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On the Relations of Geography and History

Author(s): H. C. Darby
Source: Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers), No. 19 (1953), pp. 1-11
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of
British Geographers)
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ON THE RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY1

By H. C. DARBY, O.B.E., M.A., PH.D.


(University College, University of London)

THE theme of the relations of geography and history is a we


has engaged the attention of man since he first began to examin
human society upon the face of the earth. The classical philosoph
upon the connection between peoples and their environments, an
of Herodotus and Thucydides are impregnated with geographi
and considerations. Throughout the Middle Ages, this specula
what into abeyance, but, with the revival of the Renaissance, it
once more. There is a much quoted sentence from Peter Heylyn's
which runs: 'Historie without Geographie like a dead carkasse hat
nor motion at all'; but what we do not so often hear is the be
quotation: 'Geographie without Historie hath life and motion but
and unstable.'2
Since 1621, when Peter Heylyn wrote, a vast literature has accumulated
about the relations of the two studies, and many have made forays into the
debatable land that lies between them. I am not going to attempt to map with
any precision the features of this debatable land. All I can say is that here is a
borderland with many trails and many different types of country. In particular,
I would like to offer some remarks about the geography behind history, about
the geographies of the past, and about the history behind geography, and then
to conclude with some comment about the bearing of these matters upon the
study of geography as we conceive it today.

The Geography behind History


The closing years of the eighteenth century witnessed what amounted al-
most to a new beginning in men's way of thinking. It was a revolution as pro-
found, in its different way, as that of the sixteenth century. The change can be
seen in the contrast between Goldsmith and Crabbe. Oliver Goldsmith, in The
Deserted Village of 1770, viewed the scene through the spectacles of a sentimental
convention. His was a village 'where health and plenty cheer'd the labouring
swain'. The challenge came in 1783 when George Crabbe published his Village,
harsh and sombre, and full of a desire to give what he called 'the real picture'
without the 'tinsel trappings'. It was Byron who described Crabbe as 'Nature's
sternest painter, yet her best', and Crabbe's poetry is full of the countryside of

1 Being a lecture to a Joint Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, the Geographical
Association and the Institute of British Geographers given at the House of the Royal Geographical
Society on January 2nd, 1953.
2 PETER HEYLYN, Microcosmus, or a little descrinption of the great world (1621), 1I1.

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2 RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

eastern Suffolk which he knew so well. This new attitude has been called
'realism', and, although the term is not above reproach, it is probably as go
a label as any. Whatever it be called, it was rooted, like the earlier Renaissan
in contemporary change, and it had effects upon all ways of thinking. Nor
it restricted to one country.
Hitherto, the pre-occupation of historical study had been with polit
relations and incidents. But now its vision was extended until it came to include
almost every aspect of human endeavour, social and economic. And, as the
study of history became more realistic, it also became more geographical. One
of the main, and most influential, products of the new outlook was Michelet's
Histoire de France (1833). Other writers had reduced the history of France to a
long struggle for monarchical centralization and to a tale of domestic politics.
It is true that some had thought of the ground as a stage upon which the players
acted, but to Michelet the soil was not an inert plank of a theatre. He proclaimed
that history was, in the first place, all geographical; and, in order to equip him-
self for his task, he made long wanderings through various parts of France to
gain a first-hand impression of its varying countrysides. Reviewing his work,
later in life, he wrote:

Without a geographical basis, the people, the makers of history, seem to


be walking on air, as in those Chinese pictures where the ground is
wanting. The soil too must not be looked on only as the scene of action.
Its influence appears in a hundred ways, such as food, climate, etc. As
the nest, so is the bird. As the country, so are the men."

