Geographers Biobibliographical Studies Volume 23 9780826471857, 9781474226929, 9781474226905

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GEOGRAPHERS Biobibliographical Studies VOLUME 23

GEOGRAPHERS BIOBIBLIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES This volume is part of a series of works on the history of geography planned by the Commission on the History of Geographical Thought of the International Geographical Union and the Commission of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science. Chair: Professor Vincent Berdoulay, Département de Géographie, Université de Pau, rue de Doyen Poplawski, 64000 Pau, France. Secretary: Dr Mark Bassin, Department of Geography, University College London, UK. Other Full Members: Dr Patrick Armstrong, Department of Geography, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6907 (also Co-Editor: Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies); Dr Ahmed Bencheikh, Département de Géographie, Université Cadi Ayyad, B.P.S., 17, Quartier Amerchich, Marrakech, Morocco; Dr Athanase Bopda, Cameroon; Professor Gary Dunbar, 13 Church Street, Cooperstown, New York 13326, USA; Professor Josefina Gomez Mendoza, Spain; Dr Lia Osorio Machado, Brazil; Dr Hideki Nozawa, Japan; Dr Ute Wardenga, Institut für Länderkunde, Schongauerstrasse 9, 04329 Leipzig, Germany; Dr Hong-key Yoon, Department of Geography, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. Honorary Members: Professor Anne Buttimer, Department of Geography, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland; Professor David Hooson, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, California, 90047, USA; Professor Philippe Pinchemel, Centre de Geohistoire, 7 rue Malher, 75007 Paris, France; Professor Keiichi Takeuchi, Department of Geography, Komazawa University, Setagayaku, Tokyo 154, Japan; Professor Johannes A. van Ginkel, Fakultiet der Ruimtelijke Wetenskappen, Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 8, P.B. 80125, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. Co-Editor: Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies: Professor Geoffrey J. Martin, 33 Fairgrounds Road, Woodbridge, Connecticut 06525, USA.

GEOGRAPHERS Biobibliographical Studies VOLUME 23

Edited by Patrick H. Armstrong and Geoffrey J. Martin on behalf of the Commission on the History of Geographical Thought of the International Geographical Union and the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in 2004 by Continuum © International Geographical Union, 2004 Patrick H. Armstrong and Geoffrey J. Martin have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: ePDF: 978-1-4742-2690-5 ePub: 978-1-4742-2691-2     

Geographers: biobibliographical studies. Vol. 23 1. Geographers – Biography – Periodicals 910’92’2 G67 Series: Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, volume 23

Contents

T h e Contributors Introduction

Patrick H. Armstrong and Geoffrey J. Martin

viii 1

Thomas Baines 1820-1875

Vivian Louis Forbes

George Brown Barbour 1890-1977

Roger Mark Selya

14

Lucien Febvre 1878-1956

Paul Claval

35

Sir Cyril Fox 1882-1967

Colin Thomas

50

Augustus Charles Gregory 1819-1905 and Francis Thomas Gregory 1821-1888

Marion Hercock

61

J o h n Walter Gregory 1864-1932

J.M. Powell

73

Cotton Mather 1918-1999

Pradyumna P. Karan

85

Borivoje Z. Milojevic 1885-1967

Milorad Vasovic

97

Mungo Park 1771-1806

Charles W J . Withers

Jose Salazar Ilarregui 1823-1892

Luz Maria O . T a m a y o Perez and Jose O m a r M o n c a d a M a y a 116

Chandra Pal Singh 1939-2000

Anu K a p u r

126

William Smith 1769-1839

Patrick Armstrong and Jill Rutherford

140

Ilaria Luzzana Caraci

152

Giuseppe Dalla Vedova 1834-1919 Index

105

163

The Contributors

Patrick Armstrong teaches Geography at the University of Western Australia, and is co-editor of Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies. Ilaria Caraci is Professor of the History of Geography and Geographical Discoveries, and also Vice-Rector at ' R o m a T r e ' University, Rome, Italy. Paul Claval is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of ParisSorbonne. Vivian Forbes is Curator of the m a p collection in the Reid Library at the University of Western Australia, and also teaches Cartography at Curtin University of Technology, Perth. Marion Hercock runs a tour company that specializes in following the routes of the early Australian explorers. Anu K a p u r teaches Geography at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. Pradyumna P. K a r a n is Professor of Geography, University of Kentucky, USA. Geoffrey J . Martin is Emeritus Professor of Geography, Southern Connecticut State University, and is co-editor of Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies. Jose O m a r Moncada M a y a is a leader of a research team at the Institute of Geography at the Autonomous National University of Mexico. Luz Maria O . T a m a y o Perez is a research worker at the Institute of Geography at the Autonomous National University of Mexico. Joseph Powell is Emeritus Professor of Historical Geography at the School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Jill Rutherford has taught in a number of schools is Britain and Hong Kong, and is currently Director of International Baccalaureate at O a k h a m School, England. Roger M. Selya is Professor of Geography, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

The Contributors

vii

Colin Thomas is Reader in Geography at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. Milorad Vasovic is a retired Professor of Geography from the University of Belgrade, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Banja Luka, Republic of Srpska. Charles Withers is Professor of Geography at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Introduction

T h e Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies series was launched in 1977, and thus has been published for over 25 years. In its 23rd volume is has built up to a resource that provides biographical and bibliographical details approaching 400 persons who influenced the development of geographical thought. Although each essay is complete in itself, the collection also has claims to be considered as a whole. Crossreferences are frequently given, so that a reader can make comparisons with identities considered in earlier volumes, more easily placing a particular thinker in the context of the development of the subject as a whole. T h e series is now substantial enough for there to be every possibility that someone mentioned in one essay as being an important influence on a particular individual, or to have been influenced by him or her will have been examined in an earlier volume in the series. This is particularly the case with the present collection: a number of the contributions contain references to persons whose lives and work have already been examined. T h e reader is encouraged to make use of these notes, which serve to bind the volumes in the series together. Although there are individuals here who lived in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there is an emphasis on the nineteenth. Three essays (covering four individuals - there is one pair of brothers) deal with those who spent an important part of their lives in Australia. Two of these also worked in Africa, where they join a slightly earlier explorer. Another nineteenth-century figure comes from Mexico. Europe is represented by England, Scotland, Wales, Serbia and Italy. Augustus Charles Gregory (1819-1905) and Francis Thomas Gregory (18211888), although born in England, lived in the colonies since their earliest years and were very much in the mould of the traditional 'outback' Australian explorers. Competent in surveying techniques and in bushcraft, they documented the plants, animals, native peoples and mineral and other resources of the north and west of Australia. Thomas Baines (1820-1876) was a close contemporary of the brothers, and comparisons may be made. He spent much of his adult life as a map-maker, surveyor and artist in southern Africa, but he met Augustus Gregory in Sydney in mid-1855 and joined him on the North-West Australian Exploring Expedition. J o h n Walter Gregory (1864—1932) was apparently no relation to the Gregory brothers. His life spanned the last four decades of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth. His work included what could be considered exploration in the traditional sense, and the development of university science in a thoroughly twentieth-century manner. He worked in both Britain and Australia (and also in Africa, Spitzbergen, the West Indies, Asia and North America), and in both geography and geology. T h e story of his death - drowning following the capsizing of his canoe in northern Peru — has a certain nineteenth-century ring to it.

Introduction

ix

Mungo Park (1771-1806), originally from Scotland, qualified as a doctor and is best known for his explorations in West Africa, and in particular his attempts to trace the course of the Niger. He emphasized the importance of checking the statements of 'ancient authorities' through on-the-ground field exploration. His death, in an attack by natives in a narrow gorge on his second African expedition, served to emphasize the physical dangers of exploration. William Smith (1769-1839), although his life's work was confined to Britain, had influence spreading far beyond. He not only made important contributions to stratigraphy, but developed the science of geological mapping. He is included here not only because of his indirect effect on the development of geomorphology, but because his geological m a p prepared the way for thematic mapping. H e belongs to the 'heroic age' of geology, but the importance of his work was unrecognized for much of his life. Indeed, the tale of his life, with the oscillations from humble origins to prosperity, and back to poverty, dealing with a near-insane wife, and serving time in a debtors' prison before ultimate triumph, has something of the melodrama about it. Although Sir Cyril Fox (1882-1967) held a university teaching position for only two years, and was by background an archaeologist, rather than a geographer, his influence on geography was considerable. Much of his professional life was at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, where his mission was: 'To teach the world about Wales, and the Welsh people about their fatherland.' Despite his museum base he was an advocate of 'big picture' field studies, showing how the subtle relationships between h u m a n communities and their physical background had changed over the millennia. Although his somewhat determinist approach is currently out of favour, his Personality of Britain (first published in 1932) has formed a template for 'landscape approach' studies in many parts of the world. Chandra Pal Singh (1939-2000), although a twentieth-century figure, is also, in a way, a child of the nineteenth-century British Empire. T h e son of a soldier in the British Indian Army, and partly British trained, he had a lifelong affection for English literature. H e had several changes of focus during his career from regional studies, particularly of Africa, to land use and ultimately finding a home in political geography. He also moved between academic life and industry, holding the directorship of a clock-making company for a while. A complex person, he occupied an influential position in the teaching of geography at the prestigious Delhi School of Economics. George Brown Barbour (1890-1977) was born in Scotland but became an authority on the geology and physiography of China. H e returned to assume residence in the United States and accepted a post at the University of Cincinnati (1938-1958) in the wake of the retired Nevin Fenneman. Barbour published considerably and was recognized for his work but remains curiously little known to the geographers of today. Also from the United States is Cotton Mather (1918-1999): his geographical career spanned more that 50 years 25 of these at the University of Minnesota. He was especially given to fieldwork and publishing the results therefrom. His bibliography bespeaks this interest. He travelled widely, was founder of the oldest county geographical society in America, collected art and Indian pueblo pottery, and had a contagious enthusiasm for his subject. Jose Salazar Ilarregui (1823-1892) was an example of that distinctive Mexican figure, the nineteenth-century geographer-engineer. H e combined skills in topographic survey and geodesy with political acumen, and played an important role in the delimitation of Mexico's borders with the United States and Guatemala. Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) was a French historian but with a keen geographic

x

Introduction

interest and facility. He came to admire Vidal de la Blache, and one of the latter's brightest students, Jules Sion. Febvre's agile mind and capacity for hard work led to a publication record of value to historian and geographer alike. In this context A Geographical Introduction to History is of significance. It is here that Febvre wrestles with the notions of possibilism and determinism. Giuseppe Dalla Vedova (1834—1919) is sometimes given the title 'father' of geography in post-unification Italy; strongly influenced by German geographical thought he was a great publicist for geography. As well as holding important university and public positions, his influence was also felt through his work in a geographical society. In this he somewhat resembled the Serbian geographer Borivoje Milojevic (1885-1967), who followed in the footsteps of that pioneer Jovan Cvijic, not only held the most important chair in geography in his country, but was the driving force behind the Serbian Geographical Society for many years. Like Salazar Ilarregui, he provides an example of how geographical expertise can be of use in relation to the problems attached to the fixing of international boundaries, for Milojevic was called as an expert at the Paris Peace Conference of 1946 to advise on the border between Yugoslavia and Italy. Patrick Armstrong Nedlands, Western Australia

Geoffrey Martin New Haven, Connecticut

Thomas Baines 1820-1875

Vivian Louis Forbes

Intellectual curiosity about blank spaces on the maps of Africa and Australia, prospects for increasing trade, and humanitarian concern for the fate of slaves were factors that turned the attention of a number of associations towards the relatively unknown continents in the nineteenth-century period that produced an explosion of geographical information resulting from intensive exploration in many parts of the 'discovered' world. Supported by research institutions, such as the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), by missionary societies such as the London Missionary Society (LMS) and to some degree by political ambitions, adventurers were reaching further and further into the interior of Africa and Australia. Settlements were established everywhere. Through such activity the geography of lands little known to Europeans was clarified and presented to the public in seminars, and through the publication of reports and on maps. In this regard, among those most active in the period from 1790 to 1873 were the four members of the Arrowsmith family (Verner, 1971). J o h n Arrowsmith, a nephew and protege of Aaron Arrowsmith, Senior, continued to produce maps, at first in the premises of his uncle and thereafter from his home, until his death in 1873. One person who would have offered J o h n Arrowsmith valuable geographical information about southern Africa was Thomas Baines (Carruthers and Arnold, 1995, p. 36). Such information would undoubtedly have been based on the knowledge that Baines had garnered during the twenty or so years that he lived and travelled in southern Africa. Baines travelled extensively in southern Africa - over 10,000 kilometres (about 7,000 miles) (Baines, 1877, p. 8), spent about two years exploring in northern Australia (Braddon, 1986), and returned to England on two occasions after his initial departure for Cape Town. Whilst preparing for another of his numerous expeditions into the unexplored interior of the African continent Baines died, aged 55, in Durban, Natal, on 8 M a y 1875. T h e purpose of this essay is to provide an insight into the extent of geographical knowledge that Thomas Baines had imparted, through his paintings, notes and diaries and maps, before his untimely death.

2

Thomas Baines

1. Education, Life and Work Thomas Baines (baptized J o h n Thomas Baines), was born in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, on 27 November 1820, to parents J o h n and Mary Anne (nee Watson), who were neither very poor nor superfluously rich but were honest and hardworking. Mary Anne Baines was a strong-willed woman and seemed to obtain her wishes in most things. It was she who tutored Thomas, giving him the rudiments of his education, rather in the way that the Gregory brothers' (this volume) mother encouraged her sons, and she also made it her duty to ensure that her son received due recognition for his endeavours. Thomas was educated at Horatio Nelson's Classical and Commercial Academy and then at M r Beloe's School. As a lad, he yearned for travel and adventure and whiled away his childhood years sketching with pencils and paper bought for him by his grandfather (Wallis, 1976). Thomas' father was a master mariner. At the age of fourteen, Thomas commenced a six-year apprenticeship to William Carr, the local carriage builder, whose speciality was ornamental painting, especially the brilliant coats-of-arms that adorned the carriages. O n 8 August 1842, T h o m a s Baines boarded the schooner Olivia, which was berthed at London docks, prepared for a voyage to Cape T o w n (Kennedy, 1961, p. 2). T h e Olivia arrived at T a b l e Bay, South Africa, on 24 November 1842. Baines sought employment for a month with a firm of coachbuilders in Cape T o w n before moving to Rodensbosch to further his career in coachbuilding and his hobby of painting landscapes. H e promoted himself as a ' M a r i n e and Portrait Painter'. Amongst the varied experiences and tasks undertaken on his arrival in southern Africa, Baines painted landscapes, talked with explorers, taught at a Sunday school and learned to ride a horse. H e finally set off with pioneers in a small convoy with ox carts through the trackless interior of southern Africa, commencing from Algoa Bay and heading for Grahamstown, then through King William's Town, Fort Beaufort and to points further north. H e slept when darkness overtook him, often in the open, or in African huts. His diet was mixed - biscuits, some wild seeds, elephant meat and water. Occasionally, he would meet officers of the Rifle Brigade, who would offer him a more substantial and satisfying meal. Civilized food and a comfortable bed refreshed him at the major towns. Baines enjoyed himself in the country of impressive mountainous terrain where gorgeous flowers festooned the rocks or carpeted the plains. A certain M r H. Blaine, a Grahamstown merchant, tutored Baines in the art of computing distances, taking observations and compass bearings. By 1851, Baines' financial resources were completely exhausted. H e was compelled to earn a living through painting from his sketches of his travels. Through his intimate knowledge of the frontier and with the accounts of eyewitnesses he produced illustrations of war episodes. When officers of the 74th Highlanders saw his work they advised Baines to apply to Major-General Somerset for the position of Artist to the Forces, in the field. O n 20 J u n e 1851, he was offered a place on the staff, with rations for himself and his horse, an army kit and equipment to portray on paper, the scenes and the episodes of the war in Africa. O n 22 J u n e , Baines left the town of Craddock with Major-General Somerset. Baines made friends both with the officers and those in the ranks, taking his share of the hardships of life in a war zone, and at the same time he noted every incident in his journal, illustrating events and landscapes in his sketchbooks. H e was always ready with his pencil and armed with a rifle, accepting his novel and

Thomas Baines

3

dangerous military experiences as part of his normal life. Henry Hall, a close associate, took Baines' m a p of the Limpopo region to London. Baines had many commissions to occupy his time but was unable to realize any financial gains. However, his artistic abilities were recognized in England, especially as the Illustrated London News took a keen interest in his art and published many of the landscapes, and pictures of historical episodes and military events. His mother took it upon herself to give publicity to the art collection. She even petitioned for royal patronage for a series of lithographic reproductions, titled Scenery and Events in South Africa, which was in six parts of six plates each. His ambition to reach the source of the Nile and to explore further north to Alexandria clashed with his desire to return to England. At this stage Baines knew what he wanted to accomplish, namely to make his art and explorations sustain one another. H e was mature, hardened, self-reliant and ready for most challenges. He became versed in African bushcraft. As an artist he developed admirably. He was interested in the different native races and tribes, portrayed them, and collected specimens of their apparel and weapons. T o defray his expenses, he intended to publish the volume Scenery and Events and at the same time sought funding from numerous sources in England. After nearly eleven years' sojourn in southern Africa, Baines stepped aboard an Aberdeen sailing ship, and with a mere 'three half-crowns in his pocket', undertook the voyage as a 'deck-class' passenger. The ship arrived in London on 13 September 1853. He resided in this city with his brother and then worked at the headquarters of the R G S with the cartographer Arrowsmith. Baines proposed his 'Nile scheme' to the R G S and at the same time placed his name for the society's planned exploration to the Benue River, Nigeria. At the society, he met an Austrian national, Hang, who was trying to persuade the R G S to give him leadership of an expedition to investigate the unknown tract around Victoria River in northern Australia. O n the evening of 9 J a n u a r y 1854, Baines' paper on the exploration of the Limpopo River was read before the society by the Secretary, Dr N. Shaw, whilst the artist used the pointer to indicate places on his map. At the close of the meeting, Baines showed and explained the suite of lithographs and paintings of his southern African sojourn. There was no response to the Nile project, although Baines was given assurance that he would perform the dual role of artist and storekeeper for the proposed expedition to northern Australia. The remainder of the year he spent in his native town painting and working on his journals and letters. In March 1855, Baines received instructions to be in Liverpool, with the expedition's stores, in readiness for the voyage to Australia. Baines' voyage to Australia commenced on 5 March 1855 when he embarked the Blue Jacket at Merseyside docks. T h e Blue Jacket set sail from Holyhead, north Wales, via the Atlantic Ocean, passing close to the Antarctic iceberg limiting line and across the southern Indian Ocean towards Australia. T h e ship reached Melbourne in the record time of 69 days. Whilst on board, to lighten his companions' boredom, he launched a weekly paper Blue Jacket Journal and Chronicle of the Blue Waters. The paper was formatted on blue foolscap and embellished with sketches. Most of the 'copy' was the work of Baines. O n 21 M a y 1855, the ship arrived at Sydney harbour. Here, Baines met M r A.C. Gregory (this volume), whose brother Henry was at Moreton Bay organizing transport and buying stock for the expedition to northern Australia. Gregory's expedition was supplied with the barque Monarch, which would carry the livestock and stores to the mouth of the Victoria River, and the schooner Tom Tough to act as

4

Thomas Baines

a tender to the expedition. The party set sail for Moreton Bay on 18 July 1855. The botanist von Mueller [Geographers, Volume 5) was attached to Gregory's NorthWest Australia Expedition. During the passage through the northern seas of Australia and whilst skirting Melville Island, the barque was carried by an uncharted current onto a coral reef, sustained damage to its hull, and after refloating, made its way to Singapore for repairs. The Tom Tough became the means of transport for the expedition. In recognition of Baines' dedication to work, Gregory named two terrestrial features after him: Baines River (Lat. 15° 34' S, Lon. 130° 04' E), a tributary of the Victoria River, and Mount Baines (Lat. 17° 06' S, Lon. 130° 35' E), a hillock situated between the Victoria and Wickham Rivers in the Northern Territory. A third feature to bear the name of Baines is a shoal at Lat. 16° 49' S, Lon. 146° 21' E. During the Gregory expedition Baines was placed in charge of the party to take the tender to Coepang (Kupang) in Dutch Timor (present-day West Timor, Indonesia). Here, he was to buy rice and sugar and re-victual the schooner. However, unexpected delays due to repairs to the vessel necessitated an added journey to Sourabaya, at which port Baines had engaged the brigantine Messenger to return him to the mouth of the Albert River, Gulf of Carpentaria, as per instructions from Gregory. Thereafter, he was to head to Sydney via the Torres Strait. On 7 November 1856, as the Messenger was approaching the Wessel Islands, Baines and his party were 'treacherously attacked by natives', so states the caption in one of Baines' sketches of the event. In noting that Gregory had long departed from their planned meeting point, Baines and his party chose to head for Sydney on the longer route via Western Australia. On 17 December, the Messenger was anchored off Coepang to re-victual. Thereafter, it was set on a course for NorthWest Cape of Australia, rounding that feature in February 1857. A southerly course to latitude 39° S and then an easterly course for Sydney was the intention. However, the Messenger nudged a rock off Cape Bald, was compelled to enter King George's Sound and anchored off the settlement of Albany. Minor repairs were undertaken. On 6 March 1857, the vessel was re-victualled and fresh water taken on board, and resumed the voyage to Sydney. At sunset on 31 March, the vessel anchored off Botany Bay. The next morning Baines stepped ashore and reported to Gregory, who in turn introduced him to Governor Denison of New South Wales. On 15 June, clutching nineteen completed pictures and four folios of sketches, Baines embarked aboard the Nourmahal. During the long voyage home - the ship arrived in London on 30 September - he completed a number of other oil paintings based on the sketches he made during the exploration. On 23 November 1857, Baines was elected a Fellow of the RGS. On 8 February 1858, he was invited by the RGS to join the Livingstone Expedition to the Zambesi River, as an artist but as one who might also serve as trader, storekeeper and to assist in elementary topographical surveying and cartography. On this expedition, Baines renewed his old acquaintance with Henry Hall, who gave him a signed copy of his new map of South Africa to which Baines had contributed. Although Baines had excelled in all the tasks he undertook during the exploration of the Zambesi River, despite his ill health, there were some minor issues with members of the party, in particular with Charles Livingstone and some personal differences with Dr David Livingstone. Baines left the expedition on 20 March 1861, and headed for Cape Town and then onto Walvis Bay on board the Elizabeth Mary. He began an eastward expedition across southern Africa from Walvis Bay, and in spite of occasional bouts of fever he managed to enjoy his life, spending all his spare

Thomas Baines

5

moments busy with pencil and paintbrush sketching in detail the scenery, the people, flora and fauna. By July 1861, the explorers were north of the Ntwetwe Desert and were bound for the Zambesi River and a town named Daka. O n 15 M a y 1865, Baines boarded the steamship Roman that was bound for London via St Helena and Ascension Island. Whilst in London he had regular contact with the R G S . He desired to return to the African continent as life in a boarding house in London depressed him. The desire was realized in October 1866. He received an invitation to take charge of an expedition to investigate a discovery of gold deposits - perhaps King Solomon's Ophir in King Lobengula's country on high ground between the Limpopo and Zambesi Rivers by geologist Carl Mauch. O n 30 November Baines boarded the R M S Asia, at Victoria Docks, London, for a voyage to Cape Town, arriving at that port on 30 J a n u a r y 1867. The South African Goldfields Exploration Company employed Baines in the capacity of commander of the party on an annual salary of £ 2 0 0 . Although traces of gold in the region were unmistakable, the exploration had an arduous task in difficult terrain as river beds, rock outcrops and old workings were examined. Lack of financial assistance and support from the London-based office of the company resulted in failure for Baines and his party to achieve their objective of establishing a mining venture. With his failing health and slender financial reserves Baines returned to Durban to work at his canvases and to compile his m a p (the 1872 map) of the route to the Goldfields. Baines' mining project was not forgotten, even though his directors did not appreciate his work.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought Baines was industrious and had an enormous energy for work; his power of observation was an important attribute. T h e professional approach with which he undertook all tasks and the characteristic strengths of Baines are well documented. He was meticulous in capturing and recording minute detail as he sketched portraits, painted landscapes, and surveyed the terrain. Baines is described as an explorer by Goodby (1999, pp. 30 39); an artist by Stevenson (1999, pp. 11-29); an astronomer by Warner (1999, pp. 130 45); a lover of wildlife and flora by Datta (1999, pp. 40-59) and Arnold (1999, pp. 70-89); as a geologist by Miller (1999, pp. 146 61) and as a cartographer by Stone (1999, pp. 118-29). Perhaps we should also stress that he was a 'true geographer' of that era. His sketches, he insisted, should be of significant value. He was fascinated by the baobabs. Whilst in the region of present-day Zimbabwe in J u n e 1870, he noted: I sketched a baobab 40 or 50 feet high, of a purple grey colour and grotesque form, having only a few stunted branches on top, quite out of proportion to the gigantic stem. In the lower part was a cavity which two of our men entered, and four might have sat comfortably... Baines' paintings of birds completed in the initial stages of his career contained little background but latterly he was painting the bird subject in the foreground, with colourful landscape backgrounds that occasionally included animals, plants and human-made objects. Although he had no scientific guidance in the painting of fauna, his zoological artwork was characterized by his endeavour to give an honest portrayal of whatever he sketched (Datta, 2000, pp. 42-59). Although Baines left no tangible assets when he died, ' . . . his legacy in terms of

6

Thomas Baines

writing and artwork is an immeasurable cultural heritage', noted Carruthers and Arnold in their 'Epilogue' (1995, p. 164). In his 'Memoir of the late Baines', Henry Hartley offered the following tribute: We all know what he was as an artist and field-sketcher. In that line no modern travellers could compete with him. As a geologist he made the best use of his powers of observation, and preferred facts to theories. As an astronomer, whose observations could be depended upon, the estimable Sir Thomas Maclear [astronomer at the Cape of Good H o p e ] . . . considered him as second only to Livingstone - and indeed it was in that strict school of observation that Baines learned the use of his instruments, under Sir Thomas' [Maclear] own supervision. (Baines, 1877, p. xvi) Baines sketched continuously, painting and recording everything of special interest, and acquired valuable information in his journals and logbooks about the land around him wherever he travelled. H e travelled light, with waterproof wallet to hold his journal and sketching gear, and a stick. In his Journals Baines mentions the few surveying instruments he utilized in order to obtain an accurate database of the terrain for compiling his sketch maps. These indispensable astronomical and scientific instruments were simple in design, functional and portable. H e also mentions the utilization of the Nautical Almanac. Baines was competent and confident in all facets of exploration and travel (Lord and Baines, 1871, reprinted in 1975). Being informed that an expedition under the auspices of the R G S was about to depart England for the purpose of exploring the interior of northern Australia, Baines submitted an application, on 20 December 1853, to the Secretary, Dr Norton Shaw, in which he modestly stated: With regards to my qualifications... I may state that for the past eleven years I have resided in South Africa . . . traversing the countries beyond the Eastern and North eastern frontiers of the Colony. My main object has, in accordance with my profession, been artistic, but as far as opportunity offered I have exerted myself in the acquisition of general information, such as . . . making observations from which to lay down, not merely my daily route, but the principal features of the country as far as they could be ascertained on either side, correcting the results obtained from the course by compass and distances travelled, by observations with the sextant, whenever my mode of travelling did not preclude the possibility of carrying such an instrument. T h e forward planning of this competent cartographer is evident in many instances and was well illustrated in J a n u a r y 1864, when Baines wrote to Captain George, R N , of the m a p room at the R G S stating that: I would be greatly obliged if the Society would furnish me with some of the last maps so that I might know what has been done and what would require doing and I would take it as a great favour if you could prepare for me a blank chart or rather a skeleton m a p of Africa from the southern tropic to the Line or beyond if you liked upon a scale somewhat proportional to my own i.e. 1/811 of an inch to a statute mile of 1760yds. Also give me scale of the due proportion of a minute of latitude and ditto of longitude at the tropic and an intermediate station at say 10 S. If the Society would let me have five or six

Thomas Baines

7

copies of the skeleton m a p with the coast line good and a few well ascertained spots just indicated on it then as I make observations I would copy them down from my rough draft upon this chart and return a copy to you as it went as I had a chance. It need not be on one sheet several small sheets properly numbered to prevent mistakes would be better but there ought to be five or six copies so that I could perhaps repeat or amend a former observation if requisite. Baines was in constant correspondence with Captain George and sought his advice on numerous occasions on map-related issues. For example, in a letter dated 13 February 1864 at Walvisch (Walvis) Bay, he asks the question 'What do you think of my scale of 1 inch to 8 miles?' and then noted that: . . . in some localities it is inconveniently small and yet when I tried one inch to a mile it ran away with so much paper I think if I get launched on the Zambezi I must enlarge my scale. . . . I shall be glad of any suggestions for the facilitation of my work in mapping down the country and any bits of maps etc. shewing how far others have gone and what I ought to do or what is unnecessary for me to repeat. Would ruled paper be an advantage? Despite the heavy workload undertaken by Baines in organizing the expedition to the Northern Goldfields of southern Africa, he managed to devote time to compiling maps, both at field camps and in the homes of his friends, based on his astronomical 'fixes' and his observations of the natural surroundings. His Northern Goldfields Diaries allude to many of the difficulties he encountered. For example, his entry for Saturday, 1 October 1870 noted: I have been close at work all day mapping, a very difficult task when one aims at anything like accuracy in laying the results of flying trips of 30 miles a day, in which no instruments can be carried and even a minute's halt to use the pocket-compass would disturb and vex the horses if too often repeated. (Cited in Wallis, 1976, p. 502.) Baines was meticulous in his lunar, solar and stellar observations. His journal accounts cite many instances in which he recorded his observations and he often compare them with those taken by others on the expedition. His concerns when errors are noted or there are discrepancies are voiced in a humble and modest manner. Once again in correspondence with George, dated 29 J u n e 1864, in Mozambique, he wrote thus: . . . I am sorry to hear that anything is the matter with my latitude. I expected the lunars would be thrown out perhaps and that other observations might be in error but I thought myself pretty sure of the latitude. I have taken as often as I could two, three or four stars in one night and north and south stars whenever I could and thought by the m a n n e r in which they worked out that I might always trust my latitude within a mile or two. I have recorded all the elements - index error etc and I think you will be able to judge by these how far my observation is to be trusted. Are you sure other explorers are correct? I find my work agrees very well with Anderson's but he did not go beyond the lake and to the Eastward of that I feel sure the published maps are very faulty. I do not pretend to the accuracy of a surveyor, I am only a poor artist with no source of profit but

8

Thomas Baines my pencil and beside sketching and mappings a traveller [that] has to turn his hand to everything on a j o u r n e y . . .

Although Baines implied above that he did not have the accuracy of a surveyor, his field notes would suggest otherwise. He maintained an accurate record of his scientific and visual observations. His subtle comment on the accuracy of others and the attention to detail that he devoted to his observations are on record: I am told that Dr Livingstone in many of his earlier observations never used any artificial horizon but took the natural horizon of a tolerably flat country. Now supposing this to be perfectly level would not the intense refraction make a great error - now I never use anything but the quicksilver. I have a first rate sextant divided on gold - and I think I must stick to my latitude. (Letter to N. George, 29 J u n e 1864, cited in Stevenson, 2000, p. 189.) Baines took great pleasure in compiling his maps whenever time permitted him to do so. For example, on Sunday 24 July 1871, he writes: I was glad of a quiet day to get my map prepared for the new track. My first sheet takes in part of the old road extending from T a d to 'the T o p of the Hill', so that the relative position of the new work can be seen. (Wallis, 1946, p. 717.) T h e tasks of compiling the maps and making copies were time-consuming, to say the least. An entry in his diary for Sunday 1 October 1871, states: During the day, I transferred my m a p from the small sheet to the full-sized one, pricking through six copies at a time, besides three or four for notes, or to give friends who want them. O u r distance from Lee's farm is 46m. 2f. 187yds. 0 feet 4in; lat: 21° 11' 24": height above the sea 2632 feet; b.p. 207°; baro. 27.10. (Baines, 1877, p. 727.) The units of measurement that Baines employed for distances were, of course, imperial measures. T h e boiling point of water was recorded in degrees Fahrenheit; this, and the barometric pressure at the time of observation, were recorded so that altitude could be calculated. Again, he recorded for Wednesday 27 September 1871: M a d e a morning trek of a little more than 3 miles Of. 105 yds, 1 foot 8 inches. T h e boiling point was 205.9, baro: 26.70 = 3201 feet, showing 219 feet descent. In the afternoon we made six miles and a little over five furlongs; indeed 9 yds. 2 feet and seven inches more. (Baines, 1877, p. 722.) A manuscript m a p compiled by Baines in 1872 resides at the Killie Campbell Museum and Library, Durban. T h e m a p depicts the route that Baines and his party traversed during their exploration of the Northern Goldfields of south-eastern Africa between 1869 and 1872. T h e geographical extent of the m a p covers 24° of latitude, that is, from latitudes 10° to 34° S., and 16° of longitude, namely from longitude 22° to 38° East. T h e stated scale of the m a p is 'four inches to a degree of latitude', which was 'reduced from the original of a scale four miles to one inch' (1:253,440). T h e manuscript m a p was compiled on 12 sheets each measuring 60 by 48 cm. T h e overall dimensions of

Thomas Babies 9 the map, which is mounted on linen, battened and varnished, is 2.40 x 1.44 metres (or about 8 x 4.75 feet). The 1872 map lacks a statement relating to the type of map projection employed by Baines. However, a detailed analysis of each of the twelve panels demonstrates the skill and expertise that Baines developed to give an accurate portrayal of the physical geography of the terrain and indeed, an indication that he is mapping a curved surface on a two-dimensional medium.

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas Baines is hardly known in Australia but very much recognized and acknowledged in present-day Zimbabwe and South Africa, for his artistry, in particular, his landscape paintings and sketch maps. The Baines story excites lively interest and his sketches and paintings are greatly admired. His model of the Victoria Falls was displayed in Cape Town in August 1863 and April 1864 and later at the RGS headquarters in London, where it was received with great interest. His Victoria Falls folio, dated 4 October 1865, was artistically one of the most impressive of his publications. He contributed illustrated articles to the Leisure Hour, Nature and Art and Sunday at Home, and hoped for commissions for Land and Water, a periodical that was devoted to natural history and general and sporting topics. Many of these articles were chromolithographed, with descriptive letterpress. Baines, in collaboration with W.B. Lord, an ex-artillery officer, who had travelled in Asia and Canada, contributed a major proportion of the text and all of the illustrations, some of which he cut on wood, for the volume Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, Travel and Exploration. He presented talks at the RGS, exhibited his pictures and lantern slides, and in London showed his canvases at the Polytechnic. His talks, with his own magic-lantern slides of Africa and Australia, so delighted his audience in Hull that he was invited to prolong his stay. Requests to show his slides and talk of his adventures grew frequent and he was always ready to give his services for charity. Although such occasions may have been a strain on his time and finances he nevertheless enjoyed a pleasant evening and made many friends. A painting by Baines of a distant view of the Victoria Falls, commissioned for £100, has pride of place in the Parliament House in Salisbury, Zimbabwe. Baines was tireless in the acquisition of general information, making observations from which to plot, not only his daily route, but also the principal features of the country as far as they could be ascertained on either side of the road, correcting the results obtained from the course by compass and distances travelled and by observations with the sextant. An award from the RGS of a gold watch, with an inscription acknowledging his 'long-continued services to Geography5, speaks volumes of the person whose influence and spread of geographical ideas through his maps, paintings and sketches contributed to a greater understanding of the natural beauty of the southern African and northern Australian sub-continents.

10

Thomas Baines

Bibliography and Sources 1. REFERENCES

AND SOURCES ON THOMAS

BAINES

Arnold, Marion, 'Thomas Baines and southern African flora: My small skill in Botany', in Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's, (2000), 70-89. Braddon, Russell, Thomas Baines and the North Australian Expedition, London: Collins in association with the R G S , 1986. Carruthers, J a n e 'This delicious morsel of a gold-field: Thomas Baines and the Northern Gold Fields Expedition', in Stiebel, L. (et al.), Thomas Baines and the 'Great Map' Route of the Gold Fields Exploration Company's Expedition, 1869-1872, A C D - R O M , published by the Campbell Collections, University of Natal, Durban, 2001. Carruthers, J a n e , and Arnold, Marion, The Life and Work of Thomas Baines, Vlaeberg, South Africa, Fernwood Press, 1995. Datta, Ann, 'Thomas Baines' contributions to the Zoology of southern Africa', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (2000), 40-59. Forbes, V.L., 'Observed and Drawn by T . Baines Esq. F R G S : An analysis of his Cartographic Work', in Stiebel, L. [et al.), Thomas Baines and the 'Great Map' Route of the Gold Fields Exploration Company's Expedition, 1869-1872, 2001. Godby, Michael, 'Thomas Baines on the Victoria Falls: A Contest between Science and Art in the Career of a British Explorer in Africa', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (1999), 30-39. Kennedy, R.F. (ed.), Journal of Residence in Africa 1842-1853 by Thomas Baines, Cape Town: The van Riebeck Society, Vol. I (252pp) and Vol. II (355pp), 1961. Klopper, Sandra, and Davison, Patricia, 'Images of distinction: Thomas Baines as Ethnographer', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (1999), 90-107. Lewis, Desiree, 'Thomas Baines: Tracing the Present in the Past', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (2000), 108-17. Lorber, P.S., 'Baines and Birds: the Bird Paintings of Thomas Baines and other early South African Illustrators', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (2000), 60 69. Miller, Duncan, 'From Science to Allegory: Geological Observations of Thomas Baines', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (2000), 146-61. Stevenson, Michael, 'Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (2000), 11—29.

Thomas Baines

11

Stone, JefFery, 'The Cartography of Thomas Baines', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (2000), 118-29. Stiebel, Lindy, 'A Treasure Story: Thomas Baines' M a p to the Gold Fields of South Eastern Africa, 1877', in Stiebel, L. (et al.), Thomas Baines and the 'Great Map' Route of the Gold Fields Exploration Company's Expedition, 1869-1872, (2001). Stiebel, Lindy, 'Creating a landscape of Africa: Baines, Haggard and great Zimbabwe', English in Africa, 28(2), 2001, 122-32. Stiebel, L. {et al.), Thomas Baines and the 'Great Map' Route of the Gold Fields Exploration Companys Expedition, 1869-1872, 2001. Tooley, R.V. 'Early Maps and Views of Cape of Good Hope', Map Collectors' Series, No. 6, 1963. Tooley, R.V. 'Printed Maps of the Continent of Africa 3, Map Collectors' Series, No. 29, 1966. Tooley, R.V., 'South Africa 1500-1600', Map Collectors' Series, No. 30, 1966. Tooley, R.V., 'Maps of Africa - 16th to 19th century', Map Collectors' Series, No. 48, 1968. Tooley, R.V., 'Printed maps of Southern Africa and its parts', Map Collectors' Series, No. 61, 1970. Tooley, R.V., 'A Sequence of Maps of Africa', Map Collectors' Series, No. 82, 1972. Tooley, R.V., 'Arrowsmiths' Part 1 Africa', Map Collectors' Series, No. 88, 1974. Verner, Coolie, 'Maps by J o h n Arrowsmith', Map Collectors' Series, No. 76, 1971. Wallis, J.P.R., Thomas Baines: His Life and Explorations in South Africa, Rhodesia and Australia, Cape Town, A.A. Balkema, 1976. Warner, Brian, 'Thomas Baines and Astronomy', in Stevenson, M. (ed.), Thomas Baines: An Artist in the Service of Science in Southern Africa, London, Christie's (1999), 130-5.

2. SELECTED WORKS BY THOMAS BAINES 1854

'The Limpopo, its Origin, Course and Tributary', Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 24.

1860

'Scenes on the Zambesi', The Cape Monthly Magazine, 8 November.

1864

Explorations in South-west Africa: Being an account of a journey in the Tears 1861 and 1862 from Walvisch Bay, on the Western Coast to Lake JVgami and the Victoria Falls, London, Longman, Green; reprinted Salisbury, Pioneer Head, 1973.

1865

The Victoria Falls - £ambesi River: Sketched on the Spot during the Journey of J. Chapman and T. Baines, London: Day and Sons; reprint Bulawayo, Books of Rhodesia, 1969.

1865

'Notes on a Supposed New variety of Quagga observed on the Elevated Flats between the Botlede and Zambesi Rivers during the late Journey of J . Chapman and T. Baines', Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London.

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Thomas Baines

1865

'Notes to Accompany Mr C.J. Andersson's Map of Damara Land', Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 36.

1866

'The Welwitschia Mirabilis', Nature and Art, 1 August.

1867

'The Great Tree-aloe of Damara land, S.W. Africa', Nature and Art, 1 December.

1867

'On Walvisch Bay and the Ports of South-West Africa', Reports of the British Association.

1868

'The Gold-fields and Diamond-beds of South Africa', Leisure Hour, December.

1871

Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, Travel and Exploration, by W.B. Lord and T. Baines, London.

1877

The Gold Regions of South Eastern Africa, London, Edward Stanford (Reprint Bulawayo: Books of Rhodesia, 1968).

1961

Journal of Residence in Africa, 1842-1853, R.F. Kennedy (ed.); 2 vols, Cape Town, The Van Riebeeck Society (reprinted in 1964).

1972

The Birds of South Africa. Painted by Thomas Baines (1820-1875), Johannesburg, Winchester Press.

3. ARCHIVAL MATERIALS Material relating to the life and work of Thomas Baines is held by: Campbell Collections, University of Natal, Durban; MuseumAfrica Archives, Johannesburg; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Baines' papers). Royal Geographical Society Map Room, London. An interactive CD-ROM of Baines' 1872 map and three short essays about Baines and his great map was produced and launched in Durban on 21 November 2001.

Chronology 1820

Born 27 November, King's Lynn, Norfolk, England Educated at Horatio Nelson's Classical and Commercial Academy, and Mr. Beloe's School

1834

Commenced a six-year apprenticeship to William Carr, the local carriage builder

1842

8 August, boarded the schooner Olivia, at London Docks, for a voyage to Cape Town

1842

24 November arrived at Table Bay

1843

Took a voyage from Algoa bay to Port Elizabeth; headed to Grahamstown

1850

Joined a scientific expedition

Thomas Baines

13

1851

Returned February; offered a position as artist-draughtsman to the forces under General Somerset

1852

September returned to London. Worked with Arrowsmith at the Royal Geographical Society, London

1854

Addressed a meeting of the RGS, London

1855

5 March, departed England for Australia on board RMS Bluejacket

1855

21 May, arrived in Sydney and prepared for expedition with A.C. Gregory to northern Australia

1856

Returned to England

1857

Appointed as artist to the Livingstone Zambesi Expedition

1868

Appointed as leader of an expedition to the Goldfields of the Tati, southeast Africa

1875

Died 8 May, at the boarding house of his aunt, Anna Marie Lewis, in Durban, Natal

The author is an Adjunct Associate Professor, of the Department of Spatial Sciences, Curtin University and Map Curator, The University of Western Australia, Nedlands.

George Brown Barbour 1890-1977

Roger Mark Selya

' . . . Life has been better to me than I deserve...' George Barbour, in a letter to Harry Carman, 19 October 1959 Apart from China geographers and devotees of Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the name and work of George B. Barbour are little known. Although his works are still quoted in Chinese language geography textbooks used in Taiwanese universities, his name appears in no history of twentieth-century geography, and is likewise absent in textbooks on geomorphology, his main speciality. Yet Barbour was hailed as one of the leading geomorphologists of his day, received reprints from the foremost geographers and geologists, was awarded honour after honour by European geographical societies for his work in popularizing, publicizing and interpreting important geographical and palaeontological findings, and was heralded by peers such as Kirk Bryan for the importance of his applied fieldwork for the theoretical aspects of geomorphology. Barbour was chosen to succeed Nevin Fenneman {Geographers, Volume 10) in anticipation of the latter's forced retirement from the University of Cincinnati. T h e story of his transition from central figure in geomorphology to relative unknown is a significant tale for geographers and scholars of all times. It clearly speaks to the professional and personal difficulties and challenges that arise when career choices must be made between academic administration on the one hand, and teaching and research on the other, or the need to find a position that ensures appropriate environments and opportunities for family members, and the difficulties of having a family including two professionals.

1. Education, Life and Work George Brown Barbour was born on 22 August 1890 in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Alexander Hugh Freeland Barbour and Margaret Nelson Barbour (nee Brown).

George Brown Barbour

15

Alexander Barbour was a well known and respected physician and president of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh; Margaret Barbour was the daughter of George Brown, one of the founding fathers of the Canadian Federation, a prime minister of Canada, and founder of the Toronto Globe. George Barbour was thus born into a family that occupied an important place in Scottish society, and he grew up in an environment permeated with a sense of entitlement, place, prestige and noblesse oblige. As an infant Barbour accompanied his parents on a missionary trip to China. Brown received his elementary and high school education at Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh, a Montessori-based school for the members of the extended Brown clan. After leaving high school in 1904, Barbour enrolled at M a r b u r g University in Germany for a year where he studied the organ and German language. T h e choice of Germany as place to study struck those English adults who knew him as a curious one since Barbour had what was thought to be a distressing contempt for German institutions and was not above letting all who would hear him know how he felt about his environment. T h e musical talents he honed in Germany served him well throughout his life as he would be in demand as both a composer of hymns and as an organist. Upon returning to Edinburgh he followed the liberal tradition and took an MA(Honours) in Classics in 1911 (1910 in some sources). Upon graduating, he was given a round-the-world trip by his father. O n this trip Barbour again visited China, to see if he should be a medical missionary there or in the United States. His travels and his later wartime experience convinced Barbour that the only hope for humanity lay in the practical application in everyday life of the principles and spirit of Christ. As a result Barbour decided that he should go to China as had his father and mother. T o that end upon his return to the United Kingdom he enrolled at Cambridge to acquire a science-based profession, thinking that such a profession would be of greatest help to China. Medicine was ruled out due to the lateness of his starting hard-science studies. Much to the chagrin of his parents he decided to read geology at St John's College, Cambridge, and after two years he earned a BA in Geology. Further plans for continuing his education were interrupted by the First World War. Barbour served in the Friends Ambulance Unit from September 1914 through J a n u a r y 1919, seeing action in Poperinghe, Woesten, Vlamertinghe, Ypres, and in Italy. Near Ypres he rescued some of the first victims of German gas attacks and participated in the chemical analysis of the poison gas. H e was also involved in containing an epidemic of typhoid in Ypres. His work in the ambulance corps earned him the Order of St J o h n from the British Red Cross. Barbour was no pacifist. When his service time was up, he accepted an offer to enrol in an officers1 training programme, of the Royal Field Artillery. However, no sooner had he completed his training and moved back to Italy, than the war was over, thus permitting him to continue his education. By chance he was invited by Dr J o h n Watt to attend a Y M C A convention in the United States during the summer of 1919, and while there he enrolled in summer classes at Columbia University. Discovering that he was not too far behind in his geological studies, he decided to continue his graduate work at Columbia, eventually receiving a PhD degree in 1929. During his studies at Columbia he married Dorothy Dickinson, who held two degrees from Columbia, having trained under Dewey and Kirkpatrick. Barbour had met his future wife during his visit to the United States in 1911. They corresponded and apparently their relationship developed and deepened during his studies and military service. T h e Dickinsons had visited Barbour while he was at Cambridge. Apparently Barbour's desire to find and complete a scientific career as

16

George Brown Barbour

quickly as possible was grounded on their plans to marry and then go to China and undertake missionary and educational work. Dickinson's social background was not dissimilar to Barbour's: her father was a well-known gynaecologist who had served as president of the American Gynaecological Society. While in his fifties he left his successful practice to found Planned Parenthood. Dickinson's mother, Sarah Trinslow Dickinson, was a founding member of the National Board of the Y M C A and Traveler's Aid Society. She also prided herself on convincing Walter Damrosch to give the very first children's symphony concerts in New York City. Mrs Dickinson was a scholar in her own right: she pioneered Christian education, held academic positions in Buffalo, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut, and served as the first director of religious education for the Episcopal Church before her marriage. At the time of her marriage she was the first woman faculty member at the Theological Seminary in Hartford, and was permitted to resign so that she could marry Barbour. During the course of her lifelong career she produced four books. In addition she served on the national boards of the League of Women Voters, the United Council of Church Women, the National Conference on International Economic and Social Welfare, and the United Nations International Affairs Council. U p o n completing his course work at Columbia in 1920, Barbour accepted a position as professor of Applied Geology at Yenching University in Beijing, serving there from 1920-1927. H e held additional positions while in China: he was on the faculty of Peking University (1920-2), and was professor and head of the geology d e p a r t m e n t at Peiyang University (1922-3). Although lacking the P h D , Barbour was engaged at the rank of professor based on his ability to direct graduate research, his past teaching experience, and his publication record, as specified in the Yenching University faculty hiring handbook (Edwards, 1959). While in China Mrs Barbour was active teaching college-level courses, and supervising children's services, foreign Sunday schools, and the practical work of students studying theology education. Her work also involved teaching and coaching plays and Christian home education. During their stay in China the three Barbour children were born: H u g h in 1921, I a n in 1923, and R o b e r t Freeland in 1926. In 1927, the Barbours returned to New York City so that Barbour could complete his doctoral degree requirements. Barbour was apparently quite upset about leaving China. In a letter to his wife dated 3 April 1927 he sadly reported that he went to services at the Peking Union Medical College ' . . . for possibly the last time I shall play for a service at Peking Union Medical School in my l i f e . . . ' During his return stay at Columbia University he served as a lecturer from 1928-1929, replacing his mentor, Charles P. Berkey, who had been seconded from Columbia to work for the Department of the Interior. Upon receiving his PhD in 1929, Barbour received job offers from Iowa University, University of Utah, Northwestern University and Carleton College. However, he decided to return to China with his family, against the advice of colleagues in both the United Kingdom and the United States. His decision to return was also made in the face of his wife's reservations regarding the inadequacy of health facilities and schools in China, and their doctor's recommendation that Hugh, a sickly child, should not return to China. Interestingly, the Barbours did not seem unduly concerned with the physical dangers associated with the political upheavals going on in China. Barbour saw the decision to return to China as an opportunity and a challenge, since he would be able to teach applied courses on geography and geology, and work with future leaders of China as well as expatriate children. T h e Barbours also felt that their children, and especially Hugh, would be better off mentally and

George Brown Barbour

17

spiritually in China than in the United States, since they would be able to interact with the many visitors, be they diplomats, missionaries, scientists, businessmen or travellers, who passed through the Barbour home. T h e Barbours enjoyed academic and religious successes in China during their second stay, but in 1931 they began the process of moving back to the United States at a time when academic positions were very difficult to obtain. T h e proximate cause of their decision to leave China was that their children came down with what was termed 'Peking fever', as did seven other children of Yenching University faculty members. Peking fever is now considered to be histoplasmosis. However, in the 1930s it was very difficult to diagnose since its symptoms, a recurrent high fever with no physical degeneration, were suggestive of brucellosis, chickenpox, malaria, measles, tuberculosis, or typhoid. Although one doctor at Peking Union Medical College suspected a rare parasite as the cause, for the most part doctors in China could only recommend long-term bed rest as the best course of action. Although Barbour expressed the hope many times over the next few years that he and his family would be able to return to China on a full-time basis, it is doubtful whether this could have occurred. In addition to changes at Yenching University resulting from the Communist victory in the post-Second World W a r civil war, the geography-geology programme had been terminated in 1936 due to low enrolments and financial restraints that forced Yenching University to restructure overall programming (Edwards, 1959). The Barbours left China for Palo Alto, California, chosen in part because it was felt that such an environment would facilitate recovery of the boys. California offered access to world-renowned physicians, who it was hoped could provide a definitive diagnosis and offer some hope of a cure for Peking fever. Mrs Barbour took the boys by boat via J a p a n , while Barbour himself travelled via Russia, eastern Europe and the United Kingdom, before returning to the United States. These travel plans reflect the fact that Barbour was not yet a United States citizen and would have to obtain a visa to enter the country under the British quota; this route also afforded Barbour the opportunity to visit family and explore employment opportunities in the United Kingdom. While in Palo Alto Barbour held the position of Special Visiting Fellow at California Institute of Technology, where he remained through J a n u a r y 1932. While at 'Cal Tech' he was able to devote most of his time to writing up his China field notes into formal publications. In 1932 Barbour accepted another visiting position, this time at the University of Cincinnati, where he was to fill in for Nevin Fenneman who was going on leave. Although he had been offered positions at Dalhousie University in Halifax for more money, and in Iowa, where there were facilities to study loess, Barbour accepted the offer from Cincinnati. T h e rationale for accepting the Cincinnati offer was that Halifax and Iowa were too cold for Mrs Barbour and the boys, while working at the University of Cincinnati would permit the Barbours to see if Cincinnati was a 'good' area for the boys, and allow Barbour to continue his work on Chinese geology since he would have no administrative duties. Moving to Cincinnati did require that the Barbours live apart for part of the year. Barbour nevertheless saw the position as a stepping-stone, if there were jobs to be had in locations where the three Barbour boys should go in order to attend appropriate schools and have appropriate social opportunities. Such separations did not end when Barbour settled in Cincinnati. Both he and Mrs Barbour maintained active professional speaking schedules that took them to cities all over the United States. Summer vacations also extended family separations. Barbour's correspondence during 1932 shows that he frequently relied on friends and associates from his China days, such as George Cressey, for assistance in identifying positions he could apply for.

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George Brown Barbour

During 1933 and 1934 Barbour served as the acting scientific and literary critic for the editorial office of the Geological Society of America in New York City. By carefully timing his editing work, he was able to return to China, alone this time, to continue his fieldwork. Barbour's work in China was financed in p a r t by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, requiring him to work as Visiting Physiographer at the Cenozoic Laboratory of the Geological Survey of China. It was during this stay in China that he became involved in dating the excavations at Chou K o u Tien and the fossil find that came to be known as Peking M a n . U p o n his return to the United States, Barbour's mentor Charles P. Berkey urged him not to seek a more p e r m a n e n t post at the GSA editorial offices since he felt that Barbour had other connections and possible outlets in China. However, when no academic position was found, the Barbours returned to Palo Alto, where summer teaching opportunities were available, and stayed there until 1936 when they went to London. T h e r e Barbour served as honorary lecturer at the University of London, continued writing his Yangtze report at the Royal Geographical Society library, and was a consultant to the BBC, contributing to their Broadcast to Schools on Regional Geography series. In the 1936 spring term he contributed a six-lecture series on the Monsoon Lands-China (BBC P a m p h l e t no. 984); for the fall term, 1936, he produced a twelve-part series devoted to North America (BBC Pamphlet no. 1065). T h e London location was attractive as Barbour thought he might be able to return to China from there. While in London Barbour applied for chairs in Geology at British universities the H e r d m a n at Liverpool University, the Kilgour at the University of Aberdeen, and the Wills at the University of Bristol - and for a position at Trinity College, T o r o n t o . H e eventually received two offers from the United States: one from Williams College and another to return to the University of Cincinnati. Barbour rejected the offer from Williams as he felt it was an unscientific college limited to undergraduates. T h e offer from Cincinnati was mixed: Barbour was invited back to lecture for a year, with the possibility of his being appointed dean of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences being subject to further negotiations. During the negotiations for the position, Fenneman expressed his concern that instead of replacing him in the Geology and Geography Department, Barbour would end up in a purely administrative position. Fenneman's concern was directly translated into the stipulation that Barbour participate in the annual geology department summer field trips and field camps. This he did for many years, even when such participation interfered with his duties as dean, husband and father. Barbour started teaching at the University of Cincinnati in 1937 and at the end of the academic year was appointed dean of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, a position he would occupy for the next twenty years. During his tenure as dean he received a Viking Fund grant from the Werner-Glenn Foundation for Anthropological Research. This permitted him to visit South Africa and consult on the geological setting of Australopithecine excavations in Transvaal. Barbour contemplated taking a year's leave from his position as dean to work in South Africa in 1947, but the financing could not be arranged and it appeared that it would be difficult to find suitable living quarters for his family. Barbour apparently stayed on as dean for twenty years for two reasons. First, he was committed to making his College into the model for liberal education in the state of Ohio. Second, he remained on at the request of the then president of the University of Cincinnati, Walter Langsam, who requested that Barbour stay on to help the university absorb and adapt to the returning veterans. In 1958 he returned to fulltime teaching, retiring with the rank of Dean and Professor Emeritus in 1960.

