Colin Jones is Emeritus Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London and visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the British Academy, former president of the Royal Historical Society, and officier in the Ordre des Palmes académiques. He is the author and editor of many works on French history, including The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, Paris: Biography of a City (awarded the Enid MacLeod Prize of the Franco-British Society), The Smile Revolution in 18th-Century Paris, Versailles, and The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris.

"Colin Jones is not only one of the greatest living historians of France, but a terrific writer who has distilled a remarkable quantity of learning, insight, and wit into this concise and wonderfully readable volume. There is no better starting point for readers interested in the history of France and its overseas empires."

• Introduction: The Hexagon in Global Context              The First Millennium, 52BCE–1000CEFrance Emergent, 1000–1500New Worlds, 1500–1720France Goes Global, 1720–1850            Imperial France’s German Problem, 1850–1940Resetting the Nation, 1940–1989Memories and Prospects, 1989–the presentBibliographyAcknowledgments

Colin Jones is Emeritus Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London and visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the British Academy, former president of the Royal Historical Society, and officier in the Ordre des Palmes académiques. He is the author and editor of many works on French history, including The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, Paris: Biography of a City (awarded the Enid MacLeod Prize of the Franco-British Society), The Smile Revolution in 18th-Century Paris, Versailles, and The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris.

"Colin Jones is not only one of the greatest living historians of France, but a terrific writer who has distilled a remarkable quantity of learning, insight, and wit into this concise and wonderfully readable volume. There is no better starting point for readers interested in the history of France and its overseas empires."

• Introduction: The Hexagon in Global Context              The First Millennium, 52BCE–1000CEFrance Emergent, 1000–1500New Worlds, 1500–1720France Goes Global, 1720–1850            Imperial France’s German Problem, 1850–1940Resetting the Nation, 1940–1989Memories and Prospects, 1989–the presentBibliographyAcknowledgments