Mark Bassin | Södertörn University (original) (raw)

Papers by Mark Bassin

Geographical Review, Oct 1, 2000

Territory, State and Nation

This volume is a much-revised translation of a collection of essays on Rudolf Kjellén that was or... more This volume is a much-revised translation of a collection of essays on Rudolf Kjellén that was originally published in Stockholm in 2014. For the Swedish reader, the relevance of the collection needs no explanation. Kjellén is widely recognized as an important-if unconventional-figure in the intellectual and political life of early twentieth-century Sweden. He was the holder of the country's most prestigious university chair in political science, the Skytteanska Professorship at Uppsala University-he served as an active and outspoken Member of Parliament, and he also worked as a highly influential journalist. Yet despite all this, Kjellén has remained surprisingly little-studied and even less understood, even in his own country. This lack of attention comes largely from the shadow of notoriety that coloured his legacy, a shadow cast by the resolutely conservative positions that he advocated and that have increasingly been at odds with the increasing liberal orientation of Swedish politics and society since his death in the 1920s. In his academic work, Kjellén developed an organismic concept of Great Power politics centred around the notion of Geopolitik-a neologism he coined in 1899 to highlight the significance of geography for political affairs, in domestic as well as international arenas. Kjellén was a lifelong Germanophile and supporter of the Wilhelmian Reich. His academic work was widely translated in Germany and was received there with perhaps greater interest than in his own country. Geopolitik in particular proved inspirational as the Germans developed their own science of geopolitics after 1918, and its leading proponent Karl Haushofer borrowed

Eurasian Geography and Economics, 2009

Abstract: A prominent UK-based political and historical geographer analyzes ethno-geopolitics, a ... more Abstract: A prominent UK-based political and historical geographer analyzes ethno-geopolitics, a new trend in Russian political discourse that is distinguished by the primary role it assigns to ethnicity (rather than the nation-state) as a geopolitical factorie, recog- ...

Mastering Russian Spaces, 2011

From its inception in the interwar period down to the present day, Eurasianism has always attract... more From its inception in the interwar period down to the present day, Eurasianism has always attracted attention first and foremost by virtue of what it says about Russia's place on the map of world civilization 1. There are good reasons for this, insofar as the radical relocation of Russian culture and civilization between East and West is indeed one of it most important projects. Unequivocally rejecting not only the so-called "Westernizing" tendency in Russian national thought but important parts of the Slavophile tradition as well, the Eurasians insisted that Russia belongs neither to Europe nor to Asia. Rather, it stands as a world unto itself: a third continent with its own unique geographical character, historical legacy, and cultural ethos. The utter rejection of the West is expressed through the strident

Journal of Historical Geography, 2018

This special issue grapples with a text that stands at the inception of modern geo-and biopolitic... more This special issue grapples with a text that stands at the inception of modern geo-and biopolitics-the 1901 essay 'Lebensraum: a biogeographical study' written by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904). In this essay, the trained zoologist and founding father of modern political geography set out a theory of the world in which humans and their social institutions are but an effect of the natural world and therefore subject to nature's laws in much the same way as the animal and plant kingdom. Although Ratzel describes his essay as primarily written in the language of biogeography, he uses it to flesh out his conception of the state as an organism that struggles for Lebensraum (living space). The arguments Ratzel develops in this essay should be read as an attempt to draw on basic Darwinian ideas to account for the expansive tendency of late nineteenth-century imperialism and state competition. By treating historical and biological processes alike, Ratzel famously came to naturalise both the territorial configuration of world politics and the phenomenon of interstate war. Whilst already a notable academic figure during his lifetime, it is especially the posthumous career of his Lebensraum concept that has made Ratzel a continued object of fascination for geographers, historians and political scientists alike. Indeed, Ratzel remains something of a disgraced figure in the geographical canon today, given his reputation for environmental determinism and his influence on interwar politics. Indeed, it was one of his followers, the geographer Karl Haushofer, who claimed to have introduced Adolf Hitler to the idea of Lebensraum as the latter was cobbling together his 1925 book Mein Kampf in Landsberg prison. 1 It is thus difficult to understate the historical significance of Ratzel's Lebensraum concept, even if his essay's immediate readership would have been limited to academic circles. And yet, this special issue suggests that Ratzel's text is perhaps not 'merely' of historical interest, but of theoretical significance too. For whilst geopolitical ideas were mushrooming elsewhere too in the nineteenth century, Ratzel's work is unusual in its biogeographical understanding of the state as organism: a political life form that tries to secure its survival by conquering and defending space. It is the primacy of life within his political theory that links Ratzel to a range of ongoing theoretical debates on the nature and emergence of modern biopolitics-the politics of life-even though this connection has not yet been significantly explored. 2 Moreover, Ratzel's essay embodies and promotes what we would today undoubtedly call a 'more-than-human geography' that tries to bridge the divide between science and philosophy and takes off from an understanding of the human as an effect of the natural world. 3 Indeed, Ratzel's entire oeuvre rests on the fundamental assumption of the unity of life and earth. Life, he is never tired of repeating, is earthbound. Despite the fact that there has been a significant and continuous intellectual debate on Ratzel, which has included biographical work, 4 explorations of Ratzel's place within nineteenth-century German colonial imaginaries, 5 examinations of his role in the history of geopolitical thought, 6 as well as work on his Lebensraum concept itself, 7 it is notable that, with only few exceptions, 8 Ratzel's major works have not been translated into English. This is perhaps surprising given the rising interest in other German spatial thinkers such as Carl Schmitt and Walter Christaller. 9 We argue that if future generations of Anglophone geographers and historians want to understand the popularisation of Lebensraum as a political concept, they will have to read this text and come to terms with Ratzel's conceptual universe.

