French geographer, born at Pézenas, Hérault, on the 22nd of January 1845. He was educated at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and entered upon the study of geography by way of that of history. The relations between geographical causes and historical effects were with him the subject of a life-study, the results of which are seen in one of his best-known works, the Tableau Général de la Géographie de France prefixed to Lavisse’s Histoire de France (1903) and later republished separately; but he always refrained from pressing the theory of geographical “control” to an extreme. He joined the French school at Athens in 1867, and was thus enabled to travel extensively in Mediterranean lands. From 1872 to 1877 he was in charge, latterly as professor, of the department of history and geography at Nancy; from 1877 to 1898 he taught geography in the higher grades at the École Normale Supérieure, and from 1898 to 1909 he held the chair of geography in the Faculté des Lettres at Paris. He lectured widely, and among his publications is the monumental Atlas Général: Histoire et Géographie, first published in 1894; he founded in 1891 and edited until his death the periodical Annales de Géographie, and contributed constantly to its pages. He died at Tamaris-sur-mer (Var) on the 5th of April 1918.
