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24 Hours of Le Mans
The 24 Hours of Le Mans (French: 24 Heures du Mans) is the world's oldest active sports car race in endurance racing, held annually since 1923 near the town of Le Mans, France. Commonly known as the Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency, race teams have to balance speed against the cars' ability to run for 24 hours without sustaining mechanical damage to the car and manage the cars' consumables, primarily fuel, tyres and braking materials. The endurance of the drivers is likewise tested as drivers frequently spend stints of over two hours behind the wheel before stopping in the pits and allowing a relief driver to take over the driving duties. Drivers then grab what food and rest they can before returning to drive another stint. Today it is mandated that three drivers share each competing vehicle.
The race is organised by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) and runs on the Circuit de la Sarthe, a circuit containing a mix of closed public roads and specialist motor racing circuit that are meant not only to test a car and driver's ability to be quick, but also to last over a 24 hour period. The competing teams will race in groups called classes for cars of similar specification while at the same time competing for outright placing amongst all of the classes. Originally the race was held for cars as they were sold to the general public which were then called Sports Cars compared to the specialist racing cars used in Grands Prix. Over time the competing vehicles evolved away from their publicly-available road car roots and today the race is made of two classes specialised enclosed-bodywork two-seat Prototype sports cars and two classes of Grand Touring cars which bear much closer resemblance to high performance sports cars as sold to the public.
wn.com/24_Hours_of_Le_Mans -
Algeria
Coordinates: 28°N 2°E / 28°N 2°E / 28; 2
Algeria
i/ælˈdʒɪəriə/ (Arabic: الجزائر, al-Jazā'ir; Berber: ⴷⵣⴰⵢⴻⵔ Dzayer), officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria (الجمهورية الجزائرية الديمقراطية الشعبية, al-Jumhūriyyah al-Jazāʾiriyyah ad-Dīmuqrāṭiyyah ash-Shaʿbiyyah), also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a large country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.
When referring to its land area, Algeria is the largest country in Africa, Maghreb and the Arab World. It is also the largest of the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea; it is also the tenth-largest country in the world. The country is bordered in the northeast by Tunisia, in the east by Libya, in the west by Morocco, in the southwest by Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Mali, in the southeast by Niger, and in the north by the Mediterranean Sea. Its size is almost 2,400,000 square kilometres (926,645 sq mi) with an estimated population of 37.1 million as of 2012. Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, OPEC and the United Nations. The country is also a founding member of the Arab Maghreb Union.
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Alsace
Alsace (French: Alsace [alzas]; Alsatian: Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass, pre-1996: Elsaß, IPA: [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area (8,280 km²), and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km² (total population in 2006: 1,815,488; 1 January 2008 estimate: 1,836,000). Alsace is located on France's eastern border and on the west bank of the upper Rhine adjacent to Germany and Switzerland. The political, economic and cultural capital as well as largest city of Alsace is Strasbourg. Because that city is the seat of dozens of international organizations and bodies, Alsace is politically one of the most important regions in the European Union.
The name "Alsace" can be traced back to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain". An alternative explanation derives it from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill", a river in Alsace. The region was historically part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was gradually annexed by France in the 17th century under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV and made one of the provinces of France. Alsace is frequently mentioned in conjunction with Lorraine, because German possession of parts of these two régions (as the imperial province Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918) was contested in the 19th and 20th centuries, during which Alsace changed hands four times between France and Germany in 75 years.
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Auvergne (province)
Auvergne (French pronunciation: [ovɛʁɲ]; Occitan: Auvèrnhe/Auvèrnha) was a historic province in south central France. It was originally the feudal domain of the Counts of Auvergne. It is now the geographical and cultural area that corresponds to the former province.
Today, the whole of the province of Auvergne is contained inside the administrative région of Auvergne, a région which also includes provinces and territories that were not part of Auvergne historically. The capital of the région of Auvergne is Clermont-Ferrand.
Auvergne was a province of France deriving its name from the Arverni, a Gallic tribe who once occupied the area, well known for its fierce resistance, led by Vercingetorix, to conquest by the Roman Empire. Christianized by Saint Austremoine, Auvergne was quite prosperous during the Roman ages. After a short time under the Visigoths, it was conquered by the Franks, in 507. The medieval times were for Auvergne a period of great development, especially between the 10th and 13th centuries, with the building of famous abbeys and churches in a Romanesque style. In the year 1095, the historic Council of Clermont was held there, to rally support for the First Crusade. Its wide autonomy was ended by King Philippe-Auguste of France, who linked it to the royal possessions. Hardly impacted by the Hundred Years war, the religion wars and epidemics, integrated to the kingdom of France, it turned itself more and more into an agricultural province, although reputed for its products. In 1790, the historical province was divided into the modern-day départements of Puy-de-Dôme, Cantal, Haute-Loire, and Allier, although Haute-Loire and Allier also include some land from the historical provinces of Bourbonnais, Lyonnais, and Velay.
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Aveyron
Aveyron (French pronunciation: [avɛʁɔ̃]; Occitan: Avairon [avajˈɾu]) is a département in southern France named after the Aveyron River.
Aveyron is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790.
The first known historical inhabitants of the region were the Rutenii tribe, but the area was inhabited previously to this, boasting many prehistoric ruins.
During the medieval and early modern periods, and until the 1790s, the territory covered by Aveyron was a province known as Rouergue.
In 1817, a local prosecutor Antoine Bernardin Fualdès was assassinated. The sordid circumstances of his death, following which his body was found floating in the Aveyron River, led to the matter becoming publicised as a cause célèbre. Recent studies have indicated that he met his end on the initiative of a right wing royalist organisation known as the Chevaliers de la Foi (Knights of the Faith).
The department is part of the current Midi-Pyrénées region. It is surrounded by the départements of Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, Lot, Hérault, Gard, Lozère, and Cantal.
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Banque de France
The Banque de France is the central bank of France; it is linked to the European Central Bank (ECB). Its main charge is to implement the interest rate policy of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). It is headquartered in Paris.
On 1 June 1998, a new institution was created, the European Central Bank (ECB), charged with steering the single monetary policy for the euro. The body formed by the ECB, and the national central banks (NCB) of all the member states of the European Union, constitute the European System of Central Banks (ESCB).
The ESCB is an institutional framework of a single monetary policy for the euro. According to the Banque de France's website, the "sharing of responsibilities between the ECB and the NCBs is based upon significant decentralization of the conduct of the ESCB's single monetary policy".
In 2010, the French government's Autorité de la concurrence (the department in charge of regulating competition) fined eleven banks, including Banque de France, the sum of €384,900,000 for colluding to charge unjustified fees on check processing, especially for extra fees charged during the transition from paper check transfer to "Exchanges Check-Image" electronic transfer.
wn.com/Banque_de_France -
Berry (province)
Berry is a region located in the center of France. It was a province of France until the provinces were replaced by départements on 4 March 1790.
The Berry region now consists of the départements of Cher, Indre and parts of Vienne. The capital of Berry was Bourges. Berry is notable as the birthplace of several kings and other members of the French royal family, as well as of a number of famous writers, including Honoré de Balzac. In the Middle Ages it was the centre of the Duchy of Berry. It is also known for an illuminated manuscript produced in the 14th–15th century called Les Très riches heures du Duc de Berry.
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Brittany
Brittany (French: Bretagne [bʁətaɲ] (
listen); Breton: Breizh, pronounced [brɛjs]; Gallo: Bertaèyn) is a cultural region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain). Brittany is considered as one of the six Celtic nations.
Brittany occupies the northwest peninsula of continental Europe in northwest France. It is bordered by the English Channel to the north, the Celtic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Bay of Biscay to the south. Its land area is 34,023 km² (13,136 sq mi). The historical province of Brittany is divided into five departments: Finistère in the west, Côtes-d'Armor in the north, Ille-et-Vilaine in the north east, Loire-Atlantique in the south east and Morbihan in the south on the Bay of Biscay.
In 1956, French regions were created by gathering departments between them. The Region of Brittany comprises, since then, four of the five Breton departments (80% of historical Brittany), while the remaining area of the old Brittany, the Loire-Atlantique department, around Nantes, forms part of the Pays de la Loire region. This territorial organisation is regularly contested. The Kingdom and the Duchy of Brittany, the province of Brittany, and the modern Region of Brittany cover the Western part of Armorica, as it was known during the period of Roman occupation.
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Béarn
Béarn (French pronunciation: [be.aʁn]; Gascon: Bearn or Biarn; Basque: Bearno) is one of the traditional provinces of France, located in the Pyrenees mountains and in the plain at their feet, in southwest France. Along with the three Basque provinces of Soule, Lower Navarre, and Labourd, the principality of Bidache, as well as small parts of Gascony and Bigorre, it forms in the southwest the current département of Pyrénées-Atlantiques (64). The capitals of Béarn were Beneharnum (until 841), Morlaàs (starting ca. 1100), Orthez (starting second half of 13th century), then Pau (beginning in the mid 15th century).
Béarn is bordered by Basque provinces Soule and Lower Navarre to the west, by Gascony (Landes and Armagnac) to the north, by Bigorre to the east, and by Spain (Aragon) to the south.
The name Béarn comes from Beneharnum, the capital city of the Venarni people, destroyed by Vikings by 840.
Today, the mainstays of the Béarn area are the petroleum business, the aerospace industry through the helicopter manufacturer Turbomeca, tourism and agriculture (much of which is corn grown for seed). Pau was the birthplace of Elf Aquitaine, which has now become a part of Total petroleum company.
wn.com/Béarn -
Caribbean
The Caribbean (pronounced /ˌkærɨˈbiːən/ or /kəˈrɪbiən/) is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north. From the peninsula of Florida on the mainland of the United States, the islands stretch 1,200 miles (1,900 km) southeastward, then 500 miles (800 km) south, then west along the north coast of Venezuela on the South American mainland.
Situated largely on the Caribbean Plate, the region comprises more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays. These islands generally form island arcs that delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea.
The Caribbean islands are part of the somewhat larger West Indies grouping, which consists of the Greater Antilles on the north, the Lesser Antilles on the south and east (including the Leeward Antilles), as well as the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands (the Lucayan Archipelago, which does not border the Caribbean Sea). Due to its proximity to the equator, the sun rises from 3am EST to 5am EST.[citation needed]
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Champs-Élysées
The Avenue des Champs-Élysées (French pronunciation: [av(ə)ny de ʃɑ̃zelize] ( listen)) is a street in Paris, France. With its cinemas, cafés, luxury specialty shops and clipped horse-chestnut trees, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets and one of the most expensive strips of real estate in the world. Several French monuments are also on the street, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Concorde. The name is French for Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed dead in Greek mythology. The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is known as "The most beautiful avenue in the world", La plus belle avenue du monde in French.
The avenue runs for 1.91 km (1.18 mi) through the 8th arrondissement in northwestern Paris, from the Place de la Concorde in the east, with the Obelisk of Luxor, to the Place Charles de Gaulle (formerly the Place de l'Étoile) in the west, location of the Arc de Triomphe. The Champs-Élysées forms part of the Axe historique.
One of the principal tourist destinations in Paris, the lower part of the Champs-Élysées is bordered by greenery (Carré Marigny) and by buildings such as the Théâtre Marigny and the Grand Palais (containing the Palais de la Découverte). The Élysée Palace is slightly to the north, but not on the avenue itself. Further to the west, the avenue is lined with cinemas, cafés and restaurants, and luxury specialty shops. The Champs-Élysées ends at the Arc de Triomphe, built to honour the victories of Napoleon Bonaparte.
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China
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
wn.com/China -
Corsica
Corsica (
/ˈkɔːrsɪkə/; French: Corse, IPA: [kɔʁs]; Corsican: Corsica; Italian: Corsica, IPA: [ˈkɔrsika]) is a French island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the Italian island of Sardinia. Mountains comprise two-thirds of the island, forming a single chain.
Corsica is one of the 27 régions of France, although strictly speaking Corsica is designated as a territorial collectivity (collectivité territoriale) by law. As a territorial collectivity, it enjoys greater powers than other French régions, but for the most part its status is quite similar. Corsica is referred to as a "région" in common speech, and is almost always listed among the other régions of France.
Although the island is separated from the continental mainland by the Ligurian Sea and is closer to Italy than to the French mainland, politically Corsica is part of Metropolitan France. It was once briefly an independent Corsican Republic, until being incorporated into France in 1769. Its culture has French and Italian elements blended into it.
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Culture of Monaco
Monacoi/ˈmɒnəkoʊ/, officially the Principality of Monaco (French: Principauté de Monaco; Monégasque: Principatu de Múnegu; Italian: Principato di Monaco; Occitan: Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city state, located on the French Riviera in Western Europe. Bordered by France on three sides, with one side bordering the Mediterranean Sea, its center is about 16 km (9.9 mi) from Italy, and is only 15 km (9.3 mi) north east of Nice, France. It has an area of 1.98 km2 (0.76 sq mi), and a population of 35,986, making Monaco the second smallest and the most densely populated country in the world. Monaco has a land border of only 4.4 km (2.7 mi), a coastline of 4.1 km (2.5 mi), and a width that varies between 1.7 km (1.1 mi) and 349 metres (382 yards). The highest point in the country is a narrow pathway named Chemin des Révoires on the slopes of Mont Agel, in the Les Révoires district, which is 161 metres (528 feet) above sea level. Monaco's most populated Quartier is Monte Carlo, and the most populated Ward is Larvotto/Bas Moulins. After a recent expansion of Port Hercules, Monaco's total area is 2.05 km2 (0.79 sq mi), with new plans to extend the district of Fontvieille, with land reclaimed from the Mediterranean Sea.
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Dauphiné
The Dauphiné (pronounced: [dofine]) or Dauphiné Viennois is a former province in southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of Isère, Drôme, and Hautes-Alpes. The Dauphiné (also called Dauphiny in ancient English) was an independent state from 1040 to 1349, under the rule of the Counts of Albon, before joining the Kingdom of France. As a French province, it maintained its autonomy until 1457.
The historical capital is Grenoble and the other main towns are Vienne, Valence, Montélimar, Gap and Romans-sur-Isère.
Its inhabitants are called Dauphinois.
Le Dauphiné Libéré is a famous regional French newspaper, and organized the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré (now known as the Critérium du Dauphiné) cycle stage race prior to 2010.
Under the Ancien Régime, the province was bordered in the North by the River Rhône which separated the Dauphiné from the Bresse ("Brêsse") and Bugey ("Bugê"). To the east it bordered the Savoy and Piedmont, and to the south the Comtat Venaissin and Provence. The western border was marked by the Rhône to the south of Lyon. The Dauphiné extended up to what is now the centre of Lyon.
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France
France (Englishi/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km2 / 4,383,000 sq mi).
Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.
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French Open
The French Open, often referred to as Roland Garros (French: Les internationaux de France de Roland-Garros or Tournoi de Roland-Garros, IPA: [ʁɔlɑ̃ ɡaʁɔs]), named after the famous French aviator Roland Garros, is a major tennis tournament held over two weeks between late May and early June in Paris, France, at the Stade Roland Garros. It is the premier clay court tennis tournament in the world and the second of the four annual Grand Slam tournaments – the other three are the Australian Open, US Open and Wimbledon. Roland Garros is the only Grand Slam held on clay and ends the spring clay court season.
It is one of the largest events in tennis, and the most watched French event in the world. Because of the slow playing surface and the five-set men's singles matches without a tiebreak in the final set, the event is widely considered to be the most physically demanding tennis tournament in the world.
Currently, the 2012 French Open is being conducted from May 27 to June 10, 2012 in Paris.
Officially named in French Les internationaux de France de Roland-Garros or Tournoi de Roland-Garros (the "French Internationals of Roland Garros" or "Roland Garros Tournament" in English), the tournament is often referred to in English as the "French Open" and alternatively as "Roland Garros", which is the designation used by the tournament itself in all languages, including English. In French, a hyphen is inserted after death, hence the French spelling "Roland-Garros".
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Gascony
Gascony ( /ˈɡæskəni/; French: Gascogne [ɡaskɔɲ]; Gascon: Gasconha [ɡasˈkuɲɔ]) is an area of southwest France that was part of the "Province of Guyenne and Gascony" prior to the French Revolution. The region is vaguely defined and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear; sometimes they are considered to overlap, and sometimes Gascony is considered a part of Guyenne. Most definitions put Gascony east and south of Bordeaux.
It is currently divided between the Aquitaine région (départements of Landes, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, south and west of Gironde, and south of Lot-et-Garonne) and the Midi-Pyrénées région (départements of Gers, Hautes-Pyrénées, southwest of Tarn-et-Garonne, and west of Haute-Garonne).
Gascony was historically inhabited by Basque-related people who appear to have spoken a language similar to Basque. The name Gascony comes from the same root as the word Basque (see Wasconia below). From medieval times until the nineteenth century, the Gascon language was spoken, which is a regional variant of the Occitan Language. It is also the land of d'Artagnan, who inspired Alexandre Dumas's character in The Three Musketeers. It is also home to the hero of the play Cyrano de Bergerac (though this character has little in common with the real Cyrano de Bergerac, who was a Parisian) and to Henry III of Navarre who later became king of France as Henry IV.
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Geography of France
Coordinates: 46°00′N 2°00′E / 46°N 2°E / 46; 2
France is a country located primarily in Western Europe, but containing territory in South America, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean, as well as numerous territories of various status. In Europe France borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean. To the west is the Bay of Biscay, to the north is the English Channel.
Mostly flat plains or gently rolling hills in north and west.
Elevation extremes:
Irrigated land: 16,300 km² (1995 est.)
Coal, iron ore, fish, zinc, timber
Flooding, avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes
Some forest damage from acid rain (major forest damage occurred as a result of severe December 1999 windstorm); air pollution from industrial and vehicle emissions; water pollution from urban wastes, agricultural runoff, high pesticide use (honeybee mortality)
An open grassland during the Pleistocene Ice Age, France gradually became forested as the glaciers retreated starting in 10,000 BC. Clearing of the primeval forests began in Neolithic times, but they were still fairly extensive until major clearing began in medieval times. By the 15th century, France had largely been denuded of its forests and was forced to rely on Scandinavia and their North American colonies for lumber. Significant remaining forested areas are in the Gascony region and north in the Alsace-Ardennes area. The Ardennes Forest was the scene of extensive fighting in both world wars.
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Guadeloupe
Coordinates: 16°15′N 61°35′W / 16.25°N 61.583°W / 16.25; -61.583
Guadeloupe ( /ɡwɑːdəˈluːp/; French pronunciation: [ɡwadəlup]; Antillean Creole: Gwadloup) is a Caribbean island located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres (629 sq. mi) and a population of 400,000. It is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. Its departmental code is "971". As the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe is also an integral part of the Republic. Besides Guadeloupe island, the smaller islands of Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and the Îles des Saintes are included in Guadeloupe.
As part of France, Guadeloupe is part of the European Union and the Eurozone; hence, as for all Eurozone countries, its currency is the euro. However, Guadeloupe is not part of the Schengen Area. The prefecture and the capital of Guadeloupe is Basse-Terre. Christopher Columbus named the island Santa María de Guadalupe in 1493 after the Virgin Mary, venerated in the Spanish town of Guadalupe, in Extremadura.
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Guyenne
Guyenne ( /ɡwiːˈjɛn/; French: [ɡɥijɛn]; Occitan: Guiana [ˈɡjanɔ]) or Guienne is a vaguely defined historic region of south-western France. The Province of Guyenne, sometimes called the Province of Guyenne and Gascony, was a large province of pre-revolutionary France.
The name Guyenne comes from the Occitan Guiana, which is itself a corruption of the word Aquitaine. However the words Aquitaine and Guyenne came to indicate different entities. The region of Guyenne also became confused with the region of Gascony until this took on a distinct identity in the 17th Century. From this time "Guyenne and Gascony" was a common term corresponding roughly to modern northern Aquitaine.
The Duchy of Guyenne appears for the first time in the Treaty of Paris of 1229 which brought an end to the Albigensian Crusade, and may have been actually created by that treaty. The capital was Bordeaux. The Duchy was under the Kings of England, as Guyenne had been since 1154, and remained an English vassal until 1453. In 1453 it became land directly under the French Crown, except from 1469 to 1472 when it was granted to Charles de Valois (until his death).
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Hawaii
Coordinates: 21°18′41″N 157°47′47″W / 21.31139°N 157.79639°W / 21.31139; -157.79639
Hawaii (i/həˈwaɪ.iː/ or /həˈwaɪʔiː/; Hawaiian: Hawaiʻi Hawaiian pronunciation: [hɐˈvɐiʔi]) is the most recent of the 50 U.S. states (August 21, 1959), and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean.
Hawaii’s diverse natural scenery, warm tropical climate, abundance of public beaches and oceanic surrounding, and active volcanoes make it a popular destination for tourists, surfers, biologists, and volcanologists alike. Due to its mid-Pacific location, Hawaii has many North American and Asian influences along with its own vibrant native culture. Hawaii has over a million permanent residents along with many visitors and U.S. military personnel. Its capital is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu.
The state encompasses nearly the entire volcanic Hawaiian Island chain, which comprises hundreds of islands spread over 1,500 miles (2,400 km). At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight "main islands" are (from the northwest to southeast) Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and the island of Hawaiʻi. The last is by far the largest and is often called "The Big Island" to avoid confusion with the state as a whole. The archipelago is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania.
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Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula (or, more generally, by southern and western Asia); on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, by Antarctica). The ocean is named after the geographic location of India.
As one component of the interconnected global ocean, the Indian Ocean is delineated from the Atlantic Ocean by the 20° east meridian running south from Cape Agulhas, and from the Pacific by the meridian of 146°55' east. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf. This ocean is nearly 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) wide at the southern tips of Africa and Australia; its area is 73,556,000 square kilometres (28,350,000 sq mi), including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
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Institut de France
The Institut de France (French pronunciation: [ɛ̃stity də fʁɑ̃s], French Institute) is a French learned society, grouping five académies, the most famous of which is the Académie française.
The institute, located in Paris, manages approximately 1,000 foundations, as well as museums and chateaux open for visit. It also awards prizes and subsidies, which amounted to a total of 5,028,190.55 euros for 2002. Most of these prizes are awarded by the Institute on the recommendation of the académies.
The Institut de France was created on 25 October 1795.
The Royal Society of Canada, founded in 1882, was modeled after the Institut de France and the Royal Society of London.
Coordinates: 48°51′26.07″N 2°20′12.85″E / 48.8572417°N 2.3369028°E / 48.8572417; 2.3369028
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Italy
Italyi/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic or the Republic of Italy (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a unitary parliamentary republic in south-central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km2 (116,347 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world.
Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance, an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.
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Languedoc
Languedoc (/ˌlɒŋɡəˈdɒk/; French: [lɑ̃ɡdɔk]; Occitan: Lengadòc [ˌleŋɡɔˈðɔ]) is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² (16,490 sq. miles).
The traditional provinces of the kingdom of France were not formally defined. A province was simply a territory of common traditions and customs, but it had no political organization. Today, when people refer to the old provinces of France, they actually refer to the gouvernements as they existed in 1789. Gouvernements were military regions established in the middle of the 16th century and whose territories closely matched those of the traditional provinces. However, in some cases, small provinces had been merged with a large one into a single gouvernement, so gouvernements are not exactly the same as the traditional provinces.
Historically, the region was called the county of Toulouse, a county independent from the kings of France. The county of Toulouse was made up of what would later be called Languedoc, but it also included the province of Quercy (now département of Lot and northern half of the département of Tarn-et-Garonne) and the province of Rouergue (now département of Aveyron), both to the northwest of Languedoc. At some times it even included the province of Agenais (now eastern half of the département of Lot-et-Garonne) to the west of Languedoc, the province of Gévaudan (now département of Lozère), the province of Velay (now the central and eastern part of the département of Haute-Loire), the southern part of the province of Vivarais (now the southern part of the département of Ardèche), and even all the northern half of Provence. After the French conquest the entire county was dismantled, the central part of it being now called Languedoc.
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Lascaux
Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be 17,300 years old. They primarily consist of primitive images of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time. In 1979, Lascaux was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list along with other prehistoric sites in the Vézère valley.
The cave was discovered on September 12, 1940 by four teenagers, Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas, as well as Marcel's dog, Robot. The cave complex was opened to the public in 1948. By 1955, the carbon dioxide produced by 1,200 visitors per day had visibly damaged the paintings. The cave was closed to the public in 1963 in order to preserve the art. After the cave was closed, the paintings were restored to their original state, and were monitored on a daily basis. Rooms in the cave include The Hall of the Bulls, the Passageway, the Shaft, the Nave, the Apse, and the Chamber of Felines.
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Le Marais
Le Marais ("The Marsh", French pronunciation: [maʁɛ]) is a historic district in Paris, France. Long the aristocratic district of Paris, it hosts many outstanding buildings of historic and architectural importance. It spreads across parts of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements in Paris (on the Rive Droite, or Right Bank, of the Seine).
In 1240 the Order of the Temple built its fortified church just outside Paris's walls, in the northern part of the Marais. The Temple turned the district into an attractive area, and many religious institutions were built nearby: the des Blancs-Manteaux, de Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie and des Carmes-Billettes convents, as well as the church of Sainte-Catherine-du-Val-des-Écoliers.
During the mid-13th century, Charles I of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, and brother of King Louis IX of France built his residence near the current n°7 rue de Sévigné. In 1361 the King Charles V built a mansion known as the Hôtel Saint-Pol in which the Royal Court settled during his reign as well as his son's.
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Libya
Libya (Arabic: ليبيا Lībyā), Berber: ⵍⵉⴱⵢⴰ) is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the third largest country in Africa by area, and the 17th largest in the world. The largest city, Tripoli, is home to 1.7 million of Libya's 6.4 million people. The three traditional parts of the country are Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica.
In 2009 Libya had the highest HDI in Africa and the fourth highest GDP (PPP) per capita in Africa, behind Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world and the 17th-highest petroleum production.
As a result of the Libyan civil war, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which had at that time been in existence for 34 years, collapsed and Libya entered a period of governance by a transitional administration called the National Transitional Council. The NTC has stated its intention to oversee the first phase of a transition to constitutional democracy, after which it claims it will dissolve in favor of a representative legislature.
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London
Londoni/ˈlʌndən/ is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is the world's leading financial centre alongside New York City and has the fifth-largest city GDP in the world (and the largest in Europe). London has been described as a world cultural capital. It was the world's most visited city during 2011 and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe. In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles (
i/lɒs ˈændʒələs/ loss-AN-jə-ləs; Spanish: [los ˈaŋxeles], which is written Los Ángeles; British pronounciation /lɒs ˈændʒəliːz/ loss-AN-jə-leez) with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in the state of California, and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of 468.67 square miles (1,213.8 km2), and is located in Southern California. Often known by its initials L.A., the city is the focal point of the larger Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan statistical area and Greater Los Angeles Area region, which contain 12,828,837 and nearly 18 million people respectively as of 2010, making it one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world and the second largest in the United States. Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated and one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the United States, while the entire Los Angeles area itself has been recognized as the most diverse of the nation's largest cities. The city's inhabitants are referred to as "Angelenos".
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Martinique
Martinique (French pronunciation: [maʁtinik]) is an island in the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of 1,128 km2 (436 sq mi). Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados. As with the other overseas departments, Martinique is one of the twenty-seven regions of France (being an overseas region) and an integral part of the Republic. The first European to encounter the island was Christopher Columbus in 1502.
As part of France, Martinique is part of the European Union, and its currency is the Euro. Its official language is French, although many of its inhabitants also speak Antillean Creole (Créole Martiniquais).
The island was occupied first by Arawaks, then by Caribs. It was charted by Columbus in 1493, but Spain had little interest in the territory. It was claimed by France in 1635 and, despite several interludes of British occupation, once during the Seven Years' War and twice during the Napoleonic Wars, has remained a French possession. In 1946, the French National Assembly voted unanimously to transform the colony into an overseas department.
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Mayotte
Mayotte (French: Mayotte, pronounced: [majɔt]; Shimaore: Maore, IPA: [maˈore]; Malagasy: Mahori) is an overseas department and region of France consisting of a main island, Grande-Terre (or Mahoré), a smaller island, Petite-Terre (or Pamanzi), and several islets around these two. The archipelago is located in the northern Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean, namely between northwestern Madagascar and northeastern Mozambique. Mayotte's area is 374 square kilometres (144 sq mi), and with its estimated 194,000 people is very densely populated (520 /km2 or 1,300 /sq mi). Its biggest city and prefecture is Mamoudzou. The territory is geographically part of the Comoro Islands, but has been politically separate since a 1974 referendum in which it elected to remain under French rule. The territory is also known as Mahoré, the native name of its main island, especially by advocates of its inclusion in the Union of Comoros. In a 2009 referendum, the population overwhelmingly approved accession to status of department (95.2% voted in favour of departmental status). On March 31, 2011, Mayotte became an overseas department.
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Milan
Milan (Italian: Milano [miˈlaːno] ( listen); Lombard: [miˈlan]; Latin: Mediolanum) is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital of Lombardy as well as of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area is the 5th largest in EU and the largest in Italy with an estimated population of approximately 5 million. The growth of many suburbs and satellite settlements around the city proper, following the Italian economic miracle of 1950s–60s and massive commuting flows, suggest that socioeconomic linkages have expanded well beyond the boundaries of its administrative limits and its agglomeration, creating a region of approximately 9,3 million people. It has been suggested that the Milan metropolitan area is part of the so-called Blue Banana, the area of Europe with the highest population and industrial density. Its health care and education system is considered one of the best of Europe.
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Montparnasse
Montparnasse (French pronunciation: [mɔ̃paʁnas]) is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse was absorbed into the capital's 6th and 14th arrondissements in 1669.
The area also gives its name to:
The Pasteur Institute is located in the area. Beneath the ground are tunnels of the Catacombs of Paris.
The name Montparnasse stems from the nickname "Mount Parnassus" (In Greek mythology, home to the nine Greek goddesses – the Muses – of the arts and sciences) given to the hilly neighbourhood in the 17th century by students who came there to recite poetry.
The hill was levelled to construct the Boulevard Montparnasse in the 18th century. During the French Revolution many dance halls and cabarets opened their doors.
The area is also known for cafes and bars, such as the Breton restaurants specialising in crêpes (thin pancakes) located a few blocks from the Gare Montparnasse.
