treatment of women (as individuals such as Cleopatra, and collectively, as in the case of Amazons)draws explicitly on the insights of feminist geographers. Other contributions such as DanielaDueck’s analysis of Strabo’s uses of Greek poetry, Nikos Litinas’ somewhat obscure chapteron his treatment of a narrative fragment from Sapho, and Johannes Engels’ discussion of Strabo’sattitude to ‘men of high reputation’, while fascinating in their own right, seem unrelated to thecollection’s title. Others deal directly with Strabo’s approach to specific geographical and ethno-graphic materials. Among these, Maria Pretzler’s and Yuval Shahar’s comparisons of Strabo’saccounts of Greece and Palestine with those of earlier geographers (Pausanias and Josephus,respectively) raise interesting questions about the epistemological tensions between textualauthority and autopsy (field observation) in ancient geography that have obvious contemporaryresonance. Related questions about sources and synthesis in geographical description are raisedby Ze’ev Safrai in assessing the accuracy of Strabo’s treatment of Syria, Phoenicia and Judea.Sarah Pothecary’s essay on Strabo’s treatment of Rome’s European provinces raises the enduringgeographical question of regional definition, stretched between the use of physical features andpolitical boundaries. She notes en passant his use of geometrical figures (square, rectangle, trian-gle) as simple descriptors of geographical shape and location. Here again, one remembers the useof geometrical figures in the rhetorical art of memory and thus geography’s importance for civicparticipation in the political forum. Such participation was the key marker of citizenship forStrabo, who, as Eran Almagor points out in a fascinating study of his usage of the term ‘barbarian’,regarded it as Greek culture’s enduring gift to Rome.

Although this collection will be principally of interest to Classicists and Strabo specialists, andwhile a cynic might detect astute marketing in the adoption of the currently fashionable ‘cultural ge-ography’ in its title, the book offers intriguing insights into the historical geography of our discipline.

Denis CosgroveUniversity of California, Los Angeles, USA

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2007.01.007

441Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007) 431e462

Emmanuel Garnier, Terre de conquetes. La foret vosgien sous l’ancien regime, Paris, Fayard, 2004,622 pages, V38 paperback; Philippe Jehin, Les forets des Vosges du Nord du moyen age a laRevolution: milieux, usages, exploitations, Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg,2005, 398 pages, V20 paperback.

Each year when I attend the Festival International de Geographie at Saint-Die I reserve a room ina particular hotel that faces eastward, affording me an uninterrupted view of the ‘blue line of theVosges’ that served as the traumatic boundary between defeated France and victorious Germanyin the half century following the Franco-Prussian War up to the conclusion of World War I. Inaddition to its geopolitical significance, the Vosges form a watershed with streams flowing to theRhine, the Meurthe and the Moselle, and the Saone. The upland also contains a major reserve ofwoodland. It is this final theme influenced, to be sure, by both physical and strategic location thatserves as the focus of two doctoral theses by historians Emmanuel Garnier and Philippe Jehin.With Garnier concentrating on the southern section of the Vosges (effectively the area of the Bal-lons des Vosges regional park) and Jehin studying ‘Vasgovie’ to the north (within the confines of

442 Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007) 431e462

the Vosges du Nord regional park), there is now an excellent coverage of the environmental andcultural history of the complete upland from the later middle ages to the fall of the ancien regimein 1789.

Despite researching in different universities (Garnier at Besancon and Jehin at Strasbourg), thearguments of both authors and the sources they use are remarkably similar. Both use a wide arrayof manuscript materials held in archives in towns to the east and the west of the Vosges moun-tains. Both pay great attention to detailed historic maps, reproducing some in colour in theirbooks. Both are very aware of spatial variables in the woodland histories that they present. Inmany respects their work is eminently ‘geographical’ and research by geographers is quoted fre-quently. The internal structures of the books differ but many of the underlying arguments are sim-ilar, albeit arranged in different ways. Jehin focuses on ‘man’ and the environment, the forest as‘victim’ of agricultural clearance, on woodcutting and industries, and attempts at forest manage-ment before the ‘paroxysm’ of the Revolution. Garnier looks first at land clearance before movingdirectly to regulation, then economic activities, and finally the mountain dwellers and their envi-ronment. Where Garnier privileges ‘conquest’ in his title, Jehin emphasises ‘exploitation’. Bothhighlight the contested notion of usages whereby local farmers and commoners claimed posses-sion of certain ‘rights’ to use woodland resources in numerous ways and in perpetuity, butseigneurs argued that these were simply ‘privileges’ that might be annulled or curtailed.

Both authors conclude on the need to view woodlands as hybrids set between cultural and nat-ural phenomena; both highlight them as exemplars of current environmental challenges. Theyshow that, whilst farmers, woodcutters and herdsmen attacked the woodlands of the Vosgeswith varying degrees of intensity across the centuries, vast silent and relatively untouched ex-panses still remain. Some demands on woodland resources in the Vosges were local but others,such as the navies of successive French kings and the fuel needs of industrialists in the Rhineand Moselle valleys, were distant. Thus, much investment in woodland exploitation came fromremote sources of capital. Political changes associated with shifts of territorial control inevitablyproduced modifications in systems of regulation that were often honoured in the breach ratherthan the observance. In reading about the range of livelihoods to be gained in the forests ofthe Vosges, one is reminded of powerful passages by Michel Deveze in La vie de la foret francaiseau XVIe siecle (SEVPEN, 1961), a book that forms the great ancestor of the flourishing French‘school’ of woodland history (and geography) animated by Andree Corvol.

Comparing these two complementary books, Jehin’s work is the shorter and is illustrated withexcellent maps and reproductions as well as useful statistical tables. Garnier’s book is longer anddenser, lacking tables and containing a small number of maps that unfortunately do not repro-duce well on rather coarse paper. Setting black lettering on dark grey backgrounds is never a rec-ipe for cartographic success. The answer may well be that the maps were drawn in colour but wereprinted in black and white (and grey) for reasons of economy. Despite these quibbles, bothscholars have produced fine studies of these upland forests, displaying a real passion for the ‘totalenvironments’ of the Vosges, past, present and future.

Hugh CloutUniversity College London, UK

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2007.01.008