Colonial Knowledges

Livingstone, 1992

• Geography is not a neutral or universal body of knowledge; it is always produced by particular people in particular contexts.

• Critiques internalism (explaining geography only through academic developments) and presentism (judging the past by contemporary standards, seeing linear progress).

• Shows how the 1960s quantitative revolution revealed the subjective nature of supposedly objective geographical knowledge.

• Argues that scientific authority often rests on paradigms, metaphors, and accepted conventions rather than pure truth (Kuhn).

• Introduces the idea of “situated messiness”: geographical knowledge is socially embedded and inseparable from wider political and cultural contexts.

Boyle et al., 2019

• Reassesses Livingstone’s The Geographical Tradition 25 years after publication.

• Credits the book with transforming histories of geography by moving beyond presentism and internalism.

• Argues Livingstone insufficiently reflected on the contexts shaping his own historiographical methods - thinks about WHO writes history

• Distinguishes analytical reason (universal, Enlightenment rationality) from dialectical reason (historically and socially constituted rationality).

• Suggests Livingstone's focus on traditions risks obscuring exclusions and suppressed voices and under-contextualises developments such as quantitative geography, AI, and big data.

Maddrell, 2019

• Criticises Livingstone for neglecting gender, intersectionality, exclusion, and power relations in geographical knowledge production.

• Feminist geography challenges histories that portray geography as a predominantly male intellectual enterprise.

• Argues contextualism alone cannot explain structures of gendered power.

• Calls for a “more-than-contextual” historiography that interrogates power rather than simply adding omitted figures.

• Highlights omissions of women geographers, Indigenous actors, and colonial guides from traditional histories.

Livingstone, 2019

• Reflects on shortcomings of The Geographical Tradition.

• Acknowledges insufficient attention to the geography of geographical knowledge itself.

• Argues intellectual ideas do not travel unchanged across space.

• Emphasises that all knowledge production is spatially situated.

• Calls for greater attention to how location shapes intellectual work

Nayak, 2013

• Argues modern geography emerged through empire, not merely alongside it.

• Geography functioned simultaneously as an academic discipline, imperial technology, and colonial ideology.

• Highlights the role of cartography, navigation, exploration, warfare, and capitalist expansion in empire-building.

• Discusses the Royal Geographical Society (1830) as a key institution linking geography to imperial administration.

• Uses Halford Mackinder, environmental determinism, and Social Darwinism as examples of geography’s imperial entanglements - Heartland Theory → directed LSE, gave lectures at the Oxford Union and RGS

Cresswell, 2024

• Traces modern geography’s development through German geography, geopolitics, environmental determinism, and anarchism.

• Shows geography was deeply implicated in imperialism and statecraft despite alternative anti-state traditions.

• Highlights Kant and Humboldt as foundational figures in modern geographical thought.

• Discusses Mackinder’s Heartland Theory and Ellen Churchill Semple’s environmental determinism.

Driver, 1992

• Argues geography should not be reduced to a simple instrument of capitalism or empire.

• Emphasises the heterogeneous and contested nature of geographical knowledge.

• Uses Joseph Conrad’s categories: Geography Fabulous, Geography Militant, and Geography Triumphant.

• Shows how geography was shaped by concerns over masculinity, heroism, degeneration, and national identity.

• Draws on Edward Said, arguing geographical knowledge and political domination are intertwined while warning against overly totalising interpretations.

Driver, 1991

• Reassesses Henry Morton Stanley as a figure caught between science, violence, journalism, and empire.

• Places Stanley between the “golden age” of exploration and the Scramble for Africa.

• Shows exploration facilitated colonial commerce, territorial control, and imperial penetration.

• Examines Stanley’s role in popularising the myth of “Darkest Africa.” through his exploration

Guelke and Guelke, 2004

• Critiques Mary Louise Pratt’s postcolonial reading of travel narratives.

• Argues Pratt overstates travellers’ complicity in imperial domination.

• Suggests naturalist-travellers were more historically complex than simple agents of empire.

• Highlights evidence of travellers documenting Indigenous practices and colonial violence.

• Rejects a simplistic binary between imperial “innocence” and “guilt.”

Griffiths and Baker, 2020

• Argues the RGS-IBG headquarters (Lowther Lodge) continues to embody imperial geography.

• Demonstrates how institutional spaces silently reproduce colonial histories.

• Highlights imperial portraits, maps, and material symbolism within the building.

• Suggests geography has acknowledged colonial roots but struggles to materially confront them.

• Links decolonisation to questions of institutional belonging and inclusivity.

