Jourrml of Historid

Geography. 10. 3 (1984) 229-245

The historical dimension of French geography

Paul Claval

In France. the study of history behind regional geography has suffered a long decline since the late nineteenth century. but a new historical dimension is beginning to emerge. In the nineteenth century, historians showed how much regional character owed to rernains from antiquity while historical geographers traced the history of exploration and discovery from ancient to modern times. Vidal de la Blache integrated historical reconstruction with social analysis in the study of regions. Vidals followers not only characterized the distinctiveness of regional features but also demonstrated that differences in regional ways of life were more pronounced before industrialization and urbanization than later. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, historical investigations by geographers were neither sufficiently comprehensive nor sufficiently rigorous to explain spatial patterns. Historians of the ,-Innales school obtained deeper understandings of social and economic changes and took a broader view of long-term psychological, cultural and geographical changes. Their interpretations of agrarian structures illuminated problems fundamental to the development of European civilization. In the 1970s. reacting against mechanistic analyses of spatial organization. young scholars again turned to historical geography to examine problems of social evolution. At the moment. this revival of historical interest among geographers has not attracted much attention from historians.

At the beginning of this century the fruitfulness of French geography arose from its ability to make in-depth explorations of the bonds between men and between man and his environment. In many respects geographical studies were also social and historical.Throughout the progress and the crises that have characterized the discipline for three-quarters of the century, interest in spatial patterns and curiosity about change has never faltered. One would have expected historical geography to have been cherished by a school that was so sensitive to the importance of spatial organization: it was never, in fact, at the heart of French concerns. When research in this field became systematic in Anglo-Saxon countries during the past fifty years, French geography seemed to distance itself from the field it had illuminated and in which it had shown a strong interest even if French geographers did not hide what they owed to history. There is a paradox of which foreigners are undoubtedly more conscious than Frenchmen: the logical sequence by which the significance attached to analyses of the past has been reduced is more obvious to foreigners than it is to us. It is better not to be satisfied with vague impressions but to clarify the reasons for this indifference to history which occurred intermittently over the last twenty years, and also to explain a renewed interest in the past evident at the present day. Historical geography as practised by historians In the nineteenth century, historical geography emerged before other branches of the discipline but it was then thought of only as an ancillary science
0305 -74881841030229 + 17 $03.00/O .(I 1984 Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd

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to history, a science which described the setting in which events unfolded. Scholarly work flourished: people strove to rediscover forgotten localities. to situate their findings in a historical context, to recreate vanished landscapes: this kind of research was certainly useful for historians. Exemplified by Auguste Longnons genius, it secured a place for geography in the College de France. It was by reconstituting the administrative geography of Roman Gau13 that people became aware of the incredible stability of a large part of the regional organization of our country. This implied that such research was still of interest to those people who were building a modern discipline and Pierre Foncin forcefully underlined the significance of a continuity about which Vidal de la Blachet51was more sensitive than anyone else. As long as it was regarded in this light, however, historical geography remained an accessory to history and ceased to attract a majority of geographers. It did not disappear completely. When it was practised so brilliantly by Roger Dion it was very fruitful. Dions inspiration and methods conjoined the inquiries of scholars such as Longnon and lent a geographical dimension. in the modern sense of the word, to questions posed by the evolution of administrative boundaries and frontiers,61 by the layout of former trade routes and by the choice of sites for towns,] by the nature and role played by the limes, or by the reasons leading Greeks to explore and then prompting Homer to write the OdJ,ssey in the setting of the central and western Mediterranean. At the end of the nineteenth century, geographers mostly engaged in historical research in order to deal with questions relating to the discovery of the world, its exploration and its progressive occupation. Before the triumph of the Vidalian influence this was the path that researchers often followed: they were interested in voyages, in progress in cartography and topograph Lucien Gallois thesis 7. was about Les gkographes allemands de la Renaissance9-he was not the only person to investigate travellers,tO and geographersin the old sense of the word-as mapmakers. But during the first half of the twentieth century, interest in the history of discovery declined in the French school. It took all Father de Dainvilles skill to show how geographical thought benefited from knowledge that cartographers had begun to acquire at the beginning of the modern era concerning the shape of the earth. Historical geography, inspired by history, was both ancient and interesting but marginal to the concerns of the French school of geography. A concern with change and a desire to grasp the facts of spatial organization in a historical context did not grow out of this early practice. A fresh contemplation was needed, focusing more directly on factors promoting diversity in space. Vidal de la Blache and retrospective studies of regional organization Vidal de la Blache made regional organization the central concern of geography. He had often consulted Carl Ritters work, from the time he travelled in Asia Minor preparing his thesis. He was familiar with the position that Ritter accorded to historical explanation: in a speech to the Academy of Science in Berlin on 10 January 1833, did not Ritter analyse the role of the historical factor in geography as a science? This text was extraordinarily modern in its attempt to comprehend the effects of technical changes that were occurring in early nineteenth-century Europe: distances were being reduced by improvements in sailing and by steamships and the whole concept of spatial organization was being modified. In a work whose deterministic arguments have

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often been stressed, Ritters 1833 address was fundamental because 11 demonstrated that the relationship men established with their environment was not rigid. It was changed by the adoption of innovations: it meant that geography had to be concerned with the interaction networks men were building and with the way they evolved. When Ritter was writing, there was no discipline devoted to the investigation of social facts-the term sociology was not coined until 1836, by Auguste Comte. Ritter included in his historical category all that a contemporary study would put into the social sphere. But he emphasized the role of time, a factor often ignored by modern writers. Vidal de la Blache took most of his interpretation of the connection between social forms and space from Ritters 1833 address. Y He treated the historical factor in much the same way as the man who inspired him-and Lucien Gallois 1 14who followed him very closely on this matter-classifying as historical rather than as geographical regions, all spatial constructions that resulted from the initiative of human groups and were not adapted to theit natural surroundings or were adapted to them only through a series of mediations. In French publications, the historical factor was frequently invoked to explain spatial patterns where stress was laid on the role of social organization and on cultural factors. For Vidal de la Blache and for his most faithful pupils, social analysis and historical reconstructions were by their nature intimately connected: this was an outcome of the possibilist attitude whose coherence and fruitfulness were praised by Lucien Febvre. t15] If one looks only at the present, there is a risk ot ascribing permanence to what is a fleeting moment in the development of society-and there is a risk of imbuing the environment with a power that it does not possess. Men must be aware of their environment, learn to exploit it and master it; the patterns which they give to space are limited by natural constraints, but they are never fixed. Geographical developments cannot be separated from historical understanding. Vidal de la Blache was the first person to indicate how it was possible to understand the relationships between time, groups and spatial organization. In his Principes de gCograpllie humaine W he examined critically the locations of various densities of settlement and discussed the manner in which ways of life were forged: he preferred to understand ways of life by means of the tools that were used, and to grasp the logic of their relationship with their environment by observing their basic materials-those which served to build agricultural equipment and those which were used for constructing settlements. When he analysed the regional structure of a country and drew cultural boundaries he relied on the fact that some areas displayed the same type of sociability. On this principle he divided a countr into large areas, as for example, in his Tuhlearr de la gkographie de la France 7I and as another principle of regionalization he analysed major flows which activate space. For instance, trade was the principle on which the brilliant review of Etats et nations autour de la France["' was based. In the same way, he demonstrated the changes that industry and the railways had imposed on La France de IEst.[ Vidal de la Blache was sufficiently well-versed in the historians tradition to be able to interpret travel accounts. His Marco Polopol was a testimony to this as also were his studies on the voies de commerce dans la giographie de Ptolemite and his purpuriae du roi Juba.t But this was only a minor aspect of his work, probably that which least impressed scholars who have been inspired by his example. Later on, an interest in historical geography, in the

