This paper introduces a virtual special issue that explores how monuments have been contested in the past and how they continue to be so in the present. A survey of papers published in this journal from the 1990s to the early-2000s demonstrates an ongoing and rich interest in the interconnections between nationalism, landscape and ritual, with some emphasis on resistance but little sense of the contemporary

In the first half of the 19th century, Adriano Balbi (1782–1848) was one of the greatest geographers in Italy and Europe, having an extremely vast and constantly updated scientific output. He tried to keep up with new discoveries of ‘unknown and unexplored' territories. His work influenced geographers and cartographers, who used it as a source. Evangelista Azzi (1793–1848), a cartographer and military

This paper examines the role of law, particularly law related to private property, in the historical geography of class struggle. At the center of the analysis is the ‘access rule’, written by the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board in 1975 and struck down by the United States Supreme Court in 2021. Responding to the specific geography of California agribusiness labor relations and the long

showcases, in exhibition and book form, the work of Thomas Joshua Cooper (b. 1946) and his project to chart photographically the edges and extremities of the Atlantic Basin. Cooper's large black-and-white prints, often abstract and tied tenuously to a specific location by words, are visually arresting and intensely geographical. This essay points to Cooper's work as an imaginative geography that inspires

This reflection traces my intellectual journey to geography. It focuses on the emergence of Global Black Geographies as a key methodological framework in my PhD research. The article explores its application to my work alongside my move from Jamaica to the United Kingdom. Global Black Geographies, which takes some of its cues from Black Geographies, is a field that powerfully interrogates the multiply

This article offers a critical appraisal of institutionalised knowledge production and exchange on the history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom. We examine broad epistemic trends over 41 years (1981–2021) through an analysis of annual conference sessions and special events convened by the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with

In the context of class and culture wars over the social purpose of the university, it is time to revisit a pivotal question: to whom is the discipline of geography accountable and for what? In the spirit of looking back to look forward, we wonder to what extent and in what ways historiographies of geography that critically interrogate geographers' statements on the discipline's social mission might

This paper discusses ideas of anarchist (historical) geographies of rivers and seas. It does so by addressing works of early anarchist geographer Lev Ilich Mechnikov (mentioned here with the more known French spelling Léon Metchnikoff) (1838–1888), which lie at the origin of broader ‘Mediterranean metaphors’ comparing the globalising role of oceanic navigation to early Mediterranean connectedness,

This short reflection on forty years of the UK's History and Philosophy of Geography group reflects on the poetics of geographical knowledge. Whilst histories of geography have diverged from philosophies of geography over recent years, the intervention proposes that a useful avenue of enquiry for future work is to develop fuller historical and philosophical accounts of the forms and poetics of geographical

This introduction to the special issue Reflections on Histories and Philosophies of Geography discusses the context and content of nineteen articles written to mark the fortieth anniversary of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG). The group was founded in 1981, two years after the early career

Tourism and conservation policies in Sweden share a significant common history, involving constructions of the non-human world. In this paper, the development of this historical relationship is traced through national park policies and the Swedish Tourist Association's yearbooks, from the late nineteenth century onward. We explore this in theoretical terms of what Nancy Fraser has called ‘boundary

The conflict over Wallmapu-Araucanía in southern Chile, between the Spanish , the Chilean state and the Mapuche peoples, dates from the 16th century, with a key moment being the forced integration of Mapuche land into the Chilean state in the late nineteenth century. This paper discusses this long period of conflict in three moments: conquest, occupation and liberation, and it focuses on the use of

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Adriatic was still insufficiently explored sea. The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), which in 1806 resulted in a territorial expansion of the French Empire to the eastern Adriatic (formerly part of the Austrian Empire), highlighted the issues of territorial sovereignty both on land and at sea, triggering the first hydrographic survey of the Adriatic. Napoleon

Donna Haraway has been a constant presence in geographical thought and practice over the past 30 years. From her early and very influential essay on Situated Knowledges, to her more recent engagements with the Anthropocene in Staying with the Trouble, her work has become a key reference point for questioning the production of geographical knowledge. In this commentary I trace the influence of Haraway's

This paper introduces to an international audience the ‘encyclopaedic approach’ to geographical historiography. This approach was developed at the Free University of Amsterdam between 1961 and 1987 by Marcus Heslinga and Andries Kouwenhoven. Signalling how contemporary geography is hampered by the silofication of different subdisciplines and how a better understanding of our shared and pluriform histories

In this ‘Historical Geography at Large’ review I recount my participation in an August 2023 summer school led by Professor Alan Lester at the University of Sussex, entitled ‘How to talk about British colonialism in the middle of a culture war’. The workshop encouraged the participation of non-academics who desired greater knowledge of the British empire and its legacies, to help them negotiate contemporary

