AP Human Geography
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briitt1518 on January 8, 2012
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58 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Antecedent Boundary | a boundary that existed before the cultural landscape emerged and stayed in place while people moved in to occupy the surrounding area... |
| Boundary | invisible line that marks the extent of a state's territory |
| Buffer State | a small neutral state between two rival powers |
| City-State | a city with political and economic control over the surrounding land |
| Confederate Government | A government in which the states hold more power than the central government |
| Colonialism | Attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles in another territory. |
| Colony | a body of people who settle far from home but maintain ties with their homeland |
| Compact State | the distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly |
| Commonwealth | a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them |
| Cultural Boundaries | borders based on culture traits, like language and religion |
| Domino Theory | the idea that if a nation falls under communist control, nearby nations will also fall under communist control |
| Elongated State | A state with a long, narrow shape. |
| Enclave | an enclosed territory that is culturally distinct from the foreign territory that surrounds it |
| Ethnonationalism | When ethnic groups see themselves as an individual nation and belive that they deserve their own state. |
| European Union | international organization comprised of Western European countries to promote free trade among members |
| Exclave | a part of a country that is seperated from the rest of the country and surrounded by foreign territory. |
| Federal State | An internal organization of a state that allocates most powers to units of local government. |
| Foward Capital | when the capital city is in the middle of the territory |
| Fragmented State | A state that includes several discontinuous pieces of territory. |
| Frontier | A zone separating two states in which neither state exercises political control. |
| Geometric Boundaries | boundaries of convenience drawn along lines of latitude or longitude without consideration for cultural or ethnic differences in an area |
| Gerrymandering | Process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party in power. |
| Heartland Theory | Hypothesis proposed by Halford MacKinder that held that any political power based in the heart of Eurasia could gain enough strength to eventually dominate the world. |
| Imperialism | A policy in which a strong nation seeks to dominate other countries poitically, socially, and economically or a policy of extending your rule over foreign countries |
| Land Empire | An empire that involves conquest by force in which armies attack, pillage, and plunder their way through another land, taking resources by force |
| Landlocked State | A state that does not have a direct outlet to the sea. |
| Mercantilism | an economic policy under which nations sought to increase their wealth and power by obtaining large amounts of gold and silver and by selling more goods than they bought |
| Microstate | A state or territory that is small in both size and population. |
| Multinational State | State that contains two or more ethnic groups with traditions of self-determination that agree to coexist peacefully by recognizing each other as distinct nationalities. |
| Perforated State | a state that completely surrounds another one |
| Prorupted State | A state that exhibits a narrow, elongated land extension, leading away from the main territory. |
| Nation | a politically organized body of people under a single government |
| Organic Theory | The view that states resemble biological organisms with life cycles that include all stages of life. |
| Nation-State | A state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality |
| Neocolonialism | control by a powerful country of its former colonies (or other less developed countries) by economic pressures |
| North Atlantic Treaty Organization | 1949 alliance of nations that agreed to band together in the event of war and to support and protect each nation involved |
| Political Geography | the subdivision of human geography focused on the nature and implications of the evolving spatial organization of political governance and formal political practice on the Earth's surface |
| Physical Political Boundaries | political boundary defined and delimited by a prominent physical feature in the natural landscape |
| Relic Boundaries | old political boundaries that no longer exist as international borders, but that have left an enduring mark on the local cultural or enviromental geography |
| Rimland Theory | Nicholas Spykman's theory that the domination of the coastal fringes of Eurasia would provided the base for world conquest. |
| Satellite States | national state that is economically dependent and politically and militarily subservient to another |
| Sea Empire | Empires acquired using sea power, where settlements were set up along coasts, and excursions into the interior brought loot back to those settlements, where a ship would be waiting to take the resources home |
| Self-Determination | the right of people to choose their own form of government |
| Settlement Empire | An empire intended for longer residence, rather than used for immediate return with resources |
| Shatterbelt Regions | Areas that are constantly breaking up and/or fragmenting (e.g. Southeast Asia) |
| Soveriegnty | supreme or independent political power |
| State | a politically organized body of people under a single government |
| Stateless Nation | A nationality that is not represented by a state. |
| Subsequent Boundaries | Boundary line established after an area has been populated that considered the social and cultural characteristics of the area. |
| Superimposed Boundaries | boundary line drawn in an area ignoring the existing cultural pattern |
| Supranationalism | a venture involving 3 or more national states political economic or cultural cooperation to promote shared objectives |
| Territorial Morphology | a states geographical shape, which can affect its spatial cohesion and political viability |
| Territoriality | In political geography, a country's or more local community's sense of property and attachment toward its territory, as expressed by its determination to keep it inviolable and strongly defended. |
| Theocracies | a state whose government is under the control of a ruler who is deemed to be divinely guided or under control of a group of religious leaders |
| Unitary State | An internal organization of a state that places most power in the hands of central government officials. |
| United Nations | International organization founded in 1945 to promote world peace and cooperation. It replaced the League of Nations. |
| Warsaw Pact | The 1955 treaty binding the Soviet Union and countries of eastern Europe in an alliance against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. |
| Balance of Power | an equilibrium of power between nations |
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