Geopolitics, the State, and Political Science

'This is a monumental work that completely rewrites its dominant image, Rudolf Kjellén. It makes a powerful case for revisiting the career and writing of someone who has often been reduced to sound bites, such as being the person who invented the word “geopolitics” in 1899. In fact, as Peter Davidsen notes, Leibniz beat him to it by 220 years, even if Kjellén revived the term for a different usage. The book’s major thrust is to situate Kjellén in his own time and place as a significant figure in the creation of a modern positivist political science focused on the emergence of the new activist nation-states of Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. This historicist grounding allows Davidsen to portray Kjellén on his own terms rather than simply seeing him as a problematic precursor to the questionable geopolitics that spread across Europe after his early death in 1922.'

— Prof. John Agnew, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

'Peter Davidsen’s important new book is a compelling scholarly reconstruction of the founder of geopolitics as an intellectual discipline, Rudolf Kjellén. It offers an authoritative account of a key moment in the rise of political science by focussing on one of its major innovators. Kjellén’s significance, at one time trumpeted by Meinecke and Hintze, has been obscured by the vagaries of historical transmission. Against this background, Davidsen’s study is an act of timely recovery that illuminates perhaps the most original Swedish thinker of the twentieth century, a figure who transformed our understanding of the state and its geopolitical fate.'

— Prof. Richard Bourke, University of Cambridge

'Geopolitics, the State, and Political Science is a thought-provoking reinterpretation of the origins of geopolitical thinking and its connection to the emergence of political science through theories of the state.'

— Prof. Bo Stråth, University of Helsinki

'In the context of increasing geopolitical tensions, this meticulously researched intellectual life of Swedish founder of geopolitics Rudolf Kjellén comes across as uncomfortably relevant, for better or worse.'

— Prof. Iver B. Neumann, University of Oslo and the Fridtjof Nansen Institute

'This compelling study offers new insights not only into Kjellén but generally into a key formative period for disciplines like political science, law, and history. Kjellén becomes a novel lens illuminating the constellation of key thinkers, challenging standard narratives centered on Schmitt versus Kelsen or the troubled history of the German nation as expressed by Max Weber and Friedrich Meinecke. For my own discipline of International Relations, geopolitics became the secret past that structured the field as a cover-up, continuing the content but disowning the format. Peter Davidsen’s book should therefore be required reading for discovering our own history.'

— Prof. Ole Wæver, University of Copenhagen

'Geopolitics, the State, and Political Science is a landmark study that provides a vivid account of Rudolf Kjellén’s role in the history of political thought. With exceptional detail and clarity, Davidsen reinterprets Kjellén’s work not through the distorting lens of later ideological appropriations, but within its proper intellectual and historical context. But this is more than a study of an overlooked thinker; it is a major contribution to the intellectual history of political science, the evolution of the social sciences, and the genealogy of geopolitics. Drawing on rich archival materials, the book convincingly demonstrates how Kjellén’s organic and multidimensional theory of the state helped define the contours of modern political inquiry. Essential reading for scholars of political geography, international relations, and political theory.'

— Prof. Alex Jeffrey, University of Cambridge

'Rudolf Kjellén is an overlooked thinker in the history of geopolitics, more misunderstood than known. Peter Davidsen’s compelling new intellectual biography recovers Kjellén’s thought within the context of the debates on the state, great powers, and political science that produced it. His is an empathetic account of an intellectual who was influential across Europe in the first two decades of the twentieth century, a figure who deserves to be understood on his own terms and within his own time.'

— Prof. Gerard Toal, Virginia Tech

'Rudolf Kjellén is often viewed merely as a stepping stone between Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer. This rigorous and groundbreaking book shreds generations of misconceptions about Kjellén and his work. It is required reading for anyone who wants to understand geopolitics or the history of political science. If you think you know Kjellén already, prepare to be astonished and to reappraise.'

— Prof. Nick Megoran, University of Newcastle

'In the history of political thought, certain names survive only as keywords, stripped of nuance, reduced to footnotes. Rudolf Kjellén is one such figure. Known today almost exclusively as the ‘titular saint’ of geopolitics, Kjellén’s vast intellectual contributions to state theory and political science have long been obscured by this narrow label – and by what others made of it. Peter Davidsen restores to us the full dimensions of this complex scholar-turned-politician, and has produced the definitive study of a central figure in the emergence of political science from its subordination to law, history, and philosophy in early 20th-century Scandinavia. This is more than a biography; it is a sweeping reconstruction of the academic disputes, methodological revolutions, and a unique political conjuncture that formed an entire discipline.'

— Dr. Felix Mallin, National Research Council of Italy

'This book sheds much-needed light on an often overlooked and little-understood figure in the geopolitical canon. Remarkable in its depth and breadth, and provocative in its arguments, Geopolitics, the State, and Political Science offers a comprehensive account of Rudolf Kjellén’s scholarship and its place within the political-scientific landscape of the early twentieth century.'

— Dr. Ian Klinke, University of Oxford

'This is a rich and illuminating study of Rudolf Kjellén, one of the most influential political thinkers and social scientists in early twentieth-century Europe. Exploring Kjellén’s extensive writings on the state and geopolitics, Peter Davidsen makes a compelling case that he should be read as one of the founding figures of modern political science.'

— Prof. Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge

'Peter Davidsen has written a dispassionate and very well-researched book on the man who has a good claim to having invented the modern concept of “geopolitics”.'

— Prof. Brendan Simms, University of Cambridge

'Rudolf Kjellén was one of the most important and influential theorists of modern politics and international relations. He practically invented geopolitics by pursuing a science of politics and the state that might be placed on intellectually robust foundations. He quickly became more cited than read, however, particularly in the Anglophone world, and is usually seen only as presaging later fascist and Nazi forms of geopolitics. Peter Davidsen’s book is the first study to treat the whole of Kjellén’s work on political science in its various historical contexts. From border disputes between Sweden and Norway to the intricacies of academic politics, through to the largest questions of historical international relations, Davidsen shows there was much more to Kjellén than usually presumed. Steeped in original sources and clearly written and focused, this book provides much the most complete sense of Kjellén’s ideas about politics now available.'

— Prof. Duncan Kelly, University of Cambridge