Colm Lavery

Racial mapping during the Progressive Era played into the political narratives of eugenic intervention and immigration restriction. This article argues that the racial cartographic work of the Yale geographer and prolific eugenicist Ellsworth Huntington was both developed within and contributed to this racist milieu. Huntington’s middle-class and educated upbringing, his familial history, and his expertise as a well-travelled geographer all conspired to shape his views on eugenics, race, and immigration. By applying the critical cartographic theories of John Brian Harley, Denis Wood, Heather Winlow, and others, I show that Huntington’s racial maps were a product of his cultural and political environment. The success of a map’s impact was often due to maps being seen as objective depictions of spatial variation. Indeed, for Huntington they performed an essential role in communicating and portraying racial information. But, as I argue, they were susceptible to bias, misunderstanding, ...

Recently historians of eugenics have turned their attention toward the locations where eugenics was disseminated and practiced. Continuing in this tradition, this article investigates the role of the Harvard geographer and climatologist Robert DeCourcy Ward as a leading member of the Immigration Restriction League of Boston between 1893 and 1921. I argue that the cultural history of the New England region and the evolving political and social landscape shaped eugenic thinking and thus 'restrictionist' discourse. In that sense, eugenic proclamations can be studied geographically as they often reflect the political and social conventions of their place and time.