TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 719 



The meanincT of the vei-hal combination ' political geography ' requires some land 

 of analysis. Conventionally, and in an educational sense, it is the description of the 

 political or arbitrary divisions and limits of empires, kingdoms, and states ; their 

 inhabitants, towns, natural productions, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, 

 as well as laws, modes of government and social organisation — everything being 

 viewed with reference to the artificial divisions and works made by man. Accept- 

 ing this interpretation of its objects, who can hesitate to admit its palpable and 

 immediate relation to histoi'y ? The mathematical science which investigates the 

 physical character of territory and territorial boundaries is in this case but a secon- 

 dary requirement and can be always fairly disposed of in the recognition of results. 

 Otherwise, we have simply commercial geographj' with ethnography, and considera- 

 tions which we may call political in the present but which are undoubtedly 

 historical in the past. Surely, then, it would be wise and reasonable to combine 

 the studies of history and political geography — putting a wider interpretation than 

 the conventional one upon the latter designation in such a manner that the two 

 together should be just the sort of pabulum dispensed to the rising generation of 

 statesmen, diplomatists, and all who aspire to the name of politician, in its higher 

 sense of capability to promote as well as to discuss the national welfare. 



An admirable lecture on ' Geography in its Relation to History ' was delivered 

 by Mr. James Bryce — the late Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs — in connection 

 'with the recent London Exhibition of Geographical Appliances. Those who are ac- 

 •quainted with it will readily understand why I pause to remark on its enlightened 

 teaching ; to those who have not that advantage I woidd explain that it seems to 

 embody the arguments of Modern Thought on the important question we are now 

 considering, and that a brief allusion to it is therefore no irrelevant introduction 

 "here. The lecturer, seeking to demonstrate that history and geography touch one 

 another in certain relations and interests, laid down the proposition that man is, in 

 history, more or less ' the creature of his environment ; ' that ' on one side, at all 

 ■events, he is largely determined and influenced by the envu'onment of nature ; ' 

 and that ' it is in discovering the difierent effects produced on the growth of man 

 as a political and State-forming creature by the geographical surroundings in 

 w^hich he is placed ' that one point of contact is found. He, moreover, maintained 

 that man, 'although he may lift himself above his environment, cannot altogether 

 escape from its power.' Dividing the influences thus exercised into three classes, 

 he showed that those arising from the configuration of the earth's surface affected 

 movements of races, intercommunications, and barriers of separation ; that those 

 belonging to climate affected the occupation or abandonment of particular localities 

 on the score of health, fertility, or non-fertility of soil, and consequently commerce 

 and cultivation : and that those which owed their existence to natural products 

 unmistakably directed the energies of peasantry and people into certain fixed 

 channels of enterprise — a result which applies to the zoology as well as to the 

 mineral and agricultm-al resources of a country. He made the very true observa- 

 tion that the ' animals affect man in his early state in respect to the enemies he has 

 to face, in respect to his power of living by the chase, in respect to the clothing 

 which their furs and skins offer to him, and in respect to the use he is enabled to 

 make of them as beasts of burden or of food ' ; and he, therefore, concluded that 

 ' zoology comes to form a very important part of the environment out of which 

 historical man springs.' A volume might well be written on this suggestive theme 

 alone ; and if, as I believe, the proposition of a human being's dependence on 

 environment be admissible in its entirety, what a field of speculation is open to 

 the inquirer ! A condition held applicable to the unreckoned millions of to-day 

 must have had a marvellous effect in giving character to original Man ! 



This conception of mans environment supposed heads or branches of geography, 

 all bearing upon history, which might be distinguished by names such as ethno- 

 logical, sanitary, commercial, linguistic, political and military, legal — the last lead- 

 ing to the consideration of the Suez Canal and sea-channels in which several States 

 have interests. As time, however, will not allow me to quote the lecturer's apt 

 and well-put illustrations which followed, I may mention that the express object 

 with which they were introduced was to show how ' the possession of geographical 



