The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany. French communes have no exact equivalent in the United Kingdom, but are closest to parishes, towns or cities.

A French commune can be a city of two million inhabitants as in Paris; a town of ten thousand people—or just a ten-person hamlet.

The French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin communia, meaning a small gathering of people sharing a common life; from Latin communis, things held in common.

As of January 9, 2008, there were 36,781 communes in France, 36,569 of them in metropolitan France and 212 of them overseas. This is a considerably higher total than that of any other European country. This peculiarity is explained in detail in the history section below; briefly, French communes still largely reflect the division of France into villages or parishes at the time of the French Revolution more than two centuries ago.

France (English ⁱ/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.

Jacques Bainville (February 9, 1879 in Vincennes, Val-de-Marne - February 9, 1936 in Paris) was a French historian and journalist. A staunch monarchist, he was a leading figure in Action Française.

Bainville first came to prominence as an activist against Alfred Dreyfus.

A follower of Charles Maurras, Bainville was a founder of Action Française and soon became an important figure in the Institut d'Action Française, a college of sorts ran by the organisation (it had no permanent buildings but ran lectures and study groups where possible).

Bainville became notorious in French political circles for his Germanophobia and this was one of the defining strands of his writing. His early works suggested that the history of Europe was defined by the struggle between the superior French civilisation and the barbaric German kultur. His Histoire de deux peuples (1915) underlined the importance for France of German weakness and sought a return to the pre-Franco-Prussian War status of Germany. His Les Conséquences politiques de la paix (Political Consequences of Peace, 1920), whilst intended as an answer to John Maynard Keynes' views on Treaty of Versailles, was actually translated into German in Nazi Germany and presented as evidence that France had a mission for German destruction. His other written works included Histoire de France, as well as political columns for a number of newspapers and editing La Revue Universelle for Maurras. He was however an admirer of Italian fascism and when early reports came through about violent acts by Benito Mussolini's fascio in 1921 he praised it as proof that Italy was regaining her strength.