France

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France
France.gif
Flag of France
Capital Paris
Inhabitants 65.447.374
Language(s) French
France.jpg

France is the largest country of Western Europe in area. Paris, the capital of France and largest city in the country, ranks as one of the world's great cities. For hundreds of years, Paris has been a world capital of art and learning.

Its university is over 800 years old, and is one of the largest in the world. Paris attracts artists and writers of all nationalities. Many great artists have produced their finest masterpieces there.

Although ultimately a victor in World Wars I and II, France suffered extensive losses in its empire, wealth, manpower, and rank as a dominant nation-state. Nevertheless, France today is one of the most modern countries in the world and is a leader among European nations.

Since 1958, it has constructed a presidential democracy resistant to the instabilities experienced in earlier parliamentary democracies. In recent years, its reconciliation and cooperation with Germany have proved central to the economic integration of Europe, including the advent of the euro in January 1999.

Presently, France is at the forefront of European states seeking to exploit the momentum of monetary union to advance the creation of a more unified and capable European defense and security apparatus.

Contents

History

The first humans found in France, known as Homo Erectus, are believed to have lived around 950,000 B.C. They evolved slowly, through four glaciations, discovered fire in the process (around 400,000 B.C.) to become Homo Sapiens. One of them, Cro-Magnon man, found in Dordogne (South West of France) in 1868 used to live circa 25,000. His physiognomy differed only slightly from ours. At the end of the ice age, around 10,000 B.C., Neanderthal men evolved slowly towards the more settled Neolithic civilizations (4,000-2,500 B.C.). People began to cultivate crops and settle herds, villages started to appear (many villages of today still occupy the same locations as those started then).

The Celts, emerging from Central Europe, settled in Germany and Gaul as early as 2500 B.C. They started to work with iron to make tools and weapons, and lived in well organized societies until 125 B.C., when the Roman Empire began its in the South of France.

The Greeks first tried to settle in Celtic Gaul and managed to establish a small colony in Marseille in 600 BC. Then it was the turn of the Romans, lead by Julius Caesar, who entirely invaded Gaul during the Gallic Wars (58-51 BC). The Romans brought unity and peace for two centuries of Pax Romana during which agriculture, cattle-breeding and urban development were greatly improved.

Pont du Gard

During the 2nd century AC, Romans brought Christianity into Gaul and by the third century, the power of the Roman Empire had begun its decline. The 4th century started with Barbarian invaders from the East such as the Franks, the Vandals and the Visigoths. Clovis, King of the Franks, converted to christianity and his power brought unity to Gaul, starting the Merovingian dynasty.


Charles Martel, the first leader of the Carolingian dynasty, initiated the expansion of the Franks' kingdom and stopped the Muslim advance from Spain in 732. Charlemagne (742-814) continued this expansion and conquered most of Germany and Italy to reunite most of the former Roman Empire. Shortly after his death, however, his kingdom was divided under the pressure of invaders such as the Normans (Vikings) and the Magyars (Hungarians).

Towards the end of the first millenium, France consisted of numerous feudal Lordships. The Carolingian dynasty died out in 987 when Hugues Capet was elected to the throne of France by the Lords, starting the Capetian Dynasty. The early Capetian kings had very limited power over the independent Lords. In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy invaded England while the first Crusades started in 1095.

Despite the mariage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II of England which yielded most of the western part of France to the British Crown, the Capetians continued to centralize the Lordships under their control. Philippe IV (the Fair), even pressured sucessors of Pope Boniface VIII to move the papal court to Avignon in 1309. After the death of the last Capetian king Charles IV, Edward III of England claimed the French Throne and started the Hundred Years War in 1337. Thanks to the courage of a French peasant girl, Joan of Arc, Charles VIII emerged victorious in the war and drove the English back to Calais.


In the early 16th century, after a series of Italian wars, Francois I strengthened the French Crown and welcomed to France many Italian artists and designers such as Leonardo da Vinci. Their influence assured the success of the Renaissance style characterized by enlarged doors and windows, the great sophistications of the interiors.

