French Autograph Marcel Cachin 1946 Communist Signed Letter Vintage 8.5X11
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FRENCH AUTOGRAPH MARCEL CACHIN 1946 COMMUNIST SIGNED LETTER VINTAGE 8.5X11. MARCEL CACHIN SIGNED AUTOGRAPHED 8.5X11 INCH LETTER FROM 1946 Marcel Cachin was a French Communist politician and the first editor of the daily newspaper L'Humanite. In 1891, Cachin joined Jules Guesde's French Workers' Party. In 1905, he joined the new French Section of the Workers' International and won election to the Chamber of Deputies representing the Seine in 1914.
Marcel Cachin (20 September 1869 – 12 February 1958) was a French Communist politician and the first editor of the daily newspaper L'Humanite. In 1891, Cachin joined Jules Guesde's French Workers' Party (POF). In 1905, he joined the new French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and won election to the Chamber of Deputies representing the Seine in 1914. He rallied the Union sacrée during the First World War and was sent to Russia in a mission in 1917. On that occasion he strongly supported Kerensky's Provisional Government, which was pledged to continue Russia's participation in World War I, and denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In 1918, he was one of the speakers at a patriotic rally held at Strasbourg, to celebrate the city's return to French rule. However, following the end of the war, there was a leftward shift among Cachin's grassroots supporters and a growing sympathy for the October revolution. In 1920 at the Tours Congress, Cachin became one of the founders of the French Communist Party (SFIC) and joined the Third International. In 1923, he was jailed for denouncing the French occupation of the Ruhr and Morocco. As a strong supporter of the pro-Soviet Communist Party, he refused to disavow the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and was removed from elected office in 1940. After the Liberation of France, he returned to the National Assembly until his death in 1958. He was the editor of the newspaper L'Humanité from 1918 to 1958.[1] At the age of 88, he was the first foreigner to receive the Order of Lenin. In the later part of his life, he was nicknamed "Grandfather of the Communist Party". His granddaughter, Françoise Cachin, was an art historian. Electoral results Cachin was the candidate for President of France of the French Communist Party in four elections: Third Republic: 1931: 1.11% in the first round, 1.23% in the second round 1932: 0.97% in the first round 1939: 8.13% in the first round Fourth Republic: 1953: 12.18% in the first round Marcel Cachin, born September 20, 1869 in Paimpol (Côtes-du-Nord) is a French politician and journalist who co-founded the French Section of the Communist International (with Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, Fernand Loriot and Boris Souvarine). Cachin becomes general secretary of the Communist Party after demission of Louis Sellier. He is also the director of the newspaper L'Humanité since 1918. Old socialist having militated in the French Worker Party of Jules Guesde and in the SFIO of his creation, he joins the Sacred Union with the announcement of the war against the German Empire. During the summer of 1920, he traveled with Ludovic-Oscar Frossard to Soviet Russia, and came back conquered by the Bolshevik Revolution. During the Congress of Tours of 1921, he was the craftsman of the adhesion to the Third International and managed to have a majority vote on his mention. Unitary figure and repect in the communists as in the socialists, he is the ardent craftsman of the unitary strategy, on the union and political plan. Marcel Cachin was elected secretary-general of PC-SFIC in January 1926 after the Coup of 25 May 1925, he's the artisan of reborn of SFIC and a popular transpartisan figure of resistance against French authoritarian regime. Marcel Cachin was a French Communist politician and the first editor of the daily newspaper L'Humanite. In 1891, Cachin joined Jules Guesde's French Workers' Party. In 1905, he joined the new French Section of the Workers' International and won election to the Chamber of Deputies representing the Seine in 1914. He rallied the Union sacrée during the First World War and was sent to Russia in a mission in 1917. On that occasion he strongly supported Kerensky's Provisional Government, which was pledged to continue Russia's participation in World War I, and denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In 1918, he was one of the speakers at a patriotic rally held at Strasbourg, to celebrate the city's return to French rule. However, following the end of the war, there was a leftward shift among Cachin's grassroots supporters and a growing sympathy for the October revolution. In 1920 at the Tours Congress, Cachin became one of the founders of the French Communist Party and joined the Third International. In 1923, he was jailed for denouncing the French occupation of the Ruhr and Morocco. Marcel Cachin (märsĕl´ käshăN´), 1869–1958, French Communist leader. An early leader of the Socialist party, he was instrumental in bringing many Socialists into the first French Communist party in 1920. Long the leader of the Communists in the chamber of deputies and editor of the Communist daily Humanité, he became the first Communist senator in 1935. He was expelled from his seat after the German-Soviet nonaggression pact in Aug., 1939, and was subsequently arrested. In 1945 he was elected to the national assembly, where he sat until his death. Homme politique français (Paimpol 1869-Choisy-le-Roi 1958). Licencié en philosophie, il adhère au parti ouvrier de Jules Guesde en 1892. Il est délégué aux congrès socialistes internationaux de Londres (1896), d'Amsterdam (1904) et de Stuttgart (1907). Il participe également au congrès d'unité socialiste de Paris en 1905, au cours duquel se constitue le parti socialiste SFIO. Il devient membre de la commission administrative permanente (CAP) et délégué permanent à la propagande (1906-1912) de la SFIO. Élu député de Paris en 1914, il se rallie, comme le parti socialiste tout entier, à la politique d'Union sacrée. En avril 1917, il est l'un des trois députés socialistes désignés part la commission des Affaires étrangères de l'Assemblée nationale pour aller en Russie afin d'obtenir du nouveau pouvoir révolutionnaire le maintien de ce pays dans la guerre. Mais, à son retour, il encourage l'envoi de délégués de son parti à la conférence socialiste internationale de Stockholm condamnée par le gouvernement français. Il devient en 1918 directeur de l'Humanité et le demeurera jusqu'à sa mort. En 1920, il fait avec Ludovic Oscar Frossard, secrétaire général du parti, un second voyage en Russie afin d'examiner les conditions d'admission du parti socialiste à l'Internationale communiste. Revenu en France, il est l'un des plus ardents propagandistes de cette adhésion, qui doit transformer le parti socialiste en parti communiste. À partir du congrès du Tours, Marcel Cachin est des principaux dirigeants du parti communiste ; il est membre du comité directeur de 1920 à 1924 et du bureau politique de 1923 jusqu'à sa mort. De 1924 à la dissolution de l'Internationale communiste en 1943, il est membre du praesidium du comité exécutif de cette organisation. Député de la Seine de 1914 à 1932, il est emprisonné en 1923 pour son opposition à l'occupation de la Ruhr et, en 1927, pour avoir combattu la guerre du Maroc. En 1935, il est le premier communiste à être élu au Sénat. Arrêté quelque temps en 1941, il entre ensuite dans la clandestinité. Il est élu député en 1945 et constamment réélu par la suite. L'Humanité (pronounced [l‿y.ma.ni.te]; English: "Humanity"), is a French daily newspaper. It was previously an organ of the French Communist Party, and maintains links to the party. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, L'Humanité would not exist."[1] Contents 1 History and profile 1.1 Pre-World War II 1.2 After World War II 1.3 Post-Soviet Union 1.4 After 2001 2 Fête de l'Humanité 3 See also 4 References 5 External links 6 Further reading History and profile Pre-World War II L'Humanité was founded in 1904[2][3] by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).[1][4] Jaurès also edited the paper until his assassination on 31 July 1914.[5] When the Socialists split at the 1920 Tours Congress, the Communists took control of L'Humanité. Therefore, it became a communist paper despite its socialist origin.[6] The PCF has published it ever since. The PCF owns 40 per cent of the paper with the remaining shares held by staff, readers and "friends" of the paper. The paper is also sustained by the annual Fête de l'Humanité, held in the working class suburbs of Paris, at Le Bourget, near Aubervilliers, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the country. The fortunes of L'Humanité have fluctuated with those of the PCF. During the 1920s, when the PCF was politically isolated, it was kept in existence only by donations from Party members. Louis Aragon started to write for L'Humanité in 1933, in the "news in brief" section. He later led Les Lettres françaises, the paper's weekly literary supplement. With the formation of the Popular Front in 1936, L'Humanité 's circulation and status increased, and many leading French intellectuals wrote for it. L'Humanité was banned during World War II but published clandestinely until liberation of Paris from German occupation. After World War II The paper's status was highest in the years after World War II, when the PCF was the dominant party of the French left and L'Humanité enjoyed a large circulation. Since the 1980s, however, the PCF has been in decline, mostly due to the rise of the Socialist Party, which took over large sections of PCF support, and circulation and economic viability of L'Humanité have declined as well. Until 1990 the PCF and L'Humanité received regular subsidies from the Soviet Union. According to the French authors Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain (fr), L'Humanité received free newsprint from Soviet sources. Post-Soviet Union The fall of the Soviet Union and the continued decline of the PCF's electoral base produced a crisis for L'Humanité. Its circulation, more than 500,000 after the war, slumped to under 70,000. In 2001, after a decade of financial decline, the PCF sold 20 per cent of the paper to a group of private investors led by the TV channel TF1 (part of the Bouygues group) and including Hachette (Lagardère Group). TF1 said its motive was "maintenance of media diversity." Despite the irony of a communist newspaper being rescued by private capital, some of which supported right-wing politics, L'Humanité director Patrick Le Hyaric described the sale as "a matter of life or death." Since 2001, there has been speculation that L'Humanité would cease as a daily newspaper. However in contrast to most French newspapers, its publication has actually since increased to about 75,000. After 2001 In 2006, the paper created a weekly edition, L’Humanité Dimanche. The same year L'Humanité had a circulation of 52,800 copies.[1] In 2008, it sold its headquarters due to financial problems and called for donations. More than €2 million had been donated by the end of 2008. In 2020, L'Humanité had a circulation of 39,522 copies.[7] Year 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Circulation 103,738 106,151 107,022 105,599 105,069 102,372 100,632 100,831 100,012 97,009 100,259 96,789 Fête de l'Humanité The newspaper organizes the annual Fête de l'Humanité festival as a fundraising event. The French Workers' Party (French: Parti Ouvrier Français, POF) was the French socialist party created in 1880 by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx's son-in-law (famous for having written The Right to Be Lazy, which criticized labour's alienation). A revolutionary party, it had as aim to abolish capitalism and replace it with a socialist society. The party originated with a secession from Federation of the Socialist Workers' Party of France, which was founded in 1879, after a split with Paul Brousse's possibilists. The party's programme, written by Guesde with input from Marx, Lafargue and Friedrich Engels, was approved at the opening congress. The party officially became the POF in 1893. In 1902, the party merged with the Blanquist Central Revolutionary Committee to form the Socialist Party of France and finally merged in 1905 with Jean Jaurès' French Socialist Party to form the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). Marcel Cachin, who would lead the split in 1920 which led to the creation of the French Communist Party and edited L'Humanité newspaper, became a member of the POF in 1891. The Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Loire and Allier were the principal bastions of POF electoral strength. Contents 1 Principal members 2 See also 3 Bibliography 3.1 French 4 External links Principal members Jules Guesde (1845–1922), founding member and elected deputy Paul Lafargue (1842–1911), son-in-law of Karl Marx and elected deputy Marcel Cachin (1869–1958), member from 1891, led the SFIO Tours split in 1920, future director of L'Humanité Alexandre Bracke-Desrousseaux (1861–1955), professor (Greek Philosophy) and future elected deputy for the SFIO Alexandre Zévaès [fr] (1873–1953), elected deputy Isère (1898–1910) Bernard Cadenat (1853–1930), shoemaker, elected deputy Bouches-du-Rhône (1898–1919 and 1924–1930) and mayor of Marseille (1910–1912) Ulysse Pastre (1864–1930), researcher and elected deputy Gard (1898–1910) Jean-Baptiste Bénézech [fr] (1852–1909), printer, elected deputy Hérault (1898–1909) and president of the typography workers union René Chauvin [fr] (1860–1936), barber, elected deputy Seine (1893–1898) and founder of the coiffeurs workers union who quit the SFIO in 1914 to found a small workers party promoing a return to class war Hubert Lagardelle (1875–1968), revolutionary syndicalist Prosper Ferrero [fr], elected deputy for Marseille in 1898–1910, mayor of Toulon (1893) and vice president of the General Council (1914–1915) Jean Bertrand, elected deputy for Corbeil Pierre Mélin (1863–1929) luthier, vice president of the Valenciennes's Labour Court and elected deputy Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), antisemitic anthropologist and eugenist, Attorney of the Republic and professor See also The French Communist Party (French: Parti communiste français, PCF ; French pronunciation: [paʁti kɔmynist fʁɑ̃sɛ]) is a communist party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left group. Founded in 1920 by Boris Barcelli, it participated in three governments: the provisional government of the Liberation (1944–1947), at the beginning of François Mitterrand's presidency (1981–1984), and in the Plural Left cabinet led by Lionel Jospin (1997–2002). It was also the largest party on the left in France in a number of national elections, from 1945 to 1960, before falling behind the Socialist Party in the 1970s. The PCF has lost further ground to the Socialists since that time. Since 2009 the PCF has been a leading member of the Left Front (Front de gauche), alongside Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Left Party (PG). During the 2017 presidential election, the PCF supported Mélenchon's candidature; however, tensions between the PCF and Mélenchon's movement, La France Insoumise, have led the two movements to campaign separately for the general elections.[5] Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a strong influence in French politics, especially at the local level. In 2012, the PCF claimed to have had 138,000 members, 70,000 of whom had paid their membership fees.[6] Contents 1 History 2 Doctrine 2.1 2012 platform 2.2 French nationalism 3 Elected officials 4 Internal organization 4.1 Leadership 4.2 Factions 4.2.1 Factional strength 5 Popular support and electoral record 5.1 Presidential 5.2 Legislative 5.3 European Parliament 6 Publications 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links History Main article: History of the French Communist Party The French Communist Party (PCF) originated in 1920, when a majority of members resigned from the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party to set up the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC), with Ludovic-Oscar Frossard as its first secretary-general; Ho Chi Minh, liberator of Vietnam, was one of the notable agitators who participated in its creation.[7] The new SFIC defined itself as revolutionary and democratic centralist. The 1920s saw a number of splits within the party over relations with other left-wing parties and over adherence to Comintern's dictates. The party entered the French parliament, but also promoted strike action and opposed colonialism. Pierre Sémard, leader from 1924 to 1928, sought party unity and alliances with other parties; but leaders including Maurice Thorez (party leader from 1930 to 1964) imposed a Stalinist line from the late 1920s. With the rise of Fascism after 1934 the PCF supported the Popular Front, which came to power under Léon Blum in 1936. The party supported the Spanish Republicans, and opposed the 1938 Munich agreement with Hitler. The party was banned by the government of Édouard Daladier (centre-left) as a result of the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact, due to its membership in the Comintern, which opposed the War (prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany). The leadership, threatened with execution, fled abroad. After the German invasion of 1940 the party began to organise opposition to the occupation. Shortly before Germany invaded the Soviet Union the next year, the PCF formed, in May 1941, the National Front movement within the broader Resistance, together with the armed Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) group. At the same time the PCF began to work with de Gaulle's "Free France" government in exile, and later took part in the National Council of the Resistance (CNR). By the time the German occupation ended in 1944, the party had become a powerful force in many parts of France. It was among the leading parties in elections in 1945 and 1946, and entered into the governing Tripartite alliance, which pursued social reforms and statism. However, amid concerns within France and abroad over the extent of communist influence, the PCF was excluded from government in May 1947. Under pressure from Moscow, the PCF thereafter distanced itself from other parties and focused on agitation within its trade union base. For the rest of the Fourth Republic period the PCF, led by Thorez and Jacques Duclos, remained politically isolated, still taking a Stalinist line, though retaining substantial electoral support. Although the PCF opposed de Gaulle's formation of the Fifth Republic in 1958, the following years saw a rapprochement with other left-wing forces and an increased strength in parliament. With Waldeck Rochet as its new secretary-general, the party supported François Mitterrand's unsuccessful presidential bid in 1965. During the student riots and strikes of May 1968, the party supported the strikes while denouncing the revolutionary student movements. After heavy losses in the ensuing parliamentary elections, the party adopted Georges Marchais as leader and in 1973 entered into a "Common Programme" alliance with Mitterrand's reconstituted Socialist Party (PS). Under the Common Programme, however, the PCF steadily lost ground to the PS, a process that continued after Mitterrand's victory in 1981. Initially allotted a minor share in Mitterrand's government, the PCF resigned in 1984 as the government turned towards fiscal orthodoxy. Under Marchais the party largely maintained its traditional communist doctrines and structure. Extensive reform was undertaken after 1994, when Robert Hue became leader. This did little to stem the party's declining popularity, although it entered government again in 1997 as part of the Plural Left coalition. Elections in 2002 gave worse results than ever for the PCF. Under Marie-George Buffet, the PCF turned away from parliamentary strategy and sought broader social alliances. To maintain a presence in parliament after 2007 the party's few remaining deputies had to join others in the Democratic and Republican Left group (GDR). Subsequently a broader electoral coalition, the Left Front (FG), was formed including the PCF, the Left Party (PG), United Left, and others. The FG has brought the French communists somewhat better electoral results. Pierre Laurent was leader from 2010 to 2018. Doctrine PCF rallying for a 6th republic, 2012 in Paris The PCF, in contrast to weaker and more marginal communist parties in Europe, is usually seen as a left-wing rather than far-left party in the French context. While the French far-left (LCR/NPA, LO) has refused to participate in government or engage in electoral alliances with centre-left parties such as the PS, the PCF has participated in governments in the past and still enjoys a de facto electoral agreement with the PS (mutual withdrawals, the common practice since 1962 and in 1934–39). Nonetheless, some observers and analysts classify the PCF as a far-left party, noting their political proximity to other far-left parties. In the 1980s, under Georges Marchais, the PCF mixed a partial acceptance of "bourgeois" democracy and individual liberties with more traditional Marxist–Leninist ideas. During this same period, however, the PCF—still run on democratic centralist lines—still structured itself as a revolutionary party in the Leninist sense and rejected criticism of the Soviet Union. Under Robert Hue's leadership after 1994, the PCF's ideology and internal organization underwent major changes.[8]:174 Hue clearly rejected the Soviet model, and reserved very harsh criticism for Soviet leaders who had "rejected, for years, human rights and 'bourgeois' democracy" and had oppressed individual liberties and aspirations.[8]:174 Today, the PCF considers the Soviet Union as a 'perversion' of the communist model and unambiguously rejects Stalinism. That being said, it has not attributed the failure of the Soviet Union as being that of communism, rather stating that the failure of Soviet socialism was the failure of one model "among others", including the capitalist or social democratic models.[8]:176–177 It also tried to downplay the PCF's historic attachment to Moscow and the Soviet Union.[8]:176–177 Since then, the PCF's ideology has been marked by significant ideological evolution on some topics but consistency on other issues. Some of the most marked changes have come on individual rights and immigration. After having vilified homosexuality and feminism as "the rubbish of capitalism" in the 1970s, the PCF now fully supports both gay rights and feminism.[8]:174 In the 1980s, the PCF supported reducing the age of consent for homosexual relationships and opposed attempts to repenalize homosexuality. In 1998, the PCF voted in favour of the civil solidarity pact (PACS), civil unions including homosexual couples. The PCF currently supports both same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption. On 12 February 2013, PCF deputies voted in favour of same-sex marriage and adoption rights in the National Assembly,[9] though PCF deputy Patrice Carvalho voted against.[10] The PCF also supports feminist movements and supports policies to further promote gender equality and parity. On the issue of immigration, the PCF's positions have also evolved significantly since the 1980s. In the 1981 presidential election, Georges Marchais ran a controversial campaign on immigration which was harshly criticized by anti-racism organizations at the time. In 1980, the PCF's leadership voted in favour of limiting immigration. The same year, Marchais supported the PCF mayor of Vitry-sur-Seine who had destroyed a home for Malian migrant workers; the PCF claimed that the right-wing government was trying to push immigrants into ghettos in Communist working-class cities.[11] The Libération newspaper also alleged that PCF municipal administrations had been working to limit the number of immigrants in housing projects. However, today the PCF supports the regularization of illegal immigrants. One consistency in the PCF's ideology has been its staunch opposition to capitalism, which must be "overcome" because according to the PCF the capitalist system is "exhausted" and "on the verge of collapse".[8]:177 The PCF has interpreted the current course of globalization as a confirmation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's view on the future evolution of capitalism. The party feels that the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession have further justified its calls to overcome capitalism.[8]:177 However, the PCF has remained somewhat vague on how capitalism will be 'overcome' and what will replace it, placing heavy emphasis on utopic models or values.[8]:178 The text adopted at the XXXVI Congress in February 2013 reiterated the party's call on the need to "overcome" capitalism, fiercely denounced by the PCF as having led to "savage competition", "the devastation of the planet" and "barbarism".[12] It contrasts its vision of capitalism with its proposed alternative, described as an egalitarian, humanist, and democratic alternative. It emphasizes human emancipation, the development of "each and every one", the right to happiness and the equal dignity of each human being regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.[12] The party further posits that such an egalitarian society is impossible within capitalism, which "unleashes domination and hatred".[12] 2012 platform Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the FG's platform in the 2012 presidential election was broken up into nine overarching themes.[13] "Sharing the wealth and abolishing social insecurity" – banning market-based layoffs (licenciements boursiers) for companies which make profits, raise the minimum wage (SMIC) to €1,700, setting a maximum wage differential of 1 to 20 in all businesses, right to retirement with a full pension at 60, defending public services, stopping public sector spending cuts (RGPP), setting a maximum wage at €360,000 and a 35-hour workweek. "Reclaiming power from banks and financial markets" – changing the European Central Bank's policy to favour job creation and public services, controlling financial speculation, raising the capital gains tax and the solidarity tax on wealth (ISF), abolishing fiscal loopholes and privileges, taxing corporations' financial revenues and creating a "public financial pole" to reorient credit towards jobs, innovation and sustainable development. "Ecological planning" – nationalizing Électricité de France, Gaz de France and Areva to create a publicly owned energy sector, creating a national public water service, a new transportation policy promoting public transportation and taxing the transportation of non-vital merchandise. "Producing differently" – a new model of development and economic growth which respects the environment and individuals, redefining industrial priorities, new rights for employees and creating a gross national happiness indicator. "The Republic, for real" – reaffirming the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, creating a ministry for women and equality, repealing the HADOPI law, regularizing illegal immigrants, opposition to the golden rule of fiscal balance and creating jobs in the public sector. "Convene a constituent assembly for the Sixth Republic" – convening a constituent assembly, repealing the 2010 local and regional government reform, proportional representation in all elections, reducing presidential powers and strengthening parliamentary powers, and guaranteeing judicial and press freedom. "Repealing the Lisbon Treaty and creating another Europe" – repealing the Treaty of Lisbon, opposition to the European Fiscal Compact, proposing and adopting a new European treaty which would "prioritize social progress and democracy" and reforming the statutes of the European Central Bank. "To change the course of globalization" – withdrawing French troops from the war in Afghanistan, French withdrawal from NATO, recognizing the independence of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, creation of a Tobin tax to finance international development and cooperation, debt forgiveness for low-income countries. "Prioritizing human emancipation" – creating jobs in public education, spending 1% of GDP on arts and culture, and doubling investment in research. The platform also supported same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, voting rights for resident foreigners, euthanasia, and constitutional recognition of abortion. French nationalism Main articles: Demographics of France and Separatism in Europe The French Communist Party inherited from the Jacobins the concept of France as a centralised, French-speaking, unitary state, with a unitary culture and it is opposed to the separatism and regional identity of other European minority groups native to the area of what consists the French Republic. For instance in 1984, the Soviet ethnographer Solomon Bruk (who had worked under Sergey Tolstov) published a study on France and mentioned the existence of other ethnic groups in the state such as Bretons, Corsicans, Alsatians, Basques, Catalans, Flemish and others. In response to this work, General Secretary Georges Marchais wrote a letter of protest in February 1984, complaining bitterly to the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[14] France is one country, one nation, one people. We protest indignantly against such ridiculous and odious allegations. For us, as for all the citizens of our country, every man and woman of French nationality is French. Every attempt using hazardous criteria which borders on racism in an ill-defined way, seeking to define as not purely French such and such members of the French community, is offensive to the national consciousness. Nobody here can accept that, our Party least of all. — George Marchais, Letter to the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the USSR, February 1984.[15] Elected officials Ambox current red.svg This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2020) Departments with PCF general councillors One or more PCF general councillor No PCF general councillor Deputies: Alain Bocquet, Marie-George Buffet, Jean-Jacques Candelier, André Chassaigne, Jean-Paul Dufrègne, Jacqueline Fraysse, Nicolas Sansu, Gaby Charroux, Patrice Carvalho (GDR Group) Senators: Éliane Assassi, Marie-France Beaufils, Michel Billout, Dominique Watrin, Annie David, Michelle Demessine, Évelyne Didier, Guy Fischer, Thierry Foucaud, Brigitte Gonthier-Maurin, Pierre Laurent, Gérard Le Cam, Cécile Cukierman, Isabelle Pasquet, Éric Bocquet, Mireille Schurch, Laurence Cohen, Christian Favier, Michel Le Scouarnec (CRC Group) MEPs: Patrick Le Hyaric, Jacky Hénin (EUL-NGL Group) The PCF has two Presidents of the General Council – in the Val-de-Marne and Allier. It lost Seine-Saint-Denis, which it had held since the 1960s, to the PS in 2008. Internal organization The PCF has traditionally been a "mass party", although Maurice Duverger had differentiated it from other mass parties because the PCF kept a tight control over membership and regularly expelled unsuitable members. In its heyday, the PCF maintained a large base of members and the party's political and electoral actions were supported in society by a trade union, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT); a newspaper, L'Humanité; and a large number of front organizations or associations in civil society which organized a large number of political or non-political social activities for PCF members.[8]:166 One such activity which still exists today is the annual Fête de l'Humanité organized by the L'Humanité. French and foreign left-wing parties, organizations or movements are represented and the activities feature musical performances. Since the PCF's decline began in the 1970s, however, it has seen its membership base slowly dry up and its allied organizations disappear or distance themselves from the party. The PCF claimed 520,000 members in 1978; 330,000 in 1987; 270,000 in 1996; and 133,000 in 2002.[8]:166 In 2008, the party claimed that it had 134,000 members of which 79,000 were up to date on their membership fees.[8]:166 In the 2011 internal primary, 69,277 members were registered to vote and 48,631 (70.2%) did so.[8]:166 The party likely has about 70,000 members as of today, but only about 40 to 50 thousand seem to actively participate in the party's organization and political activities. According to studies by the CEVIPOF in 1979 and 1997, the makeup of the PCF's membership has also changed significantly since 1979. The most marked change was a major decline in the share of manual workers (ouvriers) in the party's membership, with a larger number of employees and middle-classes, especially those who work in the public sector.[8]:175 The form of political action taken by members has also changed, with less emphasis on direct political or electoral action but a greater emphasis on social work and protests. The party's structures were democratized at the 1994 Congress, dropping democratic centralism and allowing for the public expression of disapproval or dissent with the party line or leadership. The party's top posts, like that of 'secretary-general', were renamed (secretary-general became national-secretary). The party, since 2000, is now led by a national council, which serves as the leadership between congresses; and the executive committee, which is charged with applying the national council's decisions. The national-secretary is elected by delegates at the congress. Likewise, the national council is elected by list voting at every congress. A reform of statutes in 2001 has allowed "alternative texts" - dissent from the text proposed by the PCF leadership - to be presented and voted on; dissident lists to those backed by the leadership may also run for the national council.[8]:170–171 The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) was dominated by the PCF after 1946, with almost all its leaders between 1947 and 1996 (Benoît Frachon, Georges Séguy, Henri Krasucki, Louis Viannet) also serving in the PCF's national leadership structures. For years, the CGT and the PCF were close and almost indissociable allies - notably in May 1968 when both the CGT and PCF were eager for a restoration of social order and welcomed the Grenelle agreements. While the CGT has remained the largest trade union in France, it has taken its independence vis-à-vis the PCF. Louis Viannet spectacularly quit the national bureau of the PCF in 1996 and Bernard Thibault, the CGT's leader between 1999 and 2013, left the PCF's national council in 2001. L'Humanité has retained closer ties with the PCF. The newspaper was founded by Jean Jaurès in 1904 as the socialist movement's mouthpiece, and it followed the communist majority following the split in 1920. After having been the official newspaper of the PCF, with a readership of up to 100,000 in 1945, the newspaper's readership and sales declined substantially partly due to the PCF's concomitant decline. In 1999, the mention of the newspaper's link to the PCF was dropped and the PCF no longer determines its editorial stance. It sold an average of 46,929 newspapers per day in 2012; down from 53,530 in 2007.[16] Leadership Secretaries-general (1921–1994) and national-secretaries (since 1994) Ludovic-Oscar Frossard: 4 January 1921 – 1 January 1923 Louis Sellier and Albert Treint, interim secretaries-general: 21 January 1923 – 23 January 1924 Louis Sellier: 23 January 1924 – 1 July 1924 Pierre Semard: 8 July 1924 – 8 April 1929 Collective secretariat (Henri Barbé, Pierre Celor, Benoît Frachon, Maurice Thorez): 8 April 1929 – 18 July 1930 Maurice Thorez: 18 July 1930 – 17 May 1964 (president between 17 May and his death on 11 July 1964) Jacques Duclos, interim secretary-general: 17 June 1950 – 10 April 1953 Waldeck Rochet: 17 May 1964 – 17 December 1972 (deputy secretary-general from 14 May 1961 to 17 May 1964) Georges Marchais, interim secretary-general later deputy secretary-general from June 1969 to 17 December 1972 Georges Marchais: 17 December 1972 – 29 January 1994 Robert Hue: 29 January 1994 – 28 October 2001 (president between 28 October 2001 and 8 April 2003) Marie-George Buffet: 28 October 2001 – 20 June 2010 Pierre Laurent: 20 June 2010 – 24 November 2018 Fabien Roussel: since 24 November 2018 Factions There are no formal organized factions or political groupings within the PCF. This was originally due to the practice of democratic centralism, but even after the democratization of the PCF structure after 1994 the ban on the organization of formal factions within the party remained. According to party statutes, the PCF supports the "pluralism of ideas" but the right to pluralism "may not be translated into an organizations of tendencies".