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65-579: Jean-François Marmontel ( French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ fʁɑ̃swa maʁmɔ̃tɛl] ; 11 July 1723 – 31 December 1799) was a French historian, writer and a member of the Encyclopédistes movement. He was born of poor parents at Bort , Limousin (today in Corrèze ). After studying with the Jesuits at Mauriac , Cantal , he taught in their colleges at Clermont-Ferrand and Toulouse ; and in 1745, acting on

130-556: A common French culture , history , and language , identified with the country of France . The French people, especially the native speakers of langues d'oïl from northern and central France, are primarily descended from Romans (or Gallo-Romans , western European Celtic and Italic peoples ), Gauls (including the Belgae ), as well as Germanic peoples such as the Franks , the Visigoths ,

195-629: A community of French Huguenots settled in South Africa . Most of these originally settled in the Cape Colony , but have since been quickly absorbed into the Afrikaner population. After Champlain's founding of Quebec City in 1608, it became the capital of New France . Encouraging settlement was difficult, and while some immigration did occur, by 1763 New France only had a population of some 65,000. From 1713 to 1787, 30,000 colonists immigrated from France to

260-485: A genre in which he excelled but could not compete with Charles-Simon Favart . French people France: 67,413,000 French diaspora and ancestry : c.  30 million Asia Middle East Europe North America South America Oceania The French people ( French : Les Français , lit.   'The French') are a nation primarily located in Western Europe that share

325-566: A majority of French people had other first languages (local languages such as Occitan , Catalan , Alsatian , West Flemish , Lorraine Franconian , Gallo , Picard or Ch'timi and Arpitan ). Today, many immigrants speak another tongue at home. According to historian Eric Hobsbawm , "the French language has been essential to the concept of 'France'," although in 1789, 50 percent of the French people did not speak it at all, and only 12 to 13 percent spoke it fairly well; even in oïl languages zones, it

390-599: A member of Les Neuf Sœurs, added Jefferson's marble bust to his corpus of works, which included busts of Franklin and General Lafayette . Jefferson persuaded Houdon to make his famous statue of George Washington , for which Houdon travelled to America in 1785. While Jefferson stayed in Paris, at the Maison des Feuillants, his neighbour was Jean-François Marmontel Secretary-for-Life of the Paris Academy of Sciences and another member of

455-455: A picturesque review of his life, a literary history of two important reigns, a great gallery of portraits extending from the venerable Jean Baptiste Massillon , whom more than half a century previously he had seen at Clermont, to Honoré Mirabeau . The book was nominally written for the instruction of his children. It contains an exquisite picture of his own childhood in the Limousin ; its value for

520-535: A short stay in Paris when elected in 1797 to the Conseil des Anciens , he died at Abloville. He was a member of the Masonic lodge Les Neuf Sœurs . John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him. In his autobiography, John Stuart Mill credits Mémoires d'un père with curing him of depression. Marmontel published many opera librettos and mostly operas comiques librettos,

585-482: Is also widely spoken, arguably the largest minority language in France as of the 21st century (a spot previously held by Breton and Occitan ). Modern French society is a melting pot . From the middle of the 19th century, it experienced a high rate of inward migration , mainly consisting of Spaniards , Portuguese , Italians , Arab-Berbers , Jews , Sub-Saharan Africans , Chinese , and other peoples from Africa ,

650-603: Is estimated that 20,000 settlers were living in Saigon in 1945, and there were 68,430 European settlers living in Madagascar in 1958. 1.6 million European pieds noirs settlers migrated from Algeria , Tunisia and Morocco . In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 pied noir settlers left Algeria in the most massive relocation of population in Europe since the World War II . In

715-399: Is happening as part of a background evolution and recent studies confirmed the results of their assimilation, showing that "North Africans seem to be characterized by a high degree of cultural integration reflected in a relatively high propensity to exogamy " with rates ranging from 20% to 50%. According to Emmanuel Todd the relatively high exogamy among French Algerians can be explained by

