The Spanish origin of the term human geography. A Teaching Program to oppose Chairs (1872)

Abstract

The discourse of geohistory has been built on the idea that civilizations are spaces. Try to understand the humanization of the Earth based on the two basic dimensions of human existence, space and time. In the more recent past, humanization has accelerated, fueled by the industrial revolution. An academic discipline, called Historical Geography, has tried to understand the world and to explain it in accordance with the forces that transformed it. This degree of coherence was called Rational Geography, but the term that finally prevailed was that of Human Geography. Well-known European geographers have so far been given pre-eminence in the use of the term human geography, since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But with the knowledge of the Teaching Programming that a professor from the Central University of Madrid, Manuel María del Valle y Cárdenas, presented in 1872 to oppose a Chair in Historical Geography, it is shown that the term was already used in Spain three decades before.