France
Kingdom of France Royaume de France | |
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 Flag
.svg) Coat of arms
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Motto: Montjoie Saint Denis! "Montjoy Saint Denis!" | |
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Royal seal  | |
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| Capital | Paris |
| Official languages | French |
| Ethnic groups | French, others |
| Religion | Avignonese Catholic (official) |
| Demonym(s) | French |
| Government | Constitutional monarchy |
| Jean IV | |
| Oscar de Saint-Just | |
| Legislature | National Assembly |
| Senate | |
| Chamber of Deputies | |
| History | |
• Baptism of Clovis I | 25 December 496 |
• Kingdom of France established | August 843 |
| 22 September 1792 | |
| 30 September 1926 | |
| 25 August 1940 | |
| 9 November 1999 | |
| Population | |
• Estimate | 70,413,000 |
| GDP (PPP) | estimate |
• Total | $2.954 trillion |
• Per capita | $45,454 |
| GDP (nominal) | estimate |
• Total | $2.551 trillion |
• Per capita | $39,257 |
| Gini |
28.5 low |
| HDI |
0.901 very high |
| Currency | French franc (Fr) |
| Time zone | UTC+1 (Central European Time) |
| Date format | dd/mm/yyyy (AD) |
| Driving side | right |
| ISO 3166 code | FR |
- "France" redirects here. For other uses, see France (disambiguation).
France, officially the Kingdom of France (French: Royaume de France), is a country in Western Europe with several overseas territories. It is bordered by the Netherlands and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the east, and Spain as well as the enclaved microstates of Venaissin City and Monaco to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France, including its overseas territories, has the most number of time zones of any country, with a total of 12. Its capital is in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial center. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.
During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into East Francia, Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia, which became the Kingdom of France in 987, emerged as a major European power in the Middle Ages under King Philip Augustus. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world. The 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots). France became Europe's dominant cultural, political, and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, establishing one of modern history's earliest republics.
In the 19th century, Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire. His subsequent Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the Second French Empire in the 1840s and persisted into the 20th century, lasting until its collapse in 1910 following the French defeat at the hands of Germany during the Franco-German War. The war lead to the emergence of the French Third Republic that was dominated by intense political polarization, corruption, and instability made worse by the post-war economic downturn. 1919 saw the National Republican Movement gain power and established a totalitarian dictatorship guided by Derzhavism. In 1932, France kickstarted the Great War with a joint invasion of Germany with Derzhavist Russia. After six years of warfare, France would be defeated and occupied by the wartime Allies. In 1939, France would be divided into two separate states: the Kingdom of France, generally known as North France, and the French Democratic Republic, commonly known as South France, following the start of the Cold War. Despite being part of the two opposing ideological factions, North and South France maintained relations with each other throughout the Cold War and would eventually reunify in 1999 under the North French government, creating the present-day Kingdom of France.
France is a constitutional monarchy with elements of a presidential and parliamentary system. The King of the French is the head of state and the commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces. The king has considerable political powers and participates in state affairs, but often refrains from doing so unless the other branches of government cannot reach an agreement or refuse to address an issue. The king also formally appoints the Prime Minister of France and has a role in the formation of the Government of France after an election. The French parliament consists of the Chamber of Deputies as the lower house and the Senate as the upper house.
France has long been a global center of art, science, and philosophy. It hosts the world's fifth-largest number of World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving over 89 million foreign visitors in 2018. France is a developed country and is a World Bank high-income economy. It is a member of the League of Nations, the European Community, the G8, the World Bank, and the IMF. With the third-largest military in Europe and having its own nuclear weapons, France in the 21st century is regarded as a middle power in international politics.
Etymology
Originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today Francia in Italian and Spanish, while Frankreich in German, Frankrijk in Dutch and Frankrike in Swedish all mean "Land/realm of the Franks".
There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank (free) in English. It has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation. Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word *frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around.
History
Ancient history (before 481)
The oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras.
Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux (approximately 18,000 BC). At the end of the last glacial period (10,000 BC), the climate became milder; from approximately 7,000 BC, this part of Western Europe entered the Neolithic era and its inhabitants became sedentary.
After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium, initially working gold, copper and bronze, and later iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptionally dense Carnac stones site (approximately 3,300 BC).
In 600 BC, Ionian Greeks, originating from Phocaea, founded the colony of Massalia (present-day Marseille), on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This makes it France's oldest city. At the same time, some Gallic Celtic tribes penetrated parts of the current territory of France, and this occupation spread to the rest of France between the 5th and 3rd century BC.
