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American Geographical Society The Economic Geography of Siberia Sibirien und seine wirtschaftliche Zukunft: Ein Ruckblick und Ausblick auf Handel und Industrie Sibiriens by P. W. Danckwortt Geographical Review, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr., 1923), pp. 314-315 Published by: American Geographical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/208456 . Accessed: 09/05/2014 12:23 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.78.109.51 on Fri, 9 May 2014 12:23:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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American Geographical Society

The Economic Geography of SiberiaSibirien und seine wirtschaftliche Zukunft: Ein Ruckblick und Ausblick auf Handel undIndustrie Sibiriens by P. W. DanckworttGeographical Review, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr., 1923), pp. 314-315Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/208456 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 12:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toGeographical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.51 on Fri, 9 May 2014 12:23:27 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS

THE ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY OF SIBERIA

P. W. DANCKWORTT. Sibirien und seine wirtschaftliche Zukunft: Ein Riickblick und Aus- blick auf Handel und Industrie Sibiriens. xii and 27I pp.; bibliogr. Osteuropa-Institut in Breslau, Quellen und Studien, Section 7, No. 2. B. G. Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin, 1921. 8 /x 6 inches.

Since the World War Germany has been looking eastward towards fields where she hopes ultimately to regain something of her lost commercial position and political prestige. If the doors leading to Africa and the Pacific are definitely locked against her ambitions, those of Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia may yet be opened, and she only waits to enter when the time is ripe. Meanwhile she purposes to survey the ground and to educate her- self in everything that pertains to .the lands beyond her eastern frontiers. One of the fore- most agencies that she has created in order to carry out this program of self-education is the Osteuropa-Institut, founded in Breslau in x918. The book before us is one of an elaborately conceived series of studies now being published by the Institut, a series which will deal with the geography, as well as the economic and intellectual life, of eastern Europe and the neighboring countries.

Danckwortt's volume is a veritable encyclopedic manual for the politician, trader, or investor, crammed full of detailed facts and statistical tables. Most of the latter date from before 19I4, for the presumption is that any figures available from the period since the war are highly unreliable. The writer is severely sceptical of Russian estimates in regard to Siberian economic potentialities and claims that his conclusions are based either on per- sonal observation or on the testimony of German prisoners; never on the verbal assertions of Russians.

After a preliminary regional sketch of Siberia as a whole and of Siberian internal and for- eign commerce before I914, Danckwortt writes in detail of climate, communications, agri- culture, hunting, fisheries, mineral resources, and manufactures. He closes with some important observations on the history of Siberian industry since the revolution, its collapse at the fall of the Kolchak regime, and on German prospects in Asiatic Russia.

The book is more than a compilation of economic details. Danckwortt is embued with the spirit of the geographer as well as of the economist, and he envisages many of the eco- nomic problems of Siberia in terms of environment. The influence of environment is imme- diate, frequently all-powerful, in enormous and sparsely settled colonial tracts like Siberia. The extreme continental climate and the vastness of the area in proportion to the number of its inhabitants are the outstanding environmental elements in Siberian life. Danckwortt believes, however, that the climate is on the whole not quite as frightful as it has been pic- tured. We are prone to forget that Siberia covers over thirty degrees of latitude; that some parts of it are relatively mild; and, above all, that the warmth of the summers admits of agriculture at localities far to the north. Summer wheat may be grown at Yakutsk, no more than 400 miles from the cold pole of the world (Verkhoyansk, where the mean temperature in January is 58? F. below zero). Snowfall, nowhere very heavy in Siberia, is heaviest in the Altai Mountains and in the western taiga or forested zone. In the taiga the protection of the snow renders the cultivation of winter wheat more successful than on the open, wind- swept steppes farther south where the temperatures are higher. Much of Siberia is charac- terized by tracts underlain by "fossil ice," strata of earth that remain perpetually frozen below a thin covering of soil which thaws out in the summer. This "fossil ice" does not prevent the growth of trees or other forms of vegetable life. Indeed, through its retention of water, it may even be beneficial to plant life. The southern limit of the area of frozen earth is determined as much by the distribution of snowfall as by temperature. In the west, the border line is held far north by the snow that mantles the ground and retains warmth. Near Lake Baikal, however, the line swings southward to the Chinese frontier, leaving the whole of eastern Siberia, except the extreme southeast beyond Blagovyeshchensk, in the region of frozen earth.

