This article describes the process by which metropolitan France - that part of France that is located in Europe, excluding its various overseas territories - came to consist of the territory it does today. Its current borders date from 1947.
Modern France is the successor state to the Kingdom of France, itself a successor to the Kingdom of West Francia, which came into being in 843 when the empire of Charlemagne was divided. Its rulers styled themselves as "King of the Franks", and their realm continued to be known as Francia, until king Philip II became the first to refer to himself as "King of France", in 1204.
Although in theory the medieval kingdom of France was not much smaller than the modern French Republic - stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Alps - the reality was that the king's direct authority was limited to a small area around Paris known as the île de France. The rest of the kingdom was made up of numerous all but independent fiefs ruled by the king's vassals: dukes and counts who owed him their loyalty and allegiance. To what extent areas like the County of Toulouse or the Duchy of Aquitaine can be considered part of the Kingdom of France before they were conquered by the king's armies is debatable. An integral part of the Kingdom of France's evolution through the Middle Ages is the story of how the Capetian kings, and their successors the Valois, brought these areas already in the kingdom under direct royal control, either through conquest, purchase or inheritance. Meanwhile, the acquisitions of the counties of Dauphine in 1349, and Provence in 1486, saw at once both the Royal Domain and the Kingdom of France expand their frontiers into the south-east, with both having previously been fiefs of the neighbouring Holy Roman Empire.
In 1066 Duke William of Normandy conquered England, making him and his successors simultaneously kings of England and - technically at least - vassals of the king of France. However, their loyalty and obedience to him was hardly a likely prospect, and the attempts of English kings to both directly control and expand their French territories sparked a succession of wars during the Late Middle Ages. On the one hand, the cost of defeat in battle could have calamitous consequences, and leave even more territory in English hands. But on the other, these wars served to unite the French feudal lords against a common enemy, and the king could use their military assistance to help conquer territory on behalf of the crown. Moreover, the wars with England - in particular the Hundred Years War, from which France ultimately emerged victorious in 1453 - helped forge a sense of French national identity.
At the beginning of the Early Modern Period, the final feudal lordships were absorbed into the royal domain, along with the large duchies of Brittany and Burgundy. By now France had become a much more centralised state, with its king exercising absolute power. Although attempts at expanding into the Italian peninsula and the Low Countries at the expense of the increasingly powerful Habsburg dynasty were ultimately unsuccessful, France's victory in the Thirty Years' War over Habsburg Spain and Austria cemented its position as the foremost power on the European continent. There followed a series of annexations during the reign of Louis XIV that greatly expanded the Kingdom of France in the north and in the east, such as Artois in 1659, Alsace in 1675, and Franche-Comté in 1678. However, only a small part of the wealthy County of Flanders, lost to the Habsburgs in 1493, was regained in 1668.
The Duchy of Lorraine remained some time an enclave in the French kingdom before it too was incorporated in 1766. But for a few smaller enclaves, this brought the territory of the kingdom into a consolidated block, known today as "l'Hexagone". Meanwhile, the island of Corsica, a long-time possession of the Republic of Genoa and briefly an independent republic, was conquered in 1768.
Following the revolution, the new republic annexed the last remaining exclaves surrounded by France, such as the papal territory of Avignon, and conquered the former Austrian Netherlands (modern day Belgium) and Luxembourg. Faced with war against virtually all the other nations in Europe, France reached by far its greatest territorial extent during the early nineteenth century when the Emperor Napoleon incorporated the Dutch Republic, Catalonia, Dalmatia, and parts of Germany and Italy into the First French Empire. However following Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, France's borders were returned to where they had been in 1791 (but for the small enclaves annexed by the republic).
Since then, France has been invaded by Prussia and twice by Germany, but has regained any lost territories on each occasion (Alsace and Lorraine changing hands four times in the process). Thus the territory of the Metropolitan France that emerged from the aftermath of World War II almost exactly corresponded with that of France on the eve of the revolution.
Although Algeria in 1848, and remained so until its independence in 1962, it is not counted as part of Metropolitan France for the purposes of this article.
Geographical context To a large extent, modern France lies within clear limits of physical geography. Roughly half of its margin lies on sea coasts: one continuous coastline along "La Manche" ("the sleeve" or English Channel) and the Atlantic Ocean forming the country's north-western and western edge, and a shorter, separate coastline along the Mediterranean Sea forming its south-eastern edge.
In the south-west, France's border with Spain and Andorra runs along the peaks of the Pyrenees mountain range, a border which has barely changed since the Middle Ages (and not changed at all since the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees). In the south-east, its border with Italy and Switzerland today runs through mostly through the Alps, though this border has undergone several minor alterations over recent centuries, most recently in the aftermath of World War II.