[17] Nevertheless, certain factions and groups are easily identifiable within the PCF and they are de facto expressed officially by different orientation texts or lists for leadership elections at party congresses. Majority: the current leadership of the PCF since 2003 is around Marie-George Buffet and Pierre Laurent and supports the continued existence of the PCF, but with the need for internal transformations. Vis-à-vis the PS, the PCF leadership has taken a more autonomous stance but it still sees the PS as a potential electoral partner (in runoff elections or in local elections) and even as a potential governing partner. The leadership has been generally strongly supportive of the Left Front alliance with other parties, which it sees as a "new Popular Front" as a culmination of its attempts, undertaken since 2003, to broaden the PCF's base to social movements, associations, unions and other left-wing or far-left parties. Orthodox: the heterogeneous faction of PCF "orthodox" refers to those traditionalist members who opposed the mutation of the 1990s and wish to return to Marxist–Leninist fundamentals. The orthodox faction opposes electoral alliances or governing coalitions with the PS, and it has also proven fairly lukewarm to the Left Front and has often been critical of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's influence over the FG and his 2012 candidacy. Unlike the majority which supports European integration under the form "social Europe" or "another Europe", the orthodox wish to withdraw from the European Union and the Eurozone. Prominent orthodox factions and leaders include Jean-Jacques Karman's Communist Left, Emmanuel Dang Tran's PCF section in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, André Gerin, Alain Bocquet and Patrice Carvalho. The PCF orthodox factions has strong support in the old PCF federations in northern France (Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Somme, Seine-Maritime) or other federations such as the Meurthe-et-Moselle, the Haute-Saône, Aisne and Tarn. Some orthodox communists have chosen to leave the PCF. In 2004, the FNARC group around Georges Hage founded the small Pole of Communist Revival in France (PRCF). Maxime Gremetz was sidelined from the PCF in 2006, after major disagreements with the leadership, and has since founded a small political movement (Anger and Hope, Colère et espoir) active only in his native Picardy. A group of hardline orthodox around former PCF senator Rolande Perlican founded the Communistes party. Novateurs, also known as conservatives: a small faction led by supporters of Georges Marchais' old political line (i.e. traditional Marxism adapted to modern circumstances) as developed by PCF economist and historian Paul Boccara, who developed the idea of state monopoly capitalism). Leaders of the faction include Nicolas Marchand and Yves Dimicoli. La Riposte: a political association within the PCF which is the French section of the International Marxist Tendency, a Trotskyist entryist organization. They are ideologically close to the orthodox faction on rejecting alliances with the PS or a return to Marxist fundamentals but they differ significantly from the orthodox faction in their severe condemnations of Stalinism and the later Soviet Union. They also support the Left Front. Huistes: the allies of former secretary-general Robert Hue (1994–2001) have mostly left the PCF. Hue's leadership was marked by internal democratizations as part of his mutation, but also close cooperation and alliances with the PS. The Huistes tend to be the most supportive of electoral and government alliances with the PS. Hue remains, technically, a member of the PCF; but he has broken with the current leadership. As a senator, he sits in the European Democratic and Social Rally (RDSE) and leads a small political movement, the Progressive Unitary Movement (MUP) which has one deputy elected in 2012 with PS support and who sits with the Radical Party of the Left (PRG) group in the National Assembly. The MUP supports the creation of a broad alliance with the PS, the Greens (EELV), the PRG and even some centrists. Besides Hue, some of prominent followers include Jean-Claude Gayssot, Jack Ralite or Ivan Renar. Refondateurs/Rénovateurs: the reformist faction of the PCF, known either as refondateurs or rénovateurs, has mostly left the PCF today, but they played an important role in the PCF's internal politics for decades and they continue to be closely associated to the PCF through the Left Front. The reformist faction, ideologically aligned with the New Left, eurocommunism, ecosocialism, feminism and democratic socialism, has long been at odds with the PCF's leadership. Under Marchais, they opposed the traditionalist Marxist and pro-Soviet direction of the party and chafed at the party's democratic centralism. Many dissident Communist reformists supported Pierre Juquin's candidacy in the 1988 presidential election, alongside 'red-green' ecosocialists, the remnants of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and the LCR. PCF dissidents who had backed Juquin's candidacy, including former cabinet ministers Marcel Rigout and Charles Fiterman participated in the foundation of the Convention for a Progressive Alternative (CAP) in 1994, which has since obtained limited support only in a few departments. Jean-Pierre Brard, the CAP's sole parliamentarian until his defeat in 2012, sat with the PCF in the National Assembly. Reformists who remained within the PCF, such as Patrick Braouezec, François Asensi and Jacqueline Fraysse, opposed Hue and Buffet's leadership: they did not support the PCF's presidential candidates in 2002 and 2007, and they clamored for the re-foundation of the PCF as part of a broader left-wing movements including left-wing Greens, ecosocialists, the far-left, social movements and left-wing associations. Despite the creation of the Left Front, the reformists led by Braouezec left the PCF in 2010 and joined the small Federation for a Social and Ecological Alternative (FASE) which is now a component of the Left Front. Factional strength Preparatory votes on orientation texts for PCF Congresses since 2003: Faction XXXII (2003)[18] XXXIII (2006)[18] XXXIV (2008)[19] XXXVI (2013)[20] XXXVII (2016)[21] Majority 55.02% 63.38% 60.9% 73.16% 51,20% Orthodox 23.60% 13.25%[22] 8.22%[23] 3.71%[24] 24.02% 10.99% 5.81%[25] 23,68% 12,87% 6,86% Novateurs 21.38% 11.44% – – – La Riposte – – 15.05% 10.05% 5,40% At the XXXIV Congress in 2008, for the election of the national council, the majority's list won 67.73% from the congress' delegates against 16.38% for Marie-Pierre Vieu's huiste list backed by the refondateurs, 10.26% for André Gerin's orthodox list and 5.64% for Nicolas Marchand's novateur list.[18] Popular support and electoral record Currently, the PCF retains some strength in suburban Paris, in the Nord section of the old coal mining area in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the industrial harbours of Le Havre and Dieppe, in some departments of central France, such as Allier and Cher (where a form of sharecropping existed, in addition to mining and small industrial-mining centres such as Commentry and Montceau-les-Mines), the industrial mining region of northern Meurthe-et-Moselle (Longwy) and in some cities of the south, such as the industrial areas of Marseille and nearby towns, as well as the working-class suburbs surrounding Paris (the ceinture rouge), Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Alès and Grenoble.[26] The PCF is also strong in the Cévennes mountains, a left-wing rural anti-clerical stronghold with a strong Protestant minority. Communist traditions in the "Red Limousin", the Pas-de-Calais, Paris proper, Nièvre, Finistère, Alpes-Maritimes and Var have been hurt significantly by demographic changes (Var, Alpes-Maritimes, Finistère), a loss of voters to the Socialist Party due to good local Socialist infrastructure or strongmen (Nièvre, Pas-de-Calais, Paris) or due to the emergence of rival parties on the radical left (the Convention for a Progressive Alternative, a party of reformist communists, in the Limousin and Val-de-Marne). There exists isolated Communist bases in the rural anti-clerical areas of southwestern Côtes-d'Armor and northwestern Morbihan; in the industrial areas of Le Mans; in the shipbuilding cities of Saint-Nazaire, La Seyne-sur-Mer (there are no more ships built in La Seyne); and in isolated industrial centres built along the old Paris-Lyon railway (The urban core of Romilly-sur-Seine, Aube has elected a Communist general councillor since 1958). During the course of the Twentieth Century, the French Communists were considered to be pioneers in local government, providing not only efficient street lighting and clean streets, but also public entertainment, public housing, municipal swimming pools, day nurseries, children’s playgrounds, and public lavatories.[27] In 1976, for instance, the Communist mayor of Sarcelles, Henry Canacos, was named "best mayor in the Paris region" by Vie Publique (a trade periodical for urban planners and administrators) for enriching Sarcelles' public spaces with new restaurants, movie theatres, cafes, more parks, a large shopping mall, and better transportation.[28] Education also became, in the words of one text, an "identifiable characteristic of Communist government at the local level". A study of municipal budgets that was completed in 1975 (but using data from 1968) found that while Communist local government spent 34% less than non-Communist Left governments and 36% less than moderate-Right governments for maintenance, it nevertheless spent 49% more than moderate Right governments and 36% more than non-Communist Left governments for education and educational support.[29] Presidential Election year Candidate 1st round 2nd round # of overall votes % of overall vote # of overall votes % of overall vote 1969 Jacques Duclos 4,808,285 21.27 (#3) 1981 Georges Marchais 4,456,922 15.35 (#4) 1988 André Lajoinie 2,056,261 6.76 (#5)[30] 1995 Robert Hue 2,638,936 8.66 (#5) 2002 Robert Hue 960,480 3.37 (#11) 2007 Marie-George Buffet 707,268 1.93 (#7) 2012 Jean-Luc Mélenchon (as Left Front candidate) 3,985,089 11.10 (#4) Legislative National Assembly Election Votes (first round) Seats # % # ± 1924 885,993 9.8 26 / 581 Steady 1928 1,066,099 11.3 11 / 604 Decrease 15 1932 796,630 8.3 10 / 607 Decrease 1 1936 1,502,404 15.3 72 / 610 Increase 62 1945 5,024,174 26.2 159 / 586 Increase 87 1946 (Jun) 5,145,325 26.0 153 / 586 Decrease 6 1946 (Nov) 5,430,593 28.3 182 / 627 Increase 29 1951 4,939,380 26.3 103 / 625 Decrease 79 1956 5,514,403 23.6 150 / 595 Increase 47 1958 3,882,204 18.9 10 / 546 Decrease 140 1962 4,003,553 20.8 41 / 465 Increase 31 1967 5,039,032 22.5 73 / 487 Increase 32 1968 4,434,832 20.0 34 / 487 Decrease 39 1973 5,085,108 21.4 73 / 488 Increase 39 1978 5,870,402 20.6 86 / 488 Increase 13 1981 4,065,540 16.2 44 / 491 Decrease 42 1986 2,739,225 9.8 35 / 573 Decrease 9 1988 2,765,761 11.3 27 / 575 Decrease 8 1993 2,331,339 9.3 24 / 577 Decrease 3 1997 2,523,405 9.9 35 / 577 Increase 11 2002 1,216,178 4.8 21 / 577 Decrease 14 2007 1,115,663 4.3 15 / 577 Decrease 6 2012 1,792,923 6.9 7 / 577 Decrease 8 2017 615,487 2.7 10 / 577 Increase 3 European Parliament European Parliament Election Votes Seats # % # ± 1979 4,153,710 20.5 19 / 81 Steady 1984 2,261,312 11.2 10 / 81 Decrease 9 1989 1,401,171 7.7 7 / 81 Decrease 3 1994 1,342,222 6.9 7 / 87 Steady 1999 1,196,310 6.8 6 / 87 Decrease 1 2004 1,009,976 5.9 2 / 74 Decrease 4 2009 1,115,021 6.5 3 / 72 Increase 1 2014 1,252,730 6.6 1 / 74 Decrease 2 2019 564,949 2.5 0 / 74 Decrease 1 Publications The PCF publishes the following: Communistes (Communists) Info Hebdo (Weekly News) Economie et Politique (Economics and Politics) Traditionally, it was also the owner of the French daily L'Humanité (Humanity), founded by Jean Jaurès. Although the newspaper is now independent, it remains close to the PCF. The paper is sustained by the annual Fête de L'Humanité festival, held in La Courneuve, a working class suburb of Paris. This event remains the biggest festival in France, with 600,000 attendees during a three-day period. During the 1970s, the PCF registered success with the children's magazine it founded, Pif gadget. See also Communism in France List of foreign delegations at 24th PCF Congress (1982) Place du Colonel Fabien Louis Althusser's Reading Capital (1965) MRAP anti-racist NGO, created in 1941 Roger Roche, founder of a cell of the French Communist Party in Rufisque in 1925. France, officially French Republic, French France or République Française, country of northwestern Europe. Historically and culturally among the most important nations in the Western world, France has also played a highly significant role in international affairs, with former colonies in every corner of the globe. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the Alps and the Pyrenees, France has long provided a geographic, economic, and linguistic bridge joining northern and southern Europe. It is Europe’s most important agricultural producer and one of the world’s leading industrial powers. France France Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. France is among the globe’s oldest nations, the product of an alliance of duchies and principalities under a single ruler in the Middle Ages. Today, as in that era, central authority is vested in the state, even though a measure of autonomy has been granted to the country’s régions in recent decades. The French people look to the state as the primary guardian of liberty, and the state in turn provides a generous program of amenities for its citizens, from free education to health care and pension plans. Even so, this centralist tendency is often at odds with another long-standing theme of the French nation: the insistence on the supremacy of the individual. On this matter historian Jules Michelet remarked, “England is an empire, Germany is a nation, a race, France is a person.” Statesman Charles de Gaulle, too, famously complained, “Only peril can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.” This tendency toward individualism joins with a pluralist outlook and a great interest in the larger world. Even though its imperialist stage was driven by the impulse to civilize that world according to French standards (la mission civilisatrice), the French still note approvingly the words of writer Gustave Flaubert: I am no more modern than I am ancient, no more French than Chinese; and the idea of la patrie, the fatherland—that is, the obligation to live on a bit of earth coloured red or blue on a map, and to detest the other bits coloured green or black—has always seemed to me narrow, restricted, and ferociously stupid. At once universal and particular, French culture has spread far and greatly influenced the development of art and science, particularly anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. 7:023 Geography: Think of Something Big, globe showing Africa, Europe, and Eurasia BRITANNICA QUIZ Which Country Is Larger By Area? Quiz This quiz will show you two countries. Pick the one that’s bigger, as measured by total area. The statistics come from this list, so study it for an unfair advantage! France has also been influential in government and civil affairs, giving the world important democratic ideals in the age of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and inspiring the growth of reformist and even revolutionary movements for generations. The present Fifth Republic has, however, enjoyed notable stability since its promulgation on September 28, 1958, marked by a tremendous growth in private initiative and the rise of centrist politics. Although France has engaged in long-running disputes with other European powers (and, from time to time, with the United States, its longtime ally), it emerged as a leading member in the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. From 1966 to 1995 France did not participate in the integrated military structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), retaining full control over its own air, ground, and naval forces; beginning in 1995, however, France was represented on the NATO Military Committee, and in 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the country would rejoin the organization’s military command. As one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—together with the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and China—France has the right to veto decisions put to the council. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Paris skyline Paris skyline © Digital Vision/Getty Images The capital and by far the most important city of France is Paris, one of the world’s preeminent cultural and commercial centres. A majestic city known as the ville lumière, or “city of light,” Paris has often been remade, most famously in the mid-19th century under the command of Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussman, who was committed to Napoleon III’s vision of a modern city free of the choleric swamps and congested alleys of old, with broad avenues and a regular plan. Paris is now a sprawling metropolis, one of Europe’s largest conurbations, but its historic heart can still be traversed in an evening’s walk. Confident that their city stood at the very centre of the world, Parisians were once given to referring to their country as having two parts, Paris and le désert, the wasteland beyond it. Metropolitan Paris has now extended far beyond its ancient suburbs into the countryside, however, and nearly every French town and village now numbers a retiree or two driven from the city by the high cost of living, so that, in a sense, Paris has come to embrace the desert and the desert Paris. small thistle New from Britannica ONE GOOD FACT The planet Venus goes around the Sun every 224.7 Earth days, but takes 243 Earth days to spin on its axis, making its year shorter than its day. See All Good Facts Among France’s other major cities are Lyon, located along an ancient Rhône valley trade route linking the North Sea and the Mediterranean; Marseille, a multiethnic port on the Mediterranean founded as an entrepôt for Greek and Carthaginian traders in the 6th century BCE; Nantes, an industrial centre and deepwater harbour along the Atlantic coast; and Bordeaux, located in southwestern France along the Garonne River. Land of France Château Gaillard Château Gaillard © Sylvain Verlaine (CC BY-SA 3.0) France lies near the western end of the great Eurasian landmass, largely between latitudes 42° and 51° N. Roughly hexagonal in outline, its continental territory is bordered on the northeast by Belgium and Luxembourg, on the east by Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, on the south by the Mediterranean Sea, Spain, and Andorra, on the west by the Bay of Biscay, and on the northwest by the English Channel (La Manche). To the north, France faces southeastern England across the narrow Strait of Dover (Pas de Calais). Monaco is an independent enclave on the south coast, while the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean is treated as an integral part of the country. Relief The French landscape, for the most part, is composed of relatively low-lying plains, plateaus, and older mountain blocks, or massifs. This pattern clearly predominates over that of the younger, high ranges, such as the Alps and the Pyrenees. The diversity of the land is typical of Continental Europe. Three main geologic regions are distinguishable: the skeletal remains of ancient mountains that make up the Hercynian massifs; the northern and western plains; and the higher young fold mountains in the south and southeast, including the Alps and the Pyrenees, with their attendant narrow plains. Much of the detailed relief can be attributed geologically to the varying differences in the resistance of rocks to erosion. A great deal of the present landscape detail is due to glaciation during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago). France lay outside the range of the great ice sheets that descended upon the northern part of Europe, so the direct sculpting of the land by ice was restricted to the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Vosges, Corsica, and the highest summits of the Massif Central. Just outside these glacial areas, in what are known as periglacial lands, repeated freezing and thawing of unprotected surfaces modified slopes by the movement of waste sheets (formed of shattered bedrock), producing very much the landscape that exists today. Pleistocene periglacial action generated the sheets of the fine windblown limon, or loess, that is the basis of the most fertile lowland soils, and it possibly also created the Landes, a sandy plain in southwestern France. The development of river terraces (flat, raised surfaces alongside valleys) was another characteristic of periglacial action. The Hercynian massifs The physical structure of France is dominated by a group of ancient mountains in the shape of a gigantic V, the sides of which form the two branches of Hercynian folding that took place between 345 and 225 million years ago. The eastern branch comprises the Ardennes, the Vosges, and the eastern part of the Massif Central, while the Hercynian massifs to the west comprise the western part of the Massif Central and the Massif Armoricain. These highlands are composed of resistant metamorphic, crystalline, and sedimentary rocks from the Paleozoic Era (about 540 to 250 million years ago), the last including coal deposits. They share the common characteristic of repeated planation, or flattening. Some variety is provided by subsequent deformation and faulting, such as in the ridge-and-valley areas of the Massif Armoricain, where upland surfaces are deeply carved by valleys in dramatic fashion. The Ardennes The Ardennes massif is an extension, from Belgium into France, of the great Rhine Uplands, characterized by rocks of slate and quartz from the Paleozoic Era. Differential erosion of Paleozoic rocks has produced long ridges alternating with open valleys crossed by the Sambre and Meuse rivers. The Vosges The Alpine earth movements produced a great upswelling along the line of the present upper Rhine, leaving the Vosges with steep eastern slopes that descend to a rift valley containing the plains of Alsace and Baden; on the west the upland descends rather gently into the scarplands of Lorraine. The Vosges reaches its maximum elevation in the south, near the Alps, where crystalline rocks are exposed; the highest summits are called ballons, and the highest is the Ballon de Guebwiller (Mount Guebwiller), with an elevation of 4,669 feet (1,423 metres). To the north the Vosges massif dips beneath a cover of forested sandstone from the Triassic Period (about 250 to 200 million years ago). Brown globe on antique map. Brown world on vintage map. North America. Green globe. Hompepage blog 2009, history and society, geography and travel, explore discovery BRITANNICA QUIZ Countries & Their Features Where is the Great Fence? What is Rhodesia now called? And which country’s name means "silvery"? It’s a country challenge--are you up for it? The Massif Central Chaîne des Puys Chaîne des Puys Christian Kempf from TSW—CLICK/Chicago The vast plateau of the Massif Central covers about 33,000 square miles (86,000 square km), or some one-sixth of the area of the country. The Massif Central borders the Rhône-Saône valley on the east, the Languedoc lowlands on the south, the Aquitaine Basin on the southwest, and the Paris Basin on the north. The planation that occurred following the creation of the Hercynian belt removed the ancient mountain chains, but the block was uplifted under the impact of the Alpine mountain-building movements, with a steep descent on the east and southeast, nearest the Alps, and a gentle decline under the later sediments of the Aquitaine Basin to the west and the Paris Basin to the north. Much of the western massif, notably Limousin, consists of monotonous erosion surfaces. The centre and eastern parts of the massif were much fractured in the course of the Alpine movements, leaving behind upthrust blocks, of which the most conspicuous is the Morvan, the forested bastion of the northeastern corner of the massif. Downfaulted basins filled with sediments from Paleogene and Neogene times (i.e., about 65 to 2.6 million years ago), such as the Limagne near the city of Clermont-Ferrand in south-central France, were also formed. Faulting was associated with volcanic activity, which in the central part of the region formed the vast and complex structures of the massifs of Cantal and Monts Dore, where the Sancy Hill (Puy de Sancy), at 6,184 feet (1,885 metres), is the highest summit of the Massif Central. Farther west, on the fringe of the Limagne, is the extraordinary Chaîne des Puys, whose numerous cinder cones were formed only about 10,000 years ago and still retain the newness of their craters, lava flows, and other volcanic features. Numerous mineral springs, such as those at Vichy in the central Auvergne region, are a relic of volcanic activity. The eastern and southern portions of the massif, from the Morvan through the Cévennes to the final southwestern termination of the massif in the Noire Mountains (Montagne Noire), are marked by a series of hill masses that overlook the lowlands of the Rhône-Saône river valley and the région of Languedoc-Roussillon; at least one of these uplands, Beaujolais, has become famous for the grapevines grown at its foot. Between the hill masses lie infolded coal deposits at locations such as Alès, Decazeville, Saint-Étienne, and Blanzy (Le Creusot) that are of more historical than contemporary importance. To the southwest the rocks of the massif are overlain by a great thickness of limestones (causses) from the Jurassic Period (about 200 to 145 million years ago). Lacking in surface water and little populated, this portion of the massif is crossed by rivers that trench dramatic gorges, notably that of the Tarn. Extensive cave systems bear remains of prehistoric art, such as that of Pêche-Merle in the Lot valley and the Lascaux Grotto in the Vézère valley. The Massif Armoricain The Massif Armoricain is contained mostly within the région of Brittany (Bretagne), a peninsula washed by the Bay of Biscay on the south and the English Channel on the north. The massif continues beyond Brittany eastward and across the Loire to the south. It is much lower than the other Hercynian massif; its highest point, the Mont des Avaloirs, on the eastern edge of the massif, attains an elevation of 1,368 feet (417 metres). Alternating bands of Paleozoic sediments and granitic rocks give the massif a generally east-west grain, particularly expressed in the headlands and bays of its rugged coast. The great lowlands The Paris Basin Between the Ardennes, the Vosges, the Massif Central, and the Massif Armoricain lie the sedimentary beds that make up the Paris Basin. Alternating beds of limestones, sands, and clays dip toward the central Paris Basin, their outcrops forming concentric patterns. Especially to the east, erosion has left the more resistant rocks, usually limestones, with a steep, outward-facing scarp edge and a gentler slope toward the centre of the basin. The central Paris Basin is filled by rocks from the Paleogene and Neogene periods, mostly limestones, that form the level plateaus of regions such as Beauce, Brie, Île-de-France, Valois, and Soissonnais. This area is mostly covered with windblown limon, which is the basis of an excellent loamy soil. The limestone levels overlap in sandwich formation. Eroded remnants of higher formations have been left behind as isolated hills called buttes, perhaps the most famous of which is in Paris—the Butte de Montmartre, on which is one of the city’s most famous districts. Sandy areas adjoining the limestone formations bear forests, such as the Forest of Fontainebleau, southwest of Paris. In the east, in the regions of Lorraine and Burgundy, are Triassic and Jurassic rocks; among the scarps the Moselle Hills are noted for their minette, low-grade iron ore. In the extreme southeast the Jurassic limestone Plateau de Langres forms the watershed between the Seine and Rhône-Saône river systems; it is crossed by major routes linking Paris with the south. The eastern basin includes the chalk country of Champagne and the Argonne massif. In the western part of the Paris Basin, scarps in the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks of Normandy are not prominent. The chalk plateau is trenched by the lower Seine in a course marked by spectacular meanders and river cliffs. The plateau surfaces are frequently mantled by clay-with-flints and other residual deposits, producing heavy soils with much forest, grassland, and orchard cultivation. Farther north the wide chalk plateaus of Picardy and Artois are generally covered with limon, which provides for a rich agriculture; many stretches of magnificent white chalk cliffs line the English Channel coast. The Flanders Plain In the extreme north the French boundary includes a small part of the Anglo-Belgian basin. Coastal sand dunes protect the reclaimed marshes of French Flanders from invasion by the sea. The Alsace Plain East of the Paris Basin is the Alsace Plain, bordered by the Vosges on the west, the Saône basin on the southwest, the Jura Mountains on the south, the Rhine River on the east, and Germany on the north. The terrace and foothills bordering the Rhine are covered with soil-enriching limon. Alluvial fans, which are laid down by tributaries emerging from the Vosges, and much of the floodplain of the Rhine and its major tributary, the Ill River, are forested. The Sundgau region of the Alsace Plain, which lies between the Jura and the Ill River above Mulhouse, is another great alluvial fan overlaying impermeable clays, which hold up numerous lakes. The Rhine River and its tributaries continue to deposit thick sediments on the floodplain. The river is canalized, to the considerable detriment of the water table on both sides. The Loire plains Toward the southwest the Paris Basin opens on a group of plains that follow the Loire valley. The hills of this area, such as the limestone plateaus of the Touraine region and the crystalline plateaus of the Anjou and Vendée areas, are cut by the broad valleys of the Loire and its tributaries. The middle Loire valley, which varies in width from about 3 to 6 miles (about 5 to 10 km), is famous for its châteaus and its scenic beauty. Battle of Fleurus (June 16, 1794), the most significant battle in the First Coalition phase of the French Revolutionary Wars; by Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse, 19th century. READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC What Led to France’s Reign of Terror? Some 17,000 people were killed in the Reign of Terror, and as many as 10,000 more died in prison or without trial. What caused the French... The Aquitaine Basin The Loire countryside links with the Aquitaine Basin of southwestern France through the gap known as the Gate of Poitou. The Aquitaine Basin is much smaller than the Paris Basin, and, while it is bounded in the south by the Pyrenees, in the northeast it runs into the low foothills of the Massif Central. The slopes of both the Pyrenees and the Massif Central decline toward the central valley of the Garonne River. The Aquitaine Basin lacks the clearly marked concentric relief of the Paris Basin. In the north it has limestone and marl plateaus cut by the fertile river valleys emerging from the Massif Central. The southern low plateaus were mostly filled by a mass of rather ill-defined Paleogene and Neogene sands and gravel called the molasse, stripped off the rising Pyrenees. The foot of the central Pyrenees is marked by a remarkable series of confluent alluvial fans forming the Lannemezan Plateau. The Landes, an area lying between the Garonne and Adour rivers to the west, has a surface that consists of fine sand underlain by impermeable iron pan, or bedrock. The area, once covered by heath and marshes, is now reclaimed and planted with maritime pine. South of the wide, deep Gironde estuary, the Bay of Biscay coast is lined by enormous sand dunes, behind which are shallow lagoons. The younger mountains and adjacent plains Pyrenees, Jura, and Alps The Pyrenees, whose foothills shelter the picturesque Basque countryside, constitute the most ancient of the more recently formed mountains in France. They stretch for more than 280 miles (450 km), making a natural barrier between France and Spain. Their formation, which began in the Mesozoic Era (about 250 to 65 million years ago), continued in the Paleogene and Neogene periods and perhaps even in the beginning of the Quaternary Period (i.e., from about 2.6 million years ago). The central and highest part of the barrier is composed of a series of parallel chains with only a few, difficult-to-reach passes that have sheer drops at each end. A section of the mountain chain centring on Mont Perdu (Spanish: Monte Perdido) was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997. The Jura Mountains, extending into Switzerland, are composed of folded limestone. The northeastern part of the Jura, which has the most pronounced folding, is in Switzerland. The highest point, however, is Mount Neige (5,636 feet [1,718 metres]), in France. The French Alps are only a part of the great chain that extends across Europe, but they include its highest point, Mont Blanc (15,771 feet [4,807 metres]). These majestic mountains were formed in a series of foldings during Paleogene and Neogene times. They include the two greatest regions of permanent snow and glaciers in Europe. The northern Alps are relatively easy to cross because of the numerous valleys created by the movement of glaciers. The relief of the southern Alps is much less orderly, and the valleys, which were not affected by glaciation, form narrow and winding gorges. Like the Pyrenees, the Alps form a natural barrier, dropping sharply down to the Po River plain in Italy. The southern plains beach at Nice beach at Nice © Nedra Westwater/Black Star Between these young mountains and the ancient Massif Central is a series of plains, including those of the Saône and the Rhône rivers, which extend southward to the great triangular delta of the Rhône on the Mediterranean coast. Its seaward face, the Camargue region, comprises a series of lakes, marshes, and sand spits and includes one of Europe’s important wetland nature reserves. West of the Rhône delta the Languedoc coastal plain is broad and rather featureless; behind its sand-spit coast are several formerly mosquito-ridden lagoons, now part of a resort complex. At the southwestern end the foothills of the Pyrenees reach to the rocky coast of the Roussillon region. East of the Rhône delta the lowlands are more fragmentary; in the Côte d’Azur region the Alpine foothills and the ancient Maures and Esterel massifs reach to the Mediterranean, forming the coves, capes, and harbours of the country’s most famous tourist and retirement area, the French Riviera. Corsica is also highly regarded for its natural scenery. A number of the island’s peaks reach over 6,500 feet, and parts of it are under wild forest or covered with undergrowth called maquis. Drainage of France The river systems of France are determined by a major divide in the far eastern part of the country, running from the southern end of the Vosges down the eastern and southeastern edge of the Massif Central to the Noire Mountains, the southwestern promontory of the massif. This divide is broken by occasional cols (depressions) and lowland corridors, notably the Langres Plateau, across the Jurassic outer rim of the Paris Basin. Along the divide originate most of the rivers of the larger, western part of the country, including the Seine and the Loire. Other major rivers include the Garonne, originating in the Pyrenees, and the Rhône and the Rhine, originating in the Alps. The Seine system Paris, France Paris, France Dana Hyde/Photo Researchers The main river of the Paris Basin, the Seine, 485 miles (780 km) in length, is joined upstream on the left bank by its tributary the Yonne, on the right bank south of Paris by the Marne, and north of the city by the Oise. While the Seine has a regular flow throughout the year, there may be flooding in the spring and, occasionally more severely, during the customary fall-winter peak of lowland rivers. Efforts have been made to reduce flooding on the Seine and its tributaries by the building of reservoirs. A number of islands dot the Seine along its meandering, generally westward course across the central Paris Basin and through the capital city itself. One of these, the Île de la Cité, forms the very heart of the city of Paris. Eventually the river enters the English Channel at Le Havre. The Loire system The Loire, the longest French river, flows for 634 miles (1,020 km) and drains the widest area (45,000 square miles [117,000 square km]). It is an extremely irregular river, with an outflow eight times greater in December and January than in August and September. Rising in the Massif Central on Mount Gerbier-de-Jonc, it flows northward over impervious terrain, with many gorgelike sections. Near Nevers it is joined by the Allier, another river of the massif. Within the Paris Basin the Loire continues to flow northward, as if to join the Seine system, but then takes a wide bend to the west to enter the Atlantic past Nantes and Saint-Nazaire. The Loire is artificially joined to the Seine by several canals. The river’s torrential flow, a hindrance to navigation, covers its floodplain with sand and gravel, which has commercial importance. The river is also a source of cooling water for a chain of atomic power stations near its course, which has raised concerns among environmentalists, as have various dam projects along the river. UNESCO designated the valley, between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes, a World Heritage site in 2000. The Garonne system The Garonne, in the southwest, flows through the centre of the Aquitaine Basin. It is the shortest of the main French rivers, with a length of 357 miles (575 km), and it drains only 21,600 square miles (56,000 square km). Its outflow is irregular, with high waters in winter (due to the oceanic rainfall) and in spring, when the snow melts, but with meagre flows in summer and autumn. Its source is in the central Pyrenees