History of the city of Bordeaux
The history of the city of Bordeaux stretches over a period of approximately 2300 years. It is shaped by the Celts , Romans , Franks and the Anglo-French antagonism; Bordeaux has been part of France without interruption since the mid-15th century . Over the centuries, the city achieved three economic heydays, mainly due to its strategic location, trade and transport links.
Antiquity and Migration Period
The city goes back to a Celtic settlement from the 3rd century BC. BC back. It was the capital of the Bituriger tribe and gained importance early on due to its strategic location: Here, on one of the main transport routes in Western Europe, there was a favorable opportunity to cross the Garonne, over which both trade and troops had to be controlled. After the conquest of Gaul by the Romans, the city called Burdigala therefore gained in importance. During this time, the region was one of the granaries of the Roman Empire and exported large quantities of wheat to Rome, Burdigala also handled large quantities of metals (especially lead) and forged goods. It is almost undisputed that viticulture was introduced to the region by the Romans; nevertheless, there is disagreement about the exact time. Wine was already consumed before the turn of the century, as amphora finds document, but this was mainly imported from the Provincia Narbonensis. Viticulture was presumably practiced from the 1st century. This period coincided with the first economic boom of Bordeaux, which lasted until the end of the 4th century. In the 2nd century the trading metropolis, which had meanwhile reached great wealth, was elevated to the capital of the province of Gallia Aquitania ; Governors like Agricola had great power. Trade, viticulture and the favorable location as a seaport were the cause. Gnaeus Iulius Agricola began his military career between 58 and 62 AD in Britannia as a military tribune on the staff of governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus . After his return to Rome , Agricola 66 served as tribune and two years later as praetor . In 71 he became a legate of the Governor of Britain, Quintus Petilius Cerialis and commander of the Legio XX Valeria Victrix. When Cerialis left the province, Agricola was appointed governor of the province of Gallia Aquitania.
The cityscape of ancient Burdigala must have been impressive; Travel reports by Roman writers describe it as a rich, magnificent city that adorned itself with magnificent public buildings and whose amphitheater , built in the 3rd century, held 15,000 spectators. An important Greek community was formed, which determined the intellectual pulse of the city, but Iberians, Bretons, Teutons and even Roman citizens also felt drawn to Burdigala, so that contemporaries even spoke of "little Rome". In 224, a traveling salesman from Britain built a sanctuary to the local goddess Tutela. After a first barbarian invasion in 276, the city was fortified for the first time. In the 4th century she presented some of the most important personalities of her time, such as the poet Ausonius , who was famous throughout the empire, and Paulinus von Nola, who was later canonized . A lot can be learned from their correspondence about the standard of living at that time: Wine had already become such a sought-after commodity that it was exported to Trier and the Iberian Peninsula. In exchange, the Bordelais mainly imported olive oil.
At the same time, Christianity finally took hold . Numerous grave fields with sarcophagi from the 4th century were recovered in Bordeaux . The Saint-Seurin church was the seat of the Bishop of Bordeaux - it has preserved a Gallo-Roman crypt . After the division of the Roman Empire, the decline of the city was announced: in 410 Rome was sacked by the invading Visigoths , the subsequent collapse of Western Rome also robbed Bordeaux of its economic importance. Although a certain standard of living and the continuation of Roman culture within the fortifications initially continued, the city could no longer build on its heyday. In 476 Bordeaux was incorporated into the Visigothic Empire, conquered by the Franks in 507 and largely destroyed by an earthquake in 580. The continual devastation ushered in a period that is also described in Bordeaux as the " dark centuries ".
middle Ages
At the latest after the division of the part of Charibert I of Paris, i.e. 567, Bordeaux belonged to Neustria. After the marriage of the neustrian king Chilperich I , he gave the city, together with Cahors , Limoges , Bearn and Bigorre as a morning gift to his bride Gailswintha . These five cities were strategically located to the area of the father-in-law Athanagild , the king of the Visigoths. After Chilperich had arranged for his wife to be murdered, this inheritance passed to the Kingdom of Austrasia , following a settlement by a Malberg summoned by Guntram , King of the Burgundians. Ultimately, not agreeing to this, Chilperich tried in 573, with his son Clovis as military leader, to recapture the cities. Although the conquest of Bordeaux succeeded in the short term, the troops of Clovis were driven out again by the Australian margrave Sigulf a month later.
