Geography Matters

Suggesting that America is an empire may seem a bit bizarre as America does not have any colonies at present but if we take a wider perspective, America has a large number of overseas territories and possessions (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands), and even more overseas military bases: in South Korea, The Philippines, Japan, Okinawa, Germany, Turkey and of course the UK where,...

European empires have a long history and can be traced back to the late C15th when Spanish and Portugese explorers were pushing further and further south down the west coast of Africa. Eventually in 1492 Columbus discovered the New world and the scene was set for Spain and Portugal to divide it up between them. But around the same time Cabot navigated to Newfoundland (the name gives it away) and L...

British and European listeners will probably be familiar with the fact that many European countries developed extensive overseas empires from about 1500 onwards. First the Spanish and Portugese, then the Dutch, then the British, French, German etc. We will discuss these European empires in the next episode. But empires have a much longer history - think back to the Romans, 2000 years ago. At its m...

Most developed western countries have got some form of welfare state or welfare support for their population. These started in some countries in a rudimentary way in the late 19th century or the interwar years, but most countries saw rapid development in the years after WWII. This was when Britain saw the start of National Insurance, the NHS, free secondary school and university education etc. But...

In mid January 2025 President Trump announced that he wanted to take back control of the Panama Canal. We might ask what this is all about and the part answer is that the US originally built and operated the canal then handed it back to Panama in 1979. Cutting off journeys round south America it accounts for about 30% of US container trade. But the Panama canal is part of a much bigger picture. Ov...

In early January 2025 President Trump shocked the world by announcing that the US wanted to buy Greenland. The Danish government said it was not for sale. But this is not the first time that the USA has attempted to buy Greenland. It has made previous offers first in 1867 after it bought Alaska, then again in 1946 when it offered Denmark $100 million, and President Trump made an earlier offer in 2...

Drinking water is crucial for human survival and for agriculture. But, as the world's population grows and pressure on resources increases, water is increasingly becoming a scarce commodity. Conflicts over water have a long history and in recent decades more and more countries want to dam rivers to control the flow, provide water for agriculture and generate power. But activities upstream have a b...

People have always migrated from place to place or country to country whether it is to escape hunger, drought, war or persecution or to search for stability, security or better living standards. The nineteenth century was a century of large scale migration, both within Europe, and from Europe to the New World - the USA and Canada. The Irish potato famine saw millions of people migrate to avoid sta...

Borders are extremely important, both in terms of national sovereignty and for human mobility and limits to it. In nomadic societies people often moved relatively freely with the seasons over long distances but borders have become much more important with the evolution of nation states in the last few hundred years. Borders today are marked on maps and sometimes marked on the ground with border fe...

The term 'postcode lottery' became popular in Britain in the late 1990's to refer to the variations in health care from one area or region to another. It suggested that variations or inequalities in health care provision or drug availability or treatment were essentially random and varied depending on where you lived. Subsequently the term has been widened to refer to variations in educational pro...

The Falkland Islands are very remote: 8,000 miles south of London, 700 miles north of the northern most part of Antarctica and 300 miles east of Argentina. Only discovered in 1760 by a British sailor, then variously settled and occupied by British, French and Spanish garrisons, the islands were claimed for the British crown in 1832. But, given their proximity, Argentina has, not surprisingly, long...

Svalbard, or Spitzbergen, as it used to be called, is an archipelago in the Arctic ocean about midway between the north of Norway and the North Pole and midway between Greenland to the West and the islands of Novaya Zemblya in northern Russia. 60% of it is covered with glaciers and it has about 3000 people. Its a place most people have never heard of, but it has considerable geographical and strat...

This is a taster for the Geography Matters podcast series. It explains why geography matters for understanding the world and how it intersects with history and with economics, politics, society and the environment. Everything happens in particular places and particular times. Geography looks at where and why and history looks at when and why. The series is presented by Chris Hamnett, emeritus prof...

This first episode of the Geography Matters series looks at some aspects of social change in London over the last 50 years and reflects briefly on Ruth Glass's pioneering identification of gentrification in 1964 and the social class changes which have taken place since then. The hosts are Chris Hamnett, emeritus professor of geography at King's College London, and Klaus Dodds, professor of geograp...