AN ILLUSTRATION OF GEOGRAPHICAL WARFARE: BOMBING OF THE DIKES ON THE RED RIVER, NORTH VIETNAM *

[...] Geography, as one mode of representing the world, is inevitably involved with ideological issues. Mass media continue to project geographical clichés and images; one notes, for example, how landscapes figure largely in films and advertisements. The kind of geographical knowledge taught in schools and repeated by students does not, at first glance, appear to have much practical import. Geographical discourse, influenced by the master-student pedagogical model of the late 19 th century, is not the only possible form for geographical reflection. Long before it was addressed to students, geography was addressed to kings, princes, diplomats, and military leaders. As a concise method of describing space, in both its human and physical characteristics (as we conventionally classify them), geography became transposed into terms amenable to management by the State, in the form of social organization and control, and also of warfare.