Geopolitics

ISSN: 1465-0045 (Print) 1557-3028 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fgeo20

German, British and French Geopolitics: The

Enduring Differences

H. van der Wusten & G. Dijkink

To cite this article: H. van der Wusten & G. Dijkink (2002) German, British and French Geopolitics:
The Enduring Differences, Geopolitics, 7:3, 19-38, DOI: 10.1080/714000970

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/714000970

Published online: 08 Sep 2010.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 604

Citing articles: 5 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fgeo20
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 19

German, British and French Geopolitics:

The Enduring Differences

H E R MA N VA N D ER W USTEN
A N D G E RT J A N D I J K I N K

Geopolitical discourses for Germany, Britain and France are outlined for several
periods since 1870. They are also categorised as to their orientations to different scales
(regional, European, global). These discourses remain different over time. Differences
are interpreted in terms of situation, state age and state organisation. At the same time
these discourses change on the basis of state system characteristics and mutual
interactions.

Introduction
For some time now the concept of ‘geopolitics’ has been disconnected from
its overly intimate relation with one group of writers who published in one
particular journal during a short period in recent German history. An
advantage is that this provides better conditions for comparative work, once
one accepts that outside Germany in the same period, and in other periods,
something that can be called ‘geopolitics’ was present. A disadvantage is
the loss of precision and historical specificity, but this argument should not
be taken too far: German geopolitical writers in the interwar period were
inspired by earlier, foreign authors like Mahan, Mackinder and Kjellen.1
In this paper we want to reap some fruits of a more general concept of
geopolitics, with an eye to interwar German geopolitics. It is our intention
to take a few steps in the direction of a comparative analysis of German,
British and French geopolitics since 1870, taking mutual impacts into
account. In this way we hope to contribute to a better understanding of
geopolitical ways of self-reflection in these three countries and their
interrelations, and to gain a sharper insight in the conjunction of factors that
gave rise to German interwar geopolitics as a particular case.
A comparative perspective may help sort out factors that have been
operative in producing the extraordinary train of events in Germany during

Herman van der Wusten, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Amsterdam,
Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands, e-mail:
<hvanderwusten@fmg.uva.nl>. Gertjan Dijkink, Department of Geography and Planning,
University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands, e-
mail: <g.j.w.dijkink@frw.uva.nl>.
Geopolitics, Vol.7, No.3 (Winter 2002) pp.19–38
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 20

20 GEOPOLITICS

the interwar years, including geopolitics, finally leading to the Second

World War. With respect to the development of German geopolitics in this
period, we are reluctant to emphasise factors like domestic enthusiasm for
German colonialism and German antisemitism in the preceding years,
simply because similar features were not absent in Britain and France at the
turn of the century.
In this section we set the terms for our analysis. We delimit our use of
the concept of ‘geopolitics’ as a certain kind of discourse concerned with a
few specific issues. We suggest the long-term conditions for different
geopolitical discourses in Germany, Britain and France during the last 130
years. We also submit views on some of the conjunctural factors that
modulated discourses in certain countries at certain times and particularly
on the systemic factors (operating at the level of the state system as a whole)
that affected all geopolitical discourses simultaneously, with varying effect
over time. Finally, we take into consideration the fact that these geopolitical
discourses impinge upon each other.
Geopolitics still has three recognisable connotations that differ but
cannot be strictly separated. Geopolitics is a type of analysis using data
concerning the international position of a country in light of its geographical
features; it is also a set of rules applicable in conducting statecraft based on
such analyses; it is finally a discourse, a sustained argument, that describes
and evaluates a country’s position in the world, possibly based on such
analyses and the application of such rules. The analyses are done by certain
professionals, rules are applied by practitioners of statecraft, discourses are
in the public domain, fed by analyses, the actual practice of statecraft and
opinions expressed by members of the public.
Discourses are important because they set some of the terms that
determine the choices countries make or the roads they follow through
history. They are like Kuhn’s paradigms guiding ‘normal science’ for real
life situations. They can not completely explain state behaviour. We
necessarily limit ourselves to a highly generalised version of ‘geopolitics’,
paying scant attention to the specific version used by decision-makers at
certain critical junctures. In addition, framing the situation by a discourse
may sort the options, but the material base to pursue them may be lacking.
Discourses are therefore only one, but in our view an important, reference
to state action.
A geopolitics in this paper is a policy-oriented discourse about a state
inspired by its position on the map.2 The interest in the state concerns its
current and potential habitus in terms of security, welfare, autonomy and
influence. There are, for each of our three countries, three relevant map-
scales: regional (how do sub-units relate to the state? Some would dispute
the relevance of this scale in this context, but we insist on it particularly in
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 21

