• took place in the late 1800s, about a decade after the establishment of German geography professorships

• Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson employed geographical principles
  -Jefferson, for instance, met with Alexander von Humboldt when the great German scholar visited this country

  -Jefferson also organized the Lewis and Clark expedition to survey the Louisiana Purchase

• there was also the writing of George Perkins Marsh on the subject of human impact on or modification of the environment

• finally, Arnold Guyot, who taught at Princeton from the 1850s to the 1880s

• there was a strong tradition of field survey and direct observation

• conversely, there was a dislike of deduction from theory

• Davis was appointed instructor of physical geography at Harvard in 1878
  -again, like so many other early geography professors, however, he had actually been trained as a geologist

  -this was a common trend in this country

  -as a result, many early geography departments emerged from geology departments

  -others existed with geology in joint departments

  -even today there are joint geography/geology departments -L.S.U. is a good example

• before being appointed to his instructorship, Davis had studied with a man named Nathaniel Southgate Shaler at Harvard
  -from Shaler, Davis attained 3 important traits
  -he became a very careful field observer, and he endeavored to draw his own conclusions based soley on his observations

  -he also began seeing man as a part of nature rather than separate from it

  -finally, he saw the importance of processes in the development of the earth's surface

  -these attributes shaped Davis' work in geography for the rest of his life

• we can summarize Davis' work, dividing it into 2 parts
  -first, Davis made huge contributions to physical geography, especially what we now call geomorphology
  -his major contribution in this field was his "cycle of erosion" or the "geographical cycle," as Davis called it

  -Davis' cycle of erosion was a brilliant American contribution to general or systematic geography

  -in addition to specific contributions to physical geography, Davis also added a great deal to the development of geographic education
  -first of all, he stressed the value of generalization or law-seeking in geography

  -as part of this stress, he was involved in a general recommendation in 1892 that school geography become more than mere memorization of facts

• perhaps more important than Davis' actual work in geography were the things he started within the discipline in America
  -first, he produced, like Vidal, a great legacy of students, in both physical and human geography
  -Albert Perry Brigham
  -Richard Dodge
  -Ellsworth Huntington
  -Mark Jefferson
  -Isaiah Bowman

  -Davis also helped form the AAG in 1904
  -he pointed out that there would be no real advancement of geography or job opportunities in that field until there was a body of professional scholars in geography

  -he therefore suggested that geographers form a scholarly society like the one that existed for geologists

  -when the association was established in Philadelphia, Davis was the logical choice to head it, and he became the first president of the AAG

• one of the most important early geographers was Mark Jefferson, a student of Davis
  -Jefferson spent his career at the Michigan State Normal College at Ypsilanti
  -this was a teachers' college rather than a university

  -trained a great number of geographers, including Isaiah Bowman

  -though he was one of Davis' students, he felt geography should put man ahead of the earth in its studies

  -he also felt that special geography was very important and should not be abandoned in favor of general geography

• another important early American geographer was Isaiah Bowman
  -Bowman was a student of both Jefferson and Davis, and he taught at Yale from 1905-1915

  -most of his specific research was conducted in the Andes Mountains of South America

  -he was also the geographer who was good friends with Jean Brunhes, providing a link between American and French geography

  -initially, Bowman accepted the idea of environmental controls and human responses that Davis had taught him

  -over time, however, he changed his mind on this point based on his many field observations

  -he became increasingly leery of environmental controls or geographic influences

  -shows the value of direct observation in the field, as Bowman simply did not see direct human responses to nature in his many travels

• this was the first separate geography department in the U.S.
  -it offered advanced graduate study specifically in geography

• the department quickly became the premier center of geographic study in America
  -the professors at Chicago placed a great emphasis on discussion, evaluation, critical thought, and thoughtful expression

  -they also stressed field study

• Chicago produced many important geographers before World War I

• these changes were the result of the emergence of scholars who had truly been trained in geography

• no longer were the leading geographers to be geologists by training

• instead, graduates of the new geography departments in this country assumed the lead in their discipline

• unfortunately, this shift became a very extreme one
  -in trying to give man an equal place in geography, many geographers went too far, almost entirely alienating physical geography from the discipline

