Geography and Science in Britain, 1831-1939: A Study of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

This book examines the history and geography of science and the science of geography in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Britain and the British Empire. Richly illustrated, the book is the first detailed study of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (founded 1831) and of BAAS section E, geography, as a civic science. It is based on detailed archival analysis in Britain and overseas. In considering the history and geography of the Association and of geography in local, national and imperial contexts, the book makes an important and innovative inter-disciplinary contribution to the history and geography of science and to the civic history of geography. Attention is paid to the Association’s workings, to geography as a civic science in Britain and overseas, to science’s audiences, to geography and exploration, geography as a science of the physical world and as a human science, and to the connections between education and citizenship in a period of interwar ‘crisis’ for geography and for science. This volume will greatly extend the knowledge of the British Association for the Advancement of Science as a leading body for the promotion of science as a public good and will engage social and cultural historians, historians of science and of empire and those with interests in disciplinary history, notably historians of geography.