French anti-Southern sentiment during the Third Republic manifested as a form of hatred directed towards the French from the South of France. This phenomenon was particularly prevalent at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. This sentiment originated from a multitude of factors, including linguistic, economic, cultural, and historical interpretations of the country and the process of constructing ethnotypes. In this context, the populations of the South were perceived as talkative, vain, and indolent, largely due to the assumption that their lives were easier due to the sunny climate and that they were governed by passions rather than reason. Those with anti-Southern sentiments attributed the preponderance of the South in society to the Roman conquest, the actions of Joan of Arc, and the French Revolution.
A subset of the nationalist right espoused a sentiment of patriotism towards individuals hailing from the South. The patriotism of the Southerners was called into question; they were judged as cowardly and indifferent. Following the defeat in the Battle of Lorraine in 1914, they were hastily declared guilty. Southern politicians, with Léon Gambetta and Ernest Constans at the vanguard, were accused of seizing power through populism to monopolize the wealth of the North and redistribute it in the South. Ultimately, Southerners were portrayed as belonging to a "race" that had been corrupted by Protestants and, in particular, Jews, with whom they were believed to have conspired to seize power. Their general behavior was thought to be a consequence of the structure of their brains.
The origins of the hatred
From the theory of climates to stigmatizing representations The South of France is a geographical area with vague boundaries. It was invented after the Revolution that ended the provinces and is based on a geographical reading of the nation from its Parisian center. Anti-Southern sentiment has its origin in the process of constructing ethnotypes, a moral and physical classification of individuals based on prejudices. These are notably built on the , but also rest on linguistic, economic, cultural, and historical interpretations of the country.
The notion that Southerners are morally and militarily inferior to Northerners due to the climate is a concept that has been expressed by several prominent thinkers throughout history. Montesquieu, in his 1748 work The Spirit of Law, Germaine de Staël in her 1800 treatise On Literature, and Charles Victor de Bonstetten, in his late 18th-century work The Man of the South and the Man of the North or the Influence of Climate, published in 1824, are among the most notable proponents of this idea. In his work, which systematizes this distinction, Bonstetten reflects a mindset that was common at the time.
From the outset of the 19th century, public opinion became increasingly attuned to the economic disparity between the South of France, which remained predominantly agrarian due to a dearth of capital, and the North, which was undergoing industrialization, emulating the growth patterns observed in Britain and Germany. Additionally, the South was perceived (erroneously) to have a lower level of education. Moreover, historical events contributed to constructing a violent image of the Southerners. These events included the massacres at La Glacière in Avignon in 1791, the decisive intervention of the Marseillais on August 10, 1792, the Federalist insurrection of 1793, and the violence of the White Terror in 1815.
The ethnotypic view of the South of France as a uniform space was pervasive in literature and popular culture. The populations of the region were often depicted as loquacious, vain, and indolent, due to the assumption that life was easy for them due to the sunny climate. They were also portrayed as governed by passions rather than reason, and thus violent. Additionally, their accent, the use of Occitan, which was incomprehensible to Northerners, and their way of speaking French were also mocked.
At the turn of the Second Empire and the Third Republic, in the popular Northern mindset, the Provençal was perceived as the embodiment of the Southerner, replacing the Gascon, which had previously been regarded as the epitome of the region's characteristics. The Provençal was now seen as "boastful and ridiculous," while the Gascon was considered "verbose and boastful but proud and quarrelsome." In the early 1870s, the success of Tartarin of Tarascon by Alphonse Daudet significantly contributed to this movement. Furthermore, these stigmatizing representations were repeated in school textbooks and novels in the second half of the 19th century, which reinforced the North/South opposition among the elites, including Ernest Renan, the leading thinker of French intellectuals.
The origins seen by anti-Southerners
Some historians who were critical of the South sought to identify the historical origins of what they perceived to be an ethnic disparity. In an article published in Le Gaulois in 1903, Maurice Barrès posited that the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar was the primary cause of the disparity between the North and the South. In his thesis novel, Jean Révolte, roman de lutte (1892), Gaston Méry posits that ancient Rome served as a bridgehead for Southern expansion towards Northern Europe. For some conservatives, the 1789 Revolution unfortunately granted primacy to the Gallo-Roman stock of the South, inclined towards egalitarianism, pacifism, and pleasure, over the Frankish stock of the North, inclined towards elitism, militarism, and work. This was posited as the cause of the defeat of 1870 by Ernest Renan.
