France
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
French Republic
République française
|
|
|
Motto: "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" (French)
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" |
Anthem: "La Marseillaise"
|
Location of the French Republic (dark green)
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Capital
and largest city |
Paris
 48°51.4′N 2°21.05′E |
| Official languages |
French[note 1] |
| Demonym |
French |
| Government |
Unitary semi-presidential constitutional republic |
| - |
President |
François Hollande |
| - |
Prime Minister |
Manuel Valls |
| Legislature |
Parliament |
| - |
Upper house |
Senate |
| - |
Lower house |
National Assembly |
| Formation |
| - |
Kingdom of France
(Treaty of Verdun) |
August 843 |
| - |
French Republic
(National Convention) |
22 September 1792 |
| - |
Current constitution
(Fifth Republic) |
4 October 1958 |
| Area |
| - |
Total[note 2] |
640,679[1] km2 (43rd)
246,201 sq mi |
| - |
Metropolitan France |
| |
- IGN[note 3] |
551,695 km2 (50th)
213,010 sq mi |
| |
- Cadastre[note 4] |
543,965 km2 (50th)
210,026 sq mi |
| Population |
| |
(2014) |
| - |
Total[note 2] |
66,616,416[2] (20th) |
| - |
Metropolitan France |
63,929,000[2] (22nd) |
| - |
Density[note 5] |
116/km2 (89th)
301/sq mi |
| GDP (PPP) |
2014 estimate |
| - |
Total |
$2.337 trillion[3] (9th) |
| - |
Per capita |
$36,537[3] (23rd) |
| GDP (nominal) |
2014 estimate |
| - |
Total |
$2.886 trillion[3] (5th) |
| - |
Per capita |
$45,123[3] (19th) |
| Gini (2008) |
32.7[4]
medium |
| HDI (2013) |
 0.884[5]
very high · 20th |
| Currency |
|
| Time zone |
CET[note 8] (UTC+1) |
| - |
Summer (DST) |
CEST[note 9] (UTC+2) |
| Date format |
dd/mm/yyyy |
| Drives on the |
right |
| Calling code |
+33[note 10] |
| ISO 3166 code |
FR |
| Internet TLD |
.fr[note 11] |
France (
UK: //;
US: 
i//;
French: [fʁɑ̃s] (
listen)), officially the
French Republic (
French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a
unitary sovereign state comprising territory in
Western Europe and several
overseas regions and territories.
[note 12] Metropolitan France extends from the
Mediterranean Sea to the
English Channel and the
North Sea, and from the
Rhine to the
Atlantic Ocean; due to its shape, it is often referred to in French as
l’Hexagone ("The
Hexagon"). France is one of only three countries (with
Morocco and
Spain) to have both Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines.
By area, France is the
42nd largest country in the world but the largest country in Western Europe and the
European Union (EU), and the third-largest in Europe as a whole. With a population approaching 67 million, it is the
20th most populated country and the
second-most populated country in the EU. France is a
semi-presidential republic with its
capital in
Paris, the nation's largest city and the main cultural and commercial center. The current
Constitution of France, adopted by referendum on 4 October 1958, establishes the country as
secular and democratic, with its sovereignty derived from the people. The nation's ideals are expressed in the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the world's earliest documents on
human rights, which was formulated during the seminal
French Revolution of the late 18th century.
France has been a major power in Europe since the
Late Middle Ages, reaching the height of global prominence during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it possessed the
second-largest colonial empire in the world.
[6] Throughout its
long history,
France has produced many influential artists, thinkers, and scientists,
and remains a prominent global center of culture. It hosts the world's
fourth-largest number of cultural
UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually – the most of any country in the world.
[7]
France remains a
great power with significant
cultural,
economic,
military, and
political influence in Europe and around the world.
[8] It has the world's
fifth-largest military budget,
[9] third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons,
[10] and
second-largest diplomatic corps.
[11] Due to its
overseas regions and territories throughout the world, France has the second-largest
exclusive economic zone in the world.
[12] France is a
developed country and has the world's
fifth-largest economy by
nominal GDP and
seventh-largest by
purchasing power parity.
[13] In terms of total household wealth, France is the wealthiest nation in Europe and fourth in the world.
[14]
French citizens enjoy a high
standard of living, and the country performs well in
international rankings of
education,
health care,
life expectancy, civil liberties, and
human development.
[15][16] France is a founding member of the
United Nations, where it serves as one of the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is a member of numerous international institutions, including the
Group of 7,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the
World Trade Organization (WTO), and
La Francophonie. France is a founding and leading
member state of the EU.
[17]
Etymology
The name "France" comes from the
Latin Francia, which means "country of the
Franks".
[18] There are various theories as to the origin of the name Franks: one 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.
[19] Another proposed etymology is that in an ancient
Germanic language, Frank means
free as opposed to
slave.
[citation needed]
According to Czech historian,
David Solomon Ganz, the country takes its name from Franci (Francio), one of the Germanic kings of
Sicambri in
circa 61 BCE, and whose dominion extended all along those lands immediately joining the west-bank of the Rhine River, as far as
Strasbourg and Belgium.
[20] This nation is explicitly mentioned by Julius Caesar in his
Notebooks on the Gallic War (
Commentarii de Bello Gallico), as is Francio in the
Chronicle of Fredegar.
History
Prehistory
One of the
Lascaux paintings of which depicts a horse (
Dordogne, approximately 18,000 BC).
The oldest traces of human life (
homo) in what is now France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago.
[21] Humans were then confronted by a hard and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras which led them to a
nomadic hunter-gatherer life.
[21] France has a large number of decorated caves from the
upper Paleolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved:
Lascaux[21] (approximately 18,000 BC).
At the end of the
last glacial period (10,000 BC), the climate softened
[21] and 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.
[22] France has numerous
megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptionally dense
Carnac stones site (approximately 3,300 BC).
Gaul
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.
[23][24]
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.
[25]
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 influences. However, 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 maintain an
adversarial relationship for the next several centuries and the Gauls
would remain a threat in
Italia.
Around 125 BC, the south of Gaul was conquered by the Romans, who called this region
Provincia Romana ("Roman Province"), which over time evolved into the name
Provence in French.
[26] Julius Caesar conquered the remainder of Gaul and overcame a revolt carried out by the Gallic chieftain
Vercingetorix in 52 BC.
[27] Gaul was divided by
Augustus into Roman provinces.
[28] Many cities were founded during the
Gallo-Roman period, including
Lugdunum (present-day
Lyon), which is considered to be the capital of the Gauls.
[28] These cities were built in traditional Roman style, with a
forum, a theatre, a
circus, an
amphitheatre and
thermal baths. The Gauls mixed with Roman settlers and eventually adopted
Roman speech (
Latin, from which the French language evolved) and Roman culture. The
Roman polytheism merged with the
Gallic paganism into the same
syncretism.
From the 250s to the 280s AD, Roman Gaul suffered a serious crisis with its "
limes" or fortified borders protecting the Empire being attacked on several occasions by
barbarians.
[29]
Nevertheless, the situation improved in the first half of the 4th
century, which was a period of revival and prosperity for Roman Gaul.
[30] In 312, the emperor
Constantin I converted to Christianity. Christians, persecuted until then, increased rapidly across the entire Roman Empire.
[31] But, from the beginning of the 5th century, the
Barbarian Invasions resumed,
[32] and
Germanic tribes, such as the
Vandals,
Suebi and
Alans crossed the Rhine and settled in Gaul, Spain and other parts of the
collapsing Roman Empire.
[33]
Kingdom of Francia (3rd century–843)
Frankish expansion from 481 to 843/870.
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 (West). 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 pagan
Franks, from whom the ancient name of "Francie" was derived, originally settled the north part of
Gaul, but under
Clovis I
conquered most of the other kingdoms in northern and central Gaul. In
498, 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,
[34] 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 north 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 government's longtime
historical association with the
Catholic Church,
[35] 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.
[36]
During the 9th and 10th centuries, continually threatened by
Viking invasions,
France became a very decentralised 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.
Kingdom of France (843–1791)
The Carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when
Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, was crowned
King of the Franks.
[37] 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 Augustus. Gerbert d'Aurillac (Gerbert of Aurillac) was the first French pope; his reign as
Pope Sylvester II lasted from 999 to 1003.
The
Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the heretical
Cathars in the south-western area of modern-day France. In the end, the Cathars were exterminated and the autonomous
County of Toulouse was annexed into the kingdom of France.
[38]
Later Kings expanded their territory to cover over half of modern
continental France, including most of the North, Centre and West of
France. Meanwhile, the royal authority became more and more assertive,
centred around a
hierarchically conceived society distinguishing
nobility, clergy, and
commoners.
Charles IV the Fair died without an heir in 1328.
[39] 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.
[39]
Accordingly, the crown passed to Philip of Valois, a cousin of Charles,
rather than through the female line to Charles' nephew, Edward, 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.
[39]
However, Philip's seat on the throne was contested by Edward III of England and in 1337, on the eve of the first wave of the
Black Death,
[40] England and France went to war in what would become known as the
Hundred Years' War.
[41] 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 English continental territories.
Like the rest of Europe, France was struck by the Black Death; half of
the 17 million population of France died.
[42][43]
The
French Renaissance saw a long set of wars, known as the
Italian Wars, between the Kingdom of France and the powerful
Holy Roman Empire.
It also saw the first standardization of the French language, which
would become the official language of France and the language of
Europe's aristocracy. 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.
[44] The Wars of Religion were ended by
Henry IV's
Edict of Nantes, which granted some freedom of religion to the Huguenots.
Under
Louis XIII, the energetic
Cardinal Richelieu reinforced the centralization of the state, royal power and French dominance in Europe, foreshadowing the reign of
Louis XIV. 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, which was at that time
at war with Spain. This rebellion was driven by the great feudal lords and
sovereign courts as a reaction to the
rise of royal 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
possessed the largest population in Europe (see
Demographics of France)
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.
[45] France obtained many overseas possessions in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Louis XIV
revoked the Edict of Nantes, forcing thousands of Huguenots into exile.
Under
Louis XV, France lost
New France and most of its
Indian possessions after its defeat in the
Seven Years' War, which ended in 1763. Its
continental 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, and his debauchery
discredited the monarchy and arguably led to the French Revolution 15
years after his death.
[46][47]
Louis XVI, Louis XV's grandson, actively
supported the Americans, who were seeking their
independence from Great Britain (realized in the
Treaty of Paris (1783)). The example of the
American Revolution
and the financial crisis which followed France's involvement in it were
two of many contributing factors to the French Revolution.
