"As we consider this rapid review of the broader currents of history, does not a certain persistence of geographical relationship become evident? Is not the pivot region of the world's politics that vast area of Euro-Asia which is inaccessible to ships, but in antiquity lay open to the horse-riding nomads, and is to-day about to be covered with a network of railways?"
Halford J. Mackinder, 1904, "The Geographical Pivot of History" and the figure "The Natural Seats of Power."
PART I: MACKINDER’S MAP OF THE WORLD
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE YEAR 1900: A NEW EPOCH IN HUMAN HISTORY?
For Halford J. Mackinder, the year 1900 was a moment to reflect not just about the turn of the century, but the last 400 years.
At the turn of an historical century one is apt to reflect on the past or have apprehensions about the future. For example, some may recall celebrating the last few seconds of New Year’s Eve 1999 thinking about whether a century full of world wars both hot and cold was finally behind us, and at the same time, whether in the next few seconds of the year 2000 the date “/00” would crash the world’s financial computers causing worldwide chaos and ATM machines to start spitting cash out into the streets. For Halford J. Mackinder, the year 1900 was a moment to reflect not just about the turn of the century, but the last 400 years. In a well-known paper entitled “The Geographical Pivot of History,” presented to the Royal Geographical Society and later published by The Geographical Journal in April 1904, Halford John Mackinder made a prediction. He said that historians hundreds of years from now looking back on centuries of history would mark the end of the long ‘Columbian epoch’ of human history as of the year 1900. So what exactly did Mackinder think would be happening to make future historians hundreds of years from now say that 1900 was a great turning point in human history and a “post-Columbian” epoch? In terms of the quote that began this essay, what exactly what was it about the pre-industrial history of Central Asia that made Mackinder regard the prospect of a Trans-Siberian railway system with such apprehension?
The pre-Columbian epoch ends and the Columbian epoch begins around 1500 as a result of European oceanic expansion.
Though the term “pre-Columbian” is commonly used for dating indigenous societies of the Americas before substantial contact with Europe, historians today do not often engage in sweeping periodization. Nonetheless, let us say that the pre-Columbian epoch ends and the Columbian epoch begins around 1500 as a result of European oceanic expansion. The Columbian epoch does not neatly begin in 1500 but represents a long period of expansion of the capitalist world economy first within the Mediterranean, then across the Atlantic, and finally to the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The spread of Europeans around the world was possible because European societies had mastered the organizational resources and technology to sustain long-distance transoceanic communications. The Columbian epoch was also a period of European discovery and imperial expansion inland from the oceanic littorals. History suggests European expansion inland at the expense of other societies was possible not simply due to superior numbers or resources but because European people also carried highly epidemic diseases to which people living outside of Europe and the Mediterranean had never been exposed; yet another persistent aspect of human population concentration and dispersion over long periods of time.
Just as Frederick Jackson Turner was apprehensive about the impacts of the “closing” of the frontier on American political life, Mackinder reflected globally about the political impacts of the closing of the world’s territorial frontiers.
Just as Frederick Jackson Turner was apprehensive about the impacts of the “closing” of the frontier on American political life during his famous address to historians at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage, Mackinder reflected globally about the political impacts of the closing of the world’s territorial frontiers. Would the closing of the world’s last territorial frontiers result in unavoidable conflicts between powerful states looking to enlarge their domains but with nowhere else to expand? Since practically every inch of land area on the planet had been staked out by 1900, it was reasonable to think that as the world’s territorial-administrative entities continued to consolidate their domains and as their populations grew, the more powerful among them would try to expand or impose their territorial interests in any other sovereign states within their reach – ushering in a new and significantly more crowded post-Colombian ‘crabs in a bucket-like’ world filled with confrontation and adjustment.
What makes Mackinder’s take on this idea of the future unique is that he seems to have been the first one to have actually tried to map it out in detail.
