<p>Foreword </p> <p>1. Friedrich Ratzel and Geopolitics </p> <p>1.1. Geopolitics as an analysis tool of power redistribution </p> <p>1.1.1. Systemic Geopolitical Analysis and Critical Geopolitics </p> <p>1.1.2. The Greek Geopolitical Systemic School (research programme) </p> <p>1.1.2.1. Methodology of Systemic Geopolitical Analysis </p> <p>1.2. Ratzel: The father of Geopolitics? </p> <p>1.3. Ratzel’s scientific Political Geography </p> <p>1.3.1. About the scientific nature of Political Geography </p> <p>1.3.2. Epistemological approach and definition of Political Geography </p> <p>1.3.2.1. Land equals power? </p> <p>1.3.2.2. Physiographical and human geographical aspects in the political evaluation</p> <p>1.3.3. Ratzel and modern Geopolitics </p> <p>1.4. A Methodological approach to Ratzel’s Work </p> <p>1.5. Determining F. Ratzel’s “geopolitical period” </p> <p>1.6. Conclusions of Chapter 1 </p> <p>2. F. Ratzel’s State as a “social organism” </p> <p>2.1. The predominant State perceptions at F. Ratzel’s age (1789 – 1900). </p> <p>2.2. The German national edifice: specificities and disputes </p> <p>2.2.1. The German national unity as a starting point of the ideological propensity to social</p> <p>darwinist and racist theories. </p> <p>2.3. In-between two eras: Ratzel’s perception of the State </p> <p>2.4. The myth of Ratzel’s organistic and metaphysical perception of the state </p> <p>2.4.1. Review of Ratzel’s article “The state as an organism” </p> <p>2.5. Conclusions of Chapter 2 </p> <p>3. Living space (Lebensraum): Bio-geographical signifier with political-geographical signified?</p> <p>3.1. Living space (Lebensraum): a bio-geographical term </p> <p>3.2. The driving forces of the organisms </p> <p>3.3. A definition of living space: its material characteristics </p> <p>3.4. The importance of space for development of the species </p> <p>3.5. Bio-geography as the field for the implementation Migrationstheorie (theory of migration) </p> <p>3.6. Conclusions of Chapter 3 </p> <p>4. Social / cultural aspects as factors of power contibutors in Ratzel’s state analysis and the issue of racism</p> <p>4.1. The position of the nature-oriented people (Naturvölker) within humanity</p> <p>4.2. People evaluation </p> <p>4.2.1. Family </p> 4.2.2. Intellectual and scientific life <p></p> <p>4.2.3. Work and economy </p> <p>4.2.4. Intellectual heroes and great statesmen </p> <p>4.2.5. The conscience of “socially belonging together” </p> <p>4.2.6. Language and “national identity” </p> <p>4.2.7. About extraction and its characteristics </p> <p>4.2.8. The cosmopolitan age or the oncoming globalisation </p> <p>4.2.9. About demography as a state power contributor </p> <p>4.3. Nationalities and races: a human-geographical analysis </p> <p>4.3.1. The age and universality of the national movements </p> <p>4.3.2. The race factor as part of the national issue </p> <p>4.3.3. Incorporation and isolation </p> <p>4.3.4. Race and Language </p> <p>4.3.5. Contradictions and ephemerality of the national movements </p> <p>4.3.6. Contradictions and ephemerality of the national movements </p> <p>4.3.7. The great racial issues </p> <p>4.3.7.1. Ratzel’s critique against Gobineau and Chamberlain </p> <p>4.4. Some objects/elements of a Political Ethnography </p> <p>4.4.1. Theoretical and applied Ethnography </p> <p>4.4.2. Land and people </p> <p>4.4.3. The unity of the human species in Political Ethnography </p> <p>4.4.4. Peoples’ evaluation </p> <p>4.4.5. Sociology and Political Ethnography </p> <p>4.5. Racist or humanist? Ratzel in the centre of a big antinomy </p> <p>4.5.1. The debiologicalisation of the term race </p> <p>4.5.2. About the allegedly hierarchical race classification </p> <p>4.5.3. About