Geopolitics, 2017

Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern yo... more Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.

The Gumilev Mystique, 2016

The Gumilev Mystique : Biopolitics, Eurasianism and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia

Journal of Historical Geography, 2014

Ab Imperio, 2003

By its very nature Eurasia is historically destined to comprise a single state entity." N. Trubet... more By its very nature Eurasia is historically destined to comprise a single state entity." N. Trubetskoi 1925 One of the great fascinations of studying nationalist ideologies is to follow the complex process by which foreign notions and perspective are absorbed, rescripted and resignified, and then redeployed in a manner quite different from, if not indeed opposed to their original function. This borrowing process can be an elusive one, not least of all because the ideology itself generally seeks to conceal and deny it through an insistence on the absolute individuality and uniqueness of the national ethos it describes. We know nonetheless that

Progress in Human Geography, 1993

Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities

Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the …, 2008

Eurasianism, as Stephen Shenfield reminds us, means many things. 1 Indeed, this is if anything an... more Eurasianism, as Stephen Shenfield reminds us, means many things. 1 Indeed, this is if anything an understatement, for the term has emerged as one of the most popular keywords available in the volatile ideological arsenal of post-Soviet politics. 2 Popularity does not, ...

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2003

This essay explores the connections between geopolitics and political conservatism. The introduct... more This essay explores the connections between geopolitics and political conservatism. The introductory argument is that geopolitics historically has been appealing and useful for two very different expressions of conservatism: one which aims to preserve the political geography of the existing ...

Slavic Review, 1991

Gehört Russland zu Europa? Der Geograph hat die Antwort am ehesten zur Hand.Georg von RauchWe sho... more Gehört Russland zu Europa? Der Geograph hat die Antwort am ehesten zur Hand.Georg von RauchWe should remember that a geographical region is in the last resort an abstraction with a history which can sometimes tell us much about the past.Denys HayRussia's position between Europe and Asia is once again a timely subject. On the most official level, it figures regularly in Mikhail Gorbachev's pronouncements on foreign policy: somberly invoked either in western capitals in order to press his vision of a “common European home” from the Atlantic to the Urals or in the Far East to affirm the Soviet Union's natural identity as an Asian country. At the same time, dissident intellectual circles in the Soviet Union have been expostulating upon the Europe-Russia-Asia juxtaposition for some years and frequently enough arrive at conclusions very different from those of the general secretary.

Progress in Human Geography, 1997

... determin-ism' and its immediate intellectual heritage, which has been misread as 'D... more ... determin-ism' and its immediate intellectual heritage, which has been misread as 'Darwinian ... in teachers' colleges (Renner was professor at Teacher's College of Columbia University), did not. ... to Smith, the bifurcation of geology and geography in the United States coincided with ...