The early Middle Ages was an overall time constant for Bordeaux uncertainty. Although the city was raised again by Dagobert I to the capital of a newly founded duchy of Aquitaine , it was plundered and devastated by Abd ar-Rahman II in 732 during the course of the Islamic conquests . After the defeat of the Arabs at Poitiers in the same year, they were pushed back behind the Pyrenees, and Charlemagne tried to pacify the region. In order to regulate his succession, he raised Aquitaine to the kingdom which was destined for his son Louis the Pious .
A little later, the entire Bordelais suffered from continued raids by the Vikings . On the way to the Mediterranean Sea , they attacked the city for the first time in 844 and repeated their looting until the year 1000. Aquitaine also lost its kingdom status in 866. The resurgence of Bordeaux was not announced until 1036, when Aquitaine and Gascony were united and the fiefdom extended over almost the entire southwestern quarter of what is now France. Viticulture also became an economic factor again after some process improvements.
The reason for the second great heyday of Bordeaux was Eleanor of Aquitaine , one of the most dazzling figures of the Middle Ages. She inherited the fiefdom from her father Wilhelm X. and brought it into her marriage to Louis VII , the King of France. The wedding was celebrated in Bordeaux in 1137, but the marriage turned out to be unhappy and did not result in an heir to the throne. In 1152 the marriage was annulled. The fief that was restored in this way brought Eleanor into the marriage with Henri Plantagenêt from the Anjou family , which took place immediately afterwards. When Henri Plantagenêt inherited the English throne two years later, all of Aquitaine fell to England. From the 12th to the 15th centuries, Bordeaux remained under the rule of the kings of England , a new city wall and a huge palace were built and the Romanesque church was replaced by a Gothic structure, the Saint-André cathedral . Bordeaux has since been the seat of an archbishop and the capital of the Principality of Guyenne (an English adaptation of the French name Aquitaine). Compared to other provinces, the standard of living in Bordeaux and the surrounding area was high: the food supply was sufficient, wine was exported to England and around the world via the seaport, and even the plague of 1348 spared the city.
During the Hundred Years War the English were able to stay in Bordeaux, and not a few established their permanent residence here. Edward of Woodstock , called the "Black Prince", arrested the captured French King John the Good in Bordeaux and tried during his reign from 1355 to 1372 to shape Aquitaine into a sovereign empire, which he did not succeed.
In 1441 the University of Bordeaux was founded. From 1443 the French armies repeatedly advanced on Bordeaux, but only after the Battle of Castillon . In 1453 the city and the Guyenne fell back to France for good. The return to France was by no means welcomed by the citizens, many of them powerful and wealthy merchants, as it meant that the old markets in England disappeared. The king also protected himself by having two large fortresses built: the Château de la Trompette in the north and the Château du Hâ in the west . These were mainly defensive structures, but the guns could also be turned against the population in the event of uprisings and were also used as prisons. In order not to hinder the effectiveness of these forts , it was only allowed to build a single storey in their field of fire, even within the city walls. It was not until 1494 that a parliament was established that allowed the bourgeoisie limited self-government and was a concession by the French royal family to the Bordelais. In particular, Bordeaux now got sovereignty over the structuring of taxes, albeit a restricted and largely controlled by the nobility.
