Williams - 1989 - Historical geography and the concept of landscape

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Journal of Historical Geography, 15, 1 (1989) 92-104 
Historical geography and the concept of landscape 
Michael Williams 
The landscape has always figured largely in the work of H. C. Darby. It formed an 
incontestable focus for geographical study, particularly during the early days of his 
historical-geographical writing. The approaches to landscape employed by Darby are 
examined, so too are .some of the criticisms of his work. Then, both the problem of 
describing the landscape- and the idea of the changing landscape are explored in depth, 
particularly the themes of the draining of the marshes and the clearing of the forests, 
against the background of contemporary environmental concerns. The neglect of 
landscape studies in geography is touched upon as is the current resurgence of landscape 
oriented studies in many disciplines. Finally, an assessment is attempted of the likely 
influence and importance of Darby's work on the concept of landscape. 
The landscape, in some form or another, has always figured largely in the writing 
of H. C. Darby. It seems that for him it was axiomatic that it was "the purpose 
of geography to explain the landscape" and that "an understanding of the 
landscape" formed an indisputable part of geographical study. He even went so 
far as to suggest that historical geography, the study of the formation of the 
human landscape, and geomorphology, the study of the tangible physical 
landscape, together constituted "the foundations of geographical study". The 
visual appreciation of landscape became the touchstone of geographical rele- 
vance and purpose as he explored the debatable frontier zone between history 
and geography. In his paper "On the relations of geography and history" the 
words geography, -ies, -ieal, appear 58 times (other than in titles), variations of 
history, 35 times, historical geography 14 times, but landscape appears 24 times, 
and face of the country/countryside 7 times. I~1 
By 1953, when Darby gave his "Relations" paper he had created a successful 
genre of historical geography in British universities through writing and 
teaching, and intellectually through the diffusion of pupils and colleagues, but 
the battle to establish that position during the previous 20 years cannot have 
been easy. In these days of academic liberalism and intellectual catholicity it is 
difficult to appreciate the earlier rigidity of disciplines and subject matter. In the 
miniscule university structure of the time many present subjects did not exist, 
geography was still battling for acceptance and was present in about a dozen 
departments only, and the concept of interdisciplinary studies that transcended 
the "tariff frontiers" around academic subjects was not to be heard of until the 
swinging sixties. ~21 It was against this institutional background that those who 
had a passionate interest in the historical element in geography laboured and 
proselytized to establish historical geography as a "self-conscious" and distinc- 
tive subset of the discipline, different from contemporary human geography, and 
different from the powerful and long-established discipline of history. ~31 Nor 
0305-7488/89/010092 + 13 $03.00/0 92 �9 1989 Academic Press Limited 
THE CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE 93 
should it be forgotten that the "new" historical geography had to distinguish 
itself from the "old" and discredited environmental determinism. In all of this 
the landscape formed an incontestable and certain focus, related to, but not 
identical with geography, area or region, and which had the clear approbation of 
historians. 
Darby's graduate work on The role of the Fenland in English history was 
completed in 1931, the first Ph.D to be awarded in Geography at Cambridge. It 
was later to be published as The medieval Fenland and The draining of the Fens, 
and it clearly charted his interest in a particular landscape of a particular region 
through time. N But it is in his An historical geography of England before A.D. 
1800 of 1936, with its organizational method of successive cross-sections which 
focus on elements of the landscape I51 (although, as Perry f61 points out, many 
chapters were not cross-sections) that we see the full flowering of his new 
historical-geographical approach in which the data were historical but the 
method geographical. The dominant role of the landscape in that endeavour was 
explicitly acknowledged, as later Darby admitted that a practical problem of 
past geographies was that "the different elements that make up a landscape do 
not change at the same rate nor at the same time. Thus while the marshes are 
being drained, the heaths are not being reclaimed", tTl Consequently information 
had to be repeated in successive cross-sections. The landscape in the cross- 
sectional approach lacked what Derwent Whittlesey called "the compelling time 
sequence of related events which is the vital spark of history". N 
There were at least two possible solutions to this problem. One proposed by 
Darby in 1960 was to interpose narrative accounts of the forces that affected the 
landscape, as was later exemplified in The new historical geography of England. ~91 
A variant was to make the cross-sections so "thick" that they partook of the 
nature of a narrative. The other was to pursue themes of change in the 
landscape, vertically through time, so to speak, so that the study of the 
transforming hand of humankind in making and fashioning the landscape 
became a legitimate focus of study. This was the history behind geography which 
would never tip over into economic history provided "an understanding of the 
landscape" was the aim in view. II~ The relatively short article on "The changing 
English landscape" which appeared as early as 1951 was an experiment in this 
approach. I~q There are, of course, many variations and combinations of both 
approaches. For example, Williams attempted to delineate cross-sections of 
sequential settlement through time in the colonization and settlement of South 
Australia and weave through these the vertical themes of creation and change in 
the landscape, emphasizing the decision-making processes and the popular and 
official perceptions of the actors, t~2J Darby has suggested many other solu- 
tions.[ 13] 
The subtle and complex intertwining relationship between history and geogra- 
phy surfaced again in 1962 in a thoughtful and significant article on "The 
problem of geographical description" which can only be considered in the light 
of his concern to depict landscape in some way or other, t~41 The problem of 
reconciling the sequential nature of words with the instantaneous apprehension 
of a visual scene was fundamental to the study of the landscape. "We look at a 
picture as a whole, and it is as a whole that it leaves an impression on us; we can, 
however, read only line by line", or as the critic Lessing put it, "the co-existence 
of the physical object comes into collision with the consecutiveness of speech". 