the worldwide labor division </p> <p>4.5.4. Racism and national conflicts </p> <p>4.6. Conclusions of Chapter 4 </p> <p>5. Ratzel’s worldview (Weltanschauung) and the “Positivist Circle of Leipzig”. The meaning of Ratzel’s law</p> <p>5.1. Partial or complete renunciation of Darwin? </p> <p>5.2. Diffusion, evolutionism and socialdarwinism </p> <p>5.3. Between religion and science </p> <p>5.4. The positivist and interdisciplinary indagation of the “Positivist Circle of Leipzig”</p> <p>5.5. Law (Gesetz), Conformity to the law (Gesetzmäßigkeit), Rule (Regel) </p> <p>5.6. The Laws of Spatial Growth. A Contribution to Scientific Political Geography</p> <p>5.6.1. 1st Law: The size of the state increases with the development of culture </p> <p>5.6.2. 2nd Law: The spatial development of countries follows other growth phenomena of the people, which necessarily proceed</p> <p>5.6.3. 3rd law: The spatial growth of states evolves through the annexation of smaller parts in a merger, through which the people’s connection to the ground becomes increasingly closer </p> <p>5.6.4. 4th Law: As a peripheral organ of the state, the border is the agent of both its growth and its consolidation, participating in all transformations of the state’s organism</p> <p>5.6.5. 5th law: When expanding, states seek to appropriate the politically valuable locations</p> <p>5.6.6. 6th Law: The initial stimuli for the spatial growth of states are external. </p> <p>5.6.7. 7th Law: The general tendency towards spatial adjustment and balancing transmits spatial growth from one state to the next and continuously intensifies it. </p> <p>5.7. Conclusions of Chapter 5 </p> <p>6. Ratzel, Central Europe (Mitteleuropa) and “European Union” </p> <p>6.1. Organising models of the Central European space </p> <p>6.2. The Pan-Germanic Central Europe </p> <p>6.2.1. Central Europe in German Political Geography and Geopolitics </p> <p>6.3. The Central European Economic Association </p> <p>6.4. Central Europe from Ratzel’s point of view </p> <p>6.5. Conclusions of Chapter 6 </p> <p>7. Fr. Ratzel and the Eastern Question: Flag follows trade </p> <p>7.1. The Eastern Question - approaches 222</p> <p>7.1.1. The Eastern question from the German ultranationalists’ point of view </p> <p>7.2. Die Bagdadbahn: railway connection from Berlin to Bagdad </p> <p>7.3. The Eastern Question in Ratzel’s Political Geography </p> <p>7.3.1. Importance and interdependence of Verkehr with politics </p> <p>7.3.2. Railways, telecommunications and military roads </p> <p>7.3.2.1 Railways </p> <p>7.3.4.2. Telecommunications </p> <p>7.3.2.3. Military roads </p> <p>7.4. The need to support the Ottoman Empire </p> <p>7.5. The English – Russian geostrategic dispute for Persia</p> <p>7.6. Suez Canal changes balances in the wider area: a geopolitical approach </p> <p>7.7. Presentation of F.Ratzel’s analysis: The Eastern Questions </p> <p>7.7.1 The Mediterranean Sea subsystem of a European system </p> <p>7.7.2. Geostrategical competition and conflicts of Great Powers in the sub-system of Balkans - Mediterranean Sea </p> <p>7.7.3. Ratzel’s geopolitical doctrine for the Eastern Mediterranean Sea: chock points and islands </p> <p>7.7.4. Geopolitical players and Realpolitik </p> <p>7.7.5. English economism and French cultural expansion </p> <p>7.7.6. Greece </p> <p>7.7.7. Cyprus </p> <p>7.7.8. Syria </p> <p>7.7.9. Psychology of peoples – The role of Press </p> <p>7.8. Conclusions of Chapter 7 </p> <p>8. Final Conclusions </p> <p>9. Appendix </p> <p>9.1. Maps </p> <p>9.2. Maps of Friedrich Ratzel </p> <p>10. References </p> <p>Friedrich Ratzel’s books and articles </p> <p>German and English</p> <p>Greek or translated into Greek </p> Websites