France (1942: Differently)

**France**, officially the **Greater French Republic**, and unofficially the **Fifth French Republic**, is a fictitious transcontinental country with its territories predominantly situated in Western Europe and North Africa—along with the Condominium of Western Frankonia, which is politically shared with Germania. Specifically, French territories in Europe are remarked as "Metropolitan France" (French: *France Métropolitaine*), and those in North Africa as "*Françafrique*". The other territories are considered as departments of France. Regardless, its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; the Françafrique stretches from the vast depths of the Sahara to the Mediterranean; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquélon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Its 28 (22, Metropolitan France + 6, Françafrique) integral regions (and 5 in the overseas overseas) span a combined area of 3,501,271 km2 (1,351,848 mi2) and have a total population of over 113 million as of January 2023. France is a federal semi-presidential republic with its Northern capital in Paris and Southern in Algiers, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre; other major urban areas include Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and Nice in the North, as well as Oran, Constantine, Annaba, and Carthage in the South.

Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. In the Early Middle Ages, the Germanic Franks formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France in 987. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralized feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th CE, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. In the 16th CE, the French Renaissance saw culture flourish and a French colonial empire rise. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

Meanwhile, Françafrique produced and is linked to many civilizations, empires and dynasties, including Numidians, Mauretanians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Mauro-Romans, Byzantines, Umayyads, Ifranids, Abbasids, Rustamids, Idrisids, Sulaymanids, Aghlabids, Fatimids, Zirids, Hammadids, Almoravids, Almohads, Marinids, Hafsids and the Zayyanids. However, centuries of Arab migration to the Maghreb since the 7th CE shifted the demographic scope in the region. The Spanish expansionism led to the establishment of Ottoman Numidia in 1516, a state that attracted people from all over the Mediterranean, making its capital Algiers one of the largest, wealthiest, and most cosmopolitan cities in the world. Its decline in the 19th CE resulted in its invasion by the French in 1830. The conquest and pacification of the country that ensued lasted until 1903 and led to the region, promptly renamed as "Algeria" becoming an integral part of France in 1848 and home to over a million European settlers.

In 1789, after a financial crisis in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution broke out, turning France into a constitutional monarchy and eventually a republic, which was replaced with the Orléans Monarch a form of "provisional constitutional monarchy". The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the Ancien Régime and produced the *Declaration of the Rights of Man*, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte from Corsica launched a coup and declared himself emperor. France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th CE under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating part of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars significantly shaped the course of European history. After 10 years of constant warfare, the Napoleonic Wars were over, as the Bourbon Monarch was restored until the 1830 Revolution, which re-established the Orléans Dynasty. In 1870, following the war with Prussia, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments until the founding of the French Third Republic. Subsequent decades saw a period of economic prosperity and cultural and scientific flourishing known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the major participants of the Grand War, from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost. Following great diplomatic in 1944, the short-lived Fourth Republic due to the Carthage-Occitan Civil War, albeit won by France, and causing Occitanie and Carthage to be integrated more fiercely.

The current Fifth Republic was formed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Except for Algeria and Carthage, most French colonies became independent in the 1960s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France. Also, as a compensation, the former regions of Alsace, Moselle, Baden and Württemberg were united in a semi-autonomous condominium that has its own Constitution and condominium-level government, shared with Germania, in the *Franco-Germanian Condominium of Alsace-Moselle and Baden-Württemberg*, or the *Condominium of Western Frankonia*.

France retains its centuries-long status as a global centre of art, science and philosophy. It hosts the 5th largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the world's leading tourist destination, receiving over 89 million foreign visitors in 2018. France is a developed country with the world's 7th largest economy by nominal GDP and 9th-largest by PPP. It remains a great power in global affairs, being one of the 6 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon state. France is a founding and leading member of the European Union and the Eurozone, as well as a key member of the Group of Eight, NATO, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Francophonie.

## Etymology & Enunciation

Originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name *France* comes from the Latin *Francia*, or "realm of the Franks". Modern France is still named today *Francia* in Italian and Spanish, while *Frankreich* in German and Laurensche, *Frankrijk* in Dutch, *Frankenrealschke* in (Romanized) Vetomorssiane, and *Frankrike* in Swedish and Norwegian all mean "Land/realm of the Franks".