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GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS

The problem of communications over the immense expanses of plain and highland remote from the narrow thread of railway is intimately associated with climate. There are but few constructed roads in Siberia. Navigation on the rivers and with it the possibility of export by the northern sea route (see this number of the Geogr. Rev., p. 309) is open for two months of the year only. On the other hand communication by land is facilitated by the freezing over of the lakes, streams, and swamps which in winter offer level and unobstructed high- ways.

Agricultural land, forests, and mineral deposits are Siberia's primary resources. Signifi- cant progress has already been made in agriculture, especially in the west. Before the war the export of butter from the plains east of the Ural had assumed no small proportions. Danckwortt prophesies that Siberia is destined to become a vast granary which will ulti- mately supply the outside world with breadstuffs. The forests are an immense and very slightly known resource. Stretching the whole length of the country from the Ural Moun- tains to the Pacific, they are broken here and there by swamps and meadows along the river valleys and by burnt-over tracts-for the forest fire is a curse in northern Asia as in Canada. The character of the forest varies widely with the region. In the Amur and Maritime Prov- inces heavier precipitation gives the woods a thickness of growth and luxuriance that is lacking farther to the west. The mineral deposits of Siberia are unquestionably very great; but they are not thoroughly explored, and we should be on our guard against exaggerated estimates of their extent or wealth.

Siberia's greatest needs are capital, labor, and improved routes of communication whereby her natural resources may be made available, and the manufactures fostered that are essen- tial to the establishment of her present and future population on a sound basis. Only these will enable her to recover from the period of "industrial insanity" (as Danckwortt charac- terizes the Bolshevik regime) which she has gone through during the last few years.

Danckwortt believes that the Russians are incapable without aid from abroad of achiev- ing economic prosperity in Siberia. He indulges in much comment that is possibly a little hypercritical on the visionary and impractical qualities of the Russian character. Nor does he ever fail, when he has the chance, to laud Germanic intelligence and enterprise, espe- cially as shown by German and Austrian prisoners of war. It is not easy for us to accept at its full face value his yivid account of the stimulus which these prisoners gave to Siberian industry nor to believe that the economic breakdown and confusion that followed their repatriation was due altogether to their departure. Danckwortt sees Germany's oppor- tunity in Russian incompetence.

But apart from its German bias, Danckwortt's book seems to be conservative and sound, an admirable introduction to the economic geography of a region about which reliable in- formation is all too difficult to obtain.

REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA AND THE GREEK MEDITERRANEAN

GIOTTO DAINELLI. La regione balcanica: Sguardo d'insieme al paese e alle genti. iv and 124 pp.; maps. Soc. An. Editrice "La Voce," Florence, I922. 7 x 5Y3 inches.

OTTO MAULL. Griechisches Mittelmeergebiet. I32 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliogr., index. Jedermanns Biicherei. Ferdinand Hirt, Breslau, 1922. 73 x 5 inches.

These little books are models of compact regional description written for the layman by the professional geographer. In each, after some preliminary general discussion of the re- spective regions, physiography, climate, vegetation, and human geography are taken up in logical order. There is constantly kept before the reader's mind the relation between environment and human life and between the whole and its component parts. Influences of environment are not exaggerated, and due weight is given to historical and ethnographic forces in determining present conditions of life. Dainelli covers the broader field and aims to set forth in bold outline a relatively few essential facts and ideas. Maull has produced a work of finer texture. The German love of minute analysis appears in numerous passages in small type and in a detailed description of local regions forming Part II of "Griechisches Mittelmeergebiet." Maull's material, however, is well arranged and well expressed, and there is little danger that the reader will lose sight of the unifying structure of the argument through the meshes of its elaboration.

