Download Europe`s Isthmus

Europe's Isthmus
France occupies territory that forms the terminus for the North European Plain – an
expansive stretch of low land thought of extending from the Russian steppe to the
Ardennes. The lowlands do not, however, actually end at the Ardennes (the heavily
forested hills at the border of France and southern Belgium). Instead, the plains curve
southwestward via the Cambresis, Beauce and Poitou gaps towards the Aquitaine
region in the extreme southwestern area of France where they meet the impressive
Pyrenees Mountains which form the natural boundary between France and the Iberian
Peninsula.
INSERT MAP 1:
TOPOGRAPHY OF FRANCE: page 248 of Historical Geography of France, show
the Beauce gap/show Garonne, Rhone Central Massif and the Pyrenees
France is therefore, depending on one's perspective, either the terminal destination or
the origin of Europe's intercontinental highway of conquest and trade – the North
European Plain. As such it avoids having to defend itself on two lowland fronts – a
challenge that Germany and Poland consistently have to overcome – but at the same
time is subjected to the same threats, opportunities and temptations that the North
European Plain offers.
France’s other notable feature is that it is essentially an isthmus between the Atlantic
and the Mediterranean and it is the only point on the European landmass at which an
unfettered land route between the two seas exists. France in fact has two such land
routes. The first is made possible by the Rhone river valley which cuts through
France's Massif Central – an imposing series of extinct volcanoes that covers
approximately 15 percent of French territory and is still the least developed and
populated area of France – and the French portion of the Alps. The second is just
south of the Massif Central, a gap between the Pyrenees and the Massif that stretches
from Montpellier to Toulouse and connects to the Garonne River that flows into the
Atlantic at Bordeaux.
The territory of France therefore provides the easiest route between the Mediterranean
and the North European Plain, one that does not involve crossing the Alps or
Dinarides of the Balkans. Its natural overland transportation routes allowed Europe's
first advanced political empire, Rome, to extend its reign to Northern Europe and
Iberia and eventually allowed the nascent France of Charlemagne to create the first
post-Roman European Empire.
INSERT MAP 2: RIVERS of FRANCE: Rhone, Seine, Loire, etc
For Ancient Rome, the Rhone valley – and its main city Lyon -- represented a key
communication and trade artery through which to expand its empire north of the Alps.
Territory around the Rhone's mouth in the Mediterranean to this day carries the name
Provence because it was Rome's first non-Italian province. Key imperial roads, the
Via Agrippa and the Via Aquitania, allowed Rome to control Lyon and Bordeaux
respectively and from there their north possessions in Belgica and Britannia and
Hispania in the south.
Ile de France
The Roman political core was centered on the Italian peninsula and so the intention of
the Roman Empire in France was to rule from a location that afforded it the best
oversight from Rome – thus Lyon and the Rhone Valley which were oriented towards
the Mediterranean. But the much more logical core for an independent political entity
ruling France is the North European Plain and the fertile soil of the Beauce region
between the Loire and the Seine.
INSERT MAP 3: FRENCH CORE
More specifically, the core is the Paris Basin, referred to politically as the Ile de
France, which contains a great number of rivers that all converge in what is a
geological indentation in the topography of the region. Paris itself was founded on an
island in the Seine, Ile de la Cite, from which it is easily defensible and controls the
overland route between the last major curve of the Seine to the north and the Marne to
the south.
It was in this region that pre-Roman Celtic Gaul had its core due to both fertile soil
and ease of transport via multiple rivers and overland routes. Although the Gauls did
not have a strong unified political core due to lack of administrative and bureaucratic
know-how, the Beauce region did host an annual all-Gaul Druid gathering near
present day Chartres, illustrating the region’s pre-Roman importance.
It took the Romans, however, to bring political coherence to all of Gaul. Through
advancements in communication and transportation the Romans created infrastructure
that was to be crucial for subsequent political control of the territory of France. When
Frankish king Clovis I defeated the last vestige of Gallo-Roman authority in the
Beauce region at the Battle of Soissons in 486 he not only saw before him the fertile
plains of northern France and the river-crossed Ile de France upon which to build his
kingdom, but also the Roman roads and cities through the Rhone valley allowing
access to the Mediterranean.
