Basque Country (historical territory)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations. This article has been tagged since December 2006.

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, and/or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
This article has been tagged since December 2006.

Location of Historical Territory of the Basque Country

Image:Flag of the Basque Country.svg Image:Lauburu.svg

This article is about the overall Basque domain. For the Spanish autonomous community, see Basque Country. For the French part (also named Pays Basque) see Northern Basque Country.

The Territory of the Basque Country (Basque: Euskal Herria) is a cultural region in the western Pyrenees mountains that spans the border between France and Spain, extending down to the coast of the Bay of Biscay. It corresponds more or less with the homeland of the Basque people and language.

1 Geography
- 1.1 Southern Basque Country
- 1.2 Northern Basque Country
2 Borders
3 History
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Geography

According to Basque tradition, the Basque Country is made up of seven traditional regions. The four regions within Spain, or Laurak Bat, form Hegoalde (“the south zone”), while the three within France form Iparralde, or ("the north zone").

Image:Mapa provincias Euskal Herria.svg

[edit] Southern Basque Country

Within the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (Spanish: País Vasco, Basque: Euskadi)

Araba (Álava in Spanish), capital Vitoria-Gasteiz. Vitoria-Gasteiz is also the capital of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.
Biscay (Bizkaia in Basque, Vizcaya in Spanish), capital Bilbao
Gipuzkoa, capital Donostia-San Sebastian

Within the Autonomous Community of Navarre

Navarre (Nafarroa in Basque, Navarra in Spanish), capital Pamplona-Iruña

[edit] Northern Basque Country

Lower Navarre (Behe Nafarroa in Basque, Basse-Navarre in French), capital Donibane Garazi (French: Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port)
Lapurdi (Labourd in French), capital Baiona (French: Bayonne)
Zuberoa (Soule in French), capital Maule (French: Mauléon)

[edit] Borders

The southern Basque Country falls within the Spanish autonomous communities of the Basque Country and Navarre. The Northern Basque Country forms part of the French département of Pyrénées Atlantiques.

Town of Maule (Mauléon) in Zuberoa (Soule)

[edit] History

Further information: Basque people

The Basque Country has been inhabited since the Late Paleolithic. In Roman times, the area of Basque cultural influence was larger than at present, encompassing Aquitaine and the quasi-impassable central Pyrenees up to Andorra.

After the Roman conquest of the Iberian peninsula, the Roman presence was tenuous, at best, manifesting itself in some roads and ill-studied small towns. Pamplona was formally founded by famous Roman general Pompey, who used it as headquarters in his campaigns against Sertorius.

In the 3rd century, apparently under the pressure of feudalization, Basques on both sides of the mountains seem to have revolted in a movement associated with the Bagaudae and gained some kind of de facto independence. The Basques maintained their independence even as the Visigoths conquered the rest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Romans, establishing the Duchy of Vasconia. The Duchy of Vasconia's loyalties varied, united to Aquitaine at times and vassal to the Franks at others.

In the 8th century AD, the Duchy of Vasconia lost its independence, squashed between the Muslims of Al-Andalus, Eudes the Great of Aquitaine and Charles Martel of the Franks. In the course of various wars, Martel eventually came to possess the Duchy of Vasconia.

In the South, the Kingdom of Pamplona, later Navarre, was (at least between 805 and 1200) the only political entity to encompass the Basque Country on both sides of the Pyrenees. The kingdom reached its greatest size under Sancho III of Navarre (c. 985–1035). Sancho's kingdom encompassed modern-day Navarre, most of the autonomous community of the Basque Country, La Rioja, and the north-east of Castile. At the time, the future kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, which at the time were just counties, also fell beneath Navarre's aegis. Under Sancho, the future kingdom of León and modern-day Gascony were reduced to Navarrian tributaries.

After Sancho's death, the kingdom was split amongst Sancho's four sons into the kingdoms of Pamplona, Castile, Aragon, and Sobrarbe/Ribagorza. A fraticidal war broke out soon afterward and Pamplona was partitioned. During Pamplona's incorporation to Aragon, the name of "Navarre" was first used.

In 1157, Ramiro the Restorer became King of Navarre after a dynastic dead-end. Ramiro launched several disastrous wars against the Castilians, first losing La Rioja and Bureba, then the rest of the western provinces. In the Basque provinces under Castilian control, the Basque provinces were allowed continued self-rule, with the exception of Treviño.

In 1512, the troops of Ferdinand II of Aragon took the southern part of Navarre, but Basse-Navarre, north of the Pyrenees, remained independent until 1620. In that year, Basse-Navarre was incorporated into France, with which it had been in personal union since 1589, when Henry IV of France inherited the French throne.

Navarre and the northern Basque provinces kept their particular forms of self-rule until the centralization of the French Revolution. During the French Revolution, the government of Gipuzkoa asked for incorporation to the French Republic to remain united, but that request was ignored.

During the French invasion of Spain by Napoleon, the Basque provinces offered less resistance to the French invasion. However, due to abuses during the occupation, the people took to arms there as well.

In the 19th century, the Liberal approach to the state, that implied centralization and homogenization in a single nation-state, caused the Basques to adhere to the reactionary Carlist party in the Carlist Wars. These wars were ended when the Basque governments in rebellion saw no more possibilities to them. In the process, Basque provinces lost most of its autonomy but kept at least remnant, particularly tax-collection, that has served for a recent partial restoration.

Particular impact had the displacement of the customs border from being between the Basque provinces and Spain to the coast and the border with France, a border that runs through the middle of the Basque Country. The traditional route Pamplona-Bayonne was cut and the fruitful smuggling activities that fed the interior provinces just vanished. The coastal provinces may have been more favored though.

As result of the end of the Carlist Wars, and embedded by the ideas of nationalism that impregnated Europe in the late 19th century, the Basque people felt impelled to refound the Basque struggle into more modern foundations. Among several others, Sabino Arana and his brother Luis, founded modern Basque nationalism, in the late 19th century.

This ideology found fertile ground especially in the bourgeois class that flourished then in Bilbao and the other industrial areas of the country. Initially it had some clerical and racist undertones, specially as a reaction to massive Spanish and Galician immigration, as workforce for the growing industry, based specially in the rich iron, much appreciated by the British foundations. Naval industries, metallurgy, small weapons... all that made of Bilbao and many Gipuzkoan towns, thriving economic centers. An influential Basque bourgeoise class was born with it.

Basque Nationalism, basically aligned in the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ-PNV), founded by Arana, aimed, via democratic means, to achieve some sort of self rule that approximated or superated (independence) the self rule that once granted the foral autonomy. It worked hard for it under the Republic, when also a leftist party (EAE-ANV) existed. Yet it didn't achieve it until 1937, in the last months of resistance against the fascists.

Under Franco, there was a fierce political repression that softened slowly as decades passed. There existed a Basque Government in exile, alternatively based in Venezuela or Paris but its activities were limited to ghostly representation and difficult undercover activities. Eventually, a schism in the nationalist youths EGI, created a new group that asked for immediate action. It was named Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Nation and Freedom) and it's now best known as ETA. It would eventually become a very active and bloody terrorist and urban guerrilla organization.

The rise of liberal democracy in Spain, after 40 years of a traditionalist Catholic government under the dictatorship of Franco, also eventually brought autonomy for the Basque Country, though Navarre has so far been governed by pro-Spanish parties that prefer a separate statute and special and polemic linguistic laws. The Basque Autonomous Community, comprising only the Western provinces, has been ruled by nationalist-dominated governments. After 38 years of terrorism and more than 1000 people killed, ETA declared a permanent truce in March 2006.