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Clark, Andrew(1911–1975)

Andrew Hill Clark was a Canadian-born historical geographer who is widely regarded as the father of the subdiscipline in North America. Clark's career at the University of Wisconsin was cut short when he succumbed to cancer at the age of 64. Clark's development as a historical geographer took a circuitous path but ultimately led to teaching positions at the University of California at Berkeley, Rutgers University, and the University of Wisconsin. It was here that the evolution of his understanding of historical geography became most apparent. More important, perhaps, was his contribution to the discipline through supervision of 19 doctoral dissertations. Many of his students, including David Ward, Cole Harris, James Lemon, Robert Mitchell, and Arthur Ray, became prominent historical geographers in their own right.

Clark earned a bachelor's degree in 1930 at McMaster University and later enrolled at the University of Toronto, completing his master's degree in 1938. He then received a fellowship to pursue doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with Carl Sauer. A 2-year teaching position at Canterbury University in New Zealand led to a dissertation on the impact of the introduction of plants and animals by Europeans to South Island, which he completed in 1944. His first academic position was at Rutgers, where he became chair of the geography department in 1949. Two years later, he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he taught until his death in 1975.

Clark's Major Monographs

During his career, Clark wrote three significant monographs and numerous articles on the impacts of European overseas colonization, served as the editor of the Historical Geography of North America series, and was the principal founder of the Journal of Historical Geography.

Clark's first book, The Invasion of New Zealand by People, Plants, and Animals (1949), provided a synopsis of the environmental changes brought to South Island by British settlers and their plants and animals. The book broke new ground, according to Donald Meinig, by viewing colonization as a process that transformed both the land and the newcomers. In Three Centuries and the Island: A Historical Geography of Settlement and Agriculture in Prince Edward Island (1959), Clark used evidence from more than 1,200 maps to document the changing character of the island through time. The uniformity of the island's climate and land-forms made possible a comparative analysis of the agricultural practices of different cultural groups.

His final book, Acadia: The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760, published in 1968, explores the evolution of Acadia as a region and studies its inhabitants, the Acadians, a French-speaking people who created distinct geographic patterns prior to their dispersal by the British in 1760. It was the Acadians’ use of this distinct environment that played an important role in the development and evolution of this region.

Contributions to the Discipline

In 1954, Clark authored the chapter on historical geography in American Geography: Inventory and Prospect, which remained the seminal work on the evolution of the subdiscipline for 20 years and provided an assessment of the field in North America at that time. Clark concluded with a plea for more emphasis on the study and teaching of historical geography and training of students in historical geography to ensure the entire discipline's vitality.

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