The “Indo-Pacific”: Intellectual Origins and International Visions in Global Contexts

Abstract

As the “Indo-Pacific” concept gains currency in public discourses on foreign policy, it remains poorly understood as an idea, due to inadequate surveys of its intellectual origins and international visions in global contexts. This article studies Karl Haushofer's theory of the “Indo-Pacific” as an organic and integral space primed for political consciousness. Haushofer not only laid the oceanographic foundation of the “Indo-Pacific” with novel evidence in marine sciences, ethnography, and philology, but also legitimated it as a social and political space. Mindful of Germany's geopolitical predicament in the interwar period and informed by sources in indology and sinology, Haushofer envisaged the political resurrection of South, East, and Southeast Asia against colonial domination, and conceived the “Indo-Pacific” vision for remaking the international order.