I.

Introduction

Geography, from the Greek geographia, “earth description”, science that, broadly defined, deals with the structures and processes of the Earth’s physical and human environments and the interactions between the two, particularly in their spatial contexts. Put even more broadly, geographers seek to understand the way our world works and why it appears as it does. This involves explaining the processes operating below, on, and above the Earth’s surface and the ways in which these processes have created the landscapes around us and continue to change them; as well as the ways in which human beings have been affected by and in turn have modified the natural environment, and how and why human structures and activities have developed in different ways in particular places.

The universal nature of geography means, in fact, that, like history, it is very hard to define satisfactorily. Geographers themselves have struggled, and failed, over the years to come up with a single definition—a problem that has been compounded by the fact that what has been studied as geography has changed substantially over the past 2,000 years (see History of Geography below). Notwithstanding this, however, there is one thing that most, if not all, definitions agree upon, that geography is the discipline that is particularly concerned with spatial relationships.

II.

Branches of Geography

Modern geography has been divided conventionally into two main traditions: systematic and regional geography. Systematic geography is concerned with the formulation of general laws and principles and is divided into two branches: physical geography and human geography. Each of these branches is subdivided into several specialist fields. Regional geography is concerned with the combinations of physical and human-made features that characterize different regions on the Earth’s surface and that distinguish one region from another. During the first half of the 20th century the regional approach dominated geographical research. However, during the 1940s it began to fall out of favour and today the systematic branches are predominant.

The eclipse of regional geography during the past 50 years has not been universal, however. In France and Germany it has maintained a rather stronger position, in part because of the different approach to the region in these countries. In contrast to the Anglo-American tradition, where regional geography became characterized by (and ultimately came to be rejected because of) a preoccupation with the unique nature of regions and with description rather than analysis, in France and, particularly, Germany, regional studies have been more concerned with discovering the nomothetic (law-controlled) aspects of particular areas.

One geographical discipline that cuts across the traditional boundaries is that of cartography. Because of the spatial aspect of much geographical research, maps have been considered the most important of the geographer’s tools. Whatever their area of interest, all geographers are trained, to a greater or lesser extent, in the techniques of map-making. The advent of the use of the computer in cartography over the past 30 years has not only revolutionized the practical aspects of map-making, it has also enabled geographers to tackle completely new areas of research. Computers have allowed them both to analyse larger and more complex amounts of data and to transform the results of that analysis into new forms of maps. These can range from the three-dimensional representation of particular topographical features to the mapping of different kinds of perceptual space.

A.

Systematic Geography

This section describes briefly the main branches of contemporary systematic geography and their respective subdisciplines. The methodologies they employ and their historical development are outlined in the sections that follow. More detailed discussion of these areas and of the current concerns and future trends within systematic geography can be found in the Physical Geography and Human Geography articles. The main subdisciplines of systematic geography also have their own articles.

A.1.

Physical Geography

The branch of systematic geography concerned with the physical environment, physical geography, encompasses a number of subject areas with close links to other environmental disciplines, notably geomorphology, climatology, biogeography, pedology, and hydrology. Oceanography is also sometimes classified within physical geography. Of these sub-disciplines probably the most important historically is geomorphology, which has played the leading role in the development of the theoretical underpinnings of physical geography. The evolution of the other subject areas has tended instead to reflect developments in their linked disciplines.

Geomorphology, which is linked to geology, is the study of the landforms on the Earth’s surface, their history, and the processes that mould them, notably weathering, erosion, transportation, deposition, and the forces associated with plate tectonics. In recent years, in line with a general tendency within geography, several distinct specializations have emerged within geomorphology, such as anthropogeomorphology and applied geomorphology. The former is the study of the role of human beings as active geomorphological agents. Its development reflects our increasing ability to mould the environment—it is estimated, for example, that human activities now move more rock and soil in a year than do natural processes. The increasing understanding of the role of process and form in landform evolution and the development of successful predictive models has enabled the emergence of applied geomorphology, which allows physical geographers to advise on the probable impact of activities such as road construction or flood control schemes.

Climatology, the study of the long-term behaviour of the atmosphere in specific areas is closely linked to meteorology. It is concerned with explaining, generally in statistical terms, the causes of both present and past climates. In recent years technological advances in the measurement of climatic factors and the analysis of the resulting data have enabled the development of a number of specialisms within climatology. They include bioclimatology, the study of the relationship between living organisms and climate; applied climatology, in which climatic information is used to study environmental, social, and economic problems; and palaeoclimatology, the study of the history of the Earth’s climate, using both geological and historical records.

Biogeography, which is linked to ecology, is the study of the biosphere and of human effects on plants and animals. It encompasses such things as the changing distribution of plants and animals over the Earth (phytogeography and zoogeography) and the human impact on the ecology of the Quaternary period. Pedology involves the study of the formation, composition, and distribution of soils, as well as their classification. Hydrology is the study of the waters of the Earth, including their occurrence, distribution in space and time, and their relation to people and the natural environment. Oceanography is the study of the physical, chemical, and biological processes that maintain the structure and motion of the salt waters that cover three quarters of the Earth’s surface.

A.2.

