La géographie, émergence d'un champ scientifique. France, Prusse et Grande-Bretagne (1780-1860)

By examining a moment in the history of geography, this book straddles both disciplines. Its aim is to study a period, namely Europe between 1780 and 1860, where geography was gradually gaining the status of a fully-fledged scientific field in Europe, thanks to renewed institutional and academic principles, especially in France, Prussia and Great Britain. At the same time, geographers in these three European countries stove to have their field finally recognised as a proper science on a par, for instance, with history or mathematics. This scientific and academic development of a recognised geographical field was influenced by a universalistic spirit, a legacy of the European Enlightenment, but it was also deeply influenced by the political context. Between 1785 and 1860, geographical knowledge was recognised as strategic: it played a major role in national politics and, therefore, in the elaboration of the different policies developed in this period. By questioning at the same time the field of geography and the field of politics and policy, this book sets out to highlight how the process of the academic and scientific development of geography launched at the same time in France, Prussia and Great-Britain is essentially in a position of tension between a demand for universalism and the progressive nationalisation of geographical knowledge. This book is of interest, therefore, to geographers and historians or historians of science.