in the Aran (Joyeuse) Valley in Spain, and its main tributaries, the Tarn, the Aveyron, the Lot, and the Dordogne, originate in the Massif Central. With the exception of the Gironde estuary, which is formed by the confluence of the Garonne and the Dordogne and is fully penetrated by the sea, the whole network is generally useless for navigation and is filled with powerful, rapid, and dangerous currents. The Rhône system In eastern France the direction of the main rivers is predominantly north-south through the Alpine furrow. The Rhône is the great river of the southeast. Rising in the Alps, it passes through Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) to enter France, which has 324 miles (521 km) of its total length of 505 miles (813 km). At Lyon it receives its major tributary, the Saône. The regime of the Rhône is complex. Near Lyon the Rhône and its important Isère and Drôme tributaries, draining from the Alps, have a marked late spring–early summer peak caused by the melting of snow and ice. While this peak is generally characteristic of the river as a whole, it is considerably modified by the contribution of the Saône, of the Durance, and of some tributaries in the Mediterranean south as a result of the fall-winter rainfall peak. Thus, the powerful Rhône has a remarkably ample flow in all seasons. The course of the river and the local water tables have been much modified by a series of dams to generate power and to permit navigation to Lyon. The Rhône also supplies cooling water to a series of atomic power stations. West of the Rhône the Bas Rhône–Languedoc canal, constructed after World War II to provide irrigation, has proved to be an essential element in the remarkable urban and industrial development of Languedoc. East of the Rhône the Canal de Provence taps the unpolluted waters of a Rhône tributary, the Durance, supplying Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Toulon, and the coast of Provence with drinking water and providing impetus for urban expansion. At its delta, beginning about 25 miles (40 km) from the Mediterranean, the Rhône and its channels deposit significant amounts of alluvium to form the Camargue region. The Rhine system The Rhine forms the eastern boundary of France for some 118 miles (190 km). In this section its course is dominated by the melting of snow and ice from Alpine headstreams, giving it a pronounced late spring–summer peak and often generally low water in autumn. The Ill, which joins the Rhine at Strasbourg, drains southern Alsace. The Rhine valley has been considerably modified by the construction on the French side of the lateral Grand Canal d’Alsace, for power generation and navigation. The eastern Paris Basin is drained by two tributaries, the Moselle, partly canalized, and the Meuse; the former reaches the Rhine by way of Luxembourg and Germany, and the latter, as the Maas (Dutch), reaches the Rhine delta at the North Sea by way of Belgium and the Netherlands. The smaller rivers and the lakes North of the Artois ridge, a number of small rivers flow into the Escaut (Flemish and Dutch: Schelde) to reach its North Sea estuary through Belgium. The Somme rises in northwestern France and flows a short distance into the English Channel, and in the southwest the Charente, rising in the western Limousin plateau, and the Adour, rising in the central Pyrenees, flow into the Atlantic. The French hydrographic system also includes a number of natural lakes of different origin. There are the lakes in depressions carved out by glaciation at the western periphery of the Alps, such as the lakes of Annecy and Bourget, the latter being the largest natural lake entirely within France. Others occur on the surfaces of ancient massifs and include the lakes of the Vosges. Some lakes are caused by structural faults and are lodged in narrow valleys, as are the Jura lakes. There are also lakes of volcanic origin, such as those in the Massif Central (crater lakes and lakes ponded behind lava flows), and regions scattered with lagoons or ponds, either created by coastal phenomena, as on the Landes (Atlantic) and Languedoc (Mediterranean) coasts, or caused by impervious terrain and poor local drainage, as in the Sologne plain. Major artificial lakes include the Serre-Ponçon reservoir, on the Durance River in the Alps, and the Sarrans and Bort-les-Orgues reservoirs, both in the Massif Central. Soils of France On a broad, general scale, virtually the whole of France can be classified in the zone of brown forest soils, or brown earths. These soils, which develop under deciduous forest cover in temperate climatic conditions, are of excellent agricultural value. Some climate-related variation can be detected within the French brown earth group; in the high-rainfall and somewhat cool conditions of northwestern France, carbonates and other minerals tend to be leached downward, producing a degraded brown earth soil of higher acidity and lesser fertility; locally this may approach the nature of the north European podzol. The brown earth zone gives way southward to the zone of Mediterranean soils, which in France cover only a limited area. They are developed from decalcified clays with a coarse sand admixture and are typically red in colour because of the upward migration of iron oxides during the warm, dry summers. These soils can be quite fertile. Over large areas of France, soils have developed not directly from the disintegrated bedrock but from the waste sheets created by periglacial action. These may provide a particularly favourable soil material; most notable is the windblown limon that mantles the Paleogene and Neogene limestone plateaus of the central Paris Basin and the chalk beds to the northwest, the basis of the finest arable soils of France. The quality of the soils depends heavily upon the origin of their waste sheets; sand spreads derived from the granites of the Hercynian massifs, for example, provide only poor soils. The bedrock, however, is not without influence. Soils developed over clays are likely to be heavy and wet, although not necessarily infertile, as in the Jurassic clay and chalk vales of the eastern Paris Basin. Limestone and chalk enrich soils with lime, which is generally favourable, but there is a marked north-south contrast. The limestone areas of southern France tend to be swept almost bare of soil by erosion; the soil then collects in valleys and hollows. The soils of the higher mountains are naturally stony and unfavourable. Finally, human action is an extremely important factor in soil quality. As soon as the original forest was cleared, some modification of the soil was inevitable. Generally, farmers through the ages have maintained or improved soil quality by draining and manuring; especially noteworthy were the activities of Flemish peasants who virtually created their soil out of a marshy wilderness. Not all human intervention has been as successful, however. For example, the degradation of brown earths under heath in western France is not a natural feature but the product of human clearance and grazing practices. Large-scale arable cultivation with no use of animal manure is leading in places to soil degradation and soil erosion. Climate of France The climate of France is generally favourable to cultivation. Most of France lies in the southern part of the temperate zone, although the subtropical zone encompasses its southern fringe. All of France is considered to be under the effect of oceanic influences, moderated by the North Atlantic Drift on the west and the Mediterranean Sea on the south. Average annual temperatures decline to the north, with Nice on the Côte d’Azure at 59 °F (15 °C) and Lille on the northern border at 50 °F (10 °C). Rainfall is brought mainly by westerly winds from the Atlantic and is characterized by cyclonic depressions. Annual precipitation is more than 50 inches (1,270 mm) at higher elevations in western and northwestern France, in the western Pyrenees, in the Massif Central, and in the Alps and the Jura. In winter eastern France especially may come under the influence of the continental high-pressure system, which brings extremely cold conditions and temperature inversions over the cities, during which cold air is trapped below warmer air, with consequent fogs and urban pollution. The climate of France, then, can be discussed according to three major climatic zones—oceanic, continental, and Mediterranean, with some variation in the Aquitaine Basin and in the mountains. The oceanic region The pure oceanic climate prevails in the northwest, especially in Brittany. It is characterized by its low annual temperature variation, with Brest having an average temperature in January of 43 °F (6 °C) and in July of 61 °F (16 °C); by its extreme humidity and moderate rainfall (35 inches [890 mm] of rain falling through the year), accompanied by cloudiness and haze; by the frequency and sometimes the violence of the west winds that blow almost constantly; and by large variations in the weather, which can change several times a day. This oceanic climate is somewhat modified toward the north, where the winters are cooler, and toward the south, where, in the Aquitaine Basin, the winters are mild and the summers warmer. There is also less rainfall, although at Toulouse great summer storms are quite frequent. The continental region The plains of the northeast are particularly affected by a continental climate. The city of Strasbourg has the greatest temperature range in France. Winter is cold, with an average of 83 days of frost and with snow cover for several weeks, although the weather is often sunny. In summer, storms cause maximum precipitation in the region in June and July, although total rainfall is comparatively light. The climate of the Paris Basin is somewhere between the oceanic and the continental. The average yearly temperature is 53 °F (11 °C) in Paris. In addition, the relatively light annual rainfall (23 inches [58 cm]) follows a pattern of moderately heavy rain in spring and early summer and autumn, as in the oceanic countries, but the maximum amount of rain falls in summer, with storms of the continental type. In summer, spray irrigation is needed for crops in the continental climatic region and the Paris Basin. The Mediterranean region In the southeast the Mediterranean climate extends over the coastal plains and penetrates the valley of the lower Rhône River as far as the Montélimar area. It affects the southern Alps, the southeastern slopes of the Cévennes and the Noire Mountains (in the Massif Central), and the eastern Pyrenees. The latitude and the proximity of the warm Mediterranean Sea contribute to mild winters, with an average temperature of 47 °F (8 °C) in January at Nice and with only a few days of frost. Precipitation is heavy and tends to fall in sudden downpours, especially in the autumn and spring, whereas summer is nearly completely dry for at least three months. In coastal Languedoc-Roussillon, annual rainfall totals can be as low as 17 to 20 inches (430 to 500 mm). It is a unique area because of its clear skies and the regularity of fine weather. This area is also subject to the violent north winds called the mistral, which are peculiar to southern France. The winds are caused by high-pressure areas from central France that move toward the low-pressure areas of the Gulf of Genoa. Permanent irrigation systems are characteristic of the Mediterranean lowlands. The Aquitaine Basin is intermediate between the oceanic and the Mediterranean climates. Winters tend toward the oceanic type, but springs and summers are warm, although less arid than in the Mediterranean zone. The mountains have varied climates. West-facing slopes in the Pyrenees have some of the highest precipitation figures in France. Snow cover stays from December to the end of April above 3,000 feet (900 metres) and is perpetual above 9,000 feet (2,700 metres) in the Alps and 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) in the Pyrenees. Locally, the contrast between the sunny south-facing valley slopes (adrets) and the shaded north-facing slopes (ubacs) can be of great importance for land use and settlement, while some intermontane basins can have quite advantageous climates as opposed to that of the surrounding peaks and plateaus. Plant and animal life Plant life Vegetation is closely related to climate, so that in France it is not surprising that there are two major but unequal divisions: the Holarctic province and the smaller Mediterranean province. Most of France lies within the Holarctic biogeographic vegetational region, characterized by northern species, and it can be divided into three parts. A large area of western France makes up one part. It lies north of the Charente River and includes most of the Paris Basin. There the natural vegetation is characterized by oak (now largely cleared for cultivation), chestnut, pine, and beech in uplands that receive more than 23.6 inches (600 mm) of annual rainfall. Heathland is also common, as a predominantly man-made feature (created by forest clearance, burning, and grazing). Broom, gorse, heather, and bracken are found. South of the Charente, the Aquitaine Basin has a mixture of heath and gorse on the plateaus and several varieties of oak, cypress, poplar, and willow in the valleys. On the causses of the Massif Central and on other limestone plateaus, broom, heath, lavender, and juniper appear among the bare rocks. The vegetation of eastern France, constituting a second part of the Holarctic division, is of a more central European type, with trees such as Norway maple, beech, pedunculate oak, and larch; hornbeam is often present as a shrub layer under oak. The various high mountain zones form a third Holarctic part; with cloudy and wet conditions, they have beech woods at lower elevations, giving way upward to fir, mountain pine, and larch but with much planted spruce. Above the tree line are high mountain pastures, now increasingly abandoned, with only stunted trees but resplendent with flowers in spring and early summer. The second major vegetation division of the country lies within the Mediterranean climatic zone and provides a sharp contrast with the plant life elsewhere in France. The pronounced summer drought of this zone causes bulbous plants to die off in summer and encourages xerophytic plants that retard water loss by means of spiny, woolly, or glossy leaves; these include the evergreen oak, the cork oak, and all the heathers, cistuses, and lavenders. Umbrella, or stone, pine and introduced cypress dominate the landscape. The predominant plant life of the plateaus of Roussillon is the maquis, comprising dense thickets of drought-resistant shrubs, characterized in spring by the colourful flowers of the cistuses, broom, and tree heather; in most areas this is a form that has developed after human destruction of the evergreen forest. A large part of Provence’s hottest and driest terrain is covered by a rock heath known as garigue. This region is a principal domain of the vineyard, but lemon and orange trees grow there also. At elevations of about 2,600 feet (790 metres), as in the Cévennes, deciduous forest appears, mainly in the form of the sweet chestnut. At elevations of 4,500 feet (1,370 metres) this gives way to a subalpine coniferous forest of fir and pine. Forest covers 58,000 square miles of France (15,000,000 hectares), which is more than a quarter of its territory. Most forests are on the upland massifs of the Ardennes and Vosges and within the Jura, Alps, and Pyrenees mountain chains, but extensive lowland forests grow on areas of poor soil, such as that of the Sologne plain south of the Loire River. The planted forest of maritime pine covering about 3,680 square miles (953,000 hectares) in the Landes of southwestern France is said to be the most extensive in western Europe. Increasingly, forests are less a source of wood and more a recreational amenity, especially those on the fringe of large urban agglomerations, such as Fontainebleau and others of the Île-de-France region. Animal life The fauna of France is relatively typical of western European countries. Among the larger mammals are red deer, roe deer, and wild boar, which are still hunted; the fallow deer is rather rare. In the high Alps are the rare chamoix and the reintroduced ibex. Hares, rabbits, and various types of rodents are found both in the forests and in the fields. Carnivores include the fox, the genet, and the rare wildcat. Among endangered species are the badger, the otter, the beaver, the tortoise, the marmot of the Alps, and the brown bear and the lynx of the Pyrenees. Seals have almost entirely disappeared from the French coasts. While French bird life is in general similar to that of its neighbours, southern France is at the northern edge of the range of African migrants, and such birds as the flamingo, the Egyptian vulture, the black-winged stilt, the bee-eater, and the roller have habitats in southern France. People of France Ethnic groups France: Ethnic composition France: Ethnic composition Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. outdoor market in Paris outdoor market in Paris © Meinzahn/iStock.com The French are, paradoxically, strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation, but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge. Before the official discovery of the Americas at the end of the 15th century, France, located on the western extremity of the Old World, was regarded for centuries by Europeans as being near the edge of the known world. Generations of different migrants traveling by way of the Mediterranean from the Middle East and Africa and through Europe from Central Asia and the Nordic lands settled permanently in France, forming a variegated grouping, almost like a series of geologic strata, since they were unable to migrate any farther. Perhaps the oldest reflection of these migrations is furnished by the Basque people, who live in an isolated area west of the Pyrenees in both Spain and France, who speak a language unrelated to other European languages, and whose origin remains unclear. The Celtic tribes, known to the Romans as Gauls, spread from central Europe in the period 500 BCE–500 CE to provide France with a major component of its population, especially in the centre and west. At the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a powerful penetration of Germanic (Teutonic) peoples, especially in northern and eastern France. The incursion of the Norsemen (Vikings) brought further Germanic influence. In addition to these many migrations, France was, over the centuries, the field of numerous battles and of prolonged occupations before becoming, in the 19th and especially in the 20th century, the prime recipient of foreign immigration into Europe, adding still other mixtures to the ethnic melting pot. Languages French is the national language, spoken and taught everywhere. Brogues and dialects are widespread in rural areas, however, and many people tend to conserve their regional linguistic customs either through tradition or through a voluntary and deliberate return to a specific regional dialect. This tendency is strongest in the frontier areas of France. In the eastern and northern part of the country, Alsatian and Flemish (Dutch) are Germanic languages; in the south, Occitan (Provençal or Languedoc), Corsican, and Catalan show the influence of Latin. Breton is a Celtic language related to languages spoken in some western parts of the British Isles (notably Wales), and Basque is a language isolate. Following the introduction of universal primary education during the Third Republic in 1872, the use of regional languages was rigorously repressed in the interest of national unity, and pupils using them were punished. More recently, in reaction to the rise in regional sentiment, these languages have been introduced in a number of schools and universities, primarily because some of them, such as Occitan, Basque, and Breton, have maintained a literary tradition. Recent immigration has introduced various non-European languages, notably Arabic. Religion of France France: Religious affiliation France: Religious affiliation Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Chartres Cathedral Chartres Cathedral Manifest_Media/iStock/Getty Images Plus About three-fifths of the French people belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Only a minority, however, regularly participate in religious worship; practice is greatest among the middle classes. The northwest (Brittany-Vendée), the east (Lorraine, Vosges, Alsace, Jura, Lyonnais, and the northern Alps), the north (Flanders), the Basque Country, and the region south of the Massif Central have a higher percentage of practicing Roman Catholics than the rest of the country. Recruitment of priests has become more difficult, even though the church, historically autonomous, is very progressive and ecumenical. Reflecting the presence of immigrants from North Africa, Algeria, and Morocco, France has one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations: an estimated 5,000,000 Muslims, a sizable percentage of them living in and around Marseille in southeastern France, as well as in Paris and Lyon. Protestants, who number 700,000, belong to several different denominations. They are numerous in Alsace, in the northern Jura, in the southeastern Massif Central, and in the central Atlantic region. There are more than 700,000 adherents of Judaism, concentrated in Greater Paris, Marseille, and Alsace and the large eastern towns. In addition to the religious groups, there also are several societies of freethinkers, of which the most famous is the French Masonry. Large numbers, however, especially among the working classes and young population, profess no religious belief. In the early 21st century the government approved a number of measures that reflected both France’s dedication to being a secular state, a principle known as laïcité, as well as the ambivalence and, in some cases, hostility felt by some French toward the country’s large Muslim population. In 2004 the government banned Muslim head scarves and other religious symbols in state schools. Additional controversial legislation passed in 2010 prohibited face-concealing garments—i.e., veils that fully covered a woman’s face—in public places. Settlement patterns Rural landscape and settlement Centuries of human adaptation of the various environments of France have produced varied patterns of rural landscape. Scholars have traditionally made an initial contrast between areas of enclosed land (bocage), usually associated with zones of high rainfall and heavy soils, and areas of open-field land (campagne), generally associated with level and well-drained plains and plateaus. Two other patterns have evolved in the Mediterranean region and in the mountains. Bocage In its classic form, bocage is found in Brittany, where small fields are surrounded by drainage ditches and high earthen banks, from which grow impenetrable hedges arching over narrow sunken lanes. Similarly enclosed land is found elsewhere, however, notably on the northern, western, and southern fringes of the Paris Basin, such as in Normandy, as well as in the western and northern parts of the Massif Central, parts of Aquitaine, and the Pyrenean region. At higher levels hedges may be replaced by stone walls. Settlement mostly takes the form of hamlets and isolated farms. Open-field The greatest extent of open-field land is found in the Paris Basin and in northern and eastern France, but there are pockets of it elsewhere. The landscape typically lacks hedges or fences; instead, the bewildering pattern of small strips and blocks of land is defined by small boundary stones. The land of one farmer may be dispersed in parcels scattered over a wide area. The land is predominantly arable, and the farmsteads are traditionally grouped into villages, which may be irregularly clustered or, as in Lorraine, linear in form. Mediterranean lavender lavender © Digital Vision/Getty Images The generally block-shaped Mediterranean lowland parcels normally are not enclosed or are enclosed only by rough stone banks. However, in areas where delicate crops would be exposed to wind damage, there are screens of willows and tall reeds. Hillsides are frequently terraced, although much of this land type has been abandoned except in areas of intensive cultivation, such as the flower-growing region around Grasse. A very large farmhouse built on three floors is characteristic of wine-growing and sheep-raising regions, such as Provence. Rural population was formerly often clustered at high elevations, both for defense and in order to be above the malarial plains. In modern times there has been a move to more convenient lowland locations. Mountain In the high mountains and especially in the Alps, there is the contrast between the adrets, the sunny and cultivated valley slopes, and the ubacs, the cold and humid slopes covered with forests. The variety of vegetation on the slopes of the mountains is remarkable. Cultivated fields and grasslands are found in the depths of the valleys, followed in ascending order by orchards on the first sunny embankments, then forests, Alpine pastures, bare rocks, and, finally, permanent snow. A unique aspect of the mountain environment is that Alpine villages of the lower valley sides were often combined with chalets (burons in the Massif Central), temporary dwellings used by those tending flocks on summer pastures above the tree line. Postwar transformation After World War II the French government instituted a program of consolidation, whereby the scattered parcels of individual farmers were grouped into larger blocks that would accommodate heavier, mechanized cultivation. Initially progress was greatest in the open-field areas, particularly the Paris Basin, where there were few physical obstacles to the process. Subsequent extension to bocage areas had more severe consequences for landscape values and ecology, as hedges, sunken lanes, and ponds disappeared in favour of a new open landscape. At the same time, the vast numbers of people abandoning agricultural pursuits enormously changed the nature of rural settlement. Particularly in the more attractive areas, abandoned farms were purchased as second homes or for retirement. Where alternative employment was available, rural people stayed and became commuters, transforming barns and stables for other uses, such as garages. On the fringes of the expanding city regions, new houses and housing subdivisions for urban commuters were built in the villages, markedly changing their character. Urban settlement France: Urban-rural France: Urban-rural Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Marseille Marseille © Digital Vision/Getty Images The primacy of Paris as the predominant urban centre of France is well known. After World War II the French government had an ambivalent attitude toward the development of the urban structure. On the one hand there was the desire to see Paris emerge as the effective capital of Europe, and on the other there was the policy of creating “métropoles d’equilibre,” through which cities such as Lille, Bordeaux, and Marseille would become growth poles of regional development. Even more evident was the unplanned urbanization of small and medium-size towns related to spontaneous industrial decentralization from Paris, such as that along the Loire valley, or to retirement migration, such as that along the coastlands of southern France. Demographic trends Population history In 1801 France was the most populous nation in Europe, containing about one-sixth of the continent’s inhabitants. By 1936 the French population had increased by 50 percent, but in the same period the number of people in Italy and Germany had nearly trebled, and in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands the population had nearly quadrupled. The marked difference in population growth between France and some of its neighbours up to the 1940s was attributed to a falling birth rate. At the same time, the mortality rate in France began its decline somewhat later than in other advanced European countries, not falling until the close of the 19th century. The birth rate was particularly affected by the practice of French peasants who deliberately limited their families in order to reduce the effect of a Napoleonic law that required the splitting of the family holdings among all heirs. Other factors may have included the rise of bourgeois individualism following the French Revolution of 1789, the decline of Roman Catholic observance (especially among the political left), and the lack of economic opportunity in the interwar years. Population growth was, of course, adversely affected by wars, including the wars of the Revolution; the wars of the First Empire; the Franco-German War (1870–71); World War I (1914–18), which cost France more than 1,500,000 lives; and World War II (1939–45), which reduced the population by 600,000. The deficit in national growth was so drastic by 1938 that France began to give monetary and other material benefits to families with children. The policy appears to have been effective, because a rise in the birth rate occurred even during the difficult years of Nazi occupation and Vichy France, culminating in the postwar baby boom years, when soldiers and prisoners returned to a climate of economic optimism. The relative youth and high fertility of immigrants also contributed to the upsurge in the birth rate, which was coupled with a decline in mortality rates, attributable to improved public health facilities and social welfare programs. In the second half of the 20th century, the high birth rate slowed, and about 1974 it fell into a sharp decline, eventually reaching a point insufficient for the long-term maintenance of the population. Since midcentury, because of a corresponding decline in the death rate, the rate of natural increase (balance of births against deaths) has remained positive, though in decline. By the early 21st century, France had an average population increase of roughly 300,000 people each year. These changes were not exceptional to France; the same postwar pattern was largely paralleled in neighbouring countries. A number of factors combined to reduce the birth rate, among them the introduction of the contraceptive pill and the new preference for smaller families. Emigration Unlike many of its neighbours, France has never been a major source of international migrants. In the 17th century, because of religious persecution, France lost more than 400,000 Huguenot refugees—often highly skilled—mainly to Prussia, England, Holland, and America. The same century saw the beginning of emigration; relatively small numbers of emigrants settled at first in North America, notably in eastern Canada (Quebec) and in Louisiana, in certain parts of Latin America that are still départements of France (Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana), and later in various countries of Africa and Asia that were parts of France’s colonial domain. Since decolonialization, whether forced or voluntary, many have returned to France, but others have remained overseas, either in business or in programs of technical and cultural cooperation in most of the former French territories, notably in Africa. Small numbers of French, especially from Brittany and Normandy, continue to relocate to Canada, and a number of Basques go to Argentina. Immigration of France France: Immigrant population admitted France: Immigrant population admitted Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Intermittently, at least since about 1830 and rather steadily from 1850, there has been a substantial flow of immigrant population into France. France had the reputation into the early 20th century of being the European country most open to immigrants, including political refugees, but this reputation changed in the late 20th century, when opposition rose to continued immigration from Africa. At this time also the countries of the European Union became generally more resistant to the admission of persons claiming political asylum. Most immigration conforms to the economic needs of the host country and tends to be particularly concentrated either in periods of economic growth or after devastating wars. Between 1850 and 1914 about 4.3 million foreigners entered France, and between World Wars I and II nearly 3 million, or 6 percent of the population, came as immigrants. Up to the end of World War I, immigration was free and spontaneous; most of the immigrants came from neighbouring countries, such as Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland, and they were quickly assimilated into the national population. The slaughter of young men and the devastation of World War I stimulated the government to draw more widely from the reservoirs of foreign manpower. The Italians came in greatest numbers (35 percent), followed by the Poles (20 percent), the Spanish (15 percent), the Belgians (10 percent), and a smaller number of people from central or eastern European countries. In the years of economic expansion after World War II, when there was an acute labour shortage, immigration again reached a high level. In the first two postwar decades, immigration contributed about 40 percent to the growth of the French population. Although immigration flattened out after 1974, natural increase dropped, so that immigration continued to contribute significantly to population growth. In the early 21st century, there were almost four million foreigners residing in France, amounting to some 6 percent of the population, a proportion that had remained constant since 1975. Neighbouring countries such as Portugal, Italy, and Spain continued to be significant contributors, but recent immigrant streams came from North Africa, notably Algeria (an integral part of France until 1962) and the former protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia. Peoples from French or former French territories in Central Africa, Asia, and the Americas provided an additional source of immigrants. As the numbers of immigrants grew, so did incidents of racial discrimination in housing and employment, as well as social activism among immigrant groups. Initially, immigrants from Africa and the Americas were predominantly males, living in low-standard housing and working in undesirable, low-skilled occupations. As families were progressively reconstituted, immigrants continued to work in jobs that Frenchmen were reluctant to accept. With the beginning of an economic downturn in 1974, though, French workers began to reclaim some of the jobs held by immigrants, and the government began to restrict immigration. Adding to the job competition were approximately one million persons with French citizenship, the so-called pieds-noirs (literally “black feet”), who were repatriated from territories in North Africa decolonized in 1962–64. The policy of restricting immigration remains in force, with the result that in the early 21st century the net annual increase of population from legal immigration averaged little more than 50,000 people. With the enactment in 1999 of the Amsterdam Treaty in France, many issues of immigration became shared by participating members of the European Union. Population structure France: Age breakdown France: Age breakdown Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The aging of the population is common to western Europe, but because of low birth rates it has been observable in France since the beginning of the 19th century. In the early 21st century, more than one-fifth of French citizens were at least 60 years old. The tendency for the proportion of the elderly population to increase also reflects medical advances, which have produced a longer expectation of life. The age structure of the population is of considerable social and economic importance. The steady increase in the proportion of the aged puts an increasing strain on the working population to provide pensions, medical and social services, and retirement housing. The increase in births between 1944 and the mid-1970s, however, brought its own problems, notably the need to rush through a school-building program, followed by the creation of new universities. But this demographically young population also stimulated the economy by creating a greater demand for consumer goods and housing. Another important aspect of population structure is the proportion of men to women, in society as a whole and in the various age groups. As in most western European countries, women outnumber men in French society and particularly in the older age groups, which is the result of two factors: the wars, which caused the death of a large number of men, and the natural inequality of life expectancy for men and women. A French woman at birth has one of the highest life expectancies in the world (85 years), while a man’s is much lower (78 years), although still relatively high when compared with the world in general. The ratio of men to women in employment is another measure of population structure, and in the late 20th century women steadily increased their share of the job market. Population distribution Particularly low population densities are characteristic of the mountain regions, such as the Massif Central, the southern Alps, the Pyrenees, and Corsica, but are also reflected in some lowland rural areas, such as the eastern and southern Paris Basin and large parts of Aquitaine. The régions of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Bourgogne–Franche-Comté, and Centre–Val de Loire and the collectivité territoriale of Corsica have less than one-fifth of the national population in about one-third of the area. By