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Geographies of Empire: European Empires and Colonies c. 1880-1960Printer-friendly versionPDF version

Book:
Geographies of Empire: European Empires and Colonies c. 1880-1960
Robin Butlin
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, ISBN: 9780521800426; 692pp.; Price: £70.00
Reviewer:
Dr Michael Collins
University College London
Citation:
Dr Michael Collins, review of Geographies of Empire: European Empires and Colonies c. 1880-1960, (review no. 851)
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/851
Date accessed: 6 December, 2023
See Author's Response

As the title of the book suggests, Geographies of Empire covers the period roughly from the beginning of the ‘scramble for Africa’ – following the British invasion of Egypt in 1882 – to the year by which many of the territories formerly acquired by European colonial powers had been lost or given up.

In fact Robin Butlin’s informative and extremely wide-ranging account of empire often reaches into earlier periods, and the chronological period that constitutes the primary focus of the book is one in which the major European colonial empires were at their fullest geographical extent and tensions between European great powers arising out of colonial competition were at their height. In this respect it should appeal to a wide readership. Moreover, the coverage of imperial expansion and contraction does not contain itself to Russia and the imperial powers of Western and Southern Europe, but includes the rising Great Powers of the late 19th and early 20th century, the United States and Japan. In other words this is a book of enormous scope, although the British, followed by the French, empires tend to feature more heavily than others.

Chapter two, looking at ‘chronologies, spaces and places’, provides an overview of the spatial pattern of development of the seaborne European empires. Unusually, in addition to the usual imperial coverage, it contains a short section on the ‘northern archipelago’ and the extent to which Wales, Scotland and Ireland were brought into a colonial relationship with England.(1) Butlin’s analysis draws on the extensive historiographical overview by Stephen Howe, which points towards the difficulties created by attempts to view the relationship between England and Ireland under the guise of a ‘generalised colonial model’ (p. 56).(2) In addition to the historiographical focus, we might have been told more about the actual historical geography of the Anglo-Irish relationship, for example patterns of settlement and land use. However, Butlin has much ground to cover, and moving on from coverage of the British Empire, he turns first to France, then the Dutch Empire, Germany, Portugal and Spain, Belgium and Italy, followed by Russia, Japan and the United States. The breadth of coverage in this chapter somewhat compromises the depth in which each imperial power is investigated, but the chapter does constitute a helpful descriptive account of imperial expansion. The comparative dimension is less prominent than it might have been. With this in mind, the analysis of French claims in Morocco, and German imperialism more generally, might have benefited from a greater emphasis on the way in which the land grab that followed Britain’s invasion of Egypt in 1882, and the subsequent exclusion of France from the Nile Delta region (Fashoda is mentioned on p. 267, but only as an aside) led to increased competition over colonial territory in North Africa, which saw Germany challenge France in Morocco twice in the immediate run-up to the outbreak of the First World War, once in 1905–6 and once in 1911. Butlin does acknowledge that Germany’s colonial policy was ‘clearly influenced by the colonial activities of other European states, notably France and Britain’ (p. 97), but this period of competition for land, resources and markets – which may or may not have precipitated the First World War (an unresolved debate) – seems to be ripe for further analysis by a historical geographer like the author.

Chapters three and four cover interconnected themes, with chapter three looking at population movement and the use of data and censuses linked to strategies of governance, or what Bernard Cohn has called ‘the enumerative modality’.(3) The familiar example is British imperialism in India, which sought to develop complex taxonomies of populations as part of a process of modernisation and management intimately bound up with racialised distinctions and hierarchies. Butlin also looks at the use of numbers in white settler colonies, firstly South Africa, then Australia. A good deal of very instructive information is also provided about population changes within territories controlled by other European colonial powers both in Africa and in Asia. The chapter also includes a helpful summary of the literature concerning migration out of Europe to colonial territories, and within colonial systems. Chapter four then goes on to trace the impact of these migrations and settlements on land use, and includes a substantial section on Germany’s colonial land policies in Africa, pointing out that Germany’s relatively late entry into the competition for land and resources in Africa in part underpinned the devastating impact that German colonialism had in countries such as Cameroon (pp. 207–17).