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.
Republics and Empires (1792–)
After the
storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, the absolute monarchy was abolished and France became a
constitutional monarchy. Through the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,
France established fundamental rights for French citizens (who could
only be male). The Declaration affirms "the natural and imprescriptible
rights of man" to "liberty, property, security and resistance to
oppression". 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.
The monarchy was restricted, and all citizens were to have the right
to take part in the legislative process. Freedom of speech and press
were declared, and arbitrary arrests outlawed. The Declaration also
asserted the principles of popular sovereignty, in contrast to the
divine right of kings that characterized the French monarchy, and social
equality among citizens, eliminating the privileges of the nobility and
clergy.
While Louis XVI, as a
constitutional king, enjoyed popularity among the population, his disastrous
flight to Varennes
seemed to justify rumours 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.
European
monarchies gathered
against the new régime, to restore the French absolute monarchy. The
foreign threat exacerbated France's political turmoil and deepened the
sense of urgency among the various factions and
war was declared against Austria on 20 April 1792.
Mob violence occurred during the
insurrection of 10 August 1792[48] and the
following month.
[49] As a result of this violence and the political instability of the constitutional monarchy, the
Republic was proclaimed on 22 September 1792.
Louis XVI was
convicted of
treason and
guillotined in 1793. Facing increasing pressure from European monarchies, internal guerrilla wars and
counterrevolutions (such as the
War in the Vendée or the
Chouannerie), the
young Republic fell into the
Reign of Terror. Between 1793 and 1794, between 16,000 and 40,000 people were executed. In Western France, the civil war between the
Bleus ("Blues", supporters of the Revolution) and the
Blancs ("Whites", supporters of the Monarchy) lasted from 1793 to 1796 and led to the loss of between 200,000 and 450,000 lives.
[50][51]
Both foreign armies and French counterrevolutionnaries were crushed
and the French Republic survived. Furthermore, it extended greatly its
boundaries and established "
Sister Republics" in the surrounding countries. As the threat of a foreign invasion receded and France became mostly pacified, the
Thermidorian Reaction put an end to
Robespierre's rule and to the Terror. The
abolition of slavery and male
universal suffrage, enacted during this radical phase of the revolution, were cancelled by subsequent governments.
After a
short-lived governmental scheme,
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, while members of the
Bonaparte family were appointed as monarchs in some of the newly established kingdoms.
[52]
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. After the catastrophic
Russian campaign, Napoleon was
defeated and the Bourbon monarchy
restored. About a million Frenchmen died during the Napoleonic Wars.
[52]
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, which lasted until 1848, when the
French Second Republic was proclaimed, in the wake of the European
Revolutions of 1848. The abolition of slavery and male
universal suffrage, both 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. Napoleon III was unseated following defeat in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and his regime was replaced by the
Third Republic.
France had
colonial possessions, in various forms, since the beginning of the 17th century. 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 kilometres in the 1920s and 1930s, 8.6% of the world's land.
France was a member of the
Triple Entente
when World War I broke out. A small part of Northern France was
occupied, but France and its allies emerged victorious against the
Central Powers, at a tremendous human and material cost. World War I left 1.4 million French soldiers dead, 4% of its population,
[53] between 27 and 30% of the conscript classes of 1912–1915.
[54]
The interbellum years were marked by
intense international tensions and a variety of social reforms introduced by the
Popular Front government (
Annual leave,
working time reduction, women in Government among others). In 1940 France was
invaded and occupied by
Nazi Germany and metropolitan France was divided into a
German occupation zone in the north and
Vichy France, a newly established authoritarian regime collaborating with Germany, in the south.
[55] From 1942 to 1944 French Jews
were deported to
death camps and
concentration camps in Germany and Poland where 76,000 were murdered. On June 6, 1944 the
Allies invaded Normandy and in August they
invaded southern France. Over the following year the Allies and the
French Resistance emerged victorious over the
Axis powers and French sovereignty was restored.
The
Fourth Republic was established after World War II and saw spectacular economic growth (
les Trente Glorieuses). Suffrage was extended to women in 1944. France was one of the founding members of
NATO (1949). France attempted to
regain control of French Indochina but was defeated by the
Viet Minh in 1954. Only months later, France faced another
anti-colonialist conflict in Algeria. The debate over whether or not to keep control of
Algeria, then home to over one million
European settlers,
[56] wracked the country and nearly led to civil war.
In 1958, the weak and unstable Fourth Republic gave way to the
Fifth Republic, which contained a strengthened Presidency.
[57]
In the latter role, Charles de Gaulle managed to keep the country
together while taking steps to end the war. The Algerian War was
concluded with the
Évian Accords
in 1962 that led to Algerian independence. France granted independence
progressively to its colonies. A vestige of the colonial empire are the
French overseas departments and territories.
In the wake of the series of worldwide
protests of 1968, the
revolt of May 1968
had an enormous social impact. In France, it is considered to be the
watershed moment when a conservative moral ideal (religion, patriotism,
respect for authority) shifted towards a more liberal moral ideal.
France has been at the forefront of the European Union member states
seeking to capitalise on the momentum of monetary union to create a more
unified and capable European Union political, defence, and security
apparatus.
[58]
Geography
A relief map of Metropolitan France, showing cities with over 100,000 inhabitants.
Metropolitan France is situated mostly between latitudes
41° and
51° N, and longitudes
6° W and
10° E, on the western edge of Europe, and thus lies within the northern
temperate zone.
From northeast to southwest, France shares borders with
Belgium,
Luxembourg,
Germany,
Switzerland,
Italy,
Monaco,
Spain and
Andorra. France also borders
Suriname to its west and
Brazil to its east and south, by way of the overseas region of
French Guiana, which is considered an integral part of the Republic.
[59]
Corsica and the French mainland form
Metropolitan France;
Guadeloupe,
Martinique,
Réunion, and
Mayotte form, with French Guiana, the overseas regions. These two integral groupings, along with several
overseas collectivities and
one territory, comprise the French Republic.
The European territory of France covers 547,030 square kilometres (211,209 sq mi),
[59] the largest among
European Union members.
[17] France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges of the
Alps in the south-east, the
Massif Central in the south-central and
Pyrenees in the south-west.
At 4,810.45 metres (15,782 ft)
[60] above sea level, the highest point in Western Europe,
Mont Blanc, is situated in the Alps on the border between France and Italy. France also has extensive river systems such as the
Seine, the
Loire, the
Garonne, and the
Rhone, which divides the Massif Central from the Alps and flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the
Camargue. Corsica lies off the Mediterranean coast.
France's total land area, with its overseas departments and territories (excluding
Adélie Land), is 674,843 km
2 (260,558 sq mi), 0.45% of the total land area on Earth. France possesses the second largest
exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world,
[61] covering 11,035,000 km
2
(4,260,637 sq mi), approximately 8% of the total surface of all the
EEZs of the world, just behind the United States (11,351,000 km
2 or 4,382,646 sq mi).
[62]
Climate
The north and northwest have a temperate climate, while a combination of maritime influences,
latitude and altitude produce a varied climate in the rest of Metropolitan France.
[63] Most of France in the south has a
Mediterranean climate that prevails. In the west, the climate is predominantly
oceanic with a high level of rainfall, mild winters and warm summers. Inland the climate becomes more
continental with hot, stormy summers, colder winters and less rain. The
climate of the Alps and other mountainous regions is mainly
alpine, with the number of days with temperatures below freezing over 150 per year and snow cover lasting for up to six months.
Environment
France was one of the first countries to create an environment ministry, in 1971.
[64] Although it is one of the most industrialised countries in the world, France is ranked
only 17th by carbon dioxide emissions, behind less populous nations such as Canada or Australia. This is due to France's decision to invest in
nuclear power following the
1973 oil crisis,
[65] which now accounts for 75% of its electricity production
[66] and results in less pollution.
[67][68]
Like all European Union members, France agreed to cut carbon emissions by at least 20% of 1990 levels by the year 2020,
[69] compared to the U.S. plan to reduce emissions by 4% of 1990 levels.
[70] As of 2009, French carbon dioxide emissions per capita were lower than that of China's.
[71] The country was set to impose a
carbon tax in 2009 at 17 Euros per tonne of carbon emitted,
[72] which would have raised 4 billion Euros of revenue annually.
[73] However, the plan was abandoned due to fears of burdening French businesses.
[74]
Forests account for 28% of France's land area,
[75][76] and are some of the most diverse in Europe, comprising more than 140 species of trees.
[77] There are nine
national parks[78] and 46
natural parks in France,
[79] with the government planning to convert 20% of its
Exclusive Economic Zone into a
Marine Protected Area by 2020.
[80]
According to the 2012
Environmental Performance Index conducted by Yale and
Columbia, France was the sixth-most environmentally conscious country in the world, one place higher than the previous report in 2010.
[81][82]
Administrative divisions
The 22
regions and 96
departments of metropolitan France includes Corsica (
Corse, lower right). Paris area is expanded (inset at left)
France is divided into 27 administrative regions: 22 regions in
metropolitan France (including the territorial collectivity of
Corsica), and five located
overseas.
[59] The regions are further subdivided into 101 departments,
[83]
which are numbered mainly alphabetically. This number is used in postal
codes and vehicle number plates amongst others. Among the 101
departments of France, five (
French Guiana,
Guadeloupe,
Martinique,
Mayotte, and
Réunion)
are in overseas regions (ROMs) that are also simultaneously overseas
departments (DOMs) and are an integral part of France (and the European
Union) and thus enjoy exactly the same status as metropolitan
departments.
The 101 departments are subdivided into 341
arrondissements which are, in turn, subdivided into 4,051
cantons. These cantons are then divided into 36,697
communes, which are municipalities with an elected municipal council. There are 2,588
intercommunal
entities grouping 33,414 of the 36,697 communes (i.e. 91.1% of all the
communes). Three communes, Paris, Lyon and Marseille are subdivided into
45
municipal arrondissements.
The regions, departments and communes are all known as
territorial collectivities,
meaning they possess local assemblies as well as an executive.
Arrondissements and cantons are merely administrative divisions.
However, this was not always the case. Until 1940, the arrondissements
were territorial collectivities with an elected assembly, but these were
suspended by the
Vichy regime and definitely abolished by the
Fourth Republic in 1946.
