Source: MAPS IN MINUTES™ © RH Publications (1997)

A country in western Europe, which is bounded on the north by the English Channel (la Manche), on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, and on the east by Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Italy.

Physical

France is Europe’s second largest country after Russia. In the north-west the Brittany peninsula with its low granite hills, Normandy with its fertile uplands, the broad Loire valley, and the Seine Basin, all enjoy a temperate climate. In the north-east is agricultural land on chalk or limestone well drained by rivers. There are also deposits of coal. Southward the ground rises to the Massif Central. To the west lie the Bordeaux lowlands and the Gironde Estuary, to the south the plains of Languedoc, and to the east the Rhône valley. Extending from south to north along France’s eastern border are the Jura Mountains, the Vosges, and the western Alps, falling away on their northern slopes to Alsace-Lorraine.

French overseas departments and dependencies include French Guiana, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, New Caledonia, and Réunion.

Economy

France has a diverse economy and the fifth-largest GDP in the world. Industries include machinery, chemicals, vehicles, metallurgy, aircraft, and electronics, with machinery, transportation equipment, aircraft, plastics, and chemicals being the principal exports. Agriculture produces cereals, sugar beet, and potatoes; wine production remains important, although France’s traditional dominance of this market has declined in recent years. Tourism is also important, with France being the most visited country in the world.

History

Prehistoric remains, cave paintings, and megalithic monuments attest to a long history of human settlement. The area known as Gaul to the Romans was conquered by the armies of Julius Caesar, and its native inhabitants thoroughly Romanized by centuries of occupation. After 330 it was invaded by Goths, Franks, and Burgundians, and then ruled by Clovis (465–511), a Merovingian king. It became part of the empire of Charlemagne and, after repeated assaults from Vikings and Saracens, a Capetian dynasty emerged in 987. Fierce competition with the rival rulers of Brittany, Burgundy, and, after 1066, with the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England ensued, culminating in the Hundred Years War. France did not emerge as a permanently unified state until the ejection of the English and the Burgundians at the end of the Middle Ages. Under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties France rose to contest European hegemony in the 16th to 18th centuries, notably in the wars of Louis XIV. In the 18th century, weak government, expensive wars, and colonial rivalry with England wrecked the monarchy’s finances, and mounting popular anger culminated in the French Revolution (1789).

The First Republic (1792–1804), established after the fall of the Bourbon monarchy, lasted until the First Empire (1804–14) under Napoleon I, when France became the dominant political power in Europe. After his fall the monarchy was restored (1814) and, with a brief interval in 1815, lasted until the abdication of Louis Philippe (1848). During this period, having lost influence in India and Canada, France began to create an overseas empire in North Africa. The Second Republic, established in 1848, lasted until 1852, when Napoleon III proclaimed the Second Empire (1852–70). It saw further expansion of the French empire, particularly in south-east Asia and in the Pacific. The Third Republic (1870–1940) was established after the capture and exile of Napoleon III and France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870). France took part in the Berlin Conference (1884) on Africa, and by 1914 ruled over Morocco, Tunis, Madagascar, and the huge areas of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. The Third Republic fell in 1940, following defeat by Nazi Germany. Northern France was occupied by the Germans, unoccupied France to the south was under the Vichy government, and a Free French government was proclaimed in London. The Fourth Republic (1946–58) was replaced by the Fifth Republic (1958– ), under the strong presidency of Charles de Gaulle (1959–69). Protracted and costly wars led to the decolonization of Indo-China (1954) and of Algeria (1962), while, from 1956, the rest of the African empire gained increasing independence. After 1945 France regained its position as a major European power and was a founder member of the European Economic Community (1958). As a nuclear power it refused to sign the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (1963) and withdrew formally from the military division of NATO in 1966. President de Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou, supported the extension of the European Community (now the European Union), and President Mitterrand’s referendum in 1992 narrowly endorsed the Maastricht Treaty. Mitterrand did not contest the presidential elections in 1995 and the right-wing moderate Jacques Chirac was elected. In 1997 a leftist government was elected, but the right returned to power in 2002. In the same year Chirac was re-elected and France adopted the euro as its currency. In 2005 Paris and other French cities saw a wave of riots in their poorer suburbs with large Muslim populations. Chirac stood down as President in 2007 and the right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy was elected. Unpopular economic policies, in particular austerity measures to reduce the budget deficit, contributed to his defeat in 2012 by the socialist François Hollande. However, Hollande’s pro-growth policies did not deliver the promised results and his popularity quickly declined.

Since January 2015, France has suffered a number of major terrorist attacks by supporters of the so-called Islamic State. Incidents included the 7 January 2015 attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 17 people, the 13 November 2015 mass shootings and suicide bombs in Paris that killed 130 people, and the 14 July 2016 attack in Nice that killed 86. These attacks have fuelled anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant sentiments in France, and have boosted the political fortunes of the extreme National Front at the expense of the traditional parties of the right and the left. The 2017 presidential elections resulted in victory for Emmanuel Macron, who had founded a new party, La République en Marche (LREM), in 2016 and had never previously stood for office.