The Land and the People

The Aborigines Assignment

August 31, 2020

The land for French culture

August 31, 2020

Published by Jessica White on August 31, 2020

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2.1: The Land and the People

Module 2

Section 1: The Land and People

Overview

In this section we will look at the geography of France and its administrative organization.

Key terms and concepts: The Hexagon, overseas departments (DOM-ROMs), overseas collectivities (COMs), territorial collectivities (TAAF)

Table of Contents:

Objectives for this section: (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

After completing the following readings, see if you are able to do these things:

· Describe France’s geographical location, including bordering countries and bodies of water.

· Explain why the French refer to their country as the Hexagon.

· Draw a rough outline of France and place within it the major mountain ranges and at least two of the five major rivers.

· Compare the four climatic zones to the microclimates of Southern California.

· Compare the population of France to California’s and name at least 3 of its 22 regions.

· Name the 5 Overseas department of France.

· Name at least four of France’s overseas possessions and locate each on the world map.

Location of France

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Continental France

France is located in Western Europe, between 51° 5’ and 42° 20’ latitude and 5° 56’ and 7° 9’ degrees longitude, with most of its territory lying east of the Greenwich meridian. On the north it is bordered by the English Channel (known to French people as La Manche, or The Sleeve) and the strait of Pas de Calais which separates it from the North Sea, Belgium and Luxembourg, on the east by Switzerland and Italy, on the south by the Mediterranean Sea (Gulf of Lion) and the Principality of Monaco, on the south-west by Spain (the Gulf of Gascony and the Principality of Andorra), and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean (Bay of Biscay). Its size including Corsica is about the same as Texas without the panhandle or twice the size of Colorado, or 551,695 square kilometers. Comparing it to countries on other continents, it is slightly larger than Thailand and slightly smaller than Kenya.

Source: http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/europe.htm (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Topography

France is both familiar and exotic to North Americans as it is to people from around the globe. Located on the western flank of Europe, it is the epic land that the first-century B.C. Greek geographer Strabo characterized “as though coming from a prevision” (De Gramont, p. 15). Frenchmen and cultural insiders also know France as a geometric figure of six roughly equal sides.

Edmiston and Duménil. La France contemporaine, 3rd Ed. Thompson-Heinle, 2010, p. 9

Basset, La carte de France (1927), p. 4.

As De Gramont sums it up, “France is no more a hexagon than England without Ireland is a triangle.” To explain what he calls the French “obsession” with this idea, he offers the following hypothesis: “The hexagon represents a longing for an orderly universe in compensation for a turbulent national history” (p. 17). Whatever the reason, the term Hexagone has become part and parcel of what symbolizes France and inevitably links the land to the spirit of that mindset known as “Frenchness.” To the French, their mainland is “The Hexagon.”

Generations of schoolchildren have been taught geography by visualizing the shape of their homeland as the near-perfect hexagon shown above, which makes it easy to remember the outline.

Inside this outline, they learn the topography by imagining a theater or concert hall in which the flat areas around Paris and the Aquitaine to the south and west constitute the stage. Surrounding this stage is a first half-circle of low mountains: the Massif Central, the Cévennes, the Jura, the Morvan, the Vosges, and the Ardennes. Behind these is a second semicircle of high mountains, which corresponds to the theater’s galleries or balcony seats.

Edmiston and Duménil. La France contemporaine, 4th Ed. Thompson-Heinle, 2010, p. 9

