I. From the origins to the Middle Age
We can say that the previous history of Bordeaux are bound to the business, even if the site reveals tracks of previous occupation. His founders, Bituriges Vivisques, Celtic tribe come from the North of France, controlled, since its internal port, the traffic of the tin brought by Armorique.
In the IIIth century before JC, between Mediteranee and the Islands of Cassiterides, Burdigalia ( Bordeaux) seem to be the stage of the road.
It is in the confluence with the Garonne and of two small brooks, Peugue and Deveze, that the ascent of the tide allowed to install a small seaport.
In 56 before JC. the conquest of the region by Crassus, lieutenant of Julius Caesar, pulled a period of economic prosperity and the birth of a rational town planning.
The city is characterized by its
cardo (current street saint-Catherine and course of the Intendance) and his
decumanus, we built aqueducts, temples, amphitheatre and one curie.
Burdigalia is thus only a seaport of small dimensions. Till the end of 1th century before JC, we have only modest one trade city. It is to the IIth that we speak of civitas of Latin right.
In 276, the city is plundered by a troop of vandals and locks itself into the surrounding wall shrunk by its walls. But she continues to shine during more than a century, illustrated by her Christian poets (Ausone 309-394) and her saints (saint Paulin of Nôle 353-431).
The seaport will see protecting by a
castrum towards 278 (according to the current plan of the courses of Alsace-Lorraine, the street of Ramparts and courses of the Chapeau Rouge and the Intendance).
Ausone (310-394), big landowner, professor at the university, the prefect of long poles and the consul, but also poet left with us through his papers of the precious testimonies of the life in Bordeaux in this time. He describes us the relaxed rhythm of life during Pax Romana. The most beautiful vestiges of the economic and political development in the Roman time are doubtless the preserved monumental rests and the big extent of the town.
An extension develops except walls (
suburbium ) around convents and churches. One of the biggest changes will be the internal disappearance of the port(bearing), the commercial activity will be made from now on outside of walls. Burdigalia will keep her importance due to her political and ecclesiastical role.
The peace was interrupted by the successive barbaric invasions. Vanadales in 409, Visigoths in 414, Francs in 498, and Normans in Xth century.
The VIIth century stands out a strong time in the parochial organization of Bordeaux with the foundation of churches Saint-Rémy, Saint Pierre and Saint-Siméon; nevertheless, the city was plundered by the Vikings in 848.
It is in the Xth that the city becomes the main city of the duchy of Gascony and in 1058 that of the counts of Poitiers become dukes of Aquitaine.
Charles Higounet shows us that the development of Bordeaux is of for the expansion of environantes campaigns which bring market and centre of craft. At the end of XI ème builds in the South the district of Rousselle and still in the South we see appearing a sort of half circle, outside of
Castrum, a new village the centre of which is other one than the church Saint Michel.
After 1154 (year of the entry in the throne of Henry II Plantagenêt's England, husband of Aliénor of Aquitaine) Bordeaux knew the prosperity thanks to her union with England. The expansion of the city required the construction of new surrounding walls: in 1227 in the South, to protect the new districts (New street, Rousselle etc.); in 1327, to integrate the new suburbs (Sainte-croix, Saint-Eulalie, Saint Michel). The parishes of Saint Michel and Saint Pierre became populated then of artisans (in the smiths, carpenters or fustiers) leaving their name with streets des Faures and of Fusterie. It was the first golden age, that of the wine that the middle-class persons sold to the English at the same time as they were granted by the power - distant - kings-dukes of the municipal liberties (which the Big Bell, "bell tower" of the city hall, is still the emblem).
However the custody of the English monarchy remains light because after all the sovereign is little present. So the jurade of the city can keep the privileges which were granted to her by Henri III in 1254.
In the XIIIth the cathedral Saint André is built and his archbishop Bertrand de Got becomes a pope under the name of Clément V, in 1305.
The medieval town knows its highlight under the administration of Prince Noir, Edouard de Woodstock. His father king Edouard III of England gives him Guyenne solely. From 1362 till 1372 Bordeaux becomes briefly major of an independent State. But the fiscal pressure compulsory for the Gascon Lords is so strong as Prince Noir soon has to give up his project to set up Guyenne as autonomous State. Besides, the assaults repeated by Charles V and of his supreme commander Of the Guesclin reduce the English possessions to a narrow strip of land from Bordeaux to Bayonne.
