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France
France, major industrialized nation in western Europe. France is the third largest country in Europe,
after Russia and Ukraine, and the fourth most populous. Officially the French Republic (République
Française), the nation includes ten overseas possessions, most of them remnants of France’s former
colonial empire. Paris is the nation’s capital and largest city.
Roughly hexagonal in shape, France shares boundaries with Belgium and Luxembourg to the
northeast; Germany, Switzerland, and Italy to the east; and Spain and Andorra to the southwest. In
the northwest, France is bounded by the English Channel. At the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of
the channel, France and England are separated by just 34 km (21 mi). France faces three major seas:
the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the North Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the
southeast.
France is a nation of varied landscapes, ranging from coastal lowlands and broad plains in the north,
to hilly uplands in south central France, to lush valleys and towering, snow-capped Alps in the east.
Mountainous and hilly areas lie on nearly all of France’s borders, creating a series of natural
boundaries for the country. Only the nation’s northeastern border is largely unprotected. Several
major rivers drain France, including the Seine, Loire, Garonne, and Rhône.
France is highly urbanized. Three-quarters of the population lives in cities, including more than ten
million people in the metropolitan area of Paris, the most densely populated region in France. The
French are among the healthiest, wealthiest, and best-educated people in the world. A comprehensive
social welfare system is in place, guaranteeing all citizens a minimal standard of living and health
care. Most citizens speak French, the principal language. The dominant religion is Roman Catholicism.
I INTRODUCTION
France: Flag and Anthem
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Page 1France
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French culture, especially French art and literature, has profoundly influenced the Western world.
Paris, one of the world’s great intellectual capitals, has been at the center of Western cultural life since
the Middle Ages. World-renowned French cultural figures include philosophers, writers, painters,
sculptors, architects, composers, playwrights, and film directors. French literary and artistic
contributions during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment deeply influenced the path of
Western cultural development. Impressionism, an innovative painting movement in the late 19th
century, originated in France. During the 20th century, French writers and artists were at the center of
movements such as dada, surrealism, existentialism, and the theater of the absurd. France has a long
reputation for excellence in cuisine, and French fashion styles are imitated throughout the world.
The economy of France is large, diverse, and one of the most highly developed in the European Union
(EU). It is a leading manufacturing nation, producing goods such as automobiles, electrical equipment,
machine tools, and chemicals. France is the EU’s most important agricultural nation—shipping cereals,
wine, cheese, and other agricultural products to the rest of Europe and the world. In recent decades
service industries, including banking, retail and wholesale trade, communications, health care, and
tourism, have come to dominate the French economy.
France is one of the oldest states in the Western world and its history is rich and varied. Little is
known of France’s earliest inhabitants. Cave paintings in southwestern France dated to about 15,000
BC reveal the existence of a sophisticated and creative people (see Paleolithic Art). By the 8th century
Village of the Massif Central
Uzerche is perched on a hill of the Massif Central, a large plateau that covers about 91,000 square kilometers (about 35,135 square miles) of south central France. The region is hilly, with deep river valleys. The Dordogne River, regarded by many people as the most beautiful in France, runs through the region en route to the Atlantic Ocean. Also found in the region are the famous Grotte de Lascaux and the Grotte du Pech-Merle, underground chambers in which magnificent Paleolithic Age paintings of animals decorate the walls.
Photo Researchers, Inc./J.M. Charles-Rapho
Page 2France
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BC hordes of Celts, among other tribes, began entering and settling in France. A Celtic word, Gaul, was
a name used in antiquity for the region of France. The ancient Romans incorporated France in the 1st
century BC and ruled the region until the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century AD.
After the fall of Rome, a series of royal dynasties ruled much of what would become France. Royal
power declined in the Middle Ages with the spread of feudalism, which distributed power among local
rulers. From the 14th to 18th century the power of the monarchy grew steadily as French kings and
their ministers built a centralized bureaucracy and a large standing army. The French Revolution in
1789 toppled the monarchy, ushering in decades of political instability. Despite this turmoil, the
revolution, and the subsequent rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, established a uniform administrative state
in France.
French strength and prosperity grew during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and France built a
worldwide colonial empire rivaling that of the United Kingdom. Much of World War I (1914-1918) was
fought on French soil, and the nation suffered heavy losses. During World War II (1939-1945),
Germany occupied northern France while a collaborationist regime was established at Vichy in central
France. After the war France rebuilt its shattered economy and emerged as one of the world’s major
industrial countries. Growing resistance to French rule in the colonies increased in the postwar period,
triggering a wave of decolonization that stripped France of most of its overseas possessions.
In 1958 an uprising in Algeria, then a French colony, threatened France with civil war. The French
government surrendered dictatorial power to Charles de Gaulle, a resistance leader during World War
II, and invited de Gaulle to form a new government. French voters approved a new constitution by
popular referendum that strengthened the powers of the presidency, and de Gaulle became the new
government’s first president. De Gaulle viewed France as a great power, and he followed an
independent stance in foreign affairs, a policy that helped boost France’s international influence. In
recent decades, France, working closely with Germany, has played a leading role in the move toward
greater European economic and political integration.
Geography of France
II LAND AND RESOURCES
Area 543,965 sq km 210,026 sq mi
Coastline 3,427 km 2,129 mi
Highest point Mont Blanc 4,810 m/15,782 ft
Page 3France
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The total area of France is 543,965 sq km (210,026 sq mi), including inland waters. The
Mediterranean isle of Corsica is considered part of the total area of metropolitan France. France has an
extreme length from north to south of about 965 km (600 mi) and maximum width from east to west
of about 935 km (580 mi). The country spans the breadth of the European peninsula, from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, and stretches from the coastal lowlands of the Great European Plain
to the Alps.
France has three distinctive types of surface features—rolling plains, uplands, and high mountains.
Nearly two-thirds of France consists of lands that are less than 250 m (820 ft) above sea level in
elevation. Despite the existence of several uplands in the French interior, there is relatively easy
access from lowland to lowland. Most of the high mountains are located on France’s borders.
French Alps
The Alps make up the largest mountain system in Europe. They extend from the Gulf of Genoa to the Danube River near Vienna. The craggy peaks of the French Alps, pictured here, provide some of the world’s best skiing.
A Natural Regions
A1 Plains
ALLSTOCK, INC./Ken Graham
Page 4France
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The north and west of France are dominated by segments of the Great European Plain, a vast lowland.
This plain includes the Basin of Aquitaine in the southwest, which stretches from the foothills of the
Pyrenees, near the border with Spain, to west central France. The basin narrows midway up the coast
where it meets the expansive Paris Basin in north central France, the nation’s heartland. Here the
landscape consists mainly of plains separated by low plateaus. The plateaus typically rise in a series of
concentric, outward-facing escarpments (cliffs). The escarpments resemble saucers of progressively
smaller size stacked atop one another, with the city of Paris in the middle of the smallest, central
saucer. These escarpments, particularly those facing east, have been the sites of many battles, as
France defended itself against invasions.
In both the Paris and Aquitaine basins, fertile soils derived from limestone and wind-deposited dust,
called loess, have supported prosperous agriculture since ancient times. Other lowlands in France are
scattered and relatively small. They include the Alsace Plain in the east, bordering Germany, the valley
of the Rhône River in the southeast, and the Languedoc Plain along the Mediterranean coast.
France contains several regions of uplands, the worn down remains of ancient mountain systems. The
largest of these is the vast plateau of the Massif Central, in south central France. A region of rounded
hills, the Massif Central has abundant extinct volcanoes, remnants of the powerful geologic pressures
that uplifted the region. Deep river gorges cut many parts of the Massif Central. The steepest areas of
the region are to the east, nearest the Alps. To the west and north the Massif Central gradually
descends to meet the Aquitaine and Paris basins.
The Armorican Massif in the far northwest forms the peninsula of Brittany, a landform that juts into
the Atlantic Ocean. Less elevated than the Massif Central, the Armorican Massif is still deeply scored
by stream valleys and has comparatively little level land. Steep slopes and poor soils restrict
agriculture in much of the region. Other uplands include the Vosges and Ardennes mountain ranges in
the northeast, where rounded and wooded hills rise above deep valleys.
Lavender Cultivation in France
Lavender is commonly grown in France. It is a shrubby Mediterranean herb with narrow leaves and small lilac-purple flowers containing oil of lavender. Lavender is used to make perfume, and dried flowers of lavender are used to make sachets for perfuming clothing and linens.
A2 Uplands
Denis Tremblay Labtex Inc.
Page 5France
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Imposing mountains form the southeastern and southwestern borders of France. These mountains,
created by the ongoing collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates, are younger than the
eroded mountain systems of the French interior (see Plate Tectonics).
The high, rugged mountains of the Alps border southeastern France. Mont Blanc, in the French Alps, is
one of the highest points in Europe at 4,807 m (15,771 ft). Rivers carved deep valleys in the Alps, and
Ice Age glaciers gouged the valleys wider and deeper. These broad valleys offer a number of low
passes that permit relatively easy travel through the mountains.
A3 Mountains
Mont Blanc
The northwestern slope of Mont Blanc dominates the view from the town of Sallanches in eastern France’s Haute-Savoie department. Located on the French-Italian border, Mont Blanc is the loftiest peak in the Alps and the highest point in western Europe.
Scope/Andre Fournier
Page 6France
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The Pyrenees, a mountain range of fairly uniform height, lie along the border with Spain. The highest
peak in the Pyrenees is Pic de Vignemale, at 3,298 m (10,820 ft). The Pyrenees were not heavily
glaciated during the Ice Age and are devoid of the large lakes, pleasant valleys, and serrated ridges
characteristic of the Alps. Their high, difficult, and infrequent passes establish a true barrier and have
historically served to limit traffic between France and Spain.
The Jura Mountains form the boundary with Switzerland to the east. Although less rugged than the
Alps, the Jura Mountains were created at the same time and are related geologically to the Alps.
Pyrenees Mountains
The Pyrenees extend along the entire southern border of France from the Mediterranean Sea to the Bay of Biscay. Their rugged peaks and high altitudes form a natural border. Pic de Vignemale, whose summit reaches an altitude of 3298 m (10,820 ft), is the highest peak in the French Pyrenees.
B Rivers
Photo Researchers, Inc./Francois Gohier
Page 7France
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France has several major rivers. The Seine, in northern France, drains much of the Paris Basin and
flows northwest into the Atlantic Ocean. The Seine’s even flow is well suited to navigation, and the
river is an important water route to and from Paris. The Loire rises in the Massif Central, flows west
across the southern portion of the Paris Basin, and enters the Atlantic Ocean at the Bay of Biscay. The
Loire’s water level fluctuates greatly, and floods are frequent. Stretching more than 1,000 km (620
mi), the Loire is the longest river in France. The Garonne rises in the Pyrenees and flows north,
draining much of the Aquitane Basin. The Dordogne rises in the Massif Central and flows west, joining
the Garonne to form the Gironde estuary, just before the Atlantic. These four great rivers all lie
entirely within French territory.
Seine River, France
Flowing through northern France, the Seine River passes through such cities as Paris and Rouen before flowing into the English Channel at Le Havre. Shown here overlooking the Seine are the ruins of 12th-century Château Gaillard at Les Andelys.
Scope/Noel Hautemaniere
Page 8France
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Major rivers with some sources outside of France include the Rhône, the great river of the
Mediterranean region of France. The Rhône rises in Switzerland, joins the Saône at Lyon, and crosses
the Languedoc Plain en route to the Mediterranean Sea. Draining the French Alps region, the Rhône is
the largest river in France measured in terms of volume of discharge. The Rhine, which is one of the
world’s most important inland waterways, rises in the Swiss Alps and flows northwest, forming part of
France’s eastern boundary. The river then travels through Germany and The Netherlands before
entering the North Sea. The Meuse traverses northeastern France and passes through Belgium and
The Netherlands before also emptying into the North Sea.
An extensive network of canals connects the major rivers with each other and with other river and
canal systems. Nearly all of France’s more than 200 streams are commercially navigable for varying
distances. France has only a few lakes. Lake Geneva (also known as Lake Leman), situated along the
Franco-Swiss border, lies mainly in Switzerland.
Rhône River
The principal river in southeastern France, the Rhône is navigable between Lyon in east central France and Marseille, a major port on the Mediterranean Sea. The Rhône is also connected via waterways and canals to major northern rivers, including the Rhine, the Seine, and the Loire. Shown here is the Rhône at Saint Vallier.
C Coastline
Scope/Jacques Guillard
Page 9France
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The coastline of mainland France, about 3,430-km (2,130-mi) long, is highly varied. A marshy lowland
prevails along the northern coast, and many areas must be artificially drained. Moving west, along the
English Channel, these lowlands give way to the cliffs of Normandy and then to the rugged, ragged
coast of Brittany. Stretching south of Brittany, a low, sandy coast meets the Atlantic Ocean.
Normandy Cliffs
The white cliffs of Aval, in the Normandy region of northern France, rise above the English Channel.
FPG International, LLC/David Noble
Page 10France
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The Mediterranean coast is equally varied. In the Riviera district to the east, the Maritime Alps plunge
abruptly into the sea, forming one of the most scenic areas of Europe. West of the Riviera, the
coastline gives way to the large, marshy delta of the Rhône. West of the Rhône delta, a coastal
lowland dotted with wetlands stretches all the way to the Pyrenees.
The French coast has relatively few natural harbors. The northern coast, along the English Channel
and the North Sea, is broken by a number of promontories, river estuaries, and minor indentations,
few of which provide safe anchorages. The harbor at Le Havre, at the mouth of the Seine, is the one
outstanding exception. A number of harbors in the north have been formed by the construction of
breakwaters, including the seaport at Cherbourg. Along the Atlantic coast, important harbors are at
Brest, Lorient, and Saint-Nazaire. The best natural harbors in France are on the Mediterranean and
include the harbors of Marseille, Toulon, and Nice.
France’s generally mild climate, ample rainfall, variety of elevations, and long growing season, offer
habitat for many species of plants and animals. Centuries of human settlement have profoundly
altered the land and greatly reduced the number and diversity of indigenous species. Conservation
efforts in recent decades have helped protect important undeveloped areas that remain.
Cannes, France
Located on the Côte d’Azur of the Mediterranean Sea, also called the French Riviera, Cannes has long been a fashionable resort frequented by wealthy people. Today, it is best known for its prestigious annual film festival, which draws worldwide attention.
D Plant and Animal Life
REUTERS/John Schults
Page 11France
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The natural vegetation of France is closely related to climatic conditions. In the mountains, the highest
elevations near the snow line consist of expanses of bare rock with only a few varieties of moss and
lichen growing in sheltered areas. Farther down the mountainside, but still above the timberline,
alpine pastures provide good grazing for sheep and cattle during the summer months. Below the tree
line the higher forests are composed of coniferous species such as pine, larch, fir, and spruce.
Below the coniferous forest is a deciduous forest of oak, beech, and chestnut. Only tiny remnants of
the great forest that once covered the plains and lower mountain slopes of France remain. Most of the
lowlands of France are now in farmland, and forests are restricted to areas of poorer soil. Yet the
lowlands of France are not treeless; lines of stately trees border many highways and canals, and in the
hedgerow country of Normandy and Brittany virtually every tiny plot of ground is enclosed by an
embankment planted with bushes or trees.
Expanses of an evergreen shrub, called maquis, prevail along much of the Mediterranean coast, where
summers are generally long, hot, and dry (see Shrub Land). The Mediterranean region once supported
open forests of live oaks and grasses. This native vegetation was destroyed by centuries of
overgrazing, burning, and woodcutting. Many areas have been reduced to expanses of bare ground.
The most common trees found in the Mediterranean region are the olive, the cork oak, and the Aleppo
pine.
The destruction of France’s native woodlands led to a sharp decline of native animals, a process that
continues to the present day. Few specimens of the larger mammals remain in France; the most
common of these include species of deer and fox. Red deer and roe deer are still hunted, as are wild
boar, which survive in remote forest areas. The rare chamois, a type of goat, is found in the Alps and
in the Pyrenees. Among the smaller animals found in the region are the porcupine, skunk, marmot,
and marten. Endangered species include beaver, otter, and badger. A small population of brown bears
and lynx survive high in the Pyrenees.
France has an abundance of bird life. Many species of migrating birds, including ducks, geese, and
thrushes, spend their winters in France. The Mediterranean region is home to various exotic bird
species, including the flamingo, bee-eater, egret, heron, and black-winged stilt. Reptiles are rare, and
the only venomous reptile in France is the adder.
France is richly endowed with agricultural resources. The fertile soils of its basins and plains have
supported a robust farming culture since antiquity. Today, France is the largest exporter of agricultural
goods in the European Union (EU). The French landscape, most of which receives abundant
precipitation, also supports a thriving timber industry. Today, about one-quarter of France is forested,
and commercial tree farms constitute a significant share of this total.
France is not exceptionally rich in natural mineral resources. The coal deposits of northern France and
the iron ore deposits in the east were important to the nation’s early industrialization. However,
France’s coal deposits have largely been depleted, and the low quality of French iron ore has lead to a
sharp decline in domestic production. Deposits of petroleum and natural gas are small and largely
E Natural Resources
Page 12France
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tapped. Today, France imports iron ore along with most other minerals important in industrial
production. However, France remains a significant producer of uranium, a fuel used in nuclear
reactors, and bauxite, from which aluminum is made.
The climate of France is generally temperate with three major variations: oceanic, continental, and
Mediterranean. The climate of any particular region of the country is largely determined by the
dominant of these three influences in the region, although elevation and other local conditions are also
important. In general, the climate of France is well suited to agriculture.
The oceanic climate prevails throughout much of the country, especially in the north and west, where
westerly winds from the Atlantic Ocean bring mild and moist conditions. These winds, charged with
moisture, produce cool summers, mild winters, and year-round rainfall. The rain usually comes in the
form of a slow, steady drizzle. Overcast skies are common, but snow and frost are rare. Paris, for
example, receives 650 mm (26 in) of precipitation annually, with rain occurring an average of 188
days each year. The average daily temperature range in Paris is 1° to 6°C (34° to 40°F) in January
and 13° to 24°C (55° to 75°F) in July. The oceanic climate fully dominates the west coast. Brest, in
Brittany, has an average January temperature range of 4º to 9ºC (39° to 47°F) and an average July
temperature range of 12º to 19ºC (54° to 67°F).
The continental climate has a pronounced influence in northeastern France. Winds and air masses
coming from the east, over the great Eurasian landmass, bring little moisture and more extreme
temperatures. In winter these air masses bring cold weather, and in summer they bring heat. The
eastern city of Strasbourg, for example, has an average January temperature range of -2º to 3ºC (28º
F Climate
French Riviera
The mild climate, numerous resorts, and bright, sunny skies of the French Riviera attract vacationers year-round.
Stone/Bruno De Hogues
Page 13France
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to 38ºF). In the course of an average winter the temperature in Strasbourg is below freezing for 80
days, and on at least 20 days snow is recorded. But the summers in Strasbourg, which average 13º to
25ºC (56º to 77ºF), are hot and often oppressive, with heavy precipitation during summer
thundershowers.
The Mediterranean climate holds sway over regions of southern France, with the strongest influence
felt in areas lying within 160 km (100 mi) of the sea. Winters are mild and moist, although much of
the precipitation comes in short showers. Summers are hot and rainless. The Mediterranean city of
Marseille, for instance, has an average daily temperature of 2° to 10°C (35° to 50°F) in January and
17° to 29°C (63° to 84°F) in July. Average precipitation in Marseille is 550 mm (22 in) annually, with
rain occurring an average of 95 days a year. Occasionally, a cold, dry wind, called a mistral, blows
down from the north, through the narrow Rhône-Saône trench valley, and out onto the Languedoc
Plain. The mistral is strongest and most frequent in the winter and spring and can temporarily bring
chilly temperatures to the Mediterranean shore.
Severe climates are found only in the mountains. High in the French Alps and Pyrenees, winters are
long and snowy, sufficient to support ski resorts. In several places in the Alps, remnant glaciers
survive.
G Conservation
The Camargue
The Camargue Regional Park on the southern coast of France covers an area of marshy flats where the Rhône River splits to meet the Mediterranean Sea. The park’s extensive brine lagoons provide habitat for many birds, including the greater flamingo. This photograph shows a wild white Arabian horse grazing in the park.
Corbis/Pat Groves
Page 14France
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For centuries the French devoted few resources to the protection and conservation of the
environment. Like most of the world’s peoples, they have focused mainly on economic development of
national lands and waters. A conservation movement arose in France in the 19th century, as
environmental problems associated with industrialization accumulated. However, the movement did
not gain broader popular support until the end of World War II (1939-1945). Rapid industrial
expansion, urbanization, and the proliferation of automobiles further degraded the environment,
leaving the nation’s air and water supplies severely polluted, and its remaining forests and wild
animals threatened.
Since the early 1960s, France has undertaken a variety of initiatives to conserve and protect its
environment. A cornerstone of this effort was the creation of a system of parks and reserves. Today,
about 10 percent of the French national territory enjoys some type of protected status. This includes
six national parks, several dozen regional nature parks, and more than 100 smaller nature reserves.
In addition, numerous measures are in place to reduce air pollution, water pollution, and soil erosion.
Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov contributed the Land and Resources section of this article.
People of France
The population of France is 60,656,178 (2005 estimate). It is the fourth most populous nation in
Europe, after Russia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. France is western Europe’s largest nation in
total area and is sparsely populated by European standards, with an average population density of 111
persons per sq km (288 per sq mi). The population is distributed unevenly within France. The most
crowded area is Paris in north central France and the surrounding urban region, where population
density exceeds 921 persons per sq km (2,386 per sq mi). The region of Limousin in the hill lands of
central France, with 42 persons per sq km (109 per sq mi), and the mountainous Mediterranean isle of
Corsica, with just 30 persons per sq km (78 per sq mi), have the sparsest settlement. France is
overwhelmingly urban: Three of every four people live in cities and towns.
III PEOPLE AND SOCIETY
Population 60,656,178 (2005 estimate)
Population density 111 persons per sq km 288 persons per sq mi (2005 estimate)
Urban population distribution 76 percent (2003 estimate)
Rural population distribution 24 percent (2003 estimate)
Largest cities, with population Paris, 2,142,800 (2004) Marseille, 795,600 (2004) Lyon, 468,300 (2004)
Main language French
Chief religious affiliations Roman Catholic, 81 percent Protestant, 2 percent Jewish, 1 percent
Life expectancy 79.6 years (2005 estimate)
Infant mortality rate 4 deaths per 1,000 live births (2005 estimate)
Literacy rate 99 percent (1995)
Page 15France
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France’s annual rate of population growth of 0.37 percent is low compared to most of the world. In
1800 France was the most populous nation in western Europe. During the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, the birth rate in France declined relative to that of the rest of Europe, and the French
population grew slowly. By the mid-20th century the population of France had fallen behind that of
Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy. (France’s population narrowly surpassed Italy’s in the
1990s). The slow growth of the French population can be partly attributed to the bloody wars of the
Napoleonic era in the early 19th century and the two world wars in the 20th century. The early and
wide-scale adoption of birth control by the French people also slowed population growth. Immigration,
especially from Europe and North Africa, was a major source of French population growth during the
20th century. The population of France is projected to gradually begin declining sometime during the
early 21st century.
The age structure of France changed dramatically in the late 20th century, with elderly people
accounting for an ever larger share of the total population. The segment of the population between
the ages of 0 and 14 declined from 26.4 percent in 1960 to 18.4 percent in 2005, while the number of
people aged 65 or older increased from 11.6 percent to 16.4 percent. The number of older people is
growing in France, as it is in most industrialized nations, as a result of the low birth rate and medical
advances that have prolonged life. Life expectancy in France is now 83.4 years for females—one of the
highest expected longevities in the world—and 76 years for males. France’s infant mortality rate (the
number of infants per 1,000 who die before the age of 1) is 4.3, one of the world’s lowest.
A Principal Cities
Toulouse, France
Woodfin Camp and Associates, Inc./Jose Nicolas
Page 16France
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The capital and largest city of France is Paris, with a population of 2,142,800 (2004). Located on the
shores of the Seine, Paris dominates France economically, politically, and culturally. It is the nation’s
leading industrial center, and most key services, including banking and finance, are concentrated
there. Paris is the seat of the national government and home to France’s most prestigious educational
and cultural institutions. About 10 million people live in the Paris metropolitan area, more than 15
percent of the country’s total population.
France’s second largest city is Marseille (795,600) on the Mediterranean coast. Marseille is a major
seaport and a diversified manufacturing center. Founded by Greek mariners in the 6th century BC,
Marseille has long served as an important commercial and trading city. Today, Marseille is socially and
ethnically diverse, with a large immigrant population. The third largest city is Lyon (468,300) in east
central France. Lyon is an industrial center located at the junction of the Saône and Rhône rivers. It is
famous for its fine textiles, although other manufactures, including chemicals, automobiles, and
petroleum products, are now more important. The urban area surrounding Lyon is the second largest
in France, after greater metropolitan Paris.
An arched bridge spans the Garonne River in Toulouse, in southern France. Known as an important settlement since before the Roman conquest of Gaul in 50 BC, Toulouse contains an impressive array of architectural styles dating back more than 1000 years. It remains a center of manufacturing, transportation, and trade.
Dawn in Marseille
On a hill above a harbor in Marseille stands Notre Dame de la Garde, a
Photo Researchers, Inc./Spencer Grant
Page 17France
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Other major cities include Toulouse (426,700), a major manufacturing and trade center in
southwestern France; Nice (339,000), a resort city on the French Riviera; and Nantes (276,200), a
seaport on the Atlantic coast that is noted for shipbuilding, food processing, and other industries.
Strasbourg (273,100) is the principal French port on the Rhine River and is also a major industrial
center. Bordeaux (229,500) is a major seaport in southwestern France and the principal exporting
center for one of the great French vineyard regions. Montpellier (244,700) is a commercial and
manufacturing city in southern France. Lille (184,657), an industrial city in northern France, is situated
amid a cluster of cities that have a combined population exceeding 1 million. According to 1999
population estimates, more than 25 additional French cities had populations surpassing 100,000.
The predominant ethnic stock in France is mixed, the result of thousands of years of ethnic mixing. A
succession of migrating and invading groups, including Celts, Romans (see Roman Empire), and
Germanic peoples, have left their ethnic imprint among the French people. The very name for the
nation, France, comes from the Germanic Franks, who invaded the area as the Roman Empire
collapsed.
The French government has long pursued an active campaign of assimilating ethnic minorities. The
expansion of the French state, completed by the mid-17th century, brought centralized rule over
diverse peripheral ethnic groups. As late as the French Revolution in 1789, less than half the
population spoke French. After the revolution, the French government sought to build a unified nation-
state based on a common language. The “law of the soil” (droit du sol), a key part of this effort, held
that residency and ethnic identity were inseparable—that is, if a person lived in France, he or she was
French. Only in recent years, under the prodding of the European Union (EU), did France extend any
noteworthy rights or privileges to ethnic minorities. Instead, every effort was made to absorb them
into the French mainstream, with considerable success.
The indigenous ethnic minorities of France inhabit ancient homelands, all of which lie on the nation’s
frontiers. In the far northern part of France live a people of Flemish descent, in and around the
marshland town of Dunkerque in the historic region of Flanders. Flemings, many of whom speak a
dialect of Dutch, harbor no separatist sentiment and have largely been assimilated. In the western
peninsular region of Brittany live the Bretons, a people of Celtic descent (see Celts). Many Bretons
seek cultural autonomy and resent French dominance. They present an overtly Celtic image to visitors,
incorporating bagpipes and Celtic harps into their local musical traditions. Dozens of Breton-language
schools have opened in Brittany since the early 1990s.
In southwestern France, where the Pyrenees and Atlantic Ocean meet, live the French Basques. Many
commanding 19th-century cathedral. Reminiscent of the splendid Basilique nationale du Sacré-Cœur in Paris, the church is topped with a statue of Mary, whom Christians believe to be the virgin mother of Jesus Christ.
B Ethnic Groups
B1 Indigenous Ethnic Minorities
Page 18France
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French Basques share the separatist sentiments of the Basques across the border in Spain, but the
French Basque country has not experienced the terrorist violence that has occurred for decades in
Spanish territory. At the eastern end of the Pyrenees, in the Mediterranean region, is the Catalan
homeland. French Catalonians share a language (see Catalan Language) and culture with the peoples
of eastern Spain, where Catalan autonomy has been achieved and separatist sentiment is common.
The French Catalonians, however, are not nearly so numerous, and they do not desire to secede from
France. In recent decades, bilingual French-Catalan signs have become common.
In the Alsace-Lorraine area of eastern France live the Alsatians, a people whose native tongue is a
dialect of High German. This ancient frontier area has been the object of disputes between French and
Germanic rulers since the Middle Ages, and control over the region has changed hands many times.
Since the end of World War II (1939-1945) the region has belonged to France. A desire for cultural
autonomy is widespread in Alsace, but there is little sentiment for joining Germany. On the French-
ruled island of Corsica in the Mediterranean live a people of Italian ancestry. Corsica’s most famous
son, Napoleon Bonaparte (see Napoleon I), had an Italian surname. A movement seeking
independence for Corsica has been active since the 1970s.
Immigrants account for about 7.5 percent of the total population of France. French immigrants come
from diverse places, including Europe, North and Central Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, and
Asia. The largest immigrant group in France consists of people from the largely Islamic nations of
North Africa, including Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Many Muslims from Turkey have also immigrated
to France. An estimated 4 million Muslims, or followers of Islam, live in France, mainly within the
nation’s largest cities.
France has a long history of immigration. A strong tradition of readily accepting immigrants as citizens
dates to the French Revolution, which popularized new notions of citizenship and universal rights.
During the 19th century, the French government recruited many immigrants to work the nation’s
farmlands and in its expanding coal, steel, and textile industries. Until the mid-20th century,
immigrants came largely from other Christian European countries, including Belgium, Italy, Poland,
Portugal, and Spain. Most of these immigrants were rapidly assimilated into the French population and
culture.
Immigration significantly increased after World War II (1939-1945), when the nation’s postwar
economic expansion generated an enormous need for workers. By the 1950s the main source of
immigration had shifted from European countries to the largely Islamic countries of North Africa, the
heart of France’s former colonial empire. In the mid-1970s France began to tighten its immigration
policies in response to a slowing economy.
By the late 1970s immigration had become a controversial social issue in France. Many people worried
that large numbers of recent immigrants appeared unwilling to adopt French customs and culture.
Unlike earlier generations of European immigrants, the newcomers were often distinguishable by their
skin color and Islamic religion, as well as by their food, dress, and music. Nationalist political
movements, such as the National Front, emerged to promote anti-immigrant policies, including
B2 Immigrants
Page 19France
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repatriation. These groups argued that immigration threatened French culture and social cohesion.
By the 1980s, heated political debate had arisen over the wearing of traditional Islamic head coverings
by girls in public schools. In 2004 the French government passed legislation prohibiting students in
primary and secondary schools from wearing conspicuous religious symbols. Although no specific
religious symbols were mentioned in the legislation, many Muslims viewed the law as targeting the
wearing of headscarves. Hostility toward immigrants has led to discrimination, social tensions, and
episodes of violence.
C Language
Traditional Vocal Music of France
In the relatively isolated French region of Brittany, the tradition of singing and songwriting in the Breton language is still very much alive. Lyrical love songs and songs praising the beauty of the Breton countryside are most prominent. As this example by Paul Huellou illustrates, the singing in this style is with a relaxed voice and very little ornamentation. A major musical event that is still practiced in Brittany is the fest-noz (night festival), which is a popular gathering of singers, dancers, storytellers, and musicians.
"Ar Gwezen Avalou" from Paul Huellou: Songs from Brittany (Cat.# Music of the World C-209) (p)1989 Music of the World, Ltd. All rights reserved./© 1989 Music of the World Ltd./J. Pol Huellou
Page 20France
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French is the official language of France and is spoken by the vast majority of people in the country.
Modern French is a dialect of the langue d’oïl, a form of the French language that originated in
northern France. This dialect developed in the Île de France, a historic province that includes Paris and
much of the surrounding Paris Basin. Beginning in medieval times, the language of the Île de France
gradually began to supplant other French dialects. Today it enjoys overwhelming dominance in French
daily life, including in commerce, education, government, and culture.
In addition to French, regional languages are spoken in many areas. The most widely spoken regional
language is Occitan, also called the langue d’oc (Languedoc), which is prevalent in southern France.
Perhaps 5 or 6 million people speak Provençal, the major dialect of the langue d’oc. Virtually all of
these speakers speak the dominant French language as well. The languages spoken north and south
of the Loire River began diverging in the early Middle Ages and by the late 13th century had emerged
as distinct languages. The langue d’oc is rooted in a Latin-derived regional culture that was once much
more Mediterranean and Roman-influenced than the German-influenced culture of northern France.
The French state’s historical drive to create a unified French language, in part by requiring state
primary schools to teach in the language of the Île de France, has succeeded in assimilating the
langue d’oc. In 1993, in a show of greater tolerance, the French government permitted state schools
to teach regional languages, including the langue d’oc.
Several other regional languages are spoken in France. About 1 million people living in Alsace speak a
dialect of High German. Perhaps 600,000 people speak Breton, a Celtic language based in Brittany.
(See also Breton Literature). About 250,000 people speak Catalan in the Pyrenees region. Some
80,000 people speak Basque, another language based in the Pyrenees. Flemish, a Dutch dialect used
in the French portion of Flanders in the north, is spoken by perhaps 60,000 people. Corse, an Italian
dialect used on the island of Corsica, is spoken by about 100,000 people. Many of France’s various
immigrant populations also retain their separate languages, including Arabic and Turkish.
D Religion
Page 21France
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Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion in France. More than 80 percent of the French population
officially identifies with this faith, although only a minority claim to be practicing Catholics. About 5
percent of the population practices Islam, France’s second most popular religion. A small minority,
about 2 percent of the population, is Protestant. Many Protestants fled France during the 16th and
17th centuries to escape Catholic persecution, and few parishes survived. About 1 percent of the
population is Jewish (see Judaism). More than 10 percent of the people claim no religion.
Secularization has made deep inroads in France, greatly diminishing the role of the once-powerful
Catholic Church. The extent of secularization varies from one region to another. The most highly
secularized regions are the Paris Basin and the Mediterranean coast. The largest percentages of
practicing Catholics live in rural areas, including Flanders to the north, Brittany to the west, Alsace to
the east, and the Basque country in the southwest. The great pilgrimage town of Lourdes in the
southwest, at the foot of the Pyrenees, draws millions of visitors annually.
The French Jewish community, although small, has long played an important role in the nation’s
economy and culture. An estimated 700,000 French citizens are Jewish, accounting for about one-third
of the total Jewish population in Europe. In recent decades, many Muslim immigrants from former
French colonies in North Africa have settled in France, leading to a significant expansion of the Islamic
faith there. Immigrants have also brought other religions to France, including Buddhism and Hinduism.
The church and state have been officially separated in France since 1905. During the 19th century, the
Christian and Jewish religions were subsidized by the state. Popular opposition to the Catholic Church,
Pilgrims at Lourdes, France
Every year millions of pilgrims visit a grotto in Lourdes, France, where in 1858 a 14-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous (later Saint Bernadette), had visions of the Virgin Mary. Bernadette claimed that the Virgin had given miraculous healing powers to the waters of a spring near the grotto.
Spectrum Colour Library
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and to church control of public education, resulted in legislation prohibiting the payment of public
funds to Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish clergy. This legislation, and subsequent measures, led to the
withdrawal of official state recognition of any religion.
The French constitution guarantees all permanent residents a basic education. School attendance is
compulsory for students aged 6 to 16, and all public schools up to the university level are free. Higher
public education is free for all students who qualify. There are also about 10,000 private schools and
colleges in France, most controlled by the Roman Catholic Church. About one in six students under the
age of 16 attends private schools. The adult literacy rate in France is 99 percent, one of the world’s
highest.
Public education in France is highly centralized. The centralization of state control over school
administration began in the early 19th century under Napoleon I. Prior to the French Revolution in
1789, most schools were administered by the Roman Catholic Church. Many of the main features of
the modern educational system were adopted in the late 19th century, under the leadership of
Education Minister Jules Ferry. A series of laws, enacted between 1881 and 1886, provided for free,
compulsory public education entirely under government control. Among later modifications were the
establishment of free tuition in secondary and technical schools, the separation of church and state in
E Education
High School Classroom in France
This secondary student attends a centuries-old high school in the town of Bazas. In France most decisions regarding curriculum and other matters are made in Paris by a national ministry for education and implemented by local educational districts called académies. However, education is somewhat less centralized than it once was. Massive student revolts in 1968 resulted in important changes to the school system, especially at the university level, and additional measures to decentralize education have been taken in recent years.
Material World/Alexandra & Pierre Boulat
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education in 1905, and the extension of compulsory school attendance to the age of 16 in 1959.
Today, the central government’s administrative role is strongest in primary and secondary education.
Metropolitan France is divided into 27 educational districts called académies. Each district is under the
jurisdiction of a rector, who is accountable to the ministry of education. The ministry is responsible for
maintaining schools, hiring and allocating staff, defining academic programs and curricula, and other
matters. The ministry also supervises private schools.
As a result of student unrest in 1968, in which strong demands were made for greater decentralization
in higher education, the government created an independent ministry of universities. Prior to 1968,
the universities were organized into facultés, or schools, according to the subject taught, and were
directly administered by the ministry of education. Afterward, they were reorganized into autonomous
multidisciplinary universities, and students and faculty were given a voice in university administration.
Under the reform, most of France’s large universities were restructured into smaller units. The
University of Paris, the largest, was split into 13 independent universities, 3 of which were formed
from the oldest unit, the Sorbonne (see Paris, Universities of).
The French educational system is competitive. After two or three years of optional preschool activities,
students attend a primary (elementary) school from age 6 to 11. Secondary education is divided into
two phases. In the first phase, students attend a collège (middle school) until the age of 15. During
the second phase, students either take academic courses in general lycées (secondary schools) or
take technical and vocational courses in separate institutions called professional lycées. Students
attending professional lycées typically earn a professional certificate or diploma after one to three
years of study. The general lycée program lasts three years and ends with a comprehensive
nationwide examination for the baccalauréate degree, which is required to enter the universities. The
baccalaureate examination is rigorous; only two-thirds of those taking the test typically pass it the
first time.
The university sector has gradually expanded to offer a wider range of educational opportunities and
serve an increasing number of students. In 1966 several instituts universitaires de technologie
(technological institutes, or IUTs) were founded. These schools depart from the general studies of the
traditional university and specialize in technology subjects. Community colleges, called antennes
universitaires, have been established in medium-sized towns such as Blois, Troyes, Tarbes, Beauvais,
and Bayonne. In 1991 the government adopted an ambitious program designed to enlarge the system
of higher education. By the early 2000s there were 100 IUTs and 87 universities in France. Besides
the Universities of Paris I-XIII, noted French institutes of higher education include the Universities of
Aix-Marseille I-III, the Universities of Lille I-III, the Universities of Lyon I-III, the Universities of Nancy
I-II, and the Universities of Strasbourg I-III.
Alongside the universities is an elite network of graduate schools, known as the grandes écoles.
Admission to the grandes écoles is limited by special competitive examinations. Founded by Napoleon
Bonaparte (see Napoleon I), these prestigious schools train executives for the highest positions in
business and government. Among the best known of these schools are the École Polytechnique
(Polytechnic School), founded in 1794 to instruct military professionals, and the École Nationale
d’Administration (National School of Administration), a training ground for government leaders.
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In a unique category are the Collège de France, founded in 1530, and the Académie Française (French
Academy), founded in 1635. The Collège de France invites eminent scholars from all over the world to
lecture publicly on their research. Membership in the Académie Française is limited to 40 of the
nation’s most prominent citizens, the immortels. The Académie was established in 1635 to uphold the
highest standards in the French language and literature, and it is responsible for the publication of the
standard grammar and dictionary of the French language. It is the oldest of the five learned societies
that make up the prestigious Institut de France.
The French Revolution swept away many of the ancient legal privileges enjoyed by the nobility and the
clergy and established the principle of legal equality among all citizens. Yet the revolution did not
erase sharp distinctions among social groups, nor did it fundamentally alter the distribution of wealth.
France still retained a rigid social structure in the early 20th century, with little mobility among social
groups. The social strata included peasants, craft and factory workers, shopkeepers, merchants, civil
servants, intellectuals, landowners, and petty nobility.
The old social order changed considerably after World War II, as the postwar economic expansion
brought growing affluence to an ever larger share of the French population. The vast expansion of the
middle classes reduced inequality of wealth and blurred the lines between many social groups. Today
power, success, and money are more important than birth in determining a person’s social status.
Another sweeping change in postwar France is the growing role of women in society. Beginning in the
early 1970s, women began entering the workforce in increasing numbers, many taking jobs in the
expanding service sector. Today women constitute 45.5 percent of all French workers. However,
women tend to be concentrated in low-paying jobs, and they are more likely than men to be
unemployed. In recent decades women have also played a growing role in politics. Women won the
right to vote in 1944; today they account for 53 percent of the French electorate. Many women have
pursued successful careers in politics, but their representation in the national parliament is still lower
than in most other nations in the European Union (EU).
Many social divisions remain visible in France. A privileged elite composed mainly of leading
politicians, senior civil servants, business leaders, and wealthy families still retains a strong grasp on
the levers of power. The middle classes are highly stratified. Among white-collar workers, two different
groups have emerged: the successful, upwardly mobile senior executives and professionals with
expanding spending power and stable jobs, and a growing mass of people in clerical, retail, and food-
service jobs for whom unemployment and lower living standards have become increasingly the norm.