Chapters five, six and seven cover exploration, geographical knowledge and the creation of geographical societies and the connections between cartography and colonialism. The chapter on exploration features, as is to be expected, familiar figures such as David Livingstone, as well as less well-known explorers in the British Empire such as Mary Kingsley (pp. 240–7). The history of geographical societies is an area where the author himself has recently published, but it also provides Butlin with an opportunity to showcase some of the best recent work in historical geography.(4) The work of Felix Driver, which is familiar to many historians of empire, and which – via its linking of intellectual developments within the colonial metropole to the practice of imperialism at the periphery, has appealed to exponents of the new imperial history in recent years – features heavily.(5) With the proliferation of geographical societies amongst European colonial powers in the late 19th century there is the suggestion of transnational connections, for example the president of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society outlining Dutch colonial ambitions in a speech to the Royal Geographical Society in London in November 1879, and Dutch geographers subsequently consulting documents held in London (p. 305). The complicity of geographical societies with the colonial project, and the simultaneous intellectual drive to compare, contrast and sometimes share knowledge across borders makes for a fascinating topic in which intellectual history and historical geography neatly overlap.

Chapter eight looks at the intellectual, cultural and physical impacts of European ‘civilising missions’. Following Chris Bayly (6), Butlin argues that the ‘nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed substantial expansion in most major religions, partly through greater association with rapidly developing ideologies of nationalism’ (p. 358). The following discussion places welcome significance on the role of gender in missionary activity, but – although including a section on ‘local agency and religious missions’ – Butlin might have spent more time looking at the way in which the indigenous religion of colonised peoples was reformed, developed and instrumentalised as part of a process of colonial resistance (the ‘Hindu' revival, and the Brahmo Samaj immediately spring to mind).

Chapters nine, ten, eleven and twelve revert back to territory that is more obviously ‘historical geography’, looking at environment, transport and communications, towns and cities, and the economic relationship between empire and colony. This is one of the strongest and most interesting sections of this extensive book, and an area where the value of historical geography is most apparent. The discussions of forestry, and particularly water use and management, are especially valuable, and this area of focus again provides the opportunity for Butlin to generously promote the work of some of his colleagues.

The book ends with a chapter on histories of decolonisation. Insights from the perspective of geography abound, with water featuring as an important factor, e.g. in the role of rivers in drawing boundaries or the control of water supplies as key aspects in negotiations between coloniser and colonised, as well as between emergent postcolonial states. The British have of course, quite rightly, come under much criticism for their obsession with the practice of partition as a decolonisation ‘exit strategy’. Even if it does not raise any sympathy for British authorities, it is illuminating to learn that the Radcliffe commission – which oversaw the drawing of boundaries in Bengal between India and what would become East Pakistan – had to contend with river channels that dried up for parts of the year, and in fact which changed their course entirely (p. 587).

Because of its breadth, this book does work as a kind of textbook which would be of particular value for undergraduate and MA courses on the history of Empire. For that readership, it offers a solid overview of the colonial period with a particular emphasis on aspects of colonialism that fall within the parameters of what might loosely be called geography. A great deal of the literature on empire is also summarised and thoughtfully presented. There is however one caveat to add. The usefulness of the book for the undergraduate readership is undermined by some shortcomings in the way that Cambridge University Press has produced the book.

With regard to the referencing, it would have been far more appropriate in a book that draws upon as wide a literature as this does, to have used footnotes – allowing the reader to glance down at the full reference – rather than the Harvard system. One is required to turn to the bibliography to find out which particular book is being referred to, a task which is both tedious and cumbersome when it comes to a book of this size.

Much more significantly, a number of errors occur in the text. For example, we are told that Britain declared war against Germany and Italy on behalf of India in 1938 (p. 584). This is obviously an uncorrected typographical error, but it somewhat undermines the strength of the argument that undergraduates ought to stick to the scholarly literature, rather than use say, Wikipedia, because the latter contains basic factual mistakes.