Overseas territories and collectivities
In addition to the 27 regions and 101 departments, the French Republic has five
overseas collectivities (
French Polynesia,
Saint Barthélemy,
Saint Martin,
Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and
Wallis and Futuna), one
sui generis collectivity (
New Caledonia), one
overseas territory (
French Southern and Antarctic Lands), and one island possession in the Pacific Ocean (
Clipperton Island).
Overseas collectivities and territories form part of the French
Republic, but do not form part of the European Union or its fiscal area
(with the exception of St. Bartelemy, which seceded from Guadeloupe in
2007). The Pacific Collectivities (COMs) of French Polynesia, Wallis and
Fortuna, and New Caledonia continue to use the
CFP franc[84]
whose value is strictly linked to that of the euro. In contrast, the
five overseas regions used the French franc and now use the euro.
[85]
Governance
Government
The French Republic is a
unitary semi-presidential republic with strong democratic traditions.
[86] The constitution of the Fifth Republic was approved by
referendum on 28 September 1958.
[87]
It greatly strengthened the authority of the executive in relation to
parliament. The executive branch itself has two leaders: the
President of the Republic, currently
François Hollande, who is
head of state and is elected directly by universal adult suffrage for a 5-year term (formerly 7 years),
[88] and the Government, led by the president-appointed
Prime Minister, currently
Manuel Valls.
The French
parliament is a
bicameral legislature comprising a
National Assembly (
Assemblée Nationale) and a
Senate.
[89] The National Assembly deputies represent local constituencies and are directly elected for 5-year terms.
[90]
The Assembly has the power to dismiss the cabinet, and thus the
majority in the Assembly determines the choice of government. Senators
are chosen by an electoral college for 6-year terms (originally 9-year
terms), and one half of the seats are submitted to election every 3
years starting in September 2008.
[91]
The Senate's legislative powers are limited; in the event of
disagreement between the two chambers, the National Assembly has the
final say.
[92] The government has a strong influence in shaping the agenda of Parliament.
French politics are characterised by two politically opposed groupings: one left-wing, centred around the
French Socialist Party, and the other right-wing, centred previously around the
Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) and now its successor the
Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).
[93]
Since the 2012 elections, the executive branch is currently composed mostly of the Socialist Party.
Law
France uses a
civil legal system;
[59]
that is, law arises primarily from written statutes; judges are not to
make law, but merely to interpret it (though the amount of judicial
interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to
case law). Basic principles of the
rule of law were laid in the
Napoleonic Code (which was, in turn, largely based on the royal law codified under
Louis XIV).
In agreement with the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen, law should only prohibit actions detrimental to
society. As
Guy Canivet, first president of the
Court of Cassation, wrote about the management of prisons:
Freedom
is the rule, and its restriction is the exception; any restriction of
Freedom must be provided for by Law and must follow the principles of
necessity and proportionality. That is, Law should lay out
prohibitions only if they are needed, and if the inconveniences caused
by this restriction do not exceed the inconveniences that the
prohibition is supposed to remedy.
French law is divided into two principal areas:
private law and
public law. Private law includes, in particular,
civil law and
criminal law. Public law includes, in particular,
administrative law and
constitutional law.
However, in practical terms, French law comprises three principal areas
of law: civil law, criminal law, and administrative law. Criminal laws
can only address the future and not the past (criminal
ex post facto
laws are prohibited). While administrative law is often a subcategory
of civil law in many countries, it is completely separated in France and
each body of law is headed by a specific supreme court: ordinary courts
(which handle criminal and civil litigation) are headed by the
Court of Cassation and administrative courts are headed by the
Council of State.
To be applicable, every law must be officially published in the
Journal officiel de la République française.
France does not recognize
religious law as a motivation for the enactment of prohibitions. France has long had neither
blasphemy laws nor
sodomy laws (the latter being abolished in 1791). However, "offenses against
public decency" (
contraires aux bonnes mœurs) or
disturbing public order (
trouble à l'ordre public)
have been used to repress public expressions of homosexuality or street
prostitution. Laws prohibiting discriminatory speech in the press are
as old as 1881. Some consider however that
hate speech laws in France are too broad or severe and damage
freedom of speech.
[94] France has laws against
racism and
antisemitism.
[95]
France's attitude towards
freedom of religion is complex. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitutional rights set forth in the 1789
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. However, since the
1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State,
the State tries to prevent its policy-making from being influenced by
religion and became suspicious in recent decades towards new religious
tendencies of the French society: the Parliament has
listed many religious movements as dangerous cults since 1995, and has
banned wearing conspicuous religious symbols in schools since 2004. In 2010, it banned the
wearing of face-covering Islamic veils in public. As some have complained that they have suffered from discrimination thus, and after criticism by human rights groups such as
Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch,
[96][97] these laws remain controversial, although they are supported by most of the population.
[98]
France is tolerant of the
LGBT community. Since 1999,
civil unions for homosexual couples are permitted, and since May 2013,
same-sex marriage and
LGBT adoption are legal in France.
[99]
Foreign relations
France is a member of the United Nations and serves as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights.
[100] It is also a member of the
G8,
World Trade Organization (WTO),
[101] the
Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC)
[102] and the
Indian Ocean Commission (COI).
[103] It is an associate member of the
Association of Caribbean States (ACS)
[104] and a leading member of the
International Francophone Organisation (OIF) of fifty-one fully or partly French-speaking countries.
[105]
As a significant hub for international relations, France hosts the
second largest assembly of
diplomatic missions in the world and the headquarters of
international organizations including the
OECD,
UNESCO,
Interpol, the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures, and
la Francophonie.
[106]
Postwar French foreign policy has been largely shaped by membership of the European Union, of which it was a
founding member. Since the
1960s, France has developed close ties with reunified Germany to become the
most influential driving force of the EU.
[107] In the 1960s, France sought to exclude the British from the European unification process,
[108] seeking to build its own standing in continental Europe. However, since 1904, France has maintained an "
Entente cordiale" with the
United Kingdom, and there has been a strengthening of links between the countries, especially
militarily.
France is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO),
but under President de Gaulle, it excluded itself from the joint
military command to protest the
special relationship between the United States and Britain and to preserve the independence of French foreign and security policies.
[109] France vigorously opposed the
2003 invasion of Iraq,
[110][111] straining bilateral relations with the US
[112][113] and the UK.
[114] However, as a result of Nicolas Sarkozy's
pro-American politics (much criticised in France by the leftists and by a part of the right),
[115][116] France rejoined the NATO joint military command on 4 April 2009.
In the early 1990s, the country drew considerable criticism from other nations for its underground nuclear tests in
French Polynesia.
[117]
France retains strong political and economic influence in its
former African colonies (
Françafrique)
[118] and has supplied economic aid and troops for peace-keeping missions in
Ivory Coast and
Chad.
[119] Recently, after the unilateral declaration of independence of northern
Mali by the
Tuareg MNLA and the subsequent regional
Northern Mali conflict with several Islamist groups including
Ansar Dine and
MOJWA, France and other African states intervened to help the Malian Army to retake control.
In 2009, France was the second largest (in absolute numbers) donor of
development aid in the world, behind the US, and ahead of Germany, Japan and the UK.
[120] This represents 0.5% of its GDP, in this regard rating France as tenth largest donor on the list.
[121] The organisation managing the French help is the
French Development Agency, which finances primarily humanitarian projects in
sub-Saharan Africa.
[122]
The main goals of this help are "developing infrastructure, access to
health care and education, the implementation of appropriate economic
policies and the consolidation of the rule of law and democracy."
[122]
Military
The French Armed Forces (
Armées françaises) are the military and paramilitary forces of France, under the
president as supreme commander. They consist of the
French Army (
Armée de Terre),
French Navy (
Marine Nationale), the
French Air Force (
Armée de l'Air) and the auxiliary paramilitary force, the
National Gendarmerie (
Gendarmerie nationale) and are among the
largest armed forces in the world. While administratively a part of the French armed forces, and therefore under the purview of the
Ministry of Defence, the Gendarmerie is operationally attached to the
Ministry of the Interior.
The gendarmerie is a military police force which serves for the most
part as a rural and general purpose police force. It encompasses the
counter terrorist units of the
Parachute Intervention Squadron of the National Gendarmerie (
Escadron Parachutiste d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale) and the
National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (
Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale). One of the French intelligence units, the
Directorate-General for External Security (
Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure) reports to the Ministry of Defence. The other, the
Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (
Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur), reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior. There has been no national
conscription since 1997.
[123]
France is a
permanent member of the Security Council of the UN, and a
recognised nuclear state since 1960. France has signed and ratified the
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)
[124] and acceeded to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. France's annual military expenditure in 2011 was US$62.5 billion, or 2.3%, of its GDP making it the
fifth biggest military spender in the world after the United States, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
[125]
French nuclear deterrence, (formerly known as “
Force de Frappe”), relies on complete independence. The current French nuclear force consists of four
Triomphant class submarines equipped with
submarine-launched ballistic missiles. In addition to the submarine fleet, it is estimated that France has about 60
ASMP medium-range
air-to-ground missiles with
nuclear warheads,
[126] of which around 50 are deployed by the Air Force using the
Mirage 2000N long-range nuclear strike aircraft, while around 10 are deployed by the French Navy's
Super Étendard Modernisé (SEM) attack aircraft which operate from the nuclear-powered
aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. The new
Rafale F3 aircraft will gradually replace all Mirage 2000N and SEM in the nuclear strike role with the improved
ASMP-A missile with a nuclear warhead.
France has major military industries with one of the largest
aerospace industries in the world.
[127][128] Its industries have produced such equipment as the Rafale fighter, the
Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, the
Exocet missile and the
Leclerc tank amongst others. Despite withdrawing from the
Eurofighter project, France is actively investing in European joint projects such as the
Eurocopter Tiger,
multipurpose frigates, the
UCAV demonstrator
nEUROn and the
Airbus A400M. France is a major arms seller,
[129][130] with most of its arsenal's designs available for the export market with the notable exception of nuclear-powered devices.
The
military parade held in Paris each 14 July for
France's national day is the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe.
[131]
Government finance
French government borrowing (
budget deficits) as a percentage of GNP, 1960–2009
In April and May 2012, France held a
presidential election in which the winner,
François Hollande, had opposed
austerity
measures, promising to eliminate France's budget deficit by 2017. The
new government stated that it aimed to cancel recently enacted tax cuts
and exemptions for the wealthy, raising the top tax bracket rate to 75%
on incomes over a million euros, restoring the retirement age to 60 with
a full pension for those who have worked 42 years, restoring 60,000
jobs recently cut from public education, regulating rent increases; and
building additional public housing for the poor.