Human Geography

Human geography involves the study of people and their activities and structures, whether economic, social, cultural, or political. It also encompasses the ways in which people interact with the natural environment. At its simplest this involves the description, analysis, and mapping of where, for example, industries or towns are located, but human geographers’ concerns are generally far more complex than this. In particular, they seek to understand how and why human structures and activities have developed in particular ways in particular places. Like physical geography, human geography is divided into a number of specialized areas of research—economic, political, social, cultural, urban, and historical geography.

Economic geography is the study of the ways in which patterns of economic activity and their relationship to the exploitation of natural resources vary across the surface of the Earth. It deals with the distribution of resources and the production and consumption of goods and services. Economic geography can be divided into four major interlinked sub-fields: agricultural, development, industrial, and transport geography. In recent years economic geographers have been particularly concerned with understanding uneven economic development, as well as the ways in which social structures can be related to economic activity.

Modern political geography involves the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. It is concerned with the interrelationships between people, state, and territory. Conventionally, the state acts as the pivotal scale of study. Above the state is the level of international relations, or geopolitics. Below the state level is the political geography of localities.

Social geography is concerned with the social significance attached to place and with analysing the spatial structures that give rise to different social relations, in particular the processes that create inequality. Social geographers are concerned not just with mapping and explaining the geography of issues such as racism or gender relations, but also with analysing the role of space in these issues. Cultural geography has its roots in the study of the evolution of rural landscapes. Modern cultural geographers, however, are equally interested in the urban, reflecting their growing concern with the idea of landscape-as-text, and with understanding how people perceive both places and other people. In recent years the links between social and cultural geography have increased, and researchers have become involved in studying an increasingly broad range of issues. Both social and cultural geographers draw on contemporary developments in the study of social sciences and literature, such as feminism and postmodernism, to analyse the language and images used to represent different groups and places. This has led, for example, to the development of “geographies” of previously marginalized groups, such as gay men and lesbians, children, and disabled people, which addresses the link between the way such groups are socially and culturally constructed and their use of space.

Urban geography is concerned with the study of towns and cities, including both their internal characteristics and structure, and the spatial and other relationships between them. In recent years researchers have been particularly concerned with the way urban areas are changing, and how these changes are explained by variations in political and economic power relationships between different groups. Areas of research include: the rise of gentrification and suburbanization; the changing location of workplaces within cities; variations in access to public services; and the way the growth of local, issue-based politics has influenced power relations and urban structures.

Historical geography is concerned with the development of human structures and activities over time. In the past human geographers tended to be concerned with the historical development of particular regions, including changes in settlement patterns and economic activity. Modern historical geographers are concerned more with global trends, such as the geography of the emergence of industrial capitalism, or of colonialism.

B.

Regional Geography

This is the branch of geography that is concerned with understanding geographical complexity by comparing and contrasting the characteristics of different regions on the Earth’s surface, and by assessing the various relationships between them. The concept of the region has been very important in the development of geography as a distinct discipline (see History of Geography below) because of the way it integrates the human and physical environments, enabling an understanding of the interactions between them in different localities. However, few researchers in the English-speaking world would today describe themselves as specifically regional geographers. Even so, the regional concept is still in use as an analytical tool. For example, it has been used to study the ways in which the concentration of particular skills influence where firms choose to locate, or the influence of the media on the creation of regional identities.

The integrative approach that characterized regional geography in the past also survives in modern landscape geography, which is concerned with the analysis of the nature of place as an interaction between communities and environments. To this end landscape geographers look not only at the physical realities of the human and natural environments, but also at the way these environments are and have been perceived, and the way this has acted as an active agent in landscape development. This contrasts with the German tradition of landscape geography (Landschaftskunde), in which the landscape is seen as the product of the interaction of human and physical factors and only such features as are repetitive and appear in accordance with certain rules and laws are taken into account. The aim is to develop and explain a typology of landscapes.

III.

Methodology

The chief goal of geographers is to understand the structures and processes that form the Earth’s physical environment and the way humans have utilized and modified that environment, particularly in spatial terms. To do this they collect, analyse, and interpret data using a wide variety of techniques and tools.

A.

Data Collection

Geographers use two kinds of data, primary and secondary. Primary data is derived from fieldwork. Physical geography fieldwork techniques include surveying and mapping; the collection of physical samples, such as rocks and soils, for later analysis; observation, for example of cloud formations; photography; and measurement. The taking of measurements—whether of changes in particle size across a beach, in stream or ice flows, in soil creep, or in rainfall and temperature—normally involves statistical sampling techniques and because of the nature of physical processes is generally carried out over extended periods, either continuously or at regular intervals. Human geographers also use mapping and statistical sampling, as well as many of the behavioural techniques of sociology and psychology, such as participant observation, questionnaires, and interviews.

Regional geography has traditionally relied heavily upon fieldwork, with the regional survey being the main data-gathering method. Originally introduced in the late 19th century as an educational exercise to inform students about the particular relationships between land and life in their locale, the regional survey flourished in Europe until the eclipse of regional geography in the 1950s. In one of the best-known uses of the regional survey, initiated by Sir Laurence Dudley Stamp, schoolchildren systematically mapped the land use of the whole of Britain between 1930 and 1934. The resulting Land Utilisation Survey was subsequently widely used by planners. In France the regional-survey tradition has survived and continues to be practised in many schools and universities.

