Lorient is a French commune located in the department of
Morbihan, in the Brittany region. Active port city and maritime
arsenal at the end of the Lorient harbor, the city is at the heart
of the urban unit of Lorient which is the largest in the department
and ranks third in the Brittany region.
The history of the
city begins in 1666 when the East India Company obtained land from
Louis XIV to establish its facilities at the place called Faouédic.
The Royal Navy also settled there in 1688 to have boats built there.
The Lorient Arsenal will produce many ships during the following
centuries, including the first French battleships. Fishing allows
the city to experience a new phase of growth, from the opening of
the fishing port of Keroman in the 1920s. World War II leads to the
almost total destruction of the city, the occupant having chosen the
city to build the largest submarine base of the time. A
reconstruction phase followed until the 1970s.
The city's
economy is geared towards maritime activities, Lorient hosting one
of the main French military arsenals, as well as the largest French
fishing port in value with the port facilities of Keroman. Lorient
also has an offshore racing pole, the main pole of the Sailing
Valley, a commercial port in Kergroise, and installations dedicated
to passenger transport. These facilities have earned the city its
nickname "City of Five Ports".
The city underwent major
changes at the end of the 1980s which changed its activities. The
opening of the Université de Bretagne-Sud in 1995, or the rise of
the Lorient interceltic festival, which became one of the largest
French music festivals in the early 2000s, accompanied this period
of transition.
Prehistory and Antiquity
The presence of megalithic monuments
confirms the settlement of the country of Lorient from 3000 BC. The
remains of Roman roads (connecting Vannes to Quimper and Port-Louis
to Carhaix-Plouguer) confirm the occupation of the Gallo-Romans.
Creation and first developments of the city
The French
Company for the Trade of the East Indies was created by Colbert in
1664. It received by an ordinance of Louis XIV of June 1666, land in
Port-Louis as well as on the other side of the harbor at the place
called Faouédic . One of its directors, Denis Langlois, bought land
there in August 1666 at the end of the harbor, at the confluence of
the Scorff and Blavet rivers, and had wedges built there. At first,
the place only functions as an annex to the Port-Louis facilities
where the company's offices and stores are located. The
establishment was threatened with abandonment several times in the
following years, but in the midst of the Dutch war, the Compagnie
des Indes decided in 1675 to abandon its base in Le Havre, too
exposed in times of war, and to transfer its infrastructure there. .
In the area which took the name of the Enclosure, the company then
built a chapel, workshops, forges, and offices, and it left the
shores of Port-Louis for good.
The Royal Navy was also
established in 1690 on the site under the leadership of Colbert's
son who inherited the post of Secretary of State for the Navy from
his father, and privateers from Saint-Malo also found refuge there.
at the same time. The city developed outside the perimeter of the
Enclosure following a shutdown in 1700 which forced the populations
to leave the area around it to settle on the large moor of Faouédic.
In 1709, the parish of Lorient was created from that of Ploemeur.
The city then had some 6,000 inhabitants in 1702, but the activities
of the Compagnie des Indes like those of the Royal Navy remained
reduced, and the city began to decline.
Developments under
the Perpetual India Company
The city experienced a new period of
growth when John Law de Lauriston created the Perpetual Company of
the Indies by buying several other commercial companies, and he
chose Lorient as the base for his operations. Despite the collapse
of Law's system in 1720, the city experienced a new phase of
development. It was during this period that the city took part in
the triangular trade, and that 156 ships took part in it between
1720 to 1790, deporting some 43,000 slaves. In 1732, the Company
decided to transfer the headquarters of all its sales from Nantes to
Lorient, and asked the architect Jacques Gabriel to build new
freestone buildings to accommodate its activities, and to embellish
the space of the Enclosure. Sales were made there from 1734, and
traded up to 25 million pounds tournaments. The monopoly of the
Company was however abolished at the same time as it in 1769 under
the influence of the physiocrats.
The city benefits from the
prosperity of the Company, and there are 14,000 inhabitants in 1738,
and 20,000 including the population of the suburbs of Kerentrech,
Merville, La Perrière, Calvin, and Keryado. In 1735, new streets
were drawn in the intramural, and in 1738 the city acquired the
status of city community. Embellishment work then began, such as the
paving of the streets, the construction of quays and wedges along
the Faouédic stream, or the demolition of thatched cottages replaced
by houses copied from the Enclosure models. Walls were erected in
1744 to close the city, and were put to use in September 1746 by an
English raid against the city. The end of the Perpetual Company of
the Indies, however, resulted in the loss of about a seventh of the
city's population.
