CHAPTER 8: Political Geography

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Amcay, Kris
Danglipen, Andrew
Deligen, Gracelyn
Duyapat, Vinia Clexane
Embong, Quim
Kalinggan, Jhonerhey
Olanos, Shane Dwight
Key Issue 1: Where are states distributed?

A World of States
STATE
 Synonym of country.
 Area organized into a political unit ruled by an established government that has control on its internal and foreign
affairs.
 A territory on Earth’s surface and contains permanent population.

STATE AS USED IN POLTICAL GEOGRAPHY

 State does not refer to the 50 local governments inside united states. The 50 states of the United States are
subdivisions within a single state-the United States of America.
 In 1940, the world only contained 50 countries, compared to approximately 200 today.
 has Sovereignty, which means independence from control of its internal affairs by other state.
 The entire state area is managed by is national government, laws, army, and leaders.
 A good example of a formal , or uniform region.

UNITED NATIONS
 Most important global organization.
 Was created at the end of World War 2 by the victorious allies.
 The UN intervened in conflicts between or within member states, authorizing military and peacekeeping actions.
 The UN seeks to promote international cooperation to address global economic problems, promote human rights, and
provide humanitarian relief.
 In 1945, the UN only have 51 members including 49 sovereign states plus Byelorussia now Belarus. The number of
UN members reached 193 in 2011.
 Land areas occupied by states vary considerably. The largest state is Russia.
 Microstates are states with very small land areas.

Challenges in Defining States

KOREA
 Korea was a colony of Japan for many years.
 Korea was divided into two occupation zones by the U.S.A. and the former Soviet Union after the defeat of Japan in
World War 2.
 The Soviets installed a pro-Communist government in the north while a pro-U.S. Government was established in the
South.
 The Korean peninsula is divided between Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North) and the Republic of Korea
(South).
 Both have signed agreements over the years but both continue to claim sovereignty over the entire Korean peninsula.

CRIMEA
 1783- Russia took control of it.
 1921 - Crimea became an Autonomous Republic in the Soviet Union.
 1954 - the Soviet government transferred responsibility for Crimea to Ukraine.
 1991 - Soviet Union broke up, Crimea became part of independent Ukraine.
 2014 - Russia invaded Crimea and annexed it, which was opposed by most countries.

SENKAKU/DIAOYU ISLANDS
 Japan, China and Taiwan all claim sovereignty over several small uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.
 These islands are known as:
Senkaku in Japan
Diaoyu in China
Diaoyutai in Taiwan
 1895 - Japan controlled it since
 1945 to 1972 - The United States administered the islands after defeating Japan.
 China and Taiwan claim that the islands historically belongs to China until Japan illegally seized it in 1895.
 Strengthening their claims, China and Japan both established air zones in the East China Sea with conflicting zones.

WESTERN SAHARA (SAHRAWI REPUBLIC)

 Spain controlled the Western Sahara territory until withdrawing in 1976.
 The independent Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was declared by the Polisario Front rebels was recognized by
most African countries as a sovereign state.
 Morocco also claims it and has built a 2,700 kilometer wall around it to keep out the rebels.
 Morocco controls most of the populated area.
 The Polisario Front operates in the sparsely inhabited deserts.
 The United Nations has tried but failed to reach a resolution.

CHINA AND TAIWAN

 Most other countries consider China and Taiwan as separate and sovereign states.
 According to China’s government, Taiwan is not sovereign but a part of China.
 The government of Taiwan agrees.
 1940’s - The civil war in China between the Nationalists and Communists.
 1949 - The Nationalists lost, the leaders fled to Taiwan and proclaimed that they are still the legitimate rulers of the
entire country.
 The United States continued to regard the Nationalists as the official government pf China until 1971 wen their
policy changed.
 The United Nations voted to transfer China’s seat from the Nationalist to the Communists.

THE LAW OF THE SEA

 States bordering an ocean are able to claim vast areas of the ocean for defense and for control for valuable fishing
areas.
 Disputes over the East China Sea islands shows the importance of territorial waters to many countries.
 The Law of the Sea, signed by 165 countries, has standardized the territorial limits for most countries.
 Disputes can be taken to a tribunal for the Law of the Sea or to the International Court of Justice.

Key Issue 2: How are States Created?

Development of States

 Prior to the 1800s, Earth’s surface was organized in other ways, such as into:
City-states
Empires
Kingdoms
Small land areas controlled by hereditary class of nobles
 City-states originated in ancient times in the Fertile Crescent
 States developed in Europe through consolidation of kingdoms.

ANCIENT STATES
 Development of states can be traced to the Fertile Crescent in the Mesopotamia.
 The Fertile Crescent formed an arc between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.
 The Fertile Crescent is the crossroad of Europe, Asia, and Africa so it became the center for land and sea
communications in ancient times.
 The first states to evolve in Mesopotamia were known as city-states.
 City-state - sovereign state tht comprises a town and the surrounding countryside.
 Walls delineated the boundaries of the city.
 Outside the walls, the city controlled the agricultural land to produce food for urban residents.
 The countryside also provided the city with an outer line of defense against attack by other city-states.
 One city or tribe in Mesopotamia would gain military dominance over the others and form an empire.
 Empires rised and was succeeded by others such as the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians.

