Pioneer Fringe Research Articles

Let us truly be Brazilian women: representations and teaching practices of normal school female students of São Paulo in the 20th century

ABSTRACT This paper aims to analyse how the first teacher training experiences happened in the last pioneer fringe in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, from the perspective of former female students and teachers. The institutions focused on are the Institute of Education Fernando Costa, from Presidente Prudente/SP, and the Institute of Education Antônio Marinho de Carvalho Filho, from Presidente Venceslau/SP. Ultimately, it was possible to verify that these institutions contributed to the development of education in the west of São Paulo and, even though they were often disseminators of representations that sought to frame feminine behaviour and how they should work, the appropriations of the normal school female students demonstrate a critical posture in regards to education.

From Oasis Archipelago to Pioneering Eldorado in Algeria's Sahara

AbstractSince the 1980s, the Biskra region in Algeria's Sahara has undergone rapid agricultural change leading to territorial transformation. Horticultural production under greenhouses, associated with a rapid expansion of date palm plantations, has led to a tangible agricultural boom that is constantly pushing the boundaries of agricultural production and constitutes a true pioneering fringe. To understand the pioneering logics at work, we propose to study the pioneer fringe through three fronts, namely land, water and infrastructure. First, we analyse each front separately in order to understand its logic. In a second step, through three illustrations, we show how these fronts interpenetrate, accelerate one another or, on the contrary, constrain the pioneer fringe. The analysis of the advance of the pioneering fringe has shown that it results from the interweaving of the three main fronts and each of these combines both the actions of the state and private initiative. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The methodological appropriation of pioneer fringe in the formation of the Brazilian Geography (1930-1950)

Partindo da analise da obra de Pierre Monbeig, tenta-se compreender em que medida alguns dos pressupostos teoricos e metodologicos contidos na nocao de franja pioneira foram internalizados e retrabalhados pela primeira geracao de geografos universitarios formada em Sao Paulo, especificamente nos trabalhos de Nice Lecoq Muller e Jose Ribeiro de Araujo Filho, fornecendo um parâmetro avaliativo para a apreciacao do processo de formacao territorial de Sao Paulo e do pais.

Natureza e progresso econômico no Noroeste Paulista (1910-1920)

A história da colonização de grande parte do interior paulista está intimamente relacionada ao processo de expansão da cafeicultura, iniciada em meados do século XIX. O desejo imperioso de alcançar solos férteis impulsionou milhares de trabalhadores em direção às novas fronteiras agrícolas, que se alargavam em movimentos contíguos, rumo às regiões mais recônditas do território, fazendo surgir cidades, muitas das quais crescendo ao lado da malha ferroviária que se ampliava impulsionada pelos investimentos públicos e privados interessados nos fluxos de capitais oriundos dessa intensa atividade cafeeira. A região Noroeste, inserida neste processo macroeconômico, tornou-se, na década de 1920, uma das mais ricas zonas produtoras de café do estado de São Paulo, e sua condição de franja pioneira em ascensão permite, de modo especial, o estudo das interações entre o homem e a natureza no passado, sob o olhar crítico da história ambiental.

“The Lost Province”: Neglect and Governance in Colonial Ogoja

The notion that the colonial entity administered as Ogoja Province represented a Nigerian form of “the frontier” persisted right through the period of British rule in Nigeria. In a late colonial geography, Ogoja and eastern Calabar are referred to as the “pioneer fringe.” Marginalized by the economic geography of colonialism, as a result of its relatively low population density, in contrast to much of southeastern Nigeria, and by virtue of its terrain, crossed by unforded rivers and characterized by heavy, clayey soils which restricted wet-season travel, it could still be characterized in the 1940s as a “traceless praierie [sic]” by one of its most seasoned European observers, and as “the Lost Province” in common colonial parlance. Scholarly exploration has done little to address this marginalization, a fact both pivotal in the administration and development of Ogoja Province and restrictive of our attempts to understand and describe these administrative processes. The dynamics of community, trade, and migration in Ogoja, and the systematic misunderstandings to which these dynamics were subject, both constitute historical processes which call for scrutiny, and help shape development and welfare projects undertaken in the later colonial period and in post-independence Nigeria. This study investigates the problematic interaction of ethnography and administration at the colonial margin, and the implications of this both for the historical study of Ogoja and its hinterland and for economic and social development planning in the area.

