ReviewGlobalisation, the ‘heartland’ and China’s New Silk Roads – an accessible primer by British historian
- Author of acclaimed history of the Silk Roads returns to the topic in guide to China’s economic advance into the ‘heartland’ of Eurasia and further afield
- The word ‘empire’ barely appears in Peter Frankopan’s book, but the concept is pervasive; so what will the rules of a China-led global order look like?
The New Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan, Bloomsbury, 4 stars
At the beginning of the 20th century, when the British empire spanned a sixth of the world, the geographer Halford Mackinder gave a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society laying out a theory of global power.
“The pivot region of the world’s politics” was not in Britain or its seaborne empire, he said, but “the vast area of Euro-Asia” that stretched from the River Volga to the Yangtze. He called it the “heartland”, and whoever controlled it, he argued, controlled the world.
Mackinder’s vision stood at odds with the political map of his times. Britain, notably, did not control the heartland; nor did the next biggest territorial empire, that of the French; nor did the emerging rivals Britons were worried about, Germany and the United States. A century later, Mackinder has enjoyed a revival for his apparently prescient insights into today’s power politics.
