France (French pronunciation: [fs]), officially the French Republic (French: Rpublique

franaise [epyblik fsz]), is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country consisting
of territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories.[XVI] The European, or
metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the
North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. Overseas France include French Guiana on
the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian
oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi)[1] and has a total population of
66.7 million.[VI][8] It is a semi-presidential republic with the capital in Paris, the country's largest
city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban centres include Marseille,
Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse and Bordeaux.
During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic
people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, when the
Germanic Franks conquered the region and formed the Kingdom of France. France emerged as a
major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years' War (1337
to 1453) strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French
culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would
be the second largest in the world.[9] The 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars
between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots). France became Europe's dominant cultural,
political, and military power under Louis XIV.[10] In the late 18th century, the French Revolution
overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, and saw
the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the
nation's ideals to this day.
In the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose
subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of
the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the
establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. France was a major participant in the First
World War, from which it emerged victorious, and was one of the Allied Powers in the Second
World War, but came under occupation by the Axis Powers in 1940. Following liberation in
1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War.
The Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day.
Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal
controversy and typically retained close economic and military connections with France.
France has long been a global centre of art, science, and philosophy. It hosts Europe's fourthlargest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign
tourists annually, the most of any country in the world.[11] France is a developed country with the
world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP[12] and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity.
[13]
In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world.[14] France performs well
in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, and human development.[15][16]

France remains a great power in the world,[17] being a founding member of the United Nations,
where it serves as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and a
founding and leading member state of the European Union (EU).[18] It is also a member of the
Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and La
Francophonie.