ABSTRACT
The assemblage of ideas and theories that have been gathered under the curious label ‘geo-politics’ has a complex and often disturbing history. The different phases in this history are discussed in the other chapters in this volume and in several recent texts (Ó Tuathail 1996; Ó Tuathail, Dalby and Routledge 1998; Parker 1998; Raffestin, Lopreno and Pasteur 1995). My concern here is with points of departure, with intellectual roots rather than subsequent trajectories. What follows is a personal reading of why and how something called ‘geo-politics’ emerged as a distinctive, albeit amorphous, intellectual project about one hundred years ago. I am primarily interested in geopolitical writings from Britain and Germany and I hope to demonstrate how these formative texts can be read as commentaries on the future of Europe and ‘European civilization’.1
