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A Prism to the Past: The Historical Geography of Ralph Hall Brown

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

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Extract

Ralph Hall Brown played a critical role in the development of historical geography as a recognized and respectable sub-field within the discipline of geography. He was not the first American geographer to be concerned with the geography of the past, but his work on American historical geography became the model for research methodology and standards and the source of themes and emphases found in subsequent writings by other historical geographers. In order to understand Brown’s achievement his work must be placed in the general context of geography—it was and is a discipline usually more concerned with the contemporary than the past—and against the character of historical work by earlier or contemporary geographers. As a geographer Brown was not solitary in his appreciation of a historical viewpoint. The uniqueness was rather his approach to the geographical past that earned for him the status as a major innovator. In this article I shall offer speculations on Brown’s emergence as a historical geographer, on the characteristics of his approach to historical geography, and on the enduring qualities of his two books.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Social Science History , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Fall 1978 , pp. 72 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1978 

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References

Notes

1 For a general discussion of the context, consult Clark, Andrew H., “Historical Geography,” in Jones, Clarence F. and James, Preston E., eds., American Geography: Inventory and Prospect, (Syracuse, 1954), 70–105Google Scholar.

2 Semple, Ellen C., American History and Its Geographic Conditions, (Boston, 1903)Google Scholar; Brigham, Albert P., Geographic Influences in American History, (Boston, 1903)Google Scholar.

3 Whittlesey, Derwent, “Sequent Occupance,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 19 (1929), 162–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Mikesell, Marvin W., “The Rise and Decline of ‘Sequent Occupance’: A Chapter in the History of American Geography,” in Lowenthal, David and Bowden, Martyn J., eds., Geographies of the Mind, (New York, 1976), 149–69Google Scholar.

5 Gilbert, E.W., The Exploration of Western America 1800-1850: An Historical Geography, (Cambridge, U.K., 1933)Google Scholar.

6 Andrew H. Clark, “Historical Geography,” 83. Oral tradition claims that Brown took a course in historical geography and had a heavy history emphasis in his program when he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. The transcript for that period of his career, however, fails to verify the tradition.

7 Brown, Ralph H. to Wrigley, Gladys, 1 January 1928, Geographical Review Archives, American Geographical Society, New YorkGoogle Scholar.

8 Brown, Ralph H. to Wrigley, Gladys, 12 May 1929, Geographical Review Archives, American Geographical Society, New YorkGoogle Scholar.

9 Brown, Ralph H., “Colorado’s Mountain Passes,” Trails and Timberline, (June 1929), 5–7; “Colorado Mountain Passes,” The Colorado Magazine, 9 (November 1929), 227–37; “The Mountain Passes of Colorado,” University of Colorado Studies, 18 (August 1930), 29–42; “Colorado’s Mountain Passes,” Colorado Yearbook for 1930, (Denver, 1930), 23–27; “Trans-Montane Routes of Colorado,” Economic Geography, 7 (October 1931), 422–25Google Scholar.

10 Ralph H. Brown to Gladys Wrigley, 25 June 1929, Geographical Review Archives, American Geographical Society, New York.

11 Brown, Ralph H., “Note on the History of the Trans-Mississippi West,” Geographical Review, 19 (October 1929), 672–73Google Scholar. To compare Brown’s summary with Sauer’s remarks, see Sauer, Carl O., “Historical Geography and the Western Frontier,” in Leighly, John, ed., Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of CartOrtwin Sauer, (Berkeley, 1963), 45–52Google Scholar.

12 Brown to Wrigley, 25 June 1929.

13 Brown, Ralph H., “Monte Vista: Sixty Years of a Colorado Community,” Geographical Review, 18 (October 1928), 567–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Brown, Ralph H., “Irrigation in a Dry-farming Region—The Greenfields Division of the Sun River Project, Montana,” Geographical Review, 24 (October 1934), 596–604CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Brown, Ralph H., “A Southwestern Oasis: The Roswell Region, New Mexico,” Geographical Review, 26 (October 1936), 610–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Brown, Ralph H., “Fact and Fancy in Early Accounts of Minnesota’s Climate,” Minnesota History, 17 (1936), 243–61Google Scholar.

17 Examples of these manuals include: Fling, Fred M., The Writing of History: An Introduction to Historical Method, (New Haven, 1920Google Scholar); Hockett, Homer C., Introduction to Research in American History, (New York, 1931)Google Scholar; Johnson, Allen, The Historian and Historical Evidence, (New York, 1926)Google Scholar; Kent, Sherman, Writing History, (New York, 1941)Google Scholar; Nevins, Allan, The Gateway to History, (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Vincent, John M., Historical Research: An Outline of Theory and Practice, (New York, 1911), and Aids to Historical Research, (New York, 1934)Google Scholar.

18 Clark, Andrew H., “Historical Geography,” 94. An exception to this generalization occurred in Historical Geography of the United States where evidence of field work may be found on many of the mapsGoogle Scholar.

19 Brown, Ralph H., “Materials Bearing upon the Geography of the Atlantic Seaboard, 1790-1810,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 28 (1938), 204–06CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Merrens, H. Roy, “Historical Geography and Early American History,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser. 22 (October 1965), 544CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, (New York, 1948), iiiGoogle Scholar.

21 Brown, Ralph H., “Fact and Fancy in Early Accounts of Minnesota’s Climate,” 610Google Scholar.

22 Brown provided examples of his detailed evaluation of source materials in the following articles: “The DeBrahm Charts of the Atlantic Ocean, 1772-1776,” Geographical Review, 28 (January 1938), 124-32; “Early Maps of the United States: The Ebeling-Sotzmann Maps of the Northern Seaboard States,” Geographical Review, 30 (July 1940), 471-79; “The American Geographies of Jedidiah Morse,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 31(1941), 145-217; “Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia,” Geographical Review, 33 (July 1943), 467-73.

