Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ocean. Or a narrow pass through a mountain range becomes a funnel through which all men and materi-
als must pass. The twenty-five-mile-long Khyber Pass, in the rugged mountains between Afghanistan and
Pakistan, was historically the key access to India. It has been fought over for centuries since the Persian
Empire and Alexander the Great. A town like Hastings in England might be the key to the lone road that
leads to the heart of a nation. Another small, seemingly unimportant town, such as Gettysburg or Ypres,
becomes a critical crossroads because of the roads that run through it. Generals of great armies have to feed
thousands. Matters of food and supplies become complicated when invading forces, far from home and a
reliable source of support, look to a supply depot or a rich food-growing area, which becomes a target of
great significance.
Sometimes the geography is merely symbolic. A capital city, like Jerusalem, Washington, DC, or Paris,
becomes a prize of great value. Or perhaps it is a fortified city like Verdun, or an outpost like Dien Bien
Phu—a point on the map elevated into a crucible that will determine the turning of a war.
These matters of geography often do determine the outcome of wars—or at least of the battles that
determine the outcome of wars. One vivid example of that came in one of the most significant battles in
American history, the three days of bloody fighting at that small crossroads in Pennsylvania farm coun-
try called Gettysburg. As John Noble Wilford recounts in his topic
The Mapmakers
, “it was at Gettysburg
that [Gouverneur Kemble] Warren, chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, cast his topographer's eye
across the battlefield and recognized the strategic importance of Little Round Top. He led troops to seize
the hill before the Confederates could, an action that proved decisive to the Union victory.”
While the heroics of this soldier-mapmaker, immortalized in a plaque at the Gettysburg battlefield, may
be a unique case of a cartographer having such an obvious impact on the course of a battle, there is no
question that geography has had a great deal to do with determining where battles have been fought and,
likewise, their outcome. Throughout military history, wise generals—and admirals—have always chosen
their spots well, using terrain to determine tactics. The following is a list of some of the world's most not-
able battlefields; the battles fought there were all turning points in which geographical factors influenced
the course of history.
World Battlefields That Shaped History
Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis
Five hundred years before Christ, Persia was by far the world's
largest empire, spreading from its base in present-day Iran over Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Egypt, and
Afghanistan. Greece was a collection of fledgling city-states, with Athens gradually emerging as the cent-
ral power. When the Ionians—Greeks living in what is now Turkey—revolted against their Persian rulers,
other Greek states stepped into what became known as the Persian Wars, lasting nearly fifty years.
Marathon was on an open plain in Greece, northeast of Athens. There, in 490
BC
, an Athenian army
under Miltiades, a Greek general who had once served under the Persian king Darius, defeated a Persian
invading force twice its size. Fearing that Athens might surrender to a Persian fleet, Miltiades dispatched
a runner, Pheidippides, to the city to report on the victory. On reaching Athens, he delivered the message,
then collapsed and died. The Olympic games of ancient Greece commemorated this runner with the mara-
thon, a race equal to the distance Pheidippides had covered.
Ten years after Marathon, the Persians, now led by Xerxes, again crossed into Greece with an estimated
one hundred eighty thousand men. This army, perhaps at that time the largest ever seen in Europe, was met
by a small force of three hundred Spartans under Leonidas at Thermopylae, a narrow pass in east-central
Greece on the principal route from the north. Despite their enormous numerical superiority, the Persians