Although maps are among the most important secondary sources used by geographers, they are far from the only ones. Others include statistical material produced by governments and multinational organizations, like the UN, such as population censuses; agricultural and industrial output, and unemployment figures; land-use surveys; trade statistics; infant mortality rates; and debt-service ratios. Geographers also make use of historical sources such as parish and port records and land enclosure acts, as well as of information derived from the technological advances of the past 50 years. For example, improvements in remote sensing methods have enabled detailed studies of the Earth’s environment and its resources utilizing aerial photographs and satellite images (see aerial survey). Physical geographers have also made use of the information provided by radar technology to understand better weather processes and environmental pollution, while the data provided by the exploration of the ocean floor, notably through the Deep Sea Drilling Programme (1964-1983) and its successor, the Ocean Drilling Programme, has been central to the development of plate tectonics theory and to the proof of continental drift. Contemporary researchers within human geography also make use of remote sensing images as well as of many secondary sources formerly considered to be outside the purview of geographers, such as the media, popular culture, literature, and film, which are subjected to various forms of analysis.

B.

Analysis and Interpretation

The map remains probably the most important analytical tool of geography and may be used to record either simple data or the results of a complicated geographical study. However, since the 1950s geographers have also increasingly resorted to statistical and other quantitative techniques to analyse data, a process that has been enormously facilitated by improvements in computer technology. The use of quantitative methods enables geographers to treat large amounts of data and a large number of variables in an objective manner, often based on the development of predictive models. This is particularly true in physical geography, where the emphasis today tends to be on the study of the relationship between form and process.

Increasingly important as both data sources and analytical tools are geographical information systems (GIS; see Cartography: Geographical Information Systems). These are special-purpose computer databases in which all the information is linked to a spatial reference system, and which integrate various kinds of data such as aerial and satellite images; census material; information about land use, such as the location of industrial and residential zones, forests, recreational areas, and agricultural land; soil maps; rainfall distribution statistics; and transport statistics. GIS can be used to analyse, for example, the spatial relationships between different environmental phenomena, such as landforms, soils, and vegetation; the impact on the environment of particular kinds of economic activity; changes in the spatial structure of voting patterns; or the relationship between the spatial distribution of particular industries and of low- and middle-income populations within urban areas.

Not all contemporary geographers use quantitative methods. Partly in reaction to the “quantitative revolution” in human geography of the late 1950s and 1960s, in which research and analysis became preoccupied with the study of purely spatial relationships expressed in terms of statistical models, a variety of new approaches has developed. So-called radical geographers, for example, have found in Marxist theory a useful framework, based on the interplay of power and economic relationships, for analysing the way urban environments, for example, have developed and operate. This trend has been particularly important in economic, urban and political geography. More recently, other researchers, particularly in cultural and social geography, influenced in part by trends in literary criticism and social anthropology have utilized such tools as “text” analysis as well as qualitative techniques such as applied factor analysis and principal components analysis.

IV.

History of Geography

Although geography is one of the oldest areas of human inquiry, it is also one of the most recent intellectual disciplines in modern academia. Since the earliest times human beings have explored and attempted to map and understand the workings of the world around them. However it was not until the 17th century that geography began to emerge as an independent intellectual discipline and not until the late 19th century that it was accepted as an academic discipline, with the founding of the first university geography departments.

A.

Origins of Geography

Although prehistoric peoples clearly explored their world, they did not generally record the results—albeit the first topographical maps date back more than 8,000 years to the Neolithic period (see History of Cartography). The recording of the results of exploration and the description of the observable features of different places begins with such ancient peoples as the Chinese, Egyptians, and Phoenicians (see Phoenician Exploration). By 1400 bc, for example, the shores of the Mediterranean Sea had been explored and charted, and during the next thousand years early explorers visited the British Isles and navigated most of the African coast.

The origins of geography as an intellectual discipline, however, are normally traced back to ancient Greece and to such figures as Thales, Anaximander, Herodotus, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Strabo, and Ptolemy. Their contributions did much to advance geographical theory and gave the Western world its first important knowledge relating to the form, size, and general nature of the Earth. It should be understood, however, that there was no concept of geography as we know it today. The term “geography” rather referred to a form of applied mathematics concerned with the measurement of the Earth’s dimensions and intimately linked to astronomy. The detailed description of the features of the Earth was called chorography and was encompassed within what was then defined as history.

During the 300s bc, the philosopher and scientist Aristotle became the first person to demonstrate that the Earth was round. He based his hypothesis on the arguments that all matter tends to fall together towards a common centre, that the Earth throws a circular shadow on the moon during an eclipse, and that in travelling from north to south new constellations become visible and familiar ones disappear. A century later, the mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and poet Eratosthenes was the first person to calculate accurately the circumference of the Earth. One of the candidates for the title “father of geography” and the first person to use the word “geography” in an important treatise on the mathematics of Earth measurement, he also made a map of the world using a crude form of latitude and longitude. The astronomer Hipparchus in the 2nd century bc also devised a system of latitude and longitude, as well as discovering the precession of the equinoxes and calculating the length of the tropical year. His mathematical work also provided the basis for the development of trigonometry (essential to the development of cartography), which was further advanced by the astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy during the 2nd century ad.

