La Geografía Política en Vidal de la Blache : "La France de l'Est"

In 1979, a surprising article of Y. Lacoste's appeared in the periodical publication «Hérodote» under the title of «A bas Vidal... Viva Vidal» («Down with Vidal, long live Vidal»), the objective of which was to unearth the last work of Vidal de la Blache: La France de l'Est (Loraine-Alsace) (1917). In this work, Lacoste distinguished some aspects previously ignored in what has traditionally been considered the vidalian model of geography; aspects such as economic social and especially, geopolitical phenomena. This article attempts to make a more profound analysis of one of the questions raised in Lacoste's article: What role did Political Geography play in the French Vidal de la Blache School of thought?. Many of the works and actions of Vidal's disciples demonstrate a special interest in Political Geography, with the momentaneous abandon of the descriptive model, so characteristic of French regional Geography. In fact, the Alsace-Loraine frontier dispute at the end of the First World War was the central theme in La France de l'Est. The truly geo-political elements of this work have been extracted, in an effort to demonstrate that one aspect of the Vidalian School has long been forgotten -the aspect of Political Geography.