Languedoc, historical and cultural region encompassing the southern French départements of Hérault, Gard, and Ardèche and parts of Haute-Loire, Lozère, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, Haute-Garonne, and Ariège and coextensive with the former province of Languedoc.

Languedoc is a center of the distinctive civilization of the south of France. Its name is derived from the traditional language of southern France, in which the word oc means “yes,” in contrast to oïl, or oui, in northern French. From the 13th century the name applied to the entire area in which the Languedoc, or Occitan, language was spoken and came to apply specifically to the territory of the feudal county of Toulouse.

From 121 bce the territory that constituted Languedoc was part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis, which connected Italy to Spain, and was strongly influenced by Roman culture. With the breakdown of the Roman Empire, the region was controlled by the Visigoths in the 5th century and was partially conquered by the Franks in the 6th century. Septimania, the coastal strip, came under Arab rule in the early 8th century and was not conquered by the Franks until 759; under the Carolingians it was formed into a march for the protection of Aquitaine. The Toulousain (area around Toulouse) was reunited with the march in 924, the date marking the origin of the county of Toulouse. By 1050 the counts of Toulouse were suzerains not only of Toulousain and Septimania but also of Quercy, Rouergue, and Albi to the north, making the county one of the great fiefs of France. The power of the counts over much of this territory was largely nominal, being limited by the independence of their vassals, by the large ecclesiastical estates, and by the self-government of the towns.

From the mid-12th century, the Cathari, a Manichaean sect, won wide support from the people and the nobles of Languedoc; the Cathari were sometimes called Albigenses because of their strength around the town of Albi. They were branded as heretics by the Roman Catholic church, and Pope Innocent III preached a crusade against them, precipitating an invasion of Languedoc by a northern French army in 1209. The ensuing wars, which lasted until the mid-13th century, ended the political independence of Languedoc. The eastern part of the county of Toulouse was annexed by the French crown in 1229 and organized into the sénéchaussées (“seneschalships”) of Carcassonne and Beaucaire. The rest remained with Raymond VII (count of Toulouse from 1222 to 1249), who agreed to the marriage of his daughter and heiress Jeanne to Alphonse of Poitiers, brother of King Louis IX. On the death of the couple without heirs in 1271, the rest of Languedoc was added to the holdings of the French crown. The Hundred Years’ War exposed Languedoc not only to invasion from the west but also to the rapacity of the French king’s own representatives, whose extortions provoked riots in the towns and finally the peasant rebellion of the Tuchins (1382–83).

By the 15th century Languedoc was organized into a gouvernement and from the 16th century was divided into the généralités (“generalities”) of Montpellier and Toulouse. The province had institutions that insured its local privileges; the estates (assembly) of Languedoc gained prominence during the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) for their taxing power over the south of France and continued to function until the French Revolution, and the Parlement of Toulouse, created in 1443, was second only to that of Paris as a high court.

In the 16th century Languedoc became a center of French Protestantism. The government’s attempt to impose Catholicism there gave rise to the peasant insurrection of the Protestant Carmisards in the early 18th century. With the Revolution, Languedoc lost its distinctive institutions and was divided into départements.

The physiography of Languedoc consists of Mediterranean lowlands of France extending from the Pyrenees in the southwest eastward some 125 miles (200 km) to the right bank of the Rhône River as far north as its junction with the Isère. The prevalence of malaria in the extensive coastal marshes of the Rhône delta (the Camargue) and westward discouraged the development of the coast well into the 19th century, and older villages tend to be inland. Traditional farmsteads around Toulouse have one story and are built of rough brick.

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Roman Catholicism predominates outside the mountains of the Cévennes above the Plain of Languedoc. There are large Protestant enclaves around Florac in Lozère and Vigan, Nîmes, and Alès in Gard. Catholicism is particularly strong in the Massif Central and less so in the plains. Freemasons are numerous in Gard. Repatriated émigrés from Algeria and immigrants from Spain and Italy have settled in Haute-Garonne, Hérault, Gard, and Tarn. The Communist Party has numerous adherents throughout Languedoc.

