France

France . Member country of the European Union ; It’s capital is Paris . It extends over a total area of ​​550,000 km² and has a population of 64.3 million inhabitants. Its form of government is organized as a semi-presidential Republic with the official name of the French Republic and the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality and Fraternity), born from the French Revolution .

France is a highly developed country, with a high international diffusion of its culture and influential on the geopolitical level. It is the fifth world economy in terms of GDP , a member of the G8 , the Euro Zone and the Schengen Area , and is home to many of the most important multinationals, leaders in various segments of industry and the primary sector, in addition to being the the world’s first tourist destination, with more than 75 million foreign visitors a year.

France, home of the first Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , is a founding member of the UN and one of the five permanent members of its Security Council . It houses the headquarters of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament , both in Strasbourg , and those of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and UNESCO , in Paris. It is also one of the eight recognized nuclear powers and a member of NATO .

A former colonial power – a condition that has benefited it considerably economically, to the detriment of its former colonies such as Haiti and Algeria – its culture is spread throughout countries around the world, grouped in the organization of Francophonie . The French language is one of the most widely spread languages, traditionally used as a language of diplomacy, which together with 77 other regional languages, makes up the linguistic heritage of France, a member of the Latin Union .

Summary

[ disguise ]

• 1 History
  • 1 Prehistory
  • 2 Pre-Roman Gaul and Empire
  • 3 The Franks
  • 4 French Revolution and First Empire
  • 5 After Napoleon
  • 6 World War II
  • 7 Second half of the 20th century
  • 8 21st century
    • 8.1 Attack on Libya
    • 8.2 Hollande Government
  • 2 French colonialism
    • 1 The first French colonial empire
    • 2 Colonization of Africa
      • 2.1 Terrorist attacks
        • 2.1.1 Charlie Hebdo (2015)
        • 2.1.2 Paris (2015)
        • 2.1.3 Nice (2016)
        • 2.1.4 Saint Etienne du Rouvray Church (2016)
      • 3 Geography
      • 4 Economy
        • 1 Tourism
      • 5 Demographics
      • 6 Culture
        • 1 Science, technology and education
        • 2 Literature
        • 3 Fine arts
        • 4 Architecture
        • 5 Music
        • 6 Language
      • 7 References
      • 8 Sources

History

Prehistory

Lascaux cave paintings

Important Lower Paleolithic remains exist in the Somme River and the traditional Pyrenees ( Neanderthal Man ), as well as at La Chapelle–aux–Saints , Le Moustier and La Ferrasie . From the Upper Paleolithic there are abundant vestiges of the Cro-Magnon , Grimaldi and Chancelade men , dated to about 25,000 years ago, which are located in the Dordogne valley . Among the most famous cave paintings in the world are those of Lascaux and Font de Gaume , in the French Pyrenees .

Pre-Roman Gaul and Empire

The borders of modern France 1810 are approximately the same as those of Ancient Gaul , which was inhabited by the Celts (Gauls). Gaul was conquered by Rome and its leader Julius Caesar (who defeated the Gallic chief Vercingetorix ) in the 1st century BC, and the Gauls adopted the Roman language (Latin, from which French evolved) and its culture. Christianity took root in the 2nd and 3rd centuries , and was firmly established during the 5th and 6th centuries , at which time Jerome of Strydon ( Saint Jerome ) wrote that Gaul was the only region free of heresy .

The Franks

In the year 451 , Attila , the leader of the Huns, invaded Gaul with the help of the Frankish and Visigothic peoples , and managed to establish themselves in the main part of Gaul. In the 4th century , the eastern border of Gaul along the Rhine was crossed by Germanic peoples , mainly the Franks , from which the ancient name Francie is derived . Modern France owes its name to the feudal domain of the Capetian Kings of France, around Paris.

The Franks were the first tribe among the Germanic conquerors of Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire, to convert to Christianity following the baptism of King Clovis in 498 ; Thus, France obtained the title of Eldest Daughter of the church, and the country would adopt this as justification for calling itself the most Christian kingdom of France.

The Merovingian Dynasty ruled present-day France and part of Germany between the 5th and 8th centuries . The first king was Clovis I who conquered a large part of Gallic territory between 486 and 507 ; and he converted to Orthodox Christianity in opposition to the Arian heresy , being baptized in Reims around 496 , obtaining the support of the Gallo-Roman elites and establishing an important historical link between the French crown and the Catholic Church .

