Consider the many textbooks you examined during your academic studies. Textbooks have deep roots reflecting the discipline that they describe and also shaping that discipline. Bernhardus Varenius (Bernhard Varen, 1622–1650) was an influential German geographer who wrote what most consider to be the first modern textbook in geography. He also laid the foundations for geographic principles and how geography should be studied.
Varenius primarily studied mathematics and medicine in secondary school and during his university career. Like other geographers, friendships awakened his interest in geography. In the case of Varenius, the most influential friendships were with Dutch navigators and cartographers, including Abel Janszoon Tasman, Willem Schouten, and Willem Blaeu. His views on mathematics were influenced by René Descartes, a contemporary of his at the University of Leiden. His accomplishments were all the more remarkable given his short life of 28 years. His own local geography influenced him—during his life, the Netherlands had become one of the world’s most important origin points for exploration and a major crossroads of trade. Dutch sailors were sailing from their small homeland to the far corners of the world. The Dutch cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam had become the first modern commodity trading ports in the world, trading in such things as spices and coffee. Even Varenius’s migration to the Netherlands from Germany was due to geography—political geography, primarily. He was seeking refuge from the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which had devastated Germany.
At age 27, in 1649, after writing a series of articles, he published a book entitled Descriptio Regni Japoniae, or “Regional Description of Japan,” which contained chapters on the religions of various peoples in Japan and Siam. The Dutch had established a trading post in faraway Nagasaki and needed information about it in their zeal to be the most expert tradesmen on the planet. The experience he gained writing this book gave him the idea that descriptions of particular places “could have no standing as contribution to science so long as these are not related to a coherent body of general concepts” (Varenius and Jurin 1650/2012). This sounds strikingly like modern geography, and indeed, Varenius to some represents the first modern scholar in geography. During the next (and what was to be his final) year, he published the book Geographia Generalis. As the name implies, his goal with this book was to establish the general principles of geography on a wide scientific basis.
The book encompasses over 700 pages and is divided into three sections: absolute geography, relative geography, and comparative geography. For Varenius, absolute geography should focus on mathematical facts relating to the Earth as a whole, including shape, size, motions, and measurements. Relative geography pertains to how the Earth is affected by the sun and stars, and includes looking at climates, seasons, differences in apparent time, day length variations, and so on. Comparative geography, as the name implies, discusses the divisions, or regions, across the surface of the Earth, including their relative positions. But also included in the third section was a discussion about how to construct globes and maps, and a discussion about latitude and longitude, including navigation.
All of today’s texts on geography include Earth-sun relationships, usually in the first few chapters. But here, in the 40 chapters of Varenius’s Generalis, works by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes were used for the first time in a major treatise on geography (see Copernicus). Varenius wrote details but also assessments of the composition of air, climate zones, hydrography, ocean currents, and geomorphology. He also wrote about cultural geography, such as commerce, wages, customs (including births, weddings, and funerals), language, government, cities, “memorable histories,” “illustrious men or women,” crafts, inventions, physical characteristics of people, food and drink, arts, learning, and “virtues and vices.” Therefore, he joined cultural and physical geography and thereby helped define the two enduring threads of the discipline. Implicit in so doing, he was saying that both cultural and physical aspects of the planet were important in the study of “real geography.”
The book was regarded widely as the best treatise on geography at the time, and indeed, it was the first modern geography textbook. Even though Varenius might not have considered himself a geographer, the book influenced geographic thought and influenced exploration. In terms of geographic thought, Varenius treated geography, as no other scholar had quite matched up to his time, as a science, with much thought dedicated to the science of comparisons. The book had influence over a vast territory and over a vast time span—150 years, until nearly the year 1800. It was widely distributed, went through many editions, and was translated into many languages. It was even added to by prominent scholars such as Sir Isaac Newton in 1672; d’Anville, Alexander von Humboldt, and even Tsar Peter the Great recognized Varenius’s services to science, scholarship, and genius.
Varenius’s work also had an impact on exploration and the kinds of data that explorers were mindful of collecting. He wrote at a pivotal time in geography and in the history of the world. It was the “big data” period of his day, as much information was beginning to pour in from the many overland treks and sea voyages that were occurring. He encouraged the scientific study of cultures by the explorers who were now in the second century of serious exploration following Columbus. Varenius’s chief task, as he saw it, was to determine how to categorize and understand all of the incoming information, and in particular, how to relate these bits of information to general principles. Through his Geographia Generalis, he began a basic division of geography—regional geography and systematic (or general) geography. The former focused on the study of particular places, while the latter studied nature and the pattern of spatial distribution of elements of the Earth system—physical aspects such as water, relief, vegetation, soils, and climate, but cultural aspects as well, such as customs, languages, housing styles, government, trade, settlement, land use, and religion.