The other main candidate for “father of geography”, Ptolemy utilized these advances to develop the coordinate system of latitude and longitude that is still in use. In his famous Geographike syntaxis, Ptolemy located 8,000 places on the surface of the Earth using this system. He also proposed new methods of map-making, including the creation of atlases. Although he used less accurate measurements of the circumference of the Earth, preferring the later and smaller calculation of the Stoic philosopher Posidonius to that of Eratosthenes, Ptolemy nevertheless contributed important descriptions and maps of the known world. His maps clearly indicated his understanding of the problems involved in representing the spherical Earth on a flat surface.

The travels, conquests, and colonizing activities of the Greeks resulted in the accumulation of considerable geographical information and stimulated geographical writing. Although Herodotus, writing in the 5th century bc, is generally considered to be the “father of history” he might also be considered the father of topographic description in geography. His great work History (from the Greek for “inquiry”) is not history as we know it today. It also includes information about earthquakes, the depths of the sea and delta-forming rivers, climates, and mountains, as well as details of human customs and traditions. Some 400 years later the geographer and historian Strabo wrote a 17-volume encyclopedia of the known world entitled Geographica, which includes attempts to explain cultural distinctiveness, and types of government and customs in particular places.

B.

Medieval Geography

In part owing to the ascendancy of a Christian tradition that was inimical to Greek traditions of scientific inquiry, after about the 4th century ad the intellectual development of geography in Europe entered a period of stagnation that lasted until the 15th century. In addition, during the Middle Ages, Europeans carried out little travel and exploration. Only the Vikings of Scandinavia were active in exploration (see Viking Exploration). In contrast to this was the flowering of Islamic civilization from the 7th century. Arab scholars interpreted, tested, and added to the work of the ancient Greeks and also contributed much to exploration—the Islamic field of influence eventually stretched in a great 15,000-km (9,320-mi) arc from Mauritania in the west to Indonesia in the east. As early as the 8th century, Arab scholars were translating the works of their Greek predecessors. Only after these texts were translated into Latin did Greek geographical learning spread back into Europe during the 15th century, contributing to the renewed interest in exploration and geographical method during the Renaissance.

Among the major figures of Islamic geography are al-Muqaddasi, al-Idrisi, Ibn Batuta, and Ibn Khaldun. Al-Muqaddasi (945-988) has been described as the most eminent geographer of the Middle Ages. A pioneer of fieldwork, his book The Best Divisions of the Study of Climate is based solely on personal observation and extensive travel. The scientist al-Idrisi wrote another of the great geographical works of the medieval period (The Book of Roger), which contains information from his own travels and also reports from people sent to obtain new information. He also demonstrated that the five zones of the Greek climatic system did not correspond to reality, proposing instead a more sophisticated and accurate world climatic system. Ibn Batuta recorded his travels—extending from Spain in the west to China in the east, and from Timbuktu to the Russian steppe—in his book Rihlah (Travels). The geographer and historian Ibn Khaldun is best remembered for his monumental Muqaddamah, the introductory volume to his Kitab al-Ibar (Universal History), in which he analysed the rise and fall of empires, and established the foundation for historical geography.

In China, too, exploration and learning flourished. Chinese travellers “discovered” Europe and India long before their European counterparts reached China. At this time Chinese culture was the most efficient in the world in the practical application of knowledge. The study of geography was advanced beyond anything known in the West—among other things the Chinese used coordinates and triangulation to produce detailed maps. During the 14th century China broke with its traditional policy of isolation when the emperor sent one of the largest fleets then known to carry out one of the most comprehensive feats of exploration in history. Led by Zheng He, this fleet between 1405 and 1421 carried out six voyages reaching South East Asia, India, the Persian Gulf, eastern Africa, and Egypt.

C.

The Age of Exploration

The travels of the Italian explorer Marco Polo in the 1200s, the Crusades of the 1100s and 1200s, and the re-entry of Greek learning into the intellectual world of Europe during the early 15th century paved the way for the period of explosion of geographical knowledge during the 15th and 16th centuries that became known as the Age of Exploration. The voyages of discovery were in many cases planned and supported by governments and merchant companies, and motivated by a variety of reasons, notably the spread of Christianity and trade—initially for spices, later for gold and slaves.

The first voyages were initiated in the early 15th century by Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, who wanted to find a route to the east that was not under Muslim control. By the time of Henry’s death in 1460 ships had reached the Guinea coast of West Africa; in 1473 the equator was crossed; in 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope; in 1497 Vasco da Gama made the first voyage from Europe to India; and in 1542 the Portuguese reached Japan. During this period Spain was also involved in exploration, but in the opposite (i.e. westerly) direction. The most notable explorations carried out under the Spanish aegis were those of Christopher Columbus in the 1490s and of Ferdinand Magellan in the early 16th century. It was Magellan who finally completed the western route, reaching Guam in the Marianas Islands in 1521. He sailed on to the Philippines, where he was killed. His crew completed the circumnavigation across the Indian Ocean back to Spain in 1522, confirming finally that the Earth was spherical. As the economic returns of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries began to be appreciated the other European powers sponsored their own voyages, led by such people as John and Sebastian Cabot, Francis Drake, Jacques Cartier, and Sir Martin Frobisher.

