# Human geography and ethnography in the field notebooks of the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne: disciplinary boundary, field methodology and circulation of knowledge in the first half of the 20th century

Gaëlle Hallair

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## To cite this version:

Gaëlle Hallair. Human geography and ethnography in the field notebooks of the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne: disciplinary boundary, field methodology and circulation of knowledge in the first half of the 20th century. 100th Anniversary of the First Congress of the Slavic Geographers and Ethnographers, Geographical Institute Jovan Cvijic SASA of Belgrade, Oct 2024, Belgrade, Serbia. pp.273-290. halshs-05082090

HAL Id: halshs-05082090

https://shs.hal.science/halshs-05082090v1

Submitted on 23 May 2025

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# HUMAN GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOGRAPHY IN THE FIELD NOTEBOOKS OF THE FRENCH GEOGRAPHER EMMANUEL DE MARTONNE: DISCIPLINARY BOUNDARY, FIELD METHODOLOGY AND CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Gaëlle Hallair¹

¹Centre national de la recherche scientifique, UMR Géographie-cités, équipe Epistémologie et histoire de la géographie, Paris-Aubervilliers, France, ghallair@parisgeo.cnrs.fr

As a historian of geography, I work on what constitutes geographical science, its object of study, its founding concepts and methodology; I analyze how geography is born and developed at the national and international levels through the circulation of knowledge. Therefore, I wondered about the apparent paradox contained in the very title of the congress ('5th congress of Slavic geographers and ethnographers') which closely associates geography and ethnography, in the continuity of previous congresses dating from the interwar period (Prague 1924, Poland 1927, Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1930 and Kingdom of Bulgaria 1936). In many countries, the academic world of the social sciences appears today increasingly compartmentalized; in geography in particular, there is on one side human geography and on the other physical geography, this was not the case during the interwar period, at the time of the first four congresses.

What does this association with ethnography say about the evolution of geography (I speak here from the point of view of the geographer that I am) as a discipline at a time when geomorphology is predominant in geography? What are the links between ethnography, human geography and physical geography at the time of the first four congresses of Slavic geographers and ethnographers?

In an attempt to shed light on this issue, I propose to study the part of human geography and ethnography in the 27 field notebooks of the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne based on the results of a research program that I have coordinated at the CNRS and entitled 'Corpus Emmanuel de Martonne'. Given the close links between Emmanuel de Martonne and Jovan Cvijic, two great geomorphologists (but not only) internationally recognized, I will introduce some comparisons between them. After discussing the emergence of concepts related to human geography in the first half of the 20th century, the presentation will show what methodology and field tools are used by E. de Martonne and J. Cvijic to describe and explain human facts.

Keywords: Human geography, epistemology, field notebook, E. de Martonne, J. Cvijic

## 1. Introduction
In the history of geography, the aim is to study what constitutes the science of geography in relation to other human sciences in the field, its main object of study, its founding concepts and its methodology. The discipline of geography was born and developed in ways that sometimes differed from country to country, while at the same time having points in common thanks to links between geographers at an international level. We are particularly interested here in the circulation of knowledge between European geographers in the first half of the twentieth century, and in particular between the Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijic (1865-1927) and his colleague and friend the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne (1873-1955), both of whom gained international recognition during their lifetime.

A figure like Cvijic, who went down in history as a specialist in both karst geomorphology and ethnology, does not really exist in France. The small world of French academic geography in the first half of the twentieth century was organised under the leadership of Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918) from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and then Sorbonne University in Paris. Through a division of tasks at the Sorbonne, E. de Martonne (1873-1955) took charge of physical geography, the predominant branch of geography at the time, while his colleague Albert Demangeon (1872-1940) dealt with human geography. So professionally, de Martonne did not see himself as a specialist in human geography. However, although they were not in the majority, the human aspects were not neglected when he went out into the field, as an analysis of his notebooks and photographs clearly shows. In academic terms, however, the articles resulting from his fieldwork are for the most part strictly geomorpho-climatic. On the other hand, in the two large books in Volume 4 of his Géographie universelle, 'Central Europe', human geography plays a significant role.

