France - An Introductory Geography

FRANCE An Introductory Geography by E. ESTYN EVANS FREDERICK A. PRAEGER, Publishers New York Washington BOOKS THAT MATTER Published in the United States of America in 1966 by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., Publishers in Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10003 The original edition of this book was published in 1937 by Chatto Windus, London, and a revised edition was issued in 1 959 IQ37, 1959, 1966 by E. Estyn Evans All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 66-17365 Printed in the United States of America FOREWORD BY H. J. FLEURE Modern Geography has sometimes been called Human Ecology. It tries to show how men at varying stages in the growth or decline of civilization have grasped or neglected opportunities provided by their environment, and how in so doing they have both fitted themselves into its limiting condi tions and often also fitted it to supply their needs. Sometimes immediate needs have been too insistent and the fitting in consequence has been temporary, the ultimate relations being impoverished by sacrifice to the short view. But in the case of la belle France we have to do with a land that has been loved and worked for many centuries, a land wherein a Roman inheritance, working upon Celtic and pre-Celtic local foundations, has been stimulated by the Frankish and Norse contacts which it latinized so remarkably. No other land has such an intimate interweaving of almost all the contributions of the various peoples of Western Europe, and few, if any, other lands have such a deep social continuity, whatever the changes in politics and leadership may have meant. France is, in fact, the land that it behooves us to study most intimately if we are to follow the growth ofa civilization impregnated with the idea of maintenance rather than expan sion, of duration rather than temporary efflorescence, though both the idea of expansion and that of efflorescence have played notable parts in French life. It is with these thoughts in mind that readers will, I hope, study this book by Mr. Evans, who has learned to think from a French as well as from a British point of view and to love the sunny land about which he writes. KANSAS Ciiv MO. U3L1G LIBRARY oo 67143 IS CONTENTS FOREWORD by H. J...