Chapter 8 Political Geography Key Issue 1 Where Are States Located?

Problems of Defining States Political geography can be studied at a number of different scales, including local, national, and international politics. The fundamental unit of political geography is the country, which is called a state. This is an area organized into a political unit and ruled by an established government that has sovereignty over its internal and external affairs. North and South Korea were admitted to the United Nations as separate countries but they both have some commitment to reunification. China has claimed Taiwan since the establishment of that country when Nationalists fled there from China in the late 1940s. Morocco still claims Western Sahara, although most African countries recognize it as a sovereign state.

Problems of Defining States cont. A nation-state is where political boundaries coincide with the territory occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality. The land area occupied by states varies considerably in the world. Russia is the largest state, encompassing 11% of the world’s land area. Other large states include China, Canada, the United States, and Brazil. There are also numerous very small states or microstates. States such as Monaco and Vatican City, both of which are located within Italy are good examples of microstates. Larger states usually have more extensive natural resources.

Development of the State Concept The concept of dividing the world into a collection of independent states is relatively recent, dating from 18th century Europe, but the concept of territoriality can be traced to the ancient Middle East. The first states in Mesopotamia, which was at the eastern end of the ancient Fertile Crescent, were known as city-states. A city-state is a sovereign state that consists of a town or city and the surrounding countryside. Later the Roman Empire provided the best example of the power of political unity. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. Europe was divided into a large number of feudal estates. Ultimately powerful kings gained control in western Europe, and their kingdoms formed the basis for the development of the modern states that include England, France, and Spain.

Colonies European states controlled much of the world through colonialism beginning in the early 1500s. They established colonies by imposing their political, economic, and cultural control (especially religion) on territories in Latin America, Asia and Africa that became legally tied to them. Technically colonialism refers to the control of territory previously uninhabited, whereas imperialism is the control of territory that is already occupied, but the two terms are used interchangeably. Latin American countries became independent in the first half of the 19th century, and decolonization proceeded rapidly across Africa and Asia after WWII. Today there are only a few remaining colonies and these are generally only very small territories around the globe.