See biography by R. Holmes (1981).
See biography by his daughter, M. F. Cresson (1947).
Until the 12th cent. A.D. most forms of writing in Gaul were in Latin. Old French emerged from the Latin vernacular of the south known as the langue d'oïl. Because of the French Crusades and military interests abroad (1050-1210), Old French became an international tongue, and a literature arose that reflected the attitudes and activities of the military, as in the Chanson de Roland (c.1100; see Roland). A tradition of epic poetry was developed by traveling minstrels, or jongleurs. Lengthy narratives were recited in groups of laisses, 10- to 12-syllable lines rhyming in groups of varied lengths (see chansons de geste).
Another early literary strain developed in the 12th cent. from the stories of saints and heroes and the Celtic romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Later, more refined romances and allegories include the philosophical Roman de la Rose and the witty Reynard the Fox. Marie de France and others created new forms, including the lai, animal fable, and fabliau (rhymed anecdotal piece). Many of these were based on themes from classical mythology. The works of Ovid and Aesop were especially popular sources, as was Arthurian legend.
French lyric poetry developed with the songs of the troubadours and the trouvères and from the more personal works of professional poets. Among the best-known lyric poets of the Middle Ages are Colin Muset, Rutebeuf, Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier, Charles d'Orléans, and the outstanding poet of Old French, François Villon. The earliest French drama consisted of religious plays, the most familiar of which are the anonymous mystères (such as the Mystère d'Adam) of the 12th cent. The miracle plays of the 13th cent. include Jehan Bodel's Jeu de St. Nicolas (1200). By the end of the century secular and didactic pieces, many of them comedies and fantasies, were being performed by nonclerics. French prose literature began with the writings of the chroniclers and historians, among them Geoffroi de Villehardouin, Jean de Joinville, Jean Froissart, and Philippe de Comines, last of the major medieval historians.
The late 15th and early 16th cent. saw the flowering of the Renaissance in France. Three giants of world literature—François Rabelais, Pierre de Ronsard, and Michel Eyquem de Montaigne—towered over a host of brilliant but lesser figures in the 16th cent. Italian influence was strong in the poetry of Clément Marot and the dramas of Éstienne Jodelle and Robert Garnier. The poet Ronsard and the six poets known collectively as the Pléiade (see Pleiad) reacted against Italian influence to produce a body of French poetry to rival Italian achievement. The early 17th-century critic François de Malherbe attacked the excesses of the Pléiade; his zeal for the correct choice of words has marked French literature ever since.
The civil and religious strife of the later 16th cent. was reflected clearly in the works of the period, particularly in the poetry of Théodore d'Aubigné, Guillaume de Bartas, and Jean de Sponde. The greatest prose of the period was produced in the fiction of the ebullient Rabelais and in the magnificent essays of Montaigne. Under the stable and prosperous Bourbon monarchy Paris became the glittering cultural center of Western civilization.
The 17th cent. produced the great academies and coteries of French literature. The elegant, controlled aesthetic of French classicism was the hallmark of the age: in the brilliant dramas of Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Molière; in the poetry and satire of Jean de La Fontaine and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux; in the prose of Blaise Pascal, Marie, marquise de Sévigné, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Marie-Madeleine, comtesse de La Fayette, and François, duc de La Rochefoucauld. The works of the ecclesiastic François de la Mothe Fénelon, the social philosopher Claude Henri, comte de Saint-Simon, and the satirist and classical scholar Jean de La Bruyère belong to this illustrious period as well as to the 18th cent.
These great writers vary enormously in their attitudes and interests but share a style that is lucid, polished, and restrained. They are, as a group, chiefly concerned with observing the subtleties of human behavior. Their works display qualities that have become permanently identified with the best French writing: wit, sophistication, imagination, and delight in debate.
From the mid-1680s French prose writers honed their critical facility as poetical and theatrical works waned in number and distinction. Ecclesiastical writing abounded and among the foremost figures in this field were Fénelon, Esprit Fléchier, Pasquier Quesnel, and Richard Simon. Major precursors of the Enlightenment of the 18th cent. were the philosophers Bernard de Fontenelle and Pierre Bayle.
The great French rationalists of the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason—François-Marie Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu—produced some of the most powerful and influential political and philosophical writing in Western history. The political and religious opinions expressed by the compilers of the Encyclopédie (completed 1765), led by Denis Diderot and the mathematician Jean d'Alembert, had great impact on French and foreign thought.
The period was also notable for advances in drama and fiction. Successful writers of tragic drama, other than Voltaire, include Antoine Houdar de La Motte and Buyrette de Belloy; the great writers of comedy were Pierre de Marivaux and Pierre de Beaumarchais. The French novel—Diderot and Marivaux contributed to its literary form—gained popularity with the works of Alain René Le Sage, Abbé Prevost, and Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and by the end of the century was among the foremost of literary genres. Another significant form of literature was the memoir; among the many writers of the period who excelled at this sort of autobiography were Mathieu Marais, Edmond Barbier, and Jean François Marmontel.
The upheavals of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era were accompanied by new intellectual trends. Romanticism, greatly influenced by the philosophy of Rousseau, was heralded in the writings of Germaine de Staël and François René, vicomte de Chateaubriand. The principal figures of the Romantic period include Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, Alfred, comte de Vigny, Alfred de Musset, Gérard de Nerval, Prosper Mérimée, Alexandre Dumas, père, and Théophile Gautier.
The period that saw the transformation from romanticism to the realism of Gustave Flaubert was spanned by the writings of the great 19th-century novelists Stendhal, George Sand, and Honoré de Balzac. The romantics and realists alike wrote of the painful discovery of self-awareness and the torments of the inner life and, in differing degrees, concerned themselves with contemporary social mores. Hugo and Balzac both wrote much-imitated historical novels. Balzac's multivolume panoramic description of French society, entitled La Comédie humaine, stands as a unique literary monument to individual genius and a remarkable portrait of an era. The outstanding critic of the era was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, whose literary essays were models of perceptive criticism.
In the later part of the century major writers of fiction included Alphonse Daudet and Guy de Maupassant, renowned for his short stories. The movement toward naturalism had its foremost French representative in the prolific novelist Émile Zola. The plays of Eugène Labiche, Émile Augier, the younger Alexandre Dumas, and later of Edmond Rostand won popularity in France and abroad. Major 19th-century French writers of history include Augustin Thierry, Jules Michelet, and François Guizot. Hippolyte Taine and Ferdinand Brunetière were outstanding critics, and Anatole France is considered the leading satirist of the age.
In poetry the Fleurs du mal (1857) of Charles Baudelaire had enormous influence, both at the time it was published and for many decades thereafter. In the later 19th cent. several circles, or schools, of literary figures became a prominent feature of Parisian letters: the Parnassians, led by Charles Marie Leconte de Lisle; the group around the Goncourt brothers; the symbolists, who were followers of Stéphane Mallarmé; and the decadents, who sought to glorify Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. The great poets of the age, including Paul Verlaine, Rimbaud, Péguy, and later Paul Valéry, worked for the most part outside such groups.
In the 20th cent., as in the 19th, the novel was the chief form of literary achievement. Although the impact on fiction writing of such factors as the vast changes in political climate, the new concentration on modern culture, the great wars, the development of major publishing houses, the introduction of the paperback, and the evolution of the movies has been very great, French writing has maintained a concern for moral questions, individual liberty and character, and, above all, respect for language and form.
The novelists Paul Bourget, Maurice Barrès, and Pierre Loti explore the psychological explanation of human behavior. Colette, in her novels, stories, and journals, expresses penetrating insight into human nature. Marcel Proust, in his great novel cycle À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) makes subtle use of subconscious memory. Psychological examination continues in the works of André Gide. The cyclical novels of Jules Romains and Roger Martin Du Gard comment on society and morality. The surge of writing with strong Catholic inspiration include the works of François Mauriac and the novels of Georges Bernanos.
Jean Giraudoux's dramas are distinguished for exquisite style and treatment, as are the varied works of Henri de Montherlant. The novels of André Malraux, Édouard Peisson, Roger Vercel, and Joseph Kessel treat humanity's commitment to action, while the extraordinary and complex works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir developed a form of existentialist philosophy to express the pain of living. Existentialism was also a primary aspect of the early writing of Albert Camus.
In the mid-20th cent. the standard novel form was abandoned by many writers of fiction, including Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Vercors, Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Michel Butor, Roger Vailland, and Romain Gary. The post-World War II writers established a type of novel not greatly related to earlier works of fiction. The nouveau roman or new novel, sometimes called the antinovel, dispensed with previous notions of plot, character, style, theme, psychology, chronology, and message. By the latter part of the century it had created a tradition of its own and was widely considered to have diminished the stature of French fiction and to have forced a self-indulgent subjectivity onto the novel form.