Existence as a separate entity began with the Treaty of Verdun , 843 , with the division of Charlemagne ‘s Carolingian Empire into East France , Central France and West France . Western France roughly comprised the area occupied by modern France , of which it was the precursor.

The Carolingians ruled France until 987 , when Hugh Capet was crowned king of France. His descendants, the Capetian Dynasty , the House of Valois , and the House of Bourbon , progressively unified the country with a series of wars and dynastic inheritances. The monarchy reached its peak during the 17th century and the reign of Louis XIV . At this time France had the largest population in Europe and its politics, economy and culture influenced the entire continent. France also gained many overseas possessions in the Americas , Africa and Asia .

French Revolution and First Empire

French Revolution

For more information see also : French Revolution
French historiography has consecrated the revolutionary event of 1789 as the hinge that marks the turn of the historical process that made the world – not just France – enter a new stage that it itself baptized with the name de contemporaine. The Storming of the Bastille marks the beginning of the French Revolution, a social and political process that developed between 1789 and 1799 , whose main consequences were the abolition of the absolute monarchy and the proclamation of the Republic, eliminating the economic and

Napoleon Bonaparte

social conditions of the old regime in France.

After a series of short-lived government schemes, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the republic in 1799, becoming first consul and emperor of what is now known as the First French Empire ( 1804 – 1814 ). Apart from his military career, Napoleon is also known for the establishment of the Napoleonic Code , a civil code that would remain in force until the second half of the 20th century and would serve as a model for other countries, such as Spain .

He is also known for his talent for having surrounded himself with brilliant experts with a high sense of the State, who knew how to create the legal and administrative framework of contemporary France, but nevertheless he was a tyrannical dictator, whose wars caused the death of millions of people. .

After leading the armies of the Revolution to victory in a war to defend the national territory threatened by the armies of the European monarchies, his army, the Grande Armée, conquered most of continental Europe, although it was defeated in Russia and at Haiti ; In the latter place he attempted to reestablish the slavery that the Revolution had repealed. In the invaded territories, Napoleon appointed members of the Bonaparte family and some of his closest generals as monarchs of the territories. Today, the Swedish royal family is descended from the Bonapartist general Bernadotte .

After Napoleon

After Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo and as a consequence of the Congress of Vienna , the French monarchy was reinstated, but with new constitutional limitations.

Although the political organization of France oscillated between republic, empire and monarchy for 75 years after the First Republic fell following Napoleon Bonaparte ‘s coup d’état , the truth is that the revolution marked the definitive end of absolutism and gave birth to a new regime where the bourgeoisie hegemonized the struggle of the popular masses and became the dominant political force in the country.

In 1830 , the July constitutional monarchy was reestablished, which lasted until 1848 . The short-lived Second French Republic ended in 1852 when Napoleon III proclaimed the Second French Empire.

During this new empire there was a considerable development of means of transportation, as well as an economic boom. The banking network is increased and a free trade treaty is signed with England in 1860 that promotes international trade. However, foreign policy had a series of important failures such as the second French intervention in Mexico and above all the resounding defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 in which Napoleon III was completely defeated and his regime was replaced by the French Third Republic .

Second World War

Although ultimately victorious in World War I , France suffered enormous human and material losses that weakened it for decades to come. The 1930s were marked by a variety of social reforms introduced by the Popular Front government. France and the United Kingdom declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3 , 1939 under a treaty signed with Poland , whose territory had been invaded by the Wehrmacht , the German army. At the beginning of World War II , France carried out a series of unsuccessful rescue campaigns in Norway , Belgium and the Netherlands between 1939 and 1940 . After the lightning attack of Nazi Germany between May and June 1940 and its ally, Fascist Italy , the political leadership of France signed the Armistice of June 22 , 1940. The Germans established an authoritarian regime under the tutelage of Marshal Philippe Pétain known as Vichy France , which pursued a policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany . Opponents of the regime formed the Free French state outside France, supported the French resistance and added more and more colonial territories to their cause. Mainland France was liberated with the common effort of the allies, Free France, and the French resistance in 1944 .

Second half of the 20th century

General Charles de Gaulle

The debate over maintaining control of Algeria , then home to a million European settlers, weakened the country and led to near civil war. In 1958 , the weak and unstable Fourth Republic led to the French Fifth Republic , which supported a strong executive power. Charles de Gaulle kept the country united as he took the road to the end of the war.

