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In this article we will discuss about the development of professional geography in France.
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Early Geographical Studies of France
- Essay on the Deterministic Trend in France
- Essay on the Development of New Geography
- Essay on the Antithesis to Environmental Determinism and Regional Studies
Essay # 1. Early Geographical Studies of France:
It was during the Age of Explorations that there was much speculation by the historians and political philosophers in France regarding the ‘influence of natural environment’ on human behaviour. The philosophy of geographical determinism seems to have been inherited from the Greeks through Ptolemy and also from the writers of the middle Ages. One of the earliest was Jean Bodin, a French political philosopher, who lived in the sixteenth century.
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In his major work published in 1566, he attempted to establish ‘a cause and effect’ relationship between Humankind and his Environment. His conception regarding the effect of environment on human behaviour reflected the implicit influence of the Greek and Roman traditions.
Abbede Bos, writing in 1719, found that weather had a definite effect on suicide and crime rates in Paris and Rome. He also attempted to show that works of art are produced only in the zone between latitudes 25° and 52° N.
One of the principal advocates of the philosophy of determinism was de la Brede et de Montesquieu, the noted French political philosopher who lived in the eighteenth century. His great work De l’ esprit des lois, published in 1748 contained certain ideas related to the environmental determinism, that people develop different qualities and characteristics in cold climates and become more energetic than in hot climates where the people tend to be lethargic.
However, Kriesel pointed out that Montesquieu also recognised the importance of other factors than climate alone, which included religion, the maxims of government precedents, and customs. In any country, as some of these factors act with stronger force, the others are weakened. Kriesel, therefore, describes him as a possibilist rather than an environmental determinist’. Nevertheless, Montesquieu was very persuasive in his discussion of the effect of differences in climate on behaviour.
Comte de Bufton (1707-88) was director of the botanical garden in Paris between 1739 and 1788. He had access to a vast number of specimens of plants and animals, and description written by travellers and explorers from all over the world.
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His Historic Naturelle in forty-four volumes, published between 1749 and 1804, was completed after his death by La Capede. In this book, Bufton made repeated reference to the relations between humankind and the environment.
He attempted to emphasise the change on the face of the Earth by the action of humans, in the process of developing a civilisation. He insisted that humans could adjust to any climate depending upon his capacity to adapt. Bufton also speculated on climatic change and suggested that the removal of forests and the drainage of marshes might lead to temperature increase.
It was not until 1756 that Philippe Buache, the French scholar, initiated a movement leading to the establishment of the ‘Reine Geographic’ (pure geography) in France. He postulated that the Earth was divided into drainage basins by mountain ranges which even continued under the oceans so that the whole surface of the Earth was divided into naturally defined compartments.
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He favoured a river basin as the best kind of natural region. The Danish-born French scholar, Malte-Brun founded the universal geography in France. He offered a carefully considered refutation of the idea that river basins are bordered by ranges of mountains or hills.
But so strongly implanted was Buache’s concept of the river basin that Malte-Brun’s refutation of it was ignored and overlooked. Some of the generalisations Malte-Brun made seemed to have been inherited from the tradition founded by Strabo 2,000 years earlier.
J. J. d’ Omalius d’ Halloy prepared a geological map of France and the low countries in 1823. The map also contained a description of the relation of landforms to the soils and underlying rocks. A French army officer prepared the first of the two works on geographical methodology in 1829, in which he attempted to show all the drainage basins bordered by ridges and mountain and that appears to be identical with that of Buache.
Essay # 2. Deterministic Trend in France:
The academic movement for the professional geography in France in the later part of nineteenth century appears to have been largely influenced by Frederic Le Play (1806-1882). He had a profound effect on the development of geography in France and Britain, though his influence was negligible in Germany and the United States. Basically, he was a sociologist. He introduced the ruling deterministic paradigm into his studies of families which reflect environmentalism.
Le Play’s classic work appeared in 1855. It was based on his first-hand investigation of social life and organisation of the places of Europe where he travelled. His method of investigation was elaborated in France by his two most well- known disciples, Henry de Tourville (1843-1903) and Edmond Demolins (1852-1907).
Like his contemporary historians, political philosophers and scientists, La Play also inherited the philosophy of geographical determinism, which he applied to study the development of social structure of the European people under different physical conditions. He was also greatly influenced by the ‘le reel’ methodological precept of Auguste Comte. Le Play felt the lack of both a unit of measurement and a scientific inductive method for the systematic examination of social phenomena.
He recognised three main family types, each of which appeared to have developed under three distinct geographical environments. The Asiatic steppe was the home of stable nomadic families under the control of patriarchs. The particularist family is the characteristic of the maritime shore of Europe, and is especially localised in the fjords of Scandinavia. This is the home of the famille-souche.
Forested land, covering great areas of much variety, with grass openings, heath, and varied soils, was the birth place of the ‘unstable family’ that had also developed in the urban environments of Europe and had spread to America.
Le Play’s studies of the development of social groups in a particular geographical (physical) milieu had been a basic objective of geographic research in France and was given special emphasis by Paul Vidal de la Blache as he developed his idea of the genre de vie.
