Halford John Mackinder

British geographer

• Born: February 15, 1861
• Birthplace: Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England
• Died: March 6, 1947
• Place of death: Parkstone, Dorset, England

Mackinder was quickly recognized for his contributions in the academic discipline of geography, and he was credited with the creation of significant institutions. Mackinder is most noted for the Heartland theory of geopolitics.

Early Life

Halford John Mackinder (muh-KIN-duhr) initially hoped to follow the occupation of his father, a medical doctor. Later he shifted his studies to science, then history and strategy, then law, which he actually practiced for a time, and, finally, he began lecturing on “the New Geography.”

Mackinder was the eldest son of Draper and Fanny Anne Hewitt Mackinder, who were both of Scottish ancestry. His education was at Epsom College and at Oxford, where he first gained a junior studentship at Christ Church in 1880. In 1883, he was president of the Oxford Union, and in 1884 he gained the Burdett-Coutts science scholarship. Later, he was called to the bar at Inner Temple and also began lecturing in the university extension system, eventually delivering more than six hundred lectures, mostly in the North and West between 1885 and 1893.

Mackinder was asked to give his lecture on “Scope and Methods of Geography” to the Royal Geographical Society in January, 1887, thus stimulating the revival of the academic discipline of geography in Great Britain. In 1892, he traveled to the United States and lectured at a number of major universities, including Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Chicago.

Mackinder always involved himself in a number of endeavors simultaneously. Extension lecturing led him into university administration, where he was to make significant contributions at several institutions. During the 1890’s he was director of what evolved into the University of Reading. Between 1903 and 1908 he served as the second director of the newly formed London School of Economics and Political Science. Between 1895 and 1925 he was lecturer and then professor of geography at the University of London. At the same time he was instrumental in the creation of the first institute, and then school, of geography, officially formed at Oxford in 1899. His readership in geography at Oxford, the first such appointment in a British university, was from 1887 to 1905.

In 1889, Mackinder married Emilie Catherine Ginsburg, the daughter of an Old Testament scholar. Emilie Mackinder often lived abroad, and, although she survived her husband, there is rarely any mention of her in Mackinder’s obituaries.

Life’s Work

At the same time that Mackinder was accomplishing so much in university administration and in the academic institutionalization of the discipline of geography, he was also formulating innovative theories on political geography, later known as geopolitics. He had already impressed academic authorities, especially leaders of the Royal Geographical Society, with his early lectures on the New Geography and the scope and methods of geography.

The discipline of geography in Great Britain had been declining, and many considered it unworthy of academic study. Oxford University, influenced by Mackinder, began the most significant steps of the subject’s rehabilitation. During his formative years, Mackinder was influenced by Sir Bartle Frere, president of the Royal Geographical Society in the 1870’s. While working as an administrator, Mackinder published basic texts in geography. Most important was Britain and the British Seas (1902). This book became the standard regional guide and was considered a classic of modern geographical literature. Other texts followed, including guides on India and the Rhine area of Europe.

Mackinder’s close association with the Royal Geographical Society provided a platform for the development of his geopolitical theories. In 1904, Mackinder presented a paper, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” in the Geographical Journal. This was the first statement of his geopolitical theories. The second major statement of his theories appeared in a book, Democratic Ideals and Reality , published in 1919, in which the famous Heartland thesis is found in full. Democratic Ideals and Reality was addressed to the peacemakers at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. Mackinder continued to refine his views in an article published in Foreign Affairs, a journal of interest to experts in the foreign policy of the United States. The article, “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace” (July, 1943), was written during World War II and incorporates concepts associated with the rapid, dramatic industrial and technological advances of the past several decades.

The essence of Mackinder’s theory is his famous dictum or triptych, first published in Democratic Ideals and Reality.

• Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland

• Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island

• Who rules the World-Island commands the World

Mackinder was never consistent about the precise location of the Heartland; presumably it was an area about twenty-five hundred miles across and the same up and down, and included Western Asia and Eastern Europe. At one point he described the southern Ural mountain region as “the very pivot of the pivot area.”

