Abstract Critical geopolitics has long recognised the role of history in geopolitics, yet popular geopolitics research is often ahistorical, focusing on ongoing conflicts without recognising the context of past wars and ideologies. In this paper, I review the literature on historical popular geopolitics. I use the literary technique of new historicism to evaluate the ways in which geographers have historicised popular geopolitics, in terms of their ideological contexts and influences on the present. Much of this work deals with various forms of media such as films and comic books, often read as products of their time or of their authors' ideologies. Some geographers, however, have been able to combine historicism with non‐representational methodologies to study embodiment, practices of consumption, and affect. I reflect that historicism is vital for understanding the continuity of geopolitics.