Universal history of Marseilles; from the year one thousand to the year two thousand - Alèssi Dell'Umbria

Description

Mobilizing a thousand years of local, economic, political, cultural, linguistic and social history, this book takes the case of the city of Marseille as an emblem of the relations between central and local power, from the birth of the French state to the present day.

The first reality of this book is that of the cultural and linguistic universe of Provençal over the first three centuries of the second millennium, which managed the alliances between the kingdoms that would become those of France, Italy and Spain. It is the retreat of autonomy of the republic of Marseille in front of the constitution of the French state that we first witness.

The highlights of this story are regional rather than national. And the only hero of this book is the population: a time of "lower city", a time of "plebs", a time of "little people", in its resistances, its victories, its failures which, for the author, are the failures of the majority. Marseille, the oldest city in France, seen from its own perspective.

The city without history according to some, or at least a city whose "provincial" history can only be anecdotal or folkloric in its contradictory relationship with the capital. Until its peripheralization within the Empire, Marseilles illustrates a state of affairs which, starting from the local, reaches the universal of the mechanisms of domination.