There is also unnoticed repetition. As formidable as David Washbrook’s work on India is, surely it doesn’t warrant the same sizeable quote appearing twice (pages 68 and 581). This, combined with the fact that the page references to Washbrook’s article are different in each case, does not inspire confidence in the copy editing that has gone into the book’s production. This may appear to be overly pedantic, but one is left with the distinct impression that the publisher has done the author a disservice in this area, and he would surely be entitled to expect better from CUP.

More meaningfully, how far does it really constitute a new contribution, and specifically, is this a work of historical geography that will introduce the latest theoretical and methodological innovations in the field to the wider and more diffuse groups of historians working in the field of imperial history?

As I have suggested, the book leans heavily towards providing descriptive accounts of things falling within the remit of geography – e.g. migration, population, environment, transport and communications – rather than explaining causes and explicating consequences within an analytical framework that is distinctive to historical geography. Butlin’s Geographies of Empire does not bring to the fore much of what is most striking about ‘modern historical geographies’, which (in an edited collection of that name) Brian Graham and Catherine Nash suggested is concerned with new directions ‘informed by feminism, post-structuralism, antiracism and post-colonial perspectives, sharing concerns about questions of power and meaning’.(7) Graham and Nash’s edited volume included contributions from scholars who have since gone on to produce some of the more innovative work connecting historical geography and the history of empire, such as David Lambert and Alan Lester’s Colonial Lives.(8)

Although the first chapter of the book makes reference to the field of post-colonialism, to issues of gender and sexuality, and to historical geographers who have recently sought to bridge the gap between histories of empire informed by postcolonial theory and the field of historical geography, one doesn’t really feel the weight of these more theoretically inclined perspectives evenly in the text that follows. That being said, this first chapter constitutes an exemplary overview of developments in the field of imperial historiography going back to J. R. Seeley, Hobson and Lenin through to Robinson and Gallagher, Cain and Hopkins, Chris Bayly and Miles Ogborn.

In sum, then, this is an impressively erudite and knowledgeable book, which draws on a considerable weight of scholarship. But for those (like this author) who are eager to better understand how historical geography can shape current developments in imperial historiography – for example the recent ‘transnational turn’, or perhaps an emergent ‘material turn’, which looks to the way in which theories of power and identity are placed in social and material contexts by someone like Bruno Latour – we may need to wait.

The author's response is pending.

Notes

  1. What Butlin calls the ‘northern archipelago’ is perhaps more familiar to historians as the ‘Atlantic archipelago’. See J. G. A. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History (Cambridge, 2005).Back to (1)
  2. Cf. Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford, 2000), p. 67.Back to (2)
  3. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Delhi, 2002), p. 8.Back to (3)
  4. The linking of imperial and local is explicit in the title of Butlin’s recent essay R. A. Butlin, '"Geography - Imperial and Local"; the work of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia (Queensland Branch) 1885–1945', Queensland Geographical Perspectives, ed. I. R. W. Childs and B. J. Hudson (Milton, 2006), pp. 217–41.Back to (4)
  5. Felix Driver, Geography  Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire (Oxford, 2001). Back to (5)
  6. Cf. C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Cambridge, 2004), introduction.Back to (6)
  7. Brian Graham and Catherine Nash, Modern Historical Geographies (Harlow, 2000).Back to (7)
  8. David Lambert and Alan Lester, Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006).Back to (8)
November 2009

Author's Response

Robin Butlin
Posted: Thu, 26/08/2010 - 12:04

I am grateful to Michael Collins for his perceptive, generous and constructive review of my book, and also to the deputy editor of Reviews in History for the extensive allocation of space to this analysis. Some of the points raised early in the review in the section summarising and commenting on its structure and contents, including Irish land-use history and the comparative dimension of the different colonial land claims, for example by the French, British and Germans in such areas as the Nile Delta, Morocco, and the reformation of the indigenous religions of indigenous peoples, are in part an outcome of space limitation in what is a very large book, and partly of personal choice and emphasis. The comments provide, however, very helpful ideas for future reflection, research and writing.