Moreover, the juxtapositioning of events in time (historical facts) was easier to 
94 M. WILLIAMS 
convey than the juxtapositioning of events in space (geographical facts). There 
was no easy solution. All he knew was that description was neither simple nor to 
be dismissed as "mere", as many novelists well adept with crafting words would 
testify. Rather, for successful description one needed to muster all ones skill, art 
and learning. ~15~ 
Critique of the focus on landscape 
Darby's views and treatment of the landscape, and hence his historical 
geography, have been criticized, possibly because its very success has provoked 
reaction but also because it has inevitably been assessed in the light of the many 
shifting emphases in the discipline as a whole since the Second World War. 
From the early 1960s onwards Darby's work has been held up and evaluated 
against, in particular, the application of theoretical concepts and quantitative 
techniques of locational analysis of historicaldata, and more latterly, and 
seriously, against the study of the reciprocal relations between human agency 
and social structure, i.e. humanism, either through idealism or some sort of 
Marxian h u m a n i s m f 61 
Thus the empirical and pragmatic nature of the Darbyesque landscape has 
been castigated as being "bloodless" and bereft of people, who, if they do appear 
are the main actors only, and as being "a narrowly economic geography of the 
past ''IlTl which displays "a failure to get to grips with c h a n g e " f 8J The approach 
has been typified as Whiggish and concerned only with progress, and therefore 
not only "separatist and pragmatic . . . . but also materialist and bourgeois in its 
or ien ta t ion"f 9~ Finally, it has been suggested that the object of Darby's work 
had been for the most part "to establish disciplinary boundaries and in some 
measure to police them". ~2~ 
Be these as they may, and some have point and others are mistaken, the 
concern of some of the critics with method, almost at the expense of substance 
runs the danger of circular and unsatisfactory argument about what ought to be 
done and very little of the doing of it. If Darby could be assured of creating an 
orthodoxy of approach then his critics might be accused of creating a tyranny of 
criticism that has possibly dissuaded would-be historical geographers from 
involving themselves in the study of landscapes and thereby evolving new 
methods and techniques for investigating them. Nor is it true that Darby did not 
consider some of the more humanistic approaches to landscape. An examination 
of his 1962 paper reveals discussion of the soul of the landscape, the landscape as 
symbol, and the role of perception, metaphor and imagination, as well as the 
aesthetics of landscape. I21~ The pity was that these topics were never high on his 
research agenda which was completely dominated by the great Domesday 
project of which he commented once, to the effect "I wondered at times if I 
would ever see light on the horizon". 
In some small way Darby has reflected on these points. On the question of 
establishing a discipline and its boundaries he would probably plead "guilty": 
"looking back from the 1980s it is difficult to realise how fragile and uncertain 
.were the prospects for the subject." It had been a long battle. On the questions of 
changing emphases he commented that he was glad that they had occurred but 
thought the nature of historical geography was such that the upheaval caused by 
the "great earthquake" of positivism during the 1960s probably affected it less 
than other parts of the discipline, perhaps registering only 3 or 2 on the Richter 
THE CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE 95 
Scale of shock. The 1970s brought "unsettled weather" in the form of 
"ideological winds and breezes" which some found bracing and inspiring but 
which were not altogether fresh air to those who had already grappled with the 
relations of geography to history and sociology. Of one thing he was certain, the 
current practitioners o f historical geography, like himself four or five decades 
before, "were prisoners of their own time and of their own cultural and 
intellectual world". E22t 
Change in the landscape 
The appearance of the article "The changing English landscape" in 1952 
caused few flutters in the geographical world. It was dismissed by many as slight 
and a variation on the theme of the cosy English rural scene. E23J Few realized that 
it was, in fact, a radical departure. Instead of seeking the material foundations 
and lineaments (patterns) of the landscape in the past, in a vacuum outside the 
world of the productive human relationship that produced that landscape, 
Darby sought to integrate people and the world they inhabited to subsist. The 
human use of the earth was a bond or relationship between society and land, and 
the processes of alteration were the focus of the study, emphasising, sometimes 
the results of the processes, sometimes the processes themselves and sometimes 
the social and technical ideas behind the processes. The article was also 
significant because in a sense it freed the historical geographer from the static, 
source-bound nature of the cross-section, and also from the interminable and 
destructive question "But is it geography?". 