With Frankish invasions the Mediterranean-oriented France, whose political power
under Rome oscillated between Roman-founded Lyon and Greek-founded Marseilles,
was forever entrenched in the north. The Franks certainly benefited from Roman
infrastructure through the Rhone Valley, but also faced a number of challenges to
their rule in the south, in the form of the Romano-Basque region of Aquitaine and the
Burgundian (a Germanic group originally from the Baltic island of Bornholm) power
center in the Rhone. Paris also had to contend with Viking settlers in Normandy and
Celtic refugees fleeing the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain in Bretagne.
From the initial Frankish invasion of Roman Gaul in the late fifth century until the
early 18th century reign of Louis XIV, it was this internal cohesion that was France's
greatest threat and challenge. Divisions in France allowed outside powers, particularly
England and Hapsburg Spain, to have designs on French territory.
The Hexagonal
This therefore forms the first French geopolitical imperative: defend political
sovereignty on the North European Plain and create strategic depth by pushing
through the Rhone Valley and down the western coastal regions to Aquitaine. Doing
so allows France to fill out the hexagonal shape that it holds today – a shape that is
forced on France by a search for natural borders to which it can extend in the south in
order to secure a broader hinterland beyond the northern plains.
From the perspective of the political entity based in Paris the economic core of the
country is the Beauce region, which contains almost all of France's arable land (which
itself is 33.5 percent of its total territory). The area's limestone soil (rich in nitrogen,
phosphorus and potassium necessary for plant fertilization), good drainage and warm
climate made possible by the North Atlantic Drift is the most fertile land in all of
Western Europe.
INSERT MAP 4: France, arable land
But the region is surrounded by potential points of attack that have to be defended –
the Atlantic coast and the 100 miles or so of Belgian border that need to be watched
continuously. The latter can be done either by expansion or by sowing chaos and
discord (how exactly does discord in Belgium keep it under control and away
from threat from other countries – ie how would that prevent Germany from
running over it again?) in the “cockpit of Europe,” as neighboring Belgium has been
called precisely because it has continually been contested due to its strategic location.
From this location, Paris looks at the Pyrenees in the southwest, the Mediterranean in
the south and the Alps in the southeast as borders of its southern expansion. Then, to
the east is the Rhine valley – which in Medieval times was more of a borderland due
to its marshy nature than a truly capable transportation corridor – and the Vosges
mountain chain. North of that are the Ardennes highlands and forest. France needs to
expand to these natural borders in order to both have depth and to concentrate on
plugging the border with Belgium and defending the Atlantic coast.
INSERT MAP 5: Perspective of Paris towards its borders
The hexagonal shape has advantages – late Medieval fortresses often employed the
shape in order to increase the range of artillery fired from their walls. Similarly, one
could argue that a hexagonally-shaped nation like France has the ability to project
power into a number of its neighboring countries. On the same token, however, it also
means the possibility of bordering strong powers not easily willing to give in to this
projection – in the case of France this has meant England, Spain, Italy and from 1871
Germany. No European nation borders as many countries that were at one point great
powers – which also means that no European nation has had to contend with as many
challengers to its sovereignty as France.
France: Idea to Reality
From the rule of Clovis I (in the ___ century) to Louis XIV (in the ___), Paris's
control of the territory that is today France has oscillated wildly. All challenges can be
roughly categorized as either internal, emerging from feudal political entities vying
for power with Paris, or external, coming primarily from England, Spain or Germany,
who attempted to augment and use internal divisions to weaken Paris. But unlike most
European nation states, France never lost the coherence of the idea (or idea of the
coherence?) of France. Even when the political power of the monarch in Paris was
limited to little more than the Ile de France, the idea of France was never brought into
question. This is because the geography of France, with its interconnecting rivers and
land routes, is easily amenable to unified rule (and necessary for survival?).
Internally, Clovis's Merovingian descendents had to contend with a number of early
challenges. Aside from essentially independent Aquitaine and Burgundy, the Franks
also waged incessant civil war for control of the northern plains between eastern and
western kingdoms (of France?). Ultimately, the Carolingian dynasty based in the
Frankish kingdom of Austrasia (whose core was between the Rhine and Meusa rivers)
overwhelmed the rest of the Frankish kingdoms (so Carolingians beat out
Merovingians?).
