prison facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about prison Prisoners' Rights ; Riot . By the mid-nineteenth century, prisons existed throughout the United States. Prisoners were kept in unsanitary environments, forced to work at hard labor, and brutalized by guards. These conditions continued until the 1950s and 1960s, when heightened social and political discourse led to a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation. The closing of one particular prison symbolized the change in correctional philosophy. Alcatraz Prison, located on an island off San Francisco, was used exclusively to place in solitary confinement convicts classified as either violent or disruptive. Rehabilitation was non-existent in Alcatraz. The prison was filthy and rat-infested, and prisoners were held in dungeon-like cells, often chained to stone walls. Established in 1934, Alcatraz was closed in 1963, in part because its brutal treatment of prisoners symbolized an outdated penal philosophy. By the mid-1960s, the stated purpose of many prisons was to educate prisoners and prepare them for life after prison.

Many federal and state courts ordered administrators to improve the conditions inside their prisons, and the quality of life for inmates greatly improved. Prison Life, New Hampshire State Prison The New Hampshire Department of Corrections oversees four prisons, three halfway houses, and one Secure Psychiatric Unit (in Concord). Prison facilities include the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord, the New Hampshire State Prison for Women in Goffstown, the Lakes Region Facility in Laconia, and the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin. The Lakes Region Facility is reserved for first-time offenders convicted of nonviolent crimes; the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility houses medium-security male inmates. It costs $19,888 per year to keep an inmate in prison in New Hampshire. The men's prison in Concord, New Hampshire, is representative of the daily life of the average prison inmate in the United States. Upon order of the court, new prisoners are transported by sheriff deputies to the appropriate prison receiving facility. After arrival, the inmate is photographed, fingerprinted, and given prison clothing and toiletries. Prisoners must wear prison clothing and an identification card at all times.

All new inmates are placed in a locked cell and are kept isolated from other prisoners until approved by prison staff for proper housing assignment. During approximately 30 days in quarantine custody, called Reception and Diagnostic, inmates are interviewed and tested by a multidisciplinary team of prison staff. Inmates receive an orientation to prison rules and expectations, medical and dental exams, mental health assessment, religious and program orientation, and educational testing. After the diagnostic period is over, the offender moves to a correctional housing unit with similarly classified inmates. Inmates are classified either C-5, C-4, C-3, C-2, or C-1 (C stands for "classification"). The C-5 classification is for dangerous or problem inmates. C-4 inmates are individuals who were C-5 but are working their way back to C-3 status, which is the general prison population. New prisoners are designated C-3 unless they break rules while in Reception and Diagnostic, in which case they may be classified as C-4 or C-5. C-2 inmates are housed in a minimum security building just outside the prison walls; C-1, or work release, inmates are allowed to live in halfway houses.

Though they are supervised by prison officials, they live outside the prison, preparing for reentry into the community. Daily life for a C-5 inmate is spartan. The average C-5 inmate spends all but one hour in a cell located in the Security Housing Unit (SHU), a building separate from the rest of the prison population. A C-5 inmate has no cellmate and receives his meals in his cell. He may leave his cell for one hour of outdoor exercise a day in a cage outside the SHU. Also, for a few minutes a day, a C-5 inmate may be allowed to make collect telephone calls from a room located in the SHU. Some C-5 inmates are allowed to work at sites located within the SHU; most of them make sheets, towels, or pockets for pants. C-5 inmates with work privileges are allowed to communicate with one another while they work. A C-5 inmate may keep reading materials. He may also watch his own television, but only when he has been in SHU for more than 30 days. Whenever a C-5 inmate leaves his cell, he is shackled by guards at the hands and feet and escorted until he reaches his destination.

A level of security more severe than C-5 is called "isolation." An inmate in isolation may not leave his cell except for one hour a day of outdoor exercise inside a cage. He may not watch television or listen to the radio and has one Bible for reading. An inmate may be kept in isolation for only a 15-day stretch, and he must be held in another setting for at least 24 hours before beginning another 15 days of isolation. protective custody is a special classification that is similar to the C-5. Inmates in protective custody are segregated from the general population: they move about the prison in a group separate from the other inmates. Protective custody is reserved for those inmates who have requested it and have a valid fear for their safety. C-4 inmates are held in a Close Custody Unit, which is also separate from the general population. C-4 inmates may have a few more privileges than C-5 inmates, but they do not have the full number of privileges enjoyed by the general population. They may work, they are not shackled as they move outside their cells, they may eat in the dining hall with the general population, and they have cellmates.

Also, the C-4 floor plan is similar to that for C-3 inmates: each cell opens into a common area where inmates may talk and play cards or other games. However, unlike C-3 inmates, C-4 inmates may not lock themselves in their cells for privacy, they may work for only a short period of time at a specific work site, and they generally have fewer privileges and are more strictly supervised than C-3 inmates. C-3 inmates comprise the general population. They may move about the prison facility unencumbered by restraints. They work at various jobs, some building high-quality furniture. Inmates can earn from $1.50 to over $3.00 per day, depending on the job. Those who perform highly skilled work, such as carpentry, may earn $3.50 a day. Inmates do not receive cash for their work; their earnings are banked in an account. Using their account, they may buy articles from the canteen, such as personal hygiene products, soda, candy, chips, and cigarettes. Inmates may smoke cigarettes in the common area and in their cells. However, if his cellmate objects, an inmate may not smoke in his cell.

An inmate may receive money from persons outside the prison, but he may not receive packages of personal items. He may not spend more than $200 per month, no matter how much money he has. He may buy items such as magazines, books, radios, and televisions, but only through the manufacturer. Inmates on C-3 status enjoy the full range of educational and work opportunities available in the prison, and their days are often consumed by these activities. They may also use the law library for a certain amount of time each day. An inmate's day begins at approximately 7:00 A.M. Those inmates scheduled to begin work before 7:00 A.M. are awakened earlier. The lights are dimmed around 10:00 P.M. and sometimes 11:00 P.M. on weekend nights. Except for C-5 inmates, restless inmates may leave their cells during the night to sit in the common area. C-3 inmates move from place to place at the top of the hour; they have 15 minutes to reach their next destination. If they are tardy for any destination, they will be reported as being out of place.

Being out of place in prison is a serious infraction. If the disciplinary board finds that an inmate was out of place, the inmate may lose the privilege to watch television, listen to the radio, or talk on the telephone. Repeated violations may result in transfer to C-5 status. further readings New Hampshire Department of Corrections. Available online at < (accessed September 2, 2003). Santos, Michael. 2003. Profiles from Prison: Adjusting to Life Behind Bars. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. "Time in Prison." 2001. State of New Hampshire Department of Corrections (January). In 1971, a bloody, day-long riot at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York sparked a reaction against rehabilitative ideals. More than 40 people were killed in the uprising in Attica. Shortly after the Attica riot, the Federal Bureau of Prisons began to transfer unruly federal prisoners to the Federal Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, where they were held in solitary confinement.

In 1983, after three killings in the prison, the prisoners in Marion were placed on permanent lock-down, making the entire prison a solitary confinement facility virtually overnight. Marion has remained on lockdown ever since. By the 1980s, most prison administrators abandoned rehabilitation as a goal. Forced by an increasing problem with overcrowding and the resulting increase in violence, administrators returned to punishment and security as the primary purposes of prison. Though most prisons continue to operate educational and other rehabilitative programs, the rights of prison inmates have been frozen at the minimal number recognized by courts in the 1960s and 1970s. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against prison guard violence, but courts have generally refused to expand the rights of prison inmates. In most cases, courts have approved increased infringement of inmates' rights if prison officials declare that the restrictions are for security purposes. Prisoners' Rights Prisoners' rights are limited. For the most part, jail and prison inmates may demand only a "minimal civilized measure of shelter" (Union County Jail Inmates v. DiBuono, 713 F.2d 984 [3d Cir. 1983]).

Generally, courts follow three basic principles when deciding whether to recognize a particular right. First, an inmate necessarily gives up many rights and privileges enjoyed by the rest of society; second, an inmate does not relinquish all constitutional rights upon placement in prison; and third, the constitutional rights retained by the prison inmate must be balanced against the security concerns of the prison. The established rights of prison inmates include freedom of speech and religion; freedom from arbitrary punishment (i.e., restraints, solitary confinement) on the sole basis of beliefs, religion, or racial and ethnic origin; freedom from constant physical restraints; a small amount of space for physical movement; essentials for personal hygiene and opportunity to wash; clean bedding; adequate clothing; adequate heating, cooling, ventilation, and light; and adequate nutrition. Prisoners' rights can be infringed for security purposes. Prisoners have the right to freedom of speech, but prison officials may search their mail, deny a wide variety of reading materials, and edit the content of prison newspapers. Prisoners have the right to adequate space, but they may be confined in isolation for long periods, even years.

Prisoners have the right to freedom from restraints, but their ankles and wrists may be shackled when they are moved. They may also be temporarily strapped down or otherwise restrained if officials believe that they present a danger. Prison inmates often attempt to establish new rights in court. Issues connected to prison overcrowding, medical treatment, media access, even exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke, are among those faced by courts. Another sensitive issue in prison is the use of prison guards of the opposite sex. Women prisoners may receive more privacy in this regard than men prisoners. For example, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in 1985 that the practice of assigning female guards to conduct strip searches on nude men and watch them while showering, urinating, and defecating did not violate any constitutional rights (Grummett v. Rushen, 779 F.2d 491 [1985]). However, in 1993, the same court held that it was cruel and unusual punishment to allow male guards to conduct searches on female prisoners while the female prisoners were clothed (Jordan v. Gardner, 986 F.2d 1521 [9th Cir.

1993]). Prisoners retain some rights aside from those concerning living conditions. Most prisons "classify" prisoners and place them in various units according to the categories. For example, violent criminals and persons suspected of gang affiliations are often housed in high-security areas of prison, separate from the remaining prison population. When an inmate is reclassified, he or she is entitled to notice of the reclassification and a citation of reasons for the move. Congress and most states authorize the allowance of "good time" for prison inmates. Good time is credit for time served on good behavior, and it is used to reduce sentence length. For example, an inmate may receive one day of good time credit for every three days that he behaves well. Other states withhold recognition of good behavior until the defendant has served a certain portion of the minimum sentence imposed by the court. In New Hampshire, for example, an inmate may be released for good behavior after serving two-thirds of the minimum sentence (N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 651-A:12 [1983]).

When an inmate has good time credits taken away, she or he is entitled to notice, a hearing before the prison board, and an opportunity to present evidence in her or his favor. Inmates may also gain early release from prison through parole, which is granted by the parole board. Prisoners have no right to parole, and the matter of early release is left to the graces of the parole board. Once released on parole, a parolee may be returned to prison for breaking one of many conditions that are normally imposed. A parolee has no right to an attorney at a parole revocation hearing, nor does an inmate have the right to an attorney at a parole hearing. Solitary confinement is used in many prisons for violent inmates and those inmates perceived as having gang-related affiliations. Some prisons are designed specifically for it. The original prisons, as envisioned by the Quakers, called for solitary confinement, but the practice was halted because of the detrimental effects it had on prisoners. However, the practice never completely ended. In the 1980s, solitary confinement became a regular feature of prisons, and it has become the sole form of incarceration in so-called Security Housing Units or Supermax prisons.

In a Supermax prison, the cells are eight-by-ten feet and windowless. The cells are grouped in "pods." The cell doors are perforated with holes large enough for guards to see inside the cell, but small enough to obstruct the prisoner's vision and light. All a prisoner can see through the door is another white wall. Each cell is furnished with a built-in bunk with a toilet-sink unit. Nothing is allowed on the walls. Prisoners may be allowed television, radio, and books, but these are taken away as punishment for any rule infractions. Prisoners in solitary confinement are kept in their cells, under surveillance, for 22.5 hours a day. Unlike the rest of the prison population, inmates in solitary confinement may not take advantage of educational or recreational programs. The 90 minutes outside the cell may be divided between visiting a small library, washing, and exercising in a pen connected to the pod. Prisoners are strip-searched by the guards before and after visiting any place and are placed in waist restraints and handcuffs when being escorted. The assignment of a prisoner to solitary confinement is made by prison officials.

With regard to assigning supposed gang members to solitary confinement, it is the policy in some prisons to require that the perceived gang member "debrief" officials on his or her gang activity and renounce his or her gang affiliations before being released back into the general population. One of the most important rights possessed by prison inmates is access to the courts through habeas corpus petitions. After an inmate has exhausted all the motions and appeals available to contest the conviction and prison sentence, a final round of limited judicial review is provided through the writ of habeas corpus. Through the ancient writ of habeas corpus, a court may order the release of a prisoner wrongly held. Habeas corpus petitions are granted only for certain constitutional violations in the prosecution of a criminal defendant. The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2261 et seq., placed strict limits on this form of relief by directing federal judges to conduct habeas petition reviews according to this law.

Under the act, a federal judge may not grant habeas relief on any claim adjudicated on the merits in state court unless the adjudication resulted in a decision that was contrary to or involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law, as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since a state court is unlikely to defy a general principle of constitutional law that the Supreme Court has clearly established, this review provides a few opportunities for a federal judge to examine and determine constitutional law. Relief may be granted if the state court's judgment is based upon an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence. An application of law to facts is unreasonable only when it can be said that reasonable jurists considering the question would be of one view that the state court's ruling was incorrect. If the prisoner fails to develop all the facts in state court supporting the claim, the prisoner will not be allowed to develop any new facts in federal court. Under the 1996 law, a federal court cannot award relief on the basis of any claim that was previously decided against the prisoner by a state court. This directive must be followed even though the federal court concludes that the state court decision was erroneous and that the prisoner's federal constitutional rights have been violated.

further readings Bennett, Steven C. 1983. "The Privacy and Procedural Due Process Rights of Hunger Striking Prisoners." New York University Law Review 58. Carter, Rubin "Hurricane." 1995. "Death Penalty Symposium Keynote Address." Santa Clara Law Review 35. Miller, Nan D. 1995. "International Protection of Prisoners: Is Solitary Confinement in the United States a Violation of International Standards?" California Western International Law Journal 26. New Hampshire Department of Corrections. 1994. Biennial Report for the Biennium Ending June 30, 1994. Pillsbury, Samuel H. 1982. "Creatures, Persons, and Prisoners: Evaluating Prison Conditions Under the Eighth Amendment." Southern California Law Review 55. Potts, Jeff. 1993. "American Penal Institutions and Two Alternative Proposals for Punishment." South Texas Law Review 34. Sowle, Stephen D. 1995. "A Regime of Social Death: Criminal Punishment in the Age of Prisons." New York University Review of Law and Social Change 21.

