Praise for

Myths of Geography

“Myths of Geography is insightful, entertaining and will force you to think

differently. It’s a much-needed exploration of the realities of the world
around us.”
—Dipo Faloyin, author of Africa Is Not a Country

“As continents, borders, nations, economic growth and sovereignty become

the buzzwords of today’s global conflicts, Paul Richardson’s Myths of
Geography skewers each one with elegant precision. His book places
political geography at the heart of how we understand the challenges of the
21st century. A bracing and important book.”
—Jerry Brotton, author of Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction

“Our world can sometimes seem upside-down. Perhaps it is. In detailed and
fervid prose, Paul Richardson dismantles eight myths we have come to tell
ourselves about geography. By revealing important truths this folklore
conceals, he shows us how our geographical imagination has far-reaching
consequences. From Hadrian’s Wall to the US–Mexico border, from the
Eastern Sahara to the ice of Antarctica, from silk roads to Ethiopian castles,
Richardson takes us to places that invite reflection—and action. After
reading Myths of Geography, no news report, no map, no journey will
appear quite the same again.”
—David Rooney, author of About Time

“Outstanding. Completely reframes how you see the world in the very first
chapter, and then does it again seven more times. You’ll never look at a map
the same way again.”
—Jonn Elledge, author of A History of the World in 47 Borders
“In this original and stimulating challenge to our assumptions about the
shapes of our geographies, Paul Richardson changes the way we see the
world—from how many continents there really are to the myths and
realities of border walls and the nations they seek to contain.”
—Isabel Hilton, contributing editor at Prospect and founder of China Dialogue Trust
Myths of Geography
Eight Ways We Get The World Wrong

Paul Richardson
In memory of John Richardson
PAUL RICHARDSON is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the
University of Birmingham in the UK. He is an established scholar in the
field of Geography and Russian Studies, and the former President of the
Association for Borderland Studies. He has previously held academic
positions at Hokkaido University in Japan and the Far Eastern Federal
University in Russia. Myths of Geography is his first book for a general
audience.
 Contents

Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six

Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Endnotes
 INTRODUCTION

IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES
Is the world upside down?

COPYRIGHT-FREE/NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SWEDEN

Not so very long ago, our maps had mythical creatures lurking at their edge.
While dragons and monsters stalked the land, deep-sea behemoths sought to
break the ships and bones of anyone who ventured into their waters. Kraken
and Leviathan lay in wait to drag vessels to their doom; sirens, serpents,
giant sea pigs, and gargantuan lobsters haunted sailors’ dreams. These
fantastical beasts adorned the cartographic imaginations of the medieval
and Renaissance ages, with reports of monsters on the high seas becoming
the legends imprinted onto maps. Myth and reality merged as these maps
enticed adventurers to faraway lands to confirm the existence of such beasts
and the riches that may lay undiscovered around them. If these tales proved
true, then fame and fortune would surely follow.1
One by one, though, such monsters began to disappear from maps until,
by end of the seventeenth century, they had all but died out. Advances in
shipbuilding, navigation, and mapping techniques meant that Europe’s
cartographers had learnt more about the world and how to render it with
greater accuracy. An age of science and rationality superseded earlier
artistic flourishes and imagined geographies.2 Still, these older maps remain
full of meaning. Their carefully drawn creatures open up remarkable portals
into the minds of the mapmakers, empire builders, adventurers, and sailors
who once charted and traversed the globe. They reveal their hopes, fears,
and anxieties before they were tamed by the new technologies that made
known an as yet unknown world.
These representations of unexplored lands and their mythical inhabitants
had the power to shape how people thought, dreamt, and talked about the
world. Cartographic canvases blurred fact and fiction in their images of the
world, in turn influencing how people behaved and acted within it. Today,
such maps might appear alive with myth and exaggeration. But perhaps the
medieval masters who created them shouldn’t be judged too harshly. For,
what if our own world is shaped just as much by myth as theirs was? What
if the maps and ideas used to understand the world in the present are just as
actively misleading us?
A world of myths has traditionally belonged to the realm of the
supernatural and the spiritual. Narratives of the birth, life, adventures, or
death of a range of human characters, were interwoven with those of gods,
heroes, nymphs, naiads, elves, trolls, as well as animals and plants, in order
to give meaning to the world.3 The rise of organised religion, followed by
an age of science and reason, diminished the mystical qualities and
meanings of these stories, but myths have remained as alive as ever when it
comes to how the world is ordered. Myths of Geography charts a set of
myths for our current age, revealing their enduring power and how they are
fundamental to how we understand the world and its geography.
Like the myths of antiquity, these myths are stories so powerfully
ingrained in our consciousness that they can even stop us recognising that
they are, in fact, products of our own active imaginations. Though today’s
imagined geographies may be different from those of the past, they can just
as readily send us on quixotic quests to El Dorado, or on journeys to slay
dragons that never existed. This book considers some of the fundamental
beliefs that define our lives and how they shape our experience of the
world.4 It reveals that, in so many ways, ‘myth is geography’.5
Such myths are imagined geographies: understandings of the world—and
its countries, continents, borders, and regions—that exist in each of our
minds. These myths do not reflect the way the world actually is but how it
is imagined to be. They appear all around us and are constantly repeated in
images, books, stories, maps, textbooks, speeches, performances, films, and
the media. Each of them informs how we both perceive and live in the
world. But like the frightening monsters that once populated our maps, they
don’t always tell us what is really out there but instead reveal our own
preoccupations, desires, and anxieties. These myths are lenses through
which we ourselves are reflected.6
The eight myths described in this book have been quietly absorbed since
our earliest days as children gazing in fascination at a globe or colouring in
maps and flags. Each chapter inverts some of our deep-seated assumptions
about the world; and reveals how myths can more readily move mountains
and create continents than any natural processes of physical geography. The
following chapters recount the tall tales we tell ourselves about the world,
asking what are the implications if taken-for-granted geographical ‘realities’
suddenly look less certain? If some of the most brilliant cartographers of the
day once drew the world ‘upside down’, then what alternative ways of
seeing might be out there? Could it be that some of the foundational
assumptions held about the world are little more than make-believe? And
what are the consequences of living in a world not as it actually is, but how
we imagine it to be?
This book counters a prevailing and long-standing invention about the
world: the notion of environmental determinism. Originating in Ancient
Greece, this is the idea that the climate and the physical environment has an
influence on human intelligence and societal development.7 It is a belief
that was later particularly well suited to the racism and hierarchies of the
colonial epoch and its need to justify imperial rule over distant lands and
people. Centuries of deterministic thinking have meant that implicit biases
about geography and the environment have proved to be troublingly
persistent.8 They lead to a false assumption that geography is destiny and
somehow the key to understanding the rise and fall of civilisations, the
prevailing world order, and our geopolitical futures. In this essentialist
account of the world, geography comes first, and the map follows it.
However, the connection between humans and geography is a
multidirectional one. We have agency in shaping our world: from the
sculpting of new landscapes, seen vividly in the reclaiming of land in the
North Sea that has redrawn the borders of the Netherlands; or in the felling
of the Amazon rainforest to create vast tracts of farmland. It can also be
seen in the invention of new technologies, from nuclear weapons to drones,
that render once strategic territories insignificant; and in our role in
accelerating climate change and the profound shifts in the terrestrial and
marine environment that will follow. This book places us, our imaginations,
and our ingenuity back in geography. It demonstrates that we are not as
bound by geography as we might think and that there is nothing inevitable
or even accurate about the geography on the maps and atlases of the world
that we have pored over since our schooldays. Rather, we have become
captives to certain ways of thinking about and representing the world.
This book charts a world where geographical facts are not always what
they seem. It journeys through space and time, from the dawn of the
continents to the rise of China and war in Ukraine, ranging across Korea,
Japan, Bhutan, Zimbabwe, China, Russia, Mexico, the United States,
Antarctica, the Sahara, the South China Sea, and Central Asia. It unravels
the spellbinding stories and myths that we keep telling ourselves about the
world. This is no mere intellectual curiosity or thought experiment. For,
only by seeing these myths for what they are can we begin to address the
very real injustices, divisions, and environmental catastrophes facing us.
Chapter one introduces perhaps the biggest geographical myth of all: the
continents. The shapes of the continents are so instantly recognisable that
we can close our eyes and visualise their outlines. They appear clearly and
neatly demarcated by the waters that surround them. However, ask even the
most basic of questions and they soon start to fall apart. How many
continents are there should have a simple answer but it depends on whether
North and South America are considered as separate continents, or whether
Antarctica is defined as a continent on its own. As for Oceania, which bits
of Asia should be included in it? And without a sea or ocean to help us, the
border between Europe and Asia is even more confusing, especially when
the Ural Mountains diminish to nothing at their southern end. It certainly
seems a little strange that we are not able to definitively say how many
continents there are, or exactly where the borders between them lie.
In the end, it is in the simplicity of the idea—and its repetition through
maps, atlases and images—that lies the power of the myth of continents:
that they are the only way to divide up our world. But the continents lack
inherent characteristics and they don’t correspond to obvious scientific
accuracy in their categorisation. They are not, for example, determined by
plate tectonics or geology. If they were, then India would more logically be
reassigned from Asia and attached to Oceania. Or, if the world was divided
according to plant and animal species, then the Sahara Desert would make a
lot more sense as a continental barrier between Europe and Africa than the
Mediterranean does. The coastline of the interconnected world of the
Mediterranean has only the tiniest interruption at the Straits of Gibraltar and
the Bosporus Strait, which are trifling in comparison to the vast distances
and dangers of the Sahara. So many of the connections, encounters, and
inter-relationships that make up our world are lost to the arbitrary
continental scheme. The continents—like the rest of the myths in this book
—conceal far more than they reveal.
From the continents to the edges of countries, borders are everywhere.
The second myth turns to the walls we build between each other and the
question why don’t border walls work? Donald Trump made wall building
along the US-Mexico border the centrepiece of his presidential runs in 2016
and 2024. However, his first attempt at the wall did not turn out to be
particularly impressive. Parts of it already lie rusting in the Sonoran Desert
and whole sections were washed away by monsoon rains in 2021. Ladders
are often found scattered alongside it, while other migrants have simply cut
holes with angle grinders. Look closer and these border walls are not as
concrete, impermeable, or permanent as they at first appear. Their
effectiveness rarely matches their grand stature and symbolism, nor do they
deliver the sense of security and separation that their architects promise.
However, this has not displaced the myth of border walls, and the belief that
they are somehow inevitable lines of separation and control.
Whether it is Trump’s border wall, Hadrian’s Wall in northern England,
or the Great Wall of China, such immense feats of engineering and effort
tend to be imagined as secure lines of defence between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Yet
this is not how they function in practice and in the shadow of great walls
diverse and vibrant border cultures can germinate. On Hadrian’s Wall,
migrants from what are now Syria and Romania once guarded Britannia’s
northern borders, while China has several times been ruled by dynasties
from beyond its Great Wall. Borders attract as much as they repel, and they
can just as readily become monuments to insecurity rather than security.
Counter to the mythology that surrounds them, borders and their walls
symbolise movement not stasis. Hadrian’s Wall was no impenetrable barrier
—it was even abandoned and reoccupied shortly after it was built—while
Trump’s wall has done little to stymie the flow of narcotics or migrants. Yet
the taller the US-Mexico border wall becomes, the more domestic fears are
heightened, and the more desperate the attempts by migrants to overcome
them. When a sense of responsibility for the lives of others stops at the
border, nobody achieves security. All we are doing is defeating our own
humanity.
Today borders are associated primarily with the nation, about which it’s
been said, long after you’re gone, ‘There’ll always be an England’, or any
other country that you feel you might belong to. At the heart of this sense of
eternity is the essence of the myth of the nation and the conviction that it is
both ancient and natural. However, creating a nation involves imagination,
selective remembering, and forgetting awkward truths. Modern nations are
kaleidoscopes of past and present migrations, the blending of cultures,
conflict, and colonisation. The further back in time any attempt to trace the
origins of the nation goes, the more elusive this essence becomes. This is
precisely why the modern nation needs to be constantly invented,
performed, read, and learnt about in the present. These endless reinventions
have become so universal that it is now almost impossible to think, act,
govern, or educate outside of the framework of the nation state.
Yet the very malleable idea of the nation means that its power and
meaning can be captured by certain groups—whether they are monarchs
imported from obscure German provinces, ex-KGB agents, or New York
property developers. They attempt to remake the nation in their image, as
though the country has always been that way. Behind these efforts often
lurk agendas that work to maintain the power, wealth, and influence of such
elites at the expense of others. But it is important to remember that for most
of human existence we managed without countries and instead placed our
loyalties and identities in other communities, religions, and institutions. Just
as empires once seemed eternal, the way the world is structured along the
lines of the nation today won’t necessarily be so in the future. In the
meantime, are we condemning ourselves to fight perennial conflicts over
territory and borders? Will we continue to marginalise and persecute
minorities that don’t fit the latest prevailing iteration of what are supposedly
‘eternal’ national values? And does our obsession with the nation stop us
collectively addressing issues like pandemics and climate change that don’t
respect international borders?
 Following the nation, the fourth myth raises another awkward question:
who does the world belong to? On political maps of the world, every corner
is shaded in a different colour for each country. However, there are obscure
places where ideas of territory, ownership, and authority are less easily
defined. In the eastern Sahara, Bir Tawil is the only habitable place on earth
not actively claimed by any country. Meanwhile, there is a religious order
in the Mediterranean that has no territory or borders but issues its own
biometric passports, stamps, coins, and licence plates, boasts an
Ambassador to the EU, official status at the UN, and diplomatic relations
with more than a hundred countries. Antarctica is also a sovereign
exception since it is a vast landmass not owned or managed by any single
country. In these oddities can be found a thread, which, once pulled, reveals
there is nothing inevitable about claiming sovereignty over a particular
territory.
Since the summer of 2016 there has also been a grand experiment
conducted into what sovereignty means in the twenty-first century. The
UK’s decision to leave the European Union was centred on a myth of
sovereignty, whereby control over borders and territory is supposedly easy
to determine and reclaim. This chapter examines the disjuncture between
such an image and a world that is far too complex to be simplified into
being either totally inside—or outside—the authority of a single state.9
While sovereignty can be made concrete in border walls and
infrastructures, it is, in the end, an abstract concept. It varies from place to
place, time to time, and even person to person. When idealised notions of
sovereignty collide with messy realities, its complexities and contradictions
become strikingly present. But in recognising that sovereignty fluctuates
over time and space, can new terrains be opened up for the formulation of a
different world order? And with sovereignty unravelling around us, what
alternatives might be out there to the current way of bordering the world?
When the taken-for-granted building blocks of our world—continents,
countries, borders, and sovereignty—are seen as the products of febrile
geographical imaginations, at least something tangible and solid like a
national economy must prove that not everything in the world is simply
made up? Unfortunately, even the way we measure economic growth and
development—through the notion of gross domestic product (GDP)—is
another invented tradition. So, why does GDP dominate the way we rank
ourselves and our countries? Are there better ways of categorising people
and places? Especially since, in certain parts of the world, some
communities of people are living healthy lives for years—even decades—
longer than their wealthier compatriots.
If economic growth alone is not a reliable indicator of wellbeing and
worth, then is the ticking upwards of GDP a sign of progress, or a
metronome of doom? And in embracing the myth of measuring growth are
we relying on a figure that tells us very little about the state of ourselves
and our world? Even though the flaws of calculating the size of economies
by GDP have long been known, this mythical figure retains a peculiar hold
over us. The chasing of economic growth cannot always deliver prosperity
and security, while it is accelerating a climate emergency and mass species
extinction as rainforests are cleared and wetlands drained. Our current
trajectory of endless economic growth, fuelled by insatiable resource
extraction, would not be the first time that human societies have
collectively and catastrophically failed to read imminent threats to
environmental conditions—but it could be the last. As climate change
accelerates and sea levels rise, this chapter leaves us wondering: if GDP and
economic growth are soaring, then why are we sinking?
The remaining myths in this book turn to three great regions of the world
that have historically been misunderstood by the West. The first of these is
Russia and the timely question: why is Russia always invading its
neighbours? While Putin may once have dreamt of uniting the ‘Russian
world’, building a Eurasian Union, and becoming the feted leader who
restored Russia to its status as a respected Great Power, his tale has become
one of infamy. The bloody invasion of Ukraine, launched in 2022, seems to
confirm a myth about Russia being a land-grabbing power, obsessed with
expansion.
This is a potent, beguiling, and seemingly self-evident idea, that Putin
has become lost to. However, rather than simply expansionism, it is
revanchism and a course of stifling repression and aggressive nationalism
that has captured Putin’s imagination as the means to assert Russia’s status
in the world. Yet this is also the same leader who once gave away his
country’s territory in a bid to enhance Russia’s standing. At a solemn
ceremony in 2008, the Chinese flag was raised on the island of Bolshoy
Ussuriysky—also known as Heixiazi Island—in the Amur River as half of
the island was peacefully transferred from Russia to China.10 Relations
between Russia and China have blossomed ever since. For Putin, this raises
a troubling question: has territorial concession been more beneficial to
Russia’s standing in the world than its revanchist claims on Ukraine? From
selling Alaska in the nineteenth century to giving away its islands to China,
Russia’s destiny has not been determined solely by expansionism. The
invasion of Ukraine may well be the inevitable outcome of the distortions
and deceits of Putinism, but it is one framed by an imagined geography
shaped by grievance, rather than simply an expansionist search for strategic
territories.
Russia has long been a rival for the West but more recently a new
challenger has emerged. In recent years, China has undertaken the grandest
building project the world has ever seen—the construction of a New Silk
Road linking China with the rest of the globe. It encompasses artificial
concrete islands rising out of the waters of the South China Sea, and lonely
trains travelling across Eurasia from coastal China to east London. All over
the globe, from Bolivia to Bermuda, and along every point of the compass,
the New Silk Road is stretching far beyond China to become the world’s
most ambitious network of infrastructure projects. While these projects may
be reshaping a new world geography, is there more to the myth of a New
Silk Road than simply a play for world domination? Do all roads inevitably
lead to China? Will such a grand initiative succeed? Or will it collapse
under its own gravity, with its infrastructure projects underutilised, even
sinking underwater?
Trying to answer these questions demands reaching beyond a reductionist
myth about China’s desire for geopolitical power. The reasons and rationale
behind this project are multiple and they are not necessarily born solely out
of a position of economic or political strength. It is less a coherent strategy
and more a programme shaped by China’s chasing of dragons—from
meeting state-mandated GDP targets to exerting sovereign control,
legitimating authoritarian rule, and bolstering national identity for a
domestic audience. These can be competing and contradictory ends that
highlight the potential risks of the imagined geographies of the New Silk
Road colliding with a physical and human geography that does not bend so
easily to its will.
Finally, the book turns to the myth of Africa as a continent that needs
saving from itself. It is a way of seeing and engaging with this region that is
still actively produced today in the West through an image of Africa as
‘functionally helpless in battling its own problems’.11 It is a perspective that
obscures a vibrant, diverse, and complicated place. The representation of
the region as requiring benevolent external intervention and charity is the
latest iteration in a long tradition of rewriting Africa’s past, present, and
future, which in earlier and less benign times, once resulted in absurdities
like the white rulers of Rhodesia (1965–79) inventing elaborate fabrications
about the origins of the magnificent site of Great Zimbabwe. This medieval
city was occupied from the eleventh century until the sixteenth century and
is at least as impressive as anything found in contemporary Europe. Under
Rhodesia’s rulers, textbooks and apparently scholarly articles were written
claiming it as the ruins of Arab traders or the traces of an earlier people who
had died out—or even a mythical lost ‘white civilisation’.12 Anybody but
the indigenous Zimbabweans who had created the capital of a great
kingdom.
Such myths have been thoroughly debunked in recent decades but the
editing and censoring of the geographies and histories of this region remain
active today. Rather than teaching a more honest account of the history of
empires there is instead a vacuum of knowledge in former colonial powers
like Britain. In this empty space, the nostalgic myth of benevolent, benign,
or civilising white rule takes root, and can endure, as a way of distracting
from the pain and shame of empire. From Cairo to Cape Town, the
traumatic events that determined the fates of millions, and which continue
to shape the world, are hardly known in many of the countries that
perpetrated them. To overcome the myths of the past demands an
engagement with this history. Otherwise, whole regions will remain
overlooked and diminished, while the phantom pains of ‘lost’ territories and
the involuntary twitches of empire will never be calmed.
The last part of this book asks the question: what comes next? The first
step is moving beyond a received set of ideas about the world and its
regions that we tend not to question. While these myths have effectively
become real for many of us, if we do not suspend an unwavering belief in
them, then we are sailing just as blindly as the ancient mariners who went
looking for fantastical creatures at the edge of the earth once did.
Most of the geographical myths in this book did not trouble our ancestors
for millennia. So why should they bind us today and determine our futures?
The implications of disavowing any of these geographical myths would
have dramatic consequences. But does our faith in them deliver harmony
and security? Are they worth living and dying for? In order to address the
global problems facing us, we must break out of the myths of geography
that we have imposed on ourselves. We need to imagine new possibilities
for managing change, and more inclusive ways of measuring progress and
building trust.
As this book’s conclusion sets out, many of the solutions are already
here, and through endeavour, courage, learning, and understanding, we can
tear down the physical and imagined walls that divide us. Unpacking a
world of myths is a disconcerting and at times counter-intuitive step into the
unknown. It is an ever more complex struggle as we adjust to new media
landscapes that are an amalgam of fact and fiction, perhaps not all that
different from the ancient maps combining scientific measurement and
survey alongside mythical creatures and cities of gold. Yet there is hope. If
these myths of geography are recognised for what they are, then we might
just be able to harness the power of our imaginations to shape brave new
worlds.
 CHAPTER ONE

THE MYTH OF THE CONTINENTS

How many continents are there?

Iceland’s Thingvellir National Park is a unique and mysterious site. Its

dramatic fissures and spectacular cliffs testify to the power of the earth to
shape landscapes. The park encompasses vast grass-covered lava fields and
ravines of towering volcanic rock that close in on the visitor. Along this rift
valley—where two tectonic plates are pulling apart—are lakes with pristine,
clear water that reflect the snow-capped peaks and high ridges that surround
them.1 Some visitors to this UNESCO world heritage site are enticed by the
promise of being able to swim between the two plates on which are located
North America and Europe. At one of the most popular dive locations,
where the narrowest point in the rift between the plates is just half a metre,
you can even touch ‘Europe’ and ‘America’ at the same time and experience
the electrifying feeling of your body linking two continents.
 HOISEUNG JUNG/SHUTTERSTOCK

However, plunging into the glacial water of Thingvallavatn, Iceland’s

largest natural lake, is not for the faint-hearted. While the waters are crystal
clear, and pure enough to drink after being filtered through layers of
volcanic rock, the water never gets more than a degree or so above
freezing.2 As your breath is taken away by the cold, underwater views of
unparalleled beauty unfurl in the icy depths. But after diving into this
continental rift—which runs through and beyond the national park, across
Iceland, and then the Atlantic—you might be left wondering whether you
are returning to Europe or America as you clamber out. Or does it depend
on which side you emerge? Or is this place—and Iceland itself—
somewhere between Europe and America? In the freezing waters of
Thingvallavatn, the neat images of the continents fracture and splinter
around you.
For most of us, the continents are instantly recognisable—their outlines
clearly demarcated by the waters that surround them. Wherever you are in
the world, you should always be able to recognise which continent you are
on. However, asking even the simplest questions about them throws up
some immediate and striking problems. How many continents are there?
Are North and South America separate continents? Is Antarctica counted as
a continent? What bits of Asia are included in Oceania? And, when there is
no sea or ocean to help us, where exactly is the border between Europe and
Asia?
Despite being so sure of the existence of the continents, it seems a little
strange that we are not able to immediately and authoritatively say how
many there are, or exactly where the borders between them lie. Yet their
shape has been imprinted on us since childhood, and has been replicated in
maps, atlases, and images ever since. It is in this simplicity, and its
repetition, that can be found the myth of continents and the idea that they
are obvious, simple, and the only way to order our world. However,
bestowing the ‘honour’ of a continent onto a geographical space is no easy
task. Rather, it is an undertaking that raises the awkward question: who
decided on the outline of the continents, and when? And what are the
consequences of carving the world up into just a few giant swathes of
territory?
In truth, the continental scheme tells us relatively little about physical
geography and rather a lot about ourselves. The continents are a way of
dividing the globe that obscure many of the subtleties of the human, natural,
and geological world. The continents are not remarkable for their
geographical uniformity, their inherent natural characteristics, or the
scientific accuracy of their categorisation. Rather the way in which they are
currently conceived highlights the power of our imaginations in insisting
that they meaningfully exist despite a wealth of evidence the contrary.
The myth of the continents has become so powerful that it has sculpted
its own reality. Today, images of the continents are everywhere, from the
schoolroom to badges on luggage, logos, and even deodorants. Yet they are
each part of a long-standing myth, the tale of which has been told by Martin
Lewis and Kären Wigen in their masterful book from which this chapter
takes its name. They outline an origin story that can be traced back to at
least the fifth century BC.3 It was the inhabitants of Ancient Greece—and
their philosophers, geographers, and mariners—who first gave the names
‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ to the land on either side of the Aegean Sea, the Black
Sea and the Sea of Azov.4 These seas were vital to the communication,
culture, and commerce of the Greek world.
However, beyond parts of their coastlines, the ancient Greeks had limited
knowledge of these vast spaces. The continental scheme was also far from
uncontested even in its own time, and some thinkers ‘evidently employed
the term Europe as a synonym for the northern (non-Greek) realm of
Thracia’, what is today the south-eastern Balkan region.5 Others placed
mainland Greece within Europe, but not the islands or the Peloponnesus
peninsula of southern Greece.6 While others still—notably the philosopher
and scientist Aristotle (384–322 BC)—argued that the Greek lands and the
characters of its people occupied a ‘middle position’ between Europe and
Asia.7 To add to this complexity, Libya—as modern-day Africa was known
in classical antiquity—was separated from Asia west of the great Nile River
delta, making it a three-continent scheme.8
For the Greek geographer and historian, Herodotus (c.484–c.425 BC), this
division of Asia and Africa along the Nile appeared as an arbitrary
boundary that severed the obvious unity of the Egyptian Delta.9 Herodotus
also noted the awkward geographical fact that Asia and Africa were not
actually separate but contiguous with each other, just as they both were with
Europe. As he put it: ‘Another thing that puzzles me is why three distinct
women’s names [Europe, Asia, and Libya] should have been given to what
is really a single landmass’.10
Despite such early objections, the three-fold continental scheme began to
shape a view of the world, which extended far beyond the classical age to
become a means of categorisation that remained unchanged for almost two
millennia. Although the continental scheme stayed largely intact, the
meaning of the continents shifted just as vast new regions had to be added.
With the rise of Christianity, they became invested with a divine
significance. The story of Noah’s successors was mapped onto the
continents and according to St Jerome (AD 347–420), the translator of the
Vulgate Bible, ‘Noah gave each of his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth,
one of the three parts of the world for their inheritance, and these were Asia,
Africa, and Europe, respectively’.11 The continental scheme was therefore
infused with a renewed spiritual legitimacy and power.
Although there were attempts by some of the geographers of Ancient
Greece and the Roman world, notably Ptolemy (AD c.100–c.170), to
faithfully draw the shape and contours of the continents, these early
attempts at geographical accuracy were later sacrificed on the altar of more
theological representations of the world.12 In medieval Europe, elements of
the geographical ideas of the Ancient Greeks merged with a religious and
spiritual geography. This cosmologically infused cartography is strikingly
expressed in the so-called ‘T-in-O’ maps. In these maps, the ‘O’ represented
the borders of the known world and, within this ‘O’, a cross symbol—the
‘T’—designated three bodies of water: the Mediterranean, the Nile, and the
Don River (formally known as the Tanais), which flows from Central
Russia into the Sea of Azov. Together, these bodies of water were meant to
separate the landmasses of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Europe was clearly
recognised by the medieval cartographers but it was usually depicted as
merely one element in the whole of creation. The emphasis was on a
universal totality under God, and it dispensed with the more accurate
depictions of the world introduced by the likes of Ptolemy.13
On the less-than-exact T-in-O maps, the points of the compass can also
be disorientating for modern-day viewers. Instead of north, it is east that is
typically located at the top of the map. East was both where the sun rose
and where medieval Christians looked for the second coming of Christ.14
The theological bias of these maps offer a reminder that nobody can ever be
quite sure which way up the spherical ball of our Earth is spinning in the
universe. And while the compass might point reliably northwards for now,
every few hundred thousand years or so, the earth’s magnetic field flips and
the north and south magnetic poles abruptly switch places. When this
happens, will all our maps be turned upside down or will we paint the other
end of the compass needle red? And, if there is nothing settled or permanent
about north, south, east, and west, what other geographical certainties might
wobble and wane?
 WIKIPEDIA

A visit to Hereford Cathedral in England to see the Mappa Mundi

(c.1300) reveals the world spun on a radically different axis. It is an
exquisite surviving T-in-O map. On the map, east is located where north is
today, placing Asia at the top, while western Europe is relegated to the
lower left-hand side. From the Mappa Mundi’s centre to its bottom runs a
long, thin Mediterranean Sea, with an exaggerated Don and Dnieper River
and a thin Aegean and Black Sea forming the left side of the ‘T’, while the
Nile and its delta complete the right side of the ‘T’.15
Navigation was not the principal aim of such maps. Instead, the
continents were the backdrop to a sacred landscape. The Mappa Mundi
preserves the way in which thirteenth-century scholars interpreted the world
both spiritually and geographically. At the centre is Jerusalem. Close
examination of the original using 3D scanning has revealed the tiny
indenture of a compass point where the city is located at the centre of the
vellum map. This mark would have been where the compass was placed by
the cartographer to draw the outer circle forming the edges of this world:
the ‘O’.16 Superimposed onto the continents are drawings of the human
world alongside prevailing myths, legends, and wonders. Real cathedrals,
cities and towns—including Paris, Rome, Petra, Damascus, and Hereford—
are placed alongside wonders of the ancient world, such as the Colossus of
Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, and references to the campaigns of
Alexander the Great. The map also includes depictions of biblical events
and places, including Noah’s Ark, the Garden of Eden, the submerged cities
of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel, and the parting of the Red
Sea. Across the map are located strange peoples, from a figure on skis in
Norway to the one-eyed king of the Ethiopians, as well as plants, animals,
birds, creatures—both real and imagined—and images from classical
mythology, including the Minotaur’s Labyrinth on Crete, the Golden
Fleece, and the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar.17
The further away from Europe you go, the more the world becomes
populated with monsters and beasts. Strange peoples and creatures such as
the headless Blemmyes, the Sciapods with their giant single leg, the cave-
dwelling Troglodytes, the dog-headed Cynocephali, the Phanesii wrapped
in their great ears, as well as an emerald-guarding griffon, and the cannibal
Essedones, all stalk the peripheries of the world. Myth and the material
coexist on a map in which ‘everything is caught up and held, past and
present, near and far’. The Mappa Mundi is a grand statement about a world
‘planned by God’,18 part of which was a striking and frightening window
into a realm beyond Europe that could not but terrorise its viewer. Imagined
geographies can linger long in the mind, and in the colonial epoch of the
following centuries, when Europeans came to increasingly encounter Asia,
Africa, and later the Americas, they went there anticipating encounters with
the kinds of monsters that stalked such maps.19
However, T-in-O maps were not the only way of rendering the world at
the time. In the middle of the twelfth century, Muhammad al-Idrisi created
one of the greatest works of medieval geography and cartography. Al-Idrisi
was born to a noble family in Ceuta, Morocco. He studied in Cordoba, and
from the age of sixteen travelled extensively around the Mediterranean,
Anatolia, the north-western coast of the Iberian Peninsula and even to
England. Around 1138, he was invited to Palermo by the Norman king of
Sicily, Roger II, who reigned between 1130–1154. The king probably
considered al-Idrisi’s noble roots useful in furthering his political objectives
in the western Mediterranean, but it was al-Idrisi’s maps that would change
how the world was seen.20

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Al-Idrisi’s masterpiece, the Tabula Rogeriana, was compiled over fifteen

years and is made up of seventy regional maps of the world with
accompanying text in Arabic.21 The Tabula Rogeriana was the remarkable
product of the accumulation of cartographic and regional knowledge of the
time, with its maps depicting the recognisable, though disproportionate,
continents of Europe and Asia, as well as the northern part of Africa. Al-
Idrisi followed the Ptolemaic cartographic school—with its origins in
Ptolemy’s Geography22—but he was also influenced by the Muslim
cartographers of the Balkhi School of Geography, whose maps are oriented
with south at the top and Mecca at the centre.23 By combining Greek and
Arab knowledge with his own first-hand observations and reports by
travellers, Al-Idrisi’s work remained the most accurate world map for the
next three centuries.24 While al-Idrisi’s world is apparently ‘upside down’ to
the prevailing view of the world today, the Tabula Rogeriana is a
revolutionary and remarkably accurate representation of the world, far
superior to contemporary depictions of the world being produced elsewhere
in Christian Europe.25
 Only as the medieval age gave way to an Age of Discovery, and the
Renaissance, was there a return in Europe to a more geographically
accurate continental scheme. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries heralded
a renewed interest in Greek and Roman learning, and the reclaiming of
Ptolemy’s inheritance, which had been lost to most of Europe for more than
a thousand years.26 With its revival though, few Renaissance scholars
questioned the basic system of the continents that had been set in antiquity,
and they simply reproduced the tripartite divisions of medieval cartography.
As such, the continental scheme only came to expand in authority and
significance as the human and physical geographies of these lands became
ever more accurately categorised and demarcated.27

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However, just as Renaissance cartographers and geographers were

drawing increasingly accurate maps of Europe, Asia, and Africa, they found
themselves suddenly confronted with a ‘cosmological shock’ of epic
proportions.28 The unexpected discovery of America brought into being a
new geographical problem. In crossing the Atlantic—initially on a quest for
Asia—a certain Genoese navigator named Christopher Columbus, along
with Portuguese, Spanish, and Florentine explorers, encountered the
inconvenience of a new world. The ‘discovery’ of the Americas shattered
the prevailing and divinely ordained structure of the world. Space urgently
needed to be found for a new continent on maps of the world.29
 This moment is captured on the extraordinary map of the German
cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller: the Universalis Cosmographia (1507).
In 2003, it became the world’s most expensive map when the United States
Library of Congress purchased it from Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg
for $10 million.30 Its value reflected the view that this map was effectively
‘America’s birth certificate’.31 On the Universalis Cosmographia,
Waldseemüller depicted—for the first time on a world map—a separate
Western Hemisphere with the Pacific as a dividing ocean. It was made in
the wake of the voyages of the Florentine explorer and navigator Amerigo
Vespucci (1454–1512), who claimed the existence of a New World as a
distinct landmass after his voyages of 1501–1502. Waldseemüller honoured
Vespucci by naming these lands ‘America’ and, in doing so, christened a
‘new’ continent and a ‘new’ world.32
By the late seventeenth century, atlases were being produced in Europe
that unambiguously showed the world divided into four main landmasses—
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.33 At the same time, cartographers were
being confounded by a tortuous problem that had troubled the ancient
Greeks: where to place the border between Europe and Asia. Advances in
geographical knowledge and cartographic techniques were posing awkward
questions about precisely where these two continents began and ended.
Knowledge from exploration and encounters to the east was presenting
these cartographers with an intractable problem: Europe and Asia were
firmly attached to each other and there was no substantial body of water to
cleanly separate them.34
For the Ancient Greeks, the lands beyond the northern coasts of the Sea
of Azov had been largely terrae incognitae. This was fortuitous for the
geographers of antiquity and their successors in the early Middle Ages, as it
enabled them to maintain a simple, threefold continental division.35 In order
to distinguish between the two continents, the small and shallow Sea of
Azov, which connects to the Black Sea through the Kerch Straight, was
exaggerated and extended northwards, leaving just a narrow isthmus of
territory to the north connecting Europe and Asia, with the Arctic Sea on the
other side. To make this ‘natural’ border between the continents complete,
this thin sliver of land was neatly transected by the Don River, which
supposedly flowed southward from its source in the Arctic and emptied into
the Sea of Azov.36 On these maps, the invention of a great northern river
and an expansive sea reflected a logic of how the world was meant to be,
rather than how it was.
It was a depiction of the world that increasingly ran counter to what was
being revealed at the eastern edge of Europe. By the sixteenth century,
geographers and cartographers were having to adjust to the idea that the
Don River did not originate anywhere near as far north as the Arctic Sea,
and that the Sea of Azov was much smaller than had been so vividly
imagined.37 However, the division between Europe and Asia—established
almost two millennia earlier and rendered sacred through Christian
interpretations—would prove stubbornly difficult to disavow.38 Resolving
this tension would involve a dramatic leap of the geographical imagination.
It demanded feverish efforts to determine a new boundary between the two
continents that would ultimately entail the creation, in the mind at least, of
impassable mountain ranges and broad ravines deemed worthy of a
continental divide.
The first attempts at remaking this division, during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, involved a variety of different river routes—
including the Volga, Kama, Northern Dvina, Pechora, and Ob rivers in
Russia—that were suggested as northern continuations of the Don. The
hope was that these waterways could maintain an acceptable and familiar
continental boundary all the way to the Arctic and, by doing so, preserve the
prevailing continental symmetry.39 However, these solutions merely
generated new problems as the rivers ended up not connecting, or at points
had feeble widths that could not match the grandeur required of a
continental divide.
It took a radical intervention from a Swedish military officer, Philipp-
Johann von Strahlenberg (1676–1747) to provide the spark of imagination
necessary to maintain the division between Europe and Asia. For
Strahlenberg, it was not a river but the Ural mountain range that could
determine the barrier between the two continents. It was a proposal that he
set out in a book and map, published in 1730, in which the Urals are
explicitly noted as the principal segment of the boundary between Europe
and Asia. At their southern terminus, he diverted the boundary to the west,
along the Samara and then Volga rivers to a point around Tsaritsyn
(Volgograd), where the Volga flows closest to the Don River. In the flat
farmland between these rivers, a few hills were conveniently inserted on his
map to cover this gap, and the continental border then followed the final
brief stretch of the Don to the Sea of Azov, and finally into the Black Sea. It
was an innovation quickly taken up by Russian intellectuals of the day,
especially those who wanted to uphold the modernising, Europeanising
agenda of Russia’s first emperor, and tsar, Peter the Great.40
During Peter’s long reign (1682–1725), the city of St Petersburg—named
in his honour and located on the Baltic Sea—was established in 1703 as a
grand window onto Europe. The land on which St Petersburg was built was
captured as a result of Russia’s victories over its northern rival, Sweden,
during the Great Northern War (1700–21), which had seen Strahlenberg
spend thirteen years in western Siberia as a prisoner.41 At the same time as
gaining territory at Sweden’s expense, Russia was also rapidly expanding
eastwards, driven by a search for valuable furs.42 By the end of the
eighteenth century, Russia stretched across Eurasia, from the Baltic Sea to
Alaska. This expansion, together with Peter’s tumultuous transformation of
Russian society towards something resembling a European state, invested
the border between Europe and Asia with an acute political salience.
After Peter’s death, one advocate for the continuation of his reforms was
the statesman and historian Vasilii Nikitich Tatishchev (1686–1750).
Tatishchev was a contemporary of Strahlenberg, even claiming that he
suggested to Strahlenberg the idea for the Urals as the boundary between
Europe and Asia, and he had consulted with the Swedish officer in Siberia,
and again after his return to Sweden.43 For Tatishchev, a continental border
at the Urals would categorically affirm the historical core of Russia as
European to the west of this border; while Siberia and the other Russian
territories—to the east—would be consigned to a colonial sphere in Asia,
which was suitable for settlement, direct rule, and exploitation.44 Though
the Urals had never before been seriously considered worthy of dividing the
continents, an imagined geography came to render them higher, wider, and
longer so that the distinction between Europe and Asia could be maintained.
It was a deception enthusiastically embraced by cartographers within and
beyond Russia.
By drawing the continental border at the Urals—and clearly
distinguishing a colonial realm in Asia—Russia could also claim to be an
equal to the empires of western Europe in Spain, France, England, the
Netherlands, and Portugal. Russia would share with these powers a distinct
homeland, which belonged within European civilization, while ruling over a
vast and non-European colonial periphery.45 This made the Ural Mountains
of immense significance for Russia, and an equivalent to the extensive
bodies of water that set apart the homelands of Western Europe’s empires
from their colonial realms in the Americas, Africa, India, and Southeast
Asia.
It was a line of continental demarcation that went on to gain near-
universal acceptance across Europe in the nineteenth century.46 However,
the scale of the Ural Mountains was never quite able to match the idea of
the continents that they were purported to divide. First among these
shortcomings was that the Urals are, in places, somewhat diminutive. They
are not the towering barrier that their designation as a continental dividing
range would suggest. In fact, they did nothing to deter Cossack soldiers
heading east in the late sixteenth century, when they portaged their
riverboats across the Urals’ crests.47
Even more problematic is that they peter out to nothing at their southerly
end. As the peaks of the Urals diminish so too does the definitive claim of
these mountains to provide a neat and natural border between Europe and
Asia. The response to this inconvenience of physical geography was the
invention of a convoluted extension to the border. In a somewhat modified
version of Strahlenberg’s route, one of the most common contortions—
endorsed by Tatishchev—has been to extend the border from the southern
edge of the Ural Mountains to run along the Ural River. This river
eventually empties into the Caspian Sea, at which point the border cuts
south-west, and returns to a land border at the Caucasus. The continental
divide continues across the Caucasus to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea,
keeping Turkey firmly in Asia, and ending up in the Mediterranean, and a
return to a division of the world more familiar to the Ancient Greeks.48
 WIKIPEDIA

The problem with this innovation is that the Ural and Caucasus Mountain
ranges remain separated by a troubling 600-mile gap, only partly filled by
the meagre Ural River. Nevertheless, the clarity of the continental divide is
left in no doubt on countless modern atlases and maps, with the boundary
so carefully traced that any lingering reservations about the Urals’
diminishing peaks and the modesty of the Ural River are obliterated. From
the mid-eighteenth century onwards, the Urals loomed—on maps at least—
as the dominating geographical feature demarcating Europe from Asia.49
For Russia though, this imagined geography also brought with it new
problems as set out by Nikolai Danilevsky (1822–85) in his magnus opus,
Russia and Europe.50 Danilevsky was an ardent supporter of pan-Slavism
and the idea of a Russian-led liberation and unification of Slavic people. In
his book, Danilevsky criticised the idea of Europe as somehow representing
the highest expression of human social, cultural, and intellectual
development.51 He denounced Europe’s misplaced sense of superiority and
the violence of empire building. As part of this polemic, he argued that, in a
geographical sense, Europe was not a continent at all but a mere peninsula
of Asia.52 To support his case, Danilevsky ridiculed the proposition of the
Urals as a major boundary:

In terms of its altitude, this mountain range is one of the most

insignificant of all, and in terms of its traversability one of the
easiest. In its middle section, around Ekaterinburg, [the Urals are so
low that] people cross them...and [have to] ask their driver: but tell
me, brother, just where are these mountains?... If the Urals make
Europe a continent, then why not consider India a continent? After
all, it is surrounded on two sides by seas, and on the third are
mountains for which the Urals are no comparison

However, Danilevsky reserved his utmost disdain for the river portion of
the continental divide, conceding that the Ural Mountains ‘at least, are
something’ but further to the south, ‘the boundary between two worlds falls
to the Ural River, which is a complete nonentity. It is a narrow little stream,
one-quarter of the width of the Neva [in St Petersburg] at its mouth, and its
banks are absolutely identical’.53

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 Danilevsky’s dismissal of such a boundary, and the relegation in this
perspective of Europe to the edge of Asia, also opened-up possibilities for
rethinking Russia as a unified geographical space. The territories east of the
Urals were now no longer a colonial sphere but could be every bit the
‘homeland and fatherland’ of Russia to the west of the Urals.54 It was a
visionary idea, which a group of Russian émigré intellectuals took to its
logical conclusion in the shape of Eurasianism in the 1920s and 1930s.
These émigrés, who had fled to Prague and Paris from the Russian Civil
War and Bolshevik rule, yearned for an alternative to the Soviet present,
alongside an aching nostalgia for an absent homeland. Among this
community was the geographer Peter Savitsky, who repeated the argument
that the Eurasian landmass is not bisected by the Urals but is unified by a
series of regions, or biomes, that run in broad, unbroken strips from the
western borderlands of Russia to Siberia, and are absolutely unaffected by
the Urals.55 For Savitsky, these biomes of characteristic flora and fauna
demonstrated the East—West unity of Eurasia and the absurdity of an
imaginary continental division. He saw Russia as Eurasia—‘a unified
geographical world unto itself’—that belonged neither to Europe nor to
Asia.56 In doing so, the territory of the Russian Empire could be maintained
by mapping its entirety onto a new continent.
However, the world was not ready for either Danilevsky or Savitsky’s
radical alternative to the established geographical order. Well before
Danilevsky’s intervention, the continental border had already been actively
supplemented by markers on the ground to correspond with those on maps
and in minds. Approximately an hour’s drive from the city of Ekaterinburg,
located just to the east of the Urals, looms a soaring column erected in the
1830s to mark the border between Europe and Asia. However, this grand
monolith does not sit atop some high peak or astride a great river but in a
quiet and secluded forest clearing. Raising the gigantic column of marble in
such a place would have been an immense feat of engineering for the day.
On the weighty, dark marble of its base is inscribed ‘Europe’ (Evropa) and
on the other side ‘Asia’ (Aziya). At its top perches the two-headed eagle of
the Russian Empire looking simultaneously east and west—to Europe and
Asia.
A little further to the south, on the motorway leading from Ekaterinburg
to Moscow is a newer, and much smaller, monument, about 12 feet tall. It
looks like a small, stylised Eiffel Tower, and on its base is also written, in
Russian, ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’. Located at a rest stop on the motorway, this
marker denoting the continental divide receives more frequent visitations by
passing motorists and tourists than the out of the way tsarist monument. At
the same stop is a memorial stone to Tatishchev, both of which have
become popular photo spots. Here, too, it is notable that there are no
significant or distinctive geographical features—no mountaintops or fast
flowing rivers—to herald the border between continents. Instead, these are
artificial markers that trace not geological and physical features in the
landscape but the lines of ink drawn across a map.