In the variations of his theory, Mackinder speculated about possible controllers of the Heartland: Russia, Germany, a combination of those two, or a number of small states. The first three possibilities would definitely threaten the hegemony of British or Anglo-American interests, among others, and Mackinder obviously favored a unified British imperial and naval influence; he feared, however, that these interests would be overwhelmed by a powerful land-based axis, especially by the feared combination of Russia and Germany. He anticipated that after further technological advances, such as the railway and air power, sea-based or peripheral powers would decline. In various ways, Mackinder perceived the potential of railroads and of air power, of the rise of Japan, and of some powerful political combinations such as those of Russia and Germany and Great Britain and the United States.

There is much debate about the influence of Mackinder and his geopolitical theories. At worst he has been accused of directly encouraging the expansionist and racist machinations of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and of causing the Cold War, the ultimate confrontation over the Heartland and global domination. At a more academic and less emotional level, scholars have debated his influence on other geopolitical theorists, such as Alfred Thayer Mahan and Friedrich Ratzel. Most commentary focuses on Mackinder’s influence on the German geopolitician Karl Haushofer of the University of Munich. Presumably, a case can be made that Haushofer taught his student, Rudolf Hess, who later instructed his superior, Adolf Hitler. There is no question that Haushofer and his school of German Geopolitik made important contributions to the Nazi cause, supplying a pseudoscientific rationalization for Hitler’s policies of expansion and racism.

It should be noted that Mackinder made a definite effort to distance himself from any association with Haushofer. He pointedly avoided the use of the term “geopolitics,” preferring instead “geo-strategic” to describe his own methodology. In a note in the 1942 edition of Democratic Ideals and Reality, Mackinder specifically renounced any links to Haushofer and his school.

In his native Great Britain, Mackinder received belated recognition. Only at the end of his life, in 1945, did he receive the Patron’s Medal, the highest award from the Royal Geographical Society. In 1971, Oxford University finally honored the founder of academic geography by establishing the Halford Mackinder Professorship of Geography.

For all of his academic status, however, Mackinder did not confine himself solely to scholarly concerns. In addition to academic geography and political geography, Mackinder was an explorer, elected politician, diplomatic official, public servant, activist, and intellectual. In 1899, Mackinder led an expedition to East Africa and was the first to climb the seventeen-thousand-foot-high Mount Kenya successfully. As early as 1900, then a Liberal Imperialist, Mackinder became interested in pursuing politics. Unfortunately, he was ahead of his time. As his political center of gravity moved to the right, to the Unionists and then the Conservatives, the Liberals united and achieved a spectacular victory in the election of 1906. Finally, in 1910, Mackinder won a seat in the House of Commons, in the industrial district of Camlachie, Glasgow. His political career lasted until 1922, when he was defeated by a Labour Party candidate. He was consistently an advocate of imperialism, tariff reform, colonial preference, and a unified empire. He was a member of the Tariff Reform League and Victoria League.

It was during his time in the House of Commons that Mackinder entered the somewhat murky situation of Allied intervention in Russia. In 1920, he was appointed British high commissioner for South Russia. Mackinder was the obvious choice for the decision makers. Lord Curzon became foreign secretary in October, 1919. He was president of the Royal Geographical Society and was advised by two other associates of Mackinder, Lord Milner and L. S. Amery. Mackinder had just presented recommendations to the Versailles peacemakers on the disposition of Eastern Europe and Western Asia the Heartland. As commissioner, Mackinder was to lead a team of political and economic experts to evaluate the situation, contact influential leaders, and report to the cabinet.