An important feature of the book not, however, mentioned in the review, and which reflects an important part of the author’s and a historical geography perspective on geographies of imperialism and colonialism, is the inclusion of 67 maps, diagrams and photographs. These add significantly in my view to the strengths of the project, drawing on a range of archival sources, my own experience and photographs taken during research visits, and the expertise of the cartographers at the School of Geography, University of Leeds.  They provide, I think, a helpful information base and a series of interpretative challenges, and indicate a generosity of space provision for their inclusion by Cambridge University Press, who also deserve greater commendation for producing a book of this size and complexity. The book, it should be noted, is also available in paperback (only the hardback version and price is listed at the beginning of the review).

The remainder of my response will look at the broader question raised by Michael Collins towards the end of the review, of the extent to which the book succeeds in presenting a balance between description and theory in matters of historical geographies of imperialism and colonialism. This is obviously in some respects a matter for readers to determine for themselves – a question of individual judgement –  in relation to a chosen authorial emphasis and experience of particular fields within what is the very broad sub-discipline of historical geography, and also a reflection of the very large geographical and chronological scales covered in the book, and the period during which it was written.

Books in historical geography dealing with very large spatial scales and time-scales are rare, and practical space constraints restrict fuller treatment of methodological and theoretical underpinnings to the many different topics, places and time periods covered. Robert Wilson has noted, in a review essay on environmental history and with particular reference to two monumental works – Donald Meinig’s four volumes on The Shaping of America, published from 1986 to 2004 and Michael Williams’ Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis (2003) – that they ‘were written by historical geographers in the later stages of their careers. Apparently, historical geographies on these time scales are not for younger scholars’ (1): a debatable contention! A similar example of a high quality large-scale historical geography of a former part of the British Empire is Graeme Wynn’s Canada and Arctic North America (2007).

Miles Ogborn in his recent publication Global Lives: Britain and the world, 1550-1800 (2009), has also pointed to the plurality of potential ways into large-scale analyses in historical geography: ‘For many, understanding global changes in the past – for example tracing histories of migrations, the development of trade, the building of empires or the uses of technologies – is also a matter of the many geographies of globalisation. Thinking about this can usefully develop ideas of networks or webs of global connection that are built in various ways to link people, places, ideas and objects in dynamic configurations … It allows for many different ways of being global, or doing globalisation’.(2)

Some useful discussion points can be raised here about the expectations  by Michael Collins of ‘modern’ postcolonial historical geography, including the significance for historical geography of the specified new ‘turns’ which currently and productively engage some historians. It must be noted that the ‘spatial turn’, the development of a very complex set of ideas and processes, based on a fundamental understanding of space which has always been an essential component of geography, and which is so much part of the fabric of current research and teaching in historical geography, is equally if not more significant for historical geography as transnational and materialist turns. The components of this ‘spatial turn’ have been greatly and imaginatively influenced by the ideas of the geographer Doreen Massey.(3) The notion of space as a fixed and unresponsive entity has been replaced in the spatial turn and the new postcolonial critical historical geography, by the idea of imperial space, according to David Lambert and Alan Lester as '"the sphere of a multiplicity of trajectories", many of which were given impetus and direction by individuals collaborating in pursuit of specific colonial or anti-colonial projects’, and which were part of a wide range of ‘material’ expressions.(4)

Historical geography, like History and other academic disciplines, is a very broad church, and the extensive work carried out by historical geographers on  empires and colonies, at widely differing geographical scales, is not confined to the kinds of  work admirably and concisely identified in the book Modern Historical Geographies, published over ten years ago, and the continued excellent work by many of its contributors (5), and which is also evident in the innovative seminars, for example, of the London Group of Historical Geographers and the activities of the Historical Geography Research group of the Institute of British Geographers (with the Royal Geographical Society). Geographers and historians also have a range of understanding and expectations of historical geography, and the links and differences between the two disciplines are complex.(6)

Joseph M. Powell has highlighted the function of historical geography in this context: ‘geography’s distinctive response to the continuing challenge of imperialism and colonisation reflects an openness to interdisciplinary theory and ideology, a well-honed regard for interpenetrating scales that can accommodate the activities of individuals and small communities within the grand panorama, and improved understandings of the subject’s long and intimate associations with the advances and retreats of Empire’.(7) In relation to environmental history – an important and innovative intellectual frontier topic for historical geographers working on colonialism and imperialism – Robert Wilson also offers the challenging opinion that ‘world historians have proven adept at incorporating natural science perspectives into their historical analysis – far more than historical geographers have recently done. Clearly such approaches can lead to problems, especially with providing a theoretical or thematic framework to make sense of such large histories. But given geography’s position at the intersection of the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, historical geographers are better able than most scholars to work in this field’.(8) The evidence from recent publications suggests that historical geographers have achieved far more in this respect than Wilson seems to think.