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Morocco
Morocco (Arabic: المغرب al-Maghrib ; Berber: ⵍⵎⴻⵖⵔⵉⴱ / ⴰⵎⴻⵔⵔⵓⴽElmeɣrib / Amerruk), officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of about 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², including the disputed region of the Western Sahara, seen by and mostly administered by Morocco as the Southern Provinces. Morocco is part of the Maghreb region, in addition to Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, and Libya, with which it shares cultural, historical and linguistic ties.
Morocco is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. The King of Morocco holds vast executive powers, including the power to dissolve the parliament. Executive power is exercised by the government but more importantly by the king himself. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Assembly of Representatives and the Assembly of Councillors. The king can also issue decrees called dahirs which have the force of law. The latest Parliamentary elections were held in November 25, 2011, and were considered by some neutral observers to be mostly free and fair. Voter turnout in these elections was estimated to be 43% of registered voters, but only about 25% of Moroccan adult citizens actually voted. The rest either chose not to vote or they were not registered as voters. The political capital is Rabat, but the largest city is Casablanca; other main cities include Marrakesh, Tetouan, Tangier, Salé, Fes, Agadir, Meknes, Oujda, Kenitra, and Nador.
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New York
New York (/njuː ˈjɔrk/; locally IPA: [nɪu ˈjɔək] or [nuː ˈjɔɹk] (
listen)) is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. New York is the 27th most extensive, the 3rd most populous, and the 7th most densely populated of the 50 United States. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east. The state has a maritime border with Rhode Island east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Ontario to the west and north, and Quebec to the north. The state of New York is often referred to as New York State to distinguish it from New York City.
New York City, with a population of over 8.1 million, is the most populous city in the United States. Alone, it makes up over 40 percent of the population of New York state. It is known for its status as a center for finance and culture and for its status as the largest gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, New York City is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both the state and city were named for the 17th century Duke of York, James Stuart, future James II and VII of England and Scotland.
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Orléanais
Orléanais (French pronunciation: [ɔʁleanɛ]) is a former province of France, around the cities of Orléans, Chartres, and Blois.
The name comes from Orléans, its main city and traditional capital. The province was one of those into which France was divided before the French Revolution. It was the country around Orléans, the pagus Aurelianensis; it lay on both banks of the Loire, and for ecclesiastical purposes formed the diocese of Orléans. It was in the possession of the Capet family before the advent of Hugh Capet to the throne of France in 987, and in 1344 Philip VI gave it with the title of duke to Philip of Valois (d. 1375), one of his younger sons. In a geographical sense the region around Orléans is sometimes known as the Orléanais, but this is somewhat smaller than the former province.
Orléanais was also a dialect of the French language spoken in the province of Orléanais until the beginning of the 19th century.
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Palais Royal
The Palais-Royal, originally called the Palais-Cardinal, is a palace and an associated garden located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. Facing the Place du Palais-Royal, it stands opposite the north wing of the Louvre, and its famous forecourt (cour d'honneur), screened with columns and, since 1986, containing Daniel Buren's site-specific artpiece, Les Deux Plateaux, known as Les Colonnes de Buren.
Originally called the Palais-Cardinal, the palace was the personal residence of Cardinal Richelieu. The architect Jacques Lemercier began his design in 1629; construction commenced in 1633 and was completed in 1639. Upon Richelieu's death in 1642 the palace became the property of the King and acquired the new name Palais-Royal.
After Louis XIII died the following year, it became the home of the Queen Mother Anne of Austria and her young sons Louis XIV and Philippe, duc d'Anjou, along with her advisor Cardinal Mazarin.
From 1649, the palace was the residence of the exiled Henrietta Maria and Henrietta Anne Stuart, wife and daughter of the deposed King Charles I of England. The two had escaped England in the midst of the English Civil War and were sheltered by Henrietta Maria's nephew, King Louis XIV.
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Persepolis
Persepolis (Old Persian تخت جمشید Pārsa, Takht-e Jamshid or Chehel Minar) was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (ca. 550-330 BCE). Persepolis is situated 70 km northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran. In contemporary Persian, the site is known as Takht-e Jamshid (Throne of Jamshid). The earliest remains of Persepolis date from around 515 BCE. To the ancient Persians, the city was known as Pārsa, which means "The City of Persians". Persepolis is a transliteration of the Greek Πέρσης πόλις (Persēs polis: "Persian city").
UNESCO declared the citadel of Persepolis a World Heritage Site in 1979.
Archaeological evidence shows that the earliest remains of Persepolis date from around 515 BC. André Godard, the French archaeologist who excavated Persepolis in the early 1930s, believed that it was Cyrus the Great (Kūrosh) who chose the site of Persepolis, but that it was Darius the Great (Daryush) who built the terrace and the great palaces.
Darius ordered the construction of the Apadana Palace and the Council Hall (the Tripylon or three-gated hall), the main imperial Treasury and its surroundings. These were completed during the reign of his son, King Xerxes the Great (Khashayar). Further construction of the buildings on the terrace continued until the downfall of the Achaemenid dynasty.
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Picardy
Picardy (French: Picardie, French pronunciation: [pikaʁdi]) is one of the 27 regions of France. It is located in the northern part of France.
The historical province of Picardy stretched from north of Noyon to Calais, via the whole of the Somme department and the north of the Aisne department. The province of Artois (Arras area) separated Picardy from French Flanders.
In the 5th century the area was occupied by the Franks, and in the feudal period it encompassed the six countships of Boulogne, Montreuil, Ponthieu, Amiénois, Vermandois, and Laonnois.
The name "Picardy" (which may have referred to a Frankish tribe of picards or pike-bearers) was not used until the 12th or 13th century. During this time, the name applied to all lands where the Picard language was spoken, which included all the territories from Paris to the Netherlands. In the Latin Quarter of Paris, people identified a "Picard Nation" (Nation Picarde) of students at Sorbonne University, most of whom actually came from Flanders.
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Poitou
Poitou (French pronunciation: [pwatu]) was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers.
The region of Poitou was called Thifalia (or Theiphalia) in the sixth century.
There is a marshland called the Poitevin Marsh (French Marais Poitevin) on the Gulf of Poitou, on the west coast of France, just north of La Rochelle and west of Niort.
Many of the Acadians who settled in what is now Nova Scotia beginning in 1604 and later to New Brunswick, came from the region of Poitou. After the Acadians were deported by the British beginning in 1755, a number of Acadians eventually took refuge in Poitou and in Québec. A large portion of these refugees also migrated to Louisiana in 1785 and following years became known as Cajuns (see Cajuns).
Perhaps paradoxically, during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Poitou had been a hotbed of Huguenot (French Calvinist) activity among the nobility and bourgeoisie and was severely impacted by the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598).
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Réunion
Réunion (French: La Réunion, IPA: [la 'ʁeynjɔ̃] ( listen); previously Île Bourbon) is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.
Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France. Like the other overseas departments, Réunion is also one of the 27 regions of France (being an overseas region) and an integral part of the Republic with the same status as those situated on the European mainland.
Réunion is an outermost region of the European Union and, as an overseas department of France, is part of the Eurozone.
Before the arrival of the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century, there is little to Réunion's recorded history. Arab traders were familiar with it by the name Dina Morgabin,. The island possibly features on a map from 1153 AD by Al Sharif el-Edrisi. The island may also have been visited by Swahili or Malay sailors.
The first European discovery of the area was made around 1507 by Portuguese explorers, but the specifics are unclear. The uninhabited island may have been first sighted by the expedition led by Don Pedro Mascarenhas, who gave his name to the island group around Réunion, the Mascarenes. Réunion itself was dubbed Santa Apolonia after a favorite saint, which suggests that the date of the Portuguese discovery may have been February 9, her saint day. Diego Lopes de Sequeira is claimed to have landed on the island in 1509.
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Savoy
Savoy (/ˈsævɔɪ/; Arpitan: Savouè, IPA: [saˈvwɛ]; French: Savoie, IPA: [savwa]; Italian: Savoia) is a region of France. It comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Dauphiné in the south.
The historical land of Savoy emerged as the feudal territory of the house of Savoy during the 11th to 14th centuries. The historical territory is shared between the modern republics of France and Italy.
Installed by Rudolph III, King of Burgundy, officially in 1003, the House of Savoy became the longest surviving royal house in Europe.[citation needed] It ruled the County of Savoy to 1416 and then the Duchy of Savoy from 1416 to 1714.
The territory of Savoy was annexed to France in 1792 under the French First Republic, before being returned to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in 1815. Savoy was finally annexed to France, under the Second French Empire in 1860, as part of a political agreement brokered between the French emperor Napoleon III and King Victor Emmanuel II of the Kingdom of Sardinia that began the process of unification of Italy. Victor Emmanuel's dynasty, the House of Savoy, retained its Italian lands of Piedmont and Liguria and became the ruling dynasty of Italy.
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Second French Empire
The Second French Empire (French: Le Second Empire Français) was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.
Although the machinery of government was almost the same under the Second Empire as it had been under the First, its founding principles were different. The function of the Empire, as Emperor Napoleon III often repeated, was to guide the people internally towards justice and externally towards perpetual peace. Holding his power by universal male suffrage, and having frequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached previous oligarchical governments with neglecting social questions, he set out to solve them by organising a system of government based on the principles of the "Napoleonic Idea", i.e. of the emperor, the elect of the people as the representative of the democracy, and as such supreme; and of himself, the representative of the great Napoleon I of France, "who had sprung armed from the French Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove", as the guardian of the social gains of the revolutionary period.
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Seine-Saint-Denis
Seine-Saint-Denis (French pronunciation: [sɛn.sɛ̃.də.ni]) is a French department located in the Île-de-France region. In local slang, it is known as "quatre-vingt treize" (i.e. "ninety-three") or "neuf trois" (i.e. "nine three"), after the official administrative number of the department, 93. The inhabitants are called Séquano-Dionysiens.
Seine-Saint-Denis is located to the northeast of Paris. It has a surface area of only 236 km², making it one of the smallest departments in France. Seine-Saint-Denis and two other small departments, Hauts-de-Seine and Val-de-Marne, form a ring around Paris, known as the Petite Couronne ("little crown"). They form, together with Paris and four other departments, the region of Île-de-France.
Seine-Saint-Denis is made up of 3 departmental arrondissements and 40 communes:
Seine-Saint-Denis was created in January 1968, through the implementation of a law passed in July 1964. It was formed from the part of the (hitherto larger) Seine department to the north and north-east of the Paris ring road (and the line of the old city walls), together with a small slice taken from Seine-et-Oise.
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Spain
Spain (i/ˈspeɪn/ SPAYN; Spanish: España, pronounced: [esˈpaɲa] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a sovereign state and a member of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Its mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar; to the north and north east by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the northwest and west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal.
Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast, and two autonomous cities in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla, that border Morocco. Furthermore, the town of Llívia is a Spanish exclave situated inside French territory. With an area of 504,030 square kilometres (194,610 sq mi), it is the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union after France, and the fourth largest country in Europe after Russia, Ukraine and France.
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Stade de France
The Stade de France (French pronunciation: [stad də fʁɑ̃s]) is the national stadium of France, situated just north of Paris in the commune of Saint-Denis. It has an all-seater capacity of 81,338, making it the eighth largest stadium in Europe, and is used by both the France national football team and French rugby union team for international competition. On 12 July 1998, France defeated Brazil 3–0 in the FIFA World Cup Final contested at the stadium. The Stade de France is listed as a category four stadium by UEFA and has hosted matches for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, some matches for the 1999 Rugby World Cup, 2003 World Championships in Athletics, and the 2007 Rugby World Cup making it the only stadium in the world to have hosted both a Football World Cup final and a Rugby World Cup final. The facility also hosted the annual Motorsport event Race of Champions in 2004, 2005, and 2006 before the event moved to Wembley Stadium in London. The stadium hosted the 2003 World Championships in Athletics and since 1999 it has hosted the annual Meeting Areva athletics meet.
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Touraine
The Touraine (French pronunciation: [tuʁɛn]) is one of the traditional provinces of France. Its capital was Tours. During the political reorganization of French territory in 1790, the Touraine was divided between the departments of Indre-et-Loire, Loir-et-Cher and Indre.
Traversed by the Loire and its tributaries the Cher, the Indre and the Vienne, the Touraine makes up a part of the Paris Basin. It is well known for its viticulture. The TGV, which connects Tours with Paris in less than an hour, has made the Touraine a place of residence for people who work in the capital but seek a different quality of life.
The Touraine takes its name from a Celtic tribe called the Turones, who inhabited the region about two thousand years ago. In 1044, the control of Touraine was given to the Angevins, who (as the House of Plantagenet) became kings of England in 1154, the castle of Chinon being their greatest stronghold. In 1205, Philip II Augustus of France regained Touraine. At this time, Touraine was made into a royal duchy. In 1429, Saint Joan of Arc had a historic meeting with the future King of France Charles VII at Chinon. Throughout the late 15th and 16th centuries, Touraine was a favorite residence of French kings, and the dark and gloomy castles were converted to Renaissance châteaux; for this reason the region was titled "The Garden of France". These same châteaux became popular tourist attractions in modern times. The royal duchy became a province in 1584, and was divided into departments in 1790.
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Tunisia
Tunisia (USi/tuːˈniːʒə/ two-NEE-zhə or UK /tjuːˈnɪziə/ tew-NIZ-iə; Arabic: تونس Tūnis pronounced [ˈtuːnɪs]), officially the Republic of Tunisia (Arabic: الجمهورية التونسية al-Jumhūriyyah at-Tūnisiyyah), is the northernmost country in Africa. It is an Arab Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area is almost 165,000 square kilometres (64,000 sq mi), with an estimated population of just under 10.7 million. Its name is derived from the capital Tunis located in the northeast.
Tunisia is the smallest country in North Africa. The south of the country is composed of the Sahara desert, with much of the remainder consisting of particularly fertile soil and 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) of coastline.
Tunisia has relations with both the European Union—with whom it has an association agreement—and the Arab world. Tunisia is also a member of the Arab Maghreb Union, the Arab League, and the African Union. Tunisia has established close relations with France in particular, through economic cooperation, industrial modernization, and privatisation programs.
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Turkey
Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia (mostly in the Anatolian peninsula) and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea is to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between East Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. The vast majority of the population are Muslims. The country's official language is Turkish, whereas Kurdish and Zazaki languages are spoken by Kurds and Zazas, who constitute 18% of the population.
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United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
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Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik, (born August 24, 1956) is an American writer, essayist and commentator. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism—and as the author of the essay collection Paris to the Moon, an account of five years that Gopnik, his wife Martha, and son Luke, spent in the French capital.
Adam Gopnik was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but was raised in Montreal, Quebec. Gopnik's parents, Irwin and Myrna Gopnik, served as professors at McGill University, from which Gopnik received his Bachelor of Arts degree. While there, he was a contributor for The McGill Daily. He completed graduate work at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.
In 1986, Gopnik began his long professional association with The New Yorker with a piece that would show his future range, a consideration of connections between baseball, childhood, and Renaissance art. He has written for four editors at the magazine: William Shawn, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and David Remnick.
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Alain Finkielkraut
Alain Finkielkraut (b. June 30, 1949, Paris) is a French essayist, and son of a Jewish-Polish manufacturer of fine leather goods who had been deported to Auschwitz and survived. He currently teaches at the École polytechnique as professor of the "history of ideas and modernity" in the department of humanities and social sciences. Author of a number of books, Finkielkraut is among some of France's "public intellectuals" who often appear on talk shows and publish columns in the French media. Finkielkraut advocates what in France is known as a humanist standpoint; although his supposed (self-declared) humanism has been challenged at many times during his career and frequently deemed quite the opposite of humanism, especially by anti-conservative and liberal activists. Sixty researchers and professors at the École polytechnique are known to have signed a petition to protest his alleged colonial views, although others have come to his defense and accused his protestors of attacking Finkielkraut because of his Jewish heritage.[citation needed]
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Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry (8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side.
Best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which is often cited as a forerunner to the surrealist theatre of the 1920s and 1930s, Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Sometimes grotesque or misunderstood (e.g. the opening line in his play Ubu Roi, "Merdre!", has been translated into English as "Pshit!", "Shitteth!", "Shittr!", "Shikt!", "Shrit!", "Pschitt!", and "Shitsky!"), he invented a pseudoscience called 'Pataphysics.
A precociously brilliant student, Jarry enthralled his classmates with a gift for pranks and troublemaking.
At the lycée in Rennes when he was 15, he led of a group of boys who devoted much time and energy to poking fun at their well-meaning, but obese and incompetent physics teacher, a man named Hébert. Jarry and classmate Henri Morin wrote a play they called Les Polonais and performed it with marionettes in the home of one of their friends. The main character, Père Heb, was a blunderer with a huge belly; three teeth (one of stone, one of iron, and one of wood); a single, retractable ear; and a misshapen body. In Jarry's later work Ubu Roi, Père Heb would develop into Ubu, one of the most monstrous and astonishing characters in French literature.
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All Saints Day
All Saints' Day (in the Roman Catholic Church officially the Solemnity of All Saints and also called All Hallows or Hallowmas), often shortened to All Saints, is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. In the Western calendar it is the day after Halloween and the day before All Souls' Day.
In Western Christian theology, the day commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in Heaven. It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries. In the Catholic Church and many Anglican churches, the next day specifically commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven. Christians who celebrate All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day do so in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual bond between those in purgatory (the 'Church Suffering'), those in heaven (the 'church triumphant'), and the living (the 'church militant'). Other Christian traditions define, remember and respond to the saints in different ways; for example, in the Methodist Church, the word "saints" refers to all Christians and therefore, on All Saint's Day, the Church Universal, as well as the deceased members of a local congregation, are honoured and remembered.
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Alsace
Alsace (French: Alsace [alzas]; Alsatian: Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass, pre-1996: Elsaß, IPA: [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area (8,280 km²), and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km² (total population in 2006: 1,815,488; 1 January 2008 estimate: 1,836,000). Alsace is located on France's eastern border and on the west bank of the upper Rhine adjacent to Germany and Switzerland. The political, economic and cultural capital as well as largest city of Alsace is Strasbourg. Because that city is the seat of dozens of international organizations and bodies, Alsace is politically one of the most important regions in the European Union.
The name "Alsace" can be traced back to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain". An alternative explanation derives it from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill", a river in Alsace. The region was historically part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was gradually annexed by France in the 17th century under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV and made one of the provinces of France. Alsace is frequently mentioned in conjunction with Lorraine, because German possession of parts of these two régions (as the imperial province Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918) was contested in the 19th and 20th centuries, during which Alsace changed hands four times between France and Germany in 75 years.
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André Malraux
André Malraux (pronounced: [ɑ̃dʁe malʁo]) DSO (3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist and Minister for Cultural Affairs. Malraux's novel La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate) (1933) won the Prix Goncourt. He was appointed by President Charles de Gaulle as Minister of Information (1945–1946) and subsequently as France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs during de Gaulle's presidency (1959–1969).
Malraux was born in Paris in 1901, the son of Fernand-Georges Malraux and Berthe Lamy (Malraux). His parents separated in 1905 and eventually divorced. There are suggestions that Malraux's paternal grandfather committed suicide in 1909.
Malraux was raised by his mother, maternal aunt Marie and maternal grandmother, Adrienne Lamy-Romagna, who had a grocery store in the small town of Bondy. His father, a stockbroker, committed suicide in 1930 after the international crash of the stock market and onset of the Great Depression. From his childhood, associates noticed that Andre had marked nervousness and motor and vocal tics. The recent biographer Olivier Todd, who published a book on Malraux in 2005, suggests that he had Tourette's syndrome, although that has not been confirmed. Either way, most critics have not seen this as a significant factor in Malraux's life or literary works.
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Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau (French pronunciation: [ʒan‿ɑ̃twan wato]; October 10, 1684 – July 18, 1721) was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement (in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens). He revitalized the waning Baroque style, and indeed moved it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical Rococo.
Watteau is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes: scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with an air of theatricality. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet.
Watteau was born in the town of Valenciennes, which had recently passed from the Spanish Netherlands to France. His father was a master tiler. Showing an early interest in painting, he was apprenticed to Jacques-Albert Gérin, a local painter. Having little to learn from Gérin, Watteau left for Paris in about 1702. There he found employment in a workshop at Pont Notre-Dame, making copies of popular genre paintings in the Flemish and Dutch tradition; it was in that period that he developed his characteristic sketchlike technique.
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Auguste Escoffier
Georges Auguste Escoffier (pronounced [ʒɔʁʒ ɔɡyst ɛskɔfje]; 28 October 1846, Villeneuve-Loubet, Alpes-Maritimes – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. He is a legendary figure among chefs and gourmets, and was one of the most important leaders in the development of modern French cuisine. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine, but Escoffier's achievement was to simplify and modernize Carême's elaborate and ornate style. Referred to by the French press as roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois ("king of chefs and chef of kings"—though this had also been previously said of Carême), Escoffier was France's pre-eminent chef in the early part of the 20th century.
Alongside the recipes he recorded and invented, another of Escoffier's contributions to cooking was to elevate it to the status of a respected profession by introducing organized discipline to his kitchens. He organized his kitchens by the brigade de cuisine system, with each section run by a chef de partie.
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Balzac
Honoré de Balzac (French pronunciation: [ɔnɔʁe də balzak]; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon.
Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. His writing influenced many subsequent novelists such as Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino, and philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Many of Balzac's works have been made into or have inspired films, and they are a continuing source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and critics.
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Bernard Pivot
Bernard Pivot, OC, CQ (born 5 May 1935) is a journalist, interviewer and host of French cultural television programmes. He is a member of the Académie Goncourt.
Pivot was born in Lyon, the son of grocers. During World War II, his father, Charles Pivot, was taken prisoner and his mother moved to the family home to the village of Quincié-en-Beaujolais, where Bernard Pivot started school.
In 1945 his father was released, and the reunited family returned to Lyon. At age 10, Pivot went to a Catholic boarding school and discovered a consuming passion for sport, a passion which helped teachers to overlook his general mediocrity in all traditional school subjects except French language and history.
After starting studies in law in Lyon, Pivot entered the Centre de formation des journalistes (CFJ) in Paris, where he met his future wife, Monique. He graduated second in his class.
After an internship at "Le progrès" in Lyon, he studied economic journalism for a full year, then joined the Figaro littéraire in 1958.
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Bertrand Delanoë
Bertrand Delanoë (born 30 May 1950; French pronunciation: [bɛʁ.tʁɑ̃ də.la.nɔ.e] ( listen)) is a French politician, and has been the mayor of Paris since 2001. He is member of the Socialist Party (PS).
Delanoë was born in Tunis, Tunisia to a French-Tunisian father and a French mother. He moved to France with his family in his teens.
Bertrand Delanoë was born 30 May 1950 in Tunis, to an atheist father (a land surveyor) and a Roman Catholic mother (a nurse). At 6 years old, Delanoë became a member of the "Petits Chanteurs des Sables", a choral group associated with the Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Bois.
At the age of 11, Delanoë witnessed the Battle of Bizerte between France and newly independent Tunisia.
After the military base was closed in 1963, Delanoë's family broke up. His mother came to live in Rodez (Aveyron), with her son. After leaving school, Delanoë is said to have started studies in law at the University of Toulouse. According to Who's Who in France he possesses a diploma in economics.
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Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy indigenous to the Indian subcontinent and encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs, and practices largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the Buddha (meaning "the awakened one" in Sanskrit and Pāli). The Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by Buddhists as an awakened or enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end ignorance (avidyā), craving (taṇhā), and suffering (dukkha), by recognizing dependent origination and sunyata, and attain Nirvana.
Two major branches of Buddhism are recognized: Theravada ("The School of the Elders") and Mahayana ("The Great Vehicle"). Theravada has a widespread following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana is found throughout East Asia and includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Shingon, Tiantai (Tendai) and Shinnyo-en. In some classifications, Vajrayana—practiced mainly in Tibet and Mongolia, and adjacent parts of China and Russia—is recognized as a third branch, while others classify it as a part of Mahayana. There are other categorisations of these three Vehicles or Yanas.
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Buddhists
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy indigenous to the Indian subcontinent and encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs, and practices largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the Buddha (meaning "the awakened one" in Sanskrit and Pāli). The Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by Buddhists as an awakened or enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end ignorance (avidyā), craving (taṇhā), and suffering (dukkha), by recognizing dependent origination and sunyata, and attain Nirvana.
Two major branches of Buddhism are recognized: Theravada ("The School of the Elders") and Mahayana ("The Great Vehicle"). Theravada has a widespread following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana is found throughout East Asia and includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Shingon, Tiantai (Tendai) and Shinnyo-en. In some classifications, Vajrayana—practiced mainly in Tibet and Mongolia, and adjacent parts of China and Russia—is recognized as a third branch, while others classify it as a part of Mahayana. There are other categorisations of these three Vehicles or Yanas.
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Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro (French pronunciation: [kamij pisaʁo]) (10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the “pivotal” figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the “dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality”.Cézanne said "he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord," and he was also one of Gauguin's masters. Renoir referred to his work as “revolutionary”, through his artistic portrayals of the "common man", as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without "artifice or grandeur".
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Cardinal Richelieu
Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac (French pronunciation: [ʁiʃəljø]; 9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642) was a French clergyman, noble and statesman.
Consecrated as a bishop in 1608, he later entered politics, becoming a Secretary of State in 1616. Richelieu soon rose in both the Catholic Church and the French government, becoming a Cardinal in 1622, and King Louis XIII's chief minister in 1624. He remained in office until his death in 1642; he was succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin, whose career he had fostered.
The Cardinal de Richelieu was often known by the title of the King's "Chief Minister" or "First Minister". As a result, he is considered to be the world's first Prime Minister, in the modern sense of the term.[who?] He sought to consolidate royal power and crush domestic factions. By restraining the power of the nobility, he transformed France into a strong, centralized state. His chief foreign policy objective was to check the power of the Austro-Spanish Habsburg dynasty, and to ensure French dominance in the Thirty Years' War that engulfed Europe. Although he was a cardinal, he did not hesitate to make alliances with Protestant rulers in attempting to achieve his goals.
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Charlemagne
Charlemagne ( /ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/ or /ˈʃɑrləmeɪn/; French pronunciation: [ʃaʁ.lə.maɲ]; c. 742 – 28 January 814), also known as Charles the Great (Latin: Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus), was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 in Rome.
His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the European Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and France.
The son of King Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, a Frankish queen, he succeeded his father in 768 and was initially co-ruler with his brother Carloman I. It has often been suggested that the relationship between Charlemagne and Carloman was not good, but it has also been argued that tensions were exaggerated by Carolingian chroniclers.
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Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (/ˈtʃɑrlz/ or /ˈʃɑrl dəˈɡɔːl/; French: [ʃaʁl də ɡol] ( listen); 22 November 1890 – 9 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969.
A veteran of World War I, in the 1920s and 1930s de Gaulle came to the fore as a proponent of mobile armoured divisions, which he considered would become central in modern warfare. During World War II, he earned the rank of brigadier general (retained throughout his life), leading one of the few successful armoured counter-attacks during the 1940 Battle of France in May in Montcornet, and then briefly served in the French government as France was falling. De Gaulle was the most senior French military officer to reject the June 1940 armistice to Nazi Germany right from the outset.
He escaped to Britain and gave a famous radio address, broadcast by the BBC on 18 June 1940, exhorting the French people to resist Nazi Germany and organised the Free French Forces with exiled French officers in Britain. As the war progressed de Gaulle gradually gained control of all French colonies except Indochina most of which had at first been controlled by the pro-German Vichy regime. Despite earning a reputation for being a difficult man to do business with, by the time of the Allied invasion of France in 1944 he was heading what amounted to a French government in exile, but although he insisted that France be treated as a great independent power by the other Allies, the Americans in particular remained deeply suspicious of his motives. De Gaulle became prime minister in the French Provisional Government, resigning in 1946 because of political conflicts.
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China
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
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Christian Dior
Christian Dior (French pronunciation: [kʁistjɑ̃ djɔːʁ]) (21 January 1905 – 23 October 1957) was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.
Christian Dior was born in Granville, a seaside town on the coast of Normandy, France, the second of the five children of Maurice Dior, a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer (the family firm was Dior Frères), and his wife, the former Isabelle Cardamone. He had four siblings: Raymond (father of Françoise Dior), Jacqueline, Bernard, and Ginette (aka Catherine). When Christian was about five years old, the family moved to Paris, France, but still returned to the Normandy coast for summer vacations.
Dior's family had hopes he would become a diplomat, but Dior was artistic and wished to be involved in fashion. To make money, he sold his fashion sketches outside his house for about 10 cents each. In 1928, Dior left school and received money from his father to finance a small art gallery, where he and a friend sold art by the likes of Pablo Picasso. Three years later, after the death of Dior's mother and brother and a financial disaster in the family’s fertilizer business, during the Great Depression, that resulted in his father losing control of Dior Frères, the gallery had to be closed. From then until about 1940 he worked with fashion designer Robert Piguet, when he was called up for military service.
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Christian Lacroix
Christian Marie Marc Lacroix (French pronunciation: [kʁistjɑ̃ lakʁwa]; born 16 May 1951) is a French fashion designer. The name may also refer to the company he founded.
Lacroix was born in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône in southern France. At a young age he began sketching historical costumes and fashions. Lacroix graduated from high school in 1969 and moved to Montpellier, to study Art History at the University of Montpellier. In 1971, he enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. While working on a dissertation on dress in French 18th-century painting, Lacroix also pursued a program in museum studies at the École du Louvre. His aspiration during this time was to become a museum curator. It was during this time he met his future wife Françoise Rosenthiel, whom he married in 1974.
In 1987 he opened his own couture house. He began putting out ready-to-wear in 1988 drawing inspiration from diverse cultures. Critics commented that he did not seem to understand the type of clothing the working woman needed. In 1989, Lacroix launched jewelry, handbags, shoes, glasses, scarves and ties (along with ready-to-wear). In this same year, he opened boutiques within Paris, Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, London, Geneva and Japan.
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Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain, (French pronunciation: [klod lɔ.ʁɛ̃]), traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, (French pronunciation: [ʒəle]), dit le Lorrain) (c. 1600 – 21 or 23 November 1682) was an artist of the Baroque era who was active in Italy, and is admired for his achievements in landscape painting.
