History and civilization
The city of Toulouse is no modern-age, fast sprouting urban conglomeration, but an ancient city where people lived, worked and created for hundreds of years. So you can easily imagine that, in terms of historical tales and museums, Toulouse comes pretty high in rank.
- The history of Toulouse can be traced as far back as the 8th century BC, according to the oldest archeological evidence of human settlement. The location was very advantageous: an easy crossing of the Garonne River, just as the northward river reaches strong hills and thus bends westward toward the Atlantic Ocean. It was a focal point for trade between the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Immediately north of these hills was a large plain suitable for agriculture. People gathered on the hills overlooking the river, south of the plain, 9 kilometers south of today’s downtown Toulouse. The name of the city was Tolosa. Researchers today agree that the name is probably Aquitanian, related to the old Basque language, but the meaning is unknown. The name of the city has remained almost unchanged over centuries despite Celtic, Roman and Germanic invasions, which is rare for French cities (for example, Paris was once called Lutetia).
- Tolosa was then fully incorporated into the Roman Provincia (Provincia Romana—the usual name for what was officially called the province of Transalpine Gaul, with its capital at Narbo Martius). Tolosa was an important military garrison at the western border of the Roman realm. However the city remained a backwater in the Provincia, people were still living in the old Celtic city in the hills. No Roman colony was established; few Roman soldiers settled in the area.
- Things changed after the conquest of the rest of Gaul by Julius Caesar. In a sign that Romanization of the people was already well under its way, Tolosa did not take part in the various uprisings against Rome during the Gallic wars. In fact southern France would prove to be the most romanized part of France after the fall of the Roman Empire. Caesar established his camp in the plain of Tolosa in 52 BC, and from there he conquered the western regions of Aquitania. With the conquest of Aquitania and the whole of Gaul, Tolosa was no more a military outpost. It capitalized on its key position for trade between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, now both under Roman control, and the city developed rapidly.
- Around AD 400, the Germanic invasions resumed. In 407 Toulouse was besieged by the Vandals, but under the impulse of its bishop Saint Exuperius the city resisted behind its strong walls, and the Vandals lifted the siege and moved into Spain, and from there into North Africa where they settled. "The provinces of Aquitaine and of the Novempopulana (that is, Gascony), of Lyon and of Narbonne are, with the exception of a few cities, one universal scene of desolation. And those which the sword spares without, famine ravages within. I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse which has been kept from failing hitherto by the merits of its reverend bishop Exuperius." wrote Jerome to a Roman widow in 409 (Letters cxxiii.16). In 413, three years after they had sacked Rome, the Visigoths under King Ataulf captured Toulouse. Under pressure from Roman forces, they soon withdrew south of the Pyrenees. After the murder of Ataulf, his successor Wallia resolved to make peace with Rome. In exchange for peace, in 418, Emperor Honorius granted the Visigoths the region of Aquitania as well as the city of Toulouse (in Gallia Narbonensis at the border of Aquitania). The Visigoths chose the prestigious and wealthy Palladia Tolosa as the capital of their kingdom, thus ending Roman rule in Toulouse.
- By the end of the 9th century, Toulouse had become the capital of an independent county, the county of Toulouse, ruled by the dynasty founded by Frédelon, who in theory was under the sovereignty of the king of France, but in practice was totally independent. The counts of Toulouse had to fight to maintain their position at first. They were mostly challenged by the dynasty of the counts of Auvergne, ruling over the northeastern part of the former Aquitaine, who claimed the county of Toulouse as their own, and even temporarily ousted the counts of Toulouse from the city of Toulouse. However, in the midst of these dark ages, the counts of Toulouse managed to preserve their own, and unlike many local dynasties that disappeared, they achieved survival. Their county was just a small fraction of the former Aquitaine, the southeastern part of it in fact. However, at the death of Count William the Pious of Auvergne (Guillaume le Pieux) in 918 they came into the possession of Gothia which had been in the family of the counts of Auvergne for two generations. Thus they more than doubled their territory, once again reuniting Toulouse with the Mediterranean coast from Narbonne to Nimes. The county of Toulouse took its definite shape, from Toulouse in the west to the Rhone River in the east, a unity that would survive until the French Revolution as the province of Languedoc.
- Toulouse sank into a sleepy regional-level status in the 18th and 19th centuries, completely missing the Industrial Revolution. In the 20th century, relocation of key military and aerospace industries in Toulouse by the French central government have awakened the city again. In an ironic twist of history, what was once a big liability for Toulouse has now become its best asset: no Industrial Revolution meant a falling economic status for the city, but it has spared Toulouse the environmental damages and painful socio-economic restructuring that are plaguing so many northern European industrial cities.
- Benefiting from its status as Europe’s capital of aerospace industry, as well as from the flow of population from the industrial belt to the sunbelt of Europe, Toulouse metropolitan area doubled its population between 1960 and 2000 (in the meantime the population of France increased only by 30%). With good prospects for aerospace and biotech industries, growth is likely to continue in the near future. Toulouse is thus recovering step by step its former rank as a major European metropolis, but it faces increasing challenges: how to accommodate such a rapid growth, how to upgrade transport and develop housing and infrastructures, in short how to reinvent the city in the 21st century.