The creation of modern France through expansion goes back to the establishment of a small kingdom in the area around Paris in the late 10th century and was not completed until the corporation of Nice and Savoy in 1860. The existing "hexagon" was the result of a long series of wars and conquests involving the triumph of French language and culture over what once were autonomous and culturally distinctive communities, especially the Occitan-speaking areas of the South, whose language (langue d'oc) distinct to French was banned from official use in the 16th century and from everyday use beginning with the French revolution. The creation of the French hexagon by conquest and annexations established an ideological precedent for the "civilizing mission" that served as a rationale for French colonialism.