Source:
NATHAN, LORD. “GEOGRAPHY AND THE BUSINESS WORLD TO-DAY.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 109, no. 5059, 1961, pp. 516–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41369050. Accessed 16 Sept. 2023.
Also a character reference following his passing.
Copyright ©
International Glaciological Society 1967
This Society has lost one of its original members by the sudden death of Sir Dudley Stamp in Mexico City, at the age of 68, while attending a committee of the World Land Utilization Survey in August last.
A graduate of King’s College in the University of London, as a geographer he had held his Chair at the London School of Economics for many years until he resigned some years ago to devote himself to the wider international field.
Like many others, he began as a geologist. Many younger glaciologists will have seen him in action when, as President of the Royal Geographical Society at the time of the 1964 meeting of the International Geographical Congress in London, the duties of representing the host country frequently fell to him.His lively and genial personality, reinforced by a supreme breadth of knowledge about the world and those who wrote about it, by a formidable energy and capacity for work, zest for travel and an accurate memory, was indeed widely appreciated.
His accomplishment in developing studies of land utilization, starting from the great survey of Britain that he initiated in the depths of the 1931 depression, was justly honoured.
He was one of the first members to join this Society, and
while his travels in his later years more commonly took him to the great cities of the world rather than the silent ice, he retained his sympathy with the aims of a new and developing branch of the earth sciences. It was characteristic of him that his interests should extend well beyond the particular field in which he was active. Many have benefited from his interest and advice and on more than one occasion this Society has been grateful for his influential assistance.
A lovely piece.
He travelled widely with his wife Elsa.
Here's one of the books they co-wrote.
Here's an analysis of his work from a piece in Science Direct.
Lawrence Dudley Stamp was born in London in 1898 and admitted to King's College at the age of 15 to study botany and geology.
Following graduation he joined the Royal Engineers and served briefly in France during World War I.
Illustrating his exuberance for the subject and his phenomenal work rate, he gained his doctorate in geology in 1921 while simultaneously taking the London BA in geography. He was then employed as a geologist in Burma (Myanmar).
While stationed there, he was appointed as the first professor of geography in Rangoon in 1923, where he taught until 1926.
In Burma, Stamp first specialized in tropical geography. In one of his first books – The Vegetation of Burma from an Ecological Standpoint – he enrolled researchers from of the Indian Forest Service to collect data and adopted a classic chorographic method to describe the country.
Drawing upon the ecological theories of A. G. Tansely and
a model for the systematic classification of natural regions developed by the geographer A. J. Herbertson, his technique examined the causes and the interrelations of phenomena in the landscape, primarily in terms of climate and geology. While he would continue to innovate – he was among the first geographers, for example, to promote the use of
aerial photography – this approach to the analysis of land-use and resource management would characterize his career.
His land-use survey technique and representation first developed in Burma, was later scaled up to encompass Britain in the 1930s, and underwrote his ideas for a world land-use survey sponsored by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) he directed in the 1960s.
A postcolonial reading of Stamp's work in tropical geography can align his interests with the demands of the colonial state. His paper on Burma published in 1933 in The Geographical Review concluded that the country's ‘wasteland’ – which he depicted as unoccupied – was open for further colonization: “Upcountry one is struck by the immense areas of cultivable land which remain waste for want of cultivators” (Stamp, 1933: 87). He could also indulge his reader with a dash of adventure and hint of the exotic: “The Salween still indulges on the quiet in the time honoured practice of head-hunting and their territory has been placed out of bounds to Europeans” (Stamp, 1933: 83).
Most of Stamp's work, however, was very applied in orientation. This was well reflected in his stewardship of Commercial Geography which he inherited from the economic geographer G. G. Chisholm. This is not so much a book but a database of commodities and the ever expanding resource frontier required by a colonial empire. At this time, it is arguable that Stamp – notably with his work on the ‘colonial soil’ – participated in a school of Western intellectuals who mobilized science in an attempt to guarantee the effective management of imperial sources.
In 1926, Stamp returned to England to take up a post at the London School of Economics (LSE). The LSE positioned him in a metropolitan network that supported a career at home and abroad.
During this period, Stamp consolidated his activities as a successful author of popular geography textbooks. For example, he collaborated with his wife Elsa Rea to produce an innovative New Age series for junior schools, based around photographs taken during his world travels.
'The World', first prepared for the school market in India in the mid-1920s, was adapted widely throughout the British Empire and, over 40 years, sold over a million copies, running to some 17 editions.
His work on school textbooks for both the national and colonial marketplace enhanced his association with the Geographical Association which he used to build support for the first Land Utilisation Survey of Great Britain.
