history-society

In 2015, journalist Tim Marshall published Prisoners of Geography, a book that did something unusual: it made geopolitics popular. Within a few years, it had sold over a million copies and introduced geographic thinking to readers who'd never heard of Mackinder or Spykman. Marshall's contribution wasn&

Peter Zeihan makes a provocative claim: the world order that has existed since 1945 is ending, and most countries aren't ready. For nearly 80 years, the United States guaranteed global security—open sea lanes, stable trade, protection for allies. This wasn't altruism; it was Cold War

We've covered a lot of ground: mountains and rivers, heartlands and rimlands, demographics and trade, water and oil, climate and conflict. Now let's pull the threads together and ask: what does geographic thinking actually tell us about power and politics? The honest answer is: more than

Between 2006 and 2010, Syria experienced the worst drought in its recorded history. Rural areas were devastated. Crops failed. Livestock died. Farmers abandoned villages and flooded into cities already strained by Iraqi refugees and unemployment. In 2011, protests began. Within a year, Syria was in civil war. Half a million

In 1959, the Netherlands discovered one of the world's largest natural gas fields. Within a decade, Dutch manufacturing was collapsing. The gas exports had pushed up the currency, making Dutch manufactured goods uncompetitive abroad. Factories closed. Workers were laid off. A country had been made poorer by becoming

In 1957, Karl Wittfogel published Oriental Despotism, arguing that the great tyrannies of history—ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China—arose from a common geographic condition: the need to manage large-scale irrigation. His thesis: Water infrastructure requires centralized coordination. Building and maintaining irrigation systems across vast territories demands bureaucracy, labor mobilization, and