Treatise on the Comparative Geography of Western Asia

James Rennell (1742-1830) could be claimed as the father of historical geography. After a long career at sea and in India, during which he had learned surveying and cartography, he returned to England, and entered the circle of Sir Joseph Banks, who encouraged him to widen the his interests to include the geography of the ancient world. This two-volume work was published posthumously in 1831: Rennell had been working on the topic for many years, and had published a part of his findings in 1814, as Observations on the Topography of the Plain of Troy, also reissued in this series. The area covered in the treatise is a wide one, from Egypt to the Danube and from the Aegean to the Caspian Sea. In Volume 1, Rennell lays out his geographical findings, and begins to discuss the relations of the modern to the ancient world.