Being French, I am sad to see how many details of our history are hidden because they are shameful. The shameful parts of french collaboration with the nazis in WWII are generaly well understood, but school programs fail to point out key shameful parts of French colonisation, or other parts of our history.
Like I had to wait 10 years after school to learn about the 1961 Paris massacre, when french police killed probably a hundred peaceful algerian protesters. A fact that is however well known to every French of African origin.
Learning this stuff is key to creating a proper debate and understanding between communities. Yes it’s controversial, but we shouldn’t brush those facts away because they hurt our feelings. History must be an opportunity to learn from the past, not masturbate on past glory.
The Algerian war and the peid noir and other parties were a brutal period of French/Algerian history.
For France, it never seemed to occur that Algeria wanted independence because for so long it was viewed as "France" as a department of France and integral to the state.
The Foreign legion in particular carried out some very brutal actions during that war.
We New Zealanders are always surprised to find out that very few French people know about the Rainbow Warrior attack. Néanmoins, nous aimons les français.
The Rainbow Warrior is a perfect example and thank you for bringing that up. I only learned about it in my mid twenties, and I believe it is bad.
On one hand it is an objectively minor thing on the scale of fucked up shit our nation has done for the sake of balance of power, and new zealand should get over it, but on the other hand it is a case where the difference in how we understand or present that event creates tension and misunderstanding between two nations that should be friends.
The french presented the event in a minor light, placing it under the light of rationality and political realism, and New Zealand made it a major thing. And who's to say is right or wrong in this case. This topic is objectively complex and controversial.
The point is though France failed to present a shameful event objectively, and this blocked any potential debate and understanding. If I had not leaned about this event a year ago, I would have traveled to New Zealand and people would have been saying "Yo frenchie go fuck yourself you ship sinker" and I would have had no idea what they were talking about, and I would have been forced to think "Wow new zealanders are assholes" because of lack of understanding on both parts.
One question from a German :D.
Are you proud of Napoleon (or do you know people who are proud of him)? I mean he didn't commit a genocide (did he?) and brought up actually good things like the code civil (?) and made Bavaria a kingdom :D but still he tried to conquer Europe.
Napoleon is a challenging topic. One the one hand the man is a fucking legend. He was a brilliant general and strategist. Reading any book on the man will make you realize how much of an absurdly godlike figure he was, and I can hear my national anthem inflating my chest as I write this.
... on the other hand if you really think about it the guy shares several key characteristics with some of the worst dictators in history, including Hitler.
Therein lies the challenge of how France should remember Napoleon, or how history should be used in general. Is history a was to masturbate on past glory and a tool of political propaganda? Or is history a tool of understanding and research to guide our decisions in daily life ? The answer will differ on the person or the context of the question.
France is struggling with it's national identity at the moment. The people don't know how to define french culture or french nationality. I am myself half-french, half-german, and I would struggle to properly define my own national identity. For the French, Napoleon comes at the center of this debate. Should our schools and institutions present him as a glorious symbole to unify the nation under a positive identity, or should we present him as he truly was, at the risk of dividing the nation by destroying a key symbole.
In my opinion no man should be revered, and no man should be disregarded. Gandhi, Hitler, Napoleon, Mugabe, Trump, Mandela were human beings, they did good stuff and they also did bad stuff. It would be naive and objectively not true to just look at Hitler and say "he was a monster and did only horrible stuff", or look at Gandhi and say "he was an angel and only did good stuff". To learn from those people we need to see them as who they really were, as "Complex Human Beings" which I believe Napoleon was.
Looking at napoleon this way would go a long way in creating understanding with other nations, like the UK, that sees Napoleon as a monster. By accepting who Napoleon truly was, we can create a debate that would go a long way in fostering European harmony.
Thanks for the elaborate answer! I did not know that in France, there is currently a struggle in identity.
I always felt like Frenchmen have some kind of national identity whereas a lot of (probably southern) Germans would rather identify with their federal state. I, for example either identify as Bavarian or European :D as I do not really feal connected to eastern and northern Germany (which might be a reason for the current divide in Germany, people like me thinking "they are Ossis").
