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During the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715), France was the dominant power in Europe, aided by the diplomacy of Richelieu's successor (1642-1661) Cardinal Mazarin and the economic policies (1661-1683) of Colbert. Renewed war (1667-1668 and 1672-1678) brought further territorial gains (Artois and western Flanders and the free county of Burgundy, left to the Empire in 1482), but at the cost of the increasingly concerted opposition of rival powers.

Today, France is at the forefront of European states seeking to exploit the momentum of monetary union to advance the creation of a more unified and capable European political, defence and security apparatus.

On the eve of the French Revolution of 1789, France was a predominantly rural country ruled by an absolute monarch and the aristocracy under the now-called ancien régime, very backwards in many ways (for instance, torture was considered an appropriate means of extracting confessions in criminal trials; there was no freedom of religion, except that Protestantism was tolerated...). The ideas of the Enlightenment had however begun to permeate the educated classes of society.

After the war of 1689-1697 gained France only Haiti (lost to a slave revolt a century later), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713) ended with the undoing of Louis's dreams of a Franco-Spanish Bourbon empire: the two conflicts strained French resources already weakened by disastrous harvests in the 1690s and in 1709, as well as by the revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes and the consequent loss of Huguenot support and manpower.

Senators are chosen by an electoral college of about 145,000 local elected officials for 6-year terms, and one half of the Senate is renewed every 3 years. Before the law of 30 July 2004, senators were elected for 9 years, renewed by thirds every 3 years. There are currently 321 senators, but there will be 346 in 2010; 304 represent the metropolitan and overseas départements, five the other dependencies and 12 the French established abroad.

One of the most important events during the Third Republic was the Dreyfus Affair, a political scandal that highlighted the dangerous levels of Anti-semitism and clerical power in the higher reaches of the French political and military systems, towards the end of the 19th century, which ultimately led to the speedy passing of the 1905 law on laïcité, split the whole nation and is referred to in most of the issues in France since that date.