Communications: Telephones:
main lines in use: 38.433 million (2005); mobile cellular: 49.37
million (2005). Radio broadcast stations: AM 41, FM about 3,500
(this figure is an approximation and includes many repeaters),
shortwave 2 (1998). Television broadcast stations: 584 (plus
9,676 repeaters) (1995). Internet hosts: 3.149 million (2006).
Internet users: 29.945 million (2006).
Transportation: Railways: total: 29,085 km
(2005). Highways: total: 956,303 km; paved: paved: 951,220 km
(including 10,490 km of expressways); unpaved: 0 km (2002).
Waterways: 8,500 km (1,686 km accessible to craft of 3,000
metric tons) (2000). Ports and harbors: Bordeaux, Calais,
Dunkerque, La Pallice, Le Havre, Marseille, Nantes, Paris, Rouen,
Strasbourg. Airports: 501 (2006 est.).
International disputes: Madagascar claims
Bassas da India, Europa Island, Glorioso Islands, and Juan de Nova
Island; Comoros claims Mayotte; Mauritius claims Tromelin Island;
territorial dispute between Suriname and the French overseas
department of French Guiana; France asserts a territorial claim in
Antarctica (Adelie Land); France and Vanuatu claim Matthew and Hunter
Islands, east of New Caledonia.
France is about 80% the size of Texas. In the Alps near the Italian and
Swiss borders is western Europe's highest point—Mont Blanc (15,781 ft;
4,810 m). The forest-covered Vosges Mountains are in the northeast, and
the Pyrénées are along the Spanish border. Except for extreme northern
France, the country may be described as four river basins and a plateau.
Three of the streams flow west—the Seine into the English Channel, the
Loire into the Atlantic, and the Garonne into the Bay of Biscay. The Rhône
flows south into the Mediterranean. For about 100 mi (161 km), the Rhine
is France's eastern border. In the Mediterranean, about 115 mi (185 km)
east-southeast of Nice, is the island of Corsica (3,367 sq mi; 8,721 sq
km).
Government
Fifth republic.
History
Archeological excavations indicate that France has been continuously
settled since Paleolithic times. The Celts, who were later called
Gauls by the Romans, migrated from the Rhine valley into what is
now France. In about 600 B.C. Greeks and
Phoenicians established settlements along the Mediterranean, most notably
at Marseille. Julius Caesar conquered part of Gaul in 57–52 B.C., and it remained Roman until Franks invaded in
the 5th century A.D.
The Treaty of Verdun (843) divided the territories corresponding
roughly to France, Germany, and Italy among the three grandsons of
Charlemagne. Charles the Bald inherited Francia Occidentalis, which
became an increasingly feudalized kingdom. By 987, the crown passed to
Hugh Capet, a princeling who controlled only the Ile-de-France, the region
surrounding Paris. For 350 years, an unbroken Capetian line added to its
domain and consolidated royal authority until the accession in 1328 of
Philip VI, first of the Valois line. France was then the most powerful
nation in Europe, with a population of 15 million.
The missing pieces in Philip Valois's domain were the French provinces
still held by the Plantagenet kings of England, who also claimed the
French crown. Beginning in 1338, the Hundred Years' War eventually settled
the contest. After France's victory in the final battle, Castillon (1453),
the Valois were the ruling family, and the English had no French
possessions left except Calais. Once Burgundy and Brittany were added, the
Valois dynasty's holdings resembled modern France. Protestantism spread
throughout France in the 16th century and led to civil wars. Henry IV, of
the Bourbon dynasty, issued the Edict of Nantes (1598), granting religious
tolerance to the Huguenots (French Protestants). Absolute monarchy reached
its apogee in the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), the Sun King, whose
brilliant court was the center of the Western world.
After a series of costly foreign wars that weakened the government, the
French Revolution plunged France into a bloodbath beginning in 1789 with
the establishment of the First Republic and ending with a new
authoritarianism under Napoléon Bonaparte, who had successfully defended
the infant republic from foreign attack and then made himself first consul
in 1799 and emperor in 1804. The Congress of Vienna (1815) sought to
restore the pre-Napoléonic order in the person of Louis XVIII, but
industrialization and the middle class, both fostered under Napoléon,
built pressure for change, and a revolution in 1848 drove Louis Philippe,
last of the Bourbons, into exile. Prince Louis Napoléon, a nephew of
Napoléon I, declared the Second Empire in 1852 and took the throne as
Napoléon III. His opposition to the rising power of Prussia ignited the
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), which ended in his defeat, his
abdication, and the creation of the Third Republic.
