The institutionalisation of ‘colonial geography’ in France, 1880-1940

Between 1880 and 1900, the conjunction of the development of higher education in France with the renewal of colonial expansion resulted in the creation of the ‘colonial sciences’. ‘Colonial geography’ played a key role in the development of these new disciplines, alongside ‘colonial history’, ‘ethnology’, ‘colonial economics and legislation’ and ‘colonial psychology’. This paper considers the social history of this field and of the institutions in which colonial geography was formed. This involves examination of the study of the teaching of ‘colonial geography’ in the universities and French grandes écoles, the gradual professionalisation of scholarship, and the increase in the number of doctoral theses and book publications, which all serve to demonstrate the vigour of the subdiscipline, leading to the emergence of a veritable research community. Under the Third Republic, ‘colonial geography’ in the universities was characterised by great diversity, irreducible to a single or homogenous ‘colonial discourse’.     

Correlating archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records using a Bayesian approach: a case study from Sutton Common,South Yorkshire,England

This paper presents a case study aimed at correlating archaeological ‘events’ (obtained from radiocarbon measurements and dendrochronology) from the site of Sutton Common with a radiocarbon-dated pollen sequence obtained from a palaeochannel deposit adjacent to the area of the main archaeological activity. It demonstrates the use of a Bayesian approach to quantifying whether the timing of palynological ‘events’ interpreted as reflecting anthropogenic impacts are likely to be associated with archaeological ‘events’. The results suggest that Bronze Age activity in the form of a mortuary enclosure and associated cremation burials are probably not contemporary with the palynological evidence for disturbance to the oak–hazel woodland in this period. Subsequent evidence for local woodland clearance and agriculture is estimated to precede the construction of the large Iron Age enclosure in 372 BC, with increases in ‘anthropogenic indicators’ following this ‘event’. The construction of the site does not appear to have had a pronounced impact on the local vegetation, with hazel the only woody taxon to show clear reductions. Despite the use of a substantial number of oak timbers in the enclosure palisade, percentages of oak remain remarkably stable. Later farming activity on the site probably post-dates the end of activity in the enclosures. The value of the methodology is discussed in relation to quantifiable and robust correlations of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental narratives of landscape and human activity.     

Interventions in the political geography of ‘libertarian paternalism’

Contributions from political, health and economic geography, social policy and environmental policy studies are brought together here in order to examine the implications of a ‘libertarian paternalist’ political ‘project’ which seeks to react in pragmatic and ideological terms to the excesses and limitations of neoliberalism in liberal democratic contexts. The authors explore the contemporary relevance and historical antecedents of so-called ‘nudge’ tactics of governing, and draw attention to the political geographies encountered in this popular political programme in specific cases.     

Rock type variability and impact fracture formation: working towards a more robust macrofracture method

Investigations into the development of weapon systems are increasingly important in archaeological debates about human evolution and behavioural variability. ‘Diagnostic’ impact fractures are key, but controversial, lines of evidence commonly used in such investigations. In 2009 a series of experiments was initiated to investigate the processes associated with macrofracture formation specifically focussing on the taphonomic factors affecting the formation of ‘diagnostic’ impact fractures (DIFs). This paper adds to that experimental data set with macrofracture results from recent knapping experiments investigating rock type variability and DIF formation. These results show that rock type variation plays less of a role in DIF formation than variables related to use and lithic taphonomy. The collective results of this experimental series show that the location, co-occurrence, type and proximity to retouch on a tool are all important means of distinguishing between weapon and non-weapon related DIFs. Collectively these macrofracture patterns are more important in diagnosing weapon components than any one ‘diagnostic’ impact fracture is alone. Overall, these experimental studies are showing that background ‘noise’ in the form of non-hunting related impact fractures, exists in many macrofracture results and that much work remains in securing the analytical robusticity of the method. The paper concludes that the macrofracture method is not a stand-alone method, but when used with caution and in conjunction with other lines of evidence it is a useful, time-efficient, tool for generating assemblage-level use-trace data.     

Geochemical indicators of preservation status and site deterioration at Star Carr

This paper presents the results of a project aimed at investigating the deterioration of organic remains at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr. Analyses of pH, Electrical Conductivity and Redox Potential are reported from borehole transects across the unexcavated part of the site. A comparison of field and laboratory measurements is made, leading to the characterisation of different preservation zones and identification of ‘vulnerable’ sediments at the site. These data are augmented by geochemical analyses of contemporary borehole sequences and adjacent historic monoliths. Analysis of surface water and groundwater has also been undertaken to assist in the interpretation of the site hydrology and geochemistry. The relationship between ‘natural’ geology and preservation potential, and the evidence for a ‘halo’ preservation effect in virgin sediments adjacent to previous archaeology trenches is investigated.     