The name of the Franks is related to the English word *frank* ("free"): the latter stems from the Old French franc ("free, noble, sincere"), ultimately from Medieval Latin *francus* ("free, exempt from service; freeman, Frank"), a generalisation of the tribal name that emerged as a Late Latin borrowing of the reconstructed Frankish endonym *\*Frank*. It has been suggested that the meaning "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation, or more generally because they had the status of freemen in contrast to servants or slaves.

The etymology of *\*Frank* is uncertain. It is traditionally derived from the Proto-Germanic word *\*frankōn*, which translates as "javelin" or "lance" (the throwing axe of the Franks was known as the *francisca*), although these weapons may have been named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around.

In English, 'France' is pronounced /fræns/ *FRANSS* in American English and /frɑːns/ *FRAHNSS* or /fræns/ *FRANSS* in British English. The pronunciation with /ɑː/ is mostly confined to accents with the trap-bath split such as Received Pronunciation, though it can be also heard in some other dialects such as Cardiff English, in which /frɑːns/ is in free variation with /fræns/.

## History

### a. Pre-History (before the 6th century BCE)

The oldest traces of archaic humans in what is now France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago. Neanderthals occupied the region into the Upper Paleolithic era but were slowly replaced by Homo sapiens around 35,000 BCE. This period witnessed the emergence of cave painting in the Dordogne and the Pyrenees, including at the famous Lascaux site, dated to c. 18,000 BC. At the end of the Last Glacial Period (10,000 BC), the climate became milder; from approximately 7,000 BC, this part of Western Europe entered the Neolithic era, and its inhabitants became sedentary.

After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, initially working gold, copper and bronze, then later iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic, including the exceptionally dense Carnac stones site (approximately 3,300 BC).

## Geography

### a. Political Geography

#### Metropolitan France

The vast majority of France's territory and population is situated in Western Europe and is called Metropolitan France, to distinguish it from the country's various overseas polities. It is bordered by the North Sea in the north, the English Channel in the northwest, the Atlantic Ocean in the West and the Mediterranean sea in the South-East. Its land borders consist of Netherlands in the North-East, Germania (discounting the *Condominium* and Switzerland in the East, Italia and Monaco in the South-East, and Navarre and Iberia in the South and South-West. Except for the North-East, most of France's land borders are roughly delineated by natural boundaries and geographic features: to the South and South-East, the Pyrénées and the Alps and the Jura, respectively, and to the east, the Rhine river. Due to its shape, France is often referred to as *l'Hexagone* ("The Hexagon"). Metropolitan France includes various coastal islands, of which the largest is Corsica. Metropolitan France is situated mostly between latitudes 41° and 51° N, and longitudes 6° W and 10° E, on the western edge of Europe, and thus lies within the Northern temperate zone. Its continental part covers about 1000 km from north to south and from East to West.

Metropolitan France covers 551,500 square kilometres (212,935 sq mi), the largest among European Union members. France's total land area, with its overseas departments and territories (excluding Adélie Land), is 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi), 0.45% of the total land area on Earth. France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges of the Alps in the southeast, the Massif Central in the South-central and Pyrénées in the South-West.

#### Françafrique

If Françafrique was an indpendent, sovereign state, it'd be the largest country in Africa and the Mediterranean Basin. Its Southern part includes a significant portion of the Sahara. To the North, the Tell Atlas form with the Saharan Atlas, further south, two parallel sets of reliefs in approaching eastbound, and between which are inserted vast plains and highlands. Both Atlas tend to merge in eastern Françafrique. The vast mountain ranges of Aures and Nememcha occupy the entire North-Eastern Françafrique. The highest point is Mount Tahat (3,003 metres or 9,852 feet).

#### Overseas France

Due to its numerous overseas departments and territories scattered across the planet, France possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,261,000 sq mi), just behind the EEZ of the United States, which covers 11,351,000 km2 (4,383,000 sq mi), but ahead of the EEZ of Australia, which covers 8,148,250 km2 (3,146,000 sq mi). Its EEZ covers approximately 8% of the total surface of all the EEZs of the world.