The rationale for the approach was threefold. First, the line between present 
and past was so blurred and uncertain that contemporary geography 
imperceptibly became historical geography: "the process of becoming is one 
process", Darby commented. Secondly, making a living, building a house, and 
moving from place to place altered physical landscapes so that "Art as well as 
Nature has gone into the making of most landscapes". Simply, one could not 
divorce humankind from the natural scene. Moreover, most landscapes 
represented a continuous struggle that was never still, and with the particular 
example of the Breckland in mind he averred that each scene was "a momentary 
balance of power, an equipoise, sensitive . . . to short term changes, responsive 
also to longer term changes". Armed with that thought one could never again 
see a landscape as a static arrangement of objects. [24] Although Darby never 
explicity said so, but demonstrated implicitly, there was a third reason why the 
landscape had to be examined through time. It was not merely an artefact but an 
expression of human ideas, attitudes and aesthetics. At one extreme the English 
landscape garden was the epitome of this; it was the ultimate humanized, 
"authored" landscapeJ 251 The creations of William Kent were as distinctively 
different from those of Lancelot Brown or Humphrey Repton, the shift from 
uncompromising formality to free flowing lines reflected the transmutation from 
"Nature 'chastened and polished' ", to "Nature itself". I261 It is true that Darby 
did not delve into the meaning of these landscapes as manifestations of what 
Cosgrove has called "cultural production", that is, as symbols or emblematic 
representations of power, capital and status, nor did he delve into "the darker 
side of the landscape", t271 He makes it quite clear that they were not landscapes 
to be lived in but landscapes to be looked at. Quite different was the "grim 
picture" drawn by Engels of Manchester in 1844, but the script of that landscape 
96 M. WILLIAMS 
was not as easy to read or as accessible as that of the country park; it was the 
result of numerous, diffuse, and unknown authorships. 
Humankind was clearly the agent of these landscape changes. Darby 
commented on the fact that neither George Perkins Marsh's pioneer work, Man 
and Nature: or The Earth as modified by human action (1864) which explored the 
theme of man as an agent of both beneficial and deleterious change, nor R. 
Sherlock's Man and the Earth (1905) had scarcely been followed up by 
geographers (this, it is to be noted, all of three years before the publication of 
Man ~ role in changing the face o f the Earth, which is often heralded as being the 
resuscitation of Marsh's ideas). With hindsight we can only bemoan the neglect 
by geographers of the theme of man as an agent of change for while their 
attention was elsewhere, interest in and the study of the "environment" gathered 
momentum, and the orphan of the geographers was adopted by other 
disciplines, much to the detriment of geography as a wholeJ zSl 
In a later amplification of his position Darby was at pains to point out that the 
visible scene was, in a paraphrase of Sauer's words, "a manifestation of a given 
culture" and therefore, said Darby, the examination of that culture "may well be 
an essential ingredient of that landscape". I291 Thus, he argued, geographers 
should put place and people close together as in Braudel's sweeping canvas of 
the Mediterranean world. Nevertheless, although aware of "culture" he did not, 
with few exceptions, examine it himself, nor see it as p a r t of some grander 
European capitalistexpansion that largely dominated the habitable world 
during the last 500 years. Instead, it could fairly be said that he focused on 
aspects of the transformation of distinctive landscapes in Europe--marshes, 
woodlands, and wastelands and heaths. 
Processes of change in the landscape 
In "The changing English landscape" Darby had considered a number of themes 
which included the changing arable, the landscape garden, and towns and the 
seats of industry. But it is clear that the themes in which he had the most interest 
were those related to changes in the physical landscape; the draining of the 
marshes, the clearing of the woods, and the reclamation of heaths and 
wastelands. These were fundamental to the transformation of the European 
landscape, and, although he was unaware of it at the time, crucial themes in the 
subsequent environmentally-aware decades of the 1970s and 1980s, being well in 
the forefront of contemporary concerns. 
The draining o f the marshes 
Of these three it was the draining of the marshes that came first to his 
attention. Living on the margins of the Fens it would have been a very dull 
geographer who did not ask the question, "why does this landscape look the way 
it does?", which led him into history. Darby's dissertation was primarily 
historical, but it is probable that the influence of Debenham, a physical 
geographer and his supervisor, and later the pioneer work of contemporaries in 
Cambridge such as Sir Harry Godwin on palaeo-botany and the formation and 
succession of the Fens, as well as the work of Major Gordon Fowler on early 
waterways and roddens led him to a closer appreciation of the intimate interplay 
between people and place in this region through timeJ 3~ 
THE CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE 97 
While many landscapes have been as radically transformed as have 
marshlands, few revert more quickly to their natural state with the absence or 
neglect of human action. Moreover, because of the dynamic and largely 
unpredictable nature of the physical factor which causes that landscape in the 
first place--mainly excess water--there is a need for co-operative effort and 
maintenance, and little room for individual action if success is to be sustained. In 
addition, technology, be it ever so simple, is crucial to draining. An 
understanding of fall, flow, tide, periodicity of flooding, soil wastage and 
slumping give rise to human responses such as cut-offs, sluices, embanked 
channels, floodways, pumps, and different forms of energy considerations, such 
as wind, steam and electricity. The initiator and planner of the grand scheme 
flourishes in this milieu: the individual proprietor recedes. These themes and 
treatments figure largely in The medieval Fenland and The draining of the Fens. 
