Geography Strikes Back?

And I wonder if I can take you back to something we've talked about before, which is the 19th century, because I think I'm right in saying that at that period, certainly in some of the Western European countries, the countries which were then in the midst of, if you like, imperial exploration, there was a much greater interest in the importance, the role of geography, and possibly also in the idea that geography had a, a more of a determining influence on human societies and human affairs.

Well, I think in the, in the 19th century, you know, what you, what you have, particularly in Europe, is the rise of geography as a, as a university subject.

It's also a subject that is attracting growing interest in countries that were, for example, securing independence.

I'm thinking of Latin America in particular.

And where new leaderships in these decolonizing post-colonial, um, countries were also recognizing the importance of geography at school level as well.

So you've got these interesting forces at play with Europeans increasingly recognizing that geography is a subject that needs to be taken seriously, studied, uh, in august universities.

Elsewhere in the world, geography being recognized an essential part of nation-building alongside history because certainly, you know, as I said before, Chris, I mean, when I was doing research in Argentina, I was very struck that in the 19th century, geography was seen as part and parcel of so-called patriotic education.

And I think the other thing that's worth saying, that in the 19th century, geography was absolutely dominated by travelers, map makers, learned societies.

But I think by the time you get to the mid-late 19th century, geography starts to be considered more as a, as a science rather than just a kind of collection of exploratory storytelling, if you way.

So you, you've also got this, this scientific credentializing, I suppose, of geography, and that's where, in particular, you get the influence of so-called sort of, uh, neo-Darwinism, this idea that there is this relationship between humans and environment, and the physical environment plays a really important role in shaping human development

developmentYes.

Now, this is interesting, this idea of, of n- as you say, n- neo-Darwinism.

Go back to the middle or the late 19th century in countries like Britain, maybe also France and Germany.

The, uh, exploration of, uh, other parts of the world by, overwhelmingly by Western explorers led to a set of perceptions about the relationship between the physical geography of the environment and levels of human development.

And this, this relationship or this perception of a relationship was not always a very, uh, a very favorable one.

No.

And I think, I think this is why geogra- geography and offshoots like geopolitics have, have often attracted intellectual controversy and, and scandal in the sense of if you've got a, an intellectual or academic enterprise very strongly shaped, conditioned, enabled by a, a, a group of nations hugely committed to their particular imperial projects, very much underwritten by ideas of national, even evolutionary, um, hierarchies and, and, and a, and a perception as well that Europeans were a civilizing force.

Then one of the things that I think comes out of this period where geography, as I say, is becoming more institutionalized as a subject, at least in European, uh, countries, is geography also is, is an extractive science, in adverted commas, in the sense of these other parts of the world become places to map, to discover, to exploit, but also to take knowledge and insight, often from indigenous knowledge systems, and incorporate that into this scientific enterprise and a, and a set of associated frameworks.

So geography becomes global in that sense, and those scientific frameworks stretch and expand to take in new sources of information and insight.

But as I say, nonetheless underpinned by a, a framework that sees Europeans first and foremost as, as civilizational agents in the pursuit of wholesome knowledge.

At that time, there, there was, uh, quite a common belief that there was a relationship between the climatic characteristics of, say, Western European countries and levels of economic development, and conversely, the climatic characteristics of, say, equatorial countries or semi-tropical countries and their perceived or actual lower levels of economic development.

So there was this perception that somehow the climatic environment of, say, Northwest Europe was beneficial, was actually instrumental, even deterministic in encouraging, in shaping the rapid economic development of Europe.

So this civilizational hierarchies, uh, map onto environments, climates, ecologies, I think very much, um, gathered vigor in the 19th and certainly the 20th century.

And if you remember, Chris, I mean, countries like Australia, y- you know, would be described as the sort of the lucky country in the sense of having a, a, a sort of a climate and environment, having huge amounts of space for settler communities to take, take hold of, to make their presence dominant, and actually to create a sort of, a thriving, urbanizing, industrializing country that Australia became in the aftermath of Captain Cook setting foot in Botany Bay in the 18th century onwards.

So, so a lot of geography, in other words, I think has been seen as, in retrospect at least, as quite self-serving in the s- in the sense of ideas, uh, and beliefs and practices being made to fit, if you like, around a set of assumptions that geography, empire-building, scientific frameworks, learned societies, and virtuous enterprise all sort of mutually reinforce one another.