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traditional sense, or in the history of travel and exploration almost completely evaporated. The concern that became dominant, on the other hand. was an understanding of the regional diversity of the earth, a desire to define major divisions of modern countries and to trace them to their origins, to define their role and to forecast their gradual transformation. The historical viewpoint was indispensable, as Vidal showed, if this goal was to be attained. The major theses that he directed bear witness to this fact: Demangeon investigated the origin of divisions of the Plain of Picardy3 and went back to remote antiquity and the Gallic tribes and the Gallo-Roman cities which succeeded them in order to understand their origin; he also used Longnons pioneering workP4 and commentaries this had provoked among geographers. Vacher took a similar approach to his study of Berry-- where the present unity was moulded very closely on a landscape inherited from the past. For others, for Jules Sion who was interested in eastern Normandy and its borders,l261 a return to the past was also necessary but it did not have to be as deep; in this physically homogeneous area, what was striking was a diversity 01 life styles and differing types of economic organization. In order to understand them it was necessary to immerse oneself in a France which preceded the industrial revolution, where looms and crafts were numerous in some parts of the countryside as, for example, in the Pays de Caux. It was then necessary to trace the effects of competition from new factories on dispersed workshops that were generally incapable of modernization. Camille Vallaux tried to identify the original characteristics of Lower Brittany. In order to understand Breton society and the organization of rural space, it was necessary to turn to a more distant past, that was intelligible through the history of law. The system of domaine congPable (tenancy-at-will) defined very different types of relationship from those prevailing in other French regions: it explained both the stability and the uniqueness of Breton-speaking areas. The France that Vidal de la Blache depicted in the Tableau de la gPographie de la France was the France of the Ancien Rhginze. His book was an introduction to an Histoire de France depuis 1e.v origines jusyuh la Rhvolution directed by Ernest Lavisse. Vidal knew of the fragility of the harmony that centuries of slow change had engendered between man and his environment and he was aware of the fact that industrialization was capable of destroying it: this was evident from his description of recent changes in the Nord region and from his account of the Around the mineshafts, surrounded by their birth of industrial agglomerations: strange silhouettes is the agricultural plain of Lens, rows of miners houses ranged uniformly in rows of eight or ten; sad little houses with nothing to distinguish one from another, created at a specific date to enclose the same lives multiplied like zeros in a number. Vidal did not like these new forms of human implantation; he found them artificial and constraining and he frequently mentioned this, but he realized that it was necessary to study them. The last part of his life, after the publication of the Tableau, was taken up with an analysis of those factors that had changed the organization of space.13 In regional syntheses carried out by his students, a judicious balance between past and present was maintained; as with Vidal, the goal was not to write geographies of the past. In order to justify undertakings of this kind, specific circumstances, such as an offer from a historian like Ernest Lavisse, were required. Habitual interests focused upon the present, but the reality an observer studied was made up of many layers of successive organizations which were clearly old-fashioned and continued to shape the countryside and peoples lives.

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The rural world was housed in ancient buildings, was constrained by agrarian structures whose obstinate persistence was bewildering, and functioned according to immemorial traditions. It was necessary to go to large towns or to cross more open and commercialized rural areas to see the weight of the past lifted. In the urban world, the balance was reversed: central districts bore the stamp of former times but they were surrounded by more recent developments associated with contemporary urbanization and long-distance trade following the revolution in transportation. Regional geography could not neglect the historical point of view if it was to reconstitute the pattern of features, moulded at different times as responses to forgotten logics. The regional monographs became more and more standardized in the marshalling of their materials: they were generally divided into three main parts: first, the configuration of the physical environment setting the stage on which history was played out, stressing the permanent features of the whole; second, the traditional economy led to a discovery of ways of life allowing scattered groups of people, who were poorly linked, to make use of resources in their own localities; third, the revolution in transportation and the arrival of heavy industry constituted a major break, with the disappearance of artisanal activities and the simplification of professional roles in rural society; rural depopulation followed this and the number of townspeople increased rapidly. ready to form new relationships.3 The contribution of and limits to the historical point of view in the early twentieth century History formed an integral part of regional studies but it was never practised for its own sake: the goal was not to depict the condition of space observed at a given moment nor to assess the coherence of its characteristics at that time; nor was the aim to follow logical sequences of changes or rhythms of development. History was used as a means of investigating a stratified reality. as a tool for clarifying relationships which might otherwise appear confused. Pierre Deffontaines made the most original contribution to the logic of historical reconstruction for geographical purposes. In his thesis on Les hommes et leurs travaux duns les pays de la moyenne Garonne31 he started from the present, the landscape around him, the networks of villages, small market towns and towns which structure this region today; he went back in time until he had retraced the origin of each feature. His account was retrospective, a clear indication of his objective: to unravel the complexities of the present in a world in which mere observation of contemporary conditions would not provide sufficient answers. When a geographer was interested in a society which had escaped the waves of modern transformations, one in which history had not yet quickened its pace, his path was easier: this is the feeling one has when reading Robequains or Gourous341 theses which were devoted to the Far East. In the Indochinese deltas one did not encounter two successive phases in the same social trajectory, but two worlds that were ignorant of each other yet juxtaposed. This was a perfect setting for analysing genres de vie but a historical perspective, indispensable elsewhere for understanding the origins and development of features of social and economic organization, was redundant in this region. Here geography unfolded in the stable depth of ethnology: it talked about unchanging worlds. This lent fascinating charm to geographical studies dedicated to these

