Notes on Mountain Ranges

Himalayas

• Forms a border between India and China – two nuclear powers that don’t really align culturally – preventing significant conflict between the two
• Also serves as the water tower of Asia – source of the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Yellow, and Mekong rivers.
  • This area of the world is highly interconnected by river networks, which made the region fertile and allowed dense populations / more surplus (and thus stronger states) early on in history.

Andes

• Runs through South America
• Split South American states into two categories:
  • Atlantic states:
    • Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guyana, Suriname
    • Have access to trade with most of the continent
    • Have more land
    • Economies are more diversified
    • Stronger states
  • Pacific states:
    • Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela
    • Andes runs through them
    • This means that there is weaker national cohesion / more regionalism, and lower state capacity
    • Their economies tend to be more focused on mining and extracting other natural resources from the mountain range
    • Can’t easily trade with the rest of South America from the wrong side of the Andes, so tend to rely more on global maritime trade

Caucasus

• Consists of Greater Caucasus and Lesser Caucasus
• Forms a barrier between Russia and the middle east. The lesser Caucasus is more twisted / porous and generally fragments the region.
• Thus, the mountains partition the region, making it ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse. And also hard to unify.
• Movement across the region also depends on travelling through a few key chokepoints, meaning small forces can block large ones. Thus, states here tend to be more defensive.

Pyrenees

• Separate the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe, creating a stable border between Spain and France
• As a result:
  • Spain and France are institutionally and culturally distinct
  • France became more powerful, connected to continent while not having another border to defend; also made Paris more centralized since no frontier nobility
  • Spain had naval power / was imperial and spread across the Atlantic, since it didn’t have to contend across Iberian land borders and couldn’t move across the Pyrenees
  • Andorra became a stable microstate since no one gave a shit

Zagros Mountains

• Primary barrier between Persia and Arabia, making them culturally distinct
• Iran sits on a defensible plateau, making its institutions stable. Also explains why they won the Iran-Iraq war
• Gives oil / gas resources
• Houses a diversity of different ethnic groups in the mountains: Kurds, Lurs, Bakhtiari, Qashqai, Assyrians

Atlas Mountains