Page 37 - ModernParadiseFLIPBOOKcomplete

37

Geopolitics not geography

Geopolitics is concerned with how power and influence flow over territory. We
usually associate the word with analyses of modern world power politics, popularised
by statesmen like Henry Kissinger, and dealing with the rivalries between modern-
day super-powers and their rise and fall. This is classical geopolitics, born at the turn
th
of the 20 century, during the age of the European global empires.

In recent times however geopolitics has widened its conceptual horizons. It now
includes cultural power as well as political and military - the concept of soft power”

was developed in the 1980’s - and is applied to regions as well as globally. These new
approaches come under the umbrella of critical geopolitics. This is concerned with
how geopolitical narratives are created and how people construct them to make
sense of their own circumstances.

As far I can tell, historians have not shown any interest in this. Nobody as yet seems
to have applied a geopolitical perspective to pre-1066 Britain (I don’t think I’ve

pinched the idea from anybody). But it seems to me to be potentially useful for
several reasons. It avoids both the determinism and the overly broad sweep of
geography; we can look as specific events and influences, including culture, identity
and religion. It avoids seeing “Europe” as exercising a monolithic influence on Britain.
And perhaps best of all, it could help us to make sense of what often seems a
bewilderingly complicated period of history.

My assumption is that Paul Johnson got it right in 1972: the key to our history is that

we are offshore islanders. We should look not as Winder says to our landscape, but
to our seascape.

This map shows the basic idea: