Le Petit Provençal was founded in Marseille in 1880, and distributed in south eastern France.

[4] Thus, during the campaign in Madagascar, from September 1894 to December 1896 Le Petit Provençal devoted 95 editorials or feature articles on the front page to colonial issues.

Regular contributors included Alexandre Millerand, René Viviani, Gustave Rouanet, Clovis Hugues and Léon Mirman.

[5] André Joseph Lefèvre wrote for Le Petit Provençal in the period before World War I (1914–18).

On 29 August 1939, on the eve of World War II (1939–45), Le Petit Provençal called for support for the administrative commission of the Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labor), which had condemned the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the USSR and Germany.

Léon Bancal was jailed for an article Adieu á Mickey in Le Petit Provençal.