTER
9
Population Growth and Pressure
The legal foundation of the state is its territory; but its reality exists
only in its citizens— in their numbers, their distribution, their biological
and demographic characteristics, their economic development, and their
social institutions and cultural heritage. This chapter and the next deal
with the population in terms of its numbers, distribution, movements, and
demographic characteristics. Later chapters will consider cultural and
economic factors in political geography.
We examine population in a study of political geography because
people, like natural resources and other geographical factors germane to
political power, are unequally distributed over the face of the earth. The
human resources available to the several nations vary greatly both in size
and quality.
Also, the human content of the national territory is forever changing,
firstly, through the biological facts of birth and death and, secondly,
through migrations. These changes are never exactly alike on the two
sides of an international boundary. Thus there are everywhere changes
in relative population and manpower that tend to shift the balance of
power among the nations concerned.
Differential rates of growth create pressures against political bound-
aries. They create tensions in the increasing competition for the scarce
resources of the earth. They provide the impetus for voluntary migrations
and often the real motive in the forced expulsion or flight of refugees.
The following discussion examines these various aspects of population
as an element of power and as a source of conflict. We shall first consider
population size as an obvious element in national power. Second, we
293
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POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 295
shall deal with the distribution of the population, which has much to do
with the coherence and effectiveness of any given state or political con-
stellation. Third, we shall consider population growth as a factor changing
the locus and expression of power. Fourth, since numbers alone are not
an adequate measure of the impact of population change, we will consider
the population structure as a measure of the relative effectiveness of the
population as the human resource base of political strength. Fifth, changes
in population size and structure bring about population pressure against
political boundaries, from areas of low economic opportunity to those of
greater economic opportunity. Sixth, this pressure is released through
movement, whether in the voluntary and primarily economically moti-
vated migrations or in the forced migrations which pour across boundaries
when the artificial dams imposed by political boundaries are breached.
A. Size
POPULATION VERSUS AREA
The ordinary political map of the world, and especially the Mercator
projection in common use, very imperfectly reflects the real importance of
the political entities portrayed. Even on an equal-area projection, which
eliminates the gross distortion of the Mercator projection at the poles,
Canada looms larger than the United States. Australia is larger than all of
Europe west of the U.S.S.R. Argentina and India are about of equal size.
The French colonies in Africa occupy a large and central position. These
are facts, but for purposes of political geography, they represent only one
dimension. Population is another dimension.
Figures 9-1 and 9-2 compare these two dimensions in schematic dia-
grams, one (Fig. 9-1) showing the nations of the world drawn in propor-
tion to their areas, the other (Fig. 9-2), according to their population size.
The first is a stylized equal-area map; in the second an effort is made to
preserve the general geographical position of each country in relation to
its neighbors.
The differences are striking. On the population map European countries
assume a position much more comparable to their actual place in the
world concentration of power. Great Britain, instead of being comparable
to New Zealand or rather smaller than Madagascar, assumes its place as
the most important of the British members of the Commonwealth. The
map shows Asia for what it is: the principal home of mankind. Africa is
shriveled to its proper proportion as the home of a relatively small per-
centage of humanity.
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POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 297
Few countries are even roughly comparable as shown in the two maps.
The most conspicuous of these is the United States, where the population
density approximates the world average. Most other countries are either
much more densely or much less densely settled than the average.
NATIONAL ENTITIES
"After rechecking last year's census the National Bureau of Statistics in
Peiping declared today mainland China's population, largest in the world,
was 582,603,417, as of June 30, 1953." x
Such was the report of the first modern census taken in China. At that
time the "official" figure used by the United Nations for China, including
Formosa, was 463,493,000. A leading Chinese authority, Ta Chen, esti-
mated the population of China at under 400 million before the Communist
revolt. This range of some 200 million in the estimates illustrates the de-
gree of ignorance of the true size of the population of this most populous
country in the world.
There is no doubt, however, that China has the largest population in
the world. If we may believe the published results of the 1953 census,
China alone contains almost one-fourth of all mankind.
India, with 377 millions, is the other demographic giant of the modern
world. Prior to the division of the Indian subcontinent between India and
Pakistan, she was a rival to China in the sheer mass of her people.
The remaining several hundred political entities include countries of
many million inhabitants and areas boasting only a few hundred persons.
After China and India come the two great continental powers, the
U.S.S.R. with 200 million and the United States with 165 million. No
other nation claims as many as 100 million inhabitants.
Clustered together as a third group in population size are three Asian
powers of middle rank: Japan, with 89 million; Indonesia with 81 million;
and Pakistan with 80 million.
The four principal powers of Western Europe are also of approximately
equal population size: United Kingdom, 51 million; German Federal Re-
public, 50 million; Italy, 48 million; and France, 43 million.
Only one non-European country, Brazil, approximates these in size.
With 58 million people Brazil is by far the most populous country in Latin
America. Mexico, with 29 million, is the second Latin American country.
Argentina, at the other end of Latin America, has 19 million. Spain, with
1 Special dispatch to the New York Times from Hong Kong, November 1, 1954.
Other population data in this section are from United Nations publications, especially
the Demographic Yearbook, 1955.
298 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
29 million, and Poland, with 27 million, are the only other European
countries with over 20 million inhabitants. There is a substantial gap be-
tween France (43 million), smallest of the world powers, and the numer-
ous smaller nations and dependent territories.
Nigeria, with 30 million, is the largest political unit in Africa.
Five countries of Southeast and East Asia each have about 20 million
inhabitants: South Korea, 22 million; Philippines, 21 million; Thailand,
20 million; Burma, 19 million; and the three Associated States of Indo-
China together number perhaps 17 million.
Three Moslem countries of the Middle East each have over 20 million
inhabitants: Turkey, 24; Iran, 21; and Egypt, 23. Egypt is much the
largest of the Arab countries. Her population exceeds that of all the
other members of the Arab League combined.
The bunching of states according to population size suggests that there
may be some optimum or standard size of state under certain conditions.
The population of Asian powers is large, in keeping with the greater
population of the continent. There are at least four distinct size classes of
Asian states. The two giants, India and China, stand alone. Those of the
second rank— Japan, Indonesia, and Pakistan— range only between 80 and
89 million. There are seven third-rank Asian and Middle Eastern powers
whose populations fall within the narrow range of 19 and 24 million.2
Aside from Afghanistan, with 12 million, the next group, including Cey-
lon, Taiwan, North Korea, Nepal and Saudi-Arabia, have 7 to 9 million
inhabitants. Three smaller Arab states, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, each have
4 to 5 million. The remaining Arab states— Lebanon, Jordan, and Libya—
and Israel— each claim between one and two million.
The Asian and Arab states thus range themselves as follows:
millions ( population )
number (states)
350-600
2
About 85 (80-89)
3
About 20 (19-24)
7
7-9
5
4-5
3
Between 1 and 2
4
The only Asian states that do not fall into these groupings are Afghan-
istan ( 12 million ) and the four states in what was formerly French Indo-
China. There has never been a census in the latter.
2 Egypt, Iran, Turkey— 21-24 million; Burma, Philippines, So. Korea & Thailand
-19-22 million.
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 299
In Europe the pattern is apparent but less obvious:
200 mi 'ion U.S.S.R.
43-51 " Leading Western Powers (4)
27-29 " Spain and Poland (2)
8-17 " Eastern European States (6)
3-11 " Small Western Powers (10)
As noted earlier the chief Western European powers are now roughly
equal in population, though the reunification of Germany would raise
that country from 49 to 70 million. Among the smaller powers those of
Eastern Europe are notably more populous than those of the West, which
were founded in earlier periods of slower and more difficult transport and
communication.
There is no comparable pattern among the political entities of Africa
and of Latin America, perhaps because in both cases population size is
determined as much by existing and former colonial divisions as it is by
the indigenous natural regions.
Obviously population size alone, scarcely more than area, is not a sure
indication of relative power. In some areas, such as Alaska, lack of popu-
lation is obviously a strategic weakness. On the other hand, China and
India might actually be more powerful if they had fewer people. The
competition for scarce resources brought about by the sheer mass of
population in these countries imposes a poverty that in many respects
neutralizes mass strength. Conversely, relatively small countries, like those
of Western Europe, have been able to maintain a leading power position
by the effective use of their material resources on the one hand and by
the maximum development of their smaller human resource through edu-
cation, training, and organization.
B. Distribution
THE PATTERN OF WORLD SETTLEMENT
The illustration of population size in terms of continents and national
entities, as in the preceding section, masks important aspects of popula-
tion distribution as a factor in political geography. Distribution, as op-
posed to simple size of population, introduces a new dimension. This
dimension is illustrated by Figures 9-1 and 2 which presents the world's
population in relation to the major geographic and topographic features.
Perhaps the most striking fact about the spatial distribution of people
is that the greater part of the world is very thinly settled or even entirely
uninhabited— usually for very excellent reasons. About 40 per cent of the
300 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
world's land area is no more densely settled than Alaska; that is, one
person for each four square miles. Well over half the land surface of the
globe is no more densely settled than Nevada, which has one and one-half
persons per square mile.
The Arctic tundra of North America supports only a few thousand
Eskimos, who are "concentrated" along many thousand miles of coast-
land. Huge interior areas are literally uninhabited. Similarly, the even
larger Eurasian tundra now supports only a few thousand reindeer-herd-
ing nomads, except where mineral resources have attracted a small non-
indigenous population. The sub-Arctic forest, the taiga, which stretches
across North America and Eurasia in a belt five hundred to a thousand
miles in width, has scarcely been penetrated anywhere by intensive set-
tlement. The vast deserts and steppes of the American West, of Central
Asia, of Asia Minor, of the Sahara, and of Australia have repelled close
settlement over most of these enormous interior regions. Yet together
these encompass close to half the land surface of the globe. This half of
the world receives less than twenty inches of rainfall annually, which is
usually insufficient to support profitable dry farming.
For quite the opposite reasons the Amazon and Congo Basins have
resisted intensive human settlement. Here, there is too much rainfall. The
tropical soils are leached of essential minerals necessary for high agricul-
tural output. The cost of clearing jungle land is often excessive in terms
of any realizable economic return.
In short, most of the world is too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet,
too high or too low to provide the conditions suitable for intensive human
settlement.
Most of us live in great clusters of population. Three-fourths of the
world's people live in four of these clusters, those of East Asia, the Indian
subcontinent, Europe, and Eastern North America. These four are
roughly comparable in area and population, except that the population
concentration in Eastern North America falls far below the other great
centers of mankind.
East Asia (650-800 million people). This greatest concentration of hu-
manity includes China, Korea, Japan, and the portion of Indo-China
neighboring on China (Viet Minh). The high population density in
North China and neighboring areas around the China Sea reflect the
North Chinese origin of the civilization created by this largest mass of
mankind.
The agricultural base of East Asian life is reflected in the extensive
area of dense settlement. There are few major cities except in industrial-
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 301
ized Japan. The Chinese and Korean population distribution closely fol-
lows the topography, soil, and rainfall conditions suitable for intensive
agriculture. However, the lesser density in South China also in part re-
flects its peripheral and marginal relation to the main centers in the
North. This lower density of population has in recent times led to sub-
stantially better living conditions in South China than in the North. Con-
sequently there has been a considerable movement of the more industri-
ous and frugal North Chinese to the South.
It is obvious that the weight of human resources in the area lies in
China and not in Japan. Formerly the latter was able to profit by the lack
of integration of the great Chinese mass. Until very recent times the
sprawling Chinese dragon has lacked an effective head. In addition to
many local and separatist tendencies, there has been a struggle between
two centers of power in the core area of settlement in the North China
plain.3 This has been symbolized by the migration of the capital between
Peking (literally "the northern capital") and Nanking ("the southern
capital") (cf. Fig. 6-5, p. 154). Peking represents the traditional political
dominance of China from the north, and by continental people from
Central Asia. This domination was reflected in the Manchu dynasty, the
last to rule China as an Empire. It is also reflected in the role of the Com-
munists, who found their strongest roots in the land of the northern prov-
inces. It is natural that the Communists should have revived the leader-
ship of Peking as opposed to Nanking and the great port city of Shanghai,
which were centers of commerce and foreign economic penetration. It is
scarcely necessary to emphasize that implicit in the success of the Com-
munist movement in China there was a massive repudiation of influences
which have come to China via the sea, and which were so strong in the
modern development of Japan. The Communists have renounced these
in favor of the continental China governed from Peking.
The Indian Subcontinent (450 million people). The population of the
Indian subcontinent is effectively set off from other great centers by im-
pressive barriers of mountain and desert. Nevertheless, the Indian popu-
lation cluster is somewhat less coherent in pattern than that of East Asia,
and this is perhaps one reason why this cluster has never in the past
served as the demographic base for a single world power. Even the great
Mogul empires of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries were never
successful in bringing the entire subcontinent under one rule.
An examination of Indian population distribution 4 will suggest why this
3 See pp. 153 ff.
4 Cf. O. H. K. Spate, Geography of India and Pakistan (London, 1954), pp. 491-493.
302 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
has been the case. The core area of India is the rich plain of the upper
Indus and Ganges Rivers. Somewhat separated from this main concentra-
tion by the arid Deccan are other but smaller concentrations of population
in South India. This distribution suggests a clear base for separatist tend-
encies in South India. These have been accentuated by the survival of
Dravidian languages and influences in the South as opposed to the pre-
vailing Indo-Aryan languages which were spread across India by suc-
cessive invasions from the Northwest.
The core area of settlement stretches from the Punjab in the Northwest
to Bengal in the East. As in China there is a conflicting pull between the
continental foci of power, represented by New Delhi, and the economic
and maritime focus of power at the mouth of the Ganges, represented by
Calcutta. It is significant that Calcutta was the first British capital of
India. It is still much the largest city in the country. But New Delhi rep-
resents the traditional administration of India from centers in the ecumene
that are nearest the original overland sources of conquest and political
power.
The highly artificial division of India and Pakistan highlights this prob-
lem. Pakistan includes the two ends of the main Indian population cluster,
one in the Punjab and the other in Bengal. The western portion includes
the less populous northwestern areas which however are the traditional
centers of aggressive Moslem leadership in India. But the main population
weight of Pakistan is at the other end, in Bengal. This is inevitably an
unstable political relationship. This instability is currently pointed up by
the increasing restlessness of East Bengal within the Pakistan union.
Europe (600 million people). Despite its fracture into many political
entities, Europe is essentially a single cluster of population. National
boundaries conceal an organized pattern of settlement reflecting economic
forces older and more fundamental than present political entities. The
center of European population lies in a core area including England, the
Low Countries, Northern France, Western Germany, Switzerland, and
Northern Italy. To the East the European settlement area reaches out
across the Russian plain into Siberia, through the Balkans to West Ana-
tolia, and across the Mediterranean to French North Africa, which is in
some respects a part of Mediterranean Europe.
The pattern of European population distribution reflects history as well
as contemporary fact. Originally it was Mediterranean-oriented with the
densest population bordering on that Sea. Superimposed on this in the
modern era has been, firstly, an Atlantic and especially North Sea orien-
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 303
tation, which has grown out of the influence of overseas trade. In this
regard we may note the heavy concentration of cities in the countries bor-
dering on the North Sea. Secondly, there has been an eastward march of
European settlement. Since 1500 probably as much new land has been
firmly settled and occupied by Europeans in Eastern Europe and Asia as
has been so occupied in North America. There is a great wedge of Euro-
pean settlement pushing across Eurasia along a narrowing base of good
agricultural land. This wedge is broad at its European base, but as it
pushes into Asia, it is progressively cramped by cold on the north and
desert to the south.
While the European settlement area has as large a population and con-
tains as much agricultural production area as the two great Asian clusters,
it does not display as heavy rural settlement. The explanation is of course
that industrialization in Europe has resulted in the rise of great cities and
conurbations that together include a large part of the total population of
the continent.
In Europe, even more acutely than in Asia, there is a conflict between
the maritime commercial interests centered in the North Sea and the con-
tinental foci of power in Russia. In its broadest terms the East-West con-
flict may be thought of as a struggle between the conflicting poles of the
older maritime civilization of the West and the continental interests of
the East created by European settlement in the last three or four hundred
years.
Eastern North America ( 150 million people ) . Eastern North America,
as far west as the Rocky Mountains, is basically a mirror image of North-
west Europe. There is a concentration of population in the habitable area
closest in character to that of the North Sea progenitor-countries. There is
an axis of industrial urban settlement in the Northeast. This industrial
area is anchored on the one side by the great metropolitan region now
extending almost continuously along the coast from Boston to Washing-
ton. From this coastal base it extends westward to include the North
Central States and the Great Lakes region. This is the American counter-
part of the great industrial and commercial region of Northwest Europe.
This industrial belt reaches from England across France and the Low
Countries to include much of Germany, Bohemia, and Northern Italy.
From the industrial northeast population density declines toward the
southeast (as it does toward the southwest in Europe). The Mississippi
Valley is the American counterpart of the European plain. The Middle
West was never settled agriculturally as densely as the European plain
304 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
because its settlement occurred in competition with industrialization and
the growing cityward movements of the past hundred years. The great
European immigration from 1880 to 1914 was a migration from European
villages to American cities rather than to the land in this country. The
United States and Canada are much more urban than Europe, where
agricultural settlement much antedated modern industrialization.
As compared with the other population clusters, that of Eastern North
America has two tremendous advantages : ( 1 ) the region is and has been
politically unified for 150 years, aside from the friendly boundary that
separates out the comparatively small Canadian population; (2) the re-
gion has resources at least equaling those available to the other great
population clusters and is able to utilize these resources for the advantage
of a very much smaller population.
A third and less specific advantage lies in the fact that the core area
centering in New York City has maintained essentially undisputed domi-
nation of the economic life of the region. Numerous political movements
have reflected the emergence of continental interests in the Middle West
comparable to those which have brought about the breaking off of Russia
and Eastern Europe from the main cultural stream of Western Europe.
These movements have been variously given the labels of agrarian, popu-
list, isolationist, et cetera, but have never reached the strength nor the
intensity to bring about a schism since the Civil War.
The West Coast of North America is of course an integral part of Anglo-
America, but in terms of population geography the pattern of West Coast
settlement is not closely linked to that of Eastern North America. As might
be expected, it reflects an orientation toward the Pacific. Being more re-
cently settled than Eastern North America, it is even more urban and has
even less agricultural settlement and hinterland.
Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina are likewise more urbanized
than Europe and for the same reasons.
As has been pointed out above, the four great clusters include three-
fourths of the world's people. The remaining one-fourth are dispersed in
the smaller clusters of Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, arid Asia,
and Oceania.
Latin America. Latin America has no real population center and hence
no ecumene to serve as a base for continental power on the scale of that
realized by China, India, the U.S.S.R., and the U.S. The present distribu-
tion of population in Latin America has two chief features : ( a ) European
settlement and influence superimposed on the ancient centers of Amerin-
dian civilization. The ancient Aztec and Incan civilizations are still re-
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 305
fleeted in the concentrations of people in the highlands of Mexico and
Central America and in the Andean intermountain valleys from Venezuela
to Bolivia and Chile; (b) scattered African and European settlement on
the Caribbean Islands and on the coasts of South America.
There has been relatively little penetration of the great lowland interior
of South America. In effect there is a thin rim of settlement around a hol-
low interior. In some local regions of Latin America there are quite dense
populations and even signs of overpopulation, as in many Andean valleys,
on the islands of Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, and certain of the other
West Indies, and in El Salvador. But there is no core of population large
enough to serve at this time as the assured base of a continental and world
power. The political fractioning of Latin America reflects this lack.
Africa. Africa is no more densely settled than South America but it is
not demographically a "hollow" continent in the same sense as South
America. North Africa and Egypt are not truly African in demographic,
economic, or political orientation. This area is a part of Africa by courtesy
of geography rather than of culture or economics. French North Africa
is of course Mediterranean in orientation but Arab in culture. Egypt and
the neighboring states of the Levant form a minor population cluster that
is also Mediterranean-oriented and of course older than even that of
Southern Europe.
But Africa really begins beyond the Sahara. In Black Africa there are
significant clusters of interior settlement and the overlay of European
settlement is important only in the Union of South Africa. Politically
Africa is artificially divided with regard to little more than the reconcilia-
tion of nineteenth century rivalries of European colonial powers. Conse-
quently, there is little relationship between the distribution of population
and of political organization.
With the probability that most of Black Africa will sooner or later
emerge from political dependency, attention needs to be given to the pos-
sible locus of emerging African power. At the present time there would
seem to be two potential competitors for leadership in the development
of native African political power. In West Africa and particularly in Ni-
geria there is a considerable population base for political and economic
power. The total population size may be deceptive, however, since there
is a conflicting pull between the coastal areas, where trade and the begin-
nings of modern economy are concentrated, and the interior areas which
are both more Moslem and more militant. A possible competing ecumene
lies in the highlands of East Africa along the great Rift Valley of East
Africa and on the shores of Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika. This area is
306 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
now divided politically between Uganda, Tanganyika, Ruanda-Urundi,
and the Belgian Congo. The Union of South Africa is thinly populated
but has the only large cities and industrial centers south of the Sahara.
Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia there are several minor centers of
population focused on major river valleys such as the Irrawaddy ( Burma ) ,
the Menam (Thailand), and the Mekong (Laos, Cambodia, and South
Vietnam ) , or on islands such as Java and Luzon. In each case the cluster
serves as the core area of a national entity. With the possible exception
of Java, the particular ecumenes are so overshadowed by the two giant
clusters in East Asia— China and India— that there is little chance for
the organization of an independent political power in the area.
Dry Asia. This vast area, the traditional domain of the Moslem religion,
has minor population centers in Egypt and the Levant, in the valley of
the Tigris and Euphrates (Iraq), in Iran, in Soviet Asia, and even in
Chinese Sinkiang. In the past this vast area has served as the geographical
base for empires founded on the mobility of the nomadic horseman. To-
day, however, its unity lies more in the spiritual cohesiveness offered by
the Moslem religion, and to a lesser extent by the community of Turkic
languages spoken all the way from Constantinople to five hundred miles
inside the boundaries of China. The area has proven too fragmented to
provide the base for a great power in the modern world.
URBAN CONCENTRATIONS
In the previous sections attention has been called to the importance of
a strong core area or ecumene to the internal strength and organization of
the modern state. Related to the importance of the core area is the degree
of urbanization and metropolitan concentration. The core area is usually
dominated by the capital which is in the purest sense of the word the
"metro-pole" and often the cultural hearth of the nation. Such cities as
London, Paris, and Rome are much more than the largest cities in their re-
spective countries. In a sense they are England, France, and Italy, and one
cannot think of these countries as existing without these home cities. The
five counties surrounding London are even called the "home" counties.
There is a universal tendency for these great economic and cultural cen-
ters to attract a larger and larger proportion of the total population.
Obviously something so important in the lives of many millions of
people as the growth of cities and the urban way of life must have its
effect on the power and the strategic vulnerability of the nations involved.
Such concentration of population has often been regarded as affecting the
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 307
internal stability of the state. In the atomic age it must be presumed that
external vulnerability is likewise affected by this development.
URBANIZATION AND POLITICAL STABILITY
The theory that cities are a source of instability and weakness is at least
as old as Thomas Jefferson and as new as Communist revolutionary doc-
trine. The mobs of Paris during the French Revolution have left a pro-
found effect on the political thought of the Western world. Later, Marx
found in the cities the apotheosis of capitalism with its division between
pyramided wealth and propertyless proletariat. In the present century
Oswald Spengler pictured the metropolis as the ultimate graveyard of
Western civilization.
In the long sweep of history it may be that modern urban society is
insufficiently stable to provide the enduring social institutions and cultural
traditions necessary for a lasting civilization. But in the short run, it is
clear that those who fear the urban mobs as revolutionary forces have
been refuted by recent history. The most urbanized countries are at the
same time the most stable politically. The twelve countries having one-
fourth or more of their people in cities of a hundred thousand or over is
a roster of countries that have been characterized by stable governments
since World War II. The single exception is Argentina.
TABLE 9-1
Degree of Urbanization: Per Cent of Population Living in Cities
CITIES OF 100,000
URBAN AREAS BY
AND OVER
NATIONAL DEFINITION a
Australia, 1947
51.4
68.9
United Kingdom, 1951
51.0
80.2
United States, 1950
43.7
63.7
Argentina, 1947
40.6
62.5
Israel, 1951
39.9
77.5
Canada, 1951
36.7
62.1
Netherlands, 1947
35.2
54.6
Denmark, 1950
33.5
67.3
New Zealand, 1951
32.8
61.3
Austria, 1951
32.8
49.1
Western Germany, 1950
27.1 b
71.1
Belgium, 1947
25.8
62.7
Japan, 1950
25.6
37.5
a National definitions of urban areas vary with administrative practices in the countries concerned and
are therefore unreliable as a measure of urbanization. To take an extreme illustration, according to its own
definitions, which include as urban all persons in communities of 500 or over, Iceland is 71.7 per cent
urban and one of the most urbanized countries in the world.
b Excludes Western sector of Berlin.
Source: United Nations, Demographic Yearbook, 1952 (New York, 1953), Table B, p. 11.
308 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Conspicuously absent from this list are France, Italy, and Southern and
Eastern European countries, many of which have experienced great politi-
cal instability over the last fifty years.
If we take the other end of the scale, those nations having less than
10 per cent of their populations in large cities, the list generally includes
countries that have not been characterized by great political stability:
Bulgaria, Burma, Ceylon, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Haiti, India, Iran, Rumania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. There are conspicu-
ous exceptions, such as Turkey.
It is fair to say that in the modern world internal political stability is
more likely to be found with a high degree of urbanization than in a
peasant economy and society. It is precisely the countries undergoing
transition from the old self-contained rural peasant world that are experi-
encing the most acute political disorder. Since European techniques and
aspirations have now penetrated to every country of the world, there are
very few if any remaining peasant societies living in premodern pattern
oblivious to the disruptive influences of Western civilization.
EXTERNAL VULNERABILITY OF METROPOLISES
It is easy to draw a quick and superficial conclusion that the things that
make a country effective in terms of internal organization (such as cen-
tralization in urban concentrations ) are precisely the things likely to make
it most vulnerable to modern warfare. Thus the existence of strong core
areas focused in metropolitan conurbations is associated with internal
stability, but this source of strength would seem to make the countries
concerned more vulnerable to air and atomic attack.
The problem is probably not so simple and certainly is as yet unsolved.
In the old days of slow military campaigns overland, the vulnerability of
metropolitan capitals and of core areas could be crucial. Except for the
largest countries this is less relevant now since the scope of warfare is so
broad that the population and industrial concentrations in the smaller
countries may be important only in relation to larger continental entities.
In other words, it is now not so much the national ecumene that counts
as the larger continental ecumene.
Again a nation with fewer urban centers may in fact be more vulnerable
than one with many. The degree and diversification of industry in such
countries as the United States and the U.S.S.R. is reflected in the existence
of a great many urban concentrations. While these concentrations contain
a relatively large percentage of total populations, they also represent
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 309
widely dispersed industrial strength. It is not at all clear that the United
Kingdom for example, with forty-two conurbations of over a hundred
thousand is actually more vulnerable to complete disorganization from
atomic attack than France with twenty-two.
C. Growth
WORLD POPULATION GROWTH
One of the most distinctive features of our age is the rapid multiplica-
tion of our species, homo sapiens.
The present growth of world population is unique in human history.
This can be painfully demonstrated from bits of historical evidence. A
little simple arithmetic will show it to be true. The present annual world
population growth is estimated at well over 30 million and perhaps as high
as 40 million a year. Had this amount of growth continued throughout the
Christian era, there would now be 6.8 billions of us rather than the actual
figure of about 2.6 billion. At the present rate of growth (which is esti-
mated to be at least 1.2 per year) the entire population of the globe would
be descended from a single couple living at the time of Christ. An Argen-
tinian demographer has carried the illustration to its logical conclusion:
if the population of two living in the Garden of Eden some six thousand
years ago had increased on the average of one per cent per year the pres-
ent human population would be so vast that it would have standing room
only, not just on the surface of the earth but on the surface of a sphere
with a radius fourteen times the orbit of the planet Neptune.
Obviously the amount of current population growth could never have
existed before; and the present rate of growth could have existed only in
brief periods of man's history.
Population growth affects political geography in two ways : ( 1 ) it never
is exactly the same in any two countries, hence the demographic bases of
political power are always changing; ( 2 ) it creates increased competition
for the scarce resources of the earth. The first views people as a source of
power and production, the second as consumers who must be fed. These
two influences often work against each other. A larger population may be
useful as a source of increased manpower. At the same time more people
mean more competition for scarce resources. Population growth may
cause a lower level of living than might be attained with a smaller popu-
lation.
In this section and the following one on Structure, we will deal with
population as a source of power. In another section, on Pressure, we will
310 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
consider measures of population pressure, and the extent to which it is a
real as against a rationalized cause of political conflict.
Population growth is often overlooked as a factor in redistribution of
political power because its course is steady, undramatic, and persistent
rather than immediate and self-evident. Yet in the longer sweep of history
different rates of population growth have been associated with major
changes in the distribution of world power. There has been an enormous
population growth in every major region of the world in the modern era,
but this growth has occurred very unequally among the several continents.
The expansion of world population between 1650 and 1950 is shown in
Table 9-2.
TABLE 9-2
World Population Growth, 1650-1950 *
( in Millions )
GROWTH
APPROXIMATE
1650
1950
1650-1950
MULTIPLIER
Asia
330
1320
990
4
j Europe
100
393
493
6
I U.S.S.R.
200
Africa
100
198
98
2
Latin America
12
165
153
14
North America
1
165
164
165
Oceania
2
13
11
6
World Total
545
2454
1909
A)i
* Figures for 1650 estimated by A. M. Carr-Saunders, World Population (Oxford, 1936), p. 42. Figures
for 1950 from United Nations Demographic Yearbook, 1953. All figures for 1650 and those for Asia and
Africa in 1950 are highly proximate.
Now, as in all previous epochs, Asia is the principal home of mankind.
In the three centuries of the modern era the Asian population has grown
by a billion people.
The dynamic demographic element in modern history, however, has
been the expansion of Europe.
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE
The population of the home continent has multiplied six times. In addi-
tion some 200 million persons of European extraction are living overseas.
The Europeans have thus multiplied some eight times in the past three
centuries. This represents an increase from about a hundred million in
1650 to approximately 800 million persons of European extraction living
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 311
in the world at the present time/' The population of European descent has
increased from less than one-fifth of the world's people in 1650 to one-
third in 1950.
The expansion of Europe relative to the rest of the world has not pro-
ceeded evenly throughout the modern era. In the broadest sense the
European settlement area comprises Europe, the Soviet Union, the Ameri-
cas, and Oceania. Growth in this half of the world may be compared with
Asia and Africa in which continents Europeans are nowhere a majority.
The comparative growth in these two areas is shown in Figure 9-5.
The population growth of Europe gained momentum in the late eight-
eenth century and after 1800 grew relatively much faster than in the rest
of the world. Between 1800 and 1920 the population of the European
settlement area gained markedly on that of Asia and Africa. Since 1920,
however, two things have happened: (1) the rates of growth in the Euro-
pean settlement area have slowed; (2) the populations of Asia and Africa
have taken a forward spurt.
Estimates made by United Nations experts for population growth in the
future suggest the continuation of these trends reversing those of the last
150 years. If anything, Asia- Africa will contain a rising share of the rapidly
increasing population projected for the next generation.
Let us examine the demographic expansion of Europe, and the signifi-
cance of the reversal of this trend that now seems in the offing.
Population growth of European peoples has been part and parcel of the
extension of European political and cultural hegemony in the world. The
population of Europe has expanded three ways :
5 The population of predominantly European descent in the world may be computed
as follows. In addition to the population of Europe west of the Soviet Union, approxi-
mately 165 million of the 200 million inhabitants of the U.S.S.R. in 1950 belonged to
nationalities commonly regarded as European. Of the remaining 35 million perhaps
the majority. live wholly or partly within the physical confines of Europe but are not
conventionally regarded as of European culture. The deduction of some 15 million
non-whites from the 165 million inhabitants of North America provides an estimate
of 150 million of European stock in that continent. There are somewhat over 10
million persons of European descent in Oceania.
It is impossible to set a precise figure to the number of persons of predominantly
European descent in Latin America. A generalization of careful analysis made in this
field indicates a rough division as follows: One-third 75 per cent or more white, one-
third mestizo, one-sixth Indian, and one-sixth Negroid, the latter including all persons
with identifiable Negroid blood. There are perhaps 5 million persons of European
descent living in Africa and Asia. Thus the European population of the world in 1950
may be summed up as follows: Europe, 393 million; U.S.S.R., 165 million; North
America, 150 million; Latin America, 55 million; Oceania, 10 million; Africa and Asia,
5 million. This provides an estimated world total of 778 million. In addition there are
some 70 million mestizos and mulattoes in the Americas and an unknown number
in Africa and Asia.
312 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
More Intensive Use of the Home Territory. The population of Europe
west of Russia has increased over 300 million since 1650. This expansion
reflects both more intensive agricultural settlement and more indus-
trialization.
It is often forgotten that much of Europe was still a frontier well into
the modern era. In Roman times only the Mediterranean littoral was fully
settled by modern standards. By the Middle Ages the line of mature agri-
cultural settlement had moved northward and westward to include France
and the low countries. But much of Germany and Eastern Europe re-
mained at an early stage of agricultural settlement; Northern Europe and
the Russian plain were still very thinly peopled. By the seventeenth cen-
tury the "frontier" had moved far to the east and into the remote north,
but there was still much unused land. Reclamation and settlement of these
lands contributed to the more rapid growth of northwest and eastern
Europe as compared with the Mediterranean countries.
Later, great commercial and industrial development enabled these re-
gions to gain political and economic leadership in Europe— an accession of
power made possible by the strengthening of the agricultural base and by
earlier increases of population attendant on the mature settlement of the
region.
The Settlement of the East. The domination of the Russian plain by the
Tatars was effectively crushed about the time of Columbus. The border,
or "Ukrain" moved forward into the rich black earth of the country so
named. From their forests around Moscow the Russians moved out across
the rich plains forbidden them earlier by their defenselessness against the
horsemen of Central Asia. There followed Russian feats of exploration
and settlement similar to those of the American West. Eastern Europe
was still being "settled" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
parts of European and Asiatic Russia even in the twentieth century. Large
sections of steppe-land in the North Caucasus and Central Asia were first
turned by the plow under the Communist regime. The eastward tide of
settlement in Russia paralleled our own "westward movement."
The eastward movement in Russia resulted in the settlement of enor-
mous areas by Europeans, areas now occupied by as many as a hundred
million of their descendants. The impetus has expanded the boundaries
of European influence effectively not only from the Don, which used to be
regarded as the eastward edge of Europe, to the Urals and the Caucasus
mountains, and beyond into Siberia and Central Asia. Much of Asiatic
Russia is still not effectively occupied by Europeans (or by any other
race).
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 313
The frontier psychology of the Soviet Union is probably one of the
factors which explain Soviet expansionism." One may find parallels in the
"manifest destiny" of the United States, so popular a phrase in American
expansion during the last century.7 But as in our own Western movement
the yearning for land is no longer so compelling as the exploitation of new
industries, of mining, and of forestry in the new regions.
The Settlement of Overseas Areas. Europeans have effectively occupied
(a) most of the habitable territory of North America north of the Rio
Grande, ( b ) the temperate zones of Latin America, including Argentina,
Uruguay, and Brazil south of the 20th parallel, (c) Australia and New
Zealand. White or mestizo populations are also in majority in most of
Latin America with two exceptions: first, the ancient Amerindian strong-
holds in the highlands of Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Paraguay; and sec-
ond, the British and French West Indies which were chiefly peopled from
Africa. Other than within the Russian orbit, Europeans have nowhere
colonized Asia unless Israel may be regarded as a European settlement.
Only in French North Africa and in South Africa are there substantial
footholds of European settlement on that continent. But in both cases
Europeans are greatly outnumbered. In French North Africa there are
about one and a half million as against approximately 18 million Moslems.
In the Union of South Africa there were 2.6 million Europeans in 1950
as against 10 million non-Europeans.
It would be idle to suggest that the relative expansion of European
peoples was in itself the explanation or the exclusive means of the exten-
sion of European civilization throughout the world. It is not always
certain which is cause and which is effect. Did population growth in
Europe both stimulate and enable the political expansion of Europe or
did the political expansion of Europe provide the means for the rapid
population growth of Europe? Both are undoubtedly true.
It is clear that the industrialization of Europe and its rapid population
growth was in part stimulated by access to raw materials and markets in
overseas countries. At the same time rapid population growth provided
both the sinews and the motives for colonization and imperialist expan-
sion. One thing is certain: the firmest influence of European expansion is
in those areas that were colonized and populated by persons of European
stock. The European civilization is now spreading very rapidly to all
people and to all parts of the world, but the most complete migration of
6 See the discussion of the Russian urge to the sea as a source of expansion, pp.
243 ff.
7 See pp. 10-12.
314 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
European culture to other continents has been in those areas colonized
by Europeans themselves.
POPULATION AND POWER IN EUROPE
The larger aspects of the expansion of European population have also
been reflected in the specific political history of the dominant countries
in the European continent and the European settlement area. In the fol-
lowing paragraphs, attention will be directed toward the demographic
base for the successive primacy in European settlement areas of France,
Germany, Britain, Russia, and the United States (cf. Fig. 9-3).
France. Much of the history of Europe between 1650 and 1800, re-
volves around France as the leading power of Europe. She was the
wealthiest and in many respects the most advanced country in Europe.
In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries France probably had
the largest population in Europe, not even excluding Russia, which now
has five times the population of France. This population served as a firm
basis for French hegemony in Europe and for the Napoleonic conquests.
But by 1800 Russia had passed France in population, and the massive
size and population of that country finally destroyed French hopes for
complete mastery of Europe.
The economic and political position of France in Europe has changed
enormously since 1800. One element in this change is the fact that France
now stands fifth rather than first in population size. She had been passed
by both Germany and the United States by 1870-1871 when she suffered
military defeat at the hands of the Germans; the United Kingdom passed
France around 1900, or if one includes the European population of the
Dominions, the British population surpassed the French about 1885; and
Italy passed France about 1930. In 1939 France had only 7.3 per cent of
Europe's people as compared with about 15 per cent in 1800.
Germany. The rise of Germany likewise has demographic foundations.
In the Napoleonic period, Germans lived in a Europe dominated not only
politically but also numerically by the French. As the result of the eco-
nomic development of Germany and the population increase made pos-
sible by this development, since the middle of the last century Germans
have become much the most numerous of the European peoples aside
from the Russians. As the largest single group, occupying a central posi-
tion in Europe, it is natural that the Germans should have sought to bring
the balance of political power into line with their growing numerical and
industrial importance. That this might have been achieved more effec-
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE
315
POPULATION GROWTH 1800-1949
MILLIONS OF INHABITANTS
200
150
100
80
60
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Fig. 9-3.
tively through peaceful rather than through warlike means is now unfor-
tunately beside the point.
By virtue of its more rapid natural increase and the Nazi annexation of
German-speaking areas, Germany in 1939 had 80 millions or twice the
population of France and a considerably larger population than that of
Britain.
Soviet Union. The populations of Eastern Europe have grown faster
than those of Western Europe. At an earlier period the large population
growth of this region was made possible by the fact that great areas were
then in the process of initial agricultural settlement, or, put in other terms,
in transition from a pastoral to a settled farm economy.
This agricultural settlement represented a superior form of land utiliza-
316 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
tion, and made possible the support of a far denser population than had
formerly existed. More recently the wave of material progress represented
by industrialization and an urban way of life has reached Eastern Europe
from its centers of origin in the West. In Russia the contrast of the old and
the new resulted in such severe stress on the old social order that it was
swept away and the new technical civilization was ushered in with an
impetus unexampled in history.
These developments have made possible rapid population increase such
as existed in Western Europe at an earlier period. Despite war and revo-
lution, which apparently cost Russia a total population deficit of 26 mil-
lions, including both deaths and loss of births, between 1900 and 1943
the population of the territory of the Soviet Union grew more rapidly than
that of Western Europe.
The very large total figure for the Soviet population conceals the cos-
mopolitan character of the Soviet Union, in which there are some seventy
official languages. Only comparatively recently, probably within the last
thirty years, has the Great Russian surpassed the German as the largest
linguistic group in Europe. The 1926 census of the Soviet Union reported
78 million persons of Great Russian ethnic group. At about the same time,
as reported in various national censuses, there were 85 million ethnic
Germans in Europe.
By 1939 there were reported to be 99 million persons of Great Russian
"nationality" as over against the 80 million inhabitants of the "Greater
Reich."
Today the German minorities of the East are liquidated. The two Ger-
manies together contain about 70 million: (50 in the Federal Republic,
18 in East Germany, and 2 in West Berlin). The U.S.S.R. now has about
200 million people of which slightly over half are Great Russians. The
demographic balance has clearly swung in favor of the latter. This is the
demographic basis for the eastward shift of power in Europe.
Thinking in terms of the European settlement area as a whole there has
of course also been a westward migration of people and power.
The United Kingdom. Allied to the demographic expansion of Germany
and of Northwest Europe has been that of Britain. Its growth has matched
and if anything exceeded that of the Germans. But much more of the
British population increase was drained off overseas; it established the
British Dominions and it contributed the largest element in the population
of the United States. While the United Kingdom has always had a smaller
population in its island home than that of the German-speaking areas of
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 317
Central Europe, this metropolitan population has been effectively bol-
stered in influence both by the tremendous resources of the Empire and
by the European population of the Dominions. If only the latter are con-
sidered as contributing to the demographic weight of the British popula-
tion, this nevertheless provides a demographic base comparable to that
of Germany. In 1939 this larger "British" population amounted to 70 mil-
lion and at the present time it has risen to 80 million and is thus more
numerous than the population of a united Germany.
The European and especially British populations that settled the United
States and the British Dominions increased even more rapidly in the new
environment than they did in the countries from which they came. It was
this rapid growth in the United States, even more than migration, that
brought about the enormous expansion of the American population. In
the early nineteenth century the average American woman surviving
through the childbearing period had eight children. It was this great fer-
tility that brought about an average growth of 25 per cent per decade
even when, as between 1800 and 1840, there was comparatively little
immigration from Europe.
No one can say what proportion of the American population is de-
scended from British stock, since there has been a wide mingling of
European nationalities. In 1940, ninety-three million or 71 per cent of the
population were estimated to be of European origin and of English mother
tongue, but this figure doubtless includes a great many persons wholly or
in part descended from other European stocks.
Through this rapid natural growth and by virtue of cultural assimilation
of other European and African nationalities, the world population of Eng-
lish mother tongue has grown from perhaps 20 million in 1800 to some
225 million, leaving aside the wide use of English as a language of com-
merce, government, and higher education by persons of other native
tongues. Whether in demographic or cultural terms this has been the
most phenomenal national expansion in modern times.
As is now widely recognized, the European population, and especially
that living in the heartlands of Western Europe, is not increasing as rap-
idly as it formerly did. As a result of the differential growth of the three
great divisions of the European settlement area, the mantle of political
supremacy has passed from the original homeland to the two great periph-
eral areas, one westward overseas and the other eastward in the great
land mass of the Eurasian plain. On the horizon is the prospective great
expansion of the Asian peoples.
318 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
In order to understand the basis for these great changes, both historical
and future, it is necessary to analyze the dynamics of human population.
These have followed a cycle of development that is sometimes called the
"Vital Revolution."
THE VITAL REVOLUTION
Accompanying the Industrial Revolution has been a profound change
in man's biological balance with his environment. In its initial phases this
has been the increasing ability of man to cope with the age-old scourges
of the four dread horsemen of the Apocalypse— famine, pestilence, war,
and death.
First, the establishment of national states imposed public order and
thereby greatly increased personal security from the dangers of civil
strife, personal vendettas, and deaths from such mundane incidents as
highway robbery, personal violence, and criminal negligence. Then the
state increasingly assumed responsibility for the welfare of its citizens-
through free public education, through elementary public health meas-
ures, and more recently through social security provisions and institutions.
These, as well as scientific advances, brought about the reductions in
deaths achieved in the more advanced countries of Western Europe dur-
ing the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
At the same time the agricultural and industrial revolutions provided
the basis for a rise in the level of living for the mass of the people. In
practical terms, this meant better nutrition, clothing, housing, and new
standards of personal cleanliness, all of which tended to reduce the death
rate. Finally and really very recently, medical research has found an-
swers to many serious diseases that could not previously be controlled by
the usual public health procedures.
Altogether these measures have made possible the doubling of the
average expectation of life at birth. For Europeans and Americans this
expectation is twenty years longer than in our grandparents' generation,
and forty years longer than in seventeenth century Europe. This is perhaps
the greatest material achievement of our civilization.
Recently in the more advanced countries of the world there has been
a parallel decline in the birth rate. But this decline in births has come
later than the reduction of deaths— hence the unique population growth
that is well-nigh universal today. It is natural that a decline in the birth
rate should follow rather than precede the decline of the death rate in
demographic evolution.
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 319
From time immemorial, human beings have had the strongest biologi-
cal, social, and even religious compulsions to "increase and multiply."
These compulsions have evoked persistently high birth rates throughout
the world. Such reproduction was costly in terms of human wastage,
since a large proportion of those born failed to achieve maturity. But high
birth rates were necessary if the race was to survive the perils of life in
previous ages.
The West. About one-third of the human race now exercises a substan-
tial degree of voluntary control of family size. In a number of European
countries this reduction of births had reached a point before World War
II at which many persons both in Fascist and in democratic countries
were becoming worried about the possibility of race suicide. The baby
boom following the war dispelled the fears that people, given the means
of voluntary control of family size, will necessarily fail to reproduce them-
selves. In fact, the wide fluctuations in the birth rate in the depression
years, during the war, and in the postwar period have concealed a rather
stable average family size in the West.
What matters in the long run, of course, is not the annual birth rate but
the size of completed families. Recent analysis of cohort fertility— the fer-
tility of women born in the same years and passing through life together
—has given us new methods for analyzing fertility trends. Among white
women born in the United States, in five-year periods beginning in 1900
and ending in 1925, the average number of children per woman has varied
only between 2.3 for the women born from 1905 to 1909 and a maximum
of 2.7 for those born from 1920 to 1924. The latter women of course have
not completed their normal childbearing years, but it is possible to make
reasonable estimates of their final fertility performance on the basis of
experience thus far. These data indicate that the actual size of American
families has not changed nearly as much as the annual birth rates might
suggest.
Similar studies in Britain suggest that the number of children per mar-
ried couple has remained remarkably stable over the last twenty-five years
at about 2.2 children per couple.
It would seem that the industrial West is moving toward a new and
more efficient reproduction in which low birth and death rates are
roughly balanced in a new demographic equilibrium. There is every
reason to suppose that the huge populations of the underdeveloped areas,
given the opportunity, will respond to the same incentives that have
brought about the reductions of births in the West. Neither ideology nor
320 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
great cultural barriers have stopped the decline of births in a country
once modern influences have reached the mass of the people. Let us illus-
trate this, first, from the experience of Russia, and second, from the expe-
rience of Japan.
The Soviet Union. The categorical anti-Malthusian doctrines of Com-
munism, backed by the most comprehensive pro-natal measures existing
in the world today, have apparently not been successful in checking very
rapid declines in the Russian birth rate since the war. Before World War
II the Russians were temporarily successful in checking the decline of
births resulting from abortion in the early 1930's. This success was
achieved by the simple expedient of closing down the free public abortion
clinics. Since the war, however, the supplements to family wages on be-
half of children and the "mother heroine medals" seem to have been in-
effective in stopping the spread of the small-family pattern.
According to its official statistics, the birth rate in the Soviet Union in
1955 was 25.6 per thousand population 8 as compared with 24.6 in the
United States. The Soviet figure represents a drastic decline from the
prewar figure of 38 per thousand. If adjustment is made for the concen-
tration of the Russian population in the young adult ages, the current
fertility in the U.S.S.R. must be substantially below that in the United
States.
Japan. The case of Japan also reveals the extent to which the small
family pattern may cross cultural barriers. Once Japan became predomi-
nantly urban and industrial, the traditional forces of Oriental familism and
ancestor worship apparently failed to retard the decline of the birth rate.
It is interesting to note that aside from fluctuations in the birth and death
rates associated with wars, the pattern of vital rates in Japan during the
last thirty-five years has very closely approximated the trend of birth and
death rates in England forty years earlier at a somewhat comparable stage
of industrialization. By 1954 the birth rate in Japan was 20.1, well below
that of the United States and rapidly approaching European levels.
The specific means used to restrict family size may differ from country
to country: in Ireland, through late marriage; in Western Europe, gener-
ally, by birth control; in Japan, by abortions, which Japanese experts
report now number over one million a year, despite growing efforts by the
Japanese government to introduce less drastic methods of family limi-
tation; and in Puerto Rico, and increasingly elsewhere, by post-partum
sterilization of women in hospitals, at the request of the women concerned
and generally following the delivery of their fourth or fifth child. Wher-
8 New York Times, June 7, 1956.
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 321
ever people have become literate, urbanized, and free of the debilitating
psychological and physical effects of the major epidemic diseases, the
birth rate has declined.
DEMOGRAPHIC STAGES
How are these differing stages in the Vital Revolution actually reflected
in population trends in the world today? In its analysis of this problem the
UN has delineated five demographic types, illustrated in Figure 9-4. The
first of these includes those countries in which both fertility and mortality
are low. In Western Europe, rates of population growth are now
generally under one per cent per year and the lowest for any major
region of the world. English-speaking countries overseas are included in
this category, but their higher fertility and higher rates of growth, ranging
from 1.5 to 2 per cent per year, suggest that these countries are some-
what different from those of Western Europe.
Type 2 includes those areas where the birth rate has now definitely
begun to decline. The death rate is now low in these regions. This situa-
tion is characteristic of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and temperate
South America. Rates of population growth in these countries range be-
tween 1.5 and 2 per cent— that is to say, somewhat lower than in type 3.
Type 3 includes those countries that have not moved so far in the
demographic transition. In these areas, which chiefly include tropical
America and South Africa, birth rates remain very high but death rates
are now at fairly low levels. These areas are experiencing the most rapid
growth observable in the world today, generally over 2 per cent per
year.
Type 4 includes those areas in which mortality, though still high, is
being reduced, while fertility remains at high primitive levels. This type
characterizes the Middle East, the Arab world, and most of South and
East Asia. In these areas population growth is now 1 to 2 per cent
per year and rising as deaths are increasingly brought under control by
cheap and elementary public health measures.
Type 5, characterized by primitive levels of high fertility and high
mortality, is now largely restricted to the native population of black
Africa. Not long ago in human history, this was the typical demographic
situation of mankind. But even in this region there is a considerable im-
pact of the influences bringing about the Vital Revolution, especially as
regards reduction of deaths.
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POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE
WORLD POPULATION GROWTH - ACTUAL 16501950
AND UNITED NATIONS MEDIUM ESTIMATES 1950-1980
323
MILLIONS OF INHABITANTS
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Fig. 9-5.
FUTURE POPULATIONS
What do these different trends mean in terms of future populations?
For this purpose we may use recent forecasts prepared by the Popula-
tion Division of the United Nations relating to the period 1950 to 1980.
Figure 9-5 is intended to give historical perspective illustrating the mo-
mentum and acceleration of absolute population growth in the world and
324
HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
POPULATION GROWTH IN THE WORLD AND ITS MAJOR
REGIONS-ACTUAL 1920-1950 AND UNITED NATIONS
MEDIUM ESTIMATES 1950-1980
MILLIONS OF INHABITANTS
4,000
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Fig. 9-6.
its two great subdivisions: Asia-Africa and the European settlement area,
which includes Europe and the U.S.S.R., the Americas and Oceania. Since
1650 there has been a great expansion of the European population. In
some periods this has exceeded even the absolute amount of growth in
Asia and Africa, but the latter area has never lost its clear predominance
in numbers. Current and foreseeable trends will widen this predominance.
The extent of this divergence will depend much on the situation in
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 325
China. Until very recently it was generally accepted that the population
of China was under 500 million and that it was growing little if at all. The
United Nations estimates incorporate this assumption in their forecasts.
But recent reports from the first modern census in China, taken in 1953,
indicate a population of not 500 million but close to 600 million increasing
at 2 per cent per year. If these latter figures for China were used in the
projections, the world estimate for 1980 would be close to 4 billion rather
than the 3.6 billion shown on this chart.
Figure 9-6 shows the United Nations forecasts in greater detail, this
time on a logarithmic scale in which parallel lines indicate equal rates of
growth, rather than equal amounts of increase.
All regions are growing and will continue to grow, barring a major
catastrophe. It is natural that demographic evolution should have pro-
ceeded furthest in Western Europe, the birthplace of modern industrial
civilization. But despite somber predictions made a decade ago no popu-
lation decline in Europe is yet in prospect. In fact there is some suggestion
that the very appearance of decline, as in France before the war, will
bring about reactions in public policy and private attitudes sufficient to
restore a moderate rate of growth. France today has one of the highest
reproduction rates in Europe.
Eastern Europe is the one major region in which the demographic
losses of World War II are clearly discernible in the population curve. If
very recent information on the rapidity of the birth rate decline in the
U.S.S.R. and the satellite countries is accurate the United Nations fore-
casts for this area are too high.
In overseas Europe— in the United States, in Canada, in Australasia, and
in temperate zones of South America— population growth is still rapid and
above the world average. While present growth rates may not be main-
tained, we may expect continued growth at a less rapid pace, both from
immigration and from the excess of births over deaths.
Latin America is the most rapidly growing major region. It is now sur-
passing America north of the Rio Grande in population. Even with an
orderly demographic evolution on the pattern of Europe, it will have very
rapid increase over the next generation. To the extent that weight of
numbers contributes to regional importance, Latin America will play a
growing role in world affairs.
But the biological fate of the species will be decided in Asia, which
now, as throughout recorded history, is the principal home of the human
race. Only catastrophe will prevent an enormous growth of population in
Asia, a growth that is gaining momentum with each new success in public
326 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
health. This is both necessary and desirable. However, the most rapid
present and potential growth often is in areas least well endowed in terms
of physical and cultural resources to meet the needs of an expanding
population.
The United Nations forecasts a population of two billion in Asia in 1980
or 2.3 billion if we adjust for the new reports of population growth in
China. We have already mentioned that almost 600 million people in
China are now reported to be growing at the rate of 2 per cent or about
12 million persons, per year, the difference between the reported birth
rate of 37 and the reported death rate of 17 per thousand population.
WAR AND FUTURE POPULATIONS
Finally, it must be evident that the above forecasts ignore the possibility
of a major war. While we may not care to think of war as a "normal"
phenomenon, it certainly is a possibility within the time span covered by
these projections.
The demographic impact of modern war has been greatly exaggerated
in the popular imagination. While war losses of the two World Wars
seriously reduced selected populations, their impact was temporary and
local, viewing the world as a whole. Their impact was negligible in retard-
ing the forward march of world population growth. Aside from the single
case of Eastern Europe one would have to look very closely on the two
charts to detect any effects of the two World Wars.
This does not in any way minimize the personal tragedy or horror of
war. It merely reflects the fact that the social and biological forces leading
to world population growth represent basic and powerful forces that were
only very temporarily checked by the two World Wars.
Another war, fought with the arsenal of horrible new weapons, might
be far more disastrous to the species. But only about 5 per cent of the
world's population lives in its sixty-odd urban agglomerations of over one
million inhabitants. The destruction of all our major cities would not
directly destroy a large part of the human race. For that matter four or
five normal years of world population growth would completely replace
the population of the United States and six years that of the Soviet Union.
These remarks are not intended to be comforting— only to put the prob-
lem of human survival in its proper perspective.
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 327
D. Structure
The previous discussions have emphasized the importance of changing
numbers. It is obvious that numbers alone will not determine demographic-
influences on national power. Obviously, populations differ in their age
composition, degree of education, occupations, and other characteristics
that will determine their per capita effectiveness in contributing to na-
tional power.
Figures 9-7, 8 and 9 present a comparison of age structures in countries
representing different stages in demographic evolution. These charts are
called "age pyramids" because of their characteristic shape.
The age pyramids of any country reflect all the things that have hap-
pened to its population for the past eighty years or more. The broadly
based youthful population of India reflects both its high birth rate and its
high death rate. Many children are born, but in the past, at least, these
were rapidly decimated. Few survived to the upper age groups.
The age pyramid of the Soviet Union would reflect, in addition to birth
and death rates, the drastic effects of war. The scars of war are obvious
both in the deficits of men among survivors of military age at the time of
conflict, and even more poignantly in the small numbers of the age
groups born during war and revolution. But the high Russian birth rate
has in the past quickly repaired such losses.
This is not happening in the United Kingdom and other Western Euro-
pean countries, however, where each succeeding group reaching age 15,
20, and so on, is smaller than the one that preceded it. In other words, the
reservoir from which Western countries draw military manpower is reced-
ing, whereas in the Soviet Union, despite estimated direct war losses of
fourteen million persons, there is a growing force of young military man-
power.
In the West the situation will be changed when the children of the
postwar baby boom reach military age. Furthermore the large drop in the
birth rate that apparently has occurred in the Soviet Union will begin to
be felt about the same time.
Consequently, present trends in military manpower heavily favor the
Soviet Union in relation to the West. Trends ten to fifteen years hence
may not.
A comparison of the composition of the population of several important
countries is presented in Table 9-3. It may be noted that there is only a
M£
INDIA - 1931
80*
||
75-80
1
70-75
15-70
i
MALE
SBJI §JB
FEMA
to- OS
55-60
50-55
45-50
40-45
35-40
30-35
25-30
'>
20-25
15-20
10-15
'
5-10
0-5.
1
1
i !
» 4
i :
1 2
1 i
1!
0 1
i
!
1 *
1 !
i (
1
' 8
il
PERCENT
).«.
Fig. 9-7. India: Composition of Population.
AGE
JAPAN -
1940
80 +
m ill
75-80
70-75
65-70
M A L E
F
E M A L E
60-65
55-60
;
50-55
45-50
40-45
•
35-40
30-35
25-30
20-25
15-20
10-15
5-10
■il-
—
ii
4 3 2 1 0 12 3 4 5 6 7 I
PERCENT
Fig. 9-8. Japan: Composition of Population.
328
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE
329
AGE
UNITED
K
1 N G DOM
-
1 948
80*
75-80
70-75
65-70
i_ .
MALE
w .
FEMALE
60-65
55-60
50-55
45-50
40-45
35-40
30-35
1
25-30
20-25
i
15-20
10-15
5-
0-5
m
1
8 1
(
!
i
:
;
■
ii
0
i :
i i
i i
i
5
! 8
PERCENT
idf
Fig. 9-9. United Kingdom: Composition of Population.
general correlation between the relative size of total populations and the
size of the groups most important to military strength.
Because of their low birth rates during the depression years the United
States and Western Europe have relatively small contingents of males in
the most crucial military age groups at the present time. Thus while the
total population of the Soviet Union is not very much greater than the
combined total population of the four chief Western European powers,
the number of males 15 to 24 in the Soviet Union is 5 million larger.
While the Soviet population is only about 20 per cent larger than that
of the United States, it has far more men at the young military ages.
On the other hand, the labor force in the Western countries is roughly
proportionate to the total population. The West is therefore better off in
terms of industrial manpower than it is in terms of prime military man-
power. Furthermore its labor force is utilized primarily in non agricultural
occupations. Despite very rapid industrialization, the Soviet population is
still almost half agricultural. In the modern world, agricultural population
contributes very little to the industrial potential of the country. It has
value as a source of military manpower but this in turn is limited by the
capacity of the economy to equip and support soldiers in the field. Defen-
sively, of course, a large agricultural population may be difficult to con-
330 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
quer and administer. This latter function has proved a decisive one on
some occasions, as Russia has proven in its resistance to both the Napole-
onic and Hitler invasions and as China has demonstrated in its resistance
to Japan.
Another aspect of the labor force potential is the labor reserves that
may be drawn upon in an emergency. There are three types of labor re-
serves: the unemployed, housewives, and the underemployed, particularly
in agriculture. To carry our comparison of Western Europe and the U.S.S.R.
further, it may be said that the Western coutries have greater reserves of
the first two categories but far less of the third. Despite great economic
activity there is still some unemployment in Western Europe, but except
in Italy this is not large in relation to the total labor force potential.
The most flexible part of the labor reserve is women. In all countries
men in the age group from 15 to 59 are almost all gainfully occupied. On
the other hand many women of this age group in all countries are of
course occupied as homemakers. In the Soviet Union there has been great
pressure for all women not actually caring for small children to enter the
labor force. About two-thirds of Soviet women at ages 15 to 59 are in the
labor force. There is little flexibility left for gaining woman-power in the
labor force in a national emergency.
By contrast, Western countries have a very substantial reserve in women
not now gainfully occupied. The proportion in the labor force is much
less; in the United States only 30 per cent of women at ages 15 to 59 are
in the labor force. Obviously many more than in Russia could be drawn
upon in an emergency, as they were in the United States during the last
world war.
The third element in labor reserve— the underemployed in agriculture-
is much greater in the Soviet Union than in the West. In a few Western
countries such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal, there is a substantial reserve
of agricultural underemployment but nothing to compare with the Soviet
Union and with Eastern Europe generally. The East has enormous re-
serves of farmers inefficiently employed in agricultural work who form a
continuing reserve of labor for future industrialization in these areas.
These illustrative comparisons should not be given too great weight in
themselves. A large population size, a large military manpower, a large
and highly skilled working force are the conditions and not in themselves
the fact of political power. To these ingredients must be added organiza-
tion, morale, and motivation to make this potential strength kinetic.
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 331
TABLE
9-3
Manpower Comparisons, Selected Countries, 1956 *
(Rounded to
Millions)
TOTAL
POPU-
POPU-
LATION
MALES
LABOR FORCE
NON-
AGRI-
LATION
15-59
15-24
TOTAL
AGRIC.
CULTURAI-
United States
168
96
11
70
64
7
Western European Powers
195
120
14
89
67
21
United Kingdom
51
31
3
23
22
1
France
44
26
3
21
15
6
Italy
49
31
4
22
13
9
Western Germany
51
32
4
23
18
5
U.S.S.R.
200
127
19
86
49
37
* Data for the United States and the Western European powers compiled and adapted from census and
official estimates of the countries concerned. Figures for the U.S.S.R. were derived from official Soviet data
by the U. S. Bureau of the Census, Office of Foreign Manpower Research. The labor force figures for the
U.S.S.R. apparently exclude several millions in the armed services, in labor camps, in domestic service, in
the party apparatus, and in certain other categories that would be included in Western countries.
E. Pressure
THE GROWING POPULATION IN A SHRINKING WORLD
In previous chapters it has been noted that, geographically speaking,
we live in a shrinking world. Modern transport and communication are
cutting down the real distance, measured in travel time and cost, between
the several parts of the globe.
Demographically speaking, the opposite is the case: we live in a rapidly
expanding world. One of the most distinctive features of our age is this
rapid multiplication of our species in all parts of the world.
At the same time hope is being held out that the human race as
a whole, not just a single class or master race, can be freed from the degra-
dation of grinding poverty and needless suffering. This hope is justified
by technical achievements and by the rising capacity to produce. Prob-
ably the cornucopia-minded are correct in asserting that the world could
meet these expectations for its present numbers. But a large part of the
economic gains must each year be diverted to provide new places at the
world's table rather than to improve the fare of those already here.
The "world population problem" turns out on inspection to be a series
of regional and national problems. Much more important than the total
resources theoretically available in the world are the specific resources
available in relation to the populations of specific countries and regions.
In fact even here the oft-discussed framework of the relation of people
to resources offers a somewhat inadequate statement of the problem.
332 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Quite as important as physical resources in relation to population are the
crucial intervening variables that determine how effectively such re-
sources are used and converted to meet population needs. The factors of
technology, social organization, and especially political stability are quite
as important in determining levels of living as the stock of physical re-
sources.
The greatest population pressure, and the greatest growth potential, lie
in the area sometimes described as Monsoon Asia, that is, non-Soviet Asia
from Pakistan east to Japan. Following is a case study of the problem of
people versus resources in that crucial area.
MONSOON ASIA
Half the world lives in Monsoon Asia— the poorer half. By Western
standards the overwhelming majority of the population of this region live
in unrelieved poverty. If sheer poverty is a measure of overpopulation, the
entire area is desperately overpopulated. But the relationship between
people and resources is not a simple one.
Measures of Population Pressure. Population pressure is not fully
measured by "man-land ratios." These leave out a vitally important middle
factor— the effectiveness with which available resources are utilized. In
the broadest sense this is determined by the cultural development of the
people— their motivations, their organization, and their skills. Low pro-
ductivity may reflect either population pressure or backward technology.
In Asia it undoubtedly reflects both. It is difficult to isolate the impact of
limited resources and to measure population pressure per se.
Population pressure should be felt most acutely in the production of
absolute essentials, and notably food. Figure 9-10 gives some measure of
the prewar relationships between people, land, and food production in
Asia as compared with other parts of the world. Asia was obviously
heavily populated in relation to arable land. In Eastern Asia (China,
Korea, and Japan ) there was available only half an acre of cultivated land
per person. Southern Asia was somewhat better off with .8 of a cultivated
acre per person. In these terms Southern Asia was in a slightly better
position than Western Europe but was at a serious disadvantage in rela-
tion to other parts of the world, particularly North America.
The different intensity of agriculture leads to quite a different compari-
son in terms of original calories per acre. Here Asia makes a much better
showing, albeit inferior to that of Western Europe. Asia produces sub-
stantially more per acre than does the extensive agriculture of North
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE
333
PEOPLE, LAND, AND FOOD PRODUCTION
North
Western
East
South
America
Europe
Asia
Asia
Acres Cultivated Per Person
total population
Llll— IlLlMlll
farm population
0.7
2.7
0.5
• — >
I
ml 0.7
a
0.8
i i
I |
1.2
Original Calories Per Acre
2,500
Original Calories Per Person
total population
7,500
5,500
—
3,600
JBL10.000
farm population
m hb m m m
tl ri :: H r:
n S m m m
L5.250
.2,750
S Ki BB Hi H DUB
giiii is s
iH JflB. JfflJH. JBL5 0,000 JHJH.20,000 J|4,000
Fig. 9-10. People, Land, and Food Production.
1.2,900
JH.4,350
W.
America and the U.S.S.R., but, in the case of Southern Asia, less than half
as much as Western Europe.
The most significant comparison is the output in relation to the popula-
tion, and especially to the population in agriculture. Despite intensive
agriculture, per capita productivity falls very far short of that in other
parts of the world. This is true even in relation to Western Europe, where
the crude relationships of people to cultivated land might indicate as
acute a problem of overpopulation as in Asia.
The comparative productivity of persons in agriculture is particularly
334 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
striking. In North America and in Western Europe only 20 to 25 per cent
of the population is required to produce the high per capita food produc-
tion indicated in Figure 9-10. In Asia it requires the efforts of 70 per cent
of the population to produce a much lower food output. Output per farm
person in the United States is ten times that in Asia. Even in Western
Europe, per capita production is five times greater than in East Asia.
The data of Figure 9-10 suggest various quantitative measurements of
"overpopulation." For example, if the United States ratio of people to
land were taken as standard, 80 to 90 per cent of the Asian population
could be regarded as surplus (i.e., would have to be eliminated to achieve
a United States relationship of people to cultivated land). By the more
relevant West European standards of per capita output of the farm popu-
lation, up to four-fifths of the agricultural population in Asia could be
regarded as surplus and available for nonfarm employment. Judged by
standards prevailing in other parts of the world, even in Western Europe,
Asia has an enormous surplus rural population numbering perhaps six
hundred million. This is a population greater than that of Europe and the
Soviet Union combined.
The Deterioration in Consumption Levels. Trends in population and
production over the past three decades have tended to widen rather than
to close these vast differentials in levels of living between Asia and the
Western world. Thus, prewar per capita consumption of rice apparently
declined in much of Monsoon Asia between the 1920's and the 1930s.
These declines are estimated to have amounted to 5 per cent in Japan,
7 per cent in India, 8 per cent in Java, and over 10 per cent in the Philip-
pines, Korea, Formosa, and Burma.9 They were partly attributable to the
special depression conditions of the 1930's and partly to the substitution
of less favored grains. But in most cases production did not fall; it simply
did not keep pace with population growth.
Prewar and postwar comparisons indicate a further deterioration in the
per capita consumption of food in the majority of Asiatic countries, again
attributable to population growth rather than to production declines. By
contrast, average diets in North and South America have undoubtedly
improved and in Western Europe prewar levels are being gradually re-
gained.
It would almost certainly seem that Asian countries would be better off
as regards food consumption if they had substantially smaller populations.
9 V. D. Wickizer and M. K. Bennett, The Rice Economy of Monsoon Asia (Food
Research Institute, Stanford University, 1941), Ch. 10.
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 335
Even given the existing backward agricultural technology in most parts of
Eastern Asia, the populations would certainly be much better fed if there
were, say, one acre of cultivated land per person instead of only half an
acre. Taking Asian countries as a whole and in terms of existing technol-
ogy and land utilization, all are certainly overpopulated— overpopulated
in the sense that the level of living would be higher if there were fewer
people, other conditions remaining the same.
Possibilities of Increased Production. Fortunately we may hope that
other conditions will not remain the same. To say that an area is vastly
overpopulated is not to say that levels of living cannot be raised or the
pressure of population ameliorated through better use of resources.
The history of Japan is particularly illuminating in this regard, since
Japan is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and bv
many objective criteria (for example, ratio of population to arable land)
the most overpopulated country. The very rapid population growth occur-
ring in Japan prior to the war was not accompanied by deterioration of
consumption levels. During the interwar period of rapid population
growth the available food supply per head of population increased in
quantity and quality more than at any other period in Japanese history.10
It is true that Japan was importing rice from the colonies and that special
circumstances favored Japan in its early period of industrialization. On
the other hand, Japan showed a rather remarkable capacity to meet the
food demands of its increased population despite very limited natural
resources.
Other Asian countries may not have the great advantages earlier en-
joyed by Japan in being able to find a market for industrial goods and
ready sources of food imports. On the other hand, within all of these
countries there are large unexploited areas which remain uncultivated
owing to such factors as lack of capital, ignorance of means of effective
utilization, and political instability. Thus, in India and China there are
substantial areas not under the plow that would be productive with
proper irrigation. In the three countries of mainland Southeast Asia
(Burma, Thailand, and Indo-China) the densely populated river deltas
are surrounded by large unexploited regions, substantial portions of
which are suitable for various types of agriculture. In Indonesia, over-
populated Java is surrounded by thinly settled outer islands that could
unquestionably support several times their present inhabitants.
10 E. B. Schumpeter, et. al., The Industrialization of Japan and Manchukuo, 1930-
1940 (New York, 1940).
336 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Furthermore, a comparison of rice yields in Japan and other Asian
countries suggests the practical possibilities of better farm practices.
Though the soil of Japan is apparently not intrinsically better for rice
culture than in other major producing areas, the yields are very much
larger. Japanese yields of 35 to 40 bushels of cleaned rice per acre may be
compared with 25 in China and Formosa, 20 in Korea, and about 15 in
India, Burma, Thailand, and Java. Higher Japanese yields are reported
to be chiefly attributable to the use of better seeds and to the effective
utilization of both industrial and organic fertilizers.
Or let us assume that through technological progress Asia were to
achieve Western European productivity per acre. In East Asia such an
achievement would increase production in that area by more than one-
third and would feed two hundred million more people at present con-
sumption levels. In South Asia the achievement of West European output
per acre would double production.
Thus, as compared with the United States and even West Europe, Asia
has a huge surplus farm population. But given improvements in farm
practices enabling the same intensity of agricultural production as in West
Europe or Japan, Asia could greatly increase her food output.
Recent Population Growth. Population pressure in Monsoon Asia is not
the result of outstandingly rapid growth in this region. Historically the
growth of European populations has been much more rapid. But while
the latter has tended to decline, the population growth of Asia has tended
to accelerate.
In the recent past, rates of growth have ranged from little or no growth
estimated for China to 2 to 2.5 per cent per year in Formosa, the Philip-
pines, and other areas undergoing especially effective public health meas-
ures. More typical of Monsoon Asia, however, is the annual rate of growth
in prepartition India at 1.4 per cent between 1931 and 1941. Between 1937
and 1947 the annual growth rate of Monsoon Asia (without China) was
1.2 per cent. This may be compared with .7 per cent during the same
period in Western Europe, 1.1 in North America, about 1.5 per cent in
Africa, and about 2 per cent in Latin America.
In Monsoon Asia (aside from Japan) the controlling factor in popula-
tion growth has been the death rate. The annual birth rate is consistently
high, ranging between 35 and 45 per thousand in all countries.11
11 As compared with 25 in the United States, 16 in the United Kingdom, 22 in Japan
(all 1953). Official data for several of the Asiatic countries show much lower rates
(India 25 in 1952), but there is ample evidence that these reflect failure to report a
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 337
In "normal" years there is an excess of births over deaths; historically
this surplus was periodically wiped out by famines, epidemics, and war.
In areas recently under European, American, or Japanese tutelage these
periodic disasters have been progressively reduced with resultant rapid
population growth. But even "normal" death rates in these areas remain
high as compared to current standards in the United States. There is
present a large "growth potential" realizable through further declines in
the death rate.
Factors Affecting Future Population Changes. The Potential Saving of
Lives. As in the West, declines in mortality in Asia preceded declines in
fertility. Great improvement in most countries of the region has been
achieved in the control of the acute and chronic contagious diseases, and
great further achievements are possible with comparatively little effort.
The possibilities in this regard under varying circumstances are illus-
trated by such experiences as those in the Philippines and Formosa,
where prewar achievements in reducing the death rate were largely the
result of external initiative; in Japan, where great progress was made at
native initiative; and in postwar Ceylon and Japan, where startling reduc-
tions in mortality have been accomplished chiefly through the broadcast
use of the new insecticides.12 Where progress in public health has been
slow or negative, the explanation is to be found in ineffective government
or political disturbance ( as in China, Indonesia, and French Indo-China ) .
major proportion of the births. Following are more reliable vital rates and comparison
with Italian and United States data:
Vital Rates Per 1000 Population
COUNTRY
YEAR
BrRTH
DEATH
NATURAL INCREASE
China
1953
37 a
17 a
20 a
India
1931-41
45 b
31"
14 b
Ceylon
1953
39
11
28
Malaya
1953
44
12
31
Formosa
1953
45
9
36
Japan
1953
22
9
12
Italy
1953
17
10
7
United States
1953
25
10
15
a As reported from a sample survey in Communist China (apparently not including areas affected by
floods).
b Estimated from census data.
12 In Ceylon the death rate per thousand population was cut from 22.0 in 1945
to 12.6 in 1949 and 10.9 in 1953 (chiefly through destruction of insect carriers with
DDT). In Japan the death rate has been cut from prewar 17.0 (1937) to 11.6 in
1949, and 8.9 in 1953, with an annual saving of some 600,000 lives.
338 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Such reliable evidence as does exist indicates ( 1 ) that death rates are
progressively declining in most of the areas, aside from reversals occa-
sioned by war and political disturbances, and (2) that the tempo of
decline is speeding up. There is no case of general upward trend in mor-
tality as a result of inadequate nutrition and overpopulation, despite the
fact that the per capita consumption in several of the countries seems to
be substantially lower than before the war. The average food supply
seems to be somewhat lower but it is better distributed.
It may be argued that people are being saved from disease only to die
from famine. But this point has demonstratively not yet been reached and
it seems probable that in the near future it will not be reached.
Theoretically, increasing the death rate might be an effective means of
reducing the rate of population growth and the pressure of population on
the land. But only wars and internal upheavals may conceivably have this
effect, which would be temporary in nature.
Will the Birth Rate Decline? So far as may be determined on the basis
of inadequate statistical evidence, birth rates throughout the region are
high— as high or perhaps higher than those prevailing in Europe and
America a century ago. In Asia as in other parts of the world, high and
uncontrolled fertility is an accompaniment of poverty, ignorance, and
subsistence agriculture. There is no reason to suppose that this high fer-
tility represents a native or racial characteristic, or that Asians would not
be responsive to the same influences that brought about declines in the
birth rate in Western countries. The difference is that, with the single and
very important exception of Japan, large Asian populations have not been
exposed to these influences. In the twenty years preceding World War II,
the pattern of decline in the Japanese birth rate was almost identical with
that experienced in Great Britain between 1880 and 1900, when that
country was at a somewhat comparable period of industrialization and
economic development. Similar declines in the birth rate have been noted
among urban and middle class groups in India. While conservative influ-
ences are antagonistic to regulation of births in Asia, up to the present
time there does not appear to be any major overt and doctrinal religious
opposition.
Declining birth rates have usually been regarded as exclusively linked
with industrialization and urbanization. If this were true there would be
little expectation of declining birth rates in those large sections of Asia
where early industrialization does not appear feasible. However, an in-
spection of Western experience shows that the birth rate also tends to
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 339
decline with education and literacy even in the absence of industrializa-
tion. In Europe declines in the birth rate have been as closely correlated
with literacy as with urbanization.13 If this also proves to be true of Asia, it
is entirely possible that declines in the birth rate may be experienced even
before extensive industrialization.
The European and Japanese experience, and the fragmentary evidence
for certain groups in other Asian countries, suggest that in time the birth
rate will tend to fall in Asia and that the tempo of this decline will be
in proportion to the rapidity of general economic and social progress on
the Western pattern. However, we face the paradox that the first effects
of modernization are to increase rather than decrease the rate of growth,
because declines in the death rate precede those in the birth rate. This
seems to be a necessary transitional stage. Controlled fertility apparently
seems to be a part of the same complex of cultural factors that result in
greater economic production. Anything convincing people that they can
control their environment rather than accept it fatalistically will probably
induce a lower birth rate.
Possibilities for Emigration. A superficially reasonable method of reliev-
ing population pressure is emigration. This was one answer of Europe to
the problem and resulted in the emigration of some sixty million Euro-
peans overseas. But, even in the exceptionally favorable situation prevail-
ing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emigration was a real
solution of population pressure only in certain smaller countries and re-
gions, such as Ireland, Scotland, and Norway.
Contemporary Asia finds herself in a very different position from
Europe in the last three centuries. The desirable empty spaces of the world
are already occupied or controlled by countries who would resist the im-
migration of large numbers of Asians.
Furthermore, there are many times as many Asians as there were Euro-
peans during the periods of great overseas colonization. Monsoon Asia has
a natural increase at the present time of at least ten million persons per
year. There are no outlets for Asiatic emigration capable of absorbing
even a very small fraction of this increase by peaceful means. Even if
other parts of the world were to absorb these huge numbers, there is no
assurance but that their places would be almost immediately taken by
more rapid increase of the population at home. While a certain amount
13 The birth rate is low in almost wholly rural countries, such as Bulgaria and the
Baltic countries, where literacy is relatively high (cf. Dudley Kirk, Europe's Popula-
tion in the Interwar Years [League of Nations, 1946], Ch. IV, p. 248).
340 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
of emigration from Asia would be desirable for various reasons, it will
have symbolic rather than actual value in solving Asia's problem of over-
population.
On the other hand, much may be expected from internal redistribution
of population, especially in Southeast Asia, where there remain large areas
suitable for agricultural exploitation.
The Outlook for the Next Decade. With a modicum of peace we may
anticipate declining death rates in the region. In all probability these will
not be matched in the earlier stages by declining birth rates. In the ab-
sence of serious political disturbances the populations of this region may
be expected to increase 1.5 to 2.5 per cent per year, with a general tend-
ency for the rate of growth to increase. Under optimum conditions, eco-
nomic production must be increased by about 2 per cent per year merely
to maintain the increasing population at existing levels.
The handicap of population growth to economic progress may be illus-
trated by reference to India and Pakistan. If the population of the Indian
subcontinent grows as fast between 1950 and 1960 as it did between 1931
and 1941 and between 1941 and 1951 (15 per cent) it will rise from the
present 425 million to about 490 million. This would represent an increase
of 31 per cent over the prewar 1937 population.
In a carefully weighed study of the problem, Burns estimates that rice
yields per acre could be increased by 30 per cent and other crops cor-
respondingly.14 But it would require all of this gain in the next decade
merely to regain the per capita consumption of the thirties. To regain the
production (and consumption) levels of the twenties would require an
additional 10 per cent increase in production in the next decade, whether
through higher yields per acre or through cultivation of new lands. A pro-
duction increase of some 40 per cent by 1960 is necessary merely to match
population growth and recapture ground lost in the past thirty years.15
On the brighter side of the picture is the example of Japan, which illus-
trates the possibility of doubling or even tripling food output through
improved farm practices. While such goals are scarcely realizable in a
decade, they hold out the possibility that even a rapidly growing popula-
tion can be supplied with an improved diet.
To the extent that Asia is successful in promoting improved levels of
living, there will initially be even more rapid population growth. But
14 Burns, Technological Possibilities of Agricultural Development in India (Lahore,
1944).
15 These figures may be pessimistic owing to the possibility that crop reporting
in recent years somewhat underestimates actual production.
POPULATION GROWTH AND PRESSURE 341
there is the hope that such rising levels of living will eventually be ac-
companied by declining birth rates and a smaller rate of growth. This is
the humane solution. No matter what the rate of technological and eco-
nomic progress, if the population of Asia continued to grow at the rates
current and likely for the near future, population would inevitably over-
take the means of subsistence and would result in a catastrophe.
THE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF POPULATION PRESSURE
The above analysis has not been optimistic. Even with the most hopeful
forecasts of economic development there is no prospect whatsoever that
the crowded populations of Asia can in this generation match Western
levels of living. Yet this level is dangled in front of all underprivileged
people as the proper standard of material life. Understandably they desire
to achieve this standard and unwittingly we have encouraged them to
aspire to it.
It is also only human nature that both leaders and citizens of the under-
developed areas will attribute their difficulties in attaining the Western
standard of living not to their own defects but to the fact that they have
been deprived access to the territories and natural resources which West-
ern people have appropriated for their own. Regardless of either the ethics
or the logic of the situation, it seems almost certain that the human mass
of the crowded areas of the world will regard this deprivation as unjust,
and hence valid grounds for militant claims for more territory. This will
be given further animus by the color prejudice to which they have been
subjected during their colonial periods.
It seems a safe prognostication that population pressure both real and
imagined will be a vital factor in the relations between the new Asian
countries and the West.
At the same time, population growth in these countries consumes eco-
nomic product that otherwise could be directed to better economic devel-
opment. In a world where an average annual gain of 3 per cent in the
national product is regarded as very large, the handicap of providing for
an annual growth of up to 2 per cent or more in the population may mean
the difference between success and failure— the difference between suc-
cess and failure not only in the effort to raise levels of living but even
more significantly in the development of political democracy.
In this sense population pressure is one of the fundamental forces mili-
tating against the free world in favor of totalitarianism.
CHAPTER
10
Migrations
MIGRATION AND HISTORY
Man's history has been described, with only slight exaggeration, as "the
study of his wanderings." Some epochs of the remote past are called
"periods of great migrations." This terminology presumes that at other
times migratory movements were at a standstill, especially in the case of
the so-called "sedentary" people. In fact, no population is ever at rest.
Every epoch is a period of "great migrations." 1
The French geographer Vidal de la Blache describes China as the scene
of many obscure migrations, which taken together have changed the face
of the land and the history of the world. It is no mere chance that the
books containing the oldest memories of the human race, the Bible, the
ancient Chinese scrolls, and Mexican chronicles, are full of accounts of
migrations. There is no people without a legend of a state of unrest,
of Trieb, to use Karl Ritter's expression, which compelled them to move
from place to place until they found a final resting place "constantly
promised by the divine voice, constantly held at a distance by enchant-
ment." 2 But often what appears to be the "final resting place" in the
longer span of history proves to be only a temporary refuge.
There are age-old paths of migration in natural highways provided by
the physical features of the earth. Halford Mackinder in his Democratic
1 E. M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and European Population Changes,
1917-1947 (New York, 1948), p. 8.
2 P. W. J. Vidal de la Blache, Principes de geographie humaine (Paris, 1922),
p. 70.
342
MIGRATIONS 343
Ideals and Reality has vividly described how, from the fifth to the six-
teenth century, wave after wave of what he termed "brigands on horse-
back" swept through the steppes, through the gateway between the Ural
Mountains and the Caspian Sea, dealing their formidable blows north-
ward, westward, and southward against the settled peoples of Europe.3
The new means of ocean transportation evolved in Europe opened a
phase of the history of migration which reached its climax in the early
part of this century. The study of the great transoceanic migrations and
of their impact on the lands beyond hitherto unexplored ocean spaces
provides the raw material of the geography of colonization and overseas
empires.
More recently the conquest of the air and the great improvements in
land transport have opened new avenues and means of migration. The
natural barriers which formerly channeled migration are being increas-
ingly replaced by political and other man-made barriers restricting and
directing the movement of people.
ARE THERE PRINCIPLES OR "LAWS" OF
MODERN MIGRATIONS?
In the perspective of centuries we see the great migrations of the past
as part of vast historical processes, whether it be the decline and fall of
Rome before the barbarian invaders, the Aryan invasions of India, or the
European colonization of the New World. It is more difficult to perceive
a pattern and direction behind migrations of the present epoch. These
often seem aimless and nihilistic, in themselves a denial of order and
reason. Sometimes they seem to reflect only the hatreds of those who
chance to have the power to wreak their vengeance and havoc on the
vanquished. Sometimes it is difficult to see meaning in so much manifest
inhumanity. Yet our task in political geography is to divest ourselves ( for
this purpose) of moral judgments and to seek meaning and direction in
the mass movements of humanity in their relation to the power of nations.
Sixty-five years ago when Ravenstein presented his famous papers on
migration at the Royal Statistical Society of Great Britain,4 the establish-
ment of a universal law of migration seemed possible, even certain. Raven-
stein's "Laws" still hold good for many purposes today, but they apply
only to those movements occurring within the "rules of the game" of
3 H. W. Weigert, Generals and Geographers (New York, 1942), pp. 123-125.
4 E. G. Ravenstein, "The Laws of Migration," Journal of the Royal Statistical So-
ciety, 1885, pp. 167-235; 1889, pp. 241-305. Ravenstein found fixed relationships
between distance of migration and the number, the age, and the sex of the migrants.
344 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Victorian Europe. The mass migrations associated primarily with the two
World Wars were entirely outside his frame of reference.
But the fact that there are new forms of migration does not mean there
is no order and direction. The pattern of change itself may be more im-
portant to political geography than the orderly movements occurring
within the fixed precepts of a particular epoch.
In the discussion that follows we shall seek to find the significance of
modern migration movements in, first, an analysis of the types of migra-
tion, and second, in an analysis of the directions of the movement.
TYPES OF MIGRATION
There are many ways of classifying migrations— according to their de-
gree of permanency, their intensity and volume, the human units involved,
their motives, the distance traveled, and the direction of the movement.
These criteria give rise to contrasts between temporary and permanent
migrations; individual versus communal or tribal migrations; free versus
forced movements; internal versus international and overseas migrations.
Each of these represents a different way of viewing the same phenome-
non and each in its own way is relevant to problems of political geog-
raphy. These dichotomies also suggest the various contrasts between the
migratory movements characteristic of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies.
Thus the overseas migrations of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries were composed of individuals and family groups, whereas the
population transfers of the twentieth century were often composed of
entire communities; the earlier migrations gave effect to the free and
voluntary choice of individuals, whereas the war-induced transfers were
motivated by fear and force; overseas migration involved continuing con-
tacts and exchanges between the homeland and the migrants, whereas
population transfers were intended to be an absolute and irrevocable
uprooting from the homeland; finally, the population shifts connected
with the two World Wars were chiefly continental movements associated
with changed political boundaries, whereas the earlier movements were
predominantly long-distance migrations overseas.
Behind these differences is a changed philosophy of the purposes and
rights involved in migration. The earlier philosophy was that the indi-
vidual should be free to choose his place of residence in accordance with
the dictates of his conscience and the welfare of himself and his family.
The modern philosophy is that individual needs and desires must be
MIGRATIONS 345
subordinated to the needs of the community as defined by the state. It
can be said that migration is controlled by conscious geopolitical motiva-
tions.
It is easy to conclude that the change in type of migration is a change
from order to chaos. But the great differences in the character of the two
types of migrations obscure the fact that both conform to underlying
forces of population pressure that determine the direction and viability
of the movements.
POPULATION PRESSURE AND MIGRATION
Population pressure exists in two senses. There is the absolute relation-
ship of people to resources which may, at a given stage of the arts, mean
the difference between poverty and prosperity. Until very recently this
was the nature of the problem in Monsoon Asia, where there existed little
knowledge of better opportunities elsewhere and even less practical means
of taking advantage of these opportunities. The typical Asian was a peas-
ant who knew little about life beyond the confines of his village. In such a
situation population pressure is a latent but not an active political force.
There is the other and relative sense of differential population pressure
between countries and the changes in these relationships occurring over
time. To be an active force this pressure has reality only if it is known and
felt by the peoples concerned. It is the latter relative population pressure
that is significant for problems of political geography.
Relative population pressures create tensions that are either relieved
through migrations or are built up against political barriers with the con-
stant threat of explosion if these barriers are weakened. Some form of
population pressure has been behind all the great migrations in history.
Population pressure that gives rise to movement is not just a matter of
the mechanical density of the population. Often the great migration pres-
sures are from areas of lesser density to higher density as was true of the
barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, of the Manchu and Mongol
invasions of China, and of the Aryan invasions of India. The factor of
crude density of population is relevant only as it is expressed in terms of
economic opportunity.
There have been two great magnets of economic opportunity in modern
Europe, which has been the source and theater of the most significant
migrations in the last two centuries. The first of these was the attraction
of unpeopled lands for land-hungry peoples. In the broader sense there
was the opportunity for personal and national exploitation of rich natural
346 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
resources in underdeveloped and relatively unoccupied countries. The
second magnet was the economic opportunity offered by industrialization
and commerce in the cities and industrialized regions both in Europe itself
and in Europe overseas.
These two great forces in migration give us a key to the understanding,
in one framework, of both the orderly migrations of the past and the
seemingly chaotic migrations of the current generation. The first magnet,
that of unpeopled lands, induced the great outward thrust of peoples
from the older centers of population, predominantly from Western
Europe but also to a lesser extent from China and India. Cutting across
and in some respects directly opposing this centrifugal thrust has been
the centripetal tendency reflected particularly in vast rural-urban migra-
tions.
Most population movements in the modern world fall into a meaning-
ful pattern if they are thought of in terms of these two great categories
and in terms of the historical replacement of the first by the second.
FREE MIGRATIONS OF EUROPEANS
In the analysis that follows we will first study free migrations and espe-
cially the migrations associated with the expansion of Europe and, without
recounting the details of this epic migration, attempt to point to its lasting
effects and to its politico-geographical legacy in the modern world. The
problem of "colonialism" has its origin in the nature of European settle-
ment and control.
The Politico-Geographical Legacy of European Settlement. Whether
colonization takes the form of permanent settlement or whether its char-
acteristic is the establishment of sovereignty over territories providing
raw materials and markets (known to the French as colonies d' exploita-
tion ) , or whether we think of the type of colonization consisting of settler
"islands" in alien lands (as, for instance, those of the Germans, Italians,
and Japanese in Brazil, or the Volga-Germans in Russia before their de-
portation), we will always have to go back to the same common denomi-
nator explaining the sources, the strength, and the goals of colonization in
a particular area. Where Europeans settled en masse we find a history
entirely different from those colonies in which the economy was estab-
lished on the extensive use of indigenous labor. The difference in terms of
the political future of these areas is decisive and profound.
For our purposes it is desirable to distinguish between the various
demographic manifestations of the expansion of Europe:
MIGRATIONS 347
Overseas Areas of Predominantly European Settlement. These coun-
tries are as a group the wealthiest in the world, including the United
States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and Uruguay. All have
in effect achieved their political independence and, with Latin American
exceptions, are among the most stable politically in the world today.
Areas of European Native Amalgamation. In the greater part of Latin
America European and native populations, in some cases with African
infusions, are in the process of merging. The divergent percentage of
European racial and cultural ingredients has resulted in a very uneven
degree of development which is too often concealed by the general rubric
"Latin America." The political regimes are often unstable, but culturallv
and politically these areas of settlement are firmly allied to the West.
While the amalgamation of European and natives is most characteristic
of Latin America, it also exists to a certain extent in the Philippines and
in Portuguese Africa, though in these areas the European biological and
cultural element is weaker than in most of Latin America.
Areas of European Settlement Where Europeans Are a Ruling Minority.
This type of settlement exists chiefly in Africa. In North Africa a million
and a half French rule three closely related Arab lands of 18 million
inhabitants. In the Union of South Africa, 2.5 million Britains and Boers
(themselves in conflict with each other) 5 hold the exclusive reins of
government in a country with some 11 million non whites. An even
smaller and less rooted white minority of fewer than 200,000 British
governs an indigenous population of some 3.5 million in the British
dominion of Rhodesia. These are the hard-core areas of colonialism that
the colonial powers and indigenous white populations cannot relinquish
without threatening the most basic welfare and perhaps even the survival
of the resident whites.
Areas Governed but Not Settled by Europeans. This type of European
colonization was chiefly characteristic of Asia and tropical Africa. In Asia
it is dead. The Second World War greatly accelerated the development of
local nationalisms and brought to an earlier end an otherwise inevitable
trend against continuing European control of these areas. The vestigial
remains of direct European government of Asia, whether in the Portu-
guese colonies, in Indo-China, or in British Malaya and Hong Kong are
under the severest pressure. The same fate is clearly in store for the Euro-
pean colonies in tropical Africa. Already Negroes in West Africa, Nigeria,
and the Gold Coast are making rapid strides toward independence. In the
East African highlands the Mau Mau revolt, while unsuccessful in itself,
5 See p. 391.
348 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
has foreshadowed the end of any prospect for permanent white control
of the region.
Linguistic Islands.6 The same drives that sent sixty million Europeans
to settle overseas lands impelled the colonization of Eastern Europe by
Western Europeans, particularly Germans. Rulers of Eastern Europe
welcomed these settlers because of their industry and relative advance-
ment. These newcomers chose to found their own communities and to
maintain their own customs, language, and religion. Settled as units and
having in their view a superior culture and higher economic status, these
linguistic islands resisted assimilation. The same phenomenon occurred
less frequently in overseas migration, as in the German settlements of
Brazil that have maintained their language and other German character-
istics for several generations. The Pennsylvania "Dutch" of the United
States are such a linguistic island though now far along toward total
absorption.7 Few of these islands are likely to survive. The German
Sprachinseln which formerly dotted Eastern Europe have been annihi-
lated. The modern nationalisms of Europe doom such islands either to
oppression or to assimilation.
Effect of Advance of Frontiers. Finally a neglected aspect of the expan-
sion of Europe is the effect of the advance of the frontier within the new
countries politically controlled by people of European stock. These in-
ternal migrations have had profound geopolitical effects particularly in
the United States and the Soviet Union.
The history of the United States offers a continuous documentation of
the impact of new areas which, in the overall picture of trie nation, have
won their place in the sun and, by achieving political maturity, have ex-
erted their influence and that of their newly settled people upon the
internal and external affairs of the Union. The "political geography" of
Presidential elections may serve as illustration: until Buchanan's Presi-
dency all Presidents came from the eastern seaboard, except for the Ten-
nessean Jackson. From Lincoln to McKinley, the majority came from the
Middle West but east of the Mississippi. Since Theodore Roosevelt, we
find a greater geographical variety, but also the first Presidents from west
of the Mississippi ( Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower ) .
6 See the detailed discussion of linguistic factors in political geography in Chapter
11, pp. 383-403.
7 An interesting example of such an island is that of the Russian sect of the Sons
of Freedom, the Dukhobors, whose members left Russia at the beginning of the
century in search of religious and political freedom and who, as squatters in British
Columbia, engaged in a last-stand struggle against the Canadian government, re-
sisting assimilation in the Canadian community.
MIGRATIONS 349
Thus the history of internal migration in the United States offers an
excellent illustration of the important principle that if the factors of in-
stability and change motivated by internal migration are of major pro-
portions they will redistribute power within a nation. A classical example
is the decisive break which began in the United States in the 1850's, when
a large-scale colonization of the Great Plains redrew the population distri-
bution map of the country. Hitherto this had shown the European settle-
ments clinging to the Atlantic coast, their penetration inland normally
limited to a strip within a hundred miles of tidewater. The map of the
population "centers" in the United States with the period between 1790
and 1950 8 is a graphic illustration of the "Westward Course of Empire"
trend which, with different connotations, is still underway. Since 1790, the
center of population in the United States has not deviated more than a few
miles from its original latitude, close to 39° N, but it has moved steadily
westward. In a century and a half the center of population has moved
about six hundred miles, at an average speed of four miles a year. The
shift was particularly rapid (more than five miles a year) between 1830
and 1890. It then slowed down, especially after 1910, but quickened dur-
ing World War II. The growth of California, which has continued after
1945, was and still is instrumental in drawing the country's center of
population further westward.
The student of politics, both on the national and state level, will dis-
cover important changes in the composition of population groups as the
result of these shifts.
The American example repeats itself in all national territories endowed
with large space. The westward course of internal migration in the United
States is paralleled by the many waves of migration southward, north-
ward, and eastward which shaped the history of Russia and of the
U.S.S.R. The internal geography of the Soviet Union cannot be under-
stood without constant reference to the mass migrations and population
transfers which took place during its entire turbulent history, starting with
the forced resettlements of the collectivization period during 1929 and
1930 and assuming momentum again in 1932 and 1933 when mass famines
starved out many villages and drove millions to the cities. As a result of
planned population transfers between 1927 and 1939, the Urals, Siberia
and the Far East, as well as Central Asia (in particular Kazakhstan),
became the receiving centers of new waves of migration involving about
five million people.9 Since the war, migrations continue as, for instance,
8 See Fig. 18-1, p. 572.
9 For a detailed discussion see Kulischer, Europe on the Move, pp. 79-112.
350 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
to the labor camps scattered in inhospitable regions over the Soviet
Union,10 and most important, the mass movements from the villages to
the towns and cities. This farm-to-town migration is rapidly turning the
Soviet Union into an urbanized nation.
THE MIGRATION CYCLE IN EUROPE
Historically, mass migration from Europe has been associated with a
particular stage of economic, social, and political development. It has not
been a purely rational movement from the areas of lowest income or
greatest physical poverty. People in such areas usually lack knowledge,
means, and abilities for taking advantage of opportunities overseas. It has
rather been a function of a particular stage in the transition from an essen-
tially self-sufficient peasant economy to a modern industrial and urban
economy. The sources of mass overseas migration were first in the British
Isles in connection with early industrialization and the related agricultural
enclosure movement. The latter dispossessed the English yeoman and the
Scottish crofter and gave them impetus to seek land and fortune overseas.
They were soon joined by the Irish cottager who suffered acute pressure
of population on the land.
The emigration "fever," as it has sometimes been described, moved in
ever-widening concentric rings as modern influences spread from their
centers of origin in England, the Low Countries, and later Western Ger-
many. The "fever" was associated with a particular stage in the transition
when the horizons of life in the rural areas began to rise beyond the
boundaries of the village to the world at large. New aspirations were
aroused by improved communication, transportation, by free public edu-
cation, and by the invasion of the money economy.
In its demographic aspects, this is also a period of transition in which
improvements in nutrition, and especially simple public health precau-
tions, were bringing down the death rate without comparable declines in
the birth rate. The result was a rapid increase in population. In the rela-
tively static agrarian economy of these areas this situation provided the
push to make new vistas beyond the village boundaries even more attrac-
tive.
The way in which the migration fever spread in concentric circles
across Europe, especially from west to east and from north to south, river
by river, province by province, is admirably documented by Marcus Lee
Hansen in his classic studies of nineteenth century migration to America.11
10 Ibid., p. 93.
11 M. L. Hansen, The Atlantic Migration (Cambridge, Mass., 1951).
MIGRATIONS 351
Already by 1800 economic opportunities as reported in letters by family
and friends overseas were the chief motive for migration.
As economic development progressed, opportunities for employment
became increasingly available in nearby factory towns and commercial
centers. These offered an alternative to overseas migration. Such "inter-
vening" opportunities characteristically resulted in a reduction in the rate
of international migration which, for example, was already evident in
England and Wales as early as 1860 and in Germany and Scandinavia in
the 1880's and 1890's.
As is widely known, the great sources of overseas migration in the earlv
twentieth century had already moved across Europe to the less developed
rural areas of Poland, Austria-Hungary, and southern Italy. This great
historic process was drastically inhibited by the first World War, bv
immigration restrictions in the overseas countries, and by the Russian
Revolution. Indeed, it is a likely but unproved hypothesis that the block-
age of movement from the east and the lack of ready outlets for popula-
tions from Eastern Europe may be related to the violence with which the
East in the course of the past generation has thrown off the former eco-
nomic, cultural, and political leadership of the West.
