Les tribulations de la carte géologique du département de la Vendée au XIXe siècle
Abstract
While Henri Fournel, a mining engineer and prominent figure in the Saint-Simonian movement, published the first geological map of eastern Vendée, Auguste Rivière undertook the task of mapping the geology of the entire department, between 1832 and 1835, using the Cassini topographic map. However, in 1849, the Departmental Council refused to publish the map, so Rivière published six excerpts at a scale of 1:10,000 instead. Furthermore, Dufrénoy and Élie de Beaumont utilised some of his unpublished findings in creating the first geological map of France, completed in 1840. An anonymous, handwritten geological map of the Vendée and Deux-Sèvres departments, which is stored at the École des Mines in Paris and dates back to the Second Republic, may have been inspired by these early maps. In 1849, the Prefect of Vendée commissioned the mining engineers Chancourtois, Bochet and Orsel, to organise a new departmental geological mapping programme. Ultimately, it was engineers Brossard de Corbigny and later Descottes who conducted the field work between 1855 and 1878, utilising 24 état-major sheets as a topographic base. Descottes completed this map in 1878, but it was never published. The original drafts for both Rivière's and Descottes' maps appear to have been lost. However, the discovery of a 563-page manuscript titled "Explanation of the geological and agronomic map of Vendée, executed by M. Descottes" has revived hopes of finding the latter. The difficulties surrounding the creation of these maps highlight the dissension between the academic community, mining engineers and an unpredictable political class. Frequent reassignment of mining engineers and prefects also contributed significantly to these difficulties. The 1:80,000-scale geological mapping programme for France reinvigorated geological exploration in the late 19th century. Rather than mining engineers, this project was primarily entrusted to geologists from universities and natural history museums.
Related
BibTeX
@article{godard2026tribulations,
title = {{Les tribulations de la carte géologique du département de la Vendée au XIXe siècle}},
author = {Gaston Godard},
journal = {Travaux du Comité français d'Histoire de la Géologie},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05797599v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Les tribulations de la carte géologique du département de la Vendée au XIXe siècle
AU - Gaston Godard
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
JO - Travaux du Comité français d'Histoire de la Géologie
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05797599v1
AB - While Henri Fournel, a mining engineer and prominent figure in the Saint-Simonian movement, published the first geological map of eastern Vendée, Auguste Rivière undertook the task of mapping the geology of the entire department, between 1832 and 1835, using the Cassini topographic map. However, in 1849, the Departmental Council refused to publish the map, so Rivière published six excerpts at a scale of 1:10,000 instead. Furthermore, Dufrénoy and Élie de Beaumont utilised some of his unpublished findings in creating the first geological map of France, completed in 1840. An anonymous, handwritten geological map of the Vendée and Deux-Sèvres departments, which is stored at the École des Mines in Paris and dates back to the Second Republic, may have been inspired by these early maps. In 1849, the Prefect of Vendée commissioned the mining engineers Chancourtois, Bochet and Orsel, to organise a new departmental geological mapping programme. Ultimately, it was engineers Brossard de Corbigny and later Descottes who conducted the field work between 1855 and 1878, utilising 24 état-major sheets as a topographic base. Descottes completed this map in 1878, but it was never published. The original drafts for both Rivière's and Descottes' maps appear to have been lost. However, the discovery of a 563-page manuscript titled "Explanation of the geological and agronomic map of Vendée, executed by M. Descottes" has revived hopes of finding the latter. The difficulties surrounding the creation of these maps highlight the dissension between the academic community, mining engineers and an unpredictable political class. Frequent reassignment of mining engineers and prefects also contributed significantly to these difficulties. The 1:80,000-scale geological mapping programme for France reinvigorated geological exploration in the late 19th century. Rather than mining engineers, this project was primarily entrusted to geologists from universities and natural history museums.
SN - 1156-2919
SN - 2268-5278
ER -