ABSTRACT
In the 1870’s J. Wimmer considered that the primary functions of historical geography were two-fold: it should be concerned with the operation of the geographical factor in history and also with the interrelationship of phenomena in space at a particular period, or the geography of past periods. The work of E. C. Semple is full of the type of selection from history, sometimes cavalier in wrenching information from a proper and necessary historical context. Whatever its methodological inadequacies, the idea of geography as the study of the landscape, with its corollary that historical geography should be the study of the changing cultural landscape, has been extremely productive of good work and stimulating ideas. The abandonment of doctrinaire attitudes towards the nature and content of historical geography opens the way for a much more flexible approach to the organization of work and its presentation.