L’oekoumène agricole au Lac-Saint-Jean

Two maps of the agricultural ecumene of the Lake Saint-Jean region are presented, the first showing the extent of cleared land as determined from air photos and the second indicating the present legal status of all surveyed parcels of land. The present land use is discussed in relation with the physical environment and the history of colonisation. In some areas the limits of the agricultural ecumene correspond to the contact between the alluvium-blanketed lowland and the surround-ing Precambrian upland ; in other areas the system of land allocation bas determined the limits of the ecumene, for the advance of colonisation was often brought to a halt by the establishment of for est reserves on Crown lands. The pioneer fringe municipalities of Saint-Ludger-de-Milot and Lac-Bouchette are located in such regions of arrested settlement. The writer concludes that throughout the Lake Saint-Jean area the lands presently under cultivation are bordered by territories unsuitable for farm settlement — consequently, it appears that the agricultural ecumene of the region bas attained its furthest extension.

Historical graffiti in northern Australia: Evidence of European settlement and society in the Selwyn Range of northwest Queensland

European graffiti dated 1905, including names, initials, and obscene drawings and verse, have been found interspersed with Aboriginal engravings in a sandstone rockshelter near the Mount Elliott copper mine in northwest Queensland. These graffiti enrich our knowledge of both the town and the people of the area. The township of Selwyn developed after the opening of the Mount Elliott smelter in 1910, and the first official record of it occurs in the Queensland Towns Directory in 1911 . However, the graffiti are indicative of European settlement in Selwyn/Mount Elliott some years prior to this. Some of the names and initials in the graffiti can be traced through historical records such as the state electoral rolls, which provide details of age, occupation and mobility. Furthermore, the drawings and verse provide evidence, albeit indicative and tentative, of the state of gender, sexual and ethnic relations in the Australian pioneer fringe environment. This study demonstrates the value of historical graffiti in reconstructing aspects of early European settlement.

The Passing of the Pioneer Fringe in Western Canada

T HE forested northland of Canada is commonly viewed as a resource frontier, an arena for economic development centered on the extractive industries and their support services.1 A second and inner frontier closely associated with the northward expansion of agriculture is often overlooked. Economic, societal, institutional, and environmental variables have produced a highly irregular, discontinuous margin of settlement traceable for some four thousand miles across the boreal forest region of Canada: in reality a belt of varying width whose delineation is complicated by the presence of numerous spatially discrete outliers or outposts of agricultural development.2 During the peak of settlement activity-the late 1890s to approximately 1940-the boreal frontier in Canada constituted a classic example of a pioneer fringe, that is, a zone in which would-be farmers, often ill-prepared and ill-equipped for the task, struggled to convert an unfamiliar and somewhat recalcitrant environment to agricultural production.3 Today the term in vogue is agricultural fringe. Segments of this fringe zone may be found from the broad valleys of interior British Columbia, where some land is still available, to the clay belts of northern Ontario and Quebec, where land settlement is currently at a standstill, if not in retreat. The most significant reach of the farming frontier is in the wooded plains of the interior west. Stretching almost two thousand miles from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the edge of the Canadian Shield, the plains frontier involves portions of the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba (Fig. 1). Once the scene of meaningful advances of agriculture onto virgin land, the western Canadian fringe zone has witnessed only limited and localized growth at the margins during the past forty years, and the validity of such efforts is currently questioned. The patterns, processes, and problems of agricultural settlement in interior Canada have attracted the attention of various scholars, including several geographers. Helge Nelson made a particularly useful survey of early development along the forest frontier as well as a careful analysis of colonization in 1920-1921, which he assessed in environmental terms.4 J. Lewis Robinson con-