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780-498: Is my home". Indeed, the country has long valued its openness , tolerance and the quality of services available. Application for French citizenship is often interpreted as a renunciation of previous state allegiance unless a dual citizenship agreement exists between the two countries (for instance, this is the case with Switzerland : one can be both French and Swiss). The European treaties have formally permitted movement and European citizens enjoy formal rights to employment in

845-591: Is such a thing as a "French ethnic group". The discourse of ethno-nationalist groups such as the Front National (FN), however, advances the concept of Français de souche or "indigenous" French. The conventional conception of French history starts with Ancient Gaul, and French national identity often views the Gauls as national precursors, either as biological ancestors (hence the refrain nos ancêtres les Gaulois ), as emotional/spiritual ancestors, or both. Vercingetorix ,

910-503: Is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture. Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes, and influences in conjugation and word order. Today, the last redoubt of Celtic language in France can be found in

975-732: The Encyclopédie evincing considerable critical power and insight, which in their collected form, under the title Eléments de Littérature , still rank among the French classics. He also wrote several comic operas, the two best of which probably are Sylvain (1770) and Zémire et Azore (1771). In the Gluck – Piccinni controversy he was an eager partisan of Piccinni with whom he collaborated in Roland (Piccinni) (1778) and Atys (1779), both using Jean Baptiste Lully 's libretto by Quinault as basis, Didon (1783) and Penelope (1785). In 1758 he gained

1040-658: The Académie française in 1763. In 1767 he published Bélisaire , now remarkable in part because of a chapter on religious toleration which incurred the censure of the Sorbonne and the archbishop of Paris . Marmontel retorted in Les Incas, ou la destruction de l'empire du Perou (1777) by tracing the cruelties in Spanish America to the religious fanaticism of the invaders. He was appointed historiographer of France (1771), secretary to

1105-617: The Americas , with the exception of the Huguenots , due to a lower birthrate than in the rest of Europe. However, significant emigration of mainly Roman Catholic French populations led to the settlement of the Province of Acadia , Canada (New France) and Louisiana , all (at the time) French possessions, as well as colonies in the West Indies , Mascarene islands and Africa . On 30 December 1687,

1170-515: The Danelaw in the region known today as Normandy in the 9th and 10th centuries. This later became a fiefdom of the Kingdom of France under King Charles III . The Vikings eventually intermarried with the local people, converting to Christianity in the process. The Normans, two centuries later, went on to conquer England and Southern Italy . Eventually, though, the largely autonomous Duchy of Normandy

1235-836: The French Basque Country , Catalans in northern Catalonia , Germans in Alsace , Corsicans in Corsica and Flemings in French Flanders . France has long been a patchwork of local customs and regional differences, and while most French people still speak the French language as their mother tongue , languages like Picard , Poitevin-Saintongeais , Franco-Provencal , Occitan , Catalan , Auvergnat , Corsican , Basque , French Flemish , Lorraine Franconian , Alsatian , Norman , and Breton remain spoken in their respective regions. Arabic

1300-554: The French Constitution , according to which "French" is a nationality , and not a specific ethnicity. France sits at the edge of the European peninsula and has seen waves of migration of groups that often settled owing to the presence of physical barriers preventing onward migration. This has led to language and regional cultural variegation, but the extent to which this pattern of migrations showed up in population genetics studies

1365-533: The French West Indies ( French Caribbean ), and in foreign countries with significant French-speaking population groups or not, such as the United States ( French Americans ), Canada ( French Canadians ), Argentina ( French Argentines ), Brazil ( French Brazilians ), Mexico ( French Mexicans ), Chile ( French Chileans ) and Uruguay ( French Uruguayans ). To be French, according to

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1430-466: The Industrial Revolution . The pace of industrial growth attracted millions of European immigrants over the next century, with especially large numbers arriving from Poland , Belgium , Portugal , Italy , and Spain . In the period from 1915 to 1950, many immigrants came from Czechoslovakia , Hungary , Russia , Scandinavia and Yugoslavia . Small but significant numbers of Frenchmen in

