Place and Locality in Modern France 9781780936864, 9781474210843, 9781780938417

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Illustrations
Contributors
The Local in French History: Changing Paradigms and Possibilities
Part 1 Space
1 The Republic of Marseille and the Making of Imperial France
Th e exceptionality of Marseille
Capital of the Levant
Revolution and reconstruction
Conclusion: France as empire
References
2 The Cartographic Language of Locality: Lessons from Alsace
Revolutionizing space: Creating a rational order from a mosaic of localities
Situating localities within regional and national space under German rule
Aft er the Great War: Re-mapping local spaces as French
Conclusion
Notes
References
3 Gastronomic Burgundy as a Regional Modernization Project
Introduction: Modernity and Burgundian modernization
Region, regionality, and regionalism
Gastronomic geographies
Emplotment, emplacement, and embodiment
Gastronomy as landscape; landscape as gastronomy
Participation and performance
References
4 Imagining Greater France in the Provinces: The Strasbourg Colonial Exhibition of 1924
Alsace and “ la plus grande France ”
Th e organizing committee
Alsace and Algeria at the exhibition
Conclusion
Notes
References
5 Annales Historians ’ Contested Transformations of Locality
Annales , place, and locality
Annales ’ detractors on place and locality
Retheorizing place and locality
Prospects of place and locality aft er Annales
Notes
References
6 A Local and Transnational Approach to Migration: The International Migration Service and its Marseilles Office in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 1
Birth of a transnational migrant assistance network
Th e Marseilles Offi ce: Operating at the local,national, and international levels
Notes
References
Part 2 Culture
7 La Lorraine Artiste : Modernity, Nature, and the Nation in the Work of Émile Gallé and the École de Nancy
The creation of the École de Nancy
“ The contemporary naturalist style ”
Classicism in question
The “ children of the forest ”
The problem of sources
The Exposition d ’ art d é coratif, Nancy, 1904
Notes
References
8 The Casbah des Oudaya: Th e Colonial Production of a Historic District in Morocco
The political stakes of preservation
The French production of a historic district
Houses as heritage
Conclusion
Notes
References
9 Facing the Nation: National Sentiment and National Belonging in the Wartime Writings of Iréne Némirovsky and Léon Werth
References
10 Remembering Oradour and Schirmeck: Struggles of Regional Memory and National Commemoration
Introduction: A tale of two lieux de mémoire
Oradour-sur-Glane: From the particular to the universal
Schirmeck: Protecting the particular by promoting European unity
Conclusion: Place particularity and “ locative thinking ”
Notes
References
11 Judging a Book Town by Its Cover: Marketing French Villages du Livre
Th e development of French book towns
Designing a cover
Books
Engagement with the written word
Local heritage
Sibling rivalry . . . and support
Ceci and Cela
Notes
References
12 Our Cousins in the New World: Celebrating Mexico in the French Alps 1
From the Valeia to the New World
Sunny Mexico in Alpine Barcelonnette
Mexico à la française
Mexico in the French borderlands
Notes
References
Part 3 Politics
13 Local Identities and Internal Migration: Networking as a Survival Strategy in Revolutionary and Postrevolutionary France
Notes
References
Published sources
14 Soldiers of the Pays : Localism and Nationalism in the Revolutionary Era Army
Localism in the Old Regime army
Regional mentalities among revolutionary troops
Annexed territories and divided loyalties
Conclusion
Notes
References
15 From mal du pays to l ’amour du pays : Fatal Nostalgia and the Local in Nineteenth-century
Le mal du pays
L’amour du pays
From pays to colonie
Notes
References
16 An Uncertain Icon: The Changing Significance of the Croix Occitane in the Postwar Midi
Decazeville: Patois and the pit
Les ann é es 68 and Occitanie
Tangled lines between Oc and vine
Th e fightback
Notes
References
17 Adoption and Adaptation: The Survival of French Départements
Designing departments: Th e French revolutionary legacy
Divide to unite: Th e departmental paradox
Long-lasting entities
When administrative entities turninto political institutions
Equalization of the territory, equalization through the territory
The incremental politicization of departments
Acknowledgment
References
18 Lé Président ? Georges Freche and the Making of a Local Notable in Late Twentieth-century France1
Making a socialist fi efdom: Power and populism
Identity politics and the rapatrié s d ’ Algérie
Place, locality, and personality: The manyworlds of Georges Frêche
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

Place and Locality in Modern France

Place and Locality in Modern France Edited by Philip Whalen and Patrick Young

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Philip Whalen, Patrick Young, and Contributors, 2014 Philip Whalen and Patrick Young have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7809-3686-4 PB: 978-1-4742-8277-2 ePDF: 978-1-7809-3841-7 ePub: 978-1-7809-3822-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain

Contents Illustrations Contributors The Local in French History: Changing Paradigms and Possibilities Patrick Young and Philip Whalen

vii ix xiii

Part 1 Space

1 The Republic of Marseille and the Making of Imperial France Ian Coller 2 The Cartographic Language of Locality: Lessons

3

from Alsace Catherine T. Dunlop Gastronomic Burgundy as a Regional Modernization Project Philip Whalen Imagining Greater France in the Provinces: The Strasbourg Colonial Exhibition of 1924 Alison Carrol Annales Historians’ Contested Transformations of Locality Joseph Tendler A Local and Transnational Approach to Migration: The International Migration Service and its Marseilles Office in the First Half of the Twentieth Century Linda Guerry

15

3 4 5 6

27 42 53

65

Part 2 Culture

7 La Lorraine Artiste: Modernity, Nature, and the Nation in the Work of Émile Gallé and the École de Nancy Jessica M. Dandona

79

8 The Casbah des Oudaya: The Colonial Production of a Historic District in Morocco Stacy E. Holden

91

9 Facing the Nation: National Sentiment and National Belonging in the Wartime Writings of Irène Némirovsky and Léon Werth Nathan Bracher

103

10 Remembering Oradour and Schirmeck: Struggles of Regional Memory and National Commemoration Elizabeth Vlossak

114

11 Judging a Book Town by Its Cover: Marketing French Villages du Livre Audra Merfeld-Langston

125

12 Our Cousins in the New World: Celebrating Mexico in the French Alps N. Christine Brookes

137

vi

Contents

Part 3

Politics

13 Local Identities and Internal Migration: Networking

14 15 16 17 18

as a Survival Strategy in Revolutionary and Postrevolutionary France Denise Z. Davidson Soldiers of the Pays: Localism and Nationalism in the Revolutionary Era Army Christopher Tozzi From mal du pays to l’amour du pays: Fatal Nostalgia and the Local in Nineteenth-century France Thomas Dodman An Uncertain Icon: The Changing Significance of the Croix Occitane in the Postwar Midi Andrew W. M. Smith Adoption and Adaptation: The Survival of French Départements Thomas Procureur Le Président? Georges Frêche and the Making of a Local Notable in Late Twentieth-century France Emile Chabal

Index

151 161 171 181 192 204 219

Illustrations Figure 2.1

Charte über die zwischen dem Cleeburger Bann und dem, dem Kirchspiel Sultz berichtigte Grenze, by P. Ney, 1788, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin, E 95 17

Figure 2.2

Le Royaume de France Divisé en 83 Départemens suivant les Décrets de l’Assemblée Nationale des 15 Janvier, 16 et 26 Fevrier 1790, Patentés par le Roi des François le 4 Mars de la même année [sic], 1790, by C. E. Delamarche. Ge C 1985, Bibliotheque nationale de France 18

Figure 2.3

Uebersichtskarte der Gemarkung Biblisheim, Kreis Weissenburg, 1909, Plan/2P, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin 20

Figure 2.4

Plan d’assemblage de la commune de Hermerswiller, Arrondissement de Wissembourg, Echelle 1 à 1000, 1921, Plan/2P, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin 22

Figure 3.1

Cover of the 1932 Gastronomic Fair of Dijon catalog, a promotional advertisement for the 1931 Fair, and a 1934 Fair poster, permission by Archives Municipales de la Ville de Dijon 32

Figure 3.2

Folkloricized map of the Côte-d’Or, woodcut by Louis William Graux in Gaston Roupnel, La Bourgogne, types et coutumes (1936). Permission Gallois family 34

Figure 3.3

Covers of the “Programme Officiel” for the 1935 Mère-Folle carnival and the January 8, 1927, edition of La Vie Dijonnaise, permission by Archives municipales de la Ville de Dijon 35

Figure 3.4

The Burgundian Cuisine float at the 1935 Mère-Folle Carnival. Permission by Archives municipales de la Ville de Dijon 37

Figure 7.1

Émile Gallé, Chambre aux Ombelles, Exposition de l’École de Nancy, 1903. Contemporary photograph 81

Figure 7.2

Poster for the Exposition de l’École de Nancy. Color lithograph by Victor Prouvé (1903). Image courtesy of the Musée de l’École de Nancy, Nancy, France 83

Figure 7.3

Portrait of Émile Gallé, Oil on canvas by Victor Prouvé (1892). Image courtesy of the Musée de l’École de Nancy 84

Figure 7.4

Poster for the Exposition d’art décoratif. Color lithograph by Auguste Vallin (1904). Image courtesy of the Musée de l’École de Nancy 87

viii

Illustrations

Figure 8.1

The exterior of the Casbah des Oudaya from behind the gate of the Café Maure, photo courtesy of Diana Wylie 92

Figure 8.2

The Casbah des Oudaya gate and its staircase, photo courtesy of Diana Wylie 95

Figure 8.3

System of narrow alleys and traditional houses perpetuated by the French in the Casbah des Oudaya, photo courtesy of Diana Wylie 97

Figure 8.4

System of narrow alleys and traditional houses perpetuated by the French in the Casbah des Oudaya, photo courtesy of Diana Wylie 98

Figure 11.1

Remodeled building in Bécherel housing a bookstore and a traditional Breton crêperie, photo by Audra Merfeld-Langston 127

Figure 11.2

Montolieu’s Village du livre vintage: Blending the local with print culture, photo by Audra Merfeld-Langston 128

Figure 11.3

Fontenoy-la-Joûte’s logo, photo by Audra Merfeld-Langston 132

Figure 16.1

Occitan Activists and the Long Kesh Ramblers, Lutte Occitan (July– August 1973). Archives Départmentale du Gard, JR1008 185

Figure 16.2

Cartoon captioned “Since Larzac, the ongoing liquidation of our country will become unavoidable if we do not take heed of our ‘Occitan fatherland,’ ” Echo des Corbières (March 1972). Archives Départementales de l’Aude, 573PER1 188

Figure 18.1

Frêche angelot, drawing courtesy Jean-Michel Renault (2012) 213

Contributors Nathan Bracher is professor of French at Texas A & M University, USA. His articles on history and memory include, most recently, “Hélène Berr et l’écriture de l’histoire,” French Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 32. No. 1, Spring 2014; and “Le passé du futur dans l’imparfait du présent: l’écriture de l’histoire chez Irène Némirovsky, Hélène Berr et Léon Werth,” in Mémoires occupées, edited by Marc Dambre (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2013). His book After the Fall: War and Occupation in Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française was published by The Catholic University of America Press in 2010. He is currently preparing a selection of François Mauriac’s editorials in English translation with notes and commentary. N. Christine Brookes is associate professor of French at Central Michigan University, USA. She co-authored The French Face of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Monsieur de l’Aubépine & His Second Empire Critics (Ohio State University Press, 2011) with Michael Anesko. Her research focuses on transnational cultural relations in France, including recent work on images of Russia in French print culture at the end of the nineteenth century, and the Institut français’ bi-national celebrations of saisons culturelles. Alison Carrol is lecturer in modern European history at Brunel University, London, UK. She has published on the Alsatian Socialist Party, on interwar Alsatian politics, and on ideas about borders in interwar Alsace, and is currently working on a monograph on the return of Alsace to France after 1918. The research for this chapter was completed with the generous financial assistance of the Scouloudi Foundation. Emile Chabal is a Chancellor’s Fellow in History at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research has focused primarily on French political culture since the 1970s, FrancoBritish relations, and the politics of postcolonialism in France. His first book, entitled A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. His contribution to this volume is part of a wider project on identity politics and municipal socialism in the south of France during the Fifth Republic. Ian Coller is senior lecturer in history at La Trobe University, Australia. His book Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe 1798–1831 was published by The University of California Press in 2010, and was the recipient of the W. K. Hancock Award of the Australian Historical Association. He has held fellowships at the University of Melbourne, the European University Institute in Florence, and the University of Paris. He is currently working on an Australian Research Council funded project, “Europe, Islam and Modernity: The French Revolution and the Muslim World 1789–1799.”

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Contributors

Jessica M. Dandona is assistant professor of art history at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, USA. Her research interests include Art Nouveau, French colonialism, and the history of scientific illustration. Her work has appeared most recently in the volume Picturing Evolution and Extinction: Regeneration and Degeneration in Modern Visual Culture, edited by Fae Brauer and Serena Keshavjee. She is currently working on a book-length study of nature and nationhood in the work of French designer Émile Gallé. Denise Z. Davidson is professor of history at Georgia State University, USA. She is the author of France after Revolution: Urban Life, Gender, and the New Social Order (2007) and co-author, with Anne Verjus, of Le Roman conjugal: Chroniques de la vie familiale à l’époque de la Révolution et de l’Empire (2011). Her articles have appeared in French History, French Historical Studies, Annales Historiques de la Révolution française, The Journal of Family History, and The William and Mary Quarterly. She is currently writing a book that makes use of private correspondence to discuss bourgeois families and their survival strategies during and after the French Revolution, research that has been generously supported by a Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council for Learned Societies and a Fulbright Research Grant for France. The essay that appears in this volume emerged out of that larger project. Thomas Dodman is assistant professor of history at Boston College, USA. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled The Making of Nostalgia: War, Empire, and Deadly Emotions in France, 1680–1880. He has published articles on the medical history of nostalgia and ennui in edited volumes, Historical Reflections, and Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales (for which he obtained the William Koren, Jr. Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies). Among other concurrent projects, he is also working on the family biography of a volunteer soldier during the French Revolutionary wars. Catherine T. Dunlop is assistant professor of history at Montana State University, USA. Her book Cartophilia, a history of mapmaking in the French-German borderland, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015. Her work has also appeared in Imago Mundi, the international journal for the history of cartography, and in the book L’espace rhénan, pôle de savoirs, recently published by the Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg. Linda Guerry is SSHR (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Postdoctoral Fellow at the INRS (Institut national de recherche scientifique), Centre Urbanisation Culture et Société, in Montréal, Canada. She is the author of several articles and a book: Le genre de l’immigration et de la naturalisation. L’exemple de Marseille (1918–1940) (Editions de l’École normale supérieure de Lyon, 2013). She is currently working on mobilizations and actions against gender discrimination related to rights of to nationality/citizenship in international organizations during the twentieth century. Stacy E. Holden is an associate professor of history at Purdue University, USA. She is the author of The Politics of Food in Modern Morocco (University Press of Florida, 2009) and A Documentary History of Modern Iraq (University Press of

Contributors

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Florida, 2012). She has published on the politics of preservation in Morocco in APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, History in Africa: A Journal of Method, and Journal of the Historical Society. She is currently working on a monograph that examines tales of Islamic captivity in US popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present day. Audra Merfeld-Langston is assistant professor of French at Missouri University of Science & Technology, USA. Her research focuses on twentieth-century French and Francophone literature, history, and culture. She is especially interested in book history. Her recent publications on this subject include several articles on French book towns and one on the national French literary festival “Lire en Fête.” She is also fascinated with the history and memory of the Second World War, particularly as it is expressed in literary and artistic forms. She has written about Marcel Aymé’s depictions of the war in his novels, short stories, and plays. Thomas Procureur holds a doctorate in political sciences from the University of Rennes 1, France. His thesis (2013) entitled The French Département: A Chameleon Institution? addresses the paradoxical forms of this institution’s legitimization. He has published several articles about French departments in Pouvoirs locaux, Mots, Les langages du politique, and La Gazette des communes, des départements et des régions. He is currently pursuing postdoctoral study on the political evolution of French overseas departments. Andrew W. M. Smith is currently a teaching fellow at University College, London, UK. His research focuses on concepts of center and periphery, analyzing various contexts in which this relationship has shaped historical events and international development. He has also looked at the relationship between the colonial periphery and the Metropolitan center, analyzing how legal and economic reforms ushered in by the 1956 Loi Cadre laid the foundation of the neo-colonial relationship. The current chapter is from research conducted as part of a larger study on French regionalism that is currently being prepared for publication. Joseph Tendler, of the University of St Andrews, UK, is author of Opponents of the Annales School (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013). His research interests range across modern American and European intellectual history, comparative and entangled history, and historical theory. He has published articles in History & Theory, the Revue d’histoire européenne, the Journal of American History and Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History and book reviews in German History. Christopher Tozzi completed a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 2013. He is assistant professor of history at Howard University, USA. He is currently preparing a book manuscript, tentatively titled The Army and the Nation: Foreigners and Minorities in the French Military, 1750–1831, that examines nationality and nation building in France through the topical lens of noncitizens who served in the armed forces during the revolutionary era. His work already in print includes a book chapter on linguistic diversity within the early modern French military and the article “Jews, Soldiering and

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Contributors

Citizenship in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France,” published in the June 2014 issue of the Journal of Modern History. Elizabeth Vlossak is an associate professor of history at Brock University in St Catharines, Canada. Her book, Marianne or Germania? Nationalizing Women in Alsace, 1870–1946, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. She is currently working on a project entitled “Remembering Forced Conscripts: The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe,” which focuses on French, Belgian, and Luxembourger veterans of the German Wehrmacht. Philip Whalen is professor of history at Coastal Carolina University, USA. His research interests are in gastronomy, tourism, cycling, and festive comportment as vectors of identity formation in modern France. Some of his recent articles have appeared in Environment, Space, Place; The Journal of Wine Research; Social Identities: Journal of Race, Nation and Culture; Contemporary European History Journal of Folklore Research and Cultural Analysis. His past book projects have addressed French historiography, historical geography, and Burgundian regionalism. Patrick Young is associate professor of history at the University of MassachusettsLowell, USA, with a primary scholarly interest in questions of place and displacement within modern French and European History. His book Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France (Ashgate, 2012) examines the historical conversion of France’s westernmost region of Brittany into an arena of modern place promotion and tourist exchange. He has also published articles in French Historical Studies, The Journal of Social History and other journals, as well as multiple chapters in edited collections.

The Local in French History: Changing Paradigms and Possibilities Patrick Young and Philip Whalen

The aim of this collection is to help signal the way toward a more expansive understanding of locality and local place, and of their significance within modern French history. It is an aim based both in the great richness of local historical study in France and the need for a historical perspective on current dilemmas of local sustainability and identity that have arisen from accelerated European and global integration. Our intention is to reconsider the peculiar French investment in the local, and in the maintenance of local place specificities, and to do so in a fashion that opens out more suggestively onto the broader contexts and concerns of the global twentyfirst century. Several decades now separate scholars from a time when the local could be comfortably enclosed within master narratives of modernity and the nation-state. The decentering of French history that has taken place in the interim began in part as a questioning of the teleological assumptions and dichotomies informing studies such as Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen (1976). The shifting of primary scholarly attention to the transnational and colonial registers of French history in recent years has likewise helped illuminate the central role of mobility, boundary crossing, trans-cultural contact, and commerce in engendering new forms of cultural and place identification. Beyond simply restoring historical agency and contingency to the so-called “periphery,” this turn in historical orientation invites a more focused consideration of the relationship between broad currents of rootedness and displacement within French history. It is now possible to approach the venerable issue of French locality in ways that take fuller account of how shifting linkages at the national, international, and global levels, far from merely challenging local moorings, have, in fact, more often been vital in enabling them; and, conversely, of how local identities and associations have been intrinsic to the development of French modernity, nationhood, and empire. While its associations in modern France have often (though never uniformly) been passéiste in nature, local place now carries richer interest and possibility in a postnational age. As the abundant insecurities and dislocations of neo-liberal reordering compel new forms of local re-rooting, a deepened scholarly understanding of the historical dynamics of local place construction becomes all the more important. It is our shared belief that the French case continues to offer particular insight on this score, given the historically deep, complex, and often conflicting French investment in locality and local place distinctiveness. France has hardly been alone among its European neighbors in maintaining strong local place attachments and mythologies across its

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The Local in French History

modern history. The German conception of Heimat, the Italian piccola patria, or the Spanish patria xica, among others, indicate the degree to which affirmation of local place rootedness has been and remains an animating principle of modern societies. Yet French attachments to the petite patrie have always been especially charged, bound as they are to dilemmas of identity and modernity that have sat at the very heart of French history. Place fealty is a question that remains at the very heart of (ongoing) French debates over difference and Republican identity, the relationship of modernity and tradition, and the territorial parameters of meaningful civic participation and collective memory. The two main conceptual underpinnings of this collection, “place” and “locality,” provide a means of approaching these issues that is both focused and expansive, and encompassing of the great variety of ways in which local connection has been (re)established across space and time in France. The question of how human beings relate to place has come to the very fore of scholarly concern within the social sciences and humanities over recent decades, following from the initial calls of humanist geographers in the 1970s for a “return to place” (Tuan 1977; Relph 1976; Cresswell 2004). While geographers have continued to lead the way in investigating objective and subjective human experiences of place, they have been joined by psychologists and phenomenologically inclined philosophers sharing a kindred interest in the complex of human longings, experiences, and disappointments that coalesce around places (Casey 1998, 2009). Recent ethnographic and anthropological treatments of place attachment have likewise considered the spatial frameworks of cultural and social development, as well as the more uncertain correspondence of culture and location in recent times (Miller 1995; Low 2003). Architectural, artistic, and literary analysis has similarly reflected the influence of new critical notions of space and place in the greater scholarly attention to the ways in which representation and rhetoric can help actualize or undermine prevalent place conceptions (Westphal 2007; Tally 2011; Dovey 2009; Hill and Paris 2006). If the historical investigation of place has been comparatively slower to develop on the whole, historians working on France have benefited from cues provided by recent spatially based French thinking (about which more is discussed later) to raise new questions about the place-bound aspects of everyday life and historical experience. This collection looks to build upon what is a still-burgeoning scholarly interest in individual and collective relationships to place, by asking more pointedly how such relationships have developed within the contexts of modern French history, and how they have informed French identity formation and experiences of modernity. While le local has a longer pedigree as a category of analysis within French history, the prospects and prestige of localized historical study have varied considerably over time (Gerson 2003b; Thuillier and Tulard 1992). Within France itself, histoire locale was long considered to be, in the main, a relatively specialized or marginal pursuit, as compared to a grande histoire tethered either expressly or implicitly to the project of the modern French nation-state. Recent scholarly accounts of the local historical inquiries undertaken by area notables, érudits, and amateurs in the nineteenth century have shown them, in fact, to be far from peripheral or narrowly reactionary in political intent; rather, the constitution of local knowledge and cultural repertoires played

The Local in French History

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an important role in the reintegration of France’s still-fractured post revolutionary social and political order (Gerson 2003a; Ploux 2011; Chaline 1995). The genesis of professional and academic history beginning in the 1880s nevertheless helped reinforce a divide between petite and grande histoire in France that has had staying power into relatively recent times. It was in the 1970s that the attentions of the French public and, to a somewhat lesser extent, French historians began to shift more evidently toward the petites histoires of local lives, life-ways, and places—partly in reaction to France’s definitive postwar transition to modern urban and technocratic society. Anglophone historical study of France likewise embraced local study more readily in the 1970s and 1980s, whether as a means of recovering the complexity of social agency in specific local contexts, or of interrogating larger historical narratives related to economic and social modernization and nation-state formation. The fragmentation of consensual French national and historical narratives—strikingly apparent in debates during the country’s bicentenary in 1989—has opened up further opportunities for the consideration of local histories on their own terms (Garcia 2000). The last two decades have indeed witnessed what some term a great floraison de singularités in French history writing, as recourse to the local past becomes a vital medium through which collectivities attempt to shore up a needed sense of cohesion and continuity across unsettled space and time (Bensa et al. 2011). The scholarly dividends of a revised historical approach to place and locality are potentially rich. As the chapters in this collection suggest, mining that potential now involves working more deliberately at the nexus of micro- and macro-history, and dedicating greater attention to the contingent and even fluid nature of local moorings—with the local conceived less in terms of stability and continuity than of nearly continuous reinvention and exchange. To do so is to continue the move away from the polarities that long informed French identity and historical understanding, and also circumscribed analysis of the role of place and locality within French history. The questioning, or even discarding, of oppositions such as nation/pays, Jacobinism/ federalism, Paris/province, centralization/pluralism, urban/rural, modernity/tradition, and Metropole/colony has made it possible for scholars to approach core problems of French history in a fashion more attentive to the multiple and interconnected spatial contexts of historical agency and change. Thus have tenacious assumptions about patterns of peasant fixity and migration, for example, given way to a fuller appreciation of the pluriactivité of peasant economic endeavors and, therefore, also of the deep involvement of many peasant communities with networks of mobility, urban cultures, and market exchanges (Rosental 1999, 2006; Rogers 1995). Likewise, recent provocative arguments over the “provincializing” of Europe and France have, beyond further exposing and undermining the universalist vocations of Western nation-states and empires, also begun to reveal the ways in which purportedly national and universal positions were always, in fact, determinedly “local” ones (Mbembe 2011; Cooper 2007; Chakrabarty 2000). In keeping with this promising scholarly turn, our collection proposes a more critical attunement to the spatial and temporal dimensions of place and locality, and to the ways in which localities do, in fact, “move” across space and time. Our hope is also to foster a comparison of particular cases from different places and periods. It should

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not be surprising that certain areas receive more sustained attention in these pages— the contested border regions of Alsace and Lorraine, the “gateway” city of Marseilles, the transnational Mediterranean region more generally—given the degree to which their location, broadly understood, speaks to the volume’s theme. So too have certain junctures of French history been especially important ones for the recasting of the terms of local connection, and they are also well represented here: the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, when the prerogatives of national sovereignty and national institutions invested locality with new and often politically laden meanings; the Third Republic, when newly invigorated discourses of locality emerged alongside agendas of national and colonial expansion; and the period running from the 1970s into the present, when a multifaceted crisis of French growth, social solidarity, and liberal political impasse has engendered a turn toward current and vestigial expressions of place-rootedness. Even across the at times considerable expanses of time, space, and subject matter separating the individual chapters of this volume, however, what comes through clearly is a shared ambition to rethink the horizons of local being in modern and contemporary France. *** The tripartite division of the table of contents corresponds to both the subject matter of the chapters themselves and the main thematic and methodological paradigms within which study of the local has proceeded. Some brief exposition of these will provide the context for the individual contributions, and also help signal possibilities for the continued scholarly exploration of how and why the French have “re-localized” over the course of their modern and contemporary history.

Space The chapters of the first section differently employ space as a conceptual prism for considering the dynamics of emplacement and mobility, of nearness and distance, within modern French history. In doing so, they evoke a longer and still-evolving tradition of modern French spatial consciousness, which has been notable for its intellectual richness and variety. Signaling a shift away from deterministic and teleological approaches to exploring the formation, development, history, and morphology of France, mid-to-late nineteenth-century French geographers, sociologists, and historians first exhibited an enhanced attentiveness to matters of territorial variability, differentiation, integration, and interdependence. Despite a lingering reliance on collective personalities, climactic dispositions, and progressivist teleology, Jules Michelet’s landmark Tableau de la France (1861) remains pivotal insofar as it positioned spatial development and geographic considerations as central to French history (Mitzman 1990; Claval 1994). Élysée Reclus’ nineteen-volume La nouvelle géographie universelle: La terre et les homes (1875–94) further illustrated how local physical geography contributed toward the development of distinct, quasi-autonomous social patterns (bioregionalism). He also introduced a social dimension via his critical interest in the “social facts” of class struggle. Finally,

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Paul Vidal de la Blache organized modern French geography, by promoting the systematic investigation of the relationship between society and environment. He employed the descriptive and analytic concepts of genre-de-vie and milieu to describe the functional integration of social organization and livelihood into relatively stable and unified patterns of daily life within localized bio-physical landscapes (Vidal 1911; Meynier 1969; see Clout 2003a and 2003b on the development of alternative priorities). Vidal’s work linked Neo-Kantian preoccupations (known to contemporaries as “possibilism) with finding a balance between human agency and geographical determinism to the empirical rigors of systematic case studies (Claval and Nardy 1968). His Tableau Géographique de la France (1903) advanced a geographic framework for reconciling nearly limitless local specificities evolving within overarching and unifying practices. Vidal’s emphasis on terrestrial unity, variability and mutation, scientific methodology, statistical procedures, environmental influences, and the role of human agency opened exciting avenues for further research, not the least of which were the numerous regional monographic theses produced under his supervision at the École Normale Supérieure between 1877 and 1897 (Buttimer 1971; Keylor 1975; Clark 1973). The rapid production of new scholarship at the turn of the twentieth century promoted enhanced opportunities for interdisciplinarity, synthetic treatments, and collaboration (Keylor 1975, p. 132). Henri Berr, most notably, promoted research gathered from disparate disciplines that might be combined to shed some light on “the original character of [a] region” (1903). While slow to gain recognition in the French university system, Berr’s synthetic impulse and critical agenda were embraced by a number of important early twentieth-century French historians and geographers who published in his innovative Revue de synthèse historique and found an institutional support in the Centre de Synthèse (Center for Synthesis).1 One of Henri Berr’s closest collaborators—dubbed the “a posteriori theoretician of the Vidalian conception of geography” by Paul Claval (1980, p. 160)—was Lucien Febvre.2 As a geographically oriented historian and early advocate of Vidalian methodological regionalism, Febvre pioneered, in Philippe II et la Franche-Comté (1911), the examination of socioeconomic interdependencies between urban and rural areas in a historical perspective within a regional framework.3 Febvre’s analysis of urban-rural interdependencies was quickly adopted for the study of French regions. Gaston Roupnel’s La ville et de la campagne dijonnaise au XVIIe siècle (1922), for example, adopted the template to investigate the nature and impact of the Dijon nobility of the robe’s seigniorial investments in the greater Dijonnais region following the ravages of the Thirty Years War.4 The development of methodologically formulated investigations of rural populations in their respective localities evidently raised questions concerning the appropriate unit(s) of analysis or “assemblages of phenomena” to employ. Efforts to identify suitably discrete and comparable spaces (such as cities, pays, departments, zones, regions, provinces, contrées, nations, or empires) generated additional questions concerning their nature, scale, and interrelations. Considerable procedural and methodological debate turned on whether such units were of biophysical, political, or cultural provenance; whether they should reflect or produce homogeneous or heterogeneous

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geographic entities, or some balance between the two; and how they were connected through processes of aggregation, disaggregation, hierarchy, symmetry, equivalence, and/or complimentarity (Flory 1966). Despite lexical variations, territorial ambiguities, and research practices that retained diverse thematic and comparative perspectives, procedural convenience and political consensus conspired to advance the region as a favored research unit in French history and geography (Berr 1903; Claval and Nardy 1968, p. 28; Meynier 1969, p. 100; Revel 2006).5 French geographical scholarship explored the development and evolution of longterm rural patterns as historical research contributed competing studies of French landscape formation.6 Looking back to this period, Paul Claval would assert that historians discovered the “worlds of the past” through geographical “reconstructions of traditional societies” (1984, p. 236). Similarly, historian Georges Duby was quite clear about mid-twentieth-century historians’ debt to geographers. While he credited the Annalistes for pioneering the practice of l’histoire totale, Duby emphasized that their methods were largely geographical (Lacoste 1994). Efforts to link the study of agrarian patterns, social structures, and human ecology within a long historical perspective (longue durée) through the study of discrete localities gradually gained recognition within a field hitherto characterized by static snapshots of rural existence.7 Regional studies were further advanced by Lucien Febvre’s and Marc Bloch’s emerging Annales (Annales d’histoire économique et sociale) project during the late 1920s and the 1930s, which challenged temporal and spatial frameworks hitherto prevalent within French historical studies.8 Early Annales historians and their collaborators employed long-term (longue durée) and comprehensive (histoire totale) approaches to explore how intelligible social, mental, and cultural patterns were linked to underlying economic, demographic, and material existence within clearly defined geographically entities.9 While permutations of this geographic imaginary continued to hold sway through the twentieth century, scholarly and public understanding of French territory and the territorial also embraced new and varied directions (Carrard 1992). A critical thrust in French geography, driven by interests in material conditions, social structures, and class struggles, and often supported by ideological sympathies, increasingly turned to spatial considerations related to capital distribution, colonial exploitation, and themes of geographic conflict operating across cities, territories, nations, and empires.10 At the same time, French historians such as Georges Lefebvre and Albert Soboul pursued the vector of class conflict in their studies of the social worlds and political activities of peasants (Lefebvre 1924, 1932) and workers (Soboul 1958a, 1958b, 1966) during the period of the French Revolution. These and related interventions stimulated additional investigation into “the concrete processes whereby class antagonisms are translated into spatial configurations.”11 Eschewing social and economic determinism while also making greater allowances for contingent factors and contributions “from below,” French thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel de Certeau sought more recently to understand space as a vital and indispensible arena of power and contestation, not least within everyday practices of the seemingly powerless before the sphere of politics (Dosse 1997; Bourdé and Martin 1983; Gardiner 2000; Frijhoff 2010). Moving beyond the analysis of subjects within spatial contexts,

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this generation of theoretically inclined scholars investigated not only how space reflected and informed cultural practices and social relations but also how space and self were mutually constitutive. They examined how different conceptions and practices of power constituted and disrupted categories of inclusion and exclusion, ranging from the social construction and management of imaginative geographies concerning the self and the other, nature and landscape, and locality and territoriality. Henri Lefebvre shifted questions away from the production of philosophical truths concerning space and reality and, instead, focused on the production of social change through spatial change. He examined how people produce spatial objects, structure spatial relations, and represent spatial organization in their everyday lives (le quotidien) through everyday events (Lefebvre 1991, 2008 [1947]). Michel de Certeau and Bruno Latour further explored these dynamics in terms of official and informal channels, networks, and structures (Latour 1993, 1999; de Certeau 1984 [1980]; Buchanan 2000; Highmore 2006). Michel Foucault famously addressed how modern spatial innovations, such as asylums, prisons, and hospitals, are efforts to localize the projection of power and exert control over everyday processes by establishing behavioral codes and standards. Foucault’s spatial geometry of power rejected the Annales’ concepts of total history and homogenous geography that function causally and apply uniformly and universally while suppressing difference, autonomy, or resistance (1965, 1973, 1977). Employing the concept of habitus, Pierre Bourdieu explored how knowledge, dispositions, and conduct relate to social circumstances and are reproduced across time and space (Bourdieu 1990, 1984; Bourdieu and Wacquart 1992). Picking up a phenomenological thread originating with Henri Bergson (1889) and advanced by Gaston Roupnel (1927), Gaston Bachelard (1932), and subsequent theorists such as Yves Lughinbühl (1995), Gilles Deleuze argued that concepts, thoughts, and events existed only in relation to time and space (Deleuze 1988, 1987). These and related contributions concerning the relations between space, power, knowledge, and differentiation continue to redefine the scope and nature of social and human science inquiry concerning the construction of space, place, and territoriality in France and elsewhere today. Recent directions in French historical scholarship are in some ways quite propitious to this “spatial turn.” Historians have been much keener of late, for example, to develop alternatives to the center/periphery imaginary that long structured understanding of French territorial, cultural, and political relationships (Agulhon 1992, pp. 825–49).12 So too have they come to conceive the spatial cadre or framework of French national development and identity in more expansive terms. In organizing the second volume of Lieux de Mémoire around the theme of “space,” for example, Pierre Nora signaled an intertwining of history, collective memory, symbolic place, and territoriality that was, in his estimation, intrinsic, if not unique, to France, a touchstone and topology for national identity and national memory that conceived the country as “completely one and irreducibly divisible” (Gasnier 1992). Nora’s explorations of “selective investigation into the collective inheritance of the country” have increasingly challenged and emboldened contemporary scholars to address how the material realm acquires symbolic significance as well as how immaterial practices may themselves become elements of place-making (Winter 1999; Sherman 1999; Holbrook 2010).

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The pronounced turn in recent years toward an intensified study of French colonial history, immigration, and the various permutations of “Greater France” has only just begun to tease out the complex connections between the local, colonial, and transregional registers of French history (Noiriel 1988; Bruno 2010; Marsh and Firth 2011, among others). Spatially based analysis can offer new opportunities for bringing these ostensibly different histories and historiographies within a single analytical frame, thereby illuminating the ways in which colonial relationships and other transnational linkages both relied upon existing formations of locality and enabled new ones. Along these lines, Ian Coller, in the very first chapter of this collection, adopts Marseille as a window onto the vital role of local particularity and inter-territorial connection to the genesis of French national sovereignty in the modern period. In Coller’s recounting, the longer term historical brokering of Marseille’s exceptionality, beyond merely helping to illuminate the city’s robust embrace of empire in 1830, reveals the “partial, precarious and irregular” nature of French political-territorial sovereignty. Indeed, the city’s identity, heritage, and status could be spun in directions leading to different and conflicting allegiances, while underscoring the relative advantages and interests associated with Marseille’s liminal position. Catherine Dunlop also explores the possibilities for a respatialized understanding of French histories of locality in her chapter on changing cartographic constructions of local space in Alsace across the long nineteenth century, and under alternating French and German political administrations. Critically interrogating maps as a distinctive form of historical evidence, Dunlop demonstrates how subtle but important differences between French conceptions of the grande and petite patrie on the one hand, and the German heimat on the other, found legible expression in local maps. Her chapter reveals how local space could be differently envisioned to help actualize larger spatial and political entities, and also uncovers some of the visual and imaginative work inherent to that endeavor. Philip Whalen adopts critically informed notions of space as his point of departure for an examination of Burgundian efforts to cultivate a distinctive gastronomic region during the early twentieth century. He examines how notions of local terroir and practices associated with the production, marketing, and consumption of produits de terroir both organized and anchored a sense of regional place and identity. Linking the cultural, social, and material aspects of cultural construction, Whalen considers how the Burgundian project entailed the development of local understanding concerning how meaning and signification could be affirmed and nuanced through contextspecific patterns of consumption and performance. He examines practices associated with Burgundian gastronomic events and culture to show how they transformed notions of public life, social comportment, economic restructuring, regional identity, civic engagement, and regional cultural self-awareness. Whalen’s study contributes to emerging works on the history of French food, taste, and gastronomy that have explored the ways in which product branding, consumer practices, cultural heritage, modern sensibilities, affective meanings, and social identity have been inscribed in place and locality through interdependent material, symbolic and affective practices.13 Joseph Tendler takes up the question of how territorial consciousness has been understood in French historical writing, specifically with regard to the historians of

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the influential Annales school and its critics (within France and beyond) across much of the twentieth century. Addressing lingering historiographic issues in light of recent French interventions, Tendler identifies core tensions around notions of space and time, specificity and comparison, and the national and transnational registers of historical analysis both within the historiography of the Annales and in the works of its critics. He finds that Annalistes, committed as they were to uniform and universal conceptions of time and space, were largely unable—despite their own heightened attentiveness to particularities—to theorize contingent, unstable, or unique phenomena. Moving to the high-water mark of French colonial promotion during the interwar period, Alison Carrol examines the intersection of imperial, national, and regional agendas and identities at the 1924 Strasbourg Colonial Exhibition. In describing the intricate political and promotional cross-circuitry at work in both its conception and unfolding, Carrol uncovers a “multicentered struggle involving a range of regional, national and international stakeholders.” The event helped manifest relationships that were felt to be still uncertain or even unwelcome for many, and provided encouragement to fuller public involvement and investment in those relationships. The chapter moves well beyond the established concept of “local cultures of empire” to show how the Exhibition brought into conversation still-emergent and abstract notions of “Greater France” on the one hand, and a conflicting Alsatian regional self-consciousness on the other. The organizers employed a discourse of colonial difference and national integration in order to advantageously position Alsatian products and underscore Alsatian political loyalty to France. Like the other chapters in this section, Carrol’s piece invites a revised spatial framework for French history, one that is more attentive to the dynamic relationship between the demands and goals of idealized and lived spaces. Linda Guerry addresses questions of population mobility and (re)localization in the context of twentieth-century transnational migrations, notably those of women and children, in and through France. Her chapter reveals how the Marseilles Office of the International Migration Service came to occupy new and uncertain institutional ground, as it endeavored to address migration issues simultaneously within international, national, and local frames of action. Guerry argues that the IMS Office represented a novel, and in many ways forward-looking approach to the question of migration, but that it also proved incapable in and of itself of pointing toward an effective “governance of the transnational phenomenon of migration.” The chapter’s analysis of the IMS’ organizational practices and preoccupations sheds light on the impact of multinational agencies and transfrontier actors in testing the boundaries of French nationality, identity, and territoriality amidst twentieth century conditions of demographic flux.

Culture A second main scholarly approach to the role of locality and place in French History has been cultural in orientation, focusing on the cultural mechanisms through which local place identities, connections, and specificities have found elaboration, and taken

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on considerable resonance over the modern period. It is an approach that has done much to illuminate the social and cultural construction of place and place attachments in differing historical contexts, and to reveal the correspondingly mediated nature of those attachments. The chapters of this section examine different cultural manifestations of the French inclination to remain “locally bound,” even (or especially) in the face of unsettling historical change. Jessica Dandona’s opening chapter sets forth some of the core quandaries of local place manifestation within culture, in a telling account of universal, national, and local engagements intersecting around matters of artistic form. Dandona shows that amidst a greatly awakened French public interest in local and regional place particularities in the fin-de-siècle, Émile Gallé and the École de Nancy developed a modern regional artistic style based on the artist’s rootedness in nature and place, one that presaged an “alternative definition of modernity . . . local in its points of reference and yet cosmopolitan in its attempts to represent the nation at home and abroad.” Other notable studies of the rustic-regional turn in French art and literature of this period have similarly questioned the degree to which ex-post facto privileging of the urban and cosmopolitan avant-garde has obscured different currents of artistic modernism, including provincially based ones (Thiesse 1991; Golan 1995; Antliff 2007; Toulmin 1990). Dandona explains how Gallé and his Lorrainais compatriots adopted local flora and fauna, rather than tradition, as “an expression of identity and belonging.” This provided the basis for a modernist and “recognizably French Decorative” arts style that they promoted at successive exhibitions in Paris and Lorraine. The project evinced many of the same unresolved tensions and contradictions that bedeviled Art Deco more generally, ones relating to matters of aesthetic dynamism, thematic coherence, commercial production, and relevant audience. Yet it also, in Dandona’s assessment, provided significant ballast to the ethos of “unity in diversity” that would inform French national consciousness (however unevenly) in the twentieth century. The three chapters following in the section focus on the constitution and projection of local place profiles, across a variety of geo-historical contexts. Stacy Holden in her chapter considers the colonial politics of place production within the urban district of the Casbah des Oudaya in Rabat, Morocco. Departing from what has been a prevailing scholarly focus on projects of urban modernization in Morocco and other French colonial possessions, Holden studies the sustained campaign undertaken by French colonial authorities to identify, preserve, and even restore the architectural distinctiveness of the Casbah over the years following the establishment of the French protectorate in 1912 (Abu-Lughod 1980; Celik 1997; Wright 1991; Rabinow 1995). In the colonies, as in provincial France, the power to assign, cordon off, and enforce place specificity and value was one the state and private actors assumed more readily during this period, usually in the face of complex and changing local circumstances. Holden describes in the case of Oudaya how French solicitude for “authentic” local architecture produced ongoing conflicts between local, national, and colonial regulatory agencies of overlapping jurisdiction, thereby complicating the maintenance of colonial policies and hierarchies. Hers is a case study that offers a broader insight into the colonial construction of indigeneity, through regulation of the built environment and extension of (imported) metropolitan place and patrimonial conceptions.

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The chapters of Christine Brookes and Audra Merfeld-Langston likewise consider the historical development and staging of cultural repertoires of local place, albeit in the context of more recent heritage enterprises in provincial France. Historians have amply studied the long-term development of discrete territorial identities and “personalities,” showing how local history, cultural artifacts, terrain, and symbolically laden sites have been converted over time into markers of a distinctive regional or local place profile (Guillet 2000, 2005).14 The modern conception of patrimoine took root as a designation for canonical national artifacts and sites, and also over time for more localized ones comprising inventories of local place history and cultural/ folkloric inheritance. Originally a project of the nineteenth century and one directed largely by national and local elites, patrimonial constitution expanded considerably in scope in the twentieth century as both an official and public preoccupation. For a great many localities in France, the organization, display, and marketing of local heritage has become a vital pathway to maintaining economic and cultural viability amidst the vagaries of French and international capitalist restructuring (Rautenberg and Trady 2000; Chevalier 2000). So too has it catered to the neo-ruralist sensibilities that took root in the 1970s and continue to find varied expression within contemporary French life (Lacroix 1981; Léger 1983; Cloonan 1999; Farmer 2011). This is the necessary historical backdrop for Christine Brookes’ examination of the curious case of the French town of Barcelonnette in the Ubaye valley of the southern French Alps. As Brookes shows in her chapter, successive generations of local leaders in Barcelonnette effected cultural linkages with Mexico and with Latin culture more generally, as a way of shoring up Barcelonnette’s distinctive place identity within shifting national and international contexts that threatened to consign the town to permanent marginality. Built upon a history of Ubayen emigration to and from the New World in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Barcelonnette’s highly pliable “Mexican myth” made a touristic asset of the region’s geographic and economic liminality. In this particular case, local identity was less the product of spatial and temporal continuity than of transnational mobility, cultural hybridity, and commercial imagination. As a place of “ambiguous identity” built upon a history of “movable borders,” the town’s “existential flexibility,” in Brookes’ final interpretation, “fits squarely into the rhetoric of a new, imagined Europe that is both post-national and transnational.” In her own chapter, Merfeld-Langston takes up the equally intriguing phenomenon of “book towns” that have sprouted in France and across Europe over recent decades. As shrines to the historical and cultural rootedness of print culture in France—if not necessarily within their own local histories or economies—designated book towns such as Bécherel, Montolieu, and Fontenoy-la-Joûte marshal the book to more broadly resonant conceptions of French cultural heritage, rural authenticity, and emergent ecological sensibility. Merfeld-Langston highlights the pivotal role of intermediary elites, print industries and targeted publicity in both germinating the events and building for them a profile of attraction within a still-emergent European circuitry of transnational exchange and cultural consciousness. The story she tells though is equally one of a seemingly anachronistic, place-based book culture reasserting itself in an increasingly dis-placed digital age. As in several of the chapters preceding it, MerfeldLangston’s attests to a “delocalization of local discourse,” as local place profiles and

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particularities have come to hinge upon broader networks of mobility and exchange (Rogers 2002; Young 2012; Whalen 2007a). Like heritage or patrimoine, memory has also been a vital medium through which ideas about locality and place connection have been organized within France’s modern history, particularly in more recent times. The key point of reference, if not necessarily of origin, for this line of inquiry is, of course, Pierre Nora’s massive Lieux de Mémoire project, its multiple chapters dedicated to “le local,” “la region,” and “centre et péripherie” among other kindred topics suggestive of the project’s overarching concern for the embedding of national memory in specific sites. As a great many critics of Nora’s project have observed, the selection and analysis of lieux in the volumes betrays an evident orientation toward Metropolitan France and the problem of French national identity, with a corresponding diminishment of the specifically colonial and local nexuses of historical experience and consciousness (Tai 2001). For all of its sweep and influence, therefore, Les Lieux de Mémoire hardly exhausted the possibilities of a memory-based approach to problems of place and locality in French history. The two final chapters in this section take up the question of memory in the context of enduring dilemmas connected with France’s années noires. As accounts of the period have amply affirmed, the war years represented a time of significant re-localization for many French, as conditions of defeat, displacement, and deprivation—exacerbated by ever-shifting and uncertain political tides—compelled a general turning inward toward familiar and/or local linkages. Within the narrowed horizons of the Vichy administration and the German occupation, it was not uncommon for the most local of rivalries and suspicions to become enmeshed with larger national and international political realities, to sometimes disastrous ends (Fogg 2008; Alary 2006; Vinen 2006; Delasselle et al. 2006).15 While France’s struggles to negotiate the legacy of the war years in collective memory at the national level have been thoroughly discussed by historians, there remains considerable room for a deeper consideration of the more localized guerres de mémoire that have arisen from efforts to come to terms with the war years. Looking to penetrate the riddles of attachment and displacement faced by many French in this period, Nathan Bracher examines the interventions of two French Jewish writers who negotiated the problem of national identity amidst wartime conditions of defeat and civic breakdown. In their war narratives, Bracher shows, Irène Némirovsky and Léon Werth interrogated the terms of national belonging, steering between the main universalist/cosmopolitan and more localized/exclusivist visions of French identity on offer to arrive at a nuanced (if still confused) grasp of the “tangible, ineluctable realities” undergirding membership in a national community. The chapter’s analysis of these two authors’ seemingly unlikely pathways to a sense of rootedness in national community and history has important implications for the larger question of how French identity grounding has proceeded in the wake of republican narratives of national and universal liberation that no longer hold the same sway. Focusing likewise on memory of the années noires, though with an eye more toward public than private or literary remembering, Elizabeth Vlossak examines the complex interplay of the national, transnational, and local registers within which historical memory is constructed, through a focus on two particularly resonant sites of the Second World War remembrance. What she finds, in considering the cases of

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Oradour-sur-Glane and Schirmeck, in the Limousin and Alsace regions respectively, is a genesis of competing memory needs and claims that further complicated the broader French struggle to arrive at consensual national remembering of the war years. In that these lieux de mémoire authorize both particular and universal mnemonic engagements, they have given rise to “a delicate negotiation between individual memories, a larger collective memory, the goals of political and specialinterest groups, and the needs of the state.” The alternative to a polarity of parochial and national consensual memory claims, Vlossak speculates in her final section, may well rest in “locative thinking” that can embrace particularity of historical place and experience as a basis for the public sharing of memory in future time.

Politics A third perspective on place and locality in French history is political in bent, focusing on the role local actors, constituencies, and agendas have played in French politics, and on how local fealties have been brokered in specific institutional arrangements and settings. The unsettling of once-predominant linear conceptions of “modernization” and political acculturation has made it possible for scholars to reconsider the full complexity of politics and political change at the local level (Weber 1976; Cabo and Molina 2009).16 They now approach such questions with a generally more pluralistic understanding of historical and contemporary formations of French identity, and with greater attentiveness to the overlapping attachments to village, region, département, and nation, and to larger territorial entities such as “Greater France” or Europe, that have provided a basis for political identity and action. Recent work in this vein has illuminated how ostensibly peripheral actors such as peasants and provincials, colonial subjects, exiles, immigrants, and sans-papiers (those residing in France without valid documentation) have helped construct French identity through their own highly varied, and often conflicting, experiences of it (Lehning 1995; Sahlins 1991; Ford 1993). The chapters of this section are of a piece with this historiographic turn, examining as they do different ways in which the “local imperative” has played out, and continues to play out, in French politics. That the local ground of politics in France has historically been a contested one is beyond dispute. By enshrining the principle of national sovereignty, and establishing a political-institutional framework for its realization, the French Revolution introduced a dilemma that has remained fundamental to French politics into quite recent times: how to square the principles of national and local liberty. Advocacy of local interests and prerogatives vis-à-vis the French state has also been a more or less continuous thread of modern French politics, running from the federalist revolts of the revolutionary era through the flowering of new regionalist and autonomist movements during the Third Republic; and on to more contemporary expressions of local political initiative following from the decentralization reforms of the 1980s and from new opportunities provided by the European Union and the diminishment of nation-state sovereignty. The inflections of this “localist” strain of French politics have, however, been varied and conflicted ones.

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The French right has historically been bound to a particular vision of French local rootedness. Conservative and reactionary identifications with the local first came into flower over the decades following the revolutionary upheaval of the late eighteenth century, and continued to ripen over the nineteenth century, as identification with the peasantry and rural life provided for some a needed moral and political counterpoint to modernity and the working class. A defensive and even embattled localism found greater political traction in the prewar Third Republic, as the new nationalist right valorized the certainties and continuities of the petite patrie against the values, institutions, and elites of an “artificial” republic (Lebovics 1994; Sternhell 1972; Chiron 1987). In the wake of the Republic’s mortal crisis of the late 1930s, Vichy’s “National Revolution” established regional prefectures, folkloric initiatives, and propaganda vaunting “the land that never lies,” all of which cast local reconnection as a basis for national regeneration (Faure 1989). Though politically discredited over the decades following Vichy’s demise, this strain of defensive, and often exclusive and authoritarian, localism returned in earnest in the rhetoric and program of the Front National, as it attempted to capitalize upon contemporary uncertainties and dislocations linked to immigration, multiculturalism, and globalization. Today, the local continues to carry allure in France as an ostensibly “purer” or more “authentic” basis for personal and political identity, a corrective to unsettling or unwelcome cultural diversity, and a way out of France’s ongoing crisis of civil society and public political disaffection (Goodcliffe 2012; Davies 1999; Gaspard 1995). Historical scholarship has done much nevertheless to challenge what can still be an almost reflexive tendency to associate French localism with nostalgia, political reaction, and xenophobic exclusion. Even as they embraced many of the premises of the “modernization” paradigm, formative studies of rural and provincial politicization such as Maurice Agulhon’s République au Village, Ted Margadant’s French Peasants in Revolt, and Charles Tilly’s The Vendée also eschewed narrowly diffusionist explanations of local political reorientation (Agulhon 1970; Margadant 1979; Tilly 1976). Subsequent studies moved even further from hardened assumptions about the “Jacobin” or “Providential” state and its “agencies of change,” highlighting the vital role of local initiatives and identifications in enabling state development and national integration. Far from being uniformly insular or passive in tenor, these studies have suggested, local politics provided a space of convergence between local concerns and state prerogative that was vital to the historical development of the liberal state and civil society in France; indeed in some cases, communal politics could even be a laboratory for new forms of civic engagement (Brassart et al. 2012). The marshaling of local and regional difference behind agendas of republican integration and national affirmation reached its apogee during the period of the Third Republic, as the petite patrie became for many the preferred symbolic conduit to the more abstract nation (Wright 2003; Peer 1998; Moentmann 2003; Whalen 2007b). It was in the successor Fifth Republic, however, that the long-deferred objective of political decentralization as a means of democratic revitalization came to fruition. Whatever the political calculation driving their conception, or the unevenness of their implementation and impact, Socialist initiatives to invest communal, departmental, and regional representation with greater power and accountability helped awaken new and

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current aspirations to potential civic renovation at the local level of French politics (Deyon 1992; Schmidt 1991). It is against this broad historical and historiographic backdrop that the chapters of this section can be understood, as varied accounts of how local attachment has been reproduced within French political and institutional life. In the section’s opening chapter, Denise Davidson examines the vital reconfiguration of the local and national registers of French politics during the revolutionary era, through a focus on the relatively neglected issue of population mobility, resettlement, and networking. Her more specific subject is the internal migration of prominent Lyonnais involuntarily displaced by the political vicissitudes of the revolutionary decade, and compelled to relocate to other cities such as Paris and Rouen. The chapter shows how these businessmen, bankers, and former and current government officials built informal networks of allied originaires, thereby forging over time “a new identity of Lyonnais living elsewhere” that aided them in reestablishing a foothold of influence within new environs. In her subjects’ canny bridging of “outsider” and “insider” positions, Davidson finds fresh insight not only into the venerable question of elite (re)formation during the revolutionary and postrevolutionary eras, but also into the complex ways in which place connection and continuity could be recreated and redeployed across modern ruptures of space and time. It is clear in reading Davidson’s chapter, as also the two that follow by Christopher Tozzi and Thomas Dodman, that one of the Revolution’s signal legacies was an enduring uncertainty over the legitimate parameters of local identification and fealty. How such dilemmas played out in the development of national institutions such as French public schooling has been a question of great interest to historians. Notable studies have revealed that primary schools not only accommodated local specificities in their daily operations, but also helped diffuse formerly localized place knowledge across France, thereby fortifying French republican discourses of the petite patrie (Chanet 1996; Thiesse 1997). For their part, Tozzi and Dodman aim to reconsider the French military as an institutional arena within which local attachment was rearticulated vis-à-vis stillemergent national imperatives. Tozzi’s “Local Soldiers and National Armies” reveals the remarkable and enduring diversity of the French army across the Old Regime, and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Periods. Taking issue with the longstanding assumption that the military was the agent par excellence of French state-building and national integration, Tozzi asks how localized and national identities and interests may, in fact, have mingled in the military’s internal culture. He shows that as much as the military bore the hallmarks of an embryonic national institution, it also had to cultivate local identities and solidarities in its recruitment and organization, and to evolve the means to function effectively as a transcultural and even transnational institution. It was, indeed, precisely as a “cosmopolitan space” and “incubator of localist loyalties” that the army was able over time to play so vital a role in forging the bases of French national community. Thomas Dodman considers in his chapter how the French military and the French medical establishment addressed a notable upsurge in cases of home-longing among soldiers during the nineteenth century. He finds that physicians responded in “unexpectedly pragmatic” and “accommodating” ways to the problems posed by

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soldierly fixations on home, and by their potentially corrosive impact upon military morale. The evolution of the medical diagnosis of “clinical nostalgia,” Dodman argues, reflected larger shifts in sensibility among French liberal elites, because they leaned increasingly toward conceiving pays and patrie in more complementary terms as “two moments of the same logic of modernity.” Thus did French medicine help to legitimize “emotional attachment to territorial belonging,” and to allow new conceptions of French territoriality at both the national and imperial levels to be both broadly propagated and emotively invested. The final three chapters of this section focus on the period of the current Fifth Republic, though they address core questions of local politics that have been salient across modern French history. One is the rich and varied history of political advocacy, mobilization, and protest action undertaken at the local level, and in defense of purportedly local interests. While a prodigious scholarly attention has focused on the social and political-ideological formation of small producer protest movements, and on their relationship to France’s revolutionary/republican or, alternatively, radical rightist traditions, there has been a less thorough consideration of how such protest has unfolded within specific symbolic and spatial frameworks of place. Focusing on the Midi region, Andrew Smith’s chapter analyzes the postwar revival and reorientation of Occitanisme, and the symbolic role of the Occitan cross as a contested marker of local patrimony. In France, as elsewhere, localized movements of political mobilization and defense germinated in the fertile political soil of the 1960s and 1970s, as the impact of accelerated modernization during the trentes glorieuses directly challenged the viability of a great many local communities, economic endeavors, cultural pursuits, and landscapes across France. Tracking its deployments in the early 1960s miners’ strikes in Decazeville through the protracted and successful protest against the proposed military installation at Larzac, Smith shows that the Occitan cross came to function as a “flexible banner” bringing different actors and agendas in the region into a common cause, and joining longer-standing Occitan identifications to the working class, New Left, and tiers-mondiste sensibilities of more recent provenance. He suggests that in these instances, as in the countervailing efforts of reappropriation by state and local authorities from the late 1970s onward, the cross also helped demarcate a distinctive local patrimoine comprising inherited cultural repertoires and place history, as well as traditions of local protest and resistance. Like other recent studies of protest action by embattled artisan, farming, or fishing communities in France, Smith’s study underscores how the success of such movements hinges upon their ability to both root themselves in a specific place and forge connections with larger discourses of national and international solidarity (Le Bris 1975; Alland and Alland 2002; Menzies 2012). Directing his own focus toward issues of administrative organization and reform, Thomas Procureur provides a long-term perspective on the French département, so long derided by successive generations of French localists as an unwelcome and unlovable contrivance of the revolutionary era. Why, he asks, has the département survived and even thrived as a French political institution? The chapter recounts the conflicting political concerns and objectives weighing upon the département’s conception, and its subsequent historical evolution, adaptation, and eventual acceptance as a “meaningful

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entity” in French politics, one that has come to embody “an ongoing compromise between local, territorial, electoral, and national interests and priorities.” While the successive waves of recent decentralization reform seemed initially to augur a curtailing of the administrative legitimacy and autonomy of the département, Procureur shows how they, in fact, reinforced the importance of its role, albeit more as a political than merely an administrative institution. In the final chapter of the section, Emile Chabal adopts a suggestively focused perspective on a single local political figure—one whose idiosyncratic and uncannily successful political style offers insight into the changing horizons of local politics and political leadership in Fifth Republic France. For much of the nineteenth century, it was the notable that most defined politics and the parameters of political possibility at the local level, dispensing patronage and acting as an intermediary between the local community and interest and the French state. The decline of the notable’s influence coincided with the growth of republican state legitimacy during the period of the Third Republic, as the empowerment of elected mayors helped establish a new (middle class) social basis for the regime, and new political rivals to the notable’s local clout (Halévy 1930; Charle 1987). Chabal profiles one of the more towering mayoral figures of the Fifth Republic, Georges Frêche, who exercised a nearly three-decade long dominance of municipal politics in the city of Montpellier. At once an exemplar of a localized political populism and a kind of Gaullist executive/presidential grandeur wielded at the local level, Chabal demonstrates, Frêche managed to reach across oftencharged ideological and demographic fault lines and continually refortify and reinvent his public base of support. This was particularly striking in Frêche’s handling of Montpellier’s knotty postcolonial identity politics, as his calculated political solicitude toward the city’s sizable pieds-noir community, as well as its Muslim minority, led to the town’s retention of the Socialist government in the face of new rightist inroads in other southern French towns. For all that Frêche’s apparent clientelism might recall the figure of the notable, Chabal suggests it instead to be a savvy adaptation to the new conditions of local politics in contemporary France. *** It goes without saying that neither the topical nor the methodological range of the included contributions is exhaustive of the scholarly possibilities for localized study. Indeed, important avenues of potential inquiry have not been as fully represented here as their intellectual salience and potential merit. The natural environment is among the more conspicuous of these, given the richness of ongoing work in French and European environmental history, and the ways in which that work challenges the conventional spatial and temporal demarcations that have long informed French history writing. While several of the chapters consider French engagements of the terrain, taking full account of the agencies of nature means keener attunement to the dense web of interconnected life relationships present in a given, ostensibly “local” environment— relationships that often lead rather far afield. The continued development of this current of historical interest will surely engender opportunities for investigation of how environmental agencies of change and conflict manifest within local cadres

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de vie. There is also considerable room to develop a more historical perspective on contemporary initiatives such as regional park reserves, ecomusées, and ecotourism that aim to re-inscribe established French cultural practices and institutions within specific natural milieux, and to propagate more ecologically grounded relationships to place (Ford 2003, 2007; Whited 2000; Bess 2003). Methodologically, it must be acknowledged that on the whole the chapters and authors represented in this volume incline toward an analytical approach emphasizing the social/cultural construction of locality and place, one that foregrounds representation as its main object of analysis. While this is an approach that has reaped ample rewards, considering place and locality too exclusively in terms of cultural construction, representation, or “invented tradition” runs the risk of shortchanging the complexity and richness of locality as a lived experience in both the past and present. There has developed over the last two decades a vibrant body of nonrepresentational theory within geography and other social science and humanities disciplines, one that invites a more grounded approach to the local as a habitual and lived knowledge, embedded and embodied in everyday movement and practice (Anderson and Harrison 2010; Thrift 2007; Bennet 2010; Green 2012). If few of the chapters in this volume aim expressly at contributing to this line of analysis, many more offer suggestive hints of what it would mean to consider place and locality as, first and foremost, a kind of experience, practice, and performance. Certainly the critical analysis of media such as maps, exhibitions, festivals, or demonstrations can more fully address and encompass how material practices, cultural protocols, emotional economies, and gestural vocabularies develop and habituate local belonging and knowledge (Kalb 2006; Scheer 2012). There is more to be understood about how these, and a great many other such sites and practices, forge connections between the near and the distant within everyday life. With respect to the more contemporary implications of the findings in this collection, our main hope is that a rethinking of France’s local pasts might help foster a keener attunement to comparable currents of localization elsewhere, and also within the global present (Appadurai 1996, pp. 178–200). Contemporary transnational integration at both the European and global levels has without question repositioned regional and local territories along a new horizon of possibility, and the interchanges of subnational collectivités with transnational structures of commerce and governance has become a vital academic and policy concern over the last two decades (Veltz 2008; Paulet 1998; Colombel and Oster 2011). Under the banner of a “Europe of regions,” the EU has encouraged the development of a “third level” of representation and governance encompassing regions across the continent, according new compétences to regional legislatures and local political offices, and opening new opportunities for interregional cooperation. Such shifts have been seen to accord with the core European objective of forging greater social and economic cohesion across the continent, and also with the hope harbored by some that local space might provide an arena for renewed civic engagement, initiative, and experimentation (Balme et al. 1999; Loughlin 2004). The larger impact of globalization on place conceptions and actual localities has been an even knottier question in recent times, within public and scholarly discourse

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alike. The almost reflexive association of transnational integration with abstract placelessness and de-territorialization in early debates over globalization has given way over time to a more careful consideration of the new and varied currents of emplacement, re-localization and re-territorialization characteristic of the global present. It is a perspective that invites a continued and more sustained attention to the ways in which new global contacts and consciousness coexist, or even become inscribed in the contexts and microactions of the locally lived life (Appadurai 1996; Kennedy 2010). The term “glocalization” in its various meanings has provided one shorthand for the ways in which economic globalization has engendered new and countervailing modes of localizing products, and of negotiating the interface of global systems and local particularities (Robertson 1992). But there is more to be understood about the longer-term historical precedents and lineages by which a seemingly contemporary dynamics of boundary-crossing and localization came to fruition, and this collection will hopefully provide a prompt to that line of inquiry. Our hope is also that, ultimately, this and other similarly themed studies might generate a greater understanding of the prospects for, and conditions of, sustainable locality in the twenty-first century. The French case provides some guidance on this score, as several of the chapters indicate. The cultivation of place-based heritage, for example, has become a fully global tendency over recent decades, compelled by concerns for the safeguarding of cultural and place diversity, as well as by interest in developing new and sustainable models of local preservation and development (Bendix et al. 2012). With an ever-sharpening competition between locations within integrated European and global economic space, and tightening fiscal constraints at all levels of government, localities in France and elsewhere will no doubt continue to be pressed into these and other strategies of local adaptation. So too are there likely to be new currents of political mobilization behind the defense of local prerogatives and autonomy, and of specific local sites and natural environments. From the Larzac protest of the 1970s through to José Bové and the myriad recent actions targeting specific aspects of globalization and European policy, France has modeled a popular politics of place integrity that compares instructively with other contemporary examples around the world. Similarly, the widespread contemporary concern over global and local food sourcing and sustainability cannot but summon what has long seemed a distinctively French investment in the territorial specificities undergirding agricultural production, taste, and cultural distinction. As transnational connectivity of various sorts continues to be normalized in the future, one can no doubt anticipate in France, as elsewhere, a corresponding growth in solicitude for local place, as the familiar and affective cadre de vie within which people actually live and make sense of their daily lives. By suggesting the many, and sometimes unlikely, threads of historical connection between the “Universal France” and the France of the pays, this collection signals the need for continued reflection on the practical and symbolic ways in which populations have continued to root themselves in place across modern and contemporary history. The need to understand ourselves in relation to a particular place or places may well be universally a human one, and the French case reveals a great many of the complications and possibilities of that endeavor.

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Notes 1 Berr 1911; Den Boer 1988, p. 325. 2 Lucien Febvre’s La terre et l’évolution humaine (1922; translated into English as A Geographical Introduction to History in 1925) promoted the study of regional history, geography, and ecology. It was the fourth volume of Henri Berr’s multivolume L’Evolution de l’Humanité series. 3 Philippe II et la Franche-Comté (1911) was an expansion of Lucien Febvre’s earlier “La Franche-Comté” published in the Revue de synthèse historique (Febvre 1905 and 1906). Febvre supported methodological regionalism under the aegis of a distinct professional identity for human geography, understood as distinct from the social morphology advanced in l’Année Sociologique (between 1898 and 1913) whose comparative, collaborative, and interdisciplinary tendencies—not to mention dogmatism—he perceived to be in competition with those of geographers and historians. 4 Pierre Goubert, a second-generation Annaliste whose Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730 remains one of the most ambitious and complete examples of a regional “histoire totale,” identified Roupnel’s La ville et la campagne as his only point of regional comparison and departure (Goubert 1960, p. lvi). 5 On the historiography and cultural politics of French regionalism, see: CharlesBrun 1911; Jean Charles-Brun, “Introduction” to Proudhon 1921; Hauser 1924; Hennessy 1916; Flory 1966; Claval and Juillard 1967; Gras and Livet 1977; Agulhon 1988, pp. 144–74; Ozouf-Martignier and Robic 1995; and Gildea 1994, pp. 166–213. Thiébaut Flory reproduces maps representing France in terms of Vidal’s seventeen regions; Charles-Brun’s twenty-four regions; Henri Hauser’s sixteen to twenty economic regions; twenty–twenty-six regions under the Vichy regime; twenty-one regions by the decree of June 2, 1960 etc., in Le Mouvement régionaliste française, pp. 118–23. Also see Baruch 1997. 6 Geographies ranged from Jules Sion’s Les paysans de la Normandie Orientale (1909) to André Allix’ Montagnard, huit textes sur les gens du Haut-Dauphinois (1935). Histories of the French countryside during the early 1930s included Bloch 1931; Roupnel 1932. These historical contributions were preceded by the American geographer, Carl Sauer’s The Morphology of Landscape in 1925. Paul Claval would assert that historians discovered the “worlds of the past” through geographical “reconstructions of traditional societies.” See Claval 1984, p. 236. Mid-twentieth-century historians such as Georges Duby were quite clear about their debt to geographers. While he credited the Annalistes for pioneering the practice of l’histoire totale, Duby emphasized that their methods were largely geographical. Lacoste 1994, pp. 8–10. 7 Livingston 1993; Berger et al. 1996/1997 [1975], pp. 133–83; Ringer 1992; Den Boer 1988; and Leroux 1998. 8 Dosse 1994 and Revel and Hunt 1995. Comparative approaches with a broader scope were, it should be noted, also advanced by geographers and historians in works ranging from Jean Brunhes and Camille Vallaux in La Géographie de l’histoire (1921) to Fernand Braudel’s Civilization matérielle et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle (1967). Much of this scholarship would inform Georges Duby’s and Armand Wallon’s Histoire de la France rural (1975–76). 9 This tradition culminated in regional monographs such as Goubert’s Beauvais et le Beauvaisis du 1600 à 1730: Contribution à l’histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siècle (1960), Pierre de Saint Jacob’s Les Paysans de la Bourgogne du nord au dernier

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12

13

14 15 16

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siècle de l’Ancien Régime (1960), and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Les Paysans de Languedoc (1966). Consider Pierre Georges’ works on French regional and world geography, specifically, Georges 1936, 1946, 1952, and 1956. Berg 2010, p. 618. New journals such as Anatole Kopp’s and Henri Lefebvre’s Espaces et Sociétés (founded in 1970) and Yves Lacoste’s Hérodote (founded in 1976), provided support for new studies in critical spatial analysis and social geography. For recent attempts at revising the center/periphery imaginary around issues of space, identity, and historical change, see the contributions in Callahan and Curtis 2009. In the same vein and including matters of race, ethnicity, and gender from the perspective of integration, see Atlink and Gemie 2008; Sa’adah 2003; and Begag 2007. Comparable recent accounts have traced the repositioning of local interests and economies through AOC designations and resonant notions of terroir within larger national and transnational discourses and market interactions. Consider for example, Kolleen 2003; Laferté 2006; Kramer 1990; Whalen 2009, pp. 67–98; and Pitte 2009. On the case of Normandy, for example, see Guillet 2000 and 2005, pp. 37–49. Recent work in this vein includes Fogg 2008; Vinen 2006; Alary 2006. For a regional perspective on the period, see Delaselle et al. 2006. For an overview of the scholarly critique and revision of Eugen Weber’s modernization thesis, with instructive Spanish and Italian comparisons, see Cabo and Molina 2009, pp. 264–86.