Tachiki, Scott N. 1995. "Indeterminate Sentences in Supermax Prisons Based upon Alleged Gang Affiliations: A Reexamination of Procedural Protection and a Proposal for Greater Procedural Requirements." California Law Review 83. Willens, Jonathan A. 1987. "Structure, Content and the Exigencies of War: American Prison Law After Twenty-five Years 1962–1987." American University Law Review 37. cross-references Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA BIBLIOGRAPHY The prison, which would become a dominant correctional strategy in Western societies, emerged in the late 1700s. Throughout its history, the prison has been used in attempts to achieve various goals of criminal sanctioning: retribution, incapacitation, general and specific deterrence, and rehabilitation. No one theory can account for the historical development and evolution of the prison. Michael Welch, a highly regarded criminologist, makes the observation that correctional ideologies, policies, and practices cannot be understood outside the political, economic, religious, and technological forces that shape them.

HISTORY OF THE PRISON Forerunners of the more sophisticated models of the prison were workhouses and houses of correction that emerged in western Europe . In the eighteenth century, when European societies were experiencing a dramatic population shift to urban areas due to the breakdown of the feudal order and the Industrial Revolution , these institutions became a mechanism for managing the growing numbers of an urban underclass. The expressed objective of workhouses and houses of correction was to provide vocational training and to instill a work ethic among inmates. However, these institutions functioned more effectively to remove “undesirables” from the community and, most importantly, to provide a cheap source of labor to private industry. The United States is credited with being most influential in the development and proliferation of the modern prison. A wing of the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia (1790–1835) was the first penitentiary. Influenced by the religious ideology of the Pennsylvania Quakers, the penitentiary was designed for the solitary confinement of criminal offenders, a place where they would repent for their sins without the contaminating influences of other prisoners or the community.

These objectives were the foundation for the design of the Western State Penitentiary in Pittsburgh and the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, opened in 1826 and 1829, respectively. Because it was believed that work would interfere with inmates’ penitence, inmate work was not originally planned or desired by the founders of the penitentiary. However, individual handicraft work (e.g., weaving, woodcarving, leather tooling) was introduced later to ameliorate the negative consequences of solitary confinement and idleness. During the development of the Pennsylvania system, an alternative prison model, the Auburn system, emerged in New York . The Auburn Prison opened in Auburn, New York, in 1817. The Auburn model incorporated a silent congregate work system, ostensibly through which inmates would learn vocational skills and be instilled with the work ethic. In complete silence, inmates would work in factory-like settings during the day, and return to their cells at night. The goal of the silent system was to prevent the spread of criminogenic values and influences among inmates. Order was maintained through a quasi-militaristic regimen, such as lockstep marching and harsh punishments for rule infractions.

The Auburn system proliferated in the United States at the same time that western European societies modeled their prisons after the Pennsylvania system. Whereas Europeans were compelled by rehabilitative ideals and what they saw as more humane treatment of inmates, the United States was motivated by the low operating costs and profits generated by cheap inmate labor sold to private industry. Fortresslike industrial factory prisons dominated the penal landscape in the United States until the early twentieth century, when laws were passed, prompted largely by skyrocketing unemployment in the private sector during the Great Depression , restricting prison industry to the manufacture of instate public-use goods. The result of the demise of prison industry was an idle inmate population in which discipline and control, rather than production and vocational rehabilitation, became the primary objective of the prison. A radical turn in the objectives and nature of the prison in the United States emerged following World War II (1939–1945) with the emergence and dominance of correctional institutions. The expressed goal of correctional institutions was the treatment and rehabilitation of inmates. Therapeutic professionals, including physicians, psychologists, educators, and social workers, were charged with diagnosing and treating inmates based on individual needs.

Under indeterminate sentencing strategies, parole boards were given more discretionary power to release inmates once they were deemed to be rehabilitated. The ideals of the correctional system began to unravel in the 1960s, in part due to overcrowding, lack of funding, and a turbulent period of unrest associated with the prisoner rights movement. Despite these systemic circumstances, a neoconservative political climate that exaggerated the failings of the rehabilitation model was successful in garnering public support for a “get tough” approach to crime. The momentum of the movement became most evident in the 1980s when the United States embarked on an “imprisonment binge.” Within a decade, both the prison population and rate of incarceration more than doubled as a result of the proliferation of new federal and state prisons. This trend of expansion continued through the 1990s with the rate of incarceration reaching 491 per 100,000 U.S. citizens in 2005 compared to 139 in 1980. Longer, determinate sentences contributed to this growth, but no single factor is more responsible than the concentration on the arrest and incarceration of illegal drug offenders.

Between 1985 and 1995, over 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population was due to illegal drug offenses. In 1985, 34 percent of prisoners were incarcerated for drug offenses; by 1995 the proportion was 60 percent. As the state prison populations tripled in the late 1900s, the proportion of inmates incarcerated for drug offenses grew from 9 percent in 1986 to 23 percent by 1995. IMPACT ON WOMEN AND MINORITIES The crackdown on drugs had a disproportionate impact on women and minorities, particularly African Americans. There were almost eight times as many female prisoners in 2003 as there were in 1980, and the primary reason for the growth was drug offenses. Similarly, illegal drug offenses contributed to a much greater extent to the growth of the African American prison population in the latter twentieth century compared to the growth for whites and Hispanics. Welch points out that “African Americans represent 12 percent of the U.S.

population, 13 percent of drug users, 35 percent of the arrests for drug possession, 55 percent of convictions for drug possession, and 74 percent of the prison sentences for drug convictions” (2004, p. 439). PERSPECTIVES ON THE PRISON The ideals and functions of the prison can be viewed from three broad and competing perspectives: conservative, liberal, and critical. From the conservative perspective, the threat of imprisonment is believed to deter would-be offenders from committing crimes (general deterrence), while the purpose of prisons is to protect society from those who are not deterred (incapacitation), and through this punishment, deter convicted offenders from repeating crimes (specific deterrence). The conservative ideology is based on a fundamental belief that criminal offenders are driven by the choice to engage in criminal behavior and that crime can be controlled through the threat of punishment and the incapacitation of those who are not deterred. From the liberal perspective, a criminal offense is seen as a result of forces—biological, psychological, or socioen vironmental—that influence the behavior.

This perspective upholds the rehabilitative ideal that prisons should function to treat and rehabilitate offenders in order that they ultimately may be reintegrated into free society. Under the liberal perspective, scientific inquiry into the etiology of criminal behavior will reveal its underlying causes, and correctional rehabilitation is ideally guided by those etiological factors. From the critical perspective, the criminal justice system is considered a means of social control that is used by the powerful class over the less powerful. Consistent with Karl Marx ’s (1818–1883) writings, criminal behavior is primarily the consequence of the economic order and politics in society. The criminal justice system and prisons, in particular, function to control an economically marginalized population, also defined as a surplus labor pool. Critical criminologists point to historical trends across societies in which correctional populations swell in times of abundant free-market labor and shrink in times of labor shortages. In his compelling book, The Warehouse Prison (2005), John Irwin adopts a critical perspective to describe the economic conditions and resulting marginalized population that spawned the prison expansion in the United States in the late twentieth century.

