Re: As Is (was: Re: Concurrency)

En réponse à John Cowan <cowan@...>:

>
> I think the departments were deliberately designed to break up the old
> provincial boundaries as a matter of building a unified nation-state.
>
AFAIK that's why when De Gaulle made a referendum to introduce regions the
people answered by a "no" (which made him resign: he had promised to resign as
soon as he would lose people's support, and losing a referendum was enough for
him. This man had many defects, but he surely always kept his word! :)) ). They
were under the impression that this would be the reintroduction of provinces
(De Gaulle behaved enough like a king, and that was probably too much).

Mitterand (who at the time of the referendum had made a whole campaign for
the "no"), when becoming president, decided that finally, introducing regions
was not a bad idea, and to be sure that it would pass, had the law voted by the
parlement, and not by referendum. So now we have 22 regions that more or less
correspond to the provincies of the former kingdom of France (more or less, it
seems that the regions were built with the conscious attempt not to mimick too
much the older provincies, so some former provincies are cut in two regions,
and some regions get pieces from more than one former province).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.