I think it's right to say that philosophy began in the streets and market places of a city (polis)  or a city-state and not in households or agricultural fields, and not even in places of worship. Therefore, it could not have distanced itself from politics or even from diplomacy. Philosophy as 'love of knowledge' would have involved not just one love of one knowledge, but rather several loves of multiple knowledges. Perhaps, it involved the intellectual encounters between the 'loves' and between 'knowledges.' Thus, it could not have eschewed either politics or diplomacy, and perhaps not even 'tricks.' If we begin to look at the question from the end, that is, of geopolitcs and of 'national identities,' I think it is possible to see that geographically or nationally or regionally adjectivized philosophies emerged as part of the desire for the establishment of (geo-)political and cultural identities in one form or the other. Identification of the words for philosophy in different cultural contexts or languages and trying to see the sameness or differences among them are also, it seems to me, part of the process of search for identit(ies), in one manner or the other. This is not always done in a conscious mode; the unconscious and the subjective makeup of the searcher could play a major role here. The chapter on Geophilosophies in Deleuze's What is Philosophy? gives some useful leads on this broad question.