The idea seems simple enough. One could probably find dozens of famous historians who foretold of something like this in terms of internal or global frontiers not to mention geographers having developed an organic conception of the state. What makes Mackinder’s take on this idea of the future unique is that he seems to have been the first one to have actually tried to map it out in detail. He synthesized an impressive scope of historical evidence in short order and then suggested that if his reading of persistent patterns about the past was correct then there were certain areas of world that would tend to be consolidated more densely and more thoroughly than others. The more densely-consolidated areas would be more likely to become more powerful, more expansionist, and more interventionist in other territories. It was largely a question of extrapolating from the past how powerful societies had adapted to geographic circumstances over long periods of time in terms of mobility, in order to suggest how powerful societies would continue to expand.
MACKINDER’S MAP OF THE “POST-COLOMBIAN” EPOCH OF HUMAN HISTORY
Mackinder centered his map on a vast complex of interior drainage basins in Central Asia he called the “pivot area.”
Mackinder sketched areas, based on drainage basins, where he felt more densely consolidated and more powerful states would naturally tend to develop. He called these areas the “natural seats of power.” Mackinder centered his map on a vast complex of interior drainage basins in Central Asia he called the “pivot area.” Surrounding the inland Central Asian pivot area was an “inner crescent” and “outer crescent” of peninsulas and major watersheds that either a) drained directly to the ocean, or b) drained to rivers accessible for much of their length from the ocean. Thus a central area of “wholly” inland territorial consolidation (pivot area) was surrounded by an outer area of “wholly” oceanic territorial consolidation (outer or insular crescent), with a transitional area in between the two expected to be dominated by neither inland nor oceanic consolidation (inner or marginal crescent).
Map 1: Georectified version of Mackinder’s original pivot area map published in April 1904 in a Mercator projection.
“Mobility upon the ocean [was] the natural rival of horse and camel mobility in the heart of the continent.”
Mackinder’s map was a sketch of both precedents belonging to the ancient past and likely projections about the future, a pivot both in space and in time, with particular focus on the Trans-Siberian railway in terms of what the area had been in the past and what it might become in the near future. Speaking as a geographer, not an historian, Mackinder had recognized a persistent geographic pattern in European and Asian history. He said, “Mobility upon the ocean [was] the natural rival of horse and camel mobility in the heart of the continent.” In other words, throughout pre-industrial history territory tended to be consolidated by either one of just two different forms of mobility. The great horse and camel societies of Central Asia like the Hun consolidated territory with their inland mobility, while the powerful maritime societies of Europe like the Norse and Greek consolidated territory with their skills of oceanic mobility. Even though his essay focuses first and foremost on identifying and explaining persistent patterns belonging to the ancient and pre-industrial world, Mackinder takes several opportunities to pause and note that this dual geographic pattern of mobility had persisted into contemporary times, in particular noting that the development of the Trans-Siberian railway system could reinforce and transform the inland pattern of mobility.
Mackinder referred to inland and oceanic forms of mobility as “rivals."
Mackinder referred to inland and oceanic forms of mobility as “rivals." Mackinder never seems to claim outright that inland and oceanic societies were natural political enemies of one another nor does he say that all societies sustained by the same forms of mobility were natural allies. In fact, if the history of European empires during the Columbian epoch is any indication, powerful European oceanic societies were as likely to be at war with each other at the far reaches of the oceans as they might be with adjacent land powers. Mackinder merely seemed to say that when one looks at the great game of territorial consolidation in Europe and Asia between powerful expansionist societies that relied on “rival,” meaning different, forms of mobility it was clear that this game was rigged by unavoidable features of the environment. There was no grand flat and uniform chessboard. The world was filled with non-uniform terrain that like the house rules in gambling would tend to impose themselves on the outcomes of thousands of tactical and strategic human maneuvers if played out over and over again, over very long periods of time. The only possible exception was in the transitional inner crescent where neither wholly inland nor wholly oceanic forms of territorial consolidation would tend to be dominant; in other words, it was anybody’s game there, which seems to have intrigued many readers of Mackinder’s ideas.
In short, Mackinder saw two basic forms of mobility adapted from massive facts about the world’s physical environment.