General geography was important because it helped people understand the world—the forest, as it were, not the individual trees. General geography could inform general hypotheses and laws explaining why things occur where they do. In so doing, regional (or special) studies could be enhanced, because those who studied them could better understand what they should be looking for and observing. But the two types of geography were interdependent; neither was more important than the other. For Varenius, in general geography, most things could be proven by mathematical laws, but in regional geography, things must be proved by experience—direct observation.
Geography, according to Varenius, was “a science mixed with mathematics, which teaches about the quantitative states of the Earth, and of the parts of the Earth, namely shape, place, size, motion, celestial bodies, and other related properties” (Varenius and Jurin 1650/2012). With these statements, and with the theme of the book, Varenius showed that he was far ahead of his time. Long before the quantitative revolution and the backlash during the 1960s against “disconnected regional geography,” Varenius wrote about that very thing (see Quantitative Revolution). He had an enduring influence on the discipline of geography.
A recent U.S. National Science Foundation grant funded a “Varenius 2000—Then and Now” conference that explored connections between Geographia Generalis and modern geographic information science: “His masterpiece, Geographia Generalis, makes the important distinction between the geographically generic and the specific. Together with his strong mathematical foundation for geography, Varenius provides a philosophical foundation for research that has been used recently to advance the science of geographic information. Under a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis has led the development of research agendas in geographic information science, which make a modern interpretation of Varenius’s view of geography (http://www.ncgia.org/varenius). The implications of a 350-year-old perspective of geography on the scientific basis of today’s and tomorrow’s high-technology industry in geographic information systems pose many challenging and fascinating questions” (Warntz 1989). Thus, his influence is felt to this day.
See also: Copernicus; Quantitative Revolution
Baker, J. N. L. 1955. “The Geography of Bernard Varenius.” Transactions and Papers, Institute of British Geographers 21: 51–60.
Schuchard, Margret, ed. 2008. Bernhard Varenius, 1622–1650. Boston: Brill Studies in Intellectual History.
Varenius, Bernhardus. 1650/2012. Geographia Generalis. Trans. James Jurin (2012). Charleston, SC: Nabu Press.
Warntz, William. 1989. “Newton, the Newtonians, and the Geographia Generalis Varenii.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 79 (2): 165–191.
Studying natural hazards is a fundamental part of geography today. Yet before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24 in 79 CE, which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy, a natural hazard had never before been described while it was occurring. And to document such a spectacular natural hazard as a volcanic eruption moved the geographic and scientific community forward, albeit at the cost of 16,000 lives.
From a distance of 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) west of the volcano, at Misenum, Pliny the Younger observed the eruption, later recording what he witnessed in two letters to the historian Tacitus. His descriptions included the earthquakes that preceded the eruption, the eruption column, rock and ash falling through the air, the effects of the eruption on people, pyroclastic flows, and the ensuing tsunami across the bay.
Its general appearance can best be expressed as being like a pine rather than any other tree, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches, I imagine because it was thrust upwards by the first blast and then left unsupported as the pressure subsided, or else it was borne down by its own weight so that it spread out and gradually dispersed. Sometimes it looked white, sometimes blotched and dirty, according to the amount of soil and ashes it carried with it. . . . Ashes were already falling, hotter and thicker as the ships drew near, followed by bits of pumice and blackened stones, charred and cracked by the flames . . . Meanwhile on Mount Vesuvius broad sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points, their bright glare emphasized by the darkness of night. . . .
We also saw the sea sucked away and apparently forced back by the earthquake: at any rate it receded from the shore so that quantities of sea creatures were left stranded on dry sand. On the landward side a fearful black cloud was rent by forked and quivering bursts of flame, and parted to reveal great tongues of fire, like flashes of lightning magnified in size. . . . We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room. You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. (Allen 1915)
Pliny’s reports made such an impression on volcanologists and geographers that the term “Plinian” is now used to describe sustained explosive eruptions that generate high-altitude eruption columns and blanket large areas with ash. While ash, rock, and pumice were falling on Pompeii, Herculaneum was being buried by a river of mud.
While Pliny was documenting the events, his uncle, Pliny the Elder, was also in Misenum, commanding a fleet of warships. He steered the ships back to rescue people (see Pliny the Elder) but died during the attempt after going ashore.
