BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, researchlibraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research.

Histoire des anciennes populations de montagne. Des origines à la modernité. Essaid'histoire comparéeAuthor(s): Jon MathieuSource: Mountain Research and Development, 32(2):255-255. 2012.Published By: International Mountain SocietyDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1659/mrd.mm098URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1659/mrd.mm098

BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in the biological, ecological, andenvironmental sciences. BioOne provides a sustainable online platform for over 170 journals and books publishedby nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.

Your use of this PDF, the BioOne Web site, and all posted and associated content indicates your acceptance ofBioOne’s Terms of Use, available at www.bioone.org/page/terms_of_use.

Usage of BioOne content is strictly limited to personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial inquiriesor rights and permissions requests should be directed to the individual publisher as copyright holder.

Histoire des anciennes

populations de montagne.

Des origines a la

modernite. Essai

d’histoire comparee

By Fabrice Mouthon. Paris, France:L’Harmattan, 2011. 389 pp.J 34.50. ISBN 978-2-296-56336-0.

As the readers of this journal knowwell, there has been a remarkableincrease in scientific mountain re-search and international mountainpolitics in recent decades. Pivotalmoments for public awareness werethe passing of the ‘‘Mountain Chap-ter’’ at the UN Conference in Rio deJaneiro in 1992 and the designationof 2002 as the International Year ofthe Mountains, which sparked activ-ities around the globe. This move-ment was related to the ecologicalturn of the late 20th century andmainly was led by concerned scien-tists. For historians, focusing onmountain issues is not self-evident;yet, inspired by their colleagues fromgeography and other disciplines,there have recently been severalattempts to address the history ofmountain regions and populations atthe global scale.

In his essay of comparative his-tory, the medievalist Fabrice Mou-thon of the University of Savoy inFrance looks at the long period ‘‘fromthe origins to modernity,’’ that is,from the end of the PalaeolithicPeriod to the eve of the IndustrialRevolution. Industrialization set in atdifferent moments in different re-gions of the world, so that thefinishing point of the book rangesfrom the 18th to the 20th centuries.Given the uneven state of research inthe world’s scattered and often re-mote mountain areas, this long period

cannot be treated in a strictly sys-tematic way. Yet, the author is wellread and offers a wide range ofhistorical mountain testimonies. Theyare arranged according to selectedkey issues, and some are inserted inthe main text as boxes, giving thereader the possibility to obtain moreimmediate access to a particularproblem or source.

Chapters 1–4 present the generalsetting for mountain history: theenvironmental constraints, the firstpopulations, the transition fromhunting-gathering to agriculture, the‘‘taming of the mountains’’ by mentalrepresentations (such as sacraliza-tion), and the diverse patterns ofsettlement and housing. Chapters 5–7turn to historical land use andeconomy: agriculture of differentintensities; animal husbandry invarious forms (nomadism, transhu-mance, Alpwirtschaft); then gathering,hunting, and mining. This includes aview on the changing face of land-scapes, for instance, with regard tomountain forests. Chapters 8–9 focuson traffic: the crossing of mountainranges by lowlanders (individualtravellers, military forces, etc), andthe interior transport and tradesystems of upland regions. Chapters10–12 deal with society and politics:peasant solidarity and community;mountain peoples against lowlandstates; and ephemeral and long-termmountain states. In his conclusion,the author stresses the increasingmarginality of upland populations in,and through, the general develop-ment of civilization for his period upto modernity. When ‘‘centers’’ spreadin the lowlands, the highlandsbecame ‘‘peripheries.’’

In my view, there are 2 problem-atic aspects to this book. First, thepersonal research experience of theauthor is rather conspicuous. He is aspecialist in the French Alps of theMiddle Ages, and his region, leading

to French sources in general beingoverrepresented, as the author wouldcertainly admit himself. The problemis not so much in this particular ‘‘basecamp’’ for the global mountain ex-ploration but in the dominant modelit provides. Small, strong peasantcommunities happened to be prom-inent in the Western Alps, yet, evenin the Eastern (German-speaking)Alps, things were rather different,with middle-sized and large farmsand weak communities. Also, theEuropean Alps cover a very smallpercentage of the global mountainterritory. Thus, it might have beenappropriate to start with a somewhatgreater distance from the author’spersonal background. Second, thebook abounds with examples takenfrom a great variety of sources, someof them scholarly, others less so.Greater efforts towards source criti-cism and historical contextualizationof the presented texts could haveenhanced the standard.

On the whole, however, this bookis certainly an important contribu-tion to global mountain research. Forreaders involved in multifaceted sus-tainability studies, it can be veryhelpful to know about the culturaland historical aspects of their re-spective areas and subjects. It is astrong argument in favor of moun-tains that they can be considered theEarth’s water towers. Yet, it is alsoimportant to point to the long-termhuman heritage of mountain regions.‘‘Deep history,’’ such as reflected inthis book, gives these regions a greatemotive value.

AUTHOR

Jon Mathieujon.mathieu@unilu.chDepartment of History, University of Lucerne,6002 Lucerne, Switzerland

Open access article: please credit the authors andthe full source.

MountainMediaMountain Research and Development (MRD)An international, peer-reviewed open access journalpublished by the International Mountain Society (IMS)www.mrd-journal.org

Mountain Research and Development Vol 32 No 2 May 2012: 255 http://dx.doi.org/10.1659/mrd.mm098 � 2012 by the authors255