From the mid-14th to the mid-15th century, France was plunged into a series of dynastic conflicts for the French throne, collectively known as the Hundred Years' War, and a distinct French identity emerged as a result. By the end of his reign, the kingdom had emerged as the most powerful state in Europe. King Philip Augustus achieved remarkable success in the strengthening of royal power and the expansion of his realm, defeating his rivals and doubling its size. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but highly decentralised feudal kingdom in which the king's authority was barely felt. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France in 987. The Germanic Franks arrived in 476 and formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture that laid the foundation of the French language. Inhabited since the Palaeolithic era, the territory of Metropolitan France was settled by Celtic tribes known as Gauls during the Iron Age. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km 2 (248,573 sq mi) and over 67 million people (as of May 2021 ).
France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra and Spain in Europe, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname and Brazil in the Americas. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and several islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Including all of its territories, France has twelve time zones, the most of any country. The CIA reports the total as 643,801 km 2 (248,573 sq mi).įrance ( French: ), officially the French Republic (French: République française), is a transcontinental country spanning Western Europe and overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Adding these give the total shown here for the entire French Republic. Source gives area of metropolitan France as 551,500 km 2 (212,900 sq mi) and lists overseas regions separately, whose areas sum to 89,179 km 2 (34,432 sq mi).
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