Blue-collar workers remain, to some extent, economically and socially segregated; only a small
proportion of university students come from blue-collar households. The number of blue-collar workers
has steadily declined in recent years as the economy has shifted from jobs in industry to those in the
service sector.
F Social Structure
G Way of Life
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For centuries the French have taken pride in the sophistication of their culture, the beauty of their
spoken language, and their diverse accomplishments in literature, the arts, and sciences. Even French
cuisine and clothing fashions have long been a source of national pride. During the second half of the
20th century, as French society grew increasingly middle class and consumer oriented, a new set of
attitudes and pursuits appeared alongside these elitist cultural attitudes. Material comforts, such as
homes, new appliances, and automobiles, became synonymous with a high standard of living.
Despite the concentration of the French population in urban areas, nearly 60 percent of French people
live in houses, rather than in apartment buildings. Most dwellings are comfortable and have modern
conveniences. In 1962 less than 20 percent of French housing had central heating. By the 1990s
nearly 80 percent had central heating, at least one telephone, and access to hot water. Housing is in
short supply, and housing costs, as a share of household budgets, have risen in recent decades.
Outlays for housing absorb about one-fifth of all household spending.
Café Life in Paris
People in Paris can enjoy numerous sidewalk cafés, such as this one in the Les Halles district of the city’s Right Bank. The Right Bank area contains the business and banking districts of Paris, as well as many palaces, monuments, restaurants, and nightclubs.
ALLSTOCK, INC./David Barnes
Page 26France
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The French enjoy a wide range of sports and recreational activities. Millions of people belong to sports
clubs, the most common of which are devoted to soccer, tennis, a bowling game called boules, and
basketball. The most popular professional sports are soccer and bicycle racing (see Cycling). The
monthlong Tour de France, the world’s most famous and prestigious bicycle race, has been held
annually since 1903. Horse racing at Longchamps and Auteuil in Paris and automobile racing at Le
Mans also draw large crowds. The French Open tennis tournament at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris
attracts international attention.
Tour de France
Bicyclists ride past the Montserie castle in southwestern France during the annual Tour de France, the nation’s premier sporting event.
AP/Wide World Photos/Laurent Rebours
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Many French people enjoy eating, drinking, and socializing at sidewalk cafes, which are prevalent in
most cities and towns. The cinema is also very popular, drawing some 15 million patrons each year.
Music concerts are well attended throughout France, and many provincial towns host their own music,
theater, and dance festivals.
Open-Air Market
Shoppers crowd an open-air market in Paris, France. Open-air markets are popular throughout France, and they offer consumers access to some of the freshest, most desirable locally grown foods.
Woodfin Camp and Associates, Inc./Catherine Karnow
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The French are famous for their cuisine, and fine food remains an important part of the French way of
life. Thousands of regional dishes are popular in France. Beloved ingredients include generous
amounts of garlic, olive oil, butter, cream, and local cheeses and wines. French dishes that have risen
to national and international prominence include a seafood soup called bouillabaisse, crepes, quiches,
andouillette sausage, and a goose-liver paste called pâté de foie gras. Breads and pastries are a daily
staple and are widely available at local bakeries, known as boulangeries.
The traditional French meal pattern is to eat a light breakfast, a large lunch, and a somewhat lighter
dinner. French wines are often served with lunch or dinner. In recent decades fast food has grown in
popularity, especially among young people, and elaborate meals are increasingly reserved for special
occasions. The movement toward convenience in eating is also evident in the growing consumption of
frozen and prepackaged foods.
The French are devoted to holidays and vacations. In addition to the Christmas, New Year’s Day, and
Easter holidays, the religious feast days of Mardi Gras in the spring, Pentecost in May or June,
Assumption Day on August 15th, and All Saint’s Day on November 1st are celebrated across France.
The national holiday, Bastille Day on July 14th, commemorates the fall of the Bastille in the French
Revolution. Most French workers are entitled to five weeks of paid vacation annually, and travel
abroad has become increasingly popular. August is the most popular month for vacation, leading to
enormous congestion in resort areas at that time of year.
Bastille Day in Paris
In celebration of Bastille Day on 14 July, French troops march down the Avenue des Champs Élysées past crowds of cheering spectators. The holiday commemorates the 1789 storming of a prison called the Bastille and the start of the French Revolution. In many French towns, the celebration begins on the night before with music and dancing in the streets. Formal balls and spectacular fireworks displays top off the festivities in Paris.
Liaison Agency/Ribeiro-Simon-Stevens
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Despite the generally high living standards enjoyed by many French citizens, the nation has not
escaped serious social problems. One of the most pressing issues is the apparent formation of a
permanent underclass. During the 1990s, unemployment consistently exceeded 10 percent of the
workforce—a high rate by the standards of the more prosperous countries of the European Union
(EU)—and it declined only marginally in the early 2000s. The unemployed include blue-collar workers
unable to find work in an economy increasingly dominated by services and high-quality manufactures;
immigrants, especially from countries in North Africa; and large numbers of women and young people.
Unemployment rates are highest in the old coal- and steel-producing regions of northern France and
along the Mediterranean coast. Strikes and labor unrest are common in France. Student protests are
also prevalent and bear some relationship to the difficulty young people have in finding good jobs.
A serious social issue related to the persistence of high rates of unemployment has been a rise in
crime and violence, particularly among youth. During the 1990s the number of people aged 13 to 18
jailed for violent crime nearly tripled. Youth violence and other criminal activity are often associated
with gangs in the tough, low-income housing projects that ring many French cities. Most of these
complexes were originally built in the 1960s and 1970s to help solve housing shortages, but they soon
became homes for the disadvantaged and underprivileged. Immigrants tend to be concentrated in
these housing projects, and unemployment usually far exceeds the national average. Major riots
erupted in some of these complexes in the 1980s and 1990s. Some critics put part of the blame for
the rise in crime and youth violence on the French state, blaming the government for failing to
integrate immigrant populations into French society.
Racism is an enduring social problem in France. The most significant expressions of contemporary
racism are anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant racism. Most of the violence directed against Jewish
people in recent decades has been symbolic, such as anti-Semitic graffiti and the desecration of
synagogues and graves. Immigrants, especially those bearing visible signs of ethnic and cultural
difference, have also been targets of racial violence in recent years. The anti-immigrant National
Front, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, blames immigrants, particularly people from North Africa, for high
unemployment and urban violence in France. National programs are in place to address racism,
including the diversification of France’s police force, but many underlying problems remain.
Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov contributed the People and Society section of this article.
The culture of France has profoundly influenced that of the entire Western world, particularly in the
areas of art and letters, and Paris has long been regarded as the fountainhead of French culture.
France first attained cultural preeminence in Europe during the Middle Ages; later, the wealth of the
French crown in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries provided a subsidization of art on a scale
comparable to that of the papacy in Rome, attracting to Paris many of Europe’s most talented artists
and artisans. Wealth also created a leisure class, which had both the time and the means for
developing elegance in dress, manners, furnishings, and architecture. French styles still pervade much
H Social Issues
IV CULTURE
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of Western culture. In the 20th century French cinema assumed a leading world position, particularly
in the 1960s with the nouvelle vague (“new wave”) group of film directors, such as Jean-Luc Godard,
Alain Resnais, and François Truffaut.
See French Literature.
France has produced many world-famous painters, and several influential schools of painting,
including impressionism, were developed here. Among French Mannerist painters of the 16th century
were Jean Clouet and his son François; 17th-century baroque artists included Georges de La Tour,
Nicolas Poussin, and Claude Lorrain. The most renowned French rococo masters of the 18th century
were Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean Fragonard, Jean Chardin, and Jean-Baptiste
Greuze. Paris became the chief art center of Europe in the 19th century. Jacques-Louis David, whose
highly influential career began in the last quarter of the 18th century, was most active in the early
19th century, as were the romantic painters Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, and
Théodore Géricault. Noted realist artists of the mid-19th century were Gustave Courbet, Honoré
Daumier, Jean François Millet, and Camile Corot. The impressionist school, influenced by Édouard
Manet, emerged around 1872; its most important members were the painters Claude Monet, Camille
Pissarro, and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Major French postimpressionist painters of the late 19th century
were Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Paul Signac; also
active in this period were Henri Rousseau and Gustav Moreau. Internationally known French artists of
the 20th century include Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Georges Rouault, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand
Léger, Pierre Bonnard, and Jean Dubuffet. The artist Pablo Picasso was born in Spain but settled in
Paris in the early 1900s.
France has also produced many influential sculptors. Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon were famous
16th-century Mannerist sculptors; in the 17th century Pierre Puget sculpted in the baroque style;
Puget inspired the 18th-century French rococo sculptors Jean Baptiste Pigalle and Claude Michel.
Leading 19th-century sculptors were François Rude, Antoine Louis Barye, and Jean Baptiste Carpeaux.
The most important 19th-century sculptor, however, was Auguste Rodin. In the early 20th century
Romanian-born Constantin Brancusi and Italian-born Amedeo Modifliani both worked in Paris. Noted
artists Marcel Duchamp and Jean Arp also sculpted in Paris in the 20th century.
A Literature
B Art and Architecture
Page 31France
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France is renowned for its great Gothic churches, built from the 12th to 15th century. Particularly
significant are the abbey church at Saint-Denis, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, and the cathedrals at
Amiens, Chartres, Paris, and Reims. Splendid Renaissance structures include the palace at
Fontainebleau and the famous châteaux of the Loire River valley. The outstanding baroque buildings in
France are the neoclassicized enlargements of the enormous royal palace at Versailles and the Louvre,
in Paris. Among the outstanding structures of the 19th century are the Second Empire Paris Opéra
(1861-1875) of Charles Garnier and the wrought-iron Eiffel Tower (1889), the symbol of Paris. The
pioneering 20th-century architect Auguste Perret and the influential Le Corbusier (a Swiss living in
Paris) were noted for designing daring structures, mainly of concrete and steel.
France has a long and distinguished musical tradition. From the 11th to the 13th century, chansons de
geste (“song of deeds”), epic poems sung by minstrels, were produced in northern France, and the
troubadours, aristocratic poet-musicians who composed famous songs that dealt chiefly with courtly
love, war, and nature, were active in southern France.
The most influential French composer of the 14th century was Guillaume de Machaut, who contributed
to the polyphonic form of composition. In the 15th and 16th centuries, songs, motets, and settings of
parts of the Mass were among the leading French musical compositions.
Pont des Arts, Paris
The Pont des Arts, a bridge for pedestrians, crosses the Seine in the city of Paris, France. The most important river in the country’s waterway system, the Seine provides economically vital links between Paris, the country’s economic, political, and cultural center, and other cities, including the Atlantic seaport of Le Havre.
C Music
ALLSTOCK, INC./Tom Benoit
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In the second half of the 17th century, the Italian-born composer Jean Baptiste Lully created a French
operatic style by combining traditional court spectacle with plots of contemporary French dramas, set
to musical forms from ballet, dance, and Italian opera. In the early 18th century noted works for
harpsichord were composed by François Couperin and Jean Philippe Rameau; the latter is also known
for his operas.
In the late 18th and 19th centuries, many foreign-born opera composers were active in Paris; these
included Christoph Willibald Gluck, Luigi Cherubini, A.E.M. Grétry, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Jacques
Offenbach. French-born opera composers of the 19th century included Jacques Halévy, Charles
Gounod, Georges Bizet, and Jules Massenet.
The chief French composer of orchestral music in the early 19th century was Hector Berlioz. Camille
Saint-Saëns became active in the 1850s, and he later taught Gabriel Fauré, who composed in a wide
variety of forms. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Claude Debussy composed noted works
in new styles influenced by trends in literature and painting.
In the early 20th century Maurice Ravel produced works with more formal outlines. Les Six, a group of
neoclassic composers formed in 1918 and 1919, included Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc,
and Georges Auric. The influential Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky worked in Paris in the
1920s and 1930s. More recent French composers include Oliver Messiaen and Pierre Boulez.
D Libraries and Museums
Grande Gallerie of the Louvre
The Louvre houses one of the world’s largest and finest art collections. Built in the 1200s as a fortress and expanded in the 1500s as a palace for French nobility, it became a museum in 1793 and has been incrementally renovated ever since. The Grande Gallerie is the main picture gallery of the museum.
ALLSTOCK, INC./Gary Hayes
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Most provincial cities in France have municipal libraries and museums. The largest concentration of
such facilities is, however, in Paris. Major libraries in Paris include the Bibliothèque Nationale, with
more than 9 million books, and the libraries of the Universities of Paris. The Louvre, also in Paris,
contains one of the largest and most important art collections in the world. Other Parisian museums of
note include the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne in the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges
Pompidou (see Pompidou Center); the Musée d’Orsay; and the Musée Picasso with its collection of
works by Pablo Picasso. Many of the great masterpieces of French architecture, such as churches,
cathedrals, castles, and châteaux, are maintained as national monuments.
Economy of France
Until the early 20th century, France was still largely a nation of small farms and family-owned
businesses. After World War II (1939-1945) the French government nationalized numerous business
enterprises—especially in energy, finance, and manufacturing—and it introduced a series of
development plans intended to modernize the economy. These reforms, along with European
economic integration, helped secure a period of sustained economic growth in the quarter century
following the war. Today, France is one of the world’s leading economic powers. A member of the
Group of Eight forum of highly industrialized nations and of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), France is home to the world’s fifth largest economy, behind the United
States, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. It is also the leading agricultural producer in
western Europe. In 2003 France’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $1.76 trillion, and per capita
income was $29,410.
The postwar economic integration of western Europe had a powerful influence on the French economy.
France was a charter member of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), a cooperative
organization founded in 1951 to establish a free-trade area for coal and steel products. This
organization merged with the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy
Community (EAEC) in 1967 to form the European Community (EC).
Today, France is a member of the European Union (EU), a successor of the EC that promotes
economic and political cooperation among European nations. European Union members share a
common economic area composed of some 400 million consumers. The creation of a single market
required France and other EU members to remove national barriers to the free movement of goods,
services, capital, and people. French businesses long protected by trade barriers have been forced to
become more competitive to withstand foreign challengers and to take advantage of new
opportunities. In many sectors of the economy, the single market has spurred businesses to
restructure and modernize their operations. France, like many other EU members, uses the euro, the
V ECONOMY
A Overview
Gross domestic product (GDP in U.S.$) $1.76 trillion (2003)
GDP per capita (U.S.$) $29,410 (2003)
Monetary unit 1 euro (€), consisting of 100 cents
Number of workers 26,950,272 (2003)
Unemployment rate 8.9 percent (2002)
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EU’s common currency.
Successive French governments have encouraged varying levels of intervention in the economy,
including state ownership and control of key industries. In 1982 the Socialist-led government of
president François Mitterrand initiated a program of extensive nationalization. At the peak of this
program, 13 of the 20 largest firms in France were owned by the state. The election of a center-right
parliamentary majority in 1986, however, led to a reduction of state ownership. During the 1990s and
early 2000s, the government continued the process of privatization, selling off a variety of state-
owned enterprises and reducing its holdings in others. Despite these measures, the public sector as a
share of GDP remains higher in France than in any other country to adopt the euro. In addition,
France’s progress in opening its domestic markets to foreign competition as required by the EU,
especially in the energy sector, has been slow, inviting criticism and legal challenges from the EU.
France faces several pressing economic problems in the early 21st century. One is the nation’s
persistently high unemployment rate. By the mid-1970s, as the postwar economic boom slowed, the
unemployment rate began to rise steadily, surpassing 10 percent in 1985. From 1991 to 1999 the
unemployment rate never fell below 10 percent. The unemployment rate remained at 8.9 percent in
2002. Efforts to lower unemployment, including government legislation implemented in 2000 to
reduce the official working week from 39 hours to 35 hours, had limited success. As a result, in 2004
the government announced plans to ease the rules to give employers and employees more flexibility.
The lack of vigorous economic growth has also made it more difficult for France to maintain the
traditionally generous social welfare benefits available to the country’s citizens. Reforming the welfare
state in a socially equitable manner remains a major challenge for France in the decades ahead.
The principle of a mixed economy, in which both government and private businesses exercise
influence over various sectors of the economy has long been accepted in France. The efforts of French
public officials to shape the economy are often traced back to 17th-century statesman Jean-Baptiste
Colbert. Under Colbert, an economic adviser to Louis XIV, king of France, the French state centralized
control over key industries and regulated international trade. During the 19th and early 20th
centuries, government intervention in the economy declined. This trend changed after World War II,
when vigorous government planning played a major role in France’s postwar economic revival. Bold
national plans were approved to promote economic growth and reconstruction of war-damaged
industries, communications networks, and other infrastructure.
After World War II the French state acquired a number of businesses, created others from scratch,
and adjusted the overall mix of enterprises it owned. Legislation creating a nationalized railroad
system was passed in 1937. Soon after the war ended, air transportation, major banks, and coal
mines came under government control. In addition, the government became a major shareholder in
the automotive, electronics, and aircraft and air transportation industries, as well as the primary
investor in the development of oil and natural gas reserves. From 1946 until 1981, the public sector
changed little in scope. Following the Socialist Party’s victory in 1981, however, state ownership and
control expanded dramatically. By 1983, about 9 percent of the labor force worked in enterprises
controlled by the state. In 1986 the new center-right government launched a privatization program.
B The Government’s Role in the Economy
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From 1986 to 1988 almost 500,000 people, or about 2 percent of the labor force, ceased to work in
publicly owned enterprises, due mostly to privatization. Since then, the government has gradually
reduced its holdings in most economic sectors, including telecommunications, air transportation,
finance, and insurance.
The first national economic plan was developed in 1947, under the leadership of French statesman
Jean Monnet. An economic planning agency was authorized to develop a new plan every four or five
years. The agency convened a series of commissions, each composed of representatives of
government, business, and labor, to study the economy and to discuss ways to achieve growth and
production targets. During the early years of planning, ambitious growth goals were often exceeded.
From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, however, planning appeared to lose much of its effectiveness
as slow growth, rising unemployment, and inflation became persistent economic problems. French
economic planners found it increasingly difficult to forecast economic trends as the French economy
became more complex and more open to international influences. Today, national economic planning
is no longer a highly visible feature of French economic policy.
The French government uses various tools to promote economic growth and stability. Until recently,
these included fiscal and monetary policies, which involve the government’s powers to tax and spend
and to control the supply of money. Fiscal policies generally seek to encourage economic expansion
when economic growth is lagging or unemployment is high. They also try to encourage economic
contraction when demand for goods and services is high enough to generate inflation (see Inflation
and Deflation). Fiscal policies to promote economic expansion include cutting taxes and increasing
government spending. These policies aim to stimulate demand by giving individuals and businesses
more money to spend. Since the mid-1970s, the French government has generally pursued
expansionary fiscal policies, and government expenditures have consistently exceeded government
revenues. Under the terms of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) established by the European Union
(EU), France and other participating EU members pledged to restrain their use of fiscal policies to keep
their budget deficits below 3 percent of GDP. France has had trouble meeting the 3 percent limit,
however. In 2003, after breaching the limit two years in a row, France received a formal warning from
the EU’s European Commission to restrain government spending. EMU participants are not permitted
to use monetary policies—efforts to adjust the supply and demand for money—to fine-tune their
economies. Since 1999 the supranational European Central Bank (ECB) has set monetary policy for all
EMU participants.
Government revenue in France comes from a variety of sources. The most important sources include
social security contributions; the value-added tax (VAT, a national sales tax); a special tax on income,
instituted in 1991 and earmarked to finance the social security system; and the personal income tax.
In general, France tends to rely on indirect taxes, such as the VAT, rather than direct taxes, such as
the personal income tax. France was the first country to implement the VAT, the primary indirect tax
used today throughout Europe. A wealth tax is levied on household assets that exceed 732,000 euros.
France is the fourth most heavily taxed nation in the EU, after Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium.
Public expenditure accounts for a large percentage of GDP in France—generally more than 40 percent.
Principal government expenditures include social security; compensation of government employees;
interest payments on the national debt; investment in tangible assets, such as infrastructure and
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military hardware; payment of pensions; and payments to the EU. The regional and local governments
generate tax revenue themselves, but they also rely heavily on transfers from the national
government. Regional and local governments maintain the roads, oversee public assistance, and share
responsibility for the educational system.
France is a charter member of the European Union (EU), which was created in 1993 with the
ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Many economic policy decisions that were once made at the
national level are now made at the EU level, including decisions regarding agricultural policy,
commercial policy, competition policy, and monetary policy.
Under provisions established in the Maastricht Treaty, France is among a group of EMU members that
have adopted a single, multinational currency, the euro. The euro entered into use in 1999 for
electronic transfers and accounting purposes. On January 1, 2002, euro-denominated coins and
banknotes went into circulation. National currencies such as the French franc were rapidly withdrawn
from circulation in all EMU countries and replaced by the euro. The ECB was founded to manage the
transition to the euro; since 1999 the ECB has set monetary policy for states participating in the single
currency. National central banks, such as the Banque de France, are expected to execute the
instructions of the ECB.
The total French labor force in 2003 was 27 million people. The structure of employment has changed
significantly in recent decades. In the 1950s the majority of French workers were employed in industry
and agriculture. Industry accounted for 24.4 percent of total employment in 2001, while the share for
agriculture, forestry, and fishing was down to 1.6 percent. In contrast, employment in the service
sector has grown steadily since World War II; 74.1 percent of the French work force was employed in
this sector in 2001. Job growth has been especially strong in business services, household services,
education, health and welfare, and public administration. White-collar occupations are gradually
replacing their blue-collar counterparts.
The average number of hours worked annually per worker has declined markedly since the early
1980s. This decline was especially significant in the automobile industry, in the electrical and
electronic equipment industries, and in the hotel and restaurant industry. Some of the decline reflects
legislated changes. In 1982 the government reduced the official workweek from 40 to 39 hours and
extended the minimum annual paid vacation from four weeks to five weeks. In 1998 the National
Assembly adopted legislation reducing the official working week from 39 to 35 hours. The rules took
effect in January 2000 for companies with more than 20 employees and in 2002 for smaller
companies. However, in 2004 the government—citing concerns that the mandatory 35-hour work
week inhibited flexibility and increased employer costs—announced plans to ease the rules, despite
strong objections from French trade unions.
Unemployment rates in France were stubbornly high during the 1990s, averaging 11.5 percent for the
C The European Union’s Role in the Economy
D Labor
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years 1992 through 1998. Unemployment fell slightly at the end of the decade following several years
of steady economic growth, but it continues to remain chronically high. Unemployment rates are
highest among young people and women.
France has a relatively low rate of trade union membership compared to most other industrialized
nations in Europe, a trend reinforced by the declining number of blue-collar jobs. In 1980, 18 percent
of French workers belonged to labor unions; by the early 2000s that number had declined to about 8
percent. Yet French trade unions retain significant power. They help manage the nation’s welfare
system and negotiate nationwide agreements on wages and working conditions. French trade unions
have maintained their presence in important public utilities, including railways, subways,
telecommunications, and electricity. As a result, trade unions are often well placed to disrupt the
economy through labor strikes.
The largest trade unions in France are industrial unions (associations that seek to organize all workers
in an industry) rather than craft unions (associations that seek to organize skilled workers in particular
crafts). The principal industrial unions include Force Ouvrière (FO); the Confédération Française
Démocratique du Travail (CFDT); the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), a communist-led
union; and the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC), a Roman Catholic-oriented
union. Most French unions profess hostility toward capitalism. They prefer to lobby government
officials for legally mandated reforms rather than to bargain with business enterprises for voluntary
changes.
The French economy changed dramatically during the second half of the 20th century. In the early
1950s industry and services had emerged as the leading economic sectors, but agriculture, forestry,
and fishing still accounted for more than one quarter of all jobs. Modernization of agriculture in the
decades following World War II reduced employment in that sector while leading to large gains in
agricultural production. Agriculture now employs a small percentage of the nation’s labor force, even
though France remains the most important agricultural nation in western Europe. In 1950 industry
and services each accounted for slightly more than one-third of all economic activity in France. Today,
services—including banking, retailing, and tourism—account for more than two-thirds of all economic
activity. In 2003 services contributed 72.8 percent of the GDP; industry contributed 24.5 percent of
the GDP; and agriculture, forestry, and fishing contributed 2.7 percent of the GDP.
E Economic Sectors
E1 Agriculture
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France is one of the world’s leading agricultural nations. France has more surface area devoted to
agriculture than any other nation in western Europe— 19.6 million hectares (48.4 million acres) in
2002, or 35.6 percent of France’s total land area. Within the European Union (EU), France is the
largest exporter of agricultural products; in world markets, France is second only to the United States.
Important farm commodities in France include dairy products, wine, beef, veal, wheat, oilseeds, and
fresh fruits and vegetables.
The large volume and diversity of agricultural products in France is made possible, in part, by
favorable natural conditions. France is endowed with extensive tracts of fertile soils, a generally
moderate climate, ample rainfall in most regions, and an extended growing season. Regional
variations in soil, topography, temperature, and climate permit farmers to produce a wide variety of
crops and agricultural products. For example, the cooler and wetter northwest region provides plentiful
grasslands for the grazing of cattle and sheep, while the warm, dry Mediterranean region offers a good
environment for growing many kinds of grapes.
Sheep Grazing in the Pyrenees
France is one of the world’s leading exporters of farm products. France’s livestock population includes about 20 million beef cattle and 10 million sheep. About one-fifth of the area of the country consists of grassland used for grazing.
Photo Researchers, Inc./Francois Gohier
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Agriculture in France has changed considerably since World War II. In 1954 the agricultural sector,
which includes forestry and fishing, employed 5 million people; by 2003 only 900,000 people worked
in the sector. During the same period agricultural output grew dramatically. Great changes in farming
techniques contributed to this growth in production, including the rapid modernization of French
agriculture. Many farmers have come to rely heavily on machines; irrigation is now widespread; and
the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemical products has risen dramatically. In addition to
modern production techniques, the size of the average farm has nearly tripled in recent decades, from
15 hectares (37 acres) in 1955 to 42 hectares (104 acres) by 2001. These changes have driven ever-
increasing yields, productivity, and efficiency.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), provided for in the 1957 treaty that created the European
Economic Community (EEC), had an enormous impact on French agriculture. The CAP created a
system of common prices for agricultural products across the EEC and, later, its successor
organizations, the EC and the EU. The CAP stimulated agricultural production and improved the
incomes of many French farmers. As the foremost agricultural producer in western Europe, France is
the largest recipient of CAP funds.
Farmland in France
Fields of grain cover about one-half of France’s arable land. While cereals provide about one-fifth of the value of the country’s total agricultural output, other important crops, such as grapes, vegetables, and other fruits, take up less space than grain and account for a greater percentage of the total value.
PAR/NYC, Inc.
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The most important crops in France are cereal grains. France is the EU’s largest producer and exporter
of cereals. These cereal crops, especially wheat, corn, and barley, are planted on roughly half of
France’s commercial farmland. The bulk of cereal crop production occurs in the low fertile plains of the
Paris Basin, a vast region in north central France that comprises the nation’s traditional breadbasket.
Sugar beets and oil seeds, mainly rape seed and sunflower seed, are also grown extensively in the
Paris Basin.
Production of dairy products, including France’s world-renowned cheeses such as brie, Camembert,
and blue cheese, is concentrated in the northwest and along the eastern border. Beef cattle are raised
mainly in eastern Brittany and the Massif Central. Quality wines are produced more broadly, in
Burgundy, around the city of Bordeaux, in the Rhône Valley, in Champagne, and along the Loire River.
An extensive assortment of fruits and vegetables is cultivated in the warm Mediterranean region.
Dense forests once covered much of France. By the early 19th century, much of the original forest
cover had been cleared for farmland, fuel, and building materials. The extent of tree cover has
increased significantly since then, due in part to active reforestation programs. In 2000 forests
covered 15.3 million hectares (37.9 million acres) of metropolitan France, 27.9 percent of its territory.
France is the third most forested nation in the European Union (EU), behind Sweden and Finland.
Forest cover is densest in the eastern, southern, and southwestern portions of France. About two-
thirds of the forests are made up of deciduous hardwoods, including oak, beech, and chestnut.
Softwood species, primarily pine, spruce, and fir, comprise less than one-third of forest stands; most
softwood stands are found in mountain regions. About three-quarters of the forests are privately
owned; the rest are state-owned.
French wood production in 2003 totaled 36.9 million cu m (1.30 billion cu ft). About 60 percent of the
Barrels of Wine, France
Fine wines are best stored under dark, cool, and moderately dry conditions such as basements. While the wine is aging in a barrel, wine makers take great care to limit the air space in the barrel by regularly adding wine to the barrels to fill vacant space formed as the wine evaporates. France is well known for its wines.
E2 Forestry
Denis Tremblay Labtex Inc.
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harvested wood is used in the construction industry, 30 percent is used for pulp and paper, and 10
percent is used for firewood.
France has an extensive coastline, and commercial fishing has long been an important industry in
coastal regions. French fishing vessels operate widely, plying coastal waters, the fish-rich North Sea,
or the North Atlantic waters of Iceland and the northeastern coast of North America.
E3 Fishing
Boulogne-sur-Mer
Boulogne-sur-Mer, on the English Channel in northern France, is one of the nation’s most important fishing ports. The city is also a destination for cross-channel ferries. Much of Boulogne-sur-Mer was rebuilt after extensive damage sustained during World War II.
Robert Harding Picture Library/Robert Francis
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The leading commercial fishing ports in France are on the Atlantic coast and include Boulogne-sur-Mer,
Lorient, Concarneau, and La Rochelle. Some of the principal fish caught are tuna, pollock, pilchard
(sardines), hake, mackerel, and whiting. The commercial cultivation of shellfish, including oysters,
clams, and mussels, occurs along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. France also has an extensive
freshwater fishery.
France has significant deposits of several minerals important to industry, such as iron ore, bauxite,
and uranium. France is the second largest producer of iron ore in western Europe, behind Sweden.
The nation’s iron districts, centered in the Lorraine basin in the northeast, once served as a major
source of employment. Most iron ore mined in France contains high levels of impurities, and domestic
production has declined in recent decades as the French steel industry has turned to purer ores
imported from abroad. Bauxite, or aluminum ore, is mined in substantial quantities, mainly in the
southeast. France is one of the world’s largest producers of uranium, a fuel used in nuclear reactors.
Uranium is mined at several sites in central and western France.
France also has notable deposits of coal. The coalfields of northern France remained productive into
the 1950s and 1960s, but production plummeted as seams were exhausted and extraction costs
climbed. By 1990 coal production ceased in the northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the traditional
center of coal mining in France. Limited coal mining continues in central and southern France. Today
France imports more coal than it produces domestically.
La Rochelle
Colorful fishing boats crowd the harbor in La Rochelle, an important Atlantic fishing port in western France.
E4 Mining
Photo Researchers, Inc./Marie Breton
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Other minerals mined in significant quantities include potash salts, salt, gypsum, tungsten, and sulfur.
Large amounts of nickel are excavated in New Caledonia, a French territory in the southwestern Pacific
Ocean. French mines also produce small amounts of lead, zinc, and silver. Small deposits of petroleum
are located in the southwestern Landes region, and nearby natural gas deposits have been tapped
since the 1950s. Quarrying for construction materials such as sand, gravel, stone, and clay occurs
throughout France.
France is one of the world’s leading industrial producers. Manufacturing in France is highly diversified
and serves as the nation’s primary source of export income. Leading manufacturing sectors include
food products; automobiles, aircraft, ships, and trains; electrical machinery; mechanical equipment
and machine tools; metallurgy; chemicals and pharmaceuticals; and textiles and clothing.
During the 17th century the French state promoted mercantilism—manufacturing and trade policies
designed to develop the economy and swell the national treasury with gold bullion. These policies,
established before the age of industrialization, included state support for high-quality manufactured
E5 Manufacturing
Automobile Production in France
Automobile production contributes significantly to the French economy. Workers assemble vehicles in a Peugeot factory at Mulhouse, in eastern France.
AFP/Damien Meyer
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goods—silk, tapestries, metalwork, porcelain (see Enamel), and other luxury items. France earned a
world reputation for producing luxury goods.
The Industrial Revolution, which originated in Britain in the 18th century, influenced industrialization
in France. By the 19th century iron and steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, and textiles had become
important industries. Industrial cities, including Lille, Lyon, and Mulhouse, grew rapidly. Despite these
changes, France remained overwhelmingly an agricultural nation of small towns and villages at the
end of the 19th century. Industrialization in France was gradual, prolonged, and steady, rather than
swift and spectacular.
Before World War II, France’s manufacturing sector consisted mostly of small, family-owned firms,
many of which were geared to produce low volumes of finely crafted goods. Manufacturing grew
dramatically after the war and was the major force behind France’s postwar economic recovery. By
the mid-20th century manufacturing had emerged as the most important sector of the French
economy. France became a leading producer of automobiles, steel, electrical equipment, and
chemicals and earned a reputation for technological innovation.
During the 1960s the French government encouraged mergers among many domestic manufacturing
firms to promote efficiency and to enhance the sector’s international competitiveness. This policy
helped create a number of large enterprises that dominated their industries domestically. By the mid-
1970s, however, manufacturing output and employment began to decline as chronic recession took
hold, foreign competition intensified, and the economy shifted toward service-based industries.
Today, food processing is France’s largest manufacturing sector in terms of employment. France is the
world’s largest producer of sugar beets; the second largest producer of wine, behind Italy; and the
second largest producer of cheese, behind the United States. Other well-known French foods include
meats, breads, and confectionaries.
France ranks fourth in the world in automobile production and second in the European Union (EU),
behind Germany. The two major auto-manufacturing firms are Renault and Peugeot, which acquired
automaker Citroën in 1974. The French automobile industry was once located mainly in the Paris
metropolitan region, but there are now major facilities in Alsace-Lorraine in the northeast and in the
western Paris Basin.
French firms are internationally known for technological innovation in aerospace, defense,
transportation, and other specialized industries. French passenger trains and railroad equipment are
sold domestically and abroad, and the French-made TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) is among the
world’s fastest passenger trains. France produces advanced commercial and military aircraft, as well
as many kinds of military hardware. France is also a world leader in nuclear energy technology. A
large electronics industry in France produces telecommunications equipment, computers, televisions,
radios, and other items. French mechanical equipment and machine tools are sold throughout the
world.
The manufacture of iron and steel (See also Iron and Steel Manufacture) remains an important source
of employment in France, although producers are increasingly turning to imported iron ore. France is
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also home to a large aluminum industry. The French chemical industry produces a diverse range of
products, including industrial chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, solvents, beauty products, and
pharmaceuticals. The textile and apparel industries, long famous for cotton, silk, and woolen goods,
remain important. However, production has declined dramatically since World War II due to intensified
foreign competition.
The production of services in France grew dramatically after World War II. In 1945 the majority of
French workers were employed in agriculture or industry; by 1998 the service sector employed 68
percent of all French workers. The service sector covers a broad range of economic activities, including
wholesale and retail trade, transportation, mail and telecommunications, finance and insurance, real
estate, business services, hotel and restaurant trades, health, education, welfare, and public
administration. Service industries are concentrated in urban areas, especially the Paris region.
The growth of the service sector has transformed urban landscapes in France. New office complexes
and shopping malls have proliferated in large cities, and many of the small, traditional retail shops for
which France is famous have disappeared. One prominent example of this new urban architecture is
La Défense, an area of high-rise buildings located just west of Paris. Begun in the late 1950s, La
Défense contains the offices of many multinational corporations and is one of the largest shopping
E6 Services
Floodlit Grande Arche at La Défense
La Grande Arche is the highlight of La Défense, an important business district in Paris. While the commercial area was developed mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, La Grande Arche itself was built more recently to commemorate the 1989 bicentenary of the French revolution. The monument is placed in a direct line through the Place Charles de Gaulle toward the Avenue des Champs Élysées. The huge structure, measuring about 110 m (about 360 ft) high, is one of many high-profile projects undertaken by governments of the Fifth Republic in recent decades.
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centers in France. Similar complexes have altered the central business districts of other major cities,
including Lyon and Lille.
Large wholesale and retail outlets have come to play a major role in French commerce. Although
French department stores were already famous in the 19th century, French households tended until
recently to purchase most of their goods from small, specialized, family-owned shops or in open-air
markets. France’s first supermarket, a large retail food store, was opened in France in 1957. France’s
first hypermarket, an even larger retail store, was opened in 1963. Since then, chains of
supermarkets, hypermarkets, and large-scale home-appliance and home-improvement stores have
spread across the country.
The monetary unit of France is the single currency of the European Union (EU), the euro (1.07 euros
equal U.S. $1; 1999 average). France is among 12 EU member nations to adopt the single currency
under Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The euro was introduced on January 1, 1999, for
electronic transfers and accounting purposes only, and France’s national currency, the franc, was used
for other purposes. Euro-denominated coins and bills entered circulation on January 1, 2002, and
replaced the French national currency.
France has a large, well-developed financial system. Banking, finance, insurance, real estate and other
business services accounted for nearly 30 percent of France’s GDP in 1998. France’s major banks are
among the largest in the world. They include Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP), Crédit Agricole, Crédit
Lyonnais, and Société Générale. The French insurance sector is the world’s fifth largest. In the late
1990s a wave of mergers, corporate restructuring, foreign investment, and continued privatization
encouraged unprecedented consolidation in the banking and insurance sectors.
The French government has long taken a strong hand in regulating the nation’s financial system. In
1945 the four largest commercial banks were nationalized. Virtually all other commercial banks, and
several major investment banks, were nationalized in 1982, giving the government control of more
than 90 percent of all bank deposits. In 1987 the government began to privatize its banks, a process
that continued into the early 2000s. In 1993 the Banque de France, the French central bank, gained
greater autonomy from the government, a requirement of membership in the EU; the bank plays an
important role in supervising and regulating the French banking sector.
In 1998 EU member countries established the European Central Bank (ECB), which is located in
Frankfurt, Germany, and is responsible for all monetary policies of the EU. In January 1999 control
over French monetary policy, including setting interest rates and regulating the money supply, was
transferred from the Banque de France to the ECB. After the changeover, the Banque de France joined
the national banks of the other EU countries that adopted the euro as part of the European System of
Central Banks (ESCB).
E6a Wholesale and Retail Trade
E6b Currency and Banking
Page 47France
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Most stocks in France are traded on the Paris Stock Exchange (Paris Bourse). Smaller exchanges exist
in other large cities, including Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux, and Marseille. The stock market in France remains
relatively small compared to other wealthy industrialized countries. Traditionally, the French stock
market played a minor role in financing private investment, a function dominated by the nation’s
banks. This began to change in recent decades as investment in the stock market increased. By the
late 1990s financial securities accounted for nearly 50 percent of household financial assets. Today
more than 1,000 mutual funds and hundreds of corporations are quoted on the Paris Stock Exchange.
In 1999 the Paris Stock Exchange agreed to participate in a single electronic trading platform that
includes the other major stock exchanges in Europe.
France is one of the world’s great trading nations, and its foreign commerce includes a wide variety of
goods and services. France imports a significant portion of its energy supplies as well as industrial
minerals; machinery; transportation equipment, primarily road vehicles; and consumer goods.
Leading exports of France include electrical and specialized machinery, passenger vehicles, aircraft,
power-generating equipment, iron and steel, cereal grains, office machines and data-processing
equipment, alcoholic beverages, organic chemicals, and textiles. For much of the period following
World War II, France imported more goods than it exported. During the 1990s the value of French
exports began to exceed the value of imports, giving France a positive balance of trade.
France is a member of the European Union (EU); about three-fifths of its foreign trade is with other EU
member nations, especially Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, the United
Kingdom, and Spain. The United States and Japan are also important trading partners. France plays a
leading role in the foreign commerce of some of its former overseas possessions, including Algeria,
Morocco, Tunisia, and Côte d’Ivoire.
The leading ports in France include Marseille, located on the Mediterranean coast, and the ports of Le
Havre, Rouen, and Dunkerque on the Atlantic coast. Marseille, which is served by extensive rail and
air transport facilities, is the port of entry for much of the oil and natural gas imported into France. Le
Havre, located at the mouth of the Seine River on the English Channel, has extensive transatlantic and
transchannel shipping facilities.
France is a charter member of many international economic organizations, including the International
Monetary Fund (IMF, joined in 1946), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(World Bank, 1946), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, 1948), which became the
World Trade Organization (WTO, 1994), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD, 1961). In addition, France is a member of the European Union, established in
1993 after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty. Prior to 1993, France was a founding member of the
EU’s precursor organizations, including the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European
Economic Community (EEC), and the European Community (EC).
E6c Foreign Trade
E6d Tourism
Page 48France
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An attractive and varied landscape, a rich set of cultural resources, and a world-renowned collection of
foods and wines make France a major tourist destination. In 2003 France had 75 million visitors, more
than any other nation in the world. Tourism is a leading industry in France. The French themselves
travel widely in their own country, an activity encouraged by the mandatory five-week paid vacation
received annually by most workers.
Tourism in France
Tourism is a leading industry in France. A tour boat carries sightseers on the Seine River in Paris, one of the most visited cities in the world.
Liaison Agency/Richard Pasley
Page 49France
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The most popular tourist destination in France is Paris, one of the most visited cities in the world. The
city’s attractions are many, from its colorful neighborhoods, sidewalk cafes, and famous cuisine to its
prestigious cultural institutions and world-renowned architecture. Monumental landmarks in Paris
include the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Louvre museum, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, and
the Georges Pompidou Center. Other popular tourist destinations in France include the Riviera on the
Mediterranean coast, with its numerous hotels and waterfront resorts, and the French Alps, which
provide some of the world’s best skiing and snowboarding.
