France – Wikipedia

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France ( french : [ fʁɑ̃s ] ), officially the French Republic ( french : République française [ 12 ] ), is a transcontinental nation spanning Western Europe and oversea regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and amerind Oceans. [ XIII ] Its metropolitan sphere extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea ; overseas territories include french Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the french West Indies, and several islands in Oceania and the indian Ocean. Due to its respective coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic partition in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra and Spain in Europe, arsenic well as the Netherlands, Suriname and Brazil in the Americas. Its eighteen integral regions ( five of which are oversea ) span a blend area of 643,801 km2 ( 248,573 sq secret intelligence service ) and over 67 million people ( as of May 2021 ). [ 13 ] France is a unitary semi-presidential democracy with its capital in Paris, the country ‘s largest city and main cultural and commercial center ; other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice. Inhabited since the Palaeolithic era, the territory of Metropolitan France was settled by Celtic tribes known as Gauls during the Iron Age. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture that laid the basis of the french language. The Germanic Franks formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France in 987. In the High Middle Ages, France was a herculean but highly decentralize feudal kingdom. Philip II successfully strengthened royal exponent and defeated his rivals to double the size of the crown lands ; by the end of his reign, France had emerged as the most herculean state of matter in Europe. From the mid-14th to the mid-15th hundred, France was plunged into a series of dynastic conflicts involving England, jointly known as the Hundred Years ‘ War, and a clear-cut french identity emerged as a solution. The french Renaissance saw art and culture brandish, conflict with the House of Habsburg, and the administration of a global colonial empire, which by the twentieth century would become the second-largest in the global. [ 14 ] The second one-half of the sixteenth hundred was dominated by religious civil wars between Catholics and Huguenots that hard weakened the area. France again emerged as Europe ‘s dominant ability in the seventeenth hundred under Louis XIV following the Thirty Years ‘ War. [ 15 ] Inadequate economic policies, inequitable taxes and patronize wars ( notably a defeat in the Seven Years ‘ War and dearly-won affair in the American War of Independence ), left the kingdom in a precarious economic situation by the end of the eighteenth hundred. This precipitated the french Revolution of 1789, which overthrew the Ancien Régime and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which expresses the nation ‘s ideals to this day. France reached its political and military zenith in the early nineteenth century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating much of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. The french Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars shaped the path of european and world history. The break down of the empire initiated a period of proportional descent, in which France endured a disruptive sequence of governments until the establish of the french Third Republic during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. subsequent decades saw a period of optimism, cultural and scientific thrive, adenine well as economic prosperity known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the major participants of World War I, from which it emerged victorious at capital human and economic cost. It was among the Allied powers of World War II, but was soon occupied by the Axis in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, the ephemeral Fourth Republic was established and late dissolved in the path of the Algerian War. The current Fifth Republic was formed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most french colonies became freelancer in the 1960s, with the majority retaining conclusion economic and military ties with France. France retains its centuries-long condition as a ball-shaped concentrate of art, skill and doctrine. It hosts the fifth-largest act of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the world ‘s ahead tourist address, receiving over 89 million alien visitors in 2018. [ 16 ] France is a develop state with the universe ‘s seventh-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by PPP ; in terms of aggregate family wealth, it ranks fourth in the worldly concern. [ 17 ] France performs good in external rankings of department of education, health worry, life sentence anticipation and human development. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] It remains a capital baron in global affairs, [ 20 ] being one of the five permanent wave members of the United Nations Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon country. France is a initiation and leading member of the European Union and the Eurozone, [ 21 ] angstrom well as a samara member of the Group of Seven, North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD ) and La Francophonie .

etymology and pronunciation

in the first place applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or “ region of the Franks “. [ 22 ] Modern France is inactive named nowadays Francia in italian and spanish, while Frankreich in german, Frankrijk in Dutch and Frankrike in Swedish all mean “ Land/realm of the Franks ”. The name of the Franks is related to the English discussion frank ( “ free ” ) : the latter stems from the Old French franc ( “ free, lord, sincere ” ), ultimately from Medieval Latin francus ( “ free, excuse from service ; freeman, Frank ” ), a abstraction of the tribal mention that emerged as a Late Latin borrow of the restore Frankish endonym *Frank. [ 23 ] [ 24 ] It has been suggested that the meaning “ loose ” was adopted because, after the seduction of Gaul, alone Franks were spare of taxation, [ 25 ] or more generally because they had the condition of freemen in contrast to servants or slaves. [ 24 ] The etymology of *Frank is unsealed. It is traditionally derived from the Proto-Germanic give voice * frankōn, which translates as “ javelin ” or “ spear ” ( the throwing ax of the Franks was known as the francisca ), [ 26 ] although these weapons may have been named because of their manipulation by the Franks, not the other way around. [ 24 ] In English, ‘France ‘ is pronounced FRANSS in american English and FRAHNSS or FRANSS in british English. The pronunciation with is largely confined to accents with the trap-bath split such as Received Pronunciation, though it can be besides heard in some other dialects such as Cardiff English, in which is in free variation with. [ 27 ] [ 28 ]

history

Prehistory ( before the sixth century BC )

[29] One of the Lascaux paintings : a sawhorse – approximately 17,000 BC. Lascaux is celebrated for its “ exceptionally detailed depictions of humans and animals ”. The oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago. [ 30 ] Over the ensuing millennium, humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by respective frigid periods. early on hominids led a mobile hunter-gatherer life. [ 30 ] France has a large numeral of decorate caves from the upper Palaeolithic earned run average, including one of the most celebrated and best-preserved, Lascaux [ 30 ] ( approximately 18,000 BC ). At the end of the final arctic period ( 10,000 BC ), the climate became milder ; [ 30 ] from approximately 7,000 BC, this partially of Western Europe entered the Neolithic era and its inhabitants became sedentary. After impregnable demographic and agrarian development between the 4th and 3rd millennium, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium, initially working gold, copper and bronze, arsenic good as later iron. [ 31 ] France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptionally dense Carnac stones site ( approximately 3,300 BC ) .

Antiquity ( sixth century BC–5th century AD )

In 600 BC, Ionian Greeks from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia ( contemporary Marseille ), on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This makes it France ‘s oldest city. [ 32 ] [ 33 ] At the same time, some Gallic Celtic tribes penetrated parts of Eastern and Northern France, gradually spreading through the rest of the state between the 5th and 3rd century BC. [ 34 ] The concept of Gaul emerged during this period, corresponding to the territories of Celtic settlement ranging between the Rhine, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. The borders of mod France approximately correspond to ancient Gaul, which was inhabited by Celtic Gauls. Gaul was then a golden area, of which the southernmost partially was heavy discipline to Greek and Roman cultural and economic influences .
Around 390 BC, the Gallic captain Brennus and his troops made their means to Italy through the Alps, defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Allia, and besieged and ransomed Rome. [ 35 ] The Gallic invasion left Rome weakened, and the Gauls continued to harass the region until 345 BC when they entered into a formal peace treaty with Rome. [ 36 ] But the Romans and the Gauls would remain adversaries for the adjacent centuries, and the Gauls would continue to be a threat in Italy. [ 37 ] Around 125 BC, the south of Gaul was conquered by the Romans, who called this region Provincia Nostra ( “ Our Province ” ), which over time evolved into the name Provence in French. [ 38 ] Julius Caesar conquered the remainder of Gaul and overcame a rebellion carried out by the Gallic captain Vercingetorix in 52 BC. [ 39 ] Gaul was divided by Augustus into Roman provinces. [ 40 ] many cities were founded during the Gallo-Roman period, including Lugdunum ( contemporary Lyon ), which is considered the das kapital of the Gauls. [ 40 ] These cities were built in traditional Roman style, with a forum, a dramaturgy, a circus, an amphitheater and thermal baths. The Gauls shuffle with Roman settlers and finally adopted roman culture and Roman language ( Latin, from which the french terminology evolved ). The Roman polytheism merged with the Gallic paganism into the same syncretism. From the 250s to the 280s AD, Roman Gaul suffered a serious crisis with its fortify borders being attacked on several occasions by barbarians. [ 41 ] Nevertheless, the site improved in the first half of the fourth century, which was a period of revival and prosperity for Roman Gaul. [ 42 ] In 312, Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity. Subsequently, Christians, who had been persecuted until then, increased quickly across the stallion Roman Empire. [ 43 ] But, from the get down of the fifth century, the barbarian Invasions resumed. [ 44 ] Teutonic tribe invaded the region from contemporary Germany, the Visigoths fall in the southwest, the Burgundians along the Rhine River Valley, and the Franks ( from whom the french take their name ) in the union. [ 45 ]

early Middle Ages ( 5th–10th hundred )

frankish expansion from 481 to 870 At the end of the Antiquity menstruation, ancient Gaul was divided into respective Germanic kingdoms and a remaining Gallo-Roman territory, known as the Kingdom of Syagrius. simultaneously, celtic Britons, fleeing the Anglo-Saxon colony of Britain, settled the western part of Armorica. As a result, the Armorican peninsula was renamed Brittany, Celtic acculturation was revived and independent fiddling kingdoms arose in this region. The beginning leader to make himself king of all the Franks was Clovis I, who began his predominate in 481, routing the stopping point forces of the Roman governors of the state in 486. Clovis claimed that he would be baptized a Christian in the event of his victory against the Visigoths, which was said to have guaranteed the conflict. Clovis regained the southwesterly from the Visigoths, was baptized in 508, and made himself master of what is nowadays western Germany. Clovis I was the first gear Germanic conqueror after the fall of the Roman Empire to convert to Catholic Christianity, preferably than Arianism ; thus France was given the title “ Eldest daughter of the Church ” ( French: La fille aînée de l’Église ) by the papacy, [ 46 ] and french kings would be called “ the Most christian Kings of France ” ( Rex Christianissimus ) .
The Franks embraced the christian Gallo-Roman culture and ancient Gaul was finally renamed Francia ( “ Land of the Franks ” ). The Germanic Franks adopted Romanic languages, except in northern Gaul where Roman settlements were less dense and where Germanic languages emerged. Clovis made Paris his capital and established the Merovingian dynasty, but his kingdom would not survive his death. The Franks treated land strictly as a private possession and divided it among their heirs, so four kingdoms emerged from Clovis ‘s : Paris, Orléans, Soissons, and Rheims. The concluding merovingian kings lost ability to their mayors of the palace ( headway of family ). One mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, defeated an Islamic invasion of Gaul at the Battle of Tours ( 732 ) and earned deference and power within the frankish kingdoms. His son, Pepin the Short, seized the crown of Francia from the weakened Merovingians and founded the carolingian dynasty. Pepin ‘s son, Charlemagne, reunited the Frankish kingdoms and built a huge empire across western and Central Europe. Proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III and therefore establishing in earnest the french Government ‘s longtime diachronic association with the Catholic Church, [ 47 ] Charlemagne tried to revive the western Roman Empire and its cultural nobility. Charlemagne ‘s son, Louis I ( Emperor 814–840 ), kept the empire united ; however, this carolingian Empire would not survive his death. In 843, under the Treaty of Verdun, the empire was divided between Louis ‘ three sons, with East Francia going to Louis the german, Middle Francia to Lothair I, and West Francia to Charles the Bald. West Francia approximated the sphere occupied by, and was the precursor to, modern France. [ 48 ] During the 9th and 10th centuries, continually threatened by Viking invasions, France became a identical decentralized state : the nobility ‘s titles and lands became familial, and the authority of the king became more religious than secular and therefore was less effective and constantly challenged by knock-down noblemen. Thus was established feudalism in France. Over time, some of the king ‘s vassals would grow therefore knock-down that they often posed a threat to the king. For case, after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror added “ King of England ” to his titles, becoming both the vassal to ( as Duke of Normandy ) and the adequate of ( as king of England ) the king of France, creating recurring tensions .

high and late Middle Ages ( 10th–15th century )

The carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, was crowned King of the Franks. [ 49 ] His descendants—the Capetians, the House of Valois and the House of Bourbon —progressively unified the area through wars and dynastic inheritance into the Kingdom of France, which was amply declared in 1190 by Philip II of France ( Philippe Auguste ). late kings would expand their directly possessed domaine royal to cover over half of modern continental France by the fifteenth hundred, including most of the north, center and west of France. During this process, the royal assurance became more and more assertive, centered on a hierarchically conceived club distinguishing nobility, clergy, and commoners. The french nobility played a big role in most Crusades to restore christian entree to the Holy Land. french knights made up the majority of the sweetheart flow of reinforcements throughout the two-hundred-year cross of the Crusades, in such a fashion that the Arabs uniformly referred to the crusaders as Franj caring little whether they actually came from France. [ 50 ] The french Crusaders besides imported the french language into the Levant, making french the base of the lingua franca ( litt. “ frankish language ” ) of the Crusader states. [ 50 ] French knights besides made up the majority in both the Hospital and the Temple orders. The latter, in finical, held numerous properties throughout France and by the thirteenth hundred were the principal bankers for the french crown, until Philip IV annihilated the ordering in 1307. The albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the dissident Cathars in the southwestern area of contemporary France. In the end, the Cathars were exterminated and the autonomous County of Toulouse was annexed into the crown lands of France. [ 51 ] From the eleventh century, the House of Plantagenet, the rulers of the County of Anjou, succeeded in establishing its district over the surrounding provinces of Maine and Touraine, then increasingly built an “ empire ” that spanned from England to the Pyrenees and covering half of modern France. Tensions between the kingdom of France and the Plantagenet empire would final a hundred years, until Philip II of France conquered, between 1202 and 1214 most of the continental possessions of the empire, leaving England and Aquitaine to the Plantagenets. Following the Battle of Bouvines. Charles IV the Fair died without an successor in 1328. [ 52 ] Under the rules of the Salic law the crown of France could not pass to a woman nor could the line of kingship pass through the female trace. [ 52 ] consequently, the crown passed to Philip of Valois, preferably than through the female line to Edward of Plantagenet, who would soon become Edward III of England. During the reign of Philip of Valois, the french monarchy reached the acme of its chivalric power. [ 52 ] however Philip ‘s seat on the enthrone was contested by Edward III of England in 1337, and England and France entered the fitful Hundred Years ‘ War. [ 53 ] The exact boundaries changed greatly with time, but landholdings inside France by the english Kings remained extensive for decades. With charismatic leaders, such as Joan of Arc and La Hire, strong french counterattacks won back most english continental territories. Like the rest of Europe, France was struck by the Black Death ; half of the 17 million population of France died. [ 54 ] [ 55 ]

early modern period ( 15th century–1789 )

