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Monarchy of France

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Main article: Kingdom of France

The Kingdom of France is the historiographical name or umbrella term given to various political entities of France in the medieval and early modern period. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe since the High Middle Ages. It was also an early colonial power, with colonies in Asia and Africa, and the largest being New France in North America.

France originated as West Francia (Francia Occidentalis), the western half of the Carolingian Empire, with the Treaty of Verdun (843). A branch of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule until 987, when Hugh Capet was elected king and founded the Capetian dynasty. The territory remained known as Francia and its ruler as rex Francorum ("king of the Franks") well into the High Middle Ages. The first king calling himself rex Francie ("King of France") was Philip II, in 1190, and officially from 1204. From then, France was continuously ruled by the Capetians and their cadet lines under the Valois and Bourbon until the monarchy was abolished in 1792 during the French Revolution. The Kingdom of France was also ruled in personal union with the Kingdom of Navarre over two time periods, 1284–1328 and 1572–1620, after which the institutions of Navarre were abolished and it was fully annexed by France (though the King of France continued to use the title "King of Navarre" through the end of the monarchy).

France in the Middle Ages was a decentralised, feudal monarchy. In Brittany and Catalonia (now a part of Spain), as well as Aquitaine, the authority of the French king was barely felt. Lorraine and Burgundy were states of the Holy Roman Empire and not yet a part of France. West Frankish kings were initially elected by the secular and ecclesiastical magnates, but the regular coronation of the eldest son of the reigning king during his father's lifetime established the principle of male primogeniture, which became codified in the Salic law. During the Late Middle Ages, rivalry between the Capetian dynasty, rulers of the Kingdom of France and their vassals the House of Plantagenet, who also ruled the Kingdom of England as part of their so-called competing Angevin Empire, resulted in many armed struggles. The most notorious of them all are the series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) in which the kings of England laid claim to the French throne. Emerging victorious from said conflicts, France subsequently sought to extend its influence into Italy, but was defeated by Spain and the Holy Roman Empire in the ensuing Italian Wars (1494–1559).

France in the early modern era was increasingly centralised; the French language began to displace other languages from official use, and the monarch expanded his absolute power in an administrative system, known as the Ancien Régime, complicated by historic and regional irregularities in taxation, legal, judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions, and local prerogatives. Religiously France became divided between the Catholic majority and a Protestant minority, the Huguenots, which led to a series of civil wars, the Wars of Religion (1562–1598). The Wars of Religion crippled France, but triumph over Spain and the Habsburg monarchy in the Thirty Years' War made France the most powerful nation on the continent once more. The kingdom became Europe's dominant cultural, political and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV.[1] In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas.

In the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire stretched from a total area at its peak in 1680 to over 10,000,000 square kilometres (3,900,000 sq mi), the second-largest empire in the world at the time behind the Spanish Empire. Colonial conflicts with Great Britain led to the loss of much of its North American holdings by 1763. French intervention in the American Revolutionary War helped the United States secure independence from King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain, but was costly and achieved little for France.

Following the French Revolution, which began in 1789, the Kingdom of France adopted a written constitution in 1791, but the Kingdom was abolished a year later and replaced with the First French Republic. The monarchy was restored by the other great powers in 1814 and, with the exception of the Hundred Days in 1815, lasted until the French Revolution of 1848.

French Revolution

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National Conmvention

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Main article: National Convention

The National Convention (French: Convention nationale) was the constituent assembly of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for its first three years during the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly. Created after the great insurrection of 10 August 1792, it was the first French government organized as a republic, abandoning the monarchy altogether. The Convention sat as a single-chamber assembly from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795 (4 Brumaire IV under the Convention's adopted calendar).

The Convention came about when the Legislative Assembly decreed the provisional suspension of King Louis XVI and the convocation of a National Convention to draw up a new constitution with no monarchy. The other major innovation was to decree that deputies to that Convention should be elected by all Frenchmen twenty-one years old or more, domiciled for a year and living by the product of their labor. The National Convention was, therefore, the first French assembly elected by a suffrage without distinctions of class.[2]

Although the Convention lasted until 1795, power was effectively delegated by the Convention and concentrated in the small Committee of Public Safety from April 1793. The eight months from the fall of 1793 to the spring of 1794, when Maximilien Robespierre and his allies dominated the Committee of Public Safety, represent the most radical and bloodiest phase of the French Revolution, known as the Reign of Terror. After the fall of Robespierre, the Convention lasted for another year until a new constitution was written, ushering in the French Directory.

Napoleonic Era

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19th century

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Provisional Government of 1848

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The Provisional Government was formed after three days of street fighting in Paris that ended in the abdication of King Louis Philippe I at noon on February 24. The leaders of the government were selected by acclamation in two different meetings later that day, one at the Chamber of Deputies and the other at the Hôtel de Ville. The first set of seven names, chosen at the Chamber of Deputies, came from the list of deputies made by the moderate republican paper Le National. The second set of names, chosen at the Hôtel de Ville, came from a list made by the more radical republican paper La Réforme. In addition to the first set of deputies it included three journalists and a representative of the workers. Later that evening the combined list was acclaimed at the Hôtel de Ville.[3]

The members of the new Provisional Government collectively acted as head of state. They included the former deputies Jacques-Charles Dupont de l'Eure, Alphonse de Lamartine, Adolphe Crémieux, François Arago, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, Louis-Antoine Garnier-Pagès and Pierre Marie de Saint-Georges. The three journalists were Armand Marrast, Louis Blanc (a socialist) and Ferdinand Flocon. The representative of the workers was Alexandre Martin, known as "Albert".[3]

Paris Commune

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Third Republic

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Major affiliations

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Since the 1789 French Revolution, the political spectrum in France has obeyed the left–right distinction. However, due to the historical association of the term droite (right) with monarchism, conservative or right-wing parties have tended to avoid officially describing themselves as representing the "right wing".

