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University of Nebraska at Omaha DigitalCommons@UNO Student Work 4-1-1986 The Breton case for regional autonomy: Centuries of struggle in Brittany, France Annie Loring Peters University of Nebraska at Omaha Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/studentwork Recommended Citation Peters, Annie Loring, "The Breton case for regional autonomy: Centuries of struggle in Brittany, France" (1986). Student Work. 405. https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/studentwork/405 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Work by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE BRETON CASE FOR REGIONAL AUTONOMY: CENTURIES OF STRUGGLE IN BRITTANY, FRANCE A Thesis Presented to the Department of History and the Faculty of the Graduate College University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts University of Nebraska at Omaha by Annie Loring Peters April, 1986 UMI Number: EP73043 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. [email protected] MKIisKng UMI EP73043 Published by ProQuest LLC (2015). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 THESIS ACCEPTANCE Accepted for the faculty of the Graduate College, University of Nebraska, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts, University of Nebraska at Omaha. Committee Name D e p a r t men V tAa JjL tyJJL c.-Mh Chairman cuhvj 2-t, h u Date TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF A B B R E V I A T I O N S ................................................ ii LIST OF M A P S ..........................................................iii PREFACE ............................................................ 1 CHAPTER I. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SPIRIT OF AUTONOMY IN BRITTANY, FRANCE: FROM ORIGINAL SETTLEMENT TO THE PRESENT............... 6 II. BRITTANY DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1789-1815: AN INCONSISTENT L E G A C Y ....................... 23 III. BRITTANY IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES: FROM CULTURAL RENAISSANCE TO POLITICAL ACTIVISM, 1815-1932 . 41 IV. POLITICAL EXTREMISM AND ECONOMIC REFORM: 1932-1967 .......... 67 V. ACTIVISM REKINDLED: BRETON ACTIVISM FROM MAY, 1968 TO THE P R E S E N T .................................................. 94 CONCLUSION............................................................ 128 BIBLIOGRAPHY 151 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ALB - Armee de Liberation de la Bretagne CAR - Conscription d ’Action Regionale CELIB - Comite d ’Etude et de Liaison d'Interets Bretons CFTC - Confederation Fran<^aise des Travailleurs Chretiens CGT - Confederation Generale de Travail CREE - Commission Regionale d ’Expansion Economique FLB - Front de la Liberation de la Bretagne FO - Force Ouvriere MOB - Mouvement pour 1 ’Organization de la Bretagne PCF - Parti Communist Fran^ais• PNB - Parti Nationaliste Breton UDB — Union Democratique Bretonne LIST OF MAPS Page HISTORICAL REGIONS OF FRANCE ....................................... iv THE BRETON PENINSULA ................................................ iv MAJOR CITIES IN BRI T T A N Y.............................................. iv DETAILED MAP OF BRITTANY, FRANCE . ............................ v THE BRETON PENINSULA IN RELATION TO THE REST OF F R A N C E ............. 7 THE FIVE DEPARTMENTS OF MODERN-DAY BRITTANY ........................ 41 iii THE TRADITIONAL PROVINCES OF FRANCE P icardit I'grraine ll/no us in Savoie (Juyenne ‘Provence ions THE BRETON PENINSULA MAJOR CITIES IN BRITTANY St. Malo Brest St-Brieuc Fougereso Rennes .Vannes Nantes iv DETAILED MAP OF BRITTANY, FRANCE v 1 PREFACE My first encounter with Brittany, France, came in 1973 when I was bicycling through the Breton countryside with a group of Concordia College students. I befriended a Breton activist named Sylvain Phlipponneau, then twenty-one years of age, who made what I found to be an intriguing parallel between the plight of the American Indian and that of the outlying regions of France. He criticized the French government as over-bearing, excessively centralized, and with what he called a reckless disregard for the cultural integrity of the provinces. I was then seventeen, anxious to experience some of the residual youth­ ful activism of the previous decade. I attended a few of the meetings of the Front de la Liberation de la Bretagne, (FLB), at the time the most radical of French autonomist groups. Often speakers at FLB meet­ ings would break into Breton phrases, however, so as to keep French gens d Tarmes uninformed of their activities. Unfamiliar with this dialect, I was not as aware as I might otherwise have been as to the operations of the FLB during its heyday. Sylvain's father, Michel Phlipponneau, is cited extensively as a reference throughout this thesis. He is a widely recognized