Among the authors who continued working in a more traditional and still popular vein are the detective-story writer Georges Simenon and the novelists Françoise Mallet-Joris, Jean Cau, Boris Vian, Marguerite Yourcenar, Gilbert Cesbron, Jean Louis Curtis, Pierre Daninos, Henri Queffelec, and Roger Peyrefitte.
TheaterAt the end of the 19th cent. the Théâtre Libre was founded, the first of a number of theatrical groups that invigorated the French stage. Alfred Jarry scandalized Paris with Ubu Roi (1896), a play now seen as ancestral to the theater of the mid-1900s. François de Curel, Georges de Porto-Riche, Jules Renard, and Eugène Brieux adapted the new social realism to drama.
Symbolism was fitted to the drama by Maurice Maeterlinck and later by Paul Claudel. Tristan Bernard and Henri-René Lenormand exploited psychoanalytical techniques. The experimental plays and films of Jean Cocteau reflect his astonishing versatility. Sartre and Camus brought to the stage a deep concern for man's predicament. The human situation is described as tragically absurd in the theater of Jean Anouilh, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Eugène Ionesco. The brilliant plays of Michel de Ghelderode were granted tardy recognition.
PoetryThe early years of the 20th cent. proved a fertile time for poetic writing. Among outstanding works are the powerful verses of Paul Claudel, the experimental poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire, and the elusive imagery of Paul Valéry. In the 1920s André Breton issued a manifesto of surrealism, rallying around him Paul Éluard, Philippe Soupault, René Char, Tristan Tzara, Louis Aragon, and Elsa Triolet.
Poets who reacted against the force of surrealism include Francis Carco, Léon Paul Fargue, Robert Desnos, and Pierre-Jean Jouve. The poetry of Alexis Saint-Léger Léger is distinguished for its imagery. Among the outstanding poets of the decades after World War II are Jacques Prévert, Francis Ponge, Jules Supervielle, Raymond Queneau, Patrice de la Tour du Pin, Pierre Emmanuel, Jean Tardieu, Jean Follain, Georges Clencier, Andrée Chédid, and Kateb Yacine.
See P. Harvey and J. E. Heseltine, ed., The Oxford Companion to French Literature (1959); J. Cruikshank, ed., French Literature and Its Background (6 vol., 1968-70); J. M. H. Reid, ed., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of French Literature (1976); 17th and 18th cent.: A. A. Tilley, The Decline of the Age of Louis XIV (1968); 19th cent.: A. Thibaudet, French Literature from 1795 to Our Era (1968); I. Babbitt, The Masters of Modern French Criticism (1912, repr. 1981); 20th cent.: J. O'Brien, The French Literary Horizon (1967); H. Peyre, French Novelists of Today (rev. ed. 1967).
Phonetically distinctive French sounds are the nasal vowels and the uvular r. Three accents over vowels are employed: the acute (´) over e, the grave (̀) over a and e, and the circumflex (ˆ) over a, e, i, o, and u. An accent may serve to indicate the pronunciation of a vowel, distinguish homonyms, or mark the discarding of the letter s from a word. A cedilla placed below the letter c (ç) signals that the c is to be pronounced as s. Ordinarily, c is pronounced as k before a, o, u, or a consonant and as s before e and i.
Written French uses the Roman alphabet. French spelling, which has many silent letters, is not always a reliable guide to pronunciation. For example, final consonants are generally not sounded. An s or x added to the end of a noun to form the plural is also usually not pronounced. In such a case, the plural number is actually indicated in speech by the form of the article, as in le garçon [the boy] and les garçons [the boys]. French spelling, however, is closer to the pronunciation than is English spelling.
French is descended from Vulgar Latin, the vernacular Latin (as distinguished from literary Latin) of the Roman Empire (see Latin language). When ancient Gaul (now modern France) was conquered by the Romans in the 2d and 1st cent. B.C., its inhabitants spoke Gaulish, a Celtic language, which was rapidly supplanted by the Latin of the Roman overlords. In the 5th cent. A.D. the Franks, a group of Germanic tribes, began their invasion of Gaul, but they too were Romanized. Although modern French thus inherited several hundred words of Celtic origin and several hundred more from Germanic, it owes its structure and the greater part of its vocabulary to Latin.
By the 9th cent. the language spoken in what is now France was sufficiently different from Latin to be a distinct language. It is called Old French and was current from the 9th to the 13th cent. The earliest extant text in Old French is the Oaths of Strasbourg, dated 842. Of the various dialects of Old French, Francien (the north-central dialect spoken in Paris and the region around it) in time became the standard form of the language because of the increasing political and cultural importance of Paris. French from the 14th through the 16th cent. is known as Middle French. During this period many words and expressions were borrowed from Latin, Greek, and Italian, and a group of French poets, the Pléiade (see under Pleiad), encouraged the French to develop and improve their language and literature.
The modern period of French began in the 17th cent. In 1635 the French Academy was founded by Cardinal Richelieu to maintain the purity of the language and its literature and to serve as the ultimate judge of approved usage. While the vocabulary and style of Modern French have been influenced by movements such as romanticism and realism, structurally French has changed comparatively little since the Middle French period. Standardization of the French language has been aided in modern times by more widespread education and by the mass media.
See U. T. Holmes and A. H. Schutz, A History of the French Language (1938); M. K. Pope, From Latin to Modern French (2d ed. 1952, repr. 1961); J. Fox and R. Hood, Concise History of the French Language (1968); P. Rickard, A History of the French Language (1974).
See Morley-Pegge, The French Horn (2d ed. 1973).
Artistic remains in France date back to the Paleolithic age (see Paleolithic art), and abundant examples attest to the art of the periods of Roman and barbarian occupation as well as to the Christian art of the subsequent periods (see Merovingian art and architecture; Carolingian architecture and art).
During the Middle Ages artistic production centered about the church and the feudal court. In the Romanesque period (11th-12th cent.) the church encouraged the development of manuscript illumination and the minor arts at several monastic centers including Reims, Tours, St. Gall, Paris, and Metz (see Romanesque architecture and art). Important schools of sculpture centered in the regions of Languedoc and Burgundy.
The hierarchic austerity characteristic of many Romanesque figures was modified in the period of Gothic architecture and art (12th-15th cent.) by tendencies toward idealization and naturalism. These tendencies are manifest in the sculpture of Reims and Amiens cathedrals, where the figures show greater variety of pose and articulation and are less severely architectonic than those of the preceding Romanesque period. Cathedral architecture gave impetus in the 13th cent. to the development of the art of stained glass, which reached its height in such windows as those of the cathedral at Chartres.
At the same time Paris became a center of miniature painting, in which Italian and Netherlandish innovations were adopted and the observation of natural detail became highly developed. Great patrons of art emerged, and Charles V transformed the Louvre into a treasure house for the government art collections. Toward the end of the Gothic period these influences began to be harmonized in terms of a style marked by a taste for formal simplicity and elegance, such as is revealed in the works of Jean Fouquet.
In the 16th cent. there was a strong new wave of Italian influence. Francis I employed Francesco Primaticcio of Bologna as artistic director, and a school of French painters worked in an Italianate manner at the palace of Fontainebleau (see Fontainebleau, school of). The French sculptors Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon contributed classical grace and expressiveness to the work of the time. Elegant portraits were painted by Jean Cousin and Jean and François Clouet. French engraving gained significance in the works of the mannerists Jacques Bellange and Jacques Callot.
During the baroque era (17th and early 18th cent.) enthusiasm for classical antiquity, combined with a cult of rationalism, encouraged the development of a monumental and formalized art. The most important painters were the landscape artists Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, who worked in Italy. Other major painters of the period include Simon Vouet, Philippe de Champaigne, George de la Tour, and the Le Nain brothers.
The movement toward political centralization, culminating in the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV, was attended by aesthetic authoritarianism marked by a consolidation and control of artistic production in the service of the state and the founding of art institutions. The French Academy was chartered in 1635, and the Gobelins tapestry factory was established in 1662. Typical of the decorative magnificence of the age was the painting of Charles Le Brun and Pierre Mignard and the sculpture of François Girardon, Pierre Puget, and Antoine Coysevox.
The 18th-century aesthetic styles were named after the political periods of these turbulent eras. They include the régence style, the Louis period styles, and the Directoire style. After the ascension of Louis XV baroque monumentality was replaced by the lighter, more animated spirit of the rococo, which had early manifestation in the art of J. A. Watteau. François Boucher and J. H. Fragonard succeeded Le Brun as official painters; their decorative, sensuous style was favored by the court but not adopted generally. The genre and still-life painter J. B. Chardin and the sculptor J. A. Houdon exhibited independent tendencies.
