Coming Soon - The History of France, The Online Independent Course

The History of France ✦ A Home PhD

For the curious traveler who wants to understand what lies behind the cathedral, the château, the village square and the fact that France is now on its fifth republic.

France is often presented as a collection of beautiful places and famous episodes: Versailles, the Revolution, Napoleon, the Resistance, Paris. This course connects the fragments.

Beginning with the earliest settlers, it traces how France developed through migration, conquest, belief, art, language, monarchy, revolution and cultural change. It concludes with a clear introduction to the structure of modern France: how the country is organized and how its present system of government works.

The aim is not to memorize every king or become trapped in a thicket of dates. It is to acquire the historical framework that makes France more legible, whether you encounter it in a book, a painting, a church, a museum or on your travels.

The course journey:

• The earliest inhabitants, Celtic societies and the world of Roman Gaul
• The Franks, Charlemagne and the beginnings of the French kingdom
• Medieval France: cathedrals, pilgrimage, courtly culture and everyday life
• The Renaissance, religious conflict and the growing power of the crown
• Versailles, royal spectacle and the world of Louis XIV
• The French Revolution and the transformation of French society
• Napoleon, empire and France’s unsettled nineteenth century
• Industrialization, artistic movements and the remaking of Paris
• France through two world wars, occupation and resistance
• Postwar France, the Fifth Republic and the structure of government today

This course is for you if you want to:

• Travel through France with a deeper sense of what you are seeing
• Understand the historical references that appear in French art, literature and architecture
• Put familiar names, places and events into a coherent chronology
• Learn seriously without enrolling in a conventional degree
• Understand modern France as the result of centuries of accumulated change
• Return from a museum with more than photographs and a mildly heroic step count

By the end, you will have a working overview of French history rather than a loose collection of kings, revolutions and picturesque buildings. You will be able to place major periods in context, recognize how the past remains visible in the present and approach France with a more informed traveler’s eye.

A Home PhD is a self-directed educational course, not an accredited degree or doctoral qualification.

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