Modern times
Early modern age
The 16th and 17th centuries were a time when crisis alternated with recovery. Bordeaux was a stronghold of humanism, headed by the famous philosopher Michel de Montaigne as mayor; However, like many cities in the south, it suffered from the consequences of the wars of religion, whose refugees it willingly accepted. The decline in wine exports was countered by switching to other commercial goods such as textile dyes. Over time, wine was also gradually able to conquer the domestic market, which in the previous period was mainly determined by Burgundian wines. Neither the new popularity of their wine at the royal court nor the pompously celebrated wedding of Louis XIII. In 1615 in the cathedral of Saint-André, however, the mostly anti-royalist Bordelais were able to prevent them from participating in several popular uprisings against the king, the most important of which were the Gabelle riots and the Fronde . It was not until 1653 that the Assemblée de l'Ormée , the Fronde of the Burghers of Bordeaux, also known as Parti de l'Ormée , submitted to the king.
Bordeaux experienced its third heyday in the 18th century due to the flourishing Atlantic sea trade, especially with the Antilles . At that time, some capable artistic directors were sent to the city, who gave it a completely new face: the old city walls were torn down and replaced by wide boulevards, the so-called cours . Some of the most impressive private houses were built along these cours, some of which still appear today like palaces. The magnificent buildings on the edge of the Hafenquais also date from this period. The Grand Théâtre , built in the classical style, welcomed the most sought-after ensembles from all over France. The Palais de la Bourse , the seat of the stock exchange, is a masterpiece of mercantile architecture . As the largest French port of the time, Bordeaux was developed into a showcase for the country, which was supposed to impress newcomers with its sheer splendor. The cityscape of the artistic directors has largely been preserved to this day, while medieval Bordeaux almost disappeared in this era.
Revolution, Empire and Restoration
The French Revolution put an abrupt end to this development. After the Château de la Trompette was stormed - as a local counterpart to the Bastille , so to speak - power passed into the hands of the revolutionaries. In 1790 Bordeaux became the capital of the newly created Gironde department . In the National Assembly, the bourgeois-liberal MPs, known as the Girondins , made up an important group that initially exercised considerable influence and played a key role in the declaration of human and civil rights and the new constitution . Already in 1793/94 the Girondins lost their influence again with the reign of terror of the Jacobins around Robespierre and were persecuted, brought to Paris and executed there. 300 Bordelais were also publicly guillotined. Although many of the magnificent buildings in Bordeaux were demoted to barns, stables and warehouses, international trade continued to develop despite some arbitrary arrests.
The economic catastrophe only followed under Napoleon's rule : during the Napoleonic Wars , the continental blockade brought all trade with Great Britain to a standstill, and only a state loan prevented the city from going bankrupt. Smuggling, a problem as early as the 18th century, assumed exorbitant proportions. However, the infrastructure improved during this time, as huge troop contingents were deployed in the direction of Spain, which passed through Bordeaux, among others. It is thanks to this fact that from 1816 the first permanent bridge was built over the Garonne, the Pont de Pierre (literally "stone bridge"; under Napoleon only a previous wooden structure could be built). The concerns of the local dignitaries about mastering the technical challenge in view of the strong currents and the unpredictable floods should be brought to Napoleon's sentence Impossible n'est pas francais! have initiated (literally "Impossible is not French!"). The layout of the boulevard , which was laid out in a wide semicircle around the old town, can also be traced back to the French emperor .
The reinstatement of the Bourbons was celebrated in Bordeaux as old trade relations could be resumed. Soon afterwards, the Esplanades des Quinconces , the largest square in the world at the time, adorned with rows of trees and surrounded by the houses of the rich, emerged on the site of the razed Château de la Trompette . During this time, the population grew considerably: between the Cours and the Boulevard, new suburbs emerged, which spread out in a ring around the medieval core on the left bank of the Garonne. In the north-west and south-west are the quarters of the upper middle class, in between the simple residential areas for workers and petty bourgeoisie. The right bank of the Garonne developed slowly in comparison. During the emerging industrialization , most of the large companies settled here and in the port area. At the same time, art and literature experienced a boom in Bordeaux in the 19th century, which attracted painters like Francisco de Goya and writers like Stendhal .
