ABSTRACT
The region of knowledge that would later be dubbed "geopolitics" was born in the colonial capitals of the rival empires of the late nine-teenth century, within the established universities, geographical societies, and centers of learning of the Great Powers. While the notion of a "geopolitical tradition" should always be approached with caution, it does group together this set of male in-tellectuals from quite different national backgrounds and cultures into a common tradition of thought on international affairs for cer-tain ostensibly good reasons. Classical geopolitics (to the extent that this names an under-specified unity) has its origins in the emerging geographical conditions of world order at the end of the nineteenth century. In the wake of the tremendous scramble among the Great Powers for their own imperial real estate on the African continent, the surface of the world political map appeared for the first time to be relatively occupied.
