Historical Geography and the Study of the European Rural Landscape

Abstract

To begin in 1957 and to proceed with a mdlange of autobiography and prosopography. In October 1957 I entered University College London as an undergraduate and came to be immensely influenced by the writings, ideas and personality of H.C. Darby, who taught me as an undergraduate (1957-60), supervised my doctoral research (1960-63) and appointed me to the Lectureship which I held at University College London (1963-66). When Darby moved to the Chair of Geography in Cambridge in October 1966 I was fortunate to be able to migrate with him to a Lectureship there. By the time of his retirement in September 1976 Clifford Darby had inspired and encouraged my interest in historical geography for almost twenty years. My intellectual debt to him is considerable: which is not to say that our ideas about the theory and practice of historical geography have been or are identical. Since 1957 my general interest in historical geography has been expressed in three specific enthusiasms: firstly, the maintenance-albeit today at a much reduced level--of my doctoral research interests in the study of field and rural settlement systems; secondly, the development-now at a much enhanced level--of my post-doctoral interests in the social geography of rural France during the nineteenth century; and thirdly, pursuance of a catholic interest in the theory and practice of historical geography, in the relations of historical geography with history and with other cognate disciplines, and in promoting the internationalisation of the practice of historical geography. To return to 1957. In early September of that year the University of Nancy hosted-and Xavier de Planhol organised-an interdisciplinary and international colloquium on Gdographie et histoire agraires. The success of that gathering laid the foundation for what was to become the informally constituted Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape. In sum, there have been thirteen meetings of the Permanent Conference during the last 30 years (Figure 1). Following upon the colloquium in Nancy in 1957, others were held in Sweden in 1960, in the United Kingdom in 1964, in West Germany in 1966, in Belgium in 1969, in Northern Ireland in 1971, in Italy in 1973, in Poland in 1975, in France in 1977, in Denmark in 1979, in England in 1981, in West Germany in 1985 and in Sweden in 1987. Papers presented at these meetings have subsequently been revised and published after all but one of the colloquia (unfortunately, no volume of essays emerged from the 1964 meeting). The eleven publications (excluding this current volume) collectively comprise more than three hundred and fifty research papers and they unarguably constitute a solid contribution to the historical and geographical study of the European rural landscape: they occupy 30 cm of shelf-space and I estimate that they comprise more than one million words and more than one thousand maps and diagrams. This series of colloquia has been very successful in bringing together scholars-mainly historical geographers-from a wide range of European countries. Each of the meetings attracted 'passive' as well as 'active' participants, the former group contributing to discussions but, unlike the latter group, not presenting or publishing papers. 'Active' participants at these conferences during the last thirty years have come from seventeen European countries (my comments here do not include the 1987 conference in Sweden, just the preceding meetings). A substantial core (four-fifths of 'active' participants) has come from France (24%), West Germany (21%) and the United Kingdom (17%). Significant numbers of participants (>10) came also from Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Poland and Sweden, with fewer from Austria, East Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. The prescient role of the initial meeting at Nancy in 1957 is illustrated by the fact that of the subsequent meetings only three (Italy 1973, Poland