The industrialization was concerned Bordeaux only marginally. Some of the first railway lines were laid from Bordeaux and the city became a hub for two regional railway companies. Incidentally, only the glass industry achieved a certain rank after the main shipping method for wine had been switched from barrels to bottles. Therefore a proletariat never emerged in Bordeaux as a socially determining class. For this, but above all for strategic reasons, the Napoléon III government withdrew . returned to Bordeaux after his capture after the battle of Sedan, when Prussian troops were advancing on Paris at the turn of 1870/71 . The one-sidedly wine-oriented economy led to an economic catastrophe at the end of the 19th century when phylloxera destroyed almost the entire wine stock in the Bordelais. Only through the introduction of resistant sticks from America and their refinement with surviving shoots ( bouillie bordelaise ) could the economic basis be restored in tough detailed work.
20th century
During the First and Second World Wars , too, the French government withdrew from Paris to Bordeaux in front of the approaching German troops . Between July 1, 1940 and August 27, 1944, Bordeaux was occupied by Wehrmacht troops. The city played an outstanding strategic role for the occupiers: Due to the exposed location near the Atlantic coast, which the Germans expanded into an " Atlantic Wall " and fortified its entire length with bunkers, the Wehrmacht built a large and important submarine harbor here . From an economic point of view, Bordeaux had come into focus especially because of its wine: the military and NSDAP functionaries - especially Göring himself - were obsessed with the region's top wines. Heinz Bömers , "wine guide" appointed by the Germans for the Bordeaux region, was able to negotiate a position that was formally independent of the NSDAP, but had the unspoken mandate to plunder Bordeaux and bring as much wine as possible to Germany. With a clever rocking policy and occasional deceptions, he thwarted these plans, but could not prevent the economic reprisals against winegrowers and the entire population from growing into unbearable during the course of the war. In 1944, many Bordelais were forced to farm with simple means on the very barren gravel soil, which was almost exclusively suitable for viticulture.
During this time the city, like the whole of the French southwest, was a stronghold of the Resistance . Official politics and a large part of entrepreneurship, on the other hand, vacillated between devotion to fate and open collaboration. The long-time mayor Adrien Marquet , originally politically left-wing, respected and popular with the Bordelais due to his urban development policy, adapted so much to the circumstances that he kept his post until 1944. Maurice Papon , prefect and thus police chief of the Gironde department, excelled in the deportation of the Jewish population through particular cruelty and thoroughness. He was only called to account for his crimes in 1997 in one of the last war crimes trials. In Bordeaux, the Resistance shifted to economic and military sabotage and help for the persecuted: As the demarcation line to the “free” Vichy France ran only 50 kilometers inland, many smuggled goods and many people who wanted or wanted to flee from the occupiers were brought across this border had to. Attempts to bring Allied soldiers into the country for sabotage purposes via the Gironde and the port of Bordeaux failed, however.
After the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, Hitler ordered that the port facilities and the Pont de pierre in Bordeaux should be destroyed when German troops withdrew from Bordeaux . The division commander Lieutenant General Albin Nake, contrary to the order, concluded a secret agreement after negotiations with representatives of the local Resistance that the city of Bordeaux would not be destroyed if the German troops withdrawing without a fight were not attacked by the groups of the resistance, but were given safe conduct . On August 22, 1944, German sergeant Heinz Stahlschmidt blew up the German ammunition depot with the 4,000 detonators ready for the intended detonation, killing several German soldiers in the process. It is not clear whether this act of sabotage prevented the destruction of the city, since the German troops still had enough artillery to destroy the city. Both sides adhered to the agreement made; the German troops and civil forces withdrew in three marching groups. Bordeaux remained largely undamaged during the war.
Jacques Chaban-Delmas , one of the most important figures in the resistance against the German occupation and later (1969–1972) Prime Minister under Pompidou, was elected mayor in 1947 and held the post until 1995.