Darby was later criticized for deliberately omitting consideration of the nature 
of the peculiar institutions that allowed the Fens to be drained, and of their local 
economy. After the publication of the second edition of The draining of the 
Fenland in 1956 he was further criticized for concentrating on the southern Fens 
and Bedford Level and of ignoring the new research on reclamation by small 
scale proprietors in the siltlands of Lincolnshire during the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries) 3q Both these points were subsequently covered adequately 
in the vastly revised and expanded The changing Fenland which appeared in 
1982. [321 Commenting on the earlier companion volumes Perry suggests that one 
of their striking characteristics is that the author "generally allows the sources to 
speak for themselves, often at great length and with no more than explanatory 
and augmentatory comments rather than paraphrases or summary. It is this that 
makes the two monographs simultaneously authoritative and readable. ''t33j It is 
a very Darbyesque trait of style and the same comment can be applied equally as 
well to the last and revised volume, but it is even more polished and assured than 
its predecessors, and is a significant contribution to the regional literature of the 
British Isles. 
The Fenland is the largest marshland in Britain, but it is, nevertheless, only 
one of many such regions. Subsequently, there have been studies by geographers 
and historians on the Somerset Levels, the Isle of Axholme, the Lincolnshire 
coastal marshes, the Hull Valley, the Essex marshes, Romney marsh and the 
Lancashire Mosses, some inspired by Darby's prior work, some not. E341 The 
inquiring nature of his quest to understand the landscape led him to consider the 
related topic of the under-draining of the clay lands. I351 a topic which took him so 
close to considering in detail the impact of man in "making" soils, a topic which 
this writer at least has always felt has been neglected in British historical 
geography. 
If the Fenland is only one of the many marshlands in the British Isles, then the 
British marshes are only a fraction of the marshlands of the world, consisting of 
perhaps as little as less than one per cent. Thus, the topic of marshland draining 
is vastly larger than Darby could have envisaged in the mid-1930s. "Wetlands" 
is now the term that has replaced "marshes," and it includes estuarine, coastal, 
lacustrine, deltaic, palustrine and riverine flooded lands, from the temperate to 
the tropical, from tidal salt marshes and freshwater marshes to mangrove 
swamps. In total wetlands cover probably about 7.8 x 106 km 2 of the ice-free 
area of the world's surface, or about 6 per cent, and they have been persistently 
and increasingly under attack, f361 Traditionally, wetlands have denoted 
98 M. WILLIAMS 
wastelands which can be put to good use only if drained and reclaimed for more 
intensive grazing or arable farming. The fact that most wetlands when drained 
are inherently more productive than adjacent dry land only increases the 
pressure for change. Nevertheless, draining for the maximum crop yield destroys 
the many other valuable products and uses of the "watery waste." The 
destruction of valued products and diverse habitats is part of the modern 
dilemma of draining. These points were not lost on Darby who was probably 
one of the first writers to point out systematically that drainage brought about a 
constant conflict between different resource uses and different resource 
allocations. Crops could be gained but fish, fuel, fowl, fur and precious and 
useful marsh plants could be lost. Moreover, the common use of the land would 
be extinguished with draining and replaced by private property rights, with 
marked effects upon the economy and society of the original inhabitants. In this 
respect, what are sometimes dubbed Darby's "landscapes of progress" are in 
fact at times the very opposite, they are landscapes of regression. Not all the 
results were good. 
Clearing the forests 
The reputation of the two Fenland monographs had spread far so that when 
Carl Sauer and William Thomas were organizing topics and participants for the 
symposium on Man's role in changing the face of the Earth in 1954 it was almost 
inevitable that an approach was made to Darby from them via Paul Fejos, 
Director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the sponsoring body, to write about 
"coast-line modification and the reclamation of land from the sea". In reply 
Darby acknowledged that The draining of the Fens had touched "a little" on 
coastal matters, but he felt that his work to date would not allow him to write 
with any confidence on the many topics listed for consideration, such as 
"protection from erosion, enforced deposition, diking, grass planting, polders, 
fen reclamation, effects of jetties, seawalls, channel-ways, dredging operations, 
etc.". Marshland was his forte, pure and simple, and if he could not write about 
that then he would like to write about something else that now engaged his 
attention. "Probably the m o s t important single factor that has changed the 
European landscape (and many other landscapes also) is the clearing of the 
woodland",he wrote. Clearing had proceeded "at different rates, in different 
ways in different places" and he envisaged a broad treatment of forest clearing 
from pre-historical times onwards. I37j It seems clear that the preliminary work 
that he had done on place-names and on woodland clearing, I381 and the 
cumulative experience of the Domesday record with its teasing references to 
woodland in many different measures had caught his imagination and convinced 
him of the importance of woodland clearing. For the first and perhaps the only 
time his attention shifted to a region beyond the British Isles, and the scale of his 
work shifted from the local or national to the continental. The result was his 
masterly and succinct survey of "the transforming hand of man" in the 
European forests, from pre-historic to modern times, which explored the 
different rates and techniques of clearing in the Mediterranean lands, central and 
western Europe, and eastern and northern Europe. 
Clearing was a different process of landscape formation and change to 
draining. Whereas draining was usually communal , planned, and often, 
THE CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE 99 
therefore recorded, clearing was individual, spontaneous and unknown, the 
work of many millions of uncoordinated actions, the collective result of which 
could only be gauged by the decrease in the forest cover from time to time. 
