Michael Bateman - The Geography of Defence

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Volume 1

THE GEOGRAPHY OF DEFENCE

Edited by
Michael Bateman and
Raymond Riley

First published in 1987 by Croom Helm Ltd

This edition first published in 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1987 Michael Bateman and Raymond Riley

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-95340-6 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-315-65887-2 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-96250-7 (Volume 1) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-65940-4 (Volume 1) (ebk)

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

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The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

The Geography of Defence

Edited by Michael Bateman and
Raymond Riley

Published on the occasion of the Annual Conference of the Institute of British Geographers, Portsmouth Polytechnic, January 1987

1987 Michael Bateman and Raymond Riley
Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row,
Beckenham, Kent BR3 1AT

Croom Helm Australia Pty Ltd, Suite 4, 6th Floor,
64-76 Kippax Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010, Australia

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The Geography of defence.
1. Military geography Great Britain
2. Great Britain Military policy
I. Bateman, M. II. Riley, Raymond
III. Institute of British Geographers.
Conference (1987: Portsmouth Polytechnic)
355' .0335'41 UA647

ISBN 0-7099-3933-7

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Ltd, Kent

.

The decision to hold the 1987 Annual Conference of the Institute of British Geographers in Portsmouth presented a unique opportunity Frequently the hosts of previous IBG conferences have published a series of regional essays, concentrating on documenting the region and its development in some detail. It was felt that Portsmouth was both already well documented, with the publication of two regional atlases in 1975 and 1985, and that the processes leading to what may be termed the new geography of the region, relating to the emergence of high technology industry, were well explained in the existing literature. On the other hand, we were convinced that Portsmouth's very raison d'tre, that of a city devoted in the past to the needs of the nation's defence, with a considerable residue of that function still present, should provide the focus for a broader geographical appraisal. At the same time, a book devoted solely to Portsmouth might at best be reasonably comprehensive, but at worst and more likely, be excessively parochial. This book therefore represents a wider canvas on which the geographical impact of defence has been painted. It is firmly rooted in Portsmouth as the reader will quickly realise, but it is presented as an attempted synthesis of many of the geographical effects of national government defence policies, many of which have received little attention in the past.

Michael Bateman and Raymond Riley
Department of Geography, Portsmouth Polytechnic

Michael Bateman

It is an unfortunate fact that man has found it impossible to live in a state of peace. Instead, throughout their history, most nations have had to make elaborate preparations for their defence. Of course, it may be argued that equal efforts have been put into offensive preparations, but whatever the real purpose, expenditure on military hardware, facilities and personnel is immense. Certainly, when measured on a world scale, it is difficult to comprehend the scale of the sums involved. Some estimates suggest that the equivalent of the total Gross National Product of Africa (including South Africa) is spent annually for this purpose (Kennedy, 1974). Yet it is only recently that geographers have begun to examine the effects of this preoccupation in terms of its wider effects with particular attention being paid to the spatial economic effects of defence spending, for instance, Short (1981) and Lovering (1985).

It would of course be misleading to suggest that geography has ignored the military. The contribution of geography to warfare, as opposed to defence per se, was recognised very early and spawned texts devoted to so-called 'military geography' (e.g. Maguire, 1900). Such writings were usually devoted to the contribution which a specialist knowledge of the terrain and local conditions could make to successful battle strategies. We are told that General Sherman in the American Civil War, wrote in 1844, 'Every day, I feel more and more in need of an atlas, as the knowledge of geography in its minutest details, is essential to a true military education' (Maguire, 1900, p. 7). Much more recently, O'Sullivan and Miller have written in an introduction to a book entitled Geography of Warfare that, 'the justification for writing this book is that the fundamental strategic and tactical problems are geographical in nature' (O'Sullivan and Miller, 1983, p. 7). At least in wartime, therefore, a geographical perspective is seen to be essential to both participant and observer.