20TH CENTURY

20th century[edit]

Year	Date	Event
1904	8 April	The Entente Cordiale was signed, as an agreement mainly based on imperial issues. With the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907, France, Britain and Russia were known as the Triple Entente in opposition to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy.
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 theThird 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 Germans. The northern half of France was 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.
1945	24 October	Establishment of the United Nations (UN) with France having a veto on the Security Council.
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 theBenelux 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 dividing Vietnam. France departed from the country in a move that started worldwide decolonization of the French colonial empire.
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.
1968	May–June	May '68: a series of protests, occupations and strikes against capitalism, consumerism and traditional institutions, values and order (part of the 1968 worldwide protests).
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.