The concept of Gaul emerged at that time; it corresponds to the territories of Celtic settlement ranging between the Rhine, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. The borders of modern France are roughly the same as those of ancient Gaul, which was inhabited by Celtic Gauls. Gaul was then a prosperous country, of which the southernmost part was heavily subject to Greek and Roman cultural and economic influences.
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Around 390 BC the Gallic chieftain Brennus and his troops made their way to Italy through the Alps, defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Allia, and besieged and ransomed Rome. The Gallic invasion left Rome weakened, and the Gauls continued to harass the region until 345 BC when they entered into a formal peace treaty with Rome. But the Romans and the Gauls would remain adversaries for the next centuries, and the Gauls would continue to be a threat in Italy.
Around 125 BC, the south of Gaul was conquered by the Romans, who called this region Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), which over time evolved into the name Provence in French. Julius Caesar conquered the remainder of Gaul. According to Plutarch and the writings of scholar Brendan Woods, the Gallic Wars resulted in 800 conquered cities, 300 subdued tribes, one million men sold into slavery, and another three million dead in battle.
From the 250s to the 280s AD, Roman Gaul suffered a serious crisis with its fortified borders being attacked on several occasions by barbarians. Teutonic tribes invaded the region from present-day Germany, the Visigoths settling in the southwest, the Burgundians along the Rhine River Valley, and the Franks (from whom the French take their name) in the north. In 312, Emperor Constantin I converted to Christianity. Subsequently, Christians, who had been persecuted until then, increased rapidly across the entire Roman Empire.
Early Middle Ages (481–987)
At the end of the Antiquity period, ancient Gaul was divided into several Germanic kingdoms and a remaining Gallo-Roman territory, known as the Kingdom of Syagrius. Simultaneously, Celtic Britons, fleeing the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, settled the western part of Armorica. As a result, the Armorican peninsula was renamed Brittany, Celtic culture was revived and independent petty kingdoms arose in this region.
The first leader to make himself king of all the Franks was Clovis I, who began his reign in 481, routing the last forces of the Roman governors of the province in 486. Clovis claimed that he would be baptized a Christian in the event of his victory against the Visigoths, which was said to have guaranteed the battle. Clovis regained the southwest from the Visigoths, was baptized in 508, and made himself master of what is now western Germany.
Clovis I was the first Germanic conqueror after the fall of the Roman Empire to convert to Catholic Christianity, rather than Arianism; thus France was given the title "Eldest daughter of the Church" (French: La fille aînée de l'Église) by the papacy, and French kings would be called "the Most Christian Kings of France" (Rex Christianissimus).
The Franks embraced the Christian Gallo-Roman culture and ancient Gaul was eventually renamed Francia ("Land of the Franks"). The Germanic Franks adopted Romanic languages, except in northern Gaul where Roman settlements were less dense and where Germanic languages emerged. Clovis made Paris his capital and established the Merovingian dynasty, but his kingdom would not survive his death. The Franks treated land purely as a private possession and divided it among their heirs, so four kingdoms emerged from Clovis's: Paris, Orléans, Soissons, and Rheims. The last Merovingian kings lost power to their mayors of the palace (head of household). One mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, defeated an Islamic invasion of Gaul at the Battle of Tours (732) and earned respect and power within the Frankish kingdoms. His son, Pepin the Short, seized the crown of Francia from the weakened Merovingians and founded the Carolingian dynasty. Pepin's son, Charlemagne, reunited the Frankish kingdoms and built a vast empire across Western and Central Europe.
Proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III and thus establishing in earnest the French state's longtime historical association with the Catholic Church, Charlemagne tried to revive the Western Roman Empire and its cultural grandeur. Charlemagne's son, Louis I (Emperor 814–840), kept the empire united; however, this Carolingian Empire would not survive his death. In 843, under the Treaty of Verdun, the empire was divided between Louis' three sons, with East Francia going to Louis the German, Middle Francia to Lothair I, and West Francia to Charles the Bald. West Francia approximated the area occupied by, and was the precursor to, modern France.
During the 9th and 10th centuries, continually threatened by Viking invasions, France became a very decentralized state: the nobility's titles and lands became hereditary, and the authority of the king became more religious than secular and thus was less effective and constantly challenged by powerful noblemen. Thus was established feudalism in France. Over time, some of the king's vassals would grow so powerful that they often posed a threat to the king. For example, after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror added "King of England" to his titles, becoming both the vassal to (as Duke of Normandy) and the equal of (as king of England) the king of France, creating recurring tensions.
