Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France: Monuments, Museums and Colonial Memories

Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France Monuments, Museums and Colonial Memories Robert Aldrich Vestiges of the Col...

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Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France Monuments, Museums and Colonial Memories

Robert Aldrich

Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France

Also by Robert Aldrich ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IN BURGUNDY SINCE 1850 AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF EUROPE, 1890–1939 (with Frank B. Tipton) AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF EUROPE FROM 1939 TO THE PRESENT (with Frank B. Tipton) THE FRENCH PRESENCE IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC, 1842–1940 FRANCE’S OVERSEAS FRONTIER: Départements et Territoires d’Outre-Mer (with John Connell) FRANCE AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC SINCE 1940 THE SEDUCTION OF THE MEDITERRANEAN: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy GREATER FRANCE: A History of French Overseas Expansion THE LAST COLONIES (with John Connell) COLONIALISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY

Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France Monuments, Museums and Colonial Memories Robert Aldrich University of Sydney

© Robert Aldrich 2005 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–3370–7 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aldrich, Robert, 1954– Vestiges of the colonial empire in France : monuments, museums, and colonial memories / Robert Aldrich. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–3370–7 1. France—Colonies—Historiography. 2. France—Colonies— History. 3. France—Colonies—Public opinion. 4. Public opinion—France. 5. Memorialization—France. I. Title. JV1811.A634 2004 325′.344—dc22 2004052102 10 14

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents vi

List of Illustrations

vii

List of Abbreviations

viii

Preface Introduction: Sites of Colonial Memory

1

1 The Colonies in Paris

21

2 The Colonies in the Provinces

76

3 Colonial War Memorials

105

4 Of Men and Monuments

157

5 The Colonies in Museums

196

6 The Colonial Legacy of Non-Western Art in French Museums

245

7 Temporary Exhibitions: Changing Perspectives

291

Conclusion: The Future of the Colonial Past

328

Notes

335

Bibliography

365

Index

377

v

List of Illustrations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

‘Au Planteur’ Bust of Francis Garnier Colonial War Memorial Entrance to the Palais de la Porte Dorée Notre-Dame des Missions ‘La France Colonisatrice’ Minaret of the Paris mosque Pavilion, Jardin Tropical Plaque honouring protesters Plaque honouring French soldiers Vietnamese ‘temple’ in the Jardin Tropical North African War memorial Monument to the Marchand Mission Montmartre cemetery Ecole Coloniale Former colonial ministry

vi

24 33 36 37 39 40 53 64 74 108 112 151 161 177 265 309

List of Abbreviations AEF AOF DOM EFEO FLN FNACA IMA MAAO MAAOA MATP OAS SME TOM

Afrique Equatoriale Française Afrique Occidentale Française Département(s) d’Outre-Mer Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient Front de Libération Nationale Fédération Nationale des Anciens Combattants en Algérie, Maroc et Tunisie Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris) Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (Paris) Musée des Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens (Marseille) Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires (Paris) Organisation de l’Armée Secrète Société des Missions Etrangères Territoire(s) d’Outre-Mer

vii

Preface

This book is about traces of the overseas empire in present-day metropolitan France and how these ‘sites of memory’ reveal French attitudes towards the colonial past. Although monuments and museums may be designed for eternity, they do not last indefinitely. Monuments are created and destroyed, while museums open and close and rearrange their collections. Therefore, the reader should appreciate that this book presents a view of colonial traces in France as seen at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and at the changes that have occurred since around 1990 in museums and monuments that refer to the colonial past. Those who may wish to use it as a guide to colonial sites may find that they will lose their way because of changes that have occurred with regularity. A word on nomenclature: I have used ‘colonialism’ and ‘imperialism’ as roughly synonymous, though in both French and English, some historians use these words to label different types of expansion. I have also occasionally used the word ‘natives’ to refer to indigenous populations, and ‘primitive’ for certain types of cultures and artefacts, because these words were current during the colonial period and preserve the mentalités of that time. I have sometimes not placed the words in inverted commas in order to avoid encumbering the text, but of course I am aware of the contested nature of the vocabulary, and by no means accept the colonialist beliefs implied by such language. Researching and writing this book gave me the very pleasant opportunity to visit a number of French cities, and to explore their museums and monuments. A considerable part of this study is based on my own visits and observations about monuments and museums. However, I have not been able to see and study all of the ones that I discuss and, in those cases, I have relied on published catalogues or secondary literature. My aim has not been to complete a comprehensive inventory of colonial sites in France, but I hope to have explored some of the most important of them. I would be grateful to readers who can inform me about ones that I have missed. The Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris provided a treasure trove of material on Paris, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Bibliothèque Forney were indispensable in my work. The inter-library loan staff at the Fisher Library of the University of Sydney did wonderful service in borrowing books and obtaining copies of articles. I would like to thank colleagues and friends who put me on the right track to find sites of memory around France and comparative ones in other countries. I regret that space makes it impossible to discuss colonial lieux de mémoire in such countries as viii

Preface ix

Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and Portugal, on which I have worked, and I hope to examine other cases elsewhere. Many people – historians, curators, students, fellow flâneurs – have shared their knowledge and insights with me, and I am grateful for their help. Several also kindly read sections of this work, or an earlier version of the manuscript, and their suggestions were most helpful; in particular, I would like to thank Rudolph Binion, Laurence Brown, Eric Jennings and David A. Schalk. Thanks, too, to Nicole Tran Minh for sharing her knowledge about the Jardin Botanique Colonial, to Jean-Jacques Jordi for giving me information on the Mémorial de la France d’Outre-Mer, to Eric Anderson for leads to monuments in Provence, to Michel Coquery and Catherine CoqueryVidrovitch for hints about sites in Paris, and to Pierre Brocheux for insight into Indochinese traces in France. Curators at a number of institutions answered my queries about their collections and provided me with invaluable documentation on their museums, and I would especially like to acknowledge their assistance. A personal word of thanks goes to friends who helped me track down sites; in addition to those above, they include JeanLuc Blanc, Loïc Chatton, Natalie Chatton, Frédéric Cotton, Stephen Cupper, Christophe D’Aniello, Mark Edwards, David Highton, Marie-Aline de Lavau, Isabelle Merle, Mark Seymour and Owen White. Luciana O’Flaherty at Palgrave Macmillan has provided vital encouragement and editorial oversight. I finished writing this book while a fellow at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, an extraordinarily beautiful site and idyllic situation in which to read, write and think. Michael Pretina, the director, his staff and other fellows provided a splendid scholarly environment and enjoyable conviviality during my stay; to them I would like to express my warm gratitude. Even in this small Mediterranean port there are traces of colonial history. A maison maure is decorated with Orientalist motifs. The Avenue Ganteaume (in which I lived) is named for a general who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt. The monument aux morts in the Place Baragnon pays tribute to French soldiers in Indochina and North Africa, and there is another plaque to soldiers killed in overseas campaigns in the town’s cemetery. The Camargo Foundation has a bust of Albert Schweitzer, the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary made by Jerome Hill, who lived in Cassis and established the foundation. These traces provide a reminder of the way in which France’s overseas ventures left an imprint on towns and villages throughout the country, and on generations of French men and women. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own, as are the photographs.

Introduction: Sites of Colonial Memory

France is a country of powerful symbols. As Roland Barthes famously observed, three of the best known and most beloved buildings in Paris sum up epochs in French history. The cathedral of Notre-Dame bears witness to the medieval power of the church, and to the age of stone and the craftsmen who sculpted it. The Louvre palace is a majestic reminder of the grandeur of the French monarchy before the Revolution. The Tour Eiffel incarnates the age of iron, capitalism and the victorious bourgeoisie.1 Places of symbolic import abound in Paris. The Arc de Triomphe recalls Napoleon’s battles, but also shelters the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a casualty of the Great War. The arch stands on the place named for Charles de Gaulle, who in 1944 memorably marched down the boulevard in a parade celebrating the Liberation. These sites attract dignitaries and tourists, and serve as venues for solemn ceremonies and ebullient celebrations. On the anniversary of the First World War armistice, the president lays a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier; there too veterans commemorate the Algerian ceasefire of 19 March 1962. On the fête nationale, 14 July, troops march down the Avenue des Champs-Elysées as fighter jets roar over the arch; the Foreign Legion contingent, sporting trademark white képis, are particularly popular with on-lookers. For the bicentenary of the Revolution in 1989, crowds jammed the avenue to applaud a grand parade, watch groups of European, African and Asian performers choreographed by Jean-Paul Goude, and hear Jessye Norman, draped in a gigantic Tricolour, sing the ‘Marseillaise’. In 1998, hordes flocked to the Champs-Elysées to celebrate France’s victory in football’s World Cup, cheering as the picture of the team star, Zinedine Zidane, the son of Algerian migrants, was projected on the Arc de Triomphe. The joining of France’s most popular star of the moment and Paris’s iconic monument bespoke sporting fervour, national pride and the multi-ethnic nature of contemporary French society. Sites such as the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysées are not just material traces of France’s past. They provide arenas where political ideologies, 1

2 Vestiges of Colonial Empire in France

public spectacles and popular sentiments are staged. The Place de la Bastille, the location of the infamous prison attacked on 14 July 1789, still serves as a rallying-point for protesters, and particularly for supporters of the political left. The cry of ‘A la Bastille’ signals a demonstration just as it did more than two centuries ago. Instead of a prison, the square is dominated by the massive Opéra de la Bastille, one of the grands projets of François Mitterrand, a monument to cultural creation and presidential inspiration.2 Across town, the statue of Jeanne d’Arc outside the Jardin des Tuileries attracts protesters from the far right, as the Front National has adopted the warrior maiden as patron for their ultra-nationalist and xenophobic crusade. In the celebration, commemoration and ‘instrumentalisation’ of history, different regimes and groups espouse varying versions of that past, and they embody their versions in monuments. The Bastille prison was demolished by revolutionaries as the symbol of all that was wrong with the ancien régime, but later a chapelle expiatoire was built in memory of the decapitated Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. The Catholic church erected the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur in the early Third Republic in penance for the sins of the Communards, but the Mur des Fédérés in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, where thousands of rebels of the 1871 Paris Commune were summarily shot, remained a sacred site for those who have shared their struggle. ‘Aux grands hommes la Patrie reconnaissante’ (To [its] great men [from] a grateful patrie) is emblazoned on the front of the Panthéon, where France’s most esteemed civilian heroes (and some now forgotten worthies) are interred with republican pomp. But those buried form a selective list – Marie Curie is the only woman, and Félix Eboué the only black man whose remains have been ‘pantheonised’. At his installation as President in 1981, Mitterrand placed red roses on the graves of his own heroes in the Panthéon – Victor Schoelcher, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, Jean Jaurès, the socialist leader, and Jean Moulin, hero of the Résistance – symbolically announcing the sympathies of his administration. Those on the parliamentary right make pilgrimages to de Gaulle’s grave at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises – President Jacques Chirac made a quick visit by helicopter on the morning of his inauguration.3 The monumental and commemorative landscape of France continues to be transformed with changing world developments and political attitudes. In 1998, Chirac unveiled a bronze memorial to French men and women killed in acts of terrorism in France and overseas.4 The next year, the president inaugurated a Centre de la Mémoire at Oradour-sur-Glane, a town in the Haute-Vienne. On 10 June 1944, the Germans had locked up most of the women and children in the Oradour church and set it alight, killing 642 people. The largely destroyed town was left as a permanent war memorial.5 In 2001, Chirac unveiled a plaque honouring the Muslim harkis who fought with the French against nationalists in the Algerian War of independence. The same year, and more controversially, the Paris municipal council put up

Sites of Colonial Memory 3

a plaque near the Seine to commemorate Algerians killed in 1961 while taking part in a demonstration against the Algerian War. In 2002, Chirac inaugurated a Mémorial National des Guerres en Afrique du Nord, a monument to soldiers who died in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The cult of monuments is as strong as ever, proof of public authorities’ desire to imprint their version of history on the built landscape and on the memory of fellow citizens, evidence too of the public’s need for sites of commemoration and recollection. Several of these recent inaugurations record memories and history in a particularly contested field, France’s colonial past. Such reminders of the age of imperialism, among other traces of colonial history, provide the subject of the present book.

