How Geography Made America The World Leader?

18,137 views Wait, is this logic right? • Mar 08, 2024

Slog Reference: How Geography decides our Past and Present and Future

Description

The unique geographical position of the United States of America has a lot to do with its superpower status than you might think. This video covers how geography can tell you a lot more information about an area than just different locations. Find out how oil, coal, minerals, fertile plains, farmland, coastline, climate, and more things made the US a superpower.

Books mentioned in the video:
Guns, Germs and Steel: https://tapthe.link/GunsGermsSteelBookD

More videos for you:
Jodhabai did WHAT to India: https://youtu.be/NPCB7mIDvaU
Why India is overpopulated: https://youtu.be/Sjur6Bu30YM
Geopolitics of Mahabharata: https://youtu.be/HJcg4Y265_s

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Links for further investigation:
Alabama coastlines and modern elections: https://tapthe.link/WyDGJn42s
How geography made US a superpower thread: https://tapthe.link/Tu3t4Y8US
Why Europeans dominated Americans thread: https://tapthe.link/VQdvKClrr
Why Brazilians speak Portuguese thread: https://tapthe.link/Gm8rZWCB6
India’s overpopulation thread: https://tapthe.link/MQd1US9tK
Locust attacks vs the shape of Indian Ocean: https://tapthe.link/GDThkPuYu
Chicago size vs ice age: https://tapthe.link/Z8yalRNEX
Why New York is bigger than most east coast cities: https://tapthe.link/gMZga5A9b
Blue banana GDP: https://tapthe.link/3AJGRsekK
Geography interesting posts: https://tapthe.link/NRuOS6_2U
YT channel for geography: https://www.youtube.com/geographynow

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:20 Geography
01:39 Explaining things based on geography
04:41 How US became a superpower
06:05 Producing stuff/farming
07:00 Oil and gas
08:55 US & Power
09:15 Why white europeans took over America
11:40 Diseases
13:26 Geography is amazing

#futureiq #geopolitics

Related Slog Matches

How Geography decides our Past and Present and Future

Date Proximity

60.00

Transcript

- why is us the most powerful country in the world shant uh because they have a large army they have more advanced technology they have lots of food I don't know none of the above it's because of their geography geography yes geography yes geography of a country decides so much of their past present and their future in fact in the US elections in Alabama are decided by the co line 100 million years ago okay hold on are you trying to tell me that having a huge Army having lots of food having a great technological advancements have nothing to of course that is the reason why that is called proximate reason okay okay but why does us have that I mean compared to

0m 48s other countries right why does us have the biggest army why does us have the most technology trade capitalism lots of countries in the world have free trade and capitalism Why Us is where ahead of everybody else uh oh wait they did not get involved in the world wars until it was too late and so they didn't suffer as many devastations as other countries in Europe why didn't they get involved until too late because they were quite far from where the war was taking place which was mostly now we are coming to geography right okay us is separated from the rest of the World by Atlantic on one side Pacific on the other side that's why the world war didn't engulf

1m 31s them the way it got everybody else good point and that is why they did so well after that right but that's not the only aspect of geography that helped them right now geography controls so many things right geography like I said controls why Alabama elections go a certain way and that depends on the coastline 100 million years ago geography decides why the Europe I an took over all of America and not the other way around when Columbus discovered right it could have happened that Columbus discovers America and then America comes and takes over all of Europe but that didn't happen yeah and even geography determines why Brazil speaks Portuguese where the rest of the continent speaks uh Spanish let's look

2m 21s at these maps of Alabama okay okay look at the first one okay the little green band you see that's where where the coast of that continent ended 100 million years ago okay because the ocean levels were different okay what happens at a coast you get sedimentary deposits okay so now these are the sedimentary deposits later what happened okay ocean levels uh went down the rest of the land masks became exposed and America much later if you look at which part of Alabama has fertile soil you will see the EXA exact same band decided by a coastline 100 million years ago okay now let's come to 1997 okay okay let's look at Alabama and let's look at the average sizes of farms

3m 16s in different parts of Alabama do you see anything interesting in the map big farms along what seems to be the same Coastline as the previous two three Maps correct so 100 million years ago the coastline determined Farm sizes today okay but let's go back 150 years ago let's look at the slave population in Alabama does this look familiar it's again the same Coastline why uh because those were the biggest farms and therefore needed the most slaves to work on those Farms right so now let's move forward to 2010 and let's look at the black population at Alabama familiar yep because most of them didn't move move they decided to stay where their ancestors stayed and

4m 03s therefore created large swads of population and now let's move to 2020 and let's look at Which counties got Republican votes and which one Democratic seats the blue is clearly Democratic and it's still the same patch of fertile soil which was laid down 100 million years ago geography is history geography is Destiny right okay wait geography explains why a certain election result set of election results happened in a certain way but it still doesn't explain how the us became a superpower let's look at the advantages of the US okay let's look at the map of us okay you will notice it has the largest navigable waterway in the world the Mississippi Missouri river system is the largest river system and

4m 58s Boots can go all the way up okay not just that but just a little north of this rivers are the huge Great Lakes okay now why does navigable rivers and waterways have such a big uh impact oh I remember we uh did something along these line uh in another episode because uh shipping through Water Shipping is actually the cheapest form of transporting cargo it is 10 to 30 times cheaper than any other method right so in terms of trade us has a huge Advantage things grown in like Way Center of us can quickly reach the coast and from there quickly reach Europe or anywhere in the world because of large navigable waterways right wow okay