Deauville, France
A popular seaside resort on the Normandy coast in northern France, Deauville relies heavily upon tourism. Local attractions include a casino, a racecourse, and the sandy beach.
F Infrastructure
Explorer/H. Veiller
Page 50France
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France enjoys a modern and innovative economic infrastructure. France is at the forefront of Europe’s
nuclear energy industry and is one of the world’s leading producers of nuclear fuels. In transportation,
France has a dense network of highways, railroads, and navigable inland waterways. It was the first
European country to develop high-speed railway passenger service, and the rapid transit systems of
most large cities, especially Paris, are comfortable and convenient for passengers. In
telecommunications, France pioneered the Minitel, a forerunner of the Internet.
Nuclear Power Generators
Nuclear power generators sit amid rich farmlands in France’s Loire Valley. Nuclear power plants provide more than three-quarters of the electricity generated in France.
F1 Energy
The Image Works/Stuart Cohen
Page 51France
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France is endowed with few natural energy resources. Coal was the primary fuel of the Industrial
Revolution, and the modest coalfields of northern France provided much of the energy for France’s
early industrial expansion. With the rapid spread of the internal-combustion engine in the 20th
century, petroleum surpassed coal as a primary energy source. With very little of its own petroleum
reserves, France had to import the vast majority of its petroleum supplies. By the early 1970s France
was importing about three-quarters of its energy, much of it petroleum.
An oil crisis in 1973 demonstrated the danger of France’s dependence on foreign oil, and the French
government undertook new initiatives to develop alternative energy sources. Much of this effort
centered on an ambitious program to generate electricity through nuclear energy. France also
diversified the types and sources of imported energy and promoted energy conservation. These
programs significantly reduced France’s dependence on external energy sources. By 1998 slightly
more than half the energy used in France was produced domestically.
France generated 78.5 percent of its electricity in nuclear power plants in 2002; only Lithuania is more
dependent on atomic power. France is the world’s second largest producer of nuclear electricity, after
the United States. Today there are 19 nuclear power generation sites in France, as well as one of the
world's largest uranium enrichment plants (uranium is a fuel for nuclear reactors). The development of
nuclear power in France has raised relatively few popular protests. Not all nuclear power projects have
met with success, however. In southeastern France a 13-year-old fast-breeder reactor, a type of
nuclear reactor that produces nuclear fuels, was permanently closed in 1998. The plant, located near
Grenoble, was shut down following technical problems, safety concerns, and opposition from
environmental groups.
The remainder of France’s electricity output is generated by hydroelectric facilities (see Waterpower)
France Electricity Production
© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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and by thermal installations using coal, petroleum products, or natural gas. In 1966 France opened a
tidal power plant on the Rance River in Brittany to harness the tremendous power of the ocean tides.
France produces more electricity than it uses and is a major exporter of electricity to neighboring
countries, including the United Kingdom, Italy, and Switzerland.
Coal production and use in France declined significantly in the late 20th century. Coal production
peaked in 1958 at 58 million metric tons. By 2002, due in part to declining coal reserves and rising
extraction costs, France produced just 2.1 million metric tons. During the same year France imported
three-quarters of its coal supplies. Declining coal production was accompanied by declining
consumption, as industries and households turned to other energy sources. By 1998 coal accounted
for just 6.4 percent of the energy consumed in France.
Indigenous supplies of petroleum, located in a series of wells in southwestern France and the Paris
Basin, are extremely limited. France is therefore a major importer of petroleum. In 1998 France
imported 98 percent of the petroleum it consumed. Since the early 1970s the importance of petroleum
as an energy source has declined steadily, from 67 percent of all energy used in 1973 to 40 percent in
1998. The sources of imported petroleum have also changed. In the 1970s France imported nearly
three-quarters its petroleum from the Middle East. Today, France supplements its Middle East imports
with large shipments of petroleum from the North Sea, Africa, and the Commonwealth of Independent
States. Major petroleum refineries in France are located near Marseille, Le Havre, and Rouen.
Domestic reserves of natural gas are also small. An important supply of natural gas was discovered in
southwestern France in 1951, but it is likely to be exhausted within the first two decades of the 21st
century. In 1998 France imported 94 percent of the natural gas it consumed. Natural gas has become
an increasingly important energy source.
F2 Transportation
Page 53France
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France enjoys one of the most highly developed transportation systems in the world. France has the
densest road network in Europe and an extensive network of railways and navigable waterways. Its
major airports are among the world’s busiest. Paris has long been at the center of the French
transportation system, with the nation’s chief land, water, and air routes radiating from the capital. In
recent decades major road transportation projects have focused on bypassing Paris and improving
connections between large provincial cities.
France’s road network has grown increasingly important since World War II: Today it carries three-
quarters of the nation’s freight and more than four-fifths of all passenger traffic. In 2002 France had
893,100 km (554,947 mi) of roads, including thousands of kilometers of limited-access autoroutes, or
superhighways. Compared to other countries in western Europe, France was slow to develop its
superhighway network. In 1960 the network amounted to just 174 km (108 mi); by 1965, it had
grown only to 650 km (400 mi). Then, in 1970, the government began promoting motorway
construction by granting concessions to private enterprises, which financed their projects by charging
tolls. The superhighway network grew to 6,000 km (3,700 mi) in 1985 and to 8,600 km (5,300 mi) by
1997.
Millau Viaduct
The spectacular Millau Viaduct soars above the valley of the Tarn River near Millau in southwestern France. The 2.5 km- (1.5 mi-) long cable-stayed structure is the highest vehicular bridge in the world, with the road surface reaching a maximum height of 270 m (885 ft) above the valley floor. The viaduct's tallest pier rises to a height of more than 340 m (1,115 ft). The viaduct opened to traffic in December 2004.
Corbis/Chris Hellier
Page 54France
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Railway construction in France began in the early 19th century; by the end of the century many of the
main lines of the nation’s railway network were in place. Most railway lines radiated out from Paris,
which served as the nation’s transportation hub. Legislation nationalizing French railroads was passed
in 1937. Independent railway companies and the existing state-controlled railways joined together in
the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français (French National Railways, or SNCF), with the state
owning a controlling share. The railway network reached its peak length of 42,000 km (26,000 mi) in
1932. Railways declined sharply in importance in the decades after World War II. Rail’s share of
domestic freight traffic fell from 62 percent in 1958 to 16 percent in 1997. Today, France has 29,000
km (18,000 mi) of railroad track in use, two-fifths of which is electrified.
Rail passenger traffic remains important in France. The development of the high-speed TGV (Train à
Grande Vitesse) has led to the construction of several new lines and increased the rate of rail
passenger traffic. TGV can travel at speeds up to 320 km/h (200 mph) on specially built track, but the
trains must travel much slower on conventional track. The first TGV line, completed in 1981, linked
Paris with Lyon. A second line linked Paris with Nantes and Bordeaux and entered service in 1989. A
third line linked Paris with Lille and was completed in 1993. In 1994 freight and passenger train
service commenced through the English Channel Tunnel (nicknamed the “Chunnel”), connecting
Calais, France, and Dover, England. Today, high-speed rail lines link Paris and other major French
cities to many destinations outside of France, including cities in England, Belgium, The Netherlands,
Germany, and Switzerland. TGV lines have proved so successful they have largely replaced passenger
air travel between connected cities. Using the TGV, passengers can travel between Brussels and Paris
in just 90 minutes.
Train à Grande Vitesse
The French high-speed train Train à Grande Vitesse travels at about 320 km/h (200 mph) on specially built track.
Photo Researchers, Inc./Sarval/Rapho
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France has 8,500 km (5,300 mi) of navigable rivers and canals, the longest system in Europe. Many of
the canals linking navigable rivers were built in the 19th century, and few are suitable for large
vessels. Inland water transport of freight has declined in recent decades as faster and less expensive
alternatives have become available. By the mid-1990s, inland waters accounted for just 2 percent of
all freight traffic, down from 10 percent in 1958.
France possesses a number of large maritime ports, including Marseille and Le Havre, two of the
largest ports in Europe. Other major ports are Dunkerque, Calais, Nantes, Rouen, and Bordeaux.
Marseille, Le Havre, and Rouen serve as entry points for large amounts of imported petroleum. Calais
is the nation’s major passenger port, handling a significant volume of English Channel traffic.
The principal international airports of France are located near Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Strasbourg,
and Toulouse. The two major airports near Paris, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly, handled 64
million passengers in 1998, making Paris one of the world’s busiest cities for air travel. Paris is also
one of the leading airfreight centers in Europe. The most important airline operating in France is Air
France, a part of Air France-KLM Group, the world’s largest airline group. Nationalized in 1933, Air
A Nation of Canals
A barge transports freight on a canal in northeastern France. Most navigable rivers in France are linked by canals, many of which were built in the 19th century.
SuperStock
Page 56France
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France was partially privatized in 1999, and in 2003 Air France merged with The Netherlands-based
KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) to form a new company called Air France-KLM. The French government
retained a minority ownership share in the Air France subsidiary.
France has a large and diverse communications system. The French government plays an important
role in the provision of key communications services, including postal, telephone, and radio and
television services. The free press has a long history in France. Many national and regional
newspapers and magazines enjoy wide circulation and are important sources of information for
France’s population. Most are privately owned and are not linked to political parties.
During most of the 20th century, mail, telephone, and telegraph services were managed by the same
public agency. In 1991 mail and telecommunications were separated from each other and given to
newly created, state-owned enterprises. Mail service was assigned to La Poste and
telecommunications to France Télécom.
La Poste is one of the largest mail carriers within the European Union (EU), operating postal services
in France, in several of the nation’s overseas departments and territories, and in Andorra and Monaco.
In addition to delivering mail, La Poste offers retail banking and courier services. These services,
which include savings and checking accounts, comprise an important part of La Poste’s revenues.
France enjoys a technologically advanced telecommunications system. France introduced the Minitel, a
forerunner of the Internet, in the early 1980s. It consists of a video display terminal connected to a
telecommunications network (Teletel) and is offered to telephone subscribers instead of a directory.
The Minitel evolved over the years to offer news, booking services for travel, and mail order and other
services. By 1999 France Télécom had distributed an estimated 9 million Minitel terminals to
subscribers across France, most of them in private households. Minitel terminals remain widely used in
France as they permit online access to useful services without the need for an Internet-linked personal
computer. Today, Minitel services are also available on the Internet.
France Télécom formerly held a monopoly on telecommunications across France. During the 1990s
France stepped up the deregulation of its telecommunications sector in response to directives from the
European Union, and France Télécom was partially privatized in 1997. Today France Télécom is
pursuing expansion into other European markets, and its subsidiaries provide Internet services, mobile
telephone services, and other telecommunications services.
Radio and television services are provided by independent, publicly financed organizations, as well as
by private commercial operators. All television broadcasting is monitored by an independent
regulatory commission, the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA). Until the early 1980s French
television consisted of three public broadcasting networks. The system was largely financed by an
annual tax levied on owners of television sets. The creation of private television was authorized in
1984, and TF1—one of the state’s three broadcast networks—was privatized in 1987. Today, there are
more than 100 broadcasters of televised programs, including free broadcasting networks, pay
broadcasting networks, cable operators, and satellite channels. Major radio stations include the public
F3 Communications
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radio networks Radio France and Radio France Internationale and the commercial stations Europe 1,
RTL, and NRJ.
The press in France is well established and free from government control and censorship. Newspapers
reflect a wide range of political viewpoints. Eight daily newspapers had a circulation of 300,000 or
more, including four in Paris. The major Paris dailies are Le Figaro, Le Parisien, L’Equipe, Le Monde,
and France-Soir. The major provincial dailies are Ouest-France in Rennes, Le Dauphiné Libéré in
Grenoble, Sud-Ouest in Bordeaux, and La Voix du Nord in Lille. The country’s leading periodicals
include Sélection du Reader’s Digest, Modes et Travaux, Nous Deux, L’Express, Paris-Match, and
Marie-Claire. The leading arts magazine is Art et Décoration and the main business periodical is
L’Expansion.
William James Adams contributed the Economy section of this article.
Government of France
France is a presidential republic with a centralized national government. France’s current system of
government, known as the Fifth Republic, is based on a constitution that was adopted by popular
referendum in 1958. This constitution significantly enlarged presidential powers and curtailed the
authority of parliament. The president, elected by direct popular vote, is head of state. This official
appoints the prime minister, who is head of government. The French parliament consists of two
chambers: the National Assembly and the Senate. The National Assembly is more powerful than the
Senate, although both chambers share legislative authority. The Constitutional Council, established by
the 1958 constitution, has authority to supervise elections and referenda and to decide constitutional
questions.
Until the French Revolution of 1789, France was a monarchy, governed by famous kings such as
Henry IV and Louis XIV. The revolution abolished the monarchy but failed to establish a durable
democracy. Power fell to Napoleon Bonaparte, and he eventually created an empire. Upon Bonaparte’s
military defeat in 1815, the countries arrayed against him restored the French monarchy. The
revolution of 1848 abolished the monarchy once again, and in 1852 Napoleon III, the nephew of
Napoleon Bonaparte, established a new empire. This regime crumbled in 1870 when Napoleon III was
taken prisoner by Germany during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).
VI GOVERNMENT
A Overview
Form of government Presidential republic
Head of state President
Head of government Prime minister (premier)
Legislature Bicameral legislature: National Assembly, 577 deputies Senate, 321 senators
Voting qualifications Universal at age 18
Constitution 28 September 1958; amended in 1962, 1992, 1993, and 2000
Highest court Court of Cassation
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Democracy returned to France under the Third Republic, a system of government formally established
by the constitution of 1875. A president, elected by a two-chambered parliament, replaced the
emperor, and a cabinet responsible to the parliament exercised legislative powers. Governing during
the Third Republic often proved challenging: Parliamentary coalitions shifted continually between
elections, and cabinets fell frequently. The Third Republic survived until 1940, when German troops
occupied France during World War II and an authoritarian collaborationist regime was established at
Vichy.
In 1946, after the war ended, French voters approved the constitution of the Fourth Republic. The new
constitution included several revisions intended to ensure a stable government, but it did not resolve
the nation’s recurrent cabinet crises. France had 26 different governments during the Fourth
Republic’s 12-year existence. In 1958 an insurrection in Algeria, then under French control, created
fear of a coup d'état in France itself. General Charles de Gaulle, a French resistance leader during
World War II, was invited to form a new government and draft a new constitution. De Gaulle favored a
presidential system with a strong, stable executive at the center of power. His constitution was
overwhelmingly approved by popular referendum and established the legal basis of the Fifth Republic.
De Gaulle took office as the first president of the Fifth Republic.
The constitution of the Fifth Republic took effect on October 4, 1958. It created a hybrid form of
republican government based on elements of both presidential and parliamentary systems. The
constitution trimmed the authority of parliament and vested the president with crucial powers,
including the right to dissolve the National Assembly and to choose the prime minister. Yet the prime
minister retained significant authority as head of the Council of Ministers (commonly called the
government) and leader of the majority party or coalition of parties in the National Assembly.
According to the constitution, national sovereignty belongs to the people. Under the principle of
universal suffrage, the constitution gives the people the right to exercise their political will in periodic
elections and referenda. All French citizens who have reached the age of voting eligibility, and who
have not been deprived of their civil rights, are entitled to vote. Citizens can be deprived of civil rights
temporarily, or permanently, if they are convicted of certain crimes. Women gained the right to vote
in 1944. The Fifth Republic’s age of voting eligibility, initially set at 21, was lowered to 18 in 1974.
As a requirement of its membership in the European Union (EU), the French parliament approved a
constitutional amendment allowing citizens of EU member countries who are residents in France to
vote in elections for seats on France’s municipal councils. The same group may also vote to fill
France’s seats in the European Parliament, the representative assembly of the EU. Citizens of any EU
country can be elected to a French municipal council or to a French seat in the European Parliament,
but they may not serve as mayors or as assistant mayors.
Constitutional amendments may be proposed by the president, at the request of the government, or
by the members of parliament. Amendments are adopted after they win approval by both chambers of
parliament and by a subsequent popular referendum, or merely by approval of three-fifths of
parliament.
B The Constitution
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The constitution gives executive authority to both the president and prime minister. The former is
head of state; the latter, as leader of the Council of Ministers, is head of government. Under Charles
de Gaulle’s leadership, the powers of the presidency completely overshadowed those of the
government. The system forged by de Gaulle remains largely in place, although the government has
gradually gained responsibility for a range of national policies, especially in the domestic sphere.
Under a precedent set by de Gaulle, all presidents since 1958 have taken primary responsibility for
foreign policy and for national defense.
The president of France is the official head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. The
president appoints the prime minister and Council of Ministers and presides over council meetings.
One of the president’s most important powers is the right to dissolve the National Assembly and call
new legislative elections. Article 16 of the constitution permits the president to assume special
emergency powers during a national crisis. In doing so the president must consult the Constitutional
Council and may not dissolve the National Assembly or prevent it from meeting. The president is also
authorized to take certain policy matters to the people in national referenda, such as the referendum
authorizing ratification of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, also known as the Treaty on European Union.
The president is elected by direct popular vote for a term of five years. The president’s term of office
was originally seven years, as established in the 1958 constitution, but voters approved a referendum
in September 2000 to reduce the term of office to five years. The shorter term took effect with the
presidential election in 2002. The constitutional revision was the most significant since 1962, when a
referendum backed by de Gaulle established direct election of the president by popular vote. (Before
1962, presidents were elected by an electoral college of government bodies.) There is no limit to the
number of terms a president can serve.
In general, the president works with the government to define policy goals and seeks to achieve these
goals with the help of a parliamentary majority. The government is primarily responsible to
parliament, which can check the actions of the government in several ways. Members of parliament
can submit written and oral questions to the government and organize investigative committees.
When the National Assembly adopts a motion of censure, or when the assembly refuses to approve
the prime minister’s program, the prime minister must tender the government’s resignation to the
president.
Presidential power is tied to the president’s support in the parliament. When the president has the
strong support of a parliamentary majority, the prime minister tends to serve as a deputy of the
president. When the president’s party is in the parliamentary minority, however, the president still
appoints a prime minister from a party in the majority coalition. In this power-sharing arrangement,
known as cohabitation, the prime minister and president may disagree about policy goals and work to
limit each other’s influence. The first episode of cohabitation occurred from 1986 to 1988 under
Socialist president François Mitterrand, after the Socialist Party lost its majority in the National
Assembly. In 1997 President Jacques Chirac lost his conservative majority in the National Assembly,
leading to a period of cohabitation with Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.
C The Executive
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The French parliament is divided into two houses, the National Assembly and the Senate. As the
legislative branch of government, parliament is engaged primarily in the debate and adoption of laws.
Legislation relating to government revenues and expenditures is especially important. The other
principal duty of parliament is to oversee the government’s exercise of executive authority, although
this oversight capacity was restricted somewhat by the 1958 constitution.
The 577 members of the National Assembly are directly elected for five-year terms. Candidates for the
National Assembly are elected by majority vote in single-member electoral districts. Runoff elections
are required if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote. Candidates who win at least
12.5 percent of the first round vote are eligible to run in second round.
The 321 members of the Senate are elected indirectly by an electoral college. A law approved in July
2003 introduced a number of reforms in senatorial elections. The law specified that senators would
henceforth be elected to six-year terms, with one-half of the Senate elected every three years.
Previously, senators were elected for nine-year terms with one-third of the Senate elected every three
years. In addition, the law increased the number of Senate seats from 321 to 346, to take effect in
2010.
In principle, the National Assembly and the Senate share equal legislative power. In practice,
however, legislative authority is tilted to the National Assembly, since the Senate may delay, but not
D The Legislature
National Assembly Building
The National Assembly building in Paris, France, houses the lower chamber of the French Parliament.
The Image Works/Lee Snider
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prevent, the passage of legislation. If the two chambers disagree on a bill, final decision rests with the
National Assembly, which may either accept the Senate’s version or, after a specified period, readopt
its own. The Economic and Social Council acts in an advisory capacity on economic and budgetary
matters to the National Assembly and the government. It consists of representatives from groups of
workers and employers and from professional and cultural organizations.
The constitution of the Fifth Republic introduced two distinctive measures intended to streamline the
legislative process. The first measure granted the government the authority to demand an up-or-down
vote on an entire bill or any portion of a bill, in either chamber. This reduces the opportunity for
members of parliament to propose endless amendments to bills they oppose. The second measure
authorizes the government to win adoption of a bill in the National Assembly without an actual vote.
To do so, the government announces that it considers rejection of the bill to be tantamount to a vote
of no confidence in the government. If opponents of the bill fail to submit and win a majority vote on a
motion of no confidence, the bill is adopted.
Laws must be promulgated by the French president to take effect. The president may ask parliament
to reconsider a law or any of its articles, and parliament must honor the request. The president may
also request the Constitutional Council to rule on the law’s constitutionality. In such cases the law may
not be implemented until the court has rendered its judgment. Prior to the Fifth Republic, laws
adopted by parliament were not subject to judicial review.
The parliamentary year was traditionally restricted to two separate sessions that ran from October to
December and from April to June. In 1995 the constitution was amended to provide a nine-month
parliamentary session to run continuously from October to June. In addition, the constitution permits
the National Assembly to censure the government in a motion passed by an absolute majority of
assembly members. Sponsors of failed motions of censure are barred from introducing similar motions
during the same session.
Prior to the French Revolution in 1789, judges in France exercised significant legislative and
administrative powers. The revolution stripped judges of much of their power and independence. An
extensive collection of laws drafted under the direction of Napoleon Bonaparte, known as the Code
Napoléon, affirmed the importance of limiting judicial power. The code, based largely on Roman, or
civil, law, directs judges to apply legal rules passed by legislative bodies to specific cases. This civil
law tradition contrasts with the English common law tradition in which judges rely on precedents—
customs and decisions in previous cases—to resolve cases. The succeeding French republics
maintained the ideal of a subordinate judiciary with little independent authority.
The judiciary regained some of its independence and power under the constitution of 1958. The
constitution established a new body, the nine-member Constitutional Council. The council is authorized
to rule on the constitutional validity of national elections, referenda, legislation, and parliamentary
procedures. Members of the council are appointed for staggered, nonrenewable, nine-year terms; the
president, National Assembly, and Senate each appoint three members. All former presidents also
have seats on the council.
E The Judiciary
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The French judiciary has two main branches. One branch of courts hears administrative cases (cases
involving disputes over government regulations); another branch hears civil and criminal cases.
Jurisdictional disputes between the two judicial branches are resolved by the eight-member Tribunal of
Conflicts. Sitting judges in the criminal, civil, and administrative courts cannot be reassigned or
terminated without cause by the executive or legislative branches of government.
Most cases involving administrative law are heard initially by administrative tribunals. Decisions in
these tribunals may, upon appeal, work their way up through a hierarchy of appellate courts. At the
apex of this system is the Council of State, a tribunal founded by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Council of
State has final appellate jurisdiction in administrative law and advises the government on the legality
of decrees, regulations, and rulings issued by the executive.
Minor offenses, such as traffic violations, are usually heard first by a police tribunal. Other criminal
cases, except felonies, are heard first by correctional courts. Felonies are heard by courts of assizes.
Only the latter employs a jury. Most civil cases are heard first either by a Tribunal of Instance or by a
Tribunal of Great Instance, depending on the amount of money at stake. The Court of Cassation has
final appellate jurisdiction in all matters of criminal and civil law.
Several specialized courts exist to try crimes of a political nature, should they arise. Cases alleging
high treason by the president of the republic are heard in the High Court of Justice, comprising 24
members of parliament. Cases alleging professional misconduct by members of the government are
heard by the Court of Justice of the Republic.
Historically, government authority in France has been highly centralized. For centuries the French
monarchy sought to centralize economic and military power to control rebellious members of the
nobility in the provinces. The French Revolution of 1789 dismantled the monarchy but retained a
highly centralized national administration, centered in Paris. Today this system remains largely in
place. Reforms introduced in recent decades have transferred some powers to the three levels of
government below the national level: the 22 regions, 96 departments, and more than 36,000
communes. However, many of France’s major policy decisions are still made in the nation’s capital.
Under pressure from growing demands for increased regional and local control, the French
government took some steps toward devolution (decentralization) of authority in the 1960s and
1970s. One important step, in 1970, was the establishment of 22 administrative regions, creating a
new layer of subnational government. Then, in 1982, President François Mitterrand initiated a major
effort to transfer real decision-making powers and budgetary authority to locally elected officials.
Since then, regional and local governments have gradually gained control over a limited range of
economic, social, and cultural matters.
In another significant move toward devolution, the French parliament approved constitutional changes
F Local Government
F1 Moves Toward Decentralization
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in March 2003 intended to pave the way toward much greater local autonomy. The changes
authorized France’s regions and departments to experiment with new powers in areas such as
education, health, transportation, and environmental policy, and they gave local governments the
power to hold referendums on matters of local concern. However, the extent to which local authorities
embrace further decentralization, which in part hinges on the central government’s willingness to
adequately finance devolved responsibilities, remains to be determined.
Among the three levels of local government, communes are the smallest. Communes range in size
from tiny villages to sections of large metropolitan areas. At the next level of government are the
departments, many of which take their names from mountains, rivers, and other local geographical
features. The departments are grouped into regions, the top level of subnational government. Each
region, department, and commune has a directly elected council and executive.
The commune, an important component of French democracy, dates to pre-Revolutionary France.
Each commune has a mayor and municipal council. The mayor, who is elected by the council, is
responsible for preparing meetings of the council and for implementing its decisions. For certain
purposes, including registration of births, marriages, and deaths, the mayor also represents the
national government. The council determines the commune’s budget and local taxes and makes
decisions regarding municipal services. Individual communes often band together to provide certain
municipal services cooperatively. Before 1982 communes were strictly supervised by representatives
of the national government.
Departments vary in population from tens of thousands of people to more than 2 million. Each
department is administered by a general council, which elects its own president. The council votes for
a budget; provides departmental services, such as health and welfare; and drafts local regulations. A
representative of the national government attends council meetings and is authorized to take steps to
ensure public order, safety, and security. Before 1982, a prefect appointed by the national
government exercised extensive authority within the department and played a key role in centralizing
decision-making authority in the hands of the national government. Today the powers of the prefect
are limited to ensuring that departmental policies do not conflict with national legislation.
The regions correspond roughly to France’s historic provinces. The primary focus of regional
government is economic and social planning. Compared to the other levels of subnational government,
the regions deliver few services to residents and employ few public officials. Each region is
administered by an elected regional council. The president of the council, elected by the council from
among its members, serves as the region’s executive. A representative appointed by the national
government speaks on behalf of the national government at council meetings and directs national
government services in the region.
The city of Paris, the capital and seat of the most important national institutions, was formerly
administered under a system designed to ensure tight central control. There was no mayor. Instead, a
prefect of Paris and a prefect of the police, both appointed by the national government, exercised
control. Under legislation passed in 1975, Paris became a department governed like any other, except
F2 Communes, Departments, and Regions
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that supervision of the police continued under a prefect appointed by the central government. Paris
was permitted to have a municipal administration, similar to other French cities, with a mayor chosen
by an elected council. The membership of the council, known as the Conseil de Paris, is determined by
elections in 20 arrondissements (districts). In 1977 Jacques Chirac became the first mayor of Paris
under the Fifth Republic.
France’s remaining overseas dependencies are the last vestiges of a once-vast colonial empire. By the
early 20th century the French empire included colonies in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Indian
and Pacific oceans. These dependencies enjoyed varying degrees of integration into the French polity.
Algeria, for example, was treated almost as if it were just another part of metropolitan France.
Resistance to French rule in the colonies grew after World War II (1939-1945), first in Indochina, then
Algeria, triggering long and bloody military conflicts (see First Indochina War and Algerian War of
Independence). France’s forced withdrawal from these territories preceded a wave of decolonization
throughout its empire. From 1954 to 1962 most of France’s overseas possessions sought and
ultimately gained formal independence. Since 1962, several additional territories have sought and
received independence, including the Comoros Islands in 1975, French Somaliland (now Djibouti) in
1977, and New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in 1980.
During the first decades of the Fifth Republic, France’s overseas dependencies were known collectively
as the French Community. Members of the community cooperated in matters of foreign policy, defense
G The Overseas Territories and Departments
Overseas Possessions of France
Vestiges of French colonialism exist around the world. The remaining French possessions, shown here, suggest the historical expanse of France’s empire and influence. Today the remaining possessions have representation in the houses of the French National Assembly.
© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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policy, and economic policy. The French president played an important leadership role in community
affairs. The wholesale disappearance of its former colonies, however, prompted France in 1995 to
repeal the constitutional provisions that established the French Community.
Today France maintains four overseas territories, four overseas departments, and two special status
areas. The overseas territories enjoy substantial autonomy over internal affairs, although France
provides defense and oversees their legal and criminal justice systems. In contrast, the overseas
departments and special status islands are much like departments in metropolitan France; they are
administered by elected councils and by a prefect who represents France. Combined, these overseas
regions contribute 22 representatives to the 577-seat National Assembly in Paris.
The overseas territories are French, which includes the island of Tahiti; New Caledonia; the Wallis and
Futuna islands in the Pacific Ocean; and French Southern and Antarctic Lands. The overseas
departments are Guadeloupe, a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea; Martinique, a Caribbean island;
French Guiana, situated on the northern coast of South America; and Réunion, an island group in the
Indian Ocean. The special status areas are Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, an island collectivity off the
coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and Mayotte, an island that chose to remain tied to France when
the rest of the Comoros opted for independence.
Political factions have long competed for power in France. The origins of organized political parties in
France can be traced back to the Third Republic. Today French parties span the full political spectrum,
from far left to far right. During the Third and Fourth republics, numerous poorly organized political
parties competed for power. Individual parties rarely succeeded in winning a parliamentary majority,
and coalitions of parties were needed to form governments. Political alliances shifted continually,
leading to weak, unstable governments.
The introduction of a strong presidential system during the Fifth Republic greatly reduced the number
of political parties. Many parties merged or joined coalitions with other groups to enhance their
political influence. Since the election of Charles de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic’s first president, most
political parties have served mainly as organizations to mobilize support for particular presidential
candidates. As the identities of the candidates change from one election to the next, so the parties
change their names and alter their platforms. Party politics in the Fifth Republic are more stable and
coherent than they were under earlier republics. Compared with political parties in other Western
democracies, however, most French parties remain weakly organized with small, often passive,
memberships.
There are several important political parties and coalitions in France. On the right is the Union for a
Popular Movement (UMP), a coalition initially named the Union for the Presidential Majority, which had
formed in 2002 to promote the reelection of President Jacques Chirac. The UMP was created by the
merger of the Rally for the Republic (RPR) and by a bloc of leaders from the Union for French
Democracy (UDF). Founded by Chirac in 1976, the RPR espoused a modern form of Gaullism, a
political philosophy that, among other things, championed a strong national government and an
aggressive foreign policy. The Union for French Democracy (UDF) was originally closely tied to former
H Political Parties
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French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The UDF, which continues as an independent political force,
supports European integration and free-market policies. On the extreme right is the National Front
(FN), led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and the National Republican Movement (MNR), founded by Le Pen’s
former deputy, Bruno Mégret. The FN and MNR espouse nationalist, anti-immigrant platforms.
On the left of the political spectrum is the Socialist Party, founded in the early 20th century and
reformed by François Mitterrand. Under the leadership of Mitterrand, who held the presidency from
1981 to 1995, the Socialist Party pursued a moderate socialist program and promoted closer economic
and political cooperation within the European Union (EU). The French Communist Party, once a
powerful political bloc, has seen its share of the vote decline steadily in recent decades. In the 1950s
and 1960s the French Communists typically won 25 percent of the vote in national elections; today
the party receives less than 10 percent of the vote. Environmentalist parties, including the Green
Party, have grown in importance, capturing about 5 percent of the vote in the 2002 elections to the
National Assembly.
The French electoral system influences the behavior of political parties in legislative races. A candidate
for a seat in the National Assembly must compete in two rounds of voting, unless the candidate claims
more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round. Typically, the two leading candidates who meet in
the second round represent parties on the left and right. Other parties on the left and right often
withdraw their candidates from the second round to improve the chances of candidates on their side of
the political divide. Agreements between parties often specify in advance which party will withdraw in
favor of the other. Sometimes, such agreements between parties are concluded even before the first
round of voting. These agreements can promote electoral alliances, and sometimes even shared
platforms among parties.
France established a comprehensive system of social security in 1946, after World War II. Social
security is a right of citizenship in France: The constitution explicitly guarantees a minimal standard of
living and health care to all French citizens. France spends about 25 percent of its annual gross
domestic product (GDP) on social security, significantly more than is spent in the United Kingdom or
United States. Nearly 100 percent of the French population is covered by the social security system.
Universal, compulsory social insurance provides income to retirees, survivors of retirees, people
unable to work, the unemployed, the sick, and families with dependent children. It also reimburses
much of the cost of health care. More broadly, the social security system defrays virtually all of the
cost of higher education and subsidizes some housing costs, especially for people with low incomes.
France has a national minimum wage, which is adjusted periodically to account for changes in the cost
of living.
The social insurance system is financed largely from payroll taxes, with a smaller percentage
contributed from the national government’s general budget. The largest categories of expenditure are
retirement and survivorship pensions. France’s aging population—a demographic shift underway in
many industrialized nations—has raised concerns about the government’s ability to meet ever-rising
pension costs. Expenditures on health care, maternity and family benefits, and unemployment benefits
I Social Services
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are also significant.
Nearly 20 percent of the French labor force is employed in public administration at the various levels
of government. Professional, highly trained civil servants staff most public sector jobs. Public sector
employees usually must pass competitive civil service entrance examinations. Other examinations
permit successful candidates to enter elite institutions of higher learning to prepare them for careers
in the civil service. These institutions include the Ecole Nationale, founded in 1945, and the Ecole
Polytechnique, founded in 1794.
The French civil service consists of strict hierarchies at the national, regional, and local levels. Each
level is associated with a particular set of public jobs and a particular path of career advancement. The
elite corps, which staff the national government’s highest technical and administrative positions, are
known as the grands corps de l’Etat. Most civil servants are members of unions.
France has one of western Europe’s most powerful military forces. France tested its first nuclear
weapon in 1960 and maintains an independent nuclear force capable of striking from land, air, and
sea. Military expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) have gradually declined in
recent decades, due to modernization of the armed services and a heavy dependence on nuclear
weapons. The French army is staffed by an all-volunteer professional force. Compulsory national
service, a feature of French life for more than two centuries, was formally abolished in 2001. In 2003
France’s total armed forces numbered 259,050 troops; 137,000 were serving in the army, 44,250
were in the navy, 64,000 were in the air force, and the remainder were in the strategic nuclear forces
or central staff positions.
The president of France is commander in chief of the armed forces and supreme head of defense
policy; the president alone is authorized to order the use of nuclear weapons. The president works
with the prime minister and Council of Ministers, along with Defense Council and Restricted Defense
Committee, to develop defense polices. The minister of defense, under the prime minister’s authority,
executes defense policies, including military operations and the administration of the armed services.
France was a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a regional defense
alliance, in 1949. Seeking a more independent military posture, France withdrew all of its forces from
the integrated command of NATO in 1966 but remained a member of the alliance. France rejoined the
military structure of NATO in 1995 and assumed a seat on NATO’s Military Committee that year.
However, France chose to remain outside the alliance’s formal chain of command and to retain sole
control of its nuclear weapons, known as the force de frappe.
A strong advocate of European cooperation in defense, France supports strengthening the Western
European Union (WEU), the security arm of the EU. In 1992 France and Germany created a 35,000-
person joint defense force called the Eurocorps, to be placed under the WEU’s command. To alleviate
J Civil Service
K Defense and Foreign Policy
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concerns within Europe and the United States that the Eurocorps could undermine NATO’s security
role in Europe, France and Germany agreed to establish formal ties between the corps and NATO’s
military command.
A major goal of French foreign policy since World War II has been the preservation of France’s status
as a great power. Toward this end, France transformed itself from a colonial ruler to a leading
advocate of European integration. During the Cold War, France attempted to arbitrate between the
United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). France has tried to retain a
leadership role in Africa by building good relations with its former colonies. As one of five permanent
members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, France is a frequent volunteer for international
peacekeeping operations; French troops have contributed to UN peacekeeping operations in
Cambodia, Somalia, Central African Republic, and the states of the former Yugoslavia.
France is a charter member of the United Nations, and holds one of five permanent seats on the UN
Security Council. France was founding member of European Union (EU) and its several precursor
organizations, including the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic
Community (EEC), and the European Community (EC). France is a member of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
France is party to numerous international treaties. Important examples include the European
Convention on Human Rights, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe. Key treaties France has refused to sign include the Limited Nuclear Test
Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. After conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific in
1995, France announced the completion of its testing program and its willingness to work with Russia,
the United Kingdom, and the United States on behalf of a comprehensive test ban treaty (see Arms
Control).
William James Adams contributed the Government section of this article.
France has enjoyed a clear sense of its own identity in the modern period, but this identity took a very
long time to develop. The term France did not refer uniquely to the territory now identified with the
French nation until the end of the Middle Ages. The French language took a standardized form only in
the 17th century. As late as the 19th century, a quarter of the population residing in France did not
speak standard French. Roman Catholicism, the religion of the vast majority of French people today,
was also adopted very slowly. Some historians argue that the majority of French people did not
practice Catholic rituals and accept Catholic doctrines in their orthodox form before the 18th century.
L International Organizations
VII HISTORY
A Overview
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The French state took centuries to build. Until 1789 the French people lived under some 400 separate
codes of civil law. They were better described as subjects of a king than as citizens of a nation.
Similarly, not until the 19th century did a true national economy form out of several regional ones.
The history of France, then, is not the story of a fixed entity over thousands of years. Rather, it is the
history of many processes that, more by coincidence than plan, turned an increasing number of people
into Frenchmen and Frenchwomen in the last few centuries.
Geography has played a major role in the development of the nation. France, today referred to as the
“hexagon” because of the country’s roughly hexagonal shape, is located at the western end of Eurasia.
France is the only European nation that borders on both the Mediterranean Sea and the northern edge
of Europe, and it is the only one that faces both central Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. All these
exposures have influenced the development of France’s economy, government, and culture. Its
location has forced France to protect itself on both land and sea. For this reason, it developed a strong
army and, in modern times, a respectably sized navy. France’s long coastlines and several long
navigable rivers allowed easy access to many parts of the hexagon long before the coming of rail
transportation. The absence of high mountain ranges within the interior also facilitated political and
economic unification.
Yet the history of the French nation cannot be reduced to its geography. Natural forces were less
important in cementing together the French hexagon than were cultural and, especially, political
forces. France was effectively unified for the first time by the ancient Romans. The Romans
incorporated it, along with other bordering territories, as Gaul within their sprawling empire in the 1st
century BC. Once the Roman Empire disintegrated in the 5th century AD, the region was united to the
rest of western and central Europe by its growing attachment to the Roman Catholic Church.
In the Middle Ages, a series of royal dynasties laid claim to what would become France. But they could
not back their claims with an effective administration for many centuries. The Valois and Bourbon
dynasties in the early modern period developed a larger military and civilian bureaucracy, which
enabled the monarchy to pacify the region and extend France’s boundaries. As part of their efforts to
build a state, these dynasties helped establish a specifically French culture.
In 1789 the monarchy was overthrown in one of the world’s greatest revolutions. The French
Revolution opened up a century and a half of political instability as defenders battled opponents of the
revolutionary heritage. Despite this internal strife, the nation remained robust enough to develop a
modern industrial economy, build and lose a vast colonial empire, fight in two world wars, become a
nuclear power, and establish itself as a major center of the arts and sciences. France is now
negotiating to integrate itself politically and economically with the rest of Europe as it has not done
since antiquity.
Modern French identity is rooted in the ancient world, chiefly in Celtic and Roman civilizations. Seen
through the lens of time, the Celtic inheritance has the more romantic glow, and the French retain a
sentimental attachment to it. The Celts provided the point of origin of French history and its first
common culture, but the Romans laid down the first lasting foundations of any significance. Without
B The Foundations
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its Roman past, France and French culture would almost certainly have developed differently.
Relatively little is known about the first peoples living in the area now called France. In the period
following the arrival of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in Europe around 40,000 BC, a variety of
migratory peoples circulated in the region. Fine paintings in the Lascaux caves dating from the Old
Stone Age, around 15,000 BC, give striking evidence of a relatively sophisticated culture (see
Paleolithic Art). The people who made these paintings were itinerant and depended on hunting and
gathering for food. By about 6000 BC, people in what is today France had begun to develop a
sedentary culture based on agriculture. This process fundamentally altered the entire French region by
about 3000 BC and allowed the population to grow to about 4 million to 5 million people by 1000 BC.
Metalwork was introduced around 1400 BC.
In the 8th century BC, waves of northern peoples entered the region. The most important of these
were the Celts, who spread over most of France by 400 BC, mixing with other peoples already settled
there. Although the Celts never unified the region politically, they left some traces of their culture. A
Celtic word meaning “hero” or possibly “Celts” was the origin of the name Gaul. Gaul was the common
name for the region of France in antiquity, and it was associated with the Latin word gallus, meaning
cock. Later, the cock became the symbol of the French nation.
