>Related to that, it's interesting how many European languages have heavily borrowed from French in the last 2-3 centuries, especially what I would call "technical" terms.

And in other areas, like the arts (from painting and photography to film and the novel), legal, and political terms. That's because France in those past 2-3 centuries was a huge power in Europe and globally, along with the UK).

For France, this ended with WWI and was a done deal with WWII but there was still some momentum up to the 70s.

So it was kind of like countries today copy US terms, fashion, politics, music, etc.