A new France emerged from World War I as the continent's dominant
power. But four years of hostile occupation had reduced northeast France
to ruins. Beginning in 1919, French foreign policy aimed at keeping
Germany weak through a system of alliances, but it failed to halt the rise
of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi war machine. On May 10, 1940, Nazi troops
attacked, and, as they approached Paris, Italy joined with Germany. The
Germans marched into an undefended Paris and Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain
signed an armistice on June 22. France was split into an occupied north
and an unoccupied south, Vichy France, which became a totalitarian German
puppet state with Pétain as its chief. Allied armies liberated France in
Aug. 1944, and a provisional government in Paris headed by Gen. Charles de
Gaulle was established. The Fourth Republic was born on Dec. 24, 1946. The
empire became the French Union; the national assembly was strengthened and
the presidency weakened; and France joined NATO. A war against Communist
insurgents in French Indochina, now Vietnam, was abandoned after the
defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. A new rebellion in
Algeria threatened a military coup, and on June 1, 1958, the assembly
invited de Gaulle to return as premier with extraordinary powers. He
drafted a new constitution for a Fifth Republic, adopted on September 28,
which strengthened the presidency and reduced legislative power. He was
elected president on Dec. 21, 1958.
France next turned its attention to decolonialization in Africa; the
French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia had received independence in
1956. French West Africa was partitioned and the new nations were granted
independence in 1960. Algeria, after a long civil war, finally became
independent in 1962. Relations with most of the former colonies remained
amicable. De Gaulle took France out of the NATO military command in 1967
and expelled all foreign-controlled troops from the country. De Gaulle's
government was weakened by massive protests in May 1968 when student
rallies became violent and millions of factory workers engaged in wildcat
strikes across France. After normalcy was reestablished in 1969, de
Gaulle's successor, Georges Pompidou, modified Gaullist policies to
include a classical laissez-faire attitude toward domestic economic
affairs. The conservative, pro-business climate contributed to the
election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as president in 1974.
Socialist François Mitterrand attained a stunning victory in the May
10, 1981, presidential election. The victors immediately moved to carry
out campaign pledges to nationalize major industries, halt nuclear
testing, suspend nuclear power-plant construction, and impose new taxes on
the rich. The Socialists' policies during Mitterrand's first two years
created a 12% inflation rate, a huge trade deficit, and devaluations of
the franc. In March 1986, a center-right coalition led by Jacques Chirac
won a slim majority in legislative elections. Chirac became prime
minister, initiating a period of “cohabitation” between him and the
Socialist president, Mitterrand. Mitterrand's decisive reelection in 1988
led to Chirac being replaced as prime minister by Michel Rocard, a
Socialist. Relations, however, cooled with Rocard, and in May 1991 Edith
Cresson—also a Socialist—became France's first female prime minister. But
Cresson's unpopularity forced Mitterrand to replace Cresson with a more
well-liked Socialist, Pierre Bérégovoy, who eventually was embroiled in a
scandal and committed suicide. Mitterrand did succeed in helping to draft
the Maastricht Treaty and, after winning a slim victory in a referendum,
confirming close economic and security ties between France and the
European Union (EU).
On his third try Chirac won the presidency in May 1995, campaigning
vigorously on a platform to reduce unemployment. Elections for the
national assembly in 1997 gave the Socialist coalition a majority. Shortly
after becoming president, Chirac resumed France's nuclear testing in the
South Pacific, despite widespread international protests as well as
rioting in the countries affected by it. Socialist leader Lionel Jospin
became prime minister in 1997. In the spring of 1999, the country took
part in the NATO air strikes in Kosovo, despite some internal
opposition.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the right-wing anti-immigrant National
Front Party, shocked France in April 2002 with his second-place finish in
the first round of France's presidential election. He took 17% of the
vote, eliminating Lionel Jospin, the Socialist prime minister, who tallied
16%. Jospin, stunned by the result, announced that he was retiring from
politics and threw his support behind incumbent president Jacques Chirac,
who won with an overwhelming 82.2% of the vote in the runoff election.