Remembering the empire France conquered and ruled the second largest empire of the modern age. ‘Greater France’ at its peak in the 1920s and 1930s extended to ten million square kilometres and one hundred million citizens and subjects.6 From islands in the West Indies to archipelagos in the South Pacific, from the Maghreb to Indochina, from huge domains in western Africa to small coastal enclaves in India, France held possessions around the globe. That empire was not only territorially vast, but also long-lived. France acquired Martinique and Guadeloupe in the 1630s, and only granted independence to the New Hebrides in 1980; ten overseas outposts remained under French rule.7 Empire played a crucial role in modern French history, and many French men and women were directly touched by imperialism. Explorers pushed back the frontiers of France’s known world, soldiers and sailors fought in wars of conquest and in wars of decolonisation, administrators ruled distant outposts, migrants tried their luck in settler colonies, convicts were deported to tropical penitentiaries, missionaries spread the Christian religion, traders counted profits and pursued development of real or imagined resources, scholars researched colonial flora, fauna and people, artists and writers sought inspiration. All French men and women were indirectly affected by imperialism through the lessons they were taught at school, the imported foods they ate and commodities they used at home, or the taxes they paid. Occasionally colonial questions moved to the centre of national attention: with the controversies about continued expansion in the 1880s, at the time of the colonial exhibition in Paris in 1931, and during the Indochinese and Algerian wars of the 1950s and 1960s. The French empire has receded into the past, but continues to haunt the French consciousness. Many probably see it through the haze of time and distance. Mention of the colonies evokes military figures encountered in school texts, such as Faidherbe, Gallieni and Lyautey, and the poetic-sounding names of alluringly exotic places – Tombouctou, Pondichéry, Louang Prabang – over which the French flag once flew. There are the scratchy recordings of


Josephine Baker’s ‘Ma Petite Tonkinoise’ and Edith Piaf’s ‘Mon Légionnaire’. The sands of the Sahara and the jungle-clad temples of Angkor Wat represent the seduction of the empire, chronicled in old newspapers and faded photographs, a quaint casque colonial or white linen suit. This is the world of Tahitian vahinés, madras-clad West Indian creoles, Vietnamese congaïes and Ouled-Naïl dancers, as well as the tirailleurs sénégalais and the zouaves, the men from Africa, Asia and the Pacific who died on the fields of Flanders. For other present-day French, ‘les colonies’ invoke more personal memories, perhaps of a grandfather who was a colonial official in Indochina or a father who fought in Algeria. In magazines and associations, rallies and publications, descendants of a million pieds-noirs who fled North Africa in 1962 nourish memories of Algérie française. Aged returned soldiers who served in the troupes coloniales or the Légion Etrangère meet to reminiscence and mourn the deaths of comrades. There are, however, other memories of the colonies, ones often hidden or denied, now painfully recovered and debated. The 2000 confession by General Paul Aussaresses that he had personally taken part in the torture of prisoners in Algeria in the 1950s produced intense debate about the ugliest sides of colonialism: electric shock treatments and brutal interrogations, the rape of women and the burning of villages, massacres and mutilations. For specialist historians, and for most observers who paid close attention to reports during the Algerian War, these revelations are not new, although as Benjamin Stora has shown, they were covered by a wall of silence and relegated to ‘oubli’ (oblivion, oversight).8 But the new exposés have forced the French, however reluctantly, to face unpleasant and inglorious memories of colonial exploits, memories – like those of the collaboration and the deportation of Jews under the German Occupation – that were long buried. The ‘Vichy syndrome’, the phenomenon of covering up ignoble French actions during the Second World War,9 found a parallel in the ‘forgetting’ of the Algerian War. In 2001, Le Monde, reporting on Aussaresses’s admissions, queried, ‘Après Vichy, l’Algérie’? (After Vichy, Algeria?) Would the French face up to their colonial past? Would other issues, such as slavery and slave trading, forced labour and the violence of colonialism, now be debated? Does the current recognisance of the Algerian War represent ‘la fin de l’amnésie’ (the end of amnesia)?10

The empire in post-colonial France The history of French colonialism is evident in many forms, foremost in the millions of descendants of the colonial diaspora and the difficult questions that their presence poses about modern-day France and French identity. West Indians, Maghrebins and black Africans have migrated to France in large numbers since the 1950s – there are now 4.5 million Muslims in France, the largest Islamic population in any European country. Most trace their family


origins to former French colonies. The colonial and post-colonial exodus was prompted by French desire for cheap labour during the boom of les trente glorieuses, though many hoped that ‘guest workers’ would ultimately return home. In the Caribbean and in Africa, men and women faced with limited employment, struggling economies and pressure on local resources responded to the call. They also were drawn to the bright lights of the big cities in a country whose civilisation had been projected to them in colonial propaganda and broadcast in post-colonial images of modernity, prosperity and liberation from hardship. Anyone who wanders along the Cours Belsunce in Marseille or in the Barbès-Rochechouart neighbourhood in Paris sees a cosmopolitan population, with women in colourful boubous and others in dark veils walking alongside Maghrebins and black Africans in designer fashions, or sweatshirts and jeans. There is the sound of Arabic music, the smell of ‘Oriental’ pastries. Chinatown in Paris’s thirteenth arrondissement has streets lined with Asian restaurants, operated by those who arrived from Southeast Asia in another diasporic wave. In Belleville, Catholic and Jewish pieds-noirs, North Africans and Comorians, West Indians and Asians mingle in a post-colonial kaleidoscope. Here, and in the suburban cités that are home to poor migrants, links between France and the old colonies are most visible. Here, too, are enacted the ugly dramas of racist attacks and a delinquency born amidst poverty and marginalisation. Here debates about religion and culture – most recently, the debate on the wearing of such ‘ostentatious’ religious symbols as Muslim head-scarves – are most pertinent.11 In other ways, too, the colonial ties still bind. Maghrebin and African authors, including a new generation of writers that has emerged from the post-war migration, are best-sellers. Film and literature festivals feature works from the French-speaking countries; Paris is the capital of diasporic cultures and refuge for dissident intellectuals from the Francophone world. Tourists flock to destinations made familiar by colonial-era imagery and still served by Air France flights. Couscous, nems and petit punch are now almost as French as boeuf bourguignon, croissants and le gros rouge qui tâche. Raï and zouk are recorded in Paris studios and played in discos around the world. Designers regularly create a fashion for ethnic clothing or ‘colonial’ furniture. The yearly Paris to Dakar motor rally and the yachting route du rhum race follow in the wake of old expeditions. All of these things illustrate the colonial heritage present in France, and are reminders of France’s long and complex colonial history. They provide fascinating and urgent subjects for the study of a rapidly changing France. This book, however, is about a particular type of reminder of the colonies, monuments, memorials and museum collections relating to the overseas empire. It looks at sites connected in a direct and identifiable way with the history of colonialism: street names and public buildings, monuments, statues and memorials (including war memorials), and museums of art and


artefacts. These varied sites share several traits. All are material traces of colonialism designed to commemorate, preserve or display French imperial history.12 They are all public sites – I have not examined private collections, family mementos or edifices that are not situated in public space.13 Furthermore, these monuments were erected, and museum collections assembled, as permanent. Therefore, except for a chapter on special exhibitions with colonial themes since the 1980s, I have not looked at ephemeral manifestations of colonialism – expositions coloniales, political rallies, ceremonies of commemoration – except in relation to edifices that survive today. My choice of monuments (in the broad sense of the term) and museums (both permanent collections and temporary shows) represents a specific subset of colonial traces that exist in present-day France. The aim is not to compile an exhaustive inventory of sites that recall the imperial past. The intention is rather to use these sites to investigate the ways in which the imperial vocation was consciously mapped onto the built landscape, and the ways in which the French collectively have remembered and commemorated their imperial deeds, or sometimes failed to do so. The geographical location of tangible memorials illuminates the position the empire occupied in France in general, in various quartiers of the capital, and in the different regions of the ‘Hexagon’. The iconography provides insight into the ideology of imperialism during the heyday of empire and in subsequent decades. The evolution of sites since the end of the colonies reflects the metamorphosis of perspectives on the past. Recent plans and controversies – for instance, about new war memorials and revamped museums – help to understand current attitudes to the former empire and to the issues that the imperial heritage represents. These traces, in brief, say something about the place that the empire occupied (and occupies) in national identity, and how the French have and have not come to terms with the colonial past. This book is thus about colonial memories and history, viewed through monuments and museums. Maurice Halbwachs in the mid-twentieth century wrote brilliantly about the volatility and diversity of memory. He pointed out that although each person has individual memories, they are imbedded in collective memories, those shared by particular groups – a village, a family, fellow students, work colleagues. There are also national memories, both of events experienced by the present generation, and those passed down through institutions and traditions. Memories can be kept alive, forgotten or repressed, acknowledged or reconstructed. Memories are personal, but also social; autobiographical and historical; active and passive. Some are recent, while others date from long ago, and it is difficult, he added, to say at what point a collective memory disappears. Halbwachs spoke of the way that memories have a spatial dimension, and he alluded to the ‘rapports entre les pierres et les hommes’ (relationships between stones and men).14 By extrapolation, monuments and museums are two ways in which memories are, in a literal sense, built, preserved and displayed.


