Geopoliticsidentifies and scrutinizes the central features of geopolitics from the sixteenth century to the present. The book focuses on five key concepts of the modern geopolitical imagination: visualizing the world as a whole; the definition of geographical areas as "advanced" or "primitive"; the notion of the state being the highest form of political organization; the pursuit of primacy by competing states; the necessity for hierarchy. The work addresses topical issues such as the re-integration of Hong Kong into China and the threatened break-up of states such as Canada, Spain, Russia and the UK. John Agnew also shows how questions of the organization of power combine with those of geographical definition and highlights the crucial geopolitical "certainties" from as recently as ten years ago which are now either gone or in question.