ABSTRACT
The really significant development in human knowledge, in its relevance to the developments of modern geography, took place in the third quarter of the nineteenth century with the impact of Darwinian evolutionary thought. Two special developments call for particular comment. Firstly, political geography has been brilliantly promoted by Andre Siegfried and Jean Ancel. Ancel, who was a pupil of Demangeon and wrote his doctorate thesis on Macedonia and its contemporary evolution, produced studies on the political geography of the Balkans and Central Europe. Siegfried for long occupied a research chair in political and economic geography at the College de France. Secondly, colonial geography has developed since the establishment of the first chair in Paris in 1892. After the First World War, geography was represented in all the Universities and nearly all the professors were pupils of Vidal de la Blache.