If they say something about remembering, they also imply something about forgetting, as difficult or painful episodes are glossed over, denied or simply ignored. What is not remembered may be as significant as what is remembered: the act of forgetting and sometimes the later recovery of memory.15 Ernest Renan remarked in the nineteenth century that ‘l’oubli, et je dirai même l’erreur historique, sont un facteur essentiel de la création d’une nation’16 (forgetfulness, and I would even say, historical error, are essential factors in the creation of a nation). Marc Augé has pointed out that forgetting and remembering are complementary, and that some people remember all too well events that they would prefer to forget – indeed, he says, it is occasionally important not to forget to forget.17 Perhaps some groups do need to get over tragedies and triumphs in order to get on with life. But the need or obligation to remember, the devoir de mémoire, is also important for individuals and societies. ‘Lest we forget’ is not just a commemorative exclamation but an historical injunction about the necessity of coming to terms with the past, even its most painful moments. Remembering and forgetting take on particular significance in recollection of colonialism. For Antoine Raybaud, the whole experience of colonialism was rejected in French memory after the end of empire, treated as a sort of mirage of false hopes, lost edens and coveted lands that failed to live up to their promise.18 Yet if the French tried to reject the memory of colonialism, it pushes its way to the surface, as events in France and in the former colonies provide unavoidable reminders of memory and of history, and of the frequent gap between the two. Régis Debray, writing on the 2004 centenary of Saint-Domingue’s rebellion against France, and in the midst of renewed chaos in Haiti, noted that ‘Haïti fait partie de notre histoire, mais non de notre mémoire’ (Haiti forms part of our history, but not of our memory). He added that ‘Haïti est . . . malade d’un trop de mémoire, et la France d’un pas assez’ (Haiti suffers from too much memory, and France from not enough). Reflecting on the seventeenth-century history of the ill-fated plantation colony, Debray observed that ‘la face noire des Lumières . . . n’est pas ce que nos compatriotes ont le plus envie de contempler dans leur passé’ (the dark side of the Enlightenment . . . is not what our compatriots are most eager to contemplate in their past). Forgetting might serve some therapeutic purposes, but so must recollection, and the utility of anniversaries is ‘en faisant émerger des souvenirs enfouis, permettre à chacun de faire son deuil de ses humiliations comme des ses triomphes. On peut alors exorciser les fantômes pour affronter les appels de l’avenir, mais en pleine connaissance de cause’19 (that by forcing out buried memories, they allow people to come to terms with both their humiliations and their triumphs. Thus can ghosts be exorcised in order for us to face the challenges of the future in full knowledge of what they entail). Debray’s comments point not to a total whiteout of memory, but to selective recollection. The French celebrated the emancipation of slaves, while forgetting the French practice of slavery. Politicians promoted privileged relationships between France and its former colonies, while sidestepping the


problems created by the heritage of imperialism. Museum-goers marvelled at ‘primitive’ art while taking little notice of the descendants of its creators living in their midst; they admired the craftsmanship but did not bother to consider the provenance of the works and how they ended up in French collections. Tourists and armchair travellers yearned for faraway places, and enjoyed ‘authentic’ experiences and spectacles folkloriques in holiday camps, with little concern for the legacy of colonialism and colonialist ideas. Demagogues raged against the presence of Arabs and Africans in France, while neglecting to remember that they are the very people to whom France once promised to dispense ‘civilisation’. Yet – in a different way – the most ardent critics of colonialism sometimes also half remembered and half forgot. The work of medical practitioners and educators was reduced in anti-colonialist appraisals only to another expression of aggression and cultural dispossession. Art, literature and scholarship were seen solely as handmaidens in conquest and the perpetuation of brutal rule and its racist justifications. The hardships of French men and women who went overseas, not always willingly – transported convicts and political prisoners, foot-soldiers and poor migrants – were subsumed to a narrative of rapacity and profiteering. Colonial soldiers and sailors, including those who believed that they were doing their duty in ‘bad’ wars in Indochina and Algeria, never received the recognition accorded comrades-in-arms in the ‘good’ world wars. The traumatic experiences of many recruits and of rapatriés were sometimes considered the inevitable consequence of opposition to decolonisation. Perhaps ambivalence is the best simple way to describe attitudes to the colonies – a mixture of nostalgia, residual pride, misgivings about the worth of the effort, sometimes shame about what was done, occasional outrage. Examining monuments, museums and other markers of the colonial patrimony is a way of charting and understanding that ambivalence.

Culture and colonialism, monuments and memory This approach draws on several historiographical trends. The culture of imperialism has become a central concern of scholars of empire, analysing not just the deeds of colonialism but the discourse of expansion: ideology and representation.20 Historians such as John Mackenzie have examined how colonialism appeared in the metropole in every artistic medium, from scholarly research to popular music halls, and how colonial propagandists mobilised resources to promote imperial endeavours.21 They have underlined the importance of ‘culture contact’ between Europeans and ‘others’ (as in the discovery of ‘primitive art’), the diffusion of colonial ideas throughout European societies, and the colonialist assumptions that have underlain (and been produced by) perceptions of non-Western civilisations. The importance of the cultural ‘taproots’ of imperialism, and the creation of


a veritable colonial culture at home, has been one of the most important developments in recent colonial history. If this work tries to contribute to the history of culture and colonialism, it also connects to the well-established study of symbols and sites of national identity. Maurice Agulhon’s path-breaking 1978 study of ‘statuomanie’ – the propensity of the Third Republic, motivated by admiration for personal achievement and democratic success, to erect statues to its heroes – led the way to his own studies of the republican image of Marianne.22 The publication in the 1980s of Pierre Nora’s magisterial and multi-volume collection on Les Lieux de mémoire represented the creation of a new historical field of study, making ‘sites of memory’ familiar beyond a specialist audience and inspiring a wave of research in other countries.23 Over 125 chapters in Nora’s collection addressed ways in which the French have conceived, formulated and embodied their history and identity, and Nora and his co-authors showed how such sites could be ‘read’ to comprehend both historical and present-day issues. A number of essays in Nora’s books – on street names, statues and monuments, for example – pricked my own curiosity about colonial lieux de mémoire. Only one chapter, Charles-Robert Ageron’s contribution on the Exposition coloniale of 1931, concerned the colonies, a slight treatment of ‘Greater France’ in a work so rich in studies of the components of French life.24 Works on public monuments have proliferated, as scholars such as Sergiusz Michalski have chronicled public art from the late nineteenth century to the present.25 Much attention has focussed on war monuments. The First World War inspired countless monuments aux morts, and almost no French commune is without its monument, whether a simple stele, a statue, or a more elaborate and allegorical sculpture. The building of war memorials was repeated, on a smaller scale, after the Second World War. Historians such as Annette Becker, Serge Barcellini and Annette Wieviorka in France, and Jay Winter, Alex King and K.S. Inglis elsewhere, have analysed the cult of war monuments.26 Other historians have examined memorials to victims of the war, especially Jews killed in the Holocaust.27 There have also been important works on the representation of slavery in American and British memorials.28 The most comprehensive studies on metropolitan memorials to colonies, paradoxically, concern Germany, a country with a relatively small and short-lived empire. Joachim Zeller’s volume on colonial monuments and historical consciousness provides a model analysis of the way that Wilhelmine authorities represented colonial efforts in Africa and the southwest Pacific, the evolution of these sites after Germany lost its empire at the end of the First World War, and the recrudescence of colonial fervour – with hope for recovering lost possessions – in the inter-war years. He shows how monuments continue to play a role in the German ‘culture of remembrance’ and the expression of political sentiments. For instance, one early twentieth-century


Hamburg monument to German expansion in what is now Namibia was rededicated, in 1980, as a monument to anti-colonialism. With Ulrich van der Heyden, Zeller has also explored remaining colonial sites in Berlin, including a few buildings, graves and statues that survived the end of empire and the vagaries of Germany’s twentieth-century history.29 Scholarly material on other countries is more scattered. Colonial exhibitions in Belgium and Portugal have been the subjects of recent studies – and of an interesting centenary exhibition at the former Belgian colonial museum, which recreated some of the original displays and reflected on the history of the institution.30 The four hundredth anniversary of the Dutch East India Company in 2002 produced a round of exhibitions in the Netherlands, and publications included both catalogues and critical appraisals of the Dutch celebrations.31 There are several works on the former colonial museums,32 including the grandiose museum in Amsterdam, now the Tropenmuseum.33 Scholars have produced studies as well on British museums with colonial collections, ranging from the venerable India Institute and Imperial Institute to the post-1945 Commonwealth Institute; the new British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol is too recently established to have stimulated scholarly analysis.34 Because of the importance of imperialism in Britain, works on institutions such as Kew Gardens, the British Museum and the Royal Geographical Society abound. Jonathan Schneer has written vividly of colonial life in London in 1900, though his main subject is not the ‘monumentalisation’ of imperialism, but John Mackenzie has looked at colonial sites in Glasgow, and Christine Chivallon has examined monuments and memories of slavery in Bristol.35 Volumes on monuments inventory statues to colonial figures, but only Ewald Vanvugt has devoted a full study to colonial monuments in a major city. His investigation of Amsterdam shows the particularly strong imprint left by the Dutch East India Company, and later Dutch imperialism in Southeast Asia, including controversies surrounding a statue of the conqueror of Aceh, General van Heutsz.36 Nicola Labanca has looked at modern colonial sites in Italy.37 Particular attention has been given to the Axum column, taken by Mussolini from Ethiopia in 1935 to decorate his Ministry of Colonies; only in 2004, after various agreements, postponements, arguments (and great damage when the column was struck by lightning) was it slated to be sent back to Africa.38 Each of these studies illustrates how politicians and imperial promoters, and the urbanists, architects and artists who worked for them, used monuments to affirm their countries’ colonial vocations, and how such monuments have provided points for post-colonial controversies. Relatively little attention39 has been paid to French memorials that concern colonialism.40 Directories of monuments include statues of figures associated with the colonies, or such other commemorations as plaques on houses, but often with few details and little analysis. Volumes on war memorials make some reference to colonial monuments in France, yet


seldom dwell on the particular ways in which colonial soldiers are commemorated, and there is little literature on commemoration of the dead of the Indochinese and Algerian wars. A very few scholars stand out for their exceptional work. David A. Schalk has written perceptively on France’s difficult coming to terms with the Algerian and Indochinese Wars, with examples of the war memorials in Paris and Fréjus, and the late William Cohen completed a survey of France’s Algerian War memories and memorial sites, while Eric Jennings has written about a war monument to Indochinese soldiers in France. Lack of attention to memorials linked to colonialism is surprising, given the great growth of interest in imperial iconography – films, photographs, art, postcards and advertising.41 One particular area that has stimulated scholars, however, is the exhibition of colonial conquests, wares and people. Colonial pavilions featured at many national and international exhibitions.42 The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a fad for expositions coloniales, culminating in the grandiose 1931 fair in Paris (and a simultaneous anti-colonial exhibition), which has been analysed by Ageron, Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre, Panivong Norindr, Herman Lebovics and, most recently, Patricia A. Morton.43 The displays of ‘natives’ imported from the colonies as part of the world fairs and colonial exhibitions has also been scrutinised.44 Study of exhibitions is part of a substantial corpus on what is often, rather simplistically, referred to as Orientalism. Although Orientalism and colonialism are not synonymous, much artistic influence from overseas occurred during the period of European conquest and rule, and the various examples resonate with stereotypes and perspectives that reflected and formed the colonialist mentalité.45 Orientalist and colonialist artworks are now displayed in French museums, and the ‘new museology’ (influenced by post-modern and post-colonial theory) has been accompanied by growing research on museums and collecting.46 There has also been great debate, among both museologists and anthropologists, about collections of ‘native’ art and artefacts in European museums, the way that these collections have been acquired, and how they are displayed.47 Finally, a study of colonial lieux de mémoire in France connects with burgeoning discussion on the role of the past in contemporary society. Robert Gildea has written about the powerful role of the past in contemporary France – the legacy of the monarchy, the Revolution, religious and social disputes. Raphael Samuel has explored how memories of historical events are formed, preserved and actualised, while David Lowenthal has looked at the issue of heritage and the preservation of historical sites. While not measuring itself against these important works representing different approaches to various ‘uses’ of history, this book seeks to consider the history of French imperialism as an area for investigation of how specific groups and the French nation come to terms with the past.48