Characteristic gracefulness and delicacy prevailed in the minor arts, exemplified in the bronze work of Jacques Caffieri and in Sèvres porcelains, produced at the royal potteries established in 1745 at Vincennes and moved to Sèvres in 1753. A self-important manner in portraiture flourished in the work of Nicolas de Largillière and Jean-Marc Nattier.
Toward the end of the 18th cent. reaction against the frivolity of court art and interest in new archaeological excavations encouraged the rise of the neoclassical style, which found government favor under the Directory, Consulate, and Empire. Its principal exponent was J. L. David, at first the king's and later Napoleon's official painter. David wielded authoritarian influence over the national taste (see Empire style).
After neoclassicism, no single style predominated in the early part of the century. Rather, individual artists gave definition to a variety of movements. J. A. D. Ingres succeeded David as leading academician and favored an essentially linear and meticulously finished style, in part inspired by a new enthusiasm for the art of the Italian Renaissance. Opposed to the academic discipline manifest in yearly Salon exhibitions were the romantic painters led by Delacroix and Géricault. At the same time that romanticism championed subjective emotion, the artist's independence from social purpose, and the taste for exotic subject matter, various currents of realism had notable exponents in Honoré Daumier, J. B. C. Corot, and Gustave Courbet. Revived interest in landscape painting was revealed in the works of the Barbizon school.
After the middle of the 19th cent. interest in rendering purely visual effects and in expressing transient and accidental aspects of nature resulted in the emergence of impressionism, an enormously influential movement that was formally launched with the exposition of 1874. This movement drew allegiance from a variety of highly individual artists including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Pissarro. Cézanne drew inspiration from the impressionist group, but he rejected their emphasis on transient effects and evolved an independent approach based on the expression of the fundamental characteristics of shapes and spatial effects. Toward the end of the 19th cent. a postimpressionist reaction arose in the work of Seurat, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Gauguin.
In comparison with painting, 19th-century sculpture on the whole maintained more conservative trends. In the first half of the century, François Rude infused his works with an animation that marked a break with the neoclassic conventions. A. L. Barye, notable for his animal sculptures, and J. B. Carpeaux, the leading sculptor of the Second Empire, exemplify tendencies toward naturalism and an interest in rendering effects of movement that reached their culmination in the second half of the century in the powerful sculpture of Auguste Rodin.
The break with the 18th-century tradition effected by the Revolution, combined with increasing substitution of machine for hand labor, resulted in a marked decline in quality of design and craftsmanship in the decorative arts of 19th-century France. On the whole a heavy-handed eclecticism prevailed. Various elements from the styles of the Louis XIV and Louis XV periods were combined with surviving neoclassic forms.
The innovations of postimpressionism, combined with the influence of Cézanne and a new current of interest in the art of Africa, to give rise to the early 20th-century movements of fauvism, led by Matisse and Rouault, and cubism, created by Picasso and Braque. Picasso's work, spanning seven decades, provided in its enormous variety of styles a working vocabulary for many of the major art movements of the 20th cent. After World War I a further reaction against the decorative and formal emphasis of prewar art resulted in the emergence of surrealism and Dada. Paris had become the artistic center of Europe in the 19th cent. and the school of Paris continued as a source of aesthetic inspiration in the 20th cent.
In sculpture, a new emphasis on relatively static, simplified forms was shown in the works of Aristide Maillol and the Romanian Constanin Brancusi, who worked in Paris and whose strong, exquisite style had a profound influence on 20th-century sculpture. Other major sculptors of the modern era include Charles Despiau, Henri Laurens, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon.
After 1945 the leading painters, including Nicholas de Staël, Jean Fautrier, Georges Mathieu, and Pierre Soulages worked in the idiom of abstract expressionism, while Jean Dubuffet emerged as the initiator of l'art brut, with strikingly grotesque images constructed of almost any conceivable sort of material.
In the decorative arts, the 20th cent. saw an attempt to revive the craft tradition and to introduce nonderivative designs. Leading artists such as Maillol, Matisse, and Lurç furnished tapestry and textile designs. In addition, new tendencies toward simplification and functionalism were manifest in the furniture of the modern style. More recently, postmodernism has had a strong effect on the decorative arts.
See G. Muehsam, ed., French Painters and Paintings from the Fourteenth Century to Post-Impressionism (1970); S. Lövgren, The Genesis of Modernism (rev. ed. 1971); L. Dennison, Angles of Vision: French Art Today (1986); J. Perl, Paris Without End: On French Art Since World War I (1988); A. Chastel, French Art: The Renaissance 1430-1620 (1995).
The earliest surviving architecture in France dates to the Stone Age, as a number of prehistoric sites in Brittany attest. Classical architecture was introduced into the south of France during the Roman conquest in the 1st cent. A.D. Well-preserved examples of Roman architecture include the Maison Carrée and the Pont du Gard near Nǐmes. Scant traces remain of the early development of Gallic architecture, including Early Christian, Merovingian, and Carolingian buildings. The Roman basilica form predominated and, during the Carolingian period, was greatly enriched by design innovations.
Innovations manifested in Carolingian buildings gave rise to the architecture of the Romanesque period, when many fine works were executed in France, and to the great cathedrals of the Gothic style, of which France was the principal center (see Romanesque architecture and art, Gothic architecture and art). Many superb medieval monuments are still extant, including St. Sernin, Toulouse (1080-1120) and Chartres Cathedral (begun 1194).
The revival of classical art and architecture during the Renaissance spread from Italy to France in the 15th and 16th cent., giving rise to the majority of the famous French châteaux, primarily in the Loire valley. During the first half of the 16th cent., Francis I established his court at Fontainebleau outside Paris, where he employed numerous Italian architects and artists, including Sebastiano Serlio, Il Rosso, and Francesco Primaticcio (see Fontainebleau, school of). At the same time native architects came into favor; they included Pierre Lescot, who built parts of the Louvre (begun 1546), and Philibert Delorme, who designed the Château of Anet (1547-55).
The Italian baroque style spread to France in the early 17th cent. A refined classicism distinguishes the French mode from its more exuberant Italian counterpart. This is revealed in the Château de Maisons (1642-46), Seine-et-Oise, by François Mansart, who added a steeply pitched roof of the form associated with his name. A turning point in French architecture occurred when Louis XIV rejected Giovanni Bernini's curvilinear design for the east facade of the Louvre in favor of Louis Le Vau and Claude Perrault's more classicizing design with its celebrated colonnade (1667-70). On a more colossal scale, Louis XIV commissioned Le Vau, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, and Charles Le Brun to remodel a hunting lodge outside Paris into the Palace of Versailles (begun 1669). The vast formal gardens and fountains were planned by André Le Nôtre.
After c.1700 the rococo style dominated interior decoration, with its characteristic curving forms and its gilded and mirrored surfaces. Architects who worked in the rococo style included Germain Boffrand and Juste-Aurèle Meissonier, whose published designs were instrumental in disseminating the rococo throughout the continent.
Jacques Ange Gabriel's Petit Trianon at Versailles (1762) signaled a return to the more restrained, rectilinear forms of classicism. The neoclassical style of the late 18th cent. transcended the period of political upheaval that was ushered in by the French Revolution and culminated with the rise of Napoleon I and the Empire style. J. G. Soufflot's Roman-inspired design for the church of Ste. Geneviève (now the Panthéon; 1755-92) emphasized the structural role of the column. Many important neoclassical monuments were erected in Paris under Napoleon, including Charles Percier and P. F. L. Fontaine's Arc du Carousel (1806-8).
In the mid-19th cent. the Gothic revival was ardently championed in France by the architect and theorist Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, restorer of many of the country's most cherished monuments, including Notre Dame in Paris (1842-68). During this period, the city of Paris was extensively remodeled under Napoleon III, who commissioned Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann to drive new boulevards through the heart of the city. At the head of one of these new boulevards stands the sumptuous neobaroque Paris Opéra (1861-75) by J. L. C. Garnier.
The French preference for classicism was institutionalized in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, whose curriculum was emulated around the world. Following a functionalist course, Henri Labrouste designed buildings utilizing cast-iron construction, such as the Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève (1843-50). French technological prowess culminated in the erection of the Eiffel Tower (1889; see under Eiffel, Alexandre Gustave).
Engineers and architects, including François Hennebique, Auguste Perret, and Tony Garnier, pioneered the use of reinforced concrete construction in the late 19th and early 20th cent. The Swiss-born architect, Le Corbusier, applied the modern machine aesthetic to French architecture in such buildings as the Villa Savoye (1929) outside Paris.
