ABSTRACT
With respect to the many seeming contradictions and divergences of interpretation which characterize the life, work, and legacy of Sir Halford Mackinder, some of the most conspicuous are associated with his paper, ‘The geographical pivot of history’, and its reception over the course of a century. For the first thirty-five years it rested in the pages of the twenty-third volume of the Geographical Journal, apparently forgotten, at least in the English-speaking world, until the signing of the Nazi–Soviet Pact by Ribbentrop and Molotov on 23 August 1939 and the rapid unfolding of events on the world stage. After a further thirty-five years, it was proclaimed that ‘the Heartland theory stands as the first premise in Western military thought’. 1
