All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas

624 Pages·2005·8.61 MB·English

by  Geoffrey J. Martin

All Possible Worlds
A ll Possible Worlds
FOURTH E D IT IO N
G e o f f r e y J. M a r t in
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
2005
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best o f all possible worlds; and the
pessimist fears this is true.
-James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion
CONTE NTS
Figures ix
Preface xii
Acknowledgm ents xvi
1 A Field o f Study Called Geography / 1
PART 1 C L A S S I C A L / 11
2
The Beginnings of Classical Geography / 13
3
Geography in the M iddle Ages / 39
4 The Age o f Exploration / 61
5 The Impact o f Discoveries / 85
6 An End and a Beginning: Alexander von Humboldt
and Carl Ritter ! 107
PART 2 M O D E R N / 129
7 W hat Was New? / 131
8 The New Geography in Germany / 162
9 The New Geography in France / 195
10
The New Geography in Great Britain / 213
11 The New Geography in Russia, the Soviet Union, and the
Com m onwealth of Independent States / 248
12
The New Geography in Canada l 279
13
The New Geography in Sweden / 301
14
The New Geography in Japan / 323
15 The New Geography in the United States Before
World War I / 338
16 The New Geography in the United States: World War I to
M idcentury / 382
vn
viii / Contents
17 The New Geography in the United States: M idcentury to
the Present / 414
18 Applied Geography / 448
19 New M ethods of Observation and Analysis / 475
20 Innovation and Tradition / 498
Index o f N am es 539
Index o f Subjects 589
FIGURES
Figure 1 Troy 16
Figure 2 Tower of the Winds 17
Figure 3 The world according to Ptolemy, according to
Hecataeus, and according to Eratosthenes 20
Figure 4 Greek exploration, 470-310 24
. .
b c
Figure 5 Calculation of the Earth’s circumference (by Eratosthenes) 32
Figure 6 T -0 maps 42
Figure 7 Travels of Marco Polo 44
Figure 8 A Portolano chart of the Mediterranean (after Juan de la
Cosa, 1500) 47
Figure 9 Early Chinese explorers 55
Figure 10 The Age of Discovery, Bartholomew’s polar projection
(the Muslim world from the eighth to twelfth centuries;
Columbus; Vasco da Gama; Magellan; Cook) 62
Figure 11 The Treaty of Tordesillas 69
Figure 12 Apian’s heart-shaped world, 1530 75
Figure 13 Outline of Mercator’s world map, 1538 76
Figure 14 Outline of Mercator’s world map, 1569 78
Figure 15 The Cassini survey changes the position of the French
coastline 81
Figure 16 Drawings adapted from Sir John Mandeville 89
Figure 17 Alexander von Humboldt 108
Figure 18 Carl Ritter 109
Figure 19 Humboldt’s travels in Europe and Russia 111
Figure 20 Humboldt’s travels in the Americas 112
Figure 21 Isotherms of average annual temperature, 1845,
according to Humboldt 118
Figure 22 Maury’s model of atmospheric circulation 146
Figure 23 Maury’s wind chart of the tropical Atlantic Ocean, 1859 147
Figure 24 Group of all members of the Hayden Survey, In camp at
Red Buttes, junction of the North Platte and Sweetwater
Rivers 152
IX
x / Figures
Figure 25 Geological exploration of the Fortieth Parallel in the
King Survey 152
Figure 26 Lieutenant Wheeler, U.S. Engineer, camp and scientific
party near Belmont, Nevada 153
Figure 27 The Powell party, Sweetwater County, Wyoming,
May 1871 153
Figure 28 Koppen’s generalized continent 181
Figure 29a E. de Martonne in the field, Romania, 1937 204
Figure 29b E. de Martonne with Robert Ficheux 204
Figure 30 H. J. Mackinder 216
Figure 31 Mackinder’s world island 217
Figure 32 Herbertson’s major natural regions 221
Figure 33 Fawcett’s provinces of England 228
Figure 34 A landscape sketch by W. M. Davis: “Looking eastward
down the normal early-mature valley of Fourmile Creek” 351
Figure 35 The transcontinental excursion, 1912 354
Figure 36 Regional diagram in the eastern Cordillera of Peru 360
Figure 37 Regional diagram of the deep canyon regions of the
Apurimac 361
Figure 38 Ellsworth Huntington counting Sequoia rings with
Henry Canby 363
Figure 39 William Morris Davis and Preston E. James attend a
meeting at Clark University in the 1920s 389
Figure 40 A portion of the Montfort area 398
Figure 41 The committee appointed to design American Geography:
Inventory and Prospect 406
Figure 42 M. W. Dow building “Geographers on Film” (1979) 430
Figure 43 Executive Directors of the AAG: Ronald F. Abler
(1989-2002) and Douglas Richardson (2003- ) 432
Figure 44 The American Geographical Society staff, June 1956 432
Figure 45 Sesquicentennial of The American Geographical Society:
Director, Mary Lynne Bird, 2002 433
Figure 46 Delegates participating in the Eighth International
Geographical Congress aboard a Chicago horse-drawn
sightseeing coach 435
Figure 47 Delegates at the 17th Congress of the International
Geographical Union, 1952, Washington, D.C. 435
Figure 48 The International Geographical Congress, 1992,
Washington, D.C.: Initiating an institutional history of
the Congresses 436
Figures / xi
Figure 49 U.S.-U.S.S.R. field trip, Lake Baikal, Siberia, 1983 438
Figure 50 Territorial specialists (and others) meet with General
Le Ronde at the Paris Peace Conference, 1918-1919 453
Figure 51 Areal coverage of land classification maps in Michigan,
July 1939 456
Figure 52 Areas of the United States reported by area analysis
method 461
Figure 53 The Prime Meridian (Greenwich, London) 479
Figure 54 Planet Earth 483
Figure 55 Relation of population to rainfall in Nebraska 486
Figure 56 Diagram of concepts 517
Figure 57 The generalized pattern of habitats 519
PREFACE
The history of geography constitutes an investigation into the way in which
geographic subject matter was recognized, perceived, thought about, and evaluated
over the course of centuries. Ideas evolved; some were correct, some were errone­
ous, but all were part of a long-developing body of ideas that helped humankind
comprehend its surroundings. Out of this, a discipline and profession evolved. This
pattern emerged in several countries, each independent of the other, until recent times,