The Algerian War and the civil war that broke out in Algeria between those in favor of leaving the colony and the settlers who clung to maintaining the French presence, concluded in 1962 , with the Evian declaration that included the holding of a self-determination referendum. The war of liberation of the Algerian people was fought by the French army with methods that included torture and mass murder.

General De Gaulle also had to face another tough test in May 1968 with the student insurrection that paralyzed the country with the support of the unions. De Gaulle emerged triumphant in the early elections called in June of the same year.

In 1981 , François Mitterrand was elected president of France, and he governed from 1981 to 1995 . Jacques Chirac would then be elected president of France, ruling from 1995 to 2007 . In that year Nicolas Sarkozy is elected president. France supported the United States in the first Gulf War in 1990 , as well as in the military intervention in Afghanistan .

XXI century

Dominique de Villepin , at the head of French diplomacy, led the bloc of countries that opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq , threatening to use his veto power in the Security Council, leading to a cooling of relations . with the George W. Bush administration .

The candidate of the conservative right, Nicolas Sarkozy , won the electoral elections of May 6 , 2007 to occupy the Presidency of the French Republic, succeeding Jacques Chirac and reconciling France with the United States by increasing its presence in NATO .

France had withdrawn from NATO’s integrated military command in 1966 by decision of then-president Charles de Gaulle , who believed that in this way he ensured the country’s independence from the United States. However, France remained a political member of NATO, the Atlantic alliance it helped found in 1949 , and participated in many of its military operations, including the one in Afghanistan.

Attack on Libya

According to revelations by journalist Franco Bechis, on October 21 , 2010 , the French secret services prepared a revolt in the Libyan city of Benghazi, which began the civil war in that country. Nuri Mesmari , Gaddafi ‘s chief of protocol offered his services to the foreign power and revealed many secrets of the Libyan defense.

At the end of February 2011 the political situation in Libya deteriorated rapidly. Numerous demonstrations against Colonel Gaddafi took place throughout the country, encouraged by Western governments.

In a decision that provoked angry protest from Libyan government authorities ^[1] and some criticism from its own NATO allies, France recognized the National Transitional Council on March 10 as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people ^[2] . The next day the insurgents were forced to abandon Ras Lanuf under attacks by artillery and forces loyal to Colonel Gadaffi ^[3] .

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy greets Mustafa Abdel Jalil , head of the CNT, at the Elysée Palace in Paris

On March 19 , 2011 , the United States , France and Great Britain began a military offensive against Libya. At the end of June 2011, France decided to send weapons to the Libyan opposition, an action that according to NATO had been previously informed and which, according to that organization, “strictly” complies with the UN mandate. ^[4]

On October 20 , 2011, Gadaffi, who was leaving Sirte after an offensive by NTC forces supported by NATO, was wounded by an Alliance bombing of the car caravan in which he was traveling ^[5] . Captured by NTC rebels, he was murdered and his body taken to Misrata, where it was publicly displayed in a refrigerated chamber, along with that of his son Mutassim Gaddafi and former head of the armed forces Abu Bakr Younu Jabr ; to finally be buried in an unmarked grave in the desert.

The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy , then declared that:

Gaddafi’s death is a new page for the people of Libya; It is the beginning of a process towards democracy. ^[6]

Hollande’s government

On May 6 , 2012 , the socialist candidate François Hollande defeated the then French president Nicolás Sarkozy during the second round of that year’s presidential elections . A week later, on Tuesday, May 15 , 2012 , Hollande was sworn in as the second president of socialist origin after François Mitterand. In his first speech as president, the socialist declared:

I send a message of confidence to the French. We are a great country that always knew how to overcome challenges (…) I measure the weight of the problems that we must face: massive debt, weak growth, high unemployment, degraded competitiveness, a Europe that suffers to get out of the crisis

^[7]

French colonialism

France had colonial possessions, in various forms, from the beginning of the 17th century until the 1960s . At its peak, between 1919 and 1939 , the second French colonial empire stretched over 12,347,000 km² of land. Including metropolis France, the total land area under French sovereignty reached 12,898,000 km² in the 1920s and 1930s, which is 8.6% of the world’s land area.