First contact: colonial European preconceptions of tropical Queensland rainforest and its people

Northerly expansion of European settlement after Queensland became a colony in 1859 carried with it an inherited interpretation of rainforest ‘scrub’ or ‘jungle’ as nuisance vegetation to be removed because it harboured ‘miasmatic’ disease vapours and covered good agricultural soil. Similar rejection of rainforest dwellers as uncivilized ‘myalls’ reflected a wider ‘dispersal’ policy against all indigenous occupants of land claimed under British colonial entitlement. In terms of performance theory, this paper illustrates the influence of common conceptions held during initial European contact with an environment so different and so remote that for decades it was avoided. Eventually, land pacification with gun and axe brought this last Aboriginal refuge with its diminutive people into the framework of an exploitative economy.     

John Shary,Charles Pease,and contested irrigation landscapes in early-twentieth-century South Texas

The paper contributes to notions of ‘hybrid’ historical geographies of irrigation by focusing on contested visions for irrigation in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Adding to geographical work using biography, notions of performance, and racialized landscapes, the paper analyzes debates between John Shary and Charles Pease. Shary and Pease were protagonists, respectively, of pumping water from the Rio Grande and a gravity scheme reliant on action by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The pumping system survived; the gravity system was never constructed. However, the debate between Shary and Pease illustrates tensions within the Anglo elite. The analysis focuses on three early-twentieth-century moments. The first is a 1918 crisis in Shary’s irrigation company, followed by a 1927 debate between Shary and Pease over the flaws of the pumping system and benefits of gravity irrigation. Finally, the paper focuses on Shary and Pease’s constructions of racialized landscapes that subordinated Hispanics as voters to be utilized for Shary’s accumulation strategy, or as ‘non-water users’ that should be excluded from water politics. The paper argues that Shary and Pease projected similarly exclusionary social visions onto the irrigated landscape in spite of their differences on irrigation systems.     

Being observant and observed: embodied citizenship training in the Home Guard and the Boy Scout Movement, 1907–1945

Building upon recent studies by geographers and social scientists on the everyday practices of (scientific) observation, this paper focuses on the role of two distinct, yet similar organisations that held observation as an essential and ‘automatic’ embodied skill. Utilising the examples of Home Guard camouflage and the Boy Scout Movement, the paper critically examines how these organisations sought to articulate the individual as both observer and observed, thereby exposing a much more complex entanglement of different visual positions and practices hitherto neglected in studies of observation. Moreover, the paper emphasises the importance of the act of ‘not-being-seen’ as a complementary and fundamental aspect of (non-)observational practice, accentuated and promoted by civic institutions in terms of duty and responsibility. Finally, the paper considers the evolutionary aspects of observation through the lifecourse, revealing a complex, relational geography of expertise, experience and skill that crossed age-distinctions.     

Topographies/topologies of the camp: Auschwitz as a spatial threshold

This paper, largely inspired by Giorgio Agamben’s conceptualization of the camp, reflects on the relationship between the ‘topographical’ and the ‘topological’ in reference to Auschwitz-Birkenau and its spatialities. After having discussed the concept of soglia (threshold), we briefly introduce the ways in which the historiographical literature on the Holocaust treats the relationship between modernity, rationality, and Nazism. The second part of the paper is dedicated to an attempt to read ‘geographically’ the entanglements between the camp, Nazi spatial planning, bureaucratic rationalities, and the Holocaust. The notion of the camp-as-a-spazio-soglia is central to this interpretation. Auschwitz, conceived as a metaphorical and real space of exception, is contextualized within the broader regional geography planned by the Nazis for that part of Poland; while ‘Mexico’, a specific compound within the camp, is described as a key threshold in the reproduction of those very geographies. The aim is to show how the topological spatialities of the camp were a constitutive element of the overall biopolitical Nazi project of ‘protective custody’ and extermination and that, for this reason, they deserve further investigation and need to be discussed in the relation to the crude calculative and topographical aspirations of that same project.     

