Patronage in the creation of French Regional Monographs

Drawing on the first hundred doctoral monographs written by French geographers about regions of France between 1906 and 1966, Hugh Clout explores the relationship between academic patrons, holding academic chairs, and their younger colleagues, preparing theses and aspiring to become professors.

The story exemplifies the exercise of power, tracing patron-client relationships, and demonstrating the creation and operation of networks of reciprocity. Attention is focused initially on the immediate disciples of Paul Vidal de la Blache at a time when Geography was struggling to define itself as a discipline. It then moves on to the two subsequent generations of geographers, including the 'golden age' of French geography between the two world wars and the final phase of Vidalian geography before substantial changes after 1968. Hugh's wider project on the evolution of French academic geography in the 19th and 20th centuries has also yielded fifteen papers since 2003, with more to come.

Historical Geography Research Series, no. 41, March 2009, 124pp., ISBN 1870074 23 8, published by the Historical Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG

See: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/cornwall/academic_departments/geography/HGRG/Research%20Series.html