The voyages of discovery were important in several ways for the subsequent development of geography. First, they transformed European knowledge about the Earth into a more or less coherent body of knowledge. This development was encouraged by a resurgence of topographical writing. Numerous accounts (of varying accuracy) of voyages and encyclopedic works on the geography of the world were published. Secondly, they brought about important developments in cartography. For example, the confirmation of the spherical nature of the globe posed considerable problems for map-makers used to representing a flat Earth. It was the Flemish geographer, cartographer, and mathematician Gerardus Mercator who solved the mathematical problems of representing three dimensions on a flat surface, devising in 1568 the system of map projection that was named after him and is still widely used. It was during this period also that the first globes were made and surveying skills and instruments developed. Thirdly, it reinforced the relationship between geography and territorial expansion, first perceived by Strabo, that was to peak during the empire-building of the 19th century. Finally, the new information about the realities of the world combined with parallel developments in astronomy to challenge, and ultimately to shatter, the prevailing cosmological traditions. During the medieval period Greek traditions of scientific enquiry had been replaced by a literal interpretation of the Bible and the development of a cosmology in which a flat, disc-shaped Earth was at the centre of the universe and Jerusalem at the centre of the Earth.

D.

Foundations of Modern Geography

Although geography had begun to emerge as a separate intellectual pursuit during the 16th century, it had no clearly defined boundaries: anyone who wrote about the Earth could claim to be a geographer. In fact it was four German scholars who, between the mid-17th and mid-19th centuries, are considered to be largely responsible for the establishment of geography’s intellectual boundaries and with providing it with a philosophical and theoretical framework. The first of these was the geographer Bernhardus Varenius. Through his Geographia generalis, published in 1650, he finally delimited geography as something separate from cosmography by defining it as being concerned only with the Earth. His other main contribution to the formalization of geography as an intellectual discipline was his division of the subject into general and special geography, originating what we now call systematic and regional geography.

General geography deals with the world as a unit and is restricted to the physical elements of the Earth that can by studied using scientific methods and by the application of natural laws. Varenius had intended to follow Geographia generalis with a treatise on special geography, but died before he could start it, aged just 28. However, he defined special geography as the description of particular places based upon “celestial conditions”, including climate and climatic zones; terrestrial conditions; and human conditions, including trade, settlement, and forms of government. His incorporation of human geography into special rather than general geography reflects the problems of applying natural laws to social and cultural phenomena.

The second was the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Although best known for his critiques of science, morality, and art, Kant also lectured on geography for 40 years from 1756. His views on the subject survive in various course notes and in Pysische geographie (Physical Geography), published in 1802, two years before his death. In this book he argued that geography and history are the two fundamental sciences as together they make up all human knowledge. Geography, he said, was description according to space; history, description according to time. This linking of geography with space was to have a profound influence on the future development of the discipline, even though later geographers have found it impracticable to draw such a sharp division between space and time. Kant also differentiated between physical geography and human geography, considering the former to be the foundation of all other geographies. These he divided into five types: moral, political, commercial, theological, and mathematical geography. The first four deal with expressions of human occupancy of the Earth, while mathematical geography deals with the shape, size, and motion of the Earth and its relationships to the solar system.

Kant had provided geography with a philosophical foundation. Alexander Humboldt and Carl Ritter during the first half of the 19th century laid down its scientific foundations. Considered to be the fathers of modern geography, they were united in their criticism of the unsystematic treatment of geographical data by most of their predecessors and in their belief in the unity of nature. For them the role of research was to clarify this unity using scientific, comparative inductive methods. An extensive traveller and polymath, Humboldt was also a gifted field observer who applied his knowledge of physical processes to the systematic classification and comparative description of geographical features. He devised methods for measuring the phenomena he observed. His greatest contributions lay in the development of systematic physical geography, but he also produced a number of classic geographical studies based on his travels in Latin America and Russia. His masterwork is Kosmos (Cosmos), published in five volumes between 1845 and 1852. Subtitled Sketch of a Physical Description of the World, it is an attempt to assemble all contemporary knowledge of the physical world and is considered one of the great geographical works of all time.

Ritter differed from Humboldt in that his views were shaped by his religious outlook. His scientific stance was teleological—he believed that unity in nature formed a God-given system to further the development of human beings and that the ultimate aim of scientific research was to discover the plans of God. However, he combined this basic standpoint with critical scientific precision. Like Humboldt he had a great ability to systematize extensive material which he applied primarily to the study of particular places. Because of this he is often considered to be the father of modern regional geography. His regional approach tended to be human in focus and to emphasize regional and historical coherence. The culmination of his work was Die Erdkunde im Verhältnis zur Natur und Geschichte des Menschen (Geography and Its Relation to Nature and the History of Man). Published in 19 parts between 1817 and 1859 this was intended ultimately to be a comparative study of all the world’s major regions, but was never finished—the published volumes concentrate on Africa and Asia. Together with Kosmos, Erdkunde is considered to be one of the two founding works of modern geography.

