CHAPTER I 

 SOCIAL LIFE ON THE COAST 



I. The oiKovfisvrj of the coast Antagonism between fishing ports 

 and commercial ports Historical pen view of the develop- 

 ment of the Havre district. II. Principal professional and 

 social groupings among the French fishermen The neces- 

 sity of an extension of the cecumene. 



WE can understand any particular phenomenon only 

 if we know its genesis and relate it to a general phenome^- 

 non. This necessity is, perhaps, more than usually 

 pressing in the case of fisheries, for, like an ancient tree, 

 they have roots longer and stronger than the trunk 

 itself. 



I 



As a result of the recent works of MM. Marcel Dubois, 

 Ratzel, Ritter, Vidal de la Blache, Vallaux, and Deman- 

 geon to cite no more social geography has entered 

 upon a new phase ; and from the maritime point of view, 

 which alone concerns us here, the notion of the cecumene 

 has been of the greatest service. " There is no cecumene," 

 says M. Vallaux, "save when there is the confinement of 

 a determined social aggregate in a particular geographical 

 region, comprising, say, the edge of a coast with the 

 continental plateau ,which serves it as base, or a border of 

 coast with a secondary sea (surrounding or surrounded by 

 land, or an island sea), or an island or large group of 

 islands, or a fishing-ground where many vessels meet in 



197 