Recent postmodern architecture in France ranges from Piano and Rogers's high-tech Centre Georges Pompidou (1970-77) in Paris to Ricardo and Emilio Bofill's sprawling neoclassical housing development in Marne-la-Vallée (1978-83). Under President François Mitterrand, several new cultural monuments were commissioned for Paris, including I. M. Pei's new pyramid-shaped entrance pavilion at the Louvre (1987-89) and Dominique's controversial Bibliothèque nationale (opened 1998).
See F. Kimball, The Creation of the Rococo (1943); P. Lavedan, French Architecture (tr. 1956); A. Blunt, Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700 (2d ed. 1970).
To the settlers in America, however, the rivalry of the two powers was of immediate concern, for the fighting meant not only raids by the French or the British but also the horrors of tribal border warfare. The conflict may be looked on, from the American viewpoint, as a single war with interruptions. The ultimate aim—domination of the eastern part of the continent—was the same; and the methods—capture of the seaboard strongholds and the little Western forts and attacks on frontier settlements—were the same.
The wars helped to bring about important changes in the British colonies. In addition to the fact of their ocean-wide distance from the mother country, the colonies felt themselves less dependent militarily on the British by the end of the wars; they became most concerned with their own problems and put greater value on their own institutions. In other words, they began to think of themselves as American rather than British.
The first of the wars, King William's War (1689-97), approximately corresponds to the European War of the Grand Alliance (1688-97). It was marked in America principally by frontier attacks on the British colonies and by the taking of Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, N.S.) by British colonial forces under Sir William Phips in 1690. (The French recaptured it the next year.) The British were unable to take Quebec, and the French commander, the comte de Frontenac, attacked the British coast. The peace that followed the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 was short-lived, and shortly the colonies were plunged into war again.
Queen Anne's War (1702-13) corresponds to the War of the Spanish Succession. The frontier was again the scene of many bloody battles; the French and Native American raid (1704) on Deerfield, Mass., was especially notable. Another British attempt to take Quebec, this time by naval attack, failed. Port Royal, and with it Acadia, fell (1710) to an expedition under Francis Nicholson and was confirmed to the British in the Peace of Utrecht, as were Newfoundland and the fur-trading posts about Hudson Bay.
Hostilities lapsed for years until trouble between England and Spain led to the so-called War of Jenkins's Ear (1739-41), which merged into the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). The American phase, King George's War, did not begin until 1744, when the French made an unsuccessful assault on Port Royal. The next year, a Massachusetts-planned expedition under William Pepperrell with a British fleet under Sir Peter Warren took Louisburg. Border warfare was severe but not conclusive. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) returned Louisburg to France, but the hostile feelings that had been aroused did not die.
Rivalry for the West, particularly for the valley of the upper Ohio, prepared the way for another war. In 1748 a group of Virginians interested in Western lands formed the Ohio Company, and at the same time the French were investigating possibilities of occupying the upper Ohio region. The French were first to act, moving S from Canada and founding two forts. Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, sent an emissary, young George Washington, to protest.
The contest between the Ohio Company and the French was now joined and hinged on possession of the spot where the Monongahela and the Allegheny join to form the Ohio (the site of Pittsburgh). The English started a fort there but were expelled by the French, who built Fort Duquesne in 1754. Dinwiddie, after attempting to get aid from the other colonies, sent out an expedition under Washington. He defeated a small force of French and Native Americans but had to withdraw and, building Fort Necessity, held his ground until forced to surrender (July, 1754). The British colonies, alarmed by French activities at their back door, attempted to coordinate their activities in the Albany Congress. War had thus broken out before fighting began in Europe in the Seven Years War (1756-63)
The American conflict, the last and by far the most important of the series, is usually called simply the French and Indian War. The British undertook to capture the French forts in the West—not only Duquesne, but also Fort Frontenac (see Kingston, Ont., Canada), Fort Niagara, and the posts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. They also set out to take Louisburg and the French cities on the St. Lawrence, Quebec and Montreal. They at first failed in their attempts. The expedition led by Edward Braddock against Duquesne in 1755 was a costly fiasco, and the attempt by Admiral Boscawen to blockade Canada and the first expeditions against Niagara and Crown Point were fruitless.
After 1757, when the British ministry of the elder William Pitt was reconstituted, Pitt was able to supervise the war in America. Affairs then took a better turn for the British. Lord Amherst in 1758 took Louisburg, where James Wolfe distinguished himself. That same year Gen. John Forbes took Fort Duquesne (which became Fort Pitt).
The French Louis Joseph de Montcalm, one of the great commanders of his time, distinguished himself (1758) by repulsing the attack of James Abercromby on Ticonderoga. The next year that fort fell to Amherst. In the West, the hold of Sir William Johnson over the Iroquois and the activities of border troops under his general command—most spectacular, perhaps, were the exploits of the rangers under Robert Rogers—reduced French holdings and influence.
The war became a fight for the St. Lawrence, with Montcalm pitted against the brilliant Wolfe. The climax came in 1759 in the open battle on the Plains of Abraham (see Abraham, Plains of). Both Wolfe and Montcalm were killed, but Quebec fell to the British. In 1760, Montreal also fell, and the war was over. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 (see Paris, Treaty of) ended French control of Canada, which went to Great Britain.
The classic works in English on the conflict are those of Francis Parkman. See also W. Wood, The Passing of New France (1915); G. M. Wrong, The Conquest of New France (1918); L. H. Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, Vol. IV-VIII (with individual titles, 1939-53); B. Connell, The Savage Years (1959); E. P. Hamilton, The French and Indian Wars (1962); H. Bird, Battle for a Continent (1965); G. Fregault, Canada: The War of the Conquest (1955, tr. 1969); F. Anderson, Crucible of War (2000); F. Anderson, The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War (2005).
The French Revolution aroused the hostility of foreign monarchs, nobles, and clergy, who feared the spread of republican ideas abroad. Émigré intrigues led the Austrian and Prussian rulers to make the declaration of Pillnitz (Aug., 1791), stating that, if all the powers would join them, they were willing to restore Louis XVI to his rightful authority. French public opinion was aroused. When the Girondists obtained control of the ministry (Mar., 1792) and Emperor Francis II acceded in Austria, war became almost inevitable. It was desired by many of the revolutionists—with the notable exception of Robespierre—who believed that war would insure the permanence of the new order and propagate revolution abroad, and by the royalists, who hoped that victory would restore the powers of Louis XVI.
On Apr. 20, 1792, France declared war on Austria. The French armies lacked organization and discipline, and many noble officers had emigrated. The allied Austrian and Prussian forces under Charles William Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, quickly crossed the frontier and began to march on Paris. The duke issued a manifesto threatening to raze Paris should the royal family be harmed. This manifesto angered the French and contributed to the suspension of the king (Aug., 1792). The comte de Rochambeau, commanding the northern sector, and the marquis de Lafayette, commanding the center, resigned. Their able successors, the generals Dumouriez and Kellermann, turned the tide when they repulsed the invaders at Valmy (Sept. 20). Dumouriez advanced on the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), and he seized it after the battle of Jemappes (Nov. 6), while Custine captured Mainz and advanced on Frankfurt.
Late in 1792 the Convention issued a decree offering assistance to all peoples wishing to recover their liberty. This decree, the execution of Louis XVI (Jan., 1793), and the opening of the Scheldt estuary (contrary to the Peace of Westphalia) provoked Great Britain, Holland, and Spain to join Austria and Prussia in the First Coalition against France. Sardinia had already declared war after France had occupied Savoy and Nice (Sept., 1792). On Feb. 1, 1793, France declared war on Britain and Holland, and on Mar. 7, on Spain. Things rapidly turned against France. Dumouriez, defeated at Neerwinden (Mar. 18) by the Austrians, deserted to the enemy; revolt broke out in the Vendée; and Custine lost Mainz to the Prussians (July 23).
In the emergency the first Committee of Public Safety was created (Apr. 6), and a levée en masse (a draft of able-bodied males between 18 and 25) was decreed in August. The Committee, inspired by the leadership of Lazare Carnot, raised armies of approximately 750,000 men; revolutionary commissioners were attached to the commands; defeated generals, like Custine, were executed "to encourage the others."
By the end of 1793 the allies had been driven from France. In 1794 the new French commanders, Jourdan and Pichegru, took the offensive. Jourdan, after defeating the Austrians at Fleurus (June 26, 1794), moved along the Rhine as far as Mannheim; Pichegru seized the Low Countries. On May 16, 1795, Holland, transformed into the Batavian Republic, made peace. Prussia on Apr. 5, 1795, signed a separate peace (the first Treaty of Basel), ceding the left bank of the Rhine to France; Spain made peace on July 22 (second Treaty of Basel).