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Gildea, R. (1994). The Past in French History. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 166–213. Golan, R. (1995). Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics between the Wars. New Haven: Yale University. Goodcliffe, G. (2012). The Resurgence of the Radical Right in France: From Boulangisme to the National Front. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goubert, P. (1960). Beauvais et le Beauvaisis du 1600 à 1730. Contribution à l’histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siècle. Paris: SEVPEN. Gras, C. and Livet, P. (1977). Régions et régionalisme en France du XVIIIième siècle à nos jours. Paris: PUF. Green, H. (2012). “Cultural History and the Material(s) Turn.” Cultural History 1(1): 61–82. Guillet, F. (2000). Naissance de la Normandie: Genèse et épanouissement d’une image régionale en France, 1750–1850. Caen: Annales de Normandie. —(2005). “L’image de la Normandie: La construction d’une identité territoriale au XIX siècle,” in Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini and Dominique Kalifa (eds), Imaginaire et sensibilities au XIX siècle, études pour Alain Corbin. Paris: Créaphis, pp. 37–49. Halévy, D. (1930). La fin des notables. Paris: Grasset. Hauser, H. (1924). Le Problème du regionalism. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Highmore, B. (2006). Michel de Certeau: Analyzing Culture. London: Continuum. Hill, C. (2008). National History and the World of Nations. Durham: Duke University Press. Hill, L. and Paris, H. (eds) (2006). Performance and Place. New York: Palgrave. Hennessy, J. (1916). Régions de France. Paris: G. Crès. Holbrook, R. (2010). “Pierre Nora (1931-),” in Philip Whalen and Philip Daileader (eds), French Historians, 1900–2000: New Historical Writing in Twentieth-Century France. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 444–60. Jacob, P. de Saint (1960). Les Paysans de la Bourgogne du nord au dernier siècle de l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Belles Lettres. Kalb, D. (2006). “Uses of Local Knowledge,” in Robert Goodin and Charles Tilly (eds), Contextual Political Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 579–94. Kennedy, P. (2010). Local Lives and Global Transformations: Towards World Society. London: Palgrave. Keylor, William R. (1975). Academy and Community. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kolleen, M. Guy (2003). When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Kramer, M. (1990). Making Sense of Burgundy. New York: William Morrow. Lacoste, Y. (1994). “Entretien avec Georges Duby.” Hérodote: revue de géographie et de politique 74(5): 8–10. Lacroix, B. (1981). L’Utopie communautaire. Paris: PUF. Ladurie, Emmanuel Le R. (1966). Les Paysans de Languedoc, 2 vols. Paris: SEVPEN. Laferté, G. (2006). La Bourgogne et ses vins. Paris: Belin. Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. —(1999). Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Loughlin, J. (2004). Subnational Democracy in the European Union: Challenges and Opportunities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lebovics, H. (1994). True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Lefebvre, G. (1932). La Grande Peur de 1789. Paris: A. Colin.

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Part One

Space

1

The Republic of Marseille and the Making of Imperial France Ian Coller

The apparent suddenness of France’s “turn to empire” in 1830 has presented a considerable challenge to French historians. Conventionally, the “prise d’Alger”—a rather oblique term for the assault and conquest of the North African city of Algiers in June and July of 1830—was considered as a kind of accidental empire, a futile attempt at distraction by the monarchy of Charles X, which would be toppled within the month in the July Revolution. In recent times, a number of intellectual historians have insisted on the central role played by liberal ideas in France, Britain, and elsewhere, in “turning” to empire and creating a broad imperialist coalition (Pitts 2005; Fitzpatrick 2012). Jennifer Sessions, in her new account of the invasion, sees a deep continuity arising from the cultural construction of revolutionary and Napoleonic militarism—a colonization waiting to happen (Sessions 2011). All these historians tend to view empire as an ideological project formed in the intellectual centers of Europe. Once the decision to transform conquest into colony was taken in 1833, many liberals and conservatives alike adjusted their positions to take in this new space, and even to anticipate further expansion. But such retrospective enthusiasms have little to say about the crucial moment of 1830–4, and how the decision to move from military expedition to territorialization of the conquest was made. Colonial historians often project metropolitan France, in contrast to its colonies, as a natural unity governed by a coherent policy emerging from the center, despite the chaos of revolution and political transition. By looking at France from the more diverse perspective of locality, we may also begin to see its imperial entanglements in a rather different way. Historians from Charles-André Julien onward have revealed that the push for colonization of North Africa long preceded the diplomatic confrontation—the so-called coup d’éventail—that served as its trigger. However, as Pierre Guiral demonstrated, it was the “opinion” of Marseille rather than Paris that fuelled this colonizing push into North Africa (Guiral 1955). Indeed, some contemporary opponents of colonization saw Marseille leaping greedily astride the conquest, while the rest of France paid the price. Elsewhere in France, opinion was sharply divided, but in Marseille, liberals and royalists expressed the same jubilation on the capture of Algiers. “On this wonderful day,” the Feuille de Commerce de Marseille proclaimed, “all the nuances of opinion melt

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into one” (Guiral 1957, p. 52). Le Messager, another Marseillais newssheet, emphasized this sudden access of unity in a more aggressive tone: Different interests may divide us at home, but when it is a question of avenging an insult, of striking back at the foreigner, all of France must rise as one and show her enemies that she is still powerful and invincible, as she has always been. (Guiral 1957, p. 53)

In Paris, July 30, 1830, was a day of celebration that followed the Trois Glorieuses, the revolutionary days in Paris that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy. By this time, news of the extraordinary events in the history of the nation would have traveled to Marseille. However, the chief concern of the Chamber of Commerce in Marseille when they met on July 30 was to petition the Minister of the Interior for permission to erect a monument to the town’s role in the capture of Algiers, as Toulon had already done. This was more than simple national pride: the expedition’s departure from Toulon implied that its intention had been primarily a military one. The Marseillais now sought to give the expedition a commercial, colonial, and permanent aspect. As Paris set about establishing a new provisional government for the nation, Marseille pushed instead for an extension of French territory outward across the Mediterranean, through the violent occupation of an Ottoman province. This is a moment that cannot easily be disaggregated into distinct “imperial” and “national” dimensions. For Marseille, this imperial moment was national: as the Messager explained, the unity of the nation existed only in its expression outside of its borders. This celebration, it was later suggested, helped to diffuse antipathy to the overthrow of the Restoration regime in Marseille. Yet, at the same time, voices in Marseille were pushing the French state to include that very space within its borders. This situation was not quite as anomalous as it seems: it had a history stretching back centuries, accompanying the emergence of the French state itself.

The exceptionality of Marseille Before the Revolution, Marseille formed a kind of Republic within the Kingdom, and its privileges made it in a sense foreign and independent from the laws of the State. (Archives Nationales, Paris F7 9002, “Rapport sur Marseille”) With these words, an anonymous official of the recently restored Bourbon regime wrote to his superiors in Paris in early 1816 to explain why Marseille was still convulsed by violence several months after the Restoration. “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” runs the famous adage of Carl Schmitt (Schmitt 2010, p. 5). But the example of Marseille suggests that sovereignty is far messier than Schmitt’s abstract conception of the “nomos of the earth” might suggest. As Lauren Benton has observed, sovereignty fails to divide itself according to this “ideal geometry” (Benton 2010, p. 279). All political spaces contain anomalies, exemptions, concessions, and extraterritorial arrangements that apply to foreigners within the space, and denizens in their residence elsewhere.

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They are often the object of intense struggle, and help to construct the nature of the space itself. Better understood, these anomalies can illuminate the functioning not only of empire, but also of the nation. Exceptions shape in important ways the development of national sovereignty and open doors to its imperial extension beyond its borders. Indeed, under the ancien regime, Marseille was the exception to an exception within the kingdom. The oldest city in France, it laid claim to historical roots far beyond the monarchy, reaching back to the city-states of classical Greece. Massalia was a polis founded by Ionian settlers from Phocaea (modern Foça in Turkey) in the sixth century BCE. During the Roman period, the city was governed by a directory of fifteen senators chosen from a council of 600, with three preeminent members known as consuls or échevins. This aristocratic “Republic” formed the basis for many of the claims made by Marseille in its dealings with the French crown, and, indeed, later when France itself became a republic (Brémond 1905; Zarb 1961). But this exceptionality was not simply a fantasy built upon a founding myth: it had a real and concrete expression in economic and political terms in the continuing relationship of Marseille with the Mediterranean, and in particular with the powerful Muslim states on its farther shores. In 1252 and 1257, Marseille signed a series of Chapitres de paix with Charles of Anjou, the ruler of Provence, which gave Marseille, along with its hinterland, a permanent statute as “terre adjacente” separate from the Comtat of Provence, in return for the sacrifice of certain elements of the city’s judicial, political, and economic autonomy. Although imposed by force of arms, this negotiation was later conceived as a voluntary act on the part of the local leaders of Marseille, and constituted a kind of “charter” for Marseille’s resistance against the emergent absolutist state. When the Kingdom of France attached the Comtat of Provence to its sovereignty, it inherited all of these anomalies and more (Zarb 1961, p. 82). After the union of France and Provence in 1481–2, Provence retained a special statute as a distinct state under the French monarchy: in the words of Régis Bertrand, France and Provence were “two states under a single crown” (Bertrand 2012). Marseille was not unique in its status as terre adjacente within Provence: Arles was the most significant of several other examples. Other foreign enclaves and anomalies existed inside Provençal territory. The emergent French state struggled to “provincialize” Provence, but the result, in actuality, was the granting of even more privileges and exceptions. The negotiation took place, not between the all-powerful sovereign and his territory, but through a piecemeal political process fuelled by the monarchy’s desperate need for funds. The renewal of Marseille’s privileges always came at a cost to the échevins, but they could also push the envelope a little further each time. For more than a century after the union with Provence, the Marseillais resisted the sovereignty of Paris, most notably in alliance with the Catholic League against Henri IV. Only after the assassination of Casaulx in 1596 did they finally submit. After the submission of Marseille, Henri is reported to have declared, “C’est maintenant que je suis roi de France” (Now I am truly king of France). Other cities claimed their own exceptionality, but this only demonstrates the importance of appreciating the role of such exceptions in the building of modern France. Indeed, Fernand Braudel suggested that Provence might be considered a microcosm of France during this time. “It would be even more tempting,” he wrote,

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“to understand, through the example of Marseilles, the huge part played by the towns first in the disintegration then in this reconstruction of France as a unit” (Braudel 1976, p. 1215). But was Marseille the example or the exception, or the example because of its exceptionality? Braudel noted the language of the échevins in presenting their petition to Spain at the very end of the sixteenth century: The gentlemen of Marseilles have borne in mind that from its foundation, their city was almost always governed by its own laws and in the form of a Republic, until the year one thousand two hundred and fifty-seven, when it came to an agreement with Charles of Anjou, count of Provence, and recognized him as its sovereign, with many reservations, pacts and conventions. . . . (Braudel 1976, p. 1216)

After the period described in Braudel’s study, however, Marseille did not simply fold its exceptionality back into the reconstruction of France, but rather maintained it in new ways, through its growing relationship with the Mediterranean and, more specifically, with the powerful Muslim states of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Capital of the Levant During the period of the religious wars, French commerce in the Mediterranean was brought almost to the brink of disaster. From the period of Henri IV onward, a new effort of reconstruction began, assisted on both shores of the Mediterranean. In the 1580s, the Sultan Amurat III, allied to Henri IV, sent orders from Istanbul authorizing the North African states of his empire to pursue and capture Marseillais ships, as the city had joined the League, exposing the traders and travelers of Marseille to plunder and enslavement (Masson 1897, p. xviii). This danger to life and liberty, and its impact on commerce, helped to bring the Marseillais back to the French kingdom under the Bourbon dynasty, even if their understanding of the nature of that sovereignty was rather peculiar. Provençal merchants had already established agreements with the Mamluk rulers of Egypt in the fifteenth century. These agreements were accepted by the Ottomans when they conquered Egypt in 1517; indeed, they generalized these arrangements across their vast empire (de Groot 2003, p. 578). The new agreements were struck between the Sultan and the French king, and were known in French as “Capitulations,” recalling the “Chapitres” of the agreement between Marseille and the Counts of Provence. In Turkish they were called the ahdname or contract document. These agreements formed a kind of evolving constitution for the residence of French subjects in the Ottoman domains, being renewed and revised at irregular intervals from 1535 onward (Van den Boogert 2005). But in this extraterritorial domain, “French” was entangled with many other categories—in the early period, other European residents were obliged to adopt the French pavillon, and the introduction of the berat or certificate allowed Ottoman subjects to claim French protection and enjoy their trading privileges. Because the Capitulations were accorded unilaterally, they projected Ottoman categories onto European subjects, who were considered without a great deal of differentiation as “Franks” during the period of Ottoman expansion. But

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these concessions were potentially extremely valuable at a time when most trade from Asia to Europe passed overland to Ottoman ports before crossing the Mediterranean. As the Portuguese, Dutch, and, finally, the British dominated the sea-routes to India, it became all the more crucial for France to preserve its privileged relationship with the Sultan. By the second half of the seventeenth century, the burgeoning trade facilitated by this privileged commercial status had given rise to a network of communities in Ottoman port cities across the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean, from Istanbul to Algiers, and even inland at Aleppo, Ankara, and Baghdad. Thousands of French subjects resided in these places, alongside other Europeans, Levantine Christians, and Jews, as well as the Muslim majority. Apparently, in an adaptation of the Turkish word for a trading post, eskele, these extraterritorial zones became known as échelles. Similar agreements were finalized with the city-states of “Barbary” (North Africa), nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, but retaining their own structures of exceptionality. In French administrative parlance, these places were known as the Échelles du Levant et de Barbarie. The creation of this network constituted an important element of France’s reconstruction after the wars of religion: aristocrats could engage in the Levant trade without derogation from their privileged status, and the volume of luxury goods flowing into France and Europe from Asia remained far greater than that of products of the colonies across the Atlantic, which provided the precious metals that allowed the purchase of these goods, and the concomitant rise of a culture of consumption. Marseille thus became the capital of a kind of archipelago constituted by the Capitulatory agreements. Although the Capitulations were signed by the French king, and had to be renewed on his death, it was only through Marseille that this profitable regime could be realized. Where the English state established its trade in India through the East India Company, France came to dominate trade with the Eastern Mediterranean through the “Republic” of Marseille. England inherited the existing company trade of Holland, while France took much of the “Republican” trade of Venice, Genoa, and Ragusa. And where the company board in London was the chief repository of power of the East India Company, in Marseille, control over the system of the “Echelles” was concentrated in the hands of the Chambre de Commerce, created in 1581, and governed—in ways that recalled Marseille’s republican pretensions—by three consuls and a chamber of the city’s elite. Under Louis XIV, Marseille was once again brought to its knees by the assertion of royal might. But this demonstration of force followed, and did not abrogate, the Lettres Patentes accorded by the King in 1652. This agreement, drawn up and presented to the sovereign by the assembly of the city’s notables, gave Marseille a new basis for its claim of distinctiveness—a “droit constitutif” for the municipality, which later served the claim that Marseille was ruled separately by the same King (Zarb 1961, p. 180). The birth of the new bureaucratic state run by civilian functionaries such as Colbert certainly began to concentrate power in the hands of committees sitting in Paris. But this was possible only through negotiation of the existing system: centralization of power was ceded as much as it was seized. In return, then, the government was able to insist on re-establishing the franchise of the port against the opposition of the

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Marseillais (Takeda 2011). Then, imposts for entry and exit for French and foreign ships were removed, including the tax imposed to pay the salary of the Ambassador in Istanbul. The direction and costs of this diplomatic post passed to the central state, not without causing concern for those responsible for balancing the accounts. As Edouard Salvador remarked, it was often observed that the state must “do something [for Marseille] in spite of itself ” (Salvador 1854, p. 204). For historians such as Paul Masson, the increasing regulation of the actions of the Chamber of Commerce, and the residence of French subjects in the Echelles—what he called le système Maurepas-Villeneuve—by committees sitting in Paris was a characteristic assertion of the centralizing tendencies of the French absolutist state (Masson 1911, pp. 1–2). Such tendencies can be contrasted with the privatizing imperative of Britain, the devolution of extraterritorial sovereignty into the hands of chartered companies (Stern 2011). But in spite of its centralizing tendencies, the French state continued by default to devolve the sovereignty over its extraterritorial subjects and interests in the Mediterranean to Marseille and its corporate bodies. The royal government tried to follow Britain by creating a chartered Compagnie du Levant, which would free the government from expense, and privatize the running of the Echelles. But this attempt failed miserably, and the Echelles remained under the jurisdiction of Marseille, which could thus exercise its claim to be a “Republic within the State” through its extraterritorial sovereignty.

Revolution and reconstruction By the time of the Revolution, Marseille had, in fact, altered little of its claim to be a separate state. In the Cahier of the Third Estate of Marseille, the city’s representatives expressed their claim most succinctly: Marseille must not be confused with other cities of the kingdom. It is a free city, which belongs neither to the province, nor to the terres adjacentes. It is a separate and isolated State, a city that has neither been conquered nor united with France. His Majesty addresses his orders to the city as the Count of Provence, and his royal predecessors granted the Marseillais the authority to accept their commandment only insofar as they carried the title of seigneur of Marseille. (Crémieux 1907, p. 213)

Revolutionary actions, notably the municipal movement, took place in Marseille well before similar actions in Paris. Republicanism emerged early as a popular movement in Marseille, inspired by the belief that Marseille had its own peculiar relationship with the monarchy, and the long-held claim that it had a republican past. Yet, in spite of their repeated claims that they should be treated as a separate state in 1789, the Marseillais willingly renounced their privileges alongside others in France in the wake of the August 4 decrees. As immortalized by the naming of the “Marseillaise,” the song (originally written for another frontier, the Rhine) sung by the “fédérés” of Marseille on their march to Paris, the participation of Marseillais volunteers in the second major revolutionary uprising of 1792 and the attack on the Tuileries Palace helped to acceler-

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ate the deposition of the King, and the proclamation of the Republic. Jacques Guilhaumou has emphasized the impact of radical Marseillais ideas of popular sovereignty on the course of the Revolution (Guilhaumou 1992; Guilhaumou 2007). However, only a year later, in June 1793, Marseille declared itself to be in a state of insurrection against the “Parisian dictatorship.” The “federal revolts” of 1793 gave the term “federation” a very different meaning, no longer suggesting unity, but rather the devolution of sovereignty to a regional level, as in the federal republic of the United States. After retaking the city on August 25, the revolutionary government did not simply reimpose order: the municipality was disbanded, and the city divided into three separate zones. The name of Marseille was declared defunct, and the city was rebaptised “Ville Sans Nom.” This terminology points to an attempt at radical spatial realignment: the city, along with its pretensions to sovereignty, was to be erased and reconstructed. In this sense, under a temporal “state of exception,” which provided it the emergency powers to retake control of the country, the revolutionary government in Paris sought to erase the long-standing spatial exception of Marseille. The insurrection of the Marseille sections has often been described as “federalist,” but as a number of historians have pointed out, it emerged more from local conditions and the refusal of an absolute sovereignty exercised from Paris than from any federal program. “Marseille should be a sister not a servant” was the catchcry of the insurrection. The uprising emerged from the real and existing conditions of survival in a city faced with severe famine—only too sharp a reminder of Marseille’s dependence on the Mediterranean. The state of war between France and Britain had brought trade in the Mediterranean almost to a standstill. The Muslim Regencies of North Africa, maintaining a neutral, even friendly, relationship with France, became crucial in the supply of food to southern France in the second half of the 1790s. Indeed, it was the debts contracted by the French government to Algiers during this period, unpaid for two decades, that would serve as the casus belli of France’s invasion of Algiers in 1830, and the beginning of French imperial occupation of North Africa (Morsy 1984). In 1805, the imperial regime of Napoleon Bonaparte, having restored the primacy of the Catholic Church, slavery, and the corporate status of Jews and Protestants, and promulgated the Civil Code regulating the family, divorce, and inheritance, restored the status of Marseille as a single municipality, uniting its three parts under a single mayor. A new version of the struggle between national and municipal sovereignty soon followed, pitting the Prefect of the Département, Thibaudeau, against the new Mayor of Marseille, Anthoine. The Mayor sought in every possible way to insist upon the prerogatives of the city and to undermine its integration within the regular structure of the national administration, and addressed himself to the Emperor directly, or through the charms of his wife, in order to claim precedence in any area of uncertainty. In this sense, the former prerogatives of the city had not disappeared, but were transformed once again within the Bonapartist system of personal power. As Thibaudeau wrote in his memoirs: As the consular government drifted backwards toward the way things were under the monarchy, the Marseillais began to dream of the restoration of their former

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Place and Locality in Modern France privileges. One privilege was dear to them above all others — the franchise of their port. This became a veritable obsession for them. They believed that this system, under which their commerce had so flourished, could bring back all its splendour. The franchise of the port dated back to 1669. The customs houses were formerly placed at the extremities of the territory. This city, in relation to France, was a foreign country. (Thibaudeau 1913, pp. 156–7)

Thibaudeau insisted that the status of port franc could only disadvantage Marseille in the trade with the rest of France, which had grown during the blockade, but this made no difference at all to the Marseillais. When Thibaudeau explained this to the Emperor, Napoleon replied, “This is the sickness of the Marseillais. They don’t know what they are asking for. I know far better than they do the nature of their interests and the real causes of their problems.” The Emperor offered the Marseillais a port franc in a segment of the town insisting, “No doubt the Marseillais do not wish to isolate themselves from France and become foreigners!” (Thibaudeau 1913, pp. 156–7) But the city demanded all or nothing. Instead, the Mayor sought permission to use the Fort St Jean—which the Emperor had suggested for the port franc—as a dépôt for incarcerating people of color and the expanding population of “Egyptian refugees” in the town (Coller 2010). This population of Egyptians was one of the consequences of the French occupation of Egypt in 1798–1801, which had severed the centuries-old relationship between Marseille and the Echelles du Levant, rupturing the French-Ottoman treaty, and leading to the arrest or expulsion of many of the French subjects living across the Mediterranean. The Mayor’s hostility toward this population reflected, and perhaps also fuelled, the more widely held antipathies to the Egyptians, which were both political and racial in character. In the violence of 1815, after the collapse of the Hundred Days of Napoleon’s restored rule in France, these hostilities turned to violence, and armed townsfolk attacked Egyptians and other people of color, murdering at least a dozen people. But, as the official report of 1816 insisted, it was no longer possible to distinguish the political components of the population, which was constituted from across the Mediterranean: Its population has been continually fed and increased by the influx of other foreigners from around the Mediterranean, attracted to settle there by the climate and the commercial position of the city, to the point that one might well consider half its population to be natives, and the other half foreigners. This other half is partly composed of Genoese and other Italians, partly of Spaniards (these latter even constituting a colony known as the Catalan Fishermen), partly of Egyptians, and Algerian and Tunisian Jews, and partly of northerners. This last group, most of whom have had nothing to do with the excesses committed in Marseille at various periods of the Revolution, should be considered quite separately. (Archives Nationales F7 9002)

Incapable of deciphering the political groupings, the official recommended, instead, the alternative of removing all the “Mediterraneans” from authority, and employing

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only outsiders or northerners. Such a radical approach to sovereignty recalls, in part, the project of the revolutionaries themselves. However, the terms had now shifted from the political opposition between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary, to the beginnings of a racial differentiation between Mediterranean and northern European. In the period of the Restoration, Marseille was torn between a return to the former privileges of the ancien regime monarchy, and the impossibility of restoring its distinctive status. “I am sitting on a volcano here,” the newly appointed Prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône (soon to be Minister of the Interior) wrote to Paris in 1815 (AN F7 9636). The city’s once privileged relationship with the Mediterranean was threatened by the postrevolutionary settlement maintained by Bonaparte, which was reinforced after 1815 by the “concert of Europe.” The new mobility of Ottoman populations brought an influx of Greeks, Jews, and North African Muslims into commercial competition with the Marseillais (Panzac 2005). It is in this context that the idea of a colonial settlement on the Algerian coast began to take shape. This project was suddenly realized by the tottering Restoration regime in June 1830, and inherited by the July Monarchy, which was unsure of what to do with this conquest. The Commission d’Afrique, convoked in 1833, concluded that the possession was of little value to France either economically or militarily, and had been the source of unconscionable abuses of person and property. The construction of a railway link from Marseille to Lyon would offer a far greater benefit to the south-east, one deputy insisted. Others pointed to the horrors of the conquest, and the expense of securing it. But Marseille maintained an extraordinarily unanimous campaign, through individual merchants, the municipality, the deputies, and the Chamber of Commerce, building an ever greater influence at the Commission. In January 1834, the Marseillais delegation expressed their position in no uncertain terms: The opinion of Marseille, this metropole of our Mediterranean coasts, wields a great influence all across the South, and the stability of several departments depends upon the tranquillity of this city. Marseille has become calmer since its hopes and plans have been turned toward the exploitation of the African coast. Populations who still have so little affection for the new regime cannot with impunity be asked to renounce interests and a future that have taken on such exaggerated importance in their minds. (Guiral 1957, p. 120)

The intérêts of Marseille had replaced its former privilèges, but the deal was clear: the integration of Marseille into the nation and the new regime, with the renunciation of its former privileges, in return for the maintenance of a colonial occupation in North Africa in which Marseille would play a privileged role. Despite the overwhelming arguments raised against it, this was precisely the outcome of the Commission: it led to the consolidation of a colonial regime that would last for the next 130 years. From the Republic of Marseille, through the Capital of the Echelles du Levant, Marseille had become the Porte de l’Orient of an imperial nineteenth century. As Alexandre Dumas wrote in 1841, “Since the conquest of Algiers, Marseille has become a capital.” (Dumas 1841, p. 142).

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Conclusion: France as empire The “constitutive story” (Smith 2003) of modern France has often been told as a story of centralization. In this tale, the autonomy of cities and provinces was gradually eroded, along with the feudal aristocratic society that sustained them, by the inexorable onslaught of the centralizing state. Inexorably, the centrifugal trend of the monarchy was taken up by the Jacobin regime during the Revolution, given an iron substructure by the Napoleonic prefectoral system, and carried on by all regimes thereafter, regardless of their political stripe. Moreover, this state centralization was invested with an intensely national content by the Revolution, imposing cultural and linguistic conformity across the territory. The question of empire stands as a challenge to this story. We must ask if there was ever a tidy fit between “nation” and “state” in France. As Frederick Cooper has suggested, the notion of empire has the capacity to “conjugate” incorporation and differentiation as elements of a common dynamic (Cooper 2007, p. 344). Re-examining empire as a leading concept in our analysis of the nation can help us to provincialize and decentralize French history. Empires have always functioned, not as monolithic forms of repressive rule, but as a fabric of exceptionalities: it is a characteristic of imperial systems to be territorially vast, differentiated, and irregular in their rule. But the nation, too, is an agglomeration of exceptions. Both republican and imperial, Marseille is an example of the anomaly at the heart of the nation that rendered national sovereignty itself partial, precarious, and irregular. In the crucible of Revolution, Marseille ceased to be the capital of the Échelles du Levant; indeed, it ceased to exist as a city at all for more than a decade, before it was remade as a provincial French city during what Louis Bergeron called the “Napoleonic episode” (Bergeron 1981). It seemed that France had, at last, dragged Marseille out of the Mediterranean, and into the modern nation. Yet, in the Restoration and July Monarchy, Marseille, building on its former privileges, helped to pull France back into the Mediterranean, and to launch a reluctant empire, no longer in the Americas and the Caribbean, but in North Africa. In the century that followed, French imperial rule would spread to Tunisia and Morocco, far beyond the Sahara, and even to the key Levantine countries of Lebanon and Syria. But this was no aberration in French history. The beginning of this imperial story must be extended back into the formative processes of France itself. The processes of nation-building and colonial expansion are often understood as separate, even if empire is often considered an outcome of nationalism, whether through imperial rivalry, strategic advantage, or the logic of capitalism. The colonies were places where democratic gains of the metropole, such as parliaments and the “rule of law,” were imperfectly implemented, or ignored outright. But these exceptions, like that of Marseille, continued to construct the nation in its modern development. Rather than conceiving empires through the prism of the nation, whether as simple extension or contradiction, we can, through this local perspective, help to illuminate the nation itself as a differentiated imperial space, a particular and contested arrangement of sovereignty rather than an irresistible natural logic.

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References Benton, L. (2010). A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bergeron, L. (1981). France Under Napoleon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bertrand, R. (2012). La Provence des rois de France (1481–1789). Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence. Braudel, F. (1976). The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. New York: Harper and Row. Brémond, A. C. P. E. (1905). République de Marseille, 1211–1257, son origine, son organisation, sa fin. Marseille: H. Aubertin et G. Rolle. Coller, I. (2010). “Race and Slavery in the Making of Arab France,” in R. Bessel, N. Guyatt, and J. Rendall (eds), War, Empire and Slavery, 1770–1830. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Cooper, F. (2007). “Provincializing France,” in A. L. Stoler, C. McGranahan, and P. C. Perdue (eds), Imperial formations. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 341–78. Crémieux, A. (1907). “Le particularisme municipal à Marseille en 1789.” La Révolution Française 52: 193–215. Dumas, A. (1841). Nouvelles impressions de voyage: (midi de la France). Brussels: Société Belge de Librairie. Fitzpatrick, M. P. (ed.) (2012). Liberal Imperialism in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. De Groot, A. H. (2003). “The Historical Development of the Capitulatory Regime in the Ottoman Middle East from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.” Oriente Moderno 22(83): 575–604. Guilhaumou, J. (1992). Marseille républicaine: (1791–1793). Marseille: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. —(2007). “Marseille et l’organisation ‘autonome’ des pouvoirs pendant la Révolution française”. Synthèses, Révolution Française.net. http://revolution-francaise. net/2007/07/19/146-marseille-o [accessed August 6, 2013]. Guiral, P. (1955). “L’Opinion marseillaise et les débats de l’entreprise algérienne (1830–1841).” Revue historique 214: 9–34. —(1957). Marseille et l’Algérie: 1830–1841. Gap: Éditions Ophrys. Masson, P. (1897). Histoire du commerce français dans le Levant au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Hachette. —(1911). Histoire du commerce français dans le Levant au XVIIIe siècle: thèse. Paris: Hachette. Morsy, M. (1984). North Africa, 1800–1900: A Survey from the Nile Valley to the Atlantic. London: Longman. Panzac, D. (2005). The Barbary Corsairs: The End of a Legend, 1800–1820. Leiden: Brill. Pitts, J. (2005). A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Salvador, E. (1854). L’Orient, Marseille et la Méditerranée: histoire des échelles du Levant et des colonies. Paris: Amyot. Schmitt, C. (2010). Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Sessions, J. E. (2011). By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Smith, R. M. (2003). Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stern, P. J. (2011). The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Takeda, J. T. (2011). Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Thibaudeau, A.-C. (1913). Mémoires de A.-C. Thibaudeau, 1799–1815. Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie. Van den Boogert, M. H. (2005). The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis, Consuls, and Beraths in the 18th Century. Leiden: Brill. Zarb, M. (1961). Les privilèges de la ville de Marseille du Xe siècle à la révolution: histoire d’une autonomie communale. Paris: A. et J. Picard.

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The Cartographic Language of Locality: Lessons from Alsace Catherine T. Dunlop

Is it possible for scholars of modern Europe to access space as a historical artifact? If so, which historical documents provide an entryway into understanding the rise and reformulation of the core social spaces that gave meaning and structure to the lives of ordinary Europeans? This chapter demonstrates that maps are some of the finest tools available for piecing together the interplay between three important units of territorial space in modern Europe: locality, region, and nation. While historians once relegated maps to the margins of history—using them as decorative illustrations or tucking them away in book appendices—they are now the centerpieces of entire studies on social and cultural history.1 Focusing on Alsace, the disputed border territory between France and Germany, I will trace the evolution of cartographic imagery from the eve of the French Revolution through the First World War. Rather than focusing on largescale map surveys of the border area, such as those sponsored by the famous Cassini family of France or the German Army’s general staff, my analysis centers on maps of local space. Village maps, we shall see, did not passively reflect local boundaries and property holdings in Alsace; instead, they acted as powerful rhetorical devices that bolstered French and German claims to the borderland.2 They did so through sophisticated iconographic techniques that infused local spaces with regional and national meanings. The discovery and use of maps as valuable tools for historical analysis began several decades ago. Founding a new school of “critical cartography,” British geographers Brian Harley and David Woodward demonstrated that no map, not even the most “scientifically accurate” one, is a mirror image of the place it represents (Harley and Woodward 1987–present).3 Every map is the outcome of choices in scale, symbols, language, perspective, and coloring that reflect a particular mapmaker’s desire to highlight certain aspects of a landscape and to silence others (Harley 2001).4 Thanks to the pioneering work of critical cartographers, scholars from a variety of disciplines are now mining cartographic archives for new information about the foundational concepts, mentalities, and identities of past societies. While there certainly are methodological hurdles to using maps as the basis for writing history—we must learn new visual and theoretical skills in order to “decode” images and trace their

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circulation through society—the rewards for venturing into the map archive can be enormously rich. This chapter explores the changing meanings of local space in Alsace by examining village maps printed at three defining moments in the borderland’s modern history. Each of these maps, I will argue, served both “instrumental” and “expressive” functions (Kivelson 2006, p. 5).5 While their official purpose was a practical one—to delineate property boundaries and determine the ownership of land parcels for taxation—the maps were also powerful visual expressions of political, cultural, and territorial identity. When compared with one another, the village maps tell the story of how Alsatian localities—many of which functioned as semi-autonomous communities through the eighteenth century—became symbolically embedded in regional and national territories over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Cartography thus became, alongside folk festivals and poetry, one of the most influential languages of locality in modern France and Germany. The fact that Europeans considered local maps to be practical, unbiased, and scientific images only enhanced the quiet power of the social and political messages disguised beneath their surface.

Revolutionizing space: Creating a rational order from a mosaic of localities Before the French Revolution, Alsace was an ill-defined space comprising small territorial enclaves. Church authorities still owned vast estates across the province, while other villages and townships fell under the control of nobles and powerful landowners.6 This complex, mosaic-like system of territorial organization was not unique to Alsace. The French Kingdom, and indeed early modern Europe in general, was a place of spatial ambiguities, amorphous boundaries, and diverse approaches to territorial rule (Biggs 1999, pp. 374–405).7 Beginning in the seventeenth century, the Bourbon monarchs attempted to bring a measure of order and rationality to their heterogeneous territory by sponsoring a team of scientifically trained surveyors to make a unified map of their realm. But the resulting royal map, completed under the leadership of the Cassini family in 1744, did little more than paper over the reality of a fractured territory that continued to exist on the ground.8 To fully grasp the enduring power of local space in pre-Revolutionary France, we must therefore look beyond large-scale maps printed in Paris, and turn, instead, to the thousands of unique, smallscale cartographic images printed by provincial mapmakers. A map representing the boundaries between two Alsatian villages—Cleebourg and Soultz—demonstrates how local space served as a privileged mode of territorial organization on the eve of the French Revolution (see Figure 2.1).9 Completed in 1788, the hand-painted map served the official purpose of establishing the locations of twelve new boundary stones between the land holdings of the Cleeburger Bann, an administrative unit of the surrounding archbishopric, and the property of the Kirchspiel Sultz, a neighboring parish. But the map also served the unofficial function of articulating Alsace’s cultural and, to some extent, political independence from the rest of France. For example, the mapmaker used a localized set of reference systems that reflected his

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Figure 2.1 Charte über die zwischen dem Cleeburger Bann und dem, dem Kirchspiel Sultz berichtigte Grenze.

detachment from the cartographic standards of Paris. The map’s labels are in German, the language that is most easily understood by the people in Alsace, and the map’s measurements are in Ruthen, the unit of measurement commonly used in nearby German lands. The border stones themselves, pictured next to the measurement chart, refer only to local power holders; the historic coats of arms affixed to their sides stand as symbols of local patriotism. In the center of the map, the boundary line between Cleebourg and Soultz likewise reflects the primacy of local space. On either side of the boundary, we see two territories marked with touches of paint, representing trees. The two territories then drift into blank spaces that isolate them visually from the rest of the world, distancing them from any larger regional or national reality. But this localized spatial order would not last very much longer. In 1789, the year after the village boundary map was completed, the French Revolution unleashed a process of political, cultural, and territorial change that would fundamentally transform the relationship between Alsatian localities and the rest of France. To signal their loyalty to the French nation, citizens from many Alsatian towns renounced their German-sounding place names: Cleeburg became Cleebourg and Sultz became Soultz.10 In 1790, a committee of representatives from across Alsace voted to turn their spatially ambiguous province into two cleanly defined administrative units: the departments of the Haut-Rhin and the Bas-Rhin (see Figure 2.2 for the new map of France divided into departments).11 In the process of this bureaucratic centralization and “enlightened” territorial rationalization, antiquated spatial enclaves such as the Bann and the Kirchspiel pictured in Figure 2.1 lost their official status and visibility. The disappearance of the Old Regime’s heterogeneous territorial order did not mean, however, that “locality” had lost its relevance in French political culture. While they no longer functioned as official jurisdictional units, local spaces continued to inspire great loyalty and patriotism in the Alsatian population. During the nineteenth century, local patriotic societies—run mostly by members of the provincial bourgeois elite— flowered all across France. They held meetings and published journals that celebrated

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Figure 2.2 Le Royaume de France Divisé en 83 Départemens suivant les Décrets de l’Assemblée Nationale des 15 Janvier, 16 et 26 Février 1790.

the uniqueness of local history, language, and ecology. For Alsatian associations, one of the key strategies for preserving local identity was to seek shelter under the umbrella of Alsatian “regionalism,” a new form of territorial identity based on the invented notion of a deeply rooted collective regional culture that all Alsatian villages shared (Fischer 2010).12 Locality thus acquired new meaning in nineteenth-century Alsace: it became the tangible link between the world that ordinary people encountered in their daily lives and the abstract, newly conceived entities of the region and the nation.13 When the Germans took control of Alsace in the late nineteenth century, they would, therefore, inherit a territory with an entanglement of unofficial psychological bonds between local, regional, and national space.

Situating localities within regional and national space under German rule After their annexation of Alsace and parts of Lorraine in 1871, the Germans not only installed a new government system, but also brought a new set of assumptions about the meaning of territorial space and identity. Replacing a French understanding of the nation as a “big homeland” (grande patrie) comprising many “little homelands” (petites patries), the Germans introduced Alsatians to the concept of Heimat. The word Heimat can be translated as homeland, home, or country. A uniquely German concept,

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Heimat is an informal, nonlegalistic spatial unit that simultaneously embodies one’s native village, region, and nation; the word does not exist in the plural (Applegate 1990; Confino 1997).14 To graft the concept of Heimat onto Alsatian land, Germans relied heavily on visual images, and particularly, maps. A series of cadastral maps printed from 1900 to 1914 offers a particularly helpful source base for analyzing how the German government taught Alsatians to see the world as German citizens. While the official purpose of the maps was to introduce German cadastral law into the region and levy taxes on parcels of land and buildings, the maps also served the unofficial purpose of communicating idealized relationships between locality, region, and nation in the German Empire.15 To see how these cadastral maps linked locality, region, and nation, let us consider a sample image from this cadastral map series: the Overview Map of the Township of Biblisheim (see Figure 2.3).16 The map has two distinct parts. In the center of the map is a bird’s eye view of Biblisheim, which the cadastral office has divided neatly into taxable units of land and property. This visual representation of the village community has a detached, abstracted, and dehumanized feel. Next to the bird’s-eye view, however, there is a second image picturing the same locality. In the map’s cartouche (textbox), we see the map’s title surrounded by an iconographic image of a man looking out onto a landscape. Unlike the bird’s-eye view of the village, the cartouche’s panoramic perspective creates an intimate, human-scale view of Biblisheim. Its rhetorical purpose is to socialize the abstract space to its left. But how does it do this? The Biblisheim map’s cartouche, rich in symbolic details, requires the historian’s close inspection. Pictured on the left side of the cartouche is a surveying instrument perched on a tripod, a reference to the technical expertise that went into creating the map. Directly below the surveying instrument is a shield that is intentionally left blank for each municipality to fill in its particular coat of arms. The vegetation displayed in the image includes local Alsatian plants and foliage, notably grape vines and huckleberry bushes. In the right-hand corner of the image sits a brawny figure that appears to be from a bygone age; sitting barefoot, he is wearing the traditional clothing of an agricultural worker, seated on a part of a plow, holding his scythe. He looks out into the distance at a pastoral scene that contains a small village with a church steeple and rolling mountains. The man’s commanding gaze over the picturesque scenery suggests a strong sense of local identity that grows out of his close personal connection to his village and to the surrounding land that he works with his own hands. The key to decoding the underlying political and cultural message of this village map is to recognize that the iconographic scene pictured within the map cartouche was not unique to Biblisheim at all; it was in fact the German government’s rubberstamped, stereotyped rendition of a rural Alsatian scene that it repeated on all of its cadastral maps for the borderland. Together, these identical representations of Alsatian village spaces were designed to reinforce a general, one-size-fits-all idea of “locality” in the German Empire. The fact that each locality was identified by the same idealized cartouche reinforced the idea that all Alsatian hometowns were connected to a single regional homeland, which was part of a single national homeland, or Heimat. But there is a second key step to uncovering the image’s “expressive” purpose. To understand the process through which a layered understanding of Heimat moved from the two-

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Figure 2.3 Uebersichtskarte der Gemarkung Biblisheim, Kreis Weissenburg. dimensional paper space of cadastral maps into the minds of ordinary Alsatians, we must figure out how people looked at them. How were the maps distributed, purchased, circulated, and used?17 Archival records tell us that the series of cadastral maps of which the Biblisheim map was a part cost just five marks apiece and were often purchased for use in Alsatian classrooms.18

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School geography curriculum can give us powerful insight into how the German government used cartographic images to shape the meaning of territorial space in the minds of its youngest, most impressionable citizens (Harp 1998).19 For an example of a classroom exercise that used maps as its primary pedagogical tool, we can turn to an 1894 Alsatian lesson plan called the “The Hometown.”20 At the beginning of the lesson, students and teachers worked together to draw a to-scale image of their classroom on the blackboard with a measuring stick. The teacher then placed a compass on the floor of the classroom and helped the students to add cardinal directions to the map of the schoolhouse. Next, the students were allowed to leave the classroom and wander around the town, measuring the distance between the schoolhouse and their hometown’s main streets, squares, creeks, buildings, monuments, railroads, and canals by counting their paces. Upon returning to the classroom, students were asked to copy a “master” village map that the teacher had drawn on the board onto their individual chalkboard slates. In the next phase of the lesson, the teacher showed the students a printed map of their village, the equivalent of the Biblisheim map. The teacher then asked students to use the map to determine the shape of their hometown from a bird’s eye view: “How does our hometown appear on the map image? Is it something like a cross, a triangle, or a star?” In other words, rather than introducing students to what “Germany” was through large, comprehensive, imperial maps, the teacher made students internalize the concept of Germany from the inside-outward: “Germany” was an extension of “Alsace-Lorraine,” which was an extension of their known, experienced, beloved local space. It was not long, however, before the visual ordering of Alsatian territory would shift once again. When the French recaptured Alsace from the Germans in 1918, they set about establishing a new series of spatial relationships that reframed locality in French terms.

After the Great War: Re-mapping local spaces as French If German cadastral maps can help us uncover how Germans conceived the relationship between local space and national identity during the turn of the century, then French cadastral maps from the interwar years can likewise reveal the kinds of spatial relationships that the French were seeking to develop between their borderland localities and their national whole. The post-1918 French cadastral maps of Alsace kept the same basic format as the prewar German cadastral maps. In the center of the map of each village was an emotionally detached, bird’s-eye view of the village in question, and off to the right-hand side of the image was an iconographic cartouche. At first glance, the cartouches from the French cadastral maps appear identical to the German ones. Upon a closer examination, however, significant differences become visible. Looking at a sample of a French cadastral map, the Overview of the Commune of Hermerswiller, we see that the man seated in the right-hand corner of the cartouche image is wearing the traditional clothing of an agricultural laborer, but his stance appears more relaxed and his body appears less masculine than the man in the German cartouche, particularly his arm and thigh muscles (see Figure 2.4).21 His covered feet suggest a “civility” that is lacking in the barefoot German figure, and his scythe

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Figure 2.4 Plan d’assemblage de la commune de Hermerswiller, Arrondissement de Wissembourg, Echelle 1 à 1000. is turned downward, suggesting a less aggressive posture. There is also a significant change in vegetation. Behind the seated figure, the grape vines from the German image are replaced by a fir tree, a prominent cultural symbol of the “lost provinces” of Alsace and Lorraine popularized by the famous French classroom reader, Le Tour de la France par deux enfants (Bruno 1905).22 Furthermore, the shield that the Germans had left blank and reserved for village administrators to fill in with their own local insignia was

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inscribed by the French tax administration with the official coat of arms of the French Republic with its Revolutionary fasces and liberty cap. Read as a political document, the interwar French cadastral map signaled a break from the federalist and more localized patterns of government under the German Empire, and a turn toward a government system supported by a more centralized conception of national identity. Maps, in other words, became the logo for the French concept of the grande patrie, helping to work out the complex spatial relationships that held the nation-state together. But the spatial relationships communicated through the village map symbols became “real” only when they connected with the life experiences of ordinary Alsatians. After 1918, French teachers used cartographic tools such as the Hermerswiller map, which cost just 4.5 francs,23 to establish conceptual relationships between the hometown that their students knew intimately and the abstract spatial concept of “France.” One classroom geography reader that used maps to teach Alsatian schoolchildren about the relationship between local space and French national pride had a lesson called “Little Charles is Lost.”24 Printed in 1919, the text told the story of a boy named Charles who traveled outside his hometown one day to visit a neighboring village. Charles became so distracted by the animals and plants that he saw along his journey that he lost his way. But the resourceful young citizen was able to save himself using the mapping skills that he had learned in class: he calculated his directional orientation and was eventually able to spot his village bell tower in the distance, the signal that he was close to home. The lesson concluded with an analogy between the spatial layout of a typical Alsatian or Lorrainer village and the French Republic: Our commune, with its public, forms a republic. The village is its capital. In this capital lives the president (the mayor) and his council and its employees. The country that surrounds the capital contains verdant fields, streams, hills, a hamlet, and several isolated houses.25

In this case, therefore, the village space itself became a means of understanding the structure of the larger national whole, and an exercise in geography became a civics lesson. The village bell tower, or clocher, became the meridian that not only guided Alsatians toward the safety of home, but it also provided the moral and civic compass that oriented the border population toward France.

Conclusion On the surface level, cadastral maps appear to give us information about property disputes and taxation methods. But upon a closer examination, they also communicate a great deal about how the French and German governments envisaged the relationships between local, regional, and national spaces that existed in modern Europe. Alsatian village maps printed before the French Revolution reveal a political culture in which localities wielded a great deal of power. The most important borders that cartographers drew were not between nations, but between village properties. Beginning in 1789, localities lost their privileged place as units of government in Alsace. Revolutionaries

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set out to erase the province’s myriad internal boundaries and replace them with the two simple departmental boundaries of the Haut-Rhin and the Bas-Rhin. But the modernization and centralization of European territory did not signal an end to local space as a key unit of territorial identity. Local spaces continued to inspire great loyalty and devotion, but they did so in an interconnected web with larger territorial spaces, the region and the nation. The great challenge facing nationalists in Alsace, particularly in classrooms, was to convince the Alsatian population that their local village shared an unbreakable bond with a larger place called “France” or “Germany.” In appearing to innocently reflect a territorial reality, maps performed a great deal of ideological work by quietly blurring the distinctions between hometown, region, and nation.

Notes 1 See Kivelson 2006; Ramaswamy 2010; Brückner 2006; Schulten 2012. 2 This chapter draws on the theoretical literature of the spatial turn in history. See, for example, Lefebvre 1991; Soja 1989; Harvey 2003; Massey 2005. For recent examples of spatial histories focusing on modern Germany, see Schlögel 2003; and Blackbourn 2006. For modern France, see selections from Nora 2001–6. 3 Brian Harley and David Woodward were among the first scholars to emphasize that even “objective-seeming” scientific maps can mask social and political objectives. See Harley and Woodward (1987–present). See also Black 1997; Monmonier 1996. 4 Brian Harley discusses the “intentional” and “unintentional” suppression of knowledge in maps as a form of silence in his influential essay “Silences and Secrecy.” See Harley 2001, pp. 84–107. 5 Valerie Kivelson argues that maps can have an “expressive function” in addition to their stated “instrumental function” and can, therefore, serve as a medium to express utopian and idealized notions of community. See Kivelson 2006, p. 5. 6 For a useful catalog of pre-Revolutionary Alsatian maps, see Himly 1959. 7 See Biggs 1999, pp. 374–405. 8 See Cassini III, Nouvelle carte qui comprend les principaux triangles qui servent de fondement à la description géométrique de la France, 1744, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ge BB 565 A (VII), pl.10. 9 See P. Ney, Charte über die zwischen dem Cleeburger Bann und dem, dem Kirchspiel Sultz berichtigte Grenze, 1788, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin, E 95. 10 Historians of cartography have long pointed to toponyms as important imperial signifiers on a map. Naming a place can be interpreted as an act of symbolic appropriation and a step toward imposing cultural domination over a piece of land. See Jacob 2006, p. 207. 11 On the formation of the Haut-Rhin and the Bas-Rhin after 1789, see Gérock 1925; Herrmann 1935. For a general discussion of the remapping of France during the French Revolution, see Ozouf-Marignier 1989. 12 For a discussion of the various strands of regionalism that developed in Alsace, see Fischer 2010. 13 See Gerson 2003. 14 Historians have recently explored the idea of Heimat as instrumental to bottom-up nation building in Imperial Germany. According to Celia Applegate, the idea of

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15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25

25

Heimat bridged the gap between national aspiration and provincial reality. See introduction to Applegate 1990. Further, Alon Confino argues that Heimat helped Germans to “devise a common denominator between their intimate, immediate, and real local place and the distant, abstract, not-less-real national world.” See Confino 1997, p. 4. Cadastral surveys in Alsace date to the Napoleonic period, and the French government completed its first complete series of Alsatian village plans (tableaux d’assemblage) in 1828. Following their annexation of the border area in 1871, it took the Germans over a decade to revise the French cadaster. When the German state finally introduced its cadastral law to Alsace–Lorraine in 1884, the state undertook a long-term project to revise the antiquated French cadastral maps. For a helpful visual overview of changes to the Alsatian cadaster, see “Carte représentant l’ancienneté des plans cadastraux des départements du Bas-Rhin, du Haut-Rhin et de la Moselle,” 1933, 4K21, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin. See Uebersichtskarte der Gemarkung Biblisheim, Kreis Weissenburg, 1909, Plan/2P, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin. Benjamin 1968, pp. 217–52. See a 1915 discussion regarding cadastral maps in communes and their classrooms. 105 AL 2138, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin. See Harp 1998. See lesson on the Heimatort in Weick 1894. Plan d’assemblage de la commune de Hermerswiller, Arrondissement de Wissembourg, Echelle 1 à 1000, 1921, Plan/2P, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin. Bruno 1905. See letter from the Directeur des contributions directes et du cadastre d’Alsace et de Lorraine to the Rector d’Académie d’Alsace et de Lorraine in Strasbourg regarding the use of cadastral maps in schools, April 8, 1921, 105 AL 2138, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin. Petite Géographie de l’Alsace et la Lorraine à l’usage des écoles 1919. Petite Géographie de l’Alsace et la Lorraine à l’usage des écoles 1919, p. 18.

References Applegate, C. (1990). A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat. Berkeley : University of California Press. Benjamin, W. (1968). “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in W. Benjamin (ed.), Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, pp. 217–52. Biggs, M. (April 1999). “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41(2): 374–405. Black, J. (1997). Maps and Politics. London: Reaktion Books. Blackbourn, D. (2006). The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany. New York: W. W. Norton. Brückner, M. (2006). The Geographical Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Bruno, G. (1905). Le Tour de la France par deux enfants. Paris: Belin. Chanet, J.-F. (1996). L’École républicaine et les petites patries. Paris: Aubier. Confino, A. (1997). The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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Fischer, C. (2010). Alsace to the Alsatians? Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870–1939. New York: Berghahn. Ford, C. (1993). Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gerson, S. (2003). The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in Modern France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gérock, J. E. (1925). La formation des départements du Haut-Rhin et du Bas-Rhin en 1789. Thann: Imprimerie du Journal de Thann. Harp, S. (1998). Learning to be Loyal: Primary Schooling as Nation Building in Alsace and Lorraine, 1850–1940. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Herrmann, A. (1935). L’Alsace, ses limites et ses divisions territoriales depuis 1789. Strasbourg: Imprimerie alsacienne. Harley, J. B. (2001). The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harley, J. B. and Woodward, D. (eds) (1987–Present). The History of Cartography, 6 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harvey, D. (2003). Paris: Capital of Modernity. New York: Routledge. Himly, F. (1959). Catalogue des cartes et plans manuscrits antérieurs à 1790. Strasbourg: Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin. Jacob, C. (2006). The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography throughout History. Trans. Tom Conley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kivelson, V. (2006). Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and its Meanings in SeventeenthCentury Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage Press. Monmonier, M. (1996). How to Lie with Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nora, P. (ed.) (2001–6). Rethinking France: Les lieux de mémoire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ozouf-Marignier, M.-V. (1989). La formation des départements: la représentation du territoire française à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Petite Géographie de l’Alsace et la Lorraine à l’usage des écoles (1919). Strasbourg: A. Viz et Co. Librairies-Editeurs. Ramaswamy, S. (2010). The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India. Durham: Duke University Press. Schlögel, K. (2003). Im Raume Lesen Wir die Zeit. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag. Schulten, S. (2012). Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Thiesse, A.-M. (1997). Ils apprenaient la France: l’exaltation des régions dans le discours politique. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme. Weick, G. (1894). Heimatkunde (Heimat und Kreis). Ein Hilfsbüchlein für den ersten Geographieunterricht. Zabern: Druck und Verlag der Schulbuchhandlung H. Fuchs.

3

Gastronomic Burgundy as a Regional Modernization Project Philip Whalen

Introduction: Modernity and Burgundian modernization Fully aware that contemporary macroeconomic developments and sociocultural transformations threatened to sweep away the circumstances of their inherited but precarious world, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Burgundians turned to attributes and resources of place and locality to address the considerable and often conflicting challenges associated with modernity and modernization. As in other regions (Agulhon 1970; Ford 1993; Thiesse 1991; Gras and Livet 1977; Young 2002), Burgundians sought “new social devices to ensure [and] express social cohesion and identity” (Hobsbawm 1983, p. 5). Their goal was to transform local and regional existence through a broadly articulated and tightly scripted project of sociospatial and gastronomic modernization (on modern restructuring generally, see Berman 1982, p. 15; Bauman 1991; Anderson 1991; Giddens 1991, p. 21; Soja 1989, 1996; Bhabha 1990; Bayly 2004, p. 198; Harvey 2006, pp. 102–7; Gunn 2006, pp. 107–26; Mann 2012; Rose 1993, p. 160; Mitchell 2000, p. 139; Grossberg 2010b, p. 84; for France, see Bernstein and Milza 1994, pp. 348–58; McPhee 1992; and for Burgundy, see Lévêque 2006, pp. 277–327). Burgundian restructuring entailed exploring the presumed links between geographical place, normative behavior, and gastronomic practices in order to develop a transformative regional agenda of cultural, civic, and commercial revitalization. Political leaders, cultural intermediaries, local cognoscenti, and commercial stakeholders worked, both autonomously and in coordination, to orchestrate a new, geographically anchored project intended to promote existing resources, actor participants generate new meanings and connections, coordinate emerging networks, adopt innovative marketing strategies, engender civic solidarity, mobilize “affective loyalties,” and engender “formations of affiliation” that would facilitate the implementation of gastronomic tourism regionally (Harvey 2006, p. 102; Thiesse 1991, p. 80; Grossberg 2010b, p. 198; Lavenir 1999). This project reflected a sophisticated understanding of how the dynamic entanglements of history and geography, memory and longing, knowledge and affect, narration and practice, coherence and resonance, along with prescription and enactment produce complex and contingent spatiotemporal effects. The result

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was greater than the sum of its parts. Simultaneously implemented as vision, landscape, discourse, and performance, the Burgundian restructuring project addressed shared needs and divergent interests: “Something for everyone,” as Gaston Gérard, Dijon’s tourism guru and creator of Dijon’s Gastronomic Fair, was fond of saying (Bien Public, November 11, 1927, p. 1).

Region, regionality, and regionalism Burgundian restructuring was informed by contemporary French regionalist aspirations, theories, and practices. Understood as an apt reflection of the realities of uneven geographical development and human experience (Jameson 1991; Harvey 2006; Soja 1996; Augé 1995), French regionalism contains diverse, overlapping, and, sometimes, contradictory agendas, ranging from the simple preservation and defense of regional cultures and languages to reactionary antimodernism and political separatism (Thiesse 1991; Moentmann 2003). The collective and independent success of such ambitions was greatly contingent on French political circumstances, which gradually favored the development of regionalist agendas during the last quarter of the nineteenth century when a centuries-old struggle over the appointment of local mayors and city councilors by central authorities shifted in favor of local democratic elections (by then “safely” under Republican influence) with the passage of the Local Government Act in 1884. Moreover, the isolation of France’s northeastern regions during the First World War invested regionalism with added legitimacy as the war effort necessitated new local structures and agencies to more effectively administer regional affairs and address regional needs. This experience also promoted the growth of decentralized and autonomous organizations such as Syndicats d’Initiative, Regional Councils, Chambers of Commerce, touring clubs, and professional and trade associations. The success of French regionalism—insofar as it transformed territorial units into “some kind of defined space of collective consumption and production as well as political action”—varied with regard to the availability of local resources, the development of industrial practices, the abilities of local leadership, the coherence of a particular region’s discourse, and the extent of participation (Harvey 2006, p. 102). The acknowledged leader (animateur) and theoretician of French Belle-Époque regionalism was Jean Charles-Brun (Wright 2003). He founded the French Regionalist Federation (Fédération régionaliste française) and the journal L’Action Régionaliste in 1900. He espoused a conciliatory agenda (“Unity without Uniformity”) based on regional diversity, administrative decentralization (déconcentration), and enhanced local autonomy (decentralization) in economic and educational matters. He also wanted to replace France’s existing administrative départements with approximately twenty natural regions, each based on a living economic and geographical reality. Charles-Brun’s emphasis on region and regionality (meaning a plurality of locales or places grouped together) dovetailed with significant interest within academic circles working on the “specificities of locality” (Livingstone 1992, p. 268).

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France’s foremost historical geographer of the period, Paul Vidal de La Blache, advanced a territorial cartography (“découpage”) that emphasized “zones” of interdependency between provincial capitals and their surrounding areas (Blache 1917, pp. 105–10). Within these, he studied the functional integration of place, livelihood, and social organization that resulted in unified patterns of daily life within localized cultural landscapes called genres-de-vie (Blache 1911, pp. 193–212 and 289–304). In addition to reflecting a negotiated settlement between the varying and uncertain forces of environmental opportunities and human possibilities (Blache 1911, p. 200), in Vidal’s view, genres-de-vie acquired fixed qualities over time (Blache 1904, p. 312; 1911, p. 297). Genres-de-vie gradually became “almost the exclusive milieu in which what remains of innovation and initiation are exercised” and thus played an increasingly significant role among human geographic variables (Blache 1911, p. 304). Vidal’s methodological emphasis on regional milieu, ecological holism, and rural lifestyles influenced a generation of geographers and historians who investigated agrarian patterns and structures during the first quarter of the twentieth century (Buttimer 1971; Bourdé and Hervé 1983; Church 1957; Clout 1978). Geospatial thinking about region and regionality was further advanced by the Ministry of Education’s decision to encourage the teaching of regional history and geography in 1911 (Chanet 1988, pp. 244–56). Indeed, the concept of “the region” was broadly recognized as the chief guarantor of social cohesion and national unity in early twentieth-century Burgundy. “Ardent defenders of Burgundy,” declared a booster in 1934, were “convinced regionalists” whose work represented “one of the foundations of the Nation” (Chatelus 1934, p. 372). An editorial in the Revue de Bourgogne from 1923 argued that regionalism was not antithetical to national patriotic agendas. “Regionalism,” it read, is not the atomization (enmiettement) of France: it is the consciousness adopted by diverse provincial regions of their own identity and special needs . . . today’s France feels the imperious need to regroup itself according to natural groupings; to give them the independence and initiative that will allow them to fulfill their role within the nation by more usefully exploiting their own riches and better pursue their own happiness. (Emmanuel 1923, p. 350)

Proud of their local traditions and gastronomic savoir-faire, Burgundians imagined their region standing on its own feet economically and with limited direction from the national state (Gérard 1959).

Gastronomic geographies The transformation of Burgundy from a sleepy province into a regional avatar and gastronomic destination required significant coordination to overcome vested interests, mobilize existing potential, and organize broad consensual participation (Poirrier 1995, vol. 1). “New times,” declared Gaston Gérard, France’s first Undersecretary of Tourism (1931), president of the Burgundian Federation of Regional Syndicats d’Initiatives, and Dijon’s mayor (1921–35), “require[d] decisive action and new methods” (Bien Public, November 11, 1927, p. 1). Responding to rapid modernization, economic uncertainty, social dislocation, existential insecurity,

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and structural differentiation, Gérard embraced regionalist precepts in order to coordinate Burgundian restructuring along the axes of integralist Republican politics, decentralized economic regionalism, commercially viable projects, mass cultural engagement, French republican universalism principles, and tolerance for nonthreatening particularisms (Whalen 2007b). Supporters recalibrated existing ideas about the relations between identity, locality, belonging, and authenticity. Moving beyond the mere description and analysis of ‘things in space,’ they demonstrated an astute appreciation for how economic, political, physical, social, and cultural processes intertwined in the production of “space itself ” (Lefebvre 1991; Merrifield 2000, p. 171; Ayers 2010, p. 1). Recalling the dramatic and painful, but ultimately successful, reconstitution of Burgundy’s wine-producing regions and industries (occasioned by the phylloxera blight from c. 1870s to 1900 and endemic pestilences, such as mildew, black rot, and mold) as their most relevant and familiar example of local and regional restructuring, Burgundians set out to re-territorialize regional space(s) into preferred localized habitats with corresponding agroecological niches (terroirs). Flagged as “unique” and “authentic,” these newly fashioned places were constituted by interconnected systems of social organization (genre-de-vie, social structures, “ways of life”, habitus, “communities of practice”); artisanal and gastronomic products (produits de terroirs); ideological “meaning systems” and their enabling techniques (signification, narration, representation, animation, mimesis, parody, pastiche, simulation, gesture, nonrepresentation, etc.); privileged cultural practices (savoir-faire, protocols, economies of belonging, “structures of feeling,” and the cultivation of the “human sensorium”); different forms of professional support (collectives, cooperatives, confréries, etc.), along with the weight of juridical validation, such as the Système d’appellation d’origine controlée and its variations (Martin and James 1993, p. 192; Febvre 1950 [1922]), p. 246; Giddens 1984, pp. 16– 24; Bourdieu and Wacquart 1992, p. 101; Williams 2006 [1961], pp. 34–7, 168; Storey 2010, pp. 34–44; Bourdieu 1984 [1979], p. 53; Painter 2000, p. 242; Thrift 2008, p. 91; Demossier 1999, 2000, pp. 142–53; B érard and Marchenay 2000, pp. 154–84; Mann 2012, p. 227; Barthes 1979, pp. 167–9; Grossberg 2010b, p. 316; Smail 2008, p. 114; Seigworth and Gregg 2010, p. 2; Anderson and Harrison 2010, p. 9; Berthier and Sweeney 2000; Jacquet 2009; Lucand 2011). The result was nothing short of a regional “space–time–being” recomposition project (Soja 1989, p. 27). Burgundians sought the promise of stability and flexibility in the attributes of place and locality to fashion new ideas, relations, and activities that offered the promise of promoting the consumption of local heritage, landscapes, and products. A new “sense of place” (Lippard 1997, p. 7) was thus cultivated, commodified, and consumed in the form of a newly fashioned regional cuisine (Laferté 2006; Whalen 2007b). The cultural logic of this process was such that it could transform ordinary bottles of Burgundy or jars of Dijon mustard into grail-like fetish objects suitable for tourists’ rucksacks and the shelves of gourmet traders everywhere. In fact, the 1939 Duchess of Burgundy’s Carnaval float was pulled by a bottle of wine and a pot of mustard (La Bourgogne Républicaine, March 20, 1939, p. 5 and March 21, 1939, p. 5).

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Paradoxically, though not unexpectedly, the seemingly fixed relations between Burgundian place, food, comportment, and identity were also the elements of a surprisingly flexible and transformative agenda. Consistent with Anthony Giddens’ description of the impact of modernity as the “the lifting out” of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across time and space” (Giddens 1991, p. 21), Burgundian gastronomy was not only unmoored from the rhythms and demands of “traditional” labor and domestic practices, but it could also be consumed anytime and anywhere. This suited the practical needs of contemporaries wishing to maintain a sense of regional affiliation and identity through a culinary savoir-faire that needed to be invoked only as festive or commemorative occasions arose (a temporary habitus, from Bourdieu 1984 [1979], p. 53). Burgundian cuisine, savoir faire, and produits de terroir were to be exported to those in places eager to demonstrate cultivated tastes (or a frisson of Burgundian culture), as replicated through the dramaturgical and pseudohistorical dinners hosted by international chapters of the Chevaliers de Tastevin (Cappe 1938, pp. 226–31). The national and international success of these activities contributed to a newfound regional cultural self-awareness (Poirrier 1995, vol. 1, p. 177; Laferté 2006; Whalen 2007d and 2010).

Emplotment, emplacement, and embodiment The successful implementation of the Burgundian regional restructuring project lay in its ability to address what Edward Ayers identifies as the “intricate interplay” between “the structural, the ephemeral, the enduring, and the emergent” (to which one might also add, the immanent and the transcendent) elements of lived and imagined experience (Ayers 2010, p. 6; also see, Cantwell 1993, pp. 110–17). “[N]ot a lie, but a myth” (Augé 1995, p. 47): simultaneously warm, fuzzy, rich, and complex, the Burgundian regional project offered a reassuring fantasy for participants (spectactors) to cast themselves in a fable of gastronomic redemption. Indeed, the logic of this idyll allowed resident boosters and sympathetic gastronomades to express and exhibit pride, pleasure, and knowledge about preferred local practices and regional attributes. Opportunities for gastronomadic displacement, display and consumption were attractively packaged (through accessible promotional literature provided by welcoming tourist offices). They proffered seductive itineraries, beckoning landscapes, alluring settings, convivial spectacles, and memorable meals (Laferté 2006; Whalen 2011). The pages of regional journals, newspapers, and reviews (such as the Bien Publique, Mirroir Dijonnais et de Bourgogne, Progrès de la Côte-d’Or, and, especially, the Guide des Fêtes Populaires et Traditionelles de la Bourgogne) (Guide to Burgundy’s Popular and Traditional Festivals) were peppered with editorials, advertisements, and reports relating the efforts of committees and organizations orchestrating gastronomic events and wine festivals. Dijon in 1922 was reported to be “literally overwhelmed by tourists: hotels and restaurants were taken by assault” (Progrès de la Côte d’Or, p. 2), By 1929, “[t]he town was jumping, quasi-hysterical, injected with a mysterious

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Figure 3.1 Cover of the 1932 Gastronomic Fair of Dijon catalog, a promotional advertisement for the 1931 Fair, and a 1934 Fair poster.

supercharge of medieval pomp and Madison-Avenue-via-Paris commercialism” (Bien Public, November 8, 1929, p. 5). Advertisements for Dijon’s Gastronomic Fairs (Foire Gastronomique de Dijon) of the 1920s and 1930s reveal that marketers sought to establish continuities between Burgundy’s past and present through an iconography of local resources and attributes. For example, the poster for the 1934 Gastronomic Fair (Figure 3.1) shows a chef holding an enormous platter filled with local and regional culinary products over his head while towering before Dijon’s City Hall (located behind him but seen from the implied viewer’s ground-level perspective). The agglomeration of City Hall’s contiguous buildings, some dating from an original fourteenthcentury Valois construction and collectively known as the Palais des Ducs et États de Bourgogne, advance a symbolic aesthetic that linked local heritage, regional gastronomy, and culinary expertise. Significant architectural features included a central tower (visible between the chef ’s legs in the 1934 poster) and a ducal kitchen built by Philip the Good during the mid-fifteenth century and noted for its multiple chimneys set between tall ogival arches (which figure on the cover of the 1931 Fair’s “Program,” see Figure 3.1). The cover of the Fair’s 1932 “Program” (Figure 3.1) used similar tropes and motifs. Here, another chef, signaled by his hat, uniform, and scabbarded knife affixed to his waist like a sword (a marker for both ancien régime and modern artisanal skills), is shown stirring the contents of a saucepan against the backdrop of yet another view of Dijon’s City Hall, this time focusing on the Tour Philippe le Bon (originally built by Philip the Strong in 1363 and subsequently embellished by Philip the Good) so as to metonymically link gastronomy and heritage through the former residence of the Dukes of Burgundy and Dijon’s modern City Hall. The valorization of modern gastronomic activities in terms of local heritage was designed and calculated to help market local produits de terroir, which, in turn, would help empty overstocked wine cellars, address contemporary anxieties concerning modernization, script opportunities for civic conviviality and social solidarity, promote the newly fashioned regional gastronomic savoir-faire, and balance municipal budgets.