Modern humans in Sarawak,Malaysian Borneo,during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3: palaeoenvironmental evidence from the Great Cave of Niah

During recent reinvestigations in the Great Cave of Niah in Borneo, the ‘Hell Trench’ sedimentary sequence seen by earlier excavators was re-exposed. Early excavations here yielded the earliest anatomically-modern human remains in island Southeast Asia. Calibrated radiocarbon dates, pollen, algal microfossils, palynofacies, granulometry and geochemistry of the ‘Hell Trench’ sequence provide information about environmental and vegetational changes, elements of geomorphic history and information about human activity. The ‘Hell’ sediments were laid down episodically in an ephemeral stream or pool. The pollen suggests cyclically changing vegetation with forest habitats alternating with more open environments; indicating that phases with both temperatures and precipitation reduced compared with the present. These events can be correlated with global climate change sequences to produce a provisional dating framework. During some forest phases, high counts of Justicia, a plant which today colonises recently burnt forest areas, point to fire in the landscape. This may be evidence for biomass burning by humans, presumably to maintain forest-edge habitats. There is evidence from palynofacies for fire on the cave floor in the ‘Hell’ area. Since the area sampled is beyond the limit of plant growth, this is evidence for human activity. The first such evidence is during an episode with significant grassland indicators, suggesting that people may have reached the site during a climatic phase characterised by relatively open habitats ∼50 ka. Thereafter, people were able to maintain a relatively consistent presence at Niah. The human use of the ‘Hell’ area seems to have intensified through time, probably because changes in the local hydrological regime made the area dryer and more suitable for human use.     

Constructing the border from below: Narratives from the Congolese-Rwandan state boundary

This article is about the simultaneous subversion and perpetuation of political borders ‘from below’. Using the state boundary between the cities of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gisenyi in Rwanda as a case study, this article shows how people make sense of their border-related social world. By analyzing everyday narratives and practices of people who live on both sides of the border, this article reveals popular geopolitics at work and demonstrates the inchoate character surrounding the idea of ‘the border’. Border talk is examined in key narratives and narrative clusters to emphasize the primacy of certain thematic plots and to reveal which aspects of the border people prioritize and how they attribute meaning to the idea of the border. Views of the border ranging from a desired barrier against the demonized ‘other,’ and as a means of exclusion, to its conception as an institution that may be in need of reform but is essential to economic survival, make clear that approaching the border through narratives means allowing for its historicity and relationality. Border narratives and practices reveal some neglected aspects of violent conflict in the study region and provide insights into state-society relations, an understanding of the state’s legitimacy, and an understanding of the effects of the border as a social construction that influences everyday life.     

Oxygen isotopic evidence of residence and migration in a Greek colonial population on the Black Sea

Oxygen isotope analysis was performed on the enamel of the first and third permanent molars of 60 individuals excavated from the Kalfata-Budjaka necropolis associated with the ancient Greek colony of Apollonia Pontica (5th–3rd centuries BC) on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. The objective of this study was to examine the geographic origins and residential histories of these individuals and to compare the isotopic data with archaeological evidence derived from the burials in an attempt to distinguish ‘locals’ from ‘non-locals’. The analysis revealed that 55 of the 60 individuals sampled were either locally born or came from areas outside of Apollonia with isotopically similar δ¹⁸O values. Five individuals were identified as ‘non-local’, and their isotope values suggest that they originated from areas with higher δ¹⁸O_w of precipitation, most likely the Aegean region. Unfortunately, the archaeological evidence associated with these five skeletons provides no clues as to their place of origin.     

‘Eternity's commissioner’: Thomas Carlyle,the Great Irish Famine and the geopolitics of travel

In 1846 and again in 1849 the Scottish born historian and social critic, Thomas Carlyle, travelled Ireland accompanied by the Irish nationalist Charles Gavan Duffy. Significantly, these dates profile the beginning and the deadly culmination of the Great Irish Famine. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that Carlyle's published memoirs of his travels and his various pamphlets on Ireland have merited little scholarly attention. As well as addressing this oversight this paper attempts to place Carlyle's travel writing within the ideological contours of the Great Famine and, to this end, I outline a specific example of what I call the ‘geopolitics of travel’. Principally this paper offers an empirical and theoretical analysis of how powerful political rationalities are produced at the ‘contact zone’ of two cultures. I consider Carlyle's shift from being a critic of laissez-faire to being a defender of property and argue that this parallels his propensity to qualify what amounts to human value through environmental and racial readings of the Famine. Finally, I briefly suggest that such calculations take us into the domain of ‘governmentality’ and capitalist political economy, perhaps the two most powerful forces directing the course of the Irish Famine.     

