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The Origin of the Idea of Natural Frontiers in France
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1951
Year
FrenchColonialismFrench Cultural TheoryDecolonialityFrench Literary TheoryPhilosophy Of HistoryPhysical GeographyPast GeographyNatural FrontiersFrancophone CulturesGerman HistoriansLanguage StudiesIntellectual HistoryTransnational HistoryHigher LawFrench CultureEnvironmental HistoryEuropean IssueHistorical ReassessmentFrench MediaArtsFrench SocietyModernity
The concept of natural frontiers has historically been used by states to justify territorial claims, paralleling ideas such as Lebensraum and shaping French political thought. Sorel reconstructed French policy as a deliberate expansion toward the Rhine, Alps, and Pyrenees by interpreting Richelieu’s testament and related documents. Sorel’s thesis gained wide acceptance among German scholars and popular literature, yet subsequent scholarship discredited Richelieu’s authorship and the policy motif, though the idea of natural frontiers remained influential during the French Revolution.
T has been not uncommon for states that cast envious eyes on the lands of their neighbors to appeal to a higher law in justification of their claims. The idea of natural frontiers has at some time or in some way been employed politically by many nation-states and forms an interesting complement to the no less significant idea of living space. Both ideas are in a sense an appeal to the higher sanction of a natural law. The recent publication of a critical edition of the Testament of Cardinal Richelieul suggests a consideration of the doctrine often ascribed to him, of les limites of France. On the basis of this work and of a small number of other texts the French historian, Sorel,2 built up an interpretation of French policy as one of steady advance towards the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. La politique franfaise, he wrote, avait He' dessinee par la geographie.3 It has become fashionable in certain quarters during the present century to believe in the inevitability of a geographically controlled expansion. The doctrine ascribed to Richelieu so much resembles the modern idea of Lebensraum that its origins become worthy of particular consideration. The interpretation offered by Sorel was readily adopted by German historians, received the approval of the historian Ranke, and issued in innumerable pamphlets and brochures in which the infamy of French policy was attuned to the mind of every class of reader. Since then however, not only has Richelieu's authorship of the words so often ascribed to him been discredited,4 but the existence of such a motif in French policy has been disproved.5 On the other hand there can be no doubt that the idea of lirnites naturelles had gained a wide acceptance in literary and educated circles, and that it was of political importance at the time of the French Revolution.