The aim of this article is to examine the links between physical geography, human geography and ethnology, in other words to look at the disciplinary boundaries of the 'new' geography as defined by de Martonne. We propose to do this on the basis of a corpus of field notebooks, photographs and other archives of the French geographer; we will take advantage of this to present as much as possible of the professional and friendly links between de Martonne and Cvijic.

After presenting the scientific context of the emergence of the concepts of human geography at the turn of the twentieth century, we will explain the field methodology used by de Martonne to tackle aspects of human geography and ethnology before looking at how de Martonne reintroduced them in his 'Géographie universelle' dedicated to Central Europe.

## 2. The emergence of concepts of human geography at the turn of the 20th century

### 2.1. An international scientific context favourable to the emergence of human sciences

In the history of science, the period 1880-1910 corresponds to a 'growth of the social sciences and university disciplinarization' (Robic, 2023) 'in the context of international interest in the promotion of a human geography distinct from the old political geography' (Robic, 2014). It is therefore essential to take an interest in the words used to define the
objects of study that come under neighbouring, and therefore competing, disciplines, namely human geography, ethnology, anthropology and sociology.

For European geography, the forerunner was the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), who published Anthropogeographie in two volumes in 1882 and 1891. This new concept of 'Anthropogeography', coined by F. Ratzel from the Greek root 'anthropos' meaning 'man', aimed to restore the living and the human to their rightful place in geography. Following in F. Ratzel's footsteps, the turn of the century saw the emergence of various disciplines within the human sciences. One of F. Ratzel's students, Franz Boas (1858-1942), a German who had emigrated to the United States, became the father of American anthropology. Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), a French sociologist, is considered to be the father of French ethnology.

At the turn of the 20th century, French geography began to be institutionalised thanks to Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918) (see fig. 1), who was authorised to teach only geography at the chair of history and geography at the University of Nancy. A critical reader of F. Ratzel, whose determinism he did not adopt, P. Vidal de la Blache sought and succeeded in establishing geography as a discipline independent of history, by promoting what the French historian Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) called 'possibilism'. P. Vidal de la Blache wrote several articles on human geography, focusing on human-environment relations, which was new at the time; in particular, he reinvested the well-known concept of 'genre de vie' ('way of life') and, by combining it with the concepts of 'environment' and 'adaptation', made it the key concept of French human geography: His posthumous book, *Principes de géographie humaine* (*Principles of Human Geography*), published in 1922, takes up his new ideas.

## 2.2 Semantic analysis of the concepts of 'human geography' used by the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne

Having sketched out the scientific context at the turn of the twentieth century, let us now turn our attention within French geography to one of Vidal de la Blache's disciples, his son-in-law E. de Martonne (see fig. 2), whose professional activity spanned the first half of the twentieth century. There are three reasons for this choice: E. de Martonne, a brilliant academic, was trained in geography by P. Vidal de la Blache, and when his master died in 1918, he became the leader of the fledgling French geography movement, which he brought to the forefront of the international scene; E. de Martonne thus embodies the evolution of the French geographical discipline and the establishment - or otherwise - of geographical terminology. What terms did he use in his academic writings to deal with human facts in geography?

First of all, E. de Martonne's bibliography (Hallair, 2007, pp. 15-24) shows that the French geographer devoted only 5% of his academic publications to subjects relating to human geography, i.e. 13 publications out of more than 220, which is very few. But that's to be expected from a geomorphology specialist (Broc, Calvet, Giusti, 2010). What is interesting, however, is to see that these 13 publications are divided into different, fairly chronological blocks, using fairly heterogeneous terminology to deal with aspects of human geography, proof that concepts in human geography are still under construction. The disciplinary boundaries between human geography, lifestyle, ethnography, social geography and human geography were still quite blurred at the time of E. de Martonne, since he used one term or another.