Historical geographers, working in contexts of postcolonial theory, are indeed productively employing innovative approaches to imperial and colonial experiences, especially those associated with the ‘spatial turn’.  The processes and experiences of empire operating beyond and at smaller scales than nation states (the ‘transnational turn’), and the understanding of aspects of materialist expressions of empire and colony, including traded goods, writings of individuals and experiences of individuals and families [the ‘material turn’], have de facto been considered by historical geographers over a long period of time, but the terms themselves are of comparatively recent usage in the historical geography literature.

On transnationalism, broad issues have been reviewed, for example, by Cheryl McEwan (9), and detailed empirical examples provided, inter alia, in Gordon Winder’s recent study of the historical geographies of Reuters news agency and Gareth Shaw and Paul Hudson’s research on colonial directories and Wellington, New Zealand.(10)Sub-national or regional impacts of empire are also receiving attention, evidenced by Richard Phillips’ study of North-West England as an imperial region.(11)

The broader import of the concept of materialism for cultural and historical geography has been reviewed by Cheryl McEwan, Sarah Whatmore, and others.(12) Partly a reaction to the excessive theorizing in the ‘cultural turn’ in geography, from about the beginning of the present century  a very broad range of topics has been researched within the field of materiality , including “‘nature’; ‘the urban’; the museum; the body; visual culture; all that which is consumed and produced, and decayed; and that which is conceptualised as ‘landscape’, ‘the domestic scene’, and ‘waste’”, each of these at varying scales.(13) Another developing interest for historical geography, which partly overlaps with the ‘material turn’, is that of biography, both of individuals and of groups of people who were part of the imperial networks. For the geographer there are considerable difficulties in biographical approaches, not least in terms of the width and depth and presentational skills of this type of investigation, but some significant and stimulating studies have recently been produced that illustrate an area of research which gives access to the finer grain of empire and colony.(14) Aspects of some of these have been incorporated into my book.

There is, however, equally important innovative research and writing in historical geographies of colonialism and imperialism that focuses on different issues, for example, on questions of sources of evidence, environmental change, and a range of geopolitical issues. Significant parts of the research carried out by historical geographers in and on ex-colonial countries and regions, particularly Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and North America, and similar work in European countries, notably France, both overlaps and also differs from postcolonial analyses of other regions. Daniel Clayton, for example, has reminded us of this contrasting experience, particularly of the former white settler colonies, 'which are not postcolonial in the same way as large parts of Africa and Asia. For geographers working on these parts of the world, disciplinary debates about ‘geography’s empire’ seem far off, and the type of globally ambitious (imperial?) postcolonial theory that emanates from India and other hot spots of postcolonial inspiration needs to be recontextualized. Postcolonial theory is used selectively, and regional historical literatures and conversations take on more importance'.(15)

The extensive and seminal work of Chris Christopher in South Africa and Joseph M. Powell in Australia exemplify this process and show how different kinds of theory and source materials can equally well inform and assist progress in historical geography. Christopher has been an extremely active and productive researcher into the historical geography of South Africa, including apartheid over a long period of time. His Atlas of Apartheid (1994), renamed The Atlas of Changing South Africa (2001), based on extensive archive and published source research, is a fine exemplification of one set of highly relevant approaches to the study of geographies of the imperial past, and this work continues, for example in a recent paper on the first census in South Africa in 1910.(16) His work is extensively referenced in my book, and constitutes, through its approaches to a wide range of sources of evidence and the narrative and analysis of located regional experiences, a major contribution to modern historical geography, of a kind rather different from work by historical geographers which has a more overtly theoretical approach.