The french Renaissance saw a outstanding cultural development and the first standardization of the french terminology, which would become the official lyric of France and the linguistic process of Europe ‘s nobility. It besides saw a long set of wars, known as the italian Wars, between France and the House of Habsburg. french explorers, such as Jacques Cartier or Samuel de Champlain, claimed lands in the Americas for France, paving the room for the expansion of the First French colonial empire. The rise of Protestantism in Europe led France to a civil war known as the french Wars of Religion, where, in the most ill-famed incident, thousands of Huguenots were murdered in the St. Bartholomew ‘s Day slaughter of 1572. [ 56 ] The Wars of Religion were ended by Henry IV ‘s Edict of Nantes, which granted some freedom of religion to the Huguenots. spanish troops, the terror of Western Europe, [ 57 ] assisted the Catholic side during the Wars of Religion in 1589–1594, and invade northern France in 1597 ; after some skirmish in the 1620s and 1630s, Spain and France returned to all-out war between 1635 and 1659. The war cost France 300,000 casualties. [ 58 ] Under Louis XIII, the energetic Cardinal Richelieu promoted the centralization of the state and reinforced the royal power by disarming domestic power holders in the 1620s. He systematically destroyed castles of defiant lords and denounced the use of private violence ( duelling, carrying weapons and maintaining secret armies ). By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu established “ the imperial monopoly of force ” as the doctrine. [ 59 ] During Louis XIV ‘s minority and the regency of Queen Anne and Cardinal Mazarin, a menstruation of trouble oneself known as the Fronde occurred in France. This rebellion was driven by the great feudal lords and sovereign courts as a chemical reaction to the lift of royal absolute office in France .
The monarchy reached its acme during the seventeenth century and the reign of Louis XIV ( 1643–1715 ). By turning powerful feudal lords into courtiers at the Palace of Versailles, Louis XIV ‘s personal power became undisputed. Remembered for his numerous wars, he made France the leading european power. France became the most populous nation in Europe and had frightful influence over european politics, economy, and culture. french became the most-used lyric in delicacy, skill, literature and international affairs, and remained so until the twentieth century. [ 60 ] France obtained many oversea possessions in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Louis XIV besides revoked the Edict of Nantes, forcing thousands of Huguenots into exile. Under the wars of Louis XV ( r. 1715–1774 ), France lost New France and most of its indian possessions after its get the better of in the Seven Years ‘ War ( 1756–1763 ). Its european territory kept growing, however, with celebrated acquisitions such as Lorraine ( 1766 ) and Corsica ( 1770 ). An unpopular king, Louis XV ‘s weak rule, his ill-advised fiscal, political and military decisions – angstrom well as the orgy of his court– discredited the monarchy, which arguably paved the room for the french Revolution 15 years after his death. [ 61 ] [ 62 ] Louis XVI ( r. 1774–1793 ), actively supported the Americans with money, fleets and armies, helping them win independence from Great Britain. France gained revenge but spent so heavily that the government verged on bankruptcy—a factor that contributed to the french Revolution. Much of the Enlightenment occurred in French intellectual circles, and major scientific discovery and inventions, such as the discovery of oxygen ( 1778 ) and the first hot air balloon carrying passengers ( 1783 ), were achieved by french scientists. french explorers, such as Bougainville and Lapérouse, took part in the voyages of scientific exploration through maritime expeditions around the ball. The Enlightenment philosophy, in which reason is advocated as the basal beginning for authenticity, undermined the power of and support for the monarchy and besides was a factor in the french Revolution .

rotatory France ( 1789–1799 )

Ouverture des États généraux à Versailles, 5 mai 1789 by by Auguste Couder Facing fiscal troubles, King Louis XVI summoned the Estates-General ( gathering the three Estates of the region ) in May 1789 to propose solutions to his government. As it came to an blind alley, the representatives of the Third Estate formed into a National Assembly, signalling the outbreak of the french Revolution. Fearing that the king would suppress the newly created National Assembly, insurgents stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789, a date which would become France ‘s National Day. In early August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished the privileges of the nobility such as personal serfdom and single hunt rights. Through the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ( 27 August 1789 ) France established fundamental rights for men. The contract affirms “ the natural and imprescriptible rights of man ” to “ liberty, property, security and underground to oppression ”. Freedom of speech and press were declared, and arbitrary arrests were outlawed. It called for the destruction of aristocratic privileges and proclaimed freedom and equal rights for all men, vitamin a well as access to public office based on talent preferably than give birth. In November 1789, the Assembly decided to nationalise and sell all property of the Catholic Church which had been the largest landowner in the nation. In July 1790, a Civil Constitution of the Clergy reorganized the french Catholic Church, cancelling the assurance of the Church to levy taxes, et cetera. This fueled much discontent in parts of France, which would contribute to the civil war breaking out some years belated. While King Louis XVI still enjoyed popularity among the population, his black flight to Varennes ( June 1791 ) seemed to justify rumor he had tied his hopes of political salvation to the prospects of foreign invasion. His credibility was so profoundly cave that the abolition of the monarchy and establishment of a republic became an increasing hypothesis. In August 1791, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia in the Declaration of Pillnitz threatened revolutionary France to intervene by force out of arms to restore the french absolute monarchy. In September 1791, the National Constituent assembly forced King Louis XVI to accept the french Constitution of 1791, therefore turning the french absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. In the newly established Legislative Assembly ( October 1791 ), hostility developed and deepened between a group, late called the ‘ Girondins ‘, who favoured war with Austria and Prussia, and a group belated called ‘ Montagnards ‘ or ‘ Jacobins ‘, who opposed such a war. A majority in the forum in 1792 however saw a war with Austria and Prussia as a luck to boost the popularity of the revolutionist government and thought that France would win a war against those gather monarchies. On 20 April 1792, therefore, they declared war on Austria .
On 10 August 1792, an angry crowd threatened the palace of King Louis XVI, who took safety in the Legislative Assembly. [ 63 ] [ 64 ] A prussian Army invaded France late in August 1792. In early September, Parisians, infuriated by the prussian Army capture Verdun and counter-revolutionary uprisings in the west of France, murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners by raiding the parisian prisons. The assembly and the Paris City Council seemed ineffective to stop that bloodshed. [ 63 ] [ 65 ] The National Convention, chosen in the foremost elections under male universal right to vote, [ 63 ] on 20 September 1792 succeeded the Legislative Assembly and on 21 September abolished the monarchy by proclaiming the french First Republic. Ex-King Louis XVI was convicted of treason and guillotined in January 1793. France had declared war on Great Britain and the Dutch Republic in November 1792 and did the like on Spain in March 1793 ; in the spring of 1793, Austria and Prussia invaded France ; in March, France created a “ sister republic “ in the “ Republic of Mainz “, and kept it under master. besides in March 1793, the civil war of the Vendée against Paris started, evoked by both the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 and the nationally united states army conscription early 1793 ; elsewhere in France rebellion was brewing excessively. A factionalist feud in the National Convention, smouldering always since October 1791, came to a climax with the group of the ‘ Girondins ‘ on 2 June 1793 being forced to resign and leave the convention. The counter-revolution, begun in March 1793 in the Vendée, by July had spread to Brittany, Normandy, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulon, and Lyon. Paris ‘ Convention politics between October and December 1793 with beastly measures managed to subdue most inner uprisings, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. Some historians consider the civil war to have lasted until 1796 with a price of possibly 450,000 lives. [ 66 ] [ 67 ] By the end of 1793 the allies had been driven from France. France in February 1794 abolished bondage in its american colonies, but would reintroduce it late. political disagreements and hostility in the National Convention between October 1793 and July 1794 reached unprecedented levels, leading to dozens of Convention members being sentenced to death and guillotined. meanwhile, France ‘s external wars in 1794 were going comfortable, for exemplar in Belgium. In 1795, the government seemed to return to indifference towards the desires and needs of the lower classes concerning freedom of ( Catholic ) religion and fair distribution of food. Until 1799, politicians, apart from inventing a newly parliamentary system ( the ‘ Directory ‘ ), busied themselves with dissuading the people from Catholicism and from royalism .

Napoleon and nineteenth century ( 1799–1914 )

Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the Republic in 1799 becoming First Consul and late Emperor of the french Empire ( 1804–1814 ; 1815 ). As a continuance of the wars sparked by the european monarchies against the french Republic, changing sets of european Coalitions declared wars on Napoleon ‘s Empire. His armies conquered most of continental Europe with swift victories such as the battles of Jena-Auerstadt or Austerlitz. Members of the Bonaparte family were appointed as sovereign in some of the newly established kingdoms. [ 69 ] These victories led to the cosmopolitan expansion of french rotatory ideals and reforms, such as the metric unit organization, the Napoleonic Code and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. In June 1812, Napoleon attacked Russia, reaching Moscow. Thereafter his united states army disintegrated through issue problems, disease, russian attacks, and last winter. After the catastrophic Russian campaign, and the ensuing originate of european monarchies against his predominate, Napoleon was defeated and the Bourbon monarchy restored. About a million Frenchmen died during the Napoleonic Wars. [ 69 ] After his brief return from exile, Napoleon was finally defeated in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, the monarchy was re-established ( 1815–1830 ), with new built-in limitations. The discredited Bourbon dynasty was overthrown by the July Revolution of 1830, which established the built-in July Monarchy. In that year, french troops conquered Algeria, establishing the first colonial presence in Africa since Napoleon ‘s abortive invasion of Egypt in 1798. In 1848, general unrest led to the February Revolution and the end of the July Monarchy. The abolition of slavery and introduction of male universal right to vote, which were briefly enacted during the french Revolution, were re-enacted in 1848. In 1852, the president of the french Republic, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon I ‘s nephew, was proclaimed emperor of the Second Empire, as Napoleon III. He multiplied french interventions abroad, specially in Crimea, in Mexico and Italy which resulted in the annexation of the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Napoleon III was unseated following kill in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and his regimen was replaced by the Third Republic. By 1875, the french conquest of Algeria was complete and approximately 825,000 Algerians were killed as a result. [ 70 ]
France had colonial possessions, in diverse forms, since the begin of the seventeenth century, but in the 19th and twentieth centuries, its ball-shaped oversea colonial empire extended greatly and became the second-largest in the global behind the british Empire. Including metropolitan France, the sum area of state under french sovereignty about reached 13 million square kilometres in the 1920s and 1930s, 8.6 % of the world ‘s country. Known as the Belle Époque, the turn of the century was a period characterised by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity and technical, scientific and cultural innovations. In 1905, state secularism was formally established .

contemporary period ( 1914–present )

french Poilus posing with their war-torn ease up in 1917, during World War I France was invaded by Germany and defended by Great Britain to start World War I in August 1914. A full-bodied industrial area in the northeast was occupied. France and the Allies emerged triumphant against the central Powers at a fantastic human and material monetary value. World War I left 1.4 million french soldiers dead, 4 % of its population. [ 71 ] Between 27 and 30 % of soldiers conscripted from 1912 to 1915 were killed. [ 72 ] The interbellum years were marked by acute international tensions and a variety of social reforms introduced by the Popular Front government ( annual leave, eight-hour workdays, women in politics ). In 1940, France was invaded and cursorily defeated by Nazi Germany. France was divided into a german occupation partition in the union, an italian occupation zone in the southeasterly and an unoccupied territory, the rest of France, which consisted of the southerly french metropolitan district ( two-fifths of pre-war metropolitan France ) and the french empire, which included the two protectorates of french Tunisia and French Morocco, and french Algeria ; the Vichy government, a newly established authoritarian government collaborating with Germany, ruled the unoccupied district. release France, the government-in-exile led by Charles de Gaulle, was set up in London. [ full citation needed ] From 1942 to 1944, about 160,000 french citizens, including around 75,000 Jews, [ 73 ] [ 74 ] [ 75 ] were deported to end camps and concentration camps in Germany and occupied Poland. [ 76 ] In September 1943, Corsica was the first french metropolitan territory to liberate itself from the Axis. On 6 June 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy and in August they invaded Provence. Over the succeed year the Allies and the french Resistance emerged victorious over the Axis powers and french sovereignty was restored with the constitution of the probationary Government of the french Republic ( GPRF ). This interim government, established by de Gaulle, aimed to continue to wage war against Germany and to purge collaborators from function. It besides made several significant reforms ( right to vote extended to women, initiation of a social security system ) .
The GPRF laid the foundation for a new built-in order that resulted in the Fourth Republic, which saw outstanding economic growth ( les Trente Glorieuses ). France was one of the founding members of NATO ( 1949 ). France attempted to regain control of french Indochina but was defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954 at the climactic Battle of Dien Bien Phu. alone months later, France faced another anti-colonialist conflict in Algeria. The taxonomic agony and repression, a well as the extrajudicial killings that were perpetrated to keep control condition of Algeria, then treated as an integral depart of France and home plate to over one million european settlers, [ 77 ] [ 78 ] wracked the nation and about led to a coup and civil war. [ 79 ] In 1958, the decrepit and mentally ill Fourth Republic gave way to the Fifth Republic, which included a strengthen Presidency. [ 80 ] In the latter function, Charles de Gaulle managed to keep the nation together while taking steps to end the Algerian War. The war was concluded with the Évian Accords in 1962 that led to algerian independence. The algerian independence came at a high price : namely, the large bell on the algerian population. It resulted in half million to a million deaths and over 2 million internally preempt Algerians. [ 81 ] [ 82 ] [ 83 ] A trace of the colonial empire are the french oversea departments and territories .
In the context of the Cold War, De Gaulle pursued a policy of “ national independence ” towards the Western and Eastern bloc. To this end, he withdrew from NATO ‘s military integrated command ( while remaining in the NATO alliance itself ), launched a nuclear development program and made France the fourth nuclear office. He restored cordial Franco-German relations to create a european counterweight between the American and soviet spheres of influence. however, he opposed any development of a supranational Europe, favouring a Europe of sovereign nations. In the wake of the series of worldwide protests of 1968, the rebellion of May 1968 had an enormous social affect. In France, it was the watershed here and now when a conservative moral ideal ( religion, patriotism, respect for assurance ) shifted towards a more liberal moral ideal ( secularism, individualism, sexual rotation ). Although the disgust was a political failure ( as the Gaullist party emerged even stronger than ahead ) it announced a rent between the french people and de Gaulle who resigned curtly after. [ 86 ] In the post-Gaullist era, France remained one of the most explicate economies in the world, but faced several economic crises that resulted in high gear unemployment rates and increasing public debt. In the deep twentieth and early on twenty-first centuries France has been at the forefront of the exploitation of a supranational European Union, notably by signing the Maastricht Treaty ( which created the European Union ) in 1992, establishing the Eurozone in 1999 and signing the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. [ 87 ] France has besides gradually but in full reintegrated into NATO and has since participated in most NATO sponsored wars. [ 88 ]
Since the nineteenth hundred, France has received many immigrants. These have been largely male foreign workers from european Catholic countries who broadly returned home plate when not employed. [ 89 ] During the 1970s France faced economic crisis and allowed new immigrants ( by and large from the Maghreb ) [ 89 ] to permanently settle in France with their families and to acquire french citizenship. It resulted in hundreds of thousands of Muslims ( particularly in the larger cities ) living in subsidized public housing and suffering from identical high unemployment rates. [ 90 ] Simultaneously France renounced the assimilation of immigrants, where they were expected to adhere to french traditional values and cultural norms. They were encouraged to retain their classifiable cultures and traditions and required merely to integrate. [ 91 ] Since the 1995 Paris Métro and RER bombings, France has been sporadically targeted by Islamist organisations, notably the Charlie Hebdo approach in January 2015 which provoked the largest populace rallies in french history, gathering 4.4 million people, [ 92 ] [ 93 ] the November 2015 Paris attacks which resulted in 130 deaths, the deadliest attack on french territory since World War II [ 94 ] [ 95 ] and the deadly in the European Union since the Madrid train bombings in 2004, [ 96 ] american samoa well as the 2016 Nice truck attack, which caused 87 deaths during Bastille Day celebrations. Opération Chammal, France ‘s military efforts to contain ISIS, killed over 1,000 ISIS troops between 2014 and 2015. [ 97 ] [ 98 ]