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forgotten peoples and explained the inability of traditional societies, without recourse to other methods, to broach the problems of modernization, change and contact with colonizers.351 The historical perspective appears to have been linked, in the Vidalian tradition, to a need to interpret European societies as they were observed at the beginning of the century. Part of space, and certainly not a negligible part. continued to respond to the logic of past social and economic situations, but towns and a growing proportion of the rural world were in the grips of modernization and the widening of a life of exchange. The retrospective vieu was not an autonomous one, a field which could be developed for its own ends. but an essential means of understanding the state of the present world. At the beginning of the century, not all geographers adopted the Vidalian attitude to the historical method, or stuck to it. In his thesis on La p/aim picarde361 and in his regional studies, Belgique et Pa_~~.r-Ba.?~ and Il~.v britanniques,381 Demangeon used the Vidalian method in an admirable way: he used the historical component which had shaped the present, to illuminate it. In his Empire britannique 391 he offered a brilliant reconstruction of British colonial methods and colonial settlement and development. Its expansion was not isolated from forms of organization sustaining it or from economic interests promoting it: history was still important, but its role was more systematic in a study which stressed economic logic more than evolution. But in many of his other works, Demangeon avoided genetic interpretations. He dreamt of using functionalist explanations to elucidate certain geographical facts; a perfect example was his study of rural habitat.401 His typology ignored the temporal dimension and allowed us to situate the farm and its outlying buildings in a context of the whole enterprise and to discover logical reasons for their layout, but it placed rural studies on the fringes of historical analysis and rural anthropology. Jean Brunhes method showed the greatest divergence from Vidals; in reading GPographie hunzaine. Essai de class$cation positive.41 one can sense what Brunhes borrowed from German geographers at the beginning of the century. from Otto Schli_iter1421 or from Friedrich4 for example, and all that he took from ethnography and from folklore studies. 441 To a much greater extent than Vidal or any of his contemporaries, Brunhes considered geography to be a study of landscapes. The rationale of his interpretation began with an analysis of the facts of human settlement and land use. He accorded a very minor place to geography behind history, relegated to the end of his text-book after he had reviewed relationships between geography and ethnography, sociology or political science. Because Brunhes felt more keenly than most other geographers of the French school that the historical factor was often invoked as a clumsy excuse for talking about social and economic forces, he narrowed its role. In order to understand the situation of the contemporary world, he relied more heavily upon a thorough study of distributions and spatial organization than upon historical reconstructions that ignored categories important to the geographer. Max Sorres451 approach was very different from Brunhes: his conception of geography was much more evolutionary, much more burdened with a notion of the slow drift of all terrestrial things and beings-Sorre was the most Darwinian of French geographers. But like Brunhes, his search for causalities led him to examine social forces, to isolate them and to study them in their specific contexts; he avoided hollow expressions such as historical factor when he

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failed to elucidate conditions which had created one spatial pattern or another. So the historical perspective suffered during the first few decades of the century for not being the object of a sufficiently systematic study. What Vidal contributed was a certain style in the practice of geographical inquiry and in the interpretation of evidence, a kind of philosophy of man-milieu relations.Jh but he failed to elaborate fundamental categories for human geography in a way that could be communicated easily. Notions such as circulation. population density, way of life were fortunately precise enough to have inspired researchers faced with concrete problems; they were not analysed in a sufficiently detailed way for a coherent body of explanatory principles to be established. The historical point of view was still a prisoner of a set of stages too loosely codified to be ranked hierarchically and justified unambiguously. In this intellectual atmosphere the survival of a particular school of thought owed more to an oral exchange of methods than to the study of a written body of knowledge. As has always been true in such cases. there was a risk of seeing teaching impoverished and its general message wiped out by an imperfect relay system. Historical geography and the longue duree of the Annales school The place of history in Vidalian French geography was thus both considerable and fragile. It was considerable because, without it, it would not have been possible to understand spatial patterns in western Europe where the traditional and the modern were intermingled. It was fragile because the boundaries between what was really linked to a specific time period and what was explained by general social and economic forces was not sufhciently clear; in the same way. interest in past periods was not pursued in sufficient depth. Historical inspiration was extremely productive during the first decades of this century despite this ambiguous position. It revealed the remarkable stability of many facts of spatial organization: one of its major contributions was the reconstruction 01 traditional cultures, making up a large part of regional monographs. It threw light on the pattern of territorial communities parishes. pc~>.v.sometimes provinces, the layout of fields and the way they were bounded. enclosed by walls or hedges; the foundations of economic life, the role of nutritious cereals. the role of rotation and fallowing--which did not disappear in backward areas until about the end of the nineteenth century. What emerges from all this is the significance of ordinary people and their environment: beneath the splendid life of towns, beneath the events recorded in diplomatic documents, lay a deep Iaye~ of silent and slow history which, until the 1930s escaped notice by historians and then was discovered by geographers. It was not long before historians became aware of this. When Lucien Febvre began writing his thesis, Philippe II et lu Frarwhe-Comth471 he had learnt enough from Vidal to realize that a region was not simply a convenient framework for limiting a subject: it was a social reality, an entity which was conscious of its coherence and its identity; its physical diversity was a guarantee of its strength because it generated complementary economic activities. The writing of history was as much about understanding the importance of this permanence and slow change as telling the story of treaties, riots or revolutions. Since the beginning of the century. the best historians had been aware of what \cas taught in geography. At the same time economic history had discovered the importance of slow movements of conjuncture. Research had continued on this subject since Levasseur s48time, initiated by pioneer studies on the history of

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prices and salaries, but the major advance came from Simiand: he ushered in patient data collection and precise methods for reconstructing series; it was he who gave these techniques their scientific character. At the beginning of this century, these two modern directions in history were often strongly opposed, much more for personal reasons than on logical grounds. Arguing against limitations of its explanatory power, Lucien Febvre led a campaign against Simiands uncompromising positivism.50 With the founding of the Annales school in 1929, 5 the synthetic aspect and a desire to ensure a global approach that would take psychological, cultural and subjective elements into account were strongly asserted. As examples tty?,imitate, the most valued works were Marc Blochs Les rois thaumaturges and Lucien Febvres Rabelais et le problPme de Iincroyance au XVI si&le.531 But the strongest thrust was towards analysis of long-term economic movements which, until then, had been neglected by historians. In this respect. Simiands method and!the method of the Annales ceased to be antithetical. In the 1930s and 1940s m$ historians viewed the efforts of the Anna/es school as attempts to grasp the social structures and economic dimensions of events rather than as attempts to explore the history of mentalities, cultures of m ths.541It was not until the 1960s Y when Dupronts and Philippe Aries research, 51 or the work of historians such as Jean-Pierre Vernant561 on Hellenic culture and society, that this essential component of the work of the Annales school became prominent. The CaractPres originaux de Ihistoire rurale ,frangaise571and Socihth, fkodale58 had a greater impact and were copied more frequently than Les rois thaumaturges. The prevailing spirit responded more to the new interest in structures than to Blochs anthropological findings. In this field, geography still had a great contribution to make. It was through geographers reconstructions of traditional societies, elucidating social structures, forms of exploitation, characteristics of rural enterprises and the force of the environment that historians discovered the quasi-stability of worlds of the past. All evidence pointed in one direction: the masters of post-war history, those who were affected by changes in the 1930s such as Fernand Braudel and Georges Duby, 601 derived many of their topics of inquiry, their intellectual development and their methods from the geography they had learnt. When he analysed the Mkditerranie et le monde mhditerranPen 2 le!poque de Philippe II,@ Braudel began in the same way as his teacher Lucien Febvre had begun for the Franche-Comte, with a picture of the structures of the environment, of the context and of ways of life that explained the daily rhythms and possibilities open to people in the sixteenth century. In doing this, he rediscovered Vidal de la Blaches most valuable intuitions and he gave a most searching geographical introduction to Mediterranean civilizations. He then turned to an analysis of the slow pulsations of conjuncture-he was exploiting the contribution of the Simiand school in order to situate events at the end of the sixteenth century within temporal limits, in the same way that he had just situated them in their spatial setting, before beginning to analyse purely political events and explaining the awesome struggle between Turks and Christians. Geography formed half the intellectual store that Braudel mobilized in 1949; the other half he borrowed from a knowledge of economic cycles and slow economic changes. It was not until later, during the 1950s that he placed more emphasis on cultural events and on anthropology. But he always considered anthropology as belonging to a less significant superstructure than economic or social

