- published: 20 Jul 2014
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Charente (French pronunciation: [ʃa.ʁɑ̃t], Saintongeais: Chérente, Occitan: Charanta) is a department in southwestern France, in the Poitou-Charentes region, named after the Charente River, the most important river in the department, and also the river beside which the department's two largest towns, Angoulême and Cognac, are sited.
Charente is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from the former province of Angoumois, west and south of Saintonge.
Prior to the creation of the department, the area was not a natural unit, but much of it was commercially prosperous thanks to traditional industries such as salt and cognac production. Although the river became silted up and was unnavigable for much of the twentieth century, in the eighteenth century it provided important links with coastal shipping routes both for traditional businesses and for newly evolving ones such as paper goods and iron smelting.
The accelerating pace of industrial and commercial development during the first half of the nineteenth century led to a period of prosperity, and the department's population peaked in 1851. During the second half of the nineteenth century Charente, like many of France's rural departments, experienced a declining population as the economic prospects available in the cities and in France's overseas empire attracted the working age generations away. Economic ruin came to many in the Charentais wine industry with the arrival in 1872 of phylloxera.
Poitou-Charente 2014
Charente-Maritime - Les carnets de Julie
Tornade le 16 septembre 2015 en Charente-Maritime
TOURISME FLUVIAL LA CHARENTE
Reportage en Charente
Fred74 dans le Poitous charente
Vendange en Charente [GOPRO HD]
Charente-Maritime, dans les bras de la mer - Échappées belles
Les escapades de Petitrenaud En Charente
Labour d'Hiver en Xérion 4000 et deux New Holland en Charente
Hommage Charente Maritime : On est bien dans le 17 !Jean -Jacques Delaforge
TORNADE A SAINTES, VENTS VIOLENTS - CHARENTE-MARITIME - AUBE - RHONE ALPES - 3 MORTS
Tornade en Charente-Maritime et Gironde le 13/09/2015
La Charente en bateau habitable sans permis vue du ciel avec les Canalous