In what ways did the post-quantitative revolution impact historical geography and its methodologies?

The post-quantitative revolution challenged the descriptive tradition in historical geography by favoring analytical and theoretical generalizations. This period saw historical geography become marginalized due to its incompatibility with quantitative methods. However, the integration of new methodologies and interdisciplinary interactions gradually revitalized its academic standing .

How has the concept of historical geography evolved over time and what challenges has it faced in maintaining its relevance?

Historical geography has evolved significantly over time, initially focusing on cartographic reconstructions and empiricism as seen in the work of Darby, which emphasized individual historical sources , to later incorporating broader methodologies influenced by quantitative and humanistic perspectives . Early challenges included a lack of commonly accepted methodologies and explanatory structures, with critics lamenting its static nature despite calls for innovation . From the 1960s, the subfield shifted towards analyzing spatial structures and regional synthesis, moving away from a mere descriptive approach to focus more on systemic analytical methods, integrating quantitative techniques . Efforts to reconcile the scientific and humanistic approaches marked further evolution, emphasizing historical materialism and humanistic perspectives that considered social and cultural influences . Despite these integrations, historical geography faced challenges in maintaining relevance, partly due to disciplinary isolation and pressures to conform to the spatial science paradigm of human geography that prioritized spatial over historical analyses . However, interdisciplinary interactions with fields such as history and anthropology have helped to reinstate its significance, emphasizing the understanding of historical specificity in contemporary geographical explanations . The field's continuing identity struggle involves debates on its independence as a discipline or a mere subset of historical studies, with some arguing it uniquely addresses geographical change over time, distinguishing it from historical analysis .

What are the implications of a geographical study focusing on human agency and behaviour, as indicated by behavioural geography?

Behavioural geography emphasizes the role of human agency and cognition in geographical studies, aiming to understand the complex processes underpinning human behaviour in spatial contexts . Its implications include expanding the scope of geographical explanation by focusing on individuals as decision-makers who perceive and interact with their environments in diverse ways . This approach necessitates multidisciplinary collaboration, as behavioural geography draws insights from sociology, psychology, and political science, thus broadening geographers' methodological tools and cross-disciplinary communication . By acknowledging the subjective nature of human perceptions, it challenges deterministic models and reaffirms the importance of perception and cognition in shaping human-environment interactions . Furthermore, behavioural geography promoted the reevaluation of methodologies in man-environment relations, countering previous models that reduced human activities to simplistic patterns . Its contributions also include influencing policy-oriented and socially relevant research by exploring topics such as hazard perception and environmental planning ."}

What is the significance of the humanistic geography movement in the study of geographical thought?

The humanistic geography movement is significant in the study of geographical thought for several reasons. It introduced a focus on human agency, challenging the reductionism prevalent in previous geographical models and promoting the idea that geography involves people who actively shape their environments . It emphasized the importance of local differences and the social construction of space, transforming the understanding of space from an abstract concept into one imbued with human meaning and cultural significance . Humanistic geography also bridged the gap between geography and the humanities by integrating philosophical concepts like phenomenology and existentialism, aiming to reconcile objectivity with subjectivity in the study of human-environment interactions . This approach shifted geography towards a more interpretive and qualitative method of inquiry, fostering greater awareness of the interconnections between cultural contexts and geographical phenomena . Additionally, it influenced the revival of interest in cultural geography by highlighting the particularities of human experiences and landscapes .

How did Humboldt's and Ritter's geographical methodologies contribute to the formation of modern geography?

Humboldt and Ritter significantly influenced modern geography by integrating systematic and regional methodologies, emphasizing the interaction of humans with their environment. Humboldt pioneered a comparative worldwide approach, advocating for generalizing data to identify the laws governing physical geography, although he lacked sufficient data to achieve global generalizations during his time . His work focused on understanding ecological patterns and the distribution of natural phenomena . Ritter, on the other hand, is recognized for establishing a regional perspective, emphasizing historical and teleological interpretations . He aimed to trace the unity and connection of natural phenomena, focusing on the harmony between nature and human activity . Together, they laid the groundwork for geography as an integrated science concerned with both natural and human elements, blending systematic studies with regional analysis . This dual approach provided a comprehensive foundation for modern geographical thought, influencing subsequent scholars and the academic discipline's development ."}

How did the political economy perspective shape the focus of human geography in the 1970s?

The political economy perspective reshaped human geography in the 1970s by focusing on the intrinsic link between political and economic structures, highlighting how these intersections influence social justice and spatial structures. This approach, influenced by Marxist thought, emphasized the role of the state and the distribution of surplus value as inherently political processes, moving beyond purely economic explanations . It marked a departure from the earlier focus on spatial science, which often overlooked the social implications of geographical research . The political economy perspective made geography more relevant to societal concerns, encouraging an examination of power dynamics and social relations in spatial contexts . This led to a rise in radical geography, which addressed issues like capitalism’s impact on spatial development and inequalities, indicating a shift towards a more holistic understanding of human-environment interactions .

How did the concept of teleology influence Ritter's geographical studies, and how was it perceived in scientific circles?

The concept of teleology significantly influenced Carl Ritter's geographical studies by framing his view of the earth as a divinely created order where every geographic feature served a purpose in relation to man. Ritter's teleological standpoint saw nature's unity and harmony as evidence of a grand divine plan, and he often used his writings to express this belief, suggesting that the earth was constructed intentionally as the home of mankind . This perspective colored his interpretation of geographic phenomena, such as his characterizations of continents as embodying different stages of human progression: Asia as the sunrise, Africa as noon, and Europe as the sunset due to their respective developmental histories and geographical features . In scientific circles, Ritter's teleological views were met with mixed perceptions. While his conceptual framework of integrating systematic and regional perspectives was influential, the rise of Darwinian evolution and its emphasis on natural selection led to a decline in the acceptance of teleological ideas in the scientific community. The emphasis on evolutionary theory and randomness challenged the deterministic teleology that Ritter espoused, leading it to be largely forgotten, although some of the regional approaches he pioneered continued to be fundamental in geography . However, some contemporaries, like Guyot, strongly supported Ritter's teleological geography despite the shifting scientific paradigms .

What led to the shift in focus from spatial patterns to behavioural processes in geographical studies during the 1960s?

The shift in focus from spatial patterns to behavioural processes in geographical studies during the 1960s was driven by dissatisfaction with static models that failed to reflect the complexities of real-world human decision-making and interactions. The traditional focus on spatial patterns framed by economic rationality began to be seen as inadequate due to the realization that human decisions are often based on perceived, rather than objective, realities . This led to an increased interest in understanding cognitive processes and mental maps as they relate to human-environment interactions . Furthermore, the limitations of spatial science in addressing human agency called for an approach that incorporated psychological and behavioural sciences, making geography more relevant to everyday experiences . As a result, behavioural geography emerged, focusing on the motivations and perceptions driving individual behaviours in space, thereby expanding the scope of geographical explanations .

What role did Humboldt and Ritter play in addressing the dualism within geography between physical and human studies?

Humboldt and Ritter significantly contributed to bridging the dualism within geography by promoting an integrated view of physical and human studies. Ritter explicitly stated that there was no inherent conflict between regional and systematic geography, and emphasized the unity and harmony between nature and human aspects, attributing this to divine design . Humboldt was considered a pioneer of comparative regional geography, advancing a worldwide comparative approach . Despite this, subsequent interpreters like Peschel criticized them for supposedly neglecting physical geography and contributed to the division between physical and human geography . However, both Humboldt and Ritter laid the foundational groundwork for geography as a comprehensive discipline interested in both the physical environment and human activities .

How did Humboldt's view of geography differ from the traditional physical geography of the nineteenth century?

Humboldt's view of geography differed from traditional physical geography of the nineteenth century through his emphasis on the interconnectedness of natural and human phenomena. Unlike the traditional approach which often involved rote memorization of geographical facts, Humboldt's method involved empirical observation, classification, and the search for causal interconnections, emphasizing the unity of the natural world and the inclusion of human influences as part of geographical study . This approach contrasted sharply with the more compartmentalized and reductionist methods of physical geography of his time, which were criticized by contemporaries like Peschel for not attempting a scientific classification of landforms and for equating general geography with the entirety of natural science .

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GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT
A Contextual History of Ideas

by
R.D. DIKSHIT
Formerly, Professor of Geograpby,
Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak

New Delhi-110001
2011

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� 225.00

GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT: A Contextual History of Ideas

by R.O. Dikshit

© 1997 by PHI Leaming Private Limited, New Delhi. All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other
means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN-978-81-203-1182-4

The export rights of this book are vested solely with the publisher.

Tenth Printing ••• • •• April, 2011

Published by Asoke K. Ghosh, PHI Learning Private Limited, M-97, Connaught

Circus, New Delhi-110001 and Printed by Rajkamal Electric Press, Plot No. 2,
Phase IV, HSIDC, Kundli-131028, Sonepat, Haryana.

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Contents

•
Preface IX

Introduction 1-16
Anomalous Status of Geography as a Discipline 1
Place of Geography in Classification of the Sciences 3
Three Essential Characteristics of Geographical Work 5
Geography, a European Science 6
Geography and the Rise of the Scientific Revolution 8
The Developing Nature of Geography 9
Organization of the Present Volume 13
The Contextual Approach to History of Ideas 14

1. The First Foundations: Developments upto the Eighteenth

Century 17-37
Contributions of the Greeks and the Romans 17
Geography in the Middle Ages 22
Geography in the Arab Lands 23
The Age of Exploration 25
The Impact of Discoveries 30
The New Geography of the 18th Century 34
Placing Geography in the Classification of Sciences:
The Contribution of Immanuel Kant 35

2. Geography in the Nineteenth Century: The Age of

Humboldt, 1790-1859 38 61
Science and Philosophy at the End of the Eighteenth Century 38
Alexander von Humboldt 42
Carl Ritter (1779-1859) and His Contribution to Geography
as a Discipline 53
Legacy of Humboldt and Ritter 57
Some Eminent Followers 58

3. Geography after Humboldt and Ritter: Developments in

Ge1111any 62-83
The Intellectual Climate of the Time 62
The Crisis of Identity in Geography 63
Developments in Ger111any 65
Rise of Dualism between Physical and Human Geography 65

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Vi CONTENTS

Re-establishment of Geography as an Integrated Science:

The Study of Man-Land Relationships 68
Integration through the Concept of Chorology 72
Geography as a Landscape Science 79

4. Geography after Humboldt and Ritter: Developments

Outside Ge,n,any 84-115
Developments in France 84
Developments in Great Britain 89
Developments in Russia 94
Developments in the United States 100

5. Developments in Geography Since World War II:

From Areal to Spatial Analysis 116-133
Sources of Dissatisfaction with Regional Geography 116
The Schaefer-Hartshorne Debate: From Regional
Exceptionalism to Generalization and Theory 118
The Course of Development of Geography as a
Science of Spatial A'i'alysis 121
On the Nature of Positivist Explanation 127

6. Behavioural Persua,ion in Geography and the Rise of

Humanistic Geogr,n>hy 134-158
Behavioural Geography 135
Humanistic Geography 146
The Practice of Humanistic Geography 152
Contributions of Humanistic Geography to Human
Geography 154

7. The Call for Social Relevance in Research: Reorientation

to Political Economy 159-182
The Rise of the Relevance Movement 159
The Political Economy Perspective in Human Geography 168
Geography and Social Justice 172
Modem Geography and Western Marxism: The Subordination
of Space in Social Theory, 1880-1920 176
Geography and Sociology 179

8. The Regional Concept and Regional Geography 183-204

The Region 185
Regional Geography 197
The Grigg-Bunge Debate (1966): "The One and the Only
Revolution in Geography" 200

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CONTENTS vii

9. The Historical Explanation in Geography 205-229

The Role of Time and Genesis in Geography 205
Major Areas of Temporal Explanation in Geography 208
Three Realms of Historical Geography: Real, Imagined,
and Abstract Worlds of the Past 217
The Need for Distinguishing between the Role of the
Past in Nature and Culture: Collingwood' s Theory
of Historical Knowing 218
Geosophy and Historical Geography 219
"Ideology", Marxist History and Historical Geography 220

10. Impact of Evolutionary Biology on Geographical Thought

Organization and Ecosystem as Geographical Models 230-241
The Darwinian Theory of Evolution 231
Ecology and Ecosystem as a Geographical Principle
and Method 237

11. Geography and Environmentalism 242-253

Man-Nature Relationship 242
Nature-as-Nurture: The Current View of Man-Environment
Relations 246

12. Place, Space and Locality: The Current Focus in Human

Geography 254-262
Locale, Location and Sense of Place 254
Focus on Localities: The Rise of New Regional
Geography 256
The Locality Research and the Social Science Theory 259

13. The Geography of Gender 263-269

Feminist Geography 263
Feminism and Phenomenological and Humanistic
Approaches in Geography 265

14. Modern versus Post-Modern Geographies 270-282

The Meaning of the Two Terms 270
The Changeover to Post-Modem Geography 276

15. Progress Since World War II: Continuity, Change,

Rapprochement, and Convergence 283-290

Index 291-300

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Preface

This book is the outgrowth of over twentyfive years of teaching and

interaction with the graduate students at various universities. It represents
the fruits of my concerted effort to develop a course 'structure' on
geographical thought with a view to enable the student to visualize the
history of geography as a professional field and to stimulate interest in the
conceptual evolution of the subject as a discipline focussed on understanding
man's relation with his environment.
The main focus of the book is on modern geography since the end of
the eighteenth century-the Age of Humboldt-the period to which the
birth of modern geography is generally traced. But the earlier periods
have not been neglected. As such, the book includes discussions on the
development of the content and methodology of geography beginning with
the ancient Greeks (to whom the European tradition of geographical learning
is traced), the Arab ascendancy in geographical learning during the middle
ages (when geographical learning in Europe had suffered complete eclipse
owing to the stranglehold of theocracy), followed by a comprehensive
statement on the age of exploration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
(when the greatly expanded horizon of geographical knowledge about lands
and peoples across the globe stimulated a renewed spirit of inquiry about
man's relationship with nature). The rising importance of geographical
knowledge, during this period when the earth surface had become a closed
system of interacting parts through the transformation of the previously
intractable oceans into high seas, had greatly added to the prestige of
geography as a branch of learning. Such a perspective on past development
provides the necessary background for a wholesome understanding of the
later developments in concept and methodology.
The approach is all through contextual, so that each phase of
development, and each major thinker and innovator, is placed in the context
of his time, and is viewed against the backdrop of the contemporary
intellectual, socio-economic, and cultural cross-currents. Such an approach
helps us appreciate each conceptual-theoretical advance in its correct
perspective, and thereby highlights the status of geography as a science
actively participating in the resolution of societal problems of the day. The
contextual approach to the study of the history of ideas in geography makes
the study of the subject an attractive and stimulating engagement.
The purpose of this volume is to provide a handy but comprehensive
textbook for students preparing for Honours and postgraduate degrees
in geography in Indian universities. It should be equally useful to students
at this level elsewhere in the Third World. The book is written in an easy
and straightforward style in order that the subject matter becomes easy. to
•
IX

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X PREFACE

grasp. Every aspect of the development of geographical thought has been

covered so that this book should stand out as a handy and self-sufficient
text, meeting the course requirements in the different Indian universities.
The wide coverage of the text should also make it a useful guide for the
aspirants for higher competitive examinations. The latest trends in the
discipline up to the 1990s have been discussed in order to make this volume
an up-to-date and comprehensive statement on the subject.
This book has been in the making for a long time. I have enjoyed
writing and discussing it with students and colleagues. I hope it will
succeed in imparting some of this joy to the young geographers in the
making, for whom it is designed. Suggestions for improvement would be
gratefully acknowledged and incorporated in future editions wherever
necessar y.

R.D. Dikshit

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Introduction

Geography, as a branch of learning, is focused on understanding the

relationship between man and nature. The edifice of geography as a discipline
is thus built on the experiences of successive generations of mankind (since
the dawn of history) in trying to comprehend the world of which their own
homeland forms but a small part. Viewed thus, history of geography is
fundamentally concerned with the development of human consciousness
about the possibilities and limitations that the external world of nature
presents for man's growth and progress. The thirst for geographical
knowledge is as old as human curiosity, since some of the earliest questions
agitating the mind of primitive man must have related to the character of
his natural surroundings. There is a natural urge in man to gain knowledge
about the lands and peoples living beyond his own territory. Such a curiosity
is at least partly utilitarian since the world beyond the familiar may contain
greener pastures and present greater possibilities for adventure.
The word geography was first used by the Greek scholar Erastosthenes
in the third century B.C. It is derived from the Greek ge (the earth) and
graphe (description), so that geography as a discipline is focused on the
description of the earth surface as the world of man. Thus, according to
Hartshorne (1959), as a discipline, "geography is concerned to provide
accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable
character of the Earth surface". By the phrase "Earth surface", geographers
imply the thin zone extending as far down below the surface as man has
been able to penetrate and as far high above the surface as man normally
goes. Since man's reach above as well as below the earth surface is relative
to the level of technological progress, the thickness of this zone of study
has been progressively increasing. This zone has been the universe of all
human endeavour-all art and science except for space explorations
since 1969.

ANOMALOUS STATUS OF GEOGRAPHY AS A DISCIPLINE

The focus of geography on ;'the earth surface as the world of man" as its
special field of inquiry had put it in a somewhat anomalous position within
the traditional organization of knowledge into distinct disciplines, since
one of the basic premises of the principle of this organization was the
fundamental separation between man and nature. Study of man was the
realm of humanities and the social sciences whereas the sciences focused
on the study of aspects of nature. Geography's difficulty arose from the
1

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2 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

fact that focus on the study of the surface of the earth simultaneously
required focus on man as well as nature since the earth surface comprises
both man-made phenomena, as well as those of natural origin produced by
physical, chemical, and biotic processes. As such, geography could neither
claim status as a pure science nor as a pure human or social science subject.
This was the source of much confusion in the fo11native phase of geography
as a modem discipline in the nineteenth century when division of knowledge
into distinct disciplines was being concretized.
The intensity of the problem was all the more grave because, although
one of the oldest subjects of scholarly speculation, geography was a late
starter as a university level discipline. The first university departments of
geography headed by professors began to be established only in the 1870s
by which time the other disciplines studying man and nature had already
carved out their own specific areas of inquiry. Humboldt and Ritter had
demonstrated the usefulness of geography as an integrated study of the
earth surface as the world of man in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Humboldt claimed for it the status of a universal science. His status as the
greatest living scholar of his time had not posed much difficulty in the
location of geography in the academia in his lifetime. The confusion, however,
greatly intensified by the mid-century after his death which coincided with
the period of maximum concretization of disciplinary division. The result
was that the status of geography vis-a-vis the social sciences on the one
hand and the natural/physical sciences on the other, could be resolved
only in the 1880s through the exertions of many scholars, most prominent
among them being Ratzel and Richthofen in Germany, and Vidal de la
Blache in France, who variously projected it as an integrated study of the
great man-environment system representing the universe of human action
as against the other systematic sciences each of which focused on particular
aspects of the man-environment reality in isolation. The intellectual origins
of geography as a distinct field of study focused on the great man
environment system go back to the ancient Greeks who viewed man as an
integral part of nature, so that geographical description of places in Greek
literature included the treatment of all organic as well as inorganic
phenomena (including man).
Glacken (1967) has identified three different views of the man
environment relationship in the history of Western thought before the
nineteenth century. The earliest was the view of mankind in harmony with
nature; next came the view that,·man's life upon earth is dominated by
nature, to be followed by the view that man dominates nature through
technological intervention. The view of geography as an integrated science
of man-environment relationships is a legacy of the classical Greek period.
However, the changing mood of society on the issue of man-environment
relationships was inevitably reflected in later debates regarding determinism
and possibilism in geographical literature. The former approach held that
nature determines the course of human development and progress whereas
the latter approach held that in the last analysis it is human will and

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INTRODUCTION 3

ingenuity that decide in what direction progress shall take place. The
protagonists of this approach believed that nature offers many possibilities,
many possible directions of progress. The direction actually chosen depends
on human choice. In the current phase of environmental protectionism and
advocacy for the maintenance of ecological balance in nature, we are once
again back to the classical Greek tradition in this regard. •

PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES

The confusion regarding the place of geography in the context of the division
of knowledge into systematic fields had continued to agitate the minds of
scholars until the last quarter of the nineteenth century despite the fact that
German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had cogently addressed
this question in his twofold scheme of classification of knowledge: one
logical and the other physical. Logical classification grouped i11dividual
items into separate classes on the basis of morphological similarities and
similarity in the processes of origin. This was the basis of the division of
knowledge into a series of systematic sciences (or "natural systems"). Such
a grouping of items for study completely ignored considerations of place
and time of occurrence of the phenomena concerned. Physical classification,
on the other hand, grouped phenomena that belonged to the same place or
the same time. Classification in terms of time is history, that in terms of
space, geography. History reports on phenomena that follow one another
in terms of time, and geography reports phenomena that exist together in
horizontal space on the earth surface. Thus, history is narrative and
geography a description. Together, the two fill up the entire circumference
of human perceptions. Both are integrating disciplines, and for that reason,
history and geography are bound together by mutual relation between
time and space, despite the fact that their bases of integration-history,
time; geography, space-are separate and apparently unrelated.
Reality is simultaneously historical as well as spatial in that the present
day phenomena occurring together in particular places on the earth surface
represent the end product of processes of historical evolution. Likewise, all
historical events had occurred in the contemporary contexts of place and
space. Kant saw man and his works in intimate association with nature
and he gave due recognition to man's role in modifying nature. As May
(1970, pp. 147-151) has analyzed, Kant's concept of geography as the study
of phenomena arranged in space, and of history as the study of phenomena
arranged in time periods, represented a secondary division of his larger
scheme of classification of fields of knowledge for convenience of academic
treatment. The question of creating barriers between different branches of
knowledge was furthest from his thought. For Kant, "Geography is an
empirical science, seeking to present a 'system of nature', and is a law
finding discipline" (James, 1972, p. 144). In his book on Critique of Pure
Reason (1781) Kant had clearly underlined mutuality of time and space
relations when he stated that: "Space is not something objective and real,

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4 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

nor is it a substance or an accident, or a relation, but it is subjective and

ideal, and proceeds from the nature of the mind by an unchanging law, as
a schema for coordinating with each other absolutely all things externally
sensed" (cited in Richards, 1974). Thus, Kant subscribed to the view of
cognitive structuring of space by the human actor, so that for him there
was no subject-object dichotomy and, by implication, time and space dualism.
This is indeed how geographers view their discipline today. The current
generation of geographers shares a common concern with history in seeking
full contextual explanation of phenomena occurring together in parts of
the earth surface as the world of man. In this sense, geography is focused
on the particular, and involves in-depth study of particular places so that
it may appear idiographic in perspective. Geography simultaneously shares
a common concern with other sciences in identifying the general laws of
organization and behaviour through comparative analyses of particular
types of phenomena (or relations) in different parts of the earth's surface.
Tne general principles so identified form a major input in the comprehension
of the geography of particular places. Geography is, therefore, simultaneously
regional as well as systematic. The fundamental purpose of geography is
to comprehend the earth as the world of man, so that "The history of
geographical ideas is the record of man's effort to gain more and more
logical and useful knowledge of the human habitat and of man's spread
over the earth: Logical in that explanations of the things observed could be
so tested and verified that scholars could have confidence in them; and
useful in that the knowledge so gained could be used to facilitate man's
adjustment to the varied natural conditions of the earth, to make possible
modifications of adverse conditions, or even to gain a measure of control
over them" Games, 1972, p. 4).
Geographical work involves seeking answers to three closely related
sets of questions. These are: What is it? What is it like? What does it mean?
The first relates to location, both absolute (i.e., in terms of latitudes and
longitudes) and relative (i.e., in terms of accessibility of other known places).
Location determines the spatial context in which things are placed�a context
which to a great extent influences the precise character of its physical and
human geography. Places in tropical latitudes have hot climate but places
located on the western margins of landmasses experience a hot and dry
climate while thos,;, on the eastern margins experience a hot and wet climate.
Likewise, location in relation to cities and highways makes a lot of difference
to the nature of place prosperity.
The second question relates to description of the observed phenomena
in a given place. Since every point on the earth surface differs from every
other point in microscopic terms, all observations and therefore, all
descriptions are by nature partial rather than complete. Our observations
are guided by the purpose of the investigation in hand, and are, therefore,
always selective. Furthermore, observations are guided by preconceived
images about phenomena made on the basis of previous knowledge. Mental
images about phenomena are known as co11cepts, as distinguished from

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INTRODUCTION 5

direct observations in the field which are called percepts. The for111er represent
theory and the latter, reality. However, the mental structuring of the observer
differs according to each person's cultural background and training.
Accordingly, the nature of the reality presented by different observers may
also differ. This poses an apparent paradox, since though concepts
detennine how the phenomena are perceived, they represent generalizations
based on previous observations which may themselves have been guided
by subjective images of reality. In academic practice, this paradox is resolved
by the fact that:
the trained observer is taught to accept a set of concepts in graduate
school, and then sharpens or changes the concepts during professional
career. In any one field of scholarship, professional opinion at any time
determines what concepts and procedures are acceptable; and these form
a kind of model, or paradigm, of scholarly behaviour. Such a body of
doctrine determines what problems are considered worth investigating,
what kinds of answers are professionally acceptable. But at all times,
accepted concepts and procedures based on them are subject to challenge.
Progress is achieved when one working hypothesis is replaced by another
Games, 1972, p. 7).
The last question, "What does the observed phenomenon mean?",
refers to its meaning in the context of the underlying premise of an orderly
world-that is, of the universe conceived as a system of harmoniously
related parts. In science, orderliness is accounted for in the recognition of
cause and effect sequences taking place in accordance with some general
law. Two different ways of representing cause and effect sequences are
recognized: one deductive and the other inductive. The for111er proceeds
from the general to the particular, and the latter follows the reverse path
from the particular to the general.

THREE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GEOGRAPHICAL WORK

Following Haggett (1994), three essential characteristics of geographical
work may be identified:
1. Emphasis on location. In geography, we try to establish locations
of phenomena on the earth surface accurately and economically on the
map. Thus cartography (or mapmaking) is an essential tool for geographical
work. Through our maps we disentangle different locational factors in
order to delineate specific spatial patterns. By this means we also endeavour
to propose more efficient or more equitable patterns in social and economic
organization of everyday life.
2. Emphasis on society-land relations. Geographical study is by nature
ecological in approach and perspective, so that it emphasizes interrelations
between phenomena, links between different aspects of phenomena in the
local natural environment and the people living in that particular segment
of the earth surface. Here emphasis shifts from spatial variation of

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6 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

phenomena to the delineation of ecological links between the land and the
people. This ecological relationship represents a kind of vertical bond. The
relationship between the people and their habitat is a two-way affair: The
environment influences human initiative, which in turn modifies the
character of the natural environment so that the environment in particular
places as we find it today is partly natural and partly the product of man's
intervention. In this context it is pertinent to remember that the choice of
scale is the critical element in geographical study since the scale of operation
local, regional or global-is what determines the overall perspective.
3. Emphasis on regional analysis. Regional analysis involves
identification of regions, analysis of their internal morphology, their ecological
linkages, and their relations with other regions near and far. Regional work
involves two different but closely related approaches. In the one we focus
on- areal organization in particular places or areas with a view to gaining
in-depth knowledge of the man-environment reality obtaining therein. The
sum total of such studies focused on particular places in different parts of
the earth surface may provide us valuable knowledge about the totality of
the global man-environment system. Such studies are termed as regional
geography and involve the "total aspect" analysis of particular places. In the
second approach, the researcher may choose any particular theme or element
of the system and analyze it systematically over the earth surface (or large
parts of it) with a view to identifying the general Jaws of its distribution
over the globe. This is called systematic geography. The two are complementary
perspectives. Regional geography provides the raw material on the basis of
which we proceed to identify the general laws of behaviour or organization
which in their turn, illuminate future perspectives in regional study of
particular places by introducing a comparative perspective in research.

GEOGRAPHY, A EUROPEAN SCIENCE

In the words of Stoddart (1986), what distinguishes geography as an
intellectual activity distinct from other branches of knowledge is a set of
attitudes, methods, techniques, and questions, all of which had developed
in Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century. Stoddart dates this
beginning to the year 1769, the year in which Captain Cook first entered
the Pacific, and over a span of ten years before his death in Hawaii in 1779,
he had charted one-third of the coastlines of the world. Cook's voyage was
accompanied by some top ranking scientists, illustrators and collectors so
that following the publication of the accounts of this expedition, empirical
science had suddenly displaced old concerns in geographical writing wherein
myth and imagination were difficult to separate from fact and reality. The
common characteristic of all geographical writing before the year 1778,
when J.R. Forster first published his account of the voyage under the title
Observations Made During a Voyage Around the World, was that none of them
was based on direct observation. Charting out of the observed phenomena
required great deal of rigour. and called for focused concern for realism in

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INTRODUCTION 7

illustration and description since the maps and charts were required to
provide precise info,11,ation in order that they could correctly guide the
course of navigators. Now on, "Places came to be seen as composed of
objects which could be recorded and related to each other in an objective
manner, rather than as triggers to mood and to expression" (Stoddart,
p. 34). With a view to facilitating comprehension of the huge amount of
new data about lands and peoples on the earth surface pouring in ever
increasing waves from the voyages of exploration, twofold devices were
developed. One was classification, of which the Swedish botanist Linnaeus
(1707-1778) was the great pioneer, and the other was the invention of the
comparative method.
The expanding frontier of knowledge about the lands and peoples on
the earth surface, and the vastly improved comprehension of the mysteries
of nature had simultaneously led to a changed attitude toward man and
his place in the scheme of nature. It is the extension of the scientific
method of observation, classification and comparison of peoples and
societies that had finally made the rise of geography as the integrated
discipline of the man-environment system possible. This changed attitude
to man and his works had given rise, before the end of the nineteenth
century, to empirical recording of the artefacts and ways of life on a global
scale, as for example in Ratzel's Volkerkunde of 1885-88. Indeed, in his 1778
volume, Forster had recommended that "mankind ought to be considered
as members of one great family; therefore, let us not despise any of them,
though they be our inferiors in regard to many improvements and points
of civilization".
Alluding to the foundation of geography as a modern discipline in
the post-1769 period, Stoddart (pp. 36-37) drew attention to the fact that
Humboldt was born in the year that Cook first entered the Pacific, and
Ritter in the year that he died ten years later, and both Humboldt and
Ritter passed away in the year 1859, the year in which Charles Darwin
published his book: The Origin of Species. The achievement of Humboldt
and Ritter (as the twin founders of geography as a modem discipline)
"was to seize the technical and the conceptual advances of the Pacific
voyages and so to organize and order knowledge as to show its coherence
and significance, Humboldt ecologically, Ritter historically and regionally".
However, "Neither Humboldt nor Ritter fully succeeded in their aims to
demonstrate the fundamental congruity of man and environment" since
"It was their misfortune never to know the key to nature which Darwin
supplied, and which transformed nineteenth-century thought. Today, a
century after Darwin's death on April 19, 1882, we necessarily see evolutionary
order everywhere, with all things interrelated in time and space. It was a
vision denied to critical observers, classifiers, comparers of the previous
decades".
This scientific revolution in Europe coincided with social and
educational upheayals that followed the Industrial Revolution. A new Act
in 1870 had made ele:nentary education compulsory in Britain. Similar

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8 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

laws were enacted in France and Germany. Institutions of higher learning

proliferated and knowledge was getting rapidly compartmentalized into
subjects or disciplines. Appointment of professors to head independent
depa, bnents of geography in the 1870s symbolized "the new professionalism
of those who called themselves geographers". These developments in the
last thirty years of the nineteenth century have "determined the future
organization" of geography just as the empirical reasoning and observation
of earth's diversity over the preceding century had shaped its content.
A humanistic tum in the study of geography was slowly emerging.
Studies in history and sociology were revealing common trends in the
growth of civilizations from savagery to culture so that the supposed
superiority of Europeans over other people in Africa, Asia and the Americas
was proved to be false. It had greatly shocked the European elite when
investigations showed that "at the end of the nineteenth century ... working
men in the East End of London had a vocabulary smaller than that of the
Melanesian islanders .... This brought to general acceptance a new cultural
relativism which had been completely absent when the first European
voyagers set sail a century before" (Weber, 1974). This changed perspective-e-
the humanistic turn-was pioneered in geography by Elisee Reclus
(1830-1904), a student of Ritter and an anarchist geographer. His lead was
kept alive by the Russian geographer Prince Kropotkin (1842-1921). It is
true that many before these two had drawn attention to man's injustice to
man including Humboldt in his celebrated essay on New Spain. However,
the true significance of Reclus and Kropotkin lay in that they "were acutely
aware of the need for social change...and social justice, and both devoted
their lives to working for it".
To conclude, geography had emerged as a modem discipline as a
consequence of Europe's encounter "with the rest of the world and with
itself, with the tools of the new objective science, and all other geographical
traditions are necessarily derivative and imitative of it. Quantification,
perception and social concern-all were dominant concerns of European
geography in its formative period just as they are today" (Stoddart, 1986,
pp. 38-39). However, such a conclusion does not negate the fact that rise of
geography as an autonomous branch of higher learning especially after
1871, the year which marked the rise of Ge111,any as a great European
power, was inescapably tied with the imperialistic/expansionist needs of
the colonising European powers. Scientific study of geography was promoted
because it provided valuable knowledge through the use of which the
areas and populations in the non-European lands could be more efficiently
controlled and exploited in order to contribute to general affluence in the
mother countries (cf. Gregory, 1989, pp. 350-351).

GEOGRAPHY AND THE RISE OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

Nowadays it is fashionable to question intellectual rigour in geography
and to speak of its for111lessness and conceptual sickliness. However, this

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INTRODUCTION 9

was not always so (Livingstone, 1992). History of science reveals that

geographical exploration had played the central role in the rise of modern
science: ''Geographical exploration, with its associated skills in navigation
and cartography, was ...the principal field of human endeavour in which
scientific discovery and everyday technique became closely associated before
the middle of the seventeenth century;... hence its immense significance in
the history of science and of thought" (Parry, 1981, p. 3). Geographical
exploration represented the triumph of experience over authority-the
fundamental ingredient in the emergence of experimental science. The
experimental method, which the geographical explorations encouraged,
"implied that men and women no longer had to believe what was said by
eminent authorities; they could put any statement and theory to test by
controlled experiment" (Cohen, 1985, p. 79).