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Gastronomy as landscape; landscape as gastronomy The ability of landscapes to collapse image and reality makes them ideal vehicles for “all manner of contests” (Mitchell 2000, p. 139; Lefebvre 1991). While humanistic geography has fruitfully explored phenomenological questions related to subjectivity and spatiality (Casey 1996), the links between geographic development and discourse can also be explored as reflections of the tensions, contradictions, convergences, differences, and resistances that inform spatial structuration (Berger 1977 [1972], p. 41; Rose 1993, p. 160; Doel 2000, pp. 127–9; Massey 1991, pp. 267–81; Lefebvre 1991, p. 154). “[S]pace,” writes Andy Merrifield, “internalizes the contradictions of modern capitalism: capitalist contradictions are contradictions of space” (2000, p. 173). John Wylie has argued that landscapes are “less a setting for the life of inhabitants than a curtain behind which their struggles, achievements, and accidents take place” (Wylie 2007, p. 69). Landscapes, in these terms, should be understood as signifying systems designed to appear natural and transparent (thereby implying and implicating complicit, ironic, or naïf viewers in an interpretive process that is duplicitous—if not “incipiently colonial” (Wylie 2007, pp. 67 and 133)—because they proffer an aesthetic of sensual and transcendent unity with nature that is calculated to “express and occlude particular socio-economic relations” (Wylie 2007, p. 67; also see Cosgrove and Daniels 1988, p. 1). Indeed, the genre-de-vies or lifestyles associated with Burgundy’s gastronomic milieux were described in detail by local ethnographers and érudits. Among them figured Gaston Roupnel, an outspoken regionalist, syndicated columnist (Dépêche de Toulouse), president of Dijon’s Folklore Society (in 1929), a historical geographer, and a leading wine-maker in Gevrey-Chambertin (Charles-Brun 1927, p. 4; ClémentJanin 1936, p. 5; Whalen 2001). He famously theorized terroir and contributed toward the elaboration of the Burgundian regional idyll through his prolific fiction, scholarship, and syndicated editorials (Whalen 2007a). His La Bourgorgne, types et coutumes (Burgundy, characters and customs) provided ethnographic descriptions of the daily lives and activities of regional laborers and vintners (Roupnel 1936). Illustrations by Louis William Graux provided rustic depictions of emblematic villages and iconic workers in localized landscapes. He also contributed a folkloricized map of the Côte-d’Or’s wine-growing terroirs, stretching southward from Chablis down to Macon (Figure 3.2). Graux’s map clearly signaled preferred symbolic associations, foregrounded preferred spaces, managed tourist expectations, suggested potential itineraries, and reoriented local perceptions through localized reflections of the Burgundian restructuring project. His caricatural depictions of workers and produits de terroir promoted wine interests at the expense of other industries, practices, trades, and conditions. The sociospatial emplacements of Burgundian restructuring worked because they were recognizable, reassuring, inclusive, and pragmatic. Local and regional action programs advanced inviting, replicable, and mutually reinforcing practices and strategies. Gastronomy and tourism allowed people with different interests to participate—to varying degrees—in a phenomenon that was greater than the sum of

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Figure 3.2 Folkloricized map of the Côte-d’Or.

its parts (Ory 1997; Whalen 2007b). Support from variously placed actors was elective, opportunistic, and expressed through highly adaptable forms of participation in programmed events. The volumes of the Guide des Fêtes Populaires et Traditionelles de la Bourgogne of the early 1930s, for example, reveal a desire and willingness to blend traditional activities and modern regionalist objectives. Local(ized) festivals included elements of Celtic fires, summer theatricals, costume revivals, wine tastings, solstice festivals, Saints’ days, gastronomic fairs, country ébaudes, musical recitals, dance troupes, and literary awards, and competed for the attentions of diverse crowds— not just middle-class tourists from Paris and provincial capitals. Accommodating a “heterogeneous array of subjective visions” (Soja 1989, p. 29) (see Figure 3.3) within an elaborate, context-specific, self-enacting, and phenomenologically constituted experience (of well-being, consumption, and belonging), Burgundian restructuring reorganized potential, desired, and lived relations between persons, objects, and spaces in terms of their gastronomic importance, desirability, and potential. Adapting a page from Marc Augé, one might say of Burgundy that, “[t]hose who [took] responsibility for coping with sudden vicissitudes, who uncover[ed] and resolve[ed] particular

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Figure 3.3 Covers of the “Programme Officiel” for the 1935 Mère-Folle carnival and the January 8, 1927, edition of La Vie Dijonnaise.

difficulties, [were] more numerous than those who [fell] victim . . .; everyone [held] fast and everything [stayed] together” (Augé 1995, p. 46). Gilles Laferté’s examination of variant folkloric applications of the Burgundian gastronomic discourse draws attention to how different social, religious, professional, and commercial agendas both competed and cohabitated within the restructuring meta-narrative (Laferté 2006; also see Payne 1998; Peer 1998; Harootunian 1998; Moentmann 2003; Jacquet 2009). One might further question how the regime, essentially framed in terms of the influence and interests of local elites, their middleclass supporters, and attendant professional organizations, had the discursive capacity to invite and/or accommodate additional elements of improvisation, adaption, or resistance—rather than simple rule following—in its festive and everyday enactments by ordinary participants. However much local and visiting spect-actors were driven by a variety of goals, compulsions, and desires, how, one might still wonder, did they become dynamic figures or complicit agents—rather than gullible dupes or naïve participants—in the new restructuring project?

Participation and performance The material and cultural dimensions of Burgundian restructuring reveal a deliberate entanglement of popular, traditional, and modern modalities through shared social experiences and the overlapping of cultural spheres (for similar strategies, see Heller 1987, p. 297; Vlastos 1998; Chakrabarty 2000, p. 15). Seemingly aware that everyday agents participate in the (re)production of local geographies through symbolic, practical, and nondiscursive modalities, Burgundian organizers employed technologies ranging from the figurative to the nonrepresentational to heighten participants’ sense

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of wonder, allure, thrill, anticipation, desire, and enjoyment (Gregory 1981, p. 1; Thrift 2008). This was designed to facilitate opportunities for convivial, intersubjective, and locally anchored bonding designed to foster a sense of local place, belonging, and identity. The city of Mâcon’s first Wine Festival provides an illustrative example of how readily festival participants might contribute different—and not necessarily divergent—expectations and layers of meaning to the significance of local festivals as civic events. Billed as France’s first French National Wine Festival (and coordinated with the Congress of Cooperative Cellars from August 13–15, 1933), Mâcon’s festival opened with an honorific reception for Wine Queens representing different wineproducing regions (and outfitted in red, white, and blue dresses to represent the colors of the French flag) along with local Mustard, Cassis, and Gingerbread Queens (Progrès de la Côte-d’Or, August 14, 1933, p. 1). A mid-day ceremonial banquet was followed by an elaborate parade of floats that represented the history of wine and emphasizing Burgundy’s contributions. Floats carried tableaux-vivants depicting the Monks of the Abbey of Citeaux, the Court of the Dukes of Burgundy, and the victorious French soldiers (poilus) at the battle of Verdun (Le Progrès de la Côte-d’Or, November 12, 1922, p. 2). Among the approximately 5,000 persons attending the parade, however, many remembered a more chaotic scene in which Cistercian monks cavorted with slaves, the Dukes of Burgundy valiantly escorted a victorious Marianne, and Algerian tirailleurs possessively encircled the “Wine Queens” (Revue du Vin de France 71, 1933, pp. 17–18; Progrès de la Côte-d’Or, August 16, 1933, p. 3). Inadequate event scheduling unintentionally enabled a rather carnivalesque atmosphere to unfold during the second evening. The crowd, having sampled different wines, endured broadcasted drinking songs (to which “the general public shouted rather than sang the refrains”), and visited an open-air, “renaissance-style” village fair (kermesse) festooned with multicolored garlands, with illuminated fountains, electric signs, and lights resembling “white clouds dancing overhead,” was animated and expressive (La Dépêche de Toulouse, August 14, 1933, p. 1). Eager to demonstrate their own understanding of participants’ roles or potential roles within Burgundian festive culture, Mâcon’s revelers proceeded to the banks of the Saône river to continue drinking and carousing into the night, many of them sleeping there indecorously until disturbed by the following morning’s thundershower (La Dépêche de Toulouse, August 15, 1933, p. 2). This turn of events reveals the different ways individuals (re)negotiate sociocultural identities by enacting alternative interpretations of prescribed social roles. The range of performative categories, Katherine Frank explains, may include “being” the role by “suspending disbelief ” in traditional or counter-narratives, “doing” the role by recognizing the “façade” and nonetheless assuming control of its performance, “resisting” through feigned ignorance or ridicule, and “subverting” the paradigm by “twisting, imitating, and parodying traditional scripts” (Frank 2002, p. 178). Accordingly, one may interpret the behavior of both the actors and the spectators attending Macon’s wine parade as knowingly expressing their support for policies and practices that facilitated regional self-awareness. With regard to the festival’s less scripted performances, Fred Inglis’ observation that modern “ideologies maintain

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their constituencies, especially in their ritual and symbolic form because they are sufficiently general and vague to allow different groups and classes to find in them what suits them, and makeshift a social identity out of that” further suggests how the disposition and comportment of Mâcon’s evening revelers might be understood as signaling that change and restructuring would not—despite the contemporary climate of political impasse—occur without popular participation and consumption (Inglis 1988, p. 108). Not reducible to the logic of simple transgression (Stallybrass and White 1986, pp. 201–2), opposition (Certeau 1984, pp. 34–6), or compliance (Fiske 1989, p. 100), the participants at Mâcon’s festival introduced elements of play, variance, and popular raucousness to nuance preferred cultural strategies and expand the repertoire of Burgundian gastronomic experience, to an extent still evident in contemporary wine festivals. The reconfiguration (a process of ethnomimetic “transubstantiation,” per Robert Cantwell [1993, p. 116]) of local time, space, and identity into the coordinates of a regionally oriented modernity was enabled by a creative complicity between local authorities, cultural intermediaries, commercial stakeholders, tourists, spect-actors, and consumers (Furlough 1993; Whalen 2011). They produced enticing menus, seductive itineraries, convivial spectacles, iconic landscapes, heritage traditions, gastronomic savoir-faire, and related technologies of allurement. The result offered more than entertaining distractions from contemporary anxieties or preoccupations. It informed the promotion and organization of civic belonging, regional identity, collective memory, spatial reorientation, and individual well-being through relatively uncomplicated, culturally rich, and instantly recognizable acts of festive comportment, gastronomic consumption, and local identification. While never intended to liberate individuals from the exigencies of economic and social integration (Lefebvre 1991), the Burgundian restructuring project transformed the habits, desires, practices, savoirfaire, and allegiances of willing participants into the productive emplacements of a new cultural geography.

Figure 3.4 The Burgundian Cuisine float at the 1935 Mère-Folle Carnival, depicting a working-class couple seated and anticipating a meal of regional produits de terroir.

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Storey, J. (2010). “All forms of signification,” in M. Seidl, R. Horak, and L. Grossberg (eds), About Raymond Williams. London: Routledge, pp. 34–44. Thiesse, A.-M. (1991). Écrire la France. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Thrift, N. (2008). “Re-animating the Place of Thought: Transformations of Spatial and Temporal Description in the Twenty-First Century,” in A. Amin and J. Roberts (eds), Community, Economic Creativity, and Organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 90–119. —(2010). “Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour,” in M. Gregg and G. Seigworth (eds), The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 1–30. Vidal de la Blache, P. (1904). “Rapports de la Sociologie avec la Géographie.” Revue internationale de sociologie, 12(5): 309–13. —(1911). “Les genres de vie dans la géographie humaine.” Annales de Géographie 20: 193–212 and 289–304. —(1917). “La renovation de la vie regional.” Foi et Vie B-9: 105–10. Vlastos, S. (ed.) (1998). “Tradition: Past/Present Culture and Modern Japanese History,” Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan. Berkeley : University of California Press, pp. 1–18. Whalen, P. (2001). Gaston Roupnel: âme paysanne et sciences humaines. Dijon: Editions Universitaires de Dijon. —(2007a). Vins, Vignes et Gastronomie bourguignonne selon Gaston Roupnel. Clémency : Terre en Vues. —(2007b). “ ‘Revenir aux saines traditions de la vielle France’: Gastronomie et Tourisme bourguignon à l’époque de Gaston Gérard.” Annales de Bourgogne 79(3): 259–80. —(2007c). “ ‘A merciless source of happy memories’: Gaston Roupnel and the Folklore of Burgundian Terroir.” Journal of Folklore Research 44(1): 21–40. —(2007d). “Burgundian Regionalism and French Republican Commercial Culture at the 1937 Paris International Exposition.” Cultural Analysis 6: 31–62. —(2011). “From ‘bat-filled slimy ruins’ to ‘gastronomic delights’: Mapping Tourist Itineraries in Early Twentieth-Century Burgundy.” Environment, Space, Place 3(1): 99–139. Williams, R. (2006 [1961]). “The analysis of culture,” in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. London: Pearson, pp. 34–7. Wright, J. (2003). The Regionalist Movement in France, 1890–1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wylie, J. (2007). Landscape. London: Routledge. Young, P. (2002). “La Vieille France as Object of Bourgeois Desire: The Touring Club de France and the French Regions, 1890–1918,” in R. Koshar (ed.), Histories of Leisure. New York: Berg, pp. 169–89.

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Imagining Greater France in the Provinces: The Strasbourg Colonial Exhibition of 1924 Alison Carrol

In July 1924, the Exposition coloniale, agricole et industrielle opened its doors in the Alsatian city of Strasbourg with a fanfare of publicity. Brochures described it as a “unique event” as it was the Alsatian population’s introduction to “the marvels of the French Empire, which they had been unable to appreciate for so many years.”1 Six years earlier, the region of Alsace, along with the neighboring department of the Moselle, had returned to French rule after forty-seven years of annexation into Germany. As a result, the initial plans for the exhibition were to treat it as a way to introduce France’s colonies to Alsatian citizens who had “everything to learn” about them. But Alsace’s reintegration into France proved far more difficult than anticipated at either the Parisian center or the Alsatian periphery, and as plans for the exhibition progressed, the theme of “Greater France” became intertwined with broader regional concerns and debates over the place of Alsace within the French nation. Research on national integration in France has stressed the dynamism of the relationship between the Parisian center and various French peripheries. Notably, work on the Breton, Pyrenean, and Flemish frontiers has underlined the role of local elites, who played an important part in filtering national questions and concerns through local understandings (Ford 1993; Sahlins 1989; Baycroft 2004). Scholarship on Alsace in particular emphasizes the importance of local agency, and research that compares Alsatian responses to French and German nation-building initiatives between 1871 and 1945 has highlighted both the strength of regional identity and its intersection with class, gender, and political identity (Baechler 1982; Fischer 2010; Goodfellow 1999; Harvey 2001; Vlossak 2010). While this literature has been successful in revealing the fluidity of local identities, less attention has been paid to how far such local attachments took account of broader, transnational connections. This chapter addresses the problem of how local and colonial conceptions of French territory relate historically by placing the Strasbourg colonial exhibition of 1924 into the context of the economic and political concerns raised by reintegration. The first section charts Alsace’s unique relationship with the French Empire and explores the early problems of reintegrating the lost province. Section Two discusses the aims of the

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organizers of the colonial exhibition, and asserts that the colonial exhibition must be understood as part of the broader project of reimagining Alsace’s place within France. The third section develops this thesis by tracing the ways in which connections between Alsace and France’s overseas empire were presented at the exhibition. All three sections address the question of how regional attachment took account of broader national and transnational connections.

Alsace and “la plus grande France” Alsace’s relationship to France and the French colonies was transformed in 1871 when the region, along with a section of neighboring Lorraine, was annexed into the German Empire after Prussia’s victory in the Franco–Prussian War. The new German authorities allowed the local population to opt for French citizenship, but only on the condition that they would leave the region (and all their possessions) within a period of two years (Wahl 1974). Most of the Alsatians and Lorrains who took this option headed for metropolitan France, but some took advantage of the French government’s support for any optants who decided to move to France’s colonies. The Chambre des députés voted funding for the financial resettlement of optants in New Caledonia, while 100,000 hectares of land in Algeria were made available for Alsatians and Lorrains (Merle 2002; Wahl 1974; Fischer 2003). Such initiatives led to a brief spike in migration from the lost provinces to the colonies, and notably to Algeria, which received six thousand Alsatian and Lorrain migrants between 1871 and 1874. Crucially, this migration also contributed to the emergence of an imagined association between Alsace and Algeria, and a nationalist myth developed that depicted Algeria as a “new Alsace-Lorraine.” In part, this reflected the situation in the colony. Alsatians and Lorrains made up around three quarters of the new arrivals to Algeria from Germany after 1875, while they were also unusually well represented in the Foreign Legion (Story 2001). Elsewhere, Alsatian companies such as the Mulhousian textile manufacturers Dolfuss Mieg et Cie., Fritz Koechlin, and Antoine Herzog took advantage of their privileged status by establishing branches in Algeria or building upon existing links with France’s colonial possessions (Gordi 2009). Nevertheless, the total number of migrants was never significantly higher than the figures for the years before 1871 (Fischer 2003). And for most of the region’s population, the myth of the “new Alsace-Lorraine” became nothing more than an element of the French nationalist cult of the “lost provinces” that followed the Treaty of Frankfurt (Turetti 2008; Varley 2008). Such connections to Greater France coexisted with German colonial propaganda. In 1895, Strasbourg hosted an exhibition of Schilluk negroes from the White Nile, and in 1913, it held a larger colonial exhibition in the Orangerie park. Nevertheless, these events were rare and “national” propaganda intended to foster feelings of attachment to Germany was predominant in the region (Fischer 2003). This was not uncommon in Imperial Germany. The recency of unification meant that colonial propaganda often took a back seat to projects designed to solidify attachment to the Kaiserreich (Klein 2004). Yet, in the minds of administrators, the need for national propaganda appeared

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to be particularly pressing in Alsace–Lorraine, where the population had been French citizens until 1871; where cultural movements stressed the inherent Frenchness of the region; and where politics was dominated by the protestation movement, which demanded the region’s return to France (Silverman 1972). Nonetheless, the years of German rule saw an increased Alsatian integration into German systems. In 1918, when the end of the Great War triggered Alsace’s return to France, reintegration proved far more problematic than anticipated in Paris or in Alsace. On their arrival from the French interior, administrators expressed surprise that the majority of the population spoke Alsatian, a Germanic dialect, rather than French, and attempts to introduce French laws and administrative institutions met with varying success. In 1924, the new Premier Edouard Herriot announced that he intended to institute the full range of republican legislation into Alsace and the Moselle. This included the laws on the separation of Church and State, which had been introduced across France in 1905 but were not in application in the recovered departments that had been under German rule at that stage. Large sections of the population treated the announcement as an attack on the place of religion in daily life, and responded with protests, strikes, and a petition (Carrol and Zanoun 2011). The widespread discontent fed the formation of the Heimatbund, an association that attempted to protect local rights and privileges. Concerned commentators in Paris and Alsace began to talk about the “malaise alsacien,” a catchall phrase that covered the range of feelings of frustration and discontent that engulfed the region, and to fear Alsatian autonomism, a wide-ranging movement that became the political vehicle for these sentiments. As various sections of the region’s political, economic, and cultural elite continued their efforts to ease the region’s reintegration into France, talk of the malaise and autonomism dominated the local press during the summer of 1924. The colonial exhibition must be understood as a part of this process of reintegration, as a range of individuals and groups became involved in the exhibition, all of them with their own ideas about Alsace’s place within France.

The organizing committee Strasbourg’s colonial exhibition was the idea of Louis Proust, a Radical deputy from the Indre-et-Loire who had sat on the organizing committees of regional colonial exhibitions in Tours and Bordeaux. Proust’s plans for a colonial exhibition in the east of France coincided with an appetite for staging exhibitions among Strasbourg’s political and economic elites. In the six years since the end of the Great War, the city had held two major exhibitions, a national exhibition in 1919 and an exhibition commemorating the centenary of Pasteur’s birth in 1923. The council had also constructed a purposebuilt exhibition site in the northern suburb of Wacken.2 After capitalizing on this enthusiasm, Proust was able to assemble an organizing committee that represented the region’s political, cultural, and economic elite. It comprised Mayor Jacques Peirotes and the city council; Auguste Sartory, professor at the University of Strasbourg; Aristide Quillet and Emile Henry, the directors of the major daily, the Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg; and Alfred Stephen of the Banque d’Alsace et de Lorraine.3 These Alsatian

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committee members were attracted by the exhibition’s potential to foster economic and political reintegration. Proust also won over relevant ministries of Colonies, Commerce, Agriculture, Hygiene, Prévoyance, and social assistance, the General Commissioner for Alsace–Lorraine, and the governor generals of a number of colonies, who were keen to take advantage of the promotion opportunities offered by the exhibition. Thus a range of interests, from the Parisian center, the Alsatian periphery, and Greater France, were represented on the organizing committee. Proust saw the exhibition’s function as primarily educational. After all, the map of the empire had changed considerably since Alsace had last been part of France in 1871. The Third Republic had expanded French territories in Southeast Asia; in north, west, and central Africa; and in the South Pacific, and after the Great War, it gained mandates over the former Ottoman territories in Syria and Lebanon, and the former German African colonies of Togo and Cameroon. As a result, the Alsatian population had missed out on a crucial fifty years of French colonial expansion. At the same time, they had also missed the accompanying development of the metropolitan cultures of empire, and Odile Goerg has pointed out that in the eyes of the French government, the Alsatians had “everything to learn” about the French Empire (Goerg 1994, 2002). Therefore, Proust planned to use exhibits, displays, and brochures to describe daily life in the colonies, and the reciprocal advantages of the relationship between France and its Empire.4 As at interwar colonial exhibitions held elsewhere in France, brochures printed for the visitors emphasized France’s grandeur and global influence. They pointed out the good work that France had done in the colonies, installing hospitals and schools where there had previously been “prisons” and “penal colonies,” and described the loyalty that it could command from its colonial subjects.5 Meanwhile, articles in the local press encouraged the population to visit the exhibition so that they could broaden their understanding of France’s work in its territories overseas.6 But this was not the only aim that motivated the exhibition’s organizers, and crucially, the “introduction” was not to be one-way. Given the recency of Alsace’s return to France, the organizers were aware that both metropolitan and colonial populations had things to learn about the recovered departments, and they viewed the exhibition as a means to “introduce Alsace to France.”7 In an early planning meeting, Louis Proust attempted to convince a group of local businessmen of the potential of the exhibition by suggesting that it would “give Français de l’intérieur a reason to come to Strasbourg.”8 As a result, while the colonial theme set the tone, about twothirds of the total area of 15 hectares featured exhibitions on Alsace and metropolitan France. Brochures placed descriptions of colonial life alongside articles about Alsatian industry, advertisements for regional products, and maps of Alsace that pointed to tourist destinations or attractive walks.9 In addition to providing a boost to tourism, the event was expected to offer a means to promote Alsatian industry and commerce. Proust stressed that the organizers intended to showcase metropolitan and, particularly, Alsatian industry to the colonies, while Mayor Peirotes wrote of the economic and intellectual benefits that he hoped the region would reap from the exhibition, which would be of considerable “economic and national importance” for the city, as well as for the three recovered departments

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and the surrounding area.10 Above all, the committee envisaged economic interaction between the regional and colonial industries represented at the exhibition, and hoped to establish opportunities for economic exchange and cooperation.11 The economic dimension of the project was particularly important in Alsace, where the region was attempting to overcome not only the impact of the Great War but also the effects of economic reintegration into France. Since 1918, regional industry had worked hard to realign Alsatian goods, products, and commerce toward French markets, with some notable successes in banking, tobacco, and construction (Dreyfus 1979). However, the exhibition’s organizers were aware of an imminent problem. The Treaty of Versailles had granted Alsatian industry five years of access to German markets, followed by ten years of customs union (Vogler 2004). These five years were due to come to an end in 1924, so holding the exhibition in that year represented part of a more concerted attempt to realign Alsatian goods toward France and its colonies.12 These aims interacted, and the exhibition became not simply a “leçon des choses,” but also a more ambitious vehicle for economic reintegration and development. The event’s organizers viewed relations with France’s overseas Empire as a crucial element of this process. These aims interacted to produce a relatively coherent view of empire among the exhibition’s organizers. Nevertheless, events surrounding the exhibition afford a glimpse into the range of attitudes toward it. When Proust first proposed the exhibition, representatives of local industry questioned whether another exhibition was necessary, as anyone who had an interest in coming to Strasbourg would have done so for the Pasteur exhibition.13 Meanwhile, the press pointed out that it would distract from the region’s existing annual artisanal and industrial exhibition, which was due to be held in Bischwiller in summer 1924.14 Thus, the proposed exhibition did not meet with universal approval in either Alsatian or national circles. Nevertheless, these criticisms did not prevent the exhibition from going ahead, and, when it opened, it attempted to address the broad aim of promoting reintegration. It aimed to do so by introducing Alsace to Greater France, while introducing Greater France to Alsace.

Alsace and Algeria at the exhibition In spring 1924, the Wacken exhibition site was transformed in preparation for the exhibition. The committee ensured that the structures built for the commemoration of the centenary of Pasteur’s birth received new colonial-style facades and interiors, and constructed new buildings including an African village, Moroccan souks, and an Indo-chinese pavilion for the event. It oversaw the planting of foliage transported from the Mediterranean coast around the site, and the staff dressed in colonial uniforms to set the tone. Displays offered a positive picture of colonial life, and informed visitors about the colonies’ natural resources, industries, organizations, and economic systems. They also offered information on the participation of the indigenous populations in the government.15 Visitors could attend ceremonies purporting to offer an insight into daily life, such as the baptism of babies born during the passage; marriages; and the coronation of King Bouppé I.16 On the assumption that many Alsatians were learning

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about the French Empire for the first time, the brochures offered basic information and featured maps detailing the products produced by individual colonies.17 The committee ensured that these colonial exhibits were placed alongside information on Alsatian industry and agriculture.18 Concerts by the Strasbourg orchestra and athletic displays took place alongside the colonial-themed ceremonies, further representing Alsace. Indeed, the opening ceremony featured a range of Alsatian choral, musical, and sporting societies.19 And while Mayor Peirotes praised the work of the exhibition in “showing to Alsace and Lorraine the magnificent work that France had accomplished in its overseas territories” after “political circumstances . . . had left [Alsace and Lorraine] on the edges of national activity,” the exhibition materials also invoked Alsace’s particular relationship with the colonies20: Alsace . . . has a colonial past. In spite of being separated from the motherland for almost half a century, it was always interested in France’s colonial expansion. The Alsatian didn’t restrict himself to the soil of his birth . . . , he looked further, paying attention of the peaceful conquests of our armies on the burning soil of Africa or in far-away Asia. Many of Alsace’s sons died heroically on these new lands, where our flag flies today. And numerous great colonialists have Alsatian origins.21

This continuity was a key theme in speeches by the exhibition’s organizers and invited guests, whether they came from Alsace or Paris. Thus, Louis Proust stressed that Alsace had always shown great interest in French colonial life, while Minister of Colonies Edouard Daladier used his opening speech to pay tribute to the eminent role that Alsatians had played in the formation and development of France’s overseas possessions, particularly those famous “fils d’Alsace” who had sacrificed their lives for the colonial idea in Tonkin and beyond.22 This relationship between Alsace and the colonies had endured, the Alsatian professor Auguste Sartory pointed out, “despite foreign invasions [as] at the head of all France’s far-off expeditions, at the head of all exotic developments, there was a child of Alsace.” In this way, the organizers attempted to mediate the slightly contradictory messages that, on the one hand, Alsatians needed to learn about empire given the separation that almost half a century of German rule had enforced on them, and that on the other, in spite of this separation, Alsace had never lost its interest in Greater France. This juggling attempt reflected the broader contradictions that arose from the imperial project. As scholarly work on differing local investments in empire affirms, such attempts to stress the role of Alsatians in the development of empire built upon general practices of rooting knowledge about the empire within existing, local understandings (Godin 2007). The publicity material for the Strasbourg exhibition similarly reveals parallels to interwar French local cultures of empire. For example, the exhibition’s poster placed three colonial figures in the foreground, against the backdrop of the distinctive Alsatian landmark of Strasbourg’s cathedral. Its style is reminiscent of posters for the Marseilles exhibition of 1906, which foregrounded three colonial figures against the background of the port of Marseilles, the Mediterranean Sea, and a ship. Indeed, the Strasbourg exhibition actually recycled some of the exhibits and displays used in Marseilles two years earlier at the 1922 exhibition.23 Such parallels

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are suggestive of the ways in which Alsace appropriated existing regional colonial imagery, while developing its own specific relationship to the colonies. Yet, this stress on continuity also reflected common practice in interwar Alsace. The region’s political, economic, and cultural elites made frequent reference to Alsatians’ continued and undiminished loyalty to France and all things French (Carrol 2011). Many had done so during the years of annexation, as opposition to Germany became an important dimension of regional identity. They continued to do so after their return to France, as it served the purpose of easing the shock of the problems of reintegration, and minimizing the emerging gulf between Parisian and Alsatian attitudes that the malaise and autonomist movement appeared to signal. This also guided the decision to display Alsatian products and metropolitan goods side by side at the exhibition, with a stress on the potential benefits that both offered to the colonies.24 Presenting Alsace as an integral part of France was, as we have seen, a concerted economic strategy. At the same time, it was also a political response to the burgeoning autonomist movement. Linking regional and metropolitan goods in this way stressed the “indivisibility” of France and represented an emphatic statement to sections of the autonomist movement that argued for Alsatian neutrality.25 What is more, as Professor Sartory pointed out, “by hosting the exhibition,” Strasbourg showed “once more its affection for France” and offered an emphatic response to the question marks over Alsatian patriotism that the emergence of the malaise had raised.26 This was reflected in both the placement of French and Alsatian displays, and in the stress that these displays placed upon France’s good work in the colonies. It also spoke to a broader concern among sections of the Alsatian elite to stress the Frenchness of the region’s population. Thus, as Peirotes had told an earlier visiting association, on their visit to Strasbourg, they would “draw the conclusion that . . . we are just as good French citizens as those in the Nord or the Midi or in the West.”27 Depicting the colonies as in need of France’s help created a sense of distinction between colonial populations and those in Alsace who had forged their own sense of national attachment in the centuries since the Revolution, and who had needed no guidance from France in doing so. It therefore attempted to secure Alsace’s place in a perceived hierarchy of cultural difference. The exhibition attracted a flurry of visitors, and in the four months that it was open, ticket receipts contributed to a profit of 40,000 francs. This made it the first exhibition held in interwar Strasbourg to register a profit and compared favorably with the loss of 150,000 francs recorded at the national exhibition and the 1,437,000 franc loss of the Pasteur exhibition.28 This is suggestive of the popularity of the exhibition. Nevertheless, it is difficult to judge how far the organizers were successful in their aim of introducing empire to the Alsatian population—not least as the major preoccupation of the press and administration during the summer of 1924 was protests against the laws of separation, rather than the colonial exhibition. It is similarly difficult to judge the success of the committee’s economic aims. In the aftermath of the exhibition, Haut-Rhin textile manufacturers established factories in Niger and Syria to cultivate cotton, and the Syrian Cotton Company, established by a number of Haut-Rhin mills, expanded its plantation from 10 hectares in 1924 to 10,120 hectares in 1930. Tanneries established important bases in North Africa, textiles and petit outillage manufacturers stepped up their exports, and metallurgical production,

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including railway construction and household appliances, attracted colonial orders amounting to several million francs before 1930.29 But the port of Strasbourg was unable to establish itself as a center for colonial imports, as ships traveling to the port needed to pass through Antwerp, which meant that the goods became subject to tariffs, regardless of their origins in the French Empire and destination in metropolitan France. This deprived the port of an important market and also meant that industries reliant on raw materials from the colonies did not set up factories in Strasbourg.30 And when depression hit in the 1930s, many of the advances made in the 1920s were lost. What is clear, however, is that the exhibition was planned and staged as a part of the broader attempts by the region’s elite to shape the economic and political reintegration of Alsace into France. The exhibition brought into conversation still uncertain notions of “Greater France” and a confused Alsatian regional consciousness. Research on fairs and exhibitions in France reveals that they offered a means of blending the near and the distant by highlighting local connections to the nation or empire (Gerson 2003; Peers 1996; Storm 2010). In the process, they often fostered a new consciousness of French territory and territorial identity and, as we have seen, this aim was manifest in the organizers’ project for the Strasbourg exhibition. Yet the exhibition was also an attempt to reimagine Alsatian identity in the aftermath of Alsace’s return to France, an attempt to shape the region’s economic and political future, and a concerted effort to contain the contradictory messages, on the one hand, of introducing empire to a population that had “everything to learn”, and on the other, of stressing the continuity of Alsace’s relationship with France. Ultimately, it was the stress on connections that dominated as the exhibition came to reflect the broader negotiation of the region’s place within Greater France.

Conclusion This discussion of the Strasbourg colonial exhibition suggests that representations of both empire and the local need to be grounded in the economic and political issues at play. The “leçon des choses” in evidence at Strasbourg was not one-way: Alsatians were encouraged to learn about the colonies while simultaneously teaching metropolitan and colonial French about Alsace. And this “leçon des choses” was guided by the region’s economic and political needs. After forty-seven years of annexation into Germany, the return to France had not been easy for Alsace. Difficulties in realigning regional products to French markets and the end of the period of access to German markets granted by Versailles had created a pressing need to find new consumers. Meanwhile, political reintegration had provoked further difficulties, and demonstrations against the introduction of French laws represented a worry for both the French government and the local elites who believed that the region’s future had to involve the introduction of French systems. The colonial exhibition thus offered a means to simultaneously seek out new markets, present the benefits of belonging to France, and assert Alsatian patriotism. The exhibition’s organizers introduced new local ideas of empire while appropriating existing French regional cultures of empire and a deep-rooted Alsatian stress on a continuous relationship between Alsace and France. What emerged was

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a renegotiation of Alsace’s relationship to the empire: the organizers attempted to show that colonial connections were no longer a means to display patriotism simply through migration to Algeria or signing up with the Foreign Legion, but were now a reality of everyday life, and an important aspect of Alsace’s future. Reimagining Alsace’s place within France involved the intertwining of the regional, the national, and the transnational. This was underlined by the borrowing of existing imagery alongside longstanding traditions. Nevertheless, these new understandings remained distinctly Alsatian. The Strasbourg Colonial Exhibition thus reveals the multiple ways in which local space was invested with meaning in interwar France. Regional and national attachments and loyalties took on new forms after Alsace’s return to France in 1918, and continued to evolve over the following two decades of French rule. Crucially, as the Strasbourg exhibition shows, this renegotiation was not simply a matter of reconciling the local and the national. On the contrary, the understandings of Frenchness that Alsatians fashioned and refashioned after 1918 took account of Greater France and revealed the synergistic interaction of local, national, and imperial connections.

Notes 1 Archives Municipales de la Ville et de la Communauté Urbaine de Strasbourg (AMVCUS), 234MW 296, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924, 4 octobre 1924. 2 AMVCUS 234MW 295, Réglementes Générales pour l’Exposition Nationale Coloniale de Strasbourg, 1924. 3 AMVCUS 234MW 343, Exposition Coloniale: Rapport sur la séance du 3 novembre 1923 à la Banque d’Alsace-Lorraine, Strasbourg, 3 Novembre 1923. 4 AMVCUS 234MW 295, Jacques Peirotes à M. Le Ministre des Finances, Strasbourg, 26 juillet 1924. 5 AMVCUS, 234MW 296, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924, 4 octobre 1924. 6 AMVCUS Louis Proust “L’Exposition Coloniale de Strasbourg,” Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg, 22 février 1924; “Une exposition coloniale a Strasbourg,” La Dépêche de Strasbourg, 10 février 1924. 7 AMVCUS 234MW 295, Jacques Peirotes au Préfet du Bas-Rhin, Strasbourg, décembre 1923. 8 AMVCUS 234MW 343, Exposition Coloniale: Rapport sur la séance du 3 novembre 1923 à la Banque d’Alsace-Lorraine, Strasbourg, 3 Novembre 1923. 9 See, for example, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924, 2 août 1924; Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924, 4 octobre 1924. 10 AMVCUS 234MW 296 M, Peirotes à M. le Directeur de l’Enregistrement à Strasbourg, Strasbourg, 5 avril 1924; Strasbourg, 28 décembre 1923 à Ministère des Colonies, Ministère de l’Agriculture, Ministère du Commerce; Jacques Peirotes, Maire de Strasbourg, à Edouard Daladier, Ministère des Colonies, Strasbourg, 15 janvier 1924; Louis Proust, “L’Exposition Coloniale de Strasbourg,” Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg, 22 février 1924. 11 AMVCUS 234 MW 295, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924.

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12 AMVCUS 234MW 295, Rapport sur la séance du 3 novembre 1923 à la Banque d’Alsace et de Lorraine. 13 AMVCUS 234 MW 295, Rapport sur la séance du 3 novembre 1923 à la Banque d’Alsace et de Lorraine (Président Louis Proust). 14 “Trop d’Expositions,” Journal d’Alsace et de Lorraine, 3 février 1924. 15 AMVCUS 234 MW 295, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924. 16 AMVCUS 234 MW 295, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924. 17 AMVCUS 234MW 295, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924. 18 “L’Exposition Coloniale de Strasbourg. Participation Etrangère,” Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg, 8 février 1924. 19 AMVCUS 234MW 297, Correspondance du secrétaire général du Comite des Fêtes de l’Exposition Coloniale Agricole et Industrielle, juin 1924; programme, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924, 9 août 1924, 16 août 1924. 20 AMVCUS 234MW 296, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924, 12 juillet 1924. 21 AMVCUS 234MW 295, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924, 4 octobre 1924. 22 Die Freie Presse, 7 juillet 1924. 23 “Trop d’Expositions,” Journal d’Alsace et de Lorraine, 3 février 1924. 24 AMVCUS 234MW 295, Exposition Coloniale, Agricole et Industrielle. Guide spéciale éditée par les Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg, 1924; Louis Proust, “L’Exposition Coloniale de Strasbourg,” Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg, 22 février 1924. 25 AMVCUS 234MW 296, Brochure de l’Exposition Coloniale, Industrielle et Agricole de 1924, “Exposition coloniale de Strasbourg,” 5 juillet 1924. 26 AMVCUS 234MW 295, Exposition Coloniale, Agricole et Industrielle. Guide spéciale éditée par les Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg, 1924. 27 AMVCUS Fonds Jacques Peirotes 125Z 33, Speech welcoming a group to Strasbourg, No date. 28 AMVCUS 234MW 343, Liste d’expositions et foires expositions à Strasbourg, 1919–28. 29 Comité alsacien d’études et Office d’informations 1937, p. 215. 30 Comité alsacien d’études et Office d’informations 1937, pp. 220–1.

References Baechler, C. (1982). Le Parti Catholique Alsacien 1890–1939: Du Reichsland à la République Jacobine. Paris: Ophrys. Baycroft, T. (2004). Culture, Identity and Nationalism. French Flanders in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. Carrol, A. (2011). “The Socialist Party and the Return of Alsace to France,” in Brian Sudlow (ed.), National Identities in France. Rutgers: Transactions Press, pp. 47–64. Carrol, A. and Zanoun, L. (2011). “The View from the Border. A Comparative Study of Autonomism in Alsace and the Moselle, 1918–1929.” European Review of History 18: 465–86. Comité alsacien d’études et Office d’informations (1937). L’Alsace depuis son retour à la France: premier supplément, vol. 3. Strasbourg. Dreyfus, F.-G. (1979). Histoire de l’Alsace. Paris: Hachette.

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Fischer, C. J. (2010). Alsace to the Alsatians? Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870–1939. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. Fischer, F. (2003). Alsaciens et Lorrains en Algérie. Histoire d’une migration, 1830–1914. Nice: Editions Serre. Ford, C. (1993). Creating the Nation in Provincial France. Religion and Political Identity in Brittany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gerson, S. (2003). The Pride of Place. Local Memories and Political Culture in Nineteenth Century France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Godin, E. (2007). “Greater France and the Provinces: Representations of the Empire and Colonial Interests in the Rennes Region, 1880–1905.” French History 21(1): 65–84. Goerg, O. (1994). “Exotisme tricolore et imaginaire alsacien. L’exposition colonial, agricole et industrielle de Strasbourg en 1924.” Revue d’Alsace 120: 239–68. —(2002). “The French provinces and ‘Greater France’,” in T. Chafer and A. Sackur (eds), Promoting the Colonial Idea. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 82–101. Goodfellow, S. H. (1999). Between the Swastika and the Cross of Lorraine. Fascisms in Interwar Alsace. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Gordi, J.-J. (2009). “Dolfuss Mieg et Cie de l’Alsace à l’Algérie.” Histoire des Entreprises 7: 1–2. Harvey, D. A. (2001). Constructing Class and Nationality in Alsace, 1830–1945. DeKalb: University of Northern Illinois Press. Klein, D. (2004). “Battleground of Cultures: ‘Politics of Identities’ and the National Question in Alsace under German Imperial Rule (1870–1914),” PhD Diss., Royal Holloway, University of London. Merle, I. (2002). “Drawing Settlers to New Caledonia: French Colonial Propaganda in the late nineteenth century,” in T. Chafer and A. Sackur (eds), Promoting the Colonial Idea. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Peers, S. (1996). France on Display. Peasants, Provincials and Folklore in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Sahlins, P. (1989). Boundaries. The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Berkeley : University of California Press. Silverman, D. P. (1972). Reluctant Union. Alsace-Lorraine and Imperial Germany, 1871– 1918. London and Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Storm, E. (2010). The Culture of Regionalism: Art, Architecture and International Exhibitions in France, Germany and Spain, 1890–1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Story, W. S. (2001). “Constructing French Alsace: A state, region, and nation in Europe, 1918–1925,” PhD Diss, Rice University. Turetti, L. (2008). Quand la France pleurait l’Alsace-Lorraine. Les ‘provinces perdues’ aux sources du patriotisme républicain, 1870–1914. Strasbourg: La Nuée Bleueé. Varley, K. (2008). Under the Shadow of Defeat. The War of 1870–71 in French Memory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vlossak, E. (2010). Marianne or Germania? Nationalizing Women in Alsace, 1870–1946. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vogler, B. (ed.) (2004). Chroniques d’Alsace 1918–1939. Barcelona: J4G. Wahl, A. (1974). L’Option et l’émigration des Alsaciens-Lorrains, 1871–1872. Paris: Ophrys.

5

Annales Historians’ Contested Transformations of Locality Joseph Tendler

The Annales school has acted upon French and international historical debates for nearly a hundred years. Taking its name from the periodical Annales d’histoire sociale et économique assembled by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre in 1929, the school and its sympathizers, Fernand Braudel, Bernard Lepetit, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie among them, expanded the number of topics admissible in professional historical research and researched phenomena on a range of scales, from the local to the global. Rather than a story of constitutional, political, religious, and royal events, history in the hands of Annalistes ranged across all aspects of the human condition, from socioeconomic to climatological, gender, and technological and environmental factors. Studies of the history of these topics were carried out in the spirit of Bloch and Febvre’s intellectual mentor, Henri Berr, who had founded an interdisciplinary periodical, La Revue de synthèse historique, or Revue de synthèse after 1931, and the Centre International de Synthèse, to promote scholarly collaboration as the antidote to the fracturing effects on the scholarly community of specialization (Tendler 2013, pp. 13–40). In recent studies of places and localities in modern French history (Applegate 1999, pp. 1161, 1171, 1181; Baycroft 2004, p. 14; Humphreys 2012, p. 126; Ford 1993, pp. 191–2; Storm 2010a, pp. 21–41; Thiesse 1991, pp. 213, 236, 259, 265)—and perhaps unsurprisingly—Annales historians’ oeuvre continue to provide points of reference. Two questions for this reason demand attention: To what extent have historians associated with the Annales school transformed notions of place and locality? And what significance attaches to these transformations? This chapter contends that Annalistes in fact deployed concepts of place similar in kind to those used both by scholars they criticized and by Annales’ detractors. They treated geographical regions, administrative territories, climatic unities, and nations like mathematical vectors, as analytical categories with not only spatial but also temporal characteristics. An underlying tension arose because Annales historians emphasized space, whereas the scholars they criticized and Annales’ detractors focused on time as key to historical understanding. In other words, “the Annales more generally have not resolved to any degree of satisfaction the problem of time” (Cedriono 1977, p. 35) and its interrelations with the problems of place, locality, and culture.

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Even today, neither side has transformed sufficiently the notion of place and locality in French history to theorize historical research in a global age. The final section of the chapter, therefore, argues that efforts to meet such challenges will benefit from approaches to locality that resolve the time–space isomorphism over which Annalistes and their critics were divided.

Annales, place, and locality Annaliste accounts drew their notions of place as much from histories of the French Revolution as from the work of Henri Berr (Berr 1900). As a subset of his efforts to reverse the fragmenting effects of specialization, Berr emulated Alphonse Aulard, historian of revolutionary France, by insisting on the interpenetration of life in Paris, provincial regions, and the world beyond as equivalent in historical interpretation to the interdisciplinary collaborations and syntheses he proposed in his periodical and his Centre. Berr, therefore, sponsored a book series, “L’Évolution de l’humanité,” that drew together all aspects of man’s collective psychology, thereby investigating the dawn of the modern age in as many places as contributing authors could be persuaded to study.1 Where university historians based their analyses on the deeds of men of state preserved in the documentation held in state archives, Annalistes granted center stage to impersonal agents such as economies or to the men and women of other spheres than politics: bankers, merchants, farmworkers, and townspeople (Braudel and Romano 1951; Duby 1962, 1973; Le Goff 1972; Goubert 1960; Le Roy Ladurie 1966). Bloch (1935, pp. 471–80) and Febvre (1933, 1939, pp. 205–36) added that the histories of localities served as test cases that could confirm, modify, or disprove conclusions based on official documentation relating to the situation of economic, political, and religious life (c.f. Hechter 1975, pp. xiii–xv). Bloch and Febvre, and, later, Fernand Braudel and Charles Morazé, in turn, used places as sample studies demonstrative of the coming of modernity as a socioeconomic and cultural experience. They applied the hermeneutic bent of their education to their historical analysis, attaching people to the localities in which they dwelt through documentary analysis, and they used analytical methods responsive to the study of regional life, anthropology, and ethnology (Storm 2010b, pp. 650–3), as well as political economy and social science, in order to venture generalizations about modernization and modern subjects with individual wills as well as communitarian commitments, secular beliefs, and technology. With this modus operandi of elucidating their present by broaching the problems confronting them in their own lifetimes (histoire problème) and exploiting new sources, Annales historians could discuss the evolution of contemporary capitalism in conjunction with the geography of landholding patterns, agrarian structures, and farming methods (Bloch 1930, pp. 551–5). Braudel (1960) and Morazé (1950, i: pp. vi, ix) even envisaged demographic patterns as a biomorphology of regional attitudes and customs.2 Of course, Annalistes were not alone in this initiative, as Gaston Roupnel’s work on Burgundian civilization (Whalen 2001, pp. 42, 58, 85) or Ernest Labrousse’s revolutionary histories confirm (Dosse 2005, pp. 324–5).

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Yet Annales historians stand out because of the extent to which they deployed locality as a vehicle for general hypotheses. René Baehrel’s (1961) study of economic development in Basse-Provence in the early modern period demonstrated the mechanics of an emergent exchange economy; Pierre and Huguette Chaunu’s (1955–60) twelve-volume study of gold bullion entering Spain between 1504 and 1650 likewise distilled from place the characteristics of global developments—in this case, the combination of Cadiz and Seville’s geography with colonial shipping routes enabling gold importation from Atlantic and Caribbean island colonies and Spanish Continental America. Marc Bloch likewise employed regional research to analyze feudalism as an organization of social resources, demonstrating how personalized vassal bonds determined the uneven development of feudal society (Bloch 1939–40, i. pp. 6–11). Most famously, Braudel’s (1949) symbolic inversion of political history’s framework from the reign of Philip II of Spain and the Mediterranean world to Le Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II demonstrated how a region and its recondite geological, geographical, and climatic features could direct evanescent life forms, including the human species. The tome, in this sense, betrayed its debt to Febvre, Braudel’s doctoral supervisor, who had suggested the inversion and whose own work Philippe II et le Franche-Comté (1912) had sought to show how territory facilitated event (p. xvii). Over the course of the twentieth century, moreover, Annalistes used this corpus to style their own research in contrast to what they cast as the deficiencies of constitutional, political, and religious history (Bloch 1928, pp. 14–60; Braudel 1958, pp. 725–53; Febvre 1934, pp. 29–36; Flory 1966; Le Goff 1971; Gras and Livet 1977). France, real and imagined, remained, nevertheless, an inescapable organizing principle into the 1980s, the decade when movements for regional secession gained renewed momentum in Europe (Pomian 1997, pp. 903–53; Applegate 1999, p. 1159). Since then, work published in the periodical Annales or in progress at the Annales-friendly École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (ÉHÉSS) continues to pursue this interest. Michael Werner and B énédicte Zimmermann’s work (2004) on entangled history (histoire croisée) extends from their research on Franco-German history, a well-established specialization directed, like more recent regional histories, toward the study of French identity in a comparative perspective (Lebrun and Lovecy 2010, pp. 13–14). Their ÉHÉSS colleague François Hartog (2003) has likewise identified an obsession with the present since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as the dominant temporality of modernity that has produced a state of detachment from longer-term perspectives in European thought (Hartog 1995, p. 1236). Hartog has achieved this in collaboration with Pierre Nora in undergraduate seminars, in the periodical Le Débat, and the multivolume Les Lieux de mémoire, all of which exercise a civic function: examining the condition of France and the French nation. Even before them, and for all his emphasis on global history, Braudel (1986) returned to France’s confused identity in L’Identité de la France, writing in the first person about the likely impact on “la communauté” (ii. pp. 193–9) of Arabs becoming French citizens. That the nation had been decentered cannot be denied, but it had not ceded any ground either, in the importance attributed to it by historians or its power as an organizing concept.

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Annales’ detractors on place and locality Annales’ detractors, by contrast, insisted on the specificity of historical events in time and place. Defenders of a broadly hermeneutic approach rejected as unhistorical the invocation of new ethnological and other theories. Bloch and Febvre’s formulation of problems on the basis of contemporary reality, and Braudel’s longue durée—longterm planetary evolutions; the middle-term of demographic, economic, and social conjunctures; and the short-term of politics and human decisions—looked to doubters like an abnegation of the purpose of historical research. Critics focused on resolving the problems posed by incomplete records in order to forensically reconstruct a past period, a procedure internal to the time of human affairs that they studied, whereas Annaliste analytic criteria originated in a present exogenous to the past (Bailyn 1951, p. 281; Chevalier 1966, p. 832; Chabod 1932, pp. 96–7; Hartog 1995, p. 1223; Sée 1931, pp. 81–100; Seignobos 1908, p. 237).3 Rejecting Annaliste theorizations, Louis Chevalier (1957) argued that investigation of one location could not enable transregional comparison or generalizations about conditions of life, because place remained as unique in character as the events studied were irreversible and could not repeat themselves (p. 5) (Marrou 1946). Other scholars willing to indulge analytic generalizations, whether Marxist-inspired or otherwise, wondered whether or not the conclusions of Annaliste local histories merited the minutiae on which their conclusions rested. Though such studies delivered new perspectives, critics insisted, they lost any “overview of the subject” (Dosse 1987; Minard 2002, pp. 149–64; Rougerie 1966, pp. 192–3). Adherents of conservative republicanism reiterated the doubt, and not just about the history of French regions: Braudel’s tome about the Mediterranean or Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s study of the regional sources for climatological history struck them as obscuring their subjects’ principal features (Droz 1954, p. 111; Elton 1983, p. 203; Hexter 1971, p. 532). International observers likewise registered these views (Bromley 1969, p. 804; Evans 2009, p. 14). While regretting the preoccupation of French historians with French history, British scholars (Thomson 1966) detected an “insular tradition” (p. 811) that stigmatized international cooperation. Indeed, so great has been recent pressure on France’s historical discipline to open itself to global scholarship that Jean-François Sirinelli (2011) recently asked, “is history still French?” (p. 1).

Retheorizing place and locality Both Annalistes and their critics recognized the instability of historical developments across space while trying to unify them into singular and secular temporal schemes of years, decades, and centuries. Bloch (1939–40) or Georges Duby (1962) on feudalism, Braudel (1979) on capitalism, or Didry et al. (1999) on Franco-German identities, all gave their argument a concrete quality by applying it to case studies. By doing so, they vindicated their critics’ insistence on the uniqueness of local phenomena. Critics (Bloch 2007, pp. 52–3, 57; Monod 1909, p. 177; DiVanna 2010, pp. 27–52) likewise appreciated the importance of demonstrating change elicited by investigation

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of a landscape and the events it hosted over time.4 In fact, where Annales historians emphasized the importance of space as an organizing function and as key to explaining past events, through comparison and global overview, their critics pressed home the theory that the individuality of occurrences, in time, space, and consequence, bulked larger. Bloch and Febvre’s, and Braudel and Bernard Lepetit’s presupposition of man in time and the present as a palimpsest implies that time is empty and static, a passive container of processes producing events, a conceptualization of time shared by their critics (Burgière 2009, p. 24; Raphael 1992, pp. 25–44). On this reading, time is also unitary, so multiple historical events can be drawn together in time. The difference remained that Annaliste historians looked in on the time in which they drew together events as if they were laboratory scientists looking through a microscope, observing samples, whereas Annales’ critics saw themselves inside time, inheriting puzzling and incomplete documentary traces of unique events that they reconstituted as coherent historical accounts. Yet, in an era of interest in global history, when scholars cannot ignore borders or transnational movements of cultures, knowledge, and people, the positions of Annales historians and their critics can offer clues to a resolution of the time–space isomorphism over which they were divided only when these positions are taken together. “Internal time” provides one means to dissolve the tension. Internal time cannot be read on clocks or measured by calendars. Instead, it requires discernment from the overall appearance of a landscape, social group, or urban space. For this reason, internal time is a characteristic of the place under scrutiny, and, in the language of quantum mechanics, an “operator” (Prigogine 1997, pp. 163–82; c.f. Zammito 2004, pp. 124–35), the determining factor in the appearance of space in relation to its timebound material character. Conceiving of multiple historical events in empty time (and space) on this basis would become impossible because time inheres both in matter and in the perceiving mind. Scholarship would quite literally “take space in” (Heidegger [1927] 2001, I. 3 §24, pp. 110–3) as Martin Heidegger stipulated when he made time the ultimate horizon of his concept of Being. But the material products and technology of human life would also express individual and communal times, following Bernard Stiegler’s reading of Heidegger (Stiegler 1994, pp. 145–6). In other words, time would become intrinsic to past life forms, humans, and their technomaterial productions, rather than the measurement by which a historian records an event’s occurrence. Locality would gain articulation as a partitioned substance in which inner times co-existed side by side and interacted (Prigogine 1984, pp. 433–47; Agamben 1993, pp. 104–6). The overall findings of historical analysis would have the same theoretical basis as they have always had, founded on instability or plurality, and irreversibility or uniqueness. Yet the mode of their presentation would require redevelopment to demonstrate the relationships productive of historical phenomena. Historical analysis would therefore express “spatio-temporal individuations” (Chakrabarty 2000, pp. 3–16; Stiegler 1994, p. 158). At least two challenges then arise. First, historical accounts need to refocus on the succession of events they study, thus implicating the past both in their object of study and in the act of studying. This, histoire croisée has sought to achieve under the banner of reflexivity (Werner and Zimmermann 2004, pp. 17–19). That time directs historical

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interest in this way may itself appear deceptively conventional: most professional historians would surely concede that time’s arrow passes over them? Yet how many would assume that they observe historical phenomena as external agents, as if outside time, assuming what Pierre Nora (2011) has called “critical distance from themselves and from their subject” like Annalistes themselves. Second, a time–space isomorphism in which temporal operators partition places pushes us to think about what Reinhart Koselleck (1989) called the “diachronic structure of events” (p. 125). To look at the history of the nation-state, as Annalistes and their critics have, means to examine entities possessed of their own time frames rather than relapsing into the mythmaking nationalism of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century historiographies, which insisted on nation building as a unitary, coherent process (Berger 2007, p. 24; Friend 2012, pp. 1–7). Nor would this reproduce Braudel’s regimented structure of the longue durée. It does not seek to separate the human species from its environment, or to lend systems supporting human life their own mechanism. Rather, the internal time of landscape relates to the internal times of the entities existing therein that scholars choose to study. For example, a conceptual theme such as an economy would have an average internal time, the mid-point of the internal times of agents, groups, and factors acting upon it. At any given moment, in each case, a host of nonsynchronous elements become synchronous, but only in the construction called a historical explanation (Koselleck 1989, p. 133). French historians have already partially embraced this possibility avant la lettre. Its coincidence with the agenda of subaltern studies and of postcolonial narratives will not escape those (Gafaïti et al. 2009) working on identity issues arising from the incorporation of French citizens overseas into mainland French society (pp. x–xi).5 The distinctions of European and non-European civilizations do, indeed, demonstrate the limits of historicization according to conventional invocations of a singular, unitary, and empty historical time, as debates about taxonomies of the premodern and modern have emphasized (Chakrabarty 2000, pp. 111–12, 250). Once abandoned in favor of multiple inner times, the multiplicity and multidirectionality of time–spaces have startling results then for historical interpretations. Think of Herman Lebovics’ (2004) demonstration of the way in which the resistance of hundred French farmers to agricultural reform fed into the foreign policy of Michel Debré (pp. 38–42), or the manner in which Chris Pearson (2010) demonstrated that landscape actively constituted the conduct of war and civilian life in Vichy, France (pp. 93–116). Proceeding in this way, scholars need worry less about the globality of their coverage in a territorial sense than about the integrity of their thematic focus and fulfillment of the genuinely interdisciplinary potential of the reconceptualization (c.f. Drayton 2008, pp. 424–30), because, if time is operative in multiple phenomena, historians must look outside disciplinary history, at the work of social scientists, life scientists, and mathematicians to explain past worlds with their legions of inner times, just as scholars in those disciplines might benefit from scanning the intellectual horizon in the same way (Marjanen 2009, pp. 239–63). It is an irony then that political historians (Palonen 2006a, pp. 9–32; Escudier 2011, pp. 131–77), the object of Annaliste scorn into the 1980s, have done most to demonstrate the potential of such an approach.

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Prospects of place and locality after Annales Places and localities construed in their temporal and spatial substance rather than as primarily spatial entities could transform French history. Annales historians and their critics have highlighted this point by emphasizing the pivotal, isomorphic quality of space and time. However, neither side grasped the full implication of a vision of the past as the operation of an active time–space isomorphism instead of an “empty container” conception of time. Global history has attempted to respond to the challenge of situating place more fully. Editors of “Companions” (Rublack 2011) to global history want readers to believe that “Historians at their best are world historians and local historians at the same time” (p. 65). Similarly, French historians (Lebovics 2004) want to “embed” their accounts in “the emergent global episteme,” thus encouraging readers to keep in mind “(1) the local, the national, and the global, as well as (2) the effects of their mutual reflexivity” (p. xvi). If place and locality remain principally spatial, then the specter of neo-Braudelian approaches arises: a global history or systems analysis that tries to know everywhere and everything (for example, Anderson 1974; McNeill 1974; Moore 1966; Wallerstein 1974). But if the past has time at its center, partitioning space into divergent temporalities, the globality of history attaches to the logic of the theme investigated—the economy, the nation, native Indians, civil rights campaigners, and so on, not endless peregrinations across space. Historians might in this way have a clearer vision of what the past might have been—“historical ontology” (Bentley 2006, pp. 349–61)—in relation to how they acquired historical knowledge, rather than concerning themselves exclusively with what becomes knowable. As this has genuinely interdisciplinary foundations in mathematical and physical as well as historical theory, it encourages interdisciplinarity within historical research as the need to study the natural and the human worlds as intertwined becomes clear with the recognition that a concept of internal time occurs in both realms. Seen as a construction of multiple internal times, place and locality in history become less interesting as hosts to processes and developments resulting in premodern and modern societies, labels that have proven so unhelpful and divisive in the genre of global history. Instead, places and localities have interest, given the way in which they relate to and result from the internal times of the phenomena and life forms that they host, the way in which past, present, and future coalesce within their horizons, not because places are containers of an empty, singular, and forward-moving time in which events happen.6 Perhaps more immediately, for the working historian and the sponsors of research, a more nuanced, interdisciplinary, and refined time–space isomorphism would encourage projects that scholars could complete in less than their lifetime, unlike those histories of everything everywhere that once seemed so appealing. Annaliste conceptions of place and locality may, therefore, interest us most because they investigated the space side of the time– space isomorphism in opposition to their detractors who proffered the time side. Neither side occupies a position that is any longer usable in isolation. For this reason, Annaliste concepts of place and locality interest us most because of the ways forward that they now intimate.

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Notes 1 Berr neither rose to the given name “Lucien” nor dismissed regional history, contrary to Applegate 1999, p. 1160; see Berr 1903, pp. 166–81, c.f. Weber 1976. 2 A biological study in that direction: Heyberger 2007, pp. 229–54. 3 Gaston Brière to Pierre Caron, May 18, 1949; Brière to Caron, October 24, 1948, Papers of Pierre Caron, Archives Nationales Françaises, AB XIX 4404/1/18 and 4404/1/3. 4 Bloch 2007, pp. 52–3, 57; Monod 1909, p. 177; DiVanna 2010, pp. 27–52. 5 Pierre Bourdieu pioneered this approach (Bourdieu 1958), yet his reputation came to the attention of historians outside France only in the 1980s, when Homo Academicus appeared. 6 Criticisms of conceptual history’s emphasis on time misperceive modernization theory under another name (for example, Davies 2008, pp. 87–95; Gumbrecht 2006, pp. 7–36).

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McNeill, W. H. (1974). The Shape of European History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Minard, P. (2002). “Les Recherches récentes en histoire économique de la France de l’époque moderne (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle).” Historiens et géographes 378: 149–64. Monod, G. (1909). De La Méthode dans les sciences. Paris: Félix Alcan. Moore Jr., B. (1966). Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon. Morazé, C. (1950). Essai sur le Civilisation de l’Occident. Paris: Colin. Nora, P. (2011). “L’Histoire au péril du politique,” Closing Speech “Rendez-vous de l’histoire,” Blois, October 16. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2011-11-24-nora-fr. html [accessed July 17, 2012]. Palonen, K. (2006a). The Struggle with Time: A Conceptual History of “Politics” as an Activity. Hamburg: LIT. —(2006b). The Politics of Limited Times: The Rhetoric of Temporal Judgements in Parliamentary Democracies. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Pearson, C. (2010). Scarred Landscape: War and Nature in Vichy France. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Pomian, K. (1997). “L’Heure des ‘Annales’: La Terre — les hommes — le monde,” in P. Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire: Premier Tome La République. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 903–53. Prigogine, I. (1984). “The Rediscovery of Time.” Zygon 19: 433–47. —(1997). The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos and the New Laws of Nature. New York, NY: Free Press. Raphael, L. (1992). “The Present as a Challenge for the Historian: The Contemporary World in the ‘Annales E.S.C.’, 1929–1949.” Storia della Storiografia 21: 25–44. Rougerie, J. (1966). “Faut-Il Départementaliser l’Histoire de France?” Annales ÉSC 21: 178–93. Rublack, I. (ed.) (2011). A Concise Companion to History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sée, H. (1931). “Interprétation d’une controverse sur les relations de l’histoire et de la sociologie.” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 65: 81–100. Seignobos, C. (1908). “L’Inconnu et l’inconscient en histoire.” Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 8: 217–47. Sirinelli, J.-F. (2011). L’Histoire est-elle encore française? Paris: CNRS. Stiegler, B., (1994). La Technique et le temps. Paris: Galilée. Storm, E. (2010a). The Culture of Regionalism: Art, Architecture and International Exhibitions in France, Germany and Spain, 1890–1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press. —(2010b). “Nation-Building in the Provinces: The Interplay between Local, Regional and National Identities in Central and Western Europe, 1870–1945.” European History Quarterly 42: 650–63. Tendler, J. (2013). Opponents of the Annales School. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Thiesse, A.-M. (1991). Écrire la France: Le Mouvement littéraire française entre la belle époque et la libération. Paris: PUF. Thomson, D. (1966). “The French Way of Research.” Times Literary Supplement, September 8, p. 811. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World System. San Diego, CA: Academic. Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1880–1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Werner, M. and Zimmermann, B. (2004). De la Comparaison à l’histoire croisée. Paris: Seuil. Whalen, P. (2001). Gaston Roupnel: Âme paysanne et sciences humaines. Dijon: Éditions de l’Université de Dijon. Zammito, J. (2004). “Koselleck’s Philosophy of Historical Time(s) and the Practice of History.” History and Theory 43: 124–35.

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A Local and Transnational Approach to Migration: The International Migration Service and its Marseilles Office in the First Half of the Twentieth Century1 Linda Guerry

In Western countries, mass migration began in the nineteenth century, a period of major economic and demographic transformations. While the population in Europe rose from 187 million inhabitants around 1800 to 468 million in 1913, the rise in transatlantic migrations was even higher: more than 50 million Europeans migrated to America in the nineteenth century (Bade 2002, p. 77). The concept of “freedom of movement,” which blossomed during the nineteenth century, was rooted in the development of a free market in labor and of governmental policies, reducing restrictions on the movement of labor (Green and Weil 2006, p. 10). Although countries of emigration allowed their inhabitants to leave, countries of immigration generally maintained their right to refuse entry to foreigners and to deport. Finally, toward the end of the nineteenth century, some states introduced new laws that enforced more stringent selection procedures for the entry of foreigners and imposed more restrictions on their mobility (Rygiel 2007). Migrants and government migration policies have been thoroughly researched, but few publications have focused on actors at the interface between migrants and state policy, such as associations, employers’ organizations, and private investment institutions. In recent years, historians have begun to analyze the ways in which people, ideas, and objects circulate, change place, and link together over and beyond the national sphere, which has until now been the principal basis for analytical research. Now many historians take a transnational approach to these relationships, resulting in a closer review of intermediary areas that often remained invisible, and keener attention to the interactions between these spaces and nations (Iriye and Saunier 2009; Saunier 2004). Recent women’s history has explored, for example, the transnationality of women’s organizations,2 which organized numerous meetings and congresses that led to women creating their own transnational networks.3 This chapter reviews the origins and birth of the International Migration Service (IMS), a transnational network, which during its early years focused on a new approach

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to migration. In 1921, at the suggestion of the American branch of the Young Woman’s Christian Association (YWCA),4 women of various nationalities created the IMS, an international service to look after women and children emigrating across borders; this organization launched its activities via a network with offices in several countries. The main focus of the chapter is the IMS’ local office in Marseilles, a key French transit port and city of immigration. Drawing mainly on archival material from the Marseilles office and the IMS’ French branch, originally called the Service international d’aide aux émigrantes (SIAÉ),5 I review the origins and birth of this transnational network and also examine the evolution of the Marseilles Office during the first half of the twentieth century.6 My argument is that the Marseilles Office of the IMS came to occupy new and uncertain institutional ground as it endeavored to address the simultaneously local, national, and international dimensions of migration.

Birth of a transnational migrant assistance network During the nineteenth century, philanthropists were mainly interested in prisoners, paupers, orphans, and old people, but they had also begun to worry about the fate of migrants. In an era that saw the development of transport systems, and in particular of the railroads, women who left their homes were seen as people who needed special protection from philanthropic societies.7 In France in 1835, the socialist–feminist intellectual Flora proposed that a philanthropic society be created in Paris with the aim of improving the condition of foreign women.8 Charities that aimed to protect women migrants multiplied toward the turn of the century, in step with the increasing demand for female domestic workers and with the reality of more and more young women leaving their homes (Martin-Fugier 1979). Protection of migrant women, especially those living in cities, was also rooted in the belief that the city threatened women’s virtue as they moved freely in its streets. These committees for the protection of women migrants were often offshoots of religious associations. In the early twentieth century, the number of committees working with immigrant women multiplied in many countries. An article published in La femme in June 1921 described the Union des Amies de la Jeune Fille, which took a long-term interest in the situation of migrant women as early as 1913: Like all the committees that have really good and useful objectives, the Union des Amies de la Jeune Fille has continued to increase its activities over the years and, having originally sought to protect unskilled women arriving in the city’s railway stations, has now extended those activities to women, whom it considered to be in even greater danger, due to their travel across the oceans in search of an advantageous situation. These women face perils and difficulties that they could not have anticipated and there are many who, despite their best intentions, lead more miserable lives than could possibly be imagined in certain parts of South America.9

The article also mentions meetings organized in 1913 and 1914 by a committee composed of representatives from the three main protection societies (Protestant,

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Catholic, and Jewish), a member of the Conseil national des femmes françaises (CNFF),10 and naval officers “with experience.” During its meetings, the committee studied the issue of female migrants arriving by sea. Steps were taken to provide French shipping companies with information that could be disseminated to women traveling on their ships (useful addresses, offers of protection, etc.). The article also reviews the congress held in Rome in May 1914 by the International Council of Women (Conseil International des Femmes—CIF),11 which included a debate on the issue of female migration and voted a motion providing for the “presence of a woman inspector to visit ships with access to all three classes of passengers and whose salary would be paid by the protective societies.” The article enthusiastically announced the proposal for the creation of an International Emigration Committee “initiated by our American YWCA sisters.” The YWCA’s American branch wanted to extend the assistance offered to emigrants—already well established in Canada since the nineteenth century—to make it available at the international level and to “render such assistance more efficient.” Two social workers, Mary E. Hurlbutt and Alida J. Bigelows, traveled to Europe to lobby governments over this proposal. Finding that governments were not particularly receptive to her proposals, Mary E. Hurlbutt sought support from women’s associations and societies in the countries she visited.12 In fact, in 1914, during a YWCA International Assembly in Stockholm, delegates from seventeen countries had “produced reports of the misfortunes faced by women emigrants and declared that there must be some form of international intervention on the issue.”13 With the outbreak of the First World War, this proposal was sidelined, but the idea of an international service for women emigrants was again put forward in 1920 at the YWCA’s Universal Conference in Champéry, Switzerland.14 The American YWCA’s delegates presented a report “demonstrating the importance of providing assistance in Europe for women and children heading for America from all countries” and thus succeeded in convincing the audience that a committee should be established.15 A “Permanent Committee on Emigration” was finally given the task of organizing “model social services centres which could give an example and allow an in-depth study of the problem,”16 which was followed by the creation of a Central Committee, with its headquarters in London, in March 1921. The following principles were adopted: 1. The service has the objective of helping female emigrants by whatever means available and, simultaneously of serving as a ercent for research into emigration. 2. In order to obtain the best results, this service will take responsibility for collaboration among the various groups interested in female emigrants. 3. It will carry out this collaboration in a spirit that is free of all religious or political propaganda.17

The network, which sought to develop an internationally coordinated group of social workers and their activities with migrants, grew quickly through the year 1921; departments were eventually established in eleven countries: Belgium, Turkey, Denmark, Uruguay, France, Czechoslovakia, England, Poland, the United States, Canada, and Japan.18

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The Service took a very methodical approach: the international head office in London was responsible for its development and coordination, not only by mail but also through frequent visits from the International Secretary. Its head office was also required to give secretary–managers on-the-job training in carrying out research and investigations to ensure collaboration among the international organizations and “to ensure that public opinion was better informed.”19 The Service was constantly preoccupied with the issue of maintaining its international character: “we are increasingly convinced that a help service for women emigrants that is not international in its methods and in its principles will be reduced to duplicating existing organizations and that all truly efficient international work must have a central coordinating office” noted the Service’s International General Secretary.20 A report on the IMS’ origins and organization, published in Geneva in 1927, also presented its internationalism as a coordinated effort under supervision of the head office.21 Beginning in 1921, ties were established with international organizations (League of Nations—LN, International Labour Office—ILO), thanks to a survey carried out by Mary E. Hurlbutt, who had been appointed Temporary Committee Secretary at the end of January 1921. This survey covered countries of emigration and immigration (Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany) and focused on “the social and human aspects” of the issue, with particular reference to the difficulties faced by women emigrants at every stage of their journey.22 The research, entitled Welfare of Migrants, was presented to the International Emigration Committee at its meeting in Geneva on August 2, 1921.23 A pamphlet highlighted “its intelligent, scientific and sincere description of the facts” and noted that it “ha(d) opened doors for the IMS’s Secretaries.”24 The principle that any activity must be based on “scientific research” not only guaranteed its legitimacy but also distanced it, as Lucienne Chibrac has noted, from the charity committees of the nineteenth century (Chibrac 2005, p. 35). The presence of IMS at the ILO’s Emigration Committee meeting in 1921 ensured that Welfare of Migrants was distributed. It permitted the question of female migration to be taken into account and also the relationship between the Central London Office and the international agencies to be strengthened.25 Even though the question of migration was being taken seriously by an official international agency for the first time, the Emigration Committee in 1921 passed a resolution on the protection of women and children: It is appropriate that the protection of women and children leaving one country to travel to another should become the subject of an in-depth study by members of the International Labour Conference and that this question should be included on the agenda of the 1922 conference. (Resolution 19)26

The question of white slavery (of both women and children) was the subject of yet another resolution. The IMS’ 1922 booklet states that, if the Service were to participate in the work of the LN’s International Conference for the Repression of White Slavery, the YWCA’s Universal Committee would “ma(k)e a clear distinction between the overall efforts of Aide aux Emigrantes (Help for Female Emigrants) and the more precise problem of vice and ill health.”27 The Service clearly wanted to indicate that it was not interested in limiting its work to the problem of white slavery, preferring to deal with “the problem [of migration] in its entirety.”28 According to one

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of its founders, Ruth Larned, who wrote a history of IMS (renamed the International Social Service in 1946), “A new insight was developing and a new instrument taking shape to meet a newly recognized form of human suffering: the family ties broken by distance.”29 In 1924, the IMS became an independent, nonconfessional organization, with the same objectives as those identified at its creation in 1921, opting to remain neutral in order to stand apart from other religious and national organizations working with migrants. Its head office moved from London to Geneva, thus allowing the Service to reinforce its relations with the international organizations. A temporary committee was set up to cover the interim until the Service’s constitution was voted on September 4, 1925.30 An International Committee managed the IMS, with national sections that were in turn managed by a committee and a director.31 The IMS’ 1927 report stated that in each section, “the Service’s international principles have been tested and their adaptation perfected through their application to practical circumstances. Thus, step by step, the Service has advanced in its search for social principles with international significance.”32 In fact, it made use of local practices implemented in its offices in order to improve its social and international approach to migration.

