The reception of American geography in France: Enthusiasm, indifference, and critical perspectives

Abstract

Modern geography developed in France after 1870 (Claval, 1998): there had been a long tradition of geographical research in the country, but at the end of the 1 8th century, the crisis opened by the failure of the old cartographic paradigm (wonderfully analyzed by Anne Godlewska, 1999) was long to heal. In the first half of the 19th century, there were many geographers in France. They gathered in geographical societies, the first of which being the Societe de Geographie de Paris, founded in 1821. There was nothing, however, like a French school of Geography. The situation changed rapidly after 1870. The defeat of France in front of Prussia was attributed to the lack of geographical training of the officers of the French army: hence the decision to develop the teaching of geography in the elementary and secondary schools, and, as a consequence, in the universities for the formation of teachers (Levasseur, 1872). The model French geographers copied at that time was mainly the German one. The influence of American geography was, however, important. Until the end of World War II, French geographers had a sympathetic attitude towards American geographers and geography. They had the feeling that United States were the most modern Western society, which meant that a knowledge of their evolution was necessary to understand the dynamics of European evolution: Alexis de Tocqueville had created a tradition which remained alive for a long time. French geographers were also fascinated by American nature: many of them were convinced that the phenomena observed in North America occurred on a larger scale than in Europe. Hence their curiosity for American nature and the way Americans used it.