In 1453, the end of the One hundred years war (battle of Castillon), after the French conquest, Bordeaux knew difficult hours; the return in France was little appreciated by the bourgeoisie of Bordeaux and the Inhabitants of ordeaux rebelled: against the obstacles brought to the business and the heaviness of the taxes. So, to annihilate any vague desire of revolt against the monarchy, Charles VIII, who distrusted anglophilic feelings of the local bourgeoisie, decided in 1495 to make of Bordeaux a royal city and to make it build two fortresses: the strong of Hâ to defend the city of attacks coming from the south and western, and the castle Trumpet which protected her towards the river. The urbanization accelerated however, after the adventures of the Early Middle Ages: in 1450, the city counted more than 30 000 inhabitants on a surface of 170 ha with surrounding wall. The installation of the Parliament in the walls of the palace of Ombrière, the ancient place of residence of the dukes of Aquitaine, made of the district Saint Pierre the place of residence of the members of parliament and the Court: the names of streets Mérignac, Métivier or the Mule immortalize the existence of these illustrious families; it is then as well that we set up the triumphal arch of the door Cailhau, in the glory of Charles VIII. From 1581 till 1585, Michel de Montaigne was the mayor of Bordeaux; his mandate was marked by no construction of public building, but the city remained intact, because Montaigne tried hard to take away the fights from it of the wars of religion and succession in the crown of France.
But during the fights of the Sling between the French nobility and the king, the middle-class persons of Bordeaux form the conspiracy of Ormée.
It is only in 1653, when the young person Louis XIV makes his entrance to the city subjected by weapons, when Bordeaux agrees finally to have left the realm of France.
If, on the artistic plan, the Renaissance, which left its imprint only on the cathedral, expressed himself in no large-scale set, profound alterations of the urban tissue intervened on the other hand in the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries thanks to the commercial expansion, to the business with the Antilles and to the draft of the slaves: pressed on the harbour growth and an important increase in population (more than 70 000 inhabitants towards the end of the XVIIIth century), Bordeaux undergoes then a radical transformation by the construction of the facade of quays and the organization of the big courses. The XVIIth century lives the land reclamation of swamps in Chartrons, but the most original period extends of the beginning of the XVIIIth century in the middle of the XIXth. Thanks to the business with the Antilles, Bordeaux became before 1789, the first seqport of the realm. At instigation of the big bursars (Boucher, Tourny, Dupré de Saint-Maur), the city was equipped with a new face with the creation of the royal place (place of the Bourse) which cut in its middle the medieval town. Also, the organization of a city tour on the ancient ditches of the public garden in 1746, paths of Tourny in 1749, followed around thirty years later by Victor Louis's realizations, finished giving in Bordeaux the face of classic city which we know her today.
Bordeaux is struck by the Revolution and by the Empire, which prevent the Atlantic business. She dreams a moment to rebel to the appeal of the Girondist representatives, but conventional Tallien makes it the terror reign.
When collapses the napoleonic empire, Bordeaux is the first city to welcome the princes of the house of Bourbon. In honour of the faithful city, the son of the duke of Berry, count of Chambord, receives duke's title of Bordeaux.
Ruined by the Napoleonic wars, the town woke up in the Restoration with the demolition of the castle Trumpet, in 1816, replaced by the immense place des Quinconces ( 1818-1827 ), and the construction of the first bridge on the Garonne. Began then the " walking westward " of the city, with the construction of these "workshops", characteristic low houses of the townscape of Bordeaux. By accompanying the demographic expansion (120 000 inhabitants in 1830, 250 000 in 1914) and industrialo-harbour, the big works of the Second Empire then those of the Third Republic finished the historic image of the city.
Of the XIXth century in our days
It is only from 1840 when the trade of Bordeaux opens of new Senegalese horizons with the trade of the groundnut. Bordeaux becomes again then a big colonial seaport and the end of the line of transport towards South America and Power plant.
At the end of the century the city becomes industrialized with chemical, metallurgical, food companies and oil-works. At the same moment the phylloxera touches the vineyard.
During the first world war Bordeaux knows a certain prosperity with arms factories and becomes from 1917 one of the passages of the American army. It is also at this moment the city of the French Action and the leagues which make the political climate agitated.
The second world war marks a new period of confusions for Bordeaux. Deportations took place and the responsibilities are still badly defined. Adrien Marquet, the mayor of the city is condemned by the high court for the national unworthiness. Persons as prefect Papon remain dark.
The city found, after the conflicts, a safety in general Jacques Chaban-Delmas of the resistance, become a mayor of the city in 1947.
He set up a cultural politics with the organization of several festivals, a politics of urbanization for the extension of the city.
In parallel a new industrialization began in the 70s with the aerospace industry and the Ford factory, while the trade collapsed.
Gradually with the economic crisis and the ascent of the unemployment, the management of the city by the team of Chaban-Delmas was criticized and he has to give up the place to Alain Juppé in June, 1995.
To end we shall say that Bordeaux had for a long time the reputation of a bourgeois city, or the provincial oligarchy reigns. It is at present a university big city, in the important architectural patrimony, which turns more and more on the tourism strong of its gastronomic trump cards and an exceptional natural environment.
