geographers-from-england

"Why, yes, of course I wrote all the Arab of Mesopotamia. I've loved the reviews which speak of the practical men who were the anonymous authors, etc. It's fun being practical men, isn't it."

"Quantitative geographers do not often concern themselves with philosophy, and although externally we are often labeled (incorrectly in many cases) as positivists, such a label has little or zero impact on the way in which we prosecute research. We do not, for example, concern ourselves with whether our intended research strategy breaches some tenet of positivist philosophy. Indeed, most of us would have scant knowledge of what such tenets are. As Barnes (2001) observes, for many of us, our first experience with positivism occurs when it is directed at us as a form of criticism."

"Cutch is composed chiefly of hills, woods, and sandy wilds; and we are utterly ignorant of any particulars, relating to the interior part of it, The mouths of several rivers appear in the map of its coast: and the ancient maps describe the Puddar river, as discharging itself into the gulf of Cutch, through these opeyings. It is possible that the tiver formed by the Caggar, and other streams, may discharge itself by one or more of these openings; unlefs it loses itself in the sands of the desert, which borders on the north of Cutch. ... A MS. map describes the junction of the Sursooty and Caggar rivers: probably this junction is formed above Sursooty town; for Tamerlane had not crofsed the Caggar when at Sur- sooty ; and the Sursooty river lay beyond the Caggar."

"Jaguars are very common on the cattle plains, and the great sport is not to shoot them, but to lasso them on horseback. Two men take part, keeping the roped beast between them. It requires good mounts and considerable dexterity with the lasso, but given these it is not nearly so dangerous a sport as it sounds."

"No Government inspector who valued his skin would venture into the rubber country and send back an honest report. The arm of vengeance was long, and in the Montaña life was very cheap. For instance, a judge was sent to the Acre to get evidence of the particularly brutal murder of an Austrian, and found that powerful people on the rivers were involved. Had he told what he knew, he would never have left there alive. It was prudent to say nothing, to return safely to the Altiplano with a nice gift of 'hush money' and to close the case by paying a small compensation to the relatives. Who can blame him?"

"Roger has brought great distinction to our field by defining the basic and essential vision that GIS is both an extension of geographic science and a practical way to apply geographic knowledge to a whole world of applications. His work over the last three decades has also defined our field as a kind of profession with formal methodology for designing and implementing systems. Finally, Roger always makes me realize that GIS must first and foremost be focused on providing information that really matters (maps, reports, etc.) and that improves our sciences, processes, and decision making."

"The word “geography” is not going to go away. It has been in use for hundreds (some would say thousands) of years…It is clear to me that the overall process is that of earth description; in short, it is geography. It has been demonstrated beyond any refutation that geography matters in human decision making."

"The Russian Revolution and Soviet policy were seen by others, both at the time and subsequently, in part in terms of earlier concerns. Sir Halford Mackinder, Britain’s leading geopolitician as well as a politician, was British High Commissioner in South Russia during the Russian Civil War. He pressed the Cabinet in January 1920 on the danger of ‘a new Russian Czardom of the Proletariat’ and of ‘Bolshevism, sweeping forward like a prairie fire’ towards India, the core of Britain’s overseas empire, and ‘lower Asia’. Such accounts presented Communism as giving renewed energy to established geopolitical drives, notably the Russian threat to the British empire in South Asia (the nineteenth century ‘Great Game’), and to British interests and influence in South-West Asia. This theme has been given even longer-term resonance in some recent scholarship. In offering a borderland perspective on the origins of the Cold War, significantly after the latter was over, Alfred Rieber saw the Cold War as ‘a phase in a prolonged struggle over the Eurasian borderlands that stretches back to the early modern period, when the great polyethnic, bureaucratic conquest empires began to reverse a thousand years of nomadic military hegemony over sedentary cultures’. More of the literature looked for continuity between the Soviet Union and Romanov Russia, and notably with the expansionism of both, for example the search for warm-water ports."

"Knowledge, as we have said before, is one. Its division into subjects is but a concession to human weakness."

