France Quatrième History-Geography
Chapters: 6
1. History 1: 18th century — expansion, Enlightenment, revolutions
Merchant classes, world trade, slave trades and slavery · The Enlightenment in Europe · French Revolution and Empire
- The Atlantic Slave Trade, Resistance and the Abolition of Slavery – From about 1500 to the 1860s, European traders forced around 12.5 million Africans across the Atlantic to work without pay on plantations in the Americas. This trade linked Europe, Africa and the Americas in a 'triangular trade'. Laws called slave codes treated enslaved people as property. Enslaved people resisted in many ways, from daily acts to escape, free 'maroon' communities and revolts such as the Haitian Revolution. A long abolition movement ended the trade and then slavery itself, country by country, between 1794 and 1888. Its legacies, including racism and inequality, are still felt today.
- The Enlightenment – The Enlightenment (about 1680–1800) was a movement in Europe that said people should use reason and evidence, not only tradition, to understand the world and to run society. It grew out of the Scientific Revolution. Thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft argued for natural rights, separation of powers, freedom of speech and religion, and government by consent. Ideas spread through books, newspapers, salons and the Encyclopédie. Some monarchs tried reforms (enlightened absolutism); the ideas also fed the American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions and later movements everywhere, including reformers in India.
2. History 2: Europe and the world in the 19th century
Europe’s Industrial Revolution · Colonial conquests and societies
- The Age of Industrialisation – Before factories, merchants gave raw material to peasant families who spun and wove at home (proto-industrialisation). From the 1760s Britain built cotton mills, machines like the spinning jenny and James Watt's improved steam engine. Change was slow: hand labour stayed cheap and common. In India, weavers once supplied world markets; the East India Company controlled them through gomasthas, and Manchester cloth later flooded India. From 1854 Indian mills grew in Bombay and elsewhere, and small workshops also grew. Makers sold goods through labels, calendars and adverts, and swadeshi adverts appealed to national pride.
- Imperialism: Why Empires Grew and How People Resisted – Imperialism is when a powerful state takes control over other lands and peoples, by war, treaties or money. Colonialism is one form: ruling a colony directly. Between about 1870 and 1914 ('New Imperialism') industrial powers raced for colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. They wanted raw materials, markets, places to invest, ports and prestige, and excused it with racist ideas. Control grew from trading posts to unequal treaties to full colonies. The colonies were drained: raw materials left cheap, factory goods came back, local industry fell. People resisted with revolts, reforms and mass movements, and most colonies were free by the 1970s. The borders and inequalities left behind still shape the world.
3. History 3: 19th-century French society and politics
Winning the vote, 1815–1870 · The Third Republic · Women’s lives in a changing society
- Suffrage: Winning the Right to Vote – Suffrage is the right to vote. In the early 1800s most countries let only rich men vote (census or property suffrage). Step by step the limits fell. France brought in universal male suffrage in 1848 (and ended slavery the same year), but the Second Republic soon gave way to Napoleon III's Second Empire, which kept the vote but controlled it. From the late 1800s women's movements (suffragists and suffragettes) campaigned for the vote: New Zealand was first in 1893, many countries followed after 1918, France in 1944 and India gave all adults the vote from 1950. Universal adult suffrage means one person, one vote, in secret, for every adult citizen.
- The Third Republic of France (1870-1914) – The Third Republic began in 1870 when the emperor fell, and was made firm by the laws of 1875. It brought freedom of the press, meeting and unions, free, compulsory and secular schools (1881-82), and in 1905 it separated the Churches from the State. The Dreyfus affair split the country, and women still could not vote until 1944.
- Women's Rights Through History – For most of history, laws and customs kept women out of politics, higher education and control of money. From the late 1700s women began to demand equal rights. The first wave (about 1848–1930s) won property rights, education and the vote. The second wave (1960s–70s) won equal pay laws and freedom in work, money and family life. The third and fourth waves (1990s onwards) focus on safety from violence, shared care and equal treatment for all women. Laws are now equal in many countries, but gaps in pay, care work and safety remain.
4. Geography 1: urbanisation of the world
Urban spaces and landscapes: centres and peripheries · Cities unequally connected to globalisation
- Urbanisation: Why Cities Grow and How to Make Them Work – Urbanisation is the rise in the share of a country's or the world's people who live in towns and cities. In 1950 about 30% of the world was urban; since 2007 more than half is, and about 68% is expected by 2050. Cities grow by rural–urban migration (push factors from the countryside, pull factors to the city) and by natural increase. Today the fastest growth is in lower-income and newly emerging countries of Asia and Africa, where megacities of 10 million or more are forming; in many rich countries growth is slow and people also move out to suburbs (suburbanisation and counter-urbanisation). Fast growth brings opportunities (jobs, services) and problems (informal housing, traffic, pollution, waste, flooding, the urban heat island). Sustainable urban development tries to fix these with public transport, green spaces, clean water, recycling, affordable housing and renewable energy.
5. Geography 2: transnational human mobility
A world of migrants · Tourism and its spaces
- Migration – Migration is the movement of people from one place to another to live there, for some time or for good. The place left is the origin; the place reached is the destination. People move because of push factors (problems at home) and pull factors (attractions elsewhere), but obstacles like cost, distance and laws stop some. Migration can be internal or international, temporary or permanent, voluntary or forced, and it changes both the origin and the destination.
- Tourism Geography: Resources, Types, Impacts and Planning – Tourism is travelling away from home for at least one night for leisure, business, health or visiting friends. Tourism geography asks where people go, why, and what tourism does to places. Places attract visitors with natural resources (mountains, beaches, wildlife) and cultural resources (heritage, festivals, food). People are pushed from home and pulled to destinations. Tourism can be domestic or international, and there are many types: eco, adventure, cultural, medical and marine. Resorts often follow a life cycle from exploration to stagnation and then decline or renewal. Tourism brings jobs and money but can harm nature and local culture if visitors exceed the carrying capacity, so good planning aims at sustainable tourism.
6. Geography 3: spaces transformed by globalisation
Seas and oceans in a maritime world · How US territory adapts to globalisation · Dynamics of a major African region
- Seas and Oceans in Globalisation: Ships, Ports, Cables and Sea Law – Oceans cover about 71% of Earth and carry about 80% of world trade by volume. Container ships follow lanes between big ports and squeeze through straits and canals. Cables on the seabed carry almost all data between continents. Under the law of the sea, a coastal state controls a 12 nautical mile territorial sea and uses resources in a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), while ships of all states may sail the high seas. Seas also regulate climate, feed people and need protection.
- The Making of a Global World – People, goods, ideas and germs have moved across the world for thousands of years: on the silk routes, with food crops like potato and maize, and with diseases like smallpox. Between 1815 and 1914 the world economy grew through three flows: goods, labour and capital, helped by railways, steamships and refrigerated ships. Colonies paid a price: rinderpest in Africa and indentured labour from India. After the First World War came mass production in the USA and then the Great Depression of 1929, which hit India's farmers hard. After 1945, the Bretton Woods system, the IMF and the World Bank rebuilt the world economy.
- Development Geography: Why Places Are Rich or Poor – Development means people living better lives: more income, better health, more schooling and more freedom. We measure it with indicators such as GNI per person, life expectancy and years at school, and with the Human Development Index (HDI, 0 to 1), which joins all three. Development is uneven: rich cores and poorer peripheries exist between world regions and inside one country. Where rich and poor areas touch, there are strong contrasts and flows of workers, goods, factories and money, with both good and bad effects. There is no single model of development: countries have grown through export factories, services, or mines and farming, each with risks.