Albert Demangeon
| Albert Demangeon | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
13 June 1872 Cormeilles, Eure, France |
| Died | 25 July 1940 (aged 68) Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Professor of economic geography |
Albert Demangeon (13 June 1872 – 25 July 1940) was a Professor of social geography at the Sorbonne in Paris for many years. He was an educator, a prolific author, and in the 1930s was the leading French academic in the field of human geography. He was a pioneer in the use of surveys to collect information on social questions.
Albert Demangeon was born on 13 June 1872 in Cormeilles, Eure, France. His parents were not well off but Albert was an outstanding student and won admission to the École Normale Supérieure in 1892. There he became interested in geography and in the teachings of Paul Vidal de La Blache. He graduated in geography in 1895 and became a teacher in a secondary school. He later was employed in the École Normale Supérieure preparing students for the Agrégation.
Demangeon presented his thesis on Picardy in 1905, considered a model of a regional monograph. He obtained a teaching post at the University of Lille. He collaborated with Antoine Vacher, Joseph Blayac and others on their Dictionnaire-manuel illustré de géographie (1907). The book received hostile reviews, and Demangeon seems to have accused Vacher of sabotaging the project. From 1911 he taught in Paris at the Sorbonne. During World War I (1914–18) Demangeon served in the geographical corps of the army and drafted memos for the army staff. Towards the end of the war he was a member of the committee studying preparation for peace. The "section géographique française" helped define the policies that France would follow after the war on territorial arrangements.
Demangeon returned to the Sorbonne after the war. He was Professor of economic geography at the Faculty of Letters from 1925 to 1940. He served on the editorial board of the Revue d'Histoire Moderne, which was relaunched in 1926. By 1927 he was one of the directors of Armand Colin's Annales de Géographie. Demangeon was noted as a university teacher, and also contributed to primary education. He was responsible for a well known collection of secondary school textbooks. In the mid-1930 he taught at the École des hautes études commerciales de Paris (HEC). One of his students was the future economist Albert O. Hirschman, who recorded that he gave "brilliant lectures", and used large and colorful maps to illustrate his themes of commerce and trade between geographical regions, and the resulting economic rivalries. Demangeon acted as an arbitrator in social conflicts at the time of the Popular Front (1936–38).
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