Colonial lieux de mémoire This study looks closely at colonial vestiges scattered around metropolitan France, although it does not encompass the DOM and TOM. The memorial landscape in the outre-mer is at least as fascinating and takes on a particularly complex significance because of the continued attachment of these old colonial possessions to the French Republic, as the works of Laurence Brown, Richard Burton, Christine Chivallon and Eric Jennings, among others, have shown in the case of the Antilles.49 Monuments in the DOM and TOM, and in the former colonies, will be examined further in another forum.50 Remaining in metropolitan France, this volume pauses to consider statues and think about the names of streets, reads the labels on artefacts in museums, seeks out memorials and monuments, questions the interpretation of colonial history that they implicitly or intentionally offer. Some of the monuments and museums are prominent, others are almost hidden away, and often overlooked. These markers of the colonial past represent an intentional effort by colonial authorities and promoters to imprint the empire on the French landscape. They named streets and put up commemorative plaques, they erected statues and constructed memorials, they opened museums and organised exhibitions. They wanted to make the empire a visible presence to compatriots who were initially half-hearted in their support of the colonial mission. Monument-builders and museum curators in the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, not surprisingly, hid episodes of colonialism that tarnished the heroic builders of ‘Greater France’ – slavery, forced labour, massacres – and later ones only belatedly paid attention to the wars of decolonisation. Occasionally, after the empire ended, they tried, quite literally, to efface memories of the colonies by sand-blasting names of imperial heroes from buildings, putting up plasterboard to hide colonialist murals, or closing galleries that vaunted the merits of empire. They agonised about what to do with collections of colonialist and ethnographic art, postponed the creation of memorials and aborted plans for commemorations. Certain patterns emerge from this imperial heritage. Colonial ‘traces’ are far more evident in France than might first be thought. In a country with countless monuments, those that commemorate the colonies are overwhelmed by allegories of Liberty and the Republic, monuments aux morts, statues of provincial notables and sites linked to the country’s turbulent and long European history. However, the ones with colonial allusions are surprisingly widespread and numerous, from great public buildings in Paris to small monuments in villages. Colonialism is inscribed on plaques and carved in stone. If colonialism seems the major theme of very few of France’s eight thousand museums, yet a large number contain some colonial treasure – a painting with a colonial subject, ethnographic art and artefacts, preserved natural specimens, items that came into collections through the inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness of French colonials. Traces of colonialism are omnipresent.


There is nevertheless no unitary memory of the empire; different groups remember the colonies in varying ways. Veterans recall wars of decolonisation in terms of soldierly solidarity and the deaths of comrades, sometimes with resentment at hopeless campaigns, lost battles and the retreat from empire. Opponents of the wars in Indochina and Algeria recollect support for movements of national liberation. Many pieds-noirs express nostalgia for Algérie française, and bitterness at the ‘abandonment’ of the land they claimed. The descendents of colonised people living in France also have very personal perspectives of colonial rule. They include West Indians and Réunionnais whose ancestors were transported to the New World as slaves, and who themselves migrated from the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, those who left Indochina in 1954 or who came from Vietnam to France as ‘boat people’ in 1975, migrants from the Maghreb and black Africa who have moved to France in large numbers ever since the 1950s, harkis who fled in 1962. Some of these people are underrepresented in monuments; there is, for example, no national monument commemorating slavery or emancipation (as there is, for instance, in Amsterdam), or a monument to African immigration. Nor is there yet a museum on slavery or immigration. The lack of monuments or museums, however, does not erase either history or memories. Some are more apt to remember and commemorate the imperial age than are others. Perhaps the group with the most vivid recollections is the military, and in military museums and memorials, the empire is most visibly, and proudly, presented. Missionaries, too, have a long memory, paying tribute to those who died for their faith, celebrating the spread of the Gospel, and treasuring relics from the colonies. By contrast, administrators appear less forthcoming in commemorating their colleagues, and the business community, except in a few chamber of commerce collections generally integrated into municipal museums, is silent on the history of the imperial economy. Museums of fine arts display the works of painters and sculptors who borrowed ‘exotic’ themes, though often showing them as masterpieces of art rather than as tokens of imperial endeavours. Ethnographic museums hold enormous collections of objects from Africa, Asia and Oceania, but until recently, have been reticent about exploring the colonial past of the works in their keeping. A concentration on certain types of colonialism can be discerned from the following chapters. Across France, the early years of empire – the saga of explorers, acts of conquest, the sacrifices of the First World War – are more often recorded than the final decades. The ‘great men’ of the long colonial age, the explorers Bougainville and La Pérouse, and proconsuls such as Faidherbe, Gallieni and Lyautey, are often acknowledged. Marshal Lyautey – officer in Indochina, administrator in Madagascar, virtual ruler of Morocco, organiser of the 1931 exhibition – is the most often encountered colonialist, buried in the Invalides, memorialised in statues and street names, and recalled in his manor, now a museum. Of the figures involved in the empire


after the middle of the twentieth century, only Félix Eboué, the Guyanais who ‘rallied’ to de Gaulle in 1940, Albert Schweitzer and possibly Jean de Lattre de Tassigny are put forward as colonial heroes. Those who pursued a humanitarian mission – notably Victor Schoelcher, who campaigned for the emancipation of slaves – are, not surprisingly, more remembered than colonial villains. European women are confined to certain roles in imperial commemoration, visible largely as grieving widows on war memorials, or pictured in photographs or paintings as nurses, nuns or settlers. ‘Natives’ appear most often in colonialist painting and in ethnographic exhibitions, but are often present, usually as loyal soldiers, muscular workers and nubile women, in other colonialist décors. Military, historical and fine arts museums display images and documents referring to indigenous leaders, but generally they are the ones defeated or subdued by the French. The Algerian Abd el-Kader is remembered in a more positive fashion because the old enemy rallied to the French. Monumental tributes to non-Western personalities, even such figures as Léopold Sedar Senghor – poet, member of the Académie Française, minister in Fourth Republic governments and president of independent Senegal – are almost impossible to find. Anti-colonialists and colonial nationalists are notable by their absence – there is, for instance, no monument to Ho Chi Minh. Colonialists are memorialised in France, whereas anti-colonial nationalists are commemorated in their own, now independent, countries. A temporal pattern can also be discerned in lieux de mémoire. The first overseas empire, the French colonies of the Americas and West Indies, have left relatively few monuments in France, despite the importance of transAtlantic trade and settlement from the 1600s through the 1700s, though allegories of the continents and images of plantation colonies sometimes appear. By the late 1700s, they are overshadowed by a general fashion for chinoiserie, a fascination with the Far East that continued throughout the nineteenth century, episodically connected to French incursions in Asia. (French interventions in China in the 1840s and in Southeast Asia in the 1860s prompted renewed interest in the Orient.) Of great monumental importance at the end of the 1700s was Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, which inspired countless sphinxes and pharaohs in Paris, gave names of battles and marshals to a whole quartier, and filled the Louvre with mummies. In the 1830s, the arrival of an obelisk for the Place de la Concorde prolonged ‘Egyptomania’.51 The Napoleonic expedition created a scholarly interest in ancient Egypt that became the science of Egyptology, and a political concern that led to the French engineering of the Suez Canal. Another part of the world also riveted interest from the 1760s to the 1820s, the South Pacific. The voyages of Bougainville, who ‘discovered’ Tahiti, his ill-fated successor La Pérouse, Bruni d’Entrecasteaux sent to search for La Pérouse, then Baudin, dispatched by Napoleon: a fascination with Oceania was current long before France took over Tahiti in 1842 and New Caledonia a decade later.


Commemoration of the ‘new’ empire quickly accompanied the conquest of new outposts. The takeover of Algiers in 1830, and the sending of a diplomatic mission to Morocco soon afterwards – one member was Eugène Delacroix – helped create a long-lasting fascination with the Arabo-Islamic world. Names of Algerian battles were given to Paris streets, Orientalists painted North African scenes, museums collected Maghrebin artefacts. The penetration of sub-Saharan Africa is mirrored in monuments to explorers and the popularity of ‘savage’ motifs, such as statues of lions, as well as of ‘primitive’ art – the ethnographic museum that opened in Paris in 1878 displayed the first fruits of conquests in black Africa, and later provided the venue for Picasso’s discovery of tribal art. ‘Monumentalisation’ and ‘museumification’ followed the flag. Imperial memorialisation reached an apogee, as did the overseas empire, in the years after the First World War. Commemoration combined homage to the colonial soldiers of the Great War with efforts to stimulate colonial enthusiasm. This period, a key stage in the formation of modern French identity and its representation in museums and monuments,52 saw the zenith of the colonial vogue. Street names, monuments, exhibitions and villages noirs, the Musée des Colonies and Musée de l’Homme in Paris: these sites testified to the way that colonialism infused French society in the early twentieth century. The years after the Second World War, however, were marked by a more technocratic approach to colonial governance and economic development, efforts less amenable to being ‘statuified’. In any case, the Third Republic fad for erecting statues and building memorials was falling out of fashion. No more grand expositions coloniales were held, and no one wanted monuments to a dying empire. Even the efforts of soldiers in Indochina and Algeria (to the consternation of anciens combattants) were memorialised discreetly, if at all. So ended, too, the intentional ‘marking’ of France with a colonial (and colonialist) imprint. Imperial withdrawal hardly lent itself to new street names, statues or displays. From the early 1960s, with the end of the Algerian War, until the 1980s, the French were hardly eager to recall an empire that had disappeared. As Agulhon remarks, the ‘myth’ of a colonial France, so carefully constructed from 1900 until about 1950, was replaced by a new myth of an anti-colonial France, Gaullist-sponsored tiers-mondisme.53 The old coloniser portrayed itself as the promoter of independent countries, a privileged interlocutor between the developed and developing world, and an alternative patron to the superpowers – a stance that did not keep Paris from intervening politically, economically and militarily in its former colonies. In the mid-nineteenth century, France’s colonial self-image had altered. A country proud of rich sugar plantations dependent on slave labour changed into one that proclaimed itself the liberator of slaves, emancipating them in its old colonies and wiping out slavery in Africa through new colonial