"The cliffs of Ballybunian are even less remarkable for their dimensions, than they are for the singular form of rocks, which seem as if carved by the hand of man; and, independently of the lofty mural precipices, whose angular proportions present every variety of arrangement, as in Smuggler's Bay, where they oftentimes are semicircularly arranged, like the groin-work of an arch, or the tablets or small strings running round a window, or are piled above one another in regular succession, presenting a geological phenomenon of great grandeur and magnificence, they have also other distinct beauties, which originate frequently in similar causes."

"Here we have lying before us an old geography book, printed early in the reign of Charles the First. It is what Mr. Carlyle happily designates "a dumpy quarto"... presenting somewhat the appearance of a modern school-book; and is entitled Mikrokosmos: A Little Description of the Great World. The Fourth Edition. Revised. By Peter Heylyn. Oxford, Printed by W. T. for William Turner and Thomas Huggins. 1629." The first edition appeared in sixteen hundred and twenty-one; so that we see the work was held in no inconsiderable estimation at the time. Indeed, Peter, though now known only to a few inquirers, was a man of some importance during his life; and, for several years after his death, was quoted as an authority. The substance of the quarto now before us was originally delivered in the form of lectures at Magdalen College, Oxford, when the writer was only seventeen years of age; and, being afterwards enlarged, was published as a book. Subsequently, Heylyn entered the Church; became one of the chaplains of Charles I., a great favourite of Laud, and a doughty champion of kingly and priestly domination; suffered for his opinions under the Commonwealth; and finally died in prosperity after the restoration of the Stuarts. He was a ready and voluminous author; and will be regarded with interest as one of our earliest newspaper-press men, having published at Oxford a weekly paper called the Mercurius Aulicus."

"Water, making but one globe with the earth, is yet higher than it. This appears, first, because it is a body not so heavy; secondly, it is observed by sailors that their ships move faster to the shore than from it, whereof no reason can be given but the height of the water above the land; thirdly to such as stand on the shore the sea seems to swell into the form of a round hill till it puts a bound upon our sight. Now that the sea, hovering thus over and above the earth doth, not overwhelm it, can be ascribed only to his Providence who 'hath made the waters to stand on an heap that they turn not again to cover the earth."

"Even as late as the middle of the seventeenth century Heylin, the most authoritative English geographer of the time, shows a like tendency to mix science and theology."

"High Churchman and scholar though was, our friend Heylyn puts on no saturnine or crabbed visage. His manner, on the contrary, is gay, lively, unctuous, flavorous, good-humoured, and full of character. His style has a chuckle in it whenever he can tell you a quaint story or an odd bit of national manners. Great relish for a joke has Peter; and you may now and then catch him telling a naughty tale with a twinkle in the eye. With no solemn pretence of abstruse wisdom does our geographical mentor conduct us on the long pilgrimage through a world; but rather with the air of a genial and well-informed companion, familiar with history, antiquity, and tradition; full of anecdote and illustration; observant of new forms and modes of life; not deficient in the broad daylight of statistics (such as were then known) yet having strong love for glimmering fables and twilight myths; no indiscriminate swallower of lies, though willing to believe any strange tale; and, poet-like, increasing in riches as he passes onward into regions and more remote. Sometimes we laugh with Peter, sometimes at him; yet there is no denying that his book is the result of great industry, great learning, much careful research in many volumes, and considerable literary tact in selection and condensation. Let us dip a little into the old quarto, and see how the world has altered in many things—how remained stationary in some—since the year sixteen hundred and twenty-nine."

"Heylyn,... with commendable honesty, will not make himself and his readers merry with the follies of the Spanish character, without also enumerating its virtues; one of which he asserts to be "an unmoved patience in suffering adversities, accompanied with a settled resolution to overcome them: a noble virtue, of which in their [West] Indian discoveries they showed excellent proofes, and received for it a glorious and a golden reward." It is to be feared that the Spaniards have degenerated since those days. Adversities enough, Heaven knows, they have had to encounter; but as yet they have not overcome them."