In June, Hollande's
Socialist Party won a supermajority in
legislative elections capable of amending the
French Constitution and enabling the immediate enactment of the promised reforms. French government bond interest rates fell 30% to record lows,
[132] less than 50
basis points above German government bond rates.
[133]
Government debt
Under European Union rules, member states are supposed to limit their
debt to 60% of output or be reducing the ratio structurally towards
this ceiling, and run public deficits of no more than 3% of GDP. The
French government has run a
budget deficit
each year since the early 1970s. In 2012, French government debt levels
reached 1.8 trillion euros, the equivalent of 90% of French GDP.
[134]
In late 2012,
credit rating agencies warned that growing French government debt levels risked
France's AAA credit rating, raising the possibility of a future downgrade and subsequent higher borrowing costs for the French government.
[135]
Economy
A member of the
Group of 7 (formerly G8) leading industrialised countries, it is ranked as the world's
seventh largest and the EU's
second largest economy by
purchasing power parity.
[13] With 39 of the 500 biggest companies in the world in 2010, France ranks fourth in the
Fortune Global 500, ahead of Germany and the UK.
[136] France joined 11 other EU members to launch the euro in 1999, with
euro coins and
banknotes completely replacing the
French franc (₣) in 2002.
[137]
France has a
mixed economy which combines extensive private enterprise
[139][140]
with substantial state enterprise and government intervention. The
government retains considerable influence over key segments of
infrastructure sectors, with majority ownership of railway, electricity,
aircraft, nuclear power and telecommunications.
[59] It has been relaxing its control over these sectors since the early
1990s.
[59] The government is slowly
corporatising the state sector and selling off holdings in
France Télécom,
Air France, as well as in the insurance, banking, and defence industries.
[59] France has an important aerospace industry led by the European consortium
Airbus, and has its own national
spaceport, the
Centre Spatial Guyanais.
According to the
World Trade Organization (WTO), in 2009 France was the world's sixth largest exporter and the fourth largest importer of manufactured goods.
[141] In 2008, France was the third largest recipient of
foreign direct investment
among OECD countries at $118 billion, ranking behind Luxembourg (where
foreign direct investment was essentially monetary transfers to banks
located there) and the US ($316 billion), but above the UK
($96.9 billion), Germany ($25 billion), or Japan ($24 billion).
[142][143]
In the same year, French companies invested $220 billion outside
France, ranking France as the second largest outward direct investor in
the OECD, behind the US ($311 billion), and ahead of the UK
($111 billion), Japan ($128 billion) and Germany ($157 billion).
[142][143]
Financial services, banking and the insurance sector are an important part of the economy. The Paris stock exchange (
French:
La Bourse de Paris) is an old institution, created by
Louis XV in 1724.
[144] In 2000, the stock exchanges of Paris, Amsterdam and Bruxelles merged into
Euronext.
[145] In 2007, Euronext merged with the
New York stock exchange to form
NYSE Euronext, the world's largest stock exchange.
[145] Euronext Paris, the French branch of the NYSE Euronext group is Europe's 2nd largest stock exchange market, behind the
London Stock Exchange.
French companies have maintained key positions in the insurance and banking industries:
AXA is the world's largest insurance company. The leading French banks are
BNP Paribas and the
Crédit Agricole, ranking as the world's first and sixth largest banks in 2010
[146] (by assets), while the
Société Générale group was ranked the world's eighth largest in 2009.
France is the smallest emitter of
carbon dioxide among the
G8, due to its heavy investment in
nuclear power.
[147]
As a result of large investments in nuclear technology, most
electricity produced by France is generated by 59 nuclear power plants
(75% in 2012).
[148] In this context, renewable energies are having difficulty taking off.
Agriculture
France has historically been a large producer of agricultural products.
[149] Large tracts of fertile land, the application of modern technology, and
EU subsidies have combined to make France the leading agricultural producer and exporter in Europe
[150] (representing 20% of the EU's agricultural production
[151]) and the world's third biggest exporter of agricultural products.
[152]
Wheat, poultry, dairy, beef, and pork, as well as internationally
recognized processed foods are the primary French agricultural exports.
Rosé wines are primarily consumed within the country, but
champagne and
Bordeaux
wines are major exports, being known worldwide. EU agriculture
subsidies to France have decreased in recent years, but still amounted
to $8 billion in 2007.
[153] That same year, France sold 33.4 billion euros of transformed agricultural products.
[154]
Agriculture is thus an important sector of France's economy: 3.8% of
the active population is employed in agriculture, whereas the total
agri-food industry made up 4.2% of French GDP in 2005.
[151]
Labour market
When "GDP per capita" is converted to U.S. dollars using
purchasing power parities, it is the most widely used income measure for international comparisons of living standards. According to the American
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a 2011 report showed that France's GDP per capita is similar to the UK, with just over US$35,000 GDP per capita.
[155] New York Times
Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman used the BLS data to state in January 2011
that "French workers are roughly as productive as US workers", but
fewer French people were working in 2011 and "when they work, they work
fewer hours". Krugman concluded that the differences were due to the
French making "different choices about retirement and leisure."
[156]
Keynesian economists sought out different solutions to the unemployment issue in France, and their theories led to the introduction of the
35-hour workweek
law in 1999, which eventually failed to reduce the unemployment rate.
Between 2004 and 2008, the government attempted to combat unemployment
with supply-side reforms, but was met with fierce resistance;
[157] the
contrat nouvelle embauche and the
contrat première embauche were of particular concern, and both were eventually repealed.
[158] The Sarkozy government used the
revenu de solidarité active to redress the negative effect of the
revenu minimum d'insertion on the incentive to work.
[159]
French employment rates for 15–64 years is one of the lowest of the
OECD countries: in 2012, only 71% of the French population aged 15–64
years were in employment, compared to 74% in Japan, 77% in the UK, 73%
in the US and 77% in Germany.
[160]
This gap is due to the low employment rate for 15–24 years old: 38% in
2012, compared to 47% in the OECD. The low employment rate, particularly
evident among young people, is explained by the high
minimum wages that prevent low productivity workers—such as young people—from easily entering the labour market
[161] and ineffective university curricula that fail to prepare students adequately for the labour market.
[162]
Krugman stated in his January 2011 Op-Ed that less French young people
were working "in part because of more generous college aid", while the
overall rate was lower because of the comparatively early retirement age
in France.
[156]
A December 2012
New York Times article reported on a "floating
generation" in France that formed part of the 14 million unemployed
young Europeans documented by the Eurofound research agency. In the same
article, a senior economist studying unemployment at the
OECD
estimated that nearly two million young people in France had given up
looking for employment at that time, while French labor minister Michel
Sapin said that 82 percent of people hired were on temporary contracts.
Sapin further explained that the challenge at that time was to create a
more flexible system, in which greater trust existed between unions and
companies, and “partial unemployment” was accommodated during difficult
periods. The floating generation was attributed to a dysfunctional
system: "an elitist educational tradition that does not integrate
graduates into the work force, a rigid labor market that is hard to
enter, and a tax system that makes it expensive for companies to hire
full-time employees and both difficult and expensive to lay them off."
[163] In July 2013, the unemployment rate for France was 11%.
[164]
In early April 2014, employers' federations and unions negotiated an
agreement with technology and consultancy employers, as employees had
been experiencing an extension of their work time through
smartphone
communication outside of official working hours. Under a new, legally
binding labour agreement, around 250,000 employees will avoid handling
work-related matters during their leisure time and their employers will,
in turn, refrain from engaging with staff during this time.
[165]
Tourism
With 83 million foreign tourists in 2012,
[7] France is
ranked
as the first tourist destination in the world, ahead of the US
(67 million) and China (58 million). This 83 million figure excludes
people staying less than 24 hours, such as North Europeans crossing
France on their way to Spain or Italy. It is third in income from
tourism due to shorter duration of visits.
[166]
France has 37 sites inscribed in
UNESCO's World Heritage List and features cities of high cultural interest, beaches and seaside resorts,
ski resorts, and rural regions that many enjoy for their beauty and tranquillity (
green tourism). Small and picturesque French villages are promoted through the association
Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (litt. "The Most Beautiful Villages of France").
The "
Remarkable Gardens" label is a list of the over 200 gardens classified by the
French Ministry of Culture. This label is intended to protect and promote remarkable gardens and
parks. France attracts many religious pilgrims on their
way to St. James, or to
Lourdes, a town in the
Hautes-Pyrénées that hosts several million visitors a year.
France, especially Paris, has some of the world's largest and renowned museums, including the
Louvre, which is the
most visited art museum in the world, the
Musée d'Orsay, mostly devoted to
impressionism, and
Beaubourg, dedicated to
Contemporary art.
Disneyland Paris is Europe's most popular theme park, with 15 million combined visitors to the resort's
Disneyland Park and
Walt Disney Studios Park in 2009.
[167]
With more than 10 millions tourists a year, the
French Riviera (or
Côte d'Azur), in south-east France, is the second leading tourist destination in the country, after the
Paris region.
[168]
It benefits from 300 days of sunshine per year, 115 kilometres (71 mi)
of coastline and beaches, 18 golf courses, 14 ski resorts and 3,000
restaurants.
[169] Each year the
Côte d'Azur hosts 50% of the world's
superyacht fleet.
[170]
Another major destination are the
Châteaux of the
Loire Valley, this
World Heritage Site is noteworthy for its architectural heritage, in its historic towns but in particular its castles (
châteaux), such as the
Châteaux d'
Amboise, de Chambord, d'
Ussé, de
Villandry and
Chenonceau.
The most popular tourist sites include: (according to a 2003 ranking
[171] visitors per year):
Eiffel Tower (6.2 million), Louvre Museum (5.7 million), Palace of Versailles (2.8 million), Musée d'Orsay (2.1 million),
Arc de Triomphe (1.2 million),
Centre Pompidou (1.2 million),
Mont Saint-Michel (1 million), Château de Chambord (711,000),
Sainte-Chapelle (683,000),
Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg (549,000),
Puy de Dôme (500,000),
Musée Picasso (441,000),
Carcassonne (362,000).
Transport
A
TGV Duplex, which can reach a maximum speed of 320 km/h (198.84 mph).
The railway network of France, which as of 2008 stretches 29,473 kilometres (18,314 mi)
[172] is the second most extensive in Western Europe after that of Germany.
[173] It is operated by the
SNCF, and high-speed trains include the
Thalys, the
Eurostar and
TGV, which travels at 320 km/h (199 mph) in commercial use.
