[LINK] Two Open Democracy articles on autonomism in Brittany and Alsace

[rfmcdonald]

At the beginning of December, Open Democracy posted a couple of essays on regionalism in France. Despite the near-death of local languages, a recent set of reforms seems to have triggered a whole series of protests in certain regions.

The first, on the 5th, was Hugo Tran's "Fighting for Brittany: autonomy in a centralised state".

[F]or Brittany, the law confirms the amputation of its territory, rebuffing the return of the fifth historical department of Loire-Atlantique and the historical Breton capital of Nantes to the region of Brittany.

For Brittany, which began life as kingdom in the ninth century, evolved into a duchy, and since the French Revolution has been a region, this was chance to regain its historical integrity. During the Second World War, the fascist Vichy government took the richest of Brittany’s five departments, Loire-Atlantique, and used it to create a new, artificial region called Pays de la Loire, which still exists today.

After several demonstrations and public debates, 85% of the Bretons in the administrative region of Brittany and 70% of the Bretons in the Loire-Atlantique department claimed to be clearly in favor of the reunification. Still the government and the National Assembly said no.

The official reason given by the government is that it wants to optimize the existing regions, making them more powerful and able to compete at a “European level”. But a reunified Brittany would have respected all the objectives wanted by the government, as Breton MPs have argued.

The “No” to a Breton reunification, and the choice to dilute Alsace, are explainable by a non-official reason. After having watched with fear and apprehension what happened in Scotland and Catalonia, the French centralized state used every legal trick to prevent any risk of such situations in France in the future. The aim was, is, and will be, to weaken any regional or cultural identities that are not explicitly “French”.

The second was Lucas Goetz' "Alsace fights back: a French David vs. Goliath story".

An ocean of red and white flags filled the streets of the Alsatian town Colmar last Satuday. A crowd of mostly young people was walking behind a banner that read “Alsatians we are, and Alsatians we will remain”. Slogans affirming the identity of this border-region were chanted both in French and in German. The crowd had responded to the call of the autonomist party Unser Land to demonstrate against the plans of the French state to merge the Alsace region in a “mega-region” with Lorraine and Champagne-Ardenne. This would effectively deny Alsace any political existence.

Throughout its history Alsace has often changed hands between France and Germany. This has affected its culture and identity. However, since it returned to France in 1918, the state enforced a policy of total assimilation, forcefully imposing the French language and suppressing the autonomy acquired when it was part of the German Empire.

Seventy years onwards, only three percent of the children can speak the Alsatian dialect. Very few know its history. Nevertheless there have remained pockets of resistance: in the recent years parents have undertaken initiatives to open bilingual schools for their children. Historians published books challenging the French version of the history of Alsace. But very few had anticipated what followed when the French government announced its intention to merge Alsace in a mega-region, almost twice the size of Belgium. Have the Alsatians finally woken up from their long slumber?

Bernard Wittmann is an Alsatian historian. He is well known within the region for his books which seek to present history from an Alsatian point of view. For him this ‘mega-region’ is the final stage of a coherent plan, made in Paris, to deconstruct Alsace.

“There is a consistent plan in Paris that seeks to “normalize” Alsace. That is, to eliminate its linguistic, legislative and cultural particularities” he argues. “Since 1918 there is a desire in Paris to make sure that these particularities can no longer express themselves.”