DIRECTIONS OF MIGRATORY PRESSURE IN EUROPE
By meaningful yardsticks population pressure in Europe during the past
two or three generations has been greatest in Eastern and Southern
Europe, much less in Northwest Europe.12 This differential pressure has
been reflected (a) in the predominance of peoples from these areas in
overseas migration, (b) in the migrations from the peripheral, predomi-
nantly agricultural regions to the industrial cores of Western Europe
12 Measures of population pressure relevant to Eastern Europe include, inter alia,
(a) density of farm population on arable land, (b) agricultural underemployment as
measured by low outputs per unit of labor, (c) ratios of entrants into the working
ages (or the labor force) to departures from these ages through death and the
attainment of retirement age. All of these applied to Eastern European countries
reveal heavy population pressure before World War II.
In a very fully documented study relating to the interwar period, estimates were
made of "surplus" agricultural populations (i.e., agricultural underemployment) in
Eastern and Southern European countries, assuming existing (1931-35) production
and the European average per capita level of production for the farm population. The
estimates of surplus population so derived ranged from zero (the European average)
in Czechoslovakia to 50 per cent or more of all the farm populations in Greece, Poland,
Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. The "surplus" agricultural population amounted
to 4.9 million (27 per cent) in Italy; 1.4 million (12 per cent) in Spain; and 1.4
million (47 per cent) in Portugal. Cf. W. E. Moore, Economic Demography of
Eastern and Southern Europe (Geneva, 1945), Table 6, pp. 63-64.
352 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
in England, Northern France, Western Germany, and the Low Countries.
In the last full decade of "free" migration from 1901 to 1910 Eastern and
Southern European countries contributed 77 per cent of the overseas mi-
gration from Europe as compared with 23 per cent of "old" emigration
from Northwest Europe.13 Fifty years earlier, in the decade 1851 to 1860,
less than five per cent of European emigrants were from the areas of
"new" migration and over 95 per cent were from Northwest Europe.
Paralleling this change in the composition of overseas migration, there
was within Europe a growing migration from the rural hinterlands to the
industrial regions of Europe. There was the flight of German agricul-
tural workers in the East to the cities and to the Ruhr. Their places were
taken by Polish seasonal workers who came across the boundary for the
harvests. Already before World War II large numbers of Italians, Span-
iards, and Eastern Europeans were moving into France, and in the inter-
war period France replaced the United States as the leading destination
of European migrants. This period saw the influx of Eastern Jews into
Germany and this, however unjustifiably, contributed to the later violent
Nazi oppression of the Jewish peoples.
Since about 1890 the prolific Eastern European peasant (usually a
Slav) has been exerting economic and demographic pressure against the
more urban, less reproductive Central European (usually a German),
even in the face of political domination by the latter. In this he was al-
ready reversing the earlier true Drang nach Osten of the German peoples
that drove back the Slav from the Elbe to the Niemen and established
German-speaking colonies all the way across Europe to the Volga River.
Already before World War I the efforts of Central European nations to
strengthen their Eastern marches with Central European settlers were
failures because this effort attempted to stem and reverse the tide of basic
demographic and socio-economic trends. The displacement of the earlier
ruling elements in the interwar years was successful because it accorded
with the fundamental demographic pressures.
The demographic pressures in Eastern Europe were partially reflected
in successful revolts from Western domination after World War I— revolts
legitimized in the principle of self-determination and the establishment of
the secession states. Then World War II broke down all barriers and re-
leased a tremendous westward thrust of the Slav. The displacement of
13 The regions of "old" emigration include the British Isles, Germany, Scandinavia,
France, the Low Countries, and Switzerland. The region of "new" emigration includes
the remainder of Europe.
MIGRATIONS 353
German by Slav has been successful because it swam with the underlying
demographic pressures, just as the failures of the German in displacing
the Pole were due to the fact that this effort attempted to stem and reverse
the tide of basic economic and social trends.
The population pressures of Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal,
and Greece) have neither been so acute nor so dramatic in results as
those of the East. In terms of European averages the surplus populations
were proportionately smaller, the rates of population growth historically
less, than in the East. Furthermore, outlets for migration were more
readily found— for Italians in France, in Belgium, in Luxembourg, and in
Switzerland; for Spaniards in France; and for all, overseas. Within Italy,
southern Italians found opportunities in the industrialized north and simi-
larly within Spain the industries of Catalonia and the Basque regions met
some of the needs of the surplus population in the south. Population
pressure was most acute in Greece, where the exchange of populations
following World War I had forced that small country to absorb a mil-
lion refugees from Asia Minor. The chief locations of crowded settlement
in Macedonia were also strong centers of disaffection following World
War II.
Nevertheless the problem of population pressure was ( and is ) real. The
farm product per farm worker in Italy is less than half that in France, not
because the Italian farmer is less skillful or less industrious but because,
on the average, he has only half as much land.14 The situation is com-
parable in Portugal, worse in Greece.
The differential population pressure is accentuated by the dynamics of
the labor force. In a rapidly growing population far more persons enter
the labor market each year than leave through death and retirement. Italy
must accommodate over 300,000 more persons in the working ages each
year, while in the United Kingdom and France the population of working
age is now almost stationary. These figures are certainly not unrelated to
the one and a half million unemployed chronically reported in Italy since
the war. Similarly Greece and Portugal, each with roughly eight million
inhabitants, have had to absorb sixty to sixty-five thousand new workers
each year, while Belgium (eight million) and Sweden (seven million)
have each had annual increments of under ten thousand.
It should be noted that population pressure in Italy is more the result
14 The relative figures for about 1930 on density of agricultural population per
square kilometer of "arable-equivalent" agricultural land are the following: France—
28.8; Italy-53.4; Portugal-49.5; Spain-34.0; and Greece-86.7 (Moore, op. cit.,
pp. 197-204).
354 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
of past than of present growth. The current growth in Italy represents the
inertia of the past, and it will disappear unless there is a sharp reversal in
the present downward trend in the birth rate. The same forces seem to be
at work in Spain, and are at an earlier stage in Portugal and Greece.
THE URBAN DRIFT
In all countries there has been a universal movement to the cities from
the countryside. The uprooting involved in this movement was enormous
—some 150 million or one-third of all Europeans were, in the interwar
period, living outside the commune of their birth; over half were outside
the province or department of their birth. These latter migrants particu-
larly were persons who had moved to the towns and cities from the vil-
lages and farms.
Already by 1880 overseas migration was primarily a movement to the
cities of the New World. In the United States for example 80 per cent
of the foreign born represented in the 1940 census were living in urban
areas as compared with only 50 per cent of the native white of native
parentage.
Likewise the greater part of the migration to Australia was to the great
cities of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane; in Argentina the bulk of the
immigration was absorbed in Buenos Aires; in Brazil the cities of Sao
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were the chief attractions; in none of these
countries did large numbers of immigrants go directly to the farms or to
the small towns. Within these overseas countries there was little new
settlement after 1900. On the other hand, within each of these overseas
countries there was a great tide of rural-urban migration. Even the west-
ward movements in the United States after 1900 were movements pri-
marily from Middle Western farms and small towns to the cities of the
Pacific Coast.
Similarly in the Soviet Union the eastward migrations into Asia, while
in one respect a continuation of the expansion of the European settlement
area, were in another respect a migration from the farms of European
Russia to the new industrial cities beyond the Urals.
In Western civilization the attractions of the city have come to out-
weigh greatly those of unsettled lands, not only because the best lands
in the temperate zone have been occupied but also because the driving
aspirations are those achieved only in city life.
The greatest attraction to international migrants exists where these two
forces are more or less combined, as in the cities of the New World.
MIGRATIONS 355
Thus the direction of population pressure in the Western world is from
the farm and the small town to the city and especially to the cities of
America. At least this is the choice of migrants in the absence of coercion
and political barriers. A second choice of migrants has been the urban
and industrial centers of Western Europe.
These choices were freely open to most of the populations of northwest
Europe because United States quotas favored them and because major
economic centers were within their territories. In part this latter oppor-
tunity was available to southern Europeans through migrations to neigh-
boring France, and in any case there were industrial regions in Italy and
Spain to absorb some of the surplus populations.
The problem was more severe and the solutions less available in Eastern
than in Southern Europe. It was this demographic context in which oc-
curred the massive population transfers set in motion by Nazi aggression,
war, and postwar settlements.
FORCED MIGRATIONS
"The Nation of the Homeless." In 1952 an editorial in The New York
Times spoke of the somber fact that "in this century the homeless form
one of the great nations of the world." The displaced person is as much
a symbol of this century as is the broken atom.
The dispossessed and uprooted, in the uninspired language of the
bureaucracies, are classified as expellees, deportees, refugees, and dis-
placed persons. In many cases they remain unabsorbed by the nations
within whose borders they have found refuge. Yet they have changed the
structure of the human and political geography of the regions in which
they have settled, just as their flight or expulsion has changed the struc-
ture of the regions they have left.
The regions from which large sections of the population have been
uprooted, as well as those where the refugees and the expelled have come
to rest, stand out on the political map as danger zones. Vacuums have
been created by the expulsion of large minorities. At the same time new
irredentist agitation is created in the receiving countries. Many external
and internal problems involved in the integration of the newcomers, or
more often the failure to achieve such integration, confront both the na-
tion and the international organizations concerned.
These problems of our age make it mandatory to the student of political
geography to observe carefully the changes in the ethnic and national
356
HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
composition of nation states which are due to mass migrations and popu-
lation transfers.15
Population Transfers in Europe. The political map of Europe and of
the European lands of the Soviet orbit has undergone, since 1939, more
basic changes stemming from mass population movements than the con-
tours of changed political boundaries would reveal. The gist of the long
story of migrations initiated in Europe by World War II is contained in
the following chart prepared by E. M. Kulischer, which lists movements
from 1939 to 1947:
TABLE 10-1 *
Redistribution of Population Produced by World War II a
YEARS
ROUTE
GROUP
Transfer; Evacuation; Flight of ethnic Germans.
1939-43 Italy (south Tyrol) to Austria and Germany
1944 Rumania to Germany and Austria
1944 Yugoslavia to Germany and Austria
1944 Rumania to U.S.S.R.
1944 Yugoslavia to U.S.S.R.
1944-46 Hungary to Germany and Austria
1944-45 U.S.S.R. (Russian East Prussia) to
Germany
1944-45 Old Poland to Germany
1944-47 New Poland (former eastern Germany) to
Germany
1944-45 New Poland (former eastern Germany) to
Denmark
1945-46 Czechoslovakia to Germany (partly to
Austria )
1945-46 Soviet Zone to United States and British
zones in Germany
80,000 Tyrolese Germans
200,000 ethnic Germans
250,000 ethnic Germans
70,000 ethnic Germans
100,000 ethnic Germans
200,000 ethnic Germans
500,000 Reich Germans
1,000,000 ethnic Germans
( Polish citizens and trans-
ferees from other countries ) b
6,000,000 Reich Germans
100,000 Reich Germans c
2,700,000 ethnic Germans
4,000,000 Reich Germans
* Reproduced by permission of the Columbia University Press from Kulischer, Europe on the Move.
a The transfer of 230,000 Germans from Austria to Germany is not mentioned; it was partly a return
cf Reich Germans who had migrated to Austria after March, 1938, and partly a transfer of Sudeten German
refugees comprised by the total of 2,700,000. Ethnic Germans transferred in 1939-44 to the Warteland are
not listed separately. Apart from those drafted in the German army, most of them left for Germany.
Se note b. Volga Germans are listed under Population Movements within the U.S.S.R.
b In 1939-44 about 800,000 ethnic Germans were transferred to the Warteland (partly to central
Poland), mainly from the Baltic countries, eastern Poland, Rumania, and the southern part of the U.S.S.R.
c Later transferred to Germany.
15 The reader is referred to the following sources for a comprehensive treatment
of population transfers: W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky's World Population and Pro-
duction (New York, 1953), pp. 66-110, is the most comprehensive short treatment
of the subject and offers the gist of the available statistical material on individual
regions. The standard works on displacements of populations in Europe are: E. M.
Kulischer, The Displacement of Population in Europe (Montreal, 1953), and the
same author's Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947 (New
York, 1948), and J. B. Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 1939-1947 (New
York, 1946).
MIGRATIONS
357
YEAKS
ROUTE
CROUP
Population Movements of Non-Germans From, Into, and Within Poland*
1939-44 Poland to Germany, Austria, and Italy 275,000 Polish displaced
1939-47 Poland through U.S.S.R., the Balkans, and
Western Europe to Great Britain
1944-46 U.S.S.R. (former eastern Poland) to New
Poland
1946 U.S.S.R. to Poland
1944-46 Poland to U.S.S.R.
1946 Various European countries to Poland
1945-47 Old Poland to New Poland
persons
160,000 members of Polish
army ( including
families )
1,000,000 Poles
50,000 Polish Jews f
518,000 Ukrainians,
Belorussians and
Lithuanians
60,000 returned Polish
emigrants
3,000,000 Poles
Population Movements of Non-Germans From, Into, and Within Czechoslovakia
1945-46 U.S.S.R. ( Carpatho-Ukraine ) to Czecho-
slovakia
1946 U.S.S.R. (Volynia) to Czechoslovakia
1946-47 Rumania to Czechoslovakia
1946-47 Western and central Europe to Czecho-
slovakia
1946-47 Hungary to Czechoslovakia
1946-47 Czechoslovakia to Hungary
1946-47 Inner Czechoslovakia to the border region
( Sudetenland )
1946-47 Slovakia to Bohemia and Moravia
30,000 Czechs and
Ukrainians e
33,000 ethnic Czechs
30,000 ethnic Czechs and
Slovaks
30,000 returned Czecho-
slovak emigrants
100,000 ethnic Slovaks "
100,000 Magyars
1,800,000 Czechs and
Slovaks
180,000 Slovaks and
Magyars
Population Movements of Non-Germans From and Into Yugoslavia
1941-47 Yugoslavia to Germany, Austria, and Italy
1946-47 Yugoslavia (Istria, Fiume, and Zara) to
Italy
1946-47 Yugoslavia to Hungary
1946-47 Hungary to Yugoslavia
90,000 Yugoslav displaced
persons and refugees
140,000 Italians
40,000 Magyars h
40,000 Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes h
Population Movements of Non-Germans from the Baltic Area
1940-44 U.S.S.R. (Karelian Isthmus) to Finland 415,000 Karelian Finns
d Jewish refugees from Poland included below in total of 225,000 Jewish refugees from various countries.
e Rough estimate.
'Total 140,000; most went farther to west and included in total of 225,000 Jewish refugees.
s In course.
h Figures according to the exchange agreement.
358
HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
YEARS
TABLE 10-1 (Cont.)
Redistribution of Population Produced by World War II
ROUTE
GROUP
Population Movements of Non-Germans from the Baltic Area
1941-44
1941-47
1942-44
1942-43
1943-44
U.S.S.R. (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) to
Germany, Austria, and Italy
U.S.S.R. (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)
through Germany to Belgium
U.S.S.R. (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) to
Sweden
U.S.S.R. (Estonia) to Sweden
U.S.S.R. (Leningrad area) to Finland
165,000 Estonian, Latvian,
and Lithuanian
displaced persons
35,000 Estonian, Latvian,
and Lithuanian
persons
30,000 Estonian, Latvian,
and Lithuanian
refugees
6,000 ethnic Swedes
18,000 Ingermanlanders '
Other Population Movements Into Or/And From Various European Countries
1941
1941
1946
1941-45
1943-46
1940-45
Bulgaria (southern Dobrudja) to Rumania
Rumania ( northern Dobrudja ) to Bulgaria
Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania to U.S.S.R.
( Soviet Armenia)
U.S.S.R. ( former eastern Poland and old
Soviet Ukraine) to Germany, Austria,
and Italy
Eastern and Central Europe to Germany,
Austria, and Italy
Various European countries to Germany,
Austria, and Italy
110,000 Rumanians
62,000 Bulgarians
30,000 Armenians J
150,000 Ukrainian
displaced persons
225,000 Jewish refugees
150,000 Displaced persons
and refugees e
Population Movements Within the U.S.S.R.
1941
1941-42
1945-46
1946
1946
Volga region to the Asiatic part of the
U.S.S.B.
Axis occupied Soviet territory to inner and
Asiatic parts of the U.S.S.R.
Southern Russia to the Asiatic part of
U.S.S.R.
Russia proper and the Ukraine to Crimea
Dagestan to former Chechen land
400,000 Volga Germans
1,500,000 Soviet citizens k e
600,000, Crimean Tartars,
Kalmyks, Chechen,
and Karachai
50,000 Russian and
Ukrainian settlers1
60,000 Dagestan
mountaineers
1 Total 65,000; the majority returned to the U.S.S.R.
J Total about 100,000 — about 70 per cent from non-European countries (Syria, Iran, Lebanon).
k Total number evacuees (partly deportees from Soviet territories) estimated at 12,000,000 of whom
great majority returned.
1 First contingent.
* E. M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move (New York, Columbia University Press, 1948), pp. 302-303.
MIGRATIONS 359
YEARS ROUTE CROUP
Population Movements Within the U.S.S.R.
1946 Various parts of the U.S.S.R. to southern
Sakhalin 50,000 Russians
1945-47 Central and western Russia proper, Belo-
russia, and Lithuania to Russian East
Prussia 500,000 Russians,
Byelorussians, and
Lithuanians
1945-47 Old Soviet territory to other newly ac-
quired western territories of the U.S.S.R. 500,000 Russians,
Ukrainians, and
others e
These mass movements in Eastern and Central Europe during and
after World War II have resulted in a complete change in the ethnic and
linguistic composition of some of the countries affected by these migra-
tions as well as in a new balance of power, or lack of it, between their
majorities and minorities.
Poland, for instance, is now a country virtually free of ethnic minorities.
Its German minority of close to nine million before World War II has
been reduced, mainly through expulsions, to approximately one to two
hundred thousand,16 most of whom live in the so-called Recovered Terri-
tories. Its large Jewish minority has been reduced, chiefly by extermina-
tion during the German occupation, to thirty to thirty-five thousand. Of
the Eastern Slavic groups once residing within the boundaries of Poland
the vast majority, mostly Ukrainians and Byelorussians, lived east of the
Curzon line and are now outside the boundaries of Poland. Thus a country
once confronted with major minority and boundary problems due to large
ethnic minorities is now ethnically homogeneous.
Czechoslovakia offers another illustration of a country which, plagued
by the failure to assimilate its minorities and to create a unified national
state, undertook to solve its minority question by mass expulsions, affect-
ing in particular its most thorny minority, the Germans. Numbering
16 The estimates vary a great deal. German sources claim the existence of much
larger German groups, in particular in Upper Silesia. These discrepancies show
vividly the difficulties with which one is confronted in the task of defining ethnic
frontiers. In border areas, such as Upper Silesia, one frequently encounters bilingual
groups whose national loyalties are not clearly defined and shift with changing for-
tunes of war and peace. The number of bilingual Silesians is approximately one million.
They are claimed by both Poles and Germans— a good illustration of the problems
with which boundary-makers are confronted if attempting to draw the line in ac-
cordance with ethnic and linguistic distinctions.
GERMAN
EXPELLEES
Moscow
Fig. 10-1. Mass Migration of Ethnic Germans into West Germany After World War II;
Pomerania 891,000
East Prussia 1,347,000
East Brandenburg 131,000
Silesia 2,053,000
Danzig 225,000
Memelland 48,000
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania 59,000
Poland 410,000
Soviet Union 51,000
Czechoslovakia 1,912,000
Rumania 149,000
Hungary 178,000
Yugoslavia 148,000
other European countries and from overseas . . 274,000
Soviet Zone and Berlin 1,555,000
Soviet Zone and Berlin 4,000,000
Expellees from:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
(10)
(ID
(12)
(13)
(14)
Refugees from:
(15)
Expellees arrived:
(16)
360
MIGRATIONS 361
3,300,000 in 1936, the close-knit German community of the Sudetenlands
had played a prominent part in the "Protectorate" of Bohemia and Mo-
ravia during the Nazi occupation. The expulsion of 3,038,000 Sudeten-
Germans under the terms of the Potsdam Agreement reduced the remain-
ing German group in Czechoslovakia to 200,000. The vacuum created by
the mass evacuation was filled by Czech settlers. But the presence of some
two million Sudeten German expellees in Western Germany, clinging
together in organizations which keep Sudeten German irredentism alive,
makes the hastily filled vacuum appear as a zone of insecurity and a
cradle of conflict. The atmosphere of insecurity is even more accentuated
by the fact that the expulsion of its most troublesome ethnic group left the
country still saddled with the age-old conflict between Czechs and Slo-
vaks. Totalling 2,400,000, about one-fifth of the entire population of
Czechoslovakia, the Slovaks confront the country continuously with prob-
lems of Slovak nationalism. Uneven cultural and political development
between Czechs and Slovaks and a serious divergence in religious belief
are factors explaining the lack of a constructive symbiosis between
Czechs and Slovaks. Here we deal with a minority whose problems could
not have been "solved" by migration or population transfer and whose
continuous presence as a minority with an intense nationalism has so far
defied all efforts to create a unified national state.
A contrasting problem is that of Germany, which was forced to receive
huge masses of Germans 17 who fled or were expelled from the East as a
result of World War II (Fig. 10-1 ). Ten and a half million or 21 per cent
of the total population of the German Federal Republic of forty-nine mil-
lion are expellees. These are divided into three categories: (1) some 8.4
million expellees from German provinces east of the Oder-Neisse Line
now under Polish or U.S.S.R. administration, and from Czechoslovakia,
Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and other countries. The largest
contingents are from the former German provinces of Silesia, East Prussia,
Pomerania, and Brandenburg (4,423,000), and from Czechoslovakia
(1,912,000); (2) over two million persons who fled to Western Germany
and are unable to return to the Eastern European areas from which they
came; (3) two hundred thousand stateless and foreign refugees. Clearly
the presence of a group of new citizens totalling nearly a fourth of
West Germany's population confronted the country with difficult postwar
adjustment and rehabilitation tasks in the process of absorbing the com-
pletely destitute millions. As a West German government source put it,
the situation was about the same as if more than the total population of
17 The figures are based on official West German estimates as of December 31, 1950.
362 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Denmark and Switzerland combined, or if considerably more than the
entire population of Australia would have been compelled to find accom-
modation, work, and a living in what was then ( but no longer is ) a totally
impoverished Federal Republic of Germany.18
While the Iron Curtain has sealed off not only the West from the Soviet
Empire but also the Soviet satellites from each other, thus bringing the
mass population shifts of World War II and of the immediate postwar
period to a standstill, the two Germanies separated from each other still
experience a numerically reduced but continuous migration from eastern
to western Germany which totalled between 1950 and 1951 about 1,800,-
000 or 10 per cent of East Germany's entire population. Here, as in the
lands of eastern Europe, it is still too early to evaluate the far-reaching
changes which the uprooting of millions has brought to their new home-
lands; too early because the consolidation and assimilation process is still
in progress. This statement should not detract from the fact that in some
cases, however exceptional, the integration of the refugees has met with
full success. A case in point is Finland which, aided by the availability of
cultivable surplus land, succeeded in settling on the basis of careful plan-
ning the 415,000 Karelian Finns (about 11 per cent of its total population)
who poured into Finland from territories ceded to Russia after the Russo-
Finnish war of 1939 to 1940.19
In some parts of Western Germany the impact of the expellee groups
has been so strong that it has radically changed the sociological structure
of the region concerned. In national politics, the close-knit expellee groups
have become power factors of great importance, affecting the strategy of
the political parties and making their irredentist claims a matter of con-
cern for the country as a whole. Furthermore the influx of refugees dras-
tically changed the religious composition of West Germany. In the past,
the map showing the geographical distribution of religions revealed a
pattern of clearly discernible Protestant and Catholic areas with political
leanings strongly influenced by confessional issues. The mass migrations
have broken up this pattern and the denominations are much more mixed
geographically than formerly.
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany offer the most impressive ex-
amples in the European theatre of mass migrations in the wake of World
War II. But a glance at Kulischer's list of flights and transfers of popula-
tions in Europe and the U.S.S.R. during and after World War II shows
18 For further details, see C. D. Harris and G. Wuelker, "The Refugee Problem in
Germany," Economic Geography (1953), pp. 10-25.
is See p. 241.
MIGRATIONS 363
clearly the uprooting of the human structure of all the lands of central
and eastern Europe. These wanderings differ basically from the great
overseas migrations between 1870 and 1920. The war and postwar mass
migrations were not motivated by the pioneer spirit of individuals and
groups but by fear and coercion. The mass migrations of our time are
"the flight of millions from their wrecked homes, the mass exodus of
people haunted by fear, the mass shipment of human beings to destruc-
tion. Measured by the number of persons affected, these recent shifts of
population have been of the magnitude of the economic migration of the
whole preceding century." 20
Population Transfers in Asia. While we have given prominence to the
treatment of population movements in eastern and western Europe, it
must be realized that they represent only one among numerous other
equally disorganized major population displacements which originated
during, or as the result of the World Wars. In 1921, Walter Duranty noted
in Moscow: "One of the strangest features of Russian life today is the
wanderers— wandering children, wandering soldiers, wandering families,
wandering villages, wandering tribes— driven from their homes by the
war or revolution to move interminably across the vast Russian plains." 21
This characterization was to hold true for many years to come and again
after World War II. We find it equally true for many other danger spots
on the globe, whether as the result of India's partition and the migrations
this caused, or of China's flood and drought areas, resulting periodically
in mass movements, or of South East Asia's migration of Chinese and
Indians across international frontiers, or of Manchuria's and Japan's wan-
dering nationals, testifying to the ambition and collapse of Japan's
"Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere."
Within the span of a few months, the Partition of India of August 15,
1947 prompted mass migrations "on a scale absolutely unparalleled in the
history of the world." 22 The communal riots started in the Indo-Gangetic
Plains, in the Punjab area which covers 55,000 square miles. Accompanied
by appalling bloodshed, the final balance sheet showed in March 1948
that six and a half million Moslems had fled into West Pakistan, while
about six million Hindus and Sikhs had left it. New disorders in Bengal
between 1948 and 1950 started another wave of mass population move-
20 Woytinsky, op. cit., p. 110.
21 Kulischer, op. cit., p. 30.
22 O. H. K. Spate, "India and Pakistan," A General and Regional Geography
(London and New York, 1954), p. 110; the discussion, above, of the 1947, 1948, and
consequent migrations is based on Spate's account, op. cit., pp. 118-120; see also the
bibliographical notes on pp. 121, 481 f.
364 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
ments, during which about three and a half million people left East Pakis-
tan and one million Moslems entered it. What distinguishes this movement
from that in the Punjab and West Pakistan is that the Bengal wave swept
in one direction only until 1950, carrying Hindus on their flight from East
Bengal into Indian territory; in 1950, the mass influx of these refugees
generated a counterwave of Moslems into Pakistan. "The total movement
is thus of the order of seventeen million," twice the population of Greater
London, New York City, or Tokyo.23 "No comparable event has ever been
known." 24
Clearly these mass migrations, and in their wake the critical tasks of
rehabilitation and resettlement of the uprooted millions, have affected
deeply the political, social, and cultural structure of both India and Pakis-
tan, thus confronting the student of political geography with a radically
different political and social landscape and the two countries with many
problems, most of which are still awaiting solution. According to Spate's
analysis, the population transfers have not perhaps modified greatly the
general distribution of population, except to swell the larger towns of the
north, but they have altered profoundly the communal pattern. For in-
stance, the Indian government, in its resettlement program, has plans for
eighteen new townships; by March, 1950, four million acres of reclaimed
and evacuee land were allotted to 390,000 families, or a total of about two
million people; the population of Delhi included in 1950 24 per cent
refugees— the intrusive minorities were largely urban, which fact posed
special problems to the overcrowded and unsanitary cities.25 Thus the
manifold problems of resettlement and the instability which the overflow
of refugees has brought to India and Pakistan since the Partition of 1947
are still, almost a decade later, a major characteristic of the internal politi-
cal geography of the subcontinent.
A mass displacement of comparable political importance was created
by the warfare connected with the creation of Israel in 1948. Several
hundred thousand Arabs fled or were uprooted from their homes in the
territory of the new state. Since that time these refugees have been
maintained in miserable camps through the largesse of an international
organization created by the United Nations for this purpose.
These camps are generally located dangerously near the borders of
Israel in the Gaza strip (Egypt), in Jordan, and in Syria. Very few of the
23 London (1951): 8,346,000; New York's five boroughs (1950): 7,892,000;
Tokyo (1954): 7,736,000.
24 Spate, op. cit., p. 119.
25 Ibid., p. 120.
MIGRATIONS 365
Arab refugees have been integrated in the economies of the countries in
which they live. After almost a decade of refugee life the 800 thousand
Arabs under international care still hope to recover their lands. They are
a persistent source of border conflict and international incidents in the
troubled relations between Israel and her neighbors.
Great displacements of population are therefore not a monopolv of
Europe, though it is in that continent that they have been most systemati-
cally carried through.
THE WESTWARD THRUST IN EUROPE
The preceding sections have described the forced migrations succes-
sively connected with Nazi aggressions, the war, and postwar territorial re-
visions. The redistribution of population incident to the second World War
brought about the permanent migration of close to thirty million people,
which Eugene M. Kulischer has described as probably the greatest migra-
tion in European history. In any event, it has remade the map of popula-
tion and ethnic distribution in central Europe. In essence this migration
has been a great westward movement induced by the collapse of Ger-
many. Though there have been significant displacements of population
affecting every country east of the Rhine, the overall pattern is of a west-
ward push of populations before the thrust of Slavic victories in the east.
Dominating the picture is the tremendously important expansion of
Slav at the expense of Teuton. In this respect European history has been
turned back almost a thousand years, when Slavic settlement extended
from the Baltic to the Adriatic, as far west as the present Iron Curtain.
Some eleven million Germans have been forced back into the rump terri-
tory of Germandom. Almost every eastern European country has liqui-
dated its German minority or reduced it to a small fraction of its former
size. The main German settlement area has been driven back to the Oder-
Neisse line.
Into the vacuum have poured millions of Slavs, particularly Poles and
Czechs, who themselves have been divested of territory by the Soviet
Union. Only a small fraction of this enormous movement has gone on into
western Europe and overseas. The problem of economic and cultural
assimilation of this enormous mass of refugees is one of the most difficult
facing Europe today.
Yet from the economic point of view it is well on the way to solution.
The underlying demographic and economic pressures from East to
West have been greatly reduced by the territorial changes resulting from
366 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
the war. In terms of the measure of density of the agricultural population,
and considering the relative change in population as compared with that
of Europe as a whole in the period of 1939 to 1954, Poland has increased
its relative agricultural living space about 60 per cent and Czechoslovakia
by about one-fourth. In both cases this result was partly due to war deaths
but chiefly to the expulsion of some thirteen million inhabitants from the
present territories of these countries. Both are now better off than the
European average.
The Danubian countries, on the other hand, were not so favored in the
redistribution of population and their position has not been so markedly
improved. In relation to European averages the Yugoslavs, Rumanians,
and Hungarians are nevertheless almost certainly in a relatively better
position in terms of agricultural density of population than before the
war, owing to war losses and to expulsion of ethnic minorities. Quite
aside from these gains, events have spared these countries the additional
population pressure ( relative to the European average ) that would prob-
ably otherwise have occurred.26
The reduction of population pressure in these countries is also being
promoted by ( a ) urbanization and industrialization, and ( b ) the present
results of rapid declines in the birth rate that occurred in the interwar
period. The one factor is increasing employment opportunities, the other
is reducing the competition for available jobs and for the land. In most
Eastern European countries the number of young people entering work
ages (that is, age fifteen to twenty) is declining each year as a result of
the fall in the birth rate that occurred fifteen to twenty years ago. This
source of pressure on employment opportunities is considerably reduced.
Quite apart from its ideologies, Eastern Europe is moving into the
demographic and economic situation that earlier brought relief from
population pressures in Western Europe, and of course in so doing it has
liquidated important minority problems.
But what of the countries that had to absorb the dispossessed of the
East? In practice this means Germany since other Western countries have
received far smaller contingents.
The war added one-fourth to the already crowded population of West
Germany. The refugees came in enormous numbers and without resources
into a land amputated by political partition and with the shattered
economy of a beaten nation. The prognosis was certainly poor. But to the
amazement of many observers West Germany has already gone far toward
26 Cf. F. W. Notestein et al., The Future Population of Europe and the Soviet
Union (Geneva, 1944).
MIGRATIONS 367
effective absorption of its refugees. Economic output is now far above the
best achieved before the war and under Hitler. Even per capita income
is now well above prewar levels and is increasing rapidly.
It is now clear that the presence of the refugees is actually contributing
to the more sustained economic progress of Germany as compared with
neighboring countries. The refugees provided a reserve of skilled, indus-
trious labor lacking in other Western European countries where, except
for Italy, early gains brought about full employment of the available
labor force.
These aggregate developments do not mean that the individual refugee
in Germany is better off than before the war. But they do mean that the
refugee burden has not been an insuperable one and that in fact it is now
being turned to advantage. The extent of this success may be measured
by the fact that German leaders, far from seeking emigration outlets for
"surplus" population, are now exploring possibilities for bringing in Italian
and other workers to provide part of the labor needed to support re-
armament.
POSTWAR MIGRATIONS AFFECTING THE EUROPEAN
SETTLEMENT AREA
Since World War II there has been a substantial revival of overseas
migration from Europe 2T (Fig. 10-2). Much of this is related to war dis-
placements of population. But the publicity attending the more dramatic
refugee movements has obscured the resurgence of voluntary "free" mi-
grations such as those that peopled North America, Australasia, and large
parts of South America from Europe in the last two centuries.
Since the war at least five million persons have emigrated from Europe,
a mass migration exceeding the total population of Switzerland. In the
average postwar year about 650,000 emigrants were recorded as leaving
Europe for countries overseas, and the actual figure was undoubtedly
larger. "Return" migration amounts to about one-third of this total. The
identifiable net outward movement in the period 1946 to 1952 was 3.2
million or about 450,000 per year. This substantial movement represents
27 Department of State, Office of Intelligence Research, Survey of Overseas Emi-
gration from Europe, 1946-51. Unclassified Intelligence Report 6054, May, 1953. For
prewar materials this summary also draws heavily on earlier studies of migration bv
D. Kirk; Europe's Population in the Interwar Years (Geneva, 1946), Chs. 4-7;
"European Migrations: Prewar Trends and Future Prospects," Milbank Memorial
Fund Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 225 (April, 1947); and "Overseas Migration from
Europe Since World War II," American Sociological Review, Vol. 19, No. 4 (August,
1954), pp. 447-56. Portions of the last-named article, written by Dudley Kirk and
Earl Huyck, are included in the present text.
Fig. 10-2. Net Postwar Overseas Migration, Europe 1946-52 (in thousands).
368
MIGRATIONS 369
the highest figures reached since the application of severe restrictive
measures by the United States in the early 1920's. In gross volume it is
comparable to European emigration from 1880 to 1900. It has not, how-
ever, attained the huge totals registered immediately prior to World
War I.
Overseas migration drained off approximately one-eighth of the natural
growth of population in Europe since the war, as compared with about
one-fifth removed by the maximum movements in the years 1900 to 1914.
Much of the controversy concerning migration restrictions in the United
States and other countries of immigration has revolved around the dis-
placement of "old" migration from Northwest Europe by the "new" mi-
gration from Southern and Eastern Europe, a displacement which came
to dominate overseas emigration around the turn of the century. Trends in
"gross" emigration from the chief regions and countries of origin are
shown in Table 10-2.
The pattern of "gross" emigration resembles that of the 1920's. The
United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal each recorded a
roughly parallel emigration in the two periods, both in numbers and in
percentages of the European total. Gross emigration from Eastern Europe
was higher than in the 1920's but much lower than at the turn of the
century. The other major difference is the new emigration from the Neth-
erlands, which is chiefly responsible for the rise in the joint figure for
France and the Low Countries.
The pattern of "net" emigration is somewhat different because of the
large return migration, particularly to the United Kingdom, to the Neth-
erlands, and to Spain and Portugal. The total net emigration by country
of origin and destination is shown in Tables 10-3 and 4. The leading coun-
tries are the United Kingdom and Italy (over 600,000 each), Poland
(460,000), Germany (290,000), U.S.S.R. (230,000), Spain and Portugal
(180,000 each), and Rumania (160,000). Some three hundred thousand
Dutch emigrated overseas since the war but these were largely offset by
repatriations and other immigration from Indonesia. France was the only
European country of overseas "immigration," which resulted from the mass
migration of North Africans to the metropole.
As in the latter days of unrestricted migration, the leading sources were
in Eastern and Southern Europe. Of the eight countries supplying over
a hundred thousand emigrants since the war, six were in these regions.
Certain older areas of emigration, such as Ireland and Scandinavia, were
notably underrepresented. Irish emigration now goes almost wholly to
Britain rather than overseas.
370 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
TABLE 10-2
Gross Overseas Emigration from Europe, 1901-52
(Annual Average in Thousands)
1901-10
1911-20
1921-30
1931-40
1946-52 a
Regions of Old Emigration
British Isles
Germany
Scandinavia
France, Low Countries,
Switzerland
195
27
49
16
183
9
20
12
180
56
25
13
32
15
4
5
165
40
12
63 b
Regions of New Emigration
Italy
Portugal, Spain
Eastern Europe c
362
142
447
219
171
271
110
86
123
26
23
34
107
74
188
Total
1,238
885
593
139
649
Percent "old" emigration
Percent "new" emigration
23
77
26
74
47
53
40
60
43
57
a For a number of individual countries, average for the years 1946-51.
b Excluding movement of Algerian workers returning to Algeria from France, estimated to average 53,000
per year in 1946-51, inclusive.
c Including Austria, Finland, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Soviet Orbit.
While the United States has continued to be the leading destination of
European migration, it does not hold the commanding position that it did
in the days of unrestricted movement, when the United States was receiv-
ing from a half to two-thirds of all European emigrants (cf. Fig. 10-2).
Since the war the United States has played host to only about one-third
(950,000) of the net movement, while Canada, Australia, and Argentina
have each absorbed well over half a million. Australia in particular has
been receiving immigrants at a ratio to population far exceeding that for
the United States even at its greatest period of immigration. Immigration
to Australia and Canada has been chiefly drawn from among British sub-
jects and other Northwest Europeans on the one hand and displaced per-
sons on the other, with limited numbers from other sources. Argentinian
immigration has been almost wholly from Italy and Spain, with less than
ten per cent of the total being displaced persons. About half of the United
States immigrants were displaced persons admitted under special legisla-
tion; the remainder follow in the order of magnitude of the quotas, which
favor immigrants from Northwest Europe.
The final major country of immigration is Israel, which alone in the
postwar period owes its existence as an independent nation to large-scale
immigration. The 370,000 Jews from all parts of Europe for whom it
MIGRATIONS 371
provided a refuge have contributed spectacularly in establishing the
demographic base for the Jewish state— the new immigrants constituted
43 per cent of the total population at the end of 1951. The days of large-
scale "rescue migration" appear to be over, however, for only 23,000
arrived in 1952 as compared with 191,000 in the previous year.
In the receiving country immigrants went primarily to the urban areas.
Immigrants into the United States in 1952, for example, went overwhelm-
ingly into the cities— nearly three-fifths into the big cities of a hundred
thousand or over, 27 per cent into other urban areas, and only the small
remainder into the rural areas. Over one-half of the 1952 arrivals in
Canada went to Ontario, the most industrialized province, one-fifth went
to Quebec, and only about one-sixth went westward to the prairie prov-
inces.
Of the immigrants arriving in Australia from 1947 through 1951 only
18 per cent classified themselves as farm workers, and the flow of immi-
grants has gone almost exclusively to the cities. Similarly, in Israel, only
one-fourth of those permanently settled had gone into agriculture. The
traditional policy in Latin America of putting immigrants on the land has
generally been unsuccessful, and there has been a pronounced drift to
the cities in search of better employment even where initial settlement
was made on the land.
Prior to World War I emigrants left Europe as individuals without
governmental assistance. Since World War II, two-fifths of all European
emigrants have been moved with governmental or international assist-
ance. Despite the greater element of government control and assistance
in the postwar period the self-financed, individual migrant is still the
predominant type, whether in the United States or in the overseas coun-
tries as a whole. With the liquidation of the most immediate refugee prob-
lems individual migration is now a growing part of the total.
Almost all of the postwar migrants of Eastern European origin ( about
one million) were either displaced persons or refugees from Communism
—by definition, since countries in the Soviet orbit now generally prohibit
emigration except in special circumstances, such as the expulsion of ethnic
Germans and of Jews from satellite countries.
Although motivated by political oppression, this movement was none-
theless in accord with underlying economic and demographic forces. The
great displacements of population in Central and Eastern Europe have
been successful precisely because they were in accord with population
pressures from East to West. Conversely German efforts to colonize the
East were unsuccessful essentially because the educated, urbanized Ger-
372 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
man could not compete effectively for the land against the prolific,
peasant Slav. Similarly, the displaced persons from the Soviet Union were
not Great Russians but chiefly more advanced peoples thrust aside by the
westward push of the Russians— the Baltic peoples, the Poles, and the
Jews. In this regard the movement paralleled the "Russian" emigration of
the early part of the century— actually largely a migration of these same
minority peoples from the old Russian Empire.
TABLE 10-3
Net Emigration from Europe, 1946-52: Western and Southern Europe *
(in Thousands)
<
O
►j
M
z
-t
AREA OF
IMMIGRATION
CO
w
>
<
g
s
z
<
>
z
<
S
PS
<
H
a
W
a
H
W
w
o
Z
<
>
<
o
P
H
PS
z
<
w
o
w
ta
H
>
<
Ifl
o
o
9
PS
H
W
<
5
u
W
«
H
O
CL.
PS
p
H
O
pq
cfi
0
z
h
hH
P.
09
o
>l
O
H
North America
Canada
189
11
63
63
17
61
*
1
6
12
47
470
U.S.A.
170
26
180
18
23
66
5
2
17
39
52
598
Latin America
Argentina
1
*
9
*
2
314
7
141
*
10
5
489
Brazil
2
*
9
2
3
49
95
6
1
1
6
174
Venezuela
*
#
*
*
*
61
7
13
*
2
3
86
Other d
1
4
1
20
*
17
2
18
*
2
9
74
Africa
South Africa
70
*
6
14
1
6
*
*
1
*
4
102
Other e
35
1
*
2
— 193
— 1
59
*
*
*
4
— 93
Asia *
—65
*
8
— 111
3
2
1
*
3
8
6
-145
Oceania
Australia
225
2
16
40
3
68
*
*
11
24
17
406
New Zealand
47
*
*
9
*
*
*
*
*
1
12
69
TOTAL
675
44
292
57
— 141
643
176
181
' 39
99
165
2,230
a Including 40,000 from Ireland chiefly to U.S.A.
b Including Denmark (17,000), Norway (15,000) and Sweden (12,000); all primarily to North America.
<-■ Including Austria (35,000), Belgium (30,000), Finland (11,000), Switzerland (19,000), generally to
North America.
d Primarily Netherlands to Surinam, Italy to Uruguay and Peru, Spain to Cuba.
e Chiefly: 34,000 British to So. Rhodesia, Algerian workers to France, Portuguese to dependences
(notably Angola and Mozambique).
f Primarily Israel — net movement of 119,000 from Indonesia to Netherlands and 68,000 from India
and Pakistan to the British Isles.
* The international migration statistics presented in this table are derived from European, overseas, and
international sources, all of which are in varying degrees incomplete, inaccurate, and inconsistent. Since
there generally is better recording of arrivals than of departures, this table is in principle based on the
statistics of the receiving country, i.e., the country receiving the outward-bound migrants from Europe
as immigrants, and the European country receiving the repatriates. Statistics of the country of emi-
gration combined with those of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) and the Inter-govern-
mental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) have been used where data of the receiving country
either are not compiled, are incomplete, or unavailable (notably Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Indonesia,
India and Pakistan). Wherever possible "country of birth" data employed in classification; elsewhere,
residence or political nationality.
The free world had another type of migration of European "displaced
persons." Whereas much of Eastern Europe was integrated closely into
the Soviet security bloc, much of Asia achieved full independence with
a displacement of the former colonial administrators. The flow back to
MIGRATIONS 373
the mother countries, particularly from India and Pakistan to the United
Kingdom (110,000) and from Indonesia to the Netherlands (230,000;,
represented the return of long-term administrators, businessmen, their
families and associates. The immigration into the Netherlands also in-
cluded a number of Eurasians whose positions in Indonesia had been
jeopardized by native nationalism.
TABLE
10-4
Net Emigration from Europe, 1946-52: The Soviet E
uropean
Orbit
(in Thousands)
AREA OF
IMMIGRATION
<
s
<
c
P
m
<
i-i
<
>
o
►J
w
O
n
o
w
N
>
<
O
z
p
X
Q
z
<
1-1
o
a,
<
<
2
P
OS
{/>
en
P
H
H
>
o
(/J
H B
o cc
f-i o
□
< B.
H g
is -
j 8
<: h
2 c
< w
O P
North America
Canada
1
10
9
77
6
31
134
470
604
U.S.A.
1
28
22
169
14
120
354
598
952
Latin America
Argentina
ft
1
3
13
1
6
24
489
513
Brazil
*
1
2
4
1
1
9
174
183
Venezuela
*'
1
2
3
8
4
10
86
96
Other
»
o
1
3
*
4
8
74
82
Africa
South Africa
*
*
*
*
ft
»
0
102
102
Other
o
ft
8
»
*
*
ft
- 93
-93
Asia ( inc. Israel ) 38
22
18
121
134
9
342
-145
197
Oceania
Australia
1
11
13
71
2
55
153
406
559
New Zealand
e
«-.
o
1
1
1
3
69
72
TOTAL
41
74
70
462
159
231
1037
2230
3267
But who were the majority of the European emigrants who were not
displaced persons or refugees? They were individuals and families im-
pelled by economic motives to seek their fortunes abroad in the traditional
manner. Few of them sought land, which ceased to be the chief lure to
overseas migrants generations ago. The typical postwar migrant was
neither a farmer nor did he aspire to become one. He rather sought out
and often was assisted by his relatives and friends in New York, Toronto,
Sydney, Buenos Aires, or Sao Paulo. Even if he had been a farmer in Italy
or Portugal his was an essentially rural-urban migration across the seas.
He would indeed be foolish to exchange his status as a poor tenant on an
Italian "latifundium," for example, for an even worse fate as a plantation
374 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
laborer on a Brazilian "fazenda." But this in principle is what many in
countries of immigration would have him do— to settle empty lands and
to do jobs that natives are reluctant to undertake for sound economic
reasons.
The immigrant naturally has sought his own kind, where problems of
personal adjustment are fewest. If an Englishman, he followed the flag
to English-speaking lands overseas. If Italian, he will be found first of all
in Argentina where the Italian tongue is almost as well understood as
Spanish. If Portuguese, he will be found almost entirely in Brazil and the
Portuguese colonies; if Spanish, almost exclusively in Latin America.
These "natural" movements still constitute the bulk of overseas migration.
It is the cross-cultural refugee movements, involving major changes in
language and customs, that have created the acute need for formal inter-
vention by governments and international agencies.
Overseas emigration historically served Europe in two ways: (1) it
afforded a relief from population pressure and an outlet for the discon-
tented and oppressed; (2) it strengthened ties with overseas countries,
whether these bonds were political, economic, or cultural.
The revival of emigration in the postwar period has certainly contrib-
uted to the solution of European refugee problems. The successful liqui-
dation of the displaced persons problem was possible only through this
recourse. While emigration has fallen short of objectives in some over-
populated countries, it is nevertheless contributing significantly to the
solution of unemployment and underemployment in Southern Europe.
For countries living in postwar austerity, such as Britain, emigration has
been alternative to living under a rationed economy.
The great free migrations before World War I were an integral part of
the expansion of Europe. They provided the human sinews of European
colonization and empire. Where they were not an instrument of European
political expansion they promoted trade, capital movements, and cultural
ties that enhanced European influence in the world.
European colonization of new lands is no longer a major aspect of
European migration unless the Jewish settlement of Israel could be so
regarded. The vast majority of emigrants now go to areas already occu-
pied by populations of European race. This is true even in Latin America
—at least three-fourths of all European immigrants to this region went to
Argentina or to the predominantly European regions of Southern Brazil.
The most important exception, aside from the dubious case of Israel,
was the European immigration into Africa south of the Sahara, a net
movement of at least two hundred thousand chiefly of British, Portuguese,
MIGRATIONS 375
and French administrators, entrepreneurs, and settlers in their respective
territories. The Boer-controlled government of South Africa officially en-
courages the immigration of Dutch and Germans, but the chief effect of
Boer policies has been to greatly reduce immigration from the British
Isles and to stimulate a movement of British to Southern Rhodesia. In no
case, however, was the migration sufficient to create a European majority
even in local areas, or to change materially the minority position of Euro-
peans in every country south of the Sahara.
The huge British emigration, 500,000 of which has gone to member
states of the Commonwealth, has certainly strengthened the ties that hold
together this loose association.
In fact, awareness of immigration and emigration trends within the
British Commonwealth of Nations is an indispensable tool for an appraisal
of its changing human structure. Since 1945, Britain has pursued a vigor-
ous policy to encourage emigration to the overseas Commonwealth. The
Commonwealth countries received an average of between 110,000 and
150,000 emigrants from Britain a year and sent to Britain 50,000 or 60,000
—including an unknown number of United Kingdom people who had
changed their minds and returned.28 Australia absorbed more immigrants
than any other country. It is the only Dominion which, under a joint
agreement with the United Kingdom, shares with it the entire cost of the
passage of the immigrant. It is interesting to observe how the Dominions,
in varying degrees, attempt to encourage the British migrant. New Zea-
land, for example, is particularly anxious not to dilute its Commonwealth
blood. Australia tries to maintain a ratio of 50 per cent for immigrants
from Britain, thus assuring a continuous predominance of United King-
dom stock (which accounted, in 1946, for over 97 per cent of its popula-
tion ) . The remaining Australian immigrants include Italian, Polish, Dutch,
German, and displaced persons. Canada displays much less preference on
ethnic grounds than do New Zealand and Australia. Its course has not
been a determined Commonwealth policy. Out of over a million immi-
grants into Canada since the end of World War II, only one-third have
been British, and yet the ties with the Commonwealth have not been
weakened by this fact.29
The countries receiving European immigration have generally profited
by this movement, if for no other reason than that they have acquired a
number of skilled workers and entrepreneurs without bearing the cost of
their education and childhood dependency. The economic problems of
28 "People for Export," The Economist, August 28, 1954, pp. 542 ff.
29 Ibid.
376 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
assimilation were minimized by the high levels of economic activity pre-
vailing in the postwar period. In the underdeveloped countries, especially
of Latin America, even comparatively small numbers of European immi-
grants are playing a disproportionately large role, since they bring skills,
work habits, and enterprise not commonly available in the less-developed
countries. Only in Australia and in Israel has immigration been so large as
to create serious economic maladjustments, notably in shortages of hous-
ing and other primary facilities.
With the resolution of the displaced persons problem largely through
overseas migration, individual migration is again the predominant form.
Such migration is now forbidden by Eastern European countries. Aside
from a few intrepid individuals who successfully escape through the Iron
Curtain, Eastern Europe is ceasing to be a source of overseas migration.
For this reason potential migration to Israel from Europe has been greatly
reduced. The leadership of that country, which is largely of European
origin, is concerned about cultural inundation from areas of new Jewish
immigration (from Asia and Africa) just as are the "older" European
stocks in overseas countries with regard to immigrants of different cultural
background.
From the problem of displaced persons, interest in sponsored European
emigration has shifted to the problem of German refugees and of popula-
tion pressure in Southern Europe and the Netherlands. While the German
refugees are far more numerous than the displaced persons who were
handled by the International Refugee Organization, they have far less
impetus to emigrate, since they are now resident in a country of their own
nationality. Furthermore, the rapid economic recovery in Western Ger-
many in recent years is providing them employment opportunities. These
opportunities may be often less favorable than are those for natives of
Western Germany, but more favorable than they might expect to en-
counter in many overseas countries.
Most of Western Europe has now passed the demographic stage which
brought about the great swarming of Europeans overseas in the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. Declining birth rates in the 1930's
have so reduced the numbers entering the labor force that pressure to
seek opportunities abroad has been greatly reduced. In Ireland, in Scan-
dinavia, and even in Germany there is much less pressure to migrate
from demographic causes than there was a generation ago. The lower
birth rates now prevailing in Southern Europe indicate that pressure from
this source will also shortly recede in that region, especially in Italy, where
MIGRATIONS 377
the birth rate is now quite low— lower even than in France, the classic-
country of depopulation, and much lower than in the United States.
In peace, the major continuing reservoir of "normal" overseas migration
in Western Europe is the underemployed rural populations of Southern
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and to a less extent the Netherlands. This
reservoir is declining, but its need for an outlet still poses one of Europe's
most pressing economic problems. At least for the next ten years it should
furnish the basis for continued overseas migration, until such time as
further economic development on the one hand, and demographic trends
on the other, may have resolved the problems of population pressure in
these countries as they have in much of Northwest Europe.
The great overseas migrations of Europeans may well be coming to an
end. Rising in their place are new pressures and new migrations.
In the United States no frontier control has yet been developed that is
tight enough to seal off the two thousand miles of desert separating this
country and Mexico. In its report to the President the Commission on
Migratory Labor in 1952 ruefully compares the total of 65,000 displaced
persons from Western Europe admitted to the United States in 1950 with
the 500,000 "wetbacks" estimated to have filtered illegally across the bor-
der in that year.
Another interesting case in point, with significant social and political
implications, is that of Puerto Rican mass emigration directed almost en-
tirely at New York City. The small island (3,423 square miles) which is
plagued by a high population density ( 646 per square mile ) of a rapidly
growing populace (2,210,000 in 1950, an increase of 18.3 per cent over
1940 30) has as a Commonwealth of the United States the advantage that
it can transfer its overflow population of United States citizens to the con-
tinental United States without being hampered by immigration restric-
tions. As a result the influx of Puerto Ricans to New York ( aided by the
low flight passage rates) has reached unforeseen proportions. In 1953,
375,000 Puerto Ricans were listed in New York, which figure reflects an
increase of 54 per cent over the total of 246,000 only three years earlier.
Not less than 25 per cent of Puerto Rico's total population have left the
island for the continent during the last two decades. The steady growth
of Spanish-speaking islands within the cosmopolitan metropolis of New
York provides the city government with major problems of integration of
a large ethnic minority that is growing continuously, is endowed with the
privileges of citizenship, and is yet far from being assimilated.
so The Statesman's Yearbook, 1953, p. 740.
M A LA Y A
Kuantan:::::::::x:::::4::
IT"
Fig. 10-3. Chinese Settlement in Malaya: (1) predominantly Chinese; (2) strong
Chinese minority.
378
MIGRATIONS 379
CHINESE AND INDIAN EMIGRATIONS
The primary interest of the American and European reader in overseas
migration from Europe should not detract from the fact that immigration
and emigration elsewhere, particularly in certain Asian territories, loom
large in the political geography of the countries concerned. The following
remarks, far from trying to exhaust the subject, aim only to call attention
to an especially important area of structural change due to immigration,
that of Chinese emigration overseas toward the peninsulas and islands of
Southeast Asia.
Malaya: A Case Study.31 Nowhere in the world do we, in this century,
find as complete a change of the human geography of a territory through
the impact of immigration as in Malaya ( Fig. 10-3 ) . The following obser-
vations on a territory which is a kingpin— economically and strategically—
of Southeast Asia, are intended to illustrate how gradual immigration,
paralleling mass migration, can lead to a decisive reversal of the ethnic
structure of a country and, as a result, to important changes in its political
and economic geography.
Malaya, an area of slightly more than 50,000 square miles (somewhat
smaller than Florida), is situated in the southern part of the Malay Penin-
sula, an extension of the southeastern tip of Asia between India and China.
A British colonial possession, it includes the peninsular mainland and the
island of Singapore. It has a heterogeneous population of some six mil-
lions, composed of Malays, Chinese, Indians, and Europeans. The political
loyalties of this population as well as their economic occupations which
differ greatly between its ethnic groups, are of no small importance. Two
vital commodities— tin, totaling more than a quarter of the world's output,
and rubber, of which Malaya since World War II has produced 40 per
cent of the world's output, have made the small territory the single largest
earner of dollar exchange in the British Commonwealth and Empire; the
naval and air base of Singapore commands the narrow Straits of Malacca,
which is the shortest connecting link between the Indian Ocean and the
South China Sea.
In this important territory we find a Chinese community which, since
1941, has outnumbered the indigenous Malay population ( Chinese 2,615,-
000, Malays 2,544,000). The rise of the Chinese group has been rapid in
the last decades, for its share of 44.7 per cent in 1947 in the combined
area of the Federation of Malaya and Singapore (where the percentage
31 F. H. Stires, British Colonial Policy in Malaya and the Malayan Chinese Com-
munity, 1946-52, M.A. thesis, 1953, Georgetown University; T. E. Smith, Population
Growth in Malaya (London, 1952).
380 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
of Chinese is 77.6 per cent) compares with one of 35.2 per cent in 1921.
The majority of the Chinese population have settled in the tin and rubber
producing regions along the western coast of the country; 92 per cent of
the total present Chinese population is located in the west coast states.32
Since 1947, Chinese immigration has been practically stopped by the
colonial administration.
Ever since the Chinese, with British permission, migrated to Malaya—
at first for employment in the rubber plantations and in the tin mines— we
find the human, and especially the economic and political geography of
the country in a state of cleavage and the British colonial government
saddled with the most complicated tasks of balancing a radically changed
population. The gravity of these problems is accentuated by the fact that
China has always adhered to the principle of jus sanguinis, according to
which it viewed the overseas Chinese as citizens of China, whose activi-
ties, especially in the fields of education and of ideological loyalties,
should be controlled by the homeland government.33
One of the main means by which the British, since 1931, have attempted
to stem the Chinese tide was by the establishment of Malay Land Reser-
vations. The late realization that the Malay people, as a race, could not
compete with the far more populous other races attracted to Malaya, led
to regulations under which land from the Reservation, in particular land
suitable for rice cultivation, could be made available only to Malays.34
From whatever angle we view the human and political geography of
the Malay Peninsula, we will trace the causes of its radical changes in the
twentieth century and its problems of co-existence between its ethnic
groups to the impact of immigration, especially Chinese immigration.
Chinese Minorities Overseas. While Malaya is the only countrv in
Southeast Asia where the Chinese have become the dominant racial group,
the problems created by Chinese immigration are shared by most other
Southeast Asian countries. The total number of Chinese minorities is esti-
mated at ten million.35 Wherever the immigrants went, they took over
32 In the present Federation of Malaya, which excludes the island of Singapore, the
Malays form the largest single racial group (49.5 per cent), but the combined Chinese
(38.4 per cent) and Indians (10.8 per cent) community is almost equally large in
numbers.
33 V. Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia (New York, 1951), p. 359.
34 R. Emerson, Malaysia, A Study in Direct and Indirect Rule (New York, 1931),
p. 479. Additional problems have arisen since June 1948 when an armed rebellion
of a Malayan Communist Party, composed almost entirely of Chinese, got under way.
The vast majority of the Chinese community have remained aloof from this move-
ment. For a detailed discussion see F. H. Stires, op. cit., pp. 70-82, and V. Thompson
and R. Adloff, The Left Wing in Southeast Asia (New York, 1950), pp. 210-211.
35 Thailand: 3,000,000 (15.5 per cent), in Bangkok they constitute half of the
MIGRATIONS 381
control of a disproportionately large share of the economy of their new
country; they controlled the rice economy; they invaded successfully the
retail, import and export business, industry, and banking. Their ways of
life and loyalties toward their motherland left a distinctive mark on the
countries in which they settled. Dislocations caused by their influx
prompted a rewriting of the maps of these countries to show the social,
economic, and political factors as expressed in the distribution of the
indigenous and immigrant populations. Malaya offers, as we have seen,
the most vivid illustration. Politically, the fact that the Chinese Commu-
nist government does not recognize the right of any Chinese national
abroad to divest himself of Chinese nationality accentuates the contrast
between the areas of Chinese concentration overseas and those of indige-
nous settlement.36 The Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru described
this situation in 1954 as "frightening."
Indian Emigration Overseas. Of similar nature, although not as serious
in their power-political aspects, are the problems created by Indian emi-
gration overseas. For instance, Ceylon has an Indian community of about
900,000, or 13 per cent of the island's population. In 1954, negotiations
between the governments of India and Ceylon were under way aimed at
straightening out the involved citizenship problems of the Indian minority,
and at repatriation to India of those who satisfied Indian citizenship laws.
According to 1949 estimates,37 large communities of Indians are to be
found in the following countries: Burma, 700,000; Malaya, 708,000; South
Africa, 282,000; East Africa, 184,000; Mauritius, 271,000 (or 63 per cent
of the total population! ) ; Indonesia, 30,000; Fiji, 126,000 ( or 46 per cent
of the total population); West Indies and Guianas, 406,000. In most of
these areas, the influx and growth of Indian immigration, with its distinctly
different economic, social, and cultural characteristics, has resulted in
serious dislocations within the indigenous community. The strongest re-
action took place in South Africa, leading to appeals by the Indian popu-
lation to its "homeland" and to the United Nations. The history of South
population of 1,000,000; Indonesia: 2,500,000 (3 per cent); Vietnam: 1,000,000
(5 per cent); Cambodia: 300,000 (10 per cent); Burma: 300,000 (5 per cent);
British Borneo and Sarawak: 220,000 (24.4 per cent); Philippines: 120,000 (0.6
per cent). See also L. Unger, "The Chinese in Southeast Asia," Geographical Review
(1944), pp. 196-217.
36 For instance, the Indonesian government announced in October, 1954, the de-
parture of a delegation for Communist China for the discussion of the burning
controversies over the double citizenship issue. Seventy-five per cent of Indonesia's
Chinese minority, estimated at 2,000,000 to 3,000,000, are Indonesian citizens, whose
allegiance, however, is also claimed by China.
37 O. H. K. Spate, op. cit., pp. 112-113.
382 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
African government measures aimed at restricting Indian immigration
and at limiting the freedom of movement and of settlement of the Indian
minority dates back to 1913 when an Immigration Act restricted the immi-
gration of Indians in appreciable numbers. These measures paralleled
those directed at the segregation of the native population. In addition to
its native segregation South Africa also has a special pattern of Asian
(including Indian, Goan, and Arab) communities. Indian trade is confined
to certain areas; freedom of movement between the provinces is limited;
land tenure and occupation of land are hedged about with legal restric-
tions; residential segregation is practiced. As citizens, the Indians are
powerless. A report by a study group of the South African Institute of
International Affairs summed up this situation in 1951 as follows: "In-
dians in South Africa are, to all intents and purposes, a voteless commu-
nity." 3S While discriminatory measures by other African governments do
not go as far as those in South Africa, the restrictions against the immigra-
tion of "non-natives" are widespread: Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and
Zanzibar enacted such restrictions in 1946; the Belgians tended to prevent
Indian entry into the Congo; the Portuguese restricted entry into Portu-
guese East Africa.39
Such barriers frustrate very powerful underlying forces for Asian demo-
graphic expansion. Future Western policy-makers will have to take into
account the results of such frustrations.
3 8 Africa South of the Sahara (Cape Town, 1951), pp. 72-75 (74).
39 Ibid., pp. 73, 74.
CHAPTER
11
The Political Geography
or Landuades
A NOTE ON THE RACIAL FACTOR IN
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
This chapter is concerned with linguistic factors as human elements of
importance in the study of political geography. Language is but one of
several important features of the human element in the cultural and politi-
cal landscape, the geographical distribution of which invites exploration
by the political geographer who will focus his attention on them. They
are features which generate binding and separating forces in the lives of
nations. Religion and ethnic composition are other features that must be
considered. But while this book devotes a chapter to the subject of the
political geography of religions, it does not include a detailed discussion
of ethnic and racial factors as such. The reason must be seen in the fact
that it is impossible to arrive at a satisfactory classification of the ethnic
structure of states. There is no state on the world's map that is not racially
heterogeneous. The waves of mass migrations, of immigration and emigra-
tion, as well as intermarriage have "resulted in such a mixture of peoples
that, although ethnologists suggest various broad groupings on the basis
of certain physical characteristics, there is no possibility of defining these
groups by acceptable linear boundaries." 1
On the other hand, we must be cognizant of one broad racial divide
1 A. E. Moodie, Geography Behind Politics (London, 1947), p. 51; see also A. C.
Haddon, The Races of Man (London, 1929), pp. 139 flE.
383
384 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
between the world of the "white man" and that of the non-white races.
The contours of this ominous dividing line are as hazy as ever, but at the
time these lines are written they are deepening and the boundary between
the two is about to assume a new meaning in international relations. In
April, 1955, a conference of twenty-nine Afro-Asian nations was held in
Bandung, Indonesia, which included the widest possible variety of coun-
tries extending from Libya to Japan and encompassing more than half of
the world's population. In spite of numerous separating factors in the
realms of religion, language, and race, of political philosophies and affilia-
tions, of cultural and economic systems, the nations assembled in Bandung
had in common that they were, in a crude, general way, non-white and
that they were suspicious of the white man's world, due to their common
heritage of having been at one time or another under the control of white
colonial powers. Such a division between the two worlds of white and
non-white people signifies the importance of this broad racial distinction
in the political geography of today.
LANGUAGE AS A MAJOR FACTOR OF UNIFICATION AND
DIVISION IN THE LIVES OF NATIONS
The French Academy, about fifteen years ago, drew from numerous
studies in the field of linguistics the conclusion that the number of lan-
guages still alive on this globe is 2,796. The Tower of Babel is still a
reality. As the biblical story may be an echo of the problems once vexing
ancient tyrants whose realms embraced countries of many languages and
dialects, so language today is a vital factor in the division or unification
of nations. In the creation and preservation of national consciousness,
language has played a major role. Each nation strives to have a language
of its own, a common language which forms the strongest unifying symbol
in the life of a national community. This desire has often given rise to a
national or regional consciousness so intense as to lead to separatist move-
ments.2 Agitations for the Breton and Catalan languages have disturbed
the political equilibrium of France and Spain; in Eire, an intensified na-
tionalism has given rise to a determined effort to revive the Irish language;
in the Ukraine, one of the major obstacles to the efforts of the Kremlin in
integrating this country into the U.S.S.R. has been the determined unwill-
ingness of the Ukrainian peasantry to give up the Ukrainian language for
Russian; in South Tyrol, the attempts by the Fascist Italian regime to im-
pose the Italian language on the German-speaking population failed
2 L. H. Gray, Foundations of Language (New York, 1939), p. 117.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 385
because of the determination of the mountain people to preserve their
language.
On the other hand, there are examples of nations which are unified
without a language peculiar to themselves, and each without a language
spoken by all the people. Switzerland is a nation with a strong and healthy
national consciousness, and yet it is inhabited by speakers of German,
French, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romanic, all four recognized as of equal
standing. Relgium is another example of a nation linguistically divided,
in this case between French and Flemish, although its unity, especially
since World War II, has had to weather many a storm. Then again, we
observe nations co-existing peacefully, but not united, in the face of the
fact that they are linguistically almost identical, such as Denmark and
Norway. Dano-Norwegian has been the literary language of Norway. But
the Danes and Norwegians do not regard that fact as any reason for merg-
ing the two nations into one. Or, as one British student of linguistics re-
marked (and obviously with his tongue in his cheek), "English is the
language of the United States of America. That is no reason for the United
States to annex the British Empire." 3
THE CASE OF INDIA AND PAKISTAN
The above examples were chosen at random to emphasize the great
importance of the element of language in the internal and external politics
of nations. Before we look more closely at the relationship of language
and linguistic boundaries to political geography, one further example will
illustrate the powerful influence the language factor still exerts in the
destinies of nations, leading in this instance to a redrawing of the political
map (Fig. 11-1). In India, in 1953, the new state of Andhra was inaugu-
rated. This was the first step toward a complete remodeling of the internal
political geography of the subcontinent. Of India's 450 million inhabitants,
at least 250 million speak Indo-Iranian languages, while about 100 million
use Dravidian tongues.4 Actually, the picture is much more complicated:
Hindi, the national language of India under the Constitution, is spoken by
42 per cent of the population. According to the government's program it is
to be adopted as the official language by 1956. Besides this, 15 major
languages are recognized by the Constitution, as well as 720 dialects,
24 distinct but minor languages, and 23 tribal tongues.5 Geographically,
3 A. C. Woolner, Languages in History and Politics (London, 1938), p. 10.
4 M. Pei, The Story of Language (New York, 1949), p. 353.
5 These figures are based on an Indian census published in April, 1954; New York
Times, April 10, 1954. See also O. H. K. Spate, India and Pakistan, p. 125, who points
out that in 1931, six languages accounted for 65 per cent of the population.
AFGHANISTAN (
VS
•"v
s- /
,".s^,r"
•
•>*
../
•• KASHMIR
AND
JAMMU ^
j
^^^^ CHfNA
W®
\
/
\
i
v
t
(
i PUNJAB /
PAKISTAN J* V ( / ^-x * /
V\ ^-•* V ^ / v» _* \ Je wvTAN • .Jl...' .'
— \f-sSi ASSAM y./
..^..<
Fig. 11-1. Linguistic States of India: (1) Gujerat; (2) Maharahshtra; (3) Andhra;
(4) Kanrataka; (5) Kerala ( after The Economist ) .
386
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 387
the Dravidian languages are those of India's south, while the Indo-Iranian
languages are spoken in the north. Between these two major competing
linguistic groups lingers the official language of the recent past, English,
which the Indian government is obligated to abolish within the next fif-
teen years. In a way, the language problems and cleavages which threaten
the unity of the new state of India and divide its people in the north and
south can be compared with the conflict which, a hundred years earlier,
threatened the unity of the young United States.
What happened in India on October 1, 1953, when the separate state
to be known as Andhra was formed for 20 million Telugu speakers of
Madras, represents the surrender of India's central government to the
demand that the country should redraw its internal boundaries to give a
dozen major linguistic groups states of their own. The principle itself is
not quite new in India. Even before 1914, when the British created Assam
and Bihar out of Bengal, and the North-West Frontier Province of the
Punjab, the new creations were largely, but not entirely, linguistic.6 After
independence was won by India, after the battle cry for linguistic states
was no longer a demand by the Congress Party to the Colonial Govern-
ment but a problem of the new Indian nation itself, it became evident to
its leaders that overemphasis on linguistic factors in the redrawing of the
political geography of the country threatened to foster a new concept of
belonging together and of nationalism based on language, and that this
strong unifying bond militated against a wider loyalty to India as a whole.
It was feared that controversies over the new boundaries might upset
national unity and divert the people's efforts from the more urgent eco-
nomic and political problems. Yet the force of the popular demand for
recognition of the language principle as a basis for a system of new Indian
states had become so vehement that the wind which the Congress Party
once sowed now turned into a tempest. Thus Andhra was born and a new
map of India based on linguistic principles is taking shape.
In the fall of 1955, Prime Minister Nehru presented a reorganization
plan for redrawing completely the political map of the federal republic of
India. While its states are as administrative bodies less powerful than are
the states in the United States, the cultural and linguistic differences and
cleavages are much more formidable. Under the new plan, in place of the
present twenty-nine states ( in contrast to the quilt of seventeen provinces
and about six hundred princely states at the time when independence was
won by India) there would be only sixteen. Only two of them, Bombay
and the Punjab, will be bilingual. Four of the large states will be Hindi
6 "Linguistic States in India," The Economist, October 3, 1953.
388 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
speaking units, and Hindi is to be the national language. History will tell
whether this scheme will succeed in overcoming the strong forces of re-
gionalism and separatism at work throughout India. The strength of these
forces is indicated by the fact that the Indian Congress Working Commit-
tee shortly after the new plan was presented gave in to the demands of
the Marahashtrians of central and western India, who agitate for a sepa-
rate Marathi-speaking state of their own, and decided to split up the
present state of Bombay to form three states.7
In Pakistan, where many economic, ethnic, religious, and cultural fac-
tors threaten the uneasy balance between its eastern and western parts,
problems having their origin in Pakistan's complicated geography of lan-
guages have become increasingly serious. The Moslem League govern-
ment in Karachi tried to decree that Urdu ( the Hindustani variant spoken
by Moslems) be used as official language in both Pakistans. But eastern
Pakistan is linguistically and culturally part of Bengal. The speakers of
the Bengali tongue, who number sixty million, are more numerous than
any language group in western Pakistan and their opposition against the
attempt to force upon them an alien official language was violent. In May,
1954, they succeeded in transforming Pakistan into a multilingual state.
Pakistan's assembly accepted a resolution declaring that Urdu and Ben-
gali should be official languages, and in addition "such other provincial
languages as may be declared to be such by the Head of the State on
recommendation of the provincial legislatures." 8 English will be allowed
to function as lingua franca until 1967.9
LANGUAGE AS BINDING ELEMENT
The India and Pakistan examples offer in a nutshell a picture of the
multitude of significant problems with which the geography of languages
confronts the student of political geography. We shall now try to define
some of these problems.
There are many factors which contribute to binding communities and
populations together. One, if not the strongest element in the process of
cementing a nation is the possession of a common language. Bace ( actual
7 A. M. Rosenthal, New York Times, October 23, 1955; ibid, October 10, 1955 and
November 13, 1955.
8 Pei, op. cit., pp. 286, 346; W. G. East and O. H. K. Spate, The Changing Map
of Asia (London, 1950), p. 123; and Neue Zurcher Zeitung, March 25, 1954, p. 1;
New York Times, March 8, 1954, p. 5.
9 The discussion of language factors in the Indian Union and Pakistan is not meant
to detract from the fact that the principal cleavage in India is one of religion.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 389
blood-affinity and, even more potent, the imagined racial community
preached by the drummers of political pseudo-philosophies), ethno-
graphic factors, the unifying force of religion, and the manifold elements
of a common history and traditions— all work together in the process of
amalgamation which creates and continuously recreates the substance of
a nation. But language is always an essential factor, sometimes competing
with religion in the order of importance.10 A common language must al-
ways be considered a powerful bond, uniting a people within a commu-
nity of ideas and ideals. Switzerland, with its four official languages, is not
an exception but rather emphasizes the fact that the mosaic of each
nation is so complex, the mosaic stones so different in appearance, that
we cannot expect to find a general formula composed of linguistic, racial,
and physical factors from which the definition of a nation or nationality
can be derived.
THE LINGUISTIC FACTOR AS A RARRIER
Just as a common language cements and binds and creates a strong
feeling of belonging-together, the lack of a common language will form
a barrier between peoples, unless, as in Switzerland, common memories
prove strong enough to challenge the factors of disunity and isolation
which differences in language are apt to create.11 In India, as discussed
above, we have an illustration of the conflicting powers at work. It is still
too early to say whether the unifying elements upon which the Indian
government rests its claim for national unity will develop sufficient
strength to offset the separating factors based on linguistic differences.
The problems with which India and Pakistan are at present confronted
within their national boundaries illustrate another important factor: dif-
ferences in language are not only barriers between nation and nation.
Where more than one language is spoken within the national boundaries
of a nation— even where different dialects prevail— the germ of not-belong-
ing-together exists and serious problems affecting in many ways the inter-
nal geography of a nation are apt to arise. There is scarcely a nation on
10 India offers a good illustration in confirmation of this statement. To quote
O. H. K. Spate (Geography of India and Pakistan, p. 125): "The 'racial' element has
indeed its importance— a very great importance— in the cultural history of India; it is
of little practical significance today. Few Indians ( and for that matter few English-
men) could speak with any degree of scientific accuracy as to their racial origins;
everyone knows what language he speaks. Next to religion language is the greatest
divisive force in India ( and Pakistan ) today."
11 M. Huber, "Swiss Nationality," in A. Zimmern, ed., Modern Political Doctrines
(London, 1939), pp. 216-217.
390 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
the political map of the world without dividing factors which have their
origin in linguistic differences. In each case, the nature of the problems
arising from such differences has characteristics of its own and is, above
all, determined by the relationship between, and the relative power of,
the various language groups brought together under one nation's sover-
eignty. Rarely do we find cultural and political equality between language
groups such as it exists in Switzerland. Mostly the co-existence between
majority and minority groups, between conqueror and conquered, be-
tween colonial power and indigenous population, will accentuate the in-
ternal problems. Thus the language map which distinguishes between
linguistic groups within a nation's boundaries— by showing the islands and
pockets of discernible language, or on a somewhat different plane, dialect
—cannot possibly do justice to the many distinctions which, nationwide,
characterize the relations of language groups and thus form an integral
and important part of a country's cultural and political geography.
REGIONAL CASE STUDIES
Canada. The internal political geography of Canada is distinguished by
the relationship between its English element and the vigorous French
group, representing more than four-fifths ( about 4,000,000 ) of the popu-
lation of Quebec, or one-third of Canada's total population of 15,000,000 12
(Fig. 11-2). De Tocqueville's prophecy of 1830 that the French were "the
wreck of an old people lost in the flood of a new nation," 13 was disproved
by history. A comparison of Ontario and Quebec shows striking differences
in their respective human and social geographies. There has been no melt-
ing pot. The French Canadians like to think of themselves as les Cano-
diens, and of the rest of their compatriots as les Anglais. In addition to
cultural and linguistic and, above all, religious factors, geography has
played a leading part in keeping the two nationalities alive under the same
Canadian flag and preventing them from getting "lost in the flood of a new
nation": set off by themselves, surrounded on three sides by the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and the forested highlands to the north and south, the French
Canadians are approaching their third century of agricultural and social
isolation, with strong Anglo-French demarcations highlighted by linguistic
divides.14
12 Official Canadian statistics for 1954 show that despite occasional sharp differ-
ences between the French Canadian groups and the majority groups of English-
speaking Canadians in immigration, births, infant mortality, and marriages, the
proportion remains the same,
13 J. R. Smith and M. O. Phillips, North America, 2nd ed. (New York, 1942), p. 72.
14 Ibid., pp. 631-639.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES
391
^ T^
r
%>J\ 7
"•*. /
.L_l .*
\m~am — >■»
Fig. 11-2. Canada: "Les Canadiens": (1) English language area; (2) French
language area.
Union of South Africa. In comparison and contrast, the geography of
languages in the Union of South Africa reveals the two competing white
groups, the Boers and the English, in an altogether different environmen-
tal setting. While it is true in the case of two language groups in Canada,
and in the case of four language groups in Switzerland, that a more or less
accurate linguistic borderline separates one linguistic group from the
other, the geography of languages, with its political implications, is much
more complex in South Africa. There is no clearly defined linguistic
boundary line. In answer to the question put to the white population in
the 1946 census as to which language they spoke at home, 57.3 per cent
stated Afrikaans (language of the Boers) and 39.4 per cent English; 1.3
per cent declared themselves bilingual. In broad terms, one can observe
Boer and British preponderance region-wise, with the British in the ma-
jority along the coast, in the Cape Province and, above all, in Natal, and
the Boers having their strongest positions in the interior, in Transvaal, and
especially in the Orange Free State. More significant than the regional
divide is that between town and country. On a town-country level, the
rural districts, with an Afrikaans-speaking majority of 82.4 per cent, dis-
play clearly the strength of the Boer element among the white farming
population. In the cities, the ratio of 48.5 per cent English to 47.8 per cent
Afrikaans reveals here the major zones of competition and conflict, com-
plicated by the fact that English is a world language and Afrikaans a
provincial tongue.15
15 R. P. Hafter, "British and Boers in South Africa," Neue Ziircher Zeitung, June 5,
1954. In this competition between English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites, time
392 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia offers an interesting example of a country which,
during the short span of its history, has astonishingly well succeeded in
binding together a great variety of ethnic, linguistic, and religious
groups,16 in the past torn apart by bitter feuds. Its total area of about
97,000 square miles ( one-half the size of France or Spain, about the same
size as Wyoming or Oregon) harbored in 1954 a population of seventeen
million. Its main nationalities, comprising 87.4 per cent of the population,
are the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and Macedonians.17 They are set apart
by three major languages: Serbo-Croat, Slovene, and Macedonian.18 The
dividing lines are even more accentuated by the fact that the Yugoslavs
adopted two alphabets, each associated with one of the major religions.
The Slovenes and Croats, largely Roman Catholic, use the Latin alphabet,
whereas the Serbs and Macedonians, largely Serb Orthodox, use the Cyril-
lic alphabet, a modified form of the Greek alphabet.19 The close link
between linguistic and religious elements in Yugoslavia illustrates the
blending of ethnic, linguistic, and religious factors which co-operate to
distinguish groups within a multination state. Such a blending contributes
to strengthening the contours of boundary lines within the state and de-
picting its internal cultural and political geography.
seems to be on the side of the latter. School statistics for 1954, as reported in the
Neio York Times of January 24, 1954, show that there are twice as many Afrikaans-
speaking white children in the public schools as English-speaking children ( and that
African Negro children far outnumber both). It is safe to predict that the English-
speaking whites in most of South Africa are on the way to becoming a minority in
the next generation; only the Natal coastal province and the adjacent northeastern
corner of Cape Province are likely to remain as areas of English-language pre-
dominance.
16 See pp. 431, 432, 435, 436.
17 It should be noted that in addition to its contrasting majority groups Yugo-
slavia has also a highly complex minorities situation: Albanians, somewhat less than
800,000, comprise about 5 per cent of the country's total population. A look at the
map reveals the precarious border situation between Albania and Yugoslavia. Since
the bulk of the Albanian minority is to be found in the Kosmet border region, this
fact emphasizes the problems arising out of the existence of so considerable a
minority group close to the boundary of the Soviet satellite Albania. Other minorities
include Hungarians (500,000), Rumanians, Czechoslovaks, Turks, and Italians. The
above information is based on U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,
The Population of Yugoslavia (Washington, D. C, 1954), pp. 52-55.
18 For centuries, Macedonia has been a cradle of conflict between the nations
represented today by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Albania. It is of interest to
note that the most recent attempt to solve the Macedonian problem has been under-
taken on a linguistic basis. Macedonia is one of Yugoslavia's six autonomous republics.
Of its population of about 1,200,000, some 800,000 are classified as "Macedonians,"
and strong efforts are made by the Belgrade government to solidify this ethnic group
through the development of a Macedonian language and a folk culture of its own.
For details, see H. R. Wilkinson, Maps and Politics, A Review of the Ethnographic
Cartography of Macedonia (Liverpool, 1951), p. 165.
19 Ibid., pp. 14-15.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 393
SUMMARY
In spite of many differences, we can describe Canada and Switzerland,
or Belgium and the United Kingdom, and even Yugoslavia, as countries
in which the various linguistic groups harmoniously— in spite of occasional
friction— collaborate and respect each other. In contrast, in the South
African Union, its colonial background, the memories of the Boer War,
and the violent controversy over the Apartheid policy of the government
prompt many among the Boer extremists to look upon their English-
speaking countrymen as intruders and invaders.
LINGUISTIC ISLANDS AS ZONES OF FRICTION
Europe. This leads us to those political areas in which linguistic minori-
ties, as in the case of the Germans in pre- World War II Poland and Czech-
oslovakia, remain an alien substance within the body politic. In these
areas, the explosive conflicts caused by hostile linguistic groups led to
radical solution of the problem by mass expulsions of eight million so-
called ethnic Germans (whose distinguishing characteristic was the lan-
guage factor) from East European countries. Often the problems resulting
from the existence of "foreign" language groups within the boundaries of
a nation are critically increased by the location of such linguistic islands
near or along a border, thus bringing the language (or ethnic) minority
close to a neighbor with whom this minority shares not only a common
language but other tangible and intangible interests as well. Most of the
boundary problems which vex the nations of Europe at this time are only
to a small degree caused by differences over factors concerning the physi-
cal geography of the frontier zone; they arise, rather, as factors of human
geography, among which the problems of conflicting linguistic and politi-
cal boundaries loom large. This is true in the following active and dormant
boundary disputes along the frontiers of Europe; the map of Europe
which shows these zones of friction over linguistic and political bound-
aries illustrates how language plays a paramount role among the factors
which account for the unstable political frontiers of Europe.20
In connection with the discussion of "dormant" disputes in Europe, in
border regions where an ethnic minority is geographically close to the
"motherland," mention should be made of the highly involved case of Ire-
land, where more English is at present spoken than Irish (which belongs
20 List from G. W. Hoffman, "Boundary Problems in Europe," Annals of the As-
sociation of American Geographers (1954), p. 107.
394
HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
to the Celtic group of Indo-European languages) by its three million
people. To Irish nationalism the partition of Ireland will always appear
intolerable, and Eire has never recognized the separation of the six North-
ern Counties. The language factor here is of minor importance because of
the dominant position of the English language, especially in the North.
Ireland is a good illustration of the importance of the religious factor in
political geography: the Southern population is 94 per cent Catholic, the
Northern 66 per cent non-Catholic. In a reunited Ireland the non-Catho-
lics would amount to a little less than 25 per cent.21 In all its complexity,
the Irish problem shows the linguistic factor as only one element, and in
this case not a decisive one, molding the human geography of the country.
TABLE 11-1
POPULATION
SPEAK
NOW
LANGUAGE
CONTROLLED
CLAIMED
TOTAL OF CLAIMANT
DISPUTED AREA
BY
BY
(000s)
—PER CENT
A. Active Disputes
Dutch-German
Netherlands
Germany
9.5
100
Saar
r Semi-inde-
< pendent
I France
Germany
943.
100
South Tyrol
Italy
Austria
340
60
B. Dormant Disputes
N. Epirus
Albania
Greece
320
20
E. Germany
( Poland
{ U.S.S.R.
W. Germany
6,000 (close
to) 100
Karelia-Viipuri
U.S.S.R.
Finland
400
?
Slovenia (Yugoslavia)
Carinthia (Austria)
Austria
Yugoslavia
190
30
Linguistic Divides in Asian Frontier Zones. In the frontier zones of
Asia, where nomadic people flow back and forth across the borders, the
linguistic divides differ in character from those in the borderlands settled
by the sedentary people of Europe. But here, too, we can observe the
centripetal force of linguistic kinship which tends to consolidate people
separated by political boundaries. An example is provided by the
Soviet-supported efforts of Afghanistan to sponsor a Pathan nation
— Pushtunistan— which would unite about seven million Pathan tribesmen
now living in disputed areas of Pakistan in a state which would be domi-
21 J. V. Kelleher, "Can Ireland Unite?", The Atlantic Monthly (April, 1954), pp.
58-62; I. Bowman, The New World (New York, 1921), pp. 30-35.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 395
nated by the Afghanistan government and would extend that country's
control over western Pakistan from the Hindu Kush range in the north
to the Arabian seacoast of Baluchistan in the south. Sinkiang serves as
another illustration. Here, too, the frontier between China and the
U.S.S.R. is not a line but a zone. "Except for the Amur and Ussuri frontiers
between the Northeastern Provinces and Siberia, the entire land frontier
could be arbitrarily shifted either several hundred miles to the north or
several hundred miles to the south and still affect practically no Russians
and practically no Chinese." 22 Ethnically and linguistically, the frontier
zone is interwoven and penetrated in both directions by Kazakh, Uiqur,
and Kirghiz groups and linguistic patterns.23
STABILITY AND INSTABILITY OF BOUNDARIES AND
THE LANGUAGE FACTOR
If one focuses attention on those sensitive spots along a political bound-
ary where the linguistic and the political boundary fall apart, one has to
distinguish between the political boundary which, in spite of lacking
identity with the language boundary, has demonstrated stability in its
history, and the political boundary which, cutting across a cultural land-
scape whose populace speaks the same language and shares the same
traditions and memories of a common history, still has to pass the test of
time. Typical of the first is the boundary separating Germany and Switzer-
land. The other extreme is exemplified by the temporary political bound-
ary which follows the Iron Curtain and cuts a Germany which is practi-
cally without linguistic or ethnic minorities into two political units— West
Germany, and the "German Democratic Republic" in what was, until 1954,
the Soviet Zone of Occupation. Even though the future of Germany and
its frontier is still in balance, this example shows clearly the fallacy of
drawing a boundary that disregards completely the intangible factors of
belonging-together that cement a nation. Such intangibles account for the
unity which the United States achieved and has maintained in spite of the
many separating factors which brought about the Civil War.
22 O. Lattimore, "The Inland Crossroads of Asia," in H. W. Weigert and V.
Stefansson, eds., Compass of the World (New York, 1949), pp. 374-394 (386).
23 O. Caroe, "Soviet Empire," in The Turks of Central Asia and Stalinism (London,
1953), map after p. 272; see also pp. 32-34, 43, 255.
396 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
IRREDENTISM
The characteristic instability of the political boundary in disrupted lin-
guistic zones (unless the boundary, as in the case of the Swiss-German
frontier, has weathered the storm over a long period of history ) frequently
generates expansionist drives and ideologies on the part of neighboring
nations. These nations tend to regard minority groups across the border
speaking their own languages as akin and claim them and their territory.
This is the meaning of irredentism. The term originated in Italy— Italia
irredenta (unredeemed Italy). A political philosophy of high emotional
pitch, it claimed for Italy not only neighboring areas in which Italian was
spoken by a majority of the people ( with Austria and Switzerland as tar-
gets), but also lands across the sea, such as Malta and the territory east
of the Adriatic. In countries in which a nationalistic irredentism is ram-
pant, we rarely find a readiness to surrender territory to a neighboring
country, even though an alien language is spoken there. Thus Italy, in the
heyday of its irredentist claims, did not produce proposals advocating the
surrender to Switzerland and France of the German- and French-speaking
districts of the Alpine valleys of Piedmont.24 An extreme case of irre-
dentism was presented by National Socialist Germany which started its
ill-fated drive toward world domination by irredentist moves directed at
the annexation of those regions along its frontier which were inhabited by
a German-speaking majority: in Czechoslovakia the Sudetenlands, the
Free State of Danzig, in Lithuania the Memelland, in Denmark the north-
ern part of Schleswig, in Belgium the region of Eupen-'Malmedy. The
"Anschluss" of Austria belongs in the same category.
THE CHANGING MAP OF LANGUAGES: ERASURE
OF LINGUISTIC POCKETS
Different from the situation of linguistic minorities residing in areas
close to their linguistic or ethnic homeland is that of such minorities
occupying lands surrounded entirely by territory inhabited by speakers
of the language prevalent in the country to which they owe loyalty. Here
the attraction and temptation which a neighboring linguistic island offers
to an expansionist nation diminishes with the distance from its borders
and with the separating power of "foreign" groups settled between the
24 H. B. George, The Relations of Geography and History, 5th ed. (Oxford, 1924),
p. 57; see also the detailed study of the borderlands of Italian language in L. Dominian,
The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe (New York, 1917), pp. 59-92.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 397
ethnic or linguistic "homeland" and the related minority. Instead, such
linguistic pockets present problems of internal political geography which,
especially in those cases in which the linguistic or ethnic majority has to
deal with substantial minorities, assume major proportions. The situation
differs from region to region, nation to nation, and it would be a highly
superficial undertaking to try and find simple formulas.
The existence of a linguistic pocket in close vicinity to the political
boundary of the country in which the same language is prevalent, often
leads to repressive measures against the inhabitants of the linguistic
pocket. The radical solution consists in the mass expulsion of the mem-
bers of minority groups who, by remaining faithful to their mother tongue
and other features of their minority culture, have actually or seemingly
documented their inner resistance to the state and nation to which they
"belong". A more moderate solution is that of international agreements
between the countries concerned aimed at an orderly population transfer
or exchange. These measures and the resulting radical changes in the
human and consequently political structure of many regions have assumed
major and decisive proportions in the political geography of the twentieth
century. Because of their importance, we shall deal with them elsewhere
separately.25 Here it must suffice to point out the quality of instability
of linguistic islands, especially when their inhabitants continue to resist
cultural assimilation. Strong reactions may occur by the majority against
what they believe has remained a foreign element within their political
entity. Much less noticeable than the effects of mass expulsions or popu-
lation transfers are those changes in the political landscape of a linguistic
or ethnic pocket which result from a gradual overpowering of the minority
group by strong immigration movements. These usually have government
support and are aimed at eventually erasing the alien island from the
national map. A case in point is South Tyrol. Its German-speaking popu-
lation complains that the equal rights status promised to it in the peace
treaty of 1946 exists in theory only due to the fact that, since 1918, when
South Tyrol became Italian, the Italian government has consistently spon-
sored the mass migration of Italians into South Tyrol and thus the Italian-
ization of the region: the number of Italians has risen between 1918 and
1954 from 7,000 to 120,000.
A full understanding of the relations in political geography between
linguistically dominant groups and minorities is possible only if one
studies the history and historical geography of these relations. To under-
stand, for instance, the geography of original languages in America, we
25 See pp. 355 ff.
398 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
must be cognizant of the fact that when colonization started, America was
but sparsely settled, for the most part by tribes in the hunting stage of
civilization, while the few cities were subjected to ruthless extermination
by the Spaniards.26 The Inca empire builders of the Andean universal
state displayed in their linguistic policy a different device of authoritarian-
ism.27 Having come to the conclusion that their subjects would not func-
tion as fully-equipped human instruments of a totalitarian regime unless
they were equipped with some common "lingua franca"— a supplementary
language of more than local currency— they selected the Quechua lan-
guage and forced all the inhabitants to make themselves familiar with it.
( An impressive example of the importance of a "lingua franca" as a bind-
ing element has been the choice of English as official language at the Ban-
dung conference of twenty-eight Asian and African states in April, 1955. )
RUSSIFICATION IN THE SOVIET ORBIT
The Soviet policy toward its ethnic minorities and, as an integral part
of it, the Russification of Soviet minority languages offers a significant
example of an authoritarian policy aimed at changing the linguistic map
of a nation's orbit and, as a result, changing also the map of its internal
political geography. Enforced national conformity and ill-concealed Rus-
sification are the main characteristics of this policy.
The history of Soviet language policy is the record of increasingly centralized
manipulation and uniformalization of the "forms" of supposedly national cul-
tures. The reins of cultural development were taken away, after the first decade
of Soviet rule, from the national minority leadership, and drawn tight by Mos-
cow. At first the aim was to sever the ties of the many cultural groups with their
past and to give their cultures a fresh Soviet face; the second step was the
gradual Russification of the "forms" of various cultures.28
As a rough approximation, one could say that the Kremlin has come full
circle to imitate Tsarist policy on national minorities, the essence of which
was the imposition of the Russian language, church, and culture on the
non-Great Russian subjects of the empire.29 But there are two major dif-
ferences. "On the one hand, there is the fact that many scores of languages
today are used in education and publishing which were not admitted by
the Tsarist regime. On the other hand, the Soviets have added a new twist
to the principle of Russification. The Tsarist goal had been the exclusion
26 Woolner, op. cit., p. 15.
27 A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. V (London, 1939), p. 523.
28 S. M. Schwarz, "The Soviet Concept and Conquest of National Cultures,"
Problems of Communism ( 1953), pp. 41-46.
29 East and Spate, op. cit., p. 350.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 399
of minority languages from various functions ( education, literary usage ) ;
ultimately, the various ethnic groups were to end up as Russians. The
Soviet regime, which has slackened this approach, has launched the Russi-
fication of languages. While supporting minority tongues in various func-
tions, it has subjected them to an influx of Russian words and grammatical
patterns, and has imposed on them Russian letters and spelling conven-
tions." 30
THE IMPACT OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY UPON
THE GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES
These examples of authoritarian language policy show that there are
many gradations between the extermination of minorities or their expul-
sion or involuntary transfer to other regions within the national bound-
aries and remedial measures such as the enforcing of an authoritarian
language policy and a policy of linguistic laissez faire. Choice as well as
success or failure of a government's measures are frequently conditioned
by factors of physical geography. Often we can trace the survival of lin-
guistic islands among speakers of a different tongue— or even more fre-
quently, the survival of distinct dialects— to geographical features imped-
ing easy communication between two areas. In the secluded southern
mountains of the Appalachians, Shakespearean language survived long
after it had fallen into disuse in England and in the Atlantic Coastal Plain
where the mountaineers once lived. So many customs of the past survive
among these people that they have well been called "our contemporary
ancestors." 31 Thus mountain chains, deserts, forests, seas, as geographi-
cal features impeding communication, will lead us to innumerable loca-
tions on the world's map where from olden times linguistic pockets have
remained intact and where, consequently— and in proportion to the over-
all national importance of these islands— problems of internal and external
political geography stayed alive.
On the other hand, the relationship of physical and human geography,
in terms of the political geography of languages, is not so obvious that
the physiographical map provides most of the answers to the questions of
why and where. By no means do linguistic boundaries always follow
obvious geographical lines.32 To claim 33 that linguistic lines of cleavage
30 U. Weinreich, "The Russification of Soviet Minority Languages," Problems of
Communism (1953), pp. 46-57 (47).
31 E. C. Semple, "The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains," Geographical
Journal (1901), pp. 588-623.
32 Woolner, op. cit., pp. 15-16.
33 Dominian, op. cit., pp. 2-3.
400 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
conform essentially with physical features would be a gross oversimplifi-
cation of the problem. In present-day human geography these features are
significant in many cases; they are not significant in many others.
For Europe, W. Gordon East 34 describes this as follows:
. . . the lower Danube, flanked by a broad belt of marshes on its north bank,
does divide Rumanian from Rulgarian-speaking peoples. The boundary between
French and German passes along the wooded summits from the high Vosges.
The area of the Pripet marshes separates Ukranian and Belorussian speech, and
the Pyrenees effectively separate French and Spanish. Areas of scantily settled
steppe and rivers which are unnavigable upstream, characterize the frontier
region between Portuguese and Spanish. But, in the main, peoples and lan-
guages have negotiated physical obstacles such as mountains, rivers, highlands,
and marshes. The watershed of the Alps does not neatly divide French and
German from Italian; within the Alpine valleys, distinctive languages have de-
veloped in semi-isolation; neither do the eastern Pyrenees sharply divide the
areas of Catalan and Provencal. As to the navigable rivers of Europe, they com-
monly serve to unite rather than to divide, so that the Vistula Basin forms the
core region of Polish speech while that of the Rhine has become mainly Ger-
manic, yet invaded by French on its western flank. The Danube, in contrast,
presents a succession of language areas astride its valley.
In lowlands and hilly country, the frontiers of language bear no obvious rela-
tionship to the relief and are clearly the expression of social forces operative
long ago. Even so, former geographical features— now erased— may have been
significant: thus the former Carbonniere Forest did in medieval times form a
zone of separation between Flemish speech in the Scheldt Basin and French
speech to the south.
THE MOVEMENT OF PEOPLES AND THE LINGUISTIC FACTOR
Europe's language map, like those of its nations and states, can be explained
only in terms of historical geography, i.e., the movements of peoples, their initial
settlements and subsequent colonization outwards, and their mutual reactions
when brought into contact with each other. By the end of the Middle Ages the
language patterns were clearly outlined; one can point to specific linguistic
frontiers, notably that of French and German in the Lorraine Plateau and that
of Walloon and French on the Franco-Belgian border where the boundary has
changed but little during the last thousand years. And, since the end of the
Middle Ages, the many migrations, colonizing efforts, and compulsory and vol-
untary transfers of population, especially in the last decade, have modified dis-
tributions fixed long ago.
35
In our age of technology, more and more natural obstructions are being
crossed; the impact of radio makes itself felt in the most remote hamlets.
Colonization, in particular settlement colonization of the tropics, has led
to the crossing of oceans by languages. It is here where historical geog-
34 In G. W. Hoffman, ed., A Geography of Europe (New York, 1953), pp. 30-31.
Copyright 1953, The Ronald Press Company.
a5 East, op. cit.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 401
raphy offers the most striking examples of an immense variety of invasion
forces displayed by foreign language groups from distant lands. The
spread of the Greek language followed colonization. Greek cities scattered
from older centers round the shores of the Mediterranean, mainly in the
eastern half but also as far west as southern Italy and Marseilles.36
The Roman Empire carried its language far beyond the Italian penin-
sula, and in the Roman colonia (colony), where conquered lands were
allotted to Roman veterans, we find the soldiers of the Roman legions and
the traders introducing their own language and civilization to the bar-
barians.37 Wherever Roman colonizers went, their prestige and the proud
Roman civilization which they represented, as well as their close-knit and
organized social community (conventus civium Romanorum) endowed
the Roman language (and Roman law) with a privileged position.38 Thus
Latin was adopted in Western Europe, North Africa, and in Central
Europe, up to the Rhine-Limes-Danube frontier zone— the outer defense
curtain from Castra Regina (Regensburg) to Confluentes (Coblenz). In
Western Europe the transformative force of the Roman language proved
decisive and permanent. Provincial Latin conditioned the growth during
the Middle Ages of languages of the Romance group: French, Provencal,
Italian, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese. In the Swiss mountains, islands
of Latin weathered the impact of centuries. In Rumania, in what once
formed the Roman province of Dacia, an "inlier" of Roman speech, con-
taining some Slav elements, remained alive.39
The historical geography of Roman colonization and its impact on the
languages of the Romance group, however important, is only one instance
of how language patterns and linguistic frontiers evolve as the result of
invasions and conquests, oversea and overland colonization. The student
of the history of languages and of historical geography will find here vast
fields to plow, and often enough in what is scientifically no man's land. To
the student of political geography this background is of great interest and
in many cases, as evidenced by India, is indispensable. Here it must suffice
to stress the importance of the historical events which account for the
survival of linguistic islands within nations the majority of whose people
are speakers of a different tongue, and also to emphasize the problems
of internal and external geography generated by these language pockets.
