Presentation of the atlas of Algeria and Tunisia

Summary

R. de Flotte de Roquevaire presents the published fascicles and continuing compilation of the Atlas of Algeria and Tunisia, issued by Algeria’s Government General with Tunisian financial support. Conceived as an inventory of existing knowledge to support land use and administration, the project developed through support from Governor General Jonnart and his successors, scholars, and public services. It comprises seven sections: geology, hypsometry, climatology, vegetation, demography, economic geography, and administrative geography. The author reports that the first four are complete, demography nearly complete, and the last two begun, with completion expected in 1932. He describes lightly generalized army-map contours reduced photographically in stages to 1:1,500,000; rainfall mapping based on 377 stations for 1876–1920; René Maire’s botanical mapping; Augustin Bernard’s rural-housing map; and population maps using the 1926 census and earlier counts. Economic and administrative coverage includes a published vineyard map and planned production, infrastructure, administrative-boundary, colonization, and historical-administration maps. Illustrated explanatory notices accompany the maps or sections. The author argues that common scales facilitate comparison, treats rainfall maps as key to interpreting agricultural and population patterns, and characterizes the atlas’s locally organized production as scientific and industrial decentralization.