The city begins its reconversion with the
purchase by the king of the installations of the Company for
17,500,000 pounds tournaments to install his navy there. The
American War of Independence led to an increase in activity from
1775, and several privateers used the city as their home port. At
the end of the war, several transatlantic lines were opened to the
United States, and in 1785, a new commercial company was created,
the Compagnie de Calonne, and settled in Lorient.
The French
Revolution and the wars against England that followed put an end to
commercial activities in Lorient for almost two decades. Thanks to
its support for the Revolution, the city acquired the title of
canton capital in 1790, of district capital and maritime district
capital in 1800, a court of first instance in the same year, as well
as than a prison in 1795.
Nineteenth and early twentieth century modernizations
The
maritime activities of the city decline at the beginning of the 19th
century, and the arsenal as the port of war turn with a reduced
activity during a period which extends until the Restoration and the
Monarchy of July. She then turned to administrative activities, and
received a secondary course in 1822 which foreshadowed a college
then a high school, a lazaretto in 1823, and a barracks in 1839.
The city began to modernize in the first half of the 19th
century: the arsenal began to modernize with the opening of a first
form of refit due to Antoine-Élie Lamblardie, then a first covered
hold in 1825, a factory canned sardines using the Appert method
opened in 1825, and a gas plant opened in 1845.
The arrival
of the steam engine in the second half of the nineteenth century
enabled ports to relaunch their activities. A first locomotive
crossed the Scorff in 1865 on a viaduct built for the line from
Savenay to Landerneau, the first railway line serving southern
Brittany. The first form of refit was extended and a second opened
in 1861. The same year, the armored frigate La Couronne left the
arsenal, followed in 1876 and 1879 by the battleships La Dévastation
and Le Redoutable.
The navy rapidly increased the tonnages
and draft of its units. In 1881, the battleship "La Dévastation" ran
aground in the eastern pass of the harbor, and the city was thus
demoted into a second-rate military port, but remained a shipyard.
But Lorient was also then a garrison town (the 62nd infantry
regiment and the 1st colonial infantry regiment were based there).
In 1898, the Lorient tram network was created, developing
several lines across the city. It operated until 1944.
Fishing began to develop at this time following the creation of the
municipal auction in 1889, and the arrival of the first steam
trawler in 1900. From 1909, the traffic in Lorient equaled that of
the three ports of Douarnenez, Pont -The Abbot and Concarneau
together.
The fishing port developed after the 1914-1918 war:
the appearance of the engine on fishing boats made Lorient as
competitive as Groix and Étel. The fishing port of Kéroman was
created from 1920. The region experienced significant Italian
immigration; Italian houses were built in number at this time.
The Second World War
In 1941, the Germans, who then occupied
France, chose to establish in Keroman one of the headquarters of
their submarine fleet. But, very quickly, the submarines will be the
target of constant bombardments by the Allied air force. It is
therefore decided to erect the largest of the German submarine bases
of the Second World War, where the second and tenth flotillas will
be installed. Admiral Dönitz installs his staff at Kernevel castle.
Lorient will be almost entirely razed in 1943-1944 by the Allied
bombardments, which will not succeed in destroying the base of the
submarines in spite of the dumping of 4,000 tons of bombs.
The German garrison will not lay down its arms until May 10, 1945;
it is the surrender of the Lorient pocket. The city of Lorient,
"dead for France", was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1949 and the
Croix de Guerre 1939-1945.
The reconstruction of the city and
its development until today
From 1943, it was the urban architect
Georges Tourry who was appointed responsible for the reconstruction
project. In April 1945, the Ministry of Reconstruction recommended
the construction of temporary wooden barracks. These barracks were
delivered as a kit and it was enough to assemble them on site. In
1948, there were twenty-eight cities under the authority of the city
of Lorient, the agglomeration will have more than twenty more
divided between the cities of Ploemeur, Lanester, Hennebont, Quéven.
These temporary neighborhoods are sometimes made up of more than 280
houses. Each of these barracks had different specificities according
to their origin (Swedish, Finnish, Swiss, French, American,
Canadian). During this time, the military used a take-of-war, a
German three-masted school, renamed Duchess Anne as accommodation
for submariners or dormitory for summer camps. The so-called
provisional period will last between 10 and 40 years depending on
the location. The city center and the nearby suburbs were gradually
rebuilt over the next twenty years. In the city center, only a few
buildings remain to bear witness to the time of the Compagnie des
Indes.