takemetocoffin-or-losemeforever:

duendology asked: “Delfe, help me, help us! 😉 I’ve been trying to establish which parts of the France southern region (usually administratively now having different names) belonged to the historic “Auvergne”? Is there, perhaps a historic map with this region marked? So I could see this territory in its full historical context?”

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First I’ve to confess I’m pretty
much ignorant of Southern France and Auvergne geography (even if I’m currently living “not-so-far” from there – shame on me), so I did learn a lot of things about the history of Auvergne.

Before speaking more specifically of
Auvergne, a “tiny” point; France has two important
administrative divisions: “région” (created in 1955) and “département” (created
in 1790). The 27 régions are subdivided into 101 départements (the

région of Auvergne, for
example, has 4 départements). Therefore, the number of régions is going to be
reduced to 18 in
2016, and Auvergne
will be merged with the

région of Rhône-Alpes. Lyon will most certainly become the administrative
center, so Clermont-Ferrand will lose its
official title of Auvergne’s
capital.

Now, back to the main topic!
Current Auvergne is basically a combination of historic Auvergne and the provinces of Bourbonnais and Velay. The name Auvergne come from gallic tribes of Arvernes, one of
the most famous and powerful confederation of Gaul.
I’m not going to trace the whole history of Auvergne
(I don’t want you to fall asleep and Wikipedia does that 1000 times better than me here anyway) but the “city of Arvernes”, in fact,
covers more or less the territory of 18^th century Auvergne. With the Revolution, France is divided in départements, and the province of Auvergne
is split between Puy-de-Dome, Cantal, Haute-Loire and Allier in 1790. A entity similar of
historic Auvergne
is finally brought back in 1955 with the creation of administrative régions.

18^th century Auvergne
on a map of current France (with départements divisions) ;
today’s Auvergne
is in red (I made a map combining this map to another one I found on Wikipedia; it’s not a
perfect match, but it makes things easier to visualize)

A map of the provinces of Marche, Bourbonnais, Limousin and Auvergne (in red), dating apparently from 1763. [source]

And a map of the “cité des Arvernes” with actual Auvergne limits. [source]

Voilà !