History of France

I

Introduction

History of France, history of the territory of France, a republic in western Europe, from prehistory to the present day.

II

Summary

After the fall of Rome, a series of royal dynasties ruled much of the area. From the 14th to 18th century the power of the monarchy grew. The French Revolution in 1789 toppled the monarchy, ushering in decades of political instability. French strength and prosperity grew during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In recent decades, France, working closely with Germany, has played a leading role in the move toward greater European economic and political integration.

III

Prehistoric Cultures

Archaeological evidence indicates that human beings have lived in what is now France for at least 100,000 years.

The oldest identifiable cultures are those of the Old Stone or Palaeolithic Age (50,000 BC-8000 BC). These cultures left a rich artistic heritage of paintings on cave walls; the most famous of these cave paintings are at Lascaux in the Dordogne region of south-west France.

The Middle Stone or Mesolithic Age (8000-4000 BC) people were food gatherers like their ancestors but left relatively few remains. The peasants of the New Stone (Neolithic) Age (4000 BC-2000 BC), on the other hand, left several thousand remarkable stone monuments in France, including the menhirs in Brittany, the statue-menhirs of southern France, and the dolmens, or chamber tombs, of the Loire Valley, the Parisian Basin, and Champagne.

More sophisticated cultures emerged in the Bronze Age (2000-800 BC) and the Iron Age (8th-2nd century BC). By about 800 BC the techniques of working with iron had been introduced by the Hallstatt people—warriors and shepherds who had spread from their native Alpine region into much of France. In the period that followed, the Celts, or Gauls, became the dominant group.

Contact with Mediterranean culture began when the Greeks explored the western Mediterranean in the 7th century BC, established a colony at Marseille, and traded with the interior via the Rhône Valley. In the 5th century BC La Tène culture—characterized by finely crafted jewellery, weapons, and pottery—spread from eastern Gaul through the rest of the Celtic world.

IV

Roman Gaul

In 121 BC the Romans established a protectorate over the old Greek colony at Massilia (now Marseille) and then founded another settlement farther inland at Narbonne, which in turn became the centre of the flourishing province of Gallia Narbonensis.

Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul several decades later, between 58 and 51 BC. The newly conquered lands were called Gallia Belgica, Gallia Lugdunensis, and Aquitania. The main centre of administration was Lugdunum (modern Lyon).

After the Romans consolidated control over Gaul, their main problem was the long, exposed north-east frontier with the Germanic peoples. Rome intended to conquer the German lands beyond the Rhine and make Colonia Agrippinensis (modern Cologne, Germany) a base somewhat equivalent to Lyon. After being defeated by the Germans in AD 9, however, the Romans limited themselves to defending the Rhine frontier. Many Gauls served in the frontier legions, and the first two centuries under Roman domination were generally peaceful and prosperous for Gauls and Romans alike.

In the 3rd century AD, as the Roman Empire began its decline, Gaul was afflicted by a variety of ills: political instability, a dwindling supply of slaves, plague, rising inflation and its complement of economic insecurity, mounting pressure from the Germanic peoples along the frontier, and a general breakdown of law and order. Temporary respite was gained in the time of the Emperor Diocletian, whose military and fiscal reorganization was carried out in part from an imperial residence in Gaul at Trier (now in Germany).

Christianity, which had been introduced as a persecuted sect in the 2nd century, flourished under imperial protection in this period of personal insecurity and political disorder. By the 5th century, even the Gallo-Roman aristocracy was converting: men from old senatorial families moved rather easily into episcopal positions.

Throughout the 4th century small groups of Germans had been settling in Gaul with the permission of the Roman authorities. In 406 this movement became an invasion when the Vandals, Suevi, and Alans broke through the frontier, moved rapidly across Gaul on a south-westerly course, and crossed into Spain. In 412 the Visigoths freely entered southern Gaul from Italy, and about 440 the Burgundians settled in eastern Gaul. In the north-west, Celtic refugees from Britain, which had also been invaded by Germanic peoples, sought and gained refuge and gave their name to the region of Brittany. In 451 Germans, Romans, and Gauls united to defeat a new horde of invaders—the Huns under Attila.