THE DEVELOPING NATURE OF GEOGRAPHY

Though geography began as a modern discipline only around the turn of
the nineteenth century, the themes that it deals with, have been the focus
of scholarly attention since the dawn of civilization. From this point of
view, each cultural realm had had its own historiography of geography
(viewed in the sense of gaining more and logical and useful knowledge
about the earth), but geography as a discipline pursued the world over in
the current phase of history is the one that had developed in Europe over
the past two centuries. Historiography of geography, in its broadest sense
is, therefore, the European historiography traced in the continuing tradition
since the time of ancient Greeks of the fourth and third centuries B.C. Since
the Greeks believed that the position of planetary bodies exerted a controlling
influence of man's life, scholars devoted a great deal of energy to the
collection of data about the position of these bodies, leading to a fir111
tradition in mathematical measurement in the service of astrology. The
gredt contribution made by scholars in the fourth and third centuries B.C.
lay in that they had contributed to change emphasis from astrology to
astronomy. This represented a great intellectual advance in that whereas in
astrology, if observed facts disagree with the general theory, the facts are
explained away as exceptional occurrences and the theory remains
unchanged; in astronomy, on the other hand, if the observed facts differ
from the general theory, the theory must be revised. This was the first
foundation of the scientific method, and many of its basic procedures were
laid by Plato (the great proponent of the deductive method) and Aristotle
(who pioneered the inductive methodology).
Geographical work in ancient Greece had followed two distinct
traditions. One was the mathematical tradition which was focused on fixing
the location of places on the earth's surface, and the other was the literary
tradition concerned with describing what was actually observed. Ptolmey's
work presented a summary of the first type, and Strabo's that of the second.
Expansion of the Roman empire had stimulated much interest in the pursuit

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10 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

of geographical knowledge without the use of which this large empire

could not have been effectively governed. The fall of the Roman empire
four centuries after Christ marked the decline of interest in geography.
Following the rising influence of theocracy in the following period, the
spirit of scientific inquiry was dulled since any attempt to question God's
creation was viewed as blasphemy. No science (including geography) could
flourish in such a climate of opinion. Inevitably, preeminence in geographical
knowledge during this period had passed on to the Arabs who were then
the leading trading nations and, therefore, traded far and wide. Many of
the ancient Greek texts were translated into Arabic and thus the Greek
tradition was also kept alive.
In Europe itself, however, things had begun to change for the better
in the Age of Explorations beginning at the close of the fifteenth century
A.O. Following the many exploratory voyages including those of Columbus
and Vasco da Gama, geographical horizons of the Europeans had greatly
increased, and in the period of territorial imperialism that followed, scientific
knowledge about lands and the peoples on the earth surface became the
most sought after intellectual commodity. Knowledge gained from the
explorations was soon to lead to falling down of the stranglehold of theocracy,
and concomittant rise of the spirit of 'academic freedom'-the right of
scholars to seek answers to questions, to publish the results of their
investigations, and to propagate what they believed to be true. The battle
that was started by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Nicolaus
Copernicus (1473-1543) was finally won in the middle of the nineteenth
century following the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution, which
shattered the old tradition of thought guided by the concept of a created
•
uruverse.
A major development in the pursuit of scientific knowledge had taken
place in the seventeenth century. This related to the need for specialization
and division of knowledge into separate fields, each focused on the study
of a specific group of phenomena, or processes, and each guided by its
own professional paradigm. This trend had reached its maximum
development in the middle of the nineteenth century. In this separation of
fields of knowledge the fundamental division was that between fields of
study dealing with man and those focused on physical nature, including
biotic phenomena. Under such a scenario, geography as a subject focused
on the integrated study of man and the environment was faced with a
crisis of identity. This crisis had coincided with the passing away of the
twin pioneers of modem geography-Ritter and Humboldt-in 1859. Viewed
thus, Ritter and Humboldt represented (in the words of James) "the
culmination and conclusion of ancient scholarship". The following decade
was a period of great disciplinary confusion. Many pleaded that geography
should focus on the study of man whereas others maintained that geography
should concentrate exclusively on the study of the physical elements of the
earth's environment.
The basic question agitating the minds of geographers was: What was

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INTRODUCTION 11

there left for geographers to do after aspects of nature and society were
parcelled out to provide separate domains for a series of systematic
disciplines? The crisis could be resolved only in the 1880s through the
innovative visions of Ratzel and Richthofen, and a little later of Blache. In
the post-1871 period, the sharper focus on acquiring geographical knowledge
to facilitate colonial adntinistration and international trade and commerce
had resulted in the realization that both natural as well as social phenomena
occur in particular geographical (spatial) contexts which to a great extent
determine their precise nature. Many of the essential elements in these
phenomena are caused by their association with all. other aspects of the
total environment whose complexion varies from place to place. To
comprehend this varying reality of the man-environment system, geography
was developed as the study of places wherein a variety of things and
events were examined in their spatial context of unsystematic groupings.
In the process of accomplishing the task of studying places, the geographical
profession had also undertaken the task of bridging the widening gap
between the natural and social sciences a task for which the discipline's
integrated focus on the totality of man and his environment eminently
qualified it. The rising importance of geography to colonial government
and the education of the citizenry greatly increased the prestige of this
discipline so t_hat independent departments of geography headed by
professors were started in many European countries, most notably Ge,,nany
and France. Inevitably, the scholars appointed to head these departments
were people who had obtained training in other disciplines such as history,
geology and biology, so that almost until the Second World War geographers
remained busy trying to establish the status of geography as an independent
discipline distinguished by its own concepts and methodology. The war
had changed the context of progress in science and humanities.
In the postwar period, geography experienced all round development
as its prestige as a useful branch of knowledge had been further enhanced
owing to the valuable service rendered by geographers in course of the
war as well as after it, particularly in the context of interdisciplinary work
called for to resolve issues involving diverse skills in the study of nature
and society. The geographers' locational perspective and their cartographic
expertise had proved particularly useful. This led to liberal funding for
geographical research and education. During this period, geography also
greatly benefited from the development of the General System Theory
(Bertalanffy, 1968) which offered new insights for the study of complex
phenomena as representations of interconnected and interdependent
elements. The application of the theory was greatly facilitated by the
invention of the electronic computer, and by the revolutionary advances in
data collection by satellites orbiting around the earth. Henceforth, the
question regarding what geography does, and the attempts to answer it by
drawing boundaries around it with a view to distinguishing it from other
sciences, became irrelevant. In the changed climate of the postwar period,
the process of separation of disciplines was replaced by "a process of

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12 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

integration in which each professional field brings its own special skills
and concepts to bear on such major difficulties as poverty, overpopulation,
race relations, and environmental destruction .... The special skills of
geography are those related to the significance of location and the spatial
relations of things and events .... A geographer is a person who asks questions
about the significance of location, distance, direction, spread, and spatial
succession. He deals with problems of accessibility, innovation, diffusion,
density, and other derivatives of relative location" Games, 1972, pp. 13-14).
(Short introductions to these concepts may be found in the various essays
in Dikshit, 1994.)
This by no means implies that things have been quiet on the disciplinary
front in geography over the past half century. Far from it. During this
period, geography has experienced a number of revolutionary conceptual
changes of far-reaching significance . In the immediate postwar period, a
major convulsion had occurred in the form of what is generally known as
the quantitative revolution, focused on mathematical precision in description
and analysis, increased use of symbolic logic, change in emphasis from
description to analysis, and from the study of the particular as unique to
the study of the particular as the general case. This implied changeover
from idiographic to nomothetic perspective in research. It also implied
change in emphasis from areal organization and areal differentiation to
spatial interaction with a view to generating theories of behaviour in space.
Focus on spatial flows meant that geometry became the preferred language
of research, and in that process postwar geography was transformed into
the science of spatial analysis of social and economic phenomena.
Simultaneously, new geography as a spatial science became increasingly
focused on the study of spatial aspects of social and economic phenomena
leading to progressive decline in focus on the study of physical environment.
Thus, postwar geography is preeminently human geography wherein the
study of the physical environment has value in that it provides the much
needed background to the understanding of man's interaction with his
environment leading to better appreciation of human ecology.
By the second half of the 1960s, however, it was realized that geography
as a spatial science had become far too involved in identifying patterns
and flows in abstract spaces and had, as a consequence, lost contact with
everyday reality. This led to a general call for shift in focus from spatial
patterns to behavioural processes that have generated those patterns. This
new turn to geographical study is sometimes referred to as the behavioural
revolution. Though the behavioural emphasis had opened up a psychological
dimension in geographical work by emphasizing the role of cognitive and
decision-making variables in mediating the relationship between
environment and spatial behaviour, much of the work that actually followed
was by way of an adjunct to geography as a spatial science. This tendency
was soon countered by laying emphasis on the central (and active) role
played by the human agency-human awareness, consciousness and
creativity-in the process of man-environment interaction. Emphasis was

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INTRODUCTION 13

laid on the understanding of meaning, value and human significance of

life events. Titis heralded the rise of humanistic geography which emphasized
the essential subjectivity of both the investigator and the investigated so
that the studies conducted were idiographic and particularistic rather than
law-seeking. Humanistic geography drew inspiration from the philosophies
of social and human sciences, and it pursued the methodology of
ethnography emphasizing the logical rather than the statistical mode of
inference.
In the 1970s, following the general radicalization of societal perspectives
in the West, relevance became the watchword in human geography (as in
other sciences focused on the study of man and his social organization) so
that the merit of any research now began to be assessed in terms of the
degree to which it contributed to the understanding and resolution of some
of the major economic, environmental, and social problems of the day. The
relevance movement (some refer to it as revolution) differed from the earlier
(postwar) focus on applied geography in that while the former was focused
on the use of science and technology in social-spatial engineering with a
view to increasing efficiency in the exploitation of resources and thereby
contributing to economic prosperity; relevance research was, on the other
hand, focused on rootedness of science in societal mores (i.e., the dominant
perspectives of the day) and it made a focused attempt to introduce the
concept of social justice in clear political terms in favour of the less privileged
sections of society. Until the 1980s the movement had remained divided
into those pursuing research under the public choice theory paradigm, and
others who insisted upon radical Marxist perspectives. By the end of that
decade the two perspectives had converged leading to more useful research
outcomes. Also, clearly visible was a definite move toward rapproachment
between the humanistic and the Marxist perspectives which had earlier
been viewed as alternative paradigms of research. Thus, the post-modernist
geography of the 1990s stands out as a unified discipline that combines the
best of every tradition-regional and systematic, idiographic as well
nomothetic, critical Marxist and humanistic. The current generation of
human geographers subscribes to the consensus that what had appeared
as conflicting perspectives in the course of the discipline's evolution in its
fo11native phases had represented no more than different (but comple
mentary) ways of looking at the totality of life in the world, so that each
perspective had something valuable to contribute towards better
comprehension of the great man-environment system, and thereby, toward
equipping the researcher with better tools of research in the service of
society.

ORGANIZATION OF THE PRESENT VOLUME

This book is designed to cover the entire conspectus of the history of ideas
in geography, beginning with the ancient Greeks, though the primary focus
is on the history of ideas in the modern period that began with Humboldt

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14 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

and Ritter toward the end of the eighteenth century. Chapter 1 is devoted
to discussion on the First Foundations of Geography and covers the period
from the ancient Greeks to the end of the eighteenth century. It includes
discussions (besides, dealing with the contributions of the Greeks and the
Arabs) on the Age of Exploration and its impact on the study of geography.
Brief discussions on contributions of Varenius and Kant are included.
Chapter 2 is focused on Geography in the Nineteenth Century: The Age
of Humboldt, and covers the period from 1790 to 1859. It includes
discussions on Humboldt, Ritter and Reclus and Guyot. The treatment of
geography after Humboldt and Ritter is divided into two parts . The first
part (Chapter 3) is focused on Developments in Germany in the context of
the emerging crisis of identity in the discipline during the post-1859 period
and the ways to resolve it. Attempts to project geography as an integrated
discipline focused on the study of the man-environment system in ecological
(Ratzel) and in regional or chorological terms (Richthofen) have been
analyzed and explained. A brief discussion of the contribution of
Schluter (who projected geography as the science of landscapes) is also
included.Chapter 4 deals with the post-1859 developments in France (Blache,
Brunhes, Vallaux, and Gallois), Britain (Mackinder and Geddes), Russia
(Kropotkin), and the United States (Davis, Jefferson, Huntington, and
Semple). Tomaintain continuity of thought, developments in American
geography to 1950 are also included with a view to highlighting the
contributions of Barrows and Sauer, and the rise of historical and applied
geography.
The remaining chapters are focused on developments since World
War JI. Chapter 5 deals with the shift in focus from Areal to Spatial analysis
in geographical work. Chapter 6 focuses on the rise of the Behavioural
perspective and Humanistic geography. Chapter 7 is addressed to the Call
for Social Relevance and Reorientation to Political Economy. Chapter 8
deals with the Regional Concept and the development of regional geography;
Chapter 9 with Historical Explanation in Geography, and Chapter 10 is
focused on the Impact of Evolutionary Biology on Geographical Thought,
Chapter 11 on Geography and Environmentalism, and Chapter 12 on Place,
Space and Locality as the dominant focus in current human geography
research. Chapter 13 presents a brief discussion of the Geography of Gender
whereas Chapter 14 is 'focused on Modern versus Post-modern Geographies.
The book concludes with a short overview of developments over the past
half century and the current phase of convergence and rapproachment in
geographical perspectives (Chapter 15).

THE CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TO HISTORY OF IDEAS

As Wright (1926/1966) had noted long ago, history of geography is the
history of geographical ideas. It is a repository of the changing views about
the relationship between man and nature, so that it reflects the development
of human consciousness in the course of man's experience in trying to

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INTRODUCTION 15

comprehend the world around him (Berdoulay, 1981). Such a disciplinary

history must necessarily emphasize the development of problems and
theories in the context of the social and intellectual environment in which
the protagonists of these theories had lived and worked. In such a history,
the truth or falsity of any given proposition is no longer the primary concern.
Instead, "we seek to understand how geographers as individual scholars
recognized and grappled with intellectual issues in their time, in particular
intellectual, social, and economic environments" (Stoddart, 1981). For such
a history of geographical thought, the "origins and persistence of error in
geography" Games, 1967) is regarded as enlightening as the history of
wisdom, since many of these errors had provided the source of inspiration
and context for further conceptual progress.
As Berdoulay (1981) has underlined, a contextual approach to the
history of geographical thought is guided by four factors: First, we must
remain conscious all through of the basic fact that, while there is a changing
system of thought, simultaneously there is also continuity of thought in
terms of certain basic ideas. The student of contextual history must always
remain conscious of the fact there is no inherent dichotomy between internal
and external factors influencing scientific change. The two represent a
continuum and are equally important. Secondly, the contextual approach
must not neglect any geographic trend though some of these may not have
acquired any lasting recognition. In other words, the historian of ideas
should guard against assigning superiority to one trend over another since
the lack of success in the fo1111 of posterity may be essentially sociological
or political. Thirdly, the identification for in-depth study of the major issues
which concern a given society is necessary for understanding contemporary
innovations in concept and methodology since science is socially rooted.
Fourthly, as geographic trends are inevitably rooted in social context, it is
important that the historian of ideas does not adopt a narrow concept of
scientific community, since every scholar belongs to a certain circle of affir,ity
which encompasses more than the scientific community in the narrow
sense. The circle of affinity includes specialists of many disciplines as
well as politicians and intellectuals with definite views on societal issues.
Lastly, a contextual approach is less concerned with examining the possible
influence of an idea and more with looking at the reasons behind the
demand for, or use of, that idea. The novelty or originality of an idea
(which when seen in isolation may not appear new or innovative to us
today) is best explained in terms of the synthesis of a particular set of ideas
held in society in the context of its place and time. To conclude, "The
contextual approach ... serves as a comprehensive framework for analyzing
the conjunction of inner logic and content of science and the context in
which the scientist is placed. It is by disentangling the links which unite
change in geographic thought to its context that one is in the best position
to assess, and to learn from, the creative contributions" of individual
scholars (Berdoulay, 1981, pp. 13-14). This is the basic approach adopted in
this book.

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16 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

REFERENCES
Berdoulay, V. (1981), The contextual approach, in Stoddart, D.R. (Ed.),
Geography, Ideology and Social Concern, Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
pp. 6---16.
Bertalanffy, L. von. (1968), General System Theory: Foundation, Develop111ents
Applications, New York: George Braziller.
Cohen, I.B. (1985), Revolution in Science, Cambridge (Mass): Harvard
University Press.
Dikshit, R.D. (Ed.) (1994), The Art and Science of Geography, New Delhi:
Prentice-Hall of India.
Glacken, C.J. (1967), Traces on the Rhodian Share, Nature and Culture in Wester,,
Thought from Ancient Times to the End of Eighteenth Century, Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Gregory, D. (1989), The crisis of modernity? Human geography and critical
social theory, in Peet, R. and Thrift, N. (Eds.), New Models in Geography,
vol. II, London, Unwin Hyman, pp. 348 385.
Haggett, P. (1994), Geography, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (Eds.), The Dictionary
of Human Geography, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 220-223.
Hartshorne, R. (1959), Perspective on the Nature of Geography, Chicago: Rand
McNally.
James, P.E. (1967), On the origin. and persistence of error in geography,
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 57, pp. 1-24.
--(1972), All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas, Indianapolis:
The Odessey Press, Chapter 1.
Livingston, D.N. (1992), The Geographical Tradition, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
May, J .A. (1970), Kant's Concept of Geography and Its Relation to Recent
Geographical Thought, Toronto: University of Toronto, Deparbnent of
Geography, Research Paper No. 4.
Parry, J.H. (1981), The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration and
Settlement 1450 to 1650, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Richards, P. (1974), Kant's geography and mental map, Transactions, Institute
of British Geographers, vol. 61, pp. 1-16.
Stoddart, D.R. (1981), Ideas and interpretations in history of geography, in
Stoddart, D.R. (Ed.), Geography, Ideology and Social Concern, Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, pp. 1-7.
-- (1986), On Geography and Its History, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Chapter 2.
Weber, G. (1974), Science and society in nineteenth century anthropology,
History of Science, vol. 12, pp. 260-283.
Wright, J.K. (1926/1966), A plea for history of geography, Isis, (1926),
vol. 8, pp. 477-491. Reprinted in Wright, J.K., Human Nature in
Geography, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard Uni,·ersity Press.

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1
The First Foundations: Developments
upto the Eighteenth Century

In its wider connotation as a branch of knowledge concerned with the

satisfaction of human curiosity about the lands and peoples away from
one's home base, speculation regarding mysteries of the physical
environment, and the role it plays in shaping the destiny of man upon the
earth, geography is as old as human civilization. As such, each major cultural
realm has had its own historiography of geography. Modern geography as
practised all the world over today, represents, however, an outgrowth of
the European geographic tradition so that the historiography of modem
geography is essentially an account of the conceptual developments among
Europeans regarding the nature of the earth and its environment and the
way it influences man. Thus, the roots of modem geography are to be
traced back to the thought of the ancient Greeks.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE GREEKS AND THE ROMANS

References to descriptive writings about lands and peoples in different
parts of the earth's surface are found in the oral traditions of classical
Greece and are reflected in the writings of Homer, whom the Greek
geographers had themselves referred to as the father of geography. Odyssey,
Homer's epic poem written sometimes in the ninth century B.C., presents
geographical accounts of the lands and peoples located on the margins of
the world then known to the Greeks. The poem records the wanderings of
Odysseus to return to Ithaca after the fall of Troy, when he was blown off
course by a storm, and it took him twenty years to reach home. The poem
contains a geographical account of the distant places visited by the hero of
the epic in course of his long journey. In it there are references to a land of
continuous sunshine, and later of Odysseus's visit to an area of continuous
darkness. Apparently a Greek poet could not have imagined these
scenes. Somehow accounts about the nature of the earth in the far north of
Europe during the long summer days and the continuous winter darkness
had filtered back to Greece, and were woven with other geographical
threads into an enchanting adventure story. As in the case of Meghdoot of
Kalidas, many have tried to identify the many places referred to in the epic
poem.
17

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18 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

However, Thales of Miletus-a town located near the mouth of the

Menderes river on the eastern side of the Aegean Sea (which was both a
centre of learning and a flourishing centre of commerce)-who lived in the
seventh and the sixth century B.C., is regarded as the first Greek to have
devoted focused attention to the measurement and location of places on
the surface of the earth. Thales himself was a very successful businessman.
In the course of a business trip to Egypt, he had been greatly impressed by
the geometrical traditions of the Egyptians in the measurement and
computation of areas. He had introduced some of these ideas among the
Greeks. Anaximander, a contemporary of Thales and a few years his junior,
is credited with having first introduced the idea of the sundial consisting
of a pole set vertically over a flat surface to measure the varying position
of the sun by measuring the length and direction of the shadow cast by the
pole. The shadow was shortest at noon and provided an exact north-south
line for determining the correct longitude of the relevant place. Anaximander
is also said to have produced a map of the known world with Greece as
its centre. Thales and Anaximander have jointly been regarded as the
originators of the mathematical tradition in geography in ancient Greece.
The literary tradition in the writing of geography had also developed around
the same time. Hecataeus, a resident of the town of Miletus, and born
around 475 B.C.-about the time that Thales and Anaximander had passed
away·-originated the literary tradition and his book Periods Ges (Description
of the Earth) is regarded as the first known attempt to synthesize available
knowledge about the world in a usable form. Hecataeus is also one of the
earliest writers of prose in classical Greek literature.
The next great name in this context is that of Herodotus (circa 485-
425 B.C.) who is widely known as the father of history, but is also generally
regarded as one of the founders of geography. His history of the Greek
struggle with the "barbarians" included (as digressions) descriptions of
various places visited by the author. Herodotus firmly believed that all
history must be treated geographically and also that all geography must be
studied historically. For him geography provided the stage, or the setting
that gives meaning to historical events. Herodotus had travelled a great
deal. Throughout his travels he had retained a keen interest in the nature
of the landscape so that he not only described geographical phenomena
but also tried to explain them. Examples include his attempt to explain the
annual fluctuations in the flow of the Nile, and the processes involved in
the origins of deltas occurring at the mouth of the Meander (Menderes)
river at Miletus. Herodotus had no interest in the mathematical tradition
and showed no interest in problems like measurement of the earth's
circumference. He accepted the Homeric view of the earth as a flat disc
over which the sun was believed to travel in an arc from east to west.
Plato (428-348 B.C.) also made an important contribution to the
development of geographical ideas. Plato was a great proponent of deductive
reasoning. He insisted that the observable phenomena on the earth's surface
represent poor copies of ideas from which these observable phenomena

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 19

had degenerated. By way of illustration he referred to the case of Attica

(the ancient territory of which Athens was the capital). According to Plato,
the area was originally very fertile and capable of supporting a large
population of men and animals. He wrote that compared to its original
state, the Attica of his time was "like the skeleton of a sick man, all the
flesh and soft earth having been wasted away, and only bare framework of
the land being left'' (cited in Glacken, 1967, p. 121). Contemporary
philosophers in Greece generally accepted the idea that symmetry of fotn,
is one of the essential alttibutes of perfection, and that the most completely
symmetrical for11, was a sphere. It was argued that since the earth had
been created to serve as the home of man, it must have a perfect form, and
therefore it must be a sphere. Plato is regarded as the first scholar who
put forward the concept of a spherical earth located in the centre of the
universe, and the sun and all the other celestial bodies moving around it.
Plato offered no argument or evidence as proof that the earth is round.
Providing the proof for the spherical shape of the earth was left to Aristotle
(384 322 B.C.), who was a student and a member of Plato's academy for
twenty years.
Aristotle is regarded as the pioneer of inductive reasoning and the
inductive approach to acquiring knowledge. He was convinced that the
best method of building a reliable theory was to start with the observation
of facts. lhis required reasoning from the particular to the general, in contrast
to Plato's deductive approach which required the student to proceed from
the general to the particular. Aristotle laid the foundation of what has been
regarded as the world's first paradigm to guide research procedures. He
laid down four fundamental principles of scientific explanation: First, it is
necessary to establish the necessary characteristics (i.e., the nature) of the
phenomenon being investigated; Second, it is necessary to identify the
substance of which it is composed; lhird, it is necessary to identify the
process through which the phenomenon has attained its present form; and
lastly, it is necessary to identify the purpose that the phenomenon concerned
fulfils in the overall scheme of nature. lhis last principle makes Aristotle
stand out as the first teleologist in that he believed that everything was
changing in accordance with a preexisting plan.
Aristotle argued his propositions so convincingly that his research
methodology appeared irrefutable at the time it was presented. His
intellectual status in the contemporary world of scholarship was so high
that his ideas were accepted without question for a long time. (Some of his
ideas were patently false, however. One such was the idea that habitability
on the earth surface is a function of distance from the equator, and that
areas around the equator are too hot for human survival.)
Although Plato and Aristotle gave intellectual leads that contributed
to the development of knowledge about the earth as human habitat, neither
of the two could be identified as a geographer. As contrasted to this,
Erastosthenes (276---194 B.C.) is often referred to as the father of geography
as a branch of knowledge. He is said to have coined the word geography.

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20 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

The te1111 is derived from ge, meaning the earth, and graphe, meaning
description. Thus was born geography as a field of study which specialized
in presenting reasoned description of the Greek ecumene, and speculated
about the nature of peoples and places beyond the range of knowledge in
contemporary Greece. He wrote the first formal text on geography entitled
Geographica. His estimate of the earth's circumference was remarkably
accurate, and, therefore had proved a major step forward in the development
of knowledge about the earth. Erastosthenes was the chief librarian at the
famous museum at Alexandria-a post that he occupied for about forty
years until his death in 194 B.C. Under his leadership, the museum had
developed into a major centre of astronomical research, a field of knowledge
that was at that time viewed as closely associated with geography.
Erastosthenes identified five climatic zones, one torrid zone, two temperate
zones, and two frigid zones. He also improved upon the Aristotelian idea
on this subject by giving latitudinal boundaries to the five climatic zones.
The torrid zone extended 24° north and south of the equator, and the frigid
zones extended to 24° from either pole. The areas in between were the two
temperate zones.
After the death of Erastosthenes the post of chief librarian of the
museum at Alexandria went to Hipparchus who was the first to divide the
circle into 360 degrees. He also defined a grid of latitudes and longitudes
for the earth, and identified the equator as a great circle that divides our
spherical planet into two equal parts. Hipparchus pointed out that since
the earth makes one complete revolution in 24 hours, it covers a journey
of 360 degrees in a day and so covers fifteen degrees of longitude in one
hour. He also made a significant contribution to the development of map
projections by suggesting ways for overcoming the difficulty of representing
the spherical earth on a flat sheet of paper.
The cartographical cosmographical traditions set by Erastosthenes and
Hipparchus were further advanced by the succeeding generation of students
at the museum. The cumulative knowledge gained through these exertions
culminated in Ptolemy's (9{}-168 A.O.) eight volume work entitled Guide to
Geography. Ptolemy was himself a great astronomer of his time and was the
author of the famous text on classical astronomy entitled Almagest which
had for long remained the most standard reference on the movement of
celestial bodies. His Guide to Geography was also of related interest. By
adopting the system of latitudes and longitudes based on the division of
the circle into 360 degrees, he attempted to give precise location for all the
known places in precise mathematical te1111s. Six out of the eight volumes
of his Guide to Geography consisted of tables of latitudes and longitudes.
The first volume was devoted to a discussion on map projections, and the
eighth volume contained maps of different parts of the world showing all
the places that had been included in volumes two to seven. It is true that
from the perspective of the present, Ptolemy's book would appear as a
monumental collection of errors. It was, however, a piece of great scholarship
at the time when it was originally presented. Ptolemy's calculations of

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 21

latitudes and longitudes are found to be wrong since these calculations

had been based on estimated lengths of journeys between places; and these
could never be accurate. Another major source of error was that Ptolemy
had rejected Erastosthenes' almost correct estimate of the earth's circum
ference in favour of Posidonius's (which gave a figure that fell short of the
actual by a little over one-fourth). (Erastosthenes had estimated the earth's
circumference at 252,000 stadii, and Posidonius at 180,000 stadii�one
stadium being equal to 157.5 metres.)
Strabo (64 B.C. to 20 A.D.), born a century-and-a-half before Ptolemy,
had carried forward the tradition of topographical work of Greek geography
as started in the works of Herodotus. His seventeen-volume work named
Geography was largely an encyclopaedic description of the world known to
the Greeks. Unlike the works of most other Greek scholars, Strabo's book
was found almost intact. The first two volumes of his book contain a review
of the work of other geographers since the time of Homer. They give a fair
idea of the nature of geographical writing in ancient Greece. The next eight
volumes were devoted to Europe, six to Asia, and one to Africa.
Strabo's book was written to cater to the needs of a specific group
of readers, namely the officers of the administration, statesmen, and
commanders of the Roman empire. The purpose was to provide a handbook
of information about places and people to help the imperial officers in the
better appreciation and accomplishment of their task. Strabo's book had
laid down a clear foundation for chorological writing in geography.
Explaining the method of writing geography, Strabo wrote:
... just as the man who measures the earth gets his principles from the
astronomer and the astronomer his from the physicist, so too, the
geographer must in the same way take his own point of departure from
the man who has measured the earth as a whole, having confidence in
him and in those in whom he, in his tum, had confidence, and then
explain in the first instance, our inhabited world, its size, shape and
character, and its relation to earth as a whole; for this is the particular
task of the geographer. Then, secondly, he must discuss in a fitting
manner the several parts of the inhabited world, both land and sea,
noting in passing where the subject has been treated inadequately by
those of our predecessors V{hom we have believed to be the best autho
rities on the matters (Strabo, trans., Jones, 1917, pp. 429-431; cited in
James, 1972, p. 47).
Both Strabo and Ptolemy had lived at a time when the Roman empire
was at its zenith. It was the largest centralized empire in history till that
time. The state needed to have exact description of its territories as well as
the other territories it interacted with. This knowledge was necessary both
for effective administration and trade as also for the training of the younger
generation from among whom the future crop of administrators was to be
recruited. The work of the two Greek scholars, besides extending the frontiers
of knowledge, was designed to meet a definite need of society. Geography
was flourishing because it served a useful purpose.

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22 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

GEOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

During the fifth century A.O., the Roman empire suffered demise. The
central administration had greatly weakened and consequently the
constituent territories gradually became independent. As trade and commerce
declined, the geographic horizons of the people rapidly narrowed down so
that, with the passage of time, the geographical horizon of most people in
Christiandom became confined to their immediate surroundings. Given
the extremely narrow world-view of contemporary European societies, it
was natural that religious orthodoxy should increase. Before Jong, scriptures
had begun to be regarded as the ultimate repository of knowledge of every
kind so that an impression was created that there was no need to learn
anything outside the Holy books. Anything that did not conform with the
"truth" of the scriptures was regarded as the product of a perverse mind
and had, accordingly, to be rejected. Under these conditions, science (and,
therefore, geography) could not develop and the Middle Ages represented
the Dark Age in the history of scientific knowledge in Europe. During this
long period, scientific concepts developed by the ancient Greeks were
reshaped with a view to make them conform with the "truth" preached by
the Church. For example, the idea of a spherical earth was abandoned in
favour of the old concept of the earth as a flat disc, with Jerusalem as its
centre. This dismal state of affairs continued almost until the end of the
twelfth century A.O.
By the end of the eleventh century A.O., overland travel of Christian
pilgrims to Jerusalem across Turkey and Syria had been made very difficult
on account of Muslim domination over these territories. This aroused the
religious sentiments of Christian Europe. A series of military campaigns
were organized with a view to rescue the Holy Land of Jerusalem from the
control of Muslims. Between 1096 and 1270 A.O., eight different crusades
were organized for the purpose. These crusades (religious wars) played a
major role in broadening the geographical horizon of Christian Europe.
Men from different parts of Europe had come together to participate in
them. These participants went back to their homes with new knowledge
and information about the landscapes and customs of many areas beyond
the range of the familiar. This stimulated interest in, and the urge to gain
knowledge about, unfamiliar places. The religious wars, therefore, had led
to a new beginning-a revival of interest in geography as a branch of
knowledge. Expeditions began to be organized to distant places. The most
famous of such expeditions was Marc Polo's voyage to China, the Far East,
and the Indian Ocean undertaken between 1271 and 1295.
The Crusades proved a stimulant to the revival of interest in the
study of peoples and places in far-off lands in another way also. Owing to
the "religious" wars the Muslims had closed the overland routes to India
and beyond to European merchants who had until then participated in the
highly profitable spice trade between India and Europe. Attempts were,
therefore, directed to finding an alternative route to the Indies. Two such
attempts led to the glorious discoveries of Columbus and Vasco de Gama.

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 23

GEOGRAPHY IN THE ARAB LANDS

The fall of the Roman empire, and the decline of scientific learning in
Europe was followed by a period of great ascendancy in the Muslim world
which, under the influence of Prophet Mohammed, had been transformed
from a multitude of tribes divided by intertribal feuds into integral
components of a larger all-inclusive identity based on adherence to a common
set of religious beliefs and practices. The followers of Islam soon embarked
upon a course of conquest of the world outside Arabia with a view to
spreading the new religious ideology to the farthest corners of the world.
Persia and Egypt were conquered in 641-642 A.O., and by A.O. 732 the
whole of the West Asian desert region was under their control. They soon
overran the Iberian peninsula and Spain and Portugal remained under
Muslim rule for almost nine hundred years. Muslim influence also extended
eastward into India and parts of south-east Asia. The act of holding on to
such a huge politico-cultural empire had, in itself, become a major stimulant
to the rise of interest in geographical learning. The Arabs held a monopoly
over the spice trade between India and Europe. This trade required a great
deal of travel over land and sea. Travels between places spread over such
a large expanse of territory became the source of considerable extension of
knowledge about geographical environment in tr_opical regions.
Following the widening of its geographical horizon, the Arab world
became fired with a new zeal for scientific learning. Baghdad (founded in
726 A.O.) became a major centre of learning. Its rulers (the Caliphs) employed
learned men of different faiths to make authentic translations of the major
scientific works of their respective languages. Included in these works
were books on astronomy and geography. Scholars were also employed to
calculate the circumference of the earth, and to fix latitudes in the plain of
the Euphrates. The method employed was the one used by Erastosthenes
about a thousand years earlier. Available texts on geography written by the
ancient Greeks (including Ptolemy) were translated into Arabic, and
new texts were got written after duly incorporating the new knowledge
derived from the records of observations made by Arab merchants and
explorers.
Thus, as a result of Ibn-Hakul's voyage to the south of the equator
(made between 943 to 973 A.O.), the wrong notion regarding the inhabitability
of the torrid zone (as perpetuated by Aristotle) was abandoned. Around
the same time, in course of his travels down the east coast of Africa upto
the Mozambique, Al-Masudi had reported the phenomenon of monsoonal
winds. Another contemporary named Al-Maqdisi had established (in 985)
the general truth that the climate of any place is a function not only of its
latitude but also of its position on the east or west side of a landmass . He
is also credited with the knowledge that most of the earth's landmass lies
north of the equator. Al-Idrisi (around 1099-1180 A.O.) made many
corrections to Ptolemy's book. On the basis of the new information collected
by Arab explorers, and some collected from other sources, he produced his
own book on geography (in 1154) in which the Greek idea about the Indian

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24 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

Ocean as a closed sea was corrected. Also corrected were the positions of
many rivers including the Danube and the Niger.
Another great Arab explorer was Ibn Batuta (1304--1368 A.O.). He
extensively explored regions of North Africa and West Asia, sailed along
the Red Sea, and travelled south along the east coast of Africa to Kilwa, a
point about 10 degrees south of the equator. He had reported that an Arab
trading post was located in the latitude of 20 degrees south thereby
confirming the habitability of the torrid zone. Ibn Batuta had also travelled
overland from Mecca to Persia, Bukhara and Samarkand, and from there
across Afghanistan to Delhi. I-le had visited several islands, including Ceylon
(Sri Lanka), Sumatra, and the Maldives. He also visited China and returned
to Fez, the capital of Morocco, in 1350 A.O. From there he travelled across
the Sahara to Timbuktu on the Niger, gathering valuable information about
Black Muslims on the way. He settled down in Fez in 1353 A.O. after
travelling an estimated 75,000 miles, a world record for his time. On the
request of the king of Morocco, he put down a detailed account of his
travels for posterity.
The last great Muslim scholar who contributed significantly to the
development of geographical knowledge was Ibn-Khaldun (1342-1405 A.O.)
who wrote (in 1377) a detailed introduction to world history published
under the title Muqaddimah. In his introduction to the book he identified
two sets of influences on man's progress (i.e., history): One, the physical
environment, and two, the social environment derived from culture and
belief rather than the natural environment. This distinction between the
two sets of environmental influences on man was a remarkable intellectual
achievement for his time so that Kimble (1938) was prompted to remark
that Ibn-Khaldun had "discovered ... the true scope and nature of
geographical inquiry".
lbn-Khaldun had concentrated on the study of the tribe and the city
the two most important elements in the political organization of the desert
society in the Arab world. He identified the tribe and the city as two
distinct stages in the evolution of social organization in a desert environment.
While the nomads represented an earlier (primitive) stage of social organi
zation, the city dwellers represented the last stage in the development of
social life, almost the point where decay sets into the social organization
owing to the sedentary lifestyle of the urban community. Many credit Ibn
Khaldun with having presented in this way one of the earliest concepts of
the life cycle of the states. Surprisingly, however, Ibn-Khaldun had clung
to the Aristotelian idea about the inhabitability of the equatorial regions.
To the great credit of lbn-Khaldun is the fact that he was the first great
scholar to direct attention specifically to the study of the man-environment
relationships.,
The significance of Arab contribution to the historiography of modern
geography lies in that the development of geographical knowledge in the
Arab world represented, in some ways, a further development over the
original base provided by the geographers of ancient Greece, whose works

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 25

had been translated into Arabic, and widely used by Arab scholars. Thus,
while Europe itself had forgotten the Greek heritage in geography, the
Arabs had held the banner aloft and it was largely through contact with
the Arab world, and the translation of their books (including retranslation
of Greek works from the Arabic translations) that geography got revived
as a living science in fifteenth century Europe. Indeed, the countries having
the closest contacts with the Arab world, such as Spain and Portugal,
spearheaded the series of exploratory voyages that ultimately opened the
way to the revival of interest in geographical learning. Large parts of Spain
and Portugal had remained under Muslim rule since the eighth century
A.O. While Portugal had become free in the middle of the thirteenth century,
the Spaniards pushed out the Muslims gradually from the peninsula through
a series of efforts lasting over a century from 1391 to 1492.
Both the Portuguese and the Spaniards had mastered the art of
shipbuilding and navigation, and had launched ambitious programmes of
voyages of exploration with a view to promoting trade and commerce with
the outside world, particularly the spice trade with the Indies, and trade
in gems and precious stones with parts of Africa south of the Sahara. Since
the overland routes in each case were then under the control of the Arabs,
it was necessary to find alternative sea routes, which contemporary science
had shown to be well within the pale of possibility in view of the round
shape of the earth, and the continuity of the oceans.
The importance of the spice trade for contemporary Europe lay in
that owing to the inadequate supply of sugar, spices were required to
make food palatable. Besides, in the absence of refrigeration, meat was to
be stored in dried and salted form. Such meat required spices in order to
be made reasonably palatable. What was more, Genoa and Venice which
had earlier been flourishing centres of trade in spices from India and beyond,
were now deserted as the Arabs had blocked direct contact between Europe
and the regions of supply further east in Asia.

