The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate pdfdrive com

part of the Tigris-Euphrates valley that carried irrigation water for miles, “they
became tempting objects of plunder to the barbarous peoples of the country
round about.” Moreover, when most of the irrigable land of Mesopotamia came
under cultivation, and the fields of one community came into contact with those
of another, chronic war emerged, as there was no central authority to settle
boundary disputes, or to apportion water in times of shortage. In the midst of this
semi-chaos, conquerors like Sargon (2400 
B.C
.) entered Mesopotamia from the
margins of the cultivated zone. Though able to establish a centralized authority,
the vanquishing soldiery, after a few generations, McNeill tells us, gave up the
military life in favor of the “softer and more luxurious ways” of the towns. And
so history began to repeat itself with the arrival of new conquerors.
This is all very reminiscent of the pattern described by the fourteenth-century
Tunisian historian and geographer Ibn Khaldun, who notes that while luxurious
living strengthens the state initially by furthering its legitimacy, in succeeding
generations it leads to decadence, with the process of collapse signaled by the
rise of powerful provincial leaders, who then invade and form their own
dynasties.
3
Ultimately, the rise of civilization in ancient Iraq led to the most
suffocating of tyrannies in order to stave off the disintegration from within: thus
we have Tiglath-pileser (twelfth–eleventh centuries 
B.C
.), Ashurnasirpal II (ninth
century 
B.C
.), Sennacherib (eighth–seventh centuries 
B.C
.), and others, famous for
their cruelty, megalomania, and mass deportations carried out in their name.
4
It
is a pattern that culminates in Saddam Hussein: that of a region prone to invasion
and fragmentation that required through much of history significant levels of
tyranny. But again, one should avoid too constricted a conclusion: for example,
between 1921 and 1958, Iraq experienced a modestly well-functioning
parliamentary system, which might have continued under slightly altered
circumstances. McNeill, Khaldun, and Stark are speaking of historical and
geographical tendencies only, and thus avoid the charge of determinism.
5
Just as geography formed the basis for an extraordinary level of tyranny and
bureaucracy in Mesopotamia, McNeill explains how it culminated in somewhat
less oppressive rule in Egypt. “Deserts gave the land of Egypt clear-cut and
easily defensible boundaries; while the Nile provided it with a natural backbone

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and nervous system,” so that Mesopotamian levels of oppression weren’t
necessary along the Nile. “Frontier defense,” he goes on, “against outlanders was
scarcely a serious problem for the king of Egypt”: indeed, because of Egypt’s
favorable situation vis-à-vis migration routes compared to Mesopotamia’s,
infiltration by Libyans from the west and Asiatics from the east were relatively
minor issues. Egypt was shut off from the south, where there is nothing but bare
desert on either side of the river; while in the north there is the Mediterranean
Sea. It is probable that for four thousand years Egyptians “never saw an invading
host in their midst.”
6
 The Nile, moreover, was easily navigable, with the flow of
the river carrying boats northward, even as the winds generally blowing from
north to south carried boats, with the help of sail, southward. Thus was
civilization able to dawn in Egypt. “By contrast,” McNeill writes,
“Mesopotamian rulers could avail themselves of no ready-made natural
instrument for securing their centralized authority, but had slowly and painfully
to develop [oppressive] law and bureaucratic administration as an artificial
substitute for the natural articulation which geography gave to Egypt.”
Mesopotamia’s heavy-handed bureaucracy had further to deal with the
capricious rate of flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates, which was not the case
with the Nile, and which complexified further the organization of the irrigation
system.
7
Even today, both Egypt and Iraq have had dictatorial regimes for long
periods, but the fact that Iraq’s have been far worse is something that, in part, we
can trace to antiquity, and to geography.
Beyond the Middle East were what McNeill calls the “peripheral”
civilizations of India, Greece, and China, “on the fringes of the anciently
civilized world,” which in the cases of the first two derived a good portion of
their vitality from the cultures of the Indus River and Minoan Crete. But all three
also drew from their interaction with barbarian invaders, even as they were