France

Article Outline

Introduction; Land and Resources of France; French People and Society; Culture; Economy of France; Government; History

Civil Service

Professional, highly trained civil servants staff most public sector jobs. Public sector employees usually must pass competitive civil service entrance examinations. Other examinations permit successful candidates to enter elite institutions of higher learning to prepare them for careers in the civil service. These institutions include the Ecole Nationale, founded in 1945, and the Ecole Polytechnique, founded in 1794.

The French civil service consists of strict hierarchies at the national, regional, and local levels. Each level is associated with a particular set of public jobs and a particular path of career advancement. The elite corps, which staff the national government’s highest technical and administrative positions, are known as the grands corps de l’Etat. Most civil servants are members of unions.

Defense and Foreign Policy

France has one of western Europe’s most powerful military forces. France tested its first nuclear weapon in 1960 and maintains an independent nuclear force capable of striking from land, air, and sea. Military expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) have gradually declined in recent decades, due to modernization of the armed services and a heavy dependence on nuclear weapons. The French army is staffed by an all-volunteer professional force. Compulsory national service, a feature of French life for more than two centuries, was formally abolished in 2001.

France was a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a regional defense alliance, in 1949. Seeking a more independent military posture, France withdrew all of its forces from the integrated command of NATO in 1966 but remained a member of the alliance. France rejoined the military structure of NATO in 1995 and assumed a seat on NATO’s Military Committee that year. However, France chose to remain outside the alliance’s formal chain of command and to retain sole control of its nuclear weapons, known as the force de frappe. In 2009 France became a full member of NATO and reintegrated into the alliance’s military command structure.

International Organizations

France is a charter member of the United Nations, and holds one of five permanent seats on the UN Security Council. France was founding member of European Union (EU) and its several precursor organizations, including the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC), and the European Community (EC). France is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

France is party to numerous international treaties. Important examples include the European Convention on Human Rights, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Key treaties France has refused to sign include the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. After conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1995, France announced the completion of its testing program and its willingness to work with Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States on behalf of a comprehensive test ban treaty (see Arms Control).

William James Adams contributed the Government section of this article.

VII

History

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Overview

France has enjoyed a clear sense of its own identity in the modern period, but this identity took a very long time to develop. The term France did not refer uniquely to the territory now identified with the French nation until the end of the Middle Ages. The French language took a standardized form only in the 17th century. As late as the 19th century, a quarter of the population residing in France did not speak standard French. Roman Catholicism, the religion of the vast majority of French people today, was also adopted very slowly. Some historians argue that the majority of French people did not practice Catholic rituals and accept Catholic doctrines in their orthodox form before the 18th century. The French state took centuries to build. Until 1789 the French people lived under some 400 separate codes of civil law. They were better described as subjects of a king than as citizens of a nation. Similarly, not until the 19th century did a true national economy form out of several regional ones. The history of France, then, is not the story of a fixed entity over thousands of years. Rather, it is the history of many processes that, more by coincidence than plan, turned an increasing number of people into Frenchmen and Frenchwomen in the last few centuries.

Geography has played a major role in the development of the nation. France, today referred to as the “hexagon” because of the country’s roughly hexagonal shape, is located at the western end of Eurasia. France is the only European nation that borders on both the Mediterranean Sea and the northern edge of Europe, and it is the only one that faces both central Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. All these exposures have influenced the development of France’s economy, government, and culture. Its location has forced France to protect itself on both land and sea. For this reason, it developed a strong army and, in modern times, a respectably sized navy. France’s long coastlines and several long navigable rivers allowed easy access to many parts of the hexagon long before the coming of rail transportation. The absence of high mountain ranges within the interior also facilitated political and economic unification.

Yet the history of the French nation cannot be reduced to its geography. Natural forces were less important in cementing together the French hexagon than were cultural and, especially, political forces. France was effectively unified for the first time by the ancient Romans. The Romans incorporated it, along with other bordering territories, as Gaul within their sprawling empire in the 1st century bc. Once the Roman Empire disintegrated in the 5th century ad, the region was united to the rest of western and central Europe by its growing attachment to the Roman Catholic Church.

In the Middle Ages, a series of royal dynasties laid claim to what would become France. But they could not back their claims with an effective administration for many centuries. The Valois and Bourbon dynasties in the early modern period developed a larger military and civilian bureaucracy, which enabled the monarchy to pacify the region and extend France’s boundaries. As part of their efforts to build a state, these dynasties helped establish a specifically French culture.

In 1789 the monarchy was overthrown in one of the world’s greatest revolutions. The French Revolution opened up a century and a half of political instability as defenders battled opponents of the revolutionary heritage. Despite this internal strife, the nation remained robust enough to develop a modern industrial economy, build and lose a vast colonial empire, fight in two world wars, become a nuclear power, and establish itself as a major center of the arts and sciences. France is now negotiating to integrate itself politically and economically with the rest of Europe as it has not done since antiquity.

The Foundations