"There are some... Points relating to Episcopacy, which Dr. Heylyn has long time since cleared and determined. And if some of our pretending States-men had considered and read what was written upon those Subjects, their time and pains would have been more profitably spent to the honor and security of this Church and Kingdom, than in raising doubts and scruples which had long before been so clearly stated and resolved. For, 1. As for Bishops sitting in Parliament to Vote in Causes of Blood and Death, this the Doctor evinced not only in the Tract, entituled, De Jure paritatis Episcoporum, but in his Observations upon Mr. L'Estrange's History, where he says, "that altho the ancient Canons disable Bishops from Sentencing any man to Death, yet they do not from being Assistants in such cases; from taking Examinations, hearing Depositions, of Witnesses, or giving Counsel in such matters as they saw occasion. The Bishops sitting as Peers in the English Parliament, were never excluded from the Earl of Straffords Trial, from any such Assistances, as by their Gravity and Learning and other Abilities, they were enabled to give in any dark and difficult business (tho of Blood and Death) which were brought before them. 2. With the like solid reasoning, the Doctor has evinced the Bishops to be one of the Three Estates."

"Concerning rivers, we find a scientific opinion which we fear will not pass muster with the learned of our own times. It appears that rivers are "engendered in the hollow concavities of the earth," and are derived from congealed air: to give us a lively idea of which engendering, Peter informs us that it is in the same manner "as we see the aire in winter nights to be melted into a pearlie dew, sticking on our glasse windowes.""

"In all things that were either spoke or writ by him, he did loqui cum vulgo so speak as to be understood by the meanest Hearer, and so write as to be comprehended by the most vulgar Reader. "It is true indeed" (as he himself observes) "that when there is necessity of using either Terms of Law, or Logical Notions, or any other words of Art, an Author is then to keep himself to such Terms and Words as are transmitted to us by the Learned in their several Faculties. But to affect new Notions and indeed new Nothings, when there is no necessity to invite us to it, is a Vein of writing which the two great Masters of the Greek and Roman Eloquence had no knowledg of. But knowledg many think that they can never speak elegantly, nor write significantly, except they do it in a language of their own devising, as if they were ashamed of their Mother-Tongue, and thought it not sufficiently curious to express their fancies. By means whereof more French and Latine words have gained ground upon us since the middle of Queen Elizabeth, than were admitted by our Ancestors (whether we look upon them as the British or Saxon Race) not only since the Norman, but the Roman Conquest. A folly handsomly derided in an old blunt Epigram, where the spruce Gallant thus bespeaks his Page, or Laquey Diminutive and my defettive Slave, Reach my Corps Coverture immediately: 'Tis my complacency that Vest to have, T' insconce my person from Frigidity. The Boy believed all Welsh his Master spoke, Till rail'd in English, Rogue go fetch my Cloak.""

"Our most provident and glorious Creator so furnished countries with severall commodities that amongst all there might be sociable conversation; and, one standing in need of the other, all might be combined in a common league, and exhibite mutuall succours. This abundance of all countries in everything, and defect of every country in most things, maintaineth in all regions and every province a most strict combination. So that, as in the body of the little world, the head cannot say to the foot, nor the foot to the head, 'I stand in no need of thee:' so, in the body of the great world, Europe cannot say to Asia, nor Asia to Africke, 'I want not your commodities, nor am defective in that of which thou boastest of abundance.'"

"A Continent is a great quantity of Land, not separated by any Sea from the rest of the World, as the whole Continent of Europe, Asia, Africa."

