FROM THE METROPOLIS TO THE COLONIES: PARALLELS BETWEEN BRUNHES’ WORKS AND HIS TRAJECTORY

Abstract

Jean Brunhes (1869-1930) was a French geographer considered one of the founders of Human Geography. Aside from his important contributions to geography, he wrote a lot of texts about various territories spread across the globe, many of which resulted from his travels. Our goal in this article was to analyze the relationship between Brunhes’ academic career and his journey around the world and evaluate how it influenced his geography theory. To do so, we mapped Brunhes’ travels, and the sites he studied throughout his career. Through a bibliographic survey of articles published by Brunhes and his contemporaries in the archives of Bibliothèque Nationale de France and on the Persée portal, we identified three main moments in his career, in a movement between the metropolis and the colonies. In the first phase, the publications from 1894 to 1902 focused on countries in North Africa and the Mediterranean. The second, from 1902 to 1923, his accounts about Switzerland and France stand out. Finally, the third phase from 1923 until his death, reflected his interest in the Far East. Throughout his career, Brunhes showed ambition to build a global geography that transcended the region, produced from a metropolitan point of view, focusing on territories linked to French interests.