THE AGE OF EXPLORATION

Portugal's Prince Henry "The Navigator" who had (in 1415) succeeded in
capturing the Muslim base at Ceuta on the southern side of the Strait of
Gibraltar, took the first initiative toward wider exploration across the high
seas. From his Muslim prisoners, the Prince had learnt that many of the
most valuable items of merchandise traded in European markets by the
Arabs were brought from areas in Africa to the south of the Sahara. This
inspired him to sponsor sea voyages of exploration along the western coast
of Africa. Around this time-in 1410-two important publications had
appeared in geography. One was the Latin translation of Ptolemy's Geography
made from a copy preserved in Byzantium (Istanbul), and the other was a
book called Imagine Mundi authored by Pierre d'Ally in which he presented
a summary of various geographical writings then existing in the countries
of Christian Europe. The two were very influential in promoting interest in

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26 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

geographical knowledge and created a favourable climate for the launching

of voyages of exploration, and for developing better techniques of
cartography and map design.
Prince Henry was responsible for establishing a broad-based institute
of geographic research at Sagre near the port of Lagos where a rich library
of all the available literature in geography, cartography, astronomy and
related subjects was stocked, and scholars (including linguists) from all
parts of Europe were invited to teach Portuguese students the art of
navigation, and to inform them about the existing knowledge regarding
the earth and its environment in different parts of the world so that suitable
preparations could be made to meet the contingent situations likely to be
encountered in the process of exploratory voyages then being planned for
the exploration of the western coast of Africa, and to find an alternative
route to the spice islands beyond India. These explorations initiated by
the Prince laid fi1111 foundations for the larger ventures by subsequent
explorers under the patronage of the royal house of Portugal, culminating
in the great voyage of Christopher Columbus (who discovered the new
World in 1492) and the discovery of an alternative sea route to India by
Vasco da Gama in 1498.
Columbus had studied at Sagre, and he had been greatly influenced
by Pferre d'Ally's Imagine Mundi which had suggested that since the earth
was round, a route to China and India could be found by sailing west from
the Canary Islands. It is a different matter though that in the process of
finding an alternative route to the Indies, Columbus landed in America
rather than Asia, his intended destination. Columbus died in 1506 still
believing that he had discovered a part of Asia. The task of finding an
alternative route to Asia by sailing west and then north along the coast of
South America was accomplished by another great Portuguese explorer
three decades later in October 1520. This voyage was perfo111,ed by Magellan
whose name the (Magellan) Strait connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific
now bears.
Voyages across the sea required maps and charts to guide the sailors
in course of their travels. Ptolemy's map was used in the beginning. It was
the task of the royal cartographers to correct the old map in the light of
new information then available. Thus, Venice and Genoa soon emerged as
great centres of cartographic learning. European sailors and merchants
departed from either of the two port towns for their journeys to the eastern
Mediterranean to pick up the cargo brought by Arab ships from the East.
The first globe showing the earth as a sphere was produced by Martin
Behain in 1490, and map projections tackling the problem of representing
the round earth on a flat sheet of paper began to receive attention of scholars
soon after. In 1530, Peter Apian produced a heart-shaped map of the earth
in which both latitudes as well as longitudes were shown as curved lines.
Neither distance nor direction was represented correctly, and the map showed
only one hemisphere. Apian's student, Gerhard Kramer (who later adopted
the name Gerhard Mercator) made a world map in 1538 by joining two

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 27

heart-shaped projections: for each hemisphere. Mercator earned

celebrity in 1569 when he succeeded in designing a projection that showed
the whole of the earth surface on a single network of latitudes and longitudes.
This was the famous Mercator Projection-the orthomorphic cylindrical
projection. As we know, even though theoretically an orthomorphic
projection, it greatly distorted the shapes of continents, but its great advantage
lay in that on it compass bearings could be shown by straight lines so that
navigators could plot their course without being required to draw
cumbersome curves. The projection could not be easily used until English
geographer Edward Wright (1558-1615) produced the trigonometric table
to reproduce the projection. This improvement made the Mercator projection
universally accepted for maps on which to base navigators' charts.
Focus on improvements in cartographic techniques continued through
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. New projections were devised and
old map projections improved upon. Map makers remained busy revising
old maps in the light of new information obtained from travellers and
explorers. From the time of Magellan (who explored the outlines of South
America between 1518 to 1521), and James Cook (1728-1779) (who through
his three different voyages, performed between 1768 to 1779, drew the
outlines of the Pacific Ocean and eliminated the possibility of the existence
of Ptolemy's Southland), scholars were directly addressing the task of
drawing correct outlines of landmasses and water bodies. They were also
busy devising techniques of surveying and cartography to be able to present
true-to-scale reality of the earth's surface on their maps and charts. This
task was almost complete by the time of James Cook's death in 1779 and
a good deal of new information about world climates, wind regimes, •
distribution of flora and fauna, and patterns of human civilization ov¢r the
earth surface had been obtained. Incorporating the ever increasing
information and data with a view to presenting a correct and mea 'i"ingful
description of the earth surface had become a formidable task. The challenge
posed by the problem attracted a number of leading scientists to the study
of geography.
W hile explorers were busy fixing the outlines of continents and oceans,
and cartographers remained busy in drawing more accurate representations
of the earth surface on maps, the world was experiencing a great revolution
in knowledge about the nature of the universe and the earth's position in
it. The old-time concept of the earth as the centre of the universe was
abandoned in favour of the concept of a heliocentric universe first put
forward by the Polish scholar Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543. The concept
was further refined by Kepler (1571-1630) in 1618 and Galileo (1564-1642)
in 1623. Galileo further revolutionized scientific thinking by formulating
the concept of mathematical order in the universe i.e., an order in which
relationships between phenomena could be described in terms of
mathematical laws rather than verbal logic. A further scientific advance
came in the form of Newton's law of gravitation in 1686. Thus, in the
course of a century and a half, seeds of scientific revolution had been

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28 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

sown. These heralded the beginning of the rise of specialized branches of

knowledge, each focusing on some particular theme, object, or relationships
between phenomena. The rise of specialized systematic sciences, each
focusing on a particular category of facts or relationships signalled the
demise of the era of universal scholarship and of cosmographies in which
scholars had attempted to bring together all that was known about the
earth and its parts in single volume works in the style set by Strabo.
In view of the rapid flow of new information derived from the
increasing stream of explorations and scientific research, compilation and
synthesis of knowledge in a meaningful manner became an increasingly
challenging task that required a high degree of scholarship. The cosmo
graphers of that period were, therefore, far from mere popularizers. The
first great cosmographer of the age of exploration was the German scholar
Sebastian Munster (1489-1552) who had been engaged, with the help of
120 other authors and artists, in writing a broad-based cosmography
incorporating the latest information on every important aspect for over
eighteen years. The outcome was a six-volume work entitled Cosmographie
Universalis published in 1544. Written in the tradition of Strabo's Geography,
the book earned its author the popular title of "the German Strabo". The
first volume of Munster's cosmography presented a general picture of the
earth on the lines of Ptolemy's Geography, while the remaining five volumes
were devoted to descriptive accounts of the major divisions of the earth's
surface.
Munster's work was a combination of tradition (imaginative stories
about people and places which were part of popular belief) and science
(incorporating new information derived from explorations and scientific
investigations). Thus, his account of America and Africa included stories of
men with heads on their chests, and having a combined animal and human
form. Such beliefs were part of contemporary scholarship and consequently,
Munster's volumes were avidly read necessitating several editions between
1544 and 1550; and the book remained a popular reference for about a
century thereafter. Another leading cosmographer was the German scholar
Cluverius (1580-1622) who had published a six-volume compendium on
universal geography (following the general plan of Munster's work but
better informed) in 1624. The first universal geography to appear in the
English language was written by Nathanael Carpenter (1589-1628) a scholar
at Oxford, who had benefited from his association with Cluverius during
the latter's frequent visits to Oxford. Carpenter's book had appeared in
1625, a year after the publication of Cluverius's book.

From Cosmography to Scientific Geography: Contribution of

Bernard Varenius
In course of time, the tradition of writing cosmographies got concretized
into a coherent body of knowledge that came to be described as "general
geography". Geographia Genera/is (1650) of Bernard Varenius (1622-1650)
(a Dutch scholar) was an outgrowth from the cosmographic tradition even

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTtJRY 29

though it is rightly regarded as a major step forward toward laying the

foundation of scientific geography. Varenius' s book was, according to
Dickinson (1969), the first work "which sought to combine general,
mathematical, and physical geography and chorology". Varenius set forth
clearly the distinction between two forms of geographical scholarship-the
one concerned with the description of particular places (i.e., regional
description), and the other concerned with developing general laws and
hypotheses of wider applicability. He termed the first Special or Particular
Geography (i.e., geography of particular places etc.) and the second as
General Geography.
Varenius was writing at a time when voyages of exploration were
pouring in a flood of new information and data so that one of the major
problems facing contemporary scholars was how to relate specific pieces of
information to general principles. Among geographers, Varenius was the
first to focus attention on this problem; and the solution that he offered
through his Geographia Genera/is was to become the basic tenet of geography
as a branch of knowledge which has ever since retained a twofold division
into Regional and Systematic (or General) geography-the former focused
on the study of particular places, and the latter was devoted to the study
of the nature, and pattern of spatial distribution of particular items of
geographical interest over the earth surface and its parts.
The most creditable part of Varenius's contribution lay in that he
underlined the relationship between the two streams of geographical
scholarship: Special geography provided the results of in-depth study of
particular places and regions which became the raw material (the data) on
the basis of which General geography could pursue its task of depicting
spatial patterns of distribution, and inferring therefrom general hypotheses
and laws explaining why they occur where they do, and thereby providing
valuable inputs for better work in the area of Special (i.e., Regional) studies.
Varenius pointed out that while Special geography was of great practical
value in the pursuit of government and commerce, General geography
provided information on the principles governing the distribution of
particular phenomena on the earth surface so that the administrator and
the businessman may be suitably informed about the nature of the
environment they are likely to encounter in particular parts of earth's surface.
To Bernard Varenius, therefore, General and Special geography did not suggest
a dichotomy or a separation of ways, and division of objectives. To him,
the two represented mutually interdependent parts of geography as a unified
field of scientific ·learning. In this vision of geography, Varenius was far
ahead of his peers. This explains why he had so greatly influenced the
concept and scope of geography in Europe for well over a century.
In the foreword to his book, Varenius had set out a plan for Special
geography, according to which the description of particular places should
be based on celestial conditions, including climate; terrestrial conditions,
including relief, vegetation and animal life; and human conditions including
trade, settlements and forms of government in each country being studied.

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30 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

It is true though, that Varenius was none too enthusiastic about human
geography since its subject matter could not be put to exact mathematical
analysis for purposes of generating laws of behaviour (Gettfried Lange,
1961, paraphrased in Holt-Jensen, 1980, p. 14).
Like most other great works of scholarship, Varenius's book had been
inspired by the demands of his time. In 1647, Varenius had accepted the
position of a private tutor in a family in Amsterdam, then the commercial
hub of the Netherlands. Here he came in contact with merchants engaged
in international trade. Many of the merchants needed information about
Japan where the Dutch had established a trading post in Nagasaki. This is
what had inspired his first book entitled Regional Description of Japan and
Siam published in 1649. The experience gained in writing a regional
geography of Japan gave Varenius the idea that descriptions of particular
places "could have no standing as contribution to science so long as these
are not related to a coherent body of general concepts". His Geographia
Genera/is was written with a view to promoting the search for and the
building of this much-needed conceptual coherence in geographical
scholarship. His book went through several editions in Latin-two of these
(published in 1672 and 1681) edited by no less a person than Sir Isaac
Newton. An English edition was published in 1693 (Baker, 1955a and 1955b).
Varenius passed away in 1650 at the tender age of 28 so that the
world of scholarship was deprived of many more conceptual leads. Under
lining the methodology of Special vis-a-vis General geography, Varenius
pointed out that while in General geography (dealing mostly with
phenomena of physical origin), most things can be proved by mathematical
laws, in the case of Special geography, with the exception of celestial features
(i.e., climate), things must be proved by experience that is, by direct
observation through the senses (James, 1972, p. 226).

THE IMPACT OF DISCOVERIES

New Answers to Questions about the Origin of the Earth and

Its Surface Features, and Man's Place in Nature
Speculation about the origin of the earth, and man's place in the web of
nature, had for long remained constrained by theocratic domination of
thought in mediaeval Europe. Intellectual thinking had continued to be
conditioned by traditions inherited from ancient Greece as well as from
biblical accounts. All this began to change during the seventeenth century
when steps were initiated to cut the thought process loose from the strangle
hold of biblical beliefs, and to start experimenting with rational methods,
so that geographical exploration had "immense significance in the history
of science and of thought" (Parry, 1981, p. 3).
By the end of the seventeenth century, a good deal of speculation on
the origin of the earth had led to the belief that the earth is a physical
phenomenon that has acquired its present form though natural processes

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 31

of change spread over millions of years, and that it was wrong to regard
it as a divine creation. Inspired by the theory of comets given by Edmond
Halley (1656-1742) in 1682, William Whiston (1667-1752) developed the
theory that the earth was made from the debris of ,. comet, and that the
gravitational pull of a second approaching comet had caused the elliptical
orbit of the earth around the sun, and.had led-through the tidal waves
caused by its gravitational pull-to the creation of the continents and ocean
basins. While the crests of the waves were occupied by landmasses
(continents), the troughs became the ocean basins. Later the German scholar
Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-1817) developed the theory that the great
flood that had been caused by the cooling of the earth's atmosphere, had
led to dissolution of materials of the earth's crust. The dissolved rr,aterials
of the crust were deposited on the surface of the earth in the form of a
series of layers so that large parts of the earth surface are covered with
sedimentary strata.
Simultaneously, a good deal of speculation had begun on the origin
of landforms. In 1719, John Strachey (1671-1743) showed that landforms
reflected the rock structure lying underneath them. Subsequently, in 1777
Simon P allas (1741-1811) published geological maps to show that the cores
of most mountain ranges are made of granite. Alongside, ideas about the
mechanics of river flows and valley development were being developed at
a rapid pace. The French scnolar Louis Gabriel Comte Du Buat (1734-1809)
mathematically explained (in 1786) how the flowing water of a river can
establish equilibrium between velocity and the load of sediment being
transported by it. This had led to the idea of "graded river profiles". During
the 18th century James Hutton (1726-1797) popularized the concept of
uniformitarianism, according to which the processes that shape the earth
surface indicate a perpetual process of change "with no vestige of a beginning
and no prospect of an end".
New methods of scientific classification of plant and animal life were
also influential in shaping geographic thought and practice. The most
influential figure in this field was Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus
(1707-1778). He developed a system of classification based on classes, orders,
genera, and species. French naturalist Lamarck (1744-1829) drew attention
to the need for a system of classification of plants and animals in accordance
with their natural characteristics. He challenged the widely believed notion
that plants and animals were created in their present form. Thus, he presented
the· rudiment of a theory of evolution that was later advanced and refined
in a big way by Darwin and others who laboured to explain the mechanism
through which the process of evolution of life forms had taken place. Coupled
with the idea of uniformitarianism of Hutton, the theory of biological
evolution had greatly impressed geographers about the role of time in the
evolution of landfo111ls.
The early part of the eighteenth century also witnessed the first
beginnings of scientific study of man. The German scholar J.P. Sussmilch
(1707-1767), in a book published in 1741, had demonstrated the existence

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32 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

of statistical regularities in population data. His research showed that the

ratios between the sexes had remained nearly balanced, and that birth and
death rates could be predicted on the basis of past trends. (However, the
idea that numerical information about individuals tends to group around
averages (in accordance with the theory of probability) was put forward by
Lambert Quetelet (1796-1874) only much later in 1848.)
As knowledge about the lands and peoples over the earth's surface
increased, so did speculation about the role of the environment in shaping
human behaviour patterns. French philosopher Jean Bodin (1529-1596) was
one of the first to present a major work on this theme in 1566. Placing
belief in the Greek concept of climatic zones, Bodin formulated the theory
that people in the southern parts of the world (being under the influence
of Saturn) are religiDus by nature; those living in the northern regions
(living under the influence of Mars) were endowed with martial charac
teristics; and only people living in the middle regions (owing to the influence
of Jupiter) were able to evolve a civilized way of life and live under the
rule of law. English geographer Nathanael Carpenter in his Cosmography
(1625) further advanced Bodin's idea regarding climatic zones and their
influence in shaping human behaviour. From these early beginnings of
what may appear to us today as unscientific speculation about the man
nature relationships, progressively evolved more rational scientific analyses
based on detailed observations and comparative case studies. In a piece
published in 1719, the French scholar Abbe de Bos established a definite
relationship between the weather and suicide rates in the cities of Paris
and Rome. His analysis showed that in Paris, suicides were most common
in the period before the onset of winter and just after the end of winter. In
Rome on the other hand, most suicides had occurred in the two hottest
months in summer (Glacken, 1967, pp. 556-558). Until the 19th century the
most influential scholar who worked on this theme was Charles Louis
Montesquieu (1689-1755). In line with the scientific ideas current in his
time, Montesquieu wrote that warm climates favoured growth of despotism
and slavery, whereas colder climates encouraged democracy and freedom
so that, according to him, democracy tended to increase in direct proportion
to _increase in distance from the equator. Despite these crude observations
on the relationship between man and the environment, Montesquieu was
far from a crude determinist (Kriesel, 1968); he had given due allowance to
human initiative and technology in reducing environmental constraints to
human progress.
The progress in scientific thought through the newly acquired habit
of questioning everything in sight represented a new tradition in scholarship.
As James (1972) wrote, all these efforts were "new" in the sense that they
offered new hypotheses, new methods of classification, and new ways of
making use of mathematical principles of explanation. In the development
of this new way of thinking, the ground breaking work was performed by
the French scholar Count Buffon (George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon,
1707-1788), who was director of the Jardin du Roi botanical garden in Paris

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 33

from 1739 to 1788. By virtue of the position that he held, Buffon had access
to a large collection of specimens of plants and animals, and to descriptions
written by travellers and explorers. His forty-four volume work on Histoire
Nature/le, Generale et Particuliere (1749-1804) (written in active collaboration
with a large number of scholars) "represents one of the first works resulting
from the reports of voyages of discovery in which attention was turned
from oddities and marvels to a search for regularities and for the laws
governing processes of change. His approach was nonmathematical and ...
strictly inductive ... aimed at finding some kind of order in the flood of
new inforrnation" obtained from the explorations and discoveries (James,
1972, p. 136).
While Buffon subscribed to the idea of a divinely created earth, he
rejected the theory that the final plan of creation was in the mind of the
creator and as such there was no need to look for causes of earth phenomena.
Buffon was the first to focus attention on man as an agent of geographic
change. He developed the idea that the earth has been cooling gradually,
and that part of the warmth on the earth surface was derived from its hot
interior. Buffon subscribed to the theory of climatic determinism inherited
from the ancient Greeks but he was positive that man was not a passive
agent, and that he was capable of adjusting to any climate through his
technology and culture.
Inclusion of panels of trained scientists in the voyages of discovery,
beginning around the last quarter of the seventeenth century, had greatly
promoted scientific knowledge about the earth. The first such scientific
traveller during 1698-1708 was the English astronomer Edmund Halley
(1656-1742), the great scientific genius at deriving order out of complex
data. He was the originator of the mortality tables in 1693, as also of many
graphic methods for showing geographical distribution of physical features
of the earth. His maps and discussions of the trade winds of the Atlantic
(1686) provided the first illustration of wind directions and wind shifts.
He also prepared the first map of magnetic variations using isogonic lines
in 1701.
The father-son team of Johann (1729-1798) and George (1754-1794)
Forster had accompanied Captain James Cook on his second voyage to the
Indian and the Pacific oceans. In the course of this voyage, the two made
botanical observations. It was in the course of this voyage that George
Forster found out that the patterns of temperature on the eastern and western
margins of landmasses are very different so that there was similarity between
the climates of Western Europe and the western coast of North America.
George Forster later played the pivotal role in attracting Alexander van
Humboldt to geography. Another great scientific traveller of this period
was Major James Renne! (1742-1830). He was one of the founders of the
science of oceanography, and had served as the Surveyor General of India
during 1767-1777. His Atlas of Bengal (1779) had gone through several
editions, and it had remained a standard work of reference until around 1850.
The growing spirit of inquiry had, by the last quarter of the eighteenth

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34 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

century, egged on many scholars to seek scientific answers to the age old
questions regarding man and his life upon the earth. A most prominent
name in this regard was that of Thomas Robert Malthus (1760---1834) who
published his famous essay on population in 1798 in which he set out his
theory about the interdependent relationship between increase in population
and food supply. He noted that population increases in geometrical
progression whereas food supply grows only in arithmetical progression.
As a result, population keeps on increasing until subsistence level is reached,
so that its further increase is checked by famine and epidemics. At one
place in his essay Malthus had used the phrase "struggle for survival", a
term which, several decades later, was to inspire Charles Darwin (1809-
1882) in his explorations toward the theory of evolution of species through
the process of natural selection. In his studies Malthus had showed that
increase in agricultural production could not cope with the natural increase
in population, irrespective of technological inputs. He was also the first to
formulate the economic law of diminishing returns from increased
employment of capital and labour.

THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF THE 18th CENTURY

The greatly increased information about the lands and peoples around the
world that had accumulated by the middle of the eighteenth century, called
for a new style of geographical writing. Around this time the old descriptive
geographies (cosmographies) were being replaced by more scientifically
informed "universal geographies". Of several such universal geographies
the two best known titles were authored by the French geographer Philippe
Buache (1700---1773) and the German philosopher Anton. Friedrich Busching
(1724-1793). In a book published in 1752, Buache developed the theory that
the earth surface is marked off into a series of major basins bordered by
continuous ranges of mountains forming drainage divides between adjoining
basins. This concept was greatly popularized through the effort of another
German geographer Johann Christoph Gatterer (1727-1799) who identified
these drainage basins as "natural regions" and used them as the basic
framework for writing new geography texts. The theory became so popular
in Britain that river basins were adopted as the preferred units for the
study of areal integrations. (Buache is also said to have been the first to
identify the existence of a land hemisphere with Paris as its centre.)
Busching had published a six-volume work on Europe in 1792. The
work was organized in terms of political units, in the style of Munster, but
was based on updated information. He died in 1793 so that his plan to write
geographical accounts of the remaining continents remained incomplete.
He was the first scholar to have used population density as a geographical
factor, and was perhaps the best known geographer of his time.
Of the many universal geographies to appear in the eighteenth century
perhaps the most influential was the one authored by the Denmark-born
(but banished from that country in 1800) French geographer Conrad Malte-

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 35

Brun (1775-1826). His universal geography was an eight-volume work that

was published over the 1810-1829 period. Malte-Brun's work was far better
organized than the works of his predecessors. His first volume had started
with a discussion of the history of geography. The second volume contained
discussions on general concepts including the origin of the earth, types of
map projections, catastrophism, and uniforrnitarianism. He rejected the
theory of climatic deter1ninism. The most creditable feature of Malte-Brun's
book was that throughout it he had incorporated the latest information
derived from the accounts of various voyages of discovery, including that
by Captain Cook.

PLACING GEOGRAPHY IN THE CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES: THE

CONTRIBUTION OF IMMANUEL KANT
German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a contemporary of
Malle-Brun. He was professor of logic and metaphysics at the University
of Konisberg. He had lectured there since 1755 on a variety of subjects, and
since 1756 had regularly offered a course of lectures on physical geography
every year until 1796. His attraction to geography was by way of his interest
in explorations for the acquisition of empirical knowledge, as part of his
general philosophical research. However, finding that geography was
inadequately developed, and that it was lacking logical organization, "he
devoted a great deal of attention to the assembly and organization of
materials from a wide variety of sources, and also to the consideration of
a number of problems" (Hartshorne, 1939, p. 38).
Kant's lasting contribution to geography is that he provided a
philosophical foundation for the subject as a field of scientific enterprise.
It was Kant's practice to expose in his introductory lecture the place of
geography among the fields of scientific learning. He pointed out that
there are two different ways of classifying phenomena for purposes of
academic study. In the one, phenomena are grouped according to their
nature (i.e., their inherent characteristics), and in the other, according to
their position of occurrence in·time or space. The first type of classification
of the fields of learning was called logical classification, and the second was
termed as physical classification. Logical classification gave us a series of
systematic sciences, each devoted to the study of particular kinds of
phenomena or activities. Fields of study like the various branches of natural
and physical sciences such as botany, zoology, physics, chemistry etc., as
also economics, political science, and sociology, derived their place as
autonomous branches of study on this basis. On the other hand, physical
classification provided a scientific basis for the historical and spatial
sciences-the former concerned with the arrangement (or positioning) of
phenomena in the time dimension, and the latter with arrangement of
phenomena in the space dimension. Grouping things of diverse character
and origin together on the basis of areal association in a horizontal space
provided the subject matter of geography (in relation to the earth surface)

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36 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

and astronomy (in relation to celestial space). Grouping of phenomena of

diverse origin and nature in terms of their arrangement in a time sequence
provided the subject matter of history. In short, geography studies
phenomena which lie side by side on the earth surface, and is, therefore,
preeminently a chorological (i.e., areal or spatial) science. History, on the
other hand, studies phenomena which are arranged in a sequence of time
periods and is, as such, a chronological science. As Kant pointed out, both
history and geography are essentially descriptive in approach, history being
a description in a time dimension, whereas geography is description in a
space \iimension.
In Kant's scheme of division of fields of knowledge, geography
occupied an important place. Owing to this, Kant is repeatedly cited by
geographers in regard to justification of the status of their discipline as a
science. Hettner's exposition of geography as chorology in the beginning
of the twentieth century had closely followed the line of argument pioneered
by Kant (even if he actually came to know about the existence of Kant's
lectures at a later date). Hartshorne's Nature of Geography (1939) also followed
the line of thought first formalised by Kant. Through Hartshorne's book
this became the dominant concept of geography as a field of learning until
around 1960 (May, 1970).
Contemporary scholarship in geography has been critical of Kant's
view in that it is "impossible, and to some extent philosophically untenable,
to draw such sharp divisions between the 'sciences' as Kant did. The
systematic sciences study phenomena with reference to time and space and
it is very difficult to separate time and space in studies of human geography"
(Holt-Jensen, 1980, p. 15). Geographers are quite often required to study
areal phenomena in terms of their transformation over time, and persistence
of the past into the present. Likewise, historians cannot neglect spatial
patterns in their study of time sequences and past periods. However, Kant
cannot be blamed if his logically sound scheme of classification of sciences,
and the place of history and geography in it, was used in a way that
created barriers between fields of learning. As discussed in the Introduction
(p. 4) Kant himself did not subscribe to the idea of any such barrier. His
was a great pioneering thought and remains as valid today as it was at the
time it was presented.

REFERENCES
Baker, J.N.L. (1955a), Geography and its history, Advancement of Science,
vol. 12, pp. 188--198.
_ _ _(1955b), The Geography of Bernard Varenius, Transactions and Papers,
Institute of British Geographers, vol. 21, pp. 51-60.
Glacken, C.J. (1967), Traces on the Rhodian Shores, Nature and Culture in Western
T hought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, Berkeley:
University of California Press.

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THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS: DEVELOPMENTS UPTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 37

Hartshorne, R. (1939), The Nature of Geography, Lancaster (PA.): Association

of American Geographers.
Holt-Jensen, A. (1980), Geography: Its History and Concepts, London: Harper
& Row.
James, P.E. (1972), All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas,
Indianapolis: The Odessey Press.
Jones, H.L. (Tr.) (1917), The Geography of Strabo, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Kimble, G.H. (1938), Geography in the Middle Ages, London: Methuen.
Kriesel, K.M. (1968), Montesquieu: Possibilistic Political Geographer, Annals
of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 58, pp. 557-574.
Lange, G. (1961), Varenius uber die Grundfrage der Geographie, Petermanns
Geographische Mittesilungen, vol. 105, pp. 274-283.
May, J.A. (1970), Kant's Concept of Geography and its Relation to Recent
Geographical Thought, Depart11,ent of Geography, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Research Publication No. 4.
T hompson, J.0. (1965), History of Andent Geography, New York: Biblo Tannen.

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2
Geography In the Nineteenth Century:
The Age of Humboldt, 1790-1859

Kant's association with geography, and his attempt to locate it in the

classification of sciences, gave respectability to the discipline as a scientific
enterprise, but geography had been only marginal to Kant's intellectual
pursuit as a philosopher. He had, nevertheless, prepared the ground and
provided the point from where a new beginning could be made. This task
was taken up and most competently accomplished by another German
scholar, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), a most versatile and prolific
scholar and scientist whose researches had enriched several branches of
science including geology, mineralogy, botany, earth magnetism and
meteorology. Scientific societies all over Europe recognized him as an
outstanding scientist of his time so that he was variously referred to by
his contemporaries as the "monarch of sciences" and "the new Aristotle".
A widely travelled individual of his time, Humboldt made singular
contributions to theory and practice of geography so that many regard him
(along side Carl Ritter) as the founder of modem geography. In many ways
the nature of his contribution to geographical thought an(j practice
represented, in the words of Preston James, both "a beginning and an
end"-the beginning of modern style geography as an analytical science
having its own methodology and way of looking at phenomena horizontally
arranged on the earth surface; and the end of old style cosmographical
geography-part science and part fiction.
In order to have a proper appreciation of Humboldt's contribution to
the development of geography as a science, it is necessary first to summarize
the intellectual cross-currents at the end of the eighteenth century, cross
currents which had influenced his education as a scientist, and in reaction
to which he had developed some of his own ideas and concepts, including
his methodological approach to the study of geography.

SCIENCE A ND PHILOSOPHY AT THE END OF

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Through the eighteenth century, with the increased growth of indus

trialization and rapid expansion of European empires, science had become
38

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GEOGRAPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF HUMBOLDT, 1790-1859 39

increasingly identified with progress in the sense that by extending the

frontiers of knowledge, science had provided mankind with powerful tools
for gaining mastery over the forces of nature wherever these appeared to
hinder his onward march to greater progress. In accomplishing this, science
met two major objectives of Enlightenment-the widening of man's mental
horizon through rational thought, and facilitating human progress through
technological advancement. As such, science became widely accepted as
the means of intellectual liberation.
Since the new science was based on sense-experience and experiment,
by the second half of the eighteenth century, it had become closely identified
with "materialism" and "objectivism" (i.e., study of matter and objects).
Each field of natural science became progressively more and more specialized
in the study of its own particular circle of facts, so that few attempts were
made to promote integrated world views. Indeed, universalism was viewed
as opposed to the specializing spirit of science. The doctrine of facts and
scientific objectivity, the two pillars of the emerging empiricist/positivist
science, led to "claims of independence of scientific method from history
and philosophy alike, while assertions of the amoral status of science were
affi11ned more strongly as the patent immorality of colonial and industrial
society became the target of a movement for reform" (Bowen, 1981, p. 175).
Some of the more important ideas and beliefs that had dominated the
world of scholarship during the Age of Enlightenment may here be briefly
summarized.

Positivist Model of Science and the Doctrine of Facts

The Comtean positivism of the early nineteenth century had its beginning
in the age of enlightenment of the eighteenth century so that many regard
David Hume as "the real father of positivism". To the philosophers of
Enlightenment, the empirical method with its emphasis on sense-experience
appeared as a suitable weapon in their own struggle against superstition,
metaphysics, inequality, and despotism. During this period, the word fact
(derived from the Latin rootfacere, meaning make or do) came to mean not
action but some primary observation based on direct sense-experience.
Thus, empiricism became identified as the "doctrine of facts". In the
introduction to his Histoire Nature/le Buffon (1707-1788) had explained this
doctrine by stating that truth in the physical sciences "rests on facts alone ...a
succession of similar facts constitutes the essence of physical truth". The
truth derived from a large number of particular observations represented,
according to Buffon, "only a probability, but a probability so great that it
is equivalent to certainty. In mathematics we make suppositions, in physical
sciences we propound and establish: In the first, there are definitions, in
the second there are facts; we go from definition to definition in the abstract
sciences, we proceed from observation to observation in the real sciences;
in the first we arrive at evidence, in the second, at certainty" (Buffon, cited
in Bowen, 1981, p. 175). T hus, the doctrine of facts was based on what has
been termed as the sensationalist approach to knowledge. The approach is

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40 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

called sensationalist since all human experience could be traced back to

individual sensations recorded by one or the other of the senses. Since
acquisition of knowledge in the empirical model of science was through
the study of the particular, or particles, this approach had also sometimes
been known as the atomic approach.

Scientific Materialism and the View of the World as a Machine

Scientific materialism was the view of science that investigated the world
as being composed of material facts-an idea that has been traced back to
the Roman philosopher Lucretius (95-55 B.C.) who had claimed that it was
the action of atoms rather than divine creation that had been responsible
for the formation of the world including the whole range of living beings
(plants, animals and man). This idea had received a fresh lease of life after
Galileo and Descartes advocated the materialist theory of science according.
to which the world was viewed as a functioning machine. Only the human
mind was regarded to be exempt from the operation of the mechanistic
laws. The view of the world as a machine later received support from the
works of Newton, so that in the course of the eighteenth century, efforts
had begun to be made to include man in the materialist model of explanation.
The original idea of Lucretius was more fully developed by the French
scholar La Mattrie (1709-1750) in his book entitled L'Homme Machine (Man
a Machine) in which he had interpreted materialism to include all forms of
life. He argued that matter is the basis of life, and organized matter in
complex bodies produces purposive motion, including human thought. He
rejected the notion of divine order.
La Mattrie's ideas were further developed by d'Holback in his Systeme
de la Nature (1770); and in the work of the French humanist Diderot (1713-
1784) who accepted the materialist interpretation of the universe as
purposeless and subject to mechanical laws and chance, and rejected the
concept of divine order and emphasized that man makes his own morality
in accordance with human physiology and needs.

