Is Geography History?

There was a time when your geographical location mattered a lot. For obvious reasons, as Will and Ariel Durant pointed out in The Lessons of History:

“Geography is the matrix of history, its nourishing mother and disciplining home. Its rivers, lakes, oases, and oceans draw settlers to their shores, for water is the life of organisms and towns, and offers inexpensive roads for transport and trade.”

No wonder then that landlocked countries have usually been poorer.

In his book, The Revenge of Geography, Robert Kaplan made a very interesting point about how north-south oriented regions of the world have suffered compared to east-west oriented regions:

 “Note how temperate zone, east–west oriented Eurasia is better off than north–south oriented sub-Saharan Africa, because technological diffusion works much better across a common latitude, where climatic conditions are similar, thus allowing for innovations in the tending of plants and the domestication of animals to spread rapidly.”

But is that true today? Has technology eliminated the importance of geography? The aeroplane, say the Durants, marked the transition from sea power to air power in “transport and war”. And with the Internet, video-chat and online shopping, location hardly seems to matter.

And yet, as an article in Delancey Place said:

“Employees and businesses in a given industry nevertheless tend to locate in tight proximity to others in the same industry. The technology industry itself, whose employees tend to be the most adept at remote communication, is a prime example of this.”

Edward Glaeser makes the same point out in his book, Triumph of the City:

“Silicon Valley and Bangalore remind us that electronic interactions won't make face-to-face contact obsolete.”

Now isn’t that ironical?

Geography may not matter as much as it used to, but it certainly ain’t history!