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France
National name - République Française
President - President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy 2007
23rd President of the French Republic
Taking office
16 May 2007 Succeeding Jacques Chirac
Land area - 210,668 square miles (545,630 sq km) total area - 211,209 square miles (547,030 sq km)
Population (Est 2006) - 60,876,136 (growth rate: 0.4%) birth rate: 12.0/1000, infant mortality rate: 4.2/1000, life expectancy - 79.7, density per square miles 289
Capital and largest city (Est 2003) Paris, 9,854,000 (metro. Area), 2,110,400 (city proper)
Languages - French 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects (Provençal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish)
Monetary unit: Euro (formerly French franc)
Officially the French Republic, is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in Western Europe, and that is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and North Sea, and from the Rhine River to the Atlantic Ocean. French people often refer to Metropolitan France as l'Hexagone (the "Hexagon") because of its geographical shape.
France is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra, and Spain. In some of its overseas parts, France also shares land borders with Brazil, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles.
France is also linked to the United Kingdom via the Channel Tunnel, which passes underneath the English Channel.
The French Republic is a democracy which is organized as a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is a highly developed country with the sixth-largest economy in the world in 2005. Its main ideals are expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
France is one of the founding members of the European Union, and has the largest land area of all members. France is also a founding member of the United Nations. It is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council wielding veto power, and it is also one of only eight acknowledged nuclear powers.
The name France originates from the Franks, a Germanic tribe that occupied the region after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. More precisely, the region around Paris, called Île-de-France, was the original French royal demesne.
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Geography
While the main territory of France (metropolitan France; French: la Métropole, France métropolitaine or informally l'hexagone) is located in Western Europe, France is also constituted from a number of territories in North America, the Caribbean, South America, the southern Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and Antarctica (sovereignty claims in Antarctica are governed by the Antarctic Treaty System). These territories have varying forms of government ranging from overseas département to "overseas country".
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Metropolitan France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges in the south-east (the Alps) and the south-west (the Pyrenees).
The French Alps contain the highest point in western Europe, Mont Blanc at 4,810 metres (15,781 ft). There are several other elevated regions such as the Massif Central, the Jura, the Vosges, and the Ardennes which are quite rocky and forested. France also has extensive river systems such as the Loire, the Rhône, the Garonne and the Seine.
Due to its overseas departments and territories scattered on all oceans of the planet, France possesses the second-largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 mi²), just behind the EEZ of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 mi²), but ahead of the EEZ of Australia (8,232,000 km² / 3,178,000 mi²).[3] The EEZ of France covers approximately 8% of the total surface of all the EEZs of the world, whereas the land area of the French Republic is only 0.45% of the total land area on Earth.
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History
The borders of modern France are roughly the same as those of ancient Gaul, which was inhabited by Celtic Gauls. Gaul was conquered by the Romans in the 1st century BC, and the Gauls eventually adopted Roman speech and culture. Christianity also took root in the 2nd century and 3rd century AD.
In the 4th century AD, Gaul's eastern frontier along the Rhine was overrun by Germanic tribes, principally the Franks, from whom the ancient name of "Francie" was derived. The modern name "France" derives from the name of the feudal domain of the Capetian Kings of France around Paris. Existence as a separate entity began with the Treaty of Verdun (843), with the division of Charlemagne's Carolingian empire into East Francia, Middle Francia and Western Francia. Western Francia approximated the area occupied by modern France.
The Carolingians ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, was crowned King of France. His descendants, the Capetian, Valois and Bourbon dynasties progressively unified the country through a series of wars and dynastic inheritance. The monarchy reached its height during the 17th century and the reign of Louis XIV. At this time France had a tremendous influence over European politics, economy and culture and possessed the largest population in Europe (see Demographics of France).
The monarchy ruled France until 1792, when the French Revolution established the First Republic. Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the Republic in 1799, making himself First Consul, and later Emperor of what is now known as the First French Empire (1804-1814). In the course of several wars, his armies conquered many countries, with members of the Bonaparte family being appointed as monarchs of newly established kingdoms.
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Following Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the French monarchy was re-established. In 1830, a civil uprising established the constitutional July Monarchy followed by the Second Republic in 1848.
The short-lived Second Republic ended in 1852 when Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte proclaimed the Second French Empire. Louis-Napoléon was unseated following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 to be replaced by the Third Republic.
France's ultimate victory in World War I and World War II after initially being invaded and partly occupied by German forces did not prevent the loss of the colonial empire, the comparative economic status, population and status as a dominant nation state.
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The Fourth Republic was established after World War II, to be replaced in 1958 by the current semi-presidential Fifth Republic established under General Charles de Gaulle.
In recent decades, France's reconciliation and cooperation with Germany have proved central to the political and economic integration of the evolving European Union, including the introduction of the euro in January 1999. France has been at the forefront of European Union member states seeking to exploit the momentum of monetary union to create a more unified and capable European Union based political, defence and security apparatus. However the French electorate voted against ratification of the European Constitutional Treaty in May 2005.
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Cities
The principal cities by population include:
Aix-en-Provence, Ajaccio, Albi, Amiens, Angers, Angouleme, Bastia, Belfort, Besançon, Bordeaux, Brest, Caen, Calais, Cannes, Carcassonne, Charleville-Mézières, Clermont-Ferrand, Colmar, Dijon, Dunkerque, Evreux, Grenoble, La Rochelle, Le Havre, Le Mans, Lille, Limoges, Lyon, Marseille, Metz, Montpellier, Mulhouse, Nancy, Nantes, Nice, Nîmes, Orléans, Paris, Perpignan, Poitiers, Quimper, Reims, Rennes, Roubaix, Rouen, Saint-Étienne, Saint-Nazaire, Strasbourg, Tarbes, Toulon, Toulouse, Tourcoing, Tours and Valence.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
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