Felix Driver

Geography's Empire: Histories of Geographical Knowledge:

In this paper the possibilities and hazards of a critical perspective on the history of geographical knowledge are considered. The focus is on the relations between modern geography and European colonialism during the ‘age of empire’ (circa 1870–1914). For writers as diverse as Joseph Conrad and Halford Mackinder, this was a moment of decisive importance for the making of the modern world. Although the interplay between geography, modernity, and colonialism has recently attracted attention from the historians of geography, it is argued in this paper that they have often conceived the role of geographical knowledge in somewhat narrow terms. The work of Edward Said is discussed at some length, as it highlights some of the key issues and dilemmas facing those who would rewrite critical histories of geographical discourse. A totalising view of ‘imaginative geographies’ (such as those of Orientalism) is argued against, and instead the heterogeneity of geographical knowledges is emphasised. The paper concludes with a more general question: Why have histories of geography at all, in these (post)modern times?

Power, Space, and the Body: A Critical Assessment of Foucault's Discipline and Punish

The work of Michel Foucault has recently been subjected to considerable scrutiny. This paper is an examination of his book, Discipline and Punish, which describes an historical transformation in the exercise of power. The themes (section 2) and the significance (section 3) of the book are discussed in terms of Foucaults conception of history and power. In the rest of the paper, its implications are examined more closely, through four categories: ‘institutions’, ‘the economy’, ‘law and the state’, and ‘struggle and strategy’. Under these headings are discussed the connections and contradictions between Foucaults analysis and more conventional Marxist or Weberian approaches. Although Foucaults perspectives cannot be ‘incorporated’ within such theories of power, they are far from being completely incompatible with them.

Heart of Empire? Landscape, Space and Performance in Imperial London

In this paper we address the ways in which global processes of imperialism helped to constitute the cultural geography of the capital cities of Europe. London is our focus, not least because its representation as an imperial city during the modern period was particularly fraught with difficulty. In the first section of the paper we consider the value and limitations of a ‘post-colonial’ perspective, and specifically the extent to which the discourse of imperial cities was European rather than national in character. In the second section we turn to London, widening the conventional focus on the ceremonial core at Westminster to consider a number of alternative ‘hearts of empire’, sites which were also claimed as central places in the landscape of the imperial city. Here we question the assumption that London ‘became’ imperial in a circumscribed area and only for a brief moment in the late-Victorian and Edwardian era. In order to develop the argument that the ‘imperial’ was not merely the preserve of policymakers in Whitehall, we then consider the role of imperial culture in shaping a variety of other urban landscapes, especially the swelling London suburbs. Last, we address the contradictions and tensions in the idea of ‘imperial London’ as it developed around the turn of the 19th century.

Political geography and state formation: disputed territory

Over the last two decades, the study of human geography in the UK and North America has undergone a number of important changes. To a large extent, the subject has escaped from the narrow confines of the particular view of scientific inquiry advanced by representatives of the ’new geography’ during the 1960s. Breaking out from their selfimposed conceptual isolationism, human geographers have become more receptive to a variety of theoretical currents within the social and natural sciences. It is quite possible that this rapprochement (for communications have certainly been two-way) will be seen as having far greater significance for the discipline than the once-celebrated ’quantitative revolution’. Human geography has not simply opened up its intellectual frontiers; it has also paid closer and more critical attention to its own territory. The modern map of human geography is thus radically different from its predecessors. Nowhere do such changes appear more remarkable than in the field of political geography. What was once considered a moribund backwater is now fertile ground for original research and lively debate. To some extent, this modest renaissance is a product of trends in the subject as a whole. The focus on questions of welfare and social justice which was increasingly evident in Anglo-American Geography from the mid-1970s inspired a more serious consideration of social structures in general and the role of the state in particular. This trend encouraged a revival of interest in political geography, a field which since the time of Ratzel has generally (though not unproblematically) been identified with the geographical study of states. Yet is has been to Marx rather than Ratzel that many political geographers have turned for theoretical inspiration. Richard Peet has recently remarked on the substantial influence that Marxism has had

The historical geography of the workhouse system in England and Wales, 1834–1883

This paper presents a study in the historical geography of social policy. It examines the shape and evolution of the workhouse system in England and Wales during the fifty years after its establishment under the 1834 Poor Law. The paper attempts to overcome the dualism in Poor Law history between “local” and “national” research by adopting an explicity geographical perspective on patterns of social administration and institutional provision. While the 1834 reform transformed the geographical structure of Poor Law administration, the post-1834 workhouse system was far from monolithic. Using a previously neglected source, the paper analyses qualitative and quantitative aspects of the historical geography of workhouse provision. It provides a national picture of the extent of workhouse building after 1834, highlighting the impact of local resistance in certain areas. The analysis points to the significance of the administrative components of the 1834 reform, as well as to subsequent changes in institutional strategy (during the 1860s in particular) for the structure of the workhouse system as a whole. The paper thus establishes a national context for the study of local variations in workhouse provision.