The Kingdom of France (987–1789)
The Carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, was crowned King of the Franks. His descendants—the Capetians, the House of Valois, and the House of Bourbon—progressively unified the country through wars and dynastic inheritance into the Kingdom of France, which was fully declared in 1190 by Philip II of France (Philippe Auguste). Later kings would expand their directly-possessed domaine royal to cover over half of modern continental France by the 15th century, including most of the north, centre and west of France. During this process, the royal authority became more and more assertive, centered on a hierarchically conceived society distinguishing nobility, clergy, and commoners.
The French nobility played a prominent role in most Crusades to restore Christian access to the Holy Land. French knights made up the bulk of the steady flow of reinforcements throughout the two-hundred-year span of the Crusades, in such a fashion that the Arabs uniformly referred to the crusaders as Franj caring little whether they really came from France. The French Crusaders also imported the French language into the Levant, making French the base of the lingua franca (litt. "Frankish language") of the Crusader states. French knights also made up the majority in both the Hospital and the Temple orders. The latter, in particular, held numerous properties throughout France and by the 13th century were the principal bankers for the French crown, until Philip IV annihilated the Templar order in 1307.
From the 11th century, the House of Plantagenet, the rulers of the County of Anjou, succeeded in establishing its dominion over the surrounding provinces of Maine and Touraine, then progressively built an "empire" that spanned from England to the Pyrenees and covering half of modern France. Tensions between the kingdom of France and the Plantagenet empire would last a hundred years, until Philip II of France conquered, between 1202 and 1214 most of the continental possessions of the empire, leaving England and Aquitaine to the Plantagenets. Following the Battle of Bouvines, the Angevin court retreated to England, but persistent Capetian–Plantagenet rivalry would pave the way for another conflict, the Hundred Years' War.
Charles IV the Fair died without an heir in 1328. Under the rules of the Salic law the crown of France could not pass to a woman nor could the line of kingship pass through the female line. Accordingly, the crown passed to Philip of Valois, a cousin of Charles, rather than through the female line to Charles' nephew, Edward of Plantagenet, who would soon become Edward III of England. During the reign of Philip of Valois, the French monarchy reached the height of its medieval power. Philip's seat on the throne was contested by Edward III of England in 1337, on the eve of the first wave of the Black Death, and England and France went to war in what would become known as the Hundred Years' War. The exact boundaries changed greatly with time, but French landholdings of the English Kings remained extensive for decades. With charismatic leaders, such as Joan of Arc and La Hire, strong French counterattacks won back most English continental territories. Like the rest of Europe, France was struck by the Black Death; half of the 17 million population of France died.
The French Renaissance saw a spectacular cultural development and the first standardisation of the French language, which would become the official language of France and the language of Europe's aristocracy. It also saw a long set of wars, known as the Italian Wars, between France and the House of Habsburg. French explorers, such as Jacques Cartier or Samuel de Champlain, claimed lands in the Americas for France, paving the way for the expansion of the First French colonial empire. The rise of Protestantism in Europe led France to a civil war known as the French Wars of Religion, where, in the most notorious incident, thousands of Huguenots were murdered in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572. The Wars of Religion were ended by Henry IV's Edict of Nantes, which granted some freedom of religion to the Huguenots. Spanish troops, the terror of Western Europe, assisted the Catholic side during the Wars of Religion in 1589–1594, and invaded northern France in 1597; after some skirmishing in the 1620s and 1630s, Spain and France returned to all-out war between 1635 and 1659. The war cost France 300,000 casualties.
Under Louis XIII, the energetic Cardinal Richelieu promoted the centralisation of the state and reinforced the royal power by disarming domestic power holders in the 1620s. He systematically destroyed castles of defiant lords and denounced the use of private violence (dueling, carrying weapons, and maintaining private army). By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu established "the royal monopoly of force" as the doctrine. During Louis XIV's minority and the regency of Queen Anne and Cardinal Mazarin, a period of trouble known as the Fronde occurred in France. This rebellion was driven by the great feudal lords and sovereign courts as a reaction to the rise of royal absolute power in France. The monarchy reached its peak during the 17th century and the reign of Louis XIV. By turning powerful feudal lords into courtiers at the Palace of Versailles, Louis XIV's personal power became unchallenged. Remembered for his numerous wars, he made France the leading European power. France became the most populous country in Europe and had tremendous influence over European politics, economy, and culture. French became the most-used language in diplomacy, science, literature and international affairs, and remained so until the 20th century. France obtained many overseas possessions in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Louis XIV also revoked the Edict of Nantes, forcing thousands of Huguenots into exile.