B1 Prehistory and Settlement of the Area
Cave Painting, Lascaux
This portion of the cave painting in Lascaux, France, was done by Paleolithic artists in about 13,000 BC. The leaping cow and group of small horses were painted with red and yellow ochre that was either blown through reeds onto the wall or mixed with animal fat and applied with reeds or thistles. It is believed that prehistoric hunters painted these to gain magical powers that would ensure a successful hunt.
Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York
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The Celts and the peoples who lived among them had developed a thriving culture of some 6 million to
8 million people at the time of the Roman conquest in the last century BC. This large pre-Roman
population was sustained by intensive agriculture, which benefited from the use of a heavy, iron-
tipped plough. Commerce also enriched the population, much of it stimulated by and traded through
the Greek colony of Massalía, which was founded in 600 BC on the site of present-day Marseille. Trade
led to the development of urban centers, which were also used for religious ceremonies. The Celtic
religion was polytheistic. Priests called Druids presided over the followers and met in yearly conclaves
(see Druidism).
Politically, the region was divided into hundreds of relatively independent units with constantly shifting
borders. These units averaged 1,500 sq km (580 sq mi) in size and were grouped into about 60 larger
federations. Units were also tied by tribal affiliations and strategic alliances. However, power relations
among the hundreds of units were constantly changing, and no formal political structure emerged that
could coordinate them in united action.
This disunity made Celtic Gaul vulnerable to incursions by the Greeks and then the Romans. Greek
culture penetrated Gaul from Massalía. The Gauls encountered Roman culture as Rome expanded into
the western Mediterranean and confronted Carthage during the Punic Wars in the 3rd and 2nd
centuries BC. Massalía was inevitably drawn into the military conflict, usually on the side of the
Romans. At the end of the 2nd century BC, Massalía called on Rome for protection against Celtic
tribes, and Rome occupied the city. A political settlement was worked out that maintained Massalía’s
independence and gave Rome territory in what is today called Languedoc and the upper Garonne
Celtic Mirror of the Iron Age
The back of this Celtic mirror shows the distinctive swirling style of Celtic art. The other side, the mirror, would be highly polished to give a reflection. Mirrors like the one pictured were rare and probably belonged to a wealthy family.
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valley. During the 1st century BC, all these territories, including Massalía, were incorporated with the
Roman province of Narbonensis. From there, Rome expanded northward, ending the independence of
Celtic Gaul.
Rome was prompted to expand north by two developments. First, Germanic and Celtic tribes began
threatening the borders of the empire, eliciting a Roman military response. Second, Julius Caesar, the
governor of the Roman province that included Massalía, schemed to advance his political career by
making large conquests in Gaul. In 58 BC Caesar began military operations to subdue the area west of
the Rhine River.
Caesar exploited divisions among the tribes, but once Rome threatened to dominate them, the tribes
B2 Roman Gaul
Vercingetorix Surrenders to Caesar
The Romans did not complete their conquest of Gaul without resistance. Vercingetorix, the leader of the powerful Arverni people, sucessfully launched an armed revolt against the Romans and inflicted heavy casualties. Julius Caesar rallied his legions, however, and eventually drove the Gallic forces into the town of Alesia (near modern Dijon, France). After a long seige Vercingetorix was forced to surrender. This picture depicts the rebel leader giving himself up to Caesar in 52 BC. Caesar took Vercingetorix back to Rome where he was later executed.
Corbis
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united behind Vercingetorix, chief of the Arverni tribe. In 52 BC Vercingetorix surrendered to Caesar
following the successful Roman siege of Alesia, and he was taken prisoner. Vercingetorix was exhibited
in chains during Caesar’s triumphal entry into Rome in 46 BC, after which he was executed.
Meanwhile, Roman troops eliminated the last vestiges of resistance. As a result of Caesar’s Gallic
Wars, which lasted until 51 BC, more than 1 million people died, and almost that many were sold into
slavery after the conquest. Following Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, the Romans divided the area north of
Narbonensis into three provinces: Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Belgica. These provinces corresponded
roughly to the three parts of Gaul that existed at the time of Caesar’s campaigns, and which he
described in On the Gallic Wars.
Narbonensis developed somewhat differently than did the three northern provinces. It had been under
Roman domination for over half a century before the time of Caesar, and it was absorbed into the
empire relatively quickly. To further this process, Caesar settled members of his legions in four
colonies in Narbonensis shortly after the conquest.
Roman Gaul, AD 50
By the time of the death of Roman emperor Julius Caesar in 44 BC, Rome had gained control over the whole territory of Gaul, a region that stretched beyond the borders of modern France. Although they initially intended to extend the boundary of Gaul beyond the Rhine and into Germanic territories, the Romans ultimately limited themselves to defending the border after suffering a defeat at the hands of the Germans in AD 9. This map shows the extent of Gaul in AD 50.
© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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The three northern provinces adopted Roman institutions more slowly. Although the Romans
eventually established colonies in these provinces as well, they forestalled opposition to their rule by
disturbing the preexisting order as little as they thought necessary. The Romans permitted the old
Celtic elites to maintain positions of power so long as they followed Roman orders. The Romans also
imposed a moderate, if not low, tax burden.
The three northern provinces, each with its own governor, were subdivided into units called the
civitates. Like the provinces, the civitates largely followed political divisions that predated the Roman
conquest. The civitates all elected representatives to a joint Gallic Council, which coordinated
administrative policy and sent common grievances to Rome. The Romans also built an excellent
system of roads and waterways in the provinces. Although built largely for military purposes, these
improvements also helped to unify Gaul.
Roman Arch, Reims, France
The ancient Romans were established in the area known as Gaul from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD. This triumphal arch, located in the city of Reims, France, dates from the time of their occupation.
Poseidon Pictures London
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A system of courts and administration based on Rome’s highly developed system of law, internal
pacification, and a new transportation system encouraged the growth of cities and the expansion of
the economy. Cities mushroomed in many regions of Gaul. They were built on the model of Rome
itself, often financed by Roman capital. They featured typically Roman buildings such as public baths,
marketplaces, city halls, and temples. A considerable number of these structures survive today in
various stages of decay, particularly in southern France, which was most heavily Romanized. The
economies of these cities benefited from activities connected with public administration and the law,
but their chief sources of wealth were trade and goods manufactured by artisans. In the countryside,
agricultural production was carried on mainly in the villas—large estates owned by a few wealthy
people and worked by tenant farmers called coloni.
The governing elite in the cities were the first to adopt Roman institutions, which then slowly spread to
the countryside and the lower classes. Latin gradually replaced the old Gaulish languages, even if the
Latin commonly spoken in the street was a vulgarization of “purer” forms. Similarly, Roman pagan
cults and worship of the emperor slowly drove out the old Celtic religious practices of the Druids. In
the 2nd century AD, religions from the eastern part of the Roman Empire, including Christianity, began
to take root. Following the general cultural pattern, Christianity was first practiced in cities, each
under a bishop, and spread gradually to the countryside. Christianity’s impact outside urban areas was
minimal until long after Roman rule collapsed. Nonetheless, Roman authorities resisted the spread of
the new faith and in some instances tried to repress it.
Arc de Triomphe, Paris
In 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte, then the emperor of France, commissioned the construction of the Arc de Triomphe as a monument to his troops. The Arc de Triomphe stands 50 m (164 ft) tall and 45 m (147 ft) wide at the western end of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The inner walls of the arch bear the names of many of Napoleon’s generals and military victories. The French built their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe after the end of World War I in 1918.
Hi Pix
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The decline of Roman Gaul after AD 200 was part of the complex process that led to weakening of the
grip of the Roman Empire everywhere in the west. The population declined due to plague, and people
migrated to the cities. These events crippled agricultural production—the main source of wealth in
almost all premodern societies. As agricultural production fell, so, too, did state revenues from taxes.
Furthermore, the empire was no longer expanding and could not depend on plunder for fresh supplies
of slave labor and material wealth, as it had for centuries. Landlords tried to legally bind their tenants
to the soil, while emperors embarked on administrative and tax reforms. But in the end, the economic
decline was not reversed.
In the 3rd century, Germanic tribes, especially the Franks and the Alemanni, began penetrating the
eastern boundaries of Roman Gaul and settling down without much disruption. These new arrivals may
at first have actually strengthened Roman rule, because they provided a workforce that was badly
needed to boost agricultural output and secure the borders of the empire. However, not all such
penetration was peaceful. To counter the growing pressure from some of these tribes in the 5th
century, the Romans made the Franks, and later the Burgundians and Visigoths, their foederati, or
allies. This strategy allowed Roman Gaul to escape collapse but caused Rome to gradually lose control.
The assignment of military responsibilities to these allies who were spreading through the four
provinces of Gaul meant that Roman Gaul was not so much conquered from without as it was
Germanized from within.
The Roman occupation of Gaul had an overwhelming impact on later French history. It gave Gaul its
first collective political identity. Dozens of France’s modern cities were founded in Roman times,
including Paris (then called Lutetia). Modern France is literally built on Roman origins inasmuch as
millions of French people today drive on highways paved over Roman roadbeds. Rome left behind its
legal system, which heavily influenced the course of French jurisprudence, as well as its artistic
traditions, most conspicuous in Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. The French language is derived from Latin,
although it has been enriched by Germanic and other infusions. In modern times, the French imagined
that the spread of French political influence and culture throughout the world was a continuation of the
civilizing mission they had acquired from Rome in ancient times.
B3 Merovingians and Carolingians
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By the end of the 5th century, Gaul was rapidly becoming a land of Germanic tribes, who mixed with
the much larger number of native Gallo-Romans. Of these tribes, Franks dominated in the north,
Burgundians in the east, and Goths in the southwest. But many other peoples lived in the area as well,
including Jews, Greeks, and Syrians. They made post-Roman Gallic society highly cosmopolitan. The
nature of the interchange between the Germanic tribes and the Gallo-Romans is not well understood,
but apparently no violent shock of opposing cultures occurred. First, some of the Germanic tribes,
including the Franks, had lived for centuries on the outskirts of Roman civilization. They had become
partly Romanized before they settled within the limits of the old Roman Empire. They were familiar
enough with Latin to use it when they drafted the first written Germanic law codes. Second, the
incoming Germans seemed inclined to settle on previously unoccupied land, generally allowing the
Gallo-Romans to keep theirs. Finally, intermarriage was common; hence, most tribal distinctions
disappeared by the 8th century.
The coming of the Germanic tribes marked the onset of a period known as the Middle Ages (roughly
Baptism of Clovis I
Clovis I was king of the Franks from 481 to 511. In 496 he converted to Christianity, which gained him the support of the Roman Catholic Church for his conquests of other tribes in western and central Europe. During his rule Clovis enlarged the Frankish territory to include most of modern France and Germany.
Roger-Viollet
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350-1450). During the early Middle Ages, from about 350 to 1050, trade, literacy, and law and order
declined among the Gallo-Romans. Historians once painted this period in the black terms of
barbarism, but today they are much less willing to do so. Historians of traditionally marginalized
groups, such as women and Jews, point out that in certain respects the condition of these groups
improved after AD 500. Women acquired more control over property as the result of Germanic laws.
Jews, whose civil status had declined when the Roman Empire was Christianized, generally faced less
persecution under the Germanic kings. Paradoxically, the condition of both women and Jews worsened
once again in the 11th century, when a more orderly society was reestablished.
The Franks conquered almost all of what had been Roman Gaul and gave the region a semblance of
political unity. Under their leader, Clovis, of the Merovingian dynasty, the Franks conquered the lands
of the Alemanni to the east, including much of present-day Germany, and those of the Goths in
present-day southwestern France. Only Brittany, in present-day western France, and the
Mediterranean coast remained outside Frankish control. Clovis, who ruled from 481 to 511, was a
capable, occasionally ruthless military leader, but he understood the importance of symbols and
ideology in strengthening his rule. He converted to an orthodox form of Christianity, that is, a form of
Christianity approved by the Roman Catholic Church. At that time most Germanic kings followed a
form of Christianity, called Arianism, that the Catholic Church condemned as heretical. Clovis’s
adoption of Catholic orthodoxy placed him in a special relation to the pope, the bishop of Rome who
was the head of the Roman Catholic Church. It also made Clovis more appealing to the growing
number of orthodox Roman Christians he had conquered. These included the bishops, who wielded
considerable influence in their localities. In addition, bishops were closely connected to powerful local
magnates, strongmen who commanded enough retainers and war supplies to exert power over a
region. From this point on, rulers in the west relied heavily on the use of Roman Catholic imagery and
associations to expand their influence and eventually to build nations.
Although the arrival of the Franks was only minimally disruptive to the Gallo-Roman peoples,
Merovingian rule did cause some changes in power relations. First, the center of power shifted to
northern Gaul, whereas under the Romans, the center of power had rested in southern regions closer
to Rome. Northern domination of the south continued into modern times with the rise of Paris as the
capital of the nation. Second, as the economy weakened, cities declined, allowing power to slip to the
countryside. Third, political rule became more personalized. The retreat of the Roman armies had left
in place a variety of local magnates. The magnates exerted power over their localities through clients
who owed some form of loyalty to them. The Merovingians allowed many local magnates to stay in
power, and they established close ties to at least some of these magnates, most of whom owed them
considerable loyalty and tribute. These personal ties did not prevent the development of rivalry and
even military conflict among the magnates. Ordinary people turned increasingly to the local magnates
for protection, submitting themselves to their rule.
The Merovingians considered their kingdom a personal possession. Following Germanic practice, Clovis
deeded his kingdom to his four surviving sons, who divided it among themselves at his death.
Although in later years the kingdom was temporarily unified, the Merovingians never developed
effective means of imposing centralized control.
During the 7th century, power within the royal government began to shift from the often ineffectual
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kings to increasingly influential court figures known as the mayors of the palace. This position was
frequently held by the Arnulfing family, later and better known as the Carolingians. This family had
strong ties to the great nobles of the kingdom and gradually strengthened the position of mayor of the
palace. By the early 8th century, the Carolingians had become the real, if not the official, head of
government.
Charles Martel became mayor of the palace in 714 and consolidated military control over outlying
regions of the kingdom. To gain support for his operations, Charles Martel distributed church lands
among his retainers. This action furthered the interpenetration of the church and the state that had
begun in early Merovingian times. These two institutions were so deeply joined that they did not
become fully disentangled in France until the 20th century. When he died in 741, Charles Martel was
buried in the abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris, which later became the burial site of many French
kings.
Charles Martel’s sons, Pepin the Short and Carloman, succeeded him. Carloman retired to a monastery
in 747, leaving Pepin to rule alone. Pepin had to put down revolts among the magnates but was
eventually able to strengthen his position. By 751 he had largely abandoned the title of mayor of the
palace in favor of the Latin title princeps (source of the title prince). Pepin was ready to end the
pretense of serving a king. The last Merovingian was bundled off to a monastery that year, and Pepin
became the first Carolingian monarch. He was acclaimed as king by an assembly of Frankish nobles
and anointed by Saint Boniface, the English missionary known as the Apostle of Germany.
Two developments made Pepin’s coup d’état possible. First, the Carolingians had accumulated vast
estates, which he used to pay off supporters. Second, the church was interested in legitimating Pepin’s
usurpation of the throne. The pope consecrated Pepin as king in 754 in return for much-needed
military support against the Lombard tribes who threatened papal security in Rome. The church’s
blessing was decisive in making Pepin’s coup a success. The Frankish magnates could accept Pepin as
king from considerations of greed and power. However, only the church’s support could effectively
remove the stain of usurpation that marked Pepin’s seizure of the royal title. The consequences were
profound for both France and the papacy.
Charlemagne
Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, was among the greatest of military leaders in the Middle Ages. He conquered much of western and central Europe. As king, Charlemagne revived the political and cultural life that had
Hulton Getty Picture Collection
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Pepin expanded Frankish rule farther south into Aquitaine, reaching perhaps as far as the Garonne
River and Bordeaux, although the kingdom’s political center remained in the north. Pepin capitalized
on his relationship with the church and ruled his freshly annexed territories through a network of
abbots who were politically loyal to him. The church suffered spiritually from its increasing use by
secular authorities, but Pepin’s reign coincided with a movement to reform the church, which his
successor would push much further. Under Pepin’s rule, the movement sought to standardize the
liturgy and the organization of the clergy throughout the kingdom.
Pepin was succeeded in 768 by his two sons, Charles (later known as Charlemagne) and Carloman,
who divided the kingdom between themselves until Carloman’s death three years later. Although
Carloman’s portion should legally have passed to his sons, Charlemagne wielded enough political
power to bend the still flexible Frankish succession law and procedures to his advantage. He seized the
inheritance of his nephews and reunited the kingdom. This usurpation provided Charlemagne with the
resources for building his empire—a political achievement unmatched by any of his Carolingian
predecessors or successors. Eventually he ruled lands stretching from the Pyrenees Mountains to the
Elbe River.
Charlemagne ruled most of his empire through officers known as counts, who received land—much of
it plundered—in exchange for their services. To secure their loyalty, the counts were obliged to swear
oaths of fidelity—sometimes sworn on holy relics to make the oath a religious obligation. The counts
had wide-ranging responsibilities, from maintaining roads to supervising the judiciary. They also
administered oaths to a variety of officials, including clerics, as a way of reinforcing loyalty to
Charlemagne. Charlemagne understood well the importance of not trusting any one group of officials
too much. Thus, he sent another set of imperial agents, called the missi dominici, to comb through the
empire to eliminate corruption and disloyalty among the counts.
It is unclear how well Charlemagne was able to control developments at the grass roots using this
system. He was frequently obliged to put down revolts against his rule. The Saxons proved particularly
hard to subdue, and their persistent resistance to Carolingian rule prompted Charlemagne to unleash
ever more bloody repression against them.
disappeared with the fall of the Western Roman Empire four centuries before.
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Charlemagne found the church to be one of his best weapons for maintaining control, and he further
integrated churchmen into his imperial system. Thus, he leaned heavily on bishops as well as the
counts to carry out his orders and appointed clergymen to serve as missi. But if political
considerations underlay much of Charlemagne’s treatment of the church, his political policies were
also rooted in genuine religious conviction. He donated large tracts of land to churches and
monasteries, worked hard on standardizing the liturgy, supported missionary efforts, and supervised
the morals and education of the clergy. The results of these efforts are hard to determine for want of
evidence. But Charlemagne’s attempts to improve the morals and education of the clergy led to his
promotion of the arts and scholarship in a movement that has been called the Carolingian
Renaissance. The Carolingian Renaissance was less a break with the past than an extension of it, for
learning was by no means dead in the kingdom when Charlemagne took power.
By the end of the 8th century, Charlemagne had made his empire reasonably secure militarily and had
enriched it with plunder. He then devoted considerable effort to expanding the empire’s intellectual
resources. Reportedly unable to write himself, Charlemagne nonetheless developed an exceptional
respect for scholarship and the arts.
Charlemagne's Empire in 800
Under the rule of Pepin the Short and his son Charlemagne, the Carolingians of the 8th and 9th centuries conquered vast territories and combined large portions of western Europe into a single unit. In 800 Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Empire of the West, a region later known as the Holy Roman Empire. This map portrays the extent of the empire as it stood in the year of Charlemagne’s coronation.
© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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The Carolingian Renaissance occurred in schools attached to cathedrals and monasteries and in
Charlemagne’s court, headquartered in Aachen (in French, Aix-la-Chapelle), in present-day Germany.
The court attracted major scholars from around Europe, even from beyond the borders of the empire.
Most notable was Alcuin, an English scholar, who set up an educational program. Scholars
congregated at the court in part to use its large library. Scholars of the Carolingian Renaissance were
concerned mainly with art, literature, and theology. Although these scholars and artists were not
highly original, they kept learning alive, partly by recopying ancient works.
The climax of Charlemagne’s rule has traditionally been considered his coronation as emperor of the
Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800. But historians then and now disagree sharply on what
happened on that occasion and its significance. Charlemagne was in Rome in late 800 as part of an
effort to restore the pope’s power in Rome, which was threatened by a rebellion. The pope hoped to
restore his political fortunes by crowning Charlemagne and thereby associating himself more closely
with the major political force in Europe. According to one account, the coronation was a surprise to
Charlemagne, and one he did not altogether welcome. Scholars now tend to think he knew about the
coronation beforehand and that he was happy enough to accept the imperial title.
Some historians have tried to represent the coronation as a turning point in medieval history and as a
key to Charlemagne’s notion of a Christian empire. However, neither Charlemagne’s ideas nor his
policies seem to have changed very much as a result. The Carolingians’ legitimacy had rested on the
church’s sanction for nearly half a century by this time, and Charlemagne’s elevation from king of the
Franks to emperor of the Romans seems only to have followed well-established precedent.
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Moreover, Charlemagne’s disposition of his empire suggests he was still thinking about it in traditional
Frankish terms. Rather than try to maintain its unity after his death, Charlemagne planned to divide
the empire among his three sons, Louis, Carloman, and Pepin. But two of these sons died before
Charlemagne, and Louis inherited the whole empire when his father died in 814.
Charlemagne’s reign quickly became encrusted by legend, which scholars, without denying its very
real achievements, are still trying to detach from the reality. Charlemagne’s impact on the
development of a French national consciousness was limited. He stimulated the growth of cultural and
political institutions throughout his empire. But Charlemagne did not directly promote either a specific
French or German identity; such terms had little meaning in his period. The name Francia—precursor
of France—was used, but it referred to the entire Carolingian empire outside Italy (northern and
central Italy fell under Charlemagne’s control after he defeated the Lombards in 773-774), not a more
limited region within the empire.
The reign of Louis I from 814 to 840 has traditionally been viewed as the gateway to disintegration
Carolingian Ivory Work
During his reign as king of the Franks from 768 to 814, Charlemagne sponsored a cultural revival in his empire known as the Carolingian Renaissance. Charlemagne established schools, ordered monks to copy and preserve ancient texts, and supported artists and craftsmen. Many beautiful works of art, such as this carved ivory plaque, were produced in this period.
Art Resource, NY/Giraudon
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and decline of the empire. But scholars now point out that Louis was more effective than his father in
making the administration work and did more to preserve the imperial idea. Louis’s chief problem was
the endemic conflict among the magnates. Toward the end of Louis’s reign, this conflict became
enmeshed in the struggle among his sons—Lothair, Louis, and Charles the Bald—over the division of
the empire. In 842, two years after Louis’s death, two of his sons, Charles and Louis, allied against
Lothair.
In 843 the three sons reached a fragile settlement over their respective inheritances in the Treaty of
Verdun. According to this treaty, Charles was to rule a western kingdom, including Aquitaine; Louis
was to rule a kingdom east of the Rhine; and Lothair was to rule a central kingdom, consisting of
lands lying between the two other kingdoms plus Italy. Lothair would receive the imperial title but
would have no effective control over Charles and Louis or their lands. See Lothair I; Charles II (Holy
Roman Empire).
This treaty was less significant for the development of the French nation than is often supposed. It did
help to set France’s ultimate boundaries, inasmuch as Charles acquired a claim over most of what
Carolingian Manuscript
Many important artistic and religious works were produced in what is now France and western Germany under the Carolingian dynasty of Frankish kings. This manuscript, created around 870, portrays the story of the biblical scholar Saint Jerome.
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would later become modern France. At the time, however, it achieved little in terms of national
unification. The term Francia continued to refer to regions ruled by Charles and by his brothers.
Charles’s inheritance was commonly called West Francia and Louis’s was called East Francia. Only
centuries later did Francia denote present-day France alone. Furthermore, the brothers continued to
fight over the terms of the treaty.
Sandwiched between West and East Francia, Lothair’s portion (Lotharingia) proved extremely hard to
consolidate, and imperial authority rapidly declined there. For a long time, West Francia followed a
similar course. Brittany, which had been a Frankish dependency, began to move beyond royal control,
while Aquitaine, a region that had been under Frankish rule for only a century, gradually reasserted its
autonomy under Charles’s rule. This trend was reinforced by cultural and linguistic differences. In the
north—the old Frankish homestead—Germanic law and an early version of the French language, the
langue d’oïl (so called because of the pronunciation of the word for yes), prevailed. In the south,
including Aquitaine, the predominant tongue was the langue d’oc, which was closer to classical Latin
than was the langue d’oïl. Roman law also exercised a much greater influence in the south than in the
north.
Charles’s reign was further disturbed by the incursions of the Vikings, a marauding people from the
north who plundered many regions of western Europe beginning in the late 8th century. Historians are
now less impressed than they once were with the destructiveness of the Vikings, pointing out that
conflicts among the magnates might well have caused just as much damage to lives and property.
Still, the Vikings were at the very least a destabilizing force in Charles’s kingdom and dealt an
unwelcome blow to an already shaky regime.
The most critical weakness of Charles’s regime—one that would continue for centuries—was the
uncertain loyalty and independence of the powerful magnates, who clustered in two major factions,
the Carolingians and the Robertians, so called because of their association with Robert the Strong,
count of Neustria. Charles had less booty to offer his nobles than did Charlemagne and sought to gain
political leverage by playing off one aristocratic faction against the other. In this effort, he received
considerable assistance from the church, which Charles protected in return for the church’s spiritual
and material support. Beginning in Charles’s reign, the church started routinely anointing Frankish
kings as a part of royal ceremony. This ritual added luster and authority to the king’s title, but it also
offered bishops of the church an invitation to intervene in state affairs in God’s name. Charles also
tried to secure a stronger political base by turning eastward to secure the imperial title. In 875 he
managed to obtain it and kept it until his death two years later.
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Despite Charles’s vigorous efforts to bolster his authority, his reign can only appear in retrospect as
the prelude to one of the most disordered centuries of French history. Aristocratic factions had gained
strength during the early and middle decades of the 9th century. These factions dominated the politics
of West Francia for a long time, making the crown more a political football than the secure possession
of any one dynasty.
Carolingian kings ruled until 888 when Odo, also known as Eudes, son of Robert the Strong of the
powerful Robertian faction, became king of West Francia. The Carolingians recovered the crown when
Charles the Simple was crowned in Reims in 893 as Charles III. But the title he temporarily regained
for the Carolingians had become an increasingly empty one. Power had shifted decisively to the
magnates. In 911 Charles was sufficiently pressed by the conquering Viking chieftain Rollo to
recognize the Vikings’ conquest of the lower Seine River in an area later known as Normandy. In
return Rollo professed loyalty to Charles and promised to convert to Christianity. The territories of
Burgundy and Aquitaine, already moving beyond the king’s control, became virtually independent
states in the following decades. In 922 Charles was deposed by the Robertian faction.
The Carolingians regained the royal title in 936 and ruled without interruption until 987. But they were
faced with a growing challenge from the Robertians, who were ably led by Hugh the Great and his son
Hugh Capet. Hugh Capet wielded sufficient influence among the magnates to overthrow the
Carolingians definitively in 987, much as the Carolingians had overthrown the Merovingians more than
two centuries earlier. One usurpation had given birth to another.
Treaty of Verdun
The Treaty of Verdun was reached in 843 between the three surviving sons of the Carolingian emperor Louis I (the Pious), who had died in 840. The treaty ended a struggle among the brothers for possession of the Frankish empire consolidated by their grandfather Charlemagne.
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The 9th and 10th centuries have been viewed as the time when feudalism—a system of land tenure
and political authority in which a lord granted the use of land in return for political and military
services—took shape. Research has now made this idea obsolete as a general description of an
enormously complex situation. It is now clear that property was held on a great variety of different
legal bases. Much land, especially in the south, was held by magnates and others in the form of
alods—that is, land granted without services due to the king or a magnate. Other territories were held
in exchange for feudal services, including military service, and over the Middle Ages these obligations
became more formalized and sanctioned by custom. Nonetheless, it is hazardous to generalize about
the relationship between the king and the magnates. This relationship, like land tenures, was
extremely variable in form and guided by no clear constitutional principles. In reality royal power
always depended largely on the king’s ability to form strategic alliances with the dominating factions.
The factions fought for their own interests and sacrificed little for the king or the nation.
The growing weakness of the late Carolingians may have been aggravated by a number of factors: the
invasion of the Vikings; a decline in economic production; insufficient supplies of booty to buy support.
But the crisis of the Carolingian state was above all a crisis of state management: Like the
Merovingians, the Carolingians allowed the magnates to form constellations of power. Eventually the
Carolingian rulers succumbed to the aggressive leaders of these constellations.
Hugh Capet’s establishment of the Capetian dynasty changed little in the political, social, or economic
structure of West Francia. The monarchy had exercised little power since the days of Charlemagne.
For another two centuries, it remained weaker than the contemporary governments of the Holy
Roman Empire in Germany and Norman-dominated England. Historians have suggested that the
French crown’s very weakness helped preserve it—its relative insignificance made it less attractive as
a target for acquisition by the magnates.
Nonetheless, the Capetian monarchy was the thread that bound together the region that would
gradually become known as France. Beginning in the late 10th century, the French monarchy felt the
force of several critical developments that affected western Europe generally: a resurgent Catholic
Church, a growing economy, and better-organized states. As the landscape of medieval Europe
changed, the Capetians worked tirelessly to master it. They were most likely guided by short- and
intermediate-term political advantage rather than any deliberate policy of nation building. The
unintended result was the emergence of an embryonic French nation by the late Middle Ages.
The Capetians had usurped their title in 987, and because of this usurpation their dynastic right to rule
remained weak for some time. Until the 13th century, the Capetian kings tried to improve the chances
for a smooth and uncontested succession. Thus, before they died, the kings had their intended
successors acclaimed as king by the magnates and crowned by church officials. This process was so
important that for three centuries the Capetians dated the beginning of their respective reigns not
from the death of the previous king but from the moment of their coronation. The Capetians’
C The Growth of a National Identity
C1 A Weakened Monarchy: The Early Capetians
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dependence on other institutions, principally the church, for their authority was one major reason
effective centralized government required centuries to build.
Hugh Capet, who ruled from 987 to 996, accomplished little as king beyond keeping the royal title
alive and out of the hands of the remaining Carolingian claimants. He avoided military confrontation
when possible; he counted more on his negotiating skills and the backing of the church to shore up his
shaky position. Hugh’s immediate successors—Robert II, known as Robert the Pious (996-1031),
Henry I (1031-1060), and Philip I (1060-1108)—did little better.
Indeed, some historians believe that royal authority, flimsy as it was in 987, shrank even more during
the first century of Capetian rule. The magnates, who in reality governed most of the kingdom, did
pay homage to the king and swore fidelity to him upon becoming his vassals. But by themselves these
formalities meant little until the 12th century. Far more important were the strategic alliances that the
kings made with the magnates. The magnates would typically live up to their feudal obligations to pay
homage and to provide counsel and military service only when such alliances had been struck. Until
the 12th century, only a few scattered territories around the Île-de-France, the region centered
around Paris, made up the king’s domain—the variegated bundle of rights to exploit and administer
land directly and to collect taxes. However, the king had much greater power over appointments in
the French church, particularly the ability to appoint bishops.
C1a Serfdom
Serfdom in the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages in Europe, peasants became legally bound to live and work in one place in servitude to wealthy landowners. In return for working the land of the owner, known as the lord, these peasants, called serfs, received a crude house, a small adjoining plot of ground, a share of the surrounding fields, some farm animals, and protection from outlaws and other lords. The serf gave part of his own crop to the lord as payment of rent
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A weak monarchy made it easier for the magnates to consolidate their hold on the lives and properties
of their underlings. Although slavery, a vestige of the Roman Empire, slowly disappeared, serfdom
arose in its place, especially in the north, where land held as alods became less common than in the
South. Serfs were legally bound to live and work on specific territories and were required to pay their
lords in the form of money, or, more typically, labor services, including work on the lord’s lands.
Limited though their liberty was, serfs should not be confused with slaves. In exchange for their
services, they retained precious rights, including the right to exploit land and the right to their lord’s
protection. Legally, they could not be sold, and if lordship of an estate to which serfs were attached
changed hands, the new lord was expected to respect the traditional rights of the serfs. In an age
when law and order was in short supply and economic opportunities were limited, the concrete rights
of the serfs to work the land and to protection undoubtedly appeared more important to most people
than the abstract condition called freedom. Serfdom became an inheritable legal condition in the 10th
and 11th centuries.
and was subject to many other payment obligations and taxes. Serfdom differed from slavery because serfs had the right to own property, could not be sold, and could theoretically purchase their freedom from their lords.
Medieval Fair
Fairs were very important to the economies of towns and cities in the Middle Ages. Traders and merchants would come from far away to meet other traders and to sell their wares. Fairs were also very lively and featured music, dancing, and other forms of entertainment. Shown here, people buy cloth and other items at a busy fair in France in the 13th century.
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Paradoxically, at the same time, the economic forces that would eventually undermine serfdom were
gathering strength. First among these forces was a steady growth of population, which increased
demand and prompted greater production. The population of the area constituting present-day France
grew from an estimated 5 million to 6 million people in 1000 to 18 million to 21 million by the early
14th century. As the population grew, people cleared forested areas to increase the amount of arable
land, a process that also expanded supplies of timber. Timber was especially important for the
medieval economy as a source of energy and building material. In addition, agricultural productivity
increased. This increase was due to a warming climate that lengthened the growing season, modest
technological improvements, such as heavier plows, and the three-field system, which allowed land to
lie fallow for one of every three years, rather than one of every two years. Finally, trade expanded,
enabling peasants to cultivate cash crops to exchange for other products in the great markets, such as
the fairs of Champagne. Trade and cash crops encouraged the development of regional specialization.
Trade also promoted the growth of towns and cities. Paris was the most spectacular example. It grew
from between 15,000 and 20,000 people under the Carolingians to between 150,000 and 200,000
people by 1300. The growth of trade and urban areas encouraged the decline of serfdom. By the 13th
century, the population had reached the saturation point in some areas of the countryside, so not all
laborers could be productively employed. Some serfs ran away to the towns and cities in search of
work, and lords were not inclined to chase after them because their labor was not much needed.
Indeed, given the high death rates in the unhealthful cities, urban populations could grow only if
people migrated to cities from the countryside.
C1b Resurgent Church
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The revival of the economy coincided with a major movement to reform the Church. During the early
Middle Ages, the church had lost a great deal of its independence. Many of the church’s most critical
offices and sources of income were controlled by the magnates, who used them for their own political
purposes. Beginning in the early 10th century, a movement to free the church of control by laymen
emerged from the Benedictine monastery in Cluny (see Benedictines). By the end of the 11th century,
1,500 monasteries supported Cluny’s reforms, and in the 12th century, the austere Cistercian order
joined Cluny’s reform efforts (see Cistercians). Nearly from the start, the papacy had maintained close
ties to the Cluniac movement. Popes such as Gregory VII (1073-1085) tied the reform movement to
the authority of the papacy over secular rulers.
The reformers sought to recruit the ablest people, not the wellborn, to fill high church offices, and, as
a result, they strengthened the church as a whole. During the High Middle Ages from about 1050 to
about 1300, the Church expanded its presence in society. The number of monastic orders multiplied,
and the church promoted arts, education, and scholarship and encouraged the use of canon law and
ecclesiastical courts.
Abbey at Cluny
Duke William of Aquitaine founded the Benedictine monastery at Cluny, France, in 910. The monastery was highly regarded throughout Europe and acquired great wealth. The abbey, shown here, was built primarily between 1088 and 1130 and was the largest church in Europe in the Middle Ages.
C2 Growth of Royal Power: The Later Capetians
Reims Cathedral, France
This cathedral in Reims, France, represents the peak of the High Gothic architectural style. Built between 1211 and 1300, the church was used for coronations of the French monarchy. The cathedral exhibits characteristically Gothic attributes such as three-tier elevation, three-part vaults, shafted
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The resurgent economy and church contributed to the slow growth of royal power starting in the reign
of Louis VI, who became king in 1108. The expanding economy eventually allowed the kings to tap
into new sources of wealth, and they were able to build armies and a new bureaucratic administration.
The rising influence of the church and Christian religion strengthened the religious basis of the
Capetian monarchy. Henceforth, French kings were crowned in formal ceremonies at Reims, where
Clovis had been baptized. They acquired the title Most Christian King. The French kings claimed to
have the power to cure a disease related to tuberculosis called scrofula. The Capetians also benefited
from the Crusades, the military campaigns called by the church to recapture the Holy Land from the
Muslims. Participation in the Crusades enhanced the Capetians’ prestige. It also allowed them to
redirect the warring tendencies of the magnates outside the country; approximately half of the
magnates participated in the Crusades. Despite occasional differences and disputes, the Capetians
were on much better terms with the papacy in the 12th and 13th centuries than were the dynasties
ruling England or Germany.
piers, flying buttresses, and gargoyles. This is a view of the west facade, which features the first examples of bar tracery in its large rose window.
The First Crusade
In response to the announcement by Pope Urban II of a Crusade to the Holy Land in 1095, Christian forces from western Europe converged on Constantinople, where they united with Byzantine forces to attack Seljuk armies in Anatolia and Muslim armies in Syria and Palestine. By 1099 the Crusaders had achieved their goal—the capture of the city of Jerusalem. The Crusades introduced Europeans to other cultures and helped to revive trade that had lagged during the Middle Ages. Although Christian territories acquired during the First Crusade were gradually lost over the next 200 years, the revitalization that these commercial contacts brought had lasting impact on economic and cultural developments during the Renaissance.
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Louis VI and Louis VII, who ruled between 1137 and 1180, pacified their domain, which had been
overrun by marauding bandits during the reigns of their predecessors. But the real challenge they
faced was the rising power of the Plantagenet dynasty. This aristocratic family had strong bases in
both England and France. Henry II, who became the first Plantagenet king of England in 1154, had
been duke of Normandy. He had also acquired a claim to all of Aquitaine when he married Eleanor of
Aquitaine in 1152. Eleanor had been married to Louis VII, but he had annulled his marriage to Eleanor
for her alleged adultery. In the 1180s the Plantagenets also came to control Brittany.
Louis VII’s son, Philip Augustus, ruled as Philip II from 1180 to 1223. He maintained surprisingly
cordial relations with both Henry II and his successor, Richard I, until the 1190s, when the rising
Plantagenet threat erupted in conflict. Philip broke with Richard while both were on the Third Crusade.
Richard was able to gain the upper hand until his death in 1199, but Philip gained the advantage after
Richard was succeeded by his brother, John.
Coronation of Philip II of France
Philip Augustus is shown at his coronation in 1180 as King Philip II of France. Serving as king until his death in 1223, Philip established France as a leading European power.
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By 1206 Philip had overrun Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, Auvergne, and Brittany. In
1214 he won a crushing victory over John and his allies at the Battle of Bouvines and then nearly
invaded England. With the Plantagenets suppressed, the battle determined which dynasty
predominated in France for the next two centuries. In that regard, it was a critical event in the long
history of national consolidation, even though another desperate struggle with the ruling house of
England lay in the future. During Philip’s reign, the royal domain expanded several fold in size, and for
a time, the Capetians were the dominant power in Europe.
Montségur Castle
In the 13th century the castle of Montségur was an important stronghold of the Albigenses, a group of Christian heretics active throughout southern France. In 1208 Pope Innocent III called the Albigensian Crusade, which resulted in the massacre of many of the Albigenses and the destruction of much of southern France.
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Louis VIII, king between 1223 and 1226, continued to build the royal domain. Philip II had already
allowed a group of knights led by Simon IV de Montfort to attack the Albigenses, members of a
heretical Christian sect in the south of France. The campaign against them was blessed by the pope.
Louis VIII himself went south to capitalize on Montfort’s bloody assaults and placed all Languedoc,
where the sect was strong, under his rule. Although Louis died in 1226, he had established the right of
the Capetian kings and their families to rule over much of the south. He had incorporated into the
Capetian sphere of influence areas that had been virtually autonomous since the 9th century.
Philip IV (of France)
Philip IV, king of France, is known for his struggle with the Roman Catholic church that first arose from his attempt to tax the clergy. After Pope Boniface VIII issued a statement declaring papal supremacy in 1302, Philip had him imprisoned. In 1305 Philip secured the election of one of his adherents as Pope Clement V, who moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon, France, in 1309 and came under Philip’s control.
Papal Palace, Avignon, France
In 1305, through the influence of Philip the Fair, king of France, the papal
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Under Louis IX, who ruled from 1226 to 1270, the Capetians added luster to their power. Louis, a
faithful son of the church, was so personally pious that he was eventually made a saint by the church.
A committed Crusader, he was a prominent collector of holy relics, which he housed in the
luminescent church of Sainte-Chapelle built in Paris under his direction. But he was also an effective
administrator. He extended and enforced law and order through the royal courts and the legal system.
He stabilized the currency and built the royal bureaucracy. His prestige was so high that for centuries
he was held up as a model king, and his sainthood strengthened the cult of the king as a godlike
figure.
Louis IX’s successor was Philip III, who became king in 1270. He was a far weaker and paler king,
whose reign was dominated by factions. He was followed in 1285 by Philip IV the Fair, who was very
different. Philip was the most brutal of the Capetians in using the growing power of the monarchy to
bludgeon his enemies. Although generous to religious foundations, Philip came to blows with the
papacy in defense of his right to tax church property. He thereby jeopardized the monarchy’s historic
alliance with Rome, one of the principal sources of its success. During this struggle, Philip’s agents
broke into the papal residence and sacked it. Soon thereafter, the papacy moved to Avignon, where it
stayed for nearly a century. To many contemporaries, the papacy’s agreement to relocate indicated
that it had fallen under the control of the French kings, and the papacy’s prestige suffered.