1495-792: The Institut de France so as to keep the original influence of the "Neuf Soeurs" intact. (Hahn, 1971) The lodge was reconstituted under its original name in 1805, ceased operation from 1829 to 1836, and finally closed in 1848. Its former location is thought to be on the Rue de la Bûcherie on the Left Bank across from Notre-Dame. Its successive "Venerable Masters" of the first decade were Benjamin Franklin (1779–1781), Marquis de La Salle (1781–1783), Milly (1783–1784), Charles Dupaty (1784), Elie de Beaumont (1784–1785), and Claude Pastoret (1788–1789) (Ligou, 1987). In 1778,

1560-685: The Middle East and East Asia , and the government, defining France as an inclusive nation with universal values, advocated assimilation through which immigrants were expected to adhere to French values and cultural norms. Nowadays, while the government has let newcomers retain their distinctive cultures since the mid-1980s and requires from them a mere integration , French citizens still equate their nationality with citizenship as does French law. In addition to mainland France, French people and people of French descent can be found internationally, in overseas departments and territories of France such as

1625-651: The Saint-Domingue . In 1805, when the French were forced out of Saint-Domingue ( Haiti ), 35,000 French settlers were given lands in Cuba . By the beginning of the 17th century, some 20% of the total male population of Catalonia was made up of French immigrants. In the 18th century and early 19th century, a small migration of French emigrated by official invitation of the Habsburgs to the Austro-Hungarian Empire , now

1690-986: The Suebi and the Burgundians who settled in Gaul from east of the Rhine after the fall of the Roman Empire , as well as various later waves of lower-level irregular migration that have continued to the present day. The Norsemen also settled in Normandy in the 10th century and contributed significantly to the ancestry of the Normans . Furthermore, regional ethnic minorities also exist within France that have distinct lineages, languages and cultures such as Bretons in Brittany , Occitans in Occitania , Basques in

1755-527: The United States Census , French people are not asked to define their ethnic appartenance, whichever it may be. The usage of ethnic and racial categorization is avoided to prevent any case of discrimination; the same regulations apply to religious membership data that cannot be compiled under the French Census. This classic French republican non- essentialist conception of nationality is officialized by

1820-401: The 1789 French Revolution . It replaced the ancient kingdom of France, ruled by the divine right of kings . The 1870 Franco-Prussian War , which led to the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, was instrumental in bolstering patriotic feelings; until World War I (1914–1918), French politicians never completely lost sight of the disputed Alsace-Lorraine region which played a major role in

1885-579: The 1970s, over 30,000 French settlers left Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime as the Pol Pot government confiscated their farms and land properties. In the 1960s, a second wave of immigration came to France, which was needed for reconstruction purposes and for cheaper labour after the devastation brought on by World War II . French entrepreneurs went to Maghreb countries looking for cheap labour, thus encouraging work-immigration to France. Their settlement

1950-623: The 7th century BCE or earlier, and non-Celtic peoples including the Ligures , Aquitanians and Basques in Aquitaine. The Belgae , who lived in the northern and eastern areas, may have had Germanic admixture; many of these peoples had already spoken Gaulish by the time of the Roman conquest. Gaul was militarily conquered in 58–51 BCE by the Roman legions under the command of General Julius Caesar , except for

2015-625: The Academy (1783), and professor of history in the Lycée (1786). As a historiographer, Marmontel wrote a history of the regency (1788). Reduced to poverty by the French Revolution , Marmontel retired during the Reign of Terror to Evreux , and soon afterwards to a cottage at Abloville (near Saint-Aubin-sur-Gaillon ) in the département of Eure . There he wrote Memoires d'un père (4 vols., 1804), including

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2080-583: The Franks, led by the Merovingian king Clovis I and his sons, had consolidated their hold on much of modern-day France. The other major Germanic people to arrive in France, after the Burgundians and the Visigoths , were the Norsemen or Northmen . Known by the shortened name " Norman " in France, these were Viking raiders from modern Denmark and Norway . They settled with Anglo-Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons from