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infrastructures.@] In Braudels work and in French history generally in the 1940s and 1950s a series of Fresuppositions were close to Marxist postulates and were inspired by Marxism, * they restricted the opening created by the Annals and treated culture as if it were outside the field of investigation. Geographical influence thus played a decisive part in the emergence of the main current of the Annales school for more than a generation. Georges Dubys641 recent statement bears this out. Research on agrarian structures and landscape history have greatly benefited from this union.

The historical geography of agrarian landscapes

The main thrust of French geography in the first thirty years of this century was directed towards the identification of regional reality. Some people began to tire of the repetitive character of studies that did not lead to any generalizations. Their only really positive contribution was to reveal a widespread and remarkable stability in certain features of spatial organization especially in rural areas. Did not investigations need to be centred on this point if a threshold was to be crossed and a fresh advance in knowledge made? A shared area of inquiry developed on the margins of history and geography, the extent of which is shown by the almost simultaneous publications by Dion,th5Roupnelt and Blocht at the beginning of the 1930s. This orientation was very successful among geographers: after all, did not the rural landscape constitute for them a convenient and undivided field of study? Was it not dealing with problems that were fundamental to an understanding of all civilizations? They became specialists of permanent and quasi-permanent elements in rural landscapes. At the same time, the historical perspective changed its meaning for geography: it ceased to be a way merely of helping to explain the present. It was interested in the past for its own sake. Did we see geographers launching into the reconstruction of geographical characteristics of one period or another? No, historians such as Braudel occasionally carried out this type of study but researchers with other ambitions were not tempted to follow. What they aimed for was an understanding of structures, of those elements of reality linked in a system that did not change independently of one another and ceased to change at all for long periods. The periods of creation and dissolution of spatial structures were also important but fewer studies were dedicated to them. Only a minority of geographers chose to specialize in this new field.sOthers continued to devote too much effort to understanding the present to be attracted by this kind of approach. Those who wished to be historical geographers faced numerous difficulties: the documents needed for reconstructing early stages in the development of French agrarian systems were scarce because rural settlement was mostly old; at the time it began, few archival materials were kept. If one were to go beyond generalities one had to learn a historians professional skills: until 1945 that did not pose a problem because historians and geographers were trained in almost identical ways, Since then they have diverged. This has strengthened the position of historians in a field in which they were relative newcomers. After 1950, the group oriented towards the analysis of landscapes and agrarian structures ceased to recruit many young geographers. Research continued, worthwhile publications69 were written, but interest had moved elsewhere.

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The decline and rebirth of historical geography Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the decline of the historical point of view was bound up with the logic inherent in the development of our discipline and with changes in French society throughout the period. To most French geographers. history was just a tool required to understand the present. The place accorded to historical inquiry depended on the deep structures of French society and of French territorial organization, on the coexistence in the same environment of forms of society and planning responding to different principles. At the beginning of the century, regional geography dealt with a modernizing society. but one in which many islands of tradition persisted. It was because of the existence and survival of these relics that it was necessary to look back into the past. In a prophetic article, Poiriert7 called attention in the 1930s to the dissolution of forces that had shaped the western bocages, exposing them to the risk of being replaced by other forms of organizing rural areas. Shortly after the war. this problem became crucially urgent. With a wave of modernization. accelerating from the early 1950s the retrospective view that geographers had been accustomed to taking became redundant: in order to understand contemporary French problems it was no longer necessary to go back to a pre-industrial past. That stable world had been shaken up gradually by transport developments and by the development of mechanization and urbanization: the old social order was obsolescent and would soon disappear. Agricultural systems that seemed to have defied time were dying. An entirely contemporary history provided all that was required to understand the massive transformations that were to be seen everywhere. Pierre Flatrest dated Finisteres second and most radical agricultural revolution from the 1950s. What happened earlier? He was familiar with that, but it hardly explained the size of farms or prevailing attitudes in the mentality of the society. Such an analysis invited reflection: Flat& was acclaimed as one of the masters of the history of landscapes and agrarian structures. In the 1950s many young geographers regretted that geography was not more useful.721 Whilst the country was changing, whilst everywhere people were planning for the future, geographical research was still oriented towards a retrospective approach, although some scholars were beginning to turn away from that path. In the 1960s Pierre Georget7i insisted on not taking backward glances to a world of the past, and many of his students considered that geography could and should be exclusively a science of the present.74 A historical point of view, nevertheless, remained valid as long as scholars adhered to the possibilist philosophy, still dominant among French geographers. Most researchers realized that what was in question was the way of conceiving a geographical explanation rather than the period to which it was applied. Geographers became much more attentive to processes. mechanisms and methods of establishing and evolving territorial organizations: they paid most attention to economic and social forces at work in different areas in the past and in the present. In Les campagnes toulousairz~s, Roger Brunet questioned the cause of underdevelopment. The natural environment in this part of France was not particularly hostile, the land prospered in early times, but it was unable to share in the large nineteenth-century growth: was man to blame? Individually. no. but yes, if all the ties guiding decisions are taken into account. In the same period, Raymond Dugrand was trying to explain how the Midi countryside had

