---
title: "Geography and Legal Order: Mackinder and Schmitt on Conflict between Empires · 地理与法权——麦金德与施米特论帝国间的冲突"
author: "Jiang Shigong"
translator: "S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026)"
title_ru: "География и право: Маккиндер и Шмитт о конфликте империй"
author_ru: "Цзян Шигун"
languages: [zh, en]
shelf: "LCI editions"
section: 6 of 7
url: https://scriptura.si/works/jiang-shigong-geography-legal-order/6/
cite: "Jiang Shigong, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026), Geography and Legal Order: Mackinder and Schmitt on Conflict between Empires · 地理与法权——麦金德与施米特论帝国间的冲突, section 6. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/jiang-shigong-geography-legal-order/6/"
---

# Geography and Legal Order: Mackinder and Schmitt on Conflict between Empires · 地理与法权——麦金德与施米特论帝国间的冲突

*Jiang Shigong, tr. S. Alexander Laurent (AI-assisted, 2026)*

Russian: География и право: Маккиндер и Шмитт о конфликте империй, Цзян Шигун

Jiang Shigong’s talk of 2018 setting Mackinder beside Schmitt: land and sea, empire and the sovereign state, and China’s choice between the continental and the maritime world. In Chinese beside a new English translation.

> Chinese: 强世功，《地理与法权——麦金德与施米特论帝国间的冲突》, remarks at the “Politics: China and the World” forum, 2018 (aisixiang.com/data/110645.html).

> English: Laurentium Cultural Industries, complete translation (9 October 2026).

## 6. V

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/jiang-shigong-geography-legal-order/6/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/jiang-shigong-geography-legal-order/6/#p-N

[¶0] V

> Chinese: 五

[¶1] Mackinder’s thought profoundly influenced the subsequent development of German geopolitics. Yet, very interestingly, the German thinker Carl Schmitt makes no mention whatsoever of German geopolitical thought in either Land and Sea or The Nomos of the Earth. The short book Land and Sea is devoted entirely to the story of global confrontation between land and sea that Mackinder set out, and in the preface to The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt explicitly expresses his gratitude to Mackinder. Yet if we read these two books alongside Mackinder, we find that Schmitt is, in fact, offering a critique of him.

> Chinese: 麦金德的思想深刻地影响了后来德国的地缘政治学。但是，非常有意思的是，德国的施米特在他的《陆地与海洋》和《大地的法》中只字不提德国的地缘政治学思想。《陆地与海洋》这本小册子完全讲针对的是麦金德提出的全球陆地和海洋对抗的故事，而在《大地的法》的序言里，他明确提出向麦金德致谢。然而，对照麦金德读施米特的这两本书，却看到施米特恰恰是在对麦金德构成了批判。

[¶2] Schmitt makes this very clear at the beginning of The Nomos of the Earth. He sees the difference between himself and Mackinder as being that he is a jurist, whereas Mackinder is a geographer. What does ‘jurist’ mean here? It means that when we understand land and sea, we do not regard them simply as two natural elements possessing objective force. Behind these natural elements there is also a normative meaning, a moral value.

> Chinese: 施米特在《大地的法》这本书开头讲得很清楚。施米特认为自己跟麦金德区别在于，他是法学家而麦金德是地理学家。“法学家”的含义是什么？是说当我们理解陆地和海洋的时候，不是把它们看成两种具有客观力量的自然要素，在这个自然要素背后还有一个规范的含义，有一个道德价值。

[¶3] This raises a question. In Mackinder’s eyes, land and sea are two natural forces to be considered on an equal footing, and they have given rise to a global confrontation between the two forces of continental states and maritime states. But from the outset, Schmitt says that human beings are creatures of the earth: only existence on land has normative significance; existence at sea has none.

