AP Human Geo Flashcards
Political Geography
The study of the ways in which the world is organized as a reflection of the power that different groups have.
State
A politically organized independent territory with a government, defined borders, and a permanent population.
Sovereignty
The right of a government to control and defend its territory and determine what happens within its borders.
Nations
Cultural entities, meaning that they are made up of individuals who have forged a common identity through a shared language, religion, ethnicity, or heritage.
Nation-state
When the territory occupied by a group who view themselves as a nation has politically recognized boundaries of the state they call their own.
Multistate nation
Consists of people who share a cultural or ethnic background but live in more than one country.
Irredentism
Attempting to acquire territories in neighboring states inhabited by people of the same nation.
Multinational state
A country with various ethnicities and cultures living inside its borders.
Autonomous/Semiautomomous
When countries contain regions that are given some authority to govern their own territories independently from the national government.
Stateless nation
A people united by culture, language, history, and tradition but not possessing a state.
Territoriality
The attempt by an individual or group to affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area.
Colonialism
Describes the practice of claiming and dominating overseas territories.
Neocolonialism
Endures the use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries, especially former dependencies.
Choke point
A narrow, strategic passageway to another place through which it is difficult to pass.
Shatterbelts
States form, join, and break up because of ongoing, sometimes violent, conflicts among parties and because they are caught between the interests of more powerful outside states.
Self-determination
The right of all people to choose their own political status.
Imperialism
The push to create an empire by exercising force or influence to control other nations or people’s.
Devolution
Occurs when the central power in a state is broken up among regional authorities within its borders.
Defining
When countries explicitly state in legally binding documentation such as a treaty where their borders are located, using reference points such as natural features or lines of latitude and longitude.
Delimit
When countries draw their boundaries on a map in accordance with a legal agreement, as the U.S. did in its 1848 treaty with Mexico.
Demarcated
Physical markers or barriers on boundaries like stones, pillars, walls, or fences.
Administer
To manage the way the borders are maintained and how goods and people will cross them.
Antecedent boundaries
Boundaries that are established before many people settle into an area.
Subsequent boundaries
Drawn in areas that have been settled by people and where cultural landscapes already exist or are in the process of being established.
Consequent boundaries
A type of subsequent boundary:
A boundary that takes into account the differences that exist within a cultural landscape, separating groups that have distinct languages, religions, ethnicities, or other traits.
Superimposed
When boundaries are drawn over existing accepted borders, by an outside or conquering force.
Geometric boundaries
Boundaries that are mathematical, and typically follow lines of latitude and longitude, or are straight line arcs between 2 points, instead of following physical and cultural features.
relics
Former boundaries that once existed but no longer have an official function.
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
This established the structure of maritime boundaries, stating that a country’s territorial seas extend 12 nautical miles off its coast.
Exclusive economic zone
A zone that extends 200 nautical miles from its coast.
Foreign aid
Money, often times for a lot of basic needs.
Diplomacy
Peaceful negotiation to solve problems.
Military Force
When diplomacy fails, force is used to achieve goals.
Microstate
A very small state like Singapore.
Territorial integrity
The right of a state to defend sovereign territories against incursion from other states.
Empires are not states
This is because territory is not clearly defined, boundaries were not set or recognized, and they included a large amount of ethnic and cultural groups.
Peace of Westphalia
This marks the beginning of the modern state system, 1648, treaty between princes of the states making up the Holy Roman Empire.