At the same time as Humboldt and Ritter were establishing the scientific basis of geographical studies, the institutionalization of geography was beginning with the foundation of the first geographical societies. The earliest were those founded in Paris (1821), Berlin (1827), and London (1830; see Royal Geographical Society). Others quickly followed, and by 1890 more than 80 had been established in all parts of the world including Mexico (1833), Brazil (1838), Russia (1845), and the United States (the American Geographical Society in 1851 and the National Geographic Society in 1888). Many of these societies sponsored important exploratory expeditions. The aim of such activities was not always purely scientific, however. In Europe, in particular, they were often carried out in support of national ambitions. Indeed, geography generally played a central role in 19th century European imperialism, by providing information essential for the colonization and subsequent administration and economic exploitation of new territories. Because of this role, geography became one of the leading subjects in the public elementary school systems that were being established throughout Europe and North America at this time.

In contrast to this, geography found it far harder to take its place as a university-level discipline. It was hampered first by its popular identification with the descriptive accounts of explorers, which undermined its claims to scientific respectability. The second stumbling block was the universal nature of geography’s interests—encompassing both the natural and human environments—which made it appear vague and diffuse to other academics, and without a distinctive area of study and methodology. In fact it was not until the early 1870s that the first university chairs were established, in Switzerland and Germany. Other continental European countries, including France, began to follow suit towards the end of the decade. In Britain and the United States, however, the establishment of geography as an academic discipline met with stronger resistance. In the former, although permanent university teaching began with the appointment of Halford Mackinder to a readership at Oxford University in 1887, the first departments of geography were not established until the beginning of the 20th century (Oxford 1900; Cambridge 1908). Similarly, in the United States, although individuals were appointed to teach geography from the late 1870s, the first department was not established until 1903 in Chicago.

E.

The 20th Century: Environmental Determinism and Regions

In seeking to establish a firm basis for the existence of the discipline, geographers at the turn of the century were inevitably influenced by broader developments within the scientific community. In particular, the publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin and the subsequent wider acceptance of his ideas on evolution had a profound influence on their approach to studying the physical and human environments.

Many researchers concerned with the physical environment applied the concept of evolution to the development of landscapes over time, an approach that brought them closer to geologists rather than to other geographers. These early practitioners of what came to be known as geomorphology tended to play down, if not ignore totally, the biological elements of nature, including human beings—encouraging the split between physical and human systematic geography that still characterizes the discipline. This trend, which was strongest in the United States, was possibly not surprising given the fact that many of the leading names in the early development of academic physical geography were geologists by training and many geography departments grew out of geology departments. Probably the most influential name here is the American William Morris Davis. Although he argued for the unifying nature of geography his research and teaching was almost exclusively within the field of geomorphology. He is best known for his development of the “geographical cycle”. This was a model of erosion, first published in 1899, based on the evolution of landscapes through youth and maturity, to old age as a result of the interaction of structure, process, and time. Although criticized at the time and subsequently, the Davisian cycle provided the core focus of physical geography research and teaching in the United States and Britain until the 1940s.

In human geography the main impact of Darwin’s ideas was in terms of approaches to the relationship between people and the environments in which they lived. In particular the concept of evolution was associated with what came to be known as environmental determinism. The German geographer Friedrich Ratzel is generally considered to be the founder of environmental determinism, as well as the founder of modern human geography. In the first volume of his chief work, Anthropogeographie (1882) he broke new ground in demonstrating that cultural as well as natural phenomena could be subject to systematic study. However, he also stressed the extent to which people lived under nature’s laws, and argued that cultural forms were adapted to and determined by the local physical environment. In the second volume, published in 1891 Ratzel modified his views, concentrating more on the historical and cultural background to the distribution of settlement forms and migrations. However, it was the first volume of Anthropogeographie that had the most impact internationally, being taken up particularly by American geographers who in some cases used it as the basis to develop extreme deterministic arguments. Notable among these were Ellen Churchill Semple and Ellsworth Huntington, who argued that the physical environment also affected the character of a people. From such arguments they, and others, derived a number of essentially racist conclusions about peoples from different parts of the world.

In Europe, the leading geographers largely rejected determinism. Nonetheless, the influence of the environment remained very important. Geographers such as Paul Vidal de la Blache, the most influential figure in regional and human geography in France or Herbert J. Fleure in Britain evolved the concept of environmental possibilism, in which the environment influences human activity without determining it, while in return human beings affect the physical environment. The debate between possibilists and determinists was one of the principal characteristics of human geography throughout the early decades of this century. However, by the 1940s, for a variety of reasons, including lack of academic rigour and the rise of Nazism in Germany, which utilized deterministic arguments, environmental determinism had been discredited.