Why was the eruption so devastating? In part it was due to complacency—the volcano had erupted in 62 CE, but the 17 ensuing years may have caused some to believe that it was no longer active. But more importantly, the eruption was so devastating because the tephra fall continued for 19 hours. It is estimated that the column of ash was 32 kilometers in height, with 4 cubic kilometers (1 cubic mile) of ash erupted. Ash covered 500 square kilometers of surrounding land. Over three meters of tephra fell on Pompeii, burying everything so well that the community was not noticed for 1,500 years. Herculaneum was buried under 23 meters of ash, mud, and pyroclastic flow. From the molds created from archaeological excavations, it is clear that people had very little time to escape. The atmosphere was unbreathable due to the sulfur-laden gases: Pliny the Elder, remaining inside for a while, hoping for a break, finally decided to flee; given the intact state of his body when found, he was unable to breathe the fumes. At least eight towns were destroyed on this single day.
Depending on the sources consulted and what those sources consider a major eruption, Mount Vesuvius has erupted between 30 and 100 times since 79 CE. Around 1037, it entered a 600-year period of dormancy. In 1631, the volcano killed 4,000 people; during the restoration that followed, workers discovered the now-famous ruins. However, another 300 years passed before excavations revealed the full story.
Over two million people live in the area of Mount Vesuvius today, with the towns of Ercolano, Torre del Greceo, and Torre Annunziata lying at the base. Nearby, Naples is the largest metropolis on the Mediterranean Sea (3.7 million), and the population density is high—20,000 to 30,000 people per square kilometer. It was estimated in 2010 that a similar eruption today would cause 21,000 fatalities. Thus, the area makes a grim but excellent case study in human–environment interaction, perceived risk, and responses to natural hazards.
Thanks to the theory of plate tectonics originally conceived as “continental drift” by Alfred Wegener and refined by others (see Wegener, Alfred), Vesuvius is understood in geographic and geologic terms. It sits above a subduction zone. The African plate moves northward at a rate of two to three centimeters per year, slowly closing the Mediterranean basin, crumpling the boundary against the Eurasian plate and forming the Alps to the north. Mount Vesuvius currently stands at 1,277 meters, a composite volcano with mixed layers of lava flows, volcanic ash, and cinders. It consists of a volcanic cone called Gran Cono, which grows and periodically erupts inside a much larger caldera called Mount Somma. The fact that the caldera is there hints at even larger eruptions in the past.
Physical geography was the cause of Pompeii’s destruction, but it was also the cause of people settling there in the first place. The original village was constructed by native Italians, the Oscans, on a volcanic ridge produced by a prehistoric lava flow. In the sixth century BCE, the Greeks used the area as an outpost. Between the years 524 and 474 BCE, the Etruscans controlled Pompeii, and finally the Romans took it over, only cementing their full control in 90 BCE after the last of the “social wars” aimed at quieting the Pompeii rebellions. These rebellions were so strong that Rome sent a force of 300,000 soldiers to suppress the last uprising. Needless to say, the destruction of Pompeii effectively ended any chance of another uprising occurring. Along the Bay of Naples, Pompeii had a good harbor, and due to ash fall from past eruptions, it was surrounded by a fertile plain irrigated by two rivers. Pompeii’s agriculture yielded six times more than the average yield of the rest of the Italian peninsula. And its mild climate, good harbor, industry in Naples, and attraction as a tourist destination guaranteed that people would continue to live in the shadow of the volcano.
This map of plate boundaries is one of the most familiar world maps, but the theory of plate tectonics did not appear until the revolutionary efforts of Alfred Wegener in the early 20th century. His theory of continental drift was vindicated after his death with evidence from a variety of sources. Because so many features and processes on and under the Earth are explained through plate tectonics such as Vesuvius and other volcanoes, Wegener and his ideas were revolutionary to the understanding of the physical geography of the planet. (Esri)
The Earth is a changing planet, and geography seeks to understand those changes. Other volcanoes have impacted the physical and cultural geography of the planet in similar ways, including Mount Pelée in 1902, Krakatoa in 1883, and Mount Tambora in 1815. The Minoan civilization was virtually destroyed by the volcanic eruption 3,500 years ago at present-day Santorini. But Mount Vesuvius perhaps remains the most famous, as it is the only active volcano on the European mainland. The excavation of cities around its base has provided an immense amount of data and a working laboratory for the field of archaeology.