2145-526: The French Revolution, it divided social classes, with the peasants identifying with the native Gauls while the aristocracy identified with the Franks. During the early nineteenth century, intellectuals began using the identification with Gaul instead as a unifying force to bridge divisions within French society with a common national origin myth . Myriam Krepps of the University of Nebraska-Omaha argues that

2210-550: The Gaulish chieftain who tried to unite the various Gallic tribes of the land against Roman encroachment but was ultimately vanquished by Julius Caesar , is often revered as a "first national hero". In the famously popular French comic Asterix , the main characters are patriotic Gauls who fight against Roman invaders while in modern days the term Gaulois is used in French to distinguish the "native" French from French of immigrant origins. However, despite its occasional nativist usage,

2275-403: The Gaulish identity has also been embraced by French of non-native origins as well: notably, Napoleon III , whose family was ultimately of Corsican and Italian roots, identified France with Gaul and Vercingetorix, and declared that "New France, ancient France, Gaul are one and the same moral person." It has been noted that the French view of having Gallic origins has evolved over history. Before

2340-447: The Lodge. At the same time Jefferson's friend, American Founding Father John Adams , was the neighbour, at Auteuil, of Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius , who hosted the famous Cercle d'Auteuil where the influence of Les Neuf Sœurs was at its highest. In Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinisme (4 vol.,1797–1798) Abbé Barruel attributed membership to key figures of

2405-930: The North and Northeast regions have relatives in Germany and Great Britain . Between 1956 and 1967, about 235,000 North African Jews from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco also immigrated to France due to the decline of the French empire and following the Six-Day War. Hence, by 1968, Jews of North African origin comprised the majority of the Jewish population of France. As these new immigrants were already culturally French they needed little time to adjust to French society. French law made it easy for thousands of settlers ( colons in French), national French from former colonies of North and East Africa , India and Indochina to live in mainland France. It

2470-470: The Roman army and obtained important commands. Their language is still spoken as a kind of Dutch ( French Flemish ) in northern France ( French Flanders ). The Alamans , another Germanic people immigrated to Alsace , hence the Alemannic German now spoken there. The Alamans were competitors of the Franks, and their name is the origin of the French word for "German": Allemand . By the early 6th century,

2535-661: The US and the UK) but as social conflicts born out of socioeconomic problems endangering proper integration. Historically, the heritage of the French people is mostly of Celtic or Gallic , Latin ( Romans ) origin, descending from the ancient and medieval populations of Gauls or Celts from the Atlantic to the Rhone Alps , Germanic tribes that settled France from east of the Rhine and Belgium after

2600-418: The advice of Voltaire , he set out for Paris to try for literary success. From 1748 to 1753 he wrote a succession of tragedies : Denys le Tyran (1748); Aristomene (1749); Cleopâtre (1750); Heraclides (1752); Egyptus (1753). These literary works, though only moderately successful on the stage, secured Marmontel's introduction into literary and fashionable circles. He wrote a series of articles for

2665-447: The centuries to France, creating a variegated grouping of peoples. Thus the historian John F. Drinkwater states, "The French are, paradoxically, strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation, but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge." The modern French are the descendants of mixtures including Romans , Celts , Iberians , Ligurians and Greeks in southern France, Germanic peoples arriving at

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2730-524: The colonial link between France and Algeria. A small French descent group also subsequently arrived from Latin America ( Argentina , Chile and Uruguay ) in the 1970s. Most French people speak the French language as their mother tongue , but certain languages like Norman , Occitan languages , Corsican , Euskara , French Flemish and Breton remain spoken in certain regions (see Language policy in France ). There have also been periods of history when

2795-581: The decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, a federation of Germanic peoples entered the picture: the Franks , from which the word "French" derives. The Franks were Germanic pagans who began to settle in northern Gaul as laeti during the Roman era. They continued to filter across the Rhine River from present-day Netherlands and Germany between the 3rd and 7th centuries. Initially, they served in