The remnants of this great empire are hundreds of islands and archipelagos located in the North Atlantic , the Caribbean , the Indian Ocean , the South Pacific , the North Pacific and the Antarctic Ocean , as well as a continental territory in South America , totaling together 123,150 km², which represents only 1% of the area of ​​the French colonial empire before 1939, with 2,543,000 people living there in 2006.

The first French colonial empire

In 1534 Francis I sent Jacques Cartier to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence River . In August 1541 , this group established a fortified colony, named Charlesbourg-Royal , on the site of the current Cap-Rouge district in Quebec City ; However, later, it was decided to abandon the place due to diseases, the execrable climate and the presence of natives.

Thus, the first voyages of Giovanni da Verrazano and Jacques Cartier in the 16th century , together with the frequent voyages of French fishermen to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland throughout that century, were the precursors to the history of French colonial expansion.

But Spain ‘s jealous protection of its empire in America, and the ruptures caused in France itself by the Wars of Religion in the closing years of the 16th century , prevented any consistent effort by France to establish colonies.

French attempts to found colonies in Brazil , in 1555 in Rio de Janeiro (the proclaimed France Antarctique) and in 1612 in São Luís (the proclaimed France Équinoxiale), and in Florida were not successful, due to Portuguese and Spanish surveillance and prevention .

The history of France’s colonial empire actually began on July 27 , 1605 , with the founding of Port Royal , in the colony of Acadia in North America, in what is now Nova Scotia , Canada . Already a few years earlier, Samuel de Champlain had made his first trip to Canada on a fur trading mission. Although he did not have an official mandate regarding this trip, he drafts a letter and writes, upon his return to France, an account entitled Des sauvages (account of his stay in an Innu tribe near of Tadoussac). Then, in 1608 , Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec , which would become the capital of the enormous, but sparsely populated, fur trading colony of New France (also called Canada ).

Although through alliances with various Native American tribes, the French were able to exert some control over much of the North American continent, areas of French population were limited to the valley of the St. Lawrence River . Before the establishment of the Sovereign Council of 1663 , the territories of New France developed as merchant colonies.

It is only after the arrival of Intendant Jean Talon , that France gave its American colonies the appropriate means to develop the colonies’ population comparable to that of the British. But there was relatively little interest in colonialism in France, which concentrated more on dominance within Europe, and for most of New France’s history, even Canada was far behind the British North American colonies in population and in economic development. Acadia itself was ceded to the British in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 .

In 1699 , French territorial claims in North America expanded further, with the founding of Louisiana , in the Mississippi River basin . The extensive trade network across the region connected Canada via the Great Lakes , and was maintained through a vast system of fortifications, many centered in the Illinois countryside and present-day Arkansas .

As the French empire in North America expanded, the French also began to build a smaller but more profitable empire in the West Indies . Settlement along the South American coast in what is now French Guiana began in 1624 and a colony was founded on Saint Kitts in 1627 (the island had to be shared with the English until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 , when it was entirely assigned).

The Compagnie des Îles de l’Amérique founded colonies in Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1635 , and a colony was later founded in Saint Lucia in 1650 . The food-producing plantations of these colonies were built and sustained through slavery, with the supply of slaves dependent on the African slave trade. The colonialists always fiercely confronted the natives who still lived in their colonies, leading to total extermination as occurred in several of the Caribbean islands .

The most important Caribbean colonial possession did not arrive until 1664 , when the colony of Saint-Domingue (today Haiti ) was founded in the western half of the Hispanic island of Hispaniola. France took advantage of Spain’s disinterest in the western part of the island and, through its buccaneers (from Turtle Island), gradually took over that western sector of Hispaniola until finally Spain ceded it to France in 1697 .

The French converted that western sector, which they called Saint Domingue, into one of the richest colonies in France thanks to its plantations worked by black slaves brought from Africa.

French colonial Haiti, in the last third of the 18th century and under a harsh slave system, had a population of barely 20,000 white people, 30,000 free mulattoes and almost 800,000 slaves who worked the sugar, tobacco, indigo, cotton, etc. plantations.

The wealth of Saint Domingue led the French to call it The Pearl of the Antilles since it produced 60% of the coffee and 40% of the sugar consumed throughout Europe .

French colonial expansion was not limited to the New World, however. In Senegal in West Africa, the French began establishing factories along the coast in 1624 .