Counterfactual geographies: worlds that might have been

This paper argues for a renewed consideration of counterfactuals within geography. Drawing upon Doreen Massey's emphasis on notions of ‘possibility’, ‘chance’, ‘undecidability’ and ‘happenstance’, we argue for an engagement with approaches in the humanities that have addressed such issues directly. We review previous uses of counterfactual method in historical geography, particularly as related to cliometrics and the ‘new economic history’ of the 1960s, but argue that a recent upsurge of interest in other disciplines indicates alternative ways that ‘what-if’ experiments might work in the sub-discipline. Recent counterfactual work outside of geography has had a notably spatial cast, often thinking through the nature of alternative worlds, or using counterfactual strategies that are explicitly concerned with space as well as temporal causality. We set out possible agendas for counterfactual work in historical geography. These include: consideration of the historical geographies within existing counterfactual writings and analyses; suggestions for distinctive ways that historical geographers might think and write counterfactually, including experiments in geographies of happenstance, and the exploration of more-than-human possibilities; analyses of the geography of and in counterfactual writing; and study of the political, ethical and emotional demands that counterfactuals make. This discussion and framework provides an extended introduction to this special feature on counterfactual geographies.     

Refugees, repatriation and liberal citizenship

This article considers the meanings attached to refugeehood, repatriation and liberal citizenship in the twentieth century. Refugees are those who have been unjustly expelled from their political community. Their physical displacement is above all symbolic of a deeper political separation from the state and the citizenry. ‘Solving’ refugees’ exile is therefore not a question of halting refugees’ flight and reversing their movement, but requires political action restoring citizenship.All three ‘durable solutions’ developed by the international community in the twentieth century - repatriation, resettlement and local integration - are intended to restore a refugee's access to citizenship, and through citizenship the protection and expression of their fundamental human rights. Yet repatriation poses particular challenges for liberal political thought. The logic of repatriation reinforces the organization of political space into bounded nation-state territories. However, it is the exclusionary consequences of national controls over political membership - and through this of access to citizenship rights - that prompt mass refugee flows. Can a framework for repatriation be developed which balances national state order and liberal citizenship rights?This article argues that using the social contract model to consider the different obligations and pacts between citizens, societies and states can provide a theoretical framework through which the liberal idea of citizenship and national controls on membership can be reconciled.Historical evidence suggests that the connections in practice between ideas of citizenship and repatriation have been far more complex. In particular, debate between Western liberal and Soviet authoritarian/collectivist understandings of the relationship between citizen and state played a key role in shaping the refugee protection regime that emerged after World War II and remains in place today. Repatriation - or more accurately liberal resistance to non-voluntary refugee repatriation - became an important tool of Cold War politics and retains an important value for states interested in projecting and reaffirming the primacy of liberal citizenship values. Yet the contradictions in post-Cold War operational use of repatriation to ‘solve’ displacement, and a growing reliance on ‘state-building’ exercises to validate refugees’ returns demonstrates that tension remains between national state interests and the universal distribution of liberal rights, as is particularly evident when considering Western donor states’ contemporary policies on refugees and asylum. For both intellectual and humanitarian reasons there is therefore an urgent need for the political theory underpinning refugee protection to be closely examined, in order that citizenship can be placed at the centre of refugees’ ‘solutions’.     

Bronze Age landscape dynamics: spatially detailed pollen analysis from a ceremonial complex

The late Neolithic and early Bronze Age are periods marked by the construction of conspicuous concentrations of ‘ritual’ complexes, used for funerary rituals, seasonal gatherings and communal activities. Understanding the environmental context of monuments may provide detailed insights into relationships between the physical environment and the activities undertaken at individual monuments. Raised burial mounds (barrows) are generally assumed to have been constructed in open landscapes (the so-called ‘landscape openness’ hypothesis) thus rendering them highly visible in the surrounding landscape. This paper seeks to test to what extent vegetation (and in particular openness) around a dense concentration of barrows was actively managed, using three pollen sequences in close spatial juxtaposition to the archaeology. The local vegetation histories, supported by radiocarbon dating, demonstrate spatial differences in vegetation pattern both during the time of monument construction and use (c. 2000–1500 cal BC) and during subsequent periods. They do not support the ‘landscape openness’ hypothesis. This suggests that there is no single ‘blueprint’ for vegetation structure on and around these types of monument complexes. There is no evidence for major restructuring of the landscape during the early Bronze Age. The data describe a major transformation of the vegetation around 1500 cal BC (the Middle Bronze Age) in an area not known for archaeology of this date. This serves to emphasize the role of palaeoecology in augmenting the archaeological record of landscape re-organisation and transformation in prehistory.     

