France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Kingdom of France
The Kingdom of France was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Western Europe. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe and a great power since the Late Middle Ages and the Hundred Years' War, it was an early colonial power, with possessions around the world. France originated as West Francia, the western half of the Carolingian Empire, with the Treaty of Verdun. A branch of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule until 987, when Hugh Capet was elected king and founded the Capetian dynasty; the territory remained known as Francia and its ruler as rex Francorum well into the High Middle Ages. The first king calling himself Roi de France was Philip II, in 1190. France continued to be ruled by the Capetians and their cadet lines—the Valois and Bourbon—until the monarchy was overthrown in 1792 during the French Revolution. France in the Middle Ages was a feudal monarchy. In Brittany and Catalonia the authority of the French king was felt. Lorraine and Provence were states of the Holy Roman Empire and not yet a part of France.
West Frankish kings were elected by the secular and ecclesiastic magnates, but the regular coronation of the eldest son of the reigning king during his father's lifetime established the principle of male primogeniture, which became codified in the Salic law. During the Late Middle Ages, the Kings of England laid claim to the French throne, resulting in a series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War. Subsequently, France sought to extend its influence into Italy, but was defeated by Spain in the ensuing Italian Wars. France in the early modern era was centralised. Religiously France became divided between the Catholic majority and a Protestant minority, the Huguenots, which led to a series of civil wars, the Wars of Religion. France laid claim to large stretches of North America, known collectively as New France. Wars with Great Britain led to the loss of much of this territory by 1763. French intervention in the American Revolutionary War helped secure the independence of the new United States of America but was costly and achieved little for France.
The Kingdom of France adopted a written constitution in 1791, but the Kingdom was abolished a year and replaced with the First French Republic. The monarchy was restored by the other great powers in 1814 and lasted until the French Revolution of 1848. During the years of the elderly Charlemagne's rule, the Vikings made advances along the northern and western perimeters of the Kingdom of the Franks. After Charlemagne's death in 814 his heirs were incapable of maintaining political unity and the empire began to crumble; the Treaty of Verdun of 843 divided the Carolingian Empire into three parts, with Charles the Bald ruling over West Francia, the nucleus of what would develop into the kingdom of France. Charles the Bald was crowned King of Lotharingia after the death of Lothair II in 869, but in the Treaty of Meerssen was forced to cede much of Lotharingia to his brothers, retaining the Rhone and Meuse basins but leaving the Rhineland with Aachen and Trier in East Francia. Viking advances were allowed to increase, their dreaded longships were sailing up the Loire and Seine rivers and other inland waterways, wreaking havoc and spreading terror.
During the reign of Charles the Simple, Normans under Rollo from Norway, were settled in an area on either side of the River Seine, downstream from Paris, to become Normandy. The Carolingians were to share the fate of their predecessors: after an intermittent power struggle between the two dynasties, the accession in 987 of Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, established the Capetian dynasty on the throne. With its offshoots, the houses of Valois and Bourbon, it was to rule France for more than 800 years; the old order left the new dynasty in immediate control of little beyond the middle Seine and adjacent territories, while powerful territorial lords such as the 10th- and 11th-century counts of Blois accumulated large domains of their own through marriage and through private arrangements with lesser nobles for protection and support. The area around the lower Seine became a source of particular concern when Duke William took possession of the kingdom of England by the Norman Conquest of 1066, making himself and his heirs the King's equal outside France.
Henry II inherited the Duchy of Normandy and the County of Anjou, married France's newly divorced ex-queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who ruled much of southwest France, in 1152. After defeating a revolt led by Eleanor and three of their four sons, Henry had Eleanor imprisoned, made the Duke of Brittany his vassal, in effect ruled the western half of France as a greater power than the French throne. However, disputes among Henry's descendants over the division of his French territories, coupled with John of England's lengthy quarrel with Philip II, allowed Philip II to recover influence over most of this territory. After the French victory at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, the English monarchs maintained power only in southwestern Duchy of Guyenne; the death of Charles IV of France in 1328 without male heirs ended the main Capetian line. Under Salic law the crown could not pass through a woman (Philip IV's daughter
Censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government private institutions, corporations. Governments and private organizations may engage in censorship. Other groups or institutions may petition for censorship; when an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is referred to as self-censorship. It occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, music and other arts, the press, radio and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, to prevent slander and libel. Direct censorship may or may not be legal, depending on the type and content. Many countries provide strong protections against censorship by law, but none of these protections are absolute and a claim of necessity to balance conflicting rights is made, in order to determine what could and could not be censored.