5m 49s things in the middle of Africa just can't get out it's just impossible to get out right and okay so yeah all right so uh waterways help moving stuff but what about producing stuff in the first place us has the largest contiguous Farmland in the world okay it makes so much food it grows so much food that it is the number one exporter in the world and it exports twice more than the number two country in the world okay all right so India also has large planes but it's not contiguous they're fragmented yeah okay also smaller country as compared to the US in terms of the breads yeah yeah correct in just in general us is large right now China

6m 39s Canada and Russia they are bigger countries yes but they don't have large enough planes and their land isn't that fertile right I mean Canada is and Russia are of course cold and China is like a large chunk is desert right and another way geography helps us is is that oil and gas it is now the number one producer all right so fuel is available food is available transport is available therefore everybody across the continent is going to be wellfed yeah and not just that hot piping food not just that but the ocean currents actually help them in a way that it doesn't help others right so on the East Coast near New York Washington Etc the

7m 26s warm Atlantic current comes and warms them up so that their ports are usable for a longer time in the year and people can live more comfortably okay and on the west coast California which otherwise would have been very hot it gets cold currents all right fascinating so uh the ocean currents the availability of waterways for transport the availability of contigous tracks of plain farmland for producing food uh and uh lots of oil and natural gas all of this contributes to lots of food being produced which contributes to abundance and prosperity and of course the oil and gas is in the last 100 years that has become one of the most important things all Prosperity depends on energy hold on

8m 12s we discussed these same things in that episode where we talked about India being the most populous why is the us then the most powerful instead so before 1500 okay before Columbus landed up the America didn't have cows cows again yes because they didn't have cows because they didn't have any large domesticated animal yeah they couldn't do all that Farmland they couldn't use it effectively because everything the tilling had to be done by humans and not Bulls right that is one problem and of course the north south nature of uh the Americas means that any new invention of farming techniqu can't move South because the climate is different the soil is different everything is different right yeah and

9m 05s the first time I heard this north south and eastwest think the word that popped into my head was vastu then I said no there is no vastu in this context it is something else I guess you could call it vastu in general the East West versus North South makes such a big difference that that also explains why white Europeans took over the Americas okay you have to explain this because it makes no sense what to me right now so first simple what I said earlier right that in an East West continent like Asia any farming techniques that gets invented quickly moves east and west and it is applicable to the adjacent countries and that's how they all

9m 46s quickly invented new and newer and newer ways of farming newer and newer I mean you should see what some of our staple food used to look like 2,000 years be uh before we did all kinds of AG cultural Innovations okay but that's why Europe was so much better at agriculture it was so much better at feeding large armies compared to the Americas in Americas the inventions can't move up and down because everything is different cor but at each latitude you need a different technology to make the food survive on at that latitude for similar reasons another thing that happened is that uh any population a tribe uh you know which is living in a particular area can

10m 31s quickly move to a adjacent East West area and go and fight there go and fight their take over and all that right somebody used to living in the north if they try to come to the South they're at a disadvantage right so having Wars north south isn't as easy in the days before technology okay and that is why Europeans had lots and lots and lots and lots of wars and the Americas had much fewer Wars okay what does that do uh that causes attration in Europe and uh no it gives Europe lots of practice with fighting Wars and knowing how to win Wars and in even simple things like what kind of manipulation can you do to get

11m 21s them to fight each other right all of those politics Europeans had like thousands of years of practice whereas these guys were just you know not that good okay one more thing right because they have so many wars and these populations all coming and fighting with each other do you know what else spreads uh diseases absolutely so that is why Europeans had like all kinds of germs where you know one Germ at this end quickly reaches the other end and they're full of germs and because a similar kind of mixing wasn't happening in the Americas they didn't have as many germs as a result they didn't have as much immunity right when the Europeans landed up in the Americas they had much

12m 08s better abilities to wage war they had much more experience with Wars and they had many more germs with which to infect those guys plus they had much more food to feed right they were waging technological Warfare they were waging military Warfare they were waging biological warfare Yes Man Europe was a warmongering yes uh continent back in the day yeah I mean so there is a book called Guns Germs and Steel it's worth reading uh it makes this diamond Jared diamond yeah I mean you know there are some inaccuracies in there so don't take everything here uh wres as the gospel truth but big picture ideas are interesting enough that you will love reading about them all right uh Guns

12m 53s Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond we've also referenced it once before so that is how Europeans came to dominate America and then they brought technology here yeah and the geography of South America also determines why Brazil speaks Portuguese but we are not going to get into it I put a link take a look at it you know this is left as an exercise to the motivated listener okay he sound like a professor from University exercise for you for you motivated students out there Destiny so the thing is geography is amazing we just teach it in such a boring way that our kids hate it right so show your kids what is amazing about geography right it is important to understand how

13m 41s geography shapes the culture of a place how it has shaped 10,000 years of our history and there are many other fascinating connections between geography and what's happening in the modern world okay let me give some examples okay so I mean we already did an episode on why India is the the most populous country in the world and how that's a result of the geography our Himalayas and the Indian Ocean and cows right we he's not kidding when he says Himalayas Indian Ocean and cows because these three things are actually are actually together important for India's population they they're responsible for India's population and how the shape of euroian continent and the little gap between Australia and Philippines is

14m 29s the is the cause of the Locust storms that we see every once in a while check out the link that little gap between Philippines and Australia causes locusts inia coming well coming from Africa to India there okay so and how Chicago is such a big city because during the Ice Age there was a water stream from uh Michigan Lake to the Mississippi River all so much reminiscent of chaos theory and and the butterfly effect that I'm quite fascinated we'll put all of these links in the uh in the description in the show notes check out also there is a area in Europe called the Blue Banana which has unusually high GDP per capita the blue banana well it's the shape

15m 17s right and that also has to do with geography yeah so check it out the blue banana check it out we are two blue Bananas but we don't banow you at all banana shant n future IQ