Prisoners of Geography

Prisoners of Geography

First edition
Author	Tim Marshall
Original title	Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics
Language	English
Subject	Geopolitics
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	Elliott & Thompson (UK) Scribner (US)
Publication date	2015
ISBN	978-1-78396-243-3
Followed by	The Power of Geography

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics is a 2015 non-fiction book about geopolitics by the British author and journalist Tim Marshall.

The author has also released a children's illustrated version of this book in 2019, Prisoners of Geography - Our World Explained in 12 Simple Maps, nominated for Waterstones Book of the Year. The Power of Geography, a sequel, was released in 2021.

Summary

Prisoners of Geography is a collection of reflections on past and present geopolitics through the lens of Geography. Through various global examples, Tim Marshall challenges the widely held belief that technology is allowing humans to overcome geography and render it redundant and irrelevant to issues and processes of geopolitics and conflict. Above all, Marshall makes the case for putting the ‘Geo’ back in ‘Geopolitics’, feeling that geography often gets written out of discussions on and understandings of historic and contemporary conflicts and stories of state development.

Prisoners of Geography covers the geopolitical contexts and situations in several vital regions of the world. These include: Russia, China, the United States, Europe, the Arab World, South Asia (mainly focusing on the geopolitical anomalies of India and Pakistan), Africa, Japan and Korea, Latin America, and the Arctic Ocean (mainly to cover the geopolitics of the Arctic resources race).

Prisoners of Geography describes the impact geography can have on international affairs, offering an explanation for such geopolitical events as Russia's annexation of Crimea based on Russia's need to retain access to warm-water ports and China's actions in Tibet to enforce its border with India.

Informed by his first-hand experiences of conflict in areas from the Balkans to Syria, Tim Marshall explores how a better understanding of geography is more crucial than ever if we are to fully understand the past, present and future behaviours of state. Prisoners of Geography, through examples such as Russia and the Arctic, explores how geography is a deciding factor in processes of peace as well as war, analysing the ways in which an abundance or lack of resources can simultaneously liberate and imprison states developmentally.

This book uses the example of the Middle East, more specifically, Syria, to demonstrate just how harmful and disastrous Western misunderstandings of topography can be. The author describes how these geographical ignorances as well as an overreliance on, and faith in, technology can help to decide the outcomes of conflicts.

In the conclusion, the author reinstates the importance of geography and the central role understanding of physical landscape must have if we are to understand future conflict, particularly as technology will see conflict advance into space as claims are made over as of yet unclaimed spaces.

Reception

The book was a New York Times Best Seller and #1 Sunday Times bestseller.

Writing in the American Association of Geographers' Review of Books, Douglas Webster concluded "The book has obvious appeal, though, corroborated by its success to date, as an easy-to-read, informative primer on contemporary geographic dynamics from a geopolitical perspective." while noting that it would be criticised by exponents of global studies, who see more influence by sociological than geographical factors.

The Berlin geographer Hans-Dietrich Schultz criticises that Prisoners of Geography is based on old-geographical spatial arguments of 19th-century regional geography, which completely contradict the current state of geographical research. He criticises Marshall's expositions on the geopolitical relationship of Russia to Ukraine: "The fact that current Russian politics also has something to do with Russia's social conditions, its savage capitalism and its kleptocratic elite, remains hidden behind the penetratingly invoked spatial determinism, which must be recognised as a 'decisive factor in the course of human history'. In contrast, it should be noted: Physical objects, like Marshall's eternal mountains, plains and rivers, do not will anything of themselves. They do not act, dictate anything, force anything, seduce anything and take no sides of their own accord".