ABSTRACT
The Society's medals carried great prestige, being awarded to such famous explorers as Captain Robert Fitzroy of HMS Beagle in 1837, and David Livingstone in 1855, whose scientific expedition of 1866 was under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS). The Society took on the responsibilities of collecting and collating the data pouring in from all over the world, of building up a library and assembling a complete collection of maps, of helping travellers and scientific explorers, and of establishing links with geographical societies abroad and other scientific societies at home. The victory of the Germans over the French in the Franco-Prussian War, for example, was presented as testimony to the superiority of geography teaching in German schools. The influential Report summarised the aims of geography teaching, the 'state of the art'in the discipline and the position of geography in different types of school, its relations with other subjects.
