On the Relations of History and Geography

Alan R.H. Baker

Historically Speaking, Volume 5, Number 6, July/August 2004, pp. 27-29

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hsp.2004.0047

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On the Relations of History and Geography
"istory is not intelligible without
"H geography." Thus wrote Oxford
.historian Hereford B. George
more than a century ago in what has endured
as the only comprehensive study ofthe inter-
dependence of the two disciplines.1 But what
did George understand by the term "geogra-
phy"? He asserted that his claim was obvi-
ously true in the sense that the reader of his-
tory must learn where are the frontiers of
states, where wars were fought, whither
colonies were dispatched. It is equaUy, if less
obviously, true that geographical facts largely
influence the course ofhistory. Even the con-
stitutional and social developments within a
settled nation are scarcely independent of
them, since the geographical position affects
the nature of geographical intercourse with
other nations, and therefore of the influence
exerted by foreign ideas. AU external relations,
hostile and peaceful, are based largely on
geography, while industrial progress depends
primarily, though not exclusively, on matters
described in every geography book—the nat-
ural products of a country, and the facilities
which its structure affords for trade, both
domestic and foreign. For George, then,
"geography" meant mainly physical resources
and position.
At about the same time, similar ideas
shaped the work of an influential American
historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, who
stressed the part played by the physical envi-
ronment in deteirnining the lines ofAmerican
development: he emphasized the need for a
thorough study of the physiographic basis of
American history. Such ideas about "geo-
graphical influences" on history were dis-
cussed by many American historians during
the 20th century but they were not consid-
ered very critically or lengthily—at least, not
until recently. The conception of geography
by many American historians has been rela-
tively limited. They have seen the physical
(geographical) environment as a structure, as
a stage upon which the drama of history was
enacted, but because different groups came
with different ideas and used the stage in dif-
ferent ways, the precise unfolding of the
drama depended on them. History has thus
Alan R.H. Baker
been given primacy over what was considered
to be geography.
Historians have railed to recognize either
geography's diverse character or the changes
it has undergone in the 20th century. This has
resulted in what one place-sensitive British
historian,J. D. MarshaU, has described as "the
Great Divide" between history and geogra-
phy.2 Bridging that gap requires historians to
widen their geographical horizons and geog-
raphers to deepen their historical understand-
ings. I have tried to take some steps in that
direction in my recently pubUshed book Geog-
raphy and History: Bridging the Divide (Cam-
bridge University Press, 2003). There are
multiple readings ofthe nature of geography,
as there are ofhistory, but I consider it appro-
priate to work within the four main intellec-
tual traditions of geography: the three
"peripheral" discourses concerned respec-
tively with distributions, with environments,
and with landscapes, and the one central tra-
dition concerned with places, areas, and
regions.
Describing and explaining the specific loca-
tion and general distribution ofboth "natural"
and "cultural" phenomena have long been and
remain major themes of much geographical
writing. For some ofits practitioners, geogra-
phy is the science oflocation and distribution;
it is the art of describing the spatial or geo-
graphical patterns of phenomena in particu-
lar places. All phenomena have their own
geographies at a moment in time and also
geographies that change over time. Thus
"objects" studied by historians—such as art
and alcohoUsm, breeds and ballots, cultures
and consciousness—have their own geograph-
ical (spatial) distributions. Although distribu-
tion is not exclusively a geographical concept,
it is quintessentiaUy so. It has certainly been
the foundation ofone ofthe major discourses
in geography. "Where?" and "Why there?"
are basic geographical questions, just as
"When?" and "Why then?" are basic histor-
ical questions.
Mapping distributions is thus a key form
July/August 2004 · Historically Speaking27
of geographical description, a first step toward
geographical understanding. Reconstructions
of geographies of the past based on clusters
ofhistorical sources can be justified either for
their own intrinsic interest, providing a snap-
shot of the geography of a particular place at
a specific moment in time, or employed in
series to provide an indication of the chang-
ing geography ofa place through time. Map-
ping sources in this way has long been a fea-
ture of work in historical geography. Recent
advances in data management and cartogra-
phy, particularly the appUcation of geograph-
ical information systems analysis (GIS) to his-
torical sources, are enhancing enormously
studies of past distributions. Historical GIS
makes possible the spatial integration oflarge
sets of both quantitative and quaUtative data
and permits standardized spatial comparisons
over long periods. Historical GIS is thus an
analytical tool that is encouraging a conver-
gence ofhistory and geography.