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Far from the Urals, the continents also unravel on Russia’s Pacific coast,
where in the port city of Vladivostok the sun both rises and falls in the
‘East’. Vladivostok is located on a peninsula, and the sun lingers long in the
evening sky over the Amur Bay before sinking below the distant hills on the
other side. In this beguiling scene is captured the immensity of Russia, as
just beyond those hills lies China. In Vladivostok, where many inhabitants
define themselves as part of Europe, the whole of China—and much of Asia
—stretches out to the west. Ten time zones from London, and seven from
Moscow, Vladivostok is a Europe beyond the Orient. From here the points
of the compass spin and the imagined geographies of Europe and Asia, East
and West, Orient and Occident, flicker and shimmer in the evening light.
 It is a reminder that every continental border is as much the product of
ideas and imagination as physical geography. When it comes to the Europe-
Africa border, the Mediterranean coastline is still widely understood as the
southern extremity of Europe. However, for the British geographer,
imperialist, and politician Sir Halford Mackinder (1861–1947), Europe’s
boundary should not have ended there but extended far to the south.
Mackinder viewed it in terms of a distinction between races, and, as he saw
it: ‘the southern boundary of Europe was and is the Sahara rather than the
Mediterranean’.57
It might have been a geographical categorisation born out of the racist
hierarchies of imperialism, but drawing a continental line in the Sahara is
no more arbitrary than declaring a continental divide in the Mediterranean.
Indeed, in terms of connectivity, the Mediterranean has long interwoven
peoples from its shores with each other. For the Romans it was known as
Mare Nostrum (‘Our Sea’), simultaneously capturing in this naming Roman
dominance on all sides of the Mediterranean, as well as the rich cultural
diversity that made up this Empire.58 The Mediterranean has always carried
the seeds of plants and trees as readily as boats, and it is criss-crossed by
avian migrations just as it is by human ones. It possesses an interconnected
and circular coastline with only the tiniest interruption at the Straits of
Gibraltar and the Bosporus. The histories of Malta, Crete, and Sicily—the
last of which was where al-Idrisi compiled his Tabula Rogeriana—are
testament to the Mediterranean Sea’s role in culture and commerce, as well
as control and conquest. It is a sea defined by movement and connection
rather than simply an expanse of water serving as an intercontinental
divide.59
The Roman map of the Tabula Peutingeriana (1265)—of which a
medieval copy survives—shows how connectivity and control radiated out
of the ports of the Mediterranean across a network of Roman roads that
stretched throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. On the
Tabula Peutingeriana, the Nile Delta teems with towns and villages, all
connected by the diverging and reconnecting branches of the river. This
map shows the potential of rivers and seas to unite rather than simply
divide. Providing fresh water, fertile land, food and a convenient means to
transport goods, rivers have played key roles in determining the locations of
towns, cities, and entire civilizations throughout human history.
 The fertile valleys of great rivers have been the cradles of four of the
earliest civilizations: the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia; the Nile in
Egypt; the Indus in South Asia; and the Yangtze and Yellow River in
China.60 While the Nile might have been a convenient line for the abstract
sacred geographies of the medieval T-in-O maps, any cartographic division
between Africa and Asia along this river bisects the interconnected world of
the Nile Basin and its delta. It is in part why geographers later determined
the Red Sea and the Gulf and Isthmus of Suez as a no less inconsistent
division between Africa and Asia.61
Attempts at demarcating the borders of newly ‘discovered’ continents
have proved no less contentious. Cartographers only detached Oceania from
Asia as recently as the early twentieth century, and it was as late as the
1950s that American geographers came to insist that North and South
America deserved separate designations. Antarctica—despite its lack of
permanent human habitation—was also added to the list of continents
around the same time, leading to a sudden and dramatic reconfiguration of
the fourfold categorisation into a seven-continent scheme.62
There is a flimsy logic to some of these new additions. For example,
when it comes to Oceania and Asia, the island of New Guinea is typically
cut in half along a north-south dividing line. The continental scheme
follows the political boundary between Indonesia, ceded to Asia, and
independent Papua New Guinea, a constituent of Oceania. It is an obvious
reflection of a political border rather than any discernible feature of human
or physical geography.63 The North American continent also has a no less
arbitrary division from the South, which by some accounts includes Panama
and all points north—the artificial line of the Panama Canal even providing
a particularly neat and convenient demarcation for the last hundred years or
so. However, in common parlance, Central America is often excluded from
North America and sometimes Mexico is removed as well. For most
Spanish-speaking peoples of the Western Hemisphere, the term Norte
America is reserved for the United States and Canada.64 In this sense, the
border is again revealing for being a cultural distinction rather than a
geographical one.
The carefully drawn borders of the continents on our maps and atlases
remain oblivious to such contentions, despite being often at odds with
nature. In terms of fauna and biogeography, northern Africa, for example, is
classified as part of the Palearctic region, which includes northern Eurasia,
encompassing all of Europe and north Asia but distinct from sub-Saharan
Africa and southern Arabia.65 In the Americas, after the volcanic Isthmus of
Panama rose from the sea floor and bridged the previously separated
landmasses around 3 million years ago, the Great American Faunal
Interchange resulted in the animal communities of North and South
America melding together.66 Floral realms also do not fit neatly into the
boundaries drawn by the continental scheme.67 As Savitsky charted, the
continuity of biomes stretching across Eurasia suggest continuity rather
than division. And, if the continents were categorised according to the
distinctiveness of the natural world, then Oceania could make the grade as a
unique continent but so too would Madagascar, due to its distinct fauna in
comparison to continental Africa.68
With the shape of the continents as they are currently conceived elusive
in the natural world, then perhaps geology and plate tectonics can be a surer
guide for confirming the continental scheme? It seems promising that in
geology, ‘continental’ granitic crust is less dense and generally lies higher
on the Earth’s surface, relative to the more dense basaltic crust of the ocean
floors.69 However, by this definition, Madagascar would again be
designated a continent as it is separated from Africa by oceanic crust, while
New Zealand would also need to be redrawn as a continent outside of
Oceania.70 Even more problematic for the prevailing continental scheme is
that North America and Eurasia are connected by an expansive, though
submerged shelf of ‘continental’ rock under the Bering Sea in the North
Pacific.71 As for the Indian ‘sub-continent’, this should be re-designated
geologically as part of Oceania as it is tectonically linked to distant
Australia rather than Asia. The modern countries of Australia and India both
lie on the same ‘Indo-Australian’ piece of lithic crust. Similarly, if plate
tectonics were a marker of continents, then not only should Iceland be split
down the middle but also Africa, which is in the slow process of breaking
apart along the Great Rift Valley.72
When it comes to a geological sense of time, the continents as we know
them are also ephemeral. Within the next 250 million years or so the
continents will all merge into one supercontinent. What is understood today
as the Americas will collide with Asia, while Africa will more firmly weld
itself to Eurasia. The continental distinctions of the present will be
annihilated to form a new supercontinent: Pangaea Ultima.73 It completes a
cycle that started with the original Pangaea, a world-island that incorporated
almost all the landmasses on earth and was surrounded by a global ocean
until it began to break apart about 200 million years ago.74
Initially, the implications of the existence of Pangaea, and the process of
continental drift, were too radical for some. In 1912, a German
meteorologist and geophysicist, Alfred Wegener, proposed that the
continents of the earth were mobile and that they were once united as this
gigantic supercontinent. However, in his day, Wegener’s theory was widely
rejected, and especially vehemently so in the United States, where his ideas
were dismissed up to the 1960s.75 Despite his ideas gaining support and
evidence from the 1920s in the southern hemisphere, notably from the
South African geologist, Alexander du Toit, the resistance of geologists and
earth scientists in the United States, as well as some in Britain, meant that
the acceptance of the idea of continental drift and Pangaea were delayed for
decades.76

WIKIPEDIA

The reluctance to accept alternatives, even when thinking about the

distant geological past, also hints at a darker side of the ordering of the
world according to the continents. In the prevailing scheme, the culture and
civilization of Europe has tended to be contrasted by Europeans favourably
with the other continents. This has been in part achieved by vastly
exaggerating Europe’s size on maps ever since the Flemish geographer and
cartographer, Gerardus Mercator, published his projections of the earth
from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. Mercator and his followers
flattened out the planet’s curves onto two-dimensional rectangles by
focusing on the northern hemisphere and breaking the map in the Pacific.
This placed an enlarged Europe at the top and centre of the world. It was a
cartographic pre-eminence that neatly coincided with the European voyages
of discovery and the introduction of printing technologies, which would
allow this message to be disseminated on atlases and maps across Europe,
and then the world.77
However, as Danilevsky and Savitsky once argued, in the absence of its
clear geological, natural, or scientific distinctiveness, Europe does not fit
quite so easily into the continental scheme. The only way to bestow it with
a continental status has been to settle on a civilisational definition. It is a
contradiction highlighted in the very first line of the entry for ‘Europe’ in
the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910–11), which
conceded that, in geography, it has become commonplace ‘to describe
Europe as a mere peninsula of Asia, but...the individuality of the continent
is established in the clearest manner by the course of history and the
resultant distribution of population.’78 By 1992, in the fifteenth edition of
Britannica, the encyclopaedia admitted that Europe formed an anomalous
landmass compared to the other continents but it nonetheless explicitly
deemed Europe’s civilisation distinctive enough to warrant extended
consideration as a continent.79 It is through such logic, honed in an age of
empire, that something altogether more troubling is smuggled in. For if
there is something special and, by implication, superior about Europe’s
civilisation, then where does this leave the other continents?80
In many of the Renaissance-era maps of Europe, including those of
Mercator, the internal borders of countries were often not depicted within
the continents. These vast spaces needed filling with content and on maps—
and in works of art—the continents became personified, with an image of
Europe often portrayed as a finely dressed woman. Some maps even drew
her in the shape of a queen: an image reproducing and reinforcing a sense
of Europe’s eminence, civilisation, power, and superiority over her ‘sister’
continents, which were depicted bringing Europe tribute on bended knee.
On the decorated texts accompanying these maps, America, Asia, and
Africa were also often represented by half-naked women. Such depictions
were enticing, exotic, erotic, savage, and they were repeated across artistic
forms, including prints, engravings, paintings, theatre, architecture, and
sculpture.81
This cartographic aggrandisement reflected and indeed shaped the
dominance and control that European empires were beginning to exert on
the world from the sixteenth century. The rise of empires—with their
attendant cartographers and explorers—crowned Europe’s status as the first
among equals in the continental scheme. Locating Europe on top of the
world also suited a sinister hierarchical scheme of a ‘civilised/developed’
North located above an ‘uncivilised/undeveloped’ South that was ripe for
colonisation and exploitation.82 As printing presses whirred, this vision
spread at speed across the globe, reproducing the idea that European
superiority was the natural order of things.
Only in comparison with other continents could a European Self—
supposedly measured, rational, and progressive—be defined as the binary
opposite of these Others.83 In Asia, the richness and diversity of the
landscapes and peoples of a vast and heterogeneous terrain stretching from
Afghanistan to Japan became reduced to the crude composite of simply
being culturally defined as ‘Asian’.84 Just as the semi-nomadic Maasai of
Kenya and northern Tanzania became as ‘African’ as the millennia old
sedentary Nile cultures of modern Egypt and Sudan. The invention of the
continents brought a demand for them to be filled with images of what an
imagined ‘Oriental’ or ‘African’ culture must be like but where no such
singular culture existed.85
The continental scheme endures today as a political and cultural
construct maintained—often unconsciously—through the work of teachers,
writers, artists, politicians and journalists, just as much as it is by
geographers and cartographers. The endless repetition of the continental
scheme has become a way of seeing the world as natural and immutable no
matter how ill-suited it is to the human and physical terrain that their
borders supposedly follow. Ultimately, the image of the continents came
first, and only later were they followed by a search for the physical and
geographical evidence to prove their existence and distinctiveness. Over the
centuries, the continents have become so ingrained in our imagination that
it is almost a shock to realise that their borders could have been drawn
almost anywhere. For it is only on maps and atlases that the continents
appear as self-evident and timeless.
 This scheme is not benign or neutral: it advances faulty assumptions
about the unity of immense geographical spaces and singular notions of the
people who inhabit them. Seen in this light, the continents are clumsy and
unsophisticated demarcations of a world carved asunder. The continents
might appear to be commonsensical and logical but this way of ordering the
world is the product of an overactive geographical imagination that
disavows physical geography, while obscuring the interconnected, complex,
and messy reality of our world.
Such geographical imaginations are still feverishly at work. In Russia,
Kazakhstan, China, and Turkey, for example, there has been an increasing
interest in different, and even competing, versions of the idea of Eurasia.
Each places its own unique emphasis on what Eurasia means for the
country’s identity, its place in the world and—in the case of China and
Russia—the role that these countries play at the centre of an alternative
continental scheme with Europe on its periphery. Some commentators have
noted that the imaginings of such a Eurasian supercontinent coincide with a
geopolitical shift of power from Atlantic communities to a new Eurasian
heartland.86
However, no matter how these giant meta-spaces are configured, the map
of the continents always precedes the territory. Any continental scheme
inevitably involves reducing the richness and diversity of the human and
natural world to four—or five, or six, or seven—arbitrary and artificial
chunks of space that must then be delineated and filled with content. As it
stands, the continents—like the rest of the myths in this book—conceal far
more than they reveal. Only by removing the continental scales from our
eyes can we hope to find new possibilities to see the world and each other.
Until that happens, so many of the rich connections and encounters that
define our world will remain lost to the continents.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE MYTH OF THE BORDER

Why walls don’t work 1

WIKIPEDIA

Ambos Nogales lies on the border between Arizona in the United States and
Sonora in Mexico. The Ambos of the town’s name is Spanish for ‘both’; the
Nogales refers to the walnut trees that were once abundant in the mountain
pass in which the two cities are located.2 Today, ‘Both Nogales’ is
dominated by a border wall running through it. Around two storeys high
and made from rust-brown steel, the wall is topped by razor wire that
gleams in the sun. Yet until 1918, the border was simply a wide avenue
called International Street across which anyone could freely cross.3 Along a
line that was once a symbol of connectivity, now runs a definitive symbol
of separation.
 A visit to the wall can be a distressing experience. On my own visit, one
bright morning in April 2023, a ripped jacket hung on the razor wire, just
yards from the main border crossing, left behind as someone had apparently
fallen or jumped trying to get over. A drop from such a height could easily
have involved fractures and trauma. A little further along—but always in
view of the watchtowers and CCTV cameras of the US Border Patrol—
groups of families gathered on either side of the barrier. Those on the
Mexican side were most likely deportees from the United States, and
originally from countries south of Mexico. Reaching through the gaps in the
wall was now the closest they could get to their loved ones on the US side
of the line. Just yards away, at the official checkpoint, a US border guard
was passing dollar bills through the wall to enterprising local children on
the Mexican side who returned with popsicles to keep them cool as they
determined who could and could not enter the US.
This story of power and despair is played out all along an immense
border that stretches 1,951 miles and has 700 miles of non-contiguous
fences, which are still being added to by the Biden administration.4 The
stark image of this divisive wall has spread from Ambos Nogales across the
world. Although the section here predated the presidency of Donald Trump,
who placed the southern US border at the heart of his campaign to become
the 45th president, it took on a heightened form with the addition of razor
wire during his presidency.5 At his campaign launch in 2015, Trump talked
up the idea of a ‘great wall’ along the US-Mexico border, which would be
‘impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful’6. His administration
subsequently spent around $15 billion on realising the ‘Trump Wall’,
sections of which he has often visited.7 Around 450 miles of wall were built
with this money,8 and a small fraction of these funds were spent on adding
the razor wire to the Ambos Nogales section.
But despite these efforts, by the end of 2021, piles of heavy steel slats
once destined for the wall lay rusting throughout the south-western
borderlands, while whole sections were washed away by monsoon rains in
the same year.9 Behind the dramatic rhetoric and bombastic symbolism that
surrounds them, so-called great walls are not always what they seem. The
sense of security and separation they promise is never complete. As this
chapter explores, the myth of borders and border walls is the belief that
these dividing lines are somehow inevitable lines of separation and control.
 All architects of borders and their walls are confronted by the fact that it
is impossible to be sure you have absolutely sealed off one discrete
community or territory from another. Even the US-Mexico border wall does
not run exactly along the official international boundary. In places, a thin
sliver of the US runs on the Mexican side of the wall. If you touch the wall
here from the Mexican side, you are already ‘in’ the United States. Any
border involves compromises in deciding where to route it, determining
who or what is inside or outside and who will be allowed to pass through.
And while border walls are often built in the name of protection and
security, they can just as easily end up achieving the opposite—fomenting
fear and insecurity between ‘us’ on one side and ‘them’ on the other.
The drawing of borders is often accompanied by immense violence and
ethnic strife. A quarter of a century ago, nationalist politicians and military
commanders attempted to reorganise Bosnia and Herzegovina along
homogenous ethnic lines. In their efforts to divide mixed territories into
exclusively Serb, Croat, and Bosnian Muslim components, the Bosnian War
cost over 100,000 lives.10 The Partition of British India into the Union of
India and the Dominion of Pakistan in 1947 created between ten and twelve
million refugees. This displacement was accompanied by large-scale
violence between Hindus and Muslims with estimates suggesting that
between several hundred thousand and two million lives were lost.11
The Korean peninsula was divided in August 1945. As the Soviet Union
entered the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War, there was deemed an
urgent geopolitical need in the United States to determine a border between
a Soviet North and a US-backed South. Two US Army colonels were
assigned with identifying a line of control that both superpowers could
agree on. The colonels hastily plucked a National Geographic map from the
shelf and selected the 38th parallel of latitude as the dividing line between
what would become North and South Korea.12
As one of these colonels, Dean Rusk—who would later become US
Secretary of State under John F. Kennedy—recalled in his biography, the
38th parallel ‘made no sense economically or geographically’.13 The lines
on the map preceded the territory, not the other way around.14 This new
border determined that the Korean peninsula—which over the best part of a
millennium had developed as a state with a geographic continuity and
cultural unity—would be severed in two. For American military planners,
the priority was that Seoul was below the 38th parallel and under US
control. Rusk’s commanders accepted the proposal with little haggling and
—to his surprise—so did the Soviets. Needless to say, no locals or experts
on Korea were consulted.15

JOSHUA DAVENPORT/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Though this border shifted several times during the Korean War (1950–
53), in which millions of lives were lost, it ended up in almost the same
position. The Military Demarcation Line, and its associated Demilitarised
Zone, were set along the frontlines where fighting had ended and are not far
from the border put forward by Rusk and his colleagues. Today, it is one of
the most fortified lines in the world, with snaking lines of infrastructure,
including walls, watchtowers, fences, minefields, ditches, and turrets,
bisecting what was once a unified state.
At the other end of the border fortification spectrum, the binational
village of Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau is famous for being twenty-two
enclaves making up Baarle-Hertog, governed by Belgian laws, which are
surrounded, and fractured, by Dutch Baarle-Nassau. The village is usually
characterised by seamless border crossing but at certain moments during the
Covid pandemic, nonessential businesses in Baarle-Hertog were told to
close while shops in the Netherlands remained open. In the village,
borderlines frequently run through buildings, which led to the surreal
situation of one clothing store marking the previously unseen international
border with warning tape to exclude customers from a section of the shop
where Belgian rules applied.16 With certain ranges of clothing now out of
reach, an invisible border suddenly became visible.
Borderlines also don’t have to be international boundaries to have
immense significance. The Mason-Dixon line was surveyed between 1763
and 1767 in order to resolve a border dispute involving the American states
of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. It later assumed a much more
sinister role when it became the border between the free states of the north
and the slave states to the south. It was a line that once crossed meant
freedom and life in one direction, and slavery and potential death in the
other—a story played out in the Oscar-winning film Twelve Years a Slave,
based on the memoir by Solomon Northup.
As these cases suggest, borders can be arbitrary with unpredictable
consequences. They can appear and disappear, and the world is full of
reminders that even the most imposing walls eventually crumble and crack.
Despite the efforts expended to stop them, humans stubbornly keep on
moving. This mirrors a natural world that is defined by movement: from the
ever-churning oceans to the slow progress and retreat of glaciers that have
sculpted the planet’s most dramatic landscapes, to the plate tectonics that
continue to shape the Himalayas, the Alps and the Great Rift Valley inch by
inch, year by year. Human and physical geography charts relentless change
and movement,17 against which static borders and their walls do not stand a
chance. Once imposing fortifications eventually become ruins. Centuries
from now, abandoned fragments of the US-Mexico Wall will jut out of the
Sonoran Desert, while the sections of walls that cut across Belfast and
Jerusalem will be museum pieces.
The world’s current obsession with linear borders is also a strikingly
recent one. Scholars, such as the historian Jordan Branch, have traced the
origins of states with exclusive and homogenous territory, demarcated by
neatly drawn geographic boundaries, to the sixteenth-century and claims on
the New World by European colonial powers. It was only after encountering
America in the 1490s, which coincided with techniques of mapping newly
rediscovered from Ptolemy, and the now-familiar system of latitude and
longitude, that a linear division of the world became possible.18 The
drawing of arbitrary lines to delineate ownership of territory in the New
World was typified by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and
Portugal, in which Spain was allotted all newly discovered territories west
of a line drawn in the Atlantic Ocean, and Portugal those to the east: ‘For
the first time in history an abstract geometric system had been used to
define a vast—global—area of control’.19 It was a technique that came to
characterise a need to divide, claim, and assign the spaces of the New World
—later exemplified in the straight lines of the external and internal borders
of the United States—which were empty of claims of authority over
territory familiar to Europeans.20
In Europe, at this time, such political claims over territory were still
based on places—towns, cities, and castles—and on persons—such as
monarchs with a divine right to rule. Territory was understood as ‘a series
of places, with authority radiating outward from centers rather than inward
from linear boundaries.’21 Only in the late eighteenth century did these
claims shift to territorial spaces that were bound by clearly demarcated
borders. This became widespread after the upheavals of the revolutionary
era and Napoleon’s conquest and rule, which represented a ‘vast experiment
with colonialism within Europe’.22 The series of negotiations and treaties
ending the Napoleonic wars came to divide authority over territory not by
places or persons but exclusively by boundaries. Yet this was only after the
usefulness and legitimacy of linearly bounded claims had been made clear
by centuries of colonial practice outside of Europe.23
Despite this, the notion of linear borders being a relatively recent
phenomenon, and an import from the Americas to Europe, is largely
forgotten. Instead, our bordered way of seeing the world in the present has
become so entrenched that it can colour how borders are imagined in the
past. Take the case of Hadrian’s Wall. At almost two thousand years old, its
grey stone, ditches, and embankments still remain a major feature of the
landscape of northern England. All along its route, the wall attracts—as it
has always done—tourists as well as the tendrils of mist that often envelop
the hills and crags of Cumbria and Northumberland.24
The Wall is the largest Roman artefact anywhere. In places it was once
16 feet high and ran a total of 73 miles from east to west, coast to coast,
with assorted turrets, milecastles and forts spaced at regular intervals along
its course.25 The Wall was the centrepiece of the efforts of Emperor Hadrian
(who ruled between AD 117–138) to define the bounds of the Roman
Empire. An intricate and imposing military complex, it allowed Hadrian to
declare himself one of Rome’s greatest leaders by appearing to definitively
claim the northern frontier through the construction of the most impressive
structure in the Roman world. Hadrian, who likely visited the wall in person
in AD 122, carved his name across the edge of empire and into history.26
Over the centuries since, Hadrian’s Wall has served multiple roles and
purposes, some of these unlikely to be ever fully known. However,
archaeologists have become increasingly aware that the Wall was not
simply a line between civilisation and barbarians. Far from being a remote
outpost of Rome, it found itself at the centre of the world for empires,
nations, and local inhabitants.27 Indicative of its changing meaning, the
Wall has only recently become known as Hadrian’s Wall. For a long while,
Emperor Septimius Severus was considered to be its builder—and much of
the Wall was constructed and developed during his later reign (AD 193–
211).28 Between the reigns of Hadrian and Severus, the Wall was also
largely abandoned as the Roman army moved north and started construction
of the Antonine Wall across the Scottish Lowlands, around AD 142, under
the aegis of Emperor Antoninus Pius (AD 138–161).29 However, this more
northerly wall appears to have been vacated before the end of his reign,
with Hadrian’s Wall restored and refurbished.30
Though there is little consensus among experts to suggest that the Wall
served solely as a military barrier during the Roman period, the idea of it as
a linear and impenetrable border has tended to eclipse all other accounts. It
was a legend retold in A Game of Thrones—the first novel in the A Song of
Ice and Fire series. Its author George R. R. Martin traced the genesis for
these books, which are centred on a great northern wall, back to a visit to
Hadrian’s Wall in 1981. As he has put it: ‘For the Romans at that time, this
was the end of civilization; it was the end of the world.’ In what could
almost be a passage from A Game of Thrones, the Byzantine historian
Procopius (AD c.500–565), wrote of the two worlds that Hadrian’s Wall
supposedly divided:

to the east [south] of the wall there is a salubrious air, changing with
the seasons, being moderately warm in summer and cool in winter.
But on the west [north] side everything is the reverse of this, so that
it is actually impossible for a man to survive there even a half-hour,
but countless snakes and serpents and every other kind of wild
creature occupy this area as their own. And, strangest of all, the
inhabitants say that if a man crosses the wall and goes to the other
 side, he dies straightway. They say, then, that the souls of men who
die are always conveyed to this place.31

The fear of what lay beyond the wall has tended to capture geographical
imaginations but—as one modern historian of Hadrian’s Wall has noted—
the story about it ‘being defended from its ramparts doesn’t come from any
Roman text that survives’32 This version of the Wall was a tale that largely
emerged from the sixth-century accounts of the Christian monk, Gildas (AD
c.500–570), who was born in what is now Scotland, and was writing more
than a century after the Wall had been abandoned by the Roman Army in
410 BC. Gildas’s accounts, in turn, became a source for the writings of the
Benedictine monk Saint Bede (AD 672/3–735), who in the eighth-century
spun a tale of the Wall that attested to its role in direct armed defence
against northern marauders.33 In these accounts of Gildas and Bede, the
Wall was interpreted as having been built in the final phase of Roman rule
to protect lowland Britons from attacks from the north, by Scots, Irish, and
Picts.34
However, the Wall’s role in armed, static defence is no longer accepted
by many archaeologists.35 There is limited evidence to suggest that the
structure was directly defensive, with no clear archaeological record that
Roman soldiers could even patrol, and pass, along the top of it.36
Milecastles and turrets were not placed according to the advantage of high
ground or accessibility but at regular, measured intervals. Such an
attachment to symmetry does not create the impression of a Wall that was
primarily there to be defended by the Roman army.37 The Wall, as a
defensive barrier, also didn’t prevent the Picts from overcoming it in AD
180; and in the late third century, they even advanced beyond York, far to
the south; and again in AD 367–8, when the Picts, Scotti, and Attacotti
invaded Roman Britain.38
The Roman frontier was not strictly linear, nor merely defensive, but
offered a launching off point for further expansion and military control with
an outer zone of surveillance and fortification beyond the wall.39 It could
have been highly effective in terms of allowing a Roman force to gather
unseen by enemies to the north, and then launching a surprise attack in
open-country beyond the Wall, where the advantage of the Roman army and
its auxiliaries were best served.40 The gateways could also allow supervised
entry and exit—where weapons and contraband could be confiscated. The
Wall’s presence itself divided indigenous groups who might resist Rome.
For example, the Brigantians, to the south, were firmly within a Roman
province, from which they could not easily escape, and were separated from
their allies to the north. As for those tribes beyond the Wall, good behaviour
could see them receive subsidies and benefits from being permitted to trade
at Wall markets, with any resistance inviting retribution from the forces
concentrated there.41
What defensive role it may have served was as part of a layered system
of defence against nomadic tribes. Enemy forces might even have crossed
the line virtually unopposed but would then find themselves in a peripheral
combat zone.42 Even if the Wall couldn’t prevent such breaches, its
presence would have helped to deter raids for livestock and slaves. The
Wall, and its deep vallum ditch to the south, would were far more
challenging to negotiate when returning with captured people and animals,
just as the vallum could prevent any untamed groups to the south
attempting to make off with the livestock and stores of the force garrison.43
By the early third century AD, four advance forts—two on each side of the
country—were also in operation north of the wall.44 At Birdoswald Fort,
situated on the line of the fort, close to present-day Carlisle, geophysical
surveys have shown that it wasn’t only home to the military but part of a
thriving community. Uniquely, some buildings around the fort here have
been found north of the Wall, suggesting that the residents—who were
likely craftspeople, traders, veterans, and the families of the serving soldiers
—were not afraid of ‘what or who lay to the north.’45
Far from sealing off the north and south, the Wall was also punctured by
openings across its span. The milecastle gates—all seventy-six of them—
indicate a barrier through which movement was central to its function.
During the Roman period, some of these regular gateways were blocked, as
well as widened and added to, suggesting that movement, or at least the
control of movement, fluctuated in significance over time.46 The Wall could
have acted as a way of both observing the landscape and controlling,
documenting, and monitoring the movement of people, extracting the
payment of taxes and customs, while regulating the goods and livestock
crossing the frontier zone.47 Historically, empires have tended to be open to
expansion in search of tax revenue, with places of entry—such as gates in
walls—a convenient point at which customs and tax collection was
possible, including from those outside direct imperial control.48 However,
rather than this more nuanced account, the narrative of the Wall as a
redoubtable and static line of defence was the version enthusiastically taken
up in England from the late sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, when this
northern borderland came to define a turbulent and violent relationship with
Scotland.49

IAN DAGNALL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

In Roman times, sustaining the Wall’s construction, function, and

maintenance would have demanded attracting a cosmopolitan community
of citizens, soldiers, and slaves from across the Roman Empire. Over time,
these immigrants became entwined with the lives of indigenous Iron Age
groups. A vibrant, diverse, and mutually dependent society emerged, with
people of all social strata attracted to the Wall.50 As one academic put it in a
catalogue associated with an exhibition on Rome’s northern frontier in
2009, rather than the Wall being garrisoned ‘by toga-draped Latin
speakers’, this was a complex that relied on ‘a polyglot mix of recruits’.51 It
also became home to a plurality of religions and beliefs as new ways of
thinking and believing were shaped in its shadow.52
Alongside the legionaries of the Roman army, the Wall hosted auxiliary
army units recruited from every corner of the empire, including Tungrians,
raised in what is now Belgium, archers from Hama in Syria, ‘Aurelian
Moors’, who were named after Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180) and
from ‘Mauretania’ (present day Morocco and Algeria),53 Asturians from
Spain, Dacians from Romania and Moldova, and Frisians from the northern
Netherlands. These populations left behind coins, cooking pottery, seeds,
fabrics, gravestones, inscriptions, altars, and texts.54 African vaulting tubes
have been discovered in the excavations of buildings,55 and from the
Mediterranean came urns of garum—a fermented fish sauce—imported by
those longing for a taste of home. Writing materials and even luxuries, such
as a fragment of glass from a commemorative charioteer cup, likely made in
Rome, have also been found.56
The lasting legacy of Hadrian’s Wall is not one of separation but of
encounter, movement and meeting—a site where values, technologies, and
knowledge were exchanged. It was a magnet for the empire’s finest
engineers and architects, whose skills and craftsmanship are still visible in
northern England today.57 A military and a cultural complex, the Wall
shaped societies on either side of it, regulating the flow of movement
between these interconnected worlds. However, when the bustling
communities around the Wall were confronted with the Roman army’s
abandonment of Britain in AD 410, the relic left behind became shrouded in
mystery and myths of division and difference.58
While some of the Wall’s secrets may never be given up, it cannot be
explained away by the defensive caricature outlined by Gildas and Bede,
nor should it be seen through the prism of the Wall on the US-Mexico
border, which is the result of the modern myths of sovereignty and the
nation discussed in the following chapters. The true legacy of Hadrian’s
Wall is not of impenetrability but a reminder that borders are crucibles of
new identities. While present-day migrants and refugees from Eastern
Europe and the Middle East have found themselves demonised by
politicians and sections of the media in the UK, it was the ancestors of these
very same people who once patrolled Britannia’s borders. The Wall
stimulated the exchange of knowledge and cultural values between
communities, altered settlement patterns across the British Isles, changed
architecture and landscape design, and left behind a shared heritage that is
still conspicuous today.59
Hadrian’s Wall is not the only great wall to have been captured by our
geographical imaginations. From the first instances of the joining together
of non-contiguous earthwork fortifications in northern China around 220
BC, myths surrounding the Great Wall of China have grown to out-of-this-
world proportions. The most persistent is that it is the only man-made
object that can be seen with the naked eye from space. Despite being
patently impossible, this claim is a reminder that the wall’s image has long
eclipsed its material reality.60 Even on the oldest printed map in the world
—a Southern Song map of northwestern China (1155)—there is a wall
depicted stretching across China’s northern frontiers. However, this was not
a representation of a real structure in existence at the time of the map’s
creation but the trace of a cultural memory of the no longer extant Wall of
the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC). The map provides an early indicator of the
enduring appeal of an idealised vision of the Wall as intact and spanning
vast tracts of time and space that far exceeds its actual structure.61
The prevailing image of the Wall rests on the illusion of historical and
geographical continuity from it being one of the ‘Qin dynasty’s marquee
accomplishments’ to the spectacular brick and stone constructions built
during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), more than a millennium and a half
later.62 These immense and impressive Ming sections, strung across the
peaks and ridges north of Beijing, are the primary destinations for today’s
eager tourist. However, these run along a different course from the Qin
variant, the origins of which are found in a number of much smaller walls.
Many of these were built pre-Qin dynasty by emerging states in the Central
Plains, to defend themselves not just from northern tribes but from each
other, while some of the northern tribes even built defensive walls of their
own.63
 WIKIPEDIA

After the fall of the Han Dynasty (202 BC–AD 220), most of China’s
subsequent rulers did not take much interest in border walls. The Tang
Dynasty (AD 618–907), for example, had strong ethnic and cultural roots in
the northern steppe and, rather than build defensive walls to protect itself
from that area, sought to expand influence into Central Asia. While for the
Liao (907–1125) and Jin dynasties (1115–1234)—during which China was
ruled by peoples from the northern steppe—the border walls that were built
were significantly farther north than those built during other periods, and
were as much a statement about aligning themselves with a wall-building
tradition associated with the Chinese interior. Later, the Mongols, who
already controlled the entire Central Asia region, had little need for
defensive walls from foreign invaders while they ruled as China’s Great
Yuan Dynasty between 1271–1368.64
 From the Han to the Ming period, those dynasties that engaged with wall-
building were interspersed with lengthy periods during which little or no
wall construction took place. The vision of the Wall stretching across an
unbroken geographical and historical span dating back to the Qin wall is the
product of a long tradition of speculation.65 The Great Wall, like Hadrian’s
Wall, served as a destination in itself where local tribes traded—and even
colluded—with the Chinese troops based along the border, exchanging the
likes of horses from the northern steppe for metals, silk, food, cotton, and
other luxuries.66 By 1571, the Ming Emperor, Longqing, finally permitted
the establishment of official trading posts on the border, formalising it as a
place of meeting and connection.67
In 1644, the Qing dynasty was established by the Manchu, whose
historical homeland was in Manchuria, north of the Wall. The Qing became
the last of China’s imperial dynasties, ruling until 1912. Yet, despite its
previous strategic function becoming redundant after the Manchus
overthrew the Ming, the Manchus themselves began almost immediately to
construct an extension of the Wall from its traditional eastern terminus at
Shanhaiguan, where the Wall meets the Yellow Sea, eastwards, along the
borders of Manchuria. This Qing barrier was constructed largely of earthen
levees and densely arranged willow trees, which overlapped in some
sections with existing eastern sections of the Ming Wall. Here the political
reversal of the Wall’s role was strikingly apparent—a wall once built for the
ethnic Han during the Ming dynasty to keep the Manchus out of China, now
served to restrict Han—as well as Mongol—entry into Manchuria.68 At the
other extremity of the Wall, in northwestern China, its function had long
possessed a dual role. During the Han Dynasty, a complex of walls, forts,
and barriers were built along the Hexi Corridor to secure the frontier region
and to guarantee the safety and openness of trade activities and cultural
communication along the ancient Silk Road—a network of trade routes
connecting China with South Asia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, and
beyond to East Africa and Southern Europe.69 The Wall served a role to
help exchange flourish, rather than restricting it.
Today, the remaining sections of the Great Wall have been granted
UNESCO World Heritage status and they retain a powerful symbolism for
the unity and power of modern China. For the country’s present-day rulers,
wall-building is also far from over, though today’s walls are not just made
from stone and mortar but also exist in cyberspace. What has been dubbed
China’s ‘Great Firewall’ is designed to stem the inflow of ideas and
information perceived to threaten China’s ruling Communist Party before
they can circulate and spread among the people behind the Wall.
Until just a few years ago, China’s internet was a forum for debate and
relatively unmediated exchange. Bloggers could advocate social and
political reforms, some amassing tens of millions of online followers. The
web brought together communities who might hold the authorities to
account by exposing corruption, circulating virtual petitions, and mobilising
protests.70 However, since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the
Chinese internet has become an increasingly closed world. Under Xi, there
has been huge investment in technology to monitor and censor such
content. New laws on acceptable content have been introduced, along with
the widespread punishment of those who defy them. As with all great walls,
building and maintaining them demands vast resources. Much of this work
has been labour intensive, even including sifting manually through the
millions of messages posted on social media and microblogging sites, and
censoring content the government doesn’t approve of.71
The firewall may help to shield China’s rulers from criticism but it also
constrains the dynamic exchange of new ideas. Limits on openness put at
risk innovation and the creation of original intellectual property. Chinese
companies—in which Communist Party committees and officials are
installed—have grown to monopolise the rapidly growing domestic online
economy, creating an environment that can stifle entrepreneurship.72 The
disadvantages of this system have to be compensated for in other ways,
such as state-sponsored cyber-attacks to access new advances in research
and development.73 Choosing to live behind the Great Firewall, under the
restrictions of one-party rule, also lacks a certain appeal for some of the
world’s leading entrepreneurial and creative elites.
Just like traditional walls, the Great Firewall has also been extended and
re-routed. At midnight on 7 July 2020, it incorporated Hong Kong at a time
of heightened anti-government feeling in the territory. As part of a new
national security law, the Hong Kong government allowed police to censor
online speech, including powers to force providers to supply user
information and shut down platforms. Private internet service providers and
internet exchanges had to comply with the new rules which sanitised news
reports on China.74 Attempts to access virtual private networks (VPNs) and
proxy servers that can grant access to the global internet soared, while
Hongkongers migrated to encrypted messaging and foreign SIM cards. Xi’s
wall, like all others in history, will be more permeable to the flow of human
ideas and ingenuity than he had hoped.75
Despite investing in borders in the virtual world, the advent of this new
cyber wall has not meant the end of more traditional wall-building in China.
The establishment and upgrading of such walls continue—notably across
China’s southern border with Myanmar and Vietnam. Here, hundreds of
miles of new infrastructure have been built and dubbed on social media the
Great Southern Wall. State media outlets once labelled it the Anti-Covid
Great Wall but the ruling party’s desire to prevent irregular migration and
unrestricted flows of trade, ideas, and religion across this border long
predated Covid.76
China is not alone in investing in border walls: in the last half a century
at least sixty-three have been built worldwide.77 In Europe, where the Iron
Curtain once bisected East and West, new divisions have re-emerged and
criss-cross Europe in the form of concrete walls, barbed wire, hi-tech
surveillance systems, drones and warships surrounding what has become
known as ‘Fortress Europe’. Coastguard planes fly low over the beaches of
southern Italy, while fortified walls and fences have spread across Europe
from Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla, to Finland and its border
with Russia.78 A European Parliament briefing paper in 2022 noted that the
European Union currently has nineteen border or separation fences,
stretching for more than 1,240 miles, which was an increase from just 195
miles in 2014.79
Politicians, mostly from the right, have placed the issue of preventing
immigration at the top of their agenda. Yet there is little sense of
responsibility for the lives of those attempting perilous border crossings, or
an acknowledgment that more robust border regimes result in ever more
dangerous and desperate attempts to overcome them. In 2016, almost three
thousand people died attempting to cross the Mediterranean to reach
Europe, twice as many as died on the Titanic. While the loss of one ship,
over a hundred years ago, still haunts a collective imagination, these deaths
on the borders of the EU seem to be more quickly and quietly forgotten.
Meanwhile, at the US-Mexico border, violence and misery have become
an everyday reality. Trump’s tenure in the White House saw the extension
and militarization of an already fortified border. His ‘America First’ agenda
is founded on demonising an alien ‘Other’ and shifting the blame for
disorder in the United States beyond its borders. Here, violence has become
no longer the exception but the accepted rule.80 In 2018, after a group of
Central American migrants had clashed with Mexican police, Trump
suggested that if groups of migrants ‘want to throw rocks at our military,
our military fights back. We’ll consider...it a rifle’81, while he also ordered
the children of asylum seekers to be separated from their parents at the US
border.82 Although Biden signed an executive order soon after coming to
office to reunite those forcibly separated by Trump’s notorious child
removal policy, the National Immigrant Justice Center reported in 2022 that
the Biden administration continued to routinely separate families through
detention and deportation as part of its immigration enforcement
practices.83
Attempting to cross the border has become frighteningly risky: since
2014 there have been 3,815 migrant deaths and disappearances recorded in
North America, which is a figure that should be understood as an
underestimation of the true number.84 In 2022, the International
Organization for Migration documented 686 deaths and disappearances of
migrants on the US-Mexico border, making it the deadliest land route for
migrants worldwide. Nearly half of the deaths were linked to exposure and
dehydration on the hazardous crossing of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan
Deserts.85 Despite this, border barrier construction has continued since the
early days of Biden’s term.86
Along the southern border of Texas, the international border between the
United States and Mexico is traced along the Rio Grande River. In 2021,
construction crews started erecting 15-foot concrete panels topped with 6-
foot steel bollards along the Lower Rio Grande Valley, near its outlet to the
sea. The Valley includes a wide floodplain and the Wall has been in places
constructed well inland, attached to a levee system originally built to
prevent flooding. It has resulted in swaths of farmland, cemeteries, and
even homes ‘in a kind of no man’s land south of the fence, which has been
built in fits and starts.’87 Although Biden released a Proclamation
suspending the redirection of funds to border wall construction on 20
January 2021, it has since been revealed that US Army Corps officials
resumed the construction of the border wall along the levees by claiming an
emergency exemption in the Proclamation allowing for border walls to be
built under the guise of levee remediation.88 In 2022, the US Customs and
Border Protection detailed plans to build another 86 miles of border wall in
the Valley, which would now include waivers of the Clean Air Act, the Safe
Drinking Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.89
In the emptiness of Trump’s campaign to ‘Make America Great Again’,
and the continuation of key elements of the border regime under Biden, are
the missing of the Sonora Desert and the drowned of the Rio Grande. A
language of fear in the populist rhetoric of politicians has bolstered support
for security-based solutions and the militarisation of borders, while turning
a blind eye to their deadly consequences. It is a strategy that works to divert
attention from the real causes of insecurity beyond the border—war,
violence, poverty, and inequality—at the same time as it creates the
conditions for the intensification of violence at the border.90 The ‘push’ and
‘pull’ factors that trigger crises on the border are far removed from it,
whether that is in the markets for labour and illicit drugs in the cities of the
United States, or the violence, poverty, and breakdown in the rule of law of
countries far to the south of the border.91 Despite the staggering human toll,
the Wall does nothing to address these underlying problems, making it
unjustifiable, deadly, and ‘doomed to fail’.92 And rather than bringing
security, it has created a space in which a multitude of human rights abuses
can take place.93
The lethal efforts deployed to securitise and militarise borders only tend
to increase insecurity. Those trying to cross the border embark on more
dangerous routes or end up in the hands of unscrupulous traffickers and
smugglers.94 Its further fortification—bristling with guards, guns, and
expensive new surveillance technologies—ends up stimulating a more
violent and militarised response by well-financed drug cartels and people
smugglers, creating greater incentives for corruption and illegality. It
foments more violence and death around the border, without seeming to
stem the flow of drugs or people.95
Cross-border narcotic traffic will continue to flourish as long as the
demand for illegal drugs in the US remains unchecked. Disruptions in
supply simply make the product more lucrative for smugglers, and the
incentives greater. Building walls distracts from the real challenge of
reforming drugs and migration policy, which would be the single biggest
threat to the profits of cartels.96 In states where there have been innovations
in drug policy, violent crime rates appear to have fallen. A study published
in 2019 found that, after the legalization of cannabis, murder and violent
crime decreased most in those states bordering Mexico as the drug cartels
lost business to regulation.97 However, instead of a broader debate on the
legalisation of drugs, the answer has been to build more walls. It is the same
misguided logic that works to prevent the opening up of more legal routes
to enter the United States that would allow people to come and go with
greater fluidity, rather them having to stake everything on a one-way
crossing.98
Instead of an evidence-based or humanitarian response to these twin
challenges, the building and heightening of the wall infrastructure
continues, funnelling people further into the parched deserts and
dangerously exposed terrain where physical barriers do not yet exist.99
Through its border policies, the US has shaped the physical landscape into a
deadly weapon that ‘kills with impunity’.100 Blame is shifted to nature and
the desert landscape, or to coyotes, or human smugglers, or migrants
themselves rather than the politicians that instigate these hostile and deadly
border regimes.101
Despite the Trump administration spending $15 billion on one of the
most expensive infrastructure projects in the history of the United States,102
the number of crossings, measured by apprehensions at the border, rose
steeply during Trump’s term. By spring 2021, unlawful border crossings
and arrests were at higher levels than those recorded in most months before
Trump began building the Wall.103 Desperation breeds ingenuity and
numerous ladders can be found scattered around already completed
sections, while some have dug tunnels and others have cut holes into the
Wall with angle grinders, sometimes using bonding agent to replace
removed sections so the breach remains undetected.104
Even for the Border Patrol agents on the front line, their priorities have
not been a call for more walls but rather technology and additional
personnel to combat illegal traffic. A report released in 2018 by Democrats
on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and based on internal
Customs and Border Protection documents from the previous fiscal year,
concluded that less than 0.5 per cent of the suggestions from agents to
secure the Southwest border mentioned the need for a wall.105
Far away from the US-Mexico border, in Finland, border officials also
admitted that it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that has been the main
reason for Finland’s sudden urge to construct a border fence. For Brigadier
General Jari Tolppanen, head of the technical division at the Finnish Border
Guard, a border fence ‘was no kind of political topic before the war (in
Ukraine). And actually, it wasn’t a kind of plan of the Finnish border
guard... All changed after the attack (of Russia against Ukraine).’106
However, analysts have pointed out that its usefulness in the case of a
military attack would be ‘practically nil,’ with others noting that if Finland
were to face episodes of mass migration, then the obstacle of the wall
would only cause migrants to splinter into smaller groups that are less
visible and harder to monitor.107 The reasoning and political rhetoric behind
such walls dissipates on contact with their practical limitations, which are
recognised even by the border enforcement officers who patrol them.
The key to security is not building supposedly impermeable walls but in
managing movement in more equitable and less dangerous ways.108 The
border wall creates an illusion of security that is ever more detached from
the reality. Walls cannot completely stop the flow of people or drugs, just as
they cannot regulate the influence of global financial markets on national
economies, nor control the speed and scale of capital inflows or outflows,
nor the spread of infectious diseases, nor the linkages of criminal or terror
networks. In these terms, walls are deadly distractions from forces that are
beyond the state’s control.109
As with all ‘Great’ walls before it, the Trump Wall will eventually be
eroded by a relentless spirit of human encounter, enterprise, and endeavour.
Indeed, parts of the Wall have already been affected by this spirit, becoming
a site of attraction for tourists, activists, and artists.110 On the outskirts of
the neighbouring cities of El Paso, in the United States, and Ciudad Juarez,
in Mexico, an interactive art exhibit was installed in 2019. Bright pink
seesaws were attached to the Wall’s architecture, pivoting on the borderline
in an event described as one ‘filled with joy, excitement, and togetherness’.
Children on each side rushed to play on the seesaws, drawn together despite
the brutalist shadow between them.111
 LUIS TORRES/AFP/VIA GETTY IMAGES

The installation by Ronald Rael won the 2020 Beazley Design of the
Year award run by London’s Design Museum. The museum’s director
reflected that the installation ‘encouraged new ways of human connection.
It remains an inventive and poignant reminder of how human beings can
transcend the forces that seek to divide us.’ These seesaws draw attention to
the interconnectivity of borders, while also acting as a metaphor showing
that what happens on one side of the border can have an equal and opposite
reaction on the other.112 Despite this spirit of coming together at El Paso-
Ciudad Juarez, six in ten of the world’s population now live in a nation with
a border wall. With each new structure comes a combination of narratives
around difference, division, and securitisation, which is accompanied by a
booming sector of the economy centred on the privatisation and outsourcing
of border security.113
There may be profits to be made in these walls but at what cost to
humanity? We seem trapped in an understanding of the world where there is
only one possible solution: more borders.114 We have become so captivated
by borders as the solution, that our modern understandings of them are even
projected back in time onto the Great Walls of the past. However, the border
is not always what it seems, and they appear today as ever more imagined
sources of protection and security. Militarising border walls exacerbates
everyday violence, entrenches authoritarian measures of control, and
enhances anxiety across communities. It works to further marginalise the
most vulnerable. If the more border walls that are built, the less secure the
world feels; and the taller they are, the more fears are heightened, then what
is the point of adding to them and expanding them?
To simply read walls as static, impermeable, and defensive lines, is to
misunderstand them. Whether it is to trade in silk, garum fish sauce, horses,
or information, borders are as much points of attraction and systems of
communication as they are supposedly impenetrable barriers. They
captivate as much as they repel and they are no more markers of authority
as they are sources of anxiety, insecurity, and transgression. All borders are
contradictory and contested. As Trump cryptically declared on a visit to the
border in Texas in one of the closing remarks of his presidency: ‘We gave
you 100% of what you wanted, so now you have no excuses.’115 While
there is no record of Trump riding the pink seesaws at El Paso-Ciudad
Juarez that day, if he did, might he have wondered what people really
wanted, and whether his ‘big, beautiful wall’ achieved it.116
 CHAPTER THREE

THE MYTH OF THE NATION

What is a country?

