Filles du roi: the Founding Mothers of New France
Sent by Louis XIV, the filles du roi were sent to North America to birth new generations of colonists and help conquer the land.
Marseille: Independent, Industrial, and Mediterranean
From Caesar’s Commentaries to the modernism of Le Corbusier, the port city of Marseille has preserved a sense of individuality and industry.
Nuclear France’s Empire of the Bomb
The first French nuclear bomb test took place in the Sahara in 1960 in the midst of the Algerian War, but French history doesn’t connect the two events.
Terroir Terror: The 1911 Champagne Riots
An environmental crisis and a dispute over regional boundaries sent both rioters and rivers of champagne pouring into the streets of Aube.
Monaco, a Mediterranean Principality Shaped by the Middle Ages
From Grimaldi piracy in the Medieval era to the high-stakes gambling tables of the present, Monaco celebrates its ties to science, religion, and royalty.
Cheesy Terroir-ism: The ABCs of AOCs
Whether it supports the production of wine or cheese, terroir is a “particularly French conception of cultural territory” says historian Tamara L. Whited.
Insects in the Mail
The efficiency of the postal system and generosity of local experts played important roles in the advancement of entomology in eighteenth-century France.
When French Citrus Colonized Algeria
The citrus industry in Algeria honed French imperial apparatuses and provided a means for France to define and shape the behavior of its colonial subjects.
The Flour War
In eighteenth-century France, the scarcity and price of flour was the base ingredient for what would become one of history’s bloodiest revolutions.
Decolonizing the Language of Overseas France
School systems in French Polynesia and New Caledonia are attempting to revitalize vernacular languages that were suppressed under French colonialism.