In 1664 , the French East India Company was established to compete for trade in the east. Colonies were established in India at Chandernagore , in Bengal ( 1673 ) and Pondicherry in the southeast ( 1674 ), and later at Yanaon ( 1723 ), Mahe ( 1725 ), and Karikal ( 1739 ). Colonies were also founded in the Indian Ocean , on the Île Bourbon (Réunion, 1664), Île de France (Mauritius, 1718), and the Seychelles (1756).

Colonization of Africa

See also : Algeria as a French colony
The mass rebellion of young Arabs and Africans in late October and November 2005 represents a historic awakening. For the first time, immigrant communities spread across France’s urban centers have risen up in the face of decades of racism, poverty and neglect.

The uprising was sparked when two North African teenagers, Ziad Benna and Bouna Traore, were electrocuted to death on October 27 after being chased by police. Their deaths sparked an outpouring of mass fury. Tens of thousands of young people took to the streets across France, burning cars and clashing with police. What began as a sporadic protest in Chichy-sous-Bois, a working-class suburb of Paris , soon transformed into a nationwide rebellion. In a few weeks, young Arabs and Muslims took to the streets in more than 300 cities and centers.

The situation faced by African and Arab immigrants in France today is a direct result of French colonialism in North Africa, especially in Algeria , which was the main French colony on the continent.

In early 1945 , after World War II , the French government responded to the labor shortage by encouraging Algerian workers to immigrate to France. Successive French governments continued this policy by extending formal democratic rights to Algerian immigrants, as they were entirely French, and offering some social benefits. But Algerian immigration coincided with the Algerian liberation struggle that began in 1954. While the French army bogged down in a brutal war of colonial pacification, Algerian neighborhoods became bastions of support for liberation struggles within France. Efforts to pacify those internal colonies with economic concessions failed.

Algeria achieved independence in 1962 , but not before millions of Algerians were killed by the brutal French counterinsurgency campaign. The scars of French brutality are still felt today.

France’s interest in Algeria dates back to the Napoleonic era. French colonial policy had suffered a turnaround in the last decades of the Bourbon reign as a result of the aggrandizement of the British Crown , since in the Seven Years’ War it achieved an almost total victory. Napoleon had also thought about the colonies at the time of the European conquests, an example of this was the adventure in Egypt . Napoleon chose Algeria to punish the king for his mistaken move between France and England . The plans for the conquest were only carried out in 1830 by Charles X. Algeria represented an ideal and strategic place for an empire like France, determined to found colonies in northern Africa. After the restoration, France resumed a program of colonial expansion, with a clearly imperialist idea.

This is the list of African countries colonized by France:

• Algeria
• Tunisia
• Morocco
• French West Africa
  • Mauritania
  • Senegal
  • French Sudan (now Mali )
  • Guinea
  • Cameroon
  • Ivory Coast
  • Niger
  • Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso )
  • Dahomey (now Benin )
• French Equatorial Africa
  • Gabon
  • Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo )
  • Ubangi–Chari (now the Central African Republic )
  • Chad
  • French Somaliland (now Djibouti )
  • Madagascar
  • Comoros

Terrorist attacks

Charlie Hebdo (2015)

Main article: Terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo .

 

On January 7, 2015 , the facilities of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo were the target of an armed attack by terrorists, presumably of Islamic denomination, motivated by the publication by this medium of offensive images of the Prophet Muhammad . In the shooting that occurred in the Twelve people were killed at the magazine’s facilities, including its director Stéphane Charbonnier and several of the main cartoonists ^[8] , as well as two police officers, one of them shot at close range in the head when he was wounded by a bullet on the sidewalk ^[9] .

A large security device was deployed in France to capture the perpetrators of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo. On January 9, Said and Cherif Kouachi were surrounded about 30 kilometers north of Paris, in the rural area of ​​Dammartin-en-Goële , after an exchange of fire with the police ^[10] [11] . The terrorists barricaded themselves in a building and took at least one hostage ^[12] . Shortly after, the French police raided the printing press where the terrorists had taken refuge and shot them down, freeing the hostage. In the assault one of the law enforcement officers was injured ^[13] .

Paris (2015)

Main article: Terrorist attacks in Paris .