geography

placement and borders

A relief map of Metropolitan France, showing cities with over 100,000 inhabitants Mont Blanc, the highest summit in Western Europe, marks the border with Italy. The huge majority of France ‘s territory and population is situated in Western Europe and is called Metropolitan France, to distinguish it from the area ‘s respective abroad polities. It is bordered by the North Sea in the north, the English Channel in the northwest, the Atlantic Ocean in the west and the Mediterranean sea in the southeast. Its land borders consist of Belgium and Luxembourg in the northeast, Germany and Switzerland in the east, Italy and Monaco in the southeast, and Andorra and Spain in the south and southwest. Except for the northeastern, most of France ‘s farming borders are approximately delineated by natural boundaries and geographic features : to the south and southeast, the Pyrenees and the Alps and the Jura, respectively, and to the east, the Rhine river. due to its shape, France is frequently referred to as l’Hexagone ( “ The Hexagon “ ). metropolitan France includes assorted coastal islands, of which the largest is Corsica. Metropolitan France is situated largely between latitudes 41° and 51° N, and longitudes 6° W and 10° E, on the western boundary of Europe, and therefore lies within the northern temperate zone. Its continental partially covers about 1000 kilometer from north to south and from east to west. France has respective oversea regions across the world, which are organized as follows :
France has state borders with Brazil and Suriname via French Guiana and with the Kingdom of the Netherlands through the french parcel of Saint Martin. Metropolitan France covers 551,500 square kilometres ( 212,935 sq security service ), [ 99 ] the largest among european Union members. [ 21 ] France ‘s entire state sphere, with its oversea departments and territories ( excluding Adélie Land ), is 643,801 km2 ( 248,573 sq myocardial infarction ), 0.45 % of the total country area on Earth. France possesses a wide-eyed variety show of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges of the Alps in the southeast, the Massif Central in the south central and Pyrenees in the southwest. due to its numerous oversea departments and territories scattered across the planet, France possesses the second-largest Exclusive economic zone ( EEZ ) in the universe, covering 11,035,000 km2 ( 4,261,000 sq security service ), merely behind the EEZ of the United States, which covers 11,351,000 km2 ( 4,383,000 sq secret intelligence service ), but ahead of the EEZ of Australia, which covers 8,148,250 km2 ( 3,146,000 sq nautical mile ). Its EEZ covers approximately 8 % of the total surface of all the EEZs of the world .

Geology, topography and hydrography

Metropolitan France has a wide kind of topographical sets and natural landscapes. large parts of the current territory of France were raised during several tectonic episodes like the Hercynian elate in the Paleozoic Era, during which the Armorican Massif, the Massif Central, the Morvan, the Vosges and Ardennes ranges and the island of Corsica were formed. These massif specify several sedimentary basins such as the Aquitaine basin in the southwest and the Paris river basin in the north, the latter including several areas of particularly fertile ground such as the silt beds of Beauce and Brie. diverse routes of natural passage, such as the Rhône Valley, allow slowly communication. The Alpine, Pyrenean and Jura mountains are much younger and have less eroded forms. At 4,810.45 metres ( 15,782 foot ) [ 100 ] above ocean flat, Mont Blanc, located in the Alps on the french and italian bound, is the highest point in Western Europe. Although 60 % of municipalities are classified as having seismic risks, these risks remain control .
Reed bed on the Gironde estuary, the largest estuary in Western Europe The coastlines offer contrasting landscapes : mountain ranges along the french Riviera, coastal cliffs such as the Côte d’Albâtre, and wide arenaceous plains in the Languedoc. Corsica lies off the Mediterranean coast. France has an extensive river system consisting of the four major rivers Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Rhône and their tributaries, whose compound catchment includes over 62 % of the metropolitan territory. The Rhône divides the Massif Central from the Alps and flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the Camargue. The Garonne meets the Dordogne fair after Bordeaux, forming the Gironde estuary, the largest estuary in Western Europe which after approximately 100 kilometres ( 62 nautical mile ) empties into the Atlantic Ocean. [ 101 ] other body of water courses drain towards the Meuse and Rhine along the north-eastern borders. France has 11 million square kilometres ( 4.2×10^6 sq mi ) of marine waters within three oceans under its jurisdiction, of which 97 % are overseas .

climate

The french metropolitan territory is relatively large, so the climate is not uniform, giving resurrect to the be climate nuances : • The hot-summer mediterranean climate ( Csa ) is found along the Gulf of Lion. Summers are hot and dry, while winters are meek and wet. Cities affected by this climate : Arles, Avignon, Fréjus, Hyères, Marseille, Menton, Montpellier, Nice, Perpignan, Toulon. • The warm-summer mediterranean climate ( Csb ) is found in the northern share of Brittany. Summers are affectionate and dry, while winters are cool and besotted. Cities affected by this climate : Belle Île, Saint-Brieuc. • The humid subtropical climate ( Cfa ) is found in the Garonne and Rhône ‘s inland plains. Summers are hot and wet, while winters are cool and muffle. Cities affected by this climate : Albi, Carcassonne, Lyon, Orange, Toulouse, Valence. • The oceanic climate ( Cfb ) is found around the coasts of the Bay of Biscay, and a short snatch inland. Summers are pleasantly warm and wet, while winters are cool and damp. Cities affected by this climate : Amiens, Biarritz, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, Dunkirk, Lille, Nantes, Orléans, Paris, Reims, Tours. • The degrade oceanic climate ( degraded- Cfb ) is found in the inside plains and in the intra-alpine valleys, far from the ocean ( or ocean ). Summers are hot and wet, while winters are cold and blue. Cities affected by this climate : Annecy, Besançon, Bourges, Chambéry, Clermont-Ferrand, Colmar, Dijon, Grenoble, Langres, Metz, Mulhouse, Nancy, Strasbourg. • The alpestrine oceanic climate ( Cfc ) is found at the animal foot of all the mountainous regions of France. Summers are short, cool and wet, while winters are reasonably cold and damp. No major cities are affected by this climate. • The warm-summer mediterranean continental climate ( Dsb ) is found in all the cragged regions of southerly France between 700 and 1,400 metres a.s.l. Summers are pleasantly strong and dry, while winters are very cold and snow-white. City affected by this climate : Barcelonnette. • The cool-summer mediterranean continental climate ( Dsc ) is found in all the cragged regions of southerly France between 1,400 and 2,100 metres a.s.l. Summers are cool, short and dry, while winters are very cold and snow-white. place affected by this climate : Isola 2000. • The warm-summer humid continental climate ( Dfb ) is found in all the cragged regions of the Northern half of France between 500 and 1,000 metres a.s.l. Summers are pleasantly warm and wet, while winters are very cold and white. Cities affected by this climate : Chamonix, Mouthe. In January 1985, in Mouthe, the temperature has dropped under −41 °C. • The alpestrine climate ( Dfc ) is found in all the mountainous regions of the northern half of France between 1,000 and 2,000 metres a.s.l. Summers are cool, shortstop and wet, while winters are identical cold and snow-white. Places affected by this climate : Cauterets Courchevel, Alpe d’Huez, Les 2 Alpes, Peyragudes, Val-Thorens. • The alpine tundra climate ( ET ) is found in all the cragged regions of France, broadly above 2,000 or 2,500 metres a.s.l. Summers are chilly and wet, while winters are highly cold, long and white. Mountains affected by this climate : Aiguilles-Rouges, Aravis, the peak of Crêt de la neige ( rare, altitude 1,718 megabyte ) and the top of Grand-Ballon ( rare, altitude 1,423 m ). • The ice cap climate ( EF ) is found in all the mountainous regions of France that have a glacier. Summers are cold and wet, while winters are highly cold, long and white. Mountains affected by this climate : Aiguille du midi, Barre des Écrins, Belledonne, Grand-Casse, Mont Blanc ( 4,810 megabyte ), Pic du Midi de Bigorre. • In the overseas regions, there are three broad types of climate :
Climate variety in France includes above median heat. [ 102 ]

environment

Marine ( aristocratic ), regional ( fleeceable ) and national ( bolshevik ) parks in France ( 2019 ) France was one of the first countries to create an environment ministry, in 1971. [ 103 ] Although it is one of the most industrialize countries in the earth, France is ranked merely 19th by carbon paper dioxide emissions, behind less populous nations such as Canada or Australia. This is due to the nation ‘s heavy investment in nuclear power following the 1973 oil crisis, [ 104 ] which immediately accounts for 75 percentage of its electricity production [ 105 ] and results in less contamination. [ 106 ] [ 107 ] According to the 2018 Environmental Performance Index conducted by Yale and Columbia, France was the second-most environmentally-conscious nation in the world ( after Switzerland ), compared to tenth place in 2016 and 27th in 2014. [ 108 ] [ 109 ] Like all European Union state members, France agreed to cut carbon emissions by at least 20 % of 1990 levels by the year 2020, [ 110 ] compared to the United States plan to reduce emissions by 4 % of 1990 levels. [ 111 ] As of 2009, french carbon dioxide emissions per caput were lower than that of China ‘s. [ 112 ] The country was set to impose a carbon paper tax in 2009 at 17 euros per metric ton of carbon emitted, [ 113 ] which would have raised 4 billion euros of tax income annually. [ 114 ] however, the plan was abandoned due to fears of burdening french businesses. [ 115 ] Forests account for 31 percentage of France ‘s down area—the fourth-highest proportion in Europe—representing an addition of 7 percentage since 1990. [ 116 ] [ 117 ] [ 118 ] french forests are some of the most diverse in Europe, comprising more than 140 species of trees. [ 119 ] France had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 4.52/10, ranking it 123rd globally out of 172 countries. [ 120 ] There are nine national parks [ 121 ] and 46 natural parks in France, [ 122 ] with the government planning to convert 20 % of its Exclusive economic zone into a Marine protected area by 2020. [ 123 ] A regional nature park [ 124 ] ( french : parc naturel régional or PNR ) is a public institution in France between local authorities and the national government covering an populate rural area of outstanding smasher, to protect the scenery and inheritance arsenic well as setting up sustainable economic development in the area. [ 125 ] A PNR sets goals and guidelines for managed human inhabitancy, sustainable economic development and protection of the natural environment based on each park ‘s unique landscape and inheritance. The parks foster ecological research programs and public education in the natural sciences. [ 126 ] As of 2019 there are 54 PNRs in France. [ 127 ]

administrative divisions

The french Republic is divided into 18 regions ( located in Europe and overseas ), five abroad collectivities, one oversea territory, one special collectivity – New Caledonia and one uninhabited island directly under the authority of the Minister of Overseas France – Clipperton .

Regions

Since 2016, France is chiefly divided into 18 administrative regions : 13 regions in metropolitan France ( including the territorial collectivity of Corsica ), [ 128 ] and five located abroad. [ 99 ] The regions are foster subdivided into 101 departments, [ 129 ] which are numbered chiefly alphabetically. This number is used in postal codes and was once used on fomite number plates. Among the 101 departments of France, five ( french Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, and Réunion ) are in overseas regions ( ROMs ) that are besides simultaneously oversea departments ( DOMs ), enjoy precisely the like status as metropolitan departments and are an built-in function of the European Union. The 101 departments are subdivided into 335 arrondissements, which are, in turn, subdivided into 2,054 cantons. [ 130 ] These cantons are then divided into 36,658 communes, which are municipalities with an elected municipal council. [ 130 ] Three communes—Paris, Lyon and Marseille—are subdivided into 45 municipal arrondissements. The regions, departments and communes are all known as territorial collectivities, meaning they possess local assemblies american samoa good as an administrator. Arrondissements and cantons are merely administrative divisions. however, this was not always the lawsuit. Until 1940, the arrondissements were territorial collectivities with an elected fabrication, but these were suspended by the Vichy government and decidedly abolished by the Fourth Republic in 1946 .

oversea territories and collectivities

In addition to the 18 regions and 101 departments, the french Republic has five oversea collectivities ( french Polynesia, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna ), one sui generis collectivity ( New Caledonia ), one oversea territory ( french Southern and Antarctic Lands ), and one island possession in the Pacific Ocean ( Clipperton Island ). overseas collectivities and territories form part of the french Republic, but do not form partially of the European Union or its fiscal sphere ( with the exception of St. Bartelemy, which seceded from Guadeloupe in 2007 ). The Pacific Collectivities ( COMs ) of french Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and New Caledonia continue to use the CFP franc [ 131 ] whose value is strictly linked to that of the euro. In contrast, the five oversea regions used the french franc and now use the euro. [ 132 ]
The lands making up the french Republic, shown at the lapp geographic scale

Government and politics

politics

France is congressman democracy organised as a unitary, semi-presidential democracy. [ 133 ] As one of the earliest republics of the modern world, democratic traditions and values are deeply rooted in french culture, identity and politics. [ 134 ] The Constitution of the Fifth Republic was approved by referendum on 28 September 1958, establishing a framework consist of executive, legislative and discriminative branches. [ 135 ] It sought to address the instability of the Third and Fourth Republics by combining elements of both parliamentary and presidential systems, whilst greatly strengthening the authority of the executive relative to the legislature. [ 134 ]
official logo of the french Republic The executive branch has two leaders. The President of the Republic, presently Emmanuel Macron, is the head of state, elected directly by universal adult right to vote for a five-year term. [ 136 ] The Prime Minister, presently Jean Castex, is the head of politics, appointed by the President of the Republic to lead the Government of France. The President has the exponent to dissolve Parliament or circumvent it by submitting referendums directly to the people ; the President besides appoints judges and civil servants, negotiates and ratifies international agreements, vitamin a well equally serves as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The Prime Minister determines public policy and oversees the civil serve, with an emphasis on domestic matters. [ 137 ]
The National Assembly is the lower house of the french Parliament. The legislature consists of the french Parliament, a bicameral body comprising a lower house, the National Assembly ( Assemblée nationale ) and an upper sign of the zodiac, the Senate. [ 138 ] Legislators in the National Assembly, known as députés, exemplify local constituencies and are directly elected for five-year terms. [ 139 ] The Assembly has the exponent to dismiss the politics by majority vote. Senators are chosen by an electoral college for six-year terms, with half the seats submitted to election every three years. [ 140 ] The Senate ‘s legislative powers are limited ; in the consequence of disagreement between the two chambers, the National Assembly has the final examination order. [ 141 ] The fantan is responsible for determining the rules and principles concerning most areas of law, political amnesty, and fiscal policy ; however, the government may draft the specific details concerning most laws. Until World War II, Radicals were a potent political force in France, embodied by the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party which was the most crucial party of the Third Republic. Since World War II, they were marginalized while french politics became characterized by two politically oppose groupings : one leftist, centred on the french section of the Workers ‘ International and its successor the Socialist Party ( since 1969 ) ; and the early rightist, centred on the Gaullist Party, whose name changed over clock to the Rally of the french People ( 1947 ), the Union of Democrats for the Republic ( 1958 ), the Rally for the Republic ( 1976 ), the Union for a popular Movement ( 2007 ) and The Republicans ( since 2015 ). In the 2017 presidential and legislative elections, radical centrist party En Marche ! became the dominant force, overtaking both Socialists and Republicans. The electorate is constitutionally empowered to vote on amendments passed by the Parliament and bills submitted by the president. Referendums have played a key role in shaping french politics and even alien policy ; voters have decided on such matters as Algeria ‘s independence, the election of the president of the united states by popular vote, the formation of the EU, and the reduction of presidential terminus limits. [ 142 ] Waning civic engagement has been a matter of rigorous public debate, with a majority of the public reportedly supporting mandate vote as a solution in 2019. however, at least as of 2017, voter outfit was 75 percentage during late elections, higher than the OECD modal of 68 percentage. [ 143 ]

