Chapter 8 Political Geography

1. Chapter 8Political Geography Key Issue 1 Where Are States Located?

2. Problems of Defining States • Political geography can be studied at a number of different scales, including local, national, and international politics. • The fundamental unit of political geography is the country, which is called a state. This is an area organized into a political unit and ruled by an established government that has sovereignty over its internal and external affairs. • North and South Korea were admitted to the United Nations as separate countries but they both have some commitment to reunification. • China has claimed Taiwan since the establishment of that country when Nationalists fled there from China in the late 1940s. • Morocco still claims Western Sahara, although most African countries recognize it as a sovereign state.

3. Problems of Defining States cont. • A nation-state is where political boundaries coincide with the territory occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality. • The land area occupied by states varies considerably in the world. Russia is the largest state, encompassing 11% of the world’s land area. Other large states include China, Canada, the United States, and Brazil. • There are also numerous very small states or microstates. States such as Monaco and Vatican City, both of which are located within Italy are good examples of microstates. • Larger states usually have more extensive natural resources.

4. Development of the State Concept • The concept of dividing the world into a collection of independent states is relatively recent, dating from 18th century Europe, but the concept of territoriality can be traced to the ancient Middle East. • The first states in Mesopotamia, which was at the eastern end of the ancient Fertile Crescent, were known as city-states. A city-state is a sovereign state that consists of a town or city and the surrounding countryside. • Later the Roman Empire provided the best example of the power of political unity. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. Europe was divided into a large number of feudal estates. • Ultimately powerful kings gained control in western Europe, and their kingdoms formed the basis for the development of the modern states that include England, France, and Spain.

5. Colonies • European states controlled much of the world through colonialism beginning in the early 1500s. • They established colonies by imposing their political, economic, and cultural control (especially religion) on territories in Latin America, Asia and Africa that became legally tied to them. • Technically colonialism refers to the control of territory previously uninhabited, whereas imperialism is the control of territory that is already occupied, but the two terms are used interchangeably. • Latin American countries became independent in the first half of the 19th century, and decolonization proceeded rapidly across Africa and Asia after WWII. • Today there are only a few remaining colonies and these are generally only very small territories around the globe.