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Geography and Image Regions Geography and Image Regions James W. Watson Although geography is about land, it is derived from the land of America: the myth of America was re- people. Therefore, geographers must pay increasing flected in the American scene. attention to people, and to what men hope and want In New England men wanted the land to be the from the land. A country is the mind of its people base for a new society, formed by compact «on just made real in the land. As a result, perception and and equal laws for the general good» to which, ac¬ understanding are needed to set it forth. Geography cording to Bradford, «everyone would give due is an imaginative art, as well as an exacting science. Submission and obedience.» Yet this society, agreed Unless that is realized, « a countryside can be bu- on by all, was for the advancement of each, so that ried in its geography books as dead as a doornail», every man could work for «his owne perticuler, as C. E. Montague warned us. A geographer can be and... in that regard trust to themselves» so concerned with the facts of a place, he loses its (Bradford W., History of Plymouth Plantation, spirit. This may result from equating reality with London, 1650, quoted in Miller P. and Johnson the impersonal, whereas reality can be the essence T. H., eds., The Puritans, I, 102, 105). There grew of the personal. A region lives in the mind that is up a basic duality, between individual interest and aware of it. Thus one way of getting at a region group responsability, that was to colour the whole would be to discover «the highly personal sense of geography of New England. The prevailing lands¬ it», expressed through the mental images of those cape was that of the «compact, of land arranged into who live with and perceive it and, from their con- townships, centred in «towns» governed by «town- cepts, help to create or preserve it. meetings», that of group movement into the land, Such things have concrete form, they imprint them- the gathering of settlers in group Settlements, and selves on the landscape, they make their own geo¬ of the group Organization of duties. However, a graphy. For instance, comparing Liverpool with sturdy and growing individualism challenged com¬ Manchester, Montague comes on minor but signi- munal control, and led to the rise of separate and ficant differences in their trading establishments often isolated farms, individual businesses, and ci¬ due to their different images of trade. «The charac- ties stamped with the individual search after Status. ters of brick and stone», he says, «speak the inten- Thus it was that the ideals people had for America tions of the minds behind them»: it is the mind that came to create the American scene.These ideals over matters (Montague C. E., The Right Place. Phoenix time built up a myth about America which, as this edn., London, 1928, pp. 190-192). Thus what a author has tried to show elsewhere, then shaped the geographer might well concern himself with is the American reality. The geography of America is mind behind the scene - that is, with the image-re- rooted at least as much in this myth about the land gions that make «the delicious differences» behind as in the land itself. (Watson J. W., «Image Geo¬ the world. graphy: the myth of America in the American Many attempts have been made to depict the geo¬ scene», Presidential address, Geography Section, graphy of North America. The scholarly, interes- British Association for the Advancement of Science, ting, and distinguished geography by Hans Boesch Adv. of. Sei., 27, 1970-71). For example, the men¬ differs appreciably from the one this author has tal climate has been as important as the physical contributed. Why? Not because the facts differ but climate. This is stressed by Cash in his study of the because the points of view are not the same. Fur¬ American South where he says: «There have arisen ther, if this author were to write another account, people to teil us that the South is distinguishable it would be different again, because he would now from New England or the Middle West only by such look for the image that each region has for Ameri- matters as the greater heat... Nobody, however, cans, and vest his regions not in rocks and rivers, has ever taken them seriously. And rightly!» The rainfall and resources but in the minds of men. South is not a condition of land but a State of mind There was an America in the mind even before the (Cash W. J., The Mind of the South, Vintage bks., British set foot in America. There was an image of New York, 1941, p. 1). what people wanted of the new world before the Cash is right. It is really impossible for a geogra¬ Sarah Constant or the Mayflower ever set sail. pher to define the South in any other way than as an And this America of the mind soon came to shape image-region, an area whose character and unique- 31 ness rest in the mind alone. The South was never of slavery. When the estate owners could not get out, like the North, for «a new course of living» enough indentured labourers they turned to the use (Bradford, History): the South did not claim, like of African slaves. Thus the South quickly became the North, to be «the place where the Lord will marked by the bond and the free, unlike the North, create a new Heaven» (Johnson B., Wonder Wor- which early abolished slavery, and relied on «free» king Providence): the South did not want, like the labour. Slavery entrenched the manorial system in North, «to be a city upon a hill, the eyes of all peo¬ the South, and increased the power of the elite. It ple upon us» (Winthrop J., A Model of Christian gave even the «poor white» a sense of superiority. Charity). In fact it was, if anything, against cities! It tended to put off new immigrants from Europe Its ideal was the land, was the soil. One of its great who in the main preferred to live and work in the sons, Thomas Jefferson, wrote: «We have no towns «free» States of the North or West. of any consequence». He said this with a certain All these things still have their impact on the Sou¬ satisfaction, if not pride, because he disliked cities thern scene, which is still one of the least citified and industry. «Those who labour in the earth are areas in the United States, which still relies to a con¬ the chosen people of God», he claimed. «The pro¬ siderable extent on primary production, still has its portion which the other classes of Citizens (i. e. non- large estates, its tenant farms, its negroes in a rela- agircultural) bears in any State to that of its hus- tively subservient position, and its poor whites; the bandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its landscape is still irregulär in its divisions, roads and healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer Settlements, and still is dominated by Anglo-Saxon whereby to measure its degree of corruption. While institutions and ways. These differences between we have land to labour then, let us never wish to see New England and Virginia are not due to north- our Citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling ness and southness, to glaciated and unglaciated a distaff» (Jefferson T., Notes on the State of Vir¬ lands, to a winterstraitened or summer-rich climate, ginia, Harper); Harper Torchbook edn., New York, or anything geographers normally look on as «the 1964, pp. 157-8). environment». They result from the images men had The mind of the South was made by settlers who in of themselves and the way they expressed those Beverly's words «peopled the Colony to increase images, in the landscape. Attitüde counted for more their Estates» (Beverly R., History and Present State than latitude. And if the North and South still have of Virginia); or who came, according to Byrd, «as any validity as regions it is in these attitudes, in Adventurers out to make a very profitable Voyage» these images, these different states of mind. or simply on «the Humor to take a trip to America. The opening of the West further influenced the This Modish Frenzy being inflamed by the Char- American scene. This was the region of the common ming Account given of Virginia made many fond of man, who broke away from the Southern elite and removeing to such a Paradise» (Byrd W., The His¬ the Northern establishment, and created a world in tory of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and which «each person could work for himself». Tur¬ Carolina). The Southern mind was shaped by the ner and Webb helped to develop the myth of the patronage of «certain of the nobility, gentry, and West. Here the Americans became a new race. «In merchants» who, as Capt. Smith pointed out, back- the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were ed the first adventurers in their search for wealth Americanized, liberated, and fuzed into a mixed (Smith J., The General Historie of Virginia, bk. III). race. English in neither nationality, nor charac¬ Soon, an American gentry appeared, and the land¬ teristics» (Turner R.J., «The Significance of the scape was marked by manor houses and tenant Frontier in American History», Proc. State Hist. farms. The new gentry were not very different from Soc. Wisconsin, 1894, p.
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