François Valentin
@Valen10Francois
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🇫🇷 politics analyst with an eye for a good map-based story Schwarzman Scholar other caps @UnDecencyPod & Editor @hexagone_news ex-@EurasiaGroup @ukonward
France
Joined August 2020
One of my biggest pet peeves: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps. A 🧵
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When the French invite you for dinner vs when the Germans invite you for dinner
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You can fly 16.5hrs in France and still be in France. The American mind cannot comprehend this.
You can drive 9.5 hrs in North Carolina and still be in North Carolina. The European mind cannot comprehend this.
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It's always crazy to me that the vast majority of Prussia, the founding father of modern Germany, is no longer part of Germany
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The American mind cannot comprehend this
Today is #NationalDrinkWineDay. Unfortunately for American sailors at sea, they cannot participate because U.S. Navy ships are dry. Their French counterparts are allowed two drinks per day. On the Charles de Gaulle, wine is available in the carrier's four bars.
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Built 800 years before France's first African colony
France would be a third world nation if it wasn’t for Africa.
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When a Frenchman and a Pole chat geopolitics after a few drinks
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Post your favorite "Desire Paths". These are paths that naturally form as a result of bad planning.
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The American mind cannot comprehend this.
French spies are immune to honeytrap schemes as their wives 'already know they're having affairs', France's 'MI6' reveals
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1568: You're the King of Spain and the dutch provinces revolt. But how can you send your army north if you find on your way a hostile England, a revanchist France and Dutch corsairs. Enters the "Camino Español", the most extraordinary logistical feat in military history. a 🧵
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But the sun will never set on the French Republic
With the UK set to lose Chagos in the Indian Ocean, the sun will soon finally set on the British empire
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Other the last few years D-Day seems to be increasingly understood as a mostly American enterprise in no small party thanks to Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, etc. But it's good te remember that there were more Anglo-Canadians than Americans on D-Day
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A reminder that it only took these 9 french soldiers to halt over 4000 italians in Menton for over 2 weeks
Reminder that this was unironically France’s flag lol. Must explain why they keep surrendering in every war lmao🏳️
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Population density in Europe. Spain is shockingly empty
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I'm reading Zamoyski's history of Poland and I'm struck about how little Western Europeans are taught about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth!. In 1619, it controlled a quarter/third of Europe's landmass, with a rich culture, a strong education and a proto-democracy.
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With the UK set to lose Chagos in the Indian Ocean, the sun will soon finally set on the British empire
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The map of crime in France is simply a population density map.
Le vote RN est élevé là où la criminalité et la délinquance sont les moins observées.
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In 1789 only 25% of French people spoke French, by the end of the first world war it was the overwhelming majority. That was the French Republic, not the internet.
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Poland also has an interesting history of moving around the continent
It's always crazy to me that the vast majority of Prussia, the founding father of modern Germany, is no longer part of Germany
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The fact that the French revolution managed to survive this absolutely desperate situation in 1793 (amid insane political turmoil) will never cease to amaze me
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I love how a country's infrastructure can tell a political story. For example, France's high speed train map hints at a very centralised country
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You may not like it, but this is what peak economic performance looks like.
The Economist rated Greece as the top-performing economy in 2023. Euronews Business breaks down the study and considers how the rest of Europe performed last year.👇.
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With a few exceptions, that's the obesity rate chart reversed
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The fact that the Brits have largely decided to move back to old English lands in France never ceases to amuse me.
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In 1920, this historian managed to predict World War II step by step!. He called out the Anschluss and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact included, by reading maps and history books. Buckle up, in this 🧵 we will explore the most prophetic book ever written in history
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First the last supper, now walking on water. blasphemy has gone too far in France
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Sack of Rome by Alaric I, king of the Visigoths, circa 410, colorized.
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French pollsters are so bored they literally tested Napoleon (yes that one). He'd beat Macron 62-38.
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To give you an indication of how Paris-centric France's rail system is, this is the fastest way to go to Lyon from Bordeaux
I love how a country's infrastructure can tell a political story. For example, France's high speed train map hints at a very centralised country
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This map drives Paris crazy. It shows France hardly contributing to Ukraine’s defense, but Paris say the data is bullshit. As Macron is taking a hardline stance on Russia, let’s see whether the map is off or if France is genuinely not taking its fair share. A 🧵
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The further you live from a train station the more you vote Le Pen (2017 data)
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The whole Russia is the true defender of Christendom narrative is quite amusing when its worship attendance is at Dutch levels. And let's not even talk about abortions, murders, drug use etc. A vibes-based narrative for low IQ MAGA types
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France is a paradise inhabited by people who believe they're in hell.
France seems to be crushing it: . • Builds housing .• Builds transit (Anglo country difficulty level: impossible).• Leading Europe esp on defense .• Green: nuclear, bikes etc .• High birth rates in declining world; Paris seems like highest birth rate large metro.
