Paul Vidal of Blache

Paul Vidal of Blache , born on January 22nd 1845 with Pézenas, deceased on April 5th 1918 with Tamaris-on-Sea is a French geographer.

Biography

Wire of a professor become then inspector of academy, very brilliance raises Lycée Charlemagne, Paul Vidal of Blache enters in 1863 to the National university at the 18 years age. In 1866, it is received with the aggregation history. Named the French School of Athens, it benefits from this assignment to travel in the Mediterranean basin in Italy, Palestine, Egypt, last country where it attends enthusiastic in 1869 the inauguration of the Suez Canal.

Of return in France, it Marie in 1870 with Laure Mondot - with which he will have five children of which two to only will survive him - then sign in various schools, in particular with Angers. It presents in 1872 in Sorbonne an ancient thesis of history published then under the title Hérode Atticus. Critical study on the life , prelude to a reorientation of its course towards a still secondary discipline in France at the time but which will experience under its magistère a considerable development, geography.

After the defeat against Prussia, a movement rises indeed in France to develop this discipline at the university and in the school system. Very little defended at the 19th century, the geography is still stammering when one considers successes which are them his in the German neighbors. The geographers of Beyond the rhine, Humboldt, Ritter, Ratzel, Von Richthofen, are envied models which are used as example with the restoration of the French geography, element of the national scientific reconquest.

Symbolic system place par excellence - its creation is the result of the removal of faculties of Strasbourg city annexed by Reich - the university of Nancy accommodates the young researcher who démené himself to enter there as teacher. Considered to be too young person, he gives courses to it, certainly, but becomes there professor only in 1875, at 30 years, holder of a pulpit of disencumbered geography, with its request, of its traditional trade-guild with the History.

Consequently, apostle of this discipline, Vidal becomes little by little “impossible to circumvent” . Its influence, immense, remains until in the years 1960 through the school which it contributes to found. University lecturer then sub-manager of ENS of the street of Ulm (1877-1898), professor in the Sorbonne (1898-1909), editor of school material - of which famous mural charts that one still finds per thousands in the affublées elementary schools of plebeian a " Vidal Lablache" - it publishes throughout its life of very many writings - works or articles - which constitute as many references for the researchers, including today.

Vidal founds, with Welsh Lucien, the Annales of Geography in 1891, bases of the French École of geography. In 1894, it publishes monumental the Atlas of history and geography , one of the first works primarily made up of charts accompanied by short synthetic comments. It presents then celebrates it geographical Tableau of France into 1903 which is used as introduction to the French history of Lavisse, volume which has a great repercussion in the public opinion.

In addition, Vidal establishes as of 1910 the plan of the universal Géographie which will be published, after its death, lasting more than 20 years - of 1927 with 1948 - by several of its disciples, writers chosen by him and who profit from the university pulpits created through the country by the Master, Albert Demangeon, Raoul Blanchard, André Cholley, Henri Baulig, Emmanuel de Martonne. This last, most enthusiastic of its pupils - it is true that it marries his daughter - will be most effective of its propagandists until his death in 1955.

After several years of university work, it publishes in 1917 France of the East (Lorraine-Alsace) , work obviously influenced by the conflict which puts since 1914 France at the catches with the winner of 1870. It supports the formula of the regional organization around the big cities by developing the function of animation of Nancy and Strasbourg. Beside this modern vision of flow and polarization, it ressuscite also in this last book certain political values by raising the ascending one exerted by the republican ideal on Alsace and Lorraine at time of the Revolution, which makes inhabitants an elective nation with the Frenchwoman.

Ultimate mission offered to Vidal by the geographical Service of the Army, one calls upon the chief of the French school of geography to obtain the contest of academics (of which Martonne, Demangeon, Welshman, etc) in order to support the effort of war or to prepare documentation to anticipate the consequences of the victory. In February 1917, Briand creates the " committee of études" of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, chaired by Lavisse assisted by Vidal of Blache, which gathers this time the elite of the historians and geographers of the Collège de France and the Sorbonne. The reports/ratios presented prepare the action of the geographers - Martonne initially - who will be at the time of the conference of peace in first line to decide, under an expertise that one recognizes to them then, the new chart of political Europe.

Vidal of Blache dies in 72 years in April 1918 after having paid a tribute with a world war whose he will not see the term, his/her son Joseph, geographer like to him, having been killed in January 1915 in Argonne.

Range of work “vidalienne”

Genuine proclamation of which the drafting asks for good ten of years to him and which it delivers with three years of delay, the " Tableau" is a summary of the work method of Vidal. He traverses all the country, notes all that he observes in tens of notebooks. It is interested in the human and political aspects, with geology (at the time stammering science, not very related to the geography), with transport and the history. For as much, it is the first to connect all these fields in a rather qualitative, miserly approach of figures, primarily even descriptive narration, nondistant, by certain aspects, of a guide or a handbook of painting, that of the landscapes.

Influenced by the German thought, in particular by Friedrich Ratzel which it met in Germany, Vidal is at the origin of the term of Possibilisme which it never pronounced certainly but which summarizes in a convenient way its opposition to the Déterminisme of the nature defended by certain geographers of the 19th century. This concept was used by the historians to evoke the epistemological blur which, for them, characterized the step of the school vidalienne. Qualified " of idiographique" because rising from an observation, undoubtedly masterly but single, this approach prevents an evolution " nomothétique" of the discipline which would be the fruit of an experimentation making it possible to release from the laws or the scientific demonstrations.

Vidal which had this aim forever, however published in 1910 an article visionary on " the Areas françaises" . It had been requested by the president of the Council Aristide Briand in order to create regional groupings equipped with representative bodies. Vidal of Blache proposes a cutting of France in areas organized by a metropolis. Economic realities of the modern world, with the ascribable world competition and the contracting of the Earth to an accelerated circulation, make him have a presentiment of that less centralized and less official modes of organization must be promoted.

The geography “vidalienne” is based on a varied cartography, famous monographs, and several concepts of which the " paysages" , the " milieux" , the " régions" , the " kinds of vie" , the " densité" . Many the pupils of the Master produced, in particular in their thesis, of the regional geography which could at the same time be physical, human even economic, the framework chosen for these descriptions being an area whose contours are not always very firm in the scientific plan. For as much, undoubtedly because this approach was more structuring, much continuators of Vidal - more still of Martonne - specialized in a geomorphology become little by little the force but also, by the contracting of the glance which it gave, the weakness of the national geography.

Between the two wars the " geography classique" remains within the framework fixed by the tradition vidalienne. It is defended by a Establishment which marginalizes all the attempts at epistemological revival so much so that to leaving the 2nd World war, the discipline is in the state where the death of Vidal left. The disciples fastened themselves with a particular aspect of the thought of the Master and did not know to seize complexity and the expansion of it, with like consequence the contraction of the field of the discipline. An immutable trilogy was essential in research and academic works: physical geography (Martonne, Baulig), regional geography (Blanchard, Cholley) and human geography (Brunhes, Demangeon, Sorre), declined on a lower scale by order of frequency and importance, in geomorphology, then rural, regional and finally tropical geography.

Naturalist, monographic, morphological, literary and didactic, the traditional geography was going to know, with the revolution of the years 1960 and 1970 and the rise of the urban and industrial studies, a fast renewal by his radical transformation into social science.

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