Continuing with the French child’s geography lesson, stretches of the 1,729 miles of coastline [i] are named after three precious jewels and a vibrant, patriotic color: la Côte d’Azur and La Côte Vermeille on the Mediterranean for its deep blue and reddish-colored waters, the iridescent Côte Opale on the Bay of Biscay, and la Côte d’Émeraude on the English Channel where the water often takes on a deep green hue. No point in the mainland is more than 500 km/ 600 miles from the sea, and inland the country is washed by more than twenty-seven thousand rivers and streams that irrigate its soil. Of the major rivers, three are “daughters” or feminine in gender: the lazy Loire, the laughing Garonne, and the well-behaved Seine. The unruly Rhone and the prodigal Rhine are France’s “sons”, epithets which likewise bespeak their masculine gender and enough about their character to remind the child that the Rhone is difficult to navigate in spots and the Rhine has come “home” to France after belonging to Germany.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3? (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Geophysical France has also been compared to a fortified castle — the dungeon is the Massif Central; the moats are the three great valleys of the Seine, the Rhone and the Garonne that surround it; its ramparts are the Alps and Pyrenees in the south, the Vosges and the Ardennes to the north, and the Massif of Brittany to the west. This image is useful because it associates the physical features with geological ages: the last three (ramparts) along with portions of the Massif Central are the most ancient, dating back to the First or Hercyian Era; the three great valleys of wide rolling plains were formed when the seas definitively regressed in the second era ; the Alpes and Pyrénées emerged as a single mountain range during the third age.

Climate

France has four distinct climatic zones: Atlantic, Continental, Mediterranean, and Mountainous. Depending on where you are, winters can be mild, with an average temperature of 47 degrees F (8 degrees C)[ii] during the month of January along the Mediterranean, to relatively harsh where the average January temperature hovers around freezing as in those areas furthest from the coast, which include north-eastern cities such as Paris and Strasbourg as well as those along the northern Rhone River valley like Lyon. The Mediterranean region is hottest in July and also driest throughout the year, while the mountainous regions along the Swiss/Italian and Spanish borders are cooler and wetter year-round. The Atlantic littoral and hinterland from the English Channel around the Amorican peninsula of Brittany, down along the western coast to the Bay of Biscay all the way to the Spanish border, have the least variation in seasonal temperature and receive the greatest rainfall.

Population and demographics

As of January 2018, France had an estimated 67,190,000 inhabitants of whom 65,017,000 live within the “Hexagon” or metropolitan France – the part of France located in Europe, including the Mediterranean island of Corsica This makes France the third largest country in the European Union and the 19^thmost populous in the world, with a population density of 301/sq. mi. Compare this to the US’s most populous state, our very own California, which accounted for 39,780,000 in 2018, with a population density of 251.3/sq.mi., making California more than half the size of mainland (metropolitan) France in terms of its population.

Metropolitan France and Corsica

The French mainland, which includes the Mediterranean island of Corsica, 200 km from Nice, is made up of 13 régions (reduced from 22 regions in January 2016) which are subdivided into 97 départements and 3,808 cantons.[iii] Go to http://www.france-pub.com/maps/regional-map.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. for interactive maps of departments and regions.

Basset, La carte de France (1927), p. 4.

Overseas France

Beyond mainland France and Corsica, (8 680 km²) are ten overseas territories scattered all over the world. These constitute the vestiges of the former French colonial empire. Of these territories, five are overseas departments and regions (DOM-ROM) where citizens are French with the same rights and responsibilities as those of the mainland. These are the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, French Guiana in South America and the islands of Réunion and Mayotte off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. You can think of it as similar to the Hawaiian Islands in the U.S. context.

In 2003 the overseas territories (TOM) became overseas collectivites (COM): French Polynesia, Wallis et Futuna, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon whose residents have a status similar to the relationship between Puerto Rico and the US. The third status is Terres Australes etAntarctiques françaises (TAAF) which are small islands in the Indian Ocean. New Caledonia has semi-autonomous status.

Sources

Basset, Melvin. La carte de France. New York: Henry Holt Company, 1927.
De Gramont, Sanche. The French: Portrait of a People. New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons, 1969.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=15360 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France
http://www.lao.ca.gov/2000/calfacts/2000_calfacts_demographics.html
http://fr.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_941505463/France_(population_et_soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9).html#endads
http://www.nationbynation.com/France/Population.html
http://fr.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_941505463/France_(population_et_soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9).html#endads
http://www.nationbynation.com/France/Population.html
http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/europe.htm (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Tasks

Check your progress by reviewing the Objectives for this section above.
Continue to Module 2, Section 2: The “Aborigines?“(Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
For Section 2 you will read Chapter 1 of the text Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong,“Meet the Aborigines”.
Asselin & Mastron. Au Contraire!The reading assignment for this Module is Part 1: Chapters 1-2. (Pace yourself.)

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