The Dictionary of Human Geography

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notions ofmasculinism, also legitimizes and

even glorifies the pursuit ofwar. (See also

military geography.) dg/sg

Suggested reading

Barnes and Farish (2006); Stahl (2006);

Woodward (2004).

military geography The study of geograph-

ies of military activities and operations.

Facilitating the military activities and oper-

ations of nation-states was central to the emer-

gence of modern geography as a formal

academic discipline. The enlistment of geog-

raphy in the service ofempirehas become a

commonplace of the history of geography (see

geography, history of), and the foundation

of the Royal Geographical Society in Britain in

1830, for example, was closely associated with

the desire to formalize geographical know-

ledge to be put to work in the extension and

management of the British Empire through

explorationand survey, often closely con-

nected with military personnel and military

objectives, and through the conduct of mili-

tary campaigns (Woodward, 2005). Some his-

torians point to the Franco-Prussian War of

1870–1 as a major spur to the institutiona-

lization of the discipline in europe: the

unexpected victory of the Prussian army was

attributed, in part, to its superior training

in geography. Across the Atlantic, a sub-

discipline identified as military geography

could trace its origins to the establishment of

schools of geography at military establish-

ments such as the US Military Academy at

West Point in the early nineteenth century.

These versions of military geography were

not onlyinstrumental(as one would expect)

but also largely descriptive, and they empha-

sized the use of geographical knowledge,

particularly location – viacartographyand

map reading– and physical terrain to facilit-

ate military operations. Perhaps the closest

connections between in-service military geog-

raphy and the academic discipline came

during the Second World War, when many

professional geographers collaborated in the

production of detailed regional geogra-

phies, for use in identifying targets and con-

ducting offensive campaigns (Clout and

Gosme, 2003; Barnes and Farish, 2006).

Geographical knowledge remained crucial to

the subsequent conduct of thecold war, and

its ‘hot’ campaigns in Indochina and elsewhere.

Much of the traditional function of regional

intelligence in the USA was contracted to

programmes in area studies rather than

geography, while the armed forces and intelli-

genceagencies(onbothsides)placedapremium

onsurveillancefrom air- and space-platforms,

and new technologies of remote sensing,

satellite photography and the like.

The repeated emphasis on regional know-

ledges and regional intelligence, even in more

sophisticated, space-sensing technical forms,

may seem to reduce military geography to

what Woodward (2005) calls a ‘largely a-

theoretical, descriptive regional geography’,

divorced from intellectual developments in

the academic discipline at large. There are

elements of truth in this, but two caveats are

crucial. First, the technical elaborations of

regional intelligence could be conceptual

ones too; Barnes and Farish (2006) identify a

series of vital connections between these seem-

ingly commonplace activities and the concep-

tual ferment of spatial science and the

quantitative revolution, and it is surely no

accident that the Office of Naval Research in

the USA took such a close (and often finan-

cial) interest in what might otherwise seem

remarkably abstract spatial modelling and

geographical research. Second, advanced mili-

taries (and the paramilitaries that they now

often find themselves fighting) have recog-

nized the need to think of what the US Army

now calls ‘battlespace’ as more than physical

terrain. Wars have always depended on the

visualizationof space, but ‘battlespace’ not

only has a much more complex geometry

than conventional battle fields or theatres of

war – it is no longer possible to make clear,

linear separations between fronts (even during

the First World War the front line decomposed

into a bewildering maze of trenches and

dugouts; contemporary conflicts transpose

these geometries to the large scale) – but it is

also increasingly understood as a human geog-

raphy. The Pentagon has become increasingly

preoccupied with urban warfare, which has

required the construction of new, militarized

models ofcitiesandurbanization, particu-

larly in the globalsouth, a development that

Graham (2009c; see also 2004a) calls ‘a new

military urbanism’, while the experience of

military occupation (seeoccupation, mili-

tary) and the revival of counterinsurgency in

the wake of the American-led invasions of

Afghanistan and Iraq has prompted the US

militarytoundertakeacultural turnof its

own in order to map ‘the human terrain’ in

ways that resonate, however awkwardly and

imperfectly, with contemporary developments

across the social sciences (Gregory, 2008b,

2009c).

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 465 1.4.2009 3:19pm

MILITARY GEOGRAPHY