Geography is the key to history

by Norbert Csizmadia

Geographical factors also explain why the West has dominated the world for the past 500 years. Although the West lost its leading role for a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, it rose again in the 1500s.

Due to its east-west orientation, the Eurasian continent lies in one of the “lucky latitudes”, i.e. in climatic zones with good conditions for agriculture and grazing. This “lucky zone” stretches from southern Europe to southern China.

Arnold J. Toynbee, in his “A Study of History”, identifies the basic patterns of the emergence of civilisations as patterns of interaction. He examined the rise and fall of 28 civilisations over the course of history, and concluded that “they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders” and that civilisations follow cycles and that the study of history was based on commercial and scientific observation”. Of the four remaining civilisations of the 21st century, two are of paramount importance: the Western and the Far Eastern civilisations.

In 2013, Thomas L. Friedman had already said that “there is no point in talking about developed or underdeveloped countries, but about those that capture people’s imagination and those that do not”. Meanwhile, our world has moved from a single-centred to a multi-centred (multipolar) world order. Hans Rosling, in his world-famous book Factfulness, argues that if you look at statistics, there are now only 13 developing countries. China, for example, was one of the underdeveloped countries in the 1980s, but has now become the world’s number one economic power. Geographical locations are becoming increasingly valued and are in constant competition with each other.

The author is geographer and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Pallas Athene Domus Meriti Foundation and the John von Neumann University Foundation