Warfare against Austria and Sardinia continued under the newly established Directory. France gradually evolved a plan calling for a three-pronged attack: Jourdan was to advance southeastward from the Low Countries; Jean Victor Moreau was to strike at S Germany; and Napoleon Bonaparte was to conquer Piedmont and Lombardy, cross the Austrian Alps, and join with Moreau and Jourdan. During 1795 the French defeated the allies on all fronts, but in 1796 the new Austrian commander, Archduke Charles, took the offensive, defeating first Jourdan, then Moreau, both of whom had retreated to the Rhine by Sept., 1796.
On the Italian front, where an ill-supplied French army had been engaged in desultory and defensive operations until Bonaparte's arrival in 1796, one victory followed another (for details of the Italian campaign, see Napoleon I). Sardinia submitted in May, 1796, and in Apr., 1797, the preliminary peace of Leoben with Austria was signed by Bonaparte, just as Moreau had resumed his offensive in Germany. The armistice was confirmed by the Treaty of Campo Formio (Oct., 1797). Britain, however, remained in the war, retaining naval superiority under such able commanders as Samuel Hood, Richard Howe, John Jervis, and Horatio Nelson. Bonaparte's plan to attack the British Empire by way of Egypt was doomed by Nelson's naval triumph at Aboukir in Aug., 1798.
Meanwhile, France again aroused the anger of the European powers by creating the Cisalpine Republic and the Roman Republic and by invading Switzerland, which was transformed into the Helvetic Republic. Under the leadership of Czar Paul I a Second Coalition was formed by Russia, Austria, Britain, Turkey, Portugal, and Naples. France defeated Naples and transformed it into the Parthenopean Republic (Jan., 1799), but in N Italy the Austrians and the Russians drove out the French, and in Aug., 1799, General Suvorov crossed the Alps into Switzerland, where Archduke Charles had already won (June 4-7) a victory at Zürich over Masséna. However, disunity between the Austrians and the Russians resulted in disastrous defeats in Switzerland, and Suvorov, after a masterly retreat through the Alps, returned to Russia (Sept.-Oct., 1799).
At this juncture Bonaparte returned from Egypt and by the coup of 18 Brumaire became First Consul (Nov., 1799). The coalition was weakened by Russia's withdrawal, and Napoleon feverishly prepared a campaign to recoup French losses. The campaign of 1800 was decisive. In Italy, Napoleon, after crossing the St. Bernard Pass, crushed the Austrians at Marengo (June 14); in Germany, Moreau crossed the Rhine and demolished allied opposition at Hohenlinden (Dec. 3, 1800). With the Peace of Lunéville—a more severe version of the Treaty of Campo Formio—Austria was forced out of the war (Feb. 9, 1801).
Great Britain, however, continued victorious, taking Malta (Sept., 1800) and compelling the French to surrender in Egypt (Aug., 1801). When Denmark, encouraged by France, defied British supremacy of the seas, Lord Nelson destroyed the Danish fleet in the battle of Copenhagen (Apr. 2, 1801). Nevertheless, the British were war-weary and, after Pitt's retirement, consented to the Treaty of Amiens (Mar. 27, 1802), by which all conquests were restored to France. But the absence of a commercial agreement and Britain's refusal to evacuate Malta was to lead to the resumption of warfare in 1803. Peace had already been made with Naples (Mar., 1801) and with Portugal (Sept., 1801), and in Oct., 1802, France signed a treaty restoring Egypt to the Ottoman Empire.
See T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany (1983); G. Lefebvre, The French Revolution (2 vol, tr. 1962-64); J. H. Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (1911, repr. 1971).
Historians disagree in evaluating the factors that brought about the Revolution. To some extent at least, it came not because France was backward, but because the country's economic and intellectual development was not matched by social and political change. In the fixed order of the ancien régime, most bourgeois were unable to exercise commensurate political and social influence. King Louis XIV, by consolidating absolute monarchy, had destroyed the roots of feudalism; yet outward feudal forms persisted and became increasingly burdensome.
France was still governed by privileged groups—the nobility and the clergy—while the productive classes were taxed heavily to pay for foreign wars, court extravagance, and a rising national debt. For the most part, peasants were small landholders or tenant farmers, subject to feudal dues, to the royal agents indirect farming (collecting) taxes, to the corvée (forced labor), and to tithes and other impositions. Backward agricultural methods and internal tariff barriers caused recurrent food shortages, which netted fortunes to grain speculators, and rural overpopulation created land hunger.
In addition to the economic and social difficulties, the ancien régime was undermined intellectually by the apostles of the Enlightenment. Voltaire attacked the church and absolutism; Denis Diderot and the Encyclopédie advocated social utility and attacked tradition; the baron de Montesquieu made English constitutionalism fashionable; and the marquis de Condorcet preached his faith in progress. Most direct in his influence on Revolutionary thought was J. J. Rousseau, especially through his dogma of popular sovereignty. Economic reform, advocated by the physiocrats and attempted (1774-76) by A. R. J. Turgot, was thwarted by the unwillingness of privileged groups to sacrifice any privileges and by the king's failure to support strong measures.
The direct cause of the Revolution was the chaotic state of government finance. Director general of finances Jacques Necker vainly sought to restore public confidence. French participation in the American Revolution had increased the huge debt, and Necker's successor, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, called an Assembly of Notables (1787), hoping to avert bankruptcy by inducing the privileged classes to share in the financial burden. They refused in an effort to protect economic privileges.
Étienne Charles Loménie de Brienne succeeded Calonne. His attempts to procure money were thwarted by the Parlement of Paris (see parlement), and King Louis XVI was forced to agree to the calling of the States-General. Elections were ordered in 1788, and on May 5, 1789, for the first time since 1614, the States-General met at Versailles. The chief purpose of the king and of Necker, who had been recalled, was to obtain the assembly's consent to a general fiscal reform.
Each of the three estates—clergy, nobility, and the third estate, or commons—presented its particular grievances to the crown. Innumerable cahiers (lists of grievances) came pouring in from the provinces, and it became clear that sweeping political and social reforms, far exceeding the object of its meeting, were expected from the States-General. The aspirations of the bourgeoisie were expressed by Abbé Sieyès in a widely circulated pamphlet that implied that the third estate and the nation were virtually identical. The question soon arose whether the estates should meet separately and vote by order or meet jointly and vote by head (thus assuring a majority for the third estate, whose membership had been doubled).
As Louis XVI wavered, the deputies of the third estate defiantly proclaimed themselves the National Assembly (June 17); on their invitation, many members of the lower clergy and a few nobles joined them. When the king had their meeting place closed, they adjourned to an indoor tennis court, the jeu de paume, and there took an oath (June 20) not to disband until a constitution had been drawn up. On June 27 the king yielded and legalized the National Assembly. At the same time, however, he surrounded Versailles with troops and let himself be persuaded by a court faction, which included the queen, Marie Antoinette, to dismiss (July 11) Necker.
Parisians mobilized, and on July 14 stormed the Bastille fortress. Louis XVI meekly recalled Necker and went to the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, where he accepted the tricolor cockade of the Revolution from the newly formed municipal government, or commune. The national guard was organized under the marquis de Lafayette. This first outbreak of violence marked the entry of the popular classes into the Revolution. Mobilized by alarm over food shortages and economic depression, by hopes aroused with the calling of the States-General, and by the fear of an aristocratic conspiracy, peasants pillaged and burned châteaus, destroying records of feudal dues; this reaction is known as the grande peur [great fear].
On Aug. 4, the nobles and clergy in the Assembly, driven partly by fear and partly by an outburst of idealism, relinquished their privileges, abolishing in one night the feudal structure of France. Shortly afterward, the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Rumors of counterrevolutionary court intrigues circulated, and on Oct. 5, 1789, a Parisian crowd, aroused by rising food prices, marched to Versailles and brought the king and queen, "the baker and the baker's wife," back to the Tuileries palace in Paris. The Assembly also removed to Paris, where it drafted a constitution. Completed in 1791, the constitution created a limited monarchy with a unicameral legislature elected by voters with property qualifications.
Of gravest consequence were the Assembly's antireligious measures. Church lands were nationalized (1789), religious orders suppressed (1790), and the clergy required (July, 1790) to swear to adhere to the state-controlled Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Only a bare majority (52%) of all priests took the oath; disturbances broke out, especially in W France; and Louis XVI, though forced to assent, was roused to action. Numerous princes and nobles had already fled abroad (see émigré); Louis decided to join them and to obtain foreign aid to restore his authority. The flight (June 20-21, 1791) was halted at Varennes, and the king and queen were brought back in humiliation. Louis accepted the constitution.
On Oct. 1, 1791, the Legislative Assembly convened. Some members joined the various political clubs of Paris, such as the Feuillants and Jacobins. Most deputies were middle-of-the-roaders, swayed by the more radical clubs and by the Girondists. Jacobinism was gaining in this period; "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" became a catch phrase.