36 Woolner, op. cit., p. 14.
37 Ibid., pp. 13-14.
38 I. Mommsen, Romische Geschichte, Vol. II (1857), p. 407.
39 East, op. cit., pp. 25-26.
402 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
DIALECTS
The political geography of languages applies also to dialects, especially
in regard to the internal political geography of nations. Professor Mario
Pei reports that about half the students in linguistic classes who were
polled as to their native tongue replied "American" rather than "Eng-
lish," 40 and G. B. Shaw wisecracked in Pygmalion that "England and
America are two countries separated by the same language." These ob-
servations and the distinctions, well known to Americans, between New
England ("Yankee") and Southern American dialects bring home to the
reader the importance of dialects within the framework of the geography
of languages. The borderline between language and dialect is exceedingly
thin and the usual distinction between a language as the accepted national
form of speech and dialect as the not officially accepted form is not too
helpful. In Switzerland, for instance, both German and the dialect known
as Schwyzer-Deutsch are recognized officially and taught in the schools.
Each language has "infinite gradations of standard tongue, vernacular,
slang, cant, and jargon," and the "geographical division extends not only
to regions and sections of the country, but also to towns and quarters of
focus." 41 It is obvious that the use of the same dialect generates strong
feelings of belonging-together among its speakers and also contributes to
setting them apart from other folk groups who, while speaking and writ-
ing the same language, have a different dialect. Within a nation, the
separating factors due to differences in dialect may be insignificant politi-
cally because other, unifying, factors are overwhelming. Or they may be
powerful enough to build invisible walls between the various dialect
groups.
To the student of political geography who attempts to trace the geo-
graphical distribution of languages on the political map and to understand
the relationship of geography and language, it will thus be evident that,
especially in the internal political geography of states, he cannot neglect
the consideration of the unifying and separating force of dialects. When
millions of so-called ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia
and Poland in 1945 and later, the problems confronting the West German
government in its task of resettling the destitute expellees in the north,
south and southwest of Germany were multiplied by the fact that the new
German citizens spoke dialects alien to the Germans who were to receive
40 Pei, op. cit., p, 298.
41 Ibid., pp. 46-47.
THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES 403
the refugees in their communities. Germany itself has two great language
divisions: High German and Low German, as well as numerous local vari-
ations. Its map of languages and dialects with all its political implications
is, as the result of the influx of millions of ethnic-German expellees, under-
going radical changes. As settlement of compact groups of newcomers
with dialects of their own becomes stabilized, new linguistic islands will
be formed— islands of distinctive dialects within the national boundaries
of Germany, and possessing all the characteristics of a nationality group
bound together by common memories, ideals, and hopes. An interesting,
although older, linguistic island of this kind within Germany is its indus-
trial heartland, the Ruhr, with a total population of about seven million.
Its mining population is composed of many ethnic groups, especially from
Eastern Germany and Poland. Gradually it has assumed distinctive na-
tional characteristics of its own, and in this process has developed a new
dialect, a mixture of Westphalian, East Prussian, Upper-Silesian, and High
German. The speakers of the new tongue share an intangible possession
which contributes strongly to the evolution of a specific folk-group within
the entity of the nation.
Italy is rich in dialects which set a distinguishing pattern of human
geography: Sicilian, Neapolitan, Roman, Tuscan, Venetian, and the Gallo-
Italian dialects of northwestern Italy.42
China offers the most colorful illustration of a country divided into a
large number of dialects often mutually unintelligible though falling into
the broad categories of Northern and Southern 43 (Fig. 11-3). About three
hundred million people speak variants of Mandarin, the dialect of north-
ern China, now renamed Kiio-yii or "National Tongue"; the remaining one
hundred fifty million speak widely divergent dialects, the majority of
which are Cantonese, the Wu dialect of Shanghai, and the Klin dialect of
Fukien.44 Thus, while the possession of a common written language pro-
vides the Chinese with an asset making for unity, the multiplicity of dia-
lects is a potent factor of separation which can be overcome gradually only
if the northern form of the "National Tongue," as a national lingua franca,
should be accepted on a broad national basis.45
42 Pei, op. cit., p. 54.
43 Gray, op. cit., p. 390.
44 Pei, op. cit., p. 371; P. M. Roxby, "China as an Entity," Geography (1937),
pp. 1-20.
45 H. J. Wood, in East and Spate, op. cit., pp. 265-266. For a vivid description of
the contrast between the Mandarin lingua franca and the highly diversified local
dialects, see Toynbee, op. cit., Vol. V, pp. 512-514.
404
HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Fig. 11-3. China: Areas of Languages and Dialects: (1) Northern Mandarin; (2)
Southern Mandarin; (3) Mongolian; (4) Tibetan; (5) Tribal dialects; (6) Can-
tonese; (7) Hakka; (8) Fukien dialects; (9) Wu dialects (after P. M. Roxby).
From the abstract point of view, the multilingual state is not ideal.
Germs of disunity similar to those existing unavoidably in the multi-
lingual state will be found in states where local dialects have remained
strong enough to challenge the supremacy of the national language. In
either case the student of political geography should take cognizance of
these linguistic patterns which spell both unity and disunity and which
therefore must be understood if one tries to evaluate the human and
political geography of a nation.
CHAPTER
n
Religions: Their Distribution
and Role in Political Geography
THE IMPACT OF RELIGION UPON POLITICS IN HISTORY
A few centuries ago political boundaries throughout the world coin-
cided closely with religious boundaries. Still more important, religious
differences found expression in, and were more or less temporarily settled
by, political conflicts. On the other hand, political conflicts influenced
religious thought and religious allegiance. At the beginning of written
history the political unification of the numerous small states of the Nile
valley into a unified kingdom led to the belief in a hierarchy of gods, in
which the local gods became subordinate minor deities. This process has
been repeated, with characteristic variations, but basically along similar
lines in some other countries. Conquests led to changes in worship, be-
cause both the conquered and the conqueror shared the conviction that
the god of the victorious group had proved to have greater power not only
at home but even in the territory of the defeated god. Some religions
required their followers to spread their beliefs by the sword. Islam is the
prototype of such a religion. The spread of early Islam inevitably led to
the expansion of Arab rule. In such periods a map of religious affiliations
would disclose the geographical distribution and extent of political forces
better than would a map of kingdoms, which would at best show short-
lived dynastic combinations.
It is therefore significant for us that, in early history and even today
among primitive people, the religious community precedes, and later
405
406 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
often supersedes, the political community.1 To see to what extent factors
of the natural environment have influenced the context and the extent of
religious communities, to visualize the boundaries which separate these
communities— as forerunners of national communities or in competition or
co-ordination with them— from other cultural or national groups is essen-
tial for the understanding of many problems of historical geography.
From this perception it is but one step to the recognizing of many present-
day problems of state power and conflict in which religion, and in par-
ticular organized religion, plays a part.
THE RELATIONSHIP OF RELIGIOUS DISTRIRUTION AND
POLITICAL FACTORS TODAY
Periods in which the religious community was dominant alternated with
periods during which politics was swayed by different motivations. Our
own age is such an era, characterized by the interplay of complex and
conflicting motivations. Therefore, we have to determine in this chapter
whether and to what extent religious distribution coincides with political
units: are such instances merely historical relics? Can and would religious
distribution and loyalties affect the political map of today? If so to what
extent? Can and would political changes affect religious allegiances under
present-day conditions?
The first question can be approached by comparing one of the cus-
tomary maps of religious distribution with a political map. For a number
of reasons we have to call such a map a preliminary approximation. A
large part of the globe's surface lacks reliable statistics of religious affilia-
tion. We have only very rough estimates for the more than a quarter of
humanity which lives in the Soviet Union and China. The picture is even
more complicated by the fact that the available statistical sources, al-
though they reveal certain information about the geographical distribu-
tion of organized churches, can reveal but very little concerning the
religious beliefs of individuals and communities and because of this de-
ficiency can be misleading. There is no accepted standard for reporting
religious adherences. In some cases, particularly among Roman Catholics,
all those baptized or even all those coming from a family of the same
faith, are counted as Roman Catholics. In other churches, only those
confirmed or baptized in adulthood are reported. These differences are
trifling in comparison with the greater problem of how to relate the sta-
tistics of religions to the actual beliefs of individuals. For instance, in
1 F. Ratzel, op. cit., pp. 164-167.
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 407
West Germany official statistics show that 96.3 per cent of the population
are Protestants or Roman Catholics— 51.1 per cent Protestant and 45.2
per cent Roman Catholic. But a public-opinion sampling in 1951 indicated
that only 78 per cent of the population actually "believed in God," and
that only 62 per cent of these "believed in Jesus as the Son of God." In
the Scandinavian countries, it is reported, Protestant pastors say that not
more than one-tenth of the average parish betrays any lively interest in
the church. In a poll taken in 1952 in an area of Norway where church
loyalty was considered above average, 60 per cent of the young Nor-
wegians questioned said that they were not much interested in Chris-
tianity, 14 per cent declared themselves Christians, and 25 per cent said
they were well disposed toward the Christian faith. These facts contrast
with the official Norwegian statistics, according to which out of a popula-
tion of 3.2 million in 1946 there were only 100,000 dissidents from the
Lutheran National Church. In England, where the Church of England is
the center of the world-wide Anglican communion, we find that the Estab-
lished Church, which baptizes some two-thirds of the children born in
England, counts only 2.3 million members out of a population of 43.7
million (1951).2 One of the few existing detailed studies on this subject
shows that in a typical French provincial town, nominally almost one hun-
dred per cent Catholic, only 15,000 of 130,000 inhabitants go to mass.3 In
an industrial environment in France it was found that only four out of
19,000 men employed in one industrial complex were practicing Catho-
lics.4 These facts can be paralleled for every country publishing statistics
on church membership, and they should be kept in mind when using such
statistics, or church distribution maps, for the evaluation of political fac-
tors.
Spain and Portugal, as well as France, appear on a church distribution
map as overwhelmingly Roman Catholic countries. However, this should
not lead to the conclusion that they constitute a unified bloc. It is clear
that Spain's international policy is influenced strongly by religious con-
victions; in 1954 the Spanish government endangered much-coveted mili-
tary aid from the United States rather than yield on religious principles.
Spain is a country where the ruling group is firmly rooted in the Catholic
faith. The allegiance of the masses to Catholicism appears to be less pro-
nounced, as evidenced in the repeated church-burning episodes of the last
150 years. In Portugal the peasants seem to be firmer in their Catholic
2 S. W. Herman, Report From Christian Europe (New York, 1953), pp. 155, 48, 49.
3 J. Perrot, Grenoble, Essay de Sociologie Religieuse (Grenoble, 1953).
4 R. F. Byrnes, "The French Priest-Workers," Foreign Affairs, Vol- 33 (January,
1955), p. 327.
408 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
faith. Portugal has tried, with some success, to build a corporative state
following the lines laid out in the Papal Encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno.
In France a complete separation of Church and State has taken place, and
a great majority of Frenchmen seem to be Catholic only in name. A
politico-religious map, in order to be useful, would have to distinguish
among these three countries as three different politico-religious types:
Spain, dominated by a strongly Catholic laity and adhering to traditional
forms of political life; Portugal, a country where Catholicism is reshaping
the social and economic life; and France, a nominally Catholic country
where Catholicism has influence only upon and through one of the more
important political parties. As far as Catholicism has any influence upon
domestic or international policy in France, it is an indication of the
strength of this party in the government of the moment rather than an
indication of the fact that 99 per cent of the French population are
counted as Catholics.
These examples show also that political boundaries are in certain cases
good indications of the distribution of certain religious attitudes. They
show also that political attitudes are influenced, both positively and nega-
tively, by the hold religion has on the population as a whole, on a ruling
group, or on the government. Of the eighty-three independent or semi-
dependent countries of the earth ( see Table I ) , fifty are countries where
90 per cent or more of the population belong to the same religion. This
gives us a first approximation of the extent to which maps of religious
affiliations and maps of political units coincide. It does not necessarily
mean that the religious affiliation of a population determines its political
attitudes. However, there is hardly a country containing a significant
religious minority where this factor has no political significance. In some
cases such religious minority status has hindered the assimilation of na-
tional groups: Armenians, Jews, French Canadians, Irish Catholics and
many other groups have preserved their separate existence primarily be-
cause of religious differences. These differences are often an obstacle to
intermarriage. Religious minorities sometimes form separate political par-
ties, or as a group back the party friendliest to themselves. Poles in Ger-
many were among the most reliable followers of the Catholic Center
Party, the Lutherans in Austria of the German National Party. The Alsa-
tians could not easily be assimilated into the main body of the French,
not so much because of their German dialect but because of their strong
Catholic allegiance in a religiously indifferent France.
No existing map of the distribution of religions can show an even
approximately correct picture for the Soviet Union and the affiliated
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 409
Peoples' Republics. Not only has no religious census been taken in these
countries for many years; we can only state with some degree of assurance
that since the last census an unknown number of individuals have relin-
quished their original religious affiliation, and that to all appearances
many young people have grown up without any real contact with a
church.
THE MULTITUDE OF RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS
Another, though remediable and therefore minor, defect of practically
all existing maps of religious distribution on a continental or world-wide
scale is their oversimplification. Most maps attempt to show a broad-brush
picture of the distribution of major religions, taking uniformity in doctrine
rather than diversity in organization as their differentiating feature (Fig.
12-1 ) . However, many religions are deeply split into dissenting and some-
times hostile denominations.
In the United States, we have the strongest evidence of the wide variety
of Protestant churches. Two hundred and fifty-two different Protestant
religious bodies were reported in 1952. While there is no unity in Ameri-
can Protestantism, it would be misleading to assume that the seeming
disunity of the American churches as evidenced by the large number of
Protestant denominations is in the nature of a serious schism. A large
nucleus of 28 churches belongs to the National Council of the Churches
of Christ in the U.S.A. The non-co-operative fringe contains some large
conservative bodies such as the Southern Baptists and the Missouri Synod
Lutherans, and some large bodies such as the Mormons and Christian
Scientists, but most of the fringe is represented by some two hundred
small sects which account for only 2 per cent of all Protestants. The con-
sciousness, throughout the Western world, of the impressive unity of the
Catholic Church is the indirect cause of a common misconception which
assumes a similar kind of unity for other religions. This misconception is
supported by the oversimplification of most maps depicting the distribu-
tion of religions. Especially where religions and political factors are
closely linked, the resulting errors may lead to a distorted evaluation of
the political map and of international relations as influenced by religious
factors.
A case in point is the world of Islam (cf. Fig. 12-5, p. 426). Character-
istic of the widespread ignorance ( in the western world ) of Islamic condi-
tions is the now almost forgotten incident of Tangier in 1905. William II,
German emperor, almost wrecked the main purpose of his Mediterranean
s
"8
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410
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 411
cruise of that year— the strengthening of his ties with Turkey— by stressing
in a speech in Tangier the complete sovereignty of the Sherif of Morocco.
Though the demonstration was intended against France, William did not
know that the Sherif was regarded by the Grand Sultan of Turkey as a
schismatic who did not recognize the Sultan's Khalifat supremacy. The
Islamic world is deeply split by the hostility of Sunnites and Shiites. Iran,
the only major Shiite country, is relatively unaffected by appeals from the
rest of the Moslem world. Iraq is divided between these two sects, with
the Sunnites more important politically. Little, remote Oman has its own
Islamic denomination, seldom found outside its boundaries.
Still less known is the geographical distribution of Hindu sects in India
( cf. Fig. 12-3, p. 420 ) . Buddhism in Ceylon, Burma, and Thailand may be
regarded as belonging to the same denomination despite the lack of com-
mon organizational ties. Tibetan or Mongolian Lamaistic Buddhism, how-
ever, is entirely different, and the Buddhism of China and especially of
Japan is different again 5 and is split into many denominations, some non
political, others, like Japanese Zen-Buddhism, intensively occupied with
active political attitudes. These differences have never been adequately
mapped— the first condition for a safe geographical approach.
The following table tries to refine somewhat the rough approximation
at which a map could arrive. The data in the table are taken mainly from
the Statesman's Yearbooks of 1953 and 1954. However, the sources of this
yearbook, though presumably the best available, are of widely varying
accuracy and different date.
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS BOUNDARIES; THEIR
RELATIONSHIP
Table 12-1 shows that a majority of countries are for all practical pur-
poses religiously uniform. It shows also that there is a surprisingly large
number of countries which are unique in the religious composition of
their population. The major religion of many of these countries is almost
unknown to the rest of the world. The number of such countries is even
larger if we include the considerable number where doctrinal uniformity
may go hand in hand with separate organization. Lutheran Germany,
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland have not only separate
church organizations, but they also use different languages in their serv-
5 A. J. Toynbee, in A Study of History ( 1934-54 ) in many places avoids, therefore,
the term Buddhism in favor of Mahayana when speaking of this northern Buddhism,
and of the Tantric form of Buddhism when speaking of Tibetan and related forms.
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RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 417
ices, making mutual exchange difficult. They may be regarded as separate
units, particularly since the unifying bond of the Ecumenical Movement
and the World Council of Churches of Christ has not yet the qualities of
an effective movement on an international plane. It is therefore not yet
tangible enough to be considered a reality in political geography/'
Similar considerations apply to the Buddhist "churches" of Ceylon,
Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, and their attempts to create some
kind of international organization (cf. Fig. 12-3, p. 420).
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC COMMUNITY
The most impressive national religious grouping is that of the Roman
Catholic countries ( Fig. 12-2 ) . Next in size, but much smaller, is the group
of Sunnite Islamic states. Table 12-2 summarizes Table 12-1 in this respect.
This table shows thirty predominantly Roman Catholic countries. The
question arises as to how far these countries can be prompted to common
political action by their common religion. There is no doubt that, despite
their common religion, grave disagreement between them may lead even
to war. The small-scale but bitter war between Costa Rica and Nicaragua
in 1955 is a recent instance. There are fewer instances of common action,
but more important, there are frequent demonstrations of a common atti-
tude toward world-wide problems. It appears that even in the case of the
hierarchical and well-organized Catholic Church the underlying common
attitude, based on a uniform religious education, is more important than
actual united leadership. This is even more conspicuous for other much
more loosely organized religions. It is, however, this common attitude
which enables the Roman Catholic Church to mobilize its adherents in
the struggle against Communism. In countries such as Poland, Hungary,
and Czechoslovakia the Catholic Church, even though forced into passive
resistance, is the major obstacle to Communism. Communism seemingly
benefited from the active phase of the struggle, as dramatized in the con-
finement of Archbishop Beran in Prague and the trial of Cardinal Mind-
szenty in Budapest. These victories proved so costly, however, that open
persecution of Catholics lessened after Stalin's death. The Catholic
Church has maintained a strong position, thus preserving for these nations
some strongholds of spiritual independence and preventing a full victory
for Communist totalitarian ideology. This would not have been possible
without the moral backing of the entire Catholic world. In many states
6 See pp. 421 ff.
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RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIRUTION AND ROLE 419
with Catholic majorities or significant minorities, Catholic parties have
sprung up and taken a strong, consistent, anti-Communist position.
Another example of the political effects of a uniform Catholic attitude
is the part played by the Catholic forces in the question of international-
ization of Jerusalem. The Papal policy was strongly in favor of interna-
tionalization in order to protect the many holy places in this cradle of
religions. The vote of a number of Latin- American countries, apparently
quite uninterested in the case in any other respect, can best be explained
by their readiness to follow the wishes of the Vatican. The anticlerical
government of Mexico was the only Latin-American country which in-
structed its delegates to cast their votes against internationalization. Also
in respect to many major questions of intra-European politics, such as
EDC (European Defense Community) or the Schuman plan (European
Coal and Steel Community ) , the ( Catholic ) Christian Democratic parties
in France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium developed essentially correspond-
ing attitudes.
The attitude of the Catholic Church in the Spanish Civil War has been
debated heatedly. There is little doubt that the volunteers on the side of
Franco— as distinguished from the German and Italian contingents sent to
Spain by Hitler and Mussolini— were almost exclusively Catholic, and that
they were able to influence the course of politics in several countries.
Mexico, on the other hand, ruled by a nominally Catholic government but
one involved in a power struggle with its native hierarchy, gave active
support to the Loyalist ( anti-Franco ) side.
This attitude of the Mexican government brings into focus the fact that
not all nominally Catholic nations necessarily follow Catholic political
leadership. In Mexico, the policy of the government, backed by wide
circles of the population, has placed the country among the anti-Catholic
Powers. Nevertheless, Catholicism is still influential. When Protestant
missionary activity became intensive, Mexican governments risked conflict
both with the United States and Great Britain in order to combat it.
In France the state has been involved in a struggle with the Catholic
Church since the turn of the century. Laws against ecclesiastic orders
were issued and enforced; the separation of Church and State became
a fact. Children were not required to have religious instruction. Diplo-
matic relations with the Vatican were severed. At the same time, however,
the French government in the Near East and Africa subsidized Catholic
orders and schools and followed a course designed to identify Christianity
(meaning Catholicism) and France in the minds of the natives. France's
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RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 421
protectorate over Syria and Lebanon rested largely on conditions derived
from France's protective position toward the Catholic Church.
All these examples point to the complex nature of the problem of reli-
gion as a motivating force in present-day politics. There is no doubt that
Catholicism is such a force, but it is not a uniform force and its impact is
changing from country to country. It is a function of political geography
to study the distribution of Catholic Churches over the world. How
strongly and under what conditions they are influential must be examined
in each individual case in order to arrive at a true picture.
THE PROTESTANT COMMUNITY
If the Catholic Church, in spite of its unique and imposing unity, con-
fronts us with difficult problems in the task of measuring the geographical
distribution of its churches and of the part played by Catholicism in the
realm of political geography, we find these problems multiplied if we
attempt to probe the role of Protestantism (Fig. 12-3). We have already
pointed out the complexity of the mosaic of Protestant denominations in
the United States, with 252 Protestant churches, of which a nucleus of 28
major churches remains if we discount the smaller churches and sects. The
American picture reflects the complexity of the world-wide situation of
Protestantism. One must be cognizant of the major distinctions and cleav-
ages between Protestant churches if one attempts to draw conclusions
about binding or separating factors in the political field, both within a
nation and internationally. In this broad discussion of religious factors,
we cannot try to describe the large number of churches which have come
into existence since the Reformation. The Reformation heralded a new
age in which the nation-state and its specific culture emerged and became
a cultural and political unit in its own right. The Protestant churches draw
their distinctions not only from religious and philosophical roots but
equally from this fact. The individual churches which were state churches
in the Protestant countries adopted specific national, dynastic, ethnic, and
linguistic characteristics that in turn contributed to the growth of the
evolving nation-states. All this led to the rise of separate and competing
national cultures and militated against a cultural and political unity of
the West. For our purpose, the realization of this schism is necessary to
avoid sweeping generalizations and faulty conclusions based on the com-
parison of areas and countries with "Protestant" populations. If we try to
detect Protestant binding or separating elements within and between na-
tions, we must be aware that in the northern parts of Germany and
422 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
throughout the Scandinavian countries the Lutheran churches prevail,
that in the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland, and Hungary, the Re-
formed or Presbyterian churches dominate, and that in England we ob-
serve an altogether different course of the Reformation leading to the
formation of the Anglican Church. The separating factors are aggravated
by differences of language.
While it is thus imperative to observe the distinguishing factors between
the various Protestant churches in their geographical setting, we must not
lose sight of the fact that the political geography of Protestantism in our
time displays some centrifugal tendencies toward international reconcili-
ation and world-wide Christian fellowship. There is a growing feeling
throughout the Protestant world that a reversal of the long historical
trend toward separation and division is now under way, that there is a
drawing-together of the bonds of Christian fellowship. The Ecumenical
Movement, a child of the twentieth century since it began in a World
Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, has grown greatly in impact
as the result of the tragic lessons taught by two world wars. Its last Con-
ference, in the fall of 1954, at Evanston, Illinois, was marked by the par-
ticipation of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The hope has been ex-
pressed that this may be regarded as the first step in the eventual
construction of a bridge to Russia.
In comparison with the unity and strength displayed by the world-wide
organization of the Catholic Church, world Protestantism as represented
by the Ecumenical Movement is still in the formative state, its member-
ship incomplete and divided on certain questions of dogma. Above all, it
is still largely a top-level movement which as yet finds no effective parallel
among individual congregations or at the grass-roots level.7 On the other
hand, there are signs of a lessening of denominationalism in the United
States, especially in rural areas which cannot support several churches in
one community. In Europe, the common experience of churches of all
denominations in their struggle, during the Third Reich, against Nazi
paganism and later against Communist oppression, has served to over-
come differences which in the light of common vital issues had lost their
meaning. Yet a realistic appraisal of the present situation leads to the
conclusion that Protestantism still remains closely identified with the cul-
ture of northern and western Europe, and that the Ecumenical Movement,
while a hopeful beginning, is not yet a strong force in world affairs.8
7 N. V. Hope, One Christ, One World, One Church; Publication No. 37 of the
Church Historical Society.
8 A. C. Murdaugh, A Geographical Summary of Protestantism and the Ecumenical
Movement. Unpublished paper.
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 423
The conclusion at which we arrived upon viewing the Catholic Church
as a motivating force in politics is equally valid in regard to Protestantism,
even though the Protestant churches have no international organization
comparable to that of the Catholic Church. The student of political
geography cannot avoid tracing the distribution of Protestant churches
throughout the world in order to detect the extent of binding and sepa-
rating elements. He will have to observe closely the distinguishing factors
between its member churches, despite the fact that most of them have
found a common basis in the ideals and hopes of the Ecumenical Move-
ment.
THE WORLD OF ISLAM
The Islamic nations ( Fig. 12-4 ) have no international organization and
are in this respect comparable to Judaism, Buddhism, and to some extent
Protestantism. The Khalifat disappeared in the aftermath of World War I.
The great pilgrims' meetings at Mecca and Medina from all over the Is-
lamic world are no doubt an important factor in strengthening community
feelings and interests.9 However, the leading statesmen of the Islamic
world rarely meet on such occasions. Nevertheless it is a fact that common
attitudes on a variety of different problems exist among many Islamic
countries and are a strong political reality. Good authorities still consider
valid General Lyautey's famous saying that "the Moslem World is like a
resonant box. The faintest sound in one corner of the box reverberates
through the whole of it."
Despite all this, the Islamic world is changing rapidly, and these obser-
vations may soon lose significance. In some respects Islam is still an ag-
glomerate of states like the Christian states at the time of the Crusades,
and can be moved by an appeal to common Islamic sentiment. In many
other respects a transformation to the forms of modern Western national
states is progressing rapidly. In Turkey this process is practically complete
and the residual Islamic consciousness seems to be on a level with that of
Christian forces in Protestant Western Europe. When Communism chal-
lenged the very existence of religion in Turkestan and other Islamic areas,
the Mohammedan world hardly stirred. This passive attitude can be ex-
plained in part by the cutting off of the pilgrimage to Mecca and the
resulting loss of contact. Only gradually, and nowhere completely, Islamic
nations are awakening to the Communist danger. Religious-national par-
ties in Egypt, Iran, and Morocco have occasionally allied themselves with
local Communist parties. The revolt of the Dungan— the Moslems of Chi-
9 See Bowman, op. cit., p. 54.
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RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 425
nese Kansu and Sinkiang— against the Communist regime remained prac-
tically unknown in the rest of the Islamic world and was not supported by
it. On the other hand, Pakistan owes much of its success in its struggle for
a separate existence to the moral support of its cause throughout the inde-
pendent Moslem states. British diplomacy, recognizing the latent force of
Islam, was ready to give its indispensable help to the cause of Pakistan
because the British knew that by backing a Hindu-dominated unified
India they would endanger their position in the entire Moslem world from
Afghanistan to Libya.
This estimate of Islam by British statesmen has been confirmed by So-
viet policy in Central Asia where, since 1954, the U.S.S.R. has followed
a new course in its attitude toward the Mohammedans. For many years
the Soviet Union wooed the Islamic countries in the Near East, especially
the countries of the Arab League, and at the same time soft-pedaled its
attack on religion in its own Islamic territories. It even permitted partici-
pation in the pilgrimage to Mecca. But the Islamic population, in spite
of their growing indisposition toward the West, did not yield to Soviet
propaganda. The Soviets then abandoned this approach and resumed
their anti-religious, and especially anti-Islamic, propaganda struggle in
Turkestan, thereby reorganizing Islam as a living force in the struggle for
ideological and political domination. Late in 1955, a new policy toward
the Islamic nations appeared to be in the making when Egypt was offered
planes and weapons by the Soviet bloc. To try to evaluate the new course
at the time these lines are written would be premature.
It would be a fallacy to overestimate the power of Islam in its influence
on political action. The lack of an organized church comparable to the
Roman Catholic Church is a significant negative factor and the symbolism
to Mecca in comparison with Rome is but a weak substitute. On the other
hand, common religious sentiment may prompt the Islamic countries to
parallel action or attitude. Another unifying factor is the close interrela-
tionship of religion and law in Islam.10 Because the canon law of Islam,
the Sharia, is the basis of the legal system of all of the Islamic states; with
the exception of Turkey, the boundaries between these states lose a little
of its divisive value as compared with other international boundaries.11
10 A. T. Gibbs, Mohammedanism (Oxford, 1949). Every human activity has its
legal aspects; therefore, an abatement of religious zeal and conviction must not lead
to a comparable diminution of Islam as a legal and social bond.
11 R. Montague, "Modern Nations and Islam," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 30 (1952),
p. 581.
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RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIRUTION AND ROLE 427
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR AND THE GREAT POWERS
Comparable to the geographical distribution of Catholicism, and to
some extent Protestantism, that of Sunnitic Islam over certain parts of the
world evolves as a primary factor of the political map ( Fig. 12-5 ) . How-
ever, none of the contemporary great Powers can be classified as either
Roman Catholic, or Protestant, or Islamic. This reservation applies to the
United States, the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth of
Nations, and, in regard to the Russian Orthodox Church, to the Soviet
Union. Neither does such identification of religious distribution and state
power exist in China. Even though the Catholic or Protestant or the Sun-
nitic Islamic countries, if we would contemplate them as units, cover an
area and have populations comparable to those of the Great Powers, their
political structure and influence is not on a comparable plane. In the pres-
ent phase of history, as cementing factors in the process of binding nations
together, religious ideologies, even where they are strongest, are of much
less force than are other, nonreligious, influences.
All of the Great Powers, within their boundaries, have significant reli-
gious minorities : the United States has a strong Catholic minority, as does
the United Kingdom and the English-speaking member nations of its
Commonwealth. China has an important Mohammedan minority, and the
same is true in regard to the Soviet Union. Among the lesser powers,
France and India have strong Mohammedan groups within their borders.
With the exception of the Soviet state, all these powers have been careful
in their recent history not to hurt, by their foreign policies, the religious
feelings of their religious minorities.
Both France and India stress the secular character of their states and
the Soviet Union goes even farther in emphasizing its antireligious phi-
losophy. Among the other great powers, especially those with predomi-
nantly Protestant populations, the fact that their map of religions discloses
a checkerboard of many different faiths or denominations, excludes poli-
cies dictated solely by the ideas or ideals of one religion only. This does
not mean that these nations are indifferent to the religious beliefs of their
majorities. The United States and Britain are undoubtedly Christian
powers, and even if we look at the extreme case of the Soviet Union, which
we shall discuss later, we find that in spite of its negative attitude toward
religion and the antireligious bias of its rulers, it has identified itself occa-
sionally with the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church.
428 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
RELIGION AS A STATE-BINDING FORCE
If one looks for examples to test the thesis that religion is still a per-
sistent political factor in the life of countries or nations, the multinational
and multireligious countries which we discussed above are of much less
significance than are two countries of relatively recent date which other-
wise are strikingly dissimilar in most respects: Pakistan and Israel.
Founded in 1947 and 1948 respectively, they are delimited primarily along
lines of religious affiliation. However, that is as far as obvious similarities
go. Each of these two states requires separate discussion.
Israel: A Secular State. The Jewish communities are organized on a
congregational basis and have no common organizational bond, only a
common religious tradition. Nevertheless, the pressure of Jewish public
opinion in the United States has visibly influenced the policy of the United
States toward Israeli independence. This is due not only to organized
Zionist opinion, but perhaps even more to the genuine religious feelings
of the non-Zionist Jews. It is the more remarkable since in Israel itself the
ideology which kindled the enthusiasm of the fighters for this new state-
creation is a movement of secularized and westernized Jewry. It is a na-
tional ideology which is almost indistinguishable from the national ideolo-
gies of Western Europe. While this nationalism has its religious messianic
roots, they tended to be pushed into the background; Western influences
favored a modern secularized Zionism which recreated Hebrew as a living
language and fostered a fervent nationalism. Finally, with the acquisition
of a territory all attributes of a modern national state were attained. Re-
ligion played in this process a very minor, certainly not an activating, role.
The most orthodox groups, fundamentalist in the American Christian
terminology, were opposed to this modern concept of a national state and
some groups accepted it only after it had come into existence. But from
this moment religion started to play a political role. The "religious" groups
became organized in political parties and have succeeded in establishing
a set of laws which reflects their convictions. The troubled boundary be-
tween Arabs and Jews, though coincident with that between religious
communities, is almost exclusively a political, national, and cultural divi-
sion.
Pakistan: An Islamic Nation. Altogether different is the story of the
contemporaneous creation of Pakistan. National unity in its modern mean-
ing never existed in India. However, common historical experience, the
subjection under the British raj, molded India into a state closely resem-
bling many western European nations before the full emergence of mod-
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 429
era nationalism. This happened although many cultural and linguistic
differences existed and still exist in India. Deep social and religious cleav-
ages complicate the picture, such as that between Hindus and Moslems.
This latter cleavage was strong enough to disrupt the emerging national
unity, and in the twenties the idea of two separate states emerged and
took such strong hold on the Moslems that finally no solution but partition
seemed possible.
The intent to make Urdu the state language in Pakistan and Hindi in
the Union of India emphasizes the linguistic factors,12 but the national
division is essentially one of religious ideologies. This is the case despite
the continued existence of minorities in both countries which include
many million individuals of the other faith. Under the influence of Gandhi
and Nehru, India has refused to base its existence on a religious idea.
There is a Hindu religious party, the Masabha, but it is of relatively minor
importance. Its influence on the shaping of the Indian laws is much
weaker than is that of the Israeli religious parties. It seems more success-
ful in promoting reactionary and nationalistic, rather than distinctly reli-
gious points of its program. On the other hand, Pakistan was based from
its very origin on the spiritual power and the community of Islam. Koranic
law is at the basis of all its institutions. As in India, we observe in Pakistan
a struggle between conservative representatives of religious institutions—
in this case Islamic— and people of a more secular turn of mind. However,
the primary interest to us is that the foreign policy of Pakistan is largely
dictated by the concept that it is an Islamic state. This concept determines
much of Pakistan's policy toward India; it led it into a community of
political interests with the Arab states, though it is hardly based on a com-
munity of material interests; it has endangered its standing with its allies,
the Colombo Powers— not only India, but also Ceylon, Burma, and even
Islamic Indonesia; it also has helped to smooth out the inherited, danger-
ous conflicts with Afghanistan. While in all these international relations
Islamic religious motives influenced Pakistan's attitude, there is one in-
stance of Pakistan having made a vital political decision without reference
to religious ties. The military agreement with Turkey was concluded over
the protest of the Islamic Arab countries. Turkey, actually a secular state,
is only nominally Islamic.
Tibet: A Vanishing Theocracy. It is difficult to find another state of the
same type as Pakistan. Until quite recently Tibet was considered the per-
fect surviving example of a theocracy— a state where the deity not only
influenced politics but, through the priests, actually ruled. In the last
12 See pp. 385 ff.
430 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
decade many forces have been at work to unseat the Buddhist, or rather
Lamaist, theocracy of Tibet. It is still too early to define the outcome of
this strange struggle, although the chances appear to be slim that the old
order will survive. Chinese control was imposed in 1950, and in the spring
of 1954 the Indian government concluded an agreement with the Chinese
Communists by which India recognized Chinese suzerainty over Tibet.
Thereby India abandoned Tibet to Communist pressure and influence.
FEATURES OF ISLAM IN SAUDI ARABIA AND LIBYA
The Arab states in general have retained to the present day the char-
acter of Islamic states. However, they present a picture which is far from
being uniform. In Egypt earlier, and in the small countries of southeast-
ern Arabia only quite recently, Western secular ideas have found expres-
sion. The religious movement of the Wahhabis in the Arabian desert was
a distinct reaction against the minimizing of religious concepts in life and
politics. Through the alliance with and the conversion of the house of
Sa'ud (rulers of Riyadh in Central Arabia), this puritanical Islamic move-
ment became victorious. The outstanding personality of the late Abdul-
Aziz ibn-Sa'ud enabled him to lead the movement to power over most of
the peninsula, and at the same time to preserve its religious purity. He
succeeded in this despite the necessary use of modern weapons and means
of communication, despite the establishment of American oil companies
on Saudi Arabian soil, and despite the use of Americans as engineers, for
irrigation and agricultural projects, and as pilots. However, wars to force
Wahhabism on other Moslems have ceased and it would be hard to show
that Saudi Arabian foreign policy of the recent past has been dictated by
its special religious bias. While no international conflict has tested whether
or not the religious factor has remained a strong force in Saudi Arabian
politics, modern secular ideas from the West have undoubtedly made an
impression on the country, particularly since Arabs have been trained in
western technology by western experts. A European authority on Arabia,
H. St. J. R. Philby, himself a convert to Islam, has warned that the death
of Ibn-Sa'ud may make inevitable and bring to the surface currents which
have little to do with strict Wahhabism.13
A similar development already has gone a step farther in Libya. The
Islamic sect of the Senussi was founded on puritanic principles similar to
those of the Wahhabites. Hidden away in the almost inaccessible oasis of
13 "The New Reign in Sa'udi Arabia," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 32 (April, 1954),
pp. 453 f.
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 431
Kufra, their way of life remained unchanged until well into the twentieth
century. Their intransigence was strengthened when they became the
leaders and the last stronghold against the Italian conquerors of Libya.
When Kufra fell to airplanes and tanks they continued the struggle from
Egypt. Finally, their head, Muhammad Idris al-Mahdi al Senussi, returned
with English help and became king of an independent Libya. The exigen-
cies of the thirty-five-year struggle and lately of modern administration
have tended to transform the Senussi brotherhood into a political and
military organization.14 The parliament of Libya, though still subordinate
to the royal power, is capable of influencing politics to a certain degree.
Its strong group of Tripolitanian members, many of them educated in
Italian schools during the colonial period, are unlikely to be influenced by
purely religious motivations overriding other considerations.
RELIGION AS A SUPPORT FOR MODERN NATIONALISM
So far we have discussed countries and nations where religion supplants
or tries to supplant other motivations, especially the ethnic or linguistic
nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth century type. There are, how-
ever, instances where religion and ethnic-linguistic nationalism have been
fused to such a degree that theoretical separation can not be undertaken.
In this connection the position of the Orthodox Church and of the Roman
Catholic Church in Yugoslavia deserves investigation. The show trial of
Archbishop, now Cardinal, Stepinac was initiated during Tito's Stalinist
phase along lines parallel to those in other satellite countries. However, it
would be an oversimplification to regard it solely as an act in the attack
of Communism against religion. Croatians and Serbs— and several smaller
national groups— have fought for supremacy since the foundation of the
Yugoslav state in 1918, indeed since 1848 within the Hapsburg monarchy.
Croats and Serbs speak dialects less unlike each other than many French,
Italian, German, or English dialects are unlike their standard language.
The Serbs, however, have been Christianized from Byzantium, and have
lived under the influence of this civilization, whether in an independent
state or under Turkish rule. The Croats received Christianity from Rome,
were culturally under Italian and German influence, and politically have
been dependent on Hungary. The national consciousness of both nations
awoke in the years of the Napoleonic wars under the leadership of theo-
logians. The census-takers of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire refused to
14 W. H. Lewis and R. Gordon, "Libya After Two Years of Independence," Middle
Eastern Journal, Vol. 8 (1954), pp. 41-53 (esp. p. 51).
432 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
recognize separate languages and tabulated a Serbo-Croatian tongue. The
difficulty in distinguishing nationality on the basis of the spoken language
despite the existence of a fervent Serb and Croat nationalism accounts for
the identification of Roman Catholics as Croats and Greek Orthodox as
Serbs.15 Thus the accusation against Cardinal Stepinac, though obviously
a link in the chain of the Communist fight against religion, relied heavily
on alleged activities of Stepinac on behalf of the wartime fascist Croat
government and his alleged responsibility for anti-Serb atrocities. This
signifies only one stage in the long-drawn struggle for the ascendancy of
one of the two nations and religions in Yugoslavia. National and religious
motives are inextricably interwoven.
This identification of the Catholic faith with a nationality struggling
for independence is not an isolated occurrence. The best known case is
that of the Irish people. Many speakers of the English tongue, among
them numerous families of English descent, have become completely
identified with Irish nationalism because their ancestors remained Catho-
lics at the time of the Reformation. The number of Celtish Irishmen who
at that time became Protestant was apparently much smaller. These have
become indistinguishable from other English or Scotch-descended groups.
Not quite as thoroughgoing is the identification of the Reformed
Church in South Africa with the Afrikaans-speaking Boer group and of
the English-speaking churches with the English.16 However, it is close
enough to notice the influence of the fundamentalist creed of the Re-
formed Church in the Biblical concept identifying the sons of Ham with
the Negroes, including the curse of Noah for this son and his descendants.
The leadership of the parties advocating "apartheid" is largely in the
hands of Reformed church ministers. On the other side, since the days of
Livingstone, British missionaries have been in the forefront of the de-
fenders of the rights of the native. The African natives are denomination-
ally divided. African churches, frequently called Ethiopian or Zion
churches, have more and more attracted the Christianized natives. These
African churches are in some cases Christian only with great qualifica-
15 Mohammedan co-nationals are often simply referred to as such.
16 "Out of a total European Afrikaans-speaking group of 1.12 million, 1.02 million
belong to the Dutch Reformed churches, whereas out of a European English-speaking
group of 783,000 only 33,000 are adherents of these churches. Religion . . . deepens
the cleavage . . . between Afrikaner and Briton.
In the Colored community the situation is different. About nine-tenths are Afrikaans-
speaking, yet only three-tenths adhere to Dutch Reformed churches, and even in rural
areas the so-called 'English-speaking' churches claim large numbers." K. Buchanan
and N. Hurwitz, "The 'Coloured' Community in the Union of South Africa," Geo-
graphic Review ( 1950), pp. 405-406.
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 433
tions, as they preserve many primitive pre-Christian concepts and rites.
Thus the racial-national-cultural division becomes reflected in denomina-
tional allegiance. At the same time the influence of religious leaders in the
political field increases. If the nationalist policy of territorial segregation
should succeed, the political map would become similar to the map of
denominations.
While in South Africa primitive religions impress their stamp on al-
legedly Christian churches, in East Africa the conflict between white
settlers and natives led in at least one instance to a revival of primitive
rituals as a rallying point and a political weapon. Centered in the Kikuyu
tribe of Kenya numbering over 1,000,000, the fanatical movement (Mau
Mau) which started in 1952 has been a continuing problem to the British
authorities and has exerted its influence on other tribes, the Moru, Embu,
and Kamba, totaling well over 1,000,000. It is too early to define the con-
tours of what at present is a fluctuating, possibly expanding area of inse-
curity in a region of great strategic and economic importance to Britain's
position in Africa. Many elements, among them especially the growing
resentment of the tribes against the apartheid policy of the white minority
( numbering some 40,000 in Kenya ) , help to unify the tribal organizations
in their struggle against colonial rule, but the crude and cruel quasi-
religious magic of curses and charms must be seen as the main factor of
cementation.
Alongside these examples should be mentioned that of Japan and its
state religion, Shinto. This peculiar creed, a mixture of primitive rituals
and modern concepts, was proclaimed as the state religion not to supplant
other religious forms, but to create a unifying bond for all Japanese irre-
spective of their private religion, including private Shinto.17 The belief in
the direct descent of the Emperor from the goddess Ameratsu has been
used to strengthen patriotism, devotion to the country, and to promote
willingness for military sacrifice. After the defeat in World War II, state
Shinto was officially abolished and the Emperor himself renounced belief
in his divine descent. The opinions of different authorities about the
actual hold of this belief on the Japanese are far from uniform. While
some assert that even before the war state Shinto was only an outward
convention, others state that it is still a real force. It seems clear that a
gradual revival of Shintoism has been attempted since its collapse in 1945;
however, the chief stress is on ritual and apparently Shinto has not the
necessary vigor to influence political decisions.
17 See D. G. Haring, "Religion, Magic, and Morale," in Japan's Prospect (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1946), pp. 209-59.
434 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Nevertheless, a comparison with China shows that, although certain
political attitudes almost never develop in a country whose leaders are
psychologically conditioned by Confucianism, Taoism, and quietist sects
of Buddhism, they occur quite naturally in a country psychologically con-
ditioned by Shintoism and Zen-Buddhism.
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES ON POLITICAL ATTITUDES
It was mentioned before that modern India was created as a secular
state and most of its leaders repudiate any religious basis for the new
state. However, the Indian struggle for independence was led by Mohan-
das Gandhi, the Mahatma, by means of nonviolence and nonresistance.
These concepts, like most of Gandhi's doctrines, are deeply rooted in
Hindu religious philosophy. So also are Nehru's international diplomatic
actions thoroughly and subtly influenced by these Gandhian doctrines and
Hindu philosophy.
Like Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian statesmen can be understood
fully only from their Hindu background, just as even the most secularly
minded politicians and statesmen of the West are unconsciously condi-
tioned by their Christian upbringing. These factors are largely outside the
field of political geography and only one observation may be added which
shows the interrelationship of religious and political motivation. It is the
conditioning by the great religions which accounts for the effectiveness
of certain political ideologies in certain regions, and only in these regions.
In this form only is religion a potent, though indirectly effective factor in
many countries. Religion shapes attitudes toward human life and society,
and toward the state as the politically organized form of society. The
claim has been made that Presbyterianism, Islam, and Confucianism con-
dition man for democratic forms of government. It is for the sociologist
to determine the validity of such claims. The political geographer can
trace only in the case of Presbyterianism that all countries in which this
denomination prevails have an old and persistent tradition of democracy.
It would be wrong to point to the existence of political parties with
denominational affiliations as proof for this conditioning of attitudes. It
appears rather that the emergence of such political parties is a sign that
in a large part of the population and in the government religion is no
longer the self-evident, almost unconscious force it once was. Religious
parties have emerged in Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist countries,
everywhere a sure sign of spreading secularism. In Europe the emergence
of Christian social, mostly Catholic parties followed in all countries the
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 435
rise of nineteenth century liberalism. Despite this common origin and
common religious basis there are great differences between these parties
which point to the fact that religion is only one factor in their make-up.
Although religion-conditioned attitudes are universal, Christianity
through its missions and backed by the prestige of Europe in the nine-
teenth century has the unique distinction of pervading other religions
with its ethical concepts. The Jewish-Christian concept of moral superior-
ity of monogamy is accepted in Islamic and other countries today; and so
are other concepts. The most individualistic religion, Buddhism, in one of
its strongholds— Burma— has begun to follow the organization of some
Christian churches, and it is reported that in this new form it may be
regarded as an effective force against the encroachments of Communism.
In Palestine, the precarious truce between Israel and Jordan left these two
countries without communication across the boundary. However, both
Mohammedans and Jews are so strongly influenced by Christian ideas that
at Christmas and Easter, Christians are able to cross the truce line to
make the pilgrimage from the holy places in Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
POLITICAL PARTIES AND THEIR
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
After this digression, however pertinent, we may return to more strictly
geographical problems. In the preceding paragraphs we have referred re-
peatedly to internal political problems. As an illustration of the problems
of interest to political geography we may ask whether and how Catholi-
cism makes itself felt in the political geography of the United States. The
claim has often been made 1S that "Catholics vote more Democratic than
Protestants." Actually a study of the so-called Catholic vote shows that
in two political shifts— that of the Democratic victory in 1932 as compared
with the Republican majority in 1928, and that of the Republican victory
in 1952 as compared with Roosevelt's easy Democratic victory in 1944—
the nine states with the largest Catholic populations voted in about the
same manner as other states. These states are Rhode Island, which is 56
per cent Catholic; Massachusetts, 47 per cent; New Mexico, 38 per cent;
New Hampshire, 35 per cent; New Jersey, 35 per cent; Louisiana, 31 per
cent; and New York, Vermont, and Wisconsin, each 30 per cent.
We have mentioned the existence and importance of religious parties
in discussing the cases of Israel, Pakistan, South Africa, and Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia is the only country where, during the time when it still had
18 P. F. Lazarsfelt et al, The People's Choice, 2nd ed. (New York, 1948).
436 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
free elections to a parliament, three parties competed for the vote appeal-
ing to religious motives. The leading Croatian party could always count
on the Catholic sentiment of the Croatian peasantry, especially in opposi-
tion to the ruling Serbian group, which was Orthodox. Among the Slo-
venes two parties had existed since the nineteenth century, a liberal and a
clerical Catholic party. The Moslems of Bosnia had founded their party
only because of their position as a minority. Only the Serbian parties, in
composition completely Orthodox, had no close ties with any organized
religion. Today Yugoslavia is a Communist dictatorship, but as far as is
known only the Orthodox Church has made its peace with the Tito gov-
ernment. The old antagonisms seem to persist, though underground and
with different aims.
Despite the existence of several religious parties in prewar Yugoslavia,
this country shares with other countries the experience that religious
parties are generally the organs of the religiously-conscious part of the
population in a predominantly secular state. Such a party may be the or-
ganization of a minority religion, but far more characteristic and interest-
ing are religious parties in countries which are nominally uniform in their
religion. The parties may be Catholic as in Austria, Italy, Belgium, or
France; Reformed Church as in the Netherlands; Islamic as in Indonesia
or Pakistan; or Hindu as the Masabha in India. In all these countries it is
possible to map the area where religions and political leadership are iden-
tical, at least ideologically. Such maps are outwardly similar to the popu-
lar maps showing results of elections. They show also, however, that once
such a religious party has been organized, a surprising stability results
which no exclusively political group can hope to achieve. A striking ex-
ample is offered by Austria. After Nazi conquest, Nazi indoctrination, and
"liberation" by the Red Army, the elections gave to the religious Catholic
party almost exactly the same proportion of votes as was the case a dozen
years earlier; the same areas as before voted for this party. In Germany
a similar phenomenon can be observed, although in that country Roman
Catholicism was the religion of a minority only. The Center Party had
been the Catholic party, with its strongholds in Bavaria, the Rhinelands,
Westphalia, and Upper Silesia. It was distinctly a regional and minority
party, nor did all of the nominal Catholics vote for it. In the whole nation
Catholics were outnumbered approximately two to one by Protestants.
Two major developments have basically changed this situation since 1945.
The partition of Germany created a predominantly Protestant Germany
in the East and improved the Catholic position in the West. In addition,
over 9,000,000 Germans from countries behind the Iron Curtain, emigres
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 437
and expellees, came into the Federal Republic, a large number of them
Catholics. Of the total population, according to the census of 1950, 51.1
per cent are Protestants, and 45.2 per cent Catholics. However, the former
include a much larger proportion of persons whose bond with their
church is very superficial. This and the internal migration has destroyed
the formerly prevailing religious uniformity of the smaller political ad-
ministrative units. The re-emerged religious party has declared itself no
longer a Catholic, but a Christian party, though drawing most of its
support from Catholics and recruiting most of its leadership from this
denomination.
POLITICAL FACTORS AND THEIR RELIGIOUS IMPLICATIONS
This German example leads us to another basic question, namely,
whether political changes would affect the contemporary distribution and
allegiance of religions. In the case of Germany we have observed a dis-
tinctive change in the distribution pattern, resulting from the political
changes since 1945. It is also generally accepted that we live no longer
in a period when the principle of cujus regio, ejus religio (the creed of
the ruler is the creed of the land ) is an accepted law. Though condemned
by a later more secular and religiously tolerant age,19 this underlying
principle is still active. Enforced conversion is generally condemned and
is not practiced in democratic countries. But invisible and often uncon-
scious pressures are still with us. These may lead to gradual and volun-
tary adjustments of church organizations, if not doctrines. In the United
States the effects of such adjustments to the Civil War period can still be
observed. The largest Protestant churches, the Presbyterians, Baptists, and
Methodists split into southern and northern branches and this break is
still not entirely healed. Almost a century earlier, at the time of the Ameri-
can Revolution, the Episcopalian Church split from the parent Anglican
Church along political lines. Those Protestant churches which came into
being as state churches, primarily the Lutheran churches, have always
reflected political changes. Even the genuinely supranational and cen-
trally controlled Roman Catholic Church could not completely escape
such influences. Transfer of territory by treaty or conquest has split old-
established dioceses and archdioceses. In many cases boundaries of such
ecclesiastic territories were adjusted to conform with new international
boundaries, though the Papal decision usually followed the political event
only after some lapse of time.
19 One of the strongest condemnations of this doctrine was voiced by Toynbee,
who called it a "monstrously cynical formula" (op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 221).
438 HUMAN AND CULTURAL FACTORS
Apart from these administrative adjustments the Roman Catholic
Church has withstood extremely well pressures to create separate national
churches. A few such attempts have remained largely abortive. One of
the few partly successful attempts was the creation of a "Catholic"
Church in the Philippines by Bishop Aglipay as a concomitant of the
awakening of national consciousness in the Islands. About 10 per cent of
the population of the Philippines belong to this church. Another instance
is the secession of a national Czechoslovak Church from the main body,
when national feeling reached a high pitch at the foundation of this state
in 1918.
This example is important for the understanding of Soviet-sponsored
attempts to create national "Catholic" churches in the satellite countries
with the help of schismatic priests. Only in Czechoslovakia have these
attempts met with some success. The "Patriotic Priests Movement" has
become a tool of Communism, with relatively broad support among the
lower clergy whose material needs can be better served by the Communist
state than by the oppressed Church. In another case, in the Ukraine and
Rumania, the Communists succeeded in forcing the Uniate or Greek-
Catholic Churches into union with the Orthodox Churches. These Uniate
Churches had recognized the Pope as their spiritual head in the fifteenth
century but retained their national or Greek liturgy. In pre-World War II
years, they served as national rallying points for Ukrainians against de-
nationalization attempts by Poland and Hungary. Most Uniate churches
were in regions ceded during and after the war to the Soviet Union by
Poland and Czechoslovakia. Thus a successful resistance to Soviet pres-
sure for the "return" to the Orthodox Church became very difficult, psy-
chologically and materially. It is reported that all Uniate bishops in
Rumania are imprisoned.
NONRELIGIOUS IDEOLOGIES
In the present age, far more important than these attempts at forced
conversion is the process of secularization. We have noted before that
almost all denominational parties, from Germany to Indonesia, are ar-
raigned not against other denominational parties, but against secular
parties. We would convey a slanted picture if we did not stress again and
strongly that political activity in the present age is much more under the
influence of other, secular ideologies than of religious ones. The propor-
tion of persons who only nominally belong to a church is increasing in
many countries. The United States is almost unique in that the member-
RELIGIONS: THEIR DISTRIBUTION AND ROLE 439
ship of all denominations has continuously increased, absolutely and
proportionally, in the 150 years since religious indifference was at its peak
at the time of Jeffersonian enlightenment.
Recent experience has shown that secular populations can be won over
by emotionally presented ideologies. In our age these ideologies, though
not religious in nature, appeal to emotions which usually respond to the
religious approach. Fascism, Nazism, and especially Communism, have
certain traits in common with religion. Some of these are, restriction of
rational argument to specific fields, an unquestioning belief in a charis-
matic leader and in "infallible" books, further development of doctrine by
a growing literature of commentaries which reinterpret a quasi-sacred,
unchangeable text. There is also the proselytizing zeal characteristic of
youthful religions, and the readiness for self-sacrifice in the service of the
world mission. This accounts for a crusading spirit common to some reli-
gions and secular ideologies. It also explains the rapid and often parallel
changes of both the political and religious maps in recent decades.
SUMMARY
In conclusion we find that religion is a factor which influences the atti-
tudes and conditions the behavior of hundreds of millions of people. It
thereby influences strongly the political map, even where religion as such
loses its hold— its conditioning influence survives, or its place is taken by
pseudo-religions. In either case, the effect of these changes finds expres-
sion on the political map. It is, therefore, rewarding for the political geog-
rapher to trace the distribution of the major religions and their organiza-
tions, and their relationship with state secular organizations. It is also
rewarding to trace religious affiliations across international boundaries
and to investigate their separating or binding functions. As in all other
aspects of political geography, constant change and fluctuation is an in-
tegral part of the complex but stimulating picture.
CHAPTER
13
Supplement: Other Cultural
Factors
LITERACY AND ILLITERACY
The reader who has followed our attempts at tracing politico-geograph-
ical factors through the medium of boundaries— ethnic, linguistic, or reli-
gious—not necessarily identical with political boundaries, will realize that
these are by no means exclusive. Among other group-cementing factors
of interest in the study of internal and external political geography those
of literacy and illiteracy deserve special mention. But their meaning is
relative— the requirements of "literacy" in the ( no longer ) "little red school
house" in the United States differ from state to state, and often from
county to county, and are difficult to compare with those in other coun-
tries. Even if one would compromise and agree on common denominators,
the mapping of zones indicating the geographical extent of various de-
grees of literacy versus the zones of illiteracy would be a highly specula-
tive task. To the extent that statistics on educational patterns permit such
mapping, it offers a helpful tool to the student who tries to evaluate, in
terms of geographical variations, the literacy achievements of groups
within nations and of nations themselves.
An interesting case study along these lines was made by Ellsworth
Huntington 1 who compared the literacy achievements of Iceland and
1 Mainsprings of Civilization (New York, 1945), p. 127 ff. See also Huntington's
attempt to measure intellectual activity by checking the percentage of non-fiction and
fiction reading in public library circulation, p. 344 ff.
440
SUPPLEMENT: OTHER CULTURAL FACTORS 441
Newfoundland. The two islands lie 1,600 miles apart. They are of similar
size, about one-third larger than Ireland. Both are thinly populated, with
about 150,000 persons in Iceland and about 375,000 in Newfoundland, in
contrast to about 4,350,000 in Ireland. Their ethnic composition is similar.
Yet in spite of these resemblances the islands differ amazingly in cultural
achievements. To name only one of Huntington's comparisons, "until re-
cently, more than a quarter of a million Newfoundlanders had only a
single public library. In Iceland, the capital alone has long had four.
There are also four main regional libraries and scores of local ones, some
of which are centuries old." Equally striking, and closely related to the
differences in literacy, are the political and economic contrasts between
the islands.
This example shows how important is the consideration of intangible
elements as expressed in the vague terms literacy and illiteracy in the task
of appraising all pertinent power factors of states within their physical
environment. Such elements are as significant in the over-all picture as
are maps showing the distribution of agricultural and mineral resources,
cities, railroads, highways, inland canals, airways, or the distribution of
automobiles.
Without such appraisal of literacy and illiteracy factors, educational
facilities, and technical skills, the student of geography who tries to ana-
lyze the power factors and potentials of a region or country on the basis
of its natural resources alone would arrive at a totally unrealistic picture.
The growing opposition in underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa
to foreign influence identified with colonialism, even where it is construc-
tive foreign aid, underlines the necessity of appraising natural resources
in terms of the abilities of native populations to utilize them. As an illus-
tration, in the Uganda Protectorate in British East Africa the great Owen
Falls Dam (1954) on the Victoria Nile provides an exceptional hydro-
electric power potential in the center of an important cotton-producing
area. However, this large power project is part of the Protectorate's Brit-
ish administration. If one considers the fact that Europeans number only
about 3,500 out of a total population of about 5,200,000, the question
arises as to whether the native population possesses the educational and
technical skills to utilize adequately its water resources, of which, as one
observer put it, the country "offers a myriad of sites." 2 Professor Frank
Debenham, in a study on the water resources of British East Africa, ob-
served that "one has only to think what the Chinese or Japanese, or even
2 Africa South of the Sahara, by a study Group of the South African Institute of
International Affairs (Cape Town, 1951), p. 184.
442
SUPPLEMENT: OTHER CULTURAL FACTORS 443
the Javanese, would do with such a wealth of water running past their
villages at such useful gradients. Those ingenious and industrious people
would have harnessed these streams to their creaking water wheels for
irrigation or for grinding meal or for rough workshop power, and would
have terraced their hills for maximum production." 3
Education, knowledge, skill, and know-how are intangible power fac-
tors ranging alongside the tangible factors and are not less important than
those. But to specify and to map them as one would do it in a geographi-
cal study of industries or resources is impossible. As a partial attempt at
a cartographical presentation of these intangible power factors, Figures
13-1 and 2 depict newspaper circulation and frequency of radio sets on a
world-wide basis; a comparison of these data permits conclusions in regard
to a number of factors in the political realm in the fields of literacy, polit-
ical education, and internal and external psychological propaganda.
LEGAL SYSTEMS IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
The geography of the world's legal systems is a further example of how
the geographical distribution of certain cohesive institutions of human
society demonstrate binding or separating qualities. Of the innumerable
factors which together constitute a legal system there are many which can
be traced to the influence of geography. It would lead too far afield to
pursue these influences. John H. Wigmore has undertaken the long-
neglected task of subdividing the world map into the major legal systems.
Those in existence twenty-five years ago were the Anglican, Chinese, Ger-
manic, Hindu, Japanese, Mohammedan, Romanic, Slavic, and Soviet. For
areas where no legal system had been developed, a color for Tribal Cus-
tom was added.4 Redrawn today, this map would require a number of
alterations, especially in the area of Slavic law where the extension of the
Soviet orbit has carried with it the expansion of Soviet law. A sense of
identity or similarity based on a law system does not promote as strongly
the belonging-together concept as does the ethnic, linguistic, and religious
community. However, just as these elements express, within or beyond the
political boundaries of a state, the cultural traits which serve as connecting
links between groups and nations, thus to a lesser but also significant de-
gree related laws, the common adherence to principles of international
law, or tribal customs serve the same purpose. Contrariwise, the line or
zone which indicates where, regardless of political boundaries, the basic
3 Ibid.
4 "A Map of the World's Laws," Geographical Review (1929), pp. 114-120.
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SUPPLEMENT: OTHER CULTURAL FACTORS 445
law concepts differ can be indicative of separating factors which explain
characteristics of the internal and external geography of states. Quebec
and Louisiana, where the Roman legal system survived, offer an illustra-
tion on the map of North America, for the internal political geography of
Canada and the United States. The present struggle for survival of the
Romanic-Germanic law system in the Eastern Zone of Germany depicts
the crucial situation in that area. In the Mohammedan world we discover
an interesting cleavage between the laws of the desert and those of the
oases, as between Bedouin law and the Egyptian Penal Code. Thus the
political geography of legal systems evolves as an additional aid in the
task of appraising the cohesive and divisive influences and power factors
among the nations.
Part
3
THE ECONOMIC FACTOR
IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
CHAPTER
14
The Importance or Economic
Factors in Political Geography
THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF LOCATION AND
OTHER FACTORS
When Halford J. Mackinder read his now famous paper, "The Geo-
graphical Pivot of History" at the Royal Geographical Society on January
25, 1904, he provoked some interesting and all-too-brief comments from
his friend and fellow member, L. S. Amery, later First Lord of the Ad-
miralty and Secretary of State for India. The paper, and these comments,
pose in an interesting way the problem of the significance of economic
factors in political geography. Mackinder, it will be recalled, had ad-
vanced the thesis that the Asiatic steppe lands, whose horse-riding no-
mads had always presented a threat to Europe, would in the "closed
system" of the modern world, and with the "full development of her
modern railway mobility" become "the pivot region of the world's poli-
tics." Mackinder obviously did not ignore economic and social factors but
he concluded that in the modern world they conferred a special advantage
on land power as opposed to sea power. "Nor is it likely," he predicted,
"that any possible social revolution will alter [Russia's] essential relations
to the great geographical limits of her existence." x
1 H. J. Mackinder, "The Geographical Pivot of History," Geographical Journal
(April, 1904), pp. 14-16. Mackinder's emphasis on "railway mobility" is foreshadowed
in the writings of the German Friedrich List who, more than a century ago, dwelt on
the influence of railways upon the shifting balance of military power. See the im-
portant study by E. M. Earle on "Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List:
The Economic Foundations of Military Power," in E. M. Earle, ed., Makers of Modern
Strategy (Princeton, 1943), pp. 117-155 (148-152).
449
450 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
In his extemporaneous remarks Amery insisted that sea mobility was
still more important to military power than railway mobility and that
before long both would be supplemented "by the air as a means of loco-
motion." This train of thought led him to the concluding observation that
". . . to look forward a bit ... a great deal of this geographical distribution
must lose its importance, and the successful powers will be those who
have the greatest industrial basis. It will not matter whether they are in
the center of a continent or on an island; those people who have the in-
dustrial power and the power of invention and of science will be able to
defeat all others." 2
In retrospect it must be judged that Amery's views were the more real-
istic. The U.S.S.R. has become a world power not so much because of its
location in the "closed heartland of Euro-Asia" as because of a profound
and far-reaching social revolution which made the development of
Amery's industrial power the paramount object of policy. Railways have,
indeed, worked great wonders in the steppes because, as Mackinder cor-
rectly saw, "they directly replace horse and camel mobility, the road stage
of development having been omitted." But their development has been
slow and costly and the vast distances of the heartland are still a liability
rather than an asset.
The controversy between the two men was mainly one of emphasis.
Mackinder failed to foresee the advent of air power, but he did recognize
in theory that other factors play their part as well as the geographical
ones:
1 have spoken as a geographer. The actual balance of political power at any
given time is, of course, the product, on the one hand, of geographical condi-
tions, both economic and strategic, and, on the other hand, of the relative
number, virility, equipment, and organization of the competing peoples. In
proportion as these quantities are accurately estimated are we likely to adjust
differences without the crude resort to arms. And the geographical quantities
in the calculation are more measurable and more nearly constant than the
human.3
Certainly once the U.S.S.R. has acquired the power of industry and sci-
ence of which Amery spoke, its central location may well prove of crucial
advantage in the outward extension of its piecemeal conquests. The West
has already learned how costly is the task of containing a powerful ag-
gressor at all points around this vast perimeter.
After fifty years this exchange of views still provides a needed reminder
of the desirability of that bridge between the physical and social sciences
2 Mackinder, op. cit., p. 21.
3 Mackinder, op. cit., p. 17.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 451
that Mackinder called upon the geographers to build. And the above quo-
tation constitutes good advice for the student of political geography, espe-
cially when he addresses himself, as we do now, to the problem of the rel-
ative importance of geographical conditions on the one hand, and of the
use and adaptations which various peoples make of the resources which
geography provides. It suggests among other things that the service eco-
nomic analysis can perform for political geography is something more
than a mere cataloging of economic resources. Political geography re-
quires more than an understanding of economic geography, or of the
geographical conditions characterized in Mackinder's phrase as economic.
The analysis must also relate these conditions to the "number, virility,
equipment and organization" of states in order to arrive at "the actual
balance of political power."
Of necessity any such analysis must have a focus. The obvious factors
in any calculation of political power relationships in today's world are the
states which are the centers of military and political power, the United
States and the U.S.S.R., together with their allies and "satellites" on both
sides. But if the balance in today's world is struck simply between these
two groups of states opposing each other in the "cold war" it would be
incomplete because it would ignore a large group of states hopelessly
lacking in the economic and military capabilities for great power status,
but which constitute a "bloc" of increasing cohesiveness and influence in
world politics. These are the underdeveloped states of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. By and large these states have accepted their lot as states
which are virtually defenseless against aggression from either the Sino-
Soviet bloc or the other great powers. They therefore do not seek to
develop more military strength than is needed to protect them from their
smaller neighbors. Instead, they seek the domestic, political, and social
advantages that come from economic progress. A large part of their
bureaucratic energies are devoted to government-sponsored and directed
measures to speed up the process of economic development. Many of them
remain "uncommitted" politically because they have not, as a practical
matter, been able to choose between the social and political systems rep-
resented by Communism and the democratic West.
In the conflicting attitudes of states toward wealth and economic life
and their relation to national power, one can distinguish, in Mackinder's
term, three sets of "competing peoples "—the industrialized states of
Europe and North America, the Sino-Soviet bloc, and the underdeveloped
areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These three groups of states are
related by two equations which are significant for today's student of
452 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
political geography. One represents the relationship between the eco-
nomic power of the Soviet bloc and that of the industrialized and anti-
Communist West. The economic capabilities of both groups of states,
though resting on radically different social foundations, are growing;
how do the rates of growth compare and what do they signify for the
future? The other equation represents the relationship between living
standards and rates of economic growth in the industrialized states of the
West and those of the so-called underdeveloped countries outside the
Communist bloc. Whether the gap between the two can be narrowed,
and at what rate, may determine the resistance of the underdeveloped
countries to Communist propaganda and subversion, and consequently
their ultimate alignment in the struggle between Communism and the
democratic West.
This discussion of economic factors in political geography is essentially
an attempt to estimate the quantities in these equations and their signifi-
cance for the three main political groupings of the present-day world. In
making the attempt we shall try in particular to show how variations in
political and military power among states are related to variations in their
underlying economic capabilities and how these capabilities in turn are
related to geographical factors such as climate, mineral resources, and
waterways. In addition we shall consider how the attempt to expand eco-
nomic capabilities, either for power or welfare purposes, influences the
attitudes and actions of the various states. Before proceeding to these
tasks, however, the remainder of this chapter sets forth certain fundamen-
tal principles concerning the relation between economic capabilities and
national power, and between physical geography and economic growth.
ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES AND NATIONAL POWER
The ability of states to afford, in the words of Adam Smith, "the great
expense of firearms," 4 is nowadays so obviously a condition of national
power that its analysis is essential to an understanding of international
political relationships. A brief explanation of this concept of economic
capability seems desirable to avoid possible misunderstanding.
In the following discussion, attention is centered on the concept of
4 ... In modern war the great expense of firearms gives an evident advantage to
the nation which can best afford that expense; and consequently, to an opulent and
civilized, over a poor and barbarous nation. In ancient times, the opulent and civilized
found it difficult to defend themselves against the poor and barbarous nations. In
modern times the poor and barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against the
opulent and civilized (Wealth of Nations, Book V, Part I, Ch. 1).
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 453
economic capabilities for military power. It is, of course, readily apparent
that not all conflicting international interests are resolved by resort to
war. A powerful modern state will require and vise its economic capabili-
ties in order to advance its foreign policy by means short of war, such as
economic or military assistance to friendly nations. It is true that economic
capabilities are seldom, if ever, as fully mobilized for other purposes as
for the national defense in time of war. Moreover, in the modern world,
the influence of a national state in international affairs depends ultimately
on its military capabilities. Hence, political and strategic capabilities are
essentially a function of the economic capabilities for war. However, the
reader is asked to bear in mind that the concept of economic capabilities
comprehends other purposes than purely military ones.
Economic capabilities for war may be defined as that portion of the
resources of a state (usually measured by national product or national
income) which it can devote to military purposes. Since the Industrial
Revolution the ability of modern states to maximize their economic capa-
bilities for war has depended on their ability to establish and maintain
a position of superiority in manufacturing and technology, and to extract
from the competing claims of the various private interests in the economy,
sufficient resources for the national defense. As states everywhere are
developing both abilities, the economic potential for war comes to be in-
creasingly a function of the size (in terms of population and resources)
of the national economy.5
Mere economic development ( as indicated by the average standard of
living, per capita incomes, the state of the arts, etc. ) is an insufficient indi-
cation of national power. Switzerland, for example, has one of the highest
average incomes per capita in the world, much higher than that of the
U.S.S.R. Yet the latter, not the former, has the economic base for the
massive power position that the Soviet Union in fact enjoys. Likewise,
size by itself is insufficient, as the examples of China and India demon-
strate. What is important is the optimum combination of size and devel-
opment, of aggregate wealth or income, widely diversified as to type of
commodities and services produced, and distributed in such a manner as
to afford a relatively high proportion of expenditures on capital and mili-
tary goods. Within fairly large limits, development has up to now ordi-
narily been the more important of the two factors. A smaller but devel-
oped state with relatively high per capita incomes (the United Kingdom
or Japan ) will have a surplus over and above minimum consumption and
5 For a discussion of this point see E. Lederer's chapter on "War Economics" in
H. Speier and A. Kahler, eds., War in Our Time (New York, 1939), pp. 206-220.
454 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
investment requirements, while a very large state with low per capita
incomes (like India or China) may have a much smaller surplus for mili-
tary and strategic purposes. When, however, such large states come under
the grip of totalitarian governments, as in Communist China, the share
of the national product used for military and security purpose can be
forcibly enlarged. The military capabilities of such a country may there-
fore be expanded at a much faster rate than its over-all economic develop-
ment would lead one to expect.
The acceptance of the economics of total war not only by the totalitar-
ian states but, in theory at any rate, by almost every advanced country,
and "the almost uniform development of modern technique in all coun-
tries" G (of which the rapidity with which the U.S.S.R. copied jet engine
and atomic weapon designs is a good example) have made aggregate re-
sources the most important single factor in determining economic capa-
bilities.
RELATIVE CAPABILITIES
The relative capability of nation states has been subject to constant
change, even before the advent of total war. The Netherlands was once
the leading manufacturing country of Europe, and Rotterdam and Ant-
werp were the leading financial centers because of the wool trade. In
those days Holland was a great power. In the days of the great explora-
tions, Spain and Portugal were among the wealthiest and strongest coun-
tries in Europe. The pre-eminence of these states gave way to that of the
United Kingdom. Similarly the superiority of the United Kingdom gave
way in the twentieth century under the strain of two World Wars and
especially with the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union. After
World War II, Great Rritain, although still a "big power" is no longer a
first-ranking power, and this is due directly to the relative decline in her
economic strength. A good illustration of this is the action of Great Britain
in 1947 in turning over to the United States her commitments in Greece
and asking the United States to assume responsibility for stability in that
country. The government of Great Britain knew that Greece needed large
measures of both economic and military assistance that the United King-
dom could no longer afford to give. This is not to say that the United
Kingdom is economically weaker now than in the nineteenth century or
than before the second World War. Actually, total output and exports,
both in value and in physical volume, are larger than ever. But in terms
6 Lederer, loc. cit., p. 220.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 455
of the cost of the growing responsibilities and commitments of national
power, the United Kingdom's capabilities are declining.
In the new atomic age, an enormous economic base is required not only
to produce atomic and other unconventional arms but to carry on the
necessary scientific research and development to maintain superiority.
Only three states are known to produce nuclear weapons and of these only
two, the United States and the U.S.S.R., can seriously be regarded as
first-ranking powers (Fig. 14-1). In fact, it is the reduction of the number
of great powers to only these two which characterizes the political and
strategic aspect of this new age. Both have strong economic bases com-
pounded in each case of size (area, population, and resources) and of
development (industrialization, high rates of investment, and intensive
application of technology to industrial processes ) .
It is not intended to suggest that national power is a simple function
of aggregate economic capabilities. There are variations in the social
limits within which modern states can mobilize resources for military
purposes. Totalitarian states can command a larger proportion of re-
sources for extended periods than can democracies. In this way the
U.S.S.R. now presents a growing threat to the peace of the world although
its gross economic capabilities are less than those of the United States
alone and less than those of all Western European countries combined.
On the other hand, there are tangible and intangible qualities of leader-
ship, of co-operation, of national effort and morale, which may multiply
or reduce the effectiveness of the economic factors.
SHORT-RUN CAPABILITIES
Moreover, in the short run, aggregate capabilities may be less important
than superiority in actual mobilized resources which give the initial mili-
tary advantage and therefore may be crucial in the decisions of statesmen.
In a war in which both sides would be prepared to make maximum use
of the mass destructive power of nuclear weapons, the initial advantage
might well prove final. On the other hand, in such a war the initial de-
struction on both sides might be so great as to nullify the importance of
industrial output, thus leaving the issue to land and naval forces operat-
ing from prepared bases and utilizing, perhaps decisively, available stock
piles.
An interesting example of how military success can be built upon exist-
ing capabilities, without reference to over-all, long-run superiority in
economic potential, is provided by the effectiveness of the German stra-
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THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 457
tegic plan up to the winter of 1941. Hitler relied on more rapid mobiliza-
tion of ground and air striking units of great initial power rather than on
superiority in basic raw materials and industry, and he struck while his
enemies were still preparing. Emphasis was placed upon a tactical air
force as an instrument of the blitzkrieg rather than upon a strategic air
force to destroy war production facilities. This plan was amazingly suc-
cessful ( despite the setbacks in the air over Britain ) until the defeats on
the Eastern Front; in September, 1941, Hitler was so confident that he
directed large cutbacks in war production.
German plans for a short war were never successfully adapted to a long
war. Although arms production increased by three times after early 1942,
the German economy was never fully mobilized, a fact which explains
its remarkable resilience to air attacks.7 Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor
was an attempt by a power with a relatively inferior industrial base to
offset this disadvantage by surprise backed up by an initially superior
existing force.
The Western allies, on the other hand, although tardy in their prepara-
tions for war, were much better equipped to fight a long war. They pos-
sessed a combination of a very large resource base of raw materials,
labor, capital, and technological genius for converting these assets quickly
to war potential. Their problem was to hold off the enemy until their
resources were mobilized, after which the issue was never in doubt.
THE RELATIONSHIP OF GEOGRAPHICAL FACTORS
TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
In their discussion of the relative importance of location and "geograph-
ical distribution," Mackinder might well have pointed out to Amery that
location is not simply a matter of the mobility of military forces in time of
war; it also establishes and determines the position of a nation with re-
spect to those "geographical conditions" and economic resources upon
which industrial power must be based.8 It is important also to note, in
support of Mackinder's thesis, that there are geographical features which,
unimportant in peacetime, can critically affect the size and composition of
the economic potential in wartime. One of the most graphic illustrations
of this last point was provided in both world wars by Britain's dependence
on sea-borne imports. The curtailment of these by submarine warfare and
7 For a complete analysis see the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary
Report, September 30, 1945.
8 See Chapter 7.
458 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the military and economic cost of the convoy system placed a very large
strain on the British war economy.9
Thus, factors such as location, size, shape, and other geographical rela-
tionships remain important determinants of political and strategic policy,
while the related geographical pattern of economic development and of
economic capabilities is seen to be equally pertinent.
The extent of the economic development of a region is always limited
and conditioned by its natural geographical features. Some states over-
come the limitations of their native environment by trade and by colo-
nization. A few areas, rich in natural resources, still remain "undeveloped."
But in general, economic development has been associated with, among
other things, some favorable combination of such physical factors as cli-
mate, soil, topography, mineral resources, and waterways. The influence
of these factors is not, of course, confined to economic life, but affects in
a unique and organic way the growth and development of a culture. How-
ever, it is through their influence on economic life that they generally have
their greatest effect on other aspects of human life. The influence of a few
of the more important of these factors is considered here very briefly.
Climate and Economic Development. Climate is one of the most im-
portant geographical factors for economic development because of its
effect on soils and vegetation and in turn on human life and activity.10
Nearly half of the land on the earth's surface is in the intermediate clima-
tic regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The economically developed
regions of the world are concentrated in these regions. While there are
dense concentrations of population in some of the tropical regions of
Asia, Africa, and South America, per capita agricultural production in
these areas is low and industrial production negligible. The explana-
tion for the difference is to be found partly in the climate, through the
effect of temperature and rainfall on soil and vegetation, and partly
in historical and cultural factors. In tropical regions high tempera-
ture and high humidity have an enervating effect on both physical and
mental activity. Rainfall, or the lack of it, and its seasonal distribution
will affect the fertility of the soil and the growth of crops. In the tropical
9 See A. P. Usher, "The Steam and Steel Complex and International Relations," in
Technology and International Relations, Wm. F. Ogborn, ed. (Chicago, 1949).
10 For a good brief discussion of the effects of climate on human activity see J. H.
Stembridge, The World: A General Regional Geography, 1953, Ch. 7. For influence
of climate on economic activity see L. D. Stamp and S. C. Gilmour, Chisholm's
Handbook of Commercial Geography, 14th ed. (New York, 1954), pp. 22-52. These
however, are fairly elementary. P. Gourou's The Tropical World (Engl, translation,
London, 1953), is a much more sophisticated examination of certain aspects of the
problem.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 459
rain forests there is so much precipitation that leaching of the soil tends
to deprive it of fertility. The hot desert regions like the Sahara or the
great Australian desert are practically uncultivable and uninhabitable.
The geographical conditions which in the past were favorable to the
growth of civilizations appear to have been different from those which
exist today in association with a high degree of economic development.
Marston Bates J1 has pointed out that all three pre-Columbian civi-
lizations in the Americas, the Incas, the Mayas, and the Aztecs, were
tropical in origin and did not spread far beyond the tropics. Bates cites
the two extinct cultures of Ceylon and Cambodia to demonstrate that a
very high level of social life and development can be attained in tropical
regions. That of Ceylon depended on a remarkable system of reservoirs
for storing water from the seasonal rains. It collapsed when the dykes fell
into disrepair in the course of internecine wars in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries. The Khmer Empire in Cambodia endured for five hun-
dred years and produced a magnificent art and architecture before col-
lapsing in the tenth century from unknown causes.
Today the regions of the tropics are among the most underdeveloped
of the world. This is especially true of the equatorial rain forests, as in
the Amazon and Congo river valleys. Rain falls throughout the year, tem-
peratures are uniformly high, and the landscape is covered with a dense
tropical forest. Some of the wood is valuable, like mahogany and ebony,
but is difficult to reach and costly to harvest. Malaya, the Philippines, and
Indonesia are in this belt but their forests are less dense because of their
proximity to the sea and here conditions are more favorable to agriculture
and the growth of population.
Other parts of the Tropical Zones are more favorable to man. These are
the tropical grass lands and savannas and especially the monsoon lands.
The former are found on both sides of the equatorial forests, in South
America (Orinoco Basin and Brazilian highlands) in Africa (Sudan), in
the drier parts of India, in the Philippines, and in the north and east of
Australia. The temperature is uniformly high, rain falls during the summer
months and the winter season is dry. These regions are primarily agricul-
tural.
The monsoon lands are economically, as well as in many other ways,
the most important of the tropical regions. With their wet, hot summers
and dry winter seasons they are extraordinarily well-suited to certain types
of agriculture (especially rice) and have thus become one of the most
densely populated regions of the earth. The monsoon climate, which is
11 Where Winter Never Comes (New York, 1953).
460 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
well marked in India, Southeast Asia, Southern China, and Northern Aus-
tralia is characterized by heavy rains during summer, as winds blow from
sea to land, and a dry season in winter when the winds blow in the
opposite direction. In northern hemisphere monsoon lands, like India and
Burma, the cool dry season lasts from November to February, the hot
season from March to June, and the rainy season from June to October.
In the wetter regions where the annual rainfall may be eighty inches or
more, the forests resemble those of the equatorial belt and the crops in-
clude rice, tea, and jute. If the rainy season lasts as long as six to seven
months, as in Pakistan, cotton and sugar cane can be grown.
Central China and Japan also receive monsoon rains and are some-
times referred to as subtropical monsoon regions. They are also among
the most densely populated regions of the world.
Our own Western civilization flourished first in the Mediterranean, but
its greatest development has occurred in the cooler intermediate regions
where man has met the challenge of the seasons. Next to the monsoon
lands of Asia, the industrial areas of Europe and the United States are the
most populous areas of the world. Most of the land and large industrial
areas of North America and Europe are in a cool temperate climate.
New England and the North Atlantic states are mostly in an eastern
maritime type of climate, as in Manchuria, part of North China, Korea,
Hokaido, and Sakhalin. Most of Western Europe and the United Kingdom
are in a cooler and more humid West coast marine climate. These are
usually comparatively highly industrialized regions. The former regions
have a more extreme climate than the latter and are hot in summer and
cold in winter, have a light to moderate rainfall, with the prevailing
winds off-shore. The West coast marine-type regions are subjected to
onshore westerly winds and thus have an insular climate marked by cool
summers and mild winters with rainfall fairly well distributed through-
out the year.
Russia's continental climate has been comparatively unfavorable to
economic development, with hot summers and winter temperatures below
the freezing point except in the Crimea. Over most of the country the
annual rainfall is not more than twenty inches. Most of the coast line lies
so far north as to be icebound for as long as six months in the year. Inland
waterways are similarly affected; while the completion of the Don-Volga
Canal makes possible water transportation between the Baltic and White
seas in the north to the Caspian and Black seas in the south, even the
southern portions of these routes are frozen for three months.
From the brief discussion given above, it will be seen that both the
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 461
tropical and the intermediate regions have been found conducive to civili-
zation. In both zones are regions which are unfavorable to life and to eco-
nomic activity, the equatorial rain forests and hot deserts in the tropics
and the deserts of Iran, and Gobi. The temperate deserts are more easily
reclaimable through irrigation than the tropical deserts, and the tropical
rain forests, of the Amazon at any rate, still more or less successfully resist
human encroachment. In both the tropics and the intermediate zones there
are areas of great population concentration— the tropical monsoon lands
of Asia which have been almost exclusively agricultural or extractive in
their development, and the industrialized regions of Europe and North
America. Experience thus suggests that intermediate climates furnish the
most favorable conditions for diversified economic development, includ-
ing industrialization.
All the highly developed countries lie in latitudes 35° N to 70° N. This
is Huntington's "very high energy" region.12 He ascribes the high eco-
nomic development of most of the countries in this zone to the invigorat-
ing effects on man of the favorable climate. Huntington eliminates relief,
soil, minerals, power resources, and waterways as major factors shaping
the pattern of world economic development. While a favorable climate
undoubtedly has contributed to the economic progress of the developed
countries, the importance attached to it by Huntington appears to be
exaggerated. On the contrary, it is becoming increasingly apparent that
the densely populated countries of the monsoon areas of India and China
are underdeveloped precisely because the climate and other physical
factors were so favorable to human life and population growth in the pre-
industrial rice economies, while industrialization was possible in North-
western Europe at least partly because the population was still relatively
small in relation to land and other resources when the new era began.13
Soils and Vegetation.14 Soils and vegetation are of basic importance to
agriculture and forestry. If the soil of a region lacks the ability to produce
agricultural and forest products it is likely that the region will be unin-
habitable. Moreover the fertility of the soil is important to the industrial
stages of economic development; usually a community must be able to
12 E. Huntington, Civilization and Climate, 3rd ed. (New York, 1939).
13 See especially Gourou, op. cit., pp. 1-5 and 99-112; also S. Kuznet, Under-
developed Countries and the Fre-industrial Phase in the Advanced Countries, an
unpublished paper delivered at the World Population Conference, Rome, September,
1954. See also A. P. Usher, "Population and Settlement in Eurasia," Geographic
Review, Vol. 10 ( 1930), pp. 110-132.
14 This discussion is based to a large extent on Stamp and Gilmour, op. cit., pp.
53-64); cf. also M. S. Anderson, Geography of Living Tilings (New York, 1954),
pp. 121-168.
462
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 463
produce a surplus of foodstuffs in order to release part of its population
to other employment before it can develop the facilities for manufactur-
ing, transportation, and trade. This is an important part of the problem of
economic development, for example, in a country like India, which has
difficulty in producing enough foodstuff for its vast population. The low
level of per capita food production is in turn partly a consequence of in-
ability of the farmers to afford fertilization, and partly a function of mere
numbers of the population, for the soil and climate throughout most of
India is favorable to cultivation.
Soils and vegetation are reflections of climate. The soil of many arid
lands is often very rich in minerals and only the lack of rainfall prevents
the growth of grasses or crops. The great climatic regions of the world
have their own distinctive soil properties, since the soil is due to the
weathering of rock under different atmospheric conditions, and is subject
to different effects of vegetable and animal life. However many soils are
aclimatic, having within the same climatic region, numerous local varia-
tions depending on the characteristics of the parent material. Consequently
the crop yield of one region may be much greater or less than that of
another with the same climate.
The productivity of land for agricultural purposes depends on the fer-
tility of the soil, and on the degree and seasonal variation of rainfall and
temperature. About two-thirds of the earth's land surface is unsuited for
agriculture because of insufficient precipitation and low temperature, and
a large part of the balance is unusable because of topography ( Fig. 14-2 ) .
About one-fifth of the land area has temperature, rainfall, and topography
in the right combinations, but less than 10 per cent is fully suited for
agricultural production, the proportion ranging from less than 3 per cent
in Oceania to 37 per cent in Europe.15
Agricultural production does not vary uniformly with natural fertility
and climate, because of differences in the skills of farm populations and
the amounts of capital employed. The most productive agricultural re-
gions are Northwestern Europe, the North Central and Middle Atlantic
United States, the valleys of the Indus and Ganges in India and Pakistan,
and Southeastern China. Smaller areas of high production are found in
coastal Argentina and Brazil, the southern Ukraine, the lower Nile valley
and southern Australia. Asia and Africa, although they contain more than
60 per cent of the world's population, account for just over 30 per cent
of world agricultural output. Output per capita is low in Africa because
15 W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky, World Population and Production (New York, 1954),
p. 316, Table 154.
464 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
of primitive techniques, in Asia because of scarcity of land. Europe (in-
cluding the U.S.S.R.), the Americas, and Oceania, with a much smaller
population, produce 70 per cent of the world's agricultural output by
value.
Agricultural production is coming more and more to depend on con-
trolled plant food ( fertilizers ) and controlled water ( irrigation ) . Farmers
were once able to rely on the organic processes of animal manures and
leguminous plants to restore the fertility of the soil but the intensive agri-
culture of today requires vast quantities of "commercial" fertilizers. World
consumption of the three main commercial fertilizers, nitrogen, phosphate,
and potash, in 1950 to 1951 was almost 13.5 million tons. Even with the
use of such fertilizers the soil gradually becomes depleted. The destruc-
tion of agricultural soil by wind and water erosion after the natural cover
has been removed is even more serious, and much good crop land, even
in the United States, has been totally destroyed in this way. Topsoil that
has taken thousands of years to build, has been washed away completely
in two generations. Large areas of former coffee land in Brazil have been
thus depleted. Erosion over the centuries in China, India, and the Middle
East has destroyed millions of acres, and in the latter region, "The ruins
of ancient water works explain eloquently why the land ... is dry and
sterile." 16
Irrigation has long been employed as a remedy for the deficiency of
rainfall, especially with rivers like the Nile and the Euphrates which regu-
larly overflow their banks. Such irrigation by inundation provided not
only water but fertilizing sediment which, if the floods destroyed one
crop, guaranteed the success of the next. However, since water is needed
most during the dry seasons, the old inundation canals have generally
been replaced by dams and perennial canals. In the United States we are
accustomed to irrigation works being employed to reclaim the western
desert lands and forget that irrigation systems are an absolutely indispen-
sable part of the agricultural economies of a number of ancient lands.
Most varieties of rice, upon which so large a part of the world's population
depends as a staple food, must be grown in irrigated fields and flooded
at a certain stage of growth; if this cannot be accomplished by the rains
or inundation, the water must be stored and released at the proper times.
Occasionally, in some districts of India (never in all), the monsoon rains
fail and famine occurs where irrigation is not practiced. In other areas,
such as the Coromandel Coast of India, the annual rainfall is concentrated
in a short period of a few weeks and must be stored in tanks. However,
16 Ibid., p. 479.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 465
in the deltas of this coast, three crops of rice a year are produced in land
irrigated by canals.
The necessity of irrigating rice ( as well as the scarcity of arable land )
has in some countries such as the Philippines, China, and Yemen produced
remarkable instances of terrace cultivation. In our own time, the counter-
part of these marvelous human modifications seems to be the planned
development of entire river valleys to provide not only for irrigation but
also for flood control, navigation, and hydro-electric power production.
The most remarkable example of modern river valley development is the
Tennessee Valley a 7 in which, up to July 1, 1949, some $800 million had
been expended for these purposes. Such measures, together with the
measures to enlarge the supply or productivity of arable land by soil and
forest conservation and by reclamation, take considerable time and re-
quire large investment outlays which are often beyond the means of
overpopulated, underdeveloped countries.
Mineral Resources and Energy. In the period between World Wars I
and II it was fashionable to interpret political rivalries in terms of the
struggle for raw materials, especially minerals. Imperial powers were
depicted as grasping for colonies to provide supplies of raw materials and
markets for finished products. The rise of Nazism in Germany was ex-
plained in part as an aspect of the German drive to recover colonial
sources of raw materials and to acquire "lebensraum." In Japan, perhaps
more than in Germany, the need to expand the economy, even for peace-
ful purposes, was a real one. Home supplies of iron ore and coking coal
were limited and petroleum was produced ( in insufficient quantities ) only
in Japanese Sakhalin. It was against this background that Prime Minister
Churchill and President Roosevelt included in the Atlantic Charter a
phrase supporting the "principle" of equal access to raw materials.
The present geographical pattern of industrial development is still
based largely on two minerals, coal and iron ore. In addition to its impor-
tance as a source of energy, coal is an essential raw material in the steel
and chemical industries. Accordingly, one common and important geo-
graphical characteristic of almost all highly developed countries is
the presence of fairly plentiful supplies of coal and iron ore, either
within their own national boundaries or close at hand. Thus, while Ger-
many is deficient in iron ore, it draws on the rich supplies of Lorraine for
its steel-making industries. France, short of coal, in turn obtains supplies
from the nearby Ruhr (cf. Fig. 17-1). Lack of coal undoubtedly was a
factor retarding the development of Mediterranean Europe.
17 See p. 579.
466 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Today no nation has adequate domestic supplies of all minerals and
very few even approach self-sufficiency. Even the United States, generally
regarded as the nation most liberally endowed with natural resources, is
deficient in a number of minerals including some that are essential in time
of war, such as tin, nickel, and manganese. These deficiencies must be
viewed in the light of our ability to stockpile large quantities of some and
to devise adequate substitutes for others.18 Similarly the U.S.S.R. and
satellites, although deliberately striving for autarky (an economic poten-
tial for war not dependent on foreign supplies), import large quantities
of many minerals including copper, lead, zinc, nickel, quartz crystals, and
industrial diamonds. The real object of concern in both countries probably
is not with its materials position in the event of a war in the relatively near
future, but rather with its long-run ability to continue to supply increasing
quantities of the exhaustible mineral raw materials to a rapidly growing
industrial machine. In the future, the search by developed countries for
mineral and other raw materials to supplement domestic supplies, rather
than the search for markets or profits, is likely to be the principal incentive
for the exploitation of undeveloped areas.
Much more basic to economic and industrial power than the minerals
per se, are the sources of mechanical energy, coal, petroleum, natural gas,
and hydro-power. Of these coal is the most widely used and in the actual
historical development of industrialism the most important. It has been
aptly said that no geographical factor is more significant in relation to the
economic history of the past two hundred years than the fact that when
Western man was ready to apply the steam engine to industrial power,
and to make steel with coke instead of charcoal, he found enormous quan-
tities of steam and coking coal literally under his feet, in the British Isles,
in the Appalachian basin, in western and central Europe. While oil and
hydraulic power have become of increasing importance as sources of
energy in the twentieth century, coal is still the chief supplier of fuel and
power. In 1949 nearly half of the world's energy was supplied by coal and
lignite.19 Petroleum, next in economic importance (though of prime mili-
tary importance ) , accounted for only about 20 per cent of the world total.
Petroleum and its products are, of course, easier to handle and cheaper
to transport than coal. In the United States petroleum is threatening the
primacy of coal as a source of energy due to the remarkable development
of motor transportation. In Europe, which produces little natural oil, coal
18 Cf. E. S. Mason, "American Security and Access to Raw Materials," World
Politics, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 147-160.
19 United Nations, World Energy in Selected Years, 1929-1950 (New York, 1952).
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 467
accounted for over 80 per cent of all energy produced, and in the U.S.S.R.
over 60 per cent.2" However, European countries are building refineries
and shifting increasingly to petroleum as coal becomes more costly.
The geographic distribution of the producing petroleum reserves is
quite different from that of coal, the three principal areas being ( 1 ) the
Gulf Coast, Mid-continent (U.S.) and Caribbean (Venezuela), (2) the
Near East (Black Sea, Persian Gulf) and (3) Far East (Indonesia). Thus
a large share of today's petroleum production comes from relatively
"underdeveloped" areas, from areas discovered and developed by Ameri-
can, British, or Dutch companies without whose capital and technical
direction it could not have been produced. The geographical distribution
of water power likewise does not support theories of physical determinism
in explaining economic development, since water-power potential occurs
in heavy concentration in many underdeveloped areas, in South America,
Asia, and Africa. The highly developed countries ( Fig. 14-3 ) , the United
States, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan ( the United Kingdom has a
very small water-potential), have all utilized their hydro-electric poten-
tial up to 40 per cent or 50 per cent or more. The availability of water
power in under-developed areas poor in coal and petroleum (Brazil)
should facilitate the industrial development of those areas.
NONGEOGRAPHICAL FACTORS
Geographical factors thus have generally a significant effect on the
economic development of a region. Except in a few isolated instances
however it is in concrete situations almost impossible to separate out and
assess the importance of geographical relative to nongeographical factors.
It is fairly obvious that areas like the Sahara Desert or the Canadian
Arctic have been of little economic consequence to date, and may well
never amount to much because of this inhospitable climate and paucity
of resources. The United Kingdom could not have developed a large steel
industry without coal and iron ore. The matchless resources of the United
States have been a major factor in its unparalleled economic growth. For
most areas, however, including the United States, the relationship be-
tween the degree of economic development and the geographic environ-
ment is much less direct than in our Sahara desert and Arctic Canada
examples. Nongeographical factors have commonly been no less signifi-
cant and frequently more important than the physical environment in
20 The reasons for the U.S.S.R.'s heavy dependence on coal are given below, on
p. 475 ff.
468
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS 469
shaping a country's economic development. How else can we explain why
countries like Switzerland and Denmark have reached much higher levels
of economic development than Spain or Italy, though less well-endowed
with basic resources? Or what accounted for the economic ascendency of
the United Kingdom over France and Germany from the middle of the
sixteenth century until almost the close of the nineteenth, despite inferior
natural resources? Why was the economic development of the U.S.S.R.,
which is second only to the United States in natural resources, delayed
until almost the beginning of the twentieth century? How and why did
Japan progress so rapidly on so limited a resource base in so short a
period? To answer these questions we must consider chiefly nongeo-
graphical factors.
The economic development process depends not only on the geographi-
cal environment but also on the attitude of the people toward economic
progress and on prevailing social, political, economic, and legal institu-
tions.21 The present pattern of world economic development is largely the
outgrowth of historical changes in Europe which must be traced back to
the Middle Ages, and which culminated in the so-called Industrial Revo-
lution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was not a revolu-
tion in the sense of a sudden and radical movement of population out of
agriculture into industry and a change from handicraft to machine meth-
ods of production. Rather, the industrial revolution was a speeding up of
a gradual process of innovation and modernization in agriculture, com-
merce, and industry which had been under way in Western Europe and
particularly in Great Britain since the fifteenth century. Two eighteenth
century technical inventions played a major role in the Industrial Revolu-
tion. They were ( 1 ) the invention of the steam engine and its application
to industry, transportation, and agriculture, and (2) the "puddling proc-
ess" which made possible the widespread use of coal in the manufacture
of bar iron. This change in the tempo of economic development has been
described by G. N. Trevelyan in his History of England as follows: "Up
to the Industrial Revolution, economic and social change, though con-
tinuous, has the pace of a slowly moving stream, but in the days of Watt
and Stephenson it has acquired the momentum of water over a mill-dam,
distracting to the eye of the spectator." 22
The Industrial Revolution began first in Great Britain. "It was the enter-
prise and industry of eighteenth-century Britain that first realized the
21 For a brief summary of the psychological and social pre-requisites of economic
progress see the United Nations study, Measures For the Economic Development oj
Under-Developed Countries (New York, 1951), pp. 13-16.
22 History of England, Vol. 3 (New York, 1954), o. 132.
470 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
dream of the Renaissance scientists and brought the forces of nature under
human control by scientific means." The forces of nature were abundantly
present in the form of coal and iron ore, but their subjection by the new
scientific knowledge might have waited in vain "as was the case with
Greek mechanics in the ancient world had it not been for the social ini-
tiative of British industry," an initiative which derived in turn from the
moral and social ideals of Puritanism.23 The history of this expansion
illustrates the extent to which economic— indeed, all human— progress has
depended on an intricate relationship of material, geographical, and cul-
tural factors rather than on any one single set of causes. The actual
balance of political power at any given time is indeed the product of all
these different factors.