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been affected as a result of exploitation by towns and why, in this area also. agricultural im rovement did not lead to a rapid take-off. Villes et campagnes en Bas- Languedoc P 76 recounts a failure-or a half-success-of the modern culture of the vine. The initial attempts to modernize the historical view were both interesting and disappointing. Geographers were conscious of the fact that they were looking for a more coherent body of principles; the period had passed when they could be satisfied with imprecise Vidalian notions, but they still did not know what to turn to. In the 1950s and 1960s most people turned to Marxism without obtaining any really convincing results. A new geography in an Anglo-Saxon style was progressively introduced and many workers moved towards a formal theoretical mode of thinkin . They attempted to specify what was included in of economic the area of the region,[ # first to g ive a clear indication mechanisms, I then to indicate social mechanisms I in order to gain an understanding of territorial formation and evolution. Micro-economics, macro-economics, sociology, anthropology and political science were drawn upon one by one. Empirical research was influenced by these disciplines and the problematic was progressively enriched. Jean-Claude Boyer Xodescribed the irreducible originality of the Dutch urban network: many models that have been dreamt up since Christallers to account for the regularity of the urban network were incapable of explaining a particularly early urban concentration which eluded geometrical reductionism. But questions that models led Boyer to ask pushed his thesis much further than most other research towards discovering the forces at work and the conditions for change. The new French geography continues, in this vein. to be faithful to the Vidalian tradition: it uses history to elucidate the present- but it focuses to ;I greater extent on towns, on economy and society, rather than on rural landscapes and is concerned more with change than with stable conditions. With the questioning of models of rapid growth and a growing concern to preserve more effectively the personality of places, young people have again decided to dedicate much of their research to historical aspects of the discipline. At present, historical geography is divided between parallel groups: a few are still working on the history of agrarian structures and landscapes, others on the evolution of territorial structures and urban networks, and some with problems of social evolution.x Dion remained aloof from the main streams of research. During his tenure ot a chair at the College de France, he devoted a good deal of time to the old historical geography of travel. exploration and of the classical world. This work is fascinating, but it had little impact on geographers. His interest in frontiers, in boundaries and in urban foundations and developmentXdwindled in the 1950s. The last book he wrote in the Vidalian historical tradition was the Histoirr de Ia vigne et du vin en France.x41 It was both a critical assessment of old theses on the location of vineyards and also a clear demonstration of the possibilities of social interpretations of viticulture and related problem,. Following this book, a small but active group of geographers emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to study questions in the historical geography of vine growing in France.lX If, compared with twenty years ago, more people are now working on historical problems, the field is no longer perceived as unified. Inspiration comes sometimes from the old nineteenth-century historical geography. sometimes from the Vidalian tradition. and more and more from growing dissatisfaction

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with the systematic developments of the 1970s. Methods are partly indigenous indicated by a concern with field work and archaeological investigation. Methods have also been borrowed from history. but they are few. since relations betwen geography and history are mainly one-way-- from geography to history. The first period of the Annules school was deeply influenced by the geographical training of its leaders, including Febvre, Braudel and Duby-and geography still plays an important part in the formative years and early writings of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. 861 New relations have now been forged: they rely on a less positivist conception of social science not only in geography but also in history. The lived dimension in the new historical geography Studies of the meanings given to places where we live have quite a long history in France, but in a very particular manner: from the end of the eighteenth tX7and discussions of the identity of century and the surveys of Giraud-Soulavie, regions by early nineteenth-century geologists, attention has shifted from natural regions to their popular names, the names ofpcl_rs: people were struck by the persistence of ancient names and by the way they reflected the natural conditions of our country. The interest kindled by students of folklore did not progress as far as might have been expected because Lucien GalloisXH1 condemned this type of research: in a dogmatic tone, he proclaimed that geographers had to dedicate themselves to more scientific investigations. For a generation antiquarian inquiries into place names were discouraged, but the habit of collecting evidence from local witnesses, both in the present and from records surviving from the past, was not lost. New life was injected into this work at the beginning of the 1960s following the example set by historians of mentalities-a stream that rose at first independently of the Annules school, along lines suggested fifty years earlier by Huizinga and thirty years ago by Philippe Aries. From the end of the 1960s when Blochs Rois thaurnaturges and Febvres Ruheluis were rediscoveredtx9 the history of mentalities came to dominate research by the Annulistes. In West Africa, Jean Gallais learnt about the links and territorial organization in the inland delta of the Niger through ways in which different ethnic groups spoke about it in their languages. In Normandy, Armand Fremont tried to paint a picture of Norman livestock farmers, not as grey anonymous businessmen, but as colourful, crafty husbandmen and horsedealers. He acquired the habit of seeing the land through the eyes of the people he was studying. Little by little he gained a taste for similar studies, but in the past. He revisited the Pays de Caux and the Rouen countryside through the eyes of Mme Bovary. or in search of the life of Jean Riviere, a mad parricidal man whose confession allowed Fremont to penetrate the mental world of groups from the bocuge, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at a time when both individuals and society were destitute and narrow-minded. Little by little the whole life of a province, the way in which groups lived, was recalled: an historical geography of mentalities was also a historical geography of classes and how they perceived space.941 It is obvious that this history was close to currents now fashionable in the Annales school-but historians are not yet aware of this, any more than they are of the work being done on the evolution of territorial organization. They would like modern geographers to offer them monographs like those that interested them when they were students, but more modern in their powers of description

HISTORICAL

DIMENSION

OF FRENCH

GEOGRAPHY

721

Research is being pursued on these themes but by means and explanation. 951 different from those with which the Annalistes are familiar: thus a mutual lack of understanding between the two disciplines persists. Conclusion At the beginning of this century, geographers were caught up in a difficult and paradoxical situation: they wanted a science that was as exact as possible and modelled on the natural sciences, whilst they were also concerned with human distributions and paid more attention to social patterns. No geographer succeeded in surmounting these difficulties, because no-one sought to contradict a point of view which seemed logically indisputable-that all problems were capable of solution by increased rigour. Each group elaborated compromises that succeeded to a greater or lesser extent, permitting research to proceed efficiently without betraying the theoretical presuppositions. That is how we explain the fact that the first half of the twentieth century was an age of national schools, pursuing different objectives, not communicating with one another. following methods handed down from master to pupil rather than exploring the universe of literature.96 French geography was, on the whole, well served by isolationism: those who created it had the advantage of a double training as historians and geographers which exposed them to demands for social interpretation. They learnt more quickly than others that the world could not be explained without a certain temporal depth: the historical perspective seemed to them necessary in order to understand the present. As they had chosen to be geographers and not historians they were not tempted to go furtherthe reconstruction of past states for their own sakes seemed unwarranted.19 If there is something like a tradition in historical geography in France, it is built around the idea that we have to delve into the past to discover the roots of present spatial structures. There have been many fluctuations in the development of the sub-field: arising from the nature of French society, which was more laden with a visible heritage a generation ago than at present; resulting also from infatuations, sometimes preoccupied with the slow history of the I~ngue &&e and sometimes seized with a desire for contemporary evidence. Vicissitudes in the progress of historical geography in France bear witness, in the broadening of questions posed, in a deepening curiosity in social architecturt:. and in an inquiry into mentalities of the past. to a sharpened awareness and to ;I certain renewal.