In his 1891 novel Là-bas, Joris-Karl Huysmans posited a prehistoric scenario in which the English Channel had not yet formed and France and England constituted a unified territory and population. It was believed that Joan of Arc was the cause of this incoherent France, incorrectly uniting the incompatibilities of the South and the North. In a pamphlet published the following year, the Freemason Louis Martin, a progressive republican, put forth the argument that she had prevented the fusion of two sister nations and led to the exacerbation of French and English national characteristics. Conversely, for Charles Maurras, a staunch defender of the South despite his nationalist leanings, she repelled the Northern enemy and preserved Latin predominance.
As Joris-Karl Huysmans observed, the Renaissance, with its return to antiquity, also had an impact on Northern Gothic literature. This impact manifested in the infusion of Mediterranean paganism into the literary landscape. One notable example is the replacement of the Virgin Mary with the Venus figure.
The nature of the hatred Anti-Southern sentiment, in varying degrees of intensity and focus, manifested as disdain, mistrust, hostility, hatred, or racism and was a prevalent phenomenon between 1870 and 1914. Robert Lafont discussed the phenomenon of internal racism, which he identified as a product of the enduring tensions within French society. By the early 1890s, as Jean-Marie Seillan observed, these tensions had reached a point where they gave rise to a form of proto-fascism in France. Three key factors were identified as the primary drivers of the most vehement anti-Southern sentiment.
Patriotism and military engagement
The regions of the South exhibited a persistent aversion to the French state, which manifested in various forms of resistance, including reluctance to fulfill military obligations, evasion of taxation, and, on occasion, violent revolt. However, the defeat of 1870 left a profound impact, and individuals were sought to bear the brunt of the collective blame. In his 1871 work , Alphonse Daudet portrayed Southerners as both boastful and indifferent to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The generalization of Tarasconians to all Southerners was swiftly embraced in the context of the profound disappointment and resentment that accompanied the defeat. In his work De Profundis, a piece from his Songs of the Soldier, the poet Paul Déroulède portrays a Marseillais who chooses to maintain his tranquility rather than engage in combat. The text of this collection, which had a significant audience until 1914, significantly influenced the perception of Southerners as cowardly and unpatriotic. However, a comparative study of war efforts by French departments demonstrated no notable differences, and post-armistice mutinies also occurred in both the South and North of France.
The 1907 winegrowers' revolt was distinguished by the mutiny of a portion of the 17th Infantry Regiment, comprising Southern soldiers, who were concerned about the fate of the inhabitants of Béziers. The military authority, in a scathing report, relied on stigmatizing ethnic stereotypes to a significant extent. Lieutenant-Colonel Émile Driant echoed these in his novel Robinsons sous-marins, which was very popular among conservative youth. The novel is built on an opposition between a devoted Breton and a repulsive, hateful, rebellious, and "internationalist" Provençal.
Following the French army's initial setback in August 1914, during the Battle of Lorraine, Parisian senator , in an article published in Le Matin, as well as several other newspapers, attributed the defeat to the Provençals of the 15th Corps. However, historical analysis has shown that the defeat resulted from the inadequacy of the campaign plan and the doctrine of an all-out offensive. Two soldiers were executed in violation of the law. Notwithstanding the government's denials, the affair had a detrimental impact on the reputation of Southerners. On the front, Southern soldiers were held in low regard, perceived as cowardly, and subjected to harassment by soldiers and officers from the North. The appellation "Tartarin," for instance, was employed as an epithet directed at Southern combatants. In the context of the extensive demographic integration that the war engendered, the invocation of stereotypes imbued one's environment with meaning and reinforced one's sense of identity. In the face of pervasive prejudices, Southern soldiers from a particular region might attempt to deflect blame onto those from an alternative region within the South or disavow their affiliation with the South.
Southerners in control of the state The nationalist, conservative right, excluded from power by the Republicans, rapidly accepted the premise that Southern politicians, predominantly from the left, had assumed control to consolidate the wealth of the North, redistribute it in the South, and secure allegiance. Between 1871 and 1914, only 28.3% of ministerial and state secretary positions were held by people from the South. Despite this, the South was perceived as economically lagging, while the North, which was much more industrialized, contributed significantly to the state budget. Additionally, the Southerner was considered inclined towards radicalism and socialism due to social conflicts or political expressions.