In short, Mackinder saw two basic forms of mobility adapted from massive facts about the world’s physical environment leading to a more inland or a more oceanic orientation depending on where you were. The boundaries of Mackinder’s map were proxy areas representing where wholly inland, wholly oceanic, or a mixture of both inland and oceanic forms of territorial consolidation would tend to be more successful leading to the most powerful political organization. Over a very long period of time, historical processes of confrontation and adjustment based on capabilities in either inland or oceanic mobility would naturally determine the balance of power and the course of international relations in the post-Columbian world – favoring the more densely-consolidated and powerful oceanic states in one zone of the world, and the more densely-consolidated and powerful inland states in another zone of the world. The environmental features most of interest to Mackinder in defining the oceanic and inland worlds were not barriers to mobility like the Himalayan Mountains, the Sahara Desert, or the Arctic Ocean – but great facilitators of human mobility. Instead of investigating the historical impact of oceanic mobility and the seas like Alfred Thayer Mahan, Mackinder sought evidence of the historical impact of inland mobility as facilitated by the steppes of Central Asia. Mackinder simply replaced in his imagination the horse with the railroad, and then made several suggestive remarks about a potential transformation of power occurring between the maritime-commercial states abutting the pivot area and the territorial-administrative state controlling the pivot area.
THE STEPPES OF CENTRAL ASIA: THE GREAT COUNTER-MEDITERRANEAN
The persistent geographic fact about Central Asia is that it possesses a natural unbroken highway of open steppes and grasslands running in a straight East-West direction across its temperate middle.
The persistent geographic fact about Central Asia is that it possesses a natural unbroken highway of open steppes and grasslands running in a straight East-West direction across its temperate middle about latitude 55° N. Over the last two thousand years of Central Asian history, the steppes sustained powerful horse societies with grains to feed mobile armies and provided an economically straight, long-distance overland route of open terrain on which they could move very effectively – a route that though crossing literally one-quarter the world never dramatically changed in elevation, temperature, or land cover. The steppes and grasslands of Central Asia spanned nearly 70 degrees of longitude – from as far as the Greater Khingan Range and the Manchurian Basin in China all the way to the foothills of the Alps and the Hungarian Basin in Europe give or take some mountainous breaks. The steppes proper conveniently passed south of the Urals and were unobstructed by any major mountains or continental divide with the only important exception being the Altai Mountains in Mongolia. The Altai Mountains happen to represent a boundary between three Asian tectonic plates and the equivalent of a great diagonally-oriented Central Asian continental divide between Russia to the northwest and both India and China to the south and southeast.
Map 2: Agriculturally productive areas of Russia to represent the general historical location of the steppes of Central Asia.
The great natural inland highway formed by the steppes was inaccessible to any navigable rivers draining to the ocean.
The great natural inland highway formed by the steppes was inaccessible to any navigable rivers draining to the ocean. From the geographic perspective of maritime transport, the six rivers of the pivot area all drained to nowhere. The Volga, Amu Darya (Oxus), and Syr Darya (Jaxartes) drained to the salty interior Caspian and Aral Seas that were isolated from the ocean. The Ob, Yenisey, and Lena drained north to a seasonal ice pack that wooden and even steel-hull ships could not safely navigate. Mackinder’s paper is, in sum, a great counter-pose to Braudel’s history of the Mediterranean Sea. What the Mediterranean had always been to maritime mobility and society in Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, the vast steppes had been to inland mobility and society in Central Asia before that.
Ironically, the threat of inland mobility was “stimulative.”