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Edmond Demolins in his book published in 1901 and 1903 demonstrates that the primary and decisive cause of the diversity of peoples and races is the route which has been followed by the peoples. It is the route (the environment) which created race and social type. The environment rigidly controls the structure and development of peoples. This is a most extreme form of geographic (environmental) determinism.
Henry de Tourville particularly studied the geographic impact on the development of the patriarchal society which usually developed in the fjords of Scandinavia. It is in the mountain environment that the development of self-reliance and initiative takes place. The married children in the region left the family and took to fishing and cultivation on another site, for they were dependent entirely on self-help.
This led also to the private ownership of land and government by election and contractual associations on a voluntary basis. The ‘genre de vie’ that appeared to have been developed on the maritime shore of Scandinavia seemed to have spread in two directions, one into Germany and the other moved across to Britain.
Essay # 3. Development of New Geography in France:
Apart from the influence Le Play and his two most prominent disciples had on the development of new geography in France, the work of Ratzel on human geography (or his Anthropogeographie) had a far greater influence on future developments of the discipline than in his own country.
Otto Schluter’s works also had significant impact on the development of geographic tradition in France. Vidal de la Blache’s method of regional description on a local basis also revealed the explicit impact of Hettner’s methodological contributions which he made in his first major essay of 1905. The views of W. M. Davis made a widespread impact before World War I in France and Germany as well.
The awakening of interest in geography among the general public in France dates from their losses in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Smarting under this defeat in Europe, France sought compensation in new lands in Africa and South-East Asia.
The newly founded geographical societies in the provinces of France were the leaders in this movement in favour of colonial expansion. Mekay attempted to trace out the development of France as a colonial power after 1871 to the influence of the French geographical societies, all of which urged France to bring the benefits of French civilisation of the less developed parts of the world.
The French have successfully merged the historical and geological schools and have achieved a regional synthesis unsurpassed elsewhere and for which they are justly renowned. It is this breadth of vision and a fine literary style that made French regional studies pleasurable to read. Scientific analysis sustains their descriptions, and their expository art has survived.
The ‘region’ that particular field of study of geographers, has been regarded as a unique functional complex which, despite a steady stream of material and ‘energy’, is in apparent equilibrium and constitutes a ‘whole’ which is more than a sum of its parts. This understanding of the region is found in the French School of geography, which we shall see in the discussion on the professionalism of French geographical heritage.
Essay # 4. Antithesis to Environmental Determinism and Regional Studies in France:
French geographer, Paul Vidal de la Blache had the clearest insight into the weakness of deterministic arguments, realising the futility of humankind’s natural surroundings in opposition to his social milieu and of regarding one as dominating the other.
Lucien Gallois:
Vidal Blache was succeeded at the Sorbonne by Lucien Gallois who was one of his first pupils. At this time, the historical tradition in the geographical studies was much strong in France, which was because of the influence of Himly who preceded Blache at Sorbonne. Gallois attempted to evaluate the relations between Man and Nature. His doctorate dissertation was an important contribution to the history of cartography.
He collaborated with Vidal Blache in the direction of the Annales de geographie. Gallois prepared a book in 1908 very much on the lines of the Vidalian tradition of regional studies. He attempted to show how the idea of the region naturelle emerged at the end of the eighteenth century in the preparation of the first geological maps of France.
Gallois concluded that it is to the land entities, large or small, all of which are of a physical order, that we should reserve the name of regions naturelles. ‘Of the variety of facts in which the activity of Man intervenes with Nature, those which bear the influence of the environment form the distinctive field of human geography’. This dictum had a profound influence on the purpose and direction of geographic work in France.
After the death of Vidal Blache, Gallois took over the organisation of the Geographie Universelle. This remarkable series shares the joint editorial names of Vidal de la Blache and Lucien Gallois and the latter was, in fact, responsible for editing the series until the time of his death in 1941. Undoubtedly, he carried forward the concept of landscape chronology, with a major emphasis on the development of regions over time.
On the changing trends of French geography, it has been pointed out that ‘there has been a weakening of ‘La tradition Vidalienne’ and loss of the feeling of coherence as French geography reacts to contemporary currents of thought that are international in range. The old unity of physical and human geography is being lost as geographers draw closer to scientific geomorphology on the one hand or to biology or sociology on the other hand.
Though regional studies of high standard have continued to appear but systematic work has expanded impressively, particularly in urban geography and economic geography. This has been encouraged by what has been referred to as the quantitative revolution. In part this late arrival of numeracy owes to the grand literary tradition in French geography exemplified in regional studies, and in part to a disciplinarily conservative epistemology’.
The fundamental mathematical techniques have now established themselves in most academic curricula, and this has manifested itself in the more recent publications of French geographers. ‘There has been increasing involvement of the geographers in the planning processes.
After much debate in the 1960s and 1970s, the French geographers have ultimately shown their interest in the la geographie appliquee (applied geography). Interest in the history of geographical thought has also developed in French geography in the 1960s and 1970s’. At the present time critical theory with phenomenology and hermaneutics dominate the French school of geography.