Philip IV risked destroying the alliance with Rome over finances because royal power was coming to
depend on money. Philip took other measures to gain revenue, including destroying the Knights
Templar—a rich crusading order—and expelling the Jews from France. In both cases, the king seized
the assets of his victims. In addition, Philip debased the currency. He was succeeded by the last three
Capetians—Louis X (1314-1316), Philip V (1316-1322), and Charles IV (1322-1328).
court was moved from Rome to Avignon. The papal palace, seen here, remains as evidence of that event. Today, Avignon is a manufacturing and wine-producing center.
C3 Legacy of the Capetians
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Aside from building the royal domain and uprooting the Plantagenets, the Capetians contributed to the
formation of the French nation by developing a set of core political institutions, many of which would
last until 1789. Among them was a local administration composed of judicial officials variously called
prévôts, baillis, and sénéchaux. In Paris, which gradually emerged as the country’s capital, a central
administration began to develop. Administrative and judicial duties that had previously been
performed by the royal council were assigned to other bodies, such as the parlements, courts with
wide-ranging jurisdiction, and the more specialized Chambres de Comptes, which heard fiscal cases.
Loosely associated with these courts was the Estates-General, an assembly composed of
representatives from the three estates, or legally defined social classes: clergy, nobility, and
commoners. These representatives were elected throughout the realm. The Estates-General counseled
the king and consented to important initiatives of the crown. The crown also developed a rudimentary
tax system. This system enabled the crown to tap the expanding wealth of the nation, although taxes
were always controversial and often fiercely resisted.
When it functioned, this machinery and the institutions of the church no doubt reduced the levels of
violence and disorder that had existed in earlier periods. Yet these administrative mechanisms were
also used to exclude and to repress. The king and the papacy tried to enforce religious orthodoxy,
which led to the bloody repression of nonorthodox believers such as the Albigenses. The rights of
Jews, who were associated with heretics and lepers, eroded, and they were eventually expelled from
the kingdom. Homosexuals and prostitutes also appear to have suffered increasing persecution. And
Capetian Monarchy in 1328
The Capetian monarchy, the ruling dynasty in France from 987 to 1328, gained a significant portion of its land through marriages. In order to maintain their holdings, the Capetian kings instituted the practices of heredity and primogeniture. With these rules in place, crown lands remained undivided through successive generations. This map shows the boundaries of the Capetian Monarchy in 1328, upon the death of the final Capetian king, Charles IV.
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although it is risky to generalize in this matter, some evidence suggests that the general reform
movement of the church wresting control of church lands from lay lords caused their families to try to
keep their remaining properties intact by granting women smaller shares of family estates than they
had received during the Early Middle Ages. In sum, processes that led to the building of the nation
were hardly cost-free.
In 1328 the Valois dynasty replaced the Capetians. By this time, the royal government that controlled
the territories constituting “France” was arguably the most powerful in Europe. During the next
century, two major crises tested its creativity and endurance to the limit. One was the socioeconomic
crisis of the 14th century, which resulted from the inability to meet the material needs of an expanded
population and from the effects of the plague. The other was a political crisis that emerged from the
Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between the Valois and the English royal house, a conflict that grew
into a French civil war. This war indicates that a strong, pervasive national sentiment had not yet
emerged.
In the late 1340s, bubonic plague struck France and most of western and central Europe (see Black
Death). Bubonic plague was caused by bacteria carried by fleas. It spread rapidly through the cities
D France in the Late Middle Ages
D1 The Plague
Effects of the Black Death
The Black Death, an epidemic of plague in Europe that lasted from 1347 to 1351, resulted in the deaths of almost one-quarter of Europe’s population. The Black Death was the first in a cycle of plagues in Europe that continued into the 18th century. Shown here, the French city of Marseille is devastated by a later outbreak of plague.
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and towns of medieval France, where the population was not in a strong condition to resist the
disease. Already by the late 13th century, available resources were not sufficient to supply the
growing French population, forcing farmers to cultivate even relatively infertile land to meet the
demand for food. Productivity generally declined with the onset of colder weather, which meant a
shorter growing season. Lumber, a critical resource in the medieval economy, became scarcer as
forests were cleared. Famine recurred frequently after 1300, when the population reached its peak.
Lower living standards gradually slowed the growth of population, which stagnated over the first half
of the next century.
In 1348 the plague swept northward through France from Marseille. A quarter to a third of the French
people died during the next two years. Plague remained endemic for the next 350 years and
contributed to further declines in the French population. By the middle of the 15th century, plague and
war had wiped out most of the population increases of previous centuries. Some areas did not again
reach pre-plague population levels until the 18th or 19th century.
The plague also had complex economic and social consequences, about which there is considerable
historical debate. It does seem to have contributed to the decline of serfdom and the emergence of a
commercial economy, in which goods are exchanged for profit, often over long distances. As the
population declined, so did demand for goods and the price of land. But wages rose because labor,
which had been plentiful and cheap, suddenly became scarce. Landlords and other employers now had
The Jacquerie
The Jacquerie, an uprising of French peasants against the nobility, began in May 1358. As the rebellion spread throughout northeastern France, peasants destroyed castles and killed nobles. The uprising was finally put down in June near the city of Meaux in a decisive battle, in which several thousand peasants were killed.
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to bid for labor on a more competitive basis. Agricultural labor became even more expensive and
difficult to hire as people migrated to the cities. The rising price of labor enabled peasants and workers
to spend more money on luxuries such as meat and proportionately less on grain. Serfs may have
used the greater demand for labor to win their freedom, thereby accelerating the decline of serfdom
that had begun a century earlier.
In the end, however, the peasants were not able to retain most of their gains from the higher price of
labor. Much of their gains went to the state, which, pressed to pay for the Hundred Years’ War,
imposed higher taxes on the peasantry. To pay the taxes, the peasants often needed to obtain loans
from urban moneylenders to whom they had to pay interest, further depressing their prosperity. In
addition, landlords raised peasants’ rents where they could. Peasants’ grievances fueled a revolt in the
1350s, called the Jacquerie (after the name Jacques that nobles commonly gave to peasants). The
Jacquerie was followed by more revolts between 1379 and 1383.
The plague seems to have had a deep psychological impact on late medieval French society,
intensifying the sense of the fragility of life and the omnipresence of death. This awareness of death
provoked a variety of reactions. Some people abandoned traditional moral constraints and turned to
the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. Others focused more on the apparently imminent judgment of
their souls and the need to repent for their sins, which some people believed were responsible for the
plague. Finally, the plague unleashed a round of accusations against those whose presence in the
community was resented for other reasons. Jews in particular were accused of poisoning wells and
conjuring with evil spirits to bring on the plague.
The despair wrought by the plague was enhanced by the devastation of the Hundred Years’ War,
which dominated the French political scene for more than a century, from 1337 to 1453. The war
originated in the Plantagenets’ efforts to make good on their claims to French territory. Indeed, the
Plantagenets suggested that they had a claim to the French crown because the mother of the
D2 The Hundred Years’ War
Edward III
In 1338 Edward III, king of England and son of Isabella of France, declared himself king of France, instigating the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. This painting features Edward, seated, wearing a robe decorated with English and French emblems. The painting is by Jean Froissart.
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Plantagenet king of England, Edward III, was Isabella, daughter of the French king, Philip IV. To
counter this claim, the Valois floated the idea that the Salic law, dating back to early Frankish times,
prohibited women from inheriting the French throne and from passing on the right to inherit the
throne to their sons. Although denounced by the Plantagenets and others as a historical fiction, the
Salic law became one of the firmest, most widely respected French constitutional traditions.
The Hundred Years’ War began in Flanders and soon moved to other areas, notably Gascony, which
the Plantagenets controlled before the war, and Normandy. During the reigns of Philip VI and John II
the Good between 1328 and 1364, the Plantagenets clearly had the upper hand, winning major
victories at Sluys in 1340, Crécy in 1346 (Crécy, Battle of), and Poitiers in 1356. Faced with military
setbacks, the effects of the plague, peasant and urban uprisings, and his own capture, John signed the
Peace of Brétigny in 1360, in which he ceded a third of his kingdom to Edward III.
Under Charles V, who ruled from 1364 to 1380, the Valois regrouped. The crown was assisted by
Bertrand du Guesclin, an able military leader who pushed back the Plantagenets on the battlefield. The
Valois also benefited from conflicts within the English royal house. By 1380 most Plantagenet gains
had been wiped out.
But under Charles VI, who became king in 1380, the French position again deteriorated, as did the
king, who suffered from periodic bouts of insanity beginning in 1392. Two competing aristocratic
factions, the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, sought to dominate Charles, and they brought France
to the verge of civil war. Both factions solicited support from the English, who clearly benefited from
their rivalry. In 1415 the new king of England, Henry V of the house of Lancaster, landed in France
Armored Soldiers in Battle
English and French soldiers engaged in heavy fighting during the Battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415.
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and defeated French forces at the Battle of Agincourt, which secured Plantagenet control of areas
north of the Loire. Four years later, the English allied with the Burgundians, who forced Charles VI to
give his daughter in marriage to Henry V and to sign the devastating Treaty of Troyes in 1420. This
treaty disinherited Charles’s son, the future Charles VII, and recognized Henry’s claims to the French
throne. Although many future historians would denounce it as an act of betrayal, contemporary
reaction to the treaty was by no means uniformly hostile in France, especially north of the Loire. Paris,
in particular, supported the Anglo-Burgundian union until late in the war, and the university and the
Parlement of Paris, the presiding sovereign court, recognized Henry V as their legitimate king when
Charles VI died in 1422.
From the 1420s on, however, the tide once again turned in favor of the Valois for several reasons.
First, the English sometimes treated their French subjects with brutality and made heavy financial
demands on the French. The English had to extort even more money from their French subjects than
did the kings of France because resources coming from England were inadequate. Second, the war—a
dynastic conflict that had become a civil war—gradually changed again, into a war of national
liberation. Although the notion of a French nation remained embryonic, the French tended to blame
the hardships of the war on the English. Royal propagandists exploited this tendency, emphasizing the
need for a king who was “one of our kind.” Third, the Anglo-Burgundian alliance began to develop
ultimately fatal strains. After 1435 the Burgundians threw their weight behind the Valois, decisively
Joan of Arc
At the age of 13, Joan of Arc convinced a board of theologians that she had a divine mission to save France during the 100 Years’ War with England. She led the French in several military victories over the English in 1429. When she led an unauthorized campaign the following year, she was tried and convicted of heresy for answering to God before the Roman Catholic church. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431, but after 25 years the church overturned the conviction and later canonized her.
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shifting the balance of power.
Finally, there was the mission of Joan of Arc, a young woman so romanticized in her own and later
times that even today it is hard to dispel the mythology spun around her. Joan was born to relatively
comfortable peasants from Lorraine. She was dismayed by the hardships her people had suffered in
the war and sought an end to the conflict. She tried to reinvigorate the Valois dynasty so that it could
remove the English from French soil. Contrary to the popular image, Joan of Arc was never a military
commander, but she did help inspire a fighting spirit among the troops of the dauphin Charles, the
eldest son of the king and the heir apparent.
Charles, the disinherited Valois prince, had remained morose, lethargic, and uncrowned before Joan
arrived on the scene in 1428. In 1429 Joan helped lift the English siege of Orléans, which opened the
way for the dauphin to be crowned as Charles VII at Reims, the traditional site of royal coronations.
The coronation was critical at this juncture, because it undercut Charles’s disinheritance in the Treaty
of Troyes by emphasizing the divine, rather than the legal, basis of royal authority.
Seized by the English, Joan was tried for heresy and witchcraft. The English wanted not only to justify
her execution but also to make the French believe the coronation had been the work of the devil. Upon
her conviction, which was a foregone conclusion, she was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431.
Partly as a result of Joan’s mission, partly as a result of the other factors indicated above, Charles was
able to put the English on the defensive until the end of the war. France was nearly cleared of English
forces by 1453, when the fighting finally ceased. Despite the armistice, the English and the French
viewed each other as mortal enemies for many centuries.
The Hundred Years’ War not only bled France white materially, it nearly extinguished the Valois
Charles VII of France
Charles VII was known as the Dauphin for the seven years after his father died in 1422. Charles ruled only in southern France, while northern France was ruled by the English infant King Henry VI. Charles was eventually crowned king of France at Reims, after Joan of Arc defeated the English at Orléans.
D3 Foundations of the Old Regime
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dynasty. But the Valois were able to use the war as the springboard for another century-long round of
building royal institutions, expanding their power in the process. This expansion of power underlay the
emergence of the Old Regime, a complex structure of political and social institutions dominated by an
increasingly absolute monarchy.
Once the conflict was over, the French population rebounded. Historians generally agree that from the
1450s until around 1620, the French population expanded considerably. This growth was probably due
to a drop in the average age at marriage, which meant more marriages and births. The death rate also
declined, especially among children, as epidemics became less frequent. The population of cities such
as Lyon, Bordeaux, and Rouen grew between 50 and 100 percent from 1500 to 1600. By the late 16th
century, the population of Paris reached about 300,000, and the French population as a whole once
again stood at the high level of the early 14th century.
Production methods changed relatively little during this period. But rising domestic demand and
increasing foreign trade through France’s coastal cities promoted product diversification. These
changes can be seen in the growth of textile trades in northern France and the expansion of
commercial wine production in the south.
The growth of the labor supply eventually depressed wages. In addition, larger families meant that
estates were divided into smaller, less viable homesteads. Increasing demand drove up prices over
the long term. The standard of living gradually declined, and population growth leveled off about
1620.
The resurgence of population and economic growth were accompanied by the political revival of the
state. The scope of royal justice widened as parlements (royal courts) were established in Toulouse in
1443, Grenoble in 1456, Dijon in 1477, Aix-en-Provence in 1501, Rouen in 1515, and Rennes in 1551.
In addition to hearing cases and overseeing local administration, the parlements were charged with
registering, or officially adopting, royal edicts. Kings expected registration to be more or less
automatic, since in their view the procedure did not involve anything like legislative approval. But the
parlements sometimes used such occasions to protest against edicts they found objectionable by
issuing formal dissents called remonstrances. In addition to expanding the judiciary, the royal
government also compiled local customary laws and extended the system of royal administration by
establishing baillis and sénéchaux, royal administrators who supervised the prevots, in areas that now
fell within the expanding royal domain. To meet the demands of war, the crown expanded its military
capacity by recruiting mercenaries.
In periods of war, the crown needed to expand its taxing power, and it did so by levying extraordinary
wartime taxes, including indirect (sales) taxes and the taille, a tax paid by nonnobles on their personal
wealth. These taxes were gradually levied on a more routine basis. To gain consent for them, the
crown summoned a variety of local and regional assemblies, in addition to the kingdom-wide
D3a Population Growth
D3b Strengthening of State Institutions
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assembly, the Estates-General. In general, these assemblies approved royal initiatives, facilitating the
expansion of royal power. At the same time, however, the assemblies ventilated grievances against
the king, and they sometimes refused to consent to fresh taxes. For these reasons, the monarchy
gradually sought to dispense with assemblies, arguing that the king’s right to tax unilaterally had
become customary. But this right continued to be contested, as were the amount and nature of the
taxes themselves.
This opposition was one factor that prevented the monarchy from establishing a uniform tax code
before the French Revolution (1789-1799), despite its rising power. Another was that the monarchy
granted permanent exemptions from some taxes to certain groups and bodies for both political and
fiscal reasons. Nobles were free from paying the taille on the grounds that they provided military
service to the king. Some localities were similarly exempt because at some time in the past they had
bought a permanent exemption through a single large contribution. Some provinces were partially
shielded from taxes because they retained the right to negotiate the size and nature of their tax
burden with the crown through their provincial assemblies. The Catholic Church, a major landholder in
the kingdom, also acquired tax advantages. Rather than pay the standard rate, the church was
permitted to make a “free gift” to the crown. This amount was much smaller than what the church
would have owed if it paid taxes like other groups. Such exemptions meant that the tax system was
far from equitable and weighed most heavily on those who lacked the political influence to gain
exemptions, notably the peasantry.
To cover the costs of government, the crown sold state offices, a practice known as venality of office.
By the early 16th century, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 offices had been sold; by the late 16th
century, the number had increased to about 15,000; by the 1660s, to about 50,000. By the late 18th
century, about 70,000 offices were venal, meaning that roughly one percent of all adult Frenchmen
owned one. Although not all state offices were venal, some of the most important positions, including
judgeships in the parlements, were. Venality limited the crown’s ability to control the quality of its own
officials. Offices were resold to the highest bidder, and the crown could not fire officers without
repaying the capital they had invested in their offices, a luxury that the state could hardly ever afford.
Yet by selling offices, the crown increased the loyalty of its servants: Normally few officials would
revolt against a state they partially owned. Moreover, venality allowed the monarchy to make money.
The crown not only profited from the initial sale of offices but also acquired further revenue by
annually charging officeholders a sixtieth of their office’s value to ensure inheritability. Established in
the early 17th century, this charge, called the paulette, yielded more revenue than did indirect taxes.
In addition, venality occasionally resulted in officeholders being forced to lend the state money.
Venality was crucial for the state because it provided an administrative apparatus at relatively low
cost. Venality was also the most important mechanism for ennobling wealthy commoners. Some of the
costliest offices not only paid yearly dividends gauged on their value but also conferred noble status if
held by a family for four generations.
Profiting from a somewhat healthier economy and a more muscular royal administration, the
monarchy built on the momentum it had acquired at the end of the Hundred Years’ War to expand
D4 From the Hundred Years’ War to the Wars of Religion
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control over remaining noble enclaves. In 1461, the year Louis XI became king, the Valois-Burgundian
alliance collapsed. The duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, was attempting to reconstitute the kingdom
of Lotharingia. He made another alliance with the English and also allied with French nobles who were
antagonistic to the new French king. This faction organized a league, to which Louis was forced to
make concessions in 1465. In 1467 Charles the Bold succeeded Philip, and in 1472 he led an Anglo-
Burgundian force against Louis. Louis responded by buying off England and forming his own coalition
of powers that were threatened by Charles. Although Louis was slow to capitalize on his strategic
advantage as king, Charles was killed in battle in 1477. Louis might have annexed all of Charles’s
large inheritance, but in the end, Charles’s sole heir, Mary, wedded Maximilian I of the Habsburg
family, giving the Habsburgs a major claim on her inheritance.
The settlement of the conflict produced mixed results. Mary’s marriage to Maximilian allowed the
Habsburgs to annex the Low Countries and left France with a ragged eastern border. There conflicting
sovereignties produced a string of conflicts with German powers in succeeding centuries. At the same
time, the settlement definitively neutralized the threat to French security from Burgundy. The
Burgundian territories were dismembered, and the French crown annexed the western regions. Louis
also consolidated his hold on areas inside France, such as Guyenne and Normandy, which had been
allied with Charles.
Moreover, the royal domain continued to grow after the Burgundian settlement. In 1481 Provence and
the Var, areas in the south of France, were added. In 1491 Charles VIII, who reigned from 1483 to
D4a Growth of the Royal Domain
Charles VIII of France
Charles VIII, king of France, invaded Italy and briefly captured Naples in 1495, beginning a series of invasions into Italian territories that would last more than 50 years.
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1498, married Anne of Brittany, thereby preparing for that province’s absorption into the royal domain
in 1532. These territories fell under Valois control according to a variety of terms. Many were allowed
to keep their provincial estates (regional assemblies elected by members of the clergy, nobility, and
commoners), thereby limiting the extent to which later French kings could integrate the kingdom.
With Burgundy dismantled and the domestic lords held in a tighter grip, the later Valois looked to
expand abroad. Charles VIII set off on a military campaign in 1494 to vindicate dynastic claims in
Italy. The campaign was initially successful, but ultimately an anti-French coalition forced Charles to
withdraw from Naples. Charles left Italy to organize another expedition but died before he could
undertake it.
The reign of Louis XII from 1498 to 1515 was, in some respects, a replay of Charles’s. To secure the
Breton succession, Louis married Charles’s widow, Anne of Brittany, after a scandalous divorce from
his first wife. He then embarked on another round of Italian wars, during which he, like Charles, had
to abandon Naples. In 1513, again like Charles, Louis had to leave Italy altogether in the face of a
coalition of anti-French forces led by the pope.
A third round of the Italian wars commenced when Francis I ascended the throne in 1515. Francis
D4b The Italian Campaigns
Chambord
The château of Chambord is one of the most famous in France. Completed in 1547, the structure contains 440 rooms.
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immediately captured Milan, but at the same time Spain occupied Naples. Spanish interest in Italy,
which stemmed in large part from Aragonese claims on Sicily and Naples, gave the Italian wars
another dimension. In 1519 the Spanish king, Charles V, of the Habsburg dynasty, became Holy
Roman emperor, thereby extending his territorial claims to include Germany and the Low Countries.
The Habsburgs threatened to encircle France, forcing the French to look to other powers as allies,
including England and eventually the German Protestants and the Muslim Turks. The Habsburg threat
would remain the focus of French foreign policy for the next 200 years.
The tide of the Italian wars at first turned against Francis, who in 1525 was captured at the battle of
Pavia. Francis was ransomed the following year, after he renounced lands claimed by Charles V. Once
set free, Francis rescinded his renunciation, and during the rest of his reign, he gained the advantage.
Under Henry II, who ruled from 1547 to 1559, the tide turned once again. The Italian wars ended with
the definitive Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis of 1559. Under the treaty, France acquired Calais and three
bishoprics in Lorraine—Toul, Metz, and Verdun. But in return, Henry renounced claim to all his Italian
possessions, including parts of Savoy and Tuscany that had been effectively united with other Valois
territories. Thus ended 60 years of costly and politically fruitless Italian intervention.
Culturally, the Italian intervention was far less sterile. The Renaissance had been flowering in Italy for
some time before the Italian wars. Humanism, a Renaissance movement that focused on the study of
ancient texts, had already appeared in southern France during the early 15th century. But the Italian
wars exposed many more French people to Renaissance styles of art, architecture, literature, and
scholarship.
Francis I became one of Europe’s leading patrons of the arts. He supported the humanistic endeavors
of major classicists, such as Guillaume Budé. Under the influence of his sister, Margaret of Navarre, he
protected scholars, such as Lefèvre d’Étaples, who were attacked because their work was associated
with new currents of Protestant religious reform. Francis also brought to France artists such as
Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini. The result was a fusion of Renaissance and late French
Gothic styles, as exemplified in the jewel-like royal residences Francis built along the Loire.
Francis and Henry II also patronized the group of French poets called the Pléiade, whose members
used and defended French as a literary language (see Pleiad). The crown cared little about the
linguistic practices of most French subjects. However, it did not want European elites to view French
regard for Italian classicism as a sign that France was culturally or politically inferior. Partly for this
reason, the crown stipulated in 1539 that henceforth French was the sole legal language of the state
and kingdom. By this time, high culture had clearly become the business of the state.
Also notable in this period was the growing use of the printing press. The effects of the print revolution
were slow to reach the nonliterate classes. However, printing did contribute to the outbreak of the
Reformation, a religious revolution that challenged the supremacy of the pope and resulted in the
creation of Protestant churches.
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In 1517 Martin Luther, a German theologian and religious reformer, began a campaign to reform what
he perceived to be widespread abuses in the church. He was quickly excommunicated. In succeeding
years, he developed a new Protestant theology and church, which inspired other reformers to do
likewise. The Protestant Reformation had a gradual, but growing, influence in France. On October 18,
1534, in what is known as the affair of the placards, reformers posted broadsides attacking the
sacraments of the church all over Paris and other northern cities. By this time, Protestantism had
spread well beyond humanist intellectual circles.
In France, Protestantism existed in many forms, some of them Lutheran in inspiration. But it was most
heavily influenced by the work of John Calvin, a French lawyer and humanist who had formulated a
systematic Protestant theology. Calvin had gone to Geneva, Switzerland, where he built a model
Protestant society. From there, itinerant ministers carried his message back into France. Many
Protestant congregations began to form, which gave organization to the growing Protestant
community. For reasons that are unclear, the members of these congregations became known by the
1560s as Huguenots.
Protestantism in France grew among many different classes, including peasants and nobles, varying in
D4d The Reformation in France
Martin Luther
German theologian and religious reformer Martin Luther precipitated the Protestant Reformation with his publication in 1517 of his Ninety-Five Theses, which detailed the indulgences and excesses of the Roman Catholic church. Luther felt that the essence of Christianity lay not in an elaborate organization headed by the pope, but in each person’s direct communication with God. Luther’s protest set off a flood of departures from the Roman Catholic church and set the stage for further Protestant movements, including Calvinism and Presbyterianism.
THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE
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its appeal depending on local conditions. It was especially strong among literate people of the middle
classes who lived in a wide southern arc stretching through Guyenne, Languedoc, Provence, and
Dauphiné. While Protestantism was clearly advancing during the 16th century, it remained a minority
movement among all classes. At its height, only about 10 percent of the total population were
Huguenots.
The attitude of the French state toward Protestantism was schizophrenic. Francis I was originally
inclined to protect intellectuals suspected of Protestant leanings. But he gradually became more
hostile as the new religion’s disruptive effects became more evident after the affair of the placards. In
the 1540s, persecution turned violent. Following heresy trials, thousands were executed or
condemned to row the galleys (large vessels with as many as 150 rowers). Overall, however, the
enforcement of orthodoxy remained spotty and did little to change religious practice.
The church’s attempts to suppress Protestantism in France were met with resistance. Since the 14th
century, the French state had promoted the notion of a Gallican Church that followed Rome only on
John Calvin
A major leader in the 16th-century Reformation of the Catholic Church, John Calvin established a new religion with strict codes of belief and behavior. Calvin taught the virtues of faith above good works and advanced the theory of universal priesthood, in which all Christians could practice their religion without the daily guidance of priests. Calvin also established the idea of the “Elect,” a preordained group of people whom God chooses for Salvation. Many Europeans embraced Calvinism; as his ideas spread, they sparked other Protestant religions.
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doctrinal matters, a notion that had provided a convenient justification for the crown’s growing control
over the bishops. Gallicanism, which would play a major political role in coming centuries, was
particularly strong among the members of the parlements, who considered oversight of the French
church to be their responsibility. Hence, the measures taken by the Council of Trent to reimpose
orthodox doctrine through the enhanced authority of the pope had less impact in France than
elsewhere. The Jesuits, the new monastic order devoted to reconquering Europe for the Catholic
Church, at first gained only limited entry into France.
At the same time, the Counter Reformation did have its impact in France. It inspired efforts to reform
the clergy and to launch new spiritual movements within the French church. Over the long term, the
monarchy supported the Counter Reformation’s goal of reuniting the nation in a single Catholic faith.
Under Henry II, persecution of Protestants intensified but was no more effective than before.
Protestant churches and organizations continued to mushroom across the kingdom during the 1550s.
Religious divisions were reinforced by political ones, as aristocratic factions, acting on both religious
and secular motives, sought to expand their power and their access to state patronage. The major
factions included the Guises, strong pro-Catholics with claims to the French throne; the Montmorency,
with ties to both Catholics and Protestants; and the Bourbons, who gradually assumed leadership of
the Protestants.
The growing crisis was aggravated in 1559 with the sudden death of Henry II in a jousting accident.
Henry left behind his widow, Catherine de Médicis, and four young sons as chief custodians of an
increasingly besieged monarchy. Upon his father’s death, the eldest son, Francis II, became king.
Morally and physically weak, the 15-year-old king fell under the influence of the Guises. In 1560
Protestant leaders organized what is known as the conspiracy of Amboise in order to kidnap the king
and free him of Guise control. The Guises thwarted the conspiracy and executed hundreds of its
members.
When Francis died the same year, his mother, Catherine, became regent, acting in the name of the
Catherine de Médicis
As the wife of France’s King Henry II, Catherine de Médicis was the queen of France and the mother of three future French kings. Catherine sought control of France through the rule of her sons. She was responsible for causing the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, in which 50,000 people died.
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new minor king, Charles IX. Catherine sought to reconcile the various factions, but concessions to the
Protestants only further inflamed the Guises. The next ten years saw three civil wars punctuated by
fragile truces. The period was marked by civil violence committed by ordinary citizens on both sides.
In 1572 Catherine gave her daughter Margaret of Valois (better known as Margot) in marriage to a
leading Protestant Bourbon, Henry of Navarre (see Henry IV). The marriage exacerbated Catholic
fears of a Protestant coup d’état. On August 24, 1572, dozens of Protestant leaders were butchered in
the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, apparently on orders of Charles IX. During the succeeding
months, thousands more Protestants were murdered across France in an uncoordinated effort to purify
the realm of heretics. Although devastating to the Protestants and their leadership, the massacres did
not end their cause but only drove them to adopt more extreme positions. They began to claim a right
to resist royal tyranny, a right rooted in an imagined Frankish constitution.
When Henry III, the third son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici, was crowned in 1574, the conflict
was immediately renewed and became progressively more embedded in a Europe-wide struggle.
England and the Netherlands favored the Protestants, while Spain supported the Guises. In 1584 the
Guises signed an alliance with Spain, in which the two partners promised to enforce the decrees of the
Council of Trent in exchange for material support. This alliance was sparked by a looming succession
crisis. When the duc d’Anjou, the last remaining brother of the childless Henry III, died, Henry of
Navarre, a Protestant who was a very distant relation to the Valois, became the next heir to the
French throne. In response, a group of Catholic nobles formed an alliance known as the Holy League.
Its goal was to reunite France in a unitary Catholic faith and prevent Henry of Navarre from becoming
king. While the league established itself in provincial France, a group of officials and clerics formed the
Sixteen, a committee dedicated to advancing the league’s goals in Paris.
The Sixteen threatened royal authority. It made a show of force during the Day of Barricades on May
12, 1588, when Henri I de Lorraine, 3rd duc de Guise, led a revolt against the king. Henry III was
obliged to sneak out of Paris, leaving the city and state in the grip of the widely supported Sixteen.
Henry IV of France
Henry IV, the first Bourbon king of France, became Catholic in 1593 in order to restore peace within the country. In 1598 Henry issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted extended rights to the French Protestants, or Huguenots, who had been persecuted by the dominant Catholics. His reign, marked also by policies that strengthened finance, agriculture, and commerce, ended in 1610 when he was assassinated.
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Henry III acceded to many league demands. But when the league forced him to call a meeting of the
Estates-General, he struck back by assassinating the duc de Guise and another Guise leader during
the meeting. The league then seized control of many cities. Meanwhile, league pamphleteers openly
argued that the monarchy depended directly on the will of the people and that the people had the
right to kill monarchs who violated divine laws. After allying with Henry of Navarre in 1589 to
counterbalance the power of the Guises, Henry III was assassinated on August 1 by Jacques Clément,
a monk associated with the league.
Like the assassination of the Guises, the death of Henry III resolved nothing. The appalling civil war
and its violence dragged on for years, abetted by the intervention of Spanish troops on behalf of the
league and intensified by peasant revolts against the state and the lords. Henry of Navarre was
recognized as king by his supporters but not, for the moment, by many others. Acknowledging that as
a Protestant he could never vindicate his claim to the throne, Henry converted to Catholicism on July
25, 1593. On February 27, 1594, he was crowned king at Chartres.
The league denounced Henry’s conversion as insincere and hence invalid, but most French people
accepted it, and thereafter opposition to Henry died out. League leaders were concerned that popular
violence might get out of hand. Thus, they were willing to put down their arms in exchange for
handsome state grants of money and offices. The French government was able to achieve a relatively
Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
Political rivalry between Roman Catholics and French Protestants (known as Huguenots) led to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572, depicted here in a 16th-century engraving. King Charles IX of France and his mother, Catherine de Médicis, feared the growing power of the Huguenots. In late August they arranged to have a number of Huguenot leaders murdered. The massacre began on August 24 in Paris—where many Huguenots had gathered for the wedding of their leader, Henry of Navarre, to Catherine’s daughter Margaret of Valois. It then spread to the French provinces.
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cost-free settlement with Spain in the Treaty of Vervins in 1598.
To settle the Protestant issue, Henry issued the Edict of Nantes on April 13, 1598. The edict granted
Protestants a limited right to practice their faith, and it temporarily gave them the right to maintain
control of certain fortified cities. The edict was so contested that it was not registered in the
parlements for many months.
The edict has been widely misunderstood. It was not intended as a step towards religious toleration or
pluralism, neither of which had much support. Rather, it was a concession made to end violence in the
short run with the purpose of imposing religious unity in the future. Far from being a step toward
secular politics, the edict was grounded in the concept of a unified Gallican Church as God’s
instrument. It was surrounded with fresh assertions of the divine source of royal authority. These
assertions were intended to counteract claims—made by both Protestants and Catholics at various
times—that the power of the monarchy derived from the people.
Leaguers had reason to be dissatisfied with the outcome. The league lived on in the form of political
factions and in movements to enforce the decrees of the Church during the Counter Reformation. But
Protestants had better reasons to be fearful of the future, and their fears proved to be well founded.
The Catholic-Protestant struggle continued, though at a lower level of conflict.
The late 16th century was an age of economic stagnation, characterized by a declining standard of
living, social anarchy, and grotesque violence. It earned a reputation as one of the most wrenching
periods in French history. Yet apart from exacerbating religious divisions, the Wars of Religion had no
major long-lasting economic or social effects on the nation, which survived intact and without
significant territorial losses. The Wars of Religion had their greatest impact on the state. Henceforth,
the new Bourbon dynasty could point to the chaos of the religious wars as evidence that only a
powerful, indeed absolute, monarchy, deriving its authority from God, could contain the virulent
antisocial tendencies of private individuals. The additional threat of encirclement posed by the
Habsburgs encouraged the Bourbons to build a state so large that, for certain periods during the next
two centuries, France loomed as the dominant nation in Europe.
To understand this period, it is critical to recognize that even defenders of absolute monarchy sharply
distinguished between absolute regimes and arbitrary regimes. In absolute regimes princes did not
share power with institutions such as representative assemblies. But an absolute king could not
legitimately violate the laws of God or nature or the fundamental laws that governed succession to the
throne and ensured the integrity of the realm. By contrast, in arbitrary regimes—what became known
around 1700 as despotisms—the state was subject to no law.
Absolutists argued that in exercising sovereignty, an absolute king could make and impose new
statute law on his subjects for their own good. Absolutists held that people had most to fear from each
other and that only if the monarchy wielded unchecked power could they enjoy true freedom—that is,
security in their lives and property.
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In fact, absolute monarchy was never close to being perfectly realized in France. The crown always
had to make compromises and cut deals with local institutions and elites, much as Henry IV had to
come to terms with the Holy League. Although the nobility might have occasionally resented royal
policies, they found much to gain from the absolute state. They looked to the state to find the means
to support their own, sometimes extensive, networks of dependents.
Henry IV’s most obvious task after 1598 was to pursue the process of pacification in a still bitterly
divided France. This process began at home. To ensure his succession, Henry had his childless
marriage to Margaret annulled in 1599 and then married Marie de Médicis, an Italian princess. Marie,
who was sympathetic to the Holy League, bore him three sons and three daughters in the next ten
years.
To bring order to the state, Henry imposed his will on the parlements and other state agencies.
Through the efforts of his superintendent of finance, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, he restored
France’s fiscal health. He made tax collection more efficient, established the paulette—a tax that
allowed venal (purchased) offices to be inherited—and reduced the interest rate on state loans. He
also improved the state’s credit rating by resuming state payments on the debt, which had lapsed for
more than a decade. By avoiding major military conflicts, Henry kept financial demands on the state
at a minimum. As a result, he was able to lower general taxes.
Tax reductions and the restoration of peace helped generate a mild economic boom, which contrasted
sharply with conditions in previous years, when hunger, wolves, and freebooting military bands
stalked the countryside. France’s recovery and Henry’s buoyant personality made him popular with his
contemporaries, and despite his many mistresses and nine bastard children, Henry was held up as a
model king for centuries. The ugly aftershocks of the Wars of Religion were far from spent, however.
On May 14, 1610, Henry was assassinated by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot who had been
E1 France Under the Early Bourbons
E1a Henry IV
Marie de Medicis
Marie de Medicis was the second wife of Henry IV of France. After he was assassinated in 1605, she ruled France as regent until her oldest son, Louis XIII, reached his majority in 1617. This portrait is in the Portraitgalerie Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck, Austria.
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inspired by the Holy League.
Henry’s death left the state in the unsteady hands of Marie de Médicis. She was appointed regent for
her eldest son, Louis XIII, who was nine years old. Marie leaned in the direction of the parti dévot
(devout party), a loose regrouping of league elements plus the Jesuits and other monastic orders.
Benefiting from a widespread resurgence of Catholic devotion in Europe, the dévots favored renewed
efforts to eradicate Protestantism. They thus supported an alliance with the Habsburgs, champions of
the Counter Reformation who had also been partners with the Holy League.
After relying upon more moderate ministers, Marie turned to dévot Concino Concini as her chief
adviser. The result was Louis’s marriage to Anne of Austria, daughter of the Spanish king, and his
sister’s marriage to Anne’s brother. Concini’s rise irritated many nobles, some of whom began courting
the Protestants. A meeting of the Estates-General in 1614 failed to resolve outstanding issues. This
failure is one reason why the Estates-General did not meet again until 1789.
In 1617 Louis seized control of the state. He had Concini imprisoned and later killed, exiled his mother
to Blois, and recalled many of Henry IV’s advisers. But these measures hardly helped the Protestants,
for Louis now took the initiative against them. Between 1620 and 1622, he personally led several
military campaigns against Protestants, with the result that by 1625 all Protestant strongholds, except
La Rochelle, had collapsed.
In 1624 Armand Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, was appointed to the royal council. Acting much
like a prime minister, he immediately became a commanding figure and soon formed a lasting
partnership with Louis. Strongly influenced by the Holy League, Richelieu was a protégé of Marie de
Médici and supported further measures against the Protestants. In 1628 La Rochelle, a Protestant
stronghold fortified by the English, was successfully assaulted. This success paved the way for the
long-sought unification of the kingdom and imposition of the Catholic faith. After 1629 Richelieu left
the Protestants alone, and during succeeding decades they were victimized far less than they had
E1b Louis XIII and Richelieu
Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu
Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, succeeded in breaking the political power of the great families of France—making the king an absolute ruler—and in establishing France as the first military power of Europe.
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been during the previous century. But their situation again deteriorated in the 1660s under pressure
from the monarchy.
Richelieu’s restraint against the Protestants infuriated the dévots, and so did his foreign policy.
Because the Habsburgs threatened France’s eastern and southwestern borders, Richelieu concluded
that France had to support the Protestant German princes, who since 1618 had been battling the
Catholic Habsburg alliance in the Thirty Years’ War. Richelieu resorted to force abroad only gradually.
In the 1620s he fought for French interests in Savoy against the Spaniards, but France did not openly
declare war on Spain and the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor until 1635.
The war went badly at first. In 1636 Spanish forces invaded eastern France—the second Spanish
intervention in France in 50 years. But Spain was eventually driven out, and the French went on the
offensive in the late 1630s. By Richelieu’s death in 1642, France had conquered Alsace in the east and
Roussillon in the south. Under Richelieu’s successor, Jules Cardinal Mazarin, France made peace with
the Holy Roman Empire in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and with Spain in the Treaty of the
Pyrenees in 1659. These treaties recognized French acquisitions in Alsace, Artois, Picardy, Lorraine,
and Roussillon. They also established the legal basis for continued French interference in the empire.
Henceforth, France had the authority to thwart any Habsburg effort to expand imperial control of
Germany. Of all the major participants, France clearly lost the least and gained the most from the
Thirty Years’ War. From 1659 to 1713 France dominated Europe in much the same way that Spain had
a century earlier.
Religious conflict and foreign war provided the occasion and the excuse to build the French state.
Following no preconceived, coherent plan, Richelieu extended many well-established practices, but he
also promoted bureaucratic procedures that were more modern. Thus, he created a large clientele of
officials immediately loyal to him. He increased the number of venal officeholders, who in some years
provided as much as 40 percent of all royal revenues. At the same time, he made important
innovations. For example, he regularized the use and extended the responsibilities of nonvenal
administrators called intendants, who oversaw the monarchy’s operations within provincial districts
known as généralités.
Richelieu was very much aware of the cultural dimensions of building the state. He established the
Académie Française (see French Academy), an organization of 40 literary scholars responsible for
standardizing the French language. The Académie produced the official French dictionary. Richelieu
was also a master propagandist who employed a stable of writers to justify French policies at home
and abroad.
Richelieu’s achievements and his policies won him important enemies, particularly among the dévots,
of whom he had once been a member. In 1630 a group of dévots—including Marie de Médicis; the
king’s brother Gaston, duc d’Orléans; and the minister Michel de Marillac and his brother, Louis de
Marillac—lobbied Louis to dismiss Richelieu. After wavering temporarily, Louis instead turned on the
dévots during the Day of Dupes in November 1630. Michel de Marillac was imprisoned and his brother
was beheaded. Gaston went into temporary exile, while Marie left France forever. Gaston was involved
in two more coups directed against Richelieu—one in 1632 and one in 1642—but neither was any
more successful than the first. Richelieu died in 1642, master of France, and his patron and partner,
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Louis XIII, died a year later.
Richelieu and Louis left behind a monarchy more imposing than it had ever been. But they also left
behind a heavy burden, particularly since the new king, Louis XIV, who reigned from 1643 to 1715,
was only four years old at his accession, and France once again fell under a regency.
E2 Louis XIV
Louis XIV
French king Louis XIV ruled from 1643 to 1715. Louis was convinced that the power of the monarchy came by divine right, and he exercised absolute control over France and the French people. Determined to make France into a strong, culturally advanced nation, he built up the French military and actively supported French artists and writers. Louis’s reign was the longest in the history of Europe, and became the model for other absolute monarchies in 18th-century Europe.
