Brittany (Breton: Breizh, French: Bretagne); is one of the 27 regions of France. It occupies a large peninsula in the northwest of the country, lying between the English Channel to the north and the Bay of Biscay to the south. Its capital is Rennes.
The region of Brittany is made up of 80% of the former Duchy and Province of Brittany. The remaining 20% of the province is the Loire-Atlantique department which now lies inside the Pays de la Loire region, whose capital, Nantes, was the historical capital of the Duchy of Brittany.
Part of the reason why Brittany was split between two present-day
regions was to avoid the rivalry between Rennes and Nantes. Although
Nantes was the principal capital of the Duchy of Brittany until the
sixteenth century, Rennes had been the seat of the Duchy's supreme court
of justice between 1560 and 1789. Rennes had also been the
administrative capital of the Intendant of Brittany between 1689 and 1789, and Intendances were the most important administrative units of the kingdom of France
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As for the provincial
States of Brittany, a legislative body which had originally met every
two years in a different city of Brittany, that had met in Rennes only
between 1728 and 1789, although not in the years 1730, 1758, and 1760.
Despite that, the Chambre des comptes had remained in Nantes until 1789. However, from 1381 until the end of the fifteenth century Vannes (Gwened in Breton) had served as the administrative capital of the Duchy, remaining the seat of its Chambre des comptes until the 1490s, and also the seat of the its Parlement until 1553 and then again between 1675 and 1689.
Although there were previous plans to create Régions out of the Départements,
like the Clémentel plan (1919) or the Vichy regionalisation programme
(1941), these plans had no effect or else were abolished in 1945. The
current French Regions date from 1956 and were created by gathering Departements together. In Brittany, this led to the creation of the new Region of Brittany,
which included only four out of the five historical Breton départements. The term region
was officially created by the Law of Decentralisation (2 March 1982),
which also gave regions their legal status. The first direct elections
for regional representatives took place on 16 March 1986.
Some people in Brittany and Nantes continue to protest against the
division of the ancient territory of Brittany, hoping to see the Loire-Atlantique
department added to the region of Brittany, in order to reunify the
historic Duchy of Brittany. However, such a reunification raises other
questions: first, what to do with the remainder of the present Pays de
la Loire region, and second, which city should be chosen as the capital
of such a reunified Brittany.
Thank you, Stef !
Sent on: May 13, 2015
Received on: May 18, 2015
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