The scope of Mackinder’s history about the steppes of Central Asia, despite its brevity, is in some respects more ambitious in its scale of time and space than Braudel’s history of the Mediterranean. Mackinder suggests that the steppes of Central Asia had a persistent but indirect political influence on the societies of the European peninsula. For instance, ancient and pre-industrial European history shows evidence of “forced” political consolidation and retrenchment out of a continual need to defend against incursions from powerful Central Asian horse-based societies. Horse and camel societies of “Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Magyars, Khazars, Patzinaks, Cumans, Mongols, Kalmuks” each in their time commanded the East-West latitudinal band of steppe vegetation across Central Asia, threatening to overrun weaker European societies by land. The powerful horse societies were only restrained by the transition to the forests and marshes at the headwaters of the Volga to the north; the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps to the west; and the Caucasus Mountains and Black Sea to the south. Mackinder said that “a large part of modern history might be written as a commentary upon the changes directly or indirectly ensuing from these raids.” Ironically, the threat of inland mobility was “stimulative.” It transformed European societies into masters of oceanic mobility creating a great long-term reversal of the dominance of Central Asia over Europe, such that there “emerged upon the world, multiplying more than thirty-fold the sea surface and coastal lands to which she had access, and wrapping her influence round the Euro-Asiatic land-power which had hitherto threatened her very existence.”
Central Asia was supposed to be different than the rest of the world when it came to the forms of mobility then available to ancient and pre-industrial societies.
Central Asia was supposed to be different than the rest of the world when it came to the forms of mobility then available to ancient and pre-industrial societies. Throughout most of its history, Central Asia experienced only limited North-South oriented incursions from the most powerful and prolific ship-men like Norse Varangians and Greek Christians navigating up the rivers that drained to the Black Sea. Central Asia had to wait for “Russian” descendents of sea-faring Norse Varangians, who settled the uplands and marshes of the Volga River drainage basin after the 9th century A.D., to turn their backs on the rivers and coasts and become a great inland society conquering open terrain. Russians enlarged their empire by expanding south from the marshes and forests of the Volga River and eventually into the steppes, remaking themselves into an inland power along the same East-West highway commanding Central Asia used by the Scythians and Attila the Hun.
A future projection of historical patterns between inland and oceanic mobility captured in a map distinguishes Mackinder’s short paper from a brief regional geography of Central Asia.
A future projection of historical patterns between inland and oceanic mobility captured in a map distinguishes Mackinder’s short paper from a brief regional geography of Central Asia. Mackinder fast-forwards a pre-industrial rivalry between the inland mobility of Central Asian societies that ruled the pre-Colombian world (then impregnable to maritime infiltration) and the maritime mobility of European societies who would eventually begin to spread throughout the rest of the world and encircle the pivot area during the Columbian epoch. Mackinder then speculated about the potentially transformative influence of technologically-enhanced or mechanized inland mobility across the steppes in contemporary times and the political threat that this reinvigorated and rival form of inland mobility posed against the reach of the British maritime empire.
PART II: MACKINDER’S WORLD IN A GIS
REPROJECTING MACKINDER’S WORLD AS THREE PENINSULAS
Less-densely consolidated territories caught in-between powerful wholly inland pivot area and the powerful wholly oceanic outer crescent would be socially and politically “shattered.”
Mackinder’s maps suggest that the source of geopolitical instabilities around the world stem from the fact that societies in less-densely consolidated territories caught in-between powerful wholly inland pivot area and the powerful wholly oceanic outer crescent would be socially and politically “shattered” by the social pressures of expansion and intervention. In natural power rivalries between organic states, the size of one’s territory mattered but density of territorial-administrative consolidation mattered even more in terms of a state’s stamina and the sustaining of its internal welfare and its common defense.
What if Mackinder had created the same pivot area but plotted it on a polar equal-area projection map?
In the spirit of Mackinder himself, one can start with the massive and persistent facts. The symmetry of Mackinder’s original map of the world could be seen differently when using a GIS. Mackinder’s map has a solid land area in the middle surrounded by continental-sized peninsulas, unfortunately using what appears to be a map based on a Mercator map projection that also cuts off the oceans. Perhaps this was the default base map for the Oxford atlas he consulted for his observations. Nonetheless, as many now know, a Mercator projection significantly distorts higher latitudes. As a result, centering the map on the Central Asian pivot area with a Mercator map projection makes the land area look massive whereas the outer and inner maritime crescents seem peripheral and disconnected. I do not suggest that pointing out the simple fact that Mackinder’s map looks like it uses a Mercator projection is anything new. In fact, I believe it has been the subject of some attention already. What is new is if we ask the following: what if Mackinder had created the same pivot area but plotted it on a polar equal-area projection map without cutting off the oceans by using that ellipsoid map border?