23 C. Dawson, Progress and Religion (New York, 1938), pp. 213-215.
CHAPTER
15
The Growing Economic
Strength or the Sino-Soviet Bloc
A. The Soviet Union
We will begin our consideration of the present world pattern of eco-
nomic capabilities with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R. )
and its system of satellite states usually referred to as the Soviet bloc. It is
the great increase in the economic, political, and military power of this
group of states in the past three decades that, more than any other factor,
accounts for the present tension in international political relationships.
The name often given to this tension— the East- West struggle— suggests
cultural rather than geographical issues. At the same time, the locus of
Communist strength is truly in the Soviet East and China, while the pole
around which the anti-Communist states cluster is the economic colossus
of the West, the United States. This relationship is an especially fruitful
field of study for the student of political geography because it permits him
to compare the influence of geographical factors in two rapidly growing
economic systems with widely differing social and political institutions.
In the one, the United States, it is customary to ascribe the extraordinary
progress of technology and industry to a favorable combination of abun-
dant resources and free enterprise. In the other, the U.S.S.R., while natural
resources are abundant, they were clearly only a necessary, and not a
sufficient, condition of economic progress. Until the Revolution of 1917
Russia was industrially one of the most backward European states, while
thereafter the country underwent the most rapid and far-reaching eco-
471
472 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
nomic development in modern history under the force of a new economic
philosophy.
One way of showing how the economic capabilities of the U.S.S.R. have
increased under the Communist regime relative to those of Western coun-
tries is to compare production of important commodities and services. For
example, in 1930 steel production in Russia was only one-seventh of that
in the United States and less than one-fourth of the combined output of
France, Germany, and Belgium.1 In 1955 steel production in the U.S.S.R.
was over two-fifths of United States output and actually exceeded the
combined output of the three Western European countries.2 If steel pro-
duction in the United Kingdom is added to the three countries above,
Russian steel output increased from a ratio of less than 20 per cent to over
70 per cent.
If the comparison is made with coal we find the U.S.S.R. increasing
from about 10 per cent of the United States output and 8 per cent of the
four Western European countries in 1930 to about 74 per cent and about
68 per cent respectively in 1955.3 These increases suggest an extraordinary
expansion in the Russian economy relative to rates of growth in the United
States and Western Europe. The result is that by 1955 the U.S.S.R., with
a population of 217 million, had a gross national product estimated at
$149 billion or $687 per capita compared with $300 billion, or $891 per
capita for the free countries of Western Europe with a population of
337 million.
GENERAL FACTORS
After the revolution of 1917, in which Finland and the Baltic states
secured their independence, the new U.S.S.R. extended over an area of
eight and a quarter million square miles, with a population of perhaps
170 million. The border adjustments after World War II and the re-
absorption of the Baltic States increased the area to 8,708,000 square
miles, as compared with 3,556,000 square miles in the United States.4 This
vast area extends over 170 degrees of longitude and more than 45 degrees
of latitude, but it lies entirely in the Temperate and Arctic Zones. There
1W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky, World Population and Production (New York, 1954),
Table 466, p. 1118.
2 Department of State, Indicators of Economic Strength of Western Europe,
Canada, the United States, and the Soviet Bloc, 1955, IR 7247, May 9, 1956.
3 Comparisons for 1930 based on Woytinsky, op. cit., Table 366, p. 870. For 1953,
from Department of State, IR 7247, including West Germany only.
4 L. D. Stamp and S. C. Gilmour, Chisholms Handbook of Commercial Geography,
14th ed. (New York, 1954), pp. 493 ff.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 473
are a number of characteristics of this land mass which are significant to
its economic development.5
European Russia, though an enormous country, is almost entirely flat.
Western Siberia, separated from Russia in Europe by the modest heights
of the Urals, is a continuation of the Great European Plain, while Eastern
Siberia, east of the River Lena, is a low plateau. Only the Soviet Far East
is mountainous and inaccessible. Distances between cities are great, and
road and rail construction is rendered difficult by the softness of the
ground and the lack of stone and timber through large areas of the south.
The rivers, such as the Volga which flows into the Caspian Sea, and the
Dnieper and the Don which flow into the Black Sea, are adaptable to
navigation, but most of the U.S.S.R. is far from the sea and has a conti-
nental climate with extremes of hot and cold. Consequently the water-
ways are frozen during the winter, and in Siberia, where they flow north-
ward to the Arctic Ocean, they are usable only a few months in the year.
It has often been remarked that the rivers of the U.S.S.R. run in the
wrong directions (north and south instead of east and west), and the
slight dependence of the U.S.S.R. on inland waterways is suggested by
the fact that while nearly 70,000 miles are classed as navigable compared
with 77,000 miles of railway, 85 per cent of the freight traffic is carried
by rail.6
The U.S.S.R. has a short coast line in relation to its area, and only a
few year-round ice-free seaports. This, and the lack of overseas posses-
sions, account for the traditional lack of interest in foreign trade and
shipping.
A large part of the land area of the U.S.S.R. is not suitable for agricul-
ture. The tundra in the north is the area of permanently frozen subsoil;
in the summer the ground is swampy. This land is inhabited by a few
Lapps and Samoyedes with their reindeer. In the south, around the Cas-
pian Sea and throughout Soviet Central Asia, the land is mostly desert,
arable only where water is available for irrigation. Southern Russia, the
Ukraine, and parts of Siberia, however, are famous for their rich black
soil which is ideal for growing wheat, while the immense belt of conifer-
5 The following discussion is limited to such geographical factors as explain the
functional features of the Soviet economy as a whole, and are therefore not meant as
a substitute for a study of the country's geography in its many ramifications. For this
purpose see especially T. Shabad, The Geography of the U.S.S.R.: A Regional Survey
(New York, 1951), and the bibliography on pp. 3-82.
G Stamp and Gilmour, op. cit., p. 509; also Trends in Economic Growth, A Com-
parison of the Western Powers and the Soviet Rloc, prepared by the Legislative Refer-
ence Service of the Library of Congress, 1955 (hereafter referred to as Trends in
Economic Growth), p. 164.
474 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ous forests, stretching across the U.S.S.R. from the Gulf of Finland to the
Pacific Ocean, contains the largest stand of virgin softwood in the world.
Thirty-four per cent of the land area of the U.S.SJR. is occupied by
forest, 31 per cent by nonarable land, 11 per cent by pasture, and only
9 per cent by arable land. The country is so large, however, that this 9 per
cent contains 500 million acres, compared with 353 million acres under
cultivation in the United States in 1945. 7 On the other hand, even where
the Soviet land can be utilized, the climate makes it difficult. Extremely
severe winter weather is encountered throughout the north and center,
moderating slightly in the south and southwest. There is hardly a place
in the whole of the U.S.S.R. which has an average January temperature
above freezing. Lumbering is hampered, livestock must be sheltered, and
even in the great cultivated black earth belt the winters are too severe
for fall planting of wheat. Only the production of furs in the northern
forests seems to be favored by climate.
PEOPLE
The population of the present U.S.S.R. is large and growing.8 The cen-
sus for 1897 shows a total population of 125.6 million, that for 1926, 147
million, and the population total in 1955 can be estimated at 217 million.
In 1926 almost 82 per cent of the labor force was agricultural. Imperial
Russia was predominantly an agricultural country. Serfdom was not abol-
ished until 1861, and in the beginning of the twentieth century most of
the peasants were uneducated and unskilled. After the revolution, since
the principal economic goal of the new regime was industrialization, there
were two main problems. One was to find labor for the growing new
industries, the other was to bring twentieth-century skills and technologies
to the labor force, both industrial and agricultural. The growth of Soviet
population was of some help in solving the first problem but not as much
as might have been expected.9 The average rate of population increase
from 1928 to 1939 was only about 2 millions or 1.2 per cent as compared
with 2.5 millions or 1.8 per cent over the period 1900 to 1914. This was
the period roughly of the first and second five-year plans, in which the
attendant social and cultural upheavals depressed the birth rate and
raised the death rate. Again population growth was retarded in the war
period, 1939 to 1950, the effects of the war on mortality and natality more
7 Stamp and Gilmour, op. cit., p. 505.
8 See pp. 312, 315-316.
9 W. W. Eason, "Population and Labor Force," in A. Bergson, ed., Soviet Economy
Growth (Evanston, 1953), pp. 102 and 103.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 475
than cancelling the "normal" population increase. However, territorial
acquisitions added some twenty million persons to the Soviet population.
As a result the total population, which stood at 147 million in 1926, in-
creased to 170.5 million in 1939 and was in the neighborhood of 200 mil-
lion in 1950.
However, during 1926 to 1939, when the total population increased by
about twenty-three million persons, the total labor force increased by only
about five million persons due to the rise in school attendance and the loss
of females from the labor force which accompanied the migration of
people from the farms. On balance, twenty-five million persons migrated
from rural to urban areas in the period 1926 to 1939 and in January, 1939,
the urban population of the U.S.S.R. was more than twice as great as it
had been in 1926.10 This movement was reflected in a marked increase in
the nonagricultural labor force at the expense of the agricultural labor
force. The total labor force is estimated to have been between 108.4 mil-
lion and 115.5 million in 1950. The division of this labor force between
agricultural and nonagricultural labor is not known but nonagricultural
workers were at least 35 per cent of the total, as against 18 per cent in
1926. Projections of Soviet population to 1970 range from 244 million to
282 million, with the labor force increasing to between 135 million and
160 million.11
NATURAL RESOURCES
One would expect an area so vast as the U.S.S.R. to be liberally en-
dowed with natural resources and this is in fact the case 12 (Figs. 15-1, 2).
Mention has already been made of the great forests and the vast belt of
black earth lands of steppes or prairies. These have permitted the U.S.S.R.
to export considerable quantities of timber and wheat. The U.S.S.R. is the
world's second largest cotton producer but exported only minor quantities
before World War II. At present low levels of domestic consumption the
U.S.S.R. can meet its own needs and those of the Eastern European Satel-
lites. However, the U.S.S.R is a net importer of wool and has no produc-
tion of cacao, coffee, jute, and rubber.
In minerals and energy supply the Soviet Union equals or surpasses the
United States in the variety and adequacy of its resources. The U.S.S.R.
is estimated to possess about 23 per cent of the world's known supply of
10 F. Lorimer, "Population Movements in Imperial Russia and in the Soviet Union,"
in H. W. Weigert and V Stefansson, eds., Compass of the World (New York, 1945),
pp. 443-460 (449).
11 Eason, op. cit., pp. 116-122, and below, pp. 483 ff.
12 H. Schwartz, Russia's Soviet Economij, 2nd ed. (New York, 1954), Ch. 1.
Fig. 15-1. Railroads, Resources, and Industrial Concentrations in European Soviet
Union: (1) industrial areas; (2) coal; (3) lignite coals; (4) iron ore; (5) petro-
leum; (6) selected railroads.
476
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 477
inanimate energy, more than all the rest of Europe and Asia combined
(19 per cent) and almost as much as the United States (29 per cent).
This superiority is due mainly to coal of which the reserves are estimated
at 19 per cent of the world's total, compared with 49 per cent for the
United States and Canada, and 34 per cent for the rest of the world.13
Production of coal in the U.S.S.R. increased very rapidly under the five-
year plans, from 40 million tons in 1929 to 281 million tons in 1951. While
the U.S.S.R. is now apparently the second largest coal producer in the
world, the output of coal has barely kept up with the increasing demands
of industry and transportation.14
In contrast, the importance of the Soviet Union as a producer of petro-
leum has declined. Although production had increased to 37.9 million tons
in 1950, the fuel value of petroleum in the U.S.S.R. had fallen from equal-
ity with coal in 1900 to less than one-fourth, and output in relation to total
world production from about 50 per cent in 1901 to about 7 per cent in
1950. The bulk of Soviet petroleum output comes from Azerbaidzhan
(Baku) (cf. Fig. 15-1), and failure of this and other large fields to expand
more rapidly is attributed to failure to obtain maximum output from small
"pumping" wells, and to inadequate exploration and development of new
fields. Moreover the geographical concentration of Soviet oil output in the
Baku-Maikop-Grozny triangle between the Black and Caspian Seas, plus
the fact that 40 per cent of the petroleum transported in the U.S.S.R.
moves by rail, has put a further strain on Soviet transportation facilities.15
However, petroleum requirements are still relatively small due to the low
use of motor vehicles, and the U.S.S.R. has been able to export between
5 and 10 per cent of its annual production.
Water power, contrary to the popular impression, is not highly devel-
oped in the Soviet Union. While the potential production of hydro-electric
power in the U.S.S.R. is twice that of the United States, actual output in
1937 was only one-tenth that of the United States, and only about one
per cent of the potential yield. Peat and fuel wood are important sources
of fuel for industry and thermal stations.
The distribution of energy resources in the U.S.S.R. is poor, nearly 90
per cent of both coal and water power being in the relatively unpopulated
Asian part of the U.S.S.R. (cf. Fig. 15-2). Moreover, much of the coal,
especially from the more accessible mines, is of poor quality and there-
fore uneconomical to transport over great distances. Water power utiliza-
13 Woytinsky, op. cit., p. 855.
14 New York Times, March 6, 1955.
15 Schwartz, Russia's Soviet Economy, pp. 234-40; also, New York Times, Novem-
ber 2, 1954, "Baku Oil Output in Sharp Decline."
•3 2
478
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET RLOC 479
tion is also hampered by freezing and uneven stream flow. However,
planned goals for electricity and coal output aim at equaling the present
output of the United States within a decade. These goals can be fulfilled
only through a vast increase in the utilization of coal and water power
resources in Soviet Asia. According to the Soviet journal, Problems of Eco-
nomics,16 almost half of the U.S.S.R.'s coal production in 1954 originated
in its eastern areas and it is expected that the proportion will rise as new
sources are exploited in Soviet Asia. Similarly, the construction of future
hydro-electric stations will be concentrated in eastern and western Siberia,
particularly on the Angara, Yenisei, and Ob rivers.
The Soviet reserve position with regard to other minerals is very good,
although extraction and processing seems to have had difficulty keeping
up with expansion.17 Before World War II the U.S.S.R. exported a number
of minerals including petroleum, coal, iron ore, manganese, platinum,
phosphates, and asbestos, while importing substantial quantities of non-
ferrous metals and iron and steel for industrial expansion. Imports of tin,
nickel, tungsten, molybdenum, and lead were stockpiled in increasing
amounts. Nevertheless, on balance, mineral exports exceeded imports.
During World War II the German armies overran most of the mineral-
producing areas and the U.S.S.R. relied very heavily on Lend-Lease im-
ports.
Since the war, because of the rapid increase in Soviet consumption of
minerals, and perhaps because of stockpiling, the U.S.S.R. seems to have
become a net importer of minerals. Principal mineral imports have been
coal, uranium, zinc, cadmium, lead, arsenic, barite, bromine, fluor spar,
and potash. It is important to note, however, that imports of these minerals
have come largely from the European satellite countries, Poland and East
Germany. Other important sources of mineral imports within the Soviet
bloc are Manchuria and North Korea (pig iron, tungsten, molybdenum,
lead, and zinc ) and China ( tungsten, tin, and antimony ) .
In brief, the minerals position of the U.S.S.R. is one of very large known
reserves of most of the ferrous metals, fuels, and non-metallic minerals,
with deficiencies in non-ferrous metals to some extent compensated for
by availabilities in other parts of the Sino-Soviet bloc. Iron ore reserves
are ample, although the prospect is one of increasing pig iron costs due to
more extensive utilization of lower grade deposits.18 Manganese and
chromium are available for export. Evident deficiencies of the U.S.S.R.
16 H. Schwartz, New York Times, September 25, 1955.
17 See D. Shimkin's comprehensive study, Minerals, A Key To Soviet Power ( Cam-
bridge, 1953 ) , especially Ch. 9.
" Ibid., pp. 303, 304-345.
480 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
include copper, nickel, cobalt, diamonds, lead, molybdenum, uranium,
tungsten, and zinc. Satellite sources are capable of reducing or eliminat-
ing the inadequacies in lead, molybdenum, uranium, tungsten, and zinc.19
The ascertained over-all position is about as good as that of the United
States, and considering that the U.S.S.R. is still in the pioneering stage of
geological exploration while the United States is far advanced, the poten-
tial minerals position of the U.S.S.R.— and particularly of the Sino-Soviet
bloc as a whole— is probably somewhat better.
The foregoing description has given us a bird's-eye view of the materials
from which the Soviet planners are attempting to fashion an industrial
base to support the political and military ambitions of the Kremlin: a vast
area with a harsh climate, enormous distances to be overcome ( and there-
fore a high proportion of productive effort expended on transportation),
a growing population and an increasingly skillful labor force, tremendous
supplies of timber and coal, the former hard to get at, the latter poorly
distributed, adequate reserves of iron ore, and a minerals position on the
whole better than that of any other world power except the United States.
What use are the Communists making of these resources to develop the
U.S.S.R.'s economic capabilities?
THE SOVIET ECONOMY
The expansion of the industrial economy of the U.S.S.R. under the suc-
cessive five-year Plans is remarkable. Soviet official estimates, claiming
a 16 per cent annual average rate of increase in national income in the
period 1928 to 1937, a 19 per cent rate of growth in 1948 to 1950, and 12
per cent for 1950 to 1951 are unreliable. But even estimates by non-Soviet
statisticians credit the Soviet Union with rates of growth in national in-
come ranging from 4.5 per cent annually to 8 or 9 per cent for the period
1928 to 1937, and a comparable rate of expansion during the period 1948
to 1950. 20 Rates of growth in industrial production are conceded to be
higher than for national income because of the priority given to heavy
industry. Official figures show an annual rate of growth of 20.9 per cent
for 1927/28 to 1937 and 23 per cent for 1946 to 1950, but Western authori-
ties similarly believe these claims are exaggerated. The following table
compares the official index of industrial production in the U.S.S.R. with
recent estimates.
19 Bergson, op. cit., p. 177.
20 Ibid., p. 9.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 481
TABLE 15-1
Average Annual Percentage Rates of Growth in Soviet
Industrial Production °
YEARS
OFFICIAL INDEX
REVISED INDEX
1927/28
23.6
14.5
1932-37
18.7
16.6
1927/28-1937
20.9
15.7
1937-40
11.6
4.7
1946-50
23.0
20.5
1927/28-1950
12.5
8.9
* A. Bergson, ed., Soviet Economic Growth (Evanston, 1953), p. 242.
Practically no statistics of physical volume of output of any commodities
have been published by the Soviet Union since the late thirties, the only
direct sources of information on production being the official indices,
statements of plan fulfillment and percentage increases over previous
years. However, by various statistical techniques, the following indices
have been constructed of industrial production in the U.S.S.R., and for
related sectors of the economy.
TABLE 15-2
U.S.S.R.: Industry, Mining, and Transportation *
(1928= 100)
100
184
363
422
337
615
a 1927-28.
* D. Hodgeman, Soviet Industrial Production 1928-51 (Cambridge, 1954), p. 91.
Different rates of growth in the Soviet economy are shown in the table
giving Soviet net national product by industrial origin: agriculture in 1953
showed little or no increase over 1937, while industry and transportation
more than doubled.
From 1928 to 1951 coal production in the U.S.S.R. increased from 35.5
million metric tons to 282 million metric tons; crude oil production from
11.5 million metric tons to 42.3 million metric tons, electric power output
from 5 million kilowatt hours to 102.9 billion kilowatt hours, pig iron pro-
YEARS
IND. PROD.
MINERALS CON
1928
100 a
100
1932
172
171
1937
371
357
1940
430
400
1946
304
386
1950
646
586
482 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
duction from 3.3 million metric tons to 22.1 million metric tons, crude steel
production from 4.2 million metric tons to 31.4 million metric tons, and
passenger cars and trucks from 600 or 700 to 364,000. By 1950, U.S.S.R.
coal output was 52 per cent of that of the United States, steel production
31 per cent, electric power 23 per cent, cement production 27 per cent
and woven cotton and woolen fabrics 40 to 45 per cent. "In the short span
of thirty years, the Soviet Union has risen from the ranks to become the
second most powerful industrial nation in the world." 21
TABLE 15-3
The Soviet Net National Product, 1937-53 *
1937
1948
1953
INDUSTRY
(1)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(1)
(2)
Agriculture (3)
Industry (4)
Transportation &
Communications
Civil and military services
Total gross national
Product
36
34
7
22
100
100
100
100
28
36
8
28
86
121
120
142
23
46
10
21
102
221
211
155
100
100
100
113
100
162
(1) Percentage of gross national product in that year, measured in 1937 factor costs (Bergson), ad-
justed for higher estimates of imputed land rents.
(2) Index, 1937 — 100, in same measure.
(3) Includes imputed land rentals.
(4) Includes manufacturing, handicrafts, mining, forestry, and fisheries (Soviet definition of "In-
dustry"), plus construction.
* H. Block in Trends in Economic Growth, p. 284.
A large part of the increased output in the U.S.S.R. has taken the form
of investment in capital goods and production for military purposes rather
than increased foodstuffs and other goods for consumption. Consequently,
the record of production in the latter sectors is not too impressive. A care-
fully constructed index of consumer goods production gives a figure of 258
for 1950 (1928 = 100), compared with 646 for all large-scale (heavy)
industrial production. Per capita production of consumer goods in 1950
was less than twice that of 1928 because of the intervening growth in
population.22 Soviet gross agricultural production in 1940 was only 15 per
cent above 1927-28 when the collective and state farm programs were
started, and by 1950 had risen by no more than a further 10 per cent of
1940 output.23
21 Hodgeman, op. cit., Table A and pp. 128-130.
22 Ibid., p. 128.
23 V. Timoshenko, "Agriculture in the Soviet Spotlight," Foreign Affairs (January,
1954), pp. 244-258.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 483
This lopsided development of the Soviet economy is due, on the one
hand, to the deliberate concentration on heavy industry in Soviet eco-
nomic planning and, on the other, to both physical and institutional ob-
stacles to the expansion of Soviet agricultural production which will be
discussed later.
FACTORS IN SOVIET ECONOMIC GROWTH
The unusual growth of the Soviet economy since the 1930's seems to be
due to institutional factors rather than to any favorable combination of
physical factors and technology. This is suggested by the relatively slow
progress of the Russian economy prior to the revolution and is confirmed
by an analysis of the events that followed.
The most important factor was the decision of the Communist rulers
to subordinate everything to the expansion of Soviet industry, a decision
motivated by Marxist doctrine and made possible by the conditions of
totalitarian rule. The mobilization of resources for investment in heavv
J
industry was literally decreed and enforced by the state, while consump-
tion was drastically restricted by wage control, rationing, and the sheer
non-availability of many consumer goods. The high priority afforded to
heavy industry and transport from the beginning accounts for the high
rate of growth in the late thirties and late forties as the process began to
pay dividends in output.
Second in importance was the fact that the new industrial technology
had already been developed abroad and could readily be copied by im-
porting technicians, prototypes, and plans. A large part of the high growth
rate of the Soviet economy is explainable in terms of this process of catch-
ing up with the highly industrialized states of the West.
In analytical terms, the expansion of output in the U.S.S.R. can be at-
tributed to ( 1 ) an expansion in the total labor force, ( 2 ) an increase in
labor productivity, and (3) a shift in employment of labor from occupa-
tions of lower to those of higher marginal productivity. We have referred
above to the growth of the labor force. Labor productivity in the U.S.S.R.
also increased markedly, although by not nearly enough to explain the
large increases in output. The most important component in the increase
in Soviet product during the period 1928 to 1937 appears to have been the
shift of labor from agricultural to nonagricultural employments where
marginal productivity was higher,24 a transfer which increased the non-
agricultural labor force, on the average, by about 10 per cent annually
?4 Q. Grossman, "National Income," Ch. 1 in Bergson, op. cit., pp. 13, 14.
484 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
during this period. Increasing labor productivity appears to have been
more important in the late thirties and in the postwar period.
In many respects the physical and geographical factors seemed to hin-
der rather than aid the expansion of the Soviet economy. Mention has
already been made of the relatively slow rate of growth in petroleum
production, and exploitation of other mineral resources has apparently
run into increasing production costs and unfavorable geographical distri-
bution of resources. The vastness of the land area and the distances to be
traversed by the transportation system in the U.S.S.R. posed major prob-
lems (cf. Figs. 15-1, 2, pp. 476, 478). As Chauncy Harris put it:
The negative economic role of the area looms even larger when one considers
the human emptiness of most of it. Most of the people of the Soviet Union live
in what is called the Fertile Triangle with its corners at Leningrad on a gulf of
the Baltic Sea, at Odessa on the Black Sea, and at the Kuznetsk Basin in Siberia.
The Triangle includes about one million square miles, an area roughly equiva-
lent to the United States east of the Mississippi River. With the exception of the
Caucasus and the oases of Central Asia most of the rest of the Soviet Union is
relatively bare space which must be crossed by long transport lines.25
This factor, plus the heavy reliance on solid instead of liquid fuel, has
greatly increased the share of resources that have to be devoted to trans-
portation. The Soviet transport co-efficient (percentage of total output
devoted to transportation) is the highest in the world and 40 per cent
higher than in the United States.26 This is readily seen from a comparison
of ton-miles of freight carried, for example in 1953: 605 billion ton miles
for the United States and 538 billion for the U.S.S.R. with less than one-
third the gross national product.27 In the twenties, Soviet planners resisted
the need to expand the rail and other transportation systems because of
a doctrinaire notion that transportation represented an unproductive ac-
tivity. When this neglect threatened a breakdown in industrial activity,
a more energetic policy was adopted, both with regard to the expansion
of the system and the efficiency of operations.28 However, the desire to
minimize the resources allocated to transportation conflicted with the
need to develop outlying areas containing untapped resources. The result
was a decision to locate industrial development in five relatively concen-
trated and more or less self-sufficient regions.29 Official theory does not
25 Ibid., p. 164.
26 D. Shimkin, quoted in Trends in Economic Growth, p. 165.
27 Trends in Economic Growth, Table 60, p. 171.
28 Schwartz, Russia's Soviet Economy, pp. 389-404. The basic work in this field is
H. Hunter's The Economics of Soviet Railroad Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).
2 9 See Fig. 14-3, p. 468.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 485
appear to recognize that such a policy may tend to retard the over-all
growth of output by limiting opportunities to reduce costs through a wider
geographical division of labor.30 The future expansion of Soviet railroads
will depend on whether these policies of regional self-sufficiency and
equalization remain in force. If they do not, there will be a greater need
for interregional rail transportation. In a speech delivered in April, 1954,
First Deputy Premier Kaganovich admitted that the regional self-suffi-
ciency policies were being ignored and cross-hauling was occurring on a
large scale because nobody "cared where goods are coming from or asked
about transport costs. . . . They are all only interested in getting the goods
at all."31
If all Soviet railway construction were regulated exclusively by Soviet
economic location theory, the result would be a railway system con-
structed without regard to strategic requirements. While Soviet planners
have perhaps not constructed exactly the kind of railway system Halford
Mackinder would have expected, they have evidently taken strategic fac-
tors into account, as in the double-tracking of the trans-Siberian over its
entire distance, the construction of the south trans-Siberian, and the re-
ported construction of the Baikal-Amur (northern trans-Siberian) road.
Another departure from the orthodox location theory may be evident in
a program for construction of an entirely new rail network in southwestern
Siberia to handle grain produced under the new "conquest of virgin
lands" program to increase agricultural output and food supplies for the
urban population.32
SOVIET FOREIGN TRADE
Soviet economic policy has always aimed at eventual autarky (self-
sufficiency). Nevertheless imports played an important part in accelerat-
ing the rate of industrialization especially during the thirties. A brief
discussion of the role of foreign trade is necessary to an understanding of
the economic capabilities of the Soviet bloc.
Soviet foreign trade policy, as explained in 1934 to the Seventeenth
Party Congress by Foreign Trade Commissar Rozengoltz, "meant that by
30 For a further examination of this point see Bergson, op. cit., p. 158, comments
by H. Hunter on J. Blackman's paper on "Soviet Transportation" (Ch. 4); also
D. Shimkin, "Economic Regionalization in the Soviet Union," Geographical Revieio,
Vol. 42 (October, 1952), pp. 596-614; also Schwartz, op. cit., p. 400.
31 Schwartz, Russia's Soviet Economy, p. 403; also The Tablet (London, September
4, 1954), pp. 222-223.
32 T. Shabad, "Soviet Adds Rails in New Grain Area," New York Times, May 15,
1955.
486 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
extending our economic contact with the capitalist world and introducing
the latest technical innovations and speeding up our socialist construction
by means of considerable imports over a definite period of time, we should
prepare for the next stage— the continuation of socialist construction on
the basis of a contraction of imports." 33
Foreign trade of the U.S.S.R. expanded from virtually nothing in the
first two or three years after the revolution to a peak in the late twenties
and early thirties when the U.S.S.R., embarked on its first five-year plan
of rapid industrialization, was desperately demanding imported capital
goods. Foodstuffs (despite widespread famine in the Ukraine), timber,
petroleum, and industrial raw materials were exchanged for producers'
goods (machinery and equipment), on terms that became distinctly un-
favorable to the U.S.S.R. because the world-wide depression affected
prices of raw materials much more than the prices of finished goods. After
1931 the volume of foreign trade fell off and by 1940 the Ministry of For-
eign trade was congratulating itself on the fact that the U.S.S.R. ranked
second in industrial production and nineteenth in foreign trade.34 At that
time the Soviet economist Mishustin reiterated that Soviet foreign trade
policy was "to utilize foreign products and above all foreign machinery
. . . for the technical and economic independence of the U.S.S.R. . . .The
speediest liberation from the need to import."
During World War II the liberation from imports was temporarily sus-
pended and the U.S.S.R. received almost $13 billion worth of goods, most
of it from the United States, under lend-lease arrangements. Lend-lease
deliveries averaged about $3 billion annually, far greater than the highest
prewar level of imports in 1931.
Analysis of the course of Soviet foreign trade in the postwar period is
complicated by the paucity of data relating to trade between the U.S.S.R.
and the European satellites and China. In 1953 trade between the Free
World and the Communist bloc as a whole was only about one-third the
pre- World War II volume of trade carried on between the two sets of
countries, whereas trade within the Communist bloc was reported to be
ten times the prewar volume. The principal reason for these differences
is that the countries of Eastern Europe before World War II conducted
most of their trade with Western Europe. Since the war their trade has
33 A. P. Rozengoltz, The USSR and the Capitalist World (Moscow, 1934), p. 4,
quoted by L. Herman, "The New Soviet Posture in World Trade," Problems of Com-
munism, Vol. 3, No. 6 (Washington, D. C, 1954).
34 Bakulin and Mishustin, Statistika Vneshnei Torgovli (Moscow, 1940), p. 299,
quoted by L. Herman, op. cit.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 487
been forcibly re-directed inward, to the U.S.S.R. and with one another.
This is shown in the following estimates of the volume of intra-bloc trade
for 1947 and 1951.
TABLE 15-4
Intra-Bloc Trade *
U.S.S.R. and Eastern European Satellites
1947 '
J 951 a
U.S.S.R.
U.S.S.R.
U.S.S.R.
U.S.S.R.
COUNTRY
IMPORTS
EXPORTS
IMPORTS
EXPORTS
Albania
6.5
6.5
12.0
12.0
Bulgaria
44.7
45.6
66.9
86.4
Czechoslovakia
27.9
38.9
222.5
247,5
Hungary
13.4
14.5
117.1
111.2
Poland
70.5
79.5
190.0
235.0
Rumania
19.9
29.9
119.7
122.5
E. Germany
16.0
11.0
176.0
250.0
Totals
198.9
225.9
904.2
1064.6
a Millions of United States dollars.
* Estimated by Leon Herman, given in H. Schwartz, Russia's Soviet Economy, 2nd ed. (New York,
1954), pp. 614-615.
In 1938 these countries supplied the U.S.S.R. with only $30 million
of goods or 11 per cent of its total imports. In 1952 the bloc furnished over
$1 billion of imports 35 or almost 70 per cent of total Soviet imports. In
general this trade consists of an exchange of Soviet manufactured and
semi-manufactured goods for satellite raw materials and foodstuffs. How-
ever, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland supply some machinery
and transport equipment and minerals.
Trade between the U.S.S.R. and the Free World in the period 1947 to
1953 has fluctuated between $300 million and $500 million annually in
imports and $250 million to $500 million in exports ( current prices ) . Trade
between the European satellites and the Free World increased to $1.1 bil-
lion in exports and $900 million in exports in 1948 and 1949. It declined
to about $800 million in exports and $700 million in imports in 1953. The
satellites have had a visible trade surplus which, with occasional gold
sales has helped the U.S.S.R. to balance its visible trade deficit with the
Free World. Details of U.S.S.R. and bloc trade are given in the following
table.
35 Official statistics of Free World countries, compiled by the United States De-
partment of Commerce.
488 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
TABLE 15-5
Soviet Bloc Free World Trade, 1947-54 *
(Millions of United States Dollars at Current Prices)
1947
1949
1953
Free World Exports to:
U.S.S.R.
477
437
438
European Satellites
857
919
682
Total
1,334
1,356
1,120
Free World Imports from:
U.S.S.R
271
272
385
European Satellites
733
1,090
810
Total
1,004
1,362
1,195
* See footnote 35.
The volume of this trade has been limited not only by the multilateral
export controls over "strategic" commodities enforced by the principal
Free World trading countries operating through a Co-ordinating Commit-
tee in Paris, but also by the inability or unwillingness of the U.S.S.R. to
deliver its traditional exports of grain, timber, and raw materials. Soviet
offers to sell capital goods on favorable credit terms, especially to under-
developed countries, have been until recently mostly propaganda state-
ments.
While the foreign (East-West) trade that is permitted undoubtedly
makes a contribution to Soviet economic growth, its volume is now too
small in relation to Soviet production and national income to make a sig-
nificant difference in the rate of this growth. The period when foreign
trade made a vital and indispensable contribution to Soviet economic
growth was in the late twenties and the thirties; it is too late now to
expect to do much damage to the Soviet economy by export controls or
other devices of economic warfare. The importance of intra-bloc trade
is a somewhat different matter; although the value of this trade is roughly
twice the value of the East-West trade of the European Soviet 36 bloc and
it may present greater advantages to the U.S.S.R. because of its perma-
nence, and the much greater degree of control the U.S.S.R. can exert in
regard to prices, quality, and other considerations.37
Since 1953 the Soviet bloc has waged a new campaign of economic
diplomacy in non-Communist underdeveloped areas designed to increase
36 Economic Commission for Europe, Economic Survey of Europe in 1954 (Geneva,
1955), Table 63, p. 111.
s^ See p. 28.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 489
trade and other economic relations with these areas. The principal ele-
ments have been offers to purchase goods in excess supply and to supply
credits and technical assistance for economic development. In some cases
military equipment has been offered in exchange for raw materials like
cotton.
PROSPECTS FOR FUTURE GROWTH
We have seen that the economy of the U.S.S.R. has been characterized
by quite high rates of growth under the various five-year plans, rates that,
if continued, would seem to make Stalin's famous production goals (50
million metric tons of pig iron, 60 million metric tons of steel, 500 million
metric tons of coal and 60 million metric tons of petroleum) 38 easily
attainable by 1960. A number of factors, however, suggest that recent
rates of increase may not be maintained. Among these are the recent indi-
cations of a growing need for more housing, consumer goods, and food-
stuffs. Housing is notoriously poor in the U.S.S.R. in terms both of quality
and quantity. Even to supply the growing population over the next sev-
eral decades with sufficient housing by present standards will require
much larger investment in housing than the postwar rate. Housing also
competes for some of the same materials and labor as investment in in-
dustry. Increased consumer goods means primarily more clothing made
from scarce fibers, cotton and wool. To increase output of these "technical
crops" is to add to the agricultural problem.
We have seen that gross agricultural production increased by only 23
per cent between 1928 and 1950, not enough to keep up with population
growth. If a population increase to 260 million people by 1970 is assumed,
this would require a 30 per cent increase in output of foodstuffs over 1950
merely to keep per capita consumption from falling. Despite official as-
surances that heavy industry and transport will continue to receive prior-
ity, it is obvious that to increase per capita agricultural production will
require intensive efforts and probably a heavier investment than previ-
ously, since during the period 1928 to 1950 agriculture received an esti-
mated 15 to 20 per cent of total investment with no appreciable increase
in per capita output.39
The problem of expanding agricultural output is so crucial to the gen-
eral outlook for the economy of the U.S.S.R. that it deserves at least a
brief examination here.
38 Speech of February 9, 1946.
39 N. Kaplan, "Capital Formation and Allocation" in Bergson, op. cit., p. 52.
490 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR E\ POLTTICAL GEOGRAPHY
Soviet agriculture suffers from difficulties of an institutionaL physical,
and economic character.- During the earlv thirties the Communists vir-
tuallv made war on the peasants for resisting collectivization. Agricultural
production declined and one-half of all the livestock were killed. There
were 10 million fewer cattle in the U.S.S.R. in 1953 than in 192S. with
90 per cent of the decline being in cow;
After Stalin's death, the new regime promised better food as well as
more food to a population that has long been confined to a diet of bread
and potatoes. But better food means meat, milk, and lard as well as fruits
and vegetables. Animal crops require several times more land and labor
than vegetable food, and some of the technical crops require a subtropical
climate. The area of subtropical climate is verv limited in the U.S.S.R. and
most of it is vers- drv. Recent efforts to increase the number of livestock
have failed, mainlv because of the scarcitv of fodder but also partlv be-
cause the collective farm organization is not well adapted to the intensive
forms of agriculture. Moreover until recentlv the remuneration of collec-
tive farm members engaging in animal husbandrv averaged about one-
fourth of that received for the cultivation of technical crops i cotton ) .
Expanding the supplv of food grains comes up against the fact that all
the good arable land in the U.S.S.R.— according to present technology— is
already cultivated, with 70 per cent in grain and with only one-third of
the grain area devoted to feed grains. As a consequence, great emphasis is
being placed on increasing the acre-vield of grain, and the current five-
vear plan I 1951-55 calls for an increase of 40 per cent an accomplish-
ment not likelv to be realized in view of past performance and the fact
that 1953 and 1954 both saw poor harvests.
Among the measures that have been adopted are Stalin's Tlan for the
Transformation of Nature'' calling for extensive shelter belts and refor-
estation through the European steppes, crop rotation, and water conserva-
tion, and. more recentlv. Kruschev's campaign for the "conquest of virgin
land" calling for the ploughing of 15 million hectares of new land per vear
in 1954. 1955. and 1956. This is calculated to provide 60 million tons of
additional grain bv 1957. The virgin land to be "conquered" is in the
northern Caucasus, the Volga region, the Urals, in Western Siberia, and
Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has an area of 1.072.797 square miles, three
times the size of Te 1 7.000 square miles . with a population 1939
of 6-000.000. of which 1.700.000 lived in cities. The "conquest" will be or-
ganized by large state farms | Sovkhoses rather than collective farms
! The discussion is based largely on Timoshenko. op. cit.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 491
(kolkhoses), since state farms can be more easily set up and controlled.
According to Soviet claims 41 the total sown area in Kazakhstan was 9 mil-
lion hectares in 1954, and the goal for 1955 was 18.6 million; for 1956,
28.5 million hectares. There are 50,000 new houses projected for 1955 and
100,000 for 1956. All these figures illustrate an undeniably strong pressure
to bring new land under the plough, especially in Kazakhstan and West-
ern Siberia, in a task which, if successful, would extend the core areas of
Soviet grain production into Soviet Asia. The goal is to create a new
wheatland area with a production to rival that of the Ukraine; an eastward
migration of "volunteers" from Russia and the Ukraine, and the earmark-
ing of 120,000 tractors for this operation lend emphasis to this battle for
grain.
Additional land is also being reclaimed by four big irrigation projects
on the Dnieper, the Volga, the Don, and the Amu Darya rivers. These
projects are expected to provide only about 15 million acres for crops, but
about 55 million acres of grazing lands, mainly in the arid and desert lands
north and east of the Caspian. Water from the Volga must be used spar-
ingly because of the falling level of the Caspian Sea.
It remains to be seen how effective these measures will be. It would be
an extreme and rash judgment to conclude that the problem of expanding
agricultural output could not be solved by an economy whose accomplish-
ments in other fields of output have been so considerable. The likelihood
is, however, that the obstacles to be overcome will require not only larger
investments in agriculture but perhaps also greater incentive payments to
members of collective farms. In the process the share of output going to
investment in industry might well be noticeably reduced, and the share of
output represented by consumer goods increased. The net result of such
developments, considering the lower average productivity in agriculture,
would be to reduce the over-all rate of growth of the Soviet economy. On
the other hand, higher standards of living may help to keep average in-
dustrial labor productivity up to the 1950-53 average increase of 4.5 to
5 per cent annually despite lower aggregate investment. If the productiv-
ity of agricultural labor could be raised by the new measures by about
3 per cent annually, a continuation of over-all economic growth at the rate
of about 4.5 to 5 per cent is not out of the realm of probability. This would
mean roughly a doubling of national product between 1953 and 1970.42
41 The Economist, March 20, 1954, pp. 873-874; also November 3, 1954, p. 568.
42 For the detailed derivation of this projection see Trends in Economic Growth,
pp. 219-222.
492 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
B. Eastern Europe — the Soviet Satellites
The European satellites of the U.S.S.R. (cf. Fig. 5-6, p. 133) add 95
million people, and an area of 392,000 square miles to the mass, if not to
the unity and power of the Soviet bloc. They comprise Poland, Eastern
Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Balkan states: Hungary, Rumania, Bul-
garia, and Albania. Compared with Western Europe, the combined indus-
trial power of these states is not great (cf. Fig. 17-1, p. 540). Neverthe-
less, as we have seen, the productive capacity of the European satellites is
significant because it is more or less at the disposal of the Soviet planners,
through redirection of the satellites' foreign trade as well as by more direct
political and administrative devices, and we must take account of it in any
assessment of the over-all capabilities of the Soviet bloc. This is not hard
to do in the gross, for we have, by virtue of recent historical data, a more
accurate notion of the main economic factors of these countries than of
the U.S.S.R. However there is little statistical information available for the
postwar period to indicate the precise patterns and levels of economic
activity in the various countries, and the volume and composition of their
trade with the U.S.S.R. is likewise shrouded in official secrecy.
The over-all contribution of Eastern Europe to the economic capabili-
ties of the Soviet bloc is summarized in the accompanying table.
TABLE 15-6
Economic Capabilities (1955) of the European Satellites*
UNIT EUROPEAN SATELLITES U.S.S.R.
Population Millions
Gross Nat. Product Billion dollars
Per Capita Dollars
Coal Production Million M.T.
Crude Steel Prod. Million M.T.
Electric Power Million KWH
Crude Petroleum Million M.T.
* Dept. of State IR 7247.
The greatest concentration in Eastern Europe of industrial strength,
as well as of population, is in Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia.
Albania and Bulgaria at the other extreme are almost exclusively agrarian
economies with a peasant culture. Hungary and Rumania are also pre-
dominantly agricultural, but together produced about 4.5 million metric
tons of crude petroleum in 1948, the last year for which Rumanian pro-
duction data are available. Hungarian oil production was estimated at
95
217
50
149
526
687
218
330
14
45
74
170
15
71
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET RLOC 493
500,000 tons in 1952. 4i The following table shows some of the differences
in the relative economic importance of the various Eastern European
countries.
TABLE 15-7
Population and Economic Activity, Eastern Europe
POPULATION
HARD COAL PROD.
STEEL PROD.
ELECTRIC POWER
(Millions)
(Millions M.T.)
(Millions M.T.)
( Billions KWH )
COUNTRY
1950 a
1951 d
195 rJ
1951 d
Poland
25.0 b
82.0
2.8
11.1
E. Germany
21.0°
3.2
1.5
20.8
Rumania
16.3°
0.3
0.7
2.5
Czechoslovakia
12.4
17.9
3.3
10.3
Hungary
9.4
1.8
1.2
3.3
Bulgaria
7.2
—
—
1.0
Albania
1.2°
—
—
—
a Economic Commission For Europe (ECE), Growth and Stagnation in the European Economy (Geneva,
19S4), p. 237.
b United Nations, Statistical Year Book, 1953 (New York, 1953), pp. 29-30, 1950 census.
c Ibid., estimates for 1952.
d ECE, Economic Survey oj Europe Since the War (Geneva, 1954), pp. 244-246.
Before World War II foodstuffs accounted for more than two-thirds of
total exports in Bulgaria and Rumania and more than one-half in Hun-
gary. The evidence suggests that in the postwar years investment in agri-
culture in these countries was neglected in favor of highly publicized
industrialization plans, with a consequent falling off of food production
and exports. This tendency was de-emphasized after Stalin's death with
results that are not yet ascertainable. Extensive land reform schemes in
Eastern Europe have broken up the large estates and a relentless struggle
against the more prosperous peasants (kulaks) and also those peasants
suspected of anti-Communist sentiments is still in progress. In spite of
widespread, mostly passive, resistance by the peasants, the Communist
regimes are pressing their programs of collectivization. Throughout the
satellite countries, the peasant is subject to rigid state controls in regard
to production and marketing.
In other sectors of the economies of Eastern Europe, according to offi-
cial claims, socialization has been carried to the extent that between 70
and 95 per cent of the value of output is being produced in the socialized
sectors.
Estimates of the trade of Eastern Europe with the U.S.S.R. and data on
trade with the Free World were given above. As was indicated, little is
known about the precise composition of this trade. East Germany and
43 United Nations, Statistical Year Book, 1953, p. 111.
494 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Czechoslovakia, and to a lesser extent, Poland and Hungary supply metals,
engineering products, and chemicals both to the U.S.S.R. and the other
satellites. East Germany is an important source of uranium for the Soviet
atomic energy program, as well as a supplier of electrical equipment and
precision mechanical and optical products. Poland supplies coal and Hun-
gary bauxite. The U.S.S.R. supplies raw materials and foodstuffs to Czech-
oslovakia and East Germany.44
It is reasonably clear that the volume of this trade ( which until recently
included some reparations deliveries from East Germany, Hungary, and
Rumania ) is fairly substantial and that its composition and terms are con-
trolled by the U.S.S.R. in its favor. What is not completely clear is the ex-
tent to which the integration of the Eastern European countries with the
U.S.S.R. enters into the economic planning of these countries and of intra-
bloc trade. Official Soviet and satellite spokesmen have repeatedly declared
that economic integration of the satellites is the aim of Soviet policy, and
that investment and trade plans will emphasize the comparative advan-
tages of the satellites to bring about an intra-bloc specialization and divi-
sion of labor. According to Oleg Hoeffding,
A writer in Bol'shevik, for instance, has denied any intention of turning the
satellite states "separately into self-sufficient units," and affirmed division of
labor among them as the objective. Each member must industrialize, with em-
phasis on heavy industry, but "there is no need for them to create simultaneously
all branches of heavy industry, which in any event would be too heavy a task
for most of these countries." Each country should develop "those heavy indus-
tries whose expansion is favored by local conditions (such as_ an adequate raw
materials base ) , and those whose products are relatively scarce in the socialist
camp as a whole. Of course, the range of such industries will be wider in the
industrially stronger countries, e.g., Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, than
in Rumania, Bulgaria or Albania."
45
Such a policy of integration may well be in conflict with overriding
geopolitical and strategic considerations, according to which the U.S.S.R.
may wish to keep these states viable, to levy on them for military pur-
poses, and to keep the populations in a state of relative docility, all in
order to enhance their ability to provide a defensive buffer against pos-
sible attack from Western Europe, or alternatively a staging area for a
Soviet drive in the other direction. Nevertheless there is developing a
fairly extensive economic interdependence between Eastern Europe and
the U.S.S.R.
44 O. Hoeffding, "Soviet Economic Relations with the Orbit" in Bergson, op. cit.,
pp. 331-334.
45 Ibid., p. 327, the inner quotations are from an article by I. Dudinski in Bol'shevik,
No. 19 (1950), p. 33.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 495
C. Communist China
INTRODUCTION
The rise of Communism to power in China at the mid-point of the
twentieth century poses some interesting problems for the student of
political geography. What has the Communization of China done— what
will it do— to the geographical distribution of power, not only as between
"East" and "West" but also within the Soviet Bloc?
China is a country of about 3.5 million square miles and roughly 600
million people 46 compared to 9.1 million square miles and 300 million
people in the European Soviet Bloc.
Is this vast area with its teeming population as significant an addition
to the mass and might of Soviet power as a comparison merely of size and
numbers would indicate? In modern times China had never been an effec-
tively unified national state. Its industrial and military power remained
slight, and throughout the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth
centuries China was a pawn of the Western imperial powers and of Japan.
Can such a community contribute very greatly to the power of the Soviet
bloc? And if, as recent evidence suggests, China under the ruthless disci-
pline of Communism will eventually develop industrial and military re-
sources to match its size and population, will these new capabilities be
placed wholly at the service of the center of Communist power in Mos-
cow? Or will Communism in China be subjected to the immemorial expe-
rience of other invasions— military, political and cultural— and produce a
Sinicized Communism rather than a Sovietized China? In this chapter
we will confine ourselves to the first question: what economic capabilities,
present and potential, can China contribute to the power of Soviet Com-
munism? In thus limiting our appraisal, however, we do not assume that
these tangible capabilities are more significant than are the intangible
elements affecting China's power position.
GENERAL FEATURES OF THE CHINESE ECONOMY
The China taken over by the Communists was a dual economy: one
small part urban-industrial, the other and far larger part rural, peasant,
agricultural. In the modern part of the economy were large coastal cities
46 Actually 582.6 million for mainland China as of June 30, 1953, according to
Peiping's National Bureau of Statistics (New York Times, November 2, 1954). Prior
to this the generally accepted figure was around 475 million. See Chapter 9, pp. 300-
301, 325.
496 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
like Shanghai, Canton, and Tientsin, but four-fifths of the population
lived as peasants on small, three or four acre farms and agricultural pro-
duction constituted 70 per cent of China's national income. Population
density was greater than in any other part of mainland Asia except India,
because of the favorable effect of the monsoon rains on the growth of
vegetable crops in the eastern plain where most of the population is
concentrated.
PRINCIPAL GEOGRAPHICAL REGIONS 47
Economic activity in China shows the effect of climate and other physi-
cal features of the geography. Most of China is north of the Tropical
Zone, extending from about 18° to 53° North, and most of it is moun-
tainous. However, China has an extensive sea coast, with many excellent
harbors, adjacent to which are the great alluvial plains drained by the
Hwang Ho (Yellow) and Yangtse rivers. These plains extend from north
of Peiping to south of the Yangtse.
South of the Great Wall "China proper" is divided into three fairly
distinct geographical regions, South, Central, and North China. South
China is a mountainous region with forests producing lumber, tung oil,
camphor, wax, and bamboo. The warm rainy summers are favorable to
a number of sub-tropical crops, such as rice, sugar cane, and cotton, which
are cultivated in the alluvial valleys. Tea is grown on the mountain sides,
especially in Fukien Province. Many of the people of the maritime re-
gions are fishermen or coastal traders; some are pirates. To the west the
land rises to the mountains of Tibet through limestone hills containing
tin and other minerals. The principal river of this region is the Si-kiang,
which rises in the plateau of Yunnan and, crossing Kwangsi Province,
creates a great delta at the head of which lies Canton, a major port city
where silk, woolen, and cotton goods are manufactured. It is from this
area of China that most overseas Chinese have migrated, because here
the environment was most favorable to population growth.
Central China is dominated by the Yangtse River, the longest of China's
great rivers. In the Yangtse valley the summer rains last longer and there
is a second period of rainfall in September and October. The winters,
while cold, are neither so harsh nor so dry as those of North China. This
47 For a detailed description see G. B. Cressey, Asia's Land and Peoples, 2nd ed.
(New York, 1951), pp. 34-165, and the comprehensive bibliography on pp. 551-557;
also W. G. East and O. H. K. Spate, The Changing Map of Asia (London, 1950),
pp. 249-277; for an excellent brief summary of China's "geographical setting" see
K. S. Latourette, A History of Modern China (London, 1954), pp. 17-23.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 497
valley of about 700,000 square miles contains more than one-third of the
population of China. In its upper regions, the Red Basin, above the Ichang
Gorge, the crops include wheat, rice, millet, sugar, tobacco, and tea. In
the central basins and delta of the Yangtse the land is intensively culti-
vated to produce wheat, rice, cotton, tea, and silk. Here also are some im-
portant manufacturing cities (Fig. 15-3): Hankow (cotton, hemp, and
flour mills), Hanyang (iron and steel), Nanking (cotton, silk, and paper
mills), and Shanghai, the chief entrepot for central China, one of the
largest Chinese cities, and, formerly at least, the financial center of all
China. The Yangtse is navigable to Hankow for ocean-going ships.
The third principal region of "China proper" comprises the great plains
of North China and the loess plateau of the northwest. This part of China
is covered with the famous yellow soil known as loess, borne from inner
Asia on the dry northwest winter winds. The summers are warm, with not
so much rain as farther south, and the winters are very cold. Though
extremely fertile, loess is porous and does not retain moisture long. The
crops in this region are therefore unusually susceptible to damage by
drought. The staple crops are wheat, peas, beans, and millet. This area is
drained by the Hwang Ho, called "China's Sorrow" because of its disas-
trous flooding. The Shantung Peninsula, a hilly region lying between the
old and new (1852) beds of the Hwang Ho is the most important silk-
producing region in China. The Hwang Ho is not navigable by vessels of
any size.
The barriers between these three districts have not been so great as to
preclude cultural and political unity.48 Great as are the distances between
the farthest margins, "the space relations of Peiping, Nanking and Canton
at least in terms of air travel are comparable with those of Stockholm,
Prague and Rome, those of Nanking and Chunking with London and
Prague." 49
It is in the eighteen provinces of "China proper," 50 with the three main
divisions just described, that the human life, culture, and economic ac-
tivity of traditional China were concentrated. These eighteen provinces
contain almost all of the agricultural land of China except that in the
northeastern provinces (Manchuria). One authority51 has preferred to
combine "China proper" with the soy bean-kaoliang area of Manchuria
and to speak of agricultural China in contrast to outer China to the west.
48 Latourette, op. cit., p. 18.
49 East and Spate, op. cit., p. 250.
50 Ibid., p. 262, for a map showing the eighteen provinces of "China proper" in
relation to the outlying provinces.
51 Cressey, op. cit., p. 100.
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GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 499
Agricultural China is subdivided in turn into nine agricultural regions,
four in the wheat, millet, and kaoliang areas of the north and five in the
rice-producing regions of the south.52 These areas include about 1,660,000
square miles, or less than half of greater China which also includes Inner
Mongolia, Sinkiang, and Tibet.
The Chinese Empire in the nineteenth century possessed a number of
outlying dependencies, including Manchuria, Mongolia, Sinkiang (Chi-
nese Turkestan), and Tibet. So many Chinese migrated to Manchuria in
the early part of this century that it is now overwhelmingly Chinese and is
referred to as the Northeastern Provinces. Manchuria is industrially the
most important region of present-day China, due to the Japanese who built
railways and developed mines and factories there, finally seizing the coun-
try in 1932 and setting up a puppet state. Outer Mongolia, north of the
Gobi, and the historic seat of the Mongols, broke away from China under
the Republic and became the Peoples Republic of Outer Mongolia under
Soviet domination. The Communists have once more established Chinese
sovereignty over Tibet and Sinkiang. These enormous territories are
sparsely populated and at present of little or no importance economically.
However, they loom large as strategic areas, to be developed by new rail-
ways, highways, and air routes, between Soviet Central Asia and Commu-
nist China.
NATURAL RESOURCES
Since China is still primarily agricultural, its most important resource
is its arable land. Over half of the area of China consists of waste ( large
areas are seriously eroded) or is built upon; 20 per cent is pastoral country
(mostly in Mongolia, Sinkiang, and Tibet) and the remainder is about
equally divided between woodland and arable land. In absolute figures,
there are about 750,000 square miles of pastoral land, 325,000 square miles
of woodland and 350,000 square miles of arable land. With a population
of 582.6 million, there is thus about 0.38 of an acre of arable land per
capita.53 An earlier estimate puts the total cultivated land at 362,082
square miles, or 27 per cent for the twenty-two provinces and 425,000
square miles, or nearly 12 per cent, for all of greater China.54 This esti-
mate would give 0.45 acres per capita which by coincidence is the same as
much earlier official estimates. The twenty-two provinces are the eighteen
52lhid.,-p. 96.
53 Stamp and Gilmour, op. cit., p. 613, based on Food and Agriculture Organization
( FAO ) reports covering 22 provinces.
54 Cressey, op. cit., pp. 89, 90, based on J. L. Buck, Land Utilization in China
(Chicago, 1937).
500 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
provinces of "China proper" referred to above, plus the two provinces,
Chahar and Jehol, of inner Mongolia and the two provinces, Tsinghai and
Sikang, of eastern Tibet. These twenty-two provinces, though excluding
the northeastern provinces ( Manchuria ) , contain nearly 2 million square
miles and over 80 per cent of the arable land. More than 90 per cent of the
people of China live in these provinces.
While the soil, whether of the alluvial river valleys of central and south
China, or of the loess plateaus of the north, is fertile and moreover is in-
tensively cultivated, population pressure is probably high. Over-all popu-
lation density for Greater China is about 167 persons per square mile based
on 3.5 million square miles and close to 600 million people. This is a
moderate density when compared with Japan (601), Belgium (740), or
the Netherlands (830).55 For "China proper" or "agricultural China,"
however, the population density would be in the neighborhood of 275 to
315 per square mile. In terms of cultivated land, however, the average
density of population would be more like 1,400 persons per square mile,
and in places there are over 2,000. 56
China is between the first and second stages of demographic develop-
ment, with very high birth, death, and infant mortality rates. In the past,
high death and infant mortality rates together with some emigration have
kept the rate of population increase low, but Communist planning will
probably have to deal with a formidable rate of increase as public-health
and related measures reduce the death and infant mortality rates.
China probably has very considerable mineral resources (cf. Fig. 15-3,
p. 498), but they have been neither carefully explored nor effectively
exploited. There is much excellent coal, both anthracite and bituminous,
especially in the north China province of Shansi. Shansi also has very good
iron ores and there are other deposits in Hupeh and Seechwan, but the
largest iron ore deposits are in Manchuria and it is here that China's iron
and steel industry is being developed. On the basis of iron content of ore
reserves per capita, however, China's known reserves are extremely small
in relation to other countries. Yunnan has rich copper deposits, and
Hunan Province contains the world's chief deposit of antimony. Chinese
tungsten production in 1950 was 11,000 tons, more than one-third of total
world output. In the same year tin smelter output was only 4,000 tons out
of a world total of 175,000 tons. Although little or no aluminum is pro-
duced, there are ample deposits ( 200 million tons ) of high-grade bauxite.
55 1952 estimates from United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 1953, pp. 27-30, con-
verted from square kilometers.
56 Cressey, op. cit., p. 86.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 501
On the negative side, China's most serious deficiency is in oil, a situation
which it shares with India.57
The mineral position has been summed up as follows:
China is bountifully supplied with coal and has major reserves of antimony
and tungsten. Tin and iron are available in moderate amounts, and there are
small quantities of a wide variety of minerals. Copper, sulphur, petroleum, and
other essentials appear very limited. China has the mineral basis for a modest
industrialization, but in terms of her population she ranks well down the list of
the great powers. Nevertheless, no other area on the Pacific side of Asia is better
supplied.
. . . Few areas in the world present the basic industrial opportunities that
China will seek to develop during the remainder of the twentieth century. Many
of these problems rest on heavy industry and in turn upon geology. The situation
is somewhat comparable to the problems of the Soviet Five-Year Plans, but
unlike the U.S.S.R., China is only modestly endowed with natural wealth. It is
fortunate that coal is super-abundant for it is the key to power and to chemical
industry, but the shortage in iron will be serious before many decades.
58
Per capita consumption of energy in China was less than 200 pounds,
coal equivalent, in 1937, putting China among the very low energy-con-
suming countries, along with India, Burma, Haiti, and the Belgian Congo.
Almost three-quarters of the total energy was used for heat and light,
18 per cent for industry and only 10 per cent for transport. About 57 per
cent of China's energy comes from coal, 35 per cent from wood and peat,
only 4 per cent from water power, and only 3 per cent from oil and gas.
Northwest China is believed to contain some promising oil-bearing struc-
tures but crude oil production in China has been negligible. China is
estimated to have about 22 million horse power of potential water power
available 95 per cent of the time, and 41 million available 50 per cent of
the time ( due to uneven stream flow ) , but practically none of it is devel-
oped. This is less than India, Pakistan, and Ceylon together (40 million)
but more than Japan ( 16 million ) .£
59
TRANSPORTATION
Before the development of rail and highway transport, the rivers and
the sea coast were China's principal arteries for travel. The principal
rivers, running west to east, were navigable at least by small craft for
considerable distances inland, especially the Yangtse, which is navigable
57 The two countries have also in common that they both possess large resources of
coal. India, however, has the advantage that its coal is in general of better quality,
is more easily accessible, and, most important, lies near its iron ore resources.
58 Cressey, op. cit., pp. 79, 85.
59 Woytinsky, op. cit., pp. 887, 935, 942-3; also Cressey, op. cit., pp. 80, 81.
502 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
by river steamer as far as Chungking. In the mountainous south, human
porterage was the chief other means of transport. In the north, mules and
horses were used to pull wagons, and together with asses and camels, for
beasts of burden. To a large extent these methods are still employed.
The railways of China were developed slowly, by foreign capital, ex-
tending inland from the treaty ports. In this way Canton was connected
with Hong Kong; Nanking, Hangchow, and Ningpo with Shanghai; and
Kunming (by the French) with Haiphong in Indo-China. The most ex-
tensive development was in the north where Peiping and Tientsin were
linked to Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. By 1936 the Canton-Hankow
railroad was completed linking the north and south positions of the
system60 (cf. Fig. 15-3, p. 498).
At the end of World War II mainland China had almost 17,000 miles of
railway of which about 14,000 miles were serviceable. There was extensive
destruction during the civil war but by 1951 reconstruction had brought
the total of serviceable mileage up to about 13,500 miles.61 Most of this
mileage is single-tracked. Double-tracked lines run from Harbin to Muk-
den, from Mukden to Dairen and Tientsin, from Tientsin to Peiping, and
from Siichow to Nanking. The highest recorded annual volume of rail
freight transported by China's railways was 6.5 billion ton kilometers in
1937. In 1947 the figure was 5.3 billion ton kilometers.62 Considering the
area and population of China this constitutes a very low utilization of
railway service.
In 1937 there were only some 15,000 miles of paved roads and 35,000
miles of dry- weather earth roads.
Under the Communists attention seems to have been concentrated on
rebuilding the railroads and reorganizing them in the interest of greater
efficiency, rather than on new construction. All railroads are now under
a single administration, and the control of the Harbin-Dairen line in
Manchuria was reportedly restored by the U.S.S.R. to China in 1953. 63
While the conspicuous deficiency that appears on any map of the Chinese
railway system is the lack of feeder lines, the government seems bent in-
stead on using surfaced highways. This plan, plus the difficulty and cost
of rail construction in the rugged terrain of the south, and the growing
potential of air transport, suggest that, except for railways constructed
into the outlying dependencies for strategic purposes or to exploit new
60 East and Spate, op. cit., p. 261.
61 N. Ginsburg, "China's Railroad Network." Geographical Review (July, 1951).
p. 470.
62 United Nations, Statistical Yearbook, 1953, p. 297.
63 New York Times, January 1, 1953, p. 3.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 503
resources, the Chinese will not embark on an overambitious railway ex-
pansion.64
New rail construction that is under way or may have been completed
by the Communists include the line from Liuchow in the south to the
Indo-China border at Chinnankuan, the line from Chungking to Chengtu
projected by the Nationalists, and the extension of the Lungsi railway to
Lanchow in Kansu.65
Plans for eventual integration of the Soviet and Chinese transportation
systems (cf. Fig. 15-3, p. 498) call for the construction of railways west
through the Kansu corridor from Lanchow through Sinkiang via Hami and
Urumchi to Alma-Ata on the Soviet border; and north from Tsinin through
Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia to the Trans-Siberian at Ulan Ude. On both
rail lines, considerable progress has been reported.66 The eventual eco-
nomic importance of the two rail lines, to both China and the Soviet
Union, will be considerable. The Tsinin-Ulan Bator railway will shorten
the journey from Pekin to Ulan Ude by more than 650 miles. The Lan-
chow-Alma-Ata line will open up access to the untapped mineral resources
of China's North-West. It will also facilitate the movement of settlers from
the over-populated eastern provinces to Sinkiang and thus promote the de-
velopment of the oil, coal, lead, zinc resources of that province. The future
economic importance of the two railroads, however, is overshadowed by
their immediate strategic value.67
AGRICULTURE
The principal crops are wheat and rice, but barley, corn, millet, sor-
ghum, and sweet potatoes are grown in large quantities. China also pro-
duces, in Manchuria, almost one-half the world supply of soybeans. The
statistics on crop production in China given by FAO are for the twenty-
two provinces.
That China accounts for a substantial proportion of the world supply
of many of the above crops is only a reflection of the fact that China con-
tains a large proportion of the world's population and that most of these
people subsist by agriculture. Actually, their agriculture, while intensive,
and employing in many cases ancient but effective methods of irrigation
64 Ginsburg, op. cit., p. 474.
65 Ibid., p. 473.
66 See p. 498.
67 A. White, Recent Railroad Expansion in Soviet Asia, unpublished (Washington,
1953); see also Ginsburg, op. cit., p. 473, and East and Spate, op. cit., pp. 357, 358,
585.
504 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
( about half the land is irrigated, and about a fourth is terraced, mainly for
rice), is inefficient in terms of labor inputs. The average farm is small,
only about four acres, and may consist of six or seven parcels. The average
farm family size is approximately six persons.68 Except for rice, sorghum,
and millet yields per acre are not exceptional. There is very little mecha-
nized equipment in use; in 1949 there were only 1,400 farm tractors in the
22 provinces. Wooden spades and hoes are common. Grain is often
threshed on a stone, wheat is harvested with a sickle, and the plow is
pulled by an ox or a water buffalo if the farmer is well-off, otherwise by
members of the family. Hired labor accounts for only about one-fifth of
the total labor performed.69
TABLE 15-8
Production and Yields of Principal Crops, China's 22 Provinces, 1949 *
YIELD PER
AVERAGE WORLD
MILLION
ACRE METRIC
PER CENT OF
YIELD METRIC
CROP
TONS
ACRES
QUINTALS
WORLD SUPPLY
QUINTALS
Wheat
20.6
52.6
3.9
12.2
3.9
Rice
44.5
45.7
9.7
29.4 a
6.6"
Barley
6.6
15.3
4.3
13.5
4.4
Corn
6.5
12.3
5.3
4.6
6.5
Millet
7.1
16.2
4.3
39.7 a
2.6b
Sorghum
5.4
10.8
5.1
32.1 a
3.0b
Rape Seed
3.1
14.0
Soybeans
4.9
n.a.
n.a.
34.7
n.a.
Cotton
0.4
5.3
0.8 c
7.6
1.0C
Tea
12.7d
n.a.
n.a.
2.6
n.a.
Tobacco
0.5
1.2
4.5
13.5
4.2
a Excluding U.S.S.R.
b Excludes U.S.S.R.
c Tons per acre.
d 1948 in thousands of tons.
* W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky, World Population and Production (New York, 1954), based on Yearbook
of Food and Agriculture Statistics.
The laborious character of Chinese agriculture is indicated by calcula-
tions showing that one acre of wheat requires 26 man-days of labor com-
pared with 1.2 man-days in the United States; one acre of corn requires
23 days in China, but 2.5 days in the United States; one acre of cotton 53
days, but only 14 in the United States.70
Animal husbandry is unimportant save in the northwest. "It is a ques-
tion, not of climate or soil, but of resources and population. The relation
68 Cressey, op. cit., p. 90.
69 R. H. Tawney, Land and Labour in China (London, 1937). p. 33. This is an ex-
cellent and vivid portrayal of the rural economy of China.
'!0 Cressey, op. cit., p. 89.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 505
between them has for many centuries been such that land capable of
growing food for human consumption cannot be spared for raising beasts.
Milk and meat will support fewer human beings than can be fed from the
land which, if cattle were reared, would be required to grow fodder." 71
Such grass as does grow in the hill near the villages is needed for fuel.
Only ducks, chickens, and pigs are kept by China's peasant and these sub-
sist on waste products from the farm. Thus there is little animal manure,
and commercial fertilizers are practically unknown.
These conditions, the small size of most farms, and the absence of any
but primitive tools, determine the character and efficiency of Chinese
agriculture. "The prevalence of minute holdings has necessitated special
methods of cultivation in order to make them yield a livelihood; and these
methods in turn, involving as they do, much detailed vigilance and heavy
physical labor, are of a kind which can be applied only when holdings
are minute . . . the Chinese farmer . . . has acquired an ingenuity which has
rarely been surpassed in wringing from the land at his disposal, not indeed
the most that it could yield— for the output could be increased by the use
of modern methods— but the utmost possible with the resources that he
has hitherto commanded. ... It is the agriculture of a pre-scientific age,
raised by centuries of venerable tradition to the dignity of an art . . .
a triumph of individual skill unaided by organized knowledge. . . . But
( its ) economic significance has not always been appreciated, and admirers
of the technical expertness of the Chinese farmer seem sometimes to for-
get the human cost at which his triumphs are won." 72
And the social cost: "The Chinese farmer grows only enough food for
himself and one other person outside his family. There is thus no agricul-
tural surplus to feed an expanding urban population." 73 What is provided
is not excessive. There are no aggregate data, but per capita food con-
sumption is not likely to be much higher than FAO's estimate of 2,700
calories per person for all of East Asia.
INDUSTRY AND TRADE
The modern, urban-industrial sector of the Chinese economy, referred
to above, developed only in a few coastal cities where western concessions
and settlements were established, and in Japanese-controlled Manchuria
( cf. Fig. 15-3, p. 498 ) . In China proper the cotton textile industry became
71 Tawney, op. cit., p. 27.
72 Tawney, op. cit., pp. 44-46.
73 Cressey, op. cit.
506 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
by far the most important manufacturing activity. In 1949 the Chinese
cotton textile industry had 4.6 million spindles, the eighth-largest cotton
textile industry in the world. About half the spindles are located at
Shanghai, the rest at Tientsin, Tsingtao, and Hankow. About half the mills
were owned by Japanese and passed into the hands of the government
after World War II. China imported cotton fiber, partly because the do-
mestic cotton has a very short staple, partly for re-export in the form of
cotton piece goods and cotton rugs.
Other manufacturing enterprises, such as flour milling and food and
tobacco processing were likewise concentrated in Shanghai, Tientsin, and
Tsingtao. The only heavy industry to speak of was built up in Manchuria
by the Japanese after 1930. Mukden became a center of armaments pro-
duction, an integrated iron and steel industry was developed at Anshan,
and similar expansion took place in heavy chemicals, metal processing,
and railway equipment shops.74
There are no reliable statistics of industrial production for China. How-
ever, from a speech made by Chou En-lai in October, 1954, which com-
pared output of the leading industries for 1954 with 1949, the following
figures have been derived.
1949 1954
Electric Power
Coal
Pig Iron
Steel Ingot
Cement
Machine Made Paper
Cotton Yarn
Metal Working Machines
While it is not possible to verify the figures for 1954, other sources pro-
vide some light on the accuracy of the 1949 figures given by Chou En-lai.
It should be remembered that economic life in many parts of China in
1949 was adversely affected by the final hostilities and dislocation of the
civil war. Electric power production in 1950 was estimated at 2.2 billion
kilowatt hours, about two-tenths of 1 per cent of the world total for that
year. Coal production (excluding Manchuria) was 16 million metric tons
in 1949 and 37 million in 1950, 1.1 per cent and 2.5 per cent of the world
output excluding U.S.S.R. in those years.75 Iron and steel production in
Manchuria in 1949 was 94,000 tons of pig iron and 89,000 tons of steel,76
74 Woytinsky, op. cit., p. 870.
75 Ibid., p. 870.
™ Ibid., p. 1121.
billion
kwh.
4.30
10.80
million
tons
31.50
82.00
million
tons
0.24
3.03
million
tons
0.16
2.17
million
tons
0.66,
4.73
million
tons
0.11
0.48
million
bales
2.40
4.60
units
13,513
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 507
figures which still reflect the removal of plant and equipment by the So-
viet Union after World War II. Whichever figures are correct they indi-
cate beyond doubt that China's industrial capabilities in 1949 were
insignificant. Whether the impression of unusual growth which the figures
for 1954 give can be taken as a portent of the future is discussed in another
section below.
To the modern sector of the Chinese economy concentrated in the
coastal cities, China's foreign trade was a source of great wealth and
activity, although the total volume of trade was small in relation to
China's area and population. Certain agricultural products like tung oil
and pigs' bristles were exported in quantity but the biggest export item
was cotton piece goods. Principal imports were raw cotton, electrical
equipment and other machinery, iron and steel, chemicals and pharma-
ceuticals, and transport equipment. A large visible trade deficit (import
surplus ) was offset by a corresponding volume of remittances from over-
seas Chinese. Most of the trade was with the United Kingdom, the United
States, and Western Europe.
THE PROSPECT FOR COMMUNIST CHINA
The description given in the foregoing pages has revealed a nation of
great size and population, occupying a country not bountifully endowed
with natural resources, with an underdeveloped transport system and with
most of the population living so close to minimum subsistence levels as to
preclude any accumulation of capital on a scale large enough to permit
modernization and industrialization of the economy. How can such a
country hope to wield any power in the struggle between the Communist
bloc and the West, at least for a long period of time? In answering this
question we should look at what the new regime has done to date, what
it proposes to do, and what its problems are.
Official Chinese figures claim an impressive rate of expansion in the
industrial sector of the economy since the completion of the revolution in
1949. In addition to the increases in output reported by Chou En-lai,
quoted above, the Chinese Premier, in the same speech, stated that the
total value of industrial production increased from 1949 to 1952 at an
annual average rate of 36.9 per cent, and from 1952 to 1953 by 33 per
cent. He predicted that the total value of modern industrial output in
1954 would be 4.2 times that of 1949, and the value of all output (indus-
trial, agricultural, and handicraft) 2.2 times that of 1949. Further, Chou
En-lai claimed that the ratio of modern industrial output to all output
508 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
increased from 17 per cent in 1949 to 33 per cent in 1954, and the ratio of
capital goods production to total industrial production from 28.8 per cent
in 1949 to 42.3 per cent in 1954. State-owned, co-operative, and joint state-
and-private enterprises, according to Chou, would account for about 71
per cent of total industrial output in 1954 compared to only 37 per cent
in 1949.
These claims undoubtedly exaggerate the expansion going on in the
Chinese economy, considering the low level of output in 1949, the well-
established practice of Communist statisticians to overstate rates of
growth, and the previous poverty of economic statistics in China. What
probably lies behind these statements is, nevertheless, a remarkable rec-
ord of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the economy, plus considerable
progress in the direction of nationalization of large enterprises. The effects
of war damage and civil dislocation on production had probably been
eliminated by 1952, aided by good harvests in 1950, 1951, and 1952. Sub-
stantial increases in output were made in steel, cotton textiles, paper, and
other consumers goods, while pig iron, coal, electric power, sugar, soy-
bean, and wheat production remained below previous peaks.
In addition to achieving a recovery of production, the Chinese Com-
munists may be credited with some success in bringing the industrial
economy under state planning, in carrying through a large-scale program
of land redistribution, and in preparing for the socialization as well as the
industrialization of the economy.
In the third year of the first five-year plan it is still true to say that
China's industrialization is just beginning. One writer has compared Com-
munist China's present position with that of Japan at the beginning of the
Meiji period.77 A number of analysts have compared China's present posi-
tion unfavorably with that of the U.S.S.R. at the beginning of its first five-
year plan in 1928. In 1952 China has a larger industrial base than Japan
had in the 1860's but much smaller than the Soviet Union's in 1928. The
relation between resources and population was much more favorable in
the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had a more literate and more skilled
labor force. Finally, the Soviet Union did not then need to devote so large
a portion of its resources to military expenditure.
The gross national product of Communist China in 1952 was probably
equivalent to not more than thirty billion dollars nor less than twenty-five
billion, or roughly between 45 and 50 dollars per capita. Recent estimates
77 W. W. Rostow and others, The Prospects for Chinese Communist Society (Cam-
bridge, 1954), p. 320. This is a comprehensive analysis of the prospects for Chinese
economic development based on studies conducted at the Center for International
Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 509
by Alexander Eckstein include an attempt to give a breakdown of the
gross national product by source and use.
TABLE 15-9
China's Gross National Product, 1952 *
BY ECONOMIC ORIGIN
PER CENT
BY USE
PER CENT
Agriculture
40.0
Household Consumption
73.0
Small scale & rural industry
15.0
Govt. Administration
4.0
Trade and Transport
24.0
Communal Services
4.0
Factory Industry and Mining
7.0
Military Expenditures
7.0
Housing
4.0
Gross domestic investment
12.0
Government and other Services
10.0
100.0
100.0
* W. W. Rostow and others, The Prospects jor Chinese Communist Society (Cambridge, 1954), p. 350.
If these approximations are correct they indicate that Communist China
already has mobilized a respectable proportion of total output for invest-
ment, 12 per cent as against, say 5 to 8 per cent for India. And the figure
for investment excludes private investment (by the peasant, small pro-
prietor, and so forth ) .
CHINESE COMMUNIST ECONOMIC GOALS
In Chou En-lai's speech to the First National People's Congress, quoted
above, he declares confidently that "We shall certainly be able, in the
course of several five-year plans, to build China into a strong modern
industrialized, Socialist nation." There are abundant signs, however, that
the Chinese officials are not blind to the obstacles that lie ahead, in the
way both of industrialization and of the transition to socialism. Chou him-
self admits that many of the details of the first five-year plan have not
been worked out, that the Chinese are inexperienced at state planning,
that the industrial foundation is weak, that skilled labor is inadequate,
and that industrial management is poor. He also appears to recognize that
development of more, and more efficient, agricultural production is essen-
tial to provide for the rapid growth in population and for the release of
manpower to the growing urban industries, and that Soviet economic and
technical assistance will be indispensable.
The short-run goals that are published are nevertheless quite ambitious.
The table on page 510 indicates the goals established for the first five-year
Plan.
The attainment of these goals would give China a crude steel capacity
510 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
equal to that of the U.S.S.R. in 1928, exceeding that of Canada, Belgium,
and other small countries but considerably below the levels attained by
Japan in the 1930's. The most ambitious— and dubious— features of the first
five-year plan is in agriculture, calling for an increase of 30 per cent in
grain output between 1953 and 1957. Consideration of these goals
suggests that the factors most crucial to success or failure are likely to be
found in the following: ( 1 ) the limitations of natural and human resources
to growth in industrial output; (2) whether agricultural production can
keep pace with population growth, and agricultural productivity keep
ahead of the demands of industry for man power; ( 3 ) whether the transi-
tion to socialism will interfere with expansion of output (especially in
agriculture); and (4) the gains to be had from foreign trade and Soviet
aid. Let us consider each one of these factors in somewhat greater detail.
TABLE 15-10
Industrial Production Targets for Communist China *
INDEX
OUTPUT
PRODUCT
1952 = 100
UNITS
1952
TARGET "
Crude Steel
400
thousand MT
1,215
4,860
Rolled Steel
250
C(
740
1,850
Coal
160
et
48,230
77,170
Electric Power
200
million kwh
5,700
11,400
Mining Equipment
200
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
Metal-cutting
Machinery
350
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
a No exact date is given, but it refers either to the last year of the Plan, 1957, or 'to when the current
aid agreement expires, i.e., 1959.
* Rostow and others, op. cit., p. 346, from Pravda, September 28, 1953.
THE PROBLEM OF INDUSTRIAL GROWTH
In the present phase, because of the head start given by Japanese de-
velopment, Manchuria is the key to Chinese industrial expansion.78 In
Manchuria skilled labor is more plentiful, transport is better, iron ore is
found close to coal and non-ferrous metals, and steel-using industries are
in operation. Manchuria has over two-thirds of known Chinese iron re-
serves. The Communist estimate is nearly 6 billion tons. Maximum pro-
duction probably reached 5 million tons during the war. The ore is of low
quality but the Japanese earlier, and more recently the Communists,
claimed to have found higher-grade ores. Copper, lead, zinc, magnesium,
and molybdenum are found throughout Manchuria. Manchurian coal re-
serves are less than a tenth of total Chinese reserves but they produce
78 The Economist, September 18, 1954.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 511
about one-half of current output. Penchihu provides the best coking coal,
and together with Yentan supplies coal both for its own iron industry and
for Anshan. Good quality coal is found in the Tunhua region, also near
rich iron ore deposits. The coal mine in Fushun is the largest open-pit
mine in the world. This coal is not of very good quality but it can be used
for coking if mixed with Penchihu coal. On balance, the 1957 target of
100 million tons of coal production does not seem unlikely of attainment.
Anshan, Mukden, and Tunhua are the principal centers of industrial
development. Anshan's pig iron output is reported now to be 1.6 million
tons and crude steel production at 800,000 tons. Doubling of these rates,
plus the addition of new plants at Tunhua, are necessary for the attain-
ment of the 1957 steel production goal of 5 million tons.
Mukden, already the center for railway equipment, is scheduled also to
be the principal location for the machine tool and other engineering in-
dustries. Chemical and engineering industries are to be developed in Har-
bin, Anshan, Fushun, and Penchihu. Manchuria has thus the potential for
a considerable further development of metallurgy and heavy industry.
The rate at which this development will go forward will depend more on
the extent of Soviet assistance than on any other factor. Estimates made
by Eckstein and Rostow indicate that the investment costs of the steel and
electric power components of the first five-year plan would be in the
neighborhood of one billion United States dollars of which about one-
third would represent imported equipment that would presumably have
to be supplied from the Soviet Union.79 It is not unlikely that Soviet assist-
ance will be concentrated in these sectors. Thus the attainment of the
industrial goals by 1960 is not at all improbable.
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND POPULATION GROWTH
With the emphasis on public health and sanitation, mortality rates are
now likely to decline sharply in China as they have in India, Ceylon,
Egypt, and Mexico. With birth rates remaining stationary the population
of China may now be expected to grow more rapidly, probably between
1 and 2 per cent per annum.80 This means that Chinese agriculture will
face the problem of expanding total output to keep per capita consump-
tion the same. In addition productivity will have to be raised if man power
is to be released to urban industries, and raised still further if per capita
food consumption is to be raised from its present very low levels.
79 Rostow, op. cit., p. 348.
80 See above, Ch. 9, p. 325.
512 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
There are, of course, two ways of increasing agricultural output: bring-
ing more land under cultivation and increasing yields per acre. Since no
more than about 15 million acres, equal to about 6 per cent of land pres-
ently cultivated, can practicably be brought to produce crops, the major
reliance will have to be placed on increasing yields per acre. Substantial
increases in yields are possible with the application on a large scale of
commercial fertilizers. However, according to official Chinese Communist
reports, production in 1952 of ammonium sulphate, one of the principal
fertilizers required, was only about 350,000 tons, whereas to raise average
crop yields by 25 per cent an estimated 6.5 million tons would be required.
It would almost certainly take from five to ten years for production even
to approach the required levels because of the high capital costs and large
requirements for electricity.81
Other measures that may more easily be introduced, because they are
labor intensive and do not require much equipment, include seed selec-
tion, pest control, flood control and water conservation, but their effect on
crop yields will be more gradual and less impressive than the effects that
would be expected from the widespread use of commercial fertilizers.
Thus Communist China is even more likely than the U.S.S.R. to have diffi-
culty in expanding food production to keep pace with the growth in total
population and in the urban industrial population.
THE SOCIALIST TRANSFORMATION OF AGRICULTURE
It is impossible to determine what effect the program of large-scale land
redistribution put in effect by the Communists has had upon output.
About 30 to 40 per cent of Chinese farmers before the revolution were
tenants and these now have their own plots. The state, however, is now
an efficient and determined tax collector, and through the party apparatus,
the mutual aid teams and producers' co-operatives may be expected to
extract the food supplies needed for the urbanized areas. The incentives
to more efficient crop production from land ownership may thus be
eliminated. In any case, the socialist goal is collective farming, under
which many of the incentives of private land ownership will disappear.
There are signs that the Chinese Communists are approaching this task
more circumspectly than their comrades in the U.S.S.R. whose socialist
designs on the peasants inflicted damage which is still being reflected in
Soviet agricultural production. "In order that agriculture may develop
81 Rostow, op. cit., p. 334.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET RLOC 513
more quickly and in a more planned way, we must gradually carry out
the Socialist Transformation." 82
By 1953 about one-half of the rural households were organized in
mutual aid teams, and about 273,000 households were organized into
14,000 producer co-operatives. By 1957 some 20 per cent of all farms
would be members of such co-operatives.83 It is too early to be able to
determine when the next stage, that of full collectivization, will be intro-
duced, or at what rate it will proceed. The co-operative organization of
the rural economy, together with other forms of control exercised by the
state and party apparatus, is probably adequate to the needs of the regime
so far as extracting the maximum share of farm output is concerned.
Collectivization ->n the other hand will be designed presumably to organ-
ize for greater and more efficient output, and while it could take place in
advance of mechanization, it is not likely in the absence of mechanization
to have much effect either in increasing output or improving productivity
and releasing labor for industrial employment. Collectivization may
therefore be expected to proceed as and when farm machinery becomes
available in significant quantities. In the meantime the goal of Chinese
agrarian policy must be to hold down consumption on the farm.
The goal of a 30 per cent increase in grain output appears quite un-
realistic for the reasons given above. Whatever increase is achieved, how-
ever, will not benefit the peasants remaining on the farms but is more
likely to be pre-empted for the growing urban industrial population.
Eckstein has constructed a model showing the growth of the Chinese
economy from 1952 to 1962 in which the gross national product increases
from the equivalent of $30 billion to $41.2 billion (at constant prices), or
about 37 per cent, but in which aggregate expenditure on personal con-
sumption increases only from $22 billion to $26.7 billion or 21 per cent.84
The estimated population increase during this period is from 582 million
persons to 654 millions or 12 per cent; this would indicate an increase in
annual per capita consumption increasing from about $38 to $41. Rural
consumption on the other hand is estimated in the model to increase in the
aggregate from $14.7 billion to only $15.1 billion, while rural population
grows from 466 million persons to 479 millions. The result is no increase
in per capita consumption for the rural population.
The significance of these calculations is not that of a set of predictions
82 Speech of Chou En-lai, October 1954.
83 Rostow, op. cit., p. 337.
84 Ibid., p. 353.
514 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
but of an attempt to express quantitatively the conditions of the kind of
economic growth the Communist regime has set for the next decade.
Keeping farm consumption down will help to increase industrial employ-
ment and investment; gross industrial investment in the same model in-
creases from 4.8 per cent of gross national product to over 8 per cent and
industrial output from 7 per cent of gross national product to almost 17
per cent. These projections are of course subject to a number of hazardous
assumptions regarding not only the efficiency of the capital and labor
recruited for the new industrial enterprises, but also and especially the
course of agricultural production in the absence of consumption gains for
the farmer. But the response of the Chinese peasant to the forced and un-
rewarded reorganization of his life and work is likely to be more important
than any other single factor, both as affecting economic growth and as
a test of the determination and ruthlessness of the new regime. In the light
of the characteristic stubbornness of peasant resistance to change, and
especially in the light of the difficulties experienced in the Soviet Union,
one may conclude that while the political control of the regime is hardly
in danger, its program of economic expansion has a rough road ahead.
FOREIGN TRADE AND SOVIET AID
Up to 1950 about one-quarter of China's trade was with the rest of the
Soviet bloc and three-quarters was with the rest of the world. By 1954
these proportions were reversed, not so much as a result, of the United
Nations embargo which was imposed after the Chinese invasion of Ko-
rea, but of a deliberate policy throughout the bloc of redirecting trade
inward.
In 1953 exports of Communist China to the Free World were about
$434 million; imports from the Free World were about $284 million. Trade
with the Soviet bloc is not reported but is probably in the neighborhood
of $800 million to a billion dollars each way. In addition to its own exports
to the Soviet bloc, China probably uses its visible trade surplus with the
rest of the world to pay for imports from the Soviet bloc. The commodity
composition of the trade probably remains much the same as before, with
Communist China relying on the U.S.S.R. and the European satellites for
the machinery, equipment, and manufactured goods formerly obtained
from the United States, Great Britain, and Western Europe. There is little
doubt that foreign trade plays an important role in China's development
program since imports supply about one-fifth of the value of capital for-
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 515
mation. The process of capital formation, in other words, to some extent
takes the form of extracting an exportable surplus of raw material and
agricultural commodities to pay for imports of capital goods. But increas-
ingly China is relying on the European Soviet bloc to supply its needs for
machinery and equipment, and engineering and technical services. In fact
the rapid modernization of China's economy is inconceivable without such
imports.
The U.S.S.R. with the European satellites, especially Poland, Czecho-
slovakia, and East Germany, is unquestionably in a position to supply
China with a considerable quantity and variety of capital goods, which
can be transported without difficulty either by sea or by means of the
Trans-Siberia railway. Because China is the weaker of the two trading
partners, the terms of its trade with the U.S.S.R. are probably less favor-
able than if it could follow a policy of buying in the cheapest market.
Soviet economic aid to China during the first four years of the Commu-
nist regime was substantial but by no means massive. Moreover, the aid
consisted, apparently entirely, of credits as opposed to grant aid. In 1949
the Sino-Soviet aid agreement provided $300 millions of credits and in
September, 1953, the U.S.S.R. promised to help build 141 projects, "the
sinews" according to Chou En-lai, of the first five-year plan. According to
unofficial reports, the September, 1953, agreement called for a ten-year
aid program involving total aid equal to one billion dollars and including
the $300 million provided in the 1949 agreement. Over the five-year period
the annual average of economic assistance provided would be about $117
million. This would be less than 10 per cent of the average annual net
industrial investment projected in Eckstein's model.85 Most of what China
requires in the way of imported capital goods from the Soviet Union will
therefore have to be paid for with imports.
This is not surprising, for it would appear improbable that the U.S.S.R.
would devote any considerable amount of capital resources, even against
repayment, to the task of awakening the strength of China's 600 million
people, when those resources are still badly needed at home. But the
U.S.S.R. may well be reaching the point where it is advantageous to ex-
port certain types of capital goods in exchange for badly needed agricul-
tural commodities. Thus, the pace of China's industrialization will depend
to a large extent on its ability to expand exports of raw materials and
foodstuff, either by increasing output or by restricting consumption, or by
a combination of both.
85 Ibid., p. 353.
516 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
CONCLUSIONS
The Economic Potential. China is an immense country with the largest
population in the world. It is a very poor country with a primitive agricul-
ture, very little industry, an underdeveloped transportation system, and
not overly well-endowed with natural resources. Its present power rests
in its numbers, and its potential power in the ruthless determination of
a communist dictatorship to mobilize both the people and the resources,
at whatever cost, to build the economic base both for an industrialized
communist state and for great power status.
Communist China's weakness lies also in its numbers in their relation
to available resources, for this relationship is so unbalanced that it will be
difficult to produce the surplus of agricultural output needed to feed the
growing numbers of the urban industrial labor force.
It has been pointed out that to achieve the Communist economic goals
the following conditions must be met: 86
1. A high proportion of industrial output must be reinvested in industry.
2. An increasing proportion of national output must be allocated to exports
in return for imports of raw materials, machinery and military equipment.
3. An increased volume of agricultural output must be allocated (a) to
exports and (b) to feeding the growing urban population.
4. An increasing proportion of total output must be devoted to investment,
and increases in consumption and welfare must, except for urban indus-
trial workers, be postponed.
To meet all these conditions will be difficult. And even if they are met
progress will be slow in relation to the continuing growth of the indus-
trialized states of the West. Because of the low level of departure for
China, the gap between its expanding capabilities and those of the United
States and Western Europe will, in absolute terms, continue to widen for
many years. In comparison, however, with other countries of East Asia,
unless their development too is accelerated, the progress made by Com-
munist China will furnish an impressive example.
The Sino-Soviet Bloc Today and in the Future
We have given this chapter the title "The Growing Economic Strength
of the Sino-Soviet Bloc"; at this point we should draw the balance of our
discussion on economic power factors and potentials in both the Soviet
Union and Communist China to try to evaluate the factors of strength and
86 Rostow, op. cit., Ch. 15.
GROWING ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF SINO-SOVIET BLOC 517
weakness which this bloc of the two main Communist powers of our time
reveals. The Chinese-Russian alliance came into effect in February, 1950.
It has proved its stability in the Korean War. The common goals of the
two Communist nations have been given practical expression; in October,
1954, the two governments issued joint declarations on general questions
of Chinese-Soviet relations with Japan; the U.S.S.R. agreed to evacuate
the Port Arthur naval base and to transfer it without compensation to
China; the Soviet-Chinese shareholding societies which were set up in 1950
and 1951 for mining and oil refining purposes were transferred by mutual
agreement to China; scientific-technical collaboration and the building of
the Lanchow-Urumchi-Alma-Ata railway were mutually agreed upon. In
the latter case, the two governments agreed that both sides should begin
the building of this line on Chinese and Soviet territory, and they also
agreed to continue the plans for the building of the railroad between
Tsining in China and Ulan Bator in the territory of the Mongolian Peoples
Republic, which is to be linked with the railway running from Ulan Bator
to Soviet territory. At the end of 1955, considerable progress had been
achieved in the construction of the strategic rail links through Sinkiang
and Outer Mongolia which will constitute new lines of communication
between the U.S^S.R. and North and Central China, supplementing the
Trans-Siberian line in the north. Such lines, when completed, will facili-
tate the movement of goods between China and the U.S.S.R. They will
also make it much easier in time of war to move military equipment and
supplies to central and southern China, on lines which would be invulner-
able to naval blockade and relatively secure against airborne attacks
launched from bases and naval craft off the coast of China. Eventually they
will also facilitate the development of new and less exposed industrial
centers in the Hinterland.87
It thus appears that at the time these lines are written, the links between
the two nations are strong and will be further strengthened. However, in
comparing the two partners we must not, in the over-all economic ap-
praisal, lose sight of the fact that China as a partner of the U.S.S.R. ap-
pears to be in the state of infancy. Its strength lies in the future, and a
comparison of, for instance, the steel and coal production data of the two
countries shows the weak position of China as against that of the U.S.S.R.
There is no likelihood of competitive conflicts in the near future. How-
ever, when and if these new developments lead to the appearance of an
industrially and militarily strong Chinese power along the Asian bounda-
ries of the Soviet Union, tensions and frictions may well be the conse-
»7 See p. 485, and Fig. 15-2, p. 478.
518 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
quence. They may be increased by the fact that China, whose population
of close to 600,000,000 people far surpasses that of the Soviet Union with a
population of about 210 million people, is and will be the strongest propo-
nent of a persuasive "Asia for the Asians" program. This force may be-
come a factor of ominous importance and should not be neglected in the
over-all appraisal of the economic power potentials of the two Commu-
nist nations.
CHAPTER
16
Japan's Economy
In this section of the book we are attempting to assess the economic
capabilities, not of all the countries of the world, but only of those major
countries and area groupings whose actual or potential strength must be
reckoned with in any attempt to calculate the world balance of political
power. In any such attempt some attention must be given to Japan.
There are several reasons for this. In the first place, Japan has been for
some time the only Asian country with the economic capabilities for great
power status. Such a statement sounds surprising now that we are accus-
tomed to think of Communist China as the major military power in the
Far East. But it must not be overlooked that the military strength demon-
strated by Communist China in the Korean war depended essentially on
Soviet logistical support. A decade or more ago, when the cost of defeating
Japan in World War II was fresh in the memories of the American people,
no one thought of China as capable of creating a modern military estab-
lishment on a large scale for many years to come, while Japan had been
a formidable enemy with a modern air force, a large well-equipped army
and the world's third largest navy.
What has happened to alter these superficial impressions? On the one
hand is the notion that Japan's economy was hopelessly crippled by war
damage and the loss of empire, and that Japan's almost 90 million people,
confined to the home islands, remain dependent on American aid. On the
other hand is the widespread but somewhat exaggerated view that under
Communism China's industrial power has grown so rapidly that economi-
cally as well as militarily China is now a modern state and one of the
world's few great powers.
519
.__. — .,
uS
I
SEA OF
JAPAN
180 Mi
0 60 120 180 Km
Fig. 16-1. Japan: Industrial Areas and Selected Railroads.
520
JAPAN'S ECONOMY 521
At present, of course, China has an overwhelming superiority in mobi-
lized ground forces, while the sheer mass of its population constitutes a
vast and perhaps unalterable advantage. Otherwise, the balance of eco-
nomic capabilities still lies with Japan, as a comparison of the chief
economic indicators will quickly show. With a population of around 88
million, Japan had a gross product of about $15 billion in 1952 compared
with about $30 billion for Communist China's almost 600 million souls.
Japan produced 43.2 million tons of coal; China 48.2 million. Japan pro-
duced 7 million tons of steel; China 1.2. Japan produced almost 52 billion
kilowatt hours of electricity while China produced only 5.7 billion.1
Moreover, Japan had an extensive road and rail communication network
(Fig. 16-1), a diversified manufacturing and heavy capital goods industry,
and a skilled labor force. These accomplishments combined to make Japan
still the leading industrial power in Asia.
By Western standards, however, Japan had never achieved a high state
of development. This is reflected in comparative per capita gross national
product which in Japan was the equivalent, in 1954 of about $230. In the
United States per capita gross national product was $2,280 in 1954; in the
United Kingdom, $911; in West Germany, $674; and in Argentina, $650.
But even with such a comparatively low level of income, Japan was once
able to mobilize an impressive surplus for military and strategic purposes.
The relative abundance in Japan— as contrasted with the rest of Asia—
of the things which characterize a modern industrial economy is due to
the remarkable speed with which the Japanese economy was transformed
after the Meiji restoration in 1868, a process which provides another
reason for studying Japan's economic capabilities. This transformation
was the result of a deliberate decision to modernize Japan's economy,
a decision remarkable for its explicit recognition of the vital connection
between economic capabilities and military power.
The Shogunate policy of isolation had been discredited, more than any-
thing else, by the performance of western cannon in the naval bombard-
ments of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki in 1863 and 1864, convincing proof
that Japan would never be secure until the Japanese could provide them-
selves with modern weapons.2 Recognition of this fact by a certain group
of feudal princes led to the repudiation of the Shogunate in 1868, the
restoration of the emperor, and the abolition of feudalism. The new gov-
1 Figures for Japan from UN, Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East
(ESCAFE), Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1954 (Bangkok, 1955); for
China from Rostow, op. cit., p. 297.
2 C. J. H. Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe (New York,
1929), p. 579.
522 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ernment expressly assumed responsibility for the modernization and Eu-
ropeanization of Japan. Armed forces were established on western models,
and the necessary supporting industries were brought into being with the
aid of government subsidies and western advisors. Neighboring islands
were acquired: the northern and central Kuriles in 1875, the Bonins in
1876, the rest of the Ryukyus in 1878. Formosa was acquired in 1895 as
one of the spoils of the war with China.
By 1904, only thirty-six years after the establishment of the first small
arms arsenal at Tokyo, the Japanese entered the war with Russia with
6 modern battleships, 8 cruisers, 80 torpedo boats, 19 destroyers and other
vessels. This war, especially the naval phase, was a decisive victory for
the Japanese, and although Japan was almost exhausted at its end, it gave
Japan the standing of a world power. It is true that many of the vessels
of this fleet had been constructed abroad, but their possession itself is
witness to a remarkable expansion of the Japanese economy, involving
construction of railways, the development of ocean shipping, the creation
of steel, textile, and other industries, and a rapid expansion of foreign
trade.
This growth continued after the Russo-Japanese war. The population,
which had been about 35 million in 1873 rose to 45.5 million in 1903,
56 million in 1920, and 73.1 million by 1940. Industrial production in-
creased by almost five times between 1907 and 1931 and rose by a further
80 per cent between 1931 and 1937.
Japan's decisive victory over Russia encouraged further aggrandize-
ment. Korea was annexed in 1910. Japan's role in World War I was re-
warded by the mandates of the Marshall, Caroline, and Mariana islands.
Manchuria was acquired in 1932, and the war against China began in
1937. Japan thus built up an overseas empire to supply it with foodstuffs
and raw materials lacking at home and to provide markets in return for the
products of Japanese consumer goods and light manufacturing industries.
Korea supplied rice, Formosa rice and sugar, Manchuria metallic ores and
soybeans, Sakhalin lumber and wood products, the Kuriles fish and other
marine products. Thus did Japan's colonial policy aim at overcoming the
resource deficiencies of the home islands.3
Much of these gains might have been preserved to Imperial Japan if not
for the overconfident attack on the United States in 1941. The defeat of
Japan in World War II has for practical purposes reduced Japan to the
four main islands of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido. It is upon
3Cf. G. D. H. Cole, World in Transition (New York, 1949), pp. 462-463 for
related aspects of Japanese policy.