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Apparently Barbour did not take to retirement: he requested, and was refused, permission to continue teaching his courses at the University of Cincinnati. Although this privilege had been granted to Fenneman, in contravention of university policies, the geology department felt that younger faculty needed an opportunity to teach the courses Barbour had taught. Thereupon Barbour registered with the placement service for retired faculty of the J o h n Whitney Hay Foundation and was able thus to teach at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in 1961, Carleton College at a summer NSF institute in 1961, at Duke University in 1961-1962, at Hunter College in 1962, the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico in 1963, and at the University of Louisville in 1964. Barbour suffered a series of strokes in 1964, thus ending his retirement teaching activities. Nevertheless, he also received invitations to teach at Oberlin (Ohio), Glasboro State College (New Jersey), Shaw University (North Carolina), and Salem College (West Virginia). Before his strokes he even attempted to return to his China work, applying for positions at two Christian universities, Tunghai and Ching Chi, in Taiwan. Barbour died of a heart attack on 12 July 1977. He was cremated and his remains buried in Scotland. As a prelude to describing Barbour's contributions to geography it is fitting to review the fact that in essence he had not one but multiple careers. To be sure, some of these distinct careers overlapped with and reinforced one another. However, these multiple careers often were in conflict in terms of their demands on Barbour's time and effort, a circumstance which introduced stress on him. Barbour was of course primarily a scholar-teacher who specialized in geomorphology, and as such he taught a wide range of courses as well as conducting fieldwork in China and the United States. He was an active member of the Geological Society of America, the Association of American Geographers, the Royal Geographical Society (London), the Geological Society of London, the Societe Geologique de France, the Geological Society of China, the Societe Geologique de Findlande, the Edinburgh Geological Society, the Peking Society of Natural History, and the British Association. More will be said below in sections 2 and 3 about the nature and importance of his work as a geomorphologist and teacher, although it must be noted here that an active research programme in geomorphology, and the subsequent presentation of his work at national and international conferences and congresses, required Barbour to be away from both his classroom and family for extended periods of time. As a teacher Barbour was known as a self-effacing, humorous and organized instructor. This was evident in the directions he included in his examinations. Barbour would remind students that he had spent considerable love, labour and time in writing the examinations, and that he expected them to use their time wisely in answering the questions. H e would frequently insert additional instructions in the body of the examinations urging students to reread their prose before submitting their answers. He also urged them to ensure that the focus of their answers was the geological aspect of the problem at hand, especially when other aspects might be more evident or easier to relate. Barbour was an able academic administrator. T h e fact that he remained dean of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences for twenty years is a strong indication of his administrative skills. During his tenure as dean he oversaw, among other projects, the construction of the major administrative-teaching facility of the college in 1949, the implementation of BS degrees, and the establishment of new majors in medical technology, theatre arts, and a four-year high school training programme. During the First World War he was charged with co-ordinating the army reserve officers' area and language, and army flying corps flight training programmes. In addition he laboured tirelessly on behalf of students who received induction notices,

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working with local draft boards to ensure that students could complete their degrees in a timely manner. More generally, Barbour busied himself with a very close management of the college. T h e record of his daily activities has been preserved in his professional papers because every afternoon at the end of the day Barbour would dictate his schedule, with comments, to his secretary, who would then type up a summary log. So, for example, we find that he checked the registration records every semester, and if he discovered that a student had not reregistered, he would personally contact the student to find out why. Regardless of the reasons for non re-registration, Barbour would find a way to help the student complete his or her course of studies, be it by finding financial aid, by intervening with departments over requirements, or by offering words of encouragement. Virtually every student who matriculated in the college was invited to tea at Barbour's home. Faculty were also closely monitored. A good example occurred at the end of fall semester: Barbour was present when faculty turned in grades and only after reviewing grades did he hand faculty their December pay cheques. He also worked tirelessly to arrange faculty leaves and for alternative employment when faculty left the university. B a r b o u r was also a dedicated lay missionary. Unlike a n o t h e r C h i n a geographer, George Babcock Cressey, Barbour had not been born in China and thus came to his interest, commitment and concern for the political future of China via a less direct route. In addition, Barbour worked as a missionary in China in what has been described as the 'golden age' for missionaries (Lutz, 2000). For his part, despite the financial and family hardships as well as the risks of working in China, Barbour was the consummate missionary: he learned to speak Chinese and acquired an intimate knowledge of Chinese social life. His attitudes towards missionary work were typically progressive. H e appeared to agree that the aim of missionaries was to impart to the Chinese the knowledge of the power of salvation, to elevate h u m a n society, to moderate and modify traditional evils, and to introduce reforming ideas, even when these goals resulted in fewer converts to Christianity (Bates, 1974; Varg, 1958). Thus in a 1925 report to the British Mission entitled ' T h e Position of a Student in a Christian University in China T o d a y ' , Barbour indicated that ' . . . he had come to China to learn, rather than to give advice,' and that ' . . . it is not our business to find answers to the problems of China. They [the Chinese] (sic) must do it, O u r business is to stand besides them and help them work out solutions for themselves . . . ' This attitude was demonstrated not only by Barbour, but by the entire Yenching University faculty. For example, in the aftermath of the Shanghai Incident of M a y 1925, Barbour did not rebuke Yenching students who had participated in the student riots, even though they had violated university regulations in doing so. R a t h e r he saw it as his duty to stand by the students, to be available to them so that they could pour out their troubles, and to assist them in keeping their minds on the positive side to which their emotional energy could be channelled. Since Barbour's missionary activities stressed living as an example to his students, he led church services, played the organ at services, and acted as treasurer for various missionary groups and funds. Barbour's missionary activities also extended to helping to co-ordinate drought and famine relief projects. Yet for all his dedication to working with the Chinese, Barbour had doubts about whether the Chinese would ever modernize their society. In a letter to his parents dated 22 July 1922, he hypothesized that 'racial defects of people are so ingrained as to be fundamental'. T h e only solution to China's problems was an acceptance of the teachings of Christ. Barbour was also worried by the changes he had seen develop in students over the years. He thought students had become more

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reactionary and less stable in reaction to increasing Japanese military activities in China and the resulting rise in nationalism. He perceived that students had lost respect for their teachers; his evidence of this was the students' increasing reluctance to accept their teachers' invitations to attend dinners or socials. And for all his progressive attitudes, Barbour, as did so many of his fellow missionaries (Varg, 1958), also harboured decidedly negative feelings towards Chinese religious beliefs and practices, as well as Chinese family practices as they pertained to the status and treatment of women, including arranged marriage, footbinding, slavery and female infanticide. H e was disgusted by the way the Chinese permitted dogs to scavenge in streets and even burial grounds. Despite any misgivings about China and the Chinese, Barbour was proud of his work and that of all missionaries in China. He noted with satisfaction the large number of Christians in the various cabinets of the government of Chiang Kai-shek and in Chinese delegations sent to international political conferences, such as the San Francisco Peace Conference. As with so many of his contemporary missionaries, Barbour was confident that China would become a democratic, nation, especially if it were to be guided by Christian, as opposed to Russian, ideals (Varg, 1958). Even after the Barbours left China they continued to support general missionary activities. For example, in 1940 they cancelled a loan of $200 they had made to the Society of Brothers, so as to enable the Brothers to continue their work. The Barbours were also active in the Westminister Foundation, a missionary activity headquartered at the M o u n t Auburn Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Barbour also served on the Committee of Management of the University Y M C A in Cincinnati from 1937 through 1947. Barbour was also a consultant in many senses of the word. Throughout his career other geomorphologists, whether novices at the start of a career or established scholars, sought his advice on the feasibility of projects in which they were engaged. This was especially true for those working in China decades after he had stopped doing fieldwork there. For example, in 1923 his mentor Charles Berkey, who served as geologist for the First Central Asian Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, requested that Barbour try to resolve some of the discrepancies between the expedition's findings and the then accepted age of certain formations within the frontiers of China proper. H e served on numerous committees, such as the Provisional Board of African Studies, and thus played a major role in the expansion of university degree programmmes. During the Second World W a r he made his large collection of field notes, atlases and maps available to United States military intelligence, since his duties as dean and lack of United States citizenship precluded his moving to Washington to assist directly in the war effort. He aided the British Counsel General's office in Cleveland and Royal Air Force Information Office of the British Embassy in Washington in vetting speakers appropriate to the Cincinnati audience, which was often openly hostile to British interests and more sympathetic to German ones. And of course he played a major role in publicizing some of the palaeontological finds of the twentieth century. His work on the geology of China, and especially his research on the Nihowan formations near Kalgan, resulted in his being drafted to assist in the dating of the fossils at Chou Kou Tien, home of Peking M a n . Barbour's skills in sketching landscape features were also exploited during his tenure on the Cenozoic Laboratory of the Chinese Geological Service. Barbour's participation in the excavations was cut short in 1934 by the death of the principal investigator of the site, Davidson Black, who had arranged funding for the dig through the Rockefeller Foundation. J u s t as Barbour had feared, the Chinese took over the administration and work of the excavation and

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used the funding to employ their own nationals. Although modern histories of the excavations of Chou Kou Tien do not mention Barbour by name, he is included in pictures of the sites, as are his sketches of the area (Shapiro, 1974; J i a and H w a n g , 1990). T h e reputation he earned at Chou Kou Tien as geologist and physiographer resulted in his being called in 1947, under the auspices of the Bernard Price Foundation for Palaeontological Research, to South Africa to advise geologists and anthropologists, such as R a y m o n d Dart, involved in excavating Australopithecinae sites. For both Chinese and South African digs he became the designated publicist. H e gave his personal reports at conferences such as the Pan African Prehistory Conferences in 1951, 1952 and 1959, and his clear, precise pieces appeared in the local popular press, newspapers around the world, and scholarly journals such as Science. Interestingly, Barbour's obituaries all cited his work on dating of Peking m a n and Australopithecinae as his major claim to fame. Barbour also gave his expert opinion to companies, institutions and neighbours in Cincinnati when they had problems with site development or the need to repair damaged buildings due to changing site conditions. A loyal Scot, in 1940 he also went out of his way to evaluate the economic potential of the mines held by the Inveane Granniote Company of Argyllshire, Scotland. H e did this even though he had to rely on laboratory analyses being conducted at Columbia in facilities founded by his mentor Berkey. While such consulting activities may be narrowly classified as nothing more than professional service, Barbour's willingness to give of his time and knowledge, as well as his willingness to venture into new geographical areas and academic topics such as the origins of mankind, clearly distinguish his activities from ordinary service, and hence have been referred to as consulting. Similarly, Barbour gave freely of his time to the Cincinnati community, appearing frequently as speaker at high school graduation ceremonies. His consulting even drew on his background as an accomplished organist. In 1961 his church consulted with him on the options of repairing, rebuilding, and even possibly replacing, the church organ. After his retirement Barbour became a skilled biographer. He devoted much of his time to ensuring that the professional, as contrasted with the theological, insights and work of Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin were properly preserved and published. Barbour was in part motivated to work on de Chardin because, as he wrote to his sons on April 11, 1955 on the occasion of de Chardin's death ' . . . he was the most God-like man I have known and the only close friend among men whom I have loved . . . ' In this endeavour his major contribution was his reminiscences of working with de Chardin, published in 1965. After his retirement Barbour also started working on his own papers in anticipation of writing his autobiography. H e completed an 82-page account of his life up through the First World W a r for his grandchildren entitled Memories of Three Continents, which included materials tracing his family origins at least as far back as King Robert the Bruce (1314) of Scotland, a description of family properties, and his education. After he suffered a series of strokes he was assisted by his wife in editing the letters he wrote while in China. This resulted in a volume entitled In China When... the contents of which paint vivid impressions of the daily travails and challenges of living in China with a family, the changing Chinese political and social environment, Barbour's successes as a geologist, and his progress as a missionary. More than anything, however, the edited letters in this volume show the deep respect and attachment Barbour held for the Chinese. T h e letters show clearly that this was a mutual feeling: Barbour was seen by such luminaries as H u Shih and V.K. Ting as an excellent antidote to anti-missionary movements current in China

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during the 1920s since Barbour was both an outstanding scientist and dedicated missionary. He edited the letters of his son Robert Freeland, who had died in 1953 of a streptococcus infection during his third year at Harvard Medical School, as a memorial biography, entitled Free.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought Any attempt to describe Barbour's scientific ideas and geographical thought is complicated by a very fundamental question: was Barbour a geographer? There are two answers to this question. Some geographers, such as Lawrence G. Wolf, who worked with Barbour at the University of Cincinnati, are of the opinion that Barbour was not a geographer in 'any sense of the words'. In addition, this opinion holds that Barbour was fundamentally hostile to geography as a discipline, in part because he was reported to have harshly criticized geography. There is little in Barbour's correspondence to substantiate this view. H e did occasionally criticize the practitioners of geography as being superficial in their work, but this criticism is not unique to Barbour. Such a position would not constitute a blanket condemnation of geography. Perhaps Barbour's critics gathered that he was hostile to geography because he twice, in November 1940 and again in May 1955, opposed requests by the geographers in the Department of Geology and Geography that geography courses be used to fulfil the social and behavioural requirements of the Arts and Sciences general education programme. Barbour's opposition to this proposal had little to do with geography per se or with the viability of a degree in geography and everything to do with the somewhat arcane and enigmatic system of budgeting used at the University of Cincinnati while he was dean. Colleges within the university literally contracted with departments from all over the university to provide specific courses for specific students to meet specific requirements. Thus, for example, the College of Engineering and Business contracted with the Geology and Geography Department of the College of Arts and Sciences to teach courses in world and economic geography exclusively for their students even though the department taught the same courses for their own and Arts and Sciences students. Often such courses, while sharing a common syllabus, had separate course numbers and instructors. W h a t Barbour was concerned with was that even within his own college any change in the menu of courses fulfilling specific distribution requirements would upset his carefully negotiated budget for the regular academic year and summer school. This was the only argument against the proposal that Barbour offered to both J o h n Rich and Richard Durrell, who acted as spokesmen for the geographers. Significantly, his refusal did not appear to have a negative effect on his relations with his colleagues. Once a more standard budgeting system was implemented, geography courses would be approved to fulfil both natural and social and behavioural science requirements. The last argument against considering Barbour a geographer is the fact that he commonly self-identified as a geologist in his professional affiliations and appearances. T h e r e is however ample evidence that Barbour was at a minimum very sympathetic to the field. At the University of Cincinnati, Barbour reportedly convinced Fenneman that geography offerings should be expanded to include specific courses in cartography and meteorology; he also insisted that geography courses be included in the Area and Language cadet programme he supervised during the Second World W a r (Ryan, 1983). H e actively and constructively

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participated in shaping the curriculum for the BA in geography that was established in 1939, and there is no record that he opposed the creation of a separate department of geography in 1959. His only concern in the debates over a separate d e p a r t m e n t and separate AB and A M degrees in geography focused on whether or not the existing geography faculty could fulfil their numerous service duties and offer high calibre programmes. His sympathy to geography and geographers displayed itself when he arranged for the transcription, publication and distribution of the memoirs of the English geographer H u g h Robert Mill (Geographers Volume 1) entitled Life Interests of A Geographer. Due to postwar conditions and shortages Mill was unable to find an avenue for publication in the United Kingdom. Barbour circulated the manuscript in the United States. W h e n it was a p p a r e n t that reviewers thought the manuscript to be too British, too detailed, and too much a part of the history of science to be of interest to an American publisher, he undertook to have the manuscript transferred into book form by his secretary in the dean's office. In all 100 copies were printed and distributed in the U n i t e d States and U n i t e d K i n g d o m . Finally, in his participation on the Provisional Board of African Studies in Washington, D C , he enthusiastically endorsed the geographic portion of a model curriculum proposed by Derwent Whittlesey. T h e case for considering Barbour a geographer relies less on hearsay and opinion, and more on substantial evidence from his professional life, his teaching, his research and publications, and his service. His successful nomination for membership in the Association of American Geographers was jointly sponsored by Nevin Fenneman, Earl Case and J o h n Rich in April 1939. Thereafter Barbour attended many annual meetings of the Association. He was similarly honoured by European geographical societies for his scholarly contributions to geography (see Chronology below). He corresponded with the major geographers with research interests in China and geomorphology. It is possible to peruse his syllabi for his courses on human geography, China, East Asia, geomorphology, principles of physiography, world physiography, physiography of the United States, the physiography of Europe, and topographic maps, and immediately recognize the inherent geographic context and explicit environmental and regional paradigms he used in organizing his materials. Although the readings are of course out of date now, they nevertheless drew on the latest materials published by geographers and of interest to geographers at that time. Barbour was willing to participate in the geographic community. O n e of his major outlets for his articles and book reviews was the prestigious Geographical Journal. When he presented his paper on the Tennessee Valley project before the Royal Geographical Society, the chairman of the evening, Colonel Sir Charles Close, pointed out that the topic was innovative for the Society's presentations: it dealt with h u m a n geography. Sir Charles expressed the desire to hear more papers such as Barbour's in the future. H e was selected to write the obituary for J o h n Rich that appeared in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. And Barbour recognized that he could write for geographical audiences. This was evident from an enquiry regarding the content and organization of his 76 essays on various places in China that he wrote for Chambers Encyclopedia. He replied that 'my contributions were more geographical than geological...' His letters sent to his sons when he was travelling or doing fieldwork also describe separately the geography and geology of his experiences. In addition, he was clearly identified by United States military intelligence agencies as a geographer in their correspondence with him. His BBC projects were also clearly geographical in content and scope. In the end, the issue of how to place Barbour as a scientist seems to

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fundamentally revolve around the question of whether or not physiography, as an approximate equivalent of geomorphology in the United States (Fenneman, 1938; Moore, 1978; Salisbury, 1909), and geomorphology from part of geography or geology. For American academics, geomorphology was and is clearly a geological topic, while for Europeans, it is clearly not only within the realm of geography (Freeman, 1980), but also the intellectual liaison between the various parts of all the geo-sciences (Wooldridge, 1956). Barbour's notes for his lectures on physiography suggest in text and in Venn diagrams that he shared Wooldridge's views on both the placement and role of geomorphology within the geo-sciences. Furthermore, Barbour's choice of the Geographical Journal as an outlet for his articles, clearly reflects this view. However, in his correspondence Barbour clearly identifies himself as a geologist, although he also refers to himself as a physiographer, stratigrapher and palaeontologist. Regardless of how contemporary geographers judge Barbour's professional qualifications and the place of geomorphology in the division of the sciences, there is a much more severe problem when attempting to describe Barbour's scientific thought and contributions. It turns out that unlike Fenneman, Barbour did take the opportunity to formally communicate his thoughts about the nature and role of geography or how to best conduct geographic research. There is one undated, incomplete essay entitled ' T h a t Geography Fellow (FRGS)', in Barbour's writings. In it, Barbour sketches his view of the history of geography in Scotland, England and the United States, describes his long-term friendship with the Bartholomew family (of atlas publication fame), reminisces about the joys of learning through play and vacations, and recalls his role as dean and colleague at the University of Cincinnati. However, there is nothing in this essay that even begins to describe how Barbour thought or worked as a geomorphologist. Furthermore, even though he criticized Fenneman's Physiography of the Eastern United States (Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1938), as lacking documentation such that 'a student of a problem was assumed to know how to follow a clue,' he agreed with Fenneman's view that the goal of science is explanation rather than mere description. Yet his publications are all descriptive, with virtually no discussion of the philosophy of science or methodology underlying the research. Finally, our ability to clearly delineate Barbour's approach is hampered by the fact that virtually none of his work was really challenged by other scholars. O n only one occasion, in February 1938, A.R. Hinks, the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, alerted Barbour that a manuscript by J . Hanson-Lowe had been received for possible publication. In the manuscript Hanson-Lowe apparently questioned some of Barbour's views of the structure of the lower Yangtze terraces. T o his credit, Barbour refused to either interfere in the manuscript review process or feel offended that his views had been challenged. However, it is possible to glean from his letters and lecture notes some sense of Barbour's approaches to research. He was a firm believer in the value of direct field observation, and especially that conducted in the language of the place being studied. This is evidenced by his mastery of German, French, Italian and Chinese. Here he seems to be following the dicta of his mentor Berkey who argued that 'the field is always right,' and that 'gold is where you find it.' The Geology faculty at the University of Cincinnati also recall that Barbour felt that the truest test of whether or not one understood the geological structure of an area was whether one could sketch in detail the study area. Yet Barbour was not Luddite: he made judicious and dramatic use of aerial and ground level photographs in his publications and lectures, something audiences at the Royal Geographical Society especially praised. This ability to sketch permitted Barbour to not only illustrate his articles but

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permitted him to include intimate landscapes on the annual family Christmas letter to friends and on stationery. An important corollary of his attitude towards sketching was that one did not need expensive equipment to do extensive or good fieldwork. In this regard he preferred personal experience over published text. It is clear that much of Barbour's work, and especially that done in China, was political, opportunistic, and syncretic. It was political in the sense that access to sites or areas of interest were highly dependent on what the Chinese refer to as guanxi (intense, close friendships based on kinship, village or school ties). Frequently Barbour was dependent on the goodwill or letters of recommendation from friends, government officials or missionaries. Sometimes, local political officials were anxious to show Barbour what they considered to be important local geological features. His work was opportunistic in the sense that fieldwork depended on whether or not major construction projects, such as road cuts, the laying of bridge foundations or railway track, or well boring, were exposing geological features or fossil beds of interest. Similarly, car or truck breakdowns requiring prolonged stays in an area permitted unplanned hikes and the opportunity to explore local geological features or curiosities or to hunt for fossils. This opportunism may account for the lack of any description of sampling techniques. Barbour also followed this pattern when he participated in the summer geology field trips and camps sponsored by the Department of Geology at the University of Cincinnati. He parlayed several trips into articles dealing with hydroelectric sites such as Boulder Dam, Tennessee Valley, Grand Coulee, and the Kitimat project in British Columbia. It was syncretic in the sense that he relied very heavily on the published work of others to bridge the gaps in his own work or to provide the background for his research. As such he commonly argued through analogy of findings in one place to his study area. In a letter to H a r r y Carman, chairman of the J o h n Whitney H a y Foundation, dated 19 October 1959, Barbour noted that he made no claim to originality. Instead he pointed to good fortune in having a close circle of friends who laid the foundations of geology. H e revelled then in the realization that his conclusions and findings were the result of 'the inspiration of a succession of peripatetic geologists who beat a track to his door'. All of these general approaches to research still stand in good stead for anyone contemplating field-based research in geography. Barbour's work did follow a very general plan where he would first define and grasp a problem, and only then move on to a resolution and inspection of his findings. In his field books, assembled during his studies at Columbia, he would start with a stated problem, list possible 'lines of attitude,' cite authority on the area, describe his field evidence, and then proceed to generalize about lithography, strata and geomorphological processes he thought had operated in the study area. When appropriate he would include chemical and mechanical analysis of the materials he was studying, along with fossil evidence, and the suspected relationships between topography, erosion surfaces, aggradation and geomorphological stages. In short Barbour appears to have used a recognizable, albeit rudimentary, form of scientific method in his research. He tolerated working in the field on his own. He felt that the adventures involved in exploring and resolving problems were adequate compensations for the loneliness he endured while away from his family. T h e final characteristic of Barbour's work that comes through clearly in his publications and field notes is his preference for dealing with practical, applied problems. In this regard it should be of no surprise that in his history of Yenching University, Edwards (1959) recalls Barbour's assistance in helping to relieve drought conditions in North China through the discovery of deep aquifers leading

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to the digging of some 4,950 village wells as one of his major contributions as a Yenching faculty member. A water tower pagoda still stands over the well he tapped on the Yenching campus.

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas Barbour's influence on geographic ideas has been very limited. His work on the geology of China is rarely cited in recent texts, and there are no records of his being cited in any citation index. Given his career change from scholar-teacher to administrator this seeming lack of influence or spread should not be a surprise. As a general rule in academia, once one stops publishing, the opportunity to be cited by others diminishes rapidly. It could also be argued that Barbour's work on China falls into the category of works labelled classic, definitive and seminal. This is truly the case for his work on the origins of loess, the structure of the Yangtse basin, and the relation of the Chinghsing to the thrust of the Himalayan tectonic plate into China. The fate of such works is not always a happy one. All too often the findings of such studies make their way into the established truths of a field without attribution. Hence the need to rediscover and re-publicize such works (as found in the programme, begun in September 1991, of reprinting classics with commentaries in Progress in Human Geography). His research methodology or philosophy also did not spread since there is no evidence that Barbour directly supervised any MA or PhD students at the University of Cincinnati. He was on several M A examination committees and his close reading of theses was greatly appreciated by the students. The fact that Barbour did not supervise graduate students was apparently a deliberate, conscious decision on his part. According to Attila Kilinc, who arrived at the University of Cincinnati while Barbour was still active in the department, Barbour preferred working with undergraduates. There is no small irony in this since Barbour had rejected an offer from Williams College, which he felt was too undergraduate oriented and unscientific. It has been suggested, however, that Barbour did have a major impact on the work of de Chardin. According to Hugh Barbour (personal correspondence, 15 Nov. 2002), de Chardin gained some of his ideas about religion and science from Barbour, this despite the two men's obvious differences: de Chardin was a mystic and relied on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, while Barbour was ever the pragmatist, and believed that the best way to overcome evil was to do good. While Barbour apparently left very little imprint on geographical ideas, it is not the case that Barbour had no impact in other forums. Upon his retirement an anonymous group of Barbour's students endowed an annual cash award in his honour to be presented to the University of Cincinnati faculty member who best fosters good faculty-student relations, thus demonstrating that Barbour's deep concern and care for people and their cultural differences had resonated among his students. This coveted award is presented at the annual Spring All University Faculty Meeting along with the two annual prizes for best teachers. Although few faculty or students at the university know of the details of Barbour's labours for the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences and on behalf of students, they do know someone named Barbour set a standard for positive involvement in students' lives that was highly regarded. In the end one can say that despite his relative anonymity today, Barbour had a successful career, and one which can provide insights into anyone seeking an academic career today. Barbour was actively involved in national academic

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George Brown Barbour

organizations. He had many undergraduate students. Barbour loved fieldwork aimed at solving practical problems and successfully transmitted this love to his students. He was driven to serve. He was a whole human being, gracious, hospitable and caring. He was multidimensional, with his family and his music as outlets. Barbour was acknowledged to be a freethinker. He lived to see his two oldest sons become university professors. His youngest son Robert, before his untimely death, also participated in the family tradition of service: he deferred completion of his PhD in Medical Physics in order to serve in Austria at a World Council of Churches camp for refugees. A hostel for refugee boys in Salzburg was dedicated to Robert's memory. Barbour had faith that he was part of God's divine plan and drew great strength from his faith. Barbour felt the conflicts that accompanied his multi-phased career, and felt at times that he was a failure as a son, husband, father and scientist. His impact on the practice of geomorphology does pass one important test: as of 2002, geomorphology is taught in both the Departments of Geography and Geology at the University of Cincinnati. He had a full and mixed career, and is remembered for the diverse contribution he made and the personal impacts he had on so many lives. Geographers could do a lot worse than remember a caring, cultured, dedicated and gracious human being that stands as Barbour's patrimony.

Acknowledgments Many thanks to the staff of the Archives and Rare Book Room Staff, University of Cincinnati, and especially Anna Truman, Kevin Grace and Kate Lindner for their help in retrieving Barbour's papers; to Barbour's son Hugh for answering my questions and providing access to materials not otherwise available; to Dr Rena Selya for her helpful editorial suggestions. Photograph courtesy of Archives and Rare Book Room, University of Cincinnati.

Bibliography and Sources 1. WORKS CITED IN THIS BIOBIBLIOGRAPHY Barbour, George B., Free: Biography of Robert Freeland Barbour, Assen, Royal van Gorcum Press, 1954. Barbour, George B., In the Field With Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, New York, Herder and Herder, 1965. Barbour, George B., In China When..., Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press, 1975. Barbour, George B., Memories of Three Continents, mimeo, no date. Bates, M. Serale, 'The Theology of American Missionaries in China, 1890-1950', in The Missionary Enterprise in China and Asia, John King Fairbank, ed., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, 135-58. Edwards, Dwight W., Yenching University, New York: United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, 1959.

George Brown Barbour 29 Ji, Lanpo, and Hwang, Wei-wen, The Story of Peking Man. From Archeology to Mystery, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Lutz, Jessica G., 'China and protestants: Historical Perspectives', in China and Christianity. Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, Stephen Uhalley, Jr., and Wu Xiaoxin, (eds.), Armonk, NJ: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, 179-94. Ryan, Bruce, 'Nevin Melancthon Fenneman, 1865-1945', Geographers Biobibliographical Studies 10, (1986) 57-68. Ryan, Bruce, Seventy-Five Tears of Geography at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, Department of Geography, University of Cincinnati, 1983. Shapiro, Harry L., Peking Man, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Varg, Paul A, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats. The American Protestant Movement in China, 1890-1952, Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2. OBITUARIES AND REFERENCES ON GEORGE BROWN BARBOUR Barbour, Hugh S., Memorial to George Brown Barbour, 1980-1977, Memorials, Geological Society of America, 9 (1979), 1-5. 'Dean, and Publicist for Peking Man', Cincinnati Enquirer, 16 July 1977. Cincinnati Post, 16 July 1977. 'George B. Barbour', Geographical Journal, 143, 1977, 307. 'Geologist and Educator', New York Times, 13 July 1977. 'Geologist, Studied Prehistoric Man', Cleveland Plain Dealer, 13 July 1977. New York Post, 13 July 1977 'Studied Prehistoric Man', Boston Globe, 13 July 1977. 3. SELECTED WORKS BY GEORGE BARBOUR Barbour's bibliography lists two monographs, 80 scientific articles, 76 articles in the new (1950) and revised (1955) editions of the Chambers Encyclopedia, 25 articles in the popular press and newspapers, and 25 book reviews in scholarly journals. A separate sheet lists some 16 technical reports and 42 'contributions' submitted while he was on the faculty of Yenching University. A. Scholarly monographs 1929 Geology of the Kalgan Area, Geological Survey of China, Memoir Series A, no. 6. 1935

Physiographic History of the Yangtze, Geological Survey of China, Memoir Series A, no. 14.

B. Scholarly articles 1922 'Underground Water Supply of the Tingchow and Shuntehfu Areas', Oriental Engineer, 3:1, 8-15. 1922

'Principles of Investigation of Water-Supply, Peking', United China Famine Relief Commission Report, 106-110.

30

George Brown Barbour

1923

'The Tsinan Intrusive', Geological Society of China, Bulletin 2:1-2, 35-78.

1923

'How Rock History is Read: the hillocks of Tsinanfu, China', China. Journal of Science and Arts, 1:3, 280-6.

1924

'Artesian Water Supply at Haitien', Oriental Engineer Journal, 5:1, 1-3.

1924

'Cretaceous Beds in North China', Nature, 113: 2832, 194-5.

1924

'Deep Wells in the Peking Area', Geological Society of China, Bulletin 3:2, 127-38.

1924

'Iron Mines of Hsuan-Hua, Chihli', China Journal of Science and Arts, 2, 478-85.

1924

'Preliminary Observations in the Kalgan Area', Geological Survey of China, Bulletin 3:2, 153-68.

1925

'The Loess of China', China Journal of Science and Arts, 3, 454—63.

1925

'Radioactivity as the Cause of Mountains', China Journal of Science and Arts, 3, 664-9.

1925

'Springs of Tsinanfu', Royal Asiatic Society, North China Branch, Journal, 56, 70-5.

1925

'Chinese Loess', Oriental Engineer, Journal, 6:4, 1-10.

1925

'Deposits of the Sangkanho Valley', Geological Society of China, Bulletin, 4:1, 53-5. 'Method of Presenting Palaeogeographic Maps', Geological Society of China Bulletin 4:2, 9304.

1925 1926

'Crystalline Gneisses and Schists in China', Geological Society of China Bulletin 5:1, 21 (title only).

1926

'Pliocene and post-Pliocene History of North China', Third Pan-Pacific Science Congress Proceedings, 1780 (abstract).

1926

'Vertical Cleavage of Loess', China Journal of Science and Arts, 4:1, 46.

1926

'Deposit and Erosion in the Huai-lai Basin and their bearing on the Pleistocene History of North China', Geological Society of China Bulletin 5:1, 47-55.

1926

(with E. Licent and P. Teilhard de Chardin) 'Geological Study of the Sangkanho Basin', Geological Society of China Bulletin 5:3-4, 263-78.

1926

'Note on the Correlation of Physiographic Stages', Geological Society of China Bulletin 5:4, 279-80.

1926

'The Loess of China', Smithsonian Institute, Annual Report, 279-96.

1927

(with C.J. Wu) 'High Altitude Dust in the Peking Area', China Journal of Science and Arts, 7, 305-6.

1928

'Structural Evolution of Eastern Asia', in Structure of Asia, J .W. Gregory (ed.), London, Methuen, 188-305.

1928

'Re-excavated Cretaceous Valley', Quarterly Journal Geological Society of London, 84:4, 719-27.

George Brown Barbour

31

1929

'Comparison between Evolution of Land Surfaces in North and South China', Lingnan Science Journal, 8, 653 9.

1929

'Revision of Physiographic Stages', Geological Society of China, Memoir, Series A, no. 6, 6pp.

1930

'Das chinesische Loess-Problem', Festbuch fur Johannes Walther, Leopoldina, Band 6, 63-8.

1930

'Further Data regarding Deep Wells in the Peking Area', Geological Society of China Bulletin 4:1, 4—57.

1930

'Origin of the Niangtzekuan Tufa', Geological Society of China Bulletin 9:3, 213-22.

1930

'Superficial Deposits of Yutaoho', Geological Society of China Bulletin 9:4, 347-54.

1930

'Age of Basalts of Chinghsing', Geological Society of China Bulletin 9:4, 355 9.

1930

(with M.N. Bien) 'Pleistocene Volcanoes of the Sangkanho', Geological Society of China Bulletin 9:4, 361—70. 'Rock Bottom in Society and Politics, Geological Determinants in Civilization', China Review of Social And Political Science, 172-83.

1930 1931

'Taiku Deposits and the Problem of Pleistocene Climates', Geological Society of China, Bulletin, 10, 71 -104.

1931

'Der geologischer Hintergrund des Peking Menschen' (Sinanthropus), Anthropologischer Anzeiger, 7, 257 8.

1931

'Origin of the Bedford Augen-Gneiss', American Journal of Science, 19, 351-8.

1933

'The Loess of China', XVII International Geological Congress, Washington. Report, vol. 2, 777-8.

1933

'Pleistocene History of the Huangho', Geological Society of America, Bulletin, 44: 6, 1143-60.

1933

'Geomorphology of the Nanking Area', Academia Sinica, Natural Research Institute, Contributions, 13, 81-136.

1934

'Physiographic Stages of Central China', Geological Society of China Bulletin 13, 456-67.

1934

'Analysis of the Lushan Glaciation Problem', Geological Society of China Bulletin, 13 647-56.

1934

(with P. Teilhard de Chardin and M.N. Bien) 'A reconnaissance across the Eastern Tsinling', Geological Survey of China, Bulletin 25, 9—37.

1935

'Correlation of Fluviatile Terraces', Geological Society of China Bulletin 14:4, 470-81.

1935

'Memorial to Dr. Davidson Black', Geological Society of America, Bulletin 46, 193-202.

1935

'Recent Observations on Loess', Geographical Journal, 86:1, 54-64.

32

George Brown Barbour

1935

'Physiography of Jehol, North China', Geological Society of America, Bulletin 46, 1483-92.

1936

'Physiographic History of the Yangtze', Geographical Journal, 87:1, 1734.

1936

'Boulder Dam and its geographical setting', Geographical Journal, 86:6, 498-504.

1936

'Dr. V.K. Ting, 1887-1936', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, London, 92, 95-9.

1937

'The Tennessee Valley Project', Geographical Journal, 89:5, 393-408.

1938

'China, Regional Geography', The Monsoon Lands, Broadcasts to Schools Handbook, no. 984, 40pp.

1940

'Harnessing the Columbia River', Geographical Journal, 96:4, 235-42.

1942

'Texas Oil', Geographical Journal, 100:4, 145-55.

1949

'Makapansgat', Scientific Monthly, 69:3, 141-7.

1949

'Ape or Man? An Incomplete Chapter of H u m a n Ancestry from South Africa', presidential address, Ohio Academy of Sciences, Ohio Journal of Science, 49:4, 129-46.

1951

'Introduction to the Apprentice Scholar (Nevin Fenneman)', Compass of Sigma Gamma Epsilon, 28:2, 3-4.

1955

' P . Teilhard de C h a r d i n ' , obituary, Geological Society of London, Proceedings, 1529, 132-3.

1956

'Memorial to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1881-1955', Geological Society of America, Proceedings, Annual Report for 1955, 169-76.

1957

'Note on M a y a n Jadeite', American Antiquity, 22, 411-2.

1957

'Teilhard de Chardin', Palaeontological Society of India, Journal 2 (Wadia Jubilee Number), 21-3.

1958

'John Lyon Rich, 1884—1956', memorial, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 48:2, 174-7.

1959

'Kitimat', Geographical Journal, 125:2, 217-22.

Archival sources Barbour was listed during the 1950s in American Men of Science, Who's Who, Who's Who in American Education, and Who's Who (London). Barbour's papers are contained in some 35 Hollinger boxes housed in the Archives and Rare Book Department of the University of Cincinnati, 808 Carl Blegen Library. There are three files of personal materials housed in the Department of Geology, 500 Geology-Physics Building, University of Cincinnati. One file of correspondence is found in the Kenneth Caster Library, Department of Geology, University of Cincinnati. Copies of Barbour's papers relating to his life and work in China are found in the China Records Project, Yale University Divinity School Library and at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His original Chinese geology field notebooks are at the Smithsonian

George Brown Barbour

33

Institution, Washington, D C . Copies of Barbour's wartime correspondence are found in the Imperial War Museum, London. Barbour's slides and charts of his Africa work were deposited with the Leakey Foundation, in San Francisco, California, while the field note books from his six African trips are at the University of Wisconsin Library. Some 2,000 pages of his materials relating to the life and work of Teilhard de Chardin are housed at the Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway at 121st Street, New York, New York, 10027; copies of this material are also found at the University of Chicago Library. His letters to and from de Chardin are at the Woodstock Theological College Library, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. Barbour's collection of fossils and rocks was donated to the Museum of Natural History, Cincinnati Museum Center, Union Terminal, 1301 Western Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio. 45202.

Chronology 1890

Born 22 August, Edinburgh, Scotland

1904

Studied music and German, M a r b u r g University

1911

A M Classics, Edinburgh University

1914— 15

Member, Friends Ambulance Unit

1917

BA Cantab. St. John's College

1919-21

Doctoral studies, Columbia University

1920

Married Dorothy Dickinson

1921-32

Professor of Geology at Yenching, Peking, and Peiyang universities Primary research on Kailan Coalfields, Tsinan and Shuntehfuh areas; works with Amadeus Grabau

1922

Prepared members of the American Museum of Natural History third Asiatic Expedition

1923--4

Fieldwork on Kalgan area

1924

First fieldwork with de Chardin, Snagkanko valley

1928--9

Lecturer, Columbia University

1929

1929- 31

PhD, Columbia University, based on Kalgan research Fieldwork in Shansi and Shensi on Pliocene and Pleistocene History of Yellow River Basin

1931

Special Visiting Fellow, California Institute of Technology

1933 4

Editorial Office, Geological Society of America

1934

Visiting Physiographer, Cenozoic Laboratory, Geological Society of China. Works with Davidson Black and funded by Rockefeller Foundation

1935

Acting Professor Stanford University

1937

Delivered the Gill Memorial Lecture, Royal Geographical Society, London

34

George Brown Barbour

1938 58

Professor of Geology and Dean McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, University of Cincinnati

1938

Elected Honorary member, Royal Geographical Society of Belgium

1939

Elected member of Association of American Geographers

1947

Geomorphologist, South African Expedition, University of California. Made corresponding member of Royal Geographical Society of Belgium. Elected honorary member of Sigma Xi

1949

Elected President, Ohio Academy of Science; elected to Royal Society of South Africa and Geological Society of South Africa

1977

Died 12 July; remains cremated and buried in Edinburgh

Roger Mark Selya is Professor of Geography and Head of Department at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Lucien Febvre 1878-1956

Paul Claval

Lucien Febvre was born in 1878, in Nancy, Lorraine. His family came from Franche-Comte, another French province, close to the Swiss border. He always considered himself as a comtois. He wrote: 'We are not, as Comtois, conformist. Courbet was not a conformist, neither Pasteur, nor Proudhon'. M a n y of his publications dealt with this region. H e managed to spend there a good part of his holidays. In the 1930s, he bought a second home on the southern border of Franche-Comte, close to the town of Saint-Amour: for the last twenty years of his life, this second home, Le Souget, played an important role in his life. He invited there for long periods some students or young colleagues, Fernand Braudel for instance. He died in Le Souget in 1956.

1. Education, Life and Work Febvre's father was a secondary school teacher. Lucien Febvre had good results at school. He managed to enter the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure in 1898, when he was twenty years old. At the Ecole Normale Superieure, the students were offered a few lectures; they mainly attended those of the Sorbonne. There were about 30 students a year in the humanities section of the Ecole Normale, which allowed for strong cross-fertilization among different disciplines. Febvre was an historian, but he was not very fond of most of the well-known historians of the time who taught in the Sorbonne: Ernest Lavisse, Charles-Victor Langlois, Charles Seignobos. H e had much admiration for Paul Vidal de la Blache, who had just left Ecole Normale Superieure (where he had been assistant director) for the Sorbonne. Lucien Febvre managed, during the years he spent in the Sorbonne, to develop acquaintances with psychologists, linguists, orientalists, geographers and those interested in Germany. He knew German and was close to many German scholars. Among the historians, his sympathies went mainly to Henri Berr, who had just launched a new journal, La Revue de Synthese historique. Febvre soon published in this journal.

36

Lucien Febvre

At the time he was at the Ecole Normale, he met Jules Sion, one of Vidal de la Blache's brightest students, a geographer who had entered the school in the same year. They became close friends. In the years before World W a r I, they travelled together several times. Febvre then spent three years, from 1903 to 1906, in the Fondation Thiers; it was (and still is) an institution which provided (and provides) a few bright young scholars with accommodation and funding for the preparation of their doctoral dissertations. Just like the Ecole Normale Superieure, it offered opportunities for encounters and cross-fertilization. Febvre completed his doctoral dissertation Philippe II et la Franche-Comtein 1911. H e was appointed the next year to the University of Dijon. H e was mobilized for five years during World W a r I and was a sergeant at the beginning of the hostilities and a captain in 1919, when he moved back to civil life. He was then appointed to the University of Strasbourg. Alsace had just returned to France after 49 years of German rule. T h e French Government considered it important to transform the prestigious German University of Strasbourg into a prestigious French one. T h e new teachers were specially bright. Henri Baulig, whose family had fled Alsace in 1871, was appointed to the chair of geography. Sociology was represented by Maurice Halbwachs, one of the most imaginative Durkheimians. In history, Lucien Febvre had as a colleague M a r c Bloch. Research was organized by centres a"etudes, which proved to be useful institutions (Friedman, 1996). When in Strasbourg, Febvre resumed his reflection on the relations between geography and history, begun in 1912, but delayed by the war. As a result, he published in 1922 La Terre et devolution humaine, his most important contribution to geography. Between 1900 and 1922, Febvre had been in some way as much a geographer as an historian. Later his interest in geography did not fail, but he devoted an increased share of his time to history and the administration of research. As an historian, he was a specialist of Modern History (by French standards, the period between 1492 and 1789) and more specifically of the sixteenth century, his doctoral dissertation dealing with this period. His study Un destin: Martin Luther is symptomatic of the orientation he chose in the 1920s (Febvre, 1928): his earlier studies had focused on social and economic problems; he was now increasingly interested in the ideas of culture and civilization. His book La Civilisation. Le mot et I'idee (Febvre, 1930) is an illustration of this interest. In Strasbourg, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre began to co-operate. T h e creation of the Annates d'Histoire economique et sociale, in 1929, was a joint venture. T h e title had been chosen in order 'to draw an analogy with the Annates de Geographie' (Friedman, 1996, p. 103) : both Bloch and Febvre wished to open history to the new orientations taken by research in the other social sciences; both had an interest in economy and in ethnology; Bloch was more eager to co-operate with sociology and Febvre with geography. T h e new journal rapidly became the symbol of a new way to conceive history and other social sciences. Febvre and M a r c Bloch shared the direction of the new journal (officially until 1941, and illegally after the anti-Jewish laws of 1941) until the assassination of M a r c Bloch by the Germans in 1944. T h e correspondence they exchanged is one of the main sources for the knowledge of historical research and the evolution of social

The title of the journal changed at different times: Annates d'Histoire sociale in 1939, Melanges d'Histoire sociale in 1942, Annates: socie'te's, economies, civilisations in 1946 (Friedman, 1996, p. 212).

Lucien Febvre

37

sciences in France in the 1930s and World W a r II. Febvre managed to publish the Annates during the war in spite of German censorship and paper shortage. Febvre moved to Paris in 1933 when elected to the College de France, the most prestigious academic institution in France. He taught there until retirement in 1948, assuming ever-increasing responsibility. He was asked in 1933 by Anatole de Monzie, who was then the Minister of Education, to chair the Committee in charge of an ambitious new encyclopedia, L'Encyclope'die franpaise. He was also involved in the managing of the money American institutions were begining to invest in French scientific research. He was part of the team responsible for the creation, in 1939, of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, which played a central role in French scientific activity after the Second World War. Febvre met Fernand Braudel in 1937 and invited him to spend the summer 1938 in Le Souget, which he had recently bought. Febvre wished to help Braudel in the preparation of his doctoral dissertation. A close friendship developed. When Braudel was a prisoner of war in Germany, from 1940 to 1945, Febvre used the network he had among German scholars to provide him with better conditions of work. After the American landing in North Africa, he arranged for Braudel to spend time with his wife, who lived in Algeria. Febvre's responsibilities became heavier after the Second World War. He participated in the reform of universities. He was French delegate to U N E S C O between 1945 and 1950. The institution was just born and Febvre was one of the scholars who organized it. Febvre chaired an International Committee on the history of the Second World War. A journal, Cahiers de I'histoire mondiale, was created, which he directed. He chaired the 6th Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and worked for its transformation into a more modern and efficient institution, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences sociales - helped, in this task, by Fernand Braudel. Febvre managed to maintain a high level of scientific writing. His book Rabelais et le probleme de I'incroyance au XVIe siecle is fascinating since he showed that we have to enter the mental categories of the time to interpret its authors (Febvre, 1942): it was almost impossible to be an unbeliever in a society when everyone was a Christian. Since most of the nineteenth-century historians had been hostile to the R o m a n Catholic church, they had misinterpreted Rabelais' critical attitude towards priests and monks. Through his book on Rabelais, Febvre had written one of the first studies in the history of mentalite's, which became central to the Annales school in the 1950s and 1960s. The book Autour de I'Heptameron expressed the same orientation (Febvre, 1944). Febvre had always much admired Jules Michelet: hence his study Michelet (Febvre, 1946). Febvre published many articles. T h e most important were gathered and published before his death: Combats pour I'histoire (Febvre, 1953). A second volume was published later: Pour une histoire a part entiere (1962). Febvre died on 26 September 1956. He had been one of the major intellectual figures of France since the late 1920s. Thanks to the Annales, he exercised deep influence on French historical research from the early 1930s which remained significant in the 1970s though replaced perhaps by the influence of Braudel. Febvre was however never prisoner to a particular discipline. His role in the Encyclopedie franpaise bore witness to his interdisciplinary capacity. His influence was strong abroad: in Germany he had many links and in Argentina where he taught in 1937. His prose was excellent — rich, sometimes slightly emphatic, but always lively. W h a t he wrote is still as fresh as at the time of its publication. Geography did not play in the life and career of Lucien Febvre as continuous a

38

Lucien Febvre

role as it did for Fernand Braudel. He managed, however, mainly through La Terre el devolution humaine, to become the most significant theoretician and exponent of the French school of geography after the death of Vidal de la Blache.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought THE SCIENTIFIC

CONTEXT

As an historian, the young Lucien Febvre did not agree with the dominant orientations of French historical research of the time. Most historians shared a Comtian conception of their research: they looked for facts; their main task was to check them. They were less interested in the men whose lives they tried to relate than in the documentary sources they relied on. The influence of German science, which was dominant after the French defeat by Prussia in 1871, had reinforced these attitudes in all French social sciences. This view of science assumed different postures in the disciplines. Historians tried to present 'historical facts' as objectively as possible. Geographers modelled their approach on the natural sciences. They were fascinated by the results of geology and thought of human societies in terms of evolution according to either the Darwinian or Lamarckian theory. When building human geography, they often referred to botanical geography. Sociologists had different options. Some of them, Herbert Spencer for instance, had chosen the evolutionist model. In France, Emile Durkheim refused to emulate the disciplines of nature. Sociology was a science of social realities: it had to rely only on social evidence - hence the role devoted to the 'total social fact'. A new generation appeared at the turn of the century. Its members considered that social sciences had to explore new paths. M a n y young scholars like Lucien Febvre were fascinated by the orientations developed by the different disciplines in their investigation of social realities. At that time, both geography and sociology appeared as younger and more dynamic scientific enterprises than history; as a result, some historians tried to capitalize on the insights provided by these two disciplines. In this intellectual competition, geographers were winning in the late 1890s. A few years later, Durkheimian sociology was more popular (Friedman, 1996). There was a growing feeling of dissatisfaction with the compartmentalization of the social sciences which resulted from their increased concern with methodology. A reaction appeared. In history, it was initiated by Henri Berr, who founded the Revue de Synthese historique in 1900. At a time when Durkheimian sociology was considered by his supporters the only social science, Berr proposed to unite all the disciplines of man under the banner of history, and conversely, to write history in another way. T h e discovery of Revue de Synthese historique was essential for Lucien Febvre: This review which proclaimed that another history than the history of battles, diplomatic treaties and political intrigues existed and ought to exist - this review which proclaimed and realized the design to gather together historians and archivists, geographers and ethnographers, linguists, economists, and philosophers for a work of synthesis, all fraternally united in the concern of the common work - this review which installed enthusiasm and hope where others knew only how to distill boredom; dear friend, dear friend, what liberation and joy. (Lucien Febvre, 1952, p. 290)

Lacien Febvre THE 1905 BOOK ON

39

FRANCHE-COMTE

As an application of his programme, Henri Berr launched in 1903 a series of monographs on 'Les regions de la France'. Their aim was to analyse the historical individualities that people had built in the chosen areas (Friedman, 1996, pp. 78 79). Febvre had prepared his Dipldme d3 Etudes Superieures on La Contre-Reforme en Franche-Comte et son histoire de 1567 a 1577. He began to work on his doctoral dissertation Philippe II et la Franche-Comte' in 1903. He consequently agreed to write the volume on Franche-Comte. Les regions de la France. IV — La Franche-Comte was published in 1905. The first chapter reviewed the different contributors to the local history of this province. In the second chapter Febvre touched on the main geographical problem of the area: the local population had a strong feeling of identity even if FrancheComte was composed of the juxtaposition of several natural units: Franche-Comte is not a natural region . . . There was no natural region to serve as a setting, as a hearth for the province. It was man who built it out of very diverse elements, uniting very diverse areas detached by him from great geographical wholes: the Vosges, Saone plain and J u r a , to which they naturally pertained. (Febvre, 1905, pp. 75-6.) Differences and contrasts were present in every domain: Such are, in their deep diversity, the constituting parts of the comtois province. W h a t do they share? Very few things, apparently: neither their origin nor their geological formation, nor the nature of their soil, even less their topographical forms . . . And in their natural and agricultural flora, the distribution of their populations, the conditions nature offered to their settlements, how many contrasts . . . : it was an endless variety of materials, plans, agglomeration and aspects. [Ibidem, p. 19.) Franche-Comte apparently shared nothing with the natural regions to which many geographers tried, at that time, to reduce the differentiation of the earth surface: It is a great surprise to see all these contrasts, all these dissimilarities melted together in the political and moral unit of a province, associated for centuries by the same destinies. Maybe nowhere the two notions of natural region and historical group appear as distant, as opposed as in this complex country. A natural region, the Saone basin? Certainly, but never a historical u n i t . . . And the Jura? Limited towards Bresse as well as pays de Vaud by very steep escarpments, it conveys perfectly the idea of a country with natural boundaries. The J u r a was however not only far from being completely comtois, but the diverse peoples who divided it never bounded their expansion to a clear topographical feature . . . There, boundaries were never given to man by nature; they were not imposed upon him rigidly: it was he who made them, he who created, transformed and permanently modified them out of his efforts. {Ibidem, pp. 19-20.) The unity of such a complex area is wrought by the complementary nature of its components and its relative isolation:

40

Lucien Febvre [Franche-Comte] remained the privileged country which is self sufficient and absorbs all its production. For the meat of his cattle, the montagnon received the wheat of the low country; for the wine of the vineyards, it offered its cheese: old secular practices of exchange, observed over time by travellers; they kept on uniting indissolubly the Burgundy of pastures to that of 'openfields'. (Ibidem, p. 66) But in this way, one realizes better the place held by Comte in the world. It was a half isolated country. . . . for a long time sheltered by the barriers that water and woods constituted around it. It could continue to live its own life and refuse for centuries a political union that conditions did not imperiously impose. For being isolated, Comte was not cut from the world all around. Through the limestone thresholds, roads penetrated into its territory . . . By them, the currents of general life could freely circulate in the country and associate it with the great trends of commerce and art of neighbouring Italy, Southern Germany or Burgundy. (Ibidem, p. 22.)

This presentation was original at a time when emphasis was often put on the role of nature in regional organization. It was close to Vidalian themes: Febvre had been a student of Vidal de la Blache. He relied heavily, in his analysis, on the notions present in Le Tableau de la geographie de la France (Vidal, 1903). He borrowed from it his conception of the dynamic nature of regional organization: So a region, a country, a land is not a set of resources, of dead productions. It is a reservoir of energies, of living forces which, according to an unceasing movement, practise mutual help, stand in and substitute one for the other and adapt themselves to the new conditions perpetually engendered by the move of time itself. (Febvre, 1905, p. 16.) Such a formulation was close to Vidal's: 'a country is a reservoir where energies lay asleep, of which nature has placed the seed, but use depends on m a n ' (Vidal de la Blache, 1903, p. 8). When speaking of the 'currents of general life', Febvre certainly referred to this statement: 'A country - France less than any other - does not live its own life; it participates with a more general life which penetrates it' (ibidem, p. 385). Even if Febvre's interpretation of the region was based on Vidalian ideas, it sounded different. Vidal stressed the role of the environment in the construction of France: An ambient atmosphere, inspiring ways of feeling, expressions and idioms, a particular form of sociability, has enveloped the diverse populations that fate united on the soil of France. Nothing has drawn its elements closer. (Vidal, p. 51) As stressed by Berdoulay, Vidal had a permanent concern: to build human geography on the model of the sciences of nature (Berdoulay, 1993). It explains why he never renounced the idea of some form of influence of the natural environment on human realities. His publications, Tableau de la geographie de la France pointed out the role of man in the building of regions, but, by stressing the harmony between social behaviour and the environment in which it took place, he conveyed the idea that nature exerted some form of influence on man. As an historian, the young Lucien Febvre felt free to interpret Vidal's findings in a more radical way.

