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Poitou-Charentes

Coordinates: 46°05′N 0°10′E / 46.083°N 0.167°E / 46.083; 0.167
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Template:Infobox French region Poitou-Charentes (French pronunciation: [pwatu ʃaʁɑ̃t] ⓘ) is an administrative region in south-western France comprising four departments: Charente, Charente-Maritime, Deux-Sèvres and Vienne. The regional capital is Poitiers.

Politics

The regional council is composed of 56 members. The region is the home of France's losing presidential candidate Socialist Ségolène Royal in the election of 2007.

Demographics

In French its residents are known as Picto-Charentais. In 2003, the region ranked 15th out of 26 in population. In area it ranked 12th in size.

Three regional languages, Poitevin, Saintongeais and Limousin are spoken by a minority of people in the region.

Poitou is believed to be the region of origin of most of the Acadian and Cajun populations of North America (settlements founded in New Brunswick, Louisiana, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec, Maine and Newfoundland).[1] Their ancestors emigrated from the region in the 17th and 18th centuries.

At first, these French immigrants from Poitou settled in eastern Canada, and established an agricultural and maritime economy (farming and fishing). This area of the "New World" was dubbed Acadia by the French, after the Greek Arcadia - the idyllic part of the Peloponnesian peninsula in Greece. It was renamed Nova Scotia (New Scotland) in the aftermath of the 1755 expulsion of most of the Acadians by the English.

Major communities

References

  1. ^ source: Dr. Carl Brasseaux, director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at The University of Louisiana in Lafayette, LA

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Poitou-Charentes.

46°05′N 0°10′E / 46.083°N 0.167°E / 46.083; 0.167

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