Let us explain some of the terms referring to 'human geography' used by E. de Martonne. First of all, E. de Martonne uses the term 'anthropogeography', which spread, particularly in France, following the reception of F. Ratzel's Anthropogeographie (Robic,
2014). The dominance of German-language geography on the international scene was prevalent at the turn of the century (Débarre, 2014). After passing his agrégation in 1895, E. de Martonne, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, spent a year in Vienna, Berlin and Leipzig on his 'tour of Germany', like every other brilliant French geography student. It should also be remembered that in 1893, J. Cvijic (see fig. 3) published in German the thesis he had written under the guidance of the German professor Albrecht Penck (1858-1945) in Vienna. In his early years, E. de Martonne used the term 'anthropogeographical maps' (cartes anthropogéographiques) for the second academic article of his career, published in 1896-1897, on the life of the peoples of the Upper Nile. Although E. de Martonne never used the term anthropogeography again in the title of a publication, perhaps to distance himself from German geography, he did use it twice in an exchange of correspondence in French with J. Cvijic a few years later in 1904 (see fig. 4): 'I have been asked to write an anthropogeographical article for Ratzel's Festschrift' and 'I believe that these questions of transhumance are among the most interesting and least explored in anthropogeography'. At the turn of the 20th century, the term 'anthropogeography', of German origin, enabled the French and Serbian geographers to understand each other.

The second term that E. de Martonne uses to describe aspects of human geography is 'life', which appears in the title of his 1904 article for the collection of homages to F. Ratzel: 'La vie pastorale et la transhumance dans les Karpates méridionales et leur importance géographique et historique' (Pastoral life and transhumance in the southern Karpathians and their geographical and historical significance). This is a direct reference to his master P. Vidal de la Blache's concept of the 'way of life'. E. de Martonne also analysed population distribution, one of the axes of the 'way of life' concept established by P. Vidal de la Blache, for his supplementary thesis in literature, published in 1903.

True to the framework of the regional geography thesis instigated by P. Vidal de la Blache, which became a trademark of the new 'French school of geography', E. de Martonne published his own in 1902 on *La Valachie, essai de monographie géographique* (La Valachie, an attempt in geographical monography): alongside physical and climatic geography, he analysed the human and economic geography of this region of Romania.

From his work as an expert geographer in the various study committees that prepared the peace treaties of the 1919-1920 Peace Conference, and which consequently redrew the borders of the countries of Central Europe, E. de Martonne repeatedly used the term 'ethnography' to qualify the aspects of human geography that he described and analysed: 'ethnographic map', 'ethnographic sketch'.

Finally, in 1927, in his article in tribute to J. Cvijic, when E. de Martonne summarised 'the geographical work of Jovan Cvijic' (de Martonne, 1927a, pp. 5-14), he did not use the term ethnography or anthropogeography but 'social and human geography', emphasising the richness, breadth and novelty of J. Cvijic's work, in particular his major investigation into Serbian migrations, which the Serbian scholar called 'metanastasian movements'. Commenting on J. Cvijic's work *La péninsule balkanique, étude de géographie humaine*, published in French in Paris in 1918, E. de Martonne noted that 'it is not only a description of the types of population and their way of life from a material and economic point of view, but also of their psychological life. This is something that had never been attempted before...'. (Martonne, 1927, p. 12).
## 2.3 Human geography and ethnography in France

The emergence of the human sciences from the turn of the twentieth century and their more or less concurrent development now make it possible to analyse the links between human geography and ethnography from the point of view of French geography. Two types of links are examined: firstly, E. de Martonne's position, which was to ensure that the discipline of geography maintained its own identity in relation to ethnography, as can be seen in the article reporting on the '2nd Congress of Slavic Geographers and Ethnographers' held in Poland in 1927, which he published in the journal 'Les annales de Géographie'. Secondly, we will present an attempt, as original as it was short-lived, to create a French institutional association between geography and ethnography in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Echoing the title of the 5th Congress of Slavic Geographers and Ethnographers in 2024, we begin by analysing de Martonne's two-and-a-half page account of the 2nd Congress of Slavic Geographers and Ethnologists held in Poland in 1927 (Martonne, 1927). In 1927, E. de Martonne was at the congress and presented a paper entitled 'Principes d'une division géographique des Karpates'. He took part in the congress in the company of three other well-known French geographers: Pierre Desfontaines (1894-1978), one of E. de Martonne's students, who was open to inter-disciplinary exchanges between geography, prehistory, ethnology and anthropology presented a paper in French entitled 'La géographie préhistorique de la Bohême' (Desfontaines, 1929, I, p. 244). Alfred Fichelle (1889-1968), an agrégé in history and geography and a specialist in the Slavic world, was appointed administrator of the Institut Ernest Denis (Institut français) in Prague in 1927 (Condette, 2006) and presented a paper entitled 'Les conditions historiques et géographiques de l'économie nationale tchécoslovaque' (Fichelle, 1930, II, p. 41). Théodore Lefebvre (1889-1943), who was more interested in human geography than physical geography, had not yet defended his thesis on lifestyles in the eastern Atlantic Pyrenees (Ginsburger, 2016); he wrote on 'Population density in Turkey in 1914 and 1927'.

