1939: Geography

The year has been characterized by significant changes in the political structure of the world and consequently a multiplicity of changes in boundaries and relationships of nations.

Far East.

The warfare in the Far East in which Japan, China, and Russia have been engaged, has continued throughout the year with varying change of fortune. In western China Communism has so firmly entrenched itself that the provinces of that district, though still represented as part of China on general maps or as nominally under the sovereignty of China, are actually under Soviet control. The borders between the Japan-administered area of China and Russian sections of occupancy or domination in Mongolia are constantly changing, and remain in large part undetermined. The sections of eastern China now held in military control by Japan comprise wellnigh the entire coastal belt and deep projections into the interior.

Changes in Europe.

In Europe the map has similarly undergone change. Through conquest, or virtual conquest, the boundaries of Germany have been extended to include all of Austria, practically all of Czecho-Slovakia, and the western half of dismembered Poland. Similarly Russia has extended her authority in greater or lesser degree over the eastern half of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and parts of ravaged Finland. Hungary has absorbed a small part, the eastern tip, of former Czecho-Slovakia. The end is not yet; further changes in sovereignty, in boundaries, in international relations impend. Not since the treaty of Versailles have so many great changes occurred in the political map of the world.

Books on Crucial European Areas.

So many books have appeared upon the areas in which the most profound changes have been made, in central Europe, that to enumerate them all would transcend the space or purpose of this brief review; three will suffice to indicate their general character: (1) 'Czechs and Germans: A Study of the Struggle in the Historic Provinces of Bohemia and Moravia,' written by Elizabeth Wiskemann and issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and from the Oxford University Press, a book in which both German and Czech points of view are as adequately and impartially presented as would seem possible; (2) 'The Baltic States: A Survey of the Political and Economic Structure and the Foreign Relations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania,' also issued by the Royal Institute of International Affairs and from the Oxford University Press; and (3) 'Poland: Key to Europe,' by Raymond Leslie Buell, a book which anticipated the final conquest and dismemberment by pointing out the inherent weaknesses, both in its internal and external policies, of the Polish state.

Participation of Geographers in Effecting a New Order.

But political changes in states and boundaries of states, some of them so revolutionary as to be wellnigh catastrophic, represent only one phase of the profound transition which characterized 1939, a year which is but a part of the whole period of rapid change through which the world is passing. Social and economic implications, of the same magnitude as those accruing from political changes, follow in the wake of the events which have changed the course of man's progress so drastically.

The past year may perhaps be considered in the future as a turning point in man's cultural evolution. By manifold improvements in means of transportation and communication and in facilities for trade and travel, man has so reduced the effectiveness of distance as a barrier that his world has been correspondingly diminished in size. From a mosaic of detached and distinctive states and peoples, each segregated within its own boundaries and distinguished by its own provincial adjustments and attitudes, the world has been transformed, by virtual reduction of distance in terms of time and expense, to one relatively small neighborhood in which every people, every state is more or less closely interrelated with every other, and more or less dependent upon every other.

As a consequence, the whole economic and social structure, as well as the political alignment, is undergoing readjustment and revision. New spheres of economic influence and activity, new frontiers of trade and routes of traffic, new methods of exploiting and developing the world's resources, are constantly being developed. The old fabric of international relations has worn out, and a new warp and a new woof are being designed and placed in the loom for a new world order. The inadequacy of the old order, the imminent necessity for a new order, is certainly the basic cause for the economic discontent, the social and political unrest and disturbance which has attained so critical a peak the past year in the widespread aggressions, invasions, and utter disregard, among nations, not only for conventions and forms, but for obligations, liberties, and rights. Japan's expansion into new territory, Germany's demand Lebensraum, Italy's annexation of Ethiopia, are some of the most conspicuous and most deplorable evidences of the new needs. The sanctity of the given pledge, of the home and family, of the right to life itself has been completely ignored. The whole unfortunate, miserable situation is a symptom of international and regional maladjustment to which the geographers are turning their attention in the hope of hastening the new and more satisfactory arrangement of world affairs.

To the plans for rebuilding the world's political structure, for recasting the economic mold of the world's trade, for redesigning the world's social fabric, the geographers have devoted much of their thought and time. In laying new local, national, and international patterns upon the trestle-boards of the world's new order, the geographers in every land participate actively with statesmen, financiers, industrialists, economists, farmers, and all the forces working toward better adjustments.

Readjustment in the United States.

In the United States, the most obvious feature of the struggle for better adjustment is the general interest in planning — planning for better farming practices and use of the land, for wiser technique of production and distribution in manufacturing, for more effective transportation and travel. While not wholly, nor even dominantly geographic in its character, this manifestation of readjustment and revision of the folk of America to their advantages and disadvantages, their resources and needs, has claimed the general support and engaged the thought and service of practically every geographer.

Leading Journals and Articles.