During this period, geographers in Germany, France, and Britain were also developing the idea of the region, seeing in it an analytical approach that by providing a synthesis between the physical and human aspects of the environment was uniquely geographical—and as such an answer to the discipline’s academic critics. In Germany Ferdinand von Richthofen, working at the turn of the century, and, subsequently, Alfred Hettner developed the methodological framework established by Humboldt and Ritter. Both followed Kant in taking a chorological approach, in that they argued that the purpose of systematic geography was to provide an understanding of causal relationships of phenomena in particular areas, and that this understanding was to be expressed in general principles applicable to the interpretation of individual regions. In other words the study of unique phenomena was needed to construct generalizations, or laws, and laws were needed to understand the particular combination of unique phenomena that make up regions. Hettner was particularly concerned about the growing split between human and physical geography. In his monumental work Die Geographie, ihre Geschichte, ihr Wesen, und ihre Methoden (Geography, Its History, Its Nature, and Its Methods; 1927) he argued that the role of geography was to bridge the gap between the human and physical sciences. Through this book and other publications he dominated German geography until the 1940s.

The French geographical tradition is intimately concerned with the work of Paul Vidal de la Blache. His approach reflects two factors. First, in contrast to the geological background of most early US and British academic geographers, his training was in classics and history. Secondly, and again in contrast to the US and British experience, in France the main criticisms of geography as an independent discipline came from historians and sociologists rather than geologists. Vidal de la Blache thus approached geography from its human and cultural aspects. At the same time, however, he emphasized that the natural and human environments were intimately linked, acting upon each other to produce unique genres de vie, or lifestyles, located in distinct regions, or pays. Because of this he believed regional rather than systematic studies were at the core of geography. His theories and methodology were refined and developed by researchers such as Jean Brunhes and Emmanuel de Martonne.

In Britain, Mackinder was a strong proponent of the regional approach. He argued that advances in physical geography had outstripped those in human geography, and that it was only possible to understand the latter in the context of geomorphology and biogeography. He thought this could best be achieved by the study of regions rather than by a systematic approach. Another influential British proponent was Andrew Herbertson who concentrated on the identification of physical regions based on climate and vegetation. He largely excluded people from his influential work on the major natural regions of the world, published in 1905. In contrast, Fleure wrote about human regions. He focused on “lived experience” and emphasized relationships not just between people and environment, but also between different groups of people, defining regions by the types of communities contained within them.

In the United States by the 1920s a growing number of geographers were concerned about both the widening divisions within systematic geography and the inadequacies of environmental determinism. One of the foremost was Carl Sauer who, influenced particularly by the French school of human geography and by the anthropologist Franz Boas, argued for a chorological approach based on the fact that the “area or landscape is the field of geography”. In 1925 he published a famous paper on the morphology of landscape, which marked not only the beginning of the end for determinism, but also the start of the modern concept of landscape geography in the English-speaking world. In addition it represented the beginning of the reintegration of geography in the United States with the wider regional tradition in Europe. The regional approach in the United States was given new impetus in 1939 when Richard Hartshorne published his seminal overview of the discipline: The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past. Influenced by the German geographers, he also viewed geography as a chorological science and reiterated Kant’s idea that geography’s role was the analysis and synthesis of phenomena in space and at a particular time, normally the present. The approach it inspired emphasized empirical studies in contemporary regional analysis, in contrast to Sauer’s concern with the historical and cultural, and finally established regional geography as the predominant approach in the English-speaking world.

F.

The 1960s: The Quantitative Revolution

Regional geography continued to flourish until the mid-1950s when it suffered from a series of intellectual attacks that resulted in its eclipse as the main approach to the discipline. A new generation of geographers emerged who were keen to turn geography into a true science based on the testing of theories and the construction of laws. The opposition to the traditional approach was spearheaded, in the United States, by Fred Schaefer, who in 1953 published a critique entitled Exceptionalism in Geography. He and others argued that the regional approach, which had become in the United States and Britain characterized mostly by description and very little explanation, was lacking in analysis and scientific rigour. In particular they criticized its emphasis on the uniqueness of each region, which prevented the development of general theories or models. Scientific methods of hypothesis testing and modelling were thus introduced to give geography more scientific respectability. Furthermore, the validity of the concept of the region as a self-contained unit was also challenged. It was argued that regions could no longer be considered separate from the national and international processes of economic development. Urbanization, industrialization, and the greater mobility of people and information had changed old ways of life to such an extent that it had become impossible to demarcate the boundaries of regions.

The systematic branches of geography had made more attempts to develop useful generalizations but were still seen as not having the academic respectability of other sciences. In particular, it was felt that human geography was being hampered by its lack of a scientific, theoretical basis. These criticisms led to the rise of a new approach to geography that rapidly became the dominant methodology, particularly in human geography, and which came to be generally known as the “quantitative revolution”.

The main characteristics of this approach were first, that it was underpinned by logical positivism, a philosophical approach that identifies knowledge with science, and which emphasizes empiricism and verifiability. The resultant methodology, largely borrowed from other disciplines, involved using models and statistical analysis to test and verify hypotheses, with the aim of establishing universal laws and of being able to predict, in the way that physics has laws and can predict events subject to those laws. Secondly, the focus of the new methodology was location, or the position of phenomena in space and the interactions between them. Hence, this approach to human geography came to be known as locational or spatial analysis. Many geographers, especially human geographers, felt that this new approach provided the discipline with a unique field of study capable of replacing regional geography: spatial science.

