Write a 500–600-word essay addressing the following issues and adding any though
Write a 500–600-word essay addressing the following issues and adding any thoughts that might have struck you while reading this paper. Integrate the following terms into your essay:
imperialism, frontier, environmental determinism
According to Mackinder, what environmental forces and historical actors shaped the formation of European nations? Give specific examples.
Why did Mackinder think that the “Heartland” was more important to the world’s geopolitical future than the maritime rimland? What were the implications of this “fact” (remember he was writing in 1904 as a British official).
Early in the paper, Mackinder states:
“From the present time forth, in the post-Columbian age, we shall again have to deal with a closed political system, and none the less that it will be one of world-wide scope. 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.”
What changes in geopolitics, science and economy impelled him to write this and which areas and peoples were these “weak elements”? How did his perspective influence the twentieth century…and even our current century?