Mackinder's Geographical Pivot of History: A Critical Review

Introduction: A Geographical Vision of History

Mackinder's 1904 article "The Geographical Pivot of History" is a classic work that paints in broad strokes across politics and geography. He sketches a vision of the movement of history grounded in geographical features and their effects — and limitations — on human action. He states that there is "a correlation between natural environment and political organization" (p. 423). Using this organic notion, he draws a powerful connection between history and the landscape that shapes it.

The Closed System and the End of Expansion

Mackinder begins with the concept of a closed versus an open system. During the four-hundred-year Columbian epoch, expansion was the rule. For Europe, he argues, the Crusades marked the beginning of expansion and of modern European history (p. 431). They drew Europe out of its insular medieval boundaries, transforming it from a settled region into a center of outward expansion. But since the land of the world has now been discovered and explored almost entirely — even to the poles — the system has closed. Politics must deal with an established map on which all claims of ownership have already been staked.

The significant consequence of this for politics is that countries will be forced to focus on the contest for efficiency rather than on territorial expansion (p. 422). Mackinder makes a pointed prediction: "Every explosion of social forces, instead of being dissipated in a surrounding circuit of unknown space and barbaric chaos, will be sharply re-echoed from the far side of the globe, and weak elements in the political and economic organism of the world will be shattered in consequence" (p. 422).

External Pressure, Opposition, and National Identity

To describe historical dynamics, Mackinder makes several important turns of perspective. First, rather than prioritizing a Eurocentric vision of history, he shifts to examine how the East significantly affected matters in the West. European history is, he argues, a product of Asian history. It was out of external pressure from the nomadic East — as well as from Viking pirates at sea — that Western nations crystallized in order to avoid extinction.

What is crucial here is his concept of opposition: outside threat is the crucible for cultural advance and for the formation of political ideas of nationhood. Mackinder believes that civilization and national identity coalesce when groups are forced to unite in order to battle a common opponent. "A repellent personality performs a valuable social function in uniting his enemies, and it was under the pressure of external barbarism that Europe achieved her civilization" (p. 423). For Europe, therefore, resistance to the external and mobile forces of Asia created the conditions for unification. Europe was hemmed in by sea and land powers, and out of this pressure the settled peoples were not overwhelmed but were stimulated and mobilized (p. 428).

As a concrete example, the idea of "France" was imposed on the tribes of Franks, Goths, and Romans by Hun aggression. Those peoples had to band together under the tension this threat exerted. This reaction stirred ideas of nationality and civilization.

Physical Geography as a Coercive Force

Second, Mackinder elaborates the influential role that physical geography has played in political history, calling it the "geographical causation in universal history" (p. 422). By this he means the effect of land and water formations, as well as climate, in shaping human action. Mackinder stresses that geography has a coercive influence: "Man and not nature initiates, but nature in large measure controls" (p. 422).

Mountains control where and whether humans move and settle. Rain and drought determine whether forest or steppe grows. Population spreads thickly near the sea on the rim of continents, while the heartland, which is drier, maintains its sparseness. Out of the forest develops settled peoples, whereas in the steppe nomads reign. The physical features of the earth are thus, to a significant extent, determinative of human life and action — a point that is essential to his later discussion of the mobility of power and historical change.

The fact that Europe survived the pressure of nomadic incursion is itself a consequence of geographical features. "That they stimulated healthy and powerful reaction, instead of crushing opposition under a widespread despotism, was due to the fact that the mobility of their power was conditioned by the steppes, and necessarily ceased in the surrounding forests and mountains" (p. 427). The limitations of the steppe peoples — such as the Mongols — lay in encountering geographical conditions they were unaccustomed to. India was similarly sheltered from invasion by the Tibetan barrier, until a route around it was found. These examples illustrate how the lay of the land shapes the course of history.

Works Cited

Mackinder, H.J. (1904). The Geographical Pivot of History. The Geographical Journal, 23(4), 421–437.