The Marseilles Office: Operating at the local, national, and international levels The IMS opened four offices in France in 1921—in Paris, Marseilles, Cherbourg, and Le Havre.33 The Marseilles office was located on the docks at La Joliette. Its members, mostly women from the upper middle classes or the aristocracy, were already regular patrons of charitable works in Marseilles. According to Lucienne Chibrac, the early days of the Marseilles office were difficult, because of problems in recruiting local members and tensions in the relationship between the Marseilles Office and the International Committee (Chibrac 2005, pp. 42–4). A report on the Marseilles Committee, written by its first secretary Marianne Berne, referred to the objective of the Service’s activities in Marseilles in the early 1920s: It is to facilitate the passage of women, girls and children through Marseilles and their stay in a city that they do not know, to help them fill in the forms required for their legal status during their stay, to protect them against theft, to try and provide them with a healthy moral environment, and, finally, when they are ready to leave, to help them negotiate the various steps involved with the consulate, police, or shipping companies, and to give notice of their departure so that someone can meet them on the arrival of their ship.34

The Service placed Marseilles in the category of “transit countries,” even though France had been a major country of immigration since the late nineteenth century. From its earliest days, the Marseilles Service was particularly involved in helping women emigrants in transit or “transmigrantes” who wanted to travel to the American continent and were prevented from continuing their journey. The first migrants to pass through the hands of the Service were Syrians and Armenians who had not been

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accepted by their country of destination, whether because the quotas had already been filled (the United States permitted immigration on the basis of national origin),35 because they suffered from trachoma (infectious conjunctivitis), or because they were illiterate (all persons aged between fifteen and fifty-five were required to pass a reading test before entering the United States).36 The report submitted by the Marseilles Office’s Secretary includes this reference to a young Syrian who had been rescued: We were informed of her arrival by her family in America and we had begun to help her and to try to make life easier for her here. Encouraged by a smuggler who persuaded her that she would manage to enter America, she boarded the Roma, without our knowledge, on 31 August last. We learned of her departure some 10 days too late. She has now returned to Marseilles, as a deportee; we were informed of her return by our office in New York. . . . We have fortunately been able to place her with a Syrian family where she is being taught to read, and we have the capacity to give her lessons ourselves; we hope she will stay there: she will thus be safe and treated kindly during the year she must spend here before she can join her brother in America, since this is the law in the United States for deportation cases.

This example clearly demonstrates the way in which the Service’s network operated when a border was closed to migratory movements: initiating direct communication with its international offices in order to track an individual’s movements. Since there were practically no other organizations offering help to migrants in Marseilles, it relied, of necessity, upon local migrant networks when seeking to help or find migrants, for example, by contacting hotels owned by Armenians, Syrians, and Greeks.37 In 1925, in a report on IMS’ French branch, still called the SIAÉ,38 the Marseilles Office’s Secretary noted that France was increasingly becoming a country of immigration, rather than a country of transit, and that the SIAÉ had, since 1924, been forced to take responsibility for immigrants even if the Marseilles office’s activities were still heavily concentrated on refugees and on “transmigrants” such as Assyrians, Syrians, Greeks, Armenians, Russians, and Palestinians. How did migrants and members of the Service come into contact? According to the 1925 report, members of the Marseilles Office would meet ships on their arrival in port and go on board to meet the migrants. The Secretary also indicated that a little over half the migrants were referred to the Marseilles Office by Service offices or other organizations, such as the police or consulates, with the remainder contacting the Service directly, because they had “simply heard about it from their compatriots who had already received assistance (from us).”39 One of the Marseilles Office’s activities consisted of finding lodgings for refugee children alone in Marseilles, mostly because they had been turned away (owing to ill health) by shipping companies or by the American authorities upon their arrival in the United States. It also took care of Armenian children whose families were looking for them. These children had been sent to American orphanages after the death of their parents during the 1915 massacres ordered by the Turkish government. The SIAÉ would find these children through the American Orphanages Agency and take responsibility for handing them back to their families after their arrival in Marseilles.

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The range of activities carried out by the SIAÉ’s Marseilles Office gradually evolved in the late 1920s. The Marseilles Office Secretary noted that “The public authorities (police, intelligence services, hospital administrations, etc.) are increasingly interested in our work and are generally ready to be of assistance whenever we need their support.”40 The SIAÉ lost its funding from the YWCA in 1924 (Chibrac 2005, p. 44)41 and, after some hesitation, the French branch began to look for grants from employers’ organizations and then from the State, which allowed it to move closer to these institutions. Financial contributions from industry continued to increase during the late 1920s (Chibrac 2005, pp. 68–9). For example, in Marseilles, the Service received donations from the local business community, including shipping companies, banks, oil mills, and the Chamber of Commerce. In the early 1930s, the Marseilles Office— which was forced to change premises several times—was provided with offices rentfree by the owners of the Darier de Rouffio oil mills. Beginning in 1922, when the question of the organization’s finances were again under discussion, members of the Marseilles Office Committee speculated on whether to continue to concentrate their efforts only on young women or whether they should follow the suggestion of the YWCA to broaden their activities to include the families of women migrants. There was much debate on this issue among the members of the Marseilles Committee and, ultimately, the fact that the French Service’s new name did not differentiate between male and female migrants put an end to the discussion in 1925.42 The Service was finally recognized as a “public utility organization” by decree in 1932 and its name was changed from the SIAÉ to the SSAÉ (no longer an “international,” but a “social,” service), as if to emphasize a change in its priorities and, at the same time, to indicate its gradual move away from the International Committee and its activities.43 In the 1930s, the SSAE’s Marseilles Office increased its collaboration with French authorities such as children’s courts, port police, and the local prefecture). Jean Dhubert, Commissioner General for the Port of Marseilles, lent direct support to the SSAE, becoming a committee member and, in 1933, its Secretary. In spite of its financial difficulties throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Marseilles Office handled a steadily growing number of cases in the late 1930s, at a time when the government was beginning to take a harder line on foreigners. Between 1921 and 1930, the Marseilles Office had processed a total of 2,088 cases,44 and in 1938 alone, it handled more than 1,000 cases.45 According to the Service’s report, this increase was due to the introduction of decrees adopted by the French government in 1938 to reinforce controls and repressive measures aimed at foreigners whose papers were not in order (repression, expulsion, imprisonment, house arrest), the result of an influx of refugees during the Spanish Civil War, and the arrival of Jewish refugees from Germany and Christian refugees from the Middle East.46 In 1939, in return for a subsidy of 500,000 francs (allocated in December 1938), Philippe Serre, then head of the State Under-Secretariat for Immigration, asked the SSAÉ to broaden its activities. This led to closer collaboration between the French government and the SSAÉ in setting up the recently created Service social de la main-d’oeuvre étrangère (Social Service for Foreign Labour—SSMOE).47 The particularity of Marseilles, with the passage of numerous “transmigrants” caused by fluctuations in international politics and in migration policy, is that the city is an ideal location for establishing a transnational

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support network for migrant families. Nevertheless, with few resources and limited contacts, IMS’ Marseilles office found few private migrant-support organizations and had difficulty obtaining new finances. It is not surprising, therefore, that businesses and government agencies became increasingly implicated in these activities, without taking advantage of IMS’ transnational interests. Thus, in a society where, after the First World War, there was “a marked desire for universalism,” (Saunier 2008) a group of female social workers created a transnational network to provide assistance to migrants’ families across borders. According to the network’s supporters, the social problems caused by migration had to be addressed at the international level. During the 1920s, the IMS moved away from this philanthropic approach, mostly because of the development of new competencies in migration issues based on the studies it conducted, the practices of its national committees, and its collaboration with intergovernmental agencies. The Service had to adapt to new circumstances between the two wars and face the consequences of migration policies that were becoming increasingly restrictive and repressive. My analysis of the Marseilles Office’s activities has provided several examples. The Service was able to draw on cross-frontier networks created by migrants and in particular on their local resources. Unlike its counterparts in the United States, the association did not receive enough subsidies and was not supported by a local network of associations for helping migrants, both of which were crucial for its survival. However, this situation led to the creation of a closer relationship with the local business community and with local representatives of the French public authorities, which were interested in making use of its practical experience in offering social services to migrants. In her history of IMS, Ruth Larned noted that “the evolution of the French branch was, it is true, somewhat different from any other.” Indeed, the activities carried out in France were increasingly linked to government immigration policy on foreign labor48 and were “deeply rooted in national life.”49 Located in a city with a strong tradition of receiving travelers and migrants, the IMS’ Marseilles office had to adapt to both national priorities and the local impact of foreign policies (international and national) and local resources. This study of the practices put in place by the international organization demonstrates that interactions at the local, national, and international levels significantly complicated governance of the transnational phenomenon of migration. This analysis of an organization’s local office involved in an international action provides historians with an opportunity to study the wide range of mobile actors, their interaction at various levels, and their variable access to funding and resources at both the local and the international levels.

Notes 1 Translation from French by Caroline Mackenzie. The author wishes to thank the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture (FQRSC) for providing funding for this research project on L’International Migration Service (1921–1939): de la philanthropie à l’approche sociale et transnationale des migrations. 2 For the history of feminisms, see Gubin et al. 2004. 3 See Rupp 1997; Cova 2009.

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4 Created in London c. 1850, the YWCA movement spread throughout Europe and North America during the second half of the nineteenth century. 5 Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône (ADBR), 128 J. The SIAÉ was later renamed the Service social d’aide aux emigrants (SSAÉ) and the IMS was renamed the International Social Service in 1946. 6 See Chibrac 2005. 7 For the situation in Belgium, see Piette 2004. 8 Tristan 1835. 9 “Projet d’Union pour la protection des Émigrantes présenté à la Conférence internationale des Amies par Madame Deraine,” La femme, June 1921, ADBR, 128 J 1. 10 The CNFF was created in 1901, as the French branch of CIF (see next footnote). 11 For more information on the CIF, which was founded in 1888 in Washington, see Jacques 2004. 12 “Projet d’Union pour la protection des Émigrantes,” La femme, June 1921, ADBR, 128 J 1. 13 Les Migrants, Rapport du Service international d’aide aux émigrants, 1927, Geneva, ADBR, 128 J 1. 14 Les Migrants, Rapport du Service international d’aide aux émigrants, 1927, Geneva, ADBR, 128 J 1. See also Chibrac 2005, p. 37. 15 Report by Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 16 Report by Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 17 Report by Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 18 Report by Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 19 Report by Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 20 Report by Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 21 Les Migrants, Rapport du Service international d’aide aux émigrants, 1927, Geneva, ADBR, 128 J 1. 22 Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, Report, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 23 Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, Report, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 24 Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, Report, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 25 Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, Report, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 26 ILO Brochure, La Commission International d’Émigration reproduced in Revue Internationale du Travail, 1922, vol. IV, n° 3, December 1921, Geneva, ADBR, 128 J 1. 27 My emphasis. Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, Report, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1. 28 My emphasis. Service International d’Aide aux Émigrantes, Report, June 1920–June 1922, YWCA, London, ADBR, 128 J 1.

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29 Social Welfare history Archives (Minneapolis), International Social Service United States of America Branch records, box 3: International Social Service: A History 1921–1955, by Ruth Larned, 1955, p. 5. 30 Constitution de l’International Migration Service signed by its Chairwoman Dorothy Gladstone, September 4, 1925, ADBR, 128 J 1. 31 Constitution de l’International Migration Service signed by its Chairwoman Dorothy Gladstone, September 4, 1925, ADBR, 128 J 1. 32 Les Migrants, Rapport du Service international d’aide aux émigrants, 1927, Geneva, ADBR, 128 J 1. 33 The Le Havre and Cherbourg offices closed in 1925 and 1926, see Chibrac 2005, p. 47. 34 Berne, Rapport sur le service d’émigration de l’ YWCA à Marseille (by Marianne Berne), (nondated, probably 1922), ABDR, 128 J. 35 In 1921 and 1924, legislation established fixed quotas based on nationality. 36 Rapport sur le service d’émigration de l’ YWCA à Marseille (by Marianne Berne), (nondated, probably 1922), ABDR, 128 J. 37 Rapport sur le Service international d’aide aux émigrantes en France (by Miss Bourseiller) presented at the IMS’s first conference in Geneva in September 1925, ADBR, 128 J 1. 38 Rapport sur le Service international d’aide aux émigrantes en France (by Miss Bourseiller) presented at the IMS’s first conference in Geneva in September 1925, ADBR, 128 J 1. 39 Rapport sur le Service international d’aide aux émigrantes en France (by Miss Bourseiller) presented at the IMS’s first conference in Geneva in September 1925, ADBR, 128 J 1. 40 Rapport sur le Service international d’aide aux émigrantes en France (by Miss Bourseiller) presented at the IMS’s first conference in Geneva in September 1925, ADBR, 128 J 1. 41 Chibrac 2005, p. 44. 42 Service pour les Émigrantes, Committee meeting dated December 10, 1922, ADBR, 128 J 1. 43 Chibrac 2005, p. 70. 44 Service social d’aide aux émigrants, June 1930, ADBR, 128 J 1. 45 Rôle du Service Social d’Aide aux Émigrants, 1938, ADBR, 128 J 2. 46 Rôle du Service Social d’Aide aux Émigrants, 1938, ADBR, 128 J 2. 47 This service is an extension of the “Comités d’aide et de protection de femmes migrantes” created by a decree of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1928. The SSAÉ had already submitted a request to this ministry for social workers who could take on the role of inspector on behalf of these committees. See Guerry 2013. 48 Social Welfare history Archives (Minneapolis), International Social Service United States of America Branch records, box 3: Larned 1955, p. 29. 49 Social Welfare history Archives (Minneapolis), International Social Service United States of America Branch records, box 3: Larned 1955, p. 29.

References Bade, K. J. (2002). L’Europe en mouvement. La migration de la fin du XVIIème siècle à nos jours. Paris: Seuil. Chibrac, L. (2005). Les pionnières du travail social auprès des étrangers. Le Service social d’aide aux émigrants, des origines à la Libération. Paris: Éditions de l’ENSP.

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Cova, A. (ed.) (2009). Histoire comparée des femmes. Nouvelles approches. Lyon: ENS Éditions. Green, N. L. and Weil, F. (2006). “Introduction,” in L. Green and F. Weil (eds), Citoyenneté et émigration. Les politiques de départ. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Gubin, E., Jacques, C., Rochefort, F., Studer, B., Thébaud, F., and Zancarini-Fournel, M. (eds) (2004), Le siècle des féminismes. Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier. Guerry, L. (2013). Le genre de l’immigration et de la naturalisation. L’exemple de Marseille (1918–1940). Lyon: ENS Éditions. Iriye, A. and Saunier, P. Y. (2009). Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History. London: Palgrave. Jacques, C. (2004). “Construire un réseau international: L’exemple du Conseil International des Femmes (CIF),” in E. Gubin, C. Jacques, F. Rochefort, B. Studer, F. Thébaud, and M. Zancarini-Fournel (eds), Le siècle des féminismes. Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, pp. 127–41. Martin-Fugier, A. (1979). La place des bonnes. La domesticité féminine à Paris en 1900. Paris: Perrin (reprinted in 2004). Piette V. (2004). “La protection des voyageuses. Une source pour l’étude des migrations féminines, XIXème-XXème siècle.” Sextant 21–2: 261–76. Rupp, L. J. (1997). Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton: University Press. Rygiel, P. (2007). Le temps des migrations blanches. Migrer en Occident (1840–1940). Paris: Aux lieux d’être. Saunier, P. Y. (2004). “Circulations, connexions et espaces transnationaux.” Genèses 57: 110–26. —(2008). “Les régimes circulatoires du domaine social 1800–1940: projets et ingénierie de la convergence et de la difference.” Genèses 71(2): 4–25. Tristan, F. (1835). Nécessité de faire un bon accueil aux femmes étrangères. Paris: Delaunay, reprinted in 1988 in Éditions L’Harmattan with an introduction and comments by Denys Cuche and a postface by Stéphane Michaud.

Part Two

Culture

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La Lorraine Artiste: Modernity, Nature, and the Nation in the Work of Émile Gallé and the École de Nancy Jessica M. Dandona

Faced with rapidly changing modes of production, increased competition from other industrialized nations, and the proliferation of historicist designs, by 1900 many in France had come to believe that the nation’s once-thriving arts industries were in crisis. As arts reformers and government officials struggled to reinvigorate a declining export market, one common theme emerged: the belief that the arts, and the decorative arts in particular, were absolutely central to both the prosperity and the unity of the French nation (Silverman 1989, pp. 52, 61; Troy 1991, p. 22). Not only could they reestablish France’s preeminence in the arts, but as expressions of a recognizably French style, the decorative arts could also communicate patriotic messages to a broad cross-section of consumers (Auslander 1996, p. 381). By the time of his premature death in 1904, critics of all persuasions praised the work of one artist in particular, the Art Nouveau designer Émile Gallé (1846–1904), as exemplifying the essence of modern French style. Neither the artist’s lifelong fascination with the art of Japan nor his demonstrated loyalty to his native province of Lorraine would prevent his work from being described as somehow quintessentially French in form and spirit. This chapter considers how Gallé’s efforts to promote a regional style inspired by the flora and fauna of Lorraine offered contemporaries an alternative definition of modernity, one local in its points of reference and yet cosmopolitan in its attempts to represent the nation at home and abroad. Although Art Nouveau would be rapidly eclipsed by subsequent artistic movements, the history of modernism is incomplete without a consideration of the ways in which the “modern” was defined and promoted by artists working in Lorraine. Most accounts of the modern movement have emphasized the highly centralized nature of the French art world at the end of the nineteenth century. This chapter, in contrast, reexamines the dynamic connection between metropole and periphery in order to consider how France’s “modernity” was established through dialogue with the capital.

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The creation of the École de Nancy In its early years, the Third Republic (1870–1940) largely continued centralizing efforts begun during the French Revolution (Agulhon 2001, p. 57). By passing educational reform laws and imposing universal military service upon the citizens of France, government officials worked to create a homogeneous nation composed of like-minded French citizens.1 Recent research, however, has challenged the view that government administrators sought to impose a uniform national identity on the provinces. Instead, historians such as Stéphane Gerson have explored the multiple ways in which government officials celebrated what he terms the “cult of local memories” in an effort to lend strength to the idea of national belonging (Gerson 2003, p. 9).2 Regional and national loyalties, far from existing in conflict, overlapped even more forcefully in France’s contested eastern territories, where efforts to define and protect the particularity of local culture gained added impetus from the events of the Franco–Prussian War (1870–1).3 The regionalist movement in Lorraine thus asserted the province’s unique identity as a border region while also reaffirming its ties to the nation of France.4 Gallé was born in the town of Nancy, France’s easternmost city following the German annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine at the end of the Franco– Prussian War. The artist’s identity as a Lorrainer would have a strong impact on his artistic production. In 1901, Gallé’s dedication to the region of his birth found expression in the founding of the École de Nancy,5 a provincial association of artists and industrialists whose exploration of decorative form would have profound implications for the French art world. This chapter focuses on critical response to two key exhibitions, the Exposition de l’École de Nancy (1903) and the Exposition d’art décoratif (1904), which introduced the artists of the École de Nancy to audiences in Paris and Lorraine. The École de Nancy’s dedication to a politics of regionalism was clear from the moment of its founding. In his letter of introduction to the group’s official statutes, for example, Gallé describes the École de Nancy’s program as “a work of [cultural] decentralization” (Gallé 1901, n.p; translation by author).6 In their efforts to forge a regional style that could represent the French nation, the artists of the École de Nancy thus sought to redefine the relationship between Paris and the provinces. In place of a centralized system of artistic authority emanating from the capital, they envisioned a nation composed of regional centers, each with its own characteristic style. Where this project diverges from a more conventional celebration of rural life and customs, however, is in its surprising substitution of “nature” for “tradition.” The primary challenge for the École de Nancy was to invent a national style, one that would unite French citizens and render French products desirable, without recourse to the idea of tradition. How, in other words, could artists craft a recognizable artistic style that associated France with modernity? The answer proposed by Gallé and fellow artists of the École de Nancy was to embrace a visual language based not on traditional French design but on the direct observation of local flora and fauna, thus reframing the national through the lens of the natural— and the regional.

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“The contemporary naturalist style” In his introduction to the statutes of the École de Nancy, Gallé writes that the art created by the artists of the École de Nancy will focus primarily upon the observation of natural forms. “Through the study and the adaptation of natural elements . . . our industrial artists of Lorraine have realized a mode of ornamentation that will characterize our era,” he declares (Gallé 1901, n.p.). The artists of the École de Nancy will employ nature, in other words, not in the form of motifs derived from art of the past, but in a way more consistent with an era of scientific advancement and progress. They will create a new language of form, what Gallé terms “the contemporary naturalist style,” through “the scientific observation of living models” (Gallé 1903, n.p; translation by author). The artist’s reference to “scientific observation” thus underscores the stylistic modernity of the École de Nancy by linking its artistic program not to a rekindling of tradition but to new discoveries taking place in the natural sciences. Gallé also makes clear that by turning to nature, the artists of the École de Nancy seek to do far more than simply evoke the fields and forests of their native province: their goal is nothing less than to create a “national” art. In his call for “a return to nature, to truth, to a national art,” Gallé thus stakes a claim to the inherent “Frenchness” of this new style even as he locates its roots in the province of Lorraine (Gallé 1901, n.p.). Gallé’s phrase “a return to nature” endows the practice of studying and representing the natural world with the weight of historical precedent, yet the artists of the École de Nancy evince a near-total refusal to base their work in the imitation of historical forms.7 Thus, in works such as Gallé’s Chambre aux Ombelles (1903), nature provides not only the decoration but even the structure for the artist’s elegant furniture designs (Figure 7.1). In their refusal to emulate traditional forms, the artists of the École de Nancy explicitly rejected the thinking of nationalists such as Paul Déroulède (1846–1914) and Maurice Barrès (1862–1923). The latter, whose famous cult of “blood and soil” (la terre et les morts) sought to locate a more “authentic” France in the traditional

Figure 7.1 Émile Gallé, Chambre aux Ombelles.

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culture of the provinces, also embraced nature as a source of renewal (Gerson 2003, p. 141). By avoiding any references to tradition and substituting natural motifs for the conventional symbols of national belonging, however, the artists of the École de Nancy sought to define the French nation as inherently modern, diverse, and radically decentered. The “national” quality of the new style is also defined through opposition to the idea of an international Art Nouveau movement. Thus Gallé describes the factories and workshops of Nancy as “the outposts of French art and industry,” adding that “even if one is imitating the Belgian style everywhere else, modern creation in Nancy has remained French” (Gallé 1901, n.p.). In his preface to the catalog of the 1903 exhibition, Gallé adds, “The École de Nancy aims to possess and put into practice certain principles that are its own, and this is what really distinguishes it from recent attempts to impose on us an incoherent and bizarre modern style” (Gallé 1903, n.p.). French critics often employed the English phrase “modern style” to refer to the Art Nouveau movement, thus emphasizing its perceived origins in British art (Ogata 2001, p. 165). Gallé’s use of the phrase to disparage developments in other parts of Europe thus establishes the École de Nancy’s claim to represent a recognizably French style, one understood as emanating not from the capital but from the provinces.

Classicism in question Gallé further elaborated upon his theory of a national style based on the observation of natural forms in his response to a survey published by Maurice Le Blond (1877–1944) in 1903. Debating whether the Prix de Rome should be offered to artists working in the decorative arts, Gallé argues that only the study of nature is necessary for the young artist. Writing in the local arts periodical La Lorraine artiste, he opines, “I would find it unfortunate to take the best sons of our trades away . . . from their natural atmosphere, that of straightforward France and its intellectuality in order to make them . . . into the uprooted of the Villa Medici” (Gallé 1903, p. 132). Gallé’s phrase “the uprooted” again recalls the writings of his erstwhile friend Barrès, who in his novel Les Déracinés (1897) attacks the centralized nature of the Third Republic’s parliamentary regime and rails against the tendency of talented young Lorrainers to seek their fortune in the capital.8 Yet Gallé clearly rejects Barrès’s notion of classicism as France’s national heritage, substituting naturalism for the classical ideals embraced by the nationalist movement, even while employing some of the movement’s most cherished metaphors in his praise of healthy “French, Gallic blood” (Gallé 1903, p. 132). Indeed, Gallé argues that it is classicism itself, and in particular the BeauxArts style promulgated by the Paris École des Beaux-Arts, that serves to divide the young artist from his or her own culture and from nature.9 Gallé proposes that the influence of classicism is a destructive one, warning against the effect of “the Italian virus of imitation” (Gallé 1903, p. 131). He thus presents the artistic culture of Paris as irredeemably corrupted and tainted by its association with a foreign legacy. In contrast, Gallé urges young artists to seek originality in the depiction of forms found in nature. Although he counsels young artists to emulate the “ingenuous consultation of nature

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and of life” practiced by sixteenth-century French artisans, it is significant that the artist stops short of urging them to imitate works of the past directly (Gallé 1903, p. 131).10 By emphasizing method rather than style, Gallé promotes a concept of artistic innovation based on diversity rather than homogeneity.

The “children of the forest” In his poster for the 1903 exhibition, Victor Prouvé (1858–1943) echoes several of the themes first explored by Gallé (Figure 7.2). The poster depicts a male artist, an album of sketches under one arm, who bends down to pick a flower. Nowhere in the image do we see an example of the kind of work created by the members of the École de Nancy. Instead, Prouvé suggests that the artists of the group are united not by a shared style,

Figure 7.2 Poster for the Exposition de l’École de Nancy.

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but by their collective origin in the region of Lorraine and their shared dedication to the depiction of natural forms. Like Gallé, Prouvé emphasizes not style, but method. In the poster, the artist is far from his studio. Recalling Baudelaire’s flâneur, he is seen strolling through his native environment—now the forests of provincial Lorraine rather than the teeming streets of the metropolis—in search of visual motifs. The swirling Symbolist atmosphere of Prouvé’s well-known portrait of Gallé, which depicts the artist engaged in the act of creation, his thoughts and ideas seeming to materialize around him (Silverman 1989, p. 237), has here been replaced by the enveloping ambiance of the forest—the artist’s new source of inspiration (Figure 7.3).

Figure 7.3 Portrait of Émile Gallé.

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The seemingly improvisational character of the poster, which strongly resembles a charcoal sketch, suggests that it was composed from life. The viewer is thus invited to imagine Prouvé seated in the grass, sketching a friend and colleague who gathers plants to take back to his studio. The scene opens outward near the bottom of the composition, offering to transport the viewer from the urban milieu of the exhibition into the vibrant, tumultuous realm of the forest. Prouvé is thus able to establish a clear contrast between the space of the exhibition, held on one of Paris’ most elegant thoroughfares, and the space of the countryside in which the art of the École de Nancy purportedly originates. Moreover, the title Prouvé chooses for the exhibition, which translates as “Lorrainer Exhibition/Decorative Group/École de Nancy,” places particular emphasis upon the geographical origin of the works to be displayed. The curving cross-hatching that marks every element of the scene, meanwhile, creates a unified space in which the artist appears to exist in total harmony with the landscape. The artist’s place, Prouvé tells us, is in nature. Prouvé’s composition seems an odd choice, however, to advertise an exhibition. The poster speaks more to the members of the École de Nancy, confirming their shared belief in nature as a source of inspiration, than it does to Parisian audiences unfamiliar with the work of these artists. Indeed, the poster faced sharp criticism from at least one Parisian commentator. Writing in La Revue de l’art ancien et moderne, Henry Havard (1838–1921) equates the deliberate naïveté of the poster with the rustic simplicity of rural life, a reading that clearly disrupts the École de Nancy’s contention that the work of its artists represents a sophisticated and modern provincial style. The author of several historical surveys of French furniture, Havard also served as an inspector with the Beaux-Arts administration. His critique of the poster, which is complex in its arguments, deserves to be quoted at length: This poster—everyone could see—represented in a rustic, almost wild setting, a slightly unkempt artist . . . dressed in homespun, bearer of an enormous piece of cardboard, bent towards the ground, and picking in the midst of the thick grass a small, lovely flower. This small flower, you have guessed it, is a symbol—that of the inexhaustible inspiration furnished by indefatigable nature. . . . For the innovators of the “École de Nancy,” our furniture arts are children of the forest! (Havard 1903, p. 467; translation by author)

The tone of Havard’s account is scathing—he clearly considers both the École de Nancy’s dedication to natural forms and its use of an emphatically literal realism naïve and misguided. He goes on to compare the artists’ “slightly rustic austerity” to the sophisticated, worldly art of the court of Louis XIV and finds the École de Nancy decidedly lacking in refinement (Havard 1903, p. 468). Havard also finds fault with the group’s alleged disdain for the “worldly needs [and] intimate requirements of comfort and of sociability” associated with contemporary life, thus challenging its claim to represent the modern (Havard 1903, p. 482). Havard’s critique thus raises an important issue: how can a style based on the depiction of natural forms securely reference modernity when the artists of the École de Nancy refuse to see nature itself as changing and changed by the circumstances of modern life?

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The problem of sources Other critics would challenge not only the modernity of the École de Nancy’s efforts, but even its claim to represent a regional style. In a review published in L’Art décoratif, for example, the socialist critic Maxime Leroy (1873–1957) notes that the artists of the École de Nancy have often sought inspiration beyond the borders of the province (Nicolas 1903, p. 173; translation by author). Thus Leroy reminds readers that two of the group’s most prominent artists, Gallé and Prouvé, spend considerable time in Paris (Nicolas 1903, p. 173). Moreover, Leroy contends that the École de Nancy’s efforts on behalf of regionalism are in vain, for now more than ever, the international character of the art market has robbed provincial art of its specificity (Nicolas 1903, p. 174). If the group persists in calling itself a “school,” he concludes, the term “École de Nancy” should be employed only as a kind of trademark. A second Parisian review published in L’Occident likewise excoriated the 1903 exhibition for its commercialism, suggesting that the École de Nancy was no more than a marketing strategy, one designed to create a market for goods from Lorraine. “Under the pretext of making the Parisian public admire the modern style products of some artworks from Nancy,” the anonymous author asserts venomously, “one permitted respectable merchants of this town to transport . . . the most precious pieces from their stores into the middle of the Louvre” (Nicolas 1903, p. 174). Such accusations of commercialism were made all the more potent, of course, by the traditional association of the decorative arts with industry and trade. In response to these critiques, supporters of the École de Nancy redoubled their efforts to cast its art as an expression of true “Frenchness,” one uncontaminated by commerce. Thus, Émile Nicolas (1871–1940), a founding member of the group, responded passionately to attacks by Parisian reviewers in the pages of La Lorraine artiste. The organizers of the exhibition, he states, “thought it good to show the capital, which too often has a tendency to become enamored of foreign products, that one can choose . . . on fertile soil, in a national setting, the harmonious inspirations of the beautiful and the true” (Nicolas 1903, p. 175). Nicolas suggests that by virtue of its origins as a natural product of its milieu, the work of the École de Lorraine can show Paris the way to a national art untainted by commercialism and foreign influence.

The Exposition d’art décoratif, Nancy, 1904 The Exposition d’art décoratif of 1904 opened in Nancy only a few weeks after Gallé’s untimely death. The organizing committee honored the artist’s memory by placing Prouvé’s portrait of Gallé at the exact center of the exhibition, where it appeared draped with black gauze and bouquets of wildflowers. Despite similarities to the exhibition of 1903, the Exposition d’art décoratif signaled a breakdown in the rhetoric of the École de Nancy. The exhibition poster designed by artist Auguste Vallin (1881–1967), for example, constitutes a radical departure from that created by Prouvé for the 1903 exhibition (Figure 7.4). Again a figure bends to pick a flower, but now it is the figure of

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Figure 7.4 Poster for the Exposition d’art décoratif.

an anonymous woman and not a professional artist. The Japanese-inspired irises bear none of the regional associations of the native flora that appeared in Prouvé’s earlier composition. Gone, too, are the dark and beckoning woods, which once recalled the monumental entranceway to Gallé’s factory, commissioned from Auguste Vallin’s father, Eugène, in 1897. The door, which bears the inscription, “My Roots Are in the Heart of the Woods,” declares nature as the source of both Gallé’s artistic inspiration and his identity. In contrast, nature plays a far more decorative role in the younger Vallin’s poster. It is posited not as the artist’s source of inspiration, but as a pleasurable accompaniment to modern life. If Prouvé’s poster made the process of artistic creation its theme, then, Vallin’s poster instead presents the viewer with a fait accompli—a depiction not of the act of making, but its product. Vallin’s poster represents nature not as a powerful signifier of local and national belonging, but as a mere decorative accessory. By conflating femininity,

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nature, and the decorative, Vallin perhaps unintentionally underscores the inherent instability of the “natural” as a symbol of shared identity. In their reviews of the exhibition, local critics would likewise struggle to define the École de Nancy’s shared style, falling back upon comparisons with the work of other Art Nouveau designers in an effort to defend the group’s claim to represent a modern French style. In his review, Édouard Bour thus condemns the “nervous sensibility” of the international Art Nouveau movement, contrasting its extremes with what he describes as the simpler, more rational style of the École de Nancy (Bour 1904, p. 226; translation by author). Evoking the idea of nature as a source of inspiration, Roger C. D’Einvaux argues that the artists of the École de Nancy, “have contemplated without fever . . . the fecundity of their soil . . . [which] furnishes them today with the means for a powerful and sober originality disdainful of extremes” (D’Einvaux 1905, p. 97; translation by author). It is the artists’ ties to the province of Lorraine and to its landscape, local critics concurred, that allowed them to create an art that was at once rational and modern. Statements by D’Einvaux and Bour thus dramatically contrast the work of the École de Nancy with what they term the “extremes,” “nervous sensibility,” and “fever” of the international Art Nouveau movement. In the process, these local writers implicitly promote the work of the École de Nancy as the “real” Art Nouveau, one born of France’s native soil, rather than the product of cosmopolitan borrowings. Yet they also seem to envision this style as one that will in turn become international, spreading French design throughout Europe and forever linking the art of the École de Nancy with the idea of modernity. In their efforts to define a modern style for France, the École de Nancy artists sought to rethink the relationship between region and nation, to redefine France as diverse and decentered, and to employ nature, rather than tradition, as an expression of identity and belonging. There is no doubt that nature served as a powerful metaphor for Gallé and the artists of the École de Nancy because of its inherent multivalency and its ability to reconcile the seemingly incompatible claims of particularity and universalism. Yet the risk was that contemporaries would perceive nature not as an expression of modernity, but as its opposite, the terrain upon which modernization and its accompanying changes were wrought. Perhaps one solution to this dilemma was that explored by Prouvé in his poster for the 1903 exhibition. Nature appeared there, if only briefly, not as an eternal and unchanging realm, but as a space of change, dynamism, and flux, a metaphor for the diversity and simultaneously the unity of a modern French nation moving toward the future.

Notes 1 For a more detailed analysis of this issue, see Weber (1976). 2 Haupt et al. have also noted that regional identity depends upon the idea of the nation-state for its rationale and that government officials often sought to employ theories of regional identity as a “building block in the process of nation building” (Haupt et al. 1998, pp. 11–12). 3 In Nancy, the issue of decentralization was first raised in an article published by local writer Baron Prosper Guerrier de Dumast (1796–1883) in 1835. Entitled “Arguments For and Against the Resurrection of the Provinces,” the article champions the idea of

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a specifically provincial identity (Mathias 1999, p. 269). Guerrier de Dumast’s writings would have a strong impact on public opinion in the eastern region. In 1865, the idea of decentralization received added impetus from a group of notables in Nancy who proposed to reform the central government (Comité de Nancy 1865, n.p.). As the century progressed, however, calls for political decentralization gradually blended into a more general regionalist movement that celebrated the traditional culture of the provinces (Agulhon 2001, p. 66). Regionalism is a complex phenomenon that assumes a multiplicity of forms depending on location and era. For the purposes of this chapter, I will employ Christopher J. Fischer’s definition of regionalism as “a movement that seeks to promote the political, social, economic, and/or cultural interests of a particular region,” with an emphasis on the cultural sphere (Fischer 2010, p. 3). The group’s official title was “l’École de Nancy, Alliance provinciale des industries d’art.” The choice of “provincial” rather than “regional” is an interesting one and may reflect a desire to emphasize Lorraine’s historical ties to the nation of France, which predated the French Revolution. The program of the École de Nancy must be understood in the context of similar efforts to celebrate the unique history of France’s individual regions and to promote political or cultural decentralization. Influential groups included the short-lived Ligue nationale de la décentralisation (founded in 1895) and the Fédération régionaliste française (FRF), founded in 1900 by Jean Charles-Brun. The FRF drew upon the writings of geographer Vidal de la Blache, whose notion of “nodality” envisioned a nation composed of regions organized around regional centers such as the cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse (Gildea 1994, p. 181). Gallé’s phrase strongly recalls Eric Hobsbawm’s definition of an “invented tradition” as “a set of practices . . . which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, p. 1). A signed copy of Les Déracinés found in Gallé’s personal collection demonstrates his familiarity with this text as well as his friendship with the nationalist writer, but Gallé’s public break with Barrès predates the founding of the École de Nancy by several years (Charpentier 1963, p. 69). Richard Thomson has noted that painters working in Nancy likewise embraced naturalism as a conscious rejection of classicism (Thomson 2005, pp. 218–19). Gallé was not alone in defining the art of the French Renaissance as France’s national heritage. Numerous fin-de-siècle authors, including Marius Vachon, Louis Courajod, Léon Palustre, and Eugène Muntz would likewise downplay the contribution of Italian artists to art of the French Renaissance by suggesting that it was the product of a French tradition characterized by logic and reason (Mihail 2008, pp. 63–4).

References Agulhon, M. (2001). “The Center and the periphery,” in P. Nora (ed.), Rethinking France: Les Lieux de Mémoire, Vol. I: The State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 53–79. Auslander, L. (1996). Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bour, É. (1904). “Exposition d’art décoratif lorrain,” Bulletin des sociétés artistiques de l’Est 12: 225–9.

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Charpentier, F.-T. (1963). “Barrès et l’art lorrain de son temps,” in Maurice Barrès: Actes du colloque organisé par la Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines de l’Université de Nancy. Nancy : Annales de l’Est, pp. 63–83. Comité de Nancy (1865). Un Projet de décentralisation. Nancy : no publisher. D’Einvaux, R. (1905). “L’Exposition d’art décoratif lorrain à Nancy.” L’Art décoratif, February, pp. 97–104. Fischer, C. J. (2010). Alsace to the Alsatians? Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870–1939. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Gallé, É. (1901). Statuts de l’École de Nancy. Available online: http://www.ecole-de-nancy. com/web/uploads/file/documents_pdf/edn/edn_statuts.pdf [accessed July 3, 2007]. —(1903). Foreward to Exposition de l’École de Nancy à Paris. Paris: Guérinet, n.p. Gerson, S. (2003). The Pride of Place: Local Memories & Political Culture in NineteenthCentury France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gildea, R. (1994). The Past in French History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Haupt, H.-G., Müller, M. G., and Woolf, S. (eds) (1998). Regional and National Identities in Europe in the XIXth and XXth Centuries. The Hague: Kluwer Law International. Havard, H. (1903). “Les Salons de 1903: les arts décoratifs,” Arts: La Revue de l’art ancien et moderne, 13: 463–82. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds) (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mathias, M. (1999). “La Tradition interrogée: la Lorraine entre lotharingisme et régionalisme,” in F. Loyer (ed.), L’École de Nancy, 1889–1909: Art nouveau et industries d’art. Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux; Nancy : Ville de Nancy, pp. 269–75. Mihail, B. (2008). “Nationalism and architecture in nineteenth-century France: The example of the French Renaissance revival,” in L. Van Santvoort, J. De Maeyer, and T. Verschaffel (eds), Sources of Regionalism in the Nineteenth Century: Architecture, Art, and Literature. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, pp. 58–71. Nicolas, É. (1903). “L’Exposition du Pavillon de Marsan.” La Lorraine artiste, June 1, pp. 173–5. Ogata, A. (2001). “Artisans and Art Nouveau in fin-de-siècle Belgium: primitivism and nostalgia,” in L. Jessup (ed.), Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modernity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 165–76. Silverman, D. (1989). Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Thomson, R. (2005). “Regionalism versus nationalism in French visual culture, 1889–1900: The cases of Nancy and Toulouse,” in J. Hargrove and N. McWilliams (eds), Studies in the History of Art 68, May, pp. 208–23. Troy, N. J. (1991). Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France. New Haven: Yale University Press. Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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The Casbah des Oudaya: The Colonial Production of a Historic District in Morocco Stacy E. Holden

Three thousand Moroccans lived in Rabat’s Casbah des Oudaya district, and much changed for them during the first twenty-five years of the Protectorate (Caillé n.d.). When the French colonized this North African kingdom in 1912, they implemented a system of association. Despite this stated intention to rule through extant institutions, French officials from the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments swarmed their ancient quarters and transformed the locale. The Casbah des Oudaya had been founded by the Almohad dynasty in the twelfth century, and the French wanted to preserve and perpetuate its extant medieval elements (see Figure 8.1). The projects implemented there provide insights into colonial ideology and the experiences of colonized Moroccans. How did the French policy of historic preservation structurally affect the Casbah des Oudaya? And with what consequences for Moroccan residents? In responding to these questions, this chapter addresses the politics of place production through the conflicts that emerged when a colonial power cultivated a romanticized and ahistoric urban form for residents. Historic preservation played a more important role in French colonial policies than heretofore acknowledged. Focusing on the history of Rabat’s new quarters, Janet AbuLughod inaccurately concludes that neglect of Moroccan medinas was a “serendipitous outcome” of the urban segregation of colonizer and colonized (Abu-Lughod 1980). Abu-Lughod, however, like later urban historians of colonial North Africa, focuses her study on the modern ville nouvelle (Béguin 1983; Wright 1991; Rabinow 1995; Celik 1997; Fuller 2007). A closer look at the sources reveals that the French did not neglect the narrow streets and walled quarters of the precolonial medina. Within five years of the Protectorate’s establishment, they classified fifty-one buildings and districts in ten medinas as historic monuments and then budgeted money to restore them. This essay advances our understanding of the dual city in Morocco by showing how the management of the medina furthered colonial ideology and deepened colonial tensions. My research sets out to understand French efforts to perpetuate a medieval urban form within their sociopolitical context. Privileging constructs of class, the historian David Cannadine analyzed how the British saw their empire in an exhaustive analysis of the 458 million people living within its 13 million square miles of territory (Cannadine 2001). Conversely, this chapter explores how the French perceived their

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Figure 8.1 The exterior of the Casbah des Oudaya from behind the gate of the Café Maure, photo courtesy of Diana Wylie. North African empire via a microhistory of one neighborhood, showing at times a concerted effort to favor the interests of poor Moroccans over those of their wealthy counterparts. Given the romanticized urban form fostered by this policy, the anthropologist Renato Rosaldo would undoubtedly identify such preservationist fancies as a case of “imperialist nostalgia,” a disparaging term coined to signify the West’s apologetic desire to salvage an imagined precolonial culture that it was itself responsible for destroying. The French were “longing for an irretrievably lost time,” and this nostalgia inevitably underscored the modernizing superiority of a foreign colonizer (Rosaldo 1993). This chapter advances the novel suggestion that France’s preservationist policies represented a deliberate strategy—one that ultimately failed in this particular neighborhood—aimed at legitimizing colonial rule and securing the political acquiescence of colonized Moroccans. The French intended to preserve the Oudaya as a demonstration of respect for ordinary Moroccans and their culture, but they had a foreign aesthetic and a concomitant concern for maintaining a romanticized medieval urban form. The French implemented the policy of historic preservation to placate poor Moroccans, but their romanticized conceptualization of a North African city unintentionally constricted the day-to-day activities of the very subjects that the policy was meant to appease.

The political stakes of preservation Within seven months of French colonization, Louis Hubert Lyautey, the Resident General of Morocco, set up a Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments.1 The policy of historic preservation enunciated by its administrators reflected French perceptions

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of Moroccans as medieval anachronisms. According to one official, Moroccans were “an entire people who have not changed for 1,100 years and who we would find intact, fixed and still living in the most impressive archaism.” In protecting their built heritage, the French would preserve their way of life. “Indigenous people,” he wrote, “are still and will be for many years, attached to the ensemble of habits and traditions which are the birthright of their history.” For this reason, “Moroccans will live and will want to live in their casbahs and their old fortified cities.” Since the French would live in the modern ville nouvelle, the official asserted that “the indigenous cities will continue to shelter the indigenous population, who need not fear being transformed.”2 Given these ahistoric perceptions of French administrators, historic preservation supported the policies aimed at ensuring the quiescence of colonized Moroccans. And so, on December 27, 1913, Maurice Tranchant de Lunel sent at least fourteen letters to members of the French Parliament to convince them that this was a national concern that merited funding.3 “The significant issue was,” the first Director of the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments remembered, “to safeguard the characteristic development of the sites of old Morocco, meaning to take a series of emergency measures suitable to assure the conservation of feudal cities.” To one member, Denys Cochin, he underscored “the wealth of art and history that the old Maghrib contains and for which it is our mission to save and to preserve jealously.” Repeating this same sentiment, he asked the Deputy Marcel Sembat to ensure “the obtaining of a small part allocated in the loan in order to safeguard of the treasures over which it is our mission to watch.” The tenor of all fourteen letters is the same. Tranchant de Lunel asks each member to make sure that the national money of France is budgeted for preservation projects in Morocco, thereby underscoring the political stakes of preservation. He would later boast of the support given “by Parliament, where certain members took a strong interest in this work of preservation, and which, moreover, entered into the larger views of our policy” (Lunel 1924). A subsequent extract from the Chambers of Deputies clarifies the political intent of preservationist projects in Morocco. Historic preservation provided a means “of showing to indigenous people a respect for the venerated monuments of their past, which essentially advances the prestige of our domination.” Including the Casbah des Oudaya as one key monument that the French had already preserved, this extract, published four years after the colonization of Morocco, continued, “this resurrection of monuments that are the very precious witnesses to the history of the Muslim civilization has had the most favorable impact on the spirit of indigenous people, for it has shown them that they need not sacrifice their traditions when they work in the shadow of our flag.”4 The French wanted to demonstrate respect for local history, which would then, they trusted, foster political quiescence among colonized Moroccans. The first monument classified by the French was the Casbah des Oudaya. In June 1914, a law stated: “Are classified as historic monuments the following parts of the Casbah des Oudaya in Rabat: the monumental entranceway, the construction called the madrasa as well as its annexes, the enclosure, the fortifications, the ramparts, the bastions, the walls, and, in a general fashion, all the buildings of the said Casbah belonging to the royal domains.”5 This last phrase implicated most houses in this district. The land on which the Oudaya stood had been a bequest of the Sultan Moulay Abderrahman in 1832 to the Oudaya tribe, who, in setting up homes there,

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gave their name to the Casbah (Pauty 1922). The French kept a Sultan as part of its policy of association, so he owned the land on which the Oudaya was built. Its residents owned only the zina, a legal term indicating improvements to the land, such as the construction of a house or a shop. Thus, the law designated that residents of the Oudaya were living in heritage and thus subject to the romanticized conceptualization of history determined by the French. Before discussing preservation projects in this district, it is important to understand the philosophy guiding officials in the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments. The desire to preserve an “authentic” Moroccan art often led the French to refute the actual history reflected in extant monuments. They did not permit monuments to reveal the intensive contacts that Moroccans had long had with the outside world. Thus, Tranchant de Lunel decried the royal palaces when he first saw them, vowing to change what he identified as unfortunate errors: Their architects borrowed—most often in a disagreeable fashion—from European styles. Some details of the ornamentation emphasized in a marked way the époque of Queen Victoria, Empress of India and Queen of the British. These were regrettably attached to the overly-ornate design of the Italians, dating to the second half of the defunct century. . . . The interest of my first visits to the palaces of Fez were colored with profound regrets, less attributable to the discords then to the profusion of styles, and of the continual bringing together of the superb, the ridiculous and the sordid. (Lunel 1924)

Under his tutelage, mistakes such as a neo-classical gate built in Fez would be razed and rebuilt with an outrepassé arch deemed authentic (Holden 2008). Remembering his three-year term as head of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments, Tranchant de Lunel concluded, “nothing modern, no matter the development that Morocco later takes, will be able to pose a threat to the beauty of the chefs d’oeuvres that are the artistic framework of [this country]” (Lunel 1924). And so, the French enunciated a desire to preserve the Casbah des Oudaya—and other precolonial walled quarters—for Moroccans, but this intent does not signify a freezing of the extant built heritage. Instead, the French wanted to transform it. Edmond Pauty replaced Tranchant de Lunel as Director of the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments, and he explained to laymen the theory of historic preservation during the Protectorate’s first ten years: The seepage of time is nothing for Muslims, who let their monuments collapse with as much indifference as they once had enthusiasm in raising them. So, we substituted ourselves for them in order to guard the artistic vestiges of a brilliant civilization. We spread a protective cloak on the entirety of the site—and of the city in the middle of which it springs up—as well as on the monuments.

This charge required changes to the urban form. “A restoration is not able, in our opinion,” Pauty asserted, “to be made without transforming as little as it is the monument for which it will prolong the existence; [the restoration] will foster the loss of the particular charm of the ruins, and the artisan, even if he brings infinite amounts

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of tact to his work, will never be able, in an absolute sense, to remake the old.” “It’s the spirit,” he concluded, “in which restorations are made that must always preserve the sense of the forms and make the tradition survive” (Pauty 1922).

The French production of a historic district The Oudaya is the result of a carefully choreographed planning by colonial administrators during the interwar years. For example, the steps now used to ascend to the monumental gate are of recent origin. When the French came, the route up the hill to the gate had been but a well-trodden dirt path. French officials designed a staircase to make access to the gate easier (see Figure 8.2). The Director of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments would later complain that it had been designed as if leading to a European church, not a Moroccan gate. This statement was a rare instance in which a French official recognized that a foreign aesthetic guided colonial restoration projects. But this was not the only case where a foreign aesthetic informed the preservation projects. The monumental gate dating to the twelfth century was one of three points marking the perimeter of the Oudaya, and its restoration fostered changes in the use of the site. In the precolonial era, Moroccan officials had designated the interior of this gate as the municipal prison.6 The prison held 150 prisoners, and Moroccans had transformed the gate into small rooms for isolation cells or shops (Normand 1914). The French did not approve, finding the recent buildings filled the gate until, as specified by Pauty, it “had disappeared behind parasitic constructions” (Pauty 1922). In 1914, the French replaced what they considered slapdash constructions with an imposing wooden door that represented, to them, a much more authentic local building tradition.7 One resident of the Oudaya legated to historians evidence that Moroccans did not support such projects. The second point in the triangular perimeter of the Oudaya was

Figure 8.2 The Casbah des Oudaya gate and its staircase, photo courtesy of Diana Wylie.

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Place Semaphore, which overlooked the Bouregreg estuary. It was problematic to create this esplanade in 1915, because private houses filled the site. One displaced resident hired a French lawyer to ensure that the Protectorate did not disregard her right to the zina of a house that she rented to lodgers. Addressing France’s diplomatic representative in Morocco, the lawyer informed the Plenipotentiary Minister that the Service of Fine Arts and Historic Monuments was forcing Moroccans to leave without indemnity.8 Informed of the situation, the Resident General still insisted on the “reestablishment of a circular route bordering the ramparts of the Casbah des Oudaya on the north side.” Lyautey insisted to the Chef of Municipal Services that the law regarding “public utility” was sufficient for the expropriation of property for this purpose.9 The French destroyed homes time and again to preserve the Oudaya, suggesting that their aesthetic tastes shaped their political understanding of the policy of preservation. In regard to the madrasa, the third point in the Oudaya’s triangle, “the entirety had been converted into indigenous dwellings.” Pauty detested such employment of space, continuing: “The upper rooms were divided in height by intermediate floors and had lost their character, the columns of the courtyard had fallen, and countless depredations had been committed by the indigenous people.”10 French officials emptied the building of homes and then ripped out the intermediate floors and restored the columns.11 They then turned the abandoned madrasa into a museum. Finally, the French decided to create an opening in the twelfth-century historic wall separating the madrasa-cum-museum from a Moorish Café. The creation of a new gate, the Chef of Municipal Services informed the Resident General, required the French “to demolish completely the house of the master worker Salah Ben Djilali, which consists of three rooms, a well, a courtyard, and a small recess.”12 The French must have feared the expropriation would disillusion their colonial subjects. So, the Chef of Municipal Services, in accord with the Resident General, spent 7,000 francs to re-house Djilali and other displaced residents. This sum would pay for the construction of a new house for the master worker in an open space near the monumental gate. The sum would also “compensate the few residents who were forced to move out when [their dwellings] were expropriated following the execution of the new works.”13 Clearly, French officials were trying to mollify ordinary Moroccan residents in the Oudaya.

Houses as heritage The French also implemented policies that prevented the gentrification of the Oudaya, yet another means of demonstrating support for ordinary Moroccans. They tried to prevent Europeans and also wealthy Moroccans from building in this quarter. Preventing the displacement of workers and the poor allowed the French to express support for them. The French had destroyed houses to preserve the monuments of the Oudaya, but thereafter they expressed an intent to ensure that private houses were considered part of the built patrimony (see Figure 8.3 and 8.4). And so, they passed a second law concerning the preservation of the Oudaya in 1922 that rendered private houses historic monuments. This Arreté Viziriel specified that “All new constructions of

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Figure 8.3 System of narrow alleys and traditional houses perpetuated by the French in the Casbah des Oudaya, photo courtesy of Diana Wylie. whatever nature that they are, such as the ones tending toward the extension of the height, width, or depth of dwellings, to the attachment of lean-to on the side or on the rooftop terraces, of balconies and verandas, of the opening of doors and windows, are prohibited in the area immediately around the walls of the Casbah des Oudaya.”14 Deeming the Oudaya “a picturesque monument,” the legislation aimed to restrict the building activities of foreigners in this quarter, for it stated “the administration must prevent European constructions from compromising the picturesque qualities of the quarters of the indigenous population.”15 The European residents of Rabat were fascinated with the Oudaya, and their decision to live there threatened the site’s historic value. Georges Guerard had resided in the Oudaya since 1913, but he sold the zina of his property to a Mme. Liouville in 1929.16 This new owner tried to transform the property. At the time, Jules Borély headed the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments, and this official provided her with a building permit only on the understanding that the Moroccans constructing the house would “give this dwelling a character in harmony with the site and the quarter.”17 This

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Figure 8.4 System of narrow alleys and traditional houses perpetuated by the French in the Casbah des Oudaya, photo courtesy of Diana Wylie. would not be the case, a fact that led to a flurry of correspondence among Beaux Arts officials. One official inspected the work and reported: The first impression given, in seeing this large house, is that it is not in its place. By its monumental and imposing mass, it contrasts considerably with the small houses, low and minute, which give this quarter a completely particular picturesque aspect. Unfortunately, this new dwelling will eventually destroy this harmony. It moves away from the conceptions long advocated by the Beaux Arts in this quarter of houses that are strictly Moroccan and of a type characteristic of the built-up area.18

Mme. Liouville intended to construct two rooms above an alley.19 Although constructed by a Moroccan builder, the house, an inspector insisted, “is instead similar to a European house.”20

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Officials in the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments blocked the construction by Mme. Liouville, who then began to bargain with the administrators. She wanted to add two rooms to her new house and promised in exchange to rebuild an arch over the alley, which, though ancient and picturesque, the French had demolished because of concerns over public security.21 Borély courted this offer, but a subsequent visit to the site showed that Mme. Liouville had altered the initial plans in order to add an extra floor. “It is my opinion,” he wrote to the Chef of Municipal Services, “that if we want to preserve the Casbah des Oudaya, then it is not possible to allow such a blot on the regulations that we promulgated in order to guard its historic character.”22 The Chef of Municipal Services then demanded that Mme. Louisville stop the construction.23 After this Liouville Affair, Borély emphasized that the Casbah should remain a neighborhood consisting of poor Moroccans. Remembering the discussions surrounding the passage of the Arreté Viziriel, he stated: “At the time that regulations on urbanism in the Casbah des Oudaya was promulgated (in 1922), I proposed to prohibit indigenous people of the quarter from ceding to Europeans the right of zina that they held on behalf of the Sultan. . . . It seemed to me that it was a sure means of keeping the Casbah as a built-up area consisting of the houses of the poor such as it was when we classified it.”24 Thus, the French policy of historic preservation was intended to aid marginalized Moroccans, not Europeans or Moroccan notables. And, indeed, Europeans were not the only threat to the Oudaya’s built heritage, for rich Moroccans also endangered the urban form. As the rich and powerful governor of Marrakesh, Thami Glaoui was a major beneficiary of the policy of association. In 1930, he purchased the zina of a dye shop intending to transform it into a private residence. The property was at the highest point in the Oudaya, from where the pasha could enjoy a picturesque view. Glaoui’s purchase, however, was a ruin, and the southeastern walls had collapsed.25 Although Glaoui was a key colonial collaborator, Beaux Arts officials were concerned that he would change the dimensions of the building when he restored it as a home. They measured the foundations “in order that the purchaser is not able to make a new building larger than the ruins that he acquired.”26 Glaoui did not take the gentle hints of the inspectors of the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments, and he continued to make plans to rebuild. This led Borély to contact the Resident General, who was, in 1932, a man named Lucien Saint. Borély told Saint that Glaoui was “among the people who dream of updating the appearance of this quarter.” The pasha had hired an architect working for this office to design a plan, hoping that this would get him past the building regulations. Borély called the property “one of the most picturesque spots in the Casbah.” To prevent the modification of the house, Borély wanted Saint to tell Glaoui that he could not build against the nearby wall. He asked Saint to convince Glaoui “to renounce his project.” Borély expressed concern that the pasha was among “those who want to transform the Casbah into a quarter of new houses.” He then continued: “The pasha is not a European, but he is of this sort, and, in terms of construction, things would happen as if he was.”27 The Resident General replied within five days, demonstrating that historic preservation continued to be a pressing concern—as did placating colonial collaborators. He assured Borély that “we must resolutely oppose bringing about modifications . . . to the whole of the monument that are able to change the character of it, and I deplore, like you, the fact that Europeans are settled there.” The state of the ruins, however,

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posed a danger, and the Resident general pointed out that a person had died there. Thus, he wanted to allow the pasha to consolidate the ruins.28 Addressing the pasha as “Excellence,” Borély wrote a polite—but firm—letter to Glaoui in which he informed him that the reconstruction of the property would have distinct limits. He wrote, “I would have preferred that you did not dream of constructing in these ruins, because it is difficult to do anything without altering the landscape.” Seeing that he was determined to do so, however, Borély provided him with the exact dimensions of the ruins that he sought to rebuild. He warned him that the adjoining twelfth-century Almohad wall must be renovated by the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments, but at the pasha’s own expense.29 Ultimately, the lot of the ordinary Moroccans for whom the Casbah had theoretically been preserved did not differ from that of the pasha of Marrakesh. The case of Mohamed ben Omar El Belghiti is representative of such demands. El Belghiti was an employee of the Compagnie Algérienne in Rabat. In 1935, he submitted a request to repair two ceilings in his house and also to add a room as well as a rounded wall to the rooftop terrace of his house. This house had a small kitchen, two rooms, and a large courtyard. El Belghiti wrote to the Director of Beaux Arts stating that “it is impossible to lodge a family consisting of eight members in two small rooms.” Further, he noted, “my pay as an employee of the Compagnie Algérienne . . . does not allow me to pay rent.”30 El Belghiti did not have the money to rent a second house, and the sale of the property was not possible, because he would be the possessor of only the zina. The French had passed legislation to limit European building, but the law’s enforcement also constricted ordinary Moroccans. El Belghiti’s request for a building permit was looked upon with sympathy, but denied. An official from the Service of Beaux Arts and Historic Monuments told the head of the Office of Architecture: “According to the current state of the legislation regulating constructions in the Casbah des Oudaya, it is impossible to authorize a new construction, even in the interior of a courtyard.” The most that the legislation allowed the Service to do was “to restore the constructions that have collapsed, but in their same proportions and aspect.” One administrator recognized that the application of the law threatened colonial tensions, for Moroccans “are aware that all this rigor has not prevented the construction of new and vast buildings for European use.”31 The archives of Morocco’s Ministry of Culture contain at least fifty demands for building permits that were rejected. And so, the policy of historic preservation in the Oudaya ultimately fostered tensions between colonizer and colonized.

Conclusion A microhistory of the Oudaya contributes to our understanding of the local in French history by showing how the ostensibly cosmopolitan influence of colonial officers actually fostered and advanced a parochial identity in Morocco, and this despite the desires and lived experiences of colonized residents. The French exuded imperialist nostalgia, a longing for the very culture that their presence, in part, helped to destroy. They implemented a preservationist policy as a means of demonstrating respect for the built culture of Moroccans, but their perceptions of local history did not reflect the lived reality of urban residents. The aesthetic sense of colonial administrators who

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interpreted local identity led them to destroy the abodes of many Moroccans in the Oudaya, thereby highlighting the monuments legated by the medieval past to this North African kingdom. Once the monuments were restored, the French established policies designed to monitor the domestic spaces of the Oudaya. And so, historic preservation did more than conserve monuments from the past; it also shaped the lived experiences of Moroccans. In theory, the French implemented this policy to placate the colonized Moroccans, particularly those who were struggling to make ends meet, but their aesthetic concerns unintentionally constricted the day-to-day activities of the very subjects that the policy was meant to appease. In this way, the medievalizing policy of historic preservation became one issue that deepened the divide between French colonizers and some colonized Moroccans, who then began to resist the parochial identity imposed on them by a foreign power.

Notes 1 Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc (BNRM), F140, Service des BeauxArts, nd. 2 BNRM, F142, Convservation des Villes, nd. 3 BNRM, F142, Lettres aux Parlementaires avant l’emprunt, December 27, 1913. 4 BNRM, F141, Extrait du Rapport No. 1774 de la Chambre des Deputés, 1916. 5 Ministry of Culture (MC), Kasbah des Oudaia, Texte, Legislation, Correspondence, Dahir, June 19, 1914. 6 MC, Kasbah des Oudaia, Texte, Législation, Correspondence, September 22, 1914. 7 MC, Kasbah des Oudaia, Texte, Législation, Correspondance, September 22, 1914. 8 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Gaston Jorard to le Comte Saint Aulaire, Ministre Plénipotentiaire Délégué à la Résidence Générale, January 12, 1916. 9 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Lyautey to Chef des Services Municipaux de Rabat, February 14, 1916. 10 Pauty 1922, p. 450. 11 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Contrôleur de l’Aconage to M. Lacorre, Ingénieur des Travaux Publics, January 5, 1916. 12 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Chef des Services Municipaux to Résident Général, September 22, 1915. 13 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Chef des Services Municipaux to Résident Général, December 4, 1915. 14 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias. See also, MC, Kasba des Oudaia, Texte, Législation, Correspondance. 15 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias. See also, MC, Kasba des Oudaia, Texte, Législation, Correspondance. 16 Office of Land Titles (Rabat), T10838, Dar el Mehidiya, Extrait de Réquisition d’Immatriculation. 17 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Borély to Chef des Services Municipaux de la Ville de Rabat, January 9, 1930. 18 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Note sur l’habitation de Mme. Liouville aux Oudaïa, nd. 19 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Borély to Chef des Services Municipaux de la Ville de Rabat, February 26, 1930. 20 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Note sur l’habitation de Mme. Liouville aux Oudaïa, nd.

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21 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Borély to Chef des Services Municipaux de la Ville de Rabat, February 26, 1930. 22 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Borély to Chef des Services Municipaux de la Ville de Rabat, July 29, 1930. 23 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, Anonymous [Chef des Municipal Services] to Mme. Liouville, August 6, 1930. 24 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, 1931–4, Jules Borély to Chef des Services Municipaux, March 18, 1931. 25 MC, Rabat, Documents Historiques, photo of Dar Glaoui. 26 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaia, Borély to Director de l’Administration Municipale, December 2, 1930. 27 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, 1931–4, Jules Borély to Résident Général, June 13, 1932. 28 MC, Rabat, Documents Historiques, Résident Général to Chef du Service des BeauxArts et des Monuments Historiques, June 18, 1932. 29 MC, Rabat, Kasbah des Oudaias, 1931–4, Borély to Si Hadj Thami Glaoui, August 10, 1932. 30 MC, Rabat, Documents Historiques, Mohamed ben Omar Belgheti to Director of Beaux Arts, June 7, 1935. 31 MC, Rabat, Documents Historiques, Henri Terrasse to Chef du Bureau d’Architecture, July 9, 1935.