In his report on the 2nd Congress of Slavic Geographers and Ethnographers in 1927, E. de Martonne praised the perfect organisation of the event, which he compared very highly to an international congress of geography: 'The perfection of the material organisation does credit to the Congress Secretariat headed by Professor Sawicki and to the local committees set up in the main centres' (de Martonne, 1927b, p. 548). However, the French geographer seemed to regret somewhat the combination of geography and ethnography, while at the same time acknowledging a certain scattering of subjects: 'The share of geography itself in the discussions was diminished by association with ethnography and by the breadth with which any communication on any subject of physical or natural science was admitted'. Nevertheless, he acknowledged the richness of the exchanges for the discipline of geography: 'The sum of geographical ideas stirred up was no less considerable'.

While E. de Martonne remained cautious in 1927 about the reciprocal place of geography and ethnography, let us now look at an example of an attempt at institutional association between geography and ethnography at the end of our study period, i.e. in the aftermath of the 2nd World War. In January-March 1948, the first issue of the 'Revue de Géographie humaine et d'Ethnologie' appeared, founded by the geographer P. Desfontaines (see above) and A. Leroi-Gourhan, a French ethnologist and prehistorian. The stated aim of the journal's two editors was that these two disciplines, geography and ethnography, both disciplines concerned with mankind, should be able to cross-fertilise each other, while sharing a common interest in the spatial distribution of the facts
observed and studied. But the journal soon ceased publication, a sign that this
association was not viable in the French academic field of the time.

To conclude this part devoted to the epistemology of geography and the
emergence and development, in Europe and especially in France, of the concepts of
human geography from the turn of the twentieth century until the Second World War, we
must emphasise the youth of geography as an academic discipline in France, its
emergence as an independent discipline in relation to history, and the sometimes fierce
competition between the different disciplines of human geography, ethnography,
ethnology, sociology and anthropology. The semantic and historical analysis of the
various terms used by the French geographer E. de Martonne to deal with aspects
relating to human geography has enabled us to identify three main points: firstly, a strong
reference to German geography at the beginning of his career with ‘anthropogeography’,
a reference that disappeared when French geography overtook German geography
internationally in the first half of the twentieth century, then a Vidalian heritage with the
concept of ‘genre de vie’ and ‘geography of life’, and finally, an equal treatment, at least
for a time and not without a certain amount of mistrust, between ‘ethnography’ and
‘human geography’.

In the next part, the study of field methodology by the French geographer E. de Martonne allows us to explore in greater depth the links between human geography and ethnography.

3. Between human geography and ethnography, what is E. de Martonne's field methodology?

If, as we analysed in the first part, the academic writings of the French geographer have
very little to do with the various aspects of human geography, the same cannot be said of
his fieldwork material, which consists of his notebooks and photographs. The latter are
surprisingly rich in elements of human geography and ethnography. The French
geographer's corpus of 27 field notebooks mainly concerns mountainous areas and/or
areas where there is contact between mountains and plains, in France (16 notebooks)
and outside France: 2 on Belgium and Luxembourg and 9 on Central Europe, the French
geographer's favourite terrain. As part of an archive development project entitled 'Corpus
Emmanuel de Martonne', coordinated by Gaëlle Hallair, the corpus of 27 notebooks has
been made freely accessible online in the NUBIS digital library of the Bibliothèque Inter-
universitaire de la Sorbonne in Paris. In addition, a collaborative online transcription of the
notebooks is currently underway and can be accessed via the TRANSCRIRE platform.
The corpus of photographs on glass plates, either taken in the field by the Sorbonne
Professor or received by his colleagues around the world, totals around 11,000 images
(MediHAL). In addition to the first two, there is a third collection of 48 letters in French
sent by E. de Martonne to J. Cvijic from the turn of the twentieth century (in his first letter,
E. de Martonne invites J. Cvijic to his wedding with the daughter of his master Vidal de la
Blache) to J. Cvijic's death in January 1927 (the last letter from E. de Martonne is dated
12 December 1926). These letters are available for consultation at the archives of the
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade.

