20th Century
| Year | Date | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 1904 | 8 April | The Entente Cordiale was signed, insuring peace between France and the United Kingdom after a millennium of constant rivalry between the two nations. The peace agreement has survived to this day. With the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907, France, the UK and Russia were known as the Triple Entente in opposition to the Triple Alliance. |
| 1905 | 9 December | The 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State ended government funding of religious groups. |
| 1906 | 18 February | Armand Fallières began his term as president of France. |
| 1913 | 18 February | Raymond Poincaré began his term as president of France. |
| 1914 | 3 August | World War I: Germany declared war on France. |
| 1918 | 11 November | World War I: The first armistice at Compiègne was signed between France and Germany, ending the Great War. France regained control of Alsace-Lorraine. |
| 1920 | 18 February | Paul Deschanel began his term as president of France. |
| 23 September | Alexandre Millerand began his term as president of France. | |
| 1923 | January | Beginning of Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. |
| 1924 | 13 June | Gaston Doumergue began his term as president of France. |
| 1931 | 13 June | Paul Doumer began his term as president of France. |
| 1932 | 10 May | Albert Lebrun began his term as president of France. |
| 1934 | 6 February | Riots by far-right leagues were repressed by the state in what was considered as a failed coup d'état, and a major political crisis of the Third Republic. |
| 1939 | 1 September | Second World War: France declared war on Germany. |
| 1940 | 25 June | Second World War: The Second Armistice at Compiègne was put into effect after the French and British armies were heavily defeated in the Battle of France by the German Wehrmacht. The northern half of France was later occupied by German forces and the southern part was governed by the collaborationist Vichy Government led by Marshal Philippe Pétain. |
| 1944 | 25 August | Second World War – Liberation of Paris: In what is considered the last battle of the Allied Operation Overlord, Allied forces, and in particular Free French Forces and the French Resistance, liberated Paris from German occupation as a strong symbolic effort to restore French honor, tarnished by the fast defeat. The rest of France was liberated as the Allies advanced towards Germany. |
| 1947 | 16 January | Vincent Auriol began his term as the first president of the Fourth Republic. |
| 1951 | 18 April | Treaty of Paris: Establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) between France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries, producing diplomatic and economic stability in Europe between former enemy states. The ECSC is credited as one of the major "ancestors" of the European Union. |
| 1954 | 16 January | René Coty began his term as president of France. |
| 1 August | End of the 8 year long Indochina War. The following Geneva Conference (1954) agreed to restoring the peace in Vietnam. France departed from the country in a move that started worldwide decolonization of the French colonial empires. | |
| 1957 | 25 March | Treaties of Rome: The Inner Six countries (including France) signed two treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC). |
| 1959 | 8 January | Charles de Gaulle became the first president of the Fifth Republic, whose new constitution greatly increased the President's powers (as opposed the Third and Fourth Republics, in which the office of President of the Republic was a largely ceremonial and powerless one). |
| 1962 | 19 March | End of the Algerian War, Algeria, a French colony, obtained independence from France after almost 8 years of official strife. |
| 1965 | 8 April | Merger Treaty: this treaty merged the ECSC, the EEC and the EAEC into a single institutional structure known as the European Community. |
| 1967 | 24 July | Charles de Gaulle's famous "Vive le Québec libre" speech provoked a diplomatic crisis in France-Canada relations. |
| 1969 | 20 June | Georges Pompidou began his term as president of France. |
| 1974 | 27 May | Valéry Giscard d'Estaing began his term as president of France. |
| 1981 | 21 May | François Mitterrand began his term as president of France. |
| 1986 | 17 February | Single European Act : a major revision of the Treaty of Rome to establish a common market by the end of 1992. (to 28 February 1987) |
| 1992 | 7 February | Maastricht Treaty: Members of the European Community (including France) signed a treaty creating what is now known as the European Union. |
| 1995 | 17 May | Jacques Chirac began his term as president of France. |
| 1998 | 12 July | France won the 1998 World Cup of football on home soil. This was their first FIFA World Cup title. |
| 31 December | Introduction of the euro: the exchange rates between the euro and legacy currencies (the franc for France) in the eurozone became fixed. |
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of French History