References Abu-Lughod, J. (1980). Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Béguin, F. (1983). Arabisances: Decor architectural et trace urbain en Afrique du Nord, 1830–1950. Paris: Dunod. Caillé, J. (n.d). La petite histoire de Rabat. Casablanca: Chérifienne d’éditions et de publicité. Cannadine, D. (2001). Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. London: Oxford University Press. Celik, Z. (1997). Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule. Berkeley : University of California Press. Fuller, M. (2007). Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities, and Italian Imperialism. London: Routledge. Holden, S. E. (2008). “The Legacy of French Colonialism: A Historian’s View of Preservation in Morocco’s Fez Medina.” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology 39(4): 5–11. Normand, R. (1914). “Rabat: les débuts d’une municipalité au Maroc.” Renseignements coloniaux et documents 1: 26. Pauty, E. (1922). “Rapport sur la défense des villes et la restauration des monuments historiques.” Hesperis 2: 449–62. Rabinow, P. (1995). French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Rosaldo, R. (1993). “Imperialist Nostalgia,” in Culture & Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press, pp. 68–87. Tranchant de Lunel, M. (1924). Au pays du paradoxe: Maroc. Paris: Bibliothèque Charpentier. Wright, G. (1991). The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

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Facing the Nation: National Sentiment and National Belonging in the Wartime Writings of Irène Némirovsky and Léon Werth Nathan Bracher

Throughout the German occupation of France, many writers reflected on the momentous upheavals of the war years while struggling to situate their public and private lives with respect to competing notions of collective identity and institutional legitimacy as expressed in the terms “la nation” and “la République.” In spite of their vastly different backgrounds—Irène Némirovsky was personally educated by a French governess in Tsarist Russia, while Léon Werth distinguished himself in the schools of the Third Republic—they, like the vast majority of French people of their time, had been weaned on the idealistic notion of French history first championed by Jules Michelet, then popularized by Ernest Lavisse’s history textbook for schoolchildren (Loubes 2009, pp. 54–8). According to that master narrative, the French nation had finally and triumphantly achieved unity, autonomy, and liberty under the Republic. Now binding all its citizens together by touting their supposedly common origins, culture, and purpose, the Republic was thus destined to fulfill the aspirations of countless generations who had for centuries suffered the injustices, oppression, and obscurantism of feudalism and monarchy. History thus had a meaning and a goal, and the vocation of the French people constituted as a body politic in “la Nation” was to lead the march of humanity toward achieving greater civilization and enlightenment. Yet the first few decades of the twentieth century had given both Werth and Némirovsky ample reason to become skeptical, if not disaffected, with respect to such lofty claims for the French nation. In addition to his deep-seated refusal of all that hinted of entrenched conformism and hypocrisy, Werth’s fifteen months of active combat duty in the French army during the First World War had made militaristic nationalism insufferable and pacifism an urgent imperative, while his subsequent travels in Indo-china had revealed the brutal injustices of French colonialism. Having fled with her parents the revolutionary upheavals and violence in her native Russia at the age of thirteen, Némirovsky remained largely aloof from politics. Like the Lucile that she portrays in the second part of Suite française, Némirovsky seems to have preferred to focus on her personal life while attempting to ignore the vexing compromises, vicissitudes, and conflicts of history. In any case, she had little reason to be enamored of the Republic that repeatedly refused to accept her and

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her husband as French citizens in spite of her passion for French literature and her stellar achievements as a novelist. Over the course of the 1930s, a severe, protracted economic crisis, the gathering storm of military and diplomatic aggression, and deepening ideological and socioeconomic divisions on the domestic front had, moreover, frayed French national sentiment among the general population. The turbulent prewar period of the late 1930s had heightened anti-Semitism in all its forms, thus revealing on many an occasion the question of rootedness to be highly sensitive and problematic: nationalists decried the “invasion” of French territory by Jewish immigrants and refugees in countless books and articles, and Xavier Vallat (then proudly representing the Ardèche département, he was in March 1941 named by Vichy to head the General Commission on Jewish Questions and thus crafted the second set of Jewish Statutes in June 1942) openly voiced his misgivings at seeing Léon Blum—allegedly not attached to French soil because he was Jewish—assume leadership of the French Republic in June 1936 (Kaspi 1997, pp. 57–8, 67–73). Over the course of the previous two millennia, what was to become in the nineteenth century the national territory of the French Republic had been traversed and inhabited by a whole host of “tribes” or ethnic groups including, most prominently, Galls, Romans, Franks (who gave the country its eventual name), Vikings, and the English. Jews had, moreover, been implanted on what was to be French soil well before the gradual Christianization that began in the latter part of the second century CE. Yet the negative stereotype of the “wandering Jew” had remained an integral component of the anti-Semitism that implacably depicted Jews as rootless outsiders alien to France’s putatively organic identity. The devastating defeat of the May–June 1940 debacle only exacerbated such fears of foreign infiltration on all levels, particularly because it immediately impacted a national territory that the nation’s soldiers had not successfully defended. Not only had numerous towns and villages been destroyed by the German invasion, but a humiliating armistice had also once again amputated the Alsace–Lorraine from the French nation, placed over half of the country under direct German control, made the entire Atlantic and English Channel coastlines off-limits, and severely disrupted the flow of goods, services, communications, and travelers within France by establishing a strictly controlled demarcation line between the Northern and Southern zones. It was not clear in what form the French nation would continue to exist, if at all, in a “New Europe” that appeared to be irreversibly under Nazi control. The route of France’s military defenses had, moreover, occasioned the virtual collapse of civil society: the civilian exodus had led to 100,000 civilian deaths and separated thousands of families (Diamond 2007, p. 143). Finally, the defeat had resulted in the implosion of the Third Republic, as the National Assembly scuttled itself by voting full constitutional powers to the doddering, reactionary “Vainqueur de Verdun,” Philippe Pétain, who insisted on the necessity of remaining on the French mainland and reaching an armistice with the Germans, yet adamantly rejected the suggestion to evacuate the government to North Africa in order to carry on the war with the Allies (Burrin 1995, p. 13). The dazed, traumatized French populace found itself summoned on the one hand to a so-called “New Europe” touted by the Nazis and beckoned on the other by Vichy propaganda to a schmalzy provincialism that attempted to construct French identity

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along narrow ethnic lines. Vichy injected heavy doses of ruralist nostalgia into a discourse that railed against intellectuals and denounced the Enlightenment ideals of the Republic as dangerous abstractions not rooted in France’s organic identity, couched in the Barrésian terms of “the land and the dead.” Such influences, insisted Pétain and his cohorts, had led the country astray from “the land that does not tell lies,” far from the Catholic, agrarian, quietist “vieille France” supposedly respectful of “natural” hierarchies, and onto the terrain of transnational cosmopolitanism rife with foreign, Jewish, and Communist influences. For both Irène Némirovsky and Léon Werth as for many others, the war years represented the crossing of a desert. With the violent passing of the old in chaos, humiliation, and defeat, and the unsettling advent of the new under the Vichy regime and the Germans, they found attitudes toward the nation and the Republic called into question by Nazism and Vichy’s “National Revolution.” Vichy’s simplistic, backwardlooking, and sententious construction of a past that, of course, had never existed could hardly be alluring to writers and intellectuals of such cosmopolitan interests and erudition as Némirovsky and Werth. Yet, even if not posed in binary, tendentious terms, the question of national identity rooted in tradition and in the land was both unavoidable and crucial for them as well as for the rest of the French population. Némirovsky’s Jewish parents had distanced themselves from their ancestral traditions and community in the Ukraine. Fearing for their lives during the Russian revolution, they and the teenaged Irène had fled through Finland to France, where they had often come for vacations and respite at spas such as Vichy. As a Russian émigré, Némirovsky thus found the question of national identity problematic from the very outset. Having achieved literary renown following the publication of her highly successful novel David Golder (also known for its highly problematic Jewish stereotypes), Irène sought desperately to acquire French citizenship in the late 1930s, and perhaps for this reason had herself and her children baptized as Catholics in 1939. Following the declaration of war with Nazi Germany on September 3 of that same year, she gave a series of patriotic talks on French radio while continuing to write (Philipponnat and Lienhart 2007, p. 332). The debacle of May–June 1940 and Vichy’s ensuing “National Revolution” put her in a particularly delicate situation: Vichy’s Jewish statutes excluded her from the national community and deprived first her and then her husband (a banker) of their livelihoods. One critic has even considered Némirovsky rather disparagingly as a “writer from nowhere” and “a person without roots” (Weiss 2005, p. 8). Pointing to negative images of the French throughout Suite française, some have suggested that feelings of bitterness and estrangement from the national community prevail in her writing of the war years. Others have claimed that relatively positive images of German soldiers in her depiction of the debacle and the ensuing German occupation suggest her writing had been tainted by a pro-Vichy posture. A close scrutiny of her prose of the early 1940s, however, disproves both those conjectures and reveals, instead, her portrayal of the French nation and of national belonging to be nuanced and complex. Published at the outset of the war on October 5, 1939, “La nuit en wagon” (“Night in a Railroad Car”) clearly celebrates the Third Republican ideal first asserted during the French Revolution: the French nation constitutes a community of citizens united as

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common partners in society and the body politic. The narrator explicitly stresses how the men and women traveling to Paris immediately after the declaration of war ignore strictures of class and codes of public demeanor in order to overcome the reserve and wariness of strangers that normally prevail in train compartments. Transcending particularisms of region and social class, they freely share life stories, food, and drink, and thus fraternize in a sort of “Sacred Union” (Némirovsky 2004a, p. 210). At the same time, however, Némirovsky avoids a narrowly nationalistic snapshot of the French by emphasizing the universally human dimensions of the drama that was about to unfold: “In wars and revolutions, there is nothing more unusual than these first instants when one is thrown from one life into another . . .” (Némirovsky 2004b, p. 207). While “Night in a Railroad Car” focuses on people from the provinces taking the train to Paris shortly after the declaration of war, the narrator indicates at the outset that people of all origins suddenly found their personal existence swept up into the maelstrom of history. Another story, “Le Spectateur” (“The Spectator”), also published during those early months of the war, on December 7, 1939, again prominently features the question of national belonging, but from an almost opposite perspective, portraying a rich, globetrotting aesthete, Hugo Grayer, who prides himself on remaining a self-styled cosmopolitan presumably too intelligent and sophisticated to be anchored in any particular nation or to take sides in any conflict: “He was neutral, a ‘citizen of no man’s land,’ he kept saying to himself with a smile. There were thus a handful of people on earth (Magda [his wife] was one of them) who, by the whims of chance, had so many different bloods mixed up that no country could say they were theirs” (Némirovsky 2000, p. 337). Though not without pity for those he sees about to be caught up in war, Grayer and his wife view bloodshed as would spectators attending a tragic play, and seem truly moved only to the extent that some battles may endanger precious works of art and architecture. In any case, Grayer has no qualms about jumping the sinking ship of Europe: immediately after the outbreak of war, he leaves France on a neutral ocean liner bound for a South American country where he had acquired an official nationality. Némirovsky spares no irony in depicting Grayer’s neutrality as cowardly hypocrisy, duly punished by the fate he suffers in this short narrative. First, the narrator indicates the true nature of his refusal to take sides: “The dear Hugo had a mind utterly detached from the things of this world, which wasn’t surprising, since he possessed one of Uruguay’s largest fortunes” (Némirovsky 2000, p. 336). The irony becomes even more emphatically didactic when the ocean liner comes under a fierce submarine attack. As the ship that Grayer had thought to be his ticket to safety and comfort quickly begins to sink in the cold waters of the Atlantic, the text underscores the grim plight common to all on board, irrespective of money, privilege, and social class: As with various liquors in a shaker, an invisible hand churned, shook, and mixed all together these groups that had until then remained distinct. Luxury passengers and those in the third class, women in mink coats, little Judeo-German children that an American charity wanted to place in an orphanage in Uruguay, all together now they were running, colliding with each other, and rushing to the lifeboats, as these safety vessels were being lowered to the sea. (Némirovsky 2000, p. 344)

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With his pretension and indifference thus punished by an ironic turn of events, Grayer recites to himself a lesson in shared humanity as he lies injured and shivering in seawater and his own vomit on the bottom of a lifeboat, comforted by a maid. Regretting his erstwhile apathy toward the suffering of Chinese, Spanish, and Jewish people glimpsed in cinema newsreels, he realizes that now his own miserable plight will be subject to the curious, passive gaze of spectators in cinema halls around the world. Nemirovsky thus frames the lesson in terms of universal humanity with no allusion to patriotism. Nevertheless, the narrative clearly discredits those who would escape the national territory or renounce the attendant responsibilities of service and solidarity to compatriots. We find a similar construction of national belonging in Suite française. The two individuals expressing the most genuinely idealistic devotion to France and to the service of their nation, Philippe Pericand and his younger brother Hubert, find themselves rudely disillusioned. Philippe, a priest, suffers a gruesome death at the hands of the very orphans and juvenile delinquents that he was leading to safety. The adolescent Hubert first gets in the way of the French troops whom he runs away from to join in defense of his country, then witnesses acts of cowardice and looting by the French themselves, and finally loses not his life but his virginity in the upstairs room of an inn while German troops are celebrating their victory in the tavern downstairs. But Némirovsky reserves her most scathing satirical depictions for those such as Charlotte Péricand, the banker Corbin, the writer Gabriel Corte, and the Viscountess Montmort, all of whom publicly mouth the most ostentatiously patriotic words. In various ways, they all prove to be just like Hugo Grayer, seeking above all to set themselves apart from their fellow citizens and escape the plight of the nation (in the form of the common people) through privilege, wealth, special connections, or devious means of acquiring food, shelter, and safe passage. They use patriotic posturing and piety merely to disguise their own self-interested designs. Némirovsky’s Suite française, nevertheless, skewers hypocrisy and injustice, not the notions of national belonging and national sentiment as such. When all is said and done, her most appealing characters render service to their compatriots, going beyond either their regional roots and socioeconomic affiliation, as in the case of young peasant Madeleine Labarie, or their yearning for cosmopolitan universalism, as in the particularly revealing case of bourgeois Lucile Angellier. Lucile desperately desires to rid herself of all political and national strictures in order to pursue a romantic idyll with the well-mannered, sophisticated German officer and musician Bruno, who courts her even while forcibly occupying her mother-in-law’s home. Yet when forced to choose between this romance promising a personal happiness beyond national ties and saving one Benoît Labarie from a German manhunt, Lucile, taking considerable personal risk, shelters the fugitive farmer and rebuffs Bruno as a foreign enemy. Suite française does maintain a certain ambivalence, because the novel presents most Germans occupying the provincial town of Bussy as typical young soldiers in search of food, drink, and women: the last chapter even highlights the farewells exchanged between soldiers leaving for the Russian front and townspeople, who have grown accustomed to and often fond of their presence. In the end there emerges a complex and somewhat cloudy construction of national identity. On the one hand,

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Némirovsky avoids any sort of systematic opposition of the French and the Germans. On the other hand, her text clearly favors characters who share in the community of French suffering and show solidarity to their compatriots, while the rural agrarian provincial population of Bussy appears rife with centuries-old infighting, driven by rancorous divisions of socioeconomic class now exacerbated by the hoarding of food, denunciations, sexual animosities, and betrayals. Many young women even give themselves over to German soldiers. The desire for a cosmopolitan citizenship in a world emancipated from wars and politics thus proves illusory, while any notion of return to rural, agrarian, regional quietism is totally shattered. To France’s unsettling experiences of defeat and German occupation, Léon Werth brings a personal background and intellectual itinerary vastly different from those of Némirovsky. Since he was born in the Vosges to assimilated Jewish parents of modest socioeconomic standing, his nationality was never in question: as a French citizen, he served on the front lines for fifteen months in the First World War before suffering wounds that would end his stint as a soldier and provide the occasion for him to pen the fiercely antimilitaristic (and, by definition, antinationalistic, because the army was at that point of the Third Republic’s existence widely considered to embody the nation) novel Clavel soldat, published just after the war in 1919 and greeted by no little outrage. Not surprisingly for a writer mentored by Octave Mirbeau, Werth persisted in attacking the pretension, hypocrisy, and injustice that were in his uncompromising eyes the hallmarks of the established national and social order. Journeying to French Indo-china, he unsparingly denounced French colonialism in the travelogue Cochinchine. While staunchly antifascist, he remained highly critical of Stalin and refused to rally the pro-Soviet French intellectuals, all the while contributing articles of a pacifist, internationalist orientation to the prestigious periodicals of Leftist persuasion Monde, Europe, and Marianne and acquiring recognition for his writings on post-Impressionist art and the cinema (Heuré 2006, pp. 165–242). Harboring few illusions about the consequences of armed conflict or strident nationalism, Werth was hardly eager to see France enter into a new war with Germany. Yet France’s total collapse in the wake of the Nazi invasion confronted him with crucial questions of nationhood, national belonging, and national sentiment. Warned by St Exupéry to keep out of the reach of the Germans who were rapidly approaching Paris, Werth and his wife left the city on June 11, 1940, joining the throngs of other refugees seeking to escape the Nazi onslaught by fleeing southward. Amid the fear, confusion, and chaos of the masses desperately searching for food, water, shelter, and fuel, occasionally bombed and strafed by German aviation and at times blocked by battles and troop movements, Werth observed numerous scenes that revealed the fabric of French national sentiment and people’s sense of collective belonging to be severely frayed. He heard rumors of infiltration by a fifth column and of French people having sold out to the Germans. He witnessed civilians booing and insulting French soldiers who persisted in fighting, and saw other military officers fleeing with their women in cars and refusing to take other passengers. Some civilians voiced their displeasure at the decision to wage war with Nazi Germany, while others surrendered obsequiously at the sight of German soldiers, raising both hands and asking to be searched. Still others

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fraternized, offering the Germans hospitality, food, and drink, and joining with them in celebrating the armistice. Perhaps such behaviors were only to be expected in the heat of events. The military debacle along with the concomitant collapse of civil society in the mass panic known as the “Exodus” had tragically revealed the utter failure of the government, not only in protecting and caring for its citizens, but also in providing them the information needed to make rational decisions about their immediate safety and long-term welfare (Diamond 2007, pp. 29–31, 66, 68). Distortion and diminution of national sentiment were predictable, if regrettable, outcomes. Werth, however, once again swam against the prevailing currents. Like his compatriots, he felt the shame of defeat and was unsettled by the resultant chaos. Yet for all his distaste for militaristic flag-waving, the war had instilled in him a strong sense of national belonging and an attendant set of duties and responsibilities, to such an extent that he felt like a soldier engaged in combat: I am once again finding in myself the soul, the torpor, and the passions of a soldier. . . . I am sleepy, hungry, and full of certainties. The war of 1914 was timid in its goals, modestly territorial, modestly economic. At stake this time are the totality of humanity and the totality of human beings. (Werth 1992, p. 74)

Werth’s disarmingly simple language articulates a keen distinction between the chauvinistic patriotism that fueled the slaughter of the First World War and the issues at stake in France’s confrontation with Nazi Germany. While clearly eschewing the jingoistic nationalism so evident in the propaganda of the First World War era, he found himself donning the national uniform, as it were, to defend a certain idea of humanity against the Nazis. The passage cited earlier is only one of a series of reaffirmations of national belonging and national sentiment: for Werth in 1940, it was not a matter of determining whether such and such individual or group was authentically “French” or “non-French,” but of defending principles, institutions, and behaviors consonant with the ideals of the French Republic. Werth articulated the stakes of France’s collective existence more clearly in comparing the state of affairs in the summer of 1940 with that of the First World War era: The French were hopeful in 1914 and in 1920. And this collapse: I can just imagine that in a few weeks some upstanding moralists will attribute the defeat to the abandonment of the earth, the penchant for facility, and indifference to work. It seems to me that France, in the most basic sense, has ceased to think. The France that has been hypnotized by Hitler or Stalin has stopped thinking for itself. When a people does not yet or no longer think, a Hitler or a Stalin thinks in its place. Will Hitler allied with Stalin absorb Europe and France with the consent of this sort of French citizen . . .? . . . since 1930, out of either admiration or horror, a part of France is in a state of hypnosis in the face of a brutalized Europe. (Werth 1992, pp. 89–90)

In lamenting France’s failure to think for itself or even to think at all, Werth reiterates the trope of personification central to Michelet’s national epic of the French people’s

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centuries-long quest for freedom and social justice: “France is a person” (Petitier 2008, p. 10). On the one hand, Werth rejects the nostalgic, agrarian, and provincial notions of French national identity promoted by Vichy’s “upstanding moralists,” who, as we have noted, blamed the disaster of 1940 on the Republic’s abandonment of tradition and authority and on the influence of “non-French” elements spread by Jews, Communists, and Free masons. On the other hand, he warns, the people who fail to associate the French nation with any specific political countenance whatsoever end up accepting the image most comfortable to them. Werth thus embraces a national integrity that can ward off not only the reactionary doctrines of Vichy’s National Revolution, but also the oppressive ideologies of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Although he recognizes France’s identity as being plural, resulting from meetings with other nations and cultures, Werth realizes that resistance to domination cannot ultimately dispense with the collective reality of the nation and the legal institutions of the Republic. For all of Werth’s lucid observation and soul-searching, this assertion of a national integrity refusing subservience to the German invaders and their Nazi ideology was not simply the result of intellectual analysis: it was prompted by witnessing dishonorable relations with the German military forces and subservience to the new order brutally imposed on the French nation. The woman who sheltered Werth and his wife in her comfortable home near the Loire River also warmly welcomed German soldiers into her home, first with wine and then with champagne, as their convoys took total control of the area. Laments Werth: “Hitler was taking possession of France” (Werth 1992, p. 78). As his host and her friends scoff, Werth concludes: “I am no longer in France” (Werth 1992, p. 80). Although, unlike other refugees still suffering from lack of food, water, medicine, and shelter, he and his wife found safety and sustenance amid the mayhem, Werth felt humiliation on observing all sorts of shameful behaviors. Acts of looting were committed not only by the German invaders, but also by French civilians and even French soldiers. Several of Werth’s compatriots saw the German route of France as an opportunity to settle scores with their political enemies. Oblivious to the plight of France, his host treated the Germans like welcome tourists and boasted of representing France after having a private discussion with a German colonel who spoke proudly of having personally killed twelve Senegalese prisoners: for Werth, her case illustrates how many French citizens allowed themselves to be contaminated by Nazi ideology. Having obtained the necessary fuel and information, Werth left his bourgeois host to return to the little farming village that had previously provided shelter and which now enabled him to make do without compromising his integrity. Werth thus describes a welling up of his national sentiment: When I returned from the Far East, I didn’t feel surprised to be back in Marseilles and in France. But in coming to Chapelon from Douciers, I really felt I was back in my native land. The feeling was so strong that I it surprised me somewhat. (Werth 1992, pp. 122–3)

The term “native land” is revealing here: it clearly affirms national belonging, an attachment not to a land and a people exclusive of all others, but to a certain idea of humanity embodied by a manner of living in society that was radically altered when

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the civil authority of the French Republic collapsed and gave way to the German occupation. Werth experienced the Occupation tangibly in the discomfiting reality of the Wehrmacht soldiers who passed through the little farming village of Chapelon where he had finally felt himself to be back in France: they entered where they pleased, searching, requisitioning, and rifling through the most personal possessions. His humiliating powerlessness brings out an acute sense of national belonging: We knew that we were under their thumb, but in this instant we feel it inside our skin. They searched through the house and left without saying anything or even looking at us. I don’t need a dictionary to define the difference between force and authority. I am nothing more than a man in a captive tribe. (p. 124)

Seeing German soldiers literally as well as figuratively dominating this French village made Werth’s sense of national identity appear as a palpable reality: though aspiring to universal humanity, he was, in fact, confined to the reality of a “captive tribe.” Similarly, Werth reflects on the actual consequences of refusing to engage in military resistance to the German invasion that swept over France and threatening to eliminate autonomous thought and culture. The anarchists that Werth had heard claiming they did not care if the Germans entered Paris had been blind to the real stakes of the conflict with Hitler’s legions: failing to assume institutional control of national affairs and refusing to resist the imposition of an iniquitous foreign order ultimately makes one subservient to racism, injustice, and oppression. Werth thus affirms the nation as an indispensable civic, political, and even human responsibility. Yet the precise character of national belonging and national sentiment prove problematical. Before the catastrophe of May–June 1940, observes Werth, many French had loudly proclaimed a nationalistic patriotism all the while denouncing numerous supposed failures and betrayals. At the time of the armistice, he like many others experienced no little confusion, since contradictory information from a variety of sources gave him the impression that there seemed to be not one, but three de facto governments for France: one in London, another at the Kommandantur in Paris, and yet another in Clermont-Ferrand. In acknowledging his own individual disarray and France’s collective confusion, Werth ironically observes: “We are at the bottom. We have sunk to the bottom. This is the time to reinvent patriotism, to redefine a sense of national belonging. What a fine opportunity: the proper, respectable people no longer have such a sentiment” (Werth 1992, p. 135). Werth thus wants to reinvent a patriotism stripped of the chauvinism ostentatiously displayed by those intent mainly on defending an unjust social order: patriotism, rediscovered by Werth in a provincial village, must resist Nazi oppression. Written in the summer of 1940, 33 jours (33 Days) poses questions that would haunt the French throughout the Occupation and for years after. As they willy-nilly came into increasing contact with the Germans in their daily lives, practical concerns suddenly began to prove more urgent and problematical. While they anxiously sought food, fuel, employment, and safe passage, they were, whether they acknowledged it or not, faced with a number of vexing questions. What was acceptable and what was

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dishonorable? What was human, dignified, and polite as opposed to that which was obsequious, self-interested, cowardly, or indiscrete? At the end of the day, history was made manifest in seemingly mundane matters in which national belonging proved to be an ineluctable reality (cf. Fogg 2009, pp. xiv, 4, and 18). Edward Berenson and Vincent Duclert have astutely observed (2011, pp. 1–2) that as a “worldview and way of organizing and understanding history . . . having developed in history, the Republic was constructed by history.” Such was eminently the case for Némirovsky and Werth, whose attitudes evolved in response to specific historical circumstances. Both were Jewish intellectuals objectively targeted by the anti-Semitism already rife under the Third Republic, particularly in the 1930s. Anti-Semitism would gain unprecedented purchase while taking on particularly sinister forms under Vichy, beginning immediately after the creation of the regime on July 10, 1940. Although we find virtually nothing explicit on the subject either in Némirovsky’s wartime fiction or in Werth’s 33 Days, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that, while distancing them from Vichy’s organic construction of national identity along bloodlines, religion, race, and ethnicity, their fragile status as Jews led them to defend allegiance to the French nation according to the ideals of the French Republic. Steven Englund (2011, pp. 281–2) has observed that the Third Republic was hostile to the various political movements organized around anti-Semitism, and that, conversely, major anti-Semitic political organizations were invariably marked by their virulent opposition to the Republic. Action Française provides a revealing case in point: constituting on the one hand the “backbone of the Jew-hating movement in the Hexagon,” Charles Maurras’ newspaper and disciples clearly spearheaded the onslaught on the Republic and inspired the explicitly anti-Republican policies and discourse of Vichy’s French state (Englund 2011, pp. 284 and 286). After all was said and done, it was the judicial institutions and the political leaders of the Third Republic that had vindicated Dreyfus and given a prominent role to Jews in government, to the point of electing a Jewish Premier in the person of Léon Blum. Similarly, Englund (2011, p. 283) notes that “a great many French Jews saw the era after 1906—culminating in 1914 with the Jewish philosopher Henri Bergson’s election to the French Academy—as a golden age.” For both Némirovsky and Werth, individual ethical quandaries were grounded in the historical situation of the French nation. Just as Némirovsky depicts private lives seemingly isolated from collective destinies yet suddenly disrupted and redefined by an unexpected rendezvous with history, so Werth observes amid the shambles of defeat: “And never had individual destinies, as they were in this war, been more closely tied to what we call history. Our lives are made of waiting, deep anxiety, and time that seems to drag on and on” (Werth 1992, pp. 154–5). Neither Werth nor Némirovsky was unaware of the “contradictions, repudiations, and episodes of violence” pointing to a significant distance “between republican discourse and authoritarian republican practice” (Berenson and Duclert 2011, pp. 2–3). On the contrary, their war narratives testify amply to such tensions. Yet the brutal historical reality of the military defeat, the civilian exodus, and the Occupation unmasked the notions of international world citizenship and of apolitical quietism as untenable dreams, if not total illusions. As Berenson and Duclert (2011, p. 6) point out, the ideologies and regimes that challenged

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the legitimacy of the French Republic at various pivotal crises facing France from the Revolution up until the present day most often did not offer palatable alternatives. Such was clearly the case during the onset of the Second World War and the German occupation of France, when it was the propaganda of Axis powers and the Vichy regime that were heaping scorn on the Third Republic, accused of betraying France’s putatively organic essence by allowing the ideals of 1789, anticlericalism, and “nonFrench” elements such as Jews, Communists, and Free-Masons to govern the country. Without removing all that remained problematical, the debacle of May–June 1940 and the ensuing Occupation made national belonging and national sentiment into tangible, ineluctable realities in the Second World War era writings of Irène Némirovsky and Léon Werth.

References Berenson, E. and Duclert, V. (2011). “Introduction: Transatlantic Histories of France,” in E. Berenson, V. Duclerc, and C. Prochasson (eds), The French Republic: History, Values, and Debates. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Burrin, P. (1995). La France à l’heure allemande. Paris: Seuil. Diamond, H. (2007). Fleeing Hitler. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Englund, S. (2011). “Antisemitism, Judeophobia, and the Republic,” in E. Berenson, V. Duclerc, and C. Prochasson (eds), The French Republic: History, Values, and Debates. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Fogg, S. (2009). The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Heuré, G. (2006). L’Insoumis. Paris: Viviane Hamy. Kaspi, A. (1997). Les Juifs pendant l’Occupation. Paris: Seuil. Loubes, O. (2009). “Ernest Lavisse, ‘l’instituteur national.’” 1500 ans d’histoires de France. Les Collections de l’Histoire, No. 44, July–September. Némirovsky, I. (2000). “Le spectateur,” in Dimanche. Paris: Stock. —(2004a).“La nuit en wagon,” in Destinées et autres nouvelles. Pin-Balma: Sables. —(2004b). Suite française. Paris: Denoël. Petitier, P. (2008). “Introduction,” in Jules Michelet (ed.), Histoire de France: choix de textes présentés par Paule Petitier. Paris: Flammarion. Philipponnat, O. and Lienhart, P. (2007). La vie d’Irène Némirovsky. Paris: Grasset-Denoël. Weiss, J. (2005). Irène Némirovsky. Paris: Éditions du Félin. Werth, L. (1992). 33 jours. Paris: Viviane Hamy.

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Remembering Oradour and Schirmeck: Struggles of Regional Memory and National Commemoration Elizabeth Vlossak

Introduction: A tale of two lieux de mémoire On Tuesday, January 13, 1953, the French newspaper Le Franc-Tireur ran two main front-page stories. The first, “Bordeaux: The Oradour Trial will take place,” was the latest update on the much-anticipated trial of members of the Waffen-SS division Das Reich who had been responsible for the massacre of 642 civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane in June 1944. The second article, “Metz: The affair of the Schirmeck camp, where so many Alsatian réfractaires were tortured,” dealt with the upcoming trial of Karl Buck, the notorious commander of the Nazi “reeducation camp” of Vorbruck, located in the Alsatian town of Schirmeck. Although the two trials were taking place concurrently, the decision of the editors of the Franc-Tireur to publish these two competing stories, side by side, without prioritizing one over the other, is nonetheless surprising. By 1953, Oradour-sur-Glane was considered France’s “martyred village”: a specific, local event had been elevated to the status of a site of national memory and commemoration. Justice was being demanded not only by the survivors, their families, and the local community, but also by the entire nation. Less well known was the fate that had befallen Alsace and Moselle after the provinces were annexed by the Nazis in June 1940. The camp of Schirmeck was the site of a regional memory of the war largely excluded from the national narrative. What the articles in the Franc-Tireur illustrate are, in fact, two parts of an entangled history. During the Nazi annexation, over 130,000 Alsatian and Mosellan men had been forced to serve in the German Wehrmacht and SS divisions, and thirteen of them had been involved in the Oradour atrocity. These Frenchmen were now being tried in Bordeaux. However, Alsatians and Mosellans had themselves been subjected, for four-and-a-half years, to the brutality of the Nazi regime. When the trial finally took place, the Alsatian forced conscripts, referred to in Alsace and Moselle as Malgré-nous (“in spite of ourselves”) received sentences ranging from life in prison to twenty years of hard labor. The verdict was met with widespread outrage. For the survivors of Oradour and the people of the Limousin, the sentence

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did not reflect the severity of the crime. For the inhabitants of Alsace and Moselle, however, the verdict had been shockingly harsh: they had expected the Malgré-nous to be declared not responsible for the massacre, and thus rehabilitated within the national community. Widespread protests ensued: in Strasbourg, the war memorial in the Place de la République was shrouded in black, and political and religious leaders throughout the region organized strikes and demonstrations. Only the local Communist Party openly supported the court’s decision. Fearful that anger would turn more violent and result in the rise of Alsatian autonomism, the French president granted amnesty to the former forced conscripts (Rioux 1984; Vonau 2003). In response to this decision, the Limousins argued that they had been abandoned by the state, and that the economically stronger, more conservative departments along the Rhine had been privileged over the poorer, Communistsupporting region. Yet the government’s decision also failed to provide a satisfactory solution for the reintegration of the Malgré-nous into the national collective. What resulted was a competitive victimhood pitting the veterans of forced conscription and, by extension, the entire region of Alsace and Moselle, against the inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane and the rest of the Limousin. The Bordeaux Trial of 1953, far from helping France come to terms with its past, exacerbated regional tensions and posed an immediate threat to national cohesion. But public responses during and after the trial, and in particular its politicization by rival groups, highlight a much larger problem that France has faced since 1945: how to reconcile various lived experiences and collective memories with a unifying historical narrative of the Second World War that promotes national cohesion. This ongoing search for a “usable past” and the attempts to overcome regional differences for the national good can be explored by analyzing the history of memorial culture in Oradour-sur-Glane and Schirmeck. While the Franc-Tireur reported on the unfolding of events related to Nazi crimes committed at Oradour and the Schirmeck camp, the sites themselves, and their evolution since the end of the war, offer historians a window into the ongoing process of negotiating regional and national histories, in particular those that are in direct conflict with one another, or that threaten national identity and unity. It is at these sites that we can also observe how history interacts with memory and commemoration, and how historical sites become sites of memory. The two case studies also reveal that it is not always clear whose memory these sites reflect, what the sites intend to commemorate, and who the intended audience actually is. In the effort to construct an inclusive history that also integrates regional accounts that may contradict or at least challenge the national narrative, the meaning of a site of memory may, in fact, be altered. This involves a delicate negotiation between individual memories, a larger collective memory, the goals of political and special-interest groups, and the needs of the state. “Competitive memory” manifests itself at both the local and national levels, and efforts to overcome these divisions and establish a more unified memory of the war can, in fact, exclude the very people who are being commemorated. Oradour-sur-Glane and Schirmeck, as specific lieux de mémoire, ultimately illustrate the problems of place particularity, most notably the ongoing process of preserving the particular in the face of changing notions of collective identity and belonging.

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Oradour-sur-Glane: From the particular to the universal In the department of Haute-Vienne, in the region of Limousin, 22 km north-west of the city of Limoges, lie the ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane. They have been preserved as a reminder of the horrors that befell the village’s inhabitants on a sunny Saturday in June 1944. Four days after the D-Day landings, a unit of approximately 200 soldiers from the Der Führer unit of the Waffen-SS division Das Reich, were en route to Normandy to fight the advancing Allied troops. The unit drove into Oradour, rounded up and shot the men, then imprisoned the women and children in the church, which they set ablaze. After the shops and homes had been looted, the village was left to burn. In total, 642 people lost their lives, including 207 children, some of whom had come from neighboring villages to attend school that morning. Five people, including one young boy, managed to escape the massacre, and others survived because they had been away for the day. News of the savage, merciless annihilation of the town spread quickly, and the tragedy of Oradour instantly became a rallying call to the French people to resist the Nazi occupiers in the final months of the war. A month after the massacre, the regional administration chose to rebuild the town outside the ruins, which were to remain untouched, and the Vichy government undertook the task of turning Oradour into “sacred ground” and a site of pilgrimage (Fouché 2005, p. 4). After the liberation of France in October 1944, the provisional government confirmed its commitment to preserving the site. A year later, President Charles de Gaulle paid his respects to the victims of the atrocity by visiting the ruins, and the state issued a commemorative stamp depicting the now-iconic image of the village’s church in flames. In 1946, the ruins were classified as a historic site. Oradour-sur-Glane had become France’s “martyred village.” But the site was also highly politicized, as rival parties, as well as the Catholic Church, vied for control over commemoration practices, and municipal, regional, and national agencies competed over the management of the site (Farmer 1999, pp. 8–15). This instrumentalization of the tragedy sat uncomfortably with the people of Oradour. Their growing resentment, in particular toward the French government’s use of the site as a means of strengthening the Republic and of renewing national cohesion, was exacerbated in 1953 by the Bordeaux Trial. By granting amnesty to the Alsatian soldiers who had participated in the massacre, the state, the people of Oradour felt, had betrayed them: the memory of their dead had been sacrificed for the greater good of the nation. In protest, the National Association of the Families of the Martyrs of Oradour (or ANFMOG) returned the flag of the Légion d’Honneur, and in order to preserve and protect their own memory of the tragedy, the people of Oradour withdrew from official commemorative practices. Over the next few decades, the signs marking the destroyed village’s various buildings faded, erosion softened the jagged edges of the ruins, and the witnesses, along with their private memories, began to disappear. The political climate also changed as the Cold War thawed and the Communist Party lost its hold on the region. By the 1970s, tensions between the ANFMOG and municipal and regional authorities had also begun to ease. Moreover, fears that the ruins had lost their power to evoke the horrors that had taken place there, and that the memory of the massacre would

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eventually be lost, also prompted a reevaluation of the purpose of the site and of how it should best be commemorated. In 1989, the general council of the Haute-Vienne, with the approval of the ANFMOG and the municipality of Oradour, initiated efforts to create an interpretive center focused on educating the public about what had happened, and inviting visitors to reflect on universal peace.1 The French state had also become more interested in renewing its ties to local history and memory (Gerson 2003, p. 287): in 1995, François Mitterrand visited the village and its ruins, the first president of the Fifth Republic to set foot on the site. The state further solidified its relationship with the ANFMOG by financing nearly a quarter of the cost of building the new memorial center (Le Monde, May 12, 1999). The Centre de la Mémoire d’Oradour-sur-Glane was inaugurated on July 16, 1999, by President Jacques Chirac and the Minister of Culture Catherine Trautmann. The 3,000 square meter center, built below ground across the street from the ruined village, houses a permanent exhibition, an archive, and a documentation center, as well as a teaching and learning center. It also organizes temporary exhibitions, conferences, and colloquia. An estimated 300,000 people make a “pilgrimage” to Oradour each year, a third of whom visit the center’s permanent exhibition.2 Visitors access the ruins by walking through the center, past panels providing information about the massacre, accounts by the survivors and other witnesses, a description of the town, and the history of the memorial. At the entrance to the village, they are left to explore the ruins on their own; here, a few discreet plaques designate what a building had once housed, or what horrors had taken place at a specific location. The creation of Centre de la Mémoire coincided with a larger, national trend in which France was finally coming to terms with its past by addressing the Vichy years head on. By providing information based on the most recent research on the massacre,3 the center also corrected many of the inaccuracies, misinterpretations, and myths that surrounded Oradour and shaped the collective memory of the massacre. Most notably, in attempting to answer the question “why Oradour,” the memorial places the atrocity within the broader context not only of France’s wartime experience, but also of Nazi-occupied Europe. In the permanent exhibition, for example, visitors learn that in Belarus, from 1941 to 1944, 209 towns and 9,200 villages were burned, and that over 2 million inhabitants (a quarter of the region’s population) lost their lives, as the victims of Nazi barbarity. Oradour was not punished, as many have argued, as a reprisal for its association with the Resistance. Nor was it an entirely unique case. This does not mean that the crime is any less horrific, or that Oradour does not deserve to be remembered. On the contrary, Oradour can help us better understand not only Nazism and the Second World War, but also the nature of war and violence, genocide, and the need to promote peace and protect human rights. The Centre de la Mémoire is committed to keeping the memory of Oradour alive by giving it back its history, and by making the massacre relevant to future generations. According to the center, Oradour should not be distinguished from more recent atrocities, and the center encourages its visitors to reflect on the crimes against humanity committed in Srebrenica, Rwanda, and Kosovo (France-Soir, July 16, 1999; Marguénaud and Pauliat 2009). The creation of the Centre de la Mémoire has ushered in a new phase in the evolution of Oradour (Meyer 2006, p. 29). In particular, the center has reshaped the relationship

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between local and national memorial culture: it reconfirms the importance of Oradour in French collective memory by broadening its relevance to reflect an increasingly diverse French population, and by situating the site within larger European and international contexts.4 Place particularity has given way to universality: Oradoursur-Glane is now the “symbol of all massacres” (Le Monde, May 12, 1999). At its opening in 1999, many visitors approved of the new ways in which Oradour was being remembered and commemorated (Baldeweck 1999b). But others were more critical, insisting that Oradour was unique and should continue to be portrayed as such, at the risk of leading to a “trivialization of Oradour.” One local resident complained that the center was too lavish (it cost 9.38 million euros to build), and, according to him, the permanent exhibition contained factual inaccuracies, while important details had been left out. The official history of Oradour that was now on display did not conform to this individual’s own memories or understanding of the massacre. Like many sites of memory, Oradour continues to be a site of intense emotion. The directors of the Centre de la Mémoire have had to negotiate a careful path between acknowledging the experiences, memories, and emotions within the community of Oradour, and not letting them derail efforts to disentangle memory from history.

Schirmeck: Protecting the particular by promoting European unity The way in which the Centre de la Mémoire depicts the Alsatians who participated in the massacre is also a radical departure from how they were originally portrayed at Oradour. Rather than vilifying the men, the center’s permanent exhibition presents a more nuanced and even-handed interpretation that highlights the complexity of Alsace’s relationship with Oradour. Visitors learn about the fate of Alsace and Moselle at the hands of the Nazis after the fall of France in 1940, and the realities of life in the annexed regions, including forced conscription. The exhibition also reveals that forty-nine Alsatian and Mosellan refugees were living in Oradour in 1944: of them, only the eight-year-old Lorrainer Roger Godfrin survived the massacre. In fact, there were Alsatians and Mosellans throughout the region, working for the Vichy regime, as well as fighting in the maquis (Ouest-France, July 17, 1999). Despite providing a more complicated narrative of the Oradour tragedy, a clear distinction is still made between those who were killed in the massacre, and those who were responsible for it. The young Alsatian recruits may have been forced into the Waffen-SS against their will, but victimhood is reserved for the inhabitants of Oradour only. As is made clear in the section of the permanent exhibition devoted to the Bordeaux Trial and its aftermath, justice was ultimately not served because the Alsatians, while acknowledging the suffering of the Limousins, still insisted that they had suffered equally, if not more. In the late 1990s, attempts were made to reconcile the Limousin and Alsace–Moselle, in large part through the efforts of the mayor of Oradour, Raymond Frugier, and the mayor of Strasbourg, Roland Ries, both members of the French Socialist Party. Ries, himself the son of a Malgré-nous, first visited Oradour in 1998 on the anniversary of the

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massacre (Bodin 2012). One year later, he led a delegation of Alsatian parliamentarians to participate in the official opening ceremonies of the Centre de la Mémoire, and presented the town with three sculptures by the Alsatian artist Bernard Abtey, symbols of the reconciliation between Oradour and Alsace (Baldeweck 1999a). Since then, several other mayors and Alsatian delegates have regularly visited the site, although tensions between the two regions have yet to be fully defused. Ries’ second visit coincided with an important stage in the evolution of Alsace’s own memorial culture: construction had just begun on the Mémorial de l’Alsace-Moselle in Schirmeck. According to Philippe Richert, president of the general council of BasRhin, this pedagogical center would educate the public about the Nazi annexation of Alsace and Moselle, and “put an end to the silence” that still surrounded this part of the region’s history, including its absence from school textbooks (Baldeweck 1999a). The memorial is located near the site of the former Nazi “political reeducation” camp in Schirmeck-La Broque, in the valley of the Bruche, approximately 50 km southwest of Strasbourg. Unlike the ruins of Oradour, nothing remains of the camp, which was destroyed in the early 1950s. Yet the name “Schirmeck” continues to conjure up powerful emotions among the Alsatians and Mosellans, and is central to the region’s collective memory of the years of annexation (Steegmann 2009, p. 53). Opened by the Nazis in July 1940, the Sicherungslager Vorbruck-Schirmeck became known as the “camp of the Alsatians:” it was here that recalcitrant behavior and resistance to the policies of Germanization and Nazification were punished. Between 1940 and 1944, an estimated 15,000 men and women were held at Schirmeck, some for a few days and others for several months. Political prisoners, enemies of the regime, homosexuals, and “anti-social elements” endured hard labor, hunger, harassment, bullying, and physical and psychological torture. Some prisoners were executed at Schirmeck, while others were sent to concentration camps to be killed. After the Liberation, the camp housed known and suspected collaborators, and was eventually razed by the local authorities to make room for a housing estate. Some former inmates had hoped to preserve at least part of the camp as a reminder of the horrors they had endured (Granier 1968, p. 17). But the desire to forget about the former Nazi presence in the Bruche was stronger. The buildings were also a reminder that members of the local population had been hired by the camp as technical and service personnel (Steegmann 2009, pp. 54–5), including two of the guards in the women’s camp who came from neighboring villages and had married German camp guards (Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin, 150 AL 3, “Camp de Schirmeck”). Very little is actually known about the camp. Given the uncomfortable questions that Schirmeck raises with regard to the degree of local cooperation or even collaboration with the Nazis, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been a general reluctance to engage in research that may implicate the community. How could Alsatians be remembered as victims of Nazism when many were actually complicit in Nazi crimes? A younger generation of Alsatians, as well as historians, however, has called for a more inclusive and honest approach to studying the region’s recent past. Private memories that did not conform to the region’s official narrative are being brought to light, revealing that a multitude of different wartime experiences could exist within one family (Thiebaut 2010). For example, the current mayor of Schirmeck, Frédéric Bierry,

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had an uncle who escaped being drafted into the Wehrmacht by fleeing to Vichy France, which led to the deportation of members of his family. Meanwhile, one of Bierry’s great-aunts was employed at the Schirmeck camp (Anguelova-Lavergne 2010a). A collective memory that reduces Alsace and Moselle to the status of victims of Nazi barbarity has been a form of collective amnesia, which has resulted in the region failing to “come to terms with its past” (Boswell 2008, p. 241). The “duty of memory,” which is the simple act of remembering, must make way for the “work of memory,” which requires societies to play a more active role in keeping collective memory relevant and rooted in history rather than mythology. The goal of the Mémorial d’Alsace-Moselle has been to engage in the “work of memory” through the “work of history,” but this has only been partially achieved. Although visitors are presented with fascinating information through interactive displays, the memorial does not always present a nuanced, balanced interpretation of the region’s past that takes into account all its complexities. Simply describing the policies of Nazification and how they affected the local population is not enough. While some space is devoted to local resistance networks, there are no references to collaboration (it is instead referred to as “ralliement”), and, perhaps most surprisingly, there is still only minimal information provided on the Schirmeck camp, despite the location of the memorial on this salient site of regional memory. Finally, Oradour receives only passing mention in reference to the Bordeaux Trial and its impact on the region. The permanent collection of the Mémorial d’Alsace-Moselle, in fact, places the annexation within a much longer chronology, 1871 to the 1950s, in order to highlight the region’s particularly tumultuous past. Alsace–Moselle’s wartime experience marks the culmination of seventy years of upheaval, ending with a celebration of the region’s centrality to the creation of a peaceful, united postwar Europe. Indeed, the ultimate mission of the memorial is to make Schirmeck the site of a more general history, where education and understanding will prevent future generations from repeating the mistakes of the past.5 Unlike the Centre de la Mémoire d’Oradour, however, the memorial fails to convince us of the universality of the region’s experience. There is an inherent insularity about the exhibition, which continues to assert the uniqueness of the region and, ultimately, perpetuates a collective memory based on its own sense of victimization. Nonetheless, by casting Alsace–Moselle as a victim of extreme nationalism, the Mémorial also makes a strong case for the need to promote peace and European integration. Despite the Mémorial’s weaknesses, real efforts have been made to engage in the “work of memory.” In a region where, for over sixty years, the collective memory of the war has been monopolized by the Malgré-nous, the memorial addresses primarily the fate of civilians, workers, women and children, with only one section of the exhibition devoted to the “reluctant soldiers.” The public’s response to the memorial has been generally positive, although many veterans of forced conscription and their supporters have voiced some disappointment in how little space is dedicated to the Malgré-nous (Association des Evadés et Incorporés de Force 2005). But it was the visit of President Jacques Chirac to the memorial in November 2005 that sparked a much greater controversy. Chirac had made the trip to Alsace to inaugurate the new Centre Européen des Résistants Déportés (CERD), built on the site of the former

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concentration camp of Natzweiler-Struthof, located in the Vosges mountains only 6 km from Schirmeck (Amoudruz 1995). Before making his way to NatzweilerStruthof, Chirac spent half an hour touring the Schirmeck memorial. In the memorial’s guest book he wrote that “the challenges that the French nation overcame here have made me even more committed to peace and the European project.” Veterans of forced conscription were disappointed, since they had hoped that this visit would provide the opportunity for the French head of state to finally recognize the Malgré-nous as victims of Nazism.6 Moreover, the President spent relatively little time at Schirmeck, yet took a full tour of Natzweiler-Struthof, a concentration camp in which approximately 20,000 men and women (out of 52,000) perished, but where only a small percentage of the prisoners had come from Alsace and Moselle. Chirac’s decision to honor the victims of Natzweiler-Struthof and inaugurate the CERD, coupled with his comments at Schirmeck—that the challenges had been endured by the nation, rather than the region—seemed to demonstrate the state’s continued prioritization of a national and even transnational collective memory of the war over a regional one. On the national stage, the place particularity of Schirmeck could not compete with that of Natzweiler-Struthof. The ways in which the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp and its victims have been commemorated over the years may explain why it does not have the same resonance with the Alsatian people as Schirmeck. Although very little was known about it, in 1950 “the Struthof ” (as it was referred to by the French) was designated by the French state as a historic site. Ten years later, General de Gaulle inaugurated the national memorial to the deportation of members of the French resistance there, and in 1964 the newly rebuilt barracks of “Block 1” became a museum. Over the next decade, the Struthof was adopted as a site of memory by a variety of groups, most notably the French victims of the Nazi Nacht und Nebel policy (Steegmann 2009, p. 354; Comité national pour l’érection et la conservation d’un mémorial de la déportation au Struthof 1976, pp. 10, 13, 54), and was regularly the target of neo-Nazi arson attacks. It was not until the late 1990s that historians began to disentangle the conflicting (and competing) memories and myths from the camp’s history. This resulted in a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of Natzweiler-Struthof, which formed the basis of the CERD. Similar to the Centre de la Mémoire d’Oradour, the CERD is designed as a site of information and reflection. The museum also reveals the full extent of the camp’s functions and organization, and thus places Natzweiler-Struthof within its broader transnational context: its history is the history of Nazi-occupied Europe and of the Holocaust. The Konzentrationslager Natzweiler-Struthof is one of the most visited historical sites in France (Steegmann 2009, p. 45). It is not, however, a site of memory. It certainly cannot be removed from Alsace’s history of the war, and not only because of its geographic location: the camp was built by prisoners of Schirmeck (many of whom were Alsatian and Mosellan), local inhabitants witnessed the arrival of prisoners, and local businesses and individuals benefited economically from the presence of the camp and its subcamps (Anguelova-Lavergne 2010b). But it is not only this darker side of Alsace’s wartime experience that explains Natzweiler-Struthof ’s exclusion from local memory. This was the camp of “others”: Poles, Soviets, Czechs, gypsies, Jews, and the

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French of the “interior.” Despite its own dark secrets, Schirmeck was, and continues to be for many, “the camp of the Alsatians.”

Conclusion: Place particularity and “locative thinking” Oradour-sur-Glane and Schirmeck remain salient lieux de mémoire, but their meaning and purpose have evolved significantly since 1945. In each case, local, regional, and national groups have vied for control of these sites to suit their particular political needs. The French state’s use of these sites to strengthen the nation have paradoxically weakened national unity by excluding the members of the community whose own memory is deemed worthy of serving the national interest. Oradour and Schirmeck also reveal that more recent attempts to disentangle memory from history alter how the past is remembered, and thus refashion a collective memory that, although more inclusive and historically accurate, does not always coincide with individuals’ own relationship to that past. Finally, the ongoing tensions between Alsace and the Limousin, centering on the Oradour massacre and the Bordeaux Trial, continue to threaten national unity. “Competitive memory” and “competitive victimhood” have prevented the two regions from reconciling their pasts (Rothberg 2009). But as the Centre de la Mémoire d’Oradour reminds us, Alsatians are part of the history of Oradour. Many Alsatians, however, continue to resent their automatic association with the massacre,7 even as Oradour has become a universalized site of memory. The evolution of Oradour-sur-Glane and Schirmeck as sites of memory also highlights the problems associated with place particularity—how it is constructed, how it can erode over time, and how (and why) it may be preserved. The creation of the Centre de la Mémoire d’Oradour and the Mémorial d’Alsace-Moselle in the 1990s marks a distinct shift in the concept of “place” and the role it plays in anchoring collective identities: Oradour and Schirmeck are placed within their broader trans-European (and even international) contexts. On the one hand, the new meanings ascribed to the sites appear to threaten their place particularity. On the other, by making the particular universal, the Centre and the Mémorial have attempted to preserve the sites by making them relevant to current and future generations. This could be described as “locative thinking,” what Ian Angus defines as “the thinking of the particular as it leads outward to other particulars” (Angus 2008, p. 26). This universalization may not be accepted by all, but it may stop the erosion of place particularity by avoiding the parochial selfpreservation that often only further weakens it. The deaths of the last survivors of Oradour and the last Malgré-nous will lead to a shift from a “commemorative memory” that relies on sharing and retelling by those who lived through the events, to a “cultural memory” characterized by its distance from the actual experience of those events (Assmann 1995). While this shift may allow both regions to overcome “a past that won’t pass,” (Rousso and Conan 1994) the tensions between the Limousins and the Alsatians may continue until the children of the survivors and veterans are gone (Hirsch 2012). “Locative thinking” may indeed be the only means by which this “war of memory” will find its conclusion (Blanchard and Veyrat-Masson 2008).

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Notes 1 According to the Centre’s official website (www.oradour.org/fr/content/lieu-dememoire). 2 According to data collected by the Comité Départemental du Tourisme for the year 2011. 3 In addition to Sarah Farmer’s groundbreaking work, the research of Jean-Jacques Fouché, director of the Centre from 1994 to 1999, has been especially influential. 4 Oradour nonetheless remains a distinctly French site of pilgrimage: in 2011, nearly 80 percent of visitors came from France. 5 According to the Mémorial’s official website www.memorial-alsace-moselle.com/f/ index2.html 6 Nicolas Sarkozy would eventually recognize them as victims of Nazism in 2010. 7 A proposal made by the Mayor of Schirmeck in 2006 to twin the town with Oradoursur-Glane was met with little enthusiasm, most notably from the Malgré-nous.

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Granier, J. (1968). Schirmeck: Histoire d’un camp de concentration. Strasbourg: Editions des Dernières Nouvelles. Hirsch, M. (2012). The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. Marguénaud, J.-P. and Pauliat, H. (eds) (2009). Les droits de l’homme face à la guerre: d’Oradour à Srebrenitsa. Paris: Dalloz. Meyer, H. (2006). “Le changement de la ‘culture de mémoire’ française par rapport à la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale à partir de trois ‘lieux de mémoire’: Bordeaux, Caen et Oradour-sur-Glane,” PhD dissertation, University of Bordeaux 3 and University of Augsburg. Rioux, J.-P. (1984). “Le Procès d’Oradour.” Histoire 64 (1984): 6–17. Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rousso, H. and Conan, E. (1994). Vichy. Un passé qui ne passe pas. Paris: Fayard. Steegmann, R. (2009). Le camp de Natzweiler-Struthof. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Thiebaut, J.-M. (2010). “Alphonse Irjud: Un destin alsacien.” Saisons d’Alsace 44: 102–3. Vonau, J.-L. (2003). Le procès de Bordeaux. Les Malgré-Nous et le drame d’Oradour. Strasbourg: Editions du Rhin.

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Judging a Book Town by Its Cover: Marketing French Villages du Livre Audra Merfeld-Langston

In the early 1980s, village du livre did not designate any existing space in France. Most people had never heard of a book town, let alone visited one. But today, at least ten towns throughout the Hexagon have adopted or are in the process of adopting variations of this moniker: Bécherel, Montolieu, Fontenoy-la-Joûte, Montmorillon, Cuisery, La Charité-sur-Loire, Salins-les-Bains, Ambierle, Esquelbecq, and Villerville. This Welsh innovation, created in 1961 by Richard Booth in Hay-on-Wye, had remained isolated until 1984, when Belgian businessman Noël Anselot imported the concept to continental Europe. Since then, book towns have appeared around the globe, from Canada to South Africa. France, however, has developed three times more book towns than any other country. Collectively, the French villages, villes, and cités du livre welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, who browse their bookstores, learn calligraphy, and attend cultural events. Most French book towns were created ex nihilo—the communities share few, if any, historical connections with book production, so advertising is crucial to constructing and projecting their new image. Their resultant materials demonstrate marketing strategies that rely not only on books to attract tourists but also on the promise of nostalgic encounters and an idyllic vision of rural France. Promoting this combination of physical and ideological attractions reflects national and international preoccupations, over the last several decades, with cultural practices, local heritage, and green tourism. Moreover, it demonstrates new ways in which rural spaces have become arenas for negotiating authenticity, history, and identity. In this chapter, I will analyze the “cover” French book towns present to the world via brochures and websites. How do they visually and textually project an identity that blends authentic and artificial? I will focus on Bécherel, Montolieu, and Fontenoy-la-Joûte, as they are the most firmly established. I will argue that book towns, by bridging a gap between physical spaces and abstract concepts, allow for the solidification and/or reformulation of local identity while simultaneously confirming links with a greater “French” identity based on a shared literary tradition, and also with a European and international identity founded on common cultural heritage (print culture), and on an ever-increasing tendency to form virtual communities based on shared values.

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The development of French book towns We can attribute the appearance of France’s book towns, beginning in 1989, to a combination of trends from preceding decades. First, although rural France had garnered attention off and on since the nineteenth century (evident, for example, in the popularity of regional novels, the emphasis placed on local cultures at the 1925 Decorative Arts Exhibition and the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, and the founding of the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires), it attracted particular attention throughout the 1980s as a retirement or second home destination, a nostalgic referent in presidential campaigns, as an ideal location for green tourism, and as a marker for reputed natural properties and authentic qualities. Second, the Gaston Deferre Decentralization Laws of 1982 officially divided France into administrative regions responsible for many of their own needs (fiscal, educational, developmental, etc.). And finally, print culture began to receive great media attention, thanks largely to Minister of Culture Jack Lang’s cultural democratization efforts throughout the 1980s. In 1981, the first Salon du livre de Paris took place. The same year saw the institution of the Loi Lang, which established standard prices for new books. In 1988, Mitterrand announced the building of the BNF and France celebrated its first national literary festival (La Fureur de lire). Increasingly, the government identified books as cultural products unlike others, owing to their commercial value and their status as vehicles of knowledge. Similarly, reading was considered a cultural practice unlike others, because of its perceived ability to foster social equality and grant access to other cultural practices (Pisier 1991, p. 120). This social, cultural, and political context fertilized the genesis of French book villages, as was perhaps most evident in the transformation of Bécherel in Brittany, initiated by a group of Breton families. Concerned about their children’s futures in a France that severed them from their cultural values by attempting to control regional markers of identity, they envisioned alternative lifestyles that would allow them to maintain their Breton heritage in modern society. They moved to Bécherel, a town gradually deserted over the previous decades, and developed a cultural project to revive it (see Figure 11.1). A visit to the successful Belgian book town of Redu convinced them that creating a French version would highlight Breton language, literature, and heritage as well as promote a more national and international literary heritage. From Brittany, the book town movement spread to the south in 1990, to Montolieu (Languedoc-Roussillon), population ~800. The impetus behind the project’s development also came from an outsider, Belgian Michel Braibant. A bookbinder by trade, Braibant planned to create a European conservatory of arts and professions associated with books. The international dimension and educational component thus prevailed from the beginning. Furthermore, like Brittany, Languedoc-Roussillon hosts numerous foreigners. As Braibant’s idea solidified into the Village du Livre et des Arts Graphiques, supporters focused on intertwining it with local and regional history to diversify the tourist itinerary to nearby Carcassonne and the surrounding Cathar sites. In 1996, a Lorrainer government official, a Dominican priest, and a schoolteacher founded another book town in the farming community of Fontenoy-la-Joûte, whose story closely mirrored that of Bécherel and Montolieu: desertification, crumbling buildings, and an aging population.

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Figure 11.1 Remodeled building in Bécherel housing a bookstore and a traditional Breton crêperie, photo by Audra Merfeld-Langston. The first three French book towns, then, were disparate physically, culturally, and linguistically. In the west, in a town once known for its production of linen and hemp production, Bécherel emphasized Breton language, literature, and traditions. In the south, Montolieu, once renowned for its royal cloth factory, lauded its Occitan roots and Cathar heritage. Perched atop a rocky plateau between two gorges, the town’s physical situation varies dramatically from the green fields one can see from the twelfth-century ramparts of Bécherel. In the east, tiny Fontenoy-la-Joûte (fewer than 300 inhabitants) is also the most rural, with sustained tractor traffic often providing the background music for book browsing. Tensions from the back-and-forth status of the region between France and Germany are still palpable and locals view outsiders with suspicion. Following the initial settling-in period of these first borderland French book towns, a veritable book town boom populated the Hexagon’s center, in Cuisery (Burgundy, 1999), La Charité-sur-Loire (Burgundy, 2000), Montmorillon (Poitou-Charentes, 2000), Esquelbecq (Nord Pas de Calais, 2007), and Ambierle (Rhône-Alpes, 2007). Villerville (Basse-Normandie) and Salins-les-Bains (Franche-Comté) have attempted

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to follow suit. Simultaneously, book villages began appearing throughout Europe. These developments follow in the wake of a push, at the European level, to encourage rural tourism, in part as a means of unification, for as the Tourism Unit of the European Commission reports, tourism “can be enormously effective in building the citizens’ Europe which is the true goal of all of our pro-European efforts: Europe is no longer a matter solely of institutions, regulations and treaties, but has become an element of ordinary people’s lives” (Von Moltke 1994, n.p.). Indeed, the transformation of these towns has stimulated local economic and demographic development, in spite of the initial skepticism expressed by the towns’ native inhabitants. Abandoned homes are renovated to accommodate new residents (forty-six homes in Montolieu, from 1990 to 2000, for instance), which means work for local electricians, masons, painters, and carpenters. Real estate prices have risen, to the point that young booksellers have difficulty affording homes in some towns. Locals have opened cafés, restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, and bookstores. Montolieu’s elementary school is no longer in danger of closing, as it was prior to the town becoming a book town. Viewed from this perspective, the book town projects have been models of sustainable rural development. However, the proliferation of French book towns presents paradoxes, too. First, towns with no (or tenuous) ties to book production use print culture to valorize and render more visible the local—books on regional themes dominate shelf space, local wines bear village du livre labels (see Figure 11.2), visiting writers tout the region. Simultaneously, rural France is presented as a place for global exchanges— events focus on international authors, shops sell books in other languages, brochures are often bi- or trilingual—and a place in which to acknowledge shared international heritage associated with print culture. Second, the generative impetus behind—and the models for—France’s book villages came from outsiders. Thus, ironically, to “save” one identity (that of the original community), outsiders impose a new identity that

Figure 11.2 Montolieu’s Village du livre vintage: Blending the local with print culture, photo by Audra Merfeld-Langston.

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they must market to potential audiences and to the native inhabitants. Third, the villages’ new “covers” are based on a place-based technology that is itself, some people fear, becoming obsolete, as digital technologies have changed both reading practices and methods of purchasing books.

Designing a cover La Charité-sur-Loire bookseller Christian Vallériaux noted that as both business people and cultural agents, entrepreneurs must “sell” their villages du livre (quoted in Branchu 2001, p. 14). But to whom are they selling their new “cover”? The expansive target audience includes bibliophiles, nature and produits du terroir enthusiasts, gastronomes, history buffs, the young, the old, French and foreign tourists, and locals. To sell the fabricated image of book towns, marketers focus on three themes: books, engagement with the written word, and heritage. This combination effectively integrates the realms of physical space (the towns and specific sites within them) and abstract space (notions of French literary culture and of local/regional/national/ international identities). Thus, these villages are simultaneously anchored in the “unique”—websites and brochures are saturated with the adjective—local, and tied to transnational concerns and trends.

Books Books constitute a significant revenue source and a new raison d’être for France’s villages du livre. Advertisements promote them, textually and visually, as aesthetically pleasing physical objects, as vehicles that transmit ideas, and as the end products of traditional craftsmanship. First, books are marketed as physical objects to every taste and budget—photos and descriptions portray both inexpensive paperbacks and luxurious collectors’ items. Pamphlets and websites list the genres and languages in which stores specialize. Importantly, though, most books are not new.1 As a brochure for Montolieu notes, each book has already “lived its life”; we can imagine the town as an “immense book cemetery,” but one that is paradoxical in that the “tenants only rest there temporarily” (GLM n.d.).2 Many interviewees in my study confirmed the attractiveness of possessing items that had “histories” as physical objects, and that may once have been owned by someone famous. They also commented on the visual, tactile, and olfactory sensations associated with handling books. Second, publicity materials champion the abstract pleasures associated with reading practices and literary events. One brochure explains, “. . . these professionals invite you to discover fecund lands where books are kings, offering themselves to curious readers hungry for knowledge and dreams” (HB Création 2010, n.p.). Although reading is generally considered a solitary activity, participating in festivals such as La Fête du Livre and La Nuit du Livre (both publicized in Bécherel’s brochure) make it a means of forging social cohesion. The villages’ events throughout the year focus on international writers and literature, thereby solidifying their links to the transnational.

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Third, marketing materials present books as the culmination of a historical tradition (and mechanical process) of creating an object made of inks, pages, bindings, and covers. Books’ status as part of a shared physical patrimoine is visible in images that highlight the métiers du livre. We see book presses, typewriter keys, and printing machines, along with artisans at work. Many images of the latter eschew identifying characteristics, such as faces, in favor of close-ups of binding materials, paintbrushes poised over illuminations, and hands holding calligraphy pens. Individuality is superseded by a skill set that belongs to an international heritage. Once prolifically practiced, some such art forms are now endangered: Jean-Pierre Gouy, who spent more than a decade practicing his trade in Fontenoy-la-Joûte, is one of seven French master papermakers left to practice a specific centuries-old method of making paper (Gouy 2004). With this in mind, it seems wrong to call the towns “cemeteries,” because French book towns have become cultural centers in which tradition is preserved and transmitted to others.

Engagement with the written word Over the last several decades, French government concerns about the country’s reading habits and skills have remained paramount as globalization and digital technologies have altered cultural practices. The years preceding the appearance of France’s first book town were marked by government efforts to combat what it considered a general reading crisis. This was particularly troublesome for a nation with a distinctive literary culture that is intimately linked with French identity.3 I have argued elsewhere that “books . . ., literature and literacy, are central to subjecthood. Thus, encouraging the public to read provides a means of cultivating more knowledgeable, responsible, and engaged citizens—both within and beyond France’s borders.” When people do not read, they fail to fully engage as citizens of the French Republic.4 Marketing materials promote book towns as places that can combat such “dangers.” Fontenoy-la-Joûte’s website asserts that the town “encourages reading by helping people rediscover old books and by giving newer books a chance” (Fontenoy-laJoûte 2012). The emphases here are on rediscovering a “lost” heritage as well as on supporting contemporary authors and, in turn, enlisting their endorsement. Regional literature, writers, and languages are particularly esteemed in the villages du livre. Montolieu celebrates Occitan poetry, Bécherel holds Breton language classes, and several of its bookstores bear Breton names. Booksellers in all these towns become specialists in books about their respective regions. Conversely, contemporary writers endorse the towns. For instance, Élise Fischer, who writes fiction set in Lorraine, has actively participated in Fontenoy-la-Joûte’s cultural program for years, now lives there, and has published a bilingual French/English novella, Meurtre au village du livre, set in the town. Book towns have an interest in encouraging reading for their own economic interests, but advertisements express loftier philosophies about democratizing access to culture and increasing public participation in literary activities. Fontenoy-la-Joûte’s website states that “Unlike a concert or theater, entrance to the village is free and you can come and stroll around as a family” (Fontenoy-la-Joûte 2012). The website

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situates the book town “at the crossroads of popular culture and savant culture.” These remarks aim at all-inclusiveness and reflect French values associated with the family. In addition, they imply that this cultural venue is easily accessible. Many of France’s other book towns employ similarly comprehensive marketing strategies. This conflicts with reality: most of them are accessible only by car, infrequent buses, or expensive taxi rides. Social class is a hidden entry fee—visitors must have the financial means to get there and the cultural curiosity and capital to motivate them to seek out these villages.

Local heritage Two main criteria in selecting towns to become book villages are their location and physical appeal. Advertisements particularly highlight local scenery and heritage, thereby reinforcing the idea that rural France is worth visiting—if not for books, then for lessons in French history or for an idyllic escape from city life. Fontenoy-la-Joûte’s website notes, “One doesn’t hesitate to enter a barn transformed into a bookstore and to browse the shelves.” Locals are proud of their town’s architecture, which appears in the town’s logo; it portrays a house with a rounded arch, typical of the Lorraine region (see Figure 11.3). The covers of an open book constitute the roof. Indeed, many of this village’s bookstores are located in former barns, whose original features (such as haylofts) are still intact and repurposed. As with other villages du livre, the town’s individual characteristics were central to its original candidacy as a book town. Moreover, its rurality accentuates the concentration of booksellers, artisans, and bibliophiles. Montolieu also symbolically integrates print culture and local heritage. In its logo, a white open book is set against a silhouette of the town, with its Saint André Church clearly discernable. Photos throughout its 2008 brochure feature a panorama of the town, scenic areas, museum exhibits, books, and materials used for book production. In photos and words, local heritage blends with print culture. The accompanying text first situates Montolieu geographically in terms of location—in the foothills of the Black Mountain, near Carcassonne—and in terms of its “unique” climate (a mixture of Atlantic and Mediterranean influences), its rocky physical features, its vineyards, and its capitelles (stone shelters formerly used by shepherds). The capitelles, however, are visible only if one leaves the paved streets of Montolieu for the footpaths in the surrounding countryside. The inclusion of these images in the brochure encourages visitors to venture beyond book-related commerce and raises the question of where the “true” Montolieu is located—within or beyond the town’s walls. Bécherel has used the same basic brochure design for at least eight years. Its cover features a reproduction of an oil painting by Breton artist Sophie Busson. Yellowed handwritten pages peek out from massive, haphazardly stacked books. In the easternmost regions of a large map outlining Brittany rises a three-dimensional Bécherel, recognizable by its church spire. Just beyond the town, green forests and farmland slope to flatness. The monumental tomes dwarfing the map bear the names of regional authors (Mahé de la Bourdonnais, Louis Guilloux, Auguste Brizeux, and Jules Verne). Despite the ancientness of the books, the map, and Bécherel, this symbiotic

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Figure 11.3 Fontenoy-la-Joûte’s logo integrates local heritage and print culture, photo by Audra Merfeld-Langston. relationship between the town and books is new, for Bécherel, like most book towns, has no particular historical links to print culture. But Busson, who often paints “invented landscapes” and “improbable libraries,” (Busson 2010), portrays Bécherel as an alluring village that has long served as a repository for Breton literary heritage. This rural town is the only one represented on the map, sending the message that the heart of Brittany lies not in Nantes, Rennes, or Brest, but rather in tiny Bécherel. Overall, marketing materials for French book towns closely integrate the physical and abstract elements of books, reading and writing practices, book-related professions, and local heritage. Brochures and websites downplay commercialism and instead focus largely on the past and on the power of nostalgia to attract consumers—in both imaginary and specific places.5 Here, then, we can detect a fear of loss—of traditional knowledge, of forgotten books, of artistry, of local customs, of regional languages. In this, the book town trend relates to similar endeavors throughout the country to revive the past. As Siân Reynolds suggests, “. . . it certainly looks as if the vanishing of the ‘real thing’ has prompted an effort to reproduce it in some form: the replica fishing vessel, the new ‘local’ cheese based on modern technology. The reconstruction of the past in the form of heritage sends a clear signal that it is not easily recoverable by

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other means” (Reynolds 2000, p. 25). The towns and the merchandise within them are on display for public consumption, by a vast international, particularly European, audience, and also by the locals.