JAPAN'S ECONOMY 523
these islands and their resources that the Japanese are trying to rebuild
a viable economy and a secure state. As a result of the loss of Japan's
colonial empire, Japan, with a vastly increased population, has been
thrown back to the resources base which it controlled at the beginning of
its expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to
this limitation, Japan has now to compete with India's slowly growing
industrial capacity and with the unified military, political, and economic
power of a China no longer under the influence of the West.
JAPAN'S LAND AND PEOPLE
Postwar Japan contains 147,611 square miles, about the size of Califor-
nia.4 In addition to the four main islands there are hundreds of smaller
islands emphasizing Japan's essentially insular character. No place is more
than a few score miles from the sea and there is one mile of coastline for
every 8.5 square miles of area. Living thus in the presence of the sea the
Japanese, like the English, have become good sailors and fishermen and,
as with the English, fish is an important item in the diet and second only
to rice. Foreign trade is indispensable to the economy.
Japan is as mountainous as it is insular. The level area does not exceed
70,000 square miles and not all of this is arable. Rivers are short, steep,
and generally unsuited for navigation.
Japan's location, roughly from 30° to 45° north latitude, gives it a
generally temperate climate, but this statement is subject to important
modifications. The islands extend about one thousand miles from south-
west to northeast and are subject to both continental and marine influ-
ences. In the summer, winds from the Pacific (the summer monsoon)
warmed by the Kuroshio current bring warm rainy weather; the winter
monsoon from Eastern Asia, bringing cold air and moisture from the sea
of Japan, is responsible for heavy snowfall in Hokkaido and northwestern
Honshu. All of Japan has adequate rainfall, the seasonal and geographical
distribution depending on relief and the monsoon.
On the plains, in the valleys, and on the hillsides of these narrow islands
live almost 90 million people. This population is concentrated in the
coastal plains, the area of greatest population extending from the Kwanto
plain around Tokyo along the Pacific coast line to the Inland Sea. But
wherever the land is not too steep and the soil reasonably fertile there are
4 For a more extended discussion of Japan's geography see Cressey, op. cit., pp.
166-231. The basic works are G. T. Trewartha, Japan, A Physical, Cultural and Re-
gional Geography (Madison, Wisconsin, 1945), and G. H. Smith and D. Good with
S. McCune, Japan, A Geographical View (New York, 1943).
524 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
people. Population density is almost 600 people per square mile, but since
only about 13 per cent of the total area is cultivated, there are over 4,000
people for each square mile of cultivated land. About half of the labor
force is engaged in agriculture and fishing, and many of those engaged in
non-agricultural pursuits return to the farm during periods of unemploy-
ment. In 1947 there were 204 cities of over 25,000 people, but only six
cities of over 500,000 (with a total population of 8,175,367). Although it is
the chief industrial economy of Asia, Japan is still largely rural or at least
non-urban in character. This is underlined by the fact that from the end of
World War II to 1955 the net movement of persons from the cities to the
rural districts reached a total of 4,000,000 persons.
Japan's population has undergone a rapid expansion since the end of
the Shogunate. Population was fairly stable under the Tokugawa regime
( 1602-1867) at around 26 million, but rose rapidly after the Meiji restora-
tion and had doubled by 1925. In 1937 the population was about 70 mil-
lion, and in 1948, 80.2 million, the difference being due not so much to
natural increase as to the repatriation of some 6 million overseas Japanese
at the end of the war. In 1955, the population was estimated at 89
million, the latest census having been in 1950. The rate of increase is now
around 1 per cent annually, much lower than in earlier decades, and
Japan's population may be nearing, though it certainly has not attained,
stability. Over the next decade the population may be expected to increase
by 9 or 10 million.
NATURAL RESOURCES
Japan is poorly endowed with mineral resources.5 Many minerals are
present, but only a few such as coal, copper, zinc, and sulphur are present
in anything like adequate quantities. The shortage of minerals is fre-
quently cited in extenuation of Japan's expansionary adventures in the
twentieth century, even though Japan's own industrial development,
achieved on the basis of imported supplies of many raw materials, illus-
trates the falsity of the premise. Japan has no nickel, aluminum, or mag-
nesium, and iron ore is both insufficient and of low quality. Most coking
coal must be imported. Copper is Japan's most important metallic mineral
and is occasionally exported; zinc is fairly plentiful and there is some
production of lead, tin, and chromium.
For energy Japan has enjoyed adequate supplies of steam coal, but the
best seams are nearing exhaustion and becoming increasingly costly.
5 See the comprehensive work by E. Ackerman, Japanese Natural Resources
(Tokyo, 1949).
JAPAN'S ECONOMY 525
Petroleum reserves are insignificant and 95 per cent of requirements are
imported. A large part of Japan's total energy supply comes from hydro-
electric power, but most good hydro-electric sites have already been ex-
ploited. Japan may thus be one of the first countries in which atomic
power production will become economically feasible.
GENERAL FEATURES OF THE ECONOMY
In Japan, the modern industrial economy, concentrated in a few urban
centers and depending on foreign trade for raw materials and markets,
has been superimposed on the traditional economy in which small-scale
labor, intensive agriculture, and handicraft industries, supplying the do-
mestic market, account for a large proportion of employment. Before the
Meiji restoration, Japan was almost completely independent of foreign
trade, with little or no mechanized industry. Three quarters of the work-
ing population were engaged in agriculture. Textile production was a
small-scale, handicraft industry. Metal production was primitive. After the
opening up of Japan, the new government saw the problem of moderniz-
ing the national economy not so much as the problem of developing a
surplus (as would be the case with many underdeveloped countries to-
day) as that of converting an agricultural surplus (rice, tea, silk and silk
worms) into the means to pay for imports of modern machinery and
equipment. The surplus was extracted from a docile agricultural popula-
tion by taxation and high rents, at first in kind but before long in money.
During the early stages of Japan's development the major exports were
raw silk, tea, and rice, accounting for about two-thirds of the total. As the
population increased, rice disappeared from the export list, and Japan
now imports large quantities of foodstuffs, but textile products— first raw
silk and later cotton yarn and piece goods— provided the bulk of Japan's
exports. It was not until the thirties, when Japan embarked on the creation
of a war economy, that intensive development of the metal, machinery,
and chemicals industries was undertaken.6 Thus a peasant economy de-
veloped into an industrial one by first exporting the products of agricul-
ture to obtain the machinery and equipment needed to produce light
manufactured and semi-finished goods. As the export of the latter in-
creased, that of the former declined and Japan shifted from exporting to
importing food and raw materials.
This process, however, was not carried as far in Japan as, for example,
6 See G. Allen, A Short Economic History of Modern Japan (London, 1946), esp.
pp. 143-160.
526 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
in the United Kingdom, and a large part of Japan's working population
are still engaged in agriculture. Out of a total of 41 million persons em-
ployed in 1954, about 19 million were employed in agriculture, forestry
and fishing, as compared with between 6 and 7 million in manufactur-
ing.7 On the other hand the value of output in manufacturing (1,421
billion yen in 1953 ) exceeds that of agriculture, forestry and fishing ( 1,300
billion yen), reflecting the much greater efficiency of the modern indus-
trial sector of the economy.
Japan's agriculture is small scale: about three-quarters of the arable
land is farmed by peasants 8 whose average holding is about three
acres.9 The chief food grain is rice, grown all over the southern part of
Japan and utilizing about 60 per cent of the total arable land. Japanese
rice production in 1954 was about 11.8 million tons. Wheat, rye, and bar-
ley utilize about 30 per cent of all arable land. Wheat production in 1954
was about 1.5 million tons. Yields per acre are relatively high (reflecting
large inputs of labor and fertilizer ) , and yet about 20 per cent of Japan's
food grain requirements must be imported. Thus further increases in
population will require imports of foodstuffs, since there is little or no
remaining uncultivated arable land. Tea is another important Japanese
crop and is exported in quantity to the United States. Raw silk, produced
by wheat farmers, is also an important crop and once was Japan's chief ex-
port. Now it accounts for less than 10 per cent by value of Japan's total
exports. Sweet potatoes are an important food crop for domestic consump-
tion. About 1.5 million persons are employed in the fisheries, and fish is—
with rice— the staple food, with a total value exceeding that of the British
fishing industry. In fact, Japan leads all other countries in the number of
persons engaged in the fisheries, the size of its fleets and the volume of
catch.10 Canned and frozen fish are also an important export, and the
Japanese fishing fleets operate not only in Japanese and nearby waters,
but seek fish and whales in distant seas. As a result, Japan is frequently
involved in international conflicts arising out of actual and alleged viola-
tions of foreign territorial waters by her fishing vessels. A case in point is
the fishing issue between Japan and the Republic of Korea which accuses
Japan of violations of the so-called Rhee Line, a unilaterally set water
boundary extending more than sixty miles from the Korean coast.
7 United Nations, Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1954 (Bangkok,
1955), Table 12, p. 218.
8 D. Stamp, An Intermediate Commercial Geo°raplu/ (London, 1954), Part 2,
p. 409.
9 Cressey, op. cit., 196.
10 Woytinsky, op. cit., p. 727.
JAPAN'S ECONOMY 527
The industrial sector of Japan's economy includes a wide range of
textiles, iron and steel products, machinery and transportation equipment,
chemicals and chemical fertilizers. Emphasis however, is on textiles,
which in 1953 accounted for about 30 per cent of Japan's total exports.
Production of cotton yarn in 1952 amounted to 353,100 tons compared
with 268,100 tons in the UK, 292,400 in West Germany, and 724,700 tons
in India. Japan also produces cotton, silk and woolen fabrics, and a wide
range of manufactured consumer goods such as pottery and china, glass,
paper, matches, and toys. Production of some basic industrial commodities
and services in 1953 is given in the table below.11
COMMODITY
QUANTITY
UNIT
Coal
46.5
million tons
Petroleum products
6.1
// //
Iron ore
1.5
// //
Steel Ingots and Metal
7.7
// r/
Cement
8.8
rr //
Electricity
55.7
billion kwh
Sulphuric Acid
4.3
million tons
Ammonium sulphate
2.0
n tr
Superphosphate
1.5
// tr
Industrial production in Japan is concentrated in a belt extending from
Tokyo and the Kwanto plain in the east along both shores of the Inland
Sea to northern Kyushu and the western entrance of the Inland Sea (cf.
Fig. 16-1, p. 520). Small factories producing native goods— silks, lacquer-
ware, toys, and Japanese paper— are still active in the villages and towns,
but modern factories are concentrated in or near the large cities, especially
the six largest cities of Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, and
Kyoto. Textile production is concentrated in the Kobe-Osaka region,
while heavy industry tended to be concentrated in the northern Kyushu
region, near the coal fields and convenient to western ports for imports of
iron ore and pig iron that used to come from Manchuria.
As indicated above, the Japanese economy is heavily dependent on im-
ports, not only of food grains and sugar but even more of raw materials
such as raw cotton for the cotton spinning industry, iron ore and coking
coal for the steel industry, and petroleum. In the inter-war period imports
of these commodities were paid for by exports of raw silk, especially to
the United States, and of cotton textiles to less developed countries in
Asia and Latin America. Imports from Japanese overseas possessions such
as sugar from Formosa, iron ore from Manchuria, and rice from Korea,
11 United Nations, Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East.
528 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
were obtained in exchange for textiles, other consumer goods and capital
equipment. This trade accounted for 42 per cent of Japan's exports in
1936. In the postwar period, the United States market for silk had
dwindled, the overseas possessions were gone, and trade with the China
mainland dried up, partly because of Western export controls but mainly
because under the Communists China's trade was reoriented to the Soviet
bloc. In addition Japanese exports encountered political barriers in many
markets and increasing competition from locally produced goods. Japan's
share of total world trade was sharply reduced.
During the occupation period, before Japan's export industries had
recovered from the effects of the war, necessary imports (especially cot-
ton, wheat, coal, and iron ore) were supplied by the United States to the
extent of Japan's inability to pay. From 1946 to 1949 such payments, for
which the United States claims partial repayment, amounted to about $2
billion. Since the end of the occupation Japan has continued to have a
substantial deficit on merchandise trade account, but procurement in
Japan for the account of United States troops stationed there and for the
United Nations Forces in Korea has occasioned foreign exchange pay-
ments to Japan sufficient to balance Japan's accounts without further
assistance. These special earnings amounted to almost $3 billion in the
years 1951 to 1954 inclusive.
Roughly 40 per cent of Japan's exports in 1953 went to the dollar area,
25 per cent to the sterling area, and 35 per cent to countries with whom
Japan had bilateral trade arrangements. By contrast, over 50 per cent of
Japan's imports have been coming from the dollar area against only 25
per cent from the sterling area and about 20 to 25 per cent from other
areas. Thus Japan's trade and payments problem is also to a large extent
a dollar problem because surpluses that might be earned in trading with
the sterling or other areas cannot generally be applied to offset the deficit
with the dollar area.
PRESENT POSITION AND PROSPECTS
Japan's economy has made a remarkable recovery from the effects of
war and postwar adjustments. Despite the 20 per cent increase in popula-
tion since before the war and despite the loss of empire, industrial pro-
duction is well above the prewar level. Per capita consumption of practi-
cally everything except possibly housing, and labor productivity are equal
to or above prewar levels. Agricultural production however has not kept
JAPAN'S ECONOMY 529
pace with the population increase, and present food consumption levels
depend on increased imports.
As indicated above, Japan's economic problem in the short run is that
of increasing exports sufficiently to balance its current accounts without
the aid of special procurement expenditures by the United States. In the
long run, however, the problem is that of increasing exports to pay for
increased imports of foodstuffs and raw materials. It has been estimated
that Japan's food grain requirements increase each year by 200,000 tons
merely to feed new mouths. Without radical improvements in agricultural
technology, Japan cannot meet any considerable portion of these in-
creased requirements except through imports, since yields per acre are
very high and there is relatively little unused or reclaimable land. In-
creased exports will require increased imports of raw materials entering
into such exports. And higher levels of income will generate demands for
larger and more varied diets and for other goods utilizing imported raw
materials. Thus Japan must strive continually for higher levels of trade,
based on increased production of exportable goods and high levels of
investment.
There are good reasons for believing that Japan can restore viability
and the necessary dynamism to its economy. Output has been increasing
at an impressive rate and investment is maintained at a proportion of
income that compares favorably with Western countries enjoying much
higher per capita incomes. The people of Japan are industrious and thrifty
as well as literate and technically skilled. While the land and labor reforms
introduced under the Occupation have to some extent redistributed in-
come progressively, Japan is relying on its own peculiar forms of private
enterprise and is likely to avoid expensive or risky welfare schemes and
to pursue conservative monetary and fiscal policies. Thus needed incen-
tives to improvement and modernization of obsolete plant and equipment
will likely continue to be present.
As indicated above, the big problem for Japan will lie in the field of
foreign trade. Some progress has already been shown in increasing Japan's
share of certain export markets, notably in Latin America. It is not as easy
to see how Japan will find alternative, non-dollar, sources of imports that
formerly came from the United States or mainland Asia. The natural
sources of these foodstuffs and raw materials for Japan would seem to be
in South and Southeast Asia, and Japan's capital goods can contribute to
the development of export availabilities in these areas.
Despite Japan's industrial superiority in Asia and its not unprepossess-
530 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ing outlook, Japan's actual military capabilities are slight. However, Japan
is recovering rapidly from what has been called the trauma of defeat and
Japanese forces will undoubtedly be strengthened. Nevertheless, there is
still considerable opposition to large forces, both as unrealistic in the
nuclear age and as requiring diversion of resources needed for moderni-
zation and expansion of Japan's export industries.
CHAPTER
17
The Economic Capabilities or
Western Europe
A. Introduction
Europe is the smallest of the continents; with an area of three and three-
fourths million square miles it has only one-fifth of the land area of Asia.1
Indeed, from the viewpoint of physical geography it is a mere extension—
a peninsula— of a larger land mass to which the term Eurasia is properly
applied. Nevertheless, because of radical differences in historical devel-
opment, cultural background, and political outlook between East and
West it is customary to treat the larger area as two continents, roughly
separated by a boundary consisting of the Ural mountains, the Caspian
Sea, the Caucasus, and the Black Sea. And, as Mackinder pointed out, in
contrast with "the unbroken lowland of the east," the European peninsula
is a "rich complex of mountains and valleys, islands and peninsulas." 2
This complex is one of the three or four great centers of population and
industrial activity in the world. In the nineteenth century it experienced
a phenomenal expansion in population and production, and five European
states (Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands)
acquired among them political control over almost all of Africa and Asia
except Japan, China, and what is today the Soviet Far East. By means of
education and the press, even more by reason of the prestige which ac-
1 J. Stembridge, The World: A General Regional Geography (London, 1953), p. 97.
2 H. J. Mackinder, The Geographical Pivot of History, reprinted with an intro-
duction by E. W. Gilbert, Royal Geographic Society (London, 1951), p. 31.
531
532 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
companied the extension of European political and military sway, the
cultural and political values of Europe came to dominate almost the
whole world. And the world economy, with its trade and shipping, its
banking and insurance services, the gold standard and related currencies,
was a European creation. The nineteenth century was indeed the Euro-
pean age.
It is true that during the nineteenth century Russia was expanding east-
ward, taking over the unpeopled spaces of Siberia and creating an empire
of contiguous possessions, but the full implications of this expansion, as of
the westward expansion of the United States, were not realized until after
the first World War. It is true also that the nineteenth century witnessed
the final liquidation of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in America.
Nevertheless, the last three decades of the century were a period of phe-
nomenal territorial expansion and conquest for the European powers, and
the world power of Europe was at its height at the death of Queen Vic-
toria in January, 1901.
A few comparisons will suffice to show how vast were the social and
political changes that transformed the character of Europe between 1800
and 1900 (or 1914). After remaining static for centuries, the population
of Europe began to grow rapidly in the eighteenth century and even more
rapidly in the nineteenth. The population of Europe as a whole was about
50 million in 1800, 246 million in 1880, and 316 million in 1910. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, as elsewhere in the world, most of
the population were engaged in agricultural pursuits and lived in small
towns or villages and rural areas. At the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury in most countries of northern and central Europe, the majority of
people were employed in nonagricultural pursuits and lived in towns and
cities. This shift of population density to the cities was a reflection of the
degree of industrialization that had taken place in Great Britain, Belgium,
and Germany, and to a lesser extent in France, the Netherlands, and other
countries.3
The nineteenth century was also a period of extraordinary colonial ex-
pansion in Asia and Africa. From 1884 to 1896, in twelve years, 2.6 million
square miles were added to the British Empire, bringing the total to about
11.3 million square miles in all, almost one-fourth of the land area of the
world.4 At the opening of the twentieth century Britain governed a third
of the whole population of Asia. France built up an empire in Indo-
3 See Ch. I, "Industrial Foundations of Contemporary Europe," in C. J. H. Hayes,
Contemporary Europe Since 1870 (New York, 1953).
4 E. Halevy, A History of the English People, trans, by E. I. Watkin (London,
1939), Epilogue, Vol. I, p. 30.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 533
China. The Dutch extended and consolidated their control over the East
Indies and in 1914 ruled over some 54 million Asians. British, German,
and French enclaves were added to that of the Portuguese in China. And
the partition of Africa in the last two decades of the nineteenth century
gave the British, French, Belgians, and Portuguese substantial territories.
Germany belatedly carved out a colonial empire in East Africa, the Cam-
eroons, and Southwest Africa, but lost it to the victors in the World War
of 1914-18.
The importance of economic factors in any imperialist expansion is
always difficult to assess and it would be foolish to try to explain the
scramble for colonies by the European great powers in the nineteenth
century as motivated simply by the desire for new markets, or the pres-
sure of surplus funds seeking investment. Nevertheless there is no doubt
that the leading statesmen of Europe were sufficiently impressed by popu-
lar ideas of the importance of potential colonies as markets, raw material
sources, and outlets for investment to act before it became too late. Jules
Ferry, French cabinet leader and champion of the cause of France's new
empire, put the argument in its most extreme form: "European consump-
tion is saturated: it is necessary to raise new masses of consumers in other
parts of the globe else we shall put modern society into bankruptcy and
prepare for the dawn of the twentieth century a cataclysmic social liqui-
dation of which one cannot predict the consequences." 5
To speak of consumption being saturated, even in the France of today,
is of course absurd; whatever truth there is in Ferry's prophecy does not
depend on the evident falsity of his economics. The twentieth century is
witnessing, for France and other colonial powers, the United Kingdom,
and the Netherlands, not a cataclysmic social liquidation, but, along with
other important political and social changes, the liquidation of the colo-
nial empires built up in the nineteenth century. Germany, we have noted,
lost its empire as a result of the first World War. The Dutch lost most of
their East Indies possessions after the second. Britain has surrendered
India and Burma, France is losing (or has lost) Indo-China. European
influence and control, except for tiny Macao and Hong Kong have been
excised. Everywhere the symbols of colonialism are challenged and de-
cried; the European age, as the title of one book suggests, is passing.
The history of European imperialism in the nineteenth century and its
liquidation in the twentieth lies outside the scope of our inquiry. If our
theme were the economic history of imperialism, we would analyze care-
5 Quoted by E. Achorn, European Civilization and Politics since 1815 (New York,
1934), p. 246.
534 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
fully the relation between these processes of expansion and contraction,
on the one hand, and the underlying economic capabilities on the other.
But we would find no simple, unilinear relationship. It must not be
thought that the loss of empire reflects nothing more than a sapping of
economic strength, the onset of economic decay. In absolute terms the
economies of Western Europe are stronger, their production and con-
sumption higher, than ever before. But it was no accident that European
overseas expansion occurred after a rapid expansion in industrial produc-
tion and transportation which enabled the powers to confront native
rulers, in Annam and Tonkin, in Madagascar, in China, in Algiers, with
overwhelming force. The Japanese learned this lesson quickly and put it
to effective use themselves. Likewise it was no accident that independence
came to India and Burma. Pakistan and Syria, Egypt and Indonesia, at
a time when the economies of the metropolitan countries were not only
recoiling under the impact of war and occupation, but facing new claims
on resources from more welfare-minded citizens.
No doubt the most important factors have been in the realm of ideas
and the imagination. The moral and cultural prestige of Europe tended to
fall with the introduction of European ideas abroad. The submission of
the Asian or African to the European's right to rule disappeared with the
spread of ideas of democracy, nationalism, equality, and social justice.
The basis of European superiority was destroyed when members of the
subject races learned the secrets of Western science and technology and
decided, rightly or wrongly, that the industrial revolution would come to
their countries under their own sponsorship. But the Opportunities to
assert their countries' independence came at the low ebb of European
economic strength in the decade after World War II.
We have merely sketched the leading role the industrialized countries
of Europe played in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What
will be the role of Europe in the world economy of the next half-century?
Despite the loss of important overseas possessions, and even though
now outdistanced by the growth of the American and Soviet economies,
Western Europe has not wholly lost its dynamism. The economies of
Western Europe continue to grow and in the aggregate they make a major
contribution to the strength of the Free World. It is this contribution and
its geographical and economic basis that we examine in this chapter.
Our method is to look first at the economic geography and the economic
structure of Western Europe. With the factual information thus provided
we shall then examine the dynamic factors in Western Europe's economy
and their implications for the future growth of economic capabilities.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 535
B. Geographical Features of Western Europe
Peninsular Europe would include both the countries of Western and
Northern Europe and the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe in an unmistakable
geographical unity. According to H. B. George, physical geography would
divide Europe into some dozen sections: Spain (with Portugal), Gaul, the
British Isles, Rhone-land, Rhineland, Italy, Balkan-land, Danube-land,
North Germany, Bohemia, Russia, and Scandinavia.6 Wright employs a
simpler classification of four main subdivisions, but his Alpine-Mediter-
ranean region would include much of Balkan-land, while East Germany,
Poland, and Russia fall into his Northeastern Europe.7 In recent years,
however, it has become common to treat the whole of the U.S.S.R. sepa-
rately and to exclude Russia when discussing European geography and
politics. In addition, for our purposes we must limit the concept of Europe
even further and focus on what is now called Western Europe, since the
expansion of the Soviet bloc has engulfed the countries of Eastern Europe,
the Balkans ( except Greece and Yugoslavia ) and the Baltic countries in a
new political unity. Nor is this merely a new political dividing line cutting
across a geographical unity; the countries of Eastern Europe were for-
merly bound by trade and cultural ties with Western Europe, and Europe
formed a close-knit economic system, whereas now the cultural and eco-
nomic life of Eastern Europe has been closed off from the West and its
trade has been largely reoriented to the Soviet economy.
WHAT IS WESTERN EUROPE?
This division of Europe into East and West is likewise reflected in the
postwar organization of political and economic life in Western Evirope,
for under the Marshall Plan co-operative measures to restore trade and
production to normal levels, to strengthen currencies and liberalize trade,
and to broaden markets, resulted in the formation of a number of new
international economic planning and consultative bodies, such as the Or-
ganization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), the European
Payments Union (EPU), and the Coal-Steel Community (CSC). Thus
it is now possible for certain purposes to define Western Europe by mem-
bership in OEEC. This has an additional convenience because the OEE
is now the central source and co-ordinating agent for many of the eco
6 The Relations of Geography and History (London, 1930), p. 118.
7 J. K. Wright, The Geographical Basis of European History (New York, 1928).
p. 4.
536 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
nomic statistics of the member countries. More will be said of these or-
ganizations later in the chapter.
OEEC includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Federal (West)
Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands,
Norway, Portugal, The Saar, Sweden, Switzerland, Trieste, Turkey, and
the United Kingdom. Spain is not a member of the OEEC, nor is Yugo-
slavia, whereas Turkey, The United Kingdom, Ireland, and Iceland are.
Except for the United Kingdom these omissions and inclusions need not
detain us, even though they may appear anomalous geographically, be-
cause in any case they would not greatly affect the statistical measures of
economic capabilities. The British Isles, separated late in geological time
from continental Europe by the straits of Dover, and strongly influenced
by this geographical position, has been in the last two centuries the center
of a world-wide political and economic community. Nevertheless, in this
chapter the United Kingdom is considered to be part of Western Europe.
Not only is this convenient because the United Kingdom is a member of
OEEC and included in Western Europe for statistical purposes; the
United Kingdom as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
( NATO ) is one of the keystones in European defense arrangements and
therefore must be counted in when we are analyzing Western Europe's
economic capabilities.
More important than these organizations in relation to political and
strategic factors are the groupings of Western European states for military
purposes. Membership in NATO therefore is another way of defining
Western Europe, especially when one is measuring and comparing the
capabilities of those countries co-operating in the Western European de-
fense arrangements. This group is smaller than the OEEC group, since
Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland are members of the latter but
not the former. The continental core of European defense comprises a still
smaller group of countries seeking to find some basis of union or federa-
tion for defense purposes: France, West Germany, Italy, the Saar, Bel-
gium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands. They now constitute what is
known as the Western European Union.
The Europe with which we deal in this chapter, therefore, is Europe
minus Bussia, the Baltic countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Bumania, Bulgaria, Albania, and East Germany. In addition to the con-
tinental countries of Western Europe we shall include the United King-
dom and Ireland, Iceland (but not Greenland), and Turkey. With these
exceptions, the area which we are describing has the same boundaries as
the continental Europe of customary geographical descriptions : the Atlan-
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 537
tic Ocean and the North Sea on the west, the Mediterranean on the south,
and the Arctic Ocean on the north. It was always the eastern boundary
which gave geographers trouble, in any case, and the boundary which has
now been established by the Iron Curtain is not without a certain limited
geographical sanction, for it coincides very roughly with the climatic
boundary between the coastal climate of Western Europe and the conti-
nental climate of Central and Eastern Europe.8
Except for parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, Western Europe lies
entirely in the Temperate Zone. But Western Europe's situation and shape
influence its climate favorably, perhaps more than its latitudinal position.
Its location in the westerly variable wind belt and the absence of a north-
south mountain barrier mean that the moderating influence of the Atlantic
Ocean is borne a considerable distance inland. Europe has the longest
coast line in relation to its area of any of the continents, and no part of
Western Europe is farther than 500 miles from the sea.9 There is conse-
quently sufficient rainfall for cultivation almost everywhere in Western
Europe except the interior of Spain, and it is well-distributed throughout
the year. In the west and northwest autumn rains predominate; summer
rains are greatest in the eastern part of the region. In the south of Europe
the mountain-sheltered peninsular countries that form the northern coast
of the Mediterranean experience the dry summers and warm rainy win-
ters associated with that name.
PHYSICAL FEATURES AND COMMUNICATION LINES
Northern Europe is separated from the Mediterranean regions by a
formidable chain of mountains, the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Carpathians,
and associated lesser ranges. Running south from these mountains are the
folds of the Apennines, forming the backbone of Italy, and the Dinaric
Alps and Pindus Mountains. North of this barrier are the central uplands
including the dry Spanish meseta, the central plateau of France, the
highlands of Brittany, Cornwall, and southwest Ireland, the Ardennes and
the Rhine highlands, and the Vosges and Black Forest ranges on either
8 For example, the line marking the western limit of average below-freezing surface
temperatures in January (D. Stamp, The World [New York, 1943], Fig. 112). "The
32° F winter line runs from Iceland to northern Norway, along the coast to Denmark,
south to the Alps, then east to the Caspian Sea. ... A line from Salonika to northwest
Germany will have almost all the winter rainfall of over 10 inches on the west side
and that of less than 10 inches on the east— the dry continental interior." G. D. Hub-
bard, The Geography of Europe, 2nd ed. (New York, 1952), pp. 30-32.
9 For a survey of Europe's physical geography see Stembridge, op. cit., Ch. 10, and
Hubbard, op. cit., Chs. 1, 2, and 3.
538 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
side of the Rhine valley. North of these uplands, in turn, is the great
European plain, stretching from the Atlantic Coast of France across the
Lowlands and Germany, Poland, and Russia. This extensive and fertile
plain not only accounts for the high proportion of arable land in Europe;
it has made for an ease of communications which has facilitated the in-
dustrial expansion of northern and western Europe.10 The plentiful and
year-round rainfall provides an even flow of water in the rivers, and this
plus the level character of the plain has resulted in waterways being
extensively used for transportation of goods. The river systems have been
extended and interconnected by canals ramifying through France, Bel-
gium, and the Rhine valley. While most of this traffic originates or termi-
nates at Channel or North Sea ports, two rivers connect western and
central Europe with the south, the Rhone flowing into the Mediterranean
at Marseille, and the Danube, navigable in normal times for over 1,500
miles from Ulm in Western Germany to the Black Sea. In recent years,
however, the Danube has in its lower reaches been denied to Western
European traffic by the Iron Curtain.
The terrain and climate of the United Kingdom similarly favored exten-
sive use of inland waterways, and its coast line and location in respect to
other countries of northern and western Europe provided the natural con-
ditions for coastal and other shipping.
The sinking of the continent bv allowing the ocean to extend through the North
Sea into the Baltic has opened up the heart of North-West Europe . . . the lower
courses of many rivers have been converted into estuaries, at the head of which
now stand some of the world's greatest ports. In the south the Mediterranean
and Black Seas provided a sea-way extending more than 2,000 miles from the
Atlantic while the Adriatic arm of the Mediterranean provided an outlet for the
southern part of Central Europe.11
Altogether, the peninsular character of Europe, with its inland seas,
well-developed coast lines, protected bays and harbors, and many navi-
gable rivers constituted the basis of an extensive and economical water
transport system. It is not hard to understand why foreign trade bulks so
large in the economies of Western Europe.
NATURAL RESOURCES
This sketchy resume of the "geographical conditions" of Western Eu-
rope would be incomplete without some reference to the natural resources
10 L. D. Stamp and S. C. Gilmour, Chisholm's Handbook of Commercial Geography,
1 4th ed. (New York, 1954), pp. 316, 317.
11 Stembridge, op. cit., pp. 97, 98.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 539
upon which the economic development of these countries rests, those
"treasures of field, forest and mine bestowed upon her by a moister cli-
mate, a more varied land surface and a more complex geological past." 12
First must be mentioned the resources of the soil and vegetation, for
Europe was once largely agricultural. Most of Western and Central Eu-
rope were once covered by deciduous woodlands, long since cleared for
cultivation. As noted earlier, the proportion of agricultural land is higher
in Europe (37 per cent) than in any other continent. The ratio is 10 per
cent in North and Middle America, 6 per cent in Asia, and 5 per cent in
South America. This high proportion is due in part to the level character
of the European plain, and in part to the fact that almost four-fifths of the
land area of Europe receives adequate (10 inches or more annually)
rainfall, as compared to one-third in North America, 30 per cent in Asia,
and one-fourth in Africa. Only the South American continent compares
favorably in adequacy of rainfall and its distribution.13
While Western Europe still depends importantly on its intensive agri-
culture, it is no exaggeration to say that its mineral resources are even
more important, since Western Europe as a whole now imports agricul-
tural goods and exports manufactures ( Fig. 17-1 ) . Western Europe's
extensive deposits of coal and iron ore were the key to its industrial de-
velopment, and are the essential base for its manufacturing industries.
British coal mines still produce one-fifth of the world's coal, although the
better veins have been worked out. Outside the United Kingdom, the
principal coal deposits are the Franco-Belgian fields, and the Ruhr. Unfor-
tunately, there are no coal mines of importance in southern Europe. Iron
ore, however, is well-distributed in Europe, with the richest ores in
Sweden and northern Spain. Most of the iron ore is produced in France,
the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Luxembourg, in that order.
Production and reserves of some other important minerals are substan-
tial, especially tungsten, bauxite, lead, zinc, mercury, and sulphur. Spain
and Italy produce about two-thirds of the world supply of mercury. Italy
is the second largest producer of sulphur, and Spain, Western Germany,
and Yugoslavia each produce more than 50,000 tons of lead annually.
Copper and tungsten are produced in moderate amounts, and nickel in
small amounts. Manganese and chromite are practically all imported.
12 Wright, op. cit., p. 25.
13 Figures on rainfall and arable land are from W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky, World
Population and Production (New York, 1954), p. 316. For somewhat different figures
and definitions see Trends in Economic Growth, Table 21, p. 99, based on the Eco-
nomic Bulletin for Europe, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1951), pp. 22-23, and Yearbook of Food and
Agricultural Statistics (Washington, 1950), Part I, pp. 13-17.
1\ . i
I
ll ■
— *'*\'
5 V :'•'■•
E "
i 0
zoo
4 00
COO Mi |
0
200
400 600 Km
_„
._
Fig. 17-1. Europe: Railroads, Resources, and Industrial Concentrations in Western Europe:
(1) industrial regions; (2) coal; (3) lignite coals; (4) iron ore; petroleum; (6) selected rail-
roads.
540
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 541
So far very little crude oil and natural gas production have been devel-
oped in Western Europe. The poor distribution of coal and the absence of
petroleum and natural gas is to some extent compensated by substantial
potential and actual hydro-electrical power supplies in Italy, France,
Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and Sweden.
C. The Economic Structure of Western Europe
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
The group of countries we call Western Europe covers an area of
1,784,000 square miles and comprises a population of over 335 million
people. It thus includes about 14 per cent of the population of the globe
but only about 3 per cent of its total land area. It has an average popula-
tion density of 188 persons per square mile compared with 45 for the
United States, 21.5 for Latin America, 17 for Africa, and 123 for Asia.
After the United States and Canada it is the most highly developed area
in the world with an average gross national product per capita in 1955
of $891. In 1948 the combined national income of these countries was esti-
mated at $122.6 billion or about 22 per cent of the world total.14 Western
Europe in 1955 produced 527 million tons of coal, 80 million tons of steel,
369 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, and 547,000 tons of primary alu-
minum. These production figures represented the following percentages
of the total production of these commodities in the United States, Canada,
and Western Europe combined: coal 53 per cent, steel 42 per cent, elec-
tricity 34 per cent, and aluminum 22 per cent. Western Europe's gross
national product exceeds that of the entire Communist bloc; on a per
capita basis it is almost four times as great. Western European steel and
electric power production exceed production in the Communist bloc.
British, Dutch, and French companies produce at home and overseas more
than one and one-half times all the crude oil production in the Commu-
nist bloc. Thus the community of Western Europe possesses in the aggre-
gate the technological and resource basis for great power status.
The economy of Western Europe as a whole is markedly industrial,
with an average standard of living below that of the United States but
higher than that of any other important region in the world. In the indus-
trialized countries of Western and Central Europe a high standard of liv-
14Woytinsky, op. cit., pp. 393, 394, and IR 7247, Dept. of State (Washington.
D. C, 1956).
542 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ing results from the use of specialized capital equipment and a skilled
labor force in both industry and agriculture. The basis of the industrial
life of Western Europe is a concentration of production of certain key
commodities, especially coal, steel, and chemicals. Using its own produc-
tion of these commodities, plus imports of other necessary raw materials,
Western Europe as a whole produces a wide range of manufactured
goods, both for producers and consumers, a relatively large part of which
are exported to pay for imports of raw materials and foodstuffs.
Western Europe is primarily industrial also in the sense that mining and
manufacturing account for larger shares of the total product than agricul-
ture, fishing, and forestry combined. It is a food-deficit area: in 1950-52
imports of bread grain were 30 per cent of consumption, of coarse grains
21 per cent, and of sugar 36 per cent.15 In terms of calories, Western
Europe depends on imports for about one-fifth of its food supplies. How-
ever, it must not be assumed that agriculture is of no importance. The
bulk of Western Europe's food requirements are supplied from within the
area, and the proportion of active workers engaged in agriculture ranges
from about one-fifth in northwestern Europe to about one-half in southern
Europe.16 The share of agriculture in national income ranges from be-
tween 5 and 10 per cent for the United Kingdom and Belgium to between
30 and 40 per cent for Ireland, Iceland, and Greece.17
ENERGY AND FUEL SUPPLY
The industrialized countries of western and northern Europe are high
energy consuming countries, particularly the United Kingdom, Germany,
Belgium, Norway, and Sweden.18 Coal is still the dominant source of
energy, accounting in 1950 for about four-fifths of the total energy sup-
ply.19
In some countries (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Austria, and
Switzerland) three-quarters or more of total electricity supplies come
from hydro-electric plants, but these countries were either small or their
total energy consumption low relative to the larger, more industrialized
15 Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), Economic Survey of Europe Since
the War (Geneva, 1954), p. 170.
16 Economic Commission for Europe, Growth and Stagnation in the European
Economy (Geneva, 1954), Table A. 4.. p. 237.
17 Trends in Economic Groicth, A Comparison of the Western Powers and the
Soviet Bloc, Legislative Reference Service (Washington, 1955), pp. 272, 273.
18 Point Four, Department of State Publication 3719, January, 1950, Appendix C-4,
p. 119.
19 ECE, Growth and Stagnation, etc., p. 104.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 543
countries, so that for Western Europe as a whole water power accounted
for only 12 per cent of total commercial energy.20
Petroleum products and natural gas supply about 10 per cent of West-
ern Europe's energy requirements, but petroleum production is small,
amounting in 1953 to only 3.6 million metric tons, almost entirely in West-
ern Germany and France. The resulting deficit is made up by imports of
crude petroleum and petroleum products.
Assuring an adequate and expanding supply of energy in the light of
coal production difficulties and the failure to find oil in significant quanti-
ties on the continent has become one of Western Europe's chief economic
(and strategic) problems. See below (page 559) for further discussion of
this problem.
INDUSTRY AND MANUFACTURING
The iron and steel industry is the industrial core of Western Europe.
The output of the iron and steel industry is sufficient to provide for the
needs of the region and to supply about three-fourths of the Free World's
exports of steel products to overseas markets. Steel production in Western
Europe is concentrated in four major producing areas, the United King-
dom, Western Germany, France and the Saar, and Belgium-Luxembourg
( cf. Fig. 17-1, p. 540 ) . While the United Kingdom has the largest produc-
tion, France and Belgium-Luxembourg are the largest exporters, selling
more than 50 per cent of their production abroad.
The big continental coal and steel-producing areas are interdependent.
Western Germany, the largest coal and steel producer, exports coking coal
and coke and imports more than half of its iron ore requirements. France
is a net exporter of iron ore and imports coal and coke. Belgium-Luxem-
bourg exports steel in large quantities but must import both iron ore and
coke.
This heavy industrial base exists to support a wide range of both heavy
and light manufacturing. For the countries of north and west Europe
manufacturing accounts for between 25 per cent and 35 per cent of na-
tional income. For Italy also the proportion is about 30 per cent; for the
other countries of southern Europe the ratio is considerably less ( as 20 per
cent for Greece).21 The most important manufacturing activities in West-
ern Europe are the engineering (machinery), textiles, and chemicals in-
dustries. These industries account for the largest share of the national
20 See Trends in Economic Growth, p. 151.
21 Trends in Economic Growth, Table 3,
544 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
product and employment and are most important to the strategic mobili-
zation of economic capabilities.
Output of engineering products (machinery, electrical goods, vehicles
and transportation equipment) in Western Europe in 1951 amounted to
$18 billion or roughly 10 per cent of the gross national product. Of this
output about $3.3 billion was exported, leaving $14.7 billion for use in
Western Europe.22 The United Kingdom and West Germany are, of
course, the big producers of engineering products.
The automobile industry is an important sector in the engineering cate-
gory. Motor vehicle production in 1950 was 1.6 million vehicles. In the
interwar period the shipyards of Western Europe produced 80 per cent
of the world's new merchant vessels, but in 1950 the share had fallen to
46 per cent.
The textiles industry is almost as important as the machinery industry
although perhaps of less strategic importance. The textiles industry ac-
counts (1950-51) for 8 per cent of all manufacturing employment in Nor-
way and Sweden, 11 to 12 per cent in the United Kingdom, Denmark, and
the Netherlands, and 18 to 19 per cent in Italy and Belgium. Exports of
textiles, especially of cotton textiles, are still Western Europe's principal
export.
The chemical industry is another European industry which is of first
importance both economically and strategically. The chemical industry
was developed in Europe in the nineteenth century and at the time of
World War I Western Europe accounted for over 50 per cent of world
production and over 80 per cent of world exports of chemicals,23 to a
large extent because of German leadership in synthetic dyestuffs and
pharmaceutical chemicals. Subsequently, Western Europe's share of world
chemical production declined because of the expansion of the chemicals
industry in the United States and the U.S.S.R. However, exports of chemi-
cal products have retained their percentage share of total Western Euro-
pean exports.24
TRANSPORTATION
The countries of central and northwestern Europe (France, Belgium,
Netherlands, Germany, Austria) and the United Kingdom have extensive
inland water transportation systems. The United Kingdom has 4,600 miles
of navigable waterway with an ingenious network of interlocking canals
22 Trends in Economic Growth, Table 3.
23 ECE, Growth and Stagnation, pp. 163-165.
24 Ibid.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 545
constructed mostly in the pre-railway early nineteenth century. In 1954,
the canals of the Docks and Inland Waterways Board (excluding the
Manchester Ship Canal) carried only about ISO million short ton miles.
France has almost 6,000 miles of navigable waterways connecting the
waterways systems of the Seine, the Rhine, and the Rhone. About 11,000
craft carried more than 5 billion short ton miles in 1954.
There are about 3,000 miles of navigable waterways in West Germany,
including the Rhine which is the backbone of the system. In 1954 West
Germany had an inland fleet of more than 7,000 craft carrying about 8.5
billion short ton miles of freight.25
The Rhine flows through Europe's greatest industrial concentrations,
carrying coal, coke and grain upstream, and timber, potash and iron ore
downstream. It is primarily a German river, and most of the industries
served by it and most of the traffic along its course are German. Yet in its
delta regions the Rhine is controlled by the Netherlands and by Belgium.
A net of inland canals constructed by Germany, Belgium, and the Nether-
lands bears witness to the competing interests of the three nations, with
Germany striving, through means of port diversion, to gain an outlet to
the sea which is not controlled by other states, and the Low Countries
(Belgium, of course, is not directly on the Rhine) intent on channelling
as much Rhine traffic as possible toward their ports. Of the German efforts
directed at port diversion the Dortmund-Ems canal extension to Emden,
and the Mittelland Canal, linking the Ruhr with the Elbe River, Berlin,
and the Oder River are the most important. The operation of this net work,
however, has been hampered by the East-West division of the country
since the Midland system is in the East Zone. This had led to controversies
between the occupying powers, especially in connection with the use of
the canals in and around Berlin.26
Upstream, Switzerland and Austria share a vital interest in participation
in Rhine river traffic. Both of them are landlocked. Whereas the Rhine
river basin with the now very important port of Basel represents the
natural outlet to the sea for Switzerland, Austria is oriented toward the
Danube. A linking of the basins of the Rhine and the Danube would be
of major importance since a completed and internationally functioning
Rhine-Main-Danube canal would open up a new inland canal avenue
from the North Sea to the Mediterranean via the Black Sea. However, thus
far only the Main up to Wiirzburg has been fully canalized and the pros-
pect for completion of the whole work before 1970 appears slim at the
25 Economic Commission for Europe, Annual Bulletin of Statistics, 1954.
26 See G. Hoffman, ed., A Geography of Europe (New York, 1953), pp. 410-411.
546 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
present time. Not only is the Danube at times beset by navigational diffi-
culties, but the political odds created by the control of the lower Danube
by the U.S.S.R. and the satellite nations of Moscow still seem to militate
against the kind of international co-operation which had been carried out
by the European Danube Commission on the maritime Danube (Braila-
Black Sea) since 1856 and by the International Danube Commission on
the fluvial Danube (Ulm-Braila) after World War I. On the basis of the
U.S.S.R.-inspired Belgrade Convention of 1948, the Soviet-Satellite- Yugo-
slav stretch of the Danube has been controlled by the Budapest (former
Galati) Danube Commission since 1949, while traffic between Germany
and Austria on the one hand and the lower Danube nations on the other
moves on the basis of bilateral agreements.
As other major projects for the future may be mentioned that of the
canalization of the upper Rhine between the Lake of Constance and Basel
and that of a Rhine-Rhone waterway which would provide Switzerland
with two links to the open sea and France with an important new route
to North Africa.
Despite the extensive ramification of navigable waterways in north-
west Europe, the inland waterways of Western Europe, according to sta-
tistics of the Economic Commission for Europe, carry only about one-fifth
of all the water and rail freight (ton miles) moved in Western Europe.27
This is about the same proportion as obtained before World War II
(1938). In the postwar period the importance of road transport has in-
creased at the expense of rail transport but the latter remains the most
important single method of internal transport for Western Europe as a
whole. Motor transport in the interwar period did not increase as it did in
the United States partly because motor-vehicle production was not so
advanced, partly because of state regulations intended to protect the rail-
ways from motor-vehicle competition. However, road transport has made
considerable progress in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy.
Railroads (cf. Fig. 17-1, p. 540) still transport the great bulk of do-
mestic and particularly of international freight and passenger traffic in
Europe. A certain amount of international integration already had been
achieved in the nineteenth century. It comprised agreements on the
( standard ) gauge to be used on all principal railways between the borders
of Spain and Russia, on the characteristics of railway cars and on the
international transport contract. These agreements also extended to time
tables for international freight and passenger trains which to a certain
extent provided the framework into which the national train schedules had
27 Economic Commission for Europe, Annual Bulletin of Transport Statistics, 1954.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 547
to fit. Most of these conventions are administered by international agen-
cies, partly governmental but largely inter-carrier organizations which,
however, due to the nationalization of practically all principal railroads,
have quasi-governmental character. In spite of the political division of
Europe with the appearance of the Iron Curtain nearly all of these con-
ventions and arrangements are still in force and the international organi-
zations, such as those for car exchanges, time tables, the international
transport contract, and the handling of dangerous goods, continue to
operate on both sides of the Iron Curtain (excepting in most instances,
however, as was the case before World War II, the Soviet Union).
Closer integration of Western European railways is being attempted
now, mainly under the aegis of such post-World War II organizations as
the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Conference of
Ministers of Transport, and the Council of Europe. The West European
countries already have pooled about 10 per cent of their freight cars, they
are about to centralize their car and perhaps also locomotive purchases,
and the most important rail tariffs of the Coal and Steel Community coun-
tries are in the process of being integrated.
AGRICULTURE
The relative economic importance of agriculture differs widely within
the region, and the same is true of the character of agriculture in the dif-
ferent countries, corresponding to differences in climate, soil, density of
agricultural population, size of land holdings, and agricultural techniques.
"Within the area, most farming systems, apart from the purely tropical,
would be found: from the rough grazings of the upland districts of Scan-
dinavia and the northern parts of the United Kingdom to the vineyards of
southern France and Italy and the tobacco fields of Greece. While single
crops were often important, in general mixed farming predominated over
monoculture. Farming was intensive and crop yields were well above
those of the rest of the world." 2S
The principal crops are wheat, barley, corn, potatoes, sugar beets, meat
and dairy products, wine, and citrus fruits. Some cotton and tobacco are
grown. Crop yields for wheat and barley are about the same in Southern
Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Turkey) as in the United States but
are considerably higher in the other OEEC countries. Crop yields for corn
are from two-thirds to five-sixths of the United States average. The de-
o
28 Committee of European Co-operation, Technical Report, Vol. 2 (Paris, 1947),
p. 21.
548 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
gree of mechanization ( number of tractors per acre of agricultural land )
in some countries, notably the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden,
Norway, West Germany, and Denmark, compares not unfavorably with
that of the United States. The use of chemical fertilizers is well-advanced
in northwestern Europe and is increasing in southern Europe.
Nearly all the countries are substantial importers of bread grains, al-
though France and Spain are nearly self-sufficient and Turkey usually a
net exporter. The same is true of coarse grains, except that Denmark and
Finland are virtually self-sufficient while the countries of southern Europe
are either self-sufficient or net exporters. France and Denmark export
sugar and the Netherlands and Denmark are heavy exporters of dairy
products. Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands export meat and meat
produce and livestock (Ireland), and import vegetable products, partly
for the feeding of livestock. Some of the problems involved in increasing
agricultural production in Western Europe are discussed below (see
pp. 549, 560-561).
REGIONAL PATTERNS
The bulk of Western Europe's population is concentrated in seven
countries which account for roughly three-fifths of the population but less
than a third of the total area. These are the United Kingdom, France
(with the Saar), West Germany, Italy, Belgium-Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands. These seven states are the core of Western Europe's eco-
nomic and industrial capabilities.
These are not the most prosperous countries in Western Europe. In fact,
five other countries (Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Switzer-
land) have per capita gross national products as high as or higher than
that of the United Kingdom, which is the wealthiest of the seven states
mentioned above. But these five countries account for only 20 million
people and their aggregate gross product came in 1952-53 to about $20
billion. The larger group of states referred to above had a combined gross
product of $143.6 billion, or three-fourths of the value of all goods and
services produced in the whole of the region we call Western Europe. If
the two groups of states are combined they represent about 70 per cent
of the population and 85 per cent of the production.
If we look to measures of industrial power such as steel and coal pro-
duction, the larger group of seven states is even more clearly apparent as
the core area of Western Europe. Here is produced 90 per cent of all the
crude steel, 95 per cent of the coal, and 70 per cent of the electric power
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 549
for Western Europe as a whole. The railroads of these countries carry more
than three-fourths of the total ton kilometers of freight transported by rail
in all of Western Europe. Of the other countries only Sweden can really
pretend to being an industrial power with a gross national product of
over $8 billion in 1952-53 ( greater than either Belgium or Holland ) , crude
steel production of 1.8 million metric tons ( Holland had less than 1 mil-
lion metric tons ) , and electric power production more than twice as great
as Belgium's and three times as great as Holland's. However, it must be
noted that Sweden, because of its traditional neutrality, lies outside the
framework of European defense arrangements.
The countries in which the agricultural sectors are most highly devel-
oped and production most efficient are likewise the United Kingdom and
the countries of northern and western Europe. With only 24 per cent of
the active population in agriculture and 28 per cent of the arable land
they produce almost half of the agricultural products in all of Western
Europe. The countries of southern Europe ( Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain,
Turkey, and Yugoslavia) on the other hand, with more than two-thirds
of the active population in agriculture and over one-half of the arable
land account for only one-third of the agricultural output.29 Thus yields
are considerably lower in southern Europe and productivity per worker
even less than in north and west Europe.
Agriculture in the United Kingdom is the most efficient in all of West-
ern Europe. This is partly because of the early elimination of small hold-
ings and the consequent low density of agricultural population, the lack
of tariff protection during the last half of the nineteenth century and the
early decades of the twentieth, and the wartime and postwar efforts to
increase output for the purpose of economizing foreign exchange. Agri-
cultural output in the Scandinavian countries is also relatively high both
per hectare and per worker.30
FOREIGN TRADE
In the countries of Western Europe the principle of international divi-
sion of labor is carried farther than in any other important region. In other
words, with a heavy specialization in manufacturing and a concomitant
dependence upon imported supplies of foodstuffs and raw materials, for-
eign trade is critically important to Western Europe. Roughly 10 per cent
of the national income represents goods exported to pay for imports, as
29 ECE, Economic Survey of Europe Since the War, p. 164.
30 Ibid., 165.
550 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
contrasted with only 4 per cent in the United States and 1 per cent for
the U.S.S.R. Western Europe's imports from the rest of the world consist
mainly of raw materials for Europe's manufacturing industries (51 per
cent), foodstuffs and animal feed (34 per cent), and some manufactured
products ( 15 per cent ) ; exports to the rest of the world are mainly manu-
factured goods (74 per cent) with some raw materials (16 per cent) and
foodstuffs (10 per cent).31
This high degree of reliance on foreign trade has been one of the condi-
tions of economic progress for Western Europe, but it also has other im-
portant consequences, both economic and strategic. It not only makes the
area vulnerable to disruption of shipping in time of war; it also subjects
the economy to the shock of economic changes in the rest of the world,
such as changes in the degree and character of demand for manufactured
goods, or higher prices for raw materials and foodstuffs. Europe's pros-
perity and stability depend therefore not only on the efforts of Europeans
but as well on the maintenance of full employment in the United States,
and on a continuous expansion of supplies of raw materials and foodstuffs
in overseas areas. The degree of this dependence is greater for some coun-
tries than others; in Holland, for example, 35 per cent of the gross national
product is based on foreign trade.
Reference has already been made to Europe's dependence on imported
food and feeding stuffs. Western Europe is also the world's largest im-
porter of raw cotton and raw wool. Other raw materials imported in large
quantities include rubber, jute, non-ferrous metals (copper and lead),
sulphur, and crude petroleum.
Traditionally, Western Europe has had an adverse trade balance, that
is, its exports paid for only about two-thirds of its imports from the rest of
the world; and the deficit was offset by a surplus on "invisible" transac-
tions, that is, income from shipping, insurance, and overseas investments.
Now, however, as a result of the reduction in overseas investments during
the war, increased indebtedness, and the larger role of United States ship-
ping in ocean transportation, Western Europe's surplus on "invisibles"
pays for a much smaller proportion of its total imports. This fact, plus the
need to obtain a larger share of total imports from the dollar currency area
in the postwar period, and other and more complicated factors, created
the European balance-of-payments problem and its acuter manifestation
known as the dollar shortage or dollar gap. More will be said about this in
a later section.
31 Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), At Work for
Europe (Paris, 1954), p. 14; percentages are for OEEC countries in 1952,
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 551
Although the dollar problem in Western Europe's balance-of-payments
should not be minimized, it should be noted that trade with the dollar
area is by no means the bulk of Europe's trade. In 1953, imports from the
dollar area were about 15 per cent of the total imports, and exports to the
dollar area about 12 per cent of total exports, if intra-European trade is
included in the total. Intra-European trade is nearly half of the total for-
eign trade of Western European countries.32 However, as pointed out in
another chapter, trade with Eastern Europe has been very sharply re-
duced.33 Another large share (13 per cent in 1953) of Europe's trade
is with the overseas territories of the United Kingdom, France, Belgium,
Portugal, and the Netherlands. These territories, such as the British West
Indies, Malaya, Singapore and Hong-Kong, British Africa, the French
possessions in Africa and Oceania, the Belgian Congo, and others,34 are
linked to the metropolitan areas by a network of administrative and finan-
cial ties. The overseas territories constitute a common currency area with
the mother country ( the franc area, the Belgian monetary area, etc. ) , and
tariff arrangements and import restrictions on both sides discriminate in
favor of trade between the possession and the metropole. Thus in 1953,
the share of the metropolitan country in the imports of the territories
ranged from 30 per cent in the British territories to 65 per cent in the
French, while one-third of the exports of the British and Portuguese terri-
tories, two-thirds of the French territories' exports, and over half ( includ-
ing re-exports) of the Belgian Congo's exports went to the metropolitan
countries.
The British monetary area, called the sterling area for a variety of
reasons goes beyond the British overseas territories and includes a num-
ber of independent countries. In the main these are members of the British
Commonwealth, such as Australia and New Zealand, the Union of South
Africa, India and Ceylon, but there are examples also of non-common-
wealth sterling countries in Iceland and Iraq. Since the gold and dollar
reserves of the sterling area are largely held in London, it is necessary for
members as far as possible to follow concerted trade and exchange poli-
cies. Co-ordination of these policies takes place usually through periodic
meetings of the finance ministers and central banking authorities of the
commonwealth countries.
32 OEEC, Sixth Report, Vol. 1, p. 252.
33 See above, p. 493.
34 OEEC, op. cit., pp. 245-7, contains a convenient list of these territories. The
relative size and importance of the overseas territories is to some extent indicated b\
the following population figures (in millions): British territories, 74; French, 53;
Belgian, 16; Portuguese, 11; Netherlands, 1.5; Italian Trust Territory, 1.
552 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
D. Dynamic Factors in the Western European Economy
In the foregoing sections of this chapter we have seen how, in the nine-
teenth century, the expansion and industrialization of the European econ-
omy was correlated with the great period of European imperialism from
1870 to 1910, while in the twentieth century, after two world wars, Eu-
rope's economic pre-eminence was superseded, and its empire began to
disintegrate. To cast some light upon the relation between political power
and economic capabilities we proceeded to look briefly at the economic
geography of Europe and the main outlines of the structure of the Euro-
pean economy. It is now in order to complete our examination of these
problems by inquiring into the factors affecting the long-range growth of
the European economy and its future prospects.
PRESENT POSITION OF EUROPE IN THE
WORLD ECONOMY
No one questioned the industrial pre-eminence of Western Europe in
the decade before the first World War. In 1913 Western Europe probably
accounted for about one-half of the world's manufacturing output. The
preceding several decades had been a period of rapid industrial expan-
sion. Industrial production had been growing by about 3 per cent per year
and about 2 per cent per capita annually.35 There was unbounded confi-
dence that the next several decades would witness more of the same.
However, by 1937, Western Europe's share of total world 'manufacturing
output was reduced to little more than one-third, and by 1954 it had
shrunk to between one-third and one-fourth.36
This decline in Western Europe's importance was a relative one, for
Western Europe's economies continued to grow after 1913 but at a slower
rate. Between 1913 and 1940 industrial output grew by only about 1.4 per
cent per year and 0.8 per cent per year per capita.37 The United States,
on the other hand, whose rate of growth even before 1913 had been more
rapid than that of Western Europe, caught up during the first World War
and pulled ahead during the second, while the U.S.S.R. experienced a
greatly accelerated rate of growth after 1920. Today its industrial power
is approaching that of all Western European countries combined.
The present and prospective relative position of Western Europe in the
35 ECE, Growth and Stagnation in the European Economy, p. 56.
36 Department of State, Long-term Trends Affecting Western Europe's Position
in the World Economy, IR No. 6929 (Washington, 1955).
3 7 Ibid.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 553
world economy is not merely a question of the over-all rate of growth;
it also involves the question of the growth of the relatively underdevel-
oped regions of southern Europe: Greece, Turkey, Southern Italy, Spain,
and Portugal. Industrialization in Western Europe did not occur uni-
formly and even in 1913, when Western Europe's relative importance was
greatest, industry was concentrated in a few countries in the north and
west. The three great powers, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France,
accounted for more than three-fourths of industrial output although they
held only 46 per cent of the population. Their production was ori-
ented toward export markets and was heavily weighted with capital
goods.38 Agriculture still occupied more than two-fifths of Europe's popu-
lation, and the proportion was much higher in the countries of southern
Europe.
This uneven pattern of economic development was in part the reflection
of the uneven geographical distribution of resources, especially coal and
iron ore; in part it was the result of more complex social and political in-
fluences. An understanding of these is essential to the understanding of
Western Europe's prospects, which depend not only on the continuation
of the present pattern and rates of growth but also on the modernization
of the less-developed regions.
In analyzing the dynamic factors in Western Europe's economic posi-
tion we will find it convenient to group them under two headings, internal
factors and external factors. However, there are considerations that can-
not neatly be ranked under either heading, especially the effect of the two
great wars that were fought on European soil.
INTERNAL FACTORS: MANPOWER AND PRODUCTIVITY
Internal factors affecting the growth of Europe's economic capabilities
are the size of the labor force, its distribution among employments of dif-
ferent productivities, and the rate at which the average productivity of
the labor force increases, which in turn depends on technology, invest-
ment, and on other factors. Western Europe's population increased by
about 7 per cent between 1938 and 1952 compared with a 20 per cent
increase in the United States and approximately the same increase for the
population within the present boundaries of the U.S.S.R. And whereas
the annual increase in population for both the United States and the
U.S.S.R. is estimated at around 1.7 per cent, it is slightly less than 1 per
cent for Western Europe. Western Europe's labor force increased by
38 ECE, Growth and Stagnation in the European Economy, p. 16.
554 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
about 10 per cent between 1938 and 1948, and at the end of 1953 was
about 125 million. It was thus almost twice as large as that of the United
States, although the total value of gross production was only a little more
than one-half as great. The European and United States labor forces are
expected to grow at about the same rate for the next fifteen years, reach-
ing about 200 million for Western Europe and 103 million for the United
States by 1970. 39 Both populations will show increasing "aging." The larg-
est and economically most important states, France, Belgium, Germany,
and the United Kingdom will not grow as fast as Western Europe as a
whole. This points to one of Europe's unsolved problems of adjustment-
how to transfer workers from faster-growing populations in the less-devel-
oped countries to nonagricultural employment in the more industrialized
regions.
In the OEEC countries about 30 per cent of the labor force is employed
in agriculture.40 The proportion of the active population in manufacturing
industry has increased over the last two decades while the active popula-
tion in agriculture has declined. However, there are marked differences
between different countries in the recent patterns of changes in man-
power and employment. For example in the United Kingdom the popula-
tion of working ages had by 1952 increased by 10 per cent over 1930, but
employment in manufacturing, construction, transport, and other services
increased by between 10 and 20 per cent. The offsetting declines in agri-
culture and mining were not enough to prevent a severe labor shortage.
In France, on the other hand, alone of all the countries in Western Europe,
employment in manufacturing was lower in 1951 than twenty years ear-
lier, as was also employment in mining, construction, and transport. Em-
ployment in trade and services, however, had increased, with a conse-
quent reduction in the average output in these occupations.
The tendency for increases in the labor force to be absorbed in trade
and services rather than in industry was most marked in Italy where the
total active population increase between 1931 and 1949 was 17 per cent;
the increase in employment in trade and banking was 36 per cent and in
other services 41 per cent. The contrast in this respect between the north-
ern and western countries of Europe and those of southern Europe was
analyzed by the Economic Commission for Europe in a way which under-
scores the economic factors that make for a dynamic balanced growth on
the one hand, and those that produce stagnation or decay.
After noting that the agricultural population has declined in northern
39 Population and labor force estimates from Trends in Economic Growth, p. 6.
40 OEEC, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 179.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 555
and western Europe "where industry was already dominant in 1930" and
increased in the countries in which agriculture predominated, the ECE
pointed out that per capita national income is much higher in the former
countries and thus the possibilities for savings and investment are much
greater. Increases in population are absorbed in industry and other urban
occupations, and because per capita incomes are high, the proportion of
increases in incomes which goes for food consumption is relatively low,
and can be met by imports paid for by expanded exports of manufactures.
Thus increases in the labor supply are matched by investment and eco-
nomic growth, and industrial expansion is relatively easy.
In southern Europe, on the other hand, savings are low and enterprise
is lacking. Government investment is inhibited by fear of inflation. A large
proportion of increments to incomes goes for food, of which the domestic
supply is inelastic and cannot easily be supplemented by imports because
of existing pressure on the balance-of -payments. Industrial production is
mostly for the home market, and is not competitive in foreign markets.
Land reform only aggravates the problem: "Land reforms which increase
total output on the land only slightly, and result mainly in more man-
power being used for producing nearly the same quantities as before or
which create too small holdings, are a poor substitute for transfer of the
surplus population to industry." 41
Thus in considerable part the future economic growth of Western
Europe depends on finding more productive employment for the partially
and less productively employed workers in southern Europe. In the words
of theOEEC: 42
A surplus agricultural population may be reduced by a movement of workers
hitherto employed in agriculture to other sectors; but the reduction may also be
very largely achieved by the movement into other sectors of workers taking their
first jobs. This movement does not necessarily involve a concentration of the
population in large towns. Industries and services more or less related to agri-
culture may develop in rural areas. Movements from agriculture to more pro-
ductive sectors have in fact been steady and rapid in the wealthiest countries,
where they have contributed considerably to the improvement in standards of
living; but they have been slower in other countries owing to delayed industrial-
isation or, since the war, to the housing shortage. Insofar as such countries are
able to pursue expansionary policies, these should aim at increased industrialisa-
tion and quicker removal of the housing shortage.
Productivity per man-hour in Western European industry has been less
than in the United States since the beginning of the century and is now
41 ECE, Economic Survey of Europe Since the War, pp. 154, 155.
42 Ibid.
556 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
between one-fourth and one-half of that in the United States. Moreover,
it is not catching up, although it is increasing much more than in the
Soviet Union. Between 1938 and 1954 the increase in real gross national
product per man hour of employment was about 15 per cent. The in-
creases in manufacturing industry over the best prewar years range from
about 4 per cent in France and 7 per cent in Germany to 29 per cent in
the United Kingdom. Increases in agriculture may have been somewhat
higher. Productivity per man hour in the United States in 1954 was about
40 per cent above pre-war in industry and in agriculture has more than
doubled.43
As contrasted with the United States, an inferior and less-balanced re-
source endowment in Western Europe has probably had some effect in
retarding the growth of efficiency. Until relatively recently the American
economy found most of its raw materials and energy at home, while the
availability of land on the expanding frontier kept the price of labor rela-
tively high and encouraged mechanization and the use of capital. These
factors also contributed to a psychology of "progress" and efficiency
whereas in many European countries traditional attitudes favored stability
rather than change.
The nineteenth century is usually thought of as a period in which the
philosophy of laissez-faire and economic liberalism prevailed, not only in
the United Kingdom but across Europe. However, this is not wholly the
case. The economic liberalism of the Manchester school was transplanted
to the continent to thrive only briefly and was succeeded after 1875 by a
growing spirit of "neo-mercantilism" under which industry, agriculture,
and trade were regarded as national interests, to be protected by tariff,
subsidies, licensing, and other restrictive measures.44
The prevalence of such attitudes toward economic progress varies
among the different countries of Europe. It is probably most marked in
France and least conspicuous in postwar Germany, once the stronghold of
neo-mercantilism. It is not absent in the United Kingdom where, under
a Labor government, what the London Economist called the "theory and
practise of capitalism" was for a while abandoned in favor of raising the
standard of living through redistribution of income.45 This characteriza-
tion of the United Kingdom as "consumption-minded" rather than capital-
conscious might have been applied with equal force to almost the whole
of Europe except Germany and the Low Countries.
43 Ibid., p. 61.
44 Hayes, op. cit., 32-37.
45 The Economist, October 16, 1954, pp. 191-92.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 557
SIZE OF THE EUROPEAN MARKET
An important factor in promoting efficiency in the American economy
was the large size of the market and the absence of restrictions on the
movement of workers and goods from one region to the other. For most
Western European countries, a much larger part of their market is in other
countries of Europe as well as other parts of the world. The protective
tariffs of the later nineteenth and early twentieth century prevented
Western Europe from taking the maximum advantage of specialization
and intra-European trade. These restrictions were aggravated in the thir-
ties by quantitative restrictions on imports and the growing practice of
bilateral trade balancing. Hence one of the principal tasks of the OEEC
in the postwar period has been the "liberalization" of intra-European
trade. Since a larger international machinery under the General Agree-
ment on Tariffs and Trade has been established for the purpose of reduc-
ing tariff barriers, the OEEC has concentrated on the removal of quanti-
tative restrictions on imports of member countries from other member
countries. Most progress has been made with the liberalization of raw
materials imports. Some member countries have been reluctant to liberal-
ize imports of manufactured goods for "balance-of-payments" reasons and
an even greater reluctance to liberalize agricultural imports is frankly
attributed by many countries to their desire to protect domestic agricul-
ture on both social and strategic grounds.
STEPS TOWARD THE INTEGRATION OF THE
EUROPEAN ECONOMY
Bilateralism has been practically eliminated from intra-European trade
( except for trade with the countries of Eastern Europe ) by the European
Payments Union ( EPU ) which ensures the transferability between mem-
ber countries of the Western European currencies (including sterling)
received by each of these countries from the others, including the terri-
tories in their monetary areas. The importance of the EPU is shown by
the fact that one-fourth of all the visible trade of the world is settled
through the Union with only a very small settlement of balances in gold
or dollars.46
Other arrangements which have been made to widen the European
market include the formation of the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands,
Luxembourg) customs union and the European Coal and Steel Commu-
*e OEEC, op. cit., 139.
558 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
nity. In Benelux all customs duties (and almost all quantitative restric-
tions ) within the area have been abolished, and a common tariff vis-a-vis
third countries was adopted. Since its establishment in September, 1944,
Benelux has weathered a number of storms and has accomplished a cer-
tain degree of economic integration. It thus becomes imperative to
the student of political and economic geography to view the economic and
political systems of these three member states in close union. This integra-
tion is even more significant if one considers the fact that Holland and
Belgium have highly different economies. Belgium found itself in a much
more favorable situation in the postwar period than Holland, which had
to repair its war damages (to say nothing of damages in 1953 when
flood waters engulfed 350,000 acres of land) and which had to recover
from the serious shock caused by the loss of its colonial empire in the
Netherlands Indies.
The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) has been estab-
lished by a treaty as a European federal institution to pool the coal and
steel resources of the six participating countries— West Germany, France,
Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Italy. It prohibits cartels and
removes barriers to the movement of coal, steel products, and workers
among member countries. This treaty has created a common market with-
out tariffs and quantitative restrictions in the most important sector of
European trade and is regarded by many as the first significant step to-
ward the unification and integration of the western European economies.
It has been hailed by some as heralding the eventual establishment of a
European political federation. Even if the operation of the Coal and Steel
Community were only extended, as has been proposed, to other trade be-
tween the members, this would be a major accomplishment in the direc-
tion of European economic integration since the six member countries
cover 450,000 square miles and include 160 million people.47
Still in the planning stage but likely to become a reality in the future
is a Scandinavian customs union. This would unite the nations of the
Nordic Council— Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland— in an organiza-
tion which, following the successful model of the Scandinavian Airlines
System, would bring about joint enterprises in such industries as steel,
chemicals, and textiles. Thus, as a first step towards a customs union, the
necessary conditions for a common market in certain goods would be
created.48
47 For further information see Foreign Operations Administration, Monthly Oper-
ations Report, June 30, 1954; also OEEC, op. cit., pp. 137-138.
48 The Economist, 1954, pp. 671-672.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 559
Although the result of all these measures has been to expand intra-
European trade well beyond the expectations entertained at the beginning
of the Marshall Plan in 1948, when no significant increase was expected,
the share of intra-European trade in the total foreign trade of Western
European countries remains about the same as in the prewar period. It is
clear that a marked expansion in regional trade relative to trade with the
rest of the world will require more intensive programs.
SPECIAL PROBLEMS— ENERGY
Coal production in Western Europe has not increased above the prewar
level and presents a serious structural problem. Up to World War I, West-
ern Europe as a whole was a net exporter of energy in the form of coal and
coal bunkers, mainly from the United Kingdom. After World War I, and
especially since the 1930's, the tendency has been towards stability or even
contraction in the demand for coal due to the substitution of other fuels
and water power, and to increased efficiency in the use of solid fuels.
Depletion of the better seams has tended to increase costs and it has been
difficult to obtain increases in productivity. It is not likely that further im-
provements in the utilization of coal will be sufficient to offset the failure
of output to rise. Stagnation in the coal-mining industry has created con-
siderable problems in a number of communities, but especially in the
United Kingdom where the mines are old, deep, scattered, and difficult to
mechanize, and where mounting costs and the drift of miners into other
occupations has tended to keep production below even the reduced de-
mand. This has prompted the government to embark on the most ambi-
tious program for producing electricity from atomic reactors that any
country has yet devised.
Coal production in France, similarly, although slightly above the pre-
war level is still below the production target of 60 million tons set by the
Monnet five-year plan. France has 40,000 fewer miners than in the thirties,
and costs are mounting. Despite the growing use of petroleum, the de-
mand for coal in Europe may for some time tend to outstrip European
production and to require imports. As a result discussions have begun
both in the Coal and Steel Community and in the OEEC looking toward
the development of a unified atomic energy program to supplement con-
ventional sources of energy.
Western Europe's difficulty in expanding coal production is com-
pounded by the failure to find petroleum in any considerable amounts.
However, the United Kingdom, France, and other OEEC countries have
560 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
for balance-of-payments reasons expanded their own refinery capacity
with a view to reducing imports of products in favor of increased imports
of lower cost crude petroleum. Imports of products into the United King-
dom, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, for example, fell from
17.5 million tons in 1948 to 12.9 million tons in 1951, while in the same
period the same countries increased their imports of crude petroleum
from 15.4 million tons to 51.2 million.49 In 1953, for the first time, some
net exports of refined products took place; Western Europe imported 8.2
million tons of products and exported 9.4 million tons (in addition to
intra-European trade of 16.6 million tons).50
Western Europe's petroleum requirements are increasing at a rate of
10 to 15 per cent annually. The refineries of Western Europe are almost
wholly dependent on crude oil from the Middle East producing countries
such as Iran, Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The crude oil is transported
to the Eastern Mediterranean by pipeline or through the Suez canal and
then generally by tanker to the refining centers. This dependence on
Middle East oil to supply Europe's rapidly growing energy demands, and
the apparent vulnerability of transportation arrangements in the area is
one of the reasons why Western European countries, especially the United
Kingdom and France, are anxious to preserve peace in that region.
AGRICULTURE
By 1953-54 agricultural output in Western Europe (OEEC countries)
had risen to 129 per cent of the best prewar levels, which is an increase
of about 14 per cent on a per capita basis. A number of factors contributed
to the increase, among them increased use of fertilizers and machinery,
seed selection, and better livestock production methods. Perhaps most
impressive is a 16 per cent increase in livestock products compared with
prewar levels, accomplished despite a 30 per cent reduction in imports
of feed.51
As indicated earlier, however, there is in many continental Western
European countries a great need for improved productivity in agriculture,
and for the release of manpower to other employments. A number of fac-
tors appear to be interfering with more efficient land utilization and pro-
ductivity. An important obstacle is the very considerable fragmentation of
agricultural land (small average size of plots), averaging from less than
49 ECE, Economic Survey of Europe Since the War, pp. 298-99.
50 The Economist, November 20, 1954, p. 674.
51 OEEC, op. cit., p. 55.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 561
one hectare in Belgium, Switzerland, and West Germany, to two or three
in the Netherlands, southwest France, and Spain. However, the averages
do not tell the whole story. About six million hectares of farm land are
estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organization to be in need of
consolidation in West Germany and Italy, and as much as nine million
in France and twelve million in Spain.52
Another obstacle to more efficient agriculture is the high degree of
government protection, expressed in tariff and quantitative restrictions on
imports. Aside from imports of cereals, sugar, fibers, and vegetable oils,
most "Western European countries have chosen ... to protect and main-
tain their agricultural structure composed of millions of small farmers,
reserving for them virtually the whole of the market for animal products
and most of that for vegetables and fruits." 53
The desirability of liberalizing and enlarging the European market for
agricultural products and promoting greater specialization has been rec-
ognized by members of the OEEC. Proposals have been made for the
creation of a "green pool," a federal institution similar to the Coal-Steel
Community to integrate the markets of member countries and relax re-
strictions on the sale and movement of agricultural products among them.
These proposals have been dropped but further consideration is being
given to the matter under auspices of the OEEC.£
54
EXTERNAL FACTORS AFFECTING WESTERN EUROPE'S
ECONOMIC GROWTH
As noted above this division into internal and external factors affect-
ing Western Europe's economic outlook is somewhat arbitrary because the
two sets of factors contain forces acting on one another in a reciprocal
relationship. Thus, the depression of the early thirties with its adverse
effect on the demand for, and prices of, foodstuffs and raw materials
helped to motivate primary producing countries to shift resources in the
direction of their own industrialization. The consequences of this in the
period after World War II are seen in reduced export availabilities of
primary products from these countries and a shift in their demand away
from consumer goods, especially textiles, which are one of Western Eu-
rope's (and the United Kingdom's) most important exports, in favor of an
52 Trends in Economic Growth, p. 109.
53 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, European Agriculture— A
Statement of Problem (Geneva, 1954), p. 2.
54 Trends in Economic Growth, p. 110. See also Economic Survey of Europe Since
the War, pp. 233, 234.
562 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
increased demand for capital goods of the latest design, especially from
the United States. The position of Western Europe in the world economy
has undergone a number of such changes since 1913 and these changes
are sometimes called structural changes to denote their deep-rooted and
irrevocable character.55
To trace these changes and their manifold interrelationships carefully
would require an extended discussion going beyond the scope of this
chapter.56 However, the principal trends can be delineated adequately if
we examine ( a ) the long-term change in the share of Western Europe in
world trade and some of the reasons therefor, and ( b ) the trade and pay-
ments position of Western Europe in the decade after World War II. At
this time, the effects both of certain structural changes and of the disor-
ganization of the war combined to create a situation in which Western
Europe's receipts from abroad, particularly of dollars, were quite insuffi-
cient to maintain a reasonable level of imports.
DECLINE IN WESTERN EUROPE'S SHARE OF WORLD TRADE
Along with the decline of the relative importance of the Western Euro-
pean economy after World War I went a decline in Western Europe' share
of total world trade. In terms of total world exports Europe's share shrank
from more than 50 per cent before World War I to 45 per cent in the inter-
war period and to about 35 per cent in 1948-50.57 Another way of express-
ing this change is in terms of shares in total trade: trade between non-
European countries, which was only 25 per cent of total trade in the
period 1909 to 1913, rose to 40 per cent in the period 1925-38, and to 50
per cent in 1948-50. At the same time intra-European trade declined from
about one-third of total world trade to about one-fifth.
Most of this decline in the interwar period represented a loss of exports
by the three big European trading nations, the United Kingdom, Ger-
many, and France, whose share of total European exports fell between
1913 and 1938 from about 64 per cent to 52 per cent.
The most obvious explanation for the declining importance of Western
Europe in world trade was the growing importance of other trading na-
tions, particularly the United States and Japan. An important factor con-
tributing to this development, especially with regard to the United States
but by no means the only one, was the interruption caused to Europe's
55 ECE, Economic Survey of Europe Since the War, p. 10.
56 See ibid., Chs. 2, 6 and 7, also ECE, Growth and Stagnation in the European
Economy, especially Chs. 2 and 9.
57 ECE, Growth and Stagnation in the European Economy, pp. 168-170.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 563
trade by two world wars. In the interwar period, moreover, there were
important shifts in the commodity pattern of world trade, which may be
summarized by saying that ( as percentages of total imports ) the demand
for textiles and miscellaneous manufactures fell, the demand for metals
and chemicals was relatively stable, while the demand for machinery and
transport equipment (including motor cars) rose. The declining volume
of textile exports from Western Europe attributable to the growth of
domestic textile production in overseas areas and to increasing competi-
tion from Japan, the United States, and India ( that is, textile exports from
Europe were a declining proportion of a shrinking total trade), was espe-
cially injurious to the trade of the United Kingdom, Germany, France,
Belgium, and Switzerland. On the other hand, the benefit of the increased
demand for machinery and transport equipment went largely to the
United States.
The relationships described merely suggest what a more detailed analy-
sis would show: that the European countries because of the effects of
World War I and of various rigidities in their industrial systems reacted
only very slowly in the interwar period to large and rapidly moving
changes in the commodity pattern of world demand. After 1938 the evi-
dence suggests that the indicated adaptations were being made; in any
case by 1950 Western Europe had regained its 1938 position in total world
trade, and after 1950, in particular by virtue of the rapid expansion of
German exports, had recovered even more lost ground.58 Moreover, the
United Kingdom, France, and Germany have regained their 1913 relative
positions in total European exports.
EUROPE'S POSTWAR PAYMENTS PROBLEM
While there is therefore some reason to think that Western Europe has
the capability of recovering some of its former pre-eminence in world
trade, there remain certain structural imbalances in the pattern of world
trade, in part the legacy of World War II, which continue to confront
Western Europe with the elements of the "dollar problem." Even before
World War II Western Europe had a deficit on current account with the
dollar area 59 estimated at about $2 billion in 1953 prices. In the general
system of convertible currencies and multilateral settlements which then
prevailed, this deficit was made up with dollars earned by European ex-
ports to third areas having dollar surpluses resulting, for example, from
58 OEEC, op. cit., p. 93.
59 The United States, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, the Caribbean and
Central American Republics, and the Philippines.
564 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
rubber and tin sales from Southeast Asia and gold sales from South Africa.
After World War II a number of factors combined to make it difficult
to achieve balance in Western Europe's external accounts and next to
impossible to impose balance in the dollar accounts. These factors, in
effect, operated to reduce Western Europe's real income and to make it
necessary to expand commodity exports very considerably while econo-
mizing to the maximum on imports. Very briefly the new factors were the
following:
Western Europe's capital position deteriorated very badly as a result
of the war. Long-term investments, especially in the United States, had
been sold. Large sterling debts were incurred during the war to obtain
wartime goods and services in India, Egypt, and other countries, and large
dollar debts were incurred by the United Kingdom and France in 1946
and 1947. Revenue from shipping, insurance, and other commercial and
financial services was adversely affected by new competition, while over-
seas military expenditures for the United Kingdom and France were
greatly increased. The greatest burden of all was that imposed by the shift
in the terms of trade which because of reduced export availabilities of
foodstuffs and raw materials increased the prices of imports relative to the
prices of Western Europe's exports.
Meanwhile partly as the result of the war and partly as the result of
political, social, and technological changes, the supplies of raw materials
and foodstuffs from the dollar area increased while similar supplies from
the sterling area and other non-dollar sources tended to decline. Thus
wartime demands stimulated production of foodstuffs hi North America,
aluminum from the dollar area increased in importance relative to sterling
area tin and lead, imports of dollar petroleum increased. At the same time
in many countries inflation and population increases swelled domestic
consumption at the expense of exports, and resources were shifted away
from the production of foodstuffs for export to industrial development—
as notably in Argentina and Australia. These developments all tended to
shift Europe's imports from non-dollar to dollar sources but without any
corresponding rise in receipts from the dollar area. Most of the wartime
and postwar increase in imports of the United States was in commodities
originating in the Western Hemisphere, such as coffee, timber and paper,
aluminum, and petroleum.
THE ECONOMIC CAPABILITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE 565
THE MARSHALL PLAN
As a consequence of these developments, unless Western Europe was to
cut its imports below the levels needed to maintain employment and pro-
duction, a deficit in the dollar balance-of -payments was inevitable— a defi-
cit beyond the capacity of Western European countries to finance from
their scanty reserves of gold and dollars. It was this situation which led
to the Marshall plan under which the United States financed the dollar
deficit in Western Europe's balance-of-payments during the period 1948-
52 and permitted some reconstitution of Western Europe's gold and dollar
reserves.
The dollar problem has temporarily disappeared although there are
grounds for believing that it has not been completely excised. The chief
factor in its disappearance is the large volume of dollar payments to West-
ern Europe resulting from military expenditures in connection with the
stationing of United States forces in Europe, and United States procure-
ment of military goods and services. A high proportion of these expendi-
tures, it is true, may become a fairly permanent feature of United States
participation under NATO in the arrangements for the defense of Western
Europe. In the absence of these payments, however, and with the termi-
nation of United States economic assistance to Western Europe, the dol-
lar-payments position of Western Europe would once again be somewhat
precarious. In the long run, strength in the European payments situation
depends on the continued expansion of exportable supplies of foodstuffs
and raw materials in non-dollar areas. The loss of colonial possessions and
the reduced ability of the metropolitan countries of Western Europe to in-
fluence the character of overseas economic development through capital
exports, coupled with the drive for industrial development and autarky in
the primary producing countries makes the long-run outlook at best un-
certain.
E. Summary and Conclusions
Western Europe has lost its former position of industrial and commer-
cial supremacy and with this loss has gone a decline in her world-power
position and a significant loss of colonial possessions. However, the pros-
pect is not one of unrelieved stagnation or decay. The favorable endow-
ments of climate, geography, and natural resources remain, as does the
heritage of unparalleled cultural, scientific, and technical achievement.
The population and labor force are growing although not as rapidly as in
the United States or the U.S.S.R. There are encouraging possibilities for
566 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
greatly strengthening the European economy through modernization of
agriculture and widening of the European market. The principal obstacles
to the future and continuing growth of Europe's economic capabilities lie
in the sphere of external economic relations. Europe must expand its ex-
ports of manufactured goods in third areas in competition with those of
the United States ( and Japan ) in order to command the growing amounts
of raw materials and foodstuffs that will be needed. These areas must in
turn continue to offer for sale to Western Europe on reasonable terms the
needed foodstuffs and raw materials. Purchases by Western Europe of
raw materials and foodstuffs from the dollar area must be kept within the
limits set by Western Europe's ability to earn dollars (a) by exports of
goods and services to the protected United States market, ( b ) by exports
of manufactures to dollar-surplus primary producing countries (as Ma-
laya), and (c) through United States military expenditures in NATO
countries.
Since 1950 the evidence has increasingly demonstrated Western Eu-
rope's capacity to make the indicated adjustments. Even if this progress is
sustained, however, there is little likelihood of Europe regaining the rela-
tive economic capabilities on which its world supremacy at the end of the
Victorian age was founded. There is, moreover, every indication that the
over-all economic capabilities of the Soviet bloc, which are now not far
exceeded by those of all Western European countries combined, will in
the next two decades surpass them. The importance of Western Europe's
economic capabilities, then, must be viewed in the light of the contribu-
tion they make to aggregate Western capabilities rather- than in them-
selves. To the extent, therefore, that power relationships continue to
depend on relative economic capabilities (as opposed to new factors
introduced by the possession of nuclear weapons), Western Europe's
future lies not in an independent course but is bound up with the fortunes
of the Western alliance.
CHAPTER
18
The United States and Canad
A. The United States
The United States occupies a dominant position in the world economy.
With only about 6 per cent of the world's population it accounted for
almost 40 per cent of the world's output of goods and services in 1954.
This was almost twice the production of all of Free Europe or of the
entire Soviet bloc, including Communist China.
By virtue of its great economic strength the United States plays a major
role in world economy. In 1954 the United States accounted for 20 per
cent of the world's exports and 14 per cent of its imports. The United
States is the world's largest creditor nation and the principal supplier of
capital for overseas investment. It is little wonder, therefore, that this
country's domestic and foreign economic policies are of vital concern to
other countries.
The enormous economic capabilities of the United States largely ac-
count for its position as the leading world power. World War II demon-
strated the awesome military force which these capabilities are able to
support. In 1944 at the peak of the war effort the United States produced
45 per cent of the armaments of all the belligerents. The United States
was truly the arsenal of democracy. The resources of the United States
have become an important instrument of national power in peace as well
as in war. They have been used on a lavish scale to restore the war-
devastated economies of friendly as well as former enemy powers and to
bolster up the economic and military strength of the Free World. Eco-
nomic power is of course only one of the ingredients of national power,
567
568 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
but in the hands of the United States it has become a major instrument of
statecraft.
As with other areas, geographical factors cannot entirely explain the
course and pattern of United States' economic development. Nonetheless,
this chapter suggests that favorable geographical factors such as rich
natural resources, climate and terrain, and world location have been more
important for the economic development of the United States than for any
other nation except possibly the Soviet Union.
GEOGRAPHY AND PEOPLE
Geography. The United States, with a land area of roughly 3 million
square miles, is the third largest nation in the Western Hemisphere;
Canada is the largest and Brazil is the second largest. It is bounded in the
north by Canada, in the south by Mexico, and includes most of North
America between 30 degrees and 49 degrees north latitude. "Separated
by some 3,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean from Europe, with its inter-
national problems, and by 5,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean from the coun-
tries of eastern Asia . . . the U.S.A. has tended until recently to isolate
herself from commitments overseas. . . ." 1 Its relative isolation from other
major centers of power has of course been a great strategic advantage to
the United States, since the danger of foreign invasion was virtually elim-
inated. As a result, the United States, like the United Kingdom in an
earlier era, was until recent times able to avoid involvement in costly and
destructive foreign wars and to devote its major energies to peaceful pur-
suits. However, progress in weapons development, the collapse of the
historic balance-of -power system in Western Europe, and the emergence
of Communist Russia, are factors which are rapidly eliminating the ad-
vantage of virtual insularity formerly enjoyed by the United States.
Though exceeded in size by the U.S.S.R., China, Canada, and Brazil,
the United States has a more favorable physical environment than any of
these countries. Virtually all of the United States falls into Ellsworth
Huntington's "very high energy" zone where the climate is believed to be
most invigorating for human endeavor. The proportion of productive land
area is much greater in the United States than, for example, in the U.S.S.R.
or Canada where large regions lie in the Arctic Zone, or in Brazil, with its
vast tropical rain forest of limited economic value. The great size of the
United States, its distribution over wide latitudes, and the modifying in-
fluence of mountains and two oceans produce a wide variety of climates
1 L. D. Stamp and L. S. Suggate, eds., Geography For Today, Book 3, "North
America and Asia," 4th ed. (London, 1954), p. 119.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 569
and a corresponding diversity of crops. "Rocks of almost every geological
age furnish in abundance almost every kind of mineral. . . ." 2 Size has
contributed to the economic growth of the United States in another im-
portant respect. Products move freely without interference of tariff bar-
riers over a market area of 3 million square miles with more than 160
million consumers. As a result the United States enjoys the large economic-
benefits to be derived from a high degree of regional specialization and
the economies of large-scale production. Free Europe, by contrast, with
an area smaller than the United States and a population of over 300 mil-
lion, comprises seventeen sovereign states administering fourteen separate
tariff systems each operating to prevent the most efficient utilization of the
area's resources. A wide domestic market also has reduced the dependence
of the United States on foreign trade, thus making it less vulnerable to
foreign economic developments.
Four main physical divisions may be distinguished in the United States.
Virtually all of the western part of the country, except for a narrow strip
of lowland along the Pacific Coast, comprises the western highlands.
These extend from Mexico into Canada and consist of a series of plateaus
and hills interspersed with high mountains. The plateaus are cut off from
rain-bearing winds from the Pacific by high mountains so that the region
is generally dry. While large irrigation projects have made farming prac-
tical in some of the interior basins, agriculture is generally limited to the
lowlands and valleys near the coast. Elsewhere in this region, despite the
growth of manufactures in recent years, stock raising, forestry, and min-
ing are of major importance. The latter two activities have been favored
by an abundance of mineral and forestry resources and large low-cost
hydro-electric power development.
Next come the great interior plains or lowlands. A continuation of the
Canadian prairie provinces, they extend to the Gulf of Mexico and have a
maximum breadth of 1500 miles. Within this zone, the upper Mississippi
Valley and the Great Lakes region constitute the heart of the North
American continent. Fertile alluvial and glacial soils, an abundance of
coal, metals, and water power, and a well-developed water and railway
network have made this the most important agricultural and industrial
region in the United States.
East of the great plains are the eastern highlands or Appalachians.
xMuch lower in elevation than the western highlands, the Appalachians
roughly parallel the Atlantic Coast, extending from Maine to Alabama.
The northern Appalachians contain the richest coalfields in the United
2 Ibid., p. 164.
570 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
States and account for almost three-quarters of the total output. These
coalfields form the basis of the heavy industry complex in the northeastern
and north-central part of the United States.
The fourth major physical division is the coastal plain bordering the
Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast, This region is broad at the Gulf
and narrows toward the north where the Appalachians reach almost to
the sea. First settled by the original colonists, parts of the eastern lowlands
have remained the most highly developed and densely populated regions
in the United States.
While the river system played an important role in the development of
the United States up through the first half of the nineteenth century, its
significance was reduced by the fact that the principal rivers flow in the
opposite direction to the main stream of commerce, which is east and west.
Thus the Mississippi system, largest in the United States and third largest
in the world and navigable for thousands of miles, flows north and south
entering the Atlantic through the Gulf of Mexico. Rivers entering the
Atlantic between the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf are small and of
limited direct value to navigation. However, they form estuaries and har-
bors in their lower courses endowing the Atlantic coast with excellent sea-
ports like New York and Baltimore. The one east-west water route of major
significance is the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes system which connects the
heart of North America with the Atlantic Ocean. This system will become
of increasing importance with the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway
described elsewhere in this chapter.
People. The population of the United States as reported by the 1950
census numbered 150.7 million. The United States is not considered to be
overpopulated in the sense that the pressure of numbers on natural re-
sources is an obstacle to continued economic expansion. The population
is increasing at a rapid rate and by April 1, 1956 had reached an esti-
mated 167.4 million. Between 1948 and 1952 the annual rate of increase
was 1.76 per cent as compared with 0.9 per cent for Free Europe and 1.5
to 1.7 per cent for the Soviet Union.3 The present rapid growth of popu-
lation is due almost entirely to natural increases. During the decade 1940
to 1950 immigration accounted for less than 5 per cent of the growth in
population and in the previous decade for less than one per cent. This is
in sharp contrast with the period 1850 to 1910 when immigrants accounted
for anywhere from 27 per cent to 55 per cent of the increase in population
3 Joint Committee on The Economic Report, Trends Toward Economic Growth, A
Comparison of Western Powers and The Soviet Bloc (Washington, D. C, 1955), p. 6.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 571
in a single decade.4 Between 1820 and 1951 more than 40 million immi-
grants entered the United States, of whom an estimated 30 million re-
mained. The abandonment of a liberal immigration policy after World
War I sharply reduced the influx of immigrants. In 1953 net immigration
of less than 150,000 was below the authorized quota level.
The proportion of the total population which the foreign-born white
population represents has fallen progressively since the end of the nine-
teenth century. In 1950 foreign-born whites were 7 per cent of the total
population as compared with almost 15 per cent in 1890. Negroes, de-
scendants of the original slaves, accounted for 10 per cent of the total
population in 1950 as compared with almost 16 per cent a century earlier.
Other races including North American Indians represented only about
one-half of one per cent of the total.
Average population density in 1950 was 50.7 persons per square mile.
Greatest densities are in the industrialized and urbanized northern and
eastern states. The New England, Middle Atlantic, and East North-Cen-
tral states had an average population density of 178 per square mile in
1950. These fifteen states with 15 per cent of the land area of the United
States had more than half the total population. Most thinly-populated are
the Mountain and West North-Central states with average densities of
5.9 and 27.5 persons per square mile respectively.5 Rational considerations
such as economic opportunities, cultural advantages, and climate have
had an important effect on the distribution of population. However, the
prewar National Resources Committee study showed that "historical acci-
dent and differential reproduction rates have played a far larger part in
determining population distribution in this country than is generally sup-
posed. The sheer size of our land area, its geographical diversity, and the
variety of cultural patterns controlling our interests and attitudes have
served to intensify the force of these irrational factors." 6
The population of the United States shows a high degree of mobility.7
The two main channels of movement have been ( 1 ) westward and ( 2 )
away from the farms to urban industrial centers ( Fig. 18-1 ). A measure of
the extent of the westward movement is indicated by the fact that be-
tween 1790 and 1950 the center of population of the United States moved
4 J. F. Dewhurst and associates, America's Needs and Resources (New York, 1955),
p. 51.
5 Ibid., p. 69.
6 U.S. Government Printing Office, The Problems of a Changing Population (New
York, 1938), p. 37.
7 See pp. 168, 169,
572 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ILLINOIS
Springfield jlndianapolis
195°* >*** * * *
I Frankfort •
\ SI ^
New York^i
WPhiladelphi
shingtonT<<y. J «
1
J^ KENTUCKY \VIRGINIA3 • "S I /
//\.y^ VIRGINIA Richmond
s
N.C.
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s.c.
JRF
Fig. 18-1. The Westward Course of the United States as Shown in the Ten-year Shift
of the Population Center, 1790-1950.
from its original location east of Baltimore to a point near Olney, Illinois,
686 miles west and 30 miles south. This westward movement is a continu-
ing one. Between 1940 and 1950 the center of population moved a distance
of 42 miles west and 7.6 miles south. Greatest relative growth has occurred
in the Pacific states and Mountain states which in 1950 accounted for 13
per cent of the total population as compared with 5.4 per pent in 1900. Be-
tween 1940 and 1950 the population of the Pacific states increased 48.8
per cent and the mountain states 22.3 per cent as compared with the
national average of 14.3 per cent. Increasing economic opportunities re-
sulting from the wartime expansion of industry and the postwar boom
have added impetus to the movement of population to the Pacific states
in the past decade, especially to California.
Like the westward movement of population, the movement of persons
from the farm and rural areas to urban centers has been going on since
Independence. In 1790 only about 5 per cent of the population of the
United States was classified as urban. By 1950 almost 58 per cent of the
population was urban (living in communities of 2500 persons or more).8
Between 1890 and 1950 the proportion of the population living in cities
of 100,000 or more rose from 15.4 per cent to 29.3 per cent. This progres-
sive decline in the rural population reflects the great increase in the rela-
8 W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky, World Population and Production (New York, 1953),
p. 124.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 573
tive importance of industrial activity over the past century or more, and
the reduced relative importance of agriculture.
RESOURCES
The United States has a rich and varied natural resource base (Fig.
18-2 ) . In contrast with most other developed nations, these resources were
adequate until quite recently to satisfy the bulk of this country's food and
industrial raw material needs and to provide a sizeable surplus for export.
Thus in 1900 the United States produced a 15 per cent surplus of materials
other than food and gold.9 However, by the decade of the forties this sur-
plus had become a deficit as a result of the unsatiable and rapidly-rising
demands of American industry. According to the report of the President's
Materials Policy Commission "there is scarcely a metal or a mineral fuel
of which the quantity used in the United States since the outbreak of the
First World War did not exceed the total used throughout the world in
all the centuries preceding." 10 With less than 10 per cent of the popula-
tion of the Free World, the United States consumes almost half the
volume of materials produced. Thus we find that by 1950 the United
States had a 9 per cent materials production deficit (excluding food and
gold) and the projected possible deficit for 1975 is estimated at 20 per
cent. This trend accounts in considerable measure for the growing United
States interest in developing new foreign sources of supply for minerals
and fuels and explains why the bulk of United States overseas investment
since the war has been going into mineral development.
Agricultural Land. Agriculture is the major exception in the United
States changing materials picture. This country's agricultural resource
base currently yields all major food and agricultural raw material re-
quirements except tropical products like rubber, coffee, and sugar, and
in addition provides sizeable surpluses for export. According to the Presi-
dent's Materials Policy Commission, the United States should have no
great difficulty in meeting the projected 38 per cent increase in consump-
tion of agricultural products by 1975 on the basis of existing land-use now
in farms. "This can be done by improving or upgrading the use of much
land now in farms and by bringing in new land only to offset any farm
acres that will be taken out for urban and other uses." 1X
According to the 1950 Census, the cropland of the United States totaled
9 The President's Materials Policy Commission, Resources for Freedom, Vol. 1,
Foundations for Growth and Security (Washington, D. C, June, 1952), p. 2.
10 Ibid., p. 3.
11 Ibid., Vol. 5, Selected Reports to the Commission, p. 70.
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THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 575
409 million acres or somewhat more than two and a half acres per person.
While this is considerably less than the 555.9 million acres estimated for
the U.S.S.R. by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, the difference may be more apparent than real. Severe climate
and inferior soils in a number of regions operate to materially reduce the
productivity of Russian croplands. Colin Clark has estimated that the
U.S.S.R. has only about 70 per cent of the "standard farmland" of the
United States.
Forests. One-third of this country's land area or 622 million acres is in
forest land. However, of this area only 460 million acres is suitable for
the growing of commercial timber. Despite this large acreage the United
States has shifted from an exporter to an importer of lumber, largely
because of the failure to build up productive stock. However, it is esti-
mated that forest land presently available would be ample to cover
requirements under a proper forestry management program.12 A recent
report of the United States Forest Service shows that in 1955, the United
States for the first time in its history was growing more timber than was
being removed by cutting or destruction.13
Minerals. Despite the substantial inroads made into reserves and the
growing importance of mineral imports the United States still meets the
bulk of its requirements from domestic sources. Thus in 1950, United
States mineral production, excluding gold, was approximately 90 per cent
of apparent consumption. Reserves of many of the important minerals
are still abundant. Table 18-1, prepared by the President's Materials
Policy Commission, lists the major industrial minerals in three groups
according to the adequacy of known United States' reserves. Metals
shown as deficient in reserves in relation to expected future needs are
further broken down according to prospects for improving supplies by
discovery of new deposits, beneficiation of low-grade ores, and replace-
ment by synthetics or substitutes.