The Historical Method and the Belief in Progress through Knowledge

One of the major concerns of the philosophers of enlightenment was progress
through knowledge. They emphasized the nature of man as a social being
as well as an individual, and drew attention to the function of science in
society as part of a general improvement in education, happiness and virtue
for humanity. This led to interest in the study of the history of development
of knowledge and of the historical method of analysis.
A most distinguished example of the use of the historical method of
analysis and explanation was presented in Adam Smith's (1723-1790) The
Wealth of Nations (1776), a book that was later to earn him the title of the
"Father of modern economics". Smith's method consisted of seeking clues
from past experiences in different societies to find explanation for and
better understanding of problems in economics. By combining the historical

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GEOGRAPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF HUMBOLDT, 1790-1859 41

method with the statistical tradition of "political arithmetic", Smith founded

the first of the new set of sciences dealing with civil and moral aspects, and
thereby focused attention on the need for a more liberal interpretation of
the scientific method. Smith's book demonstrated how the objectivist
particularism of empirical science could be employed in the study of human
groups by supplementing it with the knowledge derived from past
experience through the use of the historical method. He expanded the
scope of the empirical method of science to include the study of historical
examples.
By the end of the 1780s the philosophic movement of Enlightenment
was losing its coherence, and Baconian empiricism had gained ascendency
in the study of the natural sciences. In the revival of positivist empiricism,
the pivotal role was played by Antoine Lavoisier's (1743-1794) French
language text entitled Elementary Treatise in Chemistry published in 1789.
With a view to making chemistry an exact science, he advocated that the
student of science should draw conclusions only from experience and
experiment, and that he should rely on observations as the only source of
ideas. He rejected any concern with the history of previous enquiry as
irrelevant to further research. Lavoisier, therefore, incorporated a strong
anti-historical approach into the positivist model of the exact sciences.

Leibniz and the View of the World as an Organism

Leibniz (1646-1716) rejected the materialistic/mechanistic view of the world.
He maintained that it is impossible to find principles of a true unity in
matter alone or in that which is only passive, since everything in it is only
a collection or mass of parts of infinity. He emphasized that a continuum
cannot be composed of points (material atoms); matter itself must be
composed of parts that are pulled together by active centres of force
somewhat analogous to the soul in the human body. As Crocker (1969,
pp. 11-12) has pointed out, Leibniz thus introduced the concept of a dynamic,
pluralistic universe, which is continuous but changing. He also introduced
the idea of the world as an organism (as contrasted to the idea that the
world was like a machine) in which the whole is greater than the sum of
its parts. Nevertheless, Leibniz was an advocate of rational empiricism so
that he accepted the need for an organized programme of experiments and
observations in science. His opposition was only to the materialistic
mechanistic view of the world and not to the empirical method per se.
The organismic world view of Leibniz was adopted for the study of
plants and animal life by a group of life scientists generally known to
belong to the vitalist school. Later on, under the inspiring lead given by
the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), the model was used
as a methodological device in the study of social organizations.
It is relevant to note the contrast between the lines of approach adopted
by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1776) and Bufton. Linnaeus supported the idea of
fixity of species, and existence of discrete classes of plants and animals
a view quite consistent with the static and mechanistic view of nature. As

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42 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

contrasted to this, Buffon's Natural History favoured the idea of continuity

of nature as advanced by Leibniz. Though he accepted the need for
classification, Buffon was opposed to the system of discrete classes, since
he had found that in botany a number of plants stand out as anomalies in
classification.

The Idea of Evolution

The idea of progress through gradual change adopted in the study of species
in evolutionary biology derived inspiration from the idea of progress in
the works of some earlier writers, but focused attempts in this direction
were made only by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1851) and Jean Baptiste Lamarck
(1744 1829). In the case of geology, the evolutionary view of development
was clearly proposed by Buffon in the first volume of his Natural History
published under the title Theory of the Earth in 1749. The idea was later put
forward in a forceful manner as the doctrine of uniformitarianism by James
Hutton (1726-1797) in his Theory of the Earth published in 1795. The theory
of social and intellectual evolution of man through gradual improvement
in education and science was repeatedly emphasized by the philosophers
of the period of enlightenment. The cumulative effect of all this was that
the idea of the earth as a divine creation was abandoned and replaced by
the theory that the earth had come into its present form through progressive
change over a long period of time.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

Universally acclaimed as the father of modern geography, Alexander von
Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. A
versatile researcher, he had enriched several branches of science through
original research. Humboldt lived at a time when under the impact of the
empiricist/positivist view of science, scientific research had started to be
treated as a specialized pursuit so that each researcher tended to confine
his interest to a given branch of study. The lines dividing the several branches
of science were yet to get hardened, however. Besides, knowledge was as
yet not so highly specialized that a keen researcher could not master more
than one field of science. Given his training and background (and of course
his talent), Humboldt was eminently qualified to do so. His versatility as
a scientist, and his expertise in several fields of science related to the study
of the earth's environment had drawn him to geography-a subject that
was subsequently to become his major area of interest, and to which he
gave a sound philosophical basis as a field of learning through incremental
advances over the work of his predecessors like Varenius and Kant.
Humboldt's stature as a leading figure in several branches of science,
and his firm grounding in the philosophy and method of new science,
eminently qualified him to play the role of the father figure of modern
geography as a scientific enterprise a synthetic but systematic discipline
with a focused regional perspective.

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GEOGRAPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF HUMBOLDT, 1790-1859 43

Humboldt's Career as a Scientist and His Ideas Regarding the

Nature of the Universe
.
Alexander Humboldt was born in 1769 into the Prussian aristocracy. His
father, an officer in the Prussian army, died when Alexander was only ten
years old and he was brought up and educated under the stem guardianship
of his mother who provided the best available education for her two children.
Their early education was under the charge of private tutors at home in
Tegel and near Berlin. In 1787-1788 Alexander went to study at the University
of Frankfurt, but after only a six-month stay there, he returned home at his
mother's instance, to study factory management in Berlin only to leave it
in 1789 to study physics, philosophy and archaeology at the University of
Gottingen. It was here that he met George Forster under whose influence
he developed a lasting interest in field observation and the study of plants.
Humboldt accompanied George Forster on a hiking trip down the
Rhine to the Netherlands and from there by ship to England. As he was to
acknowledge later in his career, this trip initiated him to the study of the
phenomena of nature in relation to each other and to their environment,
and thence to the fundamentals of geography. George Forster (1754-1794)
had accompanied his father Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798) on Captain
Cook's second voyage lasting from 1772 to 1775, and had translated his
father's account of the voyage, first published in 1777 under the title:
Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World. The German translation
had appeared in 1778. As Peschel (1865) wrote, Reinhold Forster was "the
first traveller to give a physical survey of the section of the world he had
seen, and the first to perform the highest function of a geographer, that of
scientific comparisons" (cited in Dickinson, 1969, p. 18). Commenting upon
the craze for collecting facts among his contemporaries, the senior Forster
wrote: "Facts were collected from all parts of the world, yet knowledge
was not increased", because the collection of facts represented "a confused
heap of disjointed limbs, which no art could reunite into a whole." He
stressed the need for a scientific observer "to combine different facts and
to form general views from thence, which might ... guide him to new
discoveries". Plewe has described him as "the first German methodological
geographer in the modern sense".
George Forster shared his father's views and advanced them in his
own writings. Commenting upon his German languages book entitled:
Views of the Lower Rhine (based on travels made in the company of Humboldt
in 1789) Plewe has commented that through this book George Forster
''founded more securely his father's method, and prepared the way for a
systematic development of regional geography". In his Kosmos, Humboldt
has acknowledged George Forster as his friend and teacher, and has stated
that "Through him began a new era of scientific voyages, whose aim was
the comparative study of peoples and regions"

The Study of Plant Organisms in Relation to their Habitat

Humboldt had left Gottingen in 1790 to pursue research in natural sciences.

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44 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

In accordance with his mother's wishes, he first joined an academy of

commerce in Hamburg to prepare for a career in finance. There his subjects
of study included (besides commerce) botany, rninerology, and geography.
After spending only a year at the commerce academy he shifted to the
Freiberg Academy of Mines where he studied under the renowned geologist
A.G. Werner (1749-1817). Here also, alongside geology and minerology,
Humboldt continued to pursue botany. From his researches and experiments
on underground plant life in mines, resulted a major Latin language work
entitled Florae Fribergensis "in which he showed a characteristic concern
not only with plants themselves but also with the relation of these as
organisms to their environment". In the introduction to this book he had
suggested that geography of plants should form an essential part of what he
called Geognosia in Latin, and translated as Erdkunde in German (a term
that later became the synonym for geography). Plant geography, he wrote,
... traces the connections and relations by which all plants are bound
together among themselves, designates in what lands they are found...
This is what distinguishes geognosy from ... zoology, botany, geology, all
of which form part of the investigation of nature, but study only the
forms, anatomy, processes etc. of individual animals, plants, metallic things
or fossils.
Thus, as Bowen puts it,
in scope and method, Humboldt's Geognosia of 1793 can be regarded as
providing an important model for modem geography. His idea of plant
communities, extended to a study of the distribution and relation of
rocks and animals, suggested the basis for a new science, one concerned
with the interrelationships of organic and inorganic phenomena on earth.
(Bowen, 1981)

Influence of Goethe and Schiller and the Idea of

Harmonlus Unity in Nature
In 1794, Humboldt visited Jena to be with his brother. Here he came in
contact with Goethe and several other leading lights of the Weimar Society
of writers and idealist philosophers, including J.C.F. von Schiller, J.G. Fichte
and F.W.J. Schelling. In their Naturphilosophie this group favoured the
"neoplatonic idea of polar forces in the universe", so that they were opposed
to the mechanistic and materialistic view of science. They emphasized,
instead, the need to look for unity and harmony in nature. This fundamental
idea of the world of nature as an organic structure struck a sympathetic
chord in Humboldt, since he had himself been drawn to similar ideas in
his study of nature in the course of his field trip with George Forster, and
his subsequent writing on plant geography. However, Humboldt did not
share with Goethe and Schiller their distaste for the experimental-empirical
approach to science. He saw no contradiction between an organic (anti
mechanistic) view of the world and the empirical/experimental method of
acquiring knowledge.

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GEOGRAPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF HUMBOLDT, 1790-1859 45

Toward the Development of Universal Science

Soon after the publication of his research on underground plants in 1793,
Humboldt had written to a friend about his plan of a twenty-year project
to study plant life on the earth surface "in connection with the whole of the
rest of nature, along with its influence on sentient mankind". Two years
later, he changed his mind in favour of a still more positive view of the
unity of phenomena in nature. As he wrote to his friend Pictet in 1796, in
the six years since his travel to England in the company of George Forster,
he had made extensive field observations in the mountains of Europe and
had studied nature from different points of view; these field observations
had led him to conceive the "idea of a universal science (physique du monde)",
but "the more I feel its need, the more I see how slight the foundations still
are for such a vast edifice". His plan was to develop such a study on an
experimental basis specifically "to reduce experiments to general laws, to
establish harmony among the phenomena" (cited in McPherson, 1972).
Thus the basic idea that finally impelled him to write his monumental
Kosmos half a century later, had already germinated in his mind in the
mid-1790s.
The development of universal science had, however, to wait until
scientific observations and experiments on different aspects of the physical
earth had yielded sufficient insights and material for compilation. With a
view to fulfilling his ambition to establish the physique du monde, Humboldt
plunged into a wide variety of scientific research. His book entitled Aphorisms
on the Chemical Phytiology of Plants was published in 1793. In it he had
adopted the latest approaches to empirical research, and had also
incorporated Lavoisier's teachings in analytical chemistry and his theory
of "exact science". In 1797 were published the results of his experiments
with electricity in the study of animals. He had experimented with the idea
of stimulating the nervous system of various animals with the help of
electrodes. The results were published in a two-volume German language
text on Experiments with Irritated Muscles and Nerve Fibres.
During 1792-1796 Humboldt held an appointment in the Prussian
ministry of mines. On the basis of his excellent perfo1111ance, he quickly
advanced many rungs on the ladder of promotion, but his heart was not
in government service. He yearned for a career as a scientist. When his
mother died in 1796 leaving him an estate yielding a high enough income
to support his scientific activities, he quit his job to be free to start a career
of scientific travel and exploration.
In 1797 he went to Vienna to prepare for an expedition to the West
Indies. From Vienna he went to Paris where he met a number of eminent
scientists at the Institute de France. He met the French botanist Bonpland in
consultation with whom he prepared their plan for travel through Spain to
Madrid in order to seek permission for a scientific voyage to the Spanish
territories in South America. They set off in June 1799. This was the most
ambitious scientific voyage undertaken to that date. The objective was to
collect scientific data on all possible aspects of nature including place location

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46 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

and altitude so that his luggage included all kinds of available instruments
for making and recording observations. Commenting on the objective of
his voyage to a friend he wrote:
I shall collect plants and fossils, and I shall be able to make astronomical
observations with some excellent instruments; I shall analyze the air by
chemical means... but all this is not the principal object of my voyage.
My attention will never lose sight of the harmony of concurrent forces,
the influence of the inanimate world on the animal and vegetable kingdom
(cited in Bowen, 1981, p. 221).
Thus, the purpose of the voyage remained the fulfilment of his ambition
to lay the foundation of universal science based on the concept of essential
unity of organic and inorganic nature.

Scientific Explorations in South America (1799-1804)

Humboldt's travels in the tropical regions of South America began at Cumana
in Venezuela. From there the two travellers went to Caracas, explored the
settlements, and proceeded to the basin of Valencia (about 50 miles southwest
of Caracas) in which lay a shallow lake of the same name. Here they made
valuable observations on physical consequences of deforestation on the
physical landscape and local economy. In 1800, the two travellers mapped
some 1725 miles of the Orinico River and in that process established
irrefutable proof against Buache's theory of continuous mountain chains,
since in ter11,s of that theory the Orinico should have been separated from
the Amazon by a mountain chain. Humboldt's survey confirmed the earlier
report that one of the channels of the Orinico in its upper reaches flows
into the headwaters of the Rio Negro and through it into the Amazon (an
early example of river capture). Throughout their arduous journey through
tropical forests, the two travellers collected a large number of specimens of
plants and fossils.
In November 1800, they returned to Cumana and from there sailed
for Cuba. In 1801 they sailed for Colombia and arrived at the port of
Cartegena from where they proceeded to explore the Andes in Colombia,
Ecuador, and Peru throughout making elaborate records of altitudes,
temperatures, and latitudes and longitudes at a series of places. On the
basis of these records, Humboldt succeeded in providing a scientific
description of the relations of altitude and air temperature to vegetation
and the nature of agriculture in tropical mountains. From his study of
volcanic rocks in the Andes, he was convinced that A.C. Werner's theory
of the sedimentary origin of all rocks was wrong, and that granites, gneisses
and other crystalline rocks had a volcanic origin. The twosome also climbed
the Chimborazo mountain in Ecuador (which was at that time believed to
be the highest peak in the world) in June 1802, scaling an altitude of 19,286
feet. (Chimborazo is 20,561 feet high and was finally conquered by the
British mountaineer Edward Whymper in 1880). In course of climbing the
mountain peak, Humboldt made observations regarding the effect of altitude
on human physiology.

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After reaching Lima, Humboldt travelled along the Peruvian coast

and there investigated the chemical properties of guano (bird droppings),
sent samples to Europe for further examination leading subsequently to its
commercial export as fertilizer. During his journey from Callao to Guayaquil
in Ecuador he kept records of temperature changes in the ocean waters and
was the first to describe movement of ocean waters (i.e., currents), including
the phenomenon of upwelling of cold water from below. His observations
of temperature changes in the ocean waters confirmed the existence of a
cold current along the Peruvian coast. Humboldt named it the Peruvian
Current though it is often referred to as the Humboldt Current.
In March 1803, the two explorers sailed from Guayaquil to the port of
Acapulco in Mexico (then known as New Spain) which by virtue of its
status as the principal colony of the Spanish American Empire (then the
largest in the world) was at the peak of prosperity. Humboldt collected
data on the geography and economics of the colony, including the latest
population statistics. This later formed the basis for Humboldt's regional
account of Mexico. In 1804 the two had reached Habana in Cuba. From
there, they sailed to the USA. They met Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia,
and on June 30, 1804 started on their return journey.

Sclentlflc Publications Based on the Voyage Data: Maturing of

Humboldt as the Foremost Scientist of his Age
Back in Europe from his South American journey, Humboldt first returned
to Berlin but he soon realized that the environment in Germany at that
time was not conducive to his pursuit of scientific research, particularly
after the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in the battle of Jena in 1806. In 1807
he got the opportunity to visit Paris on a diplomatic mission, and decided
to stay on there for the next 19 years. It was in Paris that the thirty volumes
of his work Voyage aux Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent were
published (between 1805 and 1834). In the introductory volume of the
series, Humboldt underlined that his objective in reporting the results was
not only to portray the "great phenomena that nature presents in these
regions". The central objective was to understand the nature of their ensemble.
He explained that the series was an extension of a study plan originally
conceived in 1790 in the course of the field trip with George Forster. He
wrote: "The study that I have made of many branches of physical science
has served to extend my first ideas. My voyage to the tropics has provided
me with valuable material for the physical history of the globe". As regards
the scope of his research, Humboldt observed that it "encompassed all
phenomena of nature that are observed both on the surface of this globe
and in the atmosphere that surrounds it". He emphasized that his geography
of plants was an essential part of his universal science, since it "considers
vegetation in relation to local association in different climates".
In the volume on the geography of plants in the voyage series,
Humboldt wrote that his primary objective was "to unite into a single
picture the whole complex of physical phenomena in the equatorial regions''.

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48 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

Also included in this picture was "man and the effects of his industry". For
Humboldt, there was no dichotomy between the physical and the human
aspects of nature in the study of geognosia (geography). His volume on
New Spain "stands as a significant contribution to the field of human
geography, and even today in the new era of social activism and advocacy
research it remains an outstanding model" (Bowen, 1981, p. 230). With the
help of elaborate statistics Humboldt presented a strikingly succinct picture
of the effects of unequal distribution of wealth and productivity in the
Spanish colony. "This was" according to James (1972, p. 159) "one of the
world's first regional economic geographies, dealing with resources and
products of a country in relation to its population and political conditions".
Volumes XXVIII to XXX of the series, entitled Relation Histoire du Voyage
(translated into English as Personal Narrative) contained a detailed report
on the scientific problems investigated and the results achieved. These volumes
made an enormous impact on the world of scholarship. In his preface to
these volumes Humboldt had written that his aim in his diverse scientific
exertions was "to throw light on a science which had scarcely been outlined
and which is called vaguely enough by the names of Physique du Monde,
Theorie de la Terre or Geographie Physique". This volume was so highly regarded
by contemporary scientists that Charles Darwin, read and reread the account
and, according to his own statement, it had changed the course of his life.
As Preston James (1972, pp. 158-159) has noted, "For a world emerging
from the first shock produced by the impact of discoveries, Humboldt's
books were like a fresh breeze because they were filled not only with
excitement of travel in strange places, but also with reports of careful scientific
investigation, the seeking of answers to questions about the interconnections
among phenomena grouped together in rich diversity on the face of the
earth". Through these volumes Humboldt became a great celebrity in science,
and people from far and wide came to meet him in Paris.
Apart from being a great scientist, Humboldt was also a great humanist.
In his regional studies he frequently drew attention to the prevalent social
injustices. Apart from such a concern shown in his 1811 study on Mexico,
in the third volume of Relation Histoire (and the last in the voyages series)
he included essays on Venezuela and Cuba. In the "Political Essay on the
Island of Cuba" he drew attention to the fact that 83 per cent of the population
was coloured and 50 per cent of them were slaves. He warned: if "the
condition of the coloured people does not soon undergo some salutary
changes ... political power will pass into the hands of those who have strength
to work, the will to be free, and the courage to endure long privations.
This bloody catastrophe will occur as a necessary consequence of
circumstances". In order to properly appreciate the humanist stance of
Humboldt, it must be remembered that in writing on this issue, he was
lending the weight of the foremost scientist of the time to the cause of the
underprivileged, and was thereby setting an example for other scientists
and scholars to engage in crucial issues of social change at a time when
conservative ideas had reigned supreme. It may be relevant to recall that

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almost exactly a century-and-a-half separated Humboldt's essay on Cuba

and Zelinsky's iconoclastic Presidential address to the Association of
American Geographers in 1975 that made a fervent call for geographers to
pay attention to questions of societal relevance in research, and to focus on
the problems of poverty and social justice in a spatial context. Humboldt's
essay repr<l$ented a rare example of scholarly boldness in face of the
repression of democratic and reformist aspirations then going on in Prussia.
As a political fallout of Humboldt's humanist writing, his elder brother (a
supporter of the movement for constitutional monarchy) had to leave the
Prussian ministry in 1820.

Return to Berlin and the Writing of Kosmos (1827-1859)

Humboldt returned to Berlin in 1827 to take up appointment as chamberlain
in the court of the Prussian King. By this time, the personal fortune he had
inherited from his mother had been spent in meeting the cost of his travels
and scientific research so that a steady income from government employment
had become necessary. Two years later, he accepted an invitation from the
Czar of Russia for the exploration of Siberia and made many valuable
observations on the climate and soils there.
Humboldt set out to consolidate his ideas about science, its nature
and purpose, and the fruits of his research in illuminating his concept of
universal science. The beginning was made in a series of public lectures in
the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin during 1827-1828 on the subject
that he called "Physical Geography and Man's Effort to Understand the
Cosmos". His lectures were so popular that a second series had to be
delivered in response to public demand. Humboldt declined the offer of
publication of these lectures since he wanted to expand the idea into a
book on physical geography. The lectures had contained ideas that
subsequently crystalized as his Kosmos which, according to one author
(Kellner, 1963, p. 199), followed fairly faithfully the lectures which he had
delivered in 1828.
Humboldt wrote to his friend Varnhagen (in 1834) that he regarded
Kosmos as "the work of my life" in which he had planned to put together
in one unified work all his scientific ideas and researches of a lifetimP --
"representing in a single work, the whole material world-all that is known
to us of the phenomena of heavenly space and terrestrial life".
Kosmos had been projected as a five-volume work of which the last
volume remained incomplete at the time of Humboldt's death in 1859. It
was posthumously assembled and published in 1862 from his notes. The
first volume contained a general presentation of the whole picture of the
universe. The second began by discussing the portrayal of nature by
landscape painters and poets through the ages which was followed by the
history of man's effort to discover and describe the earth since the earliest
times. The third volume was devoted to astronomy and the laws of celestial
space; the fourth dealt with the earth; and fifth and final volume was
projected to contain a general discussion of plant and animal geography as

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50 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

well as a study of man. Unfortunately Humboldt had not been able to

cover these topics before he passed away.

Humboldt's Contribution to Geography as a Science

Humboldt was the front-rank contributor to several branches of knowledge
including botany, geology, climatology, ecology, physiology and some other
related fields. Besides, he was a great master of the empirical method. His
scientific voyage to South America and his unmatched collection of data on
various aspects of nature was a monument of empirical research. However,
unlike most of his contemporaries (who had combined empiricism with a
materialistic-atomistic view of science and, therefore had tended to see
nature in compartments), Humboldt projected nature as an organic whole
born out of harmonious interrelationship between all living and nonliving
objects existing together in particular territories. It was this belief that had
led him to develop a "universal science" encompassing all aspects of
knowledge moral as well as material-and representing the universe in
its totality. The foundation of a universal science was the specific objective
of his Kosmos. It was the urge to search for unity in science that had attracted
him to geography. A distinguished botanist, geologist, ecologist and
climatologist in his own right, Humboldt stood out most prominently as
the father of modern geography as a discipline devoted to the study of the
earth surface (as a whole as well as in parts) and encompassing the whole
range of nature (including man) as an organically interrelat�d and unified
entity.
Humboldt's view of geography as a science was projected quite early
in his career. In his 1793 book on plant geography, he had clearly stated
that "zoology, botany, and geology all form parts of the investigation of
nature, but they study only the forms, anatomy, process etc . of individual
animals, plants, metallic things or fossils". As against this, plant geography
as a part of geography traces the connections and relations by which all
plants are bound together, and it designates in what lands they are found.
In scope as well as in method, Humboldt's Geognosia had provided an
important model for modern geography as the discipline concerned with
both inorganic as well as organic phenomena on the earth's surface as an
interrelated entity. This 1793 statement was reproduced in Kosmos as a
footnote indicating his continued faith in his original idea of geography.
The study of the earth surface or its areal segments was not, however, an
end in itself. The objective was to conduct comparative analyses with a
view to fo1111ulating general concepts to explain interconnection between
phenomena occurring together in places, and for the distributional patterns
of particular types of phenomena over the earth surface as a whole. According
to him, the central problem in the study of the earth surface was to consider
"the eternal ties which link the phenomena of life, and those of inanimate
nature". To him, the division of knowledge into watertight compartments
of the separate systematic sciences presented a major hindrance. He was
convinced that "the ties which unite these phenomena, the relations which

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exist between the various forms of organized beings, are discovered only
when we have acquired the habit of viewing the globe as a great whole"
(Relation Histoire, 1814).
One of Humboldt's major contributions as a scientist and theoretician
of knowledge was to reconcile the epistemology of Kant and Herder
regarding the need for a prior concept of the whole to guide research, with
the concept of scientific empiricism of Lavoisier who rejected all traditions
and hypotheses, and wanted the data to speak for themselves. In his
researches Humboldt crossed the narrow limits of empiricism. In the preface
to his Geognostical Essay (1823) he wrote:
In this... essay, as well as in my researches on the isothermal lines, on the
geography of plants, and on the laws which have been observed in the
distribution of organic bodies, I have endeavoured, at the same time that
I give the detail of phenomena in different zones, to generalize the ideas
respecting them, and to connect them with the great questions in natural
philosophy ... It would degrade the sciences to make their progress depend
solely on the accumulation and study of particular phenomena.

Humboldt derived aesthetic satisfaction through the scientific analysis

of the ways in which things and phenomena on the earth's surface depended
upon each other (Dickinson, 1969, p. 23). This concept of interdependent
unity in nature was called zusammenhang (hanging together).
The philosophical concept of the earth as an organic whole of
interdependent phenomena-a concept that Humboldt shared with Hegel,
Goethe and Schiller-rejected the concept of dualism between man and the
physical world projected by the materialistic-atomistic view of science which
excluded man from the domain of scientific investigation. In line with the
natural philosophers and romantic thinkers of his time, Humboldt viewed
man as part of nature so that he had to be included in any scientific study
of the earth surface. Thus, for Humboldt "The influence exercised upon
man by the forces of nature, and the reciprocal, though weaker, action
which he in his turn exercises on these natural forces" £01ItLed an essential
part of scientific study of the earth surface; because
Dependent, although in a lesser degree than plants and animals, on the
soil, and on the material processes of the atmosphere with which he is
surrounded escaping more readily from the control of natural forces,
by activity of mind, and the advance of intellectual cultivation, no less
than by his wonderful capacity of adapting himself to all climates man
everywhere becomes most essentially associated with terrestrial life
(Kosmos, vol. I, Otte translation, pp. 360-361).
Humboldt had planned to make the fourth volume of Kosmos a two
part work projected to present a complete "physical geography" including
the physical and biological laws of the earth surface as well as the study
of man, but he passed away before the task was completed so that the
place of human geography in his Kosmos remained unresolved even though
his theoretical perspective on this problem had been put forward clearly in
the first volume of Kosmos. (Whereas in the nineteenth century English

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52 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

usage, physical geography implied a study of the surface features of the

earth, Humboldt and other German scholars ascribed a much wider meaning
to the term: To them it implied the geography of the whole of the natural
world, organic as well as inorganic.)
Since Humboldt firmly believed in the development of science through
cumulative wisdom of successive generations, he set his concept of
geography in the context of the past developments in geography as a science,
beginning with Varenius's Geographia Genera/is which he referred to as a
physical geography "in the true sense of the word". But he was prepared to
break with tradition in extending his own study to the universe instead of
confining the study of the astronomical parts to an introduction. The result
was that "throughout the following century this was regarded by many
geographers, as a retrogressive step and Kosmos was labelled as the last of
the great cosmographies rather than a book pointing the way to the future"
(Bowen, 1981, p. 148).
Most students of the conceptual history of geography regard Humboldt
as the founding father of modern geography-one who was "a pioneer as
well as ahead of his times" (Dickinson, 1969, p. 31). French geographer
de Mortonne (1948) regarded him as the first geographer to define and
apply two essential principles that make geography a "distinctive science"
rather than a collection of facts from the physical and biological sciences.
The first was the "principle of causality" according to which Humboldt
had first observed the complex of spatially arranged phenomena on the
earth surface and then proceeded to explain their causal interconnection
and interdependence. The second was the "principle of general geography"
by which Humboldt sought to compare the location and extent of terrestrial
phenomena on the earth surface with a view to unravelling the principles
that governed their distribution in the world.
Humboldt's method was empirical and inductive. He collected,
classified, and interpreted data pertaining to plants, animals, rocks and
other physical aspects with respect to their origins and geographical
distribution. The observed patterns of distribution were correlated with
the patterns of climate and altitudinal zones over the globe to arrive at a
broad generalization with a view to establishing a general theory. Humboldt
saw no conflict between the inductive and deductive procedures in science.
Thus, in the introductory volume of Kosmos he wrote that
We are still very far from the time when it will be possible to reduce, by
operation of thought, all that we perceive by the senses to the unity of
rational principle. On the other hand, the exposition of mutually connected
facts does not exclude the classification of phenomena according to their
rational connections, the generalizing of many specialities in the great
mass of observations, or the attempt to discover laws.
Owing to his wide-ranging scientific explorations, and his great
contribution to climatology and plant geography, Humboldt is regarded by
many as the father of systematic physical geography (in its English
connotation). The fact of the matter is, however, that Humboldt was above

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all a regionalist in the sense that he had focused on the study of areally
arranged phenomena in their interconnections, and in the context of their
spatial distribution in relation to climate and other relevant factors, and
Humboldt's work on Mexico was, according to Dickinson (1969, p. 28) "a
landmark in geographic description" in that, it represented the first of the
systematic geographic descriptions, being "in striking contrast to the
encyclopaedic compilation of the writers from the days of Strabo to the
nineteenth century topographers". For l-Iumboldt there was no dichotomy
between systematic and regional studies, and as Hartshorne wrote (1939,
p . 82), in what has come to be called "comparative regional geography"
Humboldt rather than Ritter was the pioneer.

CARL RITTER (1n9-1859) AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO

GEOGRAPHY AS A DISCIPLI N E
A friend and contemporary, Ritter is generally regarded along with Humboldt
as a cofounder of modem geography. Junior to Humboldt by ten years, he
was born in 1779 in a family of modest means. His father, a physician, had
died while young Ritter was only five years old. His mother was faced
with great difficulty to educate and support her family of five. By a stroke
of good fortune, a German educationist, Christian Salzmann, who was
starting a new experimental school, was in search of a child who had never
been exposed to traditional methods of education, and he chose Ritter as
his pupil.
At that time, rote learning was the prevalent system of education
without any attention to understanding and self-experience. Salzmann
founded his school on the new principles of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, which
emphasized that in the education of the young, clear thinking should be
taught through careful observation of phenomena. Young Ritter was put
under the charge of J.C.F. Guts-Muths who was specially interested in
teaching geography by the new method. As Hartshorne wrote (1939, p. 50),
"Probably no student of his time and few since have been so specially
trained for geography as was Ritter". In Salzmann's school at Schnepfenthal,
right from the beginning, Ritter was trained to observe man's relationship
to his natural surroundings. His teachers encouraged him to formulate for
himself the concept of unity of man and nature; and from the richly varied
landscape of this region of hills and low mountains he derived the idea of
unity in diversity, which became the basic theme of his writing in later
years as he matured into a geographer.
After completing his training in the school, Ritter was employed by
a wealthy banker, Bethmann Hollweg, as a private tutor for his two sons,
and in return he agreed to meet the expenses of Ritter's university education.
With the two Hollweg sons, Ritter went to Frankfurt where he read widely
in history and geography. After one of his pupils died, Ritter accompanied
the remaining boy to the university of Gottingen where during 1814-1816
he himself took further courses in geography, history, physics, chemistry,
botany and minerology.

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54 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

Ritter's interest in geography had been greatly aroused after a meeting

with Alexander von Humboldt in 1807. He published a two-volume work
on the geography of Europe to serve as background reading for a better
comprehension of the region's history. Six years later he published the
first of the two volumes of his famous Erdkunde (1817-1818). Ritter had
intended to follow it with a third volume on history, but could not do so.
As the book's supplementary title made it clear, Ritter had intended Erdkunde
to serve as a text on "The Science of the Earth in Relation to Nature and
History of Mankind; or General Comparative Geography as the Solid
Foundation for the study of, and instruction in, the Physical and the Historical
Sciences". The book was very favourably received, and it earned Ritter the
post of Professor of Geography at Berlin in 1820. His chief interest in the
study of geography was to provide a sound basis for the writing of history.
However, his elevation to the first professorship in geography in Germany
changed his outlook on the subject as an academic discipline. As professor
of geography in Berlin, Ritter devoted himself to a more thorough study of
geography. This he started with the rewriting of his Erdkunde. A second
edition appeared in 1822-1823 and the idea of a third volume on history
was dropped. Between 1832 to 1838, he added six more volumes to the
Erdkunde series; eleven more volumes were to come between 1838 and
1859. These nineteen volumes together covered only the treatment of Africa
and Asia when Ritter breathed his last in 1859. However, through these
volumes Ritter had succeeded in laying a firm foundation for the writing
of a new style regional geography presenting a complete picture of the
area under study and incorporating all available info1111ation on every aspect
through a thorough sifting and synthesis.
Ritter had repeatedly emphasized that he was trying to present a
"new scientific geography", as contrasted to the traditional lifeless summary
of facts about countries and cities mingled with all sorts of scientific
incongruities. His scientific geography was guided by the concept of unity
in diversity in nature, and his purpose was not merely to prepare an
inventory of phenomena occurring together in particular parts of the earth
surface, but to understand the interconnections and the causal interrelations
among the diverse phenomena that made the areal associations cohesive.
Like Humboldt, Ritter also used the term zusammenhang to refer to the
harmonious unity and interconnection among diverse phenomena on the
earth's surface. In a much-referred essay entitled "Historical Element in
Geographical Science" Ritter defined the task of geography to be: "to get
away from mere description to the law of the thing described; to reach not
a mere enumeration of facts and figures, but the connection of place to
place, and the laws which bind together local and general phenomena of
the earth's surface". According to Ritter, the geographer's task was to trace
causation and interdependence of the spatially distributed phenomena on
the earth's surface.
Ritter named his new scientific geography as Erdkunde (literally
meaning earth science) in preference to Humboldt's Erdbeschreibung (meaning

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GEOGRAPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THE AGE OF HUMBOLDT, 1790-1859 55

earth description). A close perusal of Ritter's writings shows that there

was never any doubt in his mind about the fact that his geography was
concerned primarily with the study of the earth as the home of man, and,
as such, was focused on the study of the earth's surface. However, the
literal meaning of Erdkunde as earth science proved a source of confusion
in the minds of many geographers in the following decades who were led
to extend the study of geography to include every aspect of the earth.
Ritter's concept of unity in diversity of phenomena on the earth surface
was derived from a Kantian view of the world-the world seen as an
organic whole rather than as a machine a view of which Humboldt himself
had been a strong supporter. On the concept of organic unity in nature,
Ritter wrote: "There is, above all this thought of parts, of features, of
phenomena, the conception of the earth as a whole, existing in itself, for
itself, an organic thing, advancing by growth, and becoming more... perfect".
As Dickinson has noted, Ritter was attracted to view terrestrial units (earth
areas) as organic wholes by reading Humboldt's description of the llanos
and the steppes. However, as contrasted to Humboldt's idea of organic
unity in nature as a rational scientific principle, Ritter's idea of organic
unity was derived from his deep faith in the Christian belief that the earth
was a divine creation, and that God had created every little thing on the
earth surface to serve some need of man. According to him: "As the body
is made for the soul, so is the physical globe made for mankind". To sum
up, whereas both Humboldt and Ritter had adopted the concept of organic
unity in nature as central to their concept of geography, their reasons for
doing so differed greatly. In the case of Ritter the justification for doing so
was derived from theology; in the case of Humboldt it was a central
epistemological issue in his theory of knowledge about the universe.
According to Hartshorne (1939, pp. 60-61) teleology (faith in a divinely
created universe) in Ritter's geography was an attempt to interpret
philosophically that which could not be explained scientifically. In Ritter's
view, there were three fundamental facts of geography for which science
had no explanation. These were: Uniqueness of the earth in the universe;
the earth as the home of that unique creature, man; and the fundamental
explanation of a host of geographic facts-the differentiation in character
among the major land units of the world. However, as Schmidt (1925, cited
in Hartshorne) wrote, irrespective of his teleology, in his study of geography
Ritter did not proceed from preconceived ideas and opinions:
his scientific procedure was directed throughout on temperate, purely
factual comprehension of the facts and their relations ... Ritter strove in
the knowledge of the earth for a comprehension of the divine world plan
in no other way than the natural scientists pursue the thought of evolution.
Ritter insisted that geography must be an empirical science rather
than one deduced from rational principles-from philosophy or a .priori
theories such as the theory of continuous mountain ranges and the belief
that river basins were divided by crestlines of mountain chains. As Ritter
wrote in the first volume of Erdkunde: "We must ask the earth itself for its

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56 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

laws", i.e., knowledge about the earth should be derived from field
observations (even though he himself was-unlike Humboldt-primarily a
scholar and a teacher rather than a fieldworker). Observations used in the
writing of his books were not obtained directly from the field of his own;
they were based on the works of others who had observed the phenomena
firsthand.
Ritter was a great pioneer of the regional approach in geography,
which he conceptualized as the study of earth areas as organic units deriving
their special character from the nature of the interrelationships obtaining
between the diverse phenomena existing together. His preference for regional
geography-study of areal organization in particular segments of the earth
surface was in no way opposed to the pursuit of general or systematic
geography (i.e., topical studies involving analysis of the distributional
patterns of a particular class of objects or phenomena over the earth surface
with a view to arriving at general theoretical formulations about them).
Ritter acknowledged his indebtedness to Humboldt, whose general studies
had made Ritter's own regional studies of particular regions possible (James,
1972, p. 168).
Ritter regarded regional and systematic studies in geography as the
two sides of the same coin: General geography dealt with the character,
typology, location and extent of different categories of terrestrial phenomena
(both physical as well as human) throughout the world; special or regional
geography described the content and nature of particular areas as organic
(i.e., functionally organized) entities. It is true that Ritter's Erdkunde was
essentially concerned with particular areas, he nevertheless made frequent
statements urging the development of a comparative worldwide approach
to the study of areas in his teaching and research: "He exposed the conceptual
framework of both regional and worldwide geography. He lacked the data
in his time to reach worldwide generalizations about areas, though he
urged that they should be the geographer's ultimate goal" (Dickinson,
1969, p. 46).
It is, therefore, a disservice to geography, and a false representation
of reality, to try to draw differences between the approaches to geography
pur_sued by Humboldt and Ritter. The two men themselves did not recognize
any·such distinctions. Ritter (according to Hartshorne) repeatedly asserted
that Humboldt was his teacher, and wrote that without the work of
Humboldt his own books could never have been produced. Ritter
acknowledged that "Alexander von Humboldt has become, by his thorough
study of nature in Europe, Asia and America, the founder of Comparative
Geography" (Ritter's Comparative Geography, Gage translation, p. 24).
"frying to clarify his approach to the study of geography, Ritter stated:
My aim has not been merely to collect and arrange a larger mass of
materials than any other predecessor, but to trace the general laws which
underlie all diversity of nahrre, to show their connection with every fact
taken singly, and to indicate ... the perfect unity and h.armony which exist
in the apparent diversity and caprice which prevail on the globe, and

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GEOGRAPHY 1N THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF HUMBOLDT, 1790-1859 57

which seem n1ost marked in the mutual relations of nature and man. Out
of this course of study there springs the science of physical geography,
in which are to be traced all the laws and conditions under whose influence
the great diversity in things... first springs into existence, and undergoes
subsequent modificati()ns (from a letter cited in Gage, Life of Ritter, 1867).
Since Ritter's Erdkunde was designed to provide a basis for tracing
the general laws of physical geography, for him there could be no question
of any conflict between the regional and systematic perspectives in, and
approaches to, geographical studies. In Ritter's (teleological) concept of
unity and harmony in nature,
A supreme Being, an all-wise Creator, was identified as the author of the
plan for building the earth as the home of man, and all through Ritter's
writings and lectures, are words of praise for the divine creation. Even
in the arrangement of continents Ritter saw evidence of God's purpose.
(James, 1972, pp. 168-169).
According to Ritter, Asia represented the sunrise, since it is here that
the early civilizations of man originated. Africa was viewed as representing
the noon where, owing to smoothness of relief and uniformity of climate,
the inhabitants are induced to slumber. Europe was viewed as specially
designed to bring out man's greatest accomplishments-the culmination of
man's development-so that it represented the sunset, the end of the day.
The discovery of America suggested to him the approach of a new sunset
and a new culmination of human achievement. O¼,ing to his teleological
belief, Ritter's consideration of the earth was principally man oriented. This
did not, in any ,vay, lead him to oppose other ways of looking at the
phenomena of the earth surface. He wrote: "Independent of man, earth is
also without him, the scene of natural phenomena; the law of its formation
cannot proceed from man. In a science of the earth, the earth itself must be
asked for its laws" (cited in Hartshorne, 1939, p. 63). This statement makes
it clear that any attempt to involve Ritter in the controversy regarding dualism
between human vs physical geography is doing violence to his personal
stance in this regard. Ritter's concept of teleology was not antiscientific.

