Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a historian in the tradition of Braudel, gives in this book an overview of the history of the various regions of France, talks about their simultaneous or gradual integration, thanks to the policies of the Ancien Régime and the regimes established after the French Revolution. The national state in France managed to achieve a community, despite the differences of its constituent regions.

Today this community sometimes begins to fluctuate due to more or less active demands for national self-determination put forward by the peripheral regions: Alsace, Lorraine, Brittany , Corsica, etc. Isn’t a “new cycle of protest in the regions now being born,” the author wonders. Contents: Preface ..... 5 Acknowledgments ... and clarifications ..... 8 Preface ..... 9 Introduction ... .. 14Part one. NON-LATIN MINORITIES ..... 21Chapter 1. Alsace ..... 23Chapter 2. Lorraine ..... 42Chapter 3. Flanders ..... 56Chapter 4. Brittany ..... 74Chapter 5. Basque Country .. ... 114Part two. LATIN MINORITIES ..... 147Chapter 6. Roussillon ..... 149Chapter 7. Corsica ..... 181Chapter 8. Franco-Provencal zone: Savoy. . . 236 Chapter 9. Areas of dialects "ok" ..... 293Conclusion ..... 381Notes ..... 390Bibliography ..... 412