Chirac's center-right coalition won an absolute majority in parliament. In
July 2002, Chirac survived an assassination attempt by a right-wing
extremist.
During the fall 2002 and winter 2003 diplomatic wrangling at the United
Nations over Iraq, France repeatedly defied the U.S. and Britain by
calling for more weapons inspections and diplomacy before resorting to
war. Relations between the U.S. and France have remained severely strained
over Iraq.
France sent peacekeeping forces to assist two African countries in 2002
and 2003, Côte d'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Prime Minister Raffarin's plan to overhaul the national pension system
sparked numerous strikes across France in May and June 2003, involving
tens of thousands of sanitation workers, teachers, transportation workers,
and air traffic controllers. In August, a deadly heat wave killed an
estimated 10,000 people, mostly elderly. The catastrophe occurred during
two weeks of 104°F (40°C) temperatures.
In 2004, the French government passed a law banning the wearing of
Muslim headscarves and other religious symbols in schools. The government
maintained that the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols threatened
the country's secular identity; others contended that the law curtailed
religious freedom.
In March 2004 regional elections, the Socialist Party made enormous
gains over Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) Party. Unpopular
economic reforms are credited for the UMP's defeat.
On May 29, 2005, French voters rejected the European Union constitution
by a 55%–45% margin. Reasons given for rejecting the constitution included
concerns about forfeiting too much French sovereignty to a centralized
European government and alarm at the EU's rapid addition of 10 new members
in 2004, most from Eastern Europe. In response, President Chirac, who
strongly supported the constitution, replaced Prime Minister Jean-Pierre
Raffarin with Dominique de Villepin, a former foreign minister.
Rioting erupted on Oct. 27, 2005, in the impoverished outskirts of
Paris and continued for two weeks, spreading to 300 towns and cities
throughout France. It was the worst violence the country has faced in four
decades. The rioting was sparked by the accidental deaths of two
teenagers, one of French-Arab and the other of French-African descent, and
grew into a violent protest against the bleak lives of poor French-Arabs
and French-Africans, many of whom live in depressed, crime-ridden areas
with high unemployment and who feel alienated from the rest of French
society.
In March and April 2006, a series of huge and ongoing protests took
place over a proposed labor law that would allow employers to fire workers
under age 26 within two years without giving a reason. The law was
intended to control high unemployment among France's young workers. The
protests continued after President Chirac signed a somewhat amended bill
into law. But on April 10, Chirac relented and rescinded the law, an
embarrassing about-face for the government.
Presidential elections held in April 2007 pitted Socialist Ségolène
Royal against conservative Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the nominee
for the Union for a Popular Movement. Late in the race, centrist candidate
Francois Bayrou emerged as a contender. Sarkozy, with 30.7%, and Royal,
taking 25.2%, prevailed in the first round of voting. Sarkozy went on to
win the runoff election, taking 53.1% of the vote to Royal's 46.9%.
Sarkozy immediately extended an olive branch to the United States,
saying "I want to tell them [Americans] that France will always be by
their side when they need her, but that friendship is also accepting the
fact that friends can think differently." The dialogue signalled a marked
shift from the tense French-American relationship under Chirac.
On his first day in office, Sarkozy named former social affairs
minister François Fillon as prime minister, succeeding Dominique de
Villepin. He also appointed Socialist Bernard Kouchner, a co-founder of
the Nobel-prize-winning Médecins Sans Frontières, as foreign minister.
Workers in the public sector staged 24-hour strike in October to protest
Sarkozy's plan to change their generous retirement packages that allow
workers to retire at age 50 with a full pension. On the same day of the
strike, Sarkozy confirmed that he and his wife, Cécilia, had separated and
planned to divorce. Rail workers staged a strike in November to protest
Sarkozy's plan to end generous benefits that allow workers to retire in
their 50s with full pension benefits. Strikers relented after nine days
and agreed to negotiate.
In Feb. 2008, Sarkozy married Italian-born Carla Bruni, a former model turned pop star.