The team departed on December 4, 1919, traveled to Warsaw, Bucharest, Sofia, Constantinople, and, via the Royal Navy, into the Black Sea. Among the prominent leaders interviewed was Anton Denikin, the White Russian leader in the Russian civil war. Mackinder made his report and recommendations to the cabinet on January 29, 1920. Unfortunately, the situation in the cabinet was rapidly changing: The Allies were withdrawing from Eastern Europe and the position of the White Russians was deteriorating. Great Britain had already announced that no further direct aid would go to them.

Mackinder’s team had concocted various schemes with the anti-Bolshevist leaders of the region. He warned that Russia under Bolshevism would make the world “an uncomfortable place for democracies” and that there was a threat of “a new Russian Czardom of the proletariat.” As a boundary commissioner he recommended establishing another tier of states east of the cordon sanitaire set up at Versailles (the Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, Romania). This new set of buffer states might include White Russia, the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Byelorussia.

The cabinet rudely rejected Mackinder’s recommendations one cabinet member declared them “absurd.” Even Winston Churchill opposed them. In addition, such blatantly anticommunist declarations caused his working-class constituents of Glasgow to react negatively. Mackinder resigned as commissioner and was soon defeated for reelection.

Mackinder pursued other opportunities for public service. He was knighted in 1920 and made privy councillor in 1926. During World War I he was instrumental in recruitment in Scotland and served prominently on the National War Savings Committee. He is credited with formulating the process of saving by stamps. From 1920 to 1945 he served as chair of the Imperial Shipping Committee (at two thousand pounds per year) and from 1925 to 1931 he was chair of the Imperial Economic Committee.

Prior to World War I, Mackinder was a founding member of an extraordinary group of intellectuals, the Coefficients Club. The club’s primary concern was the reversal of a perceived loss of national efficiency. At about the same time, Mackinder helped found the Compatriots, a small group that dedicated itself to “promote the wider patriotism of the Commonwealth.”

Mackinder, losing his hearing, increasingly withdrew from world affairs during the 1930’s. He collected papers, subsequently deposited in the School of Geography at Oxford, for an autobiography, but only fragments survive. He died on March 6, 1947.

Significance

Mackinder was always ahead of his time and insufficiently appreciated at home. To some extent he has been unfairly maligned, especially for his alleged influence on developments in Nazi Germany and in the Cold War. His political and diplomatic careers seemed plagued by anachronisms, in these cases futuristic and not past. Recognition and credit were often late and distant, fully arriving only after his death because of the global and interdisciplinary nature of his treatises. Few critics had the breadth of vision to appreciate him.

Nevertheless, Mackinder’s contributions are major ones, particularly in the fields of academic geography and geopolitics. He was a leader in reviving the discipline of geography in the late nineteenth century, and his theory of the Heartland has become a geopolitical axiom.

Bibliography

Blouet, Brian W. Halford Mackinder: A Biography. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1987. The long-awaited full biography. The bibliography, which is comprehensive, lists 111 works by Mackinder from 1887 to 1945. Explains some of the personal aspects of Mackinder’s activities, such as the lack of close friends, the absence of dedicated students, and the failed marriage.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Global Geostrategy: Mackinder and the Defense of the West. New York: Frank Cass, 2005. Collection of essays examining Mackinder’s Heartland theory from the perspective of geography, diplomatic history, political science, international relations, and other disciplines.

Gilbert, Edmund W., and W. H. Parker. “Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals and Reality After Fifty Years.” Geographical Journal 135 (June, 1969): 228-231. An appreciation of Mackinder’s major book after fifty years. Gilbert concludes that the book was too far ahead of its time, and its relevance has increased with time.

Hall, Arthur B. “Mackinder and the Course of Events.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 45 (June, 1955): 109-126. A thorough and scholarly assessment of Mackinder’s geopolitical theories from the perspective of American scholars. Hall concludes that Mackinder set out to create “a geographical formula into which you could fit any political balance.”

Parker, W. H. Mackinder: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. An intellectual history. Parker analyzes the Mackinder-Haushofer link and the criticism of the Heartland thesis. Not a biography.