Teutonic Horizons: Geopolitical Thought and Anglo-Saxon Empire in Late-Nineteenth Century Iceland

This article makes the case for studying fin de siècle geopolitical thought from the margins—at the Nordic periphery. While recent scholarship in the history of international thought has revisited canonical figures or turned to non-Western contexts, the Nordic margins of Europe have remained largely unexplored. This article addresses that lacuna by examining the geopolitical thought of Jón Ólafsson, an Icelandic journalist, transatlantic migrant and settler colonialist. Writing from Iceland and within Icelandic-speaking communities in North America, he engaged with and reworked dominant Anglo-Saxonist discourses of imperial federation. Blending these ideas with emerging geopolitical themes, Ólafsson developed an ambitious, Darwinist vision of geopolitical transformation: a world shifting from a European system of nations to one dominated by global racial empires. While adopting the racialized logic of Anglo-Saxonism, he extended its boundaries on the grounds of transnational whiteness—proposing a imperial federation encompassing the Teutonic race to both safeguard smaller nationalities against rising “alien” powers and empower the Anglo-Saxons in the race to enclose the world’s interiors. A reluctant Teutonist, Ólafsson was sharply critical of Anglo-American imperial conduct toward weaker states, but concluded that moral principles had to adapt to the evolutionary imperatives dictating the future shape of world order. By reconstructing these arguments, the article contributes to efforts to globalize the history of international thought, demonstrating how creative and critical geopolitical imaginaries emerged from peripheral actors beyond the traditional canon.