The Royal Geographical Society and the Projected London Institute of Geography 1892-1899

Of all the major school subjects, geography was perhaps the last to achieve an accredited status in the universities and secondary schools of this country. That it is now firmly established as a major academic discipline is due in no small measure to the pioneering work of a few gifted and visionary geographers. Some measure of the swiftness and completeness of their success may be grasped by the realization that, less than three-quarters of a century ago, geography worthy of the name was taught in no university and in few secondary schools throughout the British Isles. In the ranks of these pioneers must undoubtedly be included the name of Halford Mackinder. A man of many parts, though best known as a geographer, he was, in the course of his long life (i 861-1947), a geologist, historian, author, pamphleteer, administrator, imperialist, mountaineer, politician and Privy Councillor. Of a forceful and dynamic personality, he had clear and incisive ideas concerning the future development of geography in this country, and the realism and administrative ability to put them into effect. These qualities are well illustrated in the story of the pro? jected London Institute of Geography with which he was intimately connected. At the early age of 26, Mackinder had been appointed to the Readership of Geo? graphy at the University of Oxford; his task was to deliver a series of university lectures on geography, the first such in the country. Two years previously, having but recently graduated from Oxford, Mackinder had been appointed to an Extension Lectureship by his friend Michael Sadler, the secretary of the Oxford Univer? sity Extension. In the two years that had elapsed he had toured the country on its behalf lecturing on what he called 'The new geography', a personal testament of geographical faith which, refined and modified by himself and his contemporaries, was to provide the firm philosophical basis upon which the whole massive superstructure of modern geography has been erected. It was largely as a result of his Extension work, that he was appointed to the Oxford Readership. In the years that followed, Mackinder carried on his broad shoulders the dual posts of Reader in Geography at Oxford, and Extension Lecturer in the same subject. In the latter capacity, particularly during the years between 1887 and 1892, he travelled many thousands of miles across the length and breadth of the country, lecturing on 'The new geography'; in these years he was Sadler's lieutenant and right-hand man in propagating the cause of Adult Education, and it was in this con? nection that he began yet another campaign in the long-drawn-out struggle for the recognition of geography as a major academic subject, a campaign that he was to wage with great consistency and eventual, if modified, success in the years that followed

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