Evolution of the wheat belt in Western Australia: thoughts on the nature of pioneering along the dry margin

Summary The evolution of the Wheat Belt of Western Australia is interpreted as a succession of opening up pioneer fringes. As there is a fair amount of uncertainty about the potential of the land and the adequate way of using it, the future of a pioneer fringe is quite uncertain until it has developed into a safe zone. From 1900 to 1918 we find the first pioneering phase when commercial wheat growing was introduced. During the second phase (1919–30) the already settled parts improved in efficiency and another pioneer fringe was opened up further inland. During the crisis of 1931–45 wheat growing was abandoned in this fringe. Since then it has been converted into a safe wheat growing area but the realization of a plan for a new pioneer fringe had to be postponed because of adverse conditions.

Geomorphology—a study which spans the geology/geography interface

T he interfaces between disciplines blossom out from time to time as major fields of development, growing at times into subjects in their own right, on other occasions as less formal areas of interdisciplinary activity. At other times these appear to be frontiers rather than interfaces, shunned by all but the colonizers of the pioneer fringe as each of the subjects involved draws in on it self, seeking strength through a focus of activity within the core of its academic field. At the beginning of the century, the study of geomorphology was developing from an intellectually sound basis in the work of G. K. Gilbert and others who had been able to gain an adequate understanding of landscape development from their exploration of the American west. In addition, at the school and under- graduate level, W. M. Davis devised a clever abstraction of reality which he called the Geographical Cycle. Whatever later abuse may have been heaped on Davis, his approach was timely and effective and aided the creation of an interesting and stimulating subject, widely taught within the curriculum of both geography and geology for perhaps a quarter of a century. For a number of reasons, the study of geomorphology gradually declined in the geology curriculum in the United Kingdom and many countries in Europe, and in geography in the United States. This abandonment of geomorphology has been paralleled by a corresponding decline in the relative significance of the subjects at University level. The connection is unlikely to have been a direct, causal one, but it is suggested that the neglect of geomorphology is one symptom of a general withdrawal from the frontiers of a subject, and that as the discipline becomes more restricted in scope, so its attraction to a wide group of potential students declines. After all, in the United Kingdom the withdrawal from geomorphology has been matched by a neglect of geophysics and by repeated emphasis of the virtues of the central concern of a ‘pure’ geology. In the same way, in the United States, geography lost interest in field evidence as well as turning its back on geomorphology, and sought strength from the core material of cultural landscape and natural region. This neglect of the intellectual ground between geography and geology has been to the disadvantage of the subjects themselves, and has seriously affected progress in geomorphology. Here is a most difficult topic, one in which it is extremely easy to make major errors of interpretation which then persist un- checked for decades. Through neglect by at least one of the adjacent subjects, the number of people that might have been involved in geomorphological research has been cut almost by half. Further, when geomorphology is introduced into teaching or applied in research by those who do not treat it as a main concern, it is often treated superficially and inaccurately, its complexities unrecognised

The Oregon Desert, 1967: A Pioneer Fringe?