The idea of a land-use survey of Britain had been an objective of the Royal Geography Society from the late 1880s, when the survey “…was regarded as a project of Imperial importance” (Stamp, 1931: 42). Drawing upon his work in the tropics, Stamp mobilized a chorographical technique to devise six categories of land use for the purpose of the survey: meadow and permanent grass, arable land, heath land, and moor land or rough hill pasture forests and woodland, gardens, and unproductive agricultural land. This survey – which began in 1930 – was a huge undertaking but by framing it in the context of both geographic and
civic education, Stamp was able to enrol school children and their teachers to collect primary data on land use, and transfer this data by hand onto 6″ to 1 mile paper maps.
The results are summarized in The Land of Britain: Its Use and Misuse. H. C. Darby concluded it was the greatest achievement of British geography. The survey success and its immediate value for agricultural and physical planning during World War II and after was Stamp's entrée into public service in Britain.
As questions around physical planning and issues of environment and habitat management have intensified in Britain, Stamp's work on the Land Utilisation Survey remains highly regarded.
But as one of the stalwarts of regional geography, the paradigm shifts in the 20 following this death – first toward quantification and then to
radical geography – have often undermined his reputation among contemporary geographers.
In 1974, when David Harvey characterized geography's history as a shift from a concern with empire into “…the technics and mechanics of urban, regional and environmental management guided by a principles of benevolence and reformism…” Stamp could well have been his model (Harvey, 1974: 20).
Ron Johnston argued that Stamp's promotion of applied geography defined geographers “…as information gathers and synthesisers who stood outside the political process within which planning goals were formulated and pursued” (Johnston 1979: 30).
Even one of his warmest observers H. C. Darby conceded that his approach to geography was firmly pragmatic: “…it was said that he had a tidy mind and a passion for facts” (Darby 1983: 20).
These summaries are more problematic than first assumed. In its various forms, versions of ‘applied geography’ had always been central to the activities of the state. They came into their ascendancy in post-war Britain, when the increased state intervention in the economy and environment presented geographers with innumerable opportunities to identify practical applications for geographical techniques and expertise.
In this context, Stamp saw applied geography as the application of geography for the public good. Any claim that Stamp saw geographers as ‘outside’ the political process cannot be sustained.
Stamp was part of a group of intellectuals in the 1930s that included Max Nicholson, Vaughan Cornish, and Julian Huxley who foresaw the role science would play in the planning and reconstruction of Britain.
Geography for Stamp was a matter for action and intervention.
During World War II, he served as vice chairperson of the Scott Committee, which set out the framework for the establishment of the town and country planning policy. He was also employed as Chief Adviser in Rural Land Utilisation at the Ministry of Agriculture. In the post-war period Stamp served a member or chairperson of four major official committees – Land Use in Rural Areas, Nature Conservancy, Common Land, and National Resources.
Undoubtedly he played a key role in shaping the post-war spatial settlement in Britain.
It is also clear in this period that he revised his perspective on the Global South. His work in tropical geography turned from a concern with colonial interests to issues related to the ‘developing world’. His collaboration with the International Geographical Union (IGU) and UNESCO in particular presented him with new challenges and in their own way are reflected in clear pleas for global responsibility in Geographies of Life and Death and criticism of neocolonialism in his book The Developing World.
Toward the end of his life, Stamp reacted strongly against quantification which he saw a major challenge to applied and regional geography.
As president of the Institute of British Geographers (IBG), he controversially compared Peter Haggett to a theosophist and concluded that “Quantification has many points in common with Communism: it has become a religion to its devotees, its golden calf is the computer” (Stamp 1965: 18).
Rather than this path, he argued for public engagement over academic specialization. He also saw geography as a holistic discipline, the unification of the physical and human worlds.
Despite the growing challenge then emerging from spatial science, Stamp's profile as Britain's foremost public geographer was assured.
In 1965 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. This honor extended to an invitation on to the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) flagship radio program ‘Desert Island Discs’ where guests are asked to imagine which music and texts they would take with them as if cast away on a tropical island. As he had done with audiences all his life, Stamp charmed the public with a discussion on his work with the world land-use survey, the demographic pressure on land resources, the use and abuse of toxic chemicals in intensive farming, the possibilities of land reclamation, and marveled at the possible future cultivation of the sea's harvests.
The radio show confirmed his vivid interests in
environmental issues and his wide geographical imagination. It seems that throughout his life Stamp epitomized the motto of his old regiment, the Royal Engineers – Ubique (everywhere).
In spite of the turn toward continental social theory in Anglo-American geography, Stamp's contribution to geography remains more central to the discipline than often realized. Stamp exemplified a philosophy about geographical knowledge which located it at the interface of pubic service, education, and civic responsibility. He understood the central role that geography played in the organization of social, environmental, and economic life and was able to articulate those ideas to broad and mixed constituency: school children, the general public, and policymakers.
He helped create a geographical discourse which continues to frame many debates about the role of the discipline, particularly those concerning the application of geographic information system (GIS),
remote sensing, and land-use studies to matters of public policy.
Updated October 2023
He was the son of
Charles Stamp and
Clara Jane Evans. He married
Else Clara Rea, daughter of
Arthur Unett Rea, on 5 May 1923
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