Britain and the British Seas

Abstract

THIS important contribution to geographical literature is, we believe, the first effort to present a complete geographical description of the British Isles in accordance with modern views, complete, however, rather in comprehensiveness of scope than in exhaustiveness of detail. The work strikes us as literature—clothing in dignified and continuous form the theories and conclusions of many workers—rather than science, which in the existing state of geographical knowledge demands more critical treatment of controversial matters, and more direct contact with original data. The author excels in broad generalisations, and he has a happy knack of setting essential facts in striking lights, so that they are forced on the attention of the reader and remain fixed in his memory. It is impossible, of course, that any one man could be an independent authority on all the subjects which have to be dealt with in a geographical description; but Mr. Mackinder has got up his case so thoroughly that it is only by the smoother running of his chariot wheels where he enters on the domain of human, and especially of historical, affairs that we are led to suspect which are his most familiar studies.

Britain and the British Seas.

By H. J. Mackinder, Reader in Geography in the University of Oxford. Pp. xvi + 378. (London: William Heinemann, 1902.)