1. OC1.05 Professor David Lambert 3-4pm, 27th February 2017
Carving up space
OC1.05
Professor David Lambert
3-4pm, 27th February 2017

2. Carving up space How do historians carve up space?
What geographical units form the basis for how we interpret the past – and where do these come from?
Are there natural containers for the past, such as nation-states, regions and continents?
Where is ‘the West’ and why?
What are the implications for how historians have divided up the world for Global History and are there alternatives?

3. James Gillray, famous British caricaturist
James Gillray, famous British caricaturist. The world (1805) being carved up into spheres of influence between British PM, William Pitt the Younger and French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

4. Lecture structure
How do historians carve up the world (at Warwick and beyond)?
Continents:
Divisions
Histories
Consequences
Different ways of carving up the world: oceanic histories

9. Carving up space: My 1st claim
Historians are defined as much by which places they study as by which periods

11. The world is carved up into continents. How many are there in total?
Five
Six
Seven

12. Seven continents

13. Six continents

14. Six continents

15. Five continents

16. Martin W. Lewis and Kären E
Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen (eds), The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (1997).

17. Definition of “metageography”
“Every global consideration of human affairs deploys a metageography, whether acknowledged or not. By metageography we mean the set of spatial structures through which people order their knowledge of the world: the often unconscious frameworks that organize studies of history, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, or even natural history”.
Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen (eds), The Myth of Continents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. ix.

18. Other metageographies: Global North and Global South

19. Other metageographies: The West and ‘the rest’

20. Other metageographies: First, Second and Third Worlds

21. Carving up space: My 2nd claim
The world does not come in ready-made geographical units

22. What is the world’s biggest island?
Australia
Borneo
Greenland
Madagascar
New Guinea

23. What is the world’s biggest island?
Australia – 1st (7,600,000 km2)
Borneo – 4th (748,168 km2)
Greenland – 2nd (2,130,800 km2)
Madagascar – 5th (587,713 km2)
New Guinea – 3rd (785,753 km2)
Antarctica – 14,000,000 km2
Americas – 42,300,000 km2
Afro-Eurasia – 84,400,000 km2
Usually classified as ‘continents’ (Australia often is too)

24. Carving up space: My 3rd claim
There are few, if any, ‘natural’ geographical divisions or units

25. Seven continents

26. Classical Greek divisions of space
Asia
Europe
Libya/Africa

27. Medieval European divisions of space
A T and O map or O-T or T-O map (orbis terrarum, orb or circle of the lands; with the letter T inside an O).

28. ‘Voyages of discovery’

29. Voyages of Christopher Columbus

30. ‘Discovering a New World’

31. World map, 1513 - after Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (87-150) was an Egyptian astronomer and geographer living and studying in the 1st and 2nd century CE.

32. Seven continents

33. Seven continents

34. Europe/Asia boundary

35. Ural Mountains

36. Europe/Asia boundary

37. Six continents

38. Seven continents

39. Carving up space: My 4th claim
Europe’s status as a continent is linked to the history of European expansion

40. Seven continents

41. Definition of “environmental (or geographical) determinism”
“[T]he belief that social and cultural differences between human groups can ultimately be traced to differences in their physical environments. As this philosophy took definitive shape in the Anglo-American academy at the turn of this century, it tended to support the self-serving notion that temperate climates alone produced vigorous minds, hardy bodies, and progressive societies, while tropical heat produced races marked by languor and stupefaction”.
Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen (eds), The Myth of Continents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 42.

42. ‘The four races of man’ (early 20th century)

43. Eric Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (1981, 1987, 2003).

44. David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so Rich and some so Poor (1998).

45. Jim Blaut, Eight Eurocentric Historians (2000).

46. Definition of “Eurocentrism”
“I use the term ‘Eurocentrism,’ then, to indicate false claims by Europeans that their society or region is, or was in the past, or always has been and always will be, superior to other societies or regions…It is Eurocentric to make the claim that Europeans are more inventive, innovative, progressive, noble, courageous, and so on, than every other group of people; or that Europe as a place has a more healthy, productive, stimulating environment than other places”.
Jim Blaut, Eight Eurocentric Historians (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), p. 4.

47. Seven continents

48. The Atlantic world

49. The Indian Ocean world

50. Carving up space: My 5th claim
Histories based on oceans provide an alternative to continental (or national) frameworks

51. Take home messages The way in which space is carved up…
is not ‘natural’ (the world is not divided into ready-made units for historians to use)
has a history (which we, as historians, need to understand)
can have unrecognised consequences (by shaping how historians study the past and tell stories about it)
Terms to remember:
Metageography
Environmental (or geographical) determinism
Eurocentrism

52. OC1.05 Professor David Lambert 3-4pm, 27th February 2017
Carving up space
OC1.05
Professor David Lambert
3-4pm, 27th February 2017