The Geographical Pivot of History 2.0

How many years are there in a century? One hundred is the obvious answer — except if you are a commentator trying to make a point, and the late Eric Hobsbawm made plenty. The Cambridge academic and doyen of radical Left historical analysis identified in his 1995 book The Age of Extremes a “short Twentieth Century”. That the period 1914-89 witnessed the collapse of successive empires, a second Thirty Years’ War, the Holocaust, nuclear use and the twin abominations of Soviet Communism and Nazi Fascism concentrates attention on individual events, such is their hideous novelty. Yet Hobsbawm claimed there was an unbroken narrative linking German aggression in 1914 and Soviet exhaustion in 1989, marking the start and finish of a recognisable and unified passage of history. And, of course, he had form in playing fast and loose with centennial timekeeping, in that he had written earlier in his “Age” tetralogy of a “long Nineteenth Century”, 1789–1914, a period, again, unified by historical theme rather than temporal orthodoxy.

Whether R R Reno, an American Christian conservative, would claim Hobsbawm as an inspiration is unlikely, but that did not prevent him using the same method in his 2019 book Return of the Strong Gods. If Reno’s long, but as yet, incomplete Twentieth Century has a starting point, it is probably 1933. Hitler’s election to power took place in a Germany where the “strong gods” of nationalism, xenophobia, blood and soil were in the ascendent, bound together by strong beliefs, strong moral codes, strong relational bonds, strong communal identities and rooted in a sense of place and past. The tragedy that ensued is not only a matter of historical record but also the shaping influence on the “never again” leitmotif that characterised the intellectual universe of the architects of the postwar settlement and what has become to be known as the rules-based order of global governance.

The closed societies that incubated Führer-worship became anathema and had to be replaced by open societies that worshipped at the feet of the “weak gods” of tolerance, dialogue, equality and consumerism, overseen by an institutional architecture with global reach, centred on the United Nations, and a doctrinal compendium with global application, centred on international law. The process reached its apotheosis in 1992 with Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History. Though his thesis was grossly over-simplified at the time, there was a general sense that the rules-based order of liberal democracy was both the instrument of Cold War victory and the mechanism by which it would remain sovereign.

But the strong gods of militant Islam, Russian nationalism and Chinese exceptionalism never went away. In addition and within the West, globalisation had its casualties in working class living standards, de-industrialisation and a breakdown of traditional family and community structures. This is a process caught vividly in J D Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, where fentanyl and alcohol have become the consolation of the American dispossessed. While Vance captures the material divisions within American society, Rob Henderson’s autobiographical memoir Troubled identifies the gulf in attitudes within an increasingly divided country. His idea of “luxury beliefs” — where the privileged promote platforms that burnish their liberal credentials, while completely ignoring the potentially devastating consequences of their self-indulgence for the less fortunate – captures the essence of the culture wars subtext to Reno’s long Twentieth Century.

With the populist Right resurgent in Europe and America, the rhetorical question — which rules and what order — is increasingly posed. And, with both the US and China driving a coach and horses through the principles that established the World Trade Organisation, Russia not only invading Ukraine but also conducting wider military and influence operations just below the threshold of formal conflict, and Iran using its Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies to keep the Middle East simmering, populists have a point. It’s difficult to avoid the sense of a recognisable and unified passage of history ending and, perhaps, the strong gods returning. So, what’s next?

In search of an answer, perhaps we can pull the now established trick of shaping a century to make a point. This time, we can track the start of the unfinished Twentieth Century down to a single day: the 25^th of January 1904, when Halford Mackinder, Director of the London School of Economics, delivered a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society in London entitled “The Geographical Pivot of History”. Mackinder cuts a rather melancholic historical figure who was little celebrated in his own time or since, beyond a claim to have founded the academic discipline of geopolitics. But look a little closer and we may have found a seer for our times.

He described a world in which 59 countries subscribed to a system of international finance based on the gold standard and with the pound sterling as its unit of exchange. The City’s merchant banks, insurance and shipping companies further emphasised London’s central position in a globalised structure that seemed to guarantee economic stability. This was the natural outcome of a 400-year Columbian Age where those nations with a maritime tradition – successively, Portugal, Spain, Holland  and, above all, Britain — were able to trade and colonise on a global basis, while those nations confined by continental geography – Russia, China and Turkey – prospered less. But that was about to change.

Mackinder went on to contend that trans-continental railway communications had begun to offer the same sort of strategic mobility and access to natural resources that had previously been the monopoly of maritime powers. As a result, the geographical pivot would inevitably shift east from the Euro-Atlantic “Rimland” to the Euro-Asian “Heartland” or what he termed the “World-Island” – a land mass of 21 million square miles or “half of all the land on the globe”, at the centre of which lay Russia. Mackinder would later develop these ideas in his 1919 book Democratic Ideals and Reality, in which he drew the salutary conclusion: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland rules the World-Island: Who rules the World-Island rules the World.”

He also saw the potential of China. Indeed, he saw it as dual-qualified by adding “an oceanic frontage to the resources of the great continent”. Had he been writing today he would have seen the Chinese Belt and Road initiative and the rise of Chinese naval power as satisfying vindications of his prescience. Beyond that, he saw the potential for conflict between the continental heavyweights, China and Russia, as each vied for supremacy of the World Island. And, as a Social Imperialist enjoying the company of the Fabian couple Sidney and Beatrice Webb, he was concerned for the British working man who would inevitably suffer as the geographic pivot moved eastward. His preoccupation with protectionism, social housing, education and a minimum wage to protect the prospectively dispossessed anticipated the message of Hillbilly Elegy by over a century.

Mackinder’s ideas were later picked up by the German geographer Karl Haushofer and began to take on a darker form. He was tutor to both Hitler and Rudolf Hess during their imprisonment after the 1923 beer hall putsch. It is impossible to say how much Haushofer influenced the thinking that was given expression in the slogan of Lebensraum (an expansion of living space eastward for the German people) and, beyond that, autarky (material self-sufficiency). Either way, Hitler’s attempt to rule the Heartland by invading Russia could have been scripted by Mackinder.

And Haushofer was not the last academic seeking to justify totalitarianism to plagiarise Mackinder. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the idea of the centrality of the Heartland offered strategic comfort to the disoriented Heartland itself. A military academic lecturing in the Russian General Staff Academy, Alexsandr Dugin, began to promote the idea that the great Eurasian land power was eternally opposed to liberal Atlanticist sea power. More than that, it was geopolitics that provided the cold, hard strategic logic informing Western policies that masqueraded under the fake banner of democratic freedoms. In 1997 his The Foundations of Geopolitics became an improbable bestseller and useful bedtime reading for Vladimir Putin.

We’ve covered a lot of ground, so let’s try to draw the threads together. First, history doesn’t conform to the Calendar and follows its own sprawling and messy path, as Hobsbawm, Reno and, perhaps, Mackinder testify. Second, the strong gods are back and finding full voice on the battlefields of Ukraine and Gaza and in the chancelleries of Washington (which seems to be flirting with autarky on the back of Donald Trump’s tariff policy), Moscow, Beijing, Tel Aviv and Tehran. Third, Halford Mackinder may have given us a prospectus for our time, writing over a century ago. Let’s test that in a little more detail.

Mackinder was writing at a time when one epoch of globalisation was coming to an end and the strong gods were gathering ahead of war in 1914. Does that fit our times? Tick. As part of the end of that period of globalisation, he anticipated a loss of societal cohesion that would be visited most harshly upon the industrial working class. Does that fit our times? Tick. He saw Eastern Europe as the bearpit of Eurasia that was bound to be contested for dominance of the Heartland. Does that fit not only our times, but also the strategic history of a century and more, during which Ukraine has a claim to have seen more violent death than any place on Earth? Tick. He wrote “Who rules the World Island rules the World”. As an Axis of Autocracy comprising Russia, China, Iran and North Korea finds an expedient community of interest in confronting the West, does that fit our times? Tick. Whatever happens next, that coalition of convenience is unlikely to endure and one nation will probably seek dominance. Does that fit future times? We’ll see.

Overall, there’s a case to say we’re living through the Pivot of History 2.0, as Halford Mackinder’s saturnine world view begins to find centennial expression.

Sir Robert Fry was Commandant General of the Royal Marines and Deputy Commanding General of the coalition forces in Iraq. He is a visiting professor at King’s College London.

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