SHUTTERSTOCK

High above the army of tourists who march there every summer, seagulls
wheel over the meadows and marsh of Culloden. Located just outside
Inverness in northern Scotland, highland cattle and goats graze its fields.1
Some days the wind roars across Culloden. On others, it blows gently
across the long grass and wildflowers covering the resting places of those
who fell at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Between 1,500 and 2,000
Jacobites—who wanted the restoration of the Stuart line to the British
throne—were killed in the battle. Around 300 on the British government
side were also lost.
Today, red and blue flags cut across the meadow to mark the formations
of the clashing armies. Just behind the front line of the British troops lies a
stone inscribed with the words ‘Field of the English, they were buried here’.
But beneath this stone are no ‘English’ bones, nor those of any other nation.
There wasn’t even an English or indeed a Scottish army at Culloden—
rather a British government force faced a Jacobite army. People died on this
moor in the name of kings and clans, religion and region, or for money and
glory. Others were press-ganged into service. Men from Scotland and Wales
fought in the uniform of the British Army, some against their relations on
the Jacobite side. It would be remarkable if any of those who fell on this
field in a maelstrom of bullets and smoke was thinking of Scotland or
England.2
Later generations determined in whose name and nation Culloden’s fallen
had lived and died. The marker to the Field of the English was one of
several added to the battlefield in 1881—a Victorian falsification. Alongside
it were placed other stone markers to the various Scottish clan families at
Culloden. However, the mass graves dug after the battle would have
contained the remains of all the Jacobite combatants, regardless of clan and
kin. Back in 1746, there wasn’t any identifiable clan tartan by which to
recognise the deceased. That was another invention enthusiastically
promoted by the Victorians.3 The story of Culloden is one of complexity,
confusion, and civil war, and one of empire as much as nation. Yet, right up
until the 1960s, Culloden was regarded as the final battle in an Anglo-
Scottish conflict, with some accounts emphasising a sense of the Jacobites
as aliens—Gaelic-speaking Catholics—in an English-speaking Protestant
country.4
The stories of nations are not simply written in distant history but in the
much more recent past. In the case of England, a remarkable rewriting of
the nation has taken place over the last few decades. One telling indicator of
this change can be glimpsed in the 1966 football World Cup final held at
Wembley Stadium between England and West Germany. As the final
whistle approached, jubilant England fans spilled out of their seats
anticipating victory. The BBC commentator, Kenneth Wolstenholme, noted
that ‘some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over...’, and, as the
fourth and final goal of the game was scored, he added ‘...it is now.’
For England fans, these words can still stir a tingle of emotion, indicating
the power of a shared moment to unify and bind together a people. It evokes
a moment of national pride and the crowning achievement of a nation that
considers itself to be the home of football. For a moment, it put England
back on top of the world. However, in 1966, most of the home crowd
packed into Wembley were not waving the white and red flag of St George
and England but the Union Jack—or the Union Flag—of the United
Kingdom, which combines the flags of England, Scotland, and Northern
Ireland.
Fast forward thirty years to the European Football Championships of
1996, the first major international football tournament to be held in England
since hosting the World Cup, and a different England appears. This time
playing a unified Germany in the semi-final at Wembley, the home crowd
are waving St George’s flags, rather than the Union Flag, their faces painted
in the red and white of England. What does this changing imagery tell us
about the nation? First, it suggests that the way we see, think, and perform
national identities is not static. Nations and national symbols change, and
the values, images, and symbols associated with them are in constant flux.
For England fans, by the mid-1990s the flag of St George had seemingly
prevailed over the Union Flag. The latter’s association with the United
Kingdom and its empire had for them become somewhat detached from the
meaning of England.
This shift can be traced back to 1966, which also happened to be the year
in which the British Empire all but gasped its final breath. The last of the
British colonies in mainland Africa—Lesotho and Botswana—gained
independence and it was the Union Flag, and not the flag of St George, that
was lowered over these newly independent domains. As each independence
ceremony passed, the Union Flag came to increasingly represent not a
fading British Empire but the Union of the Home Nations—England,
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. However, as the United Kingdom’s
relationship with the world shifted, so too did relations between the four
nations that made up the United Kingdom.
In 1966, the Ulster Volunteer Force—a loyalist paramilitary group that
wanted Northern Ireland to remain as part of the UK, and which uses the St
George flag in its insignia—began its lethal operations in response to the
rise of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, which was challenging
inequality and discrimination against Irish Catholics in the province. The
Troubles, an ethno-nationalist and sectarian conflict, ran from the late 1960s
through to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In the late 1960s, the Welsh
nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, also began to make their first electoral
breakthroughs, while the Scottish National Party (SNP) won their second
ever seat in the House of Commons in 1967. Since then, the SNP has surged
in popularity and at the 2019 general election won 48 out of 59
parliamentary seats in Scotland. This followed the 2014 Scottish
independence referendum, in which 55.3 per cent voted against
independence, with 44.7 per cent in favour. Subsequent opinion polls in the
middle of 2020 to early 2021 showed a majority in favour of independence.
In early 2021, the SNP set out a road map towards a second referendum,
raising questions about the imminent break-up of the United Kingdom.5
Though from this high-water mark in independence polling, most opinion
polls since—with some exceptions—have shown a slim majority against
independence, at least up until early 2024.6 The SNP went on to lose dozens
of parliamentary seats in the 2024 general election.
This story of the United Kingdom demonstrates how nations—and their
symbols, content, and relations with each other—shift over time. By
admitting that nations are malleable, relatively modern, and invented is by
no means to dismiss their potency. They have proven to be immensely
powerful ideas and identities. Nations can be used to motivate groups to
great heights, as well as to excuse acts of extreme violence. They impact on
our emotions in tangible ways; they structure how we think, how we see
ourselves, how we behave. Being part of a nation can make us feel much
more secure—or insecure—depending on our place within it.
However, nations as conceived today are not preordained or
predetermined. They are contested and constructed, their borders are often
arbitrary, and across which spill communities and identities. The myth of
the nation is that their claim to being ancient, natural, and rooted is largely
illusionary. As such, the symbols, displays, and performances of national
identity need constant repetition and recitation, so that the intangible
connections between today’s citizens, and between the distant past and the
present, can be made to feel real. The making of the nation relies on the
invention of tradition.7 It can be seen in the United Kingdom’s Houses of
Parliament, which were rebuilt between 1840–70 in the neo-Gothic style
after the Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire in 1834. The
Commons Chamber was again rebuilt in the same style after its destruction
in the Second World War. These were deliberate choices designed to evoke
England’s great gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages, implying both a sense
of historical continuity and authority that spans centuries.8
 The Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest, inaugurated in 1896 but
not fully completed until 1904, was also built in the neo-Gothic style. It is
adorned with statues of Hungarian and Transylvanian rulers, military
figures, as well as the coats of arms of kings and dukes. Since 1 January
2000, the twelfth-century Holy Crown of Hungary—or St Stephen’s Crown
—has also been displayed in its central hall. Despite there being little
consensus on the crown’s origins—other than that it never actually crowned
St Stephen’s head—it has assumed renown as the greatest of national
treasures.9 In Budapest’s parliament, as in the Palace of Westminster, the
deliberate choice of style, statues and adornments are designed to evoke a
meaningful connection with a much earlier age.

STEPAN PETROV/SHUTTERSTOCK

The link between architecture and the nation is a debate alive in the
present. In a signal of traditional architecture bolstering a nationalist
aesthetic, the National Hauszmann Program in Budapest is redeveloping the
site of Buda Castle palace, the Matthias Church, and the Fisherman’s
Bastion, which overlook the city and the parliament building below. The
program, named after the Castle District’s original architect in the late
nineteenth century, was launched in 2019, and will see at least half a billion
dollars spent on transformation and restoration, including the relocation of
the Finance Ministry and Defence Ministry to near where the Prime
Minister’s Office is already situated. The Hauszmann Program includes the
demolition of modernist buildings and will restore the district to how it
looked in March 1944, before the Siege of Budapest and the surrender of
Hungary’s pro-Nazi government. All of this is a purely political choice and
as a former chief architect of Budapest, Istvan Schneller, has noted, the
relocation of the ministries will be at great expense and will make them less
functional than they are at their existing locations.10
It has been suggested that in making the Castle District the seat of
government, rather than the home of cultural institutions such as the
National Gallery, it is evoking a return to a late nineteenth-century
bourgeois ‘Golden Age’. However, these new buildings, while claiming to
be ‘faithful’ to the Habsburg-era originals, are often recreated from
photographs, featuring a façade of ornamentation around a concrete
structure. As Princeton academic Jan-Werner Muller has put it: ‘What
claims to be truly traditional is often postmodern pastiche.’11 This rendering
of ‘traditional’ architecture is perhaps the inevitable, and unintended, end
point of a turn to a conservative and nationalist aesthetic set out in the
writings of English academics such as David Watkin and Sir Roger Scruton,
who, in the late 1970s, linked modernity to ‘immorality’. In 2019, Scruton
was awarded the Hungarian Order of Merit by Victor Orban, who lauded
his conservatism and anti-communist work, adding that Scruton knew that
‘freedom relies on nation states and Christian civilization’.12
This turn to the traditional in architecture was also mirrored in the United
States when Trump signed at the end of his presidency an executive order
on civic architecture, denouncing modernism and promoting classical
design for federal buildings.13 An article in the conservative magazine The
Federalist favourably contrasted Orban’s revival of classical architecture in
Budapest with the author’s disappointment at Biden’s subsequent rescinding
of Trump’s order, which ‘has made it clear that public beauty will have to
be won at the ballot box’.14
While not usually associated with the views of Donald Trump, a
renaissance in classicist architecture has long been promoted by King
Charles III. Based on a mythical notion of eternal beauty as something
unchanging and deriving from God or nature,15 it is one which has been
realised in breezeblocks and concrete in the English suburb of Poundbury,
Dorchester, on the Duchy of Cornwall estate—a project championed by the
then Prince of Wales. However, in its attempt to restore tradition it finds
itself caught in the same aesthetic as Budapest’s Castle District—an eerie
postmodern pastiche, standing out of time. Its classicist appeal collides with
the profit motives of the present, coexisting with onsite restaurant chains,
supermarkets, and houses with gardens shrunk to the smallest square feet in
order to maximise the number of building plots on the estate.
The current king is no stranger to the invention of tradition and the
British royal family has developed carefully orchestrated set pieces to
reinforce their seemingly ancient rule. One such elaborate ritual was his
investiture as the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle in 1969. For the
event, the castle—a solid, stone structure dating from the late thirteenth
century—was decorated with medieval-style banners and standards. Yet,
there was also a modern flourish and rationale to this with the brightly
coloured occasion ‘in tune with the psychedelic designs of the late 1960s
and suitable for an audience watching on state-of-the-art colour TVs’.16 The
BBC television coverage was the largest live outside broadcast in colour at
the time, reaching an audience of 500 million through telecommunication
satellites. The Space Age met the Middle Ages as Prince Charles was
broadcast swearing to be the ‘liege man’ of his mother, the Queen.17
Within the walls of the castle, the solemn ceremony was meticulously
choreographed, and it was replayed—and reinterpreted—for a new
generation in a 2019 episode of Netflix’s The Crown. For the ceremony,
Charles undertook a crash course in the Welsh language to give replies in
Welsh, and Queen Elizabeth II invested her heir with a girdle, sword,
coronet, ring, rod, and kingly mantle.18 New thrones, carved of wood and
slate, were also commissioned for the occasion. It was a ritual that appeared
to be steeped in tradition since time immemorial. However, this was only
the second investiture to take place at Caernarfon Castle, following that of
the future Edward VIII in 1911. Both these ceremonies and their castle
setting were aimed at distracting from precisely what they were not: an
unbroken lineage of unchanging traditions. Instead, this was an invented
tradition designed to convey continuity and the key position of Wales, and
the prince, within the realm. It was a claim of legitimacy and ceremony
rooted in a supposedly distant past, which was meant to be reflected in the
solid stone and masonry of the castle and in each ancient chattel bestowed
on the new prince.19
Only since 1901 has the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha—a branch of
the House of Wettin, which traces its origins to the present-day states of
Thuringia and Bavaria in Germany—reigned over the United Kingdom and
its Commonwealth realms. In 1917, the name of the royal house was
changed to the more English sounding Windsor—taken from Windsor
Castle—in order to deflect from any anti-German sentiment during the First
World War. Ever since 1917, the connection with the redoubtable walls of
Windsor Castle, made from local Bagshot Heath stone, has served to
emphasise a supposedly unbroken and rooted connection with an ancient
past.20 The castle itself was founded by William the Conqueror of
Normandy, who introduced his own entirely new migrant ruling class on the
British Isles after 1066.
Elsewhere in the world, the new state of the Russian Federation, which
emerged in 1991, has drawn heavily on invented traditions. For example,
when Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in May 2012 it was an
occasion heralded by a dramatic walk through the gilded palaces and
staterooms of the Kremlin to his inauguration. In a carefully stage-managed
performance, television cameras captured from multiple angles Putin’s
magisterial return to the Kremlin. Officers in tsarist-era uniforms pulled
back enormous, golden doors to reveal Putin as he entered the great hall to
the rapt applause of his admirers.21
It was a performance designed to evoke the pre-revolutionary grandeur of
imperial Russia and followed the restoration as national symbols of the
tricolour flag and state emblem of the two-headed eagle of the Russian
Empire in the early 1990s. Flags in Russia have assumed a particular
significance in defining national identity. Shortly after becoming president
in 2000, Putin reintroduced the plain red flag of the Red Army as the
Banner of the Armed Forces, which had been removed by his predecessor,
and first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin. It was a move
designed to recognise the achievements of the Soviet Armed Forces—
especially their heroic role in what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War
(1941–45). However, the flag evolved again in 2003 to incorporate the
image of the two-headed eagle and intricate bordering with patterns
traditionally associated with the Russian peasantry, as well as the Red Star
of the Soviet Union in each corner.22 It fused together competing—and
contradictory—elements of Russia’s imperial, national, and Soviet pasts.
 WIKIPEDIA

After 1991, the Soviet national anthem—adopted in 1944—was also

jettisoned in favour of the Patrioticheskaya Pesnya (Patriotic Song) by the
nineteenth-century Russian composer Mikhail Glinka. However, the tune
and its lack of lyrics were not popular with many Russians. This culminated
in complaints from the Spartak Moscow football team and gold medal
winning Olympic athletes in 2000 that they didn’t have a rousing song to
sing. In November 2000, a nationwide poll also found that only fifteen per
cent of the Russian public supported the Glinka anthem. In response, one of
Putin’s earliest acts was to reinstate the Soviet tune, complete with a new
set of stirring patriotic lyrics written by 87-year-old Sergei Mikhalkov, who
had authored the original Stalinist lyrics in 1943.23 In 2001,
commemorative stamps were issued by the Russian postal service to
promote the new words with the lyrics presented in a traditional Cyrillic
font, suggesting an ancient provenance. It is through such everyday
reminders of past styles and symbols that the image of the nation as forged
in antiquity is created in the present. Whenever a special emphasis is placed
on a nation’s continuity with the past, invention is likely close at hand.
Another key opportunity for inventing traditions is holidays. While for
German speaking protestants the Christmas tree tradition had been
established since the sixteenth century, the custom of decorating a small,
coniferous tree was largely unknown in the United Kingdom until the
middle of the nineteenth century. Although Christmas trees had been part of
the private celebrations of the British royal family for decades previously,
they only became popular across the land after an 1848 issue of the London
Illustrated News, in which Queen Victoria, whose mother was German, was
depicted decorating one at Windsor Castle with her husband, Prince Albert
of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and their children.24 In England, the turkey—a
bird originating in the Americas—began to appear in Christmas dinners as
early as the sixteenth century. However, it only achieved its ‘yuletide
dominance’ from the 1950s onwards.25 These are reminders that popular
symbols of a shared national culture would have looked completely out of
place just a few generations ago.
Yet national traditions are deeply entrenched parts of our identities. They
appear as timeless, jarring with notions of nations as invented and modern.
While the United States is sometimes denigrated in Europe as a relatively
new nation, when the Declaration of Independence was signed on 4 July
1776, much of Europe was a fragmented region of hundreds of sovereign
independent states, kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and free cities.26 It
was not one but several German states that recognised the newly created
United States. Germany was only unified almost a century later in 1871, the
same year that Rome was officially designated the capital of the newly
formed Kingdom of Italy.
The German states were held together in the loose political entity of the
Holy Roman Empire until 1806. After the Congress of Vienna of 1814–15,
a conglomeration of 39 states, including Austria and Prussia, was created
and named the German Confederation. However, this entity fell far short of
any economic or national unity. It was only after Prussia won the Austro-
Prussian War in 1866 that its prime minister, Otto von Bismarck, created the
North German Confederation in 1867, headed by Prussia and extending
across parts of what is now Germany, Poland, Kaliningrad, and Lithuania.
Unification was finally completed with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–
71, which drew the western German states into alliance with the North
German Confederation. Only after victory in this war was the German
Empire proclaimed, in January 1871, with Berlin as its capital.27
As for Italy, this peninsula of southern Europe was for centuries a
fragmented conglomeration of states.28 However, by the mid-nineteenth
century, Italian unification, known as the Risorgimento (resurgence), had
widespread support. In 1859 and 1860, the northern Italian states unified,
while nationalist leader Giuseppe Garibaldi led an army into the southern
part of the Italian peninsula and Sicily in 1860. In early 1861, a national
parliament convened and proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy. Only two major
territories were left outside of the new kingdom: Rome and Venetia. In
1866, Venetia became part of the kingdom, and in 1870 the Italian army
entered Rome and incorporated the eternal city and the Papal States into
Italy. The Italian capital moved to Rome from Florence in 1871 and the
Risorgimento was complete.29 Only the Vatican and the microstate of the
Republic of San Marino escaped.
Today, we can hardly imagine the world without Germany or Italy. Yet
for Benedict Anderson, it was from the Americas, and the independence
movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that first
came the ‘imagined realities’ of ‘nation-states, republican institutions,
common citizenships, popular sovereignty, national flags, and anthems’.30
Since then, nations have come to frame the way in which virtually all of us
see the world and each other to such an extent that any suggestion that the
nation is modern can shake the foundations of our beliefs. However, the
unification of ‘national’ territories and the invention of their traditions are
not the only ingredients essential for the creation of the modern nation. It
has been argued that before many of the economic, societal, and
technological changes associated with the industrial revolution occurred,
the idea of the nation could not take hold when the majority of the
population were illiterate peasants rooted in their immediate locality.31 In
the agrarian societies of the past, the lives of the majority were largely fixed
in the same place with a common experience that ranged little beyond the
village, or the valley in which one lived. Beyond the local, any wider sense
of belonging was attached to religious identities and loyalties.32 However,
in such communities, there was little sense of a widely shared language,
common memories, origin myths, or ancestry on the scale of the large
territories of modern nations.
This all changed with industrialisation. In order for industrialised
societies to succeed, there needed to be a mobile population, possessing
transferable skills and a shared culture of communication and understanding
so that bureaucratic tasks, complex systems, and industrial equipment could
be run efficiently, and interchangeably, by different members of society.33
Whereas in agrarian life, only the long apprenticeship and specialised skills
of a blacksmith could make a horseshoe and shoe a horse, anybody with a
set of essential skills could join the production line in a factory. It was in
industrialised western Europe that the demand for a more uniform society
first arose. Institutions like schools and the military assumed key roles in
socialising and educating populations, forging an ever-larger community
possessing shared competencies and language. These dramatic changes led
to the spread of a more universal ‘national’ culture superseding local folk
cultures.34 Loyalty to a lord, land, or faith began to be replaced by loyalty
to the standardised culture of the nation.35
This process was not immediate. Even in the earliest nations to
industrialise, such as England and Wales, the Elementary Education Act
only established schooling for all children between the ages of five and
twelve in 1870, and this did not even guarantee free or compulsory
education. In 1880, a further Education Act made school attendance
compulsory between the ages of five and ten.36 Building a universal mass-
education system demanded colossal resources that could only be mobilised
through an efficient state able to extract sufficient taxation from a growing
and industrialising population. Mass literacy and a shared culture suited the
needs of industry and, when seen in this way, key ingredients for a national
identity developed hand in hand with capitalist modernisation. The creation
of a shared mass ‘national’ culture helped produce a literate, disciplined,
and mutually connected workforce in rapidly growing cities.37
Since then, we have since come to think, act, govern, and work within the
framework of the nation. There are national champions of industry, as well
as national canons of literature and national histories. Populations that were
literate could now read news of national interest alongside works of
literature, ranging from Dickens to Dostoevsky, which came to define traits
and characteristics associated with being English or Russian. Through the
standardisation of language and the spread of the printed word, the idea of
what Anderson famously called the ‘imagined community’ of the nation
became possible. By ‘imagined’ it doesn’t mean the nation is somehow fake
or false. Rather, it is to recognise that the members of even the smallest
nation will never actually know each other, but each citizen still firmly
believes they share something in common with their fellow members.38
The opportunities for creating a shared culture and language multiplied
with the invention of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press around 1440.
This revolutionary technology allowed certain languages and dialects to
become dominant. In England, Middle English, derived from Anglo-Saxon
with Scandinavian and Norman influences, was replaced by Early Modern
English, the dominant form of the language during the Tudor (1485–1603)
and Stuart (1603–1714) dynasties. It meant that a language with large
regional variations evolved to a more standardised form.39
By the end of the fifteenth century, London printers were publishing texts
in the Chancery Standard of English. This was the style used by the clerks
of the Court of Chancery, which sat in Westminster Hall from the fourteenth
century to the nineteenth century. From the 1430s, these clerks began to
note official records and the king’s documents in an English dialect instead
of Latin or French.40 It was a standard close to the East Midlands-
influenced dialect of the capital—the same language used by the civil
servant and poet Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340s–1400) in The Canterbury Tales
—and was reflective of London’s burgeoning merchant class as well as the
seats of learning in Oxford and Cambridge.41 It was this version of English
that ultimately prevailed to become Modern English, and later the world’s
lingua franca. However, it was not until 1755 that Samuel Johnson’s A
Dictionary of the English Language became the first to be widely regarded
as the standard of the English language.42
Standardisation of the language was followed by the development of
means of mass transportation and communication associated with
industrialisation, including canal systems, rail networks, the telegraph, and
the expansion of roads. Each infrastructural innovation increased the scale
and speed of connectivity, enabling media—at first newspapers, and later
television—to be consumed by a nationwide audience, at the same moment
in time, over ever larger spaces. In the act of consuming the daily news, the
imagined community of the nation could be made real. This moment of
shared communion became a key part of the ceremonial glue to bind
together the millions of people living in a nation.43 Alongside flags, stamps,
national holidays, and anthems, each daily, visible, and shared reminder of
the nation came to assume an essential part in its making.44
Despite the prevalence of these modernist accounts of the nation, some
scholars, such as Anthony Smith, have argued that certain features of
nations emerged from ethnic communities in the more distant past. This
point of view places a particular emphasis on a shared memory of golden
ages, cults of heroes, ancestors, and traditions.45 Yet many of these
memories are formed much more recently. For example, outside the Houses
of Parliament is a bronze equestrian statue of the crusading English
monarch, Richard the Lionheart, who reigned from 1189–99. However, this
statue was established more than six centuries after his death by the
Victorians in order to inspire new generations through evoking a sense of a
golden age of chivalry and daring overseas.46 In the mid-nineteenth century
Richard’s reputation had reached a high point, in part thanks to his portrayal
in the novels of Walter Scott (1771–1832).47
The problem with this account is that the values and beliefs that Richard I
lived by were already well out of date in the Victorian age. During his ten-
year reign, Richard spent only six months in England, and his chief
ambition on becoming king was to join the Third Crusade, in which he
failed to liberate Jerusalem and was captured on the way back. In order to
finance his crusade, he sold sheriffdoms and other offices of state. It is
doubtful he was able to speak English and he was even reputed to have
remarked that he would have sold the whole country if he could have found
a buyer.48 The statue outside of Parliament, created by the Italian-born
French sculptor Baron Carlo Marochetti, was even controversial at the time
but it was ultimately championed by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.49

ISTOCK
 Even in the case of a more recent national hero, the past does not always
sit easily with the present. There is a prominent statue of Winston Churchill
in Parliament Square, opposite the Houses of Parliament, in honour of his
wartime role as prime minister. Yet his soaring rhetoric and indomitable
leadership of war-time Britain does not sit easily in modern Britain with his
enthusiastic support of the racist imperial hierarchies of the British
Empire.50 The forging of national heroes and golden ages demands both
remembering and forgetting. Our gallery of heroes from the past would
have no conception of the nation, or the values associated with it today.
Rather, they indicate that the nation, and its symbols and heroes, are
complex, contested and contradictory, not to mention a surprisingly modern
phenomenon.
It is only relatively recently have people come to think exclusively in
terms of the nation and national identity.51 Now it seems impossible to
imagine the world without them. It is a notion enshrined in the ever-
growing membership of the United Nations, which, in 1945, was made up
of just 51 founding members. Its membership now stands at 193 nation
states, with the most recent—South Sudan—added in 2011.
The question of how nations come about is not merely a debate of
obscure academic meaning. Across the world, there are heated political
tensions over whether today’s nations should embody a more civic
understanding of nationalism or be defined in terms of ethnicity. Civic
nationalism emphasises the nation as a diverse community of citizens with
equal rights united in a patriotic attachment to a shared set of political
values and virtues. Common citizenship prevails over placing and
privileging one ethnic community over another. Ethnic nationalism, on the
other hand, is framed by the language of belonging and allegiances based
on supposedly pre-existing ethnic characteristics. In these terms, modern
national groups are understood to be structured around ancient and inherited
origins.52
The ethnic nation is typified in recent speeches by the prime minister of
Hungary, Victor Orbán, who declared in the summer of 2022 that ‘where
European and non-European peoples live together... These countries are no
longer nations: they are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.’53
Speaking of Hungarians living outside of Hungary, in the Carpathian Basin,
Orbán declared that ‘we are willing to mix with one another, but we do not
want to become peoples of mixed-race’.54
 Even in the archetype ‘civic’ nation of the United States—with its
traditional motto ‘e pluribus unum’, or ‘Out of many, one’—there is a
resurgent white ethno-nationalism, which has flourished under the rise of
Donald Trump as a political force. This was evident in Trump’s anti-
immigration rhetoric and policies, such as banning foreign nationals from
certain Muslim-majority countries,55 declarations that migrants from
Mexico are criminals and rapists56 and his diminishment of the Black Lives
Matter movement.
In the United Kingdom, another widely cited example of a civic type of
nation, the wrongful detention and deportation of those who legally arrived
in the UK from Caribbean countries in the post-war era—the Windrush
generation—starkly revealed racist and discriminatory government policies
towards its own British citizens.57 It is a story that unravels a civic
definition of the nation. Under the 1948 British Nationality Act, which
adopted the language of citizenship and formalised long-held rights of
migration to Britain for colonial subjects, the members of the Windrush
generation shared the status of ‘Citizens of the UK and Colonies’. It was an
inclusive notion of British citizenship that made no distinction between
those born in the Commonwealth to those born in Britain.58 However,
subsequent acts, including the 1971 Immigration Act, further restricted the
rights of Commonwealth citizens to enter and settle in Britain. While those
who were settled prior to the 1971 act coming into force were entitled to the
right of abode, official records were not systematically kept of those with
such status.59
This became an issue decades later when from 2010 onwards a ‘hostile
environment’ was launched by the UK’s Home Office towards anyone
suspected of being an illegal immigrant. In 2010, the UK Border Agency
destroyed thousands of landing cards from the 1950s and 1960s that could
have proved citizenship, which was followed by the 2014 and 2016
Immigration Acts that made it more difficult to remain in the country, and
obtain work and accommodation without proof of a legal right to be in the
UK.60 It also put landlords, office administrators, doctors, and teachers on
the frontline of immigration control.
Despite many of the Windrush generation, having lived, worked, and
made Britain home over the past five decades, those without documentation
became classified as an ‘illegal immigrant’ and subject to deportation. It
meant their claims to citizenship were routinely denied. They were made
ineligible for legal protections and social benefits, and had no access to the
National Health Service, leaving these British citizens marginalised and
vulnerable.61 This was done to a community who arrived with a strong
sense of Britishness, with one of their generation recalling: ‘We were more
British’ than the British.62 They arrived as citizens by way of a birthright,
bestowed by the relations of empire, which was taken away by the
racialised and xenophobic fictions of ethno-nationalism that have shaped
British immigration policy in the wake of the shift from imperialism to the
myth of an island nation.63 As one researcher on the topic has summarised:
‘It ranks among the most shameful episodes in Commonwealth history.’64
In the case of Russia, there is a linguistic distinction between an ethnic
notion of Russia and Russians (Rus and Russkii), and a civic notion
(Rossiya and Rossiiskii), which is inclusive of all citizens regardless of their
ethnic and cultural background. This is a distinction that frames debates
about Russia’s national history. One view on the origins of the Russian
nation is that it can be traced back to the culture and early state of Kievan
Rus (879–1240), which was a loose federation of different language groups,
centred on Kyiv, in modern Ukraine. Kyiv and Novogorod—in modern
Russia—were among the principal towns of this period. However, their
origins are not exclusively Slavic. They were once trading posts of
Scandinavian Vikings (Varangrians) known as Rus. Over time these
communities developed into towns and cities, losing their Viking character
and language, just as happened across parts of the British Isles and northern
France.65 By the end of the tenth century, the Rus had become Slavic
speaking and Orthodox Christian, with the religion most likely introduced
into Kievan Rus by Greek missionaries from Byzantium.66
It is an origin story of trading routes, migration, and assimilation, with
religious loyalties combining with a more immediate sense of belonging to
place and allegiance to ruling princes and chieftains. If not in Kievan Rus,
then perhaps the forging of the Russian nation can be found instead at the
Battle of Kulikovo (1380)? Here the Tatars—descendants of Mongol
invaders, who settled in southern Russia and ruled over Slavic principalities
after the fall of Kievan Rus—were dealt their first major defeat by forces
led by Prince Dmitri of Moscow. This is the view put forward in semi-
official form in Russia today as indicated by a school textbook introduced
in 2013, which proclaims that ‘victory on the field of Kulikovo roused the
national awareness of the Russian people’.67 However, was this a victory in
the name of the nation? Or were its protagonists’ lives and deaths defined
and shaped by region, religion, and resentment at the system of paying
tribute to absent rulers?
Perhaps Russia only truly became a nation during the reign of the first
Tsar of all Russia, Ivan the IV, or Terrible (1530–1584)? Ivan’s autocratic
rule consolidated power in the hands of the tsar, and it was also an era
during which the first printing press was introduced to Russia in 1553. Or
did a national consciousness definitively emerge when forces in Moscow,
led by Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, rose against the
occupying troops of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1612 to end
the Time of Troubles that had emerged in the wake of Ivan’s death? That
seems to be the view endorsed by the heroic statues to Minin and Pozharsky
unveiled on Red Square in 1818, where they stand to this day.

EKATERINA BYKOVA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Others might argue that the Russian nation only truly came into being
under Catherine the Great (1729–96). Catherine was a Prussian princess
who married into the Romanov line and spoke with a German accent. But it
was during her reign that the first attempts were made to standardise and
formalise the Russian language, even while French remained the language
of court. During her reign, the Russian Academy was founded and
published a six-volume Russian dictionary. Was it at this moment that the
beginnings of national community could finally develop through a
standardised language?
However, universal literacy was not achieved until a century and a half
later under Soviet rule (1922–91). Prior to mass education and rapid
industrialisation, which also took hold in the Soviet period, the conditions
were not in place for a universally shared culture. In the first half of the
nineteenth century, nearly half of the population were serfs who could be
bought and sold. And, at the time they were first published, most Russians
would not have been able to read the masterpieces of Tolstoy (1828–1910)
and Dostoevsky (1821–81).68
On the eve of the First World War, the Russian Empire was only partially
industrialised, with most of the population still employed in agricultural
labour in 1914.69 It was in the Soviet Union that the conditions of
industrialisation were fully realised, and with it came rapid urbanisation and
mass literacy. Therefore, was it under Soviet rule—which initially rejected
much of Russia’s tsarist history and heritage—that a Russian national
identity finally and fully emerged? During the Great Patriotic War against
Nazi Germany, figures and themes from Russia’s imperial past were
actively rehabilitated by the Soviets in an attempt to rally the people against
the Nazi threat. General Suvorov (1730–1800)—a feted general and
tactician who led Russian armies to victories over the Polish—Lithuanian
Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire—as well as Alexander Nevsky
(1221–63)—Prince of Novgorod, Grand Prince of Kiev, and Grand Prince
of Vladimir, who won victories over German and Swedish invaders—began
to appear in Soviet artwork and propaganda posters. Was it at this moment
that stories of the nation’s golden age combined with literacy and
industrialisation for the first time? Did the Soviet regime accidently create
the conditions for the modern Russian nation?70
As the example of Russia suggests, determining precisely when any
nation comes into being is not a straightforward task.71 The moment of the
Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 was also accompanied by a fierce debate
over whether a civic, Rossiiskii identity, or an ethnic, Russkii one, should
prevail. Russia’s post-Soviet leaders, from Boris Yeltsin to Putin, have at
times tacked towards a more ethno-nationalist version when it appears to
serve their policies or boost their popularity. This happened in justifying the
brutal Chechen wars (1994–96 and 1999–2009, though a low-level
insurgency continued for years afterwards), and in legitimating the
annexation of Crimea in 2014, when the term Russkii appeared in Putin’s
presidential announcements for the first time, using it to refer to Crimea,
Sevastopol and Kyiv as Russian territory.72 Yet, there are dangers in
promoting a Russkii identity in a multi-ethnic federation, and the Russian
constitution supposedly guarantees a civic notion of the Russian nation.73
Despite some of the immense efforts deployed by the state over recent
years towards binding Russia together, a Russian Public Opinion Research
Centre poll, conducted just before National Unity Day in November 2019—
which marks Pozharsky and Minin’s victory in 1612—found that only 37
per cent responded that there is national unity in Russia, which was a
decline from 54 per cent in 2017.74 Ever since the invasion of Ukraine in
2022, any dissent in society will no longer be accurately reflected in
polling. Shortly after the invasion, a law criminalising the spreading of
‘false information’ about the Russian military was adopted. In April 2023,
Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of Putin’s most outspoken critics, was sentenced
to twenty-five years in prison, after being convicted of treason, spreading
false information, and participating in the actions of an ‘undesirable’
organization. His chief crime had been to accuse the ‘dictatorial regime in
the Kremlin’ of committing ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine in a speech to
lawmakers in Arizona, USA. His sentence became the longest handed down
to a Kremlin opponent since Soviet times.75
At the same time as silencing dissent, Putin has actively mined the past to
construct his own version of the Russian nation. In his essay ‘On the
Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, published in July 2021, Putin
reached back to the ninth century to set out his claim on Ukraine and what
became the justification for his bloody invasion. From Kievan Rus, or
Ancient Rus as Putin terms it, to the Soviet Union, his text dismisses
Ukrainian nationhood and, through the same inventions, omissions, and
selective memory that he attempts to do this, he strives to construct his
imagined geography of the Russian nation.76 However, as noted by Sergey
Radchenko, professor of history at John Hopkins University, this is a
narrative constructed backwards: ‘You could equally say that Ukraine as a
state began its development in the 9th Century, exactly with the same kind
of evidence and documents... If Ukraine is a fake country [as Putin claims],
then so is Russia.’77
 In constructing this national past in the present, and in his appeals to
ethnic Russian (Russkii) lands in Ukraine, Putin’s treatise highlights how
tracing the nation back to time immemorial is illusionary. The further back
in time, the more elusive this essence of a primordial nation becomes to
extract. It is precisely why modern nations need to be constantly invented,
imagined, performed in ceremonies, and read and learnt about in the
present. That we have not always lived and died in the name of the nation,
helps to explain why so much of the efforts of nationalists like Putin are
centred on denying or even concealing this inconvenient truth.
In the span of human history, the nation is still a relatively new idea, and
one that is easily shaped by those with power—whether they are monarchs
imported from foreign lands, former state-security officers, or reality TV
stars. Every one of these elites has recognised the power of the nation, its
appeal to a sense of security and identity, and how it can be used to
mobilise people. However, behind these efforts can lurk agendas that work
to secure the power, wealth, and influence of these very same elites at the
expense of the majority.
The nation can bring with it a sense of eternity that is akin to religion. It
is no coincidence that the idea of the nation spread during the late
eighteenth century and a period of Enlightenment—with its increasing faith
in technology and science. It also emerged in a period of revolution, most
notably in France, which turned upside down the prevailing hierarchies,
religious beliefs, and sacred orders of the day.78 Yet will the nation go the
same way as other claims on identity that have also involved immense
sacrifice?
Innumerable people have lived and died in the name of kings and
emperors, just as they have for paganism, imperialism, and religion. Is
nationalism any more resilient in the long run? And are there better ways to
structure our world in order to address the existential threats and challenges
that we are facing? Is the nation even contributing to global crises, from
wars over territory and the persecution of minorities, to the failure to
address global pandemics and a climate emergency? What might be the
implications if we suddenly woke up and stopped believing in the nation?
It is worth recalling that just a few decades ago the notion of empire
framed a widely accepted understanding of the way in which the world
would always be ordered. Not so long ago Britain claimed to rule an empire
over which ‘the sun never sets’—only for it to dissipate to nothing. The idea
of colonised ‘natives’ being able to rule themselves ‘went from
inconceivable to ordinary’.79 In the blink of an eye, an imperial lens on the
world cracked and shattered to be replaced by a national one.
Just before the British Empire was at its greatest territorial extent in
1919, after the acquisition of Germany’s East and West African colonies
and Samoa in the Treaty of Versailles,80 hundreds of thousands of English,
Welsh, Scottish, and Irish soldiers had died in the Great War for king,
country, and empire. In one of the last poems of Wilfred Owen, written
shortly before his death at the front in the final days of this war, the reader
is enveloped in its tumult and turmoil. The poem recounts the unimaginable
agony of death by gas. Following a wagon with his comrade’s corpse,
Owen confronts a haunting truth about war:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori
(Latin: ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’)81

In these words, the myth of the nation fractures and falls. And yet, in a
world riven by conflict and a surge in nativist and nationalist politics, it
might appear that the nation and nationalism are still in the ascendency. But
just as the idea of the nation was once a radical and innovative alternative to
communities shaped by religion, tribal loyalty, or empire, so too new ways
of organising identities will emerge. It may be through mobilisation at the
local level, in places like Ambos Nogales, where many members of the
local community reject the absurdity of the steel and barbed wire fence
running through the heart of their city. It could be through the granting of
greater political rights to indigenous people, as was attempted in Australia
in a 2023 referendum. Or it could be in the virtual mobilisation of global
communities to combat climate change and ensure environmental justice.
Such movements can unite disparate people across the world, and they are
already helping to shape forms of global governance in ways that transcend
national borders.
In the end, nations are not ossified communities immutably rooted in a
distant past. Such a nationalistic perspective is in itself an admission of
fragility as the nation is in these terms an empty vessel of a dead culture,
devoid of enrichment, vitality, and renewal. Nationalism serves as a
homogenising force, supressing cultural richness, and myriad customs and
connections within and beyond its boundaries. Seen in this way, new
structures of governing ourselves should not be seen as threats to a world
that is made up of a patchwork of unique and overlapping cultures and
traditions, which don’t always align with national borders. If anything, a
future sense of belonging beyond the nation, or coexisting with it, does not
equate anarchy but could well prevent it.
Communities can be energised by more local decision-making power and
resources being devolved to them. Democratic accountability, participation,
and community cohesion mean something more when they are not dictated
from distant capital cities. The unique richness and diversity of localities
can be mobilised to counter the conforming and centralising tendencies of
the nation-state. On a broader scale, the future will also involve some forms
of supranational mechanisms to address existential risk from human-made
threats like climate change, nuclear weapons, and pandemics. Emphasising
our relations and linkages across the scales of the local, the national, and the
supranational has the potential to bring a greater harmony to our sense of
belonging. It is a recognition of more fluid identities that have always
characterised human experience, but which the privileging of the nation-
state has done so much to rupture. Bringing these scales of identity into
relation with each other might engender a sense of balance and equilibrium
that could help avert the fracturing of communities on national, ethnic,
religious, and tribal lines. For it is in the promotion of such divisions by
nationalist politicians that the myth of the nation is perhaps most vividly
captured: a brittle, unchanging, and illusionary idea that is so weak it needs
a strongman leader, who has confused himself for his nation, to protect it.82
 CHAPTER FOUR

THE MYTH OF SOVEREIGNTY

Why taking back control is not what it seems

John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ carries the listener on a transcendent journey

beyond countries and across borders, buoyed by a sense of freedom from
the constraints of nations, religion, and even possessions. It offers a lyrical
polemic, calling for a new kind of world but one that its composer leaves
tantalising undefined. This is part of the song’s appeal, with its endless
possibilities, limitless hopes, and unbounded dreams. Although Lennon
wrote the song over half a century ago, his beguiling invitation to imagine
there are no countries has remained tantalisingly out of reach.
Instead, our globe remains criss-crossed by borders, every last inch
claimed by a country. There is no piece of habitable land over which
sovereignty—largely understood as the exclusive zone of control of a state
over territory—is not claimed. However, there are also some places in the
world where this logic breaks down. One such place is a land of desert
dunes, black rock, and wadis—dry riverbeds that only flow after occasional
rains—which has slipped through the cracks of sovereignty. It might not be
the arcadia of peace and love that Lennon had in mind but this small parcel
of land has remained terra nullius—a ‘territory without a master’.1
The place is Bir Tawil, an eight-hundred square mile, landlocked,
quadrilateral piece of desert located between Egypt to the north and Sudan
to the south. It is not claimed by either country, though its scarce vegetation
has been traditionally grazed by the nomadic Ababda tribe. The northern
border of Bir Tawil runs along the 22nd parallel of latitude. To its north-
east, situated above this parallel, lies the larger Halaib Triangle, which has
around 130 miles of Red Sea coastline. Egypt currently administers the
Halaib Triangle, recognising a border drawn in 1899 by the British that runs
directly along the 22nd parallel, and which once demarcated the northern
border of the condominium of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan—later to become the
Republic of the Sudan. If Egypt claimed Bir Tawil, which is below the line,
then it could be understood as recognising a second administrative border,
also drawn by the British, that placed the Halaib Triangle in Sudan. This
administrative border was drawn in 1902 and cuts south of the 22nd parallel
to place Bir Tawil in Egypt but then runs north, crossing the parallel, and
includes the Halaib Triangle in Sudan.2 Conversely, if Sudan claimed Bir
Tawil, it could be interpreted as recognising the earlier 1899 line, thereby
undermining its own claim to the Halaib Triangle. While this was a trifling
concern in the days of British colonial rule, it has become one of particular
significance ever since Sudan achieved independence in 1956.3
Bir Tawil is not easy to get to for outsiders. This inhospitable territory is
located in the vast Nubian Desert and is around two days drive from the
nearest town in Sudan. There are no connecting roads, and dry winds
frequently blow in from the Arabian Peninsula, whipping up sheets of dust
that can temporarily obliterate this territory from view.4 Permission is
required from Sudan or Egypt to visit, while unlicenced gold miners, as
well as armed gangs and smugglers, operate in and around its territory.5
Despite these challenges and dangers, the rise of social media has made it
an attractive destination for thrill-seekers: mountaineers striving to climb
the highest point in every African country,6 geographers on off-roading
expeditions,7 as well as several individuals who have claimed the territory
for themselves. Among the (all-male) claimants are a Virginian farmer, a
Russian amateur radio enthusiast,8 a German entrepreneur,9 a British
newspaper correspondent,10 a fan of Game of Thrones from India,11 and
someone on X/Twitter called King Dwain, First of His Name, Lord of Bir
Tawil, Protector of the Realm.12 However, none of these claims are
recognised and Bir Tawil remains beyond the control of any ruler or state.
At Bir Tawil sovereignty gets scrambled.13 It poses awkward questions
about whether a territory with no country could or should exist? Who owns
its minerals and lands? Do any laws apply there? And, if so, whose? In
short, is it possible to have territory without sovereignty? And, who or what
rules such a place?
Bir Tawil is not the only sovereign oddity in our world. Its mirror image
is a country with no territory and no borders, but which can still print
passports and has its own official vehicle licence plates but no roads.14 It
boasts ambassadors to 112 countries and to the European Union, as well as
permanent observer missions to the United Nations and UN agencies. Yet it
has no president, prime minister, or monarch.15 This is the Sovereign
Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of
Malta, or the Sovereign Order of Malta, for short. This Catholic chivalric
order has all the trappings of statehood but no territory. Founded in
Jerusalem in 1099, long before any nation-state came into existence, its
official language today is Italian and the currency is the Maltese Scudo. The
Sovereign Order also prints official stamps and issues coins, as well as
having 500 biometric passports in circulation that are fully valid for
travel.16

