Geography’s earliest known and recorded interest stems back as far as ancient Greece, a time of great ideological and philosophical thought. Holt-Jensen, in his book Geography: History and Concepts, notes that “geographical thinking is older than the term ‘geography’” (Holt-Jensen, 1988:11). The Ancients Greeks interests were mainly theoretical but they produced many topographical descriptions of places in the known world of the time. Their philosophical concerns dealt with the divine purpose of the earth and later the influence of the surrounding environment on society, and it was this ideology and social setting that developed their keen interest on the earth and what it was. Indeed it was the Ancient Greeks that made the first known attempt to determine the shape and size of the earth and produce maps. The first map of the world by Ptolemy around 150AD depicted only 3 continents (Europe, Asia and Africa) and used concepts of longitude and latitude for projection. Soon afterwards conflicting ideologies, such as those of Homer and Aristotle, spurred curiosity in the shape and size of the earth. A prominent figure, Erastosthenes, set about calculating these by studying the actions of the sun. He also estimated the distance between Alexandria and Syene to be a 15th of the earth’s circumference, and from there calculated the size of the earth and determined its shape to be spherical. This was later disputed and rejected, but Erastosthenes estimates were actually incredibly accurate and realistic in an age of little technology.
There is little literature on the period following and the story of the expansion of geography isn’t picked up again until the Middle Ages. This was a time of incredible religious importance and influence and probably one of the greatest social and ideological influences on geographical thinking. The church rejected the ideas of the Greeks and Romans particularly on the shape of the earth and so “the earth became a disk, with Jerusalem as its centre” (Broek 1965:12). The church regressed the progress of scientific knowledge and learning in this period that has come to be known as the ‘Dark Ages’, restricting the use of classical techniques to simple cartography and wanting only to believe in the divinity and work of God. However the works of the Ancient Greeks and Romans were maintained, largely by Arab Scholars, through to the Renaissance. Technological advance enabled many Moslems to travel further distances than previously and additions were made to Ptolemy’s map. A noted traveller, Ibn Batuta (1304-1368), voyaged as far as China and along the east coast of Africa collecting information. It was the revival of Ptolemy’s map that stimulated European interest in the earth and prompted the beginning of an era of voyages and exploration.
It was the Spanish and Portuguese that initially began exploring the unknown world and the works of “Columbus and other expeditionary explorers…disproved the latter’s (Ptolemy) calculations of longitude and changed the world picture he had established” (Holt-Jensen, 1988:14). New maps were developed, for example that of Mercator in 1569, and globes came into production. The writings of the great explorers were invaluable as a source of information and encyclopaedias were compiled. It wasn’t until 1650 that a dualism in geography was recognised by Bernhardus Varenius, in his publication Geographica Generalis, who identified physical and human related geographies as different phenomenon, leading to the works of Immanuel Knat(1724-1804), and indeed, the institutionalisation and teaching of geography.
This was coupled with the period known as the ‘enlightenment’ in the 18th century. At this point new ideas on freedom and liberty emerged in Europe (particularly in France) setting values and principles that provided a new image of the natural world and ways of thinking about it. The role of the clergy and church was questioned and challenged, and with early industrialisation more science-based approaches were taken. It was an intellectual fashion dominated by white professional males, such as Adam Smith, that took a negative stance on the past and based itself on the future. To an extent it can be seen as the birth of development geography, as for the first time populations were categorised and the idea of a first, second and third world began to emulate. The clergy was the equivalent first world, nobility the second and peasants the third. This period saw the prioritisation of scientific based knowledge and the importance of publications and books.
In the seventeen and eighteen hundreds Africa was viewed as a major scene of activity with European interest in the coastal and southern regions as “essential staging-posts” (Crone, 1964:57) for trade, particularly the ‘triangular Atlantic’ trade that exploited Africa’s main resource, humans. It wasn’t until the British abolishment of the slave trade that interest in the interior parts of Africa became apparent. Humanitarian and evangelical revival and rebellion promoted abolishment across Africa and soon missionaries began travelling the unknown regions of the continent. Again religion and ideology played a key role in the expansion of Geography, with missionaries such as David Livingstone and H.M. Stanley travelling to spread Christianity and the ideal of commerce, but collecting data and mapping areas en-route. In truth these men alone mapped the vast majority of shores and rivers in continental Africa. Geography was still very much a cosmographical paradigm with writers such as von Humboldt (1769-1859) and Carl Ritter (1779-1859) concerning themselves with the ‘big picture’ and the physical side of geography.
“In the nineteenth century geography became an established discipline” (Crone, 1964:57) with the opening of the first university geography department in Germany c.1874, and the founding of geographic institutes such as the RGS (Royal Geographical Society) in London. This was during a period of great imperial expansion, in fact Livingstone believed the RGS of London was established for imperialistic reasons, because of Great Britain’s “numerous and extensive foreign possessions” (Livingstone, 1992: 167) ¹. The institutionalisation of geography shaped the discipline giving it a much more formal structure. Freeman (1961) ² identified six trends including the Encyclopaedic, Educational and Colonial trends, that all involved major geographical research and induced a much more social academic interest in the subject. This had a multiplier effect inducing advances in geographical technology that furthered it as an investigative science and a theoretical mind set.
The last part of geography’s expansion before 1900, came in 1859 with the first publication of Charles Darwin. Although he lead geography in a very physical direction he increased its sphere to consider in more detail the components of the natural environment and the significant roles of species in environmental determinism. Later theorists began relating much of Darwin’s work to humans, emphasising the dualistic element of the discipline.
It is obvious that social, technological and ideological change and the expansion of the discipline of Geography are interrelated. Social and ideological change in the form of religion was perhaps one of Geography’s greatest influences, initially holding it back and later encouraging and increasing it after the ‘enlightenment’. Technology played a lesser role in the development of geography. The period before 1900 saw little technological change that directly affected the discipline. Advances in transportation and communication meant that exploration and data collection were expanded and improved in accuracy but geography as a discipline was relatively undisturbed by this. Technological change became far more important in geography after 1900, with the development of specialist equipment. Most interestingly is the nature of the relationship between the expansion of geography and the aforementioned changes, as it is not a simple one-way relationship. As described earlier, following the institutionalisation of geography, an advance was seen in geographical technology. Also the more geography was debated and thought about over time the more theories were developed that might later change ideology and society, for example the categorisation of society does induce social change, some might even argue that geography created society, and the more one examines a subject the more likely new ideologies will arise.
In conclusion social, technological and ideological change have helped shape the way in which geography has expanded, both directly and indirectly. Similarly the expansion of geography has and is likely to induce changes in society, technology and ideology.
Word Count: 1,924
Bibliography:
-
Broek J. Geography, Its Scope and Spirit, 1965, Charles E. Merrill Books Inc., Ohio, USA
-
Crone G.R. Background to Geography, 1964, Museum Press Ltd, London
-
Holt-Jensen A. Geography, History and Concepts, 1988, Chapman Publishing Ltd, London
-
Johnston, R. J. Geography and Geographers: Anglo-American human geography since 1945, 1997, Edward Arnold, London.
-
Livingstone, D. N. The geographical tradition: episodes in the history of a contested enterprise, 1992 Blackwell, Oxford
-
Mayhew S. A Dictionary of Geography, 1997, Oxford University Press, Oxford
-
Stoddart D.R. Geography, Ideology and Social Concern, 1981, Basil Blackwell Publisher, Oxford
¹ but taken from Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 1 (1831) :vii
² as read in Johnston’s Approaches in Human Geography, as above.