So powerful was his example that it became customary for French historians to
preface their studies with a geographical introduction; and we must not forget
that Vidal de la Blache's Tableau de la gdographie de la France appeared in 1911
as an introductory volume to Lavisse's great history of France.
I have taken Michelet as the type of the new spirit in historical writing, but
there were others, and not only in France. A long list of professions of the new
faith could be made, longer than one might think at first. In 1851, in Germany,
appeared an account of the history and geography of the Pelop6nnisos by
Ernst Curtius." To him, the aged Humboldt wrote: 'I have read your first
volume line by line. Your survey of the country is a masterpiece of nature
painting.' Similar manifestations were evident in England, and one English
example must stand for the rest - A. P. Stanley's Sinai and Palestine in con-
nection with their history which appeared in 1856. This was an attempt to illustrate
geography and history and, as Stanley said, 'the relation in which each stands
to the other'. It is of special interest to us because Stanley, as he confessed,
owed something to Carl Ritter.

SJULES MICHELET, Histoire de France, preface to the edition of 1869.


4 ERNST CURTIUS, Peloponnesos: eine historisch-geographische Beschreibung der Halbinsel, 2 vols.
(Gotha, 1851-2).

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RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 3

Not all historians have adopted a geographical approach,


is no reason why many should have, but this does not pre
that the Cambridge Modern History would have been a bet
Acton been something of a geographer. On the other hand
environmentalism led many to attempt to explain histo
to produce such statements as: 'History is governed by geo
geography set into motion'; 'History is geography accum
interest.'
While the geographical explanation of history features in many studies and
permeates others, there are three full-length studies that especially call for com-
ment, if only because the inclusion of the word 'geography' in their titles has
led to their appearance in our libraries. The first is George Adam Smith's
Historical geography of the Holy Land, which was published in 1894 and which
has run into twenty-five editions. His object was, he tells us, 'to discover from
"the lie of the land" why the history took certain lines', but his treatment is far
less deterministic than these words might suggest. The more austere puritans
among us might object to his use of the term 'historical geography', but, what-
ever we think, the fact is that this Scottish divine had a power of description
that mere geographers find it easier to envy than to emulate. The two other
books are E. C. Semple's American history and its geographic conditions and
A. P. Brigham's Geographic influences in American history. They invite com-
parison, not only because of their theme, but because both were written by
professional geographers, and both appeared in 1903. Miss Semple's study
interprets the different phases of the history of the United States in the light of its
geography. It is a great work that must command our affection, if not our
allegiance. Brigham's book is different. It is organized upon a geographical
basis, and is concerned not so much with geographical influences upon history
as with the history that has entered into areal differences. As he said: 'One must
invent a method as he can, for models in this field can scarcely be said to exist.'
It is possible that Miss Semple's book is the more well known among us, but I
am sure that Brigham's book is the more relevant to us.
All these books that, in some sense, find a spiritual ancestor in Michelet are
not studies in geography. It is not for us, as geographers, to imitate them. Just
because a geographical spirit ought to, and does, inspire certain studies, it does
not follow that such studies should be incorporated within even the broad
embrace of geography. On the other hand, we cannot fail to be interested in
this work, partly out of curiosity, and partly because the recognition of geo-
graphical study in other fields is not irrelevant to our own progress.

Past Geographies
The term 'historical geography' has come to be increasingly identified
with an approach in which the data are historical but in which the method is
geographical. The purpose of the historical geographer, according to this view,

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4 RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

is to reconstruct the geography of past times. While geo


through time at the present period, historical geography
some preceding period. In this sense we can speak of the geo
in 1500, or that of Tierra del Fuego in 1837. Some histor
necessary to attempt such reconstructions as part of a par
them. Macaulay in his History of England (1848) stated cl
for this: 'If we would study with profit the history of o
must never forget that the country of which we read was a very
from that in which we live.' Accordingly, in his famous third
to describe the landscape of England in 1685 as a prelude to t
of post-Restoration times. Let a few lines of his prose speak

Could the England of 1685 be, by some magical proces


eyes, we should not know one landscape in a hundred
in ten thousand. The country gentleman would not r
fields. The inhabitant of the town would not recognize
Everything has been changed, but the great features of n
massive and durable works of human art.