In the second half of the 20th century, Bordeaux underwent a profound structural change. Chaban pursued a policy of industrialization and, at times, radical modernization: the seaport , until then located directly in the city, was abandoned in the 1960s and replaced by a terminal for container ships near Le Verdon on the Gironde estuary. Since then, the oil tankers have been serving a large refinery in Pauillac , approx. 50 km away. At that time, a fairground, hotels and shopping centers were built on previously fallow land in the north of the city. An administrative city was built near the city center, for which an entire neighborhood was demolished. In addition, a motorway ring was built ( Autoroute A630 ) to cope with the increasing traffic problems. After the May 1968 riots , the University of Bordeaux was relocated to a new campus in the suburb of Talence : a measure that both adopted the American idea of a closed campus and should lead to displacing potential troublemakers from the city center. In the 1970s, Ford , IBM , Siemens and Aérospatiale , among others, settled in newly designated areas on the outskirts and in neighboring communities. Heavy industry gave up its downtown locations in the 1980s, resulting in a not inconsiderable loss of jobs. Not every one of these brutal measures did justice to the effort, but at least the decline of the economy was halted. This has also been made possible by the amalgamation of Bordeaux and its neighboring municipalities to form the Communauté Urbaine de Bordeaux (CUB), a municipal association that has been regulating inter-municipal tasks such as structural policy, local transport, supply and disposal since then.
During the 1990s, Bordeaux became aware of its historical heritage. The old town, with its almost completely preserved historical appearance, was increasingly traffic-calmed. Residential areas have been upgraded, historic buildings renovated, the front to the Garonne restored and new buildings such as the Cité Mondiale du Vin carefully integrated into the cityscape. In 1994 a large-scale urban redevelopment project was presented, the main aim of which was to bring the city closer to the Garonne. Chaban's successor in office pursued this project vehemently: Old warehouses were demolished, cycle paths and promenades were built and the industrial wastelands on the right side of the Garonne were given new buildings. In 2004 the tram traffic, which had been replaced by buses since the 1960s, was resumed with three new lines.
literature
-
Histoire de Bordeaux. Féd. hist. du Sud-Ouest, Bordeaux:
- Volume 1: Robert Etienne: Bordeaux antique. 1962.
- Volume 2: Charles Higounet: Bordeaux pendant le haut Moyen age. 1963.
- Volume 3: Bordeaux sous les rois d'Angleterre. 1965.
- Volume 4: Bordeaux de 1453 à 1715. 1966.
- Volume 5: Bordeaux au dix-huitième siècle. 1968.
- Volume 6: Bordeaux au dix-neuvième siècle. 1969.
- Volume 7: Bordeaux au vingtième siècle. 1972.
- Volume 8: Louis Desgraves: Index général des noms de personnes et de lieux et des matières. 1974.
- Anne-Marie Cocula: Histoire de Bordeaux. Le Pérégrinateur éditeur, 2010.
Remarks
- ↑ Augustin Thierry - The kings and queens of the Merovingians 1840
- ↑ Helmut Kötting: The Ormée (1651-1653). Formative forces and personal connections of the Bordelaiser Fronde . Aschendorff, Münster 1983, ISBN 3-402-05633-X .
- ↑ Donald Kladstrup, Petie Kladstrup: Wine and War. The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure. Broadway Books 2002, ISBN 978-0767904483 , p. 79.
- ↑ Peter Lieb : Conventional war or Nazi ideological war? Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57992-5 , p. 482. Lieb compares the end of the war in Bordeaux with the withdrawal of German troops from Paris without a fight .
- ↑ Francis Cordet: Carnets de guerre en Charente, 1939-1944 . De Borée, Romagnat 2004, ISBN 2-84494-235-0 , p. 307 ff. With footnotes on p. 345 and 348.
- ^ Pierre Miquel : Une reddition négociée. In: L´Express online , May 24, 2004.
- ↑ the terminal belongs to the Grand port maritime de Bordeaux www.bordeaux-port.fr