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 21

light of the current uncertainty about state systems stability), Europe (how
does the state relate to the most immediate shared policy arena of states and
systems of governance, leaving aside for the moment the question of precise
demarcation?), world (how does the state relate to the global political
system?). The position on the map is derived from notions of distance and
accessibility between actors on the one hand and resource availability based
on domain constraints on the other.
A geopolitics can be a purely technocratic discourse only in use by those
who actually are occupied with the daily execution of statecraft. In broad-
based polities geopolitics is a much more general practice. There may be
rivalry over the terms of each discourse in each polity, but in fact these
geopolitics are, in our view, as a rule remarkably broadly supported in most
countries most of the time. Technocratic or part of a more general practice,
geopolitical discourses necessarily contain evaluative assumptions or
judgments. These are often linked to an overarching political position. In
that sense, geopolitical discourses are always ideologically inclined.
We are concerned with these discourses in three countries and with their
evolution since the 1870s, that is, after German unification and with the onset
of increasing rivalry among the big powers at the time. During the major part
of this period for all three countries the political arena became more broad-
based and consequently geopolitical discourse became increasingly part of
more general policy-related discussion among or directed at the public at
large. Even in Germany’s totalitarian phase there was a geopolitics expressed
with a view to the German public apart from other targeted audiences. The
salience of these geopolitical discourses was obviously stimulated by shock
experiences, where the position of the country was at stake or changed
dramatically. The position of the country could refer to its power position, its
primary features like borders and lost and gained populations, and the same
to an extent for its colonial possessions. There were numerous occasions at
which such factors changed.
Lacoste has combined these two factors, increased public participation
and dramatic change of essential features of a country’s position, in his
proposition that geopolitics starts in Germany in 1918 after the defeat in the
war and the opening up of the political system.3 Perhaps there was a
qualitative break at this moment, but one has to realise that in earlier
decades large debates on the position of countries on the basis of the
colonial question, the future population and productive force, etc., had been
held, with much posturing in the popular press (that really reached mass
circulation in those years). In later years, questions deemed existential from
a state perspective came again and again to the fore.
Differences between the geopolitical discourses in Germany, France and
Britain result, in our view, from longstanding differences between the three
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 22

22 GEOPOLITICS

countries. Three mutually related factors are particularly important:

maritime versus land orientation, duration of state existence, and basic state
organisation. Maritime orientation and the longevity of the state give rise to
different priorities in the European versus the global scale of state actors.
The basic state organisation predisposes the responses to regional
challenges in different directions and possibly also frames the way
geopolitical preferences on the European and the global scene develop.
These factors have often been mentioned in similar contexts, including
outside the geographical literature.4
If we consider the fates of Germany, France and Britain over this period
and try to generalise the pattern of shocks that they had to endure, and that
may have affected their geopolitical discourses, we can perhaps state the
following. Germany had to cope with rising ambitions until 1914, followed
by a disorienting military defeat, two dramatic regime changes, a new
devastating military defeat in 1945, division and renewed economic
success, high cost reunification and an effort to acquire a new international
position suited to its current power position. France has been a stepwise
diminishing power (particularly during and after the Second World War),
only gaining occasional advantages by profitable alliances. Britain has, in a
way that hid the sharp edges from view, more graciously dealt with its
slower dwindling power. Musings about a country’s position have therefore
in the German case been set amidst a very irregular historical pattern with
dramatic ups and downs, in the French case they have had continuously and
sometimes steeply diminishing power as a general background, while a
softened version of this fade out applies in the British case.
In the evolution of geopolitical discourses we deem it useful to make a
distinction in four periods that follow the main turn of political events:
1870–1914, 1918–1939, 1945–1989, 1991–. Around 1900 and 1970
additional shifts may have occurred. Granting these, we would come close
to the Kondratieff waves as the apparent pace setters of the international
system, a viewpoint that informs Taylor’s description of the international
system of the twentieth century.5
For each of our four periods, for each of our three map scales, we
assume a typical state of affairs that would condition the issues put forward
in the geopolitical discussions in Germany, as well as in France and Britain.
These states of affairs reflect conditions in this part of the global system.
They are therefore the systemic conditions for the geopolitical discourses in
the countries. The way populations relate to their state (by the opening up
of the democratic system, the extension of welfare state provisions and the
re-calibration of state allegiance by individualism in later years) has an
important bearing on the ways states cope with their regional divisions.
Europe’s relative position in the world at large, the way its dependence takes
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 23

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 23

shape once it has lost its all-out centrality, and the way internal European
cooperation evolves, these are all conditions for the evolution of those parts
of the geopolitical discourses oriented to Europe. As a corollary, the end of
Europe’s global expansion, the emergence of global rivals, the way they
impinge on the European arena and the way Europe projects its remaining
influence in the world at large influence the respective geopolitical
discourses at this map scale.

State Attributes and Systemic Factors: Further Specification

Geopolitical discourses apparently result from long-term conditions that
differentiate these three countries. In our view the geographical position
varying between a basically continental versus an entirely maritime and an
intermediate position has been of fundamental importance. Germany’s
continental position has made it sensitive to land border changes involving
powerful rivals. Britain’s island position has enabled its stable global
interest in flows, only secondarily in places. France’s position has always
been ambivalent as a land power with an important maritime front or a sea
power with important continental interests. Germany’s prime attention has
always been European, Britain has primarily been oriented at the global
level, and France has been oriented to both.
But this is not entirely a story of geographical determinism. This
differentiation could not have occurred without an additional factor, not
unrelated to this geographical configuration. Late state formation in
Germany prevented the early emergence of German predominance in
Europe. Later efforts in that direction have failed. Consequently, sequencing
of state-formation has to a large extent implied the eventual emergence of
three (and not fewer than three) states here and thus provided a basic
condition for this exercise.
A third important background factor is the conception of the state and its
organisation. This has definitely not been a completely stable feature but
some long term differences stand out. Germany always tended to a federal
form, which was again partly determined by late state formation. Britain and
France show mutually contrasting features, clearly to be distinguished from
the German example. In Britain the state as a steering instrument was
always secondary to the principle of sovereignty as embodied by the
parliament. This provided leeway for variations in local and regional
administration. In France the state has always been seen as something
elevated above the selfish world of politics; the state was a force that could
basically move society in a positive way. This went along with a tradition
of clearly separated, identically organised tiers of government (similar to a
federal structure but strongly centralised).
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 24