Meanwhile abroad, early sympathy for the Revolution was turning to hatred. Émigrés incited the courts of Europe to intervene; in France, war was advocated by the royalists as a means to restore the old regime, but also by many republicans, who either wished to spread the revolution abroad or hoped that the threat of invasion would rally the nation to their cause. The Feuillant, or right-wing, ministers fell and were succeeded by those later called Girondists. On Apr. 20, 1792, war was declared on Austria, and the French Revolutionary Wars began. Early reverses and rumors of treason by the king again led Parisian crowds to direct action.
An abortive insurrection of June 20, 1792, was followed by a decisive one on Aug. 10, when a crowd stormed the Tuileries and an insurrectionary commune replaced the legally elected one (see Commune of Paris). Under pressure from the commune, the Assembly suspended Louis XVI and ordered elections by universal manhood suffrage for a National Convention to draw up a new constitution. Mass arrests of royalist sympathizers were followed by the September massacres (Sept. 2-7), in which frenzied mobs entered jails throughout Paris and killed approximately 2,000 prisoners, many in grisly fashion.
On Sept. 21, 1792, the Convention held its first meeting. It immediately abolished the monarchy, set up the republic, and proceeded to try the king for treason. His conviction and execution (Jan., 1793) reinforced royalist resistance, notably in the Vendée, and, abroad, contributed to the forming of a wider coalition against France. The Convention undertook the foreign wars with vigor but was itself torn by the power struggle between the Girondists and the Mountain (Jacobins and extreme left). The Girondists were purged in June, 1793. A democratic constitution was approved by 1.8 million voters in a plebiscite, but it never came into force.
Instead of a democracy the Convention established a war dictatorship operating through the Committee of Public Safety, the Committee of General Security, and numerous agencies such as the Revolutionary Tribunal. Known to history as the Reign of Terror, this period represented the efforts of a few men to govern the country and wage war in a time of crisis. Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre dominated the new government, with Robespierre gradually gaining over Danton and others. Price and wage maximums were unevenly enforced, and acceptance of the inflated paper currency, the assignats, was made mandatory. A huge number of suspects were arrested; thousands were executed, including Marie Antoinette. A revolutionary calendar, with 10-day weeks, was adopted.
The fanatic Jacques Hébert, who had introduced the worship of a goddess of Reason, was arrested and executed in Mar., 1794, along with other so-called ultrarevolutionaries. The next month Danton and his followers, the "Indulgents," who advocated relaxation of emergency measures, were executed. To counter Hébertist influence, Robespierre proclaimed (June, 1794) the cult of the Supreme Being. France's military successes lessened the need for strong domestic measures, but Robespierre called for new purges. Fearing that the Terror would be turned against them, members of the Convention arrested Robespierre on July 27, 1794 (see Thermidor), and had him guillotined; a majority of Commune members were also executed.
The Convention drew up a new constitution, setting up the Directory and a bicameral legislature. The constitution went into effect after the royalist insurrection of Vendémiaire (Oct., 1795) had been put down by armed force. The rule of the Directory was marked by corruption, financial difficulties, political purges, and a fateful dependence on the army to maintain control. Conflict among the five directors led to the coup of 18 Fructidor (Sept. 4, 1797).
Discontent with Directory rule was increased by military reverses. In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte, the hero of the Italian campaign, returned from his Egyptian expedition and, with the support of the army and several government members, overthrew the Directory on 18 Brumaire (Nov. 9) and established the Consulate. Until the Restoration of the Bourbons (1814), Napoleon (see Napoleon I) ruled France.
The French Revolution, though it seemed a failure in 1799 and appeared nullified by 1815, had far-reaching results. In France the bourgeois and landowning classes emerged as the dominant power. Feudalism was dead; social order and contractual relations were consolidated by the Code Napoléon. The Revolution unified France and enhanced the power of the national state. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars tore down the ancient structure of Europe, hastened the advent of nationalism, and inaugurated the era of modern, total warfare.
Although some historians view the Reign of Terror as an ominous precursor of modern totalitarianism, others argue that this ignores the vital role the Revolution played in establishing the precedents of such democratic institutions as elections, representative government, and constitutions. The failed attempts of the urban lower middle classes to secure economic and political gains foreshadowed the class conflicts of the 19th cent. While major historical interpretations of the French Revolution differ greatly, nearly all agree that it had an extraordinary influence on the making of the modern world.
See the older works by Guizot, Jules Michelet, Alexis de Tocqueville, Louis Blanc, Edgar Quinet, and H. A. Taine; the great modern studies by Alphonse Aulard, Albert Mathiez, and Georges Lefebvre; the diplomatic history by Albert Sorel; the socialist interpretation of Jean Jaurès; P. Gaxotte, The French Revolution (1928), a royalist account.
See also J. M. Thompson, The French Revolution (1945); N. Hampson, A Social History of the French Revolution (1963); W. Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (1988) and The Oxford History of the French Revolution (1989); S. Schama, Citizens (1989); R. Cobb, The French and Their Revolution (1999); D. Andress, The Terror (2006).
On the historiography of the French Revolution, see P. Farmer, France Reviews Its Revolutionary Origins (1944, repr. 1963); D. Sutherland, France, 1789-1815: Revolution and Counterrevolution (1986); and F. Furet and M. Ouzouf, A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (tr. A. Goldhammer, 1989).
The inhabitants of French Polynesia are mainly indigenous Polynesians or those of mixed Polynesian and European descent (known as Demis); about 55% are Protestant and 30% are Roman Catholic. There is a considerable Chinese and a smaller French minority. French and Tahitian are both official languages.
Tropical fruits and coffee are grown on plantations, and there is pearl farming and deep-sea commercial fishing. Tourism is also important to the economy. Cultured pearls, coconut products, mother-of-pearl, vanilla, and shark meat are exported, while fuels, foodstuffs, and equipment are imported.
French Polynesia is governed under the 1958 French constitution. The president of France, represented by the High Commissioner of the Republic, is the head of state. The government is headed by the president of French Polynesia, who is elected by the legislature for a five-year term; there are no term limits. Members of the 57-seat Territorial Assembly are elected by popular vote for five-year terms. The territory also elects two deputies to the National Assembly and one member to the Senate of France.
Beginning c.300 A.D., migrating Polynesians settled the islands that later became French Polynesia, and from the islands subsequently settled Hawaii, New Zealand, and other parts of Polynesia. European contact began in the 16th cent., and the area was widely explored by the French during the 18th and 19th cent., when French missionaries also came to the region. The Marquesas and Society groups were annexed by France in 1842, Tahiti in 1844, and by the end of the 19th cent. the other islands had come under French administration. Uniform governance of the area began in 1903, and the islands became an overseas territory in 1946. France began testing nuclear weapons in some parts of French Polynesia in the 1960s, meeting with widespread local opposition; a series of six tests in 1995-96 was declared by France to be the last. Many inhabitants have sought a greater measure of independence from French control, and limited autonomy was awarded in 1984. In 2004 the territory became a French overseas country. France granted the territory greater autonomy in most local affairs and regional relations but retained control of law enforcement, defense, and the money supply.
Elections in May, 2004, brought a coalition of independents and pro-independence legislators to power, and Oscar Temaru, of the pro-independence Union for Democracy, became territorial president. Temaru's coalition lost a confidence vote in Oct., 2004, and Gaston Flosse, long-time leader of the government and an opponent of independence, was returned to power. The change led to political tensions in French Polynesia; at the same time, the French State Council called for rerunning the balloting for nearly two thirds of the seats. The Feb., 2005, revote enabled Temaru to form a new coalition, and he again became territorial president. Temaru again lost a confidence vote in Dec., 2006, and Gaston Tong Sang, the pro-autonomy mayor of Bora Bora, was elected to succeed Temaru. Tong Sang, however, lost a confidence vote in Sept., 2007, after a split in the anti-independence camp, and Temaru again became president. Tong Sang's party won a plurality of the legislative seats after the Jan.-Feb., 2008, elections, but Flosse subsequently was elected president with support from Temaru. By April, however, defectors from Temaru's party had aligned with Tong Sang, who replaced Flosse as president.
French Guiana has two districts (arrondissements): Cayenne, the coastal region, where more than 90% of the population is concentrated; and the larger interior district of Saint Laurent-du-Maroni. The population is largely of mixed African and European descent, but there are also minorities of blacks, whites, indigenous peoples, Chinese, and South Asians. French is the official language, but Creole and other languages and dialects are spoken as well. The population is predominantly Roman Catholic.
French Guiana is largely dependent on subsidies and imports from the mother country. Fishing and forestry are the prime industries, and timber, shrimp, and rum made from local sugarcane are the chief exports. Rice, corn, bananas and other fruits, vegetables, and manioc are grown for subsistence. There are gold (discovered in 1855), petroleum, and other mineral deposits; exploitation, however, has been hindered by inadequate transportation and scarcity of labor. The Plan Vert (Green Plan), adopted in the late 1970s to increase production in agriculture and forestry, met with only partial success.
