ABSTRACT
H.J. Mackinder’s paper ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ was delivered to the Royal Geographical Society on 25 January 1904, and published in the Geographical Journal for April of that year. 1 The historical and political contexts of its delivery are significant. As Stoddart has indicated, it came at the end of a long period of serious military engagements by Britain on imperial fronts, including the Afghan Wars, the Sudan, and the Boer War of 1899–1900: 2
Within a fortnight of his lecture, however, the imperial Japanese Navy attacked Port Arthur in the opening encounter of the Russo–Japanese War. The Japanese defeated the Russians in a naval battle off Port Arthur in August, and the city surrendered early in January 1905. Russia’s humiliation was completed at the Battle of Tsushima Straits in May. It was an extraordinary and immediate refutation of Mackinder’s land-based thesis which has scarcely been noticed by subsequent commentators obsessed by the naval expansion of Germany.
