"France,
like other European nations, is a phenomenon
born out of conscious striving rather than from the natural affinity
of its parts. Conflict has characterized France
throughout its history.
The historical landscape sets province against province, province
against crown, authority against individuality, Christianity
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against paganism, church against state, papacy
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.
Great River In France - Seine River France
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.
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