24 GEOPOLITICS

These different modes of state organisation account for different

responses to regionalist demands showing up in the geopolitical discourses.
In Germany domestic regionalism does not easily become a geopolitically
relevant issue within current state borders whatever they are at a certain
moment as federalism is able to cope adequately with these problems. In
France, regionalist claims tend to touch the state machinery as a whole and
consequently to result in systemic discussions. They bring into focus the
state as such and in that sense are part of the fundamentals of the
geopolitical discourse. In Britain, regionalist claims tend to be treated on an
ad hoc basis and thus to result in piecemeal adaptations that hardly make it
into the geopolitical discourse.
State organisation has possibly further-reaching impacts. It may act as a
prism to interpret the rest of the world and thus to act as a framework for
the geopolitical discourse as a whole. The federal prism and the centralised
ad hoc prism allow more easily for gains and losses of territory than the
centralised homogeneous prism. It is not that in the two first instances loss
is accepted easily, but it is not impossible to incorporate territorial change
in the discourse as it stands. Consequently, British geopolitical discourse
may adapt fairly easily to the loss of Ireland, and German discourse is
obsessed with the shape of the German state but it may adapt to various
versions of Germany. French geopolitical discourse is at a loss to adapt to a
non-hexagonal France. In addition, these different prisms may also
condition preferences concerning the nature of international organisation at
the European and the world scale. The federal prism allows for imaginings
of supranationalism provided there is a precise overall agreement with
generally applicable rules. The centralised non-homogeneous prism allows
for all sorts of ad hoc arrangements, but precludes easy acceptance of wide-
ranging supranationalism. The same goes for the homogeneous centralised
prism. In addition there is in this case a strong preference for generally
agreed rules like in the federal prism. We therefore assume the relevant state
attributes for the emergence of the different geopolitical discourses in
Germany, Britain and France as shown in Table 1.
At the three scales (regional, European and world) that we have
distinguished we expect certain conditional changes to impact upon the
TABL E 1
S TAT E AT T RI BUT E S AS CONDI T I ONS OF G EO PO LITIC A L D ISCO U R SES

Germany continental young federal

France cont/marit. old unitary

Britain maritime old centralised/ad hoc

73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 25

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 25

TABL E 2
P E R I O D AT T RI BUT E S AS CONDI T I ONS O F G EO PO LITIC A L D ISCO U R SES

Regional level Europe World

1870–1914 emerging mass democracies dominant world region imminent closure

1918–1939 coping with mass democracy Europe down coping with former
status

1945–1989 mature welfare states split and dependent bipolarity and

development

1991–2002 individualism, porosity re-emerging mosaic

of states

geopolitical discourses in our three countries. In Table 2 we have indicated

what factors we consider as the most relevant. We emphasise that they are
mutually related and provide the systemic general background in which all
European states have had to operate.
In our first period European states have to adapt to increasing popular
demands caused by the dislocations of industrialisation and urbanisation
and by rising levels of education. This means that regional differences are
one of the possible cleavage lines along which mass politics can emerge.
Once mobilised, the state has to react to regionalist demands and this will
show up in the geopolitical discourse that emanates from such encounters.
In the interwar years the concern is with the principle of democracy versus
the challenges of the radical right (and of communism); regionalist issues
move to the background. During the third period welfare states provide
further opportunities for regionalist claims. Their construction also
necessitates the re-structuring of a heavier domestic administration along
functional and regional lines. This gives rise to a further elaboration of
regionalist parts of a geopolitical discourse. In the most recent period
changes, or at least supposed changes, in state autonomy have put the
regionalist issue again to the fore, provoking new imaginings of the make-
up of states with respect to their unity vis à vis their regional parts.6
In the sunset of the long nineteenth century Europe is still the pivot of
the world political system but, at the same time, Europe is a set of
essentially autonomous states. Overarching concepts of cooperation, like
the ‘concert of Europe’, have weakened, rivalries abound that are mainly
played out outside Europe and underline existing mutual stereotypes of
the major nations and their states. In the interwar period, there is a
widespread sense of European decline after the catastrophe of 1914–18.
Disillusion, distrust and fear provoke worries about current and future
viability of states and prospects of alarming decline to be countered by all
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 26

26 GEOPOLITICS

out effort or to be fled by turning in on oneself. Geopolitical discourses,

even if specifically aiming to counter these trends, are impregnated by
these sentiments. The Cold War years are particularly felt in Europe,
where one of the most hardened division lines in the world is maintained.
This is particularly relevant in Germany, where geopolitical discourse has
to incorporate the division of the country itself and of its former capital
city. Although the threat of nuclear war seems to invalidate any concern
with map-related features of states, the division lines and the possible
consequences of changing them still keep geopolitics very much part of
the discourse on European politics. Cooperation among states in Western
Europe at the same time gradually changes the very definition of
sovereignty and, consequently, one of the basic parameters of geopolitical
discourse. This change becomes all-important in the most recent years
after the Cold War has subsided. Apart from the new forms of cooperation
between the countries of Western Europe, the problem of how far this
cooperation will be extended eastward, thus giving rise to a fresh
definition of what Europe is, now dominates geopolitical considerations at
the European scale.7
At the global level the years from 1870 to 1914 politically extend the
European state system to the far corners of the world, gradually giving rise
to a sense of closure: no more moving frontiers in which energy can be
invested and rivalry can be played out. The distribution of the spoils of
extension and the worries about the next phase after closure are recurring
themes in the geopolitics of the period. In the interwar years Europe’s states
are coping with the problems of maintaining their former status: shoring up
colonial possessions by starting preparatory moves for more local
autonomy, keeping the League of Nations afloat, wondering about Europe’s
position in a world with extra-European powers. During the Cold War
Europe’s parts have to play their second-order roles in the bipolar structure
of the superpowers with slight modifications and occasional resistance. At
the same time, the end of colonialism results in demands for new relations
with overseas areas, particularly the former colonies. Bipolarity and
development issues have to be put in one geopolitical discourse. In the most
recent years the new macro-regional division of the world demands a
European view towards the other parts of the global mosaic, taking into
account the long-term alliance with the US, and the evolving power political
map of Asia.8
Finally, there are effects of geopolitical discourses on each other. One
can distinguish a tendency to emulate and thus give rise to ever closer
resemblances, from a tendency to sharpen separate identities and
consequently to widen the gulf that separate parties. Emulation results
from hegemonial relations: power disparity backed up by available cultural
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 27

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 27

role models, where the weakest party emulates the stronger one. Mutual
sharpening of discourses feeds on rivalry that is strengthened in the
process.