There are no laws against self-censorship. In 399 BC, Greek philosopher, defied attempts by the Greek state to censor his philosophical teachings and was sentenced to death by drinking a poison, hemlock. Socrates' student, Plato, is said to have advocated censorship in his essay on The Republic, which opposed the existence of democracy. In contrast to Plato, Greek playwright Euripides defended the true liberty of freeborn men, including the right to speak freely. In 1766, Sweden became the first country to abolish censorship by law; the rationale for censorship is different for various types of information censored: Moral censorship is the removal of materials that are obscene or otherwise considered morally questionable. Pornography, for example, is censored under this rationale child pornography, illegal and censored in most jurisdictions in the world. Military censorship is the process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy; this is used to counter espionage.
Political censorship occurs. This is done to exert control over the populace and prevent free expression that might foment rebellion. Religious censorship is the means by which any material considered objectionable by a certain religion is removed; this involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less prevalent ones. Alternatively, one religion may shun the works of another when they believe the content is not appropriate for their religion. Corporate censorship is the process by which editors in corporate media outlets intervene to disrupt the publishing of information that portrays their business or business partners in a negative light, or intervene to prevent alternate offers from reaching public exposure. Cuban media used to be operated under the supervision of the Communist Party's Department of Revolutionary Orientation, which "develops and coordinates propaganda strategies". Connection to the Internet is censored; the People's Republic of China employs sophisticated censorship mechanisms, referred to as the Golden Shield Project, to monitor the internet.
Popular search engines such as Baidu remove politically sensitive search results. Strict censorship existed in the Eastern Bloc. Throughout the bloc, the various ministries of culture held a tight rein on their writers. Cultural products there reflected. Party-approved censors exercised strict control in the early years. In the Stalinist period the weather forecasts were changed if they suggested that the sun might not shine on May Day. Under Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania, weather reports were doctored so that the temperatures were not seen to rise above or fall below the levels which dictated that work must stop. Possession and use of copying machines was controlled in order to hinder production and distribution of samizdat, illegal self-published books and magazines. Possession of a single samizdat manuscript such as a book by Andrei Sinyavsky was a serious crime which might involve a visit from the KGB. Another outlet for works which did not find favor with the authorities was publishing abroad.
Iraq under Baathist Saddam Hussein had much the same techniques of press censorship as did Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu but with greater potential violence. According to Christian Mihr, executive director of Reporters Without Borders, "censorship in Serbia is neither direct nor transparent, but is easy to prove." According to Mihr there are numerous examples of censorship and self-censorship in Serbia According to Mihr, Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vučić has proved "very sensitive to criticism on critical questions," as was the case with Natalija Miletic, correspondent for Deutsche Welle Radio, who questioned him in Berlin about the media situation in Serbia and about allegations that some ministers in the Serbian government had plagiarized their diplomas, who received threats and offensive articles on the Serbian press. Multiple news outlets have accused Vučić of anti-democratic strongman tendencies. In July 2014, journalists associations were concerned about the freedom of the media in Serbia, in which Vučić came under criticism.
In September 2015 five members of United States Congress have informed Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden that Aleksandar's brother, Andrej Vučić, is leading a group responsible for deteriorating media freedom in Serbia. In th
Pas-de-Calais
Pas-de-Calais is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. Inhabited since prehistoric times, the Pas-de-Calais region was populated in turn by the Celtic Belgae, the Romans, the Germanic Franks and the Alemanni. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman practice of co-opting Germanic tribes to provide military and defence services along the route from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Cologne created a Germanic-Romance linguistic border in the region that persisted until the eighth century. Saxon colonization into the region from the fifth to the eighth centuries extended the linguistic border somewhat south and west so that by the ninth century most inhabitants north of the line between Béthune and Berck spoke a dialect of Middle Dutch, while the inhabitants to the south spoke Picard, a variety of Romance dialects; this linguistic border is still evident today in the patronyms of the region. Beginning in the ninth century, the linguistic border began a steady move to north and the east, by the end of the 15th century Romance dialects had displaced those of Dutch.
Pas-de-Calais is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Calaisis English, Boulonnais and Artois, this last part of the Spanish Netherlands; some of the costliest battles of World War I were fought in the region. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial, eight kilometres from Arras, commemorates the Battle of Vimy Ridge assault during the Battle of Arras and is Canada's most important memorial in Europe to its fallen soldiers. Pas-de-Calais was the target of Operation Fortitude during World War II, an Allied plan to deceive the Germans that the invasion of Europe at D-Day was to occur here, rather than in Normandy. Pas-de-Calais is in the current region of Hauts-de-France and is surrounded by the departments of Nord and Somme, the English Channel, the North Sea, it shares a nominal border with the English county of Kent halfway through the Channel Tunnel. Its principal towns are, on the coast, Boulogne-sur-Mer and Étaples, in Artois, Lens, Liévin and Saint-Omer.