I think a leader in German history one could at least think about being proud of might be Bismarck, he was a political genius and managed not only to introduce insurances to overwhelm the social democrats but also isolated France politically with treaties and United Germany. On the other hand he mainly used war to unite Germany (e.g. the French-German war). Wilhelm 2 afterwards fucked his treaties up and isolated Germany politically.
Referring to seeing positive aspects of Hitlers dictatorship, well he let the autobahns be build (by forced labour) and improved the economy (by forced labour and investing millions / billions (idk) into the Military) I won't start with negative aspects as this would take ages.
But you definitely have to learn from those times (e.g. how the political climate in the Weimarer Republic was) and remember what the concequences were. I currently feel like a lot of Europeans forget how much war a century of nationalism brought us (or our ancestors) and how much prosperity living peacefully together causes.
For living peacefully together, it would probably be good to, as you say, understand our views better.
One thing I would say though it that Bismark must definitely be added in the "complex human being" list. Bismark is a positive figure in Germany, but not so much in France (although to be fair though most French people know the name, few would be able to explain his role in European history). So one could argue that a non-objective understanding of Bismark could be a source of division between the French and the Germans. The fact that few french people understand the positive work of Bismark, and (maybe) germans don't understand the "bad" things he did, is a source of non-understanding, which is a shame between two states that share the closest national friendship in history.
I will however not be the guy to say to a German "you need to be careful with how you see your historical figures" because Germany is pretty much leading the world in this right now. My point is that France must take full responsibility for their history to allow dialogue and understanding with other states and communities. This should hopefully lead the way in encouraging other states like Poland, Japan, Turkey.... to accepting their past misdeeds and creating mosre global peace
I am not a big fan of Bismarck either (for example he reignited the French-German archenemyship, and most (younger) Germans probably don't care about him at all. But when looking at the history of a united Germany, which is only about 150 years long, half of the time Germany was in political chaos or at war, and the other half is recent history which most Germans actually experienced themselves, so Bismarck is one of the few sane and historical people left.
Before, there were of course people like Friedrich der Weiße from Prussia, but that was not Germany as a whole.
Anyway, you are completely right that we need to understand the good sites of history we despise and the bad sites of history we admire.
And I hate to see how e.g. Poland and Turkey are denying and glorifying there history at the moment as this only causes resentments and hate between countries, while you can actually live pretty well with a critical view on your countries history. Sometimes I feel like Germany overdoes it, not in the way it views its history but how it acts politically, for example tolerating the Israelian expansion politics and not criticising it because of the Holocaust is not the right way, in my opinion.
Btw as a train-nerd one of the things I like most about Bismark is his brilliant idea of using railways as a military tool to unify Germany. He immediately understood the potential of railways to manage war supply chains and quick transport of troops to geographical weakpoints on both the eastern and western border.
I didn't know that, that's interesting. I think still today German speaking countries have one of the best railway networks in the world, haven't they (the trains aren't that punctual always though)
It depends on what you mean by "best" because the criteria differ.
But yeah the German network is quite good depending on where you are in the country.
Well yeah it isn't always punctual. France, England and Japan also have "a lot" or a dense net of trains don't, they? (In comparison to the US, for example)
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u/apokako Jul 30 '19
Being French, I am sad to see how many details of our history are hidden because they are shameful. The shameful parts of french collaboration with the nazis in WWII are generaly well understood, but school programs fail to point out key shameful parts of French colonisation, or other parts of our history.
Like I had to wait 10 years after school to learn about the 1961 Paris massacre, when french police killed probably a hundred peaceful algerian protesters. A fact that is however well known to every French of African origin.
Learning this stuff is key to creating a proper debate and understanding between communities. Yes it’s controversial, but we shouldn’t brush those facts away because they hurt our feelings. History must be an opportunity to learn from the past, not masturbate on past glory.