French politics was for a long time characterised by two politically opposed groupings: one left-wing, centred on the French Socialist Party, and the other right-wing, centred previously around the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) and its successor the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), today called Les Republicains.

20th century

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Liberal and centrist political party, Renaissance (RE) (formely known as En Marche! and later La République En Marche!), has been the biggest political party in France since 2017.

The Left

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Further information: History of the Left in France

At the beginning of the 20th century, the French Left divided itself into:

After World War I

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  • Unlike those in Spain, the Anarchists lost popularity and significance due to the nationalism brought about by World War I and lost the CGT majority. They joined the CGT-U and later created the CGT-SR.
  • The SFIO split in the 1920 Tours Congress, where a majority of SFIO members created the French Section of the Communist International (the future PCF).
  • The SFIC, which quickly turned into a pro-Stalinist and isolated party (with no alliances), lost many of its original members, and changed only in 1934 (after a fascist attack to the Parliament on 6 February 1934) when it combined with the Popular Front.
  • The minority of the SFIO who refused to join the Comintern retained the name and, led by Léon Blum, gradually regained ground from the Communists.
  • The Radical Party, which inherited of the tradition of the French Left and of Radical Republicanism (sharing left-wing traits such as anti-clericalism), progressively moved more and more to the mainstream center, being one of the main governing parties between the two World Wars.

The Left was in power during:

After World War II

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The Old Left
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  • The anarchist movements.
  • The PCF remained an important force (around 28% in elections) despite it being in perpetual opposition after May 1947. From 1956 to the end of the 1970s it was interested in the ideas of "eurocommunism".
  • The SFIO declined from 23.5% in 1946 to 15% in 1956 and increased only in 1967 (19.0%). It was in government from 1946 to 1951 and 1956–1958. It was transformed in 1971 (congrès d'Épinay) in the Parti Socialiste by reunion of various socialists "clubs", the SFIO,...

After 1959, both parties were in opposition until 1981. They had formed a coalition (with the Party Radical de Gauche) called the "Union de la Gauche" between 1972 and 1978.

The New Left (or Second Left)
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The Old Left was contested on its left by the New Left parties including the:

However, the emblem of the New Left was the Unified Socialist Party, or PSU.

The Moderate Centre-Left
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After the end of the Cold War

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The Right

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Further information: Liberalism and Radicalism in France and History of the far-right in France

The right-wing has been divided into three broad families by historian René Rémond.

Legitimists

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Counter-revolutionaries who opposed all change since the French Revolution. Today, they are located on the far-right of the French political spectrum.

These included:

Orleanists

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Orleanists had rallied the Republic at the end of the 19th century and advocated economic liberalism (referred to in French simply as libéralisme). Today, they are broadly classified as centre-right or centrist parties.

These included:

Large majority of the politicians of Nicolas Sarkozy's then-ruling Union for a Popular Movement could had been classified in this family.

Bonapartists

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These included:

then the Union of Democrats for the Republic

Today

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The Gaullist UDR was then transformed by Jacques Chirac in the Rally for the Republic (RPR) in 1976, a neo-Gaullist party which embraced economic liberalism.

In 2002, the Gaullist RPR and the Union for French Democracy merged into the Union for a Popular Movement(UMP), although some elements of the old UDF remained outside the new alliance.[4] In 2015, the party's name was changed from Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) to The Republicans.[5]

In 2007, a section of the remaining UDF, headed by François Bayrou, refused to align themselves on Nicolas Sarkozy and created the MoDem in an attempt to make space for a center-right party.

In conclusion, Jean-Marie Le Pen managed to unify most of the French far-right in the National Front (FN), created in 1972 in the aftermaths of the Algerian War, which succeeded in gaining influence starting in the 1980s. In 2018, far-right National Front party (FN), led by Marine Le Pen, changed its name to the National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN).[6]

Residual monarchists movements, inheritors of Charles Maurras' Action française, also managed to survive, although many of them joined Le Pen's FN in the 1980s. Some neo-fascists who considered Le Pen to be too moderate broke away in 1974 to form the Parti des forces nouvelles, which maintained close links to the far-right students' union Groupe Union Défense.

Another important theoretical influence in the far-right appeared in the 1980s with Alain de Benoist's Nouvelle Droite movement, organized into the GRECE.

Despite Le Pen's success in the 2002 presidential election, his party has been weakened by Bruno Mégret's spin-out, leading to the creation of the National Republican Movement, as well as by the concurrence of Philippe de Villiers' Movement for France, and also by the internal struggles concerning Le Pen's forthcoming succession.

  1. ^ R.R. Palmer; Joel Colton (1978). A History of the Modern World (5th ed.). p. 161.
  2. ^ Anchel 1911.
  3. ^ a b Luna 2004.
  4. ^ Gallagher, Michael; et al. (2011). Representative Government in Modern Europe. McGraw-Hill Education. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-07-712967-5.
  5. ^ "Sarkozy renames French opposition The Republicans". BBC News. 30 May 2015.
  6. ^ "France's National Front renamed 'National Rally'". France 24. 1 June 2018.
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