The principal rivers are the following: Authie Canche Ternoise Liane Sensée Scarpe Deûle Lys Aa The economy of the department was long dependent on mining the coal mines near the town of Lens, Pas-de-Calais where coal was discovered in 1849. However, since World War II, the economy has become more diversified; the inhabitants of the department are called Pas-de-Calaisiens. Pas-de-Calais is one of the most densely populated departments of France, yet it has no large cities. Calais has only about 80,000 inhabitants, followed by Arras, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Lens and Liévin; the remaining population is concentrated along the border with the department of Nord in the mining district, where a string of small towns constitutes an urban area with a population of about 1.2 million. The centre and south of the department are more rural, but still quite populated, with many villages and small towns. Although the department saw some of the heaviest fighting of World War I, its population rebounded after both world wars.
However, many of the mining towns have seen dramatic decreases in population, some up to half of their population. In the second round of the French presidential elections of 2017 Pas-de-Calais was one of only two departments in which the candidate of the Front National, Marine Le Pen, received a majority of the votes cast: 52.05%. There are two public universities in the department. Although it is one of the most populous departments of France, Pas-de-Calais did not contain a university until 1991 when the French government created two universities: ULCO on the western part of the department, Université d'Artois on the eastern part. Cantons of the Pas-de-Calais department Communes of the Pas-de-Calais department Arrondissements of the Pas-de-Calais department Battle of Vimy Ridge 7 Valleys Pas de Calais A whole wiki about the Pas-de-Calais Prefecture website General Council website Official Tourist website Short regional tourism guide Coats of arms of the municipalities in Pas-de-Calais
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy was a liberal constitutional monarchy in France under Louis Philippe I, starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848. It marks the end of the Bourbon Restoration, it began with the overthrow of the conservative government of Charles X, the last king of the House of Bourbon. Louis Philippe, a member of the more liberal Orléans branch of the House of Bourbon, proclaimed himself as Roi des Français rather than "King of France", emphasizing the popular origins of his reign; the king promised to follow the "juste milieu", or the middle-of-the-road, avoiding the extremes of either the conservative supporters of Charles X and radicals on the left. The July Monarchy was dominated by numerous former Napoleonic officials, it followed conservative policies under the influence of François Guizot. The king promoted friendship with Great Britain and sponsored colonial expansion, notably the conquest of Algeria. By 1848, a year in which many European states had a revolution, the king's popularity had collapsed, he was overthrown.
Louis Phillipe was pushed to the throne by an alliance between the people of Paris. However, at the end of his reign, the so-called "Citizen King" was overthrown by similar citizen uprisings and use of barricades during the February Revolution of 1848; this resulted in the proclamation of the Second Republic. After Louis-Philippe's ousting and subsequent exile to Britain, the liberal Orleanist faction continued to support a return of the House of Orléans to the throne, but the July Monarchy proved to be the last Bourbon-Orleans monarchy of France. The Legitimists withdrew from politics to their castles, leaving the way open for the struggle between the Orleanists and the Republicans; the July Monarchy is seen as a period during which the haute bourgeoisie was dominant, marked the shift from the counter-revolutionary Legitimists to the Orleanists. They were willing to make some compromises with the changes brought by the 1789 Revolution. For instance, Louis-Philippe was crowned "King of the French", instead of "King of France": this marked his acceptance of popular sovereignty.
Louis-Philippe, who had flirted with liberalism in his youth, rejected much of the pomp and circumstance of the Bourbons and surrounded himself with merchants and bankers. The July Monarchy, ruled during a time of turmoil. A large group of Legitimists on the right demanded the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne. On the left and Socialism, remained a powerful force. Late in his reign Louis-Philippe became rigid and dogmatic and his President of the Council, François Guizot, had become unpopular, but the king refused to remove him; the situation escalated until the Revolutions of 1848 resulted in the fall of the monarchy and the establishment of the Second Republic. However, during the first few years of his reign, Louis-Philippe was taking action to develop legitimate, broad-based reform; the government found its source of legitimacy within the Charter of 1830, written by reform-minded members of Chamber of Deputies and committed to a platform of religious equality among Catholics and Protestants.