LEGACY OF HUMBOLDT AND RITIER

Irrespective of the fact that both Humboldt and Ritter had viewed geography
as a unified science, part regional and part systematic, and equally focused
on the study of man as well as the physical environment that surrounds
him; the generation of geographers that followed them in Germany and
elsewhere had started to view them as representing somewhat parallel
(and conflicting) streams in geography. Regional geography focused on
spatial patterns of human activities in particular parts of the earth surface
and systematic geography focused on the analysis of the nature of spatial
variation in the patterns of distribution of diverse phenomena over the
earth surface with a view to identifying the factors that have created these
patterns. Since most of the phenomena studied under this perspective had

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58 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

belonged to the physical elements of the earth's environment, systematic

geography became identified as physical geography (that is, as the study
of physical phenomena as distinguished from man and his activities studied
in regional geograpl1y). This was the source of the false notion that Humboldt
and Ritter were opposed in their views on the nature, content, and
methodology of geographical work, and that whereas Humboldt was the
father of modern geography as a systematic science concerned with topical
studies of the physical aspects of the earth surface, Ritter founded regional
geography focused on the study of segments of the earth surface as the
home of particular human groups. The truth is that even though their style
of work had differed, their geographical perspectives (and their works)
were complementary rather than conflicting, so tl1at the two together laid
a clear foundatio11 for modem geography as a discipline that studies both
man as well as his physical environment; and is equally interested in_ the
study of areal association of phenomena in particular segments of the earth
surface as well as detailed analysis of global patterns of distribution of
particular aspects of the physical environment.
As James has noted, Humboldt and Ritter had left quite different
legacies for the future generations of geographers. Humboldt sought answers
to a great variety of specific questions. To cite examples: He tried to develop
a general theory regarding the distribution of average temperatures on the
earth's surface in relation to the distribution of continents and oceans; and
in the course of his South American voyage he attempted to define how
changes in altitude influence the life of plants, animals, and man in a
tropical environment. However, though he was one of the most versatile
scholars of his time, Humboldt founded no school and left no disciples so
that the method of asking questions and seeking answers that he had so
effectively demonstrated in his own research, was not "rediscovered" by
geographers until several decades after his death. As contrasted to this, a
school of followers did develop around Ritter: Through his position as the
holder of the only chair in geography in Germany, Ritter left behind a
band of disciples who enthusiastically applied themselves to the furtherance
of the regional perspective in geography; and some of them undertook
to complete his plan of Erdkunde for the remaining parts of the world
which Ritter had not been able to cover before his death in 1859. This
would partly explain why, despite Humboldt's far greater stature as a
scientist, and his having laid a sound foundation for geography as a field
of scientific enquiry, most geographers pursued geography primarily as
regional description. The fact remains, however, that the two together
"provided an almost complete and modern programme for geography"
(Tatham, 1951, p. 28).

SOME EMINENT FOLLOWERS

Elisee Reclus (1830-1905)

Reclus had studied under !utter in Berlin during 1849-1850. This association

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GEOGRAPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF HUMBOLDT, 1790-1859 59

had created in him a deep love for geography. Not only did he follow
Ritter's concept and method of geography, he also made considerable
improvement upon them. Reclus had been expelled from his native France
in 1851 on the charge of holding anarchist views. First he went to England,
then to the United States and South America, and continued travelling and
working until he was permitted to return to France in 1856. The period of
exile was utilized by him to write a two-volume work on geography w1der
the title La Terre, though the book could be published only in 1868-1869.
La Terre, written so soon after his studies under Ritter, strongly mirrored
the ideas and concepts of the master, some of which Reclus later abandoned.
Reclus was exiled a second time in 1871 for holding revolutionary
views. This time Reclus went to Switzerland where he devoted himself to
writing a nineteen-volume work under the title: Nouvelle Geographie
Universe/le. The volumes were written in the period of his exile and stay in
different countries, including Switzerland, Belgium, and the UK. Reclus's
new universal geography has been described as "the last echo of the classical
period when one scholar could present all available knowledge about the
earth as the l1ome of man.... Unlike I{itter's Erdkunde, which is well known
for its numerous obscure passages, Reclus's work was easy to read and
nnderstand" Games, 1972, p. 192). The book was translated into English
nnder the title: Earth and Its Inhabitants and published i11 New York between
1882-189 5. It contained about 3,000 maps. In it Reclus achieved single
handed what Ritter himself had failed to do, that is, to provide a complete
description of the earth's surface on a regional basis.
Reclus was one of those of Ritter's students who had steered clear of
the master's teleological beliefs. Reclus's philosophical approach to man
environment relationships was far more enlightened. On the one hand, he
granted the role of nature as a dominant force in shaping human history,
so that according to him "We have even a right to assert that history of the
development of mankind was written beforehand in sublime lettering on
the plains, valleys and coasts of our continents", but he counter-balanced
such statements by conceding that "Man may modify (his dwelling place)
to suit his own purpose; he may overcome nature, as it were, and convert
the energies of the earth into domesticated forces". According to Reclus,
the student of landscapes must seek to trace "gradual changes in the historical
importance of configuration of the land", and that in the study of the
geography of places it was necessary to "take account of another element
of equal value time". This statement u11derlined a possibilistic view of
man's role in changing the face of the earth.

Arnold Guyot (1807-1884)

Guyot was a Swiss by birth. He had studied geography under Ritter, and
remained a faithful follower of his teacher's concept and philosophy. Guyot •

came to the United States in 1848 to deliver a series of lectures on the "new
geography" in Germany. The lectures were published as a book the following
year, and became the instrument for spreading Ritter's ideas in the New

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60 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

-------------------

World. Guyot was critical of the traditional descriptive geography then

being taught in American schools, which required the student to memorize
a large number of unrelated facts. Guyot asserted that "new geography"
should not only describe, it should also compare and interpret: It should
be concerned with "the how and wherefore of the phenomena it describes".
Guyot's influence in American geography greatly increased after the
Massachusetts Board of Education invited him to deliver a series of lectures
on the nature and methods of teaching new geography. His influence spread
rapidly to other parts of America, and for decades his textbooks set the
standard for elementary and secondary classes in American schools.
Guyot was appointed professor of geography ar,d geology at the
College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1854, and stayed there until his
retirement in 1880. Unlike l<eclus, Guyot was a strong supporter of Ritter's
teleological ideas so that
Even as the widespread acceptance of the concepts of e,,olutior1 as
developed by Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley swept away the philosophical
ideas of the theologists, Guyot's stand remained unshaken. When he
retired in 1880 the "new geography" he preached was not only old but
its philosophical basis had been largely discredited. (James, 1972, p. 193).

REFERENCES
Bowen, M. (1981), Empiricism and Geographical Thought: From Francis Bacon
to Alexander van Humboldt, Cambridge (Mass.): Cambridge University
Press.
Crocker, L.G. (Ed.) (1969), The Age of Enlightennzent, London: Macmillan.
Dickinson, R.E. (1969), Makers of Modern Geography, London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
Gage, W.L. (Tr.) (1863), Geographical Studies by the Late Professor Carl Ritter
of Berlin, Boston: Gould and Lincoln.
Guyot, A. (1849), The Earth and Ma11: Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography
in its Relation to the History of Mankind, Boston: Gould and Lincoln.
Hartshorne, R. (1939), Nature of Geography: A Citical Survey of Current Thought
in the Liglrt of the Past, Lancaster, (PA): Association of American
Geographers.
Humboldt, A. von (1845-1862), Kosmos, 5 Vols., Stuttgart: Cotta. (English
translation by E.C. Otte, London: H.G. Bohn.
James, P.E. (1972), All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas,
Indianapolis: The Odessey Press.
Kellner, L. (1963), Alexander van Humboldt, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McPherson, A.M. (1972), The human geography of Alexander von Humboldt,
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis submitted at the University of California),
Berkeley (cited in Bowen, 1981).

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GEOGRAPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THE AGE OF HUMBOLDT, 1790-1859 61

Reclus, E. (1876-1894), La Novelle

• Geographie Universe/le, 19 Vols., Paris:
Hachette. (English translation by E.G. Ravenstein (1878-1894.)
Ritter, C. (1822-1859), Die .Erdkunde, 19 Vols., Berlin: G. Reimer.
Tatham, G. (1951), Geography in the nineteenth century, in Taylor, G. (Ed.),
Geography in the Twentieth Century, London: Methuen, pp. 28-69.
Zelinsky, W. (1975), T he Demigod's dilemma, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, vol. 65, pp. 123-143.

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3
Geography after Humboldt and Ritter:
Developments In Germany

THE INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE OF THE TIME

The deaths of Humboldt and Ritter in 1859 marked the end of an era in the
development of geography as a branch of scientific knowledge. Humboldt
and Ritter had stood at the crossroads between the classical and the modem.
In that sense they had jointly represented both a beginning and an end.
The scheme of classification of knowledge presented by Kant (though not
necessarily originated by him), had by now become commonly accepted so
that geography had come to occupy a definite place among the sciences as
a branch of knowledge which brings to bear a spatial perspective to the
study of diverse phenomena on the earth's surface. The rapid explosion of
knowledge following many a voyage of scientific discovery to far-off areas
ut the earth surface, and the analysis of the massive data collected therefrom,
gave rise to a series of systematic sciences, each defined in terms of the
kind of phenomena it studied. This represented Kant's logical division of
knowledge, as contrasted to his scheme of physical division in terms of the
arrangement of phenomena of diverse origin in time (history) or space
(geography). The dual scheme of division of knowledge into a series of
systematic sciences each devoted to a distinct subject matter, and its
classification in terms of the association of diverse phenomena vertically in
terms of time periods of history, or horizontally in terms of geographical
space, implied a final fracturing of the classical view about the unity of
knowledge. Humboldt was the last great figure who could claim universal
scholarship.
The scientific voyages of discovery in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth century had completely revolutionized the biological sciences.
Diverse theories about the nature and origins of plants and animals in
various parts of the earth's surface had begun to be pieced together to
produce overarching theories, culminating in Charles Darwin's The Origin
of Species whose publication in 1859 (coinciding with the death of Humboldt
and Ritter) had contributed to a major change in perspective in every field
of science-natural and physical, human as well as material.
Darwin's The Origin of Species established that organisms on the earth's
surface have evolved through a slow and cumulative process of change;
62

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 63

and that the evolutionary process of change among different organisms

had not resulted from need or use (as postulated by Lamarck). Referring
to Lamarck's famous example of the giraffe, Darwin noted that the giraffe
did not get his long neck by stretching for fodder. The fact was that the
individual giraffes that were born with longer necks were better equipped
to survive in the Savanna environment than were the short-necked ones,
and so this feature was slowly passed on to later generations. In his
explanation of the mechanism of the evolution of species Darwin
demonstrated that this was far from a straight line process, and randomness
and chance had played a major role in evolution. Confirmation of the role
of randomness and chance in the evolution of life forms cut at the very
base of the long and widely subscribed view that the un_iverse was a divine
creation. Teleology could no longer be sustained as a scientific hypothesis,
and was quickly abandoned. An equally important and radical concept
was the idea of cumulative change through time. These ideas which appear
as simple knowledge today, were highly revolutionary at the time they
were presented, and were influential in changing the thought processes of
contemporary science (Livingstone, 1992, pp. 178-189).
An aspect of the evolutionary theory, of particular importance to
geography, was that it emphasized the need to study phenomena on the
earth's surface in relatio.n to the environment in which they were located,
since only in this way could their struggle for survival and environmental
adjustment be adequately appreciated. This gave a further justification for
the methodology and perspective of geography as a science.
The concept of evolution, which attracted many scholars in branches
of knowledge outside of biology, appeared in the study of landforms as
Davis's cycle of erosion and was also reflected in the concept of mature
soils developed through a slow process of change from parent materials.
Applied to the study of human groups, it became the theory of social
Darwinism of which Freidrich Ratzel was the staunchest supporter in
geography.

THE CRISIS OF IDENTITY IN GEOGRAPHY

A major aspect of the changed perspective in science in the eighteenth
century was the rise of systematic sciences. This meant that the subject
matter that had previously been identified as general geography now became
divided into the domains of a series of natural and physical sciences, as a
result of which geography was faced with a real crisis of identity. Humboldt
had tried to resolve this crisis by emphasizing that after the newly emerging
systematic sciences had divided up the original content of general geography,
there was still a field of study that had not been appropriated by any of
them. This related to the study of interconnections among phenomena of
diverse origins existing together in harmonious relationship in particular
segments of the earth's surface. These interconnections give personality
to particular areas and regions, and only through reference to such

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64 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

interconnections could the nature and spatial distribution of diverse earth

phenomena e.g., plants and animals, and elements of climate etc. be properly
understood and explained.
The most characteristic feature of the many systematic fields of sciences
that had emerged in the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century
was the method of study adopted by them. Their approach to study consisted
of first isolating the processes or the phenomena that each of them examined,
and then proceeding to formulate an ideal (abstract) model of how each
process works in isolation. In other words, progress in the systematic natural
and physical sciences was achieved by specifically excluding the effect of
the real life situation wherein phenomena of diverse origin and therefore
belonging to the domains of separate sciences, exist together in symbiotic
relationship. Viewed this way, the methods and objectives of the systematic
sciences appeared to be at cross-purposes with the holistic perspective of
geography. Since geography could not identify any particular circle of facts
as its special object of study, it began to lose its claim as a science irrespective
of the unquestioned personal stature of Humboldt as the leading scientist
of his time.
As the study of physical aspects of the earth was parcelled into the
domains of a series of independent sciences, each seeking to isolate processes
pertaining to the particular category that formed its special field of enquiry,
the concept of "natural units" (Lander) comprising physical environment
and man in particular segments of the earth surface as envisaged by Forster
and further refined by Humboldt and Ritter, lost respectability as a field of
scientific interest. Geography, therefore, began to be slowly neglected as a
scientific pursuit, so that Ritter's chair in geography at Berlin remained
vacant for a long time.
Geography experienced revival as an academic discipline only after
the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia in 1871 following
realization by the leaders of the government of the need to promote
geographical knowledge about lands and people around the globe with a
view to serving the interests of colonial expansion in the increasingly
competitive world of imperialism.
Under the circumstances, geography was faced with three major tasks:
Continued collection of information about the relatively little-known parts
of the earth and its presentation in a useful form; detailed study of particular
places in order to facilitate the work of officers of government, and serve
the needs of businessmen and military commanders; and formulation of
concepts about spatial association and variation of phenomena on the earth's
surface through empirical generalizations.
Another significant and noteworthy aspect of the empirical-theoretical
model of scientific research, promoted in the course of the rise of new
systematic branches of science, was the insistence that the study of human
and non-human phenomena required very different methods of study, and
as such no field of scientific research could include both. In the intellectual
climate of the times doing so was against the logic of science. The net result

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RIITER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 65

for geography was that after the deaths of Humboldt and Ritter in 1859,
geography rapidly lost respectability as a branch of science. This led to a
temporary parting of the ways between physical and human-regional
geography; since the former could be pursued through the analytical method
of natural and physical sciences, whereas the latter was descriptive and
holistic in perspective. Serious attempts at reconciling this dualism between
physical and human, and regional and systematic geography were made
only in the 1880s.

DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY
For reasons indicated in the preceding paragraphs, after the death of Ritter,
geography in Germany lost unified focus as a scientific discipline. Questions
regarding its nature and methodology were seldom asked because they
were difficult to answer. However, practical utility of geography to the
army commanders in regard to the scene of military operations, to the
government administrators in the newly acquired German colonial
possessions, and to businessmen for purposes of trade and commerce was
clearly recognized. For each of these purposes, clearly designed maps
incorporating the latest available information were an urgent need.
Accordingly, regional description and cartography became identified as
the primary task of geography at that time. For the time being geography
became "anything that could be put on maps". At the higher levels, as a
field of teaching and research geography remained chiefly concerned with
providing background information about the land and people in particular
places with a view to facilitating a better comprehension of their history.
All this began to change, however, after 1871 when the Prussian government
(conscious of the utility of geography as an aid to colonial administration
and territorial expansion) created a number of new professorships in
geography in several universities across the country as a result of which
geography regained respectability as a field of learning. A brief discussion
of the ideas and works of some of the leaders of German geography in the
last quarter of nineteenth century follows.

RISE OF DUALISM BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Oscar Peschel (1826-1875)

For about twenty years before his death in 1875, Oscar Peschel had been
the leading academic geographer in Germany. He raised some fundamental
questions concerning the nature of geography, and was critical of the
approaches of both Humboldt and Ritter. Peschel is described by some as
the last great geographer before the discipline was finally overtaken by the
impact of Darwinian ideas. Although most of Peschel's own works had
appeared in print after the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species, the
implication of Darwinian ideas in the interpretation of earthbound
phenomena and human societies had not yet been fully realized.

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66 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

Peschel had started his career as a journalist in 1849, and was the
editor of Ausland from 1854 to 1870 when he was pursuaded to take up
appointment as professor of geography at the university of Leipzig in 1871.
During his editorship of Ausland, he had regularly published articles on
lands and peoples of the world with a view to promoting geographical
knowledge among the reading public. He himself wrote extensively on the
history of ancient geography, and on the basis of this expertise he was
invited by the historical commission of the Royal Academy of Sciences to
write a book on the history of geography as part of a series on the history
of science in Germany. This book was published under the title Geschishte
der Erdkunde in 1865. It was this book that attracted attention to him as an
academic geographer. From 1866 onward he published a number of
methodological articles in which he took issue with Humboldt and Ritter.
These methodological papers were collected and published as a book in
1870 under the title Neue Probleme der Vergleichenden Erdkunde. As the Belgian
geographer Michotte wrote: "It has been justly said that with this work the
scientific spirit reentered geography" (cited in Hartshorne, 1939, p . 88).
Peschel was very critical of Ritter's method of comparative geography
(vergleichenden erdkunde), especially his practice of comparing entire continents
or large segments of them. Peschel noted that since continents and large areal
units contained great deal of internal diversity (one quite different from the
other) they could not be compared in the proper scientific sense. Comparison
was possible only in respect of clearly identifiable features or characteristics,
such as particular types of landforms, climatic types, or distribution of plant
cover. He demonstrated it with reference to his own study of fjord coasts.
His study had revealed that this type of coastal topography is characteristic
of the western margins of the continents in the higher latitudes. On the basis
of this comparative study, he was able to explain the origins of fjord
topography to be the result of abandoned valleys of former glaciers. Peschel
insisted that comparative geography should have a definite method and
purpose: The geographer pursuing comparative study should seek (with the
help of large-scale maps) similar physical features in different parts of the
earth's surface, compare their characteristics and origins, and try to relate
them all genetically (following the method of comparative anatom}·). Peschel
thus laid a sound basis for comparative research in geography. His method
required the student to begin by studying topographic maps with a view to
identifying "homologies" (i.e., landforms of similar types), and then try to
trace their origins in each of the areas where they occur. Owing to limitations
of data and knowledge about the work of agents of erosion, and the nature
of regional geology, studies pursued by this method had not always been
successful; but that was no fault of Peschel's methodology.
Peschel (1879) attempted to establish physical geography as a science.
He was critical of Ritter for having neglected physical geography, and he
criticized Humboldt for not having attempted a scientific classification of
landforms. He was also critical of Humboldt for creating the impression
that general geography could be equated with the entirety of natural science.

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 67

Ritter was further decried for holding a teleological view about the nature
and origins of earth phenomena, and for having subordinated geography
to history by presenting his own works essentially to serve as a tool for
better understanding of history. Peschel believed that physical and human
geography constituted two entirely separate domains of knowledge, and
as such the two could not form part of a single science. He was, thus, the
originator of dualism between physical and human geography, and was
strongly of the view that geography should be pursued primarily as a
study of the physical phenomena of the earth. His methodological view
regarding the distinction between physical and human in the study of
geography notwithstanding, Peschel himself made an in-depth study of
the geographical distribution of the races and cultures of mankind. It is
indeed ironical that his book entitled The Races ofMankind: Their Geographical
Distribution (1876) is the only work of Peschel available in English translation
today (Dickinson, 1969, pp. 56-58).

George Gerland (1833-1919)

Peschel's exhortation that in order to project its status as a science, geography
should identify itself more and more as physical geography, was further
advanced by another contemporary named George Gerland. Gerland was
professor of geography at the university of Strasbourg, and had been the
supervisor of the doctoral thesis of Alfred Hellner. In a long essay published
in 1887 Gerland had gone so far as to suggest that since man could not be
put to scientific analysis, study of man should be taken outside the purview
of geography. Thus, according to Hartshorne (1939, p. 97):
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, under the influence of
specialized sciences, geography for a time appeared to be changing into
a field quite different in character from that which Humboldt and Ritter
had inherited and developed. The emphasis on systematic studies appeared
to divide geography into two halves, one a natural science, the other a
social science, united only in a study of regions that hardly appeared to
be science at all.
Thus, the continuance of geography as a unified field of academic
inquiry incorporating the study of human as well as physical elements of
the earth's surface was in serious crisis.
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, several attempts
were made to resolve this dualism, and to project geography as an integrated
science concerned with the study of phenomena on the earth's surfac·e
both physical as well as human-in terms of their spatial distributions and
areal associations. The most successful of such attempts were those put
forward by Ratzel, and Alexander von Richthofen. Although Richthofen
was the elder of the two, the first volume of Ratzel's methodologically
epoch-making work Anthropogeographie (1882) was published a year earlier
than Richthofen's epoch-making methodological statement presented in
his 1883 inaugural address for the chair in geography at Leipzig. We discuss
the two in that order.

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68 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

RE- ESTABLISHMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AS AN INTEGRATED

SCIENCE: THE STUDY OF MAN-LAND RELATIONSHIPS

Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904)

Described as the greatest single contributor to the development of geography
of man, Friedrich Ratzel was born in a middle class German family in 1844.
He pursued advanced study in zoology, first at Heidelberg and then at
Jena. Ratzel's youth had passed through a period of great intellectual
upheaval in the world of science in the wake of the publication of Darwin's
concept about the origins of species. Ratzel had written a dissertation on
Darwin's theory in 1869. He was, however, more interested in field studies
of plants and animals than in the laboratory. He took employment as an
assistant to a French naturalist on his trip to countries around the
Mediterranean, but as war broke out between France and Prussia in 1870,
Ratzel quit the job to join the Prussian army. After the war, he went to
Munich to register as a student. There he came in touch with the famous
naturalist and ethnographer Moritz Wagner and was introduced to his
theory about the importance of migration in the evolution of species.
Ratzel was greatly excited by travel. As part of this interest, he was
drawn to studying how the people of German extractio11 lived and made
use of resources in different parts of the world. His project for such a work
was accepted by the editor of Kolinsche Zeitung, and he was employed as
a roving reporter. This enabled him to travel to several countries in Eastern
Europe inhabited by sizeable numbers of German minorities. He visited
Italy in 1872, and U.S.A. and Mexico in 1874-1875. His visit to the New
World has been described as the turning point in his career. From his study
of various minority groups-European, American, and Chinese he devoted
himself to developing general concepts regarding geographical patterns
resulting from contacts between aggressively expanding communities and
the re!reating indigenous populations. It was such research experience in
regional study that aroused his interest in the study of human geography.
Ratzel's extensive travels in the New World resulted in several
publications. One on Chinese migration appeared in 1876; two volumes on
the United States were published in 1878 and 1880 dealing with the country's
physical and cultural geography with special emphasis on its economic
scene. These books brought to their author considerable popularity and
honour as a scholar. After his return from the New World in 1875, Ratzel
resigned his job as a journalist and took up assignment as a tutor (privat
dozent) in geography at the institute of technology in Munich. He was
made professor of geography in 1880. Ratzel left Munich in 1886 to join the
university of Leipzig as professor of geography. He stayed there until pis
death in 1904.
After completing the publication of the results of his travels to the
United States, Ratzel turned his attention to methodological issues. The
first fruit of his labour came in the form of the first volume of Anthropo
geographie in 1882. The appearance of this book marked a major event in

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 69

the history of geography in that it had a direct and far-reaching effect on

the nature and methodology of geography which at that time was faced
with a serious crisis of identity with regard to both its content and practice.
According to Hartshorne (1939, p. 90) the term anfhropogeographie was in
itself misleading in that it suggested the connotation of geography of man
in terms of individuals and races (that is, anthropological geography) whereas
the major thrust of the work concerned the works of man, particularly the
products of man's social life and relationship to the earth. (This was clearly
a reflection of the influence of the ethnographer Moritz Wagner whom he
had met in Munich.) With his sound background in the life sciences, Ratzel
saw in geography the sought-for opportunity for establishing a connection
between natural sciences and the study of man.
Ratzel set out to lay a scientific foundation for the study of man in
geography. In his Anthropogeographie he demonstrated that the geography
of man and his work could as well be put to systematic analysis as the
elements of the non-human (i.e., physical) world. Ratzel was, therefore, in
the true sense of the term, the father of modern human geography as a
field of scientific enquiry.
The second volume of Ratzel's Anthropogeographie was published in
1891. The two volumes had represented two different approaches to the
study of the human element in geography. The first volume was organized
in terms of physical features of the earth, which were studied in terms of
their influence on human culture. The central focus of this volume was to
analyze how far and in what manner man's life upon the earth is shaped
by the physical forces of nature. This was the common procedure adopted
by geographers at that time, though some of Ratzel's contemporaries (most
notably Kirchhoff, 1833--1907) had started studying human geography by
the reverse method; that is, by analysing human activities and human
cultures in relation to the physical environment which, in methodological
terms, implied proceeding in the study of human geography by starting
with man rather than the natural environment. The second volume of Ratzel's
Anthropogeographie was written from this reverse perspective. Strangely,
however, in the English-speaking world, it was Ratzel's first volume rather
than the second that became the dominant input in human geographical
methodology so that he came to be identified by later generations of
geographers with the concept of human geography as the study of the
works of man in terms of influences of the physical environment. This was
the source of the long and erroneously held belief that Ratzel had advocated
a deterministic view of human geography.
The first volume of Anthropogeographie had carried the rather revealing
subtitle "An introduction to the application of geography to history". Thus,
the book was designed to seek the causes of human phenomena in the
natural environment. Clearly enough, Ratzel's approach was influenced by
the theory that the physical environment played an active role in the
evolution of life forms on the earth's surface. This was one of the basic
ideas of the Darwinian theory of evolution. It had great attraction for

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70 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

geographers in view of the discipline's long-standing concern with the

study of the interconnection between man and his environment. Under the
impact of this revived perspective of evolutionary biology, man began to
be viewed somewhat like an organism that could be studied in the way
that biologists studied the organisms in nature in relation to their physical
environment. This was the beginning of the social Darwinist concept in
human geography. The idea that the Darwinian theory could by analogy
be used as a methodological device in the study of human societies had
been earlier suggested by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-
1903), who drew attention to the close resemblance of human societies to
natural organisms, and speculated that some of the principles of evolutionary
biology could be fruitfully applied to the study of man. This basic idea
became the central theme in Ratzel's Politische Geographie (1897) wherein he
described the state as an organism attached to the land, which like other
organisms in nature passes through a developmental cycle: Like natural
organisms, the states also must grow or die since they cannot stand still.
Like other natural organisms, states were conceptualized to be involved in
an ongoing struggle for survival. This struggle was manifested in the states'
exertions to acquire larger and larger territories as living spaces to support
their growing populations. This was the central idea behind the concept of
Lebensraum (living space), that became so popular in Germany during the
interwar years. The concept implied the right of the more powerful states
to expand their territories at the expense of their weaker neighbours.
The second volume of Ratzel's Anthropogeographie (1891) had carried
the subtitle "The Geographical Distribution of Mankind". This indicated a
reversal of approach to the study of human geography from the one adopted
in his first volume published nine years earlier. Now the focus had shifted
from the physical environment to human groups. In attempting to explain
geographical distribution of cultural phenomena, Ratzel now paid greater
attention to the role of migrations in the diffusion of cultural traits. He
believed that every migration had an area of origin, and a specific cause
and that each followed a particular route to its given destination. The
migrant societies carried their memories, traditions, and skills with them
and the pattern of life adopted in the new area of inhabitance resulted from
two sets of forces--,one from the local geographical environment, and the
other from their remembered culture and technology which motivated them
to use the environment in their own special way. Thus, for a full geographical
explanation of cultural features it was necessary that the geographer should
consider both geographical and historical factors.
Ratzel was the first geographer to clearly formulate the concept of
cultural landscape, which he often referred to as historical landscape since
it is in reality a palimpsest of the preceding historical phases of human
occupancy in any area. He recognized ethnographic groups as geographic
assemblages of interrelated phenomena, and sought to explain them not so
much as in situ developments of similar phenomena in different parts of
the earth, but as the result of spread and splintering of ideas and phenomena

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GEOGRAPHY AFI ER HUMBOLDT AND RI I IER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 71

by migrations through the march of history (Dickinson, 1969, p. 71). The

idea of cultural landscape and the related technique of human geographic
analysis were admirably used in Ratzel's 1898 book on Deutsch/and which
is generally regarded as a classic study of its type, and which had for a
long time served as a standard text in the German schools. The sixth edition
(revised by Hans Bobek) appeared in 1943.
To sum up, Ratzel's concept of human geography consisted of two
different approaches to the study of man and his activities upon the earth's
surface: One involved the measurement of the consistent interrelationships
of the environment and man; and the other focused on the measurement
of interrelationships between areally coincident human geographic
phenomena in particular places over the surface of the earth. The fonner
focused on the role of the physical environment in the shaping of human
activities, and the latter on coincidence, correlations, and interrelations of
distributions of phenomena over the earth's surface. These were to be
interpreted in terms of the physical and cultural elements of the particular
places and regions. The theoretical basis of the first approach was that a
particular set of physical environment shall always be associated with a
specific pattern of human response, since the physical environment exercised
a controlling influence on human activities. This doctrine found its clearest
expression in W.M. Davis's concept of geography presented in his 1903
paper entitled: "A Scheme of Geography", published in the Geographical
Journal. Underlining the distinction between the concepts of Ratzel and
Davis, Dickinson has rightly noted that whereas Davis's concept projected
geography as the study of man-land relationships from a deter111inistic
perspective, Ratzel viewed geography as the study of covariants of human
distributions over the earth's surface. The reason for this difference in
perspectives may lie partly in that Davis was trained as a geologist while
Ratzel had been an advanced student of the life sciences and as such had
a better appreciation of the Darwinian ideas and their limitations. Thus in
the study of man's relationship to his environment Ratzel gave due
recognition of historical factors which play a major role in deciding how a
community shall use its environment. Thus, as a contemporary French
geographer, Louis Raveneau, was reported to have stated, Ratzel's "principal
merit is that he reintegrated into geography the human element" (which
Peschel and Gerland had tried to banish) without in any way lessening the
importance of the physical elements. As he put it, Ratzel had taken a stand
''between physical geography, sometimes predominant or exclusive, and
the science of man which neglects so easily the framework in which man
moves and the space in which he lives". By means of this middle course
Ratzel had presented a model for geographical study that helped to eliminate
the supposed dualism between physical and human geography, and thereby
he contributed to reestablish geography as an integrated discipline equally
concerned with the study of man as well as the physical environment.
Ratzel also distinguished himself as a leading scholar of ethnography.
While still at Munich he wrote a three-volume work of Volkerkunde (published

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72 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

between 1885 and 1888) which was later translated into English under the
title The History of Mankind (189&--1898). Anthropologists Lowie and Penniman
(1935) described Ratzel's contribution to ethnography as one of outstanding
value. (See: Livingstone, 1992, "The Ratzelian Programme", pp. 19&--202.)