E2a The Regency
Archivo Fotografico Oronoz
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Regency government almost always meant weak royal authority. This regency also suffered from the
fact that it was headed by two foreigners—the king’s Spanish mother, Anne of Austria, and Jules
Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian-born protégé of Richelieu. Although Mazarin was a wily strategist, he and
Anne faced awesome tasks. They had to prosecute the as-yet-unconcluded wars with the Holy Roman
Empire and Spain. They also had to deal with spreading resistance to rising taxes imposed to pay for
war. During Richelieu’s administration, direct taxes had nearly tripled. Refusal to pay taxes and
peasant revolts directed against the state’s fiscal policies had become commonplace by the 1630s.
Despite rising revenues, Mazarin and Anne had to cope with an impending state bankruptcy. At the
same time, they had to handle a growing conflict between venal officeholders and the intendants.
Finally, they had to deal with the legacy of Richelieu’s heavy-handed policies and uneven distribution
of state patronage, which had alienated powerful members of the nobility. The nobility now sought to
cash in on the government’s apparent weakness.
Jules Mazarin
French cardinal and statesman Jules Mazarin served as tutor to the young King Louis XIV of France and chief minister to Anne of Austria who served as regent after the death of King Louis XIII in 1643. Through these roles, Mazarin effectively controlled French government while Louis XIV was a minor.
E2b The Fronde
CORBIS-BETTMANN/S. A. Archivo Icongrafico
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At virtually the same time that France was concluding its involvement in the Thirty Years’ War, the
revolt known as the Fronde erupted in Paris. The crisis began when the monarchy ordered the
Parlement of Paris to register a package of fiscal measures, including tax hikes. If the parlement failed
to register the package, the monarchy threatened to suppress payments on the parlement’s venal
offices and revoke the paulette, the tax that allowed venal offices to be inherited. The parlement not
only protested against the package, it also demanded the reduction of the intendants’ powers and the
approval of the parlements to new taxes. When the monarchy arrested one leading member of
parlement, mass demonstrations broke out in Paris, forcing Anne and her family to leave the city. A
compromise that favored the parlement was reached in March 1649.
But disorders that had festered for years in the countryside now exploded, as the return of plague and
hunger revived memories of the not-so-distant Wars of Religion. Leading nobles, including Gaston,
Louis de Bourbon prince de Condé, and Armand de Bourbon prince de Conti, joined the conflict and
struggled for position. In the chaos, thousands of pamphlets, the Mazarinades, were circulated in
Paris, attacking the cardinal and foreigners in general. Mazarin withdrew to Cologne in 1651, from
where he continued to direct Anne until he returned the next year. Condé assumed leadership of anti-
Mazarin forces and made an alliance with Spain.
The Fronde
The Fronde was a series of revolts by the French nobility against the monarchy between 1648 and 1653. The nobles had some success, especially after Louis II, prince de Condé, assumed leadership of their forces in 1651. Despite this, the Fronde gradually collapsed in 1652 and 1653, and the nobility never again seriously challenged the authority of the French monarchy. Shown here, Condé rallies his troops in a battle in July 1652.
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At this point, the parlement withdrew to a more moderate position, and Paris turned against Condé.
Condé’s internally divided faction failed to develop a coherent alternative to royal absolutism and lost
ground on the battlefield. The Fronde slowly collapsed in 1652, allowing Louis XIV to return to Paris.
Louis had celebrated his 13th birthday a year earlier and could thereby legally assume responsibility
for the state. Although the Fronde petered out, resistance continued for some years. This resistance
took the form of tax strikes and religious opposition to Mazarin. This opposition was based in Paris and
led by Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz, and a dissident Catholic movement, the
Jansenists (see Jansenism). Despite his travails, Mazarin, who died in 1661, had proved a worthy
successor to his patron, Richelieu.
The Fronde clearly illuminated fault lines in the structure of the French monarchy that made it more
brittle than it sometimes seemed. Yet it had little permanent effect on the state. If anything, the
Fronde, like the far more devastating religious wars, gave further impetus to the growth of state
power by demonstrating the need for a strong monarchy to maintain order.
Louis XIV was fortunate to come of age just as the armed insurrection of the Fronde was crumbling
and France’s principal foreign enemies since the early 16th century—Spain and the Holy Roman
Empire—were in sharp decline. Historians debate whether Louis took full advantage of these
opportunities. But it is clear that during his long reign, France assumed a leading position in Europe,
both politically and culturally.
After Mazarin died and the king assumed personal responsibility for running the state, Louis’s foreign
policy led France into four wars: the War of the Devolution (1667-1668); the Dutch War (1672-1678);
the War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697), also called the Nine Years’ War; and the War of the
Spanish Succession (1701-1714). These wars were increasingly long and costly and generated anti-
French propaganda. They earned Louis a reputation for reckless, overweening ambition and cruel
tyranny that he has never entirely lost. Most modern historians now take a more balanced view. Louis
did bully and threaten weaker powers, such as the Dutch, and occasionally terrorized an area, as in
1688 and 1689 when he devastated the Palatinate, the area west of the Rhine River in Germany. But
he was also capable of moderation. It now appears that—aside from achieving personal glory—his
primary goal was not, as opponents alleged, to conquer Europe, but rather to secure France’s
vulnerable borders.
The main such area was the long-contested, ragged eastern border with Germany and the
Netherlands. Here, Louis made possibly his most critical blunder when he abandoned the old Dutch
alliance against the Spanish and unnecessarily threatened and then attacked the Netherlands in 1672.
The Dutch responded by striking new alliances at various times with Sweden, Spain, the Holy Roman
Empire, and England. In 1689 England joined dynastically with the Netherlands under William of
Orange. These alliances eventually wore down French forces and contained French ambitions.
The succession in Spain became a critical issue in 1700, when the Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II,
died without a direct heir. Before he died, he deeded the Spanish throne to Louis’s grandson, Philip,
duc d’Anjou. Louis could hardly refuse the chance to break the old Habsburg vise around France. He
E2c Foreign Policy
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accepted Charles’s will, although he thereby aroused great fears in England and the Netherlands that
France and Spain would eventually merge into one superpower. War might have been averted, but
Louis precipitated it by reasserting Philip’s rights to the French throne before Philip assumed the
Spanish throne and by moving aggressively in the Spanish Netherlands (roughly present-day
Belgium).
The result was the War of Spanish Succession, in which France suffered a string of humiliating defeats.
Only at the end of the war did France manage to restore some military balance. The Treaty of Utrecht,
signed in 1713, and subsequent treaties gave international recognition to Philip’s accession to the
Spanish throne (Philip V (of Spain)). But Spain relinquished its rights to the Spanish Netherlands and
its Italian possessions, which went to Austria. To win international recognition, Philip had to renounce
his rights to the French throne, although he soon renounced this renunciation. France had acquired
the eastern province of Franche-Comté earlier, and the Treaty of Utrecht confirmed France’s
acquisition of Alsace and Strasbourg.
Although hardly overwhelming in scale, Louis’s territorial acquisitions were important and prepared the
way for further rounding out France’s eastern frontier. The transfer of the Spanish throne from
Habsburg to Bourbon hands was arguably even more significant. It removed a base of hostile
operations on France’s southern border that had long caused trouble. It also led to the formation of an
advantageous diplomatic and military alliance with Spain during the 18th century. Thus, France did
benefit from Louis’s foreign and military policies, even if these wars cost heavily in terms of lives,
money, and ultimately European public opinion.
Louis XIV’s domestic policies are harder to evaluate. The pursuit of war put heavy financial demands
on the state. In response, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who managed the state’s finances until he died in
1683, pushed through a series of financial reforms. However, he was not able to correct the
fundamental weaknesses of the state’s fiscal system. He streamlined the process of tax collection by
creating the unified General Tax Farm, an organization composed of collectors of indirect taxes, and
by making the intendants responsible for gathering direct taxes, which he tried to make more
equitable. Colbert was a mercantilist—that is, someone who believed that the wealth of the world was
more or less fixed and that to increase its revenues the government should actively work to expand
production, enhance exports, and limit imports. Among his reforms, he lowered internal tolls, raised
tariff barriers to imported goods, and established and granted state monopolies to commercial and
manufacturing enterprises (see Mercantilism). Although most of these state companies failed, Colbert
did bring a temporary order to state finances. This order was disrupted after Colbert’s death, when
Louis’s wars also became longer and more expensive.
By the end of Louis XIV’s reign, the monarchy was so financially squeezed that it adopted one
desperate, old, and dubious fiscal measure after the other in attempts to cover expenses. These
included contracting massive loans, selling venal offices merely to raise revenue, and tampering with
the currency. But the crown also experimented with new, more promising initiatives. These initiatives
included the capitation—the first nearly universal tax levied according to status and income—and the
Council of Commerce, an advisory board on trade policy that included merchants.
E2d Domestic Policies
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By the late 17th century, a French colonial empire began to take shape. Although some French traders
and fishermen had ventured overseas earlier, the French colonial empire effectively began under
Francis I. He supported French voyages of exploration along the Atlantic coast of North America and in
the Canadian interior. Sponsored by trading companies enjoying state monopolies, the first permanent
French settlements were made in the Americas under Henry IV. The explorations of Samuel de
Champlain led to the founding of Québec City in 1608 as a fur-trading post. Competition with England
arose immediately, and in 1613 the English attacked a French encampment in present-day Maine.
Both powers allied with opposing factions among the Native American tribes, thereby amplifying the
conflict (see New France).
Under Louis XIII, the first French colonies in the Caribbean were established in Martinique and
Guadeloupe. At first these colonies relied on indentured white servants for labor in the sugarcane
fields, but gradually they shifted to African slaves. Colbert sought to breathe new life into colonial
trade and settlement by amalgamating established trading companies and by forcing the pace of
migration to the colonies. Neither the unified trading companies, including the French East India
Company (see East India Company) based in India, nor the settlement policies were noticeably
successful. Although French explorers continued to widen French claims in North America, the French
population of Canada in the 1680s stood at only about 10,000. Partly for this reason and partly
because the French navy was weak, England was able to seize Nova Scotia and the asiento—the right
to sell slaves in the Spanish colonies—from France by the early 18th century.
E2e French Colonial Empire
Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain was a French explorer who, in 1608, founded the Canadian city of Québec as a fur-trading post. Champlain befriended the Algonquin and Hurons in the area. With a party of indigenous peoples and two French companions, Champlain led a raid on the lroquois, who were defeated largely because the Europeans had firearms.
E2f Louis’s Absolutism
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The authoritarian quality of Louis’s rule has often been exaggerated. Louis certainly did enhance the
cult of royal authority. He did this most conspicuously through his belligerent foreign policy and the
grandiose court he built at Versailles, which he located away from the people and political pressures of
Paris. Versailles and its lifestyle elevated the private person of the Sun King, as Louis was called.
Thousands of courtiers focused attention on his every activity from morning to night. The nation’s best
and brightest intellectuals and artists were enlisted to enhance Louis’s glory in historical writing,
music, poetry, art, and architecture, all of which flourished under his reign. So brilliantly did Versailles
shine that knowledge of French culture and language became common among elites across Europe.
Louis also increased surveillance of and control over his subjects by building up the military, creating a
Parisian police force, and tightening the system of book censorship.
At the same time, Louis normally sought to rule by way of negotiation and compromise, not by
intimidation and command. Although the Parlement of Paris lost its right to protest before registering
royal edicts in 1672, Louis often consulted the parlement when advancing his initiatives. Similarly, in
dealing with local matters, Louis’s government did not undermine the wealth and status of traditional
French elites. Rather, it enhanced these elites to the point of sharing tax revenues. Versailles itself,
although a showcase for the crown, also served the interests of the courtiers. They came there not
only to watch Louis dress, but also to earn pensions, win government appointments, and gain public
confirmation of their privileged status. Moreover, the Versailles court was only one pillar of aristocratic
social life. Another was Paris, where aristocrats mixed more freely with middle-class intellectuals and
socialites in informal, private gatherings called salons, which prominent women held in their homes.
Hall of Mirrors, Versailles
King Louis XIV of France charged French architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart with the expansion of the Palace of Versailles. Hardouin-Mansart designed the Hall of Mirrors, which was added to the palace in 1684.
The Stock Market/Joe Bator
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After the late 1680s, Louis’s reign became increasingly troubled. The burdens of war and increasing
debt weighed more and more heavily. At the very end of his reign, a wave of deaths in the royal
house left a single, sickly five-year-old great-grandson as Louis’s sole direct and legitimate heir.
Religious problems also resurfaced. Early in his personal reign, Louis had put pressure on the already
declining Protestant community by restricting Protestants’ worship and access to jobs. In 1681 he
forced Protestant families to lodge troops called dragonnades in their homes. Finally, in 1685 he
issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, repealing the remaining provisions of the Edict of Nantes. The
dévots were now getting closer to realizing their dream of a nation united in faith. Most Protestants
either converted, while sometimes secretly practicing Protestant rituals, or left France.
Although it was generally well regarded in France at the time, the harsh anti-Protestant campaign was
costly. France lost productive merchants and artisans, but more important, the campaign gave
propaganda opportunities to France’s enemies. Bitter French Protestant exiles joined with writers
subsidized by England, the Netherlands, and Germany to assault Louis’s character and regime as
tyrannical and despotic for violating French liberty and the rights of other nations. These charges
would be repeated endlessly against the monarchy until the French Revolution.
E2g Final Years of Louis XIV’s Reign
Cornelis Jansen
Cornelis Jansen was an important 17th-century Flemish theologian. He founded the Roman Catholic reform movement known as Jansenism, which held that all people are destined by God from birth for salvation or damnation. Although not supported by the Roman Catholic Church, Jansenism was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France.
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Louis also reignited problems with the Jansenists. During the 1650s, the Jansenists had been
implicated in the Fronde. Louis’s government regarded them with suspicion, especially after two
Jansenist bishops favored the pope’s position in a major dispute with Louis in the early 1680s. When
Louis sided with the upper clergy against the local priests in the 1690s, the Jansenists began to build
what proved to be a critical alliance with the parlements, which claimed jurisdiction over the Gallican
(French Roman Catholic) Church. Like the Jansenists, the members of the parlements resented the
authority of the high clergy.
In one of the major blunders of his reign, Louis sought to crush Jansenism. In 1713 he arranged for
the pope to issue a papal bull, Unigenitus, which condemned ideas allegedly contained in a work by a
prominent Jansenist theologian. Unigenitus enraged many members of the parlements and others as
well because it suggested that the pope was once again interfering in the affairs of the Gallican
Church.
A highly dangerous lineup of opponents was about to cause major damage to the monarchy, which
had already suffered at the hands of Protestant pamphleteers. When Louis died in 1715, his once
glorious regime had already begun to tarnish.
Louis XIV’s death allowed the French to breathe somewhat more freely, but the regime of the new
king, Louis XV, who ruled from 1715 to 1774, confronted serious problems. Louis XV was only five
years old when he succeeded Louis XIV, and France once again faced a regency government. To gain
approval from the Parlement of Paris for full authority as regent, Philippe II, duc d’Orléans restored
the parlement’s right to protest royal edicts before registering them. Although this right was soon
restricted, the parlements would continue to oppose many royal edicts, especially those dealing with
Jansenism and taxes.
The most critical and urgent issue facing the new regime was the impending bankruptcy of the state.
After trying more modest expedients to add revenue, the duc d’Orléans backed the riskier proposals of
a Scottish financial wizard, John Law. With royal permission, Law founded a private bank, the Banque
Générale, in 1716. Two years later, it was transformed into a state institution, the Banque Royale. Law
also established a speculative commercial company to invest in French colonies. This company, the
Compagnie de l’Occident, was later joined with the bank and other royal concessions, which together
became known as the System. Law expanded the money supply by issuing ever-increasing amounts of
paper money through the bank. This measure, he hoped, would reduce the cost of government
borrowing and stimulate the economy. But the bank issued too many new bank notes in an effort to
sustain share prices in the Company with cheap credit, and confidence in the profitability of the
Company declined. The System collapsed in 1720.
This failure made it more difficult to establish another state bank later on, which the French
government badly needed to obtain cheap credit. It also gave critics grounds for charging that the
regime was becoming a despotism, because Law had used many high-handed, coercive measures to
F From Glory to Revolution
F1 Louis XV
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promote his bank. In fact, however, Law’s System probably gave the economy a much-needed jolt by
freeing investors of debt and prompting new commercial investment, but these benefits were not
recognized at the time. In the aftermath of Law’s failure, the regime dealt with its fiscal problems
through partial bankruptcy, whereby the government renounced part of what it owed to its creditors.
Louis came of age in 1723, officially ending the regency. But he was only 13 and continued to rely on
the duc d’Orléans, who died a few months after Louis’s 13th birthday. Orléans was followed by the duc
de Bourbon, who was dismissed in 1726 and succeeded by Louis’s old tutor, André Hercule de Fleury,
a cardinal who served as virtual prime minister until 1743.
Fleury tried to restore the nation’s strength by avoiding wars abroad and pacifying domestic disputes,
such as those over Jansenism. After Louis XIV’s death, the regency had scaled back the military to
reduce costs. Fleury wanted to maintain this policy, at least until the state was fiscally stronger. Under
his regime, France, which for a time was uncharacteristically allied with England, took the lead in
calming international tensions. But during the mid-1730s, France became engaged in the War of the
Polish Succession and thereby acquired rights to the provinces of Bar and Lorraine, which passed into
the French royal domain in 1766.
Despite Fleury’s efforts to stay on good terms with England and Austria, an anti-Austrian party in the
government pushed France into participating in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) as an
ally of Prussia against Austria, the Netherlands, and Britain. Initially the war did not go well. Austrian
troops ravaged eastern France, and Charles Edward Stuart, a claimant to the British throne who had
the unsteady support of France, failed to topple the Hanoverians, the British royal house. But France
eventually succeeded on the battlefield, capturing a number of cities in the Netherlands. Partly
because of fiscal pressures, partly because Fleury had trained Louis XV not to act the conqueror like
Louis XIV, France settled for much less than it might have gotten in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,
which ended the war in 1748. France returned its conquests in the Netherlands and agreed to exile the
highly regarded Charles Edward. The treaty precipitated an outbreak of public protest, and the
monarchy’s popularity declined.
In addition to rising costs due to war, the state faced growing expenditures for domestic programs.
These programs included building roads, reconstructing public buildings, and keeping tighter
surveillance over urban populations, especially the poor. Despite these initiatives, the government was
able for a time to roughly balance the budget. After the Law debacle, the monarchy experimented with
a variety of new taxes to tap the wealth of a broader segment of the population, although political
pressures prevented full implementation. The state also required peasants and day laborers to work a
shift each year on state road crews.
After the War of the Austrian Succession broke out in 1740, however, the government was forced to
borrow increasingly large sums, and by 1748 it had already added 200 million livres to its debt. (The
F1a Foreign Policy
F1b State Finances and the Economy
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livre was worth about 7.25 grams of silver in 1700 and declined to about 4.5 grams by 1785.) This
debt would have certainly been higher had the economy not begun to improve and the tax base
widened.
Economic expansion resulted in part from the growth of population, which had stagnated around 1560
and grew little if at all for the next century and a half. In 1715 the population stood at about 23
million; in 1745 it was about 25 million; by 1789 it reached around 28 million. These moderate
increases can be explained in part by a decline in the death rate, which was in turn due to a reduction
in plague and war-related deaths. Modest improvements in food production and better transportation
of grain to areas hard-hit by famine also contributed to population growth. Famine, which occurred
often during the 17th century, was less severe and frequent between 1710 and 1789. Manufactures
grew, and by 1789 their value roughly equaled the value of all agricultural products. Moreover,
between 1716 and 1789 foreign trade tripled, enriching in particular major port cities, such as
Marseille, Bordeaux, and Nantes.
The fastest growing sector of the economy was colonial trade, which increased tenfold during the 18th
century. The major source of colonial wealth was the French Caribbean possessions, including Saint-
Domingue (present-day Haiti), which had nearly half a million slaves by 1789. Although France lost
most of its possessions in North America, including Canada, to Britain in 1763, it kept its valuable
colonies in the West Indies for several more decades.
The benefits of this economic growth were not spread evenly. Poorer peasants and communities far
from major trade routes gained little. Inflation, which caused prices to double between 1720 and
1789, ate up the wage increases of many workers. But urban populations, especially the middle class,
flourished. The middle class benefited from new ways to earn a living (in trade and the professions)
and spent more on a growing variety of products that made life more comfortable and interesting.
These ranged from medical devices and services to books and newspapers.
F1c The Enlightenment
Voltaire
The French writer and philosopher Voltaire is considered one of the central figures of the Age of Enlightenment of the 1700s, a period which emphasized the power of human reason, science, and respect for humanity. Voltaire believed that literature should serve as a vehicle for social change. His biting
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During the 18th century, literacy grew throughout France—faster among peasants than among
urbanites. By 1789 roughly a third of the French nation was literate enough to sign their names, and
demand grew for inexpensive editions of classics and new works. Publishers struggled to meet
demand by using cheaper paper, smaller print, and flimsier bindings. Best-selling works that had been
censored for religious, political, or moral reasons were often printed abroad and smuggled across the
border.
The increase in literacy helps explain the emergence of the intellectual movement called the
Enlightenment. At the core of the Enlightenment was the philosophes, a group of professional writers
and scientists who advocated reform. They frequented salons and often worked under the auspices of
the royal academies in Paris, which was gradually replacing Versailles as the cultural center of France.
The philosophes wrote works both for the growing public and for state-sponsored publications and
agencies. Their influential critiques of traditional knowledge and society were most fully developed in
the multivolumed, multiauthored Encyclopédie, which became an international best-seller.
The politics of the philosophes were diverse, reflecting divergent interests and attempts to persuade
different audiences. Their core political value was liberty, but they disagreed on how to best promote
it. Some philosophes, like Charles Louis de Montesquieu, believed liberty would be best protected by
maintaining the traditional rights of individuals and corporate groups and by expanding the role of the
parlements. Others, like Voltaire, believed a strong monarchy was liberty’s best defense. On the
margins of the movement were more radical thinkers, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, who widened
the political imagination by proposing models of democracy.
satires and philosophical writings demonstrated his aversion to Christianity, intolerance, and tyranny. The expression captured in this portrait of Voltaire in 1718 hints at the sharp sense of humor with which he won the favor of 18th-century French society.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
The philosopher and writer Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that individuals in a state of nature were morally superior to those living in modern, civilized society. His belief in natural innocence pervaded his ideas about education and society as well as his fiction. In his yearning for what he saw as an uncorrupted past, his concern with the exploration of conflicts between moral and sensual values, and his belief in the natural goodness of man, Rousseau was a major influence on 19th-century romanticism, both literary and political.
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As reformers, not revolutionaries, most philosophes tried to strengthen the state by modernizing and
liberalizing it. But their vigorous assaults on religious and political orthodoxy offended conservatives.
Their books were frequently censored, and occasionally a philosophe served a prison term. Without
intending it, the philosophes inadvertently fostered the French Revolution by discrediting old
authorities and pushing the pace of reform.
By the 1750s the Enlightenment had reached high gear. At the same time, the monarchy was
becoming increasingly entangled in controversy. A gradually escalating crisis in the state made the
French people open to new possibilities. This crisis had many sources. First, the battle over the anti-
Jansenist papal bull Unigenitus was fought repeatedly during the early and mid-18th century, despite
Fleury’s efforts to quell the conflict with moderate anti-Jansenist policies. The Jansenists published an
underground newspaper and hundreds of pamphlets, and made multiple parlementary protests in an
effort to mobilize public opinion against the crown. Jansenist publications represented the crown as
despotic because it had repressed those appealing to the Paris parlement against the hated papal bull.
Although the controversy around Unigenitus had diminished by the 1760s, many Jansenists continued
to agitate against the monarchy in later crises.
Second, French foreign policy raised profound questions about the monarchy’s competence. In
agreeing to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the monarchy threw away its hard-won conquests in
the War of the Austrian Succession. Then in 1756 the crown reversed France’s historic diplomatic
position by allying with Habsburg Austria. In the ensuing Seven Years’ War, France was humiliated by
F1d Growing Crisis
Marquise de Pompadour
The Marquise de Pompadour became the mistress of Louis XV, king of France, in 1745. François Boucher painted this portrait, which hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris, France.
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its archenemy Britain and Britain’s new ally, Prussia, leading many to think that France had lost its
“natural” position as Europe’s leading power. Louis XV did not help matters when he instituted a policy
regarding succession to the Polish crown that he kept secret from most officials, including his own
foreign minister.
Third, the state’s finances were beginning to crumble again. The Seven Years’ War cost France an
immense 1.5 billion livres, of which one-third was paid from new taxes but two-thirds was paid
through borrowing. Creditors became increasingly unsure the state could repay them and, for this
reason, charged higher interest rates. Taxpayers grumbled over their rising tax bills.
Fourth, Louis’s personal conduct made it all too easy to attribute the state’s mounting problems to the
onset of a true despotism, in which decisions were made by sinister figures behind the throne. Louis
took up with a series of mistresses, most notably the marquise de Pompadour, to whom he appeared
more devoted than he was to the nation. Although the extent of Pompadour’s personal power is
unclear, she did provide a rallying point for some of the king’s ministers. The dévot faction at court
opposed Pompadour and tried to get Louis to dismiss her by carrying out a publicity campaign blaming
her for causing many of France’s problems. Pompadour kept her position until her death in 1764, but
the publicity campaign made Louis appear weak and vacillating. This impression was confirmed by his
tendency to change ministers abruptly, and it helped discredit the monarchy.
Louis’s reputation as a despot peaked during the last years of his long reign. In 1770 Chancellor René
Nicolas de Maupeou abolished the parlements. Their objections to royal policies had elicited
uncharacteristically strong restatements by the crown of its absolute authority. The result was an
outpouring of pamphlets that condemned not only Maupeou but also the king. Louis was caught in the
crossfire between members of the parlements, who sought more limits to royal power, and the dévot
faction, who wanted to maintain absolutism in its traditional form. By the end of his reign, he had
managed to turn his sobriquet, the Well-Beloved, into a satire.
F2 Louis XVI
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The public hoped for more from the reign of his grandson, Louis XVI, who became king in 1774. Not
wanting to appear a despot, he quickly reinstated the parlements, to much public rejoicing. But Louis
was an unimpressive emblem of the monarchy in an age when public opinion carried increasing
political weight. Awkward and seemingly slow-witted, he became an object of derision for his
incapacity to consummate his marriage to Marie-Antoinette for seven years. More important, the king
was thought to be dominated by his Austrian-born wife, whose conspicuous spending was increasingly
resented.
Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France was the grandson of King Louis XV and was married to Marie-Antoinette. Louis was considered a well-intentioned but weak king. A heavy tax burden and court extravagances led eventually to a popular revolt against him and paved the way for the French Revolution. Louis was guillotined by the revolutionary regime in 1793.
Marie-Antoinette
Marie-Antoinette was the queen of France who died on the guillotine in 1793
ARTEPHOT/Nimatallah
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Under Louis XVI, France had only one major success in foreign affairs, the American Revolution, which
France supported with men and money to weaken Britain. But in eastern Europe, France lacked the
means to effectively prop up its old allies, Poland and the Ottoman Empire, against rising threats from
Russia. Austria, France’s supposed ally, frequently sided with Russia, causing the French to become
increasingly hostile to the 1756 alliance and to Marie-Antoinette. Her Austrian origins and connections
aroused doubts about her loyalty to France. Meanwhile, Prussia humiliated France by snuffing out a
French-supported revolt in the Netherlands.
But the monarchy’s main problem lay closer to home, namely its finances. The American Revolution
added another 1.5 billion to 2.0 billion livres to the exploding national debt. By 1789 the government
was spending half its budget on debt servicing. Louis’s finance ministers sought to stop the coming
tide of bankruptcy, while other ministers sought reforms in the administration. From 1774 to 1776,
Finance Minister Anne Robert Jacques Turgot tried to increase revenues by expanding the economy.
To do so, he removed state controls on the grain trade and encouraged new manufacturing by
suppressing the guilds.
His successor, Jacques Necker, streamlined the tax-collection system and reorganized the treasury.
But like Turgot, Necker was forced to borrow additional money at increasingly ruinous interest rates.
In 1781 Necker published the Compte rendu, a doctored account of state finances, to reassure the
state’s creditors about the regime’s financial health.
These numbers were soon challenged by Necker’s rival, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who succeeded
him in 1783. Calonne sought to expand tax revenues by stimulating the economy through additional
state expenditures. Whatever its economic effects, Calonne’s spending spree worsened the debt crisis,
and he had to consider additional taxes, among other measures. By this time, however, the French
public viewed such initiatives as signs of impending despotism. To overcome resistance in the Paris
parlement, Calonne sought to win prior approval of his plans by an Assembly of Notables, composed of
nobles and high church officials hand-picked for the occasion. Meeting in early 1787, the notables
approved parts of his general plan, but not the tax increases.
Calonne left office and was replaced by Loménie de Brienne, whose own reform plan did no better with
the notables. The notables were dismissed in May 1787, and Brienne tried to deal directly with the
Paris parlement. But negotiations eventually broke down. To resolve the impasse, the monarchy
stripped the parlements of their political powers in May 1788. The only result was an outpouring of
support for the parlements and rising demand for a meeting of the Estates-General to consider the
disintegrating condition of the state. In August, Brienne was fired, Necker recalled, and the Estates-
General summoned to meet in Versailles. The calling of the Estates-General raised a second issue
alongside that of royal despotism: How was the nation to be represented?
during the French Revolution. Her lavish life-style made her unpopular, but she paid no attention to her country’s financial crisis, refusing to make any concessions to hungry mobs who marched on the palace in Versailles. Instead, she called out troops. Violence followed, and she and her husband, King Louis XVI, were imprisoned by revolutionaries and later executed.
F2a Financial Problems
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Elections were held in late 1788 and early 1789, and lists of grievances were drawn up to guide the
delegates in their deliberations. The compiling of these lists contributed to the politicization of the
nation. In September 1788 the Paris parlement decided that voting in the forthcoming meeting of the
Estates-General would proceed by estate, not by head. (The Estates-General was divided into three
estates, or legally defined social classes: the clergy, who made up the first estate; the nobility, who
made up the second estate; and the rest of the people, who made up the third and largest estate.)
The decision was probably made to prevent the king from tampering with the procedures of the
Estates-General. But members of the third estate considered the decision a sellout because it gave
disproportionate power to the clergy and nobles. The issue of voting dominated the Estates-General
when it met in May 1789, leaving the financial crisis unresolved.
After weeks of bickering, the third estate acted on its own. It established itself as the National
Assembly in June and invited the clergy and nobility to join it and vote by head. The king at first
opposed the new arrangement, then reluctantly accepted it. But already a major break with past
practice had occurred, and the king appeared to want to reverse a process over which he had lost
control.
F2b The Estates-General
Fall of the Bastille
On July 14, 1789 an angry mob, tired of the oppressive brutality of the French monarchy, captured the Bastille, the royal prison in Paris.
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Further deepening the crisis was the first major famine in France since 1709. Bread prices
skyrocketed, and vagrancy increased as the poor searched for food. Many saw these vagrants as paid
agents of the nobility intent on attacking the peasantry, resulting in new waves of panic. When Louis
called for military reinforcements in and around the capital and dismissed Necker, the hungry people
of Paris rose in revolt. On July 14, 1789, they stormed the Bastille, an old fortress-prison that many
critics of justice in the Old Regime had made the symbol of despotism. Revolt had turned into
revolution.
The crumbling of the monarchy in 1789 opened the way to more sweeping changes in France’s
political structure than occurred in any other period of French history. In the course of the French
Revolution, the state was massively reorganized, while a tradition of revolution became part of
France’s political culture. As a result, political stability, which the revolutionaries themselves sought
after a time, proved elusive. The French Revolution caused a breach in French politics that would not
be healed for a century and a half. Again and again, conservative, counterrevolutionary parties that
defined the nation in terms of its prerevolutionary past clashed with parties that saw 1789 as a critical
moment of national rebirth. Since the revolution, France has lived through five republics, two empires,
and a variety of other regimes.
The Estates-General, 1789
First established in 1302, the Estates-General was a French legislative body comprising members of the three groups, or estates, of French society: nobility, clergy, and commoners. Powerful in the 14th and 15th centuries, the body’s importance declined, and it did not meet at all between 1614 and 1789. In that year, called by King Louis XVI in a desperate attempt to stave off civil unrest, the Estates-General voted to make itself a permanent National Assembly. Louis’s efforts to repress the new assembly caused widespread rioting and ushered in the French Revolution.
G The Reshaping of France
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During the 19th century, France’s society and economy experienced other less dramatic but equally
important changes. The French Revolution destroyed the structure of traditional privilege, turning
subjects unequal before the law into citizens with roughly equal rights. The Industrial Revolution,
which took place more gradually in France than in other European nations, offered new means of
making a living and greatly raised living standards. Indeed, one of the major issues in modern French
politics has been how to assure a fair distribution of the benefits provided by the industrial economy.
In 1789 the French nation embarked on reconstructing itself. In August the National Assembly
proclaimed the end of the feudal regime—meaning primarily the end of the dues peasants owed their
landlords. The assembly also enacted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, intended
as the preface to a constitution to be written later. Brief and vague, the Declaration both affirmed the
sovereign authority of the nation and limited that authority by recognizing individual rights to life,
property, and security. Work on the constitution began immediately. Finished in 1791, the constitution
maintained the monarchy. But in an effort to prevent further despotism, the constitution sharply
limited the king’s powers and invested greater authority in a single-bodied legislature, to be elected by
wealthy males.
Between 1789 and 1791, the National Assembly also reorganized the nation into 83 districts, called
departments, and gave them considerable power to run their own affairs. The assembly eliminated the
nobility as a legally defined class, abolished venality of office, and made the French Catholic Church an
agency of the state. The lands of the church were seized and gradually sold off to repay the
monarchy’s debts and to reimburse venal officeholders. Full citizenship was extended to Jews and
other religious minorities. These radical changes were resisted by some people, especially the nobility
and the clergy, who began to leave France as early as the summer of 1789. Called the émigrés, these
exiles lobbied other nations to crush the French Revolution.
In October 1789 an angry mob forced the king and his family to leave Versailles for Paris. The king
then reluctantly and belatedly accepted revolutionary reforms. In June 1791 the royal family
attempted to escape from Paris and possibly from France, only to be stopped near the French border.
The king and his family were essentially prisoners when the new constitutional monarchy took effect in
October 1791. Differences soon surfaced over measures to be taken against the émigrés and those
members of the clergy who refused to swear the required oath of allegiance to the new regime. Using
the issue as a means to gather support, a group of deputies called the Brissotins gained power in the
legislature (Brissot, Jacques Pierre). In April 1792 they pushed the legislature into declaring war on
Austria, which was later joined by Prussia, England, Spain, and the Netherlands. The French army was
unprepared for war and was soon put on the defensive. The whole revolution now seemed in acute
danger. In August angry mobs attacked the Palace of the Tuileries, where the royal family lived.
Shortly thereafter, the assembly voted to disband the new government in favor of a new constitution
to be written by the National Convention, a new body of elected deputies.
G1 Revolution and Empire
G1a The Moderate Revolution
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The National Convention met in September 1792 and voted to abolish the monarchy immediately and
establish a republic. It proceeded to try Louis for treason, convicted him, and executed him on
January 21, 1793. During this time, counterrevolutionary revolts broke out in rural areas such as the
Vendée, and the military situation continued to deteriorate.
The convention was dominated by conflict between two factions—the more moderate Girondins (the
former Brissotins) and the more radical Jacobins—although many deputies were unaffiliated. The
Jacobins formed an alliance with the Paris mob, which for a time exercised considerable power, and
purged the convention of the Girondin leadership. In the late summer and fall of 1793, the Jacobins,
under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, established the machinery of the Reign of Terror. The
Terror was intended to coerce citizens into contributing to the war effort and to help save the republic.
The Jacobins won notable successes on the battlefield and crushed the Vendée revolt. They thereby
saved the revolution, but they also arrested a quarter-million French people. Of these, they executed
about 30,000, often on questionable grounds, for working against the republic. They terrorized other
deputies and eventually alienated the Paris crowd. By July 1794 they had so narrowed their political
base that Robespierre and his closest associates were arrested and guillotined. The Terror was over,
and the French Revolution drifted toward the right for the first time since 1789.
G1b The Radical Revolution
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre was one of the most controversial figures in the French Revolution. In the cause of fostering democracy, Robespierre helped bring about the Reign of Terror in which thousands were executed by the guillotine. He eventually met the same fate.
G1c The End of the Revolution
Hulton Deutsch
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As the instruments of the Reign of Terror were dismantled, the convention worked on a new
constitution. The goals of this new constitution were to preserve the achievements of the French
Revolution while ending the process of revolution itself. To prevent a renewal of the Terror by a single
branch of government, the constitution that was enacted in 1795 distributed power between a two-
chambered legislature and a five-man executive, known as the Directory.
Although it lasted longer than the other revolutionary regimes before it, this government also failed to
stabilize the political system. Its leaders fundamentally distrusted democratic procedures and went so
far as to cancel elections that brought undesired results. The government refused to abide by its own
constitution. It shifted back and forth between alliances with the left and the right, turning
increasingly to a policy of repression imposed by the military.
Meanwhile, the armies of the republic extended the French sphere of influence into Belgium, the
Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy. Military victory contributed to the growing power of a Corsican-
born general with great political ambitions, Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1799 serious military setbacks
weakened the Directory’s political grip, and fears grew that the radical left was about to take over.
Politician and theorist Emmanuel Sieyès then joined forces with Bonaparte to scuttle the government.
On November 9, 1799, Bonaparte’s troops forced members of the legislature to vest state power in a
new provisional government, soon to be called the Consulate. It was composed of Sieyès, Bonaparte,
and French statesman Pierre Roger Ducos. The Directory was finished and so was the revolutionary
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest military genius of the 19th century. He conquered most of Western Europe and Egypt for France, while instituting reforms in these new territories aimed at guaranteeing civil liberties and improving the quality of life. He crowned himself emperor of France in 1804 and galvanized the country, introducing reforms intended to unify the revolution-fractured nation. Many of Napoleon’s reforms are still in effect today, including some guarantees regarding civil liberty.
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process that had brought it into existence.
The only real star in the new government, Bonaparte was designated as first consul and given a term
of ten years. He quickly assumed nearly total power, despite the existence of a puppet legislature. In
1802 he signed a treaty with France’s enemies, which allowed France to keep control of northern Italy
and the regions around the Rhine. It brought France the first real peace it had known in ten years. On
a wave of popular acclaim, Bonaparte was appointed first consul for life. He successfully built up a
wide constituency, drawing from both supporters and opponents of previous revolutionary regimes. To
further that end, he pardoned most of the émigrés in 1802.
Even more important were Bonaparte’s institutional reforms, most dating from this early period of his
rule. In 1801 he settled the outstanding issues related to the French Catholic Church in a concordat
agreed to by the pope. The concordat affirmed Roman Catholicism as “the religion of the great
majority of citizens,” limited papal interference in the affairs of the French church, provided state
salaries for the clergy, and recognized the Revolution’s confiscation of church lands as permanent.
Bonaparte reorganized the civil administration, instituting a system of prefects, subprefects, and
mayors charged with executing his orders in the provinces. To strengthen state finance, Bonaparte
stabilized the value of the franc, the common name for the livre after 1789, and established the Bank
of France (Banque de France), which facilitated government borrowing. To reform education, he
instituted a series of secondary schools run according to a code of military discipline. These schools
were later incorporated into the Imperial University, a state agency to oversee and coordinate
education. Bonaparte also completed another project that would help define the modern French
nation—France’s first systematic law code (see Code Napoléon).
Having reformed France’s government, Bonaparte reformed his own status. In 1804 he crowned
himself emperor as Napoleon I, thereby initiating the First Empire. The revolutionary dreams of liberty
were now forgotten in favor of a benevolent despotism, whose citizens were kept under close
surveillance by Napoleon’s police chief Joseph Fouché, duc d’Otrante.
G1d First Empire
Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII twice took the throne as king of France: once in 1814 when Emperor Napoleon abdicated, and once in 1815 when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. This painting by Robert LeFevre is at the Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavale in Paris, France.
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Many of Napoleon’s individual domestic reforms—the system of prefects, the Bank of France, the law
code—proved enduring, but the fate of the First Empire as a whole was determined on the battlefield.
Indeed, the First Empire was, more than anything else, a machine of war. In 1803 France renewed
conflict with England, and soon thereafter with other powers. Over the next few years, Napoleon won
a string of brilliant military victories. His special target was Britain, the keystone of the opposing
alliance. Napoleon sought to cripple the British economy and stimulate French production with the
Continental System, a blockade to prevent British goods from reaching most European nations. The
Continental System failed, but by 1810 Napoleon had established an empire of satellite kingdoms—
many ruled by his relatives. Napoleon’s empire extended from Spain to Poland and included an
alliance with Russia as well as the subordination of Prussia and Austria.
This empire proved unstable and was short-lived. Spain erupted in guerrilla activity, supported by
Britain; Russia pulled out of both the Continental System and its French alliance; and Napoleon failed
to turn around Russian opposition through his ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812. By 1813 the empire
was crumbling and reeling from defeat. The following year allied armies entered France. Napoleon
abdicated and was sent to the Italian island of Elba while the Bourbons returned to power under Louis
XVIII.