While the prison remains a dominant strategy aimed at controlling crime and punishing offenders in Western societies, there is a great deal of doubt among scholars that it is an effective strategy beyond retribution and incapaci-tation. The high recidivism rate of ex-inmates points to the general failure of imprisonment to deter or rehabilitate and, further, may promote a higher level of criminality among those released. With over 90 percent of inmates ultimately returning to free society, this is, or should be, a central concern for social reform. Prison abolitionists advocate radical reform in the use of incarceration. Vocal prison abolitionists span both ends of the political spectrum. Pointing to the failure of the prison system to reform or deter, and to the swelling prison population, as well as to the evidence and claims that current practices are racist and classist, abolitionists promote expanded and widespread use of alternatives to incarceration for most offenses and support the decriminalization of certain behaviors, such as drug offenses. With the entrenchment of the prison as a primary means of criminal sanctioning, along with the recent privatization of prisons and of corrections, in general, the abolitionists face powerful ideological and economic barriers.

SEE ALSO African Americans; Crime and Criminology; Davis, Angela; Deterrence; Drug Traffic; Imprisonment; Law; Punishment; Racism BIBLIOGRAPHY Irwin, John. 2005. The Warehouse Prison: Disposal of the New Dangerous Class. Los Angeles: Roxbury. Scalia, John. 2001. Federal Drug Offenders, 1999 with Trends 1984–99. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Shichor, David. 2006. The Meaning and Nature of Punishment. Long Grove, IL: Waveland. Welch, Michael. 2004. Corrections: A Critical Approach. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Douglas L. Kuck prisoner St Dismas , St Leonard , and St Roch are the patron saints of prisoners.

Prisoner of Chillon the anti-Savoyard Genevan patriot François Bonivard (1493–1570), who was imprisoned for 6 years in the castle of Chillon; he was the subject of a poem by Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon, published in 1816. prisoner's dilemma in game theory, a situation in which two players each have two options whose outcome depends crucially on the simultaneous choice made by the other, often formulated in terms of two prisoners separately deciding whether to confess to a crime. prisoner's friend in the armed services, an officer who represents a defendant at a court martial; the term is recorded from the early 20th century. take no prisoners be ruthlessly aggressive or uncompromising in the pursuit of one's objectives. (The origin is military, implying that enemies were to be killed rather than captured.) Lonely Planet Travel Guides and Travel Information The fifth republic & yesterday's man Prehistoric people Neanderthals were the first people to live in France.

Out and about during the Middle Palaeolithic period (about 90, 000–40, 000 BC), these early Homo sapiens hunted animals, made crude flake-stone tools and lived in caves. In the late 19th century Neanderthal skeletons were found in caves at Le Bugue in the Vézère Valley in Dordogne . Cro-Magnons, a taller Homo sapiens variety who notched up 1.7m on the height chart, followed 35, 000 years ago. These people had larger brains than their ancestors, long and narrow skulls, and short, wide faces. Their hands were nimble, and with the aid of improved tools they hunted reindeer, bison, horses and mammoths to eat. They played music, danced and had fairly complex social patterns. You can view archaeological treasures from this period in Strasbourg . Cro-Magnons were also artists.

A tour of Grotte de Lascaux II – a replica of the Lascaux cave where one of the world’s best examples of Cro-Magnon drawings were found in 1940 – demonstrates how initial simplistic drawings and engravings of animals gradually became more detailed and realistic. Dubbed ‘Périgord’s Sistine Chapel’, the Lascaux cave is one of 25 known decorated caves in Dordogne ’s Vézère Valley, the prehistory of which is covered in Les Eyzies de Tayac’s Musée National de Préhistoire. The Neolithic period (about 7500 to 4000 years ago), alias the New Stone Age, produced France’s incredible collection of menhirs and dolmens: the Morbihan Coast in Brittany is an ode to megalithic monuments. During this era, warmer weather caused great changes in flora and fauna, and ushered in farming and stock rearing. Cereals, peas, beans and lentils were grown, and villages were settled. Decorated pottery, woven fabrics and polished stone tools became commonplace household items.

^ Back to top Gauls & Romans The Celtic Gauls moved into the region between 1500 and 500 BC, establishing trading links by about 600 BC with the Greeks, whose colonies included Massilia ( Marseille ) on the Mediterranean coast. About 300 years later the Celtic Parisii tribe built a few wattle and daub huts on what is now Paris ’ Île de la Cité. It was from Wissant in far northern France that Julius Caesar launched his invasion of Britain in 55 BC. Centuries of conflict between the Gauls and Romans ended in 52 BC when Caesar’s legions crushed a revolt led by Gallic chief Vercingétorix in Gergovia, near present-day Clermont-Ferrand. See Vercingétorix on Clermont-Ferrand’s place de la Jaude and Caesar in action on the façade of the Roman triumphal arch in Orange.

The subsequent period gave rise to magnificent baths, temples, aqueducts like the Pont du Gard and other splendid public buildings: stand like a plebeian or sit like a Roman patrician in awe-inspiring theatres and amphitheatres at Autun, Lyon , Vienne, Arles and Orange. Lyon also has an excellent Gallo-Roman civilisation museum. In the Dordogne , Périgueux’s 1st-century Roman amphitheatre was dismantled in the 3rd century and its stones used to build the city walls. The town’s stunningly contemporary Vesunna Musée Gallo-Romain is a feast tobehold. France remained under Roman rule until the 5th century, when the Franks (hence the name ‘France’) and the Alemanii overran the country from the east. These peoples adopted important elements of Gallo-Roman civilisation (including Christianity) and their eventual assimilation resulted in a fusion of Germanic culture with that of the Celts and the Romans.

^ Back to top Dynasty The Frankish Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties ruled from the 5th to the 10th centuries, with the Carolingians wielding power from Laon in northern France. The Frankish tradition, by which the king was succeeded by all of his sons, led to power struggles and the eventual disintegration of the kingdom into a collection of small feudal states. In Poitiers in 732 Charles Martel defeated the Moors, thus preventing France from falling under Muslim rule as Spain had done. Martel’s grandson, Charlemagne (742–814), extended the boundaries of the kingdom and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor (Emperor of the West) in 800. But during the 9th century, Scandinavian Vikings (also called Norsemen, thus Normans) raided France’s western coast, settling in the lower Seine Valley and forming the duchy of Normandy a century later. With the crowning of Hugh Capet as king in 987, the Capetian dynasty was born.

The king’s then-modest domain – a parcel of land around Paris and Orléans – was hardly indicative of a dynasty that would rule one of Europe ’s most powerful countries for the next 800 years. The tale of how William the Conqueror and his Norman forces occupied England in 1066 (making Normandy and, later, Plantagenet-ruled England formidable rivals of the kingdom of France) is told on the Bayeux Tapestry, showcased inside Bayeux ’s Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux . In 1152 Eleanor of Aquitaine wed Henry of Anjou, bringing a further third of France under the control of the English crown. The subsequent rivalry between France and England for control of Aquitaine and the vast English territories in France lasted three centuries. In Clermont-Ferrand in 1095 Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade, prompting France to play a leading role in the Crusades and giving rise to some splendid cathedrals – Reims , Strasbourg , Metz and Chartres among them – between the 12th and 14th centuries.