The Loire Valley Chateaus (Chambord) and Francois I's Chateau of Fontainebleau are perfect examples of the Renaissance style, which combined defensive fortresses with luxurious palaces.

Between 1562 and 1598, the increasse in the number of the Huguenots (Protestants) led to the Wars of Religion. Catherine de Medici ordered the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of hundreds of Protestants. In 1589, Henri IV, a target of the massacre, becomes the first Bourbon king of France and astutely converted to Catholism. He ended the Wars of Religion by enacting the Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed religious and political rights to the Huguenots.


The 17th century was marked by a period of exeptional power and glamour for the French Monarchy. Starting with King Louis XIII and the Cardinal Richelieu who together transformed the feudal French Monarchy to an Absolute Monarchy, by controlling the opposition of the "Grands" (the Lords) and the growing power of the Protestant (siege of La Rochelle, 1628). Mazarin, Louis XIV's regent, ended the popular revolts of La Fronde. Louis XIV, in turn, managed to keep all the Princes and Lords at his court in Versailles, to better control and display his glorious power. da Vinci's Mona Lisa


Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King, was the most powerful and opulent monarch Europe had seen since the Roman Empire. Political brillance in this period was matched only by the genius of the writers, architects and musicians generously promoted by the royal court. Alas, all of this exuberance, including Louis XIV's endless wars, had a cost which was to be paid by the entire nation, largely impoverished towards the end of his reign. The growing resentment of the Bourgeoisie, who demanded political rights more in keeping with their expanding power and wealth, would prove to be a political challenge to the king's successors.

The 18th century's Enlightment brought thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau to struggle against the principles of the old regime and absolutism. In 1789, the state's financial crisis brought social turmoil, triggering the Revolution. On July 14th, a Parisian mob revolted and stormed the Bastille prison, symbol of the old regime. A few weeks later, the revolutionaries enacted the Declaration of the Rights of Man which embodied the principles of Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité (Freedom, Equality, Fraternity) and had far reaching consequences for all the other European monarchies.

During the following decade France saw a succession of rivaling regimes which guillotined Louis XVI and scores of moderates as well as radicals at the Place de la Revolution, now known as Place de la Concorde. The Terror regime of Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety brought turmoil, confusion and anarchy in France.

The Revolution ends in 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris and was crowned First Consul at the age of thirty. A brilliant politician and a military genius, he took the title of emperor Napoleon I in 1804. After establishing a powerful central administration and a strong code of law, he started numerous military campaigns which almost gave him the control of the entire European continent. First defeated in Russia in 1812 and then in Waterloo in 1815, he was replaced by Louis XVIII.

Louis XVIII's constitutional monarchy was overthrown under Charles X, whose conservatism was a reminiscence of the old regime and lead to the July Revolution of 1830. The following July Monarchy, had an elected King, Louis Philippe, (the Duke of Orleans). He ruled France for 18 years of stable prosperity.


In 1848, Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon I, was elected the first president of the Second Republic. In 1852, he was proclaimed Emperor Napoleon III by national plebiscite. It was he who commissioned Baron Haussman to redesign Paris and started the French industrial revolution.

In 1870, the Franco-Prussian war erupted, Paris fell to the Germans and France lost the Alsace and Lorraine regions. Following the defeat, Napoleon III was exiled and France's Third Republic marked the definite end of centuries of monarchy.

Eiffel's controversial structure at the Universal Exhibition of 1889

The industrial expansion was not slowed by the war and continued at a fast pace. To commemorate the centenial of the French Revolution, the Eiffel Tower was constructed during the Universal Exhibition of 1889. Simultaneously, the cultural and artistic scene thrived and evolved with the Impressionists, the Art Nouveau style, the novelist Flaubert and the satirist Zola.

