Nature - autonomous learning

the ‘nature’ of geography 49discussing human–environment relations within its pages. A generationlater Halford Mackinder, William Morris Davis and Andrew Herbertsonwould each offer their own integrative visions of geography in order to getthe subject recognised at university level.Halford Mackinder (1861–1947)In January 1887 the 26-year-old polymath Halford Mackinder gavea germinal lecture to the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London.Entitled ‘On the scope and methods of geography’, Mackinder’s programmaticaddress sought not only to define geography but also to establishits importance as a field of research and teaching. For Mackinder (1887:145), geography’s role was to fill the ‘gap’‘between the natural sciences andthe study of humanity’. It was to be a ‘bridging’ discipline that studiedhuman–environment relations. The immediate context for Mackinder’schampioning of geography was twofold. First, throughout the nineteenthcentury both the British public and successive British governments hada thirst for knowledge about other peoples, other places and other environments.The RGS actively supported numerous expeditions to Africa,the Antipodes and elsewhere – expeditions that were closely linked tothe expansion of the British Empire.These journeys into ‘unknown lands’employed topographic description, social survey, resource inventory,mapping, field sketching and comparative observation to generate a massof factual information about non-Western peoples and environments.Important as this information was in the cause of colonial expansion,Mackinder rightly recognised that ‘geography can never be a discipline’if it consisted merely of ‘data to be committed to memory’ (1887: 143).Second, at the time of Mackinder’s lecture new disciplines whose hallmarkwas specialisation were gaining a foothold in universities. Thiswas a problem for geography because its subject matter was so broad. Otherdisciplines could rightly claim that they already studied what geographersdid or could do so in a more focused way. As David Stoddart (1986: 69)noted, ‘Geography . . . appeared vague and diffuse, part belonging tohistory, part to commerce, part to geology’.Together, the empiricism and sheer breadth of geographical knowledgemeant two things for Mackinder. First, he needed to show that geographycould ‘trace causal relations’ (1887: 145) and thus focus on explanation notsimply description. Second, since he could not define geography in terms