conquests. In 1900, France was a boastful colonial power, carrying out a mission civilisatrice around the world, pursuing the mise en valeur of colonial resources that brought profits to the metropole. A half-century or so later, after painful decolonisation, France’s persona metamorphosed again. No longer was France the centre of an empire fifty times the size of the metropole. France, in its self-image, had fully incorporated its vieilles colonies into the Republic in 1946,54 fostered the return to sovereignty of the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates a decade later, and granted independence to its colonies in sub-Saharan Africa in 1960. France (and, personally, de Gaulle) could even now pose as having ‘given’ independence to Algeria. Aid and trade succeeded programmes for colonial ‘development’, and the rayonnement of French culture replaced the mission civilisatrice. Imperialism and colonialism became taboo – despite accusations of ‘neo-colonialism’ – and reminiscences of the colonial era were less than welcome. In this context, new uses had to be found for old colonial buildings, such as the ex-Ecole Coloniale and the ex-Musée Colonial – an attempted ‘decolonisation’ of the very buildings of empire so arduously and ardently created only a generation before. Names were changed, new mission statements written. Metropolitan colonial sites such as the Jardin Botanique Colonial were neglected, even though the navy ‘repatriated’ tens of monuments aux morts from North Africa. Museum collections grew dusty, exhibition labels yellowed, colonialist art was shifted to storerooms. Recollection of empire was the province of specialist historians, amateurs of nostalgia, diehard colonialists or dilettantes of the exotic in a France resolutely trying to be hyper-modern. Foreign Legionnaires and ‘petites Tonkinoises’ had fallen into disrepute, pith helmets went out of fashion. Anthropologists turned away from the study of ‘artefacts’, politicians tried to forge links of co-opération with the Third World states, economists talked about new international economic orders. From the mid-1980s, however, there was a reawakening of interest in the colonies. The study of colonial history experienced a renewal.55 Stacks of memoirs and albums were published. Books such as Marguerite Duras’s memoir of her childhood in Indochina, L’Amant (1984), Erik Orsenna’s Goncourt Prize-winning saga, L’Exposition coloniale (1984), and Albert Camus’s posthumously published fictionalised autobiography about his early life in Algiers, Le Premier homme (1994), became best-sellers among many other works with colonial themes. Readers again turned to the writings of such colonial-era travelers as Isabelle Eberhardt, Alexandra David-Néel and Paul Morand, and a host of colonial-era authors – Pierre Loti, Victor Segalen and Claude Farrère – attracted a new generation of book-buyers. Orientalist and colonial art too was rediscovered, and by the 1990s, there were almost yearly exhibitions of art and photography inspired by the empire. Régis Wargnier’s ‘Indochine’, Pierre Schoendoerffer’s ‘Dien Bien Phu’ and Claire Denis’s ‘Chocolat’ brought the colonies back to the silver screen. ‘Ethnic’ design and


‘world’ music became the fashion. Travel agencies promoted tours to fabled places over which France had ruled. Colonial-era memorabilia – banknotes and medals, pith helmets and pictures – fetched record prices. There were new compilations of colonial songs.56 Colonialism, at least as theme and image, once again was à la mode. As museums re-examined the history of colonialism, they tried to ‘decolonise’ the presentation of arts no longer called ‘primitive’. Marseille opened a new museum of African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian American art (incorporating collections of the city’s old colonial museums); the Lyon Musée Africain reorganised its displays; the Musée Guimet, the national museum of Asian art, reopened after a top-to-bottom renovation. The monumental landscape also gradually began to reflect the revived interest. A monument aux morts to the Indochinese War was opened in Fréjus in 1983, joined a decade later by a necropolis for the repatriated remains of soldiers killed in Vietnam. Fréjus also unveiled a monument to African soldiers who served in the First World War. In the late 1990s and in the first years of the new century, the president unveiled a plaque to harkis, a monument to those who served in Algeria and a North African War memorial. This renewed vogue for museum exhibitions and for monuments was not just a rediscovery of the colonies. Colonial history and France’s presence in the outre-mer were contested sites in the 1980s. The calls by independence movements for the ‘liberation’ of France’s remaining overseas outposts (and Corsica) led to intense controversy that spilled over into violence in some of the French islands and produced a conflict in New Caledonia that threatened to become a replay of the Algerian War. Political figures tried to stake out territory in culture as well as politics. Mitterrand’s Socialists in the mid-1980s seemed ready to accord ‘independence in association’ to New Caledonia, a plan that came to naught because of the hostility of anti-independence groups in the Pacific territory and the metropole. They also promoted Kanak culture: an exhibition of Kanak art and artefacts in Paris, then the building of the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre (named for the assassinated independence leader) in Nouméa. In the Mitterrand years, too, an exhibition in Nantes provided the first in-depth survey of slavery in the French plantation colonies, and one in Paris investigated the métis cultures engendered by colonialism. The conservatives, led by Jacques Chirac, resolutely opposed independence for the DOM and TOM, and since becoming president in 1995, Chirac has made a sustained effort to commemorate French soldiers, harkis and rapatriés from Algeria, and has celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the départementalisation of the vieilles colonies. The cleavage between political left and right is not absolute, of course, and under Chirac’s presidency the ‘Année de l’Algérie’ provided some of the most incisive exhibitions of French colonialism yet held. During his administration, the parliament adopted a resolution in 1999 labelling slavery a ‘crime against humanity’ and in 2001 recognised


the Algerian conflict as a ‘war’. A favourite project of the president is the construction of a Musées des Arts Premiers in Paris, and the state has given its support to the creation of a Mémorial National de l’Outre-Mer in Marseille. Those museums will provide further insight into the French perspectives on the empire and on the societies that France conquered. To what extent will the history, monumental commemoration and exhibition of colonialism be ‘decolonised’? To sum up: Monuments and museums reveal three stages in France’s production of a material patrimony of colonialism. From 1890 through the 1940s, particularly during the inter-war years, colonialists – state authorities such as the Ministère des Colonies, private organisations like the Ligue Maritime et Coloniale and the Société des Missions étrangères, and even individuals – marked the French built landscape with mementos of colonialist fervour. From the 1960s, after France fought unsuccessful wars to maintain empire and retreated from most of its possessions, through the 1980s, empire was forgotten: monuments became dilapidated, paintings were shifted into reserves, ethnographic and non-Western collections gathered dust, museums searched for new vocations. During the 1980s, several gestures heralded renewed fascination with the colonies. Since the 1990s, there has been a boom in colonial interest: exhibitions, memorials, public debate, the adoption of laws, new museum projects. These phases relate to lived experiences: the triumphalist apogee of colonialism in the 1930s, the painful decolonisation of the 1950s and early 1960s, a rediscovery of the colonies in the 1990s. They also exemplify three stages of the workings of memory. In the colonial age, museums and monuments created memories. In the period of decolonisation and its aftermath, memories were forgotten, repressed or denied. In the contemporary moment, memories are being recalled. In the phase of colonial rule, colonies were proudly presented: the spectacle of colonialism. In the years of decolonisation and tiers-mondisme, they were embarrassedly hidden away. Now they are on show again, but increasingly colonialism is problematised, imperial rule is viewed critically, colonialism is being categorically interrogated. The presuppositions underlying colonialism are being re-examined, and the way in which colonial ideologies underpinned collecting and exhibition of art is being analysed. Material vestiges of colonialism remain, though they mean different things than when they were created. For example, zoos were built, at least in part, to indicate to the public how Europeans had triumphed over nature and subdued the savage, literally bringing wild beasts home and confining them in cages. Now zoos aim to develop environmental awareness and alert visitors to the possibilities of extinction that face endangered species and fragile ecosystems. The first ethnographic museums were designed to display curios, fetishes and idols produced by primitive societies to which European colonisers were bringing progress and modernity. Now they


highlight the complexity, diversity and achievements of non-Western societies, and the detrimental impacts of globalisation on culture. In art museums, Orientalist paintings and photographs were a documentary rendering of daily life in far-away places, an invitation to thrill at exotic beauty, to shiver at native barbarity and to acclaim the imperial enterprise. Now viewers gaze at the same paintings more to fathom European fantasies and stereotypes of Africa, Asia or Oceania than to learn about ‘real life’ on other continents. Statues, street names and other commemorations meant to honour the ‘great and good’ of the colonial world can provoke reconsideration of their accomplishments. A tombstone honouring an officer for putting down a slave rebellion is now not a record of imperial duty well done but a commentary on the shame of slavery. A Paris street named for a slave trader prompted a successful campaign to rename it in honour of a Guadeloupean composer. Memory and monuments can change. The variety of traces of the empire in France – the colonial patrimony – will be evident throughout this book. So will the evolution in sites, the perception of them, their ‘instrumentalisation’ for political purposes, and the metamorphosis of colonial memories. The first two chapters present a guided tour of the remainders and reminders of empire in Paris and the provinces. Next come examinations of two types of commemoration: statues and monuments to the imperial heroes, then monuments aux morts for colonial soldiers killed in France, and metropolitan soldiers who died in the colonies. The remaining chapters visit museums: colonial art and artefacts in French collections, especially in fine arts and military museums, then African, Oceanic and Asian art in French museums and, finally, temporary exhibitions held in recent years on colonial themes. As this book was going to press, I became aware of two things which sum up its themes. First I discovered a grand colonial monument that was never built. In 1909, La Dépêche coloniale illustrée, a weekly Paris journal that reported on colonial events and attempted to stimulate imperialist fervour, reported on plans to build a monument in Paris to celebrate the colonial glories of the Third Republic. Eugène Etienne, député from Oran and leader of the colonial lobby in Parliament, lamented the absence of such a monument. ‘France’s colonial empire is in the eyes of the whole world eloquent proof of our energy and our national vitality’ and, in only half a century, France had created a colonial empire of fifty million inhabitants. However, the empire had ‘neglected to affirm itself by one of those public demonstrations that are the visible and lasting consecrations of the fertile ideas to which a country owes its prosperity and greatness’. Etienne listed great men to whom France owed thanks for its empire, among them Ferry, Brazza, Garnier and Gallieni: ‘It does not suffice for this gratitude to be expressed in the minds of those who think about and reflect on [this achievement]. It must be shown in a material fashion, especially to the masses whose education is accomplished through images. It must be translated into a monument that