The Commission's study indicates that the possibilities of increasing
reserves in most of the deficient categories are still considerable. It points
out that "geologists agree that the United States still possesses vast hidden
mineral resources." 14 The principal unknown factor is the cost of exploit-
ing these resources. Technological progress has been important in the
past in permitting the use of lower-grade reserves and there is every
reason why this should be so in the future. Furthermore, it should be
12 Ibid., p. 37.
13 As reported in the Wall Street Journal, October 27, 1955.
14 Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 27.
576 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
TABLE 18-1
Domestic Supply Position of Selected Mineral Materials *
1. Known Economic Reserves Adequate For Well Over 25 Years
Magnesium
Coal
Potash
Molybdenum
Phosphate
Lime
Salt
Sand
Clay
Borax
Gypsum
Bauxite
Feldspar
2. Known Economic Reserves Inadequate
a. Discoveries geologically likely though not
necessarily adequate
Copper
Zinc
Lead
Uranium
Vanadium
Tungsten
Antimony
Natural Gas
Petroleum
Sulfur
b. Beneficiation progress expected:
Iron
Aluminum
Titanium
Beryllium
Thorium
Oil from Shale
Fluorine
Graphite
c. Synthesis progress expected:
Oil from Coal
Gas from Oil
3. Little or No Known Economic Reserves, Significant Discoveries Not Expected
a. Beneficiation progress expected:
Manganese
b. Synthesis progress expected:
Industrial Diamonds Quartz Crystals
Sheet Mica Asbestos
c. Significant beneficiation or synthesis not expected:
Chromium Nickel
Tin Cobalt
Platinum Mercury
* The President's Materials Policy Commission, Vol. 1, Foundations for Growth and Security (Washing-
ton, D. C, June, 1952), Resources for Freedom, p. 26.
pointed out that even if such reserves should prove to be relatively high
cost, the resultant drain on the United States economy is not likely to be
excessive. In 1950, the total value of all metals consumed in the United
States was roughly $2 billion or less than one per cent of the Gross Na-
tional Product. At present the United States employs only 4.5 per cent
of its total manpower to produce crude materials other than food.15 Tech-
15 Op. cit., p. 69.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 577
nological developments in beneficiation and synthesis promise to increase
the reserves of a number of important minerals at relatively moderate
cost increases. Thus while the United States may exhaust its reserves of
high-grade, low-cost iron ore of the Lake Superior region in the next
twenty-five years, it has huge reserves of taconite with 25 to 35 per cent
iron ore content. On the basis of methods of concentration now being
developed, it is estimated that the use of these ores would raise the cost
of pig iron only about 5 per cent.16 Proved recoverable oil reserves in the
United States at the end of 1954 of 29.6 billion barrels represented only
about eleven years' consumption at the then prevailing rate, and still un-
discovered reserves were estimated to amount to only about 35.9 billion
barrels. However, it is estimated that 500 billion barrels could be pro-
duced, at higher cost of course, from synthetic shale deposits. Large-scale
oil production from huge coal reserves is also possible.
This is not to suggest that the United States has no reason to be con-
cerned about its future resource position. The problem of increasing
reserves is more than a matter of higher costs. Market forces alone can-
not always be depended upon to bring about the required expansion.
Long-range planning and various measures requiring direct government
intervention may be necessary. Minerals are finite and exhaustible re-
sources. Even if current estimates of United States' reserves are on the
low side, serious deficiencies could develop, if not in twenty-five years,
then in fifty years, if proper steps are not taken now. Fifty years is not a
long time in the life-span of a nation.
The United States has always been deficient in such important minerals
as chromite, cobalt, industrial diamonds, nickel, and manganese. As
shown in Table 18-2 domestic production of these minerals in 1949 was
10 per cent or less of domestic consumption. The same table also shows
the considerable decline that has occurred since 1935 to 1939 in this
country's relative self-sufficiency in copper, lead, and zinc. The figures in
Table 18-2 need to be interpreted with caution regarding what they imply
for the strategic security of the United States. As noted above, imports
in some cases reflect cost considerations rather than absolute shortages.
Where serious deficiencies exist as in the case of minerals like nickel and
tin, the building up of strategic stockpiles affords considerable insurance
against serious wartime deficiencies. Furthermore, in a national emer-
gency substantial cutbacks in nonessential consumption can be made.
Then, of course, there is a wide range of possibilities in the area of con-
16 The President's, Materials Policy Commission, op. cit., Vol. 2, The Outlook for
Key Commodities, p. 5.
578 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
servation, standardization, and substitution. Finally, it should be noted
that most of the imported minerals come from Western Hemisphere
sources which greatly reduces the threat of enemy takeover and the prob-
lem of maintaining lines of communication. For these reasons, even
though being cut off from foreign sources of supply in wartime would
present difficult problems of adjustment for the United States, the over-all
effect on its war effort would be very minor.
TABLE 18-2
Relative Self-Sufficiency of U. S. in Minerals, 1935-39 and 1949 *
SELF-SUFFICIENCY :
RATIO OF DOMESTIC
MINERAL
PRODUCTION
TO DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION
( PER CENT )
1935-1939
1949
Antimony
Asbestos (long fiber)
Chromite
12
5
1
24
8
a
Coal:
Anthracite
102
113
Bituminous and Lignite
103
98
Cobalt
11
Copper
Diamonds ( Industrial )
Iron Ore
107
0
94
70
0
95
Lead
90
69
Magnesium
160
97
Manganese
6
9
Mercury
Molybdenum
Nickel
67
294
2
25
113
1
Petroleum Crude
109
94
Phosphate Rock
Platinum Metals
151
32
115
12
Potash
64
104
Sulfur
128
139
Tin
a
a
Tungsten
32
58
Zinc
94
74
n Less than 0.5 per cent.
* Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1952, p. 693.
Water Power. Water power is much less important as a source of
energy in the United States than coal, oil, or gas. In 1950 it accounted
for only about five per cent of this country's production of commercial
energy, as against roughly 43 per cent for coal, 32 per cent for oil, and
20 per cent for gas. Although the United States possesses only about 5
per cent of the world's hydraulic resources, it produces roughly 30 per
cent of all the hydro-electric energy. Untapped hydraulic resources are
estimated at about four times what is presently being utilized.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
579
100
50 100 150 Mi
200
300 Km
T. V. A.
! 34 MAJOR DAMS
' 12 STEAM GENERATING PLANTS V
10, 000 MILES OF POWERLINES
8,000,000 KILOWATT CAPACITY
}
mi
Fig. 18-3. Regional Extent of TVA Activity.
Despite the relatively minor position of hydro-electric power in the
total energy picture, it has been an important factor in the development
of certain regions of the United States, especially where combined with
irrigation and flood control. The most notable of such multiple purpose
projects is the government-financed Tennessee Valley Authority,17 one of
the world's major engineering projects (Fig. 18-3). Here power develop-
ment was secondary to the primary purpose of creating a nine-foot chan-
nel for navigation from Knoxville to the mouth of the Tennessee River,
and for the prevention of floods. Other objectives included erosion control,
reforestation, and rural rehabilitation. TVA has had a major impact on the
economy of the Tennessee Valley. The well-being of the farm population
has been greatly improved and a major impetus was given to the develop-
ment of manufactures. Other notable multi-purpose schemes are the
Columbia and Colorado River projects. Both have provided low-cost
power for industries in the Pacific Northwest as well as water for the
17 See p. 663.
580 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
irrigation of dry land. The Tennessee Valley authority and other large
multi-purpose projects have brought the Federal Government into the
power business in competition with private utilities. The resultant clash
of interests has had and will continue to have important political reper-
cussions.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ECONOMY
In 1954 the United States had a gross national product of $360.5 billion,
as compared with less than $200 billion for Free Europe and only about
$175 billion for the entire European Soviet bloc. Per capita income of
almost $2300 per annum was four times the Western European average
and four and a half times that of the Soviet Union. Of the total United
States gross national product two-thirds represented personal consump-
tion expenditures. All major indicators of economic potential point to the
overwhelming economic strength of the United States in relation to other
countries. The United States accounts for almost 40 per cent of the
world's output of manufactures. It is the largest single producer of agri-
cultural products and minerals; it produces 40 per cent of all commercial
energy. Its production of crude steel is only moderately less than that of
Western Europe and the Soviet Bloc combined.
During the first hundred years of its history the United States was
primarily an agricultural economy. The availability of extensive and rich
agricultural lands was a highly dynamic factor in the expansion of the
economy during this period. It attracted much needed immigration. Agri-
culture provided the surplus required to feed an increasing urban
industrial population and was a primary source of savings and investment.
Despite the rapid growth of industry, agriculture still contributed 50 per
cent more to national income than manufacturing in the decade 1869 to
1879 (see Table 18-3 below).
It was not until 1890 that manufacturing surpassed agriculture as the
principal source of income. By 1953, manufacturing was almost six times
as important as agriculture. The tall in the relative contribution of agricul-
ture to total output has been accompanied by a still sharper decline in
the proportion of the gainfully employed persons engaged in agricultural
pursuits. In 1870 more than 50 per cent of the total United States' labor
force was in agriculture. By 1953 the proportion had declined to less than
10 per cent. The other most striking change in the composition of the
country's national income has been the increasing contribution of govern-
ment. This is a result of a long-run trend reflecting the growing complexity
of economic and social life requiring increasing government respon-
sibilities.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 581
Total output in the United States has been increasing at a rapid rate.
Between 1938 and 1953 gross national product in constant prices rose
roughly 120 per cent as against an increase of about 40 per cent for Free
Europe and 62 per cent for the Soviet Union.18 However, these differ-
ences reflect to an important degree the fact that the United States was
spared the destructive effects of World War II. Thus between 1948 and
1953 the increase in United States production was only 27 per cent as
against 21 per cent for Free Europe. In the same period United States
output increased only about two-thirds as rapidly as that of the U.S.S.R.
TABLE 18-3
National Income by Major Industrial Divisions
1953 and 1869-1879 *
( Percentage Distribution )
industry 1953
1869-1879
( AVERAGE )
Agriculture, forestry and fishing
5.5
20.5
Mining
1.8
1.8
Construction
4.9
5.3
Manufacturing
32.0
13.9
Wholesale and retail trade
17.2
15.7
Finance, insurance, real estate, et
cetera
9.3
11.7
Transportation and other public utilities
8.5
11.9
Services
9.4
14.7
Government
11.4
4.4
* Data for 1953 taken from United States Department of Commerce, Survey of Current Business,
February. 1955, and for 1869-79 from United States Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of
the United States 1789-1945 (Washington, D. C, 1945), p. 13.
The economic supremacy of the United States reflects the relatively
high productivity of American industry and agriculture. Productivity in
the sense of output per man-hour was substantially higher in the United
States before the war than in Europe as a whole, and this lead has been
extended in the postwar years.19 Again much of the difference since the
war reflects the damage and dislocation caused by the war to European
industry and agriculture. Since the war man-hour productivity in the
United States has been increasing at a rate of 3.5 per cent per year.
Currently, this means that the United States is adding $13 billion an-
nually to its output of goods and services. A study of 31 industries for
the period 1935 to 1939 found average output per man-hour in the United
States to be approximately 2.8 greater than in the United Kingdom where
18 Joint Committee On The Economic Report, op. cit., p. 2.
19 Organization For European Economic Co-operation, The Report of the OEEC,
Vol. 1 (March, 1955), p. 55
582 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
it was roughly the same as in Germany and Sweden.20 Output per man-
hour in agriculture in the United States increased by approximately two-
thirds between 1935-39 and 1951. The increase for Western Europe as a
whole in the same period was probably about one-fifth.
Favorable geographical factors alone, including resources and climate,
do not explain the high output per capita in the United States. Environ-
mental factors clearly affect productivity but their significance tends to
decline as a country becomes more highly developed. Rich resources are
of particular importance during the earlier stages of a country's economic
growth because of the strong attraction they can exert on capital and
labor. The discovery of gold in California is an excellent example, as is
petroleum development in Texas. Subsequently, such factors as tech-
nology, organization, management, worker skills, incentives, and the like
tend to overshadow resources in importance. More than anything else
it is probable that the high productivity of the United States results from
the efficiency of the methods it has developed to exploit its natural re-
sources rather than from the relative abundance of these resources them-
selves. Of particular importance has been the substitution of mechanical
energy for human energy. This explains why per capita consumption of
commercial energy in the United States of 7.51 metric tons per year coal
equivalent is the highest in the world. Indirectly the abundance of natural
resources in the United States, particularly agricultural land, was an im-
portant factor in the substitution of mechanical labor for human labor.
Free land competed with industry for labor during most of the nineteenth
century, thereby tending to force wages up. There was thus a consider-
able incentive for industry to economize in the use of labor and to sub-
stitute machinery wherever possible.
MANUFACTURES
United States industry is both extensive and diversified. In addition to
being the world's leading manufacturing nation, the United States can
produce virtually all of its requirements of manufactures at costs equal
to, if not lower than, those of foreign countries. Production of durable
goods is slightly more important than of consumer goods. The principal
industries in terms of their contribution to national output are machinery
and transportation equipment, primary metals and fabricated metal prod-
ucts, textile products and apparel, food and kindred products, and chem-
20 L. Rostas, Comparative Productivity in British and American Industry (London,
1948).
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 583
icals in that order. Output in a number of major industries is quite highly
concentrated in a few firms. Thus in 1947, four firms produced 40 per
cent or more of the output of the following industries:
1. Motor vehicles and parts
2. Meat packing
3. Steel works and rolling mills
4. Organic chemicals
5. Cigarettes
6. Copper rolling and drawing
7. Soap and glycerin
While natural advantages have largely determined the location of a
number of important industries, other influences such as historical factors
or the location of consumers often have been of equal if not greater sig-
nificance. Thus the continued importance of industry in the states border-
ing the Atlantic is to an important extent the result of history (cf. Fig.
18-2, p. 574). This region happened to be settled first and its industry
therefore got an earlier start than in the rest of the country. This is not to
deny that the east coast possessed a number of natural advantages by way
of resources, proximity to the sea when ships were the chief means of
communication, closeness to Europe, and others. However, today, many of
these advantages no longer exist. The development of the automobile in-
dustry in Detroit came about largely because this area had been the site
of the horse-drawn carriage and wagon industry. On the other hand, the
location of the steel industry together with its supporting industries can be
attributed in large measure to the presence of abundant coal and iron ore
fairly nearby and cheap water transport for the movement of bulky raw
materials. The development of the aluminum industry in the Pacific north-
west was largely determined by the availability of cheap hydro-electric
power.
Three regions, New England, the Middle Atlantic states, and the East
North Central states, accounted for more than two-thirds of all United
States' manufactures in 1952. The other principal manufacturing regions
are the South Atlantic and the Pacific states. While the North Central and
Northeastern states dominate the industrial landscape, important regional
shifts have been under way for some time, both westward and southward,
following the general trend of population movements. The most sig-
nificant changes have been the increased relative importance of manu-
factures in the West South Central and Pacific states. This shift has been
accompanied by a gradual decline in the relative importance of New
England and the Middle Atlantic states. Between 1939 and 1952, the
584 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
share of total manufactures for these two regions declined from roughly
39 per cent to 34 per cent. The high costs of labor and power and the
absence of sufficient compensating advantages have been important fac-
tors in this shift.
AGRICULTURE
Despite its declining economic importance in relation to manufactures,
agriculture has been a major element of strength in the economy of the
United States. Twice in the space of twenty-five years United States agri-
culture was equal to the task of greatly expanding output to meet the
large wartime requirements of this country and its allies. After both wars,
United States exports of foodstuffs prevented widespread starvation and
suffering in war-devastated Europe and the Far East.
The United States is in the enviable position of being the world's most
industrialized state and at the same time of being able to easily meet all
of its essential food and agricultural raw material needs. In addition the
United States normally produces more agricultural products than it
consumes and therefore has a surplus for export. Agricultural imports are
limited to tropical products like rubber, silk, tea, coffee, spices, and
bananas. Only the U.S.S.R. of the other major powers approximates the
favorable agricultural position of the United States, but as described in
Chapter 15, it is experiencing increasing difficulties in meeting its needs.
An outstanding characteristic of United States' agriculture is its high
productivity. This was impressively demonstrated during World War II.
From 1939 to 1944 the volume of agricultural output increased 25 per
cent with only a 6 per cent increase in crop acreage and an actual decline
in farm employment. Greater use of fertilizers and increased farm mech-
anization, combined with favorable weather, all contributed to bringing
about the increase. Most United States' farms are moderately large. In
1945, approximately 45 per cent of all land in farms fell in the 50 to 499
acre size category. Two-thirds of the cropland harvested was by farms
in this size range. Approximately 40 per cent of all farm lands were in
farms of over 1000 acres. However, most of this acreage was used for
livestock raising and dairying, since the percentage of cropland harvested
was less than 14 per cent. Tenancy is declining in the United States. In
1930, 42 per cent of all farms were tenant-operated. By 1945 the per-
centage had declined to about 30 per cent.
Favored by many different types of climate the United States produces
a wide variety of crops ranging from semi-tropical products like rice,
sugar cane, cotton, and oranges, to typical Temperate Zone crops like
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 585
wheat, rye, and corn. Up until the mid-1920's farm receipts from sales of
crops exceeded income from livestock and livestock products. By 1950
receipts from livestock products were 25 per cent higher than from crops.
This shift resulted in part at least from the rise in income levels and the
resultant increased demand for high-protein foods. The principal crops
were cotton, fruits and vegetables, food grains, feed grains, tobacco, and
oil-bearing crops. Livestock represents more than half of the value of
livestock and livestock products, while dairy products, poultry, and eggs
account for most of the remainder.
The two principal agricultural regions are the West North Central and
the East North Central states. Together these two regions accounted for
approximately 45 per cent of the value of cash farm receipts in 1949.
These states are the major cereal, livestock, and dairying regions of the
United States. Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas are the major cotton-
producing states. The South Atlantic states, primarily the Carolinas and
Virginia, produce two-thirds of the tobacco. The Pacific states, notably
California, produce the largest share of fruits, nuts, and vegetables.
The productiveness of American agriculture has created difficult eco-
nomic and political problems both here and abroad. Largely as a result
of the inability of the farm industry to adjust to the loss of export markets
following the recovery of foreign agriculture after World War I and
World War II, the United States has had a serious surplus problem for
three or more decades. Because of the system of Congressional repre-
sentation, United States farmers enjoy much greater political strength
than their numbers suggest. Consequently, strong political pressures have
been exerted to reduce the burden of surpluses on farm prices and
incomes. The result has been a succession of measures, starting with the
Federal Farm Board of 1929, to restrict output and subsidize farmers.
Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars in farm aid, only limited
progress has been made toward solving the problem of surpluses, chiefly
because of the difficult political issues involved. In the course of its
efforts to support farm prices, the United States Government through the
Commodity Credit Corporation has accumulated billions of dollars ol
surplus farm products. Various measures have been taken in recent years
to dispose of these surpluses abroad by sales at less than world-market
prices and tie-in arrangements with foreign aid programs. While the
legislation governing such sales specifies that they should not interfere
with the regular commercial exports of other friendly powers, this is
often difficult to avoid. A number of countries like Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, and Argentina that depend heavily on agricultural exports
586 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
have expressed serious concern about the effects of the surplus disposal
programs on their sales in foreign markets.
TRANSPORTATION
The United States is served by the most extensive and probably one
of the most efficient transportation systems in the world. The develop-
ment of this system closely paralleled and at the same time was a major
factor in promoting the growth of the United States' economy. The vast
distances dividing the country were for a time as much or more of a
hindrance than an asset to economic development. The transportation
system by helping to bring about political and economic unification laid
the basis for the present high degree of regional economic specialization
which characterizes the United States.
The backbone of the United States' internal transportation system is a
vast rail network of roughly 225,000 miles of line which in 1953 handled
40 per cent of the world's railway freight traffic 21 (cf. Fig. 18-2, p. 574).
Important also is the unexcelled highway system of more than 2 million
miles of hard-surfaced roads used by 53 million passenger cars and trucks,
about two-thirds of the Free World total. Of rapidly increasing significance
are pipelines for the carriage of petroleum and natural gas, and air trans-
port for passenger travel. While inland waterways have lost their earlier
pre-eminence they are still significant for the movement of low-cost bulk
commodities and are likely to become of greater importance with the com-
pletion of the St. Lawrence Seaway described below. .
Natural as well as technological factors have had an important influ-
ence on the development of transport in the United States. During the
early period of the country's history, highways were the main arteries
of commerce and travel. Lack of public roads led to extensive construc-
tion and use of toll turnpikes by private companies, particularly between
1800 and 1820. Most of the early roads ran in a north to south direction,
in part at least because of the difficulties of traversing the Alleghanies.
One of the most notable exceptions was the famous Cumberland Road
which followed the valley of the Delaware River through the mountains.
By 1838 the Cumberland Road extended from Cumberland, Maryland to
Vandalia, Illinois. After it was opened to Wheeling in 1818, the Cumber-
land Road became a major thoroughfare between the east and the west.
Its economic significance is suggested by the fact that the time required
to travel from Baltimore to Wheeling was reduced from eight to three
21 United Nations, Statistical Yearbook, 1954, p. 289.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 587
days.22 In general, highway transportation was very expensive, so that it
was not economical to produce agricultural products or exploit mineral
resources any great distance from the market. Consequently, the rich
resources west of the Alleghanies were of limited economic value.
With the appearance of Robert Fulton's steamboat in 1807 inland water
transport gradually began to assume increasing importance. During the
second quarter of the nineteenth century the Ohio and the Mississippi
Rivers were the principal arteries of commerce in the Middle West. In
1840, New Orleans was the fourth largest port in the world.23 The era of
canal-building, ushered in by the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825,
gave a major impetus to inland water transport. The Erie played an im-
portant role in the opening of the West and in establishing the com-
mercial supremacy of New York. The Canal which extended from Ruffalo
to Albany over a distance of 364 miles provided a cheap all-water route
from the east to the west, diverting considerable traffic that formerly
went down the Mississippi to New Orleans. It gave New York a great
advantage over Baltimore and Philadelphia in trade with the west. The
financial success of the Erie Canal started a veritable orgy of canal-build-
ing with highly unfavorable financial consequences for a number of
states.
While the railroad era began in 1830, it was not until after the Civil
War that the railway succeeded the steamboat as the chief carrier of
domestic traffic. At the same time, with the completion of the first trans-
continental line in 1869, the shift in the main flow of traffic from north
and south to east and west that had begun with the construction of the
Erie Canal was completed. The railways maintained their supremacy un-
challenged until World War I. Since then heavy inroads into the railways'
commanding position have been made by motor transport, pipelines, and
most recently the airplane.
Table 18-4 below clearly indicates the rapid decline in the relative im-
portance of rail transport for the movement of freight traffic during the
past quarter-century, and the rapid rise in the importance of motor ve-
hicles and oil pipelines. While the volume of air freight in 1953 totalled
400 million ton miles, it was still less than one-tenth of one per cent of all
freight traffic. The importance of this traffic is greater than its magnitude
suggests, however, because of its speed and flexibility. The decline in rail
passenger traffic has been even more marked than for railway freight. By
1952 the railroads accounted for only 50 per cent of all passenger traffic
22 D. P. Locklen, Economics of Transportation, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 1947), p. 82.
23 Ibid., p. 72.
588 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
of common carriers as compared with 98 per cent in 1915, while the pro-
portion of bus and airplane transport had increased to 31 per cent and
18 per cent respectively. However, passenger transportation by private
automobiles of 500 billion passenger miles was roughly four times greater
than that of all common carriers. In addition to its great impact on the
transportation use pattern, the phenomenal growth in the ownership and
operation of private automobiles has had a significant influence on the
living habits of the population. The automobile has been a major factor
in the growing movement of city workers into the suburbs. It has contrib-
uted to the decentralization of industry and the decline of the small rural
town.
TABLE 18-4
Distribution of Intercity Freight Traffic
1926-1953 •
TRANSPORT AGENCY
PER CENT DISTRIRUTION
1926 1950 1953
Railroads
Great Lakes, rivers, and canals
Trucks
Oil Pipelines
Total:
77.1
58.7
51.7
15.7
16.2
16.9
2.8
12.4
17.4
4.4
12.7
14.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
* Data for 1926 and 1950 were taken from J. F. Dewhurst and associates, America's Needs and Re-
sources (New York, 1955), p. 263, and for 1953 from Interstate Commerce Commission, Monthly Com-
ment on Transportation Statistics, October 15, 1954.
The rail system of the United States is very unequally distributed. The
number of lines and the density of traffic is greatest in the industrial east
( see Fig. 18-2 ) . In 1950, states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois
had more than twenty miles of railway per square mile of territory; at the
other extreme Nevada and Arizona had less than two miles. Similar differ-
ences exist with respect to state highway systems. Unlike most countries
the United States rail system is privately-owned and operated.
Most of the inland waterway traffic moves on the Great Lakes and on
river systems like that of the Mississippi and canals such as the New York
Barge Canal. Great Lakes traffic consists chiefly of grain, iron ore, and
coal. A wide variety of cargo moves on the Mississippi including sugar,
cotton, and rice. While the relative importance of inland water transport
has been fairly stable for some time, the completion of the St. Lawrence
Seaway is likely to increase its role.
The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River provide an all-water route
from Duluth, Minnesota, to the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of more than
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 589
2,000 miles (cf. Fig. 6-11, p. 166). However, deep-draft ocean navigation
cannot now go beyond Montreal. The United States and the Canadian
Governments for many years have sought to develop the St. Lawrence-
Great Lakes route jointly so as to enable deep-draft ocean-going vessels
to reach the Great Lakes. Agreement finally was reached in 1954. When
the project is completed during 1958, ocean-going vessels of up to 20,000
tons will be able to sail into the heart of the American continent. The
resultant reduction in transportation costs and increased water traffic
should bring widespread benefits to the mid-west. Costly transshipments
of grain from the mid-west to foreign destinations will be eliminated. It is
estimated the cost of shipping wheat from Duluth to Montreal will be cut
by one-third.24 The steel industry, which is 70 per cent located on the
Great Lakes, will be able to bring in ore directly by sea from the rich
Labrador-Quebec mines instead of transshipping it by rail or to smaller
ships as at present. The Department of Commerce has estimated the Sea-
way will handle 35 million tons of ore per annum. The Seaway is expected
to bring about a big increase in general traffic between lake ports and for-
eign ports. It will be of great strategic significance in wartime since it will
reduce the open sea route from the United States to the United Kingdom
by 1,000 miles. It has been estimated that when the Seaway is completed
it will carry more tonnage than the Suez and Panama Canals combined.
Clearly the Seaway will not be an unmixed blessing. Eastern railways and
ports may be heavy losers.25
Brief mention should be made of coastwise and ocean-going shipping.
In 1953 the United States had 462 vessels aggregating 5 million dead-
weight tons actively engaged in coastwise shipping. Freight carried by
this fleet equalled about 13 per cent of that originated by the railroads.
The bulk of this traffic was petroleum and petroleum products and to a
much lesser extent coal and coke. The opening of the Panama Canal in
1914 greatly stimulated coastwise shipping between the east and west
coasts. The economies of an all-water route from the east coast to the west
coast has made it advantageous to move cargo from as far west as Chicago
to New York or Philadelphia for shipment to the Pacific Coast via the
Panama Canal. In 1953 the active United States flag fleet engaged in for-
eign trade numbered 629 vessels aggregating 7,390,000 deadweight tons.
American flag vessels in 1953 carried 39 per cent of the country's imports
and 29 per cent of its exports. The total United States' merchant marine
is more than double the active fleet. In 1953, some 1836 vessels with a
24 The Economist, August 28, 1954, p. 664.
25 See also pp. 165 ff.
590 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
deadweight tonnage of 18.4 million were in reserve. In 1952, the tonnage
of the United States merchant fleet, both active and inactive, was 40 per
cent of the world total.
FOREIGN TRADE
Although the United States is the world's largest trading nation, it is
much less dependent on foreign trade for its economic well-being than
any other major power except the U.S.S.R. This dependence is not only
small but is also declining. Since World War II the ratio of imports to
gross national product has been 3.3 per cent or less, as compared with
about 4.5 per cent after World War I. The corresponding ratio in the case
of exports is close to 4 per cent. These low ratios are in marked contrast to
those for the United Kingdom or Japan, for example, where foreign trade
is equal to 20 and 30 per cent respectively of the gross national product.
Important reasons for the small and declining place of foreign trade in
relation to total United States production is the richness of the country's
natural resources and the efficiency and diversity of its industry. These
resources have enabled the United States to feed its growing population
and to provide the raw materials for its rapidly expanding industry with-
out a corresponding increase in imports of primary materials. In addition,
United States industry can produce virtually all of the country's require-
ments of manufactures, and trade policies have tended to restrict the entry
of competing foreign imports. Various other factors have operated to in-
crease United States self-sufficiency, such as the development of syn-
thetics like rayon for natural silk, synthetic for natural rubber, more
efficient use of raw materials, and so on. Despite the future prospect of
a rapid growth of United States raw material imports, it is not expected
that total imports will rise as rapidly as total production.
The increasing self-sufficiency of the United States economy partly
explains the postwar dollar difficulties of the rest of the world. As de-
scribed in Chapter 16, foreign countries, particularly Western Europe,
became increasingly dependent on the United States for imports, particu-
larly of basic foodstuffs and raw materials. However, exports to the United
States and other dollar countries did not rise correspondingly. Hence the
large balance-of-payments deficits of the rest of the world with the United
States. During the period 1946 to 1953 these deficits aggregated $32.5 bil-
lion or more than one-fifth of the value of United States exports of goods
and services.26 As a part of its policy to help the economic recovery of
26 Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, Staff Papers (Washington, 1954),
p. 15,
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
591
the war-devastated world, and to build up the strength of its allies to
resist communism, the United States extended net foreign aid of $41 bil-
lion between 1946 and 1953 to cover the trade deficit.27 Since 1953, the
dollar problem has been reduced to manageable proportions, although
the dollar position of certain countries is still precarious. This explains the
continuing concern abroad about United States foreign economic policies,
particularly with respect to imports.
It should be recognized that foreign trade is more important to the
United States economy than the low ratio of this trade to total output
might suggest. As pointed out in the section on resources, the country is
heavily dependent on foreign sources for a number of important and in
some instances highly strategic raw materials. Foodstuffs like coffee,
cocoa, and sugar, which are considered important to the United States
standard of living, come wholly or in large part from abroad. In the case
of exports, a number of products, particularly agricultural commodities
and machinery, depend heavily on foreign markets (see Table 18-5
below).
TABLE 18-5
Exports of Selected Commodities as Percentage of U. S. Production °
agricultural commodities
(1949-51 average)
PER CENT
NON-AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES
(1951)
PER CENT
Rice
42.6
Cotton
39.0
Wheat
33.5
Tallow
33.3
Grain Sorghum
29.5
Soybeans
25.1
Tobacco
25.1
Lard
22.0
Rolling mill machinery and parts 34.9
Tractors 22.6
Sewing machines and parts 22.3
Textile machinery 21.6
Printing machinery and equipment 17.5
Oilfield machinery, tools and parts 17.3
Office appliances 16.3
Motor trucks and coaches 15.6
Agricultural machinery
(except tractors) 11.7
* Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, Staff Papers (Washington, 1954), p. 5.
As is typical of highly-industrialized countries the United States imports
chiefly crude and semi-manufactured products and exports mostly manu-
factures. In 1953, imports of crude materials, crude foodstuffs, and semi-
manufactures were 70 per cent of all imports. In the case of exports,
finished manufactures were 70 per cent of the total. Unlike most indus-
trialized countries, the United States also is an important exporter of bot1!
foodstuffs and crude materials. Exports of crude and manufactured food-
27 Ibid., p. 40.
592 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
stuffs and of crude materials were 9 per cent and 11 per cent respectively
of total exports in 1953.
In addition to accounting for the largest share of world trade the United
States is the world's leading creditor nation and exporter of capital. At the
end of 1952 United States private and governmental investments abroad
totaled $37.5 billion.28 By contrast, the United States was a debtor nation
before World War I. During the period from 1948 to 1952 net new capital
outflow, public and private, and reinvested earnings of United States-
owned subsidiaries, averaged over $2 billion per annum.
The postwar years have brought marked shifts in the geographical pat-
tern of United States trade. In 1953, 55 per cent of this country's imports
came from Canada and Latin America as compared with 32 per cent
prewar. Exports to Canada and Latin America increased to 38 per cent
of the total against 32 per cent prewar. Imports from Western Europe
declined from 24 per cent in 1937 to 20 per cent in 1953. Exports exclud-
ing military aid to the same areas fell from 27 to 17 per cent. Trade with
the rest of the world, chiefly the independent non-sterling countries in
Asia and Africa, also has fallen off substantially. The increased signifi-
cance of imports from Canada and Latin America reflects the growing
role of these areas as suppliers of crude materials and foodstuffs. At the
same time raw materials like tin, jute, and silk, supplied by Asian coun-
tries, declined in importance. The fall in European exports partly reflects
the reduced importance of United States imports of manufactures and
partly the displacement of such imports by Canada. The expansion of
United States exports to areas like Canada and Latin America has resulted
to an important extent from the displacement of former European sup-
pliers of these areas.
FUTURE ECONOMIC PROSPECTS
Projecting future economic growth trends is at best a hazardous under-
taking. Nonetheless it is a reasonable prediction, barring unforeseen dis-
asters such as a general war involving widespread physical destruction,
that the United States will maintain and probably increase its absolute
economic superiority for some time in the future. If this country's annual
rate of economic growth is no greater over the next two decades than the
average rate of the past century ( 3 per cent ) , total output by 1975 will be
more than double that of 1950, or roughly $570 billion. This figure could
well be on the low side, however, in view of present rapid technological
28 Ibid., p. 79.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 593
advances making for increased productivity, such as automation, and the
fact that prolonged depressions in the past kept the rate lower than it
otherwise would have been. While the United States economy is still not
depression-proof, it is generally believed that with present improved tech-
niques of control, business fluctuations will not be severe in the future.
The United States Joint Committee on the Economic Report has esti-
mated the potential rate of growth of this country's national output at
4 per cent per year over the next decade.29 The maintenance of this rate
until 1975 would produce a United States gross national product of $728
billion in 1950 prices. As mentioned in Chapter 15 the rate of growth of
the U.S.S.R. economy until the 1970's is expected to be higher than that
of the United States, possibly 4.5 to 5 per cent per annum. These rates
would give the U.S.S.R. a gross national product of $300 billion to $350
billion by 1975, as compared with roughly $100 billion in 1950. Thus while
the ratio of United States output to that of the U.S.S.R., will be less than
at present, the absolute superiority of the United Sates will be increased
whether its rate of growth is 3 per cent or 4 per cent per annum.
Canada
No description of the economic capabilities of the West would be com-
plete without at least a brief look at Canada. Though greatly overshad-
owed by the United States, Canada, with a population of only 16.5 million
in 1954, now ranks sixth among the industrial nations of the world. She
is also a leading exporter of industrial raw materials and foodstuffs. Dur-
ing the past decade or so Canada has been developing at a spectacular
rate. If present economic growth trends continue, Canada may well
emerge during the next generation as the fourth or fifth industrial power.
Canada's economic development has been paralleled by a correspond-
ing growth in her international status. Although a member of the British
Commonwealth of Nations, Canada is an independent and sovereign
nation and pursues her own vigorous foreign policy. Canadian troops
fought with United Nations forces in Korea. As a NATO country Canada,
like the United States, in addition to providing armed forces has made
sizeable contributions in the form of mutual aid to other member coun-
tries.
Common economic and strategic interests as well as close cultural ties
have made for increasing Canadian-United States dependence and co-
29 "Potential Economic Growth of the United States During the Next Decade,"
83rd Congress, 2nd session, Washington, 1954.
594 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
operation. Canada is both the best customer and chief supplier of the
United States. United States capital has been a major factor in Canada's
economic development. Canada occupies a highly strategic position from
the point of view of the security of the United States in today's era of
long-range bombers and atomic missiles, since most of the great circle
routes from the United States and Europe pass over Canada. Millions of
Canadians have crossed the border to become American citizens.
GEOGRAPHY AND PEOPLE
Canada is the second largest country in the world with a total area of
3.8 million square miles. It embraces all of the northern half of the North
American continent except Alaska, Greenland, and the French islands of
St. Pierre and St. Miquelon. However, cold climatic conditions limit the
habitable area of Canada to less than 10 per cent of the total as compared
with more than 50 per cent for the United States. With the incorporation
of Newfoundland in 1949, Canada now comprises ten provinces and the
Yukon and Northwest Territories.
The geography of Canada is similar to that of the United States in many
important respects. Western Canada, like Western United States, is char-
acterized by rugged mountains and plateaus. The interior plains of the Ca-
nadian prairie provinces are an extension of the Great Plains and lowlands
of the United States. In the east Canada has its mountainous and hilly Ap-
palachian region which includes all of the eastern provinces. The largest
physiographic division of Canada is the Laurentian shield, a vast V-
shaped area of 1.8 million square miles which extends from the interior
plains to the coast of Labrador. This region is marked by rugged slopes
of rocky hills broken by river valleys and is the source of most of Canada's
mineral wealth. Between the Appalachians and the Shield are the St.
Lawrence lowlands— a plain of low relief extending from Quebec City to
Lake Huron, a distance of 600 miles.30
Most major Canadian rivers, except the St. Lawrence, are of limited
utility for transportation since they flow away from the more settled re-
gions to the cold northern waters. Thus the Nelson-Saskatchewan flows
into the Hudson Bay and the Mackenzie-Athabaska flows into the Arctic.
However, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes afford an unequalled
inland navigation system, extending for a distance of 2,000 miles through
the most highly developed regions of Canada.
According to the 1951 Census, Canada had a population of just over
30 Stamp and Suggate, op. cit., pp. 155-158.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 595
14 million. The population is increasing at the rapid rate of more than
2 per cent per annum, chiefly as a result of natural increase, but partly
through immigration and amounted to 16.5 million in 1954. Immigration
has increased significantly since the war, mostly because of highly prosper-
ous economic conditions. United Nations population experts have esti-
mated that Canada's population should reach 20 million by 1980.
The two basic stocks of Canada's population are French and English
(cf. Fig. 11-2, p. 391). The French are primarily the descendants of the
original seventeenth and eighteenth century colonists. Of the 1951 popu-
lation of 14 million, 4.3 million were of French extraction and 6.7 million
British. Other Europeans number 2.5 million. The remaining population
consists mostly of Indians and a few Eskimos. The large French minority
has been a source of considerable social and policital friction throughout
Canada's history. Most Frenchmen still speak their mother tongue and
observe the customs and laws of their ancestors. "Not even 189 years of
British rule have changed them. The difference between a French and a
British Canadian is greater by far than between a British Canadian and an
American." 31
Population density (cf. Fig. 2-9, p. 48) is low, averaging 3.92 persons
per square mile in 1951. The cold and inhospitable Northwest and Yukon
territories which account for almost 40 per cent of the area of Canada had
a population density of only about 2 persons per 100 square miles while
the average density in the provinces was only 6.6 persons per square mile.
Climatic factors keep most of Canada's population in the south. Half of
Canada's population lives in a narrow band, 100 to 125 miles from the
Canadian-United States border, and 90 per cent live 200 to 225 miles from
the border. Two-thirds of the population live in the provinces of Ontario
and Quebec.
Until fairly recently the movement of population from east to west in
Canada closely paralleled that of the United States. Thus between 1871
and 1951 the proportion of Canada's total population living in the western
provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia in-
creased from less than 2 per cent to 26 per cent. This movement was
greatly stimulated by the completion of the transcontinental railway in
1885 which opened up the rich agricultural lands of the west. While the
population of British Columbia has continued to increase relative to the
rest of the country during the past decade, that of the prairie provinces
has been declining, reflecting the falling relative importance of agricul-
31 K. Munro, "Now Canada Comes of Age," New York Times Magazine, March
30, 1952; see also p. 390.
596 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ture. In recent years there has been a tendency for the population to move
in a more northerly direction. The chief stimulus for this movement has
not been opportunities in agriculture, like the movement to the west, but
rather the growth of mining activity. The quest for and exploitation of
mineral deposits has created dozens of new towns virtually in the wilder-
ness. One example is the town of Kitimat, a hundred miles south of the
Alaskan border, which is the site of the largest aluminum expansion proj-
ect in the Free World. Four years ago Kitimat was an Indian fishing vil-
lage. Today it has a population of 5,000 and by 1959, when the project is
completed, it is expected to have 20,000. 32 Another settlement has mush-
roomed at the Burnt Creek iron ore mine project on the Quebec-Labrador
boundary, 360 miles north of Seven Islands on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Or again, the discovery of vast uranium deposits at Blind River in the On-
tario wilderness is changing and has changed a slumbering lumber town of
3,000 people into a thriving community of 15,000 persons in a few years.
While the movement northward has been hampered by the lack of rail
and highway transport, it has proceeded much more rapidly than other-
wise would have been possible as a result of the availability of air trans-
port. Thus mining operations began at Burnt Creek with equipment flown
in by air one year before the railroad from Seven Islands was completed.
RESOURCES
Canada's rapid economic growth of recent years has been based to a
very important degree on the exploitation of the country's rich natural
resources (cf. Fig. 18-2). Canada is still in the stage of economic develop-
ment where the exploitation of its natural resources can significantly affect
the entire economy. Thus the iron ore deposits of Ungava and northern
Quebec "are directly responsible for the railways now being constructed
from the St. Lawrence and the 'opening up' of new lands. The past three
years have seen a significant change in the whole of Canada's economy
through the Alberta oil strikes." 33 Since Canada's natural resources are
still relatively undeveloped, their exploitation is likely to have an impor-
tant influence on the pattern of economic growth for some years to come.
Canada's frontier is still an expanding one and probably her greatest need
is more people. Some authorities have estimated Canada could support a
population of 100 million.34
Agriculture. Though less well-endowed than the United States with
32 L. D. Stamp, Our Undeveloped World (London, 1953), p. 122.
33 Ibid., p. 122.
34 Stamp and Suggate, op. cit., p. 184.
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 597
land suitable for agriculture, despite its greater area, Canada's agricul-
tural land base is nonetheless more than adequate in relation to its popu-
lation. United Nations estimates place Canada's arable land area at 93
million acres ( 1950 ) , or more than 6 acres per capita. Unoccupied but
potentially productive agricultural land exceeds 170 million acres. Like
the United States, Canada should experience no difficulty for the foresee-
able future in feeding its growing population and at the same time pro-
viding a sizeable volume of exports.
Forest. Canada's forest resources are among the richest in the world.
They are the basis of Canada's vast timber and pulp and paper industry
which for some time has exceeded all other industries in importance.
Canada produces more than one-half the world's newsprint and is a major
producer and exporter of wood pulp and timber. The country's total lum-
ber stand on accessible and inaccessible land is about two-thirds that of
the United States. However, roughly 45 per cent of this stand is at present
inaccessible, against 10 per cent for the United States.35 The trees are
predominantly softwood, and these enjoy the widest general demand.
Minerals. Canada possesses an abundance of mineral and fuel re-
sources. Although production is still small, Canada's reserves of high-
grade iron ore are among the largest in the world. Copper, nickel, lead,
zinc, uranium, and asbestos reserves are more than adequate to cover
future needs for some years to come and are exploited primarily for
export. Like the United States, Canada's principal mineral deficiencies
are in the ferro-alloys— chromium, manganese, tin, tungsten, and molyb-
denum.
Canada has large reserves of high-grade bituminous coal suitable for
coking. However, these reserves are located mainly in the maritime and
prairie provinces and in British Columbia, and not in the industrialized
provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Transportation savings make it more
economical for these two provinces to buy coal from nearby United States
sources, which explains why Canada is a large net importer of coal.
Since 1947, large reserves of oil and natural gas have been discovered
in western Canada. Proved reserves now amount to less than one per cent
of the Free World total. However, expert geologists estimate potential
reserves may amount to as much as 50 billion barrels or more than 10 per
cent of the present reserves of the Free World.36 While Canada now
imports about half of its petroleum requirements, it should achieve sta-
35 The President's Materials Policy Commission, op. cit., Vol. 5, p. 53.
36 H. M. H. A. Van Der Valk, The Economic Future of Canada (New York, 1954),
p. 54.
598 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
tistical self-sufficiency in a few years. Locational factors, however, will
make it economical for Canada to continue to import some petroleum. At
present many gas wells have been closed in Canada for lack of markets,
but in time the construction of pipelines to major consuming areas will
help to overcome this problem.
Large areas of Canada enjoy an abundance of cheap hydro-electric
power. Canada ranks after the United States in installed hydro-electric
capacity. Low-cost hydro-electric power has been an important factor in
Canada's industrial development. It has compensated to an important
extent for the lack of coal in industrialized Ontario and Quebec. It has
been the basis for the development of Canada's huge aluminum as well
as other electro-metallurgical industries, and has been extremely impor-
tant to the growth of the pulp and paper industry which is a large user
of electric power. So far only about one-quarter of Canada's hydro-
electric resources have been developed. Large untapped sources are still
available for exploitation in British Columbia, Manitoba, Northern On-
tario, Quebec, and Labrador.
GENERAL ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS
As mentioned previously production in Canada has been growing at a
rapid rate, almost doubling between 1939 and 1951. Average per capita
gross national product in 1953 was roughly $1,600 or more than twice the
average of Free Europe. Though less industrialized than the United
States, Canada's industry greatly exceeds agriculture in importance. In
1952 manufactures accounted for 29 per cent of the net domestic product
as against 14.2 per cent for agriculture.
As in any rapidly developing country agriculture has been declining in
relative importance for some time. At the beginning of the century 40 per
cent of Canada's labor force was engaged in agriculture and by 1951 the
percentage had declined to 19 per cent. The relative contribution of agri-
culture to total output has also been falling but to a lesser extent. The
prairie provinces, like the great plains of the United States, are Canada's
principal agricultural region. Their main crop is wheat, although the trend
is toward greater diversification. Canada produces enough wheat to feed
100 million people. The chief crops in the maritime provinces are potatoes
and apples, while in Ontario and Quebec mixed farming predominates.
Like the United States, Canada has had an agricultural surplus problem
for some years.
Employment in industry outnumbers employment in agriculture two
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 599
to one. The principal industries are pulp and paper, food processing, and
non-ferrous smelting and refining respectively. Production of more com-
plex industrial products such as machinery and equipment tends to be
limited by the small size of the Canadian market. Ontario and Quebec
account for roughly 80 per cent of all manufactures. The industrial pre-
dominance of these two eastern provinces owes much to the availability
of cheap hydro-electric power, their proximity to the high-quality coal
of the eastern Appalachian region of the United States, and the superb
inland water transport system of the St. Lawrence River and the Great
Lakes. American investors have a large stake in Canadian industry. It has
been estimated that United States-controlled industrial enterprises rep-
resent about one-third of the total investment in Canadian industry.37
Total United States investments in Canada amounted to $8 billion in 1952.
Canada's prosperity is heavily dependent on foreign trade. Approxi-
mately one-quarter to one-fifth of the country's gross national product
derives from exports. Moreover exports are primarily processed raw ma-
terials like foodstuffs, wood products, pulp and paper, and metals, and
are somewhat lacking in diversification. As a result Canada is relatively
vulnerable to external economic developments though by no means to the
same degree as the typical underdeveloped country. Finished manufac-
tures, chiefly machinery and equipment, are Canada's principal imports.
Since World War II the United States has replaced the United Kingdom
as Canada's principal trading partner. In 1953, some 59 per cent of
Canada's exports went to the United States and 74 per cent of its imports
came from the same source.
OUTLOOK
Canada's future economic prospects are considered to be highly favor-
able. Its population and economic growth rates are among the most rapid
in the Free World, and it has an abundance of natural resources. One
authority in a recent study estimated that Canada might have a gross
national product of $80 billion in 1952 prices by 1980. 3S This estimate may
well be on the high side. Nonetheless there is good reason to believe
Canada will continue to develop more rapidly than most other industrial-
ized nations and that it will emerge before the end of the century as one
of the world's leading economic powers. In this process it has been
prophesied by the Governor of the Bank of Canada that "Canada would
37 Ibid., p. 124.
38 Ibid.
600 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
be very much less dependent on its export trades, much more highly de-
veloped in its secondary and tertiary industries, that it would have repatri-
ated much of the ownership of basic industries now held in the United
States, and that the process of the next twenty years would be increasing
'Canadianization' rather than 'Continentalization.'" 39
39 The Economist, May 28, 1955, p. 746.
CHAPTER
19
The Challenge or the
Underdeveloped Areas
GENERAL ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS
The term underdeveloped has a number of connotations. Here the term
is used to describe countries that are unable to provide what they consider
to be acceptable levels of living for the mass of their populations. If we
arbitrarily take a figure of $300 per capita as a minimum acceptable annual
income, we find that countries which fall into the underdeveloped category
account for most of the free world's population and land area. In 1953,
with a population in excess of one billion, the underdeveloped countries
had 70 per cent of the peoples of the non-Communist world. Their land
area is also roughly 70 per cent of the total. They are to be found in all
hemispheres and on every continent, but primarily in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America ( cf. Fig. 14-3, p. 468 ) .
As might be expected, given the wide differences in their natural and
cultural environments, the underdeveloped areas have extremely diverse
economies. Despite these diversities, the underdeveloped areas share
enough common characteristics to permit meaningful generalization about
their economies, which are more directly affected by geographical factors
than are those of the more highly developed areas, especially the indus-
trialized and urbanized countries. To understand the basic features of
their economic systems, especially those rooted in the relationships of
man to his natural environment, is a prerequisite for the understanding
of the economic and political geography of the underdeveloped countries.
601
602 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
The greater the degree of their underdevelopment, the greater is the in-
terrelationship of economic and political factors in their human geog-
raphy.
The outstanding characteristic that the underdeveloped countries have
in common is of course their poverty. Most of the population live at, or
close to, bare subsistence levels. Average per capita incomes amounted to
roughly $70 in 1949 compared with $690 for the more developed regions
and $1,450 for the United States.1 Inequality in the distribution of income
between underdeveloped and developed countries is no less marked than
that between individuals within a single country. Of an estimated national
income among Free World countries of $460 billion in 1949, the devel-
oped countries accounted for $350 billion or roughly 75 per cent. In other
words, the developed countries with 30 per cent of the population of the
non-Communist world accounted for more than three-quarters of the
total output of goods and services.
Despite the efforts of the underdeveloped countries to accelerate their
economic growth, the gap between incomes in the underdeveloped and
the developed countries continues to increase. According to Professor
Simon Kuznets, this process has been going on for more than a century.2
The indications are this gap will continue to widen for the indefinite
future. The reasons are partly the low economic growth rates in many
underdeveloped areas but primarily the fact that these rates apply to a
much lower absolute base than in the case of the industrialized areas.
Low living standards are evidenced by inadequate diets, primitive
housing, poor health, and low levels of education. Most of the inhabitants
of the underdeveloped areas have a daily per capita food supply of less
than 2,200 calories per day, or 20 per cent below what is considered the
minimum for health and efficiency. This compares with 3,000 calories or
more for the industrialized countries. These calorie differences do not take
into account qualitative differences: for example, consumption of animal
proteins in the underdeveloped areas is one-fourth of that in developed
countries. Endemic and other diseases are common and undermine seri-
ously the vitality of the people. In many of these countries, the geography
of diseases is an integral part of their economic and political geography:
wherever there is the tsetse fly, sleeping sickness may bar social and politi-
cal development. Almost every African native is infested with some type
1 United Nations, Per Capita Incomes of Seventy Countries— 1949 (New York,
October, 1950).
2 "Underdeveloped Countries and the Pre-Industrial Phase In the Advanced Coun-
tries: An Attempt at Comparison," delivered before the United Nations Population
Conference in Rome, September, 1954.
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 603
of intestinal worm, and over large areas a great proportion of the people
suffer from malaria, plague, yaws, and syphilis." However considerable
progress has been made in coping with these diseases during the past 15
years in East and Central Africa. Birth and mortality rates are high and
life expectancy is low. In the underdeveloped areas as a whole, ex-
pectation of life at birth is less than 35 years as against 60 years in the
developed regions. Approximately two-thirds of the male population are
illiterate, compared with 5 per cent in developed countries. The worker
force is lacking in specialized training and skills. Although it is impossible
to measure in reasonably accurate statistical terms the degree of literacy
and technical skills in underdeveloped areas, it must be realized that these
factors are of considerable significance in evaluating the usefulness, actual
and potential, of the resources of an area to man and his political organi-
zations.4 The differentiation in literacy and skills itself defies analysis, at
least in many of the areas with which we are concerned (cf. Fig. 13-1, 2,
pp. 442, 444). These difficulties, however, only underline the need for
exploration of the intangible factors by trying to equate the human and
the natural resources of such an area within political boundaries.
Agriculture is the principal economic activity. More than 60 per cent
of the people in the underdeveloped areas depend on agriculture for a
livelihood compared with 30 per cent or less in industrialized countries
( see Table 19-1 ) . Thus with respect to the distribution of the labor force,
the underdeveloped countries stand where the developed countries stood
a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago. Many rural areas are on the
bare fringe of the money economy. Farmers produce primarily for their
own use and exchanges frequently involve barter.
Land is scarce relative to population in many underdeveloped areas. As
a consequence, average farm holdings are generally very small, usually
less than what is considered the minimum for efficient operation. Man}'
areas have semi-feudal agricultural systems characterized by large es-
tates. Large estates are widespread in the Caribbean, throughout South
America, in South East Asia, in Ceylon, and in parts of East Africa.5
Tenancy commonly associated with large estates is often characterized by
high rents and insecurity of tenure. In certain areas, notably Africa south
of the Sahara, communal tenure is the most common form of land owner-
ship.
The underdeveloped countries account for less than 10 per cent of the
3 "Annual Medical Report for Kenya (1928)," as quoted in W. Macmillan, Africa
Emergent (London, 1938), pp. 30-37.
4 See pp. 499-501.
5 United Nations, Land Reform (New York, 1951), p. 18.
604 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Free World's industrial output. Industry is confined largely to the proces-
sing of raw materials for export and the manufacture of consumers goods
for domestic consumption. In many areas industry is controlled by foreign
investors and its impact on the total economy is peripheral. Handicrafts
still account for a considerable share of the manufacturing output in many
areas. Only a few countries have any heavy industry, and crude steel pro-
duction is less than 3 per cent of the Free World total.
TABLE 19-1
Proportion of World Population in Agriculture, 1949 *
AREA
TOTAL
POPULATION
( MILLIONS )
AGRICULTURAL
POPULATION
( MILLIONS )
AGRICULTURAL
POPULATION AS
PERCENTAGE
OF TOTAL
North America a
163
33
20
Europe
391
129
33
Oceania
12
4
33
South America
107
64
60
Central America b
50
33
67
Asia
1,255
878
70
Africa
198
146
74
WORLD TOTAL
2,176
1,287
59
a United States and Canada.
b Includes Mexico.
* United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, Yearbook of Food and Agriculture, 1950, p. 16.
Productivity per worker in agriculture and industry is low. Yields per
person in agriculture in 1947-48 were well below the world average and
far less than in the United States or in Western Europe ( see Table 19-2 ) .
TABLE 19-2
Productivity of Agricultural Population by Continents, 1947-48 *
CONTINENT
yields per person
in agriculture
(metric tons)
World Average
North and Central America
South America
Europe
Oceania
Asia
Africa
0.42
2.57
0.48
0.88
2.38
0.22
0.77
* Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Monthly Bulletin of Food and Agricultural
Statistics, Vol. 2, No. 9 (September, 1949).
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 605
Various factors account for this low productivity, including underem-
ployment of labor, lack of equipment, backward technology, limited use
of fertilizers, use of inferior land, and unfavorable climate. The limited
use of mechanical energy is indicated by the fact that consumption of
commercial sources of energy in underdeveloped areas is one-sixteenth
or less that in the United States. Underemployment of labor is particularly
significant in the densely populated countries of Asia where lack of alter-
native opportunities leads to overcrowding of farms. The following data
on income of workers in manufacturing and handicrafts for selected coun-
tries in 1948 indicates that productivity per industrial worker in under-
developed countries, compared with developed countries, is even less
favorable than in agriculture.6
World
$ 910
United States
4110
Canada
3000
United Kingdom
1450
Middle America
720
South America
520
Turkey
400
Africa
265
India
200
Communications and transportation facilities are poorly developed. For
example, in 1951, the highly developed countries, the United States and
Canada had over 300 telephone instruments in use per 1000 population as
against 2 instruments per 1000 in the underdeveloped countries. Most
underdeveloped areas are inadequately serviced by any form of transpor-
tation. Whereas the United States and Canada moved about 6,000 ton
miles of freight per capita per annum in 1951, the underdeveloped coun-
tries generally carried less than 130 tons per capita. The number of motor
vehicles in use in the underdeveloped areas in relation to population was
less than 3 per cent of that in the developed countries.7
Two or three primary products generally account for the bulk of all
exports. Export earnings are extremely volatile because of wide cyclical
swings in the world market demand for such products. Thus the econo-
mies of the underdeveloped countries are highly vulnerable to external
market forces over which they have relatively little control. A United
Nations' study showed average annual fluctuations of 35 per cent in pro-
6 W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky, World Population and Production Trends and Outlook
(New York, 1953), p. 1013.
7 United Nations, Statistical Yearbook, 1954.
606 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
ceeds from exports of a number of important primary products during the
first half of the twentieth century.8
With the notable exception of Latin America, the rate of economic
growth in many underdeveloped areas in recent decades has barely kept
pace with the increase in population. As a result, per capita real incomes
have remained almost stationary at a time when they have been rising
rapidly in the industrialized countries of the West.
Many serious obstacles stand in the way of the efforts of the under-
developed countries to speed up their rate of economic development. Low
incomes leave only a relatively small margin for savings and investment.
The rate of capital formation in most underdeveloped areas is just about
adequate to keep up with the population growth, hence any significant
increase in the rate of domestic capital formation would require a reduc-
tion of existing low living standards. Not many governments of under-
developed areas have the requisite administrative skills to divert more
production from consumption into investment, and might well be unwill-
ing to assume the attendant political risks.
Lack of domestic savings can of course be compensated by infusions of
capital from abroad. The amount required to induce a satisfactory rate of
economic growth in the underdeveloped areas would be extremely large.
A group of experts appointed by the Secretary-General of the United
Nations estimated that capital imports of more than $10 billion per year
would be required to raise per capita incomes in the underdeveloped
areas by 2 per cent per annum.9 This compares with the current flow of
not much more than $1 billion per annum.
Lack of capital is by no means the only obstacle to economic progress.
In many areas economic development will require fundamental changes
in the social and economic structure of society and massive efforts to raise
levels of education. Many parts of Africa, for example, are only just
emerging from tribal forms of society where land is held in common and
the experimental or scientific attitude is virtually unknown. Other soci-
eties in parts of the Middle East and Latin America are still semi-feudal
in their essential characteristics. Wealth and power are associated with
the ownership of land rather than success in industry and trade. Absentee
ownership and farm tenancy are widespread, thereby reducing incentives
to improve existing inefficient farming methods. Much wealth is wasted in
conspicuous consumption. Moreover, many members of the ruling classes
s Relation of Fluctuations in the Prices of Primary Commodities to the Ability of
the Under-Developed Countries to Obtain Foreign Exchange (July 5, 1951).
9 United Nations, Measures for the Economic Development of Under-Developed
Countries (New York, May, 1951).
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 607
are resistant to economic progress because of the threat that it poses to
their power and prestige.
Governments are frequently inefficient and corrupt, and political in-
stability and civil disorder may be endemic. As a result, the atmosphere of
confidence about the future which is essential to sustained economic prog-
ress is often lacking.
Many underdeveloped areas lack an entrepreneurial class capable and
willing to exploit the advances of modern technology. Investors tend to
favor commercial ventures offering high and quick returns. Consequently,
the development of many of the basic services required for economic
growth, such as power, transport, and communications, is generally in-
adequate.
Demographic factors (cf. Fig. 9-2, p. 296) pose serious obstacles to
economic development. Most of today's highly developed countries had
low rates of population increase during their pre-industrial periods. Rapid
population growth came after they began to develop. By contrast, a num-
ber of underdeveloped countries— the Philippines, Thailand, Malaya, Cey-
lon, Bolivia— have rates of population increase double those of the de-
veloped countries at a comparable stage of development. This imposes a
heavy investment burden on the limited savings of these countries to sup-
port the increments to their populations. Certain areas, notably South
Asia, face both overpopulation and the prospect of a rapid rise in the rate
of population growth. India's population, for example, probably exceeds
the optimum relative to its resources. Increments to the labor force, there-
fore, mean lower returns per worker because of the necessity of having to
exploit progressively inferior resources. Inferior resources can be offset by
improved technology, but this requires increased amounts of capital per
worker and thereby raises the cost of economic development.
Better public health measures are expected to bring about a substantial
lowering of death rates in the years immediately ahead without a corre-
sponding decline in birth rates. As a result, India's annual rate of popula-
tion increase for example might rise to about 2 per cent in the next decade
or so as compared with about 1.25 per cent each year since the war. This
will mean a yearly addition to the population of about 8 million persons.
Where population is rising at the rate of one per cent annually it has been
estimated that a country must have real savings equal to 4 per cent of the
national income to maintain per capita incomes. With a 2 per cent in-
crease in population, the rate of savings would have to reach 8 per cent
per year. Thus some overpopulated countries may well face the problem
of having to run faster simply to stand still. Moreover, if the experience of
808 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
industrialized countries is any guide, it will take some decades before
declining birth rates significantly reduce population growth. Unless the
overpopulated countries are able to accelerate this planned reduction,
they may face a serious population explosion.
Even the above brief and incomplete discussion indicates that the un-
derdeveloped countries face many hurdles in their efforts to industrialize.
Many of these obstacles were surmounted only gradually by the western
industrialized countries. Whether the process can be telescoped rapidly
enough to satisfy the aspirations of the underdeveloped areas still remains
to be seen. In any case, the achievement of economic progress "will make
enormous demands on intelligence in planning, honesty and ability in
execution, and on discipline within the community." 10
THE CHALLENGE OF ECONOMIC BACKWARDNESS
11
Economic backwardness and mass poverty in many regions of the
world and among large numbers of people are not recent phenomena.
Wide differences in living standards between the industrialized countries
of the West and the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin
America have existed for a century or more. Up until the last decade or
so, this situation had no significant international political implications.
The underdeveloped areas played an important but largely passive role
in the struggles of the great powers to acquire territory. They were valued
largely as sources of food and raw materials to meet the growing needs of
the industrial states and as markets for finished manufactures. The indus-
trialized countries showed a minimum concern for the welfare of the
underdeveloped areas. Although the latter became increasingly restive
and resentful of their role as "hewers of wood and drawers of water,"
they were for the most part too weak economically and politically to do
much about it.
Particularly since the end of World War II, the underdeveloped coun-
tries have moved from the periphery to the center of the world political
arena. Two factors largely account for this. On the one hand, the political
and economic control of the Western powers over the less developed
areas has declined sharply, partly because of the weakness of Western
Europe and partly because of the growing strength of the movement for
national self-determination and social justice in the backward countries.
As a result, we have witnessed since 1947 the voluntary withdrawal of the
10 Ibid., p. 89.
11 For a fuller treatment of this subject see E. Staley, The Future of Underdeveloped
Countries (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1954).
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 609
British from India, Burma, Ceylon, and Pakistan. We have seen the forced
retirement of the Netherlands from Indonesia and France's surrender of a
part of Indochina and her declaration of the independence of Morocco
and Tunisia. Britain and France face growing political turmoil and unrest
in certain of their African dependencies. There has been a progressive
weakening of the political and economic influence of the major industrial
powers in the Middle East and to a much lesser extent in Latin America.
On the other hand, we have had the breakdown of the traditional balance-
of -power system in international relations and the polarization of political
power around the two superstates, the United States and the U.S.S.R. After
a brief period of co-operation during and immediately following World
War II, relations between the United States and Russia rapidly deterio-
rated. By 1948 the threat of Communist expansion and Russian ambitions
for world supremacy became increasingly clear.
Soviet strategy appears to be gradually to isolate the United States by
cutting off country after country from the Free World, bringing each into
the Communist camp. While the Communists have been willing to resort
to naked aggression on a limited scale to achieve their aims, as they did
in North Korea and Indochina, their favored weapon has been internal
subversion and infiltration. Mass propaganda, false promises, threats, and
trained revolutionaries are widely used by the Communists to attract ad-
herents to the Soviet fold. Economic and political unrest are exploited
wherever they exist. The Russians made strenuous efforts to undermine
Western Europe after the war by capitalizing on the economic stagnation,
social unrest, and disillusionment which affected the entire area. These
attempts were frustrated in large measure by the success of the United
States'-sponsored European Economic Recovery Program. Billions of dol-
lars of United States aid were effective in helping to rehabilitate war-
devastated Western Europe and in removing the principal causes of
economic and social discontent.
More recently the threat of Communist penetration has taken a new
course. Thwarted in the more highly developed industrialized countries
of the West, the Communists now appear to be directing their main attack
against the underdeveloped areas. Their efforts already have succeeded
in bringing into the Soviet orbit the East European satellites and main-
land China with a combined population in excess of 700 million. The
menace of Soviet expansion in the underdeveloped areas probably repre-
sents a much more serious challenge to the Free World than Communist
penetration of Western Europe. Political and economic conditions in
many of the underdeveloped countries are ideal for Soviet exploitation.
610 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
The governments of most of these countries are weak and inexperienced.
Poverty and mass discontent are widespread. Most backward areas have
had a long heritage of political and economic domination by the Western
industrialized powers. Consequently they are extremely suspicious if not
hostile toward the West. Soviet propaganda plays on these suspicions
in order to discredit the West and to drive a wedge between the independ-
ent underdeveloped areas and the Free World. The postwar years have
brought a rising tide of expectations among backward peoples for eco-
nomic betterment. Millions in the underdeveloped areas have become
aware of their depressed economic status and are no longer willing to sit
back idly and do nothing about it. They are determined to try to achieve
higher living standards. This ferment among the peoples of the underde-
veloped areas has been graphically described by Eugene Black, Presi-
dent of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as
follows: 12
Perhaps the most powerful single force shaping the course of history in our
time is the awakening consciousness of the underprivileged masses of the people
that the conditions of poverty, ill-health and ignorance in which they live are
not preordained and their deep conviction that they have a right to the oppor-
tunity to earn a better living for themselves and a better future for their
children.
The awakening of the backward areas was dramatically demonstrated
by the convening of the Bandung Conference of Asian and African States
in April, 1955 (cf. Fig. 8-21, p. 288). The final communique of the confer-
ence placed major emphasis on the urgency of promoting economic de-
velopment in the Asian-African regions.
The desire of the underdeveloped countries for economic progress is
of course motivated by other considerations in addition to the wish to
improve living conditions. Important also is their concern about security
and national prestige. Like Japan and Turkey before them, the govern-
ments of many underdeveloped countries, particularly in the newly inde-
pendent ones, recognize that political independence has limited signifi-
cance if they are too weak militarily to prevent foreign interference in
their domestic affairs or to defend themselves against external aggression.
Economic progress is viewed as an essential step in the development of
military strength. Countries like India which aspire to leadership among
Asiatic peoples realize this will require the building-up of their economic
and military strength.
12 Summary Proceedings, Fifth Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors, Wash-
ington, D. C, November 30, 1950.
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 611
Although to some extent an irrational consideration, the prestige factor
also is significant as a motive for economic progress among underdevel-
oped countries. Most backward areas are extremely sensitive about their
inferior economic status. They view economic progress and in particular
industrialization as essential if they are to gain acceptance and respect
in the community of nations. The preoccupation of the underdeveloped
countries with problems of economic growth is strongly reflected in the
proceedings and discussions within the United Nations. It has led to the
establishment under United Nations auspices of special study groups to
examine the economic problems of regional groupings of countries such
as the Economic Commission for Latin America, and the Economic Com-
mission for Asia and the Far East. Most underdeveloped countries have
in recent years prepared detailed plans to speed their economic growth
and have established special government agencies to implement these
plans. Some of these plans are soundly conceived, others are highly vision-
ary. In many cases, however, their fulfillment is very uncertain because
of financial limitations as well as the many other serious impediments to
economic growth which were described elsewhere.
Economic backwardness is only one of a number of issues which the
Communists seek to exploit in the underdeveloped areas. Other sources
of discontent subject to Communist manipulation include peasant resent-
ment against the wealthy estate owners, Soviet claims of Western racial
intolerance, and the anti-imperialist theme. Thus while economic progress
in underdeveloped countries is likely to reduce the danger of Communist
penetration, it by no means eliminates the risk.
Lack of economic progress can be expected to increase discontent
among the masses who though politically inarticulate expect better
things. This discontent undoubtedly will be exploited by Communist
agents and their supporters in an effort to undermine existing govern-
ments which are at least neutral in the East- West struggle if not allied
with the democratic West. Many governments of underdeveloped coun-
tries have been greatly impressed by the rapid economic progress
achieved in the U.S.S.R. and its satellites. If their present efforts to de-
velop fail, they may be tempted to follow the Communist solution. "Under
total dictatorship, the accumulation of capital is straightforward for, even
if standards are low, saving can be enforced by starving the marginal
people. Russian 'kulaks' yesterday, Chinese peasants today, have been
taught to pay with their lives for the program of industrialization. . . . But
modernization is achieved. The methods are there. This fact constitutes
perhaps the chief attraction of Communism to backward peoples every-
612 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
where." 13 This is why the economic backwardness of the underdeveloped
areas now presents such a grave challenge to the Free World. The threat
of Communist penetration and even takeover is of course not equally
great in all underdeveloped areas. Most vulnerable would appear to be
the countries of Asia on the fringes of the Communist bloc. Though Com-
munists are active in Africa and Latin America, their efforts in these
regions pose less of a problem for the West. Nonetheless these regions
do show considerable political and social instability in part at least
because of unsatisfactory economic conditions. Communist-inspired or
not, this growing unrest in the underdeveloped areas is a threat to the
security of the Free World.
THE INTERESTS OF THE FREE WORLD IN THE
UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS
Strategic. It is of great importance for the security and economic wel-
fare of the Free World that the presently uncommitted underdeveloped
areas do not fall into the Soviet camp. Many underdeveloped areas oc-
cupy highly strategic geographical positions across lines of communication
important to the Free World both in peace and in war. The Suez Canal
in the Middle East, which links the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian
Ocean, is a case in point. Underdeveloped areas provide bases which are
essential links in the West's air offensive and defensive systems. They are
significant as assembly areas and supply bases for troops and materiel in
time of war and as fueling stations for naval and cargo vessels. Control
of these areas by unfriendly powers would greatly weaken the defensive
and offensive military capabilities of the West.
The underdeveloped areas are a vast source of manpower which if
effectively mobilized could greatly increase the military capabilities of
the Communist bloc. Such areas now outside the Soviet orbit have a
population of over one billion persons. Of this number over 700 million
live on the periphery of the Communist sphere in the Middle East and in
South and Southeast Asia. These are the regions now most vulnerable to
Communist subversion. If they were to go Communist, the population of
the Soviet bloc would be almost doubled, thus giving the bloc an over-
whelming superiority over the West in manpower.
Sheer numbers alone obviously do not make for economic and military
13 B. Ward, "One Answer to the Challenge of Africa," New York Times Magazine,
October 31, 1944.
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 613
power. If they did, many underdeveloped countries would be first-rate
powers. The quality and leadership of the population is more important
than numbers. The populations of the underdeveloped areas are deficient
in health, literacy, and in technical skills. They frequently lack strong
and effective leadership. However, the recent experiences of the United
Nations forces in Korea, and of the French in Indochina demonstrate that
Communist leaders can mobilize these peoples into effective fighting
forces within the brief period of a few years. Even in their present stage
of economic development the underdeveloped countries, particularly in
Asia, thus have major military potentialities.
Economic. The United States and the other industrialized countries of
the Free World are heavily dependent on the underdeveloped areas for
raw materials and this dependence is expected to increase rapidly. Ac-
cording to the President's Materials Policy Commission, the United States
drew on foreign sources for 9 per cent of its raw material needs in 1950.
The corresponding figure for other Free World industrialized countries
is considerably higher. Most of these raw materials came from the under-
developed areas. By 1975, the President's Commission estimates that im-
ported raw materials will represent from 15 to 25 per cent of United
States' requirements and a much higher proportion of Japan's and West-
ern Europe's. Many of these raw material imports are items of consider-
able strategic importance. According to the International Development
Advisory Board, "Of all of the imported items which are of sufficient
military importance to be included in our stockpiles, 73 per cent are
drawn from these areas [underdeveloped]." 14 The Board concluded that
"The loss of any of these materials through aggression, subversion or so-
cial collapse, would be the equivalent of a grave military set-back." 15
The underdeveloped areas are the major trading partners of the indus-
trialized countries of the West. In the years 1948 to 1950, approximately
half of the foreign trade of the United States was with the underdeveloped
regions. For Western European countries, the percentage was almost 70
per cent in 1950. 16 This trade, by promoting international economic spe-
cialization and division of labor, has contributed materially to raising
living standards in both the industrialized and the underdeveloped coun-
tries. It is essential for the economic viability of countries like Japan and
the United Kingdom, which are particularly dependent on foreign trade.
The industrialized countries have other important economic interests
14 Partners in Progress, a Report to the President by the International Development
Advisory Board, March, 1951, p. 5.
15 Ibid., p. 46.
16 Ibid., pp. 6-7.
614 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
in the underdeveloped countries. Among these are very substantial invest-
ments. The return on these investments finances a large proportion of the
traditional import deficits of countries like the United Kingdom or the
Netherlands. The underdeveloped areas are an important source of earn-
ings for services like shipping, insurance, and banking. They earn scarce
dollars for European affiliates and provide many commodities which
otherwise would have to be purchased for dollars. They provide all sorts
of special and valuable economic advantages to individual Western coun-
tries such as tariff preferences and monopoly rights to exploit mineral
resources.
Communist expansion in underdeveloped countries typically has resulted
in a progressive decline in the penetrated area's economic relations with the
West. Foreign investments are expropriated without compensation to the
rightful owners. Thus the Chinese Communists took over an estimated
billion dollars in properties belonging to United Kingdom nationals.
Trade with the Free World contracts sharply.17 In 1951, the volume of
Western Europe's trade with the European satellites, including East Ger-
many, was only about 20 per cent of prewar. Trade between Red China
and the Free World also has declined very significantly since the Com-
munist takeover. Trade of the satellites with each other and with the
Soviet Union, on the other hand, has shown a more than corresponding
increase. Before World War II trade between the U.S.S.R. and the eastern
European countries and China was almost nonexistent, and between the
satellites themselves was of very limited significance. By 1951, however,
it is estimated that intra-bloc trade accounted for 80 per cent of total-bloc
trade.18 This represents a tenfold increase in the volume of intra-bloc
trade.
Part of the decline in trade between the West and the Communist bloc,
and in particular with Communist China, has resulted from the applica-
tion of Western security controls. In large measure, however, it is the
result of deliberate Soviet policy. Soviet foreign trade policy is governed
more by security than by economic considerations. The Russians seek to
maximize intra-bloc trade and to reduce dependence on outside supplies
to a minimum. This policy of economic autarchy is designed to limit the
vulnerability of the Soviet bloc to the cutting off of foreign sources of
supply in the event of war.
Practical considerations necessarily have limited and will probably con-
17 Economic Bulletin for Europe, Economic Commission for Europe, Second
Quarter, 1952.
i8 Ibid,
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 615
tinue to limit the extent and speed with which satellite economies are inte-
grated into the Soviet bloc. One very important consideration is the fact
that many underdeveloped areas have supplies available for export sub-
stantially in excess of the bloc's immediate requirements. For example,
the bloc could not use all of Iran's oil in the foreseeable future and the
same would be true for Malayan rubber. At the same time, the bloc's ca-
pabilities for supplying the machinery and equipment required to pro-
mote the economic development of the backward areas is limited. Under
these circumstances, continued trade with the West would still be ad-
vantageous.
Such Communist-controlled supplies, however, would be highly unre-
liable. They could be cut off at any time for political or other reasons or
might be used as a lever to force political concessions. They might be
supplied at relatively unfavorable terms to Western buyers. Soviet trade
is conducted through state trading corporations and their bargaining
power is generally much stronger than that of private individual traders
in the West.
So far the over-all adverse economic effects on the West of Communist
expansion in the underdeveloped areas has been fairly moderate. Certain
countries have been harder hit than others. Japan is an example of a
country whose trading position has been most seriously affected by Com-
munist expansion. Before the war more than 30 per cent of Japan's trade
was with the Chinese mainland and North Korea. By 1954 this was re-
duced to a trickle. Loss of China both as a source of raw materials and
as a market for exports is an important obstacle, though by no means the
only one, to Japan's becoming self-supporting. Moreover, the Japanese
economy is particularly vulnerable to any further Communist expansion
in the Far East. At the present time roughly 35 per cent of Japan's foreign
trade is with South and Southeast Asia as against 20 per cent prewar. If
this region fell into the Communist bloc, Japan would find it almost im-
possible to achieve economic self-support except by coming to terms with
the Communists.
The Soviet economy probably has gained more than the West has lost
as a result of the expansion of the Communist orbit. There is considerable
evidence to indicate Russian exploitation of the satellites. Moreover, if
the satellite economies are able to maintain anything like the high rates
of growth they claim to have achieved under the Communists, the result
would be a considerable over-all strengthening of the bloc economy rela-
tive to the West. According to official Communist statistics, rates of eco-
nomic growth in the eastern European satellites have averaged 10 to 20
616 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
per cent a year during the 1950's.19 This compares with quite low rates
of growth in many underdeveloped regions outside of Latin America.
Official Chinese figures claim that 15 per cent of the gross national prod-
uct was budgeted for investment in 1954. If true, this would give China
a level of investment almost twice that of neighboring South and South-
east Asia which has roughly the same total population. In the absence of
a rapid speeding up of economic growth in South and Southeast Asia,
China could in the foreseeable future become the dominant economic
power in the Far East.20
Regardless of the outcome of political trends in the underdeveloped
regions, their efforts to develop more rapidly are creating and will con-
tinue to create major problems of economic adjustment for the industrial-
ized countries. These problems largely derive from the determination of
the underdeveloped areas to diversify their economies and to reduce
their dependence on exports of a few primary products. This distrust of
relying on production of primary products stems in part from the drastic
deflation of raw material prices during the 1930's and also the tendency
of the underdeveloped countries to associate raw-materials production
with colonialism and foreign domination. As a first step in this process of
diversification, almost all underdeveloped countries are attempting to
meet at least some part of their requirements for the simpler types of
manufactures such as textiles, shoes, soap, matches, and other consumer
goods. This has cut sharply into the markets of the large traditional ex-
porters of consumer goods like the United Kingdom and Japan. It has
necessitated significant and costly shifts in the structure of their export
industries to accommodate the reduced relative importance of consumer-
goods exports. In some instances, notably India, underdeveloped coun-
tries since the war have become major competitors of industrialized
countries for export markets. In 1950 India, with exports of 118 thousand
tons of cotton cloth, was the world's largest exporter, exceeding Japan
and the United Kingdom by a considerable margin. The rise of India as
an important and efficient textile producer partly explains why Japan's
exports of cotton goods are only 40 per cent of prewar. Today we find
Lancashire, which rose to eminence as the world's leading textile center
largely on the basis of its markets in the underdeveloped areas, asking the
British Government for tariff protection against Indian textiles.
The measures taken by the underdeveloped countries to industrialize
and diversify their economies are partly responsible for the fact that the
19 United Nations, Economic Survey of Europe in 1953 (Geneva, 1954).
20 See Chapter 15, pp. 509-518.
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 617
industrialized countries are unable to import food and raw materials on
as favorable terms as before the war. A number of countries deliberately
have pursued economic policies designed to encourage the expansion of
industry at the expense of primary production. Often the favored indus-
tries are impractical and are able to withstand foreign competition only
under an umbrella of high protective tariffs. Argentina is one of the most
notable examples of a country which pursued this type of policy after
World War II. The result was a sharp decline in export availabilities and
higher prices for foodstuffs to Argentina's traditional market, the United
Kingdom. Subsequently Argentina reversed its shortsighted policy of neg-
lecting agriculture when the decline in its export earnings threatened to
jeopardize its entire development program. Although such extreme poli-
cies favoring industrialization have been abandoned by most underdevel-
oped areas, the distrust of primary production persists.
Even where the advantages of promoting primary production are rec-
ognized, many obstacles are placed in the way of expanding output by
the underdeveloped countries. These include various prohibitions and
limitations imposed on foreign investors, such as restrictions on the con-
vertibility of capital and earnings or the requirement of majority local
participation in the ownership and management. Then there is the fre-
quent threat of nationalization or expropriation without adequate com-
pensation. Many underdeveloped countries are unwilling to allow foreign
capital to participate in the exploitation of their natural resources even
though they lack the capital and technical know-how to do it themselves.
Where foreign capital is welcomed, the underdeveloped areas are insist-
ing on a larger share of the profits and are demanding more adequate
compensation for local labor. All of these factors, combined with the fact
that the best and most accessible resources are being consumed, suggest
that primary products will be available from the underdeveloped areas
on progressively less favorable terms.
ECONOMIC AID IN THE STRUGGLE FOR THE
UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS
Since World War II the industrialized countries of the West and in
particular the United States have shown a growing concern about the
economic problems of the underdeveloped areas. In part this interest is
based on humanitarian considerations and in part on a recognition that
the material well-being of the advanced countries is heavily dependent
on the economic health of the underdeveloped countries. More impor-
618 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
tantly, however, it reflects concern about the security of the Free World.
Poverty and lack of economic progress are recognized as important causes
of the growing political instability and social unrest in the underdevel-
oped areas making them fertile breeding places for Communist subver-
sion.
This view of the relationship between economic development and sub-
version has found widespread expression in official and semi-official
documents dealing with United States foreign economic policy. Thus the
International Development Board in its report to the President states: 21
"To achieve lasting peace, security, and well-being in the world we must
join forces in an economic offensive to root out hunger, poverty, illiteracy
and disease. The issue really is one of economic development versus eco-
nomic subversion. Soviet imperialism is seeking to chop off country after
country, to leave us in isolation."
One of the principal weapons employed by the West to counter the
danger of political instability and Communist subversion in the under-
developed areas has been economic and military aid. Here because of its
much greater industrial capabilities the West enjoys a strong advantage
over the U.S.S.R. Most of the aid extended by the West has been provided
by the United States. The economies of the other major industrial powers
have been too weak since the war to support contributions on anything
like the U.S. scale. Nonetheless aid from other countries has not been
inconsequential. Under its Colonial Development and Welfare Act, the
United Kingdom provided 140 million pounds sterling from 1945 to 1954
to assist in colonial development. An additional 80 million pounds is to
be provided for the next 5 years. In addition, the European metropoles,
particularly the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium, have been mak-
ing sizable investments in their colonies to promote economic growth. To
an important extent these investments were made possible by direct U.S.
aid to Europe.
During the period July 1, 1945 to June 30, 1954, direct U.S. economic
aid to the underdeveloped areas in the form of grants and credits ex-
ceeded $5 billion ( see Table 19-3 ) . With the recovery of Western Europe,
economic aid to the underdeveloped areas has represented an increasing
share of total aid. In 1953 U.S. economic aid to the underdeveloped
areas of roughly $1.2 billion represented almost half of all U.S. economic
aid. In 1955 to 1956 it is estimated the proportion will be more than two-
thirds.
The U.S.S.R. by contrast appears to have extended relatively limited
21 Partners in Progress (Washington, D. C, March, 1951).
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 619
assistance to the underdeveloped countries, except to China, and its Euro-
pean satellites and much of this has been military aid. It was not until
1953 that the U.S.S.R. made a contribution of $1 million to the United
Nations technical assistance program. More recently, however, there have
been signs that the U.S.S.R. may step-up its economic offensive. The most
notable example in this campaign to date has been Soviet penetration of
Afghanistan. A reported 500 Russian technicians were in Afghanistan in
1955 helping in the country's economic development.22 When Pakistan
closed its Afghan border and imposed an economic blockade against
Afghanistan as a result of an incident in March 1955 arising out of the
Pushtunistan dispute, the Russians were quick to capitalize on the situa-
tion. They offered the Afghans an alternate transit route to the Pakistan
Port of Karachi through Soviet territory. An agreement was signed au-
thorizing the landing of Afghan imports at Black Sea ports and their car-
riage by rail at subsidized rates to the Soviet-Afghan border. Early in
1955 the Soviet Union signed an agreement to build a million-ton steel
plant for India on very favorable terms. In addition to supplying arms to
Egypt in 1955 the Russians also said they were willing to help finance
the High dam on the Aswam, a 10 year $1,300 million project. It also is
increasing its efforts to arrange bilateral trade agreements with the under-
developed areas purchasing products like Egyptian cotton or Burmese
rice which in 1955 were in serious oversupply. In some instances it has
offered to extend long-term credits. With its growing industrial strength
the U.S.S.R. could become a formidable competitor against the West in
an economic offensive to gain political capital among the underdeveloped
regions.
TABLE 19-3
U. S. Non-Military Grants and Credits to Underdeveloped Areas
July 1, 1945 Through June 30, 1954 • *
AREA
TOTAL
NET GRANTS
NET CREDITS
Near East and Africa
South Asia
Southeast Asia
Korea and Nationalist China
Latin America
$ 860
389
1,173
2,035
906
$5,363
$ 598
123
962
1,907
207
$3,797
$ 262
266
211
128
699
Total
$1,566
a In millions.
* Excludes aid given dependent areas through United States grants or loans to the mother countries.
Also excludes aid by the United States through international organizations. United States Department of
Commerce, Foreign Grants and Credit by the United States Government, June, 1954.
22 New York Times, November 15, 1955.
620 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Point Four. Assisting the economic development of the underdeveloped
areas can be said to have become a definite part of United States foreign
economic policy with the adoption of the so-called Point IV program in
1950. The name Point IV derives from the famous fourth point of Presi-
dent Truman's inaugural address of January 20, 1949, in which he called
for "a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances
and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of
underdeveloped areas."
This proposal resulted in the Act for International Development which
authorized technical assistance programs to the underdeveloped areas
under both bilateral and United Nations multilateral arrangements.
Point IV is essentially a long-range program intended to lay the basis
for gradual economic and social progress in the underdeveloped areas.
Its main emphasis is on the supplying of basic technological and scientific
services and the training of foreign nationals rather than on the provision
of capital. Capital goods are a small fraction of the technical services
component. The expectation is to gradually create a favorable atmosphere
for private investment.
The United States bilateral technical assistance program is considerably
larger than the United Nations multilateral program. United States ap-
propriations for technical assistance in the fiscal year 1954 amounted to
$118 million. This compares with $40 to 50 million at the disposal of the
United Nations and its specialized agencies. In August, 1953, over 1,500
permanent American technicians and several hundred local-contract and
temporary technicians were serving abroad under United States bilateral
programs. In addition, almost 1,500 awards had been made to foreign
trainees. This compares with approximately 1000 experts and 1375 trainee
awards under the United Nations program.23
Efforts in the field of technical assistance have concentrated on agri-
culture, health, education, public administration, and resource develop-
ment. Remarkable results have been achieved in many of these vital areas.
In some countries, malaria has been eliminated and infant mortality
sharply reduced. In others, improved agricultural methods have brought
significant increases in yields. At the same time, however, the gains from
technical assistance have given rise to some serious new problems. Im-
proved farming methods have released agricultural workers for industrial
employment where opportunities in industry are still lacking. Or again,
reduced death rates have aggravated the problem of population pressure.
23 Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, Staff Paper (Washington, D. C,
February, 1954), p. 7<*
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 621
Probably the chief criticism levelled at the program is that it can be
expected to achieve results only very slowly; too slowly perhaps in the
critical areas most vulnerable to Soviet expansion. Economic development
requires capital as well as technical know-how if advantage is to be taken
of the new knowledge. This capital has not yet been forthcoming in ade-
quate amounts from private sources. The problem has been met to a
limited extent in the United States by special assistance programs which
depart from the philosophy of Point IV. The International Bank for Re-
construction and Development as described below also has made a contri-
bution to the capital needs of the underdeveloped areas. Although the
technical assistance programs have won many friends for the West, they
generally have not lived up to the expectations of the underdeveloped
areas for outside aid.
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The
International Bank was established primarily for the purpose of assisting
"its member countries to raise production levels and living standards by
helping to finance long-term productive projects, by providing technical
advice and by stimulating international investment from other sources." 24
Of its 57 members, 39 are in the underdeveloped category. Although
membership is open to all countries no Soviet-bloc country now belongs
and no loans have been extended outside the Free World.
Since the start of its operations in 1946 until July, 1954, the Bank has
loaned almost $1 billion to the underdeveloped countries. Roughly half
went to Latin America, one-quarter to South and Southeast Asia, and the
remainder to Africa and the Middle East. Most of the loans went to fi-
nance vital services, such as transportation, electric power, telecommuni-
cations, and irrigation, which have not attracted adequate private capital.
In addition, Bank technicians have furnished a number of underdevel-
oped countries with valuable assistance in preparing development proj-
ects and programs. Although the contribution of the International Bank
to the underdeveloped areas has been considerably more significant than
the total amount of loans extended suggests, it has not satisfied their de-
sire for external loans. In general the underdeveloped areas feel that the
loan requirements of the Bank are too rigid. They have campaigned for
the creation of subsidiary international loan agencies with lower stand-
ards.
Atoms-for-Peace. Few proposals in recent years have done more to fire
the hopes of the underdeveloped areas for accelerated economic growth
24 International Bank For Reconstruction and Development, 1946-53 (Baltimore,
1954).
622 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
than President Eisenhower's dramatic atoms-for-peace plan laid before
the United Nations on December 8, 1953. As an outgrowth of this pro-
posal, steps are being taken to establish an International Atomic Energy
Agency, and the United Nations in the meantime invited 84 nations to
participate in an international conference on the peaceful uses of atomic
energy at Geneva in August, 1955. Atoms-for-peace has been widely in-
terpreted as a simple prescription for the economic difficulties of the
underdeveloped areas. Visions have been conjured up of a vast source of
cheap electric power which will usher in a new era of economic growth
in the underdeveloped areas.
Such extravagant expectations are hardly warranted for the foreseeable
future. In the first place the President's proposal is necessarily limited in
its scope. It does not provide for large atomic power plants. The 120 kilo-
grams of fissionable material which is being contributed to the program
by the United States and the United Kingdom would not fuel one large
power plant. The plan by and large calls for an exchange of training
facilities and information and the use of radioactive by-products of atomic
fission in agriculture, industry, and medicine. The fissionable materials
contributed by the participating countries will be used to fuel small re-
search reactors. Thus the program is intended primarily to train personnel
and promote applied research in the peaceful uses of atomic energy. This
is certainly a requisite first step for virtually all underdeveloped countries
which have few or no qualified personnel and no technical facilities for
handling fissionable materials.
In the second place, and more important for the underdeveloped areas,
are the limitations which economic considerations are likely to impose on
the peaceful applications of atomic energy. It is now technically feasible
to construct electric power plants fueled with fissionable materials. How-
ever, such power is high cost and appears likely to remain so over the
next decade or so. Any cost advantage which nuclear power is to enjoy
over conventional power must derive from savings in fuel costs. Fixed
costs of plant and equipment for nuclear power plants are expected to
run 50 per cent higher than for conventional plants, and operating and
maintenance costs may be twice as high. Lower fuel costs alone cannot
result in drastic reductions in electricity costs. Fuel costs in modern ther-
mal plants in the United States, for example, account for at most one-half
of electric power generating costs and only about one-fifth of the average
price paid by consumers.
The outlook for the next decade or two, therefore, is that nuclear power
plants will be competitive only with conventional thermal plants burning
THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED AREAS 623
relatively high-cost coal or petroleum. They will not be competitive with
most hydro-electric plants now in existence or with plants which can be
built on fairly favorable sites. The latter fact will limit the economic use
of nuclear power plants in underdeveloped areas for some time to come.
Most underdeveloped countries with growing power requirements still
possess substantial unexploited hydraulic resources capable of producing
very low cost power. A major reason for the failure of power supply to
keep pace with requirements in a number of underdeveloped countries
is the shortage of capital. The much higher capital costs of nuclear power
plants would therefore be a deterrent to the introduction of nuclear power
even in areas handicapped by high fuel costs. The problem of size is also
relevant. The demand for power in underdeveloped regions frequently
does not warrant the construction of large power stations. While atomic
power plants are flexible as regards size, the smaller they are the less
economical they become.
The above considerations are expected to limit the use of atomic power
plants in backward areas to regions which lack cheap local fuel and are
remote from good hydro-electric sites. However, even if technological
progress permits the construction of nuclear power reactors at substan-
tially lower costs than now anticipated, the resultant power savings will
not be a major stimulus to economic growth. The reason for this is simply
that power represents a relatively small share of the total cost of most
industries. In the United States the cost of electricity represented only
1.7 per cent of the value added by manufactures for all industry in 1947.
For a number of industry groups the ratio was between 2 and 4 per cent.
Electric power is an important cost factor primarily in such industries as
aluminum, ferro-alloys, and chemicals.
This is not to minimize the significance of atomic power for the under-
developed areas. World energy consumption is making rapid inroads into
the world's reserves of coal, petroleum, and natural gas. As lower cost
reserves are exhausted, fuel costs can be expected to gradually rise. Con-
sequently, fissionable materials are likely to become of increasing impor-
tance over the long run as a source of energy. Over the short run, the
greatest benefits to be derived by the underdeveloped areas from atoms-
for-peace may well result from developments in the use of radio-active
isotopes in industry, medicine, and agriculture.
CHAPTER
20
Southwest Asia
Southwest Asia (also called the Middle or Near East) is an area of very
limited over-all economic capabilities. It is nonetheless a region of great
economic and strategic importance to the Free World by virtue of its vast
low-cost oil reserves and its geographic location. Linking three continents,
Southwest Asia stands astride vital air and water routes connecting Eu-
rope, Asia, and Africa. It controls two of the most vital water links in the
world: the Straits connecting the landlocked Black Sea and the Mediter-
ranean, and the Suez Canal joining the Mediterranean and the Indian
Ocean. All through history this crossroads of the world has been a key
factor in the strategic calculations of the major powers.' It was a pivotal
area in the defense of India and Africa in World War II. As a critical
buffer zone between Europe and Africa on the one hand and the U.S.S.R.
on the other, Southwest Asia is now of major strategic importance to the
defensive system of the West. At the same time, much of the area is sub-
ject to serious social, political, and economic unrest. There are few stable
governments in Southwest Asia capable of controlling the rising tide of
nationalism and revolt against economic oppression. Arab-Israeli relations
and inter-Arab feuds are a constant threat to the stability of the area. The
Israel-Arab conflict has created a critical refugee problem. The recent
Soviet sale of arms to Egypt has created a new challenge. All of these
developments taken together constitute a serious danger to the position of
the Free World in this area.
624
SOUTHWEST ASIA
625
AREA AND POPULATION
As defined here, Southwest Asia comprises ten independent states and
a number of small sheikhdoms and protectorates. With an area of 2.1
million square miles it is greater in size than Europe, excluding the
U.S.S.R., and approximately two-thirds the size of the United States. The
total population, however, is less than 70 million and average population
density is only 32 persons per square mile. The latter figure is not very
meaningful, however, since much of the region is unfit for human habita-
tion or is unpeopled except for nomads. A few countries like Israel and
Lebanon are fairly densely populated ( see Table 20-1 ) .
Southwest Asia is an area of high birth rates and declining though still
high death rates. During the period of 1940 to 1950 average population
growth in Southwest Asia was 1.35 per cent per year. Population growth
rates are accelerating and according to United Nations' estimates may
reach 1.83 to 2.32 per cent per year by 1980. This would give Southwest
Asia a population of 99 to 106 million by that time.
TABLE 20-1
Southwest Asia: Area, Population, and Population Density, 1953
COUNTRY
AREA
( SQUARE MILES )
POPULATION
( THOUSANDS )
POPULATION DENSITY
(per SQUARE mile)
Aden Colony
80
150
1,875
Aden Protectorate
122,000
650
5.3
Bahrein
231
112
484
Iran
629,344
20,253
32
Iraq
168,114
4,882 (1952)
29
Israel
8,108
1,650
198
Jordan
37,264
1,360
36
Kuwait
8,000
150
19
Lebanon
4,016
1,353
337
Muscat and Oman
82,007
550
6.7
Qatar
8,500
20
2.3
Saudi Arabia
617,700
7,000 (1952)
11.3
Syria
70,014
3,535
50.4
Trucial Oman
5,792
80
13.8
Turkey
296.185
22,461
75.8
Yemen
75,290
4,500 (1952)
59.8
Total
2,132,645
68,706
32.2
a United Nations, Statistical Yearbook, 1953.
b United Nations, Population and Vital Statistics Reports, Series A, Vol. 7, No. 1 (New York,
January, 19SS).
626 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE
Southwest Asia divides into two fairly distinct physical areas. In the
north and northeast are the high plateaus of Anatolia and Iran, enclosed
by rugged mountain ranges, and having average elevations of 4,000 feet.
Narrow coastal belts fringe these plateaus along the Caspian and Black
Seas in the north and along the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas in the
west and southwest. The remainder and largest part of Southwest Asia
(approximately two-thirds) forms a vast level plain which gradually
slopes upward to form the highlands of Saudi Arabia overlooking the Red
Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Although Southwest Asia is located largely in tropical latitudes, it
shows wide variations in climate. The coastal regions of the Mediterra-
nean are hot in summer and wet and cool in the winter. The Anatolian
and Iranian plateaus are generally characterized by cold winters and hot
dry summers. Their fringing littoral regions are wet and warm. Arabia,
except for the southwest which has a monsoon climate, has cold winters
and little or no rainfall.
The one outstanding climatic characteristic of Southwest Asia is its
aridity. Almost all of Arabia, much of Iraq, and most of eastern and cen-
tral Iran are desert. Rains exceeding 24 inches annually are largely con-
fined to the areas bordering the Black and Caspian Seas in the north and
the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas in the west and southwest. Most of
the region has less than 8 inches of rain and over half has less than 4
inches. The significance of this lack of moisture for raising food, which is
the principal economic activity of the region, is apparent in view of the
fact that wheat will not grow without irrigation where rainfall is less than
8 inches.
The aridity of Southwest Asia has had a major influence on economic
activity in the area and on the distribution of population. Population
density is closely correlated with rainfall. As a result, the region is char-
acterized by numerous, relatively small, cultivated pockets separated by
extensive desert area. Although large areas of Southwest Asia lack suffi-
cient moisture for growing crops, they do support vegetation for pastur-
age. Thus a considerable portion of the total population, possibly one-
seventh, is nomadic and is engaged in the raising of livestock.
RESOURCES
In terms of its area, Southwest Asia is relatively poor both in good
agricultural land and in mineral resources with the notable exception of
SOUTHWEST ASIA 627
oil (Fig. 20-1). Most of the region is mountain, desert, or swamp. The
Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations classified
roughly 8 per cent of the land area as arable as compared with more than
23 per cent in the United States. This is not to say that the area lacks
potentialities for further economic development. Despite a somewhat lim-
ited resource base, much of Southwest Asia is underpopulated and can
support a considerably larger number of people at higher levels of living,
provided these resources are more effectively exploited. Best situated re-
source-wise are Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. Some countries, like Israel,
Lebanon, and Jordan, have serious population problems. Large oil reserves
offer "at least six countries the first chance for centuries to break out of the
rut of poverty, and to organize a rise in standards of living and education
that will be sudden and decisive enough to outstrip the lusty local tend-
ency to a high birth rate." J Nonetheless even in the most promising areas
economic growth in Southwest Asia may continue to be slow. Technical
skills will have to be acquired. The proportion of total production devoted
to investment will have to be greatly increased. And most important in a
number of countries major institutional and social changes will have to
come about to establish the necessary preconditions for sustained eco-
nomic growth.
Agricultural Land. Compared with the rest of the continent, Southwest
Asia's resources of arable and potentially productive land area in relation
to the population are relatively favorable. As shown in Table 20-2, arable
land amounts to roughly 1.7 acres per capita and ranges from less than
half an acre in Lebanon to approximately 2 acres in Syria, Iran, and Tur-
key. By comparison, cultivated land in industrial United States is more
than 2.5 acres per person, whereas in primarily agricultural economies
like Australia, New Zealand, or Uruguay and Chile it is more than 4 acres
per capita. Because of poor methods of cultivation, a sizable portion of
the arable land lies fallow every year to restore its fertility. In Iraq, large
tracts of arable land have become saline because of poor drainage, result-
ing in a serious drop in yields.