INTEGRATION THROUGH THE CONCEPT OF CHOROLOGY

Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905)

Richthofen was born in an aristocratic family of Kalsruhe in Silesia in 1833.
He had received advanced training in geology, and was keenly interested
in pursuing a career in geological exploration and research. To begin with,
he started research in the Alps and later, under the auspices of the Austrian
government, in the Carpathians. In 1860, he was selected by the Prussian
government to accompany an expedition to the Far-east to study the region's
lands and resources. After working in China for some time, Richthofen
went to California where he spent six years devoting himself to the study
of geology in the field as well as in the laboratory. While in California, he
received an offer from the Bank of California to support his fieldwork in
China on condition that he should regularly report the results of his
explorations to the Chamber of Commerce at Shanghai. 1n the course of his
field observations in China, Richthofen was the first to map the coal fields
of China.
Richthofen's interest in the field was not limited to locating minerals.
He was keenly interested in the study of geological structures and the
origins of landforms. He was the first to identify the extensive stretch of
land to the east of the Gobi desert covered with a thick layer of powdery
material as being wind-blown dust or /oess. He had also noted that these
extensive plains of loess as well as other sedimentary rocks lay over a
relatively level to gently rolling surface that cut across old geological
structures of varying degrees of resistance to erosion. This led him to advance
the theory that the underlying platform had been carved by oceanic waves
striking against a continuously sinking landmass.
Richthofen returned to Germany in 1872 with the intention of
consolidating the results of hls explorations in China. The new German
empire had been just inaugurated, and it was keen on promoting scientific
research through liberal financial grants. Richthofen received a suitable
grant for the publication of hls Chlna studies, and five volumes of it were
published between 1877 to 1912.
Berlin, which was home for Richthofen after his return from China,
had given hlm enthusiastic reception. He was put in charge of the Gesellschaft
fur Erdkunde which under his leadership emerged as the first-rank
geographical society. He was appointed to the post of professor of geography
at the University of Berlin in 1875 where he was granted leave of absence
to complete his China work. In 1877 he accepted appointment to the chair
of geography at the university of Bonn. From then on, formal academic

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 73

work began to occupy most of his time so that his China volumes were put
aside for some time. In 1883 Richthofen moved from Bonn to Leipzig. He
returned to Berlin in 1886 to accept a new chair in physical geography.
In geography, Richthofen is best known for his epoch-making inaugural
address delivered at the time of accepting the chair of geography at Leipzig
in 1883. In this address, he took over the Humboldt-and-Ritter idea of
geography as science that is distinguished by its chorological or spatial
distributional perspective. In his 1883 address, Richthofen showed himself
to be "the actual one to inherit and carry forward the ideas of Humboldt
and Ritter .... He had the sound, unprejudiced historical sense to fit himself
into the course of development and to determine his position exactly"
(Plewe, cited in Hartshorne, 1939). As Hartshorne has noted, if Richthofen's
address is read against the background of the methodological views of
Humboldt and Ritter, one is struck by the fact that Richthofen was primarily
interested in seeking common ground in the ideas of his two great German
predecessors at a time when most others were busy establishing points of
contrast between their views. However, given the fact that he was himself
trained as a geologist, Richthofen was in greater sympathy with Humboldt
than Ritter, and like Humboldt, he endeavoured to restore the close
connection of geography with the natural sciences.
Richthofen's answer to the question: What is geography?, was soon
to be acclaimed as the pioneer statement on the scope and method of
modern geography-one that, in the words of Hartshorne "set the direction
of geographic thought for the future". According to Richthofen, it was the
distinctive purpose of geography to focus attention on the diverse pheno
mena that occur in interrelation on the face of the earth. He emphasized
that in order to reach useful and reliable conclusions, geographical study
of any part of the earth surface must start with a careful description of its
physical features, and from there the student should move on to examine
the interrelationships of other features of the earth's surface to the physical
geographic framework described at the outset. He underlined that the highest
goal of geography was the exploration of the relationship of man to the
physical earth and to the biotic features associated with it. This was later
adopted as standard procedure in the study of regional geography.
Another major theme in Richthofen's methodological discourse was
to seek answers to the twin questions: Is geography as a science to be
restricted to descriptive accounts of parts of the earth surface, or is it also
concerned with generalizations and theory? And: What is the nature of the
relationship between general geography and regional geography? Richthofen
answered the two questions together as an interrelated set. He asserted
that in order to arrive at general concepts, one has first to make observations
in particular areas where the features appear as unique. Such observations
constitute regional or special geography. Regional geography has of
necessity to be descriptive; but description cannot be the end purpose of
any study. The geographer must go beyond mere description of unique
features in particular areas to seek regularities of occurrence, and to forrrtulate

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74 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

hypotheses that explain the obse·rved characteristics. Loess, for example,

can be observed, measured, and carefully described; but a regional study
of the loess region must also look for the process by which loess is
accumulated and the manner in which the presence of loess influences the
cover of plants and man's use of the region. In pursuing this method of
study, Richthofen was clearly following the lead given by Humboldt.
To sum up, under the leadership of Richthofen, geography came to be
defined as the science of the earth's surface (and of things and phenomena
causally interrelated with it) pursued by the method of observation in the
field. Geography was to be pursued by two different approaches depending
upon whether areas or things and phenomena were the primary objective of
study. In the study of areas (regional geography), the approach was
predominantly synthetic and descriptive. In the case of study of phenomena
or things distributed over the earth's surface in causal interrelationship
with physical elements of the earth environment, the method of approach
was the comparative study of larger areas with a view to identifying the
nature of causal interrelationship in each area, so that inductive reasoning
may lead to general ideas and theories. This was the method of study to
be adopted in general geography wherein the emphasis was on analysis
rather than synthesis.
As Hartshorne wrote, Richthofen's exposition of the relation of
systematic (i.e., general) geography and regional geography with each other,
and to the field of geography as a whole, was of immense importance in
the development of geographic thought. The real purpose of systematic
geography, according to Richthofen, was to lead to an understanding of
the causal relations of phenomena in areas-an understanding which can
be expressed in the forrn of principles that can be applied in the interpretation
of individual regions, called chorology or regional geography. Richthofen
distinguished between a first step chorology, which is non-explanatory
description, providing material for systematic geography; and chorology,
as a final step, in which the explanatory study of regions is based on
systematic geography. Thus, as Hartshorne (1939, pp. 92-93) wrote: "Not
bound by any limited concept of science, Richthofen, like Humboldt, saw
no objection to a single science considering different kinds of things that
exist together and are bound together by causal connections". To him
geography involved no duality between physical and human; it studied
both insofar as they illuminated an understanding of the earth surface as
the home of man.

Alfred Hettner (1859-1941)

The revived concept of geography as chorology found a very effective
advocate in Alfred Heitner under whose leadership chorology became the
guiding principle of geography in Germany, and all over the English
speaking world following the publication of Hartshorne's Nature of Geography
(1939). As such, Hellner rather than Richthofen has come to be remembered
as the father figure in the contemporary revival of the concept of geography

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 75

as a chorological science. Heitner was the first geographer of his generation

who entered university with the conscious intention of becoming a
geographer. During 1877-1878 he studied at the university of Halle under
Kirchhoff from whom he had received the first clear insight into the field
of geography. From Halle he went to Bonn and then to Strasbourg where,
under Gerland in 1881, he obtained his doctorate on the climate of Chile.
While studying at Strasbourg, he became deeply interested in philosophy,
a fact that (according to Dickinson) explains his subsequent publication of
essays on the framework and methods of geography-the set of writings
that Heitner himself estimated as his most important contribution .
Heitner went to Colombia in 1882 as private tutor to the British
Ambassador in Bogota, but returned to Germany in 1884 to join Richthofen's
Kolloquium at Leipzig, and subsequently submitted his research for habilitation
under the guidance of Ratzel who had by that time succeeded Richthofen
at Leipzig after the latter moved out to Berlin to occupy the new chair in
physical geography. In 1888, Heitner proceeded on an extensive tour of
South America but returned to Leipzig to take up an academic appointment
under Ratzel in 1890-1891. He remained there until 1897 when he moved
over to Tubingen and from there to Heidelberg where he spent the rest of
his career from 1899-1928.
During his long professional career, Heitner authored many books
and papers on various aspects of geography. These included Travel in the
Colombian Andes (1888), Regional Geography of Europe (1907), Comparative
Regional Geography (1933-1935), and the posthumously published Geography
of Man, comprised of three parts entitled respectively as: Basis of the Geography
of Man, Transport Geography, and Economic Geography. His other works
included on1! on Russia (1905), England's World Domination and War (1915),
Surface Forms of the Continents (1921 and 1928) and the Spread of Culture over
the Earth (1928, 1929). Heltner's methodological essays (beginning with his
paper in the inaugural issue of Geographische Zeitschrift that he founded in
1895 and continued to edit until 1935) were collected and published (with
an introduction on the history of geographical thought) as a book in 1927
bearing the title: Geography: Its History, Character and Method (Die Geographie
Ihre Geschchte 1hr Wesen und Ihre Methoden). The rest of this discussion
relates to his methodological ideas as contained in these essays.
Heitner subscribed to a view of classification of sciences and the placing
of geography as a science that was similar to Kant's view on the subject
(though Heitner made no reference to Kant). The failure to make any
reference to Kant was possibly because at the time when Heitner was
writing his methodological essays, this view was so widely accepted that
it did not require support from the earlier methodological literature.
Heitner noted that on the one hand we have a logical classification of
fields of learning, according to which we have a series of subject-sciences
each concerned with the study and analysis of a logically defined circle of
facts. On the other, we have a physical classification of fields of knowledge
according to which fields of study are defined not on the basis of logical

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76 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

unity of the subject matter concerned, but on the basis of the physical
association of phenomena of diverse origin existing together. The physical
association (or arrangement) of phenomena may be viewed in two different
dimensions: Time and space. Accordingly, physical classification of
knowledge gives us two groups of fields of study, namely, historical sciences,
which study integrations of diverse phenomena occurring together in the
context of time (i.e., historical period); and chorological sciences which
study diverse phenomena existing together in segments of the earth's space.
This idea had been put forward by Heitner in the first of his methodological
essays published in the inaugural issue of his journal Geographische Zeitschrift,
in 1895. According to him:
If we compare the different sciences we will find that while in many of
them the unity lies in the materials of study, in the others it lies in the
method of study. Geography belongs to the latter group; its unity is in
its method. As history ... consider(s) the development of the human race ...
in terms of time, so geography proceeds from the viewpoint of spatial
variations.
Heitner noted that a historical survey of the development of geography
reveals that there are two interrelated views regarding its nature as a field
of knowledge. According to one, geography was viewed as a general science
of the earth so that study of general geography (study of the earth as a
planet) was primary, and study of special geography (i.e., in-depth study
of particular segments of the earth's surface) was secondary. This was sharply
contrasted to the second view, which saw geography as the study of the
earth's surface as the home of man, and by inference, the areal character
of the earth surface (and its regions) was the primary task of geography,
and general or comparative geography was regarded to be of secondary
concern. Heitner pointed out that the controversy regarding the primacy of
general or special geography was based on an erroneous view of the nature
of acquisition of knowledge. He underlined that since historical and spatial
approaches to acquiring knowledge stand out in clear distinction from the
systematic study of particular sets of logically defined data (studied in the
subject-sciences), geography, like history, stands out as an essential and
autonomous component of a complete system of sciences. History and
geography owe their unity as fields of knowledge not to their subject matter
but to their way of looking at phenomena on the earth's surface. History
and geography are methodologically defined branches of learning.
Tracing the development of geography from the time of the ancient
Greeks, Heitner asserted that geography is the chorological science of the
earth's surface. As such, geography is concerned with the study of areas on
the earth's surface insofar as these have material content. It describes places
and regions, and analyzes their spatial interrelations. In this, geography is
somewhat similar to, but distinct from, history which describes the sequence
of events in given places (or countries) and analyses development of things
(or the changing relationships between phenomena) over time.
Although Heitner had taken up the chorological concept of geography

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY n

from his teacher and colleague Richthofen, he nevertheless criticized his
view of geography as the science of the earth's surface as vague and
ambiguous. Hettner maintained that geography is properly described as
the study of the earth's surface according to its localized differences such
as between continents, regions, districts, and localities. Geography, according
to Hettner, seeks to define and describe unit areas of the earth's surface
and to compare them on an inductive worldwide basis . Whether the student
is engaged in the study of particular areas and regions, or in a comparative
study of several of them, the differential association of phenomena over
the earth surface is the keynote in the study of geography as a science.
Heitner was critical of the attempts by some geographers to project
geography as the "science of distributions" (Hartshorne, 1939, pp. 127-
129). He maintained that geography was not necessarily concerned with
distributions of particular phenomena per se, since logically speaking that
is the special concern of the systematic sciences under whose domain the
respective phenomena fall (e.g., plants-botany; animals-zoology). The
problem becomes of geographical interest only when such a distribution is
an element of an areal association of phenomena that gives character to an
area or region. In this regard, Heitner drew attention to the distinction that
A.R. Wallace (Darwin's coauthor in the theory of natural selection) had
made between geographical zoology that studies the distribution of
individual species of animals, and a zoological geography that is concerned
with fauna! content of different lands. The same holds true of plants, minerals
and other elements forming the subject matter of the systematic sciences.
Whereas the view of a systematic science is focused on a particular category
of phenomena which it studies in terms of their distribution, the focus of
attention in geography is on areas which it studies in terms of differences
in their mineral, floral, and fauna! content. As Hartshorne has noted, this
concept of geography represented a consistent derivation from Humboldt's
description of geography as the study of "that which exists together in an
area".
Geography, according to Heitner, begins with the spatial association
of phenomena that give character to areas at different scales of resolution.
Geography involves consideration of causal interdependence (Zusammenhang)
of various sets of spatially arranged phenomena in particular segments of
the earth's surface; individual distributions by themselves are of little
significance in giving character to areas and as such are of little direct
concern to geography as a specialized discipline. However, single distribution
becomes important in characterizing an area insofar as it is coincident with
other areal phenomena with similar areal distribution i.e., to the extent that
the distribution of single elements is geographically (or spatially) efficacious.
Like Richthofen, Heitner also used the chorological view of geography
as a means to an end-to resolve the problem of dualism between physical
vis-a-vis human geography. To quote him, geography as a chorological
study "is neither natural nor human...but both together", for it is concerned
with the "distinctive character of lands", since the character of any region

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78 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

with a history of human settlement incorporated both physical as well as

human aspects, both types of elements formed equally important components
of geographical study. He criticized the likes of Peschel and Gerland who
wanted to project geography as a purely physical science. He was also
critical of Ritter and his followers who wanted to make man the central
focus of geography. Hettner emphasized that man must be considered
alongside nature in the study of areal descriptions and interrelations.
Hettner addressed the question whether geography should confine
its vision to the study of geographical areas as unique entities, or also
concern itself with the formulation of general concepts and theories i.e., is
geography idiographic or nomothetic in perspective? His own answer was,
that like all other fields of scientific knowledge geography must be concerned
both with the uniqueness of particular phenomena as well as the general
principles that explain the particular examples. Geography is concerned
both with the unique character of particular areas as well as the elements
of similarity or universality between them. The in-depth study of particular
regions can be effectively pursued only when it is suitably illuminated by
the relevant general concepts which would frequently be necessary to identify
their uniqueness. Likewise, the study of areas as unique assemblages of
diverse phenomena provides raw material for general studies, since every
unique element is a challenge that leads to the search for better theory.
Richthofen's programme of geography, and its further exposition by
Heitner paved the way for studies in regional geography interpreted in
terms of the fruits of systematic geography. In methodological terms, this
represented a return to Humboldt's approach to geography, an approach
that was neglected by the followers of Ritter who pursued regional
geography with relatively little concern for systematic geography. It is true
that Hellner consistently encouraged the study of regional geography, but
that should not be interpreted to imply that he discouraged systematic
geography because he consistently emphasized the need for geographic
work from both the perspectives. As Hartshorne (1939, pp. 93-95) wrote,
it is significant to note that regional study in geography in Germany had
hardly reached a position comparable with systematic studies until after
the First World War which led to a refocusing of interest on the geographic
character of different parts of Europe in general, and the Germanic lands
in particular.
The standard approach to regional study in geography, which had
served as the general framework for many scholarly works in Germany
published from the 1880s to the 1920s, was described by Heitner in an
article in Geographische Zeitschrift (1933). Under this framework, various
categories of facts were examined in their geographical distribution starting
with geographical location, geology, relief, climate, natural resources,
development and distribution of population and settlements, the forms of
economy, trade, transport, and political divisions. This outline was based
on the belief that the framework formed a kind of sequence of cause and
effect. The framework had continued to be pursued as the model approach

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 79

to regional study in geography in Germany for a long time. Through

Hartshorne's Nature of Geography it became the standard framework for
regional geography in the English-speaking world.
Although the chorological view of geography had become the dominant
concept of geography in the working life of Heitner, it is significant to note
that the chorological concept of the discipline had only upstaged and not
replaced the Ratzelian view of geography as the study of man-land
relationships. Indeed, in many parts of the English-speaking world, the
Ratzelian concept had continued to be vigorously pursued under the
influence of the highly pursuasive writings of Ellen Churchill Semple.

GEOGRAPHY AS A LANDSCAPE SCIENCE

Otto Schluter (1872-1952)

Notwithstanding the considerable popularity of the concept of geography
as the study of earth's areas in terms of what Sauer called "areal
differentiation", many geographers felt uneasy about the identification of
geography as a chorological science which like the chronological sciences
(e.g., history) was defined in terms of its method rather than its subject
matter. They strongly felt that geography, like other systematic sciences,
must have a distinctive subject of study with which it could be clearly
identified as a field of science. Another source of dissatisfaction was the
Hettnerian schema for regional geography which appeared to overemphasize
the importance of Physical features in the geography of regions and places.
By tying every aspect of an area back to its physical features, the Hettnerian
model for regional studies had tended to overlook the role of factors such
as distribution and density of population, economy, patterns of development
in relation to routes of circulation, and a host of historical-cultural forces
and factors that impart individuality to places irrespective of the physical
environment. A third source of dissatisfaction was that many of the
interrelations observed in regional studies were in the process of change
over time. These could not be properly understood without the study of
past geographies of the place, and the changes taking place over a period.
In other words, geography as chorology neglected time.
These points of dissatisfaction with the concepts of geography put
forward by Ratzel, on the one hand, and Richthofen and Heitner on the
other, had led to a continued search for alternative concepts of geography
as a science. An alternative view was built around the concept of landscape
which had first been introduced by Wimmer in 1885 in his Historische
Landschaftkunde. But it gained popularity only after 1906 following its further
exposition by Otto Schluter. Born in Westphalia in 1872, Schluter first studied
German language and history but while a student at the university of
Halle he attended the lectures of Kirchhoff on human geography. This led
to a change of his interest from Germanic studies to geography. Schluter
wrote his dissertation at Halle, but shifted to Berlin in 1895 to study under

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80 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

Richthofen, under whose influence he developed a strong interest in

questions of scope and method of geography, an interest that led him to his
famous "Objectives of the Geography of Man" (1906) which projected the
alternative concept of geography as the study of landscapes. Five years
later he was appointed to the chair of geography at the university of Halle
where he stayed until his retirement in 1951. Schluter was keenly interested
in the geography of the settlements in Central Europe. The result of his
nearly forty years of labour on this subject was published in a three-volume
work under the title Siedlungsrat1me Mittelenuropas in Fruhgeschichtlicher Zeit
(1952, 1953, 1958).
In his 1906 method,,logical paper, Schluter had suggested that
geographers should concentrate on the study of phenomena on the surface
of the earth that could be perceived through the senses; and the focus
should be on the totality of perception in each area. This totality of "visual
perception of area" was termed as landscape. According to him, acceptance
of landscape as the subject matter of geography had raised the discipline
to the level of the other logically defined fields of science.
Since the concept of landscape was based on visual perception of the
surface features in given areas, the nonmaterial content of areas, such as
political organization, religious-cultural beliefs, economic institutions and
the like, lay outside the central focus of geography as a science. Schluter
wrote that knowledge about these aspects could be borrowed from the
relevant fields of knowledge, and used in interpreting the landscape which,
like an architectural deposit, mirrors the culture and economy of the human
communities inhabiting the particular segments of the earth's surface. Interest
in political, cultural, and economic aspects was, however, to be limited
only to the extent that they gave character to the visible landscape.
Schluter incorporated the concept of process i.e., development through
time, in his concept of geography as the science of landscape by means of
the derivative concepts of cultural and natural landscapes. He called them
as Kulturlandschaft and Naturlandschaft. For him the purpose of the study of
landscapes was "not only of classifying categories of phenomena and
determining their distribution and associations, but of examining their
characteristics through the process of change through time". He emphasized
that human geography should aim at the recognition of the form and
arrangement of earthbound phenomena as far as they are perceptible to
the senses. He claimed that his method of study was morphological, and
its procedure was parallel to that of the study of landforms.
Like physiography, human geography as the science of landscapes
was concerned not with the processes i.e., the mechanisms that create the
landscape, but only with the surface expression of these processes. Schluter
noted that the cultural landscape embraces both mobile and immobile forms.
The immobile forms required explanation in terms of "all the effects of
which every period and every culture, according to the measure of its
forces, has wrought upon the landscape". The mobile forms included man,
together with his works and his movement. In other words, the cultural

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 81

--- ---------- - -- - - - - --- ------------

landscape requires the study of not only the routes and route patterns, but
also the men and materials that move along them.
Schluter's concept implied that each small unit of areal association
constitutes a physiographic unit in which all the perceptible phenomena
together constitute distinct association; and as far as cultural landscapes
are concerned, the association is rooted in similarities of function or commor1
origin. This implied that in the study of cultural landscapes, the primary
focus was on the morphology of landscapes rather than on causal association
of the phenomena. Also, the landscape geography of Schluter demanded
that the study of cultural landscape be pursued in terms of its historical
evolution in relation to the original natural landscape of that area. This
meant that the areal grouping of elements in the present-day landscape
are to be explained with reference to the way they are tied together in the
current functional organization of the area, and in terms of their genetic
evolution through past survivals in the landscape. It is important to note
that the morphological approach of Schluter represented a fundamental
departure from the Dar,vinist environmentalism that underlay the
concepts and methods of W.M. Davis, H.R. Mill and some of his other
contemporaries.
Although the concepts of Heitner and Schluter appear somewhat
antithetical on first sight, a closer scrutiny reveals otherwise.
The regional concept ... of Schluter, like that of Hettner, is about a
geographical portion of the earth's surface that stands out from its
surroundings. Hettner stressed the Wesen or personality of an area as
based upon the similarities of contiguous places and their phenomena,
and the spatial and causal cohesion of the various natural elements in
this area. Schluter stresses the Bild, the association or assemblage in space
of landscape elements as the essence of this landscape unit (Dickinson,
1969, pp. 132-133).

Both Heitner and Schluter were concerned about the variations in the
character of areas on the earth's surface which became known as areal
differentiation. Both of them recognized that there were distinctly different
kinds of areas on the earth, and that these were distinct from their
surroundings in that they showed a certain degree of uniqueness that could
be defined. "Heitner, however, stressed the ways in which the features of
a region reflected the basic patterns of the physical earth, whereas Schluter
focused attention on the interrelations of these features that gave the region
its distinctive appearance" (James, 1972, p. 230).
The followers of the concept of geography as landscape science were
far from precise in their concept of landscape, leading to a good deal of
confusion. The term landscape (Landschaft) has two distinct meanings in
the German language: one, in the sense of a distinct territory with a generally
uniform aspect; and the other, in the sense in which it is used by artists to
refer to the aspect of the earth as seen in perspective (as in a painting or
a photograph) without connotation of areal extent. Interchangeable use of
the term in both the senses by the landscape geographers had led to a lot

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82 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

of confusion so that the concept became, according to Hartshorne,

surrounded by a "mystical significance". Lack of a clear definition as to the
scope of geography as a landscape science was another source of confusion:
While Schluter himself conceptualized landscape as the total impact of an
area on man's sense perception so that even invisible phenomena, such as
wind and temperature, were included; some other scholars who followed
him chose to restrict the term to only the visible landscape and excluded
anything, such as wind and temperature which cannot be seen, from
consideration. There were still others who wanted to broaden the scope of
landscape to include everything, including law, religion, and political and
economic institutions.
In a critical appraisal of Schluter's contribution, Leo Waibel (1933)
wrote: Through
the concept of the physiognomic build of the landscape , he gave the
geography of man a corporate substance for research, which can be worked
out according to the same method as physical geography-the cultural
landscape. This can be examined from the standpoints of its morphology,
physiology, and developmental history, just as the visible phenomena in
nature in the build of the landscape. Between physical geography and
the geography of man, there is no longer a gap. Both are in the closest
contact in terms of objects and methods (cited in Dickinson, 1969, p. 132).
The concept of landscape and the related methodological principles
of Schluter had been widely used by German geographers before the
Second World War. Writing in 1952, German geographer Lautensauch
reported that most geographers in Germany followed Schluter in identi
fying the study of landscape as the central task of geography: The German
methodologists viewed every landscape as a "dynamic structure, a thing
area-time system of specified quality inside the whole geosphere�that is,
an open system, as contrasted to the closed system of organism" (cited in
James, 1972, p. 232).
Jean Brunhes was advocating a somewhat similar set of ideas in France,
but it had made very little impact in the English-speaking world until Carl
Sauer introduced the concept in his essay on "The Morphology of Landscape"
(1925), and later built a research group (the Berkeley School) that focused
on the historical-ecological study of cultural landscapes. This concept was
completely ignored in Britain so that Darby's (1936) edited volume made
only a passing reference to Brunhes. Even in the United States the concept
was not pursued outside the Berkeley School. Part of the reason lay in the
widespread influence of Hartshorne's Nature of Geography (1939) which
had convincingly argued in favour of the Hettnerian paradigm of geography
as the time-honoured concept of the discipline.

REFERENCES
Darby, H.C. (Ed.) (1936), An Historical Geography of England before A.O. 1800,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY 83

Darwin, C.R. (1859), On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,

or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, London:
John Murray.
Davis, W.M. (1903), A scheme of geography, Geographical Journal, vol. 13,
pp. 413-423.
Dickinson, R.E. (1969), Makers of Moder,, Geography, London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Hartshorne, R. (1939), Nature of Geography, Lancaster (PA.): Association of
American Geographers.
Heitner, A. (1927), Die Geographie-Ihre Geochishte, ihre Wesen, und ihre
Methoden, Breslau: Ferdinand Hirt.
James, P.E. (1972), All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas,
Indianapolis: The Odessey Press.
Livingstone, D.N. (1992), The geographical Tradition, Oxford; Basil Blackwell.
Lowie, R.H. (1937), The History of Ethnographical Theory, New York.
Penniman, T.K. (1935), A Hundred Years of Anthropology, London.
Peschel, 0. (1870), Neue Proble,ne der vergleichenden Erdkunde, Leipzig:
Druncker & Humboldt.
- -- (1879), Physische Erdkunde, Leipzig: Druncker & Humboldt.
Raveneau, L. (1891-1892), L' Element Humaine dans la Geographie:
L' Anthropogeographie de M. Ratzel, Anna/es de Geographie, vol. 1,
pp. 331-347.
Ratzel, F. (1882), Anthropogeographie Vol. I, Stuttgart: J. Engethorn.
-- (1891), Anthropogeographie, Vol. II, Stuttgart: J. Engethorn.
- - - (1897), Politische Geographie, Berlin: R. Oldenbourg.
--- (1898), Deutsland, Eintuhrung in die Heimatkunde, Leipzig: Grunow.
Richthofen, F. von (1883), Aufgaben und Methoden der heutigen Geographie
(Akademische Antittsrede), Leipzig: Veit
Schluter, 0. (1906), Die Ziele der Geographie des Muschen (Antittsrede), Munich:
R. Oldenbourg.
••
Waibel, L. (1933), Was verstehen wir unter Landschaftskunde, Geographische
Anzeiger, vol. 34, pp. 523--598.

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4
Geography after Humboldt and Ritter:
Developments Outside Germany

Geography had been firmly established as an academic discipline in Gen1,any

following large-scale endowment of chairs in geography in many universities
across the country. The revival of geography, however, took some time to
spread to other parts of Europe, and to the United States. There was, in
general, a lapse of a decade or more. Before long, geography had begun to
appear as a subject of higher learning in most European universities. The
part played by the universities in the formation of geography as a
professional discipline was of fundamental importance since only through
the traini..r1g of the younger generations in an accepted mode of study
could geography emerge as a professional field.

DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE
The immediate cause for the revival of geography as a university level
subject of study in France was the country's defeat in the Franco-Prussian
war of 1870-1871. Soon after the war there was a great demand for better
quality geography education in the French schools, with a view to stimulating
interest in the knowledge about peoples and places in far-off lands so that
the pursuit of colonialism could be attended to more effectively. The country's
defeat, and the loss of territory, made it urgent that France should look to
Africa and elsewhere for commercial opportunities and politico-cultural
colonization (Freeman, 1971, p. 46). The development of French colonial
power after 1871 owed a great deal to the influence of the French
geographical societies (McKay, 1943).

Contributions of Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918)

Unlike in Germany (where revival of geography in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century had been marked by the rise of several distinct schools
of thought), the growth of modern geography in France was shaped by the
work of one man, Paul Vidal de la Blache, who founded a new school of
thought in human geography that remained dominant until the Second
World War. Writing in 1922, W.L.G. Joerg had noted that "Nearly all
occupants of chairs in geography in France are pupils or pupils of pupils
84

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 85

of the late Vidal de la Blache. In no other country ... the development of

geography centred about one man as in France".
Blache had come to geography via history and literature. After a
doctorate in history in 1872, he began teaching geography, first at the
university of Nancy (1872-1877), ard iater as professor of geography at
Ecole Normale Superiere in Paris. He became the first geographer to be
appointed to the chair of geography at the Sorbonne in 1898. As a
contemporary of Ratzel, it was quite natural that Vidal de la Blache should
be influenced by his writings. It was not Ratzel of the first volume of
Anthropogeographie (1882) but Ratzel of the second volume (published in
1891) that attracted Vidal. He was drawn to Ratzel's concern with
geographical distribution of man, and the role of migration (and inherited
traits) in man's adjustment to nature. This basic concept became the central
theme in Vidal's own concept of possibilism, which held that nature sets
limits and offers possibilities for development, but the way man adjusts to
the natural conditions of the area of his inhabitance is largely a function of
his own tradition and mental structuring. The same environment carries
different meanings·to people with different genres de vie (ways of living or
culture). According to Blache, culture (i.e., inherited traits) is the basic
factor in determining which of the many possibilities in the natural
environment shall be selected by a given community.
Blache was opposed to the concept of dichotomy between natural
and cultural aspects of geography. To him, consideration of natural and
ct1ltural aspects of the earth's surface cannot be separated from one another
for the simple reason that in every inhabited part of the earth's surface, the
original landscape is significantly transformed as a result of human
habitation. Such changes are greater in the case of culturally advanced
societies where, owing to the more developed technology, the degree of
man's intervention in nature is more far-reaching. It is, therefore, impossible
to study landscapes meaningfully without due reference to the interlocking
roles of nature and culture.
The relationship of a community to the phy sical landscape of the area
of its inhabitance is so intimate that it is difficult to think of the one without
the other. As such, each segment of the cultural landscape has, with the
passage of time, acquired a unique personality of its own. Such areas were
named as the pa ys. According to Blache, the study of such regions constituted
the primary task of geography as a professional field. Elaborating upon his
idea about the method of geographical enquiry, Blache (1913) stated that
geography is "the study of things associated in areas, mutually interacting,
characterizing particular segments of the earth space". According to him,
the distinguishing feature
••
of geography as a science was its "capacity not
to break apart what nature has assembled, to understand the correspondence
and correlation of things" existing together in association in particular regions
or pays.
Blache's method of study was essentially inductive and historical. It
was designed to suit the study of small areas of self-sufficient economies

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86 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

as had existed in the nineteenth century rural Fra11ce. An agricultural way

of life pursued in relative isolation from the outside world had favoured
the development of locally distinctive traditions and ways of life (genre de
vie), including agricultural practices, implements, food habits, dress and
architecture. Blache recommended that geographers should carry out research
in folk cultures with a view to depicting the unique personality of each
region.
Commenting on the role of history in the development of pays, Blache
cited the example of a pond being swept by a gust of wind. As the wind
overtakes it, the water of the pond gets disturbed and there is all-round
confusion, but after a few minutes the ripples subside, and the old calm is
restored. In like manner, war, pestilence, and civil strife can interrupt the
forward progress of a region and bring chaos, but with the passage of time
the crisis is overcome, and the old pattern of civic life is reestablished. This
original idea, first formulated in 1903, was illustrated in his 1917 work on
the two thousand years of development in Alsace and Lorraine. He
demonstrated how the French Revolution of 1789 had produced a great
ripple in the placid waters, as it were, but before long the usual processes
of development had reasserted themselves. However, as an honest researcher
(who is partial to truth rather than to his own pet theory), Blache did
concede that after about 1846 the balan.ce of interplay between man and
nature had been fundamentally disturbed as a result of the introduction of
new technologies that had enabled man to tame the forces of natur·,,e.
technologies which enabled the building of canals, and broke the isolation
of rural communities through laying of roads and railroads, and above all,
through the launching of the industrial revolution. All this posed a serious
threat to the maintenance of age-old traditions born out of self-sufficient
economies of the individual pays. This meant that by the end of the
nineteenth century the method of regional study in terms of genre de vie, as
advocated by Blache, was fast losing relevance to the study of European
landscapes. Blache was nostalgic about it, but the scholar in him suggested
a new approach more suited to the study of the changed scenario. He
wrote that "The idea of region in its modern form is a conception to do
with industry; it is associated with that of the industrial metropolis". He
clearly perceived that the organizing principle of economic life in the future
would be guided by the relationship of an area to the metropolitan centre
that dominates its economy, rather than the relationship between man and
his local environment.
It has been rightly noted that the method of regional study developed
by Blache "was a powerful and legitimate vision of the functioning of
societies during most of European history. It was, however, ironically, a
vision of the things past or about to pass, not a vision of things present or
to come" (Wrigley, 1965, p. 9). As such, Blache's method of regional study
provided a most appropriate methodology for historical geography of Europe
before the Industrial Revolution, and it may still be relevant to the limited
but rapidly shrinking areas of the world today whose economies may still

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 87

be dominated by peasant agriculture and local self-sufficiency in most

material requirements of life, but it cannot be applicable to a country which
has undergone industrial revolution (Wrigley, op. cit.).
Vidal de la Blache passed away in 1918. Around that time, he had
been engaged in assembling a definitive book on human geography with
a view to concretizing his philosophy and methodology of the geography
of man. From his partially completed manuscript his former student (and
son-in-law), Emmanuel de Mortonne, prepared the press copy of the book
which was published in 1921 under the title Principes de Geographie Humaine
(translated into English as Principles of Human Geography).
In an article published in 1913 in the Anna/es de Geographie (which
he had founded and edited until his death) Blache had outlined the
"distinguishing characteristics of geography", wherein he wrote that the
goal of geographical study was to study the nature and groupings of
phenomena of landscapes as the expression of man's interaction with nature.
Listing the distinctive characteristics of geography he mentioned the
following:
• The concept of terrestrial unity is the starting point in geographical
work. Geography pursues a synthetic world view of nature and
man. It also studies causes and generic types of groupings of
terrestrial phenomena.
• Geography believes that terrestrial phenomena are localized in varied
combinations both in nature as well as in the modifications brought
about by human intervention.
• Geography seeks to describe, localize, and explain covariations
between natural conditions and man-made phenomena.
• Geography seeks to measure the 1nflc1ence of environment (especially
climate and vegetation) on man.
• Geography is concerned with developing and refining methods of
defining and classifying earth phenomena.
• Geography seeks to measure and localize the part played by man
in modifying the face of the earth.