will attest to the nobility and utility of this gigantic effort. In order to fill a gap that must not remain empty, and that defies logic and justice, in this Paris where granite, marble and bronze commemorate often dubious glories, a monument must be erected, in all its grandeur, to glorify this magnificent Colonial Expansion of which France must not just profit but be proud, and which is worthy of a too belated homage’.57 The monument proposed for Paris was designed by Jean-Baptiste Belloc, the Ministry of Colonies’ official sculptor. It comprised a huge assembly of sculptures, the central one a pedestal topped by a triumphant allegory of France, her hand raised in greeting or benediction; below her, grouped on three levels, stood metropolitan and colonial figures. Despite Etienne’s enthusiasm, nothing apparently was done to erect the monument. In 1913, La Dépéche coloniale illustrée relaunched the campaign, covering two pages with the names of supporters of a monument, a veritable who’s who of colonial sympathisers headed by the President of the Republic. A new model, again by Belloc, showed a simplified structure: an enthroned France backed by a billowing flag, towards whom a bare-chested African, a turban-wearing Arab and a lissom woman look in devotion, one holding a basket no doubt containing colonial largesse.58 The First World War intervened before the monument could be built, perhaps, at least from an aesthetic point of view, just as well. These efforts to erect a colonial monument in Paris nevertheless give evidence both to the vogue for commemorative statues and monuments in the Third Republic, and to the promotion of the overseas empire in early twentieth-century France. On 26 May 2004, the Paris city council renamed a square in the Latin Quarter the Place Maurice Audin, described on the street sign as a ‘mathematician, member of the Algerian Communist Party and anticolonial militant’. Audin was a brilliant young mathematician who taught at the University of Algiers and was a supporter of the Algerian indépendantistes. He died, after being tortured and killed at the hands of French authorities, at the age of twenty-five, on 21 June 1957 in the midst of the ‘Battle of Algiers’. His body has never been recovered, and the government has denied responsibility for the assassination. Audin was arrested just a day before Henri Alleg, whose La Question revealed officially sponsored torture by French soldiers. Many years later, Alleg was present at the inauguration of the Place Maurice Audin by Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, who paid tribute to ‘women and men who refuse to resign themselves to the forgetting and faking of history’. Audin, he added, ‘was an activist [inspired by] values that history has recognised as pertinent, [if only] decades later, deaths later and tortures later’.59 The words, and the gesture of giving the name of a figure from the age of imperialism to a Paris square, confirmed the continuing significance of the commemorative and monumental tradition and the rediscovery of France’s colonial – and anticolonial – history.

1 The Colonies in Paris

Mon doux Georges, viens voir une ménagerie Quelconque, chez Buffon, au cirque, n’importe où; Sans sortir de Lutèce allons en Assyrie, Et sans quitter Paris partons pour Tombouctou. Victor Hugo1 In 1877, Victor Hugo, France’s most celebrated poet, took his grandchildren Georges and Jeanne to visit the zoo in the Jardin des Plantes. They marvelled at the wild beasts kept in the heart of Paris – the five-year-old confused lions with wolves, his sister warned that a monkey would steal his hat and said that an elephant was an animal with horns in its mouth. Hugo, too, was much taken with the animals from ‘Afrique aux plis infranchissables, / O gouffre d’horizons sinistres, mer des sables, / Sahara, Dahomey, lac Nagaïn, Darfour’ (Africa, with its unyielding folds, / O abyss of sinister horizons, sea of sands, / Sahara, Dahomey, Lake Nagain, Darfur). His poem paid respects to Buffon, the eighteenth-century scientist who helped establish this ‘Paris un peu tigré’ (mottled Paris) which Hugo called ‘du vaste univers un raccouri complet’ (of the vast universe a thorough digest). Hugo meditated on God and his creation of such strange creatures, listing for the pleasure of the words the names of weird beasts and the no less exotic-sounding places from which they came. He watched contemplatively at the encounter between his laughing grandchildren and the roaring, chirping, shrieking animals. Yet he discerned the anger and humiliation of animals captured and brought to France to satisfy a yearning for foreign places: ‘On ne sait quel noir monde étonné nous regarde / Et songe, et sous un joug, trop souvent odieux, / Nous courbons l’humble monstre et la brute hagarde / Qui, nous voyant démons, nous prennent pour des dieux’ (We know not what startled dark world watches us / And think how, under a too often odious yoke, / We subdue the humble monster and the haggard brute / Which see us as demons, but take us for gods).2 21

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Vestiges of Colonial Empire in France

Hugo did not specifically address imperialism in the poems inspired by the botanical gardens and zoo, although Frenchmen at the time ruled over Algiers and Saigon and Papeete. Yet his verses offer a poetic metaphor for the colonies and the wider world come home to Paris, the animals gathered in the Jardin des Plantes for the enjoyment of children, the edification of adults, the glory of France. These foreign animals testified in their wordless way to the subjugation and domination of overseas countries by Europeans engaged in conquest and the self-appointed mission civilisatrice. The colonial epoch marked France in a myriad of ways, leaving numerous material vestiges of the outre-mer. Sites of memory include buildings and statues, street names and plaques, museums and churches, even unmarked sites that preserve some connection with the colonial past. The present and following chapters, which provide a colonial tour of Paris and the provinces, aim to show the variety of these traces of empire. They suggest how their placement in different neighbourhoods of Paris or particular cities and regions gives an indication of colonial military exploits, administration, evangelisation, trade and cultural interest. They show how inscribing the colonies on France’s landscape functioned as colonialist propaganda, and how the survival (and evolution) of these sites evidence the persistence of the colonial legacy, just as they chart changing attitudes towards the colonial past and the colonial patrimony.

Colonial Paris The French capital was also the capital of the empire, though Paris was never architecturally or monumentally ‘remade’ fully to reflect the fact. ‘Imperial’ Paris resulted from Baron Haussmann’s urban renewal programme, meant to reflect the glory of Emperor Napoleon III and to modernise Paris for the nineteenth century at a time when France’s colonial ambition was not yet clear.3 Later developments, however, endowed Paris with many sites with a colonial connection, and by the 1930s and the International Colonial Exhibition a concerted and intentional effort was made to mark Paris with representations of the overseas empire. To most visitors and residents, the colonial imprint on the landscape is not immediately apparent, though the multicultural character of the city’s population is increasingly so. In the dix-huitième arrondissement, around the Barbès-Rochechouart Métro station, they enter the neighbourhood of Maghrebin and black African Parisians. Shops display brightly coloured African textiles. North African raï music or the tones of the kora or balafon drift out of music emporia. Restaurants serve mafé, yassa and the ubiquitous couscous. The sounds of Arabic, Wolof and other African languages fill the streets. In Chinatown in the trezième arrondissement streets are lined with Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants, and markets overflow with the products of the Orient. In Belleville, in the dix-neuvième arrondissement, North

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Africans, black Africans, Asians and ethnically European Frenchmen rub shoulders in one of Paris’s most mixed quartiers. Tourists may or may not connect this population with an enormous and long-standing migration from former colonies in Africa and Asia (and from the remaining outposts in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean): living proof of the ties that France wove with overseas countries and that survived decolonisation. Flâneurs with sharp eyes may notice other reminders of empire, even in shop names and specialities. In the Rue Jacob, the Librairie Outremer sells books on ships, sailing and exploration, and Michèle Dhennequin in the Rue du Cherche-Midi specialises in rare and second-hand books on the colonies. In the flea market at the Porte de Clignancourt, colonial képis and pith helmets feature in one stall. Poussières d’Empire, a little shop in the quinzième arrondissement, sells old colonial medals and decorations. In the Place Saint-Sulpice, the Maison de l’Indochine comprises a tearoom and a Southeast Asian travel agency, and holds lectures on Asian subjects. The Compagnie Française d’Extrême-Orient in the Boulevard Saint-Germain sells furniture and decorations from the Far East, and the Au Bon Marché department store has a line of ‘colonial’ furniture, La Maison Coloniale, created ‘dans l’esprit des grands voyageurs qui empruntèrent jadis la légendaire route d’Orient’ (in the spirit of the great travellers who in olden times struck out on the legendary road to the East) and which ‘perpétue la tradition et ramène de ces contrées aux noms magiques, des meubles rares, des objets précieux’ (keep alive the tradition of bringing back rare furnishings and precious objects from countries with magic names).4 In the Boulevard Sébastopol, Mildécor sells chairs and rugs made of coconut fibre and sisal, what its awning advertises as ‘décors coloniaux’ (colonial décors). Le Caïd has sold tobacco products in the Latin Quarter since 1878. As L’Orientale – an evocative name in the Palais-Royal – hints, tobacco (like tea) was traditionally associated with the distant overseas. At Marriages Frères in the Rue du Bourg-Tibourg, blends of tea recall France’s old Indian outposts of Pondichéry and Chandernagor, and specialist grocers stock teas marketed since 1848 by the Compagnie Coloniale. Through the 1990s, shoppers could stock up on coffee and tea at the Maison des Colonies in the Rue Vieille du Temple. The names (and décors) of restaurants provide a foretaste of foods from around the world: Le Souk with a reconstruction of a North African market at the entry, Le Maroc with an extravagantly tiled Moorish exterior, La Créole, styled like a West Indian plantation house, and for less familiar cuisine, Le Banga de Mayotte. A floating restaurant boat in the Seine is called simply Le Colonial. In the Boulevard Saint-Germain, La Rhumerie has been serving petits punchs since the 1950s. One of the grand dining rooms nearby is the Restaurant Lapérouse, named for a Pacific explorer, and it has a ‘salon des singes’ (monkey room) with antique wallpaper of monkeys gamboling in a tropical forest – a curious motif since Lapérouse explored islands with no monkeys. Patrons can sip coffee at cafés named Le Jean Bart for an eighteenth-century corsair, or

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Le Brazza, recalling the explorer of the Congo. Those whose appetites are whetted can book tours in Les Orientalistes travel agency, or at the Maison de Tahiti et des Iles. Shops, however, come and go – the Restaurant Indochine, which promised the ‘raffinement de l’Extrême-Orient’ (refinement of the Far East) in the Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, disappeared several years ago, as did the Librairie du Pacifique in Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. Also gone, though it too survived through the 1990s, is a clothier called Croisières-Safari, which sold ‘vêtements pour pays chauds’ (clothing for hot countries). Such names suggest that at least a vague recollection of the colonial world exists in the collective memory of Parisians, no doubt a romanticised and idealised view of colonial life, perhaps a nostalgia for the adventures and luxuries of faraway lands. Allusions to the ‘good old days’ of the colonies, and vestiges of the French imperium, sometimes remain visible in unmistakeable images. In the Rue Montorgueil a large wall mosaic, ‘Au Bon Planteur’, shows a young black man serving a drink to a Frenchman nattily attired in colonial whites sitting in the midst of tropical luxuriance. And in the Rue Mouffetard, there is an enseigne for another long gone shop, probably a café, called ‘Au Nègre Joyeux’: a black man in livery serving refreshments to a gentlewoman. The difference between exoticism and colonialism is not always clear, either in the Paris landscape or in French history. The way one phenomenon

Photo 1 ‘Au Planteur’. This mural in the Rue Montorgueil shows the use of ‘exotic’ themes in public spaces, and is a reminder of France’s plantation colonies.

