Paul Vidal de La Blache - Life

Life

Paul Vidal de la Blache was the son of a professor who subsequently became an academic administrator. He was sent to boarding school at the Institution Favard at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris. Afterward, he attended the École Normale Supérieure. He entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1863 and received the ‘’agregation’’ (certification) in history and geography in 1866. He was appointed to the Ecole francaise d’Athens, taking advantage of the opportunity to travel in Italy, Palestine, and Egypt (in the latter, being present at the inauguration of the Suez Canal). There he studied Greek archeology for three years.

Upon returning to France, in 1870 he married Laure Marie Elizabeth Mondot, with whom he had five children. He held several teaching positions, notably at the Lycee d'Angers and at the Ecole Preparatoire de l'Enseignment Superieur des Lettres et des Sciences. La Blache received his doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1872 with a dissertation in ancient history, afterwards published as Hérode Atticus: Étude critique sur sa vie. He began working at the Nancy-Université. Vidal de la Blache returned to the École Normale Supérieure in 1877 as a full Professor of Geography and taught there for the next 21 years. He transferred to the Université de Paris, where he continued teaching until he retired in 1909, at the age of 64.

Vidal de la Blache founded the French school of geography and, together with Lucien Gallois, the Annales de Géographie (1893), of which he was the editor until his death. The Annales de Géographie became an influential academic journal that promoted the concept of human geography as the study of man and his relationship to his environment.