| dc.description.abstract | The expression „geographical course of history”, currently seen as old-fashioned or obsolete,
seems to be typical in geographical works of Nałkowski. It combines two fields that were
very close to him just from the very beginning of his scientific career: geography, to which he
has devoted his whole life, and history, which was for him a source of information necessary
to explain the diversity of landscapes. The origins of the concept can be found in works of
German geographer, educator and philosopher Ernst Christian Kapp, which were poorly
known in the Russian language area. Nałkowski had an opportunity to acknowledge Kapp’s
instructions during his studies in Leipzig. The scholar wrote about three political-geographical
circles of culture (germ. Political-geographische Kulturkreise), which also correspond with
the stages in the development of civilization. For Nałkowski „the geographical course of
history” is a specific point of view on history. Its essence is the movement of global (political
and economic) center of civilization in three successive stages of social evolution. The first
stage is connected with the great rivers of the ancient East, the second corresponds with the
classical Greece and Rome (the Mediterranean), and the third is the period of dominance of
the so-called West (the Atlantic stage). The Atlantic stage was to be replaced with the Pacific
stage, before the advent of the global era. From the dawn of history until today the center of
civilization shifted westward and this direction is the constant element of the concept. The
article includes the results of empirical, geo-strategic and macroeconomic research, which
confirm the validity of Nałkowski’s predictions. His concept became an inspiration not only to
historians of civilization such as Feliks Koneczny and Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, but also indirectly
influenced the well-known theories of George Modelski, Peter Taylor and Samuel Huntington. | en |