And so he set the stage upon which his figures were to move and act. It was wi
similar intent that, almost a century later, Macaulay's kinsman, G. M. Trevel-
yan, prefaced his trilogy, England under Queen Anne (1930-33) with what
described as 'a survey' of 'Queen Anne's island', based largely upon Danie
Defoe's account of it. And about this time also, J. H. Clapham in his trilog
An economic history of modern Britain (1926-38), gave two accounts of what
called 'the face of the country', in 1820 and again in 1886.
These three stand out as classic examples of the practice of historica
geography by historians. To a greater or less extent, other historians hav
attempted analagous reconstructions. Nor has their effort been limited to prose
C. H. Pearson's Historical maps of England (1869) was an outstanding pione
attempt to portray the main features of the medieval scene; its preface speaks
'reconstructions of early geography'. By its side can be placed the maps th
accompanied J. R. Green's The making of England (1885). Green found th
he could give an adequate account of the Anglo-Saxon settlement only b
reconstructing the disposition of marsh and wood and open country. It was in
the preface to this book that he delivered the famous dictum: 'the ground itself
where we can read the information it affords, is, whether in the account of th
Conquest or in that of the Settlement of Britain, the fullest and most certain o
documents'.
All these studies, and others too, are most illuminating, and they command
our respect on geographical grounds, quite apart from their other excellencies.
But they all must be considered in their contexts, and it is possible that none of
them would satisfy the specifications, so to speak, that a historical geographer o
today might set out in an outline scheme.

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RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 5

Let me, therefore, turn to the practice of historical


graphers themselves. One of the most outstanding reconst
is Ralph Brown's Mirror for Americans (1943), what he ca
Eastern Seaboard' in 1810. Brown invented an imaginar
stone, and then he wrote the book that Keystone might h
based upon the sources that would have been availab
idiosyncracy of this treatment makes for great charm, but
effect in the sense that the reconstruction does not avail itself of our modern
knowledge of the relief and soils and climate of the eastern seaboard. These
are only discussed in so far as they were understood in 1810, and the method of
presentation and illustrations are also those of the period. The mythical
Keystone was obviously a man who not only had something to say, but who
could say it well. Yet, a study by Ralph Brown himself might possibly have
given us, in some respects, an even clearer view of the geography of the area in
1810.
Other period reconstructions usually do use later points of view to interpret
their period material, but they sometimes lay themselves open to the criticism
that they do not use sources earlier than those of their period. By this I mean
that an account of, say, England in 1550, based only on sixteenth-century
material, would lack a genetic approach. It would be an empirical account
without depth. Just as an account of the twentieth century should consider the
relevant circumstances of past centuries, so should an account of the sixteenth,
or of any other century. Paradoxically, therefore, some essays in historical
geography can be criticized, on methodological grounds, because they lack a
historical approach.
One way of meeting this criticism is to provide successive cross-sections in
which each can assume what has gone before; and a number of attempts have
been made along these lines. One is a valuable study, by Alfred H. Meyer in
1935, of the Kankakee Marsh in northern Indiana and Illinois. In this study,
four reconstructions correspond to the four main phases of land utilization:

(i) The period of the Indian hunter and French trader (before 1840)
(ii) The period of the pioneer trapper and frontier farmer (1840-80)
(iii) The period of the stock farmer and the sportsman fowler (1880-1910)
(iv) The period of the Corn Belt farmer and the river resorter (since 1910).

This method of successive cross-sections was adopted by some of us in the early


1930s when we set out to prepare An historical geography of England before
A.D. 1800 that appeared in 1936. It was, as the preface says, an experiment,
and it is interesting to look back and consider the method it applied.
A succession of cross-sections does provide treatment in depth, but it also
creates certain practical difficulties in that the different elements that make up a
5 ALFRED H. MEYER, 'The Kankakee Marsh of northern Indiana and Illinois', Papers of the
Michigan Academy ofScience, Arts and Letters, 21 (1935), 359-96.