Claude was born in 1604 or 1605 into poverty in the town of Chamagne, Vosges in Lorraine – then the Duchy of Lorraine, an independent state until 1766 and now in northeast France. He was one of five children. His actual name was Claude Gellée, but he is better known by the province in which he was born. Orphaned by age of twelve, he went to live at Freiburg with an elder brother, Jean Gellée, a woodcarver. He afterwards went to Rome to seek a livelihood and then to Naples, where he apprenticed for two years, from 1619 to 1621, under Goffredo (Gottfried) Wals. He returned to Rome in April 1625 and was apprenticed to Agostino Tassi. He got into a fight with Leonaert Bramer.
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Claude Monet
Claude Monet (French pronunciation: [klod mɔnɛ/mɔne]) (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant).
Claude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 on the 5th floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. He was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians. On 20 May 1841, he was baptized in the local parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as Oscar-Claude, but his parents called him simply Oscar. In 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery business, but Monet wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer.
On 1 April 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts. Locals knew him well for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857, he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting. Both received the influence of Johan Barthold Jongkind.
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Claude Montana
Claude Montana is a French fashion designer. His company, The House of Montana, founded in 1979, went bankrupt in 1997.
Born in Paris in 1949 to a Catalonian father and German mother, Montana began his career by designing papier-mâché jewelry covered with rhinestones. Later, he discovered leather and the complex techniques associated with it, eventually becoming a leading force in leather. His first fashion show took place in 1976. He was an avid colorist and favored blue, red, metallic, and neutral tones, in luxurious materials such as cashmere, leather and silk. He started his own company in 1979, and quickly became a darling of 1980s high fashion along with Thierry Mugler, who also favored aggressive shapes and strong colours.
In 1981, Montana designed his first collection for men, called Montana Hommes, in which he focused on the color and material of each garment rather than trivial details. From 1990 to 1992 he designed haute couture collections for the House of Lanvin, for which he received two consecutive Golden Thimble awards. Despite critical acclaim, Montana's bold designs were financially disastrous for the house, created at a total estimated loss of $50 million, and he was ultimately replaced by Dominique Morlotti. In 1999, he designed an affordable line of clothing for women, Montana BLU. It was inspired by his favorite themes but modified to fit the style of sportswear and citywear.
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Cremieux Decree
Adolphe Crémieux (April 30, 1796 – February 10, 1880) was a French-Jewish lawyer and statesman, and a staunch defender of the human rights of the Jews of France.
He was born Isaac Moïse in Nîmes to a wealthy Jewish family, from the papal enclave of Carpentras, which had migrated to Nîmes. He married a member of the Silny family in 1824.
After the revolution of 1830 he came to Paris, formed connections with numerous political personages, even with King Louis Philippe, and became a brilliant defender of Liberal ideas in the law courts and in the press. Examples include his Éloge funèbre of the bishop Grégoire (1830), his Mémoire for the political rehabilitation of Marshal Ney (1833), and his plea for the accused of April 1835. Elected deputy in 1842, he was one of the leaders in the campaign against the Guizot ministry, and his eloquence contributed greatly to the success of his party.
From 1834 until his death, Crémieux served as vice-president of the "Consistoire Central des Israélites de France" (Central Consistory of the Jews of France), the administrative agency for all French Jews. On February 24, 1848 he was chosen by the Republicans as a member of the provisional government, and as minister of justice he secured the decrees abolishing the death penalty for political offenses, and making the office of judge immovable. That same year he was instrumental in declaring an end to slavery in all French Colonies, for which some have called him the French Abraham Lincoln. When the conflict between the Republicans and Socialists broke out, he resigned office but continued to sit in the constituent assembly. At first he supported Louis Napoleon, but when he discovered the prince's imperial ambitions he broke with him.
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Culture of Serbia
Serbian culture refers to the culture of Serbia and of ethnic Serbs.
Serbian culture starts with that of the South Slavic peoples that lived in the Balkans. Early on, Serbs may have been influenced by the Paleo-Balkan peoples. The Byzantine Empire had a great influence on the culture; Serbs were initially governing the Byzantine frontiers in the name of the emperor and were later through their sworn alliance given independence, baptized by Greek missionaries and adopted the Cyrillic script. The Serbian Orthodox Church gained autocephaly from Constantinople in 1219. The Republic of Venice influenced the maritime regions in the Middle Ages. The Ottoman Empire conquered Serbia in 1459 and placed the country under a state of occupation which lasted for four centuries, the consequences of which suppressed Serbian culture but also greatly influenced Serbian Art. Serbian culture flourished from 1718 in regions that were under the control of the Habsburg Monarchy.
Following Serbia's autonomy after the Serbian revolution and eventual independence, the culture of Serbia was restrengthened within its people.
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Cézanne
Paul Cézanne (US /seɪˈzæn/ or UK /sɨˈzæn/; French: [pɔl sezan]; 1839–1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cézanne "is the father of us all" cannot be easily dismissed.
Cézanne's often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields, at once both a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye and an abstraction from observed nature. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.
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Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas (US /deɪˈɡɑː/ or UK /ˈdeɪɡɑː/; French: [ilɛʁ ʒɛʁmɛnɛdɡɑʁ dəɡɑ]; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, 1834–1917), was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist. A superb draftsman, he is especially identified with the subject of the dance, and over half of his works depict dancers. These display his mastery in the depiction of movement, as do his racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and depiction of human isolation.
Early in his career, he wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classic art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.
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Edith Piaf
Édith Piaf (US /piːˈɑːf/ or UK /ˈpiːæf/; French: [eˈdit pjaf]; 19 December 1915 – 11 October 1963), born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's national popular singer, as well as being one of France's greatest international stars. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads. Among her songs are "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "l'Accordéoniste" (1955), and "Padam... Padam..." (1951).
Despite numerous biographies, much of Piaf's life is shrouded in mystery. She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville, Paris. Legend has it that she was born on the pavement of Rue de Belleville 72, but her birth certificate cites the Hôpital Tenon, the hospital for the 20th arrondissement of which Belleville is part.
She was named Édith after the World War I British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity. Piaf—an argot colloquialism for "sparrow"—was a nickname she would receive 20 years later.
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Empress Josephine
Joséphine de Beauharnais (pronounced: [ʒo.ze.fin də‿bo.aʁ.nɛ]; 23 June 1763 – 29 May 1814) was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, and thus the first Empress of the French. Her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais was guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she was imprisoned in the Carmes prison until her release five days after Alexandre's execution.
Through her daughter, Hortense, she was the maternal grandmother of Napoléon III. Through her son, Eugène, she was the great-grandmother of later Swedish and Danish kings and queens, as well as the last Queen of Greece. The reigning houses of Belgium, Norway and Luxembourg also descend from her.
She did not bear Napoleon any children; as a result, he divorced her in 1810 to marry Marie Louise of Austria.
Joséphine was the recipient of numerous love letters written by Napoleon, many of which still exist. Her chateau of Malmaison was noted for its magnificent rose garden, which she supervised closely, owing to her passionate interest in roses, which she collected from all over the world.
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Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of these are considered classics of American literature.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1922, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent, and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel, was published in 1926.
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Francia
Francia or Frankia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks or Frankish Kingdom (Latin: regnum Francorum), Frankish Realm or occasionally Frankland, was the territory inhabited and ruled by the Franks from the 3rd to the 10th century. Under the nearly continuous campaigns of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne—father, son, grandson—the greatest expansion of the Frankish empire was secured by the early 9th century.
The tradition of dividing patrimonies among brothers meant that the Frankish realm was ruled, nominally, as one polity subdivided into several regna (kingdoms or subkingdoms). The geography and number of subkingdoms varied over time, but the particular term Francia came generally to refer to just one regnum, that of Austrasia, centred on the Rhine and Meuse rivers in northern Europe; even so, sometimes the term was used as well to encompass Neustria north of the Loire and west of the Seine. Eventually, the singular use of the name Francia shifted towards Paris, and settled on the region of the Seine basin surrounding Paris, which still today bears the name Île-de-France, and which region gave its name to the entire Kingdom of France.
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François Boucher
François Boucher (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa buʃe]) (29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture. He also painted several portraits of his illustrious patroness, Madame de Pompadour.
Born in Paris, the son of a lace designer Nicolas Boucher, François Boucher was perhaps the most celebrated decorative artist of the 18th century, with most of his work reflecting the Rococo style. At the young age of 17, Boucher was apprenticed by his father to François Lemoyne, but after only three months he went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars. Within three years Boucher had already won the elite Grand Prix de Rome, although he did not take up the consequential opportunity to study in Italy until four years later. On his return from studying in Italy in 1731, he was admitted to the Académie de peinture et de sculpture as a historical painter, and became a faculty member in 1734.
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French people
The French (French: Français) are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups. Within France, the French are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence.
However, the word can also refer to people of French descent who are found in other countries, with significant French-speaking population groups or not, such as Argentina (French Argentines), Brazil (French Brazilians), French West Indies (the French Caribbean people), Canada (French Canadians) and the United States (French Americans), and some of them have a French cultural identity. The United Kingdom also has a large French population, mainly in England, and due to historic relations and immigration.
To be French, according to the first article of the Constitution, is to be a citizen of France, regardless of one's origin, race, or religion (sans distinction d'origine, de race ou de religion). According to its principles, France has devoted herself to the destiny of a proposition nation, a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live together, as defined by Ernest Renan's "plébiscite de tous les jours" ("daily referendum" on the willingness to live together, in Renan's 1882 essay "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?").
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Gabriel Faure
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (pronounced: [ɡabʁiɛl yʁbɛ̃ fɔʁe]; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, nocturnes for piano, and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his greatest works in his later years, in a harmonically and melodically much more complex style.
Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a small boy. At the age of nine he was sent to a music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865 Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, Fauré was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.
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Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (French pronunciation: [øˈʒɛn ãˈʁi ˌpol ɡoˈɡɛ̃]; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist who was not well appreciated until after his death. Gauguin was later recognized for his experimental use of colors and synthetist style that was distinguishably different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. Gauguin’s art became popular after his death and many of his paintings were in the possession of Russian collector, Sergei Shchukin. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with coloring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
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Geert Hofstede
Geert Hofstede, born as Gerard Hendrik Hofstede (5 October 1928 in Haarlem, Netherlands) is an influential Dutch researcher in the fields of organizational studies and more concretely organizational culture, also cultural economics and management. He is a well-known pioneer in his research of cross-cultural groups and organizations and played a major role in developing a systematic framework for assessing and differentiating national cultures and organizational cultures. His studies demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groups that influence behavior of societies and organizations. His most notable work has been in developing cultural dimensions theory. He is known with his books Culture's Consequences and Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, co-authored with his son Gert Jan Hofstede.
Upon his retirement in 1993, Geert has visited numerous universities worldwide to educate students on his theoretical approaches and to continue his research in this field. He currently is Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, and serves as an extramural fellow of the Center of Economic Research at Tilburg University in Tilburg, Netherlands.
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Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.
Gertrude Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born on February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (merged with Pittsburgh in 1907) to upper-class German Jewish parents, Daniel and Amelia Stein. Her father was a railroad executive whose investments in streetcar lines and real estate made the family wealthy.
When Gertrude was three years old she and her family moved to Vienna and then Paris. They returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school.
Her mother died in 1888, and her father in 1891. Michael, her eldest brother, took over the family business holdings. He arranged for Gertrude, and another sister, Bertha, to live with their mother's family in Baltimore after the deaths of their parents. In 1892, she lived with her uncle David Bachrach. Bachrach had married Fanny Keyser, sister of Gertrude's mother Amelia, in 1877.
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Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement (characterized by the paintings of Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix) with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social commentary in his work.
Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still-lifes. He courted controversy by addressing social issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants, and working conditions of the poor. His work belonged neither to the predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools. History painting, which the Paris Salon esteemed as a painter's highest calling, did not interest Courbet, who stated that "the artists of one century [are] basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century ..." Instead, he believed that the only possible source for a living art is the artist's own experience.
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Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier (February 26, 1808 – February 10, 1879) was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century.
A prolific draftsman who produced over 500 paintings, 4000 lithographs, 1000 wood engravings, 1000 drawings, 100 sculptures he was perhaps best known for his caricatures of political figures and satires on the behavior of his countrymen, although posthumously the value of his painting has also been recognized.
Daumier was born in Marseille to Jean-Baptiste Louis Daumier and Cécile Catherine Philippe. His father Jean-Baptiste was a glazier whose literary aspirations led him to move to Paris in 1814, seeking to be published as a poet. In 1816 the young Daumier and his mother followed Jean-Baptiste to Paris. Daumier showed in his youth an irresistible inclination towards the artistic profession, which his father vainly tried to check by placing him first with a huissier, for whom he was employed as an errand boy, and later, with a bookseller. In 1822 he became protégé to Alexandre Lenoir, a friend of Daumier's father who was an artist and archaeologist. The following year Daumier entered the Académie Suisse. He also worked for a lithographer and publisher named Belliard, and made his first attempts at lithography.
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Hubert de Givenchy
Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy (pronounced [y.bɛʁ də ʒi.vã.ʃi], born 21st of February 1927) is a French aristocrat and fashion designer who founded The House of Givenchy in 1952. He is famous for having designed much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn, as well as clothing for clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1970. .
The younger son of Lucien Taffin de Givenchy (1888–1930), marquis of Givenchy, and his wife, the former Béatrice ("Sissi") Badin (1888–1976), Givenchy was born in Beauvais, Oise.
The Taffin family, which traces its roots to Venice, Italy (the original surname was Taffini), was ennobled in 1713, at which time the head of the family became marquis of Givenchy.
After his father's death from influenza in 1930, the future fashion designer and his elder brother Jean-Claude de Givenchy (1925–2009), who inherited the family's marquessate and eventually became the president of Parfums Givenchy, were raised by their mother and maternal grandmother, Marguerite Dieterle Badin (1853–1940), the widow of Jules Badin (1843–1919), an artist who was the owner and director of the historic Gobelins Manufactory and Beauvais tapestry factories. Artistic professions ran in the extended Badin family. Givenchy's maternal great-grandfather, Jules Dieterle, was a set designer who also created designs for the Beauvais factory, including a set of 13 designs for the Elysée Palace. One of his great-great-grandfathers also designed sets for the Paris Opera.
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Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwanCBE, FRSA, FRSL (born 21 June 1948) is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
McEwan began his career writing sparse, Gothic short stories. The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981) were his first two novels, and earned him the nickname "Ian Macabre". These were followed by three novels of some success in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1997, he published Enduring Love, which was made into a film. He won the Man Booker Prize with Amsterdam (1998). In 2001, he published Atonement, which was made into an Oscar-winning film. This was followed by Saturday (2005), On Chesil Beach (2007) and Solar (2010). In 2011, he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize.
McEwan was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, on 21 June 1948, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet (née Moore). He spent much of his childhood in East Asia (including Singapore), Germany and North Africa (including Libya), where his father, a Scottish army officer, was posted. His family returned to England when he was twelve. He was educated at Woolverstone Hall School; the University of Sussex, receiving his degree in English literature in 1970; and the University of East Anglia, where he was one of the first graduates of Malcolm Bradbury's pioneering creative writing course.
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Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac ( /ʒɑːk ʃɨˈræk/; French pronunciation: [ʒɑk ʃiʁak]; born 29 November 1932) is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 (making him the only person to hold the position of Prime Minister twice under the Fifth Republic), and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.
After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, a term at Harvard University and the École nationale d'administration (ENA), Chirac began his career as a high-level civil servant, and soon entered politics. He subsequently occupied various senior positions, including Minister of Agriculture, Minister of the Interior, Prime Minister, Mayor of Paris, and finally President of the French Republic.
Chirac's internal policies included lower tax rates, the removal of price controls, strong punishment for crime and terrorism, and business privatisation. He also argued for more socially responsible economic policies, and was elected in 1995 after campaigning on a platform of healing the "social rift" (fracture sociale). After less statist policy when he was Prime Minister (1986–1988), he changed his method. Then, his economic policies, based on dirigisme, state-directed ideals, stood in opposition to the laissez-faire policies of the United Kingdom, which Chirac famously described as "Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism". Chirac is the second-longest serving President of France (two full terms, the first of seven years and the second of five years), after François Mitterrand. As President, he also served as an ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra and Grand Master of the French Légion d'honneur.
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Jacques Toubon
Jacques Toubon (born 29 June 1941 in Nice, France) is a right-wing French politician who held several major national and Parisian offices.
Governmental functions
Minister of Culture : 1993–1995.
Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice : 1995–1997.
Electoral mandates
European Parliament
Member of European Parliament : 2004–2009. Elected in 2004.
National Assembly of France
Member of the National Assembly of France for Paris : 1981–1993 (Became minister in 1993). Elected in 1981, reelected in 1986, 1988, 1993.
Municipal Council
Deputy-mayor of Paris : 1983–2001. Reelected in 1989, 1995.
Councillor of Paris : 1983–2008. Reelected in 1989, 1995, 2001.
Mayor of the 13th arrondissement of Paris : 1983–2001. Reelected in 1989, 1995.
Councillor of the 13th arrondissement of Paris : 1983–2001. Reelected in 1989, 1995.
Jacques Toubon is known for the controversial so-called Toubon Law, enforcing the use of the French language in official French government publications, and advertisements published in France. Since the law can largely be described as being hostile to English, Jacques Toubon is sometimes referred to, jokingly, as "Mr Allgood" ("All Good" being a translation of "Tout bon").
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Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David ( /ʒɒkˈlwiˈdɒvid/) (30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, heightened feeling chiming with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime.
David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre's fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release, that of Napoleon I. It was at this time that he developed his Empire style, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. David had a huge number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the early 19th century, especially academic Salon painting.
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Jean-Paul Gaultier
Jean Paul Gaultier (French: [ʒɑ̃ pɔl ɡotje]; born 24 April 1952 in Arcueil, Val-de-Marne, France) is a French haute couture fashion designer. Gaultier was the creative director of Hermès from 2003 to 2010. In the past, he has hosted the television series Eurotrash.
Gaultier never received formal training as a designer. Instead, he started sending sketches to famous couture stylists at an early age. Pierre Cardin was impressed by his talent and hired him as an assistant in 1970. Afterwards he worked with Jacques Esterel in 1971 and Jean Patou later that year, then returning to manage the Pierre Cardin boutique in Manila for a year in 1974.
His first individual collection was released in 1976 and his characteristic irreverent style dates from 1981, and he has long been known as the enfant terrible of French fashion. Many of Gaultier's following collections have been based on street wear, focusing on popular culture, whereas others, particularly his Haute Couture collections, are very formal yet at the same time unusual and playful.
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Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (/ˈsɑːtrə/; French pronunciation: [saʁtʁ]; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism, and one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy and Marxism. His work, in addition to being influential to existentialism and Marxism, has also influenced sociology, critical theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. Sartre has also been noted for his relationship with the prominent feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir.
He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it, saying that he always declined official honours and that, "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of the French Navy, and Anne-Marie Schweitzer. His mother was of Alsatian origin and the first cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer. (Her father, Charles Schweitzer, was the older brother of Albert Schweitzer's father, Louis Théophile.) When Sartre was only a year old, his father died of a fever. Anne-Marie moved back to her parents' house in Meudon, where she raised Sartre with help from her father, a professor of German, who taught Sartre mathematics and introduced him to classical literature at a very early age. When he was twelve, Satre's mother remarried, and the family moved to La Rochelle, where he was frequently bullied.
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Jews
The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yhudim Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and an ethnoreligious group, originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation.Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos is equal to those born into it, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia.
In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the second millennium BCE. The modern State of Israel defines itself as a Jewish state in its Basic Laws, and Israel's Law of Return states: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh." Israel is the only country where Jews are a majority of the population. Jews achieved political autonomy twice before in ancient history. The first of these periods lasted from 1350 to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges, the United Monarchy, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with the destruction of the First Temple. The second was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, most Jews have lived in diaspora. A minority in every country in which they live (except Israel), they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that has fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.
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José Bové
Joseph (José) Bové (born June 11, 1953 in Talence, Gironde) is a French farmer and syndicalist, member of the alter-globalization movement, and spokesman for Via Campesina. He was one of the twelve official candidates in the 2007 French presidential election. On 7 June 2009, he was elected to the European Parliament as a member of Europe Écologie, a coalition of French environmentalist political parties.
Bové was born in Talence, near Bordeaux, but raised in many different places, both inside and outside France, including the United States. Bové speaks English fluently, having followed his parents to Berkeley, California at the age of three, when they were invited to be researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bové attended a Jesuit secondary school near Paris (from which he was expelled for being "faithless"). While at university, he associated with anarchists and pacifists. When asked to serve in the army, he fled France.
In 1976 Bové joined a movement protesting the proposed expansion of a military camp on the Larzac plateau, which would have displaced sheep farmers. He joined a band of peasants occupying the threatened territory and illegally building a sheep barn. The protest eventually succeeded and the military plan was cancelled. As a result of that experience he became a sheep farmer, producing Roquefort cheese on the Larzac.
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Kabyle people
The Kabyle people (in Kabyle: Iqvayliyen) are the largest homogeneous Algerian ethno-cultural and linguistical community and the largest nation in North Africa to be considered exclusively Berber. Their traditional homeland is Kabylia (or Kabylia) in the north of Algeria, one hundred miles east of Algiers. Tradionally, they have also had a strong presence in the Algérois (Algiers region). There are also, due to emigration during the 19th and 20th centuries, large Algerian-Kabyle (or Kabyle) communities in France and to a lesser extent in Canada.
Kabyles speak the Kabyle language, and since the Berber Spring in 1980, they have been at the forefront of the fight for the official recognition of the Berber languages in Algeria (see Languages of Algeria). The Kabyle region is referred to as Al Qabayel ("tribes") by the Arabic-speaking population and as Kabylia in French, but its inhabitants call it Tamurt Idurar ("Land of Mountains") or Tamurt n Iqvayliyen/Tamurt n Iqbayliyen ("Land of the Kabyles"). It is part of the Atlas Mountains and is located at the edge of the Mediterranean.
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Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Italian pronunciation: [leoˈnardo da ˈvintʃi] pronunciation (help·info); April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519, Old Style) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
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Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin (French pronunciation: [ljɔnɛl ʒɔspɛ̃]; born 12 July 1937) is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.
Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995. He ran for President again in 2002, and was eliminated in the first round due to finishing behind both Chirac and the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, following which he immediately announced his retirement from politics.
Lionel Jospin was born to a Protestant family in Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), a suburb of Paris. He is the son of Robert Jospin, a negationnist socialist close to Robert Faurisson. He attended the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly before studying at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the École nationale d'administration (ENA). He was active in the UNEF students' union, protesting against the war in Algeria (1954–62). He completed his military service as an officer in charge of armoured training in Trier (Germany).
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Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII (27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.
Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority. Mismanagement of the kingdom and ceaseless political intrigues by Marie de Medici and her Italian favourites led the young king to take power, in 1617, by exiling his mother and executing her followers, including Concino Concini, the most influential Italian at the French court.
Louis XIII, taciturn and suspicious, leaned heavily on his Prime Minister Cardinal Richelieu, to govern the Kingdom. They are remembered for the establishment of the Académie française and for putting an end to the revolt of the great feudal lords. The reign of Louis "the Just" was also marked by the struggles against Huguenots and Habsburg Spain.
France's greatest victory in the war against the Habsburg Empire came at the Battle of Rocroi (1643), five days after Louis's death—apparently from complications of intestinal tuberculosis. This battle marked the end of Spain's military ascendancy in Europe and foreshadowed French dominance in Europe under Louis XIV.
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Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV (5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), known as Louis the Great or the Sun King (French: le Roi-Soleil), was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. He holds the distinction of being the longest-reigning king in European history, reigning for 72 years and 110 days.
Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661 after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent of the theory of the divine right of kings, which advocates the divine origin and lack of temporal restraint of monarchical rule, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralized state governed from the capital. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis's minority. By these means he consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.
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Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard (French pronunciation: [maʁjɔ̃ kɔtijaʁ]; born 30 September 1975) is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants. She has also appeared in such films as Big Fish, A Good Year, Public Enemies, Nine, Inception, Midnight in Paris, and Contagion.
In 2007, Cotillard starred as the French singer Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, for which she won the Academy Award, the BAFTA Award, the César Award and the Golden Globe Award for best actress. She made film history by becoming the first person to win an Academy Award for a French language performance. In 2010, she received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the musical Nine.
Cotillard was born in Paris and grew up around Orléans, Loiret in an artistically inclined, "bustling, creative household". Her father, Jean-Claude Cotillard, is an actor, teacher, former mime, and 2006 Molière Award-winning director. Cotillard's mother, Monique (now known as Niseema) Theillaud, is also an actress and drama teacher. She has two younger twin brothers, Quentin and Guillaume. Guillaume is a screenwriter and director. She began acting during her childhood, appearing on stage in one of her father's plays.
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Mireille Guiliano
Mireille Guiliano (French pronunciation: [miʁɛj ʒuˈlyɑnɔ]) (born on April 14, 1946, in Moyeuvre-Grande, France) is a French-American author.
Mireille wrote French Women Don't Get Fat (2004) which reached #1 on the New York Times "Advice, How-to and Miscellaneous: Hardcover bestseller" list, followed by French Women for All Seasons. She runs a related website offering advice, recipes, and a reader forum to complement her French Women books.
Mireille's third book, Women, Work & The Art of Savoir Faire: Business Sense & Sensibility was published in October 2009, and her fourth, The French Women Don't Get Fat Cookbook, was released in April 2010.
Mireille has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today, The Early Show, Dateline NBC and CNN. She has been profiled in The New York Times, USA Today, TIME, Newsweek, The Robb Report, Business Week, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine and dozens of other publications.
She frequently contributes articles on food, wine, travel, and lifestyle to a wide range of publications, including Town & Country and The Quarterly Review of Wines. She has authored essays for Newsweek,Bon Appétit, and Nespresso magazines, as well as the third chapter of Parisiennes (Flammarion 2007).
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Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte (French: Napoléon Bonaparte [napoleɔ̃ bɔnɑpaʁt]) (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the latter stages of the French Revolution. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815. His legal reform, the Napoleonic Code, has been a major influence on many civil law jurisdictions worldwide, but he is best remembered for his role in the wars led against France by a series of coalitions, the so-called Napoleonic Wars. He established hegemony over most of continental Europe and sought to spread the ideals of the French Revolution, while consolidating an imperial monarchy which restored aspects of the deposed Ancien Régime. Due to his success in these wars, often against numerically superior enemies, he is generally regarded as one of the greatest military commanders of all time and his campaigns are studied at military academies throughout much of the world.
Napoleon was born in Corsica to parents of noble Genoese ancestry, and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France. He rose to prominence under the French First Republic and led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. In 1799, he staged a coup d'état and installed himself as First Consul; five years later the French Senate proclaimed him emperor. In the first decade of the 19th century, the French Empire under Napoleon engaged in a series of conflicts—the Napoleonic Wars—involving every major European power.
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Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte (French: Napoléon Bonaparte [napoleɔ̃ bɔnɑpaʁt]) (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the latter stages of the French Revolution. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815. His legal reform, the Napoleonic Code, has been a major influence on many civil law jurisdictions worldwide, but he is best remembered for his role in the wars led against France by a series of coalitions, the so-called Napoleonic Wars. He established hegemony over most of continental Europe and sought to spread the ideals of the French Revolution, while consolidating an imperial monarchy which restored aspects of the deposed Ancien Régime. Due to his success in these wars, often against numerically superior enemies, he is generally regarded as one of the greatest military commanders of all time and his campaigns are studied at military academies throughout much of the world.
Napoleon was born in Corsica to parents of noble Genoese ancestry, and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France. He rose to prominence under the French First Republic and led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. In 1799, he staged a coup d'état and installed himself as First Consul; five years later the French Senate proclaimed him emperor. In the first decade of the 19th century, the French Empire under Napoleon engaged in a series of conflicts—the Napoleonic Wars—involving every major European power.
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Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin (pronounced: [ni.kɔ.lɑ pu.sɛ̃]; 15 June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century. Until the 20th century he remained the major inspiration for such classically oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne.
He spent most of his working life in Rome, except for a short period when Cardinal Richelieu ordered him back to France to serve as First Painter to the King.
Nicolas Poussin's early biographer was his friend Giovanni Pietro Bellori, who relates that Poussin was born near Les Andelys in Normandy and that he received an education that included some Latin, which would stand him in good stead. Early sketches attracted the notice of Quentin Varin, a local painter, whose pupil Poussin became, until he ran away to Paris at the age of eighteen. There he entered the studios of the Flemish painter Ferdinand Elle and then of Georges Lallemand, both minor masters now remembered for having tutored Poussin. He found French art in a stage of transition: the old apprenticeship system was disturbed, and the academic training destined to supplant it was not yet established by Simon Vouet; but having met Courtois the mathematician, Poussin was fired by the study of his collection of engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi after Italian masters.
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Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso], 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are commonly regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.
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Paco Rabanne
Francisco "Paco" Rabaneda Cuervo, more commonly known as Paco Rabanne (born 18 February 1934) is a Spanish fashion designer. He fled Spain for France with his mother when the Spanish Civil War broke out. He originally had an architect's education but became known as l'enfant terrible of the French fashion world in the 1960s.
Rabanne started his career in fashion by creating jewelry for Givenchy, Dior, and Balenciaga. He started his own fashion house in 1966. He used such unconventional materials as metal, paper and plastic for his outlandish and flamboyant designs.
Rabanne has given others the opportunity to begin their fashion careers as well. Houston based designer David Peck worked for Rabanne in Paris before launching his eponymous collection.
Paco Rabanne is known for his costume designs for such films as Barbarella. Also Françoise Hardy was a big fan of Rabanne's designs. The popular French singer Mylene Farmer continues to bring the extravagance of Paco Rabanne to her live concerts.
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Pascal Bruckner
Pascal Bruckner (born 15 December 1948 in Paris) is a French writer.
After studies at the university Paris I and Paris VII Diderot, and then at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Bruckner became maître de conférences at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, and collaborator at the Nouvel Observateur.
Bruckner began writing in the vein of the so-called "nouveaux philosophes" and counts among their best known French proponents. He published Parias (Parias), Lunes de Fiel (adapted to film by Roman Polanski) and Les voleurs de beauté (The beauty stealers) (Prix Renaudot in 1997). Among essays, La tentation de l'innocence (Temptation of innocence) (Prix Médicis in 1995) and, famously, Le Sanglot de l'Homme blanc (The Tears of the White Man), an attack on narcissistic and destructive policies intended to benefit the Third World, and more recently "La tyrannie de la pénitence" (2006), an essay on the West's endless self-criticism, translated as "The Tyranny of Guilt" (2010).
