Just Finished Reading: Prisoners of Geography – Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall (FP: 2015/2019) [300pp] 

I’m sure that I’m not alone in wondering what exactly is going on with the world right now. It seems, at least if you watch the news or spend any time on-line (and especially if you spend any time swimming in the increasingly toxic depths of ‘Social Media’) that things are definitely ‘off’ to say the least. I’d even go so far as to say that it seems, on a good day, that a significant percentage of the humans on this planet have gone (or maybe just have gone public about being) crazy. So, what’s up? I thought reading up on Geopolitics might help – and it did! 

Personally, I’m one of ‘those people’ who just enjoy looking at maps, hunting out strange place names, and wondering what a place is actually like. Studying Geography at school (MANY years ago) I was completely intrigued by the idea that you could understand much about a place by looking at things like navigable rivers (or otherwise), locations and heights of mountains, placement of natural resources, the type of border (natural of the ominous straight-line) and so on. Looking closely the location of major cities, battles, migration paths, agricultural land and much more become ‘obvious’ once you take the physical geography into account. Things like cities are not scattered randomly on a landscape. They exist where they do for practical reasons. So, you can tell, almost at a glance, why some countries are prosperous and others poor. You can see why some countries are often invaded by their neighbours and others seems ‘designed’ for defence. 

Looking across the world, from Russia to the Artic, the author takes 10 locations and shows how their geography shaped their individual histories and how their geography shapes both their present and their futures. But as biology is not destiny neither is geography. A mountain range or a river will often constrain options for any country, but we are rather inventive beings who can literally move mountains, or at least blast holes through them. We can also redirect rivers, build bridges over them, or dam them – sometimes annoying or frightening the governments of countries downstream which could, under the wrong circumstances lead to conflict. 

I did think throughout this very interesting book that there was more than a slight hint of Jared Diamond (not that such is a bad thing), with nods to the direction of river flow and, more importantly, their navigability which gave Europe a head start in development (along with abundant natural resources in the shape of coal. Other zones, notably South America and Africa struggled in this regard coupled with the problems of transporting anything long distances through inhospitable regions (deserts, mountains, jungles etc). The chapter on India/Pakistan was most illuminating especially how India broke apart after the British left and how different ethnic groups ended up where they did – complete (of course) with much suffering and death in the process. I think the chapter I learned most from was that on the Middle East. Despite remembering watching many of the conflicts in that region as well as reading an excellent book on Palestine just recently, I did enjoy discovering much of the background to the wars, displacements and massacres over the decades – caused, in no small part, by the fact that the countries boundaries and indeed the countries themselves are the highly artificial constructs of European Powers after WW1 (I’m looking at YOU Britain and France). We REALLY screwed that region LONG before the present messes play out on our TVs and phones. It’s pretty much a given that wherever you see a straight line on a map you KNOW there’s trouble there!  

As my first dip into Geopolitics for a while I was both impressed and educated by this understandably bestselling book. If, like me, you wonder why conflicts start and persist over time, often in the same place's generation after generation, or have wondered why some countries are rich why others remain poor (often despite being resource rich) this is definitely a source for some answers. Definitely recommended and more to come both on the subject and from the author.  

Just Finished Reading: Icemen – A History of the Artic and Its Explorers by Mick Conefrey and Tim Jordan (FP: 1998) [180pp] 

It is no real exaggeration to call it an obsession. For several centuries now Europeans and, more recently Americans, have become fascinated with the Artic – AKA the North Pole. First it was the idea, largely a fantasy until Global Warming made it an increasing reality, of the Northwest Passage across the top of the world. Rumours of an ice-free ocean at the Pole warmed by a sun always above the horizon but enclosed behind a wall of ice drove explorers on, often to their deaths or disappearance. Many tried and the lucky ones returned to tell their tales of hardship and failure. 

Technology seemed to come to the aid of explorers everywhere with the invention of balloons and, later, rigid airships. Able to accomplish much with somewhat reduced risk – although crashing into the ice (or worse the Artic Ocean) was a real possibility – these allowed improved mapping of the region and were swiftly followed by heavier-than-air craft to break further records and more than a few bones and bank accounts. As technology advanced even further it was the submarine that allowed humans to glide under the ice and surface even at the Pole itself. The Cold War had found its very own cold home. 