In 1815 Napoleon attempted a comeback. He arrived in France and rallied the people to his side under
Battle of Waterloo
On June 18, 1815, French emperor Napoleon I and his armies met a force of primarily Austrian, Prussian, and British troops near the town of Waterloo, in modern Belgium. The Battle of Waterloo was one of the bloodiest in modern history, and it ended in Napoleon’s crushing defeat. Shown here, Prussian troops storm the village of Plancenoit, southeast of Waterloo, during the battle.
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the promise of a new, more liberal regime. But this brief interlude, known as the Hundred Days, ended
with Napoleon’s final crushing defeat in the Battle of Waterloo and the second Bourbon restoration.
The career that began in military glory ended because of military and diplomatic miscalculation.
Napoleon was exiled to the Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.
Few individuals have had such a lasting impact on French history as Napoleon. Yet the nature of his
legacy remains disputed. He ended the turbulence of the revolutionary decade while completing some
of the revolution’s unfinished business. His way of healing the cleavage between revolutionaries and
counterrevolutionaries was to personalize politics through a cult of his own glory, to embark on
ultimately fruitless campaigns of military conquest that cost the lives of about 3 million people, and to
unify the nation through the centralization of power. This was one possible answer to the instability
resulting from the revolution, and those who were moved by Napoleon’s myth in later years found it
as compelling as had so many of his contemporaries.
Yet, whether such a system could have endured much longer is questionable, given the losses of
manpower and wealth. Although Napoleon attempted to stimulate French economic production, he
was unable to prevent a net decline in trade and a reduction in the agricultural and industrial growth
rate, due to the disruptions of war. Moreover, it is arguable that the Napoleonic system of command
was not suited for a nation that still had aspirations for liberty, had practiced a primitive form of
democracy during the revolution, and was about to enter a new industrial age. Napoleon opened
careers to men of talent but modest background, so long as they accepted the kind of state-imposed
tutelage from which the early revolution had sought to release them. It remained to be seen what the
French would do under less coercive regimes.
G2 19th-Century French Economy and Society
G2a Industrialization in France
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The term Industrial Revolution, invented over a century ago to describe the rapid economic
transformation of Britain, is not entirely appropriate to describe the change of manufacturing methods
in modern France. To be sure, the two economies appear remarkably similar now, but France’s
transition to an industrial economy was much more gradual. French industrial production lagged
behind that of Britain and Germany for many decades.
This pace was in large part the result of the slow expansion of the French population relative to
population growth in virtually all other countries of Europe. During the 19th century, the British
population increased by about 350 percent, the German population increased by about 250 percent,
and the overall European population more than doubled. But the French population increased by only
40 percent, to about 39 million. French mortality rates did decline—from 25.3 per 1,000 between 1816
and 1820 to 18.3 per 1,000 during the period from 1911 to 1913. However, the birthrate declined
more—from 32.9 per 1,000 from 1816 to 1820 to 18.8 per 1,000 from 1911 to 1913, which was
unusually low for Europe in this period.
Part of the explanation for France’s low birthrate lies in the persistence of the peasantry, which grew
in absolute size, although it declined as a fraction of the total population. Peasants were typically
Industrialization in France
As the Industrial Revolution swept through France in the early and mid-1800s, factories and other manufacturing facilities began to appear throughout the country. By 1850 iron production was the dominant heavy industry in France, and foundries like the one shown here were increasingly common.
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forced to limit family size because they earned only very modest incomes from cultivating small plots
and working at a variety of low-paying jobs. Some peasants migrated to the cities in search of work,
but France’s urban growth was modest relative to Britain’s. Only 14 percent of the French population
inhabited cities of over 10,000 by 1851, compared to 39 percent of the British population. Slower
rates of population and urban growth meant smaller domestic demand for industrial goods. The
foreign market did little to increase this demand because France exported only 8 percent of its
manufactured products until the 1840s. High protective tariffs until the 1860s reduced foreign
competition that might have stimulated innovation.
As in Britain, industrialization in France began in the textile industry. It then spread to heavy industry,
especially iron, which became the dominant industrial sector by the mid-19th century. Not all sectors
of manufacturing were immediately affected by the Industrial Revolution. Until the 1880s, for
example, glassware continued to be produced by small family firms of skilled workers employing
traditional, manual glassblowing techniques.
Beginning in the 1840s, railroad construction powerfully transformed all sectors of the French
economy, spearheading an economic boom that lasted until the 1860s. Earlier in the 19th century,
canal and road building had begun to create a truly national market, but the railroads allowed goods
to reach virtually all areas of France by World War I (1914-1918). Railroad construction also
stimulated demand for metal to produce rails and rolling stock.
Railroads did not, however, prevent the onset of a serious economic recession beginning in the 1860s.
The recession was caused primarily by the inability of French agricultural and industrial producers to
meet the growing worldwide competition for markets to which a reduction in tariffs in 1860 had
exposed them. The recession slowed but did not halt French industrial growth until the strong
recovery of the 1890s. Between the 1890s and World War I, French economic growth accelerated to
twice the rate of the previous three decades.
The impact of industrialization on French society was strong, but not so dramatic as in Britain and
Germany, where faster rates of economic change altered the landscape within a few decades. Paris
suffered critical problems related to health and traffic congestion because it was so large and grew
relatively rapidly. In the 1850s the government undertook a massive program of urban reconstruction
under the leadership of the George Eugène, baron d’Haussmann, who was prefect of the Seine.
Haussmann demolished many buildings, widened streets, and constructed a massive network of
waterworks and sewers. Haussmann’s projects, which were accompanied by a great deal of private
rebuilding, transformed Paris from a medieval city into a modern city and provided a model of urban
renewal followed in other French cities.
Industrialization also led to the formation of a French working class. The industrial labor force
expanded from 1.9 million in the period between 1803 and 1812 to 6.7 million in 1913. However, as
late as 1906, only about a quarter of these people worked in establishments of more than 50 workers,
while the remainder worked in smaller businesses. Many people worked under dangerous conditions,
lived in overcrowded housing, and had little employment security. The living standards of most
workers did not begin to rise substantially until the boom of the 1850s. This improvement was
followed by further uneven rises until World War I.
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Peasants, too, improved their standard of living during the 19th century, as comforts once known to
only a few became more common. Some peasants had maintained commercial relations with urban
areas for centuries. However, the coming of railroads and the opening of state-supported schools,
especially during the Third Republic, broke down the commercial and cultural isolation of others.
Standardized French gradually replaced old dialects.
Living primarily in cities and larger villages, the middle class blended imperceptibly at its upper end
with the aristocracy. This group of so-called notables reaped most of the benefits of industrialization
and dominated politics until the Third Republic in the 1870s. At its lower end, the middle class fused
with the upper reaches of the working class. Between these extremes emerged a large class of white-
collar workers with modest incomes derived from small businesses, retail shops, and clerical and
professional jobs. This class formed the backbone of the republican constituency in the late 19th
century.
In families of the middle class, women were not expected to work in salaried positions outside the
home. This was particularly true for women who were married and had children. But primarily because
of economic necessity, 68 percent of all women over age 16 and 56 percent of all married women held
salaried jobs in 1906; these numbers were, however, much lower in nonagricultural areas.
Despite their critical contributions to the economy, women had far fewer rights than men. Indeed,
they constituted the largest disadvantaged group in a nation that had proclaimed the equality of rights
in 1789. Under the Code Napoléon, husbands had full control over family property, including dowries
brought by wives into their marriages. Divorce was illegal from 1816 until 1884, and the legal and
social consequences of adultery were much more severe for women than for men. Secondary
education was unavailable to most females until the 1880s. The right to vote was extended to women
only in 1945 after a half-century of agitation. Even today women hold only a small, although
increasing, number of top positions in the French government.
The collapse of the First Empire led to a quick succession of regimes and revolutions until 1875. This
instability was rooted in the deep political divisions left by the French Revolution, divisions relating to
the structure of government, the role of the church, and the distribution of wealth generated by the
Industrial Revolution.
The First Empire was followed by the Bourbon Restoration under Louis XVIII. It is often said that the
leaders of the Restoration tried to “turn the clock back to 1789,” but they were well aware that that
was impossible. Too many institutions of the Old Regime had been destroyed, and too many new ones
had survived Napoleon’s passing. Not only was a new system of law and administration in place, but a
double-chambered legislature henceforth provided at least some balance to executive authority.
G2b Emergence of the Middle Class
G3 Politics from Napoleon to World War I
G3a The Bourbon Restoration
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Instead, the leaders of the Restoration sought to reinstitute the power and authority of the nobility
and the elite clergy, groups that had suffered grievous losses during the previous quarter of a century.
They also wanted to make the new institutions work to their advantage.
Louis realized that he had to make some concessions to those who had supported the French
Revolution. Thus in 1814 he proclaimed—not as a matter of natural right but as the concession of a
divine-right king—a charter with weak guarantees of basic civil liberties. But after the Hundred Days,
the brief period in 1815 when Napoleon returned to office, extreme ultraroyalists convinced Louis to
purge the administration of its revolutionary personnel. At the same time, conservatives unleashed a
wave of terror against political undesirables in the countryside. Ultraroyalists decisively won the first
round of elections, but their hold was broken in the elections that Louis called in 1816.
These elections were won by a loose coalition of liberals, who supported the moderate reforms of the
revolution but not popular democracy. They continued to increase their influence until 1820, when the
king’s nephew was assassinated. Then the ultraroyalists, who blamed the assassination on the liberals,
returned to power, where they remained for most of the Restoration. Their position was enhanced
when a supporter of their agenda, Charles X, became king in 1824 upon Louis’s death.
Charles’s coronation at Reims in 1825 with most of the medieval trimmings was followed by other
gestures that recalled the Old Regime, including legislation (never enforced) to punish sacrilegious
acts. A relatively modest law was passed compensating émigrés for property confiscated during the
revolution. But disputes over leadership and the role of the papacy in the French Catholic Church split
the ultraroyalists, allowing moderate royalists and liberals to gain seats in the elections of 1827.
Charles made temporary concessions to the moderates, but in 1829 he installed an ultraroyalist
ministry under the hated chief minister, Jules de Polignac. Polignac offended both the center and the
left, leading to a fight in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower legislative house, in 1830. When the king
called for new elections, the ministry was decisively repudiated at the polls. Charles responded by
signing the July Ordinances, which dismissed the new Chamber of Deputies even before it met,
restricted the right to vote, and limited freedom of the press. Despite a military victory in Algeria that
led to its annexation by France, Charles’ government was doomed. The July Ordinances touched off a
revolution in Paris that drove Charles from the throne. The Restoration was over.
G3b The July Monarchy
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The Revolution of 1830 led to a new regime, known as the July Monarchy because of the month of its
birth. It was headed by Louis Philippe of the house of Orléans, who ruled from 1830 to 1848. His
supporters in the Orléanist Party were largely drawn from the notable class of wealthy landowners and
businessmen. The Orléanists were prepared to endorse the political heritage of 1789 to the extent that
they broke with the idea of divine-right monarchy and waved the three-color flag created in the early
1790s. But they did not endorse popular democracy.
The Orléanist regime was challenged on the left by radical republicans and on the right by former
ultraroyalists, but it was devoted to maintaining political and social stability. It did so with brute force,
as when it put down revolts of the Lyonnais weavers in 1831 and 1834. Although not marked by great
new initiatives, the July Monarchy did pass a law in 1833 laying the foundation for a national system
of primary schools. The sponsor of this measure, François Guizot, a Protestant, became chief minister
in 1840, lending a slight anticlerical cast to the regime.
Under the July Monarchy, the social problems arising out of the Industrial Revolution became matters
of increasing debate. The regime itself, however, tended to a laissez-faire, or hands-off, policy and did
little to solve social problems. Félicité de Lamennais, a philosopher who later became a priest, led an
ultimately unsuccessful campaign to interest the pope in the cause of social reform. The left developed
a number of sweeping plans of reform to save humanity from the perils of modern industrial society.
Among the more grandiose were the plans of Charles Fourier and those of the followers of Saint-
Simon. Fourier wanted to replace modern cities with utopian communities, and the Saint-Simonians
advocated directing the economy by manipulating credit. Although few of these programs had much
support, they did expand the political and social imagination of their contemporaries, including a
German-born exile in Paris named Karl Marx.
They also increased dissatisfaction with the bland policies of the July Monarchy, and in 1848 the
regime was overthrown. An economic recession in 1846 and 1847 had already spread discontent in
the population. Then in February 1848 opponents of the regime provoked it into ordering a crackdown
on dissent. The government failed to master the situation, and crowds in Paris drove out the king.
Louis Philippe abdicated on February 24. A new republic was declared, a provisional government was
organized, and the call went out for fresh elections. France was once again in revolution.
The Second Republic lasted only four years, due chiefly to the inability of the regime to reconcile
widely divergent political agendas. The provisional government responded to the crisis of
unemployment by establishing national workshops to provide jobs in Paris. But the workshops were
quickly dismantled after a relatively conservative government was elected in April 1848. This election
was the first held in France on the basis of true universal male suffrage, and France was still
overwhelmingly a country of relatively conservative peasants.
Louis Philippe
This 1839 portrait of Louis Philippe, king of France, was painted by Franz Winterhalter. It is in the Palace of Versailles near Paris, France.
G3c The Second Republic
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Parisian workers rose in revolt, barricading themselves in the streets. The government responded by
sending in troops, who bloodily repressed the revolt in what is known as the June Days of 1848. This
repression marked a major breakdown in the loose alliance of workers and bourgeois that had
underpinned revolutionary movements since 1789. A new republican constitution was enacted in
November, but it left unclear the respective powers of the unicameral assembly and the executive
president. In the presidential elections of December 1848, the overwhelming winner was a nephew of
the great Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, who had previously tried to overthrow the July Monarchy and had
served time in jail for it.
Louis Napoleon’s appeal lay not only in his prestigious dynastic background but also in his fuzzy
political platform, which allowed people of different parties to see in him a fellow spirit. In May 1849 a
new legislature was elected. The big winners were right-wing monarchists and, to a lesser extent, left-
wing radicals; moderate republicans went down to defeat. Exploiting ambiguities in the constitution
regarding the limits of his power, Louis Napoleon at first favored the right. He agreed reluctantly to a
restriction of the suffrage and to a law that increased church influence in education. But by 1851, the
president fell out with the assembly over his demands for funds to pay his debts and for a
constitutional revision that would allow him to serve a second term.
On December 2, Louis Napoleon had assembly leaders arrested and then altered the constitution so
that he could have a ten-year term. This change was approved overwhelmingly by the voters, and a
year later he followed in his famous uncle’s footsteps by making himself emperor as Napoleon III. This
move was also approved by a wide margin, demonstrating what many liberals, such as the historian
Alexis de Tocqueville, feared—namely that democracy in France would lead to the end of liberty. The
republic had given way to the Second Empire.
Napoleon III enjoyed the political benefits of ruling during a period of rising prosperity, but his success
G3d The Second Empire
Napoleon III
Napoleon III ruled as emperor of France from 1852 until 1870. The nephew of French emperor Napoleon I, he ruled with an authoritarian hand until 1860, when he began a series of liberal reforms. France’s economy and infrastructure flourished and grew during his reign, but the country suffered major military setbacks.
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was due equally to his considerable political talents. He built a well-oiled political machine that made
him master of France, and he had sufficient insight to see that his success depended on distributing
patronage widely. Moreover, he had the unusual foresight to anticipate and forestall opposition before
it became a real threat.
Recognizing that the authoritarianism of his early reign would eventually be challenged, he gradually
liberalized his regime, relaxing controls on the press, allowing workers to organize, and widening the
power of the legislature. Although the opposition exploited these concessions and grew stronger,
Napoleon III continued on his liberalizing course. In 1870 he proposed a new constitution that further
increased the power of the legislature. It was heartily endorsed by the electorate, thereby lending
fresh authority to the regime. Had Napoleon III shown as much wisdom in foreign affairs, France
might well have evolved fairly smoothly into a regime resembling the Third Republic, with the emperor
assuming a supervisory role above party politics.
As it happened, Napoleon III’s regime, like that of his uncle, died of battle injuries. Since 1815 France
had pursued a cautious foreign policy, surprising the rest of Europe, which had expected France to
continue being a disruptive force in international affairs. Although allied loosely with Britain, France
remained isolated under the July Monarchy. Napoleon III conceived of a grander French role in Europe
and elsewhere. Between 1854 and 1856 he joined forces with England to fight Russia in the Crimean
War. Imagining himself the godparent to Italian and German nationalism, he supported the efforts of
Piedmont to form a northern Italian league, and in 1866 he helped arrange an Italian-Prussian
alliance. In the 1860s he also backed an ill-fated effort to put a Habsburg prince, Maximilian, on the
throne of Mexico. This venture ended in 1867 with the withdrawal of French troops, the execution of
Maximilian, and the insanity of Maximilian’s wife.
But his fatal blunder was to engage militarily the growing power of Prussia under the able leadership
of Otto von Bismarck. Napoleon III allowed a dispute with Prussia over the Spanish succession to
become a matter of national prestige. Bismarck used the issue to elicit from France a declaration of
war (see Franco-Prussian War). Vastly underestimating Prussian military strength and overestimating
his own, Napoleon III saw his army beaten soundly at the Battle of Sedan in September 1870, and he
became a prisoner of war. Sedan set off political demonstrations in Paris that ended the Second
Empire. On September 4, 1870, a new provisional government was declared.
As minister of interior in the new government, the republican leader Léon Gambetta worked vigorously
to mount patriotic opposition to the advancing Prussian troops, which laid siege to Paris. He escaped
from besieged Paris in a balloon in order to organize provincial defenses. But French resistance
crumbled. During the winter of 1870 to 1871, starving Parisians were reduced to eating zoo animals.
In January, some members of the provisional government split with Gambetta and sued for peace.
A hastily called election in February 1871 produced a legislature that was overwhelmingly monarchist,
largely because the right favored a quick end to the war, as did most French people. The left, on the
other hand, called upon a weary nation to keep on fighting. The new assembly chose Adolphe Thiers,
a seasoned Orléanist politician, to be executive of the provisional government. Thiers negotiated the
peace terms for ending the Franco-Prussian War. France was required to pay 5 billion francs, allow
Prussian forces to temporarily occupy eastern France, and cede to Prussia all of Alsace and part of
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Lorraine. Although the assembly reluctantly approved the terms, the republicans disavowed them.
In March 1871 Paris rose in the revolt of the Commune, which turned a foreign war into a civil one
(see Commune of Paris, 1871). Lasting 72 days, the revolt was largely motivated by opposition to the
peace terms and to the monarchist assembly. But to the radical left, it became a symbol of proletarian
insurgency against the ruling classes. In May Thiers unleashed troops against the Commune and
crushed it. The result was 20,000 people dead and 50,000 sent to trial. Such repression had not been
seen since the Reign of Terror, and bitter memories of the atrocities committed by both sides endured.
The right appeared strong enough to rebuild a monarchy on the ruins of the Commune, but instead
France unexpectedly established the Third Republic. The monarchists’ failure can best be explained by
several factors: rival claims to the throne by the Bourbons and the Orléanists, delays that allowed
opponents to gain strength, and the receding of the war issue on which the right had won at the polls
in 1871.
Meanwhile, Thiers consolidated his power. He rebuilt the army and paid off reparations owed to
Germany as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, after which Prussia was incorporated into the unified
state of Germany. Most importantly, he inspired confidence among people in the political center. His
brutal repression of the Commune convinced them that a republic would not sell out to the radical left.
However, opposition to Thiers led to his resignation in 1873. He was replaced by Marshal MacMahon,
an ally of the monarchists.
Two years later a new constitution was enacted that formally established the Third Republic with a
two-chambered legislature, a president, and a cabinet responsible to the legislature. Few were truly
satisfied with this arrangement, and a party of republican radicals initially rejected it. But the
constitution gained enough support to pass because so-called republican Opportunists such as
Gambetta imagined it could be altered later to create a more unified state. At the same time,
moderate monarchists thought the president would eventually be replaced by a king. As it turned out,
G3e The Third Republic
Georges Boulanger
French general and politician Georges Boulanger rallied supporters against the French Third Republic in the 1880s. In 1889 he was charged with conspiracy. He fled to Belgium and two years later killed himself.
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both groups were wrong. The Third Republic lasted longer than any other French regime since 1789—
a remarkable result, given that all other major European states at the time were monarchies of one
sort or another.
Republicans decisively won the elections of 1876, which eventually put them at loggerheads with
MacMahon. The next year MacMahon called for new elections to the Chamber of Deputies, which led
only to another, if lesser, republican victory. MacMahon was forced to resign, and his defeat had long-
lasting consequences. Henceforth, the president became a relatively weak figure that would never
again dissolve the Deputies, thereby making the legislature the chief center of power. This outcome
was disappointing to both republicans and monarchists. It also increased the difficulties of forming
ministries with activist agendas, because the large number of parties made forming coalitions
necessary to gain the support of the legislature. If any party in a governing coalition objected to a
proposed policy, this party could easily bring down the coalition by withdrawing from it. Conservative,
agrarian interests dominated in the senate and were thereby able to block reform; as a result, women
and labor unions benefited little from the Third Republic.
Yet the common image of the Third Republic as a stalemate regime with many brakes and a weak
motor needs some correction. In the 1880s the government was strong enough to initiate a vast
program to build and staff secular primary and secondary schools, which instilled patriotic republican
values as a counterweight to those of the church. In the same decade, it expanded France’s colonial
empire, which became the second largest European overseas empire. In the early 20th century, the
Third Republic disestablished the church and led the nation through the severe trials of World War I.
Perhaps most significant, it made republican democracy—still a widely distrusted form of government
in 1870—acceptable to the vast majority of the French. This was achieved partly by developing
nationalistic symbols with wide appeal. In 1879 the revolutionary hymn La Marseillaise was made the
national anthem, and in 1880, Bastille Day, July 14, was declared a national holiday.
Georges Clemenceau
At the age of 76 French journalist and statesman Georges Clemenceau became the premier of France for the second time. During his second tenure as premier he formed a new government that boosted waning national morale and helped lead France to victory over German armies in World War I (1914-1918). Believing that harsh restrictions would inhibit future German war efforts, Clemenceau held fast to this position and influenced the drafting of the postwar Treaty of Versailles. Throughout his life Clemenceau also
THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE
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Except during the World War II years from 1940 to 1945, France has remained a republican
democracy. To be sure, the Third Republic was brought down in 1940 by depression and defeat. But
no other post-Napoleonic regime had survived disasters of equal gravity, and most had collapsed
under considerably less stress.
The first serious test of the Third Republic’s resiliency was the Boulanger affair, which followed a series
of financial scandals that discredited the government. In the late 1880s a rising career soldier, General
Georges Boulanger, launched a political career on the basis of his popularity as military reformer. In a
highly nationalistic age, his campaign drew wide support, and radicals such as Georges Clemenceau
initially thought he might serve as a charismatic figure on behalf of the left.
Increasingly however, Boulanger flirted with the right, calling for drastic revisions to the constitution.
He rallied elements of the French population who were dissatisfied with the Third Republic and was
elected to the Chamber of Deputies. As his movement gained strength, the government threatened to
arrest him. In 1889 Boulanger fled to Belgium, where two years later he committed suicide on the
grave of his mistress. Although the Boulanger affair now appears something of a farce, it seriously
threatened the Third Republic, and its resolution proved a political windfall to the center.
Still more serious was the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s. Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish career army
captain working in military intelligence. In 1894 he was arrested, court-martialed, convicted, and sent
to Devil’s Island for espionage on behalf of Germany. Convinced of his innocence, his family tried
unsuccessfully to reopen the apparently closed case. However, military secrets continued to pass to
the Germans, and a military investigator, Colonel Georges Picquart, found evidence showing that
Major Marie Charles Esterhazy was guilty instead. The army called Picquart off the case, but
information about it began to seep out to the public.
founded newspapers and worked as an editor, writer, and public speaker.
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Center-left newspapers gradually adopted Dreyfus’s cause as their own, and Esterhazy was brought to
trial. He was acquitted in 1898, but by then it was becoming clear that the army had framed Dreyfus.
In perhaps the most famous newspaper editorial ever published, “J’accuse” (“I Accuse”), the great
novelist and Dreyfus supporter Émile Zola denounced the army for its deceptions.
Controversy gripped the nation and the world as Dreyfus became a symbol of the secular Third
Republic itself. Ordinary citizens chose sides according to their politics. In defending Dreyfus’s
innocence, the center-left saw itself refighting the battles of the French Revolution in favor of liberty
and against the aristocracy and the church. Led by many anti-Semitic monarchists in the church and
the army, the right argued that Dreyfus had to be regarded as guilty, or the army, and by extension
the nation, would fall into disgrace or worse. In 1899 a new military court met and convicted Dreyfus,
now an emaciated walking skeleton, for a second time.
To resolve the controversy, the president of the republic offered Dreyfus a pardon. Dreyfus accepted it
only with reluctance, because it implied a guilt that he had always denied. In 1906 an appeals court
cleared Dreyfus officially of all charges. The army refused to admit it had framed Dreyfus, but he was
nonetheless reinstated. The right continued to believe in Dreyfus’s guilt long after the great affair was
over.
The Dreyfus case inflated the political sails of the Radicals, who pressed on with their campaign
against the church and in 1905 disestablished it altogether. The church vigorously resisted
disestablishment, and as a result, its income declined seriously, as did entries into the priesthood and
attendance at church schools. Disestablishment also freed the church from many compromising
political entanglements. Ultimately it may have improved the quality of the clergy because only the
more dedicated were willing to accept lower salaries. In any case, the church henceforth became a
much less important source of political controversy.
Zola’s “J’accuse”
In 1898 French novelist Émile Zola wrote an open letter to the president of France entitled “J’accuse” (“I accuse”). In the letter, Zola denounced French army officials for lying in their effort to convict Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, of treason. The letter was published in the newspaper L’aurore.
Alfred Dreyfus
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Another effect of the Dreyfus affair was to galvanize and reorient the right, which had begun to
change even earlier. This “new right” mixed its pleas on behalf of monarchy and the church with a
new, shrill nationalism, opposition to parliamentary government, and anti-Semitism. It used these
tenets effectively in its campaign against Dreyfus. The new right learned how to mobilize public
opinion through journalism and how to organize political campaigns, two abilities that prepared the
way for the fascist leagues of the post-World War I era.
The appearance of the new right was accompanied by the emergence of a larger, more effectively
organized left, in the form of labor unions and the Socialist Party, formally called the Section Française
de l’International Ouvrière (SFIO). The largest labor association was the General Labor Confederation
(CGT), founded in 1895, which claimed nearly a million members by World War I. Its leaders were
suspicious of political parties and leaned toward a strategy of revolutionary anarchism that called for
strikes, sabotage, and boycotts to improve the lot of workers.
This program competed fiercely with the strategy proposed by the Socialist Party, which called for
putting political pressure on the state to raise wages and improve working conditions. The Socialist
Party was formed when a workers’ association led by Jules Guesde joined a political faction led by
socialist scholar, journalist, and politician Jean Jaurès. The Socialist Party, which adopted Marxist
revolutionary language, was winning more than a million votes at the polls and had elected 100
deputies to the legislature (close to 20%) by 1914. Although workers saw their real wages double
between 1894 and 1914, they gained little from state initiatives. The industrial working class remained
a minority of the population, and democracy continued to forestall socialism, even in a regime whose
heart was on the left.
During the early years of the Third Republic, France’s colonial empire grew. Algeria had already
become a French colony in 1830, and by the end of the century Algeria had a European population—
only half of it French—of 665,000 people. Under Louis-Philippe, Tahiti and the Comoro Islands were
added to the French Empire. Under Napoleon III, the French acquired Cochin China (part of present-
day Vietnam) and protectorates over Cambodia and Senegal.
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was wrongly convicted of treason in 1894. The Dreyfus case exposed anti-Semitism in the army and generated extraordinary political and social controversy, polarizing liberal, intellectual, and progressive elements in government against the Roman Catholic church, the army, and the conservative political establishment. The case influenced the election of a more liberal-oriented French government in 1899, and helped bring about the decline of the French military’s power and prestige and the separation of church and state. In 1906 Dreyfus was pardoned and reinstated to the rank of major and decorated with the Legion of Honor.
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In the 1880s, a fresh round of imperialist expansion occurred as France gained colonies in Tunisia, the
Congo, Indochina, and Madagascar. Over the following two decades, France expanded its empire in
China and throughout West Africa, nearly coming to blows with Britain in 1898 over conflicting claims
in the Sudan. The crisis was settled amicably, and the resulting improved relations paved the way for
French military alignment with Britain in Europe. By contrast, colonial expansion only inflamed
relations with Germany, which sought unsuccessfully to frustrate French expansion into Morocco,
where France established a protectorate in 1912.
Economically, French colonialism was problematic. Exports to the colonies represented only about 13
percent of all French exports before World War I. At the same time, the costs of maintaining the
empire increased fivefold from 1875 to 1914, suggesting that empire-building had stronger political
than economic causes.
French colonies were governed centrally from Paris through agents who did not answer to any local
French Indochina
The French colonial territory known as the Indochinese Union (commonly called French Indochina) existed from 1887 to 1945. At its largest, the union comprised the present-day countries of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Shown here, French soldiers pose with local residents at a military post in French Indochina in the early 1900s.
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parliament. In the majority of its territories, France denied full citizenship to most indigenous peoples.
Full citizenship was given only to those who could pass a battery of stringent legal, linguistic,
educational, and religious tests. Thus in French West Africa, only 0.5 percent of the population
qualified as citizens.
The growth of France’s world empire occurred during a period when international tensions were rising
closer to home. The key developments occurred in Germany, which had been unified in 1871 and had
industrialized rapidly. Having soundly defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War, Germany became
Europe’s strongest continental power, while France was diplomatically isolated until the early 1890s.
Then Germany blundered by allowing its secret defense agreement with Russia to lapse. In 1894
Russia joined France in a defensive military pact, which was gradually strengthened. In 1902 France
negotiated an agreement with Italy that ensured Italian neutrality in case of a French war with
Germany. Most important, though far less formalized, was the growing solidarity between France and
Britain. Having already begun to reduce colonial tensions in 1898, France and Britain slowly drifted
together in reaction to Germany’s increasingly erratic and aggressive foreign policies after 1900. In
1904 the two nations reached the Entente Cordiale, an agreement that further clarified colonial
spheres of influence and initiated coordinated military planning.
On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, thereby initiating a chain reaction of war
declarations that opened World War I. Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany declared war
on Russia and then two days later on France; the next day Germany invaded Belgium, a neutral
nation. This invasion caused Britain to enter the war, transforming the Anglo-French entente into a
more formal alliance. France became more closely allied with other nations than ever before, and the
Third Republic faced its most severe crisis to date.
Historians often date the end of the real, as opposed to the chronological, 19th century at 1914, the
year Europe exploded into World War I. This was the first total war, in which governments mobilized
the full resources of the state and society to achieve victory. World War I led to the success of
Bolshevism in Russia and indirectly to the rise of fascism. In France, however, these developments
had less immediate impact. To be sure, France suffered from the heavy economic and human costs of
the war, which left deep scars on the participants and introduced a level of violence that would have
repercussions later.
Even so, the continuities in France between 1914 and 1930 were more striking than the changes.
After a period of adjustment, the economy rebounded, and the government gradually solved its fiscal
problems. Although the war lowered birthrates, these rates had been falling before the war.
Diplomatically, France regained territory it had controlled before 1871, but otherwise the war settled
little. In the 1920s French diplomats contended with more or less the same nationalist rivalries that
had fueled World War I. Politically, the parliamentary system of the Third Republic endured without
much striking change, while the French world empire also continued to grow.
The 1930s and 1940s were the real turning point in France. The onset of the Depression coupled with
H France in Turmoil: World War I Through World War II
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the aggressive expansion of Nazi Germany put heavy strains on the Third Republic, and it collapsed
after Germany defeated and then occupied France at the beginning of World War II (1939-1945).
Under German occupation, the French replaced the Third Republic with a right-wing regime, known as
the Vichy government, which effectively abandoned France’s republican traditions.
German authorities limited the Vichy government’s margin of maneuver, but Vichy still enjoyed broad
support in the population until the tide of war turned against Germany. Yet already in 1940 there was
an alternative to collaboration with the Germans. Local grassroots resistance movements took shape
almost immediately, while General Charles de Gaulle, who was in exile in London, announced that
Vichy would not be France’s future. Events proved him right.
World War I in France began in 1914, when Germany marched through Belgium, hoping to capture
Paris and encircle the French army, most of which was poised on the German border to retake Alsace-
Lorraine. The Germans moved faster than the French did and were well on their way to completing
H1 World War I
Troop Inspection, 1916
French troops line up in 1916 for an inspection in a trench strung with barbed wire. Armies in World War I (1914-1918) made extensive use of field fortifications composed of large numbers of parallel and intersecting trenches. This so-called trench warfare was used on both sides throughout the conflict.
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their plan when the French recognized the danger. They pulled troops back from the German border
and redeployed them to block the German advance on Paris. The Germans were stopped in the first
Battle of the Marne in September 1914. If the German plan had succeeded, it would have ended the
war in weeks. Instead, a standoff resulted, which defined the nature of fighting for the rest of the war.
In that stalemate, Anglo-French and German armies opposed one another for four years in rain-
soaked, rat-infested, barbed-wire trenches running for hundreds of kilometers through northeastern
France. Both sides tried vainly to puncture the lines of the other and win a decisive victory. They used
the full range of new weaponry—poison gas, tanks, machine guns, airplanes—only to be thrown back.
Meanwhile, casualties mounted in appalling numbers. The Battle of Verdun resulted in more than
700,000 casualties and lasted most of 1916 but resolved essentially nothing.
Such pointless slaughter eroded morale. In 1917 mutinies broke out in the French army, reflecting the
defeatism common among those on the left, who had shown pacifist tendencies before 1914. The
mutinies were put down by the Radical prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, through a combination
of repression and patriotic appeals. In the spring of 1918, the Anglo-French military—now backed by
fresh American troops—finally went on the offensive and forced Germany to an armistice on November
11, 1918. The war that had lasted more than four years was effectively won in six months.
Signing the Armistice
On November 11, 1918, representatives of France, Germany, and Britain met in a train car outside the French town of Rethondes and signed the armistice that ended World War I. Germany’s unconditional surrender ended one of the bloodiest wars in history. The same train car was the site, 22 years later, of the French surrender to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany during World War II.
Corbis
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World War I did not transform France, but its effects were surely considerable. In a country already
stricken by depopulation, 1.4 million men—10 percent of the nation’s active males—were killed and
twice that number wounded. This loss led to further declines in France’s very low birthrate. So deep
were the scars that monuments to the war dead were erected in virtually every village and town in
France. Material losses were also enormous, especially since the area of the country occupied by
Germany during the war produced about half the country’s coal and steel. Fiscally, too, the war was
costly. The government, which had not anticipated massive expenditures, met expenses by printing
great amounts of paper money and by borrowing. These measures tripled prices, quintupled the
national debt, and weakened the franc. The government’s only real innovation in dealing with these
problems was the introduction of a modest income tax.
The war also had social effects other than the demographic ones. Hundreds of thousands of
immigrants entered the country to fill the jobs vacated by soldiers. Together with native-born workers,
they swelled the ranks of labor unions by an estimated 1 million members. During the war, 450,000
women worked in factories and earned incomes that had formerly been restricted to men, but after
the war two-thirds of these women were let go to create jobs for veterans.
H2 Aftermath of the War
Working Women in World War I
During World War I (1914-1918) in France a labor shortage developed as many French men were called to serve in the military. To fill the gap, many women began doing industrial work that previously had been done only by men. Shown here, French women work in an ammunition factory during the war.
Roger-Viollet
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The difficulties of winning the war were followed by the frustrations of winning the peace. The peace
terms were worked out at an international conference held in Versailles during 1919 (see Versailles,
Treaty of). The French succeeded in regaining Alsace-Lorraine and in foisting exclusive blame for the
war on Germany. On that basis, reparations were imposed on Germany, just as France had been
forced to pay reparations after the Battle of Waterloo and the Franco-Prussian War. The exact amount
was to be computed by a commission later, but initial estimates were astronomical. France’s chief
goal, ensuring its security, proved far more elusive. In the end, France had to renounce hopes for
permanent control of the Rhine Valley. Germany agreed to demilitarize the Rhineland, and France won
the right to occupy the area until 1935. Britain and the United States guaranteed their aid to France in
case of attack.
However, many of the peace terms did not turn out as expected. Britain and the United States soon
retracted their assurances. France was left to rely on a set of alliances with central and eastern
European powers—alliances that paradoxically wound up dragging France back into war in 1939.
France withdrew its troops from the Rhineland five years earlier than planned, and German leader
Adolf Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936. German reparations, which France needed to pay off
H2a Treaty of Versailles
Paris Peace Conference
After defeating Germany in World War I, the victorious parties found it difficult to agree on the price Germany should pay in war reparations. Leaders from the United States, Britain, France, and Italy met at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and drafted the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty mandated a number of restrictive and compensatory measures for Germany, including massive demilitarization and financial reparations. Representatives at the conference included, left to right, British prime minister Lloyd George, Italian foreign minister Giorgio Sonnino, French premier Georges Clemenceau, and U.S. president Woodrow Wilson.
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debts owed to the United States, amounted to considerably less than first imagined, even though by
1931 Germany had paid 10 billion francs. Under such circumstances, it was not surprising that in the
1930s France built the Maginot Line, a heavily fortified string of defenses running along the frontier
from Switzerland to Belgium. The French trusted the Maginot Line to withstand a German assault.
Like other nations, France made an effort to forestall war. It joined the League of Nations and signed
agreements such as the Locarno Pact of 1925, which reaffirmed the Franco-German border, and the
Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy. But a strong
sense of vulnerability continued to lie behind French foreign and military policy in Europe throughout
the period between World War I and World War II. This vulnerability laid the basis for the
appeasement policies and military strategies of the 1930s.
A sense of vulnerability was much less apparent in French overseas imperialism in this period. The
French colonial empire reached its peak, expanding into the African and Middle Eastern regions
formerly controlled by Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The French empire now extended to 11.7
million sq km (4.5 million sq mi)—20 times the size of France—and included a population of roughly
80 million people—about twice that of France. Yet commercial relations with the colonies continued to
be marginal—amounting to only 15 percent of France’s foreign trade in 1929.
At home, the shape of politics changed relatively little in the aftermath of World War I, as France was
governed by a variety of center-left and center-right coalitions. The most important change was the
division of the SFIO into separate communist and socialist parties, which occurred in 1920. The
Communist Party continued to profess Marxist revolutionary doctrines and warmly embraced the
Soviet regime that had come to power in Russia in 1917. The Socialist Party, under Jaurès’s protégé
Léon Blum, adopted a less confrontational position with regard to the Third Republic and refused to
endorse the Soviet government in Moscow.
H2b Politics Between the Wars
Léon Blum
Léon Blum served as premier of France three times in the 1930s and 1940s, the first Socialist and the first Jew to hold that position.
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Although the Socialist Party initially had fewer members, they were far more successful than the
Communist Party at the polls. In the 1932 election, they won 131 seats in the legislature—more than
any other party—while the Communist Party won only 10 seats. However, neither party had much
impact on French government social policy until the Great Depression, especially because the
Socialists refused to participate officially in any coalition they could not dominate.
The major domestic political concerns of the 1920s were fiscal. Although the economy expanded in the
mid-1920s, state finances remained shaky. Accumulated war debt and deficit spending caused the
Raymond Poincaré
During his lengthy political career, which lasted from 1887 to 1929, nationalist French statesman Raymond Poincaré served as president and prime minister of France.
Paris Breadline
The Great Depression hit France in 1931 and 1932, causing widespread unemployment and poverty. People wait in line for food in Paris in late 1931.
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franc to decline; it was only one-tenth of its prewar value by 1926. In that year, a centrist
government under Raymond Poincaré restored the franc by raising taxes and cutting spending. These
measures increased confidence in the economy, and capital investment grew. By 1929 manufacturing
and trade had climbed to roughly 50 percent above prewar levels. In the agricultural sector, efficiency
improved, but the sector was still much less prosperous than were manufacturing and trade.
The coming of the Great Depression changed fiscal concerns into economic ones. France escaped the
depression until late 1931, many months after it had begun elsewhere. But when the depression did
reach France, it lasted longer. Whereas in 1937 British industrial production was 24 percent greater
than in 1929 and German industrial production 16 percent greater, French industrial production in
1937 was 28 percent lower than it had been in 1929. The response of the French government, like
that of many other nations, only aggravated the problem. Having fought so hard to support the franc
in the 1920s, the French government resisted devaluation, although the franc declined anyway. To
protect home markets, the French government, like others, raised tariff barriers, thereby worsening
the prospects for a general European recovery. What made France’s situation bearable was the fact
that unemployment was less serious than elsewhere, partly because many foreign workers were sent
home and many unemployed workers returned to family farms. Nonetheless, the standard of living
declined.
The center-right coalitions failed to stop the economic slide, and in 1932 they gave way to
governments run by the Radicals and supported by the Socialist Party. But these governments could
not agree on a coherent economic program. Paralysis in the center-left encouraged the growth of a
Workers on Strike
In June 1936, striking workers picketed in front of the Renault-Billancourt automobile factory. French politics at the time were dominated by the Front Populaire, a reformist coalition that instituted the 40-hour work week. Socialists controlled the national government.