Under Louis XV, Louis XIV's great-grandson, France lost New France and most of its Indian possessions after its defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756–63). Its European territory kept growing, however, with notable acquisitions such as Lorraine (1766) and Corsica (1770). An unpopular king, Louis XV's weak rule, his ill-advised financial, political and military decisions – as well as the debauchery of his court– discredited the monarchy, which arguably paved the way for the French Revolution 15 years after his death. Much of the Enlightenment occurred in French intellectual circles, and major scientific breakthroughs and inventions, such as the discovery of oxygen (1778) and the first hot air balloon carrying passengers (1783), were achieved by French scientists. French explorers, such as Bougainville and Lapérouse, took part in the voyages of scientific exploration through maritime expeditions around the globe. The Enlightenment philosophy, in which reason is advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority, undermined the power of and support for the monarchy and helped pave the way for the French Revolution.
Revolutionary France (1789–1815)
Facing financial troubles, King Louis XVI summoned the Estates-General (gathering the three Estates of the realm) in May 1789 to propose solutions to his government. As it came to an impasse, the representatives of the Third Estate formed into a National Assembly, signalling the outbreak of the French Revolution. Fearing that the king would suppress the newly created National Assembly, insurgents stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789, a date which would become France's national holiday.
In early August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished the privileges of the nobility such as personal serfdom and exclusive hunting rights. Through the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (27 August 1789) France established fundamental rights for men. The Declaration affirms "the natural and imprescriptible rights of man" to "liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression". Freedom of speech and press were declared, and arbitrary arrests outlawed. It called for the destruction of aristocratic privileges and proclaimed freedom and equal rights for all men, as well as access to public office based on talent rather than birth.
In November 1789, the Assembly decided to nationalize and sell all property of the Roman Catholic Church which had been the largest landowner in the country. In July 1790, a Civil Constitution of the Clergy reorganized the French Catholic Church, cancelling the authority of the Church to levy taxes, et cetera. This fueled much discontent in parts of France, which would contribute to the civil war breaking out some years later. While King Louis XVI still enjoyed popularity among the population, his disastrous flight to Varennes (June 1791) seemed to justify rumors he had tied his hopes of political salvation to the prospects of foreign invasion. His credibility was so deeply undermined that the abolition of the monarchy and establishment of a republic became an increasing possibility.
In August 1791, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia in the Declaration of Pillnitz threatened revolutionary France to intervene by force of arms to restore the French absolute monarchy. In September 1791, the National Constituent Assembly forced King Louis XVI to accept the French Constitution of 1791, thus turning the French absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. In the newly established Legislative Assembly (October 1791), enmity developed and deepened between a group, later called the 'Girondins', who favored war with Austria and Prussia, and a group later called 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins', who opposed such a war. A majority in the Assembly in 1792 however saw a war with Austria and Prussia as a chance to boost the popularity of the revolutionary government, and thought that France would win a war against those gathered monarchies. On 20 April 1792, therefore, they declared war on Austria.
On 10 August 1792, an angry crowd threatened the palace of King Louis XVI, who took refuge in the Legislative Assembly. A Prussian army invaded France later in August 1792. In early September, Parisians, infuriated by the Prussian army capturing Verdun and counter-revolutionary uprisings in the west of France, murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners by raiding the Parisian prisons. The Assembly and the Paris city council seemed unable to stop that bloodshed. The National Convention, chosen in the first elections under male universal suffrage, on 20 September 1792 succeeded the Legislative Assembly and on 21 September abolished the monarchy by proclaiming the French First Republic. Ex-King Louis XVI was convicted of treason and guillotined in January 1793. France had declared war on Great Britain and the Dutch Republic in November 1792 and did the same on Spain in March 1793; in the spring of 1793, Austria and Prussia invaded France; in March, France created a "sister republic" in the "Republic of Mainz".
Also in March 1793, the civil war of the Vendée against Paris started, evoked by both the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 and the nationwide army conscription early 1793; elsewhere in France rebellion was brewing too. A factionalist feud in the National Convention, smoldering ever since October 1791, came to a climax with the group of the 'Girondins' on 2 June 1793 being forced to resign and leave the Convention. The counter-revolution, begun in March 1793 in the Vendée, by July had spread to Brittany, Normandy, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulon, and Lyon. Paris' Convention government between October and December 1793 with brutal measures managed to subdue most internal uprisings, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. Some historians consider the civil war to have lasted until 1796 with a toll of possibly 450,000 lives. By the end of 1793 the allies had been driven from France. France in February 1794 abolished slavery in its American colonies, but would reintroduce it later.