Acknowledgement
I wish to thank Penelope
Woolf at University College London for assistance in translation

Notes
[I] Vincent
Berdoulay, La formation de Ic~cole jiangaise de ,@ograp& (Paris. Bibliotheque Nationale 198 I); Anne Buttimer. Socier~ and milieu in Frmch geographic trcdirion (Chicago. Rand McNally 1971)

242

I. CLAVAL

de la geographic en France: diffusion. institutions. projets. [21 Numa Broc, Letablissement 187&l 890, Ann&s de Geogruphie 83 ( 1973) 545.-568 [31 Auguste Longnon, Etude sur Ies pagi de lu Guule (Paris, Fran& et Vieweg 186991892): Longnon, Geographie de la Gaule au IPsiecle (Paris, Hachette 1878) [41 Pierre Foncin, Les pays de France (Paris, A. Colin 1898) [51 Paul Claval. La region historique. in Paul Claval and Jean-Pierre Nardy. Pour Ie cinquantewire de la morf de Paul Vidul de Iu Bluche (Paris. les Belles Lettres 1968) 105-l I3 161 Roger Dion, Les,fiontiPres de la France (Paris. Hachette 1947) 171 Roger Dion. Le site de Paris. in G. Michaud (ed.), Put-is. croissunw dune capit& (Paris. Hachette. 1961) 17-39 Roger Dion, Aspects politiques de la geogruphie untique (Paris, les Belles Lettres 1977) Lucien Gallois. Les geographes ullemands de lu Renaissance (Paris, Leroux. 1890) Paul Vidal de la Blache, Marco Polo. Son temps et ses voyages (Paris. Hachette 1890) Fragois de Dainville, Le langage des geographrs (Paris, Picard 1964) Carl Ritter. Du facteur historique dans la geographie en tant que science, in Carl Ritter, Introduction d lu giogruphie gPnirale comparle, trans. Nicolas Obadia (Paris, les Belles Lettres 1974) 1322150 [I31 Paul Claval, Ritter and French geography, in Manfred Biittner (ed.), Curl Ritter (Paderborn, Schiiningh 1980) 189-200 1141 Lucien Gallois. Regions nuturelles et noms de puw (Paris, A. Colin 1908) 1151 Lucien Febvre, La terre et Iivolution humaine (Paris, Albin Michel 1922) 1161 Paul Vidal de la Blache. Principes de geogruphie hum&e (Paris, A. Colin 1922) [I71 Paul Vidal de la Blache. Tubleau de Iu ghographie de la France (Paris. Hachette 1903) [I81 Paul Vidal de la Blache, Etats et nations de IEurope. Amour de la France (Paris, Delagrave 1889) [I91 Paul Vidal de la Blache, La France de IEst (Paris, A. Colin 1917) PO1 Vidal de la Blache, Marco Polo, op. cit. PII Paul Vidal de la Blache. Les voies de commerce dans la geographie de Ptolemee, c. R. Acud. Inst. et Belles Lettres 3 serie (1896) 456483 PI Paul Vidal de la Blache, La purpuriae du roi Juba, in Melunges G. Perrot (Paris, Fontemoing 1903)324-329 La pluine picarde (Paris, A. Colin 1905) [231 Albert Demangeon, Longnon, Etude sur Ies pugi de lu Game, op. cit. ;s;; Roger Vacher, Le Berry (Paris, A. Colin 1908) 1261 Jules Sion, Les pujsans de Normandie orientale (Paris, A. Colin 1908) [271 Camille Vallaux, LL( Basse-Bretugne, etude de geographic humaine (Paris, Comely 1906) have criticized the passeist orientation of the Tableau. without [281 Many young geographers noticing that it does not show the whole of Vidals philosophy of spatial organization. [291 Vidal de la Blache, Tableau, op. cit., 82 1301 E. A. Wrigley, Changes in the philosophy of geography. in R. J. Chorley, P. Haggett (eds), Frontiers in geographical teaching (London, Methuen 1965) 3320 1311 Alain Reynaud, La ghographie entre le mythe et la science: essai dipisthmologie (Reims. Publications du Departement de Geographic 1974); Andre Meynier, Histoire de la penshe geogruphique en France (Paris, PUF 1969) Les hommes et leurs truvuuy duns les puns de Iu Mo~wne Garonne (Lillc. 1321 Pierre Deffontaines, SILIC 1932) Le Thanh Hou. Etude geogruphiqur dune province unnumitr (Paris, Publica[331 C. Robequain, tions de IEcole francaise dExtreme Orient 1929) [341 Pierre Gourou. Les puysans du delta tonkinois: etude de giogruphie humuine (Paris, Editions dArt et dHistoire 1936) Lu plaine picurde. op. cit. [361 Demangeon. Belgique, Pays-Bus. Luxembourg (Paris. A. Colin 1927) 1371 Albert Demangeon, Le.7 Iles britanniques (Paris. A. Colin 1927) [381 Albert Demangeon, LEmpire britannique. Etude de gtographie coloniale (Paris, A. Colin [391 Albert Demangeon. 1923) La geographie de Ihabitat rural. Annales de Geogruphie 36 (1977) l-23 [401 Albert Demangeon. and 97-114; Demangeon, Essai dune classification des maisons rurales. in Premier CongrPs International du Folklore, Travauu (Tours. Arrault 1938) 4448 [411 Jean Brunhes, La geographic humaine. Essai de classification positive (Paris, Alcan 1909) [421 Otto Schliiter, Die Ziele der Geogruphie des Mmschen (Munich. Oldenburg 1906)

