France

France invented the modern nation-state, exported revolution across Europe, built the world's second-largest colonial empire—and in 2025 faces political paralysis not seen since 1958. Under the Fifth Republic's seventh president, the country has cycled through five prime ministers in two years while debt mounts and the streets periodically erupt. The eternal crisis strikes again.

The Roman conquest of Gaul (58-50 BCE) created the template: centralized administration, unified legal systems, roads connecting provinces to capital. The Frankish kingdom that emerged from Roman collapse produced Charlemagne, whose empire encompassed much of Western Europe. When that empire fragmented, the Kingdom of France gradually consolidated around Paris and the Île-de-France—a process completed only when Louis XIV's absolutism (1643-1715) crushed regional nobles and Protestant resistance alike. French centralization under the Sun King became the model European monarchies copied.

The 1789 Revolution destroyed that monarchy while intensifying centralization. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the metric system, the departmental reorganization of territory, the civil code—revolutionary France remade governance at every level. The Terror killed 16,000; the wars that followed killed millions more. Napoleon Bonaparte emerged from revolutionary chaos to build an empire stretching from Spain to Poland, spreading French administrative innovations at bayonet point. His defeat in 1815 ended French military dominance but not French influence: the civil law systems of most of continental Europe derive from the Napoleonic Code.

The 19th century produced republic, monarchy, empire, republic, and empire again—instability that the Third Republic (1870-1940) finally stabilized. Meanwhile, France built a colonial empire covering 13 million square kilometers at its peak—9% of the world's land area. Algeria was considered part of France itself; Indochina, West Africa, Madagascar, and Pacific territories provided resources and markets. Decolonization (1945-1962) was often violent: Indochina became Vietnam; Algeria's independence war killed hundreds of thousands and brought France to the brink of civil war.

The Fifth Republic emerged from that Algerian crisis. Charles de Gaulle designed a semi-presidential system specifically to end the chronic instability of the Fourth Republic, whose governments changed every six months. The president would hold real power; the prime minister would manage parliament. For six decades, the system functioned—producing alternations between left and right, cohabitation between presidents and opposing prime ministers, but always governance.

Emmanuel Macron's presidency has tested the system's limits. Elected in 2017 as a centrist promising reform, re-elected in 2022, Macron faces a parliament where his party lacks majority and the far-right National Rally has become the largest bloc. Five prime ministers in two years; mounting debt (approaching 115% of GDP); protests against pension reform, inflation, and perceived presidential arrogance. Some commentators note that the 1789 Revolution also began with a debt crisis.

France remains the EU's second-largest economy and the world's ninth by purchasing power. Services dominate; manufacturing (aerospace, luxury goods, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power) remains significant. The state accounts for 56% of GDP—the highest in the developed world. But the political system designed to end instability now produces paralysis. Through 2026, France tests whether the Fifth Republic can survive its contradictions or whether a Sixth Republic—whatever that might mean—becomes necessary.