Dale E. Courtney0 Portland State College The Oregon Desert, 1967: A Pioneer Fringe? In 1930 Isaiah Bowman examined major pioneer zones around the globe in terms of "a science of settlement."1 In his study he considered not only the elements which attract settlers and lead to successful habitation but also elements which lead to failure and withdrawal . Among the areas selected within the United States was the Eastern Oregon desert, especially the High Desert and northern Lake County. The purpose of this paper is to examine these areas after nearly four decades to ascertain what changes have taken place and to see how well Bowman's analysis in 1930 has held up. Occupying Marginal Lands of the Public Domain Until about the turn of the century the public domain lands available to homesteaders offered a choice in quality. Smaller amounts of good land were available than formerly but the discerning settler could make a selection that was in no sense marginal for agriculture. Much of the west, however, fell in the marginal or submarginal category, and after 1900 an increasing proportion of the lands selected for agricultural use was better suited for grazing. Much of this land could sustain livestock on a permanent basis only under management practices that were neither recognized nor understood by most of the occupants. The conditions that followed occupance of these areas were largely negative in character. The cul1 Isaiah Bowman, The Pioneer Fringe, New York: American Geographical Society, 1931, p. vi. 'Presidential address at the annual banquet of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Richardson Springs, California, June 16, 1967. 8 ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS tivator after a few years failed and moved on. The land disturbed by the plow underwent accelerated erosion and the original vegetation was replaced by an inferior cover. Uncontrolled grazing led to deterioration of the vegetation as species desirable for forage were displaced by species of less value. Large areas of marginal land were homesteaded by farmers most of whom had experience in successful farming in the east. The question of why they should choose to invest their labor and accumulated capital in land of doubtful quality for agriculture is an involved one. Among contributing factors were the availability of land for little or no cash outlay, the idea of participating in homesteading as a national institution just because it was available, and the contagious enthusiasm of fellow homesteaders who would not have been on the scene had they not been optimistic by nature. Such optimism appears to be the mark of a frontiersman regardless of time and place. The settler probably saw the area in which he chose to settle only during the summer season which may have placed him at a disadvantage. In many cases he was subjected to misleading or false propaganda supplied by promoters who stood to gain directly or indirectly through his decision to settle. The Pioneering Concepts An examination of the present day usage of such terms as pioneer fringe, pioneer, and frontier may be useful. Pioneer fringe is a widely used term equated by Bowman to "experimental zones."2 The history of frontier development in the United States was one of trial and error, the pioneer seeking for an adjustment to the new milieu through the selection of the crop complex and the farming techniques that would produce satisfactory results when applied to new areas, many of which possessed inherent qualities comparable to those of the land with which the operators had had previous experience. As marginal lands were occupied—lands that resisted successful exploitation by the use of any established pattern compatible with the technology of the time—failure became commonplace for a majority of the settlers. It is obvious now that much land upon which cultivation was attempted should never have been disturbed. The assessment of the conditions of the land in advance of settlement, as2 Bowman, op. cit., p. v. VOLUME 29 / YEARBOOK i 19679 suming standards that could be generally accepted, might have forestalled these unsuccessful efforts. The settler, however, often has not been willing to accept the technician's assessment, and it is evident that he has often acted on impulse when his past personal...

Bolivia's Pioneer Fringe

Bolivia's Pioneer Fringe

Railroad Passenger Transport in the Soviet Union

T l HE Soviet people are on the move. Whether of their own will or because of unofficial pressure, Soviet men and women accept posts on their new frontiers, in the Virgin Lands, in the valley of the Angara, in the Soviet Far East. When the Trans-Siberian Railroad was built at the turn of the century, it opened a new era and provided Russia's pioneer fringe with all-weather mass transportation. Internal migration in the Soviet Union is not as dramatic today as it was in the early l900'S, but it involves large numbers of people nevertheless. And though a few, who are in a hurry or who hold a high position, take to the airlines, the great bulk of the Soviet traveling public chooses the railroads. The railroads are, by Soviet standards, efficient, their fares are low, and their service, though slow and crowded, is still vastly superior to that which prevailed only a few years ago. For nearly a century, railroads have been the principal means of travel over the vast territory of the Soviet Union. Although newer means, by highway and by air, now compete with the railroads, their share in the total passenger traffic remains high-8o.6 per cent in 1956.' The growth trends of railroad passenger traffic, the services available, and the density and areal distribution of those services illustrate a vital facet of the Soviet transportation system. In 1960 the railroad system of the Soviet Union was second only to that of the United States (Table I). During the past fifty years railroads everywhere have felt the competition of road and air transport. In the United States, in 1916, railroads carried 98 per cent of all public passenger traffic. In 1954 the percentage was only 37.6; intercity buses carried 35.8 per cent, airlines 24.8 per cent, and waterways 1.8 per cent.2 In the Soviet Union, too, railroads lost part of their share to the growing network of suburban and intercity bus lines and, over longer distances, to Aeroflot, the Soviet airline system. In 1913 Russian railroads carried 91.1 per cent of the total

Northern Pioneer Fringe: Norway North of 65 . Ørnulv Vorren, Ed. Oslo University Press, Oslo, Norway; Allen and Unwin, London, 1961. 271 pp. Illus. $5.50.