Three Geopolitical Discourses

Germany
Prussian-dominated German unification was consolidated in January 1871.
The new Germany gained a military victory over France and took
possession of Alsace and Lorraine, a resource-rich region across the Rhine.
A period of Prussian expansion within Europe came to an end; in the race
for new colonies outside Europe Germany continued to play a secondary
role as a latecomer, despite considerable ambition. The new Germany was
a newly industrialising country, a tiger avant la lettre. An increasingly
articulate, ever broadening public had only very partial access to political
decision-making. The new empire was still governed as a federation.
Territorial interests and regional differences could therefore find their way
into the domestic political process without undue strain.9
Ratzel is one of the authors in Wilhelminian Germany who set the terms
for a contemporary German geopolitics. As with others, his insights into
state formation were coloured by the exhilaration to be involved in a
young, very successful state with seemingly lots of opportunity, but at the
same time by the anxiety of not being able to fulfill those dreams as a
latecomer on the international scene. His insights were expressed in a
Darwinian vocabulary tinged with German ecology and an idealist
philosophy. For the time being the problems still seemed to be manageable;
the empire did not show fissures of impending secession. A lot of German
speakers were still outside the reign of the emperor but the urge to
incorporate them into the fold of the newly won unity was only expressed
in the abstract. A powerful navy was demanded to pursue a high profile
political role, whose precise aims were not spelled out, on the world
stage.10
The aftermath of the disastrous defeat of late 1918 was an angry and
anxious debate about the German future. Very generally the defeat was
considered temporary and undeserved, the conditions for peace too harsh.
There was serious loss of territory in the East and the West and a threat of
secession of various parts of the Weimar republic. Germany’s role as one of
the most powerful states in Europe was jeopardised. Whatever the German
role as a colonial power was, it now had been lost. The debate was
geopolitical in nature, it was certainly not limited to the policy
professionals.11 Haushofer and his circle articulate, systematise and
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 28

28 GEOPOLITICS

elaborate on more widely held points of view like the theologically justified
arguments for a German Weltpolitik advanced before the war by journalist
Paul Rohrbach.12 The mood of the general intellectual discussion has even
been characterised as Raum-euphoria.13 Interwar German geopolitics was
about the space that should be available for Germany on account of cultural
extension, the need to dispose of sufficient natural resources, the desired
relationships between European powers and the possibilities for worldwide
bloc formation and Germany’s role in such blocs. Although there was
definitely a general tendency to introduce racial distinctions to ground
territorial claims and to muse about national power characteristics, racism –
particularly antisemitism but also antislavism – as an all important driving
force only became preponderant with the accession of the Nazis to power.14
After the initial secession movements had been defeated, the Weimar
republic retained its federative character, but with a substantial reduction of
financial autonomy and constitutional power. It was an involuntary
transition toward the unitary state that Germany actually became during the
Nazi period.
The irreparable defeat of 1945 left the future of Germany for a long
time in doubt. The division of Germany was the outcome of a conflict
between the former victorious allies. In West Germany, the most important
part, the first and foremost geopolitical issue was a negative notion: to keep
Germany’s borders an open question. There was hardly place for a
substantive, geopolitical debate during the first period of its existence. A
huge gap remained between the highly abstract declaratory policies about
re-unification, the possibility of regaining territory or compensation for
those Germans who lost out in Central-eastern Europe and the general
unwillingness to make these into central policy concerns. The first
substantive priorities were close connections with the West generally and
the nurture of the Franco–German tandem, crucial to European
cooperation. As these two policies did not easily coincide, there was a lot
of strain to be softened and no way to bring the ‘German question’ itself to
the fore. This remained very much a secondary theme, only to be made
public when the domestic situation made it unavoidable. West German
regionalism itself hardly was an issue at all as it was nicely captured –
though in a new shape – by the federal constitution crafted by the
occupying forces.15
Only in the late 1960s did the German government start its own political
policy towards the East, and there was a widespread debate about the merits
of the so-called Ostpolitik.16 Because the notion is particularly tainted in
Germany, the Ostpolitik debate was never called geopolitical in nature, but
it was. It was aimed at the position of the West German state vis à vis a
number of other states by virtue of their positions on the map that involved
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 29

