The structuralist view of mathematics was quite extended among mathematicians in the second half of twentieth century. This paper attempts to assess the extent of this perspective of mathematics, in its various forms, in providing a unifying framework for mathematics. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to the study of the genesis and development of structuralism in algebra. The second one presents, on the one hand, Bourbaki's work in particular, and, on the other hand, the contributions of some category theorists to the extension of structuralism to mathematics in general. After pointing out the widely accepted weaknesses of Bourbaki's enterprise, I discuss the different positions we can find under the general te...