Oskar Spate
| Oskar Hermann Khristian Spate | |
|---|---|
| Born |
30 March 1911 London |
| Died | 29 May 2000 (aged 89) Canberra |
| Occupation | geographer |
| Awards | Charles P. Daly Medal (1968) |
Oskar Hermann Khristian Spate (30 March 1911 – 29 May 2000) was a geographer best known for his role in strengthening geography as a discipline in Australia and the Pacific.
Spate was born to a German father and an English mother in the Bloomsbury district of London, England. During the First World War, his father was interned as a German national and Spate fled to Iowa in the United States. He returned to England in 1919, where he developed an early interest in geography and history. He went on to study at St Catharine's College, Cambridge University in the 1930s. It was during this period that many of Spate's characteristic personality traits revealed themselves: he studied both English as well as Geography, thus cementing a deeply humanistic tendency that would become obvious in his future thinking. His irreverence and sense of humor was also manifest as well – he joined a Communist cell but was thrown out for his frivolity. He was later to claim that he could be 'solemn but not serious'. His doctoral dissertation was on the historical geography of London from 1801 to 1851.
Spate's dissertation was admired, but his strong political beliefs made an academic career in England unlikely. After a year as a tutor in Reading, he took up a position at the University of Rangoon in Myanmar (then Burma) in 1937. There he became interested in the colonial struggle for independence, and produced a steady stream of high-quality work on the geography of Myanmar. When World War II broke out, Spate joined he army as a volunteer and was seriously injured in the first Japanese raid on the Rangoon airport. He was evacuated to India, where he recuperated, wrote poetry, and served in the unusual capacity of a military censor. In 1944, he moved to the Inter-Service Topographical Department in New Delhi (and later Kandy, Sri Lanka) where he was a major in charge of the section of the office dealing with Burma.
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