Abstract Between the end of World War II and the granting of independence to former French colonies in tropical Africa in 1960, a network of scientific research centres supported an emerging community of geographers. These scholars distinguished themselves by a strong commitment to fieldwork and empirical enquiry, rather than to theorization. Their investigations represented a break with the amateurism and relative lack of disciplinary rigour that characterized colonial geography, as practised by French administrators and military surveyors in inter-war Africa and Asia. Becoming connected to a broader scientific community in France and across the globe, many geographers at work during the post-war period of decolonization applied new scientific ideas to their research in tropical Africa. Through a detailed examination of institutions, researchers and publications, this paper shows how the activities of French geographers eschewed the exoticization of Africa and escaped the scholarly marginality of earlier research on tropical regions. However, although their investigations had started to be ‘decolonized’ in the 1950s, few French geographers were militant advocates of independence.

中文翻译：

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在政治储备和科学变革之间：法国地理学家和热带非洲的非殖民化，1945-1967

摘要 从二战结束到 1960 年热带非洲的前法国殖民地获得独立，科学研究中心网络支持了新兴的地理学家社区。这些学者以对实地工作和实证调查的坚定承诺而不是理论化而著称。他们的调查打破了殖民地理特征的业余主义和相对缺乏纪律严密性，正如法国行政人员和军事测量员在两次世界大战期间在非洲和亚洲所实行的那样。与法国和全球更广泛的科学界建立联系，许多在战后非殖民化时期工作的地理学家将新的科学思想应用于他们在热带非洲的研究。通过对机构的详细考察，研究人员和出版物，这篇论文展示了法国地理学家的活动如何避开非洲的异国情调，并摆脱早期热带地区研究的学术边缘。然而，尽管他们的调查在 1950 年代开始“非殖民化”，但很少有法国地理学家是独立的激进倡导者。