MEDIEVAL STATES
 Poltical unity in the ancient world reached its height with the Roman Empire.
 The Roman empire controlled most of Europe, North Africa, and Southwest Asia.
 At its maximum, the empire comprised of 38 provinces, ach using same set of laws created in Rome.
 The Roman empire collapsed in the fifth century, after series of attack on the frontiers and because of internal
frontiers.
 The European portion of the Roman Empire fragmented into states owned by kings, dukes, barons and other nobles.
 The states under the unified control of a king formed the basis of modern European States as England, France, and
Spain.

STATES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY EUROPE

 Versailles Peace Conference - leaders of the victorious countries met to redraw the map of Europe after World War 1.
 Language was the most important criterion used to create new states and adjust boundaries of existing ones.
 The redrawn map of Europe was not a recipe for peace.
 1930’s - The German National Socialists (Nazis) claimed that all German-speaking parts of Europe constituted one
nationality and should be unified into one state.
 After World War 2, Germany was divided into 2 countries from 1949 until it was reunified in 1990.

Nation-states

 Nation-state - a state whose territory is occupied by a particular ethnicity.

 Self-determination - the concept that ethnicities hve the right to govern themselves.

MULTIETHNIC AND MULTINATIONAL STATES

 Multiethnic state - state that contains more than one ethnicity.
 Every state in the world is to a varying degree multiethnic.
 Some ethnicities can coexist peacefully while in other states, one ethnicity may try to dominate others, sometimes by
force.
 Multinational state - state that contains more than one ethnicity with traditions of self determination.

DISMANTLING MULTINATIONAL STATES

 Some multinational states face complex challenges in maintaining unity and preventing discontentment from
ethnicities from breaking away.
 Czechoslovakia - peacefully transformed in 1993 to two nation-states - Czechia (Czech Republic) and Slovakia.
 Yugoslavia - a peaceful conversion of Slovenia in 1991 from a republic in multinational Yugoslavia to a nation-state.
Other portions of former Yugoslavia became nation-states only after ethnic cleansing and other atrocities.
 Soviet Union - The break up of the USSR in 1991 resulted in the creation of 15 new countries.

RUSSIA: NOW THE LARGEST MULTINATIONAL STATE

 The government of Russia officially designates 39 ethnic groups as nationalities.
 Ethnicities other than Russia comprise 20% of the population.
 Colonies
 Colony - a territory legally tied to a sovereign state rather than being completely independent.
 In some cases, a sovereign state runs only the colony’s military and foreign policy. In others, it also controls the
colony’s internal affairs.

THE REMAINING COLONIES

 The United Nations lists 17 places in the world that it calls “non-self-governing territories”
 The Western Sahara is by far the most extensive.
 The two next populous are French Polynesia and New Caledonia, both controlled by France.
 The UN also does not list inhabited territories that it considers to have considerable autonomy in self governing such
as Puerto Rico (commonwealth of the U.S), Greenland (autunomous unit within Denmark), Hong Kong and Macao
(Special Administrative Regions of China).
POLAR REGIONS : Many claims

 South pole region contains the only large mass on earth’s surface that is not part of the state.

 Antarctic treaty, currently signed by 50 states, provides a legal framework for managing Antarctica.

 Arctic region, have a rich energy resources. In 1982, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea permitted
countries to submit claims inside the Arctic Circle.

COLONIALISM

 European states came to control much of the world through colonialism, which is an effort by one country to
establish settlements in a territory and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles on that territory.
European states established colonies elsewhere in the world for these 3 basic reason.

 God

 Gold

 Glory

Key Issue 3: How are States Organized?

BOUNDARIES
 A state is separated by boundaries.

 An invisible line that marks that extent of state’s territory.

 Boundaries interest geographers because the process of selecting their location is frequently difficult.

 A frontier is a zone where no state exercises complete political council. A frontier is a tangible geographic area,
whereas boundary is an infinite thin line.

TWO TYPES OF BOUNDARIES

 Physical boundaries coincide with significant features of the natural landscape.

 Cultural boundaries follow the distribution of cultural characteristics.

PHYSICAL BOUNDARIES

 Important physical features on Earth’s surface can make good boundaries because they are easily seen.

 THREE TYPES BETWEEN STATES:

 Desert boundaries – a boundary drawn in a desert can effectively divide two states because desert are hard to cross
and sparsely.

 Mountain boundaries – contact between nationalities living on opposite sides may be limited or completely
impossible if passes are closed by winter storms. Permanent and are usually sparsely inhabited.

 Water boundaries – rivers, lake, and oceans are the physical features most commonly used as boundaries.
Historically, water boundaries offered good protection against attack from another state. Boundaries can also divide
sovereignty over bodies of water among countries.