Northern Pioneer Fringe: <i>Norway North of 65</i> . Ørnulv Vorren, Ed. Oslo University Press, Oslo, Norway; Allen and Unwin, London, 1961. 271 pp. Illus. $5.50.

Observations in the Pioneer Fringe of Western Canada

Observations in the Pioneer Fringe of Western Canada

The Latvians of Varpa: A Foreign Colony on the Brazilian Pioneer Fringe

The Latvians of Varpa: A Foreign Colony on the Brazilian Pioneer Fringe

Agriculture and Industry in Brazil

Since the early days of Portuguese settlement, Brazilian agricultural activity has been directed into two distinct channels of production, one providing goods for export, the other commodities for domestic consumption. These two branches of activity are controlled by quite different factors and, therefore, are apt to show widely diversified and independent trends. Nevertheless, there are certain general statements which, by and large, hold true for both categories. Thus, for example, the following features may be indicated as characteristic of Brazilian agriculture: (i) misuse of soil resources, resulting in widespread erosion and loss of fertility; (2) transient and intermittent use of farm land, involving long fallow periods or complete discontinuance of cultivation; (3) low output of land and labour; and (4) the superseding of several areas of traditional crop specialization, with the emer? gence of new?and more southerly?centres of production. The farmed areas of Brazil illustrate the statement made by an eminent geo? grapher to the effect that it is not the lands of old civilizations, but those of recent settlement which are the most worn-out parts of the world.1 Land is cleared, cropped, exhausted and abandoned, while new forests are destroyed and their soil plundered. Even now, little over 2 per cent. of the country's surface is planted to crops,2 a fact which favours the reassuring but false idea that the nation is still in possession of vast reserves of highly productive virgin soils. This supposition seems to be based on a double misapprehension: that all forest soils are necessarily fertile; and that a large part of the interior of Brazil is forest-covered. Evidence such as the disastrous decline in productivity observed in some upland soils of the Amazon valley, after the cutting and burning of the primeval forest, has somewhat shaken the belief that forest soils are necessarily fertile. And as the backlands of Brazil become better known, even the man in the street comes to recognize the extent of grassy plains, savannahs and scrub in the make-up of Brazil's plant cover. It is growing increasingly evident that the resource base has been grossly overestimated in so far as the potentialities of soils are concerned. Only relatively small areas where basic lavas crop out, or recent alluvium has been deposited, measure up to the popular conception of the potential fertility of what, not infrequently, has been considered the future bread-basket of the world. As the pioneers slash and burn their way through lands of high native fertility, the belt of agricultural production is pushed further and further from the markets. Many improvements are abandoned and the depleted lands are usually given over to extensive grazing, while the settlement of new areas obviously exacts new investments in the form, for instance, of public utilities. All this tends to increase cost of production. Furthermore, agricultural commodities must be hauled for longer distances and are burdened with ever-increasing costs of transport. As the railroads thrust forward with the advancing pioneer fringe, production declines in the depopulated and impoverished areas to the rear; freight, upon which the roads depend for their livelihood, falls off here, with the result that large sections of the roads are run at a loss?a fact which merits serious consideration, in view of the unsound financial situation of almost all Brazilian railroads. According to data at hand for 1951, of the 41 administratively distinct roads, all but four showed a

Report of the Research Committee on Land Erosion, 1948–1949

Activities during 1948–1949 fall under the laconic expression, routine. With the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, W. D. Ellison has been able to continue his investigations of dynamics of raindrops. But, unfortunately, this most promising field of new discoveries and of evaluation of dynamics of the beginnings of erosion is being left fallow for the most part. Rotation may have its place in use of fans land, but rotation in research work breaks continuity and displaces workers, all of which retards productive progress in discoveries and evaluation of factors in the complex process of nature.Nowadays scientists are discovering a new world and new forces in the atom, and in the minutia of nature. Dynamics of the raindrop open up a field of great possibilities and of profit. Present appraisals of erosional processes no doubt would be more clearly pointed up and strengthened by an adequate program of research in this phase of the broad subject. It is the pioneer fringe of erosion research in water erosion and deserves far more attention and support than it is getting.

