Paul Vidal de La Blache - Criticism of Vidalian Geography

Criticism of Vidalian Geography

Some adherents to modern geography as the science of the social dimension of space have criticized Vidal’s geography as the natural science of lifeways. According to this view, Vidal’s ideas made nature the external force that drove societies. They served to validate the equation of nation, territory, and sovereignty, and the fundamental idea of the French Third Republic that patriotism was the supreme value. The reasoning that made nature the driving force for societies was only tenable in regard to rural and seemingly static societies. Vidal avoided looking at industrialization, colonialism, and urbanization. He called those concepts “historical winds,” like gusts on the surface of a pond. As he himself wrote at the end of his Tableau de la géographie de la France, “Close study of what is fixed and permanent in the geographical conditions of France ought to be or to become more than ever our guide.”

Why was Vidalian geography so triumphant in France up to 1950? A notable explanation is that French thought during the Third Republic was dominated by nationalism, which was, arguably, a means of controlling the populations. History saw itself as being given the role of showing the emergence of the nation, and geography’s role was not to refer to politics. A nearly static society could be explained by a static nature. Vidal’s ideas formed the main paradigm for the geographical science of the epoch, controlling the universities, the research centers, and the granting of degrees. Urban thinkers had no place in France until 1950, which explains why geographers such as Jean Gottmann left France to make their careers in the United States.