police

France uses a civil legal system, wherein law arises chiefly from written statutes ; [ 99 ] judges are not to make police, but merely to interpret it ( though the amount of judicial interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to character police in a common jurisprudence system ). basic principles of the rule of police were laid in the Napoleonic Code ( which was, in plow, largely based on the royal law codified under Louis XIV ). In agreement with the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, law should only prohibit actions damaging to society. As Guy Canivet, first gear president of the Court of Cassation, wrote about the management of prisons : “ exemption is the rule, and its limitation is the exception ; any limitation of Freedom must be provided for by Law and must follow the principles of necessity and proportion. ” That is, Law should lay out prohibitions only if they are needed, and if the inconveniences caused by this restriction do not exceed the inconveniences that the prohibition is supposed to remedy .
french law is divided into two principal areas : individual law and populace jurisprudence. private jurisprudence includes, in detail, civil law and criminal law. public jurisprudence includes, in particular, administrative law and constitutional police. however, in practical terms, french police comprises three principal areas of law : civil law, criminal law, and administrative law. condemnable laws can only address the future and not the past ( condemnable ex post facto laws are prohibited ). [ 144 ] While administrative law is often a subcategory of civil police in many countries, it is completely separated in France and each consistency of law is headed by a specific supreme court : ordinary courts ( which handle criminal and civil litigation ) are headed by the Court of Cassation and administrative courts are headed by the Council of State. To be applicable, every law must be formally published in the Journal officiel de la République française. France does not recognise religious law as a motivation for the act of prohibitions ; it has long abolished profanation laws and sodomy laws ( the latter in 1791 ). however, “ offences against public decency “ ( contraires aux bonnes mœurs ) or disturbing public decree ( trouble à l’ordre public ) have been used to repress public expressions of homosexuality or street prostitution. Since 1999, civil unions for homosexual couples are permitted, and since 2013, same-sex marriage and LGBT adoption are legal. [ 145 ] Laws prohibiting discriminatory manner of speaking in the crush are equally old as 1881. Some consider hate speech laws in France to be excessively broad or hard, sabotage freedom of lecture. [ 146 ] France has laws against racism and anti-semitism, [ 147 ] while the 1990 Gayssot Act prohibits Holocaust denial. freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The 1905 french law on the separation of the Churches and the State is the footing for laïcité ( state secularism ) : the country does not formally recognize any religion, except in Alsace-Moselle. Nonetheless, it does recognize religious associations. The Parliament has listed many religious movements as dangerous cults since 1995, and has banned wearing blatant religious symbols in schools since 2004. In 2010, it banned the erosion of face-covering Islamic veils in populace ; human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described the law as discriminative towards Muslims. [ 148 ] [ 149 ] however, it is supported by most of the population. [ 150 ]

alien relations

La Francophonie,[151] which promotes values of [152] France has been a key member of this global organization since its inception in 1970. 88 states and governments are separate ofwhich promotes values of democracy multilingualism and cultural diversity France has been a key member of this ball-shaped organization since its origin in 1970. France is a initiation extremity of the United Nations and serves as one of the permanent wave members of the UN Security Council with veto rights. [ 153 ] In 2015, it was described as “ the best network state of matter in the earth ” due to its membership in more international institutions than any other state ; [ 154 ] these include the G7, World Trade Organization ( WTO ), [ 155 ] the Pacific Community ( SPC ) [ 156 ] and the indian Ocean Commission ( COI ). [ 157 ] It is an associate extremity of the Association of Caribbean States ( ACS ) [ 158 ] and a run member of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie ( OIF ) of 84 french-speaking countries. [ 159 ] As a significant hub for external relations, France has the third-largest fabrication of diplomatic missions, second alone to China and the United States, which are far more populous. It besides hosts the headquarters of respective international organisations, including the OECD, UNESCO, Interpol, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, and the OIF. [ 160 ] Postwar French extraneous policy has been largely shaped by membership of the European Union, of which it was a establish penis. Since the 1960s, France has developed close ties with reunified Germany to become the most influential driving storm of the EU. [ 161 ] In the 1960s, France sought to exclude the british from the european union process, [ 162 ] seeking to build its own standing in continental Europe. however, since 1904, France has maintained an “ Entente cordiale “ with the United Kingdom, and there has been a strengthening of links between the countries, particularly militarily .
The European Parliament in Strasbourg, near the margin with ( Germany ). France is a establish member of all EU institutions. France is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ( NATO ), but under President de Gaulle excluded itself from the articulation military command, in protest of the limited Relationship between the United States and Britain, and to preserve the independence of french foreign and security policies. Under Nicolas Sarkozy, France re-joined the NATO joint military dominate on 4 April 2009. [ 163 ] [ 164 ] [ 165 ] In the early 1990s, the area drew considerable criticism from other nations for its clandestine nuclear tests in french Polynesia. [ 166 ] France vigorously opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, [ 167 ] [ 168 ] straining bilateral relations with the United States [ 169 ] [ 170 ] and the United Kingdom. France retains impregnable political and economic determine in its early african colonies ( Françafrique ) [ 171 ] and has supplied economic help and troops for peacekeeping missions in Ivory Coast and Chad. [ 172 ] Recently, after the unilateral declaration of independence of Northern Mali by the Tuareg MNLA and the subsequent regional Northern Mali conflict with respective Islamist groups including Ansar Dine and MOJWA, France and early african states intervened to help the malian Army to retake control. In 2017, France was the populace ‘s fourth-largest donor of development help in absolute terms, behind the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. [ 173 ] This represents 0.43 % of its GNP, the 12th highest among the OECD. [ 174 ] Aid is provided by the governmental french Development Agency, which finances chiefly humanist projects in sub-saharan Africa, [ 175 ] with an stress on “ developing infrastructure, entree to health concern and education, the implementation of appropriate economic policies and the consolidation of the rule of law and democracy ”. [ 175 ]

military

The french Armed Forces ( Forces armées françaises ) are the military and paramilitary forces of France, under the President of the Republic as supreme commanding officer. They consist of the french Army ( Armée de Terre ), french Navy ( Marine Nationale, once called Armée de Mer ), the french Air and Space Force ( Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace ), and the Military Police called National Gendarmerie ( Gendarmerie nationale ), which besides fulfils civil police duties in the rural areas of France. together they are among the largest armed forces in the world and the largest in the EU. According to a 2018 learn by Crédit Suisse, the french Armed Forces are ranked as the world ‘s sixth-most mighty military, and the most powerful in Europe, alone behind Russia. [ 176 ] While the Gendarmerie is an built-in part of the french armed forces ( gendarmes are career soldiers ), and therefore under the horizon of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, it is operationally attached to the Ministry of the Interior vitamin a far as its civil patrol duties are concerned. When acting as general purpose police impel, the Gendarmerie encompasses the counter terrorist units of the Parachute Intervention Squadron of the National Gendarmerie ( Escadron Parachutiste d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale ), the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group ( Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale ), the Search Sections of the National Gendarmerie ( Sections de Recherche de la Gendarmerie Nationale ), responsible for criminal enquiries, and the Mobile Brigades of the National Gendarmerie ( Brigades mobiles de la Gendarmerie Nationale, or in abruptly Gendarmerie mobile ) which have the job to maintain public order. The adopt extra units are besides part of the Gendarmerie : the Republican Guard ( Garde républicaine ) which protects public buildings hosting major french institutions, the Maritime Gendarmerie ( Gendarmerie maritime ) serving as Coast Guard, the Provost Service ( Prévôté ), acting as the Military Police branch of the Gendarmerie .
adenine far as the french intelligence units are concerned, the Directorate-General for External Security ( Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure ) is considered to be a component of the Armed Forces under the authority of the Ministry of Defense. The early, the Central Directorate for Interior Intelligence ( Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur ) is a division of the National Police Force ( Direction générale de la Police Nationale ), and consequently reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior. There has been no national conscription since 1997. [ 177 ] France has a especial military corps, the french Foreign Legion, founded in 1830, which consists of foreign nationals from over 140 countries who are uncoerced to serve in the french Armed Forces and become french citizens after the end of their service period. The lone early countries having similar units are Spain ( the Spanish Foreign Legion, called Tercio, was founded in 1920 ) and Luxembourg ( foreigners can serve in the National Army provided they speak Luxembourgish ). France is a permanent penis of the Security Council of the UN, and a spot nuclear state since 1960. France has signed and ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty ( CTBT ) [ 178 ] and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. France ‘s annual military expending in 2018 was US $ 63.8 billion, or 2.3 % of its GDP, making it the fifth biggest military spender in the world after the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, and India. [ 179 ] french nuclear determent, ( once known as “ Force de Frappe “ ), relies on complete independence. The current french nuclear power consists of four Triomphant class submarines equipped with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. In addition to the submarine evanesce, it is estimated that France has about 60 ASMP medium-range air-to-surface missiles with nuclear warheads, [ 180 ] of which around 50 are deployed by the Air and Space Force using the Mirage 2000N long-range nuclear affect aircraft, while around 10 are deployed by the french Navy ‘s Super Étendard Modernisé ( SEM ) attack aircraft, which operate from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. The fresh Rafale F3 aircraft will gradually replace all Mirage 2000N and SEM in the nuclear strike character with the better ASMP-A projectile with a nuclear warhead. France has major military industries with one of the largest aerospace industries in the populace. [ 181 ] [ 182 ] Its industries have produced such equipment as the Rafale champion, the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, the Exocet missile and the Leclerc tank among others. Despite withdrawing from the Eurofighter stick out, France is actively investing in european joint projects such as the Eurocopter Tiger, multipurpose frigates, the UCAV demonstrator nerve cell and the Airbus A400M. France is a major arms seller, [ 183 ] [ 184 ] with most of its arsenal ‘s designs available for the export commercialize with the celebrated exception of nuclear-powered devices. France has systematically developed its cybersecurity capabilities, which are regularly ranked as some of the most robust of any state of the earth. [ 185 ] [ 186 ] The Bastille Day military parade held in Paris each 14 July for France ‘s home day, called Bastille Day in English-speaking countries ( referred to in France as Fête nationale ), is the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe. other smaller parades are organised across the country .

government finance

The Government of France has run a budget deficit each class since the early 1970s. As of 2016, french politics debt levels reached 2.2 trillion euros, the equivalent of 96.4 % of french GDP. [ 187 ] In late 2012, recognition rate agencies warned that growing french Government debt levels risked France ‘s AAA credit rate, raising the possibility of a future downgrade and subsequent higher adopt costs for the french authorities. [ 188 ] however, in July 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the french government issued 10-years bonds which had minus interest rates, for the first time in its history. [ 189 ] France besides possesses in 2020 the fourth-largest gold reserves in the world. [ 190 ]

economy

A proportional representation of France exports, 2019 France has a interracial economy characterised by a ample government involvement, diverse sectors, a skilled british labour party force and high invention. It is a member of the Group of Seven leading industrialized countries and an economic baron. For approximately two centuries, the french economy has systematically ranked among the ten largest globally ; it is presently the world ‘s ninth-largest by purchasing office parity bit, the seventh-largest by noun phrase GDP, and the second-largest in the EU by both metrics. [ 192 ] The french economy is highly diversified, though services dominate, representing two-thirds of both the work force and GDP. [ 193 ] The industrial sector accounts for a fifth of GDP and a like proportion of employment ; France is the third-biggest manufacture nation in Europe, behind Germany and Italy. Less than 2 percentage of GDP is generated by the primary sector, namely department of agriculture ; [ 194 ] however, France has one of the world ‘s most valuable agricultural sectors, and leads the European Union in agricultural production. [ 195 ] In 2018, France was the fifth-largest trade nation in the worldly concern and the second-largest in Europe, with the value of exports representing over a fifth of GDP. [ 196 ] Its membership in the Eurozone and the broader european Single Market facilitate access to capital, goods, services, and skilled labour. [ 197 ] Despite protectionist policies over certain industries, particularly in department of agriculture, France has generally pioneered free trade and commercial integration in Europe to enhance its economy. [ 198 ] [ 199 ] In 2019 it ranked first in Europe and 13th in the earth in Foreign Direct Investment, with european countries and the United States being run sources. [ 200 ] According to the Bank of France, the leading recipients of FDI were manufacturing, actual estate of the realm, finance and policy. [ 201 ] The Paris region has the highest concentration of multinational firms in Europe. [ 201 ] Under the doctrine of Dirigisme, the government historically played a major character in the economy ; policies such as indicative plan and nationalization are credited for contributing to three decades of unprecedented postwar economic growth known as Trente Glorieuses. At its top out in 1982, the public sector accounted for one-fifth of industrial use and over four-fifths of the credit marketplace. Beginning in the former twentieth century, France loosened regulations and express involvement in the economy, with most leading companies now being privately owned ; express ownership now dominates only transportation, defense mechanism and air. [ 202 ] Policies aimed at promoting economic dynamism and denationalization have improved France ‘s economic standing globally : it is among the universe ‘s 10 most innovative countries in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index, [ 203 ] and the 15th most competitive, according to the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report ( up two places from 2018 ). [ 204 ] According to the IMF, France ranked 30th in GDP per head, with roughly $ 45,000 per inhabitant. It placed 23rd in the Human Development Index, indicating very high human exploitation. public corruptness is among the lowest in the earth, with France ranking 12th on the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index. [ 205 ] [ 206 ] France is Europe ‘s second-largest spendthrift in research and development, at over two percentage of GDP ; globally, it ranks 12th. [ 207 ]
composing of the french economy ( GDP ) in 2016 by outgo character Financial services, banking and the indemnity sector are an crucial region of the economy. Three largest fiscal institutions hand in glove owned by their customers are located in France. [ 208 ] The Paris stock exchange ( french : La Bourse de Paris ) is one of the oldest in the world, created by Louis XV in 1724. [ 209 ] In 2000, it merged with counterparts in Amsterdam and Brussels to form Euronext, [ 210 ] which in 2007 merged with the New York stock certificate switch over to form NYSE Euronext, the world ‘s largest stock exchange. [ 210 ] Euronext Paris, the french arm of NYSE Euronext, is Europe ‘s second-largest stock substitution market, behind the London Stock Exchange. french companies have maintained key positions in the policy and banking industries : in 2019, AXA the populace ‘s third-largest insurance company by total nonbanking assets. [ 211 ] The leading french banks are BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, both rate among the exceed 10 largest banks by assets in a 2020 report by S & P Global Market Intelligence ; [ 212 ] the lapp source identified Société Générale and Groupe BPCE as the world ‘s 17th- and 19th-largest banks, respectively. [ 212 ]

agribusiness

France has historically been one of the populace ‘s dominant allele agricultural centers and remains a “ global agrarian powerhouse ”. [ 213 ] [ 214 ] Nicknamed “ the granary of the erstwhile continent ”, [ 215 ] its diverse climate, extensive tracts of fertile country, modern farming engineering, and EU subsidies had made it Europe ‘s run agrarian producer and exporter. [ 216 ] France accounts for one-fifth of the EU ‘s agricultural production and over one-third of its oilseeds, cereals, and wine ; [ 217 ] it is the worldly concern ‘s third-biggest exporter of agricultural products. [ 218 ]
France ‘s primary agricultural exports are wheat, poultry, dairy, gripe, pork, and internationally recognised processed foods. Rosé wines are primarily consumed within the country, but Champagne and Bordeaux wines are major exports with worldwide fame. EU farming subsidies to France have decreased in late years but still amounted to $ 8 billion in 2007. [ 219 ] That same year, France sold 33.4 billion euros of translate agrarian products. [ 220 ] France produces rummy via sugar cane-based distilleries chiefly located in oversea territories such as Martinique, Guadeloupe and La Réunion. proportional to other develop countries, farming is an significant sector of France ‘s economy : 3.8 % of the active population is employed in farming, whereas the total agri-food diligence made up 4.2 % of french GDP in 2005. [ 217 ]

tourism

The Eiffel Tower is the universe ‘s most-visited paid monument, an icon of both Paris and France.

