"The End of the World is Just the Beginning," suggests that **location matters, hugely, for a country's or region's success**. It's not just about having resources or smart people, but about whether your physical location provides advantages that align with the prevailing technologies and global order of the time. One of the key points about Geographies of Success is that they are **not immutable**. What makes a location successful changes as technologies evolve. Let's look at how this played out through history according to the source: - **Hunter/Gatherer Era:** In this early period, success was about range and variety. Good nutrition meant accessing multiple types of plants and animals, and since people moved frequently, they needed to be able to relocate easily. The ideal geography offered a great deal of climatic variety in a dense footprint, making mountain foothills popular because they provided access to different climatic zones in a relatively short horizontal distance. Areas where tropics met other climates were also popular. - **Sedentary Agriculture:** The shift to farming required a different geography. Success moved towards low-lying desert river valleys. These places offered sufficient flat land for irrigation using preindustrial methods, consistent water flows, a lack of seasonality for year-round crops, and natural barriers for defense. This allowed for large-scale food surpluses, leading to the development of cities, writing, arithmetic, and expansion. Examples include ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus River basin. - **Wind and Water Power / Early Deepwater Cultures:** With new technologies like waterwheels and eventually wind-powered ships, the geography of success shifted again. It became advantageous to have large, open flatlands for easy distribution, balancing good external barriers. Deepwater cultures thrived on peninsulas (like Portugal and Spain) or islands (like Britain), where armies could only approach from one direction, making it easier to focus on building navies. The English eventually surpassed the Iberians as island countries were even more defensible. - **Industrial Revolution:** This era required significant capital investment and the ability to transport goods efficiently. Locations with abundant navigable waterways that could generate capital and facilitate trade became highly successful. Germany, with its dense network of rivers like the Rhine, Elbe, Oder, and Danube, became a major player, excelling at capital generation. Britain, already a naval power, ruled the waves and thus had access to crucial trade routes. The US, with even more navigable waterways than all of Europe combined, was particularly well-suited for this era. Canals and later railways further linked production to markets and valuable resources. However, even within the same era, the "logic of Geographies of Success split"; dense river networks were great for local trade and capital, but access to international trade routes via deepwater ports became equally important. - **Post-WWII American-led Global Order:** A significant outcome of this period was that geography became less deterministic. The US guaranteed security for international commerce and opened its consumer market, allowing countries that previously lacked advantageous geographies to industrialize and grow. Manufacturing processes could be split across many locations globally, enabling new players to emerge. Areas once considered "backward" could now "bloom in safety". However, the source suggests this era of geography mattering less is ending. As globalization unwinds and the US potentially withdraws from its role as a global security guarantor, the traditional patterns where geography plays a more deterministic role are expected to reassert themselves. In a more capital-constrained future, investment is expected to flow more readily to locations with "low-hanging fruit". Infrastructure is cheaper to build and maintain in flat, temperate zones than in mountains or tropics. This implies a return to certain geographical advantages determining who can generate and apply capital most effectively. The source predicts that regions like Northern Europe will be better positioned than Southern Europe, India, Russia, Brazil, the Middle East, or sub-Saharan Africa due to these factors. Specific examples of success or challenges tied to geography are provided: - **The United States:** Described as having the "most powerful river power and land power in history" and the "perfect Geography of Success" due to its vast, usable land, navigable rivers, and protected location. - **Germany:** Rose to power due to its dense network of navigable rivers, making it a strong industrial and capital-generation zone. - **Britain:** Benefited from being an island and ruling the waves, giving it access to global trade routes. Also invested heavily in canals and turnpike roads via private enterprise, linking production to markets. - **American Piedmont/The South:** Despite some geographical disadvantages (semi-rugged terrain, limiting river transport), this region has found success, particularly in attracting foreign investment, by actively courting investors and creating tailored business environments. - **Southeast Asia (sans China):** Has factors favoring future manufacturing success, including labor variation (high-tech Singapore, younger Vietnam/Indonesia for low-end, middle-ground Thailand/Malaysia) and transport safety. - **Russia:** Industrialized relatively early but was hindered by its command economy under the Soviet Union compared to Germany's technocratic shift. Geography also historically played a role in its expansion, needing to secure lands to feed its population. - **Europe:** Has a geography that creates inherent tension between unified power and dissident forces due to its mix of flat, rivered areas and peninsular/mountainous/island regions. The post-WWII order smothered this conflict, but it remains. - **Countries in Tropics/Semitropics:** Often faced lower standards of living and shorter life spans historically, linking poverty to climate/geography. Other sources subtly touch upon the importance of location and space in different contexts: - **Bourdieu's Social Theory:** Uses spatial metaphors like "fields" and "positions" to describe social structures. Success or "distinction" depends on accumulating different types of capital (economic, social, cultural) and navigating these fields, which can be mapped out visually. An agent's trajectory involves moving within and between fields, sometimes requiring converting capital types. Privileged backgrounds often equip individuals better to recognize and occupy advantageous positions in changing fields, illustrating how early experiences and starting location (in the social field) influence potential success. - **Gramsci's Hegemony:** While the concept of hegemony itself is complex and involves intellectual and moral unity, the source emphasizes that the "national" point of departure is vital. A historical bloc, which implies hegemony, is initially founded within national boundaries, even though world economic and political conditions influence prospects. This highlights that even broad ideological or political power is rooted in a specific geographical context. - **Urban Geography:** Cities are described as the "absence of physical space between people and companies," representing an ancient solution to distance. Their success in modernity, despite falling transport costs, is seen as a paradox, highlighting the value of proximity. Cities are not interchangeable; their success derives from the specific "ecosystems of people and practice it has nurtured". This reinforces the idea that successful locations cultivate unique advantages linked to their specific spatial arrangement and history, such as New York for finance or San Francisco/Silicon Valley for technology. Modern economic geography continues to draw talent and investment to major cities, creating disparities with areas left behind. - **Cultural and Literary Geography:** The source mentions how Scottish writers like James Thomson had to go to London, the English "Big Apple," to find literary success, suggesting that the cultural geography placed the center of literary power and the market for success outside of Scotland. This shows that "success" in a cultural field can also be tied to specific, dominant locations. - **Topology and Mapping:** Freud used "topography" to map the regions of the psychical apparatus, while Appadurai used "-scapes" (ethnoscapes, finanscapes, etc.) to map the cultural economy of globalization. This use of spatial concepts and mapping metaphors across different fields suggests that thinking about location and spatial relationships is a common way to understand complex systems, whether psychological, cultural, or economic. In essence, "Geographies of Success" is a dynamic concept emphasizing that a location's physical characteristics, combined with prevailing technologies and the structure of the global order, create unique advantages or disadvantages that profoundly influence the prosperity and power of the people or entities situated there. This isn't a fixed state but a continually shifting landscape shaped by innovation and geopolitical change.