Pétition pour les langues provinciales

Following the trend in favour of decentralization, in 1870 the imperial government created a commission to study the reorganization of territorial administration in France. Henri Gaidoz, Hyacinthe de Charencey and Charles de Gaulle decided to take the debate out of the purely administrative framework and extend it to the linguistic question. They prepared a Petition for Provincial Languages, to be submitted to the Legislature, but the War of 1870 disrupted the plan. The petition remained at the proof stage and was not published as it stood by H. Gaidoz until 1903 by A. Picard et fils. The text of the petition is preceded by a preface by Henri Gaidoz and followed by the reaction letters it has generated.