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France, [IX] officially the French Republic, [X] is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world.
The population of France is growing by 1,000,000 people every three years- an average annual increase of 340,000 people, or +0.6%. [7] France was historically Europe's most populous country. During the Middle Ages, more than one-quarter of Europe's total population was French; [8] by the seventeenth century, this had decreased slightly to one ...
France sought revenge for this defeat, and under Choiseul France started to rebuild. In 1766, the French Kingdom annexed Lorraine and the following year bought Corsica from Genoa . Having lost its colonial empire, France saw a good opportunity for revenge against Britain in signing an alliance with the Americans in 1778, and sending an army and ...
A topographic map of the Republic, excluding all the overseas departments and territories Simplified physical map. The geography of France consists of a terrain that is mostly flat plains or gently rolling hills in the north and the west and mountainous in the south (including the Massif Central and the Pyrenees) and the east (the country's highest points being in the Alps).
The Eiffel Tower seen from the Place du Trocadéro. Paris, the capital city of France, is the third most visited city in the world. [5]It has some of the world's largest and renowned museums, including the Louvre, which is the most visited art museum in the world, but also the Musée d'Orsay which, like the nearby Musée de l'Orangerie, is mostly devoted to impressionism, and Centre Georges ...
The culture of France has been shaped by geography, by historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris, has played an important role as a center of high culture since the 17th century and from the 19th century on, worldwide. From the late 19th century, France has also played an important role in ...
In 1914, the territory of France was different from today's France in two important ways: most of Alsace and the northeastern part of Lorraine had been annexed by Germany in 1870 (following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871), and the North African country of Algeria had been established as an integral part of France in 1848.
Southern France is generally considered part of southern Europe because of its association with the Mediterranean Sea. The term Midi derives from mi ('middle') and di ('day') in Old French , comparable to the term Mezzogiorno to indicate southern Italy, Miazăzi which is a synonym for south in Romanian , or meridional which is a synonym for the ...