In contrast to earlier approaches to human geography, locational analysis ignored the natural environment. In the models constructed to simplify the complexities of real life and to allow underlying processes to be analysed and understood, the Earth was considered to be uniform, that is, flat and with no differentiating features to make one part of the surface more attractive for human activity than another. Most of the initial work utilizing such models was carried out in the United States, where locational analysis was spearheaded. It was largely inspired by the work of earlier researchers, few of whom were geographers. The most influential of these were the agricultural land use model proposed by the German landowner Johann Heinrich von Thünen as long ago as 1826; the urban development model first developed by the American sociologist Ed Burgess in 1924, and the subsequent modifications to it; the central place theory model of settlement location developed by the German geographer Walter Christaller in 1933, and the similar but more complex model developed by the German economist August Lösch in 1940. Although many researchers tended to focus at first on empirical work to refine these models, much original work of lasting importance was also undertaken. Among the best known are the work of Torsten Hägerstrand in Sweden on diffusion theory and that of Peter Haggett in Britain on central place theory and systems analysis.

Physical geographers also adopted a much more quantitative approach at this time, based round two main trends. The first was morphometry, or the quantitative study of the shape (morphology) of landforms based on detailed field and laboratory measurements and the development of models of the basic physical principles and relationships between form and process. This trend drew particularly on the work of civil engineers. The second was the application of systems analysis to the study of landforms, such as drainage basins. In this approach, derived from the general systems theory developed by the biologist L. Von Bertalanffy in the 1950s, a system is a set of interrelated elements and processes that (in the case of an open system) exchanges energy with its surroundings and through which materials flow; in a closed system only energy is exchanged.

G.

Contemporary Trends

Physical geography has continued to use more quantitative methods with an emphasis on form and process that has come to be known as the functional approach. The essentially scientific nature of this approach has allowed the development of models that have become increasingly accurate in terms of the prediction of short-term landform changes over small areas. Efforts are now under way to increase both the spatial scale and time periods covered by the models in an attempt to develop a better understanding of the landscape as a whole.

Within human geography, however, quantitative methods were coming under attack by the early 1970s. The use of models was initially criticized because of the exclusion of the natural environment. A more widespread criticism of locational analysis, however, related to its dependence on the assumptions of neo-classical economic theories generally, and particularly on the existence of a human being whose decisions are entirely determined by economic rationality (see Economics, History of: Neo-Classical Economics). Thus, the cheapest journey is always undertaken, the cheapest goods or services always purchased. The first response to such criticism was the development of new approaches known as behavioural geography, which emphasized the nature of the decision-making process and the role of the decision-maker. The identification of individual preferences, values and, indeed, prejudices assumed great importance in attempts to understand location. Such studies gained greatest prominence in the investigation of industrial location but were not confined to this area.

The criticisms continued, however. In the world at large the growth of the civil rights movement, feminism, and greater interest in the problems of the economically developing countries meant that increasing attention was being paid to social, political, and economic inequalities, and to what became known as social justice. Within human geography this engendered a much more radical approach that drew on Marxist theories. Such radical geographers become increasingly concerned with analysing the relationship between power and inequality in society, and with trying to understand the social, economic, political, and cultural patterns that arise from the distribution of scarce resources. The work in the 1970s of the American geographer Ray Pahl on “managerialism”, for example, was influential in establishing how the distribution of, and access to, resources such as housing and health care is controlled by “urban managers”, such as local authority housing managers and doctors. Also influential was the work of the British geographer David Harvey, then based in the United States. His book Social Justice and the City (1973) examined the functions and structures of urban areas, and how they influence the economic lives of people living in them, especially in the formation of ghettos. Not only was he instrumental, by being one of the first to use Marx’s theories and methodology, in affecting the approach of the new generation of human geographers, his work also encouraged researchers to concentrate on exploring how the distribution of urban facilities and services affected the “poor”.

At the same time other human geographers rejected the quantitative approach as being overly scientific and impersonal. Even within behavioural geography the place of people, their feelings, perceptions, and aspirations were not a consideration. Thus a more humanistic approach emerged, concerned with the effect of human subjectivity in the use of space. Such geographers began to emphasize the importance of understanding the link between the way groups of people perceive space and the way they behave in it. This led to the adoption of more qualitative and subjective approaches. Following the work of David Ley in Philadelphia’s black inner city, many humanistic geographers began to take an ethnographic approach to research based on first-hand fieldwork.

During the past 20 years the separation between human and physical geography has become even more extreme. The two sides, for example, no longer generally talk the same language when it comes to that formerly central geographical concept, space. Most physical geographers still accept the three-dimensional Euclidean view, while for many human geographers it has become a subjective concept, socially and culturally constructed. Within the two branches there has also been such an increase in specialization that many researchers now have more in common with their counterparts in other disciplines than with other geographers. These trends have led a number of geographers to express concern about the future of geography, fearing at the worst that it could cease to exist as a separate academic discipline—with physical geography subsumed within the earth sciences and human geography within the social sciences. To counter this there have been calls for a reassessment of and re-emphasis on geography’s role as a discipline of synthesis—with place replacing space as the focus for understanding the interactions between the human and physical environments, or rather between the human world of experience and the physical one of existence. Without such an integrative approach our understanding of problems like environmental degradation, pollution, and climatic change can be only partial and our solutions incomplete.