Hence, clearing "crept-up" on society un-noticed and un-recorded. Moreover, 
clearing was a multi-faceted process, the result of the quest for land for food, 
fuel for warmth or energy, timber for shelter and construction, and a multitude 
of other demands, and was therefore the outcome of the activities of farming, 
industry, transport and urban households. It was not easy to document and 
demanded all the skills of the historical geographer in exploring a range of 
sources that were often surrogate measures of deforestation, such as, for 
example, place-names, fuel consumption, or agricultural expansion. I391 
Darby's contention that clearing may be the "most important single factor" in 
the changing of natural landscapes is probably correct, although he had no 
quantitative evidence to confirm that at the time. Recently it has been calculated 
that of the different forms of pre-historic vegetation cover in the world, forests 
and woodland have been converted and reduced most of all, even more than 
have grasslands, f4~ Of the 7.01 x l06 km 2 of clearing in forest, 6.53 x 106 k m 2 has 
occurred in the temperate forests, mainly in the deciduous forests in Europe and 
eastern North America (2.57 x 106 km 2) for small-scale subsistence and then 
commercial farming, and to the north of this area in the cold deciduous forests 
with evergreens where over 1.53 x 106 k m 2 have been eliminated. The temperate 
evergreen forests of Asia have succumbed to intensive subsistence farming 
(0.39 x 106km2), as have the tropical/subtropical deciduous forests 
(1.00x 106km2). Woodlands have declined by 2.13x 106kin 2 mainly with 
extensive subsistence and small-scale commercial farming in the Mediterranean 
basin since earliest times, widespread subsistence farming throughout Africa, 
and more recently with large-scale commercial farming in the dry eucalypt and 
mallee lands of Australia. 
Current concerns at the destruction of the tropical rainforest are merely a 
continuation of the age-long process of landscape change that arises as man 
endeavors to make a living, as Darby foretold. E4q To date 0.48 x 106 km 2 has 
been cleared but this is insignificant when contrasted to what European man has 
done in the rest of the world in the past, although the rate of change of the 
current deforestation is so great that it may produce as dramatic an outcome 
within 20 years as the previous clearing did in 2000 years. 
Reclaiming the heathlands 
The reclaiming of the heathlands, as Darby rightly commented, started later 
than the clearing of the woodland and the draining of the marshes. The inherent 
infertility of the soil had to wait the coming of new crops and new methods of 
farming. Other than his somewhat brief treatment of this theme in "The 
changing English landscape" he did not return to it again, although there was an 
extended treatment of it in his lecture course of the same name. If he had been 
smitten to write a piece the equivalent of the "Clearing of the forest in Europe", 
and dealt not only with the light soils of England but also the heaths of 
Denmark, Holland, and the other ancient glaciated lands in the north German 
plain through to the borders of Russia, then we would have been much the richer 
for that. And, as with under-draining, the topic would have led to a 
100 M. WILLIAMS 
consideration of that unseen thing, the very soil itself, but more importantly, to 
the plants, animals and agricultural practices and perceptions that both created 
and destroyed it at various times. 
Landscape themes 
This essay began with a consideration of the role of the landscape in Darby's 
writing and will end with a consideration of Darby and his writing in relation to 
the current landscape concerns. Despite assertions that the idea of the making 
and changing of landscapes is somehow redundant and pass~ the landscape does 
not seem to be dead. It is, says Meinig "a lively and expanding realm of 
interest", and Coones has suggested more recently that the "surge of interest" 
has "generated a feeling of confidence in the future of the subject", f421 A new 
journal, Landscape History, the organ of the Society for Landscape Studies, has 
flourished since 1979, significant in the British scene but a mere infant compared 
to its American counterpart, Landscape, which has been published since 1951. 
Clearly we cannot ascribe the resuscitation and conspicuous contemporary 
interest in landscape directly to Darby's earlier ideas; many other factors have 
been at work in society as a whole and within the academic/intellectual circles 
within which geographers and those from other disciplines write. Nevertheless, 
Darby's concern with the landscape as a focus of study has not been out of step 
in recent times. 
Some clues for the growing interest in landscape lie in Meinig's comment that 
although the word and concept of landscape are ambiguous, they are of 
increasing interest as people throughout the world become more conscious and 
concerned about their ordinary "visual surroundings--their environment". 43 
Indeed, landscape has become bound up with the ground swell of greater 
environmental consciousness, although strictly speaking, landscape--the visual 
scene--should not be confused with environment, the system that sustains us. 
Thus, the disfigurement of the visual landscape by anything ranging from 
open-cast mining, to plate glass tower blocks, to fields of yellow rape seed and 
concrete silos in farms produces often violent reaction. In addition, interest in 
the visual has been sustained by the realization that landscape is a reflection, to 
some extent, of the society that produces it, so that a searching look at our 
landscapes helps us better to understand ourselves, and that representative 
landscapes are symbolic and a part of the very iconography of a nation. In these 
senses then, the concern for landscape is bound up with the move by the public 
at large to be sympathetic towards the preservation of cultural history, 
something which is evidenced in the phenomenal growth of such organizations 
as the National Trust, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, and 
the formation of the Countryside Commission. Some see this as elitist 
protectionism, others as a welcome and long overdue manifestation of citizen 
action.[ 44] 
These sentiments have not been without their impact on geography, and 
somewhat belatedly the environment has been taken up again, but within the 
discipline itself there have been at least two fonts of renewed interest which 
attack landscape from both sides of the subject.First, the growing interest in 
perception and humanist studies has led to a refocusing on the landscape. 