The vineyards of the plains in Languedoc produce fine muscatels. Blistelle is a sweet wine whose fermentation is artificially stopped; new cultures are then added and the wine is allowed to age. Regional cuisine relies heavily on olive oil and garlic; pork fat is widely used in the Cévennes. Soups include aigo bouillido, which is made with garlic, and oulade, which is made with potatoes and seasoned with pickled pork and various herbs. Aligot is a puree of potatoes and cheese and is seasoned with garlic. The Occitan language continues to be widely spoken around Nîmes and Uzès and in Haute-Loire and Ardèche.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Jeff Wallenfeldt.
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France, country of northwestern Europe. Historically and culturally among the most important nations in the Western world, France has also played a highly significant role in international affairs, with former colonies in every corner of the globe. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the Alps and the Pyrenees, France has long provided a geographic, economic, and linguistic bridge joining northern and southern Europe. It is Europe’s most important agricultural producer and one of the world’s leading industrial powers.

France is among the globe’s oldest nations, the product of an alliance of duchies and principalities under a single ruler in the Middle Ages. Today, as in that era, central authority is vested in the state, even though a measure of autonomy has been granted to the country’s régions in recent decades. The French people look to the state as the primary guardian of liberty, and the state in turn provides a generous program of amenities for its citizens, from free education to health care and pension plans. Even so, this centralist tendency is often at odds with another long-standing theme of the French nation: the insistence on the supremacy of the individual. On this matter historian Jules Michelet remarked, “England is an empire, Germany is a nation, a race, France is a person.” Statesman Charles de Gaulle, too, famously complained, “Only peril can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.”

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This tendency toward individualism joins with a pluralist outlook and a great interest in the larger world. Even though its imperialist stage was driven by the impulse to civilize that world according to French standards (la mission civilisatrice), the French still note approvingly the words of writer Gustave Flaubert:

I am no more modern than I am ancient, no more French than Chinese; and the idea of la patrie, the fatherland—that is, the obligation to live on a bit of earth coloured red or blue on a map, and to detest the other bits coloured green or black—has always seemed to me narrow, restricted, and ferociously stupid.

At once universal and particular, French culture has spread far and greatly influenced the development of art and science, particularly anthropology, philosophy, and sociology.

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France has also been influential in government and civil affairs, giving the world important democratic ideals in the age of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and inspiring the growth of reformist and even revolutionary movements for generations. The present Fifth Republic has, however, enjoyed notable stability since its promulgation on September 28, 1958, marked by a tremendous growth in private initiative and the rise of centrist politics. Although France has engaged in long-running disputes with other European powers (and, from time to time, with the United States, its longtime ally), it emerged as a leading member in the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. From 1966 to 1995 France did not participate in the integrated military structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), retaining full control over its own air, ground, and naval forces; beginning in 1995, however, France was represented on the NATO Military Committee, and in 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the country would rejoin the organization’s military command. As one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—together with the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and China—France has the right to veto decisions put to the council.

The capital and by far the most important city of France is Paris, one of the world’s preeminent cultural and commercial centres. A majestic city known as the ville lumière, or “city of light,” Paris has often been remade, most famously in the mid-19th century under the command of Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussman, who was committed to Napoleon III’s vision of a modern city free of the choleric swamps and congested alleys of old, with broad avenues and a regular plan. Paris is now a sprawling metropolis, one of Europe’s largest conurbations, but its historic heart can still be traversed in an evening’s walk. Confident that their city stood at the very centre of the world, Parisians were once given to referring to their country as having two parts, Paris and le désert, the wasteland beyond it. Metropolitan Paris has now extended far beyond its ancient suburbs into the countryside, however, and nearly every French town and village now numbers a retiree or two driven from the city by the high cost of living, so that, in a sense, Paris has come to embrace the desert and the desert Paris.

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Among France’s other major cities are Lyon, located along an ancient Rhône valley trade route linking the North Sea and the Mediterranean; Marseille, a multiethnic port on the Mediterranean founded as an entrepôt for Greek and Carthaginian traders in the 6th century bce; Nantes, an industrial centre and deepwater harbour along the Atlantic coast; and Bordeaux, located in southwestern France along the Garonne River.