It is in the East and north-East that France's borders are both less defined by physical geography and have undergone the most significant changes since the Medieval period. After the consolidation of French territories on the left bank of the River Rhine in the seventeenth century, and the incorporation of Franche-Comte (previously ruled by Spain) and the Duchy of Lorraine (previously independent) in the eighteenth century, the border has followed one or another of the Jura ranges until it reaches the Rhine, which it follows downstream. The remaining section, between the Rhine and the North Sea, has the least clear natural definition.
Middle Ages (843–1453) West Francia and the Carolingian kings
The division of the Carolingian Empire into West, Middle and East Francia at the Treaty of Verdun in 843 - with three grandsons of the emperor Charlemagne installed as their kings - was regarded at the time as a temporary arrangement, yet it heralded the birth of what would later become France and Germany.
The first king of West Francia was Charles the Bald. The frontiers of his kingdom extended slightly further north and south than modern France, incorporating what is now Luxembourg and parts of Belgium, and the county of Barcelona (Catalonia). However, they did not extend as far east, with areas such as Lorraine, Alsace and Provence forming part of Middle Francia. The former kingdom of Burgundy was split in two, with West Francia receiving the Duchy of Burgundy and Middle Francia receiving the County of Burgundy (the two Burgundys would sit on each side of this border until 1678). Meanwhile, Brittany was an independent kingdom. While Charles's realm comprised the Frankish heartland - where the term "Frankish" would gradually evolve into "French" - the lands to the east of the Rhine comprising East Francia were inhabited mostly by Germanic and Slavic peoples.
However, the Carolingian dynasty was on shaky ground from the very start. Middle Francia broke apart almost immediately, its territory gradually incorporated into its Western and Eastern neighbours, while the West and East Frankish kings struggled to hold their realms together in the face of continual Viking raids and rebellious local lords. The Duke of Saxony, Henry the Fowler, became the first Germanic monarch in the east in 919, and his son Otto the Great went on to use Charlemagne's title of Holy Roman Emperor. In West Francia, the last Carolingian king was deposed in 987 by Hugh Capet, who founded the Capetian dynasty, though he continued to style himself "King of the Franks".
For the next 800 years, both the Holy Roman Emperors and the Kings of the Franks/Kings of France would regard themselves as the true successor to Charlemagne. The Germanic monarchy may have adopted the grander of Charlemagne's titles, but they were never able to consolidate their power enough to create a single, centralised state, and the Holy Roman Empire would remain a loose confederation of kingdoms, duchies, principalities and bishoprics throughout its history. The West Frankish (later French) monarchy, on the other hand, would start from a very modest power base, grow its authority very gradually over many centuries, and eventually establish itself as one of the foremost powers in Western Europe.
Like its eastern neighbour, Hugh Capet's kingdom was incredibly decentralised, with his personal authority barely felt in those lands furthest from Paris, the city he made his capital. In areas like Brittany and Aquitaine, the local populations had relied on their local lord to raise armies to resist the Vikings, and as the power and wealth of these lords had grown, they had successfully founded their own dynasties that would go on to challenge the authority of the king. Much closer to the capital, meanwhile, was the Duchy of Normandy ("land of the Norsemen"), an all but independent Viking state. It had been founded in 911 when king Charles the Simple granted the land to Rollo in exchange for he and his men converting to Christianity, and promising not to raid any further up the river Seine. Although Rollo's descendants gradually adopted Frankish religion, culture and language, Normandy would remain a thorn in the King of France's side for more than 500 years.
On the other side of the kingdom, the threat was not from Vikings, but from the Umayyads, the Muslim rulers of Al-Andalus (Spain). During the ninth and tenth century the Counts of Barcelona succeeded in driving the Umayyads further south, and established new Catalan counties in the newly conquered lands. The last count of Barcelona appointed by a Frankish king, Wilfred the Hairy, left these counties to his children, thereby establishing his own Catalan dynasty. When a Muslim army burned the city of Barcelona in 985, Count Borrell II sought refuge in the Montserrat mountains and waited for help from the Frankish king, which never arrived, causing the Catalans great resentment towards the Franks.Kagay, Donald J. (Translator) (1994). The Usatges of Barcelona: The fundamental law of Catalonia. U.S.A.: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1535-4 Hugh Capet became king two years later, and there is no evidence to suggest that Borrell ever swore allegiance to him, effectively ending whatever semblance of Frankish authority over Catalonia was left. By the time the king of France formally renounced his historical claim to the County of Barcelona in the Treaty of Corbeil in 1258, it had already been in a personal union with the Kingdom of Aragon for over a century.
Struggles against the Plantagenets and Capetian expansion