Darby's assertion of the validity of Marsh's aphorism that "sight is a faculty; 
seeing an art" has been echoed by Meinig; what we see depends "not only on 
THE CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE 101 
what lies before our eyes but what lies within our heads". I451 Consequently, the 
perceptual lenses of the observer reflect taste, attitude, knowledge, and 
aesthetics, to mention only a few of the many factors. Thus every landscape is 
"coded" and needs to be decipheredJ 461 
Secondly, physical geographers have become increasingly aware of the 
approach pioneered by G. P. Marsh, that is that humankind is a potent changer 
of the physical environment, whether it be soils, vegetation, geomorphology, 
hydrology, and even micro-climates, the human impacts increasing in magnitude 
and frequency with an ever-growing population and a more widespread and 
potent technology. Goudie, and Gregory and Walling have provided ample 
documentation of the human impact, while Hooke and Kain have shown how 
the historical record can be put to good use to see how landscapes have changed 
through human or natural agencies. I47~ 
In the academic world outside geography the landscape which had been so 
readily bequeathed by historians to geographers as a rightful part of their 
heritage has been reclaimed by the historians. The realization that every 
landscape is an accumulation of "history", was largely occasioned by the writing 
of W. G. Hoskins and the popularization of his approach on television which 
made him an arch-exponent of this genre. E481 Interestingly enough, however, 
Hoskins's celebrated book, The making of the English landscape did not come 
out until 1955, nearly four years after Darby's "The changing English 
landscape". It does not seem that historians were ready for Hoskins's approach; 
of the four county volumes that immediately followed his book two were by 
geographers (Balchin and Millward) and only two by historians (Finberg and 
Hoskins himself), t491 Comparisons between Darby and Hoskins over their 
treatment of the English landscape would be a fruitful avenue of investigation. 
For example, while both thought that curiosity about the visual was the 
mainspring for enquiry, (Darby, "Why does this countryside look as it does?": 
Hoskins, "How did it come to be like this? ''I5~ Darby took the view that change 
was inevitable while Hoskins was pessimistic. Thus, "In another generation" 
commented Darby "we and our landscape will have become yet one more 
chapter in some other Historical geography of England", but for Hoskins ever 
since the advent of the present "distasteful" century "every single change in the 
English landscape has either uglified it or destroyed its meaning, or both". ~511 In 
the final analysis, however, the landscape was the only focus for Hoskins; for 
Darby it was one of many foci. These themes could be pursued further. 
Fortunately, Coones has produced a useful menu of categories that help and 
guide us in our search for order in the recent welter of work, such as Integration, 
Environment, Humanism, The Region, New Techniques, and Applied Work. t52] 
To all this one must add a growing list of works, some old, some new, in which 
the theme is as Edward Hyams puts it in his Changing face of Britain, that "the 
substance of Britain has been as much worked on as a stone by a sculptor's". I531 
Woodell's edited set of essays The English landscape. past, present and future 
(1985) and Coones's and Patten's The landscape of England and Wales (1986) 
continue this theme with variations. I54~ In the meantime there have been another 
15 or so county volumes, offshoots from Hoskins's original idea, a new series 
with a very landscape oriented approach, called The history of the British 
landscape, 1066-1939, and at least one other series which highlights particular 
features in the landscape, such as fields, villages or towns. I55j Finally, a casual 
browse in any reasonably large sized bookshop will demonstrate adequately that 
102 M. WILLIAMS 
"the history behind landscape" approach has been adopted imperceptibly in a 
plethora of travel and regional guides and glossy picture books. Of wider and 
more general significance is Cosgrove's examination of the origins and develop- 
ment of the idea of landscape as a cultural concept in the West since the 
Renaissance, and Wagstaff's recent collection of essays, Landscape and culture, 
especially those by B. Roberts and E. G. Grant. I561 This list could be added to 
endlessly. 
Although we cannot directly ascribe these books to the work of Darby in 
conclusion we can probably say four things. Nearly all the themes or departures 
are dealt with or alluded to in his papers of 1952, 1957 and 1962. Secondly, the 
idea of changing landscapes, or perhaps more accurately, landscapes changed by 
humankind, is now a major concern of many within geography and of many in 
other disciplines beyond. In this Darby's stress on the relationship between the 
physical landscape and human action is critical. Thirdly, his maintenance of the 
landscape as a focus of study of a portion of the earth's surface, just like Carl 
Sauer's focus on the cultural landscape, possibly kept the study of the human 
past and history within geography open and alive to geographers during difficult 
years. [571 Finally, a lattice of horizontal stages and vertical themes had been 
constructed with meticulous scholarship. Within that framework the 150 or so 
historical geographers who are currently working mainly on British topics, the 
overwhelming majority in geography departments, I58J can adopt, modify, reject, 
or weave new patterns and seek new departures. Perhaps the fact that they exist 
at all as historical geographers and are able to build new and better structures is 
Darby's greatest achievement. 
