Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)
BOOK REVIEWS - Davis D. Joyce: D. W. Meinig: The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. Volume 2: Continental America, 1800—1867. Yale University Press, 1993. 636 pp
Just what does a geographical perspective on history entail? To begin, it should be noted that it entails an interdisciplinary approach (history/geography) which should have a great deal of appeal for people in American Studies. It is historical geography. It is not history. It is not geography. It is both. And more. To flesh this out a bit, what does Meinig say about his approach? Not enough, unfortunately, as he made a decision not to repeat, from his first volume, his "succinct statement of ... views on the nature of geography and history, relationships between these fields, and a few basic geographic principles that inform this entire project" In that volume, he had written: "Geography is not just a physical stage for the historical drama, nor just a set of facts about areas of the earth; it is a special way of looking at the world." Clearly, Meinig is not a crude geographical determinist he emphasized that "by geographic character, structure, and system," he meant not "the determination of history by the fundament of nature" but rather "the human creation of places and of networks of relationships among them." If Meinig's approach still seems a bit vague, it should help to describe the book itself. Continental America consists of four parts: "Extension: The Creation of a Continental Empire," "Expansion: The Growth of a Continental Nation," "Tension: The Sundering of a Federation," and "Context: The United States in North America circa 1867." The four parts are very uneven in length: "Extension" and "Expansion" cover the mass of the book with just over 200 pages each; "Tension" is only about half that; and "Context," really just a conclusion, is only about 25 pages. Each part begins with a "Prologue," briefly but brilliantly introducing what is to come. Meinig includes an extensive bibliography. And, as might be expected in such a work, illustrations play a major role; there are 86 of them, of which some will be mentioned later. As an example of Meinig's prologues, here is the one for the first part, "Expansion," in its entirety: The United States began in a spacious frame —the world's largest republic, obviously rich in potential if as yet modest in 174