OMAR ROBERT HAMILTON

Over its long history, the Order has been based in the Holy Land, Cyprus,
Rhodes, Italy, Malta, and, briefly, tsarist Russia. Its crusading days are long
over and its current focus is on humanitarian missions.17 The Grand Master
presides over the order as the sovereign and religious superior, chairing the
Sovereign Council, which is elected for a term of five years, with judicial
power in the hands of the Courts of the Order.18 It reminds us of a time
when ecclesiastical and religious authority ruled much of the world. While
the rise of organised religions once diminished the myths of heroes co-
existing with spirits and monsters—and of the gods bound to mountains,
rivers, plants, and animals—the sacred significance of religion subsequently
faced its own challenge in an age of Enlightenment and rationalism.19 It
was an age in which the exclusive link between territory and the sovereign
authority of a divinely appointed dynastic monarch or emperor was severed,
creating space for a new kind of myth to emerge. With legitimate power
over territory no longer generally accepted as residing in the delegation of
heavenly powers to a ruler on earth, it now appeared in the popular will of
the nation, which had to be consulted.20
This myth endures to the present day but an innovative and striking
challenge to our bounded world of sovereign countries is revealed in
Antarctica. Although there is no permanent population on this vast land
mass, the tens of thousands of scientists, explorers, and tourists who travel
there, as well as its wealth of natural resources and wildlife, need to be
protected and governed by some rules and regulations. On this frozen
territory, it is achieved through the Antarctic Treaty System.21 With twelve
initial signatories, the Antarctic Treaty recognises ‘that Antarctica shall
continue for ever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not
become the scene or object of international discord’. Article IV of the treaty
explicitly recognises that: ‘No acts or activities taking place while the
present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or
denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica or create any rights
of sovereignty in Antarctica.’22 It is an arrangement with wide significance.
The treaty system governing Antarctica breaks with the prevailing
orthodoxy that sovereignty is indivisible—that it can’t be shared, and that
political authority must be absolute and invested in either a singular
sovereign god, represented in a king or queen, or in a sovereign parliament,
or president.23 With a bespoke set of functioning governing institutions,
Antarctica has become ‘a trend-setter’,24 which although imperfect,
presents an awkward alternative to the idea of sovereign territory.
Its mode of self-government is made up of a complex mosaic of different
types of overlapping legal and governmental institutions guided by the
principle that in Antarctica unconstrained, ‘sovereign’ power would be
‘arbitrary, dangerous, and illegitimate’. A permanent Secretariat administers
the Antarctic Treaty, with the number of member states of the Consultative
Parties to the treaty now standing at twenty-nine. The annual Antarctic
Treaty Consultative Meeting is also not exclusively the domain of
politicians but involves various representatives, observers, and invited
experts hosted by one of the different Consultative Parties each year.25
 In these arrangements, the fiction of the absolute sovereignty of states
spanning every last inch of the globe melts away. Antarctica has moved
beyond an old world of sovereignty to one in which its institutions and
consultative members regularly resist attempts by certain states to exercise
power arbitrarily, unilaterally, and without scrutiny.26 However, Antarctica
is also not immune to the old ways, and there are fears over a worsening
relationship with Russia sparking strategic competition in Antarctica, as
well as concerns over resource exploitation—from fishing to mining—and
the ecological pressures of increasing Antarctic tourism.27 For the moment
though, with no official flag, no national anthem, or currency, or coat of
arms, Antarctica refuses the usual symbols in which sovereignty is
wrapped. Instead, stewardship of this fragile and vulnerable environment
places the biosphere as a whole ahead of the perspective that humans—and
our states, borders, and nations—are the ultimate source of sovereign power
and authority on earth.28
Antarctica’s resident emperor penguins offer their own metaphor for this
mode of governing territory. Their huddles are constantly in motion,
shuffling across the ice sheets, and cycling in those penguins on their frozen
edge to the warmth of the inner circle. No single penguin claims its own
space and, like the treaty system, they point us towards a different way of
ordering the world, where no one power dominates a certain territory at the
expense of others. Could such a mechanism of working for the greater good
indicate the possibility of a post-sovereign model of governing? And might
our global commons be better managed outside of a system of sovereign
territories, borders, and nation states?
 AUSCAPE/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Away from the frozen icesheets of Antarctica, new technologies have

also raised questions about sovereignty. With all of us increasingly living
online, have we now arrived at the possibility of founding a country on the
internet? In response to a sense that central governments are no longer
capable of addressing their citizen’s needs, Balaji Srinivasan argues in his
book The Network State that institutions which predated the internet are
largely irrelevant for organising societies. Instead, through a social network,
like-minded people can pool resources, money, and skills to build a
community.29
Over time, this network could develop its own distinct culture and values,
set up social services, provide healthcare, insurance, and even passports.
The community could vote online on their preferred legislation and through
a cryptocurrency control their money supply and protect their funds from
encroaching governments. As the community expands, it might buy plots of
land suited to the community—in San Francisco for some; in Montana for
others. Cities might even compete to attract these new communities of
affluent digital citizens, who could negotiate with states, obtain rights and
recognition, and eventually break away from their home countries.30 While
this idea of creating a country on the internet might be an easy one to
dismiss, it seems no less eccentric or unjust than sailing to the other side of
the world to plant a flag of ownership in a place where people are already
living.
The complex meaning of sovereignty in the modern world has also been
revealed by an unprecedented experiment with it ever since the UK
government announced a referendum on its continued membership of the
EU, which was held in June 2016.31 One of the central figures in this
experiment was Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave,
who later became chief advisor to Boris Johnson when he became prime
minister in 2019. For years before the referendum, Cummings had been
trying to make sense of sovereignty. In his search for messages that would
resonate with the public, he ran focus groups discussing the UK’s
relationship with Europe in which people were asked to write down what
‘sovereignty’ meant. At one of these focus groups, it was reported that in
response to this task: ‘Every single person, without fail, answered “the
Royal family”’32 Cummings quickly realised that the idea of sovereignty
was not cutting through. What was needed was a novel and more
intelligible slogan. As he listened to these groups, and played with
variations, the slogan of ‘Let’s take back control’ began to emerge.33
Cummings understood that this phrase could brilliantly capture the
essence of a campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the EU. Its success
was in its simplicity as it encapsulated the myth of sovereignty; that control
over people and territory is somehow natural and obvious, and easy to
determine and exert. It is a myth in which the world is reduced into territory
being either totally inside or outside of the control of a state.34
For the proponents of Brexit, reasserting the UK’s sovereignty after the
vote to leave the EU was meant to be easy. As the new prime minister
Theresa May declared in the months after the referendum: ‘We have voted
to leave the European Union and become a fully independent, sovereign
country. We will do what independent, sovereign countries do.’35 The
problem since has been determining what exactly it is that independent,
sovereign countries do, and, after three years, May left office, defeated and
frustrated.
Much of the problem with ‘taking back control’ is that sovereignty is
both hard to define and rife with contradictions. It might be made concrete
in the walls that demarcate state borders but it also varies from place to
place, time to time, and person to person. Brexit was supposed to cut
through such confusion to realise an idealised image of sovereignty.
However, the difficulties of trying to distil a pure form of sovereignty were
quickly revealed. Firstly, every country exists in a globalised world that is
vulnerable to financial crises, the whims of capital flows, the aggressive
trade policies of other states, and unequal competition, which can restrict
any country’s control over their own economic conditions.36
While European Union member states may lose some policy
independence to its institutions, these same common structures, standards,
rules, and agreements can also protect them from external pressures,
offering more scope and resources for domestic policy choices.37 Similarly,
any external economy or enterprise wanting to trade with the EU—a
wealthy market of half a billion people—will generally have to accept the
rules the EU sets down, the formation of which all members have a say
over. This has become known as the ‘Brussels effect’, where exporters to
the bloc must meet its standards, with the result being that the EU shapes
global rules across a wide range of areas.38
At the time of the referendum, the UK’s trade with the EU’s single
market made up around 44 per cent of its total exports in goods and
services.39 All of these exporters—regardless of whether the UK is inside or
outside of the EU—are required to adhere to EU rules and regulations in
order to sell their products in the single market. This also became a key
factor in negotiating a special status for Northern Ireland and its
relationship with the EU after Brexit in order to honour the Good Friday
Agreement and its commitment to cross-border cooperation with the
Republic of Ireland—an EU member. Encountering the ‘Brussels effect’ in
relations with Ireland and with exports to the wider EU has demonstrated
the limits to which the UK can ever diverge from EU regulations and
standards.40 Even Theresa May, in a last vestige of reality before the
referendum, noted that any negotiation to leave ‘could well be about
accepting EU regulations, over which we would have no say’.41
For members of the EU, sovereignty is shared between different tiers of
government—from EU-wide, to the national, and the regional. In many
ways, the EU is its own unique experiment in sovereignty, into which many
European nation-states have thrown in their lot with one another in a way
that challenges existing state sovereignty.42 For those European economies
outside of this experiment, they can find themselves more susceptible to the
ebb and flow of globalisation.
 While the UK may have found itself somewhat less bound to the EU
since Brexit, now that it is outside the protections of the European single
market, its economic and political decisions have become more exposed to
the decisions and demands of powerful states, sovereign wealth funds,
hedge-fund managers, international institutions, central banks, investment
funds, business lobbies, asset managers, and global corporations.43 It is a
scenario not lost on the world of speculative finance, where EU regulation
such as the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (2011)—
which imposed financial regulation on hedge funds, private equity, and real
estate funds—had long been unpopular. This directive was estimated to
have increased the operating costs of certain funds by around 5 per cent
each year.44
It is no coincidence that three of the top five individuals funding the
campaign to leave the EU were from this world of speculative finance—
Peter Hargreaves (Hargreaves Lansdown); James Hosking (Marathon Asset
Management); and Crispin Odey (Odey Asset Management).45 While Peter
Cruddas, founder of the foreign exchange trading company CMC Markets,
and Stuart Wheeler, founder of the financial spread betting firm IG Index,
were credited by Cummings as being ‘two rare heroes’ of the Vote Leave
campaign.46 For those investment portfolios with interests in emerging
markets, such as Somerset Capital Management LLP47—co-founded and
co-owned by the hardline Brexiteer and Conservative MP, Jacob Rees-
Mogg—there was little to be lost and much to be gained by leaving the
EU.48
Even outside of the EU, the UK remains a signatory to around 700
international treaties, each conceding elements of independence and
sovereignty in return for broader influence.49 One international body the
UK is bound to is the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which featured
heavily in debates over Brexit. Reverting to WTO tariffs to govern trade
with the EU was represented by some as a ‘clean break’ Brexit. However,
the WTO is itself an unelected authority, which regulates international trade
through overseeing the implementation, administration, and operation of the
agreements it covers. Its member states are required to impose any
sanctions required by its rulings even if they disagree with them.50
A reliance on external financial institutions and organisations was a once
familiar scenario for the UK before joining the EU. Back in the 1970s,
repeated attempts to join what was then the European Communities (EC)
were in many ways motivated by economic weakness at home. It was an era
succinctly summarised by an article in the Financial Times in 2017:

From the mid-1940s to mid-1970s, Britain was the heaviest user of

IMF [International Monetary Fund] resources... Britain had emerged
from world war two with heavy debts and an unsustainable initial
exchange rate in the Bretton Woods system. There was also the
problem of sterling balances, private overseas holdings of the
currency used to finance trade in the sterling area. As holders sold
sterling when the exchange rate looked vulnerable, they accelerated
declines in the currency.51

The national economy was beholden to currency speculation and IMF

bailouts. It was one reason why joining the Common Market was welcomed
by voters in the 1970s. This was particularly the case in England, which had
a higher percentage of voters in favour of membership of the EC in the
confirmatory referendum on membership held in 1975 compared with
Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland.
Just over forty years later, the second ‘in-out’ referendum on the UK’s
continued membership of the EU was held. In the run-up to the referendum,
the Vote Leave campaign was fronted by two of the most high-profile and
charismatic Conservative politicians in the country: Michael Gove and
Boris Johnson. It was a campaign that proved to be highly effective at
tapping into a groundswell of antipathy towards Europe.52 A UK outside of
the EU was presented by Johnson and Gove as being supposedly
unencumbered by its rules and regulations, liberated to sign free trade
agreements with the rest of the world, and able to redirect the UK’s
budgetary contribution to the EU towards the National Health Service
(NHS) to the tune of £350 million per week. It was also a campaign that
stoked fears about migration and the circulation of a myth that Turkey
would imminently join the EU.53 Reflecting on the campaign’s success,
Dominic Cummings suggested that without Gove and Johnson picking up
‘the baseball bat marked “Turkey/NHS/£350 million”’, Vote Leave might
never have triumphed.54
 MATT CARDY/GETTY IMAGES

Under the slogan ‘Take Back Control’ an idealised image of sovereignty

was supposed to be regained. However, it was a mantra that could only
work by denigrating experts, alongside the repudiation of awkward facts
and truths. This tactic was deployed by Gove—who co-chaired Vote Leave
—when he was unable to name during a television interview any
economists who backed Britain’s exit from the EU. Gove instead insisted
that ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’.55 Even long after
the referendum, in October 2019, the then chancellor Sajid Javid declared
that there was more to delivering Brexit than ‘spreadsheets or impact
assessments’.56 Instead of relying on data, facts, scrutiny, or reason, he
argued that the government’s Brexit deal being tabled at the time was ‘self-
evidently in our economic interest’.57 The myth of sovereignty had
triumphed over reality.
Sections of the British media trumpeted the possibility of a glorious
restoration of sovereignty in the run up to the referendum. The tabloid
newspaper The Sun ran a headline on the eve of the referendum exclaiming
that ‘leaving the EU will save our sovereignty’. One of the article’s authors,
the then Conservative MEP (Member of the European Parliament) Daniel
Hannan, explained that: ‘Britain’s greatest export, our chief contribution to
human happiness, is parliamentary democracy... But we are losing it at
home.... Britain has lost its sovereignty to the EU.’58 An article in the
Telegraph newspaper in the days before the referendum also argued that:
‘At heart, the Brexit vote is about the supremacy of Parliament. All else is
noise.’ The article went on to claim that the referendum was an ‘elemental
choice’ over ‘whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to
continue living under a higher supranational regime’.59 Yet rather than
restore parliamentary sovereignty, in 2019, Johnson attempted to prorogue
parliament—i.e. to effectively suspend it—in order to force through Brexit
legislation. It was a move quickly ruled illegal by the Supreme Court,
whose decision was pilloried by the Brexit supporting media at the time.
The irony being that the greatest threat to a sovereign UK parliament had
come not from the EU, but from the executive branch of government and
sections of the British media.60
The referendum itself also posed its own challenge to parliamentary
sovereignty, in that parliament had ceded the decision-making power of its
elected representatives to a popular vote on this issue.61 In addition,
attempts to restore sovereignty to Westminster had come at least two
decades too late. In the time since the United Kingdom had joined the
European Community in 1973, transfer of political and legal powers from
parliament had created new devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales,
and Northern Ireland, complicating the claim of Parliament to singular and
exclusive territorial sovereignty.62 This was made even more complex by
majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to remain in the EU,
while the introduction of the Northern Ireland Protocol in 2021 effectively
imposed a border across the Irish Sea for certain goods moving between
Northern Ireland and Great Britain.63
Any aspirations of a pivot towards the United States somehow reviving
the UK’s sovereignty were quickly dispelled when US president Barack
Obama stated prior to the referendum that the UK was ‘going to be in the
back of the queue’ for a trade deal. While his successor, Donald Trump,
promised a ‘very big trade deal’ with the UK, Trump’s Secretary of State for
Commerce, Wilbur Ross, cautioned that to get one the UK would need to
scrap certain food standards. Trump also insisted that the NHS—an
institution that ranked highest in a recent poll on what makes members of
the public most proud to be British64—should also be ‘on the table’ in any
post-Brexit trade deal negotiations.65 Reaching a trade deal with Canada
has been no easier and talks broke down in early 2024 after Canada had
sought concessions on the export of Canadian hormone-treated beef to the
UK, while refusing to extend preferences for UK dairy exporters and
carmakers to access Canada’s market.66
Deals with these large North American economies still look a long way
off with many concessions to come. US president Joe Biden, who often
references his Irish ancestry, has warned that there would be no support for
a UK-US trade deal unless the Good Friday Agreement is protected.67 The
stalled trade deals and the emergence of new border checks and paperwork
with the EU have all become symbols of a new ‘sovereign’ era for the
United Kingdom. The reality behind the myth of taking back control is that
the sovereignty of the United Kingdom is no more complete outside of the
European Union than it was on the inside. Arguably, it has less sovereignty,
not more.
It is a logic not lost elsewhere in Europe. In Ukraine, President
Volodymyr Zelensky began an application for EU membership five days
after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Commentators have noted that for
Ukraine, EU membership is about being ‘an independent, sovereign
European state... Not merely part of the Russian world.’68 Others have
noted that EU candidate status is ‘recognition for Ukraine’s determination
to defend its sovereignty and European aspirations.’69 Just two years after
the UK had left the EU to supposedly restore its sovereignty, Georgia and
Moldova also formally applied for EU membership in the days after
Russia’s invasion, highlighting the ways in which sovereignty and security
are fused together in their priority of joining the EU.70
At some point in the future, Zelensky may find himself frustrated when
the EU insists that Ukraine’s laws and regulations are changed to meet its
standards. But perhaps more than most, Zelensky knows that sovereignty is
never indivisible but always relative to certain contexts, circumstances, and
moments; a political choice over who you wish to be dependent on. It was a
nuance lost in the Brexit debate. What the mantra of ‘take back control’
failed to convey was that while certain decision making could be returned
from Brussels, some of this would only end up being handed over to
offshore fund managers, CEOs of multinational companies, farmers in
Canada, industry lobby groups in Washington, and WTO bureaucrats in
Switzerland.
In the months before the referendum, the then prime minister, David
Cameron, warned against the dangers of pursuing the ‘illusion’ of
sovereignty. Cameron argued that the EU served to help British businesses
in Europe, facilitated European partners sharing border information on
criminals and terrorists, and provided access to dispute resolution
mechanisms in the case of unfair trade practices. While these may impinge
on state sovereignty, Cameron asked: ‘If Britain were to leave the EU that
might give you a feeling of sovereignty but you have got to ask yourself is
it real?... You have an illusion of sovereignty but you don’t have power, you
don’t have control.’71
What might have surprised Cameron was the power of such a powerful
and persuasive myth, which through live news feeds, tweets, and the
endless churn of social media, came to replace reality. The ‘Take Back
Control’ agenda repeatedly invoked the impossible—an idealised essence of
pure state sovereignty that can somehow be disentangled from a network of
overlapping national, supranational, and international norms, regulations,
and agreements.72 Former Conservative prime minister John Major put it
more bluntly: ‘If you want undiluted sovereignty, go to North Korea.’73 Yet,
Major was only half right, for even Pyongyang depends on external support
from China. Ultimately, the national sovereignty of every state is contingent
on external relations and circumstances, and this is ever more so in our
interconnected digital age.
In the United Kingdom—one of the most globalised and connected
corners of the world—the ‘Take Back Control’ agenda promised the
impossible: to extract a myth of sovereignty from a messy reality.
Captivated by their sovereign delusions, what the architects of Brexit
overlooked was that state sovereignty has never been absolute and that it
has always coexisted with competing forces, from empires to warlords, and
from the influence of neighbouring powers to the sway of religious
authority. Today, it is increasingly undercut and reconfigured by the modern
features of globalisation—whether that be the cross-border interests of
multinational companies, the vagaries of capital markets and international
finance, the whims of powerful allies and enemies, the rise of supranational
institutions, or even the activities of transnational crime networks.74
Absolute sovereignty is always just out of reach—beyond the control of any
one state. In the barren desert of Bir Tawil, among the penguins of
Antarctica, within online communities, in the biometric passports of the
Sovereign Order of Malta, and in the tortured process of Brexit, sovereignty
is everywhere and nowhere. Each presents a fundamental challenge to the
prevailing way in which the world is imagined, governed, and organised in
the twenty-first century.
One day, we might imagine away sovereignty as its currently conceived,
just as we have done away with empires and the divinity of sovereign
rulers. And, if we are able to tear down the walls dividing ‘sovereign’ states,
might we find ways to structure our world more fairly, sustainably and
equally? Could it be that the penguins in Antarctica are already living in a
post-sovereign world ahead of our time? Can our vivid geographical
imaginations, which have conjured up the sophisticated illusion of
sovereignty, be turned towards bringing about a better world? Maybe I’m a
dreamer. But I’m not the only one.
 CHAPTER FIVE

THE MYTH OF MEASURING GROWTH

Wealth, health or happiness?

In recent years, Japan has become renowned for is its long period of
practically non-existent economic growth. But on a visit would you notice
that it is a basket case of the global economy with sclerotic and frequently
declining growth? Or would you instead be struck by the way it tops other
rankings, such as having the most technological expertise in the world?1 Or
the population with the world’s highest average life expectancy?2 The
longevity of many in Japan has much to do with factors beyond economic
growth. Diet for one. Popular superfoods like green tea and seaweed are full
of antioxidants while high-fat red meat, though growing in popularity,
remains less favoured. The Japanese also eat plenty of oily fish rich in
Omega-3 as part of a diet that contains the key to long life. Among its
healthy foods is a sharply bitter tasting and warty cucumber-shaped
vegetable that is packed with antioxidants as well as vitamins and minerals.
Goya—as it is known on Japan’s Okinawa archipelago—has spread in
popularity across Japan and even has its own dedicated day on 8 May.3
Goya is credited as being one of the key ingredients in Okinawans having
an especially long life expectancy with it being said that ‘locals refuse to
die’. There is a low level of heart disease, cancer, and dementia, and
Okinawans have a 40 per cent greater chance of living to 100 than other
people in Japan.4 In addition to their healthy diet, Okinawans emphasise a
robust social life and the concept of ‘ikigai’—a sense of purpose in life—
which has led to Okinawa being designated one of the world’s five ‘Blue
Zones’ of human longevity.5
Alongside Okinawa, a National Geographic supported study identified
four other ‘Blue Zones’: Sardinia in Italy; Loma Linda in California, USA;
Nicoya in Costa Rica; and Ikaria in Greece. These are the five areas with
the highest percentage of centenarians in the world. Okinawa is home to the
longest-lived women, and Sardinia is home to the world’s longest-lived
men. On Sardinia regular exercise, a largely plant-based diet and an
occasional sip of the flavonoid-rich local wine are cited as contributing
factors. Loma Linda is an Adventist community that outlives the average
American by a decade. Their biblically inspired vegan diet involves leafy
greens, nuts, and legumes, while they also take time-out for contemplation
and reflection every week on the Sabbath. Nicoyans are more than twice as
likely than Americans to reach ninety years of age; they eat little to no
processed foods but plenty of antioxidant-rich tropical fruit. And on the
Mediterranean island of Ikaria, with its healthy diet and lifestyle, people
live eight years longer than Americans, experience 20 per cent less cancer,
half the rate of heart disease, and almost no dementia.6
The health indicators of these blue zones soar above other regions of the
world, as well as those within their own countries, and have become an
inspiration for public health policy initiatives. However, when they are
measured according to more traditional indicators of development and
progress they don’t stack up quite so well. Okinawa is Japan’s poorest
prefecture; Ikaria is part of Greece’s North Aegean region, which has the
country’s lowest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita; and Sardinia is
in the bottom third of Italy’s regions for GDP per capita.7 Costa Rica’s GDP
per capita is $12,506, compared to $69,288 in the US.8 And the city of
Loma Linda has a median household income and per capita income that is
below the US average, while its poverty rate is higher than average.9
As these cases indicate, it can be seriously misleading to only measure
the success of a community according to economic growth and its GDP—
defined by the World Bank as the ‘value added by all resident producers in
the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included
in the value of the products’.10 What you would miss from the official GDP
data alone are some of the best places in the world to live, for the longest
time.
Another place recognising that there might be more to life than making
money is the isolated mountain kingdom of Bhutan. Known evocatively as
the Land of the Thunder Dragon, Bhutan went through a democratic
transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy in the late
2000s. Its mountainous terrain is characterised by magnificent Buddhist
monasteries, which appear to defy gravity by clinging to jagged cliff faces.
The country’s vibrant yellow and orange flag depicts a fearsome and
intricately drawn dragon, clutching jewels in its razor-sharp claws. It is a
country of imposing Himalayan landscapes, misty valleys, and isolated
villages, which rise from the plains of West Bengal and Assam to the south,
with its highest peaks and passes bordering Tibet and China to the north.
Despite nestling between India and China, Bhutan’s independence has
endured for centuries and it continues to pursue its own experiment with a
unique development path. This has ranged from banning televisions until
1999 and the levying of exorbitant tourist fees in order to manage visitor
numbers, avoiding some of the breakneck development and environmental
stress of neighbouring Nepal. Visiting a Bhutanese village is like stepping
back in time. Electricity has only just arrived in some places, while new
roads, which have cut deep scars across the hillsides, are only just
connecting some villages. One of the most striking rural traditions is the
adornment on houses of painted phalluses—complete with hairy testes and
ejaculation. These are not scrawled on by local hoodlums but by talented
local artists celebrating the power of fertility and warding off the evil eye.
Such symbols also suggest that Bhutan might be a happy place: research
has shown that sex can be an important part of wellbeing and happiness.11
In Bhutan, happiness is certainly taken extremely seriously. The idea of
Gross National Happiness (GNH) was first mooted by the Fourth King of
Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the 1970s. Over subsequent years,
this idea has become formalised into an index to measure the collective
happiness and wellbeing of the population. In 2008, the aim of promoting
the conditions to advance GNH became entrenched in Article 9.2 of
Bhutan’s constitution.12
However, Bhutan remains a poor country. Picturesque village life is
punctuated by rural poverty, and there is a lack of opportunities for work in
the countryside. Traditional roles for men and women endure. People’s
village homes tend not to stable cars below their living quarters but
livestock—and their close proximity means that happiness can depend on a
high tolerance for fleas and cockroaches. Also missing from the GNH index
are around a hundred thousand Lhotshampas—a minority group of Nepali-
speaking Bhutanese, who resided mainly in the country’s southern
lowlands. Beginning in the late 1970s, the government of Bhutan
introduced progressively discriminatory measures focussed on the political,
economic, and cultural exclusion of this group. By 1992, tens of thousands
had fled discrimination, mass revocation of citizenship, violence, and
abuses at the hands of the Bhutanese police and army, while others were
forcibly deported. Over a hundred thousand became registered in refugee
camps in Nepal.13 The misery of forced displacement by the Bhutanese
government and the lost years in refugee camps is a marked contrast to the
focus on wellbeing and happiness in Bhutan today.
The majority of the refugees were resettled by the UN in third countries,
including the United States, Australia, and Norway,14 and there is no trace
of them in Bhutan’s 2015 GNH surveys which found that around 10 per
cent of the population were ‘unhappy’; 49 per cent were ‘narrowly happy’;
33 per cent, ‘extensively happy’; and 8 per cent had achieved the bliss of
‘deeply happy’. Men tended to be happier than women, urban residents
happier than rural ones, and more educated people happier than those with
less education.15 In the latest index, published after the Covid-19 pandemic,
it was revealed that between 2015 and 2022, GNH had increased due to
improvements in housing, income, schooling, services, and literacy.
However, some indicators declined, including healthy days, cultural and
political participation, and mental health.16
Nine domains constitute the Bhutanese version of GNH: psychological
wellbeing, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience,
good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience,
and living standards.17 Thirty-three indicators are used to evaluate these
nine GNH domains. Cultural diversity and resilience, for example, is
assessed by measuring possession of Zorig Chusum—that is artisan skills
such as embroidery, leather-making, and painting—and demonstrated by the
number of days participating in social and cultural activities, the ability to
speak local dialects, as well as feelings towards traditional customs,
etiquette, and behaviours, or Driglam Namzha. Happiness is rated in
relation to various government-set criteria, with different weightings
assigned to these indicators by the state. So even if you find weaving
laborious and tedious, the fact that you possess a skill in it will still be
added to the overall index. Or you may hate wearing traditional dress and
dread certain village festivals but, as long as you turn up, it will be included
in GNH.
 CINDY HOPKINS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Despite the challenge of quantifying something as subjective as

happiness, a wider recognition of the importance of measuring progress
beyond GDP has been the World Happiness Report, published by the United
Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This report has
ranked the state of happiness across most of the world since 2012 through a
series of annual surveys.18 In the 2019 World Happiness Report, Bhutan
came in at 95 out of 156.19 Despite a relatively low ranking, Bhutan still
does better in terms of happiness than it does according to its GDP. In 2019,
the World Bank ranked Bhutan’s economy at 174 out of 203. In second
place was China, with a GDP 5,851 times larger than Bhutan’s.20 Even on a
per capita basis, China’s GDP was around 35 per cent more than in
Bhutan.21 However, in the 2019 World Happiness Report, China ranked just
a fraction above Bhutan in 93rd place. While for Bhutan, 95th place might
not be that impressive for a country guided by a philosophy of happiness, if
China is anything to go by, then vast national wealth and rapid economic
growth cannot easily buy happiness either.
In the United States, the idea of happiness is embedded in its political
culture. The Declaration of Independence (1776) proclaims in its second
paragraph the right to ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’.
However, while the US comes in top of the World Bank’s GDP rankings, in
the 2019 World Happiness report, it is only ranked 19th. Top of the
happiness charts was Finland, which in 2019 had a GDP per capita around
$14,000 less than the United States.22
Despite the mismatch between GDP and happiness, we live in a world
where governments place their absolute faith not in the latter but in
economic growth. GDP has become an idea that is taken for granted and
hardly questioned—a shorthand for development and the status of every
country in the world. The myth of GDP is the privileging of a figure that we
invest so much in, but which tells us so little about the state of us and our
world. This idea of GDP as a myth is also far from new. In March 1968,
Robert Kennedy—who was then a US presidential candidate, and the
brother of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy—gave a speech at the
University of Kansas in which he declared that:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal
excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of
material things... Gross National Product counts air pollution and
cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of
carnage.
It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people
who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the
loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.
It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars
for the police to fight the riots in our cities.23

Kennedy argued that GDP could tell us nothing about the health of our
children, or the quality of their education; neither was it an indicator of the
integrity of institutions or public officials. He stated that GDP measures
everything ‘except that which makes life worthwhile...it can tell us
everything about America except why we are proud that we are
Americans’.24
This was a conviction that because of the detrimental activities included
in its calculation, the pursuit of ever-greater GDP brings with it no incentive
to build a better world, such as through curbing environmental destruction
or building trust, cooperation, and community. Nevertheless, GDP
continues to remain a figure of awe and admiration. According to the US
Department of Commerce, it is ‘one of the greatest inventions of the 20th
century’.25 On the day of writing this paragraph, a quick search of headlines
revealed its potency. The Australian newspaper triumphantly declared that
‘Australian GDP growth still leading advanced economy pack’.26 While
USA Today ran with 2nd-quarter GDP out Thursday morning: ‘Really,
you’re going to see just godawful numbers just across the board.’27 And, the
investment magazine Portfolio Advisor summed up the current situation in
the UK with its headline: ‘Hopes of a V-shaped recovery dashed after
“paltry” 1.8 per cent GDP rise in May’.28
In 2018, Ireland’s Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and
Reform, Paschal Donohoe, set out in an Irish Times article the hold that
GDP has over our governments. Donohoe recounted that in July 2016, as
finance minister, he had been consumed with dealing with demands for
rises in public sector wages. Just before embarking on a series of media
interviews to justify government policy on pay, news came in that GDP in
the previous year had grown by 26 per cent. Suddenly, the narrative of
limited resources and competing choices had to be rapidly altered.
However, this surge in GDP was largely due to several foreign companies
switching their base to Ireland and becoming included in the value of
Ireland’s corporate sector. With its low corporate tax regime, Ireland had
become a popular destination for ‘inversion’—the switching of tax
domiciles after a merger or acquisition. In 2015, this was also supplemented
by a sharp increase in aircraft imported into Ireland by leasing companies.
As Donohoe argued, Ireland could not make long-term decisions on the
basis of economic flows that could be reversed at any point, recounting that:
‘It was a vivid personal introduction to the challenges of measuring
economic growth or decline.’29 As Donohoe saw it, the GDP figure was
misleading and the country wasn’t as rich as everyone was claiming.
GDPism—the belief that rapid GDP growth should always be the
nation’s highest priority—has also had an iron grip on policy makers in
China ever since its communist rulers opened up the economy in 1978. It
has become both the route to the country’s development goals and a symbol
of the legitimacy of communist rule.30 The mantra of protecting and
maintaining an 8 per cent year-on-year GDP growth rate subsequently
became central to official rhetoric and policy—an essential benchmark of
progress under China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, who ruled between 1978
and 1989.31
Such a growth rate was deemed necessary in order to maintain social
stability and to generate jobs for the tens of millions of labourers entering
the job market each year.32 GDPism became the guiding light of the
Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to manage the economy and society.
Party leaders and local government officials gauged their performance
against the 8 per cent GDP benchmark, competing to showcase their urban
development projects—from high-speed train lines to airports and concert
halls—which had boosted regional growth rates. Through such
‘bureaucratic beauty contests’, the worth of local officials was evaluated
and rewarded.33
Shrewd local officials also developed effective strategies to exceed
centrally mandated GDP targets. For example, removing the rural poor on
the edge of towns and cities—either forcibly or with little compensation—
and then selling on the land to developers and industry. Out of the drained
paddy fields and displaced communities sprang factory buildings and
apartment blocks that served to boost growth. It was a move that could both
enrich these officials, while also burnishing their credentials in the eyes of
the Party.34 All this helped China consistently register remarkable GDP
growth of around 10 per cent per year between 1992 and 2011, though from
2012 to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, growth dipped to
between 8 per cent and 6 per cent, declining each year until a Covid
rebound in 2021.35
However, side-effects of this breakneck economic growth in the 1990s
and 2000s have been toxic air, poisoned rivers, exhausted soils, the
deterioration of natural resources and the rapid destruction of communities
and heritage—none of which are subtracted from GDP calculations.
Instead, bulldozing ancient and natural landscapes for apartments and
factories is deemed logical. Polluting the environment is incentivised as the
clean-up can also be added to GDP, just as the introduction of
environmental protection legislation is discouraged because it can hold back
GDP. The immeasurable benefits of green spaces for physical and mental
health have no value in its calculations. Better to destroy such spaces for a
steel mill instead.36
 GETTY IMAGES

Echoing the logic of GDPism, the UK’s then prime minister, Boris
Johnson, declared in a speech on job creation in July 2020 that wildlife
rules were holding back housebuilding, claiming that: ‘Newt-counting
delays are a massive drag on the prosperity of this country.’ In response to
the speech, the CEO of The Wildlife Trusts, Craig Bennett, called it ‘pure
fiction’, explaining that: ‘It may sound funny referring to newts, but
actually it...is a dog whistle to people on the right of his party who want
environmental protections watered down.’37 What is good for newts—fresh
water, clean air, green space—tends to be good for humans. But GDP
doesn’t engage with such trifles, instead reinforcing an orthodoxy that
‘nothing can be done if it harms the economy’,38 even if it means saying
goodbye forever to the humble great crested newt. Although our futures
have become bound to GDP, habitat and diversity loss in the name of
economic growth is a choice. Making the right choice is all the more urgent
as experts have stressed that the loss of biodiversity and the threat of
human-induced climate change cannot be solved in isolation: ‘We either
solve both or neither.’39
Like the idea of the economy itself, GDP is a modern construct. Before
the onset of industrialisation, agricultural economies were largely static and
it was only during the industrial revolution that human societies managed to
increase economic output from year to year.40 With the invention of GDP
came concerted efforts to define and measure the economy and its growth.41
It was devised in the 1930s by Simon Kuznets, a Belarussian exile tasked
with developing a set of national income accounts by his employer, the US
Department of Commerce. Only from 1942 were annual estimates of GDP
first published.42 In his original formulation, Kuznets had insisted that any
detrimental activities should not be included in its calculation. He wanted to
exclude illegal activities, socially harmful industries, and most government
spending. However, Kuznets did not get his way.43 Instead, economic
progress became determined by capturing all economic activity, which
today includes the whirring of the laundromat of London banks making
criminal gains appear legitimate, the extravagant purchases on luxury goods
funded by oligarchs’ ill-gotten gains, and the spending on police, lawyers
and prisons to incarcerate criminals. When it comes to GDP, crime can
pay.44
Casino banking, which involves the investment activities of banks with
large amounts of other people’s money at significant risk, was also a huge
boon for GDP in the 1990s and 2000s.45 Bank profits surged by buying
from and selling to each other complex bundles of assets and debts, most
infamously ‘sub-prime’ mortgages that were never likely to be repaid. In the
decade before the 2009 financial crisis, the UK financial services sector
grew more than twice as fast (6 per cent) as the UK economy as a whole (3
per cent).46 In such heady days of soaring GDP, the government and the
bankers were blind to the spiralling number of repossessed and vacant
homes that would eventually bring the global financial system to its knees.
Even disasters can be good for GDP. The explosion of a BP oilrig off the
coast of Louisiana in 2010, which killed eleven, and leaked 3 million
barrels of oil into the Gulf, gave a boost to GDP thanks to the money spent
on cleaning up the mess.47 According to the logic of GDP, it makes sense to
privatise healthcare systems, to prescribe the most expensive drugs, to do as
many X-rays as possible, and to litigate against hospitals at every
opportunity. In terms of GDP, it is better to pack the elderly off to a care
home or to put the young in a kindergarten, just as long as you pay someone
else to do it for you. Since women often perform unpaid caring roles and
bring up children for free, their value has been consistently undervalued by
GDP, while voluntary, charity, and unpaid work to care for loved ones is
effectively worthless.48
 GDP also dictates how much is spent on whole sectors of the economy.
For NATO members, there is an expectation to set a defence spending target
of 2 per cent of GDP. The amount of international aid countries distribute
can also be determined by GDP, with cuts to programmes if growth falls.49
While the announcement of GDP figures has an impact on the interest rates
at which can states borrow, as well as their investment ratings.
Though it was only invented in the 1930s, you would be forgiven for
thinking that GDP had been around for centuries. In 2020, the Bank of
England warned that the UK was set to enter its worst recession for 300
years. The Bank predicted an almost 30 per cent drop in GDP in the first
half of Covid-hit 2020, which it stated would represent the fastest and
deepest recession since the ‘Great Frost’ of 1709.50 The Bank’s ‘illustrative
scenario’ was noteworthy not only for the scale of the recession but also for
its claim about the accuracy of a GDP figure from the reign of Queen Anne
—more than 200 years before GDP was invented.
Another remarkable trait of the figure of GDP is that it is always
inaccurate. While surveys and estimates have become more sophisticated
over the decades, economies have also become much more service based,
complex, globalised, and interlinked. Whether it is a car company or a tech
company, GDP struggles accurately capture a multinational’s contribution
to an individual economy. If a company is registered in one country, makes
components in a second, assembles them in a third, sells these in a fourth,
and pays taxes in a fifth, then to which country’s GDP account should this
activity be attributed?51 When it comes to the likes of Amazon, Google, or
Facebook, current GDP numbers cannot hope to accurately capture the
value of digital services.52 And while these internet phenomenon are worth
billions and billions in terms of GDP, Wikipedia—a compendium of human
knowledge that is freely accessible—is valued at precisely nothing.53
In countries where informal activity makes up much of the economy, any
claim to accurate GDP figures become ever more illusionary. In India, it is
estimated that more than 90 per cent of the working population are
employed outside of the formal sector, and official statistics can only
speculate at the contribution of the informal economy to national GDP. In
an attempt to capture such activity, other methods of estimating GDP—such
as the intensity of lights at night on satellite imagery—have been used
instead.54 Despite the growing popularity of night lights in economic
literature—including studies by the World Bank, IMF, and Federal Reserve
banks—one recent academic paper highlighted some of the many
uncertainties in the relationship between lights and GDP. Its author found
that measurement errors, the degree of democracy, effectiveness of
government institutions, business environment, level of development,
economic structure, urbanization, and geography can all significantly affect
the lights-GDP relationship.55
For those states that adopted GDP immediately after independence from
colonial powers, it was not a figure well suited to describing the peasant
economy of Ghana or India, for example. However, it was a badge of
nationhood.56 The chasing of this mythical figure came to be seen as a
barometer of progress—the essence of a nation’s success or failure.
Through the ranking of national economies, GDP influences and shapes
human behaviours and actions in peculiar ways. It rewards endeavour and
damaging behaviour in equal measure, devalues our greatest assets,
discourages us to act sustainably, and all the while tells us very little about
who is benefiting from growth.57
The world’s richest person and the founder, executive chair, and former
president and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, had a wealth estimated at $189
billion in the summer of 2020. This is ‘so much money, that his fortune now
dwarfs the GDP of Hungary, Ukraine and Qatar’.58 The Bloomberg
Billionaires Index calculated his wealth was equivalent to 0.855 per cent of
the GDP of the United States—which is more than that of the GDP of New
Mexico, where Bezos was born, and Delaware, home of US president Joe
Biden, put together.59 His net worth was 2,660,478 times the median US
household income.60 But, in terms of GDP, this extreme inequality doesn’t
matter. Growth that was good for Bezos, was good for GDP. In the United
States, which has become markedly more unequal since the mid-1970s, two
economists at the RAND Corporation found that if the relatively low
inequality in taxable income in the three decades after World War II had
remained the same, then the median income in the US would be over
double what it is now. However, as inequality has widened since then, these
economists calculated that from 1975 until 2018, the top 1 per cent of
earners had cumulatively taken $47 trillion from the bottom 90 per cent
compared to if income inequality had remained the same as it was between
1945 and 1974.61 None of this shows up in the neat figure of GDP, since
broad-based wealth creation is measured in just the same way—and valued
just as much—as highly skewed growth, whose benefits have largely
accrued to the already super-rich.62
GDP is hardly ever questioned yet it determines so much of our political
and societal decision-making. While there is no question that economic
growth has brought millions out of poverty, increasing both quality and
length of life, it has also come to assume a significance way beyond what it
was designed to measure. In focussing on GDP alone have we missed how
unequal economic growth has become? Has following this cult of growth
become increasingly ill-suited for the challenges of our times? By obsessing
about GDP, and the fact that it doesn’t make any deductions ‘for depletion
and degradation of natural resources’, have we been blind to the damage
being done to the planet?63 How did we fall for thinking that everything can
somehow be monetised?64 And, by myopically following GDP, have we
failed to see that there are obvious limits to growth?65
As some experts have warned, the ‘prosperity that the First World enjoys
at present is based on spending down its environmental capital in the bank
(its energy sources, fish stocks, topsoil, forests, etc.)’.66 However, this
capital can’t keep being diminished forever. Over the last two decades, the
emergence of a growing and affluent middle class in what was the
developing world has primarily driven consumption, while technological
development and innovation has so far been associated with increased
consumption rather than the reverse.67
In the past, societal breakdowns have begun with a failure to anticipate or
even perceive an environmental problem, which then can lead to conflicts
of interest whereby some members of the group continue to work towards
goals that are good for themselves but bad for the community. In several
cases, the result has been the demise of whole societies, as happened to the
populations of Easter Island, Nordic Greenland, Pitcairn Island, and Mayan
America.68 Today’s climate emergency is a moment of global endangerment
made worse by the relentless pursuit of GDP. The whole fate of humanity is
at stake as air and sea temperatures are elevated and ocean level’s rise,
while biodiversity plummets and natural environments are exhausted,
destroyed or polluted. Could it be that GDP is less an index of progress, and
more a metronome of doom? For, if GDP is soaring, then why are we
sinking?
In response to the inequalities, pollution, and environmental destruction
caused by unsustainable economic growth, there is an emerging consensus
that a rapid—and global—decoupling of detrimental impacts from
economic activity may be needed.69 Even before the 2008 financial crisis,
most leading macroeconomists had noted slowing growth in GDP per capita
across the developed world, which is projected to continue throughout the
twenty-first century.70 The economist Dietrich Vollrath has argued that
slower growth is not necessarily a symptom of disaster but a sign of
success. Vollrath also notes that this slowdown is the result of a fall in
fertility during the twentieth century, and the shift of our expenditures away
from goods towards services.71
From clothing to computers, the production of goods has become so
efficient that their reduced prices have raised disposable incomes, leaving
more money to spend on services such as education, healthcare, and travel.
Reduced fertility is a product of education and many professions opening
up to women, as well as growth in overall wages and advances in
contraceptive technology, meaning that decisions on marriage and families
can be made later in life. As Vollrath concludes, a growth slowdown—like a
population slowdown—has happened ‘because of things that went right,
things we would not sacrifice’.72
However, a slowdown in growth produces a range of emerging
challenges, including high debt burdens for governments, declining
economic opportunity and employment, fewer resources for public services,
more inequality, and less faith in free markets, and even democracy. In the
competition for stretched resources, populist and divisive identity politics
can be energised, while additional pressures are placed on families, mental
health, personal finance, and social trust.73 Countries may need to redesign
the way they fund pension programs so they are not as dependent on a
constantly expanding economy.74 These are challenges that are already with
us75 and many developed countries are finding themselves caught in a
dilemma: continuing to chase GDP could be catastrophic for the health and
wellbeing of the planet. However, not growing economies will result in
potentially significant detrimental impacts to economic and social
wellbeing.
Even in China, which as noted is one of the most zealous followers of
GDP, there is a dawning realisation that ‘about a third of China’s stated
GDP is not real’ when it is adjusted for waste, environmental destruction,
and social disharmony.76 The source of this claim is a senior economist and
Chinese government adviser, Niu Wenyuan, who tried and failed in the
early 2000s to introduce a ‘green GDP’, factoring in environmental costs,
which he later followed up with a ‘GDP quality index’. This index was
launched in 2011 to measure the economy not just by size, but by
sustainability, social equality, and ecological impact. However, both
proposals faced fierce criticism, especially from provincial leaders who
feared their GDP achievements—and promotion prospects—would be
undermined by a full accounting of the damage being done to the
environment.77 Nevertheless, there has been a shift at the official level and,
from 2014, more than seventy cities and counties moved from GDP as a
performance metric for government officials towards prioritising
environmental protection and poverty reduction. In the summer of 2014,
President Xi Jinping even stated to party officials that: ‘We can no longer
simply use GDP growth rates to decide who the heroes are.’78
In the West there has also been the beginnings of a wider reckoning about
GDP. In early 2008, on the eve of the global financial crisis, the then
president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, suggested that: ‘We will not change
our behaviour unless we change the way we measure economic
performance... We have built a cult of the data, and we are now enclosed
within it.’ Sarkozy commissioned an international panel of experts to
explore other ways to measure wellbeing, with the report emphasising the
importance of subjective indicators, including social connections and
relationships, as well as political systems.79 In the US state of Maryland, a
Genuine Progress Index has been established, which subtracts from
economic activity the negative impacts—such as the depreciation of natural
assets, loss of leisure time, health insurance, expenditure on security, legal
services, and child support. While in Canada, an Index of Wellbeing has
been established to reflect a range of economic, social and environmental
factors that are determined by focus group surveys of what people say they
value.80
More radically, a ‘degrowth’ movement has also emerged in recent years,
which calls on advanced countries to embrace zero, or even negative GDP
growth. It is premised on the idea that the faster goods are produced and
consumed, the more the environment is damaged, and in order to save the
planet’s life support systems, the global economy needs to slow down.81
Climate activist Greta Thunberg has railed against the ‘fairy tales of eternal
economic growth’, while the joint winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in
Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, have pointed out that larger
GDP doesn’t necessarily correlate with a rise in human well-being,
especially if it isn’t distributed equitably.82
Ideas for managing low growth include the provision of a universal basic
income for citizens, job guarantees and job sharing, the introduction of
maximum income levels, more expansive public services, and stronger
regulation of ecologically destructive industries and practices.83 The EU’s
European Environment Agency (EEA) noted in a briefing published in 2021
that since growth is ‘culturally, politically and institutionally ingrained’,
there needs to be a radical rethinking and reframing of societal notions of
progress in order to take us beyond the current trajectory of unsustainable
economic growth.84
In Finland, where world beating happiness has been achieved, its level of
material wealth as measured by GDP is below those in the most affluent
parts of the world, including its Scandinavian neighbours.85 Yet Finland’s
success is highlighted across international indices—such as happiness,
stability, and trust in journalism—while books, such as Finntopia, have
lauded it as a model for the rest of the world, arguing that Finland today ‘is
one of the few environments on earth that replicates most closely the
situation in which we are most content: when we are caring for each other
and not competing; where we are each valued very similarly, and where no
one is greatly elevated or diminished’. With its relatively low income
inequality, the focus of political parties in Finland in recent decades has
been on universally accessible and high-quality public schooling,
healthcare, housing support, and financial security to the benefit of the
whole community rather than divisive and inefficient social transfers from
rich to poor.86
 ISTOCK

