The Second Bourbon Restoration was the period of French history during which the House of Bourbon returned to power after the fall of the First French Empire in 1815. The Second Bourbon Restoration lasted until the July Revolution of 26 July 1830. Louis XVIII and Charles X, brothers of the executed King Louis XVI and uncles of the tortured King Louis XVII, successively mounted the throne and instituted a conservative government intended to restore the proprieties, if not all the institutions, of the Ancien Régime. Exiled supporters of the monarchy returned to France but were unable to reverse most of the changes made by the French Revolution. Exhausted by decades of war, the nation experienced a period of internal and external peace, stable economic prosperity and the preliminaries of industrialization.

The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Greek writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, Aquitani and Belgae. The Gauls, the largest group, were Celtic people speaking Gaulish. Over the first millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul in the late 2nd century BC, and legions under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. A Gallo-Roman culture emerged and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman Empire.