From 1992 to 1999, he was an active supporter of the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovar causes against Serbian aggression. He supported the 1999 NATO bombings of Serbian forces led by Milosevic. In 2003, he supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein by the US forces but later criticized the mistakes of the American army and the use of torture in Abu Graib and Guantanamo.
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Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), and The Brooklyn Follies (2005).
Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish middle class parents of Polish descent, Queenie and Samuel Auster. He grew up in South Orange, New Jersey and was graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood. After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, he moved to Paris, France where he earned a living translating French literature. Since returning to the U.S. in 1974, he has published poems, essays, novels of his own, as well as translations of French writers such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Joseph Joubert.
He and his second wife, writer Siri Hustvedt, were married in 1981, and they live in Brooklyn. Together they have one daughter, Sophie Auster. Previously, Auster was married to the acclaimed writer, Lydia Davis. They have one son together, Daniel Auster.
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Pierre Balmain
Pierre Alexandre Claudius Balmain (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ balmɛ̃], b. Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Savoie, 18 May 1914 – Paris, France, 29 June 1982) was a French fashion designer. Known for sophistication and elegance, he once said that "dressmaking is the architecture of movement."
Balmain's father, who died when the future designer was seven years old, was the owner of a wholesale drapery business. His mother and her sisters operated a fashion boutique. Balmain studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but did not complete his studies. He spent his time there designing dresses. While attending the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Balmain went to Molyneux, who promised to give him a trial. Balmain then left his architectural studies to work for the fashion designer Edward Molyneux, for whom he worked from 1934 until 1939. He joined Lucien Lelong after World War II and opened his own fashion house in 1945. The house showcased long bell-shaped skirts with small waists - a line which later became popular as Dior's New Look. In 1951 he opened branches in the United States selling ready-to-wear clothes. During the 1950s, Balmain popularized the stole for day as well as evening wear and created a vogue for sheath dresses beneath jackets. His talent as a designer lay in his ability to make simple, tailored suits as well as grand evening gowns, all with the same aesthetic of slender and elegant lines. Balmain also designed the iconic uniform of the Singapore Airlines Singapore Girl, loosely based on the traditional Indonesian kebaya.
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Pierre Cardin
Pierre Cardin (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ kaʁdɛ̃]), born Pietro Cardin, is an Italian-born French fashion designer who was born on 7 July 1922, at San Biagio di Callalta near Treviso.
Cardin was known for his avant-garde style and his Space Age designs. He prefers geometric shapes and motifs, often ignoring the female form. He advanced into unisex fashions, sometimes experimental, and not always practical. He introduced the "bubble dress" in 1954.
Pierre Cardin was also designated UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 1991.
On 16 October 2009, Pierre Cardin was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Cardin moved to Paris in 1945. There, he studied architecture and worked with the fashion house of Paquin after the war. He worked with Elsa Schiaparelli until he became head of Christian Dior's tailleure atelier in 1947, but was denied work at Balenciaga.
Cardin founded his own house in 1950. His career was launched when he designed about 30 of the costumes for "the party of the century", a masquerade ball at Palazzo Labia in Venice on 3 September 1951, hosted by the palazzo's owner, Carlos de Beistegui. He began with haute couture in 1953.
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Pierre de Coubertin
Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ də kubɛʁtɛ̃]; 1 January 1863 – 2 September 1937) was a French educationalist and historian, founder of the International Olympic Committee, and is considered the father of the modern Olympic Games. Born into a French aristocratic family, he became an academic and studied a broad range of topics, most notably education and history.
Pierre Frédy was born in Paris on 1 January 1863 into an established aristocratic family. He was the fourth child of Baron Charles Louis Frédy, Baron de Coubertin and Marie–Marcelle Gigault de Crisenoy. Family tradition held that the Frédy name had first arrived in France in the early 15th century, and the first recorded title of nobility granted to the family was given by Louis XI to an ancestor, also named Pierre de Frédy, in 1477. But other branches of his family tree delved even further into French history, and the annals of both sides of his family included nobles of various stations, military leaders, and associates of kings and princes of France.
wn.com/Pierre_de_Coubertin -
Robert Darnton
Robert Darnton (born May 10, 1939) is an American cultural historian, recognized as a leading expert on 18th-century France.
He graduated from Harvard University in 1960, attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. (D. Phil.) in history from Oxford in 1964, where he studied with Richard Cobb, among others. He worked as reporter at The New York Times from 1964 to 1965. Joining the Princeton University faculty in 1968, he was appointed Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of European History and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982. He served as President of the American Historical Association in 1999.
On July 1, 2007, he transferred to emeritus status at Princeton, and was appointed Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the Harvard University Library, succeeding Sidney Verba.
In 1983 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title The Meaning of Mother Goose.
Darnton is a pioneer in the field of the history of the book. He is writing about electronic publishing. He is founder of the Gutenberg-e program, sponsored by Mellon Foundation.
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Romani people
The Romani are an ethnic group living mostly in Europe, who trace their origins to the Indian Subcontinent. Romani are widely known in the English-speaking world by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies).
They are known collectively in the Romani language as Romane or Rromane (depending on the dialect concerned) and also as Romany, Romanies, Romanis, Roma or Roms.
Romani are widely dispersed, with their largest concentrated populations in Europe, especially the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe and Anatolia, followed by the Kale of Iberia and Southern France.
The Americas are also home to large numbers of Romani. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States; 800,000 in Brazil, to which Kale were deported by the government of Portugal during the colonial era; and in more recent migrations, Romani have also moved to other parts of the New World.
The Romani language is divided into several dialects, which add up to an estimated number of speakers larger than two million. The total number of Romani people is at least twice as large (several times as large according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the language current in their country of residence, or of mixed languages combining the two.
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Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews (Hebrew: סְפָרַדִּי, Modern Sfaraddi Tiberian Səp̄āraddî) is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and traditions which originated in the Iberian Peninsula. Accordingly, the term Sephardic Jew refers to the Jews following the Sephardic Halakha.
The term essentially means "Spanish". It comes from Sepharad (Hebrew: סְפָרַד, Modern Sfarád Tiberian Səp̄āráḏ), a Biblical location. This location is disputed, but "Sepharad" was identified by later Jews as the Iberian Peninsula, and still means "Spain" in modern Hebrew.[citation needed]
In other languages and scripts, "Sephardi" translates as plural Hebrew: סְפָרַדִּים, Modern Sfaraddim Tiberian Səp̄āraddîm; Spanish: Sefardíes; Portuguese: Sefarditas; Catalan: Sefardites; Basque: Sefardiak; Galician: Sefardís; Italian: Sefarditi; Greek: Σεφαρδίτες Sefardites; Bulgarian: Сефаради Sefaradi; Bosnian: Sefardi; Serbian: Сефарди Sefardi; Turkish: Sefarad, Judaeo-Spanish: Sefaradies/Sefaradim; and Arabic: سفارديون Safārdīyyūn.
wn.com/Sephardi_Jews -
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir (French pronunciation: [simɔn də boˈvwaʁ]; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986), was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, political activist, feminist theorist and social theorist. She did not consider herself a philosopher but her significant contributions to existentialism and feminist existentialism have solidified her legacy as a philosopher and feminist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.
Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris, the eldest daughter of Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a legal secretary who once aspired to be an actor, and Françoise (born) Brasseur, a wealthy banker’s daughter and devout Catholic. Her younger sister, Hélène, was born two years later. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after World War I, and Françoise insisted that the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school. Beauvoir herself was deeply religious as a child—at one point intending to become a nun—until a crisis of faith at age 14. She remained an atheist for the rest of her life.
wn.com/Simone_de_Beauvoir -
Sonia Rykiel
Sonia Rykiel née Flis (French pronunciation: [sɔn.ja ʁi.kjɛl]; born 25 May 1930 in Paris) is a French fashion designer.
Ethnically a Russian-Romanian Jew, Sonia Rykiel was born in Neuilly, a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France, the eldest of five daughters of a Russian mother and a Romanian father. At the age of 17, she was employed to dress the window displays in a Parisian textile store. In 1953 Sonia married Sam Rykiel, owner of a boutique selling elegant clothing. In 1962, she couldn't find any soft sweaters to wear when she was pregnant, so she used a supplier to her husband from Venice to design her own.
Sonia Rykiel thereafter created her first maternity dresses and a tiny sweater, called the Poor Boy Sweater, which she started selling from her husband's label "Laura". The Poor Boy Sweater made the cover of ELLE fashion magazine, and brought Rykiel fame; because of it, she was crowned "Queen of Knits" by the Americans in 1967.
Since then, she has continued to experiment to expand her offerings. She later became the first designer to put seams on the outside of a garment, and to print words on her sweaters. In particular, she favours long clinging sweaters or small cropped pullovers, large rolled-back cuffs and long shawls. Her color palette usually features beige, grey, dark blue and charcoal.
wn.com/Sonia_Rykiel -
Thierry Mugler
Thierry Mugler (French pronunciation: [tjɛʁi myɡˈle]) is a French fashion designer and creator of several perfumes.
Mugler was born in Strasbourg, France on 21 December 1948. His passion led him to focus more on drawing than on school[citation needed] and at the age of 9, he began to study classical dance.[citation needed] By 14, he joined the ballet corps for the Rhin Opera (Opéra national du Rhin).
At the same time, Mugler began taking classes in interior design at the Strasbourg School of Decorative Art.[citation needed]
At the age of 24, Mugler decided to travel the world and left Strasbourg to go live in Paris. He began designing clothes for a small, trendy Parisian boutique by the name of "Gudule". At 26, Mugler, who was working as a freelance designer, began to work for a variety of large ready-to-wear fashion houses in Paris, Milan, London and Barcelona.[citation needed]
In 1973 Mugler created his first personal collection called "Café de Paris". The style of the collection was both sophisticated and urban. Melka Tréanton, a powerful fashion editor, helped launched his career. In 1976, she asked him to show his work in Tokyo, for an event organized by Shiseido. In 1978 he opened his first Paris boutique at the place des Victoires (in the 1st arrondissement). At the same time, Thierry Mugler launched a fashion collection for men. For this collection, he reworked classical masculinity giving it a definitively modern style. A clean, precise, structured cut which outlined a highly-recognizable silhouette: prominent shoulders, both "anatomical and classic", for a dynamic and slender look.
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Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings. Although he died young, he became one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement.
Born in Rouen, France, Géricault was educated in the tradition of English sporting art by Carle Vernet and classical figure composition by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a rigorous classicist who disapproved of his student's impulsive temperament yet recognized his talent. Géricault soon left the classroom, choosing to study at the Louvre instead, where (from 1810 to 1815) he copied from paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, Diego Velázquez, and Rembrandt. During this period at the Louvre he discovered a vitality he found lacking in the prevailing school of Neoclassicism. Much of his time was spent in Versailles, where he found the stables of the palace open to him, and where he gained his knowledge of the anatomy and action of horses.
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Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi də tuluz loˈtʁɛk]; 24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 1800s yielded a collection of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec is known along with Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin as one of the greatest painters of the Post-Impressionist period. In a 2005 auction at Christie's auction house a new record was set when La blanchisseuse, an early painting of a young laundress, sold for $22.4 million U.S.
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born at the chateau de Malromé near Albi, Tarn in the Midi-Pyrénées région of France, the firstborn child of Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa and Adèle Tapié de Celeyran. He was therefore a member of an aristocratic family (descendants of the Counts of Toulouse and Lautrec and the Viscounts of Montfa, a village and commune of the Tarn department of southern France). A younger brother was also born to the family on 28 August 1867, but died the following year.
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Vietnamese people
The Vietnamese people (Vietnamese: người Việt or người Kinh) are an ethnic group originating from present-day northern Vietnam and southern China. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population as of the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other ethnic groups in Vietnam. The earliest recorded name for the ancient Vietnamese people appears as "Lạc".
Although geographically and linguistically labeled as Southeast Asians, long periods of Chinese domination and influence have placed the Vietnamese culturally closer to East Asians, or more specifically their immediate northern neighbours, the Southern Chinese and other tribes within the South China. The word Việt is shortened from Bách Việt, a name used in ancient times. Nam means "south".
If regarded as a single ethnic group, the Vietnamese constitute one of the world's largest."CIA World Factbook". May 8th, 2012. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/vm.html. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
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Vincent Cassel
Vincent Cassel (born 23 November 1966) is a Cesar Award-winning French actor best known to English-speaking audiences through his film performances in Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, as well as Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.
Cassel was born Vincent Crochon in Paris, France, to Sabine Litique, and French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel (born Jean-Pierre Crochon). He is married to Italian actress Monica Bellucci, with whom he has two daughters, Deva (born 12 September 2004) and Léonie (born 21 May 2010). His brother Mathias is a rapper with the group Assassin under the name "Rockin' Squat". His half-sister, Cécile Cassel, is an actress. He has a passion for Capoeira and displayed his talent in the movie Ocean's Twelve. Besides his native French, Cassel speaks English, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian and basic conversational Russian which he learned for his role in Eastern Promises.
Cassel's breakthrough role was in Mathieu Kassovitz's critically acclaimed film La Haine where he played a troubled youth from the deprived outskirts of Paris. He has gone on to act in a variety of films such as the moody L'Appartement (with Monica Bellucci before they married), the violent Dobermann, the genre-bending Le Pacte des Loups (in English, Brotherhood of the Wolf), and the highly controversial Irréversible, where he appears fully nude (with Monica Bellucci after they married).
wn.com/Vincent_Cassel
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American Culture + French Culture = International Friendships
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:54
- Updated: 19 Oct 2012
Residents of Gonzales, Louisiana, USA connect with residents from Meylan, France in international friendship. Produced by: Elizabeth Hill Directed by: Von de Leigh Hatche
http://wn.com/American_Culture_+_French_Culture_=_International_Friendships
French Culture and Business Etiquette
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- Duration: 2:28
- Updated: 30 Oct 2012
We had to make this informational video for a Cal Poly Business class
http://wn.com/French_Culture_and_Business_Etiquette
French Culture
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- Duration: 2:54
- Updated: 03 Nov 2012
Mexican food in Paris and french culture with eating times and pricing
http://wn.com/French_Culture
3 Ways to Infuse French Culture into your Lifestyle
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- Duration: 1:28
- Updated: 10 Oct 2012
Ariane Daguin, owner of D'Artagnan, is a native of the Gascon region of France. Also watch our video about Pétanque in New York City: youtu.be Ariane Daguin was born into a world of great food. Her father, André Daguin, chef-owner of the Hotel de France in Auch, Gascony, is famous throughout France for his artistry with foie gras and other Gascon specialties. Read her entire bio here: bit.ly Let us know if these tips were helpful! And don't forget.... Make meals an event! For more news and videos visit ☛ NTD.tv Follow us on Twitter ☛ http Add us on Facebook ☛ on.fb.me
http://wn.com/3_Ways_to_Infuse_French_Culture_into_your_Lifestyle
An Introduction to French Culture
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- Duration: 3:49
- Updated: 04 Oct 2012
The 2006-2007 Abraham Lincoln High (San Francisco) French Club brings you their contribution to the 2007 Brotherhood Sisterhood assembly "We're All In This Together."
http://wn.com/An_Introduction_to_French_Culture
Whose Line - Helping Hands - French Culture
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- Duration: 3:56
- Updated: 19 Nov 2012
Please buy the DVD's and hopefully Whose Line Is It Anyway? will be continued with new episodes.
http://wn.com/Whose_Line_Helping_Hands_French_Culture
french Cultural Differences
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:34
- Updated: 30 Jul 2012
A Delightful look at a quaint cafe in Paris France
http://wn.com/french_Cultural_Differences
Lost in Francelation: Modern culture in Nantes and Angers
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:43
- Updated: 01 Feb 2012
Is it true? Can French culture really be dead? Mais non, of course not! Dans off to Nantes, in the Pays de la Loire region, to discover just how alive and kicking French culture really is. With a look at a spectacular biennial arts festival, a visit to a historic chateau, and a ride in a giant mechanical elephant yes, a mechanical elephant were out to prove modern French culture is alive and well in all kinds of unexpected ways!
http://wn.com/Lost_in_Francelation_Modern_culture_in_Nantes_and_Angers
The French Culture and Pranks
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:46
- Updated: 03 Nov 2012
This video is a compilation of some pranks I have seen occur on the streets in and around Angers, France, while studying abroad here. I interviewed some American students to see what they thought of these pranks and interviewed one French person to get her take on French pranks.
http://wn.com/The_French_Culture_and_Pranks
French - Culture vs Islam - VideoBlog #8 - Ummah films
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:41
- Updated: 15 Sep 2012
French version of Culture vs Islam from the Reminder series by Ummah Films.
http://wn.com/French_Culture_vs_Islam_VideoBlog_8_Ummah_films
French Culture
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- Duration: 4:33
- Updated: 13 Nov 2010
Report about French culture on British Radio Uploaded via www.mp32tube.com
http://wn.com/French_Culture
French Culture Project
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- Duration: 6:35
- Updated: 23 Sep 2012
A video for my family perspectives class
http://wn.com/French_Culture_Project
French Culture & Civilization : Some important figures filmed by Lalit Rao.
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- Duration: 10:02
- Updated: 23 Oct 2012
This is a small video about some of the most important personalities of French culture and civilization. It includes actors,actresses,players,singers,philosophers and writers. A map of France with its important cities has also been included in order to give an idea about their importance for international audience. Those who have knowledge about French culture would not have any problems identifying famous French people such as Alain Delon,Alain Souchon,Balzac,Brigitte Bardot,Carla Bruni,Gerard Depardieu,Henri Bergson,Jacques Derrida,Jean Paul Sartre,Jules Verne,Marc Lavoine,Marguerite Duras,Marie Ndiaye, Michel Platini,Michel Sardou,Patrick Dewaere,Patricia Kaas, Renaud,René Descartes,Romain Duris,Simone Signoret,Simone Signoret, Voulzy,Yves Montand,Zidane
http://wn.com/French_Culture_Civilization_Some_important_figures_filmed_by_Lalit_Rao
Florida Teachers and Students Celebrate French Culture
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- Duration: 2:52
- Updated: 24 Jun 2012
From March 15 to 17, 2012, le Congrès de la Culture Française en Floride in Orlando welcomed over 800 high-school and middle-school French teachers and their students from all over Florida. The 2012 edition marked the 60th anniversary of the event, which promotes the study of French and provides interaction of Florida's French students through academic competitions. Check out pictures of the event here: www.flickr.com
http://wn.com/Florida_Teachers_and_Students_Celebrate_French_Culture
French Culture
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- Duration: 1:34
- Updated: 31 May 2012
Join Karen Dumonet, the manager of the French Institute Alliance Francaise, in discussing the many events the French cultural cent Join Karen Dumonet, the manager of the French Institute Alliance Francaise, in discussing the many events the French cultural center has to offer, including a recent lecture with master chef Daniel Boulud.
http://wn.com/French_Culture
FRANCE CULTURE subtitled
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- Duration: 3:23
- Updated: 05 Nov 2012
FRANCE CULTURE subtitled from Arnaud Fleurent-Didier's album La Reproduction (2009)
http://wn.com/FRANCE_CULTURE_subtitled
Waiters Race in Paris
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:36
- Updated: 14 Jul 2011
Waiters carrying trays loaded with glasses and bottles of beer race five miles through Paris.
http://wn.com/Waiters_Race_in_Paris
The Politics of French Culture
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- Duration: 3:20
- Updated: 25 Oct 2012
http://wn.com/The_Politics_of_French_Culture
Paris, France: Latin Quarter Cafe Culture
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- Duration: 1:40
- Updated: 10 Nov 2012
In the 13th century, the University of Paris was founded on the south bank of the Seine River. Soon after, the area became to be known as the Latin Quarter for the language passers-by would hear on the street. Today the Latin Quarter makes up the core of Paris' Left Bank, offering a variety of ethnic restaurants, tangled lanes, and the city's famous cafe scene. For more information on the Rick Steves' Europe TV series — including episode descriptions, scripts, participating stations, travel information on destinations and more — visit www.ricksteves.com.
http://wn.com/Paris,_France_Latin_Quarter_Cafe_Culture
The French Culture and Civilization
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- Duration: 6:00
- Updated: 06 Jan 2011
Socrates Comenius Project "The French Culture and Civilization" "Virgil Madgearu" Highschool IASI, Romania © 2006 alexpascariu.com, All Rights Reserved.
http://wn.com/The_French_Culture_and_Civilization
French Basque Country: A Cultural Blend
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:06
- Updated: 08 Nov 2012
The land where Spain and France meet the Atlantic is Basque Country. Compared to their more stridently Basque neighbors across the border in Spain, Basques living in France seem more integrated into French culture. Nestled in the Pyrenees, St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port has an endearing energy, with its mix of day tripping families and determined pilgrims using the town as a springboard for the time honored pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in NW Spain, 500 miles away. Visit Bayonne on the coast to feel the region's urban pulse. The cathedral marks the town's old center where tall, slender buildings, decorated with typically Basque green-and-red shutters, tower above narrow streets. For more information on the Rick Steves' Europe TV series — including episode descriptions, scripts, participating stations, travel information on destinations and more — visit www.ricksteves.com.
http://wn.com/French_Basque_Country_A_Cultural_Blend
Hats Off To Culture - France
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- Duration: 6:28
- Updated: 05 Apr 2012
1 October 1999 The quintessentially French beret is going the way of the small farm, but like everything in this proud nation, they're not giving in to the American baseball cap just yet. Produced by ABC Australia Distributed by Journeyman Pictures
http://wn.com/Hats_Off_To_Culture_France
Google (again!), French culture, and Mobile Beer
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:42
- Updated: 04 Nov 2011
Google accused of CIA collaboration, Google to play with paper, French bestow cultural honors on les videogames, Microsoft launch Zune.net, Liveleak.com - yeah we don't get it either, Buying beer for your buddies via SMS brought to you by....the Aussies of course!, Europe beats United States on mobile internet use, Weird insects photos.
http://wn.com/Google_again!,_French_culture,_and_Mobile_Beer
Photo: AP / Hatem Moussa
19 Nov 2012
Gaza/Jerusalem - Israel bombed dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday and said that while it was prepared to step up its offensive by sending in troops, it preferred a diplomatic solution that...
Photo: AP / Hatem Moussa
18 Nov 2012
Israeli air strikes killed 16 Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday, prompting the Arab League to announce a visit to the battered enclave and a review of its Middle East peace policy. Egypt’s President...
Photo: AP / Eyad Baba
17 Nov 2012
Israel's defence minister Ehud Barak more than doubled his call-up of army reservists last night (Friday night) as its cabinet and military chiefs convened to discuss a ground invasion of Gaza. With...
Photo: EC / EC
19 Nov 2012
BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The shadow banking system - blamed for aggravating the financial crisis - grew to a new high of $67 trillion globally last year, a top regulatory group said, calling...
Photo: UN / UN
17 Nov 2012
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel's new offensive against the Gaza Strip has turned into a political bonanza for the territory's Hamas rulers, while sidelining Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,...
Newstrack India
Tweet Sydney, Nov 20(ANI): Australia fast bowler James Pattinson has said world number one Test team South Africa paid the price for underestimating them during the Brisbane Test. The Proteas have made much of their watershed 2008 Test series victory in Australia and deserved the No. 1 ranking after...(size: 2.0Kb)
The Prinsloo phenomenon
20 Nov 2012
Independent online (SA)
SANDRA Prinsloo is a most unusual phenomenon in today’s world. She’s building an enviable stage repertoire at a point in her career when many actors start winding down. She’s our equivalent of Helen Mirren, someone who can cross over to any genre, but for those of us who love live...(size: 7.0Kb)
NHL, players' union are talking again
20 Nov 2012
The Los Angeles Times
If the first bargaining session in eight days between the NHL and the players' association made any headway, neither side tipped its hand. A large contingent of players got together with league leadership in New York on Monday night and met for less than two hours. Not a whole lot was accomplished...(size: 35.6Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
John Gagliardi, who became the winningest football coach in NCAA history at Division III St. John's (Minn.) using an off-beat approach that included no practicing if there were too many gnats, announced Monday he was retiring after 60 seasons. Gagliardi, 86, leaves with a career coaching record of...(size: 36.4Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
When David Beckham stunned the soccer world by leaving Europe for Major League Soccer six years ago, he characterized the move not as an end to an unparalleled playing career but as the start of a new chapter. Monday, he decided it's time to close the book on that chapter, saying that next month's...(size: 38.0Kb)
South China Sea issue to top Obama visit
20 Nov 2012
Al Jazeera
US President Barack Obama is set to dive into fraught diplomatic waters of the South China Sea at a summit dominated by rival claims to the strategically vital area. The East Asian summit, which began on Sunday, forms part of the regional Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting with...(size: 19.4Kb)
Moody's downgrades France a notch on weak growth
20 Nov 2012
Euro Crisis: French Credit Rating Cut
20 Nov 2012
Skynews
A second major credit ratings agency has stripped France of its 'triple-A' status in a move that could drive up its borrowing costs and drag it further into the eurozone debt crisis. Moody's Investors Service announced last night that it was cutting France's sovereign rating by one notch to...(size: 3.9Kb)
France ends combat mission in Afghanistan
20 Nov 2012
Indian Express
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The culture of France and of the French people has been shaped by geography, by profound historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris, has played an important role as a center of high culture and of decorative arts since the 17th century, first in Europe, and from the 19th century on, world wide. From the late 19th century, France has also played an important role in cinema, fashion and cuisine. The importance of French culture has waxed and waned over the centuries, depending on its economic, political and military importance. French culture today is marked both by great regional and socioeconomic differences and by strong unifying tendencies.
Problems in defining "French" culture[link]
Wherever you come from, "culture" consists of beliefs and values learned through the socialization process as well as material arts.[1][2] "Culture is the learned set of beliefs, values, norms and material goods shared by group members. Culture consists of everything we learn in groups during the life course-from infancy to old age."[3]
The conception of "French" culture however poses certain difficulties and presupposes a series of assumptions about what precisely the expression "French" means. Whereas American culture posits the notion of the "melting-pot" and cultural diversity, the expression "French culture" tends to refer implicitly to a specific geographical entity (as, say, "metropolitan France", generally excluding its overseas departments) or to a specific historico-sociological group defined by ethnicity, language, religion and geography. The realities of "Frenchness" however, are extremely complicated. Even before the late 18th-19th century, "metropolitan France" was largely a patchwork of local customs and regional differences that the unifying aims of the Ancien Régime and the French Revolution had only begun to work against, and today's France remains a nation of numerous indigenous and foreign languages, of multiple ethnicities and religions, and of regional diversity that includes French citizens in Corsica, Guadeloupe, Martinique and elsewhere around the globe.
The creation of some sort of typical or shared French culture or "cultural identity", despite this vast heterogeneity, is the result of powerful internal forces — such as the French educational system, mandatory military service, state linguistic and cultural policies — and by profound historic events — such as the Franco-Prussian war and the two World Wars — which have forged a sense of national identity over the last 200 years. However, despite these unifying forces, France today still remains marked by social class and by important regional differences in culture (cuisine, dialect/accent, local traditions) that many fear will be unable to withstand contemporary social forces (depopulation of the countryside, immigration, centralization, market forces and the world economy).
In recent years, to fight the loss of regional diversity, many in France have promoted forms of multiculturalism and encouraged cultural enclaves (communautarisme), including reforms on the preservation of regional languages and the decentralization of certain government functions, but French multiculturalism has had a harder time of accepting, or of integrating into the collective identity, the large non-Christian and immigrant communities and groups that have come to France since the 1960s.
The last 50 years has also seen French cultural identity "threatened" by global market forces and by American "cultural hegemony". Since its dealings with the 1993 GATT free trade negotiations, France has fought for what it calls the exception culturelle, meaning the right to subsidize or treat favorably domestic cultural production and to limit or control foreign cultural products (as seen in public funding for French cinema or the lower VAT accorded to books). The notion of an explicit exception française however has angered many of France's critics.[4]
The French are often perceived as taking a great pride in national identity and the positive achievements of France (the expression "chauvinism" is of French origin) and cultural issues are more integrated in the body of the politics than elsewhere (see "The Role of the State", below). The French Revolution claimed universalism for the democratic principles of the Republic. Charles de Gaulle actively promoted a notion of French "grandeur" ("greatness"). Perceived declines in cultural status are a matter of national concern and have generated national debates, both from the left (as seen in the anti-globalism of José Bové) and from the right and far right (as in the discourses of the National Front).
According to Hofstede's Framework for Assessing Culture, the culture of France is moderately individualistic and high Power Distance Index.
Now, the interracial blending of some native French and newcomers stands as a vibrant and boasted feature of French culture, from popular music to movies and literature. Therefore, alongside mixing of populations, exists also a cultural blending (le métissage culturel) that is present in France. It may be compared to the traditional US conception of the melting-pot. The French culture might have been already blended in from other races and ethnicities, in cases of some biographical research on the possibility of African ancestry on a small number of famous French citizens. Author Alexandre Dumas, père possessed one-fourth black Haitian descent, and Empress Josephine Napoleon who was born and raised in the French West Indies from a plantation estate family. We can mention as well, the most famous French singer Edith Piaf whose grandmother was a North African from Kabylie.[5]
For a long time, the only objection to such outcomes predictably came from the far-right schools of thought. In the past few years, other unexpected voices are however beginning to question what they interpret, as the new philosopher Alain Finkielkraut coined the term, as an "Ideology of miscegenation" (une idéologie du métissage) that may come from what one other philosopher, Pascal Bruckner, defined as the "Sob of the White man" (le sanglot de l'homme blanc). These critics have been dismissed by the mainstream and their propagators have been labelled as new reactionaries (les nouveaux réactionnaires),[6] even if racist and anti-immigration sentiment has recently been documented to be increasing in France at least according to one poll.[7]
Language[link]
The Académie française sets an official standard of language purity; however, this standard, which is not mandatory, is even occasionally ignored by the government itself: for instance, the left-wing government of Lionel Jospin pushed for the feminization of the names of some functions (madame la ministre) while the Académie pushed for some more traditional madame le ministre.
Some action has been taken by the government in order to promote French culture and the French language. For instance, there exists a system of subsidies and preferential loans for supporting French cinema. The Toubon law, from the name of the conservative culture minister who promoted it, makes it mandatory to use French in advertisements directed to the general public. Note that contrary to some misconception sometimes found in the Anglophone media, the French government neither regulates the language used by private parties in non-commercial settings, nor makes it compulsory that France-based WWW sites should be in French.
