Mackinder, Sir Halford (1861–1947)

Sir Halford Mackinder was a leading political geographer of the early 20th century, best remembered today for his “heartland” model of global geopolitics. Mackinder was a leader in the founding of academic geography in Britain. He was appointed the first geographer at Oxford in 1887 and started its School of Geography in 1899. In addition, he helped the University of Reading in 1892 and served as director of the London School of Economics from 1903 to 1908. Mackinder combined his academic career with political pursuits, serving as a Member of Parliament from 1910 to 1922 and chair of the Imperial Shipping Committee from 1920 to 1939.

Mackinder is remembered primarily for creating political geography's most famous global geopolitical model, the heartland model. First developed in 1904, and refined over the next 40 years, Mackinder created a map of the world with three main areas: (1) the Heartland or pivot area, analogous originally to much of the Asian part of Russia but later extended to include most of the Soviet Union; (2) the inner crescent or rim-land, the European and Asian areas surrounding the Heartland; and (3) the outer crescent, or everything else. Mackinder argued that the Heartland was the key to world power, that whoever controlled the Heartland could control the world. He based this argument on two factors: first, that over the sweep of history, those who had attacked and tried to conquer Europe had come from the Heartland and, second, because of its physical location on the Earth's surface, the Heartland was impenetrable from attack on three sides, the east (Gobi Desert), the south (the Himalayas), and the north (Arctic Ocean), thereby making it the greatest defensive position on the planet. He argued that a naval power (i.e., Britain) would not be able to take over the Heartland. He suggested that the only way into the Heartland was through Eastern Europe and that, therefore, controlling Eastern Europe was the key to world domination.

Despite its long-lasting influence within political geography specifically and policy circles generally, there are major criticisms of Mackinder's model. First, there have been critiques of his model specifically—for example, that a great defensive position in an inhospitable area with few people does not translate into an offensive strategy for world domination; that the growth in importance of airpower, nuclear weapons, and missile systems makes his model obsolete; and that the Heartland model's Eurocentric-focus making the rest of the world irrelevant is problematic.

Beyond these specific issues, several critiques of Mackinder have been offered in recent years by students of critical geopolitics concerning such grand global geopolitical models that seek to “objectively” and from a “scientific, rational, neutral” perspective explain where power resides in the world and how it operates. First, Mackinder's model is based in large part on the world's physical geography—that is, how oceans and continents fit together. Such models ignore the billions of people who populate the world. As well, by placing Europe in the center of his maps, Mackinder made it appear “natural” that Europe [Page 1813]was the center of global power. In addition, Mackinder is purporting to present a global model of power offering a detached “view from above the clouds,” or a “god's eye view” of the world and how it operates. However, while purporting to provide a dispassionate view of the world, Mackinder's main interest was in making sure that the Germans did not challenge the British for global supremacy, with his main concern being that Germany would gain control over Eastern Europe. Thus, this supposedly scientific, dispassionate “god's eye” view of how the world works was in reality a warning to Britain to look out for Germany and a possible alliance between Germany and Russia (thereby equating controlling Europe with controlling the world). Given Mackinder's own political views championing the British Empire and its continuation as the leading global power, these warnings are not ultimately surprising.

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