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 29

them in the German expansion during the Nazi regime and guaranteed
traditional German cultural influence and a shared troubled past. The effort
to bring change in the East by building closer connections within the
framework of a seemingly unbridgeable and momentarily accepted gap in
the field of security was a grand design that, however, was made public as
essentially modest in aims.
In 1991 the actual change was consummated and the scene was set for
a new round of more intense geopolitical debate in Germany. Within the
country itself the divide between Ost and West has hardly diminished. The
continuing support for the PDS in the East and nowhere else gives politics
an extra regionalist flavour. The new political situation in Eastern Europe
and the accompanying overtures to incorporate (parts of) Eastern Europe
into the Western bodies of cooperation (NATO and EU) has revamped the
Germans in a new, geographically central role in Europe.17 German
geopolitics can be rewritten accordingly, and it is. On the world scene
Germany has finished its aloofness and has now entered worldwide
debates as a very important power in search of a new position. Here, as
well, a new script has to be written. At the official level, in academia18 and
in the press geopolitics has again become a topic for discussion, and it is
now so termed. In actual practice the Red–Green coalition governing
Germany since 1997 has chosen a much more visible foreign policy
profile in world affairs and has given up the German reluctance to engage
its armed forces, as the examples of the NATO intervention in Kosovo and
the participation in the UN mandated force in Afghanistan show. Still,
there seems to be a much greater sensitivity to the presence of an
acceptable international legal framework for such ventures than in Britain
and France.
And so Germany starts anew. It is in a number of ways a replay of 1870.
But there are some differences. Germany is now a fully democratic country
and geopolitical debate will reflect this condition. The internal East–West
divide is new. To Germany’s east the state system has enormously changed.
European cooperation has become qualitatively more intense. There is the
outside superpower, that undermines Europe’s centrality as it existed in
1870. Finally, no territorial frontier is left. Every effort to order is re-
ordering an existing order.

Britain
After 1870 the world looked less friendly and benevolent from a British
perspective. Britain, deriving its hegemony primarily from economic
preponderance and gentle persuasion without strong needs for coercion,
did not seem to operate so smoothly anymore. Irish (Fenian) violence
manifested itself on the English mainland, but the prospect of a basic
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 30

30 GEOPOLITICS

disruption of the ‘free market’ mechanism in Ireland itself (where the

word ‘boycott’ was coined) was perhaps even more frightening. As
British rule inadvertently elicited the phenomenon of civic resistance at
home, it just as inconsiderately introduced the alien instrument of
concentration camps in suppressing resistance in the Empire (the Boer war
in South Africa). The ominous message of such events was reinforced by
the rise of strong competitive powers on the world scene, like Germany
and Russia. The state of security in Europe did not immediately seem to
be at stake, since Britain continued its aloofness from European affairs.
However, ‘invasion novels’, a genre that became popular after 1870,
suggested that the draining away of military and naval resources by
disorders in distant parts of the Empire would leave the British homeland
more unprepared to attacks from Europe than, for example, France under
similar conditions.
This configuration of international power only intensified as the century
drew to a close. It was not merely the rise of new powers and challengers to
the Empire that inspired British geopolitical reflection at this time, it was
also the perception of such powers as ‘alien’ in the sense of being driven by
non-liberal, nationalist motives. The idea that this would lead to a new
struggle for life and Lebensraum was not confined to German political
thought; witness a speech of Lord Salisbury from 1898 in which he divided
nations into the ‘living and dying’, the former gobbling up the latter.19
Mackinder’s emphasis20 on the potential power of large closed territories
versus the ‘space of flows’ of a maritime Empire struck a similar new note.
Imperialists came with the same message, but it did not catch on; the
Empire was not converted into a fortress. Anyhow, the British became
aware of the closure of the world, a discovery that was perfectly captured in
Mackinder’s statement: ‘every explosion of social forces, instead of being
dissipated in a surrounding circuit of unknown space and barbaric chaos,
will be sharply re-echoed from the far side of the globe, and weak elements
in the political and economic organism of the world will be shattered in
consequence’.21
The First World War and the financial strains that it put on the country,
the slipping further and further into a state-regulated society (unleashed by
the war effort as well) and intensifying domestic troubles (Ireland) did not
bode well for the new century. However, after a few years political and
economic conditions stabilised, and since the war was won there was no
clear incitement to change the geopolitical outlook. The absence of an
economic challenge from the devastated continent and the rise of such
ideologies as socialism and fascism moreover confirmed the significance of
the empire as a safe backyard. One of the rare English books (formally)
devoted to ‘geo-politics’ in the interwar years proclaimed that ‘currently’
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 31

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 31

politics matters in looking at the world map – the author actually meant that
the world did not automatically move towards a system of free enterprise in
which each country acts in a predictable way – and attributed this discovery
to the aftermath of the Great War.22 It was an impression, however, that
already had overcome other observers before the great catastrophe that
heralded the new century in such a fateful way.
The Second World War again counted Britain among its victors. This
once more reinforced the idea that her basic geopolitical perspective had
been right, but the war left an utterly weakened Britain and new world
powers now dominated the European scene. The start of the Cold War –
with or without British prompting – helped to sustain the illusion of British
world-wide commitments23 but in the end it could not veil British decline.
Decolonisation produced what the prescient Leopold Amery (1873–1953)
had already described in 1929 as the ‘European Economic Union’, into
which Britain would be sucked inevitably if it lost its ties with the rest of
the world.24 The confusing entry into the EEC did not fundamentally
change British discourse about Europe, which never assimilated the
mythical and elevated talk about Europe that was in vogue elsewhere in
Europe, particularly in France.25 The nuclear balance dominated strategic
thought, but the scene was also set for tormenting questions about identity
and belonging. This self-examination was further amplified by rising
regional discontent within the British Isles (since 1970) and later on by the
demise of the communist system in Central and Eastern Europe (since
1990).
The regime of Margaret Thatcher, evangelist of free-market nationalism
and defender of the British special position in Europe, was also unable to
cope with the strains of the new geopolitical world order involving a unified
Germany and a disappearing evil empire. The attempt by Blair (and then
Schröder) to carve out a ‘Third Road’ was only a symbolical tribute to the
new Europe. It did not involve any geopolitical idea but might be
interpreted as a way to redress the balance of ‘power’ in a Europe where so
far the French–German axis had been the dominant driving force. The
current position of Britain on a crossroads that either leads to a vigorous
commitment to continental Europe or to a much more limited attachment to
‘ever closer Union’ has unleashed a wave of British publications on
integration, the EU and multilevel governance. It is difficult to summarise
these in terms of a distinct geopolitical outlook, but the common
denominator seems to be that – after Alan Milward’s famous catch phrase –
Europe is essential to preserve the nation state and the latter is the kernel of
European identity. The security dimension has largely disappeared from
this work.
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 32