With 89 million international tourist arrivals in 2018, [ 221 ] France is the world ‘s top tourist address, ahead of Spain ( 83 million ) and the United States ( 80 million ). however, it ranks third gear in tourism-derived income due to shorter duration of visits. [ 222 ] The most popular tourist sites include ( annual visitors ) : eiffel Tower ( 6.2 million ), Château de Versailles ( 2.8 million ), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle ( 2 million ), Pont du Gard ( 1.5 million ), Arc de Triomphe ( 1.2 million ), Mont Saint-Michel ( 1 million ), Sainte-Chapelle ( 683,000 ), Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg ( 549,000 ), Puy de Dôme ( 500,000 ), Musée Picasso ( 441,000 ), and Carcassonne ( 362,000 ). [ 223 ]

Paris area

France, specially Paris, has some of the world ‘s largest and most celebrated museums, including the Louvre, which is the most visit artwork museum in the world ( 5.7 million ), the Musée d’Orsay ( 2.1 million ), by and large devoted to Impressionism, the Musée de l’Orangerie ( 1.02 million ), which is home to eight big Water Lily murals by Claude Monet, ampere well as the Centre Georges Pompidou ( 1.2 million ), dedicated to contemporaneous art. Disneyland Paris is Europe ‘s most popular theme park, with 15 million combine visitors to the recourse ‘s Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park in 2009. [ 224 ]

french Riviera

With more than 10 millions tourists a year, the french Riviera ( french : Côte d’Azur ), in Southeast France, is the second leading tourist destination in the country, after the Paris region. [ 225 ] It benefits from 300 days of fair weather per year, 115 kilometres ( 71 secret intelligence service ) of coastline and beaches, 18 golf courses, 14 ski resorts and 3,000 restaurants. [ 226 ] : 31 Each class the Côte d’Azur hosts 50 % of the world ‘s superyacht flit. [ 226 ] : 66

Châteaux

With 6 millions tourists a year, the castles of the Loire Valley ( french : châteaux ) and the Loire Valley itself are the third base leadership tourist address in France ; [ 227 ] [ 228 ] this World Heritage site is noteworthy for its architectural inheritance, in its historic towns but in particular its castles, such as the Châteaux vitamin d ‘ Amboise, de Chambord, d ‘ Ussé, de Villandry, Chenonceau and Montsoreau. The Château de Chantilly, Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte, all three located near Paris, are besides visitor attractions .

other protected areas

France has 37 sites inscribed in UNESCO ‘s World Heritage List and features cities of high cultural interest, beaches and seaside resorts, ski resorts, arsenic well as rural regions that many enjoy for their smasher and repose ( green tourism ). Small and picturesque french villages are promoted through the association Les Plus Beaux Villages de France ( literally “ The Most beautiful Villages of France ” ). The “ remarkable Gardens “ label is a list of the over 200 gardens classified by the Ministry of Culture. This label is intended to protect and promote noteworthy gardens and parks. France attracts many religious pilgrims on their way to St. James, or to Lourdes, a township in the Hautes-Pyrénées that hosts several million visitors a class .

Energy

Électricité de France ( EDF ), the main electricity generation and distribution ship’s company in France, is besides one of the world ‘s largest producers of electricity. In 2018, it produced around 20 % of the European Union ‘s electricity, primarily from nuclear ability. [ 229 ] France is the smallest emitter of carbon dioxide among the G7, ascribable to its heavy investing in nuclear power. [ 230 ] As of 2016, 72 % of the nation ‘s electricity is generated by 58 nuclear power plants, the highest proportion in the world. [ 231 ] [ 232 ] due to its overwhelm reliance on nuclear office, renewable energies have seen relatively little growth compared to early western nation. however, hydroelectricity — provided by sources such as Eguzon decameter, Étang de Soulcem and Lac de Vouglans .

conveyance

France ‘s railway network, which stretches 29,473 kilometres ( 18,314 secret intelligence service ) as of 2008, [ 233 ] is the second most extensive in Western Europe after Germany. [ 234 ] It is operated by the SNCF, and high-speed trains include the Thalys, the Eurostar and TGV, which travels at 320 kilometers per hour ( 199 miles per hour ). [ 235 ] The Eurostar, along with the Eurotunnel Shuttle, connects with the United Kingdom through the Channel Tunnel. Rail connections exist to all other adjacent countries in Europe except Andorra. Intra-urban connections are besides well developed, with most major cities having underground or tramway services complementing bus services. There are approximately 1,027,183 kilometres ( 638,262 nautical mile ) of serviceable roadway in France, ranking it the most extensive network of the european celibate. [ 236 ] The Paris region is enveloped with the most dense network of roads and highways, which connect it with virtually all parts of the nation. french roads besides handle solid external traffic, connecting with cities in neighboring Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Andorra and Monaco. There is no annual registration tip or road tax ; however, use of the largely privately owned motorways is through tolls except in the vicinity of large communes. The new car market is dominated by domestic brands such as Renault, Peugeot and Citroën. [ 237 ] France possesses the Millau Viaduct, the world ‘s tallest bridge, [ 238 ] and has built many significant bridges such as the Pont de Normandie. Diesel and gasoline fuelled cars and lorries cause a large function of the country ‘s air befoulment and greenhouse accelerator emissions. [ 239 ] [ 240 ]
There are 464 airports in France. [ 99 ] Charles de Gaulle Airport, located in the vicinity of Paris, is the largest and busiest airport in the area, handling the huge majority of popular and commercial dealings and connecting Paris with virtually all major cities across the populace. Air France is the national carrier wave airline, although numerous private airline companies provide domestic and external change of location services. There are ten major ports in France, the largest of which is in Marseille, [ 241 ] which besides is the largest bordering the Mediterranean Sea. [ 242 ] [ 243 ] 12,261 kilometres ( 7,619 nautical mile ) of waterway transom France including the Canal du Midi, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean through the Garonne river. [ 99 ]

science and engineering

Since the Middle Ages, France has been a major contributor to scientific and technological accomplishment. Around the begin of the eleventh hundred, Pope Sylvester II, born Gerbert d’Aurillac, reintroduced the abacus and armillary sphere, and introduced Arabic numerals and clocks to Northern and Western Europe. [ 245 ] The University of Paris, founded in the mid-12th hundred, is still one of the most crucial universities in the western universe. [ 246 ] In the seventeenth century, mathematician René Descartes defined a method for the acquisition of scientific cognition, while Blaise Pascal became celebrated for his work on probability and fluid mechanics. They were both key figures of the Scientific Revolution, which blossomed in Europe during this time period. The Academy of Sciences was founded by Louis XIV to encourage and protect the spirit of french scientific research. It was at the vanguard of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is one of the earliest academies of sciences. The Age of Enlightenment was marked by the work of biologist Buffon and pharmacist Lavoisier, who discovered the character of oxygen in combustion, while Diderot and D’Alembert published the Encyclopédie, which aimed to give access to “ useful cognition ” to the people, a cognition that they can apply to their everyday biography. [ 247 ] With the Industrial Revolution, the nineteenth century saw outstanding scientific developments in France with scientists such as Augustin Fresnel, founder of modern optics, Sadi Carnot who laid the foundations of thermodynamics, and Louis Pasteur, a pioneer of microbiology. other eminent french scientists of the nineteenth century have their names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. celebrated french scientists of the twentieth century include the mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré ; physicists Henri Becquerel, Pierre and Marie Curie, who remain celebrated for their work on radiation ; physicist Paul Langevin ; and virologist Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of HIV AIDS. Hand transplant was developed in Lyon in 1998 by an international team that included Jean-Michel Dubernard, who subsequently performed the first successful bivalent hand transplant. [ 248 ] Telesurgery was developed by Jacques Marescaux and his team on 7 September 2001 across the Atlantic Ocean ( New-York-Strasbourg, Lindbergh Operation ). [ 249 ] A confront transplant was first done on 27 November 2005 by Dr. Bernard Devauchelle. [ 250 ] [ 251 ]
France was the fourth area to achieve nuclear capability [ 252 ] and has the third base largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the earth ; [ 253 ] it is besides a leader in civilian nuclear technology. [ 254 ] [ 255 ] [ 256 ] France was the one-third nation, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to launch its own space satellite, and the first to establish a commercial launch serve provider, Arianespace. France is a establish member of the european Space Agency ( ESA ), which is headquartered in Paris, and its ahead subscriber, providing over a quarter of its budget. ESA ‘s chief spaceport is based in french Guiana, while its main establish vehicle is the french Ariane 5. [ 257 ] [ 258 ] [ 259 ] France ‘s home outer space program, CNES, is the oldest, largest, and most active in Europe. France was ranked 12nd in the Global Innovation Index in 2020, astir from 16th in 2019. [ 260 ] [ 261 ] [ 262 ] [ 263 ] The European Airbus, formed partially from the french group Aérospatiale, is the earth ‘s largest airline manufacturer, designs and develops civil and military aircraft deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as communications systems, missiles, space rockets, helicopters, satellites, and related systems. France besides hosts major international inquiry instruments such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the Institut Laue–Langevin, and ITER, the latter being the world ‘s biggest mega project. It is besides a major extremity of CERN and owns Minatec, Europe ‘s leading nanotechnology research center. The SNCF, the french national dragoon company, has developed the TGV, a high-speed train which holds a series of universe speed records. The TGV has been the fastest wheeled train in commercial practice since reaching a travel rapidly of 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph) on 3 April 2007. [ 264 ] Western Europe is now serviced by a network of TGV lines. The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique ( CNRS ), the country research means, is the largest inquiry institute in Europe and among the most outstanding internationally ; it ranked fourth in the 2020 Nature Index for the parcel of articles published in scientific journals global. [ 265 ] According to the lapp index, France as a wholly had the sixth-highest plowshare of articles published in scientific journals. [ 266 ] As of 2018, 69 french people have been awarded a Nobel Prize [ 267 ] and 12 have received the Fields Medal. [ 268 ]

Demographics

Population concentration in France by arrondissement. The main urban areas are visible, notably the Paris ( center-north ), Lille ( north ), Marseille ( southeast ) and Lyon ( center-southeast ) urban areas. With an estimated May 2021 population of 67.413 million people, [ 269 ] France is the twentieth most populous area in the world, the third-most populous in Europe ( after Russia and Germany ), and the second most populous in the European Union ( after Germany ). France is an outlier among explicate countries, particularly in Europe, for its relatively high gear rate of natural population emergence : By birth rates alone, it was responsible for about all natural population growth in the European Union in 2006. [ 270 ] Between 2006 and 2016, France saw the second-highest overall increase in population in the EU and was one of only four EU countries where natural births accounted for most population growth. [ 271 ] This was the highest pace since the end of the child boom in 1973 and coincides with the advance of the total fertility rate from a nadir of 1.7 in 1994 to 2.0 in 2010. As of January 2021, the fertility rate declined slightly to 1.84 children per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1, and well below the high of 4.41 in 1800. [ 272 ] [ 273 ] [ 274 ] [ 275 ] France ‘s richness pace and crude birth rate however remain among the highest in the EU. however, like many build up nations, the french population is aging ; the average historic period is 41.7 years, while about a one-fifth of french people are 65 or over. [ 276 ] Average life anticipation at birth is 82.7 years, the 12th highest in the worldly concern. From 2006 to 2011, population growth averaged 0.6 percentage per year ; [ 277 ] since 2011, annual growth has been between 0.4 and 0.5 percentage annually. [ 278 ] Immigrants are major contributors to this swerve ; in 2010, 27 percentage of newborns in metropolitan France had at least one foreign-born rear and another 24 percentage had at least one parent born outside Europe ( excluding French oversea territories ). [ 279 ]

cultural groups

Most french people are of Celtic – Gallic lineage, with a significant admixture of Italic ( Romans ) and Germanic ( Franks ) groups reflecting centuries of respective migration and settlement. [ 280 ] Through the course of the Middle Ages, France incorporated versatile neighboring ethnic and linguistic groups, as evidenced by Breton elements in the west, Aquitanian in the southwest, scandinavian in the northwestern, Alemannic in the northeast, and Ligurian in the southeasterly. large-scale immigration over the last hundred and a half has led to a more multicultural society ; beginning with the french Revolution, and farther codified in the french Constitution of 1958, the government is prohibited from collecting data on ethnicity and ancestry ; most demographic information is drawn from secret sector organisations or academic institutions. In 2004, the Institut Montaign e estimated that within Metropolitan France, 51 million people were White ( 85 % of the population ), 6 million were Northwest African ( 10 % ), 2 million were Black ( 3.3 % ), and 1 million were Asian ( 1.7 % ). [ 281 ] [ 282 ] A 2008 poll conducted jointly by INED and the french National Institute of Statistics [ 283 ] [ 284 ] estimated that the largest lineage groups were italian ( 5 million ), followed by Northwest African ( 3-6 million ), [ 285 ] [ 286 ] [ 287 ] sub-saharan African ( 2.5 million ), Armenian ( 500,000 ), and Turkish ( 200,000 ). [ 288 ] There are besides ample minorities of other european heathen groups, namely spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Greek. [ 285 ] [ 289 ] [ 290 ] France has a meaning Gitan ( Romani ) population, numbering between 20,000 and 400,000 ; [ 291 ] many extraneous Roma are expelled back to Bulgaria and Romania frequently. [ 292 ]

immigration

It is presently estimated that 40 % of the french population is descended at least partially from the different waves of immigration since the early twentieth century ; [ 293 ] between 1921 and 1935 alone, about 1.1 million net immigrants came to France. [ 294 ] The following largest wave came in the 1960s, when around 1.6 million pieds noirs returned to France following the independence of its Northwest african possessions, Algeria and Morocco. [ 295 ] [ 296 ] They were joined by numerous former colonial subjects from North and West Africa, equally well as numerous european immigrants from Spain and Portugal. France remains a major destination for immigrants, accepting about 200,000 legal immigrants per annum. [ 297 ] In 2005, it was Western Europe ‘s moderate recipient of mental hospital seekers, with an estimated 50,000 applications ( albeit 15 % decrease from 2004 ). [ 298 ] In 2010, France received about 48,100 refuge applications—placing it among the top five mental hospital recipients in the populace [ 299 ] and in subsequent years it saw the issue of applications increase, ultimately doubling to 100,412 in 2017. [ 300 ] The European Union allows spare drift between the penis states, although France established controls to curb eastern european migration, [ citation needed ] and immigration remains a contentious political issue. In 2008, the INSEE ( National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies ) estimated that the total act of foreign-born immigrants was around 5 million ( 8 % of the population ), while their French-born descendants numbered 6.5 million, or 11 % of the population. frankincense, about a fifth of the country ‘s population were either beginning or second-generation immigrants, of which more than 5 million were of european lineage and 4 million of Maghrebi ancestry. [ 301 ] [ 302 ] [ 303 ] In 2008, France granted citizenship to 137,000 persons, by and large from Morocco, Algeria and Turkey. [ 304 ] In 2014, the INSEE reported a meaning increase in the number of immigrants coming from Spain, Portugal and Italy between 2009 and 2012. According to the french Institute, this increase resulted from the fiscal crisis that hit several european countries in that period. [ 305 ] Statistics on spanish immigrants in France show a growth of 107 percentage between 2009 and 2012, with the population growing from 5,300 to 11,000. [ 305 ] Of the full of 229,000 foreigners who were in France in 2012, about 8 % were Portuguese, 5 % british, 5 % spanish, 4 % italian, 4 % german, 3 % romanian, and 3 % belgian. [ 305 ]

major cities

France is a highly urbanized country, with its largest cities ( in terms of metropolitan area population in 2016 [ 306 ] ) being Paris ( 12,568,755 isoniazid. ), Lyon ( 2,310,850 ), Marseille ( 1,756,296 ), Toulouse ( 1,345,343 ), Bordeaux ( 1,232,550 ), Lille ( 1,187,824 ), Nice ( 1,006,402 ), Nantes ( 961,521 ), Strasbourg ( 785,839 ) and Rennes ( 727,357 ). ( note : There are significant differences between the metropolitan population figures merely cited and those in the come table, which indicates the population of the communes ). rural flight was a perennial political issue throughout most of the twentieth hundred .

