Anjou, historical and cultural region encompassing the western French département of Maine-et-Loire and coextensive with the former province of Anjou. The former province of Anjou also encompassed the regions of La Flèche and Château-Gontier.
Organized in the Gallo-Roman period as the Civitas Andegavensis, it later became the countship of Anjou and (from 1360) the duchy of Anjou. Under the Carolingians, Anjou was nominally administered by a count representing the French king, but the region became vulnerable to attack by marauding Vikings, or Northmen, in the 9th century.
First dynasty of counts
Under one of the sons of Robert the Strong, Anjou was entrusted to a certain Ingelger, who became the founder of the first Angevin dynasty. Ingelger’s son Fulk I the Red rid the country of the Normans and enlarged his domains by taking part of Touraine. He died in 942, and under his successor, Fulk II the Good, the destruction caused by the preceding wars was repaired. Geoffrey I Grisegonelle, who succeeded Fulk II in about 960, began the policy of expansion that was to characterize this first feudal dynasty. He helped Hugh Capet to seize the French crown but died some months after the new king’s accession (987).
Geoffrey’s successor Fulk III Nerra, one of the most remarkable figures of his period and the most powerful member of the dynasty, ruled from 987 to 1040. He finally drove his encroaching neighbours back beyond the frontiers of Anjou and built strongly fortified castles along the border of his territory. Fulk’s son Geoffrey II Martel (1040–60) pursued the policy of expansion begun by his father and annexed the Vendômois and a part of Maine to Anjou. Because he left no sons, his two nephews, Geoffrey III the Bearded and Fulk IV le Réchin, shared the succession. However, they soon came into armed conflict, and Fulk defeated Geoffrey in 1068. Nevertheless, he had to give up most of the lands that Fulk III Nerra had acquired and to defend his fief against the claims of the Duke of Normandy. After the death of Fulk IV in 1109, his son Fulk V the Young endeavoured to make good the losses caused by the various wars. He married his son Geoffrey Plantagenet to Matilda, the daughter of Henry I of England and widow of the emperor Henry V.
By his marriage to Matilda, Geoffrey IV Plantagenet acquired a claim to Normandy and England. Forced to spend his whole life fighting his rivals and the Angevin castellans, he nevertheless succeeded in pacifying Anjou, which in 1151 he left to his son Henry (later Henry II of England), Count of Anjou and Maine and Duke of Normandy, who married Eleanor of Aquitaine after the annulment of her marriage to Louis VII of France. Thus the Anglo-Angevin empire of the Plantagenet dynasty was founded, extending from England to the Pyrenees.
Philip II Augustus of France, however, conquered Anjou from John of England at the beginning of the 13th century. An attempt by the English to retake Anjou failed when they were defeated at La Roche-aux-Moines in 1214. Anjou was definitively ceded to France by the Treaty of Paris (1259).
In 1246 Louis IX of France gave Anjou as an appanage to his brother Charles, the future king of Naples and Sicily. Charles I was succeeded by his son Charles II and the latter by his son-in-law Charles III of Valois, under whose rule the economic and social conditions of the people of Anjou saw much improvement. The son of Charles III of Valois became king of France, as Philip VI, in 1328. From that year until 1351 Anjou was once more united to the crown and benefited from royal attention.
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John II of France gave the countship of Anjou to his son Louis in 1351. Thus began the third Angevin dynasty, which was raised to ducal rank in 1360. At this period bands of English soldiers under the command of Sir Robert Knollys were wandering through Anjou, causing great destruction. The later Angevin princes were more interested in the conquest of the kingdom of Naples than in the defense of their duchy, and Louis II, as his father, Louis I, spent most of his life away from Anjou. After his death his widow, Yolande of Aragon, strove to protect Anjou against attacks by the English.
The last of the rulers of Anjou was René I. After his death (1480) Anjou was for the last time returned to the crown of France, and its fate was thenceforth linked with that of the French kingdom.
During the French Revolution, Anjou was one of the centres of the counterrevolutionary Wars of the Vendée (1793–96). Its legal existence ended with the establishment of the departmental system (1790).
The modern region
The major part of the historic province of Anjou is contained within the département of Maine-et-Loire, in France’s Pays de la Loire région. The area retains a strongly rural character, and farms are ordinarily owned by families; the large estates that historically incorporated several farms have mostly disappeared. The rich lowlands along the Loire River produce wines, fruits, and flowers for the markets of Paris. They centre on the city of Angers and are fringed by poorer highland and plateau regions of the Armorican Massif to the north and the Mauges to the south.
Notable wines from vineyards along the Loire are Savennières, La Possonière, Epiré, Saint-Georges-sur-Loire, Roche-aux-Moines, Mûrs, Soulaines, and Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. The vin d’Anjou is ordinarily white, with a fruity taste. The white wines of Saumur are dry.
In the countryside Roman Catholicism predominates, but relatively few Roman Catholics outside the regions of Choletais (in the environs of the city of Cholet in the Mauges) and Segréen (in the northwest) attend mass on a regular basis. Protestant parishes were established in Angers, Saumur, and Cholet after 1850.