Lecture 4

• Geography started being taught in the UK in ~1900
• Herodotus (485-425 BCE)

  • ‘The Histories’
  • Account of on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars
  • Also contains a lot of geographic and ethnographic information
  • Oikoumene’ (known world)
  • Description of the flow of the Nile
  • Indirect accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

  • Provided evidence of the spherical form of the Earth
• Yü Chi T’u

  • The Map Tracing the Tracks of Yu (3rd century BCE)survey of soils, agricultural products and rivers of several Chinese provinces
  • Produced in ~1137 CE from information in 3rd century BCE survey – drawn with grids
  • Also used for printing
  • Three physical geography themes identified: coastal hydrography and description; local topographies; geographic encyclopedia
• Eratosthenes (276-~195BCE)

  • Chief librarian at Alexandria and ‘Father of Geography’
  • Provided first accurate measurement of the circumference of the Earth
  • Calculated its axial tilt and introduced concept of meridians and parallels
  • In his 3 volume Geographika (now lost) he mapped the known world and classified it into climatic zones
• Strabo (64BCE-~CE24): compiled 17 volume Geographica largely from existing sources; survived into the Renaissance world. An early appreciation of sea-level change
• Ptolemy (100-178): a Greco-Egyptian who wrote 8 volume Geography, which included a mathematical description of the Earth, a volume of maps,and the calculation of latitude and longitude (basis of European maps for the next 1400 years!)
• The Muslim World (7th to 14th CE)

  • Preserved writings of the Greek and Roman worlds
  • Al-Idrisi (1099-1180) produced a descriptive geography to assist pilgrimages
  • Significant contributions to mathematical geography and specialist treatments of topics such as climate
• Christian Geography of the Middle Ages (c. 1300)

  • Early descriptive accounts to aid pilgrims
  • Geographies based on scripture
  • Encyclopedias documenting places and features
  • As much about explaining the divine order of things (both physical and societal) as their manifestation on earth
• Up to the 15th century, Europeans still reliant on Classical Geography

  • Ptolemy’s Geographia translated from Greek to Latin in 1407 (left 1482)
  • Map based on calculations(not always correct)
  • Medieval map makers made more “important” countries bigger
  • Not appropriate for navigation
  • European map making changed after this
• Age of (European) Discovery

  • European exploration of Africa, Asia and Americas from the early 15th to the 16th century
  • Later European exploration of Australia and New Zealand and interior of North America through 18th century
  • Primary economic/political driver for acquiring knowledge about the physical geography of colonies, and potential colonies (of course leaving a colonial legacy across the globe)
• The birth of modern Physical Geography:The Age of Enlightenment

  • Age of Enlightenment (Age of Reason) (~early 17th– early 19th century) in Europe characterised by a shift from traditional (religious) authority to rationality and analysis
  • cartesian geometry, powers and superscript, law of refraction
  • 1637 René Descartes – “Je pense, donc je suis”(Discourse on the Method)
• The birth of modern Physical Geography:The Age of Enlightenment

  • “the rise of individual autonomy over traditional community, the rise of secularizing reason over inherited authority, the disengagement of nature from a supernatural worldview...the rise of science as both technique and worldview..” (Shea and Huff,1995)
  • James Cook’s first entry into the Pacific in 1769 a key moment in the scientific study of the subject matter of Physical Geography
  • Remember the impact that this colonialism has had on the world –cannot be ignored
• Alexander von Humboldt

  • Expedition to South and Central America, 1799-1804
  • Enormous range of observations and measurements relevant to physical geography as well as meteorology, volcanology and geophysics, but especially to biogeography
  • Many publications, including the 5 volume Kosmos
• Charles Darwin

  • Voyage of the ‘Beagle’ (1831-1836): explaining the formation of coral atolls
  • Founded what became the Met Office
• William Morris Davis

  • Building on Hutton, Lyell, Powell etc
  • Cycles of uplift and denudation repeated – Old,Mature, Young landscapes
  • Later critiques focus on the desire to classify rather than explain process
  • Davis was a founder (and president) of the Association of American Geographers in 1904
• Friedrich Ratzel

  • Developed concept of the organic state applying analogy of organic expansion to geopolitics; created term lebensraum ‘living space’.
  • His major work Anthropogeographie focused on effect of environmental factors on human history and culture and society.
• Lebensraum – human activities and societies are influenced by physical geography – humans/species that adapt to one location will naturally migrate/spread to another – a natural feature of all species. Nazi’s used this to justify expansion to the Eastern Europe
• Ellen Churchill Semple

  • Studied under Ratzel and presented his ideas on environmental influences on human society to an Anglophone audience. Argued that environmental rather than social factors influence culture.
  • Although her work was categorised as environmental determinism, she denied a straightforward effect of the physical environment on human society