io6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



better than quote a paragraph from a recent paper by my good friend 

 Ellsworth Huntington on this very topic (Huntington 1937). 



' The majority of historians feel that they need a knowledge of 

 geography. Therefore, those among them who belong to what we 

 may call the standard group devote an early chapter to a somewhat 

 elementary but accurate account of the geography of their selected 

 region, and then forget about it. Many historians are conscious 

 that the Alps are really a barrier, and that the climate of Russia as well 

 as of India is different from that of Belgium. Nevertheless, taking 

 their work as a whole, an astonishing number of historians seem to 

 regard a court intrigue as more important than the influence of 

 climate, relief, occupations, and so forth, upon national character, 

 or upon specific historical situations. This is not the fault of the 

 historians. The fault lies simply in the fact that both history and 

 geography are still in a very crude state of development.' 



' The route to a higher development has been explored a little by 

 the economic historians. According to their view, man's need of 

 food, clothing, shelter, and the other good things of life, has been 

 the keynote of history. Like the standard historians they have done 

 yeoman service, and no word here said should be interpreted as dis- 

 paragement. Yet many of them seem to have little knowledge of 

 the way in which geographic environment influences not only the 

 available resources, but man's desires, and the degree of energy with 

 which he works to satisfy them. . . . These differences arise in part 

 from the geographical environment as well as from the historical 

 development of a culture. Their effect on economic conditions and 

 historical events is profound.' 



I am reminded of a recent congress of historians in which I heard one 

 of the chief speakers hold up to ridicule the idea that certain historical 

 sequences in Scotland could be correlated with the Old Red Sandstone. 

 From the applause, his fellow-historians agreed with him. To the present 

 speaker nothing is more likely than that such a relation existed ; and 

 indeed I propose to show one or two examples of the same type. 



The first example is taken from the finest collection of liaison studies in 

 English with which I am acquainted. Here the various periods of 

 English history are treated as separate stages of growth ; in each of which 

 the effect of the environment on man is shown to be as important as it is 

 to-day. I refer to the Historical Geography of Britain, edited by H. C. 

 Darby. Here is history of an unusually valuable type ; and it is food 

 for thought that the authors are, as far as I know, all geographers. Is it 

 going too far to say that most historians have felt so little need to study 

 physical correlations that such a work could not be presented by them ? 



No historian would deny the vast importance of the wool trade in the 

 fourteenth century. We owe to Dr. Pelham a map of the Sussex Weald 

 (Fig. 2) which shows clearly how closely this trade depended on a geo- 

 logical condition — the outcrop of the Cretaceous Chalk. I do not assert 

 that this is the most vital feature of the wool trade in this period — but it 

 did determine the site, which no historian can ignore. 



Another example from America explains a peculiar and characteristic 



