Transatlantic landscapes: Gottmann and the roots of Lowenthal’s intellectual heritage

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on David Lowenthal’s writings, exchanges with the author, and original archival research, this paper discusses how the encounter with Jean Gottmann during WW2 and its aftermath introduced Lowenthal to the French historical-geographical canon and French culture, contributing to his intellectual development at a time of uncertainty about which direction to take. Their transatlantic perspectives helped Lowenthal to perfect his comparative method. Gottmann introduced him to French geography’s connection to history and the role of the terrain, or the need to relate regional to general geography. Their exchanges of the late 1940s and 1950s particularly highlight two important aspects of Lowenthal’s work: his search for an American philosophy of nature, which would root his approach to cultural regionalism and landscape, and the problematic relationship between past and present, opening to his future work on cultural understanding and heritage.