 

On November 13 , 2015, a series of terrorist attacks occurred in Paris when the capital was shaken by six attacks coordinated by three commandos that included several explosions near the Stade de France, shootings in two restaurants, in a bar, in a shopping center and a hostage taking in a concert hall. The terrorist attacks left more than 130 dead and around 350 injured. The attacks are considered the worst suffered by France in its entire history and the second in Europe, after those that occurred on March 11, 2004 on the Madrid trains, which left 193 dead ^{[14] [15] [16]} .

Nice (2016)

Main article: Terrorist attack in Nice .

 

On July 14 , 2016 , around 10:30 p.m. local time in Nice , a city neighboring Monaco and close to the border with Italy , a truck rammed into the crowd on the French Riviera, on the Promenade des Anglais, the coastal promenade of this tourist city on the Mediterranean coast, when passers-by celebrated the national holiday to witness the usual fireworks of each anniversary of the French Revolution .

The 19-ton, 15-meter-long truck, a Renault Midlum, was driven by Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel , a Frenchman of Tunisian origin, who drove it in a zig-zag pattern to impact as many people as possible for two kilometers in between. of the crowd at an estimated speed of 80 km/h, overwhelming the tourists and citizens who were in the street in their path. The attack left 84 dead and more than 300 injured.

The driver, who had a gun and fired several times while driving, was finally killed by the police.

Saint Etienne du Rouvray Church (2016)

Main article: Terrorist attack against Saint Etienne du Rouvray church .

 

On July 26 , 2016 , shortly before ten in the morning, the terrorists arrived at the church of Saint-Etienne du Rouvray, a residential neighborhood south of the industrial area of ​​Rouen, Normandy , 130 kilometers from Paris , there. The priest Jacques Hamel celebrated mass with four faithful.

The attackers, Abdel Malik Nabil Petitjean and Adel Kermiche, armed with knives and dressed in Muslim attire, entered through the back door during the mass and then closed it. Once there, they detained the priest, two nuns and two faithful for about an hour. A third nun managed to escape and notify the authorities.

The two jihadists forced the father to kneel, he tried to defend himself but his throat was slit, while they filmed the scene and chanted a sermon in Arabic around the altar.

The forces of the elite corps of the Investigation and Intervention Brigade and the military arrived at the place, which they surrounded. They tried, without success, to negotiate with the assailants who did not let them enter the Church because they had forced three hostages to stand in front of the door.

A short time later, the detained people left the temple, followed by the jihadists, one of them holding a gun. They both shouted Allah Akbar (Allah is great) and were quickly shot down by the police.

Geography

The French territory has an area of ​​675,417 km², which represents 0.50% of the planet’s surface land (40th place in the world). Metropolitan France, that is, European, has 551,695 km² (data from the French National Geographic Institute), while overseas France has another 123,722 km² (without considering the Adélie Land due to the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, which suspended the recognition of all sovereignties in said region). Its largest islands are New Caledonia, Corsica, Guadeloupe and Martinique.

The political demarcation of continental European France is based on its “natural borders” being these (counterclockwise): the North Sea , the English Channel , the Atlantic Ocean ( Bay of Biscay ); the Pyrenees (border with Spain); the Mediterranean Sea (Gulf of Lion, Cote d’Azur); the Alps ; the Jura Mountains; the Rhine River. The Rhine is a border only in part of its course, a point from which and up to the North Sea, there are no geographical features that “naturally” delimit the border with Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. The most important French island in Europe is Corsica , located in the Mediterranean Sea. In metropolitan France the borders extend for 2,889 km and the coastline for another 3,427 km. In Africa, Asia, Oceania, North America and the Caribbean, French territory is island. French Guiana is the only continental territory outside Europe, bordered to the north by the Atlantic Ocean (378 km); to the west with Suriname (510 km), to the east with Brazil (673 km). Saint Martin Island has a southern border with the Netherlands Antilles (10.2 km).

France has part of the Pyrenees and the Alps, both to the south. Other mountain ranges are the Jura (on the border with Switzerland) , the Ardennes, the Massif Central and the Vosges Mountains. Mont Blanc in the Alps with 4,808 meters high is the highest peak in Western Europe. The lowest point of the country is in the delta of the Rhône River: –2 m. The territory also has coastal plains towards the north and west of the country.

Economy

France is the fifth largest economy in the world in nominal terms, and at European level it is placed behind Germany, with a GDP in dollars higher than that of the United Kingdom. In 2007 , the value of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 1 trillion 892 billion euros .