France counts many regional languages, some of them being very different from standard French such as Breton and Alsatian. Some regional languages are Roman, like French, such as Occitan. The Basque language is completely unrelated to French and, indeed, to any other language in the world; its area straddles the border between the south west of France and the north of Spain. Many of those languages have enthusiastic advocates; however, the real importance of local languages remains subject to debate. In April 2001, the Minister of Education, Jack Lang, admitted formally that for more than two centuries, the political powers of the French government had repressed regional languages, and announced that bilingual education would, for the first time, be recognized, and bilingual teachers recruited in French public schools. English is taught in schools as a second language.
A revision of the French constitution creating official recognition of regional languages was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles in July 2008.[8]
Religion[link]
Main article: Religion in France
France is a secular country where freedom of thought and of religion is preserved, by virtue of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The Republic is based on the principle of laïcité, that is of freedom of religion (including of agnosticism and atheism) enforced by the Jules Ferry laws and the 1905 law on the separation of the State and the Church, enacted at the beginning of the Third Republic (1871–1940). A January 2007 poll found that 61% of the French population describe themselves as Roman Catholics, 21% as Atheists, 4% as Muslims, 3% as Protestants, 1% as Buddhists, and 1% as Jews. France guarantees freedom of religion as a constitutional right and the government generally respects this right in practice. A long history of violent conflict between groups led the state to break its ties to the Catholic Church early in the last century and adopt a strong commitment to maintaining a totally secular public sector.[9]
Catholicism[link]
Main article: Roman Catholicism in France
The Roman Catholic Church has always played a significant role in French culture and in French life. Most French people are Roman Catholic Christians, however many of them are secular but still place high value on Catholicism.
The Roman Catholic faith is no longer considered the state religion, as it was before the 1789 Revolution and throughout the various, non-republican regimes of the 19th century (the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the Second Empire). The Official split of Catholic Church and State ("Séparation de l'Eglise et de l'Etat") took place in 1905, and this major reform emphazises the Laicist and anti-clericalist mood of French Radical Republicans in this period.
At the beginning of the 20th century, France was a largely rural country with conservative Catholic mores, but in the hundred years since then, the countryside has become depopulated, and the population has largely become more secular. A December 2006 poll by Harris Interactive, published in The Financial Times, found that 32% of the French population described themselves as agnostic, a further 32% as atheist and only 27% believed in any type of God or supreme being.[10]
Islam[link]
Main article: Islam in France
After Catholicism, Islam is the second largest faith in France today, and the country has the largest Muslim population (in percentage) of any Western European country. This is a result of immigration and permanent family settlement in France, from the 1960s on, of groups from, principally, North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia) and, to a lesser extent, other areas such as Turkey and West Africa.[11] While it is prohibited in France for the government census to collect data on religious beliefs, estimates and polls place the percentage of Muslims at between 4% and 7%.[12]
Judaism[link]
Main article: History of the Jews in France
The current Jewish community in France numbers around 600,000, according to the World Jewish Congress and 500,000 according to the Appel Unifié Juif de France, and is found mainly in the metropolitan areas of Paris, Marseille and Strasbourg.
The history of the Jews in France dates back over 2,000 years. In the early Middle Ages, France was a center of Jewish learning, but persecution increased as the Middle Ages wore on. France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution, but despite legal equality anti-Semitism remained an issue, as illustrated in the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century. However, through the 1870 Décret Crémieux, France secured full citizenship for the Jews in then French-ruled Algeria. Despite the death of a quarter of all French Jews during the Holocaust, France currently has the largest Jewish population in Europe.
French Jews are mostly Sephardic and span a range of religious affiliations, from the ultra-Orthodox Haredi communities to the large segment of Jews who are entirely secular.
Buddhism[link]
Main article: Buddhism in France
Buddhism is widely reported to be the fourth largest religion in France, after Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. France has over two hundred Buddhist meditation centers, including about twenty sizable retreat centers in rural areas. The Buddhist population mainly consists of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants, with a substantial minority of native French converts and “sympathizers.” The rising popularity of Buddhism in France has been the subject of considerable discussion in the French media and academy in recent years.
Cults and new religious movements[link]
France created in 2006 the first French parliamentary commission on cult activities which led to a report registering a number of cults considered as dangerous. Supporters of such movements have criticized the report on the grounds of the respect of religious freedom. Proponents of the measure contend that only dangerous cults have been listed as such, and state secularism ensures religious freedom in France.
Regional customs and traditions[link]
Modern France is the result of centuries of nation building and the acquisition and incorporation of a number of historical provinces and overseas colonies into its geographical and political structure. These regions all evolved with their own specific cultural and linguistic traditions in fashion, religious observance, regional language and accent, family structure, cuisine, leisure activities, industry, etc.
The evolution of the French state and culture, from the Renaissance to today, has however promoted a centralization of politics, media and cultural production in and around Paris (and, to a lesser extent, around the other major urban centers), and the industrialization of the country in the 20th century has led to a massive move of French people from the countryside to urban areas. At the end of the 19th century, around 50% of the French depended on the land for a living; today French farmers only make up 6-7%, while 73% live in cities.[13] Nineteenth century French literature abounds in scenes of provincial youth "coming up" to Paris to "make it" in the cultural, political or social scene of the capital (this scheme is frequent in the novels of Balzac). Policies enacted by the French Third Republic also encouraged this displacement through mandatory military service, a centralized national educational system, and suppression of regional languages. While government policy and public debate in France in recent years has returned to a valorization of regional differences and a call for decentralization of certain aspects of the public sphere (sometimes with ethnic, racial or reactionary overtones), the history of regional displacement and the nature of the modern urban environment and of mass media and culture have made the preservation of a regional "sense of place or culture" in today's France extremely difficult.
The names of the historical French provinces — such as Brittany (Bretagne), Berry, Orléanais, Normandy (Normandie), Languedoc, Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Champagne, Poitou, Guyenne and Gascony (Gascogne), Burgundy (Bourgogne), Picardy (Picardie), Provence, Touraine, Limousin, Auvergne, Béarn, Alsace, Flanders, Lorraine, Corsica (Corse), Savoy (Savoie)... (please see individual articles for specifics about each regional culture) — are still used to designate natural, historical and cultural regions, and many of them appear in modern région or département names. These names are also used by the French in their self-identification of family origin.
Regional identification is most pronounced today in cultures linked to regional languages and non-French-speaking traditions - French language itself being only a dialect of Langue d'oïl, the mother language of many of the languages to-be-mentioned, which became a national vehicular language, like (in alphabetical order): Alsatian, Arpitan, Basque, Brezhoneg (Breton), Burgundian, Corsu (Corsican), Català (Catalan), Francique, Gallo, Lorrain, Norman, Occitan, Picard, Poitevin, Saintongeais,etc., and some of these regions have promoted movements calling for some degree of regional autonomy, and, occasionally, national independence (see, for example, Breton nationalism, Corsica and Occitania).
There are huge differences in life style, socioeconomic status and world view between Paris and the provinces. The French often use the expression "la France profonde" ("Deep France", similar to "heartland") to designate the profoundly "French" aspects of provincial towns, village life and rural agricultural culture, which escape the hegemony of Paris. The expression can however have a pejorative meaning, similar to the expression "le désert français" ("the French desert") used to describe a lack of acculturation of the provinces. Another expression, "terroir" is a French term originally used for wine and coffee to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon these products. It can be very loosely translated as "a sense of place" which is embodied in certain qualities, and the sum of the effects that the local environment (especially the "soil") has had on the growth of the product. The use of the term has since been generalized to talk about many cultural products.
In addition to its metropolitan territory, France also consists of overseas departments made up of its former colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana in the Caribbean, and Mayotte and Réunion in the Indian Ocean. (There also exist a number of "overseas collectivities" and "overseas territories". For a full discussion, see administrative divisions of France. Since 1982, following the French government’s policy of decentralisation, overseas departments have elected regional councils with powers similar to those of the regions of metropolitan France. As a result of a constitutional revision which occurred in 2003, these regions are now to be called overseas regions.) These overseas departments have the same political status as metropolitan departments and are integral parts of France, (similar to the way in which Hawaii is a state and an integral part of the United States), yet they also have specific cultural and linguistic traditions which set them apart. Certain elements of overseas culture have also been introduced to metropolitan culture (as, for example, the musical form the biguine).
Industrialization, immigration and urbanization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have also created new socioeconomic regional communities in France, both urban (like Paris, Lyon, Villeurbanne, Lille, Marseille, etc.) and the suburban and working class hinterlands (like Seine-Saint-Denis) of urban agglomerations (called variously banlieues ("suburbs", sometimes qualified as "chic" or "pauvres") or les cités ("housing projects") which have developed their own "sense of place" and local culture (much like the various boroughs of New York City or suburbs of Los Angeles), as well as cultural identity.
Other specific communities[link]
Paris has traditionally been associated with alternative, artistic or intellectual subcultures, many of which involved foreigners. Such subcultures include the "Bohemians" of the mid-nineteenth century, the Impressionists, artistic circles of the Belle époque (around such artists as Picasso and Alfred Jarry), the Dadaists, Surrealists, the "Lost Generation" (Hemingway, Gertrude Stein) and the post-war "intellectuals" associated with Montparnasse (Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir).
France has an estimated 280,000-340,000 Roma, generally known as Gitans, Tsiganes, Romanichels (slightly pejorative), Bohémiens, or Gens du voyage ("travellers").
There are gay and lesbian communities in the cities, particularly in the Paris metropolitan area (such as in Le Marais district of the capital). Although homosexuality is perhaps not as well tolerated in France as in Spain, Scandinavia, and the Benelux nations, surveys of the French public reveal a considerable shift in attitudes comparable to other Western European nations. As of 2001, 55% of the French consider homosexuality "an acceptable lifestyle."[14] The current mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, is gay. In 2006, an Ipsos survey shows that 62% support same-sex marriage, while 37% were opposed. 55% believed gay and lesbian couples should not have parenting rights, while 44% believe same-sex couples should be able to adopt.[15] See also LGBT rights in France.
Social class[link]
Main article: Social class in France
Despite the egalitarian aspects of French society, French culture remains marked by social-economic class and by many class distinctions[citation needed].
Families and romantic relationships[link]
Household structure[link]
Growing out of the values of the Catholic Church and rural communities, the basic unit of French society was traditionally held to be the family.[16] Over the twentieth century, the "traditional" family structure in France has evolved from extended families to, after World War II, nuclear families. Since the 1960s, marriages have decreased and divorces have increased in France, and divorce law and legal family status have evolved to reflect these social changes.[17]
According to INSEE figures, household and family composition in metropolitan France continues to evolve. Most significantly, from 1982 to 1999, single parent families have increased from 3.6% to 7.4%; there have also been increases in the number of unmarried couples, childless couples, and single men (from 8.5% to 12.5) and women (from 16.0% to 18.5%). Their analysis indicates that "one in three dwellings are occupied by a person living alone; one in four dwellings are occupied by a childless couple.." [18]
Voted by the French Parliament in November 1999 following some controversy, the pacte civil de solidarité ("civil pact of solidarity") commonly known as a PACS, is a form of civil union between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organizing their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage. From a legal standpoint, a PACS is a "contract" drawn up between the two individuals, which is stamped and registered by the clerk of the court. Individuals who have registered a PACS are still considered "single" with regard to family status for some purposes, while they are increasingly considered in the same way as married couples are for other purposes. While it was pushed by the government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 1998, it was also opposed, mostly by people on the right-wing who support traditionalist family values and who argued that PACS and the recognition of homosexual unions would be disastrous for French society.
However, same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in France.
Role of the State[link]
The French state has traditionally played a key role in promoting and supporting culture through the educational, linguistic, cultural and economic policies of the government and through its promotion of national identity. Because of the closeness of this relationship, cultural changes in France are often linked to, or produce, political crisis.[19]
The relationship between the French state and culture is an old one. Under Louis XIII's minister Richelieu, the independent Académie française came under state supervision and became an official organ of control over the French language and seventeenth-century literature. During Louis XIV's reign, his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert brought French luxury industries, like textile and porcelain, under royal control and the architecture, furniture, fashion and etiquette of the royal court (particularly at the Château de Versailles) became the preeminent model of noble culture in France (and, to a great degree, throughout Europe) during the latter half of the seventeenth century.
At times, French state policies have sought to unify the country around certain cultural norms, while at other times they have promoted regional differences within a heterogeneous French identity. The unifying effect was particularly true of the "radical period"" of the French Third Republic which fought regionalisms (including regional languages), supported anti-clericalism and a strict separation of church from state (including education) and actively promoted national identity, thus converting (as the historian Eugen Weber has put it) a "country of peasants into a nation of Frenchmen". The Vichy Regime, on the other hand, promoted regional "folk" traditions.
The cultural policies of the (current) French Fifth Republic have been varied, but a consensus seems to exist around the need for preservation of French regionalisms (such as food and language) as long as these don't undermine national identity. Meanwhile, the French state remains ambivalent over the integration into "French" culture of cultural traditions from recent immigrant groups and from foreign cultures, particularly American culture (movies, music, fashion, fast food, language, etc.). There also exists a certain fear over the perceived loss of French identity and culture in the European system and under American "cultural hegemony".
Education[link]
Main article: Education in France
The French educational system is highly centralised, organised, and ramified. It is divided into three different stages: primary education (enseignement primaire); secondary education (collège and lycée); and higher education (l'université)(or les Grandes écoles).
Primary and secondary education is predominantly public (private schools also exist, in particular a strong nationwide network of primary and secondary Catholic education), while higher education has both public and private elements. At the end of secondary education, students take the baccalauréat exam, which allows them to pursue higher education. The baccalauréat pass rate in 1999 was 78.3%.
In 1999–2000, educational spending amounted to 7% of the French GDP and 37% of the national budget.
France's performance in math and science at the middle school level was ranked 23 in the 1995 Trends in International Math and Science Study.[20]
Since the Jules Ferry laws of 1881-2, named after the then Minister of Public Instruction, all state-funded schools, including universities, are independent from the (Roman Catholic) Church. Education in these institutions is free. Non-secular institutions are allowed to organize education as well. The French educational system differs strongly from Northern-European and American systems in that it stresses the importance of partaking in a society as opposed to being responsibly independent.
Secular educational policy has become critical in recent issues of French multiculturalism, as in the "affair of the Islamic headscarf".
Minister of Culture[link]
Main article: Minister of Culture (France)
The Minister of Culture is, in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts (visual, plastic, theatrical, musical, dance, architectural, literary, televisual and cinematographic) in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture" (culture centres). The Ministry of Culture is located on the Palais Royal in Paris.
The modern post of Minister of Culture was created by Charles de Gaulle in 1959 and the first Minister was the writer André Malraux. Malraux was responsible for realizing the goals of the "droit à la culture" ("the right to culture") -- an idea which had been incorporated in the French constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) -- by democratizing access to culture, while also achieving the Gaullist aim of elevating the "grandeur" ("greatness") of post-war France. To this end, he created numerous regional cultural centres throughout France and actively sponsored the arts. Malraux's artistic tastes included the modern arts and the avant-garde, but on the whole he remained conservative.
The Ministry of Jacques Toubon was notable for a number of laws (the "Toubon Laws") enacted for the preservation of the French language, both in advertisements (all ads must include a French translation of foreign words) and on the radio (40% of songs on French radio stations must be in French), ostensibly in reaction to the presence of English.
Académie française[link]
Main article: Académie française
The Académie française, or the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution, it was restored in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte (the Académie considers itself having been suspended, not suppressed, during the revolution). It is the oldest of the five académies of the Institut de France.
The Académie consists of forty members, known as immortels (immortals). New members are elected by the members of the Académie itself. Académicians hold office for life, but they may be removed for misconduct. The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language. Its rulings, however, are only advisory; not binding on either the public or the government.
Military service[link]
Until 1996, France had compulsory military service of young men. This has been credited by historians for further promoting a unified national identity and by breaking down regional isolationism.[citation needed]
Labor and employment policy[link]
In France, the first labour laws were Waldeck Rousseau's laws passed in 1884. Between 1936 and 1938 the Popular Front enacted a law mandating 12 days (2 weeks) each year of paid vacation for workers, and a law limiting the work week to 40 hours, excluding overtime. The Grenelle accords negotiated on May 25 and 26th in the middle of the May 1968 crisis, reduced the working week to 44 hours and created trade union sections in each enterprise.[21] The minimum wage was also increased by 25%.[22] In 2000 Lionel Jospin's government then enacted the 35-hour workweek, down from 39 hours. Five years later, conservative prime minister Dominique de Villepin enacted the New Employment Contract (CNE). Addressing the demands of employers asking for more flexibility in French labour laws, the CNE sparked criticism from trade unions and opponents claiming it was lending favour to contingent work. In 2006 he then attempted to pass the First Employment Contract (CPE) through a vote by emergency procedure, but that it was met by students and unions' protests. President Jacques Chirac finally had no choice but to repeal it.
Healthcare and social welfare[link]
The French are profoundly committed to the public healthcare system (called "sécurité sociale") and to their "pay-as-you-go" social welfare system.
In 1998, 75% of health payments in France were paid through the public healthcare system. Since 27 July 1999, France has a universal medical coverage for permanent residents in France (stable residence for more than three months). Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan (The World Health Report).
Lifestyle[link]
Food and alcohol[link]
Main article: French cuisine
Traditional French culture places a high priority on the enjoyment of food. French cuisine was codified in the 20th century by Georges Auguste Escoffier to become the modern version of haute cuisine. Escoffier's major work, however, left out much of the regional character to be found in the provinces of France. Gastro-tourism and the Guide Michelin helped to bring people to the countryside during the 20th century and beyond, to sample this rich bourgeois and peasant cuisine of France. Basque cuisine has also been a great influence over the cuisine in the southwest of France.
Ingredients and dishes vary by region (see: Regional cuisine). There are many significant regional dishes that have become both national and regional. Many dishes that were once regional, however, have proliferated in different variations across the country in the present day. Cheese (see: List of French cheeses) and wine (see: French wine) are also a major part of the cuisine, playing different roles both regionally and nationally with their many variations and Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) (regulated appellation) laws, (lentils from Le Puy-en-Velay also have an AOC status). Another French product of special note is the Charolais cattle.
The French typically eat only a simple breakfast ("petit déjeuner") which consists of coffee or tea, served traditionally in a large handleless "bol" (bowl) and bread or breakfast pastries (croissants). Lunch ("déjeuner") and dinner ("dîner") are the main meals of the day. Formal four course meals consist of a starter course ("entrée"), a salad, a main course ("plat principal"), and finally a cheese or dessert course. While French cuisine is often associated with rich desserts, in most homes dessert consists of only fruit or yogurt.
Food shopping in France was formerly done almost daily in small local shops and markets, but the arrival of the supermarket and the even larger "hypermarchés" (large-surface distributors) in France have disrupted this tradition. With depopulation of the countryside, many towns have been forced to close shops and markets.
Rates of obesity and heart disease in France have traditionally been lower than in other north-western European countries. This is sometimes called the French paradox (see, for example, Mireille Guiliano's 2006 book French Women Don't Get Fat). French cuisine and eating habits have however come under great pressure in recent years from modern fast food, American products and the new global agricultural industry. While French youth culture has gravitated toward fast food and American eating habits (with an attendant rise in obesity), the French in general have remained committed to preserving certain elements of their food culture through such activities as including programs of taste acquisition in their public schools, by the use of the appellation d'origine contrôlée laws, and by state and European subsides to the French agricultural industry. Emblematic of these tensions is the work of José Bové, who founded in 1987, the Confédération Paysanne, an agricultural union that places its highest political values on humans and the environment, promotes organic farming and opposes genetically modified organisms; Bové's most famous protest was the dismantling of a McDonald's franchise in Millau (Aveyron), in 1999.
In France, cutlery is used in the continental manner (with the fork in the left hand, prongs facing down and the knife in the right hand). French etiquette prohibits the placing of hands below the table and the placing of elbows on it.
The legal drinking age is officially 18 (see: Legal drinking age).
France is one of the oldest wine producing regions of Europe. France now produces the most wine by value in the world (although Italy rivals it by volume and Spain has more land under cultivation for wine grapes). Bordeaux wine, Bourgogne wine and Champagne are important agricultural products.
Tobacco and drugs[link]
The cigarette smoking age is 18 years. According to a widespread cliché, smoking has been part of French culture — actually figures indicate that in terms of consumption per capita, France is only the 60th country out of 121.
France, from 1 February 2007, tightened the existing ban on smoking in public places found in the 1991 Évin law: Law n°91-32 of 10 January, 1991, containing a variety of measures against alcoholism and tobacco consumption.
Smoking is now banned in all public places (stations, museums, etc.); an exception exists for special smoking rooms fulfilling drastic conditions, see below. A special exemption was made for cafés and restaurants, clubs, casinos, bars, etc. which ended, 1 January 2008.[23] Opinion polls suggest 70% of people support the ban.[24] Previously, under the former implementation rules of the 1991 Évin law, restaurants, cafés etc. just had to provide smoking and non-smoking sections, which in practice were often not well separated.
Under the new regulations, smoking rooms are allowed, but are subjected to very strict conditions: they may occupy at most 20% of the total floor space of the establishment and their size may not be more than 35 m²; they need to be equipped with separate ventilation which replaces the full volume of air ten times per hour; the air pressure of the smoking room must constantly be lower than the pressure in the contiguous rooms; they have doors that close automatically; no service can be provided in the smoking rooms; cleaning and maintenance personnel may enter the room only one hour after it was last used for smoking.
Popular French cigarette brands include Gauloises and Gitanes.
The possession, sale and use of cannabis (predominantly Moroccan hashish) is illegal in France. Since 1 March 1994, the penalties for cannabis use are from two months to a year and/or a fine, while possession, cultivation or trafficking of the drug can be punished much more severely, up to ten years. According to a 1992 survey by SOFRES, 4.7 million French people ages 12–44 have smoked cannabis at least once in their lives.[25]
Sports and hobbies[link]
Main article: Sport in France
Football (French: Le Foot) is the most popular sport in France. Other popular sports played in France are rugby union, cycling, tennis, handball, basketball and sailing. France is notable for holding and winning the FIFA World Cup in 1998, and holding the annual cycling race Tour de France, and the tennis Grand Slam tournament the French Open. Sport is encouraged in school, and local sports clubs receive financial support from the local governments. While football is definitely the most popular, rugby union and rugby league takes dominance in the southwest, especially around the city of Toulouse (see: Rugby union in France and Rugby league in France).
The modern Olympics was invented in France, in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin.
Professional sailing in France is centred on singlehanded and shorthanded ocean racing with the pinnacle of this branch of the sport being the Vendee Globe singlehanded around the world race which starts every 4 years from the French Atlantic coast. Other significant events include the Solitaire du Figaro, Mini Transat 6.50, Tour de France a Voile and Route du Rhum transatlantic race. France has been a regular competitor in the America's Cup since the 1970s.
Other important sports include:
- 24 Hours of Le Mans - The world's oldest sports car race.
- Skiing - France has an extensive number of ski resorts in the French alps such as tignes. Ski resorts are also located in the Pyrénées and Vosges mountain chains.
- Pétanque - The international federation is recognized by the IOC.
- Fencing - Fencing leads the list of sports for which gold medals were won for France at the Summer Olympics (see: France at the Olympics).
- Parkour - Developed in France, parkour ("art du déplacement") is a physical activity that resembles self-defense or martial arts.
- Babyfoot (table football) - A very popular pastime in bars and homes in France, and the French are the predominant winners of worldwide table football competitions.
- Kitesurfing
Like other cultural areas in France, sport is overseen by a government ministry, the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports (France) which is in charge of national and public sport associations, youth affairs, public sports centers and national stadia (like the Stade de France).
Fashion[link]
Main article: French fashion
Paris is the leading capital of fashion and design. Along with Milan, London and New York, Paris is center of a important number of fashion shows. Some of the world's biggest fashion houses (ex: Chanel) have their headquarters in France.
The association of France with fashion (French: la mode) dates largely to the reign of Louis XIV [26] when the luxury goods industries in France came increasingly under royal control and the French royal court became, arguably, the arbiter of taste and style in Europe.
France renewed its dominance of the high fashion (French: couture or haute couture) industry in the years 1860–1960 through the establishing of the great couturier houses, the fashion press (Vogue was founded in 1892; Elle was founded in 1945) and fashion shows. The first modern Parisian couturier house is generally considered the work of the Englishman Charles Frederick Worth who dominated the industry from 1858-1895.[27] In the early twentieth century, the industry expanded through such Parisian fashion houses as the house of Chanel (which first came to prominence in 1925) and Balenciaga (founded by a Spaniard in 1937). In the post war year, fashion returned to prominence through Christian Dior's famous "new look" in 1947, and through the houses of Pierre Balmain and Hubert de Givenchy (opened in 1952). In the 1960s, "high fashion" came under criticism from France's youth culture while designers like Yves Saint Laurent broke with established high fashion norms by launching prêt-à-porter ("ready to wear") lines and expanding French fashion into mass manufacturing and marketing.[28] Further innovations were carried out by Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin. With a greater focus on marketing and manufacturing, new trends were established in the 70s and 80s by Sonia Rykiel, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix. The 1990s saw a conglomeration of many French couture houses under luxury giants and multinationals such as LVMH.
Since the 1960s, France's fashion industry has come under increasing competition from London, New York, Milan and Tokyo, and the French have increasingly adopted foreign (particularly American) fashions (such as jeans, tennis shoes). Nevertheless, many foreign designers still seek to make their careers in France.
Pets[link]
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This section requires expansion. |
In 2006, 52% of French households had at least one pet:[29] In total, 9.7 million cats, 8.8 million dogs, 2.3 million rodents, 8 million birds, and 28 million fish were kept as pets in France during this year.
Media and art[link]
Art and museums[link]
Main article: French art
The first paintings of France are those that are from prehistoric times, painted in the caves of Lascaux well over 10,000 years ago. The arts were already flourishing 1,200 years ago, at the time of Charlemagne, as can be seen in many hand made and hand illustrated books of that time.
Classic painters of the 17th century in France are Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. During the 18th century the Rococo style emerged as a frivolous continuation of the Baroque style. The most famous painters of the era were Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. At the end of the century, Jacques-Louis David was the most influential painter of the Neoclassicism.
Géricault and Delacroix were the most important painters of the Romanticism. Afterwards, the painters were more realistic, describing nature (Barbizon school). The realistic movement was led by Courbet and Honoré Daumier. Impressionism was developed in France by artists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro. At the turn of the century, France had become more than ever the center of innovative art. The Spaniard Pablo Picasso came to France, like many other foreign artists, to deploy his talents there for decades to come. Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Cézanne were painting then. Cubism is an avant-garde movement born in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Louvre in Paris is one of the most famous and the largest art museums in the world, created by the new revolutionary regime in 1793 in the former royal palace. It holds a vast amount of art of French and other artists, e.g. the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, and classical Greek Venus de Milo and ancient works of culture and art from Egypt and the Middle East.
Music[link]
Main article: Music of France
France boasts a wide variety of indigenous folk music, as well as styles played by immigrants from Africa, Latin America and Asia. In the field of classical music, France has produced a number of legendary composers, like Gabriel Faure, while modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop, French rock, techno/funk, and turntablists/djs.
The Fête de la Musique was created in France (first held in 1982), a music festival, which has since become worldwide[clarification needed]. It takes place every June 21, on summer's day.
Cinema[link]
Main article: Cinema of France
France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions.[30] Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle Vague, began in the country.
Additionally, France is an important Francophone film production country. A certain amount of the movies created share international distribution in the western hemisphere thanks to Unifrance. Although French cinema industry is rather small in terms of budget and revenues, it enjoys qualitative screenplay, cast and story telling. French Cinema is often portrayed as more liberal in terms of subjects (Sex, Society, Politics, Historical) and therefore often gets critical acclaim. Within the domestic market, French movies are ranked through n° of entries. Movies are premiered on Wednesdays.
Most famous genres are:
- - Romantic Drama Heartbreaker (l'Arnacoeur)
- - Comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (les Visiteurs) (la Cité de la Peur)
- - Society La Haine
- - Historical Cyrano de Bergerac
- - Political / Animation: Persepolis
French actors appear and star in Hollywood productions, such as Vincent Cassel and Marion Cotillard.
"Going to the movies" is a popular activity within metropolitan areas. Many cinema operators offer a "flat-rate pass" for approx. 30€ per month. Prices per movie range Between 5€50 to 10€.
French major cinema operators are UGC and Pathé, mainly located in city suburbs due to the number of screens and seating capacity.
Within France many "small" cinemas are located in the downtown parts of a city, resisting the big cinema operators nationwide. Another element is that Paris has the highest density of cinemas (movie theaters) in the world:[31] biggest number of movie theaters per inhabitants, and that in most "downtown Paris" movie theaters, foreign movies which would be secluded to "art houses" cinemas in other places, are shown alongside "mainstream" works as Parisians are avid movie-goers. Proximity of restaurants, accessibility, ambiance and the showing of alternative foreign movies is often cited as being the advantage of these small theaters.
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films unrestricted by country of origin.
Television[link]
Main article: Television in France
Books, newspapers and magazines[link]
Main articles: French media and French literature
France has the reputation of being a "literary culture",[32] and this image is reinforced by such things as the importance of French literature in the French educational system, the attention paid by the French media to French book fairs and book prizes (like the Prix Goncourt, Prix Renaudot or Prix Femina) and by the popular success of the (former) literary television show "Apostrophes" (hosted by Bernard Pivot).
Although the official literacy rate of France is 99%, some estimates have placed functional illiteracy at between 10% and 20% of the adult population (and higher in the prison population).[33]
While reading remains a favorite pastime of French youth today, surveys show that it has decreased in importance compared to music, television, sports and other activities.[33] The crisis of academic publishing has also hit France (see, for example, the financial difficulties of the Presses universitaires de France (PUF), France's premier academic publishing house, in the 1990s).[34]
Literary taste in France remains centered on the novel (26.4% of book sales in 1997), although the French read more non-fiction essays and books on current affairs than the British or Americans.[35] Contemporary novels, including French translations of foreign novels, lead the list (13% of total books sold), followed by sentimental novels (4.1%), detective and spy fiction (3.7%), "classic" literature (3.5%), science fiction and horror (1.3%) and erotic fiction (0.2%).[36] About 30% of all fiction sold in France today is translated from English (authors such as William Boyd, John le Carré, Ian McEwan, Paul Auster and Douglas Kennedy are well received).[37]
An important subset of book sales is comic books (typically Franco-Belgian comics like Tintin and Astérix) which are published in a large hardback format; comic books represented 4% of total book sales in 1997.[38] French artists have made the country a leader in the graphic novel genre[37] and France hosts the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe's preeminent comics festival.
