against crown, town against
country, the country against the center, and
France
against its neighbours. It has been wryly observed that all
French men
love
France, but decry all other Frenchmen for
demeaning her.
There is the central theme of
French's history:
the French created France almost in spite of themselves.
France Geography
If
France history is complex and diverse, so too is the
geographical landscape over which it unfolded. Even the great
plain stretching from beyond the
Rhine River
to
Brittany and south to the
Pyrenees
is cut by deep river valleys, high
plateaus,
and the low hills of the
Armorican Massif. It
covers roughly three quarters of the country in a triangle. The
Atlantic and
English Channel coasts
form two sides, and a line of westward facing hilly escarpments
from
Toulouse in the south to
Verdun
in the northeast form the third. The other quarter consists of
hills and mountains.
The
Alps and
Pyrenees, with
the
Mediterranean coastline between them, define
France's southern and south eastern frontiers;
and the
Vosges,
Massif Central,
and
Ardennes are rugged hills which break the
landscape also in the east and south. Geographical detail varies
greatly from one region to the next: the sheer walls of the
Pyrenees, the soaring peaks of the
Alps
with
Mont Blanc over 4000 metres, bizarre volcanic
cones in the
Puy de Dome of the
Massif
Central, park-like expanses in the
Loire Valley,
wooded hills in the
Paris Basin, flat plains
to the east of
La Rochelle, granite cliffs on
the Breton coast, marshlands in
Burgundy, and
treeless plateaus in
Champagne, to mention only
some of what catches the eye.
France Climate
All of the country escapes extremes of heat and cold, save the
highest
Alpine peaks; but a damper, cooler climate
prevails across the north and north east, while dry, hot,
Mediterranean
conditions characterize the south and south west. Wine is produced
nearly everywhere, but the principal areas are in the warm Mediterranean
or semi Mediterranean areas: the
Loire Valley south
and southeast to the
Languedoc region, and along
the
Rhone River between
Lyon
and
Arles.
Mediterranean France
also is subject to the legendary Mistral and
Sirocco
winds. The llictral is a cold, winter wind originating in the
central plateau, which blows down the
Rhone Valley.
The
Sirocco, either moist and warm or dry and
hot, blows out of
North Africa. Both are said
to produce unusual, even bizarre, behaviour among people living
in the areas affected.
Climate and geography influenced the course of
French's
history, but did not dictate it. A mild climate and vast,
rich agricultural plains, plateaus and river basins made
France
attractive to settlement and then to acquisitorial competition
from Neolithic times to the present.
Rivers
Long river systems (
the Loire is over 1000 kilometres long)
provided direction and invitation for migration, trade, invasion,
and conquest and still more acquisitorial competition.
France,
on the extreme western edge of the
European continent,
lies at the end of a great plain extending unbroken north and
east to
western Siberia. It
has been a highway for the movement of peoples and cultures for
thousands of years. Only the
Rhine separates
France from this plain to the east, and the
Rhine
has proved no barrier at all. Meanwhile, four great river systems
quarter
France, three of them in the great plain
area. They served as conduits for the settlements and movement
of peoples, To some extent the history of
France
can be written in terms of how the
Saone Rhone,
the
Garonne, the
Loire, and
the
Paris Basin (Seine) evolved from areas of
primitive habitation into centres of warring duchies, counties
and kingdoms. Only the
Rhone drains into the
Mediterranean. The others follow the gentle slope
of the western and northern plains to the
Atlantic.
Over the centuries, this
Atlantic orientation
has prevailed, for these are the richest watersheds. The economic
and political centre, when there was a centre, lay northward,
and eventually the
Paris Basin emerged as the
hub around which the wheel of the
French nation
revolved. [1]. "
Celtic Gaul
"The
Romans so named the region of modern
France which was populated after 1000 BC by a metal age
people from northern and central
Europe, known
generically as
Celts. Their identity is not precise,
since `
Celtic' connotes variously race, language
and tribe, and the
Greeks and
Romans
used
Celts interchangeably with
Gauls
to denote the people of the region.
Julius Caesar,
who described
Gaul as being in three parts, recognized
only one of the three as truly
Celtic. Even so,
in
Roman eyes the
Gauls were
Celts; and whether they were called
Belgae,
Cimbri,
Alemanni,
Boii,
Marcommani,
Arverni, or some other name,
they were much the same. Only the
Aquitanians
(Iberians) were descriptively different, and the
Belgae
were said to be different, but probably were not. Perhaps the
Romans' practical turn of mind led to lumping
the peoples of
Gaul together into this
Celtic
category for convenience.
More is known about the
Celts, or
Gauls,
than any other western European people from this epoch. If
Neolithic
dwellers left megaliths and pots,
Celts
left weapons, armour, tools, ornaments, traces of language and
other evidence of a lively, wide-ranging cultural, political and
economic life. Gold and other precious metals were widely used,
though for decoration as much as for money.
Caesar,
Gemranicus, and other
Roman travellers
identified them as tall, blond or red haired
Nordic types,
organized into a complex social political system. More recently,
archaeologist
Daphne Nash described this system
as warrior agrarian, in which peasant labour was the most important
source of social wealth and was appropriated by the nobility through
contractual and military relationships; in short, a structure
similar to later feudalism.
The
Greek geographer,
Strabo,
from his vantagepoint at
Massilia, the
Greek
colony which would become
Marseille, depicted
a trading network encompassing the four river systems, the
English
Channel, and western and southern England. It began with
the
Celts and was co opted by early
Greek
and Roman traders. The first century cross channel wine
trade was a thriving concern, indicating that `our claret, chianti
or vino tinto, is very much old wine in new bottles'.[2]. "
References:
[1], [2] Robert Cole," A Traveller's History of France". London:
Cassell A Windrush Press Book, 2002.