Tellurocracy (from and ) is a concept proposed by

Aleksandr Dugin Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin ( rus, Александр Гельевич Дугин; born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist, who has been widely characterized as a fascist. Born into a military intellig ...

to describe a type of civilization or state system that is defined by the development of land territories and consistent penetration into inland territories. Tellurocratic states possess a set state-territory in which the state-forming ethnic majority lives, around this territory further land expansion occurs. Tellurocracy is conceived of as an antonym to

thalassocracy A thalassocracy or thalattocracy sometimes also maritime empire, is a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea, or a seaborne empire. Traditional thalassocracies seldom dominate interiors, even in their home territories. Examples ...

. Most states display an amalgam of tellurocratic and thalassocratic features. In

political geography Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, po ...

geopolitics Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ ''gê'' "earth, land" and πολιτική ''politikḗ'' "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to ...

and geo-economics, the term is used to explain the power of a country through its control over land. For example, prior to their merger, the Sultanate of Muscat was thalassocratic, but the

Imamate of Oman The Imamate of Oman ( ar, إِمَامَة عُمَان, Imāmat ʿUmān, links=no) refers to a historical state within the ''Oman proper'' ( ar, عُمَان ٱلْوُسْطَى, ʿUmān al-Wusṭā) in the present-day Al Hajar Mountains in ...

was landlocked and purely tellurocratic. It could be suggested that most or all landlocked states are tellurocracies.

Defining tellurocracy

Tellurocracies are generally not purely tellurocratic. In particular, most large tellurocracies have coastlines and not just inland territories, unlike thalassocracies, which historically would generally only have coastlines, and not inland territories. This makes it difficult to define what exactly a tellurocracy is. For example, the Mongols attempted to conquer Japan on multiple occasions. As well, the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The ...

conquered

Russian America Russian America (russian: Русская Америка, Russkaya Amerika) was the name for the Russian Empire's colonial possessions in North America from 1799 to 1867. It consisted mostly of present-day Alaska in the United States, but a ...

(now

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

) after it reached a point where it could no longer expand eastward by land. Likewise, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

acquired Alaska and incorporated many islands and the

Panama Canal Zone The Panama Canal Zone ( es, Zona del Canal de Panamá), also simply known as the Canal Zone, was an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the Isthmus of Panama, that existed from 1903 to 1979. It was located within the terri ...

after it could no longer expand westward. It is also worth noting that the largely tellurocratic, continental Australia, founded as a group of thalassocratic colonies, now holds its own island territories outside of its mainland, such as

Christmas Island Christmas Island, officially the Territory of Christmas Island, is an states and territories of Australia, Australian external territory comprising the island of the same name. It is located in the Indian Ocean, around south of Java and Su ...

Historical tellurocracies

Many empires of antiquity are noted for being more tellurocratic than their rivals, such as the early

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman K ...

in opposition to its rival

Carthaginian Empire Carthage () was a settlement in modern Tunisia that later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropolises in t ...

, which later as the

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

and

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

s became a rather thalassocratic, yet still quite tellurocratic rival to the quite purely tellurocratic Parthian and

Sasanian Empire The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...

Dugin's theory

In Alexandr Dugin's theory of tellurocracy, the following civilizational characteristics are traditionally attributed: a sedentary lifestyle (not excluding migratory colonization), conservatism, the permanence of legal norms, the presence of a powerful bureaucratic apparatus and central authority, strong infantry, but a weak fleet. Traditionally, tellurocracy is attributed to the Eurasian states (

Qing Empire The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...

Mongol Empire The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries was the largest contiguous land empire in history. Originating in present-day Mongolia in East Asia, the Mongol Empire at its height stretched from the Sea of Japan to parts of Eastern Europe, ...

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

, etc. although some, such as the early

and the Brazilian Empire, have come into being elsewhere. In practice, all these qualities are not always present. Moreover, certain peoples and states evolve over time in one direction or another. Russia before the

was a typical tellurocratic state. After Emperor Peter I, there was a gradual increase in the share of thalassocratic characteristics of the

and then the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, which turned into one of the largest naval powers. The

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...

, on the contrary, was for a long time a small, largely thalassocratic state outside of its home islands, but during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it increased its tellurocratic characteristics (expansion into the

Australian Outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...

and inland Africa, etc.). Dugin based his concept on the works of the crown jurist of the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

and theorist of

, Carl Schmitt. He associates tellurocracy with

Eurasianism Eurasianism (russian: евразийство, ''yevraziystvo'') is a political movement in Russia which states that Russian civilization does not belong in the " European" or "Asian" categories but instead to the geopolitical concept of Eurasia ...

, in contrast to a perceived association of thalassocracy with

Atlanticism Atlanticism, also known as Transatlanticism, is the belief in or support for a close relationship between the peoples and governments in Northern America (the United States and Canada) and those in Europe (the countries of the European Union, th ...

Notes

References

"The Sea Against the Earth"
(in Russian)
"International tension between East and West and the confrontation of the Earth and the Sea"
(in Russian) {{Authority control Forms of government Empires Former empires National Bolshevism Supercontinents Geopolitical terminology Continental unions Political theories International relations theory Landlocked countries