D. W. Meinig and The Shaping of America

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 610-633

  Wynn, Graeme ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

America; Atlantic America; Historical geography; History of geography; Imperialism

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY; IMPERIALISM;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 29744442745     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2005.09.003     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. A.W. Spirn, The Language of Landscape, New Haven and London, 1998, 5
2. D.W. Meinig, A Life of Learning, Charles Homer Haskins Lecture, American Council of Learned Societies, Occasional Paper No 19, 1992, 1-2;
3. 'Geographer on Film, Donald W. Meinig. Interviewed 29 April 1971', Online Geographers on Film Transcriptions, 2004.
4. Meinig, A Life of Learning; D.W. Meinig, The Great Columbia Plain. A Historical Geography, 1805-1910, Seattle, 1968, xi
5. A.H. Clark, Historical geography, in: P.E. James and C.F. Jones (Eds), American Geography: Inventory and Prospect, Syracuse, 1954, 70-105.
6. D.W. Meinig, On the Margins of the Good Earth. The South Australian Wheat Frontier, 1869-1884, Chicago, 1962, preface; Meinig, Great Columbia Plain.
7. D.W. Meinig The Mormon Culture Region: Strategies and patterns in the geography of the American West, 1847-1964 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 55 1965 191-220
8. L.C. Bennion Meinig's 'Mormon Culture Region' revisited Historical Geography 24 1 & 2 1995 22-33, quote from 25.
9. Classics in human geography revisited: D.W. Meinig On the Margins of the Good Earth Progress in Human Geography 22 2 1998 257-263, quote from 262.
10. D.W. Meinig Environmental appreciation: Localities as a humane art The Western Humanities Review 25 Winter 1971 1-11
11. Meinig, Environmental appreciation, 10.
12. Especially as it seems to have worked such magic at least twice, and not only in the world of fiction: See the introductory lines of C. Roberts Imperial Texas: Texan myths and Tejano exclusion Historical Geography 24 1 & 2 1995 45-56
13. For 'Jim' see J. Michener, Texas, New York, 1985, 504.
14. D.W. Meinig, Southwest, Preface.
15. D. Stanislawski Review of Southwest: Three Peoples in Geographical Change, 1600-1970 by D.W. Meinig Annals of the Association of American Geographers 62 1972 548
16. D.W. Meinig, American Wests: Preface to a geographical interpretation, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 62 (1972) 159-184.
17. Meinig The continuous shaping of America: A prospectus for geographers and historians American Historical Review 83 5 1978 1186-1205
18. See S.B. Jones A unified field theory of political geography Annals of the Association of American Geographers 44 1954 111-123
19. Donald Meinig to Graeme Wynn, personal communication, 30 December 1980.
20. See D.J. Russo, Families and Communities. A New View of American History, Nashville, 1974.
21. Meinig, A Life of Learning; D.W. Meinig, Imperial Texas, Austin, 1969
22. D.W. Meinig, Southwest: Three Peoples in Geographical Change, 1600-1970, New York, 1971
23. D.W. Meinig American Wests: Preface to a geographical interpretation Annals of the Association of American Geographers 62 1972 159-184
24. D.W. Meinig (Ed.), On Geography: Selected Writings of Preston E. James, Syracuse, 1971
25. D.W. Meinig (Ed.), The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, New York, 1979;
26. D.W. Meinig, Andrew Hill Clark, Historical Geographer, in: J.R. Gibson (Ed.), European Settlement and Development in North America. Essays on Geographical Change in Honour and Memory of Andrew Hill Clark, Toronto, 1978, 3-26.
27. Alistair Cooke recalled his friend's advice in the opening scene of the episode in his series that dealt with early American history: 'You know, when I told an old Southerner, a friend of mine, that I was going to try and tell my version of American history in thirteen hours he said "Better talk fast, boy..."' as reported in N. Clarke, Alistair Cooke: A Biography, New York, 1999, 434;
28. see also A. Cooke, Alistair Cooke's America, London, 1973
29. M.P. Conzen, The historical impulse in geographical writing about the United States, in: M.P. Conzen, T.A. Rumney and G. Wynn (Eds), A Scholar's Guide to Geographical Writing on the American Past, Chicago, 1993, 80.
