Charles Robequain

Charles Robequain (23 June 1897, Auberives, Isère, France — 28 Sept. 1963, Rennes, France) was a French geographer, historian, economist and writer, amateur photographer, a pioneer in colonial and tropical geography who produced the first field-based doctoral monograph in geography on a region in the tropical world, the Thanh Hoa in Annam [Vietnam]. 

Enlisted in World War I, he resumed his studies in 1919, becoming secondary school teacher in 1922. From 10 April 1924 to 10 April 1926, he was corresponding member of EFEO in Annam [he signed ​“Former member of EFEO” after 1928], presenting his doctoral thesis on the Thanh Hoa region in 1928, a work often quoted by Madeleine Colani. He stayed in French Indochina until 1935, teaching at Lycée Albert Sarraut in Hanoi and traveling extensively in the region.

Professor of geography at Harvard University (1928−1935), Rennes University, then at Sorbonne University where he created the Chair of Tropical Geology, he was incarcerated by the collaborationist authorities in 1940 – 1941, resuming his teaching after World War II, advocating an ​“enlighted colonialism” until the independence movements made this view obsolete in the 1950s. His study L’évolution économique de l’Indochine française (1939), translated into English in 1944, was one of the main working papers for Charles de Gaulle’s Comite de la France Libre (French Committee of Liberation). In 1950, he also served as president of the Board of the quadripartite EFEO, short-lived institution launched in 1949 to associate not-yet independent Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos to the scientific activities in the region.

1. Le Thanh Hoa. Étude géographique d’une province annamite (thesis), Paris/​Bruxelles, EFEO/​van Oest (PEFEO, 24), 1929, 2 volumes, 243 & 636 pp.
2. “Le pays et les hommes”, in Indochine [ed. Sylvain Levi], Paris, SEGMC, 1931.
3. “Les ruines d’Angkor”, in Le Chêne: Forêt, Chasse, Pêche, Tourisme, Marseille, n 2, Jul 1931, p 127 – 136 + 12 pl.
4. “L’Habitation indigène dans les Possessions françaises : l’Indochine”, Revue d’Écologie (La Terre et La Vie) 1 – 4, 1931, pp. 230 – 247.
5. Thanh Hoa, Documents historiques et legendes villageoises reunies en 1924 – 28, manuscript given to EFEO Library by C.R. in 1939.
6. L’évolution économique de l’Indochine française, Paris, Hartmann, 1939; English: The Economic Development of French Indochina, tr. Isabel A. Ward, New York, Oxford University Press/​Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944. 
7. “Notes morphologiques sur les plateaux moï de Pleiku et du Darlac (Sud-Annam), Bulletin de l’Association de Géographes Français (BAGF), 144 – 145, 1942, pp. 46 – 54.
8. “Saint-Barthélémy. Terre française”, Les Cahiers d’Outré-Mer, 2 – 5, 1949 pp. 14 – 37.
9. Le monde malais — Péninsule Malaise — Sumatra — Java — Bornéo — Celèbes — Bali et Les Petites Isles De La Sonde — Moluques — Philippines, Paris, Payot, 510 p., 1946. 
10. L’Indochine française, Paris, A. Colin, 1948.
11. “Les genres de vie montagnards”, in L’Indochine (Viet Nam, Cambodge, Laos), Paris, A. Colin, 1952, p. 77 – 98.
12. “Notes sur l’évolution des pays moï entre Dalat et Kontoum (Sud-Annam)”, Bulletin de l’Association de Géographes Français (BAGF) 226 – 228, 1952, pp. 106 – 112.
13. Paesi dell’ex Indocina : il Cambogia, Milano, 1957 [brochure with photographs and map]
14. “Difficultés économiques dans l’Asie du Sud-Est”, Politique étrangère 20 – 1, 1955, pp. 88 – 95.
15. “La géographie française dans les terres africaines de l’union française au sud du Sahara”, L’Information Géographique 21 – 1, 1957, pp. 22 – 26.
16. Madagascar et les bases dispersées de l’Union française, Paris, PUF, 1958.
17. “Les migrations intérieures à Madagascar”, Annales de géographie 372, 1960, pp. 201 – 202.
18. Malaya, Indonesia, Borneo, and the Philippines: Geographical, Economic, and Political Description, London, 1961.

Photo: Charles Robequain portrayed in a 1937 Ouest-Éclair periodical publication, via Wikipedia.