But maps tend to tell us more about geo-
graphical patterns than about historical
processes. Alongside the maps of geographi-
cal distributions we need graphs ofhistorical
events. Such maps and graphs may be used as
bricks ofknowledge with which, working with
a mortar of theory, we can build new under-
standings of past geographies. Reconstruct-
ing time series of data enriches our historical
understandings by itself, but geographical
value is added when it is used in combination
with reconstructions ofspatial series, with dis-
tribution maps. The relations between his-
tory and geography are especially close in
studies of the development ofa phenomenon
through time and its diffusion over space.
Both qualitative and quantitative diffusion
studies bridge the gap between history and
geography.
Geographical perspectives upon history
have come to be considerably broadened and
enriched by the inclusion of concepts of space
and location in a wide range ofhistorical sit-
uations and at a wide range of geographical
scales. For example, Edward Cook has out-
lined some spatial approaches to early Amer-
ican history, and Pierre Chaunu employs the
spatial concepts ofdistribution, distance, and
28Historically Speaking · July/August 2004
diffusion in his broad-brush portrayal of the
history and geography ofthe world.3 Histori-
ans are now producing not only more geo-
graphical histories or spatial histories but also
more histories of spaces such as streets, cere-
monial centers, and domestic interiors. For
their part, geographers are increasingly
emphasizing the extent to which histories of
knowledge have been spatially configured.
The spatial turn being witnessed in history
and indeed in a variety ofacademic discourses
today is productively reinvigorating work even
in geography itself. The development of a
spatial history provides one significant means
ofbridging the divide between geography and
history. So, too, does that of environmental
history.
Studies of the earth as the home of
humanity have for centuries been a major
concern of geography. The differential
encounters ofpeoples with their physical envi-
ronments, of culture with nature as well as
with other cultures, have intrigued genera-
tions ofgeographers and underpinned legions
ofgeographical studies. A significant compo-
nent ofthat tradition has been a set of studies
focusing on the interactions between people
and their physical environments, examining
both the impact of physical environments
upon human activities and attitudes, and the
impress ofthose ideas and actions upon phys-
ical environments. Between the mid- 18th cen-
tury and the early 20th century scholars
advanced the geographical thesis of environ-
mental determinism, which argued that the
physical environment controlled the course
of human action and thus accounted for dif-
ferences in the nature of societies from place
to place. Such a stance enabled geography to
converse with the natural sciences, but it left
Uttle room, ifany, for a dialogue with the his-
torical sciences because it envisaged (human)
history as a product of (physical) geography.
Fortunately, an alternative way ofthinking
about these issues developed during the 19th
century in the French school of geography.
This new perspective envisaged the people-
environment issue as a dialectic between soci-
ety and nature, with the physical environment
offering opportunities or possibilities for
human activity and development. The envi-
ronmental discourse in geography has of
necessity involved a historical approach. Stud-
ies in historical environmental geography
have taken a number of forms. Some have
aimed to reconstruct natural and primitive
physical environments before human activities
had much, ifany, impact on them. Many more
have addressed the human impact—often
deleterious—on key components of natural
environments, such as vegetation, soils, water,
landforms, climate, and atmosphere. Others
have studied past environments from the per-
spectives of contemporaries—giving rise to a
specific set of studies labeled as "historical
geosophy," the history ofgeographical know-
ledge, but as possessed in the past by all sorts
of men and women (and even children) and
not just by geographers. Given that such
knowledge, whether academic or otherwise,
was (and is) the basis for action, for explo-
ration, and for exploitation, it has much more
than intrinsic interest: its recovery is funda-
mental to our understanding of the cultural
perception and misperception ofenvironmen-
tal opportunities and hazards. Many such
studies intriguingly examine what they con-
sider to be the gap between the image and the
reality of an environment at some period in
the past. Some ofthe most interesting work in
historical geosophy has emphasized that false
geographical knowledge has been as signifi-
cant historically as true knowledge.
