Geography Influences History

“In the past, Geography ruled History”, writes Tomas Pueyo. To some extent, most of us know that. After all, all major civilizations arose on the banks of rivers – Nile, Ganga, Indus, Euphrates…

 

Pueyo then gets into other aspects that, once told, seem obvious. (And yet, I’d not registered most of them). You need plains for a civilization to flourish.

“Conversely, you want to avoid mountains. A 2% slope makes cultivation impractical, and above 6% it’s impossible.”

But just having plains isn’t enough – they need to be fertile:

“Places that are less fertile feed fewer people, so they get less population density, less specialization, and less wealth overall. With longer times to communicate and transport goods, commerce is much more expensive, and hence there’s less of it. Perishable goods are especially less valuable. Hence, again, less wealth.”

 

He then takes into real world examples. Take Italy:

 

The Blue lines are the rivers. The Green parts are the plains. The Yellow parts have mountains. Apply what we learnt above to such a geography and voila! You see why northern Italy is more prosperous than southern Italy.

 

Let’s try our newly acquired skills to all of Europe.

 

See that?

“The truth is the South is much more mountainous than the North, due to the African and Eurasian tectonic plates colliding. That leaves them with few rivers and fertile lands.”

Now you’d be more inclined to agree with Pueyo’s snarky remark:

“Remember this when you hear in the news a German minister telling Greeks they need to work harder.”

 

Sure, you say, but hasn’t technology changed things? In many ways, yes. Aeroplanes have made travel easier. Communication systems have made certain obstacles irrelevant. But other geographical barriers remain as relevant today as they were back then:

“Even today, it’s so much more expensive to build housing and infrastructure on mountains that we avoid it.”

Overall then:

“Geography started influencing less, and other aspects mattered more. The world went from a game of draughts to a game of chess: With more complex pieces, the game became more complex. Opportunities for new combinations emerged.”

But even as the game has changed, he sums it up perfectly:

“Nevertheless, the game is bound to a square of 8*8... Geography is the chess board where History happens.”