Book review: Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

The twenty-third book I read in 2017 was Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall.  This book was on my wishlist for quite a while before I read it, and I ended up being disappointed by it.

Obviously the subtitle is an overstatement, but that's not the source of my disappointment; rather, I was expecting a historical view of how different cultures were shaped by their geography, whereas Marshall's book is much more focused on current events.  It's not his fault that he didn't write the book I wanted to read, but it will definitely date the book. For instance, the chapter on Western Europe discusses the stresses that the Greek economy has put on the European Union and the possibility that it may lead some Southern European countries to break with the EU -- but there's nary a word about Brexit, which clearly took Marshall by surprise as much as it did the rest of the world.  (Of course, Britain's geography could help explain why it feels separate from the Continent, but Marshall doesn't address the possibility.)

Also, Marshall bemoans the artificial boundaries imposed in Africa and the Middle East by colonial powers as a major cause of civil war.  Isn't the alternative -- if tribes had been allowed to define for themselves who was in and who was out and where the demarcations were between their territories and their neighbors -- simply ordinary war?  Is crossing national boundaries to seize resources by force somehow less morally reprehensible than taking them from your fellow countrymen?  I'll concede that not having to cooperate with people you judge to be outsiders might eliminate some conflict, but a neighboring tribe having diamonds or minerals or oil or access to an ocean port in their territory will still tempt invasion; witness the first Gulf War.

I did learn some things: for instance, that Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan and that its economic development is hampered by the fact that most of its country lies in a flood plain and suffers from seasonal inundations.  That DAESH is an insulting way to refer to the terrorists of the Islamic State, as it rhymes with several unsavory Arabic words.  That trade and peaceful coexistence of people groups thrived in Europe because of its easily navigable rivers, while the dangerous rivers of Africa and South America kept peoples isolated from each other and retarded the growth of civilization.

Marshall concludes the book, in an optimistic tone that would have fit the 1960s better than the 2010s, by looking forward to what he considers the inevitable expansion of humanity to other planets.  He wonders if the nations of Earth will continue their competitive and acquisitive ways, rushing to plant their individual flags on other planets like Columbus on San Salvador, or whether moving past a global perspective will encourage humanity to band together as a species, as Virginians and Pennsylvanians became Americans in the latter 18th century.  I am cynical enough both to doubt that science (and our current panic to make sure everything is "safe") will overcome the technological hazards of interplanetary travel and colonization of planets nonconducive to human life and to wager that the only way we will overcome our differences will be if we encounter a larger enemy.  But that's a sci-fi film.