Alice through the looking glass: emotion,personal connection,and reading colonial archives along the grain

This is a paper about Alice Ravenhill, an under-scrutinized early twentieth-century colonial settler in British Columbia, Canada. It is also a paper about the relationship and deep connections that I developed with her through archival research, a relationship and set of connections that I suggest open new spaces to (re)consider present-day colonial power in British Columbia. Specifically, I propose that ‘against the grain’ archival readings of BC’s past, with an emphasis on finding evidence of resistance to colonial power, can serve to distance the present from the past, thus positioning both contemporary geographies and researchers at work in the province today as existing in a different time and place than those of Alice Ravenhill and other colonial subjects. If, by reading ‘along the archival grain’ as I attempt to do in this paper, we (particularly those of us who live and work in BC today) instead understand ourselves as deeply and emotionally connected to colonial settlers like Alice Ravenhill, and if we understand their lives and work as similar to our own, there is a chance we might avoid some of their more egregious undertakings.     

Ancient-DNA reveals an Asian type of Mycobacterium leprae in medieval Scandinavia

Leprosy is a chronic infection of the skin and peripheral nerves caused by the pathogen Mycobacterium leprae. Its impact on human populations and societies of the past as well as its phylogeographic patterns around the world – at least in modern times – has been well documented. This slow growing bacterium has been shown to exist in distinct ‘SNP types’ that occur in relatively defined parts of the globe. The routes that the disease followed in the past are, however, still uncertain. This study of ancient-DNA typing of archaeological human remains from Sweden dated to early Medieval times provides genetic evidence that a transmission of M. leprae ‘SNP subtype’ 2G – found mainly in Asia – took or had already taken place at that time from the Middle East to Scandinavia. This finding is unique in the history of leprosy in Europe. All human specimens from this continent – both modern and ancient – that have been tested to date showed that the one responsible for the infection strains of M. leprae belong to ‘SNP type’ 3, whereas our results show that there were some European populations that were hosts to bacteria representing ‘SNP type’ 2 of the species as well.     

The placing of matter: industrial water pollution and the construction of social order in nineteenth-century France

Set within a Douglasian framework, this paper explores the genesis and the social significance of the concept of environmental ‘pollution’ in late nineteenth-century France by drawing on printed scientific and medical sources and analysing archival material from administrations and industrial companies. ‘Pollution’ brought together various strands of water research (especially water analysis, bacteriology and hydrology) but also served as the foundation of a discourse on industrial responsibility. It was a response to the new material circulations created by industrial discharges in river. Paradoxically, it condoned industrial discharges in watercourses, which the hygienist community deemed less dangerous than domestic wastewaters. The co-production of pollution science and nineteenth-century industrial order explains why industrial water pollution was allowed to go unabated. The incapacity of the legal framework of the time to accommodate polluting discharges as legal objects and find legitimate places for them, the power politics at work around pollution and scientific controversies themselves made discharges very difficult to challenge in court. Accordingly, water pollution was regulated informally and industrialists were able to claim rivers as legitimate places for industrial matter against challenges brought up by other social actors.     

Post-Enlightenment sources of political authority: Biblical atheism, political theology and the Schmitt-Strauss exchange

This essay reevaluates the Weimar writings of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, specifically, their intellectual efforts to replace the political authority of Kantian liberalism with, respectively, a ‘political theology’ and ‘Biblical atheism’ derived from the thought of early-modern state theorists like Hobbes and Spinoza. Schmitt and Strauss each insisted that post-Kantian Enlightenment rationality was unraveling into a way of thinking that violently rejected ‘form’ of any kind, fixated myopically on material things and lacked any conception of the external constraints that invariably condition the possibilities of philosophy, morality and politics. They considered Kantian reason and liberal politics to pose serious threats to ‘genuine’ expressions of rationality and as dangerous obfuscations of the necessity of political order—of the brute fact that human beings stand in need of ‘being ruled,’ as such.