Historical geography
Topic: Human Geography: Nature, Scope and Approaches · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Human Geography: Nature and Scope"
Meaning
Historical geography is a sub-field of social geography. Its sister discipline is history. It rebuilds the geography of past times and traces how places and landscapes changed over time. It studies old trade routes, old town plans, past land use and how settlements grew or declined. It helps explain why today's places look the way they do.
Example
Uttarapatha was an ancient trade route across the northern plains of India. It ran from the Gangetic plain towards the north-west. Historical geography maps routes like this, and its southern partner Dakshinapatha, to show how trade shaped where towns grew.
Don't confuse with
- History: history joins events together across time, which is called temporal synthesis. Historical geography asks where things were and how places changed. It keeps space at the centre.
Related concepts
- Social geography
- Cultural geography
- Gender geography
- Medical geography
- Geography of leisure
- Geography of social well-being