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Early civilizations
Traces of human existence are rare in France until about 50,000 BC.
Thereafter, beginning with the "Mousterian civilization", they become
ever more numerous, with an especially heavy concentration of sites in
the Périgord region of the Dordogne,...
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Pre-roman Gaul
There were about fifteen million people living in Gaul , as the Romans
called what we know as France (and parts of Belgium), when Julius Cæsar
arrived in 58 BC to complete the Roman conquest. The southern part of
this territory -...
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Romanization
Gallic tribal rivalries made the Romans' job very much easier. And when
at last they were able to unite under Vercingétorix in 52 BC, the
occasion was their total and final defeat by Julius Cæsar at the battle
of ...
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The Franks and Charlemagne
By 500 AD, the Franks , who gave their name to modern France, had become
the dominant invading power. Their most celebrated king, Clovis ,
consolidated his hold on northern France and drove the Visigoths out of
the southwest into...
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The rise of the French kings
The years 1000 to 1500 saw the gradual extension and consolidation of
the power of the French kings , accompanied by the growth of a
centralized administrative system and bureaucracy. These factors also
determined their foreign policy, which...
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The Hundred Years War
In 1328 the Capetian monarchy had its first succession crisis, which led
directly to the ruinous Hundred Years War with the English. Charles IV,
last of the line, had only daughters as heirs, and when it was decided
that France could not be...
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The wars of religion
After half a century of self-confident but inconclusive pursuit of
military glory in Italy, brought to an end by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis
in 1559, France was plunged into another period of devastating internal
conflict. The ...
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Kings, cardinals and absolute power
The main themes of the seventeenth century, when France was ruled by
just two kings, Louis XIII (1610-43) and Louis XIV (1643-1715), were, on
the domestic front, the strengthening of the centralized state embodied
in the person of...
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Louis XV and the parlements
While France remained in many ways a prosperous and powerful state,
largely because of colonial trade, the tensions between central
government and traditional vested interests proved too great to be
reconciled. The parlement of Paris...
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Revolution
Against a background of deepening economic crisis and general misery,
exacerbated by the catastrophic harvest of 1788, controversy focused on
how the Estates-General should be constituted. Should they meet
separately as on the last occasion -...
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The rise of Napoléon
In 1799, one General Napoléon Bonaparte , who had made a name for
himself as commander of the Revolutionary armies in Italy and Egypt,
returned to France and took power in a coup d'état. He was appointed
First Consul, with power to choose...
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The restoration and 1830 revolution
The years following Napoléon's downfall were marked by a determined
campaign, including the White Terror , on the part of those reactionary
elements who wanted to wipe out all trace of the Revolution and restore
the ancien régime . ...
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The Second Republic
A provisional government was set up and a republic proclaimed. The
government issued a right-to-work declaration and set up national
workshops to relieve unemployment. The vote was extended to all adult
males - an unprecedented move for its...
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Napoléon III and the Commune
Through the 1850s, Napoléon III ran an authoritarian regime whose most
notable achievement was a rapid growth in industrial and economic power.
Foreign trade trebled, the rail system grew enormously, and the first
investment banks were...
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The Third Republic
In 1889, the collapse of a company set up to build the Panama Canal
involved several members of the government in a corruption scandal,
which was one factor in the dramatic socialist gains in the elections of
1893. More importantly, the urban...
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World War I
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, France found itself swiftly
overrun by Germany and its allies, and defended by its old enemy,
Britain. At home, the hitherto anti-militarist trade union and socialist
leaders (Jaurès was assassinated...
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World War II
The agonies of World War II were compounded for France by the additional
traumas of occupation, collaboration and Resistance - in effect, a civil
war. After the 1940 defeat of the Anglo-French forces in France, ...
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The aftermath of war
France emerged from the war demoralized, bankrupt and bomb-wrecked. The
only possible provisional government in the circumstances was de
Gaulle's Free French and the Conseil National de la Résistance, which
meant a coalition of Left and Right....
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De Gaulle's presidency
As prime minister, then president of the Fifth Republic - with powers as
much strengthened as he had wished - de Gaulle wheeled and dealed with
the pieds noirs and Algerian rebels, while the war continued. In 1961,
a...
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Pompidou and Giscard
Having petulantly staked his presidency on the outcome of yet another
referendum (on a couple of constitutional amendments) and lost, de
Gaulle once more took himself off to his country estate and retirement.
He was succeeded as president by his...
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The Mitterrand era, 1981-95
When François Mitterrand won the presidential elections over Giscard in
1981, he embodied all the hopes of a generation of Socialists who had
never seen their party in power. Headed by Pierre Mauroy as prime
minister and including...
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Chirac's presidency
An immediate dramatic change wrought by Chirac was the abolition of
conscription , to give France more efficient and effective armed forces.
The move provoked impassioned responses by the PCF and other left-wingers
for whom conscription...
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