language

Native terminology

administrative language

Secondary or non-official language

Francophone minorities Map of the Francophone global : According to Article 2 of the Constitution, the official terminology of France is french, [ 307 ] a Romance linguistic process derived from Latin. Since 1635, the Académie française has been France ‘s official authority on the french lyric, although its recommendations carry no legal weight. There are besides regional languages spoken in France, such as Occitan, Breton, Catalan, Flemish ( Dutch dialect ), Alsatian ( german dialect ), Basque, and Corsican ( italian dialect ). italian was the official language of Corsica until 9 May 1859. [ 308 ] The Government of France does not regulate the choice of language in publications by individuals but the consumption of French is required by law in commercial and workplace communications. In addition to mandating the practice of french in the territory of the Republic, the french government tries to promote french in the European Union and globally through institutions such as the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. The perceive terror from anglicization has prompted efforts to safeguard the position of the french language in France. Besides french, there exist 77 common minority languages of France, eight spoken in french metropolitan territory and 69 in the french oversea territories. From the 17th to the mid-20th century, french served as the pre-eminent external linguistic process of delicacy and international affairs ampere well as a tongue franca among the educated classes of Europe. [ 309 ] The dominant position of french language in external affairs was overtaken by English, since the emergence of the United States as a major power. [ 60 ] [ 310 ] [ 311 ] For most of the clock time in which french served as an international tongue franca, it was not the native language of most Frenchmen : a report in 1794 conducted by Henri Grégoire found that of the area ‘s 25 million people, alone three million spoke French natively ; the rest spoke one of the country ‘s many regional languages, such as alsatian, Breton or Occitan. [ 312 ] Through the expansion of populace education, in which French was the lone speech of direction, arsenic well as other factors such as increase urbanization and the arise of mass communication, french gradually came to be adopted by about the stallion population, a serve not completed until the twentieth hundred. As a result of France ‘s extensive colonial ambitions between the 17th and twentieth centuries, French was introduced to the Americas, Africa, Polynesia, South-East Asia, a well as the Caribbean. french is the second most studied alien linguistic process in the populace after English, [ 313 ] and is a tongue franca in some regions, notably in Africa. The bequest of French as a animation language outside Europe is interracial : it is about extinct in some former french colonies ( The Levant, South and Southeast Asia ), while creoles and pidgins based on French have emerged in the french departments in the West Indies and the South Pacific ( french Polynesia ). On the other hand, many former french colonies have adopted french as an official lyric, and the sum issue of french speakers is increasing, particularly in Africa. It is estimated that between 300 million [ 314 ] and 500 million [ 315 ] people worldwide can speak french, either as a mother tongue or a second language. According to the 2007 Adult Education survey, part of a project by the European Union and carried in France by the INSEE and based on a sample of 15,350 persons, French was the native language of 87.2 % of the total population, or roughly 55.81 million people, followed by Arabic ( 3.6 %, 2.3 million ), Portuguese ( 1.5 %, 960,000 ), spanish ( 1.2 %, 770,000 ) and italian ( 1.0 %, 640,000 ). native speakers of early languages made up the remaining 5.2 % of the population. [ 316 ]

religion

France is a secular country in which exemption of religion is a built-in right. french religious policy is based on the concept of laïcité, a nonindulgent separation of church service and department of state under which public life is kept completely layman. The exception to this is the region of Alsace and Moselle where Lutheranism, Catholicism and Judaism enjoy official status and submit fund. According to a surveil held in 2016 by Institut Montaigne and Institut français d’opinion publique ( IFOP ), 51.1 % of the full population of France was Christian, 39.6 % had no religion ( atheism or agnosticism ), 5.6 % were Muslims, 2.5 % were followers of other faiths, and the remaining 0.4 % were undecided about their religion. [ 317 ] Estimates of the total of Muslims in France vary wide. In 2003, the french Ministry of the Interior estimated the total number of people of Muslim background to be between 5 and 6 million ( 8–10 % ). [ 318 ] [ 319 ] The current Jewish community in France is the largest in Europe and the third-largest in the world after Israel and the United States, ranging between 480,000 and 600,000, about 0.8 % of the population as of 2016. [ 317 ] catholicism has been the overriding religion in France for more than a millennium, though it is not as actively practised today as it was. Among the 47,000 religious buildings in France, 94 % are Roman Catholic. [ 320 ] During the french Revolution, activists conducted a barbarous campaign of de-Christianisation, ending the Catholic Church as the express religion. In some cases clergy and churches were attacked, with iconoclasm stripping the churches of statues and ornaments. After alternating between imperial and laic republican governments during the nineteenth century, in 1905 France passed the 1905 jurisprudence on the separation of the Churches and the State, which established the principle of laïcité. [ 321 ] To this day, the government is prohibited from recognising any specific veracious to a religious community ( except for bequest statutes like those of military chaplains and the local law in Alsace-Moselle ). It recognises religious organisations according to ball legal criteria that do not address religious doctrine. conversely, religious organisations are expected to refrain from intervening in policy-making. [ 322 ] sealed groups, such as Scientology, Children of God, the Unification Church, or the order of the solar Temple are considered cults ( “ sectes “ in French ) ; therefore they do not have the lapp condition as acknowledge religions in France. [ 323 ] Secte is considered a dyslogistic term in France. [ 324 ]

Health

The french health care system is one of universal health wish largely financed by politics national health indemnity. In its 2000 judgment of universe health care systems, the World Health Organization found that France provided the “ close to best overall health care ” in the world. [ 326 ] The French healthcare system was ranked first worldwide by the World Health Organization in 1997. [ 327 ] [ 328 ] In 2011, France spent 11.6 % of GDP on health care, or US $ 4,086 per head, [ 329 ] a human body much higher than the average spend by countries in Europe but less than in the United States. approximately 77 % of health expenditures are covered by government funded agencies. [ 330 ] concern is broadly free for people affected by chronic diseases ( affections de longues durées ) such as cancer, AIDS or cystic fibrosis. average liveliness anticipation at birth is 78 years for men and 85 years for women, one of the highest of the European Union and the World. [ 331 ] [ 332 ] There are 3.22 physicians for every 1000 inhabitants in France, [ 333 ] and average health care spending per caput was US $ 4,719 in 2008. [ 334 ] As of 2007, approximately 140,000 inhabitants ( 0.4 % ) of France are living with HIV/AIDS. [ 99 ] evening if the french have the repute of being one of the thinnest people in develop countries, [ 335 ] [ 336 ] [ 337 ] [ 338 ] [ 339 ] [ excessive citations ] France—like other rich countries—faces an increasing and recent epidemic of fleshiness, due by and large to the refilling in french eating habits of traditional healthy french cuisine by junk food. [ 340 ] [ 335 ] [ 336 ] [ 341 ] [ excessive citations ] The french fleshiness rate is distillery far below that of the United States—currently equal to american rate in the 1970s—and is still the lowest of Europe. [ 336 ] [ 338 ] [ 341 ] Authorities nowadays regard fleshiness as one of the independent populace health issues and fight it fiercely. [ 342 ] Rates of childhood fleshiness are slowing in France, while continuing to grow in early countries. [ 343 ]

education

In 1802, Napoleon created the lycée, the second and concluding stage of secondary education that prepares students for higher education studies or a profession. [ 345 ] Nevertheless, Jules Ferry is considered the father of the french modern educate, leading reforms in the late nineteenth hundred that established free, worldly and compulsory education ( presently mandatory until the age of 16 ). [ 346 ] [ 347 ] french education is centralized and divided into three stages : Primary, secondary, and higher education. The Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, ranked France ‘s education as near OECD modal in 2018. [ 348 ] [ 349 ] France was one of the PISA-participating countries where school children perceived some of the lowest levels of patronize and feedback from their teachers. [ 349 ] School children in France reported greater concern about the disciplinary climate and behavior in classrooms compared to other OECD countries. [ 349 ] Primary and secondary education are predominantly populace, run by the Ministry of National Education. While aim and remuneration of teachers and the course of study are the responsibility of the state centrally, the management of primary and secondary coil schools is oversee by local anesthetic authorities. basal education comprises two phases, nursery school ( école maternelle ) and elementary school ( école élémentaire ). Nursery educate aims to stimulate the minds of very young children and promote their socialization and exploitation of a basic compass of language and numbers. Around the historic period of six, children transfer to elementary educate, whose primary objectives are learning about write, arithmetic and citizenship. secondary department of education besides consists of two phases. The first is delivered through colleges ( collège ) and leads to the national security ( Diplôme national du brevet ). The second is offered in high schools ( lycée ) and finishes in national exams leading to a bachelor’s degree ( baccalauréat, available in professional, technical or general relish ) or certificate of professional competence ( certificat d’aptitude professionelle ). Higher education is divided between populace universities and the esteemed and selective Grandes écoles, such as Sciences Po Paris for Political studies, HEC Paris for Economics, Polytechnique, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales for Social studies and the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris that produce high-profile engineers, or the École nationale d’administration for careers in the Grands Corps of the state. The Grandes écoles have been criticised for alleged elitism, producing many if not most of France ‘s high-level civil servants, CEOs and politicians. [ 350 ]

culture

France has been a concentrate of western cultural development for centuries. many french artists have been among the most celebrated of their time ; France is hush recognised in the world for its rich cultural tradition. [ 351 ] The consecutive political regimes have constantly promoted artistic creation. The creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1959 helped preserve the cultural inheritance of the country and make it available to the public. The Ministry of Culture has been identical active since its creation, granting subsidies to artists, promoting french culture in the universe, supporting festivals and cultural events, protecting historical monuments. The french government besides succeeded in maintaining a cultural exception to defend audiovisual products made in the country. [ 352 ] France receives the highest total of tourists per year, largely thanks to the numerous cultural establishments and historical buildings implanted all over the territory. It counts 1,200 museums welcoming more than 50 million people per annum. [ 353 ] The most authoritative cultural sites are run by the politics, for exemplify through the public agency Centre des monuments nationaux, which is responsible for approximately 85 national historic monuments. The 43,180 buildings protected as historical monuments include chiefly residences ( many castles ) and religious buildings ( cathedrals, basilica, churches ), but besides statues, memorials and gardens. The UNESCO inscribed 45 sites in France on the World Heritage List. [ 354 ]

artwork

The origins of french art were very a lot influenced by Flemish art and by italian artwork at the time of the Renaissance. Jean Fouquet, the most celebrated medieval french cougar, is said to have been the first to travel to Italy and experience the early Renaissance foremost handwriting. The Renaissance painting School of Fontainebleau was directly inspired by italian painters such as Primaticcio and Rosso Fiorentino, who both worked in France. Two of the most celebrated french artists of the time of Baroque era, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, lived in Italy .
The seventeenth hundred was the time period when french paint became big and individualised itself through classicism. Prime Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert founded in 1648 the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture under Louis XIV to protect these artists ; in 1666 he besides created the still-active french Academy in Rome to have direct relations with italian artists. french artists developed the rococo vogue in the eighteenth hundred, as a more intimate imitation of honest-to-god baroque vogue, the works of the court-endorsed artists Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard being the most representative in the country. The french Revolution brought great changes, as Napoleon favoured artists of neoclassic style such as Jacques-Louis David and the highly influential Académie des Beaux-Arts defined the stylus known as Academism. At this time France had become a center of artistic universe, the first half of the nineteenth century being dominated by two consecutive movements, at first romanticism with Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, then Realism with Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet, a style that finally evolved into Naturalism. In the second base part of the nineteenth hundred, France ‘s influence over painting became even more important, with the growth of new styles of painting such as Impressionism and Symbolism. The most celebrated impressionist painters of the period were Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. [ 356 ] The second genesis of impressionist-style painters, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Georges Seurat, were besides at the avant-garde of artistic evolutions, [ 357 ] a well as the fauve artists Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. [ 358 ] [ 359 ] At the begin of the twentieth hundred, Cubism was developed by Georges Braque and the spanish painter Pablo Picasso, living in Paris. other alien artists besides settled and worked in or near Paris, such as Vincent vanguard Gogh, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Wassily Kandinsky .
many museums in France are wholly or partially devoted to sculptures and painting works. A huge solicitation of old masterpieces created before or during the eighteenth century are displayed in the state-owned Musée du Louvre, such as the Mona Lisa, besides known as “ La Joconde ”. While the Louvre Palace has been for a hanker clock a museum, the Musée d’Orsay was inaugurated in 1986 in the old railway post Gare d’Orsay, in a major reorganization of national art collections, to gather french paintings from the second character of the nineteenth hundred ( chiefly Impressionism and Fauvism movements ). [ 360 ] [ 361 ] The musée d’Orsay was voted in 2018 the best museum in the global. [ 362 ] Modern works are presented in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, which moved in 1976 to the Centre Georges Pompidou. These three state-owned museums welcome close up to 17 million people a year. [ 363 ] other national museums hosting paintings include the Grand Palais ( 1.3 million visitors in 2008 ), but there are besides many museums owned by cities, the most chew the fat being the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris ( 0.8 million entries in 2008 ), which hosts contemporaneous works. [ 363 ] Outside Paris, all the large cities have a museum of Fine Arts with a department dedicated to european and french painting. Some of the finest collections are in Lyon, Lille, Rouen, Dijon, Rennes and Grenoble .