McVeigh and Rolston's puts colonialism at the heart of Ireland's social and economic history, but also as essential to understanding modern Irish politics. The subjugation of Catholics in Northern Ireland was a consequence of the failure to end British control over the island and a perpetuation of ethnic rule characteristic of other white dominions. The incomplete reckoning with colonialism has shaped

This article is an attempt to understand a mesh of complex relationships among tangible and intangible socio-economic factors that turned a desert city into the headquarters of one of the mighty polities in the Middle East in the fourteenth century CE. This paper argues that proto-industrialization led to the growth of ‘virtual water’ that helped the city of Yazd, in central Iran, to break free from

This paper discusses the re-animation of a geography departmental collection through a study of the archives and map collection of the School of Geography, University of Nottingham. The discussion is situated within parallel examples of work on geographical archives and map collections, and wider debates on engagement with archival sources. The paper considers how a previously dormant collection has

This commentary reviews the papers in the special issue on the history of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group, part of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). It outlines three main themes: methodological approaches in history and philosophy of geography; the need to consider history and philosophy of geography together; and critical approaches

Wetland reclamation was an intrinsic part of nineteenth-century global agricultural transformations. In Swedish research, reclamation has mainly been situated in larger general processes of population rise, commercialization and societal/technological development. The intersection of reclamation, physical environments and local economies has seldom been studied in detail. This paper conducts a local

Geographers have regularly employed biography as a means to an end, that is, as a useful method for the investigation of some other phenomenon. But writing, reading, and collecting biographical memoirs has an inherent and not just an instrumental value. Linked to memory, biography becomes a way of recalling lives, including those not personally known to the reader, and remembering how one's own life

This article uses the records the Manvers and Portland estates in Nottinghamshire and north-east Derbyshire to consider the provision and management of licensed premises between the 1860s and 1930s. Using archival materials of land agents and solicitors, it examines the changing place of public houses in a range of local communities affected by agricultural decline and industrial change in the region

After a career devoted to studying aspects of the geography of France, compiling biobibliographies has provided a comfortable niche for the author in his retirement. Attention is drawn in this short article to the types of source employed, informants consulted, and the range of French and British scholars memorialized in Geographers Biobibliographical Studies and in other publications.

This article explores the overlooked history and significance of physical relief models in the development of geographical knowledge and education. By examining their use in academic, educational and public settings, it argues for a broader appreciation of these models as integral to the discipline's material culture. Historical debates around their function and purpose are highlighted amidst developments

The article looks at the conversations and ideas exchanged between US and Mexican architects and planners in the early 1960s and their vision of redesigning the borderlands. Through a reading of Robert Evans Alexander's archival material (donated to Cornell University) and primary source material written by Guillermo Rossell, I argue that broader ideas of spatial justice influenced their conceptions

This article delves into the interplay between the political, social, and cultural context and the material conditions of governing a cartographic mission within a French territory in the northeastern Amazon. It brings to the fore the collaborative endeavors involving a spectrum of stakeholders, ranging from local knowledge to various institutions, financial and technical resources, and human and logistical

This article describes the construction and content of an atlas of local jurisdictions of Ancien Régime France: . Bailliages were at the center of the Ancien Régime's jurisdictional apparatus: they administered the ordinary royal justice, delineated the area of influence of heterogeneous customary laws, and served as electoral constituencies for the Estates General of 1614 and 1789. Yet, their territorial

The paper investigates changes to Copenhagen's landscape of commemoration concerning its former colony, the Danish West Indies (DWI), prompted by the 2017 centennial anniversary of the Islands' sale to the US. It argues that Denmark, like other European nations, navigates a postcolonial identity crisis and that the landscape of commemoration plays a significant role within it. The paper advances our

The History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group launched its undergraduate dissertation prize in 2008. This paper reflects on the dissertations submitted throughout its first decade, highlighting particular themes in Deleuzian-inspired vitalism and immanence, attention to the politics of knowledge production, and the emergence of critical physical geography. The paper also discusses the practice

This essay argues for a connection between studying the history of geography as an academic discipline and the research experiences and knowledge productions of undergraduate geography students. The whereabouts of undergraduate dissertation research and the conceptions of what the field actually constitutes shapes geography students’ perceptions of the discipline, and thus affects shifts in what future

In the wake of the elision of the 35th and 40th anniversaries of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) (RGS-IBG) due to a coronavirus pandemic, the paper takes advantage of the anniversal twists and turns to deconstruct what is going to come without getting any closer and without moving any further