Lucien Febvre

41

It was a period when social science changed rapidly. History was increasingly open to sociological influences, as proved by the '1903 debate' fuelled by Henri Berr's journal (Friedman, 1996, pp. 39-54). It was a difficult time for human geography: Durkheim had launched a fierce attack on it in his review of Ratzel's Politische Geographie (Durkheim, 1899). Marcel Mauss and Paul Fauconnet rapidly joined their master (Mauss and Fauconnet, 1901). Geographers did not counter directly these attacks. They preferred to develop a defensive strategy in order to escape criticism (Claval, 1993). Their reaction took a few years to develop: in 1905, the Vidalians had still not formulated their conceptions of h u m a n geography and the regional approach. Gallois had not written Regions naturelles et noms de pays (Gallois, 1908), where he made the natural region - and its h u m a n transformation into the geographic region - the main focus of the discipline. Febvre had been converted to geography at a time when it was still a scientific field lacking boundaries and methodology. As a result, he interpreted Vidalian ideas in a more social and possibilist stance than Vidal himself. THE 1912

PUBLICATIONS

For a few years Febvre was largely engaged in the preparation of his doctoral dissertation. H e defended it - Philippe II et la Franche-Comte'- in 1912 and published in the same year a history of Franche-Comte (Febvre, 1912a and b). In these books, Febvre developed the arguments he had first made known in 1905 - without modifying his position after the publication of Gallois' Regions naturelles et noms de pays. For him, Franche-Comte was essentially characterized by its diversity. Its unity resulted from the economic complementarities it created. . . . so different, its parts were for the same reason complementary. T h e juxtaposition in a small area of dissimilar characteristics united and linked by these dissimilarities themselves is one of the specific features of France. In Comte, this fact is striking. A close economic solidarity - deep reason for their political agreement - does not unite the two regions of J u r a and the low country. Between them, relations are constant since the mountain needs the grains of the plain and the wine of the hills; the plain requires cattle, wood and eventually men - from the mountain: exchange of products, contacts between the inhabitants. (Febvre, 1912a, p. 29) And Lucien Febvre insisted: T h e shared possession of so rich a heritage was conducive, at a time of division, difficult traffic, jealous protectionism, to the fastening of a new and strong link between Comtois. Everything brings us back to observe in this way the harmony between natural and human forces. Such an observation, however, has not to get us lost: the responsibility of man remained dominant. For it was him who eventually had to forge out of heterogeneous fragments a political unit, a State. (Febvre, 1912a, pp. 30-1.) T h e idea of a correspondence between natural and h u m a n forces was a Vidalian one, but the final sentence stressed the role of h u m a n initiative in spatial organization. For Febvre the idea of a natural region had no interest by itself. He was rather fascinated by the historicity of the political formations of either provincess, states or historical regions. Henri Berr had convinced him that 'another history existed and ought to exist'. Instead of writing about 'battles, diplomatic

42

Lucien Febvre

treaties and political intrigues', he discovered that historians could write about the construction and evolution of regional organizations. Febvre was the first historian to become conscious of the fecundity of this new field of enquiry. Instead of basing the division of time on political events, it could be based on the dynamics of territorial construction, their appearance, their strengthening, their crises: through this territorial approach, a new path was opened for taking hold of social realities. LA TERRE ET DEVOLUTION

HUMAINE

La Terre el devolution humaine was built on the direct experience of fieldwork and archival analysis Febvre had secured in Franche-Comte, but the scope of the book was different. It was a reflection on the epistemology of a new discipline at a time when the majority of its practitioners had been unable to clearly establish its basic principles and methods. Febvre planned the book immediately after the defence of his doctoral dissertation. . . . the design of this book was completely made up in 1912-1913, ten years ago. The book should have been published at the beginning of 1915 and when war broke out, the chapters corresponding to the introduction and the first part had been written. Resumed only in 1919 and after an interruption of five years, the manuscript had to undergo a complete recasting. (Febvre, 1922, p. 9) Febvre updated his documentation and modified some of his positions according to recent research, but he did not change his objective fundamentally. H u m a n geography was a young discipline. It had been fiercely attacked by Durkheimian sociologists between 1900 and 1905. M a n y geographers adopted conservative positions in order to escape this kind of criticism. As a result geography was threatened on two fronts — by sociologists and by conservative geographers. Febvre decided to defend it. He would be the herald of the discipline: People certainly wonder why, after having first defended human geography against the criticism of social morphology - or more exactly having claimed for it an independent existence - we strove then, in all the development of this book, to criticise it . . . it is not to h u m a n geography in itself, but to a vicious and childish conception of its role and proper means that our criticism . . . was intended, (ibid., pp. 388-9) In this paragraph, Febvre identified clearly one of the enemies he was fighting: social morphology. H e was vaguer concerning the other, those who had adopted a 'vicious and childish conception of its role . . . ' . In fact, he had been profoundly disturbed by the attitudes adopted by some geographers in order to withstand the assaults of sociology. H e disagreed with the conceptions of the regional approach exposed by Lucien Gallois, and his emphasis on the natural region (Gallois, 1908). H e considered that the positivist stance ofJ e a n Brunhes in La Geographie humaine was equally dangerous, since it did not present the discipline as a social science, but as a science of landscape. Febvre preferred not to mention directly these geographers. H e attacked a 'vicious' conception of geography and not a particular geographer. His demonstration was a clear one. O u t of the conceptions of the discipline which were used at the beginning of the twentieth century: 1. geography as a study of positions, according to a tradition born with Varenius and mainly illustrated by Carl Ritter; 2. geography as the study of the regional differentiation of the earth; 3. geography as a science of landscapes; 4. geography as the study of the relations

Lucien Febvre

43

between man and his environment, Febvre selected the fourth: 'What relations did human societies of today develop with the present geographical environment? Such is the fundamental problem - and the only one - that human geography considers 1 (Febvre, 1922, p. 390). H e wrote: 'What geography studies, what it shows us, is the environment where human life occurs' {ibid., p. 77). T h e aim of Febvre, in the first part of the book, was to prove that the criticism developed by the Durkheimian sociologists was unfounded. Social morphology differed deeply from human geography. As Mauss explained: In order that [men] agglomerate, it is not enough that the climate and soil invite them to do it; it is as much necessary that their moral, juridical and religious organization allows them an agglomerated life. (Mauss and Beuchat, 1905, p. 393 of 1968 edition.) For geographers, what was significant was the material environment. For the specialists of social morphology, the social environment was more important. Hence the conclusion of Febvre: In other words: the social morphology cannot pretend to suppress human geography for its benefit, since the two disciplines neither have the same method nor the same orientation, nor the same object. (Febvre, 1922, p. 78) T h e defence of geography against the geographers who focused on the influence of nature and soil on man and history was more difficult. Three-quarters of the book were devoted to it. For Febvre, the relations between men and their environment were always complex. The task of geographers was not to speak about the 'general' influences of soil on man, but to disentagle the web of their complex relations: There is not, weighing on historical individualities, the rigid and uniform influence of four or five great geographical fatalities. There is, at every moment, the infinitely supple and stubborn intermediary of the living and initiative endowed things who are men, isolated or grouped there is in all the manifestations of their existence the constant, durable, multifarious, sometimes contradictory influences of all the forces of soil, climate and vegetation, and the action of still other forces and other powers, which are also part of the natural environment. (Febvre, 1922, p. 101.) In a paragraph on the food habits of men, Febvre wrote: Yes, but M a n , the abstract man, the Homo geographicus who has to, and can, indifferently eat everything, take advantage of all, does not e x i s t . . . There are not two of them to eat together, nor the same thing. It is everywhere that between 'man' and the natural product, the idea imposes itself. An idea which often is in nothing utilitarian and governs not only the food of man: the way they clothe themselves also and build their houses. (1922, p. 183.) Hence the significance of the regional approach : The original work of the French school of geography born of Vidal de la Blache, its particular contribution to science, is the set of regional

44

Lucien Febvre monographs [it p r o d u c e d . . . ] exact, methodical, deep monographs, as many efforts in order to render, according to the idea of geography, the characteristic features of a country, of a geographic region, of France. (Febvre, 1922, p. 29.)

T h e interest of these regional monographs was not to depict a particular area: it was to explore the same basic problem in different settings: We have not to lose sight of the terms of the problem. When seeing things from very high and far, there are only two. There are the natural regions, and men. W h a t reciprocal relations unite the latter to the former: T h a t is the question. (Febvre, 1922, p. 163) So, a deep and first hand knowledge of the natural environment; a general intelligence of the conditions of development of men; these are the two fundamental bases of all serious and efficient human geography. (Febvre, 1922, p. 393) It meant that h u m a n geography did not result from the influence of environment upon man. T h e landscapes and forms of regional organization resulted at least partly from h u m a n initiative: His habits, his particular characteristics, his genre de vie are not the necessary consequence of the fact that he is located in a particular environment. They are not the products of environment, to adopt this brutal formula. He brings them with him. They are consequences of his own nature . . . T h e physionomy of a country results in large degree from the activity of its inhabitants. (Febvre, 1922, p. 398.) Geographers do not deal with a deterministic universe. They are studying a world built by men: Necessities, nowhere. Possibilities, everywhere. And m a n , master of possibilities, judges of their use: consequently it is necessary to put him in the foreground: man, and no more the earth, nor the influences of climate, nor the determining conditions of places. (Febvre, 1922, p. 257.) Febvre coined the term 'possibilism' to encapsulate this conception of geography. In this way he provided geographers with a clear statement of the epistemology of their discipline. H e was not a geographer. When fighting for geography, he was also fighting for his view of history and the social sciences. He delved long into the criticism developed by Durkheimian sociologists since they nurtured imperialist views as much towards history as towards geography. He struggled against the determinist interpretations of man/milieu relationships since there were also determinist views of history. Even if he was aware of the most recent publications in geography, he was an outsider and behaved as such. H e did not explore all the disciplinal conceptions geographers were using at that time. He ignored: 1.

T h e geography of position; it was certainly the oldest and most revealing conception of geography. Developed initially by Varenius in the seventeenth century, it was central to the views on the discipline held by Carl Ritter: what could be observed at a particular location depended

Lucien Febvre

2.

3.

45

on its latitude, the fact that it was coastal or inland and the availability of transport facilities. For the geography of position, the role of flows, either natural or human, was essential: climate depended on oceanic and atmospheric circulation; economic life and culture, on trade. It meant that geographical positions were always relative: they changed according to techniques of transportation and communication and the opening of new infrastructures. Febvre did not ignore completely the role of 'circulation', but he did not completely understand the significance Vidal de la Blache conferred upon it. If Febvre stressed the influence of technical innovation so much, it was because he underestimated the role of mobility and trade. The study of the regional differentiation of the earth. This conception of geography, which was central to Kant's interpretation of the discipline, had become increasingly popular at the end of the nineteenth century, especially in Germany, but it was also present in Vidal de la Blache's approach. It meant that regional studies were not merely a tool for geographers, but were their major aim. It meant also that the processes of regional differentiation were as significant as their results. Vidal de la Blache was more interested in the mechanisms of regionalization (he explored four of them in the case of France) than in the description of regional differences. By his emphasis on regional monographs, Febvre reduced one of the most innovative parts of the Vidalian model. The landscape approach. It appeared at the very end of the nineteenth century in Germany. In France, it was mainly supported by J e a n Brunhes. At the time when Febvre developed his personal conception of geography, between 1900 and 1905, it was still a marginal interpretation.

As a result, Febvre focused too much on the question of environmental determinism. Vidal de la Blache stressed the role of h u m a n initiative in inventing genre de vie, but he knew that it was mainly thanks to the possibilities of trade that people escaped local constraints. These were severe limitations. La Terre et devolution humaine was however clear and highly readable. It soon became the standard reference in methodological and epistemological discussions in France - and elsewhere, due to its early translation into English (1925). CIVILIZATION,

THE ANNALES AND THE RHINE

After 1922, Febvre permanently ceased to work on geographical questions. However he touched occasionally on important problems for geographers. His research on the history of the word civilization (Febvre, 1930) was original and useful for those with an interest in the cultural approach in geography: he was the first to propose a thorough discussion of the term, its birth and its evolution. His publications on Luther, Rabelais or the Heptameron explored the mental dimensions of sixteenth-century civilization, but he did not limit his curiosity to the intellectual world of this period. At the time of the International Exhibition of Paris, in 1937, he was one of the co-organizers of the first international congress on folklore. He wrote a fascinating paper on the geography of seasonings in French cooking (Febvre, 1938). With the rise of nazism and the growing German threat on the French eastern border, Febvre co-authored with Albert Demangeon a book on the Rhine (Demangeon and Febvre, 1935). Demangeon covered the contemporary problems,

46

Lucien Febvre

mainly in the economic field. Febvre wrote a remarkable essay on the historical geopolitics of the river and its cities. The themes he covered had the same inspiration as his previous studies. Nature never determines the regional organization of life; a river may be a link as well as a barrier or a border. For Febvre, the Rhine was more fundamentally a link than an obstacle to human relations: The extreme detail of facts does not matter. W h a t has to be remembered, what, from the origin, illuminates like a flash the destiny of the Rhine, is that man, supreme fitter of rivers, has forged this one out of valleys and torrents in order to make it, no more a barrier, but a way. A link, not a ditch. Maybe a link between North and South. But between East and West, is it a link that we have to say? (Demangeon and Febvre, 1935, p. 11.) T h e answer of Febvre was yes: for most of history, the Rhine was a link between East and West. T h e most significant contribution of Febvre to geography, from the end of the 1920s, came from the way he and Marc Bloch organized the Annales. But it had more to do with his influence than his work.

3. Influence and Spread Of Ideas Febvre was not a geographer and never taught geography: his influence on the discipline was channelled through his books, his action as a prominent figure on the intellectual stage in France and his role in the Annales. For the last fifteen years of his career he had no doctoral students since he taught in College de France which did not offer the doctoral degree. O u t of his geographical publications, the three on Franche-Comte had been primarily written for historians, mainly local historians and the local elites of this part of France. Febvre had managed to give these studies a broader meaning, but their intellectual impact remained a limited one. T h e study La civilisation. Le mot et I'idee was provided by a small publishing house and its diffusion remained limited. T h e publication of The Rhine was motivated by the political situation in Europe and the Franco-German tensions: it was received as a topical work, which limited its audience. For geographers, Febvre was the man of one book, La Terre et devolution humaine and one of the two initiators of the Annales and of the Annales school of history. His genius was also linked to his large capacities in the field of public relations and organizer of public debates. T h e French school of geography was born out of the influence of Vidal de la Blache. Vidal had not published much : about a dozen papers on the nature, role and structure of geography, and after his death, Principes de geographie humaine (Vidal de la Blache, 1922). French geographers appeared as united under his aegis until he died. Later, it became apparent that the diversity of their attitudes was great: the former students of Vidal had followed his lectures at different times, from the early 1880s to the end of the 1900s; they did not remember the same lessons and their thinking evolved differently. Because of the influence of Lucien Gallois' Regions naturelles et noms de pays and J e a n Brunhes' La Geographie humaine, positivist and naturalist interpretations tended to prevail, even if they were not faithful to Vidal's thought. Hence the significance of La Terre et devolution humaine: the book offered the type of theoretical and epistemological statements geographers needed. It was clear. It

Lucien Febvre 47 became the standard reference in all discussion about the nature of geography for more than 30 years. In a way, the influence of LA Terre et devolution humaine was a highly positive one, since it offered a clear presentation of modern geography at a time when nobody could replace the figure of Vidal de la Blache. But there were also negative sideeffects. The feud with Durkheimian sociologists had been a relatively minor incident in the intellectual history of the discipline. Because of the emphasis Febvre put on it, it appeared as a major fact. As a result, geographers remained for more than a generation reluctant to adopt sociological methods or theories. Since Febvre considered that the main task of geography was to decipher the complex relations between man and environment, he gave the discipline a limited role. For him it did not establish general laws. Geography was mainly important through its regional monographs. Febvre concluded the first edition of L'Evolution humaine with this statement: Against the spirit of generalization, for a long time Vidal de la Blache stated: the perspective is to compose analytical studies, monographs where the relations between geographical conditions and social facts will be considered at close range, on a well chosen and limited field. (Febvre, 1922, p. 448 of the first edition) The other influence Febvre had on geography was through the Annales. This publication promoted a new vision of history. Instead of limiting the field to 'the history of battles, diplomatic treaties and political intrigues', it opened it to the study of 'economies, societies and civilizations', as rendered by the sub-title of the Journal from 1946. In it, historians discovered the history of landscapes (especially rural ones, under the aegis of Marc Bloch) and forms of territorial organizations as well as the distribution of material cultures and spiritual aspects of civilizations (thanks to Febvre). Febvre asked geographers, his old friend Jules Sion in particular, to contribute to the new journal. Because of the Annales, the cooperation between history and geography throve for at least a generation. How to conclude? That Lucien Febvre was a fine story-teller and a great writer: he was a man of immense personal charisma. This explains a large part of his influence.

Bibliography and Sources 1. BIOGRAPHIES AND REFERENCES Baumont, Maurice, Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Lucien Febvre, Paris, Firmin Didot, 1961. Berdoulay, Vincent, 'La geographie vidalienne: entre texte et contexte', in Claval, Paul (ed.), Autour de Vidal de la Blache, 1993, Paris, CNRS, 19-26. Claval, Paul, 'Le role de Demangeon, de Brunhes et de Gallois dans la formation de l'ecole francaise: les annees 1905-1910', in Claval, Paul (ed.), Autour de Vidal de la Blache (1993), Paris, CNRS, 14c-158. Demangeon, Albert; Febvre, Lucien, Le Rhin. Problemes d'histoire et d'economie, Paris, Armand Colin, 1935.

48

Lucien Febvre

Durkheim, E., Review ofPolitische Geographic, Annie Sociologique, vol. 2 (1899), 531-2. Friedman, Susan W., Marc Bloch, Sociology and Geography. Encountering Changing Disciplines, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. M a n n , H.D., Lucien Febvre, Paris, A. Colin, 1971. Massicotte, G., Lucien Febvre, Paris, Maloine, 1981. Mauss, M., Fauconnet, P., 'Sociologie' in La Grande Encyclopedic XXX (1901), Paris, Societe Anonyme de la Grande Encyclopedic, 175. Mauss, M., Beuchat, H . 'Essai sur les variations saisonnieres des societes eskimos', Annie sociologique, vol. I X (1905); quoted in the 1968 edition: Marcel Mauss, 1968, Sociology and anthropology, Paris, P U F , 387-477. Vidal de la Blache, Paul, Tableau de la geographic de la France, Paris, Hachette, 1903. Vidal de la Blache, Paul, Principes de geographic humaine, Paris, Armand Colin, 1922.

2. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

OF WORKS BY LUCIEN

FEBVRE

1901

Paris, La Contre-Reforme en Franche-Comti et son histoire de 1567 a 1577

1905

Les regions de la France. IV — La Franche-Comte, Publications de la Revue de Synthese historique, Paris, Cerf, 77.

1912(a)

Philippe II et la Franche-Comte, Paris, Honore Champion. Quoted in the Champs-Flammarion edition, 1970.

1912(b)

Histoire de la Franche-Comte, Paris, Boivin.

1922

La Terre et devolution humaine. Introduction giographique a. I'histoire, Paris, La Renaissance du Livre. Quoted in the Albin Michel new edition, 1970, based on the second edition (1924).

1928

Un destin: Martin Luther, Paris, P U F .

1930

La Civilisation. Le mot et I'idie, Paris, Centre International de Synthese. Premiere Semaine internationale de Synthese.

1938

'Repartition geographique des fonds de cuisine en France', Travaux du premier Congres international de folklore, Paris, 22-28 aout 1938, Tours, Arrault, 123-30.

1942

Rabelais et le probleme de Vincroyance au XVIe siecle, Paris, Albin Michelo.

1944

Autour de I'Heptameron. Amour sacre, amour profane, Paris, Gallimard.

1952

'De la Revue de Synthese aux Annates. Henri Berr ou un demi-siecle de travail au service de l'homme', Annales ESC, vol. 7.

1953

Combat pour I'histoire, Paris, Colin.

1962

Pour une histoire apart entiere, Paris, Editions de L'Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales.

3. ARCHIVAL

SOURCES

T h e son of Lucien Febvre still owns all the material left by his father. Until now, he

Lucien Febvre

49

has always refused to have it deposited in a library or freely consulted by scholars (information given by Professor Maurice Aymard, Administrateur de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, who is one of the colleagues who are trying to find a solution to this problem). It is the main reason for which there are practically no biographical studies on Lucien Febvre.

Chronology 1878

Born in Nancy

1898 1901 Ecole Normale Superieure 1901

DES: La Contre-Reforme en Franche-Comte et son histoire

1903 1907 Fondation Thiers 1905

Les regions de la France. IV-La Franche-Comte'

1912

Doctoral dissertation. Main thesis: Philippe II et la Franche-Comte'. Second thesis: Motes et documents sur la Reforme et I'Inquisition en Franche-Comte

1912

Histoire de la Franche-Comte

1912-1919 Professor at the University of Dijon 1914-1919 Participation in the First World War, from sergeant to captain 1919-1933 Professor at the University of Strasbourg 1922

La Terre et devolution humaine

1929

Foundation with M a r c Bloch of the Annales d'histoire economique et sociale

1930

La Civilisation. Le mot et I'idee

1933

Director of the Encyclopedic franpaise

1933-1948 Professor at the College de France 1942

Rabelais et le probleme de I'incroyance au XVle siecle

1945-1950 French delegate to U N E S C O 1956

Death in his second home of Le Souget, Saint-Amour

Paul Claval is Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. He has worked especially on the history and epistemology of geography, and the relations between geography and the other social sciences.

Sir Cyril Fox 1882-1967

Colin Thomas

Dimensions of space and time, with all their variety of scale and measurement, have long been intertwined as threads in academic discourse, and in innumerable scholarly pursuits information and ideas have been exchanged between geographical and historical studies. As in translation between languages, intended meaning (even when broadly agreed within a single realm) cannot be universally guaranteed with precision when transferred from one to another. Writing as an archaeologist in the first half of the twentieth century, Sir Cyril Fox assimilated and embellished concepts initially enunciated by geographers and, in turn, found his interpretations reflected by them in the cycle of debate that probed relationships between natural environment, economy, society and culture.

1. Education, Life and Work Cyril Fred Fox was born on 16 December 1882, in Chippenham, Wiltshire, where his father was a bank official and had long family connections with neighbouring Hampshire. He was educated at preparatory school on the Isle of Wight and in 1895-8 at Christ's Hospital, London, where he had few close friends; he disliked city life. As an adolescent he suffered from diphtheria, and, on leaving school at sixteen for health reasons, became an apprentice to a market gardener in Worthing, Sussex, where he developed an interest in antiquities which he shared with his father, who was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. As a consequence of a casual encounter with the bacteriologist Louis Cobbett, also an amateur antiquarian, he obtained clerical employment with the Royal Commission on Bovine Tuberculosis at its research station in Stansted, Essex. In 1912 that facility was moved to Cambridge where Fox found the fringe of university life to be congenial and gravitated towards a more academic training. During the First World W a r he received a commission in the Territorial Army but illness confined him to duties in England. Having been made unemployed by the closure of the tuberculosis laboratories,

Sir Cyril Fox

51

in 1919 he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge to read English, but very soon the eminent historical and literary scholar H . M . Chadwick took the unusual step of having him transferred to a doctoral programme. He completed his thesis, based on extensive library research and field survey, by 1922, and had it published the following year as The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region. Achieving immediate recognition, Fox was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries the same year and was appointed as an assistant at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge. In 1924 he was nominated as Keeper of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, but higher authority in the newly independent republic apparently objected to his nationality, rejected his confirmation and somewhat perversely chose a German, Walter Bremer, instead. Aware of Fox's disappointment, though he had never met him, the Director of the National Museum of Wales, the celebrated and energetic archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, persuaded him to apply for its Keepership of Archaeology and two years later, when Wheeler became Director of the Museum of London, Fox succeeded him as Director at Cardiff. Even before Fox took up this appointment, Wheeler had set up a project, funded by the University of Wales' Board of Celtic Studies, to survey Offa's Dyke, a prominent earthwork, strung intermittently along the Anglo-Welsh border, that was traditionally associated with an eighth-century Mercian king's efforts to demarcate his western territorial boundary. Since Fox had already explored the significance of similar structures in East Anglia, the challenge was seized upon and over eight summers he prepared a field-by-field description of the 80-mile-long bank and ditch, together with several related out-works. The results were initially published as six annual reports in Archaeologia Cambrensis, its summary findings and interpretation reiterated in the Sir J o h n Rhys Memorial Lecture to the British Academy in 1940, and re-issued as a book in 1955. During that programme Fox was drawn back two millennia by the existence of a round barrow and circle which interrupted the dyke's course at Ysceifiog in Flintshire, north-east Wales. The site was excavated in three weeks in July 1925 and there followed a series of tumuli excavations in South Wales from which Fox not only tried to elucidate the dual nature of Bronze Age colonization in Britain from the structural evidence of the invaders' burial mounds, but also to penetrate further into their builders' belief systems. T h a t process of imaginative reconstruction, aided according to Lady Fox by her awareness of the work by an anthropologist acquaintance on early Greek funerary rituals, culminated in Life and Death in the Bronze Age (1959), an attempt to place several sites in an interpretive sequence that revealed the spatial development of non-material culture 4,000 years ago. T h e year 1932 brought Cyril Fox professional triumph and family disaster. In August, he gave one of four special lectures, the other three being delivered by T . D . Kendrick, E.T. Leeds and O.G.S. Crawford, to the International Conference of Pre- and Proto-historic Sciences in London with the title 'The Personality of Britain, its influence on inhabitant and invader in prehistoric and early historic times'. T h o u g h he had devoted several years to compiling information, meticulously card-indexed and mapped by Lily Chitty, seldom can a single exposition have had a more momentous reception; the expanded text published by the National Museum of Wales became an immediate best-seller, and its author achieved celebrity status within academic circles for the breadth of his vision. Almost immediately his personal life was devastated by the accidental death of his wife, Olive (nee Congreve-Pridgeon), whom he had married in 1916 and who was the mother of his two young daughters. The following year he married Aileen Mary

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Henderson, like himself a student who had initially read English at Cambridge but had later chosen a career in archaeology. In 1935 he received a knighthood and for the next ten years he and Lady Fox collaborated on several excavations and surveys in Wales. Meanwhile, in the later 1930s the threat of war in Europe had occasioned the W a r Office to purchase land for the construction of military bases. In South Wales several proposed airfield sites encompassed numerous prehistoric monuments that would have to be destroyed and the National Museum was invited to conduct surveys or rescue excavations. A by-product of these excursions was the development of an interest in vernacular building styles. This was awakened through the examination of derelict houses, which revealed many local variations and peculiarities. In terms of traditional archaeology, this activity linked with the couple's excavations of early homestead sites in Glamorgan; placed in a broader continuum, it opened a window onto a more panoramic understanding of how rural landscapes and cultures were gradually re-shaped. From diverse viewpoints, he was fortunate in having on the museum staff Iorwerth Peate, one of H.J. Fleure's (Geographers, Volume 11) first geography and anthropology graduates from the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, who was in the process of producing a wide-ranging survey of rural domestic architecture in Wales, published as The Welsh House in 1940. Throughout his time in Cardiff much of Sir Cyril's energy was absorbed by administrative duties at the National Museum, not least in expanding its educational function within the principality, in the words of its first president, 'To teach the world about Wales and the Welsh people about their Fatherland'. Although he did not speak Welsh, Fox recognized the wealth of his adopted country's antiquities and folk culture, both of which represented distinctive aspects of broader European patterns. When invited in M a y 1938 to deliver the following year's Im T h u r n Lecture to the Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society, of which he previously knew nothing, he sought the advice of Gordon Childe, the Abercromby Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Childe informed him that, if he accepted, he would be following in distinguished footsteps - the names of J . L . Myres (Geographers, Volume 16) and Bronislaw Malinowski were mentioned - and suggested that he should 'give a propagandist speech about folk museums and preservation of bygones, describing what Wales has done', adding that the event would be 'fully reported . . . and will thus reach quite a large circle and might do some good'. Having established contact with Ake Campbell at Uppsala, Carl von Sydow at Lund, Alf Sommerfelt at Oslo and Peter Holm at Aarhus during a visit to Scandinavia in 1930, and with Seamus O Duilearga (J.H. Delargy), Director of the Irish Folklore Commission, Fox and Peate had already created a sub-Department of Folk Culture and Industries at the National Museum in 1933. Continuing the theme of his presidential address to the Museums Association in 1934, Fox held out to his Scottish audience the prospect that open-air museums on the Scandinavian model could lead to a 'renaissance of the native culture', asserting that 'the practice and elaboration of a common tradition enables the creative genius of a nation to reach the highest level of achievement of which it is capable'. He further emphasized that such displays should be 'chosen to illustrate not so much the life of the landed gentry as the life of the yeoman. It is not the aristocratic culture common to the whole of Western Europe but the native culture with its regional characteristics which we should strive to record'. No small irony attaches to the manner in which that objective was reached in Wales. In February 1946 the Earl of Plymouth, a past President of the National

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Museum, offered his home and gardens at St Fagan's Castle on the outskirts of Cardiff as a site for an open-air museum. Two years later the renamed 'Folk life1 collection was transferred to the newly-created Welsh Folk Museum, at which examples of regional domestic, farm and industrial buildings of the Welsh countryside began to be assembled, together with their related contents. At precisely this juncture modernization trends, accelerated by the war, wrought unusually rapid and fundamental transformations in rural economies and lifestyles, often sweeping aside the last vestiges of tradition. For his part Fox, described by his friend and fellow archaeologist Stuart Piggott as 'always a countryman in thought and feeling', not only campaigned for and facilitated the preservation of rural buildings, furnishings, equipment and customs in a museum context, but also actively engaged in folklife field research. With another museum President, Lord Raglan, he compiled a three-volume survey of small rural houses of the late mediaeval and early modern period in Monmouthshire, exercising his skills as draughtsman and artist in illustrating their ground plans and architectural details. Although the validity of some of his conclusions has since been questioned, when the work was republished in 1994 its first appearance 40 years earlier was recalled as 'a milestone in the study of vernacular architecture'. T h e family, augmented by the births of three sons, remained in Cardiff until Sir Cyril's retirement in 1948, then moving to Exeter where Lady Fox had been appointed to a lectureship at the University College the previous year. Though he continued to publish material and ideas developed earlier in his career, his active research ceased and it was at Exeter that he died on 15 J a n u a r y 1967.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought Within his primary academic sphere Fox broke new ground when he published The Personality of Britain, which expanded upon the themes he had embraced in his Cambridgeshire studies, namely the depiction of successive distributions of prehistoric sites and artifacts in relation to topographic and vegetation patterns, in this case largely with the aid of maps drawn by Lily Chitty, who was an almost daily source of advice on method, content and technique. Ten years after its first appearance, in his draft introduction to the fourth edition (1943), Fox was still anxious to stress that 'the Essay is concerned to establish principles and not to present the prehistory of Britain [an earlier project that he had long since a b a n d o n e d ] ; consequently examples illustrating a particular or recurrent phenomenon are selected, without respect to chronology, throughout the whole range of our prehistoric and early history'. Moreover, 'in pursuit of its aim, a given distributional situation is expressed in the simplest terms available, stripped of those complexities of association which make the pattern of life in early times so interesting but which are the proper subject for the historian and prehistorian'. Central to the thesis was his adoption of the concept of Britain's division into Highland and Lowland Zones, separated approximately by a line from the mouth of the River Tees in Yorkshire to that of the Exe in Devon. Opinion remains divided on the source of this set of ideas: Professor Estyn Evans has written that he had been told by Fox that the latter had read neither Mackinder's Britain and the British Seas (1902, second edition 1907) (Geographers, Volume 9) nor Vidal de la Blache's Tableau de la Geographie in Lavisse's Histoire de la France (1903) (Geographers, Volume 12) - the obvious forerunners of several notions elaborated by him, and identified as such by Emrys Bowen (Geographers, Volume 10), R . H . Kinvig and

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Glyn Daniel - before he composed the Personality of Britain. Certainly no references to those works feature in any edition of the book, yet in view of Fox's contacts with O.G.S. Crawford, J . L . Myres, H.J. Fleure, I.C. Peate, E.G. Bowen and E.E. Evans, it seems scarcely credible that he was totally unaware of either or both sources, and he had unquestionably read the English translation of Vidal (The Personality of France, 1928) by September 1933. It is probable that a clear pointer to this general approach came from Bowen, another of Fleure's students at Aberystwyth, who in the period 1925-8 was a Research Fellow at the Welsh National School of Medicine, not far from the Museum in Cardiff. A proven spin-off from these interactions was Fox's collaboration with Bowen to write three sections dealing with prehistory for the History of Carmarthenshire (1935), edited by the historian Sir J o h n Lloyd. In formulating his panoramic view, in addition to numerous borrowings from fellow archaeologists, Fox benefited from specialist contributions by colleagues at the National Museum, notably the geologist F.J. North, botanist H.A. Hyde and zoologist Colin Matheson. Belief in a two-fold division of Britain, literally along geological lines, however imperfectly they were understood, was only the frame for superimposed distributions of selected archaeological finds from which Fox constructed a grand synoptic interpretation of cultural formations. Twenty-five propositions flowed, inexorably in his own mind, from his inductive method (Personality, 1952, pp. 86-9). From elemental factors of position, outline, relief and geological structure, together with distance from sources of 'higher civilization', stemmed all of the most significant formative characteristics of Britain's human colonization and succession. Though he may not have realized it, his outlook closely mirrored chapter headings of Darwin's On The Origin of Species (see Geographers, Volume 9). In fact, in a specialized paper on Bronze Age implements, he had been more explicit: 'It is, I suggest, helpful to consider these developments as comparable with biological processes of change . . . trifling and seemingly inevitable modifications by which ultimately a form is evolved differing profoundly from the original' (Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 11, 1939, pp. 225-6). For our purposes, the most enduring influence was summarized in the notions that 'In the Lowland of Britain new cultures of continental origin tend to be imposed on the earlier aboriginal culture. In the Highland, on the other hand, these tend to be absorbed by the older culture. Viewed in another aspect, in the Lowland, you get replacement, in the Highland, fusion' (Personality, p. 40), and 'There is greater unity of culture in the Lowland Zone, but greater continuity of culture in the Highland Zone' (ibid., p. 88, all emphases in the original). While the Highland-Lowland Zone dichotomy stood as the outer strategic shell, within it sheltered the fundamental geographical idea of the period, namely that h u m a n distributions and activities were required to be interpreted in a meso-scale, or even micro-scale, environmental context. Such explanatory routes had been explored in Fox's doctoral research scheme in East Anglia. An elementary approach of plotting spatial distributions of archaeological sites or finds was far from innovative: as basic locational geography, the technique had been used since the first decades of the nineteenth century and had received further stimulation by the work of Crawford, a former student of Mackinder and Herbertson (Geographers, Volume 3) at Oxford, who became the Ordnance Survey's first Archaeological Officer in 1920. Above all, linkages between places - relational geography - were central to the remarkable syntheses of European prehistory produced by another close friend, V. Gordon Childe, and indeed on a lesser scale by G r a h a m e Clark and Christopher Hawkes. From an archaeologist's standpoint the originality, however, arose from Fox's recognition of four 'types of country' within a 25-mile radius of Cambridge - fen, boulder clay lowland, chalk downs, and drift-covered chalk. By

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inferring the 'natural' vegetation of marsh, forest, grass or light woodland, and heath respectively, he plotted archaeological data for five culture periods from the Neolithic to the late Anglo-Saxon and concluded that 'the geological structure . . . is the dominant factor which has determined the position and range of Man's settlement and has controlled and limited his activities' (Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, p. 313). O n this basis rested assumptions of a relatively constant physical environment over four millennia, the role of densely forested clay lowlands as barriers to colonization until Saxon times, and the countervailing attraction of open chalk scarplands for both agricultural settlement and lines of communication until the R o m a n invasion. In his 'Reflections', published 25 years later and reprinted as an appendix to the 1948 edition, he accepted some of the criticisms made of such broad extrapolations but persisted in the belief that his 'simplification of the geological m a p was . . . abundantly justified and that, in principle, no better physiographical base for the general purpose I had in view could be produced'. Within the parallel research publication sphere, overlapping on occasion by presentation of results and opinions in essentially didactic periodicals such as The Geographical Teacher (later Geography), Fox's concepts received wider recognition through those reviews of his book and simultaneously fell under different forms of scrutiny by colleagues in other disciplines. Among the first to take issue on the theme of environmental relationships with early history were S.W. Wooldridge (Geographers, Volume 8) and D.L. Linton (Geographers, Volume 7), pointing out that 'one of the main contributions the geographer can make to the study of any period is a synthesis of the physique, designed to bring out distinct minor regions with clearly traceable boundaries' (Geography, 20, 1930, p. 163), a creed later re-phrased in Antiquity (7, 1933, p. 297). Two foci of theoretical concern dominated this debate over interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England, quite apart from matters of historical events and processes. T h e first was geographers' preoccupation in the early twentieth century with identification of regions, in which Wooldridge and Linton welcomed Fox's contribution which projected spatial differentiation of cultures back into prehistory and thus extended the intellectual boundaries of two disciplines, archaeology and historical geography. T h e second was a matter which combined the problem of scale with that of terminology in the vexed questions of trying to recreate past physical environments and then to examine the interaction between their diverse facets and h u m a n settlement at successive phases. Specifically, Wooldridge and Linton challenged Fox's simplified distinction between porous chalk and impermeable clay as controlling influences on prehistoric and early historic vegetation distribution and hence on pioneering agricultural communities in Britain. From the exchange of views it became apparent that Fox did not adequately appreciate distinctions made between formal categories on drift geology maps as manifested in lithology, and the whole objection was summarized in their assertion: 'Neither a geological nor a contoured m a p is sufficient for our purpose'. The implied criticism was that of naive choice of surrogates for the total environment, together with insufficient concession to temporal change and local variation, but the overarching reservation was undoubtedly the overconfident declaration, tantamount to environmental determinism, of a small number of controlling influences on settlement distribution singled out in Fox's writings. Throughout both of his first two books notions of'natural highways', whether by navigable river, gravel terrace or dry scarpland, 'natural barriers' of fen and forest, and 'natural culture area' recur, alongside those of a qualitative distinction between ' M a n the stockbreeder' and ' M a n the tiller of soil', and of a time-lag in the spread of 'civilization' from east to west, both in Europe and Britain, and ultimately thence to the rest of the world. Having sought, and supposedly found,

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'unitary' cultures, another favourite theme, a logical development was to identify boundaries between them, in the same way that early twentieth-century geographers often spent great effort in trying to demarcate 'natural regions'. Experience in East Anglia, particularly while writing in the aftermath of a recent military conflict, had encouraged Fox to explain the existence and alignment of historical barriers, for instance such formidable earthworks as Devil's Dyke and Fleam Dyke, as artificial obstacles created across more open terrain lying between 'natural barriers' of forest and marsh, completing lines of separation between opposing cultural or political entities. A few years later, experience on the border of Wales posed similar questions of purpose and dating but in quite different landscapes. Using historical tradition as his point of departure, his survey of Offa's Dyke was undertaken to ascertain whether its method of construction and local orientation might provide clues as to its origin and function. In essence, the analysis was overwhelmingly morphological, plotting the dyke's course on Ordnance Survey sixinch maps, and measuring its profile at 42 points. T h e two or three excavations conducted served only to prove that the structure was post-Roman. However, approaching his topic with an eye for country, Fox concluded that, although it was not a military barricade, the fact that the ditch running parallel to the r a m p a r t always lay on its western flank indicated that its builders intended it to represent a deterrent to those coming from that direction, and that its siting offered good vantage points over wide areas in the foothills while constituting some protection for settled valley communities to the east. Where no physical trace of the boundary could be discovered on the ground, 'the clue lies in the geology' {Offa's Dyke, p. 206), specifically in districts underlain by Old Red Sandstone, here assumed to have been heavily forested in the late eighth century and thus forming a 'natural obstacle' that required no reinforcement. Even contrasts between the dyke's locally straight or sinuous course became translated into a hypothetical land-use dichotomy between arable and woodland tracts. Moreover, the dyke's apparent unitary design and chronology was attributed in Fox's opinion to 'one master-mind . . . responsible for the planning', a member of a 'Mercian school of field engineering' (Boundary Line, p. 285). In conformity with his Highland-Lowland Zone thesis, he declared that 'the Palaeozoic outcrop forms in fact a natural frontier' (ibid., p. 295), 'to which politics have proved unconsciously subservient' (Offa's Dyke, p. 292) and 'there is a natural limit to the territory of a highland people like the Welsh' (Boundary Line, p. 296). Despite the absence of any historical evidence, he concluded that Offa's Dyke was 'not the free choice of a conquering race [sic], but a boundary defined by treaty or agreement between the men of the hills and the men of the lowlands' (ibid., p. 281). From considerations of spatial pattern, environmental association and ethnic demarcation, Fox subsequently branched out into studies of h u m a n creativity. An aesthetic appreciation of craftsmanship found scope for expression, not only in his cartography and illustration of his own and his wife's publications, but also in the material he was fortunate enough to describe. Examples ranged from Bronze- and Iron-Age metalwork hoards, discovered by chance in Welsh lakes, to the intricacy of constructional detail and decorative style in traditional farm carts and cottages, some aspects of which were to be exhibited in the museum's collections. Each provided an opportunity to ponder spatial and temporal linkages and analogies while simultaneously acting as an outlet for his less mundane sensitivities. As in his interpretation of Bronze Age burial ritual, speculation based on small samples of evidence tended to lead into untrodden ground. In Pattern and Purpose: A Survey of Early Celtic Art in Britain (1958), individual objects were characteristically treated

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according to a 'grammar of the art', that is, in stylistic terms, from which a chronology was postulated and possible historical routes traced. Thus far Fox's approach followed that of Paul Jabobsthal's Early Celtic Art (Oxford, 1944), Thomas Kendrick's Anglo-Saxon Art (London, 1938) or Thurlow Leeds' Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology (Oxford, 1936). However, he went on to suggest that such finds represented, as they always had done in his opinion, 'art of the princes rather than the people' and that hoards or exceptional items might not only be attributed to particular master craftsmen or workshops, but that their location could even be used to indicate seats of wealth and power in the emerging kingdoms, whose spheres could also be inferred from these survivals. Genuinely 'cultural' geography was therefore integrated with political geography, though never explicitly in such terms, and in that sense some of Fox's writings may be regarded as heralding more recent humanistic outlooks. O n a negative note, seductive conclusions drawn from a patchy evidential base were never systematically tested and firm belief in an attenuated diffusionist process exposed contradictions and anomalies. In historical contexts some lines of thought harked back to the era of his mentor H . M . Chadwick's Origin of the English Motion (Cambridge, 1907). Many questions remained unanswered, and indeed unasked, and when passing comment on the visual expression of modern cultural trends among country people whose way of life he espoused, his own social background often left him stranded on the edge of condescension.

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas It is perhaps singularly appropriate to find the key to Cyril Fox's impact in Fleure's review of The Personality of Britain published in Archaeologia Cambrensis (87, 1932, pp. 412 13). 'Dr. Fox . . . has made a speciality of interpretive thought, and is one of those students who looks beyond typology into problems of distribution, which he relates to geographical studies in a way that has made him one of the foremost of archaeological geographers'. By selectively creating spatial patterns of sites or artifacts classified according to form or style, he merely followed the practice of others. By loading one series of patterns onto another, he shaped what he believed to be cores of synthetic culture palimpsests, in a sense reversing the analytical thought process that guided F.W. Maitland's application of that term to Domesday Book. By further placing pre- and proto-historic culture groupings firmly, even rigidly, in a supposed contemporary natural environment, he produced a classic in the (pre) historical geography genre of his era. An indication of the initial strength and subsequent decline of Fox's influence on geographical thought in Britain may be gained from the opening chapters of the first edition of H . C . Darby's edited collection of essays An Historical Geography of England before A.D. 1800 (1936) and R.A. Dodgshon and R.A. Butlin's Historical Geography of England and Wales (1978), offering commentaries on a chronologically comparable period. In the former, citations of Fox number more than twenty; in the latter, just one. Technological innovation and more rigorous methods in archaeology, in part arising from the experience of some of its leading intellects during the Second World War, resulted in a respectful drift away from the practices and approaches of an older generation. Synchronously, academics, who eventually became convinced of the need for and benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in order to deal with fluid and complex issues, reacted against any hint of static environmental determinism. Paradoxically, for 30 years the pursuit of intensified specialization to achieve distinct disciplinary identity often drove a wedge between

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archaeological and geographical studies, while in the latter preoccupation with contemporary economic and social affairs rendered former research fashions less attractive. A prime field for dissemination of a scholar's ideas extends over successive cohorts of students who have received them at first-hand. In Fox's case that direct opportunity was limited to two years (1924—26) when his appointment as Keeper of Archaeology was linked to a lectureship in what was then the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire at Cardiff. Later, when he had produced the Personality, the book was actively marketed to undergraduates and in preparing the third edition in 1937 he wrote to Lily Chitty that it was 'vital' that it 'should be in the hands of the public before the new Academic year begins in September' because 'practically all my yearly sales take place when freshmen are instructed to buy their copies in October'. Evidently in the small Cardiff department the lecturer's notions were heavily reinforced by his own publication; adoption of the Personality as a text at other unspecified 'provincial universities' was indicated in a letter to V.G. Childe in 1933. Revisions were, however, minimalized partly to avoid escalating production costs, with the result that initial errors, misprints and outdated distribution maps tended to be perpetuated in readers' minds. Indeed, in seeking the advice of Wheeler on the academic and commercial merits of a new edition, Fox wrote in October 1937 that he had 'no intention of ... loading so slight an essay with new detail: I would rather simplify it still further if that were possible'. Therein lay two flaws that sapped its strength. While some reviewers of the book saw it as being filled with unprecedented brilliant insights, others evaluating it from a different standpoint were unhappy with its sweeping generalizations and some of its debatable statements of fact, both aspects remaining either unqualified or else acknowledged only by footnotes inserted in later editions. After the middle of the twentieth century Cyril Fox's stylish pen produced no new elaborations of his original theses, though they by no means lay forgotten. The phrase 'personality of ...' continued to be applied in regional settings across the globe from Ulster to India, but its strict environmental connotation ceased to hold its former magnetism. Although still associated with the title of Fox's book, the notion's earlier Vidalian source, with its emphases on possibilist diversity of opportunity, choice and outcome, was more often invoked. By the 1960s historiographers of archaeology and geography were appraising Fox's work with fresh eyes and, while recognizing its novelty at the time when it was written, identified new models more appropriate to innovative techniques and intellectual approaches in the latter half of the new century.

Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to Anna Southall, Director of the National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff, for permission to consult Sir Cyril Fox's professional archives, and to John Kenyon, Librarian, and Louise Carey, Assistant Librarian, for drawing my attention to additional bibliographical material and for readily making available the museum's library resources. I am also pleased to acknowledge discussions of Fox's work with Adam Gwillt and Dr Philip Macdonald of the museum's Department of Archaeology, and with Dr Eurwyn Wiliam of the Museum of Welsh Life, St Fagan's. Further insights were given by Mrs Gwyneth Evans and Dr Ann Hamlin in Belfast.

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Bibliography and Sources 1. REFERENCES

ON SIR CYRIL FOX

Bassett, Douglas A., 'The Making of a National Museum', Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1982, 3-35; part II, 1983, 187-220; part I I I , 1984, 217-316; part IV, 1990, 193 260. Daniel, Glyn, 'The Personality of Wales', in Foster and Alcock (eds), 7-23. Foster, I. LI. and Alcock, L. (eds), Culture and Environment. Essays in Honour of Sir Cyril Fox, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, with a bibliography of Fox's writings up to 1961 by L.J. Lloyd, 503-12. Fox, Aileen, Aileen: A pioneering archaeologist, Gracewing, Leominster, 2000. Jope, E.M., 'Sir Cyril Fred Fox 1882- 1967', Dictionary of National Biography, 1961 70, 383-5. Piggott, Stuart, 'Sir Cyril Fox 1882-1967', Proceedings of the British Academy, 53, 1967, 399-407. Wheeler, R.E.M., 'Homage to Sir Cyril Fox', in Foster and Alcock (eds), 1 6. 2. SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

OF WORKS BY SIR CYRIL FOX

1923

The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, Cambridge.

1926

'The Ysceifiog circle and barrow, Flintshire', Archaeologia Cambrensis, 81 (i), 48-85.

1927 1931 'Offa's Dyke: A Field Survey', First Report, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 81 (i), 1926, 133-79; Second Report, 82 (ii), 1927, 232-68; Third Report, 83 (i), 1928, 33-110; Fourth Report (with Phillips, D.W.), 84 (i), 1929, 1-60; Fifth Report (with Phillips, D.W.), 85 (i), 1930, 1-73; Sixth Report (with Phillips, D.W.), 86 (i), 1931, 1-74. 1929

'Dykes', Antiquity, I I I , 135 54.

1931

'Sleds, carts and waggons', Antiquity, V (8), 185-99.

1932

The Personality of Britain, its influence on inhabitant and invader in prehistoric and early historic times, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, (later editions 1933, 1938, 1943, reprinted 1952).

1934

'Forts and farms on M a r g a m Mountain, Glamorgan', Antiquity, 8, 395 413 (with Aileen Fox).

1937

'Peasant crofts in North Pembrokeshire', Antiquity, X I , 427 40.

1939

'The socketed bronze sickles of the British Isles', Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 11, 222-48.

1940

'The Boundary Line of Cymru: T h e Sir J o h n Rhys Memorial Lecture, 1940', Proceedings of the British Academy, 26, 275-300.

1942

'Some south Pembrokeshire cottages', Antiquity, 26, 307 19.

1947

'Reflections on The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region', Cambridge Historical Journal, 9 (i), 21 pp.

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Sir Cyril Fox

1950

The Early Cultures of North-west Europe: H.M. Chadwick Memorial Studies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, edited with B. Dickins.

1951-54

Monmouthshire Houses, A Study of building techniques and smaller house-plans in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, 3 vols, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 2nd edition with an introduction by Peter Smith, 1994 with Lord Raglan.

1955

Offa's Dyke. A Field Survey of the Western Frontier- Works of Mercia in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries AD, Oxford.

1958

Pattern and Purpose: A Survey of Early Celtic Art in Britain, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

1959

Life and Death in the Bronze Age: an Archaeologist's Field Work, London.

Chronology 1882

Born 16 December at Chippenham, Wiltshire, England

1916

Married Olive Congreve-Pridgeon

1919

Entered Magdalene College, Cambridge

1923

Published The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region. Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Assistant keeper at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge

1924

Keeper of Archaeology at the National Museum of Wales

1926-48

Director, National Museum of Wales

1932

The Personality of Britain; death of first wife

1933

Married Aileen Mary Henderson

1935

Awarded knighthood

1940

Fellow of the British Academy

1944-9

President of the Society of Antiquaries of London

1947

Awarded an honorary DLitt by the University of Wales

1950

The Early Cultures of North-west Europe, edited with Bruce Dickins

1951-4

Monmouthshire Houses, with Lord Raglan

1952

Awarded the Society of Antiquaries' Gold Medal

1955

Offa's Dyke

1958

Pattern and Purpose. A Survey of Early Celtic Art in Britain

1959

Life and Death in the Bronze Age

1967

Died 15 January

Colin Thomas is Reader in Geography at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland.

Augustus Charles Gregory 1819-1905

Francis Thomas Gregory 1821-1888

Marion Hercock Three young surveyors, whose names have become celebrated since as most distinguished explorers, were sent on a small expedition to the westward. They were the brothers Gregory, of whom the famous traveller Augustus was the chief. (Julian Tenison Woods, 1865, p. 106) T h e name of Gregory is well known in the annals of Australian exploration, but the fame of Augustus Charles Gregory has tended to overshadow the achievements and work of his younger brothers, Francis Thomas and Henry Churchman. Although born in England, the Gregory brothers had lived in Western Australia since the foundation of the Swan River Colony in 1829. Thus, they had grown up more as colonial Australians than Englishmen, and all three were competent bushmen, field

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Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory

geographers and surveyors. This biobibliographical study concentrates on the work of Francis (known as Frank) and Augustus, with some mention of Henry. T h e lives and work of the eldest brother, Joshua, and that of the youngest brother, Charles, were limited to local surveys, and as such did not make a significant contribution to geographical and scientific thought. Augustus and Francis spent the early part of their careers in private contract surveying and with the Lands and Survey Department of Western Australia. Following their major explorations in western and northern Australia, the brothers settled in Queensland during the 1860s. There, during the later decades of the nineteenth century, they gained a reputation for social and political influence, earning the dubious title o f ' t h e squatting proconsuls of the Darling Downs'. T h e personality differences between Augustus and Francis were reflected in their later careers and social networks. T h e elder, a bachelor and more reclusive, with a passion for invention and technical gadgets, was deeply involved with freemasonry. T h e younger, married and sociable, with connections and friendships within the colonial elite, was more mindful of social and financial opportunity. Francis was more ambitious than Augustus and was once described as 'a smooth, not altogether trustworthy fellow'. Despite this aspect of his character, Francis appears to have been more socially astute and a better manager and administrator than his brother. I n contrast, Augustus, as the Queensland Surveyor-General and Commissioner for Crown Lands, was not a competent administrator nor an unbiased civil servant. Nevertheless, the contribution of Augustus and Francis Gregory to Australian exploration and bushcraft is considered to be unchallengeable by many scholars, field geographers, bushmen and horsemasters.

1. Education, Life and Work T h e Gregory brothers were born at Farnsfield in the English county of Nottinghamshire. Augustus was born on 1 August 1819 and Francis on 19 October 1821. Their father, Joshua Gregory, a retired army lieutenant, and their mother, Frances Churchman Gregory, struggled to support a family on Joshua's army pension. However, an opportunity to change the family fortunes arose when Joshua chose to take his wife and family to the new colony at Swan River in Western Australia. At 39 years of age, Joshua, and Frances aged 36, were sufficiently motivated, ambitious and adventurous to commence a new life as pioneers. T h e family of five boys, Joshua William, aged fourteen, Augustus, aged ten, Francis, aged seven, Henry, aged six, and the four-year-old Charles Frederick and their parents were among the first settlers to arrive at Fremantle in 1829. By 1833 the Gregory family had settled on a property on the Swan River. Their neighbours were the Surveyor-General, J o h n Septimus Roe (Geographers, Volume 21), his wife Matilda and their children. Given the insularity of Swan River and the small size of the lesser gentry and middle-class proportion of the population, there was a close association between the Gregory family and the Roe family. Whilst in England, the Gregory boys had been taught at home by a private tutor, but in Australia their mother took over that role. Although the evidence is not fully documented, biographer Wendy Birman considers Mrs Frances Churchman Gregory to have been 'clever, energetic and very ambitious for her sons' and a good teacher with apt pupils. As with many women of the period, the knowledge, intellect, ability and influence of Frances Gregory have been underrated. Yet the development of the scientific skills of her sons and the outstanding careers of Francis

Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory 63 and Augustus owe much to the foundations laid by their mother, and later the professional training from J o h n Septimus Roe. Another childhood influence was that of the Swan Valley Aborigines, from whom the Gregory boys learnt some of the indigenous names, foods and customs. When in their late teens, both Augustus and Francis worked as contract surveyors and, after gaining field experience, joined the Survey Department. Their apprenticeships in the department were gained through the interest of their family friend, J o h n Septimus Roe. EXPLORATIONS

1846-1861

By the 1840s the pastures of the colony of Western Australia were becoming overstocked, and the discovery of new grazing lands was seen as an economic and political imperative. This situation created an opportunity for the Gregory brothers to extend their surveying skills into new territory. Thus in 1846 the brothers made their first joint expedition of exploration and survey, when Augustus (in command) and assisted by Francis and Henry, explored the country north of Perth to the Irwin River, some 315 kilometres (200 miles) distant. T h e discoveries made on the expedition added to the information gathered earlier by George Grey (Geographers, Volume 22) in 1839 and J o h n Lort Stokes (Geographers, Volume 18) in 1841. However, the search for new grazing lands remained a priority and two expeditions left Perth in 1848. One expedition was to the south of the colony, under the command of the Surveyor-General, with Henry Gregory assisting. T h e other to the north, under the command of Augustus, consisted of a party of settlers who had provided funding and transport. T h e latter expedition was rewarded with the discovery of suitable grazing country and minerals, and was soon followed by settlement and the development of the Geraldine lead mine on the Murchison River. Augustus surveyed the townsite of Geraldton at Champion Bay, which would soon become the primary town of this newly opened region. For the next ten years the Gregory brothers were employed on surveys throughout the known country of the colony of Western Australia. During this time their skills and the quality of their work gained recognition from the British Colonial Office. In 1855 Augustus and Henry Gregory left Western Australia to lead a major scientific and exploration expedition from the Victoria River in northern Australia, east to Brisbane. One of the primary objects of the expedition was to see if the Victoria River was an outflow from an inland sea. Advisors to the expedition included the council of the Royal Geographical Society, Francis Beaufort (Geographers, Volume 19), and J o h n Lort Stokes of the Admiralty's Hydrographic Office, Sir William Hooker, Sir Henry de la Beche, and the explorers Charles Sturt and Edward J o h n Eyre (Geographers, Volume 15). T h e members of the expedition party included the botanist Ferdinand von Mueller (Geographers, Volume 5) and the artist Thomas Baines (this volume). A range of means of transport and logistical support (foot, horseback, a small inflatable rubber boat and a supply ship) enabled the explorers to cover more terrain than had previously been attempted. Thus, distant features first described by Stokes in 1839 were inspected more closely and the terrain examined in greater detail. For example: Left our camp at 5.45am, and, steering west, crossed the low ridge of the Fitzroy Range, and having taken bearings of the features of the country, steered north 260 degrees east through the level plain which occupies the space between Wickham Heights and the Fitzroy Range, which was named the Beagle Valley by Captain Stokes. The soil of this plain is a brown clay,

64

Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory which in the dry weather crumbles into small pieces, so that the horses sink into it; but in the wet season the whole is deep mud; it, however, appears to be very fertile, and produces an abundance of grass; the trees consist of bauhinia, acacia, and some eucalypti. (Augustus Gregory, 1968 [1884], p.117)

After 17 months and 16,000 kilometres (10,000 miles) of travel over sea and land the eighteen men under Augustus' command returned home safely, having established that the northern rivers did not flow from an inland sea. Recognition of Augustus' contribution to geographical exploration and discovery led to the award of the Founder's Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 1856. A year later he was employed by the government of New South Wales to search for the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt (Geographers, Volume 17), missing since 1848. T h e party of nine men, including Charles Gregory as assistant commander, traversed some 3,400 kilometres (2,100 miles) of savannah, scrub and desert country from Brisbane to Adelaide. During 1857, Francis used his experience of the climatic conditions of the midwest of Western Australia to take advantage of the Murchison in flood. T h e unusually high waters enabled him, with another surveyor, to ascend the Murchison River upstream of the Geraldine mine for 290 kilometres (180 miles). T h e grassy plains discovered promised good grazing for the pastoralists and as a result of that finding, a number of colonists provided horses and equipment for another expedition to the Murchison, under Francis' command. This 1858 expedition resulted in the discovery of pastoral land on the Gascoyne and Lyons Rivers, and the naming of a number of significant topographical features. In accordance with the practice of many nineteenth-century explorers, Francis named features after expedition participants, patrons and local leaders. He named the landform since identified as the world's largest monolith after his brother, and commented on the method used to estimate the height of M o u n t Augustus: it required two hours' heavy toil to bring us to the summit, the barometer gradually falling until it only registered 26.10, which, compared with the simultaneous observations kept at Champion Bay by M r H. Gray, gives an elevation of 3,480 feet above the level of the sea; the last 500 feet of the summit being clothed in thickets of melaleuca, amongst which grew a nondescript variety of red gum-tree, the only new thing observed in this locality. T h e air was fortunately very clear, enabling us to take bearings to almost every remarkable summit within 80 miles, and in two instances to hills more than a hundred miles distant. (Francis Gregory, 1968 [1884], p. 48) This familiarization with the topography was to serve Francis in good stead in three years' time when he approached M o u n t Augustus from the north. Perhaps the most curious find on the Gascoyne River expedition was the cannibal camp. Situated three miles north-east of M o u n t Augustus, at a site known today as 'Cattle Pool', the survey party: met with strong evidences of the cannibalism of the natives; at a recently occupied encampment we found several of the bones of a full-grown native that had been cooked, the teeth marks on the edges of a bladebone bearing conclusive evidence as to the purpose to which it had been applied; some of the ribs were lying by the huts with a portion of the meat still on them. (Francis Gregory, 1968 [1884], p. 47)

Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory 65 T h e language is that of the professional observer and Francis makes no valuejudgements about the behaviour or the people concerned. In addition to recording the topographical features, river patterns, geology, vegetation, the dominant bird species and the edible plants on their expeditions, the Gregory brothers commented on their encounters with the local Aborigines. Their childhood experiences had given them some understanding of the indigenous character, and of the appropriate response in particular situations. Whilst always on their guard against thieving and attack, Augustus and Francis did not overreact to situations which could turn violent if the Europeans misunderstood the Aborigines, or behaved in an inappropriate manner. By 1859 Francis was third in seniority in the Western Australian Survey Department, and, at the age of 38, looked forward to eventually occupying the position of Surveyor-General. However, in May that year their mother died and Francis, as executor of her will, travelled to England to attend to the disposal of her estate among the four surviving Gregory sons. This business was so important to the family that he turned down an offer of the position of Surveyor-General of Victoria. Meanwhile, world events would create a favourable climate for Francis 1 professional activities in England. T h e prospect of a civil war in the United States, in combination with the lobbying of the colonial pastoralists at home in Western Australia and in London, would result in him making further explorations in the north-west of Western Australia. British investors with interests in cotton mills worried about the potential shortage of cotton that would be caused by the war, and they began to consider the development of new cotton farms in British colonies, such as Australia. With his knowledge of the environment, and the appropriate letters of introduction and recommendation from the leading colonists to the authorities, Francis soon gained support from the councillors of the Royal Geographical Society for an expedition into the north-west. Thus an expedition to explore that part of Western Australia was funded by the British government and the Colonial Government of Western Australia. In M a y 1861, the men of the 'North-west Australian Exploring Expedition', under the leadership of Francis, were landed near the location of the modern town K a r r a t h a on the Pilbara coast. Their aim was to explore the country and report on the features and capabilities of the land and, in particular, its potential for the production of cotton. T h e party covered great distances and named nearly all the rivers of the Pilbara region. Yet they were forced to abandon their survey by the dunes of the Great Sandy Desert, where the men and horses were short of water and food. This formidable desert was not to be explored until well after the introduction of camels into Australia and their use for exploration in the north by the Calvertsponsored expedition in 1896, and later by surveyors Frank H a n n and Alfred Canning. Soon after the publication of Francis' reports and map, the country was opened up for pastoral leases, many of which still operate today. In 1863 he was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal. Augustus left Western Australia to take up a position with the public service in Queensland, and became Surveyor-General in 1859. Francis and Charles later followed him to Queensland, where, in 1870, Charles died, worn out by the rigours of outdoor work. Henry went to live in Sydney before finally returning to England, where he died in 1903. Augustus' qualities as a field geographer and explorer did not extend to the establishment and management of a major government department. Field experience and social and political connections did not make up for his lack of administrative skills. As a result of criticism from the local press and other civil servants, a major departmental restructure removed Augustus to the position of geological surveyor, a less politically volatile position.