32 GEOPOLITICS

France
The defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1870 left two important traces in the
French worldview. In the first place national self-reflection, previously
obsessed with the heritage of the French revolution, now began to fret about
the opposition between France and Germany.26 In the second place the idea
of Europe as a cramped space impeding national vitality suggested the
importance of lifelines to the world outside Europe. The combined
messages of an unfavourably changed and heavily secured eastern
boundary, the rise of other strongly competitive economies and the prospect
of industrial production rising everywhere seemed to be that new and
preferably submissive markets were inevitable. Colonies could provide such
markets as well as grandeur, always pursued in France.
In the 1880s the ‘global view’ had thoroughly entered French
statesmen’s thinking; witness the judgment of Jules Ferry in 1885: ‘it is not
in the Mediterranean or in the Channel that the decisive engagement will be
fought; Marseille and Toulon will be defended as much in the China sea as
in the Mediterranean’.27 But this global conception of national interest
would soon evoke serious doubts about French naval potency and paranoid
obsessions with events in all corners of the world. When the US started its
Cuban war with Spain (1898), the French minister of foreign affairs
Delcassé was anxious to mediate between Spain and the United States out
of fear that the Americans might venture a landing in Morocco and become
a Mediterranean power.28 The turn of the century showed a reorientation on
North Africa as France’s main colonial aim.
Such changing geopolitical visions do not seem to have had close
parallels in academic or (pseudo-)scientific theory in France. Reflection in
geography at the turn of the century – particularly Vidal de la Blache’s
writings – was rather a rejection of the political in geography, either as a
response to Ratzel’s work or as a way to emphasise the element of human
choice and natural harmony between ‘genres de vie’.29 Only in his Tableau
de la géographie de la France did Vidal put some work into the proposition
that the lost area of Alsace–Lorraine actually belonged to France.
France had not been defeated during the First World War, but it had
experienced the most awful destruction ever seen during a war. After
Versailles little room was left for daring geopolitical visions, rather than
obsession with the German danger and the likelihood of a next war. The
French reflex was to search for European alliances (Poland, Czechoslovakia,
etc.) that, however militarily weak, would nevertheless frustrate German
plans for a federated Mitteleuropa.30 In 1929 Aristide Briand, in a speech to
the assembly of the League of Nations, pronounced his wish that the peoples
of Europe would become integrated in a kind of federal unit. He perhaps
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 33

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 33

knew that it could not be achieved under the international system of his time,
but his words foreshadowed French European policy after the Second World
War. The French geographer Albert Demangeon showed himself less
obsessed by the German danger in his 1920 book Le déclin de l’Europe (The
Decline of Europe).31 As visionary as Amery in Britain, he predicted the rise
of the world powers America and Japan and the inevitable dissolution of the
colonial empires. France should follow the American example and develop
a global network of economic relations and stimulate technological advance
at home. So geopolitics in the inter-war period was mainly a narrative on
enemies and leadership. There was a budding sense of the necessity to
transcend the state-centred viewpoint, although this could never mean that
France was willing to efface itself.
The Second World War actually put France at the mercy of external
powers, a condition that apparently could only be redeemed by strong
rhetoric and by sublimating the nation into the voice of a strong personality.
This role was played by General de Gaulle, who in his memoirs – after
having argued that France’s position in international decision making was
badly damaged by his dismissal in 1946 – went into the problem of France’s
weakness after the war: ‘we believe that to leave out France in decision
making about Europe would be a serious mistake; first because France is
integrated with Europe …, and further because she takes pride in being able
to contribute a long and dearly won experience to the solving of European
problems and [because she enjoys] a quite exceptional degree of trust from
the side of many people’.32
This is Gaullism in a nutshell, unremarkable for clear geopolitical
visions but all the more marked by a sharp sense of mission and leadership.
Its most pronounced international action was the rejection of the Cold War
(and NATO as an integrated military apparatus) that was considered to be
based on a false ideological opposition that ignored the reality of
geography and history. It was also a criticism with a truly geopolitical ring,
because it emphatically made use of a rhetoric of logic and necessity in
international relations. At the same time France took advantage of the Cold
War by carving out a nuclear niche between the superpowers. Nonetheless,
in the end it could not dispense with its own myths like the essential role
of France (particularly cultural) in the world and Europe as a higher
calling.33 Like in other countries that propagated some kind of ‘third way’
position, the end of the Cold War implied a crisis in France’s foreign policy
paradigm. The relations with Germany and Russia had to be thoroughly
revised, but the card of the opposition between the US and Europe could
still be played. One of France’s messages was that Europe should beware
of being carried away by the US in a North–South division of the world.34
This affirmed the French self-image as the diplomatic representative of
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 34

34 GEOPOLITICS

Europe, the gatekeeper of Europe’s relations with the world outside

(particularly Africa).
The strongly diminished power of France after two disastrous world
wars has actually boosted the rhetoric of geopolitics in France: first (until
the mid 1980s), by trying to unmask the continuity of national interests
behind the idealistic rhetoric of the superpowers, and second (since the
1980s), by viewing the cooperation between territorial groups of states as a
matter of ‘manifest destiny’. However, the tradition of enhancing political
power via territorial policies (enlargement, integration) and the French
longing for a worldwide mission (as in the Francophone world) fit uneasily
together. As the comments of the former (socialist) French minister of
foreign affairs, Hubert Védrine, suggest, the Gaullist tenor about the
indispensability of the French voice in world affairs still continues.35