23 Darby, H.C., “Historical Geography,” in Finberg, H.P.R., ed., Approaches to History, (Toronto, 1962), 129–30Google Scholar; Mikesell, Marvin W., “The Rise and Decline of ‘Sequent Occupance,’” 160; Smith, C.T., “Historical Geography: Current Trends and Prospects,” in Chorley, Richard J. and Haggett, Peter, eds., Frontiers in Geographical Teaching, (London, 1965), 128Google Scholar.

24 Brown, Ralph H., Mirror for Americans: Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard 1810 (New York, 1943)Google Scholar.

25 Koelsch, William A., “Ralph Hall Brown,” Dictionary of American Biography: Supplement Four 1946-1950 (New York, 1974), 113Google Scholar; Merrens, H. Roy, “Settlement of the Colonial Atlantic Seaboard,” in Ehrenberg, Ralph E., ed., Pattern and Process: Research in Historical Geography (Washington, D.C., 1975), 236Google Scholar; Prince, Hugh C., “Real, Abstract and Imagined Worlds of the Past,” Progress in Geography, 3 (1971), 30Google Scholar; Wright, John K., Human Nature in Geography (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zelinsky, Wilbur, The Cultural Geography of the United States (Englewood Cliffs, 1973), 143Google Scholar.

26 Brown, Ralph H., Mirror for Americans, 261–62Google Scholar.

27 Porter, Philip W. and Lukermann, Fred E., “The Geography of Utopia,” in Lowenthal, David and Bowden, Martyn J., eds., Geographies of the Mind, 198; Prince, Hugh C., “Real, Abstract and Imagined Worlds of the Past,” 30Google Scholar.

28 Brown, Ralph H., Mirror for Americans, ix–xGoogle Scholar.

29 Ralph, H. Biov/n,HistoricalGeographyofthe United States, (New York, 1948)Google Scholar.

30 Meinig, Donald W., “Introduction,” in Ehrenberg, Ralph E., ed., Pattern and Process: Research in Historical Geography, 4Google Scholar.

31 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, iiiGoogle Scholar.

32 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, ivGoogle Scholar.

33 Jakle, John A., “Time, Space, and the Geographic Past,” American Historical Review, 70 (October 1971), 1089Google Scholar; Mikesell, Marvin W., “The Rise and Decline of ‘Sequent Occupance,’” 168Google Scholar.

34 H. Roy Merrens, “Historical Geography and Early American History,” 544.

35 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, 68–86Google Scholar.

36 Ralph H. hrown, Historical Geography of the United States, 5.

37 In recent writings H. Roy Merrens and John A. Jakle have criticized the static quality of Brown’s work because he neglected geographical change. See Merrens, “Historical Geography and Early American History,” 543-44, and Jakle, “Time, Space, and the Geographic Past,” 1089. Unless one is willing to accept the premise that focus on change is the only possible approach to the geographical past, their argument is not valid and is a misinterpretation of Brown’s intentions. Hildegard B. Johnson calls attention to Brown’s emphasis on process and change in “The United States Land Survey as a Principle of Order,” in Ralph E. Ehrenberg, ed., Pattern and Process: Research in Historical Geography, 114.

38 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, 204 ffGoogle Scholar.

39 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, 369–87Google Scholar.

40 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, iiiGoogle Scholar.

41 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, iiiGoogle Scholar.

42 Among present-day historical geographers, Martyn J. Bowden and G. Malcolm Lewis have been assiduous in research that expanded Brown’s theme of environmental perception in the West. Bowden, Martyn J., “Desert Wheat Belt, Plains Corn Belt: Environmental Cognition and Behavior of Settlers in the Plains Margins, 1850-99,” in Blouet, Brian W. and Lawson, Merlin P., eds., Images of the Plains: The Role of Human Nature in Settlement, (Lincoln, 1975), 189–201Google Scholar; “The Great American Desert and the American Frontier, 1800-1882: Popular Images of the Plains,” in Tamara K. Hareven, ed., Anonymous Americans: Explorations in Nineteenth Century Social History, (Englewood Cliffs, 1971), 48-79; “The Great American Desert in the American Mind: The Historiography of a Geographical Notion,” in David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden, eds., Geographies of the Mind, 119-47. Lewis, G. Malcolm, “Changing Emphases in the Description of the Natural Environment of the American Great Plains Area,” Institute of British Geographers, Transactions and Papers, 30 (1962), 75–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Regional Ideas and Reality in the Cis-Rocky Mountain West,” Institute of British Geographers, Transactions and Papers, 38(1966), 135-50; “William Gilpin and the Concept of the Great Plains Region,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 56 (March 1966), 33-51. Brown’s legacy is apparent in writings by Douglas R. McManis: The Initial Evaluation and Utilization of the Illinois Prairies, 1815-1840, University of Chicago Department of Geography Research Paper No. 94, (Chicago, 1964); European Impressions of the New England Coast, 1497-1620, University of Chicago Department of Geography Research Paper No. 139, (Chicago, 1972); “In Search of a Rational World: The Encyclopedists’ Image of Northern and Western North America,” Historical Geography Newsletter, 5 (Fall 1975), 18-29.

43 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, iiiGoogle Scholar. This passage also suggests that Brown did not consider his approach to be static.

44 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, 29Google Scholar.

45 Brown, Ralph H., HistoricalGeographyofthe United States, 39Google Scholar.

46 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, 45–47, 53, 61Google Scholar.

47 Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, 178–83Google Scholar.