Estimates of potentially productive land suggest that the area under
cultivation can be more than doubled or that Southwest Asia could grow
enough foodstuffs to feed twice its present population at existing diet
levels, assuming no changes in farm methods. However, the estimate of
potentially productive land must be considered more as a theoretical
maximum rather than as a figure likely soon to be achieved. Only a few
countries— Syria, Iraq, and Turkey— offer some possibilities for increased
1 The Economist, July 2, 1955, p. 16.
3 A
>
lU
628
SOUTHWEST ASIA
629
dry farming. Most of the potentially productive land, although inherently
fertile, would require expensive irrigation and drainage projects and ex-
tensive transportation development. Iran, Iraq, and Syria are fortunate
in having large rivers which can be harnessed to supply water. Thus the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in its economic
survey of Iraq concluded that much of the soil is inherently fertile and
"with ample water, manpower, and implements, the area under cultiva-
tion might be almost tripled." - Again, the Joint United States-Syria Agri-
cultural Mission in its 1946 survey concluded that a series of irrigation
projects drawing on the Euphrates and its tributaries might permit an
additional 2 million acres to be put under intensive cultivation. If this
were done these areas could not only feed their growing populations but
also produce considerable food for export. One of the main problems is
to mobilize the required capital. An additional difficulty is that some
water-development schemes, such as the proposed Jordan Valley project,
cut across national boundaries and require the co-operation of nations
highly distrustful of each others' intentions— in this case, the Arab states
on one hand and Israel on the other.
TABLE 20-2
Arable and Potentially Productive Land *
COUNTRY
PERIOD
ARABLE LAND
( THOUSANDS
OF ACRES)
ARABLE LAND
PER CAPITA
( IN ACRES )
POTENTIALLY
PRODUCTIVE
( THOUSANDS
OF ACRES)
Aden Protectorate
1947
272
0.4
Iran
1950
41,414
2.0
81,543
Iraq
1951
5,777
1.2
29,900
Jordan
1947
1,186
0.9
Lebanon
1950
692
0.5
Israel
1951
981 '
0.6
Syria
1950
8,737
2.5
9,578
Turkey
Total
1949
37,707
96,766
1.7
1.7
121,021
a Total agricultural area including permanent meadows and pastures.
* United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, Yearbook of Food and Agricultural Statistics,
1952, Vol. 6, Part 1.
Oil. Oil is one resource Southwest Asia possesses in great abundance
(cf. Fig. 20-1, p. 628). Indeed the location of the world's richest oil re-
serves in Southwest Asia accounts in large part for the great interest of the
major world powers in this region. In 1953 Southwest Asia's proven re-
2 The Economic Development of Iraq (Baltimore, 1952), p. 1.
630 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
serves of crude petroleum of 8.3 billion metric tons amounted to roughly
53 per cent of the world total, or 63 per cent if the Soviet bloc is excluded.
These reserves were two and a quarter times larger than those of the
United States. Moreover, these reserves yield very low-cost oil. It costs the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company less than 15 cents to produce a barrel of crude
oil as compared with 70 cents in Venezuela and $1.70 in the United States.3
As shown in Table 20-3 a few countries, principally Iran, Iraq, Kuwait,
and Saudi Arabia, account for the bulk of these reserves.
TABLE 20-3
Southwest Asia: Estimated Proven Reserves of Crude Petroleum
by Country in 1953 *
(in millions of metric tons)
PER CENT OF
COUNTRY QUANTITY
WORLD TOTAL
Bahrein
Iran
Iraq
Kuwait
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Turkey
40.9
neg.
1,722.3
11.05
1,470.6
9.44
2,444.3
15.69
163.2
1.05
2,426.51
15.57
11.1
neg.
Total Southwest Asia 8,278.9 52.80
United States 3,809.6 24.45
Venezuela 1,380.5 8.86
World Total 15,580.4 100.0
* World Oil, August IS, 1954.
The magnitude of these reserves is suggested by the fact that they
would meet total United States' requirements at present rates of consump-
tion for a period of more than thirty years. Moreover, these proven re-
serves by no means represent the total oil resources of the region. While
these reserves have been expanding rapidly as a result of continued ex-
ploitation and drilling activities, much of the potential oil-bearing land
of the region is still untapped. Thus estimated petroleum reserves in-
creased by more than 25 per cent between 1951 and 1953. A more recent
estimate made for the U.S. Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic
Energy placed Southwest Asia's crude oil reserves in 1956 at 230 billion
barrels or more than double the previous accepted estimate. 3a It is ex-
3 The Annals, Vol. 294 (July, 1954), p. 152.
3a Background Material for the Report of the Panel on the Impact of the Peaceful
Uses of Atomic Energy (Washington, D. C, 1956), p. 92.
SOUTHWEST ASIA
631
pected that Southwest Asia's reserves will continue to increase in absolute
terms and will become relatively more important as reserves in other areas,
particularly the United States, are used up. By 1956, Southwest Asia's
share of the Free World's oil reserves had increased to 75 per cent
Other Mineral Resources. Our knowledge of Southwest Asia's other
mineral resources suffers from the fact that much of the region has never
been adequately surveyed. Except for petroleum, however, the area ap-
pears to be poor in mineral resources. Turkey, the only country in the
region with the coal and iron ore required to support heavy industry, is
the one exception. The region's deficiency in minerals is suggested by the
low output figures given in Table 20-4.
TABLE 20-4
Output of Minerals, 1939, 1943, 1945, 1948 to 1952 *
(thousands of metric tons)
COUNTRY AND MINERAL
1939
1943
1945
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
Iran:
Iron oxide
10
0.2
5
11
7
Iraq:
Salt
11
23
15
14
Israel/Palestine:
Potash (K20 content)
32
47
45
50
Salt
9
18
20
5
9
7
2
Lebanon:
Salt
7
7
8
9
Saudi Arabia:
Gold (kilograms)
4.97
1326
1181
2300
2079
2059
Syria:
Salt
14
12
15
8
21
22
Turkey:
Antimony (content)
0.7
—
—
0.5
0.5
1.3
2.2
Boracite
15.2
—
5.0
5.3
7.1
9.8
Copper (smelter
production
6.7
9.7
9.9
11.0
11.3
11.7
17.5
19.1
Chrome ore (Cr203
content
92
76
72
140
217
202
287
Emery
10
7.8
2.2
7.9
8.9
1.2
Iron ore (Fa content)
155
59
82
121
136
143
143
195
Manganese ore (Mn
content)
0.9
1.1
2.0
3.3
11.1
15.8
24.7
Coal
2696
3166
3720
4023
4183
4360
4730
4863
Lignite
185
625
725
1010
1272
1203
1255
1374
Quicksilver
13.6
6.4
5.4
0.9
—
—
Salt
240
266
254
266
318
310
273
Sulphur
2.6
3.4
4.6
2.6
3.1
6.0
7.4
* United Nations, Department of Economic Affairs, Review of Economic Conditions in the Middle East
1951-1952 (March, 1953), p. 122.
632 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Turkish reserves of 500 million metric tons of bituminous coal and over
125 million tons of sub-bituminous coal are ample to cover the country's
foreseeable needs. Most of these reserves are of coking quality as required
for steel-making. Iron ore reserves, however, are relatively small, amount-
ing to 15 to 35 million metric tons with an iron content of 65 per cent.
Lower-grade ore also has been found. Turkey has large reserves of high-
grade chromium and is now a major world supplier. Turkey's copper
reserves are estimated at from 4 to 8 million tons. A large number of small
manganese deposits are also found in Turkey.
Although a variety of minerals have been found in other parts of
Southwest Asia besides Turkey, they generally have been low in quality
and limited in amount or located in inaccessible areas. In many instances
not enough information is available about these deposits to tell whether
they will warrant commercial exploitation.
EXTENT AND CHARACTER OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Southwest Asia is in no sense an economic unity. Quite the contrary.
Economic ties between the countries of Southwest Asia are minor. The
chief reason for this is that their economies are essentially competing
rather than complementary. The limited economic relationships between
the countries of Southwest Asia is indicated by the fact that intra-regional
trade is only about 5 per cent of total trade. This compares with 30 per
cent for the rest of Asia and more than 50 per cent for Western Europe.
All of the countries of Southwest Asia except possibly 'Israel are under-
developed. Average annual per capita income of the region in 1949 was
only about $125. Only a few countries, notably Turkey, Lebanon, and
Israel, have per capita incomes appreciably higher than the average. Low
incomes are reflected in diets for most of the area, which are inadequate
from a nutritional point of view and malnutrition is quite widespread.
During the period 1946 to 1949 the calorie content of food supplies avail-
able for human consumption in Iran and Iraq was less than 2000 per
person per day.4
Agriculture is the principal economic activity and supports the bulk of
the population. For most countries 75 per cent or more of the employed
population works in agriculture and animal husbandry. Except for Turkey
the area has no heavy industry. Manufactures are confined largely to the
production of consumer goods and the processing of foodstuffs.
4 United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, Current Developments of
and Prospects for Agriculture in the Near East, 1951.
SOUTHWEST ASIA 633
Production per worker in agriculture and in industry by Western
standards is low. During the five-year period 1947 to 1951 productivity in
agriculture was only 62 per cent of the world average and roughly 20 per
cent of that of North America. Productivity in industry as compared with
developed countries is even less favorable than in agriculture.
Fuel and power consumption, which is one of the best measures of
economic development, was less than 0.50 metric tons (coal equivalent)
per person in 1949. This compares with 7.32 metric tons for the United
States and more than two and a half metric tons for most Western Euro-
pean countries.
Literacy levels with few exceptions are very low. In most countries
less than 10 per cent of the population over ten years of age can read.
Southwest Asia's exports consist largely of food and raw materials and
its imports of manufactures. For most countries two or three commodities
frequently account for a high percentage of the value of all merchandise
exports. As a result their economies are highly vulnerable to foreign mar-
ket forces over which they have little or no control. Merchandise imports
are greatly in excess of exports. The deficit is financed largely from earn-
ings on oil sales, foreign grants and loans, and donations and remittances.
While a few countries like Turkey and Israel have enjoyed moderate
economic progress in recent years, the area by and large suffers from
economic stagnation. Savings and investment are low and are just about
adequate to meet the needs of the rising population. Much of the income
of wealthy potential savers goes into luxurious living. As a result living
standards have shown little or no improvement in the past decade or
more. While many countries in the region have embarked on programs to
speed up their economic development, progress to date has been slow.
Except in the case of the oil-producing countries lack of capital has been
a major obstacle. The rich oil-producing countries have been plagued by
many other problems such as inefficient governments, political instability,
and the resistance of the ruling classes to major social and economic
changes.
AGRICULTURE
Most of the agricultural land of Southwest Asia is devoted to the pro-
duction of wheat, barley, maize, and rice for domestic consumption.
Except for a few years following World War II the area traditionally has
had a cereal surplus, with the large exports of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq
exceeding the deficits of the rest of the region. Cash crops such as citrus
fruits, cotton, sugar, oil-seeds, tobacco, dates, and olive oil have been of
634 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
increasing importance with the development of transportation and the
growth of export markets. Some areas, particularly on the Arabian Penin-
sula, because of the poverty of the soil will support only pastoral nomad-
ism. But the numbers of people involved are comparatively few.
Cultivation is typically small-scale, the average family working a plot
of five to seven acres. Methods of cultivation are extremely primitive and
largely account for low yields per worker of one-eighth to one-quarter
those in Western Europe or the United States. Despite the lack of water,
modern irrigation methods have been introduced only on a limited scale
except in Iraq, Iran, and Israel. Farm implements are chiefly hand tools
and animal-drawn equipment. Very little power equipment is employed
except on the larger estates. In 1952, it was estimated that the number
of tractors in use in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey totalled less
than 37,000. Almost 90 per cent of these were in Turkey.5 Fertilizer con-
sumption is negligible in most countries and is not even sufficient to re-
place a small fraction of the nutrients extracted from the soil through
cultivation.6 Only a few countries use high-yield seed varieties and every
year crop yields are substantially reduced as a result of pests and disease.
For example, it is estimated that 15 per cent of Iran's total agricultural
production is lost through insects, rodents, waste, and spoilage.7
A number of irrigation and multipurpose projects of the TVA variety
have been planned or proposed to improve agricultural conditions in
Southwest Asia. Among these is the previously mentioned Jordan Valley
Development scheme, which is strongly supported by the United States
Government because of the contribution it will make toward relieving the
Arab refugee problem. The plan as prepared under the direction of the
United Nations would irrigate 234,000 acres of land in Israel, Jordan, and
Syria, much of which could then produce crops the year round. In addi-
tion, the scheme would produce 65,000 kilowatts of electric power. Iraq
has vast flood control and irrigation works already under way which when
completed will nearly double the present area of irrigated land.
The extensive discussions held between the countries interested in the
Jordan Valley project illustrate the difficulties of obtaining agreement on
river schemes involving international rivers. In this case four countries
lay claim to the waters of the Jordan. Even in the most favorable political
atmosphere, reaching agreement on such questions as to how the avail-
able waters are to be divided, sharing of costs, and where the dams and
5 United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, Agriculture in the Near East
(November, 1953), p. 52.
« Ibid., p. 57.
7 Department of State, Agriculture In Point 4 Countries, Part 4 (August, 1952).
SOUTHWEST ASIA 635
power installations should be located is difficult. In the case of the Jordan
Valley Development project these difficulties have been greatly magnified
by the bitterness of Israeli-Arab relations. To minimize or eliminate the
need for direct Arab-Israeli negotiations, it has been proposed that the
project be placed under international administration and supervision.
Whether or not arrangements can be worked out so that the project can
go forward is still uncertain.
Extreme inequalities in the ownership of land are an important cause
of rural poverty and a major source of political and social unrest in many
parts of Southwest Asia. Except in Israel, in Jordan, and in parts of Leba-
non and Turkey, the principal form of tenure is that of large estates
cultivated by tenants, many of whom are share-croppers. Thus in Iran
an estimated 90 per cent of the rural population are tenant share-crop-
pers.8 A few absentee landlords (including the Shah), religious endow-
ments, and the government own most of the land. Large holdings of tribal
sheikhs and other wealthy individuals are also the general rule in Iraq.
According to a recent United Nations study, "landlords supply little
capital to agriculture and exact excessive rents from tenants, who enjoy
little security. In spite of some improvement in recent years, agricultural
credit facilities are inadequate, and the peasants pay high rates of interest
to money-lenders. Many measures of reform are needed, security of tenure
and wider opportunities of ownership and further development of the
co-operative movement, among others." 9 Only Turkey, with its land-
reform policy initiated in 1945, has taken effective action to develop
peasant proprietorship. In Israel, farming settlement is primarily com-
munal or co-operative.
INDUSTRY
Except for petroleum, industry is relatively unimportant in Southwest
Asia in terms of the numbers employed and the contribution to national
output. Only Turkey and Israel have made significant strides in the direc-
tion of greater industrialization. And only in Israel is the contribution of
industry to national income greater than that of agriculture. Light indus-
tries producing textiles and possessing foodstuffs for domestic consump-
tion predominate. Handicrafts still account for a large proportion of the
area's output of manufactures. Turkey with its modest iron and steel in-
dustry is the only country in the region with any heavy industry.
Turkey's industrialization has occurred largely at government initiative
8 Ibid., p. 12.
9 United Nations, Progress In Land Reform (New York, 1954).
636 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
and was largely motivated by the desire to strengthen the power of the
state. Government banks own and operate about three-fourths of Turkey's
industry. Despite its comparative progress Turkey is still a long way from
being an industrialized state. Only 8 per cent of the labor force are in
industry as against 64 per cent in agriculture. Turkey's crude steel output
of roughly 150,000 tons per annum is only one-third that of Yugoslavia.
Israel's industrialization, in contrast with that of Turkey, has been
brought about largely through the initiative of private entrepreneurs.
Light metals and machinery and food processing are of greatest impor-
tance.
As in agriculture, productivity in industry is very low by Western
standards. The reasons are largely the same as in agriculture. They in-
clude insufficient and inadequate industrial equipment, lack of competent
supervisory personnel and poorly trained workers, inadequate supplies
of locally produced raw materials, and so on.
PETROLEUM INDUSTRY
The petroleum industry is by far the region's most important industry.
Production of petroleum has expanded rapidly in Southwest Asia since
the war, largely in response to the great increase in world consumption.
In 1953 the area produced 121.7 million metric tons of crude oil or
roughly 18 per cent of the world total— or 20 per cent if we exclude the
Soviet bloc. Table 20-5 shows the region's crude oil output by countries
for the years 1948 and 1950 through 1953.
TABLE 20-5
Southwest Asia: Crude Production by Country, 1948 and 1950-53 *
(thousands of metric tons)
COUNTRY
1948
1950
1951
1952
1953
Bahrein
1,496
1,511
1,508
1,510
1,506
Iran
25,270
32,259
16,844
1,348
1,366
Iraq
3,427
6,479
8,690
18,850
28,200
Kuwait
6,400
17,291
28,327
37,631
42,654
Quatar
—
1,636
2,370
3,296
4,003
Saudi Arabia
19,260
26,301
37,476
40,698
41,566
Turkey
3
17
19
22
28
Total Southwest Asia
57,742
88,613
97,566
105,707
121,673
World Total
470,000
525,000
592,000
623,000
666,000
Southwest Asia's Share
of World Total
12.3
16.9
16.5
17.0
18.4
* United Nations, Department of Economic Affairs, Summary of Recent Economic Development in
the Middle East 1952-53 (New York, 1954), p. 17.
SOUTHWEST ASIA 637
The sharp drop in Iranian output during and after 1951 reflects the
virtual stoppage of oil operations during the dispute between Anglo-
Iranian Oil and the Iranian Government over nationalization of the in-
dustry. It is estimated that in 1953 crude productive capacity in Iran and
elsewhere in the region was at least 50 million tons, or roughly 40 per cent
more than actual production.10
Refinery Capacity. Most of the oil produced in Southwest Asia is
shipped out of the region as crude oil. In 1950, before the shutting down
of the Abadan refinery in Iran, which is the largest in the world ( cf. Fig.
20-1, p. 628). Southwest Asia's output of refinery products aggregated
about 40 million tons or 9 per cent of the world total. In 1952 refinery out-
put was down to 23.6 million tons or to slightly less than 4 per cent of the
world total. In 1952 the annual crude charging capacity of the refineries
of the region exceeded 50 million tons and was gradually being expanded.
Output of major refineries products by countries for the period 1950-52 is
given in Table 20-6.
TABLE 20-6
Southwest Asia: Output of Major Refinery Products by Countries, 1950-52 *
(thousands of metric tons)
COUNTRY
1950
1951
1952
Bahrein
6,841
8,040
8,621
Iran
24,665
12,807 a
1,332 a
Israel
187
707
805 b
Kuwait
1,101
1,203
1,326
Lebanon
394
420
461
Saudi Arabia
4,825
7,395
7,971
Turkey
5
40,521
6
5
Total
33,224
23,607
a Partly estimated.
b Estimated.
* United Nations, op. cit.
Ownership of the Petroleum Industry. Subsoil rights to oil in Southwest
Asia are almost universally vested in the State. However, except for Iran,
which nationalized the properties of Anglo-Iranian oil in 1950, exploita-
tion of Southwest Asia's oil resources is predominantly in the hands of
foreign enterprises. In 1953, American companies controlled about 60 per
cent of the area's output, British and British-Dutch companies 35 per cent,
and French concerns 5 per cent. These foreign oil concessionaires operate
under profit-sharing agreements with the local governments. While the
10 Ibid., p. 46.
638 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
exact details of these agreements vary from country to country, they uni-
formly provide for an equal sharing of the net operating revenues of the
oil company. In 1954 the Iranian Government turned over the operation
of its oil industry to a consortium of foreign companies.
Economic Significance of Petroleum to Southwest Asia. The Southwest
Asian oil producing countries derive very significant economic benefits
from petroleum. These benefits are primarily indirect and are represented
by oil company royalties and other payments to the local governments,
local expenditures of the oil companies for labor and supplies, employ-
ment, and so on. It is estimated that in 1952 the operations of the oil
companies contributed as much as two-fifths to the combined national
income of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, and Bahrein. Before nation-
alization 10 per cent of Iran's national income came from the oil industry.
Although petroleum is the principal source of energy in the region, only
a small fraction of total production is consumed locally. In 1952, South-
west Asia's consumption of petroleum amounted roughly to 6.5 million
metric tons, or about 5 per cent of production. Exports including bunker-
ing fuel exceeded 97 million metric tons in 1952.
The largest economic benefits derived from oil are represented by di-
rect payments of oil companies to the local governments. These payments
consist of royalties, taxes, dead rent and certain other items. In 1953 they
amounted to roughly half a billion dollars and in 1954 to about $700
million.
Local employees of the oil companies in 1951 numbered more than
100,000. Wage payments to these employees plus company purchases of
local materials and supplies make an important contribution to economic
activity in the areas where the oil companies operate.
As a result of their large incomes from oil the petroleum-producing
territories of Southwest Asia have been afforded an important means of
financing much needed economic development. So far, however, only a
few, notably Iraq and Kuwait, have taken advantage of this opportunity.
A good part of the income is still being dissipated by individual rulers on
personal expenditures.
Importance of Southwest Asia's Oil to the Free World. Southwest Asia
is the world's most important exporter of petroleum. The bulk of its ex-
ports go to Eastern Hemisphere markets. In 1953, Free World countries
outside of the Americas obtained about 70 per cent of their petroleum
requirements from Southwest Asia, while the proportion for Western
Europe exceeded 90 per cent. Although American companies accounted
for the largest share of the region's output, the United States obtained
SOUTHWEST ASIA 639
only about 3 per cent of its requirements from this source. Thus while
American oil companies have a significant economic stake in Southwest
Asia's oil resources in terms of investment and revenues, the United States
economy is not now dependent upon oil from this area. For Western
European countries, by contrast, Southwest Asia's oil is of vital impor-
tance. It is doubtful whether sufficient oil could be obtained from alter-
native sources to meet Western Europe's needs except possibly over a
long period of time and at great cost. Moreover, such oil as could be
obtained elsewhere would be more expensive, would have to be paid for
largely with dollars, and would impose a heavy drain on Western Eu-
rope's balance-of-payments position. Finally, Southwest Asia's oil is an
important source of earnings particularly for the British and the Dutch.
In the event of a war, Southwest Asia's oil would be of vital importance
to the Free World. Western Hemisphere supplies alone would be wholly
inadequate to meet the essential civilian and military requirements of the
United States and its Allies.
In the years ahead, Southwest Asia's oil is likely to become of increas-
ing economic importance to the United States as consumption continues
to rise and reserves eventually dwindle. So far, despite frequent pessimis-
tic predictions that United States' crude oil reserves would soon be
exhausted, new discoveries have outpaced production. However, this can-
not keep up indefinitely. In fact, during the past five years United States
demand for crude has started to exceed production. If, as estimated by
the Paley Commission, United States demand for petroleum by 1975 is
double the 1950 amount, dependence on foreign supplies, particularly
from Southwest Asia, will be much greater than now.11
COMMUNICATIONS
Southwest Asia, which is a land bridge connecting three continents, is
a vital link in the world communications network. Its present significance
dates in considerable measure from the opening of the Suez Canal in
1869. As a result Southwest Asia has become a cornerstone of the highly
important Suez Canal-Red Sea-Strait of Bab-el- Mandeb water route
which enables vessels up to 45,000 tons to pass directly from the Eastern
Mediterranean to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
This route is followed by virtually all shipping from Europe to the Far
East and Australia. It is of major importance to all maritime powers, and
11 The President's Materials Policy Commission, Resources For Freedom ( Washing-
ton, D. C, June, 1952), p. 107.
640 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
in particular to the United Kingdom, with its large economic interests in
South Asia and the Far East. The economic advantages of this route are
demonstrated by the fact that the distance from London to Bombay via
the Suez Canal is 4,500 miles less than by the Cape of Good Hope route.
The resultant savings in transportation costs contributed significantly to
the growth of trade between Europe and Asia, The Red Sea-Suez Canal
water route has assumed increasing significance in recent years with the
large movements of petroleum from the Persian Gulf.,
The Suez Canal greatly outranks in importance all other international
canals in terms of volume of traffic handled. In 1952 over 86 million net
registered tons of shipping moved through the Suez Canal as compared
with 34.5 million tons for the Panama Canal The largest share of this
traffic has always been and continues to be British. It is not surprising
that the British had grave misgivings about relinquishing its control over
the Canal Zone to Egypt. The United States now ranks second to the
United Kingdom, largely because of oil shipments from Saudi Arabia.
Andre Siegfried has described the significance of the Suez Canal as
follows: 12
Of all the great roadways of the world, the sea road to India via the Isthmus
of Suez is probably the most important, for it joins East and West Asia and
Europe,— that is, the two most thickly populated continents having the most
ancient civilizations. The Isthmus itself, by virtue of its geographical position,
has always been a focal point, but its greatest significance dates from the open-
ing of the Canal, in 1869, at a time when Europe was triumphantly expanding,
thanks to the industrial revolution and steam navigation. The rapid pace of
industrialization could not have kept pace without access to raw materials from
the outermost parts of the earth and the opening of new markets for manufac-
tured goods. And the introduction of America to the Far East in the Twentieth
century further enlarged the role of this intercontinental route. If the Canal is
blocked or its efficiency impaired the whole Western World is affected.
While not a great international water route like the Suez Canal, the
Straits are of considerable economic and strategic importance because
they provide the only water passage between the Black Sea and the
Mediterranean. Concern over control of the Straits has always been im-
portant to the U.S.S.R. because of the otherwise landlocked position of
Southern Russia. This explains why Russia has consistently sought to
obtain the right to uninterrupted passage through the Straits in peace and
war.
Southwest Asia's oil pipelines are also of great international economic
12 "The Suez: International Roadway," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 31, No. 4 (July, 1953),
pp. 604-618; see also p. 241.
SOUTHWEST ASIA 641
significance 13 (cf. Fig. 20-1). Most important are the two large-diameter
pipelines from Saudi Arabia and Iraq to the Mediterranean. The pipeline
from Saudi Arabia, completed late in 1950, stretches from the oilfields of
Saudi Arabia, through Jordan and Syria, to Sidon in Lebanon. This thirty
to thirty-one-inch pipeline, with a length of 1,720 kilometers and a present
throughput capacity of 15.5 million tons a year, required an investment
of $230 million. The Iraqi pipeline, with diameters of twenty-six, thirty,
and thirty-two inches, and a length of 895 kilometers, has a normal
throughput capacity of 13.5 million tons a year. The line was completed
in 1952 from Kirkuk field in Iraq to Baniyas in Syria; it required a total
investment of about $115 million.
In addition to these lines, the pipeline systems of several oil producing
countries were expanded during the past three years. In Iraq, a pipeline
of twelve to sixteen inches, with a length of 120 kilometers, was laid
between the Zubair field and Fao on the Persian Gulf; it has a crude
carrying capacity of 2.6 million tons annually. This line was finished late
in 1951; in 1952 plans were laid to construct a parallel line with a diameter
of twenty-four inches. There was another plan, also, to construct a pipe-
line of twelve and three-quarter inches, with a length of about 220 kilo-
meters, capable of carrying 1.3 million tons of crude petroleum a year
from Ain Zalah to the main Iraqi pipelines near Shuraimiya. The con-
struction of a sixteen-inch pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa, which was
interrupted in 1948, was not completed. Another parallel twelve-inch
pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa, which was shut down in 1948, remains
closed. In Saudi Arabia, the pipeline system was expanded in 1951 by 76
kilometers of new pipelines with a capacity of nearly 14 million tons of
crude petroleum a year. During the past three years additional pipelines
were laid in Iran, Kuwait, and Qatar. Expansion of oil handling facilities
also included construction of storage and harbor facilities in the new oil
ports of Sidon, Baniyas, and Fao, as well as expansion of existing facilities
in Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
The rapid growth of international air transport also has contributed
to the importance of Southwest Asia in the world communications net-
work. Southwest Asia is an essential transit area on the international air
routes between Europe and the Far East, the United States and the Far
East, and Europe and Cape Town. At the present time a large number
of different international air routes cross Arabia. Air transport also has
contributed significantly to the improvement of local communications.
13 United Nations, Review of Economic Conditions in the Middle East 1951-52,
Ch. 3, "Petroleum," pp. 53-66.
642 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
The principal rail systems of Southwest Asia (cf. Fig. 20-1) were de-
veloped by foreign powers primarily for strategic and political reasons
and have only limited international or domestic economic significance. In
1951 the quantity of freight moved per capita was only about 2 per cent of
that of the United States. There are two main systems. One extends from
Europe via Turkey to Egypt and the Persian Gulf. The other starts at the
Arabian Gulf, crosses Iran in a north northeastern direction and reaches
the Caspian Sea near the Soviet border. Both systems were linked during
the war but are now separated. During the war the Trans-Iranian railroad
was of great significance in moving American supplies from the Persian
Gulf to the Soviet Union. The railroad from Basra to Turkey via Baghdad
also was important during World War II for the movement of cargo to
Turkey, since the Mediterranean was virtually closed to Allied shipping.
CHAPTER
21
South and Southeast Asia
A POWER VACUUM
South and Southeast Asia is largely a power vacuum perilously close
to the Communist bloc and a primary target of Communist expansionist
ambitions. Before World War II the entire region except Thailand and
Afghanistan was under direct foreign domination. India, Burma, Malaya,
Borneo, and Ceylon were controlled by the United Kingdom; Indonesia
by the Netherlands; Indochina by France, and the Philippines by the
United States. After World War II most of the area became independent
but none of the newly formed states have as yet achieved any real political
and economic strength. Some of the governments of the area are weak
and inexperienced; a number of countries are beset by serious internal
disorders. Limited progress has been made in breaking with the misery
and poverty of the past. As a result discontent and frustration are prob-
ably a greater threat to the political stability of South and Southeast Asia
than of any other underdeveloped area. At the same time Communist
influence has greatly increased in Asia as a result of the consolidation of
Chinese Communist power on the mainland. It is not surprising therefore
that Communists have been making a major effort to expand their influ-
ence over the area by propaganda, economic blandishments, infiltration,
and outright conquest.
Vital interests of the Free World are threatened. South and Southeast
Asia have more than one-quarter of the world's total population and al-
most 40 per cent of the population of the Free World. The area is an
important source of raw materials as well as a market for exports. It occu-
643
644 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
pies a highly strategic geographical position on the periphery of the Asian
land mass. It dominates important air and sea routes and controls major
air and naval bases. The control of the area by unfriendly powers would
endanger the entire Western Pacific defensive system. This threat to its
vital security interests accounts in part at least for the West's large-scale
economic and military aid to the region. Thailand, Pakistan, and the Phil-
ippines have joined the West as parties to the Manila Pact and Pacific
Charter of September, 1954, to protect the area against both open armed
attack and internal subversion. Most of the region, however, is as yet
uncommitted and is making every effort to remain neutral. Whether such
a neutral course will be possible remains to be seen. In any case there
appears to be no early prospect of a relaxation of Communist efforts to
win the area.
AREA AND POPULATION
Despite its diversity South and Southeast Asia has an essential unity
which sets it apart from the rest of Asia. Its unifying characteristics in-
clude similarities in geographic structure, climate, economic activities,
culture, and history. With an area of more than 3.5 million square miles
South and Southeast Asia is larger than the United States. In contrast
with other hot wet regions which typically are thinly peopled, South and
Southeast Asia is one of the most heavily populated areas in the world. It
had an estimated population of approximately 650 million in 1953, or one
quarter of the world total on 6 per cent of the earth's surface. This com-
pares with 170 million on the 11.5 million square miles of hot wet regions
outside Asia.1 South Asia, the largest and most populous of the two re-
gions embraces an area of more than 1.8 million square miles and has
more than 450 million people. The principal countries of South Asia are
India, Pakistan, Ceylon, and Afghanistan. (See Table 21-1.) Other politi-
cal units include independent Nepal and Bhutan and small Portu-
guese enclaves. Pakistan comprises two territories separated by a dis-
tance of nearly 1,000 miles. This unique political phenomenon arose
out of the provisions of the Indian Independence Act of 1947 which ended
British rule in India and provided for the establishment of the Dominion
of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The political boundaries of the
new states were fixed primarily along cultural— especially religious— and
linguistic ethnic lines. Areas predominantly Hindu became Indian and
Moslem areas Pakistan. They make little economic or geographic sense.
The distribution of the two religions in former British India was such as
1 P. Gourou, The Tropical World (London, 1952), p. 2.
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
645
to result in a divided Pakistan state. Of the two zones which make up
what has now become the Republic of Pakistan, East Pakistan with 42
million people crowded in an area one-sixth the size of West Pakistan is
the most important.
TABLE 21-1
South and Southeast Asia: Area Population and Population Density
of Principal Countries, 1953
POPULATION
COUNTRY
TOTAL AREA a
( SQUARE MILES )
POPULATION b
( THOUSANDS )
DENSITY
( per square
mile)
South Asia
Afghanistan
India
Pakistan
Ceylon
230,888
1,269,591
365,893
25,330
12,000(1951)
372,000
75,842 ( 1951 )
8,155
52
293
207
321
Southeast Asia
Burma
Thailand
Indochina
Malaya
Indonesia
Philippines
261,600
197,659
272,355
52,286
735,268
115,600
19,045
19,556
30,000
6,829
78,163(1952)
21,039
73
99
110
131
106
182
a United Nations, Statistical Yearbook, 1953.
b United Nations, Population and Vital Statistics Reports, Series A (New York, January, 1955).
Southeast Asia has an area of roughly 1.6 million square miles and a
population of more than 200 million. It includes Laos, Cambodia, Viet Nam,
Burma, and Thailand on the broad Indochina peninsula, Malaya on the
narrow Malay peninsula, and the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagoes
east and southeast of the mainland. Viet Nam was divided by a provisional
military demarcation line as a result of the Geneva Conference of July
1954. The northern part comprising 60,000 square miles and roughly 13
million people is controlled by the Communist Viet Minh. Free Viet Nam
has a republican form of government.
South and Southeast Asia has an average population density of almost
200 persons per square mile. This is very high for a predominantly agri-
cultural region, exceeding a number of industrialized countries including
the United States. Population densities vary widely from country to coun-
try. In general the Indian subcontinent is overpopulated while Southeast
Asia is underpopulated. Almost half of India's population lives on 14.5
per cent of the total area with a density of 755 to the square mile. How-
ever, Southeast Asia has some of the most densely populated agricultural
646 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
regions in the world. Java and Madura (Madoera) in Indonesia for ex-
ample, have more than 1,000 inhabitants per square mile and the Tonkin
Delta in North Viet Nam more than 1,100.
Most of the people of South and Southeast Asia live in villages and
small market towns. The number of persons living in cities of more than
50,000 is only a small fraction of the total population. Rural settlements
tend to be highly concentrated in the river valleys, deltas, and low-lying
plains like the Ganges Valley in India, the Red River and Mekong deltas
of North Viet Nam and Cambodia, the Menam delta of Thailand, and the
Irrawaddy delta of Burma.2 Population density in these areas reaches
2,000 per mile. Adjacent areas are often quite sparsely populated for a
variety of reasons including the cultural habits of the natives, less favor-
able soils and malarial infestation. Thus the outer islands of Indonesia
have a population density of under 60 persons per square mile as com-
pared with Java and Madura's 1,100. Except for Tonkin, Annam, and
fringe areas along the coast, the Indochinese peninsula's population den-
sity is under 25 persons per square mile.
South and Southeast Asia is characterized by high birth rates and de-
clining but still high death rates. Population is currently estimated to be
growing at a rate of somewhat more than 1.25 per cent per year in South
Asia as against 1.6 per cent in Southeast Asia. Declining death rates accord-
ing to United Nations estimates may raise the growth rate to as high as
1.83 to 2.32 per cent per annum by 1980. This would result in a popula-
tion in excess of 1 billion in 1980.
GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE
South Asia lies entirely north of the equator and half of the Indian sub-
continent lies outside the tropics in the Temperate Zone. Except for the
northern tip of Burma all of Southeast Asia is in the Tropical Zone extend-
ing to 10 degrees above the equator. The Indian subcontinent has the
following three main geographic divisions: 3 (a) The northern mountain
wall with elevations of more than 3,000 feet, ( b ) a lowland alluvial area
with an elevation of generally under 500 feet which extends in a band
120 to 200 miles wide completely across northern India, east and west,
and has an area of 300,000 square miles,4 and (c) the plateau of the
Indian peninsula with an area of about one million square miles and ele-
2 United Nations, Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East (New York, 1950),
p. 36.
3 L. D. Stamp, Asia: A Regional Geography, 11th ed. (London, 1952), pp. 13-14.
4 J. E. Spencer, Asia East by South (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1954), p. 4.
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 647
vations of 3,000 to 1,000 feet sloping from the West to the East. Between
the Eastern and Western edges of this plateau are narrow coastal plains.
The northern mountain barrier has served in many ways to keep India
a land apart. For all practical purposes India is accessible only by sea and
by air. It has no rail connections with other countries of Asia. The lowland
alluvial plain is one of the most fertile areas on the earth's surface, which
largely accounts for its dense population. The peninsula has poorer soils
and less favorable water conditions for irrigation than the alluvial plain.
Here population is concentrated mainly on the coastal plains.
Southeast Asia like India displays considerable variation in its physical
features. In general the terrain of the region is hilly and mountainous.
Much of the territory of Indochinese peninsula and Thailand is wild and
rugged. Mountain ranges extend throughout the length of the Malayan
peninsula into Indonesia. As a result Malaya has few stretches of level
ground and no less than two-thirds of Java is upland or mountainous. The
ruggedness of the terrain makes overland transport extremely difficult, so
that water transport is of primary importance. Much of the soil is infertile
and is covered with dense equatorial forest. Swamps and marshes are fre-
quent along the coast. Scattered throughout the area, however, are fertile
regions of lowland with large stretches of alluvial soil which, as mentioned
above, are the chief centers of population. Other fertile areas, chiefly in
the Philippines and Indonesia, have resulted from ash of extinct volcanoes
mixing with the soil.
The climate of South and Southeast Asia is tropical even though
roughly half of the Indian subcontinent is outside the tropical belt. The
reason for this is that the Himalayas form a great climatic barrier that
protects India from the cold winter winds of Central Asia.
South and Southeast Asia is predominantly a monsoon zone. Summers
are the rainy season almost everywhere, except in the equatorial regions
where seasonal differences are less marked and rain is fairly abundant at
all times. In the region of the monsoons expanding hot air creates low
pressure areas on the mainland each spring. In early June moist air moves
landward from the sea to equalize the pressure. As the air moves across
the land it brings rain for a period of almost four months. The monsoons
account for 80 to 90 per cent of the total precipitation. During other
seasons there is very little rain. The amount of rainfall varies widely from
region to region depending chiefly on differences in relief in relation to
wind direction.
The monsoon plays a vital role in South and Southeast Asia's agricul-
ture. For example, 80 per cent of India's crop land depends on the mon-
648 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
soon for water. It feeds large rivers for irrigation. It permits a fairly long
growing season. If the monsoon fails, as it periodically does, famine may
ensue.
ECONOMIC AND STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE
South and Southeast Asia plays an important role in the world econ-
omy. In 1953, the region accounted for roughly 6.5 per cent of the total
value of Free World trade. It is a major producer of a number of so-called
"key materials," notably natural rubber, tin, mica, titanium, and manga-
nese.5 (See Table 21-2 and Fig. 21-1.) Most of the region's output of these
products is exported and represents a large share of the requirements of
Western Europe and the United States. The area is also a dominant or
large world supplier of many other important raw materials and foodstuffs.
TABLE 21-2
South and Southeast Asia:
Relative Importance as Producer of Key Materials *
SHARE OF FREE
COMMODITY
WORLD OUTPUT
(1950)
COUNTRIES
Natural rubber
89 per cent
Malaya, Indonesia, Ceylon, Thailand
Tin (metal)
62
Malaya, Indonesia, Thailand
Mica
46
India, Pakistan
Titanium
30
India, Pakistan
Manganese (ore)
26
India, Pakistan
Graphite
11
Ceylon
Bauxite
7
Indonesia
Petroleum
3
Indonesia
* The President's Materials Policy Commission, Resources For Freedom, Vol. 1 (Washington, D. C,
June, 1952), pp. 9S-100.
It supplies the bulk of the Free World's requirements of jute and burlap,
manila hemp, tea, copra and coconut oil, and varying amounts of a large
variety of other tropical products such as lac and other gums, spices, palm
oil, sugar, and quinine. The economic vulnerability of the West to the loss
of these supplies has been reduced as a result of the development of syn-
thetics, more efficient utilization of materials, the opening up of alterna-
tive sources of supply, and the accumulation of strategic stockpiles.
Nonetheless the economic burden of such a loss would still be consider-
able.
South and Southeast Asia is of particular economic importance to the
former European colonial powers, especially the United Kingdom and the
5 The President's Materials Policy Commission, Resources For Freedom, Vol. 1
(Washington, D. C, June, 1952), pp. 98-100.
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 649
Netherlands. While independence has operated to circumscribe the eco-
nomic activities of foreign nationals in South and Southeast Asia, it has
not radically altered the area's traditional pattern of trade. As before the
war the largest share of South and Southeast Asia's trade is with the
metropoles or affiliated currency areas. India, Pakistan, Burma, and Cey-
lon have remained members of the sterling area. Laos, Cambodia, and
Viet Nam are in the franc area, and the Philippine peso is linked to the
dollar. Malaya is the United Kingdom's largest source of dollar earnings.
Singapore, in its outstanding entrepot role for the region, is a large source
of service income for British concerns.
Japan's economic well-being, as a result of the loss of its empire, is
much more dependent on South and Southeast Asia than before World
War II. South and Southeast Asia now provides a market for almost 40
per cent of Japan's exports, and supplies approximately 30 per cent of its
imports. As mentioned in Chapter 16, Japan's serious postwar balance-of-
payments difficulties would become almost hopeless if trade with South
and Southeast Asia were cut off.
The importance of South and Southeast Asia to the security of the rest
of the Free World hardly requires more than brief mention. If the area
fell under the control of unfriendly powers the United States outer de-
fenses in the Pacific would be seriously breached. A path to Australia
would be opened across the discontinuous land bridge of the Indonesian
Islands. British control of the Indian Ocean which is vital for the defense
of Southwest Asia and Africa would be jeopardized. Finally, if the man-
power and resources of the area were effectively organized by a ruthless
authoritarian power, as the Communists have done in China, the balance
of world power might in time overwhelmingly shift against the West.
RESOURCES
South and Southeast Asia's over-all resource picture in relation to area
and population is not too favorable. With a population in excess of 600
million, average density in 1953 was roughly 220 per square mile or
almost five times the world's average. As described elsewhere, areas of
greatest population pressure are the Indian subcontinent and Java. Much
of Southeast Asia, by contrast, is underpopulated with large areas of
potentially productive land available for cultivation.
The region's heavy population density is not offset by any unusual
endowment in other natural resources. South and Southeast Asia's mineral
resources, while fairly diversified, appear to be modest. They warrant no
650 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
particular optimism regarding the potentialities of the area for industrial
development.
Agricultural Land. Comparison of population with arable or actual
land under cultivation is of course much more meaningful than compari-
son with total land area since only part of the land is usable for the grow-
ing of food and raw materials. As shown in Table 21-3, South and South-
east Asia with less than one acre of cultivated land per head of population,
is at the bottom of the world scale with respect to arable land per capita.
TABLE 21-3
Areas of Cultivated Land Per Head of Population *
ACRES PER HEAD
2/2 or more North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Eastern
Europe (except Czechoslovakia), U.S.S.R.
1 to 2 Western and Central Europe, except Switzerland, Holland,
and Belgium
Marginal Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, Western Germany
Below 1 United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland
India, China, Japan and much of Southeast Asia, Egypt
* J. Russell, World Population and World Food Supplies (London, 1954), p. 16.
Moreover much of the land is lacking in nitrogen and phosphate and is
without dependable water. Even the countries of Western and Central
Europe, which are much more highly industrialized and depend on im-
ports to cover many of their requirements for food and agricultural raw
materials, have up to two and one-half times the land area per capita of
South and Southeast Asia. Because of its low per capita farm area the
only way the region can come close to feeding itself is by producing an
almost wholly vegetarian diet. Animal food production requires much
more land than vegetable food. An acre of land will yield up to 3000
pounds of bread or 10 tons of potatoes but only 100 to 200 pounds of
meat.6 By force of necessity, therefore, South and Southeast Asia must
devote most of the cultivated area to cereal production.
As shown in Table 21-4 the quantity of arable land varies considerably
from country to country ranging from a low of about one-third of an acre
in Indonesia to more than one acre for Burma. These differences should
not be taken too literally, however, because of possible inaccuracies in
the country's classification of what constitutes arable land. Double-crop-
ping in some areas also affects the significance of the figures.
6 Ibid., p. 16.
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
651
TABLE 21-4
South and Southeast Asia: Arable and Potentially Productive Land Per Capita
COUNTRY
PERIOD
ARABLE LAND
( MILLIONS
OF ACRES )
ARABLE LAND
PER CAPITA
( IN ACRES )
POTENTIALLY
PRODUCTIVE
( MILLIONS
OF ACRES)
India a
1950
324.5
0.87
98.4
Pakistan b
1948
51.2
0.68
22.2
Ceylon
1951
36.3
0.44
2.8
Afghanistan
1948
6.2 c
0.52
6.9
Philippines
1951
16.5 "
0.78
12.2
Indonesia
1947
27.2
0,35
Malaya
1951
5.2
0.76
2.4
Burma
1950
21.1
1.10
19,3
Indochina
1951
18.7 d
0.62
21.9
Thailand
1949
11.7 e
0.84
Totals
518.6
0.81
a Including all of Kashmir.
b Excludes Baluchistan.
c Excludes fallow.
d Total agricultural areas including permanent meadows and pastures.
e Main crops only.
* United Nations, Food and Agricultural Organization, Yearbook of Food and Agricultural Statistics,
1952, Vol. 6, Part 1.
Even if all of the so-called potentially productive land of the region
was brought into cultivation, the amount of arable land per capita would
still be only slightly more than one acre. In point of fact, however, much
of this land, particularly in India, can be reclaimed only at great cost.
Only the Philippines, Burma, Indochina, and Thailand still have large
unexploited areas of good agricultural land. China with its teeming mil-
lions may be sorely tempted to move into these areas sometime in the
future in order to relieve the growing pressure on its strained land re-
sources.
Mineral Resources.7 Exact knowledge of the mineral resources of South
and Southeast Asia is lacking, since the area has not yet been adequately
surveyed. However, the geology of the region is sufficiently well-known
as to make any sensational new mineral discoveries unlikely (Fig. 21-1).
Coal and lignite reserves amount to less than 5 per cent of the world total,
petroleum reserves to less than 2 per cent, and water power reserves to
about 15 per cent. The only metals found in significant amounts in relation
to the world total are tin, manganese, bauxite, iron ore, and titanium.
7 The materials used in this section were taken from United Nations, Development
of Mineral Resources In Asia and The Far East (Bangkok, 1953).
ra [3 0
652
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 653
Only India has the iron ore and coal reserves required to support a
large steel industry. India has immense iron ore reserves estimated at
10,000 million tons, of which as much as half has an iron content of 60
per cent. India also has the bulk of the area's high-grade coal, including
coking coal, although here its reserve position is much less favorable than
with respect to iron ore. Reserves are estimated at 5,000 to 6,000 million
tons, of which, however, less than 1,000 million tons is of coking quality.
Much of this reserve is now inaccessible and coking coal could become
a problem with a rapid speed-up in India's industrialization. While coal
is found in most of the other countries of the area, much of it is poor
quality, chiefly lignite. Indonesia and the Philippines have large iron ore
reserves, but these have a high nickel and chromium content which has
to be eliminated before the ore can be of any commercial value.
The area is well-provided with such ferro-alloys as tungsten, manga-
nese, and titanium and is moderately endowed with reserves of molyb-
denum, chromium, and vanadium. Except for tin, South and Southeast
Asia is deficient in non-ferrous metals. Limited amounts of antimony are
available in most countries. Small quantities of copper are to be found in
the Philippines, India, and Burma. Lead and zinc reserves still remain
untapped in Burma.
Both India and Indonesia have the bauxite reserves required to estab-
lish an aluminum industry, provided cheap power can be provided. Rich
magnesite reserves have also been identified in both countries. Ceylon
has sizable reserves of high-grade graphite and India of muscovite bloc
mica. No significant amounts of uranium-bearing mineral deposits have
been discovered but the region abounds in beach sands containing mona-
zite, which after uranium may be the most important source of fissionable
materials. The area is deficient in native sulphur required for a chemical
industry but has some pyrites and gypsum.
Petroleum is found in significant quantities in Indonesia, British Bor-
neo, and Burma, although known reserves are small in relation to the
world total. Indonesia's oil reserves of about one billion barrels are
roughly 1 per cent of the world total. Burma's petroleum supplies will be
just about sufficient to cover its growing needs.
While many parts of the region lack adequate coal and petroleum,
virtually every country, and in particular India, has a huge water power
potential which has been almost untouched. These hydraulic resources
are not always located in areas where the need for power is greatest and
their development will require large-scale investments. Nonetheless they
could meet a sizable share of the region's future electric power needs.
654 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
BASIC ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS
The most pervasive economic characteristic of South and Southeast
Asia is its poverty. With more than one-quarter of the world's population,
the area accounts for only about 6 per cent of total production. Levels of
living everywhere are at or close to minimum subsistence levels, averag-
ing less than $75 per capita. As a result only a very small margin of pro-
duction can be spared for investment. For much of the region the level
of investment is just sufficient to take care of the growth of population
so that living standards are stationary or increasing only very slowly.
The economy of South and Southeast Asia is predominantly agricul-
tural. The rural population represents anywhere from 70 to 90 per cent
of the total. Industrial development has been limited and outside of India
has been confined chiefly to mining, the processing of primary products
for export, and small-scale (including handicraft) production of con-
sumer goods for domestic use. Manufacturing and construction for most
countries of the region account for less than 15 per cent of national in-
come as compared with 50 per cent or more for agriculture. Before the
war a considerable share of the capital required for financing industrial
development was provided by overseas investors, principally European.
Now most of the capital is mobilized locally, in large part by the govern-
ments. Except for the Chinese, however, the number of foreigners di-
rectly engaged in the economic activities of the region was relatively
limited. The overseas Chinese, by contrast, are of considerable numerical
importance in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaya, the Philippines, and
Thailand. They play an economic role considerably greater than even
their numerical importance suggests through their extensive control of
the retail and export-import trade of the area. The success of the overseas
Chinese and their dual-citizenship status has aroused considerable resent-
ment among local people and governments, and has generated a variety
of legislative enactments designed to curb their activities.
While large plantations producing mainly commercial crops for export
occur in some parts of the region, most farming is of a small-scale sub-
sistence variety. The typical farm unit is only 2 to 5 acres as compared
with 140 acres in the United States, and is too small to permit the farmer
and his family to eke out more than a bare existence. In a number of
areas the size of the peasant's plot will not even support a bare sub-
sistence. The principal crops are rice and other grains which are largely
consumed on the farm. Commercial crops produced for export include
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 655
rubber, tea, rice, copra, jute, cotton, and manila hemp. Productivity in
agriculture is low.
Population pressure is acute over much of the area including India,
Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam, South Burma, and in Java and Madura. More-
over, these pressures have been intensified in recent years as modern im-
provements in public health and sanitation have reduced the death rate
without a corresponding decrease in the birth rate. Since there are very
few opportunities in industry, rural overcrowding, progressive fragmenta-
tion of farms, and underemployment in agriculture is commonplace. In
India, for example, it has been estimated that rural unemployment and
underemployment may be as high as 80 million.8
Economic relations between the countries of South and Southeast Asia
are limited by the fact that their economies are more competitive than
complementary. All export mostly food and raw materials. Since there is
little industrialization within the region the raw materials exports go
principally to Japan and non-Asiatic markets. It was the complementary
character of the Japanese and Southeast Asian economies which partly
inspired Japan's efforts in World War II to construct its "Greater East
Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." Trade within the region is limited primarily
to movements of rice from the surplus to the deficit areas, and exports of
textiles from India.
Exports lack diversification. Two or three products account for two-
thirds or more of the exports of most countries in the area. These exports
are typically subject to wide fluctuations in price and volume depending
on foreign market conditions. The result is equally wide movements in
the export earnings and levels of income of these countries.
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT
The very limited character of South and Southeast Asia's industrial
development is strikingly revealed by the fact that in 1948, the region
accounted for an estimated 1.5 per cent of world mining and manufactur-
ing production.9 This was only about one-third of the industrial output
of Japan and less than that of Belgium. India with 1.2 per cent of the
world total accounted for the bulk of the area's output of minerals and
manufactures.
The dominant position of India (cf. Fig. 21-1, p. 652) and the small
8 "India— Progress and Plan," The Economist, January 22, 1955.
9 United Nations, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, April, 1951.
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SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 657
amount of industrialization in the rest of the area is further highlighted by
the production data shown in Table 21-5. In 1952, India's coal production
was twelve times that of the rest of the region combined and its output of
electricity roughly three times as great. It had the only steel industry. Its
textile industry not only dwarfed that of the rest of South and Southeast
Asia but has become a major factor in the world export market. Only India
produces heavy machinery and equipment like locomotives and railway
cars. It has the only significant chemical industry. Despite its considerable
industrialization relative to the rest of the region, India's economy is still
overwhelmingly agricultural. Factory employment in manufactures and
mining in 1952 amounted to only about 2.5 million workers. In 1950,
mining and manufacturing and construction accounted for only 15 per
cent of the net domestic product as against 50 per cent in agriculture.
Per capita consumption of commercial energy was 0.10 metric tons coal
equivalent, or only one-eighth that of Japan. Moreover, light industries
are of major importance. Thus in 1952, approximately two-fifths of the
entire industrial labor force of India was employed in the cotton and jute
mills.
In the other countries of South and Southeast Asia, factory industry
consists chiefly of plants processing agricultural and mineral products
mainly for export. These include rice mills in Burma, Cambodia, Laos,
Viet Nam, and Thailand, oil refineries in Indonesia, tin smelters, vegetable
oil and rubber processing plants in Malaya, and sugar and coconut oil
mills in the Philippines. In addition, most countries of the region manufac-
ture a considerable variety of consumer goods like ceramics, glass, matches,
soap, cigarettes, paper and canned foods. All have small-scale metal-
working industries capable of making simple tools and equipment and of
doing repair work. In all countries including India handicrafts still account
for a considerable share of total output of manufactures.
Relative to its area and population South and Southeast Asia has a
poorly developed inland transportation system. Only India, which ac-
counts for about two-thirds of the length of railway lines for the entire
region, can boast of a reasonably well-developed and efficient rail system.
The development of this network has contributed significantly to India's
economic and political unification. It has been an important factor in
facilitating the movement of food from surplus to deficit areas in times
of local crop failures, thereby greatly reducing the frequency and severity
of famines which have plagued India in the past. But even in India, the
railway network is by no means adequate to service the country's growing
requirements. Freight movements frequently involve carriage both by
658 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
rail and coastal vessel, resulting in costly loading and unloading charges,
because of the overburdened rail system. The exploitation of valuable
mineral resources has been handicapped by the inability of the rail sys-
tem to move the ore from the mines.
Elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia water transport both inland and
coastal has played a much more significant role than land transport in the
region's economic development. In Burma the "linear build of the coun-
try, traversed by the Irrawaddy, has meant an easy development of water
transport. Native traffic in considerable volume has flowed along the
Irrawaddy, the Chindwin, and the Sittang for centuries, as well as along
the whole coastal fringe." 10 Similarly in Thailand the waterways have
long carried the bulk of the local transportation. Coastal shipping is the
primary form of transport in the Philippines and Indonesia. Intra-regional
transport is almost wholly by sea since rail or highway connections be-
tween countries, except as between India and Pakistan, are either very
inadequate or wholly lacking. A considerable amount of this traffic is
moved by small coastal vessels. A few countries have developed their
own merchant marines. India has a merchant fleet of almost half a million
gross registered tons of vessels larger than 100 tons. Its shipyards are
capable of building large oceangoing ships. Pakistan and the Philippines
have merchant fleets of between 150,000 and 200,000 gross registered
tons.
Because of poor land connections the development of civil aviation in
South and Southeast Asia has been very rapid since the war. Air freight
expressed in ton-kilometers increased fourfold in India from 1948 to 1952.
Large though less spectacular increases were registered in other countries
of the region. Most of the countries of South and Southeast Asia have
established their own airlines.
AGRICULTURE
The pattern of agriculture in South and Southeast Asia shows consider-
able diversity. Most widespread is permanent or sedentary farming
which involves the intensive cultivation of a given plot of land on a semi-
subsistence basis. Shifting subsistence agriculture is practiced on a much
more limited scale, chiefly in the rougher uplands, and accounts for 5 to
10 per cent of the area under cultivation in most countries. This migratory
form of cultivation involves the clearing and planting of plots of land for
a period of two or three years until the fertility of the soil is greatly
10 J. E. Spencer, Asia, East by South (New York, 1954), p. 218.
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 659
reduced and then moving on and repeating the process in a new site.
Finally, there is cash-cropping, largely for export, both by small individual
farmers and large plantations.
Food crops account for roughly three-quarters of the acreage under
cultivation in all South and Southeast Asia countries except Malaya and
Ceylon. Of the food crops grains, chiefly rice, are of overwhelming im-
portance. Wheat, maize, millet, and sorghum are grown in significant
amounts only in India and Pakistan. Grains supplemented by potatoes,
pulses, and sugar are the backbone of the native diet.
Although growing food is the principal economic activity of South and
Southeast Asia, the area has experienced great difficulties since the war
in expanding food output as rapidly as population. In 1953-54 per capita
food production was 10 per cent below prewar levels, whereas in North
America and Western Europe it was higher by 19 per cent and 7 per cent
respectively. Before the war South and Southeast Asia had a sizable grain
surplus, mostly rice. Thailand, Burma, and Indochina, Asia's rice bowl,
with exports of milled rice in excess of 6 million metric tons met the im-
port requirements of the traditional grain-deficit countries, India, Ceylon,
Indonesia, and Malaya, and in addition exported more than 2 million tons
outside the region. Since World War II South and Southeast Asia has
been a large grain-deficit area partly as a result of the reduced availabili-
ties of rice from the "rice bowl" countries and partly because of the in-
creased requirements of the traditional deficit countries. In 1953 this deficit
still exceeded 2.5 million metric tons. In the past few years most of the
countries of South and Southeast Asia have come to recognize the serious
nature of their food position, and have given increasing attention to the
problem of expanding food supplies. These efforts have achieved a fair
measure of success and have sharply reduced the region's grain deficit
from the 1951 peak levels. The present food position of the area is how-
ever still precarious. With the population of South and Southeast Asia
increasing by more than 10 million persons annually, the area cannot afford
to relax its efforts to expand food output.
As mentioned elsewhere, South and Southeast Asia also produces a
wide variety of tropical products, chiefly for export. For most countries,
with the notable exception of Ceylon and Malaya where the ratio is much
higher, the acreage given to commercial crops is about 10 to 15 per cent
of the total. Approximately 90 per cent of the world's supply of natural
rubber comes from South and Southeast Asia. Other products of which
the area is major world supplier include vegetable oils, fibres, spices, and
tea (see Table 21-6).
660 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
TABLE 21-6
South and Southeast Asia:
Selected Agricultural Exports As Percentage of World Total
COMMODITY
PERCENTAGE SHARE
(1952)
PRINCIPAL EXPORTERS
Sugar
Copra
Groundnut oil
7
75
77
per cent
Philippines
Philippines, Indonesia, Ceylon
Pakistan, India
Linseed oil
22
India
Coconut oil
Palm oil
63
32
Philippines, Ceylon
Indonesia, Malaya
Castor oil
50
India
Tea
90
India, Ceylon, Indonesia
Pepper
75
India, Indonesia, Borneo
Cotton
12
Pakistan, India
Raw jute
95
Pakistan
Abaca
80
Philippines
Reference already has been made to the low productivity of agriculture
in South and Southeast Asia. Yields per unit of land are considerably
below other countries employing intensive agricultural methods. The
production of wheat per acre in India and of rice throughout the region
is barely one-third that of Japan. Cotton yields per acre in India and
Pakistan are one-third to two-thirds those in the United States. Yields per
worker in agriculture as compared with more developed countries are
still lower.
Many factors contribute to these low yields. The use of inferior and
unirrigated soils is of major importance. Other factors include the inade-
quate use of fertilizers, the lack of mechanical equipment, the land tenure
system, overcrowding, and unscientific farm methods.
South and Southeast Asia as mentioned above is largely dependent for
its water supply on the relatively brief monsoons. The amount and reli-
ability of the monsoon rains varies widely from season to season in many
areas causing wide fluctuations in crop output. Considerable precipitation
is lost as a result of the rapid run-off of torrential downpours and large
areas are subject to flooding. Extensive recourse has been had to irrigation
and drainage projects to meet the problem of ensuring the proper amount
of water at the right time. Dykes are widely employed to contain the
flood flow. Much land is irrigated by artificial canals leading from
dammed-up rivers. Tanks and reservoirs in the upper reaches of many
rivers have been used for centuries to store water for irrigation purposes.
Wells also are tapped for subsurface water. In recent years some coun-
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 661
tries, notably India, have embarked on vast multi-purpose projects of the
Tennessee Valley Authority type which will provide flood control and
irrigation for millions of acres as well as electric power.
In 1950 more than 81 million acres of land in South and Southeast Asia
were irrigated. This represented roughly 25 per cent of the area under
principal crops. Any significant increase in agricultural output in the area,
particularly in India, will require a large expansion of irrigated crop
lands. This fact generally has been recognized with the result that most
development plans give a high priority to irrigation projects. In the first
two years of the five-year development plan which was started in 1952,
irrigation was extended to 2.25 million acres in India. Thailand has a
major irrigation project under way at Chainat which will provide regular
water supply to an area of 2.4 million acres.
The development of the Bhakra-Nangal canal irrigation system in India
has been a major source of international friction between India and
Pakistan.11 On July 15, 1954, Prime Minister Mohammed Ali of Pakistan
described the opening of the canal as a "potential threat to peace in the
subcontinent." 12 According to Pakistani engineers the 677 mile Bhakra-
Nangal irrigation system, by diverting water from the Sutlej river which
flows into Pakistan, will dry up the canals which irrigate Pakistan's 5,000,-
000 acre granary in the Punjab Province. After long and often bitter
negotiations India agreed to help Pakistan finance the development of
alternative water sources in accordance with recommendations made by
the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Fertilizer consumption in South and Southeast Asia is extremely low.
In 1951 to 1952, South and Southeast Asia with 50 times as much arable
land as Japan consumed only about one-quarter as much nitrogenous
fertilizer. Fertilizer plants are being constructed in a number of countries
to meet the deficiency but a tremendous gap still remains to be filled.
Animal power, chiefly buffaloes, provides the main source of farm
energy. Farm implements are of the most primitive types. In 1949, India
and Pakistan together employed an estimated 10,000 tractors in agricul-
ture or fewer than in Finland.
The land tenure system by weakening incentives is a serious obstacle
to raising productivity in agriculture. Farm tenancy still exists on a con-
siderable scale in many parts of the region. In 1950 over two-thirds of
the farming population of India were tenant cultivators and agricultural
laborers. Tenancy is a serious problem in South Vietnam and in the newly
11 See p. 100.
12 As reported in the New York Times of July 16, 1954.
662 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
settled lower Menam delta in Thailand. About 35 per cent of the farming
population of the Philippines were tenants in 1950. In densely populated
Central Luzon, tenancy occurs on about 88 per cent of the cultivable
land. Rents are high, usually half or more of the gross produce. Tenants
have little incentive to improve their farms ( 1 ) since most of the increase
in output is usually siphoned off by the landlord in the form of higher
rents, and (2) they often have no security of tenure. While legislation
has been passed in a number of countries to reduce tenancy and correct
some of its worse abuses, the governments are hampered in carrying out
these measures by a lack of funds to reimburse landlords and resistance
of landholders.
Most of the farming population is permanently debt-ridden. Since their
land affords them only a bare hand-to-mouth subsistence, they have no
reserve of capital to meet emergencies like crop failures, deaths, wed-
dings, and so on. Loans are usually only available at exorbitant interest
rates ranging, up to 100 per cent per annum, from landlords or money-
lenders, since no satisfactory systems have been developed to provide
rural credit on reasonable terms. Once a farmer falls under the grasp of
a moneylender he very rarely escapes and he frequently ends up a tenant
on his own land.
These are only some of the more serious features of the land tenure
system in South and Southeast Asia. It is small wonder therefore that the
system breeds improvidence and inefficiency. No less serious than the
adverse economic effects of the land tenure system are the disruptive
political effects. Inequitable land tenure systems have been important
sources of agrarian unrest in a number of countries in the region, the two
most outstanding examples being the Philippines and Communist Viet-
nam. The promise of land reform is an issue which has great appeal to the
tenant who cherishes the opportunity to own his own piece of land. It is
not surprising therefore that "land for the peasants" is one of the most
potent propaganda weapons of the Communists in many parts of South
and Southeast Asia.
FUTURE ECONOMIC PROSPECTS
The countries of South and Southeast Asia are very conscious of their
depressed economic status and are making serious efforts to break with
the poverty of the past. Virtually all governments have prepared blue-
prints outlining programs covering a period of years to accelerate their
country's economic growth. All except Afghanistan are members of the
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 663
Colombo Plan,13 created in January, 1950, to provide a framework for
international co-operative effort in promoting the economic development
of the region. Members outside South and Southeast Asia are Great Brit-
ain, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Japan. The
Colombo Plan arrangement is essentially an informal one. It has no au-
thority over individual members. Its primary purpose is to provide a
vehicle for the exchange of information as to the status and progress of
the national development programs in South and Southeast Asia. It also
serves as a channel for aid furnished by some member countries outside
the area. Thus in 1950 Australia pledged approximately £ A 31.25 million
to countries of South and Southeast Asia through the Colombo Plan and
Canada appropriated $133.4 million through 1955-56. Some technical as-
sistance is exchanged by member countries under a Technical Co-opera-
tion Scheme.
The individual national economic development programs generally
cover a three-to-six-year period. They are fairly modest in their objectives.
They call for a gradual increase in the rate of investment, an increase in
total production somewhat more rapid than the growth of population,
and only very moderate increases in per capita consumption. In almost
every case the government has been assuming a major responsibility for
new investment (generally 50 per cent or more of the total). Major em-
phasis is on agriculture and basic services like electric power and trans-
portation.
For some countries these development plans are still only paper plans,
and little progress has been made in implementing them, largely because
of unsettled internal political conditions as in Indonesia or Viet Nam.
Where countries have made substantial progress, notably in India, Burma,
the Philippines, and Thailand there nonetheless have been delays because
of programming difficulties, shortages of qualified senior personnel, and
similar problems. Lack of adequate resources to finance investment has
been a major bottleneck in virtually every country. This lack of capital
may well be the most intractable obstacle to sustained economic progress
in the region.
The problem of inadequate resources may be less serious in the fore-
seeable future for Southeast Asia than for South Asia. Southeast Asia
except for Indonesia is still relatively underpopulated. It produces a
large food surplus and still has sizable areas of good agricultural land to
be opened up. Government profits from exports of rice have provided and
can continue to provide a good source of income to finance development
13 See pp. 286-289.
664 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
projects. In South Asia, in India and Pakistan, the situation is different.
The pressure of population on resources is already great and there is
relatively little room for expansion. Yet population is rising at the rate of
1.5 per cent per annum and may increase to 2 per cent in another decade
as a result of expected reduction in the death rate. Living standards are
so low that it is extremely difficult to divert more resources from con-
sumption to investment. If the goals of India's first five-year plan, ending
March 1956, were to be met on schedule, savings would still only repre-
sent about 7 per cent of total production. This is only slightly more than
enough to meet the needs of the expanding population. The Indian pic-
ture is by no means all dark. India possesses a stable government and an
efficient and honest civil service. It is showing a strong determination to
speed up its economic growth. Its mineral resources will support a sub-
stantially higher level of industrial output than at present. Agricultural
productivity is low and offers substantial opportunities for improvement.
The Government is one of the first to officially support programs to control
population. Whether these positive factors will be sufficient to overcome
the considerable obstacles to India's economic development, particularly
the shortage of capital, remains to be seen.
Pakistan from its inception as an independent nation has been con-
fronted with much greater obstacles to economic growth than India. It
has had to face the serious handicap of being divided into two widely
separated parts (cf. Fig. 2-3, p. 35). It received the smallest share of
former United India's natural resources and administrative and technical
skills. It had to shoulder the heavy costs of a huge refugee problem. Un-
der the circumstances it is not surprising that Pakistan's economic progress
has been slow. It is still too early to tell whether or not Pakistan can estab-
lish a solid economic base from which sustained economic growth can
proceed.
Communist China, starting from a considerably lower level than India,
has achieved a relatively high rate of savings and investment in a few
years if its official statistics can be accepted as reliable. But Communist
China is an authoritarian state with a ruthless disregard for human needs
and values. The essentially democratic countries of South and Southeast
Asia cannot readily impose greater sacrifices on the mass of the popula-
tion without running grave political risks. But if the region fails to achieve
economic growth by democratic methods, it may in desperation decide
to emulate the Communist pattern. This is the danger which confronts the
Free World in South and Southeast Asia.
CHAPTER
22
Latin America
Latin America's economic and strategic importance to the Free World
at the present time, particularly to the United States, derives largely from
its role as a major supplier of essential foodstuffs and raw materials, as
well as from its location in relation to vital lines of communication, such
as the Panama Canal and the Caribbean Sea. Economic relations between
the United States and Latin America are a frequent source of friction.
However, politically it is aligned with the West, although it is not free
from or immune to Communist penetration, as the Guatemala experience
showed. It makes little military contribution to the Free World system
of collective security because of its limited capabilities.
Latin America's importance lies chiefly in its rapidly growing potential.
Its population is growing faster than that of any other region in the
world. If present demographic trends continue Latin America could have
a population of 500 million within the next fifty years, or double the an-
ticipated population of the United States and Canada.1 Latin America
is the one major underdeveloped area in the Free World which is under-
going rapid economic development and where the prospects for continued
economic growth are favorable. Moreover the desire for economic im-
provement is one of the most powerful forces operating in Latin America
today. If present trends continue, Latin America is bound to play an in-
creasing role in world affairs by virtue of the sheer growth of its popula-
tion and expanding economic capabilities.
1 Report to the President, United States-Latin American Relations, Department of
State Bulletin ( November 23, 1953).
665
666 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
AREA AND POPULATION
Latin America extends for a distance of more than 6,000 miles from
the Rio Grande, separating the United States and Mexico, to Cape Horn
at the southern extremity of Argentina. Including the West Indies it em-
braces an area in excess of 8 million square miles or two and two-thirds
that of the United States. Latin America's population in 1953 of approxi-
mately 172 million about equalled the combined populations of English-
speaking Canada and the United States. It includes twenty republics and
a number of European colonial possessions in the West Indies and the
Guianas. This chapter will deal primarily with the independent countries
of Latin America, since the colonies are much closer politically and eco-
nomically to the old world than to the Western Hemisphere.
Latin America is thinly populated with an average density of 22 persons
per square mile. With 19 per cent of the habitable land area of the world
it has only about 7 per cent of the world's population. Among the major
regions of the world, only Australia and Africa have a lower population
density. Wide variations from this average are found from country to
country and as between different regions in the same country. At one
extreme is Haiti with more than 300 persons per square mile and at the
other Paraguay with less than 10. (See Table 22-1.) A very few rural
areas, such as the Barbados in the British West Indies, have population
densities similar to those found in South and Southeast Asia. Even among
the most-thickly peopled areas population density rarely exceeds 125 per
square mile and usually is less. In general, Middle America (Mexico,
Central America, and the Caribbean Islands) is more thickly populated
than South America. For an underdeveloped region Latin America shows
an unusually large concentration of population in urban centers. Five
cities have populations of one million or more and thirty-nine have popu-
lations between 100,000 and one million 2 (cf. Fig. 6-3, p. 150).
The population of Latin America shows great racial diversity. The main
components are Indians, whites, and Negroes. The absence of strong in-
hibitions against mixed marriages has resulted in the widespread mingling
of these three groups, so that today more than half the population of
Latin America is of mixed heritage, or mestizo. Only two countries, Ar-
gentina and Uruguay in the temperate zones, have predominantly white
populations. Elsewhere the proportion of peoples of unmixed European
ancestry is generally less than 15 per cent. Pure-blooded Indians are a
2 P. E. James, Latin America, rev. ed. (New York, 1950), p. 7.
LATIN AMERICA
667
majority in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Guatemala. Negroes
predominate on most of the Caribbean Islands. Natural factors such as
climate have been important in contributing to the low proportion of
whites to the total population, particularly in the tropics. Spanish and
Portuguese colonial policies which favored quick exploitive returns rather
than permanent settlement also had some effect.
TABLE 22-1
Latin American Republics: Area, Population and Population Density, 1953 °
COUNTRY
AREA
( SQUARE MILES )
POPULATION
(000)
POPULATION
DENSITY
( PER SQUARE MILE )
Venezuela
352,141
5,440
15.4
Colombia
439,825
12,108
27.5
Ecuador
105,510
3,924
37.2
Peru
506,189
9,035
17.9
Bolivia
416,040
3,107
7.5
Chile
286,396
6,072
21.2
Paraguay
150,516
1,496
9.9
Argentina
1,072,745
18,393
17.1
Uruguay
72,172
2,525
34.9
Brazil
3,286,169
55,772
16.9
Mexico
758,550
28,053
36.9
Guatemala
42,044
3,049
72.4
El Salvador
13,176
2,052
155.7
Nicaragua
57,144
1,166
20.4
Honduras
59,160
1,564
26.3
Costa Rica
19,238
881
45.7
Panama
28,575
864
30.2
Cuba
44,217
5,807
131.3
Dominican Republic
19,129
2,291
119.7
Haiti
10,700
7,739,637
3,227
166,825
301.6
Total
Av. 21.5
* United Nations, Statistical Yearbook, 1954.
Population is growing most rapidly in Middle America and tropical
South America where birth rates are high and death rates are already
fairly low. During 1949 to 1951 the average annual rate of population
growth of mainland Middle America was 2.87 per cent. No figures are
available in the same period for tropical South America but during 1940
to 1950 the average annual growth rate in this area was 2.23 per cent.
Growth rates are lower, under 2 per cent per annum, in temperate South
America where fairly low death rates are accompanied by declining birth
rates. United Nations projections suggest the possibility of a Latin
American population in excess of 300 million by 1980.
668 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE 3
Geographical factors have had important economic and political effects
on Latin America's development. Latin America is part of what is loosely
termed "the Western Hemisphere." 4 However, while the Panama Canal
has linked the entire west coast of South America as well as its northern
territories with both coasts of the United States, the southeastern shore
from Cape Sao Roque to the Plata river region is almost as close to Eu-
rope as to the United States, and is much nearer to Africa than to either.5
Roughly 95 per cent of South America lies east of New York City. The
fact that South America juts so far out into the Atlantic has helped to
promote economic, cultural, and political relations with Europe. It is only
in the past quarter-century that Latin America's cultural relations with
the United States have become closer than with Europe. At the same time
South America's extreme southerly position has had an over-all inhibiting
effect on its relations with the rest of the world because the main streams
of commerce have been east and west.
Although Latin America extends from roughly 33 degrees north latitude
to almost 55 degrees south latitude, approximately three-quarters of it
lies in the tropics. The main reason for this is the triangular shape of
South America which tapers off sharply below the tropic of Capricorn.
Latin America exhibits wide differences in topography and climate
which in turn have significantly affected the pattern of economic develop-
ment and settlement. Middle America, connecting the United States and
South America, is predominantly mountainous with few extensive flat
areas. Plains and lowlands are largely limited to narrow strips along the
coasts and certain rivers. Slopes are gentler and coastal areas broader in
the east than in the west so that the orientation of commerce eastward
has been facilitated. The topography of Central America has been an im-
portant fact in the failure of the area to achieve greater political and
economic cohesiveness. In the Caribbean, Cuba is relatively level while
the Dominican Republic and Haiti have the rugged and mountainous
terrain of the mainland. Northern Mexico to the tropic of Cancer is arid
or semi-arid. Further south rainfall is more plentiful though still inade-
quate in many places. The Gulf and Caribbean coasts are wetter than
the Pacific coast. No part of Cuba is deficient in moisture but semi-arid
areas are found in Haiti.
3 Based largely on P. E. James, Latin America, rev. ed. (New York, 1950).
4 See p. 258.
5 L. L. Bernis, The Latin American Policy of the United States (New York, 1943),
Ch. 1.
LATIN AMERICA 669
While most of Middle America is close to or in the Tropical Zone, the
high elevation of much of the region has a significant moderating effect
on the temperature. Mexico City, 7,500 feet above the Pacific and Guate-
mala City 5,000 feet above it, even though in the tropics, have a climate
most of the year like spring in Southern California 15 to 20 degrees to
the North. With few exceptions, the highlands are the areas of greatest
population density in Middle America even though low-lying but poten-
tially richer agricultural lands are available, as in the Gulf region of
Mexico. Undoubtedly the invigorating climate of the high plateau as
compared with the hot unhealthy lowlands has contributed to this pattern
of settlement.
South America divides from West to East into three main longitudinal
zones (1) the Cordilleras of the Andes, (2) the lowland belt and (3) the
plateaus of Guiana and Brazil. The Andes form a high mountain belt 100
to 400 miles wide extending from the Caribbean in the North to the tip
of Tierra del Fuego in the South. Over most of this distance the Andes
rise close to the coast leaving only very narrow coastal plains. These
mountains have been a major obstacle to the development of communica-
tions with the rest of the continent and have served to retard the west
coast's economic development. The west coast has few good harbors but
the opening up of the Panama Canal played a vital role in reducing its
economic isolation. Arable land is limited to coastal valleys and high
plateaus between the mountains.
The lowland belt, which includes the Orinoco, and Amazon river val-
leys, and the Chaco and Pampas plains, is almost continuous from the
mouth of the Orinoco to the northern border of Patagonia. It embraces
roughly half the area of South America. Much of this area has few people,
particularly in the hot humid tropical latitudes. The lowland plains meet
the Guiana and Venezuelan highlands in the North and the Brazilian
highlands in the east. The former are remote from the coast and relatively
unexplored. The latter which extends through most of the length of Brazil
at an elevation of 1,000 to 3,000 feet support the bulk of the country's
population and again illustrates the attraction of cooler highlands in
tropical regions.
One other significant physical feature of South America is its vast river
system. The Amazon, with a drainage basin of almost three million square
miles, is the largest river in the world. The Orinoco to the north drains
an area of possibly four hundred thousand miles. However, fluctuations
in water levels, rapids or falls, and other obstacles have impaired the use-
fulness of these and other rivers for water transportation.
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670
LATIN AMERICA 671
Altitude and shape exercise important influences on the climate of
South America. High altitudes as in Middle America counteract the effect
of latitude in the tropical regions. Thus, on the east coast, the Brazilian
highlands produce relatively cool climates for a distance of 400 to 600
miles inland in an area ranging from the Tropic of Capricorn to within
ten degrees of the equator. Quito, the capital of Ecuador, though almost
on the equator, with an elevation of 9,000 feet has an average monthly
temperature of 54 degrees Fahrenheit. The tapering shape of South
America exposes the climate of the southern part of the continent to the
moderating influences of the ocean. As a result, temperatures are much
less extreme both in summer and winter than for the same latitudes in
North America.
Tropical South America generally has an abundance of rainfall and in
some areas, like the Amazon lowlands, has an excess. Arid or semi-arid
conditions obtain in Northeast Brazil and in the coastal areas of Ecuador,
Peru, and the Atacama desert of Northern Chile. Central and Southern
Chile have an ample supply of rainfall, while on the eastern side of the
Andes, in Argentina, arid and semi-arid conditions prevail over most of
the area.
RESOURCES
Latin America probably is the best-endowed of the major underdevel-
oped regions with respect to physical resources (Figs. 22-1, 2). Except for
most of the West Indies and certain Central American countries like El
Salvador, where the pressure of population on resources is acute, the area
is underpopulated. Arable land per capita is two or three times greater
than in South and Southeast Asia and exceeds most countries in Africa.
Moreover, unused but potentially productive land is at least 50 per cent
of the arable land area. Latin America has large reserves of many of the
most important minerals required to support an industrial economy. It has
vast untapped water power resources. Its major deficiency is coal. There is
little doubt that Latin America's resource base will support a much larger
population than at present and at rising living standards, provided the
capital can be mobilized to effectively exploit these resources.
Agricultural Land. According to World Food and Agriculture Organi-
zation statistics, arable land and unused but potentially productive land
represent about 5 per cent of the total area of Latin America. The number
of cultivated acres is roughly 1.3 per capita. The cultivation of potentially
productive land would raise this figure to about 2 acres per capita. This
figure is probably on the low side, in that considerable land now classed
672 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
as "permanent meadows and pastures" could be used to raise crops. Indi-
vidual countries show wide variations from the average in cultivated land
per capita. ( See Table 22-2. ) The best-endowed countries are Argentina,
Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the mid-latitudes. The humid Pampa of
Argentina is one of the best-endowed meat and grain producing areas in
TABLE 22-2
Latin America: Arable and Potentially Productive Land *
COUNTRY
PERIOD
TOTAL
ARABLE LAND
(iNCL. FALLOW
AND ORCHARDS )
( 000 ACRES )
ARABLE LAND
PER CAPITA
( 1953 POP. )
total unused
but potentially
productive
(000 acres)
Venezuela
1951
6,672
1.23
583
Colombia
1950
6,029 a
0.5
Ecuador b
1949
7,413
2.16
5,752
Peru
1950
3,954
0.44
Bolivia
1938
845
0.3
Chile
1942
8,238
1.36
Paraguay
1947
3,830 c
2.56
Argentina
1948
74,130
4.03
Uruguay
1951
5,046
2.0
Brazil
1947
46,541
0.8
72,390
Mexico
1951
37,065
1.32
22,239
Guatemala
1950
3,553
1.17
El Salvador
1950
1,349
0.66
Nicaragua
1949
1,678
1.44
7,786
Honduras
1951
2,001
1.29
Costa Pica
1950
872d
1.0
Panama
1951
608
0.7
Cuba
1946
4,868
0.84 •
62
Dominican Republic
1946
1,680
0.73
. . .
Haiti
1947
1,137
0.35
Total
217,509
Av. 1.30
a Excludes fallow.
b Excludes Oriente Province.
c Total agricultural area.
d Excludes holdings of less than 0.7 acres.
* United Nations, Food, and Agricultural Organization, Yearbook oj Food and Agricultural Statistics,
1952, Vol. 6, Part 1.
the world.6 The possession of this rich natural resource was an important
factor in the more rapid economic development of Argentina than of
other parts of Latin America. While Latin America has a relatively favor-
able land base as compared with other underdeveloped areas, it is no-
where nearly as well-endowed with good soils as the United States. In
6 P. E. James, "An Assessment of the Bole of the Habitat as a Factor in Differential
Economic Development," American Economic Review, Vol. 41, No. 2 (May, 1951),
pp. 231-238.
LATIN AMERICA 673
the United States 23 per cent of the total land area is arable or potentially
productive, while the number of acres cultivated per capita of population
is about 4. The main reason for the substantially lower ratio of cultivable
land in Latin America is the existence of vast tropical rain-forest areas
like the Amazon and the Orinoco.
The Amazon Valley is almost equal in size to the United States and
accounts for roughly two-fifths of all of South America. Yet it supports
a population of under 4 million. Despite the variety of its still largely
unexploited natural resources, it has yet to be demonstrated that the area
can support a large population at satisfactory levels of living. The sparse
population cannot be explained by the hot humid climate alone since
regions in similar latitudes of South and Southeast Asia are among the
most densely populated in the world. Approximately two-thirds of the
Amazon Valley consists of rough foothills and mountains which are ex-
tremely difficult for man to penetrate. This territory virtually rings an
almost flat inner basin of about one million square miles. Transportation
is less of a problem in this inner area because of its vast system of inter-
connecting waterways. However, here the only soils suitable for intensive
cultivation are the flood-plains. A study made in 1952 indicated that only
3 to 4 per cent of the inner basin is subject to inundation.7 Lands beyond
the flood-plain, despite their dense tropical vegetation, have almost no
mineral nutrient reserves. When cleared and cultivated they lose their
fertility in one or two years. The lands above the flood-plain therefore
offer little attraction to the farmer, since they require shifting cultivation
and will yield him only a bare subsistence. Their most economic use may
be for raising tropical tree crops like palm oil. The trees of the forest
themselves are of limited commercial value because of the absence of
dense stands of single species, particularly conifers.
Of the 30,000 to 40,000 square miles of flood-plain only about 500
square miles are cultivated. This area could therefore support millions of
additional population. However, it would yield them only the same
meager subsistence as the rice-grower in the rich delta regions of Asia,
since the farm family can cultivate only a few acres with the limited
equipment at its disposal. Large-scale operations would require heavy
capital investments in dykes, drainage systems, and pumps. Thus, Fair-
field Osborn concludes, the Amazon Valley "might eventually accommo-
date forty or fifty million persons at the bare subsistence stage now
prevailing." 8 An alternative might be the development of extensive plan-
7 F. Osborn, The Limits of the Earth ( Boston, 1953), p. 142.
8 Ibid., p. 145.
i.i— .i.iiiiwiiw. n.m»
Port of Spain,
etown
Paramaribo
Cayenne
200 400 600 Ml
•1-
*
1 17
♦ 1
■*" 1 IK
o !
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Fig. 22-2. South America: Resources: (1) coal; (2) iron ore; (3) aluminum; (4) oil; (5) rail-
road; (6) Pan-American Highway; (7) mercury; (8) silver; (9) copper; (10) vanadium;
(11) manganese; (12) platinum; (13) tin; (14) tungsten; (15) gold; (16) lead and zinc,
(17) uranium; (18) diamonds.
674
LATIN AMERICA
675
tation operations like the Ford Company rubber plantation established in
the 1930's. The failure of the Ford project, however, suggests that the
high costs of attracting the required labor may make it difficult to pro-
duce commercial crops in the area at competitive world prices.
Countries in the mid-latitudes possess the greatest possibilities for ex-
panding agricultural output. "The permanent pastures of the Pampas
might become very much more productive through the increased use of
the plough and the introduction of a rotation system based on the occa-
sional cultivation of the land and improved varieties of grass and herbage
plants, especially alfalfa." 9 In the tropics there are large unused areas
suitable for cattle raising. Increased crop production, however, will de-
pend in considerable measure on more irrigation.
Minerals. (Cf. Fig. 22-1, 2.) Latin America has many minerals in more
than adequate quantities. It has a very significant share of the Free
World's reserves of such essential minerals as iron ore, copper, lead, zinc,
bauxite, petroleum, tin and tungsten (see Table 22-3).
TABLE 22-3
Latin America: Share of Free World's Reserves of Selected Minerals *
MINERAL
PERCENTAGE
SHARE
PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES
Iron ore ( 50 per cent Fe
content or more )
Manganese ( 45 per cent mn or
above )
Copper ( contained metal )
Lead ( contained metal )
Zinc ( contained metal )
Tin ( contained metal )
Antimony ( contained metal )
Bauxite ( contained metal )
Tungsten ( contained metal ^
Native sulphur
Mercury
Petroleum
40 per cent Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Mexico
10 per cent Brazil, Cuba
38 per cent Chile
1 1 per cent Peru, Argentina, Chile
9 per cent Argentina, Peru, Mexico
10 per cent Bolivia
77 per cent Bolivia, Mexico
38 per cent West Indies, Brazil, Surinam
18 per cent Bolivia, Brazil, Peru
48 per cent Chile, Mexico
4 per cent Mexico
12 per cent Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia,
Peru
* The President's Materials Policy Commission, Resources For Freedom, Vol. 11, Ch. 23 (Washington,
June, 1952).
Other minerals found in Latin America include platinum, vanadium,
nickel, bismuth, and fluorspar. Uranium has been found in a number of
countries. Mexico and Brazil appear to be the best-endowed with mineral
9 F. L. McDougall, "Food and Population," International Conciliation, No. 486,
publication of the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace (New York, 19523.
d. 572.
676 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
resources. In general, however, the economic significance of Latin Amer-
ica's mineral resources has been reduced by virtue of their distance from
industrial centers, the inadequate transport system, and the shortage of
power. This is especially true in the case of Brazil.
The little coal found in some countries of Latin America is generally
low-grade and not suitable for coking. Countries having the greatest en-
ergy requirements such as Argentina and Brazil frequently also lack
sufficient petroleum as an alternative source of power. As a result they
are heavily dependent on imported fuels. Such imports have been absorb-
ing a growing share of their limited foreign exchange earnings, thereby
restricting imports of capital equipment for economic development. Brazil
and Argentina are seeking to solve this problem by expanding domestic
oil production. Favorable geological formations suggest the existence of
large oil reserves in both countries. The development of Latin America's
vast water power resources can also provide needed energy. The hydraulic
resources of Brazil alone are estimated to exceed those of the United
States. However, hydro-electric projects require large investments of capi-
tal. Furthermore, there is no substitute for coal in the making of blast
furnace products and open hearth steel and in the manufacture of certain
heavy chemicals, or for petroleum for highway transportation. Some relief
from the coal problem may be provided as shipments of Latin American
iron ore to the United States expand. Vessels which otherwise might pro-
ceed from the United States in ballast can carry coal at low transport costs.
ECONOMIC AND STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE
Latin America is of greater significance in the world economy than any
of the other major underdeveloped regions. In 1953 it accounted for
approximately 10 per cent of the total value of world trade. It is of par-
ticular importance as a trading partner of the United States. Latin
America takes one-fifth of all this country's exports and supplies one-third
of our imports. It thus accounts for a substantially larger share of United
States trade than all of continental Western Europe and the United King-
dom. It is more important as a market for United States exports than Asia,
Africa, and Oceania combined.
Latin America is a major world producer of a wide variety of industrial
and agricultural commodities ( see Tarble 22-4 ) , most of which are shipped
abroad. Many of these commodities are strategic in character; some thirty
items on the United States' strategic stockpile list come from Latin
America. Latin America provided 20 per cent or more of the total United
LATIN AMERICA
677
States supply ( 1952 ) of such metals as copper, lead, zinc, manganese,
vanadium, beryllium, antimony, and cadmium. It furnishes various other
strategic metals like tin and tungsten in lesser but important amounts.
More than 55 per cent of this country's imports of crude petroleum and
iron ore come from Latin America and over 90 per cent of our aluminum
imports. Latin America is of particular importance to the United States
as a source of essential supplies in wartime, since ( 1 ) it is less vulnerable
to enemy takeover or destruction, and (2) lines of communications with
Latin America are easier to maintain and protect than with other overseas
areas.
TABLE 22-4
Latin American Republics:
Share of World Production of Selected Raw Materials, 1952 °
INDUSTRIAL COMMODITY
PER CENT
AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY
PER CENT
Tantalite
52.4
Henequen
98.1
Bauxite
46.2
Coffee
83.3
Beryllium
46.2
Cocoa beans
25.1
Silver
36.8
Sugar cane and beet
15.5
Bismuth
34.7
Sisal (1951)
24.3
Antimony
Petroleum
34.4
18.9
Flaxseed
Wool
21.4
15.0
Tin, mine
18.9
Cotton
12.5
Zinc, mine
16.0
Cottonseed (1951)
12.3
Fluorspar
Tungsten
15.1
12.9
Abaca (1951)
Cattle ( number )
10.9
10.1
Graphite
Manganese
12.7
7.2
Hogs (number)
Corn
9.8
9.0
Molybdenum
Mercury
Platinum— group metals
7.4
5.8
4.9
Wheat
Peanuts (1951)
3.9
2.3
Nickel
4.7
* Foreign Operations Administration, Report on the Economic Situation in Latin America (Washington,
D. C, August, 1954), p. 91.
Large amounts of foreign capital, particularly United States capital,
are invested in Latin America. At the end of 1953, almost $7 billion, or
roughly one-third of all United States private investment abroad, were
in Latin America.10 These yielded a return of roughly $1 billion annually.
Despite the large investments, Latin-Americans are inclined to feel that
the United States has not shown sufficient concern about their develop-
ment problems. They are particularly resentful about the large amount
of United States aid given Europe and Asia as compared with Latin
America. They feel they are too much taken for granted. Other major
10 United States Department of Commerce, Survey of Current Business (May, 1954).
678 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
investors, notably the United Kingdom and France, substantially reduced
their investments in Latin America during the interwar period. British
investments as of 1951 were down to about $700 million.11
The strategic importance of Latin America is of course not limited to
its role as a supplier of essential materials. Middle America is on the door-
step of the United States. Therefore any threat to the security of the area
is a direct threat to the security of this country. The Caribbean countries
guard the approaches to the vital Panama Canal. Parts of Latin America
can provide valuable air and naval bases to protect American lines of
communication as they did in World War II. At the present time Latin
America has only very limited military capabilities to contribute to the
defense of the Free World. But it is an area experiencing very rapid popu-
lation growth and considerable economic expansion. An area which may
have as many as 500 million people by the year 2000 necessarily will play
an increasingly important role in the international political arena in the
coming years.
BASIC ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS
Probably the most significant feature of the Latin American economy
has been its rapid rate of growth. Latin America is not stagnating like
many other underdeveloped regions. During the decade ending in 1953 per
capita gross national product for the region as a whole has increased at a
rate of more than 2.5 per cent per annum. This compares with the growth
of per capita income of 2.1 per cent per annum in the United States during
the period 1869 to 1952. Rates of investment averaged close to 15 per cent
of gross national production over the period or only slightly less than in
the more highly developed areas. While certain favorable and probably
nonrecurring factors contributed to this impressive record of growth, this
postwar experience indicates elements of underlying strength in the Latin
American economy.
Latin America is nonetheless still poor. In 1952 average per capita
gross national product was only about $250. While this is considerably
more than South and Southeast Asia's $75 per person it is far below the
$2,000 for the United States. Wide variations from the average obtain
from country to country ( see Table 22-5 ) . Argentina and Venezuela with
per capita incomes in excess of $425 approach the lower end of the scale
for industrialized countries. Five countries with incomes of less than $100
11 Pan-American Union, Foreign Investments In Latin America: Measures For Their
Expansion (Washington, D. C, 1954), p. 10.
LATIN AMERICA
679
per person are close to being on a par with the most impoverished under-
developed areas. Moreover, since incomes are distributed very unequally
in Latin America, most of the population has substantially lower incomes
than indicated above. In addition to low incomes, Latin America portrays
all the other typical characteristics of underdeveloped regions. Diets are
inadequate in a number of countries, productivity is low, educational fa-
cilities are grossly inadequate, and illiteracy is widespread. The over-all
death rate is roughly 50 per cent higher than in the United States, and in
many countries large segments of the population suffer from endemic de-
bilitating diseases.
TABLE 22-5
Latin America: Per Capita Gross National Product, 1952 °
(in 1950 $ U. S.)
163
62
149
222
139
362
56
96
295
452
Argentina
Bolivia
430
66
Guatemala
Haiti
Brazil
217
Honduras
Chile
296
Mexico
Colombia
215
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
198
Panama
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
406
171
90
167
Paraguay
Peru"
Uruguay
Venezuela
* Foreign Operations Administration, op. cit., and United Nations, Department of Economic Affairs,
Economic Survey of Latin America, 1953 (New York, 1954).
Latin America is still a predominantly agricultural economy in terms of
employment of the labor force. Moreover, the organization of agriculture
is largely feudal in character with large estates taking up the greater part
of the cultivable land throughout the region. Of a total active population
in 1953 of 33.9 million, almost 60 per cent was engaged in agriculture.12
Only Argentina has a larger labor force in industry than in agriculture.
However, industry because of its greater productivity accounts for a larger
share of total output than agriculture.
Almost all countries are highly dependent on proceeds from exports
of a few primary products to finance necessary imports. Thus in 1952
coffee accounted for 60 per cent of the value of Brazil's exports, copper
for 56 per cent of Chile's, sugar for 70 per cent of Cuba's, petroleum for
98 per cent of Venezuela's, and coffee for 54 per cent of Central America's.
This high degree of specialization explains the intense interest of Latin
Americans in international commodity stabilization arrangements for their
12 United Nations, Department of Economic Affairs, Economic Survey of Latin
America, 1953 (New York, 1954), p. 23.
680 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
main exports. Intra-regional trade is small, amounting to less than 10 per
cent of total trade. The principal reason is that the economies of the region
are largely competing rather than complementary. An additional factor is
the poor transport connections between countries.
TRANSPORTATION
Few countries in Latin America, except possibly Argentina, Chile, Uru-
guay and Venezuela, and parts of Brazil and Mexico, can be said to have
reasonably well-developed transportation systems (cf. Figs. 22-1, 2).
The lack of modern means of transport over most of Latin America
is a serious impediment to the region's economic growth. In many parts
of Latin America, such as Ecuador, "mountainous terrain cuts off rich
agricultural regions from population and industrial centers . . . Better
highway rail, harbor, inland waterway, and air transportation facilities
will often create conditions which would make possible the develop-
ment of mining, manufacturing, agricultural and other enterprises . . ." 13
While development of transport is a paramount need in Latin America,
efforts to overcome this handicap are severely hampered by the heavy
costs imposed by such natural obstacles as the eastern plateaus, the vast
Tropical Zone, and the rugged Andes.
Although the few developed rail networks are limited to the mainland
east coast and Cuba, the railways account for the bulk of the internal
traffic of most Latin American countries. The rail systems of most coun-
tries are short and rarely interconnected. They frequently were con-
structed for the primary purpose of carrying raw materials, usually
minerals, from the interior to the ports for overseas shipment. Few lines
run north and south. Only in several countries do rail lines have inter-
national connections, like the trans-Andine lines between Chile and
Argentina. A serious obstacle to the development of both national and
international connections, in addition to the terrain, is the absence of
standardized gauges. In an effort to promote Western Hemisphere rail-
way development, the American Republics have established a Pan-
American Railway Congress Association.
Highway transport has been of growing significance in recent years
and in a few countries, notably Mexico, rivals the rail system in impor-
tance for the carriage of interurban freight. An important reason for the
rapid growth of road transport is the low density of population in many
areas. As a result the volume of traffic frequently is not sufficient to war-
13 Department of State, United States-Latin American Relations (December, 1953).
LATIN AMERICA 681
rant the high costs of constructing railroads. By and large the highway
system is poor. Only a small percentage of the roads have all-weather sur-
faces and paved highways are largely confined to urban centers and their
environs. During the rainy season many roads are impassable. As with
railroads, natural obstacles impede the development of highways.
Despite Latin America's excellent river system, inland water transport
in most countries generally moves no more than about 10 per cent as
much cargo as the railways. Inland navigation has great potentialities,
however, and could become of increasing importance in the interior as
South America is developed. Thus ocean-going vessels up to 7,000 tons
can navigate the Amazon up to Manaus, a distance of almost 700 miles
from the Atlantic, while vessels half that size can navigate to the Peruvian
port of Iquitos, a distance of almost 2,000 miles. Furthermore, water trans-
port is much cheaper than land transport. It costs less to move cargo six
thousand miles by ship from Callao, Lima's port, through the Panama
Canal and up the Amazon to eastern Peru, than over the 500-mile trans-
Andes highway from Lima to Pucallpa on the Ucayali river.14
Most traffic between Latin American countries is moved by coastal
shipping. Some countries, chiefly Argentina and Brazil, have sizable
coastal fleets. In addition, the twenty Latin American Republics in 1952
had more than 9 million dead-weight tons of ocean-going vessels of 1,000
tons or more. Of this amount, however, approximately 6 million tons were
Panamanian and Honduran vessels owned by United States interests. If
these are excluded Latin America's ocean-going fleet is about 3 per cent
of the world total. It accounts for only a small percentage of Latin Amer-
ica's total overseas trade. Two countries, Paraguay and Bolivia, are land-
locked. In the case of Paraguay, all its exports and imports must pass
through Argentina. As a result, Paraguay has been under continual pres-
sure from Argentina.15
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT
Manufacturing has expanded much more rapidly in Latin America
since the war than other economic activities. Between 1945 and 1952,
manufacturing output including construction increased at the rate of 6.9
per cent per year as compared with 2.7 per cent for agriculture and 4.8
per cent for total production. In 1952, manufactures and construction
accounted for roughly 28 per cent of total production as compared with
14 Osbom, op. cit., p. 126.
15 See also p. 197.
682 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
less than 24 per cent for agriculture. However, manufactures exceeded
agricultural output in only three countries, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico
(see Table 22-6). These countries together with Brazil, Colombia, and
Venezuela account for 90 per cent of Latin America's industrial output.