Of course, technology all too often meant military technology from long-range nuclear bombers to ballistic missiles. The only early ‘defence’ was early warning and the best place for those early warning stations was the Artic. Much was learned from building, supplying and maintaining outposts in some of the most hostile places on Earth. 

The pull of the Artic wastes has a long and often fascinating history. Despite the comparative brevity of the book the authors pack a LOT of information here along with a host of brave and often very strange people who helped write that history – and themselves in to it. I was particularly interested in the weird battle between Allied and German weather stations during WW2 scattered throughout the region each giving their owners vital information with which to plan their attacks. Hopefully more on THAT topic at some point! 

Well written, often humorous, sometimes tragic and endlessly interesting this was a delight from beginning to end. Much more to come on both Poles and the very brave people who went there to find out everything they could about some of the most inhospitable and dangerous places on the planet. Recommended if you can source a copy. 

Happy Birthday: Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Born in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family moved to Sydenham in suburban south London when he was ten. Shackleton's first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904, from which he was sent home early on health grounds, after he and his companions Scott and Edward Adrian Wilson set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S. During the Nimrod Expedition of 1907–1909, he and three companions established a new record Farthest South latitude of 88°23′ S, only 97 geographical miles (112 statute miles or 180 kilometres) from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in exploration history. Also, members of his team climbed Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano. On returning home, Shackleton was knighted for his achievements by King Edward VII.

After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911, with Roald Amundsen's conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to the crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end, he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917. The expedition was struck by disaster when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and finally sank in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica on 21 November 1915. The crew escaped by camping on the sea ice until it disintegrated, then by launching the lifeboats to reach Elephant Island and ultimately the South Atlantic island of South Georgia, enduring a stormy ocean voyage of 720 nautical miles (1,330 km; 830 mi) in Shackleton's most famous exploit. He returned to the Antarctic with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition in 1921 but died of a heart attack while his ship was moored in South Georgia. At his wife's request, he remained on the island and was buried in Grytviken cemetery. The wreck of Endurance was discovered just over a century after Shackleton's death.

Away from his expeditions, Shackleton's life was generally restless and unfulfilled. In his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security, he launched business ventures which failed to prosper, and he died heavily in debt. Upon his death, he was lauded in the press but was thereafter largely forgotten, while the heroic reputation of his rival Scott was sustained for many decades. Later in the 20th century, Shackleton was "rediscovered", and he became a role model for leadership in extreme circumstances. In his 1956 address to the British Science Association, one of Shackleton's contemporaries, Sir Raymond Priestley, said: "Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency[,] but[,] when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton", paraphrasing what Apsley Cherry-Garrard had written in a preface to his 1922 memoir The Worst Journey in the World. In 2002, Shackleton was voted eleventh in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Just Finished Reading: Life at the Extremes – The Science of Survival by Frances Ashcroft (FP: 2000) [306pp]

As a species that evolved to live, and indeed thrive, on the African veldt we have over the millennia moved far beyond it. There is now little ground that we have not explored and few territories that we have not settled – in time. In other to do so though we have had to adapt to some harsh conditions. Some of that adaptation has been biological but a great deal of it has been technological and cultural – allowing us to move into or at least explore areas that are not only inimical to our own species but to life in general. This is the story, the science, of mankind’s encounter with the extremes of climate and environment on Earth, below the oceans and into Space.

It is a rare place indeed that has not felt the tread of mankind. Starting at height the author (who interestingly sprinkles her own personal experiences of extreme environments throughout the book) looks at the early experiences of mountain climbers and balloonist who, for the first time in human history travelled to the edges (and sometimes beyond!) of the breathable atmosphere and looks at the effects of low oxygen on the body and why some people cope much better with altitude sickness that others. Moving into the opposite realm she explores the issues with working under enhanced air-pressure and the operation of early diving suits and the painful discovery of conditions like ‘the Bends’ first experienced in significant numbers of workers during the use of caissons used in bridge and tunnel construction in the 19^th century. Further discussion moved to the capabilities (and dangers!) of the lives of pearl divers and, later, scuba divers and the use of increasingly exotic gases to enable deeper and deeper dives.