Joseph M. Powell, a doyen of historical geography of Australia and the ‘New World’ more generally, has dedicated a professional lifetime to the study of: water management in Australia from 1788; the historiography of Geography in Australia; resource appraisal and environmental management in the British Empire/Commonwealth; and comparative geographies of environmental change in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This work is also extensively referenced and reviewed in my book,  and offers applicable theoretical perspectives, and an admirable and highly practicable tendency to look to biology and other natural sciences in the reconstruction of complex imperial science links, notably in relation to environmental management, conservation, and national and sub-national institutional issues which go beyond simple and formal political constructs of empire, and which yield fruitful ideas and information in a range of spatial contexts.(17)

Finally, it is worth mentioning that there are trends in historical geography which have much in common with parallel trends in historical studies that are informing and enlightening imperial and colonial studies. One is the strengthening of critical geopolitical perspectives on imperialism, both in terms of a broadening and deepening of theory and methodology, and reviews of such complex issues as boundary determination, and the mapping of empires.(18) Detailed studies also continue to be produced, by historical geographers and others, of empire-linked institutions such as geographical societies, extensively covered in chapter six of my book, and which both overlap with and go beyond the preferred kinds of ‘modern’ theory and methodology listed in the review.(19)

Future global-scale historical geographies of imperialism and colonialism, though in all probability comparatively rare, will undoubtedly continue to evidence many different ways of tackling the problems encountered in the construction of large-scale postcolonial historical geographies of empire and colony,  and some of these, together with smaller-scale studies, published in journals and essay collections,  will go some way to help inform the understanding and meet the sort of needs specified by Michael Collins at the end of his helpful and challenging review. In the meantime, my own version, in Geographies of Empire, I feel, makes a modest contribution to this end.

