Arrault, Jean-Baptiste <br/><br/>
An Unexpected Geography: Paul Vidal de la Blache’s World System 

 -  2008.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> Olivier Dollfus, with his 'système Monde' was not the first French geographer to represent the world as a system. Other geographers, like Paul Claval and Alain Reynaud, have also taken a systemic approach in their analyses of the world. However, there were geographers who, as early as the turn of the 20th century, had already developed a view of the world as a finite, complete and, in a way, systemic or systematic totality. Among them was Paul Vidal de la Blache, who focused on the installation of a world communication network and the emergence of three major economic poles, which were interdependent although in competition and unequal: Europe, the United States and the Far East.