Decolonising geography - early days

While looking for something else I came across Daniel Clayton's paper from the University of St. Andrews.

In it he talks about the emergence of decolonising and the early proponents of looking back at the nature of Empire, with Felix Driver's work being mentioned prominently.

In the aftermath of World War II, two British geographers, Sidney Wooldridge and Ronald Harrison Church, implored colleagues to take the study of colonial geography more seriously.  Wooldridge (1947, 202) ventured that “it appears to me to throw a strong light on the position of Geography in this country that we are so calamitously and shamefully ignorant of our Colonial Empire”.  And Harrison Church (1951, 116-17) sought to make amends with a primer entitled Modern Colonization, noting that Africa was “ripe for rearrangement” (albeit colonial reform more than independence).  

As Britain’s sprawling empire shrank, the type of geographical study and imagery associated with it became less acceptable and feasible, and Alastair Bonnett (2003) asserts that geography soon abandoned its bequest as a “world discipline” and geographers sought to make their discipline ‘useful’ again by focusing on pressing domestic problems.  Yet geography was not taught at many of the new universities established across the United Kingdom in the post-war decades, in part because politicians continued to view the subject as having “a somewhat ‘dated’ look about it”, as Ron Johnston (2003, 69) puts it. 

 Indeed, the ‘conquest’ of Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in June 1953, coinciding with the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, was arguably the crowning glory of 1950s British geography and points to the post-war extension rather than liquidation of geography’s empire.  

The RGS was a proud sponsor of the Everest Expedition, and through to the 1970s its learned organ, The Geographical Journal, kept a populist foot in the imperial past by publishing excerpts “from the journal a hundred years ago”, most of which were manly tales of expeditionary derring-do.   

Source: (PDF link) to read the whole paper.

https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/263517541/Clayton_2019_AAAG_geography_sempire_AAM.pdf

1942 - Exeter Conference and some Everest connections

Updated August 2023

From Balchin's centenary book. 

Some familiar names there.

The dinner and council meeting were held at Hope Hall, which is still used by the University (see image at the bottom of the post)

This was to avoid the wartime raids on London, although Exeter was also targeted during the Baedeker raids.

Hope Hall, Exeter University

Hugh Ruttledge's book was published in the 1930s.

He led two expeditions to Everest: in 1933 and 1936, so this would have been an exciting session to have heard: a decade and a bit after the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine.

In 1934 Ruttledge was awarded a Royal Geographical Society Founder's Medal; his citation read 'For his journeys in the Himalayas and his leadership of the Mount Everest Expedition, 1933.' Although the Mount Everest committee set up an inquiry into the reasons for the failure of the expedition, Ruttledge was not blamed, almost all members of the expedition expressing their admiration and fondness for him.

1933 Expedition

The highest point attained on this attempt was 8,570 m (28,116 f), but the route was found to be too difficult and the vital camp V that should have been reached on a rare day with fair weather – 20 May – was, as a result of disagreements between team members, never established.

It was during this expedition that Wyn-Harris found the ice axe which belonged to Andrew Irvine, who had disappeared on the peak on the 1924 British Expedition with George Mallory.

I've seen that Ice Axe at Shrewsbury School and Charterhouse has some Mallory artefacts.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license - I love it when connections like this come to light...

1936 Expedition

Although the North Col was reached, a combination of high winds, storms and waist-deep snow made progress above 7,000 m difficult and, with the monsoon arriving early, Ruttledge called off the expedition.

Tenzing Norgay wrote of Ruttledge and the 1936 expedition:[9]

Mr Ruttledge was too old to be a high climber, but he was a wonderful man, gentle and warm-hearted, and all the Sherpas were very glad to be with him. This was a very big expedition, with more sahibs than there had ever been before, and a total of sixty Sherpas, which was five times as many as in 1935.

Source: Wikipedia entry

Ruttledge moved down to Devon, hence the local connection with Exeter presumably.