Political Geography: State Shapes and Borders AP Human Geography

Territorial Morphology: The Shape of States Compact Prorupted Elongated Fragmented Perforated Micro

Compact Ease of communication; distance from capital to everything else easy Example: Switzerland; Hungary

Prorupted Compact with a large projecting extension Issues with “devolution” sometimes Example: DR Congo; Thailand

Fragmented States with several discontinuous pieces of territory; like islands. Devolution an issue Example: Indonesia

Perforated A state the completely surrounds another one Example: South Africa and Lesotho

Elongated Long narrow shape due to geography or other political or economic reasons Examples: Chile and Gambia

Microstates Tiny, usually homogenous, states Example: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Singapore

Exclaves and Enclaves Exclaves: small bits of territory that lie separate from the rest of the state by another state; not land locked Example: Russia and Kaliningrad

Enclaves Enclaves: landlocked pieces of a state surrounded by another state Example: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh

Boundaries Physical: easy to see and use; water (lakes, rivers, etc..) use the median-line principle Oceans use: Law of the Sea (1983)- territory goes out to 12 nautical miles Cultural: harder to define; language? Religion? Ethnicity? “Balkanization” and “shatter belts”(Caucasus Mts.) Geometric: straight and imaginary

Physical and Geometric

Balkanization and “Shatter Belts”

Boundary Disputes Positional(definitional): Where is the border? India and China over Assam/Himalayas Territorial: Who should own what? Pakistan vs. India over Kashmir Resource(allocation): Who gets to use the stuff? Ex: Kuwait vs. Iraq (oil); GA VS FLA. Over water Functional(operational): What rules should we use at the border? Ex: USA/Mexico border control and NAFTA

India and China