[174] The Eurostar, along with the
Eurotunnel Shuttle, connects with the United Kingdom through the
Channel Tunnel. Rail connections exist to all other neighbouring countries in Europe, except
Andorra. Intra-urban connections are also well developed with both
underground services and tramway services complementing bus services.
There are approximately 1,027,183 kilometres (638,262 mi) of
serviceable roadway in France, ranking it the most extensive network of
the European continent.
[175]
The Paris region is enveloped with the most dense network of roads and
highways that connect it with virtually all parts of the country. French
roads also handle substantial international traffic, connecting with
cities in neighbouring Belgium, Spain, Andorra, Monaco, Switzerland,
Germany and Italy. There is no annual registration fee or
road tax;
however, motorway usage is through tolls except in the vicinity of
large communes. The new car market is dominated by domestic brands such
as
Renault (27% of cars sold in France in 2003),
Peugeot (20.1%) and
Citroën (13.5%).
[176] Over 70% of new cars sold in 2004 had
diesel engines, far more than contained petrol or
LPG engines.
[177] France possesses the
Millau Viaduct, the world's tallest bridge,
[178] and has built many important bridges such as the
Pont de Normandie.
There are 475
airports in France.
[59] Charles de Gaulle Airport,
located in the vicinity of Paris, is the largest and busiest airport in
the country, handling the vast majority of popular and commercial
traffic and connecting Paris with virtually all major cities across the
world.
Air France
is the national carrier airline, although numerous private airline
companies provide domestic and international travel services. There are
ten major ports in France, the largest of which is in
Marseille,
[179] which also is the largest bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
[180][181] 12,261 kilometres (7,619 mi) of waterways traverse France including the
Canal du Midi which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean through the
Garonne river.
[59]
Demographics
Population density in the French Republic at the 1999 census.
With an estimated population of 66 million people as of July 2013, France is the
21st-most populous country in the world and the third-most populous in Europe.
[59] Although the
French people are historically of Celtic (Gallic and Breton), Latin,
Aquitanian, and Germanic (Frankish,
Alemannic,
Viking) origin, they are today a mixture of several other ethnic
groups, due mostly to large-scale immigration over the last century and a
half.
In 2004, the Institut Montaigne estimated that within Metropolitan
France, 51 million people were white (85% of the population), 6 million
were North African (10%), 2 million were black (3.5%), and 1 million
were Asian (1.5%).
[182][183]
A law originating from the 1789 revolution and reaffirmed in the 1958
French Constitution
makes it illegal for the French state to collect data on ethnicity and
ancestry, although some surveys, such as the TeO ("Trajectories and
origins") poll conducted jointly by
INED and
INSEE in 2008, are allowed to do so.
[184][185] It was estimated that 5 million people were of
Italian ancestry (the most numerous immigrant community), between 3 million
[186][187] and 6 million
[188] people are of
North African ancestry, 2.5 million people are of
Sub-Saharan African origin, 200,000 people are of
Turkish ancestry,
[189] and many more are of other
European ethnic ancestry, namely
Spanish,
Portuguese,
Polish, and
Greek.
[186][190][191]
Indeed, it is currently estimated that 40% of the French population
is descended at least partially from the different waves of immigration
the country has received since the early 20th century;
[192] between 1921 and 1935 alone, about 1.1 million net immigrants came to France.
[193] The next largest wave came in the 1960s, when around 1.6 million
pieds noirs returned to France following the independence of its North African possessions;
[194][195]
they were joined by numerous former colonial subjects from North and
West Africa, as well as numerous immigrants from Spain and Portugal.
France remains a major destination for immigrants, accepting about 200,000 legal immigrants annually.
[196] It is also Western Europe's leading recipient of
asylum seekers, with an estimated 50,000 applications in 2005 (a 15% decrease from 2004).
[197] The European Union allows free movement between the member states, although France established controls to curb
Eastern European migration, and immigration remains a contentious political issue.
In 2008, the French national institute of statistics
INSEE
estimated that the total number of foreign-born immigrants was around 5
million (8% of the population), while their French-born descendants
numbered 6.5 million, or 11% of the population. Thus, nearly a fifth of
the country's population were either first or second-generation
immigrants, more than 5 million of European origin and 4 million of
Maghrebi origin.
[198][199][200] In 2008, France granted citizenship to 137,000 persons, mostly to people from Morocco, Algeria and Turkey.
[201]
France is an outlier among developed countries in general, and
European countries in particular, in having a fairly high rate of
natural population growth: by birth rates alone, France was responsible
for almost all natural population growth in the European Union in 2006,
with the natural growth rate (excess of births over deaths) rising to
300,000.
[202] This was the highest rate since the end of the
baby boom in 1973, and coincides with the rise of the
total fertility rate from a nadir of 1.7 in 1994 to 2.0 in 2010.
[203][204] From 2006 to 2011 population growth was on average +0.6% per year.
[202] Immigrants are also major contributors to this trend; in 2010, 27% of newborns in metropolitan France had at least one
foreign-born
parent and 24% had at least one parent born outside of Europe (parents
born in overseas territories are considered as born in France).
[205]
France is a highly urbanized country, with its
largest cities (in terms of metropolitan area population) in 2011 being Paris (12,292,900 inh.),
Lyon (2,182,482),
Marseille (1,721,031),
Toulouse (1,250,251),
Lille (1,159,547),
Bordeaux (1,140,668),
Nice (1,003,947),
Nantes (884,275), and
Strasbourg (763,739).
Rural flight was a perennial political issue throughout most of the 20th century.
Language
France's legacy: a map of the
Francophone world
native language
administrative language
secondary or non-official language
francophone minorities
According to Article 2 of the Constitution, the official language of France is French,
[206] a
Romance language derived from
Latin. Since 1635, the
Académie française has been France's official authority on the French language, although its recommendations carry no legal power.
The French government does not regulate the choice of language in
publications by individuals but the use of French is required by law in
commercial and workplace communications. In addition to mandating the
use of French in the territory of the Republic, the French government
tries to promote French in the European Union and globally through
institutions such as
La Francophonie. The perceived threat from
anglicisation
has prompted efforts to safeguard the position of the French language
in France. Besides French, there exist 77 vernacular minority languages
of France, eight spoken in French metropolitan territory and 69 in the
French
overseas territories.
From the 17th to the mid-20th century, French served as the
pre-eminent international language of diplomacy and international
affairs as well as a
lingua franca among the educated classes of Europe.
[207]
The dominant position of French language in international affairs was
overtaken by English, since the emergence of the US as a major power.
[45][208][209]
Ironically, for most of the time in which French served as an
international lingua franca, it was not the native language of most
Frenchmen: a report in 1794 conducted by
Henri Grégoire
found that of the country's 25 million people, only three million spoke
French natively; the rest spoke one of the country's many regional
languages, such as
Alsatian,
Breton or
Occitan.
[210]
Through the expansion of public education, in which French was the sole
language of instruction, as well as other factors such as increased
urbanization and the rise of mass communication, French gradually came
to be adopted by virtually the entire population, a process not
completed until the 20th century.
As a result of France's extensive
colonial ambitions
between the 17th and 20th centuries, French was introduced to the
Americas, Africa, Polynesia, South-East Asia, and the Caribbean. French
is the second most studied foreign language in the world after English,
[211]
and is a lingua franca in some regions, notably in Africa. The legacy
of French as a living language outside Europe is mixed: it is nearly
extinct in some former French colonies (South-east Asia), while creoles
and pidgins based on French have emerged in the French departments in
the
West Indies and the South Pacific (
French Polynesia).
On the other hand, many former French colonies have adopted French as
an official language, and the total number of French speakers is
increasing, especially in Africa.
It is estimated that between 300 million
[212] and 500 million
[213] people worldwide can speak French, either as a
mother tongue or a
second language.
Religion
France is a
secular country, and
freedom of religion is a constitutional right. French religious policy is based on the concept of
laïcité, a strict
separation of church and state under which public life is kept completely secular.
Catholicism
has been the predominant religion in France for more than a millennium,
though it is not as actively practised today as it was. Among the
47,000 religious buildings in France, 94% are
Roman Catholic.
[215]
Whilst in 1965, 81% of the French declared themselves to be Catholics,
in 2009 this proportion was 64%. Moreover, whilst 27% of the French went
to Mass once a week or more in 1952, only 5% did so in 2006.
[216] The same survey found that
Protestants
accounted for 3% of the population, an increase from previous surveys,
and 5% adhered to other religions, with the remaining 28% stating they
had no religion.
[216] Evangelical Christianity may be the fastest growing religion in France.
[217]
The
French Revolution saw a radical shift in the status of the Catholic Church with the launch of a brutal
campaign of de-Christianization. After the back and forth of Catholic royal and secular republican governments over the 19th century,
laïcité was established with the
1905 law on the Separation of the Churches and the State.
[218]
According to a poll in January 2007,
[219]
only 5% of the French population attended church regularly (10% attend
church services regularly among the respondents who did identify
themselves as Catholics). The poll showed
[220] 51% identified as being Catholics, 31% identified as being agnostics or
atheists (another poll[221] sets the proportion of atheists equal to 27%),
10% identified as being from other religions or being without opinion,
4% identified as Muslim, 3% identified as Protestant, 1% identified as
Buddhist,
1% identified as Jewish. Meanwhile, an independent estimate by the
politologist Pierre Bréchon in 2009 concluded that the proportion of
Catholics had fallen to 42% while the number of atheists and agnostics
had risen to 50%.
[222]
Estimates of the number of
Muslims in France
vary widely. In 2003, the French Ministry of the Interior estimated the
total number of people of Muslim background to be between 5 and 6
million (8–10%).
[223][224]
According to the Pewforum, "In France, proponents of a 2004 law banning
the wearing of religious symbols in schools say it protects Muslim
girls from being forced to wear a headscarf, but the law also restricts
those who want to wear headscarves – or any other “conspicuous”
religious symbol, including large Christian crosses and Sikh turbans –
as an expression of their faith"
[225]
The current
Jewish community in France numbers around 600,000 according to the
World Jewish Congress and is the largest in Europe.
Since 1905 the French government has followed the principle of
laïcité,
in which it is prohibited from recognising any specific right to a
religious community (except for legacy statutes like that of military
chaplains and the
local law in Alsace-Moselle). Instead, it merely recognises
religious organisations,
according to formal legal criteria that do not address religious
doctrine. Conversely, religious organizations should refrain from
intervening in policy-making.
[226] Certain bodies of beliefs such as
Scientology,
Children of God, the
Unification Church, or the
Order of the Solar Temple are considered
cults ("
sectes" in French),
[227] and therefore do not have the same status as religions in France.