The fact that Mount Vesuvius’s eruption was so well documented impacted the study of geography through increased attention paid to natural hazards and human–environment interaction. Certainly, that attention would not begin in most places for another 1,400 years, and it not fully take root until the 19th century, but eventually natural hazards studies would occupy a key role in geography. It would also help tie geography to research and university departments in planning and geology (see Geography Departments). Planning for decreased destruction from natural hazards was a role well served by geographers in the 20th and early 21st centuries, such as Gilbert F. White, for example. Such was the attention paid to natural hazards that when Mount St. Helens erupted in the United States in 1980, it was under intense scrutiny for months by geographers and geologists alike; indeed, the very first casualty was David A. Johnston, a volcanologist studying the volcano from 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) distant. Aiding people during natural hazards became a focus for citizen-science Web mapping efforts through tools such as Ushahidi (see Social Media; Web Mapping).
Ironically, on the date of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the Romans there were celebrating the festival of Vulcan, their god of fire.
See also: Geography Departments; Pliny the Elder; Social Media; Web Mapping; Wegener, Alfred
Allen, G. B., ed. 1915. Selected Letters of Pliny. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bowersock, G. S. 1980. “The Rediscovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii.” The American Scholar 49: 461–470.
Carey, S., and H. Sigurdsson. 1987. “Temporal Variations in Column Height and Magma Discharge Rate during the 79 A.D. Eruption of Vesuvius.” Geological Society of America Bulletin 99: 303–314.
Dobran, F., A. Nerl, and M. Tedesco. 1994. “Assessing the Pyroclastic Flow Hazard at Vesuvius.” Nature 367: 551–554.
Etienne, R. 1992. Pompeii: The Day the City Died. London: Thames and Hudson.
Gonzalez, Jackie. 2005. “The Fall of Pompeii and Its Effect on Rome.” ICE Case Studies 149. http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/pompeii.htm.
Maiuri, A. 1958. “Pompeii.” Scientific American 198: 68–78.
Radice, B. 1968. The Letters of Younger Pliny. New York: Penguin.
Sheridan, M. F., F. Barberi, M. Rosi, and R. Santacrose. 1981. “A Model for Plinian Eruptions of Vesuvius.” Nature 289: 282–285.
Sigurdsson, H., S. Carey, W. Cornell, and T. Pescatore. 1985. “The Eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79.” National Geographic Research 1 (3): 332–387.
Despite an unimpressive record as a student and poor childhood health, Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt (1769–1859) overcame these challenges and pursued a lifetime of exploration and discovery, becoming not only one of the most influential geographers of the 19th century but also one who merits inclusion in this book, because geography itself moved forward due to his research and ideas.
Von Humboldt traveled extensively through Latin America, including a five-year expedition there from 1799 to 1804, during a time in which Spain was preoccupied with the pursuit of wealth and conquest in its colonies in the Americas; so for a scientist like von Humboldt to gain permission to visit was in itself significant. And he didn’t just quietly observe, either; after witnessing slavery, imperialism, and authoritarianism there, he became an outspoken critic of all of these. Furthermore, the prevailing notion in Europe was that the Americas were without much history, newly formed and inferior to the “known world” of Europe. Von Humboldt’s book about the views of the Cordilleras and the monuments of the indigenous peoples of the Americas refuted this notion. The Americas were not only old geologically, but they were also populated by a diverse array of indigenous groups, speaking different languages and having unique and rich cultures and histories. This was no short “blog post”; this book alone included 69 plates depicting landscapes, people, and even artwork. In the world of 1800, these views of his were not popular, particularly with the political views of many countries that were keen on eradicating or at least subjugating native populations.
Von Humboldt discovered the cold ocean current in the Pacific that flows north from southern Chile to Peru, and which still bears his name. It is one of the major upwelling systems of the world, supporting an abundance of marine life and nearly 20 percent of the world’s fish catch. He discovered a connection between the Orinoco and Amazon river systems, collected thousands of plant species, and observed how Ecuador’s volcanoes were positioned in a line, as though they were following a fault, or what later was identified as an influence of the plate boundary on the coast, in the Earth’s crust. He prepared the first relief map of Spain. He did not always work alone; sometimes, in South America, he teamed up with botanist Aime Bonpland.
