Carte - Géoportail 27/03/2020, 08:33

callianEM

Montauroux (top) and Callian (bottom) - (left) Carte d’Etat-Major, 1840s-50s, IGN Géoportail, https://bit.ly/3bmAuOC

1000 m

© IGN 2019 - www.geoportail.gouv.fr/mentions-legales

Longitude : 6° 50′ 04″ E LatitudeCallian-- : 43° 35′ 58″ N https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte Page 1 of 1 In 1835 the commune of Callian in the département du was split in two, giving birth to the new commune of Tanneron. So far, just a usual case of administrative reorganisation. The problem becomes clearer when we look at a map of the two communes: they are not contiguous. Right between Callian and Tanneron lays another gorgeous hilltop provencal village, and the commune of the same name, Montauroux.

The royal decree of 26 April 1835 (see below) states that ‘the section of Tanneron is removed from the commune of Callian, in the arrondissement of (Var), and established as a new commune with the name of commune de Tanneron and whose administrative centre will be in the hamlet of l’Houort.’ No mention of Montauroux here.

We know for sure that Montauroux exited as a separate commune then, and there is no documentation anywhere of any subsequent change of the boundary between Montauroux, Callian and Tanneron. Montauroux was subsequently (in 1867) split, creating the commune of Les-Adrets-de-l’Estérel but this modification has no implication for the boundary with either Callian or Tanneron.

So it seems that Callian was a commune with non-contiguous territories as late as the 1830s. Despite the efforts of all the French regimes since the creation of the communes in 1790 to create homogenous contiguous territorial units, some cases persisted well into the nineteenth century, and it would appear that Callian was one of them. The drawing of the local cadastre in the 1830s might have eventually spurred the need for rationalisation and the separation of the two parts of Callian. Impression Impression 27/03/2020, 08:30 27/03/2020, 08:23

Callian (Var, ) Montauroux (Var, France) Extrait du cadastre napoléonien

(Left) - Callian, 1839, AD833PP_029_13

© Archives départementales du Var, droits réservés. © Archives départementales du Var, droits réservés. (Right) - Montauroux, 1839, AD83/3PP_081_01 https://archives.var.fr/arkotheque/visionneuse/print_view2.php?mode=zoomify&tier=3&ref=ark|6|…llian%20(Var%2C%20France)%20&cot=&vPx=3992&vPy=2302&vPz=0.18549599198396793&imgId=0ed81009d0https://archives.var.fr/arkotheque/visionneuse/print_view2.php?mode=zoomify&tier=4&ref=ark|6|…roux%20(Var%2C%20France)%20&cot=&Page 1 of 2 vPx=4128.5&vPy=2668&vPz=0.1656671664167916&imgId=c06f712c93 Page 1 of 2

(Below) - excerpt from the Bulletin des Lois, ordonnance du 26 avril 1835

There might be another aspect to this protracted spatial rationalisation: the development of coal mining in the hills around Tanneron in the 1780s located on the coal field of the Reyran. Incidentally, the commune of Callian is still the owner of c. 1,500 hectare of the commune Tanneron, on the right bank of the river Briançon, which used to be the large Fluorite mining complex of Fontsante. (https://bit.ly/2Jk4MFS)

Le bassin houiller du Reyran, Geocoaching https://bit.ly/2Unct4g