The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume IX, No. 4 [‎221r] (112/172)

THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY IN RELATION TO HISTORY.
42£
intercourse of everyday life, but no one as a rule wishes to know the exact shape
of mountain ranges or the position of contour-lines for their own sake, but only for
the information given by these symbols with regard to the country. A student,
therefore, does not attempt to commit a physical map to memory any more than he
does a landscape, but only attends to and remembers those details which help to
illustrate his line of thought.
To take a concrete instance : a boy, looking at a topographical map of England,
remembers the positions of London and Liverpool from the picture imprinted on
his mind of the names London and Liverpool, written in a certain type at opposite
corners of the map. He has now got all he wants from the map; that is, the
relative positions of the two names representing the towns London and Liverpool,
in much the same way and with as little reasoning as he has learnt the position of
two benches in his schoolroom. But he can hardly look at a map of India and
see the Himalayas with the plain of the Ganges below, or of Switzerland and see
the plain of Lombardy between the Alps and Apennines, without thinking of what
these lines and dots represent, and reasoning somewhat as to how these mountains
and this plain must affect the people who live there.
The above example of the misuse of a topographical atlas is particularly fruit
ful, because it illustrates an unfortunate tendency to make English history a mere
verbal record of statistics, in the way that a topographical atlas is a diagrammatic
record of statistics. To understand history, the student should be able to have in
his mind at any one epoch (for example, 1380 in English history, at the time ot
Chaucer), a picture of the state of England, as clear as the student who has studied
the present geography of the British Isles has of the whole British Isles and the
relation of the different parts to the life of the whole.
But, as a rule, even the best student has no such clear view. He may have
studied the growth of English institutions, and be able to understand the develop
ment of our° complex system of law and custom ; or he may know the history of
parliament or the foreign policy of different reigns and epochs, or possess a connected,
idea of the development of English literature and manufacture ; but, however
thoroughly he may understand each branch (and it must be remembered that 1
mean a knowledge of English history far more complete than a mere acquaintance
with dates and genealogies and great events), he is apt to become confused when
he tries to put these different streams together and form a clear picture of life in
England at any one time.
In the study of history there must be constant comparison and contrast, and
the student has usually no clear idea of any one epoch with which he can constantly
compare and contrast others. If, however, he knew something of the present
physical geography of the British Isles in conjunction with some of the mam ideas
of the history of our own times, a knowledge that he would be able to couhnuaUif
expand from his own experience, he would possess something certain with which
he could compare other epochs.
One of the strongest reasons, therefore, for the study of geography in connection
with history, is that it would give the student a firm standpoint. It may also be
added that, as the pressure of other subjects in schools often makes it impossible for
a student to gain any but a disconnected knowledge of certain periods of history—
I know many people who have never got beyond the reign of Queen Anne—n
he be^an with geography, he would at any rate possess some certain and valuable
knowledge, in addition to a training in what is, as every one must admit, one method
of understanding history, i.e. from the geographical side. He would probably in
this way make far more use of any scraps of historical information that came in his
way in after-life.