Charlie HebdoThe Web site of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015, after 12 people were killed in a terrorist attack on the publication's editorial offices. The slogan “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) was adopted by those wishing to express solidarity with the slain journalists.© 2015 Charlie Hebdo
On November 13, 2015, coordinated teams of gunmen armed with automatic weapons and explosive belts attacked targets in and around Paris, killing at least 129 people and injuring hundreds. It was the deadliest terrorist incident in Europe since the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Three attackers blew themselves up outside the Stade de France in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis; Hollande was among the thousands of people inside the stadium watching an association football (soccer) match between France and Germany. In Paris dozens were killed when Islamist militants opened fire on crowded cafés and restaurants in the 10th and 11th arrondissements (municipal districts). At least 89 people were killed when a trio of gunmen attacked the Bataclan music venue, where the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal were playing before a sold-out crowd. The attackers occupied the Bataclan for more than two hours, holding hostages and shooting survivors of the initial assault, before French police stormed the building. Two of the attackers detonated suicide belts and the third was killed by police. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attacks, and Hollande declared that France was “at war” with the group. Over subsequent days, French jets bombed targets in ISIL-held areas in Syria and Iraq, more than 100,000 security personnel were mobilized, and police raided scores of locations across France and Belgium in search of suspected accomplices.
November 2015 Paris attacksInvestigators examining the bodies of victims of a terrorist attack on a Paris restaurant, November 13, 2015.Thibault Camus/AP Images
On July 14, 2016, at least 84 people were killed and scores were injured in France’s third major terrorist attack in 18 months, when a truck was driven through revelers celebrating Bastille Day in Nice. Tens of thousands had gathered along the city’s beachfront Promenade des Anglais to view a fireworks display, and the crowd had just begun to disperse at the time of the attack. The truck traveled roughly a mile (2 km) down the promenade, plowing through barricades and into a designated pedestrian zone, striking hundreds of people before it was brought to a halt. The driver, who had a history of petty crime but no known association with terrorist groups, was killed in a gun battle with police. Hours before the attack, Hollande had announced the planned lifting of the state of emergency that existed since the November 2015 attacks; he subsequently extended the state of emergency for an additional three months and called up the country’s military reserves.
With Hollande’s approval ratings dipping into the single digits, he announced in December 2016 that he would not seek reelection. Days later, Hollande’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, resigned his post and declared his intention to pursue the Socialist nomination for the presidency. The presidential race had already experienced one surprise, when the Republicans (formerly the UMP) resoundingly closed the door on Nicolas Sarkozy’s political comeback ambitions. Sarkozy finished a distant third in the first round of the Republican presidential primary in November. That race was won by Sarkozy’s former prime minister, François Fillon, a standard-bearer for France’s right-leaning provincial Roman Catholic population. Polls suggested that he likely would face the National Front’s Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election in May 2017.
Fillon’s campaign collapsed amid accusations that he had created fake jobs for members of his family, and in March 2017 both he and his wife were charged with the embezzlement of nearly $1 million in public funds. The presidential race essentially became a three-way contest between outsider candidates: Le Pen, former Communist Party presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and Hollande’s finance minister, Emmanuel Macron. Macron had formed his own political party—En Marche!—in April 2016, with a platform that echoed the “third way” policies of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. As the left and right wings of the major parties accrued to Mélenchon and Le Pen accordingly, Macron peeled away the centrists, earning endorsements from former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls and former UMP prime minister Alain Juppé.
Macron, EmmanuelEmmanuel Macron, 2017.AP/REX/Shutterstock
The first round of the presidential election was held in April 2017, and, for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, both of France’s mainstream parties were shut out of the second-round runoff. An eleventh-hour online information dump, dubbed “MacronLeaks,” was attributed to the same Russian hackers who had attempted to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but it failed to significantly affect the result. Macron and Le Pen advanced to the second round, held on May 7, with Macron delivering a convincing victory to become France’s youngest leader since Napoleon. The following month Macron’s En Marche! secured a commanding majority in parliamentary elections. The coalition of En Marche! and François Bayrou’s Democratic Movement (MoDem) held 350 of 577 seats. Women composed a record 39 percent of the National Assembly, but the election was marred by the lowest voter turnout in a French parliamentary election since World War II. Society since 1940
The surge of economic growth that lasted from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s brought extensive changes in French lifestyles and in some of society’s basic structures. As the century neared its end, most French people had come to enjoy greater comfort and security than their forebears; they took for granted automobiles, modern household appliances, and vacation homes in the country, which had been regarded as luxuries not too long before. The French had been converted to installment buying and supermarket shopping; they spent less on food and drink and more on health and leisure. Thanks to the social security system that was expanded after World War II, they were better protected against the hazards of illness, unemployment, and a neglected old age.
The most striking structural change taking place in France was rapid urbanization. The farm population, which stood at about one-third of the total population in 1940, fell to less than 5 percent in the 1990s, yet farm production increased as modern techniques spread, making France one of the world’s leading agricultural exporters. In the industrial regions, modern technology and a new managerial spirit brought France to the threshold of the postindustrial age. The proportion of unskilled workers declined in favour of technically trained specialists, and even more dramatic was the explosive growth in the number of white-collar employees and middle-level managers. At the base of this social pyramid was a new proletariat of immigrants from southern Europe and Africa, who provided the manual labour that most French workers were no longer willing to perform. In the 1990s these immigrants constituted between 5 and 10 percent of France’s population, and their presence fed social and racial tensions, aggravated by widespread joblessness.