Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Transylvania, along with the rest of Romania, was ruled until recently by a Communist dictator who
seems to have had a touch of the Transylvanian madman in his blood. Nicolae Ceausescu came to power
in Romania in 1967 and began a reign of brutal suppression that fit right in with the region's gory past.
He filled prisons with political prisoners who suffered modern forms of torture and death, and razed entire
villages to force the people into dreary state-owned buildings while building a magnificent palace for him-
self. An army rebellion in 1989 led to Ceausescu's overthrow. He was quickly tried and executed, along
with his wife, by firing squad. One tragically ironic footnote to this recent chapter of Romania's sad his-
tory is the awful result of a misguided experiment. In an attempt to improve health among Romanian chil-
dren during the Ceausescu regime, infants were unknowingly given blood transfusions with AIDS-tainted
blood, spawning a generation of Romanian AIDS babies.
How Did Japan Do It?
If you simply take the usual geographical factors into account, Japan should not be one of the world's
most powerful nations, with an economy that ranks among the world's leaders. From a purely geographical
standpoint, Japan has everything going against it. Yet in less than a century—after Commodore Matthew
Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay for the second time in 1854—Japan transformed itself from an isolated, prac-
tically medieval feudal state into a modern, innovative, economic superpower.
Japan is small, made up of hundreds of mountainous islands scattered over more than 1,500 miles
(2,400 km). It lacks natural resources—land and oil, most of all. Four fifths of the country is mountainous.
Forests, which are held sacred, cover almost two thirds of the country, more than in any other industrial
nation. Only 15 percent of Japan's total land can be farmed. Sitting on the Pacific Ocean's Ring of Fire,
Japan is subject to regular violent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and devastating tsunamis. Japan also
lies on the western Pacific typhoon track, which frequently brings fierce tropical hurricanes and deadly
flooding to coastal areas.
But in a way that might be described as typically oriental, Japan has done a judo move on its geography,
turning weaknesses into strength. All of the nation's geographical flaws have been met by positive re-
sponses. Rather than limiting the Japanese, geography has compelled the government and people to ad-
opt cultural attitudes and national policies that have allowed the tiny island state to prosper. For instance,
Japanese architects have designed skyscrapers for Japan's cities that can survive earthquakes of great
strength. In cities situated near live volcanoes, elaborate evacuation drills are practiced regularly in which
the Japanese genius—or obsession—for social organization and order is vividly demonstrated.
The fact that Japan is an island forced the Japanese to concentrate on developing trade. Today, its phe-
nomenal wealth is primarily based on international trade. From a historical perspective, Japan is not unique
in this respect. Other great empires throughout history have been centered on small islands or land-poor
nations that turned to overseas trade to buttress their geographically limited home economies. In the pro-
cess, they gathered technical, agricultural, artistic, and cultural expertise from the nations with which they
had contact. This was certainly true of ancient Greece. While not entirely an island, Greece was made up
of several Aegean island states which, along with the mainland city-states, had precious little land to ex-
ploit. Forced to turn seaward, the Greeks became great sailors and dominated Mediterranean trade. Then
from every country they reached, the Greeks brought back substantial contributions to their mathematics,
astronomy, philosophy, and art, all of which enriched their own civilization and were then passed on to the
different sectors of their empire.
Similarly, Holland is not an island. But pressed up against a sea that constantly threatened to drown the
countryside, and lacking sufficient land and resources, the Dutch still built a vast international sea-trading