Louis-Phillipe and his ministers adhered to policies that seemed to promote the central tenets of the constitution. However, the majority of these policies were veiled attempts to shore up the power and influence of the government and the bourgeoisie, rather than legitimate attempts to promote equality and empowerment for a broad constituency of the French population. Thus, though the July Monarchy seemed to move toward reform, this movement was illusory. During the years of the July Monarchy, enfranchisement doubled, from 94,000 under Charles X to more than 200,000 men by 1848. But, this number still represented only one percent of population and a small number of those men of eligible age; as the qualifications for voting was related to payment of a certain level of taxes, only the wealthiest men gained this privilege. The extended franchise tended to favor the wealthy merchant bourgeoisie more than any other group. Beyond resulting in the election of more bourgeoisie to the Chamber of Deputies, this electoral expansion meant that the bourgeoisie could politically challenge the nobility on legislative matters.
Thus, while appearing to honor his pledge to increase suffrage, Louis-Philippe acted to empower his supporters and increase his hold over the French Parliament. The election of only the wealthiest men tended to undermine any possibility for growth of a radical faction in Parliament, served conservative ends; the reformed Charter of 1830 limited the power of the king—stripping him of his ability to propose and decree legislation, as well as limiting his executive authority. However, Louis believed in a kind of monarchy in which the king was more than a figurehead for an elected Parliament, as such, he was involved in legislative affairs. One of his first acts in creating his government was to appoint the conservative Casimir Perier as the premier of his cabinet. Perier, a banker, was instrumental in shutting down many of the Republican secret societies and labor unions that had formed during the early years of the regime. In addition, he oversaw the dism
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish economist and author as well as a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment known as"The Father of Economics" or"The Father of Capitalism". Smith wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; the latter abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. In his work, Adam Smith introduced his theory of absolute advantage. Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by fellow Scot John Snell. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow, teaching moral philosophy and during this time and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
In his life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day. Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory; the Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, he developed the concept of division of labour and expounded upon how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were satirised by Tory writers in the moralising tradition of William Hogarth and Jonathan Swift. In 2005, The Wealth of Nations was named among the 100 best Scottish books of all time. Smith was born in the County of Fife, Scotland, his father Adam Smith, was a Scottish Writer to the Signet and prosecutor and served as comptroller of the customs in Kirkcaldy. In 1720, he married Margaret Douglas, daughter of the landed Robert Douglas of Strathendry in Fife, his father died two months after he was born.
The date of Smith's baptism into the Church of Scotland at Kirkcaldy was 5 June 1723 and this has been treated as if it were his date of birth, unknown. Although few events in Smith's early childhood are known, the Scottish journalist John Rae, Smith's biographer, recorded that Smith was abducted by gypsies at the age of three and released when others went to rescue him. Smith was close to his mother, who encouraged him to pursue his scholarly ambitions, he attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy—characterised by Rae as "one of the best secondary schools of Scotland at that period"—from 1729 to 1737, he learned Latin, mathematics and writing. Smith entered the University of Glasgow when he was 14 and studied moral philosophy under Francis Hutcheson. Here, Smith developed his passion for liberty and free speech. In 1740, Smith was the graduate scholar presented to undertake postgraduate studies at Balliol College, under the Snell Exhibition. Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford, which he found intellectually stifling.
In Book V, Chapter II of The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote: "In the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether the pretence of teaching." Smith is reported to have complained to friends that Oxford officials once discovered him reading a copy of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, they subsequently confiscated his book and punished him for reading it. According to William Robert Scott, "The Oxford of time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework." Smith took the opportunity while at Oxford to teach himself several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Bodleian Library. When Smith was not studying on his own, his time at Oxford was not a happy one, according to his letters. Near the end of his time there, Smith began suffering from shaking fits the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, he left Oxford University in 1746. In Book V of The Wealth of Nations, Smith comments on the low quality of instruction and the meager intellectual activity at English universities, when compared to their Scottish counterparts.
