Utopian and Developmental Mediterranean Spaces: The Example of the Inland Sea of Martins, Lavigne, Roudaire et al. (1869–1892)

Following the example of the tremendous success of the digging of the Suez Canal during its time, scientific and technical progress led us to believe, for more than a century and a half, in a Nature that could be modelled by Man. The nineteenth century saw the triumph of modern thought (Rabinow 1995) and the figure of the engineer, as well as the proliferation of major projects in the field of land planning, projects nowadays called “utopian”. This resea=rch will attempt to present an example to our emblematic sense of this era: the project of Captain Roudaire on the creation of an Inland Sea (1874–1884) in the southern Algerian and Tunisian borders. Our aim will be to complete the brilliant analytical work done by Olivier Soubeyran and Ahmed Benckeik (1993) by making a new point about the origins of the project and its fertile descent. Thus, we will endeavour to show that the utopian projects do not die and reappear very regularly, according to the current events and the international preoccupations – and it is the case of the Inner Sea – proof that they have not been forgotten and they “haunt” the long-term world of global planning