The Geographical Review, The Journal of Geography, Economic Geography, a goodly number of regional geographic publications, and a large number of magazines in related fields of science have continued to record the progress of events in man's struggle to reorganize his activities and to restore disrupted relationships between people and people, state and state, to meet the needs of the new conditions of the world as a neighborhood. A host of books has come from the press, some of them distinctly geographic in concept and purpose, some of them merely with geographic implications that deal more or less definitely with this period of transition.

The Annals of the Association of American Geographers, the official organ of the group of professional geographers who are making the most ambitious contributions to their field, has published during the year a valuable series of articles, of which 'Geographical Science and Social Philosophy,' the address of the retiring President, of the University of Wisconsin, Vernon C. Finch, at the annual meeting in 1938, and 'The Nature of Geography; A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past,' by Richard Hartshorne, embracing two issues of the publication to constitute a monograph upon the subject treated, are noteworthy for the exhaustive research, the profound thought, and the critical judgment which they represent.

The Geographical Review, which has occupied a leading place for years among geographical journals of the world, has published a large number of significant articles which indicate, better than any explicit statement can portray, the incalculable progress that geographic research has made within the last decade. The very first article in the January issue, the first article in Vol. XXIX, 'The Littoral of Pacific Colombia and Ecuador,' by Robert Cushman Murphy, primarily an ornithologist and only secondarily a geographer, illustrates the contribution that non-professional geographers, though well-trained scientists, are making to the field. Another article in the same issue, 'Hurricanes Into New England: Meteorology of the Storm of Sept. 21, 1938,' by Charles F. Brooks, meteorologist and now Director of the Blue Hill Weather Observatory near Boston, illustrates the same point; and a third article, 'Man's Effect on the Palouse,' by W. A. Rockie of the United States Soil Conservation Service, not only helps to prove the point, but recalls the fact that much of the work of the Soil Conservation and Amelioration forces, though definitely engineering or agricultural in character, is based upon geographic research and employs the technique of geography, just as it involves the essence of geographic discipline and the application of geographic criteria.

In the April issue of The Geographical Review for 1939, an article by Margaret Dunlop of Manchester, 'Lines of Cultural Communication in the Bronze Age, France,' deeply interesting in itself, also reveals how fascinating the borderlands between geography and related fields, in this case archeology and anthropology, can be. In the same issue, Eliot Grinnell Mears's discussion of 'Postwar Locational Changes of British Industry' gains import from the continuance of those changes since the outbreak of the new war. 'Water-Planning in the Great Central Valley, California,' by Peveril Meigs; 'The Agricultural Value of California Soils,' and 'A Permanent Loss to New England: Soil Erosion Resulting from the Hurricane,' by Hugh Hammond Bennett — all three represent application of geographic fact and principle to current practical problems. And 'The Law of the Primate City,' by Mark Jefferson, marks a field of new research, the definition of a new problem.

Most of the articles in The Geographical Review are by geographers — in general, statements of results of their research, and deal with applied geography. The October issue contains one such article that serves as example par excellence, 'Agricultural Land in Proportion to Agricultural Population in the United States,' by Richard Hartshorne of the University of Minnesota. An article similarly applicable to current problems in agriculture is 'A New Coefficient of Humidity and Its Application to the United States,' by Phil E. Church and Edna M. Geuffroy concludes the October number, and the volume for 1939.

The October issue of the Review achieves an exceedingly high standard of excellence as well as service. A remarkable series of aerial photographs of the Central Appalachian Mountains and Plateau from Washington to Cincinnati, taken by John L. Rich of the University of Cincinnati, constitutes a major feature of the issue. In addition to this valuable article, the number contains almost a score of high-grade studies, by which most varied and interesting phases of geographic interest and investigation are exemplified.

In this annual summary of geographic progress, the character of one or two of the leading general publications in the field has been given particular attention because the outstanding merit of the published material this year, the bearing of most of it upon the social and political thought and activity of our time, and the view it gives of the widespread interests of geographic research, fully justifies the space and the time required to present it.

The Journal of Geography, official organ of the National Council of Geography Teachers, serves the field of their interests, bearing many articles of which the methods of teaching geography and presenting geographic material in schools form the major theme, and perhaps just as many in which content or material is provided. The 1939 volume represents the thirty-eighth year of its issue.

Economic Geography.

In such a specialized field as economic geography, the magazine of the same name, Economic Geography, which completed its fifteenth year of issue with the 1939 volume, affords ample evidence of the applied activities of geographers and their like. Land tenure and land utilization; farm distribution and agriculture; ores and mining, petroleum and refining, granite and quarrying; shipbuilding and river development; population and map-making; these and a hundred other kindred subjects make up the subject matter, presented in detailed thoroughness or in broad outline, as the subject and the point of view determine. The progress of this phase of geography has unquestionably been accelerated by the publication of Economic Geography.

Geographical Convention.

The annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers and the National Council of Geography Teachers were held in Chicago, the last week of December 1939.