MACKINDER’S HEARTLAND AND THE LOCATION OF THE GEOPOLITICAL TETRAHEDRON
Abstract
Sir Halford Mackinder’s paper, The Geo-graphical Pivot of History,1 has retained a power to engage those concerned with the analysis of epochal events in world geopolitics. The end of the Cold War witnessed the geopolitical phoenix rising in the “new world order,” to the extent that the legacy of Mackinder has been consistently revisited in geopolitical discourse on Central Asia and, inter alia, Eurasia.
If the “age of discovery” had been the prima facie introduction to Europe of new lands and new societies across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania, then the age of capitalism had given way to virtually the complete political appropriation of these continents. Otherwise, how could there have been a sudden realization in the form of Mackinder’s cognitive metaphor that the “Heartland,” hitherto the vast moribund steppes of Eurasia, had suddenly become of prime impor-tance?2
The paper presented here addresses a dual question. First, it looks into the historical-geo-graphical conditions in which the Pivot was construed, and the systemic variables of global capitalism which are the source of its programming across time-space. Second, it addresses an aspect of Mackinder’s model that has seldom been considered—the spatial. One of the prime reasons that the latter has so often been overlooked could be the prevalent abhorrence of mapping simple geo-metrical and physical tools into the complex and changing nature of the geopolitical world. Had it not been for the 11 September 2001 episode, the restive state of world affairs would have found few takers for the platonic Heartland-Rimland debates that often used to wash the shores of Cold War geopolitics. Here, an attempt has been made to look into the dual nature of Mackinder’s theory both as map and concept. The paper’s original contribution is to show how new light is shed on the Pivot by tilting it on its axis.
The paper that Mackinder presented to the Royal Geographical Society was illustrative of events of the time. These were the inevitable transformation of British imperialism, and it is then overarching captivity of world trade, from a near monopoly to competitive play with the increasing involvement of Germany in the East and later with the advent of Socialist Russia. The paper also reflected the new Asia rising from a long slumber of economic exploitation, revitalized by eco-nomic nationalism. China and Japan revealed the enormous potential of the East. Geographers and Statesmen were the two glass-lenses of the binocular vision of British Imperialism. This can be surmised in the words of G.T. Goldie on the death of the Queen Victoria, Empress of India, as follows: “Throughout the Victorian age, Great Britain has dealt with the white races on the principle of constitutional liberty, when assured of the loyalty to the Crown and flag; and the chief aim in dealing with the colored races has undoubtedly been beneficence, though this aim, like other hu-man ideals, has too often been marred by imperfect knowledge or faulty judgement.”3
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References
H.J. Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of Histo-ry,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, April 1904, pp. 421-437.
Even apart from these external factors, the internal dynamics of British society were subject to significant stress from the impact of the business cycle that began in Britain in the 1870s, a phase that coincided with the second scram-ble for Africa and Asia.
G.T. Goldie, “Progress of Exploration and the Spread and Consolidation of the Empire in America, Aus-tralia, and Africa,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. XVII,No. 3, March 1901, pp. 240.
T.H. Holdich, “Advances in Asia and Imperial Con-solidation in India,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. XVII,No. 3, March 1901, pp. 241-242.
Mackinder contends that “the idea of England was beaten into the Heptarchy by Danish and Norman conquer-ors; the idea of France was forced upon competing Franks,Goths,” but the idea of European civilization had been the consequence of one of the more “elemental movements whose pressure … perform[ed] a valuable social function …
nd it was under the pressure of external barbarism that Europe achieved her civilization” (H.J. Mackinder, op. cit.,p. 423).
The end of the nineteenth century had been already witnessing the second scramble for Africa, with Germany and France now equipotent industrial economies ventured out both for market and raw material in competence to Brit-ain, so long held monopoly. For further details, see an Out-line of History by P. Townsend.
Britain’s monopoly was dwindling swiftly as “be-tween 1880-1884 and 1900-1904 British exports of manufactures increased 8 percent, German 40 percent, and American 230 percent.” And “in 1880 British steel output stood at 1.3 million tons, American at 1.2 million and German at 700,000. By 1900, American steel output had reached 10.2 million tons, German 6.4 million and British 4.9 million” (C.R. Dutt, Britain’s Crises of Empire, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1949, pp. 18-19).
H.J. Mackinder, op. cit., p. 421. It is interesting to note that Mackinder did not enlist Asia in the similar vein, perhaps keeping safe the perceptive difference for his pivotal work that revealed Asia in a new geopolitical light.
H.J. Mackinder, op. cit., p. 423.
Ibidem.
S. Wilkinson et al., “The Geographical Pivot of History: Discussion,” pp. 437-444.
See: H.J. Mackinder, op. cit., p. 436. This refers to one of the aims of British-Japan Treaty to preserve their pos-sessions in Korean peninsula, after all, it had been “the idea underlying Mr. Amery’s conception that the British military front stretch(ed) from the Cape through India to Japan.”
H.J. Mackinder, op. cit., p. 439.
Ibid., p. 441.
“The motives for climbing Mount Kenya were not purely scientific,” argues Brian Blouet (see: B.W. Blouet, “The Imperial Vision of Halford Mackinder,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 170, No. 4, December 2004, pp. 322-329). He further argues that the “desire to conquer Mount Kenya was a deliberate career move by a man seeking authority within the new discipline of geography in late Victorian Britain” (see: G. Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space, Routledge, London, 1996, p. 76).
See: J.W. Gregory, “The Plan of the Earth and its Causes,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 3, March 1899, pp. 225-250.
See: J.A. Steers, The Unstable Earth, Kalyani Publishers, ND, 1988, reprint, p. 3.
See: Ibid., p. 4.
H.J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, Constable and Company,London, 1919, p. 71.
Ibid., pp. 71-72.
Soviet power and its ideological orientation were in stark opposition to Mackinder’s desired ownership of Heart-land. In fact, his distaste for the Bolshevik revolution was quite conspicuous. Furthermore, World War II made him retreat from his Heartland interest. At the very moment when “policymakers in the US and the UK feared that the USSR might control the World-Island, Mackinder’s imperial vision was undermined by the perceived need to leave the empire behind and join the European Economic Community” (B.W. Blouet, op. cit., p. 328).
H.J. Mackinder, op. cit., p. 436.
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