Enlightenment Geography: The Political Languages of British Geography, 1650–1850

333 Pages·2000·10.144 MB·

by  Robert J. Mayhew (auth.)

Enlightenment Geography
Studies in Modern History
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BOLINGBROKE’S POLITICAL WRITINGS
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Enlightenment Geography
The Political Languages of British
Geography, 1650–1850
Robert J. Mayhew
Lecturer in Human Geography
Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
First published in Great Britain 2000 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-41906-7 ISBN 978-0-230-59549-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230595491
First published in the United States of America 2000 by
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ISBN 978-0-312-23475-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mayhew, Robert J. (Robert John), 1971–
Enlightenment geography : the political languages of British geography,
1650–1850 / Robert J. Mayhew.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 978-0-312-23475-1 (cloth)
1.Great Britain—Historical geography. 2. Great Britain—Politics and
government. 3. Geography—Great Britain—History. 4. Great Britain—Intellectual
life. 5. Political geography—History. 6. Enlightenment—Great Britain. I. Title.
DA600 .M295 2000
911'.41—dc21
00–027247
© Robert J. Mayhew 2000
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-333-79186-8
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Effacing and Recovering the History of Geography 1
2 The Sphere of Geography and the Realm of Politics in
Britain, c.1650–1850 23
3 ‘Geography is twinned with divinity’: the Laudian
Geography of Peter Heylyn, 1621–57 49
4 John Ogilby and the Iconographic Roads to a Restored
Royalist Geography, c.1660–75 66
5 The Political and Geographical Appropriations of
Edmund Bohun, 1684–1710 86
6 Edmund Gibson’s Editions of Britannia: Loyalist
Chorography and the Particularist Politics of Precedent,
1695–1722 100
7 Varieties of Orthodox Geography, 1700–50: Three
Vignettes: Echard, Wells and Salmon 122
8 The Denominational Politics of Travel-Writing: the
Case of Tory Anglicans in the 1770s 141
9 The Scottish Enlightenment and British Geography (I):
Guthrie and Pinkerton, c.1770–1802 168
10 On the Cusp of Modern Geography: Fieldwork and
Textuality in the Career of James Rennell, 1764–1830 193
11 The Scottish Enlightenment and British Geography (II):
James Bell and J.R. McCulloch, 1830–50 207
12 Coda: Halford Mackinder and the Empire of ‘New’
Political Geography, c.1887–1919 229
13 Enlightenments and Geography: Continuity and
Change in the Politics of Early-Modern British
Geography, c.1550–c.1850 246
v
vi Contents
Notes 258
Bibliography 295
Index 317
List of Illustrations
4.1 The Second Arch in John Ogilby’s Coronation
Procession for Charles II, from Ogilby’s Entertainment
(1662) 72
4.2 Wenceslaus Hollar’s Frontispiece to John Ogilby’s
Britannia(1675) 76
4.3 London to Aberystwyth route map, part 1, from John
Ogilby’s Britannia(1675) 80
4.4 Emblem at the Head of the text to John Ogilby’s
Britannia(1675) 81
4.5 London to Aberystwyth route map, part 1, from
Emanuel Bowen’s Britannia Depicta(1720) 84
12.1 Maps of Britain and Ireland from Halford Mackinder,
Britain and the British Seas(1902) 239
12.2 Map of Britain and Ireland from Halford Mackinder,
Britain and the British Seas(1902) 240
All illustrations are reproduced by permission of the Syndics of
Cambridge University Library.
vii
Acknowledgements
My study begins with Peter Heylyn, a lecturer in geography at Hertford
College, Oxford from the 1610s. My thanks are owed to the same insti-
tution, which fostered my humanist approach to geography and even-
tually appointed me to a college lectureship some 375 years after
Heylyn. As Heylyn sought patronage from William Laud at St John’s,
so I am also delighted to acknowledge my debt to that college, which
supported my doctoral research through its generous award of a North
Senior Scholarship. The award of a British Academy post-doctoral fel-
lowship has allowed this project to reach fruition in Cambridge, where
Corpus Christi College has given me a third congenial home, of which
I can say with Richard Gough: ‘while I erect this monument to the
votaries of antiquity, can I forget to acknowledge that my passion for
these pursuits was fostered within those venerable walls?’ Finally, as
John Ogilby’s first route-map passes through Oxford on its way to
Aberystwyth, so I have traversed that trajectory and would like to
express my thanks to the geographers at Aberystwyth for appointing
me to a lectureship.
Philip Howell and Charles Withers read and commented on an
earlier and shorter version of this book with characteristic rigour and
generosity. David Livingstone made important points which have
much improved the continuity and focus of the final draft; this is but
one of many scholarly debts I owe him. Paul Langford and Howard
Erskine-Hill have encouraged me to develop my approach to Samuel
Johnson. Boyd Hilton made useful comments on Chapter 11. Quentin
Skinner’s encouraging comments on my project proved a fillip. I owe a
great debt to Jack Langton, who has always exemplified in his work
and his criticism the interweaving of geography and humanism which
I aspire to achieve. My thanks must also go to Jonathan Clark, whose
writings have greatly influenced my own, and who has consistently
supported my attempts to recover geography’s humanist history.
My final thanks must go to Yvonne: if Enlightenment and human-
ism are the key terms in this study, they take on a living meaning in
and through her.
viii
1
Effacing and Recovering the
History of Geography
This book is an enquiry into the history of geography. More
specifically, I seek to analyse the political languages which were
encoded in British geographical discourse, c.1650–1850. In order to
engage in such an enquiry, we need to start with a clear understanding
of what distinguishes history as a mode of scholarship from other
modes, and therefore what an enquiry into the history of geography
can and cannot be about. This may appear self-evident, but, as we shall
see, most enquiries which have nominally been conducted under the
rubric of the history of geography have not, in fact, been historical in
their ambition. On the contrary, they have effaced geography’s history.
Oakeshott and the historical mode of knowledge
A lucid account of what distinguishes historical enquiry comes in the
work of Michael Oakeshott. For Oakeshott, all experience is of a per-
ceptual variety, making it inseparable from mental processes, and
therefore not ‘objective’ if this is taken to mean independent of human
subjectivity. There are a number of modes of experience, that is, of self-
contained and logically coherent ways of understanding the world,
which by their nature actually construct that world: ‘what is achieved
in experience is a coherent world of ideas. This world is itself the
arbiter of fact, for to be a fact means to have a necessary place within
it’.1
Because each mode of experience is coherent and creates its own
world, there is no way in which different modes can adjudicate one
another’s validity. Such a project of criticism between modes is
described by Oakeshott as a confusion of categories, ignoratio elenchi: ‘it
is impossible to pass in argument from any one of these worlds to any
1