Abstract

In a lecture given in 1918, the Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, William Jackson Pope, stressed the significance of what he termed ‘chemical geography’.

As an advisor to the imperial wartime government, Pope argued for the geopolitical importance of specific chemicals and minerals that were considered vital for the conduct of war. However, his proposal to establish a field of chemical geography was never taken up.

In this talk, I consider how the idea of a chemical geography might be rethought critically, in an era of both heightened geopolitical competition over the control of specific chemical resources such as rare earths, and growing international concern with what the UN Environment Programme has called the ‘chemical and waste crisis’.