Friedrich Ratzel

Friedrich Ratzel (Karlsruhe, August 30, 1844 - Ammerland, August 9, 1904) was a German geographer, founder of human geography or anthropogeography.

Biography

He studied geography at the universities of Leipzig and Munich and later traveled through Europe (1869) and America (1872-1875).

Although he did not found geopolitics (the first to speak of this term was Rudolf Kjellén) he was one of its greatest exponents. Influenced by Darwin's ideas and by deterministic theses from the 19th century, he reflected on the existing relationships between geographic space and population, and tried to relate universal history to natural laws. In the same way, Ratzel played an important role in evolutionary anthropology, opposing it to the idea that populations need to spread their cultural traits beyond their original environment and that, in turn, contacts with other peoples allow development.

Ratzel confronts evolutionism with diffusionism, concluding exchange as the engine of progress.

Friedich Ratzel is generally considered the founder of modern geography (political geography), already conceived as a systematic discipline within the scope of human geography, with a specific and differentiated objective of its analysis.

Ratzel is immersed in the current of positivist thought prevailing in his time within the general panorama of science, from which he cannot escape; on the other, his own life is situated in a specific historical context, that of Bismarckian Germany that has just achieved its unification and, in a broader scope, that of Europe at the end of the century XIX, where the exaltation of nationalist sentiments and imperialist interests based on overseas colonial expansion seem to guide political events.

His positivist attitude, which leads to the transfer of concepts and theories from the natural sciences to the human sciences, can be found in his use of biological concepts in the interpretation of facts of political geography, such as the comparison of the state as an organism alive, made up of a series of organs or elements, each of which fulfills a certain function and subjected to a constant evolutionary process in which various phases can be distinguished, from birth to maturity, decline and, finally, disappearance.

The direct influence of evolutionary biology is also present in the work of the German geographer, taking shape in his conception of state life as a process of constant struggle for survival, which leads to natural selection. This approach is precisely at the base of his well-known notion of "living space" or Lebensraum.

The tendency to occupy ever larger spaces is at the base of progress itself and, therefore, «as the territory of the states grows larger, it is not only the number of square kilometers that grows, but also their collective strength, their wealth, their power and, finally, their duration.

Ratzel's work comes to offer, in a way, a theoretical justification for the imperialist policy of expansion, based on arguments invested with the prestige that biological sciences enjoyed at that time. His theory of living space was used in Germany by the Third Reich to support its expansionist policy, its main ideologue being Karl Haushofer. The German defeat in World War II discredited geopolitics for a while, which has regained its interest.

Its influence is more than visible in Germany between the wars, linked to the rise of geopolitics, largely heir to Ratzel's postulates.

Ratzel's most important works were Anthropogeography (1891) and Political Geography (1897).