Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective Essays on the Meanings of some Places in the Past

Landscapes of material are also landscapes of meaning: praxis is itself symbolic, and all landscapes are symbolic in practice. Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective draws together fifteen historical geographers to examine landscapes as messages to be decoded, as signs to be deciphered. The range of examples is wide in terms of period, from the medieval to the modern, and of place, embracing the USA, Canada, Palestine, Israel, South Africa, India, Singapore, France and Germany. Each essay addresses a specific problem, but collectively they are principally concerned with the ideologies of religion and of politics, of Church and state, and their historical impress upon landscapes. The book is introduced by an essay which explores the dialectical understanding of landscapes, and landscapes as expressions of the connection of an ideology to a quest for order, to an assertion of authority and to a project of totalization. The issues raised by landscapes and their meanings - issues of individual and collective action, of objective knowing, of materialist and idealist explanation - are fundamental not only to historical geography but to any humanistic study, and render the geographical study of landscapes of interest to scholars in many disciplines.

List of figures; List of Contributors; Preface; Introduction: on ideology and landscape Alan R. H. Baker; 1. Ideology and landscape in early printed maps of Jerusalem Rehav Rubin; 2. Ideological contexts and the reconstruction of biblical landscapes in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Dr Edward Wells and the historical geography of the Holy Land Robin A. Butlin; 3. Land-God-man: concepts of land ownership in traditional cultures in Eretz-Israel Ruth Kark; 4. Religious ideology and landscape formation: the case of the German Templars in Eretz-Israel Yossi Ben-Artzi; 5. Planned temple towns and Brahmin villages as spatial expressions of the ritual politics of medieval kingdoms in South India Hans-Jürgen Nitz; 6. Territorial strategies applied to captive peoples D. W. Meinig; 7. Ideology and landscape of settler colonialism in Virginia and Dutch South Africa: a comparative analysis Leonard Guelke; 8. Municipal sanitary ideology and the control of the urban environment in colonial Singapore Brenda S. A. Yeoh; 9. Ideology and the landscape of British Palestine, 1918–1929 Gideon Biger; 10. Ideology, identity, landscape and society in the lower colonies of British North America, 1840–1860 Graeme Wynn; 11. Interpreting a nation's identity: artists as creators of national consciousness Brian S. Osborne; 12. Collective consciousness and the local landscape: national ideology and the commune council of Mesland (Loir-et-Cher) as landscape architect during the nineteenth century Alan R. H. Baker; 13. A contrast of Old World ideology: Germans and Scotch-Irish in the Ozarks Russel L. Gerlach; 14. Ideology in the planned order upon the land: the example of Germany Dietrich Denecke; 15. Parading: a lively tradition in early Victorian Toronto Peter G. Goheen; Index.

Landscapes of material are also landscapes of meaning. In this book fifteen historical geographers examine landscapes as messages to be decoded, as signs to be deciphered. The essays are principally concerned with the ideologies of religion and of politics, of Church and of state, and their historical impress upon the landscape.