Back when I was in a long snit about French arrogance, I used to get emails and comments that would mount a defense of the French by pointing out that Americans are arrogant, also. Which is no defense, but hey, it was fun. I have since buried that horse because sooner or later it had turned into a dead one trick pony.
But this is too good to pass up:
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."
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."
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.
An embarrassed President Jacques Chirac has called the law a "big screw-up," newspapers quoted aides as saying. 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. (h/t: Marguerite)
To be fair, there are many in France who see this as the abomination it is. The Parliament did pass this, though, and it represents France's struggle to come to terms with it's colonial past. It is clumsy and, dare I say, arrogant of the lawmakers to try to rewrite history.
"We're in a rather crazy situation," [University of Paris history professor Claude Liauzu] said. "They say the law won't be applied but it's up to lawmakers to cancel it."
Beyond the real concerns over the political manipulation of historic events, there is another danger of falsely misrepresenting French colonization, Liauzu said.
"France is a country profoundly marked by immigration" with the majority of French from immigrant stock, Liauzu said. By failing to tell the truth, children of today's immigrants "are deprived of any past."
One other note: Some took offense at my characterizing colonial French motives as a mission to civilize. This is from the body of the article:
In colonial times, French textbooks typically depicted the French presence in the colonies as that of benevolent enlightenment, with a clear mission to civilize.
The newspaper Liberation this week published drawings from "France Overseas," an illustrated colonial Atlas of 1931 that showed "before" and "after" drawings, one a sketch of Africans cooking and eating another human being, the second a school house on a well-manicured street with a French flag flying overhead.
Indeed.
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