Society and identity

The Cevennes has never been a single united geographic or administrative area.

It is currently divided into 5 départements and 3 regions. Their boundaries have changed greatly over the years. This mountainous chain starting at the Narouze sill and reaching the level of the Canal du Centre has often been described as the division between the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea .

However, history and culture have made a little country emerge from this vast area that is keenly aware of its identity and which the Scottish writer Stevenson named, in 1878, as "'pure bred Cevennes" or the "Cevennes from Cevennes" which has been singularised in literature, especially by Jean-Pierre Chabrol, as "La Cévenne".

The Cevennes is simultaneously a region, a culture, a memory, identities and a claim of belonging. This Cevennes only exists through the people who have made it and who perpetuate it. It is identifiable through the vectors of its character such as Protestantism, anthropisation of the landscape, chestnut trees, silk