HISTORICAL

DIMENSION

OF FRENCH

GEOGRAPHY

24.3

[43] E. Friedrich, Wesen und geographisches Verbreitung der Raubwirtschaft. Pc~rermc~rzns Mitteilungen (1904) 68-79 and 92-95 [44] Max Sorre. Les,fondements de la ghographie humaine 4 vols (Paris, A. Cohn 1943-1953) [45] Maurice Le Lannou, La giographie humaine (Paris, Flammarion 1959) [46] David J. M. Hooson, The distribution of population as the essential geographical expression. Canadian Geographer 4 (I 960) I O-20 [47] Lucien Febvre, Philippe II et la Franehe Comth (Paris, Hono+ Champion 1912) [48] Jean-Pierre Nardy, Levasseur, gkographe. in P. Claval and J.-P. Nardy. Pour 112 cinquuntrnaire de la mort de Paul Vidal de la Blachc, op. cit. Levasseur was a historian. but he had a wide range of interests: he contributed to the development of statistical studies, of demography, of economic history (the history of prices). of social history (the history of the French working class) and played a decisive role in the introduction of geography in secondar! school curricula and in the universities. [49j Franqois Simiand, Recherches anciennes PI nouvelles .sur le ~nouw~w~~ gckckrl dcs pr/ \- du .tl P au XIX.ci~clc (Paris, Domat-Montchrestien 1932) [SO:] Febvre, LLI terre et Ihvolution humaine, Jp. cit. [Sl:j 0r1 the birth and development of the Anna/es school. WC now have good studies: T. Stoianovitch. French historical method: t/w Annales purodigm (Ithaca Cornell Universit! Press, 1976); Maurice Aymard, The Annales and French historiography 1979 1972. Journal of European Economic History. (1972) 491 51 I: Jacques Revel. Histoire et sciences so&ales: les paradigmes des Annales. Annales. Econon~ie. .%Jc.ic;tr. Cirlikwtion 34 ( 1970) 136G-1376; Franqois Furet, En marge des Annales. Histoire et sciences sociales. Lr Dc+trt 17 (1!)81) I l2--127; J. Lc Goff, R. Chartier, J. Revel (cds). f<a NrJuwllc~ Histoirc (Pat-Is. CEPL. Rctz 1978): Hervk Coutau-Begarie, Lr phrbum~&w Nouvelke Histoirc (Paris Economica 1983); This last book, more critical of the Anna/es school than the others. ofTe1.4 LXX perspectives on the history of its development and on the reasons for its success [52] Marc Bloch. Les rois thaumaturges [ 19241 2 cd. (Paris, A. Colin 1061) [53] Lucien Febvrc. Le prohl&nr de /incrcJ~~aJ~c~~~ au 31 .P sikke. La re/iSqicJJl de Rh~lui.s (Paris Albin Michel 1962) [54] The influence of Ernest Labrousse was dominant in the 1940s and a~ the beginnmg o1thL i950s. Courtau-Begdrie, Le ph&omtbe Nourv& ffistoire. op. cit., esp. I32 135: Ernest Labrousse. Esyuisse des pris et des revenus en Froncr uu XCIII .si~cle (Paris. Dalloz 1933). Labrousse. Ln crise de Ikonomie ,/run~ais~~ ci [<I,firt t/e 1.4ncior1 Rt;ginw (Paris. PUF 1944). Michel Vovelle, who has written a good account of the development of the hlstor) 01 mentalities, explains that the new orientation in the .4nnak~ school did not flourish bcfor-c (hi. 1960s. Michcl Vovelle, Idt;ologies rt mrntulifis (Paris. Maspcro 1981) [SS] Philippe Arlis, Histoire des popu1ation.u fran~.aises et de leurs uttitudes devant lu \*w &puis 11, .%VfIIsi&k (Paris, SELF 1948); AriPs. Lc, temps de /histoir (Monaco. Editions du Rochet I9 54); Aries. L erzfbnt et /a vie,fitmiiialc sou.s /.-lncien Rt;Xinw (Paris. Plon 1960) [56] Jean-Pierre Vernant. Mvthr et pens& the: /es Grecs (Paris. Masp&o 1965) (571 Marc Bloch. f.us caract& originaus de lhi.stoire rurnl~,.f~on(,tri.s~, (@lo. lnstitut pour IEtude Cornparke des Civilisations I93 I ) [58] Marc Bloch. La sociPtt:.f&da/e (Paris. Albin Michel lY.10) [SY] Bloch. Les rois thaumaturges, op. cit. [60] Jai souvent per& quune des superiorit& franCaises dans les sciences socialcs t:tait cettc Ccole gkographique de Vi&l de la Blache dont nous nc nous consolerions pas de coir trahis Iesprit et les leqons. Fernand Braudel, El.rit.s SW Ihistoirt~ (Paris. Flammarion 1969) X2; .. cn ces temps d&jtji anciens. I&ole geographique fran$aise ktait LI Iavant-garde de toutes Ic\ sciences humaines II y eut un moment, dans les an&s trentc, oti rkpandus dans la France entierc, tous Its ilkves de Raoul Blanchard proposaient une gkographie. je ne dirai pa\ simplement humaine, mais humaniste. oti la gCographie faisait vraiment partie. ri part entiire. avec ses versants les plus arides, la pkdolopie. la climatologie. des sciences humaines. LL;colc de gbographie franqaise fournit li Ii-cole des Annaie.~. ;iu dkpar-t. ses meilleures recruch Cest done par la gtographie que je suis parvenu i Ihlstoire mCditvale, et ;i lhistoire de\ campagnes cn particulier; Georges, Duby. Guy Lardrcau. Ditrlogws (Paris. Flammarion 1980) 95-96 [62] The doctoral dissertation of Braudel dealt with a question similar to Lucien Febvrcs (set above note 4). but on a much larger area: Philippe Brdudel. LLI MPt/iterra& et /e nroJr& mhditerranirn ti Ihpoyue de Philippe II (Paris. A. Colin 1949) [G?] On the importance of culture and civilization as a main theme for historical enquiry: Fernand

234

P. CLAVAI des civilisations: le passe explique le present, in Braudel. Grits sut op. cit., 2555314; in fact. Braudel is mainly interested in material culture: Fernand Braudel. Civilisution materielle et capitalisme (Paris. A. Cohn 1967) On the relations between Marxism and the .4nnale.s school: Coutau-Begarie, Le p&nonz& Nouvelle Histoire , op. cit., 2255243 Roger Dion, Essai sur la.formation du parsage ruralfran~ais (Tours, Arrault 1934) Gaston Roupnel, Histoire de la campagne,fian~aise (Paris, Grasset 1932) Bloch. Les caracteres originauu, op. cit. Pierre Brunet, Structure agraire et Pconomie rurale des plateaux tertiuires entre la Seine et IOise (Caen, Caron 1960); Michel Chevalier, La vie humaine dans les P_vrPnPes aridgeolses (Paris, M. Th. G&in 1956); Etienne Juillard. La vie rurale dans la plaine de Basse Alsace (Paris, les Belles Lettres 1953); Rene Lebeau, La vie rurale dans les montagnes du Juru meridional. Etude de geographic humaine (Lyon. Institut dEtudes Rhodaniennes 1955): Maurice Le Lannou, Patres et puvsans de Sardaigne (Tours, Arrault 1941); Jean-Pierre Moreau, La vie rurale dans le Sud-Est du bassin parisien (Paris, les Belles Lettres 1958) E. Juillard, A. Meynier. X. de Planhol and G. Sautter (eds), Structures agraires et paysages ruraux (Nancy, Annales de IEst 1957); Since then the work on this theme has been fostered by Braudel. Lhistoire
Ihistoire.

[64]
[65]

[66] [67]
[68]

[69]

[70]

[71]
[72]

[73]

[74] [75] [76] [77]

[78]

[79] [80] [Sl]

[82] [83]
[84]

[85]