Recently, Finland held one of the largest experiments with universal

basic income. Conducted in 2017 and 2018, it involved a randomly selected
group of 2,000 unemployed people being given a monthly payment of €560.
Although it did not make those receiving the basic income more likely to
find work than a control group, participants of the trial reported higher
levels of well-being, less stress, and greater overall happiness.87 A universal
basic income can also offer choices to citizens by allowing time and
resources for unpaid volunteering, seeking out more fulfilling but lower
paid work, and permitting increased leisure time. While the debate on the
merits of a universal basic income continues, the case of Finland suggests
that working for as many hours as you can, for as much money as you can
get, doesn’t appear to buy happiness.88
Of all the developed countries in the world, Japan has also registered
some of the smallest GDP growth: in 2008, 2009, and 2011, its economy
actually shrank. Policy makers have scrambled to reverse these trends, but
the world’s other developed economies seem to be following this pattern of
slower growth and aging populations that was established in Japan during
the 1990s.89 While there remain questions over how much debt stagnant
economies like Japan can afford,90 it may be that Japan is as much the
pioneer as the patient. Japan is the most equal major economy in the world
in terms of wealth distribution and has the lowest share of wealth
concentrated in the hands of the richest 1 per cent.91 On life expectancy,
unemployment, community cohesion, living standards, crime, and
healthcare, Japan also compares favourably with the rest of the developed
world.92
While neither Finland, Japan, nor Bhutan are a success on every metric,
each point to alternatives beyond the cult of GDP. Such cases force us to
ask why so much trust has been placed in a number that tells us so little
about our wealth, health, and wellbeing. Measuring our worth by GDP is
not normal, benign, or inevitable. As Robert Kennedy put it back in 1968,
GDP ‘measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our
learning, neither our compassion’.93 Half a century on, we might be running
out of time to place more of our faith in the things that really make life
worth living.
 CHAPTER SIX

THE MYTH OF RUSSIAN EXPANSIONISM

Or how Putin unleashed the revanchist monster1

In Russia there is no war. Despite a bloody invasion, launched by Vladimir

Putin in February 2022, with the targeting of civilians and the bombing of
cities in order to break Ukrainian resistance, it is forbidden to call it a war
in Russia. It is instead referred to merely as a ‘special operation’, with
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov stating with a straight face in the
weeks after the invasion that Russia had not even attacked Ukraine.2
Reporting the truth about the war—beyond the lies of state propaganda—
became punishable in Russia by up to fifteen years in prison. Access to
critical Western media and social media are blocked.3 Even so, many
Russians still came out on the streets to protest the invasion, only to be
arrested. Others simply held blank signs but were also detained.4 The
repression exposed a darkness that had been stirring in the Kremlin for a
while. As the dissident Russian writer, Vladimir Sorokin, explained:

On 24 February, the armor of the ‘enlightened autocrat’ that had

housed Vladimir Putin for the previous 20 years cracked and fell to
pieces. The world saw a monster—crazed in its desires and ruthless
in its decisions. The monster had grown gradually, gaining strength
from year to year, marinating in its own absolute authority, imperial
aggression, hatred for western democracy, and malice fueled by the
resentment engendered by the fall of the USSR.5

Sorokin described in this article the corrupting influence of the throne of

power on which all Russian leaders have sat since Ivan the Terrible in the
sixteenth century. He cited J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and its
warning that power—symbolised in the book by a magical ring—can
corrupt, distort, and destroy all those who stay too close to it for too long.
For Sorokin, Putin had once possessed an almost pleasant demeaner, and
seemed to talk genuinely about democracy, and the rule of law, even
denouncing the idea of holding onto power. Until, that is, he couldn’t let go
of it.6
Sorokin sees the change in Putin rendered visible in his appearance,
which became charged with something ‘evil and sinister’.7 Under Putin, the
Russian presidency has become unchecked by law, parliament, or the
people. In such a system, power has taken total possession of the leader.
Ever since spring 2012, when Putin returned to the presidency after four
years as prime minister, any urge to democratise or relinquish power was
doomed, as it would mean Putin’s own demise. With the assassination of
journalists and political rivals under his watch—most notably the liberal
and opposition politician, and former Deputy Prime Minister, Boris
Nemtsov, in 2015—the sole ambition of Putin became to retain power,
which had become a means of both personal enrichment and protection
from prosecution, and even survival. Putin has written his own tale of
infamy and he will not be remembered for uniting the ‘Russian world’ that
he once dreamed of.8 Instead, he cuts a disquieting, and menacing figure,
embalmed in a suffocating web of corruption and deceit.
While the invasion of Ukraine unmasked the true face of Putinism, it also
seemed to confirm a long-standing story about Russia as a perpetually land-
grabbing power. In this myth of Russian expansionism, the invasion of
Ukraine was merely the latest instalment of an inexorable extension of
territory set in motion by Ivan the Terrible, which took Russia from tsardom
to empire, and from Muscovy and the Baltic to Alaska and the Pacific. Over
a hundred years ago, in the final years of the Russian empire, Rear Admiral
Alfred Thayer Mahan—the United States’ foremost naval strategist of the
day—captured this perspective on an expansionist Russia. In 1905, he
argued that warm water ports, which didn’t freeze in winter and would
allow vessels year-round access, were an ‘evident need’ for imperial
Russia.9
Mahan noted in his analysis the will and final testament of Peter the
Great (1672–1725), who, among his many achievements, established the
modern Russian navy.10 This fourteen-point document lists Russia’s
expansionist urges in all directions of the compass, and it resurfaced again
after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. In his bestselling book on
geopolitics, Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall explains that:
 This lack of a warm-water port with direct access to the oceans has
always been Russia’s Achilles Heel... No wonder, in his will of
1725, that Peter the Great advised his descendants to ‘approach as
near as possible to Constantinople and India. Whoever governs there
will be the true sovereign of the world... Penetrate as far as the
Persian Gulf, advance as far as India’.11

Peter the Great’s testament has often been cited to explain Russia’s
behaviour over the last 200 years. Unfortunately for those who place their
faith in it, the document is a notorious fake. It first appeared in 1812 in a
work of anti-Russian propaganda, produced on the orders of Napoleon who
was justifying his ill-fated invasion of Russia.12 In 1836, a version of the
will was published in full in French, and it later became widely circulated in
England and France during the Crimean War against Russia (1853–56).
Napoleon III even ordered copies of the document to be posted on buildings
throughout France. The story was again revived, when the will was
reprinted in English, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, and it
reappeared in Germany in 1914 during the First World War, before being
widely circulated there again in the Second World War. Inevitably, it was to
reappear just a few years later in the United States, during the Cold War,
even while the Soviet government made concerted efforts to emphasise that
it was a fake.13
Despite its widespread resonance, the will was likely fabricated almost a
century after Peter I’s death by a Polish general, Michał Sokolnicki (1760–
1816), who, after being imprisoned by Catherine the Great in the Fortress of
St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg, emigrated to France and joined the
French Revolutionary Army.14 As one scholarly account of this fake
concludes, at each moment of renewed tension between the East and West,
the ‘forged Will turns up again like the proverbial bad penny’.15 In the latest
version of his book, Marshall concedes that it was merely ‘attributed’ to
Peter the Great and was ‘possibly written for political purposes’ before
continuing to use it to explain Russia’s insatiable desire for a warm water
port.16 This idea’s sticking power seems to stem from the fact that the
fabricated will fits seamlessly into an explanation of Russia’s threatening
past, present, and future. It is a perspective that has long held sway in
Washington, London, and Paris, and neatly corresponds with a concern over
Russian power one day being extended to complement sea as well as land.
 WIKIPEDIA

In the early twentieth century, the British imperialist, politician and

geographer, Sir Halford Mackinder (1861–1947)—already encountered in
chapter one, and who still today has a professorial chair in geography
named after him at the University of Oxford17—was deeply troubled by the
threat of a rising Eurasian power challenging the supremacy of the British
Empire and its sea power. He considered that whoever controlled Eurasia—
or the ‘pivot area’, or ‘heartland’, as he termed it—would pose a grave
threat. In a famous lecture at the Royal Geographical Society in London in
1904—just months before the inauguration of the Trans-Siberian railway—
Mackinder outlined how Russia’s railways were beginning to open up the
resources of Eurasia for exploitation. For Mackinder, this was in the same
order of significance as when Britain’s merchant ships and Royal Navy had
come to dominate the seas in favour of the British Empire. In Mackinder’s
thinking, whoever controlled Eurasia ‘would permit of the use of vast
continental resources for fleet-building’, translating land power into sea
power. As he saw it, a new ‘empire of the world would be in sight’,18 which
would imperil the economic and military dominance of the British Empire.
 WIKIPEDIA

In this perspective, ice-free warm-water ports were deemed of particular

importance for projecting Russia’s geopolitical power beyond the Eurasian
heartland. It was an idea that became so entrenched in Western thinking on
Russia that several decades later, during the closing days of the Second
World War, the Western Allies used it to justify the annexation of the city of
Konigsberg (present-day Kaliningrad) to the Soviet Union. President
Truman informed the American public after the Potsdam conference of July
and August 1945 that he had agreed to satisfy the apparently age-old
yearning of Russia for an ice-free port.19 However, by this point in the war,
the Soviet Union already had possession of a series of accessible Baltic
ports—from Riga to Baltiysk—while Konigsberg was distant from the open
water, only suitable for medium-sized vessels, and accessible by a canal that
in winter had to be kept open by icebreakers.20
The American diplomat and historian, George Kennan, railed at the
‘casualness and frivolity in which these decisions were made, the apparent
indifference on the American side...to their real economic and other effects,
and the misimpression conveyed at the time to the American public’.21
While Kennan suggests that Stalin brought the warm-water claim into the
discussions held during the summits, one review of these conferences
argues that ‘close examination of the published records leaves a different
impression. Churchill and Roosevelt were considering how to satisfy Soviet
demands for warm water ports before Stalin ever made them!’22 The myth
of warm-water ports was so captivating that it created its own logic for the
Western Allies and came to shape the post-war borders of Eastern Europe.
Subsequent decades seemed to only further prove Moscow’s longing to
secure its interests in distant ports—from Cuba to Vietnam.23 Even the
Soviet invasion of landlocked Afghanistan in 1979 was interpreted by some,
including analysts at the CIA, as merely a step towards the Indian Ocean.24
Yet for a permanent naval base or commercial port on the Indian Ocean to
be contiguous with the Soviet homeland would have involved a potential
war of conquest, annexation, and resettlement of such magnitude and scale
that acquiring the port itself would have been a distant secondary matter.25
Even today, such a geopolitical gambit is given credence and amplified in
some quarters, interpreted as giving ‘hope to the Great Russian dream of its
army being able to “wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian
ocean”, in the wods of the ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir
Zhirinovsky’.26 What is left out of Zhirinovsky’s biography is that to most
Russians he was regarded as a circus clown playing a politician. It was an
idea no less plausible than his warnings to the United States in 2002 that:
‘At night our scientists will slightly change the gravitational field of the
Earth, and your country will be under water!’27 Or his policy in the mid-
1990s, when he stated his ambition to personally father a child in each of
the one hundred districts where his political party had offices in order to
help boost Russia’s sagging birth rate.28 Zhirinovsky’s warm-water
nonsense can be taken with the same pinch of salt.
Another awkward detail facing the warm-water theory is that Russia has,
on several occasions, given up its naval bases. At the end of the Second
World War, the Soviet Union leased from Finland a base at Porkkala, just
outside Helsinki. This was returned shortly after Stalin’s death, and well
before the lease expired. Today it remains a Finnish naval base.29 In the Far
East, Stalin also restored the warm-water port of Port Arthur (Dalian) to
China in 1950 without any demands for compensation.30
More recently, Putin himself gave up Russia’s right to extend its lease on
Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam in 2002, despite significant investment in
expanding the base in Soviet times. By the early 2000s, it appeared that the
economic, military, and political costs of maintaining this base were not
worth the investment. However, this habit of periodically relinquishing
access to the sea—perhaps the most famous example being the sale by the
Russian Empire of Alaska to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million—is
rarely noted in the analysis of Russian expansionism.
It’s also often forgotten that Russia has had within its territory the
potential for a port with ice-free access to the open ocean for centuries.
Located on the Arctic Sea, the city of Murmansk, and a short stretch of the
Murman Coast, is kept ice-free year-round by the Gulf Stream—a warm
and swift Atlantic Ocean current that keeps the coastlines of western and
northern Europe much warmer than they otherwise would be. It is a port
more open to the oceans of the world than Sevastopol in Crimea, and closer
to the major population and production centres of Russia than the Pacific.31
To get to the Atlantic from Crimea, ships must navigate the Bosporus,
which cuts through Istanbul, the Dardanelles Strait (both of which are
subject to the Treaty of Montreux and certain limits on the passage of
military vessels), and then the Straits of Gibraltar, before reaching the
ocean. Similarly, Russian navy vessels in Kaliningrad and St Petersburg
have to pass through narrow gaps around Denmark and Sweden to exit the
Baltic.

ANDREY RUDAKOV/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

In contrast, the ice-free waters of Murmansk once allowed the city to

become a vital access point for Allied supplies during the Second World
War. The Murmansk Run (1941–45) was made up of Allied convoys
delivering millions of tons of essential supplies and military equipment to
the Soviet Union from the United States, Britain, and Canada. Many of
these perilous runs took place in the extreme cold of winter: under the cover
of the long nights and almost constant darkness, when vessels could better
avoid detection by German U-boats and aircraft.32 Its key strategic role in
the war gained it the status of Hero City of the Soviet Union in 1985 but if
Russia was so obsessed with warm-water ports, and an urge to the sea, it
could have realised an ice-free port centuries before the concerted effort to
develop an outlet to the sea at Murmansk, which was not until World War
I.33 Aside from Murmansk, the technological innovation of icebreaking
ships with reinforced hulls, from the late nineteenth century onwards, also
allowed more of Russia’s ports in the Baltic and Pacific to remain open
throughout the year, again negating any need to find a supposedly warm-
water port.
Although reducing Russia’s behaviour to a single myth of incorporating
warm-water ports that it supposedly lacks has proved to be an appealing
and alluring way to explain Russia’s geopolitics, it ends up ignoring both
geography and history. While the warm-water thesis of Russian expansion
does not hold water, it has nevertheless proved to be a difficult idea to
dislodge. A common trope to explain Russia’s annexation of Crimea in
2014 was the urge to seize Sevastopol, misunderstood by some as ‘Russia’s
only true major warm-water port’.34 Indicative of such a view, an article in
The Atlantic in 2015 suggested that an urge for warm-water ports linked
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its involvement in propping up Bashar
al-Assad’s dictatorship during the Syrian civil war. Since Soviet times,
Russia has leased the Tartus naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coastline,
with one prominent expert on Russia, Jeffrey Mankoff, suggesting that, as
‘a result of its geography’, use of these ports can compensate Russia for
‘not having great maritime access’.35
However, before Crimea’s annexation, Russia already had its own warm-
water port on the Black Sea with an advanced naval facility in
Novorossiysk, which is located just along the coast from Crimea in the
Krasnodar region of Russia, and was being modernised and expanded prior
to the annexation.36 Warm-water ports were also the least of Putin’s
ambitions in the Black Sea when he launched his invasion of Ukraine in
2022 with regime change in mind and the incorporation of the country, or at
least parts of it, into Russia. In 2014, the annexation of Crimea was justified
not in terms of securing a warm-water port but in terms of protecting the
peninsula’s majority ethnic Russian population, while returning to Russia
its supposedly lost and ancient territory. Geopolitics may well have been a
part of the calculation—just as it was in Russia’s support of Assad in Syria
—but, for Crimea at least, the case presented to the Russian people was
centred on nationalist sentiments rather than geographical determinism.
In a speech to the Russian State Duma and the Federation Council in
March 2014, Putin explicitly stated that: ‘Colleagues, in people’s hearts and
minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia.’37 It was the
prelude to a theme developed in his article ‘On the Historical Unity of
Russians and Ukrainians’, published just months before the full-scale
invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In this treatise, Putin mythologises the past,
editing history to suit his message that Russia and Ukraine are ‘essentially
the same historical and spiritual space’. His argument spans a timescale
from Kievan Rus and Vladimir the Great (958–1015) to the point at which
the Bolsheviks drew up the borders of the Soviet Union, and his complaint
that ‘Russia was robbed’ in the process.38 Captured by these vivid
geographical imaginaries of the past, Putin set out on the fateful course of
invading Ukraine.
Back in 2014, Putin’s nationalistic appeals and actions had served a more
immediate goal of providing a distraction from the recent ousting of
Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Unlike President
Volodymyr Zelensky, who stayed steadfastly in Kyiv as Russian missiles
rained down on the city in February 2022, Yanukovych fled from Ukraine
in the wake of protests centred on the capital’s Maidan Square, only to
resurface a few days later in Moscow. The wave of protests that precipitated
Yanukovych’s departure accelerated Ukraine’s pivot towards the West and
the EU, and away from Russia and its nascent Eurasian Union initiative.
This project was an ambitious attempt at economic integration in the former
Soviet space, including a customs union and common market, with its
members including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia.
The geopolitical ambitions behind it were also widely commented on, with
Hillary Clinton describing it in 2012 as ‘a move to re-Sovietise the
region’.39
However, the Maidan protests, the resultant change of government in
Kyiv, and the escape of Yanukovych signalled the end of Moscow’s hopes
that Ukraine would enter Russia’s orbit and the Eurasian Union.40 It was a
humiliation for Putin and a key factor behind his opportunistic decision to
annex Crimea, followed by Russian support of armed separatists in the
Donbass region of eastern Ukraine in the power vacuum of Yanukovych’s
departure. With the Eurasian Union project critically weakened without
Ukraine, Putin decisively turned to the course of revanchism, which
ultimately set the scene for his full-scale invasion of 2022.41 The danger of
focussing on expansionist myths and the drive to warm-water ports to
explain Russia’s actions is that it occludes a very real threat—the ethno-
nationalist fuelled hatred that lies behind Putin’s revanchism.
Revanchism is distinct from expansionism and refers to a concept
derived from the French word for revenge. It is a term related to the
reclamation of lost territories in order ‘to recover past position, power, and
status’.42 The idea was originally associated with state elites in France and
their efforts to recover the country’s prestige after defeat in the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870–71. In these efforts, the reclamation of the territory of
Alsace and parts of Lorraine, which had been lost in this conflict, became
equated with the restoration of France’s strength, dignity, and esteem.43
The 1990s were certainly a period in which a sense of loss characterised
the experience of many Russians. In 1991, the Soviet Union fragmented
into fifteen independent states—the largest of which became the Russian
Federation. For Russia, this coincided with economic collapse, a decline in
geopolitical power and status, and confusion over the identity of a new
Russia in a new world. According to official statistics, Russian GDP per
capita fell about 39 per cent in real terms between 1991 and when the
economy started to recover in 1998.44 Between 1990 and 1994, life
expectancy for Russian men declined dramatically from 63.8 to 57.7, and
for women from 74.4 years to 71.2 years.45 It was a decade defined by
tumult and turmoil with devastating social and economic outcomes for most
Russians.
These changes shocked and bewildered many Russians as the country
was reduced to its smallest territorial extent since the time of Peter the
Great.46 Through atlases and maps, a new geography had to be charted as
Russia had come to exist within new borders that it had never exactly
occupied before. While it retained areas such as Tuva (a republic in
southern Siberia with a majority population of ethnic Tuvans) and
Chechnya (a republic in the North Caucasus over which two wars were
fought over its independence between 1994–96 and 1999–2009), it lost
parts of Ukraine and North Kazakhstan, both with large populations of
ethnic Russians. As one Russian commentator explained, this was like
picturing the United States with Texas, Hawaii and Alaska, but without
Alabama and West Virginia.47
Putin himself has spoken of the early 1990s as a period when the
‘epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself’.48 With the spectre of
territorial fragmentation, the abandonment of communist ideology, and the
end of one-party rule, Russia urgently needed to find a new identity that
could unite the vast territories and diverse peoples that made up the Russian
Federation. It also meant that certain territories suddenly assumed critical
significance in debates over national identity.
For some, holding on to these territories became a symbol of the integrity
of the new state, the authority of the leadership, and the marker of a new
national identity.49 It was an agenda endorsed by Putin, who burnished his
image as a ‘territorial tough’50 by orchestrating the Second Chechen War,
which devastated Chechnya and the capital Grozny. Under Putin’s
leadership, the rebel leader turned Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov was
installed as the Head of the Chechen Republic in 2007 and has ruled
Chechnya through fear and oppression ever since.51 Beyond Russia’s
borders, the Russian military clashed with Georgian forces to support ethnic
Russian separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which culminated in a
brief but bloody war in August 2008.
In the lead-up to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Putin also amended the
Constitution of the Russian Federation. These amendments, which were
approved by a referendum in 2020, included the line that any action
‘directed at alienating parts of state territory as well as calls for such actions
will not be permitted’ (Article 67, 2.1).52 Though this provision included
exceptions for the demarcation and redemarcation of state territory, on 22
July 2020, the Duma adopted a bill, which decreed that any activities
deemed to violate the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation could
lead to prosecution and punishment.53 This package of ‘territorial integrity’
bills labelled those who repeatedly ‘violate Russia’s territorial integrity,
including alienating part of its territory’, as ‘extremists’, with jail terms of
between six and ten years.54 It made the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s
claim on the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and
Donetsk—which had been formally declared part of Russia in September
202255—irreversible and anybody who questioned the government’s actions
a criminal in the eyes of the law.
However, the constitutional amendment also had a strange side-effect:
ten years before the annexation of Crimea, Putin had himself orchestrated
the transfer of Russian territory to a foreign state. In October 2004, a few
months after his landslide re-election, Putin resolved a longstanding
territorial dispute between Russia and China. The Russian government
agreed to transfer from its territorial jurisdiction the island of Tarabarov and
half of Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island to China. Both islands, which are located
in the Amur River, form part of Russia’s 2,485-mile border with China.
They are not just remote islands but situated adjacent to the city of
Khabarovsk—Russia’s largest in its Far East region. After their transfer in
2008, the islands became the most easterly part of China and have since
been developed as a tourist site.56
A month after this deal with China was revealed, Lavrov announced in
November 2004 that Russia was also prepared to transfer part of a disputed
chain of isolated islands to Japan in return for a peace treaty. Such a treaty
hadn’t been signed between the Soviet Union and Japan after the Second
World War partly due to this dispute. The islands that were proposed to be
transferred—Shikotan and the group of Habomai Islands—make up part of
the disputed Southern Kurils, known as the Northern Territories in Japan. In
the surreal authoritarian world of today’s Russia, through this gesture,
which followed the concession of territory to China, both Putin and Lavrov
could now be regarded as ‘extremists’ according to the 2020 constitutional
amendments for calling into question Russia’s territorial integrity.
 ECONOMIST—© THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED, LONDON 2008

The debate over the Southern Kurils’ destiny also reveals fascinating
insights into the complex and contradictory relationship between territory,
borders, and identity in contemporary Russia. These islands became caught
up in a heated debate on the future of Russia in the late 1990s and early
2000s. They form part of a volcanic chain stretching between the
Kamchatka peninsula of Russia and the island of Hokkaido in Japan. After
Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, the few thousand Japanese
residents living there were deported, and Soviet soldiers and citizens began
to settle on the islands. A small community of Russian citizens reside there
to this day. During most of the post-war Soviet period, the status of these
islands was a closed discussion. However, in the final months of the Soviet
Union and the early days of the Russian Federation, debate raged across
Russian politics and society over the future of these islands.
Most of the politicians, journalists, and commentators of the day argued
that holding onto these islands was the mark of a powerful and assertive
state. In their terms, these islands were a symbol of the sacred value of
territory above all other considerations. They were guided by two maxims
from the tsarist age of empire: ‘Not one inch to friend or foe’, put forward
by the Russian historian and writer Nikolai Karamzin (1776–1826); and
Tsar Nicholas I’s 1850 line that ‘Where once the Russian flag has been
raised, never shall it be lowered’.57 For this group of nationalists, holding
onto the Southern Kurils became a symbol of Russia’s inviolable borders
and Great Power status as it was a site where victory in the Second World
War had been finally and definitively secured in some of the last battles of
the conflict.58
At the other end of the political spectrum, a coalition of elites argued that
retaining the islands would only hold back the new Russia from leaving
behind an imperial mindset and emerging as a liberal, democratic,
‘civilised’ power. For this group, with their liberal-democratising agenda,
nostalgia for the borders of the Russian or Soviet Empire was not
appropriate for the twenty-first century. Instead, transferring the islands to
Japan would enhance Russia’s status and standing in the world as a reliable
and trusted partner. It would also encourage Japan to invest and
economically develop eastern Russia, building a partnership that would
help make the country a true great power in Asia, as well as Europe.59
Drawing on elements from both poles in this debate, a third group argued
on purely geopolitical grounds for a territorial concession. They did not
make the case in terms of leaving behind an imperial past but were simply
convinced that conceding these scraps of territory was insignificant
compared to the far greater and more pressing task of securing and
developing the vast territories of Siberia and the Russian Far East without
relying too heavily on China. Some even mooted the idea of a Moscow-
Tokyo partnership as a geopolitical counterweight to a rising China.60
 Such arguments for improving relations with Japan combined pragmatic
economic, political, and geopolitical considerations to justify a territorial
concession that would be in exchange for Russia’s return to greatness. One
notable proponent of this idea was Aleksandr Dugin, the head of the
Eurasianist political and cultural movement in Russia. In his geopolitical
fantasy, Dugin draws on Mackinder’s ideas to arrive at the deterministic
notion of an inevitable conflict between Russia as a Eurasian land power
and the combined sea power of the West. Dugin advocated a grand bargain
in which Russia could transfer the islands to Japan in exchange for a new
kind of strategic partnership that would involve Japan renouncing its
military alliance with the US and the presence of US bases, allowing Russia
to assume the leadership of a Eurasian alliance against the United States
and the West.61
The isolated residents of the Southern Kurils found themselves caught up
in these competing geopolitical visions on Russia’s national identity, all of
which were—in their own radically different ways—seeking the endpoint
of restoring or maintaining Russia’s status as a great power. They simply
passionately disagreed on the means to achieve this. What is remarkable
today is that Putin was once willing to accede to a concession of territory,
albeit a small one, as a means to restore Russia’s status. The initiative to
transfer some of the Southern Kurils to Japan in 2004 went against the
wishes of many of the Russian citizens living on the islands, as well as
broader public opinion in Russia, but it was still put forward by the Russian
government. This counter to revanchism came in the wake of Putin’s
agreement to concede Tarabarov and half of Bolshoy Ussuriysky to China
and would be followed by the finalisation of a border demarcation with
Kazakhstan, which left many ethnic Russians beyond Russia’s borders
(2005), and a fifty-fifty split to resolve a disputed maritime zone in the
Barents Sea with Norway (2010).62
In the end, though, the proposal on the Southern Kurils was quickly
dismissed by Japan’s Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, who insisted that
a peace treaty could only follow the return of all the islands. Putin’s gambit
had failed and, in response, the Russian leader quickly switched from a
pragmatic to a much more patriotic line. Just months later, he refused to
even acknowledge the issue and insisted that all the islands were under the
sovereignty of the Russian Federation, and their status was enshrined in
international law as a result of the Second World War.63
 The remarkable reversion from territorial concession to revanchism is
captured in the words of Konstantin Kosachev in 2020, when he was then
Head of the International Affairs Committee of Russia’s Federation Council
—the upper chamber of the Russian parliament. Kosachev stated that: ‘We
are not discussing a territorial question with Japan. Only a peace treaty is
being discussed. In theory, Russian territory could become larger, but it will
never become smaller.’64 It was a claim that demonstrated the ability of the
leadership to pick up a set of ideas on territory, borders, and identity—only
to opportunistically discard them at a later point.65
Today, Russia’s so-called ‘special operation’ in Ukraine has been framed
in Moscow as bringing back supposedly lost territory and people into the
Russian world. It is a revanchist claim that is meant to be a surrogate for
restoring Russia’s past position, power, and standing in the world. However,
the failures of the Russian military, its reliance on North Korea and Iran for
weapons,66 its weakened economic and political ties with the West, and
increasing dependence on China, point to precisely the opposite, and with it
the folly of Putin’s revanchism.
More than two decades since he came to power, Putin’s obsession with
Russia as a victim of western aggression, the promotion of a cult of Soviet
victory in the Second World War, the reinstatement of a Russian sphere of
influence, and the undermining of Western liberal values have all become
the defining features of his presidency. The primary aim of foreign policy is
no longer that of furthering Russian national interests—whatever they may
be—but instead the singular goal of Putin’s self-preservation and the
continued access to power and stolen wealth that protects him from
prosecution or worse. It is an agenda of survival for an authoritarian regime
that is wrapped in the dark cloak of revanchism, rather than expansionism.
The course of the war in Ukraine is not bound to geographical
determinism but to Putin’s destiny. It is a conflict that has fatally
undermined his great power pretensions for Russia and driven a wedge
between Russia and Ukraine that will last for generations to come. Putin’s
war has exchanged trade and influence with Europe for the status of a junior
partner to China. In this new Russia, it will take some time for Putin and the
rest of his elite to get used to having so little leverage over the political,
military, and economic powers to their east and west.
Ordinary Ukrainians have taken up arms and sacrificed their lives to
defend their country from revanchist aggression and the stifling repression
and kleptocracy of Putinism. Putin’s revanchism has also galvanised a
coordinated response in the West to a common threat. While the spectre of
Trumpism and national-populism linger, Putin achieved in the moment of
his invasion the remarkable feat of drawing together transatlantic
communities.67
In an increasingly authoritarian system of his own making, isolated from
reality, and dismissive of advice, power ultimately overcame Putin. He
became lost in a myth of Russian greatness, for if there was a shred of
pragmatism left in him, then he would have known that there never was a
victory for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. By staking the house, it may
come down with him. Centuries old historic, cultural, and economic bonds
have been severed by the bloodshed and enmity unleashed by a leader lost
to power. No matter what the gains on the battlefield, Putin’s own words
haunt his revanchist course. Once directed at Ukraine, Putin may as well
have written his own epitaph when he stated in July 2021 that: ‘Hate and
anger, as world history has repeatedly proved this, are a very shaky
foundation for sovereignty, fraught with many serious risks and dire
consequences.’68
In his revanchist fury, Putin seems to have forgotten how a minor
territorial concession once allowed relations between two former
adversaries to blossom. In 2019, China’s president, Xi Jinping, declared that
Sino-Russian relations were at ‘the highest level in history’.69 The volume
of trade between Russia and China surged from $15.8 billion in 2003 to a
record $108 billion in 2018.70 By contrast, on its revanchist course, Russia
has lost Ukraine, its once closest ally, at the same time as cutting itself off
from the EU. At its peak in 2012, EU-Russia bilateral trade in goods fell
from €322 billion to €232 billion in 2019, just before the onset of the
Covid-19 pandemic.71 In 2023, Russia’s share of the EU’s trade was less
than 2 per cent, compared to a share of EU imports that had once ranged
between 7 and 10 per cent between 2002 and 2022, with exports around 4–6
per cent.72 For Russia, and for Putin, all this raises a troubling question:
how far has revanchism got him in securing Russia’s status and standing in
the world?
While giving up a few scraps of territory to China, and offering similar to
Japan, does not do much to tip the scales in comparison with the swathes of
territory accumulated by the Russian empire after centuries of expansion, it
should at least give pause for thought. For this chapter has revealed a story
on Russia that is much more complex than it simply being an insatiable
land-grabbing power. The problem is not in Russia’s DNA, or an inevitable
result of its geographical position, but in a political system that locks up
independent opposition, a government that cannot tolerate criticism, and a
kleptocratic oligarchy that exists to enrich itself. It is a system in which
unchecked power hollows out the souls of its leaders, leaving the country at
the whim of such despots.
While the pragmatic side of Putin lies under the rubble of Kyiv, Kharkiv,
and Kherson, Russia will not walk the revanchist line forever. The warm-
water myth and expansionist urges are no guide to Russia today. Russia is
also not Putin, and there is an alternative path of peace, pragmatism, and
partnership—one that the current president himself even once travelled. It is
a way forward that the West and Russia must eventually take together.
Otherwise, even when Putin is gone, the spectre of Putinism, and the
revanchist monster within it, will lay in wait to spring from the past once
again.73 For the moment, deluded by the geographical imaginary of
‘liberating’ Ukraine and dreams of a garlanded return for the Russian tsar,
Putin may not be welcoming a new dawn but instead overseeing the sun
setting over the long shadow of the Russian Empire.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MYTH OF CHINAS’S NEW SILK ROAD

Why all roads don’t lead to China1

In 1997, a diving expedition came across a mysterious object at the bottom

of the South China Sea off the Philippine coastline. Their torches lit up a
six-foot-tall tombstone edged with floral motifs, on which were carved two
identical skulls with crossbones. Between the skulls was a wreath enclosing
the tools of a merchant’s trade—a pair of scissors, balancing scales, a
plume, ink well, and cargo items. Below was an inscription in Latin and
Armenian revealing that this tombstone belonged to an Armenian merchant
called Khwaja Sultan David, who had died at Pondicherry, India, in 1754.
But what was this tombstone to a long-dead merchant doing on the seabed,
thousands of miles from where he was buried?2
The answer involves commerce, conflict, and catastrophe—
demonstrating how the South China Sea connects with all points of the
compass. Sultan David was likely a member of the Armenian Apostolic
Church buried in one of Pondicherry’s Catholic cemeteries.3 However, he
did not rest in peace for long as during the Seven Years War (1756–63)
between Britain and France, Pondicherry was looted by the victorious
British, who destroyed much of the city, including all its public buildings.4
When the British East India Company needed ballast for its merchant
vessels, this gravestone was one of many loaded aboard a three-masted East
Indiaman, called the Earl Temple.5
Whether or not the crew thought it an ill omen to have onboard the
desecrated gravestones of Pondicherry is not recorded. However, the
doomed Earl Temple sailed the Indian Ocean and after loading with a cargo
of iron, tin, and lead from Batavia—today’s Jakarta in Indonesia—it set out
to cross the South China Sea in early June 1763. Bound for Manila, and
repairs, the Earl Temple’s final destination was meant to be Canton, now
Guangzhou in China. As it sailed across the South China Sea, the crew were
ever vigilant to coral reefs and small islands. But late in the evening of 7
June, as the ship zigzagged its way north-east, the weather turned and
visibility worsened.6
By the time the crew spotted the waves breaking over the approaching
coral reef, it was too late. First, the topsails were drawn and then cannons
were thrown overboard to lighten the load; finally the masts were cut down.
But to no avail. The ship slammed into the reef and the crew abandoned the
sinking vessel. Only a handful of survivors made it to a nearby island,
which had a single coconut tree. Of those, four set out in search for other
survivors and to salvage provisions from the wreck after the storm had
abated. However, their makeshift raft was blown off course and away from
the island that they had just left. Near exhaustion, they were shipwrecked
again, this time on Thitu Island.7
While one of these survivors was lost to thirst during their stay on the
island, the other three managed to endure for fifteen months alongside
several Vietnamese traders, who had also found themselves shipwrecked. At
this point, an abandoned boat miraculously drifted by. They managed to
repair it and attach sails made from bird skins, which they had been
collecting to make jackets. The three set out with two of the traders in
search of any survivors of the Earl Temple, but they failed to find the island
where they had first landed and instead headed for what is now Vietnam. In
circumstances not entirely clear, their relief at reaching the mainland was
tempered by having to spend a year and a half as prisoner-labourers until
they were finally allowed to leave. On 31 August 1766, more than three
years late, they sailed into Canton aboard a junk. Their remarkable account
can still be read in the East India Company’s archives in London,8 a
reminder of the perpetual dangers of a treacherous sea and the allure of
commerce, commodities, and riches in faraway lands.
Containing hundreds of small uninhabited islands, cays, shoals, reefs,
atolls, and seamounts, the South China Sea has been the graveyard of not
only the crew of the Earl Temple but generations of sailors and fishers. As
one maritime archaeologist noted, the waters around the Philippines are
‘like a giant underwater museum’.9 The earliest mention in Chinese
documents of maritime traffic in the Southeast Asian region was as early as
the Han Dynasty (202 BC–AD 220); and underwater archaeology in the
western part of the Philippine archipelago has revealed a variety of
shipwrecks dating to as early as the eleventh century. These include Chinese
junks and Southeast Asian vessels loaded with ceramics. The Pandanan
Shipwreck site, for example, was found with Ming Dynasty coins from the
early fifteenth century and yielded 4,722 artifacts, including porcelain and
stoneware from modern-day China, Vietnam, and Thailand, bronze artifacts
and iron tools, glass beads, and stone tools.10 All of which are testament to
the significance of these seas.
Today, Thitu Island, now administered by the Philippines, has a handful
of residents on its 92 acres. A lighthouse has been built to warn wayward
sailors, and there is a school, health centre, and police station serving its
small community.11 Thitu was once the second largest of the Spratly
Islands, a large group of islands, islets, and reefs, located north of Malaysia
and scattered midway between Vietnam and the Philippines. The islands are
claimed—wholly or in part—by several countries in the region, including
China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. These claims have
become particularly contentious in recent years after China started
producing maps on which it drew a controversial U-shaped, nine-dash line
extending south of China and encompassing most of the South China Sea,
and all it contains.12 The justification for it is based on claims of historical
interactions in this sea, dating back centuries. However, the claim is
contested by all the other littoral and island states of this sea, including
those involved in the dispute over the Spratly Islands, in addition to Brunei,
Indonesia, and the United States.13
The South China Sea hosts more than half of the world’s fishing vessels,
and, in 2016, the UN estimated that more than 21 per cent of global trade
transited through it. There are also extensive oil and gas reserves under the
seabed. China’s modern claims can be traced back to 1947 and the
publication of a map with an eleven-dash line by the then Nationalist
government of the Republic of China. The Nationalists were subsequently
defeated by the communists in 1949, and retreated to Taiwan, but for both
China and Taiwan this claim on the South China Sea remains.14
In 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS) was agreed, which included the recognition of a country’s
exclusive economic zone extending for 200 nautical miles from its
coastline. It meant that any claim to even a small island—though excluding
a feature submerged at high tide or artificial structures—carries with it a
huge maritime zone that is projected into the sea. This made possession of
islands in the South China Sea of increased economic and strategic value,
while claims to them were framed in terms of nationalist images of the
nation.15
In recent years, Thitu Island has lost its status as the second largest of the
Spratly Islands. Just a few miles away a gigantic new island has risen out of
Subi Reef, which was once submerged at high tide. However, it was not
created by geology, shifting sands, or changing tides, but by the Chinese
state out of 976 acres of elevated concrete.16 To create one of the largest
islands in the South China Sea has meant that much of the original reef has
been destroyed by dredging or smothering it with millions of tons of
concrete. The dead coral is now the foundation for a runway that is nearly 2
miles long, suitable for fighter jets, and has even been tested for civilian use
with a Boeing 737 aircraft.17
It is a situation mirrored by developments at Mischief Reef, about 125
miles south-west of Thitu Island, and Fiery Cross Reef, roughly the same
distance to the south-east. There are now around 400 structures on these
artificial islands, including neat rows of basketball courts and parade
grounds, all flanked by military facilities and equipment. Some analysts
believe that the facilities on Subi, Mischief, and Fiery Cross could each
hold a regiment—between 1,500 to 2,400 Chinese troops.18 On Fiery Cross
Reef, there is now a fully operational airfield, hangars, other large
buildings, and radar, while Chinese state media has reported that there is a
population of more than 5,000 officers and soldiers stationed on its islands
and reefs in the South China Sea.19 Admiral Philip Davidson, commander
of US forces in the Pacific, has suggested that: ‘Any forces deployed to the
islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South
China Sea-claimants.’20
Satellite images show the extent of the square miles of concrete, steel,
and sand that have been used to build what look like giant grey spaceships
that have landed in the pristine turquoise water off these reefs. The scale of
the decimation of the reef’s habitat and biodiversity is visible from this
perspective in the channels of shattered coral, which allow tankers and
frigates access to dock at these bases. The dredging and artificial island-
building campaign began in 2013; just three years later it had already
created around 3,200 acres of new land across the South China Sea,
providing China with a commanding presence in the region.21
In January 2013, the Philippines filed to the Permanent Court of
Arbitration at the Hague proceedings against China under Annex VII of
UNCLOS. The arbitration concerned the role of historic rights and the
source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea, the status of certain
maritime features in this sea, and the lawfulness of actions by China that the
Philippines alleged to be in violation of the convention. Though China
adopted a position of non-acceptance and non-participation in the
proceedings,22 a tribunal panel of five judges found unanimously in favour
of the Philippines on almost all of its fifteen submissions.23 As the panel
also noted in its decision, published in July 2016, China’s massive
reclamation projects in the sea have ‘caused severe harm to the coral reef
environment and violated its obligation to preserve and protect fragile
ecosystems and the habitat of depleted, threatened, or endangered
species’.24
The vast concrete islands built by China stand in sharp relief to Thitu
Island, which still retains much of the greenery that sustained the survivors
of the Earl Temple. However, since 2018, the Philippines government has
funded the transformation of the dirt runway on Thitu Island into a concrete
one that has been further extended into the sea. New port facilities to
accommodate bigger boats have been added, as well as a new coast guard
monitoring base. The government is the island’s main employer, offering
construction and maintenance jobs, alongside subsidises to the families
living there, who first began to move there in 2002. The school was built in
2012; the island now has Wi-Fi; and paved roads have cut through the
vegetation. Much of this development is in response to the bases on the
nearby reefs, with the shimmering lights of Subi Reef visible on the horizon
from Thitu at night.25
 EMILY FENG/NPR