Sibling rivalry . . . and support Historically, rivalry and individualism have characterized relationships between French book towns, even prompting some of them to trademark their names (“Cité du Livre,” “Village du Livre et des Arts Graphiques,” “Ville du Livre”) and threaten other towns with lawsuits for trademark infringement.6 Many entrepreneurs assert that towns such as Cuisery or La Charité-sur-Loire are not “real” book towns because the attractions are concentrated in one neighborhood of a larger town rather than spread throughout a village. Traditionally, these communities have shunned mutual promotion, doubting its viability, and citing unsuccessful past attempts, rampant individualism, and concerns about an oversaturation of villages du livre in France.7 Even though the European Union sought to link book towns, in part by creating the International Organisation of Book Towns (IOB) in 2000 following a two-year study of five European book towns, France has been reticent about sharing its “knowledge, skills, and know-how” (one of the IOB’s aims) with others. Montolieu, one of the original towns in the study, has not been a member for years. No French book towns belong to the organization, which currently includes members from sixteen countries.8 Only recently—in April 2010—have French book towns ventured into joint advertising by publishing the brochure “Villes, Cités et Villages du Livre en France” (HB Création 2010). Founders of the Bécherel project, who initiated the brochure, explain on their website, “We must coordinate our activities and communication with other book towns. . . . We have to avoid the over-multiplication of book towns so they don’t suffocate one another. However, a book route could link them.”9 Tourists do seek out the book town trail, as do some booksellers, artisans, bibliophiles, and residents who have lived in multiple book towns.10 Thus, these villages can benefit from mutual promotion. After decades of competition, book town developers are finally allowing tourist interest and demand to take precedence over individualist tendencies within and between the towns. But necessity, rather than idealism, compels this coordination; ever-increasing numbers of online sales means fewer clients in the physical spaces of the stores. Faced with fears of bookstores becoming irrelevant, entrepreneurs must find a new promotional angle: the discovery of France’s regions, via its book towns. Although Bécherel has traditionally insisted upon being recognized as the first French book town, the new brochure omits this information. The map on the back cover lists towns in alphabetical order rather than by inauguration dates, and there is a sense of coherence and shared heritage associated with print culture. A dotted line curves down the front pages, past four lowercase letters, with a detour over a block print of a smiling man holding a printed paper; the line ends in the pages of an open book. The village in the background is unrecognizable. The brochure’s cover avoids geographical specificity and, instead, focuses on the joyful reader and the historical procession from letters to the printed pages to completed books. Or, if we read it in “reverse,” the open book provides us with the capacity (through reading) of retracing

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elements of the history of the book, thus leading us from a specific cultural product (a book) to a shared national—and even international—heritage (the technical process of creating a book). Moreover, a bilingual English/French introduction acknowledges an international audience of bibliophiles—and also of those who love nature, local products, and the patrimoine—and encourages them to “partake in a discovery of books and regions of France.” Textual descriptions for the towns collectively demonstrate an extensive collection of books, artifacts related to print culture, artisans, and many cultural activities, all designed to preserve and promote literature, traditional trades, arts, regional languages, and even produits de terroirs throughout France. The photos, though, focus on local heritage rather than on print culture. Only two images, those for Bécherel and La Charité-sur-Loire, include any books or people. Four (Cuisery, Esquelbecq, Montmorillon, and Montolieu) feature the local church. Another, Ambierle, shows a cloister in the background, with the foreground dominated by fields and flowers. Finally, Fontenoy-la-Joûte is represented by a photo of a water fountain. Rural France is as much a part of the attraction here as the towns’ hundreds of thousands of books. Advertising in this brochure encourages us to embark on a Tour de France that leads deep into the countryside, into spaces valued for their locations and physical beauty, their ability to convey a region’s identity, their ability to provide physical space (bookstores and workshops) to protect and promote written patrimony and artisanal skills, and their ideological attractiveness as venues replete with nostalgia.

Ceci and Cela In Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, Claude Frollo laments “Ceci tuera cela” (“This will kill that”), implying that the book will destroy the church and, extending the metaphor, that the printed word (churned out by the then-newfangled printing press) will destroy architecture, that the new will destroy the old.11 It seems that those involved in the development of France’s book towns are hoping for more of a “Ceci sauvera cela” outcome, a “This will save that.” As opposed to its status as the destructive force Frollo assigns it, the printed word in the villages du livre is imbued with a protective force meant to reinvigorate the “old,” to save architecture (specific places) and preserve heritage (including abstract concepts). However, how can “this” save “that” when “this” itself is in trouble? The traditional used bookselling business—not just in France, but worldwide—has undergone radical transformations over the last decade, as online commerce has increased, making it difficult for booksellers who do not maintain an online stock to thrive. Numerous speculators fear the disappearance altogether of traditional paper and ink books, which are besieged by today’s newfangled digital technologies. And France’s book-reading habits have declined.12 Just as books must fortify these villages, the “idyllic” rural environments in which they are found must also “save” books and traditional print culture. The “old” must save the “old,” and ironically, this happens when foreign ideas and foreign residents arrive to reimagine the community. Traditional book jackets attempt to entice consumers with

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pithy exclamations such as “savagely funny” or “ace storytelling.” If book towns had such jackets, “unique!” would appear most prominently, alongside other assertions such as “quaintly fascinating”, or “authentically novel”. Judging by the promotional materials, France’s villages du livre are rich places physically, in terms of natural landscapes, regional architecture, and cultural artifacts. However, they are equally rich in a more abstract sense—as spaces in which to preserve traditions, to discover, to learn, to find inspiration, and to identify and establish transnational links. For the towns to remain viable in an increasingly displaced digital age, locals and outsiders mediate the image of the towns, which now appear in advertisements as key guardians of local, regional, and national heritage. Their proliferation in recent years demonstrates not only increasing anxieties about the fate of printed books and the status of traditional professions, but also concerns about national identity and France’s place within the world as globalization continues to redefine national boundaries.

Notes 1 New books do not belong there because they are so readily available in urban areas. Abrassart n.d. 2 All translations of quotations from French into English are mine. 3 See Clark 1987. 4 See Merfeld-Langston 2010, p. 348. 5 On the nostalgic and mythical status of the countryside, see Rogers 2002; Sharpley and Sharpley 1997. 6 Personal interviews with booksellers, politicians, artisans, and residents in French book towns in 2004 and 2008. 7 These same complaints, however, parallel those found at the microlevel, that is, within a single village. My interviewees as a whole consistently complained about their colleagues for not doing things “right” and therefore undermining the overall group effort to promote the town. 8 As of November 20, 2012. “I.O. B.—International Organisation of Book Towns,” booktown.net. 9 Bécherel, Cité du Livre n.d. 10 Personal observations and interviews with entrepreneurs and residents of book towns. 11 Hugo 2009. 12 See Barluet 2007.

References Abrassart, J. (n.d.). “Montolieu: Village du Livre et Des Arts Graphiques.” http://www. montolieu.net/hist2.htm [accessed August 10, 2004]. AD LIB Rennes. (2010/2011). “Bécherel, Cité du Livre.” [Brochure]. Barluet, S. (2007). “Rapport Livre 2010: Pour que vive la politique du livre.” http://www.centrenationaldulivre.fr [accessed March 13, 2008].

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Bécherel, Cité du Livre (n.d.). “Projets et prospectives.” http://www.becherel-citedulivre.fr/ page18.html [accessed December 10, 2010]. Branchu, J. (2001). “La Charité-sur-Livres.” Bourgogne côté livre, janvier, pp. 14–15. Busson, S. “Galerie Sophie Busson Peintures.” http://galeriesophiebusson.monsite-orange. fr/ [accessed December 5, 2010]. Clark, P. P. (1987). Literary France: The Making of a Culture. Berkeley : University of California Press. Fontenoy-la-Joûte, village du livre. “Éditions et rééditions,” http://www.fontenoy-la-joute. com/editions.php [accessed December 10, 2012]. GLM (n.d.). “Montolieu Village du livre.” [Brochure]. Gouy, J.-P. (2004). Personal interview, November 17, 2004. HB Création (2010). “Villes, Cités et Villages du Livre en France.” [Brochure]. Hugo, V. (2009). Notre Dame de Paris. Paris: Gallimard. International Organization of Book Towns. (2012). booktown.net. November 20. Merfeld-Langston, A. (2010). “Celebrating Literature to Shape Citizenship: France’s Annual ‘Lire en Fête’.” Modern & Contemporary France 18(3): 343–56. “Montolieu Village du Livre et des Arts Graphiques” (n.d.). [Brochure]. Montolieu Village du Livre et des Arts Graphiques, http://www.montolieu-livre.fr/ [accessed April 12, 2012]. Pisier, E. (1991). “Politique du livre et de la lecture.” Esprit 3 (March–April): 116–29. Reynolds, S. (2000). “Recalling the Past and Recreating It: ‘Museums Actual and Possible’,” in S. Blowen, M. Demossier, and J. Picard (eds), Recollections of France. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 22–32. Rogers, Susan C. (2002). “Which Heritage? Nature, Culture, and Identity in French Rural Tourism.” French Historical Studies 25(3): 475–503. Sharpley, R. and Sharpley, J. (1997). Rural Tourism: An Introduction. London: International Thomson Business Press. Von Moltke, H. (1994). “Forward,” in Eurotourism: Culture and Countryside: 48 Projects Cofinanced by the European Commission in 1992. European Commission—DG XXIII Tourism Unit. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

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Our Cousins in the New World: Celebrating Mexico in the French Alps1 N. Christine Brookes

It was with some trepidation that I watched Les Bleus play against Mexico during the World Cup on June 17, 2010, on the giant screens in the zócalo or central square of Puebla, Mexico. Quietly rooting for France in a sea of green, white, and red was a risky affair in the city that had heroically ousted French troops on the first Cinco de mayo, May 5, 1861. Mexico’s 2-0 defeat would later begin the very public undoing of the notso-long-ago great French national team. How could it get any worse than Zinédine Zidane’s off-key (and off-color) swan song, the infamous coup de boule in 2006? The World Cup face-off between France and Mexico, however, paled in comparison to the diplomatic row that occurred in 2011. As France was to kick off its “cultural season,” 2011, l’Année du Mexique en France in February of that same year, French– Mexican relations were hanging in the balance (“Préparation de” 2010; “2011, Année” n.d.; Quirion 2009). The tensions between the two countries reached a breaking point with the final sentencing in Mexico of French national Florence Cassez, alleged kidnapper, to sixty years in prison. France followed by canceling all official support for the cultural season in March 2011. The “Year of Mexico in France” was abruptly shut down. But France’s own Barcelonnette, a little alpine burg in the southeastern Alps, did nothing of the sort. Never mind what Paris had decided: this self-designated ville mexicaine carried on with its plans for the year, which included the annual celebration of the fêtes latino-mexicaines. Why would a small town bordering Italy care to persist in these and other activities surrounding Mexico? The answer lies in the town’s history of migration to Mexico and its subsequent use of this history to bolster present-day tourism in the Ubaye Valley. Much has been written on the Ubayen immigration to the New World. Local historians and the descendants of the valley’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century French immigrants have worked hard to retain these particular stories as a part of the two countries’ collective memory (Barker 1979; Gamboa Ojeda 2008; Meyzenq 1983; Thivot 1966; La Vie publique 1970). To date, however, little has been written on the success of Barcelonnette’s mining of its own history, both past and present, for its tourism industry. A brief tracing of this unique history of emigration, and the village’s

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refashioning as an all-seasons Mexican mountain playground makes clear that the area turned to sunny Latin America to help shore up its local economy. The success of the Mexican myth for Ubaye’s tourism industry is precisely because of that myth’s pliability. Exotic and unknown, Mexico (or, more generally, Latin America) has been—and can continue to be—anything the Ubayens need it to be. And therein lies this phenomenon’s real interest. To study the Mexican myth of Ubaye—in all of its iterations—is to look close-up at a number of issues that go well beyond a French mountain enclave. A small French alpine town’s history is one among many microhistories within the larger history of a nation, and even Europe. The story of Barcelonnette and the surrounding areas, a history “in breadcrumbs,” as Thierry Gasnier puts it, is a close-up of a France in transition—from an agricultural to a technological society, from centralization to globalization, from rural to tourist economies (Gasnier 1997, p. 3428). This story is told by teasing apart the exoticized myths of the New World, discourses on geography and tourism, and quests for a modern, stable identity. In the past, the area’s strategic location made for multiple and changing identities. In today’s borderless Europe, Ubaye’s existential flexibility fits squarely into the rhetoric of a new, imagined Europe that is both postnational and transnational. Not unlike Brittany’s cultivation of its Celtic ties beyond France, Barcelonnette’s hybridity is no longer its liability, but its strength. What is more, like Strasbourg and Brussels in other European borderlands, Barcelonnette has profited from its liminality, both within Europe and beyond. Somehow, this French hamlet has regained a clearer sense of self (and arguably its Frenchness) by recalling its international patrimoine in the New World. At these interregional and international crossroads, the past and present periphery thus becomes central, and the local becomes national, and even global. In a Europe, and a world, grappling with issues of borders, immigration, and cultural flux, perhaps Barcelonnette—then and now—can serve as a unique point of reflection as we begin to reimagine our communities.

From the Valeia to the New World The tourists who come to this corner of the French Alps, known locally as la Valeia, are perhaps surprised to find themselves surrounded—just 30 km away from Italy— by not only ersatz villas mexicaines (Mexican-esque McMansions built at the turn of the twentieth century with money earned by local émigrés in the New World), but also a handful of wannabe Mexican restaurants, Mexican regional handicrafts and folk art, the imprecisely titled fêtes latino-mexicaines held every August, and even an honorary Mexican consulate. This local history can seem to be coming from out of the blue, but there is indeed a very real and deep history tying the area to the New World (“L’Épopée” n.d.). Barcelonnette and the surrounding areas do have a connection to Mexico, but it came in the nineteenth century, long after the town’s establishment in 1231 by its namesake, Raimond-Bérenger IV, count of Barcelona and Provence. Later, Barcelonnette became part of the House of Savoy from 1388 until 1713. The area’s strategic position—at a

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key point between Dauphiné, Piedmont, Provence, and Savoy—meant that many vied for military and other control of the roads that accessed these areas (Musset 1994, p. 11). With the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, however, France gained permanent control of the area. Ubaye asked to join not Dauphiné, but rather Provence because of its warm climate, something this area needed to sustain grazing livestock, one of the few ways to survive in a remote mountain area (Musset 1994, p. 12). With this vital connection to Provence, Ubaye established “common collective practices,” thereby forging, already in the eighteenth century, a provençale identity not necessarily based on a shared language or history (Hobsbawm 1990, p. 71). Weaving and textile production, along with raising livestock, were mainstays of the area’s economy. It was common for those in Ubaye to leave the area to go to warmer climes during the cold months to find work. Though the area’s silk and wool weavers could leave in the winter to work in Provence, Burgundy, Dauphiné, Lyonnais, Flanders, and Holland, they began to face more and more competition, which led to leaner textile markets in the nineteenth century. Demand for the Barcelonnettes’ artisanal skills declined as the Industrial Revolution transformed Europe, and there was little in this remote pocket of the Alps to sustain a population through the difficult winter months. What then? Though at a true European crossroads, the Ubayens—or los Barcelonnettes as they are more commonly called in Mexico—could not survive at home an isolation brought on by industrial and infrastructural advances in the nineteenth century. The New World offered a solution: new markets for their trades and wares. And some in the Valeia were smart enough to take advantage of this opportunity. One of the first was Jacques Arnaud, who landed initially in Louisiana in 1805. Later, his brothers Dominique and Marc-Antoine Arnaud joined him at a site just about 20 miles from Lafayette, Louisiana. There, along with some other compatriots, they founded Arnaudville, now a sister city to Jausiers. By the early 1820s, the Arnaud brothers had set up shop, selling French fabric and clothing in Mexico (Charpenel and Proal 1986; Gouy 1980). A significant Ubayen immigration followed the success of this and other stores, especially under the dictatorial reign of the Mexican President Porfirio Díaz from 1876 through 1911 (“L’Ubaye et le Mexique” n.d.).2 Under the Porfiriato, Mexico was, indeed, a promised land: French enterprises run by the Barcelonnettes included breweries, dry goods stores, paper factories, banks, and—most famously—the first Mexican grands magasins. A massive Ubayen immigration followed the success of these and other economic ventures in the New World. Mexico’s draw was reinforced in 1848, paradoxically, when the French government opened its first modern road to this closed-off valley. This new access to materials and products cut off a mainstay of the local economy, colportage, dealing another blow to the traditional local economy. As a result, by the beginning of the twentieth century, more than 7,000 Ubayens had left for Mexico; many had returned to share their New World wealth, something that even today visually marks the Ubaye Valley landscape. However, the reality was that this newfound wealth translated into little for the local economy (Charpenel and Proal 1986, p. 83). Why then, if this experience brought little back save ostentatious Mexican mansions, has Barcelonnette put so much into maintaining its own Mexican myths? The short answer

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is that this secluded area has been able to mine its New World history and connections for its winter and summer tourism, a new sort of economic promised land. Alpine Ubaye is a land of snow and (Mexican) sun, a Vidalien mix of North and South dreamt of by tourists. At the same time, the Mexican identity of Barcelonnette allows for a hybrid Latin identity in a long-contested area at the crossroads of Europe.

Sunny Mexico in Alpine Barcelonnette The Valeia’s historical connections to Mexico are real, though its identification as “Mexican” remains problematic. This “Mexican” identity, along with a concerted effort (beginning in the 1960s) to develop the area’s capacity for outdoor tourism during both winter and summer seasons, has translated into a viable source of revenue in an almost abandoned nook of the Alps. In so doing, the Ubaye Valley has been working, in Susan Carol Rogers’ words, to “support valued lifeways and landscapes” that—without the tourism industry created around the area’s local and international patrimoine—might fade away (Rogers 2002, p. 477). Indeed, Barcelonnette has done everything but disappear. By turning to an exploration of the various developments in tourism in the area since the 1960s, we will see how Mexico’s many imagined cultural riches are mined in this small corner of France. What remains of the Ubaye Valley as it used to be, prior to the exodus to Mexico, has been funneled into a sort of tourist curiosity. The area’s traditional agricultural practices exist now not to sustain the local population, but rather to serve as souvenirs of a visit to the Valeia. The Maison des Produits de Pays at Jausiers, a small town down the road from Barcelonnette, showcases local farming, herding, and foraging traditions, all of which would effectively have disappeared in the twentieth century were it not for the growth of local tourism (Avocat 1979, p. 11). They include rosehips, juniper, berries, honey, mushrooms, wool, cheese, génépi (a digestif made from local plants), and fumeton—smoked lamb. No longer necessary, all these local products have now become artisanal culinary mementos of Alpine days gone by (Demoissier 2000; Bérard and Marchenay 2000; Portet 2000). Though the area may whet the appetite of gourmand tourists, the vast majority of tour activities are outdoors, in the form of cycling, fishing, hiking, horse riding, and skiing. The many options for outdoor activities in the area, supported by the local valley infrastructure, dominate the area’s tourism brochures and promotions. Ubaye’s “green tourism” has been key, as it has for many small, rural French towns, in helping stave off “desertification” (Poulain 1997, p. 18). Cut off from the rest of France, the isolated Ubayens could thus tap into the benefits of being in a remote location by developing existing natural resources. As another local historian puts it, the local ski industry has become a sort of “white gold,” likening it to a “new Mexico” for Barcelonnette. The would-be New World promise of riches and financial stability has become a reality. Perhaps it is not surprising that there is no mention of Mexico in this town’s ecotourism publications. Sunny Mexico is not an obvious reference for skiers and cyclotouristes who come for mountain activities. Yet a closer look at the most recent publicity put out by Ubaye’s Direction Tourisme suggests a connection. During the

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summer, hiking is done in “fresh air under a radiant sun”; for mountaineering, the rocks “return the sun’s warmth”; for cyclists, their routes are “under the sun of the Southern Alps” (Guide de la Vallée 2008, pp. 6, 18, 22). This stretch is a not a hard one to make during the summer months, but in winter, because Ubaye is shut off from the rest of France, it is. Here again, however, the sun is out in full force. Consider the following descriptions: “Barcelonnette will seduce you with its atmosphere, at once southern and mountain” (“Barcelonnette, capitale” n.d.); “The snow of the Alps under the Midi sun” (Ubaye Vallée 2010–1, p. 5); “Luxury hotels, lucky clientele, festive ambiance, quality sun and ski” (Ubaye Vallée 2010–11, p. 5); or “its sunniness [is] as exceptional as its snowiness” (Ubaye Vallée 2010–11, p. 9). Even in winter, the southern sun seems ever present (Avocat 1979, p. 10). The sun is an integral part of the Ubaye landscape, even in winter. What, to the tourist, could be more attractive than a mix of two sought-after natural elements— sun and snow? In spite of Mexico’s absence in these discourses, the solar link nudges visitors closer to a warmer New World experience. Under the blue skies and sun of Ubaye, tourists clad in ski boots and winter parkas can take an imaginary trip to Mexico when window shopping and eating in the town’s many “Mexican” establishments. The “Mexican experience” in effect reinforces sunny, outdoor holidays in Ubaye. Even the town’s name invites this sort of Hispanic association! In a Barthesian twist, alpine Barcelonnette empties out Mexico’s own complicated history, replacing it with the sun, and the promises, of the New World. The town then becomes a way—not too far from Marseilles, Paris, or Turin—for winter and summer sports enthusiasts to tap into the exotic myth of “Mexican-ness”. Barcelonnette is, as tourist pamphlets would have us believe, a European Mexico.

Mexico à la française Certainly, after a day on the slopes or out on the trails, Barcelonnette offers Mexico— or something like it—in some of its architecture, cuisine, and its small museum. The Musée de Barcelonnette was opened in 1988, displaying the area’s history of immigration and its links to Mexico in particular (“Gens de l’Ubaye” n.d.). The museum is housed in one of the area’s famous villas, which originally belonged to Alexandre Reynaud (father of Paul Reynaud, the next-to-last prime minister of the Third Republic) and showcases, in part, his life and successes in Mexico as founder of factories named Las Fábricas Universales. As the tour continues, visitors may explore another room dedicated to what the Valeia was like prior to the exodus. This section focuses on the subsistence farming, grazing, and foraging that sustained the locals until the end of the eighteenth century. Much of the rest of the museum is dedicated to things Mexican. Two rooms deal specifically with the history and stories from the area’s Mexican adventure, Les Barcelonnettes au Mexique and La Salle Rose: 1000 chef-d’œuvres du Mexique, the latter housing items brought to France by returning native sons and daughters (“Salle par salle” n.d.). The remainder is a hodgepodge of the significant artifacts of local history and patrimoine—a room that details the Mexican mansions; a cabinet de bain featuring

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some china made for one of the former owners of the villa-musée; another highlighting a local naturalist and prize-winning author, Émile Chabrand, who made his fortune in Mexico; and finally, one displaying the work of several local painters. Even in this patchwork of a museum, the overall narrative is an old favorite in Ubaye: the perennial “rags to riches” story of people starting life in the New World (Pérez Siller 1998, p. 46). The Musée de Barcelonnette is one of six museums that make up the Musée de la Vallée. The others, more predictably, deal with the local history. In Jausiers, there is “Memories of the Earth”; in Lauzet Ubaye, a nature enthusiast’s paradise at “A World of Gathering and Hunting”; in Meyronnes, “A Valley and Its Military”; in Pontis, the “Mountain School and Public Instruction”; and in Saint-Paul Ubaye, “Movements and Tools, in the Fields, Workshop, and Home” (“Musée de la Vallée” n.d.). These other museums tell the tale of Alpine life; they also reveal the area’s strategic military positioning (Musset 1994, p. 11). But these alpine outposts are even more remote than Barcelonnette, a sous-préfecture that has no train station and is only reachable by car or shuttle. As riveting as the other museums may be, the main attraction is Mexico as it was lived by los Barcelonnettes, and how their experiences fundamentally changed Ubaye. This museological remembrance of things past, however, does little to draw tourists to Barcelonette. Hence, the town has looked to new ways to renew its past in order to bolster tourism. The most important effort happening today is the fêtes latinomexicaines held every year in sunny August, which—according to Barcelonnette’s official website—are meant to “perpetuate and share this memory” of the area’s migration (“Fêtes latino-mexicaines” n.d.). Since 1994, Stéphane Kochoyan has been the director of the festival, chosen in particular for his successes with the area’s Enfants du jazz festival held in July. During his tenure, the annual celebration has evolved. He notes how much the celebrations have changed, and why: “The first only lasted for two days and mostly mariachi groups came, not all of them from Mexico . . . to put on folk shows to celebrate friendship between Barcelonnette and Mexico”. However, he continues, “I proposed that we open up to other Hispanic cultures, to grow over time and to have a week, even ten days of the festival” (Cochois 2010). The event has grown in length, and the festival is now part of the regular cultural programming in the town. However, its claimed goals of commemorating local history with Mexico seem a little forced. Even from the beginning, the activities around “traditional” Mexico—in the form of mariachis and folk activities—have not really been Mexican! Kochoyan readily admits the difficulties of finding Mexican artists to fit the bill. What is more, the town does not have the financial means necessary to bring in other big acts from Mexico. He explains, “It was necessary . . . to propose Latino artists on tour in the Hexagon in order to pad the festival!” (Cochois 2010). With a tactical sleight-of-hand and a renaming, a sputtering homage to the area’s past was saved by augmenting the annoyingly specific qualifier “Mexican” with the conveniently vague and exotic adjective “Latin.” In 2010, the town held its twentieth fête latino-méxicaine. The event’s program demonstrates that Barcelonnette’s big annual show was much more “Latino” than “Mexican” (“Fêtes latino-mexicaines” n.d.). The opening act on August 9 was a concert by Los Taínos de Mayarí from Cuba, followed by a viewing of Wim Wenders’ 1999

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Afro-Cuban musical documentary, Buena Vista Social Club, in the town’s central square. On Monday, after Argentine tango lessons offered by Félix de la Milonga del Ángel, the alternative group Karamelo Santo—also from Argentina—offered concert goers a “mestizo rock” blending Argentine folk, cumbia, reggae, hip hop, ska, samba, bolero, paso doble, and candombé. The group was billed as “an invitation to travel in to the panorama of past and present Latin American music,” Here, we have gone from “Latino-Mexican” to “Latino-American” in one smoothly orchestrated move. What about the rest of the week? Was there anything Mexican at all? On Wednesday, there was the Brazilian percussion group Batuc Calu; on Thursday, the Spanish-Argentine neo tango group Otros Aires; and on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, El Mariachi Semblanza. El Mariachi Semblanza sounds Mexican, but the group is not a Mexican one either. It is from Spain, perhaps trying to pass as Mexican, as the name might suggest. The publicity is careful to point out that they “make not only Mexicans shine, but also the refined romantics of the entire world” (“Fêtes latino-mexicaines” n.d.). The “entire [Latin] world” indeed, it seems, because the final act on Saturday night was by Brazilian Mariana Da Cruz, a samba singer successful in São Paulo and Lisbon. Clearly, Barcelonnette’s fêtes latino-mexicaines took visitors to everywhere in Latin America except Mexico. The ville mexicaine certainly had more Cuban son and Argentine tango to it than it did Mexican mariachi. To be fair, there were some Mexican-like activities during that week. Children were invited to attend a morning arts workshop to “discover the colors of Aztec gods”; later in the afternoon, there were classes for children on the art of piñata making (“Fêtes latino-mexicaines” n.d.). For adults, there were several exhibitions on at the Musée de Barcelonnette: a display of Alfred Briquet’s (1833–1926) photography, Vistas mexicanas, a visual commemoration of life in Mexico under the Porfiriato; a display of Mexican traditional textiles and clothing, “les Costumes de China Poblana”; and finally, what appears to be simply an extension of the museum’s permanent collection, “Témoignages des Barcelonnettes au Mexique”, including the “Paroles franco-mexicaines” of los Barcelonnettes’ descendants currently living in Mexico (“Fêtes latino-mexicaines” n.d.). Mexico was, in the end, present in the festivities, if only at its fringes. The fêtes latino-mexicaines are not the only way the area tries to tap into the potential gold of an invented New World for its tourism today. A simple glance at the area’s phone book shows a dearth of Mexican (in name at least) restaurants, handicraft stores, and hotels. There is even a theater in town called El Zócalo (Saison culturelle 2010). In a single trip to the French Alps (and almost into Italy), one can eat, drink, buy, sleep and be entertained à la mexicaine—or rather, à la latine—in a town that recalls Spain. Walking down avenue Porfirio Díaz (the only one in France) to place Valle de Bravo or place Manuel, the tourist seems to feel that the Valeia is Latin central. What are the town’s other ties to today’s New World? First, Barcelonnette is home to an honorary Mexican consulate.3 Barcelonnette’s consulate is active in helping to cosponsor local Franco-Mexican activities. Again, on the Mexican side, there is the bi-national cooperative “French Roots in Mexico,” which has been seeking to promote both historical and contemporary exchanges between France and Mexico since 2003 (Raíces francesas n.d.). In fact, the June 2007 edition of the association’s publication

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devoted an entire issue to Ubaye Valley and Mexico, and to promoting the group’s bilingual publications about this history (Barcelonnette, un antología n.d.). No one has forgotten this story on either side of the Atlantic.

Mexico in the French borderlands All these cultural sleights-of-hand demonstrate the benefits of mining the area’s past for its present tourism industry. Mexico, or at least the idea of Mexico, has lent an identity to an area that was struggling to define itself within modern France, and has also helped it find its purpose within the Hexagon. The “Mexican” fable of Barcelonnette, after a quick historical revision (forgetting the stories of bankruptcy and population decline that followed in the wake of a New World adventure), is one of tenacity—a savoirfaire and ferocious independence forged out of necessity in an at-times cruel valley (Charpenel and Proal 1986, pp. 99–121). Ubayen determination, born of a life of hard knocks in an alpine hamlet, harnessed New World resources into riches for the Old. American myths, it should be noted, are not limited to Barcelonnette. Other alpine villages such as Abriès, Embrun, Gap, and Queyras experienced a similar sort of exodus, but these towns have not yet capitalized on their American pasts in their tourism industry as Barcelonnette has. The department of Ariège in the Pyrenees borderlands, with a history of emigration of bear tamers and restaurateurs to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has done little to glorify its ties to the New World. Why has this myth persisted so effectively in Barcelonnette? Perhaps the answer lies in its situation, both historical and current, within France and within Europe. This is a place of ambiguous identity, with a history of, as one brochure puts it, “moving borders” (Guide de la Vallée 2008). Indeed, the other Alpine towns cited and the department of Ariège, also situated along France’s borders, have had comparatively more stable regional identities historically than the Ubaye Valley. Barcelonnette, however, is even further marginalized at the edges of France. It is a “land of transition,” “between Provence and Dauphiné, between Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, between Occitan and Provençal” (Meyzenq 1983, p. 20). Within France and its own regions, Barcelonnette is all mixed up. Mexico, while a source of economic sustenance and renewal in the area’s tourism industry, has also provided a more stable identity to the region. When los Barcelonnettes left their valley to go to Mexico, the Old World fell away for the New. It was precisely this detachment from Europe that allowed the Ubayens to affiliate themselves with Mexico, which, in turn, gave them a clearer identity in place of many unstable ones. Mexico is a Catholic or Latin country like France, a sort of twin—or perhaps distant cousin—culture. Mexico is not French, Italian, Savoyard, or Provençal; it is a culture with a mixed identity—part European, part indigenous, echoing perhaps la Valeia’s own mixed heritage at the crossroads of Europe. What are we to make of the slippery Mexican identity of a French town right next door to Italy? Are there other examples in France of a persuasive international identity coexisting alongside (or perhaps even trumping) local and regional identities? Indeed, at another edge of France, coastal La Rochelle began to commemorate its commercial

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ties to Canada in the late nineteenth century, memorializing its global past in the twentieth century further with the establishment of the Musée du Nouveau Monde and celebrations of Jacques Cartier and French Canada. In a similar vein to a “Mexican” Barcelonnette, it has been called “the most Canadian city in France” and weaves this story into the fabric of the area’s tourism industry (Poton n.d.). Though La Rochelle, a robust Atlantic port city, has not suffered from geographical isolation as has Ubaye, both areas have developed a sense of self linked to their histories across the ocean. Certainly, for both of these populations, different though they may be, their carefully cultivated ties beyond France’s borders help to nourish the local tourism industry. But is it more than that? If, as Anne-Marie Thiesse’s work has suggested, the definition of national and European identities are now in constant flux, are those local areas at the fringe of a nation more capable than others of turning outward to the world beyond to imagine new communities or to reimagine the one in which they live, to shed the carapace of nations and nationalism in the face of an increasingly interconnected world? Certainly Marseille, the 2013 European City of Culture, might be proof of just that. The port city of Marseille has knit together a complex and varied character, drawing its attributes from France, yes, but with the Mediterranean also writ very large. Long thriving on the ebb and flow of migration, this patchwork, hodgepodge city and its inhabitants, including Zinédine Zidane, have pushed at the edges of what it means to be French, offering novel visions of what a multifaceted and complex France may come to be in the future.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Kathleen de Miranda, Vera Mark, Audra L. Merfeld-Langston, Kory Olson, David J. Proctor, and Michael Wilson for their helpful comments and suggestions on this project. 2 Cf. Rosenberg (1988) for a discussion of similar migration from other French communities in the Alps. 3 There is also one honorary consulate in Fort-de-France, Martinique.

References “2011, Année du Mexique en France: première réunion du Comité Mixte,” (n.d.). La France au Mexique, Ambassade de France à Mexico. http://www.ambafrance-mx. org/francais/ambassade-150/salle-de-presse/communiques/article/2011-annee-dumexique-en-france-2983 [accessed October 8, 2010]. Avocat, C. (1979). Montagnes de lumière (Briançonnais, Embruais, Queyras, Ubaye): Essai sur l’évolution humaine et économique de la haute montagne intra-alpine. Villeurbanne, France: Imprimerie A. Fayolle & Cie. Barcelonnette, un antología, Raíces francesas en México/Racines françaises au Mexique. http://www.rfm.org.mx/publicaciones/gacetas/boletin2.pdf [accessed October 17, 2010]. “Barcelonnette, capitale de la Vallée de l’Ubaye,” Barcelonnette. http://www.barcelonnette. com/fr/index.aspx [accessed January 17, 2011].

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Barker, N. N. (1979). The French Experience in Mexico, 1821–1861: A History of Constant Misunderstanding. Chapel Hill: The Univerisity of North Carolina Press. Bérard, L. and Marchenay, P. (2000). “A market culture: produits de terroir or the selling of heritage,” in S. Blowen, M. Demossier, and J. Picard (eds), Recollections of France: Memories, Identities and Heritage in Contemporary France. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 154–67. Charpenel, P. M. and Proal, M. (1986). L’Empire des Barcelonnettes au Mexique. Marseille, France: Editions Jeanne Lafitte. Cochois, J. (2010). “Les Fêtes latino-mexicaines,” Le Grand Journal du Mexique. http:// www.legrandjournal.com.mx/la-une/reportage-les-fetes-latinos-mexicaines-debarcelonnette [accessed October 8, 2010]. Demoissier, M. (2000). “Culinary heritage and produits de terroir in France: food for thought,” in S. Blowen, M. Demossier, and J. Picard (eds), Recollections of France: Memories, Identities and Heritage in Contemporary France. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 141–53. “Fêtes latino-mexicaines,” Barcelonnette. http://www.barcelonnette.com/fr/il4-1_p237fetes-latino-mexicaines.aspx [accessed October 8, 2010]. Gamboa Ojeda, L. (2008). Los Barcelonnettes en México, miradas regionales, siglos XIX-XX. Puebla, Mexico: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Gasnier, T. (1997). “Le local,” in P. Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire, Vol. 3. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 3423–77. “Gens de l’Ubaye,” Barcelonnette. http://www.barcelonnette.com/fr/il4-3_p51-le-museede-la-vallee.aspx [accessed October 8, 2010]. Gouy, P. (1980). Pérégrinations des “Barcelonnettes” au Mexique. Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble. Guide de la Vallée de l’Ubaye Printemps/Été/Automne 2008, (2008), n.p. Hobsbawm, E. (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1789: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. La Vie publique dans les Hautes-Alpes vers le milieu du XIXe siècle (1970). 38 La Tronche Montfleury, France: Editions des Cahiers de l’Alpe. “L’Épopée des Barcelonnettes,” NetProvence. http://www.netprovence.com/tourisme/ departement/04/ubaye/epopeebarcelo.htm [accessed October 8, 2010]. L’Ubaye et le Mexique’, Vallée de l’Ubaye. http://www.ubaye.com/fr/page.aspx?IdPage=74 [accessed October 8, 2010]. Meyzenq, C. (1983). Hautes-Alpes, Ubaye, Haut-Drac, Préalpes Drômoises: Pays de transtion entre Alpes du Nord et Alpes du Sud. Grenoble, France: Editions Orphrys. “Musée de la Vallée,” La Vallée de l’Ubaye. http://www.ubaye.com/fr/page.aspx?IdPage=71 [accessed October 8, 2010]. Musset, D. (1994). Les habitants de l’Ubaye: récit de la transformation d’une vallée. Gap, France: Les Alpes de Lumière. Pérez Siller, J. (1998). “Historiografía general sobre México Francia: 1920–1997,” in J. Pérez Siller (ed.), México Francia: Memoria de una sensibilidad común. Siglos XIX-XX. Puebla, Mexico: BUAP-CEMCA-Colegio de San Luís, pp. 21–83. Portet, F. (2000). “Produits de terroir, between local identity and heritage,” in S. Blowen, M. Demossier, and J. Picard (eds), Recollections of France: Memories, Identities and Heritage in Contemporary France. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 168–84. Poton, D. (n.d.). “La Rochelle et l’Amérique française,” Encyclopédie du patrimoine culturel de l’Amérique française. http://www.ameriquefrancaise.org/fr/article-582/La_Rochelle_ et_l’Amérique_française.html#.UyumzNyUs1Q [accessed March 20, 2014].

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Poulain, J. P. (1997). “Goût du terroir et tourisme vert à l’heure de l’Europe.” Ethnologie française 27: 18. “Préparation de ‘2011, Année du Mexique en France’,” (2010). France Diplomatie (Ministère des affaires étrangères et européennes) (March 16). http://www. diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/pays-zones-geo_833/mexique_481/france-mexique_1188/ presentation_3425/preparation-2011-annee-du-mexique-france-16.03.10_80930.html [accessed October 8, 2010]. Quirion, N. (2009). “Relation France-Mexique: ce qui va bouger,” Le Grand Journal du Mexique (March 10). http://www.legrandjournal.com.mx/la-une/relations-francemexique-ce-qui-va-bouger [accessed October 8, 2010]. Raíces francesas en México/Racines françaises au Mexique. http://www.rfm.org.mx/ [accessed October 17, 2010]. Rogers, S. C. (2002), “Which Heritage? Nature, Culture, and Identity in French Rural Tourism.” French Historical Studies 25: 477. Rosenberg, H. G. (1988). A Negotiated World: Three Centuries of Change in a French Alpine Community. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Saison culturelle 2010-2011, Barcelonnette. http://www.barcelonnette.com// telechargements/Programme_culturel_El_Zocalo-2010-2011.pdf [accessed October 18, 2010]. “Salle par salle,” Barcelonette. http://www.barcelonnette.com/fr/il4-1_p168-le-musee– salle-par-salle.aspx [accessed October 8, 2010]. Thivot, H. (1966). La Vie privée dans les Hautes-Alpes vers le milieu du XIXe siècle, 38 La Tronche-Montfleury, France: Editions des Cahiers de l’Alpe. Ubaye Vallée (2010–11). Le magazine des Alpes du Sud 6 (Winter): 5.

Part Three

Politics

13

Local Identities and Internal Migration: Networking as a Survival Strategy in Revolutionary and Postrevolutionary France Denise Z. Davidson

The political and geographical trajectories of Louis Vitet (1736–1809) and his son Pierre Vitet (1772–1858) illuminate some of the methods of surviving political and economic turmoil among the French bourgeoisie during and after the French Revolution. Both men were born in Lyon and both strongly identified with their Lyonnais roots. Yet, both spent large portions of their lives outside their native city. A doctor and prolific author, Louis Vitet served as mayor of Lyon from 1790 to 1792 and then as deputy to the Convention. During the Terror, the father-and-son team went into exile in Switzerland, after which they settled in Paris. Pierre never held public office, choosing instead to lead his life in the shadow of his prominent father, serving as his assistant and overseeing the family’s properties. After marrying Amélie Arnaud-Tizon in 1801, Pierre devoted his energies to the education of his son, Ludovic Vitet (1802–73), who went on to an illustrious career during the July Monarchy. One of Pierre’s most valuable means of ensuring his and his son’s successes was the social network he constructed and nourished in Paris and Rouen, where his in-laws, wealthy textile manufacturers from Lyon, had relocated after the Terror, for political and economic reasons. This Lyonnais network of businessmen, bankers, and government officials collaborated to their mutual benefit during the years of military conflict and political uncertainty, creating a new identity of Lyonnais living elsewhere. Little scholarship has addressed the question of how the French Revolution affected internal migration. In Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, as part of her discussion of outsiders and the emergence of a new political class, Lynn Hunt briefly mentions that the French Revolution encouraged geographical mobility, and brings up some specific examples (Hunt 1984/2004, pp. 181–2). Emigration for political reasons was certainly one obvious kind of mobility, something that has received extensive attention, but internal migration also became more prevalent during the Revolutionary decade. Migrants then relied on older connections to build new lives, a pattern that is well known among workers and artisans, but less well-studied among those who practiced middle-class professions.1 Both push and pull factors explain why and where people chose to move.2 Dangerous or unpleasant situations in one place might have

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encouraged people to relocate, or they could have found locations appealing because of the new opportunities that emerged from the political and economic experimentation that was taking place during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Both the desire to flee and the hope for better pastures are visible in the choices made by the Vitet and Arnaud-Tizon families. While these migrants may have been “outsiders,” as Hunt argued, the networks they constructed in their new cities helped them become “insiders” among a subgroup within their new environment. Like the Arab immigrants Ian Coller examined recently— the so-called “Egyptians” who settled in France after siding with Napoleon during his invasion of that country—they created a sense of community within their new setting (Coller 2006, 2011). Building upon the work of anthropologist James Clifford, Coller argues that mobility is not necessarily destructive to community, and can even reinforce a sense of solidarity. The Arab immigrants he studied built their community around their shared language and experiences. Then, as they settled into their new environment, that sense of community evolved and weakened over the generations, as the immigrants melded into the local population through intermarriage. The Lyonnais families discussed here followed similar trajectories. They maintained their Lyonnais identities and connections, using them to improve their standing in their new localities, while creating new, relocalized identities. The cases examined in this essay thus demonstrate that a “sense of place” may be constructed through networks that are not necessarily anchored in a particular place, and that the actors involved in creating and maintaining those networks have a great deal of flexibility as they make use of that “sense of place” to build connections across time and space (Latour 2005).3 Louis Vitet’s geographical mobility predated the Revolution, but the nature and causes of the earlier voyages differed from those he would take after 1789. Born in Lyon, he studied medicine in Montpelier, and wrote and defended his doctoral thesis in Paris. He returned to Lyon in 1756, where he built a solid reputation as a doctor and professor of medicine, veterinary science, and midwifery.4 He married Marguerite Faulin in 1765, and the couple proceeded to bring ten children into the world, only to see all but one, Pierre, die in childhood (Feuga 1996). A close ally of Jean-Marie Roland, who was in Lyon during the early years of the Revolution, Louis Vitet became mayor in late 1790 and then served as deputy to the Convention. He arrived in Paris to take up this position on September 23, 1792 (the day after the declaration of the First Republic).5 After returning to Lyon as a representative on mission, Louis traveled back to Paris in time for the king’s trial, where he voted against his immediate execution, supporting instead a referendum on the matter of punishment. Claiming illness, Louis returned once again to Lyon after the trial and settled at his country estate in Longes, a village south of Lyon.6 This was the first of several instances where Louis’ travels saved his life. Had he remained in Paris, he would have been purged with the Girondins. Instead, he was placed under arrest, but evaded capture. During the siege of Lyon that followed the federalist uprising there, Jacobin troops arrived in Longes to seize him, but Louis and Pierre escaped just in time, leaving Pierre’s mother behind to defend their property, which was searched and damaged by the soldiers. After many harrowing experiences, they managed to hide in the city and then to escape just as the Jacobins gained control. From there they fled to Switzerland, eventually settling in Zurich.

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As soon as news arrived that Robespierre had been overthrown, the Vitet men headed for Lyon where they were reunited with Marguerite before heading to Paris. They then got to work to have their sequestered property returned to them.7 While Pierre and Marguerite reassembled the family’s property and wealth, Louis returned to politics, taking a seat in the Council of 500. Pierre traveled quite frequently between Paris and Lyon during these years.8 Louis, in contrast, seems to have remained in the capital for the most part, devoting himself to his duties as a deputy. Their transition to Parisian life was solidified when they bought property there. In January 1798, Louis purchased a former convent on the rue neuve Saint Roch that had been sold earlier as a bien national.9 It was located behind the Eglise Saint Roch and the priest there, the curé de Saint Roch, was a longtime family friend from Lyon, Claude Marie Marduel, a former refractory priest and émigré. Pierre traveled back to Lyon not long after his father had purchased this new property. Soon after he arrived, Pierre sent his father a description of Lyon and of how he felt upon seeing his native city after his long stay in Paris, reactions that may help to explain why he never considered moving back there. “As I was entering Lyon, I was struck by the solitude and inactivity that reigns in the streets. It is certain that this sensation was not simply the effect of the contrast with the immense city of Paris which I had just left, but that in reality the population and activity of Lyon have greatly diminished and that to sojourn here has become less pleasant.”10 He then described sites that had been destroyed and some improvements that had been made. Overall, Lyon compared poorly to the capital. We see here a “push factor” at play: Lyon’s physical and economic destruction made it a less appealing place to live and to prosper, even if Paris was more expensive. Of course, the many enemies that Louis had no doubt created as a consequence of his political decisions must have served as a “push factor,” too. After voicing staunch opposition to Napoléon Bonaparte’s 1799 coup d’état, Louis stepped out of public life and devoted his energies to research and writing, while Pierre focused on private matters as well. Although he had no official reason to remain in Paris, Louis did not return to Lyon except for a brief visit in 1803. Pierre stayed faithfully at his side, serving as his assistant, just as he had during the previous years. In 1801, Pierre left his father in Paris to travel to Lyon, and as soon as he returned to the capital, he left again, this time for Rouen. Although none of his correspondence from this period survives, it is obvious why he made these trips. In December 1801, he married Amélie Arnaud-Tizon, daughter of a Lyonnais textile manufacturer whose family had relocated to Rouen. Her father had maintained his business and property in Lyon, and Pierre probably met with him there to discuss marriage with his daughter. Pierre then traveled to Rouen to meet his bride-to-be and the rest of her family.11 In choosing to cement this connection with another Lyonnais family no longer in Lyon, Pierre set in place the centerpiece of what would become a large and valuable network of Lyonnais allies. The Arnaud-Tizon family’s movements during and after the Revolution present another case of mobility in the context of political and economic strife. The Revolutionary generation of this family included two brothers, Claude and Pierre-Marie Arnaud-Tizon, and their sister, Claire. Their father, also named Claude, had amassed enormous wealth, and Claire’s large dowry permitted her to marry into an aristocratic

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family in 1781.12 When her in-laws’ chateau came under attack in June 1791, Claire apparently committed suicide by jumping from the window of her apartment in Lyon, leaving behind two young children.13 Claire’s brothers supported the Revolution from the very beginning, and Claude became active in local politics, serving on the municipal council during Louis Vitet’s tenure as mayor. The story of these siblings illustrates the potential for politics to divide families. Claire and her children are never mentioned in the family’s later correspondence. It is as though they never existed. The alliances the family nurtured tended not to cross political barriers. In 1791 and 1792, Claude served as a municipal officer, attending daily meetings of the Municipal Council, a six-member board that typically met every morning and afternoon. He was in charge of finance; among his other duties, he oversaw the melting down of an equestrian statue of Louis XIV in November 1792.14 Soon afterward, he was voted out of his position, and we have little knowledge of his activities for the next several months. Claude’s father died in May 1793, a few days before the radical populist Chalier was overthrown by more conservative factions who created a new municipal government that voiced open opposition to the Jacobins in Paris. Caring for family and business during this trying moment may have been the reason for Claude’s choice to stay on the sidelines; his political views may also explain it. In response to the so-called counterrevolutionary takeover of the city, the Jacobincontrolled government in Paris sent troops to attack Lyon. Beginning in late July 1793, Jacobin forces laid siege to the city and bombed it repeatedly, destroying homes and killing hundreds. Suffering from severe famine, the Lyonnais accepted defeat in early October. Once the Jacobins took control, they executed nearly two thousand Lyonnais for taking part in the revolt (Hanson 2003; Edmonds 1990). On October 12, the Convention issued its famous decree, “Lyon made war against liberty; Lyon is no more.” As the Jacobin representatives on mission regained control, they installed new leaders, including Claude Arnaud-Tizon, who once again became a municipal officer, this time under Antoine-Marie Bertrand, an ally of Chalier who had been serving as mayor before the anti-Jacobin takeover. Claude attended municipal council meetings virtually every day of that difficult year when Lyon’s name was officially changed to “CommuneAffranchi” and the Terror was in full operation. In most cases, he was the first to sign the minutes after the mayor. Claude served on the comité de subsistances, which meant that he was one of three men responsible for ensuring that Lyon’s inhabitants would have access to sufficient food, a position that no doubt earned him many enemies. While Claude stayed in Lyon, and even held an important political position under the Jacobins, many tried to flee the city. Claude’s brother, Pierre-Marie, received permission to leave for Rouen with his wife in January 1794.15 His wife, Anne Vincent, was from Rouen; the couple had spent the first few years of their marriage there. In moving to Rouen, they were entering into a preexisting network of family and friends, that of the Vincent family. After Thermidor, Claude was arrested and spent a few weeks in jail in Paris. At about the same time, his wife Catherine and their three young children also fled Lyon for Rouen. For several years, Claude divided his time between Rouen and Lyon until his son, Ludovic, moved to Lyon to run the family business there. In 1811, they severed their remaining commercial ties to the city, selling the family’s property there and investing their capital in Rouen, where, in partnership with their new sonin-law Jacques Barbet, they opened a business, a factory that produced indiennes, or

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calicos, printed cotton fabrics that were the rage during these years (Chassagne 1991; Chaline 1982). Rouen was the center for this cutting-edge technology. So in the case of the Arnaud-Tizon brothers, their decision to move seems to have been the result of both “push” and “pull” factors. The traumatic experiences that they had lived through no doubt contributed to the family’s decision to leave Lyon. It was a place filled with unhappy memories of death and destruction. Meanwhile, the economic opportunities offered by the new industry blossoming in Rouen also probably aided in their choice of destination. Once there, they established themselves as members of the local elite, creating a hybrid identity that combined their Lyonnais roots with the new connections they had forged. They thus serve as perfect examples of Lynn Hunt’s outsiders emerging as a new political class. Ties to another prominent Lyonnais family help to explain these families’ successes in the chaotic years of the Directory and into the Consulate and Empire. One of Pierre Vitet’s childhood friends from Lyon was Louis-Gabriel Suchet (1770–1826), who later became the Maréchal Suchet. An indication of their close ties is the fact that Suchet and his younger brother sought refuge with Pierre and his family in Longes just before the Jacobin siege of Lyon (Vitet 1932, p. 10). In 1802, soon after Pierre married Amélie, Pierre and his new mother-in-law, Catherine Arnaud-Tizon, orchestrated the marriage of Amélie’s cousin Adèle with Suchet’s younger brother.16 The older brother had risen to the rank of general by this point, and this marriage boded well for both families by tying them to one of France’s most esteemed military leaders. The younger Suchet settled in Rouen near his wife’s family, running the department’s division of taxation, and the Maréchal later visited the Arnaud-Tizon’s factory during a trip through the region.17 The family’s integration into the city’s political and social elite is visible in the fact that Amélie and her family attended balls held in honor of Napoleon and Marie-Louise when they visited Rouen following their marriage. Amélie’s younger sister was among the “demoiselles” selected to present a gift to the Empress (Davidson 2007, pp. 30–5).18 Another Lyonnais family who played an important role in the Vitet and ArnaudTizon families’ network of close allies was that of Vital Roux and his wife. Although there are no records to indicate exactly how Pierre ended up marrying Amélie, the most likely scenario is that the Roux couple initiated the discussions. They came from the same Lyonnais milieu as the Arnaud-Tizon family, and Catherine’s letters suggest that they knew each other well. Claude Arnaud-Tizon and Vital Roux had been in much the same situation during and after the Terror; having collaborated with the Jacobins, both had been forced to leave their native city.19 The Roux family settled in Paris during the Directory, with Vital Roux opening a bank with another Lyonnais, Jacques Fournel. Madame Roux, who was known as Roux-Montagnat, ran a flourishing business making artificial flowers, eventually becoming the official flower maker of the Emperor (Pipelet 1798; Masson 1902, p. 169).20 Her equally successful husband, Vital Roux, became a regent of the Banque de France in 1806. Pierre and Louis Vitet already knew the Roux and Fournel families from their days in Lyon, and even the Suchet brothers invested their money with them.21 These interrelated Lyonnais families trusted each other implicitly. They were all intimately connected, and they relied on each other for all the important matters in life. Through good times and bad, they survived (literally and figuratively) thanks to these strong ties, this network of Lyonnais who no longer lived in Lyon.

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Lyonnais who remained in Lyon also relied on this network of former insiders who had turned outsiders. Pierre’s mother, Marguerite, stayed in Lyon all of her life, with the exception of a few years in Paris before and after Louis Vitet’s death in 1809. She wrote frequently to Pierre asking him to help friends in Lyon. In January 1810, for example, she thanked him for making use of his many contacts to help a certain Mr Brunet, and referred to others that he and his Lyonnais compatriots in Paris had assisted earlier. “I know that you are working to help this unfortunate man, and hope that you will find him suitable to fill the post that you managed to find for him working with your friend. Please express my gratitude to Monsieur and Madame Fournel for their assistance with my protégées. I am also grateful to Madame Roux for all that she has done in this case, and I remember also the help this lady offered to poor Guibert . . . and later Mr. Morel. It gives me great pleasure to know that my Lyonnais have such wonderful defenders.”22 Lyonnais stuck together, and made use of their geographical separation to help each other even more, to build a sense of solidarity that stretched across the miles. Further evidence for this Lyonnais network in Paris comes from a very short note I uncovered among Pierre Vitet’s letters. The note, written in a rough hand on a very small piece of paper, is dated Saturday, April 11; the year was probably 1818. The note reads: “Le Maréchal Suchet fait milles amitiés à Monsieur Vitet, et le prie de lui faire l’honneur de venir diner chez lui, vendredi prochain 17 du mois, jour fixé pour la réunion des anciens camarades de Lyon.”23 Suchet, who bypassed his secretary in jotting down this note in his own hand, seems to have hosted these dinners on a regular basis. The letter provides evidence not only for the existence of a Lyonnais network in the capital, but also for conscious efforts to maintain and reinforce it. Of course, it is not surprising that people would use whatever contacts and connections they could to help them climb the social ladder. The Lyonnais seemed particularly adept at these kinds of practices, however, especially when it came to building dense, tightly woven webs of connection. In contrast to the Parisian upper classes, whose socializing often brought them into contact with large numbers of acquaintances, Lyonnais bourgeois tended to keep to themselves, to limit their networking to trusted allies (Fugier 1990/1993). Historian Catherine Pellissier quotes a nineteenth-century university professor who said that the Lyonnais bourgeoisie limited their socializing to “a circle of friends whose trustworthiness had been tested over many years.” A lawyer named Emmanuel Vigntrinier, a descendent of a man who nearly married into the Aranud-Tizon family, described the traditional Lyonnais approach to sociability: “large families [and] social relations limited to a circle of close friends and allies” (Pellissier 1996, p. 125; Saunier 1995). The Lyonnais tendency to distrust outsiders put family even more at the center of social and business relations than might have been the case for bourgeois from other cities. When branches of these Lyonnais families moved to other cities, they viewed other Lyonnais as trustworthier than others they encountered. In fact, they seem to have regarded old (and new) Lyonnais allies more as family than friends; they confided in them and relied upon them as they would have done with close family members. The network of Lyonnais migrants (and nonmigrants) functioned in many ways like a family. They could count on each other through thick and thin. They may have been outsiders in their new cities, but they were insiders in this close-knit network that was

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built upon their strong sense of local identity, an attitude that remained in place at least for this first generation working to rebuild lives that had been so deeply affected by the Revolution. This strong sense of solidarity faded, however, among later generations who felt more Parisian or Rouennais than Lyonnais. These families’ trajectories and networking strategies served as a harbinger of things to come. They were putting into practice a new dynamics of geographical mobility that would emerge as a key strategy among elites in subsequent years, practices that would continue to make place-based networks important for social and political mobility.

Notes 1 An older study comments on the dearth of information about mobility during the Revolutionary period, and to my knowledge that remains largely the case (Poussou 1970). More recently, Paul André Rosenthal has studied mobility, but mostly rural– urban migration, as opposed to my focus here on urban–urban migration. He also treats the entire nineteenth century, with little attention to the way the Revolution encouraged mobility (Rosenthal 1999 and 2006). 2 On difficulties in working out the causes of migration, cf. Rosenthal 2006, pp. 477–9. 3 Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory seeks to provide a “language for mapping out the traces of networks through an anthropology of the figures that set them going and keep them at work.” Bingham and Thrift 2000, p. 285. 4 A long essay published after the death of Louis’ grandson, Ludovic, includes details on the family’s origins and Louis’ education and career (Sauzet 1874). 5 The literature on the Girondins, Roland, and Roland’s famous wife, Manon Philipon, a.k.a. Madame Roland, is very large. Among this literature is May 1970; CornutGentille 2004; Oliver 2009; and Reynolds 2012. Roland’s ideas about improving society through politics are explained nicely in Walton 2009, ch. 8 and Reynolds 2012, ch. 12. Louis Vitet expressed many similar ideas. Details on Louis and Pierre’s whereabouts during the Revolution come from Vitet 1932. Pierre underlined the date of his father’s arrival in Paris to reinforce its significance (p. 8). The manuscript version of this text is held in AML, Fonds Vitet, 84 II 07. 6 The bill of sale for the property, a former monastery, is in ADR, 1Q 339 No. 140. Louis and Pierre are listed as co-owners. They purchased the bien national property on March 29, 1791 for 18,200 livres. 7 Levée de sequestre for the maison dite de la Jurary, dated 28 Fructidor II (September 14, 1794), AML Fonds Vitet, 84 II 03. Although this document was signed two weeks after Robespierre’s execution, the authorities continued to refer to themselves as “sansculottes administrateurs provisoires de la campagne de commune affranchie.” The document that opened the seals on their properties is dated 16 Nivose III (January 5, 1795). 8 Pierre received permission to travel to Paris on 10 Pluviôse III (February 7, 1795) to continue his studies. Laissez-passer, AML Fonds Vitet, 84 II 07. On passports for internal travel during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, see Denis 2006. 9 Bill of sale dated 6 Pluviôse VI (January 25, 1798), AN, Minutier central, étude V, 962. The document indicates that Jean Marie Joseph Blondel had purchased the building on 27 Prairial IV (June 15, 1796) for 27,000 francs. Vitet paid 25,500 francs.

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10 Pierre Vitet to Louis Vitet, 27 Floréal VI (May 16, 1798), AML Fonds Vitet, 84 II 09. 11 Pierre recorded the dates of these travels as well as some of his activities while in Lyon, but never mentioned the Arnaud-Tizon family until after he had married Amélie. PV Correspondence journal, entries dated Vendémiaire and Brumaire an X (Fall 1801) AML Fond Vitet, 84 II 07. He traveled to Rouen on 13 Brumaire X (November 4, 1801). Their marriage took place less than a month later. 12 Marriage Contract June 17, 1781, AD Rhône 3E 5110. Claire received a dowry of 100,000 pounds and a trousseau valued at 10,000 pounds. 13 I say “apparently,” because the highly melodramatic account that discusses her suicide is less than fully reliable; its author was a committed counterrevolutionary (Suleau [1791], pp. 27–8). More reliable documents confirm that she died at the time of those attacks on her husband’s family: AML, Saint Nizier death registry. 14 Claude Arnaud-Tizon appears on virtually every page of the minutes of the municipal council from 1790 to 1792 and again in the year II. See Procès-verbaux du corps municipal de la ville de Lyon, 6 vols. (1907). His role in taking down and melting the statue appears in vol. 3: 356. 15 January 22, 1794, Passeport pour Pierre-Marie Arnaud-Tizon, place St Nizier 42, pour aller à Rouen avec sa femme Anne Francoise Adélaïde (AML I2 70 No. 1866). (I am grateful to Paul Feuga for sharing his research notes with me). 16 Many years later, when Suchet faced bankruptcy and the entire family went into crisis mode to salvage his honor, Catherine regretted her role in helping to arrange this marriage. “Having myself contributed to arranging this fatal marriage, I cannot put into words the depths of my sorrow.” Catherine Arnaud-Tizon to Pierre Vitet, March 2, 1817, AML Fonds Vitet, 84 II 13. 17 Catherine Arnaud-Tizon described this visit in a letter to Pierre Vitet, September 23, [1814], AML Fonds Vitet, 84 II 12. 18 Amélie Vitet to Pierre Vitet, May 31 and June 3, 1810, AML Fonds Vitet, 84 II 11. 19 A biography of Roux appears in Szramkiewicz 1974, pp. 358–65. 20 Both Madame Roux née Montagnat and Madame Fournel née Tournachon signed Pierre and Amélie’s marriage contract: AN minutier central, etude IX, 866, 11 Frimaire X (December 2, 1801). 21 PV correspondence journal, letter to Jauntet, 7 Ventôse VII (February 25, 1799): “Roux & Fournel vont établir une maison de commerce et changer de demeure.” AML Fond Vitet, 84 II 07. In his biography of Suchet, Bernard Bergerot mentions that Suchet had an account with “la maison Roux, Fournel et Cie, rue Helvétius (Sainte-Anne)” that held more than 200,000 francs in the year XI (1801–2) (Bergerot 1986, p. 81). 22 Marguerite Vitet to Pierre Vitet, January 11, 1810, AML Fonds Vitet, 84 II 11. 23 Louis-Gabriel Suchet to Pierre Vitet, April 11 [1818], AML Fonds Vitet, 84 II 11.

References Archival materials Archives Départementales du Rhône (ADR) Archives Municipales de Lyon (AML), Fonds Vitet Archives Nationales (AN), Minutier Central

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Published sources Bergerot, B. (1986). Le Maréchal Suchet: Duc d’Albuféra. Paris: Tallandier. Bingham, N. and Thrift, N. (2000). “Some new instructions for travelers,” in M. Crang and N. Thrift (eds), Thinking Space. London: Routledge. Chaline, J.-P. (1982). Les bourgeois de Rouen: une élite urbaine au XIXe siècle. Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques. Chassagne, S. (1991). Le coton et ses patrons: France, 1760–1840. Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Coller, I. (2006). “Arab France: mobility and community in early-nineteenth-century Paris and Marseille.” French Historical Studies 29: 433–56. —(2011). Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798–1831. Berkeley : University of California Press. Cornut-Gentille, P. (2004). Madame Roland: Une femme en politique sous la Révolution. Paris: Perrin. Crang, M. and Thrift, N. (2000). Thinking Space. London: Routledge. Davidson, D. Z. (2007). France after Revolution: Urban Life, Gender, and the New Social Order. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Denis, V. (2006). “The invention of mobility and the history of the state.” French Historical Studies 29: 359–77. Edmonds, W. D. (1990). Jacobinism and the Revolt of Lyon, 1789–1793. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Feuga, P. (1996). “Les malheurs de Madame Vitet, femme du maire de Lyon.” Bulletin de la Société historique, archéologique, et littéraire de Lyon 26: 103–21. Hanson, P. R. (2003). The Jacobin Republic under Fire: The Federalist Revolt in the French Revolution. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Hunt, L. A. (2004). Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, 2nd edn, 1st edn, 1984. Berkeley : University of California Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin-Fugier, A. (1990/1993). La vie élégante ou la formation du Tout Paris: 1815–1848. Paris: Fayard/Seuil. Masson, F. (1902). Napoléon et sa famille, vol. 3 (1805–1807), 5th edn. Paris: Société d’Editions Littéraire et Artistique. May, G. (1970). Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press. Oliver, B. W. (2009). Orphans on the Earth: Girondin Fugitives from the Terror, 1793–1794. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Pellissier, C. (1996). Loisirs et sociabilités des notables lyonnais au XIXe siècle, vol. 1. Lyon: Editions lyonnaises d’art et d’histoire and Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Pipelet, C. (1798). “Rapport sur les fleurs artificielles de la citoyenne Roux-Montagnat par Constance de Th. Pipelet de la Société du Lycée des Arts lu par l’auteur à la 59˚ séance publique du 30 Vendémiaire an 7. [October 21, 1798].” Poussou, J.-P. (1970). “Les mouvements migratoires en France et à partir de la France de la fin du XVe siècle au début du XIXe siècle: Approche pour une synthèse.” Annales de démographie historique, 11–78. Procès-verbaux du corps municipal de la ville de Lyon (1899–1907) 6 vols. Lyon: Imprimerie Nouvelle Lyonnaise. Reynolds, S. (2012). Marriage and Revolution: Monsieur et Madame Roland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Rosenthal, P. -A. (1999). Les sentiers invisibles: Espace, familles et migrations dans la France du XIXe siècle. Paris: Editions de l’ Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. —(2006). “Between macro and micro: theorizing agency in nineteenth-century migrations.” French Historical Studies 29: 457–81. Saunier, P.-Y. (1995). L’esprit lyonnais XIX-XX siècle. Genèse d’une représentation sociale. Paris: Editions du CNRS. Sauzet, M. P. (1874). “Hommage à la mémoire de Ludovic Vitet.” Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Lyon 26: 185–221. Suleau, F.-L. (1791). Journal de M. Suleau, No. V, July 16. Paris: Imprimerie de l’Homme sans peur. Szramkiewicz, R. (1974). Les régents et censeurs de la Banque de France nommés sous le Consulat et l’Empire. Geneva: Librairie Droz. Vitet, V. (1932). Notes et souvenirs sur quelques-uns des principaux événements de la Révolution, sur la vie politique de mon père, ses malheurs et son exil en Suisse, après le siège de Lyon, 1792–1793 et 1794. Paris: Renouard. Walton, C. (2009). Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14

Soldiers of the Pays: Localism and Nationalism in the Revolutionary Era Army Christopher Tozzi

Reflecting upon France’s regional diversity, Charles de Gaulle famously quipped in 1962 that it is nearly impossible to govern “a country which has two hundred fortysix types of cheese” (Shapiro 2006, p. 193). In an earlier and lesser known remark, however, the general had pointed to a solution to this challenge when he declared that “France was built with swords” (De Gaulle 1938, p. 5). French national unity, he implied, owed much to the military, which had helped to forge a cohesive national community out of a collection of localities that had historically shared little in common culturally, linguistically, or politically—some of which, indeed, continue to contest centralized authority even today (Schrijver 2006, pp. 171–259). This is a viewpoint that much of the prevailing historiography on France, from studies of the development of Bourbon absolutism in the seventeenth century to explanations of the Third Republic’s ascendancy by the turn of the twentieth, would seem to confirm. For instance, many scholars have closely linked the emergence of the centralized state in France, and in Europe more broadly, to the development during the early modern period of professional military forces. According to the influential “militaryrevolution” thesis first set forth by Michael Roberts in a speech in 1955 and later published in a collection of essays (1968), the unprecedented costs that stemmed from the establishment of standing armies during the seventeenth century spawned vast state bureaucracies for the purpose of better extracting taxes from the king’s subjects. The professional military served in turn to reinforce the power of the centralized state against localized resistance; as a result, military expansion and state centralization fed off one another. Although scholars have nuanced Roberts’ thesis over the decades since he first proposed it, its essential features remain highly influential in modern historiography (Black 1991; Parrott 1985; Rogers 1995). Meanwhile, studies of more recent periods in French history have tended to take for granted that the military was a homogeneous entity that necessarily encouraged national integration. Eugen Weber, in his seminal work on the transformation of “peasants into Frenchmen” during the nineteenth century, depicted the military as a “school of the fatherland” (1976, p. 298) that played a vital role in acculturating recruits from France’s disparate regions to a national way of life. To be sure, Weber

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recognized that some soldiers resisted efforts by their superiors to force them to speak French rather than the patois of their villages, and that the localized manner in which the authorities recruited military units engendered worries in Paris about the army becoming too regionalized. Nonetheless, he took mostly as a given (1976, pp. 298–9) that the military was a consummately national institution that encouraged nationalist sentiment among soldiers and civilians, exposed young conscripts to life beyond the frontiers of their petit pays, and spread the national language. Viewed from certain perspectives, the theses of both Roberts and Weber regarding the army’s contributions to state building and national integration are accurate. There is little disputing the military’s role during the early modern era in helping Bourbon kings to forge a more politically centralized state. Nor is there any serious doubt that, by the time of the Third Republic, the military had in many ways reinforced national unity in the way Weber described. Yet, despite historiographical tendencies to assume otherwise, in key respects, the French army at the outset of the modern era reflected regional interests, and served in some cases as an incubator of localist loyalties, at the same time that it promoted political, cultural, and social uniformity at the national level. The army of the Old Regime functioned as a cosmopolitan space where soldiers and officers spoke a wide variety of languages, practiced different religions, and sometimes split their loyalties between the king in Paris and the local, or even outright foreign, proprietors of their particular regiments. After 1789, the revolutionaries undertook considerable effort to transform the military into a more homogeneous institution that reflected the official national program; pragmatic concerns, however, made achieving this goal exceedingly difficult into the Napoleonic era. These trends problematize portrayals of the professional French military as an institution that, since its origins in the early modern period, served solely to promote the interests of the centralized state ruled from Versailles or Paris. On the contrary, as the following brief survey of a few key examples shows, the military during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, despite being one of the largest and perhaps one of the most important national institutions in France, retained an orientation that was in many senses very local. In this way, it synthesized localist and nationalist identities, helping to forge a more cohesive national community while simultaneously reinforcing individual soldiers’ sense of difference from troops who hailed from other parts of France. It was this nuanced interplay between local and national interests, rather than a unidirectional momentum that favored national integration alone, that ensured the military’s importance in helping to forge the contours of the national community that emerged out of the revolutionary era.

