The natural borders of France (French: Frontières naturelles de la France) were a nationalist model of French state-building developed during the French Revolution that called for the expansion of France's borders to prominent natural boundaries.[1] These boundaries correspond to the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean Sea, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Ocean.
According to University of California, Berkeley, historian Peter Sahlins, "as a model of French identity, it formed part of a constitutive myth of the state."[1]