La crise des années trente et la tension vers l’expertise géographique : expériences françaises et internationales. Une nouvelle frontière ?

In the national schools of geography, and likewise internationally, university-based geography in the 1930s witnessed a marked change in orientation that led it towards application (including in the democratic countries considered here). By way of this novel trend, geographers encountered other disciplines, which were disciplines of action, and envisaged their interventions within pluri-disciplinary teams, or in the form of a specific contribution based on the idea of geographical synthesis and the cartographical message. The economic crisis accentuated this pragmatic orientation, although it did not create it. From there, with an awareness of a world whose various parts were interdependent, and of an inhabited worldthat was nearly complete but still extensible, already present among geographers at the turn of the 20th century, they went on to undertake surveys and studies aiming to solve problems of settlement and organisation of space. The urgency of these tasks was however very diversely assessed according to countries