Picardy

This article is about the historical French province and cultural area of Picardy. For the modern French région of Picardie, see Picardie. For use in music, see Picardy third.

Coat of arms of Picardy

Picardy (French: Picardie) is an historical province of France, in the north of France. The historical capital and largest city is Amiens.

According to Edward Gibbon,

Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and from thence of Picardie, which does not date earlier than AD 1200. It was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome humour of those students, in the University of Paris, who came from the frontier of France and Flanders. (Chapter LVIII - Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

During the Middle Ages, Picardy referred to that part of France north of Paris, and it even included the Dutch speaking Flanders. Thus, the name applied to an area much larger than what we now think of as Picardy. This area corresponds to all the territories from Paris to the Netherlands. In the Latin Quarter of Paris, people identified a "Picardy Nation" (Nation Picarde) of students, most of whom actually came from Flanders, who studied in the prestigious Sorbonne University.

In a narrower sense, Picardy refers to the area covered by the gouvernement (military region) of Picardy as created in the 16th century. This area is the Somme département, the northern half of the Aisne département, and a small fringe in the north of the Oise département. This is what most people think of as Picardy today. The older definition survives in the name of the Picard language, which applies not only to the dialects of Picardy proper, but also to the Romance dialects spoken in the Nord-Pas de Calais région, north of Picardy proper.

Picardy proper now lies inside the Picardie région, making up half of this région. Before the French Revolution, the coastal areas of Boulogne-sur-Mer and Calais were considered part of Picardy, but are now part of the Nord-Pas de Calais région. However, anciently these areas belonged to the province of Artois, and had been detached from Artois in the 15th century.

Most of Picardy is a vast plain with open fields, famed for the gruesome Battle of the Somme. The main crops of Picardy are wheat, sugar beets, and fodder. Sugar beet was introduced by Napoleon I during the Napoleonic Wars in order to counter the United Kingdom which had seized the sugar islands possessed by France in the Caribbean. The sugar industry made the fortune of Picardy in the 19th century and contributed to the ruin of the sugar economy in the Caribbean.

Villages of Picardy have a distinct character, with their houses made of dark red bricks, in contrast with the neighboring provinces.

A minority of people still speak the Picard language, one of the languages of France, which is also spoken in Artois (Nord-Pas de Calais région). "P'tit quinquin", a song in the Picard dialect, is a symbol of the local culture (and of that of Artois).