"Here also is a dictum in respect to the political position and power of islands which, could the author be suddenly reanimated, he would find had been startlingly disproved in the course of a few generations. "As concerning the situation of ilands," says Peter, "whether commodious or not, this is my judgment. If a Prince desire rather to keep than augment his dominions, no place fitter for his abode than an iland, as being by itself and Nature sufficiently defensible. But if a King be minded to adde continually unto his empire, an iland is no fit seat for him; because, partly by the uncertainty of winds and seas, partly by the longsomenesse of the wayes, he is not so well able to supply and keep such forces as he hath on the continent. An example hereof is England, which hath even to admiration repelled the most puissant monarch of Europe [ Philip II of Spain ]; but for the causes above-named cannot show any of her winnings on the firme land: though shee hath attempted and atchieved as many glorious exploits as any country in the world." See what genius and energy can effect, even in spite of what seems a very plausible theory. Our insular position remains unchanged; yet we have acquired and maintained a foreign empire greater than Alexander's. On the other hand, Spain, then "the most puissant" of monarchies, has been stripped of nearly all its foreign possessions."

"But alas! all these unkindnesses and neglects were trivial to the irreparable loss of his eye sight: of which he found a sensible and gradual decay for many years; and therefore was the better enabled to endure it. But about the year 1654. tenebrescunt videntes per foramina [darkly you look through the holes]; those that looked out of the windows were darkened, and he was constrained to make use of other mens eyes (but not in the sense as great persons do) to guide him in the Motions of his Body, tho not in the Contemplations of his Mind."

"The capacity to transform itself from the inside makes capitalism a somewhat peculiar beast - chameleon-like, it perpetually changes it colour; snake-like, it periodically sheds its skin."

"Rampant inflation is just as hard to live with as the devaluation of commodities."

"The accumulation of capital involves the the expansion of value over time."

"But planned obsolescence is possible only if the rate of technological change is contained."

"If all money capital invests in appropriation and none in actual production, than capitalism is not long for this world."

"When money functions as measure of value it must truly represent the values it helps to circulate."

"The onset of a crisis is usually triggered by a spectacular failure which shakes confidence in fictitious forms of capital."

"If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?"

"Perpetual revolutions in technology can mean the devaluation of fixed capital on an extensive scale."

"Money could not be converted into capital if wage labour did not exist."

"Individual capitalists, in short, necessarily act in such a way as to de-stabilize capitalism."

"The social relations of capitalism have penetrated slowly into all spheres of life to make wage labour the general condition of existence only in fairly recent times."

"The inner logic that governs the laws of motion of capitalism is cold, ruthless and inexorable, responsive only to the law of value. Yet value is a social relation, a product of a particular historical process. Human beings were organizers, creators and participants in that history. We have, Marx asserts, built a vast social enterprise which dominates us, delimits our freedoms and ultimately visits upon us the worst forms of degradation."

"workers then have a strong stake in the preservation of the very system that exploits them because the destruction of that system entails the destruction of their savings."

"Because the earth is not a product of labour it cannot have a value."

"Money must exist before it can be turned into capital."

"The equilibrium between supply and demand is achieved only through a reaction against the upsetting of the equilibrium."

"Technological change can become 'fetishized' as a 'thing in itself', as an exogenous guiding force in the history of capitalism."

"Every production network has spatiality - the particular geographical configuration and extent of its component elements and the links between them."

"Reality is far more complex and messy than many of the grander themes and explanations would have us believe."

"In fact, technology in, and of, itself does not cause particular kinds of change. It is, essentially, an enabling or facilitating agent. It makes possible new structures, new organizational and geographical arrangements of economic activities, new products and new processes, while not making particular, outcomes inevitable."

"Innovation - the heart of technological change - is fundamentally a learning process."

"(Mercantilism is based upon the idea that a nation's wealth and security depend upon its ability to regulate and control its external trade at the expense of others.)"

"the internationalization of economic activity and its major vehicle, the TNC, can be regarded simply as being part of the normal expansive process of capitalist development."

"It serves to remind us that, in trying to explain the globalization of economic activity, we are dealing with the workings of a dynamic capitalist market system, and not just individual agents within it."

"Significantly, the 14 most transnational firms (in terms of the TNI) originate from small countries (Switzerland, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada)"

"Transnational corporate networks, and their resulting spatial patterns, are always in a continuous state of flux. At any one time, some parts may be growing rapidly, others may be stagnating, others may be in steep decline."

"Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise."