The Power of Geography

Abstract

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the World. -Sir Halford John Mackinder Paul Dibb follows a long line of geographers who have contributed to the evolution of contemporary geopolitics. Sir Halford John Mackinder, because of his seminal paper "The Geographical Pivot of History", which was delivered at London's Royal Geography s=Society in 1904, and his famous dictum, cited above, is considered to be one of the key progenitors of modern strategic geography. Within Australia Thomas Griffith Taylor, after the First World War, and Oskar Spate, after the second World War, drew attention to the country's isolated global position by centring their maps upon Canberra (see Fig. 1). Since then, a legion of geographers in Australia and in other parts of the world have refined political geography's focus during the Cold War and Post-Cold War eras, provided fresh concepts and contemplated how the future geopolitical map may be moulded.