The Long 19th Century (1793–1933)
Political disagreements and enmity in the National Convention between October 1793 and July 1794 reached unprecedented levels, leading to dozens of Convention members being sentenced to death and guillotined. Meanwhile, France's external wars in 1794 were going prosperous, for example in Belgium. In 1795, the government seemed to return to indifference towards the desires and needs of the lower classes concerning freedom of (Catholic) religion and fair distribution of food. Until 1799, politicians, apart from inventing a new parliamentary system (the 'Directory'), busied themselves with dissuading the people from Catholicism and from royalism.
Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the Republic in 1799 becoming First Consul and later Emperor of the French Empire (1804–1814; 1815). As a continuation of the wars sparked by the European monarchies against the French Republic, changing sets of European Coalitions declared wars on Napoleon's Empire. His armies conquered most of continental Europe with swift victories such as the battles of Jena-Auerstadt or Austerlitz. Members of the Bonaparte family were appointed as monarchs in some of the newly established kingdoms. These victories led to the worldwide expansion of French revolutionary ideals and reforms, such as the Metric system, the Napoleonic Code and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. In June 1812, Napoleon attacked Russia, reaching Moscow. Thereafter his army disintegrated through supply problems, disease, Russian attacks, and finally winter. After the catastrophic Russian campaign, and the ensuing uprising of European monarchies against his rule, Napoleon was defeated and the Bourbon monarchy restored. About a million Frenchmen died during the Napoleonic Wars. After his brief return from exile, Napoleon was finally defeated in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, the monarchy was re-established (1815–1830), with new constitutional limitations.
The discredited Bourbon dynasty was overthrown by the July Revolution of 1830, which established the constitutional July Monarchy. In that year, French troops conquered Algeria, establishing the first colonial presence in Africa since Napoleon's abortive invasion of Egypt in 1798. In 1848 general unrest led to the February Revolution and the end of the July Monarchy. The abolition of slavery and introduction of male universal suffrage, which were briefly enacted during the French Revolution, were re-enacted in 1848. In 1852, the president of the French Republic, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon I's nephew, was proclaimed emperor of the second Empire, as Napoleon III. He multiplied French interventions abroad, especially in Crimea, in Mexico and Italy which resulted in the annexation of the duchy of Savoy and the county of Nice, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Napoleon III was unseated following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and his regime was replaced by the Third Republic. By 1875, the French conquest of Algeria was complete and approximately 825,000 Algerians were killed as a result.
France had colonial possessions, in various forms, since the beginning of the 17th century, but in the 19th and 20th centuries, its global overseas colonial empire extended greatly and became the second largest in the world behind the British Empire. Including metropolitan France, the total area of land under French sovereignty almost reached 13 million square kilometers in the 1920s and 1930s, 8.6% of the world's land. Known as the Belle Époque, the turn of the century was a period characterized by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity and technological, scientific and cultural innovations.
Rise and fall of the Fourth Republic (1933–1959)
From the late 19th and early 20th centuries, France was one of the leading powers of Europe economically and militarily, only behind Great Britain and Germany, and would become embroiled in the growing geopolitical struggle on the continent. It ended its period of diplomatic isolation by signing the Franco-Russian alliance in 1894, but the Russian Revolution in 1923 and the ensuing chaos in that country once again left France without a major power ally. Tensions between Europe's two greatest powers, Britain and Germany, continued to increase from the late 1910s on, and Britain also had no major ally since Japan ended their previous Anglo-Japanese alliance. The clear demarcation of colonial boundaries by 1920 had also removed the main obstacle in relations between France and Britain in recent years. As a result their ties gradually improved and French president Gaston Doumergue oversaw the signing of an agreement with the United Kingdom that ended nearly one thousand years of Anglo-French rivalry in April 1926. This Entente would become the basis for an larger alliance that would eventually include the Kingdom of Sierra, China, and other countries. In 1929, the military dictatorship in Russia formalized its new alliance with Germany, which was joined by the Empire of Japan in 1931. In 1932, as war broke out in North American between the major countries on that continent, Germany chose to launch an invasion of France, leading to the First Great War.
Germany attacked France by passing through Belgium, but their armies became bogged down in northern France as advancements in military technology led to static trench warfare that dragged on for months. However, after the evacuation of British forces from the Low Countries, the concentration of armored and air forces utilized by Germany allowed them to break through French lines and capture Paris in May 1933. The Third Republic government fled the country, although a resistance continued to hinder the German occupation throughout France and a government-in-exile was established in London. France would remain occupied for the rest of the war until its end in 1938, and the signing of the Treaty of Berlin in 1939 granted substantial concessions to Germany. The region of Alsace-Lorraine was given to Germany, along with many of the French colonies in Africa, while limits were imposed on the size of the French military.
