France was one of the major participants of World War I, from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost. Subsequent decades saw a period of economic prosperity and cultural and scientific flourishing known as the Belle Époque. The collapse of the empire initiated a period of relative decline, in which France endured a tumultuous succession of governments until the founding of the French Third Republic during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars significantly shaped the course of European history.

France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating part of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. 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. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. In the 16th century, the French Renaissance saw culture flourish and a French colonial empire rise. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralized feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the Early Middle Ages, the Germanic Franks formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. 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. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre other major urban areas include Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nantes and Nice. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km 2 (248,573 sq mi) and have a total population of over 68 million as of January 2023. Its overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, Germany to the north east, Switzerland to the east, Italy and Monaco to the south east, Andorra and Spain to the south, and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the north west.

It also includes overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. The World Factbook reports the total as 643,801 km 2 (248,573 sq mi).įrance, officially the French Republic (French: République française ), is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Adding these give the total shown here for the entire French Republic. Source gives area of metropolitan France as 551,500 km 2 (212,900 sq mi) and lists overseas regions separately, whose areas sum to 89,179 km 2 (34,432 sq mi).

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