Despite human geography's sophisticated analyses and overwhelming focus on space, time in its various guises has certainly not been absent in the literature. The same cannot be said for historical geography, which is particularly interesting as its main concern is purportedly with space and place in and across other times. In response, this paper examines the ontology and epistemology of time in “modern”

Historical land use reconstructions help to assess climate change, interactions between ecosystems and human and strengthen the knowledge about these interactions. They are conducted on the basis of historical maps that only cover certain areas. Hence, there is a need to seek other maps enabling historical land use to be reconstructed. The aim of study is to assess the suitability of contemporary maps

This article approaches the history of geographic thought through a partial autobiography that covers the last 40 years – a period that corresponds with the existence of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). The paper is informed by both memory and a personal archive of material from the mid to late 1980s

This article identifies the recurring expression ‘scope and method/s’ in three published lectures by Henry Sidgwick, Halford Mackinder and James George Frazer between 1885 and 1921. It tracks transdisciplinary connections between the thought and practice of late nineteenth-century philosophy, economic science and geography, and early twentieth-century anthropology, thereby illuminating shifting perceptions

This paper argues for the relevance of the history and philosophy of geography and provides a personal perspective on the origins of the Working Party/Study Group/Research Group by one of its founders. Intellectually, the paper identifies the role of its history and philosophy as the construction and sanctioning of meta-narratives by which meaning is conferred on ‘geography’. Practically, the paper

This paper examines the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI), a monumental exercise supervised by George Grierson to survey and classify the languages of colonial India. It considers why the LSI developed into an atypical scheme that corresponded with a multiethnic and multinational network of officials and scholars to survey India's languages. It makes the case that the networked practice of surveying

In this short paper, I contend that the history and philosophy of geography should be considered as an indispensable scholarly field to nourish both theoretical speculations about geography and ongoing scholars' political and social engagement towards critical, radical, decolonial, feminist and antiracist geographies. I argue that rediscovering ‘other geographical traditions’ is paramount to these

In this short commentary, I reflect on my experience of writing three progress reports on the history and philosophy of geography for Progress in Human Geography. In so doing, I consider the challenges of identifying commonalities and narrating progress in a sub-disciplinary specialism that is often characterised by diversity in its empirical and epistemological foci. I go on to propose three possible

This paper examines the socio-ecological implications of reindeer-caribou hybridization during the rise and collapse of the reindeer industry in Alaska. Following their introduction in the late nineteenth century, reindeer populations increased dramatically as herds spread throughout the territory. As populations increased, domesticated reindeer often escaped from their herds and ran off with migratory

In recent decades, a spectral turn has animated geography and related fields like archaeology, memory studies, and landscape studies, examining how places can be haunted by the ghosts of the past, with heavy emphasis on metaphorical specters and spirits. The geography of spirits and other unseen forces presented here takes a less metaphorical approach to haunted landscapes. This paper examines how

Since 1965, New York City's Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) has listed over 37,900 buildings and sites, overwhelmingly located in 156 historic districts. While official landmark criteria have not changed, designation reports reveal shifting narratives of place and race. I examine historic placemaking in Black-identified districts, focusing on how designation rationales have evolved. Evidence

In the field of art studies, there is a growing interest in data-driven approaches to analyse the spatial organisation of art worlds. Biographical databases of notable individuals have been used to uncover the emergence and decline of globally significant art cities, while less attention has been given to peripheral art systems. This paper aims to address this gap by utilising a curated dataset that

The article examines the development of a new discourse on habitability in the sixteenth century, which breaks with the ancient notion that distinguished between habitable and uninhabitable spaces according to their climate and location. In it, a new conception of the world as completely habitable and exploitable is articulated, and the European ideal of a temperate climate as a reference to characterize

Portugal was the longest modern European imperial power, yet the dominant historical narrative is characterised by a celebration of the ‘Discoveries’ and a denial of colonial violence. This is visible in Lisbon's public space, dotted with monuments and statues glorifying the imperial past, while occluding less convenient histories. Especially since 2017, more attention has been given to Portugal's

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This article develops a dual analysis of commemoration in Wales and Trinidad that extends outwards from a monument in the Welsh town of Carmarthen to Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton, the most senior officer to die at the battle of Waterloo and an aggressive imperialist who has since been accused of committing crimes against humanity in the name of the British Empire. Using torture and public executions

This article addresses competing visions of sovereignty that underwrite recent debates about monuments. It turns to a well-known monument built to commemorate the loss of British lives in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857–59: the Kanpur (Cawnpore) Memorial Well Monument. The memorial stood over a well in which the bodies of 200 British women and children killed by Indian sepoys lay buried. A large landscaped