Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America , Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies , and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean , giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, Germany to the northeast, Switzerland to the east, Italy and Monaco to the southeast, Andorra and Spain to the south, and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest.
Its eighteen integral regions βfive of which are overseasβspan a combined area of , km 2 , sq mi and have a total population of nearly France is a semi-presidential republic and its capital, largest city and main cultural and economic centre is Paris. In the High Middle Ages , France was a powerful but decentralized feudal kingdom, but from the midth to the midth centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War.
In the 16th century, French culture flourished during the French Renaissance and a French colonial empire emerged. France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte , subjugating part of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire.
The collapse of the empire initiated a period of relative decline, in which France endured the Bourbon Restoration until the founding of the French Second Republic which was succeeded by the Second French Empire upon Napoleon III 's takeover. His empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War in France was one of the major participants of World War I , from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost.
Following its liberation in , the short-lived Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the defeat in the Algerian War. The current Fifth Republic was formed in by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most French colonies became independent in the s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France. France retains its centuries-long status as a global centre of art , science , and philosophy.