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I hate to say it, but this looks stunningly French
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Even the safest US cities are battlefields compared to London murder-wise
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That's the map of a continent that doesn't believe it has a future. Spain is especially dramatic
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And to wrap it up here's one on Alabama that goes back millions of years. This ex-coastline area throughout history has had larger farm sizes, a larger slave population and now strong democratic credentials in a red state. More here:
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France's troubled political history is often reflected in the evolution of street names. This street in Rambouillet is a fantastic crash course
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English possessions in 1154 vs the 1st round of the presidential election. Where British citizens currently reside in France
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He lost 80 seats and his MPs now hate his guts. He has accelerated his "lame duckisation". And if he governs with the left they'll unravel what he did over the last 7 years. This is a pyrrhic defeat.
I cannot believe Macron’s gamble worked. Completely insane. This is incredible.
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This should be celebrated as one of the biggest accomplishments in French and industrial history.
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British version of this dropped. The more people drive to work, the more that constituency votes Farage
The further you live from a train station the more you vote Le Pen (2017 data)
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The hollowing of central and eastern Europe is staggering
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Zooming in on Paris, districts that voted for Macron vs districts that voted for Mélenchon in the 1st round of the presidential election vs the 1871 commune of Paris. (Diamonds are important barricades)
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One of the greatest battles in Anglo-French history:. The battle of Marianne Faithfull of 1967. Belligerants:. Alain Delon (🇫🇷). Mick Jagger (🇬🇧)
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More generally the Austrian empire has left its mark all around. Thanks to:
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It's now been 41 days without a government for France. It's entering a very prestigious list of countries without governments. But it seems hard to beat the Belgian GOATs
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Zeroing in on the Austrian Empire's legacy, here's Romania with the Austrian Empire overlaid on top. (2014 election, PNL is "right-wing" and PSD "left-wing"). Thanks to:
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Fascinating report on child allowances and fertility. France cut child allowances for wealthy couples in 2014, which lead to a marked drop in their fertility, especially among parents who already had kids.
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Budapest is the only region in Europe where European identity is stronger than both national and regional identity.
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Poland can boast the famous "politically relevant old map": The partitions between Prussia, Russia & Austria are still visible in recent elections, with Russo-Austrian territories markedly more conservative.(2020 + 2007 elections, German empire overlaid).
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I've always found it incredibly cool that veterans of the Napoleonic wars lived long enough to be photographed in their uniforms.
What are the craziest two people/things to coexist at the same time in history?.
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How rich was pre-revolutionary Europe?. Despite major political divides, Northern Italy was still ahead on the continent!. England with its proto industrial revolution was just behind. France was very poor in contrast.
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Time to pivot to Germany, unsurprisingly the iron curtain has had quite a few consequences. The former Soviet Republic is less religious, more far-right and. more far-left than the rest of the country . A good read on this:.
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That's the face of someone having an existential crisis and reconsidering their life choices
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Americans discovering what the US has been imposing on Europeans for years never ceases to amaze me. It's called an ESTA.
I feel like this is something that should be a much bigger story than it is: Starting next year, American passport-holders won't have visa-free access to Europe. Instead, you'll have to pay 7 Euros and wait *14 days* for an entry visa to be processed.
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A female head of state in North America you say?
CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM SWORE IN AS MEXICO’S PRESIDENT🚨 . She becomes the first female leader of not only Mexico, but also all of North America. She is also the first Mexican leader with Jewish ancestry as well
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Italians often joke that the North and the South of the boot are different countries. But you would've been able to spot this North/South divide centuries ago!. A 🧵 on Italy that goes from Ancient Greece to Beppe Grillo (with some food sprinkled along the way)
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One of the biggest enigmas in European history, why did France begin its fertility transition decades before the rest of the continent?
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Every time the left loses elections some people get a step closer to endorsing 19th century style limited suffrage where only aristocrats and the upper bourgeoisie can vote.
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Another one of these forgotten European empires. It's remarkable how an empire with a population of 1.5 million circa 1600 (Russia was around 10m, Poland-Lithuania 8m) managed to punch well above its weight for decades.
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This map on the population of Europe in 1789 is part of the answer. France was the demographic superpower throughout most of European history. And when it stopped being the superpower in the 19th century. well we all know what happened after
The fact that the French revolution managed to survive this absolutely desperate situation in 1793 (amid insane political turmoil) will never cease to amaze me
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The fascinating political impact of wine. In Alsace the further you are from a vineyard the more you vote for Le Pen.
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Trump or not, the lesson should be that Europeans can't base their defense strategy on a coin toss in Pennsylvania every 4 years. Too many saw 2016 as an accident they could wait out until the adults came back. That was and still is a mistake.
Not an easy piece to write. But only Trump is likely to jolt the EU out of its malaise. My piece for @POLITICOEurope .
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One of my favorite phantom borders:. Nazis completely underperformed in nearly every Catholic pocket of the country
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I find this map a fascinating reminder that there was a strong German diaspora across Europe. All gone after WW2, but they left their fingerprints across the continent. I've been to Transylvania, Romania, it feels at time like you are in Bavaria
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Nothing will ever beat the repeated optimism of the French government when trying to predict its future deficits
massive swing in gdp forecasts for china from 2015, 2019, to 2024. few expecting china’s economy to catch up with the united states’ anytime soon
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Super cliché, I know, but the China-centred map really changes the way you think about the world. The Pacific and US-China relations are at the centre of the world. Europe becomes a minor peninsula of the Eurasian continent.