the biennial meetings of the Permanent Conference for the Study of European Rural Landscape; for instance: P. Flat& Pawages rurauy europeens (Rennes, Universite de Haute Bretagne 1979); As an example of more recent investigations on agrarian structures; Jean Peltre, Recherches metrologiques sur les,finages lorrains (Paris, H. Champion 1975) Louis Poirier, Bocage et plaine dans le sud de IAnjou, Annales de Ghographie 43 (1934) 22-37; Louis Poirier is better known under his pen-name: Julien Gracq is one of the best French novelists: Jean-Louis Tissier. De Iesprit geographique dans Ioeuvre de Julien Gracq. L Espace geographique 9 ( I98 I ) 50-59 Pierre Flatres, La deuxieme revolution agricole finisterienne. Etudes Rurales 3 ( 1963) 5535 This attitude is best exemplified in: Michel Phlipponeau, Geogruphie et action. Introduction a la Ghogruphie uppliquee (Paris, A. Colin 1960) In the mid 1960s Pierre Georges attitude regarding history is clearly summarized in his book on geographic active: Ainsi definie, la geographic se presente comme la recherche dune image instantanee du monde (p. 21). Implicitement la recherche scientifique [for classical Vidalian geography] reposait sur le postulat suivant lequel tout ce qui la concernait sittait passe avant (p. 21-22) Une situation [which constitutes, for George, the main object of geographical enquiry] est la resultante a un moment choisi&qui est par definition le moment present en geographic dun ensemble dactions qui se contrarient, se temperent ou se renforcent _* (p. 17); Pierre George. R. Guglielmo, B. Kayser and Y. Lacoste. L,a geographic active (Paris, PUF 1964) A strongly critical attitude towards historical geography was taken by people like Bernard Kayser, or Yves Lacoste Georges Brunet, Les campagnes toulousaines (Toulouse, Boisseau 1965) Michel Dugrand. Villes et campagnes en Bas-Languedoc (Paris, PUF 1963) Etienne Juillard, La region. essai de definition, Annales de Geographic 71 (1962) 4833499 Paul Claval, Regions, nations, grands espaces (Paris, M.-Th. Genin 1968) Etienne Juillard, La region . Contribution d une geogruphie gPnGrule des espaces regionau.r (Paris, Ophrys 1974) Jean-Claude Boyer. L evolution de lorganisution urbaine aur Pays-Bus (Paris. Champion 1978) Roland Schwab, De la cellule rurale a la region. LAlsace 1825-1960 (Paris, les belles Lettres 1980); Andre Vant, Imagerie et urbanisation. Recherches sur lexemple stephanois (SaintEtienne, Centre dEtudes Foreziennes 1981) Roger Dion, Le Danube dHtrodote, Revue de Philologic. de Litterature et dHistoirr Ancienne 94 (1968) 741; Dion. Aspects politiques de la gtographie untique, op. cit. Dion, Le site de Paris, op. cit.; Dion, Les frontihres de la France, op. cit. Roger Dion. Histoire de lu vigne et du vin en France des origines au XIYsiecle (Paris, chez IAuteur 1959) Historical geography is now practised in France by different groups: agrarian history is mainly represented by Xavier de Planhol, Jean Peltre, Pierre Flat& and the Commission de Geographic historique; in Strasbourg, former students of Etienne Juillard are mainly interested in the history of regional organization in the 19th and 20th centuries (Roland Schwab, Jean-Pierre Martin. J.-Cl. Claverie); people interested in urban and social historical

HISTORICAL

DIMENSIO?.

OF FRENCH

GEOGRAPHY

24;;

Jean-Claude Boyer. Antoine Haumont. Guy Burgel in Paris. geography are more dispersed Andrk Vant, Marc Bonneville in Lyon. The last group. with a strong interest in the history of vine growing and the wine trade. is mainly centred on Bordeaux: H. Enjalbert. Comment nalssent les grands vignobles, Annules. G~onomies, Socigtds. Civilisutions 8 (1953) 3 I5 338; Enjalbert. Histoire de lu vigne et du vin. Luvhnemrnt de la qualit; (Paris. Bordas 1975): R. Pijassou. Lu .seigneurie et le vignohle de Ch~truu Lutour (Bordeaux. Fkdt-ration Historiquc du Sud-Ouest 1974); Pijassou. Utf ,crarztl ~@oh/t~ c/l> L/I_&&: /r M&c (Paris. Tallandier 1980); A. H uetz de Lcmps (ed.), G&graphie /lir!oriyrre dcs vi~qru~hh. .4c,tu.v riu cdkupr~ t/c h&trtr.~-, Or,tobre 1977 (Paris, CNRS 1978) [861 Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Pursans du Larlguedoc (Paris, SEVPEN 1966); Le Roy Laduric. Histoire du &mat depuis Iun m;l (Paris, Flammarion 1967) [87] Abbt: Giraud-Soulavie, Histoire naturelle de la Frunw mdridionulc 7 vol (Paris. 1780 1784) [88l Lucien Gallois. R&ions nutwelles et nom.\ de ptrys, op. cit. [89] The interest in mentalities. perception and attitudes developed mainly during the 1960s. To observe an interest in the history of ideologies, it is necessary to wait until the 1970s. with works like those by Duby or Le Gaff, for instance. Ari&. i_t@utr~ rf II vie>f~~i~?j~ju~~, SOK, IAncicn Rkgimr, up. cit.; Aribs. Histoirc des populations /loqaise.s et de Irurs altitudes devurrr lu vie depuis Ie XVIlP sitkle, op. cit. Bloch, 1,e.s rois thuumaturgc~s. op. cit.; Coutau-Begaric, LC ph&om&r Nouvelle Histoirr , op. cit.; Georges Duby. Les trois ordres de Iimuginuirr (Paris. Gallimard 1978); Febvre, Le problZme de Iincrq~nce uu .YCP siPcle: lu religion de Ruhelui,~ op. cit.; Johann Huizinga. Le dkclin du Mown Age [191X] (French translation 1932); Jacque? Le Goff, Lu nuissunce du Purgutoire (Paris. Gallimard I98 I ); Vovelle. fd&logirs et mentuhtck
op. cit.

in mentalities grew out of field work: Jean Gallais. Le delta intrkicrrr du ,Yi,ycr (Dakar. IFAN 1967) [9lI Frkmonts interest in mentalities grew up of his knowledge of the research developed by the historians of the Annales school, and out of his taste for French literature. There was ncl connection between him and perceptual studies developed as in America before 1973 1974 Armand Frttmont, Lelevage en Normundie (Caen, Facultk des Lettres 1968) [921 Armand Frimont. La rCgion, essai sur Iespace vicu. in La per&e giogruphiyuc fran(,trr\cJ wntrmporuinc (Saint-Brieuc. Presses Universitaires de Bretagne 1972) 663- 67X [93] Armand FrCmont, La rigion espace vdcu (Paris, PUF 1976) I82 ~185 [94] Armand FrCmont. Pqsans de Normundie (Paris, Flammarion I98 I ) [95] There is a kind of nostalgia for a time when geography was strong in Dubys assessment ofthc discipline: Les chases ont changt. Pourquoi? Au fond. la gCographie a CtP en partic Ppuiske par sa f&ondit& mime, dissocike par le cloisonnement kpistCmologique, &tout& peu li peu par sa progCniture, Duby and Lardreau, Dialogues. op. cit. 96; Braudel was longing for new developments in social geography at the end of the 195Os, but apparently, he missed the new developments in this field (according to T.V. interviews last year): La gkographie sc pcnse trop souvent comme un monde en soi et cest dommage. Elle avait besoin dun Vidal dc la Blache qui, cette fois, au lieu de penser temps et espace. penserait temps et r&alit& sociale. Braudel, Ecrits .sur Ihistoire, op. cit. 82 [96] Paul Claval. Lu gkographie humaine et hconomique (Paris, PUF 1984) [97] In fact, a good deal of historical geography in France was written by historians who were like Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel. bright geographers at the time they were students Marc Bloch or Emmanuel Le Roy Laduric.

[90] Gallais interest