Geographical society

“ To imagine the resources of geographical science we must think not only of its accumulated documents, instruments, and aptitudes, but also in a still higher degree of the spiritual forces that pervade and animate this universal organisation, this world-extensive community of similar minds. And any one who is learned enough to master the symbolism of geography, to consult the files of the periodical publications is, if not a full brother, yet a novitiate of this universal fraternity. ”

“ The nation as a whole, with the development of sedentary life, increases its population and therewith its need for external movements; it widens its national area and its circle of contact with other lands, enlarges its geographical horizon, and improves its internal communication over a growing territory; it evolves a greater mobility within and without, which attaches, however, to certain classes of society, not to the entire social group. This mobility becomes the outward expression of a whole complex of economic wants, intellectual needs, and political ambitions. ”

“ Yet, as this extensive territory will, in all probability, in process of time, support a numerous population, the progeny of Britons, and may be the means of spreading the English language, laws, and institutions, over a great part of the Eastern Archipelago, it is presumed that every accession to our knowledge of its geographical features, however limited, will be acceptable to the Society. ”

“ Communities with geographical unity constitute the primary type of communities which we find in the world. Indeed the lower we go in the scale of being, the more necessary is geographical unity for that close interaction of individuals which constitutes society. ”

“ For the term, as used in modern times, implies a geographical area characterized by society of a certain general type, and according to his opinion of this type, each person, who thinks or writes of the East, expands or contracts its geographical area. ”

“ The successive stages of social development—savage, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial—represent increasing density of population, increasing numerical strength of the social group, and finally increasing geographical area, resulting in a vastly enlarged social group or state. ”

“ While eliminating geographical distance, this society produces a new internal distance in the form of spectacular separation. ”

“ Yet because racial and social geography changes slowly, quietly and imperceptibly, like all those fundamental processes which we call growth, it is not so easy and obvious a task to formulate a natural law for the territorial relations of the various hunter, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial types of society as for those of the growing state. ”

“ Universal history shows us that, as the geographical horizon of the known world has widened from gray antiquity to the present, societies and states have expanded their territorial and economic scope; that they have grown not only in the number of their square miles and in the geographical range of their international intercourse, but in national efficiency, power, and permanence, and especially in that intellectual force which feeds upon the nutritious food of wide comparisons. ”

“ Geographical influences that have helped determine the discovery and development of this country, and global conditions that have given rise to wave after wave of immigration to our shores, make ours a history that cannot be understood without a ready knowledge of world geography. In order for our Nation to maintain its special heritage and retain its position of global economic and political leadership, it is essential that our citizens have a sound appreciation of basic geographical facts and principles. ”

“ They have been formulated without reference to the all-important fact that the geographical relations of man, like his social and political organization, are subject to the law of development. Just as the embryo state found in the primitive Saxon tribe has passed through many phases in attaining the political character of the present British Empire, so every stage in this maturing growth has been accompanied or even preceded by a steady evolution of the geographic relations of the English people. ”

“ Territorial expansion is always preceded by an extension of the circle of influence which a people exerts through its traders, its deep-sea fishermen, its picturesque marauders and more respectable missionaries, and earlier still by a widening of its mere geographical horizon through fortuitous or systematic exploration. ”

“ These societies were formed to cultivate the science of geography in a more comprehensive spirit, to facilitate the acquisition of geographical information by the establishment of libraries, to disseminate it by publications, and to encourage and assist scientific travelers and explorers. ”

“ I should say that geography has to do with all those aspects of social life which are concerned with the interaction of the life of man and nature; or, that it has to do with the world considered as the scene of social interaction. Any fact, then, will be geographical in so far as it has to do with the dependence of man upon his natural environment, or with changes introduced in this environment through the life of man. ”

“ With these writers, physical geography and history were long intimately associated, and remained simply but elegantly blended until the period of the development of political interests, when the agitation in which the lives of men were passed caused the geographical portion to be banished from the history of nations, and raised into an independent science. ”

“ Now, in the same proportion as any people forming a Nation develope their commercial and intellectual strength, in the same ratio has it pleased Providence to render it necessary that its inhabitants should not only become acquainted with the Topographical and Geographical features, relative distances and bearings, of their own and neighbouring nations, but of every portion of the known world, even extending their researches to unknown regions. ”

“ The great kingdom of Geographical Science has many ramifications, and these ramifications are so extensive and far-reaching that, like the territories of some powerful potentate, they sometimes infringe on the boundaries of neighbouring States. ”

“ Every advance to a higher state of civilization has meant a progressive decrease in the amount of land necessary for the support of the individual, and a progressive increase in the relations between man and his habitat. The stage of social development remaining the same, the per capita amount of land decreases also from poorer to better endowed geographical districts, and with every invention which brings into use some natural resource. The following classification122 illustrates the relation of density of population to various geographic and socio-economic conditions. ”