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One of the reasons Zelensky has held back from mobilising young men. There's simply not a lot of them and Ukraine's demographic prospects were already very dire. That's one of the most depressing population pyramid I've ever seen
"One of the key reasons Zelensky refuses to mobilize the key cohort of men aged between 18 and 25—typically the bulk of any fighting force—is because most of these people haven’t had children yet, according to the former Ukrainian officials. Should the recruits of that age group
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In contrast, you'd be incapable of identifying Germany's capital city from it's high speed rail map alone
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Carter's 1976 electoral map is so staggeringly bizarre with today's eyes. California red, and the south blue. Industrial belt is also blue, but somehow New England is red.
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True story:. As the Germans were planning to shut their nuclear plants, they were regularly checking with the French that their nuclear capacity would be capable of making up for any potential shortfall. Moral posturing and hypocrisy that the rest of Europe is now paying for.
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One good map = 100 articles. Here's the projected population growth in Germany, take a look at Saxony at Thuringia who just massively backed the far-right AFD
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The huge irony is that the Euro was saved by an Italian central banker who wrote his MIT PHD thesis on why a single currency was bad idea. "I concluded that the single currency was madness, something absolutely not to do." -Mario Draghi. History works in strange ways sometimes.
I hope you're all sitting down, but it looks like a CEP study showed that Germany gains most from euro.
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"Right-wing granite, left-wing limestone" André Siegfried's famously claimed in 1913. The father of electoral geography argued that the soil had a lasting political impact, one that still pops its head in modern French politics. A few tweets on conservatism and soils. 🧵 1/17
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Brits in France are older and live in the countryside. Frenchies in the UK are younger and live in cities
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Forget 15 minute cities, Paris is a 5 minute city for what matters the most:. Bakeries
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Disappointed by the #napoleonmovie? The good news is that reality dwarfs fiction. Far from being Scott's half-wit, he was a legendary tactician and a master of deception, in full display in the triumph of Austerlitz. A🧵on Napoleon's crowning success
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Hard to overstate the importance of this result, Le Pen might even have the largest delegation in the European parliament ahead of Germany's CDU
Results in France look as bad as had been forecast, per exit polls. Macon's party barely gets 2nd place - and less than half the 31.5% of the National Rally of Marine Le Pen. Will have consequences in France, but also Europe.
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À 3 semaines du référendum sur l'indépendance de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, mon image du match #FRAvNZL c'est bien celle de Peato Mauvaka, le petit gars de Nouméa qui plante 2 essais et fait le tour du stade en agitant fièrement le drapeau tricolore. Vive le rugby français!
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Map of uninhabited spots. That's the thing that always struck me about the French countryside, no matter how seemingly remote you are, you'll always come across a farmer or a hamlet every 2-3 kilometers
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I absolutely hate to say it, but this graph is this very cringe meme made flesh
"Strong Democrats" have, in the past 10 years, swung away from the median voter on cultural issues. New analysis by @jburnmurdoch 🧵
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Did anyone have. "Nigel Farage joins the republican front against Le Pen" . on their 2024 election bingo card?
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Except the plant:. -Provides electricity for Belgium. -Was built by France and Belgium. -Provides jobs and apprenticeships for Belgians. -Is overseen by Belgian local officials.
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It also seems that the short-lived Polish 2nd Republic survives in some form in Ukraine and Lithuania. (The pink in Lithuania is the Polish nationalist party in 2016, dark green in Ukraine is the conservative party in 1998). Found here:
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This section is plucked from @jameshawes2 and his wonderful "Shortest History of Germany." Very interesting concept when approaching German history
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If we take a step back to the European scale the 6 original members of the future EU cover most of Charlemagne's Empire (dark green is for direct control, light green vassal states). To circle back to Hawes' thesis, notice how East Germany/Prussia is in neither of these entities.
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Labour got 33,8% of the vote ==> 65% of seats. The Rassemblement National 33% in the first round and 37% in the runoff ==> 25% of seats. Electoral systems matter!.
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Europe's imperial political models have always been a mix of the Roman Empire, Charlemagne's/HRE, and maybe sometimes Napoleon's, but never the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was, for its time, very forward-thinking and wealthy.
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Travelling to the USA, it seems that the Mexican empire is not just alive in telenovelas (2014 map):. From the economist:
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France's fiscal situation is very dire and yet we refuse to consider cutting pensions (350bn a year, 25% of public spending) . Worse still we added another 14bn for pensions last year because we are afraid of upsetting pensioners. Boomers have put France in a fiscal chokehold
🇫🇷 French finance ministry warns of worsening deficit - Politico.
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Toujours fasciné par les vielles cartes qui recoupent des réalités politiques actuelles
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