Métamorphoses d'un continent. L'Afrique des Annales de Géographie, de 1919 au début des années 1960

Abstract

Abstract A Continent's Metamorphoses: The Africa of Annales de Geographie from 1919 to the early 1960s. — The space reserved for Africa and the way this continent was presented in the Annales de Geographie (the official publication of the Vidalian "French School of Geography") from WW I to the 1960s reflects the image that the community of French geography professors had of this continent. Though separated from the colonial lobby, this journal remained dependent on colonial sources till WW II. To a large extent, it reproduced the stereotypes of the times, namely: Africa as the "dark continent". Right after the war however, the journal presented Africa's new place in epistemological debates in geography and in the definition of the relations between geography and the other socials sciences. This scientific interest in Africa entailed changes in the subjects at the center of African studies.