In the second half of the 19th century, an Occitan cultural revival manifested itself in the creation of many associations. These were heralded by the Félibrige – a literary association of young Provençal poets founded in 1854 by Frédéric Mistral, Théodore Aubanel, Jean Brunet, Paul Giéra, Anselme Mathieu, Joseph Roumanille, and Alphonse Tavan – and the Société pour l’Étude des Langues Romanes (1869), a philological association focusing on the study or Romance languages and literature. Other associations arose in their wake.

La Cigale, established in Paris in 1875 by Maurice Faure, Louis-Xavier de Ricard, and Eugène Baudoin, was the first regional association of scholars to be established in the French capital, and brought together scholars, poets, writers, and artists from all over the south of France. Its members were called the cigaliers. Women could be part of the association, but did not have the right to attend monthly dinners; they could participate only in parties organized by La Cigale in the provinces.

In 1876, La Lauseto was started up in Toulouse on the initiative of Ricard and the poet Auguste Fourès. The two joined the Félibrige, but with the aim of asserting their republican ideas and religious beliefs. La Lauseto: Armanach dal patrioto lengadoucian, the periodical of this society, was a bilingual Occitan-French journal, breathing a federalist spirit. The literary activity of its founder, Louis-Xavier de Ricard (1843–1911), a poet, writer, and journalist, fully merged with his political beliefs and aspirations. Resolutely republican, liberal, federalist, and anticlerical, he was an outspoken opponent of the imperial regime of Napoleon III, and a supporter of the 1871 Paris Commune. Born in Paris, he had taken refuge from the post-1871 backlash in Switzerland, returning to Montpellier in 1873. There, he founded a succession of periodicals (La Commune libre, L’Autonomie communale, Montpellier-journal) and became editor of the Midi républicain from 1881-82. Passionately involved with the Félibrige he also organized several associations: besides La Cigale and La Lauseto there was also the Alliance Latine (1878, see below). Opposed to the apolitical – indeed, reactionary – orientation given by Mistral to the Félibrige, he split away from it, and become known as the “Red Félibre” (as opposed to the “White”, i.e. Catholic and legitimist Félibrige of the Avignon school). Historical and linguistic differences, as well as political and religious ones, between Languedoc and Provence played into the dissent among the Provençal Félibrige (and, to a certain extent, the Société pour l’Étude des Langues Romanes).

L’Alouette: Société d’Alliance Latine was initiated by Ricard in 1878 to propagate the idea of the Fédération des Peuples Latins. Its remit was literary rather than political, but inspired by republican tendencies, and it addressed Switzerland, France, and American countries – where the republican tradition was already established; its political colouring in the other Latin countries was liberal rather than republican. L’Alouette’s ideal was a confederacy of Latin nations through literature, arts, sciences, and collective publications. It published a periodical, L’Alliance Latine, of which only two editions were published in 1878.

Ricard’s ideas greatly influenced the thought of Jean Charles-Brun (1870–1946), a félibre from Montpellier. In 1892, Charles-Brun moved to Paris, where he joined a group of young people from the south of France, the École Parisienne du Félibrige (1892-96), established by Charles Maurras and Frédéric Amouretti. The group had issued the Déclaration des félibres fédéralistes, read at the Café Voltaire on February 22, 1892, stating their ambition to move beyond the strict culturalism the Félibrige had fallen into, and to pursue political federalism. In 1896, the group split over the Dreyfus Affair into the Ligue de la Patrie Française (1898-1904), led by Maurras, and the Ligue Occitane (1897-1900), created by Charles-Brun, which in 1900 became the Fédération Régionaliste Française (FRF). Ricard was its president, Charles-Brun its general secretary; between 1901 and 1968 it issued a periodical, initially entitled Correspondence régionaliste, in 1902 renamed L’Action régionaliste.

Charles-Brun’s regionalism did not oppose French unity as such, but sought to restore the greatness of France by revitalizing its provincial life. The FRF aimed to unite the swelling ranks of decentralizing, regionalist, and federalist communities regardless of political or religious beliefs; its studiously a-political stance was taken partly to obviate the suspicion of anti-republicanism. Its stated objective was to reconcile “man and nature, the individual and the state, the region and the nation, tradition and modernity”. The region, whose defining criteria nonetheless remained vague, had to be the guarantor and, at the same time, the starting point of a major administrative, intellectual, economic, and social reform of the entire nation. According to Charles-Brun and the regionalists, the region constituted the one and only division of the country that was naturally, humanly, and historically authentic. Charles-Brun expounded his agenda in Le régionalisme, published in 1911. Although during the period of occupation the FRF was silenced, Charles-Brun identified closely with the Vichy regime. Following the liberation, the FRF resumed its activities, but died out by the late 1960s.