2860-425: The definition of the French nation and therefore of the French people. The decrees of 24 October 1870 by Adolphe Crémieux granted automatic and massive French citizenship to all Jewish people of Algeria. Successive waves of immigrants during the 19th and 20th centuries were rapidly assimilated into French culture . France's population dynamics began to change in the middle of the 19th century, as France joined

2925-416: The end of the Roman Empire such as the Franks and the Burgundians , and some Vikings who mixed with the Normans and settled mostly in Normandy in the 9th century. According to Dominique Schnapper , "The classical conception of the nation is that of an entity which, opposed to the ethnic group, affirms itself as an open community, the will to live together expressing itself by the acceptation of

2990-409: The fall of the Roman Empire such as the Franks , Burgundians , Allemanni , Visigoths , and Suebi , Latin and Roman tribes such as Ligurians and Gallo-Romans , Basques , and Norse populations largely settling in Normandy at the beginning of the 10th century as well as " Bretons " (Celtic Britons) settling in Brittany in Western France . The name "France" etymologically derives from

3055-489: The first article of the French Constitution , is to be a citizen of France, regardless of one's origin, race, or religion ( sans distinction d'origine, de race ou de religion ). According to its principles, France has devoted itself to the destiny of a proposition nation , a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live together, as defined by Ernest Renan 's " plébiscite de tous les jours " ('everyday plebiscite') on

3120-441: The island of Saint-Martin hold French nationality even though they do not speak French as a first language, while their neighbouring French-speaking Haitian immigrants (who also speak a French-creole) remain foreigners. Large numbers of people of French ancestry outside Europe speak other first languages, particularly English, throughout most of North America (with Quebec and Acadians in the Canadian Maritimes being notable, not

3185-448: The literary historian is great. Marmontel lived for some time under the roof of Madame Geoffrin , and was present at her famous dinners given to artists; he was welcomed into most of the houses where the encyclopaedists met, and was a contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers . He thus had at his command the best material for his portraits, and made good use of his opportunities. After

3250-490: The nations of Austria , Czech Republic , Hungary , Slovakia , Serbia and Romania . Some of them, coming from French-speaking communes in Lorraine or being French Swiss Walsers from the Valais canton in Switzerland , maintained for some generations the French language and a specific ethnic identity, later labelled as Banat (French: Français du Banat ). By 1788, there were eight villages populated by French colonists. The French First Republic appeared following

3315-414: The northwestern region of Brittany , although this is not the result of a survival of Gaulish language but of a 5th-century AD migration of Brythonic speaking Celts from Britain . The Vulgar Latin in the region of Gallia took on a distinctly local character, some of which is attested in graffiti, which evolved into the Gallo-Romance dialects which include French and its closest relatives. With

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3380-414: The only, exceptions), Spanish or Portuguese in southern South America , and Afrikaans in South Africa . The adjective "French" can be used to mean either "French citizen" or "French-speaker", and usage varies depending on the context, with the former being common in France. The latter meaning is often used in Canada, when discussing matters internal to Canada. Generations of settlers have migrated over

3445-404: The patronage of Madame de Pompadour , who obtained for him a place as a civil servant, and the management of the official journal Le Mercure , in which he had already begun the famous series of Contes moraux . The merit of these tales lies partly in the delicate finish of the style, but mainly in the graphic and charming pictures of French society under King Louis XV . The author was elected to

3510-421: The rules of a unified public domain which transcends all particularisms". This conception of the nation as being composed by a "will to live together," supported by the classic lecture of Ernest Renan in 1882, has been opposed by the French far-right , in particular the nationalist Front National ("National Front" – FN / now Rassemblement National - "National Rally" - RN) party which claims that there