Oriel College, 
Oxford 
Notes 
[1] H. C. Darby, The relations of history and geography Transactions" of the Institute of British 
Geographers 19 (1953)1 11, esp. pp. 9, 11 
[2] H. C. Darby, Academic geography in Britain, 1918-1946 Transactions of Institute of British 
Geographers NS8 (1983) 14-26, esp. 17-24 
[3] H. C. Darby, Historical geography in Britain, 1920-1980 Transactions" of the Institute of 
British Geographers NS8 (1983) 421~8, esp. p. 425. See also A. R. H. Baker, Maps, models 
and Marxism: methodological mutation in British historical geography L'Espace Gdographi- 
que (1985) 9-15, esp. p. 10 
[4] H. C. Darby, The medieval Fenland (Cambridge 1940, 1974); H. C. Darby, The draining of the 
Fens (Cambridge 1940, 1955) 
[5] H. C. Darby (Ed.), The historical geography of England before A.D. 1800 (Cambridge 1936, 
1948, 1951) 
[6] P. J. Perry, H. C. Darby and historical geography: survey and review Geographische 
Zeitschrift 57 (1969) 161-78, esp. p. 167 70 
[7] H. C. Darby, Relations of history and geography, op. cit. pp. 5-6. 
[8] D. Whittlesey, The horizon of geography Annals of the Association of American Geographers 
35 (1945) 1-36, p. 22 
[9] H. C. Darby (Ed.), A new historical geography of England (Cambridge 1973) 
[10] H. C. Darby, Relations of history and geography, op. cit. p. 9 
[11] H. C. Darby, The changing English landscape Geographical Journal 118 (1951) 377-97 
[12] M. Williams, The making of the South Australian landscape (London 1974) 3 
[13] H. C. Darby, The problem of geographical description Transactions of the Institute of British 
Geographers 30 (1962) 1-14, esp. pp. 8-11 
[14] 1bid. 
[15] Ibid., esp. pp. 1, 2 
THE CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE 103 
[16] A. H. R. Baker, op. cit. l0 
[17] D. Gregory, Some terrae incognitae in historical geography: an exploratory discussion, p. 
186, 192 of A. R. H. Baker and D. Gregory (Eds.), Explorations in historical geography 
(Cambridge 1984) 
[18] A. R. H. Baker, Some terrae incognitae p. 193 of Baker and Gregory (Eds.), op. cit. 
[19] A. R. H. Baker, On ideol~)gy and historicalgeography, p. 237 of A. R. H. Baker and M. 
Billinge (Eds), Period and place: research methods in historical geography (Cambridge 1982) 
[20] D. Gregory, p. 182 of Baker and Gregory (Eds.) op. cit. 
[21] H. C. Darby, The problem of geographical description, op. cit. esp. pp. 4, 6 
[22] H. C. Darby, Historical geography in Britain, 1920 1980 op. cit. pp. 424-27 
[23] H. C. Darby, The changing English landscape op. cit. 
[24] H. C. Darby, The relations of history and geography op. cit. 7, 8 
[25] M. Samuels, The.biography of landscape, 51-88 of D. W. Meinig (Ed.), The interpretation of 
ordinary landscapes (New York 1979) esp. pp. 63-70 
[26] H. C. Darby, The changing English landscape, op. cit. 389 
[27] D. E. Cosgrove, Social formation and symbolic landscape (Beckenham 1984) 54-65 
[28] For the relationship of Marsh to historical-geographical studies see K. R. Olwig, Historical 
geography and the society/nature "problematic": the perspective of J. F. Schouw, G. P. 
Marsh and E. Reclus Journal o f historical geography 6 (t980) 29-45, esp. pp. 36-39, 44. For 
the genesis of Man's role and geographical participation in it, see M. Williams, Sauer and 
"Man's role in changing the face of the Earth" Geographical Review 77 (1987) 218-31 
[29] H. C. Darby, Historical geography, 127-156 of H. P. R. Finberg (Ed.), Approaches to history. 
a symposium London 1962) 135 
[30] The best general account of Godwin's work is in his Fenland: Its ancient past and uncertain 
future (Cambridge 1978); G. Fowler, The shrinkage of the peat covered Fenlands Geographi- 
cal Journal 81 (1936) 149-151 
[31] R. Lennard in Economic History Review 1st series 10 (1940) 153 55 and H. E. Hallam in 
Agricultural History Review 5 (1957) 106-I07. For the early reclamation of the Lincolnshire 
siltland see H. E. Hatlam, The new lands of Elloe (Leicester 1954) and later and more 
comprehensively, H. E. Hallam, Settlement and society: a study of the early agrarian history of 
South Lincolnshire (Cambridge 1965) 
[32] H. C. Darby, The changing Fenland (Cambridge 1982) 
[33] P. J. Perry. H. C. Darby and historical geography, op. cit. 167 
[34] For example, J. Thirsk. The Isle of Axholme before Vermuyden Agricultural History Review 1 
(1953) 16-28, and English peasant farming: the agrarian history of Lincolnshire from Tudor to 
recent times (London 1957); J. A. Sheppard, The draining of the Itull Valley, and The draining 
of the marshlands of Holderness and the Vale of York, E. Yorkshire Local History Society 
publications 8 (1958) and 20 (1966) respectively: J. M. Lambert, J. N. Jennings, C. T. Smith, 
C. Green and D. W. Hutchings, The making of the Broads Royal Geographical Society 
Research Series, 3 (1960); R. A. L. Smith, Marsh embankment and sea defences in medieval 
Kent Economic History Review Ist series, 10 (1940) 29-37; M. Williams, The draining of the 
Somerset Levels (Cambridge, 1970); W. Rollinson, Schemes for the reclamation of land from 
the sea in North Lancashire during the eighteenth century, Transactions o f the Historical 
Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 115 (1964) 107-47 
[35] H. C. Darby, The draining of the English claylands Geographische Zeitschrift 52 (1964) 19(~ 
201 
[36] E. Maltby, Waterlogged wealth (London 1986) 
[37] Based on the Sauer correspondence, Bancroft Library Archives, University of California, 
Berkeley, California, H. C. Darby to P. Fejos, 19th July, 1954, and P. Fejos to H. C. Darby, 
28th July 1954 
[38] H. C. Darby, The clearing of the English woodlands Geography 36 (1951) 71-83; H. C. 