Conclusions
The German geopolitical discourse of the last 130 years has been centred on
shape, the shape of the German state on the map. It is the most obviously
cartographic discourse of the three. The British geopolitical discourse has in
many respects been its polar opposite. Its most central concern has been the
space of flows that make up the global system. In its economic orientation
it has sometimes been able to nearly forget about the map. The French
geopolitical discourse is the most complicated to summarise, though it is
clear in its outline. The French have always been active players in two
arenas simultaneously, the European and the global, on the basis of a steady
French state. In the European arena France has longed for a hegemonic
position, trying to overcome the obvious material shortcomings for its
realisation. In the global arena it has realised a separate, integral world on
the basis of cultural dominance that has declined and shrunk over time. The
discourse therefore presupposes two maps, both centred on an
unproblematic hexagon.
There have been incidental deviations and emulations, like Germany’s
sudden preference for Weltpolitik in a truly global sense around 1900 (with
free copies of a translated Mahan, courtesy the German navy), or
Mackinder’s insistence on a space of places, that largely fell on deaf ears in
Britain (but not in Germany), or the French widespread acceptance of new
power-political realities during Vichy. But these deviations are small
disturbances of a longer term, pretty stable configuration.
This conclusion emphasises types of geopolitics according to countries
(larger European powers in this instance) rather than according to period
like in Agnew’s periodisation of civilisational, natural and ideological
geopolitics.36 Apart from the fact that ‘naturalisation’ is already a very old
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 35

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 35

way of legitimising the state, it would, in the period under consideration,
mainly apply to Germany. Germany, indeed, was the most conspicuous
source of geopolitical rhetoric before 1945 because it was most frequently
and profoundly affected by sudden changes in the systemic context,
including its own emergence.
In our definition of geopolitics every state’s foreign policies suppose
certain geopolitical views (discourses) that can be explained by
geographical position, state conception/organisation and particular history
of the state concerned in interaction with systemic factors. We assume that
changes in systemic factors may sometimes be at variance with the basic
foreign policy views that have crystallised in a particular country on the
basis of long-term, country-specific background variables. In that case, a
new, although short-lived, geopolitical discourse may emerge that can be
quite atypical, because it e.g. relies on emulation of geopolitical discourses
in other countries.
Britain’s liberal vision of the state was challenged at the end of the
nineteenth century and directly after the First World War by the rise of state
ideologies and the idea of privileged and territorially closed markets, not to
mention by the prospect of territories disengaging from the political union
(either the British Isles or the Empire). An initial reaction was a
territorialising discourse about the Empire: Mackinder, imperialism. These
views did not catch on and British foreign policy returned to its mainstream
‘geo-economical’ and liberal view of global relations. During the last few
decades Britain has constantly hesitated over whether it will finally become
part of a strong European bloc, a state of affairs that is deeply repugnant to
its longheld geopolitical discourse.
France’s conception of the state as an integral entity with a superior
centre and state leadership was of course shocked by the mutilation of its
territory in 1870, which unleashed a kind of global thinking in circles of the
foreign policy elite: colonialism and reinforcing France’s influence in
Europe. It was perhaps even more shocked by the split in the state during
Second World War (the Vichy regime) and by the rise of a new hegemonic
power: the US. This explains France’s deviating geopolitical discourse
under a strong leadership after the war and the geopolitical tenor of its
foreign affairs officials and school of geography.
Germany’s state was meant to be the expression of the almost corporeal
(organic) unity of culture (Volk) and territory (Land). It had not been realised
before 1914, but Versailles reversed the trend. It was experienced as a shock,
as being the victim of an undeserved crime.The kind of radical geopolitics
that emerged aimed to show how much the other powers would be punished
if they would not acknowledge the organic principles behind the world of
states. The idea of a world fire was never far away. The further catastrophe
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 36

36 GEOPOLITICS

of 1945 was in the first instance not answered by new geopolitical

elaborations. The first period after 1945 saw a deep crisis of German
statehood in which any prospect of a future unity of German culture and
territory could only be foreseen by refusing to accept current boundaries as
final. In the current period more explicit geopolitical considerations come
again to the fore.
Finally, evolving geopolitical discourses affect each other. There were
clear signs of emulation of superpower geopolitical discourses during the
Cold War years. As these hegemonies subsided in their turn, traditional
geopolitical discourses once again came more insistently to the fore.37
France, particularly under de Gaulle, was a partial exception, challenging
American supremacy from pretty early in the Cold War years. At moments
that tension and rivalry between our three European countries flared up,
traditional differences in their geopolitical discourses were more
prominent. Efforts were made to construct more compatible frames of
mind when they could perceive themselves as having common positions in
the world. This is one of the underlying aims of European cooperation.
Many opportunities to achieve such compatible frames have been lost
during this whole period. New attempts have always been made. Overall,
the ever more insisting framework of what is now the European Union has
probably resulted in more compatible positions among the policy-making
elites, but this may well be a source of growing distance between the
geopolitical discourses at elite and mass level within European countries.
This could be the re-emergence of an old pattern that disappeared as the
First World War began.

