Editing Charente (section)

==History==
{{Main|History of Charente}}

Charente is one of the original 83 departments created during the [[French Revolution]] on 4 March 1790. It was created from the [[Provinces of France|former province]] of [[Angoumois]], and western and southern portions of [[County of Saintonge|Saintonge]].

Prior to the creation of the department as a single unit, much of it was commercially prosperous thanks to traditional industries such as salt and [[Cognac (brandy)|cognac]] production. Although the river Charente became silted up and was unnavigable for much of the twentieth century, in the eighteenth century it provided important links with coastal shipping routes both for traditional businesses and for newly evolving ones such as paper goods and iron smelting.{{cn|date=February 2023}}

The accelerating pace of industrial and commercial development during the first half of the nineteenth century led to a period of prosperity, and the department's population peaked in 1851.<ref>Jean Combes (dir.) et Michel Luc (dir.), La Charente de la préhistoire à nos jours, Imprimerie Bordessoules, coll. "L'histoire par les documents", 1986, 429 p. ({{ISBN|2-903504-21-0}})</ref> During the second half of the nineteenth century Charente, like many of France's rural departments, experienced a decline in population as the economic prospects available in the cities and in France's overseas empire attracted working-aged people. Economic ruin came to many in the Charentais wine industry with the arrival in 1872 of [[phylloxera]].{{cn|date=February 2023}}

During the twentieth century, the department with its traditional industries was adversely impacted by two major world wars, and in the second half of the century, it experienced relatively low growth. The overall population remaining remarkably stable at around 340,000 throughout the second half of the twentieth century, although industrial and commercial developments in the conurbation surrounding [[Angoulême]] have added some 10,000 to the overall population during the first decade of the twenty-first century.{{cn|date=February 2023}}

The relatively relaxed pace of economic development in the twentieth century encouraged the immigration of retirees from overseas. Census data in 2006 revealed that the number of British citizens residing in the department had risen to 5,083,<ref name="ins1">{{Cite web|url=https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1560056|title=Près de 13 000 Britanniques ont choisi de vivre en Poitou-Charentes - e.décim@l &#124; Insee|website=www.insee.fr}}</ref> placing the department fourth in this respect behind Paris, [[Dordogne (département)|Dordogne]] and [[Alpes-Maritimes]].<ref>La [[Charente libre]] du 4 janvier 2010</ref>