ABSTRACT
An indication of the nature and content of applied geography may be gained by examining a selection of available definitions of the approach. One of the earliest statements on applied geography was offered by A.J. Herbertson in 1899 in a lecture to the Council of the Manchester Geographical Society. In this he defined applied geography as ‘a special way of looking at geography, a limitation and a specialisation of the study of it from one point of view. For the business man this point of view is an economic one, for the medical man a climatic and demographic one, for the missionary an ethic and ethical one’ (p. 1). While the second part of this definition presents a somewhat restricted view of the context of applied geography even at the end of the nineteenth century, the opening sentence has proved to be a prescient statement that, as we shall see, remains relevant today.