contrast, the régions of Île-de-France (Paris region) and Hauts-de-France have nearly one-third of the French population in less than one-tenth of the area. Other high-density areas are the industrial cities of Lorraine; isolated large cities, such as Toulouse; and certain small-farm areas, such as coastal Brittany, Flanders, Alsace, and the Limagne basin of Auvergne. Until about the mid-19th century, rural and urban populations both increased, but thereafter there was a marked depopulation of the more remote, mostly mountainous, rural areas and a swing to urban growth. In the space of a century, from the 1860s to the 1960s, rural population decreased by more than one-third, though since that time the decline has slowed, and the rural population in the early 21st century numbered roughly 10 million. There were still as many rural as urban inhabitants even up to the period between the two World Wars, but by 2014 roughly 80 percent of the population was urban. Postwar rural depopulation was associated with the exodus of labour following the modernization of French agriculture. At the time, rural areas were left with an aging population and low birth rates as the young departed to the cities, especially to the growing industrial régions of Nord–Pas-de-Calais, Lorraine, and Île-de-France. The massive postwar movement from rural areas to the cities was supplemented by immigration, which also focused on urban areas where employment was available. Because immigrants to the cities tended to be young adults of childbearing age, city dwellers multiplied. Urban population growth in the 30 years after World War II was estimated to be at least 16 million persons. Subsequent urban growth was due in part to expanding city limits and was characterized by urban sprawl, accelerated redistribution from city centres to suburban outskirts, though some rebalancing toward the centre has occurred in recent years. From about 1975, migratory flows were greatly modified, the most immediate cause being economic. The older industrial regions, such as Nord–Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine, were in decline and had become regions of out-migration. The most dynamic migratory flow was experienced in the deindustrialized Île-de-France région; students and young workers flocked to the greater Paris area, while pensioners retired to the coasts. Growth subsequently switched to the south, to the coastlands of Languedoc and of Provence–Alpes–Côte d’Azur; to the west, in the Atlantic regions of Poitou-Charentes and Pays de la Loire; and to the southwest, in the Midi-Pyrénées and Aquitaine. These shifts reflect a combination of economic decentralization, retirement migration, sunbelt industrialization, changing residential preferences, and expanding tourism. Population increase has also been strong on the southern and western fringes of the Paris Basin, favoured for industrial decentralization from the Île-de-France région. Since World War II, urban growth in France has been accompanied by marked suburbanization. This trend was initiated much earlier in Paris, a densely built-up city that leveled off at a maximum population of about 2.8 million in the period 1911–54 and declined thereafter. Proportionately the decline set in much earlier: in 1876 the city of Paris had 60 percent of the population of what was to become the Île-de-France région; in 1921, 51 percent; in 1954, 39 percent; and in 2008, 19 percent. The century after 1850 witnessed the rise of the industrialized inner suburbs (the petite couronne) outside the walls of the city. There maximum population was reached in the 1970s, followed by a decline associated with a marked degree of deindustrialization. Since the 1980s, population growth has been concentrated in the outer Paris suburbs (grande couronne), which by 2008 accounted for 44 percent of the total population of the Île-de-France région, compared with 37 percent in the declining inner suburbs. In the first half of the 20th century, suburban growth, where it did occur, was not the result of middle-class suburbanization, as it was in the United States and the United Kingdom. It was the working class and the lower middle classes that moved out, while higher-income groups endeavoured to maintain a foothold in central Paris. In the postwar period, however, suburbanization took increasingly middle-class forms, with the building up of satellite low-density subdivisions known as “new villages.” Similar postwar suburbanization occurred in cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Lille, and Bordeaux. Increasingly, the most rapid population growth is relegated to small towns and nominally rural communes on the expanding fringes of the city regions. This dispersal of population is associated with an increasing length of daily commuter movements, with all their human disadvantages, as well as other problems of urban sprawl. Vacation travel, very popular among the French, involves the movement of crowds of people during the peak seasons, particularly during school vacations and in August, when many people take their paid holiday and leave the city. Transport facilities and popular vacation spots become saturated, especially the coastal areas and mountains. Thomas Henry Elkins John N. Tuppen The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Economy of France vineyard in Ay, France vineyard in Ay, France Serraillier—Rapho/Photo Researchers France is one of the major economic powers of the world, ranking along with such countries as the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Its financial position reflects an extended period of unprecedented growth that lasted for much of the postwar period until the mid-1970s; frequently this period was referred to as the trente glorieuses (“thirty years of glory”). Between 1960 and 1973 alone, the increase in gross domestic product (GDP) averaged nearly 6 percent each year. In the aftermath of the oil crises of the 1970s, growth rates were moderated considerably and unemployment rose substantially. By the end of the 1980s, however, strong expansion was again evident. This trend continued, although at a more modest rate, into the 21st century. During the same postwar period, the structure of the economy was altered significantly. While in the 1950s agriculture and industry were the dominant sectors, tertiary (largely service and administrative) activities have since become the principal employer and generator of national wealth. Similarly, while it was once the heavily urbanized and industrialized regions of northern and northeastern France that were developing most rapidly, in the 1980s these areas began losing jobs and population. Contemporary growth has switched to regions that lie in the south and, to a lesser degree, the west of France. Despite the dominance of the private sector, the tradition of a mixed economy in France is well established. Successive governments have intervened to protect or promote different types of economic activity, as has been clearly reflected in the country’s national plans and nationalized industries. In the decades following World War II, the French economy was guided by a succession of national plans, each covering a span of approximately four to five years and designed to indicate rather than impose growth targets and development strategies. The public sector in France first assumed importance in the post-World War II transition period of 1944–46 with a series of nationalizations that included major banks such as the National Bank of Paris (Banque Nationale de Paris; BNP) and Crédit Lyonnais, large industrial companies such as Renault, and public services such as gas and electricity. Little change took place after that until 1982, when the then Socialist government introduced an extensive program of nationalization. As a result, the enlarged public sector contained more than one-fifth of industrial employment, and more than four-fifths of credit facilities were controlled by state-owned banking or financial institutions. Since that period successive right-wing and, more recently, left-of-centre governments have returned most enterprises to the private sector; state ownership is primarily concentrated in transport, defense, and broadcasting. Postwar economic growth has been accompanied by a substantial rise in living standards, reflected in the increasing number of families that own their home (about half), a reduction in the workweek (fixed at 35 hours), and the increase of vacation days taken each year by the French people. Another indicator of improved living standards is the growth of ownership of various household and consumer goods, particularly such items as automobiles and computers. Over time, however, consumption patterns have altered significantly. As incomes have risen, proportionately less has been spent on food and clothing and more on items such as housing, transportation, health, and leisure. Workers’ incomes are taxed at a high to moderate rate, and indirect taxation in the form of a value-added tax (VAT) is relatively high. Overall, taxes and social security contributions levied on employers and employees in France are higher than in many other European countries. Agriculture, forestry, and fishing France’s extensive land area—of which more than half is arable or pastoral land and another quarter is wooded—presents broad opportunities for agriculture and forestry. The country’s varied relief and soils and contrasting climatic zones further enhance this potential. Rainfall is plentiful throughout most of France, so water supply is not generally a problem. An ample fish supply in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea provides an additional resource. Agriculture employs relatively few people—about 3 percent of the labour force—and makes only a small contribution to GDP—about 2 percent. Yet France is the EU’s leading agricultural nation, accounting for more than one-fifth of the total value of output, and alone is responsible for more than one-third of the EU’s production of oilseeds, cereals, and wine. France also is a major world exporter of agricultural commodities, and approximately one-eighth of the total value of the country’s visible exports is related to agriculture and associated food and drink products. France has a usable agricultural area of nearly 74 million acres (30 million hectares), more than three-fifths of which is used for arable farming (requiring plowing or tillage), followed by permanent grassland (about one-third) and permanent crops such as vines and orchards (about one-twentieth). Areas in which arable farming is dominant lie mostly in the northern and western regions of the country, centred on the Paris Basin. Permanent grassland is common in upland and mountainous areas such as the Massif Central, the Alps, and the Vosges, although it is also a notable feature of the western région of Normandy. Conversely, the major areas devoted to permanent cultivation lie in Mediterranean regions. Grains More than half of the country’s arable land is used for cereals, which together provide about one-sixth of the total value of agricultural output. Wheat and corn (maize) are the main grains, with other cereals, such as barley and oats, becoming progressively less important. There are few areas of the country where cereals are not grown, although the bulk of production originates in the Paris Basin and southwestern France, where both natural conditions and (in the former case) proximity to markets favour such activity. A considerable area (about one-seventh of the agricultural area), predominantly in western France, is also given over to forage crops, although the acreage has been shrinking since the early 1980s as dairy herds have been reduced in accordance with EU guidelines. In contrast, there has been a substantial increase in oilseed output; the area under cultivation has quadrupled since the early 1980s and now approaches one-tenth of agricultural land. Fruits and wine making France: wine regions France: wine regions Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Vines, fruits, and vegetables cover only a limited area but represent more than one-fourth of the total value of agricultural output. France is probably more famous for its wines than any other country in the world. Viticulture and wine making are concentrated principally in Languedoc-Roussillon and in the Bordeaux area, but production also occurs in Provence, Alsace, the Rhône and Loire valleys, Poitou-Charentes, and the Champagne region. There has been a marked fall in the production of vin ordinaire, a trend related to EU policy, which favours an increase in the output of quality wines. Fruit production (mainly of apples, pears, and peaches) is largely concentrated in the Rhône and Garonne valleys and in the Mediterranean region. Vegetables are also grown in the lower Rhône and Mediterranean areas, but a large part of output comes from western France (Brittany) and the southwest and the northern région of Hauts-de-France, where sugar beets and potatoes are produced. Dairying and livestock Cattle raising occurs in most areas of the country (except in Mediterranean regions), especially in the more humid regions of western France. Animal-related production accounts for more than one-third of the total value of agricultural output. In general, herds remain small, although concentration into larger units is increasing. Overall, however, the number of cattle has been falling since the early 1980s, largely as a result of EU milk quotas. These have adversely affected major production areas such as Auvergne, Brittany, Basse-Normandie, Pays de la Loire, Rhône-Alpes, Lorraine, Nord–Pas-de-Calais, and Franche-Comté. One result has been an increasing orientation toward beef rather than dairy breeds, notably in the area of the Massif Central. The raising of pigs and poultry, frequently by intensive methods, makes up more than one-tenth of the value of agricultural output. Production is concentrated in the régions of Brittany and Pays de la Loire, encouraged originally by the availability of by-products from the dairy industry for use as feed. Sheep raising is less important. Flocks graze principally in southern France on the western and southern fringes of the Massif Central, in the western Pyrenees, and in the southern Alps. Agribusiness Agriculture has changed in other ways. Farm structures have been modified substantially, and the number of holdings have been greatly reduced since 1955, numerous small farms disappearing. By the late 1990s there were fewer than 700,000 holdings, compared with more than 2,000,000 in the mid-1950s and more than 1,000,000 in the late 1980s. The average size of farms has risen considerably, to close to 100 acres (40 hectares). Large holdings are located primarily in the cereal-producing regions of the Paris Basin, while small holdings are most common in Mediterranean regions, the lower Rhône valley, Alsace, and Brittany. Important technical changes have also occurred, ranging from the increased use of intermediate products such as fertilizers and pesticides to the widespread use of irrigation (nearly one-tenth of agricultural land is now irrigated) and the growth of crops within controlled environments, such as under glass or plastic canopies. Marketing systems have also been modified, as an increasing proportion of output is grown under contract. Together such changes have led to a remarkable increase in output of major agricultural products, but they have also resulted in a large reduction in the number of agricultural workers and the increased indebtedness of many farmers, and the related negative effects on the environment have given rise to the organic farming movement. Forestry With more than 57,000 square miles (148,000 square km) of woodland, France possesses one of the largest afforested areas in western Europe, offering direct employment to more than 80,000 people. Forested areas are unevenly distributed, with the majority lying to the east of a line from Bordeaux to the Luxembourg border. Aquitaine and Franche-Comté have a particularly dense forest cover. This vast resource is, however, generally underexploited, partly because of the multitude of private owners, many of whom are uninterested in the commercial management of their estates. Less than one-fourth of the afforested area is controlled by the National Office of Forests. Fishing Despite the extent of France’s coastlines and its numerous ports, the French fishing industry remains relatively small. Annual catches have averaged about 700,000 tons since the mid-1970s, and by the 21st century there were fewer than 16,500 fishermen. The industry’s problems are related to its fragmented character and to inadequate modernization of boats and port facilities, as well as to overfishing and pollution. Activity is now concentrated in the port of Boulogne in Nord–Pas-de-Calais and to a lesser degree in ports in Brittany such as Concarneau, Lorient, and Le Guilvinic. France is also known for its aquaculture, with activity increasing over recent years along the coastal waters of western France. Oyster beds are found particularly in the southwest, centred on Marennes-Oléron. Resources and power Compared with its agricultural resources, the country is far less well-endowed with energy resources. Coal reserves are estimated at about 140 million tons, but French coal suffered from being difficult and expensive to mine and from its mediocre quality. In 1958 annual production amounted to some 60 million tons; 40 years later this total had dropped to less than 6 million tons; and in 2004 the last coal mine was shuttered. Imported coal had long supplemented indigenous production. Imports originate mainly from Australia, the United States, South Africa, and Germany. Other energy resources are in short supply. Natural gas was first exploited in southwestern France (near Lacq) in 1957. Production then increased substantially, only to decline after 1978 as reserves became exhausted. By the late 1990s, production was negligible, requiring a high level of imports, principally from the North Sea (Norway and the Netherlands), Algeria, and Russia. France has few oil reserves, and production from wells in Aquitaine and the Paris Basin is extremely limited. Uranium is mined in the Massif Central, and, although recoverable reserves are estimated at approximately 50,000 tons, more than half of the annual consumption has to be imported. France, however, does possess fast-moving rivers flowing out of highland areas that provide it with an ample hydroelectric resource. Minerals The metal industry is poorly supplied by indigenous raw materials, although traditionally France was an important producer of iron ore and bauxite. Iron ore output exceeded 60 million tons in the early 1960s, originating principally in Lorraine; but production has now ceased, despite the continued existence of reserves. Low in metal content and difficult to agglomerate, Lorraine ores were thus long supplemented and have now been replaced by richer overseas supplies from such countries as Brazil, Sweden, and Australia. Bauxite production is negligible, though other mineralized ores, such as those containing lead, zinc, and silver, are mined in very small quantities. Greater amounts of potash (mined in Alsace), sodium chloride (from mines in Lorraine and Franche-Comté and from salt marshes in western and southern France), and sulfur (derived from natural gas in Aquitaine) are produced, but again the trend is toward declining output as reserves are depleted. The supply of stone, sand, and gravel is relatively ubiquitous. Energy France: Breakdown of renewable energy by source France: Breakdown of renewable energy by source Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Through the post-World War II years, the increase in the demand for energy has closely followed the rate of economic growth. Thus, for much of the period until 1973, consumption increased rapidly. Then, in the wake of the two oil price rises of 1973 and 1979, demand stabilized, followed by a fall in the early 1980s until growth rates recovered after the mid-1980s. The demand for different types of energy has changed considerably over time. In the early postwar years, coal provided the larger part of energy needs. By the 1960s, however, oil, as its price fell in real terms, was being used in ever-greater quantities, so that by 1973 about two-thirds of energy consumption was accounted for by crude oil. Since then a more diversified pattern of use has emerged. Coal now plays only a minor role, while the use of oil has also fallen, replaced partly by natural gas and notably by nuclear energy, which now accounts for more than one-third of primary energy consumption. One of the main consequences of these changes has been a reduction in the country’s previously high dependence on external sources of supply. Oil has long been France’s principal energy import, which has led to the growth of a major refining industry, with plants concentrated in two areas of the lower Seine valley (Le Havre and Rouen) and in the region around Fos-sur-Mer and the Étang de Berre. Many markets are supplied with oil products by pipeline, which is also the distribution method for natural gas. Algerian imports arrive in the form of liquefied natural gas (primarily methane) and are unloaded at French ports where regasification plants operate. Since the early 1980s one of the most significant changes in energy supply has been the greatly increased role of nuclear power, at the expense of fuel oil and coal; even the production of hydroelectric power has stabilized, as most suitable sites have already been exploited, particularly those of the Rhine and Rhône valleys, the Massif Central, and the Alps. In contrast, nuclear production, benefiting from major government investment from the early 1970s, expanded enormously in the 1980s, notably with the construction of sites in the Rhône and Loire valleys, a reflection of the need for large quantities of cooling water. By the 21st century more than three-fourths of electricity in France was produced in nuclear plants, the highest proportion in the world, which enabled the country to become a large exporter of such energy. More recently development has slowed substantially, as demand has eased and environmental groups have campaigned against further investment. France’s nuclear industry also includes a large uranium-enrichment factory at Pierrelatte in the lower Rhône valley and a waste-reprocessing plant at La Hague, near Cherbourg. In the early 21st century renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, gained new prominence. Although wind power generated less than 3 percent of the electricity consumed in France in 2010, the country’s “wind potential” was the second largest in Europe, and new facilities were planned in accordance with EU renewable energy directives. In addition, France’s installed solar capacity increased by almost 700 percent between 2009 and 2011, and its 2.5 gigawatts of production represented almost 4 percent of the world’s total. Manufacturing of France Industrial trends French industry was long the powerhouse of the country’s postwar economic recovery. Yet, after a period of substantial restructuring and adjustment, particularly during successive periods of recession since the late 1970s, this sector (including construction and civil engineering) now employs only about one-fourth of the country’s workforce and contributes the same proportion of GDP. Both production and employment grew rapidly during the 1950s and ’60s as industrial development was stimulated by the opening of new markets and by rising incomes. Industrial production went into decline in the mid-1970s, however, and a period of major deindustrialization followed as manufacturers responded to reduced domestic demand and to more intense foreign competition. Investment fell, delaying modernization and further compromising French competitiveness. In recent years investment and output have again increased, although at a lower rate and in a more erratic fashion than in the earlier postwar period. Nevertheless, industrial employment is still declining. There is an ever-increasing concentration of ownership as a result of the expansion of large multinational groups, which also allows foreign markets to have a greater impact on French industry. Changes in industrial location have also occurred. Industrial expansion in the 1960s and ’70s was accompanied by large-scale decentralization, favouring many areas of the Paris Basin (where there was an abundant and relatively cheap supply of labour) at the expense of the capital. Few company headquarters followed the dispersion of manufacturing plants, however, so that the centre of industrial operations remained rooted in the Paris region. The decline of industrial employment since the mid-1970s has had the greatest impact in traditional manufacturing regions, such as Nord–Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine. Nevertheless, the broad arc of régions stretching through northern and eastern France, from Normandy to Auvergne–Rhône-Alpes, remains the most heavily industrialized part of the country. Branches of manufacturing On the basis of employment and turnover, seven branches of manufacturing stand out as particularly important: vehicles, chemicals, metallurgy, mechanical engineering, electronics, food, and textiles. The vehicle industry is dominated by the activities of the two automobile manufacturers, Peugeot SA (including Citroën) and Renault, which together produce nearly four million cars annually. Automobile production generates a substantial number of direct jobs as well as employment in subsidiary industries, such as the major tire manufacturer Michelin. France also possesses an important industry for the manufacture of railway locomotives and rolling stock, for which the expanding high-speed train (train à grande vitesse; TGV) network represents a major market. Within the chemical industry, manufacturing ranges from basic organic and inorganic products to fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other parachemical items, including perfumes. Because of the capital-intensive nature of these activities, a dominant role is played by large manufacturers such as Rhône-Poulenc. Extensive research is carried out in this field. Basic chemical production is concentrated in areas offering access to raw materials, such as Nord–Pas-de-Calais, Étang-de-Berre, and Rhône-Alpes, whereas pharmaceutical production is more closely related to major market areas and research centres, notably Île-de-France. The metallurgical industry, dominated by the production of steel, experienced major restructuring in the late 1970s and the ’80s as demand fell and competition from other international producers increased. Originally concentrated in Lorraine because of the presence of iron ore, steel production shifted to the coastal sites of Dunkirk and Fos-sur-Mer, which relied on imported ore and coal. France is also an important producer of aluminum, notably through the Pechiney group. Such basic metal industries support a diverse range of engineering activities, spread widely throughout France but with important concentrations in the highly urbanized and industrialized régions of Île-de-France and Auvergne–Rhône-Alpes. Similar features characterize the electrical engineering and electronics industries. France is a major manufacturer of professional electronics, such as radar equipment, but is weakly represented in the field of consumer electronics, which has led to a high level of imports. The country also has a number of high-tech aerospace industries, which manufacture aircraft, missiles, satellites, and related launch systems. These industries are concentrated in the Paris region and in the southwest around Toulouse and Bordeaux. Food and beverage industries represent a large branch of French manufacturing, reflecting the considerable volume and diversity of agricultural production. Although present in most regions, food manufacturers are particularly concentrated in major urban market areas and in western agricultural regions such as Brittany, Pays de la Loire, and Basse-Normandie. The beverage sector is dominant in the main wine-growing areas of northern and northeastern France; it represents an important source of exports. Textile and clothing industries have experienced a long period of decline in the face of strong foreign competition, with substantial job losses and plant closures affecting the major production areas of northern France and Rhône-Alpes (textiles), as well as Île-de-France (clothing). Unlike other major industrial branches, these activities remain characterized by small firms. A varied group of construction and civil engineering industries employs about one-fourth of the labour in the industrial sector. Activity and employment have fluctuated considerably in relation to changing government and private investment programs and the varying demand for new homes. This sector is characterized by the coexistence of a large number of small firms with a limited number of large companies, many of which work on civil engineering contracts outside France. Finance of France Although the French financial sector employed less than 13 percent of the labour force in the early 21st century, it accounted for roughly one-third of the country’s total GDP. Home to some of Europe’s largest banks and its second largest stock exchange, France is a key player in the continent’s financial markets. Banking and insurance France possesses one of the largest banking sectors in western Europe, and its three major institutions, Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, and Société Générale, rank among the top banks on the continent. Traditionally, banking activities were tightly controlled by the government through the Banque de France. However, deregulation beginning in the 1960s led to a substantial increase in branch banking and bank account holders, and legislation in 1984 further reduced controls over banks’ activities, which thereby enabled them to offer a wider range of services and led to greater competition. Since then, encouraged by the lifting of restrictions on the free movement of capital within the EU in 1990, banks have broadly internationalized their activities. In 1993 the Banque de France was granted independent status, which freed it from state control. In general, employment in the banking sector has declined, largely because of the widespread computerization of transactions and this restructuring. At the turn of the 21st century, the franc gave way to the euro as the legal currency in France. France has a large insurance industry dominated by major companies such as Axa, CNP, and AGF but also including a number of important mutual benefit societies, which administer pension plans. The deregulation of this sector has led to vast reorganization, with activity still concentrated in Paris though a number of provincial towns have developed as specialist centres through the location of various mutual societies. The stock exchange Share transactions in France were historically centred on the Bourse de Paris (Paris Stock Exchange), a national system that in the late 20th century incorporated much smaller exchanges at Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille, Marseille, Nancy, and Nantes. Share dealings and stock market activity increased greatly beginning in the early 1980s, corresponding with a period of deregulation and modernization: official brokers lost their monopoly on conducting share transactions; a second market opened in 1983 to encourage the quotation of medium-size firms; and in 1996 the “new market” was launched to help finance young, dynamic companies in search of venture capital. Also in 1996 the Bourse was restructured, reinforcing the powers of its controlling body, Commission des Opérations de Bourse. In 2000 the Bourse merged with the Amsterdam and Brussels stock exchanges to form the Euronext equities market, which in 2006 merged with the New York Stock Exchange. Foreign investment Financial deregulation, the movement toward a single European market, and the general freeing of world trade are among the influences that have encouraged investment by French firms outside France and increased the reverse flow of foreign investment funds into the country. In the industrial field French companies have shown a growing interest in investing in other advanced economies, especially the United States. Over recent years investments have also multiplied in the developing economies of Asia and eastern Europe. Foreign firms investing in France have been principally from the EU (notably the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany) and the United States. Most investment is related to the fields of engineering, electronics, and chemicals and generally is directed at the more highly urbanized centres of the country. The sources and nature of foreign investment in France are becoming more diverse, however. Japanese interests have increased substantially, for instance, and investment in property and the service industry has been growing, particularly in and around Paris. Trade of France France: Major import sources France: Major import sources Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. France, a leading trading nation, has grown into one of the world’s foremost exporting countries, with the value of exports representing more than one-fifth of GDP. France is also a major importer, especially of machinery, chemicals and chemical products, tropical agricultural products, and traditional industrial goods such as clothes and textiles. The high level of imports led to a trade deficit for much of the period between the early 1970s and early 1990s. However, from 1992 France experienced a trade surplus, combined with a positive balance from invisible (nonmerchandise) transactions, especially tourism. France: Major export destinations France: Major export destinations Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Most foreign trade is based on the exchange of goods. In the case of agricultural commodities, France has become an increasingly important net exporter of raw agricultural products (such as grains) as well as agro-industrial products, such as foods and beverages, including wines, tinned fruits and vegetables, and dairy products. The need to import large quantities of oil (and to a lesser extent gas and coal), however, has resulted in a sizable deficit for those exchanges. Although France imports a great deal of industrial goods, the country has long been a major exporter of vehicles and transport equipment, as well as armaments and professional electronics. More recently exports of pharmaceuticals and parachemical products have risen. The greater part of foreign trade is carried out with other developed countries, and some four-fifths of transactions take place with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Among these the EU plays a major role, reflecting the growing exchange of goods and services between its member countries. More than three-fifths of French exports and imports are destined for or originate in EU countries, of which Germany is easily the most important. Outside the EU the United States is France’s other major trading partner, although Russia and China claimed a growing percentage of French trade in the 21st century. EU countries are an important source of industrial imports, whereas fuel products and raw materials tend to originate from more distant sources. Conversely, agricultural and food exports are oriented predominantly toward European markets, whereas industrial goods are exported to a more global marketplace. Services of France The various service, or tertiary, industries in France account for about two-thirds of the country’s employment and of GDP. These levels were reached following an extended period of sustained growth, notably since the 1960s. This sector covers a highly diverse range of activities, including social and administrative services, such as local government, health, and education; wholesaling, distribution, and transport and communication services; consumer services, such as retailing and the hotel and catering trades; and producer or business services, including banking, financial, legal, advertising, computing, and data-handling services. Not all tertiary activities have developed in the same way. For example, rationalization in the banking and financial services sector has limited the creation of jobs. Conversely, the continuously strong growth, since the early 1970s, of hypermarkets and other large freestanding retail outlets that allow for purchasing in bulk and in greater variety has led to a significant rise in related employment. In particular the large group of producer services has expanded rapidly. In part this trend is the inevitable consequence of the increasingly complex and highly competitive nature of the modern economy. It also results from companies’ strategies of externalizing (outsourcing) such service requirements for reasons of efficiency and cost savings. Tertiary activities are located predominantly in urban areas, especially the larger cities. Such concentration is most evident in relation to the capital. The Île-de-France région (Paris region) alone accounts for nearly one-fourth of all tertiary employment while containing less than one-fifth of the population. In Paris the sector’s importance is qualitative as well as quantitative. Paris houses more than two-thirds of the headquarters of the country’s major companies and a disproportionately large share of senior management and research staff. This attraction to the capital is influenced by a number of factors, including the size and diversity of the labour market, the high level of accessibility to other French and international business centres, prestige, and the presence of numerous specialized