The department (also one of 26 official regions of France) is represented in the French National Assembly and Senate. It is governed by a prefect and an elected council.
French settlement dates from 1604. In the Dutch wars of Louis XIV, Cayenne was captured (1676) by the Dutch but was later retaken. The Portuguese and British occupied it during the Napoleonic Wars, but the Congress of Vienna (1815) restored French authority. French Guiana was used as a penal colony and place of exile during the French Revolution, and under Napoleon III permanent penal camps were established. Devils Island, one of the Îles du Salut, off the coast, became notorious. The penal colonies were evacuated after World War II.
In 1947, French Guiana became an overseas department of France, and in 1974 it also became an administrative region. A rocket-launching base at Kourou, established in 1968, is used by the European Space Agency for communication satellites. Economic problems and divisions between the white European elite and the Creole majority persisted into the 1990s, accompanied by increasing local demands for autonomy.
The origins of the academy were in a coterie of literary men who met informally in Paris in the early 1630s to discuss rhetoric and criticism. Recognized by Cardinal Richelieu, the academy received the royal letters patent in 1635 (registered by the Parlement of Paris in 1637). Its aims included chiefly the governance of French literary effort, grammar, orthography, and rhetoric. The membership was soon fixed at 40 (called often, because of their former motto, "the forty immortals") and was established as self-perpetuating, with a veto of elections reserved to the official protecteur (or patron), later to the state. The first notable act of the society was the criticism of the Cid of Pierre Corneille.
After Richelieu's death (1642) the patronate went (1643) to Pierre Séguier, the chancellor; on his death (1672), King Louis XIV assumed the position of protecteur, which remained ever after a prerogative of the head of the French state. The suppression of the academies in 1793 ended the French Academy; it reappeared in the second class of Napoleon's Institut (1803), and the old name and organization were "restored" in the first division of the Institut of 1816.
The academy has often been accused of literary conservatism, owing to the failure of certain writers to attain membership; the most prominent of these are perhaps Molière, Marquis de La Rochefoucauld, Duc de Saint-Simon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Stendhal, Émile Zola, and Marcel Proust. But not all omissions from the academy roster are attributable to literary criteria, for personal respectability and loyalty to the existing state have always been conditions of membership. The membership of the academy has traditionally included eminent Frenchmen outside the field of literature; some of its members come from France's senior clergy to mark the role of Roman Catholicism in French culture. Today the academy's membership includes women and people of other nationalities who write in French.
The work of the French Academy has chiefly consisted of the preparation and revision of a dictionary (1st ed. 1694, 9th ed. 1992-) and of a grammar. The very conservative attitude of these books toward orthography, new words, and grammatical development has led to much criticism. The academy, however, has never claimed to legislate but simply to record forms; legislation on orthography and grammar was made a function of the minister of public instruction during the Third Republic. The awarding of literary prizes has also been an important function of the French Academy, and in the 19th cent. its nonpartisanship encouraged the general recognition of the academy as a suitable trustee for the distribution of grants and prizes for courage and civic virtue.
Except for the narratives of French explorers (such as Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Esprit Radisson) and missionaries, no notable writing was produced before the British conquest of New France in 1759. Since that time the inspiration for much French Canadian literature has been a concern with preserving an autonomous identity in a country dominated by the English language and the Protestant religion. Traditionally, there has been little contact between Canada's French and English literature. Until the 20th cent. French Canadian writers found their models mainly in writers from France and their themes in nationalism, the simple lives and folkways of the habitants, and the devotion to the Roman Catholic Church.
The first artistic expression of this spirit was F. X. Garneau's Histoire du Canada (1845-48), still the classic of French Canadian nationalism. Other historians, including Benjamin Sulte, Thomas Chapais, and L. A. Groulx, also placed their emphasis on pride in and protection of their French heritage. This school of thought inspired the first nationalist poet, Octave Crémazie and the Quebec school of poets, novelists, and historians. In 1861 they began a deliberate effort to create a national literature, with such French authors as Hugo and Lamartine as their chief models. The group included Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, J. B. A. Ferland, Louis-Honoré Fréchette, Pamphile LeMay, Abbé H. R. Casgrain, Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, and Nérée Beauchemin.
About 1900 a new group of writers developed, centered chiefly in Montreal, who tried to achieve the stricter technique and keener artistic perceptions of the Parnassians of France. These more sophisticated poets included Charles Gill, René Chopin, and Louis Dantin. Some writers of the new group, such as Émile Nelligan—considered French Canada's first native poetic genius—and Paul Morin, abandoned the national note for exotic subjects. Others, such as Albert Lozeau and Albert Ferland, found inspiration in Canadian nature. About the same time another movement began, led by Adjutor Rivard, aimed at preserving the purity of the French language in Canada. Influential critics included Camille Roy, Henri d'Arles, and the poet Louis Dantin.
In the novel, a rural romanticism was expressed in the works of Félicité Angers (Laure Conan). A more realistic fiction took impetus from Louis Hémon's Maria Chapdelaine (1913), a novel of the peasants of the Lake St. John country. There followed a stream of fiction on habitant life in the backwoods, on the farms, and in the villages, by such native Canadians as Robert Choquette, F. A. Savard, Claude Henri Grignon, Roger Lemelin, and Ringuet.
Although some novels were set in cities and the notable author Robert Charbonneau explored the psychological defeatism of his characters, the realistic regional novel about the simple Catholic community remained dominant until the 1950s. Important poets since 1914 include Clément Marchand, whose inspiration is often religious; Alfred DesRochers, who writes of the life of the soil; and Robert Choquette and Roger Brien, whose romantic lyrics are eloquently individualistic.
Following World War II there was evidence of a new, less self-conscious spirit. Poets and novelists, trying to settle the language problem, declared that pure French should be standard, with the use of Canadianisms accepted wherever these served a purpose. Although it was still possible to detect the influence of France, in the mid-20th cent. much creative writing in Canada, as elsewhere, was characterized by experiment with subject matter and technique.
From the 1970s to the 90s a nationalist focus in the novel was generally replaced with irony, skepticism, and universalism, reflecting developments in both Europe and the United States. Among noteworthy postwar novelists are Herbert Aquin, Yves Beauchemin, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, Jacques Godbout, Gilbert La Rocque, Antonine Maillet, and Jacques Poulin. Among the poets are Michel Beaulieu, François Charron, Anne Hébert, Paul Marie Lapointe, Rina Lasnier, Gaston Miron, Yves Préfontaine, Jacques Godbout, and Jean Guy Pilon, the last two founding the literary magazine Liberté in 1959.
See I. F. Fraser, The Spirit of French Canada (1939); E. Wilson, O Canada (1964); A. J. M. Smith, ed., Modern Canadian Verse in English and French (1967); N. Story, The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature (1967); R. Lecker and J. David, ed., Annotated Bibliography of Canada's Major Authors (7 vol., 1979-87).
(born July 13, 1935, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) U.S. politician. He played professional gridiron football with the Buffalo (N.Y.) Bills. As a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1971–89), he championed conservative causes but also strongly supported civil rights legislation. After a failed presidential bid in 1988, he was appointed secretary of housing and urban development by Pres. George Bush (1989). In 1996 he ran unsuccessfully for vice president on a ticket with Republican Bob Dole.
Learn more about Kemp, Jack (French) with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born July 13, 1935, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) U.S. politician. He played professional gridiron football with the Buffalo (N.Y.) Bills. As a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1971–89), he championed conservative causes but also strongly supported civil rights legislation. After a failed presidential bid in 1988, he was appointed secretary of housing and urban development by Pres. George Bush (1989). In 1996 he ran unsuccessfully for vice president on a ticket with Republican Bob Dole.
Learn more about Kemp, Jack (French) with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born April 20, 1850, Exeter, N.H., U.S.—died Oct. 7, 1931, Stockbridge, Mass.) U.S. sculptor. He produced his first important commission for the town of Concord, Mass.—the famous statue The Minute Man (1874). He was the leading turn-of-the-century American sculptor, with studios in Boston, Concord, Washington, D.C., and New York City. His best-known work, the seated marble figure of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 1922. His other notable public monuments include the equestrian statues of Ulysses S. Grant in Philadelphia (1898) and George Washington in Paris (1900) and sculptures representing Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, in front of the New York City customhouse (1907).