His discoveries and observations show how well versed he was in plants, natural hazards, oceans, river systems, animals, land cover, and weather—in short, von Humboldt was a truly holistic-thinking geographer. Though known primarily for his work in physical geography, he also was a keen observer and writer about language, art, clothing, cultural norms, history, and culture. In that respect, he foreshadowed 20th-century geographers such as Carl Sauer (see Sauer, Carl O.). He studied the economics and politics of Mexico. He sought to understand how human values shape our perception of nature. In fact, von Humboldt died while working on the fifth volume of his book Kosmos, which was an attempt to provide the world with a unified explanation for all existence. Von Humboldt had been writing Kosmos for 17 years, managing to publish the first four volumes before his death. It echoed some of the grand tomes of the early Greek geographers 2,000 years before. Only von Humboldt, who had observed so much of the world from a geographic perspective, could have attempted this type of multivolume tome. In his words, “I have . . . endeavored to comprehend the phenomena of physical objects in their general connection, and to represent nature as on a great whole, moved and animated by internal forces” (von Humboldt 1805). He embraced the new emphasis on positivistic science and rigorous observation that was emerging in the scientific community. However, unlike some of his contemporaries, he did not fully embrace the domination of nature by humans, perhaps because of what he had observed in South America with the domination of native people and the landscape by the Spanish rulers.
In this sense, von Humboldt foreshadowed the “noble nature” ethic of the late 19th century, as exemplified by Theodore Roosevelt and the movement to protect land before it was all under human influence. In this sense, he foreshadowed the environmental movement of the 1970s and beyond (see Environmental Movement; Land Protection). He helped lead John Muir to his ideas about natural preservation and influenced Thoreau’s Walden. Von Humboldt argued for a more ecological view that seems strikingly modern—that humans are a part of the larger whole, an interconnected natural ecosystem. Nature is a complex and interconnected system that does not exist for the use of humankind alone—a revolutionary idea! Von Humboldt was the first to describe massive human modification of the landscape, including its detrimental effects, and the first to suggest human-induced climate change. Also modern are his cross-sections and maps showing zones of vegetation at successive levels of altitude. Unlike fellow geographers of his century and in the 20th century to follow, he did not hold an academic post, but rather he worked as an independent scholar. But like his academic contemporaries, he wrote extensively and spent years in the field collecting primary-source data. He did not get bogged down in the details; the details were collected in his effort to understand the general laws of nature—how diverse phenomena were integrated into some harmonious whole.
Von Humboldt was also a good communicator, publishing more than 30 volumes of his recordings while he lived in Paris, and also networking with fellow scientists there during the early 19th century. He even was able to fashion poetic narratives out of his field observations. His writings inspired other naturalists and poets, including Darwin and Wordsworth. He talked extensively with the poet Goethe. He became so well known that the Russian government invited him to tour the Urals and Siberia for consultation about mining techniques. Thomas Jefferson asked him to visit Washington, D.C., for a week, which he refused. Despite his writings and his renown, von Humboldt had little money, in part due to the enormous costs of producing maps and illustrations to accompany his books. Yet he refused to give up his life of discovery and communication. Even his travel methods reveal his zeal for discovery: By foot, canoe, and horseback, he traveled down uncharted rivers, climbed volcanoes, and explored in seagoing vessels. With his party, he climbed to nearly 20,000 feet (6,096 m) up the volcano Mount Chimborazo in the Andes, whose peak is the point on the surface of the Earth farthest from the center of the Earth, the highest point reached to that date by any European mountaineer. He walked all the way from Berlin to China when he was 59 years old. He even performed experiments on himself to demonstrate the role of electricity as the life force, which must have been painful, to say the least.
Von Humboldt’s influence was so profound that naturalists after him participated in what historians have called “Humboldtian science”—to measure and map every feature of the Earth. This would take root in government-sponsored geological surveys later in the 19th century. He began a worldwide network of magnetic observatories. He inspired generations of biologists as well, who would found what is now known as ecology. To highlight one life that he affected, part of the reason why Charles Darwin was so willing and eager to join HMS Beagle on its voyage to South America was because of von Humboldt’s writings about the continent. Indeed, von Humboldt’s emphasis on how natural processes shaped the Earth and its inhabitants influenced Darwin’s own theory of evolution, in which populations adapt to survive in an ever-changing world. Von Humboldt’s influence continues today: A book he wrote about the Cordillera in South America was recently translated and edited, and it was received eagerly by the natural science and history communities.
See also: Environmental Movement; Land Protection; Sauer, Carl O.
Bowen, Margarita. 1981. Empiricism and Geographical Thought: From Francis Bacon to Alexander von Humboldt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Terra, Helmut. 1955. Humboldt: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt, 1769–1859. New York: Knopf.
Hartshorne, Richard. 1939. The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past. Lancaster, PA: Association of American Geographers.
Kellner, L. 1963. Alexander von Humboldt. London & New York: Oxford University Press.
Von Humboldt, Alexander. 1805/2012. Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, a critical edition, edited and introduced by Vera M. Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette; translated by J. Ryan Poynter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wulf, Andrea. 2015. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. New York: Knopf.