Capital and Empire: Geographies of Imperial London

The notion of empire has often been regarded in Europe as a matter of diffusion and expansion; something which happened ‘over there’ rather than close to home. Yet the form, use and representation of modern European cities have been shaped by the global history of imperialism in ways that continue to matter even in an apparently post-imperial age. The signs of empire were prominently displayed within the built environments of all the major cities of late-nineteenth century Europe, as they came (in different ways) to play the role of regional, national and imperial capitals. In what was evidently a pan-European discourse on the imperial city between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth, national models were defined in relation to other national models, in a spirit of competition as much as emulation. This paper examines the case of London. British architects and planners frequently complained that London lagged behind its rivals in the struggle for imperial primacy, given the absence of state-sponsored projects to parallel Haussmanns rebuilding of Paris or Leopolds grand plans for Brussels. At the intra-urban scale, the imperial city had a geography which mattered: in the case of London, different parts of the city were associated with different aspects of empire. More generally, it is clear that national debates over imperial urbanism were conditioned not simply by understandings of the global reach of European empires, but also by attitudes towards social, cultural and political change within Europe itself.

New perspectives on the history and philosophy of geography

more problematic, and at the same time more pleasurable, by the current efflorescence of writing in this field. There are indeed signs of considerable progress, if the work reviewed here is anything to go by. To think in terms of ’progress’ carries some risks, of course. Here I use the term to denote three specific advances: an engagement with the wider academic literature on the history and philosophy of the social and natural sciences, without losing sight of the specific character of geographical knowledge; a willingness to consider

'Making space: territorial themes in the history of science', a conference organized by the British Society for the History of Science, held at the University of Kent, Canterbury, 28-30 March 1994

n recent years, the language of space has become unexpectedly fashionable within Ia range of disciplines. Whereas Foucault’s self-confessed ’spatial obsessions’ met with considerable scepticism for much of his lifetime, they have proved far more contagious in the last decade than even he would have imagined possible. The proliferation of references to maps of meaning, cartographies of conflict, spaces of knowledge and imaginative geographies in recent writing within cultural studies, for example, has been particularly striking. The aetiology of this condition will no doubt provide future historians of the human sciences with much interesting material, as they attempt to locate the roots of our own ’spatial obsessions’. They may take the simplest route, and diagnose a case of the ’postmodern condition’, a complaint which in its worst form is reputed to deprive its victims of all sense of history. Or, assuming they have been ingenious enough to develop an antidote to the unpredictable side effects of the cartographic metaphor, they may attempt to map the uneven impact of feminism and postcolonialism on contemporary accounts of power, culture and society.2 2

Missionary Travels: Livingstone, Africa and the Book

ABSTRACT ‘I think I would rather cross the African continent again than undertake to write another book. It is far easier to travel than to write about it’. So wrote David Livingstone in the preface to his best-selling work, Missionary Travels (1857). Yet writing was what Livingstone spent much of his time in Africa doing, and on any scrap of paper he could find. And it was not travelling but writing, or rather more precisely publishing, which made his fortune. The European exploration of Africa during the nineteenth century has so often been treated as a story of action and adventure, that it is easy to overlook the fact that it was also a literary event. Missionary Travels became one of the best known works of travel writing in the English language, and it was widely read, reproduced and translated. In order to appreciate the significance and impact of Missionary Travels within Britain and beyond, this paper sets the work in the context of contemporary cultures of exploration and empire. It also seeks to unravel the story of the making of the book and the different hands and voices at work in its composition, including those of illustrators, sponsors and publishers.

Exploration as Knowledge Transfer: Exhibiting Hidden Histories

This chapter addresses the spatial mobility of knowledge in a dual context: the role of local knowledge in geographical exploration during the age of empire, and the presentation of that theme within a recent exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in London. In some respects, as suggested by recent work in the history of cartography and botany, the process of exploration can be conceived as a form of “knowledge transfer,” in which indigenous knowledge was absorbed into European systems of knowledge. Yet on closer examination it becomes clear that the knowledge thus “transferred” was not always strictly local or indigenous—and in the often uneasy process of translation, intermediaries such as guides, brokers, and interpreters played a significant role. In seeking to bring this agency into view, the author draws on the experience of research for an exhibition informed not only by subaltern and postcolonial perspectives but also by more material, indeed spatial design strategies. The chapter emphasises the mutability as well as the mobility of knowledge in both the nineteenth-century culture of exploration and its re-presentation in physical and digital form today.