The Dictionary of Human Geography

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2005; Legg, 2007b; Ogborn, 2007). These

studies haveinvolveda closeandcriticalengage-

ment with various forms ofpost-colonialism.

The colonial project was largely concerned

with the acquisition and exploitation ofnat-

ural resources, and much of the new work

on historical geographies of colonialism has

focused on its environmental consequences.

This is scarcely an unheralded development

(Clark, 1949; Powell, 1988; Williams, 1989;

Donkin, 1999), since the relationship between

environmental history and historical

geography has always been extremely close,

particularly in the USA (Williams, 1994a).

However, recentenvironmentalismhas gen-

erated a more politically charged historical

geography that has explored the impact of

natural resource exploitation on regional and

urban development (Cronon, 1991), and

which includes explicitly Marxist historical

geographies on the interactions ofclass,race

and the physical environment in industrializing

regions (Mitchell, 1996; Walker, 2001).

Westernscience, including the science of

geography, was directly implicated in the

processes of agricultural and industrial trans-

formation, urbanization and imperial exp-

ansion that historical geographers have

increasingly investigated. This has prompted

a renewed interest in the critical history of

post-enlightenmentgeographical and envir-

onmental thought (Livingstone, 1992; Grove,

1995). Inspired in part by the writings of the

literary critic Edward Said, this work has em-

phasized the constitutive significance of geo-

graphical knowledge in the creation of national

and imperial identities (Smith and God-

lewska, 1994; Bell, Butlin and Heffernan,

1995; Driver, 2001a; Withers, 2001: see also

orientalism). It has also reconnected histor-

ical geography with the history of cartography

(seecartography, history of), particularly

through the seminal work of historical geog-

rapher J. Brian Harley (Harley, 2001b).

No single methodological or philosophical

orthodoxy has prevailed since the 1970s, and

historical geography has become increasingly

eclectic. This demonstrates the growing influ-

ence of perspectives from allied disciplines but

is also evidence of a wider ‘historicization’ of

human geography that has partially comprom-

ised historical geography’s status as a distinct-

ive sub-discipline (Driver, 1988). This has

generated some unease about sub-disciplinary

identity, notably in the debate about the legit-

imacy of the terms ‘historical geography’ and

‘geographical history’ (Baker, 2007). But for

all its thematic diversity, twenty-first-century

historical geography has become increasingly

focused on the (relatively) recent past, a trend

partly determined by the need for reliable,

spatially extensive data, but also influenced

by theinstrumentalistassumption that his-

torical research should have immediate rele-

vance to contemporary issues (Jones, 2004b).

That said, its continued vigour is demon-

strated in the pages of theJournal of Historical

Geographyand in the steady stream of innova-

tive work in historical geography that also ap-

pears in the pages of mainstream journals

inside and, crucially, outside geography. mh

Suggested reading

Baker (2003); Butlin (1993); Harris (1991);

Morrissey, Whelan and Yeoh (2008).

historical materialism The materialist con-

ception of history, formulated by Karl Marx

(1818–83) with Friedrich Engels (1820–95),

and the ‘guiding thread’ of their joint work

(see alsomarxism). Historical materialism is

a theory of history incorporating a series of

bold theses about the dynamics of historical

change, most succinctly summarized in the

1859 ‘Preface’ to ‘A Contribution to the

Critique of Political Economy’.

Social development is driven by progress in

meeting social needs through the development

ofproductive forces(means of production and

labour power). In the process of production,

men and women necessarily enter into certain

social relations of production. These include both

work relations (technical relations and forms

of co-operation) and forms of ownership and

control of the means of production, which are

at the root ofclass formation. The totality of the

relations of production constitutes theeco-

nomic structureof society, ‘‘the real foundation,

on which arises a legal and politicalsuperstruc-

tureand to which correspond definite forms of

social consciousness’. The economic base and

superstructure together constitute themode of

productionof a society. (See alsobase and

superstructure.)

Eachmode of production is subject to

internal tensions and contradictions (see

dialectic). Thus, at a certain stage of their

development, the material productive forces of

society come into conflict with the dominant

relations of production, which reflect en-

trenched forms ofpropertyownership and

classrelations. The relations of production

increasingly become fetters on the further de-

velopment of the productive forces. ‘Then be-

gins an era of social revolution’, transforming

the economic structure, and with it the whole

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HISTORICAL MATERIALISM