when ease of transport and circulation of the written and spoken word has facili­
tated the exchange of ideas.
Each national geography has its own necessities, and each country produces its
own sages, each with his or her own inimitable point of view that naturally
influences students. Nevertheless, since approximately the middle of the nineteenth
century an ever-increasing exchange of thought has taken place that permits inter­
national recognition of a geographical point of view. The history of this point of
view is offered as an account of the successive images scholars have developed con­
cerning arrangements and patterns on the face of the earth. Long before the dawn
of written history, men who explored even just a short distance from home were
aware of differences that distinguished one place from another. The concept of areal
differentiation had been bom. Some people were drawn to the challenge of form­
ing mental images of what it was like beyond the horizon and communicating these
images to others. The differentiation of the face of the earth is what John K. Wright
called “geodiversity.” This is what geography is all about.
How can a mental image of geodiversity be formed with sufficient clarity so that
it can be communicated to others? What things are combined in different places on
the earth to produce the complex characteristics of the world's landscapes? In the
first place, the world is much larger than humans are, and on its curved surface our
range of vision is narfowly restricted. Most of the fields of study in modem science
seek to form mental images of things and events that are much too small to observe
directly; but to form a mental image of a world that is too big to see, it is necess­
ary to generalize, to select certain features to build into the image, and to reject
other features as irrelevant. Furthermore, no coherent image of our world could be
put together unless the observed features are located in relation to a known point.
One of the distinctive characteristics of a geographer is a consistent concern about
the relative location of things.
Along with the formation of a mental image of geodiversity, however, has existed
our need to explain it. Scholars formulated many different explanations to make the
mental images seem plausible or acceptable. Their explanations, in turn, often deter­
mined the features they chose to observe. Scholars developed ideas concerning
X ll
Preface / xiii
sequences of events, or processes of change, that satisfied the need to understand;
they also sought and found mathematical regularities separate from the processes
of change that nevertheless satisfied the urge to explain the image of geodiversity.
The mental images and explanations of one generation seldom were satisfactory
to succeeding generations. There has been a continued search for new and more
perfect images and for explanations that accord with contemporary beliefs. These
changing images and the theoretical structures established to give them plausibility
provide us with the content of the history of geographical ideas.
There are certain built-in biases that should be recognized at the start. The text
embraces the whole sweep of the history of ideas from the viewpoint of this time
and looks at different nations of the world from the United States of America; inevi­
tably the view is foreshortened. Much attention is given to the twentieth century
and to a consideration of geographical ideas in America. However, the existence of
scholars in other times has not been ignored, nor have the geographical ideas and
developments of the non-Western world been overlooked.
THE CLASSICAL AND TH E MODERN PERIODS
Two major periods are defined. The first period extends for thousands of years
from the shadowy beginnings of geographical thought to the year 1859. This is the
classical period, during which relatively little attention was paid to the definition
of separate fields of study. This was the period when the world’s knowledge was
not so great that a scholar could not become master of it. So it is that almost every
Greek philosopher, often listed as a historian in the history books, may with equal
justification be called a geographer. Even in the eighteenth century, when the sep­
aration of fields of study had begun, there existed scholars such as Benjamin
Franklin, M. V. Lomonosov, and Montesquieu who are usually not known as geo­
graphers but nevertheless are important links in the history of geographical ideas.
The last person who could claim universal scholarship, however, was Alexander
von Humboldt; after his death, no one could attain the preeminence in the world
of scholarship Humboldt had been able to reach. The year 1859 functions as a
significant divide: Humboldt’s death was accompanied by that of Carl Ritter.
Alfred Hettner was bom, as was Darwin’s Origin o f Species. What we call the
classical period is discussed in Chapters 2 through 6.
The modem period began in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It is dis­
tinguished by the appearance of the professional field called geography—that is, a
field of study in which trained students could earn a living by being geographers.
To create a professional field, three conditions had to be satisfied. First, there
had to be a body of concepts or images that was accepted by the members of a pro­
fession, as well as an accepted way of asking questions and seeking answers. In other
words, there had to be a model of professional behavior. Second, no such model
could be formulated or passed on to later generations of scholars until there were
societies, associations, periodicals, and departments of geography in universities offer­
ing advanced training in concepts and methods. Third, graduate departments of geo­
graphy could not develop until paying jobs existed for students who had earned
advanced degrees from these departments. But when all three conditions were met,