After presenting the main field methods used by E. de Martonne to understand
human geography and ethnography, we will analyse the human geography and
ethnography themes recorded in his notebooks and in his photographs.
## 3.1 Strategies for gathering scientific data

E. de Martonne's academic writings do not provide any information on the strategies and methods he uses in the field to collect raw data for research into human geography and ethnography. We have access to his private writings, namely his correspondence and field notebooks. At the time of E. de Martonne, in the first half of the 20th century, field research trips legitimised the geographer's work, but were also very costly in terms of time, finance and energy.

We learn from the notebooks that the French geographer visited both farms and factories to gather information. In his 1908 notebook No. 4 on Northern France, two double-page spreads are devoted to information gathered during the visit to the Platiot farm in Longuenesse: the history of the farm, the size of the land, agricultural choices, crops, labour, tools, facilities, farmer training, sale of farm produce. In his notebook n°20 of 1923 'Czecho-Poland », alongside the pages devoted to physical geography, the French geographer records the information gathered during his visit to the Skdoda factory in Pilsen on 4 August 1923: the issue of the blast furnaces, the coalfield, the coal, the production of cannons and munitions during the war, the number of workers, the wages, the workers' housing estates, the equipment and production of the steel foundry, the forges, the gas, the power station, the products manufactured, the international customers.

When the French geographer is unable to go and find information in the field himself, particularly abroad, he asks his network to do it for him. Ever since his education at the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure on the rue d'Ulm in Paris, the French geographer has been building up a network of colleagues all over the world, a network that he knows very well how to call on for his needs. In a letter dated 30 January 1904 (see fig. 4), he did not hesitate to ask his Serbian colleague to gather information for him on the question of transhumance, using his own network and possibly his own students. E. de Martonne attached a detailed questionnaire to his letter.

In his field notebooks, the Sorbonne professor certainly aimed to describe and understand the relief in front of his eyes, but indications of human geography and ethnography were always present, albeit to a lesser extent. There are two types of information: textual and iconographic.

The textual analysis beginning with 'Human geography' appears regularly in his various field notebooks. In his notebook no. 9 of 1911 concerning an excursion through the Carpathians along a South-North transect, E. de Martonne, after describing the physical geography of the Lipto basin, goes on to analyse the human geography of the basin on double page 28: 'Human geography. The Lipto basin. Marvellously cultivated, fields stretched out along the slope on large, bare, soft ridges, Picardy-like. Wheat, maize, potatoes, oats, forage, cabbage. Settlement appears to be truly Magyar but some [illegible] German. Lipto Sz Miklos is the real centre of the whole region. Large, wide, cobbled streets, clean, with the appearance of small, well-kept Romanian towns. numerous shops, grocery shops, ironmongery stores, fashions! This is obviously where the whole rural world gets its supplies. There are travelling salesmen in the hotel. 2 or 3 large factories. 1 tobacco factory' (translation by the author).

From time to time, in the midst of a text on human geography, E. de Martonne enters the domain of ethnography, noting types of costume, details of dress or even psychological traits linked to geographical origin. In notebook 21 'Slovakia, 1923', on double page 22 (see fig. 5), before the letters GH for 'géographie humaine' (human geography), we find the following description of clothing: 'Large square in the middle, market, Slovak farmers. Various costumes: men in waistcoats as in Romania, women in
striped aprons, various colours... boots. All along the road to the 3rd station, Slovak
peasants walking to the fair (translation by the author).

Information on human geography is also to be found in the numerous sketches that dot the double-page spread of the notebooks, although they are very much in the minority compared with the information on physical geography. In a panoramic drawing, he would always quickly sketch at least one village with the cross of its church in the centre, or a few roofs of isolated houses, or even the railway station when he was travelling by train., as is the case, for example, in his sketchbook no. 21 ‘Slovakia’ on double page 28. More ethnographic and also rarer, on double page 22 (see fig. 5) of the same notebook no. 21, he quickly and somewhat clumsily drew a clothing detail, namely a type of female bonnet, which he described and judged as follows: ‘curious women’s costumes bonnet with ribbons embroidered in bright colours very pretty’ (translated by the author). The French geographer was also interested in types of housing, particularly roofs. On double page 22 of sketchbook no. 20 (Czechoslovakia-Poland, 1923), he produced a small, simple sketch of the roof of a house on the Olomuc plain. Although he drew aspects of human geography, they were almost never large, complicated sketches, as he was so good at doing for aspects of geomorphology and physical geography; he was much less at ease in this domain. Occasionally, he would draw a plan of a farm, taking up a page of his notebook, as shown, for example, by the plan he drew of Northern France in his notebook No. 4 of 1908.