La Tradition Vidalienne
For almost half a century French geography had remained a faithful reflection
of the Vidalian tradition of thought and methodology perpetuated by his
own students and the next generation trained by those students as they
spread out to man the various university departments across the country.
The essence of the Vidalian tradition was an unswerving faith in tl1e principle
of terrestrial unity so that the concept of dualism between man and nature,
and human and physical geography, was alien to the French tradition in
geography. French geograpliers have all through maintained a balance
between physical and human components of geography. Thus, of the two
leading disciples of Blache (each a leader in his own right), while Jean

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88 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

Brunhes (1869-1930) spread the message and methodology of new geography

of man as preached by his master, Emmanuel de Mortonne (1873-1955),
was a leading physical geographer.
Brunhes was a leading geographer in his own right. His book La
Geographie Humaine, first published in 1910, went through several editions
over the next quarter of a century. An English translation (edited by Bowman)
was published in 1920. The book became so popular in North America that
an abridged edition was published in 1952. Brunhes proposed a classification
of geographic facts that made Blache' s concepts easier to transmit in the
classroom. Brunhes wrote that the two basic maps for the study of human
geography are a map of water and a map of population. According to him
the essential facts of human geography may be classified into three groups
namely
• Facts of the unproductive occupation of the soil (houses, roads,
and settlements);
• Facts of plants and animal conquest (cultivation of plants, and
animal husbandry);
• Facts of destructive exploitation (clearing of forests, hunting, and
mining).
The last part of Brunhes's book contained a discussion on different
kinds of geographical studies pursued under the headings of human
geography, regional geography, social geography, political geography and
historical geography.
Emmanuel de Mortonne was a leading physical geographer of his
time. He held physical geography to be an essential part of the scheme of
geographical study of areas. He maintained a consistent interest in
geomorphology and climatology. He combined this interest with regional
expertise in the geography of Central Europe. One of the most influential
geographers of the interwar period in Europe, de Mortonne was a strong
supporter of Davisian geomorphology which he popularized in the French
academic circles. His 1927 study on the identification of arid"regions through
the use of aridity index, was a major contribution to the study of climate.
An important part of the Vidalian tradition was the recognition that
while from one point of view geography is a unitary field, from another it
appears to tie together a variety of fields in the natural and human sciences.
In a book entitled Science of Geography (1925) Camille Vallaux (1870-1945)
stated that geography is both a unitary and autonomous field of study, and
also an auxiliary aspect of many other fields of scientific knowledge. Thus,
not only does geography have a philosophy of its own, "it is almost, in
itself, a philosophy of the world of man". This explains how the Vidalian
tradition had succeeded in making important contributions to systematic
aspects of geography (i.e., topical studies) side by side with its unique
contribution to regional geography pursued through the concept of genre
de vie which had resulted in the justly famous French regional monographs
"the study of places" (Harrison-Church, 1951; James, 1972; Livingstone, 1992).

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Another distinctive aspect of the Vidalian tradition in geography was

that Blache had regarded field study of small areas as the best possible
way to train geographers. He was convinced of the great practical value of
such regional studies to society and government. With a view to fulfilling
this need, Vidal had planned a series of books on regional geography
covering the whole of Europe a new series of universal geographies.
However, Blache passed away before the plan could be concretized so that
the task was taken over by his student and close associate Lucien Gallois
(1857-1941). The first volume appeared in 1927, and the series had been
completed (except for the volume on France) before the out break of the
Second World War. The series is regarded as a monument to the regional
tradition in geography.

DEVELOPMENTS IN GREAT BRITAIN

In the nineteenth century British geography had suffered from maladies
similar to the ones that had beset it in France. Much of what was taught
in British schools in the name of geography was uninteresting and dull;
and the students were required to commit to memory a large mass of
unorganized facts. As in France, courses in geography in the universities
were handled by geologists on the physical side, and the courses meant to
provide geographical background to history were taught by historians. The
overall scene was extreme!)' confusing. In the midst of this confusion Mary
Somerville (1780-1872) appeared as a bright star and shone on the path to
development of geography as a field of scientific enquiry in its own right.
Her famous book on Physical Geography was published in 1848. It went
through seven editions over the next tl1irty years. This book started with
a physical description of the earth's surface continents, oceans, atmosphere,
plants and animals-and included the study of man as an agent of change
in the physical landscape. The author kept on updating the book with each
edition by incorporating new facts as they became available. Its
sound methodology and approach received praise even from Humboldt
(Freeman, 1971, p. 28) but irrespective of its soand method and the author's
erudition, the book failed to create a stir in British geographical circles
since it was published at a time when physical geography was claimed by
geologists, and Humboldt's books were supposed to have said everything
that needed to be told about geography. Ironically enough, the book became
highly influential in North America through George Perkin Marsh who
found her observations about man's destructive use of the earth very
stimulating. (For short appraisal, see: Livingstone, 1992, pp. 272-274.)
Another major figure in the history of nineteenth century British
geography was Francis Galton (1822-1911) who was a member of the Council
of the Royal Geographical Society in London from 1854-1893. He had
prepared the first weather map of Britain in 1861, and was the first scholar
to demonstrate that weather patterns could be revealed by plotting lines of
equal air pressure on the map. He was also the first to identify the nature

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90 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

of air circulation in an anticyclonic formation. He further refined his isopleth

'
technique to prepare the first ever isochronous map showing lines of equal
travel-time from London. Commenting upon the nature of geography Gallon
(1855, p. 81) described it as "a peculiarly liberalizing pursuit, which links
the scattered sciences together, and gives each of them a meaning and
significance of which they are barren when tl1ey stand alone" (cited in
James, 1972, p. 257).
While geography was making news through the contributions of
individual scholars like Somerville and Gallon, until the 1880s the discipline
had no place as a branch of learning in the British universities. In 1884 the
Royal Geographical Society asked its secretary, John Scott Kellie to survey
the status of geography in Great Britain in the light of the contemporary
status of the discipline in Germany, France, and U.S.A. Kellie reported that
the status of geography in Britain compared very unfavourably with its
status in other leading European countries and in America where the subject
was flourishing, as a universit y l- evel discipline under the charge of full
professors of geography. On the initiative of the society (and induced by
a special grant offered by it), the university of Oxford introduced geography
in 1887 with Halford J. Mackinder (1861-1947) as reader and chairman.
The university of Cambridge followed suit in 1888 under Francis Henry
Hill Guillemard (1852-1933) who was succeeded by John Young Buchanan
in 1889.
As was the case in Germany and France, in Britain also expansion of
geography as a university-level discipline was intimately related to the
needs of British imperialism. A memorandum issued by the Royal
Geographical Society had urged the promotion of geographical knowledge
in Britain since
The colonies of England, and her commerce, her emigrations, her wars,
her missionaries, and her scientific explorers bring her into contact with
all parts of the globe, and it is, therefore, a matter of imperial importance
that no reasonable means should be neglected of training her youths in
sound geographical knowledge (Proceedings of the Royal Geographical
Society, 1879, pp. 261-264; cited in Freeman, 1980, p. 35).

Contribution of Halford J. Mackinder (1861-1947)

Mackinder's training as an academic included a first class honours in natural
sciences at Oxford in 1883, followed by graduation in history from the
same university in 1884. He studied law and was called to the bar in 1886.
He was one of the organizers of the Oxford University Extension Movement
which aimed at taking university teaching beyond the university campus
by means of travelling lecturers. Participating in the extension programme
Mackinder had given 600 popular lectures in course of a few years on the
theme "the new geography" in cities and towns all over the country. In
1887 he was invited by the Royal Geographical Society to deliver a lecture
on "The Scope and Method of Geography". Impressed by his erudition
and scholarship, the Society offered him appointment as Reader to organize

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the first university department in the subject in Britain at Oxford. He

continued in that position until 1905. While still at Oxford, he did part
time teaching at the London School of Economics, of which he became the
Director in 1903 and continued in that position until 1908.
As a trained historian, Mackinder was convinced that since everything
must occur at a specific time in a particular place, history (which specializes
in ·the time dimension) and geography (which is the spatial science of the
earth's surface) should never be separated. The concept of geography that
he presented before the Royal Geographical Society in 1887 was of a field
that is concerned with the study of interactions between man and his
environment. His geography was less interested in the details of man-land
relations than in the development of a world view so that his book Britain
and the British Seas (1902) was aptly described as a "regional study in a
global context". It is this interest in the study of a world view that
subsequently got concretized into his famous theory of the "Heartland" or
"The Geographical Pivot of History", the title under which it was originally
presented in 1904.
Through his writings and addresses, Mackinder became a major
influence in British geography. In his presidential address to the Geography
Section (E) of the British Association of Science in 1895 under the title
"Modern Geography: German and English", he stated that while British
geography could be proud of its contribution to field survey, hydrography,
climatology, and biogeography, as regards the "synthetic, philosophical
and ... educational side of the subject" the British contribution fell "so
markedly below the foreign and especially the German standard". The
main points in Mackinder's view of geography as a field of learning, as
evidenced by his presidential address may be summarized as follows.
On the relationship between systematic and regional studies in
geography Mackinder stated that in his view "treatment by regions is a
more thorough test of the logic of the geographical argument than is the
treatment by types of phenomena". In this regard he commended the effort
made by Alexander von Humboldt who "for the first time" made "an
exhaustive attempt to [causally] relate...relief, climate, vegetation, fauna
and the various human activities" in particular places.
Mackinder did not in any way undervalue the contribution of the
systematic approach to geographical inquiry. He noted that regional surveys
could be made on the basis of systematic geography. Since scientific analysis
of the environment depended on geomorphology, "geophysiology"
(oceanography and climatology) and biogeography, any one studying human
geography in the regional context needed the knowledge of the environment
gathered by systematic studies of its different aspects.
Not aware of the concept of cultural borrowings through migrations
in contemporary France, Mackinder drew attention to the role of migration
as an instrument of geographical change, noting that although human
communities were influenced by the geographical environment, their
traditions and practices in relation to the use of the environment are derived

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92 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

from cumulative wisdom resulting from past experience so that by exercising

ingenuity, human groups are able to maintain themselves even in the midst
of very unfavourable natural environment: The student of geography must
remember, therefore, that man's progress on earth is influenced by two sets
of factors natural environment, and cultural tradition forming part of
man's mental equipment.
Mackinder emphasized the need for geographers to pay due attention
to the economic aspects of life in particular places as an essential component
of human geography. He also laid emphasis on the study of political
geography. He regarded politics as an expression of the corporate spirit of
a nation (here the influence of Ratzel's theory of the state is obvious). His
political geography was based on economic and strategic considerations
(see Freeman, 1980, pp. 51-53; and Freeman, 1971, pp. 65-66).
Referring to what he regarded as the distinguishing traits of an "ideal"
geographer, Mackinder (1895) stated that
[An ideal geographer] is a man of trained imagination, more especially
with the power of visualizing forms and movements in space of three
dimensions... he has an artistic appreciation of landforms ... he is able to
depict such forms on the map and to read them when depicted by
others;...he can visualize the play and conflicts of the fluids over and
around the solid forms; he can visualize an environment, the local resultant
of worldwide systems; he can picture the movement of communities...
acting and reacting on the communities arotllld.
The fact remains that as a regional geographer, Mackinder was clearly
"outclassed by many people working at his time, particularly by Vidal de
la Blache (1845---1918), yet he did a great deal to encourage regional geography
in Britain" (Freeman, 1980, p. 52).

Contribution of Patrick Geddes (1854-1934)

Another geographer who made a lasting impact on British geography was
Patrick Geddes. In an essay published in 1898 he expressed views about
the nature of geography comparable to those of Mackinder (1895), but
from a biological perspective, as contrasted to Mackinder's historical
perspective. A botanist by training, Geddes was greatly influenced by the
Darwinian idea of "ordered evolutionary unity". He had been attracted to
geography with a view to investigating the possible relationships between
relief, climate, and natural resources on the one hand and the distribution
of various communities, their economic pursuit, and cultural development,
on the other. He was deeply interested in finding an answer to the question:
How has nature determined, and how has man reacted to his environment?
For an answer, Geddes focused attention on the study of human activities
(Robson, 1981). Influenced by the ideas of the French sociologist Frederic
le Play (1806-1882), Geddes developed a methodology for the study of
human communities through focused attention on the "Place-Work-Family
(Folk)" progression: The essence of his methodology was that place (i.e.,
en\rironment) determines the pattern of economic life, which, in turn,

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 93

determines family norms and social structures. In the case of certain commu
nities of advanced cultures, the steps could be reversed: Folk-Work-Place.
Geddes was a great advocate of learning and imparting education
through regional surveys. His famous slogan was "Survey before action".
Thus, "Geddes has remained a source of fascination to many people, and
his ideas on town planning long survived his death in 1934" (Freeman,
1980, p. 53).

Development of Mapping and Field Work

A distinguishing feature of British geography all along has been a strong
tradition of field work as a method of acquiring knowledge through direct
contact with reality in and around the locality one lived in. By the end of
the nineteenth century, there was general agreement among British
geographers that any adequate survey of the world and a proper
understanding of its geography could be gained only through local study.
This educational method of approaching from "the familiar to the unfamiliar"
had been greatly popularised by T.H. Huxley's Physiography, first published
in 1877. "This work defined for a generation the way in which the earth's
physical features were studied in Britain; it defined also the nature of school
education" (Stoddart, 1975 (1986), p. 180).
According to Huxley (1825-1895), science was "nothing but trai11ed
organized knowledge common sense beginning with observation, facts
collected, proceeding to classification, facts arranged, and ending with
induction, facts reasoned upon and laws deduced". His objective was "to
show young people the fascination of the brook which ran through the
village, or the gravel pit from which the road metals were acquired, or the
ordnance map which revealed their own neighbourhood. From this basis
one could work forward to an understanding of the world; without it the
world would be an abstraction" (Freeman, 1980, p. 54). Training in
cartographic representation of the surveyed data through sketches, drawings,
and maps laid the foundation of the geographic way of analysis, and the
art of mapping, in the students' mind.
The cartographic tradition in British geography was greatly aided
by the mass of data collected by the world expedition of the Challenger,
1872-1876; which had provided so much material that even after 29,000
pages of its reports, and 3000 maps and plates, published in 1895, the
publication was not yet complete. The Challenger publications not only
laid a firm foundation of mapmaking; they were also responsible for the
rise of geographical interest in various fields of environmental research
such as oceanography, climatology, and plant and animal geography, besides
closer interaction with geology with which geography already shared a
common interest in geomorphology. Although the expedition's objective
was the study of submarine relief of ocean floors, its contribution to
climatology was considerable.
The ingenuity of the late nineteenth century British geographers
appropriated oceanography to local field study. H.R. Mill and A.J. Herbertson

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94 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

dealt with observations of water temperature at 9.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m. at
four stations on the west coast and four on the east coast for 1890, 1891,
and 1892. They found that water was warmest in August to September,
and coldest in February to March. The normal monthly temperature was
15.5 ° F but the difference in the temperatures of the coldest and warmest
months ranged between 20 to 24° F. As this ingenuous experiment showed,
even oceanography could be studied by the method of local survey.
At the instance of the Royal Geographical Society, H.R. Mill published
a paper on the theme of local study in 1896. In it, he advocated the publication
of memoirs for each Ordinance Survey 1 :6360 sheet to guide the student.
These memoirs could lead to the preparation of regional memoirs. It was
recommended that each memoir should include an index of names of streams
along with notes on place names, calculation of mean elevation on the
basis of the area enclosed between selected contours, commentary on
landforms and geological structure, and the stage reached in the geographical
cycle of landform evolution, soils, minerals, local magnetic conditions, climate
and natural vegetation, and land use. It was also recommended that aspects
of history and politics be included. All this was to be correlated on a
human geographic basis with reference to settlement patterns, commu
nication network, population distribution, and industrial development.
Although Mill's suggestions were not acted upon owing to cost restraints,
they underlined the distinctive spirit of contemporary methodology in British
geography. It was this distinguished tradition of field survey as the basic
feature of British geography that later led to tl1e conception and successful
execution of Dudley Stamp's massive programme of land utilization survey
of Britain in the 1930s through the association of school-level students on
a voluntary .basis in a little over ten years.
As Preston James (1972, p. 266) noted, during the period of expansion
following the First World War, British geography developed five distinctive
characteristics. These were:
• A conti11uing concern with exploration;
• An emphasis on regional study of various kinds;
• Inclusion of field observation and map interpretation as essential
parts of the training programme of geography students;
• An emphasis on studies in historical geography;
• An emphasis on the relevance of geographical study to economic,
social, and political problems.
The foundations of each of these had been firmly laid by the end of
the 1890s. That explains why Mackinder has sometimes been called the
"grand old man" of British geography.

DEVELOPMENTS IN RUSSIA
The vast expanse of the Russian empire was a most potent factor in the
development of geography as an institutionalized discipline. Peter the Great

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 95

(who ruled Russia from 1682 to 1725) appreciated the need for accurate
geographical information to facilitate the eastward march of the empire.
State supported expeditions were sent to the east and the north to explore
the vast uninhabited stretches of territory; and generous funding was
provided to prepare maps of the explored regions. The main objective of
these explorations was to chart out the topography, and to identify places
where valuable merchandise, such as furs and precious metals could be
found. Later on M.V. Limonosov (who became head of the world's first
officially named Department of Geography at the Russian Academy of
Sciences in 1758) pursuaded the state authorities to charge the exploring
parties with the task of collecting systematic information about the physical
character of land, population, and economic condition. The recognition of
geography as a department in the Russian Academy of Sciences gave
considerable academic prestige to geography as a useful field of scientific
learning. Under the patronage of the Academy, the Department of Geography
launched several schemes of regional surveys and mapping of data.
In the beginning, many of the more important projects in exploration
and mapping were done under the guidance of experienced experts from
Germany and France, but gradually they were replaced by the newly
trained Russian personnel. German geographer Busching was a pastor of
a German Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg from 1761-1765. Portions of
his New Geography dealing with Russia were translated into Russian, and
his suggestion that the imperial territory be divided into natural regions in
order to facilitate administration was quickly adopted so that by 1800,
regional descriptions of a number of the regions had already been published.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century Russian geography had
already developed two distinguishing characteristics. The first was an
emphasis on regions as the basis for organizing geographical work, and
the belief that regions are concrete entities that can be objectively defined.
Second was the continued-use of geography to include a wide variety of
specialities. This was sharply contrasted to the contemporary trend in
Germany where, in the words of James, classical geography was torn apart
as each academic discipline established its separate existence. In Russia,
the classical tradition of geography as a field of study dealing with the
physical environment of the earth and its human inhabitants had continued.
To formalize this structure of geography, the Imperial Russian Geographical
Society was founded in 1845. The Society was charged with promoting
work, alongside geography, in geology, meteorology, hydrology, anthro
pology, and archaeology. The several specialities covered under the Society
were collectively identified as "the geographical sciences".
Unlike in Germany where the deaths of Humboldt and Ritter in 1859
were marked by a break in the continuity of geographical study, in Russia
there was no such break. For this reason, in the case of Russian geography,
it is difficult to pick up any single scholar as the "grand old man of Russian
geography". However, the continuous growth of the pre-Soviet (before
1917) period suffered a serious jolt, like everything else in the country, after

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96 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

the 1917 revolution. In order to survive the persecution of the new regime,
scholars were required to bring their ideas in line with the ideas of Marx
and his followers, who were strong advocates of economic determinism,
and were clearly opposed to any suggestion that natural environment was
a potent force in shaping the life of human communities in particular areas.
Given this major curb on the exercise of free thought, in the post-1917
period, development of geography as a field of learning in Russia was cut
off from the concept and development of the discipline in the rest of Europe
and North America. This isolation became particularly marked owing to
the strong linguistic barrier. Owing to this, developments in Soviet geography
since 1917 have little bearing on the conceptual development of geography
as a science. For this reason, the post-1917 developments in geography in
Russia need not detain us. However, as regards the pre-1917 phase in the
development of geography in Russia, Petr Kropotkin, whose concept of
geography as social ecology, and his concept of "mutual aid" in nature
have been the object of special attention in the recent literature (Galois,
1976; Breitbart, 1981), deserves special mention.

Contributions of Petr Kropotkin (1842-1921)

Born into the Russian aristocracy, Kropotkin attended military school, and
was trained for a career in the state administration. He served as the personal
page of the Tsar for a short duration and the experience of service under
the Tsar created a distaste for court life in the young Kropotkin so that he
opted out for military service in Siberia. Here he came in direct touch with
unspoiled nature and in the course of five years' service in the Siberian
region, geographical exploration formed an important part of his
administrative duties. In the course of his service, he came in touch with
the various peasant communities living in close contact with nature. He
was greatly impressed by the spirit of equality and self-sufficiency among
the peasant communities. It was through the close observation of the life
of peasant communities in Siberia that Kropotkin's distinctive concept of
"nature" began taking shape. His encounter with the plight of Russian
peasants had already aroused his conscience . These two>-nature, and socially
aroused conscience were the seminal influences in the making of Kropotkin
as a social geographer.
Dissatisfied with his life as a military service administrator, Kropotkin
returned to St. Petersburg to enter the university to study geography and
mathematics. For some time he worked for the Russian Geographical Society.
To begin with, his first love was physical geography, but as time passed his
scientific interests were overtaken by social geographic problems. This was
not surprising in view of the social conditions prevailing in Russia in the
1860s, which had raised the conscience of many intellectuals who became
drawn to the social issues of their times. The critical point in Kropotkin's
case came during a visit to the Jura mountains in 1872. The region, at that
time, had been one of the leading centres of anarchist activities. While
there, Kropotkin came in contact with many activists of the movement and

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 97

he too became an anarchist. This led to his joining agitational movements,

being arrested, and sentenced to a prison term in Russia from where he
managed to escape to France. A similar fate awaited him there. After release
from a prison term in France in 1886, he came to England and stayed there
until the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917. At the age of 75,
Kropotkin returned to Russia where he died in 1921. In course of his long
stay in England Kropotkin had served with the Royal Geographical Society
in London.
Kropotkin had rapidly shaped into a distinguished physical geographer
so that the Russian Geographical Society offered him the prestigeous post
of secretary in 1871. Kropotkin rejected the offer, since by this time his
enthusiasm for science had waned following his increased fascination for
social geography, and his rising concern for social ills. Reminiscing upon
his conversion from physical geography to social ecology (or social
geography) Kropotkin wrote:
Science is an excellent thing. I knew its joys and valued them-perhaps
more than many of my colleagues did. Even now as I was looking at the
lakes and hillocks of Finland, new and beautiful generalizations arose
before my eyes...a grand picture was rising and I wanted to draw it ...
to open new horizons for geology and geography.
But what right I had to these highest joys when all around me was
nothing but misery and struggle for mouldy bits of bread; ... all those
sonorous phrases about making mankind progress, while at the same
time the progress-makers stay aloof from those whom they pretend to
push onwards, are mere sophisms made up by minds anxious to shake
off a fretting contradiction (Kropotkin, 1899, pp. 237-241).
Kropotkin's views on social geography were largely shaped by his
anarchist philosophy. Social anarchism maintained firm belief in the
capacity of the people to organize their life without structures of domination
and subordination i.e., it reposed faith in the people's capacity to coordinate
everything from the family to the economy on a cooperative basis. For
anarchists, freedom was an article of faith so that they aimed at elimination
of authoritarian social organization. Kropotkin believed that true individual
freedom can only be cultivated by conscious and reflective interaction of
people with the social environment which supports their personal freedom
and growth. The essence of freedom to him was unity in diversity, a sense
of mutual dependence on others for collective action, but with unfettered
opportunity to express individual differences. His ideas were derived from
his world view of nature developed in the course of his sojourn in Siberia.

Kropotkin's View of Nature and His Concept of Mutual Aid

Kropotkin was writing during the period when social Darwinism was in
ascendancy, and no intellectual could escape the impact of evolutionary
theories. Kropotkin's view of nature was based on three premises namely,
nature is organic (i.e., holistic); it is historic; and it is spontaneous. His
originality lay in the manner in which he interpreted the organic (holistic)

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98 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

characteristics of nature, especially in relation to man's place in the web of

nature. This theme was the key idea and the central focus of his theory of,
and his book on, Mutual Aid (no date). The first two chapters of the book
were devoted to the discussion on mutual aid (i.e., cooperation) among
animals. He demonstrated that both cooperation and competition are present
in nature simultaneously, as also in the case of human communities. Thus,
"man is no exception in nature", wrote Kropotkin, since the same forces
operate in the "living world of nature". In his view, therefore, it was
erroneous to interpret biological evol11tion in terms only of struggle and
competition between species as the social Darwinists insisted on doing.
As one writer pointed out,
A critical point to note here is the opposition between the holistic approach
and the atomistic approach. The latter, which sees in nature a series of
discrete units acting independently, was one of the fundamental tenets of
the pervasive liberal ideology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
It permitted, not to say encouraged, partial analysis ... [and] it rendered
the context irrelevant. This was the view of society, and this was the
view of nature, each supporting the other in a reciprocal fashion (Arblaster,
1972, paraphrased in Galois, 1976).
This is what lay behind the Social Darwinist concept of competition
among organisms in nature, and was supposed to be reflected in the
competitive nature of man.
Kropotkin's view of nature as "historic" was also a product of his
organic view of nature, and his analogy between man and animals. He
wrote that "Man did not create society; society existed before man". He
emphasized that life in nature was not a timeless constant, but a product
of history and historical development. His concept of spontaneity in nature
implied cooperation between organisms (leading to the concept of mutual
aid). The concept of spontaneity also subsumed the concept of freedom,
but Kropotkin's concept of freedom differed from that of other socialists as
well as from the nineteenth-century liberals. According to him, an individual
"will be really free in proportion only as others around him become free"
In its application to human societies, this view of nature implied that:
...all mutual relations of its members are regulated, not by laws, not by
authorities, whether self-imposed or elected, but by mutual agreements
between members of that society and the sum of social customs and
habits...developing and continually readjusted in accordance with the
ever-growing requirements of a free life stimulated by progress of science,
invention and steady growth of higher ideals (Kropotkin, 1970, p. 357).
Kropotkin's historical research indicated that struggles for existence had
been carried out not by individuals, but by groups of individuals cooperating
with one another. This had led him to affirm the predominance of "mutual
aid" over competition in the quest for survival, and in the progress of
human civilization. To him "mutual aid" was "the germ out of which all
subsequent conceptions of justice, and ... morality" had evolved (Kropotkin,
1924, cited in Breitbart, 1981, p. 137).

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 99

Kropotkin's concept of spontaneity in nature also included the

recognition of an element of irrationality. He subscribed to the notion of
"poetry in nature". He spoke about the idea and need of a poetical Jove of
nature, and stressed that geography possessed the potential for awakening
this love. In his view, the works of Humboldt and Ritter were "most liable
to draw the poetical Jove of nature, the desire of knowing more about her
mysteries, ... [and] awakening the thirst for further knowledge" (Kropotkin,
1893, cited in Galois, 1976, p. 88).
Kropotkin recognized the importance of non-purposive behaviour.
He wrote that "bread alone" was not enough; art formed "an integral part
of a living whole ... and the spirit and serene beauty of [artistic] creations
... produce ... beneficial effect on heart and mind". In his view, games and
amusements not only performed a social function in learning, they
represented an expression of the joy oi life.

Kropotkin's Theory of Social Ecology

In course of developing his concept of "mutual aid" among organisms_ and
human groups, Kropotkin laid the foundation for a radical theory of social
ecology. He viewed nature and social groups as organic wholes so that the
action of one part affected all the other parts. He considered social groups
as being subject to many of the same processes as are found in organic
nature. As such, he urged that human communities should discover the
laws of nature in organisms, and act in accordance with those Jaws. It was
not, however, his case that society should refrain from intervening in nature.
All that Kropotkin meant was that human intervention should be based on
a proper understanding of nature, and with due regard so as not to unsettle
its balance. He believed that rather than trying to "legislate" environmental
awareness into the citizenry, attention should be focused on reinforcing a
sense of community and love of place. He firmly believed that rootedness
in a particular environment fosters greater human interaction and a more
intimate relationship with one's surroundings (Kropotkin, 1914, paraphrased
in Breitbart, 1981, p. 140).

Kropotkin's Views on What Geography Ought to Be

In a paper entitled "What Geography Ought to Be?" (1885), published as
part of a larger report on geographical education in Britain, Kropotkin had
made a forceful plea for making the content and methodology of academic
geography socially relevant. According to Kropotkin, the goal of education
was to create in the citizenry a keen awareness of the diverse social (including
econon1ic and political) forces impinging upon their life, and to create in
them a desire to resist political and social manipulation. According to him,
owing to its potential to capture the imagination of children, geography
was most eminently suited to serve this most important objective of the
education of the young, and to inculcate in them mutual respect for other
communities and other nations. r---r� wrote that

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100 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

The task of geography in early childhood [is] to interest the child in the
great phenomena of nature, to awaken the desire of knowing and
explaining them. Geography... must teach us that we are all brethren,
whatever our nationality ... Geography must be... a means of dissipating
prejudice and creating other feelings more worthy of humanity. It must
show that each nationality brings its own precious building stone for the
general development of the commonwealth, and that only small parts
of each nation are interested in maintaining hatreds and jealousies
(Kropotkin, 1885).
To sum up, Kropotkin had tried to revolutionize the discipline of
geography in a number of key areas. "His theories of geographic education,
human ecology, and decentralization were aimed at halting the use of
geographical research for exploitative and imperialistic purposes. Instead
of subscribing to a narrow physical view of the discipline, Kropotkin
emphasized the interrelatedness of natural and social processes, and the
importance to both of cooperation over competition. He also recognized
that a true ecology movement had to be linked to a revival of community,
and hence, radical , political, social, and economic change" (Breitbart, 1981,
p. 150).
As Galois (1976, p. 91) wrote, Kropotkin offers a view of nature and
potentiality of geography which could replace the post-quantitative
revolution "spatial monomania" with a socially conscious account of the
states and conditions on the earth. That Kropotkin's contribution to the
method and philosophy of social and economic geography had remained
generally neglected until recently may be explained by the fact that Kropotkin
had presented these ideas during a period when the capitalist nations of
the West were attempting to consolidate their power over the resources
of the world. Under the prevailing imperialistic accumulation of capital
through colonial exploitation through the political strategy of divide and
rule, Kropotkin's voice had no listeners so that when the Royal Geographical
Society of London wanted to educate its members in geography through
an arranged lecture series in 1887, it looked to young Mackinder who was
then a young man of 26 shaping up into a brilliant speaker and scholar,
rather than to Kropotkin who had by then already made a mark as an
eminent geographer, and was at hand right in the office of the Royal
Geographical Society.

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Starting with the foundation of the Johns Hopkins University in 1875, the
concept of university as a community of scholars had taken root in the
New World. The time had now arrived for setting paradigms for scholarly
performance in each discipline by its own professionals. The pioneering
work in the introduction of the new geography, then making news in
Germany and France, was performed by William Morris Davis who had
taken appointment as an instructor in physical geography in the department
of geology at Harvard in 1878. The first separate university department in

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 101

geography to be established in the United States was at the University of

Chicago in 1903 under the charge of the geologist Rollin D. Salisbury.
Geography had, however, already been present in American schools and
colleges for quite some time. Arnold Guyot (1807-1884), a Swiss scholar,
and former student of Ritter, had arrived in the country in 1848 on invitation
from the Harvard University to deliver a series of lectures outlining the
nature of "new" geography. His lectures had been brought out in book
form under the title Earth and Man: Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography
in its Relation to the History of Mankind, the following year and had remained
the standard reference on Ritter's ideas for a long time. Another early
pioneer in this regard was George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) whose book
entitled Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action had been published
way back in 1864. Through this book, Marsh had introduced the American
public to the ideas of Humboldt, Ritter, and Mary Somerville focusing on
interconnections between man and his natural surroundings. Another
important name in this regard was that of Mathew Fontaine Maury (1806-
1873), a naval officer who had collected a mass of data on winds and
currents of the oceans, and in 1850 had presented a model of atmospheric
circulation on the earth's surface. His book entitled Physical Geography of
the Sea (1855) was widely read.

Contribution of William Morris Davis (1850-1934)

Central to Davis's contribution to geography was the concept of
"geographical cycle", as he chose to call it, though it is more popularly
known as the cycle of erosion. His cycle was a generalized model of the
sequence of landforms that would occur in the course of erosional work of
running water on an elevated portion of the earth's surface, if there were
no change in its surface in relation to elevation or sea level, and no drastic
change in climate. His formula for landform evolution was based on a
combined interaction between the structure of surface rocks, the agency of
landform change (process) and the stage in the sequence of landform change
already reached at a particular time. Davis claimed that his model of
geographical cycle provided a theoretical framework in reference to which
the observed landforms could be described and analysed:
In the scheme of the cycle of erosion ... a mental counter-part of every
landform is developed in terms of its understructure, of the erosional
process that has acted upon it, and the stage reached by such action ...
[And] the observed landform is then described not in terms of its directly
visible features, but in terms of its inferred mental counterpart. The essence
of the scheme is simple and easily understood; yet it is so elastic and so
easily expanded or elaborated that it can provide counterparts for
landforms of the most complicated structure and most invol,,ed history •.

Davis belonged to the period in intellectual history when Darwin's

ideas about the evolution of species were in great currency, and scholars in
most fields of study were increasingly drawn to the concept of development
through gradual and cumulative change over a long period of time (as part

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102 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

of the theory of evolution), and they were attempting to apply it as an

underlying principle in their own researches. Davis's concept of cyclic
development of landforms was clearly Darwinist in inspiration. Using the
evolutionary terminology, Davis identified three stages i n landform
development-youth, maturity, and old age. The power of evolutionary
thinking to bring diverse facts into meaningful relationships had greatly
fascinated Davis, so that he wrote that
We may in imagination picture the life of geographical area as clearly as
we now witneSs the life of a quick growing plant.... The time is ripe for
the introduction of these ideas. The spirit of evolution has been breathed
by the students of the generation now mature all through their growing
years, and its application in all lines of study is demanded (Davis, 1889,
included in Davis, 1909, pp. 85-86).
Davis defended the concept of cycle of erosion with such vigour, and
demonstrated it with such pursuasiveness, that it became almost universally
accepted as a working model for landform analysis.
The key to the cyclic view in geomorphology lies in the idea of
systematic, irreversible change of form through time, and it is from this
that the biological concept of ageing was appropriated by Davis and his
students to the study of landforms. It is important to remember here that
Darwin's theory of evolution was, in reality, far from one of evolution
inte, preted as linear development through passage of time. Darwin was
primarily concerned with identifying the process whereby random
variations in plants and animals could be selectively preserved, and, by
inheritance, lead to changes at the level of the species. Thus, what for
Darwin was a process became for Davis and others a history. For many
geographers like Davis, "evolution implied little more than the idea of change,
development, and progress and Darwin was, in spite of himself, seen as its
author" (Stoddart, 1966).
As the leading figure in American geography in his time, it was natural
that Davis should be concerned with problems in geographic education
and that he should state his position in regard to the nature and methodology
of geography. In a paper entitled "An Inductive Study of the Content of
Geography" (1906), he had clarified that the essence of his approach to
geography was to seek cause-and-effect generalization "usually between
some inorganic elements of the earth... acting as control, and some element
of the ... distribution of the earth's organic inhal:,itants serving as response".
Causal explanatory relationship between organic and inorganic elements
on the earth surface had appeared to Davis "the most definite, if not the
only, unifying principle in geography". He was one of the most prominent
advocates of Darwinism in human geography.
Davis was a member of the Committee of Ten appointed by the National
Education Association in 1892 to review the status of geography in precollege
school programmes and college entrance requirements. The report that
was drafted by Davis, recommended that

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 103

[geography in America] should take lln a more advanced form and should
relate more specifically to the features of the earth surface, the agencies
that produce or destroy them, the environmental conditions under which
these act, the physical influences by which man and the creatures of the
earth are so profound!y affected.
The report was accepted by the government. Following the imple
mentation of these recommendations school geography in the U.S.A. was
transformed from pure memory work to the status of a general science.
However, the Davisian legacy to geography was that, at least at the level
of the American school system, teaching of geography became oriented to
a restricted paradigm of cause-and-effect relationship between physical
environment and human respo11se. In other words, irrespective of changes
at the level of research, geography in the U.S.A. had continued, for a long
time, to be oriented to a deterministic perspective. (For fuller treatment of
the Davisian "strategy" see: Livingstone, 1992, pp. 202-212.)