computer architecture

During the Middle Ages, many fortified castles were built by feudal nobles to mark their powers. Some french castles that survived are Chinon, Château d’Angers, the massive Château de Vincennes and the alleged Cathar castles. During this earned run average, France had been using Romanesque architecture like most of western Europe. Some of the greatest examples of Romanesque churches in France are the Saint Sernin Basilica in Toulouse, the largest romanesque church in Europe, [ 364 ] and the remains of the Cluny Abbey. The Gothic computer architecture, primitively named Opus Francigenum meaning “ french influence ”, [ 365 ] was born in Île-de-France and was the first french stylus of computer architecture to be copied in all Europe. [ 366 ] Northern France is the home of some of the most important Gothic cathedrals and basilica, the first of these being the Saint Denis Basilica ( used as the royal cemetery ) ; other important french Gothic cathedrals are Notre-Dame de Chartres and Notre-Dame d’Amiens. The kings were crowned in another important Gothic church : Notre-Dame de Reims. [ 367 ] aside from churches, Gothic Architecture had been used for many religious palaces, the most important one being the Palais des Papes in Avignon. The final victory in the Hundred Years ‘ War marked an important degree in the development of french architecture. It was the clock of the french Renaissance and several artists from Italy were invited to the french court ; many residential palaces were built in the Loire Valley, from 1450 with as a first gear reference point the Château de Montsoreau. [ 368 ] such residential castles were the Château de Chambord, the Château de Chenonceau, or the Château d’Amboise. Following the renaissance and the end of the Middle Ages, Baroque computer architecture replaced the traditional Gothic manner. however, in France, baroque architecture found a greater success in the worldly sphere than in a religious one. [ 369 ] In the secular knowledge domain, the Palace of Versailles has many baroque features. Jules Hardouin Mansart, who designed the extensions to Versailles, was one of the most influential french architect of the baroque earned run average ; he is celebrated for his dome at Les Invalides. [ 370 ] Some of the most impressive provincial baroque architecture is found in places that were not however french such as Place Stanislas in Nancy. On the military architectural side, Vauban designed some of the most efficient fortresses in Europe and became an influential military architect ; as a result, imitations of his works can be found all over Europe, the Americas, Russia and Turkey. [ 371 ] [ 372 ]
After the Revolution, the Republicans favoured Neoclassicism although it was introduced in France anterior to the rotation with such buildings as the parisian Pantheon or the Capitole de Toulouse. Built during the first french Empire, the Arc de Triomphe and Sainte Marie-Madeleine represent the best exemplar of Empire style architecture. [ 373 ] Under Napoleon III, a newly wave of urbanism and computer architecture was given birth ; extravagant buildings such as the neo-baroque Palais Garnier were built. The urban design of the time was identical organize and rigorous ; most notably, Haussmann ‘s renovation of Paris. The architecture associated with this era is named Second Empire in English, the term being taken from the Second French Empire. At this time there was a impregnable Gothic revival across Europe and in France ; the associate architect was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. In the late nineteenth century, Gustave Eiffel designed many bridges, such as Garabit viaduct, and remains one of the most influential bridge designers of his time, although he is good remembered for the iconic Eiffel Tower .
In the twentieth century, French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier designed several buildings in France. More recently, french architects have combined both advanced and old architectural styles. The Louvre Pyramid is an exemplar of modern computer architecture added to an older build. The most difficult buildings to integrate within french cities are skyscrapers, as they are visible from afar. For case, in Paris, since 1977, new buildings had to be under 37 metres ( 121 foot ). [ 374 ] France ‘s largest fiscal district is La Défense, where a significant number of skyscrapers are located. [ 375 ] early massive buildings that are a challenge to integrate into their environment are large bridges ; an model of the way this has been done is the Millau Viaduct. Some celebrated modern french architects include Jean Nouvel, Dominique Perrault, Christian de Portzamparc or Paul Andreu .

literature

The earliest french literature dates from the Middle Ages, when what is now known as modern France did not have a one, uniform lyric. There were several languages and dialects, and writers used their own spell and grammar. Some authors of french medieval texts are unknown, such as Tristan and Iseult and Lancelot-Grail. other authors are known, for case Chrétien de Troyes and Duke William IX of Aquitaine, who wrote in Occitan. much medieval french poetry and literature were inspired by the legends of the Matter of France, such as The Song of Roland and the versatile chansons de geste. The Roman de Renart, written in 1175 by Perrout de Saint Cloude, tells the history of the medieval quality Reynard ( ‘the Fox ‘ ) and is another example of early french writing. An crucial 16th-century writer was François Rabelais, whose novel Gargantua and Pantagruel has remained celebrated and appreciated until now. Michel de Montaigne was another major figure of french literature during that century. His most celebrated ferment, Essais, created the literary genre of the test. [ 376 ] French poetry during that hundred was embodied by Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay. Both writers founded the La Pléiade literary movement. During the seventeenth century, Madame de La Fayette published anonymously La Princesse de Clèves, a fresh that is considered to be one of the first psychological novels of all time. [ 377 ] Jean de La Fontaine is one of the most celebrated fabulists of that time, as he wrote hundreds of fables, some being far more celebrated than others, such as The Ant and the Grasshopper. Generations of french pupils had to learn his fables, which were seen as helping teach wisdom and common smell to the young people. Some of his verses have entered the popular terminology to become proverb, such as “ À l’œuvre, on connaît l’artisan.”[A workman is known by his chips]. [ 378 ]
denim Racine, whose incredible command of the alexandrine and of the french speech has been praised for centuries, created plays such as Phèdre or Britannicus. He is, along with Pierre Corneille ( Le Cid ) and Molière, considered one of the three capital dramatists of France ‘s fortunate historic period. Molière, who is deemed to be one of the greatest masters of comedy of the western literature, [ 380 ] wrote dozens of plays, including Le Misanthrope, L’Avare, Le Malade imaginaire, equally well as Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. His plays have been so popular around the global that the french speech is sometimes dubbed as “ the speech of Molière ” ( la langue de Molière ), [ 381 ] precisely like English is considered “ the linguistic process of Shakespeare “. french literature and poetry flourished even more in the 18th and 19th centuries. Denis Diderot ‘s best-known works are Jacques the Fatalist and Rameau’s Nephew. He is however best known for being the main redact of the Encyclopédie, whose aim was to sum up all the cognition of his century ( in fields such as arts, sciences, languages, and philosophy ) and to present them to the people, to fight ignorance and obscurantism. During that same century, Charles Perrault was a prolific writer of celebrated children ‘s fairy tales including Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard. At the starting signal of the nineteenth century, symbolist poetry was an authoritative movement in french literature, with poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé. [ 382 ] The nineteenth century saw the writings of many celebrated french authors. Victor Hugo is sometimes seen as “ the greatest french writer of all time ” [ 383 ] for excelling in all literary genres. The foreword of his play Cromwell is considered to be the manifesto of the romantic movement. Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles are considered “ poetic masterpieces ”, [ 384 ] Hugo ‘s verse having been compared to that of Shakespeare, Dante and Homer. [ 384 ] His novel Les Misérables is wide seen as one of the greatest novel ever written [ 385 ] and The Hunchback of Notre Dame has remained vastly popular. other major authors of that hundred include Alexandre Dumas ( The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte-Cristo ), Jules Verne ( Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea ), Émile Zola ( Les Rougon-Macquart ), Honoré de Balzac ( La Comédie humaine ), Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier and Stendhal ( The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of Parma ), whose works are among the most well known in France and the earth. The Prix Goncourt is a french literary prize first awarded in 1903. [ 386 ] Important writers of the twentieth century include Marcel Proust, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote Little Prince, which has remained democratic for decades with children and adults around the world. [ 387 ] As of 2014, french authors had more literature Nobel Prizes than those of any other state. [ 388 ] The beginning Nobel Prize in Literature was a french author, while France ‘s latest Nobel trophy in literature is Patrick Modiano, who was awarded the respect in 2014. [ 388 ] Jean-Paul Sartre was besides the first campaigner in the committee ‘s history to refuse the prize in 1964. [ 388 ]

philosophy

chivalric philosophy was dominated by Scholasticism until the emergence of Humanism in the Renaissance. Modern doctrine began in France in the seventeenth hundred with the doctrine of René Descartes, Blaise Pascal and Nicolas Malebranche. Descartes was the beginning Western philosopher since ancient times to attempt to build a philosophic system from the earth up quite than building on the workplace of predecessors. ” [ 389 ] [ 390 ] His Meditations on First Philosophy changed the primary coil object of philosophic think and raised some of the most fundamental problems for foreigners such as Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Berkeley, and Kant .
french philosophers produced some of the most important political works of the Age of Enlightenment. In The Spirit of the Laws, Baron de Montesquieu theorised the principle of legal separation of powers, which has been implemented in all liberal democracies since it was first applied in the United States. Voltaire came to embody the enlightenment with his defense of civil liberties, such as the right to a loose test and freedom of religion. 19th-century french thought was targeted at responding to the social malaise following the french Revolution. positivist philosophers such as Victor Cousin and Auguste Comte, who called for a new social doctrine, were opposed by reactionary thinkers such as Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald and Félicité Robert de Lamennais, who blamed the rationalist rejection of traditional order. De Maistre, together with the Englishman Edmund Burke, was one of the founders of european conservatism. Comte was the fall through of positivism, which Émile Durkheim reformulated as a basis for social research. In the twentieth century, partially as a reaction to the sensed excesses of positivism, french spiritualism thrived with thinkers such as Henri Bergson and it influenced american realism and Whitehead ‘s version of process philosophy. interim, french epistemology became a outstanding school of think with Jules Henri Poincaré, Gaston Bachelard, Jean Cavaillès and Jules Vuillemin. Influenced by german phenomenology and existentialism, the doctrine of Jean-Paul Sartre gained a impregnable influence after World War II, and late-20th-century-France became the cradle of postmodernist philosophy with Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault .

music

France has a long and vary musical history. It experienced a golden age in the seventeenth hundred thanks to Louis XIV, who employed many talented musicians and composers in the royal court. The most celebrated composers of this period include Marc-Antoine Charpentier, François Couperin, Michel-Richard Delalande, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marin Marais, all of them composers at the court. After the death of the “ Roi Soleil ”, french musical universe lost dynamism, but in the future hundred the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau reached some prestige, and today he is hush one of the most celebrated french composers. Rameau became the prevailing composer of french opera and the leading french composer for the harpsichord. [ 392 ] [ full citation needed ] french composers played an important role during the music of the 19th and early twentieth century, which is considered to be the romantic music era. romantic music emphasised a giving up to nature, a captivation with the by and the supernatural, the exploration of unusual, foreign and surprise sounds, and a concenter on national identity. This menstruation was besides a golden senesce for operas. french composers from the Romantic earned run average included : Hector Berlioz ( best known for his Symphonie fantastique ), Georges Bizet ( best known for Carmen, which has become one of the most democratic and frequently performed opera ), Gabriel Fauré ( best known for his Pavane, Requiem, and nocturnes ), Charles Gounod ( best known for his Ave Maria and his opera Faust ), Jacques Offenbach ( best known for his 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his incomplete opera The Tales of Hoffmann ), Édouard Lalo ( best known for his Symphonie espagnole for violin and orchestra and his Cello Concerto in D child ), Jules Massenet ( best known for his opera, of which he wrote more than thirty, the most frequently staged are Manon ( 1884 ) and Werther ( 1892 ) ) and Camille Saint-Saëns ( he has many frequently-performed works, including The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah ( Opera ), Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso and his Symphony No. 3 ). late came precursors of modern classical music. Érik Satie was a key penis of the early-20th-century parisian avant-garde, best known for his Gymnopédies. Francis Poulenc ‘s best known works are his piano cortege Trois mouvements perpétuels ( 1919 ), the ballet Les biches ( 1923 ), the Concert champêtre ( 1928 ) for harpsichord and orchestra, the opera Dialogues des Carmélites ( 1957 ) and the Gloria ( 1959 ) for soprano, choir and orchestra. Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy are the most big figures associated with Impressionist music. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed. [ 393 ] Debussy ‘s music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of atonality. The two composers invented newly musical forms [ 394 ] [ 395 ] [ 396 ] [ 397 ] and new sounds. Ravel ‘s piano compositions, such as Jeux d’eau, Miroirs, Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit, demand considerable virtuosity. His command of orchestration is apparent in the Rapsodie espagnole, Daphnis et Chloé, his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky ‘s Pictures at an Exhibition and his orchestral work Boléro ( 1928 ). More recently, the middle of the twentieth hundred, Maurice Ohana, Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Boulez contributed to the evolutions of contemporary classical music. [ 398 ]
french music then followed the rapid emergence of pop and rock music at the middle of the twentieth century. Although english-speaking creations achieved popularity in the country, french pop music, known as chanson française, has besides remained very popular. Among the most important french artists of the century are Édith Piaf, Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré, Charles Aznavour and Serge Gainsbourg. [ 399 ] Although there are very few rock bands in France compared to english-speaking countries, [ 400 ] bands such as Noir Désir, Mano Negra, Niagara, Les Rita Mitsouko and more recently Superbus, Phoenix and Gojira, [ 401 ] or Shaka Ponk, have reached global popularity .
other french artists with external careers have been popular in respective countries, most notably female singers Dalida, Mireille Mathieu, Mylène Farmer, [ 401 ] Alizée and Nolwenn Leroy, [ 402 ] electronic music pioneers Jean-Michel Jarre, Laurent Garnier and Bob Sinclar, later Martin Solveig and David Guetta. In the 1990s and 2000s ( ten ), electronic duet Daft Punk, Justice and Air besides reached global popularity and contributed to the reputation of modern electronic music in the world. [ 401 ] [ 403 ] [ 404 ] Among stream musical events and institutions in France, many are dedicated to classical music and opera. The most esteemed institutions are the state-owned Paris National Opera ( with its two sites Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille ), the Opéra National de Lyon, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse and the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. As for music festivals, there are respective events organised, the most democratic being Eurockéennes ( a word play which sounds in French as “ european ” ), Solidays and Rock en Seine. The Fête de la Musique, imitated by many alien cities, was beginning launched by the french Government in 1982. [ 405 ] [ 406 ] Major music halls and venues in France include Le Zénith sites present in many cities and other places in Paris ( Paris Olympia, Théâtre Mogador, Élysée Montmartre ) .