Marcel Cachin (20 September 1869 – 12 February 1958) was a French Communist politician and the first editor of the daily newspaper L'Humanite. In 1891, Cachin joined Jules Guesde's French Workers' Party (POF). In 1905, he joined the new French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and won election to the Chamber of Deputies representing the Seine in 1914. He rallied the Union sacrée during the First World War and was sent to Russia in a mission in 1917. On that occasion he strongly supported Kerensky's Provisional Government, which was pledged to continue Russia's participation in World War I, and denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In 1918, he was one of the speakers at a patriotic rally held at Strasbourg, to celebrate the city's return to French rule. However, following the end of the war, there was a leftward shift among Cachin's grassroots supporters and a growing sympathy for the October revolution. In 1920 at the Tours Congress, Cachin became one of the founders of the French Communist Party (SFIC) and joined the Third International. In 1923, he was jailed for denouncing the French occupation of the Ruhr and Morocco. As a strong supporter of the pro-Soviet Communist Party, he refused to disavow the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and was removed from elected office in 1940. After the Liberation of France, he returned to the National Assembly until his death in 1958. He was the editor of the newspaper L'Humanité from 1918 to 1958.[1] At the age of 88, he was the first foreigner to receive the Order of Lenin. In the later part of his life, he was nicknamed "Grandfather of the Communist Party". His granddaughter, Françoise Cachin, was an art historian. Electoral results Cachin was the candidate for President of France of the French Communist Party in four elections: Third Republic: 1931: 1.11% in the first round, 1.23% in the second round 1932: 0.97% in the first round 1939: 8.13% in the first round Fourth Republic: 1953: 12.18% in the first round Marcel Cachin, born September 20, 1869 in Paimpol (Côtes-du-Nord) is a French politician and journalist who co-founded the French Section of the Communist International (with Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, Fernand Loriot and Boris Souvarine). Cachin becomes general secretary of the Communist Party after demission of Louis Sellier. He is also the director of the newspaper L'Humanité since 1918. Old socialist having militated in the French Worker Party of Jules Guesde and in the SFIO of his creation, he joins the Sacred Union with the announcement of the war against the German Empire. During the summer of 1920, he traveled with Ludovic-Oscar Frossard to Soviet Russia, and came back conquered by the Bolshevik Revolution. During the Congress of Tours of 1921, he was the craftsman of the adhesion to the Third International and managed to have a majority vote on his mention. Unitary figure and repect in the communists as in the socialists, he is the ardent craftsman of the unitary strategy, on the union and political plan. Marcel Cachin was elected secretary-general of PC-SFIC in January 1926 after the Coup of 25 May 1925, he's the artisan of reborn of SFIC and a popular transpartisan figure of resistance against French authoritarian regime. Marcel Cachin was a French Communist politician and the first editor of the daily newspaper L'Humanite. In 1891, Cachin joined Jules Guesde's French Workers' Party. In 1905, he joined the new French Section of the Workers' International and won election to the Chamber of Deputies representing the Seine in 1914. He rallied the Union sacrée during the First World War and was sent to Russia in a mission in 1917. On that occasion he strongly supported Kerensky's Provisional Government, which was pledged to continue Russia's participation in World War I, and denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In 1918, he was one of the speakers at a patriotic rally held at Strasbourg, to celebrate the city's return to French rule. However, following the end of the war, there was a leftward shift among Cachin's grassroots supporters and a growing sympathy for the October revolution. In 1920 at the Tours Congress, Cachin became one of the founders of the French Communist Party and joined the Third International. In 1923, he was jailed for denouncing the French occupation of the Ruhr and Morocco. Marcel Cachin (märsĕl´ käshăN´), 1869–1958, French Communist leader. An early leader of the Socialist party, he was instrumental in bringing many Socialists into the first French Communist party in 1920. Long the leader of the Communists in the chamber of deputies and editor of the Communist daily Humanité, he became the first Communist senator in 1935. He was expelled from his seat after the German-Soviet nonaggression pact in Aug., 1939, and was subsequently arrested. In 1945 he was elected to the national assembly, where he sat until his death. Homme politique français (Paimpol 1869-Choisy-le-Roi 1958). Licencié en philosophie, il adhère au parti ouvrier de Jules Guesde en 1892. Il est délégué aux congrès socialistes internationaux de Londres (1896), d'Amsterdam (1904) et de Stuttgart (1907). Il participe également au congrès d'unité socialiste de Paris en 1905, au cours duquel se constitue le parti socialiste SFIO. Il devient membre de la commission administrative permanente (CAP) et délégué permanent à la propagande (1906-1912) de la SFIO. Élu député de Paris en 1914, il se rallie, comme le parti socialiste tout entier, à la politique d'Union sacrée. En avril 1917, il est l'un des trois députés socialistes désignés part la commission des Affaires étrangères de l'Assemblée nationale pour aller en Russie afin d'obtenir du nouveau pouvoir révolutionnaire le maintien de ce pays dans la guerre. Mais, à son retour, il encourage l'envoi de délégués de son parti à la conférence socialiste internationale de Stockholm condamnée par le gouvernement français. Il devient en 1918 directeur de l'Humanité et le demeurera jusqu'à sa mort. En 1920, il fait avec Ludovic Oscar Frossard, secrétaire général du parti, un second voyage en Russie afin d'examiner les conditions d'admission du parti socialiste à l'Internationale communiste. Revenu en France, il est l'un des plus ardents propagandistes de cette adhésion, qui doit transformer le parti socialiste en parti communiste. À partir du congrès du Tours, Marcel Cachin est des principaux dirigeants du parti communiste ; il est membre du comité directeur de 1920 à 1924 et du bureau politique de 1923 jusqu'à sa mort. De 1924 à la dissolution de l'Internationale communiste en 1943, il est membre du praesidium du comité exécutif de cette organisation. Député de la Seine de 1914 à 1932, il est emprisonné en 1923 pour son opposition à l'occupation de la Ruhr et, en 1927, pour avoir combattu la guerre du Maroc. En 1935, il est le premier communiste à être élu au Sénat. Arrêté quelque temps en 1941, il entre ensuite dans la clandestinité. Il est élu député en 1945 et constamment réélu par la suite. L'Humanité (pronounced [l‿y.ma.ni.te]; English: "Humanity"), is a French daily newspaper. It was previously an organ of the French Communist Party, and maintains links to the party. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, L'Humanité would not exist."[1] Contents 1 History and profile 1.1 Pre-World War II 1.2 After World War II 1.3 Post-Soviet Union 1.4 After 2001 2 Fête de l'Humanité 3 See also 4 References 5 External links 6 Further reading History and profile Pre-World War II L'Humanité was founded in 1904[2][3] by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).[1][4] Jaurès also edited the paper until his assassination on 31 July 1914.[5] When the Socialists split at the 1920 Tours Congress, the Communists took control of L'Humanité. Therefore, it became a communist paper despite its socialist origin.[6] The PCF has published it ever since. The PCF owns 40 per cent of the paper with the remaining shares held by staff, readers and "friends" of the paper. The paper is also sustained by the annual Fête de l'Humanité, held in the working class suburbs of Paris, at Le Bourget, near Aubervilliers, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the country. The fortunes of L'Humanité have fluctuated with those of the PCF. During the 1920s, when the PCF was politically isolated, it was kept in existence only by donations from Party members. Louis Aragon started to write for L'Humanité in 1933, in the "news in brief" section. He later led Les Lettres françaises, the paper's weekly literary supplement. With the formation of the Popular Front in 1936, L'Humanité 's circulation and status increased, and many leading French intellectuals wrote for it. L'Humanité was banned during World War II but published clandestinely until liberation of Paris from German occupation. After World War II The paper's status was highest in the years after World War II, when the PCF was the dominant party of the French left and L'Humanité enjoyed a large circulation. Since the 1980s, however, the PCF has been in decline, mostly due to the rise of the Socialist Party, which took over large sections of PCF support, and circulation and economic viability of L'Humanité have declined as well. Until 1990 the PCF and L'Humanité received regular subsidies from the Soviet Union. According to the French authors Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain (fr), L'Humanité received free newsprint from Soviet sources. Post-Soviet Union The fall of the Soviet Union and the continued decline of the PCF's electoral base produced a crisis for L'Humanité. Its circulation, more than 500,000 after the war, slumped to under 70,000. In 2001, after a decade of financial decline, the PCF sold 20 per cent of the paper to a group of private investors led by the TV channel TF1 (part of the Bouygues group) and including Hachette (Lagardère Group). TF1 said its motive was "maintenance of media diversity." Despite the irony of a communist newspaper being rescued by private capital, some of which supported right-wing politics, L'Humanité director Patrick Le Hyaric described the sale as "a matter of life or death." Since 2001, there has been speculation that L'Humanité would cease as a daily newspaper. However in contrast to most French newspapers, its publication has actually since increased to about 75,000. After 2001 In 2006, the paper created a weekly edition, L’Humanité Dimanche. The same year L'Humanité had a circulation of 52,800 copies.[1] In 2008, it sold its headquarters due to financial problems and called for donations. More than €2 million had been donated by the end of 2008. In 2020, L'Humanité had a circulation of 39,522 copies.[7] Year 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Circulation 103,738 106,151 107,022 105,599 105,069 102,372 100,632 100,831 100,012 97,009 100,259 96,789 Fête de l'Humanité The newspaper organizes the annual Fête de l'Humanité festival as a fundraising event. The French Workers' Party (French: Parti Ouvrier Français, POF) was the French socialist party created in 1880 by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx's son-in-law (famous for having written The Right to Be Lazy, which criticized labour's alienation). A revolutionary party, it had as aim to abolish capitalism and replace it with a socialist society. The party originated with a secession from Federation of the Socialist Workers' Party of France, which was founded in 1879, after a split with Paul Brousse's possibilists. The party's programme, written by Guesde with input from Marx, Lafargue and Friedrich Engels, was approved at the opening congress. The party officially became the POF in 1893. In 1902, the party merged with the Blanquist Central Revolutionary Committee to form the Socialist Party of France and finally merged in 1905 with Jean Jaurès' French Socialist Party to form the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). Marcel Cachin, who would lead the split in 1920 which led to the creation of the French Communist Party and edited L'Humanité newspaper, became a member of the POF in 1891. The Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Loire and Allier were the principal bastions of POF electoral strength. Contents 1 Principal members 2 See also 3 Bibliography 3.1 French 4 External links Principal members Jules Guesde (1845–1922), founding member and elected deputy Paul Lafargue (1842–1911), son-in-law of Karl Marx and elected deputy Marcel Cachin (1869–1958), member from 1891, led the SFIO Tours split in 1920, future director of L'Humanité Alexandre Bracke-Desrousseaux (1861–1955), professor (Greek Philosophy) and future elected deputy for the SFIO Alexandre Zévaès [fr] (1873–1953), elected deputy Isère (1898–1910) Bernard Cadenat (1853–1930), shoemaker, elected deputy Bouches-du-Rhône (1898–1919 and 1924–1930) and mayor of Marseille (1910–1912) Ulysse Pastre (1864–1930), researcher and elected deputy Gard (1898–1910) Jean-Baptiste Bénézech [fr] (1852–1909), printer, elected deputy Hérault (1898–1909) and president of the typography workers union René Chauvin [fr] (1860–1936), barber, elected deputy Seine (1893–1898) and founder of the coiffeurs workers union who quit the SFIO in 1914 to found a small workers party promoing a return to class war Hubert Lagardelle (1875–1968), revolutionary syndicalist Prosper Ferrero [fr], elected deputy for Marseille in 1898–1910, mayor of Toulon (1893) and vice president of the General Council (1914–1915) Jean Bertrand, elected deputy for Corbeil Pierre Mélin (1863–1929) luthier, vice president of the Valenciennes's Labour Court and elected deputy Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), antisemitic anthropologist and eugenist, Attorney of the Republic and professor See also The French Communist Party (French: Parti communiste français, PCF ; French pronunciation: [paʁti kɔmynist fʁɑ̃sɛ]) is a communist party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left group. Founded in 1920 by Boris Barcelli, it participated in three governments: the provisional government of the Liberation (1944–1947), at the beginning of François Mitterrand's presidency (1981–1984), and in the Plural Left cabinet led by Lionel Jospin (1997–2002). It was also the largest party on the left in France in a number of national elections, from 1945 to 1960, before falling behind the Socialist Party in the 1970s. The PCF has lost further ground to the Socialists since that time. Since 2009 the PCF has been a leading member of the Left Front (Front de gauche), alongside Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Left Party (PG). During the 2017 presidential election, the PCF supported Mélenchon's candidature; however, tensions between the PCF and Mélenchon's movement, La France Insoumise, have led the two movements to campaign separately for the general elections.[5] Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a strong influence in French politics, especially at the local level. In 2012, the PCF claimed to have had 138,000 members, 70,000 of whom had paid their membership fees.[6] Contents 1 History 2 Doctrine 2.1 2012 platform 2.2 French nationalism 3 Elected officials 4 Internal organization 4.1 Leadership 4.2 Factions 4.2.1 Factional strength 5 Popular support and electoral record 5.1 Presidential 5.2 Legislative 5.3 European Parliament 6 Publications 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links History Main article: History of the French Communist Party The French Communist Party (PCF) originated in 1920, when a majority of members resigned from the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party to set up the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC), with Ludovic-Oscar Frossard as its first secretary-general; Ho Chi Minh, liberator of Vietnam, was one of the notable agitators who participated in its creation.[7] The new SFIC defined itself as revolutionary and democratic centralist. The 1920s saw a number of splits within the party over relations with other left-wing parties and over adherence to Comintern's dictates. The party entered the French parliament, but also promoted strike action and opposed colonialism. Pierre Sémard, leader from 1924 to 1928, sought party unity and alliances with other parties; but leaders including Maurice Thorez (party leader from 1930 to 1964) imposed a Stalinist line from the late 1920s. With the rise of Fascism after 1934 the PCF supported the Popular Front, which came to power under Léon Blum in 1936. The party supported the Spanish Republicans, and opposed the 1938 Munich agreement with Hitler. The party was banned by the government of Édouard Daladier (centre-left) as a result of the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact, due to its membership in the Comintern, which opposed the War (prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany). The leadership, threatened with execution, fled abroad. After the German invasion of 1940 the party began to organise opposition to the occupation. Shortly before Germany invaded the Soviet Union the next year, the PCF formed, in May 1941, the National Front movement within the broader Resistance, together with the armed Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) group. At the same time the PCF began to work with de Gaulle's "Free France" government in exile, and later took part in the National Council of the Resistance (CNR). By the time the German occupation ended in 1944, the party had become a powerful force in many parts of France. It was among the leading parties in elections in 1945 and 1946, and entered into the governing Tripartite alliance, which pursued social reforms and statism. However, amid concerns within France and abroad over the extent of communist influence, the PCF was excluded from government in May 1947. Under pressure from Moscow, the PCF thereafter distanced itself from other parties and focused on agitation within its trade union base. For the rest of the Fourth Republic period the PCF, led by Thorez and Jacques Duclos, remained politically isolated, still taking a Stalinist line, though retaining substantial electoral support. Although the PCF opposed de Gaulle's formation of the Fifth Republic in 1958, the following years saw a rapprochement with other left-wing forces and an increased strength in parliament. With Waldeck Rochet as its new secretary-general, the party supported François Mitterrand's unsuccessful presidential bid in 1965. During the student riots and strikes of May 1968, the party supported the strikes while denouncing the revolutionary student movements. After heavy losses in the ensuing parliamentary elections, the party adopted Georges Marchais as leader and in 1973 entered into a "Common Programme" alliance with Mitterrand's reconstituted Socialist Party (PS). Under the Common Programme, however, the PCF steadily lost ground to the PS, a process that continued after Mitterrand's victory in 1981. Initially allotted a minor share in Mitterrand's government, the PCF resigned in 1984 as the government turned towards fiscal orthodoxy. Under Marchais the party largely maintained its traditional communist doctrines and structure. Extensive reform was undertaken after 1994, when Robert Hue became leader. This did little to stem the party's declining popularity, although it entered government again in 1997 as part of the Plural Left coalition. Elections in 2002 gave worse results than ever for the PCF. Under Marie-George Buffet, the PCF turned away from parliamentary strategy and sought broader social alliances. To maintain a presence in parliament after 2007 the party's few remaining deputies had to join others in the Democratic and Republican Left group (GDR). Subsequently a broader electoral coalition, the Left Front (FG), was formed including the PCF, the Left Party (PG), United Left, and others. The FG has brought the French communists somewhat better electoral results. Pierre Laurent was leader from 2010 to 2018. Doctrine PCF rallying for a 6th republic, 2012 in Paris The PCF, in contrast to weaker and more marginal communist parties in Europe, is usually seen as a left-wing rather than far-left party in the French context. While the French far-left (LCR/NPA, LO) has refused to participate in government or engage in electoral alliances with centre-left parties such as the PS, the PCF has participated in governments in the past and still enjoys a de facto electoral agreement with the PS (mutual withdrawals, the common practice since 1962 and in 1934–39). Nonetheless, some observers and analysts classify the PCF as a far-left party, noting their political proximity to other far-left parties. In the 1980s, under Georges Marchais, the PCF mixed a partial acceptance of "bourgeois" democracy and individual liberties with more traditional Marxist–Leninist ideas. During this same period, however, the PCF—still run on democratic centralist lines—still structured itself as a revolutionary party in the Leninist sense and rejected criticism of the Soviet Union. Under Robert Hue's leadership after 1994, the PCF's ideology and internal organization underwent major changes.[8]:174 Hue clearly rejected the Soviet model, and reserved very harsh criticism for Soviet leaders who had "rejected, for years, human rights and 'bourgeois' democracy" and had oppressed individual liberties and aspirations.[8]:174 Today, the PCF considers the Soviet Union as a 'perversion' of the communist model and unambiguously rejects Stalinism. That being said, it has not attributed the failure of the Soviet Union as being that of communism, rather stating that the failure of Soviet socialism was the failure of one model "among others", including the capitalist or social democratic models.[8]:176–177 It also tried to downplay the PCF's historic attachment to Moscow and the Soviet Union.[8]:176–177 Since then, the PCF's ideology has been marked by significant ideological evolution on some topics but consistency on other issues. Some of the most marked changes have come on individual rights and immigration. After having vilified homosexuality and feminism as "the rubbish of capitalism" in the 1970s, the PCF now fully supports both gay rights and feminism.[8]:174 In the 1980s, the PCF supported reducing the age of consent for homosexual relationships and opposed attempts to repenalize homosexuality. In 1998, the PCF voted in favour of the civil solidarity pact (PACS), civil unions including homosexual couples. The PCF currently supports both same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption. On 12 February 2013, PCF deputies voted in favour of same-sex marriage and adoption rights in the National Assembly,[9] though PCF deputy Patrice Carvalho voted against.[10] The PCF also supports feminist movements and supports policies to further promote gender equality and parity. On the issue of immigration, the PCF's positions have also evolved significantly since the 1980s. In the 1981 presidential election, Georges Marchais ran a controversial campaign on immigration which was harshly criticized by anti-racism organizations at the time. In 1980, the PCF's leadership voted in favour of limiting immigration. The same year, Marchais supported the PCF mayor of Vitry-sur-Seine who had destroyed a home for Malian migrant workers; the PCF claimed that the right-wing government was trying to push immigrants into ghettos in Communist working-class cities.[11] The Libération newspaper also alleged that PCF municipal administrations had been working to limit the number of immigrants in housing projects. However, today the PCF supports the regularization of illegal immigrants. One consistency in the PCF's ideology has been its staunch opposition to capitalism, which must be "overcome" because according to the PCF the capitalist system is "exhausted" and "on the verge of collapse".[8]:177 The PCF has interpreted the current course of globalization as a confirmation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's view on the future evolution of capitalism. The party feels that the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession have further justified its calls to overcome capitalism.[8]:177 However, the PCF has remained somewhat vague on how capitalism will be 'overcome' and what will replace it, placing heavy emphasis on utopic models or values.[8]:178 The text adopted at the XXXVI Congress in February 2013 reiterated the party's call on the need to "overcome" capitalism, fiercely denounced by the PCF as having led to "savage competition", "the devastation of the planet" and "barbarism".[12] It contrasts its vision of capitalism with its proposed alternative, described as an egalitarian, humanist, and democratic alternative. It emphasizes human emancipation, the development of "each and every one", the right to happiness and the equal dignity of each human being regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.[12] The party further posits that such an egalitarian society is impossible within capitalism, which "unleashes domination and hatred".[12] 2012 platform Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the FG's platform in the 2012 presidential election was broken up into nine overarching themes.[13] "Sharing the wealth and abolishing social insecurity" – banning market-based layoffs (licenciements boursiers) for companies which make profits, raise the minimum wage (SMIC) to €1,700, setting a maximum wage differential of 1 to 20 in all businesses, right to retirement with a full pension at 60, defending public services, stopping public sector spending cuts (RGPP), setting a maximum wage at €360,000 and a 35-hour workweek. "Reclaiming power from banks and financial markets" – changing the European Central Bank's policy to favour job creation and public services, controlling financial speculation, raising the capital gains tax and the solidarity tax on wealth (ISF), abolishing fiscal loopholes and privileges, taxing corporations' financial revenues and creating a "public financial pole" to reorient credit towards jobs, innovation and sustainable development. "Ecological planning" – nationalizing Électricité de France, Gaz de France and Areva to create a publicly owned energy sector, creating a national public water service, a new transportation policy promoting public transportation and taxing the transportation of non-vital merchandise. "Producing differently" – a new model of development and economic growth which respects the environment and individuals, redefining industrial priorities, new rights for employees and creating a gross national happiness indicator. "The Republic, for real" – reaffirming the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, creating a ministry for women and equality, repealing the HADOPI law, regularizing illegal immigrants, opposition to the golden rule of fiscal balance and creating jobs in the public sector. "Convene a constituent assembly for the Sixth Republic" – convening a constituent assembly, repealing the 2010 local and regional government reform, proportional representation in all elections, reducing presidential powers and strengthening parliamentary powers, and guaranteeing judicial and press freedom. "Repealing the Lisbon Treaty and creating another Europe" – repealing the Treaty of Lisbon, opposition to the European Fiscal Compact, proposing and adopting a new European treaty which would "prioritize social progress and democracy" and reforming the statutes of the European Central Bank. "To change the course of globalization" – withdrawing French troops from the war in Afghanistan, French withdrawal from NATO, recognizing the independence of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, creation of a Tobin tax to finance international development and cooperation, debt forgiveness for low-income countries. "Prioritizing human emancipation" – creating jobs in public education, spending 1% of GDP on arts and culture, and doubling investment in research. The platform also supported same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, voting rights for resident foreigners, euthanasia, and constitutional recognition of abortion. French nationalism Main articles: Demographics of France and Separatism in Europe The French Communist Party inherited from the Jacobins the concept of France as a centralised, French-speaking, unitary state, with a unitary culture and it is opposed to the separatism and regional identity of other European minority groups native to the area of what consists the French Republic. For instance in 1984, the Soviet ethnographer Solomon Bruk (who had worked under Sergey Tolstov) published a study on France and mentioned the existence of other ethnic groups in the state such as Bretons, Corsicans, Alsatians, Basques, Catalans, Flemish and others. In response to this work, General Secretary Georges Marchais wrote a letter of protest in February 1984, complaining bitterly to the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[14] France is one country, one nation, one people. We protest indignantly against such ridiculous and odious allegations. For us, as for all the citizens of our country, every man and woman of French nationality is French. Every attempt using hazardous criteria which borders on racism in an ill-defined way, seeking to define as not purely French such and such members of the French community, is offensive to the national consciousness. Nobody here can accept that, our Party least of all. — George Marchais, Letter to the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the USSR, February 1984.[15] Elected officials Ambox current red.svg This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2020) Departments with PCF general councillors One or more PCF general councillor No PCF general councillor Deputies: Alain Bocquet, Marie-George Buffet, Jean-Jacques Candelier, André Chassaigne, Jean-Paul Dufrègne, Jacqueline Fraysse, Nicolas Sansu, Gaby Charroux, Patrice Carvalho (GDR Group) Senators: Éliane Assassi, Marie-France Beaufils, Michel Billout, Dominique Watrin, Annie David, Michelle Demessine, Évelyne Didier, Guy Fischer, Thierry Foucaud, Brigitte Gonthier-Maurin, Pierre Laurent, Gérard Le Cam, Cécile Cukierman, Isabelle Pasquet, Éric Bocquet, Mireille Schurch, Laurence Cohen, Christian Favier, Michel Le Scouarnec (CRC Group) MEPs: Patrick Le Hyaric, Jacky Hénin (EUL-NGL Group) The PCF has two Presidents of the General Council – in the Val-de-Marne and Allier. It lost Seine-Saint-Denis, which it had held since the 1960s, to the PS in 2008. Internal organization The PCF has traditionally been a "mass party", although Maurice Duverger had differentiated it from other mass parties because the PCF kept a tight control over membership and regularly expelled unsuitable members. In its heyday, the PCF maintained a large base of members and the party's political and electoral actions were supported in society by a trade union, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT); a newspaper, L'Humanité; and a large number of front organizations or associations in civil society which organized a large number of political or non-political social activities for PCF members.[8]:166 One such activity which still exists today is the annual Fête de l'Humanité organized by the L'Humanité. French and foreign left-wing parties, organizations or movements are represented and the activities feature musical performances. Since the PCF's decline began in the 1970s, however, it has seen its membership base slowly dry up and its allied organizations disappear or distance themselves from the party. The PCF claimed 520,000 members in 1978; 330,000 in 1987; 270,000 in 1996; and 133,000 in 2002.[8]:166 In 2008, the party claimed that it had 134,000 members of which 79,000 were up to date on their membership fees.[8]:166 In the 2011 internal primary, 69,277 members were registered to vote and 48,631 (70.2%) did so.[8]:166 The party likely has about 70,000 members as of today, but only about 40 to 50 thousand seem to actively participate in the party's organization and political activities. According to studies by the CEVIPOF in 1979 and 1997, the makeup of the PCF's membership has also changed significantly since 1979. The most marked change was a major decline in the share of manual workers (ouvriers) in the party's membership, with a larger number of employees and middle-classes, especially those who work in the public sector.[8]:175 The form of political action taken by members has also changed, with less emphasis on direct political or electoral action but a greater emphasis on social work and protests. The party's structures were democratized at the 1994 Congress, dropping democratic centralism and allowing for the public expression of disapproval or dissent with the party line or leadership. The party's top posts, like that of 'secretary-general', were renamed (secretary-general became national-secretary). The party, since 2000, is now led by a national council, which serves as the leadership between congresses; and the executive committee, which is charged with applying the national council's decisions. The national-secretary is elected by delegates at the congress. Likewise, the national council is elected by list voting at every congress. A reform of statutes in 2001 has allowed "alternative texts" - dissent from the text proposed by the PCF leadership - to be presented and voted on; dissident lists to those backed by the leadership may also run for the national council.[8]:170–171 The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) was dominated by the PCF after 1946, with almost all its leaders between 1947 and 1996 (Benoît Frachon, Georges Séguy, Henri Krasucki, Louis Viannet) also serving in the PCF's national leadership structures. For years, the CGT and the PCF were close and almost indissociable allies - notably in May 1968 when both the CGT and PCF were eager for a restoration of social order and welcomed the Grenelle agreements. While the CGT has remained the largest trade union in France, it has taken its independence vis-à-vis the PCF. Louis Viannet spectacularly quit the national bureau of the PCF in 1996 and Bernard Thibault, the CGT's leader between 1999 and 2013, left the PCF's national council in 2001. L'Humanité has retained closer ties with the PCF. The newspaper was founded by Jean Jaurès in 1904 as the socialist movement's mouthpiece, and it followed the communist majority following the split in 1920. After having been the official newspaper of the PCF, with a readership of up to 100,000 in 1945, the newspaper's readership and sales declined substantially partly due to the PCF's concomitant decline. In 1999, the mention of the newspaper's link to the PCF was dropped and the PCF no longer determines its editorial stance. It sold an average of 46,929 newspapers per day in 2012; down from 53,530 in 2007.[16] Leadership Secretaries-general (1921–1994) and national-secretaries (since 1994) Ludovic-Oscar Frossard: 4 January 1921 – 1 January 1923 Louis Sellier and Albert Treint, interim secretaries-general: 21 January 1923 – 23 January 1924 Louis Sellier: 23 January 1924 – 1 July 1924 Pierre Semard: 8 July 1924 – 8 April 1929 Collective secretariat (Henri Barbé, Pierre Celor, Benoît Frachon, Maurice Thorez): 8 April 1929 – 18 July 1930 Maurice Thorez: 18 July 1930 – 17 May 1964 (president between 17 May and his death on 11 July 1964) Jacques Duclos, interim secretary-general: 17 June 1950 – 10 April 1953 Waldeck Rochet: 17 May 1964 – 17 December 1972 (deputy secretary-general from 14 May 1961 to 17 May 1964) Georges Marchais, interim secretary-general later deputy secretary-general from June 1969 to 17 December 1972 Georges Marchais: 17 December 1972 – 29 January 1994 Robert Hue: 29 January 1994 – 28 October 2001 (president between 28 October 2001 and 8 April 2003) Marie-George Buffet: 28 October 2001 – 20 June 2010 Pierre Laurent: 20 June 2010 – 24 November 2018 Fabien Roussel: since 24 November 2018 Factions There are no formal organized factions or political groupings within the PCF. This was originally due to the practice of democratic centralism, but even after the democratization of the PCF structure after 1994 the ban on the organization of formal factions within the party remained. According to party statutes, the PCF supports the "pluralism of ideas" but the right to pluralism "may not be translated into an organizations of tendencies".