France is currently in the process of privatizing large companies and banks, including leading companies such as Air France , France Télécom , Renault , and Thales , although it still maintains a strong presence in some sectors, particularly energy, public transportation, defense and industry.

Its strengths are diverse: transportation, telecommunications, agro-food industries, pharmaceutical products, aeronautics, defense, technology, as well as the banking sector, insurance, tourism, and traditional luxury products (leather goods, ready-to-wear, perfumes, alcohols, etc.).

The growth of French GDP per capita is lower than that of other countries – especially the less developed ones – during the last two decades, provoking debates about the reality of this gap and about the economic reforms that, according to some, could remedy the problem and according to others, aggravate it.

Tourism

Paris

With 82 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2007, France is the world’s leading tourist destination. Tourism is the second largest surplus in the balance of payments, with a surplus of more than 1.28 billion euros in 2008 .

Among the most frequented cultural sites are the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower , the Georges Pompidou Center , the Louvre Museum , the Sacré Cœur Basilica, Our Lady of Lourdes, and the Palace of Versailles .

Demography

It has 65,073,482 inhabitants (January 2009), of which 62,448,977 live in metropolitan France, with a density of 115 inhabitants/km², and 2,624,505 live in overseas France, including the community of about 2,000 scientists. and leading researchers in Antarctica .

Around 75% of French people live in urban centers. Paris and its metropolitan area corresponding to the region known as “Ile de France” concentrates 11,769,433 inhabitants, making it one of the largest in the world, and the most populated in the European Union . Other metropolitan areas with more than a million inhabitants are Lyon and Marseille , which each have more than a million and a half inhabitants.

Life expectancy at birth is 83 years for women (the best in the world) and 76 years for men. The population is made up of descendants of various ethnic groups, mainly of Celtic origin (but also Ligurian and Iberian), fundamentally Gauls merged with the preceding population, who gave their name to the region of Gaul, today France (which also included Belgium , Luxembourg and Switzerland ). Chronologically, other ethnic groups were added: in the historical formative process of today’s France, populations of Germanic origin (mainly French but also Burgundian), Greek, Roman, Basque, Viking (in Normandy) and to a lesser extent Saracen are also significant.

Since the 19th century , France has been a country of immigration. More than 90% of the population was born within the country. Among the foreigners who are integrating, North Africans, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Poles, sub-Saharans, Chinese (1,000,000 in 2007), Turks (400,000–500,000), Vietnamese (250,000) and gypsies (200,000–300,000) predominate. The largest number of immigrants in recent years comes from the Maghreb . In total there are about four and a half million immigrants, of which approximately one and a half million were born in a foreign land but have become naturalized by acquiring French nationality, while another three million are still foreigners.

In 2008 France, in the semiannual presidency of the European Union , presented a plan for a concerted offensive against illegal immigration that was expected to be approved, despite pending differences and accusations of xenophobia. South American leaders sharply criticized new European Union rules that allow authorities to detain illegal immigrants for up to 18 months and ban them from re-entry for up to five years. The Argentine president, Cristina Fernández , said that the law was reminiscent of times of xenophobia and the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez , stated that Europe had legalized barbarism.

Culture

Science, technology and education

Great inventors have been born in France such as the Montgolfier Brothers (inventors of the hot air balloon), Nicéphore Niepce (chemist, lithographer and amateur scientist who invented, together with his brother, a boat engine and, together with Louis Daguerre , photography), Clément Ader (inventor of the airplane, a microphone and the first improvements of the telephone), the Lumière Brothers (inventors of the film projector), René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (inventor of the stethoscope), Louis Pasteur (the technique known as pasteurization), Jacques Lacan considered by many theorists as the most important for psychoanalysis among others; whose contributions to science have been decisive in the history of humanity. In France, education is free at all levels, both for French and foreign students.

Literature

Victor Hugo , the most prominent of the romantic writers in French.

France is the country with the most Nobel Prize winners in Literature (fourteen). Both French citizens and Francographers from other countries (such as the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck , the Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor or the Luxembourgish Daniel Herrendorf ), make up what is called French literature, which has had a deep relationship with the literature of important authors, countries and languages. Such is the case of the Cuban Alejo Carpentier or the so-called Latin American boom.

Fine arts

The first manifestations come from prehistoric art, in the Franco-Cantabrian style. The Carolingian era marks the birth of a school of illuminators that lasted throughout the Middle Ages , culminating in the illustrations for the book The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry.

