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History Lessons?
TPMCafe, NY
Jan 14 2006
History Lessons?
By Kate Cambor
From: Culture Table
Poor Jacques Chirac!
While George Bush and Angela Merkel have been laying the groundwork
for stronger future ties between Washington and Berlin, presenting a
united front in opposition to Iran's nuclear program after their
first meeting on Friday since Merkel became chancellor, poor Jacques
Chirac has been stuck struggling with the past.
Jan 14, 2006 -- 04:30:58 PM EST
A historical debate has been brewing in France, one that actually
began last February, when a law was passed that included this
passage: "School programs are to recognize in particular the positive
role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa, and
give an eminent place to the history and sacrifices of fighters for
the French army raised in these territories." The clause was
inserted to please veterans and former colonists and, unsurprisingly,
ended up displeasing just about everyone else, including the
president of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and a host of educational
and civic organizations. Eventually, even French prime minister,
Dominique de Villepin, came out against it, telling France Inter
radio: "It is not up to parliament to write history. There is no
official history in France." Opponents of the law have petitioned
for it to be repealed on the grounds that it "imposes an official lie
about the crimes, the massacres that sometimes went as far as
genocide, the slavery, the racism that has been inherited from this
past."
In the light of the recent urban and ethnic violence in Paris and
other major cities ignited by the deaths two teenage boys, concern
about the legacies of colonialism are no longer academic. And at a
press conference last week, French president Jacques Chirac, sounding
his most avuncular and expansive, announced that the law would be
revisited and that the clause in question needed to be "rewritten."
End of story? Hardly. Because there's been a lot of talk about
rewriting history in la belle France recently. In December, Claude
Ribbe, a respected black academic, published a new book about
Napoleon, just in time for the 200th anniversary of the epic battle
of Austerlitz. You only need to glance at the cover--the accusing
title "Napoleon's Crime" is set against a photo of Hitler visiting
Napoleon's tomb in 1940--to know this isn't going to be another
celebration of Napoleon's military genius. In the book, Ribbe charges
Napoleon with setting off a bloodbath in the Caribbean when he
revived slavery in the French Empire in 1802 and furthering certain
racist and pseudo-scientific theories that would later be taken up by
the Nazis. He also protests against the "historical revisionism"
that has allowed this darker side of Napoleon to remain largely
overlooked. Perhaps unsurprisingly, French celebration of the
anniversary of Austerlitz was decidedly muted, with politicians
suddenly scrambling to distance themselves from the formerly great
general now plagued with a nasty case of bad PR.
The tricky thing in France is that certain versions of history have
become the law of the land--literally. One French historian, Olivier
Pétré-Grenouilleau, recently found this out when, during an
interview, he made statements implying that the slave trade was not a
crime against humanity. (He actually said it did not constitute
genocide). An organization of intellectuals from overseas regions
(Guyana, the Caribbean, Réunion, etc) has accused him of breaking a
2001 law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity; and, if
found guilty, he could lose his academic appointment.
There are currently four such laws of memorialization--the 2001 law
about slavery, a 1990 law punishing the denial of the Holocaust, a
2001 law recognizing the Armenian genocide, and the February 2005 law
affirming the "positive role" of colonialism--and some of the
best-known historians have recently demanded that any such laws
"restraining a historian's freedom, telling him on pain of punishment
what he should ... find" should be struck down.
At first glance all this may seem like mere Gallic posturing over
long-dead issues. But from Bush's 2003 denunciation of critics of the
war in Iraq as "historical revisionists" to new challenges to
Darwinism and science, haven't we been weathering similar storms on
this side of the pond? Of course, revisionism doesn't have to be a
bad thing, as Princeton University professor and former American
Historical Association President James McPherson eloquently explained
in this essay responding to Bush's accusations. I only hope
historians in the future, looking back on these times, will be able
to tell the good revisionists from the bad. In the meantime, with his
nation seemingly in a rut and the right-wing eternal candidate
Jean-Marie Le Pen hoping to translate up post-riots frustrations into
votes for his presidential candidacy, Jacques Chirac will certainly
have his hands full in 2006.