In 1309 French-born Pope Clement V moved the papal headquarters from Rome to Avignon , with Avignon ’s third pope Benoît XII (1334–42) starting work on the resplendent Palais des Papes. The Holy See remained in the Provençal city until 1377. ^ Back to top The Hundred Years’ War Incessant struggles between the Capetians and England ’s King Edward III (a Plantagenet) over the powerful French throne degenerated into the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). The French suffered particularly nasty defeats at Crécy and Agincourt (home to a great multimedia battle museum). Abbey-studded Mont St-Michel was the only place in northern and western France not to fall into English hands. Five years later, the dukes of Burgundy (allied with the English) occupied Paris and in 1422 John Plantagenet, duke of Bedford, was made regent of France for England ’s King Henry VI, then an infant. Less than a decade later he was crowned king of France at Paris ’ Notre Dame.

Luckily for the French, a 17-year-old virginal warrior called Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) came along; her tale is told at Orléans’ Maison de Jeanne d’Arc. At Château de Chinon in 1429, she persuaded French legitimist Charles VII that she had a divine mission from God to expel the English from France and bring about Charles’ coronation in Reims . Convicted of witchcraft and heresy by a tribunal of French ecclesiastics following her capture by the Burgundians and subsequent sale to the English in 1430, Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431: one tower of the castle where the teenager was imprisoned and the square where she was burned as a witch remain. Charles VII returned to Paris in 1437, but it wasn’t until 1453 that the English were driven from French territory (with the exception of Calais ). At Château de Langeais in 1491, Charles VIII wed Anne de Bretagne, marking the unification of independent Brittany with France.

^ Back to top Renaissance to Reformation With the arrival of Italian Renaissance culture during the reign of François I (r 1515–47), the focus shifted to the Loire Valley . Italian artists decorated royal castles in Amboise , Blois , Chambord and Chaumont, with Leonardo da Vinci making Le Clos Lucé in Amboise his home from 1516 until his death. Artist and architect disciples of Michelangelo and Raphael were influential, as were writers such as Rabelais, Marot and Ronsard. Renaissance ideas of scientific and geographic scholarship and discovery assumed a new importance, as did the value of secular over religious life. The Reformation swept through Europe in the 1530s, the ideas of Jean (John) Calvin (1509–64) – a Frenchman born in Noyon (Picardie) but exiled to Geneva – strengthening it in France.

Following the Edict of Jan (1562), which afforded the Protestants certain rights, the Wars of Religion (1562–98) broke out between the Huguenots (French Protestants who received help from the English), the Catholic League (led by the House of Guise) and the Catholic monarchy. In 1588 the Catholic League forced Henri III (r 1574–89) to flee the royal court at the Louvre and the next year the monarch was assassinated. Henri IV (r 1589–1610) kicked off the Bourbon dynasty, issuing the controversial Edict of Nantes (1598) to guarantee the Huguenots many civil and political rights, notably freedom of conscience. Ultra-Catholic Paris refused to allow the new Protestant king entry to the city, and a siege of the capital continued for almost five years. Only when Henri IV embraced Catholicism at the cathedral in St-Denis did the capital submit to him.

Throughout most of his undistinguished reign, Fontainebleau -born Louis XIII (r 1610–43) remained firmly under the thumb of his ruthless chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, best known for his untiring efforts to establish an all-powerful monarchy in France and French supremacy in Europe . ^ Back to top The Sun King At the tender age of five, le Roi Soleil (the Sun King) ascended the throne as Louis XIV (r 1643–1715). Bolstered by claims of divine right, he involved France in a rash of wars that gained it territory but terrified its neighbours and nearly bankrupted the treasury. At home, he quashed the ambitious, feuding aristocracy and created the first centralised French state. In Versailles , 23km southwest of Paris , Louis XIV built an extravagant palace and made his courtiers compete with each other for royal favour, reducing them to ineffectual sycophants. In 1685 he revoked the Edict of Nantes .

Grandson Louis XV (r 1715–74) was an oafish buffoon whose regent, the duke of Orléans, shifted the royal court back to Paris . As the 18th century progressed, the ancien régime (old order) became increasingly at odds with the needs of the country. Enlightened anti-establishment and anticlerical ideas expressed by Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu further threatened the royal regime. The Seven Years’ War (1756–63), fought by France and Austria against Britain and Prussia, was one of a series of ruinous wars pursued by Louis XV, leading to the loss of France’s flourishing colonies in Canada , the West Indies and India to the British. The war cost a fortune and, even more ruinous for the monarchy, it helped to disseminate in France the radical democratic ideas that had been thrust onto the world stage by the American Revolution. ^ Back to top Revolution to Republic Social and economic crises marked the 18th century.

With the aim of warding off popular discontent, Louis XVI called a meeting of the États Généraux (Estates General) in 1789, made up of representatives of the nobility (First Estate), clergy (Second Estate) and the remaining 90% of the population (Third Estate). When the Third Estate’s call for a system of proportional voting failed, it proclaimed itself a National Assembly and demanded a constitution. On the streets, a Parisian mob took the matter into its own hands by raiding the Invalides for weapons and storming the prison at Bastille (now a very busy roundabout). Said to be something of a clueless idiot, Louis XVI is reckoned to have written ‘rien’ (nothing happened) in his diary that day. France was declared a constitutional monarchy and reforms enacted. But as the new government armed itself against the threat posed by Austria , Prussia and the many exiled French nobles, patriotism and nationalism mixed with revolutionary fervour. Before long, the moderate republican Girondins lost power to the radical Jacobins led by Robespierre, Danton and Marat, and in September 1792 France’s First Republic was declared.

Louis XVI was publicly guillotined in January 1793 on Paris ’ place de la Concorde and the head of his queen, the vilified Marie-Antoinette, rolled several months later. The terrifying Reign of Terror between September 1793 and July 1794 saw religious freedoms revoked, churches closed, cathedrals turned into ‘Temples of Reason’ and thousands incarcerated in dungeons in Paris ’ Conciergerie before being beheaded. Afterwards, a five-man delegation of moderate republicans led by Paul Barras set itself up as a Directoire (Directory) to rule the Republic – until a dashing young Corsican general named Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) came along. ^ Back to top Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte’s skills and military tactics quickly turned him into an independent political force and in 1799 he overthrew the Directory and assumed power as consul of the First Empire. A referendum in 1802 declared him consul for life, his birthday became a national holiday and in 1804 he was crowned emperor of the French by Pope Pius VII at Paris ’ Notre Dame.

Two years on he commissioned the world’s largest triumphal arch to be built. To consolidate and legitimise his authority, Napoleon waged several wars in which France gained control of most of Europe . In 1812 his troops captured Moscow , only to be killed off by the brutal Russian winter. Two years later, Allied armies entered Paris , exiled Napoleon to Elba and restored the House of Bourbon to the French throne at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15). But in 1815 Napoleon escaped from the Mediterranean island-kingdom, landed at Golfe Juan in southern France and marched north, triumphantly entering Paris on 20 May. His glorious ‘Hundred Days’ back in power ended with the Battle of Waterloo and his return to exile (to the South Atlantic island of St Helena, where he died in 1821). In 1840 his remains were moved to Paris ’ Église du Dôme.

