Tyranny of the Map: Crash Course Geography #35

Today we’re going to talk about borders. Borders can bring people together, evoke passion and war, divide, conquer, and solidify power. We’re going to focus on the tyranny of the map which is what happens when those in power draw boundaries in ways that conflict with how people in that place want to be grouped. We’ll look at the repercussions of the Berlin Conference of 1884 on boundaries within Africa, take a closer look at continued political unrest in Mali, and look at how this can even happen at a local level like when gerrymandering occurs within a US state.

[Sources]

In general
Getis, Bjelland, and Getis. Introduction to Geography, 15 ed. McGraw-Hill Education. 2017. ISBN: 978-1-259-57000-1
Gregory, Derek, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts, and Sarah Whatmore, eds. 2009. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Willey-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-4051-3288-6
Cracking the AP Human Geography Exam: 2020 edition. The Princeton Review.

Mali

Boundaries

South Sudan

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[eskualerritar]

I love how this series started in the curious world of rocks and is now connecting to the fascinating world of political geography. Broad topics integrated in a beautiful way. The only good way to teach geography, thank you!!!

[therongjr]

When I first heard about "Crash Course: Geography, " I thought, "This is going to be boring; I already know where all the countries are and the various biomes on the planet." But even from the very beginning I have been BLOWN AWAY by how amazing this series has been! I never expected we would hearing about the difference between countries, nations, states, and nation-states! This quickly became one of my favorite "Crash Course" series. 💕

[AnonymousFreakYT]

"On a map, they look like the edges of wonky shapes..."

I would argue that straight lines are usually more indicative of tyranny than wonky shapes. Those are more likely "a complete disregard" than wonky shapes, which usually are, at worst, based on natural barriers/separators.

[RO-wndg]

Such a tragically neglected topic. But this video ignores the extent to which even supposedly “homogenous” nation states like Iceland (or indeed most of Europe) required substantial and deliberate campaigns of cultural homogenisation (sometimes quite violent) like those mentioned elsewhere in the video in order to reify their “borders”. That’s not unique to Africa at all. It’s just most odiously obvious when looking at Africa.

I think a lot of the confusion begins when (as this video does) the term “nation” gets conflated with culture or ethnic group. When in fact “nations” are very specific historical constructs arising out of the very process of border engineering described here

[krucdfumv]

I love your guys content. Would love to see a map of Native American Nations along side the other maps shown for the period about power dynamics in USA.

[yumeriagirl]

Another brilliant day on Earth 🌎🌍 & another brilliant video!!
Best content creators/channel, for years!
✊🏿✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻🖖

[Antipius]

Always a fascinating topic! But like all social sciences, human geography is a contentious field. Anyone digging further into the topic will find great amounts of nuance and debate, even on the basic points laid out in this video.

Good stuff, great way to get people interested <3

[Caterfree]

Nice touch connecting this with gerrymandering! Especially given some electoral maps that have already been released. <<

[jeromegeorge]

such an underrated video! our schools should take notes on how to teach this stuff

[QuestTube]

Wow . I didn’t know this series exists.

[kevind]

Yay, gerrymandering on a continental scale.

[mortuos]

this is such a difficult issue to overcome. cause splitting up the countries in smaller more homogeneous countries, looses them what little power they have, but not doing so makes it hard to exert that power to solve the issues colonialism left behind.
i wish we could somehow clean up the mess our ancestors caused, but cause of obvious reasons, they won't trust us, to have their best interests in mind.
cause we probably don't.
even if the population at large just wants to help, there's just too much power at stake.

[alexjcord]

Typo in the video: “Lybia” is a genus of small crabs. “Libya” is the country in North Africa.

[andersonandrighi]

Next Star Wars the villain should be a geography buff redesigning the galaxy map for himself. By the way, does Star Wars have a map?

[culwin]

Maps. Wait... they don't love you like I love you.

[chacarilla]

Wow I had a class about maps and cartography just weeks ago, funny thing I'm studying medicine

[ChristopherNFP]

Would have been better if you gave us your working definition of the term "nation".

[Salsmachev]

I'm not sure I'd agree on that definition of nation-state. Certainly a nation-state has a single dominant nation and/or a state ideology that promotes one particular nation, but there needn't only be one nation present. For example, there are two major nations within the state called Israel, but I would not call Israel multinational, because the Israeli state actively seeks to remove and/or destroy the Palestinian nation. Thus, while the land/country is multinational and multiethnic, the ethnonationalist settler colonial state is a nation-state and an ethnostate. Most settler colonial states are conceived of as nation-states, ethnostates, or racial ethnostates. A multicultural state would be one that actively tries to promote the equality of several nations and seek harmony and consensus between them (albeit not necessarily successfully). So, for example, I would describe Nigeria as multinational in that it tries to maintain a balance of power between ethnic groups, but the U.S. as a nation-state practicing several varieties of domestic imperialism, in that the country is founded on white supremacist values and structures that have never been materially addressed.

[Thenoobestgirl]

The audacity these old Europeans had...

[JAMES]

Sometimes, I like to Fill UP my Bathtub with Milk, lay in the Fetal Position and pretend that I'm a Cheerio!...