Heartland

Heartland is used in geography to refer to the central areas of a country. This occurs in many nations and areas, such as Eurasia and the United States.

* In Eurasia, the Heartland is remote and inaccessible from the periphery.

* The term Heartland is also frequently used to describe the Midwestern region of the United States. It is also used for other areas of the US which are culturally similar to the Heartland; for example, the Stater Bros. supermarket chain, which is concentrated in the Inland Empire counties of southern and central California, ran TV commercials for many years using the slogan "in the Heartland" to refer to inland counties such as San Bernardino County, Kern County and Riverside County being culturally more similar to the central United States than to coastal California. In the state of Florida is a region called the Florida Heartland, a six county region that is rural and in the south central part of the state.

* The term "Hindi heartland" is used to refer to the Hindi-speaking states of Northern India, namely Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
* In Singapore, "Heartlanders" (as opposed to "Cosmopolitans") was a term popularised in 1999 by then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, to characterise the majority of the Singapore population that is generally poorer, less educated, either working class or lower-middle class, speaks a distinct variety of English (Singlish), lives in HDB housing estates, and has a local (rather than global) perspective on political, economic and cultural issues.
* In Poland - the main part of country, meaning Mazovia.

Geopolitics

Heartland as a geopolitical term was originally created by Sir Halford Mackinder in his address, "The Geographical Pivot of History", to the Royal Geographic Society.

"Heartland" refers to the continuous landmass of Eurasia measuring more than 21 million square miles (54 million km²). This landmass contains no waterways to the ocean and is contained by the Arctic ice cap and drainage to the north, the monsoon lands along the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, the Near East or land of the Five Seas, and Europe. This landmass is remote and inaccessible to its periphery. Mackinder argued in his address that this was the strategic region of the foremost importance in the World.

The term "heartland" was important in the writings of Adolf Hitler's geopolitical mentor Karl Haushofer, who greatly influenced Hitler's concept of lebensraum which he advanced in "Mein Kampf", and formed the basis of the eventual establishment of Hitler's New Order--i.e., that it is necessary for Nazi Germany to control the heartland of Eurasia by successfully completing the conquest of Russia.

The term is used by United States geopolitician Zbigniew Brzezinski in his writings.

ee also

* "Heartlanders", Singapore English language television drama