[17] Nevertheless, certain factions and groups are easily identifiable within the PCF and they are de facto expressed officially by different orientation texts or lists for leadership elections at party congresses. Majority: the current leadership of the PCF since 2003 is around Marie-George Buffet and Pierre Laurent and supports the continued existence of the PCF, but with the need for internal transformations. Vis-à-vis the PS, the PCF leadership has taken a more autonomous stance but it still sees the PS as a potential electoral partner (in runoff elections or in local elections) and even as a potential governing partner. The leadership has been generally strongly supportive of the Left Front alliance with other parties, which it sees as a "new Popular Front" as a culmination of its attempts, undertaken since 2003, to broaden the PCF's base to social movements, associations, unions and other left-wing or far-left parties. Orthodox: the heterogeneous faction of PCF "orthodox" refers to those traditionalist members who opposed the mutation of the 1990s and wish to return to Marxist–Leninist fundamentals. The orthodox faction opposes electoral alliances or governing coalitions with the PS, and it has also proven fairly lukewarm to the Left Front and has often been critical of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's influence over the FG and his 2012 candidacy. Unlike the majority which supports European integration under the form "social Europe" or "another Europe", the orthodox wish to withdraw from the European Union and the Eurozone. Prominent orthodox factions and leaders include Jean-Jacques Karman's Communist Left, Emmanuel Dang Tran's PCF section in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, André Gerin, Alain Bocquet and Patrice Carvalho. The PCF orthodox factions has strong support in the old PCF federations in northern France (Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Somme, Seine-Maritime) or other federations such as the Meurthe-et-Moselle, the Haute-Saône, Aisne and Tarn. Some orthodox communists have chosen to leave the PCF. In 2004, the FNARC group around Georges Hage founded the small Pole of Communist Revival in France (PRCF). Maxime Gremetz was sidelined from the PCF in 2006, after major disagreements with the leadership, and has since founded a small political movement (Anger and Hope, Colère et espoir) active only in his native Picardy. A group of hardline orthodox around former PCF senator Rolande Perlican founded the Communistes party. Novateurs, also known as conservatives: a small faction led by supporters of Georges Marchais' old political line (i.e. traditional Marxism adapted to modern circumstances) as developed by PCF economist and historian Paul Boccara, who developed the idea of state monopoly capitalism). Leaders of the faction include Nicolas Marchand and Yves Dimicoli. La Riposte: a political association within the PCF which is the French section of the International Marxist Tendency, a Trotskyist entryist organization. They are ideologically close to the orthodox faction on rejecting alliances with the PS or a return to Marxist fundamentals but they differ significantly from the orthodox faction in their severe condemnations of Stalinism and the later Soviet Union. They also support the Left Front. Huistes: the allies of former secretary-general Robert Hue (1994–2001) have mostly left the PCF. Hue's leadership was marked by internal democratizations as part of his mutation, but also close cooperation and alliances with the PS. The Huistes tend to be the most supportive of electoral and government alliances with the PS. Hue remains, technically, a member of the PCF; but he has broken with the current leadership. As a senator, he sits in the European Democratic and Social Rally (RDSE) and leads a small political movement, the Progressive Unitary Movement (MUP) which has one deputy elected in 2012 with PS support and who sits with the Radical Party of the Left (PRG) group in the National Assembly. The MUP supports the creation of a broad alliance with the PS, the Greens (EELV), the PRG and even some centrists. Besides Hue, some of prominent followers include Jean-Claude Gayssot, Jack Ralite or Ivan Renar. Refondateurs/Rénovateurs: the reformist faction of the PCF, known either as refondateurs or rénovateurs, has mostly left the PCF today, but they played an important role in the PCF's internal politics for decades and they continue to be closely associated to the PCF through the Left Front. The reformist faction, ideologically aligned with the New Left, eurocommunism, ecosocialism, feminism and democratic socialism, has long been at odds with the PCF's leadership. Under Marchais, they opposed the traditionalist Marxist and pro-Soviet direction of the party and chafed at the party's democratic centralism. Many dissident Communist reformists supported Pierre Juquin's candidacy in the 1988 presidential election, alongside 'red-green' ecosocialists, the remnants of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and the LCR. PCF dissidents who had backed Juquin's candidacy, including former cabinet ministers Marcel Rigout and Charles Fiterman participated in the foundation of the Convention for a Progressive Alternative (CAP) in 1994, which has since obtained limited support only in a few departments. Jean-Pierre Brard, the CAP's sole parliamentarian until his defeat in 2012, sat with the PCF in the National Assembly. Reformists who remained within the PCF, such as Patrick Braouezec, François Asensi and Jacqueline Fraysse, opposed Hue and Buffet's leadership: they did not support the PCF's presidential candidates in 2002 and 2007, and they clamored for the re-foundation of the PCF as part of a broader left-wing movements including left-wing Greens, ecosocialists, the far-left, social movements and left-wing associations. Despite the creation of the Left Front, the reformists led by Braouezec left the PCF in 2010 and joined the small Federation for a Social and Ecological Alternative (FASE) which is now a component of the Left Front. Factional strength Preparatory votes on orientation texts for PCF Congresses since 2003: Faction XXXII (2003)[18] XXXIII (2006)[18] XXXIV (2008)[19] XXXVI (2013)[20] XXXVII (2016)[21] Majority 55.02% 63.38% 60.9% 73.16% 51,20% Orthodox 23.60% 13.25%[22] 8.22%[23] 3.71%[24] 24.02% 10.99% 5.81%[25] 23,68% 12,87% 6,86% Novateurs 21.38% 11.44% – – – La Riposte – – 15.05% 10.05% 5,40% At the XXXIV Congress in 2008, for the election of the national council, the majority's list won 67.73% from the congress' delegates against 16.38% for Marie-Pierre Vieu's huiste list backed by the refondateurs, 10.26% for André Gerin's orthodox list and 5.64% for Nicolas Marchand's novateur list.[18] Popular support and electoral record Currently, the PCF retains some strength in suburban Paris, in the Nord section of the old coal mining area in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the industrial harbours of Le Havre and Dieppe, in some departments of central France, such as Allier and Cher (where a form of sharecropping existed, in addition to mining and small industrial-mining centres such as Commentry and Montceau-les-Mines), the industrial mining region of northern Meurthe-et-Moselle (Longwy) and in some cities of the south, such as the industrial areas of Marseille and nearby towns, as well as the working-class suburbs surrounding Paris (the ceinture rouge), Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Alès and Grenoble.[26] The PCF is also strong in the Cévennes mountains, a left-wing rural anti-clerical stronghold with a strong Protestant minority. Communist traditions in the "Red Limousin", the Pas-de-Calais, Paris proper, Nièvre, Finistère, Alpes-Maritimes and Var have been hurt significantly by demographic changes (Var, Alpes-Maritimes, Finistère), a loss of voters to the Socialist Party due to good local Socialist infrastructure or strongmen (Nièvre, Pas-de-Calais, Paris) or due to the emergence of rival parties on the radical left (the Convention for a Progressive Alternative, a party of reformist communists, in the Limousin and Val-de-Marne). There exists isolated Communist bases in the rural anti-clerical areas of southwestern Côtes-d'Armor and northwestern Morbihan; in the industrial areas of Le Mans; in the shipbuilding cities of Saint-Nazaire, La Seyne-sur-Mer (there are no more ships built in La Seyne); and in isolated industrial centres built along the old Paris-Lyon railway (The urban core of Romilly-sur-Seine, Aube has elected a Communist general councillor since 1958). During the course of the Twentieth Century, the French Communists were considered to be pioneers in local government, providing not only efficient street lighting and clean streets, but also public entertainment, public housing, municipal swimming pools, day nurseries, children’s playgrounds, and public lavatories.[27] In 1976, for instance, the Communist mayor of Sarcelles, Henry Canacos, was named "best mayor in the Paris region" by Vie Publique (a trade periodical for urban planners and administrators) for enriching Sarcelles' public spaces with new restaurants, movie theatres, cafes, more parks, a large shopping mall, and better transportation.[28] Education also became, in the words of one text, an "identifiable characteristic of Communist government at the local level". A study of municipal budgets that was completed in 1975 (but using data from 1968) found that while Communist local government spent 34% less than non-Communist Left governments and 36% less than moderate-Right governments for maintenance, it nevertheless spent 49% more than moderate Right governments and 36% more than non-Communist Left governments for education and educational support.[29] Presidential Election year Candidate 1st round 2nd round # of overall votes % of overall vote # of overall votes % of overall vote 1969 Jacques Duclos 4,808,285 21.27 (#3) 1981 Georges Marchais 4,456,922 15.35 (#4) 1988 André Lajoinie 2,056,261 6.76 (#5)[30] 1995 Robert Hue 2,638,936 8.66 (#5) 2002 Robert Hue 960,480 3.37 (#11) 2007 Marie-George Buffet 707,268 1.93 (#7) 2012 Jean-Luc Mélenchon (as Left Front candidate) 3,985,089 11.10 (#4) Legislative National Assembly Election Votes (first round) Seats # % # ± 1924 885,993 9.8 26 / 581 Steady 1928 1,066,099 11.3 11 / 604 Decrease 15 1932 796,630 8.3 10 / 607 Decrease 1 1936 1,502,404 15.3 72 / 610 Increase 62 1945 5,024,174 26.2 159 / 586 Increase 87 1946 (Jun) 5,145,325 26.0 153 / 586 Decrease 6 1946 (Nov) 5,430,593 28.3 182 / 627 Increase 29 1951 4,939,380 26.3 103 / 625 Decrease 79 1956 5,514,403 23.6 150 / 595 Increase 47 1958 3,882,204 18.9 10 / 546 Decrease 140 1962 4,003,553 20.8 41 / 465 Increase 31 1967 5,039,032 22.5 73 / 487 Increase 32 1968 4,434,832 20.0 34 / 487 Decrease 39 1973 5,085,108 21.4 73 / 488 Increase 39 1978 5,870,402 20.6 86 / 488 Increase 13 1981 4,065,540 16.2 44 / 491 Decrease 42 1986 2,739,225 9.8 35 / 573 Decrease 9 1988 2,765,761 11.3 27 / 575 Decrease 8 1993 2,331,339 9.3 24 / 577 Decrease 3 1997 2,523,405 9.9 35 / 577 Increase 11 2002 1,216,178 4.8 21 / 577 Decrease 14 2007 1,115,663 4.3 15 / 577 Decrease 6 2012 1,792,923 6.9 7 / 577 Decrease 8 2017 615,487 2.7 10 / 577 Increase 3 European Parliament European Parliament Election Votes Seats # % # ± 1979 4,153,710 20.5 19 / 81 Steady 1984 2,261,312 11.2 10 / 81 Decrease 9 1989 1,401,171 7.7 7 / 81 Decrease 3 1994 1,342,222 6.9 7 / 87 Steady 1999 1,196,310 6.8 6 / 87 Decrease 1 2004 1,009,976 5.9 2 / 74 Decrease 4 2009 1,115,021 6.5 3 / 72 Increase 1 2014 1,252,730 6.6 1 / 74 Decrease 2 2019 564,949 2.5 0 / 74 Decrease 1 Publications The PCF publishes the following: Communistes (Communists) Info Hebdo (Weekly News) Economie et Politique (Economics and Politics) Traditionally, it was also the owner of the French daily L'Humanité (Humanity), founded by Jean Jaurès. Although the newspaper is now independent, it remains close to the PCF. The paper is sustained by the annual Fête de L'Humanité festival, held in La Courneuve, a working class suburb of Paris. This event remains the biggest festival in France, with 600,000 attendees during a three-day period. During the 1970s, the PCF registered success with the children's magazine it founded, Pif gadget. See also Communism in France List of foreign delegations at 24th PCF Congress (1982) Place du Colonel Fabien Louis Althusser's Reading Capital (1965) MRAP anti-racist NGO, created in 1941 Roger Roche, founder of a cell of the French Communist Party in Rufisque in 1925. France, officially French Republic, French France or République Française, country of northwestern Europe. Historically and culturally among the most important nations in the Western world, France has also played a highly significant role in international affairs, with former colonies in every corner of the globe. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the Alps and the Pyrenees, France has long provided a geographic, economic, and linguistic bridge joining northern and southern Europe. It is Europe’s most important agricultural producer and one of the world’s leading industrial powers. France France Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. France is among the globe’s oldest nations, the product of an alliance of duchies and principalities under a single ruler in the Middle Ages. Today, as in that era, central authority is vested in the state, even though a measure of autonomy has been granted to the country’s régions in recent decades. The French people look to the state as the primary guardian of liberty, and the state in turn provides a generous program of amenities for its citizens, from free education to health care and pension plans. Even so, this centralist tendency is often at odds with another long-standing theme of the French nation: the insistence on the supremacy of the individual. On this matter historian Jules Michelet remarked, “England is an empire, Germany is a nation, a race, France is a person.” Statesman Charles de Gaulle, too, famously complained, “Only peril can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.” This tendency toward individualism joins with a pluralist outlook and a great interest in the larger world. Even though its imperialist stage was driven by the impulse to civilize that world according to French standards (la mission civilisatrice), the French still note approvingly the words of writer Gustave Flaubert: I am no more modern than I am ancient, no more French than Chinese; and the idea of la patrie, the fatherland—that is, the obligation to live on a bit of earth coloured red or blue on a map, and to detest the other bits coloured green or black—has always seemed to me narrow, restricted, and ferociously stupid. At once universal and particular, French culture has spread far and greatly influenced the development of art and science, particularly anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. 7:023 Geography: Think of Something Big, globe showing Africa, Europe, and Eurasia BRITANNICA QUIZ Which Country Is Larger By Area? Quiz This quiz will show you two countries. Pick the one that’s bigger, as measured by total area. The statistics come from this list, so study it for an unfair advantage! France has also been influential in government and civil affairs, giving the world important democratic ideals in the age of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and inspiring the growth of reformist and even revolutionary movements for generations. The present Fifth Republic has, however, enjoyed notable stability since its promulgation on September 28, 1958, marked by a tremendous growth in private initiative and the rise of centrist politics. Although France has engaged in long-running disputes with other European powers (and, from time to time, with the United States, its longtime ally), it emerged as a leading member in the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. From 1966 to 1995 France did not participate in the integrated military structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), retaining full control over its own air, ground, and naval forces; beginning in 1995, however, France was represented on the NATO Military Committee, and in 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the country would rejoin the organization’s military command. As one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—together with the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and China—France has the right to veto decisions put to the council. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Paris skyline Paris skyline © Digital Vision/Getty Images The capital and by far the most important city of France is Paris, one of the world’s preeminent cultural and commercial centres. A majestic city known as the ville lumière, or “city of light,” Paris has often been remade, most famously in the mid-19th century under the command of Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussman, who was committed to Napoleon III’s vision of a modern city free of the choleric swamps and congested alleys of old, with broad avenues and a regular plan. Paris is now a sprawling metropolis, one of Europe’s largest conurbations, but its historic heart can still be traversed in an evening’s walk. Confident that their city stood at the very centre of the world, Parisians were once given to referring to their country as having two parts, Paris and le désert, the wasteland beyond it. Metropolitan Paris has now extended far beyond its ancient suburbs into the countryside, however, and nearly every French town and village now numbers a retiree or two driven from the city by the high cost of living, so that, in a sense, Paris has come to embrace the desert and the desert Paris. small thistle New from Britannica ONE GOOD FACT The planet Venus goes around the Sun every 224.7 Earth days, but takes 243 Earth days to spin on its axis, making its year shorter than its day. See All Good Facts Among France’s other major cities are Lyon, located along an ancient Rhône valley trade route linking the North Sea and the Mediterranean; Marseille, a multiethnic port on the Mediterranean founded as an entrepôt for Greek and Carthaginian traders in the 6th century BCE; Nantes, an industrial centre and deepwater harbour along the Atlantic coast; and Bordeaux, located in southwestern France along the Garonne River. Land of France Château Gaillard Château Gaillard © Sylvain Verlaine (CC BY-SA 3.0) France lies near the western end of the great Eurasian landmass, largely between latitudes 42° and 51° N. Roughly hexagonal in outline, its continental territory is bordered on the northeast by Belgium and Luxembourg, on the east by Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, on the south by the Mediterranean Sea, Spain, and Andorra, on the west by the Bay of Biscay, and on the northwest by the English Channel (La Manche). To the north, France faces southeastern England across the narrow Strait of Dover (Pas de Calais). Monaco is an independent enclave on the south coast, while the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean is treated as an integral part of the country. Relief The French landscape, for the most part, is composed of relatively low-lying plains, plateaus, and older mountain blocks, or massifs. This pattern clearly predominates over that of the younger, high ranges, such as the Alps and the Pyrenees. The diversity of the land is typical of Continental Europe. Three main geologic regions are distinguishable: the skeletal remains of ancient mountains that make up the Hercynian massifs; the northern and western plains; and the higher young fold mountains in the south and southeast, including the Alps and the Pyrenees, with their attendant narrow plains. Much of the detailed relief can be attributed geologically to the varying differences in the resistance of rocks to erosion. A great deal of the present landscape detail is due to glaciation during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago). France lay outside the range of the great ice sheets that descended upon the northern part of Europe, so the direct sculpting of the land by ice was restricted to the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Vosges, Corsica, and the highest summits of the Massif Central. Just outside these glacial areas, in what are known as periglacial lands, repeated freezing and thawing of unprotected surfaces modified slopes by the movement of waste sheets (formed of shattered bedrock), producing very much the landscape that exists today. Pleistocene periglacial action generated the sheets of the fine windblown limon, or loess, that is the basis of the most fertile lowland soils, and it possibly also created the Landes, a sandy plain in southwestern France. The development of river terraces (flat, raised surfaces alongside valleys) was another characteristic of periglacial action. The Hercynian massifs The physical structure of France is dominated by a group of ancient mountains in the shape of a gigantic V, the sides of which form the two branches of Hercynian folding that took place between 345 and 225 million years ago. The eastern branch comprises the Ardennes, the Vosges, and the eastern part of the Massif Central, while the Hercynian massifs to the west comprise the western part of the Massif Central and the Massif Armoricain. These highlands are composed of resistant metamorphic, crystalline, and sedimentary rocks from the Paleozoic Era (about 540 to 250 million years ago), the last including coal deposits. They share the common characteristic of repeated planation, or flattening. Some variety is provided by subsequent deformation and faulting, such as in the ridge-and-valley areas of the Massif Armoricain, where upland surfaces are deeply carved by valleys in dramatic fashion. The Ardennes The Ardennes massif is an extension, from Belgium into France, of the great Rhine Uplands, characterized by rocks of slate and quartz from the Paleozoic Era. Differential erosion of Paleozoic rocks has produced long ridges alternating with open valleys crossed by the Sambre and Meuse rivers. The Vosges The Alpine earth movements produced a great upswelling along the line of the present upper Rhine, leaving the Vosges with steep eastern slopes that descend to a rift valley containing the plains of Alsace and Baden; on the west the upland descends rather gently into the scarplands of Lorraine. The Vosges reaches its maximum elevation in the south, near the Alps, where crystalline rocks are exposed; the highest summits are called ballons, and the highest is the Ballon de Guebwiller (Mount Guebwiller), with an elevation of 4,669 feet (1,423 metres). To the north the Vosges massif dips beneath a cover of forested sandstone from the Triassic Period (about 250 to 200 million years ago). Brown globe on antique map. Brown world on vintage map. North America. Green globe. Hompepage blog 2009, history and society, geography and travel, explore discovery BRITANNICA QUIZ Countries & Their Features Where is the Great Fence? What is Rhodesia now called? And which country’s name means "silvery"? It’s a country challenge--are you up for it? The Massif Central Chaîne des Puys Chaîne des Puys Christian Kempf from TSW—CLICK/Chicago The vast plateau of the Massif Central covers about 33,000 square miles (86,000 square km), or some one-sixth of the area of the country. The Massif Central borders the Rhône-Saône valley on the east, the Languedoc lowlands on the south, the Aquitaine Basin on the southwest, and the Paris Basin on the north. The planation that occurred following the creation of the Hercynian belt removed the ancient mountain chains, but the block was uplifted under the impact of the Alpine mountain-building movements, with a steep descent on the east and southeast, nearest the Alps, and a gentle decline under the later sediments of the Aquitaine Basin to the west and the Paris Basin to the north. Much of the western massif, notably Limousin, consists of monotonous erosion surfaces. The centre and eastern parts of the massif were much fractured in the course of the Alpine movements, leaving behind upthrust blocks, of which the most conspicuous is the Morvan, the forested bastion of the northeastern corner of the massif. Downfaulted basins filled with sediments from Paleogene and Neogene times (i.e., about 65 to 2.6 million years ago), such as the Limagne near the city of Clermont-Ferrand in south-central France, were also formed. Faulting was associated with volcanic activity, which in the central part of the region formed the vast and complex structures of the massifs of Cantal and Monts Dore, where the Sancy Hill (Puy de Sancy), at 6,184 feet (1,885 metres), is the highest summit of the Massif Central. Farther west, on the fringe of the Limagne, is the extraordinary Chaîne des Puys, whose numerous cinder cones were formed only about 10,000 years ago and still retain the newness of their craters, lava flows, and other volcanic features. Numerous mineral springs, such as those at Vichy in the central Auvergne region, are a relic of volcanic activity. The eastern and southern portions of the massif, from the Morvan through the Cévennes to the final southwestern termination of the massif in the Noire Mountains (Montagne Noire), are marked by a series of hill masses that overlook the lowlands of the Rhône-Saône river valley and the région of Languedoc-Roussillon; at least one of these uplands, Beaujolais, has become famous for the grapevines grown at its foot. Between the hill masses lie infolded coal deposits at locations such as Alès, Decazeville, Saint-Étienne, and Blanzy (Le Creusot) that are of more historical than contemporary importance. To the southwest the rocks of the massif are overlain by a great thickness of limestones (causses) from the Jurassic Period (about 200 to 145 million years ago). Lacking in surface water and little populated, this portion of the massif is crossed by rivers that trench dramatic gorges, notably that of the Tarn. Extensive cave systems bear remains of prehistoric art, such as that of Pêche-Merle in the Lot valley and the Lascaux Grotto in the Vézère valley. The Massif Armoricain The Massif Armoricain is contained mostly within the région of Brittany (Bretagne), a peninsula washed by the Bay of Biscay on the south and the English Channel on the north. The massif continues beyond Brittany eastward and across the Loire to the south. It is much lower than the other Hercynian massif; its highest point, the Mont des Avaloirs, on the eastern edge of the massif, attains an elevation of 1,368 feet (417 metres). Alternating bands of Paleozoic sediments and granitic rocks give the massif a generally east-west grain, particularly expressed in the headlands and bays of its rugged coast. The great lowlands The Paris Basin Between the Ardennes, the Vosges, the Massif Central, and the Massif Armoricain lie the sedimentary beds that make up the Paris Basin. Alternating beds of limestones, sands, and clays dip toward the central Paris Basin, their outcrops forming concentric patterns. Especially to the east, erosion has left the more resistant rocks, usually limestones, with a steep, outward-facing scarp edge and a gentler slope toward the centre of the basin. The central Paris Basin is filled by rocks from the Paleogene and Neogene periods, mostly limestones, that form the level plateaus of regions such as Beauce, Brie, Île-de-France, Valois, and Soissonnais. This area is mostly covered with windblown limon, which is the basis of an excellent loamy soil. The limestone levels overlap in sandwich formation. Eroded remnants of higher formations have been left behind as isolated hills called buttes, perhaps the most famous of which is in Paris—the Butte de Montmartre, on which is one of the city’s most famous districts. Sandy areas adjoining the limestone formations bear forests, such as the Forest of Fontainebleau, southwest of Paris. In the east, in the regions of Lorraine and Burgundy, are Triassic and Jurassic rocks; among the scarps the Moselle Hills are noted for their minette, low-grade iron ore. In the extreme southeast the Jurassic limestone Plateau de Langres forms the watershed between the Seine and Rhône-Saône river systems; it is crossed by major routes linking Paris with the south. The eastern basin includes the chalk country of Champagne and the Argonne massif. In the western part of the Paris Basin, scarps in the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks of Normandy are not prominent. The chalk plateau is trenched by the lower Seine in a course marked by spectacular meanders and river cliffs. The plateau surfaces are frequently mantled by clay-with-flints and other residual deposits, producing heavy soils with much forest, grassland, and orchard cultivation. Farther north the wide chalk plateaus of Picardy and Artois are generally covered with limon, which provides for a rich agriculture; many stretches of magnificent white chalk cliffs line the English Channel coast. The Flanders Plain In the extreme north the French boundary includes a small part of the Anglo-Belgian basin. Coastal sand dunes protect the reclaimed marshes of French Flanders from invasion by the sea. The Alsace Plain East of the Paris Basin is the Alsace Plain, bordered by the Vosges on the west, the Saône basin on the southwest, the Jura Mountains on the south, the Rhine River on the east, and Germany on the north. The terrace and foothills bordering the Rhine are covered with soil-enriching limon. Alluvial fans, which are laid down by tributaries emerging from the Vosges, and much of the floodplain of the Rhine and its major tributary, the Ill River, are forested. The Sundgau region of the Alsace Plain, which lies between the Jura and the Ill River above Mulhouse, is another great alluvial fan overlaying impermeable clays, which hold up numerous lakes. The Rhine River and its tributaries continue to deposit thick sediments on the floodplain. The river is canalized, to the considerable detriment of the water table on both sides. The Loire plains Toward the southwest the Paris Basin opens on a group of plains that follow the Loire valley. The hills of this area, such as the limestone plateaus of the Touraine region and the crystalline plateaus of the Anjou and Vendée areas, are cut by the broad valleys of the Loire and its tributaries. The middle Loire valley, which varies in width from about 3 to 6 miles (about 5 to 10 km), is famous for its châteaus and its scenic beauty. Battle of Fleurus (June 16, 1794), the most significant battle in the First Coalition phase of the French Revolutionary Wars; by Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse, 19th century. READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC What Led to France’s Reign of Terror? Some 17,000 people were killed in the Reign of Terror, and as many as 10,000 more died in prison or without trial. What caused the French... The Aquitaine Basin The Loire countryside links with the Aquitaine Basin of southwestern France through the gap known as the Gate of Poitou. The Aquitaine Basin is much smaller than the Paris Basin, and, while it is bounded in the south by the Pyrenees, in the northeast it runs into the low foothills of the Massif Central. The slopes of both the Pyrenees and the Massif Central decline toward the central valley of the Garonne River. The Aquitaine Basin lacks the clearly marked concentric relief of the Paris Basin. In the north it has limestone and marl plateaus cut by the fertile river valleys emerging from the Massif Central. The southern low plateaus were mostly filled by a mass of rather ill-defined Paleogene and Neogene sands and gravel called the molasse, stripped off the rising Pyrenees. The foot of the central Pyrenees is marked by a remarkable series of confluent alluvial fans forming the Lannemezan Plateau. The Landes, an area lying between the Garonne and Adour rivers to the west, has a surface that consists of fine sand underlain by impermeable iron pan, or bedrock. The area, once covered by heath and marshes, is now reclaimed and planted with maritime pine. South of the wide, deep Gironde estuary, the Bay of Biscay coast is lined by enormous sand dunes, behind which are shallow lagoons. The younger mountains and adjacent plains Pyrenees, Jura, and Alps The Pyrenees, whose foothills shelter the picturesque Basque countryside, constitute the most ancient of the more recently formed mountains in France. They stretch for more than 280 miles (450 km), making a natural barrier between France and Spain. Their formation, which began in the Mesozoic Era (about 250 to 65 million years ago), continued in the Paleogene and Neogene periods and perhaps even in the beginning of the Quaternary Period (i.e., from about 2.6 million years ago). The central and highest part of the barrier is composed of a series of parallel chains with only a few, difficult-to-reach passes that have sheer drops at each end. A section of the mountain chain centring on Mont Perdu (Spanish: Monte Perdido) was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997. The Jura Mountains, extending into Switzerland, are composed of folded limestone. The northeastern part of the Jura, which has the most pronounced folding, is in Switzerland. The highest point, however, is Mount Neige (5,636 feet [1,718 metres]), in France. The French Alps are only a part of the great chain that extends across Europe, but they include its highest point, Mont Blanc (15,771 feet [4,807 metres]). These majestic mountains were formed in a series of foldings during Paleogene and Neogene times. They include the two greatest regions of permanent snow and glaciers in Europe. The northern Alps are relatively easy to cross because of the numerous valleys created by the movement of glaciers. The relief of the southern Alps is much less orderly, and the valleys, which were not affected by glaciation, form narrow and winding gorges. Like the Pyrenees, the Alps form a natural barrier, dropping sharply down to the Po River plain in Italy. The southern plains beach at Nice beach at Nice © Nedra Westwater/Black Star Between these young mountains and the ancient Massif Central is a series of plains, including those of the Saône and the Rhône rivers, which extend southward to the great triangular delta of the Rhône on the Mediterranean coast. Its seaward face, the Camargue region, comprises a series of lakes, marshes, and sand spits and includes one of Europe’s important wetland nature reserves. West of the Rhône delta the Languedoc coastal plain is broad and rather featureless; behind its sand-spit coast are several formerly mosquito-ridden lagoons, now part of a resort complex. At the southwestern end the foothills of the Pyrenees reach to the rocky coast of the Roussillon region. East of the Rhône delta the lowlands are more fragmentary; in the Côte d’Azur region the Alpine foothills and the ancient Maures and Esterel massifs reach to the Mediterranean, forming the coves, capes, and harbours of the country’s most famous tourist and retirement area, the French Riviera. Corsica is also highly regarded for its natural scenery. A number of the island’s peaks reach over 6,500 feet, and parts of it are under wild forest or covered with undergrowth called maquis. Drainage of France The river systems of France are determined by a major divide in the far eastern part of the country, running from the southern end of the Vosges down the eastern and southeastern edge of the Massif Central to the Noire Mountains, the southwestern promontory of the massif. This divide is broken by occasional cols (depressions) and lowland corridors, notably the Langres Plateau, across the Jurassic outer rim of the Paris Basin. Along the divide originate most of the rivers of the larger, western part of the country, including the Seine and the Loire. Other major rivers include the Garonne, originating in the Pyrenees, and the Rhône and the Rhine, originating in the Alps. The Seine system Paris, France Paris, France Dana Hyde/Photo Researchers The main river of the Paris Basin, the Seine, 485 miles (780 km) in length, is joined upstream on the left bank by its tributary the Yonne, on the right bank south of Paris by the Marne, and north of the city by the Oise. While the Seine has a regular flow throughout the year, there may be flooding in the spring and, occasionally more severely, during the customary fall-winter peak of lowland rivers. Efforts have been made to reduce flooding on the Seine and its tributaries by the building of reservoirs. A number of islands dot the Seine along its meandering, generally westward course across the central Paris Basin and through the capital city itself. One of these, the Île de la Cité, forms the very heart of the city of Paris. Eventually the river enters the English Channel at Le Havre. The Loire system The Loire, the longest French river, flows for 634 miles (1,020 km) and drains the widest area (45,000 square miles [117,000 square km]). It is an extremely irregular river, with an outflow eight times greater in December and January than in August and September. Rising in the Massif Central on Mount Gerbier-de-Jonc, it flows northward over impervious terrain, with many gorgelike sections. Near Nevers it is joined by the Allier, another river of the massif. Within the Paris Basin the Loire continues to flow northward, as if to join the Seine system, but then takes a wide bend to the west to enter the Atlantic past Nantes and Saint-Nazaire. The Loire is artificially joined to the Seine by several canals. The river’s torrential flow, a hindrance to navigation, covers its floodplain with sand and gravel, which has commercial importance. The river is also a source of cooling water for a chain of atomic power stations near its course, which has raised concerns among environmentalists, as have various dam projects along the river. UNESCO designated the valley, between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes, a World Heritage site in 2000. The Garonne system The Garonne, in the southwest, flows through the centre of the Aquitaine Basin. It is the shortest of the main French rivers, with a length of 357 miles (575 km), and it drains only 21,600 square miles (56,000 square km). Its outflow is irregular, with high waters in winter (due to the oceanic rainfall) and in spring, when the snow melts, but with meagre flows in summer and autumn. Its source is in the central Pyrenees in the Aran (Joyeuse) Valley in Spain, and its main tributaries, the Tarn, the Aveyron, the Lot, and the Dordogne, originate in the Massif Central. With the exception of the Gironde estuary, which is formed by the confluence of the Garonne and the Dordogne and is fully penetrated by the sea, the whole network is generally useless for navigation and is filled with powerful, rapid, and dangerous