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6 RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

landscape do not change at the same rate nor at the same tim
marshes are being drained, the heaths are not being reclaim
tion has to be repeated in cross-section after cross-secti
change takes place, repetition is unavoidable. It might be
not theoretical difficulties, and that the problems they prese
practical common sense. But only too often they involve un
and it may well be that any cross-section in a series fails ad
reality. In spite of these difficulties, I still think that the m
cross-sections has much to be said for it, especially if the c
chosen as to coincide with marked changes in an area as a w

The History behind Geography

Having spoken of the geography behind history, and of


let me turn to the history behind geography. Speaking stri
I find it difficult to delimit the frontier between the two
reasons. In the first place, the geography of the present-da
that even at this moment is becoming history. The Land
directed by L. Dudley Stamp in the early thirties, is the mos
ment of British geographical study. Yet it is becoming almo
ment of history as, say, the surveys of the Board of Agricu
1800. When did it, or a lot of it, cease to be geography an
geography? Can we fix a date? Can we draw a line betw
history? The answer is 'no', for the process of becoming
geography is historical geography, either actual or potentia
In the second place, the characteristics of different l
result not only of relief and soil and climate, but also of the
by successive generations of inhabitants. It was Vidal de
geography 'the science of places', but he meant places as mo
not as they were upon the first morning of creation. On ano
'A geographical individuality does not result simply from
matic conditions. It is not something delivered complete
Nature.' We might continue the train of his thought by add
thing that emerges when men wrest their livelihood from
as Nature has gone into the making of most landscapes
William Cowper once said that 'God made the country a
town'. Nothing could be more misleading, and Cowper s
better. He wrote that line in 1783 at the village of Olney, in
where he had settled in 1767. In 1768, the open fields of Oln
and Cowper must have watched, with his own eyes, the new l
hedgerow take form. The landscape of Olney, like the En
general, is as artificial as any urban scene.
Let me for a moment take an example, modest but concr
element in geography. The East Anglian Breckland was on

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RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 7

natural heathland. But recent work has shown that even its
devoid of wood when farming first began, and that the so-
had its origin in the clearing of the wood by Neolithic farm
existence of the heathland has depended upon some factors
the re-establishment and growth of trees. The more obviou
by sheep or rabbits, recurrent fires which destroy tree seed
direct action of man.
But while a certain amount of grazing maintains heathland, too much
destroys it. Heavy and continuous pasturing by sheep or rabbits converts it into
grassland. The reason is that the animals nibble down to about half an inch
above the ground, and that shrubs cannot endure this, while grass can. In the
competition between heather and grass, the grass therefore survives and spreads.
When rabbits enter a heathland with some existing trees, the trees are trimmed
in a spectacular fashion up to a height of about 20 inches - that is the height
to which a rabbit can reach with its mouth when standing on its hind legs;
young seedlings do not survive the experience. If the rabbits depart or are
excluded from a heathland, the heather rapidly recolonizes the ground at the
expense of the grass. The story does not end there, for the ultimate effect of
rabbit-grazing may be to destroy the vegetation completely in some localities.
Entrances to rabbit burrows, and a general thinning of vegetation, may give the
wind a purchase on the sand so that it blows away; grass-heath fades out locally
into bare sand. A further complication is that rabbits do not like bracken fern
which in places thus flourishes triumphantly amid the savage battle for life raging
around.
The net result of these struggles is that an expanse of heathland usually
presents a variety of surface, and a variety that is never still. Stretches of
calluna and erica merge into a light wood cover or into bracken, or grass or bare
soil. A heathland is, therefore, not only a geographical fact, but a most delicate
compromise between the forces promoting it and those destroying it. The
scene that confronts us represents a momentary balance of power, an equipoise,
sensitive, as we have seen, to short-term changes, responsive also to long-term
changes - to the introduction, in the eighteenth century, of turnips and clover
which completely altered the appearance of vast areas, and to afforestation
which likewise has had great effect. Even so, many tracts of heathland still
remain as inliers of an older and wilder landscape surrounded by improvement.
In the light of these facts, can anyone be satisfied with an empirical des-
criptive approach to the geography of heathlands, or to the geography of any
other area? The landscape we see is not a static arrangement of objects. It has
become what it is, and it is usually in the process of becoming something differ-
ent. A close analogy is to regard our momentary glimpse of it as a 'still' taken
out of a long film. Let us then not study a static picture, but a process that is
continuing and, seemingly, never-ending.
The main instrument of historic change is, of course, Man himself, and
there is an enormous literature dealing with his works and influence upon the
B

