Miss Semple meets the historians: the failed AHA 1907 conference on geography and history and what happened afterwards

The year 2013 marked the sesquicentennial of the birth of Ellen Churchill Semple, at one time a towering figure in American geography. Like almost all of her geographer contemporaries in the first decade of the twentieth century, she was a stout defender of ‘geographic influences’ in history. This article examines a failed attempt by professional historians to give geographers a hearing at the American Historical Association in a critical ‘Conference’ on the relevance of geography to history, in 1907. Organized by Frederick Jackson Turner, it was the first time professional historians in America had given Miss Semple a public opportunity in which to defend her views. How and why it turned out to be an intellectual disaster, and how its major participants changed their views later, is the subject of this paper. •Discussion of the failed American Historical Association conference on geography and history (1907).•Failure of 1907 conference resulting from Ellen Churchill Semple's ‘geographic influences’ theories.•No resolution at subsequent 1907 Association of American Geographers meeting.•Examination of Semple and Turner in later years indicates shift toward Harlan Barrows' concept of ‘human adjustment’.