currents. The Rhône system In eastern France the direction of the main rivers is predominantly north-south through the Alpine furrow. The Rhône is the great river of the southeast. Rising in the Alps, it passes through Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) to enter France, which has 324 miles (521 km) of its total length of 505 miles (813 km). At Lyon it receives its major tributary, the Saône. The regime of the Rhône is complex. Near Lyon the Rhône and its important Isère and Drôme tributaries, draining from the Alps, have a marked late spring–early summer peak caused by the melting of snow and ice. While this peak is generally characteristic of the river as a whole, it is considerably modified by the contribution of the Saône, of the Durance, and of some tributaries in the Mediterranean south as a result of the fall-winter rainfall peak. Thus, the powerful Rhône has a remarkably ample flow in all seasons. The course of the river and the local water tables have been much modified by a series of dams to generate power and to permit navigation to Lyon. The Rhône also supplies cooling water to a series of atomic power stations. West of the Rhône the Bas Rhône–Languedoc canal, constructed after World War II to provide irrigation, has proved to be an essential element in the remarkable urban and industrial development of Languedoc. East of the Rhône the Canal de Provence taps the unpolluted waters of a Rhône tributary, the Durance, supplying Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Toulon, and the coast of Provence with drinking water and providing impetus for urban expansion. At its delta, beginning about 25 miles (40 km) from the Mediterranean, the Rhône and its channels deposit significant amounts of alluvium to form the Camargue region. The Rhine system The Rhine forms the eastern boundary of France for some 118 miles (190 km). In this section its course is dominated by the melting of snow and ice from Alpine headstreams, giving it a pronounced late spring–summer peak and often generally low water in autumn. The Ill, which joins the Rhine at Strasbourg, drains southern Alsace. The Rhine valley has been considerably modified by the construction on the French side of the lateral Grand Canal d’Alsace, for power generation and navigation. The eastern Paris Basin is drained by two tributaries, the Moselle, partly canalized, and the Meuse; the former reaches the Rhine by way of Luxembourg and Germany, and the latter, as the Maas (Dutch), reaches the Rhine delta at the North Sea by way of Belgium and the Netherlands. The smaller rivers and the lakes North of the Artois ridge, a number of small rivers flow into the Escaut (Flemish and Dutch: Schelde) to reach its North Sea estuary through Belgium. The Somme rises in northwestern France and flows a short distance into the English Channel, and in the southwest the Charente, rising in the western Limousin plateau, and the Adour, rising in the central Pyrenees, flow into the Atlantic. The French hydrographic system also includes a number of natural lakes of different origin. There are the lakes in depressions carved out by glaciation at the western periphery of the Alps, such as the lakes of Annecy and Bourget, the latter being the largest natural lake entirely within France. Others occur on the surfaces of ancient massifs and include the lakes of the Vosges. Some lakes are caused by structural faults and are lodged in narrow valleys, as are the Jura lakes. There are also lakes of volcanic origin, such as those in the Massif Central (crater lakes and lakes ponded behind lava flows), and regions scattered with lagoons or ponds, either created by coastal phenomena, as on the Landes (Atlantic) and Languedoc (Mediterranean) coasts, or caused by impervious terrain and poor local drainage, as in the Sologne plain. Major artificial lakes include the Serre-Ponçon reservoir, on the Durance River in the Alps, and the Sarrans and Bort-les-Orgues reservoirs, both in the Massif Central. Soils of France On a broad, general scale, virtually the whole of France can be classified in the zone of brown forest soils, or brown earths. These soils, which develop under deciduous forest cover in temperate climatic conditions, are of excellent agricultural value. Some climate-related variation can be detected within the French brown earth group; in the high-rainfall and somewhat cool conditions of northwestern France, carbonates and other minerals tend to be leached downward, producing a degraded brown earth soil of higher acidity and lesser fertility; locally this may approach the nature of the north European podzol. The brown earth zone gives way southward to the zone of Mediterranean soils, which in France cover only a limited area. They are developed from decalcified clays with a coarse sand admixture and are typically red in colour because of the upward migration of iron oxides during the warm, dry summers. These soils can be quite fertile. Over large areas of France, soils have developed not directly from the disintegrated bedrock but from the waste sheets created by periglacial action. These may provide a particularly favourable soil material; most notable is the windblown limon that mantles the Paleogene and Neogene limestone plateaus of the central Paris Basin and the chalk beds to the northwest, the basis of the finest arable soils of France. The quality of the soils depends heavily upon the origin of their waste sheets; sand spreads derived from the granites of the Hercynian massifs, for example, provide only poor soils. The bedrock, however, is not without influence. Soils developed over clays are likely to be heavy and wet, although not necessarily infertile, as in the Jurassic clay and chalk vales of the eastern Paris Basin. Limestone and chalk enrich soils with lime, which is generally favourable, but there is a marked north-south contrast. The limestone areas of southern France tend to be swept almost bare of soil by erosion; the soil then collects in valleys and hollows. The soils of the higher mountains are naturally stony and unfavourable. Finally, human action is an extremely important factor in soil quality. As soon as the original forest was cleared, some modification of the soil was inevitable. Generally, farmers through the ages have maintained or improved soil quality by draining and manuring; especially noteworthy were the activities of Flemish peasants who virtually created their soil out of a marshy wilderness. Not all human intervention has been as successful, however. For example, the degradation of brown earths under heath in western France is not a natural feature but the product of human clearance and grazing practices. Large-scale arable cultivation with no use of animal manure is leading in places to soil degradation and soil erosion. Climate of France The climate of France is generally favourable to cultivation. Most of France lies in the southern part of the temperate zone, although the subtropical zone encompasses its southern fringe. All of France is considered to be under the effect of oceanic influences, moderated by the North Atlantic Drift on the west and the Mediterranean Sea on the south. Average annual temperatures decline to the north, with Nice on the Côte d’Azure at 59 °F (15 °C) and Lille on the northern border at 50 °F (10 °C). Rainfall is brought mainly by westerly winds from the Atlantic and is characterized by cyclonic depressions. Annual precipitation is more than 50 inches (1,270 mm) at higher elevations in western and northwestern France, in the western Pyrenees, in the Massif Central, and in the Alps and the Jura. In winter eastern France especially may come under the influence of the continental high-pressure system, which brings extremely cold conditions and temperature inversions over the cities, during which cold air is trapped below warmer air, with consequent fogs and urban pollution. The climate of France, then, can be discussed according to three major climatic zones—oceanic, continental, and Mediterranean, with some variation in the Aquitaine Basin and in the mountains. The oceanic region The pure oceanic climate prevails in the northwest, especially in Brittany. It is characterized by its low annual temperature variation, with Brest having an average temperature in January of 43 °F (6 °C) and in July of 61 °F (16 °C); by its extreme humidity and moderate rainfall (35 inches [890 mm] of rain falling through the year), accompanied by cloudiness and haze; by the frequency and sometimes the violence of the west winds that blow almost constantly; and by large variations in the weather, which can change several times a day. This oceanic climate is somewhat modified toward the north, where the winters are cooler, and toward the south, where, in the Aquitaine Basin, the winters are mild and the summers warmer. There is also less rainfall, although at Toulouse great summer storms are quite frequent. The continental region The plains of the northeast are particularly affected by a continental climate. The city of Strasbourg has the greatest temperature range in France. Winter is cold, with an average of 83 days of frost and with snow cover for several weeks, although the weather is often sunny. In summer, storms cause maximum precipitation in the region in June and July, although total rainfall is comparatively light. The climate of the Paris Basin is somewhere between the oceanic and the continental. The average yearly temperature is 53 °F (11 °C) in Paris. In addition, the relatively light annual rainfall (23 inches [58 cm]) follows a pattern of moderately heavy rain in spring and early summer and autumn, as in the oceanic countries, but the maximum amount of rain falls in summer, with storms of the continental type. In summer, spray irrigation is needed for crops in the continental climatic region and the Paris Basin. The Mediterranean region In the southeast the Mediterranean climate extends over the coastal plains and penetrates the valley of the lower Rhône River as far as the Montélimar area. It affects the southern Alps, the southeastern slopes of the Cévennes and the Noire Mountains (in the Massif Central), and the eastern Pyrenees. The latitude and the proximity of the warm Mediterranean Sea contribute to mild winters, with an average temperature of 47 °F (8 °C) in January at Nice and with only a few days of frost. Precipitation is heavy and tends to fall in sudden downpours, especially in the autumn and spring, whereas summer is nearly completely dry for at least three months. In coastal Languedoc-Roussillon, annual rainfall totals can be as low as 17 to 20 inches (430 to 500 mm). It is a unique area because of its clear skies and the regularity of fine weather. This area is also subject to the violent north winds called the mistral, which are peculiar to southern France. The winds are caused by high-pressure areas from central France that move toward the low-pressure areas of the Gulf of Genoa. Permanent irrigation systems are characteristic of the Mediterranean lowlands. The Aquitaine Basin is intermediate between the oceanic and the Mediterranean climates. Winters tend toward the oceanic type, but springs and summers are warm, although less arid than in the Mediterranean zone. The mountains have varied climates. West-facing slopes in the Pyrenees have some of the highest precipitation figures in France. Snow cover stays from December to the end of April above 3,000 feet (900 metres) and is perpetual above 9,000 feet (2,700 metres) in the Alps and 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) in the Pyrenees. Locally, the contrast between the sunny south-facing valley slopes (adrets) and the shaded north-facing slopes (ubacs) can be of great importance for land use and settlement, while some intermontane basins can have quite advantageous climates as opposed to that of the surrounding peaks and plateaus. Plant and animal life Plant life Vegetation is closely related to climate, so that in France it is not surprising that there are two major but unequal divisions: the Holarctic province and the smaller Mediterranean province. Most of France lies within the Holarctic biogeographic vegetational region, characterized by northern species, and it can be divided into three parts. A large area of western France makes up one part. It lies north of the Charente River and includes most of the Paris Basin. There the natural vegetation is characterized by oak (now largely cleared for cultivation), chestnut, pine, and beech in uplands that receive more than 23.6 inches (600 mm) of annual rainfall. Heathland is also common, as a predominantly man-made feature (created by forest clearance, burning, and grazing). Broom, gorse, heather, and bracken are found. South of the Charente, the Aquitaine Basin has a mixture of heath and gorse on the plateaus and several varieties of oak, cypress, poplar, and willow in the valleys. On the causses of the Massif Central and on other limestone plateaus, broom, heath, lavender, and juniper appear among the bare rocks. The vegetation of eastern France, constituting a second part of the Holarctic division, is of a more central European type, with trees such as Norway maple, beech, pedunculate oak, and larch; hornbeam is often present as a shrub layer under oak. The various high mountain zones form a third Holarctic part; with cloudy and wet conditions, they have beech woods at lower elevations, giving way upward to fir, mountain pine, and larch but with much planted spruce. Above the tree line are high mountain pastures, now increasingly abandoned, with only stunted trees but resplendent with flowers in spring and early summer. The second major vegetation division of the country lies within the Mediterranean climatic zone and provides a sharp contrast with the plant life elsewhere in France. The pronounced summer drought of this zone causes bulbous plants to die off in summer and encourages xerophytic plants that retard water loss by means of spiny, woolly, or glossy leaves; these include the evergreen oak, the cork oak, and all the heathers, cistuses, and lavenders. Umbrella, or stone, pine and introduced cypress dominate the landscape. The predominant plant life of the plateaus of Roussillon is the maquis, comprising dense thickets of drought-resistant shrubs, characterized in spring by the colourful flowers of the cistuses, broom, and tree heather; in most areas this is a form that has developed after human destruction of the evergreen forest. A large part of Provence’s hottest and driest terrain is covered by a rock heath known as garigue. This region is a principal domain of the vineyard, but lemon and orange trees grow there also. At elevations of about 2,600 feet (790 metres), as in the Cévennes, deciduous forest appears, mainly in the form of the sweet chestnut. At elevations of 4,500 feet (1,370 metres) this gives way to a subalpine coniferous forest of fir and pine. Forest covers 58,000 square miles of France (15,000,000 hectares), which is more than a quarter of its territory. Most forests are on the upland massifs of the Ardennes and Vosges and within the Jura, Alps, and Pyrenees mountain chains, but extensive lowland forests grow on areas of poor soil, such as that of the Sologne plain south of the Loire River. The planted forest of maritime pine covering about 3,680 square miles (953,000 hectares) in the Landes of southwestern France is said to be the most extensive in western Europe. Increasingly, forests are less a source of wood and more a recreational amenity, especially those on the fringe of large urban agglomerations, such as Fontainebleau and others of the Île-de-France region. Animal life The fauna of France is relatively typical of western European countries. Among the larger mammals are red deer, roe deer, and wild boar, which are still hunted; the fallow deer is rather rare. In the high Alps are the rare chamoix and the reintroduced ibex. Hares, rabbits, and various types of rodents are found both in the forests and in the fields. Carnivores include the fox, the genet, and the rare wildcat. Among endangered species are the badger, the otter, the beaver, the tortoise, the marmot of the Alps, and the brown bear and the lynx of the Pyrenees. Seals have almost entirely disappeared from the French coasts. While French bird life is in general similar to that of its neighbours, southern France is at the northern edge of the range of African migrants, and such birds as the flamingo, the Egyptian vulture, the black-winged stilt, the bee-eater, and the roller have habitats in southern France. People of France Ethnic groups France: Ethnic composition France: Ethnic composition Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. outdoor market in Paris outdoor market in Paris © Meinzahn/iStock.com The French are, paradoxically, strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation, but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge. Before the official discovery of the Americas at the end of the 15th century, France, located on the western extremity of the Old World, was regarded for centuries by Europeans as being near the edge of the known world. Generations of different migrants traveling by way of the Mediterranean from the Middle East and Africa and through Europe from Central Asia and the Nordic lands settled permanently in France, forming a variegated grouping, almost like a series of geologic strata, since they were unable to migrate any farther. Perhaps the oldest reflection of these migrations is furnished by the Basque people, who live in an isolated area west of the Pyrenees in both Spain and France, who speak a language unrelated to other European languages, and whose origin remains unclear. The Celtic tribes, known to the Romans as Gauls, spread from central Europe in the period 500 BCE–500 CE to provide France with a major component of its population, especially in the centre and west. At the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a powerful penetration of Germanic (Teutonic) peoples, especially in northern and eastern France. The incursion of the Norsemen (Vikings) brought further Germanic influence. In addition to these many migrations, France was, over the centuries, the field of numerous battles and of prolonged occupations before becoming, in the 19th and especially in the 20th century, the prime recipient of foreign immigration into Europe, adding still other mixtures to the ethnic melting pot. Languages French is the national language, spoken and taught everywhere. Brogues and dialects are widespread in rural areas, however, and many people tend to conserve their regional linguistic customs either through tradition or through a voluntary and deliberate return to a specific regional dialect. This tendency is strongest in the frontier areas of France. In the eastern and northern part of the country, Alsatian and Flemish (Dutch) are Germanic languages; in the south, Occitan (Provençal or Languedoc), Corsican, and Catalan show the influence of Latin. Breton is a Celtic language related to languages spoken in some western parts of the British Isles (notably Wales), and Basque is a language isolate. Following the introduction of universal primary education during the Third Republic in 1872, the use of regional languages was rigorously repressed in the interest of national unity, and pupils using them were punished. More recently, in reaction to the rise in regional sentiment, these languages have been introduced in a number of schools and universities, primarily because some of them, such as Occitan, Basque, and Breton, have maintained a literary tradition. Recent immigration has introduced various non-European languages, notably Arabic. Religion of France France: Religious affiliation France: Religious affiliation Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Chartres Cathedral Chartres Cathedral Manifest_Media/iStock/Getty Images Plus About three-fifths of the French people belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Only a minority, however, regularly participate in religious worship; practice is greatest among the middle classes. The northwest (Brittany-Vendée), the east (Lorraine, Vosges, Alsace, Jura, Lyonnais, and the northern Alps), the north (Flanders), the Basque Country, and the region south of the Massif Central have a higher percentage of practicing Roman Catholics than the rest of the country. Recruitment of priests has become more difficult, even though the church, historically autonomous, is very progressive and ecumenical. Reflecting the presence of immigrants from North Africa, Algeria, and Morocco, France has one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations: an estimated 5,000,000 Muslims, a sizable percentage of them living in and around Marseille in southeastern France, as well as in Paris and Lyon. Protestants, who number 700,000, belong to several different denominations. They are numerous in Alsace, in the northern Jura, in the southeastern Massif Central, and in the central Atlantic region. There are more than 700,000 adherents of Judaism, concentrated in Greater Paris, Marseille, and Alsace and the large eastern towns. In addition to the religious groups, there also are several societies of freethinkers, of which the most famous is the French Masonry. Large numbers, however, especially among the working classes and young population, profess no religious belief. In the early 21st century the government approved a number of measures that reflected both France’s dedication to being a secular state, a principle known as laïcité, as well as the ambivalence and, in some cases, hostility felt by some French toward the country’s large Muslim population. In 2004 the government banned Muslim head scarves and other religious symbols in state schools. Additional controversial legislation passed in 2010 prohibited face-concealing garments—i.e., veils that fully covered a woman’s face—in public places. Settlement patterns Rural landscape and settlement Centuries of human adaptation of the various environments of France have produced varied patterns of rural landscape. Scholars have traditionally made an initial contrast between areas of enclosed land (bocage), usually associated with zones of high rainfall and heavy soils, and areas of open-field land (campagne), generally associated with level and well-drained plains and plateaus. Two other patterns have evolved in the Mediterranean region and in the mountains. Bocage In its classic form, bocage is found in Brittany, where small fields are surrounded by drainage ditches and high earthen banks, from which grow impenetrable hedges arching over narrow sunken lanes. Similarly enclosed land is found elsewhere, however, notably on the northern, western, and southern fringes of the Paris Basin, such as in Normandy, as well as in the western and northern parts of the Massif Central, parts of Aquitaine, and the Pyrenean region. At higher levels hedges may be replaced by stone walls. Settlement mostly takes the form of hamlets and isolated farms. Open-field The greatest extent of open-field land is found in the Paris Basin and in northern and eastern France, but there are pockets of it elsewhere. The landscape typically lacks hedges or fences; instead, the bewildering pattern of small strips and blocks of land is defined by small boundary stones. The land of one farmer may be dispersed in parcels scattered over a wide area. The land is predominantly arable, and the farmsteads are traditionally grouped into villages, which may be irregularly clustered or, as in Lorraine, linear in form. Mediterranean lavender lavender © Digital Vision/Getty Images The generally block-shaped Mediterranean lowland parcels normally are not enclosed or are enclosed only by rough stone banks. However, in areas where delicate crops would be exposed to wind damage, there are screens of willows and tall reeds. Hillsides are frequently terraced, although much of this land type has been abandoned except in areas of intensive cultivation, such as the flower-growing region around Grasse. A very large farmhouse built on three floors is characteristic of wine-growing and sheep-raising regions, such as Provence. Rural population was formerly often clustered at high elevations, both for defense and in order to be above the malarial plains. In modern times there has been a move to more convenient lowland locations. Mountain In the high mountains and especially in the Alps, there is the contrast between the adrets, the sunny and cultivated valley slopes, and the ubacs, the cold and humid slopes covered with forests. The variety of vegetation on the slopes of the mountains is remarkable. Cultivated fields and grasslands are found in the depths of the valleys, followed in ascending order by orchards on the first sunny embankments, then forests, Alpine pastures, bare rocks, and, finally, permanent snow. A unique aspect of the mountain environment is that Alpine villages of the lower valley sides were often combined with chalets (burons in the Massif Central), temporary dwellings used by those tending flocks on summer pastures above the tree line. Postwar transformation After World War II the French government instituted a program of consolidation, whereby the scattered parcels of individual farmers were grouped into larger blocks that would accommodate heavier, mechanized cultivation. Initially progress was greatest in the open-field areas, particularly the Paris Basin, where there were few physical obstacles to the process. Subsequent extension to bocage areas had more severe consequences for landscape values and ecology, as hedges, sunken lanes, and ponds disappeared in favour of a new open landscape. At the same time, the vast numbers of people abandoning agricultural pursuits enormously changed the nature of rural settlement. Particularly in the more attractive areas, abandoned farms were purchased as second homes or for retirement. Where alternative employment was available, rural people stayed and became commuters, transforming barns and stables for other uses, such as garages. On the fringes of the expanding city regions, new houses and housing subdivisions for urban commuters were built in the villages, markedly changing their character. Urban settlement France: Urban-rural France: Urban-rural Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Marseille Marseille © Digital Vision/Getty Images The primacy of Paris as the predominant urban centre of France is well known. After World War II the French government had an ambivalent attitude toward the development of the urban structure. On the one hand there was the desire to see Paris emerge as the effective capital of Europe, and on the other there was the policy of creating “métropoles d’equilibre,” through which cities such as Lille, Bordeaux, and Marseille would become growth poles of regional development. Even more evident was the unplanned urbanization of small and medium-size towns related to spontaneous industrial decentralization from Paris, such as that along the Loire valley, or to retirement migration, such as that along the coastlands of southern France. Demographic trends Population history In 1801 France was the most populous nation in Europe, containing about one-sixth of the continent’s inhabitants. By 1936 the French population had increased by 50 percent, but in the same period the number of people in Italy and Germany had nearly trebled, and in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands the population had nearly quadrupled. The marked difference in population growth between France and some of its neighbours up to the 1940s was attributed to a falling birth rate. At the same time, the mortality rate in France began its decline somewhat later than in other advanced European countries, not falling until the close of the 19th century. The birth rate was particularly affected by the practice of French peasants who deliberately limited their families in order to reduce the effect of a Napoleonic law that required the splitting of the family holdings among all heirs. Other factors may have included the rise of bourgeois individualism following the French Revolution of 1789, the decline of Roman Catholic observance (especially among the political left), and the lack of economic opportunity in the interwar years. Population growth was, of course, adversely affected by wars, including the wars of the Revolution; the wars of the First Empire; the Franco-German War (1870–71); World War I (1914–18), which cost France more than 1,500,000 lives; and World War II (1939–45), which reduced the population by 600,000. The deficit in national growth was so drastic by 1938 that France began to give monetary and other material benefits to families with children. The policy appears to have been effective, because a rise in the birth rate occurred even during the difficult years of Nazi occupation and Vichy France, culminating in the postwar baby boom years, when soldiers and prisoners returned to a climate of economic optimism. The relative youth and high fertility of immigrants also contributed to the upsurge in the birth rate, which was coupled with a decline in mortality rates, attributable to improved public health facilities and social welfare programs. In the second half of the 20th century, the high birth rate slowed, and about 1974 it fell into a sharp decline, eventually reaching a point insufficient for the long-term maintenance of the population. Since midcentury, because of a corresponding decline in the death rate, the rate of natural increase (balance of births against deaths) has remained positive, though in decline. By the early 21st century, France had an average population increase of roughly 300,000 people each year. These changes were not exceptional to France; the same postwar pattern was largely paralleled in neighbouring countries. A number of factors combined to reduce the birth rate, among them the introduction of the contraceptive pill and the new preference for smaller families. Emigration Unlike many of its neighbours, France has never been a major source of international migrants. In the 17th century, because of religious persecution, France lost more than 400,000 Huguenot refugees—often highly skilled—mainly to Prussia, England, Holland, and America. The same century saw the beginning of emigration; relatively small numbers of emigrants settled at first in North America, notably in eastern Canada (Quebec) and in Louisiana, in certain parts of Latin America that are still départements of France (Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana), and later in various countries of Africa and Asia that were parts of France’s colonial domain. Since decolonialization, whether forced or voluntary, many have returned to France, but others have remained overseas, either in business or in programs of technical and cultural cooperation in most of the former French territories, notably in Africa. Small numbers of French, especially from Brittany and Normandy, continue to relocate to Canada, and a number of Basques go to Argentina. Immigration of France France: Immigrant population admitted France: Immigrant population admitted Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Intermittently, at least since about 1830 and rather steadily from 1850, there has been a substantial flow of immigrant population into France. France had the reputation into the early 20th century of being the European country most open to immigrants, including political refugees, but this reputation changed in the late 20th century, when opposition rose to continued immigration from Africa. At this time also the countries of the European Union became generally more resistant to the admission of persons claiming political asylum. Most immigration conforms to the economic needs of the host country and tends to be particularly concentrated either in periods of economic growth or after devastating wars. Between 1850 and 1914 about 4.3 million foreigners entered France, and between World Wars I and II nearly 3 million, or 6 percent of the population, came as immigrants. Up to the end of World War I, immigration was free and spontaneous; most of the immigrants came from neighbouring countries, such as Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland, and they were quickly assimilated into the national population. The slaughter of young men and the devastation of World War I stimulated the government to draw more widely from the reservoirs of foreign manpower. The Italians came in greatest numbers (35 percent), followed by the Poles (20 percent), the Spanish (15 percent), the Belgians (10 percent), and a smaller number of people from central or eastern European countries. In the years of economic expansion after World War II, when there was an acute labour shortage, immigration again reached a high level. In the first two postwar decades, immigration contributed about 40 percent to the growth of the French population. Although immigration flattened out after 1974, natural increase dropped, so that immigration continued to contribute significantly to population growth. In the early 21st century, there were almost four million foreigners residing in France, amounting to some 6 percent of the population, a proportion that had remained constant since 1975. Neighbouring countries such as Portugal, Italy, and Spain continued to be significant contributors, but recent immigrant streams came from North Africa, notably Algeria (an integral part of France until 1962) and the former protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia. Peoples from French or former French territories in Central Africa, Asia, and the Americas provided an additional source of immigrants. As the numbers of immigrants grew, so did incidents of racial discrimination in housing and employment, as well as social activism among immigrant groups. Initially, immigrants from Africa and the Americas were predominantly males, living in low-standard housing and working in undesirable, low-skilled occupations. As families were progressively reconstituted, immigrants continued to work in jobs that Frenchmen were reluctant to accept. With the beginning of an economic downturn in 1974, though, French workers began to reclaim some of the jobs held by immigrants, and the government began to restrict immigration. Adding to the job competition were approximately one million persons with French citizenship, the so-called pieds-noirs (literally “black feet”), who were repatriated from territories in North Africa decolonized in 1962–64. The policy of restricting immigration remains in force, with the result that in the early 21st century the net annual increase of population from legal immigration averaged little more than 50,000 people. With the enactment in 1999 of the Amsterdam Treaty in France, many issues of immigration became shared by participating members of the European Union. Population structure France: Age breakdown France: Age breakdown Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The aging of the population is common to western Europe, but because of low birth rates it has been observable in France since the beginning of the 19th century. In the early 21st century, more than one-fifth of French citizens were at least 60 years old. The tendency for the proportion of the elderly population to increase also reflects medical advances, which have produced a longer expectation of life. The age structure of the population is of considerable social and economic importance. The steady increase in the proportion of the aged puts an increasing strain on the working population to provide pensions, medical and social services, and retirement housing. The increase in births between 1944 and the mid-1970s, however, brought its own problems, notably the need to rush through a school-building program, followed by the creation of new universities. But this demographically young population also stimulated the economy by creating a greater demand for consumer goods and housing. Another important aspect of population structure is the proportion of men to women, in society as a whole and in the various age groups. As in most western European countries, women outnumber men in French society and particularly in the older age groups, which is the result of two factors: the wars, which caused the death of a large number of men, and the natural inequality of life expectancy for men and women. A French woman at birth has one of the highest life expectancies in the world (85 years), while a man’s is much lower (78 years), although still relatively high when compared with the world in general. The ratio of men to women in employment is another measure of population structure, and in the late 20th century women steadily increased their share of the job market. Population distribution Particularly low population densities are characteristic of the mountain regions, such as the Massif Central, the southern Alps, the Pyrenees, and Corsica, but are also reflected in some lowland rural areas, such as the eastern and southern Paris Basin and large parts of Aquitaine. The régions of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Bourgogne–Franche-Comté, and Centre–Val de Loire and the collectivité territoriale of Corsica have less than one-fifth of the national population in about one-third of the area. By contrast, the régions of Île-de-France (Paris region) and Hauts-de-France have nearly one-third of the French population in less than one-tenth of the area. Other high-density areas are the industrial cities of Lorraine; isolated large cities, such as Toulouse; and certain small-farm areas, such as coastal Brittany, Flanders, Alsace, and the Limagne basin of Auvergne. Until about the mid-19th