Notes

  1. R. M. Wilson, ‘Supersized history’, Journal of Historical Geography, 31 (2005), 567.Back to (1)
  2. M. Ogborn, Global Lives: Britain and the world, 1550–1800, (Cambridge, 2009), p. 5.Back to (2)
  3. D. Massey, ‘Places and their pasts’, History Workshop Journal, 39 (1995),183–92; For Space (London, 2005); C. W. J. Withers, ‘Place and the “Spatial turn” in geography and history’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 70, 4 (October 2009), 637–58; A Place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalisation, ed. D. Massey and P. Jess (Oxford, 1995); M. Middell and K. Naumann, ‘Global history and the spatial turn: from the impact of area studies to the study of critical junctures of globalization’, Journal of Global History, 5 (2010), 149–70; H. Blais, ‘Coloniser l’éspace: territoires, identités, spatialité’, Genèses, 74 (2009),145–59; R. A. Dodgshon, ‘Geography’s place in time’, Geografiska Annaler B, 90 (2008), 1–15.Back to (3)
  4. D. Lambert and A. Lester, Colonial Lives Across the British Empire. Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century, (Cambridge, 2006), p. 14.Back to (4)
  5. See for example A. Lester, ‘Imperial circuits and networks; geographies of the British Empire’, History Compass 4, 1 (2006), 124–41; G. M. Winder, ‘Imperialistic Geographies’, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, ed. R. Kitchen and N. Thrift (Oxford, 2009), 330–43; C. McEwan, Postcolonialism and Development, (London, 2009); (Dis) Placing Empires: Renegotiating British Colonial Geographies, ed. L. J. Proudfoot and M. M. Roche  (London, 2005).Back to (5)
  6. Alan R. H. Baker, Geography and History. Bridging the Divide, (Cambridge, 2003); P, Grosser, ‘Comment écrire l’histoire des relations internationals aujourd-hui? Quelques reflexions à partir de l’Empire Britannique’, Histoire@Politique, 10 (2010), 1–36.Back to (6)
  7. J. M. Powell, ‘Nature, Science and the Imperial Mosaic’, Australian Geographer, 41, 2 (2010), 267.Back to (7)
  8. Wilson, op.cit, 566.Back to (8)
  9. C. McEwan, ‘Transnationalism’, in A Companion to Cultural Geography, ed. J. S. Duncan, N. C. Johnson, and R. H. Stein  (Oxford, 2008), pp. 499–51.Back to (9)
  10. G. Winder, ‘London’s global reach? Reuters News and Network, 1865, 1851, and 1914’, Journal of World History, 21, 2 (2010), 271–96; G. Shaw and P. Hudson, ‘Edge of Empire: transnationalism and identity in Wellington, New Zealand, ca.1860-ca, 1920’, Landscape Research, 27, 1 (2002), 51–66.Back to (10)
  11. R. Phillips, ‘Exploring an imperial region: North-West England’, North West Geography, 2 (2002), 2–9.Back to (11)
  12. C. McEwan, ‘Material geographies and postcolonialism’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 24, 3 (2003), 340–55; S. Whatmore, ‘Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world’, Cultural Geographies,13 (2006), 600–9; see also D. P. Tolia-Kelly, ‘Material culture’, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, ed. R. Kitchen and N. Thrift  ( Amsterdam, 2009) pp. 500–54; Postcolonial Geographies, ed. A. Blunt and C. McEwan (London, 2002); E. Rappaport, ‘Imperial possessions, cultural histories, and the material turn: response’, Victorian Studies, 50, 2 (Winter 2008), 289–96.Back to (12)
  13. Tolia-Kelly, op.cit., 500.Back to (13)
  14. Nicola Thomas, ‘Exploring the boundaries of biography: the family and friendship networks of Lady Curzon, Vicereine of India 1898–1905’ Journal of Historical Geography, 30 (2004), 466–519; A. Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home, (Oxford, 2005); M. Ogborn, Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550–1800 (Cambridge 2009).Back to (14)
  15. Daniel Clayton, ‘Imperial geographies’, in A Companion to Cultural Geography, ed. J. S. Duncan, N. C. Johnson, and R. H. Stein (Oxford, 2008), pp. 449–68; also D. Clayton, ‘Le passé colonial/impérial et l’approche postcoloniale de la géographie anglophone’, in L’Empire des Géographes. Géographie, exploration et colonisation XIXe–XXe siècle, ed. P. Singaravélou (Paris, 2008), pp. 219–34.Back to (15)
  16. A. J. Christopher, ‘A South African Domesday Book: the first  Union census of 1911’, South African Geographical  Journal, 92, 1 (2010), 22–34.Back to (16)
  17. J. M. Powell, Environmental Management in Australia, 1788-1914: Guardians, Improvers and Profit: an Introductory Survey (Oxford, 1976); An Historical Geography of Modern Australia. The Restive Fringe, (Cambridge, 1991); ­Plains of Promise, Rivers of Destiny. Water Resources and the Development of Queensland, 1820–1990 (Brisbane, 1991); ‘Griffith Taylor and ‘Australia Unlimited’, The John Murtagh Macrossan Lecture for 1992 (Brisbane, 1993); ‘Historical geography and environmental history: an Australian interface’, Journal of Historical Geography, 22, 3 (1996), 253–73;  ‘Dominion over palm and pine’: the British Empire forestry conferences, 1920–1947’, Journal of Historical Geography, 33, 4 (2007), 853–77;  ‘Development imperative, terrae incognitae: a pioneer soil scientist 1912–1951’, Geographical Research (early view e- journal, December 2009); ‘Nature, science and the imperial mosaic’, Australian Geographer, 41, 2 (2010), 263–77.Back to (17)
  18. G. Kearns, Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder (Oxford, 2009); ‘Feature: politics and scale in boundary-making’, special number of the Journal of Historical Geography, 34, 3 (July 2008); The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire, ed. J. Akerman ( Chicago, 2009).Back to (18)
  19. H. Clout, ‘Popularising geography in France’s second city: the rôle of the Société de Géographie de Lyon, 1873–1968’, Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography, on-line document 449 (27 April 2009); H. Clout, ‘Popular geographies in a French port city: the experience of the Le Havre Society of Commercial Geography, 1884–1948’, Scottish Geographical Journal, 124, 1 (2008), 53–77; L’Empire des Géographes. Géographie, exploration et colonisation XIXe–XXe siècle, ed. P. Singaravélou (Paris, 2008).Back to (19)
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