  -there was, in other words, an overcompensation

• since then, very few people have found a way to balance both the physical and human aspects of our field

• the first of these was the idea of geography as human ecology
  -in this interpretation of geography, the field was supposed to focus on the adjustments made by man to his physical environment
  -these adjustments were entirely a matter of human choice; they were not determined by nature

  -viewed in this way, the physical environment was a passive element in the equation rather than man

  -the idea of human ecology in geography was proposed in 1923 by Harlan Barrows
  -he was a leading member of the faculty of the University of Chicago

  -he was also the president of the AAG

  -his idea of geography was expressed in his presidential address, "Geography as Human Ecology"

  -as part of his idea of geography, Barrows advised the relinquishment of geomorphology, climatology, and biogeography to other fields
  -physical geography, he felt, should only be studied in relation to man and his activities

  -human ecology, then, was a major overadjustment in the shift away from physical geography
  -for this reason, it was not widely accepted

• another new idea in American geography wasn't really that new; it was rather an old idea from Germany--chorology
  -it was introduced to American geography by Carl Sauer in 1925 in an article entitled "The Morphology of Landscape"
  -Sauer was one of the early Ph.D. graduates from the University of Chicago

  -he then began teaching at the University of Michigan

  -in 1923, however, Sauer left Michigan to become the chairman of the geography department at the University of California, Berkeley

  -his article was his inaugural statement on his views of geography at Berkeley

  -the article had a major impact on American geography

  -central to Sauer's idea of geography was the concept of the cultural landscape
  -cultural landscapes resulted from the transformation of the physical landscape by man

  -because this process occurred over time, Sauer recognized the importance of the historical perspective

  -Sauer's article was an important and effective attack on the study of geographic influences or controls--environmental determinism
  -he felt that accepting the notion of environmental influences predisposed geographers to a particular conclusion before an observation was conducted

  -he preferred that geographers draw their conclusions after making observations

  -Sauer's ideas produced mixed reactions
  -younger geographers enthusiastically embraced them

  -older geographers, especially those trained in geology, rejected them

  -one scholar who didn't entirely agree with Sauer, but who did see geography as chorology was Richard Hartshorne
  -he taught at the University of Minnesota after studying at the University of Chicago

  -he did accept the idea of chorology very strongly, calling it areal differentiation

  -Hartshorne did not, however, accept the study of landscapes

  -he also did not accept the study of processes and the emphasis on the historic perspective

  -he summarized his views in a massive 500 page book in 1939 titled The Nature of Geography

  -Hartshorne's book was a landmark work

  -it was highly scholarly

  -it summarized a great deal of geographic thought

  -because of Hartshorne's Nature of Geography, American geography in the 1940s and 50s became dominated by regional geography, at least at the major Midwestern universities like Minnesota, Michigan, Northwestern, and Wisconsin

• a third major idea in American geography was historical geography
  -this was an outgrowth of the study of processes as envisioned by Sauer in his 1925 article

  -in these studies, geographers delved into the past so as to explain the contemporary landscape

  -Harlan Barrows was an early leader in historical geography

  -he taught a course on the historical geography of the United States in which he examined past examples of human adjustments to the environment

  -many dissertations in historical geography were prepared at Chicago

  -more important than Barrows, however, were two other American geographers
  -one of these was Ralph Brown
  -he taught at the University of Minnesota

  -Mirror for Americans, Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard, 1790-1810 (1943)

  -past geography

  -Historical Geography of the United States (1948)
  -geographic changes during the course of settlement

  -he met an untimely death, cutting short a brilliant career

  -the second was Carl Sauer
  -stress on processes

  -1941 AAG presidential address on historical geography

  -venue of Latin America

  -legacy of students who became the leaders in historical geography in this country

  -Andrew Clark
  -went on to the University of Wisconsin

  -probably did more to advance historical geography in this country than any other person besides Sauer

  -Fred Kniffen
  -went to L.S.U.

  -taught Sauer's ideas to many of his own students

  -because Sauer was so interested in the cultural landscape, most of thehistorical geography associated with him and his students was culturally based and focused on landscape elements
  -agricultural practices, folk housing, settlement patterns

  -this tradition is often called the Berkeley school of cultural-historical geography

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