What do you think?
Rate this book
The Geographical Basis of European History
108 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1928
2 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 21, 2021
Reading old texts on known topics is always a great exercise every now and then since it provides a portal through time to see how the world was seen back then - in the case of this book around 100 years ago, just after the first world war. Quite often the concern with such books is that they are quite ethnocentric. This was not really the case for this little entertaining read, where an American describes Europe.
It anticipated many things that appeared only much later in common textbooks when it comes to the interaction between history and geography and the importance of geographic preconditions for economic development in general.
One specific thing that struck me and I thus want to highlight is the differential location of port cities in the Atlantic vs. the Mediterranean. In the former the tides are much stronger, thus sediment that gets washed down the rivers is easily dragged out in the ocean. In the Mediterranean, on the other hand, the tide is much weaker, thus not able to fully clear out stuff that gets washed down the rivers and therefore locations of ports cannot be right at the mouths of rivers since they would naturally sand up until they become unusable (which is what happened e.g. with Ravenna, once the Capital of the (Western) Roman Empire). This is also a nice example for how a geographic feature can both be a virtue and curse at the same time. Being a relatively smooth sea was very beneficial in the early days when sailing/shipping technology was still very primitive. It allowed for easy navigation and the creation of an early network of trade in ancient times.
It anticipated many things that appeared only much later in common textbooks when it comes to the interaction between history and geography and the importance of geographic preconditions for economic development in general.
One specific thing that struck me and I thus want to highlight is the differential location of port cities in the Atlantic vs. the Mediterranean. In the former the tides are much stronger, thus sediment that gets washed down the rivers is easily dragged out in the ocean. In the Mediterranean, on the other hand, the tide is much weaker, thus not able to fully clear out stuff that gets washed down the rivers and therefore locations of ports cannot be right at the mouths of rivers since they would naturally sand up until they become unusable (which is what happened e.g. with Ravenna, once the Capital of the (Western) Roman Empire). This is also a nice example for how a geographic feature can both be a virtue and curse at the same time. Being a relatively smooth sea was very beneficial in the early days when sailing/shipping technology was still very primitive. It allowed for easy navigation and the creation of an early network of trade in ancient times.
Displaying 1 of 1 review