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Francis' career in the Queensland public service was less onerous, but as a district land commissioner he was not the model of an impartial civil servant, as his mentor, Roe, had been in Western Australia. Francis tended to act in the interests of his own class more than that of the general public, and earned a reputation for favouring pastoralists over other land users. Both Francis and Augustus worked and socialized with the political and social elite, and after retirement from the public service, were involved in conservative politics. T h e sudden death of Francis, at home in Brisbane in 1888, led the West Australian newspaper to comment on the careers of the four brothers. Also discussed was the influence of their mother, who 'brought the resources of a good education to bear upon their training, and inspired them with her own high principles, her energy and pluck'. At the age of 83 Augustus was elected the first mayor of Toowong, his home town in Queensland. T h e following year, 1903, he was knighted - perhaps as a result of his masonic connections, as well as his involvement with the learned societies and government and non-government boards and advisory committees. Augustus died at home on 25 J u n e 1905, and is buried at the Toowong cemetery.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought T h e Gregory brothers were influenced in their perspective of the environment by their education, daily life on the family property, and the work of the maritime and land explorers of Australia in the 1830s and 1840s. Material influences included the reports and charts prepared by Captain J o h n Clements Wickham and J o h n Lort Stokes of the Beagle, following their visits to Western Australia in the years 1838 to 1841. In addition, 1841 publication of the journals of George Grey's expeditions in north-west and western Australia, would have provided an impetus for the inquiring minds of the Gregory brothers. During their early careers, the brothers had all been involved, either as contractors or government employees, in survey work in Western Australia. They were among J o h n Septimus Roe's proteges in the Department of Lands and Surveys, and were quick to follow and improve upon the mobile exploration techniques developed by Roe. Their horsemanship and horse management reflected an understanding of equine physiology and care. Augustus is credited with the innovative development of appropriate pack-saddles for Australian conditions. In this, and in the design of an apparatus to operate the first revolving light installed on Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth, he demonstrated his talent in the technical application of scientific knowledge. Speed, mobility and self-reliance and provision were the essence of a Gregory expedition. By carrying their own lightweight types of food, the brothers ensured the minimum of conflict with any indigenous inhabitants over resources. Likewise, speed and mobility through unknown territory reduced the potential for hostile encounters. This mode of exploration shows the methodical application of techniques learnt originally from Roe and through their own field experience. In regard to expedition logistics the Gregorys developed a replicable method and a military-like precision that owed more to science than to the armed forces. T h e published edition of the Gregory brothers' exploration journals illustrates the high standard of their reporting, which is concise, unemotional and inherently scientific. T h e entry for each day includes a celestial reading and latitude and longitude. This last measurement being relative, rather than accurate, owing to the

Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory 67 chronometers being bumped and shaken in the pack-saddles. Whilst laudable in terms of technicality and objectivity, this quality of their work, and its brevity, is regretted by contemporary nineteenth-century and modern scholars seeking more expansive descriptions and explanations of landscape processes. For example, Julian Tenison Woods (Geographers, Volume 21), himself a field geographer and contemporary of the brothers, commented on the work of Augustus: H e it was that gave the key to larger explorations, by showing what could be done if proper means were selected; and with all this his observations are so concise, so clever and ingenious, that it is a matter of great regret that they have been so brief, or that he has not published them in a more extended form. (Julian Tenison Woods, 1865, p. 291) Nevertheless, the perspective taken by the Gregory brothers is integrative and technical, as shown by Augustus' remarks about the terrain near Stokes' Range, in northern Australia: At 7.30 [am] started on a course of 120 degrees; reached the foot of the sandstone range at 8.50, and the summit of at 9.30, the tableland on the top of the range being intersected by deep ravines trending to the south-west; we steered east till 11.40 when we came to a deep valley trending east-south-east; having made the necessary observations for elevation, commenced the descent of the hills, which was practicable in few places, as the valley was walled-in by steep hills crowned by sandstone cliffs 20 to 100 feet height, with only an occasional break. At 1.0pm reached the base of the hill . . . T h e summit of the range is nearly a level tableland, the undulations not exceeding 100 feet, but is intersected by deep ravines with perpendicular sides, which vary from 100 to 600 feet in depth. T h e upper rock is sandstone, and the soil on it very poor and sandy, producing small eucalypti, hakea, grevillia [sic], and sharp spiny grass (triodia); this is the spinifex of Captain Sturt and other Australian explorers. (Augustus Gregory, 1968 [1884], p. 121) T h e times are a useful reflection of distance and difficulty of travel, and complement the information about the terrain and the vegetation. T h e reference to the work of Sturt follows from the expedition's use of his field notes, as well as those of Wickham and Stokes. The flood-dominated, seasonal, northern Australian watercourses consist of numerous channels that make identification of the primary channel very difficult. However, the sketchmaps prepared by Francis and Augustus Gregory, when read in conjunction with their notes, appear to be a relatively accurate record of these complex, braided streams. T h e brothers' contributions to the history of geological survey in Western Australia are remarked upon by J . H . Lord, in the preface to the 1975 edition of The Geology of Western Australia. For example, in the report of the 1848 settlers" expedition Augustus included some of the most detailed early descriptions of the resources of what is now the agricultural and mining district of Northampton: The hills are of gneiss, with garnets and trap-rock, the latter producing excellent grass of various kinds . . . T h e existence of garnets, iron pyrites, and a mineral resembling in many of its properties plumbago, specimens of which were found in the gneiss of this district, seems to indicate a metalliferous formation . . . (Augustus Gregory, 1968 [1884], p. 25)

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T h e Gregorys' aptitude for observation and measurement was noted in the West Australian's article in response to Francis' death: the young men, gifted with natural ability, used their hands and their heads to good purpose . . . while storing their minds with what knowledge they could gain, in large part bearing upon mensuration and natural science, for which latter Augustus and Francis, in particular, had special aptitude and inclination. (West Australian, 27 October 1888) This inclination towards the sciences was demonstrated by Augustus' interests after his retirement from the public service in 1879. He was the first president of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (Queensland Branch), formed in 1885; and with von Mueller, one of the foundation members of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science. Whilst in the field the Gregory brothers not only collected minerals and plants but also birds. Some of these specimens and the relevant field notes were sent to the ornithologist and artist J o h n Gould for classification, and were later retained by the British Museum as type specimens. Francis is credited with the first descriptions and collected specimens of the Pilbara race of the spinifex pigeon (Lophophaps plumifera ra.ee/erruginea) and the western bowerbird (Chlamydera guttata). As well as descriptive information about topography and weather conditions, Francis Gregory's report of the North-west Australian Expedition offers some analysis of land capability for grazing, wool production and wheat. In this analysis, he differentiates between capability and suitability, and is keen to promote the region for cotton growing on the basis of his prior observations and research: W h a t it appears more highly qualified for than anything else is the growth of cotton . . . From my personal observation of the cultivation of this plant in Egypt, and the attention I have recently paid to this subject while in Europe, I feel confident that a very considerable portion of the arable lands on the De Grey and Sherlock [Rivers] are precisely the soils, adapted for the production of this valuable commodity. (Francis Gregory, 1968 [1884], p. 96) Since he concluded with the proposal that he will 'make this the subject of a more lengthy paper at a future period', he may have been cautious about his assessment because the paper has not yet been found.

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas Although the ideas and work of the Gregory brothers were limited to a particular period in the exploration history of Australia, their influence was part of the progression towards a replicable method of exploration on horseback in arid terrain. T h e impression created by the Gregory brothers' professionalism in land surveying started in 1854. Whilst Augustus was working at Picton, he was observed by the young J o h n Forrest who was later to become a geographical thinker, explorer, regional planner and statesman (Geographers, Volume 8). Forrest's early career and explorations and surveys in Western Australia were directly influenced by the Gregory legacy. Years later, as a politician, Forrest still revered the work and discoveries of the Gregory brothers. Augustus and Francis Gregory left a legacy of place names in Western Australia

Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory 69 and Queensland. In keeping with the practice of the time they tended to rename a site after a fellow explorer on the survey expedition, or after a patron or sponsor, a senior official, or a professional associate. In spite of his failure to record and use the indigenous names of topographical features, Francis Gregory nevertheless recorded words from the local languages, where he had a translator. T h e family name marks a number of topographical features in western and northern Australia. T h e small township of Gregory, also known as Port Gregory, on the mid-west coast of Western Australia, was named after both Augustus and Francis. T h e Gregory Range in the Pilbara, Western Australia, commemorates Francis while a range of the same name in Queensland, is named after Augustus. Ferdinand von Mueller, in appreciation of Augustus' leadership and management of the North Australian Expedition, as well as for his collection of botanical specimens, named at least three species of plant 'Gregory'. T h e largest and most distinctive plant is the Australian boab (or baobab) tree Adansonia gregorii. T h e other species include the yellow-top daisy or fleshy groundsel Seneciq gregorii, and Brachychiton gregorii, the desert kurrajong, which is found throughout the central Western Australian lands discovered by the brothers. The succinct record left by Augustus and Francis in Journals of Australian Explorations is a fundamental source of reference for scholars and scientists writing about the plants, animals, landscapes, fluvial geomorphology, geology, landforms and Aboriginal peoples of western and northern Australia. T h e brothers' lives, and their maps and journals have provided both inspiration and information for modern adventurers. One expedition, undertaken in 1999 by a Sydney stockbroker re-enacted the Northern Australian Expedition, using nineteenth-century navigational equipment and horses. More recently, an expedition to the remote Lyons River catchment sought to find some trees scarred with an axe by the North-west Australia Exploring Expedition in 1861. Francis Gregory's record of latitude and landscape was proved correct, as several beefwood trees {Grevillia striata) were found, clearly cut with an axe. T h a t this long-lived and termite-resistant species was marked rather than much taller, but less long-lived species of eucalypt suggests knowledge of the properties of the trees. The influence of the Gregory brothers is perhaps greatest on outback travellers and field researchers in remote and arid Australia; there, the quality of Augustus' and Francis' records, and their achievements in hostile environments is fully appreciated.

Bibliography and Sources 1. REFERENCES

ON THE GREGORY

BROTHERS

Birman, Wendy, 'Francis Thomas Gregory: T h e Explorer', in Lyall H u n t (ed.), Westralian Portraits, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1979. Birman, W., Gregory of Rainworth: A Man of his Time, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1979. Birman, W. and Bolton, G., Augustus Charles Gregory, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1972. Cohen, K., 'Augustus Gregory, "a Biased Civil Servant": an Administrative Perspective', Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, Vol. 14 (1992), 393 402.

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Cumpston, J . H . L . , Augustus Gregory and the Inland Sea, Roebuck Society Publication No. 9, Roebuck Society, Canberra, 1972. Kelly, K., Hard Country, Hard Men: In the Footsteps of Gregory, Hale & Ironmonger, Alexandria, New South Wales, 2000. McLaren, G., Beyond Leichhardt: Bushcraft and the Exploration of Australia, Fremantle Arts Press, Fremantle, 1997. Waterson, D.B., 'Gregory, Sir Augustus Charles; his brother Francis Thomas', in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 4 1851-1890, Carlton, Victoria, Melbourne University Press, 1972. Whittell, H . M . , 1964. T h e ornithology of Francis Thomas Gregory (1821-1888)', Emu, Vol. 45 (April 1964), 289-97. Woods, J.E. Tennison, A History of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia, Vol. 2, Sampson, Low, Son & Marston, 1865. 2. WORKS BY THE GREGORY

BROTHERS

1857

Papers relating to an expedition undertaken for the purpose of exploring the northern portion of Australia, [compiled for the United K i n g d o m Parliament] George Edward Eyre & William Spottiswood for H M S O , London.

1884

Journals of Australian Explorations, James C. Beal, London, and also Government Printer Brisbane. Facsimile editions by Greenwood Press, New York, 1968, Libraries Board, Adelaide, 1969 and Hesperian Press, Victoria Park, Western Australia, 1981.

1862

'Expedition to the North-West Coast of Australia', in Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. 32, 372-429.

3. ARCHIVAL

SOURCES

There are three main public repositories holding work of the Gregory brothers: the State Records Office (archives) of Western Australia in Perth, the State Library of Queensland, in Brisbane and the State Library of New South Wales, located in Sydney. The State Records Office of Western Australia holds microfiche copies of the records of the Lands and Survey Department, which include the field books, diaries and reports made by the Gregory brothers during their periods of contract with, and employment by, the department. Transcripts of the original material are held at the Western Australian Department of Land Administration at Midland, but these are not generally made available to the public. T h e Manuscript and Business Records Collection of the J o h n Oxley Library, in the State Library of Queensland, contains 29 items of Augustus Gregory's correspondence. Augustus' geological reports 1831-48 and 1877-1905 and the meteorological register and journals of the Northern Australian Expedition are in the W. Dawson collection of the New South Wales State Library. Within the same public library, the Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscript Collection contains field books, journals and memoranda concerning expeditions, diaries, letters and other records, generated by Augustus and Francis. Henry's 1848-9 journal, and his 1849 diary of survey work and notes are also retained in the Manuscript Collection.

Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory 71

Chronology 1819

Augustus Gregory born 1 August, at Farnsfield,

Nottinghamshire,

England 1821

Francis Gregory born 19 October

1829

Gregory family emigrates to Swan River Colony, Western Australia

1838

Death of Joshua Gregory; the elder sons Joshua and Augustus start contract surveying work, assisted by Francis as chainer

1841

Augustus joins the Survey Department as a cadet

1842-3 1845

Francis joins the Survey Department Surveys the alignment of the streets of Fremantle and recommended by the Surveyor-General J o h n Septimus Roe for a higher duty allowance. Francis becomes acting assistant surveyor at Bunbury Private expedition led by Augustus, assisted by Francis and Henry to the east and north of the Swan River beyond Toodjay - the Irwin River Expedition

1846

1848

September - Augustus and Charles Gregory explore the Murchison River with three settlers -• T h e Settlers' Expedition to Champion Bay and the Murchison December - Augustus in command of the Governor's Expedition to the Geraldine Mine on the Murchison

1849

Francis acting Assistant Surveyor

1854 5

Francis works on survey duties on the Albany to Perth road

1855 6

Augustus and Henry lead the North Australian Exploring Expedition across Queensland and the Northern Territory

1856

Augustus awarded the fellowship of, and a Founders' Medal by, the Royal Geographical Society

1857

Francis, assisted by S. Trigg, surveys the lower Murchison River Augustus' report of the North Australian Exploring Expedition published

1858

Augustus in command of a party in search of the explorer Leichhardt, in southern Queensland and South Australia. Francis leads an expedition to the Upper Murchison, Gascoyne River and Mount Augustus in Western Australia. Appointed to the position of Superintendent of Roads

1859

Augustus appointed Surveyor-General of Queensland. Death of Mrs Frances Gregory at the age of 61

1859 60

Francis travels to England and rejects offer of the position of SurveyorGeneral of Victoria

1861

Francis leads the North-west Australian Exploring Expedition to the Pilbara

1862

Francis leaves Western Australia and joins his brothers in Queensland

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Augustus Charles Gregory and Francis Thomas Gregory

1863

Francis awarded the Founders' Medal from the Royal Geographical Society for his exploration in Western Australia. Francis becomes district land commissioner and police magistrate. Francis rejects offer of the position of Deputy Surveyor-General of Western Australia

1865

Francis married to Marion Scott H u m e , daughter of Alexander H u m e

1866

Francis - appointed District Surveyor for the regions of Darling Downs and M a r a n o a

1867

Francis - appointed District (Crown Lands) Assessing Commissioner and Crown Lands Commissioner for Darling Downs

1870

Francis fails to win a seat in the Legislative Assembly. Death of Charles Gregory

1872

Francis resigns government post as mining commissioner for Stanthorpe

1874

Augustus made a Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. Francis appointed to the Legislative Council. Francis becomes Commissioner of Crown Lands Toowoomba district, Queensland

1883

Francis appointed Post-Master General for seven weeks Augustus and Francis visit Western Australia

1884

Journals of Australian Exploration published

1885

Francis visits England

1886

Francis leads the opponents of payments to Council members

1888

Francis died 23 October, at Harlaxton, near Toowoomba, Queensland

1902

Augustus elected the first mayor of Toowong

1903

Augustus knighted. Death of Henry

1905

Augustus died 25 J u n e in Brisbane and buried in Toowong cemetery

Marion Hercock runs a tour company that specializes in following the routes of the early Australian explorers, and lectures in Geography at the University of Western Australia.

John Valter Greg 1864-1932

J.M. Powell

Distinctions between biography and other approaches to the history of science often declaim purported privileging of individualistic trajectories ~ that is, at the expense of interpretative narratives of influential schools, groups or institutions, or of key trends, pivotal concepts and events, and the like. Cited defences may range from the aesthetic to the practical: greater didactic potential for recovering the creativity of engagement, the sourced passions of commitment; a chance to achieve an improved purchase on the past through observations of the negotiations made by a seemingly authenticated companion-in-arms. It was never true that history can or should be distilled to biography, but whatever the ascription, humanity or vanity, biography's appeal has surely been exhaustively tested down the centuries. As ever, the most prudent course is to nurture a rich diversity of perspective. In such lights, the scientific and literary negotiations made by J o h n Walter Gregory were in turn exceptional and representative, not to say anachronistic and anticipatory. All warts and talents like the rest of us, his accommodations with time and place left some enduring inscriptions. In distinctive, usually highly personable style, his occupation of the scarcely patrolled borderlands of geology and geography, and indeed of the beckoning conjunctions of geography, anthropology and sociology, strongly influenced two academic communities at opposite ends of the British Empire during a formative stage of disciplinary development. At several points throughout a productive and varied research career, he displayed an uncommon grasp of the need to address a broad, educated public. T h e following account mainly relates to the published Gregory. A mere shot across the bow, it invites supplementation from an elusive unpublished record.

1. Education, Life and Work J o h n Walter Gregory was born on 27 J a n u a r y 1864 at Bow, London, England, to J o h n J a m e s Gregory, wool merchant, and his wife J a n e . After attending the wellregarded Stepney G r a m m a r School, he retraced the footsteps of his recently-

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John Walter Gregory

deceased father during a lengthy stint as a wool clerk in the City of London. Although daily experience of hectic international trading stimulated an interest in the wider world - later warmly recalled as useful geographical initiation contemporary infatuations with geological fieldwork resonated with his energetic pursuit of country 'rambles' and helped to shape a stronger investment in the natural sciences. H e enrolled in evening classes at Birkbeck Institute (formerly the London Mechanics' Institute and later Birkbeck College), which was destined to establish a fine record in the preparation of mature students for London University degrees. Graduating as a BSc with first-class honours, he was appointed to an assistantship in the geological department of London's Natural History Museum and commenced the production of a stream of scientific papers. An amply demonstrated appetite for palaeontological and other work brought exceptional opportunities for overseas field experience. Early ventures took him to North America (Rocky Mountains, Great Basin, 1891), British East Africa (1892), Spitzbergen (1896) and the West Indies (1899). T h e ensuing publications propelled the diminutive Londoner into the leading ranks of scientific explorers, but it was his East African vicissitudes that chiefly supplied the aura of imperial adventure. After the departure of all of his scientific colleagues due to the ignominious collapse of the original project, the sick but determined Gregory pressed on with another. With 40 African assistants, he covered about 1,650 km (1,000 miles) in less than five months, almost completed the first ascent of M t Kenya and reported competently on its glaciers, examined tectonic features and lava fields associated with an immense trough - famously labelling it and its extensions ' T h e Great Rift Valley' - and launched a lifelong interest in colonial policies and inter-racial relationships. Post-Kenya convalescence was followed by useful service as naturalist on the first crossing of Spitzbergen by Sir Martin Conway's party. His marriage to Audrey Chaplin on 6 J u n e 1895 was followed by a trip to the West Indies - perhaps a late, fossil-hunting honeymoon - which preceded Gregory's appointment (in 1900) as Director of the Civilian Scientific Staff of the British Antarctic Expedition. By that time, however, he had been appointed to the foundation chair of geology and mineralogy at the University of Melbourne. Quite soon, the demands of that Australian position would be publicly cited when he relinquished his Antarctic post, but the decision was also influenced by a falling-out with Sir Clements M a r k h a m and other key establishment figures over a preference given to naval over scientific personnel. T h e Melbourne brief included the Directorship of the Geological Survey of Victoria, with the task of resuscitating an agency built upon a rich gold-mining heritage and the simultaneous popularization and professionalization of geological training. Struggling against inadequate funding, poor laboratory facilities and the commandeering of vital collections by Melbourne's National Museum, Gregory nonetheless proceeded to set appropriate standards for teaching and fieldwork; in addition, he found outlets for his boundless energy in mining fields around the young state and reported on the mineral resources of Tasmania's M t Lyell deposit. Confronted by a complete absence of university geography departments in Australia, he produced a series of geography texts for Victorian schools and the first reputable textbook on the geography of Victoria, and just as quickly devised and supervised physical geography classes for secondary school teachers. His staffstudent expedition into the far interior yielded The Dead Heart of Australia (1906): that evocative title would reverberate for the rest of the century. University challenges notwithstanding, Australia's extraordinary openings seemed rather well met by a vigorous workrate and a proven capacity for lively teaching,

John Walter Gregory

75

coupled with a maturing talent for accessible publication. His efforts appeared to be as warmly appreciated in the empire's periphery as at its centre, where he had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1901, and Gregory would prove unfailingly supportive towards Australia's pioneering endeavours. But Britain's undiminished appeal drew him back in 1904, as the foundation head of geology at the University of Glasgow; he would remain there until his retirement in 1929. From that Glasgow base he resumed his early research on corals and bryozoa, mineralogy and descriptive geology, undertook some innovative fieldwork in Cyrenaica (1908), Angola (1912), India (1916) and the Tibetan Alps (1922), and contributed to the heated international debate on inter-racial relationships and emigration. As for Australia, he maintained his affection for the country, electing to revisit in 1914 on the occasion of the historic Australian meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Undaunted by news of the outbreak of war, and typically so, as admirers relate, he refused to amend his post-conference itinerary, returning to Britain via the Trans-Siberian Railway and the (then arduous) St Petersburg crossing. Just as typically, Gregory's last major works included this rapid-fire mixture: The Elements of Economic Geology (1928), The Structure of Asia (1929), and The Story of the Road (1931). A few years into what was therefore a very active retirement, he joined an expedition to northern Peru and was drowned in the U r u b a m b a River when his canoe overturned. His wife, son and daughter survived him.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought Gregory's career traversed two relatively distinct periods as well as two hemispheres with divergent economic, environmental and social profiles. Seemingly chronologically removed, at the outset, from disciplinary boundary riding, he chose to exercise his conviction that Science - taken as a general, not as a particular should demonstrate its civic worth by boldly addressing important public issues. Place and circumstance entwine in so complex a fashion as to forbid separation in this short note. Perhaps it will suffice to say that, in his enthusiasms, he was rather easily tempted into, or at any rate relished, a series of robust exchanges over environmental constraints on colonial development and inter-racial relationships, as well as on the veracity of current scientific theories and methods. In some respects, and without imagining either individual as wholly 'representative' or indicative, allusions to civic alignment, self-conscious academic pioneering and practical experience of exploration and government agencies tend to suggest parallels in the life of another leading pioneer, Griffith Taylor {Geographers, Volume 3). At present, however, such observations only permit the most guarded expansions. As with Taylor, the contemporary perspective may be less harsh than privileged hindsight. T h e following insertion is therefore pertinent. Complementing his F R S , Gregory accumulated the following awards: the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society; gold medals from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and the Bigsby Medal of Britain's Geological Society, which he served as President in 1928-30. H e received a DSc from London University and honorary degrees from the Universities of Melbourne, Liverpool, Glasgow and Lima. Twice President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science's Section C (geology) and once of Section E (geography), he was also elected to honorary memberships of geographical, geological and other societies in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Germany. His books and newspaper

76 John Walter Gregory articles improved the visibility of geography and geology in the public sphere, and his spirited teaching won the attention of students who subsequently built notable careers in industry, the universities, and government service. Yet for all of that, Gregory's published record - thus far, it is virtually all that remains to hand from this uncommon academic life - does not, in itself, constitute a flawless picture of flair and distinction. He was enticed repeatedly to favoured topics, despite weighty rebuttals: arguments over the surface plan of the earth and an assumed permanence of continents and oceans; the development of river systems and the work of glaciers; on major tectonic problems he considered to be indicated in Alpine chains, rift valleys and fiords; on the origins of ore deposits. The first bee in the bonnet can be traced to one of his earliest papers, in which he discussed Lothian Green's tetrahedral theory. Gregory seemed absorbed in the theory's implications for an essential permanence: he would remain apparently unmoved by all the arguments for Continental Drift. This stance persuaded him to consider likely land bridges and therefore justified much hopeful sieving of data on fauna and other distributions in pursuit of bridge signage. Later, some bold observations on the evolution of British river systems became quite well ensconced ingredients in the 'physiographical' literature of their day, whereas his findings on the Norfolk Broads and the Essex gravels would be qualified by subsequent geomorphological, geological and archaeological analyses. Similarly, his interpretations of structures and successions in the Scottish Highlands were and are considered idiosyncratic, and his field inspections of glaciated features overseas fostered an attempt to resurrect an old notion of marine submergence for the higher shelly gravels of Scotland and Wales, together with a marine origin for low-lying boulder clays. On the geomorphological front, he thought that the elongated forms of many kames and eskers were more comprehensively described as the products of subsequent wind erosion acting upon depositional features. Gregory's sustained admiration of the views of Suess on regional geology and tectonics underpinned much of his fieldwork in Europe, Asia and North America. It provided the impetus for an initially controversial account of the Great Rift Valley, documenting a colossal product of fracturing and consequent selective sinking of crustal strips and blocks. From Africa to Australia, when dissent also dogged his applied work on ore deposits, Gregory served happily as target and missile. Censure was often partly muted, no doubt, by an engagingly alert disposition, but that was less true of his broader forays into the social sciences, including areas of social and political geography. The Melbourne sojourn exploited a keen interest in public affairs, but plunged him too quickly into sizeable research questions bristling with moral and political implications. In 1904, for example, he came out against the suggestion that Aboriginal communities could rightly point to a very ancient occupation of Australia. Yet local experiments in 'State Socialism' had been illustrating the kinds of intervention and leadership he supported, and government agencies at state and federal levels continued to trumpet the creation of a 'social laboratory of the world'. From his Melbourne base, Gregory identified unequivocally with this civic lead, to the extent that he embraced the White Australia policy. On his return to Britain, he frequently defended the Australian stand on racial (or racist) and imperial grounds, whereas its antipodean champions had astutely enunciated the narrower 'protectionist' arguments reinforcing postcolonial social, economic and strategic appraisals. Amplified, and to a degree also qualified, these civic concerns guaranteed him wide interwar recognition as an expert in inter-racial issues and international population movements. He advised on the potential of locations in Cyrenaica (in 1908) and Angola (1912) for Jewish colonization, and produced two volumes

John Walter Gregory

11

which became well known in university geography circles and amongst a wider educated readership in the Anglophone world, The Menace of Colour (1925) and Human Migration and the Future (1928). Gregory also served on the Calcutta University Commission (1917-19) and acted as a water supply consultant in Kenya. Even his last major book, The Story of the Road, one of his more prosaic products, contrived to address social utilities and British imperial policy. If a high incidence of overreaching is integral to the condition and circumstances of pioneering, then little purpose is met by conjuring allocations of rewards and sanctions to separate talented individuals from enveloping intellectual, professional and social domains. Although he was twice a foundation head of school, Gregory hardly provides the only instance in which individual vitality was so opportunely harnessed, personal energy budgets made so obligingly available, as to provide endless openings for detractors. Hopeful contenders for public attention and university recognition in a modernizing Western world, as young university subjects geology and geography alike attracted some particularly colourful teachers and researchers, many of whom were rewarded with increasingly secure, respectable employment and contingent approvals of ambitious activities. Furthermore, their novitiate stages registered and indulged a profusion of hits and misses: experimenting in self-recognition, hustling for elbow-room, preferring notoriety above invisibility, they were perhaps unduly reliant upon the drafting of mutually-sustaining contracts with the Gregorys of their world. Consistent to the end, the older Gregory became less inclined to favour radical geological emphases, and continued to plead the worth of well-remembered noncomformisms, despite their wholesale rejection by his own generation: 'nobody was more active in resuscitating theories long since abandoned, and in assembling cogent arguments in their favour' (Boswell, 1932, p. 155).

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas As Gregory seemed to understand intuitively, certainly from the beginning of the twentieth century, academic geology and geography were destined to remain diversely entwined over the next two or more generations. Nor should the two subjects be forced apart within this single career. As earlier sections disclose, his engagement with contemporary geographical imaginations was less continuous than his participation in the growth of geological science, but it was no less assured. Leaving aside the contributions as foundation professor and acclaimed teacher, in Australian and British geology he was possibly most enduringly recognized for interpretations of river systems and glaciated features which sketched out the interface with geomorphology. But dwelling on specifics seriously diminishes a relentless output - in aggregate, 300 papers and over twenty books and monographs - that sharpened the public images of his chosen fields. If it is not too misleading to trace, for geology, a critical transition - from, say, parochial insularities coupled with mixtures of elevating and distracting amateurism, to internationalizing purview and a cultivation and institutionalization of applied 'expertise' — then Gregory's global reach casts him relatively well as advance scout. As for appreciations of the link with geomorphology and the place of the latter within a more scientific geography, the founding editor of this series once presented Gregory's stated attitude as distinctly outmoded when compared with that of W . M . Davis: geographers should confine themselves to description, not search for underlying principles, although (given a little luck?) they might 'sometimes glide

78

John Walter Gregory

into explanations' (Freeman, 1961, p. 72). Davis was then well advanced in his conceptualizations of the 'Cycle of Erosion'. And as will be shown, there was more unfortunate baggage for international geography and its undersized offspring in the Australian academy. Yet Australia also features prominently elsewhere in this ledger. First, geology in its local representations developed a closer relationship with the mining industry, and while the arrangement was not entirely satisfactory, at minimum it directed and underwrote a distinctive national maturation of the subject. Second, notwithstanding Freeman's discovery of that declared preference for traditional, descriptive physiographies, at much the same juncture Gregory was arguing that 'Geography must be studied as a science with methods better adapted to its materials and problems, and with a more exact and adaptable terminology' (Gregory, 1904, p . 330). This pronouncement was most opportunely made in and for Australia, he continued, because the lamentably neglected geography of the surrounding oceans appeared to exercise a massive influence on weather patterns and climatic swings. Ergo, 'Federal Australia wants a united meteorological service' (Gregory, 1904, p. 345). Bandwaggoning as advocacy, admittedly, but it also reflected a familiarity with the promotion of the kinds of Antarctic research in which the new nation had been claiming a sizeable stake. The proposed federal agency was not news to Australia's science community. Second, his Dead Heart of Australia placed a provocative stamp on the vast Australian interior. Primed by news of the recent Spencer-Gillen transcontinental trek and by A.A. Davidson's well-backed West Central Australia mineral search, federated Australians were checking through their great patrimony with quickened interest. Although Gregory's book was based on a mere six weeks in the field, as an elaboration of his earlier reports in several Melbourne and Adelaide newspapers its market was strategically assured. While this much-cited publication efficiently capitalized on the mystique invested in Gregory's status as an internationally accredited explorer, its narrative section occupied far less than half of the volume. T h e rest offered speculative ruminations on millennia of ecological change, including annotations on climatic shifts and an engrossing array of associated hydrological, zoological and other transformations. Gregory delighted in finding the nation's pulse, and his success in that regard explains much of the book's longevity as a classic in crafted, monogrammed summation. Closer contemporaries were also taken by its deft selection of themes which appealed to an emergent sense of national identity - distinctive, startlingly ancient topography, fauna and flora; mysterious Aboriginality; pivotal environmental challenge. Lightly dismissing wild schemes to flood the interior by 'turning back' some northern rivers, Gregory also managed to perpetuate them by providing a gratis inkling of a lush primeval centre. Repackaged within the broader aesthetic, his own 'plutonic' hypothesis for the origin of the continent's extensive artesian waters also appealed, albeit differently, despite the opposing claims of an (ultimately vindicated) 'meteoric' camp. Gradually, as the citizens of Australia's new Commonwealth felt obliged to adjust their sights, the shunned interior would be re-imagined. Increasingly, the great inland shed its peripherality. A growing number of writers, artists, poets, scientists and naturalists found defining potentials in its seared plains. Pilgrimages to 'The Centre' took on the aura of rites of passage for an immigrant people with a temperate European background. Dead Heart became Red Heart: the continent's pulsating hub, an indisputably, eerily distinctive presence. And the plutonicmeteoric dispute created no scientific preserve. O n the contrary, it could not fail to attract intense political, bureaucratic and media attention. Artesian supplies had underpinned the extension of huge, economically and culturally significant grazing

John Walter Gregory

79

regions that dwarfed some groups of storied European countries, and recent signs of the depletion of those supplies emphasized the need for good hydrological science. Perhaps Gregory's impressive standing excused the very recalcitrance which helped to prolong this dispute; more research is required to guage the affect on the determination and delivery of conservational management techniques (Pittman, 1907; Powell, 1991, pp. 65-78, 134-64). His adventures into social science illustrate similar authorial appetite and skill, but although it could be said, once again, that they were not unrepresentative of a contemporary genre, their ruling perspective (incorporating a stubborn eugenicism) did not meet the scientific and ethical criteria of later years. Even so, facile pens are too readily dismissed as passports to superficiality: they proved well adapted to the needs of a modernizing West. Boasting mass education yet still precariously reliant on the key print media, the West was made alert to the insecurities attending a 'shrinking globe'. As its cultural and racial presumptions (and their economic bases) became more exposed within the academy, concessions were duly if sometimes grudgingly made to accessible critiques, in recognition of their role in an expanding dialogue with the paying public. And yet, as earlier sections suggest, if one result was an inviting porosity of disciplinary borders, Gregory appeared to be easily snared. Continuing with the purposes of this chapter, and returning the discussion to its introductory reflection, a simple differentiation might be expected between two types of effect. Reaction across the gamut of academic peers and amongst his wider readership built first, a diffuse product. Second, one feels entitled to anticipate a more proximate influence where there is comparability of context and personality. Given the need for more substantial research commentary on the first of these outcomes, all that can be safely posited is that he appears to occupy a distinctive but minor niche in the historiographical record of modern geology, principally for authoritative early work in palaeontology and spectacular success in the coining of 'The Great Rift Valley'; and perhaps secondarily for popularizations of the subject via newspaper articles, feats of exploration, regular forays into controversial disputations where his espousal of discarded hypotheses won enduring if sometimes endearing notoriety, and for attempts at the clarification of linkages with geomorphology. Exploration and geomorphology aside, it is the second set of observed effects that seems most pertinent to his engagement with modern geography. Hazard-prone flirtations with refurbished environmental determinism frequently scarred early-twentieth-century geography, even when its practitioners and co-workers courted optimistic lines. T h e mitigation finds that pioneering and recklessness, also given as experimentation or courageous interrogation, go handin-hand. So too with Gregory under his geographical hat. A distinguished historiographer has noted his curious attachment to an older 'moral economy' of climate. Indeed, in the cited instance Gregory contrived to combine casual racial stereotyping of the 'affectionate, emotional Negro, the docile, diligent Asiatic, and the inventive, enterprising European' with barely disguised repugnance for racial intermarriage and residential co-existence (Gregory, 1924, p p . 270, 281; Livingstone, 1992, p. 239). O n e revisionist Australian historian has condemned the same stance as complicit in the implementation of racist policies for Aboriginal communities (McGregor, 1997, p. 139). Finally, and most intriguingly, context and personality comfortably bracket Gregory and pioneer geographer Griffith Taylor [Geographers, Volume 3) on numerous grounds, large and small - the civic impulse; the geology-geography-exploration-fieldwork interface; the Antarctic connection; late entry into academic prominence and 'foundational' experience in two countries; refreshingly energetic teaching with commensurate student

80

John Walter Gregory

followings; an elastic publishing range, from elementary primers to research articles, monographs and newspaper features; overstated claims to novelty; stubborn retentions or retrievals of suspect approaches; repeated pronouncements on Australia's desert interiors; speculations on Australia's 'carrying capacity'; a few fixations about physiological responses to climate; and even their births in the same London neighbourhood. T h e careers of the two men overlap by more than 30 years. Taylor acknowledged some but not all of Gregory's leads and in turn, Gregory found ways to cite and subtly differ from the younger author. In different degrees, both slanted accessible writings towards the d o m i n a n t public discourse. Later generations would recoil from naively racist propositions in both repertoires, but whereas Taylor fell from grace on promoting Asians to the top of the evolutionary ladder, Gregory preferred a narrow eugenics line tinged with white supremacist assumptions. Occasionally, otherwise unexceptional Geographical Journal offerings on the relationships between environment and development show him straying into such candidly racist territory that one doubts the very availability, let alone the common sense, of the editor: Of course, where work has to be done under such rough conditions that life must be freely sacrificed, as when, in railway construction, a man has to be buried under every sleeper, as was said about the P a n a m a railway, he must be a coloured man. (Gregory, 1906, p. 233) Racist slips and eccentricities aside, both authors attempted to inject environmental data into regional development programmes, and the effort helped to emphasize geography's practical or utilitarian prospectus during a formative phase. In that regard, Taylor proved conspicuously successful in his (plucky, lucky) predictions of a future Australian population of about 19 or 20 million at the end of the twentieth century. Gregory's cavalier stabs included some in excess of 100 million - usually judiciously unaccompanied by end-dates. Concerning their first meeting (near Dublin, in 1908), Taylor's cannily doctored recollection submits mainly this: ' . . . Professor J . W . Gregory, whose brain I have always revered, however unusual his "understanding" (Taylor, 1958, p. 69).

Bibliography and Sources 1. OBITUARIES AND REFERENCES

ON JOHN WALTER

GREGORY

Boswell, P.G.H., 'John Walter Gregory - 1864-1932', Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, No.l (1932), 53-59. Branagan, D. and Lim, E., 'J.W. Gregory, traveller in the dead heart', Historical Records of Australian Science, Vol. 6 (1984), 71-84. Branagan, D. and Vallance, T., 'The earth sciences: searching for geological order', in R. MacLeod (ed.), The Commonwealth of Science. AN^AAS and the Scientific Enterprise, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988, 130-46. Freeman T.W., A Hundred Tears of Geography, Duckworth, London, 1961. Gregory, C.J. (comp.), J.W. Gregory — a Sketch. Scientist explorer teacher, privately published, Chelmsford, 1977.

John Walter Gregory 81 Lim, E., Professor Gregory, Archives, University of Melbourne. Livingstone, D.N., 'A "sternly practical" pursuit: geography, race and empire', in D.N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition. Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise, Blackwell, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1992, 216-59. Lovering, J.F., 'Gregory, J o h n Walter (1864-1932)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 9, 101-2. McGregor, R., Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880-1939, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1997. Pittman, E.F., 'Problems of the artesian water supply of Australia, with special reference to Professor Gregory's theory', Journal, Royal Society of New South Wales, Vol. 41, 1907, 100-39. Powell, J . M . , Plains of Promise, Rivers of Destiny: Water Management and the Development of Queensland, 1824-1990, Boolarong Publications, Brisbane, 1991. Taylor, G., Journeyman Taylor. The Education of a Scientist, Robert Hale, London, 1958. Age (Melbourne), 26 February 1900; Argus (Melbourne), 30 October 1904; Times (London), 14 J u n e 1932; Nature, 25 J u n e 1932; Geographical Journal, Vol. 80, 1932, 269-72. 2. SELECTIVE AND THEMATIC BIBLIOGRAPHY GREGORY

OF WORKS BY JOHN

WALTER

1891

'The relations of the American and European Echinoid faunas', Bulletin, Geological Society of America, Vol. 3, 101-8.

1891

'The variolotic diabase of the Fichtelgebirge', Quarterly Journal Geological Society, Vol. xlvii, 45-62.

1892

'The physical features of the Norfolk Broads', Natural Science, Vol. 1, 347-55.

1893

'Australian Fossil Echinoidea', K. Paul, Trench, T r u b n e r Geological Magazine, October 1892, 433-37).

1894

Evolution of the Thames, Rait, Henderson and Co., London (from Natural Science, Vol. v, 97-108).

1895

'Contributions to the palaeontology and physical geology of the West Indies', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, Vol. 1, 255-310.

1896

The Great Rift Valley: being the Narrative of a Journey to Mount Kenya and Lake Baringo, with Some Account of the Geology, Natural History, Anthropology, and Future Prospects of British East Africa, J o h n Murray, London.

1899

'Geology of Socotra and Abd-El-Kuri', Geological Magazine, New Series, Decade iv, Vol. 6, 529-33.

1899

'Palaeozoic starfishes', Geological Magazine, New Series, Decade iv, Vol. 6, 341-54.

1899

'The plan of the earth and its causes', Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1898, Washington, 363-88.

(from

82 John Walter Gregory 1900

'On the West Indian species of Madreopora\ Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Series 7, Vol. vi, 20-31.

1901

The Foundation of British East Africa, H. Marshall and Son, London.

1901

'Some remains of an extinct kangaroo in the dune-rock of the Sorrento Peninsula, Victoria', Proceedings, Royal Society of Victoria, Vol. 14, 139-44.

1902

'The age of the metamorphic rocks of North-eastern Victoria', Proceedings, Royal Society of Victoria, Vol. 15, 123-31.

1902

The Teaching of Geography, Whitcombe and Tombs, Melbourne (and later editions).

1903

The Geography of Victoria, Whitcombe and Tombs, Melbourne.

1903

'Some features in the geography of North-Western Tasmania', Proceedings, Royal Society of Victoria, Vol. 16, 177-83.

1904

'The antiquity of man in Victoria', Proceedings, Royal Society of Victoria, Vol. 17, 120-44.

1904

'The glacial geology of Tasmania', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, Vol. 60, 37-53.

1904

'The Southern Ocean and its climatic control over Australasia' (Presidential Address, Geography,)., Australian and Mew Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, Dunedin Meeting, Government Printer, Wellington, 328-47.

1905

'Mt Lyell mining field, Tasmania', Transactions, Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers, Vol. 10, 26-196.

1906

'The economic geography and development of Australia', Geographical Journal, Vol. 28, 130-45, 229-45.

1906

The Dead Heart of Australia: a Journey Around Lake Eyre in the Summer of 1901-1902, with Some Account of the Lake Eyre Basin and the Flowing Wells of Central Australia, John Murray, London (reprinted 1909).

1907

'Ballarat East Goldfield', Geological Survey Memoir, No. 4, Acting Government Printer, Melbourne.

1908

Australia and New Zealand, Stanford, London (first edition written by A.R. Wallace).

1908

Geography: Structural, Physical and Comparative, Blackie and Son, London.

1909

'Climatic variations: their extent and causes', Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1908, Washington, 339-54.

1909

Report on the Work of the Commission sent out by the Jewish Territorial Organization under the Auspices of the Governor-General of Tripoli to Examine the Territory Proposed for the Purpose of a Jewish Settlement in Cyrenaica, ITO Offices, London.

1910

Austral Geography for Classes 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, Whitcombe and Tombs, Melbourne (several editions).

1910

'The geographical factors that control the development of Australia', Geographical Journal, Vol. 35, 658-82.

John Walter Gregory 83 1910

Geology, Dent and Sons, London.

1910 12

(With T.W. Bothroyd and J.A. Leach) The Federal Geography: Grades 3 8, 6 Vols, Whitcombe and Tombs, Melbourne.

1911

'The terms "denudation", "corrosion", and "corrasion"', Geographical Journal, 37, 189-95.

1911

'The flowing wells of Central Australia', Geographical Journal, Vol. 38, 34-59, 157-81.

1912

The Making of the Earth, Williams and Northgate, London.

1913

'The relations of kames and eskers', Geographical Journal, Vol. 40, 169 75.

1913

The Mature and Origins of Fiords, J . Murray, London.

1913

Livingstone as an Explorer, MacLehose, Glasgow.

1914

'The Scottish Lochs and their origin', Proceedings, Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, Vol. 45, 183-96.

1915

Temperance Regulations in the Russian and Australian Armies, Black, Glasgow.

1916

Geology of Today: a Popular Introduction, Seeley, Service, Lippincott, Philadelphia.

1916

Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

1921

The Rift Valley and Geology of East Africa: an Account of the Origin and History of the Rift Valleys of East Africa and their Relation to the Contemporary Earth Movements which Transformed the Geology of the World, Seeley, Service, London.

1922

Evolution of the Essex Rivers and of the Lower Thames, Bentham, Colchester.

1923

'On recent records from the flowing wells of Eastern Proceedings, Pan Pacific Science Congress, Vol. 2, 1291 6.

1923

(With C.J. Gregory) To The Alps of Chinese Tibet: an Account of a Journey of Exploration up to and among the Snow-Clad Mountains of the Tibetan Frontier, Seeley, Service, London.

1925

The Menace of Colour: a Study of the Difficulties Due to the Association of Whites and Coloured Races, with an Account of Measures Proposed for their Isolation, and Special Reference to White Colonization in the Tropics, Seeley, Service, London.

1925

(With C.J. Gregory), 'The geology and physical geography of Tibet, and its relations to the mountain system of South-Eastern Asia', Philosophical Transactions, Royal Society of London, Series B, Vol. 213, 171 298.

1927

The Elements of Economic Geology, Dutton, New York.

1928

Human Migration and the Future: a Study of the Causes, Effects and Control of Emigration, Seeley, Service, London.

1928

(ed.), The Structure of Asia, Methuen, London.

1929

Africa: a Geography Reader, Rand, McNally, New York, Chicago, etc.

London;

Australia',

84

John Walter Gregory

1929

Earthquakes and Volcanoes, Benn, London.

1929

'Water divining', Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1928, Washington, 325-48.

1930

The Fossil Fauna of the Samana Range and some Neighbouring Areas, Central Publications Branch, Government of India, Calcutta.

1931

Dalradian Geology: the Dalradian Rocks of Scotland and their Equivalents in other Countries, Methuen, London.

1931

The Story of the Road: From the Beginning Down to A.D. 1931, MacLehose, London; Macmillan, New York.

1931

Race as a Political Factor, Watts and Co., London.

3. ARCHIVAL

SOURCES

England: British Library; Royal Geographical Society. Scotland: University of Glasgow. Australia: Archives, University of Melbourne; Archives, University of Sydney; and Manuscripts Section, National Library of Australia.

Chronology 1864

Born 27 January, London

1887

Assistant, Natural History, British Museum

1891

BSc London University (Birkbeck College); United States fieldwork

1892

East African expedition

1893

DSc London University

1896

The Great Rift Valley; Spitzbergen expedition

1899

West Indies fieldwork

1899-1901 Appointed Director of Civilian Scientific Staff, British Antarctic Expedition; formally resigned this post after taking up appointment as Foundation Professor of Geology, Melbourne University 1901

Elected F R S

1904

Appointed Foundation Professor of Geology, University of Glasgow

1906

The Dead Heart of Australia

1928

Human Migration and the Future

1931

Race as a Political Factor

1932

Drowned in the U r u b a m b a River, Peru

J.M Powell is Emeritus Professor of Historical Geography in the School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.

Cotton Mather 1918-1999

Pradyumna P. Karan

Cotton Mather was a university professor, a research analyst in the Office of Strategic Services, founder of America's oldest county geographical society, VicePresident of the South Dakota Geographical Society, and President of the New Mexico Geographical Society. He also produced beef cattle on a former cotton plantation in Georgia, raised beef cattle and Morgan horses in Wisconsin, and grew pecans in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. In addition, he was chairman of the First, Second, and Third International Congresses of Geographical Societies. He operated a gallery with personally collected art from around the world, and he assembled over a period of four decades one of the finest pottery collections from Indian pueblos in America. H e was a great personality as a geographer, regaling his confidants with uproarious stories of his geographic adventures. His geographical career spanned a total of nearly 60 years - four in the service during the Second World W a r (1941-45), one year (1946-47) as instructor at the University of Wisconsin, nine years (1947-56) on the faculty of the University of Georgia, fourteen in visiting professorships in the United States, Canada and overseas, and a quarter of a century (1957-83) with the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota. After retirement he served as part-time professor for eight years at the University of Minnesota and two years at the New Mexico State University. During his lifetime, Mather explored and searched for nirvana from the high Himalayas and the lofty Andes to the beatitude of the Great Plains and the solitude of the High Arctic. From these peregrinations, he experienced many geographical rewards — not the least of which was sharing and preparing for great geographic adventures. Although Mather wandered widely over time and place, it was the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota which was his academic home. A man of enormous energy and with deep devotion to geography, Cotton Mather belonged to that group of geographers who, down through the years, have been less interested in discussions of theory and methodology than in the understanding of unique circumstances which make one place and landscape different from another. At an early age, he began to follow the rule that to be a geographer one must travel, and over the years he travelled to all the continents

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except Africa. During his wartime service in Washington he facilitated negotiations between senior members of the Association of American Geographers and members of the American Society of Professional Geographers, resulting in the merger of the two organizations into the Association of American Geographers in 1948. He helped establish graduate field seminars and county and state geographical societies to promote the study of local areas and regions.

1. Education, Life and Work Born 3 J a n u a r y 1918 on a farm in the tiny Quaker hamlet of Springdale, Iowa, he was brought up in the Midwest and California in circumstances that made a distinct impression on him. His father was in the cattle business, and Cotton travelled frequently with him to ranches and to stockyards. These early travels by car across the Western United States instilled in young Mather a love for the rural landscapes of America. His childhood was spent in the uniquely homogeneous Iowa farm community where stern morals and a high regard for honesty prevailed. T h e family traditions of education, music and art (as well as his uncle, a professor of Romance Languages at the University of Iowa), had a major impact on him in his formative years. H e attended grade and high schools in Iowa and California, and entered the University of Iowa in 1935. While at Iowa he undertook a bicycle tour of the Eastern United States and Canada, which was perhaps the starting point of his lifelong love of travel. H e transferred to the University of Illinois to study geography, receiving his AB degree in 1940 and M S in 1941. Cotton then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin for his PhD but the Second World W a r interrupted his graduate work. He worked as a m a p editor in the Army M a p Service in Washington, DC, and later worked as a research analyst in the Office of Strategic Services. H e shared the responsibility for research in the European campaigns, and after the Allied victory in Europe he was associated with research on J a p a n , the Philippines, and China. H e received the PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1951. Cotton Mather started his teaching career at the University of Wisconsin in 1946 as a geography instructor, later moving to the University of Georgia in 1947. At Georgia he became deeply interested in the South. He co-authored a number of papers with J o h n Fraser Hart, his colleague at the University of Georgia and later on at the University of Minnesota. Mather participated regularly in the meetings of the Southeast Division of the Association of American Geographers. His tour guide of the South (prepared in collaboration with J o h n Fraser H a r t for the 1952 International Geographical Congress) was the first comprehensive field guide to the geography of the South. In the same year Cotton authored an important paper on the marketing of beef cattle in Georgia (1952). Two of his early papers coauthored with H a r t deserve special note: a paper delineating three major types of agricultural regions in the American Southeast (1954), and a paper examining the striking cultural impact of the Western or range cattle complex in Georgia (1955). T h e results of other field studies during this period appeared in journals including Economic Geography (1950), Geographical Review (1954), Land Economics (1956), and Landscape (1957). In 1957 Mather went to the University of Minnesota as a professor of geography. During his tenure there he also served as department chair, supervised the graduate work of a score of students, and served as mentor to many others.

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After 26 years at the university, he retired in 1983. H e held fourteen visiting professorships at leading American, Canadian and overseas universities. While his experience at Georgia was a happy one, Mather saw differences between Georgia and Minnesota. At Minnesota there was a great deal of intellectual creativity and socialization and sense of solidarity among the department and commitment to students and the university. These things existed at Georgia but not to the same extent that they did in Minnesota, and the elaborate structure of segregation and race relations in the South created bitter social and behavioural situations. Cotton Mather was a professor of the old school who took a keen interest in the welfare and success of his students both during their time on campus and after graduation. H e always remained interested in the careers of his former students and other geographers with whom he came into contact; all speak highly of his integrity, guidance and help. His enthusiasm for geography was infectious, his clearly expressed lectures and writings were an inspiration to all, and he gave unstintingly of his time to students, colleagues and friends alike. Madier's calmness, good sense and commanding presence were of inestimable value in dealing with 'sit ins' and classroom demonstrations during the year of violent student protests on the Vietnam War. Although Mather was a well-respected and very effective teacher, and dealt efficiently with departmental administration, his main interest was field research. This occupied a great part of his life. In the early 1960s he organized the annual Big Ten Field Conferences to discuss field research in geography. His field experience was extended through involvement in a succession of expeditions and research programmes in Latin America, Asia and the Arctic. At the University of Minnesota, he conducted field seminars for graduate students at a number of locations in the Midwest, Southwest and the Rocky Mountain Region. H e also led field trips for the National Geographic Society. During his retirement, Cotton continued to work on the rural landscapes of the South and Southwest, and visited other parts of the world, particularly J a p a n , India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia and Taiwan. His experiences in India and J a p a n led to a deep concern for the environment and cultures of the nonWestern world. His most recent work The Japanese Landscapes (1998) explored the interaction between nature and society in the landscapes of J a p a n . At the time of his death, he had completed books on the landscapes of two European villages based on field research in 1998, and landscape sketches of J.B. Jackson which will be published in the near future. Mather was a geographer with a sense of humour that was wry and puckish. For Cotton the breathtaking natural and cultural landscape was everywhere to study and explore - in the American South and West, the Bluegrass of Kentucky, the high-tech area of Kyushu, the M o u n t Everest region, the Mesilla Valley, and the Arctic slopes of Canada. In the Indian subcontinent another kind of beauty caught his eye - folk art. Truly captivated with the regional patterns of folk art, he coauthored papers on the geography of art in the Himalaya (1976) and in India (1982) with P.P. Karan, a colleague and friend at the University of Kentucky. K a r a n and Mather first met at the 1952 International Geographical Congress in Washington, DC. For over 25 years (1972—99), they shared field experiences in India and J a p a n and co-authored several publications. Cotton Mather's main contributions to research were made in studies on North America, J a p a n and the Indian subcontinent. This was not exclusive - he wrote his PhD dissertation on the Sand Hills of Nebraska. Regional geography remained his greatest love, and he was especially concerned with cultural landscapes and the geography of rural settlements. These interests came together particularly well in

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his contributions to the study of the Great Plains, especially the impact of railways on the settlement of the area. Mather was a charming and entertaining lecturer. He taught a generation of geographers about cultural landscapes, stressing the importance of entering the field to observe the landscape and mingle with the people living there. His ability to provide a lucid explanation in the field seminars was unrivalled. H e was dedicated to excellence in teaching and research, and to an extremely flexible graduate programme. His leadership as department chair in the 1960s laid the foundation for Minnesota's top-ranked graduate programme. He organized lectures and led many educational field trips for the Pierce County Geographical Society (Prescott, Wisconsin) and the New Mexico Geographical Society (Mesilla, New Mexico) to promote and advance geography among the populace. Under the sponsorship of these societies, Cotton Mather organized several international conferences of geographers from Europe, Latin America, China, India and the Middle East. T h e Pierce County Geographical Society is America's oldest county geographical society (1979). Cotton was meticulous, and once his mind was made up he was tenacious in defending his point of view. If you wanted to spend a couple of hours in a challenging discussion, you could try to change his mind. Wherever he went he seemed a thoroughly American scholarly figure in the best traditions of the postSecond World War era - tall, distinguished looking, with an authoritative manner, which inspired confidence among those around him. T h e period between 1945 and 1960 represented the most intensive and productive period of his life. T h e years from about 1960 to the 1990s saw him reach the academic and intellectual summit. During the last five months of his life, Cotton became seriously ill, but he undertook it with courage, stoicism, fortitude, and good humour. His colleagues, friends and geographers worldwide mourn his passing. Above all, his companionship will be missed by Julie, his wife of 55 years, whose fortitude and devoted care over the years was a source of admiration and inspiration to all their many friends. For those who came into contact with Mather in the field, classroom, or at conferences, he will be missed as a kindly, helpful and loyal senior colleague. For students, both from this country and from abroad, his guidance and advice on personal as well as academic matters were invaluable. Of all Cotton Mather's contributions, it is perhaps his h u m a n warmth and charm that will be remembered with the most affection.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought Mather's geographic thinking was moulded by Vernor Finch, Leo Waibel and Glenn T r e w a r t h a at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His first paper published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers in 1944 grew out of a graduate seminar offered by Trewartha, who sponsored the paper for publication in the Annals. During his wartime service in Washington, DC, Mather developed close professional and personal relationships with Clarence Jones, Preston James and Richard Hartshorne; and their geographic ideas and research methods had a significant impact on Mather's thinking. H e also acknowledged the influence of three geographers at Minnesota prior to the Second World War: Darrell H a u g Davis, Ralph Brown and Samuel Dicken from whose research he learned considerably. In particular, he acknowledged intellectual debt to Darrell H a u g Davis, whose probings reached as far as Hokkaido, J a p a n .

