Importance of External Barriers and Axis

An earlier blog talked about how geography influences history. In another blog, Tomas Pueyo makes an interesting point:

“Both China and India have external barriers that are much more impenetrable than the internal ones. The more time passed, the more they developed, and the more they united.”

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. This is one of those pictures.

 

Strong external barriers made China and India practically impenetrable by outsiders. Europe was the opposite – there were no impenetrable barriers separating most European empires and countries from each other; hence the eternal warfare amongst them. On the other hand, the lack of such barriers also made it easier for ideas and technologies to flow (relatively) freely across Europe.

 

Another important determiner is the axis on which a region is spread. North-South or East-West? Europe, India, and China have East-West spread; whereas Africa and the Americas are mostly spread in the North-South direction. Why does that matter?

“The idea is that things can easily spread East-West, because the temperatures and climates are broadly similar, and thus plants, animals and habitats are also the same.”

On the other hand:

“This East-West spread isn’t true in North-South axes. With changes in latitude, weather also changes, so plants and animals won’t easily move in that direction. Without this movement, there’s also less commerce, fewer humans moving along these axes, and less learning being spread.”

 

Further, he points out, the Americas have only one major river – the Mississippi. And it flows in the North-South direction. Wrong axis. Unlike the many rivers of Europe that flow in the East-West direction, he says. While he doesn’t mention it, I realized that most Indian rivers flow along the East-West axis (Ganga in the Northern Plains; Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri into the Bay of Bengal; Narmada and Tapti to the Arabian Sea).

 

It's interesting how big a role geography has had and continues to have on how history plays out.