France Monarchy to Republic Government

Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789

The monarchy reigned France until the French Revolution, in 1789. Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were put to death in 1793, along with thousands of other French citizens. Afterward a series of temporary governmental systems, Napoleon Bonaparte took over control of the Republic in 1799, getting himself First Consul, and later Emperor of what is at present known as the First Empire (1804–1814). In the flow of numerous warfares, his armies conquered most of continental Europe, with members of the Napoleon Bonaparte family line being appointed as monarchs of freshly built kingdoms.

Pursuing Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, the French monarchy was reinstated, but with newly constitutional limits. In 1830, a civil revolt settled the constitutional July Monarchy, which lasted till 1848. The temporary Second Republic ceased in 1852 while Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte declared the Second Empire. Louis-Napoléon was unseated following defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and his regimen was replaced by the Third Republic.

France had complex possessions, in different forms, since the beginning of the 17th century until the 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, its global overseas colonial empire was the 2nd largest in the world trailing the British Empire. At its bloom, between 1919 and 1939, the second French colonial empire expanded over 12,347,000 square kilometres of land. Including metropolitan France, the whole area of land under French reign gained 12,898,000 square kilometres in the 1920s and 1930s, which is 8.6% of the world’s land area.

Although ultimately a winner in World War I and World War II, France suffered large human and material losses. Its metropolitan territory was partially or totally invaded by Germany during the two wars. The 1930s were noted by a sort of social reforms presented by the Popular Front governance. The Fourth Republic was built after World War II and struggled to preserve its economic and political condition as a sovereign country state. France tried to keep to its colonial empire, but shortly encountered difficulty. The lukewarm 1946 attempt at recovering control of French Indochina led in the First Indochina War, which finished in French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Just months afterward, France faced a new, even harsher conflict in Algeria.

The argument over whether or not to retain control of Algeria a home to over one million European settlers, wracked the country and closely led to civil war. In 1958, the weak and unstable Fourth Republic gave way to the Fifth Republic, which controlled by a strengthened Presidency. In the latter role, Charles de Gaulle managed to keep the country together though leading steps to end the war. The Algerian War and Franco-French civil war that led in the capital Algiers, was ended with peace negotiations in 1962 that led to Algerian independence.

In past decades, France’s reconciliation and cooperation with Germany have proved central to the political and economic integration of the evolving European Union, including the introduction of the euro in January 1999. France has been at the forefront of the European Union member states attempting to work the impulse of monetary union to produce a more unified and capable European Union political, defence, and security setup. The French electorate voted against confirmation of the European Constitutional Treaty in May 2005, but the successor Treaty of Lisbon was signed by Parliament in February 2008.