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In the field, he asserted, we are looking at landscapes - visual scrolls which provide insights into the nature of a people and their cultural impress upon the environment. To Mather, landscape was the interaction of culture, time and space; the unvarnished etching of the past and present expressing the values and social forces associated with culture. He conceived the study of cultural landscapes and regions as the foundation of human geography. His book The Japanese Landscapes (1998) succinctly summed up his concept of landscape studies and the importance of field research in geography. A concern for field-based research led Mather to take a leading role in organizing a series of Faculty Field Seminars in the early 1960s. These seminars were related to the objectives of the earlier Spring Field Conferences (James and Mather, 1977), and especially to Mather's tenet that geographers should go directly to the field - the original source of all geographical knowledge. He enlisted the participation of Robert S. Piatt and K.C. McMurry, who had been active in the earlier spring conferences. The first Faculty Field Seminar was held, September 1961, at the Kellogg Gull Lake Biological Station, northwest of Battle Creek, Michigan. Its theme was the spatial structure of settlement with participants from the major Midwestern universities: Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan State, Michigan, Minnesota, Northwestern and Ohio State. Mather convened the second Field Seminar, August/September 1962, at River Falls, Wisconsin; this seminar was concerned with field research problems related to physical geography and rural settlement. All of the major Midwestern universities, including Wisconsin, participated. T h e third Field Seminar was held in August 1963 at Del Norte in the San Luis Valley of Colorado; its main concern was the problems of settlement. Geographers from Midwestern universities, including Robert S. Piatt of the University of Chicago, participated in this seminar. In addition, Mather invited David Lands of Chico State College to participate. Lantis had written a comprehensive doctoral dissertation on the San Luis Valley at Ohio State University, and he provided a fine orientation to settlement problems of the region. T h e fourth seminar met at Kankakee, Illinois, in September 1964; its theme was 'the dying village 5 . O n the first day seminar participants went on a group reconnaissance under the leadership of a geographer familiar with the area; the following day members went independently into the field and developed a field problem outline; subsequently, each member took a half day or more to lead the seminar in the field on a discussion of his proposed research problem. Mather noted that an important goal of the seminar was to provide an opportunity to exchange ideas about geography, in the field, with other geographers. T h e emphasis was upon the applicability of ideas rather than on the specific facts of the field area. T h e field area was viewed as a laboratory for the testing of ideas with the benefit of having colleagues on the scene as critics. Throughout his career Mather was involved in field training of graduate students in geography. A graduate student-training phase was added to the 1961 Faculty Field Seminar at Gull Lake, Michigan. Mather successfully secured the approval of university administrators at Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota to offer a joint Tri-State Graduate Field Seminar. The first Tri-State Graduate Field Seminar was held at River Falls, Wisconsin. Among the graduate students enrolled in this seminar were Gerald Rushton, Aninda Chakravarti and James Newman. Mather organized the 1963 Graduate Field Seminar in San Luis Valley, Colorado, with fourteen graduate students from Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Among the students were Ray Henkel, Placidio La Valle, James Crowley, Ronald Abler and Surinder Bhardwaj. Until his retirement Mather continued to offer graduate field

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seminars at various places in the United States. A whole generation of graduate students had their field training at these seminars.

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas His major contributions to geography were institutional and pedagogic as well as the intellectual development of the discipline. Through organization and staffing of the department at Minnesota in the early 1960s, he laid the foundation for the development of a top-ranked programme in the country. In the 1960s under Mather's leadership the department emerged as a major centre for graduate instruction and research in geography. Scores of students from around the nation and the world were attracted to Minnesota during the Mather years. Minnesota graduates in many cases moved on to positions of influence in state universities, in government service and business. Mather's influence and geographic ideas spread widely across the United States, Canada and overseas through the rich contributions of his numerous graduate students including Walter Hardwick, Jameson Lin, Kenard Smith, Alvar Carlson, Warren Kress, H a r r y Swain, Arnold Alanen, James R. Wilson, Matti Kaups, Karl Raitz, Surinder Bhardwaj, Aninda Chakravarti, Luc Bureau, J o h n Crowley and others who held important positions in the United States and overseas. Mather worked at a new frontier as the pursuit of cultural knowledge gripped post-Second World W a r America. T o know Europe was not to know the world. He set out to expand the curriculum beyond its narrow European confines to the study of Asian and Latin American cultures. He enticed colleagues accustomed to teaching about American and European geography or the social structure of Chicago to expand their syllabus to include discussions of China, India and J a p a n in their courses. It is in this pioneering milieu that Mather set up what may have been the first rural geography course in the United States. Indeed, most of the geographers who teach rural geography in American universities (and some in India, China, Korea and J a p a n ) worked with him. Mather's rural geography can be thought of as a motivational response to educate students by frequent analysis of rural situations in Latin America and Asia in the context of the discussion of rural landscapes of the United States and Canada. And educate them he did, not just in rural landscapes and economy but also in other aspects of geography beyond North America. Another of M a t h e r ' s significant contributions was the advancement of geography at the local and regional levels through the establishment of county and state geographical societies and the publication of regional field guides. T h e establishment of county geographical societies in the 1960s was one of the distinctive developments in American geography. Cotton played a major role in encouraging county geographical societies in Florida (Leon County Society of Geography and Anthropology at Tallahassee), Minnesota (Blue Earth County Geographical Society at Mankato), Oregon (Lane County Geographical Society at Eugene and Douglas County Geographical Society at Reedsport) and South Dakota Geographical Society in Brookings. These local and regional geographical societies were a great idea invigorated by Mather to generate enthusiasm for geography. T h e International Congress of Geographical Societies, convened by Mather in 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1984, was designed to promote co-operation and provide the counsel of professional geographers in each county geographical society in the United States and overseas.

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The Pierce County Geographical Society was founded by Mather in 1968 at Prescott, Wisconsin (1979). In addition to the public lectures, field trips and hosting assemblies of geographers, the Pierce County Geographical Society published a number of regional field guides. A reviewer of one of these field guides, St. Croix Border Country, in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers 60 (1970), pp. 802-3, noted as follows: A deep immersion in the area by authors . . . has simply an amiable, informative vade mecum, only?) reasonably systematic look at the far edge curious, raggle-taggle limbo between suburbia countryside.

enabled them to produce not but perhaps the first (and of a growing metropolis, that and more or less untouched

The review pointed out 'the fantastic possibilities of good field geography, at howmuch we can learn, or ask, about major geographic processes and structures by squinting at the right things at the proper angles, by really seeing, listening, sniffing, touching, and feeling.' J o h n Hudson in his review of another field guide, Upper Coulee Country, noted that 'the authors lead both those familiar and unfamiliar with the area on an intriguing armchair fieldtrip through one of Wisconsin's most appealing regions' (Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66 (1975), pp. 164-5). After his retirement from the University of Minnesota in 1983 Mather moved to Mesilla, New Mexico, and incorporated the New Mexico Geographical Society in the historic community that was under the jurisdiction of the Mexican state of Chihuahua until the 1854 acquisition of the Gadsden Purchase Territory by the United States. Founded in Hispanic America, the New Mexico Geographical Society is the oldest geographical society chartered in the earliest European settled part of North America. Under Mather's leadership the society dedicated itself to the advancement of geographical knowledge through public lectures, regional and international conferences, educational field trips, research, and publications to reach the student, scholar and the public. Mather was particularly interested in using the society's resources to foster regional research and the scientific exploration of localities. T h e society awarded the J o h n Wesley Powell Medal, named after the great explorer and pioneer geographer of the American West, to individuals who made outstanding contributions to the advancement of regions and localities — a subject which was close to the great American explorer and geographer of the Western regions of the United States. In April 1999 at a special ceremony Mather, on behalf of the Committee on Awards, conferred the J o h n Wesley Powell Medal upon Morihiro Hosokawa, a prime minister of J a p a n (1993-4) for his devotion to the enrichment, autonomy and progress of regions and localities in J a p a n . Under the directorship of Mather the publishing division of the New Mexico Geographical Society was set up as T h e Geographical Society with an international advisory board to review and recommend publications. T h e Geographical Society sponsored several publications either solely or in association with other publishers. Among the recent publications are: Leaders in American Geography, Vol. I; Leaders in American Geography, Vol. II; Registered Places of Mew Mexico, Millennium Tear Report, Two Village Landscapes: Saxony and Provence; and J. B. Jackson and his sketches (in press). In the last year of his life, Mather continued to work with the disciplined intensity that had characterized his entire career. His attention had shifted to completing the book on research leaders in American geography - a project he had

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initiated in the early 1990s. T h e book was published in March 2000, three months after his death. Aside from published research and outstanding teaching, Mather's impact on the profession can be measured through his unique gifts as a lecturer and as a friend. He stirred the interest of his audience and kindled their admiration and affection.

Bibliography and Sources 1. ACCOUNTS RELATED TO COTTON MATHER 'Cotton Mather', in Thomas F. Barton and P.P. Karan, Leaders in American Geography (Vol. 1), New Mexico Geographical Society in association with Prestige Books, Mesilla, New Mexico, 1992, 144-7. 'Cotton Mather', by J.B.Jackson, Journal of Cultural Geography (Vol. 5), Fall/Winter 1964, 141-2. 2. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS BY COTTON MATHER 1943

(with J o h n L. Page) 'The Geography of Crab Orchard: A Submarginal Area in Southern Illinois', Economic Geography, 19, 363-71.

1944

'A Linear Distance M a p of Farm Population in the United States', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 34 (September), 173-80.

1950

'The Production and Marketing of Wyoming Beef Cattle', Economic Geography, 26 (April), 81-93.

1952

'Marketing of Beef Cattle in Georgia', Memorandum Folio of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers, 4, 27-9.

1952

(with J . Fraser Hart) Southeastern Excursion Guidebook, Washington, DC, 17th International Geographical Congress.

1953

(with J o h n Fraser Hart) 'The Chorographic Compage M a p ' , Surveying and Mapping, 13 (July-September), 333-7.

1954

(with J o h n Fraser Hart) 'The People of the Deep South and the Border States', Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, J a n u a r y , 1-4.

1954

(with J o h n Fraser Hart) 'Fences and Farms', Geographical Review, 44 (April): 201-23.

1954

(with J o h n Fraser Hart) 'Agricultural Regions of the American Southeast', Memorandum Folio of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers, 6, 56-9.

1954

(with J o h n Fraser Hart) 'Industry in the Deep South and the Border States', Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, M a y - J u n e , 108— 12.

1954

(with J o h n Fraser Hart) 'Agriculture in the Deep South and the Border States,' Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, SeptemberOctober, 161-6.

1955

(with J o h n Fraser Hart) 'The Range Cattle Complex in Georgia',

Cotton Mather 93 Memorandum Folio of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers, 7(2), 69-72. 1955

(with John Fraser Hart) 'Unmixed Farming', Economist, September 24, 5-6.

1956

(with John Fraser Hart) 'The Geography of Manure', Land Economics, February, 25-38.

1957

(with John Fraser Hart) 'The American Fence', Landscape, 6 (Spring), 44-9.

1961

(with John Fraser Hart) 'The Character of Tobacco Barns and Their Role in the Tobacco Economy of the United States', Amials of the Association of American Geographers, 274 93.

1962

(with John Fraser Hart) 'Signs of the Tawny Weed', Landscape, Winter, 28-31.

1963

(with Matti Kaups) 'The Sauna: A Cultural Index to Settlement', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 53 (December), 494 504.

1963

'One Hundred Houses West', Canadian Geographer, 7, Geographical Society, 1-12.

1968

(with Matti Kaups) 'Eben: Thirty Years Later in a Finnish Community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan', Economic Geography, 44 (January), 47-70.

1968

(with Harry Swain) 'St. Croix Border Country. Prescott, Wisconsin: Trimbelle Press and Pierce County Geographical Society.

1971

(with Karl Raitz) 'Norwegians and Tobacco in Western Wisconsin', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 61 (December), 684 96.

1972

'The American Great Plains', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 62 (June), 237-57.

1975

(with John Fraser Hart, Hildegard Binder Johnson and Ron Matros) Upper Coulee Country, Prescott, Wisconsin: Trimbelle Press and Pierce County Geographical Society.

1976

'Coulees and the Coulee Country of Wisconsin', Wisconsin Academy Review, 22 (September), 22-5.

1976

(with Pradyumna P. Karan) 'Art and Geography: Patterns in the Himalaya', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 66 (December), 487-515.

1977

(with Preston E.James) 'The Role of Periodic Field Conferences in the Development of Geographic Ideas in the United States', Geographical Review, 67(4), 446-61.

1977

(with P.P. Karan (eds.)) Atlas of Kentucky, Lexington, University Press of Kentucky.

1977a

(with P.P. Karan) 'Modern Encroachment on Khumbu Himalaya', Explorers Journal, 55 (March), 31-5.

1978

(with Pradyumna P. Karan) 'The Concept of Land Support Units: Bhutan', Geografiska Annaler, 60, Series B, 28-35.

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1978a

(with Pradyumna P. Karan) 'The Past Third-Century of the Annals', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 68 (December), 591-5.

1979

'America's Oldest County Geographical Society', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 69 (March), 180-6.

1980

(with Ruth Hale) Prairie Border Country, Prescott, Wisconsin: Trimbelle Press.

1982

(with P.P. Karan) 'The Geography of Folk Art in India', in India: Cultural Patterns and Processes, Allen G. Noble and Ashok K. Dutt (eds), Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 165-94.

1983

'The Pennyroyal', in Kentucky: A Regional Geography, P.P. Karan (ed.), Dubuque, Iowa. Kendal/Hunt Publishing Company, 75-99.

1983

Kentucky and American Geographic Thought', in The Evolution of Geographic Thought in America: A Kentucky Root, Wilford A. Bladen and P.P. Karan (eds), Dubuque, Iowa. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1-11.

1984

'O Canada! Reality and the Image in America', Journal of Geography, 83 (September-October), 195-8.

1985

(with P.P. Karan) 'Tourism and Environment in Mount Everest Region', Geographical Review, 75 (January), 93-5.

1986

'The Midwest: Image and Reality', Journal of Geography, 85(5), 190-4.

1986

(with P.P. Karan) 'The Trouble with College Geography', Journal of Geography, 85, 95-7.

1986a

(with Christopher Sutherland and Jack Williams) 'Beer Houses: An Indicator of Cultural Change in Taiwan', Journal of Cultural Geography, 6 (2), 35-50.

1990

(with James R. Wilson) 'The Rio Grande Borderland', Journal of Cultural Geography, 10(2), 66-98.

1992

(with George F. Thompson and P.P. Karan) Beyond the Great Divide, Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

1995

(with George F. Thompson) ''Registered Places of New Mexico, Mesilla, NM, New Mexico Geographical Society.

1997

'Urban Landscapes of Japan', in The Japanese City, P.P. Karan and Kristin Stapleton (eds), Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. 40-55.

1998

(with P.P. Karan and Shigeru Iijima) Japanese Landscapes: Where Land and Culture Merge, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

1999

(with P.P. Karan) 'Urban Landscapes of Japan', in Urban Growth And Development in Asia, Vol. 1: Making the Cities, Graham P. Chapman, Ashok K. Dutt and Robert W. Bradnock (eds), Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 402-15.

2000

(with P.P. Karan). Leaders in American Geography, Vol. 2: Geographic Research, Mesilla, NM: Geographical Society.

Cotton Mather 3. ARCHIVAL

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SOURCES

T h e Mather collection at the Institute of Historical Survey Foundation, Mesilla Park, New Mexico 88047, contains books, manuscripts, photographs and scattered pieces of correspondence. Inquiries concerning the collection should be addressed to Dr Evan Davies, President of the Institute of Historical Survey Foundation (email: [email protected]). There is also a Mather Library at Arthur, Nebraska, containing books and journals from his personal library. For use of the Mather Library, contact George F. Thompson, President, Center for American Places, 80 South Main Street, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22801. A digital version of some of Cotton Mather's publications can be viewed at New Mexico Geographical Society website: {http:lldgraphix.gws.uky.edulnmgsjsociety.html).

Chronology 1918

Born J a n u a r y 3, Evergreen Farm, West Branch, Iowa

1932 -33

Played on Springdale High School basketball team, Springdale, Iowa

1935 37

University of Iowa, Iowa City

1937 -38

Lecturer-Demonstrator of world's first portable television transmitter and receiver before audiences at American universities and colleges

1938 39

University of Iowa, Iowa City

1940

AB University of Illinois, U r b a n a

1941

Field trip from central United States (Iowa) to the Canadian Maritime Provinces on bicycle

1941

M S University of Illinois, U r b a n a

1941 42

M a p Editor, Army M a p Service, Washington, D C

1943

First paper published in Economic Geography

1942-43

Instructor, Army Specialized Training Program, Madison, Wisconsin

1943

Paper published in the Annals, depicted by isarithmic lines patterns of linear distances between nodes of farm population in the United States based on 1940 census. Paper developed in a graduate seminar on methods of population representation under the direction of Professor Glenn Trewartha, who sponsored its publication. It was probably the first paper employing quantitative method in geography which developed a mathematical formula to measure linear distances between farmhouses

1943-45

Research Analyst, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D C

1944

Married Julia Marie Eiler, December 23

1946-47

Instructor, University of Wisconsin, Madison

1947-56

Assistant and Associate Professor, University of Georgia, Athens

1952

Led the seventeenth International Geographical Congress Field T r i p across Southeastern United States (with J o h n Fraser Hart)

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1957-83

Professor plus term as Chairman, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

1961

Big Ten Faculty Field Seminar, Gull Lake, Michigan

1962

Big Ten Faculty Field Seminar, River Falls, Wisconsin

1963

Big Ten Faculty Field Seminar, Del Norte, Colorado

1964

Big Ten Faculty Field Seminar, Kankakee, Illinois

1964—65

Ford Foundation grant to lecture at major universities in Latin America

1973

Field research in the Himalaya for paper on Himalayan art and geography; travel in the Khumbu region of Nepal to study landscape changes

1975-82

Adjunct Professor, University of Kentucky

1986-88

Professor, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces

1991

American representative on Canadian High Arctic Expedition

1992

Chairman, Field Trips Committee, 27th International Geographical Congress, Washington, DC

1998

Published The Japanese Landscapes Field research in France and Germany for Two Village Landscapes: Saxony and Provence Participated at a conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and presented a paper on urban landscapes of Japan

1999

At a special ceremony awarded New Mexico Geographical Society's John Wesley Powell Medal to Morihiro Hosokawa, prime minister of Japan Died 25 December, Las Cruces, New Mexico

Borivoje Z. Milojevic was a student of, and successor to, J o v a n Cvijic {Geographers, Volume 4) at both the University of Belgrade and the Serbian Geographical Society. Accepting Cvijic's idea that terrain research is the basis of geography, Milojevic undertook this work for 56 years. He lectured in geography for 48 years, gaining the reputation as the best lecturer in the 100-year history of scientific, geography in Serbia.

1. Education, life and work Borivoje Z. Milojevic was born on 22 December 1885 in Carina, near Pecka in western Serbia; he died on 22 October 1967 in Belgrade. There are certain similarities between Borivoje Milojevic and his famous teacher, J o v a n Cvijic. Both were born in the part of Serbia near the River Drina, and both had ancestors from the northern part of Montenegro. Cvijic was born in the town of Loznica, only 30 km away from Carina. Both grew up in families with six children, both started their teaching career in a 'gymnasium' (an upper-grade high school, preparing students for entry to university), and then moved on to the University of Belgrade: Milojevic taught first in the gymnasium in Valjevo, and Cvijic in Belgrade. Cvijic at one stage had intended to study medicine, but nevertheless chose geography, while Milojevic chose geography from the start although his parents has advised him to study medicine. Both completed part of their education at foreign universities: in Milojevic's case at Halle, Berlin, Lausanne, Bern and Fribourg. At the end of the nineteenth century, political life in Serbia was very tense. Governments of the Liberal and Progressive parties were constantly replacing each other. T h e supporters of a third party, the Radical Party, were repressed, prosecuted, dismissed from state service or relocated. Milojevic's father Zivojin, as an active member of the Radical Party, suffered for years from the consequences of his political choice; he was first relocated to a small Vlach village, Korbovo, on the border between Serbia and Romania, then to the town of Bajina Basta, to Gornji

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Milanovac, Bogatic, Krupanj, Sabac and ultimately Belgrade. Thus the young Borivoje Milojevic received his education in a number of places, completing gymnasium in Belgrade in 1904. H e studied geography first at Belgrade 'Higher School', and then at the University of Belgrade. Cvijic noticed the young Milojevic, and at the end of his fourth semester recommended him for the position of his assistant, at a salary of 60 dinars per month. During his first four semesters, Milojevic attended lectures on history and archaeology; in his fifth and sixth semesters, those on geology and ethnology, and in his seventh and eighth, on climatology and meteorology. From the very beginning of his studies he read extensively in the field of geography: in the academic year 1906-7 alone he read all the geomorphological and anthropogeographical works published by J o v a n Cvijic. Milojevic regularly participated in field excursions, especially during the years 1906-8, which Cvijic made into the valleys of southeastern Serbia, along the Djerdap Gorge, and the Adriatic coast, and on the karst area of the Dinaric mountains. In J u n e of 1908 he travelled with Cvijic along the Adriatic coast from Rijeka to Bar, seeing the sea for the first time. H e also regularly attended a seminar series on problems and methodology in geography. Students had to display the results of their researches (for example on village settlement and population) in the presence of their contemporaries. During the course of these, Milojevic discovered the importance of scientific judgement, and learned how to evaluate research. In September 1908, Milojevic passed his final examinations with excellent marks. But instead of staying on at university, where he was already Cvijic's associate, he suddenly departed, and became a teacher in the gymnasium in the town of Valjevo. It is not clear why he suddenly decided to interrupt his university career, but he did not entirely sever relations with the Geographical Institute at the university, nor with his mentor J o v a n Cvijic. In Valjevo he was soon noticed as a very good teacher. Milojevic was soon relocated from the gymnasium in Valjevo to that at Cacak, where he taught for the academic years 1909-11, but he was more and more overwhelmed by the emptiness of provincial life. H e carefully studied the work on physical geography of E. de Martonne. In the summer months of 1909 and 1910 he returned to terrain researches, in the provinces of J a d a r and Radjevina in western Serbia, and wrote a substantial monograph. In the autumn of 1911 Milojevic obtained leave of absence and travelled to Vienna, where he worked at the Geographical Institute, and visited museums, galleries and libraries. T h e far-sighted Cvijic recommended him at about the same time for a year of advanced study, so he spent the winter semester of 1911-12 at Halle, on the River Saale, in Germany, and the following summer in Berlin. In the former university he listened to the lectures of Otto Schliiter (1872-1959, Geographers, Volume 6), on anthropogeography, and at the latter he attended those of J. Walther on geology. Then he visited the well-known Geographical and Cartographic Institute of Justus Perthes, in Gotha, which at the time produced some of the best wall maps in the world. Milojevic obtained a further benefit from his sojourn in Berlin. Albrecht Penck (1858-1945, Geographers, Volume 7) was at that time teaching there, and so Milojevic was able to attend his lectures on geomorphology. Penck happily recalled his former Serbian students - including J o v a n Cvijic - and welcomed him gladly, helping him a great deal. Penck took the young Milojevic on scientific excursions into the surroundings of Dresden, and into the Alps. After his return to his native country, he was employed as a teacher of geography in the gymnasium as Loznica, where he spent the academic year 1912-

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13. In his spare time he made short excursions into the surrounding countryside, and completed his work: Radjevina and Jadar: Anthropogeographical Researches. He was still recalling his time at the Geographical Institute in Belgrade, and could not easily forget his rash decision to abandon his position as Cvijic's assistant. T h e academic year 1913-14 saw him teaching at the gymnasium in Belgrade, and he also accepted the position of custodian at the Geographical Institute. Not long before the provinces of Kosovo, Metohija, Old Raska and the area around the River V a d a r were liberated from the Turks, and Milojevic was attracted to these regions because there was relatively little literature on them, and he undertook research in the regions of Pester and Sjenica in the summer of 1914. H e was on this trip when the First World W a r broke out, but he was conscripted into the army and had to report to the military authorities. He was assigned the duties of a censor at a military post office. A year later he obtained short leave, and in the summer months of 1915 completed his researches on these regions. T h e retreat of the Serbian army in the autumn of 1915 caused Milojevic to withdraw on foot, taking his Pester and Sjenica manuscript with him, along the valley of the River Ibar, to the town of Pec. From there he followed the River Rugova, over the Cakor ridge and down into the valley of the River Lim, and onwards to the town of Podgorica. This traverse made a deep impression on him, and inspired him to establish himself as an expert on the mountains of Yugoslavia. T h e withdrawal continued across Albania to Durres, from whence he took ship in J a n u a r y 1916 to the Greek island of Corfu (Kerkira), where he remained for several months, working in an army medical unit. From Corfu Milojevic went to Thessaloniki, from where he was sent back to the front, although duruing a lull in the fighting he was able to continue with his researches. Unfortunately, however, his manuscripts were destroyed at this time by a fire in Thessaloniki. In mid-1918 Milojevic received a letter from J o v a n Cvijic, who was then in Paris, warning him that he should take steps to defend his doctoral thesis at a university in Switzerland. T h e reason for this was that, according to the Serbian regulations of the time, a doctoral thesis had to be defended within ten years of graduation. For Milojevic the deadline had passed. T h e Serbian military authorities allowed Milojevic to travel to Switzerland, and so the academic year of 1918 19 Milojevic spent in Lausanne, listening to the lectures of Maurisse Lygeon on geology, and Charles Biermann on economic geography. H e also arranged his observations on the Aegean, Macedonia and elsewhere. He also spent some time at universities in Bern and Fribourg, and went on excursions into the Alps. In the event, he did not defend his dissertation in Switzerland, as he returned to Belgrade, where by 1919 the rules had changed and he was able to receive his doctorate in the spring of 1920. He was immediately selected for a lectureship at the university; a senior lectureship followed the next year, and on Cvijic's death in 1927 he was made a full professor, a position he held until his retirement in 1956. He was active after his retirement, but quite suddenly became ill with Parkinson's disease, and the man who for decades traversed on foot the mountains, valleys and coasts of the Balkans was rendered immobile. For three years he hardly moved from his bed. While he could speak, the professor expressed his wish to be buried in Krupanj, a small town in western Serbia, where he had gone to primary school, where he had fished in clear mountain streams with his childhood friends, picked strawberries in the forest, and sometimes looked after sheep. His wish was fulfilled, and he was buried in Krupanj on 25 October 1967. A 'geographical' tombstone was erected over his grave — a stone of granite with a bronze relief map of Serbia inlaid. A street and a primary school were named after him.

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2. Scientific ideas and geographical thought Borivoje Z. Milojevic was interested in what he described as 'terrain research' from the very start of his geographical career. At that early time almost all of Cvijic's students were researching rural settlement and population. Milojevic chose Pocerina (the area around the Cer M o u n t a i n ) . Later he was to write of that work: 'When I presented the results of my research, I was told that I drew conclusions "too hastily" and Cvijic said that first attempts are often not very successful, and that I should work harder next time.' Milojevic took these criticisms seriously, and for the next two summers studied the villages of his native Radjevina, and, when he presented this research at a seminar Cvijic said that Milojevic had 'noticed certain connections' between the physical background and the h u m a n response. Research on these links formed an important theme in some of his later work. H e received the 'Saint Sava Prize', of 320 gold dinars for this work. As already mentioned, in J u n e 1908 he had travelled with Cvijic along the Adriatic coast from Rijeka to Bar, seeing the sea, islands, ports and coastal villages for the first time. This journey encouraged him to undertake systematic research over a number of years of the complete Adriatic coast, and he eventually wrote a substantial monograph on the subject. He also soon became interested in geomorphology, and wrote a series of short works on this subject; these included publications on the karstic landforms along the Dinaric coast, glacial traces in the Dinaric Mountains, the fluvio-glacial deposits of Yugoslavia, the erosion surfaces around the River Zrmanja, the canyon valley of the river Neretva, and exhumed relief. Early in his career Milojevic saw research on geomorphology and anthropogeography as very different fields, but from an early time he wished to link these two areas of enquiry, showing how landscape units were interconnected. He wished to analyse large landscape elements in all their complexity. He planned to apply this approach first to littoral landscapes, then to those of the high mountains, then to valley and plain landscapes. He followed this research plan for a full 30 years, publishing his first regional synthesis (The Dinaric Coast and Islands) in 1933, and his last in 1964. Important as this long series of monographs is, they have been criticized for their lack of clear definitions of terms such as 'region', 'landscape' and 'area', and his regionalization was sometimes vague. Milojevic also wrote a number of works on the history of geography, and on methodology, producing some 30 publications on these topics. Seven of these were publications in honour of his mentor, J o v a n Cvijic; the earliest of these was titled The scientific jubilee of Jovan Cvijic (1924), and the last The main merits of Cvijic's works (1970). As an experienced professor, and an excellent lecturer, Milojevic also wrote about the teaching of geography, producing a paper on the status of geography in secondary schools in 1934, and several on the geography courses taught in Yugoslavia's universities (1949, 1959, 1962), including one comparison with geography teaching in France (1957). He attached great importance to the teaching of geography in schools and went out of his way to help teachers in the development of their programmes.

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3. Influence and spread of ideas Borivoje Z. Milojevic was the key person in Serbian and Yugoslav geography for almost four decades - from his return to the university until his retirement in 1956. Even after his retirement, until he became ill with Parkinson's disease, his colleagues from the university gathered around him. He made his first scientific, journey in 1908, and his last in 1961. He entered the classroom for the first time in 1908, and left it for the last time in 1956. At the start of his career, while still at the gymnasium in Valjevo, Milojevic felt that he was developing into a good teacher. But the reputation for being the best lecturer in the 100-year history of Serbian geography was won at the University of Belgrade. When he was selected for his first university lecturing appointment, Milojevic was still a young man of 35. H e taught three important and integrative subjects: general geography, the regional geography of the continents, and the geography of Yugoslavia. At that time almost all the geography graduates went into high schools as teachers, and it was felt necessary to impart to them as many scientific facts and explanations of the world's complex reality as possible. Under general geography he covered climatology, hydrography, geomorphology, biogeography and anthropogeography. In regional geography he presented the continents as totalities, but also examined smaller portions of them. He continued to teach these important and complex subjects from 1920 to 1940. After the Second World War, the number of teaching staff was augmented by the arrival of colleagues from Macedonia, so only regional geography was left for Professor Milojevic. He established this on a completely different basis. Instead of teaching about the continents, he approached the subject by looking at the different types of environments and landscapes of the earth: valleys, high mountains, polar regions, deserts, steppes, seas, islands and coasts. He was also continuing with his systematic terrain researches of Yugoslavia's main valleys, high mountains, coasts, sandy terrains and loess landscapes: he felt he was analysing 'regional totalities'. At the end of his career he explained these concepts in a large volume General Regional Geography. Throughout his teaching career he attempted to link his teaching approach to his researches. Besides his regular lectures, Milojevic gave practical classes, and took excursions into the Belgrade surroundings. Perhaps he was at his best when he was supporting students when they were working on their theses. He gave special courses for graduates, and was an excellent postgraduate supervisor, having an extraordinary eye for detail. Of great benefit were his patient explanations of research methods. He did not dwell upon phrases such as 'theoretical methodological problems', 'quantitative methods in geography' or 'applied geography'. He attempted something else: he wanted to lead students into the charm and fascination of research work, and to get students used to geographical thinking, to understand the regional structure of their own country and planet, and to think in terms of a 'mosaic of countless regional totalities'. Field excursions were not only useful, but were often joyful occasions: when he felt he was losing his students' attention, he told a joke to make them laugh. There were one-day excursions into the Belgrade countryside, as well as longer expeditions to Bucharest, Istanbul, Sofia, Grenoble, the Swiss Alps and Clermont Ferrand. Any picture of the work and reputation of Milojevic would be incomplete without an account of his role in the Serbian Geographical Society. He had been associated with its foundation in 1910, and from the time of his appointment back

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to the university in 1920 he began to replace the ailing and exhausted J o v a n Cvijic. From then until 1961 he was pivotal in the workings of the society. For almost 40 years he was editor of the society's journal, and promoter of dozens of other geographical publications, as well as organizer of regular monthly meetings. T h e present writer recalls many years of lectures at the Serbian Geographical Society chaired or organized by Professor Milojevic. T h e auditorium was almost always full. He introduced the custom of having a modest meal after the lectures of the society. There attended, as well as the writer, Antonije Lazic, Stevan Vujadinovic, Pero Sobajic, Spiro Soldo, Dusica Matic, Radomir Simovic, Milisav Lutuvac and Milan Nesic. They remained good friends for decades. In this circle vigorous debates took place about the direction of scientific geography in Serbia and Yugoslavia, and comparisons were made with developments in other countries. For example, Soviet geographers were quite often mentioned, particularly in the context of the sharp divisions that existed between physical and economic geography in the Soviet Union. Thanks to Milojevic, dualism to this extent has never developed in Serbian geography. Foreign geographers who visited Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s were welcomed. Frequently Milojevic met them and took them on short excursions; very often they gave lectures to the Geographical Society. He had a good knowledge of French and German, and some English, and frequently gave papers, not only at meetings of Slav geographers but at international congresses, including: Cairo (1925), Cambridge (1928), Paris (1931), Warsaw (1934), Amsterdam (1938), Washington (1952), Rio de J a n e i r o (1956). Frequently the travels he undertook in connection with international congresses formed the basis for publications. T h u s a series of works followed his attendance at the Washington and Rio meetings. A n o t h e r i m p o r t a n t influence was a j o u r n e y through Yugoslavia named ' T h e French Inter-university Excursion' that traversed from Jesenice to Skopje and from Dubrovnik to Belgrade. It was led by E m m a n u e l de M a r t o n n e [Geographers, Volume 12), a professor at the Sorbonne, in the a u t u m n of 1929. De M a r t o n n e was a great admirer of J o v a n Cvijic; he led a group of about 40 French students and academics. Thus developed a lifelong link with French geography and geographers. T h e link with France was further strengthened by his participation in the postSecond World W a r Paris Peace Conference (29 J u l y - 1 5 October 1946), where his advice was sought on the postwar boundaries of Yugoslavia. Milojevic's knowledge of the ethnic compositions and cultural and geographical links in the border area was particularly important in delimiting the boundary with Italy. He received honorary memberships of many foreign geographical societies, including organizations in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Austria, France, Belgium and the USSR. He was also awarded honorary degrees by several foreign universities, including Grenoble, Montpellier and Prague.

Bibliography and Sources 1. SELECTED REFERENCES

RELATING

TO BORIVOJE MILOJEVIC

Bukurov, B., 'Dr Borivoje Z. Milojevic: on his 70th birthday', Matica Srpshka Collection, series on the natural sciences, Vol. 9, 1955, 133-6.

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Bukurov, B., Obituary of Borivoje Z. Milojevic, Matica Srpslika Collection, series on the natural sciences, Vol. 34, 1968. Dukic, D., 'Borivoje Z. Milojevic and the Serbian Geographical Society', Herald of Serbian Geographical Society, Vol. 48(2), 1966, 123-9. Serbian Geographical Society, ' O n the 50th anniversary of the work of Borivoje Z. Milojevic', Herald of Serbian Geographical Society, Vol. 41(1), 1961. Vasovic, M. and Rsumovic, R., 'Borivoje Z. Milojevic: on his 80th birthday', Herald of the Serbian Geographical Society, Vol. 48(1), 1966, 3-8. Vasovic, M., 'Borivoje Z. Milojevic and his contribution to geographical science', Earth and People, Vol. 18, 1968. Vasovic, M., Borivoje £. Milojevic: successor to Jovan Cvijic, Valjevo Gymnasium, 1987. 2. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

OF BORIVOJE MILOJEVIC

1913

Radjevina and Jadar: anthropogeographical researches, Settlements in Serbian Lands, Vol. 9, Begrade, 613-816.

1920

South Macedonia: anthropogeographical researches, Settlements in Serbian Lands, Vol. 10, Belgrade, 1-147.

1922

Glacial traces in the areas of Vlasulja, Bioca and Krucica, Settlement and Origin of Population, Vol. 7-8, Belgrade, 275-94.

1922

Poljes of Krupres, Vukovo, Ravno and Glamoc, Settlement and Origin of Population, Vol. 12, Belgrade, 1-153.

1933

Dinaric coast and islands, Serbian Royal Academy, Special editions, Vol. 96, Belgrade, 1-483.

1937

High mountains in our kingdom, Special editions of the Geographical Society, Belgrade, 1-459.

1949

Valleys of Zapadna Morava, Moraca and Treska, Special editions of the Serbian Geographical Society, Vol. 26, Belgrade, 1-79.

1951

Durmitor: regional geographic researches, Geographical Institute of the Serbian Academy, Vol. 2, Belgrade, 1-74.

1951

Main valleys of Yugoslavia: geographical researches and observations, Special editions of the Serbian Academy, Volume 1806, Belgrade, 1-447.

1955

Valleys of Tar a, Piva and Moraca: geographical observations, Scientific Society of Montenegro, Cetinje, 1-84.

1956

General regional geography, Naucna knjiga, Belgrade, 1-451.

Chronology 1885

Born Carinia, 22 December

1904 08

Studied in Belgrade

Serbian

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1909-12

Taught geography at gymnasia in Laljevo, Cacak and Loznica

1911-12

One-year leave of absence: undertook advanced studies at Halle and Berlin

1914

Undertook research in the highland area of Pester and the town of Sjenica

1915

As a soldier, retreated through Montenegro and Albania to Corfu (Kerkira) and Thessaloniki

1916-17

During a lull in fighting at the front, undertook research in southern Macedonia

1918-19

At J o v a n Cvijic's suggestion, undertook advanced studies in Lausanne, Bern and Fribourg

1920

Returned to Belgrade to defend doctoral thesis

1920-56

T a u g h t at the University of Belgrade; later Director of the Geographical Institute, and main organizer of the activities of the Serbian Geographical Society

1925-32

Undertook research on the Dinaric coast

1933

Publication of The Dinaric coast and islands

1932-36

Undertook research in high mountain areas

1937

Publication of High mountains in our kingdom

1946

Expert at the Paris Peace Conference

\ 950

Publication of The main valleys of Yugoslavia

1956

Retired from the university

1967

Died in Belgrade, 22 October, buried 25 October K r u p a n j , Serbia

Milorad Vasovic is a retired Professor of Geography from the University of Belgrade, and a visiting professor at the University of Banja Luka. He succeeded Professor Milojevic at the University of Belgrade, and was responsible for the editing of an edition of the complete works of Jovan Cvijic. Translated by Husein Saljic, Belgrade, an independent scholar who made this essay possible.

Mungo Park was a physician, botanist, ichthyologist and African explorer. H e was the first European to return safely having observed the west-east course of the River Niger. His enduring fame stems from the widely acclaimed and much reprinted account of his first expedition, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, first published in 1799, and from his 'heroic' failure and death, in 1806, in circumstances that are still unclear, on a second Niger expedition. Park's geographical activities are important for several reasons. His West African expeditions demonstrate the importance of testing, through direct encounter, the 'truth' of ancient geographical accounts. His travels were prompted by the British Government's interest, directed principally by Sir Joseph Banks through the African Association, begun in 1788, in the commercial possibilities resulting from African exploration. Park's death and the high mortality of members of his second expedition symbolized the dangers of African travel. Park's life and work, which contemporaries reckoned to have advanced considerably geographical knowledge of Africa, thus illustrates those connections between individual endeavour, personal patronage, institutional and textual authority and the empirical testing of established belief that underlay late Enlightenment geographical enquiry. His subsequent commemoration established Park's place in the pantheon of British African explorers. It is, perhaps, ironic then that he is remembered more for having failed and died in tragic circumstances than for his partial achievements. Park confirmed the course of the Niger. H e did not discover that the river emptied into the Atlantic in the Bight of Benin. This fact was not directly confirmed by Europeans until 1830. Yet this enduring geographical problem had by then been solved: in 1802-03, by a German 'armchair geographer' Reichard through examination of ancients' accounts, and again in 1821 by J a m e s MacQueen, a plantation owner in the West Indies who had interviewed West African natives among his workforce. It is a matter of even greater irony that Park in 1804 admitted to his friend, Sir Walter Scott, that his 1799 Travels was not the whole truth of his first African expedition. Important as it is for the reasons above, Park's work thus also illustrates the epistemological distinction between geographical knowledge derived from the direct but transient mobility of fieldwork and

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that resulting from prolonged and sedentary textual enquiry or trust in others' words.

1. Education, Life and Work M u n g o Park was born in Foulshiels in the parish of Selkirk, in the Yarrow Water and Ettrick Forest district of the Scottish Borders, probably on 11 September 1771 (this is the date given in the register of baptisms: some other works give his birthdate as 10 September). His father, also Mungo, was a tenant farmer. His mother, Elspeth Hislop, was the daughter of a tenant farmer in nearby Tinnes. T h e younger M u n g o was the seventh of thirteen children, only eight of whom survived into adulthood. Park was educated at home and at Selkirk G r a m m a r School. His father intended M u n g o for the ministry but, in 1786, he was apprenticed to Thomas Anderson, a surgeon in Selkirk. In 1789 he was admitted to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. There he came under the instruction of leading Enlightenment men including Joseph Black the chemist, Alexander Monro secundus for anatomy and surgery, Daniel Rutherford for botany and the Rev Dr J o h n Walker in natural history. Park's work as a medical student included essays on scurvy, ringworm and jaundice. By 1791, Park had secured his surgical diploma but was without gainful employment. In association with his brother-in-law, James Dickson, the botanist, Park undertook botanical excursions throughout the Highlands of Scotland in the summer of 1792. Dickson had earlier secured the patronage of Joseph Banks (he and Banks were co-founders, with others, of the Linnean Society in 1788 and of the Horticultural Society of London, in 1808). Dickson successfully proposed Park for Associate Membership of the Linnean Society in November 1792, and introduced him to Banks. It was through Banks' influence that Park secured the position of Assistant Surgeon on the East India Company's ship Worcester which sailed for Sumatra in February 1793. Park's stay at Benkulen, the East India Company's station in Sumatra, provided him with time to sketch and to collect botanical and zoological specimens, some of which Park presented to Banks upon his return to London in May 1794. Park's paper on Sumatran ichthyology, presented to the Linnean Society in November 1794, was published in 1797. It would, strictly speaking, be inaccurate to see Park's Sumatran experience as an apprenticeship for his later African travels. Yet Park's work as a physician and natural historian and his experience of the rigours of foreign travel as well as his declaration of interest in related work certainly commended him to Banks. In M a y 1794, Banks advanced Park's name to a General Meeting of the African Association, and, in July of that year, interviewed him with a view to West African exploration on behalf of the association. Park was formally appointed from 1 August 1794. T h e twin concerns of the African Association were to extend geographical knowledge of Africa and to investigate its commercial possibilities. In the mid17908, however, these objectives were tempered by the war with France. Park's initial plan to sail for the Gambia in association with the newly-appointed Consul General for the Gambia, James Willis, was not realized. Park sailed for west Africa on the Endeavour on 22 M a y 1795 and landed at Jonkakonda in the G a m b i a on 21 J u n e 1795. His local contact was Dr J o h n Laidley, honorary consul in Pisania, a slave and trading centre, to which Park travelled in July 1795. Park was ill with fever during the first two months of his stay in the Gambia.

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During his convalescence, he engaged in botanical study, learnt Mandingo, the principal language of the local peoples, and studied Islamic customs and laws. His expedition to determine the course of the Niger and to know more of the region's lands and peoples began on 2 December 1795. It was to last until May 1797. Park was accompanied by only two other persons: Johnson, a freed slave, who acted as interpreter, and Demba, a servant. Park's records of his travels are a mixture of personal adventure, commentaries upon the trading networks of the interior and ethnographic descriptions of the locals, notably of the Mandingo people. These were, he wrote, 'a very gentle race; cheerful in their dispositions, inquisitive, credulous, simple and fond of flattery'. He also commented upon the slave trade. He was himself an object of ethnographic wonder and difference. Not everyone treated him kindly. He was regarded with suspicion - by the Moors as a Christian and because many would not believe his justification for travelling was simply to observe the course of a river - and he was on more than one occasion imprisoned and threatened with death. Park accomplished the principal aim of his travels on 21 July 1796. As he wrote, 'I saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission — the long sought for majestic Niger, glittering in the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward! [original emphasis]. Following this, he travelled further east to the Moorish kingdom of Timbuktu and to the settlement of Sansanding on the Niger, then a town of 10,000 people. O n or about 29 July 1796 and near the town of Silla, Park turned westwards, initially intending to explore the southern bank of the Niger. In late August 1796, he was again beaten and robbed. After his horse fell down a well in early September 1796, Park completed his return journey on foot. He survived largely due to the kindness of an Arab slave trader, Karfa T a u r a , who fed and sheltered Park in return for the 'fee' of one slave which Park would provide in the event of his safe return to the Gambia. Park was resident in T a u r a ' s care in the town of Kamaila for seven months from mid-September 1796. H e was ill with fever for part of this time, but it was during this stay that Park put many of his notes and thoughts into order. Park left Kamaila with Karfa T a u r a and a slave party on 19 April 1797. H e again saw the Gambia river on 31 May, and, on 7 J u n e 1797, returned to Pisania. O n 12 J u n e , he was reunited with Laidley who greeted Park 'with great joy and satisfaction, as one risen from the dead'. Park sailed from the Gambia for the West Indies on the American slave ship Charlestown on 17 J u n e 1797, and from Antigua to London on the Chesterfield Packet on 24 November 1797. H e arrived in Falmouth on 22 December 1797 and, on Christmas Day morning, encountered James Dickson in the gardens of the British Museum. Sir Joseph Banks demanded that Park's achievements be written up as a formal report to the African Association and arranged for others to assist Park. T h e geography of the report and a map of Park's travels was entrusted to Major James Rennell. T h e narrative was brought together from Park's notes by Bryan Edwards M P , a leading abolitionist and Secretary to the African Association. A summary Abstract from the Travels together with Rennell's Geographical Illustrations of Mr. Park's Journey was printed for association members in M a y 1798. Park returned to Scotland in J u n e 1798 where he spent the time preparing his summary work for publication, with Edwards in London acting as advisor. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, which included Rennell's Geographical Illustrations, was published in London in April 1799 and was an instant success. During its writing, Park received an invitation, formally from the Under-Secretary of State but through Banks' influence, to explore Australia. Park declined, partly through a mix up over salaries, from commitments to his book and because he was courting. Park

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married Allison Anderson, his 'lovely Allie', daughter of his old master, on 2 August 1799. T h e success of Park's expedition and of its published account was used by Banks to again press the African Association and the British government over exploration of West Africa. In M a y 1799, Banks urged the government to appoint a consul for the Senegambia region and to send a military force 'to take possession of the banks of the Joliba [Niger], and explore the Interior from thence'. One modern commentator notes that: With the passing of this resolution the African Association took several steps towards advocating an imperial strategy for Britain in West Africa, lobbying for the use of military force to secure commercial opportunities, and to forestall any ambitions the French might have for control of the Senegambia region. (Duffill, 1999, p. 95) Park was not, however, immediately involved in this renewed attention to West Africa. In J a n u a r y 1800, Park hints at an appointment in China, but was dissuaded by Banks. Following his marriage, Park was principally resident in the Scottish Borders. H e had thoughts to be a farmer, but as he wrote to Banks, the 'high price of cattle' and 'the enormous rents' made this 'a dangerous speculation'. At this time, he briefly resumed plans to settle in Australia and entertained the possibility of a regimental surgeonship in the West Indies. Early in 1801, he took the examination to qualify for membership of the Royal College of Surgeons of London. Although not keen to be a doctor, Park set up practice as a country doctor in the town of Peebles in September 1801. H e wrote to Banks that 'I will gladly hang up the lancet and the plaister ladle whenever I can obtain a more eligible situation'. During his work as a Borders physician, Park became acquainted with the Enlightenment thinkers Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart, and, from 1804, with Sir Walter Scott. In September 1803, he received an invitation from Lord Hobart, Secretary of State for W a r and the Colonies, with a view to a further African expedition. T h e wider context to Hobart's proposal for the Senegambia region was military. Park's particular mission was to discover where the Niger entered the sea. Plans for the expedition were delayed by war and changes of government, and the expedition was not confirmed until March 1804. Park had spent the intervening months working as a doctor and learning Arabic from a Moroccan, Sidi Ombark Bouby, whom he had brought to Peebles for the purpose. Park moved to London in September 1804. He sailed again for Africa from Portsmouth on board the Crescent on 31 J a n u a r y 1805. Park was granted the temporary commission of Captain and his brodier-in-law, Alexander Anderson, who accompanied him, that of Lieutenant. In contrast to his first expedition, Park was accompanied on his second trip by a military detachment from the Royal African Corps garrison at Goree in West Africa. One officer, Lieutenant J o h n Martyn, and 35 soldiers enlisted for Park's expedition. T h e party landed at Kayee on 15 April 1805. Park's second expedition formally began on 27 April in the march from Kayee to Pisania. T h e record of the expedition - which we know from Park's surviving letters and notebooks - is one of struggle against the depredations of Moors and hostile locals, of sickness and the difficulties faced by travelling in the wet season. By 19 August 1805, when the expedition reached Bamako on the Niger, only twelve men remained alive from an original party of 44. Those who had survived to this point seemed to have owed much to the efforts of Park and to the expedition's native guide, Isaaco.

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Between August and September 1805, Park secured the continued safety of the expedition through gifts to local leaders, and, on 26 September, Park was resident at Sansanding preparing for the final stage of the journey to determine the mouth of the Niger. Park completed the building of the expedition canoe, '//. M. S. Jolibd' as he named it, by late September 1805. The expedition did not leave Sansanding until on or about 20 November 1805. By then, not including Isaaco, Amadi Fatouma a further guide and two slaves, it numbered only five men: Park, Lieutenant Martyn and three private soldiers, all of whom were ill and one of whom was insane. O n 17 November 1805, Park wrote to Lord Camden that 'I shall set sail to the east with the fixed resolution to discover the termination of the Niger or perish in the attempt'. H e also wrote that 'I have heard nothing that I can depend on respecting the remote course of this mighty stream, but I am more inclined to think that it can end nowhere but in the sea'. His death meant he never confirmed his suspicions. Park and his party sailed downstream as far as the town of Boussa. Isaaco had by then been entrusted to return to the coast with Park's notebooks and letters for London. Amadi Fatouma was absent, negotiating with the locals. At Boussa, sometime early in 1806, at a narrow gorge where the river ran as rapids, natives attacked the party from the shore. All save one slave were drowned. T h e precise reasons for the attack upon Park are unclear. W h a t is known is that Park's party, thinking they were being attacked, had earlier shot and killed several natives. It is also likely that Park, by then short of tribute gifts for local leaders, had unwittingly transgressed customary expectations. H e had long been regarded as a spy by the Moors. Rumours of Park's death reached the coast later that year. His fate was not confirmed until 1812 (although the House of Commons voted in 1808 to provide funds for his widow and father-in-law), and only then through investigations by Isaaco and the testimony of Amadi Fatouma. Park's body was never recovered. This fact, as much as the need to confirm Park's suspicions over the termination of the river, prompted later travellers to attempt to ascertain the truths of Park's death and of West African geography.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought In the preface to his 1799 Travels, Mungo Park noted of his book that: 'As a composition, it has nothing to recommend it but truth. It is a plain unvarnished tale, without pretensions of any kind, except that it claims to enlarge, in some degree, the circle of African geography'. James Rennell put it more forcibly in his Geographical Illustrations included with Park's text: 'The late journey of Mr. P A R K , into the interior of W E S T E R N A F R I C A , has brought to our knowledge more important facts respecting its Geography (both moral and physical), than have been collected by any former traveller'. In order to understand why such claims were made, it is necessary to place Park's geographical activities and Rennell's comments in historical context. T h e course and direction of the Niger was a long-standing geographical question by the later eighteenth century. There were, in effect, two related questions. T h e first concerned the course of the river and where it ended. T h e second concerned the river's relationship to what was believed to be that chain of mountains that bisected Africa west to east. This line of mountains, referred to generally as the Mountains of the Moon and in the west as the Mountains of Kong, was believed to prevent the river flowing south. In alluding to these mountains in his 1799 Travels,

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Park helped sustain an erroneous view of the topography of sub-Saharan Africa. The fact of a great river in West Africa and the belief that it flowed west-east was known to Herodotus in the fifth century BC, who recorded that it eventually joined the headwaters of the Nile. In the second century AD, Ptolemy subscribed to a similar view, but held that the river terminated in a great inland lake. Arab geographers had written upon the river, but only two Arab texts were known to European geographers in Park's day. The first was by Sharif al-Idrisi, who, in his Kitab Roger of 1154 (an abridged version was printed in Rome in 1592) accepted Ptolemy's argument for the existence of a central lake from which the Nile flowed northwards. He also asserted that what he termed the Nil as-Sudan - the Nile of the Sudan, that is, the Niger - flowed westwards out of this lake. The second text was by a Moorish diplomat, known to Europeans as Leo Africanus, who, in his 1526 Description of Africa (printed in 1550), confirmed al-Idrisi's view that the Niger flowed from east to west but denied the existence of an inland lake as its source. The work of Arab geographers thus contradicted classical authorities, and it was this which prompted renewed European interest in the Niger during the eighteenth century. (The geographical work of a third Arab, al-Bekri, written sometime in the eleventh century and which argued for a west African origin for the Niger and a west-east flow for the river was known to and dismissed by Leo Africanus [Geographers, Volume 15) but not known in Europe until the 1820s.) In the early eighteenth century, the French geographer de LTsle published maps derived from information given by French officials in the Senegambia region which both more clearly distinguished the Niger from the Senegal and the Gambia rivers, and, importantly, gave the Niger a west-east flow. He showed the Niger to end in an inland lake. D'Anville's 1749 map of the region was largely based upon de LTsle's with the important difference that d'Anville left open the question of the river's termination as, simply, a blank space. Between 1749 and the later 1780s, no further work was done on the Niger problem. Park's travels were thus undertaken to solve an enduring geographical problem for which differently derived and contradictory evidence had long existed. Added to such geographical issues, as far as Britain was concerned, was the French presence in West Africa. Interrelated matters of politics and commerce thus underlie those imperatives of Enlightenment geography to test ancient truths that prompted the foundation of the African Association on 9 June 1788: That as no species of information is more ardently desired, or more generally useful, than that which improves the science of Geography; and as the vast Continent of Africa, notwithstanding the efforts of the Antients, and the wishes of the Moderns, is still in a great measure unexplored, the Members of this Club do form themselves into an Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Inland Parts of that Quarter of the World. (Lupton, 1979, p. 20) Park was not the first agent of the African Association to attempt to solve the Niger question. The first was John Ledyard who got no further than Cairo before (presumably accidentally) poisoning himself. The second, in August 1788, was Simon Lucas, officially the Oriental Interpreter to the Court of St James, who gleaned limited information on trans-Saharan trade. The third was Major Daniel Houghton who had served at Goree between 1779 and 1783. Houghton began his exploration at Pisania under the direction of Laidley through whom he sent reports on the trading networks of West Africa and the course of the Niger. Native informants told Houghton that the river flowed west-east. Houghton never returned: his final report to Laidley is dated 1 September 1791. Further

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information on the river had been gleaned in London in 1788 and 1790 from two Moroccan visitors, Ben Ali and Shabeni, the latter stating that the Niger ran into the sea. H e was not believed. A further key element of Park's geographical activities is the role of Major James Rennell (Geographers, Volume 1). Rennell was a major figure in late eighteenthcentury geography. H e had earlier travelled to Borneo and undertaken mapping work in India: his Bengal Atlas was published in 1780, his Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan in 1783. At the time of Park's Niger work, Rennell was examining the geographies of classical writers, chiefly of Herodotus: this project, never finished, was partly published in 1800 as The Geographical System of Herodotus examined and explained by a comparison with those of other ancient authors and with Modern Geography. In the absence of contrary contemporary evidence, Rennell's method was reliance upon the credibility of classical authors. Rennell (like d'Anville) believed that the Niger flowed westward and emptied into an inland lake. Most biographical accounts of Park note that Rennell assisted Park from a shared interest in African geography and because he was requested to by the African Association. It is likely, too, that Rennell, conscious of his own status as a geographer, would have been keen to see how Park's field-based findings accorded with his own contemporary investigations of ancient texts. Park's geographical significance rests, then, less in his corroboration that the Niger flowed east and more in the fact that he had seen it. His is the triumph of a particular element of scientific method within geography: seeing things for one's self. Houghton, whose reports Park knew, had only been told it by natives. In both cases but in unequal ways, these geographical ideas rest upon matters of trust and credibility. In the later Enlightenment, neither word of mouth nor native testimony were deemed as reliable as the fact of direct observation by Europeans who survived to tell the tale and write the book. It is for this reason that Rennell lauded Park and laid emphasis upon Park discerning the Niger's course by 'ocular testimony' as Rennell puts it. Classical textual accounts - the written words of ancient authorities - were anyway being widely challenged and we should see Park's achievements as bound up with the rise of a more formal empirical natural philosophy. Yet we should not straightforwardly see Park's work as a key moment in the unproblematic advance of enlightened geographical knowledge. Distinction must be made between his achievement in establishing the direction of the Niger, his later failure to determine the mouth of the river and the work of contemporaries examining the problem of the Niger. In this regard, we may consider Park's 1799 Travels as a partial solution to the Niger problem. Rennell's Geographical Illustrations is a summary of contemporary geographical knowledge concerning the Niger and an interpretation of Park's partial findings by a leading scientist who already held firm views concerning African geography. T h e Journal of A Mission, published in 1815 by J o h n Wishaw, Park's first biographer, provides a partial solution to the problem of Park's death (Wishaw included the evidence from Isaaco and Amadi Fatouma), and a summary of geographical ideas concerning the Niger between 1799 and 1815. Notwithstanding that 'Park's discoveries have ascertained that it [the Niger] flows from west to east', four theories were held on this 'most doubtful and obscure [problem] in modern geography' (i.e., where the river ended). T h e first (and most widely-held) was that it ran into an inland lake or simply dissipated into the sands of central Africa. A second held that it terminated in the Nile. T h e third argued that the Niger flowed into the River Congo. Park knew of this idea from correspondence in 1804 with a M r George Maxwell, a trader in Africa, and, from

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remarks in the Journal, seems to have been reconciled to a longer second expedition in consequence. The fourth theory respecting the termination of the Niger had been advanced by the German geographer, Christian Gottlieb Reichard, in an article in 1802 in the Monatliche Correspondent and in one in 1803 in the Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden. Arguing from the disposition of deltas in comparable rivers of the world (the Ganges, the Nile and the Congo) and from ancients' geographical accounts, Reichard argued that the Niger curved south to empty into the Atlantic. None of Rennell, Banks or Park knew of Reichard's theory. Even if they had, they would have been likely to have rejected it on the grounds that the supposed Kong Mountains prevented a southern course for the Niger. Almost twenty years later, in his Geographical and Commercial View of Northern and Central Africa (1821), James McQueen arrived at the same view as Reichard but from a different direction. McQueen had Mandingo natives in his labour force in Grenada and had spoken with a Houssa man who said he had rowed Park across the Niger during his first trip. From such sources and from his reading others' works, noted McQueen, the 'most striking facts' were elicited in this 'geographical department'. Joseph Thomson, writing in his Mungo Park and the Niger (1890) noted: 'Never was a piece of arm-chair geography worked out more admirably. In its broad outlines it was perfectly correct. To McQueen it was as much a certainty as if he had actually explored and mapped it on the spot'. Sixty years before Thomson, years after armchair theorists had thought it through and nearly a quarter of a century after Park's death, Richard and John Lander did actually explore it in sailing from Boussa down the Niger to the sea to solve the Niger problem.

