'From the soil we have come, to the soil we shall go and from the soil we want to live': Language, Politics and Identity in the Grande Revolte of 1907

During the summer of 1907, France experienced one of its largest social disturbances since the Revolution, as the winegrowers of the Languedoc-Roussillon led a mass protest movement that paralysed the region and challenged the state. Although the Grande Revolte evoked references to the Albigensian Crusade, and juxtaposed North and South, it never fully represented a moment of Occitan regionalist rising. The failure of the cultural organisation the Felibrige to fully engage with protesters led to a fissure between political and cultural expressions of Occitan identity that marked the movement thereafter. By combining linguistic anthropology and historical analysis, the authors are able to foreground a key aspect of national identity formation as it occurred in 1907. Considering the impact of the Grande Revolte on the identity and language of the Midi offers us an insight into the development of regionalism both within and beyond the borders of the French nation. Pendant l'ete 1907, la France vecut de grands troubles sociaux auxquels l'Etat dut faire face, a savoir la Grande Revolte des vignerons du Languedoc-Roussillon qui glaca la region. Bien que la Grande Revolte ait evoque des references a la Croisade des Albigeois et ait juxtapose le Nord et le Sud, elle n'atteignit jamais le niveau d'un vrai soulevement regionaliste occitan. Le manque de cooperation entre l'organisation culturelle du Felibrige d'un cote et les manifestants de l'autre provoqua une fissure entre les expressions politiques et culturelles de l'identite occitane, qui desormais marquerait le mouvement. Les auteurs allient l'anthropologie linguistique et l'analyse historique afin de souligner un aspect principal de la creation d'une identite nationale en 1907. Prendre en consideration l'impact de la Grande Revolte sur l'identite et les langues du Midi nous donne un apercu du developpement du regionalisme en France et hors de France.