Heffernan, 1996

• Examines how World War I transformed geography’s relationship with the British state.

• Shows geographical expertise became integrated into military planning and intelligence.

• Traces intelligence agencies’ origins to cartographic institutions and imperial networks.

• Discusses the RGS’s wartime role as a cartographic and intelligence centre.

• Demonstrates widespread belief that geographical knowledge could determine military success.

Agnew et al., 2011

• Shows how deterministic geographical thinking still influences modern strategic discourse.

• Connects contemporary conflicts (e.g. the War on Terror) to older geopolitical logics.

Kearns, 2020

• Argues universities remain deeply shaped by colonialism, slavery, and racial capitalism.

• Uses Rhodes Must Fall, Edward Colston, and Cecil Rhodes debates as examples.

• Shows statues and commemorative naming practices are active political symbols, not neutral history.

• Introduces “colonial aphasia”—the inability or refusal to discuss colonial violence.

• Links decolonisation to wider anti-racist movements, including Black Lives Matter (2020).

Kearns, 2021

• Critiques Mackinder as inseparable from imperial and racial assumptions.

• Shows how geography education has often normalised colonial ideology and the “civilising mission.”

• Links modern interventions such as the Iraq War to continuing imperial geographical thinking - area studies continuing the ‘othering’?

• Argues decolonisation requires confronting geography’s disciplinary history.

Martin and Armston-Sheret, 2020

• Reviews the development of critical exploration studies.

• Exploration is no longer studied as heroic adventure but as linked to empire, race, science, and gender.

• Exploration narratives, maps, and travel writings are forms of imaginative geography, not neutral records.

• Highlights institutions such as Kew Gardens, the RGS, and the Royal Society.

• Emphasises the role of scientific instruments in shaping, rather than merely recording, knowledge - not neutral, have flaws, used in certain contexts, developed by certain people

Livingstone, 1991

• Explores historical links between climate theory, race, and morality.

• Argues climatic explanations of human difference justified racial hierarchy and imperial expansion.

• Discusses ethno-climatology, where climate and moral character were treated as connected..

• Analyses anthropometric cartography, which transformed moral judgements into seemingly objective maps and statistics - objectifies subjective topics

Frenkel, 1992

• Examines Ellen Churchill Semple and environmental determinism in the United States.

• Shows environmental determinism provided scientific legitimacy for American imperialism in the Panama Canal Zone.

• Tropical climates were portrayed as producing laziness, passivity, and moral weakness.

• Canal construction was framed as a “mandate from civilisation.”

• Environmental determinism justified racial labour hierarchies, segregation, and social control.

Guelke and Morin, 2001

• Recovers the contributions of women naturalists within imperial travel culture.

• Argues these “near-geographies” have been marginalised in disciplinary histories.

• Uses Theodora Guest as an example of hybrid scientific and aesthetic travel writing.

• Shows women established authority through citation, observation, and technique despite exclusion from formal science.

• Demonstrates the intersections of gender, empire, and knowledge production.

• Women arguably conformed and contributed to dominant systems despite their inherent marginalisation

Esson et al., 2017

• Critiques institutional approaches to “decolonising geographical knowledges.”

• Focuses on the 2017 RGS-IBG conference theme on decolonisation.

• Distinguishes between colonialism (past process) and coloniality (enduring structures of power after empire).

• Argues institutions often focus on knowledge of colonialism while avoiding continuing structural racism and inequality.

• Suggests meaningful decolonisation requires challenging whiteness, institutional power, and exclusion.

Robinson, 2003

• Shows scholars from the Global South are often expected to engage with Euro-American theory for legitimacy.

• Critiques the dominance of Western experiences as universal models.

• Questions supposedly neutral standards such as “rigour,” “reliability,” and “relevance.”

• Calls for greater recognition of local knowledges and theoretical diversity.

Puttick et al., 2026

• Geography education is never neutral; curriculum choices shape political understandings of the world.

• Decolonial geography education has expanded, especially after 2020 anti-racist activism, but remains uneven.

• Geography teaching can either reproduce or challenge social injustice.

• Emphasises the importance of language in shaping place, identity, and power.

• Notes the continued dominance of English-language and Anglo-American norms in global geography education.

Shaw et al., 2006

• Critiques geography’s continuing marginalisation of Indigenous geographies.

• Argues Indigenous peoples are often treated as a single homogeneous category.

• Highlights tensions between collective Indigenous identity and the diversity of Indigenous experiences.

• Criticises the “post” in postcolonialism for obscuring ongoing settler colonialism.

• Warns that mapping and GIS technologies can facilitate surveillance and exploitation of Indigenous communities.