Secte is considered a pejorative term in France.
[228]
Health
The
French healthcare system was ranked first worldwide by the
World Health Organization in 1997
[230] and then again in 2000.
[231] Care is generally free for people affected by
chronic diseases (
affections de longues durées) such as cancer, AIDS or
Cystic Fibrosis. Average life expectancy at birth is 78 years for men and 85 years for women, one of the highest of the European Union.
[232] There are 3.22 physicians for every 1000 inhabitants in France,
[233] and average health care spending per capita was US$4,719 in 2008.
[234] As of 2007, approximately 140,000 inhabitants (0.4%) of France are living with HIV/AIDS.
[59]
Even if the
French have the reputation of being one of the thinnest peoples in developed countries,
[235][236][237][238][239][240] France—like other rich countries—faces an increasing and recent epidemic of
obesity, due mostly to the replacement of traditional healthy French cuisine by
junk food in French eating habits.
[235][236][241]
Nevertheless, the French obesity rate is far below that of the USA (for
instance, obesity rate in France is the same that the American once was
in the 1970s
[236]), and is still the lowest of Europe,
[238][241] but it is now regarded by the authorities as one of the main public health issues
[242] and is fiercely fought; rates of childhood obesity are slowing in France, while continuing to grow in other countries.
[243]
Education
In 1802,
Napoleon created the
lycée.
[244] Nevertheless it is
Jules Ferry
who is considered to be the father of the French modern school, which
is free, secular, and compulsory until the age of 13 since 1882
[245] (school attendance in France is now compulsory until the age of 16
[246]).
Nowadays, the schooling system in France is centralized, and is
composed of three stages, primary education, secondary education, and
higher education. The
Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the
OECD,
currently ranks France's education as the 25th best in the world, being
neither significantly higher nor lower than the OECD average.
[247] Primary and secondary education are predominantly public, run by the
Ministry of National Education.
Higher education in France is divided between
public universities and the prestigious and selective
Grandes écoles, such as
Science Po Paris for Political studies,
HEC Paris for Economics,
Polytechnique and the
École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris that produces high-profile engineers, or the
École nationale d'administration for careers in the great corps of the State. The
Grandes écoles have been criticised for alleged
elitism,
[248] nevertheless they have produced many if
not most of France's high-ranking civil servants, CEOs, and politicians.
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.
[249] 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.
The 43,180 buildings protected as historical monuments include mainly residences (many
castles, or
châteaux in French) and religious buildings (
cathedrals,
basilicas, churches, etc.), but also statutes, memorials and
gardens. The
UNESCO inscribed 38 sites in
France on the World Heritage List.
[250]
Art
The origins of French art were very much influenced by
Flemish art and by
Italian art at the time of the Renaissance.
Jean Fouquet,
the most famous medieval French painter, is said to have been the first
to travel to Italy and experience the Early Renaissance at first hand.
The Renaissance painting
School of Fontainebleau was directly inspired by Italian painters such as
Primaticcio and
Rosso Fiorentino, who both worked in France. Two of the most famous French artists of the time of
Baroque era,
Nicolas Poussin and
Claude Lorrain, lived in Italy.
The 17th century was the period when French painting became prominent
and individualized itself through classicism. Louis XIV's prime
minister
Jean-Baptiste Colbert founded in 1648 the
Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture to protect these artists, and in 1666 he created the still-active
French Academy in Rome to have direct relations with Italian artists.
French artists developed the
rococo style in the 18th century, as a more intimate imitation of old baroque style, the works of the court-endorsed artists
Antoine Watteau,
François Boucher and
Jean-Honoré Fragonard being the most representative in the country. The French Revolution brought great changes, as
Napoleon favoured artists of
neoclassic style such as
Jacques-Louis David and the highly influential
Académie des Beaux-Arts defined the style known as
Academism.
At this time France had become a centre of artistic creation, the first
half of the 19th century being dominated by two successive movements,
at first
Romanticism with
Théodore Géricault and
Eugène Delacroix, and
Realism with
Camille Corot,
Gustave Courbet and
Jean-François Millet, a style that eventually evolved into
Naturalism.
In the second part of the 19th century, France's influence over
painting became even more important, with the development of new styles
of painting such as
Impressionism and
Symbolism. The most famous impressionist painters of the period were
Camille Pissarro,
Édouard Manet,
Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and
Auguste Renoir.
[251] The second generation of impressionist-style painters,
Paul Cézanne,
Paul Gauguin,
Toulouse-Lautrec and
Georges Seurat, were also at the avant-garde of artistic evolutions,
[252] as well as the
fauvist artists Henri Matisse,
André Derain and
Maurice de Vlaminck.
[253][254]
At the beginning of 20th century, Cubism was developed by
Georges Braque and the Spanish painter
Pablo Picasso, living in Paris. Other foreign artists also settled and worked in or near Paris, such as
Vincent van Gogh,
Marc Chagall,
Amedeo Modigliani and
Wassily Kandinsky.
Many museums in France are entirely or partly devoted to sculptures
and painting works. A huge collection of old masterpieces created before
or during the 18th century are displayed in the state-owned
Musée du Louvre, such as
Mona Lisa, also known as La Joconde. While the
Louvre Palace has been for a long time a museum, the Musée d'Orsay was inaugurated in 1986 in the old railway station
Gare d'Orsay,
in a major reorganization of national art collections, to gather French
paintings from the second part of the 19th century (mainly
Impressionism and Fauvism movements).
[255][256]
Modern works are presented in the
Musée National d'Art Moderne, which moved in 1976 to the
Centre Georges Pompidou. These three state-owned museums welcome close to 17 million people a year.
[257] Other national museums hosting paintings include the
Grand Palais (1.3 million visitors in 2008), but there are also many museums owned by cities, the most visited being the
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (0.8 million entries in 2008), which hosts contemporary works.
[257]
Outside Paris, all the large cities have a Museum of Fine Arts with a
section dedicated to European and French painting. Some of the finest
collections are in
Lyon,
Lille,
Rouen,
Dijon,
Rennes and
Grenoble.
Architecture
The world's most visited paid monument,
[258] the
Eiffel Tower is an icon of both Paris and France.
During the Middle Ages, many fortified
castles were built by feudal nobles to mark their powers. Some French castles that survived are
Chinon,
Château d'Angers, the massive
Château de Vincennes and the so-called
Cathar castles. During this era, France had been using
Romanesque architecture like most of Western Europe. Some of the greatest examples of Romanesque churches in France are the
Saint Sernin Basilica in
Toulouse, the largest romanesque church in Europe,
[259] and the remains of the
Cluniac Abbey.
The
Gothic architecture, originally named
Opus Francigenum meaning « French work »,
[260] was born in
Île-de-France and was the first French style of architecture to be copied in all Europe.
[261] Northern France is the home of some of the most important Gothic
cathedrals and basilicas, the first of these being the
Saint Denis Basilica (used as the royal necropolis); other important French Gothic cathedrals are
Notre-Dame de Chartres and
Notre-Dame d'Amiens. The kings were crowned in another important Gothic church:
Notre-Dame de Reims.
[262] Aside from churches, Gothic Architecture had been used for many religious palaces, the most important one being the
Palais des Papes in Avignon.
The final victory in the Hundred Years' War marked an important stage
in the evolution of French architecture. It was the time of the
French Renaissance and several artists from Italy were invited to the French court; many residential palaces were built in the
Loire Valley. Such residential castles were the
Château de Chambord, the
Château de Chenonceau, or the
Château d'Amboise.
Following the renaissance and the end of the Middle Ages,
Baroque architecture
replaced the traditional Gothic style. However, in France, baroque
architecture found a greater success in the secular domain than in a
religious one.
[263] In the secular domain, the
Palace of Versailles has many baroque features.
Jules Hardouin Mansart,
who designed the extensions to Versailles, was one of the most
influential French architect of the baroque era; he is famous for his
dome at
Les Invalides.
[264] Some of the most impressive provincial baroque architecture is found in places that were not yet French such as the
Place Stanislas in
Nancy. On the military architectural side,
Vauban
designed some of the most efficient fortresses in Europe and became an
influential military architect; as a result, imitations of his works can
be found all over Europe, the Americas, Russia and Turkey.
[265][266]
After the Revolution, the
Republicans favoured
Neoclassicism although neoclassicism was introduced in France prior to the revolution with such building as the
Parisian Pantheon or the
Capitole de Toulouse. Built during the first French Empire, the
Arc de Triomphe and
Sainte Marie-Madeleine represent the best example of
Empire style architecture.
[267]
Under
Napoleon III, a new wave of urbanism and architecture was given birth; extravagant buildings such as the neo-baroque
Palais Garnier were built. The urban planning of the time was very organised and rigorous; for example,
Haussmann's renovation of Paris. The architecture associated to this era is named
Second Empire in English, the term being taken from the
Second French Empire. At this time there was a strong Gothic resurgence across Europe and in France; the associated architect was
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. In the late 19th century,
Gustave Eiffel designed many bridges, such as
Garabit viaduct, and remains one of the most influential bridge designers of his time, although he is best remembered for the iconic
Eiffel Tower.
In the 20th century, French-Swiss architect
Le Corbusier
designed several buildings in France. More recently, French architects
have combined both modern and old architectural styles. The
Louvre Pyramid
is an example of modern architecture added to an older building. The
most difficult buildings to integrate within French cities are
skyscrapers, as they are visible from afar. For instance, in Paris,
since 1977, new buildings had to be under 37 meters, or 121 feet.
[268] France's largest financial district is
La Defense, where a significant number of skyscrapers are located.
[269]
Other massive buildings that are a challenge to integrate into their
environment are large bridges; an example of the way this has been done
is the
Millau Viaduct. Some famous modern French architects include
Jean Nouvel,
Dominique Perrault,
Christian de Portzamparc or
Paul Andreu.
Literature
The earliest French literature dates from the
Middle Ages,
when what is now known as modern France did not have a single, uniform
language. There were several languages and dialects and writers used
their own spelling and grammar. Some authors of French mediaeval texts
are unknown, such as
Tristan and Iseult and
Lancelot-Grail. Other authors are known, for example
Chrétien de Troyes and
Duke William IX of Aquitaine, who wrote in
Occitan.
Much mediaeval French poetry and literature were inspired by the legends of the
Matter of France, such as
The Song of Roland and the various
chansons de geste. The
Roman de Renart, written in 1175 by Perrout de Saint Cloude, tells the story of the mediaeval character
Reynard ('the Fox') and is another example of early French writing.