TABLE 22-6
Latin America:
Relative Importance of Manufactures in Selected Countries, 1952 *
MANUFACTURING
AND CONSTRUCTION
AGRICULTURE
OTHER ACTIVITIES
AREA
( PER CENT
(per CENT
( PER CENT
OF TOTAL
OF TOTAL
OF TOTAL
OUTPUT )
OUTPUT )
OUTPUT )
Latin America
27.9
23.6
51.5
Argentina
34.3
29.0
36.7
Chile
24.7
15.7
59.6
Mexico
20.3
18.2
61.5
* United Nations, Economic Survey of Latin America, 1951-52.
A number of countries, notably Bolivia, the Caribbean and Central Amer-
ican Republics, and Panama and Paraguay have experienced relatively
limited industrial development. In part at least their problem has been
the small size of the domestic market. This has led the governments of
Central America to study the possibilities of developing new activities
based on an integrated regional market. A meeting of the Ministers of
Economy held at Tegucigalpa in August 1952, agreed on the principles
involved in reciprocity and singled out potential industries where these
principles could be applied.16 Thus far, however, no real progress has been
made toward the goal of regionalization of industry. Industrialization
probably has gone further in Argentina than anywhere else in Latin Amer-
ica despite that country's deficient mineral and power base. Whereas
private enterprise predominates in Latin America, the governments of
many countries are a major source of investment funds. Thus at the pres-
ent time roughly half of all new capital expenditures in Argentina, Vene-
zuela, and Mexico are made by the Federal Government.
As in other underdeveloped regions, industrial output consists in large
part of consumer goods for the domestic market, although the processing
of foodstuffs and the refining of copper, lead, and zinc for export are of
some importance. Capital goods industries do not account for more than
15 per cent of Latin America's industrial output. However, Latin America
16 Economic Commission for Latin America, Committee of Ministers of Economy
on Economic Co-operation in Central America, Report of the First Sessions.
LATIN AMERICA 683
has a sizable and growing steel industry. In 1954, Brazil, Chile, and Mex-
ico had a combined output of crude steel in excess of 2.0 million metric-
tons. New mills were about to be opened in Colombia, Argentina, and
Peru. Argentina's San Nicolas steel mill on the Parana River will have a
steel ingot capacity of 588,000 metric tons. Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil
have mechanical transforming industries of considerable importance, pro-
ducing machinery, motors, railway rolling stock, home appliances, and
other products, while Mexico and Brazil also have motor vehicle assembly
plants. The production of construction materials, particularly cement,
lime, and wood, is important in a number of countries. Progress also has
been made toward establishing a basic chemical industry.
Latin America's industrial development has been hampered by the lack
of basic services, particularly electric power and, as described elsewhere,
transport. Electric power is frequently so short that in some countries it
has had to be rationed. These deficiencies have prevented the establish-
ment of new enterprises and impeded the efficient operation of existing
ones. Private capital has contributed little to meeting the shortage in basic
services because of the investment habits of local capitalists. Much of
Latin America's new investment goes into fields like speculative commer-
cial ventures and luxury urban construction which contribute relatively
little to development. Consequently a good deal of the responsibility for
providing these services has been assumed by the governments. However,
the amounts of capital required are large and commonly exceed the re-
sources of the governments.
AGRICULTURE
With the exception of the few countries noted above, agriculture is the
principal economic activity in Latin America. Although not land-poor like
Southeast Asia, Latin America nonetheless has a major land tenancy prob-
lem. In the Caribbean and South America, the large estate dominates the
agrarian structure. The large estate is characteristic of all countries except
parts of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Haiti, and Mexico. For Latin America
as a whole, individual landholdings in excess of 15,000 acres account for
about 50 per cent of all agricultural land.17 In Argentina 85 per cent of
the privately owned land is in estates larger than 1,250 acres while 80 per
cent of the farm population own no land. Plantations are important in
some regions, chiefly in Central America and the Caribbean but do not
17 United Nations, Land Reform: Defects in Agrarian Structures as Obstacles to
Economic Development (New York, 1951).
684 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
dominate the economy as a whole. The bulk of the rural population of
Latin America consists of small tenants, landless laborers, and small land-
owners of subsistence farms with very low living standards. In many
countries the relationship between the tenant and the landlord is feudal
in character. In return for the right to cultivate a small piece of land the
tenant devotes a specified number of days' labor per week on the estate.
As in Southeast Asia, the large estate, except for the plantation which
practices intensive cultivation, is a serious drag on productive efficiency.
Moreover, large estates devoted to grazing result in serious under-utili-
zation of land. Countries like Colombia and Venezuela, which have ample
land resources to be self-sufficient in foodstuffs if more intensive cultiva-
tion was practiced, have to import food to feed their populations. "The
pattern of land utilization is . . . the reverse of what market conditions and
natural resources require. The hillside land, which is best suited for pas-
ture and woodland, is intensively cultivated for subsistence crops by hoe
culture which destroys the top soil, while the valley floors, more suited for
arable cultivation are used for grazing." 18 Thus . . . "the combination of
very extensive agriculture and a high degree of concentration of owner-
ship prevents a fuller utilization of land resources and an expansion of
food production for local needs, and it depresses the living standard of the
majority of the farm population." 19
In addition to its adverse economic effects, the system of land tenure
in Latin America as in other underdeveloped areas is a serious source of
social tension. It is considered the most fundamental issue in the social,
economic, and political life of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Political oppor-
tunists periodically exploit the land problem in order to enlist broader
peasant support for their policies. The most recent example was the ex-
propriation of large estates and the distribution of land, albeit limited, to
the peasants by the Communist-dominated Arbenz Government in Guate-
mala prior to its overthrow in June 1954. Where extensive foreign owner-
ship of plantations exists, as in Guatemala and other parts of Central
America and the Caribbean, the tensions created by the land tenure prob-
lem are frequently heightened. In the West Indies, the plantation economy
has created "strikes, riots, the burning of canes, and in some colonies even
an uncertainty from year to year whether the state of labour relations will
permit the whole crop to be taken off." 20
Only two countries in Latin America have instituted broad agrarian
18 Ibid., p. 20.
19 Ibid., p. 49.
20 W. A. Lewis, Issues in Land Settlement Policy, a report to the Caribbean Com-
mission West Indian Conference. 1950.
LATIN AMERICA 685
reform programs, Mexico as early as 1915 and Bolivia in August 1953.
Reform measures periodically have been introduced in a number of other
countries but nothing much has come of them to date. The major obstacle
is of course the resistance of the powerful landholders. This problem was
described by the Government of Chile in response to a United Nations
questionnaire on land reform as follows:
21
Owing to the economic and political structure of the country, land reform
in Chile is difficult to carry out. Land holders who would be affected by any
action of an economic, political, administrative, legal or social nature will vigor-
ously oppose its implementation, and their political and economic influence is
very powerful. In spite of this, the necessary conditions are being created in
Chile to initiate a land reform policy, which will have to be introduced gradu-
ally, in other words, with due safeguards but with determination.
While modern methods of cultivation are being rapidly introduced in
a number of Latin American countries, the techniques of the peasant
farmer are still primitive. His principal tools are the hoe and the machete.
The use of fertilizers is quite limited. Thus far the employment of modern
equipment, scientific techniques, and the use of fertilizers is largely con-
fined to the large plantations and estates.
Before the war, the growing of food and agricultural raw materials for
export was almost as important as for domestic consumption. For the
period 1934 to 1938 agricultural exports averaged roughly 45 per cent of
total agricultural output.22 Growing local requirements resulting from the
expansion of population, rising incomes, and general economic develop-
ment have radically changed this relationship. In 1953, agricultural ex-
ports represented only about one-third of total production. While the
volume of Latin America's agricultural output in 1953 was approximately
one-third higher than before the war, virtually all of this increase was
retained at home.
Despite the growth of agricultural output, production has not been sat-
isfactory in relation to the growth of population. On a per capita basis
total agricultural production and food production in 1953-54 were still
below prewar. This lag in agricultural production has resulted in consid-
erable measure from the preoccupation of most Latin American govern-
ments in the postwar years with programs to speed up their industriali-
zation. Ill-considered government policies were adopted which favored
industry at the expense of the agricultural sector of the economy. Only
in the past year or two, with population increasing at a rapid rate, has
21 United Nations, Progress in Land Reform (New York, 1954), p. 43.
22 United Nations, Economic Survey of Latin America, 1953, p. 135.
686 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
it been recognized that agriculture is no less important than industry for
Latin America's economic development. A number of countries, notably
Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil, are now actively attempting to
stimulate agricultural output by means of various incentives and aids to
farmers. These policies are already beginning to bear fruit.
Table 22-7 gives the production of the principal agricultural crops cul-
tivated in Latin America and the importance of these crops in world trade.
Latin America is a dominant area in the exports of tropical products like
sugar, coffee, bananas. It is an important supplier of meat, cacao, cotton,
and wool. Exports of grains are much less important than before the war,
in large part because of reduced output and export availabilities from
Argentina.
TABLE 22-7
Latin America: Production and Exports of Agricultural Production
PRODUCTION a
( MILLION
METRIC TONS)
EXPORTS
AS PER CENTb
COMMODITY
1948-50
1952-53
OF WORLD TOTAL 1952
(AV.)
( PROV. )
Bread grains
8.6
10.8
3.6
( 1952-53 )
Maize
14.6
17.7
15.4
(1952-53)
Potatoes
4.8
5.0
neg
Cassava
15.5
15.9
neg
Sugar ( raw equivalent )
12.2
12.4
63
Bananas
6.5
7.5
79
Cacao
0.26
0.24
23
Coffee
1.85
1.98
82
(1952-53)
Cotton
0.79
1.08
17
Hard fibers
0.25
0.24
22
Wool ( clean basis )
0.18
0.20
15
Meat
5.69
5.54
33
a United Nations, FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture, 19S3, Part 2 (January, 19S4), p. 71.
b United Nations, FAO, Yearbook of Food and Agricultural Statistics, 19S3, Vol. 7, Part 2.
FUTURE ECONOMIC PROSPECTS
Latin America's long-term economic development prospects appear to
be much more favorable than for most other underdeveloped regions.
Except for the lack of coal the region has a relatively rich resource base
both in agricultural land and minerals. Although the population is increas-
ing rapidly, the region as a whole is underpopulated, so that greater num-
bers should contribute to increasing returns in productive activities. More-
over, the area already has demonstrated a substantial capacity for rapid
economic growth over the past decade or more. In the process many of
the traditional social and institutional obstacles to economic development
LATIN AMERICA 687
have been broken down. The stage of Latin America's economic growth
and development has been likened in many respects to that of the United
States during the latter half of the nineteenth century.23
Nonetheless, the area faces many difficult economic problems. There
is the need to maintain a proper balance between industrial development
and the production of primary products. As described above, a number
of Latin American countries in their haste to industrialize have tended to
neglect the production of agricultural products and minerals. Since these
products are the primary source of export earnings needed to finance im-
ports of capital equipment, the result has frequently been to delay rather
than speed up economic development. In some cases countries which
could readily feed themselves have been sizable food-deficit areas. This
same sense of urgency has commonly led governments to embark on
projects beyond their financial capabilities. Frequently this has caused
widespread inflation, thereby inhibiting productive investment and creat-
ing friction between employers and wage earners. Many uneconomic in-
dustries have been fostered by excessive protection and subsidies. More
investment is required in basic services like transport, communications,
and power. This calls for a change in the attitude of investors who now
favor speculative ventures with high quick returns. Managerial skills are
short in many fields. Most importantly, the level of investment needs to be
raised. While savings and investment have been relatively high in Latin
America as compared with other underdeveloped regions, they have been
inadequate to the task at hand. Raising the rate of investment in the
absence of large infusions of capital from abroad will be a slow process,
however, given the present low level of incomes. Yet many Latin Amer-
ican countries, obsessed with fear of foreign exploitation, pursue economic
policies which operate to keep out much needed capital from abroad.
For the foreseeable future it appears unlikely, even if the above prob-
lems can be met, that per capita gross national product will increase at a
faster rate than the 2.5 per cent of the past decade or so. This would raise
per capita gross national product to about $500 in 28 years, which is
within 15 per cent of the present-day average per capita gross national
product of Western Europe. With a prospective population at that time
of more than 300 million people, Latin America could thus be an area of
considerable economic capabilities.
Clearly the extent and the pattern of Latin America's economic de-
velopment is likely to vary widely from country to country. Certain Cen-
23 Foreign Operation Administration, Report on The Economic Situation in Latin
America (Washington, D. C, August, 1954), p. 5.
688 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
tral American countries and most of the West Indies with their limited
resources and dense populations are likely to advance less rapidly than
the average. The rich agricultural resources of the southern republics of
Latin America, and their lack of iron ore and coal, suggests that this
area will not achieve the degree of industrial specialization of Western
Europe.24 Tropical Latin America, particularly Brazil and Venezuela, also
lacking in coal, has vast iron ore reserves and a tremendous water power
potential. Its resource base, therefore, offers greater possibilities for the
development of industry than the rest of the region. Climatic factors, lack
of skilled labor, and the high cost of capital, however, may well delay this
development until some time in the more distant future. In the meantime
tropical agriculture and mining are likely to be of continuing importance.
24 A. J. Brown, Industrialization and Trade, pamphlet published by The Royal
Institute of International Affairs (London, September, 1943), p. 23.
CHAPTER
23
Arrica: The Last Stand or
Colonialism
Africa is the last of the large colonial areas, with roughly 70 per cent of
its territory under some form of foreign control. However, this vast con-
tinent is showing increasing signs of restiveness under foreign tutelage.
"Africa is headed for great political changes. The trend of events is inexor-
ably toward an adjustment in relations between the native population
and its European rulers." x Violent disorders already have broken out
since World War II in a number of territories, particularly in French
North Africa and British East Africa. Growing local disturbances in
Algeria have developed because of dissatisfaction with the speed of
French political and economic reforms. In British East Africa, resort
to violence is largely a result of native frustration over policies of white
supremacy. So far, Belgian and French colonies south of the Sahara
have been spared these difficulties as a result of their paternalistic eco-
nomic policies and the absence of color discrimination. In some areas
local aspirations for greater freedom have been met by substantial
political concessions, as in the Gold Coast, Nigeria, and the Anglo-Egyp-
tian Sudan. Whether the necessary concessions will be made elsewhere in
time to avoid widespread political and social disturbances remains to be
seen. Such a development clearly would be damaging to the strength of
the Free World because of the importance of a politically stable and
friendly Africa as a source of many strategic materials, as a safeguard to
1 C. W. de Kiewiet, "African Dilemmas," Foreign Affairs (April, 1955), pp. 444-457.
689
3
4
7
A *
n
12
14
■
■
J
*
♦ ♦
S
r
10
'/
** v * * * '
Fig. 23-1. Resources, Railroads and Political Structure of Africa: (1) independent; (2) British
colonies; (3) Belgium colonies; (4) French colonies; (5) Portuguese colonies; (6) Italian
mandate; (7) tin; (8) lead and zinc; (9) phosphate; (10) petroleum; (11) gold; (12)
diamonds; (13) aluminum; (14) iron ore; (15) copper; (16) coal; (17) railroads; (18)
proposed railroads.
690
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 691
the security of Allied naval and air bases on the continent, and as a pro-
tection for key lines of communication in time of war.
AREA AND POPULATION
Africa, with an area of 11.7 million square miles, is exceeded in size only
by Asia (including Asiatic U.S.S.R. ). Its distance north to south is 5,000
miles and its maximum breadth is 4,600 miles. Although Africa embraces
more than 20 per cent of the surface of the earth, its estimated population
of 212 million (1953) is less than 9 per cent of the world total. Average
population density is slightly more than 18 persons per square mile. Only
Oceania among the continental areas is more thinly populated. The
sparseness of Africa's population has been a serious hindrance to the area's
economic growth, leading to the prevailing wasteful system of migrant
labor, limiting the development of the domestic market, and frustrating
the construction of an economic transport and communications system.
Only six countries in Africa (Figure 23-1)— Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia,
Liberia, Libya, and the Union of South Africa— are politically independent.
These account for approximately 26 per cent of the continent's total area
and 29 per cent of its population. Tunisia, Morocco and the Gold Coast
are scheduled to become completely independent in 1956 or 1957. The
rest of Africa consists of non-self-governing territories and dependencies
in varying stages of transition toward self-government which, except for
South-West Africa are under the jurisdiction of European countries. South-
West Africa, a former mandated territory, is controlled by the Union of
South Africa. The percentages of African territory controlled by European
metropoles are roughly as follows:
PERCENTAGE
COUNTRY
OF ALL AFRICA
France
37a
United Kingdom
28b
Relgium
8
Portugal
7
Italy
2
Spain
1
" Including Tunisia and Morocco.
b Including the Gold Coast.
The borders separating individual African territories are almost wholly
artificial in the sense that they show little or no relationship to ethnic or
geographic factors. Boundaries cut through tribes and separate natural
geographic regions. The extent and configuration of most African terri-
S92 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
tories largely reflect the success of the respective European metropoles in
carving out their claims. As one writer has aptly pointed out, African
"boundaries of territories were, and are, no more than the result of con-
ference and negotiation by statesmen in Europe, by whom, 40 and 50
years ago, African human geography was unknown and economics little
understood. Frontiers were drawn with a ruler on a blank map, or by give
and take about the unknown, in Western foreign ministries . . ." 2
Despite its predominantly colonial status, Africa has been of minor
importance as an outlet for European immigration. Climate and closely
related health problems have been the main obstacles to European settle-
ment, but modern technology and new developments in public health
could overcome these drawbacks. Persons of European descent living in
Africa number only about 5.5 million, or less than 3 per cent of the total
population. Most of these live in the more temperate and disease-free
regions of the continent. Approximately 3 million are to be found in the
Union of South Africa, less than 2 million in Mediterranean Africa. The
balance is located chiefly in East and Central Africa, attracted by the
relatively favorable climate and the presence of considerable mineral
wealth. In addition, Africa south of the Sahara has an important non-
African minority of Syrians, Lebanese, and Indians and Pakistani. This
group is engaged largely in commerce and is a target of considerable
native antipathy.
Population density varies widely from country to country (see Table
23-1 ) and is strongly influenced by geographic factors. In interpreting the
low average densities it must be recognized that many parts of Africa are
virtually uninhabitable. Thus Egypt is more than 95 per cent desert and
in terms of productive land has a density in excess of 2,000 per square
mile. However, few areas of Africa are overpopulated in the sense that
there is a continuous supply of surplus labor. Except for Egypt and
mining centers in Southern and South-Central Africa, there is a close
correlation between population and mean average rainfall.3 Tropical
Africa shows much greater population density than comparable areas of
South America. Gourou suggests that differences in the accessibility of
the two continents may account for these variations; the greater naviga-
bility of the Amazon as compared with the Congo made it easier for
Europeans to penetrate the Amazon valley and to inflict damage on the
native population by spreading disease, by slave hunts, and by instituting
2 C. G. Haines (ed.), Africa Today (Baltimore, 1955), p. 20.
3 W. Fitzgerald, Africa, 4th ed. (New York, 1942), p. 108.
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM
89J
serfdom.4 Unlike Latin America, Africa has few urban concentrations of
population.
TABLE 23-1
Africa: Area, Population and Population Density of Principal Countries
POPULATION
area"
POPULATION
1953 b
COUNTRY
(000 so. mi.)
(000)
DENSITY
(per sq. mi.)
Algeria
846.1
9,367
11.0
Sudan
967.5
8,820
9.1
Belgian Congo
905.0
12,154
13.4
Egypt
386.0
21,935
57.0
Ethiopia
409.3
15,000 (1951)
36.7
French Equatorial Africa
969.1
4,492
(1952)
4.6
French West Africa
1,835.0
17,435 (1952)
9.5
Gold Coast
78.8
4,062
51.5
Kenya
225.0
5,851
26.0
Liberia
43.0
1,648
(1949)
38.3
Libya
706.6
1,500
21.2
Madagascar
227.7
4,464
19.6
Morocco
150.2
8,220
54.7
Mozambique
297.7
5,895
19.8
Nigeria
338.6
30,000
88.6
Northern Rhodesia
290.3
2,020
6.9
Southern Rhodesia
150,3
2,260
15.0
Tanganyika
362.4
8,069
22.3
Tunisia
60.2
3,630
60.3
Uganda
94.0
5,343
56.9
Union of South Africa
472.7
13,153
27.8
Other
1,880.6
27,379
14.5
Total
11,696
212,697
Av. 18.2
a United Nations, Statistical Yearbook, 19S2.
b United Nations, Population and Vital Statistics Reports (New York, October, 1954).
Three distinct demographic regions may be identified in Africa. North-
ern or Mediterranean Africa is characterized by high birth rates and
declining though still high death rates. Recent rates of population in-
crease in this region have been estimated by the United Nations at 1.56
per cent per annum and may reach a "medium" rate of 1.86 per cent by
1980 as death rates continue to fall.5 Middle or intertropical Africa is
characterized by both high birth and death rates. Satisfactory estimates
of population growth in this area are limited by the poverty of informa-
tion. The United Nations considers one per cent as a "medium" figure for
the present rate of population growth, with an upper limit of 1.5 per cent
and a lower limit of 0.5 per cent. In the absence of more definite mortality
4 P. Gourou, The Tropical World (London, 1952), p. 125.
5 United Nations, Framework For Future Population Estimates, 1950-1980, By
Regions (1954).
694 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
trends, it was estimated that growth rates over the next twenty-five years
in this area would continue about as at present. The third demographic
area is Southern Africa, with high birth rates and fairly low death rates.
Here the current rate of population increase is estimated at 2.15 per cent
per annum with a projected "medium" rate of 2.32 per cent by 1980. The
total population of Africa is projected at roughly 300 million by 1980.
GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE
Geographic factors probably have had a more significant effect on
Africa's general development than on that of any other continent. The
continent's forbidding physical characteristics go a long way toward
explaining the late opening up of the area south of the Mediterranean
littoral.6 The hot humid interior is infested with virulent tropical diseases.
The coast has few good harbors and the rivers do not provide easy access
to the interior because of water falls and rapids near the coast. Only the
Congo has a deep water estuary. Extremely rugged topography impedes
travel north and south. It is not surprising, therefore, that Africa's real
contact with the outside world, except in the climatically more favorable
extreme north and south, did not begin until the closing decades of the
nineteenth century.
Africa is the most tropical of all continents, with almost four-fifths of
its total area lying in the tropics. It is bisected by the equator and has
roughly the same climate zones in the north and south. Most of Africa
is a plateau with elevations of from 1,000 to 4,000 feet, flanked by moun-
tain chains in the extreme northwest and on the southern margins of the
Cape. Elevations are highest south of the equator, particularly in the east,
making for more temperate climatic conditions than in the north. The
plateau's edge is close to the seaboard so that Africa has very narrow
coastal plains. The shore line lacks indentations and except in the Medi-
terranean there are few natural harbors. Ocean depths descend abruptly
save off the Mediterranean and extreme southern coasts. As a result there
is a lack of feeding grounds for fish, and fishing plays a negligible role in
the life of the people.
Four major climate zones may be distinguished. The first is the area
approximately 5 degrees north and 5 degrees south of the equator which
is hot, humid, and has rain throughout the year. This region, which
extends for a distance of 400 miles on each side of the equator, is covered
by a dense tropical rain forest. The next zone, extending roughly from 5
6 Lord, Hailey, An African Survey, 2nd ed. (New York, 1945).
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 695
degrees to 15 degrees north and south of the equator, is also hot and
humid but receives all of its precipitation in the summer. This area, which
is 600 to 800 miles wide on each side of the Equatorial Zone, is the tropi-
cal grassland or park-savanna region. The vegetation consists primarily
of scrub forest and coarse grass 5 to 12 feet high. Ocean currents and
mountains modify the characteristic climate of these two zones. Kenya,
Tankanyika, Uganda, Nyasaland, and Mozambique in East Africa have
quite equable climates except in the low-lying coastal regions. Elevations
of more than 4,000 feet produce climates not unlike the Andean plateau
of Colombia. At Nairobi, which is almost on the equator but has an ele-
vation of 5,500 feet, the highest average monthly temperature is 66 de-
grees and the lowest 58 degrees. These are the only regions in tropical
Africa which have attracted European settlers in any numbers, giving
rise to serious conflicts of interest between the whites and the natives.
The third zone is the hot desert which extends between 15 degrees and 30
degrees north and south of the equator. Temperatures are high through-
out the year and there is virtually no precipitation. North of the equator
this zone includes the Sahara desert which extends from the Atlantic
Coast to the Red Sea and has an average width of 800 miles. The Sahara
has an area almost equal that of the United States and except for occa-
sional oases is only suitable for nomadic herdsmen. The Sahara has been
a major barrier to the spread of ancient Mediterranean cultures to the
south, and has been an important factor in Middle Africa's backwardness.
South of the equator, desert conditions are repeated only in South-West
Africa. The southeast trade winds bring rain, precipitated by the South
African plateau, to the eastern part of the subcontinent.
The fourth zone covers the area beyond 30 degrees north and south of
the equator and includes the Mediterranean littoral of Morocco, Algeria,
and Tunisia in the north and the southwestern corner of the Union of
South Africa. Here the climate is typically Mediterranean, not African,
with mild rainy winters and hot dry summers. The Atlas range in the
northwest precipitates moisture from winds blowing from Europe and the
Atlantic, thereby making the land between the mountains and the sea
habitable. East of Tunisia, in the absence of such mountains, the sea and
the desert come together for most of the 800 miles of Libya's coastline.
Here again the desert has presented a significant obstacle to direct cul-
tural exchange between Egypt and the French North African littoral. As
pointed out in the United Nations World Economic Report 1949-50,
"North Africa, bordering on the Mediterranean, and separated from the
rest of Africa by the vast wastes of the Sahara desert, is by history and
696 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
geography closely associated with southern Europe, of which in an eco-
nomic sense much of it forms an integral part." Although a part of Africa
geographically, South Africa is cut off from the rest of the continent by
the formidable barriers of the Karoo desert and the southern mountain
ranges.
RESOURCES
Widely divergent views prevail as to Africa's economic potential. In
part at least these differences stem from the fact that the area's resources
have been only partially assessed. On the basis of presently available
information it would appear that Africa is by no means "a promised land."
Like most predominantly tropical regions, Africa's resource base is seri-
ously deficient in many important respects. Soils are much poorer in
essential minerals and humus than in temperate regions. They erode
rapidly and decline in fertility under constant cropping. Desert and poor
scrub land cover nearly one-third of the continent and the desert is slowly
spreading south. Africa is less healthy than regions in the temperate belt.
Much of Africa's vast tropical forest area contains species of little or no
worth. Although a major world source of many important minerals such
as copper, gold, manganese, and uranium, Africa is deficient in coal, iron
ore, and petroleum. It does, however, have a vast untapped water power
potential, which has given rise to a number of ambitious plans for hydro-
electric power development. One of these, which the Central African
Federation has decided to undertake, would involve the damming of the
Zambesi River at Kariba gorge and would be larger than Boulder Dam.
Cheap power and industrialization offer one solution of the pressure of
the increasing native population on the land.
Agricultural Land. According to statistics compiled by the Food and
Agriculture Organization, Africa, with approximately 7 per cent of its
total area classified as arable land, has the lowest ratio of cultivable land
of all continental regions except Oceania. Nonetheless arable land (in-
cluding fallow and orchards ) in relation to population appears to be con-
siderable, averaging 2.8 acres per capita for the continent as a whole ( see
Table 23-2 ) . There are of course a number of countries with substantially
less than this average, the most outstanding being Egypt with less than
one-third of an acre per capita. The population is also pressing on the
land in French North Africa and Kenya. The high average figure is gen-
erally misleading on other grounds. Water supply is inadequate or unre-
liable in many areas. Furthermore, a considerable proportion of the arable
land continually lies fallow in tropical Africa. Since tropical soils rapidly
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM
697
lose their fertility under constant cropping, shifting cultivation as in the
uplands of Southeast Asia is the traditional method of native farming. A
piece of ground will be planted for only a few years, and as its fertility is
exhausted it will be abandoned and permitted to relapse into forest or
savanna. After the lapse of a certain number of years the fertility of the
exhausted land is at least partly restored and it is cleared and used again.
TABLE 23-2
Africa: Arable and Potentially Productive Land in Selected Areas *
COUNTRY
PERIOD
TOTAL ARABLE
LAND (iNCL.
FALLOW AND
ORCHARDS )
( 000 ACRES )
ARABLE LAND
PER CAPITA
(1953
POPULATION )
total unused
but potentially
productive
(000 acres)
Algeria
1951
15,686
1.7
Sudan
1951
5,888
0.7
Belgian Congo
1951
121,079
10.0
Egypt
1951
6,056
0.3
1,633
Ethiopia
1951
27,181
1.8
19,768
French Equatorial Africa
1950
74,130
16.5
French West Africa
1950
24,710
1.4
Gold Coast
1951
13,121
3.2
Kenya
1948
3,954
0.7
Liberia
1948
4.480
2.7
6,721
Madagascar
1947
12,355
2.8
618
Morocco
1950
19,609
2.4
18,557"
Mozambique
1948
4,942
0.8
Southern Bhodesia
1951
3,825
1.7
Tanganyika
1948
7,413
0.9
Tunisia
1951
9,496
2.6
Union of South Africa
1951
19,028
600,453
1.4
ALL AFRICA
Av. 2.8
a Includes rough grazings.
* United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, Yearbook of Food and Agricultural Statistics,
19S2, Vol. 6, Part 1.
This shifting system of agriculture requires many more acres to support
a family than under a permanent system where a single plot can be culti-
vated continuously. According to Stamp, the practice of shifting cultiva-
tion in Nigeria should allow seven years of fallow for each year of
cultivation. This would mean that the average family of 3.6 persons cul-
tivating an average plot of 2 acres needs 16 acres of land to support itself.7
A few countries like Ethiopia have rich and fairly accessible lands avail-
able for exploitation. In general, however, under existing agricultural
techniques arable land per capita in Africa is not plentiful. On the con-
7 L. D. Stamp, "Land Utilization and Soil Erosion in Nigeria," Geographical Re-
view (1938), p. 35.
698 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
trary, with the expansion of population the supply of arable land over
much of the continent is becoming increasingly inadequate, and many
areas are experiencing growing difficulties in satisfying their food require-
ments. A considerable area of Africa is more suitable for pastoral than for
crop-raising pursuits. However, large regions in the park-savanna country
are infested with the tsetse-fly and cannot be used for livestock raising
until immunization against sleeping sickness is developed. Then Africa
south of the Sahara could become one of the major grazing areas of the
world.8
Forest Resources. Forests cover 25 per cent of the total area of Africa
and exceed those of Latin America in extent. However, Africa does not
compare with Latin America as a storehouse of tropical timber since only
40 per cent of the forest area is productive forest. Moreover, of this pro-
ductive share roughly 60 per cent is inaccessible.9 Until very recently the
continent traditionally was a deficit area in forestry and forest products.
Almost all African forests are of hardwood varieties and commercial out-
lets have been found for only a limited number of species. In 1948 Africa
produced only between one and two per cent of the Free World's output
of industrial wood. It has been estimated that production will barely keep
pace with growing requirements over the next two or three decades.
Minerals. Although Africa has a number of serious mineral deficiencies
her mineral resources in many categories are equal or superior to those
of any other continent (cf. Fig. 23-1). The presence of these minerals
has been a major incentive to European intervention in Africa and
has significantly affected relationships between the native populations and
Europeans. Africa leads the world in reserves of copper, cobalt, chromite,
manganese, uranium, industrial and gem quality diamonds, and phosphate
rock (see Table 23-3). Reserves of bauxite, antimony, tin, asbestos, and
rare metals such as columbium, tantalum and platinum are more than ade-
quate. While not in the strategic-metal category, Africa's gold fields are
the richest in the world and have played a vital role in financing South
Africa's economic development. The richest mineral regions are the
Union of South Africa, South- West Africa, Southern and Northern Rhode-
sia, and the Belgian Congo.
Of the non-ferrous metals the two principal deficiencies are lead and
zinc. More significant, however, are the lack of mineral fuels and iron ore.
Africa depends on external sources for about one-sixth of its energy sup-
8 F. Osborn, The Limits of the Earth (London, 1954), p. 85.
9 The President's Materials Policy Commission, Resources For Freedom, Vol. 5
(Washington, D. C, June, 1952), p. 55.
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 699
plies.10 Egypt has the only productive oil resources and these represent
less than a fraction of one per cent of total world reserves. Africa has the
smallest coal reserves of any continent. Proved reserves of coal in Africa
have been estimated at 2 per cent of the world total and probable reserves
at 4 per cent.11 The bulk of these reserves are in the Union of South
Africa and Rhodesia. Most of the known deposits are of poor quality and
occurrences of coking coal are few. In contrast with its limited coal re-
serves Africa is estimated to have 40 per cent of the world's water power
resources, or four times the potential of North America. Lack of fuel re-
sources will be a handicap to industrialization in many parts of Africa in
the absence of large-scale electrification. Africa's iron ore reserves amount
to somewhat less than 15 per cent of the world total and most of these
have less than 50 per cent iron content. These iron ore reserves are found
chiefly in the Union of South Africa, in Southern Rhodesia, and in French
West Africa. On the basis of the presently known occurrences of coal and
iron ore, only the Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia have the
raw material resources necessary to support a significant iron and steel
industry.
TABLE 23-3
Africa: Reserves of Selected Minerals as Percentage of Free World Total *
MINERAL PER CENT PRINCIPAL PRODUCING AREAS
Copper 40 Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia
Manganese (av. grade 45%) 38 Union of South Africa, Belgian Congo,
Morocco
Manganese (av. grade 25%) 20 Morocco, Belgian Congo
Chromite 80 Union of South Africa and Southern
Rhodesia
Phosphate rock 70 French North Africa
Diamonds 95 Belgian Congo and Union of South
Africa
Cobalt 90 Belgian Congo, Northern Rhodesia
Lead 6 Morocco, Nigeria
Zinc 5 Belgian Congo, Morocco
* The President's Materials Policy Commission, Resources For Freedom, Vol. 2 (Washington, D. C).
ECONOMIC AND STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE
Africa's over-all international economic importance is not proportion-
ate to its population and area. In 1953, Africa accounted for less than 7
per cent of world trade. Nonetheless the continent was a very important
10 United Nations, Review of Economic Conditions in Africa (New York, February-,
1951), p. 106.
11 Ibid., p. 107.
700 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
if not a major factor in the foreign trade of a number of European colo-
nial powers. In 1953, France, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Bel-
gium-Luxembourg conducted 30 per cent, 25 per cent, 15 per cent, and
10 per cent respectively of their total foreign trade with Africa. Most of
this was with their colonies. The largest share of the foreign trade of the
African dependencies is engrossed by the European metropoles. In 1953,
the share of the foreign trade of the dependent territories with their
respective mother countries was as follows : 1 2
SHARE OF EXPORTS
SHARE OF IMPORTS
DEPENDENCY
TO METROPOLE
FROM METROPOLE
British 1
53
47
French 2
63
67
Belgian
56
40
Portuguese
24
40
Includes Gold Coast.
2 Includes Tunisia and Morocco.
The economic importance of the dependencies to the metropoles is of
course not limited to trade. A significant share of the overseas invest-
ments of France, the United Kingdom, and Belgium have been made in
Africa. These investments are highly productive and profitable, are impor-
tant earners of foreign exchange, and provide the metropoles with essen-
tial foodstuffs and industrial raw materials. Estimates of the United States
Department of Commerce place total book value of American direct in-
vestments in Africa, exclusive of Egypt, at $458 million at the end of 1952.
Africa is a major producer of a large number of industrial raw mate-
rials and foodstuffs, chiefly for export. The most important of these are
listed in Table 23-4. Not included is uranium, for which no production
figures are available because of security reasons. However, Africa— prin-
cipally the Belgian Congo and the Union of South Africa— is believed to
be the world's largest producer. The Union of South Africa produces
more than half of the Free World's output of gold. Most of this gold is
shipped to the United Kingdom and makes an important contribution to
meeting the sterling area's hard-currency needs.
Brief mention needs to be made of North Africa's locational impor-
tance by virtue of its position astride the vital Mediterranean and Suez
passageway to the Indian Ocean and the Far East. As mentioned in
Chapter 19 this route is of great commercial and strategic significance
to the Free World and in particular to the United Kingdom and the Far
East. "Because of its geographical relationship to the highways of the
12 Compiled from United Nations, Direction of International Trade, Series T, Vol.
5, No. 8 (New York).
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 701
Mediterranean, to the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, and to the oil fields
of the Middle East, Africa would immediately become part of the global
front line in the event of war." 13 The experience of the past war demon-
strated the great strategic importance of North Africa as a logistical
springboard in any military operations against southern Europe. The area
has a string of airbases which form a vital part of the Free World's first
line of defense against Soviet aggression. North Africa's strategic impor-
tance is enhanced by virtue of its highly defensible position between the
desert and the sea.
TABLE 23-4
Africa: Share of Free World Output of Selected Raw Materials, 1950
MINERAL
PER CENT
AGRICULTURAL .
PER CENT
Manganese (ore)
54
Groundnuts
20
Copper (metal)
24
Coffee
13
Antimony (metal)
25
Cocoa
66
Cobalt (metal)
87
Cotton
13
Tin (metal)
19
Sisal8
50
Industrial diamonds
87
Palm oil"
69
Chrome (ore)
45
>
Asbestos
12
Graphite
10
Phosphate rock
35
* Per cent of world exports.
GENERAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Africa is the most backward of the major underdeveloped regions. With
more than 8 per cent of the world's population, it accounts for only about
2.5 per cent of the world's production. All of this vast continent with the
exception of the Union of South Africa falls into the underdeveloped
category. Nonetheless, significant regional variations are to be found in
the pattern and degree of economic development. Broadly speaking, three
major zones of economic development can be identified. The first is
North Africa, which embraces the Mediterranean countries from Morocco
in the west to Egypt in the east and has a population of roughly 40 mil-
lion. As pointed out elsewhere, this area except for Egypt is really an
extension of the European Mediterranean economy. As a result of its
longer exposure to European influences, North Africa is generally more
advanced than the rest of Africa. The second and by far the largest eco-
nomic region is Middle or Intertropical Africa, which extends roughly
13 de Kiewiet, op. cit., p. 447.
702 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
from 30 degrees north latitude to the Union of South Africa. This area
with a population of 140 million is only beginning to emerge from almost
complete dependence on subsistence pursuits to participation in various
forms of activities involving money exchange. According to Albion Ross
in his series of articles on Africa, published in The New York Times,
middle Africa "is filled with people still in the childhood stage of the
human race . . ." 14 Finally, there is the Union of South Africa which, at
least in the European sector, has most of the characteristics of a highly
developed western economy.
Poverty and disease are endemic in Africa. Food shortage is widespread
and much of the population is undernourished and too weak to resist
tropical disease. The limited statistical data available suggest that the
bulk of the population has incomes below $75 per annum (see Table
23-5) and in some areas incomes are falling. Thus per capita income in
TABLE 23-5
Africa: Per Capita National Income of Selected Countries *
(in U. S. Dollars)
COUNTRY YEAR AMOUNT
Belgian Congo
Egypt
Gold Coast
Kenya
Nigeria
Northern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia
Tunisia3
Uganda
Union of South Africa
a Revue D'Economie Politique (Paris, March-April, 1954).
* United Nations, Statistics of National Income and Expenditure, Series H, No. 6 (New York, August,
1954).
Egypt today is considerably less than it was in the 1920's. Incomes are
distributed very unevenly between natives and Europeans. Thus, French-
men in North Africa are generally considered to enjoy living standards
equal to, or higher than, in metropolitan France ($880 per capita Gross
National Product in 1954). The relatively small white populations of the
Union of South Africa have higher average incomes than in most Euro-
pean countries. Accordingly, average incomes of native peoples in coun-
tries where Europeans play a significant economic role are substantially
less than shown. An economic middle class is virtually unknown in native
14 New York Times, October 24, 1954.
1951
63
1950
121
1950
102
1952
52
1950-51
67
1952
89
1952
151
1952
100
1952
53
1952
272
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 703
Africa south of the Sahara, except possibly in the Belgian Congo and the
Gold Coast. Incomes in Nigeria, which is a predominantly native agricul-
tural economy, probably are fairly representative of the mass of Africa's
population.
Agriculture is the principal economic activity with about three-fourths
of the population of the continent as a whole dependent on farming for
a livelihood, as compared with about 60 per cent for South America. In
most countries agriculture accounts for 40 to 55 per cent of the national
income. Except for the Union of South Africa, manufacturing generally
accounts for 10 per cent or less of total production. Again, outside of the
Union, most progress in the development of secondary industry has been
achieved in French North Africa, chiefly Algeria, Egypt, the Belgian
Congo, Kenya, and Southern Rhodesia. Handicraft industries are of some
significance in parts of West Africa, particularly the Gold Coast and Ni-
geria. Manufactures follow the typical pattern for underdeveloped areas,
with primary emphasis on consumer goods industries like textiles, food
packing, and the processing of raw materials for export. The production
of minerals accounts for a significant percentage of total output in a few
countries like the Belgian Congo, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and
of course the Union of South Africa. Most industrial and commercial en-
terprises are controlled by non-indigenous elements. For example, a 1952
census of business in Tunisia showed that 90 per cent of the commercial
and industrial establishments employing more than 50 persons were
owned by non-Tunisians.
Although the scope of the money economy is gradually widening in
Africa as more of the native population exchanges its production or labor
for cash, subsistence agriculture is still of primary importance, particu-
larly in the middle region. The United Nations has estimated that in all
territories of Middle Africa, except the Gold Coast, subsistence farming
accounts for approximately 60 per cent or more of the total land area cul-
tivated by the native population.15 In many areas like French West Africa,
Kenya, and Southern Rhodesia, the percentage exceeds 80 per cent. The
same United Nations study estimates that 60 per cent of the adult male
population is engaged in subsistence production. In certain areas like
French West Africa, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria, cash earning chieflv
takes the form of cash cropping. In others like Kenya and Southern Rho-
desia, wage earning is the chief source of native money income. In some
territories like the Belgian Congo, money incomes are derived both from
15 United Nations, Department of Economic Affairs, Enlargement of the Exchange
Economy in Tropical Africa ( New York, 1954 ) , p. 13.
704 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
cash cropping and wage earning. Wage earning activities are in various
stages of transition from intermittent employment for wages combined
with subsistence farming to complete dependence on wages. The growth
of the wage-earning class has been greatest in areas like Kenya, Northern
Rhodesia, and Southern Rhodesia where the pressure of the population
on the land has forced natives to seek alternative means of earning a
livelihood. Nonetheless labor remains scarce in many parts of Africa, and
the movement of labor to the towns and mines frequently impairs agricul-
tural output.
Production methods in agriculture among the native populations are
extremely primitive. Yields per acre and per man are the lowest of all the
continents. Food crop yields per acre are only about 60 per cent of the
world average. Most natives employ no more efficient tool than the hoe.
While a few are learning to use the plough, its general employment in
many regions is impossible because the tsetse fly precludes the use of
draft animals. Outside of a few areas like Egypt and French North Africa
conservation of water and the use of fertilizers is rare. Agricultural output
also suffers from the fact that many parts of Africa are subject to periodic
drought and famine.
Like other underdeveloped regions, exports of a few primary products
account for the preponderant share of total exports in most countries.
Thus in 1952 cotton accounted for 87 per cent of the value of Egypt's
exports, copper for almost 90 per cent of the value of Northern Rhodesia's
exports, and cocoa for 60 per cent of the Gold Coast's exports. As a result,
levels of income are subject to wide fluctuations depending on external
market conditions. Intra-African trade is small. In 1948 only 13 per cent
of Africa's exports were intra-regional.16 The chief reasons for this low
figure are ( 1 ) the exports of most of the territories are competing rather
than complementary, (2) trade is largely oriented overseas because of
the strength of colonial ties, and (3) transport and communications are
very poor.
Africa has a poorly developed transport system. Human porterage is
still of importance in tropical Africa for the movement of goods over short
distances. Relatively few areas outside of French North Africa and the
Union of South Africa are adequately served by rail, road, or river com-
munications (cf. Fig. 23-1, p. 690). Lack of transport is a major obstacle
to the development of most of Africa. In 1949, the total length of Africa's
rail network (excluding Egypt) was only about 39,000 miles, of which
16 "Summary of World Trade Statistics," United Nations Statistical Papers, Series D,
No. 2 (New York, April, 1950).
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 705
roughly one-half was concentrated in French North Africa and the Union
of South Africa.17 Railway development, particularly in Middle Africa,
occurred largely in response to the need to transport minerals from the
interior to the coast for export abroad (cf. Fig. 7-6, p. 186). In many cases
the servicing of agricultural communities is thus largely fortuitous. In-
ternal crosswise rail development is insignificant. "Such transcontinental
connections as the Cape to Cairo Railway or the Trans-Saharian were
partially built or projected to serve national and imperial schemes and not
necessarily to respond to strictly economic criteria." 1S Few highways in
tropical Africa are hard-surfaced and most are impassable during the
rainy season. Natural obstacles, such as falls and rapids close to their
mouths, and seasonal fluctuations in the flow, place severe limitations on
the use of Africa's rivers for transportation purposes. Except for the Nile
and Congo river systems, river transport is largely limited to the navigable
lakes like Nyasa and Victoria.19
CONTRASTING COLONIAL POLICIES
Marked differences are to be found in the colonial policies which the
European metropoles pursue in their African dependencies. Very fre-
quently these policies reflect strong geographical influences. The British
officially proclaim the primacy of the interests of the native populations
and seek to encourage the development of self-government in their terri-
tories. In the Belgian colonies a paternalistic attitude toward the native
population still governs colonial policy and the emphasis is on efficiency
and maximum returns for the mother country. Neither the native nor the
white populations have political rights. Preparation for self-govern-
ment is viewed as a goal for the more distant future after the natives have
been civilized. Portugal's colonial policies are somewhat similar, except
that Angola and Mozambique are considered overseas provinces of Por-
tugal rather than colonies. French policy looks toward the gradual inte-
gration of its African dependencies into the French Union on a basis of
common citizenship and unified political institutions as in Algeria. In the
case of Tunisia and Morocco, however, the French are being compelled to
grant independence outside the framework of the French Union.
British policies have brought dependencies like the Gold Coast and
Nigeria, well along the path toward self-government. This process has
17 United Nations, Review of Economic Conditions In Africa (New York, 1951).
18 Haines, op. cit., p. 129.
19 Hailey, op. cit., p. 1541.
706 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
been facilitated by the absence of any significant numbers of European
settlers in these territories, thereby minimizing the inevitable clash
of interests between the natives and the whites. However, these same
conditions do not obtain in many parts of British Central and East
Africa. Here more favorable climatic conditions have attracted moderate
numbers of white settlers, who favor a policy of white supremacy. The
result has been increasing social tensions and in certain instances serious
physical outbursts like the Mau Mau disturbances in Kenya described
elsewhere.
British policy has favored the federation and consolidation of its African
territories. The first move in this direction has been the creation of the Cen-
tral African Federation in 1953 comprising Northern and Southern Rhode-
sia and Nyasaland. Political considerations figured most importantly in the
establishment of the Federation, but the desire to create a more cohesive
economic unit combining three essentially economically interdependent
political units was a contributory factor. While the white minorities fa-
vored the Federation, it was bitterly opposed by the natives in all three
territories. They fear that the resultant improvement in economic condi-
tions will attract additional white settlers and add to the pressure on the
natives. Conflicting racial interests block a proposed similar federation of
Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika. Efforts to organize tropical Africa along
regional lines to take into account natural resources and communications
are a recognition of the limitations of the original colonial boundaries.
Thus far Belgian policies in the Congo have been highly successful in
maintaining political stability. Unlike the Union of South' Africa and Brit-
ish East Africa, the Congo has no color bar. Natives are permitted and
encouraged to train for and occupy skilled positions. The size of the white
population is limited and there are few permanent settlers. Political rights
of both whites and natives are barred as noted above, although the Bel-
gians are planning to give the right to everyone to vote in municipal elec-
tions. Just how long this situation can continue is uncertain. There is the
periodic pressure from Belgian groups who want to send out large num-
bers of white settlers to the Congo. If these efforts were realized the result
could be a breakdown of the present system and the development of con-
ditions similar to those in some British territories. Then there is always the
possibility that the growth of native self-government in neighboring terri-
tories will generate similar pressure in the Congo.
In French West Africa political conditions are still relatively tranquil,
but as in the Congo there is always the prospect that growing native as-
pirations for self-government will intensify. In French North Africa, with
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 707
its sizable European minority, the conflict of interests between the natives
and whites and the growing demands of the natives for greater political
and economic freedom created a highly explosive political situation. As a
result France has been forced to agree to grant independence to Morocco
and Tunisia and certain economic and social reforms to Algeria. Portu-
guese territories enjoy relative political stability as a result of strict gov-
ernment controls, the small white population, and the fact that the process
of modernization has not gone very far due to the limited resources for
economic development at the disposal of the Portuguese government.
AGRICULTURE
Since World War II, total agricultural output in Africa as well as output
of foodstuffs has increased somewhat more rapidly than the population.
This has permitted some raising of the very low prewar per capita levels
of food consumption as well as a considerable expansion of exports. How-
ever, most of the improvement in diets probably has been limited to the
Union of South Africa and the more prosperous cocoa and mineral-pro-
ducing regions. Africa produces the bulk of its essential food needs, al-
though the margin between supplies and requirements is narrowing. Thus,
whereas Africa before the war had an export surplus of cereals of about
three-quarters of a million tons per annum, it is now running a slight
deficit largely because of Egypt's sizable imports and reduced surpluses
from French North Africa.
Principal Crops. Africa displays considerable variation from region to
region with respect to the principal crops, production for the home mar-
ket and for export, methods of cultivation, and farm agricultural organiza-
tion. In French North Africa the principal food crops are wheat and
barley, in Egypt wheat, corn, and rice. South of the Sahara wheat is of
almost negligible importance except in the Union of South Africa. Root
crops, millets, sorghum, pulses, and maize are of greatest significance.
Root crops are particularly important in tropical areas. In certain terri-
tories, the proportion of cultivated land devoted to the production of
export crops represents a large percentage of the total. The Gold Coast
with 45 per cent is a notable example. Countries where the area under
crops mainly for export range between 20 and 30 per cent include Egvpt,
French Equatorial Africa, and Uganda. In some areas high prices for
export crops have reduced production of food for local consumption. This
could create serious food deficiencies in periods of rapidly declining ex-
port prices. (The principal agricultural exports were given in Table
708 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
23-4.) Although Africa is believed to have significant potentialities for
increasing meat production, cattle-raising is presently of only limited eco-
nomic significance. In tropical Africa a major limitation, as mentioned
earlier, is the widespread presence of the tsetse fly. Purely nomadic tribes
are found chiefly in the savanna region on the southern border of the
Sahara.
Land Tenure. Although landlordism is much less of a problem in Africa
than in other underdeveloped regions, the continent nonetheless faces
serious difficulties in certain areas arising out of existing land tenure ar-
rangements. Communal tenure is the most widespread form of agricul-
tural organization in Africa south of the Sahara. While it manifests itself
in a variety of forms communal tenure has a number of common features.
"Land is held on a tribal, village, kindred or family basis, and individuals
have definite rights in this land by virtue of their membership in the rele-
vant social unit. Hence, title to land has a communal character and it is
usufructuary, rather than absolute." 20 Subsistence shifting-cultivation
usually is associated with communal forms of land tenure.
A number of developments that vary in importance from region to
region are breaking up this traditional system of land tenure and cultiva-
tion. Shifting agriculture, as described on page 697, requires a plentiful
supply of land. However, with the growth of population the pressure of
numbers on the land has made more intensive methods of cultivation
necessary. This has frequently led to overcropping and soil exhaustion.
It has forced increasing numbers of natives to seek employment on Euro-
pean-owned plantations and in industry as an alternative or supplemen-
tary source of income. This process has been intensified by the earlier
colonial land alienation policies. In French Equatorial Africa and the
Belgian Congo vast territories were declared vacant by the state and
turned over to private concessions. This resulted from a misunderstanding
of the fact that seemingly vacant lands were in fact cultivable tribal areas
lying fallow. Subsequently the concessions originally granted were con-
siderably reduced and government policies were adopted to encourage
native freeholds. In the Union of South Africa, Kenya, and Northern
Rhodesia, reserves of land were set aside for the native population. How-
ever, these reserves were wholly inadequate under existing methods of
cultivation.
The shortage of land and the reserve system has been a major cause of
Kenya's Mau Mau uprisings. Roughly 4,000 white settlers occupy the
20 United Nations, Land Reform (New York, 1951).
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 709
12,000-square-mile fertile belt of the green highlands of Kenya where
Negroes cannot acquire land. By contrast the Kikuyu tribe of 1,2.50,000
persons is restricted to 2,000 square miles. Land hunger is intense. The
pressure of population on this limited area has made it necessary for about
200,000 natives to work on plantations and in other employments on the
white reserve. This is back of the Mau Mau's determination to drive the
white man out.
The growth of cash cropping by which land acquires a commercial
value is also contributing to the break-up of the communal system of
land tenure. This process has gone further in Uganda and the Belgian
Congo where the desire to exploit land for commercial purposes has pro-
moted widespread individual forms of land ownership. Also important
has been the growing demand for labor resulting from the expanding
production of minerals and agricultural products for export. A growing
number of natives have abandoned subsistence agriculture to become in-
dustrial and agricultural wage earners.
In certain parts of Africa, particularly eastern central and southern,
there has been some development of plantation agriculture mainly by
Europeans. Crops consist mostly of export products such as sisal, sugar,
coffee, tobacco, and rubber. Because of the early difficulties of attracting
native labor some of these plantations were developed by immigrant
labor. The most notable example was the use of Indians on the Natal
sugar plantations. After serving their period of indentured service many
of these Indians stayed on in Natal to engage in market-gardening and
retail trade. This has given rise to a color problem in the Union of South
Africa second only to that of the Negro problem, a problem which has
been the cause of serious strictures between the Union of South African
Government and the Government of India.
In French North Africa and Egypt individual ownership in property
is well developed and landlordism is a problem. Thus in Tunisia, the
French hold 25 per cent of the land devoted to crops although they repre-
sent less than 7 per cent of the population. Moreover, these are the most
fertile and best-watered lands. Natives generally farm small uneconomic
plots. This situation may well change if the French pull out in the face
of growing local instability and pressures. Until the land reform law of
September, 1952, one-half of one per cent of Egypt's population owned
one-third of the land in holdings of 50 acres or more. Another one-third of
the land was owned by 5 to 6 per cent of the population in plots of 5 or
more but less than 50 acres. The remaining one-third was controlled by
710 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
94 per cent of the landowners in plots averaging under one acre.21 Under
the land reform program almost 600,000 acres of land are to be taken from
1,758 landowners and distributed to 250,000 families over a period of five
years.22 While the program has improved the lot of the peasant families
affected, it by no means has destroyed the wealthy land-owning class or
solved the basic problem of land hunger.
For most of Africa, however, the poverty of the natives is chiefly a
result of the primitive methods of farming, which lead to food shortages
and land exhaustion, rather than the system of land tenure. One promising
approach to the introduction of better farming and better land use is the
so-called settlement scheme. "They are . . . the means of settling either
land reclaimed from bush and waste, or reclaimed from aridity by irriga-
tion, or land lately used by Africans to the point of exhaustion and re-
habilitated by proper fallowing, manuring and similar treatment, and
then laid out in proper holdings, bunded strip cropped or otherwise
treated to prevent soil erosion, etc. and settlement by peasants." 23 An
outstanding example is the Gezira Scheme in the Sudan which embraces
one million acres with irrigation canals. The Scheme is a partnership
between the government and the peasant who share the profits and the
responsibilities for maintaining the land. The government furnishes the
land to the peasant in forty-acre plots on a long-term lease basis and is
responsible for the supply of water. It also provides qualified agricultural
managers, mechanical equipment, fertilizers, and marketing facilities. The
peasant on his part is required to observe proper methods of cultivation.
Through their representatives the peasants have assumed an increasing
role in running the project. The Gezira Scheme has been highly successful
and similar projects have been established in a number of other territories.
The settlement scheme would appear to offer considerable opportunities
for improving the lot of the native populations.
LONG-RUN ECONOMIC PROSPECTS
Since World War II government-sponsored long-range economic devel-
opment plans have been drawn up for most African territories and in
many areas these plans are now being implemented. In the case of the
dependent territories a large proportion of the funds is being provided
by the metropoles. By and large these plans provide for investments
21 Department of State, Agriculture In Point Four Countries, Part 4, Near East and
Independent Africa (August, 1952), p. 1.
22 New York Times, October 20, 1955.
23 United Nations, Progress In Land Reform (New York, 1954), p. 107.
AFRICA: THE LAST STAND OF COLONIALISM 711
which are unlikely to attract private capital and yet are fairly basic to the
achievement of any real economic progress. The principal categories of
investment include irrigation, transportation, social services like educa-
tion, health, public housing, and measures to increase agricultural pro-
ductivity. While the programs seek to stimulate production of primary
products required by the metropole they show much more concern for
the welfare of the native population than earlier colonial policies. Despite
these plans there is still no evidence of a significant acceleration of eco-
nomic growth in most parts of Africa.
Before economic development can proceed very rapidly in Africa
among the native populations, more resources will have to be shifted
from subsistence to exchange activities and productivity will have to be
greatly increased. Otherwise the incentives and the means of providing
surpluses required to feed workers in industry and to accumulate capital
will be lacking. New techniques of farming will have to be developed to
counteract the declining productivity of the soil and permit settled agri-
culture. The failure of the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme is a good ex-
ample of the difficulties of introducing new methods of cultivation in
tropical regions even where large-scale financial backing is available. A
fundamental attack will have to be made against the problem of disease.
There are many obstacles to the development of industry. An entrepre-
neurial class will have to develop. A disciplined and trained labor force
has to be established. Levels of literacy will have to be raised. Even the
present limited development programs are greatly hampered by the lack
of skilled workers and adequately trained administrators. Then there is
the problem of native-white relations in some areas. Thus, much of Africa
has a considerable way to travel before it faces the no less serious prob-
lem of capital shortage. Very few of the native economies have the
capacity to mobilize significant amounts of capital for investment. While
the present expansion of basic services under government auspices will
attract private capital into industry, mining, and agriculture, not much of
this capital is likely to move into the native economy. Thus the native
economies may benefit from the present programs only indirectly. There
are some exceptions, of course, like the Gold Coast which has accumu-
lated large sums for development through its cocoa stabilization fund, and
the Belgian Congo with its profitable mineral export industries. Some
countries, like Egypt, may be unable to expand output rapidly enough to
keep pace with the growth of population. For most of the region, how-
ever, economic development is likely to be slow and production of food-
stuffs and industrial raw materials will continue to predominate. Perhaps
712 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
the outlook for Africa is well summed up in the following statement by
Albion Ross in his previously mentioned series of articles on Africa: 24
The drama of the Americas will never be re-enacted here unless the findings
of the geographers, soil scientists and the like are all wrong. The theory of the
"dying continent" is probably regarded today by African soil scientists as some-
what of an exaggeration but they grant that it contains a vital element of truth.
The native will need all of his African heritage as the generations go by and
will be lucky if it can support him in decency.
24 New York Times, October 26, 1954.
w
ex
The Index is not meant to list every geographical place name mentioned in
the text. Rather, it attempts to list subject matters, place names, and names
of persons which have been given substantial treatment; even with this limita-
tion, the great variety of subjects covered in the text precludes a complete
indexing.
Acheson, Dean, 272
Aden: strategic base of, 235
Afghanistan, 89; language factors, 394 f.;
Soviet penetration, 619
Africa: agricultural land, 696 f.; agricul-
ture, 702, 707 ff.; area, 691 f.; climate,
694 f.; colonial policies, 705 ff.; crops,
707 f.; economic significance, 696 ff.;
exports, 704; European minorities, 347;
forests, 698; immigration, 374 f., 692;
land tenure, 708 ff.; manufacturing,
703; minerals, 698 f.; population,
691 f.; prospects, 710 ff.; railroads in
Central Africa, 186 (map), 690 (map);
resources 690 (map), 696 ff.; stra-
tegic significance, 700 f.; transporta-
tion, 704 f.
Afrikaans language, 391
Agriculture: China, 503 ff., 511 f., 512 ff.;
Japan, 525, 526; U.S.S.R., 489 ff.;
Western Europe, 539, 542, 547 f.,
560 f.
Air distances ( across Arctic ) , 247 ff .
Alaska, non-contiguity, 66
Alaskan Panhandle, 75
Alexander VI, 255 f.
Algeria, as part of France, 66
Amazon Basin, settlement of, 300, 673
Amazon River, 187, 673
"American Ruhr," 166
Amery, L. S., 449, 450
Ancel, J., 136
Andhra, 385, 387
Angola, 58
Ankara, as capital, 144 f.
Antarctic: claims, 84 (map); narrow
marine straits in the, 245
Anti-Colonialism (Colombo Powers), 289
Appalachians, language islands, 399
Apartheid, 60 f.
Appenzell, Swiss canton and exclave, 60
Arab countries, population, 298
Arable land, world, 462 (map)
Arctic Mediterranean, 246 ff.; strategic
bases in, 251, 278
Arctic Ocean, 182 f., 246 ff.; sector prin-
ciple, 126 (map)
Arctic Sea routes, 251
Arctic, air routes, 246 (map); coloniza-
tion, 220; population factors, 300; stra-
tegic factors, 220 f ., 248 ( map )
Argentina ( see also South America ) : in
the Antarctic, 245; and Chilean bound-
ary, 92 (map); Manifest Destiny, 268;
and Western Hemisphere, 267 f.; im-
migration, 370; industrialization, 617;
location of capital, 152 f.
Asia, Mackinder's concept of, 213 f.; pop-
ulation transfers, 363
Asian countries, population, 297, 298
Asian Frontier Zones, linguistic divides,
394 f.
Atomic energy resources, 456 (map);
Western Europe, 559
Atoms for Peace Plan, 621 ff.
Australia: capital, 151; in the Antarc-
tic, 246; continental shelf, 49 (map);
empty spaces, 131; immigration, 370;
immigration policy, 375; urban drift,
354, 371
Autarky, 485
Azores, 66
"Backdoors," 180
Baghdad Treaty, 285 f.
Baikal-Amur Railway, 221
Balance of power, 218 f.
Baldwin, H. W., 244 f.
Bali Strait, 233
713
714
INDEX
Balkan Treaty, 1954, 282
Baltic Sea, 237 ff., 238 (map); U.S.S.R.
control of, 239
Baltic Straits, 234
Bandung Conference, 289 (map), 384,
610
Basel Airport, 62
Bases Overseas, U.S., 275 ff.
Basutoland, an exclave, 60, 61 (map)
Bates, M., 459
Beaufort Sea, 58, 183, 251
Benelux, 132, 557 f.
Bengal, 387; migrations, 363 f.; language,
388
Bering Strait, 237, 251
Berlin, 117; core character of, 156; as ex-
clave, 63, 64 (map)
Birth rates, declining, 338
Black, E., 610
Black Sea, 243
Blockade of Heartland power, 242 ff.
Boer States, boundaries, 176, 177 (map)
Boers, 391
Boggs, S. W., 267
Bohemia, location, 203 f.
Bolivia, 181 (map)
Bolshevik, 494
Bombay, 234; language factors, 387
Bonn, as capital, 157
Boundaries: Alaskan-Siberian, 102 f.; and
population pressures, 128 ff.; Antarctic,
82; antecedent, 89; Arctic, 83; arti-
ficial, 94 f.; barrier function, 85 f.;
changes, 107; crystallized, 109; demar-
cation of, 90; diminishing functions of,
111; emotional value of, 123 f.; func-
tions of, 85; 49° boundary, 104, 105;
geometrical, 85, 104; marked by physi-
cal features, 95; mountain crest, 95;
natural, 94; obsolescence of, 112; of
small economic units, obsolescence,
132; of Soviet satellites, 133; of terri-
torial states, vs. national states, 138;
religious, 411, 417; superimposed, 94;
survival of, 121; subterranean, 135;
undefined, 89 f.; zone, 87 ff.
Boundary lines, and boundary zones, 79;
conflicts in South America, 180 (map);
De facto, 81; definition, 80; De jure,
81; disputed, 81; types of, 81
Brandenburg, fragmented and contigu-
ous territory, 64 f .
Braunschweig, fragmented state, 62
Bratislava bridgehead, 98 ( map )
Brazil (see also South America), 674,
676; shift of capitals, 151 f., 152
(map); size, comparative, 44 (map)
Britain, in the Antarctic, 245
British Commonwealth of Nations, immi-
gration and emigration trends, 375
British control of Indian Ocean terri-
tories, 69
British Isles, 200
British naval bases, 234 f .
Buddhism, distribution of, 420 (map)
Buenos Aires, growth of, 152 f.
Buffer states, 176 ff., 179 (map)
Burgess, J. W., 11
Biisingen, German exclave, 61
Cabinda, 185; Portuguese exclave, 58
Calcutta, 188
California: core area of, 169 ff.; 170
(map); population movement to, 572
Campione, Italian exclave, 61
Canada: agriculture, 596, 598; economic
capabilities, 593 ff.; foreign trade, 599;
forests, 597; geography and people,
594 ff.; hydroelectric powers, 498; im-
migration, 370, 375; languages, geog-
raphy of, 390, 391 (map); minerals,
597; population factors, 48 (map),
595 f.; resources, 47, 596 ff.; rivers,
594; and Western Hemisphere, 259
Canberra, as capital, 151
Capital cities (see also Core Areas), 143
Capital of states, shift inland, 188
Capitals: location, stability of as core
areas, 146 f.; in Turkey, 144 f.; in
U.S.S.R., 148; near frontiers, 157; and
population clusters in South America,
149 f.
Capitulations, 65
Caprivi Strip, 75
Caribbean Area, 228, 72 (map)
Caribbean Sea and Panama Canal, 237
Carlson, F. A., 268
Caucasus, petroleum, 477
Central Africa: German and Portuguese
expansion, 75 (map); landlocked posi-
tion, 185, 187
Central African Federation, 706
Central America, resources, 670
Central Europe: mass migrations, 355 ff.;
transfers of populations, 355 ff.; forced
migrations, 355 ff .
Ceylon, 200, 201; Indian minority, 381;
British strategic base on, 235
Chapultepec, Act of, 270 f .
"Character" of Nations, 24
Chile: and Argentina boundary, 91
(map); in the Antarctic, 245; elon-
gated shape of, 73
INDEX
715
China: expansion of, 50; agriculture,
503 f., 511 f., 516; arable lands, 499 f.;
capitals, 153 f., 154 (map); collectivi-
zation of agriculture, 512 f.; compari-
son with other economies, 508 f.; core
areas, 153, 301; economic relations
with U.S.S.R., 514 f., 516 f.; economy,
general features, 495 f.; foreign trade,
507, 514 f.; "Forward Points of
Growth," 73 f.; geographical regions,
496 ff.; geography of dialects, 403,
404 (map); gross national product,
508 f., 513 f.; industrial and economic
growth, 507 ff.; industry and trade,
505 ff. ; mineral resources and energy,
500 f.; natural resources, 499 ff.; popu-
lation, 297, 495, 500; population dis-
tribution, 301; principal cities, 496,
497; rivers, 496, 497, 501; trade with
Free World, 614; transportation, 226,
498 (map), 501 ff., 517
China Sea, 231
Chinese: in Malaya, 379; overseas,
379 ff.
Chou En-lai, 506, 507, 509, 513
Churches: political events, influence on,
437 f.
Circum-marine states, 57 ff., 157; and
strategic bases, 69 ff.
City states, size of, 32 ff., 33 ( map )
Clark, C, 575
Climate: and economic development,
458 f.; and population growth, 459 f.;
Canada, 594; China, 496, 497; cool
temperate regions, 460, 461; Japan,
523; tropical regions, 459; U.S.S.R.,
473, 474; Western Europe, 537,
538
Coastal bases, 188
Coasts: accessibility to invasion, 127,
198 ff.; as boundaries, 124; vulner-
ability to intrusion, 126
Collective Security, 279, 281 ff.
Colombo Plan, 287
Colombo Powers, 286 ff., 287 (map)
Colonies: and fragmented shape, 65;
European, 532 ff., 551
Colonization: and city states, 34 ff.; and
geography of languages, 400 f.
Colorado River Project, 579 f .
Communications in boundary zones,
118 f.
Communist World and United States,
comparison of geography and economic
factors, 471 f.
Commuting, across boundaries, 118
Compactness, factor of, 67
Congo, outlet, 185; basin, 300; State,
location, 185, 123 (map); coloniza-
tion, 706
Contiguous and non-contiguous state
areas, 58 ff.
Continental Shelf, 101, 102, 124, 125
(map)
Core Areas, 142 ff.; and capital cities,
143 ff.; and colonialism, 172; and
shipping lanes, 163 ff.; competitive, in
outlying regions, 169; effect of com-
munications on, 157 ff.; in regional
geography, 142; in totalitarian coun-
tries, 171; measures aimed at reducing
influence of, 168 f.; the "natural" core,
149; in Israel, Turkey, South America,
and Japan, 147, 144, 150, 155 (map)
Corridors: Finnish, 77 Polish, 77
"Cost Distance," 260 f.
Croats, and Catholicism, 431 f.
Cross-boundary influences, 120
Cultural factors, 440 ff.
Cumberland Road, 586
Curzon, G. N., 7
Custom Unions, 557 f .
Czechoslovakia: factor of shape, 71, 73;
minorities problems, 359 f.; railroads
of, 161, 162 (map); schism from
Roman Catholic Church, 438; spatial
relationship to Germany, 76; "threat"
to Nazi Germany, 77 (map)
Damao, Portuguese possession, 62
Danish Sound, 190
Dano-Norwegian language, 385
Danube River, 184, 545 f.; international
status, 184, 546
Danzig, 77, 239, 32 (map)
Dardanelles, 190, 624, 640
Death rates, declining, 337 f.
Debenham, F., 441
de la Blache, V., 342
Delhi, refugees, 364
Demographic factors, see Population
Demographic types, 321
Denmark, strategic location, 239
Deserts: as boundary in Southern Arabia,
87; divisive factors of, 67, 204
Determinism, 4
Detroit, Michigan, 55 (map)
DeVoto, B., 22
Dialects, and political geography of lan-
guages, 402 ff .
Displaced persons, 371 ff.
Dollar: area, 563, 564; "Gap," 550,
563 ff.
716
INDEX
Drake Passage, 245, 246 (map)
Drang Nach Osten, 352
Dravidian languages, 385, 387
Dukhobars, 348
Dulles, J. F., 286
East Africa, 199
East, G., 223, 226, 227, 400
"East," Mackinder's view of, 256 ff.
East Pakistan, as exclave, 58, 62
East Prussia, as exclave, 58, 62
Eastern Europe, 225; mass migrations,
356 ff.; migrations from, 350 ff.
Eckermann, J. P., 13
Educational factors, 441, 443
"Effective Occupation," 83
Egypt-Sudan, boundary, 134
Eire, 393 f., 441
Ellesmere Island, 45 (map)
Enclaves and Exclaves, 60 ff.; in metro-
politan areas, 63
English language, as lingua franca, 388
Erie Canal, 587
Ethiopia, expansion, inland: interior loca-
tion, 182; landlocked position, 182
Europe, see Western Europe
European, Coal and Steel community,
558
European countries, population, 297, 299
European: expansion overseas, 313; eco-
nomic co-operation, organization for
(OEEC), 535 f.; Payments Union
(EPU), 557
Expansion: ideological justification of,
137 f.
Fawcett, C. B., 260
Ferry, J., 533
Feudal states, size of, 30 ff.
Fictitious boundaries, 81, 82
Finland: as buffer state, 158; settlement
of Karelian Finns, 362
Fissionable materials, see Atoms for
Peace
Floating ice islands, 250
Foreign trade: China, 507, 514 f.; im-
portance to Western Europe, 549 ff.;
intra-European trade, 551; Japan,
527 f.; Soviet bloc, 488 f.; U.S.S.R.,
485 ff.
Formosa, 202, 231; defense resolution
1955, 285
Formosa Strait, 285
"Forward Point of Growth," 73 ff.
France: and Catholicism, 419; the chaus-
sees of, 158; demographic factors, 314;
depopulation of rural areas, 131; factor
of shape, 71; overseas immigration,
369; post roads, 159 (map); religious
adherence, 407; as secular state, 427;
comparative size, 42 (map)
Frankfurt a.M., 157
Free World, sea communications, 228
French Canada, 390
Frontier: vs. interior, 115; psychology,
116; as undelimited border, 115
Fulton, R., 587
Gandhi, M., 434
Garay, Don Juan de, 152
Gdynia, 77, 239
General Agreement on Tariff and Trade
(GATT), 557
Geographical: determinism, 463 ff.; fac-
tors in economic development, 457 ff .
Geopolitics, 5 ff.
George, H. B., 21
German internal boundaries, 95
Germany: boundaries, 108 (map); capi-
tals, 156, 157; Catholic party in, 436;
communication pattern, 161; core
areas, 156 f.; demographic factors,
314 f.; in relation to Russia, 214; lan-
guage divisions, 402 f.; language fac-
tors, 395, 396; migration, 361 f.; rival
core areas, 156
Gezira Scheme, African agriculture, 710
Gibraltar, Straits of, L90, 191
Goethe, J. W., 13 f.
Gourou, P., 692
Great Britain as "Christian power," 427
Great Circle Routes ( across Arctic ) , 247
Great Lakes, 187
Greek colonization, and geography of lan-
guages, 401
Greenland, 45 (map), 250, 251, 253, 265
(map), 277
Greenland-Iceland Bridge, 220
Hansen, M. L., 350
Hapsburg Empire, 139 (map)
Harbors, 191
Harris, C, 484
Harrison, R. E., 43
Haushofer, K., 7, 11, 26, 27, 76, 136
Hawaiian Islands, 66
Heartland, 175, 208 ff., 216 (map), 220
(map), 224; and China, 221; and
INDEX
717
Eastern Europe, 224 ff.; interrelation-
ship of, and marginal lands, 227; rain-
fall, 223; urge to the sea, 243
Hindu sects in India, 411
Hinduism, differences in, 411
Historical geography and distribution of
religions, 20 ff., 405 f.
Hoeffding, O., 494
Hohenzollern, acquisition of territory,
64 f.
Hokkaido, 231
Hongkong, 221, 502
Hoover, H., 272
Human Geography, 3 ff .
Huntington, E., 440, 461, 568
Hydroelectric power, 466, 467; China,
501; Japan, 525; U.S.S.R., 477, 479;
Western Europe, 540
Ibn Saud, King, 205
Iceland, 440 f.; and Western Hemisphere,
262 ff., 265 (map); factors of literacy,
440 f.
Ideological groupings, 140 f.
Imperialism: of European powers, 532 ff.;
Japanese, 522; Soviet, 492 ff.
India: as secular state, 429; boundaries
of princely states, 134; capitals, 151
core areas, 302; Europe, 43 (map)
geography of languages, 385 ff., 389 f.
industry, 657; irrigation, 661; linguistic
states, 386 (map); mass migrations,
363 f.; mineral resources, 653; political
divisions, 62; populations, 297, 328
(map); population distribution, 301 f.;
textile exports, 616
Indian Independence Act of 1947, 644
Indian Ocean, British influence, 68
(map)
Indians overseas, 381 f.
Indonesia, a circum-marine state, 69, 70
(map)
Industrial revolution, 469 f .
Industry: China, 505 ff.; Japan, 527 f.;
U.S.S.R., 480, 483; Western Europe,
543 f.
Inland waterways: Europe, 544 f.;
U.S.S.R., 473
"Inner line" of communications, 175
Intangible power factors, 441 f.
Inter-American highway, 261
Interior areas, 142
International agreements and U.S. de-
fense system, 281 ff.
International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development, 621
International Date Line, 103 f.
International rivers, 184
Iran, oil, 207, 209; railroads, 284 (map);
Shiite religion, 411
Iraq, oil, 630
Irish: Catholicism, 432
"Iron Curtain," 85
Iron ore and coal: China and Manchuria,
500, 501; importance to economic de-
velopment, 465, 466; Japan, 524;
U.S.S.R., 477, 481 ff.; Western Europe,
539, 542, 543
irredentism, 396
Irrigation, 464 f.; China, 503 f.; U.S.S.R.,
491
Islam, 423 ff., 424 (map), 426 (map)
Island chains, 198
Island refuge areas, 200 ff.
Island states, 66
Israel: a secular state, 428; Palestine-
Syria corridor, 192 (map); core area,
147 (map); immigration, 370 f.; in-
dustry, 636; urban drift, 371
Istanbul, 144, 145
Isthmus of Panama, 194, 195
Italy: communication pattern, 163; core
areas and capitals, 146; geography of
dialects, 403; irredentism, 396; popu-
lation pressure, 353
Japan: agriculture, 526; birth rates,
320 f.; climate, 523; comparison with
China, 519 ff.; core area, 155 f.; eco-
nomic development, 520 f.; demo-
graphic factors, 300 f., 320 f., 523 f.;
economy, 519 ff.; factor of compact-
ness, 67; fisheries, 526; foreign trade
and payments, 527 f.; general features
of the economy, 525 ff.; gross national
product, 521; growth of military
power, 522; imperial expansion, 522;
imports and exports, 527 ff.; industriali-
zation, 525 ff.; land and people, 523 f.;
natural resources, 524 f.; overpopula-
tion, 33.'>; population, 328 (map);
prospects, 529 f.; Sea of Japan, 236
(map); security agreement with U.S.,
283; shift of capitals, 155 f.; trade
with China, 615
Jefferson, Th., 307
Jerusalem: as capital, 146 ff.; interna-
tionalization, 419
Jones, S. B., 272
Jordan Valley Project, 629, 634 f.
Judaism, distribution of, 420 (map)
Jungbluth, 62
718
INDEX
Jus Sanguinis, nationality law of China,
380
Kaganovitch, L., 485
Kaliningrad, 239
Kamchatka, 231
Kashmir, as "Forward Point of Growth,
74
Kazakhstan, "Conquest of Virgin Lands,
490 f.
Kenya, Mau Mau uprising, 708 f.
Keflavik, 262
Khabarovsk, 221
Khyber Pass, 191
Kiel Canal, 197, 239
Kitimat, B. C, 596
Kra Canal Project, 196 f.
Kurile Islands, 231
Kutznets, S., 602
Kuwait, oil, 630
Labor reserve, 330
Landlocked location, 175 f.
Land Reform Program, African agricul-
ture, 709 f.
Languages: as barrier, 389 f.; as factor
of unification, 384 f.; geography of,
383 ff.
La Plata, drainage basin, 268
Latin America: agrarian reform pro-
grams, 684 f.; agricultural land, 671 ff.;
Amazon Valley, 673; area, 666 f.; basic
economic characteristics, 678 f.; cli-
mate, 668 f.; core areas, 149; depend-
ency on exports, 679 f.; economic im-
portance (foreign trade), 676 ff.;
European native amalgamation, 347;
foreign investments, 677 f.; future eco-
nomic prospect, 686 ff.; future popula-
tion, 325; geography, 668 ff.; income,
678 f.; industrial development, 681 ff.;
meeting of Tegucigalpa, 682; minerals,
675 f.; population, 666 f.; racial diver-
sity, 668 f.; racial structure, 268 f.; re-
sources, 671 ff.; strategic importance,
676 ff.; system of land tenure, 683 ff.;
transportation, 680 f .
Latin, spread of language, 401
Lattimore, O., 50
Lebensraum, 26
Legal systems in political geography,
443 ff.
Lena River, 215
"Lenaland," 215
Lenin, I., 227
Leningrad, 239, 241
Lingua Franca: in China, 403; in India,
368
Linguistic: islands, 348, 393 ff.; pockets,
396 ff.; vs. national states, 139
Literacy, 440
Llivia, Spanish exclave, 61
Location: backdoor areas, 180 ff.; bound-
aries, 176; buffer locations, 176 ff.;
continental seacoasts, 198 ff.; cultural
factors, 207 f.; deserts, 204 f.; harbors,
191; island chains and land bridges,
198; island coasts, 200; isthmuses, 194;
landlocked areas, 175 f.; large and
small countries, 206 f.; narrow con-
tinental passages, 191 ff.; narrow ma-
rine straits, 190 f.; national security
and locations, 189; pass areas, 191 ff.;
peninsulas, 197 f.; refuge areas, 200 ff.;
sea power position, 188
Lodge, H. C, 11
Lombok Strait, 223
Louisiana extension, 98 (map)
Mackinder, H. J., 7, 14, 208, 211, 212,
213, 214, 215, 217, 218, 219, 221, 222,
223, 224, 225, 256 ff., 343 f., 449, 451,
485, 531
Madrid, core area, 153
Mahan, A. T., 11, 211, 212, 213
Malaya: Chinese in, 378 (map); immi-
gration, 379 f .
Manchuria, 499, 505, 506, 510 f.
Manchurian railways, .19, 502
Manifest Destiny in Argentina, 10 ff.,
212, 313
Manpower factors, 327 ff.
Maps, spatial misconceptions due to,
41 ff.
"March" as frontier district, 116
Marches, U.S. defense, 273 f.
Marginal lands, see Rimlands
Marginal seas, 227 ff.
Marine Straits, 190
Marshall Plan, 559, 565
Marx, K., 307
Matsu, 285
Mau-Mau, 433, 708 f.
Mecca, as core, 146
Mediterranean, 240 (map), 241
Mercator projection, 217, 249, 295
Metropolises, vulnerability of, 308 f.
Metropolitan areas, 37
Mexico: and Catholicism, 419; and U.S.:
Migratory labor problems, 377
Middle East, oil fields, 628 (map)
INDEX
719
Middle West, core of, 21 ff., 115 f., 142
Migrations, 342 ff.; directions of migra-
tory pressure in Europe, 351 ff.; of
ethnic Germans, 360 (map); forced
migrations, 355 f.; laws and patterns of,
343 f.; and population pressure, 345 f.;
overseas, 368 (map); postwar migra-
tion, 367 ff .
Military capabilities, 453, 455 ff.
Millet, 65
Mineral resources, 465 ff.; China, 500 f.;
Japan, 524; relation to economic de-
velopment, 467 f.; U.S.S.R., 475 ff.;
Western Europe, 539 ff.
Minnesota-Canada boundary, 92 (map)
Minorities, Europeans in Africa, 347
Mishustin, 486
Mississippi River, 587, 588
Mohawk Valley, 193
Mongol empire, 213, 226
Monroe Doctrine, 258, 269 ff.
Monsoon, 459 f.; China, 496; Japan,
523 f.; Asia, 334 f : consumption levels
in, 334 f., 646 f.; population pressure,
332 ff.; recent population growth,
336 ff.
Moslem religion and population distribu-
tion, 306
Mountain refuge areas, 202 f.
Mozambique, 60, 75
Narrow: channels, 234 ff.; waterways,
227 ff.
National: Council of Churches of Christ,
409; socialism, German irredentism of,
396
Nationalism and shape of state terri-
tories, 65 f .
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 281,
282 f., 536, 565; in the Baltic area,
239, 240; strategic position in Arctic,
251
Nehru, J., 381, 387
Neo-mercantilism, 556
Netherlands, location, 206 f.
Neutral zones, 88
New Delhi as capital, 188, 151
Newfoundland, 441
Newspaper circulation, 442 (map)
New York City, Puerto Rican immigra-
tion, 377
New Zealand: immigration policy, 375;
in the Antarctic, 246
Nixon, R. M., 171
Nomadism, 28, 205
Non-geographical factors ( in economic
development), 467 ff.
North America, Eastern population dis-
tribution, 303 f.
North German plain, 194
Northern Sea Route, 251
"Northern Tier," 286 f.
Northwest Passage, 251
Norway: contiguity of islands, 66; elon-
gated shape of, 73
Oceanic boundaries, 100 ff.
Odd-shape relationship between states,
73 ff.
Ohio River, 587
Okhotsk, Sea of, 231
Okinawa, 278, 279
Organic theory of states, 135 ff.
Organization for European Economic Co-
operation (OEEC), 535 f., 554 f.
Ormuz, Straits of, 234
Osborn, F., 673
Overseas Areas, 313 f.; settlement of
European, 346 ff.
Overseas territories, European, 551
Owen Falls Dam, 441
Pacific Area: strategic bases, 277 f.; con-
tinental shelf, 101
Pakistan: an islamic nation, 286 ff.,
428 f.; and Kashmir, 97; economic
problems, 644 ff., 664; geography of
languages, 388; irrigation, 100; non-
contiguous state area, 58 ff., 59 ( map )
Palestine, 93, 127, 128
Palestine-Syria corridor, 192 f.
Palmer Peninsula, 245
Panama: Canal, 165, 187, 194 ff., 234 f.,
237, 245; Isthmus of, 194; Declara-
tion of, 101
Pan American Highway, 194, 261
Pan American Security, 270 ff.
Papal State, 29
Papua, 95
Parallel, 38th in Korea, 34
Paramushino, 231
Parella, F., 11 ff.
Pass states, 190 ff.
Pei, M., 402
Peking, 153 f., 157, 301
Peninsulas, 197
Perimeter of Defense, 253 ff., 272 ff., 275
(map)
Peru, 181 f., 187
720
INDEX
Pescadores Islands, 74
Petroleum: importance to world energy
supply, 466 ff.; Middle East, 628
(map); principal producing areas, 467;
U.S.S.R., 477
Petsamo, 77, 78
Philby, St. J. B., 87, 430
Pipelines: Southeast Asia, 211; Saudi
Arabia, £11
"Pivot Area" (Mackinder), 209 f., 214,
216
Po Valley, 194
Poland Boundaries, 81 f., 82 (map), 156;
on the Baltic Sea, 77, 239; Jewish
minority, 359; minorities, 359; popula-
tion pressure, 356 f.
Polar Aviation, 78
Polar: Ice Pack, 79; Mediterranean,
220 ff., 249; Regions, strategic bases,
87
Political Attitudes and the map of re-
ligion, 408
Population: factors, 294 ff.; distribution,
299 ff.; dynamics of, 99 ff.; expansion
of Europe, 310 f.; fertility factors, 309;
effects of war, 326; growth, 309 ff.;
intensive use of the home territory,
312; national entities, 92; settlement of
the East, 312; outlook for next decade,
340; settlement of overseas areas,
313 f.; size of, 295 ff.; structure,
327 ff.; transfers, 356 ff.
Population pressure, 331 ff., 341; and
migrations, 345 ff .
Population vs. Area, 91 f.
Population growth: outlook age pyramid,
102; age structures, 102 f.; future pop-
ulations, 323 ff.
Population growth and pressure, 91 ff.
Population: composition factors, 102;
pressure, 103 f.; movement, USA, 104;
trends: China, 158, 159, 165; Japan,
168; U.S.S.R., 150; Western Europe,
179: Porkkala-Udd, 71
Portugal: as buffer, 179; colonialism, 34,
69, 91, 122, 176, 185, 35 (map); sphere
of influence, 256; religious adherence,
407 f.
Possibilism, 4
Presidential elections, political geography
of, 109
Prestige factor in boundary changes,
122 f.
Problems of Economics, 151
Productivity of labor: in agriculture, 181;
China, 164; Soviet Agriculture, 156;
U.S.S.R., 153; Western Europe, 179
"Prompted Shape," 73 f.
Protestantism, 420 (map), 421 f.
Pseudo-religious ideologies, 140
Psychological factor of frontier mentality,
121
Puerto Rico emigration, 130, 377
Punjab, language factors, 387 f.; migra-
tions, 363 f.
Pushtu language, 90
Pushtunistan, 394
"Quarter-Sphere," American, 267
Quebec, 390
Quemoy, 285
Racial factor in political geography, 383 f .
Radiating communications, patterns and
core areas, 52
Radio distribution concept, 444
Railroads, 51 f., 53, 59; as outlets for
landlocked countries, 58
Railways, 167 ff.; Central Africa, 186;
China, 502 f.; U.S.S.R., 159 ff., 484 f.;
Western Europe, 159 ff., 161; South
America, 161 f.
Ratzel, F., 7, 27, 52, 95, 135, 136
Raum, see Space
Ravenstein, E. C, 343
Reformation, 426
Refuge Areas, 200 ff.
Regional organizations, 38 ff.
Religions, political geography of, 405 ff.,
410 (map)
Rhee Line, 526
Rhine River as international river, 184,
538
Ribbon Developments, 189
Rimlands, 223 ff., 225 (map); popula-
tion density, 71; strategic vulner-
ability, 72
Rio Grande, 97
Rio de Janeiro Treaty, 83, 85, 88, 271,
281
Ritter, K., 342
River basins, 99
River boundaries, 97 ff.
Rivers, internationalization of, 184
Roman Catholic countries, 406 ff., 416
(map), 417 ff.; distinctions between
Spain, Portugal, France, 407 f .
Roman colonization and geography of
languages, 401
Roman Empire, compactness of, 22
Rome, capital and core, 146
Roosevelt, F. D., 262, 263, 270
INDEX
721
Roosevelt, Th., 10
Ross, A., 712
Rub'al Khali, 87, 88 (map), 204
Ruhr, Planning Authority, 113, 159; lin-
guistic factors, 403
Rumania, autonomous regions, 203
Russia, see U.S.S.R.
Russian capitals, 148 ff.
Russification policy of U.S.S.R., 141,
398 f.
Saar, 113 (map), 114, 118, 121
Sahara, 47 f., 204
Sakhalin, 231
Satellites: boundaries, 133 (map); eco-
nomic factors of Soviet, 492 ff.; inte-
gration of, 494; population 493; trade,
493
Saudi Arabia, 87 f., 134 f.; and Wahha-
bism, 430
Scandinavian: Airlines, 247 f.; Customs
Union, 558
Schwarz, S. M., 126
Sea Power and expansion inland, 188;
Mahan's concept of, 212
Seacoasts of continents, 198 f.
SEATO, 283 f.
Sector principle, 83 f., 128 (map)
Sedentary ways of life, 205
Semple, E. C, 27, 136
Senussi, 430 f .
Serbs, Orthodox Church, 431 f.
Seward, W. H., 4
Shanghai, 153, 301
Shape, 58 ff.
Shaw, G. R., 402
Shintoism, 431
Shipping lanes and core areas, 163 ff.
Shoreline as boundary, 100
Siberia, Western ("Conquest of Virgin
Lands"), 156
Siegfried, A., 24, 640
Silesia, 239, 241
Sikkim, 74 f ., 97
Singapore, 190
Sinkiang, 73, 158, 172, 499
Sino-Soviet Rloc, economic factors, 471 ff.
Size, 26 ff.; factors in internal political
geography, 52 ff.; security, 44 ff.; state
power and factor of, 30; psychologi-
cal factors of, 50 ff.; physiographic
factors of, 56 f .
Slavic expansion, 365 f .
Slovaks, minority problems, 361
Smith, A., 452
Smith, J., 23
Smuts, J. C, 16
Soils and vegetation, 461 ff.
South Africa, Union of, 130 f.; Apartheid,
60 f.; enclaves in, 60; European minor-
ity in, 347; minority, Indian, 381 f.;
seat of government, 169; political ge-
ography of languages, 391; religious,
433
South America: "Rackdoor" areas, 181;
boundaries, 89; border zones, 87; and
Canada, 259; core areas, 149 ff.; re-
sources, 674 (map)
South China Sea, 232 (map)
South Moluccas, 202
South Pole, 245 f.
South and Southeast Asia: agricultural
land, 650 f.; agriculture, 658 ff.; area,
644 f.; coal, 653; economic characteris-
tics, 654 ff.; economic significance,
648 ff.; exports, 655, 659; industriali-
zation, 657; iron ore, 653; irrigation,
661: petroleum, 653; physical ge-
ography and climate, 646 f.; popula-
tion, 644; power vacuum, 643 f.; pros-
pects, 662 ff.; resources and railroads,
652 (map); security problems, 283,
286; strategic significance, 648 ff.;
tenancy, 661 f.; transportation, 657 f.;
water power, 653; water supply, 660 f.
Southern Europe, migrations from, 353
Southern Manchurian Railways, 19, 185
"Southern Union" of Argentina, 269
"Southern Union," Peron's, 84
Southwest Asia: agricultural land, 627 f.;
agriculture, 632 ff.; air transport, 641;
area and population, 625 f.; exports,
633; geography and climate, 626; in-
dustry, 520 (map), 635 ff.; irrigation,
634; minerals, 631 f.; petroleum,
629 ff., 636 ff.; railroads, 520 (map);
resources, 626 ff.; tenure, 635; trans-
portation, 639 ff.
Space, expansion in, 26 ff.
Spain: and Catholicism, 419; core area,
153, 159; geography of languages, 400,
401; population pressure, 353; re-
ligious adherence, 407 f.; strategic po-
sition, 282
Spate, O. H. K., 115
Spengler, O., 80, 95
Spvkman, N. J., 223, 228, 267, 268
Stalev, E., 261
State capitals in U.S., 49
State lines in U.S., 34
States, increase of "independent," 6
Stefansson, V., 78, 82, 13, 245 f., 263
Stepinac, Cardinal, 430, 341
722
INDEX
Sterling area, 551
Straits, see Dardanelles
Strategic bases: in the Arctic, 249 f., 279;
development in World War I and
II, 275 ff.; structure of, 278 f.; termi-
nology, 86; U.S. bases overseas, 278 f.
Strategic Trusteeship Area, 87
St. Croix River, 90, 93, 97
St. Lawrence River, 127
St. Lawrence Seaway, 165 f., 166 (map),
187
St. Petersburg, 148, 159, 183
Submarines, role in Soviet strategy, 253
Subterranean boundaries, 44
Sudeten Germans, 539 ff.
Suez Canal, 165, 190, 194 ff., 241, 245,
560, 639 f., 700 f.
Sunda Strait, 74
Sunnites, 411
Swaziland, 130
Sweden, location of industries, 119 f.,
189, 239
Switzerland, 30, 60, 61, 62, 64, 123, 138,
169, 178, 191; language factors, 356,
389
Szczecin (Stettin), 184, 239
Ta Chen, 297
Taiga, 300
Taiwan, see Formosa
Tallinn, 239
Tartary, Strait of, 235
Taylor, C, 131
Teggart Wall, 93
Telugu language, 387
Toiassen n, 75
TVA (Tennessee Valley /uthrity), 54,
99 f., 574 ( map )
Territorial Aggrandizement, 40 f .
Teutons and Slavs in Europe, 115 f.
Thailand, 177 f.
Thomas, R., 87
Thule Air Rase, 251 ff.
Tibet, 74, 97; a theocracy, 429 f.
Tocqueville, A. de, 390
Tokyo, 527
Tordesillas, Partition of, 102, 254 (map),
255 f.
Toynbee, A. J., 143, 148, 273
Trade areas and frontiers, 121
Trading posts, extraterritorial and fac-
tories, 22
Trans-Iranian Railroad, 167 f.
Trevelyan, G. M., 174, 469
Trevor, R. H., 9
Trieste, 324
Tundra, 300
Turkey: core, 144 (map); industry, 209;
mineral resources, 631 f.; "millet," 65;
railroads of, 168, 984 (map); shift
of capitals, 144, 157, 159
Turksib Railroad, 167
Tyrol, 94, 384 f., 397
Ukraine, 40 f., 41 (map), 171, 226, 239;
language factors, 384
Ulan Rator, 517
Underdeveloped Areas: agriculture,
603 ff.; atoms-for-peace, 621 f.; chal-
lenge of economic backwardness,
608 ff.; Communist penetration, 609 f.,
614 f., 618 f.; demographic factors,
607 f.; diseases, 602 f.; economic char-
acteristics, 601 ff.; exports, 606 f.; in-
dustrialization, 616 ff.; International
Rank for Reconstruction and Develop-
ment, 621; Point Four, 620 ff.; poverty,
602 f.; productivity, 601 ff.; strategic
factors, 612 f.; transportation, 605
United Kingdom: shipping lanes, 163 ff.,
164 (map); demographic factors,
316 f.; colonial structure, 173; emigra-
tion, 375; population composition, 329
(map)
Ural-Caspian Gate, 193
Urban concentration, 306
Urban drift, 354 f .
Urbanization, and population stability,
306 ff.
Urdu language, 388 •
Urumchi, 517
"Urge to the Sea," 182 ff.
U.S.A.: agriculture land, 573 f.; agri-
culture, 584 ff.; boundary with Canada,
114; boundary with Mexico, 114, 129 f.
(map); boundary disputes between
States, 106 (map); communication
pattern, 163; continental shelf, 101,
124 f.; core areas (California), 169 f.;
expansion inland, 188; economic capa-
bilities, 567 ff.; energy resources,
477 f.; foreign trade, 590 ff.; forests,
575; geometrical boundaries, 104 f.;
geography, people, 568 ff.; gross na-
tional product, 580; language factors,
139; manufactures, 582 f.; minerals,
575 ff.; movement of people, 188,
571 f.; population, 473, 570 ff.; pros-
pects, 574 (map), 587 f.; religions,
409; resources, 523; sector principle,
85; size, comparative, 44 (map); state
boundaries, 86; state capitals, 151;
INDEX
723
transportation, 586 f.; urban drift, 354,
572; U.S.S.R. boundary, 102 f.; water
power, 579, f.; waterways, 588 ff.;
westward movement, 572 (map)
U.S.S.R.: administrative subdivisions, 54;
agriculture, 489 f.; arable land, 473 f.;
in the Arctic, 182 ff.; atheistic state,
autonomy principle, 66; backdoor
areas, 180; in the Baltic Sea, 237 ff.;
blockade, geographical, 242 ff.; capi-
tals, 148 ff.; central position, 514 ff.;
coal production, 472, 479; demo-
graphic factors, 315 f., 320; depend-
encies, 172; eastward movement, 312;
economic prospects, 483 ff.; economy
and capabilities, 480 ff., 489 ff.; energy
resources, 477 f.; expansion of econ-
omy, 480 ff., 489 ff.; foreign trade,
485 ff.; grain production, in Soviet
Asia, 491; inland waterways, 473; irri-
gation projects, 473, 491; Islam, and,
425; labor force, 475; location theory,
485; migrations and population trans-
fers, 342 f., 349 ff., 491; minerals, re-
serves, imports and exports, 475 ff.,
479 f.; natural resources, 475 ff.; naval
power, 242 ff.; petroleum, 477; physi-
cal features, 473, 484; population
growth and structure, 315 f., 329 f.,
474 f.; railroads, 222, 476 (map), 478
(map); reclamation of new land, 490;
relocation of industries, 189; religions,
distribution of, 480 f.; rivers, 183, 473;
size, comparative, 44 (map); trans-
portation system, 484 f.; urban drift,
354; urge to the sea, 182 ff.; U.S.A.
boundary, 102 f.; "virgin lands con-
quest," 490; waterways, 473; water-
power, 477
'conquest" of
in
Vegetation, 461 ff.
"Virgin Lands":
U.S.S.R., 490
Virginia, Commonwealth of, 63
"Vital Revolution," 318 ff.
Vladivostok, 235
Wachstumsspitze, see Forward Point of
Growth
Wahhabism, 430
War, effects on future populations, 326
Washington, D.C., as core, 145 f., 169
Water bodies, 260 ( map )
Weather observation stations in Arctic,
250 f .
Wei Valley, 153
Western Europe: agriculture, 547 f., 560;
climatic factors, 537 f.; colonialism,
532 f.; coal production, 559 f.; cultural
factors, 534; economic capabilities,
531 ff.; economic structure, 541 ff.;
energy and fuel supply, 542 f., 559;
expansion, 531 f.; European Coal and
Steel Community, 558; foreign trade,
549 ff.; geographical features, 535 f.;
gross national product, 541; industry
and manufacturing, 543 f.; interna-
tional economic organizations, 535 f.;
integration, steps toward, 557 f.; man-
power and productivity, 553 ff.;
Marshall Plan, 565; payments prob-
lems, 563 f.; present position in world
economy, 552 ff.; population growth,
532; Organization for European Eco-
nomic Cooperation (OEEC), 535 f.,
554 f., 557, 560; railroads, 540 (map),
546 f.; regional patterns, 548 f.; re-
sources 538 ff., 540 (map); Scandi-
navian customs union, 558; sterling
area, 551; westward thrust in, 365 ff.;
transportation, 544 f.; waterways,
544 f.; world trade, decline of Western
Europe's share, 562 f .
Western Hemisphere, 253 ff., 264 (map)
Western Reserve, 64
Western Security System, 280 (map)
"Westward Course of Empire," 349, 572
(map)
"Wetbacks," 129 f., 377
White Sea, 237 f.
White Sea-Baltic Canal, 161
Wigmore, J. F., 443
World, demographic regions, 322 (map)
World, relative land areas, 294 (map)
World, population growth, 323 (map),
324 (map)
World state, 28 f.
Wright, J. K., 535
Wright, Q., 25
Yangtse Valley, 153, 496 f., 501 f.
Yedo, 156
Yenisei River, 218
Yugoslavia: backdoor location, 182;
boundaries, 93; churches, 430, 435 f.;
nationalities, 392; political geography
of languages, 392
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