“ On account of the importance of thoroughly understanding the articulation of great districts, in contradistinction to a mere division, which implies no organic and living correlation of parts, and which gives over to mathematics, political history, and fortuitous circumstances the duty of explaining geographical phenomena, it is instructive to trace the footsteps of our science back to some of the earlier conceptions. ”

“ And it is with this sort of case that anthropo-geography most often has to deal. So restless has mankind been, that the testimony of history and ethnology is all against the assumption that a social group has ever been subjected to but one type of environment during its long period of development from a primitive to a civilized society. ”

“ Finally, at the mouth of its estuary, rises the smoke of a great manufacturing city, a central world-market in its way. Such a river system is, as geographer after geographer has pointed out, the essential unit for the student of cities and civilisations. Hence this simple geographical method of treatment must here be pled for as fundamental to any really orderly and comparative treatment of our subject. By descending from source to sea we follow the development of civilisation from its simple origins to its complex resultants ”

“ For has not the political development of races depended most largely on the physical conditions and natural resources of the countries occupied by them? So far, then, as these have sensibly influenced the progress of peoples, they come naturally under the consideration of Political Geography. ”

“ At the base of the mountains themselves, where the bold relief begins, is always a piedmont zone of hilly surface but gentler grade, at whose inner or upland edge every phase of the historical movement receives a marked check. Here is a typical geographical boundary, physical and human. It shifts slightly in different periods, according to the growing density of population in the plains below and improved technique in industry and road-making. ”

“ Most systems of sociology treat man as if he were in some way detached from the earth's surface; they ignore the land basis of society. The anthropo-geographer recognizes the various social forces, economic and psychologic, which sociologists regard as the cement of societies ”

“ It must be a serious function of some kind of geography to give reality to the idea of country, although of course we cannot separate entirely geographical from historical idea of country. The teaching of the geography of the native land must be different from other geography. ”

“ Every great movement which has widened the geographical outlook of a people, such as the Crusades in the Middle Ages, or the colonization of the Americas, has applied an intellectual and economic stimulus. The expanding field of advancing history has therefore been an essential concomitant and at the same time a driving force in the progress of every people and of the world. ”

“ Finally, the modern society or state has grown into every foot of its own soil, exploited its every geographic advantage, utilized its geographic location to enrich itself by international trade, and when possible, to absorb outlying territories by means of colonies. The broader this geographic base, the richer, more varied its resources, and the more favorable its climate to their exploitation, the more numerous and complex are the connections which the members of a social group can establish with it, and through it with each other ”

“ Intellectual effects of locality: the geographical position made them mountaineers and mariners; variety of experience; each petty community possessed an individual life, yet sympathized with the remainder; commerce with a great diversity of half-country-men ”

“ Our plan indeed of being more minute in the early history of geographical science and commercial enterprise, is founded on an obvious as well as a just and important principle. In the infancy of geography and commerce, every fact is important, as reflecting light on the knowledge and state of mankind at that period, and as bearing on and conducing to their future progress ”

“ Here the mere fact of geographical location on a remote frontier, and of almost complete isolation from the centers of English life on the Atlantic slope, and the further fact of persistent contact with a lower status of civilization, resulted in a temporary return to primitive methods of existence, till the settlements secured an increase of population adequate for higher industrial development and for defence.
A race boundary involves almost inevitably a cultural boundary, often, too, a linguistic and religionary, occasionally a political boundary. ”

“ The world is fully awake to the importance of geographical inquiry, and its thirty-five geographical societies watch the progress of the lonely traveler and self-sacrificing missionary, estimating their labor at its value, and welcoming every addition they make to the stock of human knowledge. ”

“ Plain countries suffer particularly from a paucity of varied geographic conditions and of resulting contrasts in their population. Their national characters tend to be less richly endowed; their possibilities for development are blighted or retarded, because even racial differences are rapidly obliterated in the uniform geographic environment, A small diversified country like Crete, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Saxony, or Japan, is a geographical multum in parvo. ”

“ But in general, accessibility, exposure to some measure of ethnic amalgamation and social contact is essential to sustained progress.226 As the world has become more closely populated and means of communication have improved, geographical segregation is increasingly rare. The earth has lost its "corners." All parts are being drawn into the circle of intercourse. ”

“ It is always with some degree of hesitation that I introduce geographical details into my books, as I well know that a taste for the study of physical geography has not been developed among my countrymen. Where among all our colleges is there a well-supported chair of physical geography occupied by an American? ”

“ In history, the question of territory,—by which is meant mere area in contrast to specific geographic conditions—has constantly come to the front, because a state obviously involved land and boundaries, and assumed as its chief function the defence and extension of these. Therefore political geography developed early as an offshoot of history. Political science has often formulated its principles without regard to the geographic conditions of states, but as a matter of fact, the most fruitful political policies of nations have almost invariably had a geographic core. ”