> Chinese: 这就带来一个问题：麦金德的眼中，陆地和海洋是两种等量齐观的自然力量，而且形成了陆地国家和海洋国家两种力量的全球对峙，但是施米特从一开始就说，人作为大地的动物，只有陆地上的生存才有规范意义，海洋上没有什么规范意义。

[¶4] To put it in our own terms, why do we translate ‘the earth’ into Chinese as an ‘earth-globe’ rather than a ‘water-globe’? In fact, to translate it as an ‘earth-globe’ is to understand ‘earth’ as ‘land’ rather than ‘sea.’ The implication is that all the meaning of human existence comes from the land. The earth generates norms and meaning, whereas the sea signifies the loss of norms and the loss of meaning. This is the nihilism that Schmitt identifies in The Nomos of the Earth: a nihilism of scientific rationality devoid of normative meaning.

> Chinese: 用我们的话说，为什么the earth翻译成“地球”，而不是“水球”呢？实际上翻译成“地球”是把earth理解成land，而不是sea，隐含的意思是：人的生存全部意义来源于土地，大地生产规范和意义，而海洋意味着规范的丧失和意义的丧失，这就是施米特在《大地的法》所指出的虚无主义，就是一种没有规范意义上的科学理性的虚无主义。

[¶5] Even so, Schmitt and Mackinder have much in common. Just as Mackinder never speaks only about Britain, Schmitt does not confine his discussion of land, sea, and the nomos of the earth to Germany.

> Chinese: 尽管如此，施米特和麦金德有非常相似的地方。就像麦金德从来不是只讲英国，施米特也不会只着眼于德国来讲陆地、海洋和大地的法。

[¶6] From the outset, Mackinder speaks of a distinction between friend and enemy grounded in European civilization: Europe’s enemies are East Asia and Russia. Schmitt largely shares this view.

> Chinese: 麦金德一上来就讲的是基于欧洲文明的敌友划分，欧洲的敌人是东亚、是俄国，施米特也基本分享了类似的观点。

[¶7] Mackinder divides world history into three stages, and Schmitt largely agrees with this division. The difference is that Schmitt understands it from a juridical standpoint. The first stage is the early Christian era, when Europeans shared a conception of the public international law of Christendom. In this first stage, the law of European Christianity was directed precisely against the external, non-Christian world of the East.

> Chinese: 麦金德将世界历史分为三个阶段，施米特也基本同意这个划分。不同的是，施米特从法权的角度来理解。第一个阶段是早期基督教时代，当时的欧洲人共享一个基督教世界的国际公法的观念，而第一个阶段欧洲基督教的法恰恰是针对外部的异教徒东方世界。

[¶8] The second stage also comes close to Mackinder’s second stage, but Schmitt emphasizes the Westphalian era, or the era of states, constructed with states as its subjects. In this era, the territorial state became the political form. Even so, while Europe’s existence was sustained by the Westphalian system, beyond Europe there remained a barbarian world. In the language of international law, only within the Westphalian system was there a ‘partnership’ of European civilization. Equal treaties could be concluded among partners; ‘unequal treaties’ could be concluded with external, non-Christian, semi-civilized states; and with barbarian states, there was no need to conclude treaties at all: one could resort directly to war. In other words, European civilization was founded precisely on such a hierarchical system. In Schmitt’s eyes, this was European civilization at its best.

> Chinese: 第二个阶段也接近麦金德划分的第二个阶段，不过施米特强调的是以国家作为主体建构的威斯特伐利亚时代或国家时代。在这个时代，领土国家成为了政治的构型，尽管如此，威斯特伐利亚体系支撑的欧洲的存在，在欧洲外部还是一个野蛮世界，用国际法的话说，在威斯特伐利亚体系内部，才有欧洲文明的“伙伴关系”，伙伴之间可以签定平等条约，和外部的、非基督教的、半文明的国家之间则可以签定“不平等条约”，对于野蛮国家就无需签定条约、直接诉诸战争。换句话说，欧洲文明恰恰是建立在这样一个等级体系之上，这是施米特眼里欧洲文明最好的一个状态。

[¶9] His delineation of the third stage, however, is fairly close to Mackinder’s: he treats the Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nations as marking this third stage. Yet while Mackinder admires the League of Nations, Schmitt makes it the very object of his criticism, seeing it as signifying the death of Europe.

