ABSTRACT

The growth of geography over the past hundred years, and in particular the French and German contribution to it, is revealed by its place in the universities, where there has been a great growth in numbers of both professors and students throughout the world; and by the organization of national and international bodies to promote it. The university record in France and Germany has been covered in these pages and several enquiries have been published 1 , the latest in German by W. Hartke in 1960 2 . The growth of societies has also been examined. 3 The history of the International Geographical Union has appeared in print, though in a source of very limited circulation. 4 We shall comment in this chapter on the second and third matters, and then draw some general conclusions. The first society to be founded was the Societé de Géographie de Paris in 1821. It was followed by the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, founded by Carl Ritter in 1828. Two years later the Royal Geographical Society in London came into being (1830). Others were added in quick succession: the Geographical and Statistical Society of Mexico in 1833, the Geographical and Statistical Society of Frankfurt in 1836, the Geographical Society of Brazil in 1838, the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in 1845, and the American Geographical Society in New York in 1852, with the name American Geographical and Statistical Society. In 1866 there were eighteen geographical societies throughout the world and eleven of them in Europe. It is characteristic that these societies were primarily associated with the great phase of continental and oceanic exploration of the century and also with the collection of masses of statistical material of all kinds.