The First World War erupted in 1914 in northeast France and after two years of German victories, fell into the horrors of trench warfare. The United States entered the war in 1917 and helped France to victory. The Allies demanded generous restitutions and payments from the Germans, who resented the humiliation for years, and was one of the factors which sparked WWII.

Despite the devastation of the war, the Entre Guerres (Between Wars) period allowed France to hold a leading role in the avant garde movement. From Paris to the Riviera, France attracted experimental artists, musicians, filmmakers and musicians from all over the world.


In 1940, the Germans invaded Paris and occupied the north and west parts of France until 1944. The rest of the country was under the authority of the puppet Government of Vichy led by Marshal Petain. Simultaneously, General Charles de Gaulle was organizing the Resistance movement of the Free France from London. Soon after the American, British and Canadian military invasion on the Normandy Beaches on June 6, 1944, de Gaulle entered Paris to head the new government of the Fourth Republic.

The postwar years deeply changed French society: consumerism was born, the service sector rapidly expanded, and high-tech national projects were successfully launched (Concorde, TGV...). Meanwhile, in the 50's and 60's, France had difficulty in coping with the claim to independence of its African and Asian colonies and with the liberalization of its society, leading to wars in Algeria, Indochina (Vietnam) and the violent student revolts of 1968.

Culture

Arts

In the 18th century, Jean-Baptiste Chardin brought the humbler domesticity of the Dutch masters to French art. Later, Napoleon named Jacques Louis David, a leader of the 1789 Revolution, official state painter. David produced vast pictures, including one of Revolutionary-dictator Marat lying dead in his bath.

Painting as portraiture was simultaneously revamped by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix in the 19th century, while landscape painting was transformed first by Jean-François Millet and the Barbizon School, then by Edouard Manet and the realists. Manet's later work is influenced by the Claude Monet-prefected Impressionist school, which numbered Camille Pisarro and Edgar Degas among its students.

Post-impressionism gave way to a bewildering diversity of styles in the 20th century, two of which are particularly significant: Fauvism, à la Henri Matisse, and Cubism, personified by Pablo Picasso. These were followed by the Dadaists, who reacted to the negativity of WWI by acting weird.

In the 19th century, sculptor Auguste Rodin, regarded by some critics as the finest portraitist in the history of the art, rendered sumptuous bronze and marble figures.

Music

French Baroque music was influential throughout the Continent, informing much of the wider European output. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and Berlioz, who founded modern orchestration and produced operas and symphonies that sparked a musical renaissance, are other important names in classical music.

Literature

Victor Hugo is the key figure of 19th-century French Romanticism. By the mid-19th century, Romanticism was evolving into new movements, both in fiction and poetry, and three stalwarts of French literature emerged: Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire and the controversial, innovative and powerful work of Emile Zola. The poet Arthur Rimbaud, as well as crowding rugged and exotic adventuring into his 37 years, produced two enduring pieces of work: Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell).

Marcel Proust dominated early 20th century literature with his exquisitely excruciating seven-volume novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Poet André Breton was a militant surrealist fascinated with dreams, divination and all manifestations of 'the marvellous'. After WWII, Existentialism developed around Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, who stressed the importance of the writer's political engagement. De Beauvoir, author of the ground-breaking The Second Sex, had a profound influence on feminist thinking. By the late 1950s, younger writers began to look for new ways of organising narrative; novelist Nathalie Sarraute, for example, did away with the pesky conventions of identifiable character and plot. Marguerite Duras employed similar abstractions, backgrounding character for mood. She came to the notice of an international public with her racy novel L'Amant (The Lover) in 1984.

Philosophers such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva, best known for theoretical writings on literature and psychoanalysis, are other 'serious' authors known worldwide, although the most admired national literature is the comic strip Astérix.

Emergent (and readable) voices in French literature include Annie Ernaux and Daniel Pennac (urban crime fiction).