Like other areas of French culture, book culture is influenced, in part, by the state, in particular by the "Direction du livre et de la lecture" of the Ministry of Culture, which oversees the "Centre national du livre" (National Book Center). The French Ministry of Industry also plays a role in price control. Finally, the VAT for books and other cultural products in France is at the reduced rate of 5.5%, which is also that of food and other necessities (see here).
In terms of journalism in France, the regional press (see list of newspapers in France) has become more important than national dailies (such as Le Monde and Le Figaro) over the past century: in 1939, national dailies were 2/3 of the dailies market, while today they are less than 1/4.[39] The magazine market is currently dominated by TV listings magazines[40] followed by news magazines such as Le Nouvel Observateur, L'Express and Le Point.
Architecture and housing[link]
Main article: French architecture
Transportation[link]
Main article: Transportation in France
There are significant differences in lifestyles with respect to transportation between very urbanized regions such as Paris, and smaller towns and rural areas. In Paris, and to a lesser extent in other major cities, many households do not own an automobile and simply use efficient mass transportation.The cliché about the parisien is rush hour in the Métro subway. However, outside of such areas, ownership of one or more cars is standard, especially for households with children.
The TGV high speed rail network, train à grande vitesse is a fast rail transport which serves several areas of the country and is self financing. There are plans to reach most parts of France and many other destinations in Europe in coming years. Rail services to major destinations are punctual and frequent.
Holidays[link]
Main article: Public holidays in France
Despite the principles of laïcité and the separation of church from state, public and school holidays in France generally follow the Roman Catholic religious calendar (including Easter, Christmas, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Assumption of Mary, All Saints Day, etc.). Labor Day and the National Holiday are the only business holidays determined by government statute; the other holidays are granted by convention collective (agreement between employers' and employees' unions) or by agreement of the employer.
The five holiday periods of the public school year[41] are:
- the vacances de la Toussaint (All Saints Day) - one and a half weeks starting near the end of October.
- the vacances de Noël (Christmas) - two weeks, ending after New Years.
- the vacances d'hiver (winter) - two weeks in February and March.
- the vacances de printemps (spring), formerly vacances de Pâques (Easter) - two weeks in April and May.
- the vacances d'été (summer), or grandes vacances (literally: big holidays) - two months in July and August.
On May 1, Labour Day (La Fête du Travail) the French give flowers of Lily of the Valley (Le Muguet) to one another.
The National holiday (called Bastille Day in English) is on the 14 of July. Military parades, called Défilés du 14 juillet, are held, the largest on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris in front of the President of the Republic.
On November 2, All Souls Day (La Fête des morts), the French traditionally bring chrysanthemums to the tombs of departed family members.
On November 11, Remembrance Day (Le Jour de la Commémoration or L' Armistice) is an official holiday.
Christmas is generally celebrated in France on Christmas Eve by a traditional meal (typical dishes include oysters, boudin blanc and the bûche de Noël), by opening presents and by attending the midnight mass (even among Catholics who do not attend church at other times of the year).
Candlemas (La Chandeleur) is celebrated with crêpes. The popular saying is that if the cook can flip a crêpe singlehandedly with a coin in the other hand, the family is assured of prosperity throughout the coming year.
The Anglo-Saxon and American holiday Halloween has grown in popularity following its introduction in the mid-1990s by the trade associations. The growth seems to have stalled during the following decade.
Conventions[link]
- France is the home of the International System of Units (the metric system).[42] Some pre-metric units are still used, essentially the livre (a unit of weight equal to half a kilogram) and the quintal (a unit of weight equal to 100 kilograms).
- In mathematics, France uses the infix notation like most countries. For large numbers the long scale is used. Thus, the French use the word billion for the number 1,000,000,000,000, which in countries using short scale is called a trillion. However, there exists a French word, milliard, for the number 1,000,000,000, which in countries using the short scale is called a billion. Thus, despite the use of the long scale, one billion is called un milliard ("one milliard") in French, and not mille millions ("one thousand million"). It should also be noted that names of numbers above the milliard are rarely used. Thus, one trillion will most often be called mille milliards (“one thousand milliard”) in French, and rarely un billion.
- In the French numeral notation, the comma (,) is the decimal separator, whereas a space is used between each group of three digits (fifteen million five hundred thousand and thirty-two should be written as 15 500 032). In finance, the currency symbol is used as a decimal separator or put after the number. For example, €25,048.05 is written either 25 048€05 or 25 048,05 € (always with an extra space between the figure and the currency symbol).
- In computing, a bit is called a bit yet a byte is called an octet[43] (from the Latin root octo, meaning "8"). SI prefixes are used.
- 24-hour clock time is used, with h being the separator between hours and minutes (for example 2:30 pm is 14h30).
- The all-numeric form for dates is in the order day-month-year, using a slash as the separator (example: 31/12/1992 or 31/12/92).
See also[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Culture of France |
- Architecture of Normandy
- Catherinettes
- Demographics of France
- Remarkable Gardens of France
- List of French people
- List of World Heritage Sites in France
References[link]
- Bernstein, Richard. Fragile Glory: A Portrait of France and the French. Plume, 1991.
- Carroll, Raymonde. Carol Volk, translator. Cultural Misunderstandings: The French-American Experience. University of Chicago Press, 1990.
- Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. Vintage, 1984. ISBN 0-394-72927-7
- Dauncey, Hugh, ed. French Popular Culture: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press (Arnold Publishers), 2003.
- DeJean, Joan. The Essence of Style: How The French INvented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour. New York: Free Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-7432-6413-6
- Forbes, Jill and Michael Kelly, eds. French Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Clarendon Press, 1996. ISBN 0-19-871501-3
- Gopnik, Adam. Paris to the Moon. Random House, 2001.
- Hall, Edward Twitchell and Mildred Reed Hall. Understanding Cultural Differences: Germans, French and Americans. Intercultural Press, 1990.
- Howarth, David and Georgios Varouzakis. Contemporary France: An Introduction to French Politics and Society. New York: Oxford University Press (Arnold Publishers), 2003. ISBN 0-340-74187-2
- Kelly, Michael. French Culture and Society: The Essentials. New York: Oxford University Press (Arnold Publishers), 2001. (A Reference Guide)
- Kidd, William and Siân Reynolds, eds. Contemporary French Cultural Studies. Arnold Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0-340-74050-7
- Marmer, Nancy, "Out of Paris: Decentralizing French Art," Art in America, September 1986, pp. 124-137, 155-157.
- Nadeau, Jean-Benoît and Julie Barlow. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not The French. Sourcebooks Trade, 2003. ISBN 1-4022-0045-5
- Robb, Graham. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War. New York: Norton, 2007. ISBN 978-0-393-05973-1
- (French) Wylie, Laurence and Jean-François Brière. Les Français. 3rd edition. Prentice Hall, 2001.
- Zedlin, Theodore and Philippe Turner, eds. The French. Kodansha International, 1996.
Notes[link]
- ^ Jary, D. and J. Jary. 1991. The HarperCollins Dictionary of Sociology, page 101.
- ^ Hoult, T. F, ed. 1969. Dictionary of Modern Sociology, p. 93.
- ^ Thompson, William; Joseph Hickey (2005). Society in Focus'. Boston, MA: Pearson. ISBN 0-205-41365-X.
- ^ see, for example, Jonathan Fenby: On the Brink; the Trouble with France Warner Books London, 1998
- ^ Aïcha Saïd Ben Mohamed (1876 - 1930) was born in Kabylie, Généalogie Magazine, N° 233, p. 30/36
- ^ Le Point, February 8, 2007
- ^ "One in three French 'are racist'". BBC News. 2006-03-22. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4832238.stm. Retrieved 2006-05-03.
- ^ Article 75-1: (a new article): "Les langues régionales appartiennent au patrimoine de la France" ("Regional languages belong to the patrimony of France"). See Loi constitutionnelle du 23 juillet 2008.
- ^ (Romanian) Franţa nu mai e o ţară catolică (France is no longer a Catholic country), Cotidianul, 2007-01-11; "France 'no longer a Catholic country'", Daily Telegraph, 10 January 2007
- ^ Religion Important for Americans, Italians, Angus Reid Global Monitor, December 30, 2006
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, 104-5.
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, for example, give a figure of 4 million Muslims, or 6.9%, based on sources dated 1993, 1994, 1999. (102). See Islam in France for more on recent estimates.
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, 30-31.
- ^ Embassy of France in the US - The PACS - A civil solidarity pact
- ^ Gay News From 365Gay.com
- ^ Kelley, "Family", 100.
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ http://www.insee.fr/en/ffc/chifcle_fiche.asp?ref_id=NATTEF02313&tab_id=31
- ^ Kelley, 246-7.
- ^ TIMSS 1995 Highlights of Results for the Middle School Years [1]. France has not participated in later TIMSS studies. [2]
- ^ fr:section syndicale d'entreprise December 27, 1968 law
- ^ fr:SMIG
- ^ Decree n°2006-1386 over 15th November, 2006 taken as application of article L3511-7 of the Public Health Code, banning smoking in public places.
- ^ "France to ban smoking in public". BBC News. 2006-10-08. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6032125.stm. Retrieved 2006-10-09.
- ^ http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/boekhout.france.html
- ^ Kelly, 101. DeJean, chapters 2-4.
- ^ Kelly, 101.
- ^ Dauncey, 195.
- ^ Le marché des aliments pour chiens et chats en Belgique. Mission Economique de Bruxelles, 2006. Read this document (in French) PDF
- ^ Alan Riding (February 28, 1995). "The Birthplace Celebrates Film's Big 1-0-0". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/28/movies/the-birthplace-celebrates-film-s-big-1-0-0.html.
- ^ 20 questions about studying in France |url=http://old.campusfrance.org/en/a-etudier/faq.htm
- ^ Theodore Zedlin, quoted in Kidd and Reynolds, 266
- ^ a b Kidd and Reynolds, 261.
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, 266.
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, 258 and 264.
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, 265.
- ^ a b Donald Morrison, "The Death of French Culture", Time, Wednesday Nov. 21, 2007. {http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1686532,00.html}
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, 264.
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, 232.
- ^ Kidd and Reynolds, 236
- ^ French schoolyear calendar {fr}[3]
- ^ International System of Units (SI) - Physics Laboratory
- ^ English translation of "Octet" on Reverso
-
External links[link]
- Frenchculture.org
- Frenchcultureguide.com - French culture news website
- France in Brief / France From A to Z - Embassy of France in the US
- National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE)
- Morrison, Don. "The Death of French Culture," TIME
- Chardin's paintings are just an example of the importance of the French culture in the history of art
- French Painters who contributed to the Rococo and Neoclassical period are Boucher, Bouguereau and Jean-Léome Gérôme famous forgotten artists
- The French Culture in Lyon
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
For later revolutions in France, see July Revolution and French Revolution of 1848.
For other uses, see French Revolution (disambiguation).
| The French Revolution | |
|---|---|
 The storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789 |
|
| Participants | French society |
| Location | France |
| Date | 1789–1799 |
| Result |
|
The French Revolution (French: Révolution française; 1789–1799), was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France that had a major impact on France and indeed all of Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation, as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from radical left-wing political groups, masses on the streets, and peasants in the countryside.[1] Old ideas about tradition and hierarchy – of monarchy, aristocracy and religious authority – were abruptly overthrown by new Enlightenment principles of equality, citizenship and inalienable rights.
| History of France | |
|---|---|
 This article is part of a series |
|
| Prehistory | |
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| Mesolithic | |
| Neolithic | |
| Copper Age | |
| Bronze Age | |
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| Ancient history | |
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| Roman Gaul (50 BC–486 AD) | |
| Early Middle Ages | |
| The Franks | |
| Merovingians (481 AD–751 AD) | |
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| Middle Ages | |
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| Kingdom of France (1791–1792) | |
| French Revolution (1789) | |
| 19th century | |
| First Republic (1792–1804) | |
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| First Empire (1804–1814) | |
| Restoration (1814–1830) | |
| July Revolution (1830) | |
| July Monarchy (1830–1848) | |
| 1848 Revolution | |
| Second Republic (1848–1852) | |
| Second Empire (1852–1870) | |
| Third Republic (1870–1940) | |
| Paris Commune (1871) | |
| 20th century | |
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|
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|
France Portal |
The French Revolution began in 1789 with the convocation of the Estates-General in May. The first year of the Revolution saw members of the Third Estate proclaiming the Tennis Court Oath in June, the assault on the Bastille in July, the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, and an epic march on Versailles that forced the royal court back to Paris in October. The next few years were dominated by tensions between various liberal assemblies and a right-wing monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms.
A republic was proclaimed in September 1792 and King Louis XVI was executed the next year. External threats also played a dominant role in the development of the Revolution. The French Revolutionary Wars started in 1792 and ultimately featured spectacular French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and most territories west of the Rhine – achievements that had defied previous French governments for centuries.
Internally, popular sentiments radicalized the Revolution significantly, culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins and virtual dictatorship by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror from 1793 until 1794 during which between 16,000 and 40,000 people were killed.[2] After the fall of the Jacobins and the execution of Robespierre, the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795 and held power until 1799, when it was replaced by the Consulate under Napoleon Bonaparte.
After the Napoleonic Wars and ensuing rise and fall of Napoleon's First French Empire, a restoration of absolutist monarchy was followed by two further successful smaller revolutions (1830 and 1848). This meant the 19th century and process of modern France taking shape saw France again successively governed by a similar cycle of constitutional monarchy (1830–48), fragile republic (Second Republic) (1848–1852), and empire (Second Empire) (1852–1870). The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. The growth of republics and liberal democracies, the spread of secularism, the development of modern ideologies and the invention of total war[3] all mark their birth during the Revolution.
Contents
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Causes[link]
Main article: Causes of the French Revolution
Adherents of most historical models identify many of the same features of the Ancien Régime as being among the causes of the Revolution. Economic factors included hunger and malnutrition in the most destitute segments of the population, due to rising bread prices (from a normal 8 sous for a four-pound loaf to 12 sous by the end of 1789),[4] after several years of poor grain harvests. Bad harvests (caused in part by extreme weather from El Niño along with volcanic activity at Laki and Grímsvötn in 1783–1784), rising food prices, and an inadequate transportation system that hindered the shipment of bulk foods from rural areas to large population centers contributed greatly to the destabilization of French society in the years leading up to the Revolution.
Another cause was the state's effective bankruptcy due to the enormous cost of previous wars, particularly the financial strain caused by French participation in the American Revolutionary War. The national debt amounted to some 1,000–2,000 million[citation needed] livres. The social burdens caused by war included the huge war debt, made worse by the loss of France's colonial possessions in North America and the growing commercial dominance of Great Britain. France's inefficient and antiquated financial system was unable to manage the national debt, something which was both partially caused and exacerbated by the burden of an inadequate system of taxation. To obtain new money to head off default on the government's loans, the king called an Assembly of Notables in 1787.
Meanwhile, the royal court at Versailles was seen as being isolated from, and indifferent to, the hardships of the lower classes. While in theory King Louis XVI was an absolute monarch, in practice he was often indecisive and known to back down when faced with strong opposition. While he did reduce government expenditures, opponents in the parlements successfully thwarted his attempts at enacting much needed reforms. Those who were opposed to Louis' policies further undermined royal authority by distributing pamphlets (often reporting false or exaggerated information) that criticized the government and its officials, stirring up public opinion against the monarchy.[5]
Many other factors involved resentments and aspirations given focus by the rise of Enlightenment ideals. These included resentment of royal absolutism; resentment by peasants, laborers and the bourgeoisie toward the traditional seigneurial privileges possessed by the nobility; resentment of the Church's influence over public policy and institutions; aspirations for freedom of religion; resentment of aristocratic bishops by the poorer rural clergy; aspirations for social, political and economic equality, and (especially as the Revolution progressed) republicanism; hatred of Queen Marie-Antoinette, who was falsely accused of being a spendthrift and an Austrian spy; and anger toward the King for firing finance minister Jacques Necker, among others, who were popularly seen as representatives of the people.[6]
Pre-revolution[link]
Financial crisis[link]
Louis XVI ascended to the throne amidst a financial crisis; the state was nearing bankruptcy and outlays outpaced income.[7] This was because of France’s financial obligations stemming from involvement in the Seven Years War and its participation in the American Revolutionary War.[8] In May 1776, finance minister Turgot was dismissed, after he failed to enact reforms. The next year, Jacques Necker, a foreigner, was appointed Comptroller-General of Finance. He could not be made an official minister because he was a Protestant.[9]
Necker realized that the country's extremely regressive tax system subjected the lower classes to a heavy burden,[9] while numerous exemptions existed for the nobility and clergy.[10] He argued that the country could not be taxed higher; that tax exemptions for the nobility and clergy must be reduced; and proposed that borrowing more money would solve the country's fiscal shortages. Necker published a report to support this claim that underestimated the deficit by roughly 36 million livres, and proposed restricting the power of the parlements.[9]
This was not received well by the King's ministers, and Necker, hoping to bolster his position, argued to be made a minister. The King refused, Necker was fired, and Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed to the Comptrollership.[9] Calonne initially spent liberally, but he quickly realized the critical financial situation and proposed a new tax code.[11]
The proposal included a consistent land tax, which would include taxation of the nobility and clergy. Faced with opposition from the parlements, Calonne organised the summoning of the Assembly of Notables. But the Assembly failed to endorse Calonne's proposals and instead weakened his position through its criticism. In response, the King announced the calling of the Estates-General for May 1789, the first time the body had been summoned since 1614. This was a signal that the Bourbon monarchy was in a weakened state and subject to the demands of its people.[12]
Estates-General of 1789[link]
Main article: Estates-General of 1789
The Estates-General was organized into three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of France.[13] On the last occasion that the Estates-General had met, in 1614, each estate held one vote, and any two could override the third. The Parlement of Paris feared the government would attempt to gerrymander an assembly to rig the results. Thus, they required that the Estates be arranged as in 1614.[14] The 1614 rules differed from practices of local assemblies, where each member had one vote and third estate membership was doubled. For example, in the Dauphiné the provincial assembly agreed to double the number of members of the third estate, hold membership elections, and allow one vote per member, rather than one vote per estate.[15]
The "Committee of Thirty," a body of liberal Parisians, began to agitate against voting by estate. This group, largely composed of the wealthy, argued for the Estates-General to assume the voting mechanisms of Dauphiné. They argued that ancient precedent was not sufficient, because "the people were sovereign."[16] Necker convened a Second Assembly of Notables, which rejected the notion of double representation by a vote of 111 to 333.[16] The King, however, agreed to the proposition on 27 December; but he left discussion of the weight of each vote to the Estates-General itself.[17]
Elections were held in the spring of 1789; suffrage requirements for the Third Estate were for French-born or naturalised males only, at least 25 years of age, who resided where the vote was to take place and who paid taxes.
Pour être électeur du tiers état, il faut avoir 25 ans, être français ou naturalisé, être domicilié au lieu de vote et compris au rôle des impositions.[18]
Strong turnout produced 1,201 delegates, including: "291 nobles, 300 clergy, and 610 members of the Third Estate."[17] To lead delegates, "Books of grievances" (cahiers de doléances) were compiled to list problems.[13] The books articulated ideas which would have seemed radical only months before; however, most supported the monarchical system in general. Many assumed the Estates-General would approve future taxes, and Enlightenment ideals were relatively rare.[14][19]
Pamphlets by liberal nobles and clergy became widespread after the lifting of press censorship.[16] The Abbé Sieyès, a theorist and Catholic clergyman, argued the paramount importance of the Third Estate in the pamphlet Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? ("What is the Third Estate?"), published in January 1789. He asserted: "What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something."[14][20]
The Estates-General convened in the Grands Salles des Menus-Plaisirs in Versailles on 5 May 1789 and opened with a three-hour speech by Necker. The Third Estate demanded that the verification of deputies' credentials should be undertaken in common by all deputies, rather than each estate verifying the credentials of its own members internally; negotiations with the other estates failed to achieve this.[19] The commoners appealed to the clergy who replied they required more time. Necker asserted that each estate verify credentials and "the king was to act as arbitrator."[21] Negotiations with the other two estates to achieve this, however, were unsuccessful.[22]
National Assembly (1789)[link]
Main article: National Assembly (French Revolution)
On 10 June 1789, Abbé Sieyès moved that the Third Estate, now meeting as the Communes (English: "Commons"), proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so two days later, completing the process on 17 June.[23] Then they voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People." They invited the other orders to join them, but made it clear they intended to conduct the nation's affairs with or without them.[24]
In an attempt to keep control of the process and prevent the Assembly from convening, Louis XVI ordered the closure of the Salle des États where the Assembly met, making an excuse that the carpenters needed to prepare the hall for a royal speech in two days. Weather did not allow an outdoor meeting, so the Assembly moved their deliberations to a nearby indoor real tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath (20 June 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a constitution.[25]
A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did 47 members of the nobility. By 27 June, the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles. Messages of support for the Assembly poured in from Paris and other French cities.[25]
National Constituent Assembly (1789–1791)[link]
Main article: National Constituent Assembly
Storming of the Bastille[link]
Main article: Storming of the Bastille
By this time, Necker had earned the enmity of many members of the French court for his overt manipulation of public opinion. Marie Antoinette, the King's younger brother the Comte d'Artois, and other conservative members of the King's privy council urged him to dismiss Necker as financial advisor. On 11 July 1789, after Necker published an inaccurate account of the government's debts and made it available to the public, the King fired him, and completely restructured the finance ministry at the same time.[26]
Many Parisians presumed Louis's actions to be aimed against the Assembly and began open rebellion when they heard the news the next day. They were also afraid that arriving soldiers – mostly foreign mercenaries – had been summoned to shut down the National Constituent Assembly. The Assembly, meeting at Versailles, went into nonstop session to prevent another eviction from their meeting place. Paris was soon consumed by riots, chaos, and widespread looting. The mobs soon had the support of some of the French Guard, who were armed and trained soldiers.[27]
On 14 July, the insurgents set their eyes on the large weapons and ammunition cache inside the Bastille fortress, which was also perceived to be a symbol of royal power. After several hours of combat, the prison fell that afternoon. Despite ordering a cease fire, which prevented a mutual massacre, Governor Marquis Bernard de Launay was beaten, stabbed and decapitated; his head was placed on a pike and paraded about the city. Although the fortress had held only seven prisoners (four forgers, two noblemen kept for immoral behavior, and a murder suspect), the Bastille served as a potent symbol of everything hated under the Ancien Régime. Returning to the Hôtel de Ville (city hall), the mob accused the prévôt des marchands (roughly, mayor) Jacques de Flesselles of treachery and butchered him.[28]
The King, alarmed by the violence, backed down, at least for the time being. The Marquis de la Fayette took up command of the National Guard at Paris. Jean-Sylvain Bailly, president of the Assembly at the time of the Tennis Court Oath, became the city's mayor under a new governmental structure known as the commune. The King visited Paris, where, on 17 July he accepted a tricolore cockade, to cries of Vive la Nation ("Long live the Nation") and Vive le Roi ("Long live the King").[29]
Necker was recalled to power, but his triumph was short-lived. An astute financier but a less astute politician, Necker overplayed his hand by demanding and obtaining a general amnesty, losing much of the people's favour.
As civil authority rapidly deteriorated, with random acts of violence and theft breaking out across the country, members of the nobility, fearing for their safety, fled to neighboring countries; many of these émigrés, as they were called, funded counter-revolutionary causes within France and urged foreign monarchs to offer military support to a counter-revolution.[30]
By late July, the spirit of popular sovereignty had spread throughout France. In rural areas, many commoners began to form militias and arm themselves against a foreign invasion: some attacked the châteaux of the nobility as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as "la Grande Peur" ("the Great Fear"). In addition, wild rumours and paranoia caused widespread unrest and civil disturbances that contributed to the collapse of law and order.[31]
Working toward a constitution[link]
Main article: French Revolution from the abolition of feudalism to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy
On 4 August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished feudalism (although at that point there had been sufficient peasant revolts to almost end feudalism already), in what is known as the August Decrees, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithes gathered by the First Estate. In the course of a few hours, nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies and cities lost their special privileges.
On 26 August 1789, the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution with legal effect. The National Constituent Assembly functioned not only as a legislature, but also as a body to draft a new constitution.
Necker, Mounier, Lally-Tollendal and others argued unsuccessfully for a senate, with members appointed by the crown on the nomination of the people. The bulk of the nobles argued for an aristocratic upper house elected by the nobles. The popular party carried the day: France would have a single, unicameral assembly. The King retained only a "suspensive veto"; he could delay the implementation of a law, but not block it absolutely. The Assembly eventually replaced the historic provinces with 83 départements, uniformly administered and roughly equal in area and population.
Amid the Assembly's preoccupation with constitutional affairs, the financial crisis had continued largely unaddressed, and the deficit had only increased. Honoré Mirabeau now led the move to address this matter, and the Assembly gave Necker complete financial dictatorship.
Women's March on Versailles[link]
Main article: The Women's March on Versailles
Fueled by rumors of a reception for the King's bodyguards on 1 October 1789 at which the national cockade had been trampled upon, on 5 October 1789 crowds of women began to assemble at Parisian markets. The women first marched to the Hôtel de Ville, demanding that city officials address their concerns.[32] The women were responding to the harsh economic situations they faced, especially bread shortages. They also demanded an end to royal efforts to block the National Assembly, and for the King and his administration to move to Paris as a sign of good faith in addressing the widespread poverty.
Getting unsatisfactory responses from city officials, as many as 7,000 women joined the march to Versailles, bringing with them cannons and a variety of smaller weapons. Twenty thousand National Guardsmen under the command of La Fayette responded to keep order, and members of the mob stormed the palace, killing several guards.[33] La Fayette ultimately persuaded the king to accede to the demand of the crowd that the monarchy relocate to Paris.
On 6 October 1789, the King and the royal family moved from Versailles to Paris under the "protection" of the National Guards, thus legitimizing the National Assembly.
Revolution and the Church[link]
Main articles: Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution and Civil Constitution of the Clergy
The Revolution caused a massive shift of power from the Roman Catholic Church to the state. Under the Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest single landowner in the country, owning about 10% of the land in the kingdom.[34] The Church was exempt from paying taxes to the government, while it levied a tithe—a 10% tax on income, often collected in the form of crops—on the general population, which it then redistributed to the poor.[34] The power and wealth of the Church was highly resented by some groups. A small minority of Protestants living in France, such as the Huguenots, wanted an anti-Catholic regime and revenge against the clergy who discriminated against them. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire helped fuel this resentment by denigrating the Catholic Church and destabilizing the French monarchy.[35] As historian John McManners argues, "In eighteenth-century France throne and altar were commonly spoken of as in close alliance; their simultaneous collapse ... would one day provide the final proof of their interdependence."[36]
This resentment toward the Church weakened its power during the opening of the Estates General in May 1789. The Church composed the First Estate with 130,000 members of the clergy. When the National Assembly was later created in June 1789 by the Third Estate, the clergy voted to join them, which perpetuated the destruction of the Estates General as a governing body.[37] The National Assembly began to enact social and economic reform. Legislation sanctioned on 4 August 1789 abolished the Church's authority to impose the tithe. In an attempt to address the financial crisis, the Assembly declared, on 2 November 1789, that the property of the Church was "at the disposal of the nation."[38] They used this property to back a new currency, the assignats. Thus, the nation had now also taken on the responsibility of the Church, which included paying the clergy and caring for the poor, the sick and the orphaned.[39] In December, the Assembly began to sell the lands to the highest bidder to raise revenue, effectively decreasing the value of the assignats by 25% in two years.[40] In autumn 1789, legislation abolished monastic vows and on 13 February 1790 all religious orders were dissolved.[41] Monks and nuns were encouraged to return to private life and a small percentage did eventually marry.[42]
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed on 12 July 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the state. This established an election system for parish priests and bishops and set a pay rate for the clergy. Many Catholics objected to the election system because it effectively denied the authority of the Pope in Rome over the French Church. Eventually, in November 1790, the National Assembly began to require an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution from all the members of the clergy.[42] This led to a schism between those clergy who swore the required oath and accepted the new arrangement and those who remained loyal to the Pope. Overall, 24% of the clergy nationwide took the oath.[43] Widespread refusal led to legislation against the clergy, "forcing them into exile, deporting them forcibly, or executing them as traitors."[40] Pope Pius VI never accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, further isolating the Church in France. During the Reign of Terror, extreme efforts of de-Christianization ensued, including the imprisonment and massacre of priests and destruction of churches and religious images throughout France. An effort was made to replace the Catholic Church altogether, with civic festivals replacing religious ones. The establishment of the Cult of Reason was the final step of radical de-Christianization. These events led to a widespread disillusionment with the Revolution and to counter-rebellions across France. Locals often resisted de-Christianization by attacking revolutionary agents and hiding members of the clergy who were being hunted. Eventually, Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety were forced to denounce the campaign,[44] replacing the Cult of Reason with the deist but still non-Christian Cult of the Supreme Being. The Concordat of 1801 between Napoleon and the Church ended the de-Christianization period and established the rules for a relationship between the Catholic Church and the French State that lasted until it was abrogated by the Third Republic via the separation of church and state on 11 December 1905. The persecution of the Church led to a counter-revolution known as the Revolt in the Vendée, whose suppression is considered by some to be the first modern genocide[citation needed].
Intrigues and radicalism[link]
Factions within the Assembly began to clarify. The aristocrat Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazalès and the abbé Jean-Sifrein Maury led what would become known as the right wing, the opposition to revolution (this party sat on the right-hand side of the Assembly). The "Royalist democrats" or monarchiens, allied with Necker, inclined toward organising France along lines similar to the British constitutional model; they included Jean Joseph Mounier, the Comte de Lally-Tollendal, the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, and Pierre Victor Malouet, comte de Virieu.