> Chinese: 然而，第三个阶段划分与麦金德的比较接近，就是将巴黎和会和国际联盟看作是第三个阶段，当麦金德推崇“国际联盟”的时候，施米特恰恰将这个作为批判的对象，即意味着欧洲的死亡。

[¶10] This is because, after the First World War, and especially after the establishment of the League of Nations, European civilization’s system of specific norms and spiritual values was increasingly treated in technical and legal terms, turning it into an abstract legal framework that incorporated heterogeneous civilizations from outside Europe. It brought in not only Russia and the United States but also Japan from the East. This meant that the League of Nations, and subsequently even the United Nations, could no longer uphold the standards of European civilization at all. In Schmitt’s view, therefore, it was precisely the emergence of this entirely new system, the League of Nations, that destroyed the international legal order dominated by European civilization.

> Chinese: 因为一战以后、尤其是国联以后，欧洲文明具有特定规范和精神价值的体系被不断地加以技术化和法律化，从而变成了一个抽象的法律框架，以至于将欧洲之外的异质文明纳入进来，不仅把俄国带进来、把美国带进来、而且把东方的日本带进来。这就意味着国联乃至后来的联合国，完全不能再维持欧洲文明的标准。因此，在施米特看来，恰恰是国联这个全新体系的出现，摧毁了欧洲文明主导的国际法体系。

[¶11] Yet the League of Nations and the United Nations, which in Schmitt’s eyes destroyed European civilization’s system of international law, were precisely Mackinder’s ideal. Only from this can we understand Schmitt’s criticism of Mackinder: his emphasis on physical geography and human power in technical terms, together with his emphasis on the League of Nations’ abstract, equilibrium-based democracy, exemplified nihilism. Another representative of nihilism was Kelsen, the exponent of the pure theory of law whom Schmitt continually criticized.

> Chinese: 然而，在施米特眼中摧毁了欧洲文明国际法体系的国联和联合国，恰恰是麦金德的理想。由此，我们才能理解施米特对麦金德的批判，即麦金德这种对自然地理和人力的技术化强调，以及对抽象的均衡的国际联盟民主的强调，恰恰是虚无主义的代表，而另一个虚无主义的代表就是他不断批判的纯粹法学的代表人凯尔森。

[¶12] In The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt particularly emphasizes that Britain’s turn toward the maritime world meant choosing ‘rootlessness’: an existence capable of detaching itself from the earth, norms, and meaning. The British put forward the concept of ‘utopia,’ but in Latin this concept means ‘that which does not exist.’ In other words, the British gradually imagined an entirely new order that could be detached from geographical space and designed through technology.

> Chinese: 而在《大地的法》中，施米特特别强调英国转向海洋世界，就意味着选择“无根性”，一种可以脱离大地、规范和意义的存在。英国人提出了“乌托邦”这个概念，但这个概念在拉丁文里就是“没有的东西”。换句话说，英国人慢慢设想了一个可以脱离地理空间、可以技术设计的一个全新秩序。

[¶13] Thus, when the advent of aircraft and outer space led Mackinder to adopt a view from space, Schmitt criticized this perspective and resolutely chose the earth, with its normative, historical, and civilizational significance. In this sense, if Mackinder stands at one pole, thinking about the geographical and technological elements underlying empire, Schmitt stands at the other, thinking about the normative, spiritual, and civilizational elements underlying empire. Alexandre Kojève’s subsequent conception of a new Latin empire brought precisely these two sets of factors together.

> Chinese: 因此，当麦金德对飞机和太空的出现而选择太空的视角的时候，施米特对太空的视角进行了批判，毅然选择的具有规范、历史和文明意义的大地。在这个意义上，如果说麦金德在一个端点上思考帝国背后的地理和技术要素，那么施米特在另一个端点上思考帝国背后的规范、精神和文明要素。而科耶夫后来对新拉丁帝国的建构恰恰是将这两个因素综合起来加以思考。