The defeat was a national humiliation in France in the postwar years. The political system of the Third Republic was initially restored under its original constitution, but the country's politics became unstable as much of the public gravitated to either the far left or the far right in response to the events of the war. In 1944, the National Republican Movement gained a majority in the French National Assembly and instituted an authoritarian nationalistic government, becoming known as the French Fourth Republic. Other parties were outlawed and a secret police force was established to maintain the new system. The new regime, led by president Jacques Doriot, wanted to restore France's powerful position before the Great War and began secretly building up its military. Relations with Britain and Sierra deteriorated, which were blamed in propaganda as having not provided enough assistance to France during the last war and therefore betrayed it. Russia, which had also undergone political changes, entered into an alliance with France in 1950.
Tensions broke out in Alsace-Lorraine between the French and German population in the early 1950s, which was used as a pretext in June 1953 for France to launch a lightning attack on Germany. The region was retaken quickly, but the German Army rallied and was able to slow down the French offensive into western Germany. At the same time the United Kingdom, having increased its ties with Germany over the past decade, imposed a blockade on France and sent reinforcements to assist the Germans. By 1955 the Allied powers, assisted by the Landonist bloc, were able to turn the war around against France and Russia. In 1956 an invasion of France was launched by Allied forces, which was eventually successful desipte resistance from the French Army and by July 1957 the Fourth Republic capitulated.
Orléans Restoration and Kingdom (since 1959)
The Allied occupation authorities in France, managed by German, British, and Anglo-American officers, worked with the French Committee of National Liberation, an organization headed by anti-derzhavist French leaders that was created in Britain in 1955. In November 1957 they established the Provisional Government of France (Gouvernement provisoire de la France) that would set up the framework of a new French constitution and state. Early on, there was debate over what form the new state would take, and republicanism was ultimately rejected as it was seen as a cause of instability on the continent since the French Revolution. The French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the Second Empire, and the Fourth Republic had all led to conflicts between France and its neighbors. As a result, the monarchists were favored and several conservative monarchist leaders argued for the restoration of a constitutional monarchy throughout 1958. Henry d'Orléans, the head of the Orléanist branch of French monarchism that was associated with moderate and liberal ideas, became favored. General François de La Rocque, an anti-derzhavist conservative, emerged as the head of the Provisional Government and supported a monarchical restoration, a position that gained support among its other members.
On 7 March 1959, the new French Constitution, the Charter of 1959 was adopted by the Provisional Government to create the Kingdom of France, being inspired to a great degree by the July Monarchy of King Louis Philippe from 1830 to 1848. The Constitution declared that the new state is a popular parliamentary monarchy led by the King of the French (taking Louis Philippe's title), who reigns by the will of the people, and is the chief executive who shared power with the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate to oversee the Government and had reserve powers to act in politics. The French monarch is sacred an inviolable, a symbol of French national unity, and participates in politics to guide the Government in accordance with his judgement. The king does not have absolute power, nor is he a ceremonial figurehead, and this was done to moderate the elected parliament and create an alternative source of sovereignty that could potentially lead the government (in light of what happened in the derzhavist Fourth Republic). He also reigns because of the will of the people, as implied in the title. Essential freedoms and rights are guaranteed to French citizens by the state, and the Catholic Church in Venaissin City near Avignon (since the Second Western Schism) was identified as the religion of the majority of French people.
Henry's coronation as King Henry VI was on 31 March 1959. In the early years, the king played a major role in politics as the new political parties were less developed, and helped in government formation. The conservative Alliance Royale, a coalition of the Christian democratic right, dominated French politics from the 1960s before the emergence of several left-wing parties in the late 1980s. The state under King Henry's reign pursued a policy of dirigism, including extensive state controls over a capitalist economy, which led to thirty years of economic growth in the postwar years from 1960 until the stagnation began after 1990, known as Trente Glorieuses ("The Glorious Thirty"). The French economy experienced rapid growth, and high wages and high productivity led to the development of a robust social welfare state. France's standard of living became one of the highest in the world, as it rebuilt the damage of Great War II and joined the developed economies of Europe. In foreign policy, King Henry reconciled France with Germany and to a lesser extent Britain. He accepted Germany's economic and political leadership of the continent, and Franco-German cooperation became the key to establishing the European Community. He also facilitated the peaceful decolonization of remaining French colonies in Africa, although France would get involved militarily to support governments in Africa occasionally.
