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2001
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Description Description, geography Documents Manuscript repositories Manuscript depositories Manuscripts--Repositories Manuscripts--DepositoriesCiter ce document
« Sur les traces de Coquebert de Montbret. A la recherche d'une géographie invisible », Dix-Huitième Siècle (documents), ID : 10.3406/dhs.2001.2422
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Résumé
18th Century geographers considered geography as merely a description of the earth, which explains the contempt for them expressed by their 19th-century successors. But their modest conception did not mean that before the establishment of the discipline of geography there was no attempt to make space intelligible. The professional and private archives of Charles-Etienne Coquebert de Montbret, an important civil servant at the end of the Old Régime and during the Revolution, indicate an interest for the different ways of describing space. While some documents do show a concern to present reality directly and immediately, others on the contrary attempt to go beyond what is immediately visible in order to provide explanations. This article looks at four methods of writing about space in Coquebert de Montbret' s writings : the table, the inventory, the monograph, and the description. They are not linked to a particular type of source, to an individual or a profession, but they reveal a way of looking at space.
