France

France, officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary sovereign state comprising territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories.

Metropolitan France (551,695 km² and 63.7 million inhabitants) extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. Thus it always had direct cultural contacts with other countries important for boy-love history: Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and across the sea with United Kingdom and with the Maghreb. Its capital Paris, the nation’s largest city, is considered as one of the main cultural centers of the world.

History

The pederastic history of France is rich and very old, rooted in the successive peoples who inhabited it.

Antiquity

During the Iron Age, what is now France was inhabited by the Celtic Gauls, with also some Greek cities such as Marseille. The Gauls were conquered by the Roman Empire in 51 BCE, which progressively integrated Gaul and officially ruled until 486. The Gallo-Romans faced raids and migration from the Germanic Franks, who dominated the region for hundreds of years, eventually creating the medieval Kingdom of France.

The Kingdom of France (6th-18th centuries)

France has been a major power in Europe since the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years’ War (1337 to 1453) strengthening French state-building and paving the way for a future centralized absolute monarchy. Then the love of boys is still present, mixed with real child abuses (slavery, rapes, prostitution, castration, etc.), but it remains more discreet than under the Roman Empire.

During the Renaissance, France experienced a vast cultural development and established the first steps of a worldwide colonial empire. Under the Italian influence, a more positive view of boy-love re-emerges.

The 16th century was dominated by Religious Civil Wars primarily fought between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots), which sometimes blamed mutually for “indecency” or even “sodomy” towards boys.

The Libertines of the 17th century still brave the suppression, and the Enlightenment will be more tolerant until the Revolution.

Modern and contemporary period

Since 1789, the political regime of France changed at least a dozen times, which shows an alternating will of evolution and stability, and a strong tension between conservative and progressive ideologies. Sexual liberation, with its ups and downs, followed this scheme, and has been a popular topic in the fight between catholics and secularists, right-wing and left-wing.

It is worth mentioning the important role of colonization, which created lasting links between France and several countries of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), sub-Saharan Africa, and the far East (French Indochina, now split into Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos).

The so-called “Pompier” art of the 19th century was largely a hymn to the boyish beauty. What is more, an exceptional literary and militant bloom will flourish in the 20th century.

Since 1958, France is a semi-presidential republic. The Constitution of France establishes the country as secular and democratic, with its sovereignty derived from the people. After a rather conservative spirit dominated under president Charles De Gaulle, the 1968 student rebellion initiated a libertarian-minded period, favorable to child-liberation as well as pedophile expression and claims. From the 1980s, however, the moralistic hegemony of the United States throughout the world will cause a return of the antipedophile puritanism.