Traditions, Crisis, and New Paradigms in the Rise of the Modern French Discipline of Geography 1760–1850

Bibliographic Data

ID8377591
AuthorsAnne Godlewska (0000-0003-4862-9660, Queen's University, corresponding author)
Year1989
Volume79
Issue2
Pages192-213
Publication date1989-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnnals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-8306.1989.tb00258.x
OpenAlexW2020135788
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited21

This paper examines the nature of the French discipline of geography through the research and writings of the eighteenth century geographer, d'Anville, the geographers on the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt (1798–1801), and those involved in the exploration of Algeria (1839–42), and illuminates a major paradigm shift which transformed geography from a science barely recognizable to modern geographers into a social science with many of the dimensions of the modern discipline. In the eighteenth century, French geographers were primarily concerned with locational determination and representation: locating and mapping towns, major natural or human-made features, and provincial and national borders. By the early nineteenth century, there is evidence that geographers were beginning to broaden their interests to include problems that were not strictly locational. In this period of transition, instead of radically reforming their approach, French geographers clung to their traditional methodologies and stretched them to solve non-locational problems. By the mid-nineteenth century, they had substantially refocused their attention on the general nature of the terrain, description of major landscape features, “man'’as a being interacting with the environment to produce race and culture, the movement of populations, hegemonic boundaries and territoriality, the history of exploration, and commercial geography. Geography retained an anachronistic and increasingly peculiar concern with the determination of location. This paper represents the first step in an attempt to explore geography's ambiguous role in the intellectual revolution that took place between 1750–1850 and which gave birth to the modern social sciences

Anachronism · Critical geography · Cultural geography · Development geography · Economic geography · Geographer · Geography · Hegemony · Historical geography · Human geography · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics) · Social geography · Social science · Sociology · Time geography · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · History of Science and Natural History · Law

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