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8 RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

face of the earth. Topics such as draining, stream-regulat


surface-subsidence are discussed in the various engineeri
changes in agriculture are described in the journals of econom
themes have also made their appearance in our geographical l
phrase 'Man and his conquest of Nature' is no new one to u
Curiously enough, there was a promising beginning of inv
these lines in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was t
G. P. Marsh's Man and Nature (1864). Marsh was a farmer
and a Congressman from the state of Vermont. He was a
boldt, and he described geography as 'both a poetry and a
of his main themes was the rapid clearing of forests in the Un
work has been hailed as the fountain-head of the American conservation
movement. But, as far as I can see, the main line of his thought has not ofte
been pursued to its logical conclusion, and there are relatively few studi
explicitly devoted to the investigation of the consequences of man as an agen
of change in the landscape. When R. L. Sherlock published his book, Man
geological agent, in 1922, he had to state that he had been 'unable to disco
any comprehensive account of the effect of Man on geographical or geologic
conditions'. He would not need to make such a sweeping statement toda
One recent book, for example, which does deal with this problem is A.
Clark's The invasion of New Zealand by people, plants and animals (1949). It is
described in the preface as 'a report on a revolutionary change in the charact
of a region, which occurred in a period of less than two centuries'. The resul
of the report is a clearer understanding of the geography of the South Islan
of New Zealand as it appears today.
With this line of thought in mind, it is possible to envisage a treatment
the historical element in the English landscape different from that of t
experiment of 1936. The data can be organized in terms not of horizontal cro
sections but of vertical themes - the clearing of the wood, the draining of t
marsh, the reclamation of the heathlands, changes in settlement, and so
This was the approach that I had the opportunity of developing two years ag
I am not going to set one method against the other for both, it seems to me, a
permissible, and maybe desirable.
This vertical method can, however, be criticized. In the first place, i
thus analysing a landscape into its changing elements, a picture of the wh
developing as one is lost. That is a just criticism, but against it two considerati
can be urged: (a) Even a horizontal treatment, whether historical or present-da
has to some extent to present its material analytically; we cannot apprehe
reality in one flash. (b) In practice, it is possible to mitigate the division into
separate themes by taking a broad view of each of them, e.g. to make refere
to, say, settlement while discussing the clearing of the wood or the reclamat
of heathlands. But there is a second criticism. The form of the presentation
that of successive narratives, and we are inevitably faced with the question as
a H. C. DARBY, 'The changing English landscape', Geographical Journal, 117 (1951), 377-98.

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RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 9

what is economic history and what is historical geog


that has troubled many an honest mind. The answe
change is part of historical study, as it must be, then s
torical. If an understanding of landscape is part of g
must be, then such a treatment is geographical. Let us
ments lie in an intellectual borderland. To set tariff frontiers around our
different academic subjects, and so hinder the flow of ideas, is as unnecessary
as it is unprofitable.

The Historical Element in Geography

What of geography itself? Granted that without history it is but 'at


randome, and unstable', how are we to secure, in a purely geographical de
cription, the appropriate historical approach? When we cease to be historic
geographers, and graduate to become complete geographers of the present, ho
are we to conduct ourselves? If it is the purpose of a geographer to explain th
landscape, it is clear that he is unable to rely only on what he sees. The visible
scene cannot give us the whole sum of the factors affecting it. Field wor
provides us with the data, and, on occasions, takes us some way towards th
elucidation of those data. It is an article of faith among us that field work is th
essential basis of geographical study. When R. H. Tawney said that what
economic historians needed was stouter boots, many of us paused to consid
the condition of our own shoe leather, and the cry among us has quite proper
been 'field work and more field work'. To many, the field has been a welcome
relief from the methodological babble to which I am adding today. I can w
imagine a geographer thinking as Tennyson did when he wrote:

And forth into the fields I went,


And Nature's living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.

