Introduction

Abstract

It is now some twenty years since I published Modern Political Geography. When this book first appeared, in 1975, the rehabilitation of political geography had scarcely begun (Muir 1976), though during the 1980s the subject reclaimed a position near the centre of the geographical stage, and its prominence has been consolidated during the 1990s. The two decades which span the publication of Modern Political Geography and that of Political Geography: A New Introduction cover a most formative period in the development of the subject and provide interesting bases for comparison.

Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences.

Mao Tse-Tung, speech ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions’ (1957)

When shall the saner softer polities/Whereof we dream, have sway in each proud land … ?

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) ‘Departure’ (1899)