Re: South France Calling for Independence from France!

On 4 fév, 00:28, "Sunny" <wombatho...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"john" <abcd_lebanon_sa...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1170557044.196990.147930@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The people of South France have been always seeing themselves not
connected to mainland France, and the south wants tp become an
independent state.

Is that the old "Vichy France" ?

When France was divided in the war, the choice of where the border
would be wasn't negotiated - "Vichy France" was what was left once the
Nazis had grabbed the coast (to build defences) and territory as far
as they had advanced. And it only lasted 2 1/2 years (June 40 - end of
42 when Germany grabbed the "free" zone).

There is a (roughly) southern half of France that had a distinct
culture, or rather distinct cultures, but it doesn't make a country.
It's not united - you've got the Basque country, Navarre, Toulouse,
French Catalonia which are more Spanish in culture, and on the other
side of the Herault river, the Mediterranean cost which has ties to
Italy. The language(s) spoken were all closer to Spanish/Catalan/
Italian than French is, and closer to each other than to French, but
there wasn't one "Occitan" language (I can see lots of replies to that
post already ;-)

If France came into existence out of the disparate local cultures, it
is because all those separate regions didn't make viable countries -
even when France was overrun by every European power in 1815, it came
out of the negociations that followed with its territory almost intact
- that just shows how strongly other European powers saw that it made
one country, quite difficult to break up without provoking yet more
wars.

Which, I'm sure you realise, is an interesting take on all these
"French=pussies" stories: see, if we still exist as a big country in
Europe after being such military failures, it's because everyone loves
us so much they just wanted to give us bits of their countries. That's
"soft power" for you.



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