Yet I suggest that the new cry might well be 'Field work is not enough'. T
map, to use F. W. Maitland's familiar phrase, is a 'marvellous palimpsest
Not all the ancient writing is legible through what has been written since, bu
much of it is, and still more of it is for those who have eyes to see. When, as
geographers, we gaze around, one question forces itself upon our attentio
it takes a variety of form: 'Why does this countryside look as it does? What h
given this landscape its present character?' The moment we ask this question,
that moment are we committed to historical geography in one form or
another.
But difficulties lie in ambush, not so much theoretical ones as practical
ones. As Derwent Whittlesey asked in 1945: 'Is there a solution for the puzzle
of writing incontestable geography that also incorporates the chains of event
7 F. W. MAITLAND, Domesday Book and beyond (1897), 15.

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10 RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

necessary to understand fully the geography of the present d


there are two possible solutions. One is to be concerned not
struction of past geographies or with the analysis of the chan
scene, but only with those past phases of occupation that have
themselves, and so continue to exist in the present. This is th
the American term 'sequent occupance', invented by Whi
In this same year, Preston James laid the basis for his desc
pretation of the Blackstone Valley in southern New Engla
what he called 'the development of the landscapes':

Into this not too hospitable land came man, and with m
modifications of the original terrain which it is our special
Three distinct periods in the modification of the original
discerned. First the native Indians with their primit
land occupation created landscape forms characteristic of
Then came the European settlers, first interested in farm
people developed out of the earlier landscape, largely o
a new set of forms reflecting a more advanced agricul
Finally, industrial cities with an entirely new set of cultu
imposed upon the rural landscape, not by any means o
but rather forming patches scattered especially in the vall
vivid contrasts with the earlier landscapes in which they

After discussing each of these phases, Preston James proceede


what he had already said, to an analysis of the landscapes that
Other American geographers have also adopted this approac
their regional studies to our advantage. The practical difficult
lies in the fact that it is not always easy to separate the survi
past phase from associated phenomena that have disappear
that the treatment might easily lead to a full-scale reconstruc
geography. According to one's point of view, one might regar
down the slippery slope or as scaling the heights.
There is, as I have said, a second way of providing a his
in geographical description. It is to start not at the beginn
present-day - to describe an existing landscape, and look back
in so far as, this or that element cannot be explained in conte
to restrict historical comment severely to relict landscape fea
naturally need to look farther back for some origins than
retically there is much to be said for this approach, except
8 DERWENT WHITTLESEY, 'The horizon of geography', Annals of the Asso
Geographers, 35 (1945), 32.
* DERWENT WHITTLESEY, 'Sequent occupance', Annals of the Association of Am
19 (1929), 162-5.
10 PRESTON E. JAMES, 'The Blackstone valley', Annals of the Association of A
19 (1929), 72.

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RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 11

prefer to put first things first, and that frequently a past


has influenced the present arrangement in ways other than
of itself. In practice, however, it is not easy to achieve a co
presentation along these lines. To keep looking back ov
always uncomfortable and sometimes perilous. The app
parentheses in any descriptive writing have to be many
adopts an elaborate system of footnotes. The combin
geographical text with historical footnotes would be a form
As far as I know, there is no full-bodied treatment along
second approach, but it is far from being a theoretical abst
of it can be seen in many studies - in John Bygott's Eastern
example; in many of the French regional monographs; a
of the volumes of the Gdographie Universelle. A representa
long one. I can only conclude that the complete success
geography and history depends partly upon the nature of t
and partly upon literary skill.
Whatever be the relations of geography and history, i
sense, I must end by affirming that a fourth dimension is a
in geographical study. An analogy with geomorphology
itself. To understand the physical landscape it is necessa
take photographs and make measurements. The sequence of
and Quaternary times, at least, is often necessary to an
opposed to a description, of the present scene; an empirical
streams or erosion surfaces does not take us far along t
hension. There are, of course, limits beyond which we ne
the subject matter of geology and history. But I ventur
limits are not to be defined by nice methodological argum
with words and definitions. The limits are best set by the n
problem we are attempting to unravel, or by the charac
landscape we are trying to describe. Some problems and s
us farther into geology and history than others. Whatev
fact remains that the landscape we see today is a collection
past, some from geological, some from historical, times. An
inclined to think that the foundations of geographical s
phology and in historical geography. Here are the basic
discipline. Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying t
and historical geography are the most important parts o
after all, foundations are meant for greater things to be bu

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