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Europe

France Orders Positive Spin on Colonialism

2005-10-22

France, grappling for decades with its colonial past, has passed a law to put an upbeat spin on a painful era, making it mandatory to enshrine in textbooks the country's "positive role" in its far-flung colonies. But the law is stirring anger among historians and passions in places like Algeria, which gained independence in a brutal conflict. Critics accuse France of trying to gild an inglorious colonial past with an "official history."

As a colonial power, La Belle France wasn't all that hot. Not as destructive as Belgium, a little more competent than Italy, but not as constructive or civilizing as Britain.

At issue is language in the law stipulating that "school programs recognize in particular the positive character of the French overseas presence, notably in North Africa."

JFM probably has a better handle on the character, positive or otherwise, of the French presence in North Africa. Political correctitude probably makes any kind of rational evaluation of whether the colonial presence in sub-Saharan Africa was more beneficial than the current crop of artificially drawn nation states, many of which seem incapable of governing themselves. Zim-Bob-we is only the grossest example.

Deputies of the conservative governing party passed the law in February, but it has only recently come under public scrutiny after being denounced at an annual meeting of historians and in a history professors' petition.

That'd be the politically correct crowd, assuming the law makes any sense at all...

An embarrassed President Jacques Chirac has called the law a "big screw-up," newspapers quoted aides as saying.

I guess it doesn't make any sense, then...

Education Minister Gilles de Robien said this week that textbooks would not be changed. But the law's detractors want it stricken from the books — something the minister says only parliament can do. The measure is one article in a law recognizing the "national contribution" of French citizens who lived in the colonies before independence. It is aimed, above all, at recognizing the French who lived in Algeria and were forced to flee, and Algerians who fought on the side of France. Unlike other colonies, Algeria, the most prized conquest, was considered an integral part of France — just like Normandy. It was only after a brutal eight-year independence war that the French department in North Africa became a nation in 1962, after 132 years of occupation. Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has equated the law with "mental blindness" and said it smacks of revisionism. The Algerian Parliament has called it a "grave precedent."

Posted by:Fred

#5 I would just love to see how the French try to put a positive spin on Haiti. Let's see: "We only put the worst of the worst slaves there, so it was like a penal colony. And we worked them to death, unlike other slaves, which is good, because they were bad.

It was like a Devil's Island, but for evil black people. So France did everyone a favor."

Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-10-22 13:30

#4 You are right, anonymous, I am a pied noir.

First: While there were a number of draftees in Algeria, the war winners were mostly airbone troops (volunteers) led by officers who had learned from Indochine. For the anecdota: the then colonel Bigeard (1) managed to transform a low-quality regiment of draftees who was having his ass kicked by the FLN into one as effective or more than his previous all-volunteer elite para regiment. BTW; It was the British who made an officer from Bigeard when he went to commando-training during WWII: in the French system you are born an NCO, you die an NCO.

Algeria was a war militarly won but De Gaulle thouhght that it would burn an anchor on France: that it would spend treasure and people building roads in an undevelopped country instead of building high tech goods.

One of the big shames was the treatment of the harkis: the Algerians who had fought for France and that, IMHO, made them more French than myself (and still more than any amnistiated collabo). Not only they were abandonned to the FLN. They were disarmed by the French to prevent the intersting situation of the harkis taking power: they outnumbered the FLN. Then the FLN came and they were impaled, electrocuted, burned alive, anything the sick minds of the FLN people were able to design.

Some French officers disobeyed orders and at great risk to their carreer managed to exfiltrate the harkis they commanded. They were placed into concentration camps in tents. They were robbed either by the government of by their guards (to my shame, most were pied-noirs) of most of the money they were entitled. Then they were employed in semi-forced labor (with of course the cost of the camps deduced of their meager pays). When a woman went in labour, she was led to hospital and within minutes of having had the baby she and her baby were brought back to their tent in the camp by -15 C.

"We didn't have gas chambers but that is only because we lacked gas". Solsyenitsin

Posted by: JFM 2005-10-22 11:20

#3 I don't think imperialism was all bad. Case in point South Africa. The French are swine and getting what they deserve as did the English in indigenous revolts of the colonies. What amazes me is how societies decide to revise their pasts like our Political Correctness. Sincerely Yours, George Orwell.

Posted by: Bardo 2005-10-22 09:55

#2 I don't think imperialism was all bad. Case in point South Africa. The French are swine and getting what they deserve as did the English in indigenous revolts of the colonies. What amazes me is how societies decide to revise their pasts like our Political Correctness. Sincerely Yours, George Orwell.

Posted by: Bardo 2005-10-22 09:52

#1 The only remaaining "Grand Project" of Shiraq is the "treaty of friendship" with Algeria, to be signed in december IIRC.

France is in the weak, asking position, and Bouteflika can allow himself to compare colonial France to nazi Germany, insult harkis (algerians who fought for France), ask french legislators to change their draft,... that kind of thing.

This treaty will be signed between a pseudo-gaullist who hates western civilization and is fascinated with islam and East Asia, and a FLN butcher.

Algeria war was the opening salvo of the jihad against the West, and the horrors comitted by the fellaghas were absolutely on the par with thoses comitted by the GIA, AIS, GSPC,... in the last decade, not to mention the 150 000 pieds noirs andd harkis slaughtered AFTER the fighting has ended, despite the peace agreement.

Algeria war is a dark spot in France meory, not because of the french army's brutality, but because a whole country was surrendered to national-arabism, even though the fighting was clearly won by France (it was a very brutal and successful anti-insurrectional war, fought by well-led draftees).

I know I'm rambling on a subject I do not know, JFM will correct me (I think he's a pied-noir, given his family name I've seen in a french blog), but to me Algeria war never has truly ended, it has only opened an another front, what conspiracy-oriented would call Eurabia.

I think this is Boumedienne who said at the UN something like : "some day, millions of men from the south will go to the north, and they will not come as friends, they will come as conquerors; we will conquer you with the bellies of our women. You may have the atomic bomb, we've got the demographic bomb".

Posted by: anonymous5089 2005-10-22 09:44

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