History
French people are the descendants of Gauls (a western European Celtic people), as well as Italic people, Sarmatian peoples (Alans, Taifals), Bretons, Aquitanians (Basques), Iberians, and Greeks in southern France, mixed with the Germanic people arriving at the end of the Roman Empire such as the Franks, the Belgae, the Visigoths, the Suebi, the Marcomanni, the Vandals, the Saxons, the Allemanni and the Burgundians, and later Germanic tribes such as the Vikings (known as Normans), who settled mostly in Normandy in the 9th century.
The name "France" etymologically derives from the word Francia, the territory of the Franks. The Franks were a Germanic tribe that overran Roman Gaul at the end of the Roman Empire.
Some regions were immensely affected by mass migrations of different peoples: Celtics in Brittany, and Germanics in Alsatia (Alemanni) before the existence of the Frankish kingdoms, and the languages and culture of these regions continue through self-perpetuation until this day.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)