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas Park's influence exceeded his achievements. This is ironic since what Park claimed in writing in 1799 to be the 'plain unvarnished ... truth? was admitted to in private conversation with Scott, Ferguson and Stewart in 1804 as a partial account. Park's confession to friends T will not shock their [the public's] credulity, or render my travels more marvellous, by producing anecdotes which however true, can only relate to my own personal escapes and adventures' - raises again the matter of trust and acts as a corrective to those of Park's biographers who see his 1799 Travels as an African adventure in adversity. Park's 1799 Travels is more important as a description of West Africa than it is as the full solution to an enduring geographical problem. In recognizing this, however, we should not lose sight of the role Edwards played in preparing Park's notes for publication or Rennell's agency over the geographical context. Park's 1815 Journal effectively solved the location of his death if not the date and precise causes, but it was not a substantial work of geography. It is useful, therefore, in considering Park's influence to distinguish between the reception of Park's 1799 and 1815 works, the stimulus they gave to further African exploration and Park's continued hold on the popular geographical imagination through biographers' accounts and his memorialization in statuary. Contemporary reviews of Park's 1799 Travels were favourable and remarked more upon Park's description of Africans than upon his partial achievements in respect of the Niger. For many contemporaries, Park's work was of interest for its novelty. As the Edinburgh Magazine grandiosely noted in 1799, 'To the firmness of individuals, aided by the liberality of a society whose enquiries have been equally meritorious and successful, a considerable portion of Africa is now known, which hitherto has been impervious to every traveller; and to no one has the world been so

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much obliged as to this gentleman'. For one modern biographer, 'Beyond his geographical revelations, his greatest single achievement was to get across convincingly that between Africans and Europeans no difference existed "in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feeling of our common n a t u r e " ' (Lupton, 1979, pp. 113-4). Travels in the Interior went through several printings in 1799, was translated into French and German in 1800 and was included in J o h n Pinkerton's 1808 A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels. T h e most recent edition was published in 2000. It is arguable, of course, that it was not Park's achievements but his failures first, to find the Niger's mouth and second, to return - that prompted renewed geographical exploration of West Africa. Hugh Clapperton's travels in 1824 and 1826, the Landers' in 1829-30, and that of his son, Thomas Park, who died in Accra in 1827 in search of his father, might all be cited in support of such a claim. Yet these men and others (his son perhaps excepting) also sought a name for themselves and were motivated more by the commercial and political imperatives of British interests in Africa than by Park's work alone. Even so, Park's work and the manner of his death had a powerful hold on the popular imagination after 1815, particularly in the nineteenth-century biographical treatment of 'heroic' explorers. This is evident also in the erection of a commemorative statue to him, unveiled in Selkirk in 1859. It is apparent in numerous biographical accounts of Park - in which he is, for example, variously seen as 'fitted' for a life of African adventure by virtue of his rural background or because of his physique and moral conduct. Perhaps most ironically still, Park's continuing influence (if not as a geographer) is evident in the fact that, as part of a campaign begun in 2000 to boost tourism in the Scottish Borders, an actor takes the part of Park in an annual pageant of Border worthies.

Acknowledgements For assistance with this essay, I am grateful to Andrew Grout, Nicolaas Rupke, Gabriel Finkelstein, Francis Herbert, Andreas D a u m , the staff of Special Collections in the University of Edinburgh Library and staff in the Department of Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland, especially Iain Maciver in drawing to my attention the recent acquisition of Park—Anderson letters. This essay was researched and written whilst in receipt of a British Academy Research Readership and I gratefully acknowledge the British Academy for its support.

Bibliography and Sources 1. ARCHIVAL

SOURCES

The principal manuscript sources for Park are held in the British Library, the Museum of Natural History, the Public Record Office, the National Library of Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland, the University of Edinburgh Library and the Borders District Council Archives. Detailed listings of manuscript sources appear in Lupton (1979).

114 Mungo Park 2. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS ABOUT MUNGO PARK There are numerous biographical accounts of Park and his travels, several anonymous. The works listed here are the more interesting and informative. Lupton remains the definitive account; Duffill is an easier read. Anon., The Life and Travels of Mungo Park, W. & R. Chambers, Edinburgh, 1838. ['B.H.'], The Life of Mungo Park, Fraser & Co., Edinburgh, 1835. Brent, C , Black Nile, Mungo Park and the Search for the Niger, Gordon Cremonesi, London, 1977. Duffill, M., Mungo Park, West African Explorer, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1999. Gibbon, L.G., Niger: The Life of Mungo Park, Porpoise Press, Edinburgh, 1934. Gwynn, S., Mungo Park and the Quest for the Niger, John Lane Bodley Head, London, 1934. Lupton, K., Mungo Park, the African Traveler, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979. Miller, R., 'A Mungo Park anniversary', Scottish Geographical Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 3 (1955), 147-56. Miller, R., 'Mungo Park, 1771-1971', Scottish Geographical Magazine, Vol. 87, No. 3 (1971), 159-65. Thomson, J., Mungo Park and the Niger, George Philip and Son, London and Liverpool, 1890. Vogel, A., Mungo Park's Lament, and Other Narratives of Loss: Themes in African Travel Writing 1759-1830, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2000. 3. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS BY MUNGO PARK 1797

'Descriptions of eight new fishes from Sumatra', Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Vol. 3, 33-8.

1799

Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, Performed under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association, in the Tears 1795,1796 and 1797. With An Appendix, Containing Geographical Illustrations of Africa, by Major Rennell. George Nichol, London.

1815

The Journal of A Mission in the Interior of Africa in the Year 1805 by Mungo Park, With An Account of the Life of Mr Park (by John Wishaw), (including Isaaco's and Amadi Fatouma's Journals and, in the second edition, some additional material with the Account of the Life), John Murray, London.

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Chronology 1771

Born 11 September at Foulshiels in the parish of Selkirk, Scotland

1786

Apprenticed to Thomas Anderson, surgeon, Selkirk

1789 91

Attends University of Edinburgh as student of medicine

1792

Undertakes botanical expedition to Highlands of Scotland with his brother-in-law, J a m e s Dickson; introduced to Sir Joseph Banks

1793

Sails for Sumatra as Assistant Surgeon on the East India Company ship, Worcester, 18 February. Departs Benkulen, Sumatra, 14 November

1794

Lands at Gravesend, 2 May. Returns to Scotland in J u n e and to London in July. Secures contract to explore West Africa on behalf of African Association on 1 August

1795

Travels to the Gambia on Endeavour, leaving Portsmouth 22 May and landing at Jonkakonda on 21 J u n e . Travels to meet Laidley at Pisania in July

1795 97

Travels throughout West Africa, leaving on 2 December 1795 and returning to Pisania in M a y 1797

1797

Leaves Kayee in the Gambia and returns to England, via Antigua, on the Charleston, arriving in Falmouth on 22 December. Meets James Dickson in the gardens of the British Museum

1798

Presents a summary of his West African travels under the title Abstracts from the Travels into the Interior Districts of Africa, which, together with Rennell's Geographical Illustrations of Mr Park's Journey, is printed for private circulation to members of the African Association

1799

Travels in the Interior District of Africa published. Marries Allison Anderson in Selkirk on 2 August

1799 1804 Resident in the Scottish Borders. Contemplates life as a farmer but establishes himself as a doctor in Peebles from September 1801. Receives invitation for a further African expedition in September 1803. Expedition not confirmed until 1804 1804

Sails for Africa from Portsmouth on the Crescent, 31 J a n u a r y 1805. Lands at Kayee on 15 April 1805. Expedition of 44 men begins on 27 April. By 19 August, only 19 men remain alive. By 26 September, resident in Sansanding on the Niger. Expedition reduced to Park and four others. Sets sail on HMS Joliba downstream on or about 20 November

1806

Drowns at Boussa Falls on the Niger

1812

Confirmation of Park's death received by British authorities

1859

Memorial statue to Park erected in Selkirk

Charles W.J. Withers is Professor of Geography at the University of Edinburgh.

Jose Salazar Ilarregui 1823-1892

Luz Maria 0. Tamayo Perez Jose Omar Moncada Maya Jose Salazar Ilarregui was an important but little-known Mexican geographer of the nineteenth century. Salazar received his education at the Mining College, a pioneer institution in the development of science in Mexico. He was the director of the Mexican Commission on Borders which, along with the US counterpart led by William H. Emory, delineated the border between the two countries after a war in which Mexico lost over half of its territory. He was a member of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. Jose Salazar was appointed to important positions during Maximilian of Austria's empire, for which he was accused of being a traitor. Afterwards he conducted the survey works that later allowed delimitation of the borders with Guatemala.

1. Education, Life and Work Jose Salazar Ilarregui was born in Mexico City on 25 September 1823. His parents were Francisco Salazar Ilarregui and Francisca Velazquez y Obregon. Even though academic study of geography was started during the colonial period, its institutionalization at the Mining College began in 1833, when this school created the professions of surveyor-geographer first, and geographerengineer later (1843). For that reason, he studied in El Colegio de Mineria (the Mining College), starting on 7 J a n u a r y 1841, when he was eighteen years old. During his degree studies he distinguished himself with his intelligence and dedication. He attended lectures delivered by some of the most important scientists of the first half of the nineteenth century in Mexico. In 1846 he earned the titles of 'Agrimensor' (surveyor) and 'Ensayador de metales' (metal assayer). T h e Mining College initially appointed him substitute lecturer and later vice-prefect. And in 1846, when he was 23 years old, he was admitted as a proprietary member in the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. This Society, founded on 18 April 1833 as the National Institute of Geography and Statistics and afterwards named Military Commission of Statistics, was the first scientific society in Latin America

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and amongst the earliest to be founded in the world. Its first director was Jose Justo Gomez de la Cortina. This society allowed the country's scientific community to work with the government, a relationship that influenced the professional profile of its members as well as the orientation of the scientific works discussed during this society's meetings and that are documented in its bulletins. Although Mexico was at war with the United States, life at the college continued normally. O n 6 August 1847, Salazar was appointed lecturer in geodesy, replacing Tomas R a m o n del Moral who had died the previous month. With Salazar the staff of lecturers began renewal by absorbing some of the most outstanding students. In September 1847, the U S army arrived and occupied the capital city of the country; Mexico had lost the war and more than half of its territory. In the Tratado de Paz, Amistad y Limites de Guadalupe Hidalgo (Guadalupe Hidalgo's Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Borders) signed on 2 February 1848, the new borders were established and each country was to name a commission which would delimit them in the field. In this treaty it was established that the borderline was defined partly by a natural limit (the Bravo River), and partly by a geometric limit. T h e geometric limit was to be traced in a sandy desert zone, where it was impossible to obtain water. In general this area was scarcely populated. There were ethnic groups (Apaches, Comanches, Coco-maricopas and others) that dominated the area and did not want to acknowledge any boundaries in them, a fact that made the work of the commission harder. Jose Salazar Ilarregui was appointed Surveyor of the Mexican Commission of Borders when he was 25 years old. T h e Commission was headed by the General Pedro Garcia Conde, included the engineers Francisco Jimenez, Francisco Martinez de Chavero, Agustin Garcia Conde and Ricardo Ramirez, and Felipe de Iturbide as translator and interpreter. O n 3 J u n e 1849, the field work on the new borderline started. When Garcia Conde died, in December 1851, Salazar Ilarregui assumed responsibility as co-ordinator of the Commission, made some changes and continued the work until completion. It is worth mentioning that there were various problems related to the development of the commissioners' work. T h e country was in a permanent state of war between Liberals and Conservatives, and this hindered the supply of resources for the Commission. For this reason engineers lacked adequate scientific equipment and had an insufficient number of soldiers to guard them from the attack of Apaches and others. This contrasted with the conditions of the US Commission which, headed by William H. Emory, had the necessary resources. Realizing that the government had little concern for the work on the border Salazar Ilarregui wrote a letter in 1855 complaining about the essential abandonment of the commissioners. However, given the perspective of Mexican politics, such complaint was considered lacking in respect, paradoxically resulting in the incarceration of the Mexican commissioner for more than one month. Salazar Ilarregui organized the Commission so that the engineers were able to do their work in a systematic way. They made measurements and charts marking the location of observation sites; conducted triangulation works and registered other details of the relief so that later it allowed them to make maps. T h e work of the Mexican Boundary Commission may be divided into four phases, and Salazar participated directly in all of them. In the first, the border of California was outlined. In the second, a reconnaissance of the Gila and part of Bravo rivers and the borderline of New Mexico was conducted, according to Guadalupe Hidalgo's Treaty. During the third phase, the Commission modified the borderline agreed by the La Mesilla or Gadsden Treaty in 1853. When the fieldwork had been completed, Salazar, chief of the Commission, travelled to Washington to negotiate

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matters with the US Commission. In this way, during the fourth phase the boundary of the US-Mexico border was agreed. O n 18 May 1856, T h e Faculty Council of El Colegio de Mineria issued the first title of Geographer-Engineer, which was given to Jose Salazar Ilarregui 'as an honorable testimony of the high concept that his scientific career and services deserve' (Ramirez, 1982). When the Commission completed its work, he rejoined the Mining College as a lecturer in Topography, Geodesy and Astronomy. T h e political unrest in Mexico at that time was caused largely by continuous changes in government. T h e liberal and conservative parties were fighting with each other to secure power. In the conservative government (1859-60) Salazar occupied the position of inspector of public works in the capital city council, and later, was Inspector of Mexico's mint. In this environment the scientific community in Mexico expressed its political preference: for example at the Mining College Salazar Ilarregui adopted ideas from the conservative party, while another young lecturer, who was an outstanding geographer-engineer, Francisco Diaz Covarrubias, was a liberal [Geographers, Volume 19). From the conservative party's standpoint, the United States constituted a threat to Mexico. T h e loss of the extensive Mexican territory that only some years previously had been ceded to that country was a cause of distrust. T h e U S was considered as a dangerous enemy that would not respect Mexico's territorial integrity. T h e conservative ideologists argued: When independence was achieved we were not prepared to be a Republic, our political assays inspired by the admiration for our neighbouring country have led us to failure, with France the territorial integrity of Mexico will not be at risk, and its generous protection will favour the only government option [monarchy] that is able to bring about political stability. (Quirarte, in Arrangoiz, 1994.) T h e family environment that surrounded Salazar identified him more with the conservative party, which aimed to place the Archduke Maximilian of Austria on Mexico's throne. Although other authors consider that Salazar was a moderate, who accepted the monarchy with the Constitution as a legal framework, he also espoused some liberal avant-garde ideas shared by Maximilian. Regardless of his ideology, the truth is that while Salazar Ilarregui collaborated with the empire, others never accepted him, including Francisco Diaz Covarrubias. When the French army arrived in Mexico, Salazar, then 39 years old, was already a renowned scientist and was appointed Minister of Development by the Executive Power of the Empire Regency (1863-64), a position that he occupied on two occasions. H e provided important economic support to several education centres, as well as the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. H e granted important resources for public works having widespread benefits. Also, by request of the emperor, he asked Manuel Orozco y Berra to develop a territorial division of the Mexican Empire (Commons, 1989). O n 23 July 1863, Salazar was appointed Interim Director of the Mining College, which was then named the Imperial School of Mines. Having the responsibility of presiding over the Ministry of Development at the same time he ordered the construction of an astronomical observatory in this college and provided it with excellent instruments from the best manufacturers in London. H e also enriched the library and ordered rooms and a laboratory to be installed. In 1864, the Scientific, Literary and Artistic Commission of Mexico was constituted. This body appointed Salazar Ilarregui Honorary President and

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responsible for Astronomy, Earth Physics, Geography, Hydrology and Meteorology. As an acknowledgement his name was inscribed in the session room of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. In July 1864, Emperor Maximilian appointed him Imperial Commissary in the Yucatan peninsula. Upon his arrival in Merida, the capital city, he initiated several social and cultural reforms that gained him popularity. Old monuments in this peninsula were not considered part of the national patrimony before him. For this reason Salazar issued a decree to preserve them. This constituted the first step to guard the remains of the ancient preHispanic cultures in the area, which are a cause of pride for the country. T h e main works left by him include the m a p of Merida, a meteorological and astronomical observatory, and a telegraph line between Merida and the Sisal port. Without the support of the French army, the empire was collapsing. T h e Emperor was abandoned by his collaborators and only some of them remained in charge of several ministries. In 1866, Maximilian requested that Salazar return to Mexico City and appointed him State Counsellor, requesting that he manage the Ministries of Promotion and Government. Salazar did not interrupt his work. He knew that communications were important for the empire, and in his role of technician serving the government, in August he issued a decree aimed at organizing a Mexican imperial enterprise to build railways. At the end of 1866 Maximilian left the capital city and again appointed Salazar Ilarregui Imperial Commissioner in Yucatan with full faculties and power, and with exceptional honours. He intended to work for the common good, but political circumstances prevented it since republicans finally defeated the empire in J u n e 1867. Salazar was incarcerated and nearly executed, but he was pardoned due to the intercession of Merida's inhabitants, who acknowledged the benefits that Yucatan received under his government. However, he was condemned to exile. H e travelled to Cuba and then to the US where he lived for three years in poverty. When he returned to Mexico his situation was critical since he was regarded as a traitor and expelled from scientific associations where he was formerly praised, especially from the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. H e then founded the Trinity Scientific College, a private education institution where he was a lecturer. In 1878, owing to the mediation of his former student Manuel Fernandez Leal, then Underminister of Promotion, the 55-year-old Salazar was again asked to work for the government conducting the geographical survey to determine the border between Mexico and Guatemala. O n 1 October 1882, Salazar was appointed Chief of the Mexican Commission, but his physical condition was inadequate for the job. However, he led the work, until he had to be taken down from the T a c a n a volcano, very ill with pulmonary emphysema (Memoria Limites Mexico-Guatemala, 1964). His poor condition led to his resignation; he returned to Mexico City where he lectured again until his death in 1892.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought Since the end of the W a r of Independence in 1821, Mexican politicians acknowledged the need to survey the national territory. However, the lack of stability of the governments that followed did not permit the completion of this task. Hence, when the war with the United States ended, this survey was urgent. To this end, the Mexican men of state created the Ministry of Promotion, which was similar to the one operating in Spain since the 1830s. In 1853 this ministry was

120 Jose Salazar Ilarregui created in Mexico to stimulate the establishment of new industries and sources of jobs, giving importance to technological development (Sanchez, 1980, p. 351). It was required to survey the territory and describe it in a scientific way, to promote national wealth. The geographer-engineer had the ideal profile to conduct this task since he understood the relationship between knowledge of the territory and nationalist aspirations. It is worth stressing that although the teaching of geography began in the colonial period, its academic institutionalization took place from 1843, and the Mining College was the one in charge of the academic training of professionals as regards the physical-mathematical disciplines. Studies had a duration of eight years and were divided into three stages: three years of compulsory preparatory studies to gain access to professional studies, followed by three years of 'special' studies specifically focused on this preparation, and finally two years of practice (as assistants to the various official commissions) guided by the government's geographer-engineers. Then the professionalization of geography came as a response to the requirement of the state to have professional geographers capable of planning and developing the territory it ruled. Jose Salazar Ilarregui's leadership while in the Commission of Borders allowed him to join the Ministry of Promotion and even preside over it for brief periods. The interest of the Mexican government in knowing the territory facilitated the development of scientific cartography, a field in which Salazar Ilarregui had an outstanding participation. His influence is observed in those whom he led during the Commission of Borders, who later stood for an unconditional dedication to this geography identified with cartography. Furthermore, through his lectures at the Mining College he contributed to the preparation of geographer-engineers. His cartographic work developed and allowed him to obtain, on the one hand, the most exact maps of the border at that time, and, on the other, a methodology for future works. It can be said that the main objective of Salazar was to devote his knowledge to public service. His labour in the field of geography was conducted through: 1. 2.

3.

His participation in the Commission of Borders, first between Mexico and the US and then between Mexico and Guatemala. His work in the government, mainly in the Ministries of Promotion and Government, and as Imperial Commissioner during Maximilian's empire. He applied his scientific knowledge for the improvement of the public administration. His lecturing activities, not of a lower importance, that allowed him to transmit to his students of the Mining and Military College the methodology and experiences obtained during his work at the border.

CARTOGRAPHIC WORKS UNDER JOSE SALAZAR ILARREGUI'S SUPERVISION 1.

2.

The Mexican Commission of Borders made, together with the US Boundary Commission, 58 maps of the border. Four general maps were made comprising the whole border, with a scale 1:600,000, and also 54 detailed maps, nine with a scale 1:30,000 and, 45 1:60,000. The topographic map of the city of Merida, was designed according to his instructions, completed during his first term as Imperial Commissary of Yucatan (1864—65), and was elaborated by a scientific commission. Its approximate scale is 1:5,000, and it includes urban information. This map was printed in Paris by the Gratia lithography company.

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T h e cartography of the northern border allowed the updating of the map of the country by the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics, along with other contemporary geographic atlases including that by Antonio Garcia Cubas (1858) [Geographers, Volume 22). In addition, the methods used, which were state-of-theart at the time, were revealed through lectures delivered by Salazar and other engineers from the Commission, contributing to the progress of regional cartography and geography in Mexico. Importantly these maps responded to a treaty between Mexico and the United States. They provide information about relief, human settlement, areas dominated by specific local groups and their towns, rivers, roads and yet other details. All these constituted a legal instrument to solve potential and future land disputes, as mentioned in a joint letter of 25 J u n e 1856 by the two commissioners. Washington City, J u n e 25, 1856 Commission met at 9h30m a.m., and the following preamble and resolution were adopted: . . . Resolved, and agreed upon in joint commission, that these maps and views, duplicate copies of which will be made - one to be deposited with the United States, the other with the Mexican government shall be the evidence of the location of the true line, and shall be the record to which all disputes between the inhabitants of either side of the line, as to the location of that line, shall be referred; and it is further agreed that the line shown by these maps and views shall be regarded as the true line, from which there shall be no appeal or departure . . . W.H. Emory, Jose Salazar Ilarregui. (Emory, 1857, p. 38.) It is in this second aspect that the work conducted by Salazar is particularly important for the country, because even when he did not literally fight to defend the territory, he did defend it with his scientific work. At the border with Guatemala there was a conflict related to the territories of Chiapas and Soconusco. These territories belonged to Guatemala, and during the colonial period they voluntarily joined Mexico in 1823 along with part of Central America for the purpose of gaining independence from Spain. Later, when Guatemala split away from Central America, it requested the devolution of these territories. However, the local population opposed it and retained its adhesion to Mexico. This situation remained unresolved until 1878, when the Mexican government named a Commission of Borders under the direction of Jose Salazar Ilarregui, who was also first astronomer. At this border he conducted terrain survey works, astronomical observations and determined the procedure that was later applied for its delimitation. He stayed for fifteen days at the T a c a n a volcano, an important astronomical point and trigonometric vertex, making astronomical observations, with which he obtained the exact length of points relative to the Greenwich meridian. He retired without having concluded the establishment of the borderline. However, the advanced and systematic condition of his work contributed to the completion of this task. In this way Salazar contributed to Mexico's spatial conformation, given that he participated in the delimitation of the two longest borderlines of the country.

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas Salazar Ilarregui was a geographer-engineer with expertise in geodesy and

122 Jose Salazar Ilarregui topography. His work in the public administration was carried out during one phase, as the classical professional technician in the service of the state, who performs his work according to strict and exact criteria and at the lowest possible cost. This was exemplified during his work in the Commission of Borders and as an employee in the Ministry of Promotion. He is also the political statesman that made use of the work in the public administration to attack the interests of powerful groups who made the decisions. This can be appreciated at the time of his work on the Mexico-US border, when he challenged some ministers in the Mexican government when claiming better work conditions for the Mexican Commission, and was incarcerated as a result. He was also the intellectual man described by Robert K. Merton as the political scientist who, instead of stepping aside, chooses to gain a place in history by joining the political bureaucracy near important decision-making positions (Merton, 1984, p. 292). His role as Imperial Commissioner and Minister of Government during Maximilian's empire constitutes an example in this respect. When he was the Imperial Commissary of Yucatan he decided to draw the map of Merida city to solve the need to develop a detailed knowledge of the capital city of the region he was going to govern. Afterwards, this allowed him to take a series of measures to benefit the local population. His profile as a scientific technician is well represented in his cartographic work, supported by careful and detailed astronomical measurements and topographic triangulations conducted when he headed the Commission of Borders, as shown by the reports sent to the government. The maps developed under his direction seek to graphically express the geographical elements. In this way, his work was not limited to measuring the land, but also to exploring it, sometimes travelling into the desert, which led him to be considered missing on more than one occasion. As a lecturer, his work allowed him to enrich his presentation with the experience he obtained, updating it with the new astronomical and topographic methods applied to delimit the border. For example, he taught Talcott's method of calculating latitude. In addition, through him his students acquired a more realistic vision of the geography of those regions. In this way, at the Mining College the topics of geodesy, topography, astronomy and geography were taught in a modern way, as well as including state-of-the-art cartographic methods, exemplified by the maps of the borderline area. When he was interim director of the college, the scientific equipment improved.

Bibliography and Sources 1. REFERENCES Albuquerque Museum, Drawing the Borderline. Artist-Explorers of the U.S. Mexico Boundary Survey, Arizona State University and Albuquerque Museum, US, 1996. Anuarios del Colegio Nacional de Mineria (National Mining College Yearbooks), 1845,1848, 1859, 1863, Facsimile edition, Mexico, UNAM, 1994. Commons, Aurea, 'La Division Territorial del Segundo Imperio Mexicano' (The Territorial Division During the Second Mexican Empire), Estudios de Historia Modernay Contempordnea de Mexico, XI1:79-124, 1989. Emory, William H., Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, Cornelius Wendell, Printer, Washington, Vol. I., (1857).

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Hewitt, Harry, 'El deseo de cubrir el honor nacional (The wish to defend the national honour): Francisco Jimenez and the Survey of the Mexico-United States Boundary, 1849-1857', in La ciudady el campo en la historia de Mexico, Memoria de la VII Reunion de Historiadores Mexicanos y Norteamericanos, U N A M , Instituto de Investigaciones Historicas, 1992, 709-19. Lozano, Maria, 'El Instituto Nacional de Geografia y Estadistica y su sucesora la Comision de Estadistica Militar', en: Saldana J.J., Los origenes de la ciencia nacional, Cuadernos de Quipu, Sociedad Latinoamericana de Historia de la Ciencia y la Tecnologia y F.F.y L., U N A M . P, 1992, 187-233. Memoria sobre la cuestidn de limites entre Guatemala y Mexico, presentada al Seiior Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores por el jefe de la Comision Guatemalteca (Account of the borderline between Guatemala and Mexico, presented to the Minister of External Relations by the chief of the Guatemalan Commission), 1964, Guatemala, Centro editorial Jose de Pineda Ibarra, reedicion de 1900. Mendoza V., Hector, 'Francisco Diaz Covarrubias 1833-1889', in Geographers, Biobibliographical Studies, Mansell Publishing Limited, International Geographical Union, London, vol. 19 (2000), 16-26. Merton, K. Robert, Teoriay Estructura Sociales (Social Theory and Structure), Editorial Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico, 1984. Moncada Maya J . O . and I. Escamilla H., 'La geografia en Mexico en el siglo X I X . Institutionalization y profesionalizacion. En: Ciencia, no. 44, pp. 269 78, Mexico, 1993. Ramirez, Santiago, Datos para la Historia del Colegio de Mineria (Data for the history of the Mining College), facsimile edition of 1890, Sociedad de exalumnos de la Facultad de Ingenieria, 1982, Mexico, 1982. Rebert, Paula, 2001, La Gran Linea, Mapping the United States-Mexico Boundary, J849 1857, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2001. Rivera C., Manuel, Historia de la Intervention Europea y Norteamericana en Mexico y del Imperio de Maximiliano de Habsburgo, Instituto Nacional de Estudios de la Revolution Mexicana, T . I I , 1888, 459, reedicion 1987. Saldana, J u a n Jose, 'Science et pouvoir, en France et au Mexique', in Science and Empires, edited by Patrick Petitjean, Catherine J a m i and Anne Marie Moulin (eds), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, 1992, 153-64. Sanchez F., Ramon, Historia de la Tecnologia y la Invencion en Mexico (History of Technology and Inventions in Mexico), Fomento Cultural Banamex, Mexico, 1980. Soberanis, Alberto, 'La ciencia marcha bajo la egida de la guerra' (Science develops under the guidance of war), Revista de la Universidad de Guadalajara, enero-febrero 1995, 50-60.

2. PUBLISHED WORK OF JOSE SALAZAR

ILARREGUI

Salazar Ilarregui, Jose, 1850, Datos de los trabajos astrondmicos dispuestos en forma de diario, practicados durante el ano de 1849 y principios de 1850 por la Comision de Limites Mexicana en la linea que divide esta Republica de la de los Estados Unidos (Data from astronomical works reported as a diary, obtained during 1849 and the beginning of 1850 by the

124 Jose Salazar Ilarregui Mexican Commission of Borders that divide this Republic from the United States). Juan N. Navarro's printhouse, Mexico. 'Discurso pronunciado en la Catedra de Geodesia, por el Profesor sustituto D. Jose Salazar Ilarregui, el dia 16 de noviembre de 1848', Anuario del Colegio Nacional de Mineria, Ano de 1848 (Speech delivered to the Geodesy students by the substitute Professor Jose Salazar Ilarregui on November 16, 1848, National Mining College Yearbook, 1848), Mexico, Imprenta de Juan R. Navarro, 1849, 48-52. 'Discurso pronunciado por el Sr. D. Jose Salazar Ilarregui, en la solemne entrega de premios del Colegio de Mineria, el 19 de noviembre de 1848', Anuario del Colegio Nacional de Mineria. Ano de 1848 ^Speech delivered by Jose Salazar Ilarregui at the awards ceremony of the Mining College, on November 19, 1848, National Mining College Yearbook, 1848), Mexico, Imprenta de Juan R. Navarro, 1849, 100-9. 3. OBITUARIES AND REFERENCES ON JOSE SALAZAR ILARREGUI Cardenas, Enrique, Mil personajes en el siglo XIX, 1840-1870 (A thousand celebrities from the nineteenth century, 1840-1870) Banco Mexicano Somex, S.A. Mexico, 1979, p. 347. Moncada M. Omar, I. Escamilla, G. Cisneros y M. Meza, Bibliografia geogrdfica mexicana. La obra de los ingenieros gedgrafos (Mexican geographic bibliography. The work of geographer-engineers), Instituto de Geografia, UNAM, Serie Libros, num.1, Mexico, 1999, p. 75. 4. ARCHIVAL SOURCES Historical Archive of the Mining College, 'Genaro Estrada' Historic Archive, Ministry of External Relations, General Nation's Archive, General Archive of the Yucatan State, Manuel Orozco y Berra Map Archive, Tacubaya, Reserved Fund of the National Library and Newspaper Library, Archive of Mexico City's Civil Register, Special Collections Division, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. A guide to the Jose Salazar Ilarregui papers. Maximilian's Imperial Commissioner for Yucatan. 1823-1898, prepared by Maritza Arrigunaga C , 1997. Special Collection Division, University of Texas in Arlington Libraries.

Chronology 1823

Born Mexico City September 25

1841-45

Studies in the Mining College

1846-47

In 1846, appointed substitute lecturer, earns the title of Surveyor, is named vice-prefect, earns the title of Metal Assayer in the Mining College. Joins the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics as a proprietary member. In 1847 is a lecturer of Geodesy in the same college

1848

November 2, appointed surveyor of the Mexican Commission of Borders

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1849-55

Headed the fieldwork of the Commission of Borders

1856-57

Earned the title of Geographer-Engineer. In Washington headed the elaboration of the Mexican maps by the Commission of Borders

1858

Joined the Mining College again to deliver lectures in topography, geodesy and astronomy

1859—63

Occupied positions in the conservative government and in the Empire's regency. Appointed interim Director of the Mining College

1864-67

Appointed Imperial Commissary of Yucatan (1864). Minister of Government and Promotion, besides State Counsellor and again Imperial Commissary of Yucatan (1866). The empire was defeated in 1867 and he travelled to the US, where he lived until 1869

1870-77

Returned to Mexico; founded the Trinity Scientific College, where he lectured

1878-85

Worked in the Commission of Borders between Mexico and Guatemala

1892

Died Mexico City May 9

Dr Luz Maria 0. Tamayo Perez is a research worker of the UNAM Institute of Geography and works in the programme entitled 'History of Geography in Mexico'. Dr. Jose Omar Moncada Maya is a research worker of the same institute. He is the leader of the programme entitled 'History of Geography in Mexico' and is adviser of the UNAM's Postgraduate Studies in Geography. We wish to mention the invaluable collaboration of Dr Hector Mendoza V., of this same institute, and the translation collaboration of Ma. Elena Sanchez S.

Professor Chandra Pal Singh died on 5 December 2000. It was a Tuesday afternoon and he was engaged in his work at the Department of Geography, Delhi School for Economics, where he had served as a geographer for 28 years. In six months he would have retired and perhaps left the institution. Chandra Pal's pace of work and his sudden death, despite his apparent robust health, caused all, even his most adamant critics, to voice dismay.

1. Education, Life and Work Chandra Pal's life might be compared with a polycyclic landscape. Regional studies, land use, political geography (including electoral geography) all appear on Chandra Pal's career path. There appear to have been a number of attempts to build up a level of research expertise and then abandonment of an entire exercise. His most remarkable achievements were gained in the penultimate part of his life, although he left many works incomplete. It might be said that opportunities came late for Chandra Pal; he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Geography, at Delhi School of Economics in 1972 (at the age of 31). He became a Reader in 1983, a professor in 1993 and chairman of the department in 1999, when he was 60. Even if he had lived longer, Chandra Pal could only have been chairman for the brief period of two years. Life's trajectory is, however, rarely smooth. It is difficult to pinpoint all the causes that delay opportunities. In the case of Chandra Pal, the overwhelming factors seem to be his search for a destination, the prevailing academic environment and attempts to carve out more than one parallel identity. Nevertheless, 28 years is a long enough duration for an individual to place an indelible imprint on a profession. Born in the village of Bitoada in the heart of the countryside of the state of Uttar Pradesh on July 2, 1939, Chandra Pal's family shifted to Shamili early in his childhood. Situated in the Muzaffarnagar District, back in 1941, Shamili was a

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small settlement of 12,000 people. Lying within the commercial sugar cane belt of India, Shamili was one of the few progressive settlements in the area with its agricultural implements, bullock carts and sugar mills. Retired from his life as a soldier from the British Indian Army, Chandra Pal's father took advantage of the geographical location of Shamili and not only farmed but opened a small shop selling agricultural implements, seeds, fertilizers and animal feed. Chandra Pal's primary school education was in Shamili. For his later years of education he shifted to J a i n Government School at MuzafFarnagar, a town 38 kilometres from Shamili. In 1951 MuzafFarnagar had a population of around 65,000. In 1959, he graduated in geography, political science and English literature from Balwant Rajput College at Agra, a town famous for the Taj Mahal. From the heat and dust of the Indo-Gangetic plains, it was the salubrious environment of the Vindhyan Ranges in the heart of India, which was to be his next academic halt. Established by the philanthropist Dr Hari Singh Gaour in 1946, it was at the Department of Geography, Sagar, M a d h y a Pradesh, that Chandra Pal undertook postgraduate studies, completing them in 1961. It needs to be recalled that in the early 1960s, postgraduate-level geography was taught at only a handful of universities in India. Sagar was among the leading few. After his postgraduate work, he returned to Dyal Bagh College, Agra, to undertake teacher training. London was to be the final city of his formal education. C h a n d r a Pal completed his doctorate in 1972 from the University of London. An ambitious student in search of learning had crossed a great sweep from an Indian village, to a town, to a city and finally to a large conurbation. Academic pursuits took him through not just a hierarchy of settlements but three different continents: Asia, Africa and Europe. Scaling the difficulties provided by such contrasts demands adjustment and teaches adaptation. Chandra Pal's mother had never been to school, while his father studied up to the middle school level. His elder brother studied as far as class twelve, but his sister never went beyond primary school. Despite a rural, non-academic background, Chandra Pal succeeded in completing his doctorate and following a lifelong career in teaching. Although in later life he lived in the cosmopolitan environs of Delhi, he never lost his love for the countryside and pride in being a J a t . Though he was proud of his heritage he was not a parochial. It is worth noting that while appointing faculty members or cancelling registration of students not up to his standards, Chandra Pal was even-handed; many who bore the brunt of his ire belonged to his very own community. A critical prerequisite to reach a destination is knowledge of where one is going. Destinations for academics are not usually outward and visible honours or high positions. What is usually significant is the identification of the area of research to which a long-term commitment is made. This may be a theme or a region; for geographers it is often both: channelling energy in a very limited number of directions often does yield fruitful results. Identifying a goal early in one's career is beneficial and selecting an appropriate one is an advantage. Before fixing on political geography as his final objective, Chandra Pal discarded two themes of research, namely, regional studies ('foreign area expertise') and land use studies. The cost of these digressions was a decade and a half of delay in his making use of all his opportunities. At an early stage in his career, C h a n d r a Pal took upon himself the task of acquiring expertise on East Africa. Visas in his passport confirm that he made eight trips to Africa in the thirteen years from 1962 to 1975. During this time he

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resided for five years at Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, learning the Amharic language and selecting Shewa, a province located in the centre of the country, as his area of research for a doctorate; this gave him a detailed knowledge of a specific region. U p o n his return to India, C h a n d r a Pal introduced a course on sub-Saharan Africa. Stocking the library with books and journals on Africa became an immediate statement of his intent,, and his personal commitment to African studies. Africa, long after his doctorate was completed, remained a centre of interest, and he took a three-month grant-in-aid for research in Nigeria in the summer of 1973, and a four-month fellowship, u n d e r the auspices of the Association of Commonwealth Universities to collect data on Ethiopia and Tanzania in the summer of 1975. His association with colleagues, such as Kathy Baker, a specialist on East Africa at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, is further proof of his deep and continuing interest in this region. Though his doctorate remained unpublished, most of his earlier publications focused on Africa. His 'Review of R u r a l Development and Bureaucracy in Tanzania: Case of M w a n z a Region' (1975), 'Strains and Stresses in Ethiopia' (1976), and 'Review of Managing Rural Development: Ideas and Experience in East Africa' (1976), are evidence of a sustained interest in the region. Participating in a conference on the International Struggle Against Apartheid, held in New Delhi, in 1979, was an offshoot of a similar vein. At the University of Delhi, he established links with the African Studies Department and worked in various joint committees with them. (The Department of African Studies is in the faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Delhi. Established in December 1954, it is an interdisciplinary area study centre.) M a n y African students registered with the foreign student cell of the University of Delhi came to seek his counsel, and his first student for a doctorate, C. Offia, hailed from Nigeria. T h e reasons for Chandra Pal's keenness on Africa are not difficult to discern. Understanding the innumerable similarities in the characteristics of, and in the problems that beset, the countries of Africa and India, was a major motive. T h e teaching assignment in Ethiopia gave him the 'feel' of the land and people. C h a n d r a Pal enrolled for a doctorate under the supervision of J . H . G . Lebon, an authority on Africa, at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. (With the sudden death of his supervisor, he became the student of J.A. Allan.) A wider geographical understanding is no doubt aided by developing an expertise in a particular overseas region, yet limitations in the availability of funds for travel and problems in garnering data may lead to difficulties. Chandra Pal's interest in Africa waned. Removing the course from the syllabus, he did not write a single line on Africa, or ever visit that continent after 1979. However, umbilical cords developed during a doctorate programme are often too strong to be easily severed. Doctorate training often provides the environment for the nurturing of research acumen. Frequently, in the career paths of geographers, while the region on which a doctoral thesis was written is discarded, the theme lingers. Cloning the goals of research imbibed in the doctorate training into a different region thus becomes the agenda. Such was the case with C h a n d r a Pal. T h e core objective of Chandra Pal's doctorate was the understanding of the utilization of land by the people in the cropland area of Shewa, in Ethiopia. Back home in India, he pursued similar agriculture and land use studies. When war broke out with Pakistan in 1971, Chandra Pal was busy collecting data on crops, agricultural infrastructure and productivity in the villages of Bulandshahr, a district of U t t a r Pradesh. T h e enthusiasm to transplant some part of the approach

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of his doctoral study from Africa to India was honed in the year he spent working as a research associate with a team of geographers from South Asian and Oriental Studies (Cambridge) in a rural part of his own country. A four-month teacher grant from the University Grants Commission in 1972 gave him the support he needed for a study: 'Changes in Agriculture in the Field of Delhi' (1972). His publications, such as 'Agricultural Labour in Chirchita Village, Bulandshahr' and ' U t t a r Pradesh: Labour Availability and Peak D e m a n d ' (1975), and the presentation of a paper on 'Gandhian Ideology in the Transformation of Rural Habitat in the Third World Countries' (Varanasi, 1978), spearheaded similar research thrusts. Examining the relationship between agriculture and industry also falls within the ambit of land use studies. An eighteen-month period of research from 1976 to 1978 on the sugar industry in Western U t t a r Pradesh provided Chandra Pal with forays into this aspect of his new field. Two parallel research programmes, on Africa and on land use studies, therefore occupied eighteen years of Chandra Pal's academic career. Yet they failed to give a fulfilling sense of purpose and identity. H e abandoned his interests in Africa and in due course discarded any attempt to clone the Africa-based doctorate. T h e prevailing academic environment also cast its shadow. T h e Department of Geography in Delhi was entering its teenage years when Chandra Pal joined as a lecturer in July 1972. Founded in July 1959, the department was exactly thirteen years old. In this period of over a decade the department had failed to stabilize. A large number of the earlier group of geographers, responsible for its creation, departed to seek more lucrative appointments elsewhere. In its initial phase of development, the department saw a turnover of no fewer than nine faculty members, one every seventeen months. T h e constituent academic strength of the department was a meagre four persons at the end of 1972, of which Chandra Pal was the most recent entrant. It was R. R a m a c h a n d r a n and S.G. Burman who shouldered much responsibility to ensure stability. By temperament S.K. Pal was a loner and sought to work in isolation, and thus when Chandra Pal joined, he gravitated towards R. R a m a c h a n d r a n and S.G. Burman. The trio thus constituted a team that existed throughout their professional years, and all worked towards nurturing the department. T h e years saw the joint pioneering of student classes and the building up of resources. While the active role played by R. R a m a c h a n d r a n and S.G. Burman in the affairs of the department has been widely recognized, what is less known is the supportive role played by Chandra Pal, offering views forthrightly when sought. There was a certain synergy between these three. However, very few would know of R. Ramachandran's and S.G. Burman's critical role in channelling C h a n d r a Pal's attention towards political geography. Thus, wrote R. R a m a c h a n d r a n : Chandra Pal Singh's initial interests were in agriculture and land use studies. A few years ago, he changed his focus of research partly on my advice to political geography and in particular on electoral geography in India. (Letter of Recommendation for Commonwealth Fellowship, 15 November 1985) Gratitude was an obvious part of the character of C h a n d r a Pal and he acknowledges this support: 'S.G. Burman and R. R a m a c h a n d r a n introduced me into this branch of geography during one of the informal lunch sessions in 1976.' (in the preface of the research study 'The Seventh Parliamentary Elections in India: A Geographical Analysis', 1980). Studying political science at undergraduate level and the turbulent political environment of India were factors that maintained his interest. T h e emergency

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which was imposed on 6 June 1975 and the 1977 elections which removed the then prime minister of India, Mrs Gandhi, from power, were additional influences. From a personal point of view, the radical transformation of Delhi and its newly emerged face under the short-lived emergency under Mrs Gandhi, and the subsequent events swept me off my feet and brought me into political geography. Indian elections, two within three years, were also experiences which helped me to understand the mosaic of politics at sub-national level - I am convinced that politics and political processes were the most powerful elements in shaping the spatial patterns and geographies of different parts of the earth. (Letter to Professor D.B. Knight, Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, Carleton University, Canada; the letter is not dated but was probably written in 1987.) These were not the last of the influences of the prevailing environment. Two posts for readers (associate professors) were advertised in the department in 1980. Chandra Pal was not selected. It is often said that events shape our lives - but it would be nearer the truth to say that it is our interpretation of an event which moulds our reactions. For Chandra Pal it was a moment of deep anguish. Jolted by not having been selected for a readership, Chandra Pal was catapulted from a state of gloom into a position of identity. He wore two hats in the 1980s, by acquiring the directorship of a company and by establishing a name as a political geographer. As director of an expanding industrial concern, which manufactured quartz clocks, Chandra Pal took the business to new heights. He taught industrial geography at the department and carried his theoretical knowledge across into the applied field. There were other perceptions: Chandra Pal's keen interest in National Development can be seen from the fact that All India Electronic Clocks Manufacturing Association elected him as their first Honorary Secretary. In this position, he has been able to mould some of the industrial policies of Government of India recently, in pulling down trade barriers. (Professor R. Ramachandran in a letter of recommendation, 1985.) Acquiring a directorship in private industry was criticized by some, envied by few and ignored by others. While Chandra Pal did attract criticism, he was too busy simultaneously pursuing an identity as a political geographer to be too concerned. When the Who's Who in Indian Geography was published in 1981 containing a list of 31 political geographers, Chandra Pal's name was among them. R.J.Johnston, Professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield, stated: 'The world political map is the most familiar of all geographers' maps, yet paradoxically has been the least researched in recent times.' The Study Group on the World Political Map was constituted by the International Geographical Union at the meeting of its General Assembly in Paris in August 1984. The Commission enrolls only eleven full members from different countries of the world. Chandra Pal was among this small chosen team along with political geographers like J. Minghi of America, Wang En Yong from China and R.J. Johnston from the United Kingdom. They were good years for political geography: Political Geography Quarterly, the leading journal of the field, was founded in 1992. Frequent contacts with like-minded scholars were beginning to develop. Dr Geoffrey Parker from the University of Birmingham requesting: T have been awarded the Aneurin Bevan Fellowship for the purpose of making a study of Indian Political Geography - and

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would like to meet you for discussions in my forthcoming visit to India' (1998); and P.J. Taylor's invitation to C h a n d r a Pal to write an epilogue on Indian perspectives for this book Political Geography of the 20th Century provide evidence of this. Along with his work on the international platform he was keen to network with geographers at the national level. T o knit them together his plan was: . . . to give impetus to studies of political geography in different universities in India and, thereby, South Asia as a whole, I have arranged with the National Association of Geographers, India, to organize an annual meeting of political geography along with its annual Congress - my effort will be to link this academic activity with the International Geographical Union Commission of T h e World Political M a p . (Letter dated 20 May 1991 to Professor D.B. Knight, Faculty of Social Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, Chairman of the Commission on T h e World Political Map) A Commission on Politics and Environment was set up when the National Association of Geographers met in December 1991 at M a g a d h University, Bodh Gaya, in Bihar. Chandra Pal also organized an International Conference on Politics and Development at the Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics in November, 1990. An exchange with various political geographers across India, including R.D. Dikshit (Panjabi University), S. M e h t a (Panjab University), R.N.P. Sinha (M.S. University, Baroda), M a n o r m a Sinha (Allahabad University), and J . C . Sharma (Himachal University, Simla), was successful. Presenting and publishing papers in different forums formed an additional agenda aimed at reinforcing his identity as a political geographer. 'Spatial Variations in Electoral Participation in India' (1980), 'Nature and Scope of Political Geography' (1980), 'Political Regions of India' (1981), 'Geography and Electoral Studies' (1981), 'Indian Electoral Geography' (1981) and 'India and the New Global Politics' (1991) are among these efforts. Writings for leading national newspapers and interviews on the television were also used to reach a wider audience. Articles with a number of maps on themes such as 'Why they Vote the Way they Do', 'How to Gauge the Voters' Mood', 'The Voter is getting Choosier', in the Statesman (1985) belong to this category. The decade of the 1980s for Chandra Pal were years of great struggle. Carving two identities with opposing requirements was like rowing two boats on different bearings. T h e tasks sapped his energy and health. C h a n d r a Pal suffered a heart attack in the summer of 1991. T h e serious illness warned him that his lifestyle needed to be changed. Colleagues beckoned the now 52-year-old C h a n d r a Pal back towards a single track. Disassociating himself from industry, a much more sedate and wiser C h a n d r a Pal settled with a desire to crystallize his ideas about political geography. He had identified his academic destination. Further, the experience of life had equipped him with two additional strengths: first, the ability to scale contrasting milieus, and second the strong British influence on his character.

2. Scientific Ideas and Geographical Thought T h e ability to straddle contrasting milieus was to be his hallmark for years to come. J u m p i n g from academia to industry, from land use studies to political geographyare the obvious cases. Being able to carve international, national and local links

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with political geographers also speaks of a similar breadth of view. Such ability helped him in capturing a kaleidoscopic range of political processes and events. Examples of global political events influencing the local issues were often used in his class and lectures. A collection of texts and readings on the history of India, along with files of newspaper clippings, backed most recently by downloads from the internet, tell us that linking the past with the present came to him with ease. In the latter years, as chairman of the department, it is perhaps a similar sweep which motivated him to carry the department from the morass of archaic teaching equipment to modern information technology. The mix of guests - including farmers from the small town of Shamili, Kathy Baker from the School of Oriental and African Studies, Sahib Singh Verma, the Chief Minister of Delhi - in the photo album of his younger son's wedding are proof that even his friendships ranged over a wide scale and endured for a long time. He often said that he was comfortable with all in all environments — little wonder that when he met the British prime minister Edward Heath, and shook hands with the Queen in 1986, these were not events of which to boast, though the impress of the British influence on him was to endure a lifetime. The near-impeccable command of the English language, his flair for extempore speeches and lectures, the polished manners, conservative habits of dress and passion for Mackinder's 'Heardand Theory' all show that Chandra Pal remained under the spell of British style and magnanimity. Despite an Indian rustic background, reading English literature was a hobby with Chandra Pal. Hailing from a rural and government school education, to overcome his perceived failings in the language, he burnt midnight oil to master Wren and Martin's Comprehensive Grammar. It was under the tutelage of Muzzafar Ali that his interest to study in England was fanned. Ali joined Sagar University (where Chandra Pal studied 1959-61) as Professor and Head in 1957. Ali had completed his own doctorate under E.G.R. Taylor at Birbeck College, in the University of London in 1939. He obviously recognized in Chandra Pal a talented and enthusiastic scholar with a future, and convinced him to move to London. The School of Oriental and African Studies, a part of the University of London, the institution at which Chandra Pal registered in 1966, was located in Bloomsbury in the heart of London, close to the British Museum, the British Library, Covent Garden, Westminster, and the City. These were attractions Chandra Pal used for making progress in education. When the present author visited the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1999, Professor J.A. Allan, Chandra Pal's supervisor, remarked 'Students of the like of Chandra Pal in dedication and excellence are becoming rare at the School'. Chandra Pal became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London, in 1969. His stay in London was a period of apprenticeship and it left a deep imprint on him. Though London was a joy, Chandra Pal's heart lay in India. Without even the promise of a job in India, he returned with his family to settle in Delhi in 1970. But visits to England continued throughout his life. In the Second Indo-British Geography Seminar held at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, in 1975, Chandra Pal as a participant reinforced links with R.W. Bradnock of the School of Oriental and African Studies, G.P. Chapman and B.H. Farmer of the University of Cambridge and M.J. Wise from the London School of Economics. After the International Geographical Congress held at Paris in 1984 he revisited England. Chandra Pal was nominated for the award of the Commonwealth Foundation by the Commonwealth Geographical Bureau and he was in England for five weeks in 1986. The Commonwealth Foundation, with the broad aim of increasing interchanges between professionals of different fields, nominates a dozen people every year from

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within all the Commonwealth countries. In England he met R.J. Johnston, and also R. Bennett of the London School of Economics. He visited the Royal Geographical Society and Department of Geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His ties ran deep and he remained South Asia representative for the Commonwealth Geographical Bureau from 1984 to 1992 and organized a conference on urbanization in developing countries in Delhi in 1987 under its auspices. In 1993, he participated in the Indo-British Geography Seminar on Environment and Development, held at the Lai Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. Despite a destination, a grasp of contrasting realms and a training at a British university, the opportunity for the crystallization of ideas was delayed. Though Chandra Pal was appointed professor in 1993, it was during his sabbatical year in 1997, which he spent in the United States that he settled into a much needed life of quiet reading and researching for his book. O n his return he often expressed to me his urge to finish his book: ' . . . I want to devote a year or two towards the completion of my book on political geography which shall show the relationship between history and geography in shaping the political processes and patterns in India.' But the winds blew in a different direction. T h e Executive Council of Delhi University's decision to extend the age of retirement for university teachers from 60 to 62 years resulted in Chandra Pal taking over as chairman of department at the end of J u n e 1999. Possessing creative ideas is distinctly different from having an identity. One can have ideas but no identity and there can be an identity but no ideas. T h e possibility of gaining both - idea and identity - is also not uncommon. T h e fact, however, remains that the two are separate. Chandra Pal established an identity as a political geographer prior to the in-depth crystallization of creative ideas on this theme. While the embryonic seeds were sown with the two research projects on the sixth and the seventh parliamentary elections back in 1978, his identity as political geographer was well cemented by 1990. A serious attempt at the crystallization of ideas gripped Chandra Pal between 1991-2000. The break in Chandra Pal's creative line of thought was more due to lack of opportunities than to procrastination of ideas. T h e clear-cut deletion and addition in the syllabus of political geography - a course which Chandra Pal had introduced in the department in 1972 - voice a silent but sure morphogenesis of ideas. Take the title and contents of the course: prior to 1983 entitled Political Geography, it had only one section on India, but by 1993 a clear bifurcation of ideas had taken place; by then there were two courses, namely, Political Geography and Political Geography of India. Attempts at Indianization were well under way. Whereas the earlier course had much emphasis on elections and voting, the latter had diversified into areas of regionalism, environment and politics and the problems of nation building and international relations. In tune with the course, the design of a book was making headway. Strewn in his heap of papers is a note the title of the book 'Politics and Development' dated 1991. In a letter dated 1992, he wrote: If I can be relieved from my normal duties and routines here, I can surely put forward these ideas in the form which can become the basis of my future book. I am at such a ripe stage that I need only eight weeks to complete the job. (Letter to Professor D.B. Knight, 22 February 1992) The weeks never came. In fact, thereafter, there was with no further reference to a book until 1997, the year he took a sabbatical. By the time of his return from the

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study leave he had a well structured title - 'A Geography of the Indian State' which had evolved by 1999 into 'Political Geography of Contemporary India'. The blueprint of his book had been cast. He just needed time for penning its contents. T h a t a more thorough and systematic research investigation was underway as compared with the decade of the 1980s can be seen in the nature of papers and public lectures he delivered throughout the 1990s: 'Darwinism in New Global Order' (Washington, 1992), T o w e r Structure in India in Democracy' (Delhi, 1993), ' T h e Asia-Pacific and Global Geopolitical Change' (Tokyo, 1993), 'Environmental Politics and Status of Women' (Dhaka, 1994), 'Constitution Delimitation Policy in India' (Chandigarh, 1996), 'Vanishing Borders: T h e New International Order of the 21st Century' (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), 'Geographical Factors in Political History of India' (Rohtak, 1997), 'Factors in the Political History of India' (Syracuse University, New York, 1997), 'Geographical and Political History of India' (Chandigarh, 1998), 'Elections: Geographical Analysis and Predictions (Delhi, 1998), 'A Geographical Analysis of the Background of the 12th Parliamentary Elections in India' (Delhi, 1998), 'India and the New Geopolitical World Order,' and 'Assembly Elections: 1998 Causes and Consequences' (Chandigarh, 1998). Editing the book Readings in Political Geography (1994), and research articles like 'India, ASEAN and the New Geopolitical World Order' (1998) and 'A Century of Constituency Delimitation in India' (2000), speak of the fact that identity and ideas had merged. He had come full circle. Compared to the 1980s, when carving an identity was the dominating agenda, the works of the 1990s reflect a definite drive to comprehend the social and historical factors which were instrumental in shaping India's political landscape. A scrutiny of his notes depicts an earnest attempt to understand the historical dimensions which would augur well for the analysis of political processes and patterns. Painstaking study of the break-up of all political parties at the National and State level in India, tabulation and analysis of data from the first general election in 1952 to the thirteenth election in 1999, give glimpses of his scientific rigour. He had discussed the issues of regionalism in India up until the creation of three new states of J h a r k h a n d , Uttarakhand and Chattisgarh. Incorporating the influence of environmental politics and especially the environmental movements, he highlights laws and policies that show his ideas were in-depth. An abstract of his book which he provided to the present author a few days before his demise best sums up the crystallization of his ideas: T h e political geography of India, and for that matter of any country, is the outcome of complex processes over time. The present cannot be understood without the understanding of the past. For instance, the schism between India and Pakistan, the churning in the Hindu society with the upward mobility of many castes, the regional variations in sub-cultures and politics etc., cannot be comprehended without taking the varied experiences of numerous localities and areas of society, economy, polity under different princes, kings, emperors, feudal landlords, etc., at different times along with the spread of different indigenous and foreign religions. The spatial differences in society, demography, culture, resources and economy over a physical base, and political structures and processes, and their interrelationships and interactions over time are reflected in the political geography of India. This book on the Political Geography of Contemporary India attempts to provide a comprehensive treatise on the above factors. T h e book would have been a delight to read. Innumerable notes with the general

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heading 'Book Support Material' can be classified under the diverse headings of administration, militancy, globalization, geography and politics, political parties, society, history and archaeology, technology, strategy and power. Ideas were sharpened as readings were sifted and categorized. T h a t the craft of geography had been mastered is all evident. The last half of the decade of the 1990s was perhaps the most prolific period of his life. It was a creative decade for him. A sense of frustration and sadness grip when one sees the exhaustive bibliography, the notes and articles, facts and data logged faithfully in his laptop with many websites awaiting a browse. An era of the trio of Professor R. R a m a c h a n d r a n , S.G. Burman and Professor C h a n d r a Pal Singh in the Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics comes to an end a new one unfolds. While projects and infrastructure in the department could be reinitiated in administrative routine, the ideas have died with Chandra Pal.