He attributes this both to the rich endowments of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, which made the income of professors independent of their ability to attract students, to the fact that distinguished men of letters could make an more comfortable living as ministers of the Church of England. Smith's discontent at Oxford might be in part due to the absence of his beloved teacher in Glasgow, Francis Hutcheson, well regarded as one of the most prominent lecturers at the University of Glasgow in his day and earned the approbation of students and ordinary residents with the fervor and earnestness of his orations, his lectures endeavoured not to teach philosophy, but to make his students embody that philosophy in their lives, appropriately acquiring the epithet, the preacher of philosophy. Unlike Smith, Hutcheson was not a system builder. Smith began delivering public lectures in 1748 in Edinburgh, sponsored by t
Geneva
Geneva is the second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situated where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva; the municipality has a population of 200,548, the canton has 495,249 residents. In 2014, the compact agglomération du Grand Genève had 946,000 inhabitants in 212 communities in both Switzerland and France. Within Swiss territory, the commuter area named "Métropole lémanique" contains a population of 1.26 million. This area is spread east from Geneva towards the Riviera area and north-east towards Yverdon-les-Bains, in the neighbouring canton of Vaud. Geneva is a global city, a financial centre, a worldwide centre for diplomacy due to the presence of numerous international organizations, including the headquarters of many agencies of the United Nations and the Red Cross. Geneva hosts the highest number of international organizations in the world, it is where the Geneva Conventions were signed, which chiefly concern the treatment of wartime non-combatants and prisoners of war.
In 2017, Geneva was ranked as the world's fifteenth most important financial centre for competitiveness by the Global Financial Centres Index, fifth in Europe behind London, Zürich and Luxembourg. In 2019 Geneva was ranked among the ten most liveable cities in the world by Mercer together with Zürich and Basel; the city has been referred to as the world's most compact metropolis and the "Peace Capital". In 2017, Geneva was ranked as the seventh most expensive city in the world. Geneva was ranked third in purchasing power in a global cities ranking by UBS in 2018; the city was mentioned in Latin texts, by Caesar, with the spelling Genava from the Celtic *genawa- from the stem *genu-, in the sense of a bending river or estuary. The medieval county of Geneva in Middle Latin was known as pagus major Genevensis or Comitatus Genevensis. After 1400 it became the Genevois province of Savoy; the name takes various forms in modern languages, Geneva in English, French: Genève, German: Genf, Italian: Ginevra, Romansh: Genevra.
The city shares the origin of * genawa "estuary", with the Italian port city of Genoa. Geneva was an Allobrogian border town, fortified against the Helvetii tribe, when the Romans took it in 121 BC, it became Christian under the Late Roman Empire, acquired its first bishop in the 5th century, having been connected to the Bishopric of Vienne in the 4th. In the Middle Ages, Geneva was ruled by a count under the Holy Roman Empire until the late 14th century, when it was granted a charter giving it a high degree of self-governance. Around this time, the House of Savoy came to at least nominally dominate the city. In the 15th century, an oligarchic republican government emerged with the creation of the Grand Council. In the first half of the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation reached the city, causing religious strife, during which Savoy rule was thrown off and Geneva allied itself with the Swiss Confederacy. In 1541, with Protestantism on the rise, John Calvin, the Protestant Reformer and proponent of Calvinism, became the spiritual leader of the city and established the Republic of Geneva.
By the 18th century, Geneva had come under the influence of Catholic France, which cultivated the city as its own. France tended to be at odds with the ordinary townsfolk, which inspired the failed Geneva Revolution of 1782, an attempt to win representation in the government for men of modest means. In 1798, revolutionary France under the Directory annexed Geneva. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, on 1 June 1814, Geneva was admitted to the Swiss Confederation. In 1907, the separation of Church and State was adopted. Geneva flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries, becoming the seat of many international organizations. Geneva is located at 46°12' North, 6°09' East, at the south-western end of Lake Geneva, where the Rhône flows out, it is surrounded by three mountain chains, each belonging to the Jura: the Jura main range lies north-westward, the Vuache southward, the Salève south-eastward. The city covers an area of 15.93 km2, while the area of the canton is 282 km2, including the two small exclaves of Céligny in Vaud.
The part of the lake, attached to Geneva has an area of 38 km2 and is sometimes referred to as petit lac. The canton has only a 4.5-kilometre-long border with the rest of Switzerland. Of 107.5 km of border, 103 are shared with France, the Département de l'Ain to the north and west and the Département de la Haute-Savoie to the south and east. Of the land in the city, 0.24 km2, or 1.5%, is used for agricultural purposes, while 0.5 km2, or 3.1%, is forested. The rest of the land, 14.63 km2, or 91.8%, is built up, 0.49 km2, or 3.1%, is either rivers or lakes and 0.02 km2, or 0.1%, is wasteland. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 3.4%, housing and buildings made up 46.2% and transportation infrastructure 25.8%, while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 15.7%. Of the agricultural land, 0.3% is used for growing crops. Of the water in the municipality, 0.2 % is composed of lakes and 2.9 % streams. The altitude of Geneva is 373.6 metres, corresponds to the altitude of
