January 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/01

The Great French Wine Blight was a severe blight of the mid-19th century that destroyed many of the vineyards in France and laid to waste the wine industry. It was caused by an aphid (the actual genus of the aphid is still debated, although it is largely considered to have been a species of Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, commonly known as grape phylloxera) that originated in North America and was carried across the Atlantic sometime around the late 1850s. While France is considered to have been worst affected, the blight also did a great deal of damage to vineyards in other European countries.

How the Phylloxera aphid was introduced to Europe remains debated: American vines had been taken to Europe many times before, for reasons including experimentation and trials in grafting, without consideration of the possibility of the introduction of pestilence. While the Phylloxera was thought to have arrived sometime around 1858, it was first recorded in France in 1863, near the former province of Languedoc. It is argued by some that the introduction of such pests as phylloxera was only a problem after the invention of steamships, which allowed a faster journey across the ocean, and consequently allowed durable pests, such as the Phylloxera, to survive.

Eventually, following Jules-Emile Planchon's discovery of the Phylloxera as the cause of the blight, and Charles Valentine Riley's confirmation of Planchon's theory, Leo Laliman and Gaston Bazille, two French wine growers, proposed that the European vines be grafted to the resistant American rootstock that were not susceptible to the Phylloxera. While many of the French wine growers disliked this idea, many found themselves with no other option. The method proved to be an effective remedy. The following "Reconstitution" (as it was termed) of the many vineyards that had been lost was a slow process, but eventually the wine industry in France was able to return to relative normality.

February 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/02
The National Front (French: Front national, FN) is a far-right and nationalist political party in France. The party was founded in 1972, seeking to unify a variety of French far-right currents of the time. Jean-Marie Le Pen was the party's first leader and the undisputed centre of the party from its start until his resignation in 2011. While the party struggled as a marginal force for its first ten years, since 1984 it has been the unrivalled major force of the French far-right. The FN has established itself as the third largest political force in France, after the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the Socialist Party (PS). The 2002 presidential election was the first ever in France to include a far-right candidate in the run-off, as Le Pen beat the socialist candidate in the first round. In the run-off, Le Pen nevertheless finished a distant second to Jacques Chirac. Due to the French electoral system, the party's representation in public office has been limited, despite its electoral success. The current leader of the party is Marine Le Pen, who took over from her father in 2011.

The party's political profile is based on French nationalism. Its current policies include economic protectionism, a zero tolerance approach to law and order issues, and opposition to immigration. Since the 1990s, its stance on the European Union has grown increasingly eurosceptic. The party's opposition to immigration is particularly focused on non-European immigration, and includes support for deporting illegal, criminal, and unemployed immigrants; its policy is nevertheless more moderate today than it was at its most radical point in the 1990s. Some party officials have historically been subject to controversy for occasionally promoting historical revisionism, specifically related to the Second World War. However, the party's current leader, Marine Le Pen, has actively distanced herself from this.

March 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/03

The Thinker (French: Le Penseur) is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin, held in the Musée Rodin, in Paris. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. It is sometimes used to represent philosophy.

Originally named The Poet, the piece was part of a commission by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, to create a monumental portal -- the Gates of Hell -- to act as the door of the museum. Rodin based his theme on The Divine Comedy of Dante. Each of the statues in the piece represented one of the main characters in the epic poem. The Thinker was originally meant to depict Dante in front of the gates of Hell, pondering his great poem. (In the final sculpture, a miniature of the statue sits atop the gates, pondering the hellish fate of those beneath him.) The sculpture is nude, as Rodin wanted a heroic figure in the tradition of Michelangelo, to represent intellect as well as poetry.

Rodin made a first small plaster version around 1880. The first large-scale bronze cast was finished in 1902, but was not presented to the public until 1904. It became the property of the city of Paris, thanks to a subscription organized by Rodin admirers, and was put in front of the Panthéon in 1906. In 1922, however, it was moved to the Hôtel Biron, transformed into a Rodin Museum.