Localism in the Old Regime army A variety of factors contributed to the persistence of localist mentalities in the French army of the Old Regime despite its close association with the centralizing state. Among the most important were recruitment practices that often resulted in the grouping together of troops from the same local places. Until the eve of the Revolution, responsibility for recruitment fell mostly on individual officers for whom a major

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source of enlistees was the male population of the home towns or villages to which they generally returned during the semester leaves that they enjoyed every other winter (Corvisier 1964, vol. 1, pp. 165–6). As a result, many soldiers in Old Regime France served both under and alongside men who hailed from their native regions, and who were sometimes even neighbors from the same city or village. At the same time, the regiments of the royal army drew a significant number of their recruits from among the local populations of the areas in which they were stationed, which in peacetime tended to remain constant for long periods (Corvisier 1964, vol. 1, pp. 163–4). This practice also meant that men from the same locale tended to enlist in the same unit. The concentration of troops from particular regions within each regiment ensured that soldiers did not have to leave behind their localized dialects and customs, or even their political identities, when they went off to serve in the army. France’s “foreign regiments” also contributed substantially to the persistence of localist mentalities that differed from those of the court in Versailles. The Old Regime monarchy maintained an array of regiments, which, at least in theory, were composed of soldiers from specific foreign territories, such as Switzerland, Germany, and Ireland (Fieffé 1854; O’Callaghan 1870; Tornare 1998; Tozzi 2013). The corps in which these men served constituted microcosms of the foreign lands they represented, with the Crown allowing foreign troops to maintain their own judicial policies, practice the religions of their choice, and speak their native languages freely. The state’s tolerance of this heterogeneity was such that in 1755, the foreign regiments even received German, English, and Italian translations of official French military commands to ensure that foreign military personnel could communicate effectively on the battlefield with their Francophone counterparts (Tozzi 2012). At the same time, the Crown permitted some of the foreign troops serving in France to profess allegiance to both the French king and their native sovereigns, allowing them officially to allocate their political loyalties between the regime for which they fought and the states where they had been born.1 For all these reasons, the foreign regiments functioned as spaces in which cultural, religious, and political values distinct from those of the centralized state thrived. Furthermore, since the foreign regiments also frequently enlisted native French subjects from peripheral provinces, such as Alsace and Lorraine, which shared linguistic and religious affinities with the foreign groups that the regiments represented, they served as incubators of regional identity not only for foreigners in the service of the king, but also for many of his own subjects who in many regards were much less “French” than their counterparts from elsewhere in the realm. In addition to promoting locally oriented cultural, linguistic, and religious heterogeneity, individual military units under the Old Regime could also function as vehicles by which the Crown negotiated and collaborated with peripheral centers of power. In one example, an anonymous theorist in the war ministry, observing that Louis XIV in the previous century had levied German regiments under the command of nobles from the outlying province of Franche-Comté in order to facilitate that region’s integration into France, suggested in 1748 that the king raise special regiments in cooperation with the nobility of Lorraine. The latter province, he wrote, was “to some extent already united to the Crown”; nonetheless, it “cannot be regarded with the same eye as the other provinces of the kingdom; we cannot have the same confidence

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in the loyalty of the people, and the local nobility does not yet possess the same attachment to the king as that of the rest of the kingdom.” Investing local aristocrats with a greater stake in the French military by commissioning them with their own regiments, the author argued, promised a solution to this challenge.2 Similarly, the marquis of Monteynard pointed, in a 1773 treatise, to the “dual advantage” of pursuing conventions with petty German princes along France’s frontiers to recruit their subjects for the French army. He claimed that such agreements would not only encourage the amalgamation of different “customs” and “practices” (“moeurs” and “usages”) within the French army by bringing Germans into contact with French natives, but also reinforce France’s diplomatic ties to German sovereigns.3 Germans were not the only peripheral group that the Crown sought to integrate into the kingdom via military service. Although royal regulations strictly forbade the nonforeign regiments of the army from enlisting troops born abroad, they granted exceptions for recruits from the foreign territories of the Comtat-Venaissin, which until 1791 was ruled by the pope, and from the independent kingdom of Savoy. The Crown permitted such exemptions because it deemed the inhabitants of these border territories “French due to the conformity of their customs and language.”4 In each of these cases, the military operated as a tool by which the Crown, far from using its armed forces to keep in check or stamp out any challenges to its own political authority, instead negotiated and collaborated with centers of power on the peripheries of France. In this way, the early modern military contributed to a nuanced formulation of the national community that afforded agency both to both localized actors and the centralized state.

Regional mentalities among revolutionary troops In stark contrast to the policies of the Old Regime, homogenizing and centralizing the army became, at least in theory, key imperatives for the revolutionaries, who proclaimed a radically new vision of the nation in which political and linguistic uniformity featured centrally (Bell 2001, pp. 169–97). Beginning in 1789, revolutionary leaders reconceptualized the military as a microcosm of the national community itself and promoted a vision of soldiering as one of the highest reflections of an individual’s devotion to the state (Lynn 1994, pp. 43, 62–6). Accordingly, they decreed the “nationalization” of the army—a process that entailed placing the military at the disposal of the nation rather than of the king, as well as transforming it into a force of patriotic citizen-soldiers who embodied national ideals—and dissolved the foreign regiments they had inherited from the Old Regime (Tozzi 2013). They also reinforced their control over the army by dispatching “representatives on mission” to the battlefront to impose upon French troops, in the words of historian R. R. Palmer, “the idea of an indivisible Republic” within “a country distracted by cross purposes and civil discord” (Palmer 1969, p. 132). The advent of conscription, meanwhile, meant that the army became much more representative of French society as a whole than it had been prior to 1789, when certain regions and social groups had accounted for disproportionate shares of military personnel (Lynn 1984, pp. 43–4; Forrest 1989, p. 25).

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Yet, despite the premium that the revolutionaries placed on disseminating centralized values throughout the army and reconfiguring it in the image of a unified French nation, the revolutionary army, like its Old Regime predecessor, continued to function as a space that fused national and regional identities. The experiences of Basque soldiers from the rugged Pyrenees region of France, which had been part of the kingdom since the seventeenth century but remained culturally and linguistically isolated, provide a particularly illuminating example of this phenomenon. French leaders were eager to capitalize on the special military skills they attributed to Basque troops, who, in the words of the deputy and military planner Lazare Carnot, were “accustomed to scaling mountains, uniquely skilled in traversing small paths and valleys [and] cannot be equaled by men born in flat country” (Archives parlementaires, vol. 58, p. 10). With these military assets in mind, the deputies of the National Convention levied a special unit, which they called the Legion of the Mountains, in 1793 for the express purpose of enlisting troops native to the Pyrenees departments (Charavay 1892, vol. 1, p. 352; Bertaud 1979, p. 88). Other specifically Basque units appeared during later stages of the revolutionary war and under Napoleon.5 Although French leaders placed unique value in the combat skills of troops from the Pyrenees frontier, they also remained wary of the localist tendencies of these soldiers. In July 1796, the war minister wrote to the Directory, the regime ruling France at the time, to warn that the concentration within certain units of Basque-speaking troops, especially those deployed in their native territory, posed problems because the Basques were more committed to serving in the name of their particular region than of France as a whole. “Living in the mountains, speaking a foreign tongue and having different moral values,” the war minister wrote, “the Basque is fanatical in his love for his pays.” The war minister’s request for permission to redeploy Basques serving along the Spanish frontier to other parts of France made clear that when he complained of the troops’ fanaticism for their pays, he referred to their local native territory, not the larger pays of the Republic.6 Nonetheless, certain aspects of the Basque troops’ localist identity also constituted an asset for the French war effort, which made French leaders think twice about removing them from the Pyrenees frontier. As the war minister conceded in other correspondence with the government in 1796, the special enmity that Basques in France shared toward the Spanish crown, which had oppressed their counterparts across the border, made them particularly zealous fighters against the armies of Spain. The French state, he wrote, should capitalize on the Basques’ hatred of Spaniards “if not by feeding it, at least by avoiding suppression of it.”7 French generals commanding troops along the Pyrenees frontier consequently undertook concerted efforts to encourage the Basques to enlist by promising them special privileges unavailable to other soldiers in the French army, including the right to serve only alongside men from their own region. The commander of the Army of the Pyrenees, general BonAdrien Jeannot de Moncey, issued a proclamation to the Basque people in March 1796 reassuring them of the falsehood of rumors that they would be forced to enroll “in battalions of strangers, among soldiers whose language you do not understand.” He instead promised local recruits, “you will not leave your pays”—and here again, the reference was to the petit pays of Basque country—“you will be incorporated into

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Basque battalions; you will be mixed among your fellow citizens, your relatives, your brothers, your friends.”8 Calls for granting special dispensations to Basque troops in order to encourage them to serve in the army persisted under the Napoleonic Empire. In 1808, an administrator in the department of Ariège, near the Spanish frontier, warned the minister of the interior that many of the men in his jurisdiction were refusing to cooperate with military conscription. The problem stemmed in part, he wrote, from the inability of many local Basque mayors to read the instructions that the central government had sent to them, in French, regarding conscription; however, he also suggested that recruitment among the Basques would proceed more smoothly if the troops served under local officers “from their own pays, who know their values, customs and language perfectly,” rather than commanders from elsewhere in France.9 This and the preceding examples highlight the extent to which French authorities, in the interest of achieving military goals, were willing to form units of Basque troops oriented toward the soldiers’ local region rather than France as a whole, even as they used these troops to advance the national military and diplomatic agenda. From a linguistic perspective in particular, Basque troops were by no means the only soldiers in the revolutionary army who retained strong markers of their places of origin while defending the national community. Perhaps the most telling example of the persistence of foreign languages among the troops was the second battalion of the 53rd Regiment, many of whose officers were of German origin. In 1794, in response to a decree requiring all higher-ranking officers in the French military to learn to read and write if they could not already, most of the commanders of the unit gained these skills, which they had not previously possessed. But since the authors of the decree had not taken care to specify the language in which literacy skills were required, most of the officers learned to read and write only in their native German, not French. As late as 1798, only fifteen of ninety-two officers in the battalion were literate in the latter language.10 Similar conditions prevailed in other units whose personnel hailed largely from regions on France’s peripheries; for example, in 1794, fifteen of twenty-six officers in the first battalion of the 53rd Regiment, and seven of forty in the first battalion of the 98th, were literate only in German.11 These trends, which were the product in large part of the historical tendency of both these units to recruit along France’s border with Germany, exemplified the persistence of localist identities among soldiers despite the project of national uniformity that the revolutionaries attempted to impose upon the army.

Annexed territories and divided loyalties The demographic, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the French military grew yet greater as French armies overran foreign territories during the revolutionary war and political leaders in Paris levied special units for enlisting the inhabitants of newly conquered regions, whose political loyalties and cultural attributes did not always conform with those of the state. Although these corps served in theory to help assimilate people on the periphery of France into the Republic by integrating them into

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the military, they also undercut efforts to impose linguistic and cultural uniformity on the army and provided spaces in which France’s newest citizens retained powerful associations with their local places of origin. One of the earliest examples of units with special ties to peripheral territory arose in Belgium. In December 1792, only days after revolutionary forces formally completed their first conquest of the Austrian crown’s Belgian possessions (Belgium changed hands several times before the French definitively captured it in 1794), French generals sought to levy three legions for enlisting Belgian and Flemish natives, particularly those who had seen combat in the failed revolution against the Dutch Stadtholder of 1787.12 These men would fight in the French army, but their ultimate loyalties—as well as their cultural and linguistic practices—aligned them with the Low Countries rather than the regime in Paris. More contradictory for the French state’s program of national unity was the Legion of the Franks of the North. Conceived originally by a native of Coblenz named Johann Kaspar Schorp, a self-styled “homme de lettres” who had emigrated to France at the beginning of the Revolution, the legion came into existence in September 1799 through a decree by the Directory (Hansen 1931–8, vol. 4, p. 1094; Dufraisse 1964, p. 127). Its purpose was to recruit troops in the Rhineland departments of Mont-Tonnerre, Roër, Sarre, and Rhin-et-Moselle, all of which had been newly established by the French government in January 1798 when it annexed occupied territory along the Rhine to France. The legion was commanded by an amalgamation of Rhinelanders and men native to other parts of France, but the government intended all the ordinary soldiers in the unit to hail from “the land between the Meuse and Rhine and the Rhine and Moselle” (Dufraisse 1964, p. 127)—that is, France’s German-speaking eastern frontier (Rowe 2003, p. 163). The new legion also constituted, at least in theory (Dufraisse 1964, p. 127), the sole unit of the French army in which France’s newest citizens from the Rhineland could enlist. As such, it brought together men who, having become French citizens only upon the annexation of their formerly independent states to France, in many cases did not speak the national language and remained culturally and politically oriented toward their native German communities rather than Paris. Ultimately, because sufficient volunteers from the new Rhineland departments proved in short supply, the Legion of the Franks of the North enlisted many foreigners, including some from as far away as Greece and India (Dufraisse 1964, pp. 127–8, 130). These men diluted the special Rhenish identity that the legion’s early supporters had hoped it would have, and they only augmented the corps’ lack of conformity with the linguistic and cultural homogeneity that the state sought to impose upon the military. Indeed, at least one Francophone officer lost his post in the unit because he could not communicate with the German-speaking troops under his command.13 Difficulties such as these were further complicated by the government’s decision in December 1799 to incorporate into the legion an “Irish battalion,” whose command it entrusted mostly to exiled Irish revolutionaries who expressed greater commitment to an independent Ireland than to France.14 The problems that stemmed from the amalgamation of so many different nationalities and languages within the legion, combined with chronic recruitment difficulties, prompted the government to disband it in June 1801.15 Nonetheless, during the time it existed, it served to incubate various regional mentalities

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while also providing men from France’s frontier with an opportunity to participate in one of the centralized state’s most important institutions, and one closely aligned with national citizenship and patriotism. The tension between, on the one hand, the state’s effort to integrate its newest citizens in annexed territories into French society by enlisting them in the army and, on the other, its commitment to maintaining a military that reflected the program of national unity endured into the Napoleonic era. Legions levied in 1803 to recruit Italian speakers residing in newly annexed territories on France’s southeastern frontier concentrated troops from the fringes of the French national community, both geographically and culturally, into particular units of the military.16 So too did the six “Illyrian” regiments that Napoleon levied in the Balkans in order to capitalize upon the military prowess of what he deemed the “horde of Tartars” residing on the French Empire’s eastern frontier (Fieffé 1854, vol. 2, pp. 156–7).

Conclusion From Basque country to the Balkans, the personnel of the French army during the era of the Revolution constituted a diverse array of groups who clung to the political, cultural, and linguistic identities of their places of origin even while serving in the national army. These soldiers were as emblematic during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of France’s deep-seated regional traditions as the country’s myriad varieties of cheese were in de Gaulle’s time. If the transformation of France’s peasants into Frenchmen under the Third Republic owed much to the influence of the armed forces, it was not because the military served solely to advance the national interests of the centralized state. It functioned instead as a space for blending localist with nationalist values, and for assimilating soldiers into the national community without imposing a total loss of their regional identity. It was the army’s synergistic fusion of the local and the national, rather than the intrinsic tendency to promote the interests of the centralized state that teleological readings of the evidence have taken for granted, that determined the military’s centrality to the emergence of the modern French national community.

Notes 1 The dual loyalties of Swiss troops were evident in the oaths they swore upon entering French service. An example read: “Vous jurerés de servir fidellement et en tout honneur Sa Majesté très Chrêstinne le Roy de France . . .; nous nous reservons néanmoins en cecy nos souverains seigneurs et Peres des Cantons et leurs alliés; en sorte qu’il nous sera loisible, conformément à nôtre Capitulation de retournée en nôtre Paÿs touttes foict et quant il plaira à notre souveraine de nous rappeller.” Letter of June 2, 1759 in Vincennes, Service historique de la défense (hereafter SHD), Xg 1. 2 This anonymous memorandum, in SHD 1M 1722, is dated “fin de 1748” according to a note in its margin. That date, however, appears incorrect because a Regiment of Royal-Barrois already existed at the time. Royal-Barrois was levied in 1745 and

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14

15 16

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disbanded in 1749, and saw a second incarnation under the same name from 1757 to 1762. A regiment with the title Royal-Lorraine also existed from 1744 to 1748, and again from 1757 to 1760. In no case did the Crown designate either of these regiments as foreign. Chartrand 1997, pp. 17–19. Marquis of Monteynard, untitled memorandum, April 8, 1773, SHD 1M 1771. These exemptions are discussed in a document titled “Memoire concernant Les Recrües des Regiments Irlandais au Service du Roy,” dated April 1, 1775 and signed by “Talaru” (presumably César Marie, marquis of Talaru and Chalmazel), SHD 1M 1771. Cf. the decrees of 26 Ventôse Year VIII and April 25, 1808, SHD Xk 45. Paris, Archives nationales (hereafter AN) AF/III/147, dossier 694, item 89. AN AF/III/147, dossier 693, item 2. AN AF/III/147, dossier 693, items 79–81. Letter of September 16, 1808, AN F/9/745. Roster of 2 Messidor Year VI, SHD Xi 20. AN AF/II/371, dossier 3001 and AN AF/II/372, dossier 3012. Under the Old Regime, the 53rd and 98th regiments had been the regiments of Alsace and Bouillon, respectively; each was considered a foreign regiment. Fieffé 1854, vol. 1, pp. 393–420. AN F/7/4689, plaquette 3, item 29; and AN F/7/4689, plaquette 1, item 17. Pierre Augéreau to the war minister (9 Pluviôse Year IX) and Eickemeyer to the war minister (2 Germinal Year IX), SHD Xk 21. “Liste des Irlandais Réfugiés destinés à la formation d’un Bataillon qui doit être attaché à la Légion des francs du Nord proposé aux différens Grades d’Officiers”, 25 Pluviôse Year VIII, SHD Xk 21. On the political loyalties of Irish officers in the legion, cf. the letter of 22 Thermidor Year VIII, SHD Xk 21. Decree of 7 Messidor Year IX, SHD Xk 21 Decree of 28 Floréal Year XI and pamphlet of 8 Thermidor Year XI, SHD Xk 45.

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Fieffé, E. (1854). Histoire des troupes étrangères au service de France, 2 vols. Paris: Librarie Militaire. Forrest, A. (1989). Conscripts and Deserters: The Army and French Society during the Revolution and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hansen, J. (1931–8). Quellen zur Geschichte des Rheinlandes im Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution, 1780–1801, 4 vols. Bonn: Peter Hanstein. Lynn, J. (1984). Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791–94. Urbana: University of Chicago Press. —(1994). “Recalculating French Army Growth During the Grand siècle, 1610–1715.” French Historical Studies 18(4): 881–906. O’Callaghan, J. (1870). History of the Irish Brigades in the Service of France from the Revolution in Great Britain and Ireland Under James II to the Revolution in France Under Louis XVI. Glasgow : Cameron and Ferguson. Palmer, R. R. (1969). Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Parrott, David A. (1985). “Strategy and Tactics in the Thirty Years’ War: the ‘Military Revolution’.” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 38: 7–25. Roberts, M. (1968). Essays in Swedish History. Minnesota: Minnesota University Press. Rogers, C. (1995). The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Westview Press. Rowe, M. (2003). From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schrijver, F. (2006). Regionalism After Regionalisation: Spain, France and the United Kingdom. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Shapiro, Fred R. (2006). The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tornare, Alain-J. (1998). Vaudois et Confédérés au service de France, 1789–1798. Yens-surMorges: Cabédita. Tozzi, C. (2012). “One Army, Many Languages: Foreign Troops and Linguistic Diversity in the Eighteenth-Century French Military,” in H. Footitt and M. Kelly (eds), Languages and the Military: Alliances, Occupation and Peace Building. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 12–24. —(2013). “Citizenship, Soldiering and Revolution: Foreigners and Minorities in the French Military, 1750–1831.” Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, April. Weber, E. (1976). Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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From mal du pays to l’amour du pays: Fatal Nostalgia and the Local in Nineteenth-century France Thomas Dodman

In 1825, the widely respected French physician Jean-Louis Alibert published to great acclaim a two-volume treatise of psychology entitled Physiologie des passions, ou nouvelle doctrine des sentiments moraux.1 Alibert was a survivor who had outlived the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration’s backlash, recusing his youthful radicalism to maintain his professorship at the Paris faculty of medicine and become personal physician to Louis XVIII. With the Physiologie des passions, he hoped to articulate a “moral psychology” adequate to a postrevolutionary order in desperate need of stability (Williams 1994; Goldstein 2005). He shelved sensationalist theories widely blamed for the excesses of the revolutionary era and instead sought to catalog the “innate penchants” that ostensibly fuel people’s passions (or emotions), breaking these down into four overarching “instincts”: those of conservation (responsible for fear, courage, and vanity among others); of imitation (ambition, envy . . .); of social relations (friendship, hatred, pity, aggressiveness, patriotism . . .); and of reproduction (all forms of family love) (Alibert 1825, vol. 1, pp. 1–10). Patriotism or, as he called it, following popular eighteenth-century classicist odes, “l’amour de la terre natale,” was central to Alibert’s unstated goal of social mooring and regeneration. A wholly natural and quite providential passion, patriotism ensured that all living beings, whether human or animal, did not compete for the most fertile and temperate parts of the earth, preferring instead their native lands to those of others (Alibert 1825, vol. 2, pp. 315–27). Alibert illustrated his exposition with an exotic pastoral influenced by the primitivism fashionable at the time. It tells the story of a young native Guianese girl named Couramé who is found abandoned in the forest and is adopted by a generous French woman in Cayenne. Rechristened Démétrie—after Demeter, goddess of the harvest and fertility—Couramé is educated à la française and grows into a delightful young lady troubled solely by a vague sense of melancholy and a Rousseauian indifference to all forms of luxury. When members of her tribe are invited to Cayenne by the French governor—in a shamelessly embellished rendition of interracial relations in the colony—she fraternizes and, torn between instinct and nurture, decides to flee with her own people under cover of darkness. She is found again in the jungle years

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later by a French doctor, grown into a beautiful adult woman, the happy wife of her tribe’s chief, and a content mother of many Christian children. Moved by his eyeopening conversation with Couramé and shaken by a sudden pang of homesickness, the doctor heeds to his own “amour de la terre natale” and promptly sets sail for France (Alibert 1825, vol. 2, pp. 330–72). A classical story of noble savages reacquainting civilized man with nature and Arcadian simplicity, Alibert’s moral tale highlights the entanglement of local, national, and colonial forms of territorial belonging in postrevolutionary France, and reveals how emotional attachment to this composite sense of place was very much imbedded in medicalized discourse (as were virtually all social questions at the times). Although he generally approves of patriotism as a natural penchant, Alibert concedes that it may also entail unpleasant side effects. The melancholy and ennui that undermine Couramé in Cayenne and the homesickness that sends the French doctor onto the first ship bound for France (or that allegedly caused a swarm of “French” bees to seek an unlikely hive on its mast), are, in fact, all manifestations of the serious clinical condition then referred to colloquially as “maladie du pays” and classified by physicians as “nostalgia.” Alibert acknowledged that this nostalgia was, indeed, a “dreadful disease”—a destabilizing passion caused by an excessive outpouring of patriotic sentiment that provoked a “deep sorrow” in exiles and soldiers stationed far from home. He noted the familiar story of Aotourou, Bougainville’s Tahitian darling of Parisian salons, who broke down in tears at the sight of familiar trees in the Jardins des plantes, and also related the case of a homesick Swiss housemaid whom he had treated personally (Alibert 1825, vol. 2, pp. 320–3). Yet, crucially, Alibert limited his observations on this clinical nostalgia to a few lines buried deep within an otherwise wholly positive account of patriotism, and he never used the term in the tale of Couramé (despite its featuring a doctor), as if to minimize its importance. This is quite remarkable if one considers that only six years earlier, the authoritative Dictionnaire des sciences médicales had opined that “no epoch has produced as many cases of nostalgia as the French Revolution and the wars it led to” (Percy and Laurent 1819, p. 268). Indeed, in the wake of two-and-a-half decades of near-continuous warfare, army physicians estimated that up to one in every twenty men enlisted might have succumbed to an ailment they considered as endemic as scurvy and typhus in the ranks (Lachese 1803, p. 36; Chamberet 1821, p. 123). In fact, it was far more common in the early 1800s for medical treatises on the passions to worry about nostalgia’s pathological effects rather than laud its putative instinctual origins. Philippe Pinel and the first psychiatrists plotted its symptomatology and identified it as a subform of melancholia; physicians, surgeons, and even pharmacists sought palliatives and effective treatments for nostalgia in the ranks; and dozens of medical students—many of them Alibert’s own—dissertated at length on the condition, making this “nostalgia” one of the most studied mental disorders in French medical faculties during the first half of the century (Venayre 2005). Just what, we may well ask, was this condition? Why did Alibert decide to replace, in 1825, a well-established psychiatric discourse of a “mal” with a moral psychology of an “amour”? And to what extent was this shift tied to a blurring of the distinction between a local “pays,” a wider “patrie,” and the ill-defined “terre natale” Alibert refers to?

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This article examines how the fraught question of locality and its place within the postrevolutionary national whole was echoed in French medical discourse and practice. It traces a broad change in understandings of clinical nostalgia from the outbreak of the revolutionary wars through to the Restoration, and uncovers an unexpectedly pragmatic approach to the question of people’s emotional attachment to the local at a time of embryonic nation building and imperial fantasies. Rather than viewing local and national as antipodes of a Manichean republican ideology, this article argues for the development of a synthetic outlook grounded in physicians’ accommodating response to cases of homesickness. The story told here thus complements Stephane Gerson’s efforts to unearth the vibrant “cult of local memories” that emerged after the fall of Napoleon, flourished under the more liberal phases of the July Monarchy and Second Empire, and eventually spilled into the Third Republic’s painstaking efforts to realign petite and grande patrie in a concerted pedagogy of place. As Gerson has argued, these efforts to instill affection for one’s pays “transcended reaction or nostalgia” for the Old Regime; rather, the local elites that spearheaded them sought to steady a society still jittery from twenty-five years of upheaval by recomposing the jigsaw of people’s territorial attachments within a logic of liberal progress (Gerson 2003). As such, the cult of local memories owed at least as much to the ascendancy in the 1820s and 1830s of Cousin’s philosophical psychology centered on a stable and grounded self than it did to the passions of romanticism. Less well known, however, is its connection to, more properly, medical anxieties about clinical nostalgia at the time.

Le mal du pays Unbeknown to most, the term “nostalgia” is itself of medical origin, having been coined by a maverick medical student at the faculty of Basel in 1688 (and not, as its Greek etymology might lead us to believe, in a time of classical odysseys and exiles). With this likable neologism, Johannes Hofer sought to establish a legitimate diagnostic category for a condition already known colloquially as Heimweh in German and maladie du pays in French. Developing an eclectic, post-Galenic pathogenesis, he described this new clinical entity as a depressive mood produced by an obsessive idea—a pathogenic “idée fixe”—or as he put it, the “sadness [tristem animum] generated by the burning desire to see one’s homeland again” (Hofer 1688, §2). If left untreated, nostalgia would breed melancholy and an inexorable wasting away of organic faculties, leading the patient to death by exhaustion or some other concomitant disease. Although Hofer himself never quite made it into the annals of medical history, his “uncertain disease” (as the Scottish physician William Cullen called it) successfully established itself in eighteenth-century medical circles, attracting the attention of prominent Enlightenment physicians and philosophes such as Rousseau and Kant. It gradually came to be associated with the plight of villagers enrolled in the army, attaining almost legendary status following stories of Swiss guards breaking down at the sound of familiar cowbells and Alpine hymns (Starobinski 1966; Rosen 1975; Roth 1991). Although observed in all eighteenth-century European armed forces, it became a grave

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source of concern for the French in particular following the Seven Years’ War and especially after the outbreak of hostilities with other European powers and internal counterrevolutionary forces in 1792. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars are generally viewed as a watershed moment separating wars of kings from wars between citizenries. The revolutionaries introduced mass mobilization and inaugurated the first full-fledged system of conscription in 1798, producing a formidable fighting force that also encapsulated their ideal of Republican unity. But while the army was undoubtedly conceived of as a “school for the nation,” it initially caused much resentment against Paris, stoking a latent “esprit de clocher” and provoking rebellion in many parts of the country, most famously in the Vendée. Mobilization caused hundreds of thousands of young men—by and large, illiterate peasants from rural parts of the country who spoke a variety of regional dialects—to leave their homes and travel to the four corners of France, Europe, and beyond. For most, the experience was one of painful uprooting accentuated by fear, horror, boredom, and anomie. Many broke down and needed to be hospitalized; occasionally, entire units were crippled by the sudden outbreak of contagious homesickness among recruits, most famously Breton conscripts in the year II and in the Grande Armée (Reinhard 1958). As soldiers’ letters reveal, the pays for which so many of them longed was both a concrete spatial category denoting the specific locale—village and vicinity—formerly inhabited, and a more abstract sociohistorical one connoting a living community of relatives, neighbors, and customs sorely absent in the regimented life of the army (Forrest 2002; and Puzelat 1996). While physical distance should obviously not be discounted in cases of nostalgia recorded in Moscow or Saint-Domingue, others diagnosed merely a few miles from the sick man’s home suggest that spatial displacement often only accentuated emotional dislocation.2 As one unusually literate volunteer confessed to his loved ones only months after having enlisted, it was not so much “mal du pays” he suffered from, as a “maladie de la famille.”3 French army physicians confronted these cases of nostalgia with a humane approach rooted in new Enlightenment ideas about caring for soldiers and the insane (Pichichero 2008; Goldstein 2001). They devised prophylactic means to prevent the illness—including a functional postal service and sources of leisurely distraction—and treated its first symptoms with paternal care and a rudimentary talking cure rather than the punishments and bullying more typical of military culture. If these measures proved insufficient, they resorted without hesitation to a more radical remedy: a threemonth furlough to return “au pays,” after which the soldier would be expected to rejoin the ranks, his health restored. As one might imagine given the circumstances and hysterical witch-hunting of the Revolution’s more radical phases, the Hippocratic injunction to “respirer l’air natal” by temporarily abandoning the frontline did not always go unquestioned. In the days of the patrie en danger, overzealous representatives on mission did, in fact, point their finger at what they saw as treasonous doctors colluding with criminal malingerers.4 One could even presume that the very category “nostalgia” might have proven suspect to revolutionaries steeped in utopian élan—if not yet in its subsequent temporal meaning, at least insofar as it seemed to dovetail perilously with anti-republican federalist movements. Indeed, as a condition premised on one’s prioritizing of local attachment over national interest, clinical nostalgia must surely

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fit, one would have thought, within well-rehearsed models of Republican universalism crushing all forms of particularity (Bercé 1987). And yet, surprisingly enough, nothing of the sort appears to have happened. Rather, the overwhelming impression is one of pragmatism and willingness to accommodate the emotional needs of the men, even at the height of the Terror or during Napoleon’s most taxing levies of 1812–13. Despite a chronic shortage of men and repeated attempts by revolutionary authorities to limit the number of sick leaves, the medical corps consistently maintained nostalgia as the one medical condition warranting an automatic temporary discharge throughout the conflict (and right up to the 1840s).5 The formidable Committee of Public Safety even tolerated NCOs swapping posts so that they could serve closer to home when diagnosed with nostalgia.6 In fact, notwithstanding the propaganda and recruitment reforms, the French army fell far short of moulding “peasants into Frenchmen.” Instead, authorities relied on a federating surge of wartime patriotism and turned a blind eye to the persistence of regionally based battalions and platoons of villagers. These coalesced semi-autonomously in the fog of war and were eventually endorsed as a way of preserving group cohesion and motivation (Lynn 1984; Christopher Tozzi’s chapter in this volume). “We are all together, all from the pays,” private Joseph Rousseau sought to reassure his parents upon arriving on the banks of the Rhine in 1793.7 Remembering his mother’s admonition to stick with “those who have inhaled the same air since youth,” another soldier, Louis Dumez, fought alongside fellow Verlinghemois from 1796 through to his discharge in 1802.8 By Napoleon’s time, military newspapers openly encouraged soldiers from the same region to form surrogate families within the ranks, believing that these would lay the foundations for esprit de corps.9 Throughout, the medical corps endorsed these “bands of pays” as the surest means of preventing outbreaks of nostalgia. They welcomed, in particular, the formation of large Breton companies and did not hesitate to dispatch a compatriot physician to their aid at the first signs of homesickness (Percy and Laurent 1819, p. 277).

L’amour du pays The story of clinical nostalgia after the end of the Revolutionary era is one of slow decline and eventual removal from medical usage in favor of various neurasthenic and hysterical syndromes. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the term gradually came to denote a more benign form of temporal displacement rather than painful exile, eventually becoming a general cultural category befitting an epoch soon to be remembered as the “Belle Époque.”10 Still, cases of deadly mal du pays continued to be diagnosed in French army barracks through to the 1890s, and with alarming frequency in expeditionary corps sent to fight in Algeria and Crimea among other places. Fittingly enough, the last known epidemics occurred among Breton reservists of the garde mobile during the Franco–Prussian War (1870–1) (Roynette 2000). The disappearance of clinical nostalgia was, therefore, a surprisingly long and fitful process. Although often attributed to the musings of early nineteenth-century romantic authors, it actually featured a variety of causes and a wide cast of actors (Dames 2001;

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Fritzsche 2004). Among the least expected, perhaps, were doctors themselves, including Napoleonic physicians and surgeons eager to become civilian practitioners following years of training in the army. Drawing from first-hand experience collected on the battlefield, dozens submitted dissertations on nostalgia as part of their accrediting examinations at the two medical faculties of Paris and Montpellier—more than one per year on average from 1803 to the 1840s (and without counting at least as many more works on closely related topics). These provided a summa of clinical knowledge on the condition, outlining its etiology, pathophysiology, and suggested therapeutic remedies. Surprisingly, though, they also shifted very quickly from an unambiguously medical view of clinical nostalgia to a rather more nuanced appreciation of how this “ maladie” might actually reveal a hidden “amour.” The students’ choice of opening sentences for their dissertations is telling in this regard: if in 1804 it was de rigueur to commence with a clear warning that “the disease described as Nostalgia (and known colloquially as maladie du pays) is a condition entailing extremely dangerous consequences,” after the fall of Napoleon it became customary for students to start on the rather more upbeat—and spatially underdetermined—note that “L’amour du pays is a sentiment that moves the hearts of all men. None can be indifferent to the idea of abandoning their patrie.” By 1820, with the Restoration now in full swing, nostalgia was introduced as nothing less than the “the greatest, strongest, and most durable . . . of all sentiments given to man” (Castelnau 1806, p. 5; Allard 1820, p. 5; Martin 1820, p. 5). Within a few years, Alibert—with whom many of these medical students worked—would see it fit to drop the clinical term “nostalgia” altogether in favor of the wholly benign instinctual penchant that lay behind it. Demobilized army doctors justified their shift from mal to amour by pointing out that branding homesick soldiers as madmen fit for psychiatric asylums was tantamount to making patriotism a form of insanity. The nostalgic certainly required medical attention, they argued, but his illness was transitory rather than constitutional. He should not be blamed for loving his homeland too much, and instead should be educated on how to manage his emotions for both the pays and the patrie (Thérrin 1810, pp. 8–10). At times these young doctors seemed to be merely confusing the local and the national. Nevertheless, in the long run, they successfully outlined two distinct ways of articulating, both spatially and historically, the relation between these increasingly porous nodes of identification. With the first of these—perhaps the more intuitive one for twenty-first century readers—medical students added their voice to the “romantic antimodernism” typically associated with the cultural landscape of the immediate postrevolutionary era (Löwy and Sayre 2001). Although they recognized that material advances and civilization were rendering people less prone to feeling homesick, they also bemoaned a corresponding loosening of patriotic feeling and worried about the longterm implications of increased cosmopolitanism. Swapping clinical perspective for ideological outlook, these physicians were most likely the first to explicitly associate the term to the kind of idealizing rearward glance that has since come to define “nostalgia.” As one thésard argued in 1825, what the nostalgic actually suffered from was an “obsession with the past” that led him to view things “in terms of the discrepancy between [his] current and former existence” (Masson 1825, p. 7). Extending this sense

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of temporal displacement from an individual to a collective historical perspective, another medical student lamented “the overflowing of a conquering civilization [that] effaces one by one the various moral colours that once used to feed it” (Pilet 1844, p. 18). Over the following decades, this “nostalgic” (sic) view of a vanishing “France d’antan” would crystallize around widespread anxieties about rural depopulation, vagrancy, and waning traditions, ultimately finding political outlets in fin de siècle regionalist, ultranationalist, and anti-Semitic movements. Far more surprising, though, is the second way in which medical students writing on nostalgia during the Restoration and July Monarchy attempted to reconcile local and national spheres. Rather than viewing these two in terms of an opposition between conservatism and progress (or Republicanism), they identified synergies based on their experience of dealing with clinical nostalgia in the army. According to surgeon Pauquet, the distinction between “l’amour du pays” and “l’amour de la patrie” was both real and transient. “One belongs to nature, the other to civilization,” he explained, and whereas the former was “subordinate to the first impressions man receives from his surrounding environment,” the latter “answers to feelings one has for family, personal fortune, and glory.” Nature and nurture, Pauquet insisted, should not be seen as pulling in opposite directions, but rather as working together, as the individual and collective facets in the one and same progressive movement of bildung (Pauquet 1815, p. 7). The idea proved seductive and several other medical students expanded upon this complementary relation between local and national forms of belonging thereafter. They argued specifically that the sophisticated and educated sentiments associated with the fatherland as a whole grew out of the more instinctual, raw—and therefore somewhat unpredictable—feelings one had for home. To the poetically inclined surgeon Pillement, this relation conjured charming synecdochic imagery far removed from the sufferings of war: “The sacred love of the fatherland [l’amour de la patrie] draws its most sublime expressions of devotion from this noble source [l’amour du pays]” (Pillement 1831, p. 5).

From pays to colonie Pillement’s opening line to his 1831 MD thesis on nostalgia gives a measure of just how much the medical—and, increasingly, paramedical—discourse of clinical nostalgia had evolved since the first battlefield reports on the disease. Whereas the latter posited sickness as the only possible outcome of the clash between atavistic localism and the “nation in arms,” the former suggests a complementarity that recalls the complementarity envisaged by the local notables Gerson has studied. In the mind of these liberal elites, cultivating local memories was part of a plan to instill a sense of place as the basis for a nationally shared civic consciousness. They viewed pays and patrie as two moments of the same logic of modernity, not as antagonistic standpoints for conservative and progressive ideologies. As this article has shown, it is possible to identify a very similar outlook within ongoing medical discussions of clinical nostalgia. Paradoxically, the transformation of the category itself seems to have had much to do with the consistency with which doctors, and army physicians in particular, sought

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pragmatic measures to confront cases of homesickness and legitimate emotional investment in the local at a time of heroic nation building. The implications of this logic would only become fully apparent in what has aptly been described as the Third Republic’s “nesting model” of territorial identities, where concrete places and more abstract spaces of emotional allegiance could be stacked together like Matryoshka dolls (Thiesse 1997; see also Chanet 1996). Here too, clinical nostalgia provides a revealing perspective on this decisive moment in the history of French nationhood, pointing to the role played by a third layer—an imperial one—in the realigning of pays and patrie. For if nostalgia—“le mal le plus français,” in the words of one contemporary (Dupont-White 1865, p. 260)—enjoyed a certain resurgence in the 1830s and 1840s as a way of explaining French setbacks during the colonization of Algeria (just as the British were extending their imperial standing in the East), it subsequently came to facilitate the very establishment of an Algérie française. This seemingly happened once colonization projects resorted to resettling whole village communities in look-alike settlements across the Mediterranean, rather than relocating settlers randomly as they had previously done. If the pays could not be forgotten, so the reasoning went, then why not transplant it to the colonie—buildings, street names, neighbors and all—so that nostalgia might undercut itself by fostering a new sense of rootedness? The most ambitious projects called for the creation of departmental colonies composed exclusively of compatriots, even Breton ones previously singled out as hopelessly prone to homesickness! After Sedan, entire communities of dispossessed Alsatians would be relocated to typical French villages in Algeria, adding both ideological significance and concrete substance to the notion of a “mirror image of France.”11 In other words, rather than dissolve within a larger whole, the pays actually came to prop up the colonie, just as it had done for the patrie during the Napoleonic wars. Like Alibert’s Couramé, these displaced French families could hope for Arcadian lives overseas, confident in the belief that their amour du pays would both embed localism within “la plus grande France” and preserve tradition in this “New France.”

Notes 1 I wish to thank the members of the Modern Europe graduate student workshop at Boston College for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter. 2 Archives du Service de Santé de l’Armée au Val-de-Grâce (VdG), Paris, 36/14. Delasser, “Table synoptique des quatre derniers mois de l’an XIII de l’hôpital militaire de Sainte-Domingue, 20 Vendémiaire an XIV [12 October 1805]”; and Service Historique de la Défense (SHD), Vincennes, Xw 83 Pas-de-Calais. Souvilles and Danies, health certificate delivered to citizen Pierre Audriet on 6 Ventôse an III [February 24, 1795]. 3 Joseph-Louis-Gabriel Noël to his adoptive mother, December 4, 1792, in Noël 1912, p. 296. 4 Aulard (1889–) contains several reports in this sense, as do the army medical archives at the Val-de-Grâce. 5 Committee of Public Safety, decree of 5 Brumaire year III [October 26, 1794], in Aulard, Recueil des actes, vol. 17, p. 628.

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6 7 8 9 10

SHD Xr 25. Committee of Public Safety, report of 1 Floréal year III [April 20, 1795]. Joseph Rousseau to his parents, December 22, 1793, in Picard 1914, p. 31. SHD 1KT 560. Papiers François-Joseph Dumez. Anon 1805, p. 183. Rudimentary text mining in large and more refined databases including Google Ngram and ARTFL-Frantext show a marked increase in usage of the term “nostalgia” around the 1880s and 1890s. 11 Archives nationales d’outre-mer (ANOM), L3. Conseil Général de l’Isère, “Extrait du procès-verbal des délibérations du Conseil général, 2 December 1848.” On nostalgia during the colonization of Algeria, see Dodman 2011.

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Martin, J. J. A. (1820). “Dissertation sur la nostalgie,” Paris, medical thesis. Masson, J. B. (1825). “De la nostalgie considérée comme cause de plusieures maladies,” Paris, medical thesis. Noël, G. (1912). Au temps des volontaires. Lettres d’un volontaire de 1792. Paris: Plon. Pauquet, J. L. A. (1815). “Dissertation sur la nostalgie,” Paris, medical thesis. Percy[ J.-F.] and Laurent (1819). “Nostalgie,” in Dictionnaire des sciences médicales, vol. 36. Paris: Panckoucke. Picard, E. (1914). Au service de la nation. Lettres de volontaires (1792–1798). Paris: Félix Alcan. Pichichero, C. (2008). “Le soldat sensible: Military Psychology and Egalitarianism in the Enlightenment French Army.” French Historical Studies 31(4): 553–80. Pilet, D.-E. (1844). “De la nostalgie considérée chez l’homme de guerre,” Paris, medical thesis. Pillement, G.-L.-V. (1831). “Essai sur la nostalgie,” Paris, medical thesis. Puzelat, M. (1996). “La notion de pays: un parcours historiographique,” in Odile Redon (ed.), Savoirs des lieux: géographies en histoire. Saint-Denis: PUV. Reinhard, M. (1958). “Nostalgie et service militaire pendant la Révolution.” Annales historiques de la Révolution française 30(1): 1–15. Rosen, G. (1975). “Nostalgia: a ‘forgotten’ psychological disorder.” Clio Medica 10(1): 29–51. Roth, M. (1991). “Dying of the past: Medical studies of nostalgia in nineteenth-century France.” History and Memory 3(1): 5–29. Roynette, O. (2000). “Bons pour le service”: L’expérience de la caserne en France à la fin du XIXe siècle. Paris: Belin. Starobinski, J. (1966). “The Idea of Nostalgia.” Diogenes 14(54): 81–103. Thérrin, A. (1810). “Essai sur la nostalgie,” Paris, medical thesis. Thiesse, A.-M. (1997). Ils apprenaient la France: L’exaltation des régions dans le discours patriotique. Paris: Editions de la MSH. Venayre, S. (2005). “Le Corps malade du désir du pays natal: nostalgie et médecine au XIXe siècle,” in A. E. Demartini and D. Kalifa (eds), Imaginaire et sensibilités au XIXe siècle. Paris: Créaphis, pp. 209–22. Williams, E. (1994). The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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An Uncertain Icon: The Changing Significance of the Croix Occitane in the Postwar Midi Andrew W. M. Smith

The Occitan cross adorns many crimson flags in the Languedoc, communicating a proud attachment to both the region’s identity and its long and turbulent history.1 Regional identity has at times seemed like, and pretended toward, a national status, based upon the premodern unit of “Occitanie.” Occitanie is the region in which Occitan is principally spoken, encompassing much of the southern half of France (the Midi, described as Méridional), but concentrated most strongly around the regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées. It has been recognized as a vibrant identity since the Middle Ages, but has skirted political validation, except as the territories of the Count of Toulouse, both prior to and following its conquest by the French nation in the thirteenth century. The predominance of winegrowing in the economy of these regions has engendered convergences between wine and regional identity throughout the twentieth century; this has ensured that the Occitan cross is frequently deployed as part of the vocabulary of viticultural protest whenever the Languedoc viticole faced economic difficulties. Yet, exactly which aspects of Occitan history or identity are called to mind varies with the specific deployment of the cross. It has been borne at the head of demonstrations, spray-painted on walls as a sign of protest, and today flies atop the offices of the regional administration. How then can we reconcile a symbol which is at once dissenting, combative and yet, legitimately institutionalized? This chapter elucidates how the cross was used to ground different inflections of Occitanisme, and analyzes different conceptions of distinctive Occitan patrimony as those related to issues of class, regionalism, internal colonization, and modernization. Tracing the varying deployment of this symbol, from the head of protest marches in the 1960s to the top of government buildings after the decentralization drive of the 1980s, allows for an illuminating analysis of both Occitan and regional identity. The fluctuating significance of the Croix Occitane is emblematic of a struggle for control of regional patrimony that first arose in the late 1960s. The height of both Oc and vine as resistant notes in the south coincides with a period in which supporters of both articulated and manipulated the significance of this patrimony: from its aggressive

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usage in the 1970s, when regionalist protestors deployed it against the French state, to the 1980s, when the sweeping election of the left redefined the experience of these regionalist fringes and brought patrimony into the collective vocabulary of French nationhood (Lebovics 2004, p. 6). This history shows how local symbols and protests have helped demarcate the lines between precarious communities rooted in their locality, and external pressures often embodied by national government.

Decazeville: Patois and the pit The miners of Decazeville went on strike between 1961 and 1962, spending nearly a month occupying cold, damp underground mines isolated from their families and sleeping on piles of straw to protest a round of layoffs (Reid 1985, p. 204). That the intensification of action involved twenty miners on a hunger strike was intended to instruct the French public of the extent to which Parisian technocrats were wreaking havoc on the peripheries of the state; it presented broken, starving laborers as evidence of a barren and damaging industrial policy. Particularly relevant in this strike, however, was the extent to which it solidified Occitanisme as the new language of resistance to the centralized state, rehabilitating a concept which, it was commonly thought, had previously been the reserve of perceived intellectual dandies such as the literary movement of the Félibrige. Many regionalist commentators highlight Decazeville as a turning point for the Occitan movement; for Michel Le Bris, despite being “originally cultural, the Occitan movement after 1962 became political” (Le Bris 1975, p. 31). The miners conveyed in the language of the region that damage wrought on the culture of their community and their economy was in fact representative of damage being done by the French state to the regions more broadly. So too was the icon of the Occitan cross a useful tool in communicating the distinct character of this industrial dispute, with the red flag synonymous with pit strikes and also communicative of regional difference. Reid depicts the fragile Occitan movement at the time of the strike as having largely restricted itself to “literati and intellectuals in Montpellier and Toulouse” (Reid 1985, p. 209). Yet the langue d’oc of strikers’ slogans brought an air of freshness and humanity to the Occitan movement, a decisive move away from the poetic and literary incarnation of Occitanie and toward “an interpretation of Occitanisme as the cultural expression of all those dispossessed by the central state” (Reid 1985, p. 210). Strikes broke out across the Languedoc in support of the Decazeville miners, with rugby games canceled in Toulouse and Perpignan as a demonstration of solidarity (De Sède 1982, p. 267). These measures of support began to symbolize a meshing of movements as the political maturity of the Occitanistes allowed them to address problems of class and speak coherently to the region’s economic interests. The miners’ strike showed Occitanistes that the formation of another society did not rest merely on reactions to “cultural alienation” but had to involve direct political action. Those convinced of the need to speak simultaneously of Socialism, class struggle, and the culture of the region’s masses converged to form the Comité Occitan d’Études et d’Action (COEA) in 1962 (Lafont 1971, p. 219). This organization was designed to

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channel the political relevancy of the older scholarly societies into more direct action to foster Occitan identity. The COEA, as the hub of Occitan intellectuals, began to speak of “internal colonialism,” which contributed to a new conception of regional disparity. The Occitan movement had to deal not only with traditional identity and language, but also with de-industrialization, unemployment, and the exodus of youth and agricultural labor (Alliès 1972, pp. 10–12). Decazeville reenergized intellectual engagement with Occitanisme and other intellectuals emerged to champion the cause of regionalism in the 1960s. Robert Lafont, a long-time member of the COEA was emblematic of this shift, moving from linguistic analysis to political theory, as southern intellectuals took on a new role as social activists. Lafont published La Révolution Régionaliste in 1967, which advocated federalism as a solution to the increasingly alienating and “autarchical” character of the French Republic (Lafont 1967, p. 14). In recognizing the challenges of European integration and regional economic disparity, Lafont sought to construct a federalism that liberated through the representation of regional interests at a European level.

Les années 68 and Occitanie While the riots of Paris were not mirrored in the Midi, the social pressures triggering such a widespread movement across Europe did come into play there, as did the ramifications of so direct a challenge to the central government. If 1968 did not create the forces that encouraged expressions of Occitan identity and spurred viticultural radicalism, then the années 68 can be said to have provided a shot in the arm to an existing process in the Midi. Yet, it is striking how little memorial legacy ’68 has left in the region. Most interviewees showed little appreciation of 1968’s direct impact on the Languedoc viticole, denigrating its importance as “an urban movement, not a rural one” (Interview with Bonafé 2010). In claiming that “Occitania is essentially agricultural,” (COEA 1971, p. 81) the COEA sought to distinguish the Midi as not only culturally but also economically distinct from the North. Southern regionalists took strength from “les années 68” and the reservoirs of support filled by the actions of those in the COEA would fuel an increasingly active Occitan movement. Despite its poor local traction, 1968’s legacy has been widely acknowledged to have created an increased national appetite for discussion of the role of the regions in the centralized state. Robert Lafont’s reflection on the consolidation of the French nation throughout its history was released in this same year. His very first line warns that the book “could shock the French reader” (Lafont 1968, p. 25), and Lafont proceeds to tell the story of France’s triumph over the regions through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the modern period, characterizing internal and external colonialism as merely different facets of “official French chauvinism” (Lafont 1968, p. 221). Culturally too, the 1960s had an impact on Occitanisme. Formed in July 1968 by Claude Alranq, the Occitan theatre group Lo Téatre de la Carriera (Theatre of the Street) toured a series of Occitan language plays about the struggles of winegrowers. The group, which bore the Croix Occitane as its logo, became a resonant link between

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the people of the Corbières, wine, and the Occitan movement. In particular, their play La Mort et Resurrection de M. Occitania (The Death and Resurrection of Mr Occitania) linked the economic and cultural health of the Languedoc with the titular embodiment of the region (Hébert and Noël 1980, pp. 145–61). After resurrection, he is reminded that “a people that has lost recognition of itself is the easiest to destroy” (“Mobilisation contre la Septimanie” 1971). This awakening was demonstrated by the formation of a group called Lutte Occitan (Occitan Struggle), charged with pushing a specifically Socialist vision of Occitan independence in 1970. They drew together the many Comités d’Action Occitans that had formed in the wake of 1968 to form a socialist political federation and push for national liberation (Rawlinson 1996, p. 6). Significantly, it was Lutte Occitan that championed the slogan of the Occitaniste movement, “Volem viure al païs” (We want to live in our country). They tried to connect the popular engagement with Occitanisme and Catharism in the context of political struggle. For example, their meeting in Montségur in 1973 drew some 10,000 attendees, ostensibly to commemorate the Cathars, but also to listen to political rhetoric as the Occitan cross flew against the resonant backdrop of the Cathar citadel. The rally finished with a performance from Claude Marti, the Occitan singer whose popularity across France had also served to raise interest in the Occitan cause. Moreover, Roland Pécout, in a book on Claude Marti, wrote of this period that “it was an era in which the affirmation of Occitania had taken on the colours of the Third World; the passage from this stage marked the end of a certain romanticism and the beginning of a more lucid analysis” (Pécout 1974, pp. 50–9). The popularization of the Occitan movement, bearing the Croix Occitane as its emblem, and the radicalization of vocabulary encouraged further recourse to the challenging debate on the Third World and the future role of regions such as the Languedoc in a “post-imperial” world. Although these developments during the 1960s had proved useful in drumming up increased support for the Occitan movement, it was the conflict at Larzac that entrenched this support. When the French government (and specifically the then Minister of Defence Michel Debré) sought to extend a military base that had been in place since 1899 from 30 km2 to 170 km2, infringing on agricultural land on the Larzac plateau, locals began a longstanding struggle to prevent the annexation of regional land in service of the military. Tractors and sheep farmers inundated the proposed expansion area, setting up protest camps within which circulated a new regional radicalism. The multicultural protest camp threw up odd combinations of freedom fighters: suddenly, Kanak militants protesting the extension of army bases in New Caledonia appeared alongside Languedocien activists to express the solidarity of minorities sidelined by the extension of a Parisian imaginaire. By broadening their national and international appeal, the defenders of Larzac cultivated a potent authenticity that validated their nonviolent actions and held them up as a legitimately oppressed group. They successfully manipulated the outrage at Paris’ seemingly unfeeling dismissal of their grievances to create a new local space for protest. Indeed, there were demonstrable interactions between the Occitan movement and nationalist militants elsewhere in Europe. In particular, Occitan extremists sought to form connections with the IRA in an effort to show solidarity and draw a comparison between the Occitan nation under French control and Ireland under British rule.

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Figure 16.1 Occitan Activists and the Long Kesh Ramblers exchange the Croix Occitane with the Starry Plough, a symbol of Irish nationalism with a particularly Socialist overtone.

The “Long Kesh Ramblers”—an Irish republican band formed as a fundraising group for the families of interned political prisoners—were welcomed at a series of concerts in the South of France and happily posed for photos during “the exchange of the Occitan flag and the IRA flag” (see Figure 16.1). The group’s political engagement was well appreciated in the Midi where, following a concert, debate raged about violent struggle and the road to “national” liberation (“Un salut du peuple irlandais” 1973). Common ground was found in mutual hatred of occupying soldiers—also stationed at Larzac—who had massacred “our brothers, the workers of Ireland.” Likewise, the two groups professed “the solidarity of impoverished people on the periphery of capitalist Europe” (“Un salut du peuple irlandais” 1973). The “internal colonialism” loathed by both the Occitan movement and the IRA allowed common ground to be found despite many disparities in their actual situation. Suddenly, the dormant Occitan nation was granted a similar cachet to those resisting oppression all over the globe. Yet, the most enduring link remained between the Occitanistes and the militant winegrowers of the Languedoc; their shared heritage strengthened both movements.

Tangled lines between Oc and vine When winegrowers occupied Montpellier Cathedral early in 1971, the police diagnosed a new vivacity and a different tone in their protest movement. According to several RG reports, “the occupation certainly referenced ‘folklore’ and at times took on the look of a ‘kermesse’ (regional festival)” (RG Report 1971). The notion of an Occitan revival had become bound to the concept of regional resistance in the eyes of the forces of order. The significance of the highly visible and symbolic acts of the winegrowers was in creating new touchstones of regional identity. These demonstrations, bearing the Occitan cross at their head, served as a new form of cultural fête, in which the

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symbols of Occitanie and the region’s occupational identity could be communicated in a modern setting using well-worn vocabulary. The deployment of the cross in festive contexts and the celebratory atmosphere amidst a climate of contestation underlined the importance of patrimony in communicating modern attachment to distant values. The RG description of this protest symbolized the commingling of culture, identity, and politics; the appearance of the Occitan cross at demonstrations was an especially striking facet of the Midi’s political development, projecting the tried and tested combative values of the Languedoc into a modern setting. Indeed, it became a potent and communicative symbol, a tradition that had been reclaimed or reinvented to serve modern needs. Hobsbawm states that “invented tradition” is utilized to serve three main aims: establishing or symbolizing social cohesion; legitimizing authority; and socializing and inculcating beliefs (Hobsbawm 1983, p. 9). This theory does not suggest that there is only one conscious font for tradition, but rather that communities can subtly and at times unconsciously shape their own traditions to be reflective of their aspirations and preoccupations. In this sense, the alignment of Occitan and viticultural groups is understandable during a period of social and political radicalism, as they were mutually validating. Abandoning the modern phrase “agriculturalist” in favor of the rather outdated label of “peasant” was another of the principal unifying concepts that brought the sheep farmers of Larzac, the miners of Decazeville, and the winegrowers of the Midi under the aegis of one broad movement. This peasant label allowed all three movements to connect themselves to the past and fostered an understanding of patrimony, which emerged in opposition to the central modernizing project of the Parisian powers-that-be. By uniting as “peasants” fighting for regional patrimony under threat from a predatory colonizer, they won the conceptual battle for legitimacy. These sweeping terms allowed the co-option of swathes of history that might reinforce their resistant claim. The formation of Mouvement d’Intervention des Viticulteurs Occitans (MIVOC) in 1975 by a winegrower long involved with viticultural political activism,2 Jean Huillet, forged a tangible example of the cooperation between winegrowers and the regionalist movement. Huillet, in his trademark cowboy boots, blue jeans, earring, and handlebar moustache, became involved with Occitanisme in the early 1970s through Lutte Occitane and carried their message into his participation in viticultural activism (Martin 2005, p. 138). In 1975, MIVOC denounced the enemies of Languedocien viticulture, whom they named as “Merchants. . . . Political power . . . and large landowners.” These enemies were characterized as external, Parisian, centralizing, and of the political right (Martin 2005, p. 142). Moreover, Huillet published an article in the Paysan du Midi on February 13, 1975, that specifically utilized the rallying cry of the Occitan movement in defense of winegrowers: “Volem viure al päis!” Huillet associated regional identity strongly with regional viticulture as the predominant economic activity of a Méridional working class. His attachment to the Occitan movement and his viticultural activism as well as his socialism demonstrate a strong conceptual bond between class, region, and identity, which was borne out by his political engagement. For Huillet, “the economy” was viticulture, “the region” was the Languedoc viticole, and the “päis” was Occitanie (Paysan du Midi 1975). The interaction of these local

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identifiers was seen as intuitive and their interdependency was reiterated as a political certainty, in direct contrast to the political and geographical exterior. This direct association marked a tangible interaction of the “civilization of the vine” as both groups took an active stance in claiming the authenticity of their own regional patrimony. After 1971, the various movements of the South became drawn together under the flexible banner of the Occitan cross, symbolizing a hazily defined political radicalism which supported regional, working-class activity and cultural production against perceived external threats.

The fightback A useful indication of the significance surrounding symbols such as the Occitan cross and the history and identity it invoked was the long shadow it cast across the French government. This notion of patrimony was not officially welcomed into the purview of the French state until 1978, when Giscard’s administration created an office of Cultural Patrimony within the Culture Ministry (Lebovics 2004, p. 84). “Emergency ethnography” was suddenly pursued by the French state as a way to drain potent regionalist groups of their primary weapon—historical authenticity. This was set up in direct opposition to what had been termed “guerilla ethnology” emanating from regional actors—a concept analogous to Hobsbawm’s “invented tradition.” Lebovics describes this overwrought term as one that “devalues an activity by regionalist political actors which the ‘real’ scientists find both occupationally and politically unacceptable” (Lebovics 2004, p. 84). Defining the Midi’s traditions and celebrating its heritage were to remain a distinctly Parisian-led affair, allowing undesirable elements of local culture to be sanitized by the study of professional ethnologists who eschewed the fiery fervour of regionalists or protesting winegrowers and offered a decidedly “neutral” stance on historical issues of place and locality. The creation of this office within the Culture Ministry was backed by an inquiry ordered by the government and led by Isaac Chiva, a social anthropologist from the Collège de France. Chiva, along with Claude Levi-Strauss, sought to bring about an administrative decentralization in the control of patrimony backed by a coordinating central body (Lebovics 2004, p. 95). This initiative was not targeted solely at the Midi but reflected the pressure from regional groups during this period: the popularity of the Larzac protestors, the visibility of militant winegrowers, the vigor of Occitanistes and Bretons, and also the violence of the struggle in Corsica. The government’s reorganization was a move not merely to strike out at regionalist groups, but also to protect itself and start fighting back against those seeking to carve it up. Thus have centrally led campaigns sought to deploy the Occitan cross as an image of regional distinction. The Occitan cross has been repeatedly pinned to the image of the Cathar knight, horse bound and symbolic of a sanitized regional heritage. Stripped of a radical context and widely used as a tool for marketing the Midi to tourists, Cathar heritage replaced the unsuccessful 1963 “Mission Racine,” which had seen the French government attempt to paint the Midi as a cheap alternative to the beach holiday destinations of Morocco and Tunisia (McCaffrey 2001, p. 128). This campaign

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infuriated regional groups, and its concurrence with the Decazeville strike, viticultural protests and then the occupation of Larzac heightened the sense of a region under attack. Such mass marketing had been a contentious issue, as it was seen as an attempt to erode the functional identity of the region, relegating the cherished rebellious heritage to a historical curio to be found atop biscuit tins. The winegrowers’ leader André Cases repeatedly claimed that “mass tourism brings nothing, it is destructive” (Le Bris 1976, p. 207). Indeed, this attempt to cast the Midi as a beach destination, threatening political, cultural, and economic marginalization, was satirized in cartoons in the radical journals Lutte Occitane and L’Echo des Corbières. Both presented a proud homme d’oc (Occitan man) hemmed in by restrictions and facing ever more pressure from newcomers and profiteers, with his existence guaranteed only as some sort of living museum exhibit (see Figure 16.2). The resurgence in Occitan nationalism that had been championed by the COEA bolstered public awareness of the Languedoc’s Cathar heritage. The Cathars were a heretical Christian sect, which was the target of the Albigensian crusades of the thirteenth century, when the French nation wrested power in the Languedoc from the Counts of Toulouse. The Cathars remained significant as an obvious symbol of difference from a time when Occitan was widely spoken in a Midi that was politically distinct. They were also popularized at the time by a documentary television series, La caméra explore le temps, which had dedicated its final 2 episodes to the Cathars. Les Cathares: La Croisade and Les Cathares: L’Inquisition, directed by Stellio Lorenzi and broadcast on March 22 and 29, 1966, showcased the antiquity and size of the region at over sixteen départements in the twelfth century. Isabelle Veyrat-Masson stated that “the overwhelmingly successful documentary was a way to embody and reconcile a reconstructed identity” (Veyrat-Masson 2000, p. 106). This series was significant and well received, constituting an important reminder of Catharism’s importance to the Languedoc. In contrast to the unpopularity of the “Mission Racine,” the later “Pays Cathare” (Cathar Country) program was locally directed and sympathetically incorporated cultural festivals and historical commemorations into a regional celebration of Cathar identity (McCaffrey 2001, p. 130). This culturally attuned integration of region and state

Figure 16.2 “Since Larzac, the ongoing liquidation of our country will become unavoidable if we do not take heed of our ‘Occitan fatherland’ .”

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has served as a means of pacification. Invented tradition had been reconditioned by the state to be commemorated as a profoundly historical event. 1980 was declared a year dedicated to the celebration of heritage, and Giscard d’Estaing’s government appointed acceptable interpreters of folklore, history, and art in each region of France. Television and radio airtime was dedicated to broadcasting on patrimony, stamps and postcards were released, and the government went so far as having 60 million commemorative matchboxes issued by the State tobacco company (Lebovics 2004, p. 112). The studies, articles, and exhibitions that took place during 1980s year of patrimony helped define a genuine cultural heritage within France. Rather than serving as lairs for regionalist malcontents, local spaces of cultural pluralism could now be incorporated into the positive, collective field of national identity. The end of that year marked a poignant moment in France’s approach to heritage, with the cancellation of the Larzac plan in 1981 by the new Socialist government. Much of the fire that had driven regionalist protest had been extinguished as the government addressed the most immediate, inflammatory crises. The declining relevancy of the Occitan movement sidelined it from involvement in viticultural struggles. The shared potency that had brought about this fragile regional alliance was dampened by a government more determined to open itself to the regions for the sake of preserving the national whole. The city of Toulouse re-adopted the Croix Occitane as its emblem in 1983 as a part of the celebrations that commemorated the historical legacy of the medieval Counts of Toulouse. The reclamation of patrimony by regional councils and local authorities after the decentralization program of 1982 could take place in an atmosphere of sustainable development that actively courted the communication of regional interests. Further to this, institutional usage of the Croix expanded, with the Conseil régional de MidiPyrénées beginning to use the Croix Occitane as its logo in 1986 (de La Farge 2010). In its deployment of the Occitan cross alongside the Cathar logo of a rising sun, the Audois “Pays cathare” (adopted in 1989) program was emblematic of a shifting regional dialectic. Suddenly the patrimony that had motivated protest and provided the cultural cachet for regional dissidents was reclaimed by the state and reused liberally. Surveys into the possibility of marketing the Aude on its own patrimony were undertaken by the Conseil Général in 1987 and brought private interests closer to the local administration while allowing for popular consultation to guide policy (European Commission 2002). The diverse and fluctuating significance of the Occitan cross was redeployed in the wake of national political change as a means of developing and refining progressive and positive regional identity, rather than communicating grievances against the central state. Yet, the institutionalization of the Occitan Cross has not rendered it uncontroversial, nor has it removed it from the psyche of the Midi. In 2004, the incoming Président de la Région George Frêche proposed a change to the region’s name: gone would be the Languedoc-Roussillon in favor of a title recalling the Roman presence in the area, Septimania. Protests against the idea conveyed a popular rejection, as 5,000 people gathered in Perpignan to protest against the plan (“Mobilisation contre la Septimanie” 2005). Following this reaction, Frêche admitted defeat: “95% of people have expressed their love for the (name) Languedoc-Roussillon, and 5% defended Septimanie. It was

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a proposition and the people didn’t want it, I am abandoning it, I’m backing off. I’ve touched a raw nerve and I won’t stand against popular will” (“M. Freche (PS)” 2005). Yet this climb-down did not signify an end to his attempts to rebrand the region, as he changed the flag from the traditional Occitan cross to a figurative rendering of the seven suns referred to by Septimania, representing the seven principal cities of the region. This flag change also met with criticism and there remain groups on social networks such as Facebook campaigning for the reinstitution of the Occitan Cross as a symbol of Languedociens. As ever, traditional images of regional patrimony such as the Cross proved a powerful tool in communicating modern grievances in a historic vernacular. This adapted patrimony was the potent force that brought the broader regionalist movement together, uniting Occitanistes, winegrowers, and strikers with a heady mix of emotive ethno-politicking and enthusiastic class entreaties. The symbol fluctuated historically between an articulation of regional difference and a claim toward Occitan political separatism. Tradition and inherited memory were updated by modern institutions, which recycled and repositioned the relevancy of local patrimony. The deployment of the Occitan cross has represented a narrative of this negotiation, with its usage depicting a changing message bound to the enduring authenticity of regional patrimony and the changing political reality of the local space.

Notes 1 The Occitan Cross (Croix Occitane) is the distinctive twelve-pointed yellow cross set against a red background, which constituted the heraldry of the Counts of Toulouse and represents an early token of Occitan nationhood. 2 For further discussion of the key group, the CRAV and viticultural violence in the Languedoc, see Smith 2011.

References Alliès, P. (1972). L’Occitanie et la lutte des classes. Montpellier: La Découverte. COEA, (1971). Le Petit Livre de l’Occitanie. Nimes: 4 Vertats. de la Farge, B. (2010). “La Croix Occitane.” Convergéncia Occitana site. http://www. ostaldoccitania.net/articles.php?pg=917&lng=fr [accessed December 15, 2010]. De Sède, G. (1982). 700 ans de révoltes occitanes. Paris: Plon. European Commission. (2002). Using natural and cultural heritage for the development of sustainable tourism in non-traditional tourism destinations. http://ec.europa.eu/ enterprise/sectors/tourism/documents/studies/index_en.htm [accessed December 15, 2010]. Hébert, L. and Noël, F. (1980). “Femmes-comédiennes en Occitanie: entretien avec Lo Teatre de la Carriera.” Jeu: revue de théâtre 16(3): 145–61. Hobsbawm, E. (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Interview with Pierre Bonafé at Domaine de Larzac, Pezenas, Herault, August 17, 2010. Lafont, R. (1967). La révolution régionaliste. Paris: Gallimard.

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—(1968). Sur la France. Paris: Gallimard. —(1971). Clefs pour l’Occitanie. Paris: Seghers. “La resurrection de M. Occitania.” (1971). Nouvel Observateur, September 13. Lebovics, H. (2004). Bringing the Empire Back Home: France in the Global Age. Durham: Duke University Press. Le Bris, M. (1975). Les Fous du Larzac. Paris: Presses d’Aujourd’hui. —(1976). La Révolte du Midi. Paris: Grou-Radinez. “M. Frèche (PS) ‘abandonne’ le nom de Septimanie pour le Languedoc-Roussillon.” (2005). L’Agence France Presse, September 23. Martin, J. (2005). Histoire de la nouvelle gauche paysanne. Paris: La Découverte. McCaffrey, E. (2001). “Memory and Collective Identity in Occitanie.” History & Memory 13: 114–38. “Mobilisation contre la Septimanie.” (2005). Nouvel Observateur, October 11. Pécout, R. (1974). Claude Marti, collection Poésie et Chanson. Paris: Seghers. Rawlinson, R. (1996). Larzac. York: Ebor Press. Reid, D. (1985). The Miners of Decazeville. Harvard: Harvard University Press. RG reports, 03/02/1971. Archives Départementales de l’Hérault, 676W179. “Si Fasen Pas Res Si on Netejats.” (1972). Echo des Corbières, March. Archives Départmentale de l’Aude, 573PER1. Smith, A. (2011). “Molotovs in the Minervois: Were the Comité Régional d’Action Viticole terrorists, revolutionaries or just cantankerous winegrowers?” in B. Sudlow (ed.), National Identities in France. New Jersey : Transaction, pp. 81–98. “Un salut du peuple irlandais.” (1973). Lutte Occitane, July–August. Archives Départmentale du Gard, JR1008. Veyrat-Masson, I. (2000). “Panorama de l’histoire à la télévision française.” Récherches en communication 14: 103–13. “Volem viure al päis.” (1975). Paysan du Midi, February 13. Archives Départmentale du Gard, JR438-26.

17

Adoption and Adaptation: The Survival of French Départements Thomas Procureur

The process of designing modern French départements, of overlapping administrative, electoral, and geographic interest at the end of the eighteenth century was a response to three enduring sets of issues. Locally, the provinces lacked uniform territorial definition, while also supporting variegated systems of representation. Nationally, the need to settle the brand-new Republic rested on the implementation of local relays to facilitate decision making and administration. Electorally, members of the Parliament were officially standing for the departments and the public good. The solution, the implementation of modern French départements that have—with minor changes and a few additions—lasted for more than 200 years, reflects an ongoing compromise between local, territorial, electoral, and national interests and priorities. The evident stability of the map of French departments, however, conceals shifts in the institutional competences and rivalries that underscore a gradual and enduring process of departmental autonomization from the French national government. Created in the early months of the French Revolution, the department was meant to erase the political influence of Ancien Régime provinces. While departments are thought to have split France into pieces because of a geometrical districting, the shape of the eighty-three departments (now one-hundred-and-one since the departmentalization of Mayotte in late March 2011) actually resulted from a negotiated agreement between the Constituent Assembly and local interests elected from those areas that became the national territory (Ozouf-Marignier 1992). The creation and implementation of this new institution (departments) launched a process—still relevant—of path dependence (Pierson 1993) that underscores the impact of former decisions on later parliamentary debates. Departments have not only been lasting institutions, but they have also been reinforced by successive laws over the years. Every potential threat to their hegemony turned them into stronger departments: the first (1982–3) and second (2003–4) decentralization acts took place in contexts within which the department was possibly considered obsolete and irrelevant. But both series of laws still turned out to be departmentally focused. Besides the presence of the préfet (prefect) standing for both the Government in the department and, sometimes, for the department in negotiations with the Government

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(Grémion 1976), it is clear that one of the reasons for such ensuing legislative successes is the practice widely spread among French representatives of holding two or more political mandates at a time. Considered as an electoral insurance in case of defeat, or as a buffer against the emergence of potential opponents inside one’s political party, the cumul des mandats (sometimes translated as “multi-mandating”) provides opportunities for departmental-national representatives to directly lobby within the Parliament. This is illustrated by departmental dependence in the election of regional councilors, the limits of many intercommunalités (gatherings of cities and/ or villages) corresponding to the general councilors’ constituencies, and the special relationship between each general council (the elected body of the department) and small villages.

