Landscapes of material are also landscapes of meaning: praxis is itself symbolic, and all landscapes are symbolic in practice. Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective draws together fifteen historical geographers to examine landscapes as messages to be decoded, and as signs to be deciphered. The range of examples is wide in terms of period, from the medieval to the modern, and of place, embracing the United States, Canada, Palestine, Israel, South Africa, India, Singapore, France and Germany. Each essay addresses a specific problem, but collectively they are principally concerned...

This book uses data collected in the American journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for some 350 cities from around the world to look at trends in global mortality at the turn of the twentieth century, a period that witnessed some of the most dramatic changes in city growth on an international scale. The diseases considered are diphtheria, enteric fever, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and whooping cough--as well as death from all causes. The data have never before been systematically analyzed and they give important insights into patterns of mortality from these diseases.

This book is the first available survey of English agriculture between 1500 and 1850. Written specifically for students, it combines new material with an analysis of the existing literature. It describes farming in the sixteenth century, analyzes the reasons for improvements in agricultural output and productivity, and examines changes in the agrarian economy and society. Professor Overton argues that the impact of these related changes in productivity and social and economic structure in the century after 1750 amount to an agricultural revolution.

Using meticulous archival research, Alan Baker challenges the orthodox portrayal of nineteenth-century French peasants as individualists and examines the extent to which they both continued with traditional forms of community action and developed new forms of collective action. More specifically, he examines the development and spread of voluntary associations in Loir-et-Cher, on the southwestern margin of the Paris Basin. He focuses on associations aimed at reducing risk and uncertainty (mainly livestock insurance associations, mutual aid societies, and volunteer fire brigades), and on...

Power and Pauperism aims to provide a new perspective on the place of the workhouse in the history and geography of nineteenth-century society and social policy. The workhouse system is set in the wider context in an age associated, paradoxically, with both laissez-faire and increasing state regulation. The study pays particular attention to conflicts over Poor Law policy and workhouse design. Dr Driver demonstrates that despite appearances the workhouse system was far from monolithic, and that official policy was beset with conflict: his study combines a national perspective on the system...

The French historian Marc Bloch has often been praised for his interdisciplinary approach. This book demonstrates the importance of both Vidalian geography and Durkheimian sociology for Bloch and the significant, but often overlooked, differences between his approach and theirs. In contrast to much other work on Bloch, Professor Friedman highlights the intellectual and institutional contexts of Bloch's works, arguing that only by a careful examination of the debates in which he was involved can one begin to come to terms with the nature of his contribution.

Scotland is viewed from the context of the relationship between geographical knowledge and national identity in this study. The author explores new perspectives on Empire, national characteristics and local geographies of science, and advances a previously unexplored area of geographical inquiry--the historical geography of geographical knowledge. The book offers a broad-ranging approach to the subject, and will be of interest to students as well as imperial historians.

This is the first book to take a comprehensive view of the historical geography of Scotland since the Union. The period is divided into sections separated by the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War, and each section offers a general view followed by detailed studies giving a balanced coverage of regional and urban-rural criteria, and the economic infrastructure. The book contains a number of original researches and Dr Turnock attempts to set the Scottish experience in a framework of general ideas on modernisation.

Urbanising Britain brings together the work of some of the leading British historical geographers of the younger generation to consider nineteenth-century urbanization as a process, emphasizing the dimensions of class and community. The essays in this collection reflect the increasing use of social science concepts within the field of historical geography, and are organized to follow urbanization from its origins in migration, to its consequences in urban culture and public health. The contributions combine conceptual sophistication with original empirical research to present a series of...

What made cities 'modern' in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Cities in Modernity explores connections between culture, economy and built environment in cities of this period, drawing its evidence principally from London, New York and Toronto. The book discusses both the cultural experience of modernity and the material modernization of cities, placing special emphasis on their historical geographies, on the production, representation and use of urban space. The opening chapters present new ways of seeing cities in political and religious discourse, social survey, mapping, art...