Cultural and Historical Geography

Historical Geographies of Empire, Environment and Health

Historical Geographies of Empire, Environment and Health fosters a commitment to the historical study of environment, health and biopolitics in their international contexts. Methodological contributions span the qualitative interpretation of archival sources to the quantitative analysis of extensive statistical datasets. Research demonstrates the potential for detailed scrutiny of specific sources, sites and events to transform understandings of global processes, with agenda-setting contributions made by Matthew Smallman-Raynor, Georgina Endfield and Stephen Legg in geography and cognate fields, including medical history, public health medicine and epidemiology, climate history, urban history, and postcolonial studies. Existing work has examined the origin, geographical spread and control of epidemic and pandemic diseases such as poliomyelitis and avian influenza A(H5N1); the conditioning effects of war and island environments for disease morbidity and mortality; the social adaptation to, and conceptions of, climate change in colonial Mexico; women missionaries, climate and health in nineteenth century central southern Africa; colonial governmentality and urban biopolitics; and the planning and ordering of colonial cities. Work in these areas has been supported by the award of two prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prizes to Matthew Smallman-Raynor and Georgina Endfield. Public dissemination of advanced scholarship has included Matthew Smallman-Raynor’s co-authored World Atlas of Epidemic Diseases (Arnold, 2004).