ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

“Centres of Dispersal & Mobile Biogeographies in the First Half of the Twentieth Century”

• In Event: Histories of Biogeography Part 2

English Abstract

Across a range of different fields, the first half of the twentieth century saw the resurgence of the idea of migration and expansion from assumed ‘centres of dispersal’ as key forces in human and natural history. From William Diller Matthew’s notions of the interactions between ‘climate and evolution’ as central to life’s history, to Nikolai Vavilov’s proposed ‘centres of origin’ for the major agricultural crops, to Grafton Elliot Smith’s ‘hyper-diffusionism’ seeing the origin of all human civilization in ancient Egypt, to Henry Fairfield Osborn’s notions of the prehistoric conquest of the world by elephants marching out from Africa, the idea of movement from centres of origin cut across understandings of the human and the animal.
In this paper, I will present some examples of this, thinking about the similarities and differences between some early twentieth century ideas of centres of dispersal, and why this should have been such a common motif at this time. The paper will also think about how this emphasis on mobility and movement interacted with established ideas in biogeography, of delineated ‘provinces’ defined by characteristic fauna and flora (and often human cultures too). In doing so, it will think about how movement and stasis, and the valuation of particular places, shifted across the animal and the human sciences.

Author

• Chris Manias, King's College London