Map 3: Georectified version of Mackinder’s pivot area map in a polar azimuthal equal-area projection
The Central Asian pivot area covers a total area not much larger than the area of the United States and Canada.
An equal-area projection centered on the North Pole distorts and enlarges areas the further they are from the pole, but it could have led to at least five different interpretations by Mackinder. First, the Central Asian pivot area is indeed a large more or less landlocked mass but still only covers a total area not much larger than the area of the United States and Canada, and in fact much smaller than North America in terms of population.
The high-seas and the oceanic-peninsulas of the inner and outer maritime crescent dominate the world in terms of total area.
Second, the high-seas and the oceanic-peninsulas of the inner and outer maritime crescent dominate the world in terms of total area. In Mackinder’s original Mercator-like map, the Central Asian pivot area looks like it is practically the same size as the entire Pacific Ocean, a severe exaggeration. A polar equal-area projection, on the other hand, would have distorted areas the other way around, making the crescents and especially the southern latitude areas seem larger while the Central Asian pivot area would have looked small, and making the oceans look more to their proper scale as enormous.
There would have been no “crescents” at all.
Third, there would have been no “crescents” at all. The term “crescent” probably refers to the upside down waxing moon shape of the rest of the world around the pivot area in Mackinder’s original map. A polar projection might very well have stimulated Mackinder’s spatial imagination in a different direction. Mackinder might have seen the world not as a single inland core with a crescent-shaped oceanic periphery and a transitional zone in between, but as three major world peninsulas jutting out in three different directions from the North Pole – onto which one could map a common inland-oceanic gradient of mobility. The world’s three peninsulas are: 1) the Americas from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn, 2) Europe, Africa, and the Middle East from the Arctic Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, and finally 3) Asia and Australia from the Arctic Ocean to the Southwest Cape of New Zealand. Europe, Africa, and the Middle East could be split from Asia along a more or less strait line from the Urals Mountains to the Plateau of Iran, in other words, the eastern boundary of the greater Volga River basin and Caspian Sea. Thus the western Russian basins of Mackinder’s pivot area would be separated from the eastern basins of the pivot area.
North America had its own pivot area.
Fourth, Mackinder might have looked at North America and speculated that it, too, had its own pivot area, namely, the Mackenzie River basin and the Canadian-Alaskan coastal areas draining to the Arctic Ocean. The North American pivot area might possibly have included the northern reaches of the Great Plains along the largely non-navigable reaches of the Missouri River, lying at roughly the same latitude as the Central Asian steppes. Great Native American horse tribes that first incorporated horses brought from Europe by the Spanish perhaps as early as the mid-17th century and ranging from tribal people like the Comanche in the Southwest, Sioux in the central Dakota Badlands, or Cree in western Canada could have all played the role of the interior power whose land mobility threatened European maritime settlements along the Great Lakes or the Atlantic coast of North America. Because of a significantly different continental morphology and the absence of a centrally located sea like the Mediterranean or Caribbean, Mackinder could have labeled Asia not as the only inland core of the world, but simply an inland core area that was significantly larger than any other inland pivot area anywhere else around the world. In addition, Mackinder might have more mentioned, as apparently he did in writings, and in order to strengthen his general mobility thesis, the existence of other massive pivot areas like the Sahara and its impact on the history of West African imperial states like the Kanem-Bornu or Songhai empires, whose power was based on land-based or at least interior, non-coastal river-based mobility.
Map 4: Polar azimuthal equal-area projection of Mackinder’s map, with potential Canadian-Alaska “pivot area” of landlocked basins.
Mackinder might have thought in terms of a tripartite system of international relations belonging to each of the three world peninsulas.