NOTES

1. L.W. Hepple, ‘The Revival of Geopolitics’, Political Geography Quarterly 5/4 (1996)
pp.21–36; S. Dalby, D. Atkinson and L.W. Hepple, ‘Classics in Human Geography
Revisited’, Progress in Human Geography 25/3 (2001) pp.423–30.
2. G. O’Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Social Construction of State and Place in The
Practice Of Statecraft (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press 1989); an overview of
the current literature is in V.D. Mamadouh, ‘Geopolitics in the Nineties: One Flag, Many
Meanings’, GeoJournal 46/4 (1998) pp.237–53.
3. Y. Lacoste, Dictionnaire de géopolitique (Flammarion: Paris 1993) pp.1–45.
4. See S. Rokkan, ‘Dimensions of State-formation and Nation-building: A Possible
Paradigm for Research on Variations within Europe’, in C. Tilly (ed.), The Formation of
National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1975)
pp.562–600; Tilly, C., Coercion, Capital and European States. Oxford: Blackwell 1992);
G. Modelski and W.R. Thompson, Seapower in Global Politics, 1494–1993. Basingstoke:
Macmillan 1998.
5. P.J. Taylor, ‘Geopolitical World Orders’, in P.J. Taylor (ed), Political Geography of the
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 37

GERM AN, BRI TI SH AND FRENCH GEOPO L I T I C S 37

Twentieth Century: A Global Analysis (London: Belhaven Press 1993) pp.31–61.
6. M. Keating, ‘The Invention of Regions: Political Restructuring and Territorial
Government in Western Europe’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy
15/4 (1997) pp.383–98.
7. J. Lévy, Europe. Une géographie (Paris: Hachette 1997).
8. B. Beedham, ‘The Road to 2050. A Survey of the New Geopolitics’, The Economist 31
July 1999, pp.3–16.
9. G.A. Craig, Germany 1866–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1978).
10. F. Ratzel, Deutschland. Einführung in die Heimatkunde (Leipzig: Grunow 1898); G.
Dijkink, ‘Ratzel’s Politische Geographie and Nineteenth-Century German Discourse’, in
M. Antonsich, V. Kolossov and M.P. Pagnini (eds), On the Centenary of Ratzel’s
Politische Geographie. Europe Between Political Geography and Geopolitics (Rome:
Societa Geografica Italiana 2001) pp.115–28.
11. S.R. Steinmetz, ‘Die Nationalitäten in Europa’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde
zu Berlin, Supplement 2 (1927) pp.5–67; S. Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen – Die
Erinnerungen 1914–1933 (Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2000).
12. W.D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (New York: Oxford University
Press 1986) p.63.
13. D.T. Murphy, ‘“A Sum of the Most Wonderful Things”: Raum, Geopolitics and the
German Tradition of Environmental Determinism, 1900–1933’, History of European
Ideas 25/3 (1999) pp.121–33.
14. M. Bassin, ‘Race Contra Space. The Conflict between German ‘Geopolitik’ and National
Socialism’, Political Geography Quarterly 6/2 (1987) pp.115–34; for antisemitism
among German geographers generally see also K. Kost, ‘Anti-semitism in German
Geography 1900–1945’, GeoJournal 46/4 (1998) pp.285–91.
15. G. Dijkink, National Identity and Geopolitical Visions. Maps of Pride and Pain (London:
Routledge 1996) ch.2.
16. W. Brandt, Erinnerungen (Berlin: Ullstein 1989) ch.3; T. Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name:
Germany and the Divided Continent (New York: Random House 1993).
17. W.R. Mead, ‘The Once and Future Reich’, World Policy Journal, 7/4 (1990) pp.593–638.
18. I. Diekmann, P. Krüger and J.H. Schoeps (eds), Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist. 2
vols (Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg 2000).
19. B. Porter, Britannia’s Burden. The Political Evolution of Modern Britain 1851–1990
(London: Arnold 1994) p.121.
20. H.J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, Geographical Journal 23 (1904)
pp.421–42.
21. Ibid., p.422.
22. E.H. Short, A Handbook of Geo-politics (London: Philip Allen 1935) p.11.
23. P.J. Taylor, Britain and the Cold War: 1945 as a Geopolitical Transition (London: Pinter:
1990).
24. Porter, Britannia’s Burden (note 19) p.215.
25. H. Larsen, Discourse Analysis and Foreign Policy. France, Britain and Europe (London:
Routledge 1997).
26. M.-C. Robic, ‘National Identity in Vidal’s Tableau de la Géographie de la France: From
Political Geography to Human Geography’, in D. Hooson (ed.), Geography and National
Identity (Oxford: Blackwell 1995).
27. Quoted in C.M. Andrew, Theophile Delcassé and the Making of the Entente Cordiale. A
Reappraisal of French Foreign Policy 1898–1905 (London: Macmillan 1968) p.87.
28. Ibid., p.80.
29. J. Ancel, Géopolitique (Paris: Librairie Delagrave 1936); Robic (note 26).
30. J. Néré, The Foreign Policy of France from 1914 to 1945 (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul 1975) p.45.
31. A. Demangeon, Le Déclin de l’Europe (Paris: Payot 1920).
73geo02.qxd 22/08/02 08:29 Page 38

38 GEOPOLITICS

32. C. de Gaulle, Mémoires de Guerre III: Le Salut (Paris: Plon 1959) pp.346–7.
33. Larsen (note 25).
34. J.F.V. Keiger, France and the World since 1870 (London: Arnold 2001).
35. H. Védrine, Les cartes de la France à l’heure de la mondialisation. Dialogue avec
Dominique Moïsi (Paris: Fayard 2000).
36. J. Agnew, Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics (London: Routledge 1998).
37. J. Nijman and H. van der Wusten, ‘Breaking the Cold War Mould in Europe: A
Geopolitical Tale of Gradual Change and Sharp Snaps’, in J. O’Loughlin and H. van der
Wusten (eds), The New Political Geography of Eastern Europe (London: Belhaven 1993)
pp.15–30.