TYPES OF CULTURAL BOUNDARIES

 Geometric boundaries – simply straight lines drawn on a map.

 Ethnic boundary

 Physical and cultural boundary ; desert and geometry – straight line across the desert by the French and British
colonial powers.

 Geometrical boundary – International Peace Park between north Dakota and Manitoba separating US and Canada.

 Language boundary – separating France and Spain

 Religion boundary – In 1911, UK divided between the Irish Catholic Republic of Ireland in the South.

 Ethnic boundary – a. Cyprus is divided between Greek and Turkish areas, separated by UN buffer zone. b. a crossing
 between Greek and Turkish sides. Boundaries between countries separate speakers of different languages, adherents
of different religions, or members of different ethnicities.

SHAPES OF STATES

Fragmented states: Problematic

 Includes several discontinuous pieces of territory.

 Particularly significant for some states that face problems and costs associated with communications and maintaining
national unity.

Fragmented by water

 Two entities agreed to join together because they shared common development goals abd political priorities.

Fragmented by other states

 Division of two different states.

PRORUPTED STATES : ACCESS OR DISRUPTION

 Was created for two principal reasons.

 To provide a state with access to a resources

 To separate two states that otherwise would share a boundary.

COMPACT STATES : Efficient

 In a compact state, the distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly.

PERFORATED STATE : South Africa

 A state that surrounds another one is a perforated state.

 In situation, the state that is surrounded may face problems of dependence on, or interference from, the
surrounding state.

LANDLOCKED STATE

 Lacks a direct outlet to a sea because it is completely surrounded by other countries. Direct access to an ocean is
critical to states because it facilitates international trade of bulky goods, such as petroleum, grain, ore, and vehicles
and is normally transported long distances by ship.

GOVERNING STATES

 At the national scale , a government can be more less democratic.

 At the local scale, the national government can determine how much power to allocate to local governments.

NATIONAL SCALE : Regime type

 Some national governments are better able than others to provide the leadership needed to promote peace and
prosperity.

 Democracy – a country in which citizens elect leaders and can run for office.

 Autocracy – a country that is run according to the interests of the ruler rather than the people.

 Anocracy – a country that is not fully democratic or fully autocratic but rather displays a mix of the two types.

LOCAL SCALE : unitary and federal

 Unitary scale – unitary government works best in a relatively compact nation-state characterized by few internal
cultural differences and a strong sense of national unity.

 Federal state – more suitable for very large states because the national capital may be too remote to provide control
over isolated regions.

ELECTORAL GEOGRAPHY

 In democracies, politics must follow legally prescribed rules.

 The process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party on power is called
gerrymandering. It was named for Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814), governor of Massachusetts(1810-1812) and vice
president of the United States. Gerry signed a bill that redistricted the state to benefit his party. An opponent observed
that an oddly shaped new district looked like a “salamander” whereupon another opponent responded that it was a
“gerrymander” with a body shaped like the district.

Gerrymandering takes three forms :

 Wasted vote – opposition supporters are spread across many districts but in the minority.

 Excess vote – opposition supporters are concentrated into a few districts. Distant areas of like-minded voters are
linked through oddly shaped boundaries.

Key Issue 4: How are States Interact with Each Other?

MILITARY COOPERATION IN EUROPE

 Cold War Era - most European States joined one of two military alliances.
 NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization - which included the United States, Canada, and Western European
Allies.
 Warsaw Pact - included the Soviet Union and the Eastern European allies.
 Balance of Power - condition of roughly equal strengths between two opposing forces.

ECONOMIC COOPERATION IN EUROPE

European Union - had 24 members states as of 2014.
COMECON - an economic alliance during the Cold war era.

THE EUROZONE
Euro - the common currency, created for electronic transactions behinning in 1999.

TERRORISM BY INDIVIDUALS & ORGANIZATIONS

Terrorism - systematic use of violence in order to intimidate a population or coerce a government into grantimg its
demands.
TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS
September 11, 2001 - the tallest buildings in the United States, the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center in
New York City were destroyed, and the Pentagon near Washington D.C. was damaged.

the 2013 Boston Marathon - 3 people died, and an estimated 264 were injured.

AL QAEDA - respinsible in most of the anti-US terrorism.

*Osama bin Laden - Al Qaeda's leader, issued war against the United States in 1996.

THE ISLAMIC STATE (ISIS) - terrorist organization operating in southwest Asia.

*Also known as the Islmic Stae of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL)

STATE SUPPORT FOR TERRORISM

STATE-SPONSORED SANCTUARY FOR TERRORISTS

-Countries known to provide sanctuary for terrorists are Afganistan and Pakistan.
- The Taliban had gained power in Afganistan in 1995.

STATE YERRORIST ATTACKS

Libya was an active sponsor of terrorist attacks. Including:
*1986 bombing of nightclub in Berlin, Germany
*1988 bombs were planted on Pan Am flight 103 which blew up on Lockerbie, Scotland.
*1989 bombs blew up UTA flight 772