century, rural and urban populations both increased, but thereafter there was a marked depopulation of the more remote, mostly mountainous, rural areas and a swing to urban growth. In the space of a century, from the 1860s to the 1960s, rural population decreased by more than one-third, though since that time the decline has slowed, and the rural population in the early 21st century numbered roughly 10 million. There were still as many rural as urban inhabitants even up to the period between the two World Wars, but by 2014 roughly 80 percent of the population was urban. Postwar rural depopulation was associated with the exodus of labour following the modernization of French agriculture. At the time, rural areas were left with an aging population and low birth rates as the young departed to the cities, especially to the growing industrial régions of Nord–Pas-de-Calais, Lorraine, and Île-de-France. The massive postwar movement from rural areas to the cities was supplemented by immigration, which also focused on urban areas where employment was available. Because immigrants to the cities tended to be young adults of childbearing age, city dwellers multiplied. Urban population growth in the 30 years after World War II was estimated to be at least 16 million persons. Subsequent urban growth was due in part to expanding city limits and was characterized by urban sprawl, accelerated redistribution from city centres to suburban outskirts, though some rebalancing toward the centre has occurred in recent years. From about 1975, migratory flows were greatly modified, the most immediate cause being economic. The older industrial regions, such as Nord–Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine, were in decline and had become regions of out-migration. The most dynamic migratory flow was experienced in the deindustrialized Île-de-France région; students and young workers flocked to the greater Paris area, while pensioners retired to the coasts. Growth subsequently switched to the south, to the coastlands of Languedoc and of Provence–Alpes–Côte d’Azur; to the west, in the Atlantic regions of Poitou-Charentes and Pays de la Loire; and to the southwest, in the Midi-Pyrénées and Aquitaine. These shifts reflect a combination of economic decentralization, retirement migration, sunbelt industrialization, changing residential preferences, and expanding tourism. Population increase has also been strong on the southern and western fringes of the Paris Basin, favoured for industrial decentralization from the Île-de-France région. Since World War II, urban growth in France has been accompanied by marked suburbanization. This trend was initiated much earlier in Paris, a densely built-up city that leveled off at a maximum population of about 2.8 million in the period 1911–54 and declined thereafter. Proportionately the decline set in much earlier: in 1876 the city of Paris had 60 percent of the population of what was to become the Île-de-France région; in 1921, 51 percent; in 1954, 39 percent; and in 2008, 19 percent. The century after 1850 witnessed the rise of the industrialized inner suburbs (the petite couronne) outside the walls of the city. There maximum population was reached in the 1970s, followed by a decline associated with a marked degree of deindustrialization. Since the 1980s, population growth has been concentrated in the outer Paris suburbs (grande couronne), which by 2008 accounted for 44 percent of the total population of the Île-de-France région, compared with 37 percent in the declining inner suburbs. In the first half of the 20th century, suburban growth, where it did occur, was not the result of middle-class suburbanization, as it was in the United States and the United Kingdom. It was the working class and the lower middle classes that moved out, while higher-income groups endeavoured to maintain a foothold in central Paris. In the postwar period, however, suburbanization took increasingly middle-class forms, with the building up of satellite low-density subdivisions known as “new villages.” Similar postwar suburbanization occurred in cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Lille, and Bordeaux. Increasingly, the most rapid population growth is relegated to small towns and nominally rural communes on the expanding fringes of the city regions. This dispersal of population is associated with an increasing length of daily commuter movements, with all their human disadvantages, as well as other problems of urban sprawl. Vacation travel, very popular among the French, involves the movement of crowds of people during the peak seasons, particularly during school vacations and in August, when many people take their paid holiday and leave the city. Transport facilities and popular vacation spots become saturated, especially the coastal areas and mountains. Thomas Henry Elkins John N. Tuppen The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Economy of France vineyard in Ay, France vineyard in Ay, France Serraillier—Rapho/Photo Researchers France is one of the major economic powers of the world, ranking along with such countries as the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Its financial position reflects an extended period of unprecedented growth that lasted for much of the postwar period until the mid-1970s; frequently this period was referred to as the trente glorieuses (“thirty years of glory”). Between 1960 and 1973 alone, the increase in gross domestic product (GDP) averaged nearly 6 percent each year. In the aftermath of the oil crises of the 1970s, growth rates were moderated considerably and unemployment rose substantially. By the end of the 1980s, however, strong expansion was again evident. This trend continued, although at a more modest rate, into the 21st century. During the same postwar period, the structure of the economy was altered significantly. While in the 1950s agriculture and industry were the dominant sectors, tertiary (largely service and administrative) activities have since become the principal employer and generator of national wealth. Similarly, while it was once the heavily urbanized and industrialized regions of northern and northeastern France that were developing most rapidly, in the 1980s these areas began losing jobs and population. Contemporary growth has switched to regions that lie in the south and, to a lesser degree, the west of France. Despite the dominance of the private sector, the tradition of a mixed economy in France is well established. Successive governments have intervened to protect or promote different types of economic activity, as has been clearly reflected in the country’s national plans and nationalized industries. In the decades following World War II, the French economy was guided by a succession of national plans, each covering a span of approximately four to five years and designed to indicate rather than impose growth targets and development strategies. The public sector in France first assumed importance in the post-World War II transition period of 1944–46 with a series of nationalizations that included major banks such as the National Bank of Paris (Banque Nationale de Paris; BNP) and Crédit Lyonnais, large industrial companies such as Renault, and public services such as gas and electricity. Little change took place after that until 1982, when the then Socialist government introduced an extensive program of nationalization. As a result, the enlarged public sector contained more than one-fifth of industrial employment, and more than four-fifths of credit facilities were controlled by state-owned banking or financial institutions. Since that period successive right-wing and, more recently, left-of-centre governments have returned most enterprises to the private sector; state ownership is primarily concentrated in transport, defense, and broadcasting. Postwar economic growth has been accompanied by a substantial rise in living standards, reflected in the increasing number of families that own their home (about half), a reduction in the workweek (fixed at 35 hours), and the increase of vacation days taken each year by the French people. Another indicator of improved living standards is the growth of ownership of various household and consumer goods, particularly such items as automobiles and computers. Over time, however, consumption patterns have altered significantly. As incomes have risen, proportionately less has been spent on food and clothing and more on items such as housing, transportation, health, and leisure. Workers’ incomes are taxed at a high to moderate rate, and indirect taxation in the form of a value-added tax (VAT) is relatively high. Overall, taxes and social security contributions levied on employers and employees in France are higher than in many other European countries. Agriculture, forestry, and fishing France’s extensive land area—of which more than half is arable or pastoral land and another quarter is wooded—presents broad opportunities for agriculture and forestry. The country’s varied relief and soils and contrasting climatic zones further enhance this potential. Rainfall is plentiful throughout most of France, so water supply is not generally a problem. An ample fish supply in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea provides an additional resource. Agriculture employs relatively few people—about 3 percent of the labour force—and makes only a small contribution to GDP—about 2 percent. Yet France is the EU’s leading agricultural nation, accounting for more than one-fifth of the total value of output, and alone is responsible for more than one-third of the EU’s production of oilseeds, cereals, and wine. France also is a major world exporter of agricultural commodities, and approximately one-eighth of the total value of the country’s visible exports is related to agriculture and associated food and drink products. France has a usable agricultural area of nearly 74 million acres (30 million hectares), more than three-fifths of which is used for arable farming (requiring plowing or tillage), followed by permanent grassland (about one-third) and permanent crops such as vines and orchards (about one-twentieth). Areas in which arable farming is dominant lie mostly in the northern and western regions of the country, centred on the Paris Basin. Permanent grassland is common in upland and mountainous areas such as the Massif Central, the Alps, and the Vosges, although it is also a notable feature of the western région of Normandy. Conversely, the major areas devoted to permanent cultivation lie in Mediterranean regions. Grains More than half of the country’s arable land is used for cereals, which together provide about one-sixth of the total value of agricultural output. Wheat and corn (maize) are the main grains, with other cereals, such as barley and oats, becoming progressively less important. There are few areas of the country where cereals are not grown, although the bulk of production originates in the Paris Basin and southwestern France, where both natural conditions and (in the former case) proximity to markets favour such activity. A considerable area (about one-seventh of the agricultural area), predominantly in western France, is also given over to forage crops, although the acreage has been shrinking since the early 1980s as dairy herds have been reduced in accordance with EU guidelines. In contrast, there has been a substantial increase in oilseed output; the area under cultivation has quadrupled since the early 1980s and now approaches one-tenth of agricultural land. Fruits and wine making France: wine regions France: wine regions Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Vines, fruits, and vegetables cover only a limited area but represent more than one-fourth of the total value of agricultural output. France is probably more famous for its wines than any other country in the world. Viticulture and wine making are concentrated principally in Languedoc-Roussillon and in the Bordeaux area, but production also occurs in Provence, Alsace, the Rhône and Loire valleys, Poitou-Charentes, and the Champagne region. There has been a marked fall in the production of vin ordinaire, a trend related to EU policy, which favours an increase in the output of quality wines. Fruit production (mainly of apples, pears, and peaches) is largely concentrated in the Rhône and Garonne valleys and in the Mediterranean region. Vegetables are also grown in the lower Rhône and Mediterranean areas, but a large part of output comes from western France (Brittany) and the southwest and the northern région of Hauts-de-France, where sugar beets and potatoes are produced. Dairying and livestock Cattle raising occurs in most areas of the country (except in Mediterranean regions), especially in the more humid regions of western France. Animal-related production accounts for more than one-third of the total value of agricultural output. In general, herds remain small, although concentration into larger units is increasing. Overall, however, the number of cattle has been falling since the early 1980s, largely as a result of EU milk quotas. These have adversely affected major production areas such as Auvergne, Brittany, Basse-Normandie, Pays de la Loire, Rhône-Alpes, Lorraine, Nord–Pas-de-Calais, and Franche-Comté. One result has been an increasing orientation toward beef rather than dairy breeds, notably in the area of the Massif Central. The raising of pigs and poultry, frequently by intensive methods, makes up more than one-tenth of the value of agricultural output. Production is concentrated in the régions of Brittany and Pays de la Loire, encouraged originally by the availability of by-products from the dairy industry for use as feed. Sheep raising is less important. Flocks graze principally in southern France on the western and southern fringes of the Massif Central, in the western Pyrenees, and in the southern Alps. Agribusiness Agriculture has changed in other ways. Farm structures have been modified substantially, and the number of holdings have been greatly reduced since 1955, numerous small farms disappearing. By the late 1990s there were fewer than 700,000 holdings, compared with more than 2,000,000 in the mid-1950s and more than 1,000,000 in the late 1980s. The average size of farms has risen considerably, to close to 100 acres (40 hectares). Large holdings are located primarily in the cereal-producing regions of the Paris Basin, while small holdings are most common in Mediterranean regions, the lower Rhône valley, Alsace, and Brittany. Important technical changes have also occurred, ranging from the increased use of intermediate products such as fertilizers and pesticides to the widespread use of irrigation (nearly one-tenth of agricultural land is now irrigated) and the growth of crops within controlled environments, such as under glass or plastic canopies. Marketing systems have also been modified, as an increasing proportion of output is grown under contract. Together such changes have led to a remarkable increase in output of major agricultural products, but they have also resulted in a large reduction in the number of agricultural workers and the increased indebtedness of many farmers, and the related negative effects on the environment have given rise to the organic farming movement. Forestry With more than 57,000 square miles (148,000 square km) of woodland, France possesses one of the largest afforested areas in western Europe, offering direct employment to more than 80,000 people. Forested areas are unevenly distributed, with the majority lying to the east of a line from Bordeaux to the Luxembourg border. Aquitaine and Franche-Comté have a particularly dense forest cover. This vast resource is, however, generally underexploited, partly because of the multitude of private owners, many of whom are uninterested in the commercial management of their estates. Less than one-fourth of the afforested area is controlled by the National Office of Forests. Fishing Despite the extent of France’s coastlines and its numerous ports, the French fishing industry remains relatively small. Annual catches have averaged about 700,000 tons since the mid-1970s, and by the 21st century there were fewer than 16,500 fishermen. The industry’s problems are related to its fragmented character and to inadequate modernization of boats and port facilities, as well as to overfishing and pollution. Activity is now concentrated in the port of Boulogne in Nord–Pas-de-Calais and to a lesser degree in ports in Brittany such as Concarneau, Lorient, and Le Guilvinic. France is also known for its aquaculture, with activity increasing over recent years along the coastal waters of western France. Oyster beds are found particularly in the southwest, centred on Marennes-Oléron. Resources and power Compared with its agricultural resources, the country is far less well-endowed with energy resources. Coal reserves are estimated at about 140 million tons, but French coal suffered from being difficult and expensive to mine and from its mediocre quality. In 1958 annual production amounted to some 60 million tons; 40 years later this total had dropped to less than 6 million tons; and in 2004 the last coal mine was shuttered. Imported coal had long supplemented indigenous production. Imports originate mainly from Australia, the United States, South Africa, and Germany. Other energy resources are in short supply. Natural gas was first exploited in southwestern France (near Lacq) in 1957. Production then increased substantially, only to decline after 1978 as reserves became exhausted. By the late 1990s, production was negligible, requiring a high level of imports, principally from the North Sea (Norway and the Netherlands), Algeria, and Russia. France has few oil reserves, and production from wells in Aquitaine and the Paris Basin is extremely limited. Uranium is mined in the Massif Central, and, although recoverable reserves are estimated at approximately 50,000 tons, more than half of the annual consumption has to be imported. France, however, does possess fast-moving rivers flowing out of highland areas that provide it with an ample hydroelectric resource. Minerals The metal industry is poorly supplied by indigenous raw materials, although traditionally France was an important producer of iron ore and bauxite. Iron ore output exceeded 60 million tons in the early 1960s, originating principally in Lorraine; but production has now ceased, despite the continued existence of reserves. Low in metal content and difficult to agglomerate, Lorraine ores were thus long supplemented and have now been replaced by richer overseas supplies from such countries as Brazil, Sweden, and Australia. Bauxite production is negligible, though other mineralized ores, such as those containing lead, zinc, and silver, are mined in very small quantities. Greater amounts of potash (mined in Alsace), sodium chloride (from mines in Lorraine and Franche-Comté and from salt marshes in western and southern France), and sulfur (derived from natural gas in Aquitaine) are produced, but again the trend is toward declining output as reserves are depleted. The supply of stone, sand, and gravel is relatively ubiquitous. Energy France: Breakdown of renewable energy by source France: Breakdown of renewable energy by source Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Through the post-World War II years, the increase in the demand for energy has closely followed the rate of economic growth. Thus, for much of the period until 1973, consumption increased rapidly. Then, in the wake of the two oil price rises of 1973 and 1979, demand stabilized, followed by a fall in the early 1980s until growth rates recovered after the mid-1980s. The demand for different types of energy has changed considerably over time. In the early postwar years, coal provided the larger part of energy needs. By the 1960s, however, oil, as its price fell in real terms, was being used in ever-greater quantities, so that by 1973 about two-thirds of energy consumption was accounted for by crude oil. Since then a more diversified pattern of use has emerged. Coal now plays only a minor role, while the use of oil has also fallen, replaced partly by natural gas and notably by nuclear energy, which now accounts for more than one-third of primary energy consumption. One of the main consequences of these changes has been a reduction in the country’s previously high dependence on external sources of supply. Oil has long been France’s principal energy import, which has led to the growth of a major refining industry, with plants concentrated in two areas of the lower Seine valley (Le Havre and Rouen) and in the region around Fos-sur-Mer and the Étang de Berre. Many markets are supplied with oil products by pipeline, which is also the distribution method for natural gas. Algerian imports arrive in the form of liquefied natural gas (primarily methane) and are unloaded at French ports where regasification plants operate. Since the early 1980s one of the most significant changes in energy supply has been the greatly increased role of nuclear power, at the expense of fuel oil and coal; even the production of hydroelectric power has stabilized, as most suitable sites have already been exploited, particularly those of the Rhine and Rhône valleys, the Massif Central, and the Alps. In contrast, nuclear production, benefiting from major government investment from the early 1970s, expanded enormously in the 1980s, notably with the construction of sites in the Rhône and Loire valleys, a reflection of the need for large quantities of cooling water. By the 21st century more than three-fourths of electricity in France was produced in nuclear plants, the highest proportion in the world, which enabled the country to become a large exporter of such energy. More recently development has slowed substantially, as demand has eased and environmental groups have campaigned against further investment. France’s nuclear industry also includes a large uranium-enrichment factory at Pierrelatte in the lower Rhône valley and a waste-reprocessing plant at La Hague, near Cherbourg. In the early 21st century renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, gained new prominence. Although wind power generated less than 3 percent of the electricity consumed in France in 2010, the country’s “wind potential” was the second largest in Europe, and new facilities were planned in accordance with EU renewable energy directives. In addition, France’s installed solar capacity increased by almost 700 percent between 2009 and 2011, and its 2.5 gigawatts of production represented almost 4 percent of the world’s total. Manufacturing of France Industrial trends French industry was long the powerhouse of the country’s postwar economic recovery. Yet, after a period of substantial restructuring and adjustment, particularly during successive periods of recession since the late 1970s, this sector (including construction and civil engineering) now employs only about one-fourth of the country’s workforce and contributes the same proportion of GDP. Both production and employment grew rapidly during the 1950s and ’60s as industrial development was stimulated by the opening of new markets and by rising incomes. Industrial production went into decline in the mid-1970s, however, and a period of major deindustrialization followed as manufacturers responded to reduced domestic demand and to more intense foreign competition. Investment fell, delaying modernization and further compromising French competitiveness. In recent years investment and output have again increased, although at a lower rate and in a more erratic fashion than in the earlier postwar period. Nevertheless, industrial employment is still declining. There is an ever-increasing concentration of ownership as a result of the expansion of large multinational groups, which also allows foreign markets to have a greater impact on French industry. Changes in industrial location have also occurred. Industrial expansion in the 1960s and ’70s was accompanied by large-scale decentralization, favouring many areas of the Paris Basin (where there was an abundant and relatively cheap supply of labour) at the expense of the capital. Few company headquarters followed the dispersion of manufacturing plants, however, so that the centre of industrial operations remained rooted in the Paris region. The decline of industrial employment since the mid-1970s has had the greatest impact in traditional manufacturing regions, such as Nord–Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine. Nevertheless, the broad arc of régions stretching through northern and eastern France, from Normandy to Auvergne–Rhône-Alpes, remains the most heavily industrialized part of the country. Branches of manufacturing On the basis of employment and turnover, seven branches of manufacturing stand out as particularly important: vehicles, chemicals, metallurgy, mechanical engineering, electronics, food, and textiles. The vehicle industry is dominated by the activities of the two automobile manufacturers, Peugeot SA (including Citroën) and Renault, which together produce nearly four million cars annually. Automobile production generates a substantial number of direct jobs as well as employment in subsidiary industries, such as the major tire manufacturer Michelin. France also possesses an important industry for the manufacture of railway locomotives and rolling stock, for which the expanding high-speed train (train à grande vitesse; TGV) network represents a major market. Within the chemical industry, manufacturing ranges from basic organic and inorganic products to fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other parachemical items, including perfumes. Because of the capital-intensive nature of these activities, a dominant role is played by large manufacturers such as Rhône-Poulenc. Extensive research is carried out in this field. Basic chemical production is concentrated in areas offering access to raw materials, such as Nord–Pas-de-Calais, Étang-de-Berre, and Rhône-Alpes, whereas pharmaceutical production is more closely related to major market areas and research centres, notably Île-de-France. The metallurgical industry, dominated by the production of steel, experienced major restructuring in the late 1970s and the ’80s as demand fell and competition from other international producers increased. Originally concentrated in Lorraine because of the presence of iron ore, steel production shifted to the coastal sites of Dunkirk and Fos-sur-Mer, which relied on imported ore and coal. France is also an important producer of aluminum, notably through the Pechiney group. Such basic metal industries support a diverse range of engineering activities, spread widely throughout France but with important concentrations in the highly urbanized and industrialized régions of Île-de-France and Auvergne–Rhône-Alpes. Similar features characterize the electrical engineering and electronics industries. France is a major manufacturer of professional electronics, such as radar equipment, but is weakly represented in the field of consumer electronics, which has led to a high level of imports. The country also has a number of high-tech aerospace industries, which manufacture aircraft, missiles, satellites, and related launch systems. These industries are concentrated in the Paris region and in the southwest around Toulouse and Bordeaux. Food and beverage industries represent a large branch of French manufacturing, reflecting the considerable volume and diversity of agricultural production. Although present in most regions, food manufacturers are particularly concentrated in major urban market areas and in western agricultural regions such as Brittany, Pays de la Loire, and Basse-Normandie. The beverage sector is dominant in the main wine-growing areas of northern and northeastern France; it represents an important source of exports. Textile and clothing industries have experienced a long period of decline in the face of strong foreign competition, with substantial job losses and plant closures affecting the major production areas of northern France and Rhône-Alpes (textiles), as well as Île-de-France (clothing). Unlike other major industrial branches, these activities remain characterized by small firms. A varied group of construction and civil engineering industries employs about one-fourth of the labour in the industrial sector. Activity and employment have fluctuated considerably in relation to changing government and private investment programs and the varying demand for new homes. This sector is characterized by the coexistence of a large number of small firms with a limited number of large companies, many of which work on civil engineering contracts outside France. Finance of France Although the French financial sector employed less than 13 percent of the labour force in the early 21st century, it accounted for roughly one-third of the country’s total GDP. Home to some of Europe’s largest banks and its second largest stock exchange, France is a key player in the continent’s financial markets. Banking and insurance France possesses one of the largest banking sectors in western Europe, and its three major institutions, Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, and Société Générale, rank among the top banks on the continent. Traditionally, banking activities were tightly controlled by the government through the Banque de France. However, deregulation beginning in the 1960s led to a substantial increase in branch banking and bank account holders, and legislation in 1984 further reduced controls over banks’ activities, which thereby enabled them to offer a wider range of services and led to greater competition. Since then, encouraged by the lifting of restrictions on the free movement of capital within the EU in 1990, banks have broadly internationalized their activities. In 1993 the Banque de France was granted independent status, which freed it from state control. In general, employment in the banking sector has declined, largely because of the widespread computerization of transactions and this restructuring. At the turn of the 21st century, the franc gave way to the euro as the legal currency in France. France has a large insurance industry dominated by major companies such as Axa, CNP, and AGF but also including a number of important mutual benefit societies, which administer pension plans. The deregulation of this sector has led to vast reorganization, with activity still concentrated in Paris though a number of provincial towns have developed as specialist centres through the location of various mutual societies. The stock exchange Share transactions in France were historically centred on the Bourse de Paris (Paris Stock Exchange), a national system that in the late 20th century incorporated much smaller exchanges at Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille, Marseille, Nancy, and Nantes. Share dealings and stock market activity increased greatly beginning in the early 1980s, corresponding with a period of deregulation and modernization: official brokers lost their monopoly on conducting share transactions; a second market opened in 1983 to encourage the quotation of medium-size firms; and in 1996 the “new market” was launched to help finance young, dynamic companies in search of venture capital. Also in 1996 the Bourse was restructured, reinforcing the powers of its controlling body, Commission des Opérations de Bourse. In 2000 the Bourse merged with the Amsterdam and Brussels stock exchanges to form the Euronext equities market, which in 2006 merged with the New York Stock Exchange. Foreign investment Financial deregulation, the movement toward a single European market, and the general freeing of world trade are among the influences that have encouraged investment by French firms outside France and increased the reverse flow of foreign investment funds into the country. In the industrial field French companies have shown a growing interest in investing in other advanced economies, especially the United States. Over recent years investments have also multiplied in the developing economies of Asia and eastern Europe. Foreign firms investing in France have been principally from the EU (notably the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany) and the United States. Most investment is related to the fields of engineering, electronics, and chemicals and generally is directed at the more highly urbanized centres of the country. The sources and nature of foreign investment in France are becoming more diverse, however. Japanese interests have increased substantially, for instance, and investment in property and the service industry has been growing, particularly in and around Paris. Trade of France France: Major import sources France: Major import sources Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. France, a leading trading nation, has grown into one of the world’s foremost exporting countries, with the value of exports representing more than one-fifth of GDP. France is also a major importer, especially of machinery, chemicals and chemical products, tropical agricultural products, and traditional industrial goods such as clothes and textiles. The high level of imports led to a trade deficit for much of the period between the early 1970s and early 1990s. However, from 1992 France experienced a trade surplus, combined with a positive balance from invisible (nonmerchandise) transactions, especially tourism. France: Major export destinations France: Major export destinations Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Most foreign trade is based on the exchange of goods. In the case of agricultural commodities, France has become an increasingly important net exporter of raw agricultural products (such as grains) as well as agro-industrial products, such as foods and beverages, including wines, tinned fruits and vegetables, and dairy products. The need to import large quantities of oil (and to a lesser extent gas and coal), however, has resulted in a sizable deficit for those exchanges. Although France imports a great deal of industrial goods, the country has long been a major exporter of vehicles and transport equipment, as well as armaments and professional electronics. More recently exports of pharmaceuticals and parachemical products have risen. The greater part of foreign trade is carried out with other developed countries, and some four-fifths of transactions take place with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Among these the EU plays a major role, reflecting the growing exchange of goods and services between its member countries. More than three-fifths of French exports and imports are destined for or originate in EU countries, of which Germany is easily the most important. Outside the EU the United States is France’s other major trading partner, although Russia and China claimed a growing percentage of French trade in the 21st century. EU countries are an important source of industrial imports, whereas fuel products and raw materials tend to originate from more distant sources. Conversely, agricultural and food exports are oriented predominantly toward European markets, whereas industrial goods are exported to a more global marketplace. Services of France The various service, or tertiary, industries in France account for about two-thirds of the country’s employment and of GDP. These levels were reached following an extended period of sustained growth, notably since the 1960s. This sector covers a highly diverse range of activities, including social and administrative services, such as local government, health, and education; wholesaling, distribution, and transport and communication services; consumer services, such as retailing and the hotel and catering trades; and producer or business services, including banking, financial, legal, advertising, computing, and data-handling services. Not all tertiary activities have developed in the same way. For example, rationalization in the banking and financial services sector has limited the creation of jobs. Conversely, the continuously strong growth, since the early 1970s, of hypermarkets and other large freestanding retail outlets that allow for purchasing in bulk and in greater variety has led to a significant rise in related employment. In particular the large group of producer services has expanded rapidly. In part this trend is the inevitable consequence of the increasingly complex and highly competitive nature of the modern economy. It also results from companies’ strategies of externalizing (outsourcing) such service requirements for reasons of efficiency and cost savings. Tertiary activities are located predominantly in urban areas, especially the larger cities. Such concentration is most evident in relation to the capital. The Île-de-France région (Paris region) alone accounts for nearly one-fourth of all tertiary employment while containing less than one-fifth of the population. In Paris the sector’s importance is qualitative as well as quantitative. Paris houses more than two-thirds of the headquarters of the country’s major companies and a disproportionately large share of senior management and research staff. This attraction to the capital is influenced by a number of factors, including the size and diversity of the labour market, the high level of accessibility to other French and international business centres, prestige, and the presence of numerous specialized
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PicClick Insights - French Autograph Marcel Cachin 1946 Communist Signed Letter Vintage 8.5X11 PicClick Exclusive
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