The "National Party", representing the centre or centre-left of the assembly, included Honoré Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Bailly; while Adrien Duport, Barnave and Alexandre Lameth represented somewhat more extreme views. Almost alone in his radicalism on the left was the Arras lawyer Maximilien Robespierre. Abbé Sieyès led in proposing legislation in this period and successfully forged consensus for some time between the political centre and the left. In Paris, various committees, the mayor, the assembly of representatives, and the individual districts each claimed authority independent of the others. The increasingly middle-class National Guard under La Fayette also slowly emerged as a power in its own right, as did other self-generated assemblies.
The Assembly abolished the symbolic paraphernalia of the Ancien Régime— armorial bearings, liveries, etc. – which further alienated the more conservative nobles, and added to the ranks of the émigrés. On 14 July 1790, and for several days following, crowds in the Champ de Mars celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille with the Fête de la Fédération; Talleyrand performed a mass; participants swore an oath of "fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king"; the King and the royal family actively participated.[45]
The electors had originally chosen the members of the Estates-General to serve for a single year. However, by the terms of the Tennis Court Oath, the communes had bound themselves to meet continuously until France had a constitution. Right-wing elements now argued for a new election, but Mirabeau prevailed, asserting that the status of the assembly had fundamentally changed, and that no new election should take place before completing the constitution.[citation needed]
In late 1790, the French army was in considerable disarray. The military officer corps was largely composed of noblemen, who found it increasingly difficult to maintain order within the ranks. In some cases, soldiers (drawn from the lower classes) had turned against their aristocratic commanders and attacked them. At Nancy, General Bouillé successfully put down one such rebellion, only to be accused of being anti-revolutionary for doing so. This and other such incidents spurred a mass desertion as more and more officers defected to other countries, leaving a dearth of experienced leadership within the army.[46]
This period also saw the rise of the political "clubs" in French politics. Foremost among these was the Jacobin Club; 152 members had affiliated with the Jacobins by 10 August 1790. The Jacobin Society began as a broad, general organization for political debate, but as it grew in members, various factions developed with widely differing views. Several of these fractions broke off to form their own clubs, such as the Club of '89.[47]
Meanwhile, the Assembly continued to work on developing a constitution. A new judicial organisation made all magistracies temporary and independent of the throne. The legislators abolished hereditary offices, except for the monarchy itself. Jury trials started for criminal cases. The King would have the unique power to propose war, with the legislature then deciding whether to declare war. The Assembly abolished all internal trade barriers and suppressed guilds, masterships, and workers' organisations: any individual gained the right to practice a trade through the purchase of a license; strikes became illegal.[48]
In the winter of 1791, the Assembly considered, for the first time, legislation against the émigrés. The debate pitted the safety of the Revolution against the liberty of individuals to leave. Mirabeau prevailed against the measure, which he referred to as "worthy of being placed in the code of Draco".[46] But Mirabeau died on 2 April 1791 and, before the end of the year, the new Legislative Assembly adopted this draconian measure.[49]
Royal flight to Varennes[link]
Main article: Flight to Varennes
Louis XVI, egged on by Marie Antoinette and other members of his family, opposed the course of the Revolution, but rejected the potentially treacherous aid of the other monarchs of Europe. He cast his lot with General Bouillé, who condemned both the emigration and the Assembly, and promised him refuge and support in his camp at Montmédy. On the night of 20 June 1791, the royal family fled the Tuileries Palace dressed as servants, while their servants dressed as nobles.
However, late the next day, the King was recognised and arrested at Varennes (in the Meuse département). He and his family were brought back to Paris under guard, still dressed as servants. Pétion, Latour-Maubourg, and Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave, representing the Assembly, met the royal family at Épernay and returned with them. From this time, Barnave became a counselor and supporter of the royal family. When they returned to Paris, the crowd greeted them in silence. The Assembly provisionally suspended the King. He and Queen Marie Antoinette remained held under guard.[50][51][52][53][54]
Completing the constitution[link]
Main article: The Last Days of the National Constituent Assembly
As most of the Assembly still favoured a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groups reached a compromise which left Louis XVI as little more than a figurehead: he was forced to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to abdication.[55]
However, Jacques Pierre Brissot drafted a petition, insisting that in the eyes of the nation Louis XVI was deposed since his flight. An immense crowd gathered in the Champ de Mars to sign the petition. Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins gave fiery speeches. The Assembly called for the municipal authorities to "preserve public order". The National Guard under La Fayette's command confronted the crowd. The soldiers responded to a barrage of stones by firing into the crowd, killing between 13 and 50 people.[56]
In the wake of this massacre the authorities closed many of the patriotic clubs, as well as radical newspapers such as Jean-Paul Marat's L'Ami du Peuple. Danton fled to England; Desmoulins and Marat went into hiding.[citation needed]
Meanwhile, a new threat arose from abroad: Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, Frederick William II of Prussia, and the King's brother Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which considered the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his absolute liberty and implied an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions.[57] The French people expressed no respect for the dictates of foreign monarchs, and the threat of force merely hastened their militarisation.[58]
Even before the "Flight to Varennes", the Assembly members had determined to debar themselves from the legislature that would succeed them, the Legislative Assembly. They now gathered the various constitutional laws they had passed into a single constitution, showed remarkable strength in choosing not to use this as an occasion for major revisions, and submitted it to the recently restored Louis XVI, who accepted it, writing "I engage to maintain it at home, to defend it from all attacks from abroad, and to cause its execution by all the means it places at my disposal". The King addressed the Assembly and received enthusiastic applause from members and spectators. With this capstone, the National Constituent Assembly adjourned in a final session on 30 September 1791.[59]
Mignet argued that the "constitution of 1791... was the work of the middle class, then the strongest; for, as is well known, the predominant force ever takes possession of institutions... In this constitution the people was the source of all powers, but it exercised none."[55]
Legislative Assembly (1791–1792)[link]
Failure of the constitutional monarchy[link]
Under the Constitution of 1791, France would function as a constitutional monarchy. The King had to share power with the elected Legislative Assembly, but he still retained his royal veto and the ability to select ministers. The Legislative Assembly first met on 1 October 1791, and degenerated into chaos less than a year later. In the words of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: "In the attempt to govern, the Assembly failed altogether. It left behind an empty treasury, an undisciplined army and navy, and a people debauched by safe and successful riot."[60] The Legislative Assembly consisted of about 165 Feuillants (constitutional monarchists) on the right, about 330 Girondists (liberal republicans) and Jacobins (radical revolutionaries) on the left, and about 250 deputies unaffiliated with either faction.[citation needed] Early on, the King vetoed legislation that threatened the émigrés with death and that decreed that every non-juring clergyman must take within eight days the civic oath mandated by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Over the course of a year, such disagreements would lead to a constitutional crisis.[citation needed]
Constitutional crisis[link]
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Main articles: 10 August (French Revolution), September Massacres, and Proclamation of the abolition of the monarchy
On the night of 10 August 1792, insurgents and popular militias, supported by the revolutionary Paris Commune, assailed the Tuileries Palace and massacred the Swiss Guards who were assigned for the protection of the king. The royal family ended up prisoners and a rump session of the Legislative Assembly suspended the monarchy; little more than a third of the deputies were present, almost all of them Jacobins.[61]
What remained of a national government depended on the support of the insurrectionary Commune. The Commune sent gangs into the prisons to try arbitrarily and butcher 1400 victims, and addressed a circular letter to the other cities of France inviting them to follow this example. The Assembly could offer only feeble resistance. This situation persisted until the Convention, elected by universal male suffrage and charged with writing a new constitution, met on 20 September 1792 and became the new de facto government of France. The next day it abolished the monarchy and declared a republic. This date was later retroactively adopted as the beginning of Year One of the French Republican Calendar.
War and Counter-Revolution (1792–1797)[link]
Main articles: French Revolutionary Wars and French Counter-Revolution
The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with Austria and its allies. The King, many of the Feuillants, and the Girondins specifically wanted to wage war. The King (and many Feuillants with him) expected war would increase his personal popularity; he also foresaw an opportunity to exploit any defeat: either result would make him stronger. The Girondins wanted to export the Revolution throughout Europe and, by extension, to defend the Revolution within France. The forces opposing war were much weaker. Barnave and his supporters among the Feuillants feared a war they thought France had little chance to win and which they feared might lead to greater radicalization of the revolution. On the other end of the political spectrum Robespierre opposed a war on two grounds, fearing that it would strengthen the monarchy and military at the expense of the revolution, and that it would incur the anger of ordinary people in Austria and elsewhere. The Austrian emperor Leopold II, brother of Marie Antoinette, may have wished to avoid war, but he died on 1 March 1792.[62] France preemptively declared war on Austria (20 April 1792) and Prussia joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The invading Prussian army faced little resistance until checked at the Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792), and forced to withdraw.
The new-born Republic followed up on this success with a series of victories in Belgium and the Rhineland in the fall of 1792. The French armies defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Jemappes on 6 November, and had soon taken over most of the Austrian Netherlands. This brought them into conflict with Britain and the Dutch Republic, which wished to preserve the independence of the southern Netherlands from France. After the king's execution in January 1793, these powers, along with Spain and most other European states, joined the war against France. Almost immediately, French forces faced defeat on many fronts, and were driven out of their newly conquered territories in the spring of 1793. At the same time, the republican regime was forced to deal with rebellions against its authority in much of western and southern France. But the allies failed to take advantage of French disunity, and by the autumn of 1793 the republican regime had defeated most of the internal rebellions and halted the allied advance into France itself.
The stalemate was broken in the summer of 1794 with dramatic French victories. They defeated the allied army at the Battle of Fleurus, leading to a full Allied withdrawal from the Austrian Netherlands. They followed up by a campaign which swept the allies to the east bank of the Rhine and left the French, by the beginning of 1795, conquering Holland itself. The House of Orange was expelled and replaced by the Batavian Republic, a French satellite state. These victories led to the collapse of the coalition against France. Prussia, having effectively abandoned the coalition in the fall of 1794, made peace with revolutionary France at Basel in April 1795, and soon thereafter Spain, too, made peace with France. Of the major powers, only Britain and Austria remained at war with France.
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The French national anthem La Marseillaise was written during the revolution in 1792.
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It was during this time that La Marseillaise was first sung. Originally titled Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin ("War Song for the Army of the Rhine"), the song was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. It was adopted in 1795 as the nation's first anthem.
National Convention (1792–1795)[link]
Main article: National Convention
Execution of Louis XVI[link]
Main article: Execution of Louis XVI
In the Brunswick Manifesto, the Imperial and Prussian armies threatened retaliation on the French population if it were to resist their advance or the reinstatement of the monarchy. This among other things made Louis appear to be conspiring with the enemies of France. On 17 January 1793 Louis was condemned to death for "conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety" by a close majority in Convention: 361 voted to execute the king, 288 voted against, and another 72 voted to execute him subject to a variety of delaying conditions. The former Louis XVI, now simply named Citoyen Louis Capet (Citizen Louis Capet), was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793 on the Place de la Révolution, former Place Louis XV, now called the Place de la Concorde.[63] Royalty across Europe was horrified and many heretofore neutral countries soon joined the war against revolutionary France.
Economy[link]
When war went badly, prices rose and the sans-culottes — poor labourers and radical Jacobins – rioted; counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary coup, backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian sans-culottes. An alliance of Jacobin and sans-culottes elements thus became the effective centre of the new government. Policy became considerably more radical, as "The Law of the Maximum" set food prices and led to executions of offenders.[64] This policy of price control was coeval with the Committee of Public Safety's rise to power and the Reign of Terror. The Committee first attempted to set the price for only a limited number of grain products but, by September 1793, it expanded the "maximum" to cover all foodstuffs and a long list of other goods.[65] Widespread shortages and famine ensued. The Committee reacted by sending dragoons into the countryside to arrest farmers and seize crops. This temporarily solved the problem in Paris, but the rest of the country suffered. By the spring of 1794, forced collection of food was not sufficient to feed even Paris and the days of the Committee were numbered. When Robespierre went to the guillotine in July of that year the crowd jeered, "There goes the dirty maximum!"[66]
Reign of Terror[link]
Main article: Reign of Terror
The Committee of Public Safety came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre, a lawyer, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror (1793–1794). According to archival records, at least 16,594 people died under the guillotine or otherwise after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities.[67] A number of historians note that as many as 40,000 accused prisoners may have been summarily executed without trial or died awaiting trial.[67][68]
On 2 June 1793, Paris sections — encouraged by the enragés ("enraged ones") Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert – took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone.[69] With the backing of the National Guard, they managed to persuade the Convention to arrest 31 Girondin leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot. Following these arrests, the Jacobins gained control of the Committee of Public Safety on 10 June, installing the revolutionary dictatorship. On 13 July, the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat — a Jacobin leader and journalist known for his bloodthirsty rhetoric — by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin, resulted in further increase of Jacobin political influence. Georges Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the King, undermined by several political reversals, was removed from the Committee and Robespierre, "the Incorruptible", became its most influential member as it moved to take radical measures against the Revolution's domestic and foreign enemies.[70]
Meanwhile, on 24 June, the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, variously referred to as the French Constitution of 1793 or Constitution of the Year I. It was progressive and radical in several respects, in particular by establishing universal male suffrage. It was ratified by public referendum, but normal legal processes were suspended before it could take effect.[71]
War in the Vendée[link]
Main article: War in the Vendée
In Vendée, peasants revolted against the French Revolutionary government in 1793. They resented the changes imposed on the Roman Catholic Church by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and broke into open revolt in defiance of the Revolutionary government's military conscription.[72] This became a guerrilla war, known as the War in the Vendée.[73] North of the Loire, similar revolts were started by the so-called Chouans (royalist rebels).[74]
After the defeat at Savenay, when regular warfare in the Vendée was at an end, the French general Francois Joseph Westermann is argued by some historians to have penned a letter (its veracity is disputed)[75][76] to the Committee of Public Safety, stating:
"There is no more Vendée. It died with its wives and its children by our free sabres. I have just buried it in the woods and the swamps of Savenay. According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all. The roads are sown with corpses. At Savenay, brigands are arriving all the time claiming to surrender, and we are shooting them non-stop... Mercy is not a revolutionary sentiment."[77][78]
Other historians doubt the authenticity of this document and point out that the claims in it were patently false — there were in fact thousands of living Vendean prisoners, the revolt had been far from crushed, and the Convention had explicitly decreed that women, children and unarmed men were to be treated humanely.[79] It has been hypothesized that if the letter is authentic, Westermann may have been attempting to exaggerate the intensity of his actions and his success, because he was eager to avoid being purged for his opposition to sans-culotte generals (he was later guillotined together with Danton's group).[80]
The revolt and its suppression, including both combat casualties and massacres and executions on both sides, are thought to have taken between 117,000 and 250,000 lives (170,000 according to the latest estimates).[81] Because of the extremely brutal forms that the Republican repression took in many places, certain historians such as Reynald Secher have called the event a "genocide". This description has become popular in the mass media,[82] but has largely been rejected by mainstream scholars.[83]
Facing local revolts and foreign invasions in both the East and West of the country, the most urgent government business was the war. On 17 August, the Convention voted for general conscription, the levée en masse, which mobilized all citizens to serve as soldiers or suppliers in the war effort.
The National Convention subsequently enacted more legislation, voting on 9 September to establish sans-culottes paramilitary forces, revolutionary armies, and to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On 17 September, the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with "crimes against liberty." On 29 September, the Convention extended price limits from grain and bread to other household goods and established the Law of the Maximum, intended to prevent price gouging and supply food to the cities.[84]
The guillotine as a symbol[link]
The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions. Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Queen Marie Antoinette, Barnave, Bailly, Brissot and other leading Girondins, Philippe Égalité (despite his vote for the death of the King), Madame Roland and many others were executed by guillotine. The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death.
At the peak of the terror, the slightest hint of counter-revolutionary thoughts or activities (or, as in the case of Jacques Hébert, revolutionary zeal exceeding that of those in power) could place one under suspicion, and trials did not always proceed according to contemporary standards of due process. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them. Most of the victims received an unceremonious trip to the guillotine in an open wooden cart (the tumbrel). In the rebellious provinces, the government representatives had unlimited authority and some engaged in extreme repressions and abuses. For example, Jean-Baptiste Carrier became notorious for the Noyades ("drownings") he organized in Nantes;[85] his conduct was judged unacceptable even by the Jacobin government and he was recalled.[86]
Another anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the installment of the Republican Calendar on 24 October 1793. Against Robespierre's concepts of Deism and Virtue, Hébert's (and Chaumette's) atheist movement initiated a religious campaign to dechristianize society. The climax was reached with the celebration of the flame of Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November.[87]
The Reign of Terror ultimately weakened the revolutionary government, while temporarily ending internal opposition. The Jacobins expanded the size of the army, and Carnot replaced many aristocratic officers with soldiers who had demonstrated their patriotism, if not their ability. The Republican army was able to throw back the Austrians, Prussians, British, and Spanish. At the end of 1793, the army began to prevail and revolts were defeated with ease. The Ventôse Decrees (February–March 1794) proposed the confiscation of the goods of exiles and opponents of the Revolution, and their redistribution to the needy. However this policy was never fully implemented.[88]
In the spring of 1794, both extremist enragés such as Hébert and moderate Montagnard indulgents such as Danton were charged with counter-revolutionary activities, tried and guillotined. On 7 June Robespierre, who had previously condemned the Cult of Reason, advocated a new state religion and recommended the Convention acknowledge the existence of the "Supreme Being".[89]
Thermidorian Reaction[link]
Main article: Thermidorian Reaction
On 27 July 1794, the Thermidorian Reaction led to the arrest and execution of Robespierre, Louis de Saint-Just, and other leading Jacobins. The new government was predominantly made up of Girondists who had survived the Terror, and after taking power, they took revenge as well by persecuting even those Jacobins who had helped to overthrow Robespierre, banning the Jacobin Club, and executing many of its former members in what was known as the White Terror.[90][91]
In the wake of excesses of the Terror, the Convention approved the new "Constitution of the Year III" on 22 August 1795. A French plebiscite ratified the document, with about 1,057,000 votes for the constitution and 49,000 against.[92] The results of the voting were announced on 23 September 1795, and the new constitution took effect on 27 September 1795.[92]
The Constitutional Republic: The Directory (1795–1799)[link]
Main article: French Directory
The new constitution created the Directoire (English: Directory) and the first bicameral legislature in French history.[93] The parliament consisted of two houses: the Conseil des Cinq-Cents (Council of the Five Hundred), with 500 representatives, and the Conseil des Anciens (Council of Elders), with 250 senators. Executive power went to five "directors," named annually by the Conseil des Anciens from a list submitted by the Conseil des Cinq-Cents. Furthermore, the universal male suffrage of 1793 was replaced by limited suffrage based on property.[94]
With the establishment of the Directory, contemporary observers might have assumed that the Revolution was finished. Citizens of the war-weary nation wanted stability, peace, and an end to conditions that at times bordered on chaos. Those who wished to restore the monarchy and the Ancien Régime by putting Louis XVIII on the throne, and those who would have renewed the Reign of Terror were insignificant in number. The possibility of foreign interference had vanished with the failure of the First Coalition. The earlier atrocities had made confidence or goodwill between parties impossible. The same instinct of self-preservation which had led the members of the Convention to claim so large a part in the new legislature and the whole of the Directory impelled them to keep their predominance. However, many French citizens distrusted the Directory,[95] and the directors could achieve their purposes only by extraordinary means. They habitually disregarded the terms of the constitution, and, even when the elections that they rigged went against them, the directors routinely used draconian police measures to quell dissent. Moreover, to prolong their power the directors were driven to rely on the military, which desired war and grew less and less civic-minded.[96]
Other reasons influenced them in the direction of war. State finances during the earlier phases of the Revolution had been so thoroughly ruined that the government could not have met its expenses without the plunder and the tribute of foreign countries. If peace were made, the armies would return home and the directors would have to face the exasperation of the rank-and-file who had lost their livelihood, as well as the ambition of generals who could, in a moment, brush them aside. Barras and Rewbell were notoriously corrupt themselves and screened corruption in others. The patronage of the directors was ill-bestowed, and the general maladministration heightened their unpopularity.[97]
The constitutional party in the legislature desired toleration of the nonjuring clergy, the repeal of the laws against the relatives of the émigrés, and some merciful discrimination toward the émigrés themselves. The directors baffled all such endeavours. On the other hand, the socialist conspiracy of Babeuf was easily quelled. Little was done to improve the finances, and the assignats continued to fall in value.[citation needed]
The new régime met opposition from remaining Jacobins and the royalists. The army suppressed riots and counter-revolutionary activities. In this way the army and its successful general, Napoleon Bonaparte eventually gained total power.
On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire of the Year VIII) Napoleon Bonaparte staged the coup of 18 Brumaire which installed the Consulate. This effectively led to Bonaparte's dictatorship and eventually (in 1804) to his proclamation as Empereur (emperor), which brought to a close the specifically republican phase of the French Revolution.[98]
Symbolism in the French Revolution[link]
The French Revolution was a time of upheaval, especially towards traditional ideology, in almost every sense: the current monarch, King Louis XVI, was executed; the Catholic Church was all but abolished; a new calendar was created; and a new Republican government was established. In order to effectively illustrate the differences between the new Republic and the old regime, the leaders needed to implement a new set of symbols to be celebrated instead of the old religious and monarchical symbolism. To this end, symbols were borrowed from historic cultures and redefined, while those of the old regime were either destroyed or reattributed acceptable characteristics. These revised symbols were used to instill in the public a new sense of tradition and reverence for the Enlightenment and the Republic.[99]
Fasces[link]
Fasces, likes many other symbols of the French Revolution, are Roman in origin. Fasces are a bundle of birch rods containing an axe. In Roman times, the fasces symbolized the power of magistrates who could order the beating of a criminal, representing union and accord with the Roman Republic.[99] The French Republic continued this Roman symbol to represent state power, justice, and unity. During the French Revolution the fasces image is seen in conjunction with many other symbols. This is seen with many emblems of the French Revolution. Though seen throughout the French Revolution, perhaps the most well known French reincarnation of the fasces is the Fasces surmounted by a Phrygian cap. This image has no display of an axe or a strong central state; rather, it symbolizes the power of the liberated people by placing the Liberty Cap on top of the classical symbol of power.[99]
Liberty cap[link]
The Liberty cap, also known as the Phrygian cap, or pileus, is a brimless, felt cap that is conical in shape with the tip pulled forward. The cap was originally worn by ancient Romans and Greeks.[100] The cap implies ennobling effects, as seen in its association with Homer’s Ulysses and the mythical twins, Castor and Pollux. The emblem’s popularity during the French Revolution is due in part to its importance in ancient Rome: its use alludes to the Roman ritual of manumission of slaves, in which a freed slave receives the bonnet as a symbol of his newfound liberty. The Roman tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus incited the slaves to insurrection by displaying a pileus as if it were a standard.[101] The pileus cap is often red in color. This type of cap was worn by revolutionaries at the fall of the Bastille. According to the Revolutions de Paris, it became "the symbol of the liberation from all servitudes, the sign for unification of all the enemies of despotism."[99] The pileus competed with the Phrygian cap, a similar cap that covered the ears and the nape of the neck, for popularity. The Phrygian cap eventually supplanted the pileus and usurped its symbolism, becoming synonymous with republican liberty.[99]
Liberty Tree[link]
The Liberty Tree, officially adopted in 1792, is a symbol of the everlasting Republic, national freedom, and political revolution.[99] It has historic roots in revolutionary France as well as America, as a symbol that was shared by the two nascent republics.[102] The tree was chosen as a symbol of the French Revolution because it is a symbol of fertility in French folklore,[103] which provided a simple transition from revering it for one reason to another. The American colonies also used the idea of a Liberty Tree to celebrate their own acts of insurrection against the British, starting with the Stamp Act riot in 1765.[104] The riot culminated in the hanging in effigy of two Stamp Act politicians on a large elm tree. The elm tree began to be celebrated as a symbol of Liberty in the American colonies.[104] It was adopted as a symbol that needed to be living and growing, along with the Republic. To that end, the tree is portrayed as a sapling, usually of an oak tree in French interpretation.[105] The Liberty Tree serves as a constant celebration of the spirit of political freedom.
Hercules[link]
The symbol of Hercules was first adopted by the Old Regime to represent the monarchy.[106] Hercules was an ancient Greek hero who symbolized strength and power. The symbol was used to represent the sovereign authority of the King over France during the reign of the Bourbon monarchs.[107] However, the monarchy was not the only ruling power in French history to use the symbol of Hercules to declare its power.
During the Revolution, the symbol of Hercules was revived to represent nascent revolutionary ideals. The first use of Hercules as a revolutionary symbol was during a festival celebrating the National Assembly’s victory over federalism on 10 August 1793.[108] This Festival of Unity consisted of four stations around Paris which featured symbols representing major events of the Revolution which embodied revolutionary ideals of liberty, unity, and power.[109] The statue of Hercules, placed at the station commemorating the fall of Louis XVI, symbolized the power of the French people over their former oppressors. The statue’s foot was placed on the throat of the Hydra, which represented the tyranny of federalism which the new Republic had vanquished.[108] In one hand, the statue grasped a club, a symbol of power, while in the other grasping the fasces which symbolized the unity of the French people.[110] The image of Hercules assisted the new Republic in establishing its new Republican moral system.[109] Hercules thus evolved from a symbol of the sovereignty of the monarch into a symbol of the new sovereign authority in France: the French people.[111] This transition was made easily for two reasons. First, because Hercules was a famous mythological figure, and had previously been used by the monarchy, he was easily recognized by educated French observers.[107] It was not necessary for the revolutionary government to educate the French people on the background of the symbol. Additionally, Hercules recalled the classical age of the Greeks and the Romans, a period which the revolutionaries identified with republican and democratic ideals. These connotations made Hercules an easy choice to represent the powerful new sovereign people of France.
During the more radical phase of the Revolution from 1793 to 1794, the usage and depiction of Hercules changed. These changes to the symbol were due to revolutionary leaders believing the symbol was inciting violence among the common citizens.[112] The triumphant battles of Hercules and the overcoming of enemies of the Republic became less prominent. In discussions over what symbol to use for the Seal of the Republic, the image of Hercules was considered but eventually ruled out in favor of Marianne.[112] Hercules was on the coin of the Republic.[112] However, this Hercules was not the same image as that of the pre-Terror phases of the Revolution. The new image of Hercules was more domesticated. He appeared more paternal, older, and wiser, rather than the warrior-like images in the early stages of the French Revolution.[112] Unlike his 24 foot statue in the Festival of the Supreme Being, he was now the same size as Liberty and Equality.[112] Also the language on the coin with Hercules was far different than the rhetoric of pre-revolutionary depictions. On the coins the words, "uniting Liberty and Equality" were used.[112] This is opposed to the forceful language of early Revolutionary rhetoric and rhetoric of the Bourbon monarchy. By 1798, the Council of Ancients had discussed the "inevitable" change from the problematic image of Hercules, and Hercules was eventually phased out in favor of an even more docile image.[112]
Role of women[link]
Women had no political rights in pre-Revolutionary France; they could not vote or hold any political office. They were considered "passive" citizens; forced to rely on men to determine what was best for them in the government. It was the men who defined these categories, and women were forced to accept male domination in the political sphere.[113] The Encyclopédie, published by a group of philosophers over the years 1751–1777, summarized French male beliefs of women. A woman was a "failed man," the fetus not fully developed in the womb. "Women’s testimony is in general light and subject to variation; this is why it is taken more seriously than that of men" as opposed to men, upon whom "Nature seems to have conferred… the right to govern." In general, "men are more capable than women of ably governing particular matters".[114] Instead, women were taught to be committed to their husbands and "all his interests… [to show] attention and care… [and] sincere and discreet zeal for his salvation." A woman’s education often consisted of learning to be a good wife and mother; as a result women were not supposed to be involved in the political sphere, as the limit of their influence was the raising of future citizens.[115]
When the Revolution opened, some women struck forcefully, using the volatile political climate to assert their active natures. In the time of the Revolution, women could not be kept out of the political sphere; they swore oaths of loyalty, "solemn declarations of patriotic allegiance, [and] affirmations of the political responsibilities of citizenship." Throughout the Revolution, women such as Pauline Léon and her Society of Revolutionary Republican Women fought for the right to bear arms, used armed force and rioted.[116]
Even before Léon, some liberals had advocated equal rights for women including women's suffrage. Nicolas de Condorcet was especially noted for his advocacy, in his articles published in the Journal de la Société de 1789, and by publishing De l'admission des femmes au droit de cité ("For the Admission to the Rights of Citizenship For Women") in 1790.
