E-Book, Englisch, Band 15, 210 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 225 mm
Reimann Mediating Geographic Knowledge
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-3-8394-7488-4
Verlag: transcript
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark
U.S. Geographical Societies, 1888-1914
E-Book, Englisch, Band 15, 210 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 225 mm
Reihe: Amerika: Kultur - Geschichte - Politik
ISBN: 978-3-8394-7488-4
Verlag: transcript
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark
1. Why did you choose this topic?
My starting point was how geographical imaginations shape our view of the world today. We divide the globe through inherited categories, such as continents, spheres of influence, or ›strategic‹ spaces, that keep resurfacing in geopolitics. Working in the archives, I expected to study exploration and mapmaking. Instead, I found that institutional practices determined what counted as legitimate geography. By opening that institutional ›black box‹, I trace how information was transformed into fact.
2. What new perspectives does your book offer?
I shift the focus from famous geographers and landmark publications to the institutions and infrastructures that legitimized them. I highlight the everyday practices of librarians, editors, councilors, and secretaries who helped authorize what counted as geography. This shows that geography was shaped by finances, networks, and editorial choices at least as much as by fieldwork, and that these decisions often aligned scientific authority with imperial ambitions.
3. What makes your topic relevant to current research debates?
The book bridges the history of knowledge, science and technology studies, and U.S. imperial history. It connects these fields by showing how institutional practices made geographical expertise authoritative and aligned it with imperial ambitions. The Pacific case study demonstrates how geographical knowledge made spaces legible for imperial control before any formal political action.
4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!
Isaiah Bowman. His appointment as American Geographical Society director in 1915 marks where my study ends and a new chapter begins: geography mobilized directly for state purposes, culminating in his role as chief territorial specialist at the Paris Peace Conference. I would ask whether he recognized how much the societies’ earlier work in organizing and legitimizing geographical knowledge made his au