^ Back to top Second Republic to Second Empire A struggle between extreme monarchists seeking a return to the ancien régime, people who saw the changes wrought by the Revolution as irreversible, and the radicals of the poor working-class neighbourhoods of Paris dominated the reign of Louis XVIII (r 1815–24). Charles X (r 1824–30) responded to the conflict with ineptitude and was overthrown in the so-called July Revolution of 1830. Those who were killed in the accompanying Paris street battles are buried in vaults under the Colonne de Juillet in the centre of place de la Bastille. Louis-Philippe (r 1830–48), a constitutional monarch of bourgeois sympathies, was subsequently chosen as ruler by parliament, only to be ousted by the 1848 Revolution. The Second Republic was established and elections brought in Napoleon’s almost useless nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, as president. But in 1851 Louis Napoleon led a coup d’état and proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III of the Second Empire (1852–70). France enjoyed significant economic growth at this time.

Paris was transformed under urban planner Baron Haussmann (1809–91), who created the 12 huge boulevards radiating from the Arc de Triomphe. Napoleon III threw glittering parties at the royal palace in Compiègne, and breathed in fashionable sea air at Biarritz and Deauville. Like his uncle, Napoleon III embroiled France in various catastrophic conflicts, including the Crimean War (1853–56) and the humiliating Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), which ended with Prussia taking the emperor prisoner. Upon hearing the news, defiant and very hungry Parisian masses took to the streets demanding a republic. The Wall of the Federalists in Paris ’ Cimetière du Père Lachaise serves as a deathly reminder of the subsequent bloodshed. ^ Back to top A beautiful age There was nothing beautiful about the start of the Third Republic. Born as a provisional government of national defence in September 1870, it was quickly besieged by the Prussians who laid siege to Paris and demanded National Assembly elections be held.

Unfortunately, the first move made by the resultant monarchist-controlled assembly was to ratify the Treaty of Frankfurt (1871), the harsh terms of which – a five-billion-franc war indemnity and surrender of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine – prompted immediate revolt. During the Semaine Sanglante (Bloody Week), several thousand rebel Communards (supporters of the hard-core insurgent Paris Commune) were killed and a further 20, 000 or so executed. Despite this bloody start, the Third Republic ushered in the glittering belle époque (beautiful age), with Art Nouveau architecture, a whole field of artistic ‘isms’ from impressionism onwards, and advances in science and engineering, including the construction of the first metro line in Paris . World Exhibitions were held in the capital in 1889 (showcased by the Eiffel Tower) and again in 1901 in the purpose-built Petit Palais. Bohemian Paris , with its nightclubs and artistic cafés, was conceived around this time.

Colonial rivalry between France and Britain in Africa ended in 1904 with the Entente Cordiale (literally ‘Cordial Understanding’), marking the start of a cooperation that has continued, more or less, to this day. ^ Back to top The Great War A trip to the Somme or Verdun battlefields goes some way to revealing the unimaginable human cost of WWI. Of the eight million French men called to arms, 1.3 million were killed and almost one million crippled. Much of the war took place in northeastern France, with trench warfare using thousands of soldiers as cannon fodder to gain a few metres of territory. Central to France’s entry into war against Austria - Hungary and Germany had been its desire to regain Alsace and Lorraine, lost to Germany in 1871. The Great War officially ended in November 1918 with Germany and the Allies signing an armistice in a clearing near Compiègne.

But the details were not finalised until 1919 when the so-called ‘big four’ – French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Italian Premier Vittorio Orlando and US President Woodrow Wilson – gathered in the Palace of Versailles to sign the Treaty of Versailles . Its harsh terms included the return of Alsace -Lorraine to France and a reparations bill of US$33 billion for Germany . WWI caused industrial production to drop by 40% and threw France into financial crisis. Yet somehow Paris still sparkled as the centre of the avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s, with artists pushing into the new fields of cubism and surrealism, Le Corbusier rewriting the architectural textbook, foreign writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald being attracted by the liberal atmosphere of Paris , and nightlife establishing a cutting-edge reputation for everything from jazz to striptease. In 1922 the luxurious Train Bleu (Blue Train) made its first run from Calais , via Paris , to the Côte d’Azur .

^ Back to top WWII The naming of Adolf Hitler as Germany ’s chancellor in 1933 signalled the end of a decade of compromise between France and Germany . Initially the French tried to appease Hitler, but two days after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, France joined Britain in declaring war on Germany . By June 1940 France had capitulated. The British expeditionary force sent to help the French barely managed to avoid capture by retreating to Dunkirk and crossing the English Channel in small boats. The Maginot Line had proved useless, with German armoured divisions outflanking it by going through Belgium . Germany divided France into a zone under direct German occupation (in the north and along the western coast) and a puppet state led by ageing WWI hero General Pétain in the spa town of Vichy; the demarcation line between the two ran through Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley . Life in the Nazi-occupied north is examined at La Coupole, a WWII museum inside a subterranean Nazi-built rocket-launch site.

The Vichy regime was viciously anti-Semitic, and local police proved very helpful to the Nazis in rounding up French Jews and others for deportation to Auschwitz and other death camps. Museums in Grenoble and Lyon , among others, examine these deportations. The only Nazi concentration camp on French soil was Natzweiler-Struthof; it can be visited. An 80km-long stretch of beach and Bayeux ’s Musée Mémorial 1944 Bataille de Normandie tell the tale of the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 when 100, 000-plus Allied troops stormed the coastline to liberate most of Normandy and Brittany . Paris was liberated on 25 August by a force spearheaded by Free French units, sent in ahead of the Americans, so the French would have the honour of liberating their own capital. The US general’s war room in Reims , where Nazi Germany officially capitulated in May 1945, is open to the public. ^ Back to top Postwar devastation France was ruined.

Over one-third of industrial production fed the German war machine during WWII, the occupiers requisitioning practically everything that wasn’t (and was) nailed down: ferrous and nonferrous metals, statues, iron grills, zinc bar tops, coal, leather, textiles and chemicals. Agriculture, strangled by the lack of raw materials, fell by 25%. In their retreat, the Germans burned bridges (2600 destroyed) and the Allied bombardments tore up railroad tracks (40, 000km). The roadways hadn’t been maintained since 1939, ports were damaged, and nearly half a million buildings and 60, 000 factories were destroyed. The French had to pay for the needs of the occupying soldiers to the tune of 400 million francs a day, prompting an inflation riptide. France’s humiliation at the hands of the Germans was not lost on its restive colonies. As the war economy tightened its grip, the native-born people, poorer to begin with, noticed that they were bearing the brunt of the pain.

In North Africa, the Algerians coalesced around a movement for greater autonomy that blossomed into a full-scale independence movement by the end of the war. The Japanese moved into strategically important Indochina in 1940. The Vietnamese resistance movement that developed quickly took on an anti-French, nationalistic tone, setting the stage for Vietnam ’s eventual independence. ^ Back to top The Fourth Republic & post-war prosperity After the liberation, General Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) – France’s undersecretary of war who had fled Paris for London in 1940 after France capitulated – faced the tricky task of setting up a viable government. Elections on 21 October 1945 created a national assembly composed largely of pro-resistant communists. De Gaulle was appointed head of the government, but quickly sensed that the tide was turning against his idea of a strong presidency and in January 1946 he resigned. The magnitude of France’s post-war economic devastation required a strong central government with broad powers to rebuild its industrial and commercial base. Soon after the liberation, most banks, insurance companies, car manufacturers and energy-producing companies passed into the hands of the government.

