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Why The French Have an Internal Demographic Crisis and Blindspot

Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley
5 min readJan 13, 2025

Modern-day France, as we understand it today, was founded upon these revolutionary principles: liberté, égalité, fraternité — liberty, equality, and fraternity.

These words are regarded as the most famous slogan of the French Revolution.

Men and women are born and remain free and have equal rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the common good.

The French Revolution originates from the American Wars of Independence or Revolutionary Wars.

(Here is my behind the paywall link.)

Still, it’s far more accurate to regard the American Revolution as an internal British civil war in which the British people in North America went their own way.

The American Wars of Independence lasted from 1775 to 1783, leading to the French Revolution, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars from 1793 to 1815. The French Revolution began during the storming of the Bastille in 1789.

Due to the legacy of the revolution and the politics of that period, people such as Normans, Aquitania, Corsicans, Britton and other ethnic groups within France were now legally and constitutionally only allowed to be identified as French.

This legacy has continued through five French republics, the restored Bourbon Monarchy, and two empires, which means the French government has a massive internal demographic blind spot regarding meeting the…

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Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley
Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley

Written by Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley

I have been writing from 2014 to the present day; my writing is focused on history, politics, culture, geopolitics and other related topics.

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