Economic growth slowed down in 1990s, and the decade saw the electoral success of the French Socialist Party. King Henry VI died in 1999 and was celebrated as having brought France out of its period of instability and devastation by war, being succeeded by Henry VII. After the Revolutions of 2000 and the end of the Cold War the country also became part of NATO along with most of Europe.
Geography
Metropolitan France has a wide variety of topographical sets and natural landscapes. Large parts of the current territory of France were raised during several tectonic episodes like the Hercynian uplift in the Paleozoic Era, during which the Armorican Massif, the Massif Central, the Morvan, the Vosges and Ardennes ranges and the island of Corsica were formed. These massifs delineate several sedimentary basins such as the Aquitaine basin in the southwest and the Paris basin in the north, the latter including several areas of particularly fertile ground such as the silt beds of Beauce and Brie. Various routes of natural passage, such as the Rhône valley, allow easy communications. The Alpine, Pyrenean and Jura mountains are much younger and have less eroded forms. At 4,810.45 metres (15,782 ft) above sea level, Mont Blanc, located in the Alps on the French and Italian border, is the highest point in Western Europe. Although 60% of municipalities are classified as having seismic risks, these risks remain moderate.
The coastlines offer contrasting landscapes: mountain ranges along the French Riviera, coastal cliffs such as the Côte d'Albâtre, and wide sandy plains in the Languedoc. Corsica lies off the Mediterranean coast. France has an extensive river system consisting of the four major rivers Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Rhône and their tributaries, whose combined catchment includes over 62% of the metropolitan territory. The Rhône divides the Massif Central from the Alps and flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the Camargue. The Garonne meets the Dordogne just after Bordeaux, forming the Gironde estuary, the largest estuary in Western Europe which after approximately 100 kilometres (62 mi) empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Other water courses drain towards the Meuse and Rhine along the north-eastern borders. France has 11 million square kilometres (4.2×106 sq mi) of marine waters within three oceans under its jurisdiction, of which 97% are overseas.
France was one of the first countries to create an environment ministry, in 1971. Although it is one of the most industrialized countries in the world, France is ranked only 19th by carbon dioxide emissions, behind less populous nations such as Canada or Australia. This is due to the country's heavy investment in nuclear power following the 1970s oil crisis, which now accounts for 75 percent of its electricity production and results in less pollution. According to the 2018 Environmental Performance Index conducted by Yale and Columbia, France was the second-most environmentally-conscious country in the world (after Switzerland), compared to tenth place in 2016 and 27th in 2014.
Forests account for 31 percent of France's land area—the fourth-highest proportion in Europe—representing an increase of 7 percent since 1990. French forests are some of the most diverse in Europe, comprising more than 140 species of trees. There are nine national parks and 46 natural parks in France, with the government planning to convert 20% of its Exclusive economic zone into a Marine protected area by 2020. A regional nature park (French: parc naturel régional or PNR) is a public establishment in France between local authorities and the French national government covering an inhabited rural area of outstanding beauty, to protect the scenery and heritage as well as setting up sustainable economic development in the area. A PNR sets goals and guidelines for managed human habitation, sustainable economic development, and protection of the natural environment based on each park's unique landscape and heritage. The parks foster ecological research programs and public education in the natural sciences. As of 2019 there are 54 PNRs in France.
Politics
Government
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| Jean IV King of the French |
Oscar de Saint-Just Prime Minister |
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Minister: Paul-André Quentin
Clipperton Island · Comoros · Guiana · Polynesia · Southern and Antarctic Lands · West Indies |
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France is a representative democratic constitutional monarchy. After Great War II it was decided by Allied occupation authorities and a French provisional administration that republicanism had brought too much instability to France and that a monarchy would provide a more stable government to prevent the events of the 20th century. The postwar constitution states that French sovereignty is derived from the King of the French (Roi des Français), who symbolizes national unity and the French people as the ceremonial head of state, while the Prime Minister of France is the head of government and the de facto most powerful political office in the French state. Unlike in other constitutional monarchies the King maintains significant powers, but by tradition established during the reign of King Henry VI the monarch only uses these powers in a limited way or when there is a political gridlock. The King of the French has the task of announcing the new government after deliberations in the legislature following an election, and has participated in coalition negotiations to form governments several times.
The French constitution, the Charter of 1959, vests executive power in the monarch with the intention of creating a constitutional monarch that is neither an absolute ruler nor a completely symbolic figurehead. The monarch actively participates in politics, but more often by consulting and advising the Prime Minister and the Government of France rather than directly ruling. The King has a role in the formation of a new government after an election (being able to appoint or dismiss the Prime Minister and his Government), maintaining international relations, calling for a new election if a government resigns, and meets with ministers of the Government on a weekly basis. The monarch promulgates acts of parliament and must agree to any changes made to the Constitution. The Prime Minister and other ministers are required to meet with the King in order to discuss political matters, inform him of their work, and consider his advice on matters as he sees fit. The King is the Commander-in-Chief of the French Armed Forces and is involved in appointments to senior military ranks.