3575-411: The south-east which had already been conquered about one century earlier. Over the next six centuries, the two cultures intermingled, creating a hybridized Gallo-Roman culture . In the late Roman era, in addition to colonists from elsewhere in the Empire and Gaulish natives, Gallia also became home to some immigrant populations of Germanic and Scythian origin, such as the Alans . The Gaulish language

3640-639: The state sector (though not as trainees in reserved branches, e.g., as magistrates ). Seeing itself as an inclusive nation with universal values, France has always valued and strongly advocated assimilation . However, the success of such assimilation has recently been called into question. There is increasing dissatisfaction with, and within, growing ethno-cultural enclaves ( communautarisme ). The 2005 French riots in some troubled and impoverished suburbs ( les quartiers sensibles ) were an example of such tensions. However they should not be interpreted as ethnic conflicts (as appeared before in other countries like

3705-448: The view of "a unified territory (one land since the beginning of civilization) and a unified people" which de-emphasized "all disparities and the succession of waves of invaders" was first imprinted on the masses by the unified history curriculum of French textbooks in the late 1870s. Since the beginning of the Third Republic (1871–1940), the state has not categorized people according to their alleged ethnic origins. Hence, in contrast to

3770-402: The willingness to live together, in Renan's 1882 essay " Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? "). The debate concerning the integration of this view with the principles underlying the European Community remains open. France has been historically open to immigration, although this has changed in recent years. Referring to this perceived openness, Gertrude Stein , wrote: "America is my country but Paris

3835-470: The word Francia , the territory of the Franks . The Franks were a Germanic tribe that overran Roman Gaul at the end of the Roman Empire . In the pre-Roman era, Gaul (an area of Western Europe that encompassed all of what is known today as France, Belgium, part of Germany and Switzerland, and Northern Italy) was inhabited by a variety of peoples who were known collectively as the Gaulish tribes . Their ancestors were Celts who came from Central Europe in

3900-427: The year Voltaire became a member, Benjamin Franklin and John Paul Jones also were accepted along with Jean Sylvain Bailly . Benjamin Franklin became Master of the Lodge in 1779, and was re-elected in 1780. When Franklin, after a long and influential stay in Europe, returned to America to participate in the writing of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson a non-Mason took over as American Envoy. Jean-Antoine Houdon ,

3965-470: Was also identified in the fourteenth century, consistent with the timing for the Black Death in Europe. Les Neuf S%C5%93urs During the French Revolution , while the Académie Royale des Sciences et des Arts was drastically reorganised, two members of the lodge, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu and Gilbert Romme , in collaboration with Henri Grégoire , helped to organise a "Société Libre des Sciences, Belles Lettres et Arts", to subsidise what had become

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4030-425: Was incorporated back into the royal domain (i. e. the territory under direct control of the French king) in the Middle Ages . In the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem , founded in 1099, at most 120,000 Franks, who were predominantly French -speaking Western Christians, ruled over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, France experienced relatively low levels of emigration to

4095-500: Was not usually used except in cities, and even there not always in the outlying districts . Abroad, the French language is spoken in many different countries – in particular the former French colonies . Nevertheless, speaking French is distinct from being a French citizen. Thus, francophonie , or the speaking of French, must not be confused with French citizenship or ethnicity. For example, French speakers in Switzerland are not "French citizens". Native English-speaking Blacks on

4160-588: Was officialized with Jacques Chirac 's family regrouping act of 1976 ( regroupement familial ). Since then, immigration has become more varied, although France stopped being a major immigration country compared to other European countries. The large impact of North African and Arab immigration is the greatest and has brought racial , socio-cultural and religious questions to a country seen as homogenously European, French and Christian for thousands of years. Nevertherless, according to Justin Vaïsse , professor at Sciences Po Paris , integration of Muslim immigrants

4225-403: Was unclear until the publication of a study in 2019 that used genome wide data. The study identified six different genetic clusters that could be distinguished across populations. The study concluded that the population genetic clusters correlate with linguistic and historical divisions in France and with the presence of geographic barriers such as mountains and major rivers. A population bottleneck

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