FRA9 FILE · The story of France
History of France
Two thousand years, from Gaul to contemporary France, told clearly.
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key points: Gaule · Kingdom · Revolution · Republic
Before France: Gauls and Romans
The territory was not yet France. Celtic peoples lived across Gaul while Greek trading settlements faced the Mediterranean. Caesar's conquest in the first century BCE drew the region into the Roman world; cities, roads, law, Latin and Christianity left deep marks.
From the Franks to the Capetian kingdom
After Rome's fall, Clovis united part of the Franks and converted to Christianity. Charlemagne later ruled much of western Europe. From 987, the Capetian dynasty slowly built a more stable kingdom around Paris.
Middle Ages: cathedrals, crises and the Hundred Years’ War
Royal power grew alongside lords, towns and the Church. Gothic cathedrals reflected prosperity, but plague and the Hundred Years’ War shook the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Joan of Arc became a face of French recovery.
Renaissance and absolute monarchy
Francis I encouraged the arts, developed Loire châteaux and strengthened the state. Religious wars later divided the kingdom. In the seventeenth century Louis XIV moved court to Versailles, turning the palace into a home, political stage and symbol of absolute monarchy.
1789: Revolution
Financial crisis, social inequality and Enlightenment ideas broke the Ancien Régime. The Bastille, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the end of privilege and the Republic permanently changed politics, though the period also descended into the violence of the Terror.
Napoleon and the long nineteenth century
Napoleon preserved some revolutionary changes, notably the Civil Code, but turned the Republic into an Empire and fought across Europe. After 1815 monarchies, empires and republics alternated as industrialisation, colonial expansion and the rebuilding of Paris transformed the country.
Two world wars
The First World War struck French soil directly and left an enormous legacy of loss. Defeat in 1940 brought occupation, Vichy and Resistance. Liberation in 1944 opened a period of economic, social and institutional reconstruction.
From 1958 to contemporary France
The Fifth Republic strengthened executive power. Decolonisation, European integration, immigration, May 1968 and modernisation reshaped society. France still balances centralised government, territorial diversity and republican ideals.
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