3. Influence and Spread of Ideas Chandra Pal was the twelfth in the series of professors who had chaired the Department of Geography at the Delhi School of Economics. Some chairmen carry a vision about the contribution they would like to make. Chandra Pal as Chairman wanted to build a modern infrastructure and provide a host of facilities for the benefit of students. T h a t the future of geography was being throttled without information technology was his core concern. A deeper worry was that students, the torchbearers of the discipline, were not being given an up-to-date insight to the subject. Shortly after independence, a band of visionaries led by Professor V . K . R . V . R a o and supported by prime minister J a w a h a r Lai Nehru wanted to create a centre for advanced learning and research in the Social Sciences of high repute. T h e Delhi School of Economics was founded in 1949. It entered its Golden Jubilee in 1999, the year Chandra Pal took over as Chairman of the Department of Geography. Owing allegiance, Chandra Pal was keen to give his best to the 50th-year celebrations. Various committees in charge of alumni, fundraising, registration, reception and exhibitions were set up three months in advance of November 14th — the Founders Day of the School. With a band of enthusiastic students, records were searched, slides converted to photographs, theses, dissertations and innumerable research papers and books by the alumni of the department were amassed. Joining the celebrations R. R a m a c h a n d r a n came all the way from his retirement retreat at Coimbatore and added a distinctive glow to the event. He remarked it was truly a 'Reminiscence' the caption of the exhibition and the meeting had matched the theme for the day. C h a n d r a Pal had contacted over 300 alumni of the department across the globe and created a meticulous record. A landmark event, it speaks of the talent with which Chandra Pal involved most of the faculty and all the students into the work of the department. Using a mix of theoretical concepts and everyday examples, Chandra Pal navigated class lectures in a way which held the attention of students. While his agile mind enabled him to answer questions it was his personality which encouraged student interaction. He liked to teach and encouraged students to experiment with innovative ideas and ways of thought. T h a t he could train reluctant students into using computers in a few weeks speaks of his skill as a teacher. But he was no hand-holder, he expected determination and encouraged

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independence. The headship of the department delighted him and he enjoyed giving access to students and lending an ear to their troubles. They streamed continually into his office for advice, references and his signature on documents. C h a n d r a Pal's ability to give individual attention to each student won him deep loyalty. T h a t he enjoyed being with students can be seen in the numerous field survey trips he willingly offered to undertake. Lending an air of congeniality and care was his wife Indira, who accompanied him on numerous academic endeavours •- proving that geography and students were not separated from his personal life. A family-like feeling was kindled in the department: this can be seen in the numerous projects in which students were willingly involved. It was the pool of alumni and student donations which helped augment the meagre department funds in order to provide some basic needs, including computing facilities. Students were the priority for Chandra Pal and it is no irony that it was not his own sons or members of the family, but students who shouldered the gasping Chandra Pal and sought medical help from the university health centre. Finding the centre bereft of any doctor on duty in the middle of the day they hurried him to the Hindu R a o hospital - he died in their arms. In times when universities across India face severe budgetary cuts and lax working ethics, C h a n d r a Pal set out to seek funds and to demand discipline. T o establish basic infrastructure for training students for geographical information systems and the interpretation of satellite imageries was his guiding motto. Finances were a major hindrance to the installation of a modern well-equipped laboratory. A typical extract from his roster of official requests signals the vigour of his hunt for funds: 27 J u l y 1999 21 August 1999 8 March 2000 26 M a y 2000 3 April 2000 25 April 2000 31 July 2000

Director Delhi School of Economics Department of Science and Technology Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi Pro-Vice Chancellor for Development Fund National Informatics Centre University Grants Commission Deputy Finance Officer, University of Delhi

Elaborate research and teaching objectives backed his every effort. At the helm of affairs of the Department of Geography he wanted not just the funds but also discipline. An efficient time manager, he just could not tolerate delays; to him 'Indian Stretch Time' was not acceptable. His punctuality for classes, careful signing out of paperwork in the office and the holding of timely meetings, are examples of the same efficiency. O n 1 J a n u a r y 2000 he took a flight back from Nagpur where he had gone to attend the Annual Congress of the National Association of Geographers. Reaching the department by mid-afternoon and finding the entire staff away he recorded them absent. It was a cold foggy day indeed - the chill was to last for a long eight months. Almost the entire staff left. No personal assistants would work under the discipline he imposed. The result was that for eight months he keyed at the computer to finish work on time. And there was a lot of work. Never previously had the department conferred eight doctorates in a single year. Chandra Pal was serving a term as President of the Association of Geographers, Delhi, and as Joint Secretary of the National Association of Geographers. Being a member of the governing body of Kirori Mai College and the Academic Council of the University of Delhi required additional meetings. Revision of the syllabus was also on the agenda. Discarding a lot of archaic machines and obsolete equipment which had collected over years in the department was a chore he also initiated. Teaching two full courses and guiding

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research were added commitments. As chairman of the department, he wanted to get much done. In a brief sixteen months as chairman of the department he had tried to achieve too much. T h e load of work, hunt for funds, projects floated coupled with the frustration of delays created an unnoticeable syndrome of stress. While his mind was energetic his body could not keep pace and bore the brunt. A major heart attack took him in a matter of a few seconds. Pushing the department towards a new century he did not live to see 2001. In the overcrowded schedule of administrative work, teaching and meetings, the crystallization of his ideas got delayed this time permanently.

Acknowledgements I thank Noor M o h a m m a d , Chairperson of the Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, for all help in this area. Interviews with Professor B. Thakur, a colleague at the Department of Geography, were beneficial in all respects, as he answered many of my questions with care and concern. Professor Gopal Krishan at the Department of Geography, Chandigarh, was a colleague who appreciated C h a n d r a Pal's academic insights and invited him often to his department to deliver lectures. He shared valuable anecdotes which helped build an objective assessment of C h a n d r a Pal. Deeptima, a research student at the department, helped assemble a bibliography of C h a n d r a Pal's research works. Despite a heavy heart, C h a n d r a Pal's children and wife Indira, all in the United States, took time to allow me to interview them through e-mail. I am thankful to all.

Bibliography and Sources 1. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

OF WORKS BY CHANDRA PAL SINGH

1972

Changes in Agriculture in the Field of Delhi, University Grants Commission (Research Project).

1975

'Agricultural Labour in Chirchita village, Bulandshahr, U t t a r Pradesh: Labour Availability and Peak Demand', Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, J a n u a r y - M a r c h 1975, Vol. 30(1), 77-85.

1975

'Review of Rural Development and Bureaucracy in Tanzania: Case of Mwanza Region', Africa Quarterly, 15, 115-18.

1976

'Strains and Stresses in Ethiopia', India Quarterly, Vol. 33(2), 207-14.

1976

'Review of Managing Rural Development: Ideas and Experience in East Africa', Africa Quarterly, 15(4), 121-7.

1977

The North-South Divide in the Sixth Parliamentary Elections in India (mimeo), Department of Geography, University of Delhi.

1977

'Urbanization in National Capital Region of India', Uttar Bharat Bhugol Patrika, Vol. 13(1), 121-7.

1977

Indian Geographers and Foreign Area Studies', Geographical Review of India, (39)1, 134-45.

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1978

Sugar Industry in Western Uttar Pradesh, Indian Council of Social Science and Research (Research Project).

1979

'Banking and Socialism in Tanzania', Africa Quarterly, 18(4), 45-58.

1981

'Geography and Electoral Studies', Transactions of the Institute of Indian Geographers, 3(1), 81-8.

1981

'Indian Electoral Geography', Annals of the National Association of Geographers, India, 1(2), 105-8.

1985

'Why they Vote the Way they Do', 19 J a n u a r y , The Statesman.

1985

'How to Gauge the Voters' Mood', 20 J a n u a r y , The Statesman.

1985 1987

'The Voter is getting choosier', 21 J a n u a r y , The Statesman. 'Location Patterns of Health Centres in Salcette, Goa, Massam' (with Askew, I.D. and Singh, C.P.); Annals of the National Association of Geographers, India, 7(2), 13-26.

1996

'Towards a New Equilibrium: India, the Asia Pacific and Global Geopolitical Change', in Global Geopolitical Change and the Asia Pacific: A Regional Perspective, D. Rumley, T. Chiba, A. Takogi, and Y. Fukushima (eds), Avebury, Aldershot (UK) and Brookfield (USA), 260-81.

1998

'Elections 1996: Floating Vote Favours Congress', Times of India, 26 April.

1998

'India, ASEAN and the New Geopolitical World Order', in The New International Order of the 21st Century, Lee Boon-Thong and Tangku Shamshul Bahrain (eds), Ashgate, Aldershot ( U K ) , 131-44.

1999

'Regional Patterns of Support to the Congress and the BJP in Indian Parliamentary Elections', in Geography, Development and Change: Professor N.P. Ayyar Memorial Volume, D.K. Singh, R.S. Dubey and V.K. Shrivastava (eds), Association of Marketing Geographers of India, Gorakhpur.

2000

'A Century of Constituency Delimitation in India', Political Geography, 19, 517-32.

2. ARCHNAL

SOURCES

Archival and official records, personal diaries and letters, notes and publications relating to C h a n d r a Pal Singh were collated from the Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics. These included the manuscript of his partially completed book, of which two chapters had been finalized, four drafted, and four left as an outline.

Chronology 1939

Born in village of Bitoada, Uttar Pradesh, India

1959

BA degree, Balwant Rajput College, Agra, U t t a r Pradesh, India

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PhD degree, 'Utilization of Land by the People in the Cropland Area of Shewa, Ethiopia', School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

1972

Appointed lecturer in geography at Delhi School of Economics

1983

Appointed reader in geography at Delhi School of Economics

1983

Award from Commonwealth Geographical Bureau

1993

Appointed Professor of Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India

1997

Sabbatical leave in the United States

1999

Appointed Chairman of the Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi, India (June)

2000

Died 5 December, Delhi, India

2000

Elder son of Chandra Pal Singh married, 20 December

Anu Kapur is Lecturer in Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.

William Smith 1769-1839

Patrick Armstrong and Jill Rutherford Courtesy Natural History Museum, London

The role of social class in the development of science, particularly British science, has been much discussed. There are those who contrast the distinguished career of Charles Darwin (1809-82, Geographers, Volume 9), who came from a gentry, almost a patrician, background, who attended Shrewsbury School, Edinburgh Medical School, and Christ's College, Cambridge, and who never had to earn his own living, with that of Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913, Geographers, Volume 8), whose origins were more humble. Wallace left school at fourteen, never attended university, and had a lifelong struggle to gain sufficient income upon which to live. While Darwin as a young man went aboard HMS Beagle at the expense of his wealthy doctor father, Wallace tried to earn a living from collecting specimens and selling them to museums and collectors. The argument runs that although both developed similar concepts, and their ideas were placed before the scientific world in a somewhat hastily cobbled-together joint presentation to the Linnean Society of London in 1858, Darwin eclipsed Wallace because of his influence, connections and relative wealth. The contrary view, emphasized by those who stress the essentially egalitarian nature of British science, asserts that Wallace did succeed, attained great distinction, and has a significant position in the scientific Pantheon, even if somewhat lower than Darwin, in spite of his lack of formal education and social connections. And despite, incidentally, espousing radical, and in some cases somewhat bizarre, causes that put him out of phase with many in the scientific establishment. William Smith, like Wallace, had a lowly start in life; like Wallace, Smith started out as a land surveyor, and like Wallace he was an autodidact who rose above his humble beginnings as the result of bringing his brilliant mind to bear on scientific problems. Like Wallace, Smith was profoundly concerned with ideas about patterns of distribution in space and time. But William Smith's career undoubtedly was hampered by his lower class origins, almost to a pathetic degree. He was not a member of the Geological Society (then something of a well-to-do gentlemen's club) at a time when membership would have been valuable to him, although the Reverend Joseph Townsend, whose main claim to geological fame was to publish (with acknowledgement) a somewhat

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distorted interpretation of some of Smith's material, was a member. Smith served time in a debtors' prison. At one stage, to avoid financial embarrassment, he was forced to sell his incomparable collection of fossils to the government for a rather low sum in humiliating circumstances, spending months and years over negotiations. His collection was then neglected for many decades. His geological map, published in 1815, was independently produced and was not taken up by the Geological Society. Indeed, the society produced its own m a p shortly after the appearance of Smith's: he later claimed, with justification, that his work was pirated by members of the influential, Oxford and Cambridge educated, well-to-do coterie of those who then controlled the Geological Society, many of whom were 'armchair scientists' at best. Smith himself wryly lamented in 1816 'that the theory of geology was in possession of one class of men, the practice in another'. William 'Strata' Smith clearly achieved the status of 'The father of English geology' (he was so described by Professor Adam Sedgwick, President of the Geological Society, in 1831), despite his handicaps and the difficulties he faced. Although primarily a geologist (he was originally a surveyor and civil engineer) his impact on certain aspects of geography, particularly perhaps geomorphology and cartography, was significant, and for this reason he is included in this biobibliographical series. H e was among the first to show that rock strata, minerals, landforms and soils were distributed in accordance with comprehensible scientific principles and not merely by random, unfathomable chance.

1. Education, Life and Work William Smith's origins were indeed humble. He was born on 23 March 1769, the son of the village blacksmith, at Churchill, Oxfordshire. The surname perhaps suggests that the blacksmith's craft was traditional in the family, although William's father (John) was also known as 'Hobbins'. J o h n Smith died when William was only seven years old, his mother Ann remarrying two years later (Cox, 1942). He received such education as the village school was able to provide, but it is said that his interest in geology and the history of the earth was first fired by the fossils he found as a lad exploring the Oxfordshire countryside; these included the 'Chedworth buns', the rounded fossils of Clypeus ploti, or 'pound stones' used as weights on the scales in the local dairy. Be that as it may, by the age of eighteen he was working as an assistant to a land surveyor at Stow-on-the-Wold, a picturesque Gloucestershire village, in the heart of the Cotswolds. Here he helped with undertaking surveys of farms and estates, and planning drainage schemes. At the age of 22 he went to work in Somerset, for a Lady Elizabeth Jones, a baronet's widow, who owned large estates there. He planned, drained and surveyed and came to know in some detail the regular, cyclothemic arrangement of the rocks in the Somerset coalfield. He was employed particularly at the Mearns Colliery and, through discussion with the miners, picked up their lore - the local names for the main coal seams, and of the rocks that intervened; he was interested especially in the fact that the rock types always occurred in the same order. He also noticed that particular fossil types were associated with particular strata. He saw that the dip of the coal-bearing rocks was different from that of the red marls above them. In 1794, perhaps partly because of the enthusiastic support of Lady Elizabeth, he was employed as engineer for the Somerset Coal Canal Company, initially as assistant to Scotsman J o h n Rennie. H e was responsible for planning the route of a

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canal that was to carry coal from the mines of Somerset, close to where he lived, across to the Kennet and Avon Canal, and thence to markets elsewhere in the kingdom. This enabled him to examine the landscape, its physical features and its rocks in great detail. He noted the general dip of the rocks; he saw how the Lias, for example, at one point 300 feet above the line of the canal, a few miles to the east, was at the same level and then disappeared beneath his feet. He saw how other strata ran in parallel. He speculated at one stage that this phenomenon, the eastward dip of the layers of rock, might be worldwide, and caused by 'the motion of the earth'. He soon saw the error of this but he continued to look for, and find, broad patterns in the distribution of rocks, and their influence on topography, soils and agriculture. Soon after taking up the appointment with the canal company he had accompanied several members of the board on a long study-tour across many parts of England, including the Midlands and Yorkshire, to investigate the latest methods in canal-building and coal mining. This was of enormous value to Smith, as it enabled him to get an overview of the structure and physiography of much of the country. One story has it, although the evidence is slender, that he underwent something of a Eureka-like experience when his party climbed the tower of York Minster and surveyed the landscape; he is said to have seen the outlines of the chalk hills of the Yorkshire Wolds to the east and realized that the sequence of rocks coal measures, red marls and sandstones of the Trias, chalk - was repeated throughout much of the country. It is asserted that it was atop the tower that he shared his ideas with other members of the group for the first time. The young engineer was good at his job. He moved, in 1795, to an address that he felt befitted his new-found status, in Cottage Crescent (later known as Bloomfield Crescent) in Bath. The following year he joined the Bath and West of England Society and exchanged ideas with those associated with the building of canals, and others interested in geology, soils and agriculture, through his membership. He became friendly with the Revd Joseph Townsend and the Revd Benjamin Richardson, and working with them was encouraged to draw up a 'Table of Strata' showing the relationships between and characteristics of the rock types near Bath. At about the same time (1799) he prepared a circular, coloured, geological map of'five miles round the city of Bath'. It has been claimed that this was 'the oldest geological map in existence' (Judd, 1897). In 1801 he produced a small outline map of the geology of the whole of England and Wales. He began to make preparations for the writing of a major book. But just as his scientific studies, and his career, seemed to be developing well, and long-term prosperity and distinction seemed within grasp, fate struck, and seemed to hover close by for much of the rest of his life. In June 1799, he was dismissed from his position with the Canal Company: it is not entirely clear for what reason. He did not again hold a permanent, full-time position until quite late in his life. Many accounts depict Smith as affable enough, but there may have been flaws in his character. He seems to have had a considerable opinion of his own worth, perhaps rightly, but a touch of arrogance would not always be well received among the aristocratic landowners and gentry with whom he sometimes had to deal. His writing is sometimes untutored and wordy: maybe his speech was too. He certainly made errors of judgement: he kept up appearances, buying or renting properties he could not afford. He made a disastrous investment in a stone quarry. A few years later, perhaps in 1808, he made an almost equally disastrous marriage. Little is known about his wife, Mary Ann, apparently just a teenager when they were wed. When, where and in what circumstances the wedding took place are not known; it seems that he, or his nephew, pupil and colleague, John Phillips after his death, or both, censored William's diaries and other papers of almost everything concerning

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the marriage. Within a few years of it, however, his wife seems to have become mentally ill, and much of the time thereafter a burden rather than a support. No longer in regular employment after leaving the canal company, William Smith earned a living as a freelance surveyor, geologist and engineer. He was frequently on the road, staying overnight in wayside inns, moving between what would now be called consultancy assignments in different parts of the country. He earned a guinea or two a day advising on drainage, sorting out water-supply problems, giving advice on the likelihood of coal being found in a particular location and conducting estate surveys (Winchester, 2001). H e was often accompanied by his nephew and pupil, J o h n Phillips. T h e work was irregular and the living insecure. And yet, if it had not been so, and if he had not had to travel such distances, one wonders whether he would have been able to gather the information he needed for what Simon Winchester called 'The m a p that changed the world'. T h e first printing of Smith's remarkable geological m a p of England and Wales — the first complete charting of the underworld of an entire nation was in 1815. But copies were very expensive to produce and did not sell well, partly because of competition with the Geological Society's map, produced a short while later. This latter m a p was partly based on Smith's work, but supplemented by information gathered by the society, and, incidentally, funded by some of the extremely wealthy group that ran it. Smith's financial affairs are entangled with his scientific career in highly complex ways. One of his contributions was the appreciation of what has now become a Law of Stratigraphy, that 'Rocks may be identified by the fossils they contain'. Thitherto, although fossils had been collected, sometimes enthusiastically, and much studied, the importance of identifying the setting in the geological column from whence they were obtained was not always fully understood. Mahogany cabinets in country houses and rectories seldom had labels attached to each specimen naming the horizon from which the fossil had been obtained. In Smith's collection of hundreds of fossils all were so identified, and thus it had great scientific value. In order to raise money at a time of acute financial difficulty, he attempted to sell the collection to the British government; negotiations dragged on from July 1815 to March 1818, eventually Smith extracting a meagre sum in exchange for them, paid over reluctantly, in several moieties. For much of the time since they were acquired they have been hidden away in the back rooms of museums. Several times bailiffs were at the door of his London house demanding payment. Yet William Smith was not entirely without influential scientific connections, and it seems that once or twice no lesser a person than Sir Joseph Banks, distinguished botanist and President of the Royal Society, and a supporter of the m a p project, paid debts to prevent him being arrested. Finally, however, events caught up with him and in the summer of 1819 he spent ten weeks in the King's Bench Prison, an institution for debtors in Southwark. Somehow, at the end of August, his debts were paid and he was released. Not long afterwards he set out for the North of England, never returning to London for any extended period. Later he was to write: 'The man might be imprisoned - but his discoveries could not be . . . London quitted with disgust. T h e cheering fields regained' (Winchester, 2001, quoting Smith's autobiographical writings). Smith once again adopted the wandering, peripatetic lifestyle, finding work where he could - surveying, civil engineering work, lecturing. He walked long distances, much of the time still making annotations on the geology and other aspects of the countryside he traversed. H e prepared county geological maps and geological sections, some of which have been described as more beautiful than anything he had created before, and revealing the underground structure of the

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country, and its relation to the relief in a more detailed way than had thitherto been possible. Occasionally he was ill, and almost always he had to endure the disturbed condition of his tormented wife. He spent much of these years in Yorkshire, where a favourite was the town of Scarborough, set on the cliffed coastline along which the well-bedded rocks of the Jurassic and the chalk of the Cretaceous that were his special interest are well exposed. He setded there initially because he thought that this 'delightful town' and the seaside air might 'soothe the mental aberration of his wife'. However, he seemed to like the place: it had something of an intellectual life. Particularly important for him, many of the town's population, living where the rocks were so clearly exposed in the cliffs, had an interest in geology. He made friendships there; he gave lectures. He took a major part in the planning of the Rotunda, a unique museum - it still stands, although it has seen better days - that allowed fossils to be displayed in their proper geological relationship to one another. There was a spiral staircase, and the youngest fossils were arranged in shelves at the top of the building, and the older lower down. This unique facility was opened in 1829. Alas the fossils have been removed: it is now more or less empty. From 1828, Smith was employed as a steward on the estates of Sir John Johnstone, of nearby Hackness Hall. The job may have been something of a sinecure, for the baronet provided an old parsonage for William; nevertheless Sir John used the ageing man's expertise: William Smith advised on the soils and other resources of the estate. A magnificently detailed map of the geology of Sir John's lands survives from the period. It was perhaps partly through the intervention of Sir John, and one or two of his associates, that the mind of the Geological Society of London was finally turned. At a meeting of the Council of the Society held on 11 January 1831 it was resolved, without dissent, to award William Smith the first Wollaston Medal. It was presented a month later at a 'sumptuous' dinner. In the presentation speech he was described by the Revd Professor Adam Sedgwick, Professor of Geology at Cambridge, as 'the Father of English Geology'. The society acknowledged his role in the preparation of the map. Further celebrations followed at Oxford in the summer of 1832, and Trinity College, Dublin, awarded him an honorary doctorate. He was granted a small pension for life by the state. He was appointed a member of the committee charged with seeking building materials for the new Houses of Parliament. But much of the time, in these final years, he lived in a cottage in Scarborough, gardening, writing (including attempts at verse, which have been described as 'execrable'), caring for his poor wife, apparently living the life of a contented man. In his last years he regularly attended the meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which his nephew and pupil, John Phillips, was by now a leading light, but he did not make a major contribution. It was on a journey to the 1839 meeting at Birmingham that he took ill and died, in the Midlands town of Northampton, and he was buried close by at St Peter's Church.

2. Scientific ideas and geographical thought William Smith's contribution was three-fold. First, he established the stratigraphy of England and Wales in greater detail than anyone previous to him: some of the names that he employed are still used. Second, he linked this to the study of fossils demonstrating the rule that rocks could be identified by the fossils they contained.

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Third, he emphasized that rocks were distributed in accordance with ascertainable patterns that could be mapped. A pioneer in the stratigraphy was the Revd J o h n Mitchell, who in a paper published as early as 1760 (in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society) showed that he understood clearly the arrangement of the rocks of England in layers in 'regular and uniform strata'. Moreover, he showed that he understood the implications of this for the spatial patterning of outcrops when he wrote: We ought to meet with the same kinds of earths, stones and minerals, appearing at the surface in long narrow strips, and lying parallel to the greatest rise of the mountains: and so in fact we find them. But Mitchell, despite thinking spatially, and understanding the three-dimensional implications of his geological discoveries, never compiled a geological map. Not clear is the extent to which Smith was aware of Mitchell's work. H e may have been, but to a considerable extent Mitchell's ideas languished as, a few years after he published the 1760 paper, he gave up the Woodwardian Chair of Geology at Cambridge, married, and became a country parson in Hampshire, later moving to Yorkshire. It was many decades later that Smith took up some of his challenges in the observations made on his travels, in his maps and in Organised Fossils. Maps, certainly until the eighteenth century, showed coastlines, rivers and towns. Some larger-scale maps showed landed estates, woodlands and roads. Until well into the nineteenth century thematic maps were a rarity, although Edmond Halley (c. 1656-1743) had pioneered the production of maps that showed winds, pressures and tides. A mineralogical m a p of France had been published in the 1760s, and a geological m a p of part of the United States in 1809. Agricultural maps, and maps showing some soil characteristics, appeared intermittently in the eighteenth century. Yet William Smith's Geological Map of England and Wales, first published in 1815, in concept, level of detail, accuracy and standard of production was revolutionary. These maps, hand-coloured, with their clear but often decorative printing, geological sections in the margins, and with the localities of important economic mineral deposits marked, have claims to be considered works of art, as well as scientific documents. There were apparently several printings between 1815 and 1819, and subtle differences can be discerned, Smith making slight alterations, incorporating new information as it came to hand (Eyles and Eyles, 1938). Systematic geological survey and mapping in the United Kingdom can be said to have its origin in these maps, and the idea was soon followed. 'A Memoir to the M a p and Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with part of Scotland' was produced to accompany the map, but apparently sold separately. In 51 pages Smith summarizes his findings with regard to the characteristics, distribution and fossils of 'British Strata'. After noting the futile expenditure of large sums of money in searching for coal and other minerals where none could possibly exist, on page 2 he declaims, a little grandiloquently: . . . I presume to think, that the accurate surveys and examinations of the strata, as well near the surface of the earth as in its interior, to the greatest depths to which art has hitherto penetrated, by the sinking of wells mines and other excavations, to which I have devoted the whole period of my life, have enabled me to prove that there is a great degree of regularity in the position and thickness of all these strata; and although . . . dislocations are found in collieries and mines . . . the general order is preserved; and that each stratum is also possessed of properties peculiar to itself, has the same . . . characters and

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William Smith chemical qualities, and the same . . . organized fossils throughout its course. I have, with immense labour and expense, collected fossils . . . and compared them with others from very distant parts of the island . . . and have arranged them in the same order as they lay in the earth; which arrangement must readily convince every scientific or discerning person, that the earth is formed . . . according to regular and immutable laws, which are discoverable by h u m a n industry and observation, and which form a legitimate and most important object of science.

Smith goes on to make a plea for the more extensive use of systematic geology in agriculture (through a knowledge of the soil), mining and in the construction of canals, roads and railways. An important feature of the 1815 m a p was the key, in fact a comprehensive table showing a number of important relationships; this was remarkably integrative and geographical. For each stratum he depicted on the m a p (e.g. London Clay, Crag, Chalk [upper and lower], Coral Rag, etc) he included in the table the 'organized fossils which identify the respective Strata': for the London Clay he listed Volutae, Rostellaria, Fusus, Cardia, Crabs, Teeth and Bones. He also indicated the type of landscape to which the stratum gave rise: 'Plains, Chalk hills, Clay Vales, M o u n t a i n o u s . . . ' , and the 'Products of the Strata'; in the table opposite chalk he included 'Flints the best for road materials, good lime for water cements'. Smith had in fact produced a number of manuscript maps before the 1815 m a p was published. T h e first seems to have been the m a p of five miles around Bath; the various layers of the Jurassic are very accurately depicted. In 1801 a small sketch map showing the geology of England and Wales was produced. These can be considered 'trial runs' and provide evidence of Smith's developing techniques, for example in the manner in which he coloured the different strata. In many ways Smith's Stratigraphical System, published in 1817, was a logical development from the map. T h e full title was Stratigraphical System of Organized Fossils, with Reference to the Specimens of the Original Geological Collection of the British Museum: explaining their State of Preservation and their Use in Identifying British Strata. Smith wrote of it: 'The chief object of this work . . . [was] to show the utility of organized Fossils in identifying the Strata', and included a table correlating the fossils with each stratum, that was very similar to, and in fact an elaboration of, that accompanying the map. Here Smith spelled out in great detail the association between the main sedimentary rocks of the stratigraphical column of England and Wales, and the 'organized fossils' in each. T h e relationship between stratigraphy and palaeontology was established for all time. T h e Stratigraphical System has to be considered alongside a work, sometimes known by the short title Organized Fossils, in full: Strata Identified by Organized Fossils containing Prints on Colored Paper of the most Characteristic Specimens in each Stratum. It contained a remarkable series of illustrations of fossils from the various strata (apparently by Sowerby), each group of fossils being portrayed on paper that was approximately the same colour as the rock in which they were found: where this was impossible, the paper was lightly tinted. The first volume of this work appeared in early 1816, three others appearing over the next three years. It was planned that there would be seven volumes, but only four appeared, perhaps because production was so expensive. It is clear that Smith understood the connection between the mineralogical character of rocks and the soils derived from them, and the agricultural significance of this correlation. In the Introduction to Organized Fossils he wrote: 'The Method of knowing the Substrata from each other by their various substances embedded,

William Smith 147 will consequently shew the difference in their soils.' The enquirer, using Smith's method, could identify strata by their fossils, and knowing the nature of any stratum (and the soils associated with it) could make certain deductions about the agricultural potential, e.g. 'Blue Marl [Jurassic clays], under the best pastures of the Midland counties'. The map, the Stratigraphical System and Organized Fossils, published over four years, comprise a unity. The strata are identified and described in terms of their significance in landform development, and economically; their distribution in space plotted, and the fossils associated with each stratum described and exquisitely illustrated. Together they constitute a unique achievement. Between 1817 and 1819 Smith produced a series of geological sections. These are quite remarkable in that they demonstrate Smith's very clear understanding of the underground structure of the country, and also his appreciation of the relationship between that structure and the surface landforms, produced by denudation: some of these sections are works of art. The finest of these is an engraved section from Snowdon to London; it has some of the characteristics of a block-diagram showing the three-dimensional form of the land, and similar to some diagrams produced by the geomorphologists (such as Davis) of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There were others, before Smith, who attempted to make maps, often rather crude, and usually of soils, rather than strata; there were those who understood, in a general way, the layering of rocks (like Mitchell), or who collected fossils, even, very occasionally, like Hunton (see below) understanding that the association was as important as the fossil itself. It was the manner in which William Smith integrated all these skills, his extraordinary ability to 'see in three dimensions', and his perseverance through many years of their use, and his eye for detail that made his contribution unique.

3. Influence and spread of ideas Chorley, Dunn and Beckinsale (1964) imply that Smith's immediate impact on the study of the surface features was somewhat negative; they wrote: 'Everywhere the development of stratigraphy and palaeontology led to a neglect of [geomorphology]...' But the existence of good geological maps was an important influence on the development of physiography, and of geomorphology, in the later nineteenth century. Rock type was seen as one of the significant factors that influenced the development of landforms. In an interesting letter (4 May 1898) to the British geographer H.R. Mill (1861-1950), the pioneer geomorphologist W.M. Davis (1850-1934), in a plea for a firm terminology, and careful definitions, showed that he was very familiar with the work, and particularly the maps (and the nomenclature of strata that they employed), of William Smith: I do not think William Smith would have deserved much credit if he had carefully avoided introducing his names and sequence of strata simply because his audience did not understand them. Elsewhere in the same letter he declaims: As to the value of maps in geographical study: I may be an extremist, but there are good grounds for my opinion. Good maps embody the accumulated results of long observation by experts.

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And he asks: '[WJhere in the world, if not in England, . . . has geology been so long and thoroughly applied [?]', implicitly acknowledging the tradition of which Smith was a part. Certainly Smith's emphasis on careful fieldwork and meticulous observation were an inspiration to many fieldworkers of his own and later generations (Geographers, Volume 1). Incidentally, Davis' correspondent Mill was later an enthusiastic proponent of the detailed survey and mapping of many aspects of the geography of Britain as an aid to land planning. One of the results of this was the First Land Utilisation Survey of Britain (1930-47). This association emphasizes the point that Smith led the way in producing thematic maps: if geology could be mapped accurately, so too could phenomena such as soils, vegetation and land use. Smith's detailed maps, and his work on the relationship between strata and their fossils, had a great impact on the development of geology and stratigraphy in the British Isles. For example, Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) employed the techniques in British Palaeozoic Fossils (1854), published following some of his investigations into the oldest fossiliferous rocks in Britain, in the Lake District and North Wales. Indeed Sedgwick taught the importance of mapping strata, and associating fossils with particular layers, to Charles Darwin in a couple of weeks in the field in North Wales in mid-1831, techniques that Darwin used extensively in his geological work during the voyage of H M S Beagle (1831-35) and which resulted in the threevolume Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle. The volume on coral islands included some of his first published thoughts on the way in which the earth might be undergoing gradual change. T h e connection with Darwin is an important and serendipitous one. Smith was presented with the Wollaston Medal (then made of palladium), the highest award of the Geological Society in 1831, Darwin 'whose work . . . owes much to geology, and a very great deal to Smith, won it in 1859' (Winchester, 2001). It does not seem, however, that the two ever met. Although their memberships of the British Association for the Advancement of Science overlapped, they did not attend the same meetings; ironically, they would have done if Smith had completed his journey to the 1839 Birmingham meeting, on which he died. Interestingly, Smith's idea of associating geological strata with particular kinds of fossils was mentioned in the first volume (1811) of the Transactions of the Geological Society, even though he was not a member. In a paper by James Parkinson, in the first volume, entitled 'Observations on some of the strata in the neighbourhood of London' appears the note: [L]ong since . . . M r W Smith . . . noticed that certain fossils are peculiar to, and are only found lodged in, particular strata; and . . . ascertained the constancy in the order of superposition, and in the continuity of the strata of this island. T h e idea had taken hold. It was refined into the precise discipline of biostratigraphy by one Louis Hunton (1814—38) working on the same Yorkshire coast as was studied by William Smith and his nephew J o h n Phillips. T h e only paper he ever wrote (at the age of 21 - he died tragically of TB just a couple of years later) had the title: 'Remarks on a section of the upper Lias and marlstone of Yorkshire, showing the limited vertical range of species of ammonites, and other testacea, with their value as geological tests'; the paper appeared in the Geological Society's Transactions for 1836. Hunton noted that while some fossils have a long vertical range, others, especially certain ammonite species, are confined to a very narrow sequence of rocks, sometimes just a few feet in thickness. Particular species are thus useful as zone fossils: the occurrence of a particular fossil in a stratum

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provides a clear and precise indication of stratigraphical position. This idea later became of fundamental significance in the search for coal, oil and natural gas. Smith's geological maps were produced independently of any official support. Smith campaigned for the placement of geological mapping on some more official footing, and in 1835 the Geological Survey came into existence: the Ordnance Survey had already had its origin in 1791. These two bodies formed the models for similar organizations in many countries, particularly those of the Commonwealth. Geographers have neglected William Smith, seeing him as part of the geological stream of thought that led through Sedgwick, Murchison and the formation of the British Geological Survey (later the Institute of Geological Sciences). This might be a correct appraisal, but his influence on the whole discipline of thematic mapping, on the notion of the relationship between the underlying geological structure of a landscape and the landforms atop it, and of the integration of geology with geomorphology, palaeontology, the studies of soils and of agriculture, must not be forgotten. Nor must the indirect influence of his work on Darwin, whose evolutionary notions occasioned a total reappraisal of humanity's relationship with its environment. And Smith's map, much imitated in his own time and later, proved to be a jumping-off point for the geographical imagination, to be followed by the mapping of a great range of phenomena in many countries. It is fair to say that Smith's contribution has long been overlooked; there are a few physical monuments to him - one close to his birthplace in Churchill, Oxfordshire, and a bust exists in Oxford. A plaque exists on a house (Tucking Mill) in Somerset, wrongly identified as a house owned by him for a while (his actual former home is close by). Recently, however, there has been a minor eruption of interest. A strikingly original book by Roger Osborne (1998) contains interesting information on him, and a popular biography attracted a great deal of interest (Winchester, 2001). It is also worthy of note that the Geological Society, having for so long treated William Smith badly, recently instituted a William Smith Medal for work in applied geology. Finally, it should be noted that an important part of the influence and spread of the ideas of William Smith was through his nephew, J o h n Phillips, whom he treated like the son he never had, trained, and with whom he travelled. J o h n , after a sojourn at King's College, London, and holding the Chair of Geology at Trinity College, Dublin, eventually became the Professor of Geology at Oxford, and gained the Wollaston Medal in 1845. In a strange twist of irony he became President of the Geological Society of London — the organization that did not admit his uncle and mentor to membership at a time when it could have been so valuable to him. A book that the two of them planned on the geology of Yorkshire was eventually published, under J o h n ' s authorship alone, in 1829. J o h n Phillips' influence lasted for generations.

Bibliography and sources 1. SELECTED REFERENCES

ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF WILLIAM

SMITH

Chorley, R.J., Dunn, A.J., and Beckinsale, R.P., The History of the Study of Landforms or the Development of Geomorphology, vol. 1, Methuen, London, 1964. Cox, L.R., 'New light on William Smith and his work', Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, 25, 1942, 1-99.

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Eyles, J . M . , 'William Smith: the sale of his geological collections to the British Museum', Annals of Science, 23(3), 1967, 177-212. Eyles, V.A., and Eyles, J . M . ' O n the different issues of the first geological m a p of England and Wales', Annals of Science, 3, 1938, 190-212. J u d d , J.W., 'William Smith's Manuscript maps', Geological Magazine, 1897, 439-47. J u d d , J.W., 'Geological maps: their origin and development', Proc. Geol. Assoc, 15(8), 1898, 290-92. Osborne, R., The Floating Egg: Episodes in the Making of Geology, J o n a t h a n Cape, London, 1998. Phillips, J., Illustrations of the Geology of Yorkshire, Wilson, York, 1829. Phillips. J . 'Biographical notice of William Smith, LL.D.', Magazine of Natural History, 3, n.s., 1839, 213. Phillips, J., Memoirs of William Smith, J o h n Murray, London, 1844. Sheppard, T., 'William Smith: his maps and memoirs', Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, 19, n.s., 1917, 75-253. Winchester, S., The Map that Changed the World: the Tale of William Smith and the Birth of a Science, Viking, London, 2001. Woodward, H.B., The History of the Geological Society of London, Geological Society, London, 1907.

2. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

OF WILLIAM

SMITH

1806

Observations on the Utility, Form and Management of Water Meadows, and the Draining and Irrigation of Peat Bogs, with an Account ofPrisley Bog, and Other Extraordinary Improvements, conducted for His Grace the Duke of Bedford, Thomas William Coke, Esq., M.P. and others, J o h n Harding, London.

1815-19

Geological Map of England and Wales, with memoir, J o h n Cary, London.

1816-19

Strata Identified by Organized Fossils containing Prints on Colored Paper of the most Characteristic Specimens in each Stratum, W. Arding, London.

1817—19

Series of geological sections, 1817—1819. E.g. Geological Section from London to Snowdon, showing the varieties of the strata, and the correct altitude of the hills (1817); reprinted in Philosophical Magazine, 1833.

1817

Stratigraphical System of Organized Fossils, with Reference to the Specimens of the Original Geological Collection of the British Museum: explaining their State of Preservation and their Use in Identifying British Strata, E. Williams, London.

3. ARCHIVAL

SOURCES

An important collection of William Smith's personal papers, including letters, diaries and notes, is held in the University Museum, Oxford. Papers documenting the complex negotiations leading to the sale of his fossil collection are preserved amongst the Treasury Papers in the Public Record Office (Kew); a few pieces concerning his sojourn in the King's Bench Prison are also at Kew. One of the best collections of the hand-coloured maps of the various printings of his Geological Map

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of England and Wales, produced between 1815 and 1819, is in the Department of Geology of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. Other archives, including several of Smith's maps, the original manuscript version of his Table of Strata, and the portrait at the head of this chapter, are held by the Geological Society of London. T h e original of the W . M . Davis letter quoted is in the possession of the Royal Geographical Society, London (located in the H.R. Mill Collection).

Chronology 1769

Born 23 March, son of the village blacksmith, Churchill, Oxfordshire

1791

Walked to High Littleton in Somerset; employed on the estates of Lady Elizabeth Jones

1794—99

Employed as resident engineer to the Somerset Coal Canal Company

1796

Admitted to membership of Bath and West of England Society; became acquainted with landowners and those interested in geology and natural history

1808

Probable year of marriage; actual date and place of wedding, and the place of birth of his wife Mary Ann, apparently unknown. She seems to have been mentally ill throughout much of the marriage, dying some years after William in York Asylum

1815

First publication of Geological M a p of England and Wales

1815-18

Tortuous negotiation with H M Treasury, leading to sale of unique collection of fossils

1819

Imprisoned for debt, 11 J u n e to 31 August, King's Bench Prison, London; ejected from his house in London

1820

First visit to Scarborough, Yorkshire, where he was to spend much of the latter years of his life

1821

Publication of geological m a p of Yorkshire; Smith published over a dozen county geological maps

1829

Opening of the Rotunda, Scarborough Museum, largely planned by Smith.

1831

Presentation of the first Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London

1838

Membership of a committee charged with finding a suitable building stone for the new Palace of Westminster

1839

Died, Northampton, 28 August, while travelling to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Birmingham. Buried at St Peter's Church, Northampton

Patrick Armstrong teaches geography at the University of Western Australia and has written extensively on nineteenth-century science and geographical thought. Jill Rutherford has degrees in agricultural and forest sciences, and plant pathology from Oxford University, and is Director of International Baccalaureate, Oakham School, Rutland, United Kingdom.

Giuseppe Dalla Vedova (1834-1919)

Ilaria Luzzana Caraci

At the proclamation of the 'Reign of Italy' (I860), the intellectuals who had contributed to the Risorgimento movements with the strength of their ideas sometimes even directly participating in them - had to face enormous difficulties in the building of the new nation-state. It was a critical moment for Italian culture, particularly geography, as at the time it was very vaguely defined. T h e imprecise knowledge of geography was mostly due to the number of different and even contradictory interests connected to it. Trying to simplify the matter, we can say that there were essentially three categories of geographers in Italy. T h e first and largest one, was a group of scientists that a few years later would give birth to the Italian Geographic Society (Societd Geogrqfica Italiana). They included scientists working in many different fields, but all convinced of the practical usefulness of geography; they supported the so-called 'exploration geography', which would lead to the search for new markets, commercial opportunities and raw materials, as well as new outlets for emigration. A second category of geographers, more restricted but equally heterogeneous, included those who taught in high schools and universities, where, from 1859, the teaching of geography had been extended to almost all the faculties of letters in the major institutions and also to some faculties of science. In 1880, however, there were only seven university chairs of geography (to which those holding temporary teaching appointments must be added). However, even where it was taught, geography was often considered little more than an encyclopaedic accumulation of facts and ideas, or as an adjunct to history. A third category of Italian geographers included the 'humanist geographers': the whole Italian post-unification culture was, above all, humanistic. M a n y geographers of the 1820-30 generation took part in the Risorgimento movements in the name of the unity of the Italian people - a notion that was more an ideal than a reality. They were seeking some confirmation of their beliefs from history and, like their historian and men-of-letters colleagues, were naturally inclined to focus their attention on what they considered to be the happiest period of pre-unity Italy: the Italian Renaissance. From this stems the interest of nineteenth-century Italian

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geographers in the great geographic discoveries and in the study of medieval nautical cartography. Into this situation emerged the striking, original personality of Giuseppe Dalla Vedova, who, endowed with an inexhaustible optimism, became the diamond edge of Italian geography in a very short time. However, in spite of a long and busy life, his influence was relatively short-lived, as it was soon overshadowed by the prestige gained a little later by Giovanni Marinelli. It was, nevertheless, deeply significant.

1. Education, life and work Born in Padua on 29 J a n u a r y 1834 into a family of modest origins, after completing his studies in the local school, Giuseppe Dalla Vedova decided to attend the Vienna University instead of staying in Padua. We do not know the reasons for this choice, but certainly it was in Vienna that he encountered geography. All his biographers underline the fact that following the lectures of Federico Simony, he became enthusiastic in his teaching. He loved to recall this detail, which linked him to one of the most prestigious geography schools in Europe. Simony's teaching enlarged his cultural horizons; moreover, it put him in touch with German geographic ideas, which were very much to the fore at that time, in particular with the work of Humboldt and Ritter (Geographers, Volume 5). These gave him the certainty that geography had an important position as the science of synthesis, more significant than that of any other science. It also reassured him on the concept of 'new', both about the progress (not social, or economic progress, but civil progress) of humanity, above all, concerning science. Ritter's geography attracted Dalla Vedova because of its being a new and independent science. Later, the Neue Probleme der vergleichenden Erdkunde by Peschel (1869) completed Ritter's comparative method by studying geographical distributions; this seemed to provide him with the means to accomplish his mission as a geographer. After finishing his university studies in Vienna in 1858, with excellent results, Dalla Vedova moved to Venice in 1859, where he taught at Santa Caterina's G r a m m a r School. In 1860 he moved back to Padua where, while he continued teaching in a secondary school, he wrote a good deal and gained popularity, in particular in translating materials from German and in giving well-prepared and well-structured speeches at various official occasions. H e must have been a good orator, as he was considered very successful. In 1868, when he had written only three original studies on geography, he was called to be a 'private teacher' of geography at Padua University. H e took up the university chair a few years later (1872), although he had not, at the time, a long publications list — barely a dozen works, only five of which dealt with geography. In Padua he gave his first famous speech: La geografia a' giorni nostri (Geography in our times), which, in De Magistris' opinion, clarified the ' . . . uncertain notions on geography's position amongst sciences, including those on the duty of completing in a united Italy, what the Italian people had already accomplished'. It was also published in two parts in 'La JVuova Antologia', the most prestigious cultural periodical of the time. In fact, the discourse systematically dealt with the position of the 'geographic science' in Italy and worldwide. O n this occasion Dalla Vedova displayed a great oratorical ability and poise, also showing how deep and profound were both his experience and his understanding of geographical culture. His contemporaries

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perceived and, for the most part appreciated, his wide range of interests. At a time when the few people interested in geography found it difficult to emerge from Italian cultural provincialism, his attitude probably contributed to the creation of an admiring and reverent group around him. Dalla Vedova did not stay in Padua for very long. In 1874 the Minister of Public Instruction, Ruggero Bonghi, entrusted him with the planning, and later with the direction, of the Museo di Istruzione ed Educazione (Education and Training Museum). T h e following year he was called upon to take up the geography chair at the University of Rome. At the time he was a very popular character, promoting a modern, useful geography, oriented towards the future and yet sustaining the achievements of h u m a n intelligence. A couple of years later, on 3 November 1880, he was entrusted - a first among geographers - with giving the opening lecture of the new academic year at Rome University. In front of a serious and attentive public, he gave his most popular discourse: // concetto popolare e il concetto scientifico della geografia (The popular and the scientific concepts of geography), which, in Almagia's opinion 'definitely contributed to . . . new scientific currents, while abroad it had great repercussions, contributing to the definition of the programme and the criteria of our science.' When the Societa Geografica Italiana was born, Dalla Vedova was one of its founder members. In 1877 he was appointed secretary of the society, a position that he held for the next nineteen years. During the 1880s and a part of the following decade, Dalla Vedova was deeply involved in the society's life. Besides the important, silent work that he performed under the four presidents who followed one another between 1877 and 1895, he completed a great number of maps for the 'Bollettino', illustrating explorations in distant lands. H e also prepared detailed accounts of the 'progress of geographical science', described the work of expeditions, and wrote commemorations of the lives of past members. He was also interested in organizing conferences, an activity that he pursued with continuity and zeal. He knew by personal experience the importance of maintaining relationships between scholars, particularly at the international level; he also knew that 'the progress of geographical science' continues through dialogue. After having had an active part in the organization of the International Geographical Congress in Venice, he contributed towards the organizing of many national geographical congresses. T h e first of these took place in Genoa in 1892, on the quatercentenary of Columbus' first journey, under the auspices of the Societa Geografica Italiana (whose president was then Giacomo Doria); it was essentially organized and managed by Dalla Vedova. In 1895 he left the position of Secretary of the society, officially because the board of directors had decided that the duties were heavy enough to require the services of a full-time employee. T h e decision, however, may have been related to more serious problems, probably concerning the difficult relationship between Dalla Vedova and the board. T h e following year, however, he was reappointed and in 1897 he joined the board. In 1899 he received the gold medal of the society. He was elected President of the society on 11 November 1900, when Giacomo Doria gave up the charge. At that time, the management of the society, substantially in the hands of political and military figures, was in crisis. There was no one on the board who could represent the society with the right authority. As President, Dalla Vedova proved his exceptional skills, quietly initiating a complete reorganization of the society. T h e minutes and archives of the society attest to his intense activity for the time of his chairmanship. He reorganized the library, soliciting gifts and acquisitions; he

Giuseppe Dalla Vedova

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also simplified and rationalized the editorial work and the publications programme. Besides members' assemblies and morning and afternoon conferences, he established evening meetings to allow a larger proportion of the public, to participate. He regulated subventions for research and study, using them to support 'scientific' researches on Italy. Further, he set up a scheme for scholarships for deserving young students. Outside, the new president immediately focused his efforts on a precise aim, which he pursued with firmness and care. He worked hard to re-establish the society's credibility in the opinion of both academic institutions and the public. As Dalla Vedova kept the presidency of the Societd Geograjica Italiana for five years, we can say that during the very long period that covers his secretaryship (1877-95) and his chairmanship (1900 05), he was the force behind the society for almost 30 years - his most significant 30 years, from the ages of 43 to 71. In the years of his chairmanship, many of the major geographers and travellers of the time visited the society. He continued working on the organization of congresses and promoting exploration enterprises. In J a n u a r y 1906, Dalla Vedova, who was by then 71 years old, began to be absent because of ill health. O n 10 March, after checking that arrangements were in hand for a replacement, he informed the board that due to circumstances beyond his control he regretted that he had to 'offer his resignation again'. Two years later, on 16 December 1908, in the Aula Magna of the University of Rome, in the presence of many political and academic dignitaries, his pupils honoured him, presenting him with the volume, Scritti di geografia e storia della geografia concernenti I'Italia (Writings on Geography and the History of Geography concerning Italy), a tangible sign of their esteem and gratitude. Dalla Vedova was also awarded other honours. Some years later, on the occasion of his 81st birthday, a committee of geographers organized the re-publication of a major part of his writings in a 500page volume. While he was still alive, Porena wrote a biography of him in 1907 for the Geographen Kalender and De Magistris undertook the writing of another one for the Calendario Atlante de Agostini in 1914. Giuseppe Dalla Vedova died in Rome on 21 September 1919. Four months later, in J a n u a r y 1920, the Societd Geograjica Italiana and the University of Rome arranged a solemn commemoration. The main address was entrusted to Roberto Almagia. He was then 35, therefore one of Dalla Vedova's youngest geographer-disciples, but he was undoubtedly the most authoritative and representative of them, except for Giovanni MarineUi, who had died earlier. Besides academic dignitaries, the ceremony was attended by illustrious names from politics and culture.

2. Scientific ideas and geographical thought Giuseppe Dalla Vedova's scientific output was quantitatively quite modest. His 155 titles, distributed over more than 50 years, include 47 maps, 74 articles of no more than ten pages and a score of contributions on non-geographical subjects. In contrast to Giovanni and Olinto MarineUi - another fundamental reference for Italian geographers during the first half of the twentieth century Dalla Vedova did not gain his popularity through specific researches but through a few clear, precise, strong writings of general character, in which he explained what 'modern 1 geography was in the countries where it was most developed at the time, and what he would have liked it to be in Italy.

156

Giuseppe Dalla Vedova

Therefore he was at all levels, and in every area in which he worked, an enthusiastic promoter of geography, the first to declare its scientific value in Italy and, above all, the first to undertake the task of explaining its importance to a new generation. In company with the majority of the Italian intellectuals of his time, Dalla Vedova attached a high value to education as a mechanism for creating a more equitable society. The education-civil progress relationship was therefore the leitmotiv of his scientific work. 'To us,' he said in 1875, 'the best educational system takes the form of a real political necessity, while at the same time it never ceases to be a widely human necessity, a social need.' In fact, he never extended himself beyond this affirmation and beyond a sort of enlightened reformist paternalism. He believed in a differentiation between basic education, destined to provide elementary ideas, training and techniques, and higher education, aimed at the creation of future managers and scientists. We must not forget that, at the time, as far as education was concerned, Italy's conditions were really at a low ebb. Almost two-thirds of the population could not read or write, and less than 9 per cent remained in education beyond elementary school. This explains Dalla Vedova's engagement with teaching geography. Five of the ten articles he wrote on this subject were published in the Giornale del Regio Museo di Istruzione e Educazione, that he directed. Two more articles on educational topics were written on different occasions: one in 1881, for the Societd Geogrqfica Italiana, and one in 1892, as a contribution to the first Italian Geography Congress. His last two works on didactics are basically the texts of two reports he presented to the Royal Commission for the University Reform and were written with contributions from other geographers. His last publication, too, refers to educational reform projects; it was printed just two months before his death. The long period over which these writings were produced, and their substantial unity of purpose, demonstrate Dalla Vedova's constant concern for a correct use of geography in schools. We must acknowledge that, in Italy, no one before him took up this challenge with such sensitivity and pertinacity. Thanks to his long period of teaching at the university and the variety of roles he filled (he was even elected to Parliament), he left to his disciples a precise programme, which has been a reference for decades. Almost twenty of his writings still have a certain historical interest, as they refer to Italian geographical developments, which he reported faithfully in the pages of the Bollettino della Societd Geogrqfica Italiana. Ten articles are memorials and obituaries; the other ten are reviews. Two articles, one following the other many years later, are focused on Columbus; and although they are casual incursions into a field that was not familiar to Dalla Vedova, they confirm his methodological correctness. He also wrote on cartography, and was very much concerned about endowing Italian schools with good cartographic support. Nevertheless, Dalla Vedova's fame is mostly connected with his works on theoretical and methodological problems. From the very beginning of his activity he intervened on topical questions, though he always limited himself to providing summaries of a general nature. These writings give a clear idea of the path covered by Dalla Vedova's thought. In his first work, Delle origini e deiprogressi della geograjia fisica (The origin and the progress of physical geography), conceived when he was 34, he merely draws an enthusiastic picture of the 'new geography', marking the progress produced by Humboldt - who, in his opinion, had skilfully renewed descriptive geography — and by Ritter, through the application of the causality principle and of the comparative method.