But how has the environment been
addressed by historians? Environmental his-
tory as a self-conscious subdiscipline emerged
in North America in the 1960s and 1970s as
a byproduct ofinteUectual and poUtical histo-
ries of conservation, and also as part of the
wider environmentalist movement that devel-
oped apace during this period. From being
concerned principally with the history of atti-
tudes toward nature and ofideas about nature,
environmental history has broadened signif-
icantly into a study of the impact of human
actions upon the "natural" world. Historians
like Donald Worster, Richard White, and
William Cronon have both produced them-
selves and stimulated others to produce works
that aim to understand how people have been
affected by their natural environment through
time and, conversely, how they have affected
that environment and with what conse-
quences. These themes are music to the ears
ofhistorical geographers who have been play-
ing similar tunes for much more than fifty
years. It is remarkable that, in the develop-
ment of environmental history as a subdisci-
pline, the contribution of historical geogra-
phy to studies of the reciprocal relationships
between peoples and their environments has
been at best partially recognized and at worst
completely overlooked by historians. Those
failings are now being remedied. The paths
ofhistorical environmental geography and of
environmental history have converged and
together now form an important bridge
between geography and history. Another is
provided by approaches to landscape.
The concept of "landscape" has been
debated seriously within geography for more
than a century and it entered into geograph-
ical discourse much earlier. "Landscape" is
not a straightforward idea and its meaning has
varied from place to place and from time to
time. Debate of the concept within geogra-
phy has been grounded largely in the extent to
which it overlaps with the related concepts of
environment and area. But the landscape dis-
course is fundamentally concerned with the
visible appearance of surfaces of the earth; it
recognizes landscapes as being cultural con-
structions and also cultural representations
reaUzed in imagination, in Uterary forms, in
art, and on the ground itself. The geograph-
ical literature demonstrates two main
approaches to landscapes: the making ofland-
scapes and the meaning of landscapes.
Many geographical studies have started
with reconstructions ofnatural landscapes and
then traced the impact of human activities
upon them and the consequential construc-
tion (as well as destruction and renewed con-
struction) of a series of cultural landscapes.
Such minking has especiaUy permeated stud-
ies that focus upon the creation of primitive
landscapes as a result of early encounters of
people with natural landscapes, in effect upon
cultural landscapes within which natural fea-
tures continue to play an important role. But
such thinking is also influential within studies
that emphasize the dominant role of culture
and the almost total destruction of nature in
the development of "unnatural" urban-indus-
trial landscapes. The British historical geog-
rapher H. C. Darby provided what has come
to be seen by many as a model for studies of
changing landscapes. He saw population
migrations and growth and the colonization
and settlement of territory as the basic agents
of change in the English landscape since the
5th century A.D. He then identified some key
themes of landscape change: clearing the
woods, draining the marshes, reclaiming the
heaths, agricultural improvement, landscape
gardening, and urbanization and industrial-
ization. Darby's template has been applied to
the changing landscapes of many countries
and continents.
More recently, geographers have wresded
with the meaning of landscapes. Landscapes
have come to be seen as the richest ofour sys-
tems of signs: a landscape is a cultural mes-
sage that has to be decoded. Ideologies under-

pin landscapes, unintentionally or intention-
ally. AU forms of social tension—including
political, economic, class, ethnic, religious,
and gender conflicts—are inscribed in land-
scapes. The symbolism of landscapes has
become a highly significant component of
landscape studies by geographers. Michael
Conzen's edited collection of essays on the
making of the American landscape, written
largely by geographers, was the first attempt
to cover the history of the American land-
scape in a single volume, and it exemplifies a
rich diversity of approaches to its theme.4
Like geographers, historians have been
incorporating landscape into their studies for
a very long time, but landscape history as an
identifiable subdiscipline is a relatively recent
and not always appreciated addition to his-
tory's extended family. From an early accept-
ance oflandscape as a repository ofhistorical
evidence and a backcloth to historical dramas,
landscape has now come to be accepted by
many—but not by aU—historians as an object
ofhistorical inquiry in its own right. In Britain
the research and writings ofhistorians like W.
