THE INVENTION OF REGIONALISM DURING THE BELLE EPOQUE

The word << regionalism >> was created in the very last years of the 19 th century to define a range of cultural and politic claims formulated by young intellectuals coming from the provinces. The regionalists link the criticism of a specifically French problem (the cultural, administrative and political centralism) to a general phenomenon in Europe at that time : the << valorization >> of a national culture rooted in the peasantry. The regionalism is not an offensive social movement and claims for separatism appear only at its fringe. Regionalism wishes rather to be a movement of reconciliation, surmounting political differences through the discovery of << genuine >> national identity. Therefore it plays the role of a consensual reference during the Third Republic. This article shows how regionalist themes were elaborated in the 1900's and points out how they simultaneously appeared in the political and cultural fields (see the multiplication of small literary reviews in the provinces).