Product Description

Modern Historical Geographies is the first comprehensive undergraduate text to explore the historical geographies of modernity that have shaped and connected places and landscapes on a global scale. The approaches, themes and theories of historical geography have changed significantly over the last twenty years, and the book introduces students to the major developments in the subject. Ten contributions, from leading historical geographers, are organised thematically around the historical geographies of key processes and issues which have shaped the modern world in the post-medieval period, including patterns of globalisation, nationalism and the nation-state, imperialism, urbanisation and environmental change. Bringing together questions of material change, culture and power, this book addresses the meanings, implications and material geographies of 'modernity'.

Modern Historical Geographies is a key text for undergraduate courses in historical geography, cultural geography, human geography and cultural and heritage studies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #457875 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

Customer Reviews

Good first undergraduate textbook to explore 'modernity'
Modern historical geographies is the first comprehensive undergraduate textbook to cover this theme of modernity in relation to past geographies. The theories of historical geography have changed significantly over the last twenty years, and this book contains substantial research made in this area in the last two decades. The book is not trying to define the limits of historical geography, but is the interplay between the past and the present, between symbolic and material worlds. At times it is not describing anything new but the book teaches ideas and shows examples in a different light than any other published textbook. The book is aimed for undergraduates studying in historical, cultural and human geographies. The two hundred and seventy-page book is clearly written as it tackles a potentially confusing topic of modernity with relative ease and clarity. The adapted style and layout of the book is ideal for the market, as it is split into relevant sections that can be used for a variety of subject matter. The book is divided into ten chapters laid out in four parts; the context; modernity and its consequences; spatial contexts; and finally past and present. The context, written by the editor Catherine Nash, explores conceptual ideas of modernity, such as it being a European discourse and that modernity needs to be spatially and socially differentiated to avoid some of its totalising implications. The second chapter 'modernity and its consequences' deals with the interconnections between places created by the networks (e.g. routes of people, power and objectives) that have structured present circumstances. This chapter visibly demonstrates how the past fits into the present through this concept of modernity. 'Spatial contexts' uses particular geographical contexts to explore historical themes. The final chapter 'past and present', written by Nuala Johnson (Queen's University of Belfast), draws together the theoretical, moral and practical questions raised by bringing past into present, by using landscapes of remembrance as an example. Nuala excellently concludes the book, fully demonstrating the relevance of modern historical geographies today.
The font and font size are easily legible, and each chapter has precise sub-headings making it easy for the undergraduate to extract meticulous information. Each chapter is written by a different author, which means the manner is frequently varied. However the authors are writing on the specialised themes, such as Richard Dennis (University Collage London) writing on historical geographies of urbanism or Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore) on historical geographies of the colonised world, making the material appealing and understandable. Each author writes using a similar structure, and all relate their example back to original idea of modern historical geographies. The book contains sixty figures and three tables spread out throughout the chapters. The maps, diagrams and photos are all directly relevant to the text, making it clearer to the reader and theories more realistic. Every author uses a range of references that make the book a good start for source material. There is no final bibliography but each chapter has a correctly constructed list of references at the end. This is due to the variety of topics discussed which would lead to a long, confusing and unrelated all-inclusive bibliography. The index is useful but could be more withstandtial, as the book is aimed for undergraduates who will be looking to extract small amounts of information in a short space of time.
I would recommend this book for students who want to gain ideas of how past fits present in a geographical context. I think the book is not just relevant to geography students, but also other social and historical science undergraduates. This is due to the nature of the examples discussed, such as colonialism and imperialism, where the book providing a brief historical overview. Also, for people who are sceptical of geography, reading modern historical geographies will illustrate to them how geography shaped where we are today. I wouldn't advocate it for physical geographers as it has little physical context except the historical geographies of environment and historical geographies of landscape... There are very few textbooks comparable to this one, as it consists of numerous topics making it more competitively priced than other textbooks. Due to the nature of the focus discussed, 'modernity', which is an ever changing entity, we shall probably see other undergraduate textbooks in the future being published exploring similar issues. Modern historical geographies can said to be a successful first textbook to investigate this ever-increasing popular theme in geography.