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segues into another can be seen in animal sculptures. Lions, of course, have been used for millenia as symbols of strength and majesty, often as heraldic emblems for monarchs. Some of Paris’s lions have no colonial traits – the splendid lion in the Place Denfert-Rochereau commemorates Belfort’s resistance to invading Prussians in 1870. ‘Le Lion de Nubie et sa proie’ (1870) in the Luxembourg Gardens is more obviously an ‘action’ figure of a real beast. It was sculpted at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, the loss of which would stimulate France’s overseas interests in an endeavour to win leverage against newly unified Germany. In the Place Cambronne, another lion lords it over his human prey. Henri Fouques sculpted ‘Le Drame du désert’ in 1892 at the height of the ‘scramble for Africa’. Located in the Parc Montsouris, the lion’s dead body is borne away by African porters – adventure and danger brought from the wilds of the dark continent to a Paris park.5 The mixture of general exoticism and explicit colonialism appears best in Paris’s Egyptian monuments. Napoleon’s 1798 campaign in Egypt formed part of an imperialistic effort to extend French influence in the eastern Mediterranean – his battles are inscribed among other victories on the Arc de Triomphe. Napoleon was accompanied by a bevy of scientists, writers and artists. Their return with accounts of the land of the pharaohs – a Description de l’Egypte of ten volumes of texts and twelve of illustrations, published between 1809 and 1828 – inaugurated a vogue for things Egyptian lasting for much of the nineteenth century and that was revived by the building of the Suez Canal in 1869. Champollion began deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1822, and the Louvre opened an exhibition of mummies five years later. ‘Egyptomania’ left many monuments and motifs, including countless sphinxes – the first had appeared on the Hôtel de Fieubet on the Quai des Célestins in 1680, foreshadowing Napoleon’s tour by more than a century – carvings, pyramids, statues and obelisks. The First Empire obelisk in the Place du Châtelet is one of the grandest; in the mid-1850s, the square was redesigned and copies of sphinxes in Luxor were added to the fountain. Paris’s most famous obelisk stands in the Place de la Concorde. Given to the French king by the Egyptian ruler Mehmet Ali in 1831, it was moved to Paris with great effort by the French navy. Other antique works – either real or mock ones – underline France’s continuing fascination and involvement with Egypt. The ‘Fontaine du Fellah’, placed in the Rue de Sèvres in 1816, was one of fifteen (six with Egyptian motifs) built by Napoleon, the water-carrier representing Antinous, the handsome young Bithynian who was the lover of the Spanish-born Roman Emperor Hadrian. The Paris statue is modelled on an Egyptian-style Roman statue Napoleon had souvenired from the Campidoglio in Rome (and which is now in the Louvre).6 An eagle alludes to Napoleon and his expedition. The multi-layered monument thus neatly symbolises Roman imperialism in the Black Sea, French incursions into Egypt, and Napoleon’s booty from Italy.7

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One quartier in Paris, constructed right at the end of the 1700s on land seized from a convent during the Revolution, was called the ‘Foire du Caire’. Street names commemorated Napoleon’s battles at Aboukir, Nil and Alexandrie – and such officers as Damiette. The developers of the precinct, the Caisse des Rentiers, decided that a monument to Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign would be too costly. But they added medaillons with heads of Egyptian figures – the goddess Hathor is recognisable by her characteristic cow’s ears – to a building in the Passage du Caire, and there is a narrow bas-relief frieze in Egyptian style. A contemporary, Amédée de Kermel, however, was surprised that the ‘Egyptian’ quartier did not contain more exoticism or a more dignified tribute to Napoleon: ‘Il n’y a ni reflets, ni souvenirs, ni témoignages de ce que pouvait la main de celui qui immortalisa le nom du Caire. Je ne vois là ni les richesses d’Egypte, ni ses parfums, ni ses enfants, ni le grandiose de ses monuments, ni la profondeur de ses pensées. . . . Profanantion des mots! Le Caire dans cet infect caravansérail, le Caire dans ce carrefour humide, le Caire argenté et resplendissant, dans cette amosphère froide!.’8 (There are no allusions to or recollections of the very man who immortalised the name of Cairo. I do not see here the richness of Egypt, its perfumes and its children, neither the grandeur of its monuments nor the profundity of its thought. . . . What a profanation – Cairo reduced to this ignoble market, this damp street corner, silvery and splendid Cairo in such a cold climate!) Exotic motifs and buildings are legion in Paris – one inventory lists sixty buildings with exotic ornamentation constructed between 1850 and 1900, three-fifths of which have disappeared. Orientalist design was particularly popular for cafés and public baths, and for such private constructions as smoking rooms.9 The ‘retour d’Egypte’ style lasted for over a hundred years – the Grand Palais, constructed for the world’s fair of 1900, has a frieze of Egyptian art, and in 1912 a Masonic lodge was built in Egyptian style in the Rue Jules-Breton. Egyptian motifs are not the only ones pointing to overseas fantasies. A house in the Avenue de l’Observatoire is ornamented with elephant and lion heads. The former Palace Hotel (now the CCF bank) in the Champs-Elysées sports heads representing, somewhat fancifully, China, Persia, Spain, Algeria, Russia and Australia – a handy compilation of what the fin-de-siècle considered exotic. Several Asian-inspired buildings date from the colonial period. The Ba-ta-clan, a café-concert, built as a Chinese palace in the Boulevard Voltaire in 1864, retains a few vestiges of Asian ornamentation. In the Place du Pérou, C.T. Loo in 1908 constructed the ‘Pagode Rouge’, still a private house and antique shop. In the Rue de Babylone another building in Asian style (with Japanese gardens), now the Pagode cinema, was constructed as a residence in 1896. Orientalist influences also appear in buildings decorated with mosaics and outrepassé arches, and in churches modelled on Bzyantine basilicas.10

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The colonial map of Paris Street names are an obvious way of imprinting a nation’s self-image, ambitions and memories on the map. Changes in political regime often lead to ‘rebaptising’ of streets, and development of new quartiers provides opportunities for giving names to new streets. The origins of some names are lost in the past, many medieval streets honour saints or crafts, and simply preserve the names of local land-owners. However, other names were given by municipal authorities to honour a famous man (less often a famous woman), commemorate a battle, recall an historic association, or embody such concepts as liberty or the republic. Passers-by may not know much about the figures or events behind the names of streets where they walk – although plaques sometimes provide succinct identifications – but they are nevertheless one way in which collective memory is recorded.11 Some 275 streets (of about 5400 in the twenty arrondissements) make explicit colonial references.12 A few recall the first overseas empire, as well as French exploits in Mexico, the Middle East and other areas. Names commemorate explorers – Champlain, Cartier, Cavelier de la Salle, Brazza, Foureau, Gentil, Flatters and Caillié – and such colonial soldiers as Bugeaud and Lyautey, and Admirals Cloué and Courbet as well as heroes of the world wars. There are also streets named for colonial military units: the Bataillon du Pacifique and the Légion Etrangère. Missionaries and bishops, for instance, Lavigerie and Foucauld, are commemorated. So too are writers linked to the colonies from Loti to Camus. Most of the well-known figures associated with imperialism have their streets, as do many little-known ones. An example of the latter is Antoine Mizon, who travelled with Brazza, explored central Africa, served as a French Resident in Madagascar and Mayotte, then died in a shipwreck in 1899 just after he had been appointed governor of Djibouti. Street names provide a gazetteer of colonial places: countries – Annam, Cambodge, Madagascar, Soudan – and cities – Alger, Constantine, Tunis – and regions – Kabylie, Atlas. Indeed, most of the major colonies (and some of the minor ones) are commemorated, and names honour some obscure sites of battles or settlement, such as Saïdak and Laghouat. Names were sometimes given soon after conquest in immediate recognition of expansion: the Rue d’Alger in 1832, the Rue d’Annam in the 1870s, the Rue de Casablanca in 1913. Other streets were given colonial place names later in a seeming effort to include colonies that had been overlooked. In the last few decades, several streets have been named – Rue Port-au-Prince in 1961 and the Place d’Acadie in 1984 – in gestures of solidarity with Haitians and French Canadians, and the Place des Antilles was denominated in the 1980s in recognition of Paris’s large West Indian population. A vague logic marks the timing and location of street naming. Egyptian names appeared after Napoleon’s expedition in a quartier redeveloped at the time. Since streets generally were not named for living people, the death of

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a worthy figure could prompt the rebadging of a street. Many names from African and Asian colonialism appeared in the early 1930s in streets around the Exposition Coloniale in the Bois de Vincennes. Several reflect local buildings or at least seem fortuitous: the Académie des Sciences d’Outre-Mer is located on the Rue La Pérouse. More seem haphazardly situated in the Paris landscape. A few are misleading: the Rue de la Colonie was named for a ‘colony’ of rag-pickers, the Rue Négrier does not honour a slave-trader but a general in Algeria, and the Rue Joséphine was not named after Napoleon’s creole empress. There is, by design or happenstance, a plethora of names recalling explorers in the chic seizième arrondissement, while colonial place names converge in working-class north-central and northeastern arrondissements, where many migrants from former colonies live. The Place des Combattants en Indochine is the official name of a square outside the old colonial museum, but no residents use it as an address since surrounding streets have different names. The Place des Combattants en Afrique du Nord is even more of a backhanded recollection of the Algerian War: an ugly and traffic-clogged square outside the Gare de Lyon (from which many soldiers, including conscripts, were dispatched to Algeria). Only a lone street sign, lost in the busy mêlée of the square, notes the name. The half-hearted nature of recognition of France’s campaigns against independence in Indochina and Algeria is obvious. Names of Métro stations are among the most familiar, if banal, landmarks of Paris. The Babylone of Sèvres-Babylone, like the street, comes from the titular see of a seventeenth-century missionary in partibus infidelium. Dupleix is named after the leading French officer in the Indian Ocean in the 1700s. The Dugommier station recalls a Creole from Guadeloupe who commanded the Garde Nationale in the Antilles in 1790, was elected a député, became a general in the Armée d’Italie and served during the siege of Toulon. Armand Barbès, a republican and député in 1848, also born in Guadeloupe, is remembered in the Barbès-Rochechouart station. The Kléber station is named after one of Napoleon’s generals in Egypt, and Kléber’s aide-de-camp gave his name to La Tour-Maubourg; Pyramides commemorates a battle near Cairo. Generals Faidherbe and Gallieni, important in adding western Africa, Indochina and Madagascar to the empire, have stations. Bir-Hakeim comes from a 1942 battle in North Africa. The second part of the Daumesnil-Félix Eboué name honours a Guyanais-born colonial governor. Part of the Nation station is subtitled Place des Antilles.13 Colonies are thus, quite literally, inscribed on the street and underground map of Paris. Plaques affixed to buildings where famous people lived or worked are reminders of links between colonials and the capital. Statues of a dozen or so figures known for their colonial work stand in squares, and there are several memorials to overseas expeditions.14 Probably most Parisians give only a passing glance at such plaques and monuments, and care little about the origin of often obscure names. Yet these markers testify to a desire by