Cinema

The 1950s and 1960s was a period of French celluloid innovation, when new wave directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Louis Malle burst onto the scene. The dominance of the auteur directors continued until the 1970s, by which time the new wave had lost its experimental edge and boosted the reputation of French cinema as an intellectual, elitist and, frankly, boring enterprise. The most successful directors of the 80s and 90s have produced original and visually striking films featuring unusual locations, bizarre stories and unique characters. Well-regarded directors include Jean-Jacques Beineix, who made Diva and Betty Blue. The 2001 hit Amélie was France's biggest-grossing film of all time.

Food

Food is a subject of endless rumination. Consider just some of the country's epicurean delights - foie gras, truffles, Roquefort cheese, well-built crustaceans, succulent snails plucked off grape vines, sharp-tasting fruit tarts - and you begin to appreciate the culinary zeal of the French. But one cannot live on escargot and vin de table alone. France's North African and Asian populations have contributed to the pot, bringing spice and colour to many dishes.

A typical day's eating begins with a bowl of café au lait, a croissant and a thin loaf of bread smeared with butter and jam. Lunch and dinner are virtually indistinguishable and can include a first course of fromage de tête pâté (pig's head set in jelly) or bouillabaisse (fish soup), followed by a main course of blanquette de veau (veal stew with white sauce) and rounded off with a plateau de fromage (cheese platter) or tarte aux pommes (apple tart). An appetite-stirring apéritif such as kir (white wine sweetened with syrup) is often served before a meal, while a digestif (cognac or Armagnac brandy) may be served at the end. Other beverages designed to aid digestion and stimulate conversation include espresso, beer, liqueurs such as pastis (a 90-proof, anise-flavoured cousin of absinthe) and some of the best wine in the world.

The first distinctively Gallic architecture was Gothic, which originated in the mid-12th century in northern France and is preserved in the Chartres cathedral and its successors at Reims and Amiens.

Christmas

Nearly every French home at Christmastime displays a Nativity scene or creche, which serves as the focus for the Christmas celebration. The creche is often peopled with little clay figures called santons or "little saints." An extensive tradition has evolved around these little figures which are made by craftsmen in the south of France throughout the year. In addition to the usual Holy Family, shepherds, and Magi, the craftsmen also produce figures in the form of local dignitaries and characters. The craftsmanship involved in creating the gaily colored santons is quite astounding and the molds have been passed from generation to generation since the seventeenth century. Throughout December the figures are sold at annual Christmas fairs in Marseille and Aix.

The Christmas tree has never been particularly popular in France, and though the use of the Yule log has faded, the French make a traditional Yule log-shaped cake called the buche de Nol, which means "Christmas Log." The cake, among other food in great abundance is served at the grand feast of the season, which is called le rveillon. Le rveillon is a very late supper held after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. The menu for the meal varies according to regional culinary tradition. In Alsace, goose is the main course, in Burgundy it is turkey with chestnuts, and the Parisians feast upon oysters and pat de foie gras.

French children receive gifts from Pere Noel who travels with his stern disciplinarian companion Pre Fouettard. Pre Fouettard reminds Pere Noel of just how each child has behaved during the past year. In some parts of France Pere Noel brings small gifts on St. Nicholas Eve (December 6) and visits again on Christmas. In other places it is le petit Jsus who brings the gifts. Generally adults wait until New Year's Day to exchange gifts.

Events

coming soon...

National holidays

  • Jan 1: New Year's Day
  • May 1: Labour Day
  • May 8: Fête de la Victoire 1945 (WWII Victory Day)
  • Jul 14: Bastille Day
  • Aug 15: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
  • Nov 1: All Saints Day
  • Nov 11: Armistice Day
  • Dec 25: Christmas Day
  • Dec 26: 2nd Day of Christmas (in Alsace Lorraine-only)
  • Metal workers have the holiday of St. Eloi on 1 December
  • Good Friday
  • Easter Sunday
  • Easter Monday
  • Ascension
  • Whit Sunday (Pentecost)
  • Whit Monday

Embassies

 

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