Prisoners of Geography: FULLY UPDATED NEW EDITION OF THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER (Tim Marshall on Geopolitics)

To see how nations and cultures behave the way we do, we often look to history. In this fascinating work, Tim Marshall posits that past actions may have more to do with geography; natural rivers and mountains as boundaries (France was a successful nation because it has the most kilometres of navigable rivers of any country in the world, thus facilitating movement of goods and ease of trade), and artificial partitions (the arbitrary division of East and West Pakistan has caused unrest and volatility in the subcontinent for the past eighty years). For example, the USA and Russia had communication and unification issues purely due to their physical magnitude; Egypt didn’t become a colonialist power because it had no trees with which to build ships; and China seeks expansion to secure warm water seaports. Control of ports, seas, exclaves, canals and straits are of crucial geopolitical importance. Marshall wrote this book in 2015, and this is a revised version published in 2025. With recent global conflicts, including the war to control the Strait of Hormuz, he has plenty to include in his next update.