An important 16th-century writer was
François Rabelais, whose novel
Gargantua and Pantagruel has remained famous and appreciated until now.
Michel de Montaigne was the other major figure of the French literature during that century. His most famous work,
Essais, created the literary genre of the essay.
[272] French poetry during that century was embodied by
Pierre de Ronsard and
Joachim du Bellay. Both writers founded the
La Pléiade literary movement.
During the 17th century,
Madame de La Fayette published anonymously
La Princesse de Clèves, a novel that is considered to be one of the very first
psychological novels of all times.
[273] Jean de La Fontaine is one of the most famous
fabulist of that time, as he wrote hundreds of fables, some being far more famous than others, such as
The Ant and the Grasshopper. Generations of French pupils had to learn his fables, that were seen as helping teaching
wisdom and
common sense to the young people. Some of his verses have entered the popular language to become proverbs.
[274]
Jean Racine, whose incredible mastery of the
alexandrine and of the French language has been praised for centuries, created plays such as
Phèdre or
Britannicus. He is, along with
Pierre Corneille (
Le Cid) and Molière, considered as one of the three great dramatists of the France's
golden age. Molière, who is deemed to be one of the greatest masters of comedy of the
Western literature,
[275] wrote
dozens of plays, including
Le Misanthrope,
L'Avare,
Le Malade imaginaire, and
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. His plays have been so popular around the world that French language is sometimes dubbed as "the language of Molière" (
la langue de Molière),
[276] just like English is considered as "the language of
Shakespeare".
French literature and poetry flourished even more in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Denis Diderot's best-known works are
Jacques the Fatalist and
Rameau's Nephew. He is however best known for being the main redactor of the
Encyclopédie,
whose aim was to sum up all the knowledge of his century (in fields
such as arts, sciences, languages, philosophy) and to present them to
the people, in order to fight ignorance and
obscurantism. During that same century,
Charles Perrault was a prolific writer of famous children's fairy tales including
Puss in Boots,
Cinderella,
Sleeping Beauty and
Bluebeard. At the start of the 19th century,
symbolist poetry was an important movement in French literature, with poets such as Charles Baudelaire,
Paul Verlaine and
Stéphane Mallarmé.
[277]
The 19th century saw the writings of many renowned French authors.
Victor Hugo is sometimes seen as "the greatest French writer of all
times"
[271] for excelling in all
literary genres. The preface of his play
Cromwell is considered to be the manifesto of the
Romantic movement.
Les Contemplations and
La Légende des siècles are considered as "poetic masterpieces",
[278] Hugo's verse having been compared to that of Shakespeare,
Dante and
Homer.
[278] His novel
Les Misérables is widely seen as one of the greatest novel ever written
[279] and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame has remained immensely popular.
Other major authors of that century include
Alexandre Dumas (
The Three Musketeers and
The Count of Monte-Cristo),
Jules Verne (
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea),
Émile Zola (
Les Rougon-Macquart),
Honoré de Balzac (
La Comédie humaine),
Guy de Maupassant,
Théophile Gautier and
Stendhal (
The Red and the Black,
The Charterhouse of Parma), whose works are amongst the most well known in France and the world.
The
Prix Goncourt is a French literary prize first awarded in 1903.
[280] Important writers of the 20th century include
Marcel Proust,
Louis-Ferdinand Céline,
Albert Camus, and
Jean-Paul Sartre.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote
Little Prince which has remained popular for decades with children and adults around the world.
[281] As of 2010, French authors had more
Literature Nobel Prizes than
those of any other nation.
[282]
Philosophy
Medieval philosophy was dominated by
Scholasticism until the emergence of
Humanism in the Renaissance.
Modern philosophy began in France in the 17th century with the philosophy of
René Descartes,
Blaise Pascal, and
Nicolas Malebranche. Descartes revitalised
Western philosophy, which had been declined after the Greek and Roman eras.
[283] His
Meditations on First Philosophy changed the primary object of philosophical thought and raised some of the most fundamental problems for foreigners such as
Spinoza,
Leibniz,
Hume,
Berkeley, and
Kant.
During the 18th century, French philosophers produced one of the most important works of the
Age of Enlightenment. In
The Spirit of the Laws,
Baron de Montesquieu theorized the principle of
separation of powers, which has been implemented in all
liberal democracies since
it was first applied in the United States. In
The Social Contract,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau openly criticized the European
divine right monarchies and strongly affirmed the principle of the
sovereignty of the people.
Voltaire
came to embody the Enlightenment with his defence of civil liberties,
such as the right to a free trial and freedom of religion.
19th-century French thought was targeted at responding to the social
malaise following the French Revolution. Rationalist philosophers such
as
Victor Cousin and
Auguste Comte, who called for a new social doctrine, were opposed by reactionnary thinkers such as
Joseph de Maistre,
Louis de Bonald and
Lamennais, who blamed the rationalist rejection of traditional order. De Maistre is considered, together with the Englishman
Edmund Burke, one of the founders of European conservatism, while Comte is regarded as the founder of
positivism and
sociology.
In the early 20th century, French
spiritualist thinkers such as
Maine de Biran,
Henri Bergson and
Louis Lavelle influenced Anglo-Saxon thought, including the Americans
Charles Sanders Peirce and
William James, and the Englishman
Alfred North Whitehead. In the late 20th century, partly influenced by German
phenomenology and
existentialism,
postmodern philosophy began in France, with notable
post-structuralist thinkers including
Jean-François Lyotard,
Jean Baudrillard,
Jacques Derrida,
Jacques Lacan,
Michel Foucault and
Gilles Deleuze.
Sciences
Since the
Middle Ages, France has been a major contributor to scientific achievement . Around the beginning of the 11th century
Pope Sylvester II reintroduced the
abacus and
armillary sphere, and introduced
Arabic numerals and
clocks to northern and western Europe.
[284] The
University of Paris, founded in the mid-12th century, is still one of the most important universities in the Western world.
[285]
In the 17th century,
René Descartes defined a
method for the acquisition of scientific knowledge, while
Blaise Pascal became famous for his work on
probability and
fluid mechanics. They were both key figures of the
Scientific revolution which erupted in Europe during this period. The
Academy of Sciences was founded by
Louis XIV to encourage and protect the spirit of
French scientific research. It was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is one of the earliest
academies of sciences.
The
Age of Enlightenment was marked by the work of biologist
Buffon and chemist
Lavoisier, who discovered the role of
oxygen in
combustion, while
Diderot and
D'Alembert published the
Encyclopédie which aimed to give access to "useful knowledge" to the people, a knowledge that they can apply to their everyday life.
[286]
With the
Industrial Revolution, the 19th century saw spectacular scientific developments in France with scientists such as
Augustin Fresnel, founder of modern
optics,
Sadi Carnot who laid the foundations of
thermodynamics, or
Louis Pasteur, a pioneer of
microbiology. Other eminent French scientists of the 19th century have their
names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Famous French scientists of the 20th century include the mathematician and physicist
Henri Poincaré, physicists
Henri Becquerel,
Pierre and
Marie Curie, remained famous for their work on
radioactivity, the physicist
Paul Langevin or virologist
Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of
HIV AIDS.
As of 2012,
65 French people have been awarded a
Nobel Prize[287] and 11 have received the
Fields Medal.
[288]
Music
France has a long and varied musical history. It experienced a golden
age in the 17th century thanks to Louis XIV, who employed several
musicians and composers in the royal court. The most renowned composers
of this period include
Marc-Antoine Charpentier,
François Couperin,
Michel-Richard Delalande,
Jean-Baptiste Lully and
Marin Marais,
all of them composers at the court. After the death of the "Roi
Soleil", French musical creation lost dynamism, but in the next century
the music of
Jean-Philippe Rameau reached some prestige, and today he is still one of the most renowned French composers.
French classical music knew a revival in the 19th and 20th century,
at the end of the romantic movement, at first with opera composers
Hector Berlioz,
Georges Bizet,
Gabriel Fauré,
Charles Gounod,
Jacques Offenbach,
Édouard Lalo,
Jules Massenet and
Camille Saint-Saëns. This period was a golden age for operas, being popular in the country the
opéra bouffon, the
opera-ballet and the
opéra comique genres. Later came precursors of modern classical music
Érik Satie,
Francis Poulenc, and above all
Maurice Ravel and
Claude Debussy, who invented new musical forms.
[290][291][292][293] More recently, at the middle of the 20th century,
Maurice Ohana,
Pierre Schaeffer and
Pierre Boulez contributed to the evolutions of
contemporary classical music.
[294]
French music then followed the rapid emergence of pop and rock music
at the middle of the 20th century. Although English-speaking creations
achieved popularity in the country,
French pop music, known as
chanson française, has also remained very popular. Among the most important French artists of the century are
Édith Piaf,
Georges Brassens,
Léo Ferré,
Charles Aznavour and
Serge Gainsbourg. Although there are very few rock bands in France compared to English-speaking countries,
[295] bands such as
Noir Désir,
Mano Negra,
Niagara,
Les Rita Mitsouko and more recently
Superbus,
Phoenix and
Gojira[296] have reached worldwide popularity.
Other French artists with international careers have been popular in several countries, for example female singers
Dalida,
Mireille Mathieu and
Mylène Farmer,
[296] electronic music pioneers
Jean-Michel Jarre,
Laurent Garnier and
Bob Sinclar, and later
Martin Solveig and
David Guetta. In the 1990s and 2000s (decade), electronic duos
Daft Punk,
Justice and
Air also reached worldwide popularity and contributed to the reputation of modern electronic music in the world.
[296][297][298]
Among current musical events and institutions in France, many are
dedicated to classical music and operas. The most prestigious
institutions are the state-owned
Paris National Opera (with its two sites
Palais Garnier and
Opéra Bastille), the
Opéra National de Lyon, the
Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the
Théâtre du Capitole in
Toulouse and the
Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. As for music festivals, there are several events organized, the most popular being the
Eurockéennes and
Rock en Seine. The
Fête de la Musique, imitated by many foreign cities, was first launched by the French government in 1982.
[299][300] Major music halls and venues in France include
Le Zénith sites present in many cities and other places in Paris (
Paris Olympia,
Théâtre Mogador,
Élysée Montmartre, etc.).
Cinema
France has historical and strong links with
cinema, with two
Frenchmen, Auguste and Louis Lumière (known as the
Lumière Brothers) having created cinema in 1895.
[304] France remains a leader in filmmaking, as of 2006 producing more films than any other European country.