cinema

France has diachronic and firm links with film, with two Frenchmen, Auguste and Louis Lumière ( known as the Lumière Brothers ) credited with creating film in 1895. [ 411 ] The world ‘s first base female film maker, Alice Guy-Blaché, was besides from France. [ 412 ] several important cinematic movements, including the recently 1950s and 1960s Nouvelle Vague, began in the country. It is noted for having a strong film industry, due in part to protections afforded by the Government of France. France remains a leader in filmmaking, as of 2015 producing more films than any other european state. [ 413 ] [ 414 ] The state besides hosts the Cannes Festival, one of the most important and celebrated film festivals in the populace. [ 415 ] [ 416 ] apart from its solid and advanced film custom, France has besides been a gather spotlight for artists from across Europe and the world. For this reason, french film is sometimes intertwined with the cinema of extraneous nations. Directors from nations such as Poland ( Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Andrzej Żuławski ), Argentina ( Gaspar Noé, Edgardo Cozarinsky ), Russia ( Alexandre Alexeieff, Anatole Litvak ), Austria ( Michael Haneke ) and Georgia ( Géla Babluani, Otar Iosseliani ) are outstanding in the ranks of french film. conversely, french directors have had fecund and influential careers in other countries, such as Luc Besson, Jacques Tourneur or Francis Veber in the United States. Although the french film market is dominated by Hollywood, France is the only nation in the world where american films make up the smallest contribution of sum film revenues, at 50 %, compared with 77 % in Germany and 69 % in Japan. [ 417 ] french films account for 35 % of the sum film revenues of France, which is the highest share of national film revenues in the developed world outside the United States, compared to 14 % in Spain and 8 % in the UK. [ 417 ] France is in 2013 the 2nd exporter of films in the world after the United States. [ 418 ] France historically was the cultural kernel of the world, [ 309 ] although its prevailing position has been surpassed by the United States. Today, France takes steps in protecting and promoting its culture, becoming a leading preach of the cultural exception. [ 419 ] The nation succeeded in convincing all EU members to refuse to include culture and audiovisuals in the list of liberalize sectors of the WTO in 1993. [ 420 ] furthermore, this decision was confirmed in a vote in the UNESCO in 2005 : the principle of “ cultural exception ” won an overwhelm victory with 198 countries voting for it and only 2 countries, the United States and Israel, voting against. [ 421 ]

fashion

fashion has been an authoritative diligence and cultural export of France since the seventeenth hundred, and mod “ haute couture ” originated in Paris in the 1860s. today, Paris, along with London, Milan, and New York City, is considered one of the populace ‘s manner capitals, and the city is dwelling or headquarters to many of the prime minister fashion houses. The saying Haute couture is, in France, a legally protected name, guaranteeing certain quality standards. The association of France with fashion and style ( french : la mode ) dates largely to the predominate of Louis XIV [ 422 ] when the luxury goods industries in France came increasingly under royal control and the french imperial court became, arguably, the arbiter of taste and style in Europe. But France renewed its dominance of the high gear fashion ( french : couture or haute couture ) diligence in the years 1860–1960 through the establish of the big couturier houses such as Chanel, Dior, and Givenchy. The french perfume diligence is global drawing card in its sector and is centered on the township of Grasse. [ 423 ] In the 1960s, the elitist “ Haute couture ” came under criticism from France ‘s youth culture. In 1966, the couturier Yves Saint Laurent broke with established Haute Couture norms by launching a prêt-à-porter ( “ cook to wear ” ) line and expanding french fashion into mass manufacture. With a greater focus on commercialize and fabrication, newfangled trends were established by Sonia Rykiel, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1990s saw a aggregate of many french couture houses under lavishness giants and multinationals such as LVMH. According to 2017 data compiled by Deloitte, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey ( LVMH ), a french sword, is the largest lavishness party in the worldly concern by sales, selling more than twice the amount of its nearest rival. [ 424 ] furthermore, France besides possesses 3 of the crown 10 luxury goods companies by sales ( LVMH, Kering SA, L’Oréal ), more than any other country in the world. [ 424 ]

Media

best-selling daily national newspapers in France are Le Parisien Aujourd’hui en France ( with 460,000 sell casual ), Le Monde and Le Figaro, with around 300,000 copies sold daily, but besides L’Équipe, dedicated to sports coverage. [ 426 ] In the past years, free dailies made a discovery, with Metro, 20 Minutes and Direct Plus distributed at more than 650,000 copies respectively. [ 427 ] however, the widest circulations are reached by regional daily Ouest-France with more than 750,000 copies sold, and the 50 other regional papers have besides high sales. [ 428 ] [ 429 ] The sector of weekly magazines is stronger and diversified with more than 400 specialize weekly magazines published in the area. [ 430 ] The most influential news magazines are the leftist Le Nouvel Observateur, centrist L’Express and rightist Le Point ( more than 400.000 copies ), [ 431 ] but the highest circulation for weeklies is reached by television magazines and by women ‘s magazines, among them Marie Claire and ELLE, which have foreign versions. influential weeklies besides include fact-finding and satirical papers Le Canard Enchaîné and Charlie Hebdo, ampere well as Paris Match. Like in most industrialize nations, the print media have been affected by a severe crisis in the past ten. In 2008, the politics launched a major enterprise to help the sector reform and become financially independent, [ 432 ] [ 433 ] but in 2009 it had to give 600,000 euro to help the photographic print media cope with the economic crisis, in summation to existing subsidies. [ 434 ]
Le Figaro was founded in 1826; many of France’s most prominent authors have written in its columns over the decades, and it is still considered a [435] was founded in 1826 ; many of France ‘s most outstanding authors have written in its column over the decades, and it is inactive considered a newspaper of commemorate In 1974, after years of centralized monopoly on radio and television receiver, the governmental agency ORTF was split into several national institutions, but the three already-existing television receiver channels and four national radio stations [ 436 ] [ 437 ] remained under state-control. It was entirely in 1981 that the government allowed complimentary broadcast in the territory, ending the express monopoly on radio. [ 437 ] french television was partially liberalized in the future two-decade with the creation of several commercial channels, chiefly thanks to cable and satellite television receiver. In 2005 the national military service Télévision Numérique Terrestre introduced digital television all over the district, allowing the universe of other channels. The four existing national channels are owned by state-owned consortium France Télévisions, funded by advertise tax income and television receiver license fees. Public broadcasting group Radio France run five national radio stations. Among these populace media are Radio France Internationale, which broadcasts programmes in french all over the universe, adenine well as Franco-German TV groove TV5 Monde. In 2006, the politics created ball-shaped news channel France 24. Long-established television channels TF1 ( privatised in 1987 ), France 2 and France 3 have the highest shares, whilst radio stations RTL, Europe 1 and state-owned France Inter are some of the least heed to .

company

sculpture of Marianne, a common national personification of the french Republic According to a BBC poll in 2010, based on 29,977 responses in 28 countries, France is globally seen as a incontrovertible influence in the global ‘s affairs : 49 % have a positive view of the state ‘s determine, whereas 19 % have a negative scene. [ 438 ] [ 439 ] The Nation Brand Index of 2008 suggested that France has the irregular best external reputation, only behind Germany. [ 440 ] A global opinion poll for the BBC saw France ranked the fourth most positively see nation in the world ( behind Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom ) in 2014. [ 441 ] According to a poll in 2011, the french were found to have the highest level of religious permissiveness and to be the country where the highest proportion of the population defines its identity chiefly in terminus of nationality and not religion. [ 442 ] As of 2011, 75 % of French had a favorable horizon of the United States, making France one of the most pro-american countries in the universe. [ 443 ] As of 2017, the favorable see of the United States had dropped to 46 %. [ 444 ] In January 2010, the magazine International Living ranked France as “ best country to live in ”, ahead of 193 early countries, for the fifth year running. [ 445 ] The OECD Better Life Index states that “ France performs well in many measures of wellbeing relative to most other countries in the Better Life Index ”. [ 446 ] The french Revolution continues to permeate the country ‘s collective memory. The tricolor flag of France, [ 447 ] the anthem “ La Marseillaise “, and the motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité, defined in Title 1 of the Constitution as national symbols, all emerged during the cultural zymosis of the early revolution, along with Marianne, a coarse national personification. In addition, Bastille Day, the national holiday, commemorates the storm of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. [ 448 ] A common and traditional symbol of the french people is the Gallic cock. Its origins date back to Antiquity since the Latin bible Gallus meant both “ cock “ and “ inhabitant of Gaul ”. then this figure gradually became the most widely shared representation of the french, used by french monarchs, then by the Revolution and under the consecutive republican regimes as representation of the national identity, used for some stamps and coins. [ 449 ] France is one of the world leaders of sex equality in the workplace : as of 2017, it has 36.8 % of its corporate board seats held by women, which makes it the leader of the G20 for that metric unit. [ 450 ] It was ranked in 2019 by the World Bank as one of the merely six countries in the worldly concern where women have the like work rights as men. [ 451 ] France is one of the most liberal countries in the universe when it comes to LGBT rights : a 2020 Pew Research Center poll found that 86 % of the french think that same-sex relationships should be accepted by club, one of the highest acceptance rates in the world ( comparable to that of other western european nations ). [ 452 ] France legalized same-sex marriage and adoption in 2013. [ 453 ] The government has used its diplomatic clout to support LGBT rights throughout the populace, notably in the United Nations. [ 454 ] In 2020, France was ranked one-fifth in the Environmental Performance Index ( behind the United Kingdom ), out of 180 countries ranked by Yale University in that analyze. [ 455 ] Being the host nation of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, the french Government was instrumental in securing the 2015 Paris Agreement, a success that has been credited to its “ openness and feel in diplomacy ”. [ 456 ]

cuisine

french cuisine is renowned for being one of the finest in the earth. [ 457 ] [ 458 ] According to the regions, traditional recipes are different, the North of the country prefers to use butter as the prefer fat for fudge, whereas olive vegetable oil is more normally used in the South. [ 459 ] furthermore, each region of France has iconic traditional specialties : Cassoulet in the Southwest, Choucroute in Alsace, Quiche in the Lorraine region, Beef bourguignon in the Bourgogne, provençal Tapenade, etc. France ‘s most celebrated products are wines, [ 460 ] including Champagne, Bordeaux, Bourgogne, and Beaujolais arsenic well as a big diverseness of unlike cheeses, such as Camembert, Roquefort and Brie. There are more than 400 different varieties. [ 461 ] [ 462 ] A meal frequently consists of three courses, hors d’œuvre or entrée ( introductory course, sometimes soup ), plat principal ( chief class ), fromage ( cheese run ) or dessert, sometimes with a salad offered before the cheese or dessert. Hors d’œuvres could include terrine de saumon au basilic, lobster bisque, foie gras, french onion soup or a croque monsieur. The plat star could include a pot astronomical unit feu or steak frites. The dessert could be mille-feuille pastry, a macaron, an éclair, crème brûlée, mousse astronomical unit chocolat, crêpes, or Café liégeois .
french cuisine is besides regarded as a key component of the timbre of life and the attraction of France. [ 445 ] A French publication, the Michelin template, awards Michelin stars for excellence to a blue-ribbon few establishments. [ 463 ] [ 464 ] The learning or loss of a star can have dramatic effects on the success of a restaurant. By 2006, the Michelin Guide had awarded 620 stars to french restaurants, at that time more than any early country, although the lead besides inspects more restaurants in France than in any early nation ( by 2010, Japan was awarded as many Michelin stars as France, despite having half the phone number of Michelin inspectors working there ). [ 465 ] [ 466 ] In addition to its wine tradition, France is besides a major manufacturer of beer and rum. The three independent french brewing regions are Alsace ( 60 % of home production ), Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine. France produces rum via distilleries located on islands such as Reunion Island in the southerly indian Ocean .

Sports

France hosts “ the earth ‘s biggest annual sporting event ”, the Tour de France. [ 468 ] other popular sports played in France include : football, judo, tennis, [ 469 ] rugby union [ 470 ] and pétanque. France has hosted events such as the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, [ 471 ] the 2007 Rugby World Cup, [ 472 ] and will host the 2023 Rugby World Cup. The state besides hosted the 1960 european Nations ‘ Cup, UEFA Euro 1984, UEFA Euro 2016 and 2019 FIFA Women ‘s World Cup. The Stade de France in Saint-Denis is France ‘s largest stadium and was the venue for the 1998 FIFA World Cup and 2007 Rugby World Cup finals. Since 1923, France is celebrated for its 24 Hours of Le Mans sports cable car survival race. [ 473 ] several major tennis tournaments take place in France, including the Paris Masters and the french Open, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments. french martial arts include Savate and Fencing .
France has a close affiliation with the Modern Olympic Games ; it was a french aristocrat, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who suggested the Games ‘ revival, at the end of the nineteenth century. [ 474 ] [ 475 ] After Athens was awarded the beginning Games, in reference point to the Olympics ‘ greek origins, Paris hosted the second Games in 1900. [ 476 ] Paris was the first home of the International Olympic Committee, before it moved to Lausanne. [ 477 ] Since 1900, France has hosted the Olympics on 4 far occasions : the 1924 Summer Olympics, again in Paris [ 475 ] and three Winter Games ( 1924 in Chamonix, 1968 in Grenoble and 1992 in Albertville ). [ 475 ] similar to the Olympics, France introduced Olympics for the deaf people ( Deaflympics ) in 1924 with the theme of a french deafen cable car automobile mechanic, Eugène Rubens-Alcais who paved the way to organise the inaugural address edition of the Summer Deaflympics in Paris. [ 478 ]
[479]Zidane was named the best European footballer of the past 50 years in a 2004 UEFA poll. Both the national football team and the national rugby union team are nicknamed “ Les Bleus “ in reference book to the team ‘s shirt discolor arsenic well as the national french tricolor iris. football is the most popular fun in France, with over 1,800,000 register players and over 18,000 record clubs. [ 480 ] The football team is among the most successful in the universe, with two FIFA World Cup victories in 1998 and 2018, [ 481 ] one FIFA World Cup second set in 2006, [ 482 ] and two UEFA european Championships in 1984 [ 483 ] and 2000. [ 484 ] The peak national football club rival is Ligue 1. France has produced some of the greatest players in the world, including three-time FIFA World Player of the Year Zinedine Zidane, three-time Ballon d’Or recipient role Michel Platini, criminal record holder for most goals scored at a World Cup Just Fontaine, first football player to receive the Légion d’honneur Raymond Kopa, and the record goalscorer for the french national team Thierry Henry. [ 485 ] The french Open, besides called Roland-Garros, is a major tennis tournament held over two weeks between late May and early June at the Stade Roland-Garros in Paris. It is the premier clay woo tennis championship event in the populace and the second of four annual Grand Slam tournaments. [ 486 ] Rugby union is popular, particularly in Paris and the southwest of France. [ 487 ] The national rugby union team has competed at every Rugby World Cup ; it takes part in the annual Six Nations Championship .

See besides

References

far reading

• “France.” in Europe, edited by Ferdie McDonald and Claire Marsden, Dorling Kindersley (Gale, 2010), pp. 144–217. online

Topics

• Carls, Alice-Catherine. “France.” in World Press Encyclopedia, edited by Amanda C. Quick, (2nd ed., vol. 1, Gale, 2003), pp. 314–337. online coverage of press and media
• Chabal, Emile, ed. France since the 1970s: History, Politics and Memory in an Age of Uncertainty (2015) Excerpt
• Gildea, Robert. France Since 1945 (2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2002).
• Goodliffe, Gabriel, and Riccardo Brizzi, eds. France After 2012 (Bergham, 2015)
• Haine, W. S. Culture and Customs of France (Greenwood Press, 2006).
• Kelly, Michael, ed. French Culture and Society: The Essentials (Oxford University Press, 2001).
• Raymond, Gino. Historical Dictionary of France (2nd ed. Scarecrow, 2008).
• Jones, Colin. Cambridge Illustrated History of France (Cambridge University Press,1999)
• Ancient maps of France from the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, The National Library of Israel

economy

politics

culture

• Contemporary French Civilization, journal, University of Illinois.
• FranceGuide – Official website of the French Government Tourist Office