France fights over the future of its past

PARIS — France is suffering from an acute dose of commemoritis.  

The French spend an inordinate amount of time and public money commemorating their history, erecting museums to it and, of course, arguing over it. Presidents love to perorate at grandiose ceremonies during which they project themselves as the embodiment of the nation and heirs to its great leaders.  

None more so than Emmanuel Macron, France’s youngest president and the first to be born after the end of its colonial wars, whose declared objective is to “pacify memories.” 

Macron never misses an opportunity to shape le récit national (“the national story”), from a week-long centenary tour of World War I landmarks in 2018, even as Yellow Jacket protesters were barricading the nation’s rotaries, to the ceremonial reburial of Simone Veil, the Auschwitz survivor who as health minister legalized abortion, in the Pantheon — a secular temple in Paris whose façade is inscribed “A Grateful Nation honors its Great Men.” 

But in the runup to next year’s presidential election, polemics about who, what and how to commemorate are turning into a political minefield.  

Two anniversaries, in particular, illustrate those sensitivities: the 200th anniversary of the death of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on May 5 and the 150th anniversary this spring of the Paris Commune, a short-lived leftist/utopian uprising in the wake of the defeat and fall of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian war. Politicians and public intellectuals are crossing swords over which of these non-events is worthy of commemoration.  

These debates are a proxy war over questions of race, class and identity. There are echoes of culture wars in the United States over removing monuments to Confederate generals, in Britain over the toppling of statues linked to the slave trade and in Spain over the exhumation of dictator Francisco Franco from his hero’s grave.  

Should the revolutionary general turned emperor be celebrated as the man who modernized state institutions and the legal code and, in the French telling, spread enlightenment values and the egalitarianism of the French Revolution across Europe by the sword? Or should Napoleon be eschewed as a dictator who restored slavery and subjugated much of Europe by war, only to lose it all? 

Likewise, much ink is being spilled over whether to glorify the egalitarian, anti-clerical anarchy of the 1871 Commune that pioneered compulsory free schooling, women’s rights and workers’ ownership of enterprises — or else to spurn a chaotic revolt that lasted barely two months and ended in a bloodbath, starvation and the torching of national monuments including the Tuileries palace. 

Tell me what you commemorate and I’ll tell you who you are. Or rather, what your politics are. 

For the left, the Commune is ideological bedrock, a heroic defeat that was a founding moment for a century of class struggle and, above all, an enduring reason to loathe the reactionary bourgeoisie embodied by Adolphe Thiers, who ordered the merciless crushing of the Communards by troops sent in from Versailles. 

The right, meanwhile, venerates Napoleon as the exemplar of French power and glory, airbrushing out the monumental death tolls of the Napoleonic wars, estimated at between 3 million and 6 million soldiers and civilians across Europe. The Paris skyline is shaped by his legacy, with the Arc de Triomphe celebrating his victories and the golden dome of Les Invalides crowning his tomb.  

His defeats litter the national vocabulary: “Une Berezina” is a catastrophic rout named after the battle that followed his retreat from Moscow; “un coup de Trafalgar” is a sudden reversal like the destruction of the French fleet; and “connaître son Waterloo” is to experience definitive defeat. 

Asked which events France should mark this year, liberal historian Pierre Nora told France Inter radio: “Yes to Napoleon, no to the Commune.” Splitting historical hairs, he suggested the nation should celebrate Bonaparte — the early years of reform and nation-building — rather than Napoleon, the war leader.  

These debates predate this anniversary-laden year. In Macron’s bid to reconcile the French with the darker sides of their history and promote a more modern, diverse and gender-balanced vision of national identity, the French president last year commissioned two high-profile historians as mine-sweepers, tasked with plugging some of the black holes in French memory. 

Benjamin Stora, born into a Jewish Algerian family who fled to France in 1962, last month recommended a series of steps to help heal open historical wounds with Algeria. They include telling the truth, belatedly, about the torture and disappearances of Algerian nationalists, opening long classified archives and returning symbols and remains. The so-called “Stora report” infuriated surviving settlers driven out of Algeria and their descendants, but was also criticized in Algeria because it advocated neither an apology nor compensation for what Macron himself has called the “crimes against humanity” of colonization.  

Meanwhile, Pascal Blanchard, a historian of colonialism, led a panel that earlier this month put forward 318 names of figures from France’s overseas territories, former colonies and immigrant communities worthy of honoring with street names and monuments. Most French streets and buildings are named after white men, and Blanchard’s efforts are intended to introduce greater diversity. But any decisions to change those plaques will have to be taken by local mayors and councils.  

Both reports have fueled rather than soothed culture wars over French history and identity — but perhaps that was the point.  

Macron is staking out a position in contrast to his adversaries: embodying the triumphs, sacrifices and diversity of French history while also acknowledging its darker deeds (albeit without formally apologizing for them). This stands in flattering contrast to right-wing opponents who end up painting themselves into a nationalist historical corner by refusing to distance themselves from colonialism, and left-wing adversaries who demand atonement and a bonfire of the flawed national heroes of French history. 

Macron is right to argue that history cannot be engraved immovably in stone for all time. Perhaps the best way to come to terms with the past is to add new monuments rather than tear down old ones.