So with pressure (and the lack thereof!) so to temperature with the science of living in both Hot and Cold zones on the planet and the adaptations forced upon those who live there – even for short expeditions to the hottest and coldest places imaginable. Lastly the author takes a few diversions – into space (and how we cope with low – or zero – gravity as well as issues like cosmic radiation) and seemingly a bit more off-topic into the realm of speed – essentially running and finally a look at the latest (20 years ago) insights into bacterial and viral extremophiles found, once we actually started looking, just about everywhere from the tundra to hot springs, and from the deepest caves to the most acidic lakes.

This was a fascinating romp through Earth’s more extreme environments and how people have adapted to live there – or simply survived brief encounters with temperatures or other factors that would, in other more sustained instances have killed them. There is a lot of information here from all over the world showcasing how humans have used both their natural abilities and their ever inventive brains to push envelopes further than most of us can imagine. So if you want a real insight into how your body copes (or fails to cope) with a cold winter or hot dry summer this is definitely the book for you. It might even save your life one day…. Recommended.  

Just Finished Reading: Voyages of Delusion – The Search for the Northwest Passage in the Age of Reason by Glyn Williams (FP: 2002)

It HAD to be there. If only they could find it. Discovery meant fame, wealth both personally and for the Company and its shareholders and, more importantly, it would allow the British navy to dominate the Pacific in the same way that it now dominated the Atlantic. So it HAD to be there. The Northwest Passage running between the two great oceans would allow whoever could both find and defend it to shave weeks or even months off the voyages between Europe, India and the Orient which would enhance profits, undercut the commercial and political enemies of the British Empire and make her power unassailable. The search had already begun in the Hudson Bay with tantalising possibilities emerging out of the mists and between the icepacks that few ships could penetrate without difficulty. Rumours abounded – that a Spanish ship had already completed the voyage years or even decades before, that polar waters were ice free all year, the salt water simply couldn’t freeze, that native Indians had travelled days inland and had seen the Pacific ocean and returned with tales of great lakes linked by great rivers stretching across the continent. If only they could find the entrance to this interlinked system.

Despite being aware of the potential profits the secretive Hudson Bay Company was reluctant to search for the Passage themselves. They knew enough about their local environs to suspect that the Passage did not actually exist and, at every opportunity, called its existence into question. But obsessed men in London had other ideas and pressed Parliament to fund a survey of Hudson Bay beyond the area already mapped by the Company. This was the first of many private ventures and, later, Royal Navy missions sent to find the Holy Grail of navigation. Years of hardship in freezing temperatures the likes of which could scarcely be imagined, shipwreck, starvation and the ever present and mysterious scurvy, failed to blunt the search. As newly drawn maps arrived back in London, Madrid and St Petersburg the possible location of the Passage narrowed and narrowed again. But with the weather set against them for most of the year the journeys into the far North on the eastern seaboard gave way to the possibility of gaining access to the Passage on the Pacific side. The Russians had already discovered the Bering Strait and the edge of Alaska which showed great promise. To discover more the great navigator of the age – Captain James Cook – was sent to investigate the west coast north of Spanish California. After many months of travel and many more months of exploration and coastal mapping a few tantalising hints were found but there was no sight of the fabled inlet spoken of in awe in old Spanish texts. It was left to Captain George Vancouver to undertake the tedious task of mapping every twist of the western coast and the exploration of every river or estuary heading inland. Time and again hope turned to disappointment as the towering mountain chain (later known as the Rocky Mountains) seemed to be impenetrable. With ever more detailed treks inland failing to uncover any great east-west navigable watercourses hope of the true Northwest Passage began to fade and finally the much talked about earlier voyages were seen as fantasy and hoax. 

This is a brilliantly told tale of one of the driving obsessions of the 17th and 18th centuries in the seafaring nations of Europe. With competing expeditions from Britain, France, Spain and Russia a great deal of effort, time and gold was spent trying to find something that did not exist. In the Age of Enlightenment this was a very strange phenomena indeed but the author shows just how this drive came about and what sustained it for so long despite so many setbacks. Not only a fascinating tale of geographical exploration but also an interesting insight into the European mind of the time. Definitely recommended for naval history buffs. (R)

Coming next: The Cinema Book Blitz.