Fifth, and lastly for our purpose here, instead of leading to inferences about a dual Cold War-esque set of international relations between one pivot area and one outer maritime crescent over a disputed inner maritime crescent, Mackinder might have thought in terms of a tripartite system of international relations belonging to each of the three world peninsulas. Each of the three world peninsulas could have been characterized by the emergence of various great late-Columbian and early post-Columbian extraterritorial doctrines designed to deter the projection of foreign power by land, sea, or air mobility; as well as the extraterritorial interference of foreign governments in the affairs of adjacent states. For instance, 1) in the Americas: the Monroe Doctrine versus European imperialism, 2) in Europe and Africa: the Allies versus the Axis or NATO versus the Soviet Union, and 3) in Asia: containment and triangular diplomacy between and among China, Japan, Russia, and India in light of Russian extraterritoriality over adjacent areas by land; Japanese extraterritoriality over adjacent areas by water; or Chinese extraterritoriality over non-adjacent areas by virtue of the fact that they contain a significant ethnic Chinese Diaspora, or for other reasons.
DIVIDING THE PIVOT AREA INTO ITS COMPONENT PARTS
The sources for the drainage boundaries that Mackinder used to draw the pivot area are reasonably accurate, but some significant adjustments are worth considering.
The sources for the drainage boundaries that Mackinder used to draw the pivot area are reasonably accurate when compared to drainage basins generated from digital elevation models available today. By re-creating the pivot area using a GIS application one can certainly see what Mackinder was getting at. The pivot area is a large complex of individual basins that drained to an “icy sea” or internally, all commonly intersected or within reach of a massive natural East-West highway of steppes. However, some significant adjustments are worth considering.
The southern border of Mackinder’s original pivot area should be extended more to the East.
The southern border of Mackinder’s original pivot area should be extended more to the East, if drainage areas derived from digital elevation models are used. It is not clear what Mackinder had in mind when (in his April 1904 publication’s Figure 4) he mapped the southeast boundary. He may have simply taken this drainage area from a map source that for some reason included the low and flat Tarim Basin but excluded the high Plateau of Tibet. It appears as if the line was meant to exclude the edge of the Tibetan plateau and then continue north until it met the Ob River drainage basin. In any event, to be consistent with accurately derived drainage basins the Plateau of Tibet, the Gobi Desert, and Inner Mongolia should be included in the pivot area. This represents the biggest modification to Mackinder’s original map in terms of area and it puts the pivot area now significantly closer to Beijing, in fact, separated by only a few hundred miles and perhaps not coincidentally ending almost exactly at the line of the Great Wall of China (see later maps for the location of Beijing and the great walls).
Map 5: Reconstructed “pivot area” based on drainage basins computed from global digital elevation models.
The entire northern edge should be shifted east, based on modern monthly average patterns of Arctic ice generated from recent satellite remote sensed data.
The rest of the pivot area looks fine until one gets to seasonal pack ice on the Arctic Ocean, which Mackinder labels as the “icy sea.” The northern boundary of the central pivot area was drawn relative to some sort of average extent of sea ice, as one can see by the fact that the boundary actually continues out into the Arctic Ocean marked out with a stippled pattern. However, the entire northern edge should be shifted east, based on modern monthly average patterns of Arctic ice generated from recent satellite remote sensed data. Over about the last decade, the minimum extent of sea ice occurs in September when the Russian Arctic Coast is clear and continuous sea ice just barely touches the Severnaya Zemlya islands. The maximum extent of ice occurs during March when it covers almost the entire Arctic Coast of Russia, including parts of the Baltic and much of the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk. The medium average extent of sea ice occurs in June, which corresponds most closely to the extent of sea ice drawn by Mackinder. However, during its average medium extent, sea ice does not extend west of Novaya Zemlya, thus it does not block navigation of the Pechora River. On the other hand, sea ice does extend all the way to the Bering Straits, a shift which is reflected in the “redrawn” northern border of the pivot area map.