In April of 1904, a lecture by Sir Halford J. Mackinder, the founder of the school of geopolitics, called "The Geographical Pivot of History" was published in the Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. Mackinder's thesis argued that the coming of steam power, electricity and the railways was at last permitting continental nations to overcome the physical obstacles that had hampered their development in the past. In particular, the railway was enabling tsarist Russia to exploit its vast internal resources and to make strategic inroads in the far east and towards India that its imperial rival Great Britain could not counter. Land power was thus eroding the geopolitical advantages that had been enjoyed by the western sea powers.

The rest of the 20th century bore witness to Mackinder's treatise.

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