[305] The nation also hosts the
Cannes Festival, one of the most important and famous film festivals in the world.
[306][307]
Although the French film market is dominated by
Hollywood,
France is the only nation in the world where American films make up the
smallest share of total film revenues, at 50%, compared with 77% in
Germany and 69% in Japan.
[308]
French films account for 35% of the total film revenues of France,
which is the highest percentage of national film revenues in the
developed world outside the United States, compared to 14% in Spain and
8% in the UK.
[308]
Until recently, France had for centuries been the cultural center of the world,
[207] although its dominant position has been surpassed by the
United States. Subsequently, France takes steps in protecting and promoting its culture, becoming a leading advocate of the
cultural exception.
[309]
The nation succeeded in convincing all EU members to refuse to include
culture and audiovisuals in the list of liberalized sectors of the WTO
in 1993.
[310]
Moreover, this decision was confirmed in a voting in the
UNESCO
in 2005, and the principle of "cultural exception" won an overwhelming
victory: 198 countries voted for it, only 2 countries, the U.S and
Israel, voted against it.
[311]
Fashion
Fashion has been an important industry and cultural export of France
since the 17th century, and modern "haute couture" originated in Paris
in the 1860s. Today, Paris, along with London, Milan, and New York City,
is considered one of the world's fashion capitals, and the city is home
or headquarters to many of the premier fashion houses. The expression
Haute couture is, in France, a legally protected name, guaranteeing certain quality standards.
The association of France with fashion and style (
French:
la mode) dates largely to the reign of
Louis XIV[312]
when the luxury goods industries in France came increasingly under
royal control and the French royal court became, arguably, the arbiter
of taste and style in Europe. But France renewed its dominance of the
high fashion (
French:
couture or haute couture) industry in the years 1860–1960 through the establishing of the great
couturier houses such as Chanel,
Dior, and
Givenchy. The French perfume industry is world leader in its sector and is centered around the town of
Grasse.
[313]
In the 1960s, the elitist "Haute couture" came under criticism from France's
youth culture. In 1966, the designer
Yves Saint Laurent broke with established Haute Couture norms by launching a
prêt-à-porter
("ready to wear") line and expanding French fashion into mass
manufacturing. With a greater focus on marketing and manufacturing, new
trends were established by
Sonia Rykiel,
Thierry Mugler,
Claude Montana,
Jean-Paul Gaultier and
Christian Lacroix
in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1990s saw a conglomeration of many French
couture houses under luxury giants and multinationals such as
LVMH.
Media
Compared to other developed countries, the French do not spend much
time reading newspapers, due to the popularity of broadcast media.
Best-selling daily national newspapers in France are
Le Monde and
Le Figaro, with around 300,000 copies sold daily, but also
L'Équipe, dedicated to sports coverage.
[314] In the past years, free dailies made a breakthrough, with
Metro,
20 Minutes and
Direct Plus distributed at more than 650,000 copies respectively.
[315] However, the widest circulations are reached by regional daily
Ouest France with more than 750,000 copies sold, and the 50 other regional papers have also high sales.
[316][317]
The sector of weekly magazines is stronger and diversified with more
than 400 specialized weekly magazines published in the country.
[318]
The most influential news magazine are left-wing
Le Nouvel Observateur, centrist
L'Express and right-wing
Le Point (more than 400.000 copies),
[319] but the highest circulation for weeklies is reached by TV magazines and by women’s magazines, among them
Marie Claire and
ELLE, which have foreign versions. Influential weeklies also include investigative and satirical papers
Le Canard Enchaîné and
Charlie Hebdo, as well as
Paris Match. Like in most industrialized nations, the print media have been affected by a
severe crisis
in the past decade. In 2008, the government have launched a major
initiative to help the sector reform to be financially independent,
[320][321] but in 2009 it had to give 600.000 euros to help the print media cope with the
economic crisis, in addition to existing subsidies.
[322]
In 1974, after years of centralized monopoly on radio and television, the governmental agency
ORTF was split into several national institutions, but the three already-existing TV channels and four national radio stations
[323][324]
remained under state-control. It was only in 1981 that the government
allowed free broadcasting in the territory, ending state monopoly on
radio.
[324]
French television was partly liberalized in the next two decade with
the creation of several commercial channels, mainly thanks to cable and
satellite television. In 2005 the national service
Télévision Numérique Terrestre introduced digital television all over the territory, allowing the creation of other channels.
The four existing national channels are now owned by state-owned consortium
France Télévisions, while public broadcasting group
Radio France run five national radio stations. Among these public media are
Radio France Internationale, which broadcasts programs in French all over the world, and Franco-German TV channel
TV5 Monde. In 2006, the government created global news channel
France 24. Long-established TV channels
TF1 (privatized in 1987),
France 2 and
France 3 have the highest shares, while radio stations
RTL,
Europe 1 and state-owned
France Inter are the least listened to.
Society
According to a BBC poll in 2010, based on 29,977 responses in 28
countries, France is globally seen as a positive influence in the
world's affairs: 49% have a positive view of the country's influence,
whereas 19% have a negative view.
[325][326] The
Nation Brand Index of 2008 suggested that France has the second best international reputation, only behind
Germany.
[327]
According to a poll in 2011, the French were found to have the
highest level of religious tolerance and to be the country where the
highest proportion of the population defines its identity primarily in
term of nationality and not religion.
[328] 69% of French have a favourable view of the US, making France one of the most pro-American countries in the world.
[329]
In January 2010, the
magazine International Living ranked France as "best country to live in", ahead of 193 other countries, for the fifth year running.
[330][331]
The French Revolution continues to permeate the country's
collective memory. The
tricolour flag, the anthem "
La Marseillaise", and the motto
Liberté, egalité, fraternité, defined in Title 1 of the
Constitution as national symbols, all emerged during the cultural ferment of the early revolution, along with
Marianne, a common
national personification. In addition,
Bastille Day, the national holiday, commemorates the
storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789.
[332]
A common and traditional symbol of the French people is the
Gallic rooster. Its origins date back to Antiquity, since the Latin word Gallus meant both "
rooster"
and "inhabitant of Gaul". Then this figure gradually became the most
widely shared representation of the French, used by French monarchs,
then by the Revolution and under the successive republican regimes as
representation of the national identity, used for some stamps and coins.
[333]
Gastronomy
Foie gras with mustard seeds and green onions in duck
jus. Foie gras belongs to the protected gastronomical heritage of France.
[334]
French cuisine is renowned for being one of the finest in the world.
[335][336] French cuisine is extremely diverse and has exerted a major influence on other western cuisines.
[337]
According to the regions, traditional recipes are different, the North
of the country prefers to use butter as the preferred fat for cooking,
whereas
olive oil is more commonly used in the South.
[338]
Moreover, each region of France has iconic traditional specialities :
Cassoulet in the Southwest,
Choucroute in Alsace,
Quiche in the
Lorraine region,
Beef bourguignon in the
Bourgogne,
provençal Tapenade, etc. France's most renowned products are
wines,
[339] including Champagne,
Bordeaux,
Bourgogne, and
Beaujolais as well as a large variety of different
cheeses, such as
Camembert,
Roquefort and
Brie. There are more than 400 different varieties.
[340][341]
French cuisine is also regarded as a key element of the
quality of life and the attractiveness of France.
[331] A French publication, the
Michelin guide,
had by 2006 awarded 620 stars to French restaurants, at that time more
than any other country, although the guide also inspects more
restaurants in France than in any other country (by 2010, Japan was
awarded as many Michelin stars as France, despite having half the number
of Michelin inspectors working there).
[342][343]
Sports
Popular sports played in France include
football,
judo, tennis
[345] and
basketball.
[346] France has hosted events such as the
1938 and
1998 FIFA World Cups,
[347] and the
2007 Rugby World Cup.
[348] Stade de France in
Saint-Denis
is France's largest stadium and was the venue for the 1998 FIFA World
Cup and 2007 Rugby World Cup finals. France hosts the annual
Tour de France, the most famous
road bicycle race in the world.
[349][350] France is famous for its
24 Hours of Le Mans sports car endurance race.
[351] Several major tennis tournaments take place in France, including the
Paris Masters and the French Open, one of the four
Grand Slam tournaments. French
martial arts include
Savate and
Fencing.
France has a close association with the Modern Olympic Games; it was a French aristocrat, Baron
Pierre de Coubertin, who suggested the Games' revival, at the end of the 19th century.
[352][353] After
Athens was awarded the first Games, in reference to the Olympics' Greek origins, Paris hosted the second Games
in 1900.
[354] Paris was the first home of the
International Olympic Committee, before it moved to
Lausanne.
[355] Since 1900, France has hosted the Olympics on 4 further occasions: the
1924 Summer Olympics, again in Paris
[353] and three
Winter Games (
1924 in
Chamonix,
1968 in
Grenoble and
1992 in
Albertville).
[353]
Both the
national football team and the
national rugby union team are nicknamed “
Les Bleus”
in reference to the team’s shirt color as well as the national French
tricolor flag. Football is the most popular sport in France, with over
1,800,000 registered players, and over 18,000 registered clubs.
[356] The football team is among the most successful in the world, particularly at the start of the 21st century, with one
FIFA World Cup victory in 1998,
[357] one FIFA World Cup second place in 2006,
[358] and two
UEFA European Championships in
1984[359] and
2000.
[360] The top national football club competition is
Ligue 1. France has produced some of the greatest players in the world, including three time
FIFA World Player of the Year Zinedine Zidane, three time
Ballon d'Or recipient
Michel Platini, record holder for most goals scored at a World Cup
Just Fontaine, first football player to receive the
Légion d'honneur Raymond Kopa, and the all-time leading goalscorer for the French national team
Thierry Henry.
Rugby union is popular, particularly in Paris and the southwest of France.
[361] The national rugby union team has competed at every
Rugby World Cup, and takes part in the annual
Six Nations Championship. Stemming from a
strong domestic league, the French rugby team has won 16 Six Nations Championships, including 8
grand slams; and has reached the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup 6 times and the final 3 times.
Rugby league in France is a sport that is most popular in the south, in cities such as
Perpignan and
Toulouse. The
Catalans Dragons currently play in the
Super League, which is the top tier rugby league competition in Europe. The
Elite One Championship is the professional competition for rugby league clubs in France.
In recent decades, France has produced world-elite basketball players, most notably
Tony Parker. The
French National Basketball Team won gold at the
FIBA EuroBasket 2013. The national team has won two Olympic Silver Medals: in
2000 and
1948.