authority on French regionalism, and has chaired many committees promoting Breton interests in that regard. He is a professor of geography at the University of Rennes. i only regret that, at the age of seventeen, I had not done more extensive note-taking while a guest at the 2 Phlipponneau home. I lost contact with Sylvain shortly after he finished his studies in applied urban geography at Oxford. My second Breton interlude took me to the southern Breton coast, where I spent six months in 1976 as a student of French History in Nantes, Brittany. Here I continued to participate in many of the Breton cultural events, such as the test noz, or Breton dances, which were still popular and still somewhat of a "political statement" among the young.^ The following summer I moved to Paris to study French civiliza­ tion at the Sorbonne. The real research phase for this thesis began in 1984, after a succession of Breton house guests renewed my interest in present-day political activism there. I returned to Brittany in the late spring of 1985 to assess the current state of autonomist activities, and to con­ duct more formal research, both at the local archives and in the National Archives in Paris. The National Archives in Paris proved to be the best resource for primary materials pertinent to this study. In a reference carton labeled MF7 13244" were contained publications of the Breiz Atao, which is Breton for "Brittany Above All," dating from 1919 to 1939. Much of the material in the Archives file was marked "confidential." But having access to it anyway, I discovered it consisted mostly of letters from the Commissioner of Police to the various local authorities in Quimper, Vannes, Saint-Briuec, and other hotbeds of autonomy. The letters from Fest Noz’s often attracted over one hundred teenagers, dancing lu traditional Breton music skillfully played by young Breton musicians. 3 the delegates of the Ministry of the Interior were most often followed by dutiful responses on the part of the prefects to keep close tabs on the activities of the autonomists, and to report on their status to the Director of Security in Paris. The Archivist at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris recommended that I visit the Bibliotheque Mazarine, near the Hotel de Ville, which houses most of the writing of regional interest. Besides being treated to some of the most exquisite interior architecture in these two librar­ ies, I soon learned that the Parisian librarians and archivists, though gracious and pristinely professional, found my choice of topic somewhat peculiar. They advised me to go to the local archives of the region I was researching, which I, of course, was planning to do, though they expressed doubt that their colleagues in Brittany would be of much more assistance than they had been. In this assumption, they were mistaken. Though the Bibliotheque Nationale contained copies of the munici­ pal records of every French village, many dating to the early nineteenth century and open for my perusal, they were not indexed by date other than by decade. Fascinating though it was to begin reading at random, despite the excellent exchange rate of dollar to franc during the summer of 1985, my husband and I could not stay in Paris forever. The next phase of research took me to Brittany. The indexing problem proved to be identical in the local archives. But the impetus of my return to Brittany was not so much to spend time in the Archives as it was to spend time with the people. It was disappointing to learn, 4 however, that much of the Breton activism I had witnessed in the early 2 1970fs was no longer apparent. Much of the information cited, therefore, has been drawn from secondary sources. The most notable French experts in this area are not historians, but sociologists, political scientists, journalists, and politicians. Among those cited are two French sociologists: Michael Crozier, who complained of the French bureaucratic "traffic jam" in his Societe bloquee, and Alain Peyrefitte whose work is entitled Le Mai 3 francais,>- or The Trouble ------------------ With France. Journalist Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber wrote Le Defi americain, or The American Challenge, in 1967 as a way to complain of the complacency of his fellow Frenchmen in 4 the suffocating French political community. Parallel autonomist move­ ments were surveyed in Charles R. Foster's Nations Without A State, which provides great insight into comparative studies of Breton separa­ tism with other active movements in western Europe.^ Finally, my indebtedness to the faculty at the University of Nebraska at Omaha must be acknowledged. Dr. Mark 0. Rousseau, professor of Sociology, shared with me his bibliography and first draft of a study 2 Personal observation in Brittany, May, 1986.

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