INSERT MAP 6: Merovingian France PLUS Charlemagne's France
Under Charles Martel ("the Hammer"), one of the greatest military commanders of
the early Middle Ages, the Franks defeated the first serious external existential
challenge to the nascent French state – the Muslim army of the Umayyad Caliphate –
in 732 at the Battle of Tours. The Muslim invasion of Europe threatened to use
France's overland transportation lines on the lowlands and the Rhone valley to gain
access to the North European Plain and thus for a full out conquest of Europe. With
their defeat, Martel's son, Charles Pippin, and grandson, Charlemagne, forged the first
truly post-Roman European empire. Ironically, Charlemagne is claimed by both the
Germans and French as the source of their modern political sovereignty, underlying
the fact that in Medieval Europe political rule and power did not always align with
ethnic or linguistic characteristics.
Consolidation (you just talked about his defeat of the Muslims not how he
consolidated France – if inherited write that) of the Frankish Empire under
Charlemagne did not last long, however. First, the Frankish tradition of splitting the
kingdom among the king's male progeny divided the country politically almost
immediately through the 843 Treaty of Verdun (how did this treaty do that? if
tradition what did the treaty have to do w/ it?). Three of Charlemagne’s grandsons,
Louis the German (ruler of East Francia), Charles the Bald (ruler of West Francia)
and the eldest Lothair I (ruler of Middle Francia) immediately set out to wage a civil
war for control of the divided Empire.
Second, linguistic and ethnic differences of the Empire became pronounced during
this period, romantically said to have become pronounced with the Oath of Strasbourg
by which Louis the German and Charles the Bald pledged an alliance against their
older brother Lothair. As a sign of respect and unity for one another’s kingdom, Louis
and Charles made their respected oaths in the other’s vernacular tongue, not Latin.
While at that moment in 842 the gesture may have been intended to symbolize
continued unity of the Carolingian Empire, it in fact began to illustrate the linguistic
fissures that would divide the future French and German entities, and that would also
ironically make Strasbourg, where the two nations mingle most intently, a focal point
of competition between the future power centers of Paris and Berlin.
Third, the military technology of the heavily armored cavalry adopted from the
invading Muslim armies by Charles Martel placed an onus on maintaining armies of
knights at the disposal of the King. This was particularly true in West Francia whose
lowlands were conducive to charges of heavy horse. But such armies were expensive
to train – let alone maintain – and forced the centralized monarch to allow his vassals
to own land from which to draw the resources necessary to maintain a corps of
mounted knights.
The introduction of feudalism in France led to a period of roughly 500 years of
complete political free for all in Europe. The Carolingian dynasty was replaced by the
Capetian in 987, which ended the tradition of dividing the kingdom among the sons of
the dead monarch (how/why was this done). This period is also notable in that it
established Paris as the clear center of power in France, even though it only tenuously
held control over the rest of France. The process of feudalization was not stalled and
the political map of France quickly began to resemble the patchwork of overlapping
vassal relationships and political disunity that the rest of Europe also adopted.
INSERT MAP 7: Messed up France in the Middle Ages
During the feudal period the greatest threat to the political sovereignty of Paris over
the territory of France was the nascent English political entity, or rather more
correctly the Anglo-Norman entity which was at first based in France. England was
taken by the Normans in 1066 with the invasion of Great Britain by William the
Conqueror. However, the Norman dynasty ruling England retained numerous
possessions in continental France – particularly Aquitaine and Normandy – as well its
adopted French culture and language (have you talked about the Normans yet in
regard to the French? maybe explain a bit more here before you go into the next
sentence that they moved in from France or else it’s a bit confusing). One could
therefore say that the contestation between the Normans – and their so-called Angevin
Empire in Britain – and Capetian France was in fact a civil war between two feudal
houses of French-Norman monarchs claiming sovereignty over territories in both
France and England (how did this go/end? need some explanation/transition
before next paragraph).
