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Geopolitical Hypotheses in Technological Perspective*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Harold Sprout
Harold Sprout
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Great wars, the rise and decline of empires, observed differences in the power and influence of nations, and in general the uneven levels of national achievement in international politics have inspired much speculation and hypothesis-building. Men have felt the need for satisfying explanations of past events and patterns, and even greater need for plausible hypotheses with which to approach the future. The last seventy-five years or so have witnessed a bumper crop of hypotheses designed to account for or to anticipate the ordering of political relationships in the society of nations. One characteristic of most of these activities has been a persistent search for the “master variable” that would provide a simple yet plausible and satisfying basis for explaining or predicting the ordering of political relationships among nations.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , January 1963 , pp. 187 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1963

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References

1 For a more extended discussion of this issue, see Harold, and Sprout, Margaret, Foundations of International Politics (Princeton 1962)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

2 Quoted by Gilbert, E. W. in his obituary memoir on Mackinder, in Geographical Journal, CX (January 1948), 96.Google Scholar

3 SirMackinder, Halford, Democratic Ideals and Reality (rev. edn., New York 1942), 2.Google Scholar

4 Mackinder, H. J., “The Geographical Pivot of History,” Geographical Journal, XXIII (April 1904), 436.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 441.

6 Huntington, Ellsworth, Civilization and Climate (New Haven 1915), 9.Google Scholar

7 Huntington, Ellsworth, World-Power and Evolution (New Haven 1919), 24.Google Scholar

8 Wheeler, R. H., “Climate and Human Behavior,” in Encyclopaedia of Psychology (New York 1946), 78ff.Google Scholar

9 Mills, Clarence A., “Temperature Dominance over Human Life,” Science, CX (September 16, 1949), 267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ibid., 270.

11 Neumann, John von, “Can We Survive Technology?” Fortune, LI (June 1955), 106.Google Scholar

12 “But Somebody Does Something About It,” New York Times Magazine, July 8, 1962.

13 For some additional commentaries on the issue of large-scale control of climate, see Landsberg, H. E., “Climate Made to Order,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XVII (November 1961), 360–64Google Scholar; and Kaplan, L. D., “Could We Control the Climate?” The New Scientist, IX (March 9, 1961), 597–99.Google Scholar

14 Emeny, Brooks, The Strategy of Raw Materials (New York 1934), 1.Google Scholar

15 Strausz-Hupé, Robert, The Balance of Tomorrow (New York 1945), 119, 156ff., 231.Google Scholar

16 Brown, Harrison, “Technological Denudation,” in Thomas, W. L., ed., Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago 1956), 1023–32.Google Scholar

17 Attributed to Marshal Turenne (1611–1675); also to Voltaire, who quoted the maxim in a letter in 1770.

18 Democratic Ideals, 140.

19 Strausz-Hupé, 48, 57, 63.

20 Stewart, J. Q., Coasts, Waves and Weather (New York 1945), 163.Google Scholar

21 Stewart, J. Q., “Natural Law Factors in United States Foreign Policy,” Social Science, XXIX (June 1954), 127–34.Google Scholar

22 Blount's hypothesis and supporting arguments were first presented at a meeting of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, and subsequently published as “Science as a Factor in International Relations” in International Affairs, XXXIII (January 1957), 71ff. A more concise and tightly reasoned version appeared later in The New Scientist, XXXII (June 27, 1957), under the title “Science Will Change the Balance of Power.”

23 “Science as a Factor,” 71–72.

24 The above quotations and those that follow are from “Science Will Change the Balance of Power.”

25 There is a respectable body of opinion that doubts the ability of the underdeveloped countries to overtake those that are technologically most advanced. P. M. S. Blackett, for example, recently argued before the British Association for the Advancement of Science that the underdeveloped countries “have missed the bus, not by default but by chance of history,” and that science is no good to them directly, though “it helps us [the Western nations] to provide them more cheaply with the things they need.” (New York Times, August 29, 1962.).

26 Wedgwood, C. V., Truth and Opinion: Historical Essays (London 1960), 61.Google Scholar