30. P.W. English Review of Imperial Texas Annals of the Association of American Geographers 60 1970 789
31. G.M. Lewis Review of Imperial Texas Nature 224 96 December 1969 979
32. R.L. Peterson Review of Imperial Texas Arizona and the West 12 Summer 1970 204
33. H.R. Lamar Review of Southwest American Historical Review 79 February 1974 221
34. A.H. Clark The strategy and ecology of man's occupation of the intermontane Northwest: An essay review Pacific Northwest Quarterly 60 April 1969 101-102
35. R. Symanski The manipulation of ordinary language Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66 4 December 1976 605-614
36. Consider R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, Cambridge, 1991
37. R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, 1979
38. K. Hayles, The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century, Ithaca, 1984 (among others on this point).
39. On this point see C. Harris, The historical mind and the practice of geography, in: D. Ley and M.S. Samuels (Eds), Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems, Chicago, 1978, 123-137.
40. D. Sopher, Ordinary language; G.R. Vale, Ordinary language; and O.F.G. Sitwell, Did Meinig tell the truth? with a response by R. Symanski, Comment in reply, all in Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67, 4 (December 1977) 625-639.
41. Although Meinig's address to the Institute of British Geographers half a decade on might be seen in part at least as a something of a rejoinder to Symanski's claims: D.W. Meinig Geography as an art Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers N.S. 8 3 1983 314-328
42. One of Meinig's last doctoral students offered a more thoughtful and reasoned commentary on geographers' use of language almost two decades after the Symanski incident:MJ.M. Smith Geographical rhetoric: modes and tropes of appeal Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86 1 1986 1-20
43. G.N. Blainey, The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000, South Melbourne, 1988
44. see also G.N. Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History, Melbourne, 1966.
45. T. Griffiths, Light green, dark green, in: D. Gare, G. Bolton, S. Macintyre and T. Stannage (Eds), The Fuss that Never Ended: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blainey, Melbourne, 2003, 53-66, quotes from 64.
46. Griffiths, Light green, 62.
47. W.L. McNeill, Coming Apart: An Informal of America in the 1960s, Chicago, 1971.
48. Here I would thank those members of my fourth year Geography seminar at UBC in Winter term 2005, who joined me in reading and discussing the four volumes of The Shaping of America series and led me to think about the works in new ways: Jennifer Austin, Michael Becir, Alex Coombes, Christine Murray and Jason Woo.
49. The themes or concepts are most explicitly set down in the preface of Meinig Atlantic America; the sketch of selected patterns quote is from the preface of Meinig, Continental America.
50. The comment about the overwhelming scale of the Grand Canyon is one I came across years ago and referred to in Atlantic perspectives: A review essay Canadian Historical Review 69 3 1988 339
51. see also S.J. Pyne, How the Grand Canyon Became Grand. A Short History, New York, 1998.
52. As a way into an extensive literature around the issues noted in the latter part of this paragraph see G. Wynn A fine balance? Geography at the millennium The Canadian Geographer 43 3 1999 220-243
53. I heard this story from Darby during a visit he made to the University of Toronto ca 1970; the reference is presumably to one of the re-issues or later editions of G.M Trevelyan, History of England, London, 1929. Re-issues/editions appeared in 1945, 1953, 1958 and 1973.
54. V. Konrad Review of Continental America Canadian Review of American Studies 25 1 Winter 1995 173
55. M.P. Conzen, The historical impulse, 80-82, offers a summary of some of the reactions to Atlantic America. His own comment is that 'Meinig's method is essentially that of a painter, using a brush dipped in the rich pigments of diverse, detailed and distilled secondary sources, to delineate a broad schematic "conspectus" showing the continual shaping of the peoples and their regions on a canvas so breathtakingly wide that the geographical context, coverage, scale, structure, tensions and change involved are dynamically seen and consequential.'