Contribution of Mark Jefferson (1863-1949)

Geography made rapid progress in the United States, so that in the opening
years of the twentieth century, there were several geography departments
across the country offering university courses under faculties comprising
senior geographers. As the community of geographers grew, there was far
more open questioning on the nature and content of geography-questions
and answers that helped give American geography a distinct identity. Many
scholars had contributed in this development, but a most distinguished
name was that of Mark Jefferson, a former student of Davis, who was
appointed professor of geography at the Normal College in Yapsilanti in
1901, and stayed there until 1939.
As James wrote, Jefferson deserves a special place in the history of
American geography not only because of the enthusiasm he enkindled in
his students, but also for the many contributions to the conceptual structure
of geography that came from his pen. Jefferson strongly disagreed with the
recommendations of the Committee of Ten regarding the content and
conceptual approach to geography. He insisted that the focus of geography
teaching should be "man on the earth", in that order, not "the earth and
man". Jefferson's geography (in sharp contrast to Davis's) was a man
centred geography. Further, Jefferson was opposed to the view of Davis
and the Committee of Ten which had favoured the study of systematic
geography to the exclusion of regional geography of other parts of the
world. As a professor in a teachers' training college, Jefferson realized the
role of knowledge about lands and peoples around the world in training
the mind of the future citizens of a rapidly shrinking world.
Responding (in 1931) to a questionnaire in regard to the nature of
geography, Jefferson stated that his view of geography was many things in
one, so that it defied a short and crisp definition. To Jefferson,
The nature of geography is the fact that there are discoverable causes of
distributions and relations between distributions. We study geography

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104 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

when we seek to discover them .... But there is an art of geography-the

delineation of earth's features and inhabitants on maps-cartography,
and a science of geography, which contemplates the facts delineated and
seeks out the causes of the form taken by each distribution and its
relationship to others (cited in Martin, 1968, pp. 319-321; reference in
James, 1972, p. 369).

Contribution of Elsworth Huntington (1876-1947)

Another fo1111er student of Davis at Harvard, Huntington was a most prolific
writer and an imaginative interpreter of the effects of climate on human
life. Correlating the periods of drought with historical dates, he developed
the hypothesis that the great migrations and invasions of the nomadic
peoples of Central Asia resulting in the Mongol conquests of China and
India, and invasions over eastern Europe, in the thirteenth century, could
be explained by dry climatic spells leading to the drying up of the pastures
that formed the backbone of nomadic economy. He presented this theory
in his book entitled The Pulse of Asia (1907). The book was a great success
in the world of scholarship, and quickly launched its author on the road
to academic fame. He became established as the most knowledgeable person
on the influences of climate on human history. Another book published in
1915 under the title, Civilization and Climate, advanced the thesis that
civilizations could develop only in the stimulating climates of the temperate
regions, and that the monotonous heat of the tropics had destined the
people of those areas to live in relative poverty.
Huntington's books were immensely popular among historians,
sociologists, and medical students (owing to his statements regarding the
close relationship between health and climate), as well as geographers, but
at the time that Huntington was highlighting climatic influences on
civilization in a deterministic style, American geography was fast moving
away from the philosophy of environmental determinism. Owing to this,
Huntington's influence on American geography-its philosophy and
methodology-was rather limited.

Contribution of Ellen Churchill Semple (1863-1932)

Another contemporary geographer whose name deserves special mention
as a leading figure in the formative phase of American geography was
Miss Ellen Churhill Semple who, after a Masters degree in history, had
gone to Germany to study geography under Ratzel at the University of
Leipzig in 1891-1892, and again in 1895. Ratzel's ideas made a lasting
impression on her historically trained mind so that she was inspired to
study American history in relation to its earth conditions. The result was
the publication of her first book entitled American History and its Geographical
Conditions in 1903. The book was an immediate success and confirmed her
status as an eminent teacher of history and geography.
Semple's place in the historiography of American geography lies in
that she had carried Ratzel's philosophy and methodology of geography to

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the New World, and had mesmerized a generation of American students

by her persuasive writing and her enchanting literary style, backed by
convincing scholarship. Through her generations of American geographers
came to subscribe to the view of environmental influences in shaping
man's life upon the earth. Her version of the first volume of Ratzel's
Anthropogeographie was presented in her book entitled Influences of
Geographical Environment (1911). The opening paragraph of the book set its
tone and style:
Man is the product of the earth's surface. This means not merely that he
is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has mothered
him, fed him, set him to task, directed his thoughts, confronted him with
difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits, given
him problems of navigation or irrigation and at the same time whispered
hints to solution.
Further sentences in the paragraph, and many interspersed throughout the
book, emphasized that every aspect of man's life upon the earth (including
his philosophy, religion, as well as physiography) mirrored the influence of
the physical environment of his habitat.
Semple had described her own method of study as comparative. In
the preface to her 1911 book she wrote that her method of research had
been to compare typical peoples of all races and all stages of cultural
development, living under similar geographic conditions. If these peoples
of different ethnic stocks but similar environments manifested similar or
related social, economic, or historical development, it was reasonable to
infer that such similarities were due to environment and not to race.
An intrinsic failure of Semple's style and method was that she had
carried the concept of earth as the controlling factor in human affairs beyond
the possibility of objective verification:
In combining the writings of all nations for examples to illustrate her
principles ...she failed to look carefully for examples that contradicted
her principles.... People who live in pass routes, she wrote, tend to become
robbers of passing travelers. Then she presented case after case of people
in pass routes who rob for a living, but she did not look for people in
pass routes who do not rob; nor did she seek explanation for robbers
who do not live in pass routes (James, 1972, pp. 379-380).
She was, however, careful enough to emphasize that the environment
does not control human actions; it influences them so that there is a tendency
for people to behave in predictable ways, but there could be deviations in
the exact direction taken. To this extent her man-environment thesis was
probabilistic in approach.
It appears somewhat strange that Semple focused upon only the
approach to human geography as presented in the first volume of Ratzel's
Anthropogeographie, the approach that had focused on man-environment
relationships from the perspective of the environment viewed as a deter
mining factor in man's life. The second volume of the book that approached
the problem from the reverse route in terms of the role of human will

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106 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

and choice, and the part played by culture and history therefore, remained
an almost unknown entity in American geography, so that Ratzel was,
despite himself, treated as an old style determinist.

Foundation of Geography at Chicago

As the first full-fledged department of geography in the country, founded
in 1903, the department of geography at the University of Chicago had
played a major role in the development of geography as a field of higher
learning in the United States. Many of its students in the first decade of the
twentieth century became leaders of the profession in the post-First World
War period. They included Carl Sauer, Wellingdon Jones, and Charles Colby.
Geography had made rapid strides in the United States in the first
quarter of the twentieth century. Colby (1955) identified three causes for
this rapid stride:
• The critical role played by the surveys of the American West in
which many geographers had been involved;
• Rapid increase in the volume of America's overseas trade leading
to the demand for better teaching of economic and commercial
geography, and
• Rapid opening up of new natural resources (including oil) which
compelled attention of educators to the need of conserving them.
The school of geography at Chicago had laid down a strong tradition
of field study. In the tradition of the exploring expeditions of the West, all
graduate students were expected to go out of doors to examine the character
of landscapes and to identify geographical problems from direct observation
Games, 1972, p. 390).

Developments since the First World War to the 1950s

After the establishment of the department of geography at Chicago,
university-level geography had spread rapidly across the United States.
Before long, there were professors incharge of geography teaching at several
universities and teachers' training colleges. This led to a great deal of
independent questioning on the nature, methodology, and purpose of
geography as a scientific enterprise. Many like Jefferson had been bold
enough to question the concept of Davis and the Committee of Ten as early
as 1909. As Harlan H. Barrows noted in his famous address to the Association
of American Geographers i11 1922:
...scarcely was physical geography established ...before an insistent
demand arose that it be "humanized". This demand met with prompt
response and the centre of gravity... shifted from the extreme physical
side toward the human side, until geographers in increasing numbers
[began to define their subject as the study of] mutual relations between
man and his natural environment [i.e., the combined physical and
biological environment} (Barrows, 1923).

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The habit of independent thinking inspired by a dedicated band of

scholars now led to vigorous competition for new approaches to geo
graphical inquiry. Two main currents of geographical thought competed
for professional acceptance as the leading paradigm for geographical work.
These were, first, the proposal to develop geography as human ecology,
and second, to take it primarily as the study of places and regions, that is,
to develop geography as chorology. That chorology won the race, of course,
is history.
Chorological studies in geography were required to be much more
than mere descriptions. They were expected to be both analytical and mind
widening. The search for methodology in chorology had led to two somewhat
parallel approaches. One pursued the search for genetic explanation focusing
on the processes of change acting through time. This laid the foundation
for historical geography. The second approach was motivated by the search
for functional explanations for association between phenomena existing
together in segments of horizontal space. This led to the organizing concept
known as the fz,nctional organization of space. The post-First World War period
also witnessed a marked shift in professional emphasis from "objective"
(or "pure") academic studies to studies relating to application of geographical
knowledge in finding solutions to practical problems economic, social,
and political. This led to the movement toward applied geography, i.e.,
geography in the service of society.

Geography as Human Ecology: The Contribution of Harlan H. Barrows

In American geography, the concept of geography as human ecology was
set forth in clear terms for the first time by Harlan Barrows (1877-1960) in
his 1922 presidential address to the Association of American Geographers
(published in the Annals, A.A.G. in 1923). Like Jefferson and others before
him, Barrows underlined that man's adaptation to the conditions of his
habitat is not caused by the physical environment. On the contrary, this
adaptation was a function of human choice the central idea behind the
concept of possibilism, then so much in currency in France. Barrows had
expressed the view that although much of the subject matter of geography
had been lost to the systematic disciplines, the content of geographical
study was still far too broad for its development as a coherent discipline.
He, therefore, proposed that the specialized branches of geography, such as
geomorphology, climatology, and biogeography should be abandoned, and
geographers should concentrate upon human ecology as the unifying
theme the central organizing principle for their work.
Barrows was of the view that "those relationships between man and
the earth which result from his effort to get a living [are] in general the
most direct and intimate", and that most other human adjustments on the
earth's surface are guided by these economic relations. Accordingly, he
recommended that "development of economic regional geography should
be promoted assiduously, and that upon economic geography for the most
part, other divisions of the subject must be based". He emphasized the

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108 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

need for intensive field work and regarded "a thoroughly effective technique
of field work as our greatest immediate need", since, in his view, the field
represented the geograpl)ers' laboratory.

Geography as Chorology: The Contribution of Carl Sauer (1889-1975)

The concept of geography as a chorological science had a long history of
development in Germany and the other countries of Europe. In America,
however, geography had remained confined to the search for geographic
influences in human development. By the beginning of the 1920s, many
among the younger generation of geographers had started questioning the
validity of the content and method of geography as a discipline built around
the basic theme of man-environment relationships. The new generation of
students was anxiously looking for an alternative model for geographical
work to replace the existing one which they were finding increasingly
unsatisfying. It was at this juncture in the history of American geography
that Carl Sauer (1889-1975), who had then taken charge of a new depart111ent
of geography at the University of California at Berkeley, published his
frequently cited essay entitled "The Morphology of Landscape" (1925).
Sauer was critical of the concept of geography built around the theme of
man-land relationships, and underlined the intellectual strait-jacketing that
adherence to this concept as the guiding principle of geographical work
had created, since the concept tied the student to a single dogma that
committed him to a particular outcome of investigation in advance. The
guiding premise was that the environment influenced man, and that in
course of man's life upon the earth the environment itself experienced
changes.
Sauer proposed an alternative model for geography based on the
works of Humboldt and Heitner. Following the teachings of the two eminent
German geographers, Sauer defined geography as the study of things
associated in area on tlie earth's surface, and the differences in tl1e nature
of areal aggregations from place to place in regard to both physical as well
as cultural factors. In particular, he drew attention to the role played by
human action in modifying the physical and biotic features in particular
segments of the earth's surface so that natural landscapes had got slowly
transformed into cultural landscapes (Hooson, 1981).
Sauer's concept of landscape included: " ... the features of the natural
area, and...the forms superimposed on the physical landscape by the
activities of man ... [who] is the latest agent in fashioning the landscape".
The purpose of geography as chorology was defined as the study of "the
development of the cultural landscape out of the natural landscape". Sauer
himself regarded this view of geography as "the newer orientation that
continues the traditional position" (Sauer, 1927, pp. 186-187).
Thus, for Sauer, geography was the study of areas, but not as description
of areas as unique occurrences. The purpose of the study was to identify
the regularities and occurrences from place to place with a view to
formulating generalizations. According to Sauer, in order to appreciate the

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 109

nature of the modifications brought about by human action to the original

landscape of any area, to establish the nature of the processes involved, it
was necessary to go back far enough in time. Morphology of landscape
required a historical perspective. Thus, the concept of chorology in the
study of cultural landscape promoted by Sauer differed from the concept
of chorology advocated by Hellner (and later Hartshorne) in that Sauer's
concept was not ahistorical or anti-historical in spirit and design. On the
contrary, a keen historical insight was viewed as an essential part of the
methodology pursued by Sauer and his students.
In a review of Sauer's geography, written for the Commission on
College Geography, Norton Ginsburg noted that Sauer's geography was a
"scientific" geography that was "concerned with regions as systems, and
with the comparative method as a device for developing hypotheses
concerning areal relations and processes". The major tenets of Sauer's
chorological perspective in the study of landscape morphology were
summarized by Ginsburg as follows:
• Geography is a comparative study of regions
• Description is an essential part of geography, and is coequal in
importance with interpretation
• Focus of geography is not on human activities per se, but on material
features of the landscape resulting from man's activities
• Features of the natural environment play a dual role in geography
in that they furnish a set of structures that give character to areas,
and they are one of the several factors which may help to explain
the forms, patterns, and functions resulting from human occupation
and use of the original natural landscape
• Cultural forms and patterns which are explainable in terms of natural
features have no higher geographic quality than those of historical
antecedents, and other cultural forces and factors
• The geographer engaged in the study of morphology of a landscape
must look backwards in time long enough to gain proper
understanding of the areal relations and processes that give character
to the present landscape.
After the publication of Sauer's "Morphology of Landscape" in 1925,
it had become common for research papers in American journals to report
on situations where physical features of an area were not of major importance,
and cultural factors were more important in giving character to areas. In
a paper entitled "Location as a Factor in Geography", Hartshorne (1927)
demonstrated that location relative to the sources of raw materials, markets,
power, and labour was more important than location relative to relief,
drainage, soils and climate. Thus, to the likes of those who had so far been
"explaining" the concentration of cotton textile factories in New England
by reference to humidity and climate, the new emphasis on relative location

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110 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

(with almost no mention of the role played by the elements of the physical
environment) came as a shock. Chorologists like Hartshorne were, therefore,
accused of "leaving ge out of geography".
The real change over in American geography to chorology as the
basic paradigm for geographical work came only after the publication of
Hartshorne's monumental Nature of Geography in 1939. This book presented
an authoritative account of developments in modern •
geography, and had
soon become essential reading for graduate students in every geography
department. From then on, the Hettnerian concept of geography as a
chorological science became enshrined as the mainstream concept of the
discipline, and it continued to be so until the late 1950s.

Development of Historical Geography

Chorology was centrally focused on the study of present-day landscapes,
and following the Kantian scheme of division of knowledge on a physical
basis between chronological (i.e., historical) and spatial sciences-a view to
which both Hellner and Hartshorne subscribed, chorology remained
indifferent to the historical perspective which, according to the current
interpretation of the Kantian view, belonged to the domain of another group
of sciences. However.. as students started applying themselves to the study
of actual landscapes, they came increasingly to realize that the "being" and
the "becoming" of landscapes were intimately interrelated; so that the
present-day patterns in the landscapes of particular places could not be
adequately appreciated without due attention to the processes (i.e., the time
sequence of events) that had contributed to bring them to their present form.
This meant that in practice, the chorologist was often required to go back
wards in time to adopt a historical perspective. As a result of this realization,
historical geography was soon raised to the status of an essential component
of the American approach to the study of geography as chorology. The
influence of Sauer in this regard was quite obvious. Needless to say, however,
that the historical geography of Sauer and his contemporaries was very
different in nature and orientation from the one that Ellen Semple had laid
down in her enchanting American History and its Geographic Conditions (1903).
The two chief innovators in historical geography of the post-1925
period in the United States were Ralph H. Brown, and Carl 0. Sauer. In his
path-breaking study entitled Mirror for Americans (1943), Brown portrayed
the geography of the eastern seaboard of the North American continent for
the period around 1810 on the basis of statements contained in the writings
of a large variety of contemporary authors. Brown's imaginative approach
to re-creation of the past geography of a region, (in terms of how
contemporary scholars had perceived it) had, in some ways, foreshadowed
the modern orientation to environmental perception in geographical studies.
In a second book entitled Historical Geography of the United States (1948),
Brown had traced geographical changes that had taken place in the course
of the country's settlement by European emigrants.
The other major influence in the development of historical geography

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITIER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 111

was Carl Sauer himself. He, and a large number of his graduate students
at Berkeley, produced a number of studies of past landscapes. _A,. major
principle that emerged from these studies, focused upon sequences of the
settlement process in particular areas, was that "the same physical conditions
of land could have quite different meanings for people with different attitudes
toward their environment, different objectives in making use of it, and
different levels of technological skills" (James, 1972, p. 407). For example,
in agricultural areas slope had one meaning for the man with a hoe and
quite another for the man with a tractor-drawn plough. Likewise, people
with one kind of culture might concentrate their settlements on flattish
uplands, whereas another group belonging to a different cultural tradition
might concentrate its dwellings in the valleys.
Derwent Whittlesey was another major contributor to historical studies
in geography. In a note published in the Annals, of the Association of
American Geographers in 1927, he described studies focused upon the
processes of change in the settlement of an area as studies of sequent occupance.
According to Whittlesey,
each generation of human occupance is linked to its forebear and to its
offspring, and each exhibits an individuality expressive of mutations of
some elements of its natural and cultural characteristics. Moreover, the
life history of each discloses the inevitabilit)' of the transformation from
stage to stage.
Clearly enough, sequent occupance represented the antithesis of the
concept of environmental determinism. In the opinion of Preston James,
the sequent occupance studies represented a kind of cultural determinism in
that they had started with the premise that with every significant change
in attitudes, objectives, and technical skills of the inhabitants of an area, the
resource base of the region is put to fresh appraisal.

Development of Applied Geography

As large numbers of trained geographers poured out from the new university
departments, it was natural that their young enquiring minds should
question the practical utility of their knowledge in society's efforts to improve
the quality of life. On this score, they found their discipline to be severely
wanting. They noted that field studies in small areas carried out by students
as part of the requirement for a formal degree were of little practical utility.
They expressed themselves in favour of reorienting geographical education
in a manner that would make it more relevant to the resolution of overriding
social, economic and political problems of the day. In response to this
rising demand, a large number of studies of an applied nature carried out
with a view to providing valuable inputs in planning and remedial action
were taken up and their results published. Thus, geography took on an
applied perspective. As a result geographers now began to find employment
as consultantS-in both public as well as private sectors.
The breakthrough in the use of geography professionals in the study

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112 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

of practical problems had come as a result of the First World War in the
course of which geographers had rubbed shoulders with other specialists
to find solutions to real-life problems. In the decades following the First
World War, all through the 1920s and 1930s different kinds of applied
research were undertaken. In the Second World War, a large number of
geographers had taken up appointments in the army and civilian
departments, and there was growing appreciation of their contribution.
The trend had continued.

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GEOGRAPHY AFTER HUMBOLDT AND RITTER: DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE GERMANY 115

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5
Developments in Geography Since
World War II: From Areal to
Spatial Analysis

SOURCES OF DISSATISFACTION WITH REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY

In a mid-century review of the status and content of geography, Freeman
(1961) had noted that dissatisfaction with the work of regional geographers
of the chorological pursuasion had, by that time, led many to wonder
whether the regional approach could ever be academically satisfying. The
result was that the new generation of geographers began to be increasingly
drawn to systematic studies. Answering the question: Why was regional
geography so dissatisfying? Freeman (pp. 142-143) gave three reasons: In
the first place, he observed, much of regional study in geography was
"naive", especially that carried out at the macro scale. At this scale, a good
number of studies were based on the cor1cept of natural regions put forward
by Herbertson. To be sure, the concept had proved a useful pedagogic
device at the time it had been proposed, but at the mid-century it could
hardly stand scientific scrutiny. Secondly, many of the works in the
regional stream appeared to "drag wearily through a sequence of apparently
unrelated facts", both physical and human, paying "little attention to the
relationship between the physical environment and the inhabitants and in
some cases, they included the most involved digressions into such matters
as the physical history. of an area". As Freeman saw it, the trouble with
regional geography was that many of its practitioners had "tried to include
too much". A third, and more subtle, difficulty was that the marked success
of the pays treatment in the Paris basin had led many students to the false
belief that the whole of the earth's surface could be divided into clearly
identifiable regions,each endowed with "a quality of uniqueness", with a
personality of its own, so that regional geography completely neglected
theory and generalization-it neglected to look for the general in the
particular-a trait common to all fields of scientific learning. As Freeman
wrote,
It is, of course, true that there may be marked differences in the agriculture
and standard of living between adjacent regions, but...there are other
aspects of human personality expressed in art, drama, sport, religion,
116

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DEVELOPMENTS IN GEOGRAPHY SINCE WORLD WAR II: FROM AREAL TO SPATIAL ANALYSIS 117

that may override differences in economic standards clearly related to

the physical environment .... Perhaps the most dangerous word in regional
geography is "natural". It has so often been applied in a supposedly
scientific sense to provide a world framework into which men and their
activities must somehow be fitted.
The view that the enshrining of regional work as the core of geograp
hical science had led to neglect of the systematic perspective had been
projected most forcefully in a paper by Edward Ackerman in 1945. The
paper was based on Ackerman's experience of teamwork with experts drawn
from other social sciences for the US intelligence services during the Second
World War. The demand of the teamwork revealed shocking weaknesses of
geographers in the systematic aspects of their discipline so that when they
were called upon to provide intelligence material for the army, their
contribution was extremely thin in content. Ackerman emphasized that
geographers needed to be much more firmly grounded in their topical
specializations, since this alone could save geographical work from
superficiality, and contribute to making its content rich. Ackerman made it
clear that his call for greater attention to systematic aspects of geography
in no way implied shifting the emphasis away from regional synthesis. His
contention was that improved understanding of the systematic aspects of
the phenomena studied by geographers would lead to greater depth in the
geographers' interpretation of areal organization in particular places and
territories. Ackerman's paper represented, in many ways, the conscience of
his generation. He had given voice to what was being generally felt by the
profession at large at that time. This is most evident from the cooperative
venture of American geographers at mid-century stock taking of the status
and content of geography in America. The result was published in 1954
under the title American Geography: Inventory and Prospect, which included
wide-ranging reviews of all the important systematic branches of geography
Games and Jones, 1954).
In the development of systematic perspective, Ackerman saw a remedy
for the geographers' extreme isolation from other sciences-physical and
social. In a forceful paper published in 1963 he pointed out that the dominant
concept of geography as "areal differentiation" derived from Hellner
"favoured (although it did not demand logical!}') a goal of investigation
independent of the goal of other sciences. The same might be said of another
important concept in the field, that of areal functional organization,
introduced by Platt (1959)". He lamented that "In our search for a solid
footing ... many of us tried to separate ourselves from the other sciences...
and some of us saw geography as an end in itself rather than in
the broader context as a contributor to a larger scientific goal". By
around 1950, there was a strong and widespread feeling in the United
States that geography needed to break out from its professional isolation
to which the Hettnerian concept of geography as chorology had contributed
to lead us.

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118 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

---- --

THE SCHAEFER-HARTSHORNE DEBATE: FROM REGIONAL

EXCEPTIONALISM TO GENERALIZATION AND THEORY
This pent up feeling of disappointment with the state of affairs in
contemporary geography had found voice in a forceful paper by Schaefer
(1953), an economist turned geographer, then teaching at the University of
Iowa. This posthumously published paper (Schaefer had passed away while
the paper was still in the press) was aptly entitled "Exceptionalism in
Geography". It became a rallying point for the large crop of young
geographers who were feeling greatly dissatisfied with the "sterile" regional
paradigm of geography as chorology. Schaefer criticized the "exceptionalist"
claims made for regional geography, and put forward a strong case for
geography to adopt the philosophy and methodology of scientific positivism.
Debunking the contention that geography could not adopt a systematic
perspective owing to the restriction imposed by the uniqueness of places
and regions, Schaefer wrote that most sciences , including physics and
economics deal with unique phenomena and geography could claim no
special status on that account. All sciences study unique events which they
seek to explain in terms of general laws. This should equally apply to
geography. He made a strong case for geographers to focus attention on
the formulation of laws governing spatial distribution of phenomena on
the earth surface since it is spatial arrangement of phenomena, and not the
phenomena themselves that are the special concern of geography as a science.
He defined geography as the science of spatial arrangements, and underlined
the essential difference between the nature of laws developed in geography
vis-a-vis the laws of the other social sciences. Geographical laws are pattern
laws, as contrasted to the process laws of the other social science disciplines.
Schaefer advocated the need for effective channels of academic commu
nication with other social science disciplines, and to interact with them
more freely than had been the case in the past. He firmly believed that a
full understanding of the assemblage of phenomena in particular places
described by the geographer cannot come without due understanding of
the process laws governing their functions. Thus, like Ackerman, Schaefer
too was a strong advocate of interdisciplinary teamwork.
Since Schaefer's paper had posed a challenge to the concept of
geography projected and popularized by Hartshorne's Nature of Geography
(1939) , it was natural that Hartshorne should offer a rebuttal in the form
of a well-argued response. The first reaction from him came in the form of
a letter to the editor of the Annals, A.A.G. (1954), in which the original
paper of Schaefer had been published. This was followed by two full
length papers in the same journal in 1955 and 1958, and finally by his
monograph entitled Perspectives on the Nature of Geography (1959). Hartshorne
used this monograpr, to present a wide-ranging review on the nature of
the subject, including discussions on, and clarifications about, many points
of criticism regarding the concept of geography as areal differentiation.
The book was intended as a supplement to his Nature of Geography.
In his new monograph, Hartshorne stuck to the essentially chorological

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DEVELOPMENTS IN GEOGRAPHY SINCE WORLD WAR 11: FROM AREAL TO SPATIAL ANALYSIS 119

concept of geography propounded in his earlier book, and he reasserted that

"Geography is a discipline that seeks to describe and interpret the variable
character of the earth's surface as the world of man" (p. 47); and underlined
that although time was important in the study of geography, the discipline's
"primary concern" was to describe "the variable character of areas as fo1111ed
by existing features in interrelationships"; that is, functional relationships
between phenomena of diverse origin existing together in particular places
at the present time. Accordingly, in Hartshorne's view, historical geography
as the branch of geography as a professional field could focus only on the
study of the historical present, also called "past geographies". There was,
nevertheless, a perceptible shift in Hartshorne's earlier position regarding
the centrality of regional synthesis in geographical work. In his chapter
entitled "Is Geography Divided between Systematic and Regional
Geography?", he wrote that geography cannot be divided between systematic
studies which analyze individual elements over the whole world, and those
which analyze complete complexes of elements by areas, since:
The former are logically a part of the appropriate systematic sciences, the
latter simply cannot be carried out. All studies in geography analyze the
areal variations and connections of phenomena in integration. There is
no dichotomy or dualism, but rather a gradual range along a continuum
from those which analyze the most elementary complexes in areal variation
over the world to those which analyze the most complex integrations in
areal variation in small areas. The former we may appropriately call
"topical" studies, the latter "regional" studies, provided we remember
that every truly geographic study involves the use of both the topical
and the regional approach (pp. 121-122).
In another chapter, "Does Geography Seek to Formulate Scientific
Laws or to Describe Individual Cases?", Hartshorne emphasized that the
primary objective of science is to extend the frontier of knowledge and to
understand reality. "One of the most important methods of accomplishing
this purpose ... is the construction and application of scientific laws. But to
assert, as some do, that the formulation of scientific laws is the end-purpose
of science is to confuse the means with the end" (p. 168). The focus on the
essential task of geography as the study of complex integrations in unique
places, meant (in Hartshorne's view) that geography, by virtue of the nature
of its subject matter, must remain restricted to description and explanation
of individual cases, i.e., particular areal complexes. In this context, Hartshorne
(1959, pp. 169-170) highlighted the essential nature of geography as a science
in the following words:
Geography seeks (1) on the basis of empirical observation as independent
as possible of the person of the observer, to describe phenomena with the
maximum degree of accuracy and certainty; (2) on this basis, to classify
phenomena, as far as re3tity permits, in terms of generic concepts or
universals; (3) through rational consideration of the facts thus secured and
classified, and by logical process of analysis and synthesis, including the
construction and use wherever possible of general principles or laws of

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120 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

generic relationships, to attain the maximum comprehension of the specific

relationships of phenomena; and (4) to arrange these findings in orderly
systems so that what is known leads directly to the margin of the unknown.
Hartshorne emphasized that geography is a field the subject matter
of which includes the greatest complexity of phenomena, and at the same
time is concerned, more than most other disciplines, with the studies of
individual and unique cases. "For both these reasons geography is less
able than many other fields to develop and use scientific laws, but
nonetheless, like every other field, it is concerned to develop them as much
as possible" (Hartshorne, 1959, p. 170).
The essential difference in the positions taken by Hartshorne and
Schaefer was that: "Hartshorne's was a positive view of geography:
Geography is what geographers have made it. Schaefer's view on the other
hand, was a normative one, what geography should be, irrespective of
what it had been" Uohnston, 1983, p. 57). The fact, however, was that since
Hartshorne's position was fast losing ground, geographers in increasing
numbers had, by the end of 1950s, veered round to Schaefer's view of
geography as a spatial science. For this, they used methods of the other
systematic sciences and were increasingly concerned with quantification
and development of theory, so that by the time Hartshorne's Perspective
had appeared in 1959, the quantitative revolution had reached its zenith
(Burton, 1963).
As many scholars have noted, the contrast in the postures adopted by
Schaefer and Hartshorne was more apparent than real. In his 1955 paper
Hartshorne had, indeed spoken of an "essential agreement" between himself
and Schaefer. As Gregory (1978) wrote, "It is certainly hard to see how
Hartshorne's simple correlations differ from Schaefer's morphological laws,
given that they can both be reduced to spatial patterns". The two differed
only in the status that each ascribed to these patterns in geography as a
field of scholarly study. While Schaefer regarded identification of laws
about patterns of spatial relationships as the raison d'etre of geography,
Hart�horne (1939, pp. 551 and 644) maintained that although identification
of "concepts, relationships and principles that shall... apply to all parts of
the world" was important, it could not be taken as the primary goal of
geographic study. Such an emphasis, in Hartshorne's view, divested specific
regions "of the fullness of their color and life" which according to him was
the ultimate object of geographical inquiry. In a nutshell, "in principle,
their disagreement was about ends and not means" (Gregory, 1978, p. 32).
Hartshorne was not opposed to the scientific method of the positivists,
except in that he thought that owing to the uniqueness of areal integrations
studied in geography, the method of positivist science was, in general, not
applicable in geography. Schaefer, on the contrary maintained that uniqueness
was a general problem of science in that every object was in detail unique
but at the same time it shared some characteristics with other such objects.
The problem of uniqueness was, therefore, no ground for geography to
adopt an "exceptionalist" stance. As Guelke wrote:

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In extending the idea of uniqueness to everything, Schaefer effectively

removed a major logical objection to the possibility of a law-seeking
geography and demonstrated that Hartshome's view of uniqueness as a
special problem was untenable for anyone who accepted the scientific
model of explanation (Guelke, 1977b, also see Guelke, 1977a).
The net outcome of the Schaefer-Hartshorne debate was that geography,
by the end of the 1950s at least in the United States had come increasingly
to be viewed as a science requiring the use of the "scientific method" so that,
like other sciences, it could also develop laws and theories relevant to its
field of study. This brought about a distinct shift in emphasis from regional
to systematic studies, which meant that geography thereafter began
increasingly to be viewed as a field of study that required urgently to adopt
a nomothetic perspective, that is, it required to develop the habit of seeking
the general in the particular. This also involved a shift from areal to spatial
studies; from absolute to relative locations; and from areal integrations to
spatial interaction, circulation and movement (which generated the spatial
patterns which geography as a spatial science sought to explain with a view
to identifying morphological laws underlying them). Geography began now
on to be increasingly viewed as a "discipline in distance" (Watson, 1955), so
that the network of communication lines, and the flow of goods, people, and
messages passing through them began to receive increasing attention. As
the discipline dealing in distance, geography became increasingly a study of
"spatial interaction" (Ullman), since it is these interactions that created the
spatial patterns that new geography as spatial science sought to explain.
Thus, the new orientation in geography toward search for theory and
morphological laws became increasingly focused on the study of spatial
patterns of diverse kinds. Patterns in space represented essentially
geometrical forms of different kinds, so that the study of geometries of
space became the central theme of the law-seeking new geography of the
1950s and 1960s. For this reason, for quite some time, geography became
dominated by the language and method of geometry. Geographers were
increasingly drawn toward the development of theories that could explain
and predict patterns of spatial interaction and the resultant spatial forms.

THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AS

A SCIENCE OF SPATIAL ANALYSIS
The rr\Ovemen
'
t towards new geography as the science of spatial analysis
with a well-defined theoretical focus had started, to begin with, in a few
selected centres in the United States around the middle of the 1950s, and
from there it quickly spread to other centres in and outside the United
States. These major centres of development were:
• The University of Iowa (to which Schaefer had belonged, although
the leader of the school was Harold McCarty);
• The University of Wisconsin at Madison (where John Weaver's
Ph.D. thesis submitted way back in 1943 had been one of the early

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122 GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT-A CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF IDEAS

examples of the application of quantitative techniques in geography.

The work related to this thesis became the basis of a widely used
statistical procedure for defining agricultural regions developed by
Weaver in 1954). Most of the advance came only later under the
leadership of A.H. Robinson who, in collaboration with Bryson (a
colleague in the department of meteorology), focused attention on
the development of statistical methods in cartography.
• The University of Washington at Seattle became, under the leadership
of W.L. Garrison, the most important centre for the development of
theoretically oriented geography, using the method of science and
mathematics in the study of problems in urban and economic
geography. The central place theory became a major focus of work
at this centre. Edward Ullman (1980) was an important member of
the University of Washington team of new geography as the science
of spatial interaction. The department also benefited from the visits
of the Swedish theoretical geographer Hagerstrand (a leader in the
development of methods for the study and prediction of spatial
patterns and processes). Several of the leaders of the new geography
in 1960s (including Berry, Bunge, Dacey, Marble, Morrill and Tobler)
were students of Garrison at Seattle.
• A fourth important influence in the development of quantitatively
oriented theoretical geography of the 1950s was the astronomer
J.Q. Stewart of the University of Princeton, who drew attention to
regularities in the distribution of various aspects of population
dynamics that seemed to follow laws similar to those of physics.
His interest in identifying law-like behaviour in the themes studied
by social scientists had led him to develop a new field of study
that he named social physics, which was based on the premise that
"dimensions of society are analogous to the physical dimensions
and include numbers of people, distance, and time". Social physics
dealt with observations, processes and relations in terms of these
three variables. According to Stewart, "the distinction between social
physics and sociology is the avoidance of subjective description in
the former" (Stewart, 1956). Stewart's ideas were first introduced
in geography in 1947 in a paper published in the Geographical Review
and subsequently in another paper in 1956. Later, he collaborated
with the geographer William Warntz (Stewart and Warntz, 1958,
1959). The latter wrote extensively on this subject. His best known
work was Toward a Geography of Price (1959).
The work carried out under the social physics tradition contrasted
markedly with the work of the other three groups noted above in that:
Stewart and Warntz ... conformed more than any others to Bunge's call
for scientific approach which aimed at a high level of generality. Second,
there was the nature of the approach to theory, for macrogeography
[of Stewart and Warntz] was inductive in its search of regularity rather

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DEVELOPMENTS IN GEOGRAPHY SINCE WORLD WAR II: FROM AREAL TO SPATIAL ANALYSIS 123

than testing deductive hypotheses. Finally, the analogies sought for human
geography were in a natural science physics-and not in the other soci