The area of the Rhone-Alps
© Intercarto
French administrative area made up by the departments of Ain, of Ardeche, of Drome, of Haute-Savoie, of Isere, of the Loire, of the Rhone and Savoy. Surface: 43 738 km2. The Gallo-Roman time Burst between several Gallic nations (Ségusiaves, Allobroges, Voconces), the area knows its hour of glory at the time Gallo-Roman. The first Roman colonies date from I er front century J. - the C., most famous being Vienna. The foundation of Lyon, in 49 av. J. - C., under the name of Lugdunum, devotes the rise of this period. The birthplace of the Claude emperor quickly becomes the capital of Gaules.
Other important Gallic cities develop, in particular Grenoble, old Cularo of Allobroges, become Gratianopolis. A dense network of Roman ways - including through the Alps -, of important monuments (theaters of Lyon and Vienna, amphitheater of Three-Beat in Lyon), of the richly decorated houses, with the image of those of the vestiges of Saint-Romain-in-Gall, are the witnesses of an exceptional past.
The end of the Empire and the Middle Ages mark on the contrary a length and deep political and economic decline. The old Roman province bursts in several political entities, absorptive at the time feudal by the kingdom of France and the Germanic Empire. It is necessary to await XIVe century so that the Dauphine one is attached to France. Until the XIXe century, this division survived in the vocabulary, the boatmen of the Rhone naming the Empie left bank (“Empire”) and the Riaume Right Bank (the “Kingdom”). The cities then, Lyon in particular, lose most of their population and of their richness to the profit of those of the north of the country.
The time of prosperity The French Rebirth, starting from the end of the XV E century, is also that of Lyon and the space which surrounds it. Remarkably located at mid--course between Northern Europe and Italy, the area drew its new richness from the trade flows which cross it by the Alps and the valley of the Rhone. Lyon very quickly becomes a great center of commercial exchanges and banking. The city creates its own wealth of developing, with the assistance of the king, the silk trade, usually imported of Italy.
Until the medium of the XVI E century, Lyon and the adjacent cities are among most prosperous of the kingdom, competing with Paris successfully. But the wars of religion and the royal will to privilege Paris make fall down South-east in stagnation. However, the silk trade is maintained and progressed, in particular under the reign of Louis XIV. This industry then makes live many inhabitants, silky (commercial), silk workers (working tisserands) or peasants raising the caterpillars on the mulberry trees.
To the economic retreat the tumultuous relationships to the royal power are added, illustrated, inter alia, by the fight of the Calvinist partisans, Protestant refugees in Vivarais, against the soldiers of Louis XIV after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
With the approach of the French revolution, Vizille and Grenoble are affirmed, since 1788, like protestors cities. Under Terror, the opposition of Lyon to the power Jacobin causes a bloody repression and the temporary disappearance of the name of the city, renamed “Freed City”.
The industrial era The industrial revolution makes future Area of program one of the three great economic whole of French space. As of the end of the XVIII E century, but especially as from 1820, the coal of the basin of Saint-Etienne and the proximity of the valley of the Rhone explain to it fast rise of heavy industry: iron and steel industry (until the years 1950) and especially metallurgy around Lyon and Saint-Etienne, cities connected in 1827 by the first railway line Frenchwoman exploited to economic ends.
Towards the end of the XI E century, the use of electricity, then primarily of hydraulic origin, makes of the Alps the cradle of the industry of aluminum: the valley of Maurienne becomes an industrial site of first importance. At the same time, the Lyons industrialists of the textile encourage the creation of factories manufacturing of the synthetic dyes, then rayon, first fiber of synthesis: it is the origin of the powerful chemical whole of the Lyons South.
At the XXe century, prosperity is maintained, the area moreover being saved by the destruction of the First World War. It obtains modern equipment with the hydroelectric installation of the Rhone and the alpine valleys. Its activities are renewed, its contractors innovate, as well in the fields of alpine tourism (winter initially, estival then), of fine chemistry, the nuclear research (Grenoble), of electrometallurgy (Southern Lyonese) as in those of the precision mechanics (valley of Arve) and of the plasturgie (Bugey). Large building sites of infrastructure for the highways, the irrigation and the pipelines accompany this revival.
The creation of the administrative entity to the beginning of the year 1960 devotes this coherence by creating of all parts a regional unit gathering the three urban areas which determine the power of it: Lyon, Saint-Etienne, Grenoble.