The Life and World of Francis Rodd, Lord Rennell (1895-1978): Geography, Money and WarFrancis Rodd's life is interesting for the way it connected the worlds of geography, international finance, politics, espionage, and wartime military administration. Rodd was a generalist in an age of growing specialisation; he had an instinct for problem-solving, which he applied in a range of areas. He was both a pragmatist and a man of strong convictions, and in relation to African society a traditionalist as well as a moderniser. His life, interesting in itself for what it tells us about British geography, banking and military government, is also a window onto British society at a time of great change. More specifically, Rodd's claim to fame lies in two fields in particular: geography and military government. Geography was in the family; he was a direct descendant of the cartographer and oceanographer James Rennell (1742-1830), who was for a time Survey-General of the East India Company. His first trip to the Mountains of Aïr in what is now Niger, took place in 1922. His gravestone in the Welsh border town of Presteigne contains a saying in the Tuareg language of Tamasheq 'Naught by good', reflecting the fact that he always felt connected to this remote desert region. A product of Eton and Balliol College Oxford, he spent a year with the Royal Field Artillery in Northern France 1914-15, before moving to work in Italy and North Africa--including intelligence duties. He then worked for a time in the Foreign Office (1919-24); and it was from there that he took time out to do this first Saharan expedition. His acclaimed book--still admired to this day--on the Tuareg, People of the Veil (1926), was the result. A second expedition to the Sahara in 1927 earned him the Royal Geographical Society's Founders' Medal in 1929. Later he was President of the Royal Geographical Society as it re-established its post-war agenda (1945-48). In old age, he was increasingly preoccupied with Welsh border geography and the agriculture of Western Australia |
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The Life and World of Francis Rodd, Lord Rennell (1895-1978): Geography ... Philip Boobbyer No preview available - 2022 |