TPMCafe, NY
Jan 14 2006
History Lessons?
By Kate Cambor
From: Culture Table
Poor Jacques Chirac!
While George Bush and Angela Merkel have been laying the groundwork
for stronger future ties between Washington and Berlin, presenting a
united front in opposition to Iran's nuclear program after their
first meeting on Friday since Merkel became chancellor, poor Jacques
Chirac has been stuck struggling with the past.
Jan 14, 2006 -- 04:30:58 PM EST
A historical debate has been brewing in France, one that actually
began last February, when a law was passed that included this
passage: "School programs are to recognize in particular the positive
role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa, and
give an eminent place to the history and sacrifices of fighters for
the French army raised in these territories." The clause was
inserted to please veterans and former colonists and, unsurprisingly,
ended up displeasing just about everyone else, including the
president of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and a host of educational
and civic organizations. Eventually, even French prime minister,
Dominique de Villepin, came out against it, telling France Inter
radio: "It is not up to parliament to write history. There is no
official history in France." Opponents of the law have petitioned
for it to be repealed on the grounds that it "imposes an official lie
about the crimes, the massacres that sometimes went as far as
genocide, the slavery, the racism that has been inherited from this
past."
In the light of the recent urban and ethnic violence in Paris and
other major cities ignited by the deaths two teenage boys, concern
about the legacies of colonialism are no longer academic. And at a
press conference last week, French president Jacques Chirac, sounding
his most avuncular and expansive, announced that the law would be
revisited and that the clause in question needed to be "rewritten."
End of story? Hardly. Because there's been a lot of talk about
rewriting history in la belle France recently. In December, Claude
Ribbe, a respected black academic, published a new book about
Napoleon, just in time for the 200th anniversary of the epic battle
of Austerlitz. You only need to glance at the cover--the accusing
title "Napoleon's Crime" is set against a photo of Hitler visiting
Napoleon's tomb in 1940--to know this isn't going to be another
celebration of Napoleon's military genius. In the book, Ribbe charges
Napoleon with setting off a bloodbath in the Caribbean when he
revived slavery in the French Empire in 1802 and furthering certain
racist and pseudo-scientific theories that would later be taken up by
the Nazis. He also protests against the "historical revisionism"
that has allowed this darker side of Napoleon to remain largely
overlooked. Perhaps unsurprisingly, French celebration of the
anniversary of Austerlitz was decidedly muted, with politicians
suddenly scrambling to distance themselves from the formerly great
general now plagued with a nasty case of bad PR.
The tricky thing in France is that certain versions of history have
become the law of the land--literally. One French historian, Olivier
Pétré-Grenouilleau, recently found this out when, during an
interview, he made statements implying that the slave trade was not a
crime against humanity. (He actually said it did not constitute
genocide). An organization of intellectuals from overseas regions
(Guyana, the Caribbean, Réunion, etc) has accused him of breaking a
2001 law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity; and, if
found guilty, he could lose his academic appointment.
There are currently four such laws of memorialization--the 2001 law
about slavery, a 1990 law punishing the denial of the Holocaust, a
2001 law recognizing the Armenian genocide, and the February 2005 law
affirming the "positive role" of colonialism--and some of the
best-known historians have recently demanded that any such laws
"restraining a historian's freedom, telling him on pain of punishment
what he should ... find" should be struck down.
At first glance all this may seem like mere Gallic posturing over
long-dead issues. But from Bush's 2003 denunciation of critics of the
war in Iraq as "historical revisionists" to new challenges to
Darwinism and science, haven't we been weathering similar storms on
this side of the pond? Of course, revisionism doesn't have to be a
bad thing, as Princeton University professor and former American
Historical Association President James McPherson eloquently explained
in this essay responding to Bush's accusations. I only hope
historians in the future, looking back on these times, will be able
to tell the good revisionists from the bad. In the meantime, with his
nation seemingly in a rut and the right-wing eternal candidate
Jean-Marie Le Pen hoping to translate up post-riots frustrations into
votes for his presidential candidacy, Jacques Chirac will certainly
have his hands full in 2006.
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