Gastronomy, which includes processes ranging from “farm to fork,” and of which the culinary arts are but one component, has thus become, through a synthesis of the diversity of cultural heritages, one of the most emblematic representations of French culture. A model during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, French gastronomy triumphed in the eighteenth century, continued to exert a hegemony during the nineteenth century, and saw a weakening of its dominant position at the close of the twentieth century. In response to this more recent change in status, France has developed strategies designed to maintain influence and preeminence. To trace this history is to trace a cultural history in which the culinary arts were constituted in France as a form of political, economic, and social government as well as diplomatic device.