On a recent trip through Raynes Park, I picked up an unusual item, unusual in the sense that it was a serious journal, very nearly new. To wit, the September 2023 number of the Geographical Journal, Vol.189, No.3.
Nothing much like the November 1987 number, Vol.8, No.5 lifted from ebay and snapped above. By the look of it published by the RGS themselves and printed by one Edward Stanford, the chap who later had the fine map shop in Long Acre, now more or less deceased.
The old shop is still there in Long Acre, I dare say a listed building, but it is now occupied by someone selling fashion clothes. Not completely clear, but probably for both men and women. While the passage to the right leads to the Lamb & Flag, a boozer once famous for both its clientèle and its bread and cheese, particularly its Stilton, but I dare say that it has moved on too.
The journal is now published by Wiley, whose name appears at the top of more or less every page. But I suppose it makes sense these days to contract the job out to a specialist. This number being pages 384 to 552, a bit more than 150 pages. Perhaps the original idea was to number the pages with the bound volume to come in mind. Taking the long view as it were. A bit of tradition which has survived.
The first fifty of those pages are given over to the Arctic, to its rising temperature and to the goings-on of the various players. That is to say the eight Arctic nations - Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States - plus others who want a finger in the pie, notably the UK and China. The latter seeming to be keen to project its great power status into this largely empty, but nevertheless important space. Not that one can blame them - great power projection being something that we in the UK have done for the last 200 and more years and we have not grown out of it yet.
And not having a territorial foothold, the Chinese make full use of their considerable space and maritime assets to collect a huge amount of data; data which they do not seem particularly keen to share, which is a pity.
Even more depressing, after a thirty year break, militarisation seems to be in full swing again, with all kinds of offensive and defensive assets being put in place there. Lots of dual use assets which can equally well serve military or civil ends.
As an aside, I am reminded that the Arctic is quite different from the Antarctic in that it has inhabited land all around it. Much easier to be relaxed about a chunk of ice hidden away in the depths of the southern ocean, hundreds of miles away from anywhere, never mind anywhere important.
On a lighter note, geographers seem to be very keen on using lots of arcane jargon, some warning of which is given by the titles they give their papers. For example: 'Moving through liquid territories: A cartographic history of roads in the Danube Delta'. Or from reference 1: 'Evaluation of efficiency of the index of potential anthropic geomorphology at meso level: a case study of Goa State, India'. Or: 'Experiences of dog theft and spatial practices of search/ing'. This last, at least, is open access.
A sense that, having thoroughly described and mapped the world, once the main business of geographers, they are now casting around for anything which admits a large scale spatial dimension. I am reminded of the Economic Atlas of Ontario, a copy of which was once in my possession, a beautifully and expensively produced book full of rather curious maps, mostly white space, but littered with circles of various sizes and colours indicating the presence of this or that activity. For example, lithium mining. Now, maybe twenty five years later, they have moved well beyond coloured circles!
A journal which I was interested to see, but which has now been retired.
References
Reference 1: https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14754959.
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