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2011

Mark Bassin Nicholas Riasanovsky was a remarkable scholar, but in a very particular way. Unlike h... more Mark Bassin Nicholas Riasanovsky was a remarkable scholar, but in a very particular way. Unlike his Berkeley colleague Reginald Zelnik, he was not outgoingly charismatic; and unlike his other colleague Martin Malia he did not regularly mesmerize his audiences with the brilliance of his audacious (if not always entirely convincing) interpretations. What set Nick apart from the others was a simple and very powerful combination of two special qualities: an utterly extraordinary erudition regarding all aspects of Russian history and civilization, on the one hand, and the unsurpassed balance, judiciousness, and elegance with which he wielded this knowledge, on the other. Either of these qualities would be notable by themselves, but Nick brought them together in a way that made him sui generis and without question one of the great monuments on the landscape of Russian studies in the late 20th century. Of all his writings, his many-editioned textbook offers probably the best example of this combination, and there is no surprise in the fact that it remained for decades as the leading English-language text on the subject across much of the globe. (1) As a supervisor he was decidedly noninterventionist. Restrained and gentle in his critiques, he was--so it seemed to me--quite as concerned about my mistransliterations of the Russian tverdyi znak as he was about my labored interpretations of Count Uvarov's correspondence with Goethe. But the pedagogical effect of interacting with this scholarly paragon was immense and enduring. More than anyone I have ever known, Nick gave full meaning to the notion of "teaching by example," and he did so entirely naturally and effortlessly. It may never have occurred to him to offer himself as a model of the sort of excellence that we historians should seek to achieve, but it would never have occurred to any of his students to see him in any other way. I was extremely proud when he agreed to write the foreword to the published version of the dissertation that he supervised. In retrospect, it is clear that my most significant scholarly interaction with Nick related not to my dissertation research but to a rather different subject that I began to study seriously only later, namely the history of Eurasianism. This was a subject in which he had a personal interest, partly through his father Valentin Riasanovsky, who was a specialist on Mongol law, and partly because it involved issues of emigration and emigre visions of Russia in which he would have felt himself implicated. Nick published an extended essay on the topic in the mid-1960s, which was little noted at the time but--with the emergence of neo-Eurasianism in post-Soviet Russia--has today become one his most republished and oft-cited works. (2) The essay stands out for the dynamism and intensity of the argument, which is presented with an unusual energy that is linked, I am sure, to Nick's own sense of direct personal engagement with the subject. I studied the essay as his student, and while I admired it, I was skeptical of his emphatic conclusion that Eurasianism represented a fundamental break with the prerevolutionary legacy of Russian nationalist thinking. As I became an expert on the subject in my own right, however, and particularly in light of the revival of Eurasianism in Russia today, I came to appreciate precisely how important the point is and how very right he actually was. To be challenged by, and learn from, a scholar after his or her time has passed is without doubt the greatest tribute that can be paid. Nick's legacy will continue to challenge and teach us for many years. Marshall Poe In 1986, Professor Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, my new advisor, told me I was sloppy because I didn't know how to transliterate properly. He told me I was lazy because I refused to learn Latin. And he told me I had a bad attitude because I generally failed to follow directions and, when I did follow them, grumbled about their supposed unfairness. …

The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2009

The Journal of Modern History, 2012

Journal of Historical Geography, 1983

Wynn gives the reader a full account of how timber fashioned this transformation. He describes th... more Wynn gives the reader a full account of how timber fashioned this transformation. He describes the distribution of the provincial timber resources, noting its regional variations, and portrays the cutting of the timber, the techniques employed, and the seasonal cycle of the work from the preparation of the timber roads in the autumn to the spring drive. He explains the price and commercial structure of the trade, down to the local shopkeeper, as well as the rise and the growth of sawmills. All of this is richly illustrated with photographs, prints, maps, charts and diagrams. Through a skilful exploitation of the available archival evidence and an informed use of the secondary literature, Wynn paints a broad Atlantic view of the operation of the timber trade, supported by statistical schedules and tables. Literary evidence, private letters, diaries, government documents, newspapers and travellers' accounts are equally well used to demonstrate the impact of the timber trade on the lives and land of individuals, families and communities. But Wynn also makes clear that New Brunswick, for all its peculiar reliance upon the timber staple, was only "an intriguing variant on a common pattern" (p. 8). Settled rapidly, predominantly rural, and dependent for its growth upon international trade, New Brunswick shared many characteristics with other colonies of British Settlement, including Cape Colony, Tasmania, New South Wales, as well as neighbouring British North American colonies. Technology, rapid population growth, capital concentration and industrial strategies and ideologies transformed the work patterns and social structures of colonial life in all these territories. Although the technology of logging changed little over the 50 years considered in this book, market instability, the growing institutionalization of trade, increasing costs of land and transportation, as well as government regulation, strengthened the hands of those men who could command capital and influence. The increasing replacement of wind, water and man power by steam in the province's sawmills and wood processing industries, toward the middle of the century, was a harbinger. In these larger, more specialized operations labour relations began to resemble the work discipline of British industrial life. Elsewhere, too, the attitudes and ideologies of industrial Britain, with its people and capital, crossed the Atlantic and found a welcome home in colonial New Brunswick. Consequently, New Brunswick was a far different place in 1850 than it had been in 1800. It was not just a larger population and expanded economy; it possessed a society which was more differentiated, a commercial class whose wealth was more concentrated, and a people more exposed to the industrial notions of efficiency, time thrift and labour management. In this emerging modern, industrial world the opportunities for an ordinary man in the timber trade were as "severely restricted" as those of David Gagan's HopefuZ Travellers who came to Peel County, Canada West, in search of land, or those of Michael Katz's The People of Hamilton. The creation of a "Powerful entrepreneurial class and a growing proletariat" severely compromised the ideal of "yeomanly independence" (p. 137). In short, the exploitation of the timber trade in New Brunswick followed a familiar pattern of development. This compact, well-written, informative, and skilfully crafted study makes an important contribution to our understanding of colonial New Brunswick. Wynn delivers what he promised: more than a "walled garden"-"a perspective on an horizon far wider than the province itself" (p. IO). McGill University CARMAN MILLER Other studies KARL LENZ (Ed.), Carl Ritter: Geltung und Deutung. Beitriige des Symposiums anliisslich der Wiederkehr des 200. Geburtstages von Carl Ritter November 1979 in Berlin (West)