Giuseppe Dalia Vedova

157

T h e second text, already mentioned, La geogrqfia a3 giorni nostri (1873), is a more wide-ranging work, even if it is only a review of geography's (then) recent progress. Dalla Vedova lingers on what had been done or was being done in other countries, and then he describes the Italian situation. In the first part he very clearly exposes the principles, the purposes and the methods of the 'new geography', so this writing has rightfully been considered the first manifesto of his doctrine. T h e third work, // concetto popolare e il concetto scientifico della geogrqfia, is the text of his most famous speech, given on 3 November 1880 at the commencement of the academic year at the University of Rome. Here, the certainty of the form and the clear and precise exposition reveal the maturity the author had reached. In his youth, Dalla Vedova had approached geography thanks to Ritter; afterwards he had assimilated Peschel's critics and Richthofen's theories, so that he could assert that geography must acknowledge as its sole subject the planet, or more truly, the surface of it, as it is now, in its whole and its parts, in its forms, in its characteristics, and in the distribution of its phenomena; and as its aim not the mere enunciation, classification or representation of factual data, but the research in the geographic causal connection, that is the synthesis of actions and reactions, of any kind of relationship on which it depends, to which their local distribution refers. Geography, then, as a science, collects, classifies, represents, describes and declares the local elements of the Earth's surface. In fact, Dalla Vedova's original contribution to his models was an attempt to build up an agreement between different ways of conceiving geography, which are substantially similar. Moreover, attributing to geography such wide tasks highlighted the problem of its relation with the other sciences. Dalla Vedova was perfectly aware of this; in fact, after tracing the history of geography and defining it as 'a discipline aimed to embrace a simple and rational bond, to resume, to connect to each other the loose limbs, the foundations of natural studies, making a whole with the social [aspects]', he gets to the point of defining the terms of the problems and engaging himself in their resolution. In order to explain his thought, he formulates a scheme of the division existing inside geography, which - he points out - must limit its activity to the 'distributing or chorological' moment of the cognitive process. Geography should 'collect from the exact and n a t u r a l sciences the necessary d a t a to re-build in its measure, drawing and words, the figure, the shape, the general and particular phenomena of the Earth's surface'. This part should constitute the geographic morphology, while the second part, the geography of life or geographic biology, should 'consider large groups of facts, being able to include primarily the local conditions of life of inferior organisms — flora and fauna — and secondarily those of humankind . . . ' This scheme did not have many followers, even in Italy, because it was quickly surpassed by Ratzel's Anthropogeographie, which was published only two years later. For Dalla Vedova and Ritter, the subject of geography (the geographical individual) was the terraqueous globe as a whole, where man and h u m a n activities occupied a very marginal position; with Ratzel it began to be defined in a much more articulated form. Nevertheless, the speech given in 1880 was the highest moment of Dalla Vedova's theoretical reflection, and confirmed him the undisputed head of Italian geography. Later, we find one other piece on general geography, published in 1901,

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Giuseppe Dalla Vedova

in which, however, theoretical matters take up little room and Dalla Vedova ends in repeating much of what he had already asserted. Two published addresses, that Dalla Vedova gave in 1898, (/ recenti lutti delta Societa Geograjica Italiana: T h e recent mourning of the Societa Geograjica Italiana), and in 1904, La Societa Geograjica Italiana e l3opera sua net secolo XI (The Societa Geograjica Italiana and its work in the 19th Century), are particularly interesting for the history of the Societd Geograjica Italiana. T h e first is an accurate though balanced and dignified defence of the work of the society at a very difficult moment of its history. It reveals Dalla Vedova's Africanism, unusually determined and strong: Africanism is merely a special case, a symptom, a localisation of those universal geographical exigencies, which modern progress and needs impose on the world of nations! As for us, for the Society, it seems to me that Africa could disappear from our sphere of activity only when it disappeared from the surface of the Earth. In Africa there are still too many important subjects of study . . . too many great problems to be confronted; and to it we are linked more than ever by the work, courage, and sacrifice expended there by a cohort of Italians. Dalla Vedova's position in relation to the politics of the Societd Geograjica Italiana has been frequently debated. T o understand it, we can recall an interesting detail: in July 1873, when he had just been given the Chair of Geography at the University of Padua, Dalla Vedova wrote a long letter to the President of the society, Cesare Correnti. As had happened before, and was to happen again in the history of the society, during the session which brought Correnti's election there had been some disagreements between the members about the tasks the membership should encourage. T h e society's slender economic resources had induced some members to suggest a clear and drastic choice. Dalla Vedova, instead, proposed a softer line, marked by two essential purposes: 1. 2.

'Expanding original researches', promoted by the society itself, 'the actual patrimony of the geographic science'; and 'Elaborating and spreading, in the most appropriate way the information collected by [the society] and by others.'

These very tasks would be recalled 25 years later, on 25 February 1898, in the speech he gave in the presence of the Queen of Italy to commemorate work of the Societd Geograjica. H e said: Necessarily the aims of a geographic society must be two: the 'diffusion' and the 'progress' of geography, both addressed towards the improvement of culture and national interests: to diffuse the knowledge of the different parts of the Earth, studied under all aspects and according to the present state of science; to promote this knowledge through new researches, original investigations and explorations of various places. Both the generation of geographical knowledge and its diffusion were important. As we can see, despite the time that had passed, the fundamental idea had not changed: according to Dalla Vedova, a geographic society had to focus on scientific purposes. He understood that explorations of faraway lands with the purpose of gaining geographic knowledge was an important part of 'geographic science'. At the time the major European geographic societies were all essentially oriented

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towards exploration. It is therefore obvious that, in Dalla Vedova's opinion, the Societd Geograjica Italiana should be part of this enterprise.

3. Influence and spread of ideas Through the moving and somewhat rhetorical pages of all biographies and commemorations, we receive a somewhat stereotyped image of Giuseppe Dalla Vedova as the 'Father' of Italian geography. In Porena's (1907) opinion, his speech on // concetto popolare e il concetto scientifico della geogrqfia was the most important of his works; it constituted a significant event for science, not only in Italy, but also abroad. It not only contains an account of the debates which had taken place up until that moment, on the methodology which constitutes geographic science in its essence and speculative function, but, what is more, it got to the heart of the matter with personal views presented in an original way. It made [geographic science] move towards its final step, and brought it to its ultimate goal. T o Italy, it was the first stone of the whole programme of the new geography, to the other countries it was the last completion to its integration. Almagia (1920), in the opening lecture of the geography course at Padua University, defined Dalla Vedova: 'He whom we ought to thank for his great initiative in translating from German and defending among us the essence and principles of modern geography', and, in the commemoration mentioned above, in 1920, he referred to 'The founder of modern geography in Italy, the enlivener of our major institute of geography, the directing mind . . . in the field of our studies, an incomparable Master for more than half a century.' His teachings soon bore fruit. Gottardo Garollo (1850-1917), the eldest of his pupils, though remaining a teacher in the secondary school, had a large scientific publication record, and, among other things, was called to collaborate on Giovanni Marinelli's La Terra. Giuseppe Pennesi (1851-1909), the first of his Rome pupils, obtained a chair in 1885 and, in 1892 93 when Marinelli went to Florence, took the place which had previously been occupied by his teacher. In Rome, Pietro Sensini, Goffredo Jaja, Carlo Maranelli and Roberto Almagia were amongst Dalla Vedova's pupils. The contribution Dalla Vedova made to the culture of Italian geography has been determinant, but it soon became exhausted, together with the Risorgimento enthusiasms which had generated it. But the traces left by his personality echoed for a long time. He represented the starting point, above all as a methodological guide, for all those who came after him, even those who would have driven Italian geography along very different paths. This influence, however, was not completely positive. Dalla Vedova's principal merit was to bring German geographic culture to Italy, but this initiative stopped at a certain point, so the interest it produced in the years of his youth changed little; and eventually led to a complete closing of his mind towards any other line of thought. This did not happen only in the geographic field. T h e geographers who preceded him, humanists and historians, had kept a link with the other intellectuals of their time; Dalla Vedova and some of his pupils, on the other hand, withdrew into themselves to some extent, despite affirming that geography had to embrace, in

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a great synthesis, all the sciences concerning the earth. Nor had they any better connections with humanistic subjects; on the contrary, they avoided all contact with them, fearing to be obliged to resume the former unwelcome dependence upon history. Moreover, depicting Dalla Vedova as the 'founder' (or 're-founder' or 'restorer') of a 'true' Italian geography - a geography that univocally referred to Humboldt and Ritter and considered itself 'established in a neat and sure shape' in methods and purposes - ensured that later generations of geographers saw him as the symbol of a dogmatic and categorical way of conceiving geography. This conception of geography exhausted itself in all the classifications which, for a while, seemed to circumscribe and catalogue geographical knowledge. In reality, he never considered himself as a founder or a restorer, nor did he wish to impose upon his pupils any predetermined scheme of studies. However, just as Ratzel's disciples' rigour had reached a strict and limited interpretation of geographic determinism a few years before, the excessive fidelity to the road traced by Dalla Vedova became a restraining element for the activity of the Italian geographers of his generation.

Bibliography and sources 1. ARCHIVAL SOURCES Manuscript materials by Dalla Vedova used in writing this essay are preserved in Societa Geografica Italiana archives, Rome. 2. SELECTION OF BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES ON GIUSEPPE DALLA VEDOVA Almagia' Roberto, 'Padova e l'Ateneo padovano nella storia della scienza geografica', Rivista Geografica Italiana, Vol. 19, 1912, 465-510. Almagia' Roberto, 'Giuseppe Dalla Vedova', Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, S. 5, Vol. 57, 1920, 31-50. De Magistris Luigi Filippo, 'Giuseppe Dalla Vedova', in Calendario Atlante De Agostini, De Agostini, Novara, 1914, 1-16. Luzzana Caraci Ilaria, A sessant'anni dalla morte di Giuseppe Dalla Vedova, Publicazioni delPIstituto di Scienze Geografiche N° 32, Universita di Genova, Genova, 1978. Luzzana Caraci Ilaria, La geografia italiana tra 1800 e 1900 (DaWUnitd a Olinto Marinelli), Publicazioni dell'Istituto di Scienze Geografiche N° 37, Universita di Genova, Genova, 1982, 17-30. Luzzana Caraci Ilaria, 'Giuseppe Dalla Vedova primo "presidente geografo" della Societa Geografica Italiana', Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, s.12, Vol. 6, 2001, 3-30. Porena Filippo, 'Giuseppe Dalla Vedova', Geographen Kalender 1907, Ghota, 1907, 2-27.

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Giuseppe Dalla Vedova 3. A SELECTION OF DALLA VEDOVA'S PUBLICATIONS 1867

Cristoforo Colombo ed il signor Oscar Peschel, Cenni critici, Stab. Naz. di P. Prospering Padova.

1868

Delle origini e del progressi della geografia fisica, F. Sacchetto, Padova.

1870

'Delia vita di G.B. Belzoni, padovano', Giornale di Padova.

1873

'La geografia a' giorni nostri', Nuova Antologia, Vol. 23, 88-100, 335-79.

1875

'L'insegnamento della geografia locale nelle scuole primarie', Giornale del Museo d'Istruzione e d'Educazione, Vol. 1, 47-50.

1877

'II primato de' Greci nella cultura antica e nella scuola classica moderna', Nuova Antologia, s. 2, Vol. 5, 791-817.

1877

'La questione africana e l'Associazione internazionale di Bruxelles', Nuova Antologia, s. 2, Vol. 5, 620-56.

1881

'II concetto popolare e il concetto scientifico della geografia. Discorso inaugurale letto all'Universita di R o m a il giorno 3 novembre 1880', Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, Vol. 18, 5-27.

1885

'Pellegrino Matteucci ed il suo di diario inedito', Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, Vol. 22, 641-73.

1887

'Giacomo Bove', Nuova Antologia, s. 2, Vol. 11, 115-22.

1892

'Sull'insegnamento della geografia nelle Universita, in relazione specialmente al fine professionale di esso', Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, Vol. 29, 1064-9.

1892

'Cristoforo Colombo', Atti del I Congresso Geografica Italiano, Sordomuti, Genova, Vol. 1, 175-85.

1898

'I recenti lutti della Societa Geografica Italiana', Memorie della Societa Geografica Italiana, Vol. 7, 52-80.

1900

'Giovanni Marinelli. Commemorazione letta il 14 giugno Bollettino della Societa. Geografica Italiana, Vol. 37, 629-54.

1903

'La Societa Geografica Italiana e l'opera sua nel secolo X I X ' , Atti del HI Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche, Vol. 70, 203-62.

1901

'I progressi della geografia nel secolo X I X ' , Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, Vol. 38, 615-36.

1906

'Commemorazione di Cristoforo Colombo, letta nella seduta del 20 maggio 1906', Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, Classe Scienze Fisiche, Matematiche, Naturali, Vol. 15, 658-64.

Chronology 1834

Born 29 J a n u a r y in Padua, Italy

1841-58

Attended school in Padua and university in Vienna

1859

Teacher, Santa Caterina's G r a m m a r School, Venice

Tip.

1900',

162

Giuseppe Dalla Vedova

1860

Teacher, public secondary schools, Padua

1868

'Private teacher', Padua University

1872

Appointed to Chair, Padua University

1874

Director of the Museo di Istruzione e Educazione (Education and Training Museum), Rome

1875

Professor, University 'La Sapienza', Rome

1877-95

Secretary of the Societd Geografica Italiana

1896

Honorary Secretary of the Societd Geografica Italiana

1897

Member of the Board of the Societd Geografica Italiana

1899

Gold Medal of the Societd Geografica Italiana

1900—05

President of the Societd Geografica Italiana

1919

Died in Rome

Ilaria Luzzana Caraci is Professor of History of Geography and of Geographical Discoveries and Vice-Rector in the 'Roma Tre' University, Rome.

Index

The index is divided into two parts: 1. A general index, including personal names, organizations, conferences, societies, and geographical concepts, theories and research. 2. A cumulative list of biobibliographies which includes all the geographers listed in volumes 1—22 inclusive. 1. GENERAL INDEX Aborigines 63, 65, 79 Addis'Ababa 128 Adriatic coast 98, 100 Africa 1, 4, 8, 9, 74, 105, 127-8, 158 see also specific regions, cities etc.

African Association 106, 110 Africanism 158 agriculture 40, 55, 68, 86, 128 Ali, Muzzafar 132 Allan, J.A. 132 Almagia, Roberto 154, 159 American Museum of Natural History Anglo-Saxons 55, 57 Annates de Geographie 36 Annates d'Histoire economique et sociate Archaeologica Cambrensis 51

21 36

archaeology 51, 52, 54, 56, 57 Arrowsmith family 1, 3 Association of American Geographers 19, 24, 86, 88, 91 astronomy 6, 7, 121 Australia 9, 61-9, 74, 75, 78, 80 Australian Association for the Advancement of Science 68 Australopithecine excavations 18, 22 Baines, Mary Ann (nee Watson) 2 Baines, Thomas 1-9, 12-13, 63 Balwant Rajput College, Agra 127 Banks, Sir Joseph 105, 106, 108, 143 Barbour, Dorothy (nee Dickinson) 15, 16 Barbour, George Brown 14—34 Barbour, Hugh 16, 17, 27 Barbour, Margaret (nee Brown) 14, 15

Barbour, Robert Freeland 16, 23, 28 Bartholomew family 25 Bath 146 Baulig, Henri 36 BBC 18, 24 Belgrade 97, 98, 99, 101, 102 Bennett, R. 133 Berkey, Charles P. 16, 18, 21, 22 Bernard Price Foundation for Palaeontological Research 22 Berr, Henri 35, 38, 39, 41 Biermann, Charles 99 Birkbeck Institute 74 Black, Davidson 21-2 Blaine, H. 2 Bloch, Marc 36-7 Blue Jacket Journal and Chronicle of the Blue Waters 3

Bonghi, Ruggero 154 botany 5, 55, 69, 106, 107 Botany Bay 4 Bowen, Emrys 53, 54 Braudel, Fernand 35, 37, 38 Britain 54-6, 76, 77, 144-6, 147, 148, 149 see also Scotland British Academy 51 British Antarctic Expedition 74 British Association for the Advancement of Science 75 British river systems 76 Bronze Age 51, 54, 56 Brown, George 15 Brunhes, Jean 45, 46

164 Index Burman, S.G. 129, 135 Butlin, R.A. 57 Cakiers de I'histoire mondiale 37 California Institute of Technology Cambridge 15, 50, 5 1 , 54 Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 51 C a n a d a 9, 15, 85, 86, 87, 90 canals 141, 142 cannibalism 64 Canning, Alfred 65 C a r m a n , H a r r y 26 Carr, William 2 cartography 98, 154, 156

17

Africa 6-9, 110, 111 geological maps 141, 142, 143-4, 145-6, 147 Mexico 120, 121 thematic maps 145 Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique 37 Chadwick, H . M . 5 1 , 57 Chambers Encyclopaedia 24 Chicago 89, 90 Chico State College 89 Childe, Gordon V. 52, 54, 58 China 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 26, 26-7, 27, 90 Chinese Geological Service 21 Chitty, Lily 5 1 , 53, 58 Cincinnati, University of 1 7 , 1 8 , 1 9 , 2 1 , 2 3 , 25, 26, 28 Clapperton, H u g h 113 Clarke, G r a h a m e 54 Close, Colonel Sir Charles 24 coalmining 141, 142 Coepang (Kupang), Dutch Timor 4 College de France 37, 46 Columbia University 15, 16, 22, 26 Commission of Borders 120, 121, 122 Continental Drift 76 Conway, Sir Martin 74 Correnti, Cesare 158 cotton 65, 68 Covarrubias, Francisco Diaz 118 Cressey, George 18, 20 Cubas, Antonio Garcia 121 culture, traditional 3, 52, 53 Cvijic, J o v a n 97, 98, 99, 100 Dalla Vedova, Giuseppe Damrosch, Walter 16 Daniel, Glyn 54 D'Anville 110 Darby, H . C . 57 Dart, R a y m o n d 22

152-62

Darwin and Darwinism 38, 54, 140, 148, 149 Davidson, A.A. 78 Davis, W . M . 77, 78, 147, 148 De Magistris, Luigi Filippo 155 Delhi 126, 129, 131, 133, 135 Demangeon, Albert 45-6 Denison, Governor of New South Wales 4 determinism 44, 46, 79 Devil's Dyke 56 Dickinson, Sarah Trinslow 16 Dijon, University of 36 Dinaric mountains 98, 100 Djerdap Gorge 98 Dodgshon, R.A. 57 Domesday Book 57 domestic architecture 52, 53 Duilearga, Seamus a 52 Durkheim, Emile 38, 4 1 , 42, 43 Durrell, Richard 23 Earl of Plymouth 52 Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences sociales 37 Edinburgh 14, 15, 106 Edinburgh Magazine 112 environment 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 55, 79, 87, 101 Essex gravels 76 Evans, Estyn 53 Exeter 53 exploration 6 Africa 2, 3, 74, 105, 106, 108-13 Australia 3, 4, 6, 9, 61-9, 74, 75, 78, 80 methods 66, 67 'exploration geography' 152 Faculty Field Seminars 89 Fatouma, Amadi 109 Fauconnet, Paul 41 Febvre, Lucien 35-47, 48-9 La Terre et devolution humaine 36, 38, 42— 5, 46, 47 Les regions de la France. IV - La FrancheComte 39-41 Philippe II et la Franche-Comte 3 6 , 3 9 , 4 1 - 2 Fenneman, Nevin 14, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25 fieldwork 26, 28, 42, 75, 87, 89, 101, 105 finances 2, 3, 136, 141, 143 First World W a r 15, 20, 22, 36, 50, 99 Fleam Dyke 56 Fleure, H.J. 54, 57 Fondation Thiers 36 Forrest, J o h n 68 fossils 143, 144, 145, 146-7 Fox, Aileen M a r y (nee Henderson) 5 1 , 52, 53

Index Fox , Olive (nee Congreve-Pridgeon) 51 Fox, Sir Cyril 50-60 France 36, 37, 40, 44, 45, 100, 118, 119, 145 Franche-Comte 35, 39-41, 46 Freeland, Alexander Hugh 14, 15 'French Inter-university Excursion' 102 Gallois, Lucien 4 1 , 42, 46 Gambia 106-7 Gandhi, Mrs 130 Garollo, Gottardo 159 Genoa 154 Geographical and Cartographic Institute of Justus Perthes 98 Geographical Journal 24, 25, 80 geographical societies 19, 85, 88, 90, 102 geography (as an academic discipline) 23-4, 25, 4 2 - 3 , 100, 152, 153-60 and archaeology 57-8 and geology 77 and history 36, 38, 152 and science 38, 75, 157, 160 geological maps 142, 143-4, 145-6, 147 Geological Society 140, 141, 143, 144, 148 Geological Society of America 18, 19 Geological Survey 149 Geological Survey of Victoria 74 geology 75, 79, 141, 143 Australia 67 Britain 54-5, 56, 76, 77, 147, 148 in China 18 geomorphology 19, 21, 25, 28, 76, 79, 100 George, Captain 7 Georgia 85, 86, 87 Geraldine lead mine, Murchison River 63, 64 Gerlaldton, Champion Bay 63 Germany 35, 36, 98 Glasgow, University of 75 gold-mining 5, 74 Goldfields 7, 8 Gomez de la Cortina, Jose Justo 117 Gray, H. 64 Great Plains 85, 88 Great Rift Valley 74, 76, 79 Great Sandy Desert, Australia 65 Green, Lothian: tetrahedral theory 76 Gregory, Audrey (nee Chaplin) 74 Gregory brothers (Augustus Charles and Francis Thomas) 3, 4, 61-72 Gregory, Charles 62, 64 Gregory, Frances Churchman 2, 62-3 Gregory, Henry Churchman 61, 62, 63 Gregory, J o h n Walter 73-84 Gregory Range 69 Gregory (township) 69

Grey, George 63 Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty Guatemala 121

165

117

Halbwachs, Maurice 36 Hall, Henry 3, 4 Halle, Germany 98 H a n n , Frank 65 Hanson-Low, J . 25 Hart, J o h n Fraser 86 Hartley, Henry 6 Harvard Medical School 23 Hawkes, Christopher 54 Herbertson 54 Herodotus 110 Highland-Lowland thesis 53, 54, 56 Himalayan tectonic plate 27 Hinks, A.R. 25 history 36, 38, 45 Hobart, Lord 108 Hosokawa, Morihiro 91 Houghton, Major Daniel 110, 111 Hudson, J o h n 91 human geography 38, 4 0 - 5 , 52, 57, 87, 88, 90 'humanist geography' 152 Humboldt, Alexander von 153, 156 H u n t o n , Louis 148 hydroelectricity sites 26 Illinois, University of 86 Illustrated London News 3 India 87, 90, 111, 127, 130, 131, 134 International Conference of Pre- and Protohistoric Sciences, London 51 International Congress of Geographical Societies 90 International Geographical Congress 87 Irish Folklore Commission 52 Isaaco (African guide) 108, 109 Italian Geographic Society 152, 154, 155, 158 Italy 152-3, 158, 159 Jabobsthal, Paul 57 Jackson, J.B. 87 J a p a n 87, 88, 90 Jewish colonies 76 J o h n Wesley Powell Medal 91 J o h n Whitney H a y Foundation 26 Johnston, R J . 130, 133 Johnstone, Sir J o h n 144 journeys overland 86, 98, 99 Africa 2, 6, 74, 107, 108-9, 111 Australia 63-6 Kant

45

166

Index

K a r a n , P.P. 87 Kellogg Gull Lake Biological Society 89 Kendrick, T h o m a s 57 Kentucky 87 Kilinc, Attila 27 Killie Campbell Museum and Library, Durban 8 King George's Sound 4 King Solomon's Ophir, King Lobengula's country 5 Kinvig, R . H . 53 Kirk, Bryan 14 Krupanji 99 La Revue de Synthese historique 35 Laidley, D r j o h n 106, 110 Lamarckian theory 38 land use studies 128-9 Land and Water 9 Lander, Richard and J o h n 112 landscape 45, 46, 67, 87, 89, 100, 101, 142 Langsam, Walter 18 lantern-slides 9 Lands, David 89 Latin America 90 Lausanne 99 Lebon,J.H.G. 128 Ledyard, J o h n 110 Leeds, Thurlow 57 Leichhardt, Ludwig 64 Leisure Hour 9 L' Encyclopedic franpaise 3 7 Leo Africanus 110 Limpopo region 3, 5 Linton, D.L. 55 LTsle 110 Livingstone, Charles 4 Livingstone, Dr David 4, 6, 8 London 18, 127, 143 L o r d , J . H . 67 Lord, W.B. 9, 12 Loznica 98 Lucas, Simon 110 Lygeon, Maurisse 99 Mackinder H.J. 53, 54, 132 Maclear, Thomas 6 McMicken College of Arts and Sciences 18, 19, 27 McQueen, J a m e s 105,112 Maitland, F.W. 57 Malinowski, Bronislaw 52 Mandingo people 107 maps and map-making see cartography M a r b o u r g University 15 Marinelli, Giovanni 153, 155, 159 M a r k h a m , Sir Clements 74

Martonne, Emmanuel de 98, 102 Mather, Cotton 85-96 Mather, Julie 88 Mauss, Marcel 4 1 , 43 Maximilian, Emperor 119 Maxwell, George 111-12 Melbourne 74, 76 Merida 119, 120 meteorology 23, 45, 78 Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics 117, 118, 119, 121 Mexico 117-20 Michelet, Jules 37 military experiences 2 - 3 , 15, 20, 36, 88, 99 Mill, Hugh Robert: Life Interests of a Geographer 24 Milojevic, Borivoje Z 97-104 Milojevic, Zivojin 97 Mining College, Mexico 116, 118, 120 mining industry 22, 78, 141 Minnesota 85, 86, 87, 88, 90 missionaries 1, 20-1 Mitchell, Revd. J o h n 145 Monzie, Anatole de 37 Moreton Bay 4 M o u n t Augustus 64 M o u n t Kenya 74 M o u n t Lyell, Tasmania 74 Mountains of the Moon 109 mountains, study of 99 Mozambique 7 Mueller, Ferdinand von 4, 63, 68, 69 Murchison River 64 Museums Association 52 Myers, J . L . 52 National Geographic Society 87 National Museum of Wales 51, 52, 54 natural history 5, 68, 74, 106, 157 Natural History Museum 74 Nature and Art 9 Nautical Almanac 6 Nebraska 87 New Mexico 85, 91 Geographical Society 91 New South Wales 64 Niger, River 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113 Nigeria 128 Nihowan formations 21 Nile 3, 110, 111 Norfolk Broads 76 North Australian Expedition 69 North-West Australia Expedition 4 Offa's Dyke 51, 56 Ohio 18, 89

Index Rennell, Major James 109, 111 research methods 27, 156

Order of St John 15 Ordnance Survey 54, 149 Oxford 54, 149

Revue de Synthese historique

painting and sketching 2, 3, 5-6, 9, 87 Palo Alto, California 17, 18 Pan African Prehistory Conferences 22 Paris 99 International Exhibition 45 Peace Conference 102 Park, Allison (nee Anderson) 108 Park, Mungo 105-15 Park, Thomas 113 Parker, Dr Geoffrey 130 Parkinson, James 148 Peate, Iorwerth 52 Peiyang University 16 'Peking fever' 17 Peking Man 18, 21, 22 Peking University 16 Penck, Albrecht 98 Perth, Australia 63, 66 Peru 75 Peschel, Oscar 153 Phillips, John 143,144,148,149 physical geography 101 Australia 64 Britain 53, 54, 55, 76, 142 physiography 25 Pierce County Geogrpahical Society 91 Piggott, Stuart 53 Pilbara coast 65 Pocerina 100 political geography 129, 130-1, 133, 134 Political Geography Quarterly

130

politics 129-30 Porena, Filippo 155, 159 prehistory 54, 56 Prescott, Wisconsin 91 Provisional Board of African Studies Prussia 38 Ptolemy 110

Queensland

167

24

62, 66, 69

Rabelais 37, 45 race and racism 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 87, 113 Radjevina 98, 100 Raglan, Lord 53 railways 88 Ramachandran, R. 129, 135 Ratzel, Friedrich 41, 157, 160 regional geography 39-45, 87, 88, 90, 91, 99, 101 Reichard, Christian Gottlieb 105, 112 relational geography 54, 55 religious beliefs 21, 37

38

Rhine 45, 46 Rich, John 23 Richardson, Revd. Benjamin 142 Risorgimento 152, 159 Ritter, Carl 44, 153, 156 Robert the Bruce 22 Rockerfeller Foundation 18, 22 Roe, John Septimus 62, 63, 66 Romans in Britain 55 Rome 154, 155, 157 Royal College of Physicians 14 Royal College of Surgeons 108 Royal Commission on Bovine Truberculosis 50 Royal Geographical Society of Australia 68 Royal Geographical Society (RGS) 5, 6, 18, 24, 25, 63 Founder's Medal 64, 65 rural geography 90 Sagar, Madhya Pradesh 127 St Fagans Castle 53 'Saint Sava Prize' 100 Salazar Ilarregui, Jose 116-25 San Francisco Peace Conference San Luis Valley 89 Scarborough 144

1, 3, 4,

21

Scenery and Events in South Africa (lithographic

reproductions) 3 Schliiter, Otto 98 science 25, 38, 68, 75 Scotland 22, 25 Borders 106, 113 Highlands 76, 106 Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society 52 Second World War 21, 24, 37, 86 Sedgwick, Professor Adam 144, 148 Senegambia 108, 110 Serbia 97, 98, 99 Serbian Geographical Society 97, 101, 102 Shanghai Incident 20 Sharif al-Idrisi 110 Shaw, Dr. Norton 3 Simony, Federico 153 Singh, Chandra Pal 126-39 Sion, Jules 36, 47 slaves and the slave trade 1, 106, 107 Smith, William 140-51 social sciences 36, 38, 40-1, 79 Somerset, Major-General 2 South Africa 2, 4, 6, 9, 22 Soviet Union 102

168 Index Spain 121 Spencer, Herbert 38 Spencer-Gillen transcontinental trek (Australia) 78 Spitzbergen 74 Stokes, J o h n Lort 63, 66 Stokes' R a n g e 67 Strasbourg, University of 36 stratigraphy of Britain 144, 145-6, 149 Suess, Eduard 76 Sumatra 106 Sunday at Home 9 surveying 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 117, 141 Swan River Colony 61, 62 Switzerland 99 T a u r a , Karfa (slave trader) 107 Taylor, Griffith 75, 79, 80 Taylor, P J . 131 teaching 20, 76, 101, 120, 152, 156 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 14, 22, 27 Tennessee Valley 24, 26 thematic maps 145 Thomson, Joseph 112 Torres Strait 4 Townsend, Revd. Joseph 140-1,142 Travelers Aid Society 16 T r e w a r t h a , Glenn 88 U N E S C O 37 University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire 58 U r u b a m b a River 75 US-Mexico border 117, 118, 120 U S A 25, 9 0 , 9 1 , 117, 119, 145 South and Southwest 87 Southeast 86 U t t a r Pradesh 126, 128 Valjevo 98, 101 Varenius 44 Victoria Falls 9 Victoria River, Australia 4, 63 Vidal de la Blache, Paul 35, 36, 40, 4 1 , 43,

45, 46, 47, 53, 54, 58 Vienna 98, 153 Vietnam W a r 87 voyages 2, 3, 4, 5, 107 Wales 5 1 , 52, 56, 76, 144-6, 147, 148, 149 Wallace, Alfred Russell 140 Walter, J . 98 Walvisch (Walvis) Bay 4, 7 Watt, Dr. J o h n 15 Welsh Folk Museum 53 Werner-Glenn Foundation for Anthropological Research 18 Wessel Islands 4 West Australian newspaper 66, 68 Western Australia 4, 63, 64, 66, 68-9 North-west Australian Exploring Expedition 65 Western Australia Survey D e p a r t m e n t 65 Westminster Foundation 21 Wheeler, Mortimer 51, 58 White Australia policy 76 Whittlesey, Derwent 24 Wickham, Captain J o h n Clements 66 Williams College 18, 27 Winchester, Simon 143 Wisconsin 85, 86 Wishaw, J o h n 111 Wolf, Lawrence G. 23 Woods, Julian Tenison 67 Woolridge, S.W. 55 World Council of Churches 28 Yangtze 18, 25, 27 Yenching University, Beijing 16, 17, 20, 26, 27 Y M C A 15, 16, 21 Yucatan peninsula 119, 122 Yugoslavia 99, 100, 101, 102 Zambesi River 4, 5, 6 Zimbabwe 5, 9 Zrmanja, River 100

2. C U M U L A T I V E LIST OF BIOBIBLIOGRAPHIES ADAIR, John (1660-1718) 20, 1-8 AL-BIRUNI (Abu'Rayhan Muhammad) (973-1054) 13, 1-9 AL-HASAN, see LEO AFRICANUS AL-KINDI (801-873) 17, 1-8 ALMAGIA, Roberto (1884-1962) 13, 11-15 AL-MUQADDASI (c. 945-c. 988) 4, 1-6 ANCEL, Jacques (1882-1943) 3, 1-6 A N U C H I N , Dmitry Nikolaevich (1843-1923) 2, 1-8

APIANUS, Peter (1495 or 1501-1552) 6, 1-6 ARBOS, Philippe (1882-1956) 3, 7-12 ARDEN-CLOSE, Charles Frederick (1865-1952) 9, 1-13 A R M S T R O N G , Terence Edward (1920-1996) 18, 1-9 A R Q U E , Paul (1887-1970) 7, 5-9 A T W O O D , Wallace Walter (1872-1949) 3, 13-18

Index 169 AUROUSSEAU, Marcel (1891-1983) 1-8

72,

BAINES, Thomas (1820-1875) 23, 1-13 BAKER, John Norman Leonard (1893-1971) 16, 1-11 BAKER, Samuel John Kenneth (1907-1992) 22, 1-11 BANSE, Ewald (1883-1953) 8, 1-5 BARANSKIY, Nikolay Nikolayevich (1881-1963) 10, 1-16 BARBOUR, George Brown (1890-1977) 23, 14 34 BATES, Henry Walter (1852-1892) 77, 1-5 BAULIG, Henri (1877-1962) 4, 7-17 BEAUFORT, Francis (1774-1857) 19, 1-15 BECKINSALE, Robert Percy (1908-1998) 22, 12-27 BERG, Lev Semenovich (1876-1950) 5, 1-7 BERNARD, Augustin (1865-1947) 3, 19-27 BINGHAM, Millicent Todd (1880-1968) 77, 7-12 BLACHE, Jules (1893-1970) 7, 1-8 BLODGET, Lorin (1823-1901) 5, 9-12 BOBEK, Hans (1903-1990) 16, 12-22 BONNEY, Thomas George (1833-1923) 17, 9-16 BOSE, Nirmal Kumas (1901-1972) 2, 9-11 BOWEN, Emrys George (1900-1983) 10, 17-23 BOWMAN, Isaiah (1878-1950) 7, 9-18 BRATESCU, Constantin (1882-1945) 4, 19 24 BRAUDEL, Fernand (1902-1985) 22, 28-42 BRAWER, Abraham Jacob (1884-1975) 72, 9 19 BRIGHAM, Albert Perry (1855-1929) 2, 13-19 BROEK, J a n Otto Marius (1904-1974) 22, 43-62 B R O O K S , Alfred Hulse (1871-1924) 7, 19-23 B R O O K S , Charles Franklin (1891-1958) 18, 10-20 BROWN, Ralph Hall (1898-1948) 9, 15-20 BROWN, Robert Neal Rudmose (1879-1957) 8, 7-16 BRUCE, William Speirs (1867-1921) 17, 17-25 BUACHE, Philippe (1700-1773) 9, 21-7 BUJAK, Franciszek (1875-1953) 16, 23-30 BUSCHING, Anton Friedrich (1724-1793) 6, 7-15 CAMENA d'ALMEIDA, Pierre (1865-1943) 7, 1-4 CAPOT-REY, Robert (1897-1977) 5, 13-19

CAREY, Henry Charles (1793-1879) 10, 25-8 CAVAILLES, Henri (1870-1951) 7, 5 9 C H A T T E R J E E , Shiba P. (1903-1989) 18, 21-35 C H I S H O L M , George Goudie (1850 1930) 72, 21-33 C H R I S T A L L E R , Walter (1893-1969) 7, 11-16 C H U L A L O N G K O R N , King of Siam (1853-1910) 27, 65-71 C H U R C H , James Edward, J r (1869 1959) 22, 63-71 CLARK, Andrew Hill (1911-1975) 14, 13-25 CLEMENTS, Frederic Edward (1874-1945) 18, 36-46 CODAZZI, Augustin (1793-1859) 72, 35 47 C O L A M O N I C O , Carmelo (1882-1973) 72, 49-58 COLBY, Charles Carlyle (1884-1965) 6, 17-22 CONEA, Ion (1902-1974) 72, 59-72 C O O K , James (1728-1779) 20, 9 23 C O P E R N I C U S , Nicholas (1473-1543) 6, 23-9 C O R N I S H , Vaughan (1862-1948) 9, 29-35 C O R T A M B E R T , Eugene (1805-1881) 2, 21-5 C O T T O N , Charles Andrew (1885 1970) 2, 27-32 COWLES, Henry Chandler (1869-1939) 10, 29-33 CRESSEY, George Babcock (1896 1963) J, 21-5 C U I S I N I E R , Louis (1883-1952) 16, 96 100 C V I J I C , Jovan (1865-1927) 4, 25 -32 D'ABBADIE, Antoine (1810-1897) 3, 29-33 DANA, James Dwight (1813-1895) 15, 11-20 DANTIN-CERECEDA, J u a n (1881 1943) 10, 35-40 DARWIN, Charles (1809 -1882) 9, 37-45 DAVID, Mihai (1886-1954) 6", 31-3 DAVIDSON, George (1825-1911) 2, 33-7 DAVIS, William Morris (1850-1934) 5, 27-33 DE BRAHM, William Gerard (1718-1799) 10, 41-7 DE C H A R P E N T I E R , Jean (1786-1855) 7, 17-22 DE M A R T O N N E , Emmanuel (1873-1955) 72, 73 81 DEE, John (1527-1608) 10, 49 55

170 Index DEMANGEON, Albert (1872-1940) / / , 13-21 DIAZ COVARRUBIAS, Francisco (1833-1889) 19, 16-26 DICKEN, Samuel N. (1901-1989) 13, 17-22 D I C K I N S O N , Robert Eric (1905-1981) 8, 17-25 D I M I T R E S C U - A L D E M , Alexandre (1880-1917) 3, 35-7 D I O N , Roger (1896-1981) 18, 47-52 D O K U C H A E V , Vasily Vasilyevich (1846-1903) 4, 33^12 D O U G H T Y , Charles Montagu (1843-1926) 21, 1-13 DRAPEYRON, Ludovic (1839-1901) 6, 35-8 DRYER, Charles Redaway (1850-1927) 11, 23-6 DRYGALSKI, Erich von (1865-1949) 7, 23-9 DUNBAR, William (1749-1810) 19, 27-36 E L T O N , Charles Sutherland (1900-1991) 21, 14-27 E R A T O S T H E N E S {c. 275-c. 195 BC) 2, 39-43 EVEREST, Sir George (1790-1866) 15, 21-36 EYRE, Edward John (1815-1901) 15, 37-50 FABRICIUS, Johann Albert (1668-1736) 5, 35-9 F A I R G R I E V E , James (1870-1953) 8, 27-33 F A W C E T T , Charles Bungay (1883-1952) 6, 39^-6 FEBVRE, Lucien (1878-1956) 23, 35-49 F E D C H E N K O , Alexei Pavlovich (1844-1873) 8, 35-8 FENNEMAN, Nevin Melancthon (1865-1945) 10, 57-68 F I T Z R O Y , Robert (1805-1865) 77, 27-33 F L E U R E , Herbert John (1877-1969) 11, 35-51 FORBES, James David (1809-1868) 7, 31 - 7 F O R M O Z O V , Alexander Nikolayevich (1899-1973) 7, 39-46 F O R R E S T , Alexander (1849-1901) and F O R R E S T , John (1847-1918) 5,39-43 F O X , Cyril (1882-1967) 23, 50-60 FRANZ, Johann Michael (1700-1761) 5, 41-8 FREEMAN, Thomas Walter (1908-1988) 22, 72-90 FRESHFIELD, Douglas William (1845-1934) 75,23-31

GANNETT, Henry (1846-1914) 8, 45-9 GARCIA CUBAS, Antonio (1832-1912) 22, 91-8 GAVIRA M A R T I N , Jose (1903-1951) 19, 37-49 GEDDES, Arthur (1895-1968) 2, 45-51 GEDDES, Patrick (1854-1932) 2, 53-65 G E I K I E , Archibald (1835-1924) 3, 39-52 GERALD O F WALES, see G I R A L D U S CAMBRENSIS G E R A S I M O V , Innokentii Petrovich (1905-1985) 72,83-93 GILBERT, Edmund William (1900-1973) 3, 63-71 GILBERT, Grove Karl (1843-1918) 7, 25-33 GILLMAN, Clement (1882-1946) 7, 35^-1 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS (c. 1146-1223) 21, 28-45 GLACKEN, Clarence James (1909-1989) 14, 27-41 GLAREANUS, Henricus (1488-1563) 5, 49-54 G M E L I N , Johann Georg (1709-1755) 13, 33-7 GOBLET, Yann-Morvran (1881-1955) 13, 39-44 G O O D E , John Paul (1862-1932) 8, 51-5 GOYDER, George Woodrofle (1826-1898) 7, 47-50 GRADMANN, Robert (1865-1950) 6, 47-54 G R A N O , Johannes Gabriel (1882-1956) 3, 73-84 GREELY, Adolphus Washington (1844-1935) 77, 26-42 G R E G O R Y , Augustus Charles (1819-1905) 23, 61-72 G R E G O R Y , Francis Thomas (1821-1888) 23, 61-72 G R E G O R Y , John Walter (1864-1932) 23, 73-84 GREY, George (1812-1898) 22, 99-111 G R I G O R Y E V , Andrei Alexandrovich (1883-1968) 5, 55-61 G U Y O T , Arnold Henry (1807-1884) 5, 63-71 HASSERT, Ernst Emil Kurt (1868-1947) 10, 69-76 H A U S H O F E R , Karl (1869-1946) 12, 95-106 HERBERTSON, Andrew J o h n (1865-1915) 3, 85-92 H E R D E R , Johann Gottfried (1744-1803) 10, 77-84 H E T T N E R , Alfred (1859-1941) 6, 55-63

Index H I M L Y , Louis-Auguste (1832-1906) 7, 43-7 H O , Robert (1921-1972) 1, 49-54 H O H N E L , Ludwig von (1857-1942) 7, 43 7 H O L M E S , James Macdonald (1896-1966) 7, 51-5 H O W I T T , Alfred William (1830-1908) 15, 51 60 H U G H E S , William (1818-1876) 9, 47-53 H U G U E T DEL VILLAR, Emilio (1871-1951) 9,55-60 H U L T , Ragnar (1857-1899) 9, 61-9 H U T C H I N G S , Geoffrey Edward (1900-1964) 2, 67-71 IBN BATTUTA (1304-1378) 14, 1-11 IGLESIES-FORT, Josep (1902-1986) 12, 107-11 ILESIC, Svetozar (1907-1985) 11, 53-61 ISACHSEN, Fridtjov Eide (1906-1979) 10, 85-92 ISIDA, Ryuziro (1904-1979) 15, 61-74 J A M E S , Preston Everett (1899-1986) 11, 63-70 JOBBERNS, George (1895-1974) 5, 73-6 J O N E S , Llewellyn Rodwell (1881-1947) 4, 49 53 KANT, Edgar (1902-1978) 11, 71-82 KANT, Immanuel (1724-1804) 4, 55-67 K E C K E R M A N N , Bartholamaus (1572-1609) 2, 73 9 K E L T I E , John Scott (1840-1927) 10, 93 8 KENDREW, Wilfrid George (1884-1962) 17, 43-51 K I M , Chong-ho (c. 1804-1866) 16, 37-44 KINGSLEY, Mary Henrietta (1862-1900) 19, 50 65 K I R C H O F F , Alfred (1838-1907) 4, 69-76 K O M A R O V , Vladimir Leontyevitch (1862-1914) 4, 77-86 KRAUS, Theodor (1894-1973) 77, 83-7 K R O P O T K I N , Pyotr (Peter) Alexeivich (1842-1921) 7, 57-62, 63-9 K R U M M E L , Johann Gottfried Otto (1854-1912) 10, 99-104 KUBARY, J a n Stanislaw (1846-1896) 4, 87-9 LARCOM, Thomas Aiskew (1801-1879) 71-4 L A T T I M O R E , Owen (1900-1989) 20, 24-42 LAUTENSACH, Hermann (1886-1971) 91-101

7,

4,

171

LEFEVRE, Marguerite Alice (1894-1967) 10, 105-10 L E I C H H A R D T , Friedrich (1813-1848?) 17, 52-67 L E I G H L Y , J o h n (1895-1986) 12, 113 19 LELEWEL, Joachim (1786 1861) 4, 103 12 LENCEWICZ, Stanislaw (1899-1944) 5, 77-81 LEO AFRICANUS (Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al Wazzan az-Zayyati) (c. 7499-1550) 15, 1-9 L E P E K H I N , Ivan Ivanovich (1740 1802) 12, 121-3 LEVASSEUR, Emile (1828-1911) 2, 81- 7 LEWIS, William Vaughan (1907-1961) 4, 113-20 LI DAOYUAN (ft c. AD 500) 12, 125 31 L I N T O N , David Leslie (1906-1971) 7, 75-83 LLOBET I R E V E R T E R , Salvador (1908-1991) 79,66 74 LOBECK, Armin Kohl (1886-1958) 22, 112-31 L O M O N O S O V , Mikhail Vasilyevich (1711-1765) 6, 65 70 MacCARTHY, Oscar (1815-1894) 8, 57 60 McGEE, William John (1853-1912) 10, 111-16 M A C K I N D E R , Halfordjohn (1861 1947) 9, 71-86 MAGELLAN, Ferdinand (c. 1480 1521) 18, 53-66 M A K A R O V , Stepan Osipovich (1848 1904) 11, 89-92 M A K I G U C H I , Tsunesaburo (1871-1944) 20, 43-56 M A L T H U S , Thomas Robert (1766-1834) 20, 57-67 M A R T I N E A U , Harriet (1802-1876) 21, 46-64 M A R X , Karl (1818-1883) 79, 75 85 MASON, Kenneth J. (1887 1976) 18, 67-72 M A T H E R , Cotton (1918 1999) 23, 85 96 M A T T R E S , Francois Emile (1874-1948) 14, 43-57 MAURY, Matthew Fontaine (1806-1873) 7, 59-63 MAY, Jacques M. (1896-1975) 7, 85 8 M E H E D I N T I , Simion (1868-1962) 7, 65-72 M E L A N C H T H O N , Philipp (1497- 1560) 3, 93-7 MELIK, Anton (1890-1966) 9, 87 94 MENTELLE, Edmunde (1730-1815) 77, 93-104

172

Index

M E N T E L L E , Francois-Simon (1731-1799) 11, 93-104 M E U R I O T , Paul (1861-1919) 16, 45-52 M I H A I L E S C U , Vintila (1890-1978) 8, 61-7 M I K L O U H O - M A C L A Y , Nikolai Nikolaevich (1846-1888) 22, 132-40 M I L L , Hugh Robert (1861-1950) 1, 73-8 M I L N E , Geoffrey (1898-1942) 2, 89-92 M I L O J E V I C , Borivoje Z. (1885-1967) 23, 97-104 M I T C H E L L , Thomas Livingstone (1792-1855) 5 , 8 3 - 7 M O N G K U T , King of Siam (1804-1868) 21, 65-71 M U E L L E R , Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von (1825-1896) 5,89-93 M U I R , John (1838-1914) 14, 59-67 M U N S T E R , Sebastian (1488-1552) 3, 99-106 M U S H E T O V , Ivan Vasylievitch (1850-1902) 7, 89-91 MYRES, John Linton (1869-1954) 16, 53-62

PENCK, Albrecht (1858-1945) 7, 101-8 PENNANT, Thomas (1726-1798) 20, 85-101 P E R R O N , Charles-Eugene (1837-1909) 20, 102-7 PETERMANN, August Heinrich (1822-1878) 12, 133-8 PHILIPPSON, Alfred (1864-1953) 13, 53-61 P I T T I E R , Henri-Francois (1857-1950) 10, 135^1-2 PLATT, Robert Swanton (1891-1964) 3, 107-16 PLEWE, Ernst (1907-1986) 13, 63-71 POL, Wincenty (1807-1872) 2, 93-7 P O L O , Marco (1254-1324) 15, 75-89 POWELL, John Wesley (1834-1902) 3, 117-24 PRICE, Archibald Grenfell (1892-1977) 6, 87-92 PUMPELLY, Raphael (1837-1923) 14, 83-92 P U T N A M , Donald Fulton (1903-1977) 21, 72-84

N A K A N O M E , Akira (1874-1959) 20, 68-76 N A L K O W S K I , Waclaw (1851-1911) 13, 45-52 NANSEN, Fridtjof (1861-1930) 16, 63-79 NELSON, Helge (1882-1966) 8, 69-75 N E U S T R U E V , Sergei Semyonovich (1874-1928) 8, 77-80 NIELSEN, Niels (1893-1981) 10, 117-24

R A I M O N D I DEL ACQUA, Antonio (1826-1890) 76,80-7 RAISZ, Erwin Josephus (1893-1968) 6, 93-7 RATZEL, Friedrich (1844-1904) 11, 123-32 RAVENSTEIN, Ernst Georg (1834-1913) 1, 79-82 RECLUS, Elisee (1830-1905) 3, 125-32 RECLUS, Paul (1858-1941) 16, 88-95 R E I S C H , Gregor (c. 1470-1525) 6, 99-104 RENNELL, James (1742-1830) /, 83-8 R E V E R T , Eugene (1895-1957) 7, 5-9 R H E T I C U S , Georg Joachim (1514-1573) 4, 121-6 R I C H T E R , Eduard (1847-1905) 10, 143-8 R I C H T H O F E N , Ferdinand Freiherr von (1833-1905) 7, 109-15 R I T T E R , Carl (1779-1859) 5, 99-108 R O E , Frank Gilbert (1878-1973) 18, 73-81 R O E , John Septimus (1797-1878) 21, 85-96 R O M E R , Eugeniusz (1871-1954) 1, 89-96 ROSBERG, Johan Evert (1864-1932) 9, 101-8 R O S I E R , William (1856-1924) 10, 149-54 ROXBY, Percy Maude (1880-1947) 5, 109-16 R U H L , Alfred (1882-1935) 12, 139-47 RUSSELL, Richard Joel (1895-1971) 4, 127-38 R Y C H K O V , Peter Ivanovich (1712-1777) 9, 109-12

O B E R H U M M E R , Eugen (1859-1944) 7, 93-100 O B R U C H E V , Vladimir Afanas'yevich (1863-1956) 11, 105-10 O'DELL, Andrew Charles (1909-1966) 11, 111-22 OGAWA, Takuji (1870-1941) 6, 71-6 OGILBY, John (1600-1676) 20,77-84 O R G H I D A N , Nicolai (1881-1967) 6, 77-9 ORMSBY, Hilda (1877-1973) 5, 95-7 PALLAS, Peter Simon (1741-1811) 17, 68-81 PARK, Mungo (1771-1806) 23, 105-15 PARSONS, James Jerome (1915-1997) 19, 86-101 PARTSCH, Joseph Franz Maria (1851-1925) 10, 125-33 P A U L I T S C H K E , Philipp (1854-1899) 9, 95-100 PAVLOV, Alexsei Petrovich (1854-1929) 6, 81-5 PAWLOWSKI, Stanislaw (1882-1940) 14, 69-81

SALAZAR I L A R R E G U I , Jose (1823-1892) 23, 116-25

Index SALISBURY, Rollin D. (1858-1922) 6, 105 13 SANCHEZ GRANADOS, Pedro C. (1871-1956) 20, 108-18 SAUER, Carl Ortwin (1889-1975) 2, 99 108 SAWICKI, Ludomir Slepowran (1884-1928) 9, 113-19 SCHLUTER, Otto (1872-1959) 6, 115-22 S C H M I T H U S E N , Josef (1909-1984) 14, 93-104 S C H M I T T H E N N E R , Heinrich (1887-1957) 5, 117-21 SCHRADER, Franz (1844-1924) /, 97-103 SCHWERIN, Hans Hugold von (1853-1912) 8, 81-6 SCORESBY, William (1789-1857) 4, 139-47 SEMENOV-TYAN SHANSKIY, Petr Petrovich (1827-1914) 12, 149-58 SEMENOV-TYAN SHANSKIY, Veniamin Petrovich (1870-1942) 13, 67-73 SEMPLE, Ellen Churchill (1863-1932) 8, 87-94 SHALER, Nathaniel Southgate (1841-1906) 3, 133-9 SHEN K U O (1033-1097) / / , 133-7 SHIGA, Shigetaka (1863-1927) 8, 95-105 SIBBALD, Robert (1641-1722) 17, 82-91 SIEVERS, Wilhelm (1860-1921) 8, 107-10 SIGN, Jules (1879-1940) 12, 159-65 SINGH, Chandra Pal (1939-2000) 23, 126-39 S M I T H , George Adam (1856-1942) 1, 105-6 S M I T H , Joseph Russell (1874-1966) 21, 97-113 S M I T H , Wilfred (1903-1955) 9, 121-8 S M I T H , William (1769-1839) 23, 140-51 SMOLENSKI, Jerzy (1881-1940) 6, 123-7 S O L C H , J o h a n n (1883-1951) 7,117-24 SOLE I SABARIS, Lluis (1908-1985) 12, 167-74 SOMERVILLE, Mary (1780-1872) 2, 100-11 SPENCE, Catherine Helen (1825-1910) 22, 141-56 SPENCER, Joseph Earle (1907-1984) 13, 81 92 STAMP, Laurence Dudley (1898-1966) 12, 175-87 STOFFLER, Johannes (1452-1531) 5, 123 8 STOKES, John Lort (1811-1885) 18, 82-93 STRZELECKI, Pawel Edmund (1797-1873) 2, 113-18

173

TAMAYO, Jorge Leonides (1912 1978) 7, 125 8 TANSLEY, Arthur George (1871-1955) 13, 93-100 T A T I S H C H E V , Vasili Nikitich (1686 1750) 6, 129-32 TAYLOR, Thomas Griffith (1880-1963) 3, 141 53 T E I L H A R D DE CHARDIN, Pierre (1881-1955) 7, 129-33 T E L E K I , Paul (1879-1941) 11, 139 4 3 T E N I S O N - W O O D S , Julian Edmund, see W O O D S , Julian Edmund Tenison TERAN-ALVAREZ, Manuel de (1904 1984) 11, 145-53 T H O M P S O N , David (1770-1857) 18, 94-112 T H O R N T H W A I T E , Charles Warren (1899-1963) 18, 113-29 T I L L O , Alexey Andreyevich (1839-1900) 3, 155-9 T O P E L I U S , Zachris (1818 1898) 3, 161 3 T O R R E S CAMPOS, Rafael (1853-1904) 13, 102-7 T O S C H I , Umberto (1897-1966) 11, 155-64 T R O L L , Carl (1899-1975) 3, 111-24 T U L I P P E , Omer (1896-1968) 11, 165 72 ULLMAN, Edward Louis (1912 1976) 129-35

9,

VALLAUX, Camille (1870 1945) 2, 119 26 VALSAN, Georg (1885-1935) 2, 127-33 VAN CLEEF, Eugene (1887-1973) 9, 137-43 VAN PAASSEN, Christiaan (1917-1996) 22, 157-68 VAVILOV, Nikolay Ivanovich (1887-1943) 13, 109-16, 117-32 VEDOVA, Giuseppe Dalla (1834-1919) 23, 152-62 VERNADSKY, Vladimir Ivanovich (1863-1945) 7, 135-44 VICENS VIVES, J a u m e (1910-1960) 17, 92-105 VIDAL DE LA BLACHE, Paul (1845-1917) 12, 189 201 VILA I DINARES, Pau (1881-1980) 13, 133-40 VIVEN DE SAINT-MARTIN, Louis (1802-1896) 6, 133-8 VOLZ, Wilhelm (1870-1959) 9, 145-50 V O Y E I K O V , Alexander Ivanovich (1842-1916) 2, 135-41 VUIA, Ramulus (1881-1980) 13, 141 50 V U J E V I C , Pavle (1881-1966) 5, 129 31

174

Index

WAIBEL, Leo Heinrich (1888-1951) 6, 139-47 WALLACE, Alfred Russel (1823-1913) 8, 125-33 WANG YUNG (1899-1956) 9, 151-4 WARNTZ, William (1922-1988) 19, 102-7 WARD, Robert DeCourcy (1867-1931) 7, 145-50 WATSON, James Wreford (1915-1990) 17, 106-15 WELLINGTON, John Harold (1892-1981) 8, 135-40 WEULERSSE, Jacques (1905-1946) 1, 107-12 WILKES, Charles (1798-1877) 75, 91-104 WISSLER, Clark (1870-1947) 7, 151-4

WOODS, Julian Edmund Tenison (1832-1889) 21, 114-122 WOOLDRIDGE, Sidney William (1900-1963) 8, 141-9 WRIGHT, John Kirdand (1891-1969) 22, 169-81 WU SHANG SHI (1904-1947) 13, 151-4 XU HONGZU (1587-1641)

16, 31-6

YAMASAKI, Naomasa (1870-1928) /, 113-17 YI CHUNG-HWAN (1690-1756) 21, 123-130

ZHENG HE (1371-1433)

*

20, 119-25