56. Two of the most thorough appraisals of Atlantic America were written by James T. Lemon (Atlantic imperialism Reviews in American History 15 3 1987 173-175)
57. and R. Cole Harris (Taking on a continent Journal of Historical Geography 14 4 1988 416-419)
58. C. Earle Response to 'The Continuous Shaping of America' American Historical Review 83 5 1978 1206-1209
59. For 'Geographical History' see C. Earle, Geographical Inquiry and American Historical Problems, Stanford, CA, 1992
60. D.W. Meinig Reply to responses 'To The Continuous Shaping' American Historical Review 83 5 1978 1214-1217
61. C. Earle Continuity or discontinuity - that is the question! The Shaping of America in the gilded age and progressive era Journal of Historical Geography 25 1 1999 12
62. see also C. Earle, The American Way: A Geographical History of Crisis and Recovery, Lanham, MD, 2003.
63. For some indication of the different ways in which historians and geographers responded compare E.M. Cook Jr. Response to 'The Continuous Shaping' American Historical Review 83 5 1978 1209-1213
64. with that by Earle; see also C. Harris Comments on The Shaping of America Journal of Historical Geography 25 1 1999 11
65. Most directly by J. Kay Western women's history Journal of Historical Geography 15 1989 302-305
66. J. Kay The future of historical geography in the United States Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80 1990 618-623
67. See for example N. Langston Review of Continental America William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 54 2 April 1997 460-462
68. Comments on the 'disembodied' theme can be found in C. Earle, et al., Historical geography, in: G.L. Gaile and C.J. Willmott (Eds), Geography in America, Columbus, 1989, 156-191, especially 159.
69. W. Cronon 'The landscape of our past', review of Atlantic America New York Times Book Review 17 August 1986 12-13
70. Langston, Review of Continental America, 460-461.
71. Harris, The historical mind.
72. E. Countryman The English sea-borne empire History Today August 1987 57
73. Bryce cited by Meinig, Transcontinental America, 29, Figure 32 on 180-181. Consider also and in similar vein Figures 32 and 33 of Continental America (260-263), which offer brilliant cartographic and tabular summaries of 'The Classic Turnerian Pattern' of Western settlement and 'An Alternative Pattern: American System of Regional Development'.
74. For more on the basic arguments of this paragraph with respect to de-historicization see J.C.D. Clark, Our Shadowed Present. Modernism. Postmodernism and History, London, 2003; more specifically, one might reflect upon possible connections between Meinig's central arguments about American imperialism, the events of 9/11/2001 and the continuing aftermath of that event, links that Meinig understandably and explicitly deigned to leave aside in volume four, most of which was written in the twentieth rather than the twenty-first century.
75. H.S. Barron, Those Who Stayed Behind: Rural Society in Nineteenth-century New England, New York, 1984.
76. My phrasing borrows from two publications that exemplify, but by no means exhaust these new fascinations: B. Bailyn The idea of Atlantic history Itinerario 20 1 1996 19-44
77. T. Bender (Ed.), Rethinking American History in a Global Age, Berkeley, 2003
78. see also N. Canny Writing Atlantic history; or, reconfiguring the history of colonial British America Journal of American History 86 3 1999 1093-1114
79. and the forum on American exceptionalism in an age of international history American Historical Review 96 4 1991 1031-1072
80. S.J. Hornsby, British Atlantic, American Frontier: Spaces of Power in Early Modern British America, Hanover and London, 2005;
81. among relevant items by Cole Harris see, European beginnings in the Northwest Atlantic: A comparative view, in: D.D. Hall and D.G. Allen (Eds), Seventeenth-century New England, Boston, 1984, 119-152
82. The simplification of Europe overseas Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67 4 1977 469-483
83. and by Elizabeth Mancke see Early modern expansion and the politicization of oceanic space Geographical Review 89 1 1999 225-236
84. The Fault Lines of Empire: Political Differentiation in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, 1760-1830, New York, 2005.
85. W. Cronon, Changes in the Land
86. see also C. Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender and Science in New England, Chapel Hill, 1989;
87. T. Silver, A New Face on the Countryside; Indians, Colonists and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800, New York, 1990;
88. G. Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America from 1500 to the Present Cambridge, 1994;
89. C.V. Earle, The myth of the Southern soil miner: Macrohistory, agricultural innovation and environmental change, in: D. Worster (Ed.), The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, Cambridge, 1988, 175-210
90. C.V. Earle, Environment, disease and mortality in early Virginia, in: T.W. Tate and D.L. Ammerman (Eds), The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays in Anglo-American Society, Chapel Hill, NC, 1979, 96-125.