The classical painters of the French 17th century are Poussin and Lorrain . In the 18th century, Rococo predominated, with Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard. At the end of the century the classicism of Jacques-Louis David began . Romanticism is dominated by the figures of Géricault and Delacroix. The realistic landscape of the Barbizon School has its continuation in artists of a more testimonial realism about the social reality of their time, such as Millet and Courbet. At the end of the 19th century, Paris, which became a center of painting, saw the birth of Impressionism, preceded by the work of Édouard Manet . These are followed by Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Cézanne. Already in the 20th century, the Fauves emerged around Matisse and Cubism at the hands of Georges Braque and the Spanish Picasso who worked in Paris. Other artistic movements took place in Paris between the wars, declining as a world pictorial center after the Second World War.

In France, sculpture has evolved since ancient times through various styles, excelling in all of them: prehistoric, Roman, Christian, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, baroque and rococo, neoclassical ( Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi : Statue of Liberty ), romantic ( Auguste Rodin : The thinker), and contemporaries.

Architecture

Former palace, current Louvre Museum

Eiffel Tower .

As far as architecture is concerned, the Celts also left their mark in the erection of large monoliths or megaliths, and the Greek presence from the 6th century BC. C. is remembered today in the classical heritage of Massalia ( Marseille ).

The Roman style has examples in the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple built between 138–161 BC, or in the Pont du Gard built between 40 and 60 AD. C., in Nimes and declared a universal heritage in 1985. In France, the Gothic style was invented, reflected in cathedrals such as Chartres, Amiens, Notre Dame , Strasbourg or the Santa Maria de Villelongue Abbey , considered a historical monument.

The Renaissance that emerged in Italy , has its architectural style masterfully represented in the Blois Castle or the Fontainebleau Palace, among others.

Baroque art (also of Italian origin), and Rococo (French invention) have extraordinary works in France. Such is the case of the Louvre Palace and the Pantheon in Paris among many others.

Modernism or modern art in architecture covers the entire 19th century and the middle of the 20th, and in it Gustave Eiffel revolutionized the architectural theory and practice of his time in the construction of gigantic bridges and the use of materials such as steel. His most famous work is the so-called Eiffel Tower . Another great of universal architecture is Le Corbusier , an innovator and functionalist celebrated especially for his urban planning contributions in housing buildings and housing complexes.

Music

In French music since before the year 1000, Gregorian Chant used in liturgies stands out. Polyphony was created in France . In the so-called Ars Antiqua, the Scholae Cantorum is attributed to Charlemagne . The Oaths of Strasbourg is the most important French lyrical work of the Middle Ages, a period in which the Songs of Deeds such as the Song of Roland were developed . France was the birthplace of the troubadours in the 12th century , as well as of the Ars Nova two centuries later. During Romanticism, Paris became the musical center of the world and today France maintains a privileged place in musical creation thanks to new generations of composers. Among the exponents of French popular music, there are figures such as Edith Piaf , Dalida , Charles Aznavour , Gilbert Becaud and Serge Gainsbourg .

Language

The official language is French, coming from French, a linguistic variant spoken on the Isle of France that, at the beginning of the Middle Ages and, over the centuries, has prevailed over the rest of the languages ​​and linguistic variants spoken anywhere. part of the territory.

Often, this imposition of French has been the result of political decisions taken throughout history, with the aim of creating a linguistically uniform State. In fact, article 2 of the French Constitution of 1958 says verbatim that “La langue de la République est le français.”

This article served to prevent the official use of the languages ​​spoken in France in cultured spheres of use, until in 1999 the Cerquiglini Report established 75 regional and minority languages ​​spoken in metropolitan and overseas France. Since 2006, 13 of them are taught as an optional second foreign language in public school, such as Breton , Catalan , Corsican , Occitan , Basque , Alsatian , Tahitian and 4 Melanesian languages . Immigration from outside the country, as well as from exclusively French-speaking regions, means that the percentage of speakers of these languages ​​is increasingly lower.

It is one of the states that have not signed the European Charter for Minority Languages. Despite everything, today, some private institutions have sought to promote the use of these languages ​​by creating media, cultural associations, primary and secondary schools to teach these languages ​​and undertake protest actions in favor of an alternative linguistic policy.