Sir Halford John Mackinder - Work and achievements, Enter the Nazis, The importance of Mackinder, Mackinder on geography

Geographer and politician, born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, EC England, UK. He studied at Oxford, and laid the foundations of British academic geography there, and later at Reading and the London School of Economics. He held numerous senior university appointments, became an MP (1910–22), and was British high commissioner for South Russia (1919–20). Knighted in 1920, he became chairman of the Imperial Shipping Committee (1920–45) and of the Imperial Economic Committee (1926–41).

He was educated at Epsom College and Christ Church, Oxford, and specialised as a physical geographer, later branching into economics and political theory, arguing that physical and human geography should be treated as a single discipline.

Work and achievements

In 1887 he was appointed Reader in Geography at Oxford University, then by far the most senior position for a British geographer, announcing: "A platform has been given to a geographer." By 1899 he had drawn together a single School of Geography. In 1904 Mackinder gave a paper on "The Geographical Pivot of History" at the Royal Geographical Society, in which he formulated the Heartland Theory.

Possibly disappointed at not getting a full Chair, Mackinder left Oxford and became director of the London School of Economics between 1903 and 1908.

His next major work was in 1919 - Democratic Ideals and Reality - was a perspective on the 1904 work in the light of peace treaties and Woodrow Wilson's idealism. Who rules the World Island commands the World." Although Mackinder was anti-Bolshevik (as British High Commissioner he tried to unite the White Russian forces), the principal concern of his work was to warn of the possibility of another major war (a warning also given by economist John Maynard Keynes).

Enter the Nazis

The Heartland Theory was enthusiastically taken up by the German school of Geopolitik, in particular by its main proponent Karl Haushofer. The German interpretation of the Heartland Theory is referred to explicitly (without mentioning the connection to Mackinder) in The Nazis Strike, the second of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series of American World War II propaganda films.

The importance of Mackinder

Mackinder's work paved the way for the establishment of geography as a distinct discipline in the United Kingdom. Mackinder was given a personal chair at the London School of Economics in 1923.

Mackinder on geography

"The science whose main function is to trace the interaction of man in society and as much of his environment and as varies locally."

"The science of distribution. The science, that is, which traces the arrangement of things in general on the Earth's surface." Mackinder is also credited with introducing two new terms into the dictionary : "manpower" , "heartland".