Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Alison E. Martin. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh (2018), 268 pages, £80.00 hardcover Publication date: Available online 2 August 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Charles W.J. Withers

The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History, Hilda Kean, Philip Howell (Eds.). Routledge, Abingdon (2018), 560 pages, £140 hardcover Publication date: Available online 30 July 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Ben Garlick

Power, Political Economy, and Historical Landscapes of the Modern World, Christopher R. DeCorse (Ed.). State University of New York Press, Albany, New York (2019), 418 pages, US$95.00 hardcover Publication date: Available online 27 July 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Andrew Sluyter

Shifting urban namescapes: street name politics and toponymic change in a Romanian(ised) city Publication date: Available online 9 July 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Mihai Stelian Rusu Abstract Street names express the spatial materialisation of nominative discourses articulated and deployed by the powerful in their politicisation of the urban landscape with self-legitimising ideological values, political symbols and historical narratives. Using an approach grounded upon the theoretical principles of critical toponymies, this paper sets out a longitudinal perspective on the politics of street nomenclature in Hermannstadt/Sibiu (Romania). For this purpose, a dataset comprising the complete historical record of street names in Sibiu between 1829 and 2018 was constructed. The analysis focuses on capturing the ethnopolitics played out at the level of the city's street names through the dual toponymic means of naming and renaming. Subsequently turning to a cross-sectional and comparative approach, the paper then explores the spatialisation of post-communist toponymic change. The statistical analyses performed on these data reveal how the streetscape became a canvas for political authorities' attempts to inscribe and reinscribe ethnicity onto urban space.

Settlers as Conquerors: Free Land Policy in Antebellum America, Julius Wilm. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart (2018), 284, €52 hardcover Publication date: Available online 4 July 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Michael Yoder

Editorial Publication date: Available online 3 July 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Miles Ogborn

Pekedamkam: frontierism and the unearthing of indigenous landscapes in Val-d'Or, Canada Publication date: Available online 2 July 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Caroline Desbiens, Bastien Sepúlveda Abstract This article focuses on the cultural landscape of Val-d’Or (Quebec, Canada) to assess how the geographical and historical erasure of indigenous peoples is materialised in frontier places. Val-d’Or is an industrial mining town of about thirty-two thousand people in Quebec's middle north, near the Ontario border. Although Val-d’Or is situated in the unceded territory of the Quebec Anishinabeg, known as Anishinabeg Aki, references to the ‘pioneering’ activities of migrants to the region dominate its iconography, subsuming preexisting indigenous territorialities and understandings of the land. Evidence of this is found in the urban landscape: whether through the distinct silhouette of the old Lamaque mine headframe, remnants of the Bourlamaque company village, or the large number of place names with a reference to gold, the space of Val-d’Or functions as a comprehensive geosymbol of frontierism via mineral extraction. Our analysis demonstrates not only that indigenous people never vacated these lands, but that they are willing to inscribe their presence in the mining landscape as a symbol of cohabitation and reconciliation. Taking a critical perspective on this ‘resurgent’ landscape, we explore the potentialities and limitations of decolonisation through hybrid place iconographies, especially as they relate to areas associated with industrialism, resource extraction and the idea of the frontier.

Humanism and Empire: The Imperial Ideal in Fourteenth-century Italy, Alexander Lee. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2018), 464 pages, UK£70, hardcover Publication date: Available online 29 June 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): António Ferraz de Oliveira

Debating water purity and expertise: the chlorination controversy in Vancouver during the Second World War Publication date: Available online 29 June 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Matthew Evenden Abstract Since its founding in 1886, Vancouver, Canada, has drawn on water supplies from the coastal mountains around the city. City founders and boosters claimed that the water was pure and soft and promoted the quality of the local water as one of the city's defining features. During the Second World War, bacteriological testing identified elevated contamination levels and a major public debate ensued over how to ensure pure water supplies. Regional water managers and civic politicians rejected the evidence as unrelaible and cultivated public opposition to chlorination. The federal government, by contrast, sought to impose water chlorination to ensure public safety and as a war measure. At the heart of the debate lay questions of evidence and truth as well as lay and expert understandings of water purity. While expert opinion disagreed about the best measures of quality and the appropriate regime of treatment, public debate highlighted the mixed views on federal intervention, local control and the legitimacy of science and expertise in the heightened context of wartime.

As nearly as may be: estimating ice and water on the Niagara and St. Lawrence Rivers Publication date: Available online 26 June 2019 Source: Journal of Historical Geography Author(s): Daniel Macfarlane Abstract This article looks at the bilateral U.S.-Canada remaking of the St. Lawrence River and Niagara River/Falls during the twentieth century for hydropower and navigation. Utilizing a range of archival records from various governments and organizations, and an envirotech approach, I focus on the role of estimation for controlling water and ice formation on these iconic waterways. The engineers employed an iterative ‘cut and try’ approach which relied upon considerable place based knowledge of the local Niagara and St. Lawrence environments, which was then used to generate synoptic models that served as the basis for remaking those very environments. But the gap between local and abstract expertise often resulted in uncertainty. To deal with cases where they had only approximate knowledge, engineers and bureaucrats used the qualifying phrase ‘as nearly as may be’. Not only did this allow them to proceed in the face of uncertainty, but it required experts to incorporate flexibility into their plans.