Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall | Book Review and Summary

hi everybody my name is sam pedro

in today's video i'll be talking about

the book prisoners of geography which

was written by tim marshall

in this video i'll just briefly

summarize the book kind of share what

it's about

and also a few of the things which i

learned i'm really excited to talk about

the book today

geography has always been kind of a

passion of mine i haven't read many

books

geography books like this but i was i'm

really glad i did because i found this

book to be absolutely

fascinating and very interesting very

eye-opening about a lot of the issues we

see today in the world

and so tim marshall and kind of the main

point of the whole book

is he tries to say that a lot of the

issues the global issues the

geopolitical issues we see

between different countries is a result

more of the geography of that country

and that plays a big role into it and so

when we hear of conflicts between

nations

and whether it's a difference of opinion

or ideas or people

a lot of that is rooted in the fact that

geography

plays a big role in those things and so

hence the name and the title of the book

prisoners of geography

we can't a country really can't escape

the the geography

that it has tim marshall builds out this

idea by looking at 10 parts of the world

so 10 countries or 10 regions and he

calls these the 10 maps

and he looks at them and he explains the

issues there

and how geography actually explains the

problem

because he's taking this idea from a

global perspective

and he's only giving us 10 examples a

lot of these issues

surround global superpowers so the

united states russia china

india all of these are highlighted

so he's not going to give you a

geography issue that's more of a

regional

issue but but i like that i liked being

introduced to this

idea from a very high level perspective

so i'm going to share

three things that i that i learned and i

found really fascinating

and kind of my purpose in doing this is

i think as i

i explain what i learned you will be

able to get a flavor for what this book

is about and how this

idea is built upon the first thing i

want to talk about is the united states

of america

and from a geography perspective it is

probably

the country that has the best geography

and let me explain what that means

so if you look at a map of the united

states to the north of us we have canada

to the south

there is mexico both of these countries

are very big

and we've had friendly terms with them

for most of our history

but if you look even deeper so if you

look north at canada

a lot of canada is represented by the

canadian shield which is kind of this

barren land

it's hard to to move through there's not

a lot of development in this area

and then if you look at mexico the the

northern

part of mexico that touches the united

states is the sonoran desert

so it's this dry desert land again hard

to pass through

and this sets us up um almost like two

natural barriers to the united states

so to the north and the south no army

could come and conquer the united states

no one would want to go through canada

through the canadian shield and down

into the united states

and no one would want to go through

mexico and up through this desert

to the united states so for a long time

that's protected america

and that has left this huge country

that has been very hard to penetrate and

so that's already

already why one reason why america has

become so powerful

another geography topic that has made

the united states as powerful

as as it is is its river system

so the united states has the most

navigable rivers in the world

so the mississippi river and some of the

other rivers in the united states

and when a river is so navigable and can

get you from

the ocean and go way you know hundreds

of miles into the interior of the

country that allows goods

and ideas and people to just freely move

back and forth which is great for the

economy

and has helped build up the united

states economy

another very interesting thing is if you

look at the east coast

a lot of the east coast has have these

natural harbors that are just

are aren't found anywhere else in the

world so for example new york

and new york harbor that is just a

natural wonder

that has allowed you know whatever city

was going to be built at new york was

going to be an economic powerhouse

because so much trade could happen early

on and so that

helped aid in making new york city this

global city

and overall i think that the point that

tim marshall makes is

the united states geographically

speaking is

in the best spot in the world and if if

a country could have been set up from

east to west

that country was destined to be a world

superpower now i want to talk about

china this was kind of an interesting

topic he talks about

so specifically he talks a lot about

china

and china's involvement in tibet and the

tibetan plateau

and from an ethnic perspective

the tibetan people and the han chinese

people

they are very different culturally

and ethnically and so there's really no

reason why china should be

involved in tibet but they are and

china is doing everything it can to

strengthen its

its grip on tibet they're importing

millions of han chinese people into

tibet

to make sure that tibet never leaves and

the reason why

is between china and india you have the

himalayan mountain range

but you also have tibet and so

india would never think of you know

attacking

china through the himalayan mountains

that's just

an insane prospect that that's not where

you want to be fighting a battle in this

the world's most mountainous region

but if they could get past that and

establish a stronghold

in tibet then china

is at a vulnerable spot because

all of a sudden india could just descend

down onto china so

they definitely don't want that so from

a military perspective

china is very interested in tibet and

making sure that they control that

region

also another big issue is the tibetan

plateau

is the the headwaters of of the yellow

and the yangtze river

which are the is the rivers that pretty

much feed and water all of china

so also another very important thing

that they want to protect