For China, much like the Great Wall, part of the reason behind its vast
investment in these infrastructures is not simply about keeping others out
but ensuring that China can secure access to trade routes at all times. It is an
initiative that is related to the arrival of a special freight train on the other
side of the world. Far from the stifling heat and humidity of the South
China Sea, on a fresh January morning in 2017, the first direct rail freight
service from China to the United Kingdom arrived at a depot in Barking,
east London. After 7,500 miles and eighteen days on the rails, its cargo had
travelled from China across the frozen steppe of Kazakhstan, through
Russia and then Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France before
plunging into the Channel Tunnel, and eventually reaching its end point in
Barking.26
On that winter’s morning, London became the fifteenth European city on
an ever-expanding map of the New Silk Road: the latest destination for
goods from China to be delivered directly by rail.27 The train had departed
from the city of Yiwu, on China’s east coast, with forty-four containers of
clothes and high street goods on board. Along the way, some containers
were dropped off in the German city of Duisburg but most made it to
Barking. By then the original driver and locomotive had long since turned
back. The romantic vision of a lonely engine driver, braving the icy terrain
of Eurasia from east to west, does not hold. Several locomotives and
wagons are used to transport such cargoes as the gauge of the railway
changes along the route between the standard gauge (1435mm width track)
of China and most of Europe, and the Russian gauge (1560mm), which
covers the states of the former Russian and Soviet empires.28
On the Kazakhstan—China border, the world’s largest dry port has
sprung up to transfer containers and goods between these railway gauges.
The Yiwu—London service would have passed through the Khorgos
Gateway, which was financed by China. These activities in the middle of
Eurasia are part of an initiative connected to the building of the new islands
in the South China Sea. They are parallel projects in an endeavour whereby
China is joining up and protecting the routes of what has become widely
known as the New Silk Road. Its name is an evocative reminder, and
revival, of the ancient trading routes between East and West.
During his visits to Indonesia and Kazakhstan in autumn 2013, President
Xi Jinping announced the One Belt, One Road, though later the name was
changed by China for an English audience to the Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI).29 However, no matter what name it goes by, the New Silk Road is
about megaprojects connecting China with countries and regions across the
globe. The scale and ambition of this initiative was immediately signalled
when almost $1 trillion was committed to projects across Asia in the two
years after Xi’s announcement.30 The projects of the New Silk Road
encompass port infrastructure in places far away from the South China Sea
such as Gwadar in Pakistan, Piraeus in Greece, and Hambantota in Sri
Lanka, as well as pipelines in Russia, bridges in Bangladesh, mining
enterprises in Africa, and investments and upgrades to transport
infrastructure across much of the world.
The official BRI website lists dozens of African countries, as well as
several from Latin America and the Pacific, which have all signed
agreements or other forms of understanding with China.31 By 2021, China
had agreed Silk Road cooperation documents with all ten Pacific Island
countries with which it had established diplomatic relations.32 From Bolivia
to Bermuda, this new Silk Road has stretched far beyond the routes of its
Eurasian antecedent.33
In its totality, the New Silk Road is one of the most ambitious collections
of infrastructure ever conceived—and it is undoubtedly remaking the
world’s geography. Much of the anticipation, as well as anxiety,
surrounding the project has been in trying to explain what it means for the
changing global role of China. While the ominous and vast new military
bases that have emerged in the South China Sea appear in stark contrast to
the trains full of clothes gliding into Duisburg and Barking, they are two
sides of the same coin. It is a contradiction which hints that there may be
more to the New Silk Road than simply the myth that it is a geopolitical
play for world domination.
The initiative has certainly captured geographical imaginations both in
China and abroad. There has been a proliferation of stories and analysis
appearing across academic papers, think-tank and government reports, TV
bulletins, documentaries, news broadcasts, magazines, radio programmes,
blogs, websites, and exhibitions. Much of this punditry has tended to focus
on a single factor behind its development—a state-backed campaign
asserting China’s geopolitical presence on the world stage.34 In this
interpretation, the New Silk Road is a symbol of China’s global
ambitions,35 and even ‘a Trojan horse for China-led regional development
and military expansion’.36 Or, as another commentator suggests, it is set ‘to
weaken economic links between the liberal democracies on either side of
the Atlantic Ocean’.37 These perspectives all agree that the New Silk Road
is part of a geopolitical ‘grand strategy for Eurasia’ on the part of the
Chinese leadership.38
Such understandings return us again to the ideas of the English
geographer and imperialist, Sir Halford Mackinder. In the early twentieth
century, Mackinder saw an immediate threat to Britain’s sea power in the
greater efficiencies of transporting goods, resources, and troops across a
continental railway system. He highlighted the inefficiencies involved in
transferring goods and people from rail to sea and back again, fearing that
railways would open up access to immense continental resources for the
likes of Germany, Russia, and even imperial Japan through its control of
China.39 For Mackinder, whichever power controlled the resource rich
Eurasian interior, now criss-crossed by railways, would oversee the
development and expansion of a Eurasian ‘heartland’, which could then
dominate the world.40
It is a reductionist geopolitical trope that still holds currency today when
it comes to interpreting the New Silk Road. Mackinder has even found
himself lauded for his ‘apparently prescient insights into today’s power
politics’.41 His work has been cited in glowing terms for its ‘brilliant
understanding of the relationship between geography and history’, and for
supposedly allowing ‘today’s strategists to grasp the strategic implications
of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, cooperation with Russia, diplomatic
and economic inroads into Africa, and growing sea power’.42 Even official
outlets in China, such as the China Daily newspaper, have declared the New
Silk Road—and the creation of a trans-regional land-sea mass—to be the
‘second biggest geographical discovery in human history after Mackinder’s
breakthrough’.43
As in Mackinder’s day, railways assume central importance in
geopolitical visions of the New Silk Road. Chinese investment has already
funded a rail link between Tashkent and the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan,44
as well as the modernisation of Iran’s rail network and the development of
an east—west rail link across Kazakhstan.45 Beyond Eurasia, China has
financed and constructed railways in Africa, including the new centrepiece
of the Ethiopian Railway Corporation—the line between Addis Ababa and
Djibouti46—and the Mombasa—Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway in
Kenya, which is the country’s largest infrastructure project since
independence.47 These are alongside investments in trans-Siberian routes,
which had seen the most significant increase in EU—China rail
transportation, increasing by a hundredfold between 2010 and 2018. Much
of the growth in trade along these routes was subsidised by the Chinese
state or regional administrations in China.48 However, after the Covid-19
pandemic and Western sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine,
this branch of the Silk Road faces an uncertain future.
While Mackinder’s century-old geopolitical logic still holds a wide
appeal as a simple and intelligible interpretation of China’s New Silk Road,
it is a logic that doesn’t always survive contact with facts on the ground.
Mackinder’s focus on transport and the inefficiencies of stevedoring goods
between rail and ship didn’t anticipate the containerisation of shipping that
has revolutionised global logistics, with costs significantly lower than rail;
nor did he see the emergence of a world of nation-states rather than one of
global empires. Instead of offering a key to understanding Eurasian
geopolitics, the reanimation of his predictions has served to mask their
complexity. By focussing on the New Silk Road as a geopolitical gambit
driven solely by China’s newfound economic and military power, a
Mackinderian analysis misses how this initiative might also be a response to
critical weaknesses at the heart of the Chinese economy.
A counter-narrative to the Mackinderian take is that China’s construction
of the megaprojects associated with the New Silk Road are in response to
an urgent fix to a slowdown in the Chinese economy. Slowing economic
growth has resulted in declining demand and domestic surpluses in capital,
labour, and industry—including, over the last couple of decades, steel and
cement, aluminium, glass, coal, ship-building, and solar panels.49 The
argument runs that building the New Silk Road routes allows China to put
this overproduction to work by making new territories—with their markets,
resources, and businesses—more readily accessible as a long-term outlet for
these surpluses.50 In this sense, the New Silk Road is merely the
continuation of a strategy played out over the last five decades, whereby
urbanisation and the growth of mega-cities on China’s east coast was
followed by efforts to develop its interior.51
Understood in this way, the New Silk Road is an antidote to a marked
economic slowdown. Between 1992 and 2011, China’s annual GDP growth
rate averaged over 10 per cent -though there were fluctuations from year to
year. However, growth fell every year from 2010 until a Covid rebound in
the economy in 2021. It was 3 per cent in 2022, and 5.2 per cent in 2023.52
While impressive in comparison with other leading economies, it is a
significant deceleration compared to the heady days of the 1990s and
2000s. Just as this economic slowdown was becoming obvious, the New
Silk Road was announced in 2013 with the promise of extending economic
activities and opening markets across vast new territories. In this way it
would help to mitigate the impacts of waning demand for Chinese-made
goods both within China and in traditional overseas markets, while also
maintaining employment, and averting the worst of a bursting domestic
property bubble at home.53
However, this initiative hasn’t prevented defaults by some of the biggest
property developers in China, and, in 2023, the property market
experienced the worst decline in new home prices since 2015. To
compensate for what was once a key driver of the world’s second largest
economy—with the property sector accounting for around a quarter of
China’s economy54—the New Silk Road has a key role to play in
consuming surpluses in industry and labour once fulfilled by this boom. In
this sense, it is a grand fix to a long-standing problem and is as much an
economic plan to reenergise a slowing economy as it is a play for
geopolitical dominance.
In order to finance the building of the New Silk Road, and the
deployment of surplus resources, China has also mobilised extensive
reserves of foreign currency to offer low-interest loans to developing
countries to fund new infrastructure. These countries are in turn required, or
heavily incentivised, to enlist Chinese state-owned enterprises and other
Chinese businesses to build the large-scale infrastructure and construction
projects attached to these loans. As such, a fix to China’s economy is
ensured as the loans financing these projects are conditioned and dependent
on using Chinese materials, equipment, and labour.55
It is a circuitous route, whereby China subsidises its industry through
infrastructure projects commissioned by foreign governments, which are
financed by loans from China’s foreign currency reserves, in order to put to
work domestic surpluses in production and labour.56 The New Silk Road
and trans-border networks of roads, railways, energy pipelines, and
communication infrastructure are the concrete outcomes of this plan.
Islands in the South China Sea are also part of this logic, though here the
political-economic rationale becomes blurred with a political-military one.
In these projects—and all their inherent tensions—the New Silk Road has
now touched almost every corner of the planet and, by 2014, China had
already become a net exporter of capital.57
In this interpretation, China’s gambit appears to be more about prising
open markets and territories for Chinese goods and capital as it is about a
grand geopolitical strategy to dominate Eurasia. However, the economic
rationale and strategic elements of this project are not always easy to
separate. The Silk Road’s re-drawing of the world’s geography is both
complex and contradictory, with Chinese officials having admitted to
expecting losses on investments in Silk Road projects of up to 80 per cent
in Pakistan, 50 per cent in Myanmar, and 30 per cent in Central Asia.58 Port
projects in the Indian Ocean have also been evaluated as having little hope
of financial success,59 and the extent of such losses suggests that there is
something more at stake than investment returns alone.
Even more confusing is how to disentangle genuine investment
opportunities from political imperatives, since ‘Chinese investment’
involves everything from central state-owned enterprises and policy banks,
which include the Export-Import Bank of China (China Exim Bank) and the
China Development Bank, to regional state-owned enterprises and private
companies of varying sizes, as well as entrepreneurial and family firms.60
From this range of actors springs a variety of diverse and competing
investment objectives serving various national, strategic, and profit
interests.61 It makes the New Silk Road and its projects difficult to
categorise: they can mean different things to different people in different
places. It also makes any search for an overarching organising principle,
origin, or endpoint virtually impossible.62
To add to this complexity, there is also a third prominent interpretation of
the New Silk Road. This semi-official account promotes the notion of
‘South-South’ development and the New Silk Road as ‘a quest for “win-
win” economic cooperation and common development’ for both China and
the developing world. This development model is set against the perceived
inequality and liberalism promoted by US-led forms of globalisation and
development.63 It has become the preferred narrative of China’s ruling
communist party as it seeks to co-opt partners in the developing world,
while diverting attention from geopolitical motivations, or weaknesses in
China’s domestic economy.
Behind this official narrative is an appeal to a domestic audience. The
notion of One Belt, One Road (yi dai yi lu) has a more expressive tone in
Mandarin, carrying to a Chinese audience ‘a classical, even epic ring’. As
an article in The Economist emphasised, it evokes an image of China ‘going
forth to encompass the world on land and sea, at once opening to the world
and binding the world more closely to China, in a balanced and harmonious
way’.64 This situates the New Silk Road firmly within the idea of a
‘Chinese Dream’—a concept set out by Xi in his first address to the nation
as head of state on 17 March 2013. In this speech, he stated his desire ‘to
achieve the Chinese dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’.65 In
this sense, the New Silk Road becomes something more than just roads,
railways, and ports; but part of an idea to place China at the centre of a
‘community of shared interests, destiny and responsibility’.66
 REUTERS/EDGAR SU

The historical significance of the old Silk Road assumes great importance
in this narrative, as its reconstruction and revival heralds the return of a
golden age that is not only for China but also the world. It is a beguiling
imagined geography envisioned in Xi’s unveiling of the New Silk Road in
Kazakhstan in 2013: ‘Today, as I stand here and look back at that episode of
history, I could almost hear the camel bells echoing in the mountains and
see the wisp of smoke rising from the desert.’67 Evoking this romanticised
past promotes continuity and the idea of a reversion to a historical norm for
China at the centre of global trends, while deflecting from the radical
redrawing of the world’s geography that the New Silk Road has become.68
Much of the official rhetoric surrounding it involves celebrating a return to
this past. China has even funded museum and archaeology collaborations in
Greece, Kenya, and Sri Lanka, which have included joint expeditions in
search of evidence of connected pasts between China and these countries.69
Through such initiatives—across the economic, political, and cultural
spheres—could it be said that a new space is emerging from the old order of
Europe and Asia? Some commentators have already suggested that a
Eurasian supercontinent is increasingly a ‘unit of analysis and
discussion...one that also reaches across to Africa and up to the Arctic’.
And, at the centre of this supercontinent is China, ‘regaining its place as
“The Middle Kingdom” of both world history and of contemporary
international affairs’.70
Yet these grand claims, favoured in both Beijing and in Washington, end
up missing the critical details that will ultimately make this initiative a
success or a failure. The future of the New Silk Road will be determined not
just by what the Chinese leadership wants but by how it plays out at the
local level.71 For example, at Chinese mining and construction complexes
in Africa, some locals have become suspicious of China’s intentions. In
Zambia, life is highly regulated for the Chinese managers, administrators,
and workers employed within these complexes. Isolated behind the
compound’s walls, their connections with local communities are
minimised.72 Most workers don’t bring their families and the absence of
women and children is not merely a cultural curiosity for local Zambians
but brings with it ‘a palpable sense of fear and insecurity’. This has seen the
circulation of unsubstantiated myths about firms using Chinese convict
labour,73 and doubts voiced by local contractors about the intentions of their
Chinese counterparts repatriating the money they receive from deals, while
only returning meagre wages.74
Such suspicions can be harnessed by the political opposition eager to
gain power from incumbent political leaders and governments promoting
partnership with China. The unsuccessful 2016 election campaign of
Zambia’s current president Hakainde Hichilema contained anti-Chinese
rhetoric and, while in opposition, unsubstantiated allegations in November
2018 that the government had sold to China the state-owned timber
company Zambia Forestry and Forest Industries Corporation (ZAFFICO).75
However, on assuming office Hichilema tacked towards the incumbent’s
course, visiting China in September 2023. The visit led to an upgrading of
China-Zambia bilateral ties to a ‘comprehensive strategic and cooperative
partnership’, and a joint communique emphasising synergies between
Zambia’s Eighth National Development Plan and the BRI. This
announcement was accompanied by memorandum of understandings on
building a smartphone assembly plant and improvements to information and
communications technology infrastructure, as well as commitments to build
a wind and solar hybrid power generation project worth $800 million, and
$290 million of investment in a lithium battery manufacturing plant.76
Yet, despite China becoming by far the biggest investor in Africa and its
largest bilateral creditor over recent years,77 there have also been instances
of ‘push back’ among local communities towards Chinese projects.78 These
have included protests during construction of the Lagos—Ibadan railway
line in Nigeria, at the Bagamoyo Port and industrial zone in Tanzania, as
well as over mining activities and port construction in Madagascar and
Cameroon.79 In Kenya, local protests in autumn 2016 delayed a section of
the Mombasa—Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway crossing Nairobi national
park.80 This line was reported to be losing $100 million in its first year of
operation with accusations of the segregation of Chinese and Kenyan
workers and discrimination against Kenyan drivers, who were not being
allowed to drive the trains and were outnumbered by Chinese drivers.
Kenyan train operatives reportedly received less than one third of the pay of
their Chinese counterparts working on the line, while staff in the depot and
rolling stock department claimed earnings of less than a quarter. Several
deaths of lions and buffalo have also been reported on the line. In 2019,
Kenya’s The Sunday Standard newspaper published many of these claims,
reporting that Kenyan workers ’say they are experiencing neo-colonialism,
racism and blatant discrimination as the taxpayer foots the Sh30 million a
day bill for the train’.81 In 2023, it was reported that the line remains
underused for freight, which is its main economic rationale, and even as
income grows, it remains far below the amount needed to repay its debt.82

TONY KARUMBA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

 Alongside the route of the new standard gauge line is a striking reminder
of the fate of a grandiose megaproject that was once completed at great
human and economic cost. Those passengers sitting in air-conditioned
comfort on the new line can gaze out at the overgrown metre-gauge
‘Lunatic Line’ running in places alongside it. Completed in 1901, it became
notorious for its costly and dangerous construction—with lions devouring
the labourers building the line and cost overruns preoccupying the British
government—before it was beset by underinvestment, delays, and accidents
in the decades until its closure in 2017.83
Elsewhere in Kenya, construction of a coal power plant on Lamu Island,
announced in 2015 and backed by a Chinese-led consortium, was halted
after local protests over its environmental and economic viability.84 In
2018, China reportedly owned more than 70 per cent of Kenya’s external
bilateral debt and in 2021—along with twelve other African countries—
Kenya was forced to secure a debt repayment suspension from China.85
There are increasing instances of some African countries cancelling or
postponing BRI projects in order to reduce the level of their debt held by
China—with much of this government-guaranteed public enterprise debt
owed to the Exim Bank of China—while other projects have been halted or
shut down on safety and environmental grounds.86
If this region is envisaged as a key spur of the New Silk Road, then its
‘main axis’, according to some Chinese officials, is in South and Southeast
Asia.87 However, the anticipated political dividends for China have not
always materialised there either. In the Maldives, for example, the pro-
Beijing Progressive Party was unseated in 2020 by the Maldivian
Democratic Party, which ran on an explicitly anti-BRI platform. The
Maldives’ new president even called the project ‘a big cheat’ and a ‘debt
trap’ that must be abandoned or renegotiated. In Malaysia, Mahathir
Mohamad, prime minister between 2018 and 2020, went as far as
describing BRI projects as a form of ‘new colonialism’ that must be
rejected.88
Elsewhere, after finding itself unable to service the Chinese loans that
funded the Hambantota port development, the Sri Lankan government was
compelled in late 2016 and 2017 to negotiate a 99-year lease to China for
the port.89 These negotiations sparked protests from unions and opposition
groups, and in early 2017 there were violent protests in the Hambantota
industrial zone over a perceived loss of autonomy to China and a rumoured
land grab to build the 15,000-acre zone.90 In 2018, Bangladesh banned the
China Harbour Engineering Company, a subsidiary of the majority state-
owned China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), for trying
to bribe a government official to obtain favourable terms on a road project.
In the same year, the Malaysian government also halted a CCCC railway
project amid investigations of corruption and overbilling.91 Across
Southeast Asia concerns and protests have ranged from fears over the
destruction of the environment to anger at land being ‘sold to foreigners’.92
Environmental concerns extend across all routes of the New Silk Road,
with growing unease at the development and transfer of polluting industries
from China to territories beyond its borders. In late 2016, Chinese banks
and companies were involved in 240 coal projects in BRI host nations.93 In
2017, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report noted considerable overlap
between Silk Road projects and sensitive environments: more than 1,700
Important Bird Areas and Key Biodiversity Areas were at risk of harm and
over 265 threatened species could be adversely affected. A Chinese dam on
the island of Sumatra in Indonesia is also posing a threat to the orangutans
of the Batang Toru jungle ecosystem.94
The amount of concrete being spilt in the building of the new Silk Road
also significantly increases carbon dioxide emissions. In 2018, a Chatham
House report estimated that each year over 4 billion tons of cement are
produced globally, accounting for around 8 per cent of global carbon
emissions,95 which in turn contributes to the warming of the planet and
rising sea levels. In 2021, the sea levels around China reached their highest
on record, and, in its annual bulletin, China’s National Marine
Environmental Monitoring Centre noted that coastal sea levels were 3
inches higher in 2021 than the average between 1993 and 2011. In China,
coastal sea levels have risen at a higher rate than the global average over the
same period.96
China’s own environment ministry forecasts a rise of another 2.1 to 6.7
inches in coastal water levels over the next thirty years. It will demand the
spilling of more concrete—and with it the production of more carbon
dioxide—to protect this coastline. Sea-level rise leaves coastal ecosystems
vulnerable to erosion as well as the loss of tidal flats. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognised that
rising sea levels are a ‘serious threat to China’s coastal cities and
populations’.97 From this angle, the concrete being poured for the BRI is
contributing to an environmental disaster at home.
From Mombasa to the Maldives, Chinese invocations of a ‘Silk Road
Spirit’98 can quickly be effaced by feelings of threat, insecurity, and
environmental degradation on the ground. In local communities, often
overlooked by their own national governments, the ambitions of the New
Silk Road are being countered through protest and political mobilisation. To
understand this Chinese initiative and its redrawing of the world’s
geography, demands an analysis that is more inclusive of various
perspectives and voices. Only by doing so can the answers be revealed as to
whether this initiative is binding more territories to China’s economic and
political model—or whether it is simply emboldening opposition to it? Are
new projects destined to multiply as the Silk Road network expands? Or
could it collapse under its own gravity, its infrastructure projects
underutilised, or even underwater?
The story of China’s New Silk Road will unfold over many roads and
routes—some of its endeavours will be successful, others not. It is an
initiative characterised as much by incoherence, urgency, and opportunism
as it is by a grand geopolitical strategy. It is also undercut by even wider
tensions, none more so than China’s meteoric economic growth being built
on foreign investment, resource imports, and the export of manufactured
goods to states and regions that have become China’s geopolitical rivals—
the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and the European Union.99 The
nature of China’s export-orientated economy does not sit easily with its own
claims to political-military primacy in the region and beyond.100 If in the
late 1970s and early 1980s, communist China struck a ‘Faustian bargain’
with the capitalist world economy, then, five decades on, this unresolved
contradiction is now being played out at every twist and turn of the New
Silk Road.101
Seen from this perspective, the New Silk Road is much more than simply
the vision of one leader, from one country. Yet the reasons and rationale
behind it are still much misunderstood by a West that knows little about the
country. Tony Blair, for example, recounted in his autobiography that
during a visit to Hong Kong as prime minister in 1997 to oversee its
handover to China, he struggled through a conversation with the then
Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, on the subject of UK-China history. In his
own words, he had ‘only a fairly dim and sketchy understanding of what
that past was’. The subject being discussed was the Opium Wars—the very
reason why Hong Kong had become British in the first place.102
The history behind the New Silk Road runs much deeper than its
expanding roads and railways. This project is an initiative with branching
and emergent futures that are beyond simplistic storylines invoking Chinese
domination of Eurasia, or fixes to the Chinese economy, or new
development models. All three are reductionist myths that don’t account for
the disconcerting incoherence, unevenness, and contradictions of this
project. Instead of uncritically repeating the myths that surround the BRI, it
is the ways in which the competing imagined geographies of the New Silk
Road are remaking the world at the smallest scales that need to be
understood.103
Focussing solely on the megaprojects and the islands being built in the
South China Sea also risks missing an ever-greater threat. In time it won’t
just be the gravestone of an Armenian merchant beneath the waves of the
South China Sea. Claims of national rejuvenation and ‘win-win’ strategies
of ‘South-South’ cooperation will start to ring hollow when these islands
and reefs sink below the waves of human-induced climate change. In the
end, it will be cooperation, not conflict or competition, that will keep China
—and the rest of us—afloat.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

THE MYTH THAT AFRICA IS DOOMED TO FAIL

Seeing beyond the colonial clichés

ISTOCK

The turrets and domes of the magical castles of Gonder loom above the
visitor, their towers and crenelations framing the sky. These elegant but
resolute structures stand within a formidable walled enclosure, which
encircles the ruins of churches, palaces, halls, thermal baths, a library, and
even lion cages.1 This vast and magnificent fortress complex could have
been lifted from the pages of the Lord of the Rings, and its fictional
kingdom of Gondor. However, the castles of Gonder are very real—and
were once described by a visiting Yemeni envoy in 1648 as ‘the most
beautiful of glorious marvels built of stone and lime’.2 The capital of the
Ethiopian Empire from 1636 to 1855, it is today labelled by tourist guides
as ‘The Camelot of Africa’, and it is also a place where a long-standing
myth on Africa begins to unspool.
Many of Gonder’s treasures, such as the captivating illuminated religious
manuscripts produced there, are no longer in the city. These can be found at
the British Library in London in its collection of Ethiopic manuscripts. This
archive demonstrates the richness of painting and calligraphy produced in
Gonder and elsewhere in Ethiopia.3 These manuscripts, alongside hundreds
of other precious items—a gold crown, textiles, stone tablets, processional
crosses, gold chalices, jewellery, and sacred religious tabots representing
the fabled Ark of the Covenant—found their way to London after being
looted by the British army in 1868 following the defeat of the Ethiopian
Emperor Tewodros II at the battle of Maqdala. Despite repeated requests
from Ethiopia for their return, the majority of these artifacts remain in the
collection of the British Library and several other UK museums and
libraries.4 For Hirut Kassaw, Ethiopia’s culture minister, who visited the
UK in 2019 to request their return, these items are ‘a fundamental part of
the existential fabric of Ethiopia and its people’. Even though most people
in the UK don’t even know the Maqdala treasures exist, and many are
stored in vaults and hidden from public view, requests for their permanent
return have been repeatedly refused.5
In the UK’s second city of Birmingham, an alternative take on the
legacies of empire was recently set out in the city’s central library. In the
summer of 2022, the library hosted an exhibition entitled From City of
Empire to City of Diversity: A Visual Journey. It took visitors across the
history of a city that once supplied goods to run a global empire—from
guns, axes, hoes and cattle bells, to slave chains and iron collars.6 One
striking scene was revealed in a photograph displayed in the early part of
the exhibition showing one of the city’s most famous personalities: Joseph
Chamberlain—Mayor of Birmingham (1873–76), MP for the city (1876–
1914), Secretary of State for the Colonies (1895–1903), and founder of the
University of Birmingham, as well as the father of future prime minister
Neville Chamberlain. The image is dated 3 February 1903 and Chamberlain
is pictured seated firmly upright with his trademark monocle, at the edge of
a trekking camp in South Africa. His wife, who was also part of the
expedition, is seated next to him. Around them stand around a dozen white
men complete with the imperial pith helmets—or sola topis—of the day. In
the picture also sits Robert Baden-Powell, the future founder of the Boy
Scouts movement.
Ahead of all of them seem to stretch the endless possibilities of empire
for generations of Britons. It was a vision that Chamberlain carried back to
Birmingham. Just a few weeks after his expedition, he declared in a speech
in the city: ‘But the Empire is not old. The Empire is new—the Empire is in
its infancy. Now is the time when we can mould that Empire and when we
and those who live with us can decide its future destinies.’7 Like many of
his day, Chamberlain thought empire was the natural and eternal way in
which the world would be ordered. He died just days before the onset of the
First World War, a conflict that ended with the British Empire at its greatest
extent after it acquired Germany’s East and West African colonies at
Versailles in 1919.8 However, just fifty years later, the British Empire had
all but expired.
For cities like Birmingham, the story of empire was far from over and the
second half of the library’s exhibition turned to a city seen through the
images captured by a local firm of portrait photographers. From the 1950s
onwards, the city was a destination for a wave of migrants from all corners
of empire that helped to rebuild Britain and Birmingham after the
devastation and exhaustion of war. The portraits of these new residents
draw the viewer into deeply personal worlds. A photo of two smiling
newlyweds from the Caribbean are flanked at the church by two
groomsmen forming an arch with cricket bats. A young Sikh man seems to
sit impatiently for his photo to be taken, two pens poking out of his top
pocket. And a nurse, most likely from the Caribbean, poses proudly in her
NHS uniform like so many other nurses from all across the UK. These
photographs are a world away from the monochrome empire of hierarchy
and privilege captured in Chamberlain’s photo just a few decades earlier.
The exhibition did not shy away from the ghosts of empire as it included
stories of enduring exclusion and alienation told by the children and
grandchildren of these migrants to the city. But not everyone was
sympathetic to the curators’ aims. Below a YouTube video to promote the
exhibition, an anonymous comment read: ‘I don’t recall ever being asked if
I wanted my city to become “diverse”’.9 As if anticipating the irony of this
comment, the exhibition included a quote from the sociologist and
intellectual Stuart Hall, in which he reflected that: ‘Slavery, colonization
and colonialism locked us all—them (you) and us (them)—into a common,
unequal, uneven history.’10 For the anonymous commentor there was no
reflection on whether those peoples and societies encountering Europeans
for the first time had ever been asked if they wanted slavery or imperialism.
And, while formal colonial rule may have disappeared, the racism and
discrimination of empire have not dissipated as quickly.
In 2016, a former journalist gave a speech in Birmingham laced with a
longing for a time when Britain ruled the waves. The speech reminisced
about ‘an empire that was seven times the size of the Roman empire at its
greatest extent under Trajan’. It extolled a recent intervention in Somalia by
the Royal Navy, where British ships were taking on pirates menacing the
Gulf of Aden ‘with all the courage and decisiveness of our 19th century
forebears’.11 It heralded a benign Britain, where ‘up the creeks and inlets of
every continent on earth there go the gentle kindly gunboats of British soft
power’.12
Lost in the fog of imperial nostalgia this former journalist—who was
now Foreign Secretary and future prime minister, Boris Johnson—made a
telling slip. Speaking of his concern about increasing authoritarianism in
Africa, he referred to the continent as ‘that country’ of Africa. It was a
revealing mistake that could have come from a line in the satirical
intervention of ‘How to Write About Africa’ by the Kenyan author and
journalist, Binyavanga Wainaina, who suggested: ‘In your text, treat Africa
as if it were one country... Don’t get bogged down with precise
descriptions... Broad brushstrokes throughout are good.’13 For all the
richness, diversity, and dynamism of Africa—both in the past, as typified by
sites like Gonder, and in the present—the place can still be regarded as a
single entity, each country broadly the same.
While Johnson appeared to revel as Foreign Secretary in visiting the Map
Room of Lord Palmerston at the Foreign Office14—which was the Colonial
Office until 1966—his struggle to grasp the legacies of empire were even
more starkly exposed in the summer of 2021, by which time he was prime
minister. In response to the toppling by anti-racism campaigners in Bristol
of the statue of the merchant, slave trader, philanthropist and MP Edward
Colston (1636–1721), Johnson acknowledged the ‘legitimate feelings of
outrage’ sparked by the murder of George Floyd in the US. However, he
also warned against attacking statues: ‘We cannot now try to edit or censor
our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history.’15 It was a remark
that cut to the heart of who controls the past. Should the editing and
censoring of history undertaken by previous generations be left untouched
in the present? And is this process safe in the hands of privileged political
elites embodied by Johnson? Or should other voices—those of local people,
migrants, activists, minority groups, the young—have a right to be involved
in interpreting Britain’s past?
These questions are reflective of ongoing debates over empire in Europe
and beyond. In March 2020, a YouGov poll surveyed citizens in a number
of countries that had formerly been empires and asked them what they
thought about their imperial pasts. Dutch respondents were the most
unabashed about empire: half of those surveyed replied that the Dutch
should be more proud than ashamed of their old empire. In the United
Kingdom that figure was a third. Another third in the UK felt that the
empire had done more good than harm for colonies—a higher percentage
than any other former colonial power, including France and Japan. Of the
eight countries surveyed, the United Kingdom had the largest proportion of
people (27 per cent) who stated that they would still like their nations to
have an empire.16
Such views are intrinsically tied to the imagined geographies of empire,
which shape how those countries formerly with empires still treat ‘that
country’ called Africa. There is a long-standing myth that Africa is both
uniform and undeveloped. This myth compresses a gigantic land mass of
fifty-four countries with over 1,000 ethnolinguistic groups and a population
of 1.3 billion into a neat geographical unit.17 When the richness, plurality,
and diversity of this huge expanse of territory is reduced to a single entity, it
becomes a trap from which even this chapter cannot entirely escape. As
noted by the Cameroon-born writer Eliza Anyangwe, by condensing such
complexity, it becomes easier to attach to it the negative stereotype that
there is ‘something exceptional about Africa, that while other continents
and peoples have got or are getting richer, Africans, for reasons we can
think but no longer speak in polite company, choose to remain in
poverty’.18
It is a way of seeing and engaging with this region that is still being
actively produced through the seemingly benign lens of charity fundraising.
In his book Africa Is Not a Country, Dipo Faloyin outlines the frustrations
of many at the ‘West’s very specific need to portray Africa as functionally
helpless in battling its own problems’. He rails at a white saviour complex,
and the images that circulate in charity campaigns to strip Africa of its
‘grace, decency, and nuance’. His advice for those on such fundraising
missions, who then post to social media their pictures of life in village
communities, is to try to ‘avoid picking up random children you do not
know for a photo that you then publish without a clear indication of
consent...no matter how cute or poor they are. It’s unthinkable that anyone
would make a habit of doing it in almost any other region of the world.’19
This version of the white saviour complex is the latest iteration in a long
tradition of obscuring the richness of this region. In earlier times, the white
rulers of what became known as Rhodesia between 1964 and 1979 invested
immense efforts and creative licence in reimagining the ruins of the ancient
city of Great Zimbabwe.20 This vast complex of walled enclosures was
inhabited from the eleventh century up to the beginning of the sixteenth
century and is as impressive as anything found in Europe at the time. The
outer wall of the Great Enclosure stands thirty-six feet high and is made up
of more than a million granite stones arranged with a geometric precision
that can still be seen today. This site was the hub of a civilisation central to
a regional network of trade and knowledge, which also had links to the rest
of the world, as evidenced by finds such as a Ming dynasty teapot, Persian
pots, glass from Syria, and cowrie shells from the Indian ocean.21
However, the existence of Great Zimbabwe was also a threat to the
legitimacy of white settler society, which tried to alter the past to make it
more palatable to its racist ideology. In Rhodesia, textbooks were published
ascribing the ruins to Arab traders, or an earlier people that had since died
out, or even mythical figures and a lost ‘white civilisation’.22 Anybody but
the ancestors of today’s black Zimbabweans who had in fact created the
capital of a great kingdom.
The over-representation of certain voices in interpreting the history of the
region is still present today. Out of the academic papers published in four
prestigious history journals from 1997 to 2020, only three per cent were
about Africa. Of these, just 10 per cent were written by authors based in
Africa—whereas 86 per cent were scholars based in America, 76 per cent
Europe, and 40 per cent Asia and Oceania (many of the papers had more
than one author so the percentages don’t add up to one hundred).23
Far from Great Zimbabwe, on the copper-clad dome of Rhodes House at
the University of Oxford perches an enormous bronze carving of the
Zimbabwe Bird—a copy of eleventh-century carvings stolen from Great
Zimbabwe in the late nineteenth century. Cecil Rhodes—mining magnate,
politician and imperialist, after whom Rhodesia and Rhodes House were
named—believed the sculptures too sophisticated to have been fashioned by
an African culture and wrongly attributed them to a Mediterranean
civilisation.24 Just a few hundred yards away, on the façade of Oriel
College, also part of the university, looms a statue of Rhodes himself. In
recent years students have been campaigning to remove his shadow from
the university and from Oxford High Street over which he watches.25
Despite the attempts of Rhodes and his admirers to censor the
achievements of African civilisations, it is a region that possesses several
wonders of the ancient world—ranging from Great Zimbabwe in the south,
to the Pyramids of Giza in the north. The city of Meroë in present day
Sudan, around 125 miles north-east of Khartoum, has monuments that ‘bear
comparison with the best of Egypt’s’, while excavations at Kerma, in
Nubia, have unveiled a city with roots dating back to at least the third
millennium BC.26
Then there is Gebel Barkal in northern Sudan, a UNESCO world heritage
site, about 250 miles to the south-east of Bir Tawil, which was encountered
in chapter four. This site has been a sacred mountain since the time of
Egypt’s New Kingdom (c.1500 BC). The Ancient Egyptians believed that
their god Amon resided in this Holy Mountain.27 Fragments of Amon’s
temple are still visible at the base of Gebel Barkal’s cliffs and, over
millennia, the site has served multiple roles—as the outermost limit of
Egypt’s Pharaonic kingdoms, the centre of autonomous Nubian kingdoms,
and as a vassal province of the Ottoman empire.28 The pyramids, temples,
burial chambers, and funerary chapels of Gebel Barkal, and its surrounding
area, preserve two thousand years of creative genius, which include
intricate painted scenes and writings.29 In its shadow, the notion of modern
nations, borders, and sovereignty seem the aberration rather than the rule.
In the northern Ethiopian highlands, the kingdom of Aksum developed in
the first century AD and was a literate civilization that produced gold
coinage, monolithic obelisks, giant stelae, royal tombs, and large palaces.30
One of its highlights is the Obelisk of Aksum: a fourth century, 78-foot-high
monolith weighing around 152 tons, which was looted by fascist Italy in
1937 and only returned in 2005.31 A recognised UNESCO site, the city of
Aksum preserves the wealth and importance of this ancient civilization,
which was once the most powerful state between the Eastern Roman
Empire and Persia.32
 Kilwa Kisiwani, located off the southern coast of present-day Tanzania,
is another UNESCO world heritage site.33 It was the principal port of a
string of coastal trading cities, with its first mosque dated to around AD 800.
The wealth and the gold trade of east Africa flowed through this island,
which had trading connections that stretched as far as China.34 In
neighbouring Kenya, the Lothagam North Pillar Site is a massive
communal cemetery with megalithic pillars, stone circles and cairns
beneath which the dead were buried between 5,000 and 4,300 years ago.35
Intriguingly, no social hierarchy among the burials has been identified from
the archaeological work at the site, which counters the traditional narrative
that societies needed to be agricultural or sedentary—with elites at the top
—before monumental works could be developed.36
Other highly developed societies include the sophisticated urban
civilisations of West Africa, which began to develop around the inland delta
of the Niger River in about 500 BC.37 From AD 700 to 1600, great empires
emerged across West Africa, including Ancient Ghana, and the kingdoms of
Benin, Mali, Songhai, and Asante.38 The renown of the medieval empire of
Ghana as ‘the land of gold’ had reached as far as Baghdad as early as the
eighth century. And, after Mansa Musa, of the Mali Empire (c.1230–1670),
had visited Cairo in 1324, it was said that he brought so much gold that its
price plummeted and took a decade to recover.39
From AD 900, the Kingdom of Benin developed into a wealthy state with
guilds of artisans producing refined and exquisite works of art in ivory and
metal.40 This culminated in the masterpieces known as the Benin Bronzes—
radiant and elaborately decorated cast plaques, statues, ornaments, and
figurines made of bronze and brass, which were produced from the
sixteenth century onwards by specialist guilds working for the royal court in
Benin City. Despite requests for their return from the Nigerian government
and representatives of the Benin Royal Palace, over 900 Benin Bronzes
remain in the British Museum’s collection in London, most of which were
pillaged in the devastating occupation of Benin City by British forces in
1897. The occupation saw the torching and partial destruction of the Benin
Royal Palace. Its ancestral shrines and associated compounds were looted
of thousands of objects of ceremonial and ritual value, including the
symbolic brass heads of former Obas (kings) and plaques depicting key
historic practices and traditions. Just as with the Ethiopian treasures at the
battle of Maqdala, in the flash of a rifle muzzle, several centuries of a
sophisticated and rich culture were bagged up and dispersed. This brutal
colonial episode effectively ended an independent Kingdom of Benin.41

ADAM EASTLAND/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

These societies represent just a few of the medieval African empires of

monumental sophistication that pre-dated colonial encounters.42 They form
part of a romantic gloriana perspective on Africa and a celebration of highly
complex achievements, which—as the Kenyan political thinker Ali Mazrui
puts it—‘salutes the pyramids of Egypt, the towering structures of Aksum,
the sunken churches of Lalibela [in Ethiopia], the brooding majesty of
Great Zimbabwe, the castles of Gonder’. This tribute to Africa’s empires
and kingdoms stands in contrast to a romantic primitivism—and a
celebration of the region’s simplicity—taken up by figures such as the poet
and first president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor, who valorised ‘the
cattle-herder rather than the castle-builder’.43 This was another, perhaps
larger Africa, which existed alongside empire states, but was of no less
significance or interest, and was held together by myriad connections and
relationships somewhat looser than those in the emerging states of the
region.44
For Mazrui, these poles of cultural nostalgia—Africa as home of great
indigenous empires and Africa as place of natural simplicity—are both
‘partial re-inventions’.45 He suggests that Africa has been reinvented in
several stages. The first stage was when what is now North Africa was
understood as part of the classical Mediterranean world and conceived of as
an extension of Southern Europe. Though the colonial provinces of Ancient
Rome in present-day Tunisia and eastern Algeria were referred to as
‘Africa’ by the Romans, it is a geography with little resemblance to the
outline of Africa that we hold today. It was a time before the boundaries of
the different continents had been demarcated by mapmakers, and instead
the concept of ‘Mediterranean civilizations’ prevailed.46
The second phase involved a wider set of African peoples interacting
more deeply with Semitic speaking people—Arabs, Phoenicians, Hebrews,
Amhara, and Tigrayans—and with the classical worlds of Greece and
Rome. This was followed by the subsequent spread of Christianity across
North Africa, from the first century, and later along the Nile Valley into
Ethiopia in the fourth century.47 At the Abba Garima Monastery in the
Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, the brightly illustrated Garima Gospels,
written on goat skin, are among the oldest surviving copies of the Christian
gospels in existence. Recent carbon testing has dated them between AD
330–650.48
Mazrui’s third phase of Africa’s development involved the birth of Islam
in the early seventh century and its expansion north and south of the Sahara.
The earliest Muslims, who were being persecuted for following the Prophet
Mohammed, fled from Mecca across the Red Sea into Ethiopia where they
were offered refuge. Later, Islam helped to inaugurate the legacies of the
empires of Songhai (1325–1591) and Mali, which flourished from the
thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries giving rise to such miracles of medieval
civilization as Timbuktu as a centre of learning and host to one of the oldest
universities in the world.49
The fourth phase came with the impact of European encounter, trade, and
colonisation. It was this interaction more than any other that came to inform
‘Africans that they were Africans’, as the contours of a continent were
imposed on its people. For Mazrui, during this stage, Africa was part of
Europe’s invention of the world, part of the naming by Europeans of ‘all the
great continents of the world, all the great oceans, many of the great rivers
and lakes and most of the countries.’ And, of the greatest significance,
Europe was positioned above Africa in this cosmological ordering of the
world.50
 The final phase has been the archaeological discoveries indicating that all
of us originated in Africa, meaning that ‘the entire human race becomes a
massive global African Diaspora. Every human being becomes a
descendant of Africa.’ It was a discovery that placed the region as the
foundation of the whole of humanity and its flourishing civilisations.
Tracing our identities and migrations to their ultimate origin no longer leads
us to the essence of a bounded ethnic community or nation-state. Instead, it
takes us to Africa and a history that does not end at its shores but globalises
Africa itself.51 It was a revelation that overlapped with an emerging idea of
reclaiming the meaning of Africa in the moment of decolonisation, put
forward by the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana
(1960–66). Nkrumah was a passionate advocate of Pan-Africanism, and a
belief that Africa, and the global African diaspora, ‘should break down any
divisions and unify under a common purpose of prosperity.’52 It was a
shared vision of a future for the continent beyond that of the nation state.
These different versions of the idea of ‘Africa’ were created over
centuries and elements of each have combined over time. However, this rich
history of cultural development did not easily sit with the epoch of
European empires and their supposedly ‘civilising’ mission. The author
Chinua Achebe, educated under the British colonial order in Nigeria in the
1940s, saw first-hand empire’s editing and censoring of Africa’s history for
what it was: ‘a violent...counter-factual effort to annihilate the history of his
continent’s peoples’.53 In order to justify the fracturing and corruption of
indigenous societies, the theft of their wealth, resources, and people, as well
as the conquering of its states and kingdoms, the past had to be rewritten by
Europeans. It was only by effacing this history that Africa could become ‘a
place defined by a state of “underdevelopment”’54, and one that required
external interference and exploitation by outsiders.
Written out of the colonisers’ accounts was the richness of the pre-
colonial era. Prior to the Atlantic slave trade—and the subsequent colonial
presence, resource extraction, repression, and exploitation—there were
societies in Africa that had developed complex systems of participatory
government, which were highly integrated within local, trans-regional, and
global trading networks.55 Although slavery existed, and was even
widespread in Africa before Arab and then Portuguese traders began to
export slaves, the scale of the transatlantic enterprise eclipsed any preceding
trades.56 Perhaps as many as 13 million people were taken from Africa to
work as slaves in the Americas and West Indies, with 10 to 20 per cent
dying across the infamous Middle Passage.57 The first leg involved the
transportation of goods—knives, guns, ammunition, cotton cloth, and tools
—from Europe to Africa; and the last leg the shipment to Europe of mainly
raw materials—sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo, rum, and cotton—produced on
the plantations of the Americas.58
The transatlantic trade brought with it a need to justify the unjustifiable.
As argued in the book The Myth of Africa by Dorothy Hammond and Alta
Jablow, from which this chapter draws its title, until the eighteenth century
—with Britain in the 1730s the world’s biggest slave trading nation—
Africans were not generally characterised as ‘bloodthirsty, superstitious,
and susceptible to despotic forms of government’.59 However, after a shift
in imagined geographies of the region and its people, the implications were
genocidal. In 1600, the sub-Saharan or tropical population of Africa was
perhaps 50 million—30 per cent of the population of the New World,
Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined. By 1900, tropical Africa’s
population had grown to perhaps 70 million but it now made up little more
than 10 per cent of the greater region of the New World, Europe, the Middle
East, and Africa. Based on these figures, the historian Patrick Manning has
suggested that the population of tropical Africa in 1850 was little more than
half of what it would have been had it not been for slavery and the slave
trades.60
Between 1640 and 1807, British ships had transported about 3.4 million
Africans across the Atlantic, of which around 450,000 died on the
crossing.61 When Britain’s role in the trade finally came to an end—first
through abolition in 1807, and then through the outlawing of the purchasing
and owning of slaves in 1834—it was not slaves who were compensated but
British slave owners. The descendants of the families that profited include
the United Kingdom’s former prime minister David Cameron62 and it was
only in 2015 that UK taxpayers ‘paid off’ the massive debt the British
government had incurred compensating these slave owners for their human
property. This revelation came about in a hastily deleted tweet from the UK
Treasury in 2015 exposing how taxpayers had been servicing one of the
largest and most immoral loans in history for almost two centuries.63
While the triangular route connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas
was highly profitable, it was devastating for those communities that
supplied slaves. Aside from the loss of the working-age population, the
societies impacted by this trade were shattered in other ways. Local
intermediaries participated in acquiring and trading the slaves, who tended
to be captives taken in war, those kidnapped on slave raids, as well as those
slaves from communities selling their own criminals, dependents, or people
acquired in exchange for loans.64 Slavery incentivised villages to turn on
each other to capture more slaves, creating conditions for political
instability, the weakening of collaboration within and between existing and
emerging states, and the corruption of judicial institutions as slavery
became a lucrative punishment for crimes.65 Where groups of villages
might have previously deepened cooperation and developed into larger-
scale federations, ethnic groups, and ultimately nations, relations between
the villages tended to turn hostile through the corruption and distrust
inherent in the trade of captive human beings.66
Pre-existing forms of government collapsed and this disorder was
compounded by the exchange of slaves for European weapons in a ‘gun-
slave cycle’.67 This was a vicious circle as once a community got into the
slave-trading business, its capacity to make war and stage raids increased.68
Many fled the expanding bloodshed, terror, and disruption, though these
were often to places that did not offer the best opportunities for sedentary
agriculture.69 The consequences have cast a long shadow, with the extent of
the slave trade linked to poor economic performance in more recent times,70
and distrust in national leaders in the twenty-first century traced back to
ruptures between elites and their people in the seventeenth and eighteenth
century.71
In the wake of the devastations of the slave trade, European powers then
arrived as direct colonisers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries in what became knowns as the ‘Scramble for Africa’. From
controlling around 10 per cent of mostly coastal Africa in the mid-to late
nineteenth century, by the start of the First World War only Ethiopia and
Liberia remained outside of European control.72 However, the colonising
powers found that conquest was easier than administering diverse, complex,
and vast spaces. Ultimately, the colonial governments ‘barely knew the
populations they governed’ and there were only meagre efforts at the mass
education of local populations. It meant that rather than bringing societies
together, division was sown in the creation of a small, entitled, and highly
educated local elite whose skills were prized by colonial administrators.73
 It is perhaps in Achebe’s masterpiece, Things Fall Apart (1958), that is
most vividly captured the true essence of colonial misrule and its legacy. In
the closing pages of the novel there appears the figure of a British Regional
Commissioner. A man—maybe of Ashdown, Eton, or Oxford—who is of
such learning and wisdom that he builds a court to judge ‘in ignorance’
while ruling over a land in which he is as yet unable to ‘even speak our
tongue’.74 Achebe describes the commissioner observing the aftermath of
the suicide of Okonkwo, the novel’s protagonist, who ends his life broken
by the destruction of his gods, his beliefs, his family, his community, and
his world by this encounter with the colonial system. As the Commissioner
walks away from the scene of the suicide, all he can reflect on is how this
event will merit at least a paragraph in the magnum opus of his time in
colonial service: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower
Niger.75 Achebe never conceals in his novel the violence and inequalities of
precolonial Igbo society but he fiercely laments its total destruction by a
group of vandals in sola topis.
The colonial administrations often did little to develop the territory that
they had taken over; their interests were focussed on enriching the home
country—the metropole—rather than the colony. The infrastructures they
built were primarily to exploit natural resources and open markets, rather
than respond to the needs and interests of those they ruled over. Africa’s
railways were not like the networks that tied together Europe, or even India.
Instead, they were ‘drainage networks’—often single-track, narrow-gauge
lines linking an interior ripe for resource extraction with coastal ports.76 All
the while, the European rulers of these colonial states found themselves
unable to effectively remake the societies they ruled over in their own
image, or even to efficiently exploit these new territories. Instead, they
turned to indigenous leaders—such as kings, chiefs, and elders—to collect
taxes and round up labour. The result was often minimal political
development.77
Through this reliance on local elites, the ‘new’ colonial order rested on
the old pre-colonial order, which had been significantly shaped and
structured by its devastating contact with the slave trade.78 Europe’s ‘ruling’
powers ended up becoming trapped in a symbiotic relationship with ‘the
very elites whose backward or tyrannical ways had justified European
colonization’ in the first place.79 When Africa’s post-independence leaders
later inherited their post-colonial states, they were not bequeathed well-
functioning state structures, mass-education systems, or robust local
judiciaries; nor did they have the expertise, infrastructure, or legitimacy
necessary to extend authority and control over the whole country. In the
final reckoning, when the European powers departed, they left behind little
of value.
It is striking that today the memory of empire in former colonial powers
often contains little trace of Europe’s abject failure to stimulate social and
economic development in the lands over which they ruled. Instead, as each
defeated, frustrated, and exhausted empire departed, they often demanded
that the new governments should immediately take responsibility for the
mess they left behind.80 As external support for fragile post-colonial
governments was rapidly drawn down, newly independent administrations
were forced to forge relations with the same local kings, chiefs, and kinship
elders outside of capital cities that the colonial governments had dealt with.
The governments of these newly independent states were immediately
vulnerable to these local power brokers, who might have their own designs
on the resources of the state, which were now no longer secured by colonial
financial and military power. The scramble out of Africa created many of
the conditions for the cycles of coups and military governments that have
been a feature of the region ever since.81
The forty or so nation-states that emerged from decolonisation were far
from able to exercise the idealised and illusionary form of sovereignty that
nations were supposed to possess. These were circumstances recognised by
some independence leaders. In the newly independent states of French
Africa after the Second World War, some politicians and future leaders,
such as Senghor of Senegal, considered their territories too small—unlike
India or Algeria—and too poor to survive as nation-states and they initially
explored federal alternatives.82 While Nkrumah in Ghana, advocated Pan-
Africanism, and a belief that ‘our independence is meaningless unless it is
linked up with the total liberation of Africa’.83 Both offered visions of a
future beyond that of the nation-state but neither were realised. Although an
alternative federal system of political organization didn’t emerge, the
chimeric sovereignty of the nation-state has proved to be just as elusive.
There is also the question of whether colonisation ever really ended.
Even today, thousands of French troops are stationed in Chad, Djibouti,
Gabon, Ivory Coast, and Senegal,84 while longstanding mining concessions
continue to benefit French companies in their former colonies.85 Political
systems in Francophone Africa, which were modelled on France’s
arrangement of strong presidential powers, have been blamed for
democratic backsliding across the region.86 The CFA (Communauté
Financière Africaine) franc is also the currency for fourteen countries in
sub-Saharan Africa, with this arrangement historically requiring its West
and Central African members to deposit half their foreign exchange
reserves with the French treasury.87
Behind the myth of these sovereign, bordered nation-states were, and
often remain, the realities of a monocrop export economy established under
colonial rule—such as a dependency on oil palms, cocoa, peanuts, sugar
cane, or tea—poor infrastructure, few material resources, and a ruling elite’s
‘acute need to control the networks by which those resources were
distributed’.88 The vulnerability of many postcolonial states in Africa has
proved to be a fertile ground for corruption and dictatorship, as anyone who
seized control had to stay there with few, if any, alternatives to gaining
wealth or power other than through controlling the state.89
While certain aspects of a world shaped by empire clearly fell away at
the moment of decolonisation, others continued, albeit in different forms.90
After a military coup in Niger in August 2023, French president Emmanuel
Macron, announced the withdrawal of France’s ambassador and troops. The
new regime in Niger welcomed this as an historic step forward for the
country: ‘Imperialist and neocolonialist forces,’ it stated, ‘are no longer
welcome on our national territory’.91 However, such rhetoric rang hollow in
the face of reports that the coup generals were requesting help from the
Russian-backed Wagner mercenary group, who were operating in
neighbouring Mali. As one commentator from Niger lamented: ‘It’s all a
sham... They oppose foreign interference to restore constitutional order and
legality. But on the contrary, they are ready to make a pact with Wagner and
Russia to undermine the constitutional order.’92
Leaders in the Central African Republic (CAR) had also turned to Russia
in 2015. During that conflict, the Wagner group profited from exports of
timber, gold, and diamonds, and its mercenaries were paid large sums to
brutally quell local resistance. In Mali, violence has surged since military
regimes took over in 2020 with reports of over a thousand Wagner
mercenaries operating in the country since 2021.93 After the disbanding of
Wagner in the wake of an attempted coup in Russia in the summer of 2023,
the Russian state has assumed more direct control of its multibillion-dollar
operations in the region, which are now mostly being run as the Russian
‘Expeditionary Corps’. The leadership of this rebranded mercenary force
toured the region in September 2023, meeting with groups and governments
in Libya, Burkina Faso, CAR, Mali, and later Niger. It is reportedly offering
governments in Africa a ‘regime survival package’ with the operational
costs of deployment and security compensated for with parallel business
activity, primarily mining concessions.94 Wherever Wagner has been
deployed, analysts have recorded a surge in violence, which has been seen
in Mali where atrocities have multiplied, fuelling a negative spiral of
abuses, recruitment to jihadist groups and more attacks.95
This present-day scenario is indicative of the weakness of these states
and part of the true inheritance of colonialism and the dislocation and
disorder of slavery that this colonial ‘order’ was built on.96 It is a
vulnerability cynically capitalised on by a new set of neo-colonial actors.
However, current realities have not prevented a misty-eyed nostalgia for
empire enduring in former colonial powers—a feeling that thrives in a
vacuum of knowledge about the complex history of these empires. In the
UK, for example, the Home Office has had to develop an education module
designed to instruct officials about the legacies of empire and Britain’s
colonial past.97 It is a module likely to remain in demand as in February
2022 the UK’s Department for Education (DfE) published guidance on the
legal duty of schools ‘to ensure pupils receive a balanced presentation of
opposing views’, which includes many topics relating to empire and
imperialism.98 A new generation of Conservative politicians, such as Suella
Braverman MP (Home Secretary 2022–23) and Kemi Badenoch MP
(Minister for Women and Equalities 2022–24), whose parents are of Indian
and Nigerian origins respectively, have suggested that the British empire
‘was a force for good’,99 urging the telling of ‘both sides’ of history.100
Nadhim Zahawi MP, the Education Secretary (2021–22) at the time of
the guidance’s publication, stated in March 2022 that schools should teach
‘all aspects’ of the British Empire, including the supposed positives.101 He
drew on Iraq, where he was born, as a good example of the legacy of a
British civil service system, ‘which actually served the country incredibly
well for many, many decades, and that’s the sort of thing that actually
children should be learning about’.102 These are no doubt genuine
sentiments but this experience of empire was not that of most colonial
subjects. With the politicians in charge of education, justice, and equality
advocating for a ‘balanced’ approach to empire, Nadeine Asbali, a teacher
in London, responded in a national newspaper article in March 2022, that
some things are simply not equal: ‘What message does it send to
schoolchildren of colour if we present the subjugation, torture and murder
of their ancestors as justified because some train tracks were built?...it is not
impartial to present colonialism as a two-sided issue.’103
Empire was never balanced or fair so why should it be taught as such
now? Can the abuses and inequality of empire be justified by accounts of
the wonders of the Iraqi civil service, which subsequently served Saddam
Hussein so well? Such a question reflects a long-standing public debate in
the United Kingdom about empire, which has so often been reduced to the
‘balance sheet’ approach.104 In this debate, the perspectives of the colonised
are largely written out and only the deeds of colonisers feature. For many,
the prevailing argument is that ‘“on balance”, the British empire was a
“good thing” and decolonization was a largely benign or even benevolent
process’.105 These exchanges are not unique to the United Kingdom. In
2005, a controversial Article IV of a newly proposed law in France called
for school curricula to stress ‘the positive role of the French presence
overseas’, and therefore of France’s colonial history. It prompted a backlash
so fierce that it forced the then president, Jacques Chirac, to rescind it.106
It is a debate also played out in the teaching of empire and Africa through
museums. Over the last few years, the Royal Museum for Central Africa,
outside Brussels, has been gripped by a dispute on how to update one of the
largest museums in the world devoted exclusively to Africa. Opposing an
unvarnished telling of Belgium’s colonial encounter have been what the
author Adam Hochschild calls the country’s ‘old colonial’ lobby—people
who had lived and worked in Congo before it became independent in 1960,
and their descendants. They long resisted a reckoning with Belgium’s
infamous colonial encounter with Congo, which became a personal fiefdom
of King Leopold II between 1885 and 1908. It was ruled with such
unchecked brutality and barbarism that demographers estimate Congo’s
population may have been reduced by some 10 million people through
murder, starvation, and disease. Until recently, what was presented in the
museum offered little recognition of the atrocities of this reign of terror, nor
of the countless lost and forgotten lives behind the story of the collection.107
The Royal Museum for Central Africa is just one part of a global
museum-scape, in which more than 90 per cent of sub-Saharan African
items housed in museums are held outside of the region, in cities like
Brussels, New York, and London.108 Politicians and curators in the
countries where these treasures are squirreled away argue that they are safe
custodians of these artefacts, opening up their collections for a global
audience. However, it is a claim that rang a little hollow when the British
Museum revealed in 2023 that approximately 2,000 uncatalogued items
were damaged or missing from its collection, with up to 1,500 of these
stolen. As an independent investigation revealed, the museum didn’t even
know what was in the entirety of its collections, which it is now scrambling
to catalogue, while the majority of the treasures it holds remain hidden from
public view in storerooms and basements.109
By not telling the full story of these artefacts, many of the geographies,
narratives, and histories of empire remain untold. As such, much of what is
essential about the world in the past century is still being missed.110 As the
empty vaults and display cabinets of museums in Ethiopia, Congo, and
Nigeria testify, empire is not simply a ‘passing historical phenomenon’ but
one very much alive in the present.111 Decolonisation was not an end point
at which empire ceased to be important; nor was it the moment when
sovereign nation-states neatly emerged from imperial domination. Rather, it
is a messy, contingent, uneven, and unresolved process of change—one in
which our understanding of what happened in the past can both enable and
limit what is possible in the future.112
Yet instead of facing colonial pasts, in which there is still much to
resolve, an emphasis is placed on forgetting in order to overcome the
discomfort and shame. Schoolchildren in the United Kingdom are not
required to study history beyond the age of fourteen, and the history of
empire, colonisation, and slavery remain largely untaught. Decisions on
whether secondary school children get to study them is largely dependent
on the modules, topics or texts selected by each school.113 Given the
political atmosphere, and a tabloid press ever vigilant to so-called ‘wokery’,
many schools tend to shy away from the challenges and controversy of
teaching empire. It leads to a collective amnesia compounded by the mass
erasure and closure of colonial archives.114
In the moment of decolonisation, many records and documents of empire
were systematically destroyed or hidden. Countless files were incinerated
across the British Empire’s consulates and high commissions, and many of
those preserved were stored in a closed archive at Hanslope Park in
Buckinghamshire. Despite previous denials by British officials, the
existence of this store of documents was finally admitted to in 2011 after a
lawsuit was brought against the British government by victims of torture in
colonial Kenya. An expert witness at this trial was the Harvard historian
Caroline Elkins, author of Britain’s Gulag, which outlined the story of
systematic violence and high-level cover-ups in the suppression of the Mau
Mau uprising during the 1950s.115 Elkin’s Harvard colleague Maya Jasanoff
summarises that, when it comes to colonial archives, British officials
actively ‘sought to manipulate the kinds of histories that future generations
would be able to produce’. It was a project to control the future as much as
the past, and what has come out of the fragmentary archives at Hanslope
Park are records of systematic, wide-ranging, and disturbing abuse.
Although partial, these records expose the lie that there was an orderly
transition from Empire to Commonwealth.116

BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

These findings are not simply obscure details about archives and lost
files. They have a far wider significance since an incomplete imperial
history, as the historian Richard Drayton notes, ‘will be inaccurate, if not
delusional, about the reality of empire, and complicit with future forms of
tyranny, inequality and structural violence’.117 In romanticising empire, past
and present injustices can remain unchecked with the future haunted and
confounded by unacknowledged historical traumas. The phantom pains of
the lost territories of a supposedly benign empire will never be salved.118
Without turning to face the painful chapters of national histories, politicians
and populations in former colonial powers will remain largely oblivious to
what happened during the epoch of empire in Africa, or in places from
Amritsar to Aden.119 Just as the ‘country’ of Africa confounded Boris
Johnson, and the mass ownership of slaves shadows David Cameron, so too
the events and histories of empire do not fade out of the education
curriculums or the collective memories of former colonies. Here they will
continue to frame images of the old colonial powers.120
These two worlds cannot be easily divorced from each other. In Britain
and France, ‘national’ wealth and cultural values—which include
democracy, equality, human dignity, tolerance, justice, and freedom—were
created as much, if not more, by the labour, resistance, and non-violent
movements of the colonised and the enslaved as they were by the coloniser
and the slaver.121 Making such connections demands a decolonisation of the
mind as much as the map. Otherwise, the endless regurgitating of insidious
narratives that deny the richness, dynamism, and diversity of Africa will
endure. An insistence on a supposedly ‘balanced’ approach to learning
about empire is just another evasion in the long-running deceit of the Myth
of Africa, which also reveals a deep anxiety about identity and history in
these former colonial powers.122
Rather than a place seen through the monochrome lens of empire, or as a
poverty-stricken land in desperate need of benign intervention and charity,
Africa should be seen in vivid and vibrant colours—a living, breathing, and
complicated place. It is the site of some of the greatest civilisational
wonders of the world, and the ultimate origins of humankind. It is a region
characterised by bold innovations in post-national forms of sovereignty
seen in the immediate post-colonial period. And among the diversity of the
region’s art are its expressive, fluid, and exquisitely graceful sculpture and
masks that inspired artists such as Picasso and Matisse. These sublime
traditional works have been around for millennia, only to later inspire a
‘modernist’ turn in European art.123 They embody peoples ahead of their
time, whose stories have for too long been subordinated by colonial era
renderings of the world. A timely corrective to this condescension would be
to restore the stolen treasures—such as the tabots representing the Ark of
the Covenant, looted at Maqdala—to their place of origin. It would be a
small but significant step towards at last bending the arc of human destiny
towards justice, peace, and equality.124
 CONCLUSION

BEYOND MYTHS
A new world geography

Our world has always been shaped by a deep faith in myth. Once ardent
beliefs in a flat earth, monsters at the edge of the world, or kings and queens
descended from gods and divinely ruling over territory have today been
replaced by an equally fervent commitment to continents, borders, nations,
sovereignty, and growing economies. These myths have become the
building blocks of our modern world, possessing an extraordinary power
and appeal. They enable us to deal with a complex world, much of which is
beyond our comprehension.1 In this sense these myths of geography are a
way of creating order out of the chaos of our times.2 Without them we
simply wouldn’t be able to structure our world as we know it. But despite
their allure, these myths are neither natural nor innate. They exist because
we have come to agree that they are true. The implications of disavowing
any of them would be dramatic—but it could also remake our world and our
relationships with each other for the better.
 ADOBE STOCK

To say we live in a world of myths is not to argue that they don’t have
meaning, or potency. On the contrary, they clearly have an extraordinary
power. Yet while inventions like the continents or notions of sovereignty are
barely questioned, there is a troubling irony that some of the very real
emergencies facing the world are still actively presented by some as
‘myths’. The deluge of evidence that human-induced and accelerated
climate change and species loss will—if left unchecked—take our
civilisations and our natural world to the brink is still denied by some.3
We already live in an era of mass extinctions.4 One extinction, confirmed
in 2020, was the Chinese paddlefish, which was among the largest
freshwater fish in the world. It had survived for 200 million years and lived
through the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs. Yet it couldn’t survive
a human engineered one. This beautiful, streamlined swordfish, with a
world-weary look in its drooping mouth and elongated snout, was
overfished and finally wiped off the earth when the Yangtze River was
dammed, blocking its route to spawning grounds.5 Like many other
extinctions, it snuffed out millions of years of adaption and interactions
between species and the environment, further threatening the breakdown of
ecosystems.6
 WIKIPEDIA

It is a sobering reality that puts the myths of today into perspective.

Similarly, the disaster of the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the fallacy of our
geographic myths: our most nationalist, sovereigntist, and border enforcing
leaders were among the most inept at managing it. As Covid struck, Xi
Jinping scrambled a cover-up by silencing doctors and health workers,
while the likes of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump bungled the early
stages of the virus. As they were distracted by tilting at the windmills of
‘Take Back Control’ and ‘Make America Great Again’, millions were
infected with the virus and hundreds of thousands died.7 Rapt by myths of
splendid isolation and exceptionalism, or fixated on fears over lost GDP,
there was a myopic failure to see a grim reality of our own making.
Chasing such sovereigntist illusions reveal that our myths of geography
are not benign, nor mere curiosities. The idea of a ‘Chinese Dream’,
‘Russian World’ or ‘America First’—or for that matter ‘Albania First’ or
‘Zimbabwe First’—will not get us very far when faced with existential
threats ranging from nuclear weapons and pandemics to the loss of the
natural world. In order to begin to address global problems first means
breaking out of the prisons of geography that we have imagined around
ourselves.
We can choose to stop worshipping false gods but it takes a bold leap of
the imagination to stop believing in any one of them. Once we do though,
the other myths fall like dominos. Becoming free from these bounded
geographical imaginaries can elevate us to a planetary scale and a
recognition of our connections to each other beyond the borders that we
have imposed upon ourselves. Humans are, after all, physically and
psychologically linked to an atmosphere and biosphere that recognises no
borders.8
Such a rethinking of geography can no longer be merely a thought
experiment. For our imagined sovereign worlds cannot fully mitigate the
problems, nor offer the means to adapt to these new realities.9 In a planetary
scheme of things, the unstoppable flows and immense movements and
shifts of the world—its tectonic plates, oceans, ice caps, rivers, as well as its
plants, animals, and humans—present an irrefutable challenge to the made-
up stories of a static and divided world that we keep telling ourselves.10
Although these myths appear to be elemental parts of geography, in the
end, it is the constructed map of the world that precedes the territory. Each
myth is a tall tale, though a short, simple, and often repeated one, which has
become a cornerstone of how our world and our lives are structured.11
Even those myths of geography that appear to be the most permanent are
fleeting and would be incomprehensible to previous generations. If the idea
of the continents, with its origins in Ancient Greece, is the longest lived of
these myths then, in geological time, what we recognise today as the
familiar is merely ephemeral. The parcels of land that form our continents
are transitioning from the break-up of the original supercontinent—Pangaea
—towards the next collision and the creation of a new supercontinent—
Pangaea Ultima—in around 250 million years.12 It is a scale of time that we
can scarcely comprehend, but reorganising our world might help us capture
a spirit of Pangaea and its meaning of ‘all the Earth’.13 There must be a
better means of ordering the world than slicing and dicing its richness,
diversity, and connectivity according to these myths of geography.
Throughout human history, myths have always reached beyond reason
and rationality, and if we can imagine into existence mountains that divide
continents, mobilise whole nations on invented traditions, and create
spellbinding stories about continents and countries, then new ways of
imagining the world are infinitely possible. Ahead of all of us are critical
choices over what and who we are in thrall to and the destinies to which we
bind ourselves. To reach beyond the trope that geography is destiny
demands untethering ourselves from these myths. Disavowing any of them
involves a radical and counter-intuitive departure from all that is familiar
but—in that moment—the world as we know it ends, only to begin again.
This raises the inevitable question: what might a new beginning look
like? Does it still have countries and passports? In the Sovereign Order of
Malta there are passports but no territory. While for some of the Windrush
generation they had every right to a home in the UK and a strong sense of
belonging, but no passports. Is that what our myths amount to—flimsy bits
of paper to tell us who we are and we aren’t? Or could we take inspiration
from the emperor penguins of Antarctica, where in response to extreme
environmental threats they gather for the greater good in huddles that are
not static but move in coordinated periodic waves, allowing every penguin
a chance to move from the colder outer edge to the warmer inner region?
Can we adapt to a different—and more altruistic—way of claiming space?14
Alongside the tens of thousands of scientists, explorers, and tourists who
visit Antarctica, is it better to be protected and governed by carefully
negotiated rules and regulations, where no one power dominates? But who
writes these rules? And, in order to manage global and regional economic,
political, and environmental challenges, how can supranational
organisations, such as the United Nations and the European Union, be made
democratically accountable? In short, how can a shared future on this planet
be built while accounting for nuance, difference, and democracy?15
A start might be determining whether living by some myths are better for
us and the planet than others. Given the state of the environment and
enduring conflict, the prevailing myths that have captured much of
humanity increasingly appear to be to its detriment. To change course
demands beginning to look critically at a world of ‘virtual reality’, where
maps, and their borders, sovereignty, and GDP figures, efface the subtlety
and richness of the world. The neat parcels of national space it produces fail
to capture the depth of human history and the dynamic change that defines
our planet. As the historian David Ludden has argued, on these maps we
have come to ‘imagine that mobility is border crossing, as though borders
came first, and mobility, second. The truth is more the other way around.’16
Counter-intuitively, perhaps the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral is a
more reliable guide than our highly detailed modern cartography. It at least
reminds us that history and geography are co-created. This image is full of
movement, from the parting of the Red Sea to the flickering flames of the
Lighthouse of Alexandria. Though imperfect and fantastical, the Mappa
Mundi is strikingly multidimensional, capturing time, space, and motion
within its realms.17 In contrast, today’s political maps seem to suggest
stasis, closure, and the reaching of a terminal point for a world made up of
entirely bounded national space.
 © KEN GARLAND

Or should our maps of the world look more like Harry Beck’s
imaginative and beautifully simple London Underground design, first
produced in 1933.18 To some extent it recognises physical geography—
acknowledged with the stylised and imprecise course of the River Thames
—but the emphasis is placed on connectivity and how the places on the map
are held in relation to each other rather than precisely where they are
located. It is a strikingly brilliant technical and artistic innovation that
reconfigures how we think about geographical space. A similar emphasis
can be captured in maps of aircraft flight paths, or the emission of lights at
night. Such maps indicate activity, movement, and variance within, across,
and beyond international and continental boundaries.
Today, maps are also increasingly consumed not on paper, but on
smartphones and computer screens. Like much in the largely ungoverned
space of the internet, they come with new opportunities and challenges. The
border lines on Google Maps, for example, are drawn differently depending
on where in the world you view them.19 And while Russia and China
attempt to close their online spaces, they interfere in more open online
terrains elsewhere in the world. Just as newspapers, radio, and TV once
reconfigured how the world is understood, we are in the throes of a
revolution in human communication and are still getting used to the ways in
which the internet and social media are reshaping representations of the
globe.
In these new and old ways of seeing the world there are perhaps clues for
how it might be ordered as our current myths fade and shift in meaning.
Will towns, cities, and regions increasingly demand decisions on their
economy, environment, and community are made more locally? Will this go
hand-in-hand with a recognition that the nation-state concentrates too much
power in the hands of the few? Can the risk of leaders confusing themselves
for their nations be averted?20 Are there lessons in the treaty system of
Antarctica and resisting attempts by certain states and actors to exercise
power arbitrarily, unilaterally, and without scrutiny?21 With our whole
planet looking increasingly fragile and vulnerable, does our very survival
depend on finding a different way of ordering the world?
What is clear, is that the current myths which we live and die by are
demonstrably ill suited to our times. In the face of planetary ecological and
geopolitical disaster, our prevailing geographical myths, which once served
a key purpose in shaping the modern world, are being upended by new
crises. An alternative set of myths for a post-modern world may have to
return us to a more elemental understanding of the power of the earth, our
connection to it, and thinking about it more reverently.22 Already, cross-
border campaigns and initiatives to address climate change and threats to
the natural world are seeing new and powerful coalitions emerging that
transcend sovereign nations. There is something hopeful and exciting about
reaching beyond these old ideas. Rather than the interconnectedness of the
world being crushed under the weight of unwieldy nation-states, GDP
targets, and sovereign delusions, can there follow a dawning recognition
that it is the old myths that have been holding us back from seizing the
vibrancy and potential of our current epoch?
We are not the product of immutable, ossified communities trapped in
time. We are the product of change and mobility, and that should urge us to
privilege the cultural richness and myriad customs and connections which
are within and beyond ‘national’ boundaries. If there is a threat to a world
made up of a patchwork of unique and overlapping cultures and traditions,
then it is in the way in which we currently organise space. A future sense of
belonging beyond our current myths of geography does not equate to
anarchy but could actually prevent it. In balancing the uniqueness and
diversity of localities with the global movements and connectivity that have
characterised human experience, we may find possibilities for a harmony
that has so far eluded us. In order to harness such forces of change, first
demands the imagination to see the world from perspectives other than our
own. And that is the challenge of our times.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasure to thank the many friends, family members, and colleagues

who contributed—sometimes unknowingly—to the completion of this
book. From childhood memories of my parents explaining how it wasn’t
necessarily a good thing that so much of the world was once coloured in the
pink of the British Empire, to explanations that you don’t go ‘down’ to
London from northern England, since nobody knows which way up our
globe is spinning.
This book is also thanks to some inspirational teachers and academics,
and it couldn’t have been written without the lived experience of studying
and working in the United States, Japan, Sweden, and Russia, and all the
conversations and the friendships that followed, with a special mention to
Jon Carson who endured a particularly detailed synopsis of the book. Over
the years, the Leverhulme Trust, the Economic and Social Research
Council, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the British
Academy have generously supported some of my academic research that
has informed this book.
Thanks to John Agnew, Klaus Dodds, Elisabeth Vallet, Mark Bassin, and
Cerwyn Moore for reading and commenting on elements of the book. Each
brought important insights that found their way into it, though I remain
solely responsible for what I made of their comments and suggestions.
Mark Bassin in particular has been a long-standing mentor and friend in
navigating the world. The border studies community, and in particular the
Association for Borderland Studies, has also been a vital source of
inspiration towards seeing the world from different angles and disciplines.
This is a book at the intersection of politics, history, and geography,
drawing inspiration from some of the key authors and perspectives in fields
that have shaped my world view. Myths of Geography rests on these broad
shoulders and, in my enthusiasm for these ideas, I hope not to have
stumbled into appropriation.
I’m grateful to Tom Killingbeck for being a reliable guide through the
world of commercial publishing and for immediately understanding what I
was trying to achieve with this book. The same goes for Sameer Rahim,
who from our first interactions demonstrated his knowledge and passion for
this project. His careful editing and suggestions—alongside the editorial
team at Little, Brown and Peter Joseph at Harper Collins—have made this a
much better book.
Finally, I offer the deepest thanks to Beth for reading and commenting on
so much of the early stages of the book and providing steadfast
encouragement, belief, and unbelievable patience. Her enthusiasm and
support, alongside the distractions and delight of our little son, have made it
all worthwhile. Helen Handzel, Ann Los, and June Richardson—who read
the very first draft and reassured me that I was onto something—have also
been instrumental in its realisation with their unwavering interest and
encouragement over the years. Thank you for everything.
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 ENDNOTES

Introduction: Imagined Geographies

1 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-enchanting-sea-
monsters-on-medieval-maps-1805646/

2 Ibid.

3 M. Eliade, The Quest of Origins, cited in Paul Claval, ‘The

geographical study of myths’, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift—
Norwegian Journal of Geography, 55, no. 3, p.139.

4 Claval, ‘The geographical study of myths’, pp.150–51.

5 Maja Essebo, ‘A mythical place: A conversation on the earthly aspects

of myth’, Progress in Human Geography, 43, no. 3, p.527.

6 Edward W. Said, Orientalism.

7 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ugly-history-of-
climate-determinism-is-still-evident-today/

8 Ibid.

9 John Agnew, ‘Taking back control?’, Territory, Politics, Governance,

8, no. 2, p.260.

10 https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-
10/15/content_7105825.htm

11 Dipo Faloyin, Africa Is Not a Country, pp.79, 98, 106.

12 Mike Crang, Cultural Geography, pp.39–40.

 1. The Myth of the Continents

1 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1152

2 https://www.insider.com/iceland-swim-between-touch-continents-
2017-8; https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20140617-swim-between-
two-tectonic-plates

3 Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.16.

4 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 8, pp.711–12, cited in

Lewis and Wigen, p.21.

5 Denis de Rougemont, The Idea of Europe, pp.36–7, cited in Lewis and

Wigen, p.22.

6 See Henry F. Tozer, A History of Ancient Geography, p.69, cited in

Lewis and Wigen, p.22.

7 See Aristotle, Politics, pp.565–7, cited in Lewis and Wigen, p.22.

8 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.21.

9 Herodotus, The Histories, pp.134–5 cited in Lewis and Wigen, p.22.

10 Ibid., p.285, cited in Lewis and Wigen, p.22.

11 de Rougemont, The Idea of Europe, p.19, cited in Lewis and Wigen.

p.23.

12 Mark Bassin, Russia between Europe and Asia, pp.2–3.

13 Michael Wintle, ‘Renaissance maps and the construction of the idea of

Europe’, pp.139, 159.

14 https://www.themappamundi.co.uk/index.php

15 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.24.

16 https://www.themappamundi.co.uk/mappa-mundi/

17 Ibid.; https://www.herefordcathedral.org/mappa-mundi; Meryl Jancey,

Mappa Mundi, pp.11, 15, 17, 19.

18 Jancey, Mappa Mundi, pp.9, 28–9.

19 https://www.themappamundi.co.uk/mappa-mundi/;
https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/library_exhibitions/schoolresources/
exploration/mappa_mundi

20 S. Maqbul Ahmad, ‘Cartography of al-Sharif al-Idrisi’, in The History

of Cartography Vol. 2, Book 1, p.156;
https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667394/

21 https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2017/08/new-worlds-to-explore/?
loclr=blogmap

22 Ahmad, ‘Cartography of al-Sharif al-Idrisi’, p.156–57

23 https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2022/01/al-idrisis-masterpiece-of-medieval-
geography/

24 Ibid.

25 bid.

26 Wintle, ‘Renaissance maps and the construction of the idea of Europe’

pp.139–140.

27 See Peter Burke, ‘Did Europe Exist before 1700?’, p.23, cited in Lewis
and Wigen, p.23–4.

28 Eviatar Zerubavel, Terra Cognita, p.69, cited in Lewis and Wigen,

p.25.

29 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.25.;

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/12/12-maps-
 that-changed-the-world/282666/

30 https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-03-110/library-completes-purchase-of-
waldseemuller-map/2003-06-18/; https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-01-
093/

31 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/12/12-maps-
that-changed-the-world/282666/

32 https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-03-110/library-completes-purchase-of-
waldseemuller-map/2003-06-18/

33 See, for example, Nicolas Sanson, Mappe-Monde, cited in Lewis and

Wigen, p.26.

34 Bassin, Russia between Europe and Asia, p.3.

35 Ibid., p.2.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid, p.2–3.

38 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.23.

39 W. H. Parker, ‘Europe: How Far?’, The Geographical Journal, 26, no.

3, pp.281–3, cited in Bassin, p.3.

40 Bassin, ‘Russia between Europe and Asia’, pp.6–7;

https://altaica.ru/LIBRARY/Strahlenberg.pdf;
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1730_map_of_
Russia_and_Siberia_by_Strahlenberg.jpg

41 Bassin, ‘Russia between Europe and Asia’, p.6.

42 Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness, pp.209–10.

43 Bassin, ‘Russia between Europe and Asia’, p.7.

44 Ibid., pp.6–7.

45 Sergei G. Pushkarev, Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms, p.31;

‘Rossiia’, Sovetskaia Istoricheskaia Entsiklopediia, 16 vols., 12, p.210;
Ladis K. D. Kristof, ‘The Russian Image of Russia’, in Essays in
Political Geography, pp.349–353, cited in Bassin, ‘Russia between
Europe and Asia’, p.5.

46 See Parker, p.286, cited in Lewis and Wigen, p.27.

47 W. Bruce Lincoln, The Conquest of a Continent, p.40, cited in Lewis

and Wigen, p.35.

48 Bassin, ‘Russia between Europe and Asia’, pp.6–7.

49 Ibid., p.7.

50
https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/item/247721/diec_russian_
pan-slavism_and_its_concept_of_europe_2020.pdf

51 Ibid.

52 Bassin, ‘Russia between Europe and Asia’, p.9.

53 N. IA. Danilevskii, Rossiia i Evropa, pp.56–7, cited in Bassin, ‘Russia

between Europe and Asia’, p.10.

54 Vladimir I. Lamanskii, Tri mira Aziiskogo-Evropeiskogo materika, p 9;

V. Pyotr Semenov-Tian-Shanskii, ‘Lamanskii kak antropogeograf’,
Zhivaia Starina, pp.11–15, cited in Basssin, Russia between Europe
and Asia, p.12.

55 P. N. Savitskii, ‘Geograficheskii obzor Rossii-Evrazii’, Rossiia. Osobyi

geograficheskii mir, p.52.; Bassin, Russia between Europe and Asia,
p.15.

56 Bassin, ‘Russia between Europe and Asia’, p.14.

57 Halford J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, The
Geographical Journal, 23, no. 4, pp.428–9, cited in Lewis and Wigen,
The Myth of Continents, p.28.

58 https://sites.utexas.edu/culturescontexts/page/2/

59 https://www.britannica.com/place/Mediterranean-Sea

60 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147238/when-rivers-are-
borders; Laurence C. Smith, Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force
Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World.

61 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, pp.24, 27.

62 See Hammond’s Ambassador World Atlas of 1954, cited in Lewis and

Wigen, The Myth of Continents, pp.31–2.

63 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.38.

64 Ibid., p.40.

65 Ibid., p.34; https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-

sciences/palearctic-region

66 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/4073/panama-isthmus-that-
changed-the-world; https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/recent-
connection-between-north-and-south-america-reaffirmed

67 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, pp.34–35.

68 Wilfred Neill, The Geography of Life, p.99; Lewis and Wigen, The
Myth of Continents, p.34.

69 https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Education-and-Careers/Ask-a-
Geologist/Continents-Supercontinents-and-the-Earths-Crust/Is-the-
Continental-Crust-Granitic.
70 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.34; Derrick Hasterok,
Jacqueline A. Halpin, Alan S. Collins, Martin Hand, Corné Kreemer,
Matthew G. Gard and Stijn Glorie, ‘New Maps of Global Geological
Provinces and Tectonic Plates’, Earth-Science Reviews, 231, 104069.

71 See David G. Howell, Tectonics of Suspect Terranes, p.106, cited in

Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.34.

72 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.34.

73 https://www.britannica.com/place/Pangea

74 Ibid.

75 Naomi Oreskes, ‘The Rejection of Continental Drift’, Historical

Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 18, no. 2, pp.312, 318.

76 https://www.britannica.com/place/Gondwana-supercontinent

77 Wintle, ‘Renaissance maps and the construction of the idea of Europe’,

pp.143, 161.

78 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/35473/pg35473-
images.html#ar87

79 See Encyclopaedia Britannica (1992), Vol. 18, p.522, cited in Lewis

and Wigen, p.36.

80 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, p.36.

81 Wintle, ‘Renaissance maps and the construction of the idea of Europe’,

pp.153, 150, 159.

82 Lewis and Wigen, The Myth of Continents, pp.4–5.

83 Said, Orientalism.

84 Lewis and Wigen, p.41.

85 Said, Orientalism.

86 https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/12/new-silk-roads-present-futur-
world-peter-frankopan-review;
https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/greater-eurasia-what-is-yet-to-be-
done/

2. The Myth of the Border

1 This subtitle is taken from Michael Dear’s thought-provoking analysis

Why Walls Won’t Work.

2 https://www.achp.gov/preserve-america/community/nogales-
arizona#:~:text=Thousands%20of%20years%20ago%2C%20before,Sp
anish%20still%20can%20be%20seen.

3 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41697262

4 https://time.com/6324599/bidens-trump-history-border-wall/

5 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/06/arizona-razor-wire-
border-wall-nogales

6 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/trump-border-
wall-reportedly-severe-disrepair-arizona

7 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-heads-us-mexico-border-
fresh-attacks-biden-policies-2021-06-30/

8 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/16/my-
neighbourhood-is-being-destroyed-to-pacify-his-supporters-the-race-
to-complete-trumps-wall

9 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/trump-border-
wall-reportedly-severe-disrepair-arizona;
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/12/steel-trump-
border-wall-rusting-desert/621005/
10 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17632399

11 https://news.stanford.edu/2019/03/08/partition-1947-continues-haunt-
india-pakistan-stanford-scholar-says/

12 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/8/130805-korean-
war-dmz-armistice-38-parallel-geography/

13 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/8/130805-korean-
war-dmz-armistice-38-parallel-geography/;
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/how-2-colonels-national-
geographic-map-divided-korea-24734l

14 Jean Baudrillard, ‘Simulacra and simulations’, Selected Writings,

p.166.

15 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/8/130805-korean-
war-dmz-armistice-38-parallel-geography/;
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/how-2-colonels-national-
geographic-map-divided-korea-24734

16 https://somatosphere.com/forumpost/containment/;
https://www.omroepbrabant.nl/nieuws/3177572/belgische-grens-
dwars-door-zeeman-in-baarle-nassau-ik-kon-geen-herenshirts-meer-
kopen

17 Philip E. Steinberg, ‘Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in

maritime regions’, Atlantic Studies, 10, no. 2.

18 Norman J. Thrower, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture

and Society; David Woodward, The History of Cartography, Vol. 3:
Cartography in the European Renaissance; Jordan Branch, ‘“Colonial
reflection” and territoriality: The peripheral origins of sovereign
statehood’, European Journal of International Relations, 18, no. 2,
p.284.
19 Robert D. Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History, p.132,
cited in Branch, ‘“Colonial reflection” and territoriality: The peripheral
origins of sovereign statehood’, European Journal of International
Relations, 18, no. 2, p.284.

20 Branch, ‘“Colonial reflection” and territoriality: The peripheral origins

of sovereign statehood’, European Journal of International Relations,
18 no. 2, p.285.

21 Ibid., p.282.

22 Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics: 1763–

1848, p.391, cited in ibid., pp. 289-90.

23 Branch, ‘“Colonial reflection” and territoriality: The peripheral origins

of sovereign statehood’, European Journal of International Relations,
18, no. 2, pp.290, 292.

24 https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/hadrians-
wall/hadrians-wall-history-and-stories/history/

25 Ibid.; https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/history/hadrians-wall-19-
things-you-11294698

26 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2931730.stm; Richard Hingley,

Hadrian’s Wall: A Life, p.16.

27 Divya Tolia-Kelly, ‘Narrating the postcolonial landscape:

archaeologies of race at Hadrian’s Wall’, Transactions of the Institute
of British Geographers, 36, no. 1, p.72.

28 Ibid., pp.76, 79.

29 https://www.antoninewall.org/about-the-wall/the-romans-in-scotland

30 Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A Life, p.339.

31 Procopius, History of the Wars, 8.20.42–8 cited in
https://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/readingthewall/conferenceinformation/cal
lforpapers/

32
https://ahrc.ukri.org/research/readwatchlisten/features/hadrianswallalif
e/

33 Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A Life, p.37.

34 Ibid., pp.42, 46.

35 Ibid., p.37.

36 Ibid., p.296.

37 Robin Birley, The Building of Hadrian’s Wall, p.11.

38 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fears-fueled-ancient-border-
wall-180963025/

39 Matthew Longo, The Politics of Borders, p.32.

40 Birley, The Building of Hadrian’s Wall, p.12.

41 Ibid.

42 Longo, The Politics of Borders, pp.32–3.

43 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fears-fueled-ancient-border-
wall-180963025/; Birley, The Building of Hadrian’s Wall, p.34.

44 https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/hadrians-
wall/hadrians-wall-history-and-stories/history/

45 Ibid.; https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/birdoswald-
roman-fort-hadrians-wall/history-and-stories/the-secrets-of-
birdoswald/
46 Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A Life, pp.23, 25; https://www.english-
heritage.org.uk/visit/places/hadrians-wall/hadrians-wall-history-and-
stories/history/; https://www.english-
heritage.org.uk/visit/places/birdoswald-roman-fort-hadrians-
wall/history-and-stories/the-secrets-of-birdoswald/; Andrew Gardner,
‘Hadrian’s Wall and Border Studies: Problems and Prospects’,
Britannia 53, p.165.

47 Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A Life, p.30.

48 Longo, The Politics of Borders, p.31.

49
https://ahrc.ukri.org/research/readwatchlisten/features/hadrianswallalif
e/

50 https://www.migrationmuseum.org/tag/hadrians-wall/

51 Mike Crang, ‘World Heritage and world heritages’, p.1, cited in

Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A Life, pp.317–18.

52 https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/birdoswald-roman-
fort-hadrians-wall/history-and-stories/the-people-of-birdsowald/

53 https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/families/black-londoners-
through-time/african-romans

54 Tolia-Kelly, ‘Narrating the postcolonial landscape’, p.81.

55 Ibid., p.84.

56 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/hadrians-wall-a-
horde-of-ancient-treasures-make-for-a-compelling-new-cumbrian-
exhibition-2301329.html

57
http://wasleys.org.uk/eleanor/churches/england/north/northumberland/
 northumberland_one/chollerton/index.html

58 https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/birdoswald-roman-
fort-hadrians-wall/history-and-stories/the-secrets-of-birdoswald/

59 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/430/

60 Carlos Rojas, The Great Wall: A Cultural History, p.23.

61 Ibid. pp.24–27; Lili Jiang, Qizhang Liang, Qingwen Qi, Yanjun Ye and
Xun Liang, ‘The heritage and cultural values of ancient Chinese
maps’, Journal of Geographical Sciences, 27 no. 12, p.1527.

62 Rojas, The Great Wall: A Cultural History, p.42.

63 Ibid., pp.68–9.

64 Ibid., pp.95, 97.

65 Ibid., pp.97, 121.

66 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2016/03-
04/the-great-wall-of-china/

67 Ibid.

68 Rojas, The Great Wall: A Cultural History, p.118.

69 Lei Luo, Nabil Bachagha, Ya Yao, Chuansheng Liu, Pilong Shi,

Lanwei Zhu, Jie Shao, and Xinyuan Wang, ‘Identifying Linear Traces
of the Han Dynasty Great Wall in Dunhuang Using Gaofen-1 Satellite
Remote Sensing Imagery and the Hough Transform’, Remote Sensing,
11, no. 22: 2711.

70 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firewall-of-
china-xi-jinpings-internet-shutdown

71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.

73 https://www.ft.com/content/ea9c3d83-a8ab-48ad-bcb8-01a5bed3ec2f;
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/peoples-republic-of-
china-prc-targeting-of-covid-19-research-organizations

74 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/china-great-firewall-
descends-hong-kong-internet-users

75 Ibid.

76 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/border-07092021122326.html

77 https://www.tni.org/en/walledworld

78 https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/feb/15/eu-
far-right-migration-fortress-europe

79
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/733692/E
PRS_BRI(2022)733692_EN.pdf

80 James D. Sidaway, ‘Iraq/Yugoslavia: Banal Geopolitics’, Antipode, 35,

no. 4, pp.601–9.

81 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/01/trump-immigration-953569

82 Gambino, L., and J. Lartey. 2018. ‘Trump says U.S. will not be a
“migrant camp.”’ The Guardian, June 19. Accessed June 20, 2018.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/18/donald-trump-us-
migrant-campborder-separation; https://www.ft.com/content/12ed8f9e-
de27-11e8-9f04-38d397e6661c

83 https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/03/23/family-separation-
timeline#2022; https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-
room/presidential-actions/2021/02/02/executive-order-the-
 establishment-of-interagency-task-force-on-the-reunification-of-
families/

84 https://migrationdataportal.org/themes/migrant-deaths-and-
disappearances

85 https://www.iom.int/news/us-mexico-border-worlds-deadliest-
migration-land-route

86 https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/25/texas-border-wall-biden/

87 https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/02/texas-border-wall-private/

88
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/border_wall/pdfs/Borde
r-Wall-Construction-Defies-Biden-Executive-Order-090722.pdf

89 https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/05/biden-border-wall-texas-
starr-county/

90 https://www.tni.org/en/walledworld

91 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/16/my-
neighbourhood-is-being-destroyed-to-pacify-his-supporters-the-race-
to-complete-trumps-wall

92 Abby C. Wheatley and Oren Kroll-Zeldin, ‘Impermeable Borders and

the Futility of Walls’, Peace Review, 32, no. 2, p.191.

93 Ibid., p.190.

94 https://www.tni.org/en/walledworld

95 Reece Jones, Corey Johnson, Wendy Brown, Gabriel Popescu, Polly

Pallister-Wilkins, Alison Mountz and Emily Gilbert, ‘Interventions on
the state of sovereignty at the border’, Political Geography, 59, pp.1–
10; http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-oe-
border-wall-immigration-drugs-20180215-story.html
96 Wheatley and Kroll-Zeldin, ‘Impermeable Borders and the Futility of
Walls’, p.191.

97 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/legal-marijuana-
medical-use-crime-rate-plummets-us-study;
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/129/617/375/5237193

98 The Economist, ‘Disorder on the Border’, 24 December 2022, p.29.

99 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/16/my-
neighbourhood-is-being-destroyed-to-pacify-his-supporters-the-race-
to-complete-trumps-wall

100 Wheatley and Kroll-Zeldin, ‘Impermeable Borders and the Futility of

Walls’, pp.192–3.

101 Ibid., p.193.

102 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/16/my-
neighbourhood-is-being-destroyed-to-pacify-his-supporters-the-race-
to-complete-trumps-wall

103 https://theweek.com/immigration/1023983/is-trumps-wall-working

104 Ibid.; https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration-

fy2020

105 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/border-patrol-wall-
immigration-trump-senate-democrats.html

106 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/newest-nato-member-finland-
starts-building-fence-on-russian-border

107 https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-04-10/europes-new-wall-
finland-is-building-a-124-mile-long-border-fence-to-protect-itself-
from-russia.html
108 Wheatley and Kroll-Zeldin, ‘Impermeable Borders and the Futility of
Walls’, p.190.

109 Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty.

110 Wheatley and Kroll-Zeldin, ‘Impermeable Borders and the Futility of

Walls’, p.192.

111 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/30/pink-seesaws-
reach-across-divide-us-mexico-border;
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0fY2R6hfKr/?utm_source=ig_embed;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55718478

112 Ibid.

113 https://www.tni.org/en/walledworld

114 Longo, The Politics of Borders, p.41.

115 https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/12/trump-texas-border-wall/

116 Ibid.

3. The Myth of the Nation

1 https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/conservation-grazing-in-action-at-
culloden-battlefield

2 https://cullodenbattlefield.wordpress.com/page/5/

3 Ibid.

4 https://theconversation.com/how-a-battle-300-years-ago-nearly-
wrecked-the-new-union-of-england-and-scotland-50670

5 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/03/31/nicola-sturgeon-
launches-election-campaign-indy-ref-two-pledge/
6 https://www.whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/how-would-you-vote-
in-the-in-a-scottish-independence-referendum-if-held-now-ask/?
removed

7 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in Eric

Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition.

8 Ibid.

9 https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/13015/1/13015.pdf, pp.421, 424–

5.

10 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-03-26/viktor-orban-s-
construction-in-the-heart-of-budapest?embedded-checkout=true;
https://nemzetihauszmannprogram.hu/nhp-strategy-2021.pdf

11 https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/26/what-happened-when-hungary-
revived-classical-architecture-in-budapest/

12 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/robert-bevan-traditionalist-
modernist-beauty-architecture-tufton-street/;
https://abouthungary.hu/speeches-and-remarks/viktor-orbans-
laudation-address-at-the-presentation-of-the-order-of-merit-to-sir-
roger-scruton

13 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-24/trump-s-
beautiful-building-order-is-here-to-stay?embedded-checkout=true

14 https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/26/what-happened-when-hungary-
revived-classical-architecture-in-budapest/

15 https://www.dezeen.com/2023/05/04/king-charles-coronation-
architecture-far-right-opinion/

16 Exhibit in Caernarfon Castle Museum, September 2023.

17 Ibid.
18
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a26576659/pri
nce-charles-prince-wales-investiture-1969-true-story/

19 https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/charles-prince-
wales-investiture-caernarfon-castle-50-years-welsh-nationalism-what-
happened/

20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Windsor

21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo7KldU9kAo

22 Yuri Teper, ‘Nationalism and Political Culture in Symbols and Myths

in Putin’s Russia: 1999–2010’, research seminar, University of
Manchester, 17 November 2014.

23 Martin J. Daughtry, ‘Russia’s New Anthem and the Negotiation of

National Identity’, Ethnomusicology 47, no. 1, pp.51-52.

24 https://theconversation.com/the-christmas-tree-is-a-tradition-older-
than-christmas-195636

25 https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/christmas/history-turkey-eat-
christmas-day-106736; https://merl.reading.ac.uk/blog/2022/12/why-
do-we-eat-turkey-at-christmas/

26 https://history.state.gov/countries/issues/german-unification

27 Ibid.

28 https://history.state.gov/countries/issues/italian-unification

29 Ibid.

30 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, p.81.

31 https://nationalismstudies.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/ernest-gellner-2/
32 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p.7.

33 https://gellnerpage.tripod.com/gellner12.html

34 https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/gellneronnationalism

35 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p.36.

36 https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-
heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/1870educ
ationact/

37 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p.55.

38 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p.6.

39 https://public.oed.com/blog/early-modern-english-an-overview/

40
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199661282
.001.0001/acref-9780199661282-e-240

41
https://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/history/Standardisation/C.ht
m

42 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-
english-dictionaries/samuel-johnson-and-the-first-english-
dictionary/D3999C74ED1D776735E1C3F682E43F9B

43 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p.35.

44 Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism.

45 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, p.213.

46 Simon John, ‘A Crusader Duel at the Crystal Palace: The statues of

Godfrey of Bouillon and Richard the Lionheart at the Great
 Exhibition’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 26, no. 3, pp.463-63.

