François Fontan

François Fontan is a French politician. He was born in 1929 in a family which came from Gasconny (region of Bordeaux). Raised in a monarchic family, he first join a political party : the Mouvement Socialiste Monarchique when he was about 15, but he quickly gave up monarchism and became closer of anarchism, and, then, of communists, but he got fed up with their stalinism.He moved to Nice and created there the Parti National Occitan.From 1962, Fontan often met professor Guy Héraut, and developed the first clarificationof the linguistic border between Occitan and Piemontais.He died in Cuneo in 1979

He argues that states must create new borders, uniting each separate people within one country. In Africa especially, borders were created by European administrators and are not related to the various peoples.Creating new ethno-linguistic border could avoid new massacres such as the one in Rwanda in 1994 between Tutsis and Hutus.

He wrote some books, explaining his ideas. "Ethnisme" is the most known.

Links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/ Ethnologue.com, a web site which have classified almost all the peoples and languages of the world.]
* [http://www.ben-vautier.com/ ben-vautier.com, a French site where Fontan's texts and ethnic maps are shown.]