INSERT MAP 8: Angevin Empire
Capetian ruler Philip II managed to fight off the various attacks against France,
particularly from the powerful English king Henry II. To secure his realm against the
Anglo-Norman threat, Philip II made alliances with Henry’s son Richard the
Lionheart, who fought his father for the Norman throne and possessions in France.
Important to understand during this period is that the concept of nation state was still
about 400 years away, with feudal relationships between various nobles resembling
civil wars more than contestations between two states. While the Angevin Empire of
the proto-English certainly presented a threat to Philip II of France, he allied with the
Aquitaine portion of it ruled by Richard the Lionheart so as to defeat the core ruled by
Henry II (this seems repetitive of the first part). Following the Battle of Bouvines
against Holy Roman Emperero Otto IV (allied with the Flemish and English),
Capetian France managed to wrestle control of Normandy from England and secure
the eastern border from Flanders and Germany.
However, the English would threaten again during the 100 year war between 1337
and 1453. This war pitted a better organized (politically and militarily) England
against a more populous France – but one which had seen political order collapse with
the end of the Capetian dynasty. It was also far less of a feudal spat among essentially
interrelated nobility (although it was certainly also that) and more of a coherent
contestation for power between much clearer political entities, one centered in
England and the other around Ile-de-France. The combination of war and bubonic
plague, which arrived in Western Europe in 1347, devastated France which saw its
population decrease from 17 million to about 12 million in the 120 years of war.
Ultimately, England could not maintain a decades-long occupation of vast territories
of France and despite at various points controlling almost the entire core of the
Beauce region, France outlasted it and won. The geopolitical imperative of retaining
territory between the Northern plains and the Mediterranean for strategic debt
essentially paid off as French political authority was able to withdraw from Beuce and
still survive.
Following the 100 Years War which ended in 1453 England lost all of its possessions
in France save for the port of Calais and essentially eschewed further serious
expansionist entanglements on the Continent (nice alliteration!). From that point
onwards, England concentrated on consolidating power in Great Britain and became a
naval power. Paris, meanwhile, began to assert control over its own territory with the
century-long contestation (you used this word in the last paragraph… and maybe
a few times before that) against England serving to entrench a sense of French
identity in the realm and thus loyalty to the French crown. Feudalism was largely
proven to be incompatible with the military technology of the time because of
advances in archery, castle defense and nascent gunpowder technology.
The next two hundred years saw consolidation in France and the strengthening of the
monarchy. The number of fiefs, plots of territory ruled by feudal vassals at the behest
of the king, was reduced from around 80 in 1480 to about half that number in 1530 as
more territory came under the direct control of the French crown. Burgundy, a
pseudo-independent Dutchy based in the Saone river valley, Luxembourg and
Flanders fell to the French crown in 1477, although it invited Habsburg intervention
in Flanders, and Bretagne lost its independence in 1488. By the 1490s France became
one of the most powerful countries in Europe with military entanglements in Italy and
an advanced diplomatic corps that would be the foundation of modern diplomacy.
Key divisions that were also overcome during the period were both linguistic and
ethnic. “Modern” French, based on the Northern Langue D’Oil of the Ile de France
dialect, became the official language in 1539. But areas roughly south of the Central
Massif and in Aquitaine used various Langue D’Oc dialects (sometimes referred to as
Occitan) – a language that shared greater commonality with Catalan, Spanish and
Italian than with Langue D’Oil. In the north Langue D'Oil retained considerable
Celtic influences and was impacted by the Frankish (German) invasions.
INSERT MAP 9: Linguistic divisions
Ultimately, it would take the French Revolution in the late 18th century and the Reign
of Terror under the radical Jacobin regime to completely subjugate ethnic and
linguistic divisions in France. As late as 1863 large portions of France did not speak
French, particularly in Brittany, Basque regions and Occitan-speaking Mediterranean
regions.
INSERT MAP 10: Linguistic divisions in 1869
French Geopolitical Imperatives
France in 16th Century became an absolute epicenter of Europe’s diplomatic and
military events. The consolidation of French power at the end of 15th Century and
Italy’s power vacuum sucked Paris on to the Apennine Peninsula. But French
campaigns in Italy had repercussions, mainly by giving the emergent Habsburg
Empire an excuse to wage war against rising French power. Habsburg possessions in
Spain, the Netherlands and Italy surrounded France and formed the core threat to
Paris, particularly once they seized Burgundy following the Treaty of Madrid in 1526.
