Decolonization and decoloniality

Until recent times, Historical Geography was considered as a research field not particularly rich in innovative intellectual stimulations. Although classical research on the history of territories often included politically progressive or even radical works (Baker 2003; Cosgrove 1984), its main focus has traditionally been historical landscapes that were overwhelmingly located in some regions of Western Europe. Thus, for a period, historical geography seemed little attractive to critical geographers. In the UK, evidence shows that research tends to focus on the history of British rather than international or global geographies (Newman, Martin and Crawford 2022). Nevertheless, there is a growing interest in and of the ‘Global South’, with a great potential for historical geography to contribute to wider calls to decolonize geography, theory and practice (Esson et al. 2017; Radcliffe 2017). This trend can also be seen across the discipline of geography, where special attention is being paid to so-called ‘other geographical traditions’ (Ferretti 2019). That is leading to the rediscovery of authors of the past who had been marginalized by mainstream academics because they were political dissidents, or because their gender, ethnicity, language, social or national origins did not match the required standards. This has implied the rediscovery of several Latin American geographers and their neglected worldwide impact, the most famous example being that of Brazilian radical geographer Milton Santos, whose works have been recently translated into English (see Further Readings), as well as new attention to women in South American geographies (see Further Readings). Latin American geographies, including specialized networks such as Rede Brasilis, the Brazilian Network of Historical Geography and the History of Geography (see Further Readings), are growing. They increasingly call the attention of geographers from the Global North on new ideas about considering indigenous knowledges and environmental ethics as alternative to Eurocentric models as detailed below. Historically, the shift from indigenous territoriality to territorial states (see Haesbaert and Halvorsen chapter) passed through the colonization operated by European empires, but also through the successive decolonization, a phenomenon that likewise increasingly interests geographers. The differences between this kind of political decolonization and a fuller decolonial turn are explained in the following sections.