Population Geography

Roots and Growth of Population Geography

The benchmark in the development of population geography is often cited as the 1950s, after Glenn Trewartha gave his presidential address in 1953 to the Association of American Geographers. However, the roots of population geography can be traced back several centuries earlier. While Trewartha's address was a defining moment in the development of population geography as a subdiscipline of geography, there were before him others who had been working in this field elsewhere, particularly in Germany, France, Britain, [Page 2246]and Russia. These precursors to the modern subdiscipline of population geography concentrated on the examination of population statistics, population mapping, and the study of human elements in geography.

By the 1800s, the discipline of geography had experienced great improvements in its methods, such as the introduction of statistical methods, quantitative indices, and better cartographic techniques. These improvements required the existence of high-quality data, which were in short supply at that time. Thus, geographers and cartographers throughout Europe, and particularly in Germany, banded together to begin compiling and evaluating different sources of quantitative data. The leading geographic and cartographic center was the Geographische Anstalt Justhus Perthes in Gotha, Germany. These data were then used to compile maps that depicted, among other things, the sizes of settlements with respect to their population. These early private efforts at compiling data were then taken up by the League of Nations and later the United Nations and the member states of these institutions. However, the seeds of population geography had been sown in these early periods, and to this day, geographers continue to supplement government statistics by gathering their own population data during field investigations.

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