E. de Martonne's strategies for collecting field data in human geography and ethnography were therefore varied. He called on his professional network and travelled intensively through his research fields, recording geographical and ethnographical information in one field notebook at a time, each notebook constituting what we once called 'a methodological platform' (Hallair, 2013, 8) synthesising observation, description, analysis, explanation and visualisation. A focused analysis of a selection of 10 of the French geographer's field notebooks now allows us to delve deeper into the themes of human geography and ethnography addressed.

## 3.2 Main themes of human geography/ethnography in the notebooks

We carried out a detailed, quantified analysis of a small corpus of 10 notebooks (a third of all the notebooks currently known of E. de Martonne) chosen for their representativeness: at the beginning (1907) and at the end of his career (1935), in France (Nord, Morvan, Vosges, Alps) and in Central Europe (Austro-Hungarian Empire, Carpathians, Romania, Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, Poland). The aim was to identify the main themes of human geography and ethnography, the frequency of their occurrence and the abundance of information contained in the 826 pages of this corpus. For each notebook selected, we listed in a table the pages concerned with descriptions of human geography and the various themes addressed from time to time.

The results of this analysis show first of all that human geography and ethnography account for a minority in relation to the analysis of landforms, i.e. around 1/8th, which is not surprising for a geomorphologist. What's more, the occurrences of human geography range from one word to a page, which means that the French geographer can take the time to note down fairly rich and comprehensive information
relating to human geography. Finally, human geography is expressed mainly in text and
very little in sketches or drawings. These occurrences are also related to soil types, land
tenure, type of ownership, population and relations with the outside world, in keeping
with the Vidalian legacy of 'possibilism' (see below).

The main themes of human geography that emerge from this analysis of the field notebooks explore three areas, which we will detail briefly: economic geography, types of housing and population. E. de Martonne does not hesitate to link them to the historical or even prehistoric context and to make comparisons (with other places or other periods).

The economic geography that interests the French geographer concerns the types of agricultural production (cereal growing, arboriculture, viticulture, horticulture, brewing, in the plains, in the mountains, in the countryside and on the outskirts of towns, the breeding of horses, cows and sheep), mining (mines, coal) and industry (sugar refineries, iron and steel works, machine tools, watchmaking) and finally ports, all in relation to the movement of these products.

The types of housing, whether rural or urban, attract the attention of the French geographer: the distribution of housing (grouped or not), its exposure on the slopes (adret or ubac, in relation to the slope), its location (near water points and traffic routes), their its permanent or seasonal occupation, the shape of the houses, the shape of the roofs (gable or 4-sided), the materials used (rammed earth, thatch, tiles, wood, stone), the organisation of the different living elements (living rooms, lean-to, hutches, orchards, garden, path) and the links between the inhabitants, the animals and the seeds or crops, the monuments (church, railway station, market), the links between the centre and the outskirts, and urban development. The relationship with space remains predominant, but can sometimes fade into ethnography when E. de Martonne focuses on the decoration of a gateway, for example.

The elements relating to the population that E. de Martonne records in his notebooks refer to their distribution in relation to the surrounding environment, ethnic origin, (subjective) impressions of poverty/wealth, dirtiness/cleanliness, psychological characteristics and details of male and female costumes. The French geographer's keen interest in the variety and detail of costumes is his furthest step towards ethnography.

Finally, all the themes of human geography as practised in France in the first half of the twentieth century are covered in the French geomorphologist's field notebooks. He describes and analyses 'ways of life' according to the Vidalian model.

These three main themes of human geography and ethnography can be found in the collection of 11,000 photographs that E. de Martonne has built up since he started out; these 11,000 photographs on glass plates are the third and final part of his field methodology.