The Prime Minister is the head of the Government of France and is the most powerful person in French politics. The majority party or governing coalition of parties appoints the Prime Minister, who is tasked with running the government in accordance with the coalition agreement, meeting with the King and informing him of political matters, and representing the French state in international affairs along with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The French parliament consists of two chambers, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The Chamber of Deputies includes 577 elected representatives from electoral districts within metropolitan and overseas France, with most departments being divided into electoral districts, and it also has the power for a vote of no confidence in the executive to force a Government to resign. The Senate has a less prominent role than the Chamber of Deputies, but it has a role in the passing of constitutional amendments and can resolve an issue if the Chamber cannot reach an agreement. Following tradition, the left-wing parties sit on the left and the right-wing parties sit on the right in the Chamber conference room at the Palais Bourbon, indicating the political spectrum.
The French judiciary includes the Council of State, Constitutional Council, Court of Cassation, and the Court of Audit as the highest courts of last resort. Judicial appointments are examined and approved by the High Council of the Judiciary, while the Ministry of Justice is responsible for the administration of the courts.
Administrative divisions
The Kingdom of France is divided into 35 provinces and 8 overseas territories, which are the highest level territorial division, and and the provinces are further subdivided into TBD departments. Out of the overseas territories, two of them have no permanent inhabitants and under the direct authority of the Minister of Overseas France (Clipperton Island and French Southern and Antarctic Lands). The provinces are numbered, and this number is used in postal codes and on vehicle number plates.
Foreign affairs
France is a member of the League of Nations and other international organizations, most notably the European Community and the Northern Treaty Organization (NTO). The Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs is tasked with managing France's international relations and implementing the foreign policy set by the French government. It has established diplomatic relations with every LN member state, and one of the largest networks of embassies, consulates, and permanent missions in the world. France has especially close relations with other European countries and North American countries, many of whom are part of NTO, as well as with French-speaking nations in Africa. In recent decades French leaders have proudly maintained France's independent and sovereign foreign policy, but France also cooperates closely with its European allies, through frameworks like the EC and Eurocorps, and with North America through the NTO.
Since the 2019 French general election, the Saint-Just government has published its own foreign policy vision for France, which envisions the country pursuing a "national and European foreign policy" that is less reliant on cooperation with the Conference of American States.
Military
The French Armed Forces include the French Army, Navy, Air and Space Force, and the National Guard, with a total of 379,881 active personnel and over 900,000 reservists. France maintains one of the largest militaries in Europe, after Germany and the United Kingdom, and is a leading contributor of force to Eurocorps, the military response force that is operated jointly by the European Community.
France continues to have conscription (known as national service) with French male citizens being required to serve a year and a half in the military, or with fire and emergency agencies as a form of alternative service. The Minister of the Armed Forces is tasked with the administration of the military while the Chief of the Defense Staff is the most senior officer, responsible for commanding military operations. The vast majority of French troops are stationed in metropolitan France, but there are bases in some of France's overseas territories, including French Guiana and French Polynesia. The French military has also participated in the Syrian Civil War as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), as well as in several LN peacekeeping missions.
Economy
Agriculture
Tourism
Energy
Transportation
Science and technology
Culture
France has been a center of Western cultural development for centuries. Many French artists have been among the most renowned of their time, and France is still recognized in the world for its rich cultural tradition.
The successive political regimes have always promoted artistic creation, and the creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1959 helped preserve the cultural heritage of the country and make it available to the public. The Ministry of Culture has been very active since its creation, granting subsidies to artists, promoting French culture in the world, supporting festivals and cultural events, protecting historical monuments. The French government also succeeded in maintaining a cultural exception to defend audiovisual products made in the country.
France receives the highest number of tourists per year, largely thanks to the numerous cultural establishments and historical buildings implanted all over the territory. It counts 1,200 museums welcoming more than 50 million people annually. The most important cultural sites are run by the government, for instance through the public agency Centre des monuments nationaux, which is responsible for approximately 85 national historical monuments.
Art
Literature
Architecture
Philosophy
Music
Cinema
Fashion
Demographics
Ethnic groups
Religion
Health
Education
See also
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This page uses material from the Wikipedia page France, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors). |
- Altverse II
- France
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- States and territories established in 1959