When a country identifies its national resources, it helps it to form an identity around that resource. Think Texas oil or Maine lobster. Every nation has some golden commodity. Some more or less than others. This scale of resources is directly related to the scale of national prosperity. Norway has mining and fishing, fjords and skiing. Such a combination has produced a society keen on exploration and industrious trade. This universal factor of logistics has its place among chief indicators of national contentment and success.

How does the sun set in your country? What is your national pastime? How is the maritime trade going? The answer to these questions depends upon the precise placement of your homeland on the sphere of this earth. The latitude and longitude of your borders will be a determining factor in its prosperity or its troubles. An equatorial country is at all times closer to the sun, therefore warmer than other locations, giving way to tropical manners and custom. A nation in equatorial Africa is by placement doomed to the constant threat of jungle disease, while Greenlanders simply worry about frostbite. On the other hand, the African may, due to the climate, run about without a shirt and survive, while the Greenlander must wear several layers to survive. This location factor then must be examined, exploited, and complied with in order to insure a national success.

The lines on the map tell us about the sovereign control a nation claims over its space. This space well occupied and rightly exploited can allow a country to define itself, becoming prosperous or pitiful by virtue of its borders.

Borders are rarely superficial but seem to be created by the hand of natural boundaries such as water or mountain ranges. These boundaries place two or more countries apart from each other even though they are only inches apart. Such lines are often scoffed at as artificial or spurious, but without them there are no nations.

Understanding history begins not with the events themselves, but with the advent of a language that conveys events into words. Poetry is speech aligned. Wars begin and end with the proliferation of language. Even law is rhetorical. All the technology in the world does not function without a unique vocabulary to sustain it. Language separates us by light years from the animal kingdom, and allows us dominion over the moon and planets, mountains and poles. Language then is a foundational factor to the success of a nation.

Nations—their leaders and citizens—can and should understand the factors that are integral to their country’s prosperity or demise. Historical observation can give some insight as to the identity of these crucial factors.

Many political seers have endeavored to define which factors interplayed and finessed could determine national success, but have done so armed only with a humanistic foundation.