### 3.3 Field photographs between human geography and ethnography

As he wrote to his colleague and friend J. Cvijic on 30 January 1904 (see fig. 4), E. de Martonne set about building up a collection of geographical photographs from his first university post in Rennes. As a student in Vienna at the end of the 19th century, he had
## 4.1 'Géographie universelle' (Universal Geography): a reference for geography

The result of a collective effort by French geographers, the 'Géographie universelle' was conceived in 1907/1908 by P. Vidal de la Blache, who divided up the different regions of the world between his disciples. Those in his esteem were given regions accessible from France so that they could spend time there and practise field geography. At the time, fieldwork was the criterion for validating the 'new geography' or 'géographie de plein vent' (open-air geography'), to use an expression popularised by the French historian Lucien Febvre and explained by M. - C. Robic, a specialist in Vidalian geography (Collective work, 2018). This open-air geography contrasts with cabinet geography (Robic, 2016). The First World War marked a turning point, redrawing the borders of many countries, so the first volume was published in 1927 and the last in 1948 (Wolff, 2005, pp. 433-437).

An expression of French geographical thought and a veritable monument to the French school of geography, 'Géographie Universelle' was a reference for all geographers in the first half of the twentieth century and was particularly well received in France and abroad (Hallair, 2007, pp. 48-50). Its aim was to provide every educated person with in-depth knowledge of both physical geography and human geography, the latter of which, according to P. Vidal de la Blache, encompasses the distribution of populations, how they are grouped, their lifestyles, their housing, economic issues and international relations.

In 'Géographie universelle', E. de Martonne dealt with Central Europe, his favourite field of research, and wrote Volume 4 in two parts published in 1930 and 1931 respectively.

To prepare his manuscript, the French geographer made several field trips, and the notebooks devoted to Central Europe can be analysed as the preparatory phase for gathering the necessary geographical information. The chronology of the notebooks currently available is very clear: notebooks n°8, n°9 and partially n°12 (1911, Austrian Empire, Hungary), notebooks n°16 and 17 (Romania, 1921), notebook n°19 (Czechoslovakia, 1923), notebook n°20 (Czecho-Poland, 1923), notebook n°23 (Moldavia, 1929) (Hallair, 2020).

## 4.2 From field notebooks and photographs to E. de Martonne's 'Central Europe'

It is interesting to compare the field notebooks from 1911 to 1929 and the photographs in the de Martonne collection with the finished academic work in the 'Central Europe' volume, in the 1930s, by analysing the genetics of both text and image. We will illustrate this with examples taken from the angle of human geography and ethnography. Echoing the 1927 Congress of Slavic Geographers and Ethnographers, these examples relate the 'Poland' section of E. de Martonne's 'Géographie Universelle' to his 1923 field notebook no. 20 and images from his photographic collection, which corresponds to the Polish terrain.

Concerning the geography of the Polish population, we note that in chapter XXXIX about 'Territory and peoples', the 2 penultimate paragraphs from 'From the division between Prussia, Austria and Russia' to the end of the paraph '.... division politique' (Europe centrale, tome 2 p. 630) largely reproduce elements noted on double pages 32 and 33 of notebook no. 20 about the 'three social types of Polish people', reflecting the 'three temperaments' that developed under the three very different political powers: Russian, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian.

The urban geography of Warsaw attracted the attention of E. de Martonne in 1923, as he devoted a double page 27 to it. This can be linked to the section devoted to 'Warsaw: site and development', in particular pages 674-676 of chapter XLII 'The Great
Plain of the North'. Both describe the urban development of Warsaw and its urban morphology.

Finally, the last example concerns rural settlements and the geography of agricultural production in Posnania. The two photographs at the top of plate CXIX accompanying the text of the 'Géographie Universelle', p. 677, were taken by the French geographer and come from his photographic collection (see fig. 10).

In each case, we can see that the academic discourse is much smoother, neutral and restrained, whereas in his field notebook, which was never intended to leave the private sphere, E. de Martonne expressed himself more spontaneously, even if it meant taking offence at the dirtiness or squalor of certain districts of Warsaw.