The problem of communications over the immense expanses of plain and highland remote from the narrow thread of railway is intimately associated with climate. There are but few constructed roads in Siberia. Navigation on the rivers and with it the possibility of export by the northern sea route (see this number of the Geogr. Rev., p. 309) is open for two months of the year only. On the other hand communication by land is facilitated by the freezing over of the lakes, streams, and swamps which in winter offer level and unobstructed high- ways.

Agricultural land, forests, and mineral deposits are Siberia's primary resources. Signifi- cant progress has already been made in agriculture, especially in the west. Before the war the export of butter from the plains east of the Ural had assumed no small proportions. Danckwortt prophesies that Siberia is destined to become a vast granary which will ulti- mately supply the outside world with breadstuffs. The forests are an immense and very slightly known resource. Stretching the whole length of the country from the Ural Moun- tains to the Pacific, they are broken here and there by swamps and meadows along the river valleys and by burnt-over tracts-for the forest fire is a curse in northern Asia as in Canada. The character of the forest varies widely with the region. In the Amur and Maritime Prov- inces heavier precipitation gives the woods a thickness of growth and luxuriance that is lacking farther to the west. The mineral deposits of Siberia are unquestionably very great; but they are not thoroughly explored, and we should be on our guard against exaggerated estimates of their extent or wealth.

Siberia's greatest needs are capital, labor, and improved routes of communication whereby her natural resources may be made available, and the manufactures fostered that are essen- tial to the establishment of her present and future population on a sound basis. Only these will enable her to recover from the period of "industrial insanity" (as Danckwortt charac- terizes the Bolshevik regime) which she has gone through during the last few years.

Danckwortt believes that the Russians are incapable without aid from abroad of achiev- ing economic prosperity in Siberia. He indulges in much comment that is possibly a little hypercritical on the visionary and impractical qualities of the Russian character. Nor does he ever fail, when he has the chance, to laud Germanic intelligence and enterprise, espe- cially as shown by German and Austrian prisoners of war. It is not easy for us to accept at its full face value his yivid account of the stimulus which these prisoners gave to Siberian industry nor to believe that the economic breakdown and confusion that followed their repatriation was due altogether to their departure. Danckwortt sees Germany's oppor- tunity in Russian incompetence.

But apart from its German bias, Danckwortt's book seems to be conservative and sound, an admirable introduction to the economic geography of a region about which reliable in- formation is all too difficult to obtain.

REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA AND THE GREEK MEDITERRANEAN

GIOTTO DAINELLI. La regione balcanica: Sguardo d'insieme al paese e alle genti. iv and 124 pp.; maps. Soc. An. Editrice "La Voce," Florence, I922. 7 x 5Y3 inches.

OTTO MAULL. Griechisches Mittelmeergebiet. I32 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliogr., index. Jedermanns Biicherei. Ferdinand Hirt, Breslau, 1922. 73 x 5 inches.

These little books are models of compact regional description written for the layman by the professional geographer. In each, after some preliminary general discussion of the re- spective regions, physiography, climate, vegetation, and human geography are taken up in logical order. There is constantly kept before the reader's mind the relation between environment and human life and between the whole and its component parts. Influences of environment are not exaggerated, and due weight is given to historical and ethnographic forces in determining present conditions of life. Dainelli covers the broader field and aims to set forth in bold outline a relatively few essential facts and ideas. Maull has produced a work of finer texture. The German love of minute analysis appears in numerous passages in small type and in a detailed description of local regions forming Part II of "Griechisches Mittelmeergebiet." Maull's material, however, is well arranged and well expressed, and there is little danger that the reader will lose sight of the unifying structure of the argument through the meshes of its elaboration.

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