Warfare between the two political entities was intermittent throughout the 16th
Century.
INSERT MAP 11: Map of Europe in 16th Century
It is out of this concomitant consolidation of centralized power in France and its
immediate surrounding by opposing political entities that French geopolitical
imperatives emerge. By overcoming its first imperative, unifying and controlling
roughly the territory of modern France, France established for itself the borders with
other European powers that at the same time had designs on French territory and were
threatened by its size and population, at the time largest in Western Europe.
The second imperative therefore involved protecting French core between Seine and
Loire from invasions on the North European Plain where the Habsburg Emperor
controlled the Netherlands and where England could continue to threaten via the short
distance across the English Channel to the French port Boulogne and Calais.
To do this effectively, France established its third imperative, which was to use
diplomacy and short military interventions across of Europe (and later across the
world) to stymie and frustrate its rivals so that they would be unable to concentrate on
massing naval or land forces in the lowlands. In the 16th and 17th Centuries this meant
that the English were continuously frustrated through French support of Scottish
independence, while the Habsburg were drawn into never ending inferno that was the
Apennine Peninsula and wars against various Protestant German kingdoms.
Throughout this period, Catholic France armed and allied with numerous Protestant
German political entities, even fighting on the Protestant side during the brutal Thirty
Year War between Protestants and Catholics that decimated Europe. This illustrated
the extent to which France was going to eschew ideology and religious allegiance in
order to sow discord and war on its periphery, all so as to avoid having to fight a land
war on the North European Plain. This then forms the French fourth and final
geopolitical imperative, which is to be flexible and break alliances that no longer
benefit it and turn on religious/ideological allies when needed. To illustrate this last
point, France even allied with the Muslim Ottoman Empire against the fellow
Catholic Habsburg Empire during one of the multiple wars in Italy in 1543.
Ultimately, France continued to survive during the turbulent 16th and 17th Centuries
despite military defeats and despite being surrounded by enemies by using its strategic
depth of immense territory it controlled, result of accomplishing its first geopolitical
imperative. As some pertinent examples, a combined English-Habsburg attack in
1544 was repelled because the French could hold up the attackers on its own territory
and then fight a war of attrition. Similar strategy was employed to repel a Habsburg
attack in 1636 that threatened Paris during the Thirty Years War and most importantly
during First World War when German forces were bogged down in trench warfare
just outside of the Beauce region on the Marne.
FRENCH GEOPOLITICAL IMPERATIVES
1) Secure a broader hinterland and maintain internal political control.
Because the French core is situated on the North European Plain, Paris needs
to use the Rhone Valley and the Beauce Gap land route to Aquitaine to expand
its political control and seize whatever easily digestible territories are
available. It then must stamp out any opposition or semblance of independence
in this territory so that its rule is not challenged.
2) Always look east… across the plains. Securing its open borders on the
North European Plain is crucial as the 100 mile stretch between the Ardennes
and the Atlantic is easily accessible land route to France and is only 120 miles
away from Paris. This imperative is most difficult to achieve (and brings about
subsequent two imperatives) but the French have tried to accomplish it in
various ways, by having a network of weak and disunited states as buffers on
its northeastern borders (Belgium, Luxembourg) or by building giant military
fortifications (Maginot Line).
3) Maintain influence abroad (near and far). Between 16th and 19th Century
this meant involving itself in every military entanglement that would draw in
its rivals the Habsburgs and English anywhere at any and all time, as long as it
was not on the North European Plain. Post 18th Century this also meant
engaging its rivals on a global scale, using the Empire to harass its European
rivals even further afield.
4) Be flexible. France’s geography and its hexagonal shape places it under
constant threat. This means that France has to be flexible in giving up territory
to invading armies in order to buy itself time (ultimately, even Vichy France
of Second World War was successful in this) while also doing away with any
ideology or normative goals. France has to be ready to make a deal with the
Devil more often than most.