We will conclude this article, paradoxically dedicated to the analysis of human geography and ethnography in the work of the geomorphology specialist E. de Martonne, by insisting on the paradigm of regional geography of the French school of geography. We have been able to demonstrate that aspects of human geography and ethnography are surprisingly important, whether in field methodology or in the tools of description, analysis and visualisation that are notebooks and photographs. Similarly, the two large volumes on 'Central Europe' in the great work of 'Géographie Universelle' are a majestic contribution to regional geography. Apart from the book on *Principes de la Géographie humaine* by his father-in-law Vidal de la Blache, which he completed and published after his death, 'Central Europe' is the academic work in which E. de Martonne delved most deeply into questions of human geography and ethnography.

This article sheds light on a little-known aspect of the French geographer's interest in human geography and ethnography. Didn't he end his letter of 28 January 1923 to J. Cvijic with 'I'm sending you my *Abrégé de Géographie physique (Abbreviated book of physical geography)*, which has finally been published! What do you think of the last chapter added on human geography?' (translated by the author).

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1. The French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918)</figcaption></figure>

Source: CNRS, UMR Géographie-Cités, France
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2. The French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne (1873-1955)</figcaption></figure>

Source: CNRS, UMR Géographie-Cités, don de Madame Sommer

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3. The Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijic (1865-1927)</figcaption></figure>

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Јован_Цвијић,_реограф_(1865-1927).jpg

Figure 4: Proposed English translation by G. Hallair of the letter in French from E. de Martonne to J. Cvijic dated 30 January 1904 30 January 04

My dear colleague,

Are you still in Belgrade? Or have you decidedly become Bohemian? Not knowing, I am sending this letter to your old address, as I did for some of my last publications sent some time ago. I really regretted not being able to go ahead with our planned excursion to the Iron Gates, but my time was so full! I still don't know how I managed to do everything I did. Now I would like to ask you for some information. I've been asked to write an anthropogeographical article for Ratzel's Festschrift and I've been thinking of taking up again the pastoral life in the southern Karpathians, a sketch of which I gave in my 'Wallachia'. I believe that these questions of transhumance are among the most interesting and least explored in anthropogeography. I'd like to try and do a brief review of what we know about this. Could you give me some information on Serbia and Macedonia (especially Serbia). I'm enclosing a questionnaire which, if you don't have time, you could ask one of your students to answer. Of course - although the question is not formulated - please indicate the works where information can be found on the questions asked.

I have another project for which I would also like your support. By extending my field of observation further than the southern Karpathians, and by comparing observations from lowland and mountain stations, I would like to try to draw a rough line between the region where eastern and northern exposure is the wettest (with the limit of lower trees and snow) and the region where southern and western exposure is the wettest. I'd like to get
in touch with your Serbian meteorologists. What has been published? Would it be
possible to have handwritten information (like that obtained in Romania) to contact?

Please be so kind as to answer the 1st question in particular as soon as possible.

Thank you in advance, and best regards.

E. de Martonne

Since my return, I have completely reorganised my laboratory, which has taken up a lot of my time. I haven't yet completed the catalogue and classification of my photographs, but I'll send it to you as soon as it's done. Perhaps, as I suggested, we could make some useful exchanges.

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5. Double page 22 of E. de Martonne's notebook no. 21</figcaption></figure>

Source : Library of the Paris Institute of Geography, Paris Pantheon Sorbonne University, France

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6. Glass plate photograph 'Le Creusot (Saône et Loire), general view of the factories'</figcaption></figure>

Source : F523(046), collection E. de Martonne, CNRS, UMR PRODIG, France

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7. Glass plate photograph: 'Thoisy, farm'. By E. de E. de Martonne.</figcaption></figure>

Source : F523(006), collection E. de Martonne, CNRS, UMR PRODIG, France
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8. Glass plate photograph: 'Slovak Carpathians and the Waag Valley'. By E. de Martonne.</figcaption></figure>

Source: EU3231(016), collection E. de Martonne, CNRS, UMR PRODIG, France

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>Figure 9. Glass plate photograph: 'Slovakia. Near Trencin, wood industry'. By A. Fichelle.</figcaption></figure>

Source: EU3231(017), collection E. de Martonne, CNRS, UMR PRODIG, France

<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>Figure 10. Glass plate photograph: 'Pamientkovo estate near Poznan. 1926'. By E. de Martonne.</figcaption></figure>

Source: EU334(012), collection E. de Martonne, CNRS, UMR PRODIG, France

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