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PARIS – In an age of culture wars and Manichean Twitter debates, French President Emmanuel Macron is once again bucking the trend.
By commemorating the bicentennial of Napoleon’s death on Wednesday evening, Macron intends to fully embrace the emperor’s vast legacy in building most of the modern French state’s institutions, from the penal and civil codes to the appellate court and high schools.
But he will also recognize that his restoration of slavery in French colonies in 1802 was an “abomination,” according to an adviser at the presidency, who pointed out that “it’s a commemoration, it is in no way a celebration.”
Never one to embrace what’s become known as “cancel culture” – rejecting people for beliefs, statements or actions that are perceived as offensive – Macron has taken the same broad approach to confronting France’s colonial past in Algeria, its role in the Rwandan genocide and in refusing to tear down statues of historical figures who were also racists or slave-traders.
“Our approach is to look at history straight on,” the adviser told a group of journalists on Monday, not without a hint of exasperation at having to defend the choice to commemorate Napoleon. “There will be no hagiography but there also won’t be any denial or repentance because that would be engaging in an anachronistic reading of history by projecting on our past the weight of our contemporary debates.”
Yet Macron’s decision to commemorate Napoleon still represents to some extent an “uncancelling” of one of the top three most well-known French figures internationally, alongside Joan of Arc and Charles de Gaulle. Previous presidents have largely shied away from marking anniversaries associated with the emperor.
Macron’s commemoration is at heart a political move ahead of the 2022 presidential election. It allows him to indulge conservative voters he is wooing with the nostalgia many have for what they perceive as a more glorious time for France, while also winning over some on the left through recognizing Napoleon’s crimes and misogyny, and it gives Macron a new opportunity to cast himself among the great leaders of France’s history.
These undercurrents have not gone unnoticed by his main opponents. He’s already drawn sharp criticism for his approach from both far-right leader Marine Le Pen and current lead conservative presidential hopeful Xavier Bertrand who both took issue, separately, with Macron’s stated desire to “deconstruct” French history. Le Pen and Bertrand accuse Macron of giving in to those who “weaponise” the issues of colonialism and slavery to attack France and the West.
The Elysee adviser sought to counter this criticism.
“Deconstructing is building. When we tackle these issues, our goal is to reveal the truth and tell this truth to the French people and make it possible for a shared and republican memory to be built,” the adviser said.
Macron’s approach is not without risk. His own political camp is divided over the figure of Napoleon.
“[Napoleon] is one of the biggest misogynists,” said the Minister of Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the French-Cape Verdean Elisabeth Moreno, who also criticized the emperor for restoring slavery. Under Napoleon’s rule, the inferior status of women versus men was codified into law.
Also, there was an internal debate in Macron’s office over how to commemorate Napoleon, as officials sought to strike the right balance between doing enough but not too much.
“The decision to commemorate Napoleon was taken a while ago, what moved around a lot is the granularity, the form it would take,” a second adviser to Macron said. “[Some] advocated for as big a ceremony as possible, others were in favor of a minimalistic approach given the context with the pandemic and issues around memory.”
The decision to commemorate Napoleon’s death has caused anger in particular in France’s overseas territories that were especially brutalized under the emperor’s rule. Protests are planned in Guadeloupe while Macron is delivering his commemoration speech.
“How can we celebrate a man who was the enemy of the French Republic, of a number of European peoples and also the enemy of humanity in that he was an enslaver?” asked Martinique-born activist and author Louis-Georges Tin and political sciences professor Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison last month in Le Monde.
Without excusing slavery, some historians underline the economic context at the time.
“As a historian, I can only plead for the contextualization of events. It is undeniable that Napoleon reintroduced slavery in 1802, but he did it in a context in which all European countries and the United States had slavery,” argued Sorbonne University history professor Jacques-Olivier Boudon claiming that Bonaparte had no choice if he wanted France to compete with other pro-slavery countries.
Objections to Napoleon are neither new nor exclusive to the left. In 2005, right-wing President Jacques Chirac avoided commemorating the bicentennial of Napoleon’s victory over Russian and Austrian forces at Austerlitz.
Over the next week, Macron’s schedule appears designed to disarm critics from across the political spectrum. After commemorating Napoleon, he will mark Europe Day on Saturday, and two days later the National Day for the Memories of Slavery and the fortieth anniversary of the election of Francois Mitterrand, the legendary first socialist president of the French Fifth Republic.
Commemorating Napoleon and Europe Day in quick succession offers Macron two chances to address Bonaparte’s complex European legacy. The French emperor is often portrayed as the man who unified Europe by exporting the values of the French revolution. But paradoxically, Napoleonic expansionism contributed to fueling nationalism, the foremost enemy of today’s Europe, as wherever Napoleon’s armies went, there was a patriotic reaction, experts say.
“Napoleon’s attempt to export the order of the French revolution resulted in the birth of nations,” said Sylvain Kahn, a historian and geographer of the EU at the university Sciences Po in Paris.
And yet, for many, both Napoleon and Macron represent ambitions for a greater role for Europe, and through it France, on the world stage.
Pauline de Saint Remy contributed reporting.
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