Darby, Colonization, 178-89 of H. C. Darby, (Ed.), An historical geography of England before 
A.D. 1800 op. cit. 
[39] For a discussion on investigating the incidence and pace of deforestation see M. Williams, 
Global deforestation, in The Earth as transformed by human action (New York 1989) 
[40] E. Matthews, Global vegetation and land use: new high resolution data bases for climatic 
studies Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology 22 (1983) 474-87 
[41] There is a vast and expanding literature on this topic, but probably the most accessible source 
(though already a little out of date) is J. C. Allen and D. F. Barnes, The causes of 
deforestation in developing countries Annals, Association of American Geographers 75 (1985) 
163-84 
104 M. WILLIAMS 
[42] D. W. Meinig (Ed.), The interpretation of ordinary landscapes (New York 1979) preface, 1; P. 
Coones, One landscape or many? a geographical perspective Landscape History 7 (1985) 5- 
12, esp. p. 5 
[43] D. W. Meinig, The beholding eye pp. 33-50 of D. W. Meinig, op. cit. p. 33 
[44] For example, D. Cannadine, Brideshead re-visited New York Review of Books 32 (20) 19 Dec. 
1985, 17-20 
[45] D. W. Meinig, ibid. 34 
[46] D. W. Meinig, Reading the landscape, pp. 195 244 of D. W. Meinig (Ed.) op. cir.; E. Penning- 
Rowsell and D. Lowenthal (Eds.), Landscape meanings and values (London 1986) 
[47] A. S. Goudie, The human impact: man's role in environmental change (Oxford 1981, 1986); K. 
J. Gregory and D. E. Walling (Eds.), Man and environmental processes (London 1981); J. M. 
Hooke and R. J. P. Kain, Historical change in the physical environment; a guide to sources and 
techniques (London 1982) 
[48] W. G. Hoskins, The making of the English landscape (London 1955); W. G. Hoskins, One 
man's England (London 1978); D. W. Meinig, Reading the landscape, op. cit. esp. pp. 196--210 
[49] W. G. Hoskins, Leieestershire; an illustrated essay on the history o/" the landscape (London 
1957); W. G. V. Balchin, Cornwall (London 1954, 1983); H. P. R. Finberg, Gloucestershire 
(London 1955); R. Millward, Lancashire (London 1955) 
[50] H. C. Darby (1973) op. cir. preface; W. G. Hoskins, (1955) op. cir. p. 231 
[51] H. C. Darby, The relations of history and geography, p. 9; W. G. Hoskins, One man's 
England p. 8 
[52] P. Coones, One landscape or many? op. cit. 
[53] E. Hyams, The changing face of Britain (London 1977) 7 
[54] S. R. J. Woodell (Ed.), The English landscape. past, present and future (Oxford 1985); P. 
Coones and J. Patten, The Penguin guide to the landscape of England and Wales (Harmonds- 
worth 1986) 
[55] Between 1970 and 1981 the following county volumes have been published, A. Raistrick, 
West Riding of Yorkshire; C. Taylor, Dorset; R. Newton, Northumberland; T. Rowley, 
Shropshire; N. Searfe, Suffolk; C. Taylor, Cambridgeshire; F. Emery, Oxfordshire; J. Steane, 
Northamptonshire; P. Brandon, Sussex; D. Palliser, Staffordshire; K. J. Allison, East Riding of 
Yorkshire; P. Bigmore, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire; M. Reed, Buckinghamshire; M. 
Williams, South Wales; and M. Havinden, Somerset. Of the History of the British landscape 
series, T. Rowley, The Norman heritage, 1066-1200 (London 1987); M. Reed, The Georgian 
triumph, 1700-1830 (London 1983) and L. Cantor, The changing English countryside, 1400 
1700 have appeared so far. Of the final group, the following have been published, T. Rowley, 
Villages in the landscape (Gloucester 1978); M. Aston and J. Bond, The landscape of towns 
(Gloucester 1976, 1987); and C. Taylor, Fields in the English landscape (Gloucester 1975, 
1987). 
[56] D. E. Cosgrove, Social formation and symbolic landscape (Beckenham 1984); J. M. Wagstaff 
(Ed.), Landscape and culture." geographical and archaeological perspectives (Oxford 1987) 
[57] Cole Harris, The historical mind and the practice of geography, 123-37 of D. Ley and M. 
Samuels (Eds), Humanistic geography: prospects and problems (London 1978) esp. pp. 1234. 
[58] Kathleen A. Whyte (Ed.), Register of research in historical geography, 1988, Historical 
geography research series, No. 20 (Lancaster 1988)