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variety of new political organizations on the right. These ranged from blatant imitations of Benito
Mussolini’s and Hitler’s fascist movements, such as Jacques Doriot’s French Popular Party (PPF), to
more tradition-minded groups, such as the Cross of Fire. Both groups had memberships in the
hundreds of thousands.
When the operations of a shady financier, Serge Stavisky, were made public and linked to the Radical
Party in 1934, the right staged a massive demonstration in Paris, joined by members of the
Communist Party. The demonstration threatened to overthrow the Third Republic, although its goal
was apparently only to force a change of cabinet. During the demonstration, 17 people were killed and
thousands were wounded. The cabinet was changed, but the new government offered no effective
cure for the Depression. Equally ineffective was the next government led by Pierre Laval, who would
later be a key member of the Vichy government.
In 1935 the Communist Party, acting on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s orders, offered to ally with the
Socialists and the Radicals to stem the tide of fascism sweeping Europe. This coalition would be called
the Popular Front. Stung by previous communist attacks on them as social fascists, the Socialist Party
was reluctant to join, but did so. To solidify the alliance with the Radicals, both Communists and
Socialists dropped earlier plans to socialize the economy, but even the coalition’s mild calls for
government intervention to improve the lot of workers scandalized the right.
The bitterly fought 1936 elections witnessed the beginning of the end of the broad centrist consensus
that had supported the Third Republic. The center’s failure to solve the Depression drove voters to
extremes on both right and left at the expense of the center, and the Communist Party increased its
seats from 10 to 72. This gave Léon Blum the support he needed to form the Popular Front, the first
French government led by a Socialist.
The record of the Popular Front was mixed. Blum settled a wave of strikes by arranging for wage
increases, collective bargaining, a 40-hour workweek, and paid vacations. He also attempted to
support farm prices. But Blum’s government lacked an adequate theory to explain the Depression and
had no better idea than earlier ones for how to cure it. When the Popular Front was toppled by the
Radicals in 1937, the economy was no stronger than before.
Except for a very brief period in 1938, Radicals dominated the government from 1937 until 1940.
During this time, they managed to nudge production up, through tax cuts and concessions to business
at the expense of labor. Even so, by the summer of 1939, economic activity had returned only to the
level of 1928.
The failure of the Third Republic to deal effectively with the Depression was accompanied by the
collapse of its foreign and military policy. Until 1936 the rise of Nazi Germany caused little controversy
in France. The government responded to growing Nazi power by attempting to strengthen ties with
H2c The Popular Front
H3 World War II
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France’s central and eastern European allies, establish new agreements with Italy and the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and renew the old entente with Britain. But after the Popular Front
government came to power, the right, which portrayed the Popular Front as the prelude to a
communist takeover, began to see Hitler as less of a menace than Blum. The left, torn between its old
pacifism and its fears of creeping European fascism, was divided on whether to confront or negotiate
with Germany.
Clearly, the majority of the French people wanted to avoid war at almost all costs, and British pressure
to do so inclined France toward a policy of appeasement. In 1936 France merely protested Hitler’s
remilitarization of the Rhineland, despite the fact that this move violated the treaties of Versailles and
Locarno. While the Popular Front was in power, Blum declined to aid the Spanish Republic, which was
fighting a brutal civil war against anti-Republican forces led by Franco and supported by Nazi Germany
and Fascist Italy. Since the right favored Franco, Blum feared a civil war in France if he intervened in
the Spanish conflict. In March 1938 France acceded to Germany’s annexation of Austria. At the Munich
Conference (see Munich Pact) in September 1938, France violated its own defense treaty with
Czechoslovakia by agreeing to German occupation of the Czech Sudetenland. The next March, France
stood by while Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Only on September 3, 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, did France and Britain reluctantly declare
war. Even then France took little offensive action beyond participating in a naval blockade of Germany,
still hoping that something might be worked out. Such paralysis, far from thwarting Nazi aggression
against France, only invited it. The German attack on France in May 1940 was no repetition of the
attack of September 1914, which had stalled out very quickly. Hitler directed his massed tank
divisions north of the Maginot Line through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes forest. France and
the rest of the Allied Powers did not lack men and material, but they were unprepared strategically. In
six weeks Hitler won the decisive victory that had eluded the Germans in World War I. Seventy years
after the Battle of Sedan, France was once again an occupied nation.
H3a The Vichy Government
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While millions took to the roads to escape the German advance, the French government left Paris for
Bordeaux. On June 17 the government asked Germany for an armistice, after which aging Marshal
Henri Pétain, the hero of World War I, was appointed prime minister. On June 22 France signed an
armistice agreement in the same railroad car in which the Germans had signed the armistice of 1918.
French armed forces were to be demobilized, the southern third of France would continue to be
governed by the French, and the northern two-thirds was to be occupied and administered by the
Germans with funds provided by French taxpayers. Reassuring the French people with a soothing,
paternal radio voice, Pétain called upon France to lay down its arms and accept the armistice. Most
French people, in shock over the quick defeat, followed his advice.
In the south, the government moved from Bordeaux to Vichy, where on July 10 it voted
overwhelmingly to authorize Pétain to draft a new constitution. Under this constitution, Pétain became
head of state and the final arbiter in all decisions, while a variety of ministers responsible to him
carried out government functions. Pétain’s deputy, Pierre Laval, pushed the plan through the Chamber
of Deputies.
The professed goal of the new regime was a national revolution, which would regenerate a decadent
France by rerooting the nation in its traditions of religion, family, and the land. The squabbling and
corruption of parliamentary democracy was now supposed to give way to the authoritarian efficiency
of one-man rule. Legally and spiritually, the Third Republic, which was blamed for involving France in
a war it could not win, was now dead.
Vichy France
During World War II (1939-1945), Nazi Germany defeated France in 1940 and occupied the northern part of the country. At this time a pro-German government headed by Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain was established at Vichy in south central France, which was still under French control. In 1942 German troops occupied the south of France.
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In fact, Vichy was a hodgepodge of competing factions and interests. The principal division lay
between the traditionalists and the modernizers. A majority of Vichyites were traditionalists who
sought to contain capitalist competition, organize society into partially self-governing associations, and
restore the influence of the Catholic Church. The modernists, who were closely associated with big
business, wanted to push France forward through more active government intervention in the
economy. Although they were in the minority, the modernists gradually gained influence, in large part
because their program called for measures that were more practical. If Vichy had a positive legacy, it
lay in its efforts at government economic planning, which were continued after the war and helped
remove obstacles to growth. One of the ironies of the Vichy regime was that in some ways it promoted
modernization more effectively than the Third Republic had.
Yet Vichy also meant an active collaboration with Nazi Germany. Although Vichy leaders protested
after the war that they had resisted German demands as much as they had dared, they were in fact
convinced in 1940 that the future belonged to fascism. They actively cooperated in building the Nazi-
dominated European empire, doing even more than Germany expected or demanded.
Germany did not, in the end, reward France for this cooperation. France was required to supply
Germany with hundreds of thousands of forced laborers and more material aid than any other German
satellite. Despite their vast agricultural resources, the French ate more poorly and suffered more
inflation during the war than any other western European people except the Italians. Alsace-Lorraine
was again annexed by Germany, and in November 1942, the Germans occupied the southern third of
the nation, thereby removing most of Vichy’s independence.
However, the most shameful acts committed by the Vichy government resulted more from its own
hatreds than from German demands. Not only did Vichy hunt down and execute resistors to German
rule, but it also initiated its own campaign of anti-Semitic persecution. Jews were fired from positions
in the civil service, judiciary, army, public schools, and cultural institutions (publishing houses,
newspapers, radio, and entertainment), and only a limited number were permitted to practice
Henri Philippe Pétain
Henri Pétain was a French military hero in World War I (1914-1918). During World War II in 1940 Pétain became chief of state at Vichy, the French territory under control of the occupying Germans. He ruled as a dictator with the consent of the Nazi regime, suspending the constitution and deporting Jews to German concentration camps.
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medicine and law. Vichy seized Jewish property, while Jews who had recently immigrated to escape
persecution elsewhere were interned in concentration camps.
Still worse was Vichy’s collaboration in the Holocaust. Vichy was not inclined to commit genocide itself
and was anxious to keep French-born Jews under its control, all the better to strip them of their
property. However, Vichy employed its own police and militia to round up Jewish men, women, and
children, most of them foreign-born. They were then shipped in appalling conditions to German-
occupied Poland and gassed in Nazi death camps. The death toll of Jews transported from France was
about 75,000.
Most French people initially supported Pétain’s regime, but resistance to German rule and opposition
to Vichy began almost immediately after France was defeated. Charles de Gaulle, a career general and
undersecretary of war who had bitterly criticized French strategy in the 1930s, escaped to London in
June 1940 and established a government in exile. Lacking any formal authority, de Gaulle attracted
few followers at first, but he received vital recognition and material assistance from British prime
minister Winston Churchill.
In France, small groups of resisters formed and committed isolated acts of protest and sabotage.
These groups were better organized in the southern unoccupied zone and attracted support from
H3b The Resistance
De Gaulle’s June 18, 1940 Radio Address
When France fell to Germany during World War II, French military leader and future president Charles de Gaulle escaped to London where he organized the French National Committee in Exile. On June 18, 1940, one day after Henri Philippe Pétain (the future leader of Vichy France) asked for an armistice with Germany, de Gaulle went on the radio to urge France to resist the Germans.
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various parties, especially the Communist Party. Contacts between de Gaulle’s government in London
and the Resistance in France increased, and gradually de Gaulle was able to impose control from
abroad on the expanding Resistance in France.
In 1943 de Gaulle moved his headquarters to Algiers, after clashing with Churchill and U.S. president
Franklin Roosevelt over strategy. De Gaulle’s relations with the Resistance in France were also
sometimes difficult. Resistance leaders feared de Gaulle’s ambitions, but sufficient harmony was
maintained to prevent a breakdown in relations. As the tide of war turned against the Germans and
the Germans demanded more forced labor from the French, the ranks of the Resistance swelled. By
1944 most people could demonstrate they had done something to resist the Germans, so they could
later claim to have been members of the Resistance.
Following the successful landing of Allied troops in Normandy on June 6, 1944, France was gradually
liberated. The communists made some attempt at seizing power, most notably through an uprising
against the Germans in Paris in August 1944. But in the end de Gaulle was able to establish his
authority throughout France without much difficulty. A new provisional government under de Gaulle’s
Charles de Gaulle
French statesman, patriot, and general Charles de Gaulle led the French Resistance against Germany during World War II (1939-1945) and helped preside over France’s postwar restoration. After France surrendered to Germany in 1940, de Gaulle escaped to London and organized Resistance forces in Britain, the French colonies, and within occupied France. De Gaulle gave this inspired speech when the Allies finally liberated France from German forces in 1944: “Paris, outraged Paris; Paris, broken Paris; martyred Paris, but liberated Paris, liberated by the men, liberated by its people, with the participation of the French army, with the support and participation of all of France, that is to say, of France in its entirety, of only one France, that is to say, the true France, the eternal France!”
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leadership assumed power. The harshness of the occupation led to rough justice against former
collaborators, often without formal trials. About 10,000 people were executed and 40,000 sent to
prison. Laval was tried and executed. Pétain was also tried and sentenced to death, but his sentence
was commuted to life imprisonment.
France emerged from World War II profoundly weakened economically, but it had once again learned
to appreciate its republican traditions. Indeed, one effect of Vichy’s collapse was to discredit the
traditional right, which had never really accepted the values of 1789 as its own. The nearly universal
acceptance of republican values after 1945 facilitated the building of a more stable political system.
The Fourth Republic, which was established after World War II, lasted only 12 years, but the long-
term prospects for the Fifth Republic, which has endured its share of shocks and strains, are good,
indeed. The real question now is not whether the Fifth Republic will be overthrown as were earlier
regimes but how much of it will have to be dismantled as France merges into the European Union
(EU).
The year 1945 was also a turning point demographically and economically, after which France
acquired an energy not seen for half a century. Striking new population growth and a rising standard
of living increased demand for consumer goods and for more education and other services from the
state. Women, enfranchised in 1944 by a wartime decree, exercised their newly acquired right to vote
and gradually improved their economic status.
Having dealt with some of the collaborators, the new government sought to build on the patriotic spirit
of the Resistance, hoping to synthesize unity out of the myth that nearly everyone had been a
resistor. The government enacted fresh reforms, extending the vote to women. But political
differences soon resurfaced, and parties quickly formed. The political right, which had been discredited
by its association with Vichy, was in disarray. A new centrist party, the Christian Democratic
Mouvement Republicain Populaire, or MRP, emerged and won about 25 percent of the votes in the fall
1945 legislative election, as did the older socialist and communist parties.
The National Assembly drew up a new constitution amid protracted controversy. It soon became clear
that the constitution would mandate another parliamentary regime, not the presidential system that
de Gaulle favored. De Gaulle resigned in January 1946 and spent the next 12 years in virtual political
exile. The assembly approved a proposed constitution calling for a state dominated by a single-
chambered legislature, but the voters rejected it, fearing it would facilitate a communist takeover of
the whole government. In October 1946 the voters approved a second draft, which proposed a two-
chambered legislature, but included mechanisms to make it easier to pass legislation than under the
Third Republic. The Fourth Republic was born.
During the 12 years of its existence, the Fourth Republic witnessed a string of relatively short-lived
governments that over time tracked more and more to the right. None was particularly distinguished,
I From the Fourth Republic to the European Community
I1 The Fourth Republic
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except for that of the Radical Pierre Mendès-France, who sought to breathe life into the republic
through a series of reforms inspired by British economist John Maynard Keynes. Two major items
dominated the political agenda: the economy and decolonization.
At the end of World War II, the French economy suffered from low production and an excess of
money, which led to rapid inflation. The Vichy experiments at planning and the postwar nationalization
of key industries—coal, gas, electricity, and some banks and insurance companies—prepared the way
for bold efforts to energize the economy. Beginning in 1946, Jean Monnet, head of the state planning
commission, administered a program to break through traditional economic bottlenecks by stimulating
investment and thereby production. Part of the investment capital was provided by the United States
under the Marshall Plan.
In addition, France and other European nations recognized how economic isolationism had undermined
all their economies during the 1930s. They began to form international associations to promote more
broadly based economic growth and to lay the basis for possible long-term political integration. An
additional incentive to form such associations was the fear that an economically weak and politically
divided western Europe would invite further expansion by the Soviet Union, which after World War II
had established a broad band of satellite countries in eastern and central Europe.
In 1951 France joined with West Germany and other European nations in the European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC), the brainchild of the French statesman Robert Schuman. The ECSC led to the
formation in 1957 of the European Economic Community, known as the Common Market, a trade
association that included Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Luxembourg). Although generally successful, reduction of tariff barriers tended to benefit large
producers at the expense of smaller ones. In the 1950s many small producers backed a short-lived,
right-wing protest movement for tax relief, led by the shopkeeper Pierre Poujade. The movement
failed, but it expressed resentment against modernization that would show itself more forcefully later.
Overall the Fourth Republic dealt successfully with economic issues, but it was less successful in
resolving colonial ones. Decolonization eventually brought down the regime, much as the Franco-
Prussian War had terminated the Second Empire and World War II the Third Republic. The sprawling
French Empire, like those of other European nations, faced widespread revolts after World War II.
In Indochina, resistance movements had been organized to oppose the Japanese, who had occupied
the area during World War II. After the war, these movements were redirected against French
imperialism. From 1946 to 1954 the French army attempted to suppress the resistance movements in
Indochina, but it was dealt a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 (see First
Indochina War). Prime Minister Mendès-France arranged for as graceful a diplomatic and military
withdrawal from Indochina as was possible under the circumstances, and he preempted trouble in
Morocco and Tunisia by conceding independence.
I1a Economic Issues
I1b Decolonization
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The prime minister faced a much more difficult situation in Algeria, where the vast majority of Arab
Algerians wanted independence but the 1 million European settlers there demanded the continued
protection of French rule. A violent independence movement began in 1954, and increasingly large
numbers of French troops were sent to Algeria to put it down. The movement escalated into a virtual
civil war involving the use of terror and torture. Extremists in the French army and their sympathizers
who feared a French pullout from Algeria plotted to bring down the French government. By 1958 it
was clear that the Fourth Republic could not resolve the crisis (see Algerian War of Independence).
Supporters of Charles de Gaulle, who had bided his time in retirement, plotted to use the turmoil to
put him in power under a new constitution, and eventually a smooth transition was arranged. De
Gaulle became the last prime minister of the Fourth Republic. In May 1958 the National Assembly
vested him with full power for six months and the authority to draft a new constitution, to be
approved by the voters. Then in June the Assembly dissolved itself. The Fourth Republic was dead.
A new constitution for France’s Fifth Republic was drafted by a committee headed by Gaullist Michel
Debré. The new constitution was a hybrid of the presidential and parliamentary systems. It pruned
back the powers of the two-chambered legislature and granted the president considerably more power
than the presidents of previous regimes. But it also maintained a prime minister, who was chosen by
the president yet needed the support of the legislature.
Perhaps because the first president was likely to be the charismatic de Gaulle, the constitution did not
spell out the distribution of power between the president and prime minister. This ambiguity would
create uncertainties later, but it also allowed for flexibility in situations in which the presidency and the
legislature were controlled by different parties.
The constitution was approved by 80 percent of the voters in September 1958. The elections that
followed gave a new Gaullist party a near majority in the legislature, while the left, which had opposed
the new constitution, lost badly. Following procedures stipulated by the new constitution, which gave
the right to choose the president to a college of local officials, de Gaulle, not surprisingly, was made
president. De Gaulle chose Debré as his first prime minister.
I2 The Fifth Republic
I2a The De Gaulle Years
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De Gaulle attempted to keep the French colonial empire together by granting more autonomy to the
remaining colonies within a new French Community. But in the end he had to agree to their
overwhelming demands for independence. The Algerian crisis, which had brought him back to power,
was the toughest problem on his agenda. De Gaulle had led the differing parties to believe he was
sympathetic to their opposite positions. He had misleadingly assured the French Algerians that “I have
understood you.” But he gradually recognized the hopelessness of continued repression in Algeria, and
in 1962 he reached agreement with the insurgents in meetings at Evian, France.
The Evian Accords, which 90 percent of French voters also approved, provided for an Algerian
referendum on independence. A majority of Algerians voted for independence. Even before the
accords were reached, however, a group of military officers and colonials organized the Secret Army
Organization (OAS), which conspired to overthrow the government. De Gaulle put down this rebellion
in 1962, ending the Algerian crisis. French Algerians remained bitter over what they saw as de
Gaulle’s sellout. Most of them also had to endure the insult of living in a France governed by their
nemesis, de Gaulle, after having suffered the injury of leaving Algeria forever.
De Gaulle envisioned a greater role for France in world affairs than it had played under the Fourth
President de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle served as president of France from 1959 to 1969. During his time in office, he negotiated France’s entry into the European Economic Community (now the European Union), presided over the development of the French nuclear weapons program, and worked to improve relations with the countries of Eastern Europe. Shown here, de Gaulle signs autographs in Warsaw, Poland, in 1967.
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Republic. With the Algerian crisis settled and Soviet expansionism into Europe more or less contained,
de Gaulle set out to create and lead a group of nations distinct from the American and Soviet
superpowers. To give this group teeth and to gain independence from the United States, he initiated a
successful, if expensive, program to develop nuclear weapons. Then in 1967 he pulled France out of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a defense alliance led by the United States that France
had joined earlier to provide a common front against the USSR.
De Gaulle maintained cordial relations with former French colonies and even intervened in Canadian
internal affairs by declaring solidarity with Canadian Francophones who were demanding independence
for the province of Québec. He also prevented Britain from joining the Common Market on the grounds
that it was too closely tied to the United States. At the same time, he forged stronger ties with West
Germany. In the end, de Gaulle did make the French feel that they continued to be an important
presence in international affairs, even after their once extensive empire had crumbled.
Paris Students’ Revolt
In May 1968 students at the University of Paris, in France, went on strike and occupied university buildings. Their example set off protests throughout the country, culminating in a general strike that virtually paralyzed the nation. Shown here, barricades of overturned cars block Rue Gay-Lussac in Paris after a night of rioting during which students fought police for 12 hours; nearly 1,500 people were hurt in the rioting, many of them seriously.
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At home de Gaulle worked to strengthen the franc, which in the late 1950s was again in trouble,
instituting devaluations and government austerity measures. Whatever the effect of these measures,
the economy experienced another growth spurt in the 1960s, which added credibility to the Fifth
Republic. To enhance his authority, de Gaulle had the constitution altered in 1962 to provide for the
direct election of the president, beginning with the next election, in 1965. De Gaulle was elected to a
second term as president in 1965, but he had a harder time winning than expected. He failed to get a
majority of votes in the first round of the election. Even in the second round, his margin of victory was
only 10 percent over that of his challenger, François Mitterrand.
Georges Pompidou
Georges Pompidou served as premier of France from 1962 to 1968 and succeeded Charles de Gaulle as president in 1969. He served until his death in 1974.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was elected president of France in 1974. His
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Documentation Francaise/Jacques Henri Lartigue
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However, de Gaulle still seemed unremovable and irreplaceable in 1968, when he faced his worst
crisis. That May, a student protest movement escalated into a massive national strike, paralyzing the
country. These developments drew on multiple resentments that had been building against the Fifth
Republic for years, particularly among the young and the working class. De Gaulle wisely retired from
the scene, waiting for the country to grow tired of the chaos. He then boldly reentered, presenting
himself as the only alternative to anarchy and promising university reforms for the students and wage
increases for the workers.
In the legislative elections of June 1968, de Gaulle’s party won a crushing victory. But de Gaulle’s
prestige had declined greatly, and he ruled with less mastery than before. Aging, tired, and apparently
looking for an exit, in 1969 he pledged to leave office if the voters rejected his proposal to restructure
the Senate. It was rejected and de Gaulle resigned. The most prominent French leader of the 20th
century made perhaps the strangest departure from politics in all French history.
With de Gaulle gone, Gaullism became an affair of more ordinary politicians. The Fifth Republic, which
de Gaulle had previously seemed to embody, became more depersonalized and institutionalized. De
Gaulle was succeeded as president by the much less commanding Georges Pompidou, who was closely
tied to big business. Pompidou was less committed to French intervention in world politics than de
Gaulle had been, and he permitted Britain to enter the Common Market. In economic matters, he
leaned more toward a laissez-faire position than had de Gaulle, and his administration undertook
relatively few new initiatives.
When Pompidou died in 1974, he was succeeded by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who was not a Gaullist
but the leader of the center-right Independent Republicans. A technocrat by training, Giscard had a
progressive agenda. He proposed to protect the environment, legalize contraception and abortion,
lower the voting age, and redistribute taxes. He was successful in most of these initiatives. However,
his popularity was undercut by the first major economic downturn since World War II, which caused
unemployment and inflation to grow. He was defeated in 1981 by François Mitterrand, whose Socialist
Party also won a majority in legislative elections.
attempts to reform the French economy could not overcome a global recession, and he was defeated in the presidential elections of 1981.
I2b The Socialist Era
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An able political strategist, Mitterrand had rebuilt the Socialist Party during the 1970s, working first
with the Communist Party and then apart from it. His decisive victory in 1981 marked the first major
swing to the left since the Popular Front in the 1930s. Even more significantly, it was the first time
power had been passed to an opposing party without a major change to the constitution. It seemed
that the Fifth Republic was a regime that both left and right had learned to live within.
After Mitterrand’s election, struggle among the major political parties centered not on which one
offered the most popular, distinctive vision of the future, but on which one appeared best able to
achieve commonly desired goals of economic growth and political stability. Ideological differences
between left and right mattered less than before; voters were now looking for competent leadership.
One indication that voters were abandoning traditional ideological causes was a major drop in support
François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand ran for president of France four times, first winning an election to the post in 1981. Once president, he established a reputation for pragmatic, consensual leadership, often sharing power with members of other political camps, including both the Communist party and members of conservative parties. Seriously ill with prostate cancer, Mitterrand retired at the end of his second term in 1995.
François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl
In 1984 French president François Mitterrand and German chancellor Helmut Kohl took part in a commemorative ceremony at the ossuary (repository for bones of the dead) of Douaumont, near the French town of Verdun. Verdun was the site of one of the most hard-fought battles in World War I (1914-1918) between French and German forces. The battle resulted in more than 700,000 casualties. Shown here, the two statesmen join hands at the ceremony in a spontaneous symbol of reconciliation between the French and German peoples.
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for the once powerful French Communist Party in the elections of 1981. The French Communists were
unable or unwilling to follow the example of the more successful Italian Communist Party, which broke
with Soviet Marxist orthodoxy. The French Communist Party’s refusal to innovate structurally or
ideologically led to the loss of the support of many intellectuals and workers. The Communist Party
henceforth exerted only marginal political power, although its decline was temporarily masked by the
appointment of four Communist Party members to the cabinet of Mitterrand’s first prime minister,
Pierre Mauroy.
Mitterrand decentralized power by allowing localities more self-government. He enacted a string of
new reform measures that gave workers new rights to bargain collectively, raised the minimum wage,
and increased family subsidies and old-age pensions. The death penalty was abolished, and new
prisons were built to alleviate overcrowding. The government nationalized the nation’s major banks,
as well as a number of large industries. By 1983 the government controlled 13 of France’s 20 largest
companies. In the end, however, these reforms did not add up to a successful economic or fiscal
strategy. Deficits escalated and the economy failed to expand under the government’s stimulation,
leading to greater unemployment, inflation, and trade deficits. After two years of left-wing euphoria,
the Mitterrand regime was losing its popular support, while the right regained strength.
When the Socialists tried to impose controls on state-subsidized, private Catholic schools, they
provoked one of the largest popular demonstrations in French history. A new extreme right-wing
movement, the National Front, emerged, led by a former paratrooper, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The National
Front drew its support chiefly for its anti-immigrant proposals, which proved especially popular among
unemployed older males. It won over 10 percent of the vote in some elections. Although the National
Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac was elected president of France in 1995 and reelected in 2002. Chirac also served as mayor of Paris for almost 20 years and as prime minister of France on two separate occasions.
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Front divided the right, the government could not afford politically or economically to continue on its
earlier course and began dropping its socialist agenda. Budgets for social programs were slashed, and
private industry was favored with tax cuts. The economy improved somewhat, although
unemployment continued to rise.
Mitterrand hoped to divide the right-wing opposition by introducing proportional representation in
elections to national and regional assemblies. The new system, which awarded seats to parties
according to their share of the vote, was intended to favor small splinter parties and make it more
difficult for stable majority coalitions to form. Mitterrand’s reform allowed the National Front to claim
more than 6 percent of seats in the National Assembly in the legislative elections of 1986. But the left
lost anyway. For the first time in the Fifth Republic, the president came from a different part of the
political spectrum than did the prime minister and the majority in the legislature. In fact, cohabitation,
as it was called, worked more smoothly than some observers had predicted. Mitterrand dealt primarily
with foreign affairs, and the new Gaullist prime minister, Jacques Chirac, focused on domestic matters.
This arrangement lasted only until 1988, when the Socialists won a slim margin in the legislature after
Mitterrand defeated Chirac in the presidential elections. Cohabitation was tried again without much
friction in 1993, when the Socialists again lost control of the legislature and Edouard Balladur, a
Gaullist, became prime minister.
In 1995 Chirac succeeded Mitterrand as president, but he, too, had to contend with cohabitation after
just two years in power. The center right lost control of the legislature in 1997, and Chirac was obliged
to appoint a Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin. Cohabitation sharply constrained Chirac’s political
influence. He was unable to prevent the left-wing majority from instituting major reforms, including
1998 legislation to shorten the work week from 39 to 35 hours (which took effect in 2000) in an effort
to increase employment opportunities.
In 2000 the term of the French president was reduced from seven years to five years by a popularly
approved amendment to the constitution. The main argument in favor of this change was that it would
discourage further rounds of cohabitation, which had become associated with deadlocked government.
Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin was prime minister of France from 1997 to 2002. A member of the Socialist Party, Jospin replaced conservative Alain Juppé. Jospin announced his retirement from politics after he finished third in the 2002 presidential election, behind the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.
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Under the amendment, future legislative and presidential elections are more likely to occur in the
same year and hence to register similar outcomes. The shortened presidential term took effect in
2002.
Jacques Chirac was overwhelmingly reelected in May 2002. In a surprise showing the previous month,
National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen had finished slightly ahead of Socialist candidate Lionel
Jospin during the first round of presidential balloting. Appalled by the success of Le Pen, over 1 million
people took to the streets in protest before the second round of balloting. Chirac swept the election,
winning the second round of balloting with more than 80 percent of the popular vote. The outcome
was a stunning defeat for the Socialist Party and for Jospin, who resigned his post and retired from
politics.
In the June 2002 legislative elections a coalition of center-right parties backing Chirac, called the
Union for the Presidential Majority, captured an absolute majority in the National Assembly, thereby
completing the rout of the left. (The coalition was later renamed the Union for a Popular Movement, or
UMP). The elections ended five years of cohabitation between Chirac and the Socialist-led National
I2c The Return of the Center Right
Jean-Pierre Raffarin
Jean-Pierre Raffarin became prime minister of France in 2002.
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Assembly and gave Chirac significant new power over the direction of the French government. Chirac
appointed Jean-Pierre Raffarin as prime minister of the new government. Raffarin, a member of the
small, pro-free market Liberal Democracy party, had led an interim government since May, following
Jospin’s resignation. Raffarin pledged to support Chirac’s conservative reform agenda, including a
major crackdown on crime, tax cuts, and the easing of labor regulations.
Despite the lopsided conservative victories, the record of Chirac and the new government, particularly
its economic policies, would be watched closely by voters. Of special concern were tax cuts introduced
by the government in hopes of spurring economic growth and boosting future government tax
revenues. In the short term, the cuts threatened to expand France’s budget deficit beyond 3 percent
of gross domestic product (GDP), a limit imposed by the European Union (EU) as a requirement for
adopting the EU’s common currency. With little room to maneuver, the government was forced to
reduce planned tax cuts in the 2003 budget, provoking sharp protests from the right. Nevertheless,
France’s budget deficit exceeded the 3 percent limit two years running, in 2002 and 2003, leading the
EU to issue a formal warning to France to restrain government spending. At the same time, the
persistence of high annual unemployment rates in France drew strong criticism from the left. These
objections, in a difficult economic climate, raised questions about the right’s ability to maintain its
electoral mandate.
The establishment of the European Union in 1993, a successor of the European Community, had
profound consequences for France and other European nation states. Power over a wide range of
policies, once exercised solely by European national governments, gradually shifted toward the EU.
The creation of the EU marked the evolution of the European Community from a largely economic
organization into a political one, which now includes a European Parliament. The Maastricht Treaty
(1991) that established the EU provided a new impetus toward further European integration; among
its provisions was the call for a single European currency. This common currency—the euro—came into
use on January 1, 1999, much to the surprise of many observers. They had been skeptical because
the EU had not always been able to agree on a common economic policy.
France has strongly supported European integration under the auspices of the EU, and this support
has perhaps been France’s most significant contribution to world affairs since it dissolved its overseas
empire. French governments of both the center left and center right have consistently supported
European integration. A Frenchman, Jacques Delors, provided strong leadership as president of the
European Commission, an agency of the EU, from 1984 to 1994.
France has favored European integration for several reasons. First, as Charles de Gaulle had
recognized in the 1960s, France without an empire was too small a nation to play a major role in
international affairs. France’s influence abroad promised to be enhanced if it joined with other nations
of Europe to pursue a common foreign policy. Second, trans-European institutions, such as those of
the EU, could help restrain Germany, whose great industrial and financial power was bound, in the
absence of such institutions, to dominate Europe economically. Membership in the EU would allow
France and other nations to have greater economic influence in Europe through common policies on
trade and interest rates. Third, at a time when growing international competition meant that France
I2d France and the European Union
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had to compete more intensively to sell its goods abroad, participation in the EU ensured that France
would have greater access to the markets of its neighbors.
After punishing thousands of people who collaborated with the German-backed Vichy regime in World
War II, the French in the 1950s and 1960s sought to forget about the Vichy past. Although many
people guilty of heinous crimes remained at large, the trials of Vichyite collaborators were routinely
halted under pressure from powerful state officials with compromising pasts of their own. Prior to the
1990s, no French president had officially acknowledged the role played by the French state in the
commission of crimes against humanity during the war. Rather, to foster a badly needed sense of
national unity, most French parties, especially the Gaullists, cultivated the myth that nearly everyone
had belonged to the French Resistance.
As time passed and the Fifth Republic acquired stability, France became more willing to reexamine
critically the Vichy legacy. Path-breaking research beginning in the 1970s exploded the myth of near
universal participation in the Resistance and proved beyond doubt the willingness of Vichy leaders to
collaborate with Nazi Germany. The French soon began revisiting the Vichy years in a growing flow of
books, documentaries, and films, most of which confirmed the new research. In 1995 President
Jacques Chirac publicly acknowledged the role of the French people and government in abetting
crimes under German occupation. Two years later French Catholic bishops apologized for the church’s
failure to resist the deportation and murder of Jews more vigorously, and the leaders of the French
police union apologized for police participation in the roundup of Jews. Also in 1997, the government
initiated procedures to return artworks and other property stolen from French Jews during World War
II by the Vichy authorities.
The most controversial aspect of this wrenching reassessment of the Vichy years was a new round of
trials directed against collaborators who had yet to be tried and punished. Painful memories were
already stirred in 1987 during the trial of Klaus Barbie, a notorious German Gestapo (secret state
police) officer. Barbie was convicted of crimes against humanity committed in Vichy France and
sentenced to life imprisonment.
Other trials followed. In 1991, René Bousquet, an important French police official in the Vichy
government, was indicted for crimes against humanity. Bousquet had previously escaped trial with the
help of powerful friends, but he was assassinated before the trial began. In 1994, Paul Touvier, a
French member of the Vichy militia who worked under Barbie, was convicted of crimes against
humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment. Touvier had been sentenced to death for treason
shortly after France’s liberation, but he had escaped his sentence with the help of influential allies,
including conservatives within the Catholic Church. In 1998, Maurice Papon, an administrator in the
Vichy regime and later a Gaullist minister, was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity and
sentenced to ten years in prison. After escaping to Switzerland, Papon was extradited to France in
1999, where he served three years in prison and was released in 2002 on grounds of ill health.
Papon’s trial was likely to be the last of its kind, leaving the French public divided over whether such
trials had even begun to rectify the atrocities committed by the defendants.
I3 Ghosts of the Vichy Past
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Despite dramatic ups and downs resulting from World War I and the worldwide depression of the
1930s, France changed relatively little economically and socially between the two world wars. By 1924
the French had again reached their 1914 levels of industrial production. Although industrial production
grew another 40 percent by 1929, three-quarters of this increase was lost during the global
depression. Agriculture was relatively stagnant during the same period. Production of some crops,
notably wheat, became more efficient, but overall, French agriculture lagged increasingly behind that
of other nations. It was, for example, only one-third as efficient (measured in output per farmer) as
agriculture in the United States.
Partly as a result of the large number of Frenchmen killed in World War I, population growth between
the wars was sluggish. The most striking demographic trend was the continued immigration of
foreigners. By the 1930s 2.5 million immigrants lived in France, making it Europe’s foremost melting
pot. However, some of these newcomers returned home when the employment situation deteriorated
during the depression.
During the interwar period, the standard of living rose only slightly. Workers and small farmers, in
particular, saw barely any improvements in their quality of life. Demographic and income stagnation
meant little growth in consumer demand, delaying the onset of a consumer society. Modern lifestyles
and an artistic avant-garde could be found in Paris and a few other areas, but most regions, especially
in the center and south, showed few signs of change. On the eve of World War II, a full half of the
population still lived in agricultural communities.
Feminism in this period was relatively inactive, and the legal and economic condition of women
improved very little. Partly because the population was growing so slowly, females were constantly
reminded of their “natural” duty to become mothers, while contraceptives and abortion were banned.
The frozen condition of the French economy and society undoubtedly underlay often-heard charges
that France had become so “decadent” that it could not meet the challenges of modern international
economic and political competition.
I4 Economy and Society Since World War I
I4a Stagnation Between the Wars
I4b Post-World War II Growth
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The end of World War II marked a decisive economic and social turning point. The war cost France
about 600,000 dead, but this was less than half the death toll of World War I. The French population
surged significantly in the late 1940s, reversing decades of little growth. By 1962 the population had
reached 46.5 million, by 1975, 52.7 million, and by 1995, 58.1 million. Some of this increase was due
to more births among native-born French women, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s. By the
1990s, with the spread of birth control and the aging of the French population, population increases
came largely from immigration, mostly from southern Europe and northern Africa.
By 1975 about 4 million immigrants lived in France, making it more racially and ethnically diverse than
at any time since the barbarian invasions of the early Middle Ages. Immigrants provided much needed
labor in boom periods, but when unemployment rose in the 1980s and 1990s, their presence was
resented. This resentment prompted support for the anti-immigrant policies of the National Front.
Prejudice against immigrant workers was also fueled by their comparatively low standard of living.
Immigrant Children in Marseille, France
Marseille, like many major cities in France, has a large immigrant population. Shown here, African immigrant children play in front of a high-rise tenement in the city.
Aurora/Joanna Pinneo
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Increasing population, government planning, funds from the Marshall Plan, and greater European
integration sparked a boom in industrial production, which rose 80 percent between 1950 and 1958.
Agriculture was transformed by additional mechanization, as the number of tractors increased sixfold
between 1945 and 1980. As productivity rose, the number of farmers declined steeply, from 35
percent of the population in 1945 to 6 percent in 1990, nearly severing the nation from its peasant
roots. The economy grew at an average annual rate of 4.5 percent between 1949 and 1959, and 5.8
percent between 1959 and 1970. Altogether, the gross national product increased fivefold between
1946 and 1977. Since then, economic growth has been more sluggish, due partly to oil price increases
in the 1970s and increasing competition from abroad.
The benefits of this growth trickled down to ordinary citizens in the form of increases in real wages,
especially after 1960. A large variety of consumer goods became widely available and affordable,
raising the standard of living. Higher standards of living led to growth in the service sector of the
economy, which by the 1990s absorbed more than half the national work force.
Jean-Marie Le Pen
French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen heads the right-wing National Front party.
Corbis/Peter Turnley
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The state became an increasingly important employer as the range of government services and
pensions expanded. The government established a system of state-sponsored medical care, which
paid the major costs of treatment for most citizens. Slowly the state also expanded its educational and
research institutions. Between 1950 and 1984, the number of baccalaureate students rose from
32,000 to 249,500, reflecting the increasing importance of education and the declining importance of
land as the basis for a successful career.
These changes were accompanied by a slow change in the status of women. Women were granted the
vote in 1944, and they improved their levels of education. Contraception and abortion were legalized
in the 1970s, giving women more control over their reproductive lives. By 2000 women provided 45
percent of the national work force.
Although women made many gains since World War II, they did not achieve political representation in
proportion to their numbers. Thus, for example, in 1993 women held barely 6 percent of the seats in
the Chamber of Deputies. During the 1990s, feminists and their sympathizers lobbied for a “law of
parity” that was intended to force the nomination of more female candidates. Enacted in 2000, this
Paris Shopping
Paris, France, is well known for its many upscale shops and trendy boutiques. Stores and galleries like the one shown here cater to visitors and affluent local residents alike.
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law required that at least half of all candidates chosen by parties to run for municipal office be women.
It also reduced state subsidies to parties that declined to meet this requirement. Most French voters
supported the law as a means to rectify the gender imbalance. The law had some success in reducing
gender inequality, but it did not produce gender-balanced political representation. Some parties
evaded the law by accepting lower government subsidies, with the result that in 2002 women still held
only about 12 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies.
France today still faces significant social and economic problems, some of them a product of France’s
growth since World War II. Despite the proliferation of government social welfare programs, wealth in
France remains more unevenly distributed by social class than in any other northern European
country, and regional variations are significant as well. Economic development has produced major
environmental problems that need to be resolved. Among them is the escalating problem of air
pollution, in large part the result of the increasing number of automobiles in Paris and other cities.
Contraception and abortion have led to a declining birthrate since the 1970s, which in turn has led to
the aging of the French population. Budgets for social services have escalated beyond taxpayers’
willingness to support them, requiring cutbacks in free services and possibly putting the whole French
welfare state in jeopardy.
During the 1990s the unemployment rate climbed to more than 12 percent, thereby replacing inflation
as France’s most critical economic problem. In 2002 the unemployment rate stood at 8.9 percent, and
the French economic outlook remained cloudy. Growing international competition and the downturn in
the U.S. economy since the late 1990s reduced demand for goods produced in Europe, with the result
that in 2002 the French economy grew at its lowest rate in years.
No doubt the French economic situation would have been worse had the European Union (EU) not
acted to promote growth. Agreements between the EU and several eastern European countries during
the 1990s made markets in those countries more accessible, and successful implementation of the
EU’s single currency, the euro, facilitated commerce across national borders. However, the extent to
which greater European integration will be, on balance, a boon to the French economy and society is
controversial and uncertain. New opportunities for reaching foreign markets must take into account
the difficulty of maintaining domestic wage rates that are much higher than wage rates abroad.
Greater European integration also threatens to increase the influence of large multinational
corporations on national policies while limiting the ability of countries such as France to address
important domestic concerns, such as environmental pollution. As they become integrated into wider
and deeper economic and political networks, France and the other EU members may well be compelled
to develop a broader definition of the nation than they have ever known before.
The history section of this article was contributed by Thomas E. Kaiser.
Contributed By: William James Adams Terry G. Jordan–Bychkov
I4c Recent Developments
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