More than any other Rodin sculpture, The Thinker moved into the popular imagination, as an immediately recognizable icon of intellectual activity; consequently it has been subject to endless satirical use. This began already in Rodin's lifetime. Armand Hammer records that, on meeting Lenin face to face in 1912, he gave the Bolshevik leader a small sculpture of a chimpanzee in Thinker pose, meditating on a human skull, in recognition of the Darwinist slant of Lenin's thinking.

Until September 2006, the original cast was on display at Sakip Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to that, the original cast was displayed in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, in March and April 2006. Since the beginning of 2007, it is back in Paris.

April 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/04

The Adventures of Asterix (French: Astérix le Gaulois) is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo (Uderzo also took over the job of writing the series after the death of Goscinny in 1977). The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959.

The series follows the exploits of a village of indomitable Gauls as they resist Roman occupation. They do so by means of a magic potion, brewed by their druid, which gives the recipient superhuman strength. The protagonist, the titular character Asterix, along with his friend Obelix have various adventures. The "ix" suffix of both names echoes the name of Vercingetorix, a historical Gaul chieftain. In many cases, the stories have them travel to various countries around the world, though other books are set in and around their village. For much of the history of the series (Volumes 4 through 29), settings in Gaul and abroad alternated, with even-numbered volumes set abroad and odd-numbered volumes set in Gaul, mostly in the village.

The Asterix series is one of the most popular Franco-Belgian comics in the world, with the series being translated into over 100 languages, and it is popular in most European countries. Asterix is less well known in the United States and Japan.

May 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/05

Foie gras (French for "fat liver") is "the liver of a duck or a goose that has been specially fattened by gavage" (as defined by French law). Foie gras is one of the greatest delicacies in French cuisine and its flavour is described as rich, buttery, and delicate, unlike that of a regular duck or goose liver. Foie gras can be sold whole, or prepared into pâté, mousse, or parfait, and is typically served as an accompaniment to another comestible, such as toast points or steak.

The technique of gavage dates as far back as 2500 BC, when the ancient Egyptians began keeping birds for food and deliberately fattened the birds through force-feeding. Today, France is by far the largest producer and consumer of foie gras, though it is produced and consumed worldwide, particularly in other European nations and the United States.

In modern foie gras production, force feeding takes place from 12−18 days before slaughter. The duck or goose is typically fed a controlled amount of corn mash through a tube placed in the animal's esophagus. Due to this force feeding procedure, and the possible health consequences of an enlarged liver, animal rights and welfare organizations and activists regard foie gras production methods as cruel to animals. Foie gras producers maintain that force feeding ducks and geese is not uncomfortable for the animals nor is it hazardous to their health. Scientific evidence regarding the animal welfare aspects of foie gras production is limited and inconclusive. Foie gras production is illegal in a number of countries and other jurisdictions.

June 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/06

The Battle of Normandy was fought in 1944 between Nazi Germany in Western Europe and the invading Allied forces as part of the larger conflict of World War II. Over sixty years later, the Normandy invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, still remains the largest seaborne invasion in history, involving almost three million troops crossing the English Channel from England to Normandy in then German-occupied France.

The primary Allied formations that saw combat in Normandy came from the United States of America, United Kingdom and Canada. Substantial Free French and Polish forces also participated in the battle after the assault phase, and there were also contingents from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, and Norway.

The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks and naval bombardments, and an early morning amphibious assault on June 6, “D-Day.” The battle for Normandy continued for more than two months, with campaigns to establish, expand, and eventually break out of the Allied beachheads, and concluded with the liberation of Paris and the fall of the Falaise pocket in late August 1944.

The various factions and circuits of the French Resistance (also known as the Maquis) were included in the plan for Overlord. Groups were tasked with attacking railway lines, ambushing roads, or destroying telephone exchanges or electricity sub-stations. They were to be alerted to carry out these tasks by means of the messages personnels, transmitted by the BBC in its French service from London. Several hundreds of these were regularly transmitted, masking the few of them that were really significant.

July 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/07
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August 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/08
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September 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/09
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October 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/10
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November 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/11
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December 2012: Portal:France/Featured article/2012/12
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