Designing departments: The French revolutionary legacy Designed as a tool for centralization, the French department has itself been gradually institutionalized. This top-down process depending on the central State started with the definition of the departmental frontiers by the Constituent National Assembly. At the time, a department was seen only as a space within the denomination process. To avoid the resurgence of former provinces—which were precisely what departments were meant to replace—each and every department was named after geographical or topographical references. This choice conveyed the idea that what defined a department was its location. Furthermore, the members of the Constituent Assembly refused the principle of allocating a number to the departments because they rejected any potential ranking among them. In spite of the artificiality of departments when they were created, they succeeded in becoming a reference in the French political landscape. Used as a means to avoid the dilution of competences and, thus, powers among cities and villages that were regarded as potentially dangerous for the new regime, departments transformed into real institutions, thanks to the successive transfers of responsibilities.

Divide to unite: The departmental paradox Yet, in the aftermath of the abolition of the privileges of the autocracy during the night of August 4, 1789, the French Constituent Assembly had still to turn such a massive decision into reality. One of the aspects should have been a redistricting intended to erase former provinces or—more precisely—to replace them. The key principle at that time was “divide-to-unite” the country. Even before the French Revolution, and especially during the eighteenth century, equalizing appeared to be a political and geographical issue. The most famous attempt to solve the problem, designed by Louis XVI’s geographer Robert de Hesseln, suggested that the country should be divided into nine squares (North-West, North, North-East, West, Center, East, South-West, South, and South-East). Each one was then to be split into nine other entities and so on. In the end, this draft planned ten tiers from the State at the top, down to a 35-square-yard tier (Ozouf-Marignier 1992). Thus the geometric

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rationale applied to geography overrode the former authorities and was projected in being shaped like a chessboard. This was one of the approaches to the redistricting issue that the Constituent Committee had to tackle in 1789–90. The biggest question at the time was which entity representatives should stand for. From early on in this debate among the members of the Constituent Assembly, departments were expected to play two roles. On the one hand, they could constitute territorial entities. On the other, they could stand for the population. Abbé de Siéyès and Thouret, both representatives of the Tiers-État (or Third Estate), were more supportive of the first approach, while Mirabeau, also standing for the Third Estate, clearly preferred to design entities taking full account of local habits, which would lead to smaller but more numerous departments. The proposal of the Committee tried to combine these two sets of arguments. So when the principle of creating seventy-five up to eighty-five departments was enacted, the Committee was enlarged to become a Committee of Division. Representatives of each former province were invited to draw up agreements with their counterparts of adjoining territories, and to define how inner boundaries were to be drawn. The Committee, after one of Mirabeau’s proposals, identified the number of departmental entities that former provinces could contain, and the provinces that needed to gather to build departments (Mage 1925). At that stage, local interests were at stake, especially because the future influence of the cities was supposed to depend on the departmental frontiers. In Brittany, for instance, the inhabitants of Saint-Malo expected the Breton departments to preserve the limits that the Church had defined because it would have allowed the city to become the administrative center of a sixth department. Others of the Basque and Béarn regions similarly tried to influence the districting process by arguing for their cultural differences and for the legitimacy of their having two distinct territories. This remains unrealized, although their political manifesto remains alive. A few provinces in the South-West became departments on their own but their names changed, because the renewal had to be as deep as possible (see Table 17.1). Once again many options emerged. For some representatives, departments should have been named after their administrative centers. But to avoid some local disagreements, the Committee preferred to postpone the final decision about main cities, which rendered this choice null and void. Besides, attributing a figure to each new territory might have induced the perception of a ranking process, with the first being implicitly the most important. In the end, given that the geographical argument had been used to shape departmental entities, the Constitutive Assembly voted for references to rivers,

Table 17.1 From provinces to departments, the districting at work in 1790 Gathered Provinces Departments

11 5

Equivalent

8

Divided

Gathered then divided

Total

5

62

86

13

57

83

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195

mountains, or cardinal points (Bancal 1945). The design of departments illustrates the coincidence of geometry with geography, alongside with the one between the administrative purpose of relaying national laws and the need for proximity within the population. Departments certainly have lasted for so long because of this process.

Long-lasting entities The lettres patentes (letters of patent) signed by Louis XVI on March 4, 1790 finally created eighty-three departments. They currently number 101, which means that they not only lasted but also multiplied. Of course, under Napoleon the figure had reached 130, as the result of various annexations in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. But as far as the France of 2014 is concerned, only minor changes are apparent. In 1793, the Vaucluse (Avignon) was created after the Pope agreed that the population of the papal enclave around Avignon could decide to join France. The same year, the Loire (Saint-Étienne) was separated from the Rhône (Lyon) after what was considered as an antirevolutionary uprising in Lyon. In 1808, Napoleon as Emperor then decided to create a new department to thank Montauban citizens for the warm welcome he had received a few months earlier. The new entity was built from pieces of the surrounding departments—Aveyron, Lot, Haute-Garonne, Lot-et-Garonne, and Gers (Ligou 1994). Alpes-maritimes (Nice) and both Savoie (Chambéry) and Haute-Savoie (Annecy) definitively became French departments in 1860 after the Turin Treaty. Territoire-deBelfort (Belfort) and Meurthe-et-Moselle (Nancy) were supposed to be only temporary departments after German annexations of Alsace and of parts of Lorraine. But this situation has been permanent since 1919, when these territories were recovered from Germany. Since 1946, four former overseas colonies (Guadeloupe, Martinique also known as the West Indies in the Caribbean, French Guiana, and Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean) have become departments. From that time, most of the French legislation concerning departments has been either directly applied or adapted to their particular overseas situation. In addition, the Seine-et-Oise that encircled Paris was divided in 1964 into four new entities: Yvelines, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-deMarne, and Val-d’Oise. In the end, creation of new departments was rare, and only a few of the changes involved the entities that had originally emerged from the French Revolution (see Graph 17.1). It seems that departments became the best way to integrate new territories that had joined France as a country either after an international treaty (such as the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919) or as a way of putting an end to their former colonial status. Thus has the department, as a frame that was artificial at its very beginning, gradually become a meaningful entity and been used as a means of integration in the French Republic. Even the departments’ names have lasted. Only seven conseils généraux (departmental assemblies) succeeded in completing the renaming process. Most of them considered their naming as a defect because the names were composed of

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105 100 95 90 85 80 1790

1808

1815

1860

1870

1919

1946

1964

1976

2011

Graph 17.1 Evolution of the number of French departments between 1790 and 2011.

adjectives such as “lower”—bas or basse in French—(Basses-Alpes, Basses-Pyrénées) or “inferior” (Seine-Inférieure, Loire-Inférieure, Charente-Inférieure). For the Constituent Assembly, these adjectives only referred to a height or a downstream position on a river. In the 1950s, they were considered as deprecating and stigmatizing for both economic and touristic reasons. The case of Côtes-du-Nord becoming Côtesd’Armor (Le Bart and Procureur 2011) is particularly illustrative. The mention of the North was meant only for geographical purposes and for locating this particular department in relation to its Breton neighbors—which might well have become Côtesde-l’Ouest and Côtes-du-Sud (instead of the current Finistère and Morbihan)—but it had led most French people to think that it was close to the Nord (Lille) and not a western department. Put in a nutshell, departments were designed for unifying and administrative purposes even if the word départements stands for bits of territory. Launched during the French Revolution, the institutionalization process continued under Napoléon’s Consulate and then the First Empire, thanks to the creation of the préfet meant to become the link between the centralized State and local entities by ensuring the full implementation of national laws and regulations. While the changes in the purpose of the departmental institution were major, the shape of their territories experienced only minor adaptations. However, during that period of the department’s emergence, the territory appeared mainly as an object, as a political tool. The departments’ main function consisted then in intermediation between national and local authorities. Georges Pompidou, the French President, had drawn lessons from the failure of the 1969 referendum, which proposed to introduce not only a reform of the Senate but also a regionalization process. So he was fully aware that departments had influential and skillful policy brokers or intermediaries within the Parliament, especially in the Senate, which is considered the “house of local authorities.” In a way—through path dependence (Pierson 2000) and incrementalism (such as step-by-step changes because of the influence of existing institutions or public policies

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discussed in Lindblom 1959)—departments turned out to be more than administrative units. They have gradually taken root, and have little by little transformed into influential political institutions. Indeed, regions that turned into political assemblies (even without any electoral system until 1986) during the 1970s were designed by aggregating departments.

When administrative entities turn into political institutions In the 1870s, the path toward acceptance of the department as a “place” was not yet complete. But thanks to the implementation of an electing process designed for the representation of cantonal populations in the departmental assembly, the constituency—called the canton—became a political institution, and thus contributed to the institutionalization of the department as a whole. At stake in the election of representatives and in the fact that they officially gather in the departmental issues was the question of legitimation as a process. The legitimacy that emerged had an impact on the relationships that general councilors had with the administration and the prefect. In 1982, the first decentralization act confirmed that the department had become a functional territory. Indeed, the Socialist government decided to transfer some of the prefect’s responsibilities to departmental assemblies. Although it has often been called into question, the department still remains a relevant and important administrativeterritorial framework for the implementation of national public policies, as for electoral purposes.

Equalization of the territory, equalization through the territory The creation of the prefect, and then the gradual implementation of local elections on a sub-departmental level, has produced a particular kind of relationship between the administrative and political bodies of the department. The prefect, who legally represents each and every member of the Government within the department, is a key player for local representatives. In addition, civil servants meet with mayors or general councilors. In Le pouvoir périphérique (1976), Pierre Grémion designated as “crossed legitimation” the process by which each actor, whether civil servant or representative, is reliant upon someone who stands higher in the opposite hierarchy. For example, a mayor would ask a civil servant for help, rather than the president of the general council who is also a representative and a potential competitor. On both the administrative and political sides, people are interested in dealing because they can expect positive outcomes from this kind of transaction. Mayors can, officially or not, offer a solution to their voters, and thereby reinforce the narrative on which political power relies. On the other hand, civil servants gain acknowledgment from their political counterparts. This scheme works at whichever level one observes. Even the prefect can be by-passed, either by members of the Parliament having access to the ministers, or by the ministers

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themselves, who are the only ones who can overrule the prefects. In fact, because of their turnover, these prefects also depend on local representatives who last and have a deeper knowledge of the department. The implementation of the prefect also conveyed some power, but he or she is mainly a figure that both representatives and the population as a whole know and respect. Somehow, rootless prefects have become major elements of the local political landscape, so much so that they sometimes play two roles at a time. While they continue to work for general interest issues in the name of the Government in place, they also defend some local interests. Doing this tended to make them notables (i.e., deeply rooted figures from the Establishment). This is the reason why in the mind of successive governments, they had to leave their constituencies after two or three years to avoid full assimilation and the risks of connivance with the local representatives. Even when the first decentralization act (1982–3) was passed, prefects retained such an aura of influence, despite the fact that many competences and responsibilities fell from that moment on upon the presidents of the general councils. Furthermore, the department had been for a very long time the reference scale that Government and national laws referred to. Hence the title of the assembly: apart from the period of the Vichy régime (1940–4), they have never been called “departmental councils,” but rather general councils, because when they were created they were the highest local authorities and the ones closest to the State. In the aftermath of François Mitterrand’s first presidential election (1981), Gaston Defferre, MP (1945–58, 1962–81) and mayor of Marseilles (1953–86), promulgated one of the Socialist candidate’s promises into law. Decentralization implied the end of the prefectorial authorization before any local authority decision could be enacted. The executive functions that the prefect bore now depended on the president of the general council. With these new powers, departments also received new duties, particularly in the field of social care. Thus they have become responsible for collèges (middle schools) and also for most of the public road network. The second decentralization act—though it was supposed to be the masterpiece of a regionalist Prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin (2002–5)—extended the path dependence. Most of the new compétences and their attending costs fall on departments, whose budgets are weakened by an unbalanced sharing of costs (Estèbe 2007). Meanwhile, thanks to multi-mandating and also to public subsidies, general councils and councilors have partly succeeded (as they already had when regions were created) in influencing the structuring process of communities of villages and/or cities (Tesson 2009). These gatherings could possibly have threatened departments and their competencies. But a 2006 study of 2,525 structures led by the association that gathers these intercommunalités listed 480 entities that shared the exact frontiers of cantons and 480 others that were close to the geography of cantons. About four out of ten of these structures coincide with canton boundaries (Assemblée des Communautés de France 2006). Thus departments are still considered as relevant for implementing massive public policies such as caring for the disabled, or the elderly, and also helping the unemployed to find their way back to jobs, for which they receive no tribute or equivalent public funding. In other words, they play, willingly or not, the part of the social agent.

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Following the 2004 decentralization process—often referred to as the “second act”—departments received competences that followed and maintained their path dependence in social action. But this appeared more like a Pyrrhic victory (Portier 2003). They made substantial, but quite symbolic, progress considering the regionally focused Government draft. Nonetheless, the departmental lobby—mainly embodied by the Assemblée des Départements de France or French Departments Assembly— expressed concern that the department might disappear if new competencies were not aggregated to the ones already taken on. The other side of such transfers consists in the increasing costs that they implied when they were decided and still imply today. This brought departmental budgets to critical situations and drastic measures such as cutting subventions, raising local taxes, stopping optional policies or voting unbalanced budgets, which is illegal. All these strategies (Hirschman 1970) reflect economic weaknesses. Even though none of the local authorities should benefit from any supervision on others, this principle of subsidiarity does not apply to the French State, which increasingly considers local authorities as agents of national policies. Presidents of general councils deem departments to be “instrumentalized,” which means that they work as instruments of policies over which they have absolutely no influence (neither on the amount of allowances nor on the criteria that determine eligibility). At the same time, these presidents fear that their financial and political autonomy and their authority could be put at risk. And without any autonomy, most of them think that departments as they exist could vanish, and national agencies simply replace them. To sum this up, departments are still administrative agents despite the fact that they were upgraded by decentralization. They also operate as electoral constituencies. These two Russian-doll systems illustrate the importance of departmental entities in French local organization. Nevertheless, they are as much silent as efficient, indeed, perhaps silently efficient. And both decentralization acts and the typically French cumul des mandats (Marrel 2011) confirm that they work as key (f)actors in France’s political life and structures. Thus, departments are no longer simply administrative divisions; they have also become political entities through which members of Parliament are to be elected.

The incremental politicization of departments Though the general councilors have been elected since 1871, the politicization of the departmental assemblies, at least on a local scale, is far more recent. Because a department is also a constituency, sitting in a general council makes it easier for a member to be elected as a member of the Parliament. During the Third Republic (1870–1940), and also at the beginning of the Fifth Republic (1958–), most members of the Parliament had already been elected to the assembly of their department. Since the 1970s (and during the Fourth Republic), mayors are more likely to have the opportunity to get access to the Parliament (Loonis 2006). On the other hand, because of the system of election to the Senate, presidents of general councils have greater opportunities to enter the upper house of the Parliament. In the end, service in departmental assemblies is a major step toward a French political career (see Table 17.2).

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Table 17.2 The department in French elections Presidential elections

Since 1976, candidates for the presidency have to be supported by at least 500 representatives (mostly local ones), within the limits of fifty per department and in at least thirty departments.

Senate elections

The Department is the constituency for all the senators regardless of the fact they can be elected on lists (when more than two members of the Senate stand for this department) or by name (under the three-seat threshold).

Legislative elections

Députés (members of the Parliament) are directly elected within constituencies that correspond to sums of cantons (i.e., the general councilors’ constituencies).

Regional elections

Regional elections are scheduled on departmental sections that refer to regional lists of candidates. Each elector votes for a departmental list. The results of each list are gathered to provide the region with an assembly.

As a result of the cumul des mandats, almost one in five of the French parliamentary representatives is also elected in a general council (see Table 17.3). Despite the fact that they are more numerous in the National Assembly, their proportion is still higher in the Senate. Furthermore, almost every second president of general councils sits in the Parliament. Therefore, they are the most influential representatives—sometimes contrary to the national interest (Heitshusen et al. 2005)—because they have mastered the intricacies of the institution that most of them have attended for years prior to being elected to the presidency. The link between senators and local representatives also depends on the population of the local entities for which they stand. Hence, in contrast to US senators, French counterparts are more or less numerous depending upon the demography of the department in which they are campaigning. Seven of them elect one senator, while two others elect more than ten (the Nord elects eleven and Paris elects twelve). Despite these obvious gaps, the grands électeurs standing for the villages—who are local and national representatives, and also voters for the French Senate—are far more numerous than the ones coming from the other local institutions (see Table 17.4). Actually, though each department has to be represented in the Senate, there is absolutely no equal sharing of the seats. The electing system differs between rural and urban departments. In the most populated ones, list election is used whereas voting for a single member applies to the others. The limit between these two has been an issue for almost twenty years because of its impact on the balance of political power within the upper house. In the National Assembly, the election system is the same in every constituency and all French citizens are expected to take part in the election. Nonetheless, massive

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Table 17.3 Multi-mandating between Parliament and departmental assemblies Updated in November 2012

National Assembly

%

Senate

%

General councilor

78

13.5

44

12.6

122

13.2

Vice-presidents of general councils

39

6.8

18

5.2

57

6.2

Presidents of general councils

10

1.7

35

10.1

45

4.9

127(577)

22

97(348)

27.9

224(925)

24.2

Total

Total Proportion Parliament in Parliament

Table 17.4 French Senators’ electorate Members of municipal councils and delegates

137,365

95.48%

General councilors

4,042

2.81%

Regional councilors

1,880

1.31%

577

0.40%

Members of the Parliament

143,864

differences among constituencies also exist. They arise partly from inequality (sometimes politically oriented which is also known as Gerrymandering) between cantons, which are general councilors’ constituencies and compose legislative constituencies when gathered. Actually, assembly men and women refer to their department more than to their constituency when they introduce themselves. Thus they also contribute to the French departmental dependence. Under Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency (2007–12), a new reform of French local authorities was launched by the President himself. The most important aspect of this reform dealing directly with the existing departments was the creation of territorial councilors intended to improve the coherence of the policies enacted by the diverse local assemblies and their agents. This new figure was to be elected according to the general councilors’ model but was meant to sit in both departmental and regional assemblies (Le Lidec 2012). After the election of François Hollande on May 6, 2012 and the swing of the majority from the right to the left in both the Senate (in September 2011) and the National Assembly (in June 2012), the ambitions of Sarkozy’s government were thwarted. The law that introduced territorial councilors in French legislation was repealed.

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Nonetheless, the issues that the new representative was intended to tackle are still relevant. The Government has drawn up a new reform that should provide solutions for questions such as equal access for men and women to the mandates in departmental assemblies; the definition of new constituencies; and the more balanced distribution of seats between the rural and urban parts of each department. The solution to these requisites could be the introduction of a one-woman-one-man ticket. Each canton could be represented by two representatives—one woman and one man—only if these cantons are merged in twos. Such a proposal would aim at renewing the legitimacy of departments, which are often criticized for being old-fashioned institutions, especially for their lack of representativeness (Troupel 2005). The threat to departments is not breaking news, especially because none of the former attempts to reform, or to erase, them succeeded; but the best way to avoid their disappearance is probably a new adjustment, or, more precisely, new adjustments (Bezes and Lidec 2011). Departments have already proven their resilience and their skills in turning anti-department reforms into pro-department evolutions.

Acknowledgment I would like to express my very great appreciation to Jacques Harel for his valuable and constructive suggestions and proofreading during the writing of this chapter.

References Assemblée des Communautés de France (2006). “Les territoires de l’intercommunalité: périmètres et pertinence,” http://www.adcf.org/files/noteADCF-perimetres.pdf Bancal, J. (1945). Les Circonscriptions Administratives de la France: leurs Origines et leur Avenir. Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey. Bezes, P. and Le Lidec, P. (2011). “Ce que les réformes font aux institutions,” in J. Lagroye and M. Offerlé (eds), Sociologie de l’institution. Paris: Belin, pp. 75–101. Estèbe, P. (2007). “Du conseil général à l’agence départementale?.” Pouvoirs locaux 75: 120–3. Grémion, P. (1976). Le Pouvoir Périphérique: Bureaucrates et Notables dans le Système Politique Français. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Heitshusen, V., Young, G., and Wood, D. M. (2005). “Electoral context and MP constituency focus in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.” American Journal of Political Science 49: 32–45. Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Le Bart, C. and Procureur, T. (2011). “Quand les Côtes-du-Nord sont devenues les Côtesd’Armor. Le département entre identité et attractivité.” Mots: les langages du politique 97: 31–44. Le Lidec, P. (2012). “La réforme des collectivités territoriales sous Sarkozy: entre (mise en scène du) volontarisme et incrémentalisme,” in J. de Maillard and Y. Surel (eds), Les Politiques Publiques sous Sarkozy. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, pp. 189–210.

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Ligou, D. (1994). “La formation du Tarn-et-Garonne (1788–1811),” in G. Chianéa, R. Chagny, and J.-W. Dereymez (eds), Le Département: Hier, Aujourd’hui, Demain. De la Province à la Région, de la Centralisation à la Décentralisation. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, pp. 131–44. Lindblom, C. (1959). “The science of ‘muddling through’.” Public Administration Review 19(2): 79–88. Loonis, V. (2006). “Les déterminants de la réélection des députés français de 1871 à 2002.” Histoire et mesure XXI(1): 221–54. Mage, G. (1925). La Division de la France en Départements. Toulouse: Imprimerie SaintMichel. Marrel, G. (2011). “Cumul des mandats,” in R. Pasquier, S. Guigner, and A. Cole (eds), Dictionnaire des Politiques Territoriales. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, pp. 115–21. Ozouf-Marignier, M.-V. (1992). La Formation des Départements: la Représentation du Territoire Français à la Fin du 18e Siècle. Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Pierson, P. (1993). “When effects become cause. Policy feedback and political change.” World Politics 45(4): 595–628. —(2000). “Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics.” The American Political Science Review 94(2): 251–67. Portier, N. (2003). “Les ‘gagnants’ et les ‘perdants’ de ‘l’Acte II’.” Pouvoirs locaux 59: 62–8. Tesson, F. (2009). “Quand le territoire fabrique le territoire: de l’effet des institutions territoriales sur la construction des regroupements intercommunaux,” in P. Boino and X. Desjardins (eds), Intercommunalité: Politique et Territoire. Paris: La Documentation française, pp. 51–63. Troupel, A. (2005). “Parité: le département fait de la résistance.” Pouvoirs locaux 65: 15–8.

18

Le Président? Georges Frêche and the Making of a Local Notable in Late Twentieth-century France1 Emile Chabal

The Odysseum leisure and shopping complex in southeastern Montpellier seems an unpropitious place for a history lesson. To the untrained eye, it looks like a new but rather depressing replica of an American outdoor mall, complete with palm trees and sand-colored architecture that is vaguely reminiscent of New Mexico. But, on a closer inspection, one can make out ten bronze statues, unceremoniously squeezed in between the Mare Nostrum aquarium, the Vegapolis skating rink, and an 843-space car park. The first five—of Jean Jaurès, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lenin—were built in 2010.2 They were joined two years later by Nelson Mandela, Golda Meir, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Mao, and Gandhi (Trubuil 2011). The image is striking: as shoppers make their way back to their cars, they are greeted by some of the twentieth century’s most charismatic leaders, neatly arranged in a circle and seemingly locked in a never-ending ideological struggle. Unfortunately, as the local press has pointed out, few people stop to look at the statues, except for teenage skaterboys (Coste 2011). The inhabitants of Montpellier are apparently uninterested in the pedagogical and ironic potential of a space in which Mandela points an accusing finger at Lenin and de Gaulle is forced to rub shoulders with Chairman Mao and Churchill. Sympathetic critics would no doubt argue that the statues are in the wrong place: who wants to ponder the lives of controversial historical figures after a quick trip to Galeries Lafayette? Yet, this would be to miss the point. The strange mixture of pedagogy and commercialism are integral to their conception; their interest lies precisely in the fact that history very obviously stands amidst the purest expressions of modern consumer capitalism. Above all, the statues reflect the single-minded vision and deep contradictions of one of France’s most colorful local politicians of recent years: Georges Frêche. Outside Montpellier, Frêche has been remembered primarily as the man who made a seemingly endless number of polemical statements. But there was rather more to him than his self-confessed “big mouth.” A relentless socialist modernizer, who embraced new electoral techniques and administrative ideas, he almost singlehandedly transformed the medium-sized provincial city of Montpellier into one of the fastest-growing cities in France, with a remarkable cultural scene, vibrant industry, and

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enormous public works that rivaled even the grandest of Parisian vanity projects. From a purely electoral point of view, his record was formidable: he was mayor of Montpellier for seventeen years and held various elected offices continuously from 1973 until his death in 2010. However, apart from essays by local journalists, straightforward hagiographical accounts, or interviews and writings by Frêche himself, there has been very little analysis of what people at the time called “the Frêche phenomenon,” and none at all in English (Maoudj 2007; Delacroix 2007).3 This is a shame, as a more dispassionate study of his trajectory, methods, language, and ideas can tell us a great deal about local politics in France under the Fifth Republic. His career speaks to some of the most significant political issues of the last four decades: decentralization, the reform of the non-Communist left, the end of the Trente Glorieuses, and the management of France’s disparate, divided postcolonial communities. These questions have attracted a good deal of scholarly attention at a national level, but relatively little has been said about how they have been managed locally. Traditional accounts of local politics in postrevolutionary France have charted the rise and fall of the notable, a political figure deeply anchored in his local or regional context, but this model cannot be easily generalized to the postwar period, especially under the increasing pressure of decentralization (Tudesq 1964; Halévy 1930; Charle 1987). Indeed, for all that Frêche was a figure of Napoleonic grandeur on his home territory, he was one of the first local leaders to understand that the region had become a necessary and essential feature of contemporary political life. He also recognized that the reformulation of the postwar center-left would rely heavily on its successes at a local level. He shared this view with other local socialist leaders such as Gaston Defferre (mayor of Marseille from 1953 to 1986) and Hubert Dubedout (mayor of Grenoble from 1965 to 1983), both of whom used their cities to show that socialism was not simply a politics of opposition: it could be the foundation of an effective and modernizing municipal administration.

Making a socialist fiefdom: Power and populism Frêche was not a native of Montpellier, or even the Hérault. He was born in 1938 in the medium-sized town of Puylaurens in the Tarn, 50 km east of Toulouse. His father left to fight in the Second World War only a year later and subsequently appears to have been involved in some Resistance activities. This meant that the young Georges was raised as an only child by his mother, a schoolteacher with socialist sympathies. When he was eight years old, the family moved to Toulouse, where Frêche took his baccalauréat exam in 1956. According to his own account, he then hesitated between preparing for the entrance exam for Saint Cyr—France’s foremost military school—and the HEC business school. He opted for the latter but failed the entrance exam after one year of classe préparatoire at the Lycée Joffre in Montpellier. To improve his chances and overcome the stigma of a provincial education, he moved to Paris. After a further year of preparation at the Lycée Stanislas and the Lycée Saint Louis, he succeeded in gaining a place at HEC. For the next eleven years, he would be a full-time student, completing his studies at HEC alongside further qualifications in history and law. By the early 1960s, he had abandoned the business route and committed himself fully to

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the study of history. In 1968, he completed two separate doctoral theses on the social history of the Midi-Pyrénées region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the following year, he came second in the history agrégation exam (Frêche 1974, 2001). With a bewildering array of diplomas in hand, he was ready for an academic career (Frêche with Lapousterle 1990). Blocked from taking up a post in his hometown of Toulouse because the doyens of the university’s right-leaning law and history faculties did not look kindly on Frêche’s left-wing past, he was forced to look elsewhere (Maoudj 2007, pp. 14–17). He expressed a preference for an institution in the south and in late 1969, negotiated his first full-time post as a professor of legal history at the University of Montpellier. Despite the exigencies of a political career, he continued to teach there every year until his retirement in 2007.4 These biographical details would be of merely academic interest were it not for the fact that Frêche repeatedly used them to anchor his regional identity. Unlike his great political rival—the center-right politician Jacques Blanc who had family roots in the rural Lozère—the young outsider repeatedly had to assert his local credentials (Pourcher 2004). In this respect at least, his encyclopedic historical knowledge of the region and his lilting southern accent were crucial assets. He combined this with a trenchant antiParis discourse. In his memoirs, he described how he felt out of place as a young man among the Parisian haute bourgeoisie at HEC and how he always preferred a “politics of proximity” to national politics (Frêche with Lapousterle 1990, pp. 17–18). Critics argued that this was simply because Frêche was systematically passed over for ministerial positions, despite being one of the most prominent Socialist politicians of the 1980s. But it is clear that both the hostility toward him in the capital and the affection for him in his home region owed much to his caustic attitude toward the Parisian elite.5 Frêche also used his biography to create a narrative of his political identity. As an elected politician, one of his favorite statements was “my mother is Jaurès, my father is de Gaulle.” This deftly rolled his family and political heritage into one: by invoking two of France’s best-loved politicians, he was able to project an ecumenism that would be richly rewarded at the ballot box, while deflecting any awkward questions about his youthful political engagement on the extreme left. Like many students with left-wing sympathies in the late 1950s, he was drawn into student politics at his lycée (Frêche with Lapousterle 1990, p. 27). On arrival in Paris, he gravitated toward the UNEF student union, which in this period was marked by the politics of anticolonialism, as well as by violent clashes with extreme-right groups (Frêche with Lapousterle 1990, pp. 28–9; Charpier 2005).6 With obvious Third-World sympathies, Frêche eventually joined the fledgling Maoist group, the Fédération des cercles marxistes-léninistes (FCML). He also wrote for the Maoist newspaper L’Humanité Nouvelle until at least 1965 when he was expelled from the movement (Lierre 1965; see also Bourseiller 1996, pp. 67, 75, 468; and Bourseiller 1997).7 He appears to have been tired of radical politics around this time, but his activism also came to an end because of his studies. His monastic existence as a doctoral student meant that the protests of the late 1960s passed him by—so much so that one of his oral examinations was held in May 1968 at Nanterre amidst the clamor of student agitation. Nevertheless, Frêche had learned the lessons of his student politics. When he began to run for office in Montpellier in the early 1970s under the banner of the newly

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formed Parti Socialiste (PS), he used the style of his dissident politics to breathe life into a moribund local socialist movement. Traditionally, the Hérault and neighboring départements were divided between the right-leaning cities and the left-leaning countryside. But by the 1960s, the remnants of the local SFIO (Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière) had been weakened by the multiple splits within the postwar non-Communist left and regular electoral setbacks. Moreover, the region’s largest city—Montpellier—appeared to be a lost cause: it had been governed without interruption since 1959 by the independent, center-right politician François Delmas. The challenge for the young Frêche was to unite the disparate parties of the left into an electoral force that could compete with the entrenched interests of the right (Dedieu 1995). A key part of his strategy was to put in place a local “union de la gauche” that pre-empted and reflected what was happening at a national level. Most importantly, it was a strategy that brought dividends. To everyone’s surprise, Frêche’s united left list was narrowly defeated in the municipal elections in 1971, but the fresh-faced rabblerouser triumphed in the 1973 legislative elections in the Montpellier-Lunel constituency that had belonged exclusively to the right for decades. In the municipal elections of 1977, he finally succeeded in toppling Delmas after his eighteen years of rule. It was a remarkable victory.8 Whatever the disagreements between the Communists and the Socialists at a national level, Frêche had shown that a “union de la gauche” could work on the ground. This enthusiasm and talent for forming coalitions inevitably led to accusations that he was using the PS as a vehicle for his own political advancement. By the end of his career, he was often cast as a “Le Pen of the left,” willing to embrace a “transpolitical” ideology that ranged indiscriminately from the extreme right to the extreme left (for example, Molénat 2004, p. 44).9 However, this view seriously underplays the consistency of Frêche’s commitment to the non-Communist left: despite frequent and public disagreement with the leadership of the PS, he did not leave until he was expelled in January 2007. There were rumors and accusations that, during his very first campaigns in the early 1970s, he had sought the support of local politicians from the extreme right to build an openly anti-Delmas coalition.10 But, once in power, he showed himself to be uncompromising with the center-right and the far right. This was made most apparent when, in 1998, his archrival Blanc retained the presidency of the Languedoc-Roussillon region by enlisting the support of the Front National. It was a controversial move for which Blanc was temporarily suspended from his own party (the Union pour la démocratie française, UDF), but the fiercest criticism came from Frêche, who launched a campaign that was made stronger by its combination of intense personal and political animosity. Frêche continuously harangued Blanc in public, going so far as to use his power in the city council to decree that a small street opposite the Montpellier headquarters of the conseil régional where Blanc worked be renamed “rue de Vichy” in honor of his “collaborationism.”11 The campaign worked: Frêche’s list won a resounding victory in the next regional elections in 2004 and he replaced Blanc as president of the region. Beyond electoral politics, there are other reasons for casting Frêche as a man of the left. Many of these have to do with the social policies he implemented during his time as mayor of Montpellier. When he took over in 1977, the city had undergone a major

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period of demographic expansion and it was this predominantly young electorate that had helped bring the new mayor to power. Frêche needed to implement visible and effective social policies that would guarantee the loyalty of these new constituencies. One of his most successful initiatives was the Maisons pour tous, set up in the early 1980s. These community and cultural centers were located in Montpellier’s quartiers populaires and acted as a focal point for the development of a local civil society. They were augmented by comités de quartiers in each neighborhood that provided a first contact point for local grievances. As his critics pointed out, this proliferation of intermediary bodies provided a perfect recruiting ground for political activists, the majority of whom would end up supporting Frêche (Molénat 2004, pp. 44–6). They nonetheless played a key role in bringing local government closer to the people and ensured that the city’s blossoming civil society would remain dependent on—and grateful to—the new mayor. This attempt to energize Montpellier’s civil society was accompanied by a formidable public relations campaign. In keeping with his decision to support Michel Rocard in the late 1970s, and his commitment to the principles of the market-friendly deuxième gauche, Frêche firmly believed that socialism and capitalism were compatible. He thus had no qualms about embarking on one of the most sustained attempts at urban “marketing” in France. For residents, this meant a steady stream of public information magazines designed to celebrate the municipal government’s achievements and provide details of city-sponsored cultural activities. The first of these was a general monthly information bulletin entitled Montpellier, votre ville, which had stopped appearing in 1971 but was resurrected in 1977.12 This was followed by more focused quarterly publications, including one for the elderly entitled Age d’Or (first published in 1984) and another for the “youth and students” entitled Mach2 (first published in 1985).13 In addition, the municipality made vigorous attempts to promote Montpellier as a business-friendly city to outside investors. In the mid-1980s, Frêche championed the concept of the “technopole” that would bring together the substantial research expertise of the local university and the entrepreneurial skills of local business leaders, while in 1986 he set up “Agropolis,” a collaboration between academics, businesses, and farmers that was designed to encourage cooperation in the field of agriculture (Puche 1987, pp. 12, 23–9). Quite apart from their positive economic consequences, these initiatives had the effect of reinforcing a narrative of urban progress that Frêche repeatedly used to his advantage. When the city famously proclaimed itself “Montpellier, la surdouée” (“Montpellier, the overachiever”) in 1987, there were few dissenting voices.14 Indignant opposition politicians argued that the former mayor Delmas deserved more credit—it was, after all, under his leadership that large technology companies such as IBM had moved to Montpellier in the early 1960s—but who could blame Frêche for reaping the political rewards of his businessorientated socialism? (Diméglio 2005)15 Unlike his predecessor, though, Frêche could not be accused of being a “mere” businessman. His economic vision went hand-in-hand with an even grander cultural vision. He wanted Montpellier to be, in his own words, a cultural capital “to rival Florence, Venice, Genoa.”16 This meant revitalizing the city’s cultural and student life.17 Frêche claimed that he had already begun to sketch plans for a cultural renaissance in

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Montpellier before the national victory of the left in 1981, but the enthusiasm of the new Socialist culture minister Jack Lang gave his ideas a considerable boost (Frêche and Montanari 2010). His first major project was the annual Festival de Montpellier Danse that started in 1981 under the stewardship of Dominique Bagouet and Jean-Paul Montanari. It rapidly became one of France’s premier dance festivals. Four years later in the summer of 1985, the mayor inaugurated another annual festival: the Festival International de Musique de Radio France et de Montpellier.18 It included debates and cultural activities alongside an eclectic concert series and the event soon joined the dance festival as one of the country’s leading cultural events. Frêche was determined to renovate the city’s cultural spaces as well. Only two years after the completion of the Zénith concert hall in Paris, the same architects were commissioned to build the Zénith Sud in an eastern suburb of Montpellier; the 5,000-seat space was opened to the public in 1986. In a similar vein, the Corum—a new conference center and concert venue in the heart of city—was completed in 1988. This proliferation of new cultural spaces and events left residents in no doubt as to Frêche’s commitment to the city’s cultural elevation. Perhaps the most striking of Frêche’s projects was Antigone—an entire neighborhood built on reclaimed land near the center of Montpellier. Shortly after his victory in 1977, the new mayor hired the talented geographer Raymond Dugrand as his adviser on urban planning; he would remain a staunch ally and close collaborator for almost twenty-four years. Together, the two men sketched out a future for the city that involved an extension of the city toward the south-east (Delacroix 2007, pp. 209–20). Part of this was the Odysseum shopping complex built in the late 1990s, but the first priority was to build housing for Montpellier’s mushrooming population. Frêche and Dugrand chose the Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill to design a new neighborhood of approximately one square kilometer, which was built in several stages between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. Alongside a large residential section, it includes a whole range of offices and shops, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a large médiathèque and the government buildings of the Languedoc-Roussillon region. The style is overwhelmingly neo-classical, in keeping with both Bofill’s aesthetic preferences and Frêche’s vision of Montpellier as a modern-day Greek city-state. Significantly, however, around 20 percent of the available housing stock was earmarked for public housing: even at his most imperious, the mayor kept his eye on his socialist principles and a potential new electorate. Antigone has now been recognized as one of the most significant urban renewal projects outside Paris in the last three decades and stands as a testimony to Frêche’s larger-than-life vision. His big ideas did not all meet with success—for instance, his attempts to change the name of Languedoc-Roussillon to “Septimanie” when he became president of the region in 2004 were a dismal failure—but the intense desire to market himself, his city, and (later) his region was more than simple political myth-making (Gastambide 2005). The “technopole” and large public works created jobs; a succession of high-level cultural events fostered a sense of civic pride; and the Maisons pour tous maintained a lively civil society. Whatever else it was, this was highly successful local socialism. While the PS struggled to maintain its national political presence into the 1990s, Frêche continued to march onward, and was eventually reelected mayor four

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times (he had to resign to take up the presidency of the region). By this time, the very concept of Montpellier had begun to seem inconceivable without its totemic figurehead.19

Identity politics and the rapatriés d’Algérie On February 11, 2006, Frêche was caught on camera hurling abuse at two sons of harki soldiers in Montpellier.20 As part of his tirade, he called them “des sous-hommes” (“subhumans”). Within days, his words had created a public sensation. Antiracism organizations condemned the former mayor for evoking the racism of the Second World War; the leaders of the PS accused him of perverting the values of the left; and, as the media storm increased, his local right-wing opponents gleefully pointed out the dangers of their sworn enemy’s “grande gueule” (“big mouth”) (Rollat 2008; Laudinas 2010). Finally, on February 28, François Hollande was forced to suspend an embattled Frêche from the PS. Over the next few years, the man who had made his populist and anti-elitist language into an invaluable asset found himself repeatedly pilloried by the media. It was no longer possible for his statements in 2008 about the number of blacks in the French football team to pass unnoticed; nor could he claim in 2010 that a senior PS politician of Jewish origin—Laurent Fabius—had a “tronche pas très catholique” (“rather un-Catholic face”) without incurring the wrath of Jewish and antiracist groups. Inevitably, the media frenzy distorted Frêche’s words and pulled them out of context; on each occasion, his explanations were plausible and there is little evidence to suggest that he was racist or anti-Semitic (Frêche 2010). But what is most interesting is that, in all three cases, the controversy had to do with race, origin, or religion. These were postcolonial issues with which the former mayor of Montpellier was extremely familiar. Right from the beginning of his political career, he had recognized the need to mobilize specific communities and exploit identity politics—the same identity politics that had now come back to haunt him (Chabal 2014). Of all the communities that made up an increasingly diverse Montpellier in the 1970s, there was one that stood out: the rapatriés d’Algérie. They were divided into a large number of Europeans (pieds-noirs) and a much smaller number of Algerians who had fought for France during the war of independence (harkis). Of the 1 million rapatriés who migrated to France in 1962, as many as 50,000–60,000 of them arrived in the Hérault (Schultz 1992). The majority chose to settle in Montpellier. They came in part because of the region’s similarity in climate and geography, but also because the then mayor, François Delmas, was well disposed to their plight. He had openly supported l’Algérie française and he promised to integrate the new arrivals into the city. Over the next decade, he built thousands of new social housing units to accommodate the enormous increase in population, including the now infamous tower blocks of La Paillade in the west of the city. In return, the pieds-noirs contributed substantially to the region’s economic revival. By the end of the 1960s, they appeared to have integrated seamlessly into the social fabric of the region.21 But employment and housing were not enough to erase the memories of what many pieds-noirs considered the trauma of decolonization. They had been forced to

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leave a land to which they were profoundly attached and they now expected adequate compensation from the French state for their losses (Comtat 2009; Esclangon-Morin 2007; Jordi 1993). As they became increasingly settled and secure, they began to realize their political potential. At a national level, they were a relatively small minority, but in cities such as Montpellier, the pied-noir vote could decide an election. In the 1970s, pied-noir organizations such as ANFANOMA and RECOURS-France began to exhort their members to use their vote to punish local politicians who failed to support legislative proposals to compensate the rapatriés.22 This vote sanction played a key role in the demise of Delmas. Despite his sustained material commitment to the integration of the pieds-noirs, his decision in the mid-1970s to align himself with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s Républicains indépendents (RI) meant that he would henceforth be associated with the ruling party and its failures. As negotiations over compensation stalled, angry pied-noir organizations called on the rapatriés to punish Giscard d’Estaing at the polls (Roseau 1985). Delmas was one of the first victims, even though his fall from power in 1977 came three years before Giscard d’Estaing and the center-right were defeated in the national elections. It was a death foretold: in the run-up to the election, commentators repeatedly asked the mayor whether he was “doing enough” for the rapatriés and whether he feared losing their support.23 In the meantime, his opponent was vigorously courting the pied-noir vote. Frêche systematically included prominent local piedsnoirs on his electoral lists and sought to make friends with community leaders. Of these, his most significant and most rewarding friendship was with Jacques Roseau, who had founded RECOURS-France in 1976 (Jubineau 1997). Over the course of the 1980s, Roseau became the public face of the pied-noir movement. At a national level, his willingness to negotiate with and endorse politicians of all political persuasions allowed him to push pied-noir issues into the mainstream of French politics, while at a local level he was considered a major power broker in his hometown of Montpellier. It did not take long for Frêche to understand that he needed Roseau’s support and he cultivated it assiduously. He maintained warm relations with him and encouraged his cousin—Gilbert—to stand (successfully) as a parliamentary candidate in Montpellier. These quasi-familial ties were badly shaken in 1993 when, in one of the most dramatic examples of pied-noir infighting since the 1960s, Roseau was shot dead in Montpellier by three elderly members of a rival association. The assassination brutally exposed the divisions within the pied-noir community, but it also removed one of Frêche’s key interlocutors (Eldridge 2012). Henceforth, the battle for the pied-noir vote would become more fragmented. Indeed, the two sons of harkis who provoked Frêche’s ire in 2006 accosted him at a memorial service for Roseau, which explains the emotions behind the heated exchange. As dissident members of the rapatrié community, they were challenging one of Frêche’s most cherished political rights: the legitimacy to speak on their behalf. In all fairness, Frêche could (and did) point to his long-standing commitment to the entire rapatrié community, including the harkis. From the moment he was elected député in 1973, he became a vocal defender of the pied-noir cause in parliamentary debates, and he was often at the head of protests by pied-noir and harki groups in the 1980s and 1990s. In public, he fully endorsed the standard pied-noir view that,

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because of subsequent atrocities committed against Europeans and harki soldiers who remained in Algeria, the Algerian War did not end with the ceasefire of March 19, 1962. He systematically campaigned against legislation to commemorate the end of the Algerian War on March 19 and, unlike many left-wing municipalities, refused to inaugurate a “rue du 19 mars 1962” in Montpellier. Likewise, he was sympathetic to the highly controversial legislation to teach the “positive effects of colonization” that was passed in 2005—a bill for which pied-noir groups had lobbied (Liauzu and Manceron 2006). The latter was especially jarring for a man who had been committed to the Third-World cause in the 1960s, but it was motivated by an acute awareness of electoral politics. As he put it bluntly in 2001 in a letter to the President of the Socialist bloc in parliament, Jean-Marc Ayrault, any attempt to formalize a day of commemoration on March 19 would “surely lose 150,000 to 200,000 votes for Jospin [in the forthcoming presidential election].”24 The numbers were almost certainly exaggerated, but the political pragmatism was unmistakable. At a local level, Frêche made a special effort to support a specifically pied-noir civil society in Montpellier. Almost as soon as he was elected in 1977, he initiated a project for a Maison des rapatriés, which was eventually built in the Mas Drevon neighborhood and became a focal point for pied-noir community life. In 1996, he agreed to subsidize the national conference of the ANFANOMA in Montpellier and his lengthy keynote address wholeheartedly endorsed the pied-noir cause.25 At the same meeting, he mentioned his desire to build a museum in Montpellier on the history of the French presence in Algeria. In 2003, the conseil municipal approved the project (Martin 2009, p. 8). The museum, which will be housed in the Hotel Montcalm, was due to open in 2007 but is still awaiting full approval by the French state. When it is inaugurated in 2014–15, it will be the first museum in France to focus solely on the impact of French colonization in North Africa. Given the circumstances in which it was conceived, it seems likely that the exhibition will adhere closely to the privileged pied-noir narratives of benevolent colonization and interracial harmony in Algeria.26 If it does, it will rightly be considered as Frêche’s posthumous gift to the pieds-noirs of Montpellier. In retrospect, it is easy to cast Frêche’s “management” of the pied-noir community as a cynical combination of pragmatism and clientelism. This view is reinforced when one considers that he developed similar techniques with other “interest groups.” He made strenuous efforts to co-opt Montpellier’s Muslim community through the construction of mosques; he broke with the dominant position of the French left by publicly defending the state of Israel in order to ensure the support of the Jewish community; and he enthusiastically campaigned amongst the homosexual community, who returned the favor by making Montpellier into one of France’s most gay-friendly cities (on the Muslim community, see Geisser and Zemouri 2006; Geisser 2007; on the Jewish community, see Molénat 2004, pp. 157–61).27 Yet, Frêche’s unapologetic identity politics was also a principled stand. He realized the threat of the extreme right in the 1980s and knew that he would have to cast his net widely in order to halt the inexorable advance of the Front National. Where other parts of the Languedoc, especially those with large pied-noir populations, have seen the FN score reach 25–30 percent, in Montpellier it has oscillated around 15 percent in the last twenty years (Comtat 2009, pp. 232–9). Frêche did not win the city simply for himself; he also won it for the left.

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Figure 18.1 Frêche angelot (Frêche, the little angel). In this posthumous drawing by a well-known local cartoonist, Georges Frêche is being targeted by rifles concealed amidst the benign-looking flowers that represent the symbol of the Parti Socialiste. He survives by flying above them all, like an angel.

Place, locality, and personality: The many worlds of Georges Frêche Frêche died on October 24, 2010. His death coincided with the release of a film about him by Yves Jeuland, which chronicled his last victorious election campaign.28 With no narrator, the film painted a vivid picture of a man gearing up for his favorite activity of election campaigning. Viewers saw Frêche compulsively chewing on Post-It notes, singing “Le Chant des Africains” with his pied-noir friends and doing just enough to control his “big mouth” during radio interviews. The degree of intimacy accorded to the director was surprising, even by the standards of political documentaries. The sheer proximity to power seemed to unsettle some of the film’s reviewers. The film critic in Le Monde attacked the film for casting politics in a bad light: “One is left wondering whether politics can simply be reduced to this cynical farce?” (Mandelbaum 2010). This reaction reflected both the fact that the private life of French politicians is not

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seen as a legitimate subject of scrutiny and the degree to which Frêche was misunderstood. He certainly knew how to manipulate and he reveled in his brutal language, but he remained a pure product of the democratic system of the Fifth Republic, carefully balancing his grandeur with a deep respect for the ballot box. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the 2010 regional elections that were the subject of Jeuland’s film. Frêche had already been suspended by the PS, but in 2010, the leader of the party—Martine Aubry—abruptly withdrew all support for Frêche’s candidates and supported the creation of an “official” PS electoral list headed by the new mayor of Montpellier, Hélène Mandroux. Genuinely upset by this rebuttal, Frêche recomposed his forces and led a sustained assault on the party leadership and his opponent. He reminded anyone who would listen that he had won Montpellier and the region for the PS for over a quarter of a century, including elections where the party suffered crushing national defeats. In any case, Mandroux herself was a pure product of the “système Frêche,” having risen through the municipal government during his reign. She had no chance, he argued; she would be “humiliated.” Sure enough, Frêche was right: with a paltry 7.74 percent, the official PS list was eliminated in the first round and his list triumphed with 54.19 percent of the vote in the second round. A few months later, Frêche died in his presidential office in the Antigone neighborhood. He remained, until the end, a local political hero. But, for all his grandeur, perhaps the most striking thing about Frêche was his ability to speak different languages to different audiences: he was as comfortable in his professorial robes as he was playing table football in a rural bar. This skill allowed him to flourish through the end of the Trente Glorieuses, the rise of globalized neo-liberalism, and the increasingly fragmented political culture of the late Fifth Republic. His statue that now stands outside the Lycée Georges Frêche in Montpellier reminds passersby of this special talent. It shows him pointing a finger—a homage to the lifelong university teacher—and with a clenched fist behind his back—in honor of his combative spirit.29 He comes across as a cantankerous political animal, with enough brains to outfox even his most wily opponents. It is an appropriate tribute.

Notes 1 I am indebted to Claire Eldridge for helping me to understand the pieds-noirs, and Akhila Yechury for teaching me the value of the local. I am also grateful to St John’s College, Cambridge, for financial assistance with the research for this project. This piece is dedicated to my parents, for introducing me to Montpellier long before I knew about the Roi Georges. 2 Of the many articles published at the time on this subject, see for instance Devailly 2010 and Goutorbe 2010. 3 The best and most balanced account is by a journalist from the Midi Libre, Karim Maoudj, although many interesting details are to be found in the much more hagiographical biography written by Frêche’s former directeur de cabinet, François Delacroix. 4 For student recollections of his teaching style, see Carcolse 2010. 5 On this, see for instance the analysis by the political scientist Emmanuel Négrier, the linguist Catherine Détrie, and the journalist Karim Maoudj on France 3, 7 à voir (first broadcast March 28, 2010).

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6 Frêche mentioned his encounters in law school with the future ministers Gérard Longuet and Alain Madelin who were part of the far-right group Occident at the time. 7 While he was involved with L’Humanité Nouvelle, Frêche wrote under the pseudonym Georges Lierre. 8 For a sense of the reaction in the local press, see “La chute des citadelles,” in Sud: hebdomadaire du Languedoc et du Roussillon (March 21–27, 1977). 9 Local journalists have variously described Frêche as a man “in quotation marks” (Palat 2006) and frêchisme as a “transpolitical UFO that ignores party lines and electoral taboos” (Molénat 2004). 10 The local branch of the FN claimed that he had tried to enlist their support in the 1973 legislative election. D. R., “Une région en or” in La lettre du Front (No. 3, 1986), no page number. See also Maoudj 2007, pp. 53–6. 11 Montpellier’s conseil municipal voted to rename the street “rue de Vichy (22 juin 40–6 juin 44)” on June 26, 1998. On July 31, the renaming decree was annulled and the conseil chose instead the rather less controversial “rue de Platon”. “Montpellier dépatise sa ‘rue de Vichy’ in Libération (August 3, 1998). 12 The front cover of the first edition of Montpellier, votre ville in 1977 can be found in the excellent online médiathèque of the Association Georges Frêche: http://www. georgesfreche-lassociation.fr/media/montpellier-votre-ville-n-1.html [accessed December 17, 2012]. 13 Frêche was present in the pages of both publications right from the start. See for instance Frêche 1984, p. 1. 14 A facsimile of one of the “Montpellier, la surdouée” posters is available online at the Association Georges Frêche. http://www.georgesfreche-lassociation.fr/montpellier-lasurdouee.html [accessed December 17, 2012]. 15 Diméglio was a center-right (UDF) député for the Hérault from 1986 to 1997. His Les cent fleurs is the most sustained written attack on Frêche’s narrative of municipal triumph. 16 From an interview with Frêche on France Inter, Inter-Actualités de 7h30 (July 10, 1987). 17 According to INSEE statistics, the proportion of students as part of the urban population was 8.1 percent in 2011, second only to Poitiers. Audric and Tasqué 2011. 18 A copy of the program of the first festival can be found in “Montpellier capitale de la musique,” in Puissance 13 (No. 9, June 1985), no page number. 19 On this, see for instance the debate on La Cinquième, Montpellier, capitale du Languedoc (first broadcast October 18, 2000) 20 The harkis were auxiliary Arab or Berber troops who fought alongside the French colonial army in Algeria. After the Algerian War, many thousands of them fled to France. They were considered traitors by the postindependence Algerian government and those who remained in Algeria suffered severe reprisals. 21 These issues are well captured in a documentary on the pieds-noirs in the Montpellier area. France 5, Algérie-Montpellier, aller simple (dir. Benoît Califano, first broadcast May 25, 2002). 22 ANFANOMA stands for “Association Nationale des Français d’Afrique du Nord, d’Outre-Mer et de leurs Amis”. RECOURS stands for “Rassemblement et coordination unitaires des rapatriés et spoilés”. 23 These issues were raised in high-profile radio and television debates between Frêche and Delmas just before the election. See for instance France Inter, Inter-Actualités de 19h (March 16, 1977) and TF1, Journal télévisé (March 15, 1977). 24 This letter was reproduced in France-Horizon: le cri du rapatrié (No. 428–427, Nov-Dec 2001): 17.

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25 “Intervention de M. Georges Frêche, Maire de Montpellier” in France-Horizon: le cri du rapatrié (No. 376–377, Nov-Dec 1996): 8. 26 For some idea of what the museum will look like, see an interview in with the current president of the agglomération de Montpellier in March 2012: Povillon 2012. 27 A sign of Montpellier’s status as a gay-friendly city was that France’s first gay marriage was held there on May 29, 2013. 28 Le Président (dir. Y. Jeuland, France Télévisions Distributions 2010). 29 The sculptor explained his choices in Merot 2012.

References Audric, S. and Tasqué, O. (2011). Repères syntheses pour l’économie du Languedoc Roussillon, no. 1. Montpellier: Montpellier Agglomération. Bourseiller, C. (1997). “Georges Frêche: itinéraire d’un jeune militant pro-chinois.” Les Cahiers de l’Histoire Sociale 8: 125–9. —(2008 [1996]). Les maoïstes. La folle histoire des gardes rouges français. Paris: Points. Carcolse, E. (2010). “Georges Frêche, ‘mauvais maire’ peut-être mais bon prof,” Marianne (December 13). Chabal, E. (2014). “Managing the postcolony: miniority politics in Montpellier, c.1960–c.2014,” Contemporary European History 23(2): 237–58. Charle, C. (1987). Les élites de la République (1880–1900). Paris: Fayard. Charpier, F. (2005). Génération Occident: de l’extrême droite à la droite. Paris: Seuil. Comtat, E. (2009). Les pieds-noirs en politique. Quarante ans après le retour. Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. Coste, V. (2011). “Les Grands Hommes n’attirent pas la foule,” Midi Libre (September 11). Dedieu, O. (1995), “Les notables en campagne: luttes et pouvoirs dans la fédération socialiste de l’Hérault.” Pole Sud 2: 101–20. Delacroix, F. (2007). Georges Frêche, la sagesse de la démesure. Céret: Editions Alter Égo. Devailly, A. (2010). “Lénine, de Gaulle, Mao, Jaurès, Mandela et. . . . Georges Frêche,” Le Monde (August 3). Diméglio, W. (2005). Montpellier, les cent fleurs, 1960–2020. Montpellier: self-published. Eldridge, C. (2012). “‘Fiers de notre passé et forts de nos liens fraternelles’: Questions of unity and solidarity between pied-noir associations,” unpublished conference paper, presented at the Institut Historique Allemand, Paris, March 7–9. Esclangon-Morin, V. (2007). Les rapatriés d’Afrique du Nord de 1956 à nos jours. Paris: L’Harmattan. Frêche, G. (1974). Toulouse et la region Midi-Pyrénées au siècle des Lumières (vers 1670–1789). Paris: Editions Cujas. —(1984). “Editorial.” Age d’Or Informations 1 (Sep-Dec): 1. —(2001). Puylaurens. Une ville huguenote en Languedoc. Toulouse: Editions Privat. —(2010). Trêve de balivernes. Pour en finir avec l’hypocrisie. Paris: Editions Héloïse d’Ormesson. Frêche, G. with Lapousterle, P. (1990). La France ligotée. Paris: Belfond. Frêche, G. and Montanari, J.-P. (2010). “Entretien avec Georges Frêche: Éveiller une conscience culturelle,” in J.-P. Montanari (ed.), Montpellier Danse(s). Trente ans de création. Montpellier: Actes Sud.

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Gastambide, J. (2005). “Languedoc-Roussillon, vivre en cacophonie.” Quaderni 59: 109–20. Geisser, V. (2007). “Le revisionnisme municipal. Montpellier sous le mandat Frêche (1977–2004),” in S. Jahan and A. Ruscio (eds), Histoire de la colonisation. Rehabilitations, Falsifications et Instrumentalisation. Paris: Les Indes savantes. Geisser, V. and Zemouri, A. (2006). Marianne et Allah. Les politiques francais face à la “question musulmane.” Paris: La Découverte. Goutorbe, C. (2010), “Frêche met Lénine et Mao à l’honneur à Montpellier,” Le Figaro (August 6). Halévy, D. (1930). La fin des notables. Paris: Grasset. Jordi, J.-J. (1993). De l’exode à l’éxil: rapatriés et pieds noirs en France: l’exemple marseillais, 1954–1992. Paris: L’Harmattan. Jubineau, E. (1997). L’enigme Roseau: La parole pied-noir assassinée. St Georges d’Orques: Éditions Causse. Laudinas, G. (2010). Journal d’une curée en campagne. Paris: Editions Au Diable Vauvert. Liauzu, C. and Manceron, G. (eds) (2006). La colonisation, la loi et l’histoire. Paris: Editions Syllepse. Lierre, G. (1965). “L’agression économique de l’impérialisme américain contre la France et contre l’Europe,” L’Humanité Nouvelle (April 3). Mandelbaum, J. (2010). “Le Président: Georges Frêche, la face noire de la politique,” Le Monde (December 14). Maoudj, K. (2007). Georges Frêche, grandes heures et décadence. Paris: Max Chaleil. Martin, J. (2009). “Le musée de la présence française en Algérie à Montpellier avance alors qu’à Marseille le mémorial de la France outre-mer piétine.” France-Horizon: le cri du rapatrié (494–5): 8. Merot, C. (2012). “Statue Georges Frêche: le bel homage rendu ‘grand batisseur’” midilibre.fr (September 5). http://www.midilibre.fr/2012/09/05/la-statue-de-georgesfreche-inauguree-ce-matin,557515.php [accessed December 18, 2012]. Molénat, J. (2004). Le marigot des pouvoirs. Systèmes, réseaux, communautés et francmaçons en Languedoc-Roussillon. Castelnau-le-Lez: Editions Climats. Palat, P. (2006). “Georges Frêche entre guillemets,” Le Monde (March 2). Pourcher, Y. (2004). Votez tous pour moi! Les campagnes électorales de Jacques Blanc en Languedoc-Roussillon, 1986–2004. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Povillon, Y. (2012). “Moure: ‘Il faut savoir affronter l’histoire de face,’ ” Midi Libre (March 17). Puche, M. (1987). “Montpellier technopole: la revanche du Sud.” Autres Temps. Les cahiers du christianisme social 12: 23–9. Rollat, A. (2008). L’assassinat raté de Georges Frêche. Sète: Editions Singulières. Roseau, J. (1985). “Histo-recours.” R.E.C.O.U.R.S infos 34 (No. 1, September). Schultz, J. (1992). “L’effet rapatrié dans l’Hérault,” in M. Khellil and J. Maurin (eds), Les rapatriés d’Algérie en Languedoc-Roussillon 1962–1992. Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier III. Trubuil, G. (2011). “Place des Grands-Hommes: les statues de Meir et Mao font polémique,” Midi Libre (July 24). Tudesq, A.-J. (1964). Les grands notables en France (1840–1849): étude historique d’une psychologie sociale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Index Algeria 43, 46–9, 50 Algerian War, 1954–62 210–12, 215n. 20 French Conquest of Algeria (1830) 3, 10–11, 175, 178–9 Alsace/Alsace-Lorraine xvi, xx, xxi, xxv, 15–24, 42–50, 79–88, 114–15, 118–22 Ancien Régime/Old Regime 4–8, 16–17, 162–5, 173 années noires xxiv, 103–13, 116, 118 anti-Semitism 104–7, 110–13, 121–2 army, French xxvii, 103, 108–9, 155, 161–8, 172–8 autonomy, local/autonomism xxxi, 16, 28, 44, 48, 55, 181–90, 192, 199 borders/borderlands xvi, xxiii, 4–5, 15–24, 57, 66, 70–2, 80, 127, 137–40, 144–5, 164–6 Brittany 138, 194 Burgundy 27–37, 139 centralization xv, xxvi, 7–8, 12, 17, 23–4, 161–8, 182, 183, 186, 192–3, 196 commerce 44–6, 86, 125–6, 128–9, 131, 134, 137–45 decentralization xxv, xxvi, xxix, 28–32, 80, 88–9, 126, 181, 187, 189, 192, 197–9, 205 democratization xxvi–xxvii, xxx see also decentralization départements xvii, xxviii–xxix, 192–202 elections and electoral politics 182, 192–3, 197–202, 204–14 environment see milieu and natural environment

Europe and European Union xiii, xv, xxiii, xxv, xxx–xxxi, 55, 118, 120–2, 125, 128, 133, 138–40, 144–5, 183–5 exhibitions/expositions xxi, xxii, xxx, 42–50, 80, 82–3, 85–8, 117–18, 120–1, 126, 143 festivity

xx, xxx, 16, 31, 34–7, 126, 129, 141–3, 185–6, 188 Fifth Republic xxvi, xxviii–xxix, 117, 130, 183, 199–202, 205, 214 First Empire/Napoleonic Era xvi, xxvii, 3, 9–10, 12, 25n. 15, 152, 155, 157n. 8, 162, 165, 166, 168, 174–8 First World War xxiv, 15, 28, 67, 72, 103, 108, 109 folklore xxiii, xxvi, 16, 33–5, 138, 142–3 foreigners, foreignness xxv, 4–5, 8, 10, 65–72, 92, 95, 97, 101, 103–13, 121–2, 137–45, 162–8, 169n. 11 Franco–Prussian War 43, 80, 175 French Revolution xv, xvi, xviii, xxv–xxviii, 8–12, 15–17, 23, 24n. 11, 54, 113, 151–7, 161–8, 171–5, 192–3, 196 Front National xxvi, 207, 212 gastronomy and wine xx, xxii, 27–37, 128, 130–7, 141, 181–90 geography xvi–xix, xxx, 15–16, 21, 27–31, 33, 37, 53–4, 85–9, 131, 133, 138, 151–2, 156–7, 187, 192–6, 198 Germany 15–24, 24–5n. 14, 42–9, 80, 114–22 German Occupation 24, 103, 105, 108, 111–13, 114–22, 185–8 heimat (“homeland”) xiv, xx, 18–19, 24–5n. 14, 44

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globalization xiii, xxvi, xxx–xxxi, 53–9, 125, 128, 130, 135, 138, 145 “Greater France”/la plus grande France xx–xxi, 42–3, 45–50 harki(s) 210–12, 215n. 20 heritage/patrimoine xx, xxiii–xxiv, xxviii, xxxi, 30–2, 37, 92–9, 125–35, 138, 140, 141, 144, 181–2, 185–90 imperialism xiii, xv, xvii, xviii, xx, xxi, xxviii, 3–4, 11–12, 42–50, 91–101, 175, 178–9 industry/industrial development 28, 46, 71, 79–82, 86, 89, 137–40, 144, 145, 155, 182 integration, national xiii, xv, xvi, xxi, xxvi, xxvii, xxxiiin. 12, 4, 5, 9–12, 15–24, 29, 31, 42–50, 58, 79, 88, 103–13, 114–16, 118, 121–2, 129, 161–8, 175, 178–9, 181–9, 192–202 Islam xxix, 6–7, 9, 11, 93–4, 212 July Monarchy 3–4, 11–12, 173, 177 landscape

xvii–xix, xxviii, 15, 19, 28–33, 37, 57–8, 85, 88, 91–101, 132, 135 Languedoc-Roussillon 126, 181–90, 207, 209, 212 lieux de mémoire xix, xxiv–xxv, 55, 114–22 Maghreb/North Africa 3–12, 91–101 map(s)/mapping/mapmaking xx, xxx, xxxii, 10, 15–24, 33, 131–3, 157, 192 market(s) 8, 15, 20, 23, 32, 46, 49, 65, 79, 86, 128, 139 marketing xx, xxiii, 27, 32–3, 125, 129–32, 187–9, 208–9 Marseilles xvi, xxi, 6, 47, 65, 66, 69, 70–2, 110, 141, 198 memorial(s) and memorialization 115, 117–20, 145, 183, 211 memory xiv, xix, xxiv–xxv, 27, 37, 86, 114–23, 137, 142, 190

migration

xv, xx–xxi, xxiii, xxvi, xxvii, 43, 50, 66–74, 137–9, 141–5, 151, 153, 155, 157 milieu, nature, and natural environment xiii, xv, xvii, xxix–xxxi, 28, 29, 33, 53, 58, 72–85, 134, 139–42, 152, 171 modernity/modernization xiii–xv, xxii, xxv–xxvi, xxviii, xxix, xxxiiin.16, 5, 6, 10, 27–8, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 54–5, 58, 59, 60n. 6, 79–88, 91–3, 97, 117, 129, 134, 138, 142, 172, 176, 177, 181, 186, 204–5 Morocco xxii, 12, 91–4, 96, 100, 187 museum(s) 96, 121, 131, 141–2, 188, 212, 216n. 26 see also memorials nostalgia

xxvi, xxviii, 92, 100–1, 105, 108, 110, 125, 126, 132, 134, 171–8, 179n. 10 nostalgia, imperialist 92, 100 notable xiv, xvi, xxii, xxvii, xxix, 7, 89n. 3, 99, 177, 198, 204, 205 Paris

xiv, xv, xxi, xxii, xxvii, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 32, 34, 42, 44, 46, 48, 54, 56, 57, 66, 69, 80, 82, 85, 86, 88, 90, 106, 108, 111, 126, 134, 141, 151–7, 171, 172, 174, 176, 182–4, 186–7, 195, 200, 205–6, 209 Parti Socialiste 207, 213, 216 Patrie xix, xx, xxvi–xxviii, 18, 23, 172–8 patrimoine see heritage/patrimoine patriotism 17, 48–50, 79, 105–11, 164, 168, 171, 172, 175, 176, 178 pays xv, xvii, xxviii, xxxi, 162, 163, 165, 167, 174–8, 188, 189 place (concept of) xiii–xxviii, xxx–xxxi, 4–12, 27–37, 42–50, 91, 98, 114–23, 151–7, 162, 166–8, 172–8, 187, 197, 204, 207, 213 prefect (préfet) and prefectoral system xxvi, 9, 11, 12, 192, 197, 198 produits de terroir xx, 30–3, 37, 129, 134, 140 Provence 5, 6, 8, 55, 138, 139, 144

Index rapatrié(s) 210–12, 215–16 refugees 10, 70, 71, 104, 108, 110, 118 see also foreigners and foreignness region xvi–xxxiii, 15–19, 23, 24, 26, 27– 37, 42–6, 48–50, 53–6, 60, 106–8, 114–22, 126–35, 138, 144, 155, 161–9, 174–5, 181–90, 193–4, 196–201, 205–7, 209–10, 214 regionalism 9, 23, 24n. 12, 26, 107, 108, 161–8, 177 regional language(s) 16–18, 21, 126–30, 132, 134, 162–7 Republican/Republicanism xiv, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxix, 7, 8, 12, 28, 30, 44, 56, 105, 173, 174, 175, 177, 185 resistance 110–11 Restoration 4, 11, 12, 171, 173, 176, 177 Revolution of 1830 3, 4 Revolution, French xvi, xviii, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, 8, 9–12, 15–17, 23–5, 48, 54, 80, 89, 113, 151–8, 161–9, 171–6, 192–3, 195–6 Revolution of 1830 3, 4 rural/ruralism xv, xvii, xviii, xxiii, xxvi, xxxiin. 8, 19, 29, 80, 85, 105, 108, 110, 125–34, 138, 140, 147, 157n. 1, 174, 177, 183, 200, 202, 206, 214

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Second Empire 173 Second World War 113, 115, 117, 205 space (applications and the study of) xiii–xxi, xxvi–xxxi, 3–5, 12, 15–24, 28, 30–4, 37, 50, 53–9, 65, 85, 88, 96, 101, 120, 125, 128, 129, 133, 134, 152, 178, 184, 189, 190, 193, 204, 209 terroir xx, xxxiii, 30–3, 37, 129, 134 Third Republic xvi, xxv, xxvi, xxix, 8, 45, 80, 82, 103, 104, 105, 108, 112, 113, 117, 130, 141, 161, 162, 168, 173, 178, 199 tourism xxiii, xxx, 27–9, 33, 45, 125–9, 133–4, 137–45 ecotourism xxx, 126, 140–1 Treaty of Versailles 46, 195 Trente Glorieuses, les xxviii, 205, 214 urbanization (practice, policy, and politics) xv, xvii, xxii, xxviiii, 3–12, 91–2, 94–101, 125–6, 128, 137–8, 140–5, 183, 188, 204–14 Vichy (State)

104, 105, 110, 112, 113