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Following the seizure of the (then separate) English, Irish and Scottish thrones by the Dutch prince William of Orange in 1688, the anti-French "Grand Alliance" of 1689 inaugurated more than a century of intermittent European conflict in which Britain would play an ever more important role, seeking in particular to keep France out of the Netherlands (the Dutch provinces and the future Belgium, then under Spanish rule).

France surrendered to Nazi Germany early in World War II (June 24, 1940). Nazi Germany occupied three fifths of France's territory leaving the rest to the new Vichy collaboration government established on July 10, 1940 under Henri Philippe Pétain. Its senior leaders acquiesced in the plunder of French resources, as well as the sending of French forced labor to Nazi Germany; in doing so, they claimed they hoped to preserve at least some small amount of French sovereignty. The Nazi German occupation proved costly, however, as Nazi Germany appropriated a full one-half of France's public sector revenue.

Settled mainly by the Gauls and related Celtic peoples (apart from a shrinking area of Basque population in the south-west and Ligurian population on the southern coast), the area of modern France comprised the bulk of the region of Gaul (Latin Gallia) under Roman rule from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD.

France is a unitary state. However, the various legal subdivisions, the régions, départements and communes, have various attributions, and the national government is prohibited from intruding into their legal normal operations.

France is a democracy organised as a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is a developed nation whose modern economy is the fifth-largest in the world in 2003. Its main values are expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

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.

Although ultimately a victor in World Wars I and II, France - much like Britain - suffered extensive losses in its empire, comparative economic status, working population, and status as a dominant nation-state. Since 1958, it has constructed a semi-presidential democracy (known as the Fifth Republic) that has not succumbed to the instabilities experienced in earlier, more parliamentary regimes.

The national government of France is divided into an executive branch, a legislative branch and a judiciary branch. The President of France has some direct executive power but most of the formal power resides in his appointee the Prime Minister of France, the choice of which in practice has to be approved by the French National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament (see below for a discussion of the division of power between the President and Prime Minister). Parliament passes statutes and votes the budget; it also controls the action of the executive through questioning and enquiry commissions. The constitutionality of the statutes is checked by the Constitutional Council. Finally, the independent judiciary is divided into the judicial branch (dealing with civil and criminal law) and the administrative branch (dealing with recourses against executive decisions), each with their own independent supreme court. In addition, the French government comprises various bodies checking against possible abuses of power and independant agencies.

Statute legislation may be proposed by the government (i.e. the council of ministers), or by members of parliament. In the first case, it is a projet de loi, in the latter case, a proposition de loi. All projets de loi must undergo compulsory advisory review by the Conseil d'État before being submitted to parliament. Propositions de loi cannot increase the financial load of the state without providing for funding.

France has an important aerospace industry (lead by Airbus Industrie) and is the only European power to have its own national space centre. France is also the most energy independent Western country due to heavy investment in nuclear power, which also makes France the smallest producer of carbon dioxide among the seven most industrialised countries in the world. Large tracts of fertile land, the application of modern technology, and EU subsidies have combined to make France the leading agricultural producer in Western Europe.

The reign (1715-1774) of Louis XV saw an initial return to peace and prosperity under the regency (1715-1723) of Philippe II, duke of Orléans, whose policies were largely continued (1726-1743) by Cardinal Fleury, prime minister in all but name, renewed war with the Empire (1733-1735 and 1740-1748) being fought largely in the East. But alliance with the traditional Habsburg enemy (the "Diplomatic Revolution" of 1756) against the rising power of Britain and Prussia led to costly failure in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763).

Under the constitution, the president was originally elected for a seven year term; this has been reduced to five years. The president names the prime minister, presides over the cabinet, commands the armed forces, and concludes treaties. The president may submit questions to national referenda and can dissolve the National Assembly. In certain emergencies, the president may assume special, comprehensive powers.

The May 1958 seizure of power in Algiers by French army units and French settlers opposed to concessions in the face of Arab nationalist insurrection led to the fall of the French government and a presidential invitation to de Gaulle to form an emergency government to forestall the threat of civil war. Swiftly replacing the existing constitution with one strengthening the powers of the presidency, he became the elected president in December of that year, inaugurating France's Fifth Republic.

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.