47 https://www.rct.uk/collection/44114/richard-i-coeur-de-lion

48 https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Richard-
Lionheart;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/richard_i_king.shtml

49 https://www.rct.uk/collection/44114/richard-i-coeur-de-lion

50 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/10/britain-
imperial-past-culture-war-toxic-crimes-empire

51 Craig Calhoun, Nationalism, p.6.

52 Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging:

53 https://abouthungary.hu/speeches-and-remarks/speech-by-prime-
minister-viktor-orban-at-the-31-st-balvanyos-summer-free-university-
and-student-camp

54 Ibid.

55 https://news.yale.edu/2021/07/30/trumps-muslim-ban-harmed-health-
muslim-americans-study-finds

56 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-
rapists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-later-
annotated/

57 https://www.jcwi.org.uk/windrush-scandal-explained

58 https://www.aaihs.org/windrush-and-britains-long-history-of-
racialized-belonging/

59 https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2020/12/01/more-british-
than-the-british-windrush-nationality-identity-and-belonging/
60 Ibid.; https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/17/home-office-
destroyed-windrush-landing-cards-says-ex-staffer

61 https://www.aaihs.org/windrush-and-britains-long-history-of-
racialized-belonging/

62 https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2020/12/01/more-british-
than-the-british-windrush-nationality-identity-and-belonging/

63 https://www.aaihs.org/windrush-and-britains-long-history-of-
racialized-belonging/

64
https://blogs.hud.ac.uk/academics/2018/april/windrushgenerationthehis
toryofunbelonging/

65 Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness, pp. xv, xxix, 206.

66 Ibid., p. xv.; https://www.britannica.com/topic/Russian-Orthodox-

Church

67 https://ospreypublishing.com/blog/Kulikovo_1380/

68 https://www.jstor.org/stable/368437#metadata_info_tab_contents

69 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-02307-3_2

70 David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism.

71 Walker Connor, ‘When Is a Nation?’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13, no.
1, pp.92–103.

72 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
cage/wp/2014/03/19/vladimir-putin-ethnic-russian-nationalist/

73 Yuri Teper, ‘Official Russian Identity Discourse in Light of the

Annexation of Crimea: National or Imperial?’ Post-Soviet Affairs, 32,
no. 4.
74 https://tass.com/society/1086307

75 https://www.rferl.org/a/kremlin-critic-kara-murza-verdict-treason-
trial-/32366209.html; https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-vladimir-kurza-
profile/32367146.html

76 Vladimir Putin, ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’,

https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/tt382m/

77 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68255302

78 Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp.6–7.

79 Frederick Cooper, ‘Africa in World History’, in The Cambridge World

History, p.580.

80 https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/size-british-empire

81 https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/tag/wilfred-
owen/; https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/last-poet-and-chorus-
wilfred-owen-s-cruelly-timed-death-100-years-ago-1.3684400;
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est

82 Dipo Faloyin, Africa Is Not a Country, p.334.

4. The Myth of Sovereignty

1 https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/terra_nullius

2 https://sahara-overland.com/tag/bir-tawil/

3 https://sawanandsawan.com/places-on-earth-with-no-laws/

4 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/welcome-to-the-
land-that-no-country-wants-bir-tawil

5 https://sahara-overland.com/tag/bir-tawil/
6 Ibid.

7 http://www.intonomansland.org/photographic-content/last-stop-bir-
tawil/

8 https://www.slow-journalism.com/from-the-archive/the-battle-of-bir-
tawil

9 https://christoph.today/sudan-bir-tawil/

10 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/welcome-to-the-
land-that-no-country-wants-bir-tawil

11 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/things-to-do/an-indian-
claims-kingship-of-bir-tawil-declares-it-kingdom-of-
dixit/articleshow/61655752.cms

12 https://twitter.com/dwain_the_first?lang=en

13 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/welcome-to-the-
land-that-no-country-wants-bir-tawil

14 https://www.targheitaliane.it/index.html?/smom/smom.html

15 https://www.orderofmalta.int/diplomatic-activities/bilateral-relations/

16 https://www.orderofmalta.int/press-release/sovereign-order-malta-
clarifies-press-reported-figure-passports-issue-currently-500-
passports-circulation/

17 https://theculturetrip.com/europe/malta/articles/this-is-the-only-
country-in-the-world-that-is-recognised-by-the-un-but-has-no-land/

18 https://www.orderofmalta.int/government/governance/

19 Claval, ‘The geographical study of myths’, p.144.

20 Ibid., p.148.
21 https://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/law-and-
treaty/australia-and-antarctic-treaty-system/;
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2014/06/antarctic-biodiversity-risk

22 https://www.bas.ac.uk/about/antarctica/the-antarctic-treaty/the-
antarctic-treaty-1959/

23 https://theconversation.com/antarctica-notes-on-the-fate-of-
sovereignty-28292

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/124548/pdf/

28 https://theconversation.com/antarctica-notes-on-the-fate-of-
sovereignty-28292

29 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/05/could-new-
countries-be-founded-on-the-internet

30 Ibid.

31 Elements of this discussion on Brexit are set out in Paul B.

Richardson, ‘Sovereignty, the Hyperreal, and “Taking Back Control”’,
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109, no.6,
pp.1999–2015.

32 https://inews.co.uk/opinion/brexit-language-dominic-cummings-
sovereignty-244286

33 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/dominic-cummings-how-the-
brexit-referendum-was-won

34 John Agnew, ‘Taking back control?’, p.260.

35 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-
conference-speech-article-50-brexit-eu-a7341926.html

36
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2019/html/ecb.sp190222~fc
5501c1b1.en.html

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/

40 http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/04/26/whythe-european-court-of-
justice-isnt-going-away/

41 https://www.conservativehome.com/parliament/2016/04/theresa-mays-
speech-on-brexit-full-text.html

42 John Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes’ Annals of the Association of

American Geographers, p.445.

43 Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights.

44 http://web.archive.org/web/20210513101818/;
https://investin.org/blogs/news/112677126-why-are-hedge-fund-
bosses-supporting-brexit

45 https://www.businessinsider.com/twenty-one-biggest-donors-to-the-
leave-brexit-campaign-2017-5?r=US&IR=T#1-arron-banks-8106-375-
21

46 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/dominic-cummings-how-the-
brexit-referendum-was-won

47 https://somersetcm.com/
48 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/profits-jacob-rees-moggs-
investment-14114954

49 https://www.economist.com/britain/2016/03/19/dreaming-of-
sovereignty

50 https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/inbrief_e/inbr_e.htm

51 https://www.ft.com/content/3b583050-d277-11e6-b06b-680c49b4b4c0

52 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-eu-32129018

53 https://ukandeu.ac.uk/research-papers/peoples-stated-reasons-for-
voting-leave-or-remain/

54 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/dominic-cummings-how-the-
brexit-referendum-was-won

55 https://www.ft.com/content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-abc22d5d108c

56 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/22/today-
brexit-debate-lack-of-information-sajid-javid-johnson-deal

57 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/21/sajid-javid-refuses-
to-assess-economic-dangers-of-brexit-plan

58 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1278140/why-voting-to-leave-the-eu-
will-save-our-sovereignty-rein-in-migration-and-boost-our-economy/

59 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/12/brexit-vote-is-about-
the-supremacyof-parliament-and-nothing-els/

60 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/02/27/brexit-could-prove-to-be-
britains-constitutional-moment/

61 Ibid.

62 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-illusion-of-sovereignty/
63 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-53724381

64 https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/nhs-remains-our-
biggest-source-of-national-pride-but-public-are-worried-about-its-
future

65 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/06/trump-ross-says-
uk-us-trade-deal-eu-brexit-chlorinated-chicken;
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/donald-
trump-warns-nhs-must-16378794

66 https://www.ft.com/content/edfb3af5-a32a-4800-8494-1913709be295

67 https://theconversation.com/what-does-joe-biden-mean-for-brexit-a-
quick-primer-on-the-current-state-of-play-149928

68 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61844552

69 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/what-would-eu-
candidate-status-mean-for-ukraine/

70 https://carnegieeurope.eu/2022/04/01/ukraine-s-eu-membership-and-
geostrategy-of-democratic-self-preservation-pub-86771

71 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35624753

72 Michael Gordon, ‘The UK’s Sovereignty Situation: Brexit,

Bewilderment and Beyond...’, King’s Law Journal, 27, no. 3, pp.333–
43.

73 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36168487

74 Agnew, Globalisation and Sovereignty; Agnew, ‘Sovereignty

Regimes’, pp.437-461.

5. The Myth of Measuring Growth

1 https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/technological-
expertise

2 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?
end=2020&most_recent_value_desc=true

3 https://www.facebook.com/visitokinawajapan/posts/may-8th-is-goya-
daygoya-day-was-established-to-better-promote-goya-which-sees-
an/1624447174300193/

4 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190116-a-high-carb-diet-may-
explain-why-okinawans-live-so-long

5 https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20201126-why-so-many-japanese-
live-to-100

6
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6125071/pdf/10.1177
_1559827616637066.pdf

7 https://stats.oecd.org

8 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

9
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/lomalindacitycalifornia,U
S/PST045221

10 https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/sustainable-
development-goals-%28sdgs%29/series/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD

11 https://theconversation.com/consensual-sex-is-key-to-happiness-and-
good-health-science-says-91384

12 https://www.nab.gov.bt/assets/templates/images/constitution-of-
bhutan-2008.pdf
13 https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/bhutans-dark-secret-the-lhotshampa-
expulsion/;
https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/wrd/refugees/2.htm;
https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/wrd/refugees/3.htm

14 https://www.france24.com/en/20181015-bhutans-not-so-happy-
evicted-minority-lhotshampa

15 http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/01/Final-GNH-Report-jp-21.3.17-ilovepdf-
compressed.pdf

16 https://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/news/bhutan-gross-national-happiness-
index-shows-increase-2015-despite-pandemic

17 https://ophi.org.uk/policy/national-policy/gross-national-happiness-
index/

18 https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/#read

19 https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-report/2019/WHR19.pdf;
https://worldhappiness.report/faq/

20 https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf

21 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?
end=2019&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=2016

22 Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen, ‘Finntopia’, New

Internationalist (Jan/Feb 2021), p.64;
https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2021/;
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?
end=2019&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=2016

23 https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/24/robert-
kennedy-gdp
24 Ibid.

25 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/SCB/pages/2000-
2004/35260_2000-2004.pdf

26 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/australian-gdp-
growth-still-leading-advanced-economy-pack-fitch/news-
story/af4c9c3a015ed05d1f0425b96100bb29

27 https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/07/29/u-s-gdp-nations-
economy-likely-shrank-35-annual-rate-q-2/5530223002/

28 https://portfolio-adviser.com/hopes-of-a-v-shaped-recovery-dashed-
after-paltry-1-8-gdp-rise-in-may/

29 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-growth-delusion-
review-insightful-look-at-a-growing-dilemma-1.3411868;
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/12/irish-economic-
growth-revised-figures-foreign-investment-aircraft

30 Ngai-Ling Sum, ‘The intertwined geopolitics and geoeconomics of

hopes/fears: China’s triple economic bubbles and the ‘One Belt One
Road’ imaginary, Territory, Politics, Governance, 7:4, pp.530-31.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 David Pilling, The Growth Delusion: The Wealth and Well-Being of

Nations, p.176.

35 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?
locations=CN

36 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, pp.173–7.

37 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53276461

38 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, p.226.

39 Robert Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy

Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, cited in Dinyar
Godrej, ‘The Case for Nature,’ New Internationalist (January/February
2021), p.18.

40 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, pp.9–10.

41 Ibid., p.304.

42 Ibid., pp.23–27.

43 Ibid, pp.28, 32-35.

44 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57362816; Pilling, The Growth Delusion,

pp.43–4.

45 John Kay, Other People’s Money.

46 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-
bulletin/2011/measuring-financial-sector-output-and-its-contribution-
to-uk-gdp.pdf

47 https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/economic-
growth/506423/

48 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, pp.62–4.

49 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57362816

50 https://www.ft.com/content/734e604b-93d9-43a6-a6ec-19e8b22dad3c

51 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, pp.27, 109.

52 https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/09/17/even-google-
doesnt-understand-googles-value-to-the-economy/

53 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, p.93.

54 Ibid., pp.127–8.

55 Diep Hoang Phan, ‘Lights and GDP relationship: What does the
computer tell us?’, Empirical Economics 65;
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2019/09/satellite-
images-at-night-and-economic-growth-yao;
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/second-
quarter-2017/chinas-economic-data-an-accurate-reflection-or-just-
smoke-and-mirrors;
https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/tracking-light-space-
innovative-ways-measure-economic-development

56 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/29/growth-delusion-
david-pilling-review

57 https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/03/jokey-nature-
growth-delusion-odds-its-serious-economic-arguments

58 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/21/jeff-bezos-the-
worlds-richest-man-added-10bn-to-his-fortune-in-just-one-day

59 https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-bezos/

60 https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-
wealth-inequality/

61 https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/;
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html

62 https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/03/jokey-nature-
growth-delusion-odds-its-serious-economic-arguments
63 https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/sustainable-
development-goals-%28sdgs%29/series/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD

64 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/17/bobby-kennedy-
was-right-gdp-is-a-poor-measure-of-a-nations-health

65 Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jergen Randers and

William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (1972)—a report
commissioned by the Club of Rome, which consists of current and
former heads of state, high-level administrators, politicians, officials,
diplomats, scientists, economists and business leaders from around the
globe—forecast exponential economic and population growth in a
world with a finite supply of resources.

66 Jared Diamond, Collapse, p.509.

67 https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/growth-without-economic-
growth

68 Diamond, Collapse, p.23.

69 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y.pdf, p.2.

70 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01229-y, p.1609.

71 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/02/22/slow-economic-growth-
is-a-sign-of-success/

72 Ibid.

73 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01229-y

74 https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/economic-
growth/506423/

75 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01229-y, p.1617.

76 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, pp.177–8.

77 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/16/china-green-
economist-gdp

78 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, p.184.

79 Ibid., p.11; https://humanityinaction.org/knowledge_detail/a-case-for-

governance/

80 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, pp.271, 281.

81 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/can-we-have-
prosperity-without-growth

82 Ibid.

83 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y.pdf

84 https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/growth-without-economic-
growth

85 Dorling and Koljonen, ‘Finntopia’, New Internationalist, p.64.

86 Ibid., pp.64–5, 68.

87 Sigal Samuel, ‘Finland gave people free money’, Vox, 9 February

2019 cited in Dorling and Koljonen, ‘Finntopia’, New Internationalist,
p.70.

88 Dorling and Koljonen, ‘Finntopia’, New Internationalist, p.70.

89 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/can-we-have-
prosperity-without-growth

90 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01229-y.pdf

91 https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-
wealth-report.html, p.24.
92 Pilling, The Growth Delusion, p.15.

93 https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/24/robert-
kennedy-gdp

6. The Myth of Russian Expansionism

1 Some of the ideas explored in this chapter also appear in Paul B.

Richardson, ‘Rethinking Russia’, Geography Review, 35, no. 1, pp.32–
35.

2 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10597929/Sergei-Lavrov-
says-Russia-DIDNT-attack-Ukraine-dismisses-pathetic-outcry-
hospital.html

3 https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/bbc-halts-reporting-russia-after-
new-law-passes-2022-03-04/

4 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amid-russias-new-crackdowns-
small-signs-of-defiance-emerge

5 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladimir-
putin-russia-ukraine-power

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2021-07-13/putins-
article-historical-unity-russians-and-ukrainians

9 Alfred T. Mahan, The Problem of Asia and Its Effect Upon

International Policies, pp.118–9, cited in William C. Green, ‘The
Historic Russian Drive for a Warm Water Port: Anatomy of a
Geopolitical Myth’, Naval War College Review, Vol. 46, No. 2, p.83.
10 William C. Green, ‘The Historic Russian Drive for a Warm Water
Port’, Naval War College Review, 46, no. 2, pp.80–102, 83.

11 Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography, p.13.

12 Dimitry V. Lehovich, ‘The Testament of Peter the Great’, American

Slavic and East European Review 7, no. 2: 111–24.

13 Green, ‘The Historic Russian Drive for a Warm Water Port’; Lehovich,
‘The Testament of Peter the Great’; Walter List, Das Politische
Testament Peter des Grossen.

14 Lehovich, ‘The Testament of Peter the Great’, p.122.

15 Ibid., p.124.

16 Marshall, Prisoners of Geography, p.13.

17 https://governance.admin.ox.ac.uk/legislation/halford-mackinder-
professor-of-geography

18 Mackinder ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, p.436.

19 George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950, pp.263–4; Green, ‘The

Historic Russian Drive for a Warm Water Port’, p.89.

20 Green, ‘The Historic Russian Drive for a Warm Water Port’, p.88.

21 Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950, p.263.

22 Green, ‘The Historic Russian Drive for a Warm Water Port’, p.89.

23 https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/11/02/will-a-russian-naval-base-
appear-in-the-south-china-sea/

24 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-
RDP81B00401R000600120003-3.pdf
25 Green, ‘The Historic Russian Drive for a Warm Water Port’, p.95.

26 Marshall, Prisoners of Geography, p.12.

27 https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220406-zhirinovsky-russia-
s-ultra-nationalist-who-predicted-ukraine-conflict

28 https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/09/09/Zhirinovsky-to-boost-
Russian-birthrate/5413779083200/

29 https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/ice-season-in-the-baltic-sea

30 Green, ‘The Historic Russian Drive for a Warm Water Port’, p.96.

31 John A. Morrison, ‘Russia and Warm Water’, United States Naval

Institute Proceedings, 78, no. 11, pp.1169–80;
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-
about/weather/oceans/what-is-the-gulf-stream

32 https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/historical-
sheets/murmansk

33 Morrison, ‘Russia and Warm Water’, pp.1169–80.

34 Marshall, Prisoners of Geography, p.16.

35 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/navy-base-
syria-crimea-putin/408694/

36 https://jamestown.org/program/the-future-of-the-russian-black-sea-
fleets-bases-novorossiysk-versus-sevastopol/

37 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26652058

38 https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/tt382m/pdf/

39 https://www.rferl.org/a/clinton-calls-eurasian-integration-effort-to-
resovietize/24791921.html
40 Irina Busygina ‘The Rise of Eurasia and the Ukraine War’, Horizons:
Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development, 21,
p.188.

41 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/world/asia/nato-steps-back-into-
the-ussr.html; https://www.economist.com/eastern-
approaches/2014/03/25/the-bear-is-back

42 Gerard Toal, Near Abroad, p.89.

43 Ibid.

44 Though some have suggested that Russia’s economic decline was

probably smaller than officially reported:
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/normal_jep.pdf

45 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9508159/

46 John B. Dunlop, ‘Russia: In Search of an Identity’, p.49; John

O’Loughlin and Paul F. Talbot, ‘Where in the World Is Russia?
Geopolitical Perceptions and Preferences of Ordinary Russians’,
Eurasian Geography and Economics 46, No. 1, p.25.

47 Oleg Kashin, ‘Rossiya—Urodlivoe Detishche Belovezheskogo

Dogovora’, Slon, 28 October 2013, cited and translated in Mikhail
Suslov, ‘“Urania Is Older Than Sister Clio”: Discursive Strategies in
Contemporary Russian Textbooks on Geopolitics’, Ab Imperio, 3
(2013), p.353.

48 Putin speaking in 2005, cited in Toal, Near Abroad, p.55.

49 Toal, Near Abroad, p.89.

50 Ibid, p.87

51 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/21/chechnya-death-
squads-europe-ramzan-kadyrov
52 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-
international-law/article/international-law-and-the-2020-amendments-
to-the-russian-
constitution/89CE630A4E1AFD2F1EAD8DA47B3E0970

53 Ibid.

54 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/07/22/russia-seeks-10-year-
jail-terms-for-calls-to-cede-territory-under-new-constitution-a70827

55 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/30/putin-russia-war-
annexes-ukraine-regions

56 https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2016/05/signs-and-symbols-on-
the-sino-russian-border?lang=en

57 Paul B. Richardson, At the Edge of the Nation, p.51;

https://en.interaffairs.ru/article/where-the-russian-flag-has-been-
hoisted-it-shall-never-be-lowered-who-and-why-sold-russian-ameri-
f23b8860/

58 Russia joined the Pacific Theatre against Japan in the last days of the
Second World War and captured these islands.

59 Richardson, At the Edge of the Nation, p.73.

60 Paul B. Richardson, ‘Geopolitical Cultures, Pragmatic Patriotism, and

Russia’s Disputed Islands’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 59,
no. 1, pp.7–27; https://www.europenowjournal.org/2017/09/05/the-
demon-of-geopolitics-how-karl-haushofer-educated-hitler-and-hess-
by-holger-h-herwig/

61 Richardson, ‘Geopolitical Cultures, Pragmatic Patriotism, and Russia’s

Disputed Islands’.

62 Ibid.
63 Richardson, At the Edge of the Nation, Chapter 4.

64 https://ria.ru/20200630/1573690794.html

65 Richardson, ‘Geopolitical Cultures, Pragmatic Patriotism, and Russia’s

Disputed Islands’.

66 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/russia-has-violated-un-
resolutions-by-procuring-weapons-from-north-korea-and-iran-to-use-
in-ukraine-uk-statement-at-the-un-security-council

67 https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/weakness-and-paranoia-
are-behind-the-western-war-scare

68 https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/tt382m/pdf/

69 https://nationalpost.com/news/world/russia-china-relations-are-at-
highest-level-in-history-putin-and-xi

70 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879366517300052

71 https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-
regions/countries/russia/index_en.htm

72 https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russias-share-eu-trade-drops-
below-2-2023-09-01/

73 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladimir-
putin-russia-ukraine-power

7. The Myth of China’s New Silk Road

1 Themes in this chapter are set out in more depth in Paul B. Richardson,
‘Geopolitical encounters and entanglements along the belt and road
initiative’, Geography Compass, 15, no. 8.
2 https://palawan-news.com/stone-grave-marker-found-in-shipwreck-in-
thitu-reef-featured-by-national-museum/;
https://modernarmenianhistory.history.ucla.edu/2020/01/31/blog-6/

3 http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/9708/10/spratly.shipwreck/index.html;
https://palawan-news.com/stone-grave-marker-found-in-shipwreck-in-
thitu-reef-featured-by-national-museum/

4 https://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/history-and-
culture/Madras-Miscellany-When-Pondy-was-
wasted/article15719768.ece

5 https://palawan-news.com/stone-grave-marker-found-in-shipwreck-in-
thitu-reef-featured-by-national-museum/

6 https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0615/p22s1.html.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.; https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/46354/Philippine-Seas-Are-
a-Trove-of-Sunken-Treasures

9 https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/46354/Philippine-Seas-Are-a-
Trove-of-Sunken-Treasures

10 Eusebio Z. Dizon, ‘Underwater and Maritime Archaeology in the

Philippines’, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 31, no. 1/2,
pp.1–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29792514;
http://www.themua.org/collections/files/original/441a5d344a97b5f3f2
182e742c9e89d2.pdf; https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-
videos/detail?
itemid=3982270ca220aaaeeb24b134d75de09e&mediatype=video&sou
rce=youtube

11 https://www.rappler.com/nation/8824-ph-town-no-match-vs-china-s-
sansha/
12 https://thediplomat.com/2016/07/international-court-issues-
unanimous-award-in-philippines-v-china-case-on-south-china-sea/

13 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/24/why-does-china-claim-
almost-the-entire-south-china-sea

14 Ibid.; https://uk.usembassy.gov/the-importance-of-the-south-china-
sea/; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/08/competition-
over-the-south-china-sea-explained-in-30-seconds

15 Ibid.

16 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/subi-reef-building-
05102022104439.html

17 Ibid.

18 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-southchinasea-insight-
idUSKCN1IO3GA

19 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/southchinasea/china-artificial-
islands-10312022043801.html

20 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-southchinasea-insight-
idUSKCN1IO3GA

21 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/13/pentagon-report-
china-reclaimed-3200-acres-south-china-sea

22 https://pca-cpa.org/en/cases/7/

23 https://www.cfr.org/councilofcouncils/global-memos/hague-tribunals-
south-china-sea-ruling-empty-provocation-or-slow-burning-influence

24 https://thediplomat.com/2016/07/international-court-issues-
unanimous-award-in-philippines-v-china-case-on-south-china-sea/
25 https://amti.csis.org/thitu-island/;
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/South-China-
Sea/Philippines-set-to-fix-airstrip-on-South-China-Sea-island;
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/welcome-to-thitu-the-tiny-island-
fending-off-china-0e565ec4

26 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38666854

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-
initiative

30 State Council Information Office, ‘Six major economic corridors form

the “Belt and Road” framework’, 2 May 2015 cited Steven Brakman,
Peter Frankopan, Harry Garretsen and Charles van Marrewijk, ‘The
New Silk Roads: an introduction to China’s Belt and Road Initiative’,
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Vol. 12, Issue 1,
p.3.

31 https://eng.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/info/iList.jsp?cat_id=10076&cur_page=3

32 https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/china-solomon-islands-security-pact-us-
south-pacific

33 Brakman, Frankopan, Garretsen and van Marrewijk, ‘The New Silk

Roads: an introduction to China’s Belt and Road Initiative’, p.8.

34 https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2018/jul/30/what-
china-belt-road-initiative-silk-road-explainer

35 https://www.brookings.edu/research/chinas-belt-and-road-the-new-
geopolitics-of-global-infrastructure-development/
36 https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-
initiative

37 https://www.hudson.org/node/41813

38 Theresa Fallon, ‘The New Silk Road: Xi Jinping’s Grand Strategy for
Eurasia’, American Foreign Policy Interests, 37, no. 3, p.140, cited in
Seung-Ook Lee, Joel Wainwright and Jim Glassman, ‘Geopolitical
economy and the production of territory: The case of US–China
geopolitical-economic competition in Asia’, Environment and
Planning A: Economy and Space, 50, no. 2, p.427.

39 Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’.

40 Ibid., p.434.

41 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/11/new-silk-roads-
peter-frankopan-review

42 https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/china-and-the-world-island/

43 China Daily, 6 May 2015, cited in Sum, ‘The intertwined geopolitics

and geoeconomics of hopes/fears,’ p.538; see also Yiwei Wang and
Xuejun Liu, ‘Is the Belt and road initiative a Chinese geo-political
strategy?’, Asian Affairs, 50, no. 2.

44 https://www.railwaygazette.com/news/infrastructure/single-
view/view/kamchik-tunnel-completed.html

45 https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/twt/inroads-eurasia; Assel
G. Bitabarova, ‘Unpacking Sino-Central Asian engagement along the
New Silk Road: A case study of Kazakhstan’, Journal of
Contemporary East Asia Studies, 7, no. 2, p.161.

46 https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2018/may/12/ethiopia-railway-boom-promises-turn-to-
dust
47 http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/beltandroad/ke/enindex.shtml

48 Jakub Jakóbowski, Konrad Popławski and Marcin Kaczmarski, ‘The

Silk Railroad: The EU-China rail connections: background, actors,
interests’, OSW Studies, 72, p.5.

49 Sum, ‘The intertwined geopolitics and geoeconomics of hopes/fears,’

p.531; Patrick Bessler, ‘China’s “New Silk Road” focus on Central
Asia. EU-Asia Economic Governance Forum’ Konrad-Adenauer-
Stiftung: https://www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?
uuid=340e4711-32ee-377c-11c9-b986819bd1d7&groupId=252038

50 Tim Summers, ‘China’s “new silk roads”: Sub-national regions and

networks of global political economy’, Third World Quarterly, 37, no.
9.

51 David Harvey, The New Imperialism; David Harvey, ‘Globalization

and the “Spatial Fix”’. Geographische Revue 2: 23-30; ‘David Harvey
on the geography of capitalism, understanding cities as polities and
shifting imperialisms’, Theory Talk #20, http://www.theory-
talks.org/2008/10/theory-talk-20-david-harvey.html

52 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?
locations=CN; https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/02/08/a-bumpy-road-
ahead-for-chinas-economy/

53 Sum, ‘The intertwined geopolitics and geoeconomics of hopes/fears,’

p.531; Bessler, ‘China’s “New Silk Road.”

54 https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-dec-new-home-prices-
fall-fastest-pace-since-feb-2015-2024-01-17/

55 Imomov Imomnazar, ‘Impact of “One Belt, One Road” initiatives to

the economy of Central Asian countries’, International Journal of
Business and Economic Development, 6 no. 2, p.32.
56 Ngai-Ling Sum, ‘A cultural political economy of crisis recovery:
(Trans-)national imaginaries of ‘BRIC’ and sub-altern groups in
China,’ Economy and Society, 42, no. 4; Sum, ‘The intertwined
geopolitics and geoeconomics of hopes/fears’, p.535.

57 Xinhua, ‘China Now a Net Capital Exporter’, 21 January 2015, cited

in Xin Zhang, ‘Chinese capitalism and the maritime silk road: A
world-systems perspective’, Geopolitics, 22, no. 2, pp.320, 322.

58 https://www.ft.com/content/e83ced94-0bd8-11e6-9456-444ab5211a2f;
Michael Dunford and Weidong Liu, ‘Chinese perspectives on the Belt
and Road Initiative’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and
Society, 12, no. 1, p.150.

59 https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/bri-china-belt-road-initiative-
blunder/

60 Ching K. Lee, ‘The spectre of global China’, New Left Review, 89,
pp.34–5.

61 Lee, Wainwright and Glassman, ‘Geopolitical economy and the

production of territory’.

62 Martin Müller, ‘Assemblages and actor-networks: Rethinking socio-

material power, politics and space’, Geography Compass, 9 no. 1,
p.29.

63 Dunford and Liu, ‘Chinese perspectives on the Belt and Road

Initiative’, p.148.

64 https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/02/06/how-the-belt-
and-road-initiative-got-its-name

65 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-22726375

66 Caixin, ‘Yidai yilu’ guojia dingceng zhanlue shiji yu xingdong buju

[‘One Belt, One Road’: National Strategic Top-Level Design and
 Action Plan]; and NDRC, ‘Vision and actions on jointly building silk
road economic belt and 21st-century maritime silk road’ both cited in
William A. Callahan, ‘China’s “Asia dream”: The Belt Road initiative
and the new regional order’, Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 1,
no. 3, p.236.

67 Brakman, Frankopan, Garretsen and van Marrewijk, ‘The New Silk

Roads: an introduction to China’s Belt and Road Initiative’, p.2.

68 Ibid., p.7.

69 Tim Winter, Geocultural Power: China’s Quest to Revive the Silk

Roads for the Twenty-First Century; Winter, ‘Geocultural power:
China’s Belt and road initiative’, Geopolitics, 26, no. 5, 1385, 1389.

70 Winter, ‘Geocultural power: China’s Belt and road initiative’, p.1393.

71 Cynthia Enloe, ‘Flick of the Skirt: A Feminist Challenge to IR’s

Coherent Narrative’, International Political Sociology, 10, no. 4,
p.320.

72 Lee, ‘The spectre of global China’, pp.53–8.

73 Ibid., pp.57–60.

74 Colin Flint and Madeleine Waddoups, ‘South-South Cooperation or

Core-Periphery Contention? Ghanaian and Zambian Perceptions of
Economic Relations with China.’ Geopolitics, 26, no. 3, p.908.

75 Ibid., p.910; https://www.lusakatimes.com/2018/11/04/zaffico-has-not-

be-sold-to-chinese-investors/

76 https://thediplomat.com/2023/09/china-and-zambia-a-new-chapter-
beyond-debt/

77 https://www.sais-cari.org/data;
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122389/leading-countries-for-fdi-
 in-africa-by-investor-country/

78 https://www.orfonline.org/research/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-
implications-in-africa/

79 Laureen Fagan, ‘New China-Africa paper calls on West to tone down

the BRI drama’, Africa Times, 30 September 2019; and Mingxin Pei,
‘China’s expensive bet on Africa has failed Coronavirus crash in
commodity prices has wasted $200 billion in investment and loans’,
Nikkei Asian Review, 1 May 2020, both cited in
https://www.orfonline.org/research/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-
implications-in-africa/

80 Nyshka Chandran, ‘Fears of excessive debt drive more countries to cut

down their Belt and Road investments’, cited in
https://www.orfonline.org/research/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-
implications-in-africa/

81 https://nation.africa/kenya/news/Workers-union-wades-into-SGR-
mistreatment-claims/1056-4655442-ned326/index.html;
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001287179/revealed-sgr-
workers-treated-badly-by-chinese-masters;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-46341910

82 https://adf-magazine.com/2023/11/kenyas-sgr-drives-up-debt-falls-
short-on-profits/

83 https://nation.africa/lifestyle/DN2/Last-ride-on-the-kenya-Lunatic-
Express/957860-3917650-vpvga7z/index.html

84 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jul/11/kenya-
first-coal-plant-construction-paused-climate-victory; Chandran, ‘Fears
of excessive debt drive more countries to cut down their Belt and Road
investments’, cited in https://www.orfonline.org/research/chinas-belt-
and-road-initiative-implications-in-africa/
85 https://www.orfonline.org/research/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-
implications-in-africa/; https://africacheck.org/fact-
checks/reports/china-owns-213-kenyas-external-debt-not-70-reported

86 Anthony Kleven, ‘Belt and Road: colonialism with Chinese

characteristics’, The Interpreter, Lowy Institute, 6 May 2019; Dipanjan
Roy Chaudhury, ‘Africa cancels a Belt and Road Project for the First
Time’, Economic Times, 25 October 2018; Ian Scoones, ‘The Chinese
Belt And Road Initiative: What’s in it for Africa?’, Steps Centre, 13
May 2019; Bill Ide and Joyce Huang, ‘Caution, Cancellations, Protests
as Concerns Grow on China’s Belt and Road’, Voice of America, 15
October 2018; and Editorial, ‘Africa’s experience with Chinese
investors. Some parallels with Central Asia’, Eurasianet, 31 Oct 2019,
all of the above cited in https://www.orfonline.org/research/chinas-
belt-and-road-initiative-implications-in-africa/

87 https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/bri-china-belt-road-initiative-
blunder/

88 Ibid.

89 https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/what-chinas-belt-and-road-
initiative-bri

90 https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/01/08/violent-
protests-against-chinese-colony-in-hambantota-sri-lanka-rage-on/;
https://www.ft.com/content/e150ef0c-de37-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c

91 https://ge.usembassy.gov/chinas-construction-companies-sow-chaos-
worldwide/

92 https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/thai/project-protest-
12102020165020.html

93 https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/exploring-the-environmental-
repercussions-of-chinas-belt-and-road-initiativ
94 Ibid.

95 https://www.chathamhouse.org/2018/06/making-concrete-change-
innovation-low-carbon-cement-and-concrete

96 https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/05/09/china-sets-new-record-
for-rising-sea-levels-how-will-its-cities-cope

97 Ibid.

98 Xiao Han and Michael Webber, ‘From Chinese dam building in Africa
to the Belt and Road Initiative: Assembling infrastructure projects and
their linkages’, Political Geography, 77, p.1.

99 Agnew and Stuart Corbridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory

and International Political Economy, pp.143–5.

100 Ibid., p.145.

101 Ibid.

102 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/04/pupils-
benefits-empire-ignorance-royals-caribbean-windrush

103 Richardson, ‘Geopolitical encounters and entanglements along the belt

and road initiative’.

8. The Myth that Africa is Doomed to Fail

1 https://www.britannica.com/place/Gonder;
https://www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/the-complete-history-of-
gondar-africas#footnote-1-113489625

2 https://www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/the-complete-history-of-
gondar-africas
3 https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2018/02/african-scribes-
manuscript-culture-of-ethiopia.html

4 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/why-
britain-wont-return-ethiopias-sacred-treasures/593281/;
https://www.ethioembassy.org.uk/culture-minister-visits-british-
museums-on-debut-visit-to-the-uk/; Dipo Faloyin, Africa Is Not a
Country, p.240.

5 https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2018/02/african-scribes-
manuscript-culture-of-ethiopia.html;
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/why-
britain-wont-return-ethiopias-sacred-treasures/593281/

6 Taken from Robert Dent, The Making of Birmingham: Being A History

of the Rise and Growth of the Midland Metropolis, cited in ‘From City
of Empire to City of Diversity’ exhibition held at Birmingham Central
Library, June 2022.

7 ‘From City of Empire to City of Diversity’, June 2022.

8 https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/size-british-
empire#:~:text=The%20British%20Empire%20was%20at,set%20on%
20the%20British%20Empire.

9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw7pITeFF7E

10 Stuart Hall, cited in ‘From City of Empire to City of Diversity’

Exhibition, June 2022; Mathilde Bertrand, ‘The politics of
representation and the subversion of landscape in Ingrid Pollard’s
Pastoral Interlude (1987)’. E-CRINI-La revue électronique du Centre
de Recherche sur les Identités Nationales et l’Interculturalité, 2014, 7,
p.10.

11 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-text-boris-johnson-s-
conference-speech
12 Ibid.

13 https://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/

14 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-text-boris-johnson-s-
conference-speech/

15 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-statues-
churchill-mandela-colston-protests-black-lives-matter-a9562626.html;
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1271388182538526721

16 https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/articles-
reports/2020/03/11/how-unique-are-british-attitudes-empire?
utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=B
ritish_Empire_attitudes

17 https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/;
https://minorityrights.org/minorities/overview-of-africa/

18 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/28/why-africa-
so-poor-google

19 Faloyin, Africa Is Not a Country, p.79, 98, 106.

20 Crang, Cultural Geography, pp.39–40.

21 https://www.economist.com/interactive/christmas-
specials/2021/12/18/great-zimbabwe-archaeology

22 Crang, Cultural Geography, pp.39–40.

23 https://www.economist.com/interactive/christmas-
specials/2021/12/18/great-zimbabwe-archaeology

24 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jan/14/rhodes-must-fall-
oxford-colonialism-zimbabwe-simukai-chigudu
25 https://newint.org/features/2023/08/21/how-rhodes-must-fall-
amplified-calls-decolonize

26 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/12/17/africa-the-hidden-
history/

27 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1073/

28 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/welcome-to-the-
land-that-no-country-wants-bir-tawil

29 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1073/;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-40420910

30 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/15/

31 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/20/italy.ethiopia;
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/kingdom-aksum/;
https://whc.unesco.org/document/100813

32 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/15/

33 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/144/

34 https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-
civilisation/2020/09/this-abandoned-east-african-city-once-controlled-
the-medieval-gold

35 https://www.pnas.org/content/115/36/8942

36 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-their-world-
was-chaos-these-ancient-people-coped-building-monument-
180970087/

37 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/12/17/africa-the-hidden-
history/

38 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zpvckqt/articles/z883gk7
39 https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/history-of-
slavery/africa-before-transatlantic-enslavement/;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47379458

40 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zpvckqt/articles/z3n7mp3;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zpvckqt/articles/z84fvcw

41 https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-
story/contested-objects-collection/benin-bronzes

42 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/12/17/africa-the-hidden-
history/

43 Ali Al’Amin Mazrui, ‘The Re-invention of Africa: Edward Said, V. Y.

Mudimbe, and Beyond’, Research in African Literatures, 36, no. 3,
p.77.

44 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/12/17/africa-the-hidden-
history/

45 Mazrui, ‘The Re-invention of Africa’, p.77.

46 Ibid., pp.69, 80.

47 Ibid., pp.71, 80.

48 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/books/features/unearthed-the-ancient-texts-that-tell-
story-of-christianity-2019188.html

49 Mazrui, ‘The Re-invention of Africa’, pp.70, 71, 80.

50 Ibid., pp.74, 75.

51 Ibid., pp.77, 81, 71.

52 Faloyin, Africa Is Not a Country, p.349.

53 https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/postscript-chinua-
achebe-1930-2013

54 Frederick Cooper, ‘Africa in World History’, pp.571–2.

55 https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/history-of-
slavery/africa-before-transatlantic-enslavement/

56 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/12/17/africa-the-hidden-
history/

57 Ibid.

58 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Middle-Passage-slave-trade

59 Richard Bjornson, Research in African Literatures 12, no. 2, p.247;

https://heritagecollections.parliament.uk/stories/the-transatlantic-slave-
trade/

60 Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and

African Slave Trades, pp.170–1, cited in Nathan Nunn, ‘The Long-
Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades’, The Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 123, no. 1, p.142.

61 https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/the-slave-
trade-and-abolition/sites-of-memory/slave-traders-and-plantation-
wealth/; https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/history-transatlantic-
slave-trade

62 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/27/britain-slave-trade

63 https://taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/treasury-
tweet-slavery-compensate-slave-owners

64 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/12/17/africa-the-hidden-
history/
65 Nunn, ‘The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades’, p.142.

66 For example, see Mario Azevedo, ‘Power and Slavery in Central

Africa: Chad (1890–1925),’ Journal of Negro History, 67; Joseph E.
Inikori, ‘Africa and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade’; Andrew Hubbell,
‘A View of the Slave Trade from the Margin: Souroudougou in the
Late Nineteenth-Century Slave Trade of the Niger Bend’, Journal of
African History, 42, all cited in Nunn, ‘The Long-Term Effects of
Africa’s Slave Trades’, p.142.

67 Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in

Africa, second edition, pp.68–70, cited in Nunn, ‘The Long-Term
Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades’, pp.142-3.

68 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/12/17/africa-the-hidden-
history/

69 Cooper, ‘Africa in World History’, pp.558, 559.

70 Nunn, ‘The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades’, p.140.

71 https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2019/01/west-africa-
pre-colonial-fistful-shells-toby-green-review

72 Cooper, ‘Africa in World History’, p.562.

73 Ibid., p.562, 565.

74 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, pp.154–5.

75 Ibid., p.183.

76 Cooper, ‘Africa in World History’, pp.562, 566, 567, 564.

77 Ibid., p.562.; Nunn, ‘The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades’,

p.166.
78 Clement Eme Adibe, ‘Accountability in Africa and the international
Community,’ Social Research, 77 no 4, pp.1253–4, 1256.

79 Cooper, ‘Africa in World History’, p.566.

80 Ibid., pp.575, 578.

81 Ibid., pp.579, 562.

82 Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation, p.9.

83 https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/04/kwame-nkrumahs-pan-african-
socialism

84 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-67278027

85 https://www.voanews.com/a/france-struggles-to-reshape-relations-in-
africa-/7257057.html

86 Ruth Maclean, ‘Democracy teeters in old French colonies,’ New York

Times (international edition), April 2, 2024, pp.1-2.

87 Ibid.; https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fabric/backgrnd.htm;
https://hir.harvard.edu/true-sovereignty-the-cfa-franc-and-french-
influence-in-west-and-central-africa/

88 Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation, pp.438–9.

89 Michael Collins, ‘Nation, state and agency: evolving historiographies

of African decolonization’, p.37.

90 Ibid., p.42.

91 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/05/france-departure-
niger-failure-former-colonies

92 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/5/nigers-military-rulers-ask-
for-help-from-russian-group-wagner
93 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/05/france-departure-
niger-failure-former-colonies;
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/20/russian-
mercenaries-behind-slaughter-in-mali-village-un-report-finds

94 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-68322230

95 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/05/france-departure-
niger-failure-former-colonies;
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/20/russian-
mercenaries-behind-slaughter-in-mali-village-un-report-finds

96 Nunn, ‘The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades’, pp.167–8.

97 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/30/ghosts-of-empire-
what-kwasi-kwartengs-book-tells-us-about-him

98 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/political-impartiality-in-
schools/political-impartiality-in-schools

99 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/30/ghosts-of-empire-
what-kwasi-kwartengs-book-tells-us-about-him

100 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/27/badenoch-
empire-comments-enduring-mentality-colonialism-britain

101 https://inews.co.uk/opinion/teaching-pupils-positives-british-empire-
white-supremacy-1545806

102 Ibid.

103 Ibid.

104 https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/snapshotsofempire/2016/01/26/time-to-
throw-out-the-balance-sheet/; Collins, ‘Nation, state and agency:
evolving historiographies of African decolonization’, p.23.
105 Collins, ‘Nation, state and agency: evolving historiographies of
African decolonization’, p.23.

106 https://theconversation.com/a-decade-after-the-riots-france-has-
rewritten-its-colonial-history-50499; Collins, ‘Nation, state and
agency: evolving historiographies of African decolonization’, pp.22–3.

107 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/when-
museums-have-ugly-pasts/603133/

108 Ibid.

109 https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/dec/12/british-museum-
told-to-keep-better-records-after-theft-of-1500-items; Faloyin, Africa
is Not a Country, pp.257, 261.

110 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. xx cited in Dominic

Thomas, Africa and France, p.6.

111 Collins, ‘Nation, state and agency: evolving historiographies of

African decolonization’, p.24.

112 Ibid., pp.41–2.

113 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jul/03/migration-and-
empire-should-be-taught-in-english-schools

114 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/02/misremembering-
the-british-empire

115 Ibid.; https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-

truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau

116 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/02/misremembering-
the-british-empire

117 Richard Drayton, ‘Where Does the World Historian Write From?
Objectivity, Moral Conscience and the Past and Present of
 Imperialism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 46, no. 3, p.685, cited
in Robert Gildea, Empires of the Mind, p.10.

118 Gildea, Empires of the Mind, p.13.

119 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-history-
slavery-buried-scale-revealed

120 https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/education/2020/06/history-
british-empire-not-taught-schools-curriculum

121 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/06/britains-
story-empire-based-myth-need-know-truth

122 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/11/06/the-trouble-with-
heart-of-darkness

123 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/10-things-
africa-given-world

124 https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/our-god-marching

Conclusion. Beyond Myths

1 Essebo, ‘A mythical place’, p.523.

2 Joanna Overing, ‘The role of myth: An anthropological perspective, or:

“the reality of the really made-up”’, p.10, cited in Essebo, ‘A mythical
place’, p.523.

3 https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059061

4 IPBES, Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem

services, 2019, nin.tl/vertebrates cited in Dinyar Godrej, ‘The Case for
Nature’, New Internationalist, 529, p.16.
5 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/chinese-
paddlefish-one-of-largest-fish-extinct; Dinyar Godrej, ‘The Case for
Nature’, p.16.

6 Dinyar Godrej, ‘The Case for Nature’, pp.16–18.

7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274;
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

8 Oli Mould, ‘From globalisation to the planetary’, Geography

Compass, Vol. 17, Issue 9, p.6.

9 Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, ‘The strange geographies of the

“new” state capitalism,’ Political Geography, 82;
https://www.noemamag.com/governing-in-the-planetary-age/ both
cited in Mould, ‘From globalisation to the planetary: Towards a critical
framework of planetary thinking in geography.’ Geography Compass,
17(9), e12720, p.8.

10 Mould, ‘From globalisation to the planetary’, p.8.

11 Paul Claval, Les mythes fondateurs des sciences sociales; Claval, ‘The
geographical study of myths’, p.147.

12 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pangaea-ultima-the-next-
supercontinent-may-doom-mammals-to-far-future-extinction/

13 https://www.britannica.com/place/Pangea

14 https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07obpenguin.html

15 Faloyin, Africa Is Not a Country, p.351.

16 David Ludden, ‘Presidential Address: Maps in the Mind and the

Mobility of Asia’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 62, no. 4, pp.1058,
1062.

17 Mappa Mundi, Herford Cathedral Enterprises, pp.28–9.

18 https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-heritage/art-and-
design/harry-becks-tube-map

19 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/14/google-
maps-political-borders/

20 Faloyin, Africa Is Not a Country, p.334.

21 https://theconversation.com/antarctica-notes-on-the-fate-of-
sovereignty-28292

22 Thanks to Klaus Dodds for this succinct summary.

ISBN-13: 9780369760319

Myths of Geography

First published in 2024 by Bridge Street Press. This edition published in

2024.

Copyright © 2024 by Paul Richardson

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