On the issue of the synthesis of geopolitics and racialism in the early days of contemporary history

Abstract

The purpose of the research is the consideration of the problem of synthesis of racialism and geopolitics in the late 19th - the early 20th century and the substantiation of such a new concept in geopolitics as geopolitical racialism which hasn’t been used before neither in Russian nor in foreign science. To solve this task, the author applies the fundamental geopolitical dualism methods to the analysis of supremacist and imperialist mindset typical for scientific and sociopolitical life in Britain and the U.S. of the considered period, which became a core for the formation of Anglo-Saxon exceptionality, and formed the basis for the foreign policy of these states. The author arrives at the conclusion that until recently, Anglo-Saxonism was considered as a result of the Western elites’ fascination with the ideas of social Darwinism rather than as a geopolitical form of racism, since its analysis was mostly based on the peculiarities of “blood and descendance” of Anglo-Saxon peoples rather than on their “thalassocratic nature” or the influence of natural and climatic factors on their development. The differentiating feature of continental geopolitics was, vice versa, not only distancing from social Darwinism, but also the repudiation of the possibility of ultimate victory in the struggle between the West and the East. Theoretical and practical importance of the research consists in the fact that based on the analysis of the works of the Western authors of the late 19th - the early 20th centuries, both already known and left out in the cold, the author substantiates the definition and characteristics of geopolitical racism in its Anglo-Saxon variant, upholding the supremacy of maritime powers (thalassocracies) over land powers (tellurocracies) predefined by geographical factors, which in many aspects predetermined the development of the Western geopolitical mindset in contemporary history.