Other businesses remained in private hands, the objective being to combine the efficiency of state planning with the dynamism of private initiative. But progress was slow. By 1947 rationing remained and France was forced to turn to the USA for loans as part of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe . One of the aims of the Marshall Plan was to financially and politically stabilise post-war Europe , thus thwarting the expansion of Soviet power. As the Iron Curtain fell over Eastern Europe, the pro-Stalinist bent of the Communist Party put it in a politically untenable position. Seeking at once to exercise power within the government and at the same time oppose its measures as insufficiently Marxist, the communists found themselves on the losing end of disputes involving the colonies, workers’ demands and American aid. In 1947 they were booted out of government. While the Communist Party fulminated against the ‘imperialism’ of American power, de Gaulle founded a new party, the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), which argued for the containment of Soviet power. In 1949 France signed the Atlantic Pact uniting North America and Western Europe in a mutual defence alliance (NATO).

The fear of communism and a resurgent Germany prompted the first steps towards European integration with the birth of the Council of Europe in 1949, the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and military accords in 1954. The economy gathered steam in the 1950s. The French government invested in hydroelectric and nuclear power plants, oil and gas explor­ation, petrochemical refineries, steel production, naval construction, auto factories, and building construction to accommodate a baby boom and consumer goods. ^ Back to top War in the colonies The 1950s spelled the end of French colonialism. When Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, nationalist Ho Chi Minh launched a push for an autonomous Vietnam that became a drive for independence. Under the brilliant General Giap, the Vietnamese perfected a form of guerrilla warfare that proved highly effective against the French army. After their defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the French withdrew from Indochina. The struggle for Algerian independence was nastier. Technically a French département, Algeria was in effect ruled by a million or so French settlers who wished at all costs to protect their privileges.

Heads stuck firmly in the Saharan sands (especially in the south where the oil was), the colonial community and their supporters in the army and the right wing refused all Algerian demands for political and economic equality. The Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) was brutal. Nationalist rebel attacks were met with summary executions, inquisitions, torture and massacres that only made Algerians more determined to gain their independence. The government responded with half-hearted reform and reorganisation programmes that failed to address the fact that most people didn’t want to be part of France. International pressure on France to pull out of Algeria came from the UN, the USSR and the USA , while pieds noirs (literally ‘black feet’, as Algerian-born French people are known in France), elements of the military and extreme right-wingers became increasingly enraged at what they saw as defeatism in dealing with the problem. A plot to overthrow the French government and replace it with a military-style regime was narrowly avoided when de Gaulle agreed to assume the presidency in 1958.

The Fifth Republic & Yesterday’s Man While it could claim to have successfully reconstructed the economy and created political stability, the Fourth Republic was hampered by a weak presidential branch and the debilitating situation in Algeria . De Gaulle remedied the first problem by drafting a new constitution (the Fifth Republic), which gave considerable powers to the president at the expense of the National Assembly. Algeria was a greater problem. De Gaulle’s initial attempts at reform – according the Algerians political equality and recognising their right in principle to self-determination – only infuriated right-wingers without quenching the Algerian thirst for independence. Following a failed coup attempt by military officers in 1961, the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS; a group of French settlers and sympathisers opposed to Algerian independence) resorted to terrorism. It tried to assassinate de Gaulle several times and in 1961 violence broke out on the streets of Paris . Police violently attacked Algerian demonstrators, murdering more than 100 people.

In 1962 de Gaulle negotiated an end to war in Algeria with the lakeside signing of the Accord d’Évian (Evian Accord) in Évian-les-Bains. By the late 1960s de Gaulle was appearing more and more like yesterday’s man. Loss of the colonies, a surge in immigration and the rise in unemployment had weakened his government. De Gaulle’s government by decree was starting to gall the anti-authoritarian baby-boomer generation, now at university and agitating for social change. Students reading Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich found much to admire in Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the black struggle for civil rights in America , and vociferously denounced the American war in Vietnam . Student protests of 1968 climaxed with a brutal overreaction by police to a protest meeting at Paris ’ most renowned university. Overnight, public opinion turned in favour of the students, while the students themselves occupied the Sorbonne and erected barricades in the Latin Quarter. Within days, a general strike by 10 million workers countrywide paralysed France. But such comradeship between worker and student did not last long.

While the former wanted a greater share of the consumer market, the latter wanted to destroy it. After much hesitancy, de Gaulle took advantage of this division by appealing to people’s fear of anarchy. Just as the country seemed on the brink of revolution and an overthrow of the Fifth Republic, stability returned. The government immediately decentralised the higher education system and followed through in the 1970s with a wave of other reforms (lowering the voting age to 18, instituting an abortion law and so on). De Gaulle meanwhile resigned from office in 1969 after losing an important referendum on regionalisation and suffered a fatal heart attack the following year. France has maintained an independent arsenal of nuclear weapons since 1960. It withdrew from NATO’s joint military command in 1966. ^ Back to top Pompidou to Le Pen Georges Pompidou (1911–74), prime minister under de Gaulle, stepped onto the presidential podium in 1969. Despite embarking on an ambitious modernisation programme, investing in aerospace, telecommunications and nuclear power, he failed to stave off inflation and social unrest following the global oil crisis of 1973.

In 1974 Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (b 1926) inherited a deteriorating economic climate and sharp divisions between the left and right. Hampered by a lack of media nous and an arrogant demeanour, d’Estaing proved unpopular. His friendship with emperor and accused child-eater Jean Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic did little to win him friends and in 1981 he was ousted by longtime head of the Parti Socialiste (PS; Socialist Party), François Mitterrand (1916–96). As the only surviving French president to remain in politics, the French media have nicknamed d’Estaing l’Ex (the Ex). Despite France’s first socialist president instantly alienating the business community (the Paris stock market index fell by 30% on news of his victory) by setting out to nationalise 36 privately owned banks, industrial groups and other parts of the economy, Mitterrand did give France a sparkle. The Minitel – a potent symbol of France’s advanced technological savvy – was launched in 1980 and a clutch of grands projets were embarked upon in the French capital.

The death penalty was abolished, homosexuality was legalised, a 39-hour work week was instituted, annual holiday time was upped from four to five weeks and the right to retire at 60 was guaranteed. Yet by 1986 the economy was weakening and in parliamentary elections that year the right-wing opposition, led by Jacques Chirac ( Paris mayor since 1977), won a majority in the National Assembly. For the next two years Mitterrand worked with a prime minister and cabinet from the opposition, an unprecedented arrangement known as cohabitation. The extreme-right Front National (FN; National Front) meanwhile quietly gained ground by loudly blaming France’s economic woes on immigration. Presidential elections in 1995 ushered Chirac (an ailing Mitterrand did not run) into the Élysée Palace, the former mayor winning immediate popular acclaim for his direct words and actions in matters relating to the EU and the war raging in Bosnia. Whiz-kid foreign minister Alain Juppé was appointed prime minister and several women were placed in top cabinet positions.

