A Prism to the Past: The Historical Geography of Ralph Hall Brown

Abstract

Ralph Hall Brown played a critical role in the development of historical geography as a recognized and respectable sub-field within the discipline of geography. He was not the first American geographer to be concerned with the geography of the past, but his work on American historical geography became the model for research methodology and standards and the source of themes and emphases found in subsequent writings by other historical geographers. In order to understand Brown’s achievement his work must be placed in the general context of geography—it was and is a discipline usually more concerned with the contemporary than the past—and against the character of historical work by earlier or contemporary geographers. As a geographer Brown was not solitary in his appreciation of a historical viewpoint. The uniqueness was rather his approach to the geographical past that earned for him the status as a major innovator. In this article I shall offer speculations on Brown’s emergence as a historical geographer, on the characteristics of his approach to historical geography, and on the enduring qualities of his two books.