"The facts of location do not change. The significant of such facts changes with every shift in the means of communication, in routes of communication, in the technique of war, and in the centers of world power, and the full meaning of a given location can be obtained only by considering the specific area in relations to two systems of reference: a geographic system of reference from which we derive the facts of location, and a historical system of reference by which we evaluate those facts."
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Journalists from the United StatesPolitical scientists from the United StatesDiplomats of the United StatesPeople from AmsterdamGeographers from the United States
Original Language: English
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"Geography and Foreign Policy I", American Political Science Review, Vol XXXII, No. 1 (February 1938), p. 29.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nicholas_J._Spykman
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Nicholas J. Spykman
Nicholas John Spykman (pronounced "Speak-man", 13 October 1893 – 26 June 1943) was an American political scientist who was one of the founders of the classical realist school in American foreign policy, transmitting Eastern European political thought to the United States. A Sterling Professor of International Relations, teaching as part of the Institute for International Studies at Yale University, one of his prime concerns was making his students geographically literate, as geopolitics was impo
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