Régence

The "Régence" is the period in French history between 1715 and 1723, when King Louis XV was a minor and the land was governed by a regent, Philippe d'Orléans, the nephew of Louis XIV.

Politics and culture

The Régence marks the temporary eclipse of Versailles as centre of policymaking, since the Regent's court was at the Palais Royal in Paris. It marks the rise of Parisian salons as cultural centers, as literary meeting places and nuclei of discreet liberal resistance to some official policies. In the Paris salons aristocrats mingled more easily with the "higher bourgeoisie" in a new atmosphere of relaxed decorum, comfort and intimacy.

Art history

In the arts, the style of the Régence is marked by early Rococo, characterized by the paintings of Antoine Watteau (1684-1721).

Colonialism

"Régence" is also the customary French word for the pre-independence regimes in the western North African countries, the so-called Barbary Coast. It was applied to:
*First the Barbary Coast (Maghrebinian countries in North Africa) was de facto independent (dominated by military governors, soon de facto princes, styled dey, bey or beylerbey, and by the raïs, Muslim corsairs), but nominally an Ottoman province.
*Later the beylik of Tunis (present Tunisia) and the Sherifian sultanate of Morocco (except for the Spanish-dominated part) came under a specific, protectorate-type of colonial regime that France established over each.

ources and references

* [http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Algeria.html#Algiers WorldStatesmen- see every present country; here Algeria]