ABSTRACT
The touristic projection of place was at the heart of the Touring Club de France’s 1909 proposal to hold, each year in a different province, a “Grande Semaine de la Vieille France” or “Old France Week”. 1 Designed, according to the Club’s original blueprint, to combine elements of regionalist advocacy, patrimonial conservation and tourist promotion, the events were to counter the deeply-ingrained French “rage for uniformity” that the Club and other advocates of regionalism viewed as the greatest threat to individual regions, as well as to genuine cultural value and originality in the country more generally. The grandes semaines would also help demonstrate the ultimate compatibility of national and regional interests, not least in their reliance on the active collaboration of both well-placed national and regional actors to achieve fruition. As was the case for regionally themed and folkloric museums, France was judged by Club leaders to lag behind many of its European neighbors in these kinds of efforts. Cantons and communes in Switzerland had already begun providing direct support to area fêtes as a means both of fostering local fealties and generating tourist commerce. In the absence of such state support in France, the Club envisioned its own initiative being taken up initially by local artists, notables and businesses with a particular interest in regional preservation and promotion, and it called expressly upon municipalities, local syndicats d’initiative and cultural organizations to collect artifacts and to organize exhibitions and performances. As a prime example of the “mise en valeur méthodique” (systematic outfitting) that the Club advanced as an alternative to the often-contentious political negotiation of the regional question in Third Republic France, the semaines would help elevate regionalism to the higher ground of national solidarity. 2
