Région française
These, as formally administrative units, are a comparatively late development, being ruled by title XII of the 1958 French Constitution and by the 4th part of the general code of territorial collectives.[1] To varying degrees these reflect areas of historically cultural and other identity. They play a moderate role in our ascertainment of locational data via modern channels, furthering our overall sense of the pertinent geographical relations.
The régions françaises is further divided into départements français. This latter unit is displayed on virtually all antique French patent documents, these having evolved over centuries.
The régions françaises are naturally to be differentiated from the régions belges, which, as formally administrative units, come up sporadically within our antique data. The French word “région”, in its most general sense, does come up from time to time in our data. For instance, the publication Bracke, 1906, Les précipitations dans la région de Mons pertains to precipitation in the general area around Mons, Belgium, not per se to precipitation within the borders of Wallonie, or the région wallonne, which is the administratively official “région belge” in which the city is located.
The formal units are all to be disambiguated from “region” as used more generally, being that this latter comes up as we assess phenomena of the “social network”.