However, Chirac’s attempts to reform France’s colossal public sector in order to meet the criteria of European Monetary Union (EMU) were met with the largest protests since 1968, and his decision to resume nuclear testing on the Polynesian island of Moruroa and a nearby atoll was the focus of worldwide outrage (France didn’t sign the worldwide test-ban treaty until 1998). Always the maverick, Chirac called early parliamentary elections in 1997 – only for his party, the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR; Rally for the Republic), to lose out to a coalition of socialists, communists and greens. Another period of cohabitation ensued, this time with Chirac on the other side. Presidential elections in 2002 were a shocker.

Not only did the first round of voting see left-wing PS leader Lionel Jospin eliminated, it also saw the FN’s racist demagogue Jean-Marie Le Pen (b 1928) – legendary for his dismissal of the Holocaust as a ‘mere detail of history’ in the 1980s and his ‘inequality of races’ jargon in the late 1990s – scoop 17% of the national vote. In the fortnight preceding the subsequent run-off ballot, demonstrators took to the streets with cries of ‘Vote for the crook, not the fascist’ (‘crook’ referring to the various party financing scandals floating around Chirac). On the big day itself, left-wing voters – without a candidate of their own – hedged their bets with ‘lesser-of-two-evils’ Chirac to give him 82% of votes. Chirac’s landslide victory was echoed in parliamentary elections a month later when the president-backed co­alition UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) won 354 of the 577 parliamentary seats, ending years of cohabitation and leaving Le Pen’s FN seatless.

Subsequent claims of nepotism in response to Le Pen trying to automatically pass the party leadership to his look-alike daughter, Marine, only weakened the party further. ^ Back to top Power to the people France’s outright opposition to the US-led war in Iraq in 2003 stirred up anti-French sentiment among Americans: many restaurants in the US changed ‘French fries’ to ‘freedom fries’ on their menus, to avoid having to mention the unspeakable, while US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld publicly dismissed France (along with Germany ) as ‘old Europe ’. Old Europe indeed – in need of a shake-up: in November 2002 widespread strikes brought France to a standstill as public-sector workers hit out at the government’s ambitious privatisation plans aimed at raising cash to reduce an increasingly too-high budget deficit. A few months later, in a bid to appease a discontented electorate, parliament granted greater power to local government on economic and cultural affairs, transport and further education.

The constitutional reform also gave the green light to local referenda – to better hear what the people on the street were saying (though the first referendum subsequently held – in Corsica – threw up a ‘No’ vote, putting Paris back at square one). Spring 2003 ushered in yet more national strikes, this time over the government’s proposed pension reform, which was pushed through parliament in July. ‘We are not going to be intimidated by protestors’ was the tough response of centre-right Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, in office since May 2002. An extreme heatwave that summer, sending temperatures in the capital soaring above 40° and claiming 11, 000 predominantly elderly lives, did little to cool rising temperatures. More cracks appeared in France’s assured countenance and silky-smooth veneer during 2004. Regional elections in March saw Chirac’s centre-right UMP party sent to the slaughterhouse by the socialists; European elections two months later were equally disastrous.

Strikes against various pension, labour and welfare reforms proposed by the government continued and in May 2005 the voice of protest was injected with a new lease of life thanks to French voters’ shock rejection of the proposed EU constitution in a referendum. It was no coincidence that the constitution was something Chirac had fervently backed: the overriding message behind the humiliating ‘No’ vote was loud and clear – We are fed up with you. Do something! What Chirac did was to sack his hugely unpopular punchbag of a prime minister, Raffarin, take his own foot off the reform pedal and knuckle down to some serious people-sweetening amid calls in some circles that he should resign. In the face of a five-year high in unemployment (10.2%) and an increasingly sluggish economy (GDP grew by just 1.4% in 2005 compared to 2.1% in 2004), the newly appointed prime minister – the silver-haired and -tongued career diplomat Dominique de Villepin (b 1953) who was best known as foreign minister during the Iraq invasion – assumed the gargantuan task of turning around disgruntled public opinion.

The last quarter of 2005 was the final helter-skelter downhill. The catalyst was the death of two teenagers of North African origin in October who, apparently running from police, were electrocuted while hiding in an electricity substation in a northeast Paris suburb. Rioting immediately broke out in the poor, predominantly immigrant neighbourhood and spread like wild fire. Within days, the violence was countrywide as rioters burnt cars, hurled petrol bombs, smashed windows, looted shops and vented months of pent-up anger. Two weeks later the government introduced emergency measures restricting people’s movements and imposing curfews in 30 French towns and cities as part of its tough zero-tolerance policy on the urban chaos. Nine thousand burnt cars and buildings later, as peace returned, Chirac assured France there would be no more urban violence and steps would be made to create equal opportunities for immigrants and better opportunities for its youth. Little did he realise how loaded with irony this pledge would prove. ^ Back to top The fifth republic & yesterday's man While it could claim to have successfully reconstructed the economy and created political stability, the Fourth Republic was hampered by a weak presidential branch and the debilitating situation in Algeria .

De Gaulle remedied the first problem by drafting a new constitution (the Fifth Republic), which gave considerable powers to the president at the expense of the National Assembly. Algeria was a greater problem. De Gaulle’s initial attempts at reform – according the Algerians political equality and recognising their right in principle to self-determination – only infuriated right-wingers without quenching the Algerian thirst for independence. Following a failed coup attempt by military officers in 1961, the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS; a group of French settlers and sympathisers opposed to Algerian independence) resorted to terrorism. It tried to assassinate de Gaulle several times and in 1961 violence broke out on the streets of Paris . Police violently attacked Algerian demonstrators, murdering more than 100 people. In 1962 de Gaulle negotiated an end to war in Algeria with the lakeside signing of the Accord d’Évian (Evian Accord) in Évian-les-Bains. By the late 1960s de Gaulle was appearing more and more like yesterday’s man.

Loss of the colonies, a surge in immigration and the rise in unemployment had weakened his government. De Gaulle’s government by decree was starting to gall the anti-authoritarian baby-boomer generation, now at university and agitating for social change. Students reading Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich found much to admire in Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the black struggle for civil rights in America , and vociferously denounced the American war in Vietnam . Student protests of 1968 climaxed with a brutal overreaction by police to a protest meeting at Paris ’ most renowned university. Overnight, public opinion turned in favour of the students, while the students themselves occupied the Sorbonne and erected barricades in the Latin Quarter. Within days, a general strike by 10 million workers countrywide paralysed France. But such comradeship between worker and student did not last long. While the former wanted a greater share of the consumer market, the latter wanted to destroy it. After much hesitancy, de Gaulle took advantage of this division by appealing to people’s fear of anarchy. Just as the country seemed on the brink of revolution and an overthrow of the Fifth Republic, stability returned.

The government immediately decentralised the higher education system and followed through in the 1970s with a wave of other reforms (lowering the voting age to 18, instituting an abortion law and so on). De Gaulle meanwhile resigned from office in 1969 after losing an important referendum on regionalisation and suffered a fatal heart attack the following year. France has maintained an independent arsenal of nuclear weapons since 1960. It withdrew from NATO’s joint military command in 1966.

Question: In which decade of the 18th century did purpose built Prisoner of War Camps first appear?
Answer: '90's