Learn more about French, Daniel Chester with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Romance language spoken as a first language by about 72 million people in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada (mainly Quebec), and many other countries and regions formerly governed by France. French is an official language of more than 25 countries. Its earliest written materials date from the 9th century. Numerous regional dialects were eventually pushed aside by Francien, the dialect of Paris, adopted as the standard language in the mid-16th century. This largely replaced the dialects of northern and central France, known as the langue d'oïl (from oïl, the northern word for “yes”), and greatly reduced the use of the Occitan language of southern France, known as langue d'oc (from oc, Occitan for “yes”). Regional dialects survive mostly in uneducated rural speech. French grammar has been greatly simplified from Latin. Nouns do not have cases, and masculine and feminine gender are marked not in the noun but in its article or adjective. The verb is conjugated for three persons and for singular and plural; though spelled differently, several of these forms are pronounced identically.
Learn more about French language with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Orchestral and military brass instrument, a valved circular horn with a wide bell. It is normally a transposing instrument (its music written in a different tone than its actual sound) in F. It has a wide bore and three (sometimes four) rotary valves; its conical mouthpiece produces a mellower tone than the cup-shaped mouthpieces of other brass instruments. Horns long relied on separable crooks—circular lengths of tubing that could be attached and removed rapidly—for music modulating to new keys. Since circa 1900 the standard horn has been a “double” instrument, with built-in crooks in F and B-flat that can be selected rapidly by means of a thumb valve. The modern symphony orchestra usually includes four horns. Though difficult to play and prone to producing conspicuous errors, its tone is widely admired.
Learn more about French horn with a free trial on Britannica.com.
River, western North Carolina, U.S. Rising in the Blue Ridge and flowing 210 mi (340 km) north through the Great Smoky Mountains into Tennessee, it then turns west to join the Holston River near Knoxville, forming the Tennessee River. Douglas Dam, part of the Tennessee Valley Authority, is on the river near the junction.
Learn more about French Broad River with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Former federation of French dependencies, western Africa. It consisted of what are now the independent republics of Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. The capital was at Dakar. The federation was established in 1895 and dissolved 1958–59. By 1960 the former colonial territories had become independent republics.
Learn more about French West Africa with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Political entity created by the constitution of 1946 of the Fourth Republic. It replaced the French colonial empire with a semifederal entity that absorbed the colonies (overseas departments and territories) and gave former protectorates limited local autonomy, with some voice in decision making in Paris. By the constitution of 1958, the French Union was replaced by the French Community.
Learn more about French Union with a free trial on Britannica.com.
City (pop., 2006 est.: 325,000), major port, and capital of Djibouti. It is located on the southern shore of the Gulf of Tadjoura in the Gulf of Aden. It was founded by the French in 1888 and made the capital of French Somaliland in 1892. It was linked by rail to Addis Ababa in 1917 and made a free port in 1949. The economic life of both the city and the country depends on the city's function as a transshipment point, especially between Ethiopia and the Red Sea trade. Built on three level areas linked by jetties, the city has a mixture of ancient and modern architecture. Drought and conflict during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s brought many refugees to Djibouti from neighbouring countries, swelling its population.
Learn more about Djibouti with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799, reaching its first climax in 1789, and ended the ancien régime. Causes included the loss of peasant support for the feudal system, broad acceptance of the reformist writings of the philosophes, an expanding bourgeoisie that was excluded from political power, a fiscal crisis worsened by participation in the American Revolution, and crop failures in 1788. The efforts of the regime in 1787 to increase taxes levied on the privileged classes initiated a crisis. In response, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General, made up of clergy, nobility, and the Third Estate (commoners), in 1789. Trying to pass reforms, it swore the Tennis Court Oath not to disperse until France had a new constitution. The king grudgingly concurred in the formation of the National Assembly, but rumours of an “aristocratic conspiracy” led to the Great Fear of July 1789, and Parisians seized the Bastille on July 14. The assembly drafted a new constitution that introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proclaiming liberty, equality, and fraternity. The Constitution of 1791 also established a short-lived constitutional monarchy. The assembly nationalized church lands to pay off the public debt and reorganized the church (see Civil Constitution of the Clergy). The king tried to flee the country but was apprehended at Varennes. France, newly nationalistic, declared war on Austria and Prussia in 1792, beginning the French Revolutionary Wars. Revolutionaries imprisoned the royal family and massacred nobles and clergy at the Tuileries in 1792. A new assembly, the National Convention—divided between Girondins and the extremist Montagnards—abolished the monarchy and established the First Republic in September 1792. Louis XVI was judged by the National Convention and executed for treason on Jan. 21, 1793. The Montagnards seized power and adopted radical economic and social policies that provoked violent reactions, including the Wars of the Vendée and citizen revolts. Opposition was broken by the Reign of Terror. Military victories in 1794 brought a change in the public mood, and Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown in the Convention on 9 Thermidor, year II (in 1794 in the French republican calendar), and executed the next day (see Thermidorian Reaction). Royalists tried to seize power in Paris but were crushed by Napoleon on 13 Vendémaire, year IV (in 1795). A new constitution placed executive power in a Directory of five members. The war and schisms in the Directory led to disputes that were settled by coups d'état, chiefly those of 18 Fructidor, Year V (in 1797), and 18–19 Brumaire, Year VIII (in 1799), in which Napoleon abolished the Directory and declared himself leader of France. Seealso Committee of Public Safety; Constitution of 1795; Constitution of the Year VIII; Charlotte Corday; Cordeliers Club; Georges J. Danton; Feuillants Club; Jacobin Club; J.-P. Marat; Marie-Antoinette; Louis de Saint-Just; E.-J. Sieyès.
Learn more about French Revolution with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Learn more about French Polynesia with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Region of mainland Southeast Asia. The term, now largely superseded by the name Southeast Asia, was used mainly by Westerners to describe the intermingling of Indian and Chinese cultural influences in the region. Indochinese Peninsula typically referred to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (see French Indochina), though it was sometimes expanded to include Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and the mainland portion of Malaysia.
Learn more about Indochina with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Overseas department (pop., 2002 est.: 172,000) of France, northeastern coast of South America. It has an area of 33,399 sq mi (86,504 sq km) and is bounded by Brazil to the south and east, by Suriname to the west, and by the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast. The capital is Cayenne. Most of French Guiana is low-lying, with mountains in the south and a swampy coastal plain. The Maroni River forms the border with Suriname. French Guiana's population is mostly Creole. The principal languages are French (official) and creole; nine-tenths of the people are Roman Catholic. Originally settled by the Spanish, French, and Dutch, the territory of French Guiana was awarded to France in 1667, and the inhabitants were made French citizens after 1877. By 1852 the French began using the territory for penal settlement; the penal colony at Devils Island was notorious. French Guiana became a department of France in 1946; the penal colonies were closed by 1953.
Learn more about French Guiana with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Former federation of French possessions, western Central Africa. It was in existence from 1910 to 1959; its capital was Brazzaville. With independence in 1960, the former territory of Ubangi-Shari, to which Chad had been attached in 1920, became the Central African Republic and the Republic of Chad; the Middle Congo became the Republic of the Congo; and Gabon became the Republic of Gabon.
Learn more about French Equatorial Africa with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Trading company founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1664, and its successors, established to oversee French commerce with India, East Africa, and other territories of the Indian Ocean and the East Indies. In constant competition with the already-established Dutch East India Co., it mounted expensive expeditions that were often harassed by the Dutch. It also suffered in the French economic crash of 1720, and by 1740 the value of its trade with India was half that of the English East India Co. Its monopoly over French trade with India was ended in 1769, and it languished until its disappearance in the French Revolution.
Learn more about East India Co., French with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(French, la Communauté) Association of overseas territories created in 1958 by the constitution of the Fifth Republic to replace the French Union in dealing with matters of foreign policy, defense, currency and economic policy, and higher education. As the former colonies gained full independence in the 1960s and '70s, the Community became obsolete; it was defunct by the late 1970s.
Learn more about French Community with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Literary academy in France. The Académie Française was established by Cardinal Richelieu in 1634 to maintain standards of literary taste and to establish the literary language. In modern times it has endeavoured (somewhat absurdly) to purify French of foreign loanwords. Its membership is limited to 40. Despite its conservatism, most of France's great writers, including Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Voltaire, and Victor Hugo, have been members.
Learn more about Académie Française with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born April 20, 1850, Exeter, N.H., U.S.—died Oct. 7, 1931, Stockbridge, Mass.) U.S. sculptor. He produced his first important commission for the town of Concord, Mass.—the famous statue The Minute Man (1874). He was the leading turn-of-the-century American sculptor, with studios in Boston, Concord, Washington, D.C., and New York City. His best-known work, the seated marble figure of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 1922. His other notable public monuments include the equestrian statues of Ulysses S. Grant in Philadelphia (1898) and George Washington in Paris (1900) and sculptures representing Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, in front of the New York City customhouse (1907).
Learn more about French, Daniel Chester with a free trial on Britannica.com.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|