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national and municipal authorities to imprint on Paris symbols of France’s colonial vocation. The names, plaques and statues did not disappear with the end of empire, and remain a testimony to the colonial past. A systematic campaign to rename streets that commemorate now contested historical figures (colonial or otherwise) has not occurred. A group of Antillais, however, succeeded in getting one street renamed. The Rue Richepanse honoured the Napoleonic general who reinstated slavery in the Antilles in 1802. After years of efforts by West Indians, the street was renamed in 2002 in honour of Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Born in 1739 in Guadeloupe, the son of a white planter and a slave mother, SaintGeorges became a violinist, conducted orchestras in Paris, was appointed Marie-Antoinette’s Director of Music and head of the Paris opera, and composed two symphonies and dozens of other pieces. He headed a brigade of coloured soldiers during the revolutionary wars of the 1790s and took part in the Haitian revolution before returning to his career as a Paris conductor for the last two years before his death in 1799. Also in 2002, outside the Institut du Monde Arabe, was inaugurated a square named for Mohammed V; sultan of Morocco from 1927 to 1956, when the country was a French protectorate, he took the title of king the year after independence in 1956 and reigned until 1961. President Jacques Chirac, Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, and King Mohammed VI took part in the ceremony that paid homage to the current Moroccan sovereign’s grandfather. The mayor spoke of a leader ‘qui fut à la fois un libérateur, un dirigeant éclairé et un militant inlassable de l’humanisme’ (who was a liberator, an enlightened ruler, an unfalling promoter of humanism). Mohammed V had opposed the Vichy government, for which de Gaulle made him a Compagnon de la Libération. In 1947, however, the sultan called for independence for Morocco; three years later, French authorities removed him from the throne, exiling him to Madagascar for two years. France subsequently had to accept independence, and Mohammed V was welcomed joyously on his return home. Chirac’s speech traced his career, referring straightforwardly to the conflicts of the early 1950s yet underlining the amicable relations between Morocco and France. The initiative to name a square after a leader once considered an enemy of France indicated official recognition of anti-colonialist nationalism and the ‘artisan de l’indépendance du Maroc qu’on honore’ (the artisan of Morocco’s independence whom we honour [here]), as the Socialist and Tunisian-born mayor of Paris noted. It recognised a country and dynasty that have intimate relations with France, despite some criticism inside France of Moroccan policies. Finally, it represented a gesture to Paris’s Moroccan population and acknowledgement, in Delanoë’s words, of ‘l’exceptionnel apport des cultures arabes à notre histoire et à nos valeurs’15 (the exceptional contribution of the Arab cultures to our history and our values).

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The Rue du Chevalier de Saint-Georges appears one of only two streets named after a person of colour, and the Place Mohammed V the only one commemorating a nationalist leader in the empire. The erasure of the name of a promoter of slavery symbolically removed a stigma on the Paris landscape. The new names of a West Indian cultural figure and a North African anti-colonialist represent attempts by municipal authorities both to provide a post-colonial reminder of France’s overseas links and to cite the contribution of colonised people to French life and culture. While colonial names appear throughout Paris, several quartiers – or at least, micro-neighbourhoods – have a more concentrated colonial patrimony. These include the district of the old colonial ministry and the Invalides in the septième arrondissement, that around the Ecole Coloniale in the sixième, the streets near the old colonial museum in the douzième – the most colonial quartier of the capital – and the Cité Universitaire in the quatorzième.

The colonial ministry and the Invalides The ‘headquarters’ for the empire was the Ministère des Colonies. When the colonial administration was separated from the Navy ministry in the 1890s, it moved into the Louvre. Other departments in the palace, particularly the museum, were anxious to get rid of government offices that took up space, and curators worried about dangers of fire in cramped paper-strewn quarters.16 By the start of the twentieth century, plans foreshadowed a move to larger, dedicated accommodation. The 144-member staff of the colonial ministry, however, dragged their feet and postponed departure to the Rue Oudinot for almost a year after premises were completed in 1908. The new home of the ministry was the Hôtel de Montmorin, built in 1768 by Jean-Baptiste Gaillard de Beaumanoir, who was ruined by the cost of the mansion, and in 1784 sold it to the Comte de Montmorin, ambassador to Spain and later Minister of Foreign Affairs. After his death during the Revolution, the hôtel was declared a bien national but subsequently restored to the family’s heirs. It had various owners before being purchased in 1846 by the city of Paris. It was then used by the Frères des Ecoles chrétiennes. In 1905, after the separation of church and state, the brothers departed, and the city ceded the building to the state in return for another site. Thus the colonial ministry transferred there in 1910.17 Painters and decorators presumably gave the Hôtel de Montmorin colonial touches during the heyday of colonialism – there is no study of its decoration. Most traces of colonialism have been removed in the building now shared between the ministry of international cooperation and the ministry overseeing France’s present-day overseas territories. Among the visible colonial details that remain are several representations of Africans in the iron fencing around the property. Ten busts of colonial figures – among them Paul Bert, Montcalm, Dupleix, Garnier, Faidherde, Auguste Pavie and Eugène Etienne – brought from the Ecole Coloniale to the Rue Oudinot

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nevertheless recall the building’s vocation. A gallery is named after GovernorGeneral Eboué and in the late 1990s hosted an exhibition of posters from colonial exhibitions from the 1890s to the 1940s, the first time the building’s colonial history has been so recognised.18 The ministry stands near other buildings with colonial reminders, including the church of St Francis Xavier, with its murals depicting evangelisation, and the Invalides. The Hôtel des Invalides – burial place for Napoleon and France’s greatest military leaders, retirement home for old soldiers, church, military museum, archives – is full of colonial references. Marshal Lyautey, France’s colonial elder statesman, was also interred there. After his death in 1934, Lyautey’s remains were buried, according to his wishes, in Morocco, but were returned to France and reburied in the Invalides in 1961. In the crypt of the Saint-Louis des Invalides church are the graves of other officers who spent postings overseas. In the cloisters, plaques commemorate the colonial service of spahis, zouaves, tirailleurs sénégalais and Legionnaires, and in 2001 a plaque was unveiled in honour of harkis who fought on the French side during the Algerian War. The Musée de l’Armée preserves documents, banners, paintings and personal mementos of military campaigns in North Africa. Outside the Invalides stand statues of Gallieni, Lyautey and General Gouraud (a French administrator in Syria), making this the key site of colonial military memory in Paris.19

The Ecole Coloniale and the Observatoire quartier Another ‘colonial’ quartier lies between the Luxembourg Gardens and the Observatory (in the sixth arrondissement). One guidebook comments that the neigbourhood ‘a comme un parfum de pays lointains et de poussière d’Empire’ (has an whiff of distant countries and colonial dust).20 The Luxembourg Gardens contain a statue of Eugène Delacroix, whose visit to Morocco with a diplomatic delegation in 1832 inspired many of his paintings. The statue itself makes no reference to his Orientalist works, but Delacroix’s atelier, not very distant in the Rue de Furstenberg, has sketchbooks and souvenirs which he brought back from North Africa. An exotic note in the park, however, is struck by the 1870 statue of the ‘Lion de Nubie et sa proie’ by Auguste Caïn. Just outside the gates is the mansion ornamented with lions and elephants, mentioned earlier, constructed by a British industrialist (whose factories made bathroom taps for sea-liners) for his mistress, an actress; he suicided when she left him. Exoticism continues in the Institut d’Art et d’Architecture of the University of Paris, close by in the Rue Michelet, built in 1927 and described in a contemporary guide as showing ‘un éclectisme qui mélange allègrement . . . créneaux néo-mauresques, lucarnes médiévales et colonnes vaguement babyloniennes’21 (an eclecticism that merrily blends neo-Moorish turrets, medieval dormer-windows and vaguely Babylonian columns). The parkways linking the Luxembourg with the Boulevard de Montparnasse are named for Marco Polo and for de la Salle, French explorer of the Mississippi in the seventeenth

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century, a felicitous nomenclature recalling European voyages to Asia and the Americas. At the end is the Fontaine de l’Observatoire, sculpted by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux in 1880–1881; figures represent the four continents – Australia was eliminated because a fifth figure disrupted the symmetry.22 Allegories of the continents are a veteran subject in European art, and the theme is not particularly colonial. However, Carpeaux in 1866 had made a sculpture for the southern façade of the Louvre’s Pavillon de Flore entitled ‘La France portant la lumière dans le monde’, which suggests that he may well have intended the fountain to suggest France’s international rayonnement.23 Immediately behind it is an 1898 statue of Francis Garnier, who lost his life in 1872 trying to conquer Tonkin, a more explicitly colonial marker perhaps placed there as a complement to the other international symbols. The most important colonial site in the neighbourhood is the former Ecole Coloniale. The government established the colonial training academy in 1889 and a bit later constructed a building for the school at 2 Avenue de l’Observatoire. The Ecole Coloniale, renamed the Ecole Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer in 1934, continued to educate administrators until 1960, fulfilling its mission until the dying days of empire. From 1959 to 1966, the building housed the Institut des Hautes Etudes d’Outre-Mer. Now the Institut International d’Administration Publique provides training for bureaucrats from developing countries – the institution where France no longer trains colonial public servants provides courses for fonctionnaires from independent countries, often former colonies. The Ecole Coloniale building, erected between 1895 and 1898, was designed by Maurice Yvon,24 who had supervised construction of the pavilions of France and its protectorates – and himself designed the pavilions of Annam and Tunisia – at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Yvon’s brief mandated a building with a 300-seat amphitheatre, classrooms, offices, a library and several apartments for students and lecturers. As some architectural reference to the colonies was deemed appropriate, Yvon proposed a Mauresque style with keystone arches and exterior walls decorated with a mosaic of North African tiles. Underlining the Orientalist aspect, the school buildings surrounded a Hispano-Mauresque patio. Carved above the main entrance hall was ‘Ecole Coloniale’ and the dates of