Settlement and Land Utilization, Malacca

MALACCA has historical associations extending over nearly six centuries; this distinguishes it from the rest of the Malay Peninsula, which retains the characteristic landscape of a pioneer fringe. The settlement began as a fourteenth-century refuge for Malays fleeing from Singapore and the south when these were attacked by Javanese. It received the rank of protected kingdom under Chinese suzerainty in the early fifteenth century and owed its perpetuation as a unit to Chinese control of the Siamese marauders who at various times overran most parts of the Peninsula. Chinese interest in the kingdom was primarily commercial even then, since the settlement had a small town, the meeting-place of traders from China, India, Arabia, and Java. The influence of Hindu merchants was considerable, but nearly obliterated by the later Chinese. Undoubtedly the growth of Malacca commercially at that time was an effect of the trade between the Far East and Europe via the Red Sea; hence the association with Arabs. It depended on outside contacts rather than on relations with the Malayan mainland, which threatened these overseas trade relations. Portuguese navigators came to Malacca as part of their crusade against the Arabs, and Albuquerque captured the settlement solely to further the Portu? guese policy of attacking the roots of Arab trade between Europe and the East. For nearly one hundred and fifty years the Portuguese held Malacca as one of the links in their chain of stations on the Asiatic seaboard. These could be held so long as the Portuguese dominated the sea, but, since Portuguese control led to no trade or economic development within its sphere of influ? ence, the stations easily fell from their hands so soon as the Dutch and English arrived with equal skill at sea, and bringing with them trade facilities which always expanded the economy of the zones they touched. The Dutch took Malacca from the Portuguese, with some difficulty, in the first half of the seventeenth century and, significant of changing values, found the sea approach too shallow for their larger ships. Yet Malacca was never prosperous under the Dutch, who were only interested in the tin production of the settlement and in possessing a strategic cover point for routes to their Sumatra and Java colonies. They even restricted agriculture in Malacca so that it should not interfere with Javanese production. Under them, Malacca was constantly endangered by Malay attacks from inland which kept the settlement in a state of armed anxiety; this uncertainty and the growing disadvantage of shallow sea diminished the commercial significance of Malacca.

Prince Rupert, British Columbia

I RINCE RUPERT is a frontier port on the north Pacific coast. Located at the western end of the Canadian pioneer fringe and hemmed in on the north by the Alaskan Panhandle and the unproductive highlands of northern British Columbia, it is the potential outlet for the northwestern margin of the advancing American agricultural frontier (Figure 1). Prince Rupert is young, younger than the Alaskan ports that were founded during the gold rush at the turn of the century. Yet, in, the short time since the city was incorporated (1910), its dominant functions and cultural landscape forms have undergone marked changes. Prince Rupert was designed and built to function as a potential world port, the Pacific terminus of the new National Transcontinental-Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Soon (1920) the railway became bankrupt and was taken over by the Canadian National Government and operated on a smaller scale. The young city, thus deprived of its chief financial support, and further handicapped by slow development of its hinterland, never became an important commercial center. Prince Rupert has continued to function chiefly as a fish shipping port and center of local trade and government. At present an attempt is being made to secure bonds for the construction of a wood pulp mill within the city. The establishment of this new industry would change again the economic life of the community. Changes in the function of Prince Rupert have caused changes in the cultural landscape. Areas planned for one use have been diverted to another or remain unoccupied. Erection of the pulp mill would cause further readjustment. The purposes of this study are to state, and, so far as possible to explain, the origin, location, metamorphosis, and probable further development of Prince Rupert. Emphasis will be placed upon dominant activities, or functions, and their objective expressions in the morphology of the cultural landscape.