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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

7. “Our Field Is the World”: Geographical Societies in International Comparison, 1821–1914

Authors : Maximilian Georg, Ute Wardenga

Published in: Decolonising and Internationalising Geography

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

As associations for the promotion and dissemination of geographical knowledge, Geographical Societies were the institutional basis of geography for the larger part of the “long” nineteenth century. Before 1914, up to 170 such Societies existed in all inhabited continents. Most historiographical research has focused on Geographical Societies in capital cities and/or dealt with them as being inside the “containers” of their respective nation-states, and as if they existed and operated in independence and isolation from one another. By contrast, in a research project launched in 2015/16 at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IfL), Leipzig, within the framework of the Leipzig Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199 “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”, we seek to identify connections and draw comparisons among 34 Geographical Societies from all continents and of 13 languages, including Societies from minor cities and countries. Our data comes from the Societies’ yearly journals, which we record with a standardized method that we have developed. From a Society’s proceedings, we gather, rather qualitatively, its organizational structure including its networking with other Geographical Societies; from the geographical articles in its journal, we gather, rather quantitatively through codes, the Society’s subjects (e.g. “physical geography”: “geology”; or “human geography”: “economy”), and world areas (e.g. “Africa, West”, or “Polar Regions, South”) of interest. For each Society, we thus obtain a profile reflecting its structure, activities, interests and evolution. Each profile may be explained by the Society’s local and historical context (e.g. French colonialism; Czech nationalism), and further understood through the theoretical concepts of our Collaborative Research Centre: each Society “spatialized” the world into certain “spatial formats”, which then made up a certain “spatial order”. By negotiating modes of dealing with a globalized world, the Geographical Societies thus contributed to the professionalization of geography.

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At the time, to be sure, Algeria was a French colony, and Egypt was about to become a British one. Thus, their Geographical Societies consisted of immigrated Westerners and Westernized locals rather than of “real” Egyptians or Algerians; and the language of both the Cairo and the Algiers Societies was French rather than Arabic.

The most-quoted lists of Geographical Societies are those compiled by, successively, Ernst Behm, Hugo Wichmann and Georg Kollm in various volumes of the Geographisches Jahrbuch between 1866 (vol. 1) and 1909 (vol. 32). However, for the time after 1909, and because of omissions and errors in those lists, we have complemented them with various other sources. By the way, in contrast to other research, we do not count as Geographical Societies those establishments, mostly located in Latin America, that called themselves “Geographical Institutes”, such as the “Institutes” of Rio de Janeiro (est. 1838) and Buenos Aires (1879).

The name “Society of Commercial Geography” meant that the respective Society was led by businessmen and other “bourgeois” and sought to collect geographical information that would help overseas businesses and trade, especially in or with the respective country’s colonies. In regions and subjects of interest, Societies of “Commercial Geography” did not differ much from “classic” Societies of Geography. The difference lay in methods and aims: “commercial geography” was an applied, “utilitarian” one, as opposed to a theoretical, academic geography (Lejeune 1993: 147–156).

On the Societies of Rome: Carazzi (1972), Natili (2008); Milan: Milanini Kemény (1973); Berlin: Bader (1978); St. Petersburg: Bassin (1983), Weiss (2007); Bordeaux: Péhaut (1994); Lima: López-Ocón (1994); Quebec: Bergevin (1994); Amsterdam: van der Velde (1995); Cairo: Ferrié and Boëstch (1996); Madrid: Rodríguez Esteban (1996), Villanova Valero (1999), Nogué and Villanova (2002); Nancy: Bonnefont (1999); London: Driver (2001): Chap. 2; Edinburgh: Kuitenbrouwer (2004); Lisbon: Garcia (2004); Paris: Gómez Mendoza (2005); Lyon: Klein (2008); France: Lejeune (1993); Spain: Hernández Sandoica (1994); Belgium: Nicolaï (1994); Italy: Monina (2002); Latin America: López-Ocón (1996); on various Geographical Societies: Capel (1981): Chap. 7, Heffernan (2003), Butlin (2009): Chap. 6.

On geography’s links to “national identity”: Hooson (1994); to “colonization”: Bruneau and Dory (1994), Singaravelou (2008); to “imperialism”: Hudson (1972), Bell et al. (1995); to “empire”: Godlewska and Smith (1994), Driver (2001), Butlin (2009).

In the case of, for example, the Rome Society, its journal’s monthly issues were each delivered with a cover containing, among other things, a list of the Society’s current officials. At libraries, however, all issues of one year were usually bound together in one volume, in which process the issues’ covers were discarded. Therefore, the information on the covers may elude us, because for our research project, we must do with the printed or scanned library copies of journals that we happen to obtain.

For around 1900, on colonialism in French schools: Manceron (2003); on the strong support from German schoolteachers for imperialism and nationalism: Wehler (1995): 1209.

To be sure, if we gather certain structures, interests and activities of a Geographical Society from its journal or further sources, this does not mean that all its members continuously supported those structures, shared those interests, or participated in those activities. Any Society’s members may have been so heterogeneous that in practice, its structures, interests and activities may have been less uniform and consistent than what we read in the sources. However, if we are to look at many Societies at the same time, we cannot do without some generalizations.

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Title: “Our Field Is the World”: Geographical Societies in International Comparison, 1821–1914
Authors: Maximilian Georg
Ute Wardenga
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Decolonising and Internationalising Geography
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49515-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-49516-9

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49516-9_7

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