Godfather of British Geopolitics
26th May 2025
The lecture that launched geopolitics in the Anglosphere was given 120 years ago, on 25 January 1904, to the Royal Geographical Society in London. The speaker, Halford Mackinder (1861–1947), didn’t invent the term, but did more than anyone else to give the idea currency, not least because he was a leading commentator of the world’s most powerful empire and naval power — two elements that featured so heavily in the concept.
As director of the London School of Economics, Mackinder was a well-connected academic who was also active in politics. He had joined the Conservatives in 1903, having been one of their allied Liberal Unionists. After two unsuccessful attempts to enter Parliament in 1900 and 1909, he was to serve as MP for Glasgow Camlachie from 1910 until 1922.
During Britain’s intervention in the Russian Civil War, he was High Commissioner to (anti-Bolshevik) South Russia in 1919–20. Subsequently, he was chairman of the Imperial Shipping Committee from 1920 to 1945 and chairman of the Imperial Economic Committee between 1925 and 1931.
The contemporary influence of Mackinder’s views is a matter for discussion. Yet the nature of the British state, which then lacked administrative and intellectual institutions for imperial planning and defence, increased the possibilities for ideas from external thinkers to make an impact. The gap was filled by circles of intellectual opinion sustained through meetings in London, including in clubland. Mackinder’s metropolitan milieu was therefore very much an active part of the debate about the power Britain should rightly wield and the anxiety about its ability to do so in a changing world.