Introduction: Lebensraum and its discontents

Abstract

This special issue grapples with a text that stands at the inception of modern geo-and biopolitics -the 1901 essay 'Lebensraum: a biogeographical study' written by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel . In this essay, the trained zoologist and founding father of modern political geography set out a theory of the world in which humans and their social institutions are but an effect of the natural world and therefore subject to nature's laws in much the same way as the animal and plant kingdom. Although Ratzel describes his essay as primarily written in the language of biogeography, he uses it to flesh out his conception of the state as an organism that struggles for Lebensraum (living space). The arguments Ratzel develops in this essay should be read as an attempt to draw on basic Darwinian ideas to account for the expansive tendency of late nineteenth-century imperialism and state competition. By treating historical and biological processes alike, Ratzel famously came to naturalise both the territorial configuration of world politics and the phenomenon of interstate war.Whilst already a notable academic figure during his lifetime, it is especially the posthumous career of his Lebensraum concept that has made Ratzel a continued object of fascination for geographers, historians and political scientists alike. Indeed, Ratzel remains something of a disgraced figure in the geographical canon today, given his reputation for environmental determinism and his influence on interwar politics. Indeed, it was one of his followers, the geographer Karl Haushofer, who claimed to have introduced Adolf Hitler to the idea of Lebensraum as the latter was cobbling together his 1925 book Mein Kampf in Landsberg prison. 1 It is thus difficult to understate the historical significance of Ratzel's Lebensraum concept, even if his essay's immediate readership would have been limited to academic circles.And yet, this special issue suggests that Ratzel's text is perhaps not 'merely' of historical interest, but of theoretical significance too. For whilst geopolitical ideas were mushrooming elsewhere too in the nineteenth century, Ratzel's work is unusual in its biogeographical understanding of the state as organism: a political life form that tries to secure its survival by conquering and defending space. It is the primacy of life within his political theory that links Ratzel to a range of ongoing theoretical debates on the nature and emergence of modern biopolitics -the politics of life -even though this connection has not yet been significantly explored. 2 Moreover, Ratzel's essay embodies and promotes what we would today undoubtedly call a 'more-than-human geography' that tries to bridge the divide between science and philosophy and takes off from an understanding of the human as an effect of the natural world. 3 Indeed, Ratzel's entire oeuvre rests on the fundamental assumption of the unity of life and earth. Life, he is never tired of repeating, is earthbound.Despite the fact that there has been a significant and continuous intellectu...

History and philosophy of geography III: The haunted, the reviled, and the plural

“…(Murphy, 2018: 86).The historiographical and moral challenges associated with revisiting Ratzel’s lebensraum essay have been given a particular focus in a recent special section of the Journal of Historical Geography , ‘ Lebensraum and Its Discontents’. Here, a series of five interventions from geographers, historians, and political scientists respond to a new English-language translation of Ratzel’s essay and, in so doing, seek both to contextualise the development of Ratzel’s thought, and to advertise the relevance of his essay to ‘ongoing debates in geography and beyond’ (Klinke and Bassin, 2018: 58) around issues of biopolitics, colonialism, geopolitics, and nature-society relations. In their introduction to the special section, Klinke and Bassin (2018: 54) argue for the value of reframing our understanding of Ratzel’s essay – to see it, and him, as foregrounding modern biopolitics and as embodying ‘a “more-than-human geography” that tries to bridge the divide between science and philosophy’ (see also Barua, 2018; Chiantera-Stutte, 2018).…”

“…Here, a series of five interventions from geographers, historians, and political scientists respond to a new English-language translation of Ratzel’s essay and, in so doing, seek both to contextualise the development of Ratzel’s thought, and to advertise the relevance of his essay to ‘ongoing debates in geography and beyond’ (Klinke and Bassin, 2018: 58) around issues of biopolitics, colonialism, geopolitics, and nature-society relations. In their introduction to the special section, Klinke and Bassin (2018: 54) argue for the value of reframing our understanding of Ratzel’s essay – to see it, and him, as foregrounding modern biopolitics and as embodying ‘a “more-than-human geography” that tries to bridge the divide between science and philosophy’ (see also Barua, 2018; Chiantera-Stutte, 2018). While repositioning Ratzel as a more-than-human geographer is clearly terminologically anachronistic, it is arguably not an entirely presentist imposition; Ratzel’s work, much like that of Alexander von Humboldt, was infused with, and predicated upon, monism – a belief in the fundamental unity of life and earth (Rupke, 2012).…”

“…Haeckel was also, however, a figure from whom Ratzel later sought to distance himself as he articulated his own distinct biographical philosophy (Bassin, 1987). For Klinke and Bassin, the development of Ratzel’s philosophy is explained not simply by the debates and individuals that shaped and coloured his experience as a student, but by his first-hand participation in the Franco-Prussian War from 1870, a conflict in which he was invalided (Klinke and Bassin, 2018). Although the war cost Ratzel his hearing in one ear, it instilled in him a profound sense of German nationalism and reinforced his belief that ‘war was a natural condition of world history’ (Klinke and Bassin, 2018: 55).…”

“…For Klinke and Bassin, the development of Ratzel’s philosophy is explained not simply by the debates and individuals that shaped and coloured his experience as a student, but by his first-hand participation in the Franco-Prussian War from 1870, a conflict in which he was invalided (Klinke and Bassin, 2018). Although the war cost Ratzel his hearing in one ear, it instilled in him a profound sense of German nationalism and reinforced his belief that ‘war was a natural condition of world history’ (Klinke and Bassin, 2018: 55). It is tempting to see Ratzel’s position here as some form of coping mechanism – a way of trying to rationalise the personal damage the war had done to him as somehow both inevitable and natural, the inescapable consequence of the nation-state’s perpetual, inextinguishable struggle for space.…”

“…For historians of the discipline, a moral problem seems to presents itself in the question of how, most appropriately, to approach a text whose author is a ‘disgraced figure in the geographical canon’ (Klinke and Bassin, 2018: 53) and whose intellectual legacy is, even in the most forgiving interpretation, toxic. Is it possible, in that respect, to examine the text in its own terms, and to say something new about it, without decoupling the essay from its ‘posthumous career’ as ‘a scientific legitimisation of imperialist expansionism’ (Klinke and Bassin, 2018: 53; Halas, 2014: 15)? Can we, then, reconsider Der Lebensraum without also rehabilitating it?…”