ABSTRACT
While the founding fathers of modern Political Geography are numbered among the creators of the field of International Relations, their interest has been maintained only fitfully by successor generations, especially those of the post-World War II era. Karl Ritter, Friedrich Ratzel, Halford Mackinder and Isaiah Bowman sought from their nineteenth and early twentieth century vantage points to inject notes of realism into the conduct of international affairs (Mackinder 1919).1 They observed various natural-conditioning factor concepts from which they developed certain political world views and articulated consequent policies. During the Inter-War periods, German Geopolitik emerged as a distortion of the founders’ theories. Karl Haushofer et al. promulgated the pseudo-science that rationalised the conduct of national policy as being naturally-determined, thus reversing the logical relationship between cause and effect.