G. Hoskins and Maurice Beresford and in
America the enterprise and ideas ofJ. B.Jack-
son have stimulated landscape history and cre-
ated new journals dedicated to the subfield.
As a hoUstic concept, "landscape" invites
and even demands interdisciplinary
approaches and so constitutes a significant
bridge between history and geography. It also
provides, of course, links with other disci-
plines, including archaeology, anthropology,
literature, poetry, paintings, and even music.
Scholars from different disciplines look at
landscapes in different ways: a single land-
scape may be viewed in multiple ways. A sim-
ilar point can be made in relation to areas.
The region is a core concept in geogra-
phy. Geography as an academic subject has
been developed over more than 2,000 years
to meet in a disciplined way people's curiosity
about places and to explain why places differ
and change. The idea of the region is a syn-
thesizing concept, unlike the three analytical
concepts I have considered so far. It focuses
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not upon a special category ofphenomena but
rather upon the totality of phenomena in an
area. Thus the synthesizing concepts of "total
history" (as propounded especially by the
French Annales school of history) and of
regional geography have much in common.
They approach the same problem but from
different perspectives. Period history and
regional geography are closely related syn-
thesizing concepts. Synthesis logically
requires the integration of the two dimen-
sions of history and geography.
The prosecution of historical regional
geographies has itselftaken a variety offorms.
For some it has involved characterizing the
distinctive geographical personaUty ofan area,
while for others it has involved detecting and
explaining the development ofdistinctive cul-
ture areas. Area studies in geography are con-
ducted within a range of scales that extends
from the local through the regional and
national to the continental and the global.
They are concerned as much with processes as
with patterns of change. The links with his-
tory here are multiple. Many historians
address the historical personaUty of periods.
The regional boundary problem in geogra-
phy is paralleled by the period boundary prob-
lem in history. Geographies take time, but
histories take place. Historians pursue their
studies at a variety of geographical scales,
ranging from local history through regional
and national history to world history.
Understanding places requires a historical
perspective, and understanding periods
requires a geographical perspective. Each
needs the other; each is impoverished with-
out the other. More importantly, each is
enriched by the other. Historical atlases pro-
vide a distinctive way ofbringing the two per-
spectives together. They provide both a geo-
graphical perspective upon the history of an
area and a historical perspective upon the
geography ofan area. They do so using maps
as the primary (but not the only) means of
communication. They provide marvelous
opportunities for cooperation by historians
and geographers. C. O. Paullin and J. K.
| Emory & Henry College, Emory, VA
July/August 2004 · Historically Speaking29
Wright's Atlas ofthe Historical Geography ofthe
United States (1932) was a major product of
coUaboration over almost thirty years between
the Department ofHistorical Research ofthe
Carnegie Institution of Washington and the
American Geographical Society. More
recently, the three volumes of the Historical
Atlas ofCanada (1987-1993) provide magnif-
icent testimony to the fruits of similar inter-
disciplinary cooperation.
There has been much more dialogue between
historians and geographers than is assumed
by an emphasis on the "Great Divide"
between them. But there could be even more.
The "geographicization" ofhistory has a long
way to go before it will be anywhere near to
being completed, but at least the journey is
well underway. Meanwhile, many contempo-
rary human geographers are coming increas-
ingly to reject the presentist and functionaUst
mode ofinterpretation and to recognize once
again the necessity for a historical mode of
explanation. But that is another story.
Alan R.H. Baker is a Life Fellow of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge University.
He was honored by the French government as
a Chevalier dans Vordres des Palmes
Académiquesfor his service to French culture.
His most recent book is Geography and His-
tory: Bridging the Divide (Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
1 H. B. George, The Relations ofGeography and His-
tory (Clarendon Press, 1901), 1.
2 J. D. Marshall, "Why Study Regions?"Journal of
Regional and Local Studies 5 (1985): 15-27.
3 E. M. Cook, Jr., "Geography and History: Spatial
Approaches to Early American History," Historical
Methods 13 (1980): 19-28. P. Chaunu, Histoire sci-
ence sociale: h Durée, l'espace et l'homme à l'époque
moderne (Presses Universitaires de France, 1974).
* M. Conzen, ed., The Makingofthe American Land-
scape (Unwin Hyman, 1990).