Feminist agitation[link]
Main article: Militant Feminism in the French Revolution
The March to Versailles is but one example of feminist militant activism during the French Revolution. While largely left out of the thrust for increasing rights of citizens, as the question was left indeterminate in the Declaration of the Rights of Man,[117] activists such as Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt agitated for full citizenship for women.[118] Women were, nonetheless, "denied political rights of ‘active citizenship’ (1791) and democratic citizenship (1793)."[117]
Pauline Léon, on 6 March 1792, submitted a petition signed by 319 women to the National Assembly requesting permission to form a garde national in order to defend Paris in case of military invasion.[118] Léon requested permission be granted to women to arm themselves with pikes, pistols, sabers and rifles, as well as the privilege of drilling under the French Guards. Her request was denied.[119] Later in 1792, Théroigne de Méricourt made a call for the creation of "legions of amazons" in order to protect the revolution. As part of her call, she claimed that the right to bear arm would transform women into citizens.[120]
On 20 June 1792 a number of armed women took part in a procession that "passed through the halls of the Legislative Assembly, into the Tuilleries Gardens, and then through the King’s residence."[121] Militant women also assumed a special role in the funeral of Marat, following his murder on 13 July 1793. As part of the funeral procession, they carried the bathtub in which Marat had been murdered as well as a shirt stained with Marat’s blood.[122]
The most radical militant feminist activism was practiced by the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, which was founded by Léon and her colleague, Claire Lacombe on 10 May 1793.[123] The goal of the club was "to deliberate on the means of frustrating the projects of the enemies of the Republic." Up to 180 women attended the meetings of the Society.[124] Of special interest to the Society was "combating hoarding [of grain and other staples] and inflation."[125]
Later, on 20 May 1793, women were at the fore of a crowd that demanded "bread and the Constitution of 1793."[126] When their cries went unnoticed, the women went on a rampage, "sacking shops, seizing grain and kidnapping officials."[127]
Most of these outwardly activist women were punished for their actions. The kind of punishment received during the Revolution included public denouncement, arrest, execution, or exile. Théroigne de Méricourt was arrested, publicly flogged and then spent the rest of her life sentenced to an insane asylum. Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe were arrested, later released, and continued to receive ridicule and abuse for their activism. Many of the women of the Revolution were even publicly executed for "conspiring against the unity and the indivisibility of the Republic".[128]
These are but a few examples of the militant feminism that was prevalent during the French Revolution. While little progress was made toward gender equality during the Revolution, the activism of French feminists was bold and particularly significant in Paris.[citation needed]
Women writers[link]
While some women chose a militant, and often violent, path, others chose to influence events through writing, publications, and meetings. Olympe de Gouges wrote a number of plays, short stories, and novels. Her publications emphasized that women and men are different, but this shouldn’t stop them from equality under the law. In her "Declaration on the Rights of Woman" she insisted that women deserved rights, especially in areas concerning them directly, such as divorce and recognition of illegitimate children. De Gouges also expressed non-gender political views; even before the start of the terror, Olympe de Gouges addressed Robespierre using the pseudonym "Polyme" calling him the Revolution’s "infamy and shame." She warned of the Revolution’s building extremism saying that leaders were "preparing new shackles if [the French people’s liberty were to] waver." Stating that she was willing to sacrifice herself by jumping into the Seine if Robespierre were to join her, de Gouges desperately attempted to grab the attention of the French citizenry and alert them to the dangers that Robespierre embodied.[129] In addition to these bold writings, her defense of the king was one of the factors leading to her execution. An influential figure, one of her suggestions early in the Revolution, to have a voluntary, patriotic tax, was adopted by the National Convention in 1789.[130]
Madame Roland (aka Manon or Marie Roland) was another important female activist. Her political focus was not specifically on women or their liberation. She focused on other aspects of the government, but was a feminist by virtue of the fact that she was a woman working to influence the world. Her personal letters to leaders of the Revolution influenced policy; in addition, she often hosted political gatherings of the Brissotins, a political group which allowed women to join. While limited by her gender, Madame Roland took it upon herself to spread Revolutionary ideology and spread word of events, as well as to assist in formulating the policies of her political allies. Though unable to directly write policies or carry them through to the government, Roland was able to influence her political allies and thus promote her political agenda. Roland attributed women’s lack of education to the public view that women were too weak or vain to be involved in the serious business of politics. She believed that it was this inferior education that turned them into foolish people, but women "could easily be concentrated and solidified upon objects of great significance" if given the chance.[131] As she was led to the scaffold, Madame Roland shouted "O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!" Witnesses of her life and death, editors, and readers helped to finish her writings and several editions were published posthumously. While she did not focus on gender politics in her writings, by taking an active role in the tumultuous time of the Revolution, Roland took a stand for women of the time and proved they could take an intelligent active role in politics.[132]
Though women did not gain the right to vote as a result of the Revolution, they still greatly expanded their political participation and involvement in governing. They set precedents for generations of feminists to come.
Counter-revolutionary women[link]
A major aspect of the French Revolution was the dechristianisation movement, a movement that many common people did not agree with. Especially for women living in rural areas of France, the demise of the Catholic Church meant a loss of normalcy. For instance, the ringing of Church bells resonating through the town called people to confession and was a symbol of unity for the community.[133] With the onset of the dechristianisation campaign the Republic silenced these bells and sought simultaneously to silence the religious fervor of the majority Catholic population.[133] When these revolutionary changes to the Church were implemented, it spawned a counter-revolutionary movement, particularly amongst women. Although some of these women embraced the political and social amendments of the Revolution, they opposed the dissolution of the Catholic Church and the formation of revolutionary cults like the Cult of the Supreme Being advocated by Robespierre.[134] As Olwen Hufton argues, these women began to see themselves as the “defenders of faith”.[135] They took it upon themselves to protect the Church from what they saw as a heretical change to their faith, enforced by revolutionaries.
Counter-revolutionary women resisted what they saw as the intrusion of the state into their lives.[136] Economically, many peasant women refused to sell their goods for assignats because this form of currency was unstable and was backed by the sale of confiscated Church property.[135] By far the most important issue to counter-revolutionary women was the passage and the enforcement of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790. In response to this measure, women in many areas began circulating anti-oath pamphlets and refused to attend masses held by priests who had sworn oaths of loyalty to the Republic.[136] This diminished the social and political influence of the juring priests because they presided over smaller congregations and counter-revolutionary women did not seek them for baptisms, marriages or confession.[137] Instead, they secretly hid nonjuring priests and attended clandestine traditional masses.[138] These women continued to adhere to traditional practices such as Christian burials and naming their children after saints in spite of revolutionary decrees to the contrary.[139]
It was this determined resistance to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the dechristianisation campaigns that played a major role in the re-emergence of the Catholic Church as a prominent social institution. In fact, Olwen Hufton notes about the Counter-Revolutionary women: “for it is her commitment to her religion which determines in the post-Thermidorean period the re-emergence of the Catholic Church…”.[140] Although they struggled, these women were eventually vindicated in their bid to reestablish the Church and thereby also to reestablish traditional family life and social stability.[141] This was seen in the Concordat of 1801, which formally reinstated the Catholic Church in France.[142] This act came after years of failed attempts at dechristianisation or state-controlled religion, which were thwarted in part due to the resistance of devout counter-revolutionary women. After the upheaval of the revolutionary period, the reestablishment of the Church was seen by many people as a welcome return to normalcy.
Legacy[link]
Main article: Historiography of the French Revolution
The French Revolution has received enormous amounts of historical attention, both from the general public and from scholars and academics. The views of historians, in particular, have been characterized as falling along ideological lines, with disagreement over the significance and the major developments of the Revolution.[143] Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the Revolution was a manifestation of a more prosperous middle class becoming conscious of its social importance.[144] Other thinkers, like the conservative Edmund Burke, maintained that the Revolution was the product of a few conspiratorial individuals who brainwashed the masses into subverting the old order—a claim rooted in the belief that the revolutionaries had no legitimate complaints.[145] Other historians, influenced by Marxist thinking, have emphasized the importance of the peasants and the urban workers in presenting the Revolution as a gigantic class struggle.[146] In general, scholarship on the French Revolution initially studied the political ideas and developments of the era, but it has gradually shifted towards social history that analyzes the impact of the Revolution on individual lives.[147]
Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, and the end of the early modern period, which started around 1500, is traditionally attributed to the onset of the French Revolution in 1789.[148] The Revolution is, in fact, often seen as marking the "dawn of the modern era".[149] Within France itself, the Revolution permanently crippled the power of the aristocracy and drained the wealth of the Church, although the two institutions survived despite the damage they sustained. After the collapse of the First Empire in 1815, the French public lost the rights and privileges earned since the Revolution, but they remembered the participatory politics that characterized the period, with one historian commenting: "Thousands of men and even many women gained firsthand experience in the political arena: they talked, read, and listened in new ways; they voted; they joined new organizations; and they marched for their political goals. Revolution became a tradition, and republicanism an enduring option."[150] Some historians argue that the French people underwent a fundamental transformation in self-identity, evidenced by the elimination of privileges and their replacement by rights as well as the growing decline in social deference that highlighted the principle of equality throughout the Revolution.[151] The Revolution represented the most significant and dramatic challenge to political absolutism up to that point in history and, despite its failures, spread democratic ideals throughout Europe and ultimately the world.[152] It had a profound impact on the Russian Revolution and its ideas inspired Mao Zedong in his efforts at constructing a communist state in China.[153]
See also[link]
- Biens nationaux
- Dual revolution
- History of democracy
- La Révolution française (film)
- List of people granted honorary French citizenship during the French Revolution
- List of revolutions and rebellions
- Military career of Napoleon Bonaparte
- Napoleonic code
- Jean-Nicolas Pache
- Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution
- Rise of nationalism in Europe
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Other revolutions or rebellions in French history[link]
- Camisard Rebellion, French Huguenots (1710–1715)
- Haitian Revolution, Haiti colony (1791–1804)
- July Revolution (1830)
- Canut revolts of the July Monarchy
- French Revolution of 1848
- Resistance to the coup of 1851
- Paris Commune of 1871
- French Army Mutinies (1917)
- French Resistance during World War II
- May 1968 in France, a noteworthy rebellion, though not quite a revolution
Notes[link]
- ^ "French Revolution". http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/french_revolution.htm.
- ^ Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation (1935).
- ^ Bell, David Avrom (2007). The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the birth of warfare as we know it. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 51. ISBN 0-618-34965-0. "The French Revolution, which began in 1789 and led to the total war of 1792–1815...."
- ^ Hibbert. Pg 96.
- ^ "Encyclopædia Britannica — Traite". http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/602094/traite. Retrieved 16 October 2008.
- ^ William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (2nd ed. 2003), pp.73–74
- ^ Frey, p. 3
- ^ "France's Financial Crisis: 1783–1788". http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/frenchrev/section1.html. Retrieved 26 October 2008.
- ^ a b c d Hibbert, p. 35, 36
- ^ Frey, p. 2
- ^ Doyle, The French Revolution: A very short introduction, p. 34
- ^ Doyle 2003, p. 93
- ^ a b Frey, pp. 4, 5
- ^ a b c Doyle 2001, p. 38
- ^ Doyle 1989, p.89
- ^ a b c Neely, p. 56
- ^ a b Hibbert, pp.42–45
- ^ Assemblée Nationale (French)
- ^ a b Neely, pp. 63, 65
- ^ Furet, p. 45
- ^ Hibbert, p. 54
- ^ Schama 2004, p.300–301
- ^ John Hall Stewart. A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution. New York: Macmillan, 1951, p. 86.
- ^ Schama 2004, p.303
- ^ a b Schama 2004, p.312
- ^ Schama 2004, p.317
- ^ Schama 2004, p.331
- ^ Schama 2004, p.344
- ^ Schama 2004, p.357
- ^ Lefebvre, pp.187–188.
- ^ Hibbert, 93
- ^ Doyle 1989, p.121
- ^ Doyle 1989, p.122
- ^ a b Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, 4.
- ^ Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, 16.
- ^ John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church, 5.
- ^ John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church, 50, 4.
- ^ National Assembly legislation cited in John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church, 27.
- ^ John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church, 27.
- ^ a b Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, 61.
- ^ Emmet Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution, 148.
- ^ a b Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, 92.
- ^ Emmet Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution, 151.
- ^ Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, 92–94.
- ^ Schama 2004, p.433–434
- ^ a b Mignet, François (1824). Histoire de la Révolution française. Chapter III.
- ^ Schama 2004, p.449
- ^ Schama 2004, p.442
- ^ Schama 2004, p.496
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition
- ^ Lindqvist, Herman (1991). Axel von Fersen. Stockholm: Fischer & Co
- ^ Loomis, Stanley (1972). The Fatal Friendship. Avon Books — ISBN 0-931933-33-1
- ^ Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)
- ^ The Flight to Varennes • Memoir by the Duchesse d'Angoulême
- ^ a b Mignet, François (1824). Histoire de la Révolution française. Chapter IV.
- ^ Schama 2004, p.481
- ^ Schama 2004, p.500
- ^ Soboul (1975), pp. 226–227.
- ^ Lefebvre, p. 212.
- ^ "French Revolution". About LoveToKnow 1911. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/French_Revolution. Retrieved 10 April 2009.
- ^ Pfeiffer, L. B., "The Uprising of June 20, 1792," p.221. New Era Printing Company, Lincoln: 1913."
- ^ Schama 2004, p.505
- ^ Doyle 2002, p. 196
- ^ White, E. "The French Revolution and the Politics of Government Finance, 1770–1815." The Journal of Economic History 1995, p 244
- ^ Schuettinger, Robert. "Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls." Heritage Foundation, 2009. p. 45
- ^ Bourne, Henry. "Maximum Prices in France." American Historical Review, October 1917, p. 112.
- ^ a b Gough, Hugh (1998). The Terror in the French Revolution. p. 77.
- ^ Doyle 1989, p. 258
- ^ Schama 2004, p.616
- ^ Schama 2004, p.641
- ^ Schama 2004, p.637
- ^ In a Corner of France, Long Live the Old Regime, New York Times
- ^ McPhee, Peter Review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide: The Vendée H-France Review Vol. 4 (March 2004), No. 26
- ^ Hibbert, p. 321.
- ^ Frédéric Augris, Henri Forestier, général à 18 ans, Éditions du Choletais, 1996
- ^ Jean-Clément Martin, Contre-Révolution, Révolution et Nation en France, 1789–1799, éditions du Seuil, collection Points, 1998, p. 219
- ^ Davies, Norman. Europe: A history Pimlico, (1997). p. 705
- ^ Schama 2004, p.666
- ^ Jean-Clément Martin, Guerre de Vendée, dans l'Encyclopédie Bordas, Histoire de la France et des Français, Paris, Éditions Bordas, 1999, p 2084, et Contre-Révolution, Révolution et Nation en France, 1789–1799, p.218.
- ^ Jean-Clément Martin, Violence et Révolution. Essai sur la naissance d'un mythe national, éditions du Seuil, 2006, p. 181
- ^ 117,000 according to Reynald Secher, La Vendée-Vengé, le Génocide franco-français (1986); 200,000–250,000 according to Jean-Clément Martin, La Vendée et la France, Éditions du Seuil, collection Points, 1987; 200,000 according to Louis-Marie Clénet, La Contre-révolution, Paris, PUF, collection Que sais-je?, 1992; 170,000 according to Jacques Hussenet (dir.), « Détruisez la Vendée ! » Regards croisés sur les victimes et destructions de la guerre de Vendée, La Roche-sur-Yon, Centre vendéen de recherches historiques, 2007, p.148.
- ^ In a Corner of France, Long Live the Old Regime. The New York Times. 17 June 1989
- ^ Michel Vovelle, « L'historiographie de la Révolution Française à la veille du bicentenaire », Estudos avançados, octobre-décembre 1987, volume 1, n° 1, p. 61–72. [1] ou [2]
- ^ Schama 2004, p.646
- ^ Jean-Baptiste Carrier, Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Soboul (1975), p. 384.
- ^ Schama 2004, p.658
- ^ Schama 2004, p.689
- ^ Schama 2004, p.706
- ^ Soboul (1975), pp. 425–428.
- ^ Schama, p.852.
- ^ a b Doyle 1989, p.320
- ^ Cole et al 1989, p.39
- ^ Doyle, Oxford History (2003) pp 318–40
- ^ Doyle, Oxford History p.331
- ^ Doyle, Oxford History, p.332
- ^ Doyle, Oxford History, pp. 322–23
- ^ David Nicholls, Napoleon: a biographical companion (1999) p.
- ^ a b c d e f Censer and Hunt, "How to Read Images" LEF CD-ROM
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica entry
- ^ Harden, "Liberty Caps and Liberty Trees" 90
- ^ Harden, "Liberty Bells and Liberty Trees" 75–77
- ^ Ozouf, "Festivals and the French Revolution" 123
- ^ a b Harden, "Liberty Bells and Liberty Trees" 75
- ^ Harden, "Liberty Bells and Liberty Trees" 88
- ^ Hunt 1984, 89.
- ^ a b Hunt 1984, 101–102
- ^ a b Hunt 1984, 96
- ^ a b Censer and Hunt 2001, 92
- ^ Hunt 1984, 97
- ^ Hunt 1984, 103
- ^ a b c d e f g Hunt 1984, 113
- ^ Scott "Only Paradoxes to Offer" 34–35
- ^ Encyclopedia "Woman"
- ^ Marquise de Maintenon, "Writings" 321
- ^ Dalton "Madame Roland" 262
- ^ a b Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution Edited by Sara E Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine pg. 79
- ^ a b Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution by Olwen W. Hufton pg. 23–24
- ^ Rebel Daughters by Sara E Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine pg. 89
- ^ Women and the Limits of Citizenship by Olwen W. Hufton pg. 23–24
- ^ Rebel Daughters by Sara E Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine pg. 91
- ^ Women and the Limits of Citizenship by Olwen W. Hufton pg. 31
- ^ Rebel Daughters by Sara E Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine pg. 92
- ^ Deviant Women of the French Revolution and the Rise of Feminism by Lisa Beckstrand pg. 17
- ^ Women and the Limits of Citizenship by Olwen W. Hufton pg. 25
- ^ Gender, Society and Politics: France and Women 1789–1914 by James H. McMillan pg. 24
- ^ Gender, Society and Politics by McMillan pg. 24
- ^ Deviant Women by Beckstrand pg. 20
- ^ De Gouges "Writings" 564–568
- ^ Mousset "Women’s Rights" 49
- ^ Dalton "Madame Roland" 262–267
- ^ Walker "Virtue" 413–416
- ^ a b Hufton, Olwen. Women and the Limits of Citizenship 1992 pg. 106–107
- ^ Desan pg. 452
- ^ a b Hufton, Olwen. “In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women.” 1998 pg. 303
- ^ a b Hufton, Olwen. Women and the Limits of Citizenship 1992 pg. 104
- ^ Hufton, Olwen. “In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women.” 1998 pg. 311
- ^ Hufton, Olwen. Women and the Limits of Citizenship 1992 pg. 105
- ^ Hufton, Olwen. “In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women.” 1998 pg. 304
- ^ Hufton, Olwen. “In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women.” 1998 pg. 305
- ^ Hufton, Olwen. Women and the Limits of Citizenship 1992 pg. 130
- ^ Hufton, Olwen. “In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women.” 1998 pg. 326
- ^ Rude p. 12-4
- ^ Rude, p. 15
- ^ Rude, p. 12
- ^ Rude, p. 17
- ^ Rude, p. 12-20
- ^ Frey, Foreword
- ^ Frey, Preface
- ^ Hanson, p. 189
- ^ Hanson, 191
- ^ Riemer, Neal; Simon, Douglas (28 January 1997). The New World of Politics: An Introduction to Political Science. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-939693-41-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=gKa3FTpH49oC&pg=PA106. Retrieved 18 October 2011.
- ^ Hanson, 193
References[link]
- Carlyle, Thomas (2002) [1837]. The French Revolution: A History. The Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-76022-9. http://books.google.com/?id=nmRdAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=French+Revolution+carlyle.
- Censer, Jack; Lynn Hunt (2001). Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.
- Cole, Alistair; Peter Campbell (1989). French electoral systems and elections since 1789. Gower. http://books.google.com/?id=msOIAAAAMAAJ&q=%22first+bicameral+legislature%22+directory+french&dq=%22first+bicameral+legislature%22+directory+french.
- Dalton, Susan (2001). "Gender and the Shifting Ground of Revolutionary Politics: The Case of Madame Roland" Canadian Journal of History. ISSN 00084107.
- Desan, S. “The Role of Women in Religious Riots during the French Revolution.” Eighteenth-Century Studies. Vol. 22, No. 3, Special Issue: The French Revolution in Culture (Spring, 1989), pp. 451–468.
- Doyle, William (1990). The Oxford history of the French Revolution (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285221-3. http://books.google.com/?id=N7chHQAACAAJ&dq=Oxford+history+of+the+French+Revolution.
- Doyle, William (2001). The French Revolution: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285396-1. http://books.google.com/?id=B-Zf4topzfQC&dq=0192853961.
- Doyle, William (2002). The Oxford history of the French Revolution (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-925298-X. http://books.google.com/?id=oMYWKlevAV4C.
- Frey, Linda; Marsha Frey (2004). The French Revolution. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-32193-0. http://books.google.com/?id=RFgXl1EG5soC&dq=Short+History+of+the+French+Revolution+Doyle.
- Furet, Francois (1995). Revolutionary France, 1770–1880. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-19808-3. http://books.google.com/?id=EPsEJIdFz3AC&dq=Revolutionary+France+Furet.
- Hanson, Paul (2009). Contesting the French Revolution. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-6083-4. http://books.google.com/?id=dsCf8Q0xqO4C&pg=PA186&dq=legacy+french+revolution&cd=17#v=onepage&q=legacy%20french%20revolution.
- Hibbert, Christopher (1980). The Days of the French Revolution. New York: Quill, William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-03704-6. http://books.google.com/?id=yr1z38HCkdAC&dq=Hibbert+French+Revolution.
- Hufton, Olwen (1992). Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
- Hufton, Olwen. “In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women.” The French Revolution: Recent debates and New Controversies. Ed. Gary Kates. New York, NY. Routledge (1998).
- Hunt, Lynn (1984). Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkley: University of California Press.
- Levy, Darline Gay and Harriet B. Applewhite. "Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris," in Rebel Daughters, ed. Sara e. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine (New York: Oxford University Press 1992).
- Kennedy, Emmet (1989). A Cultural History of the French Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Lefebvre, Georges (1971). The French Revolution: From Its Origins to 1793. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-08598-2. http://books.google.com/?id=I2oA5MtB0ZkC&dq=Lefebvre+estates+general.
- Marquise de Maintenon "Instruction to the Nuns of St. Louis," in Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women. ed. Anne R. Larsen and Colette H Winn. (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 2000), 321.
- McManners, John (1969). The French Revolution and the Church. New York: Harper and Row.
- Mousset, Sophie (2007). Women’s Rights and the French Revolution. Joy Poirel. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0345-3.
- Neely, Sylvia (2008). A Concise History of the French Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7425-3411-1. http://books.google.com/?id=fccjTyOQiYwC&dq=The+Estates-General.
- Rude, George (1991). The French Revolution: Its Causes, Its History and Its Legacy After 200 Years. Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-3272-3. http://books.google.com/?id=f1pMIbvzKckC&dq=causes+of+the+French+Revolution.
- Schama, Simon (2004) [1989]. Citizens. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-101727-9.
- Scott, Joan Wallach. "A Woman Who Has Only Paradoxes to Offer," in Rebel Daughters, ed. Sara e. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine (New York: Oxford University Press 1992).
- Soboul, Albert (1975). The French Revolution 1787–1799. New York: Vintage. ISBN 0-394-71220-X.
- Soboul, Albert (1977). A short history of the French Revolution: 1789–1799. Geoffrey Symcox. University of California Press, Ltd. ISBN 0-520-03419-8. http://books.google.com/?id=GSdw2oC60cwC&dq=Soboul+French+Revolution.
- Walker, Leslie H. "Sweet and Consoling Virtue: The Memoirs of Madame Roland" Eighteenth-Century Studies, French Revolutionary Culture (2001): 403–419.
- "Women." The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert. University of Michigan Library, n.d. Web. 10/29/09. < http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/>.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. - This article incorporates text from the public domain History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg.
Further reading[link]
- Baker, Keith M. ed. The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture (Oxford, 1987–94) vol 1: The Political Culture of the Old Regime, ed. K.M. Baker (1987); vol. 2: The Political Culture of the French Revolution, ed. C. Lucas (1988); vol. 3: The Transformation of Political Culture, 1789–1848, eds. F. Furet & M. Ozouf (1989); vol. 4: The Terror, ed. K.M. Baker (1994). excerpt and text search vol 4
- Blanning, T.C.W. The French Revolutionary Wars 1787–1802 (1996).
- Censer, Jack R. "Amalgamating the Social in the French Revolution." Journal of Social History 2003 37(1): 145–150. Issn: 0022-4529 Fulltext: in Project Muse and Ebsco
- Davies, Peter. The French Revolution: A Beginner's Guide (2009), 192pp
- Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution (1989). online complete edition; also excerpt and online search from Amazon.com
- Doyle, William. The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. (2001), 120pp; online edition
- Doyle, William. Origins of the French Revolution (3rd ed. 1999) online edition
- Dunne, John. "Fifty Years of Rewriting the French Revolution: Signposts Main Landmarks and Current Directions in the Historiographical Debate," History Review. (1998) pp 8+ online edition
- Englund, Steven. Napoleon: A Political Life. (2004). 575 pages; the best political biography excerpt and text search
- Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. ed. The Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History (ABC-CLIO: 3 vol 2006)
- Frey, Linda S. and Marsha L. Frey. The French Revolution. (2004) 190pp online edition
- Furet, François. The French Revolution, 1770–1814 (1996) excerpt and text search
- Furet, François and Mona Ozouf, eds. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989), 1120pp; long essays by scholars; conservative perspective; stress on history of ideas excerpt and online search from Amazon.com
- Hufton, Olwen. Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution University of Toronto Press (1992).
- Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. (1992)
- Hunt, Lynn. "Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution." (1984)
- Germani, Ian and Robin Swayles. Symbols, myths and images of the French Revolution. University of Regina Publications. 1998. ISBN 978-0-88977-108-6
- Griffith, Paddy. The Art of War of Revolutionary France 1789–1802, (1998); 304 pp; excerpt and text search
- Jones, Colin. The Longman Companion to the French Revolution (1989)
- Jones, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (2002) excerpt and text search
- Kaiser, Thomas, and Dale Van Kley. From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution (2010)
- Kates, Gary. The French Revolution (2nd ed. 2005), 308pp; essays by scholars; excerpts and online search from Amazon.com
- Lefebvre, Georges. The French Revolution (2 vol 1957) classic Marxist synthesis. complete online edition vol 1; also excerpt and online search from Amazon.com
- Neely, Sylvia. A Concise History of the French Revolution (2008)
- Palmer, Robert R. The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800. (2 vol 1959), highly influential comparative history; vol 1 online
- Paxton, John. Companion to the French Revolution (1987), hundreds of short entries.
- Rothenberg, Gunther E. "The Origins, Causes, and Extension of the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4, (Spring, 1988), pp. 771–793 in JSTOR
- Rude, George F. and Harvey J. Kaye. Revolutionary Europe, 1783–1815 (2000), scholarly survey excerpt and text search
- Schroeder, Paul. The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848. 1996; Thorough coverage of diplomatic history; hostile to Napoleon; online edition
- Schwab, Gail M., and John R. Jeanneney, eds. The French Revolution of 1789 and Its Impact (1995) online edition
- Scott, Samuel F. and Barry Rothaus. Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution, 1789–1799 (2 vol 1984), short essays by scholars
- Schama, Simon. Citizens. A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989), highly readable narrative by scholar excerpt and text search
- Sutherland, D.M.G. France 1789–1815. Revolution and Counter-Revolution (2nd ed. 2003, 430pp excerpts and online search from Amazon.com
- Woshinsky, Barbara R. Imaging Women’s Conventual Spaces in France, 1600–1800: The Cloister Disclosed. Burlington, Vermont. Ashgate (2010).
External links[link]
 |
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article French Revolution, The. |
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: French Revolution |
- "French Revolution" in the Catholic Encyclopedia
- Open University course
- Entry on Encyclopedia.com from the Columbia Encyclopedia
- Primary source documents from The Internet Modern History Sourcebook
- Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, a collaborative site by the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University) and the American Social History Project (City University of New York)
- The Origins of the French Revolution, The French Revolution: The Moderate Stage, 1789–1792, and The French Revolution: The Radical Stage, 1792–1794, three essays from The History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History
- Vancea, S. The Cahiers de Doleances of 1789, Clio History Journal, 2008.
- english.republique.de A large collection of links
| Preceded by The Old Regime |
French Revolution 1789–1792 |
Succeeded by French First Republic |
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Lalith J. Rao | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Lalith Rao |
| Born | (1942-11-06) 6 November 1942 (age 69) |
| Origin | Bangalore, Karnataka, India |
| Genres | Hindustani classical music |
Smt. Lalith J. Rao (also spelt Lalit) (born 6 November 1942) is an Indian classical singer and a representative of the Agra gharana.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Rao's introduction to Hindustani classical music was at the age of three, at a concert by the Agra Gharana vocalist Faiyaz Khan. She started learning music from Rama Rao Naik, who initiated her into the Agra gharana style of singing. Rao's first public concert was at the Bangalore Sangeet Sabha at the age of 12. When she was 14, she won the All India Classical Music competition in Mumbai and became the youngest participant of the Swami Haridas Sangeet Sammelan the same year, and was well received.[1]
Rao completed her Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Communication Engineering, the latter from the University of New Brunswick. In 1967, she married Jayavanth Rao and moved to Delhi to work. Her husband convinced Rao to abandon her engineering career and pursue singing, and she received training from Dinkar Kaikini and later from Khadim Hussain Khan.[2]
Singing career[link]
Rao went back to the Sur Singar Sansad to restart her performance career and became a professional singer after a positive reception. She is as adept at singing khyal, dhrupad, dhamar, as well as thumri, tarana and hori. Under the guidance of her ustad, Rao developed a unique style of rendering taranas.
Her first concert abroad was in 1981. She has performed in France, UK, US and Canada and is a top-grade artiste of All India Radio. Rao regularly performs on the Radio and Television.
Rao was one of the key figures in setting up a trust "Sajan Milap" in the mid-seventies, to popularise the music of her Ustad, who used the pen name "Sajan Piya". She was the chief coordinator for the Ford Foundation Archival project at the ITC Sangeet Research Academy from 1989-91.[3] Few years later she herself sang for the Ethno-Musicology Department of the University of Washington in Seattle.[4][5] for them to archive the music of her Agra gharana.
Rao lost her voice on the eve of a tour of Europe in 1994 but gradually recovered with the help of a voice trainer. She lives and teaches music in Bangalore.
Partial discography[link]
- Bihag; Kedar; Thumri(1986) HMV PSLP 1373
- Beyond Reach: Ragas Durga & Pilu (2003)
- Raga Darbari Kanhada, Raga Desh (2006)
References[link]
- ^ "Biography". swaramanjusha.com. http://www.swarmanjusha.com/ViewDetails.aspx?id=8. Retrieved 2009-08-30. [dead link]
- ^ "Biography (ITC SRA)". itcsra.org. http://www.itcsra.org/aspfiles/personwindow.asp?personid=223. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
- ^ "Story of ITC SRA:Ford Foundation Project". itcsra.org. http://www.itcsra.org/sra_story/sra_story_research/sra_story_resrch_links/sra_story_resrch_ford/sra_story_resrch_ford_index.html. Retrieved 2009-09-01.
- ^ "Lalith Rao 1981". washington.edu. http://www.music.washington.edu/ethno/php/ethno_archive_detail.php?ID=1981010. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
- ^ "Lalith Rao 1985". washington.edu. http://www.music.washington.edu/ethno/php/ethno_archive_detail.php?ID=1985025. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
External links[link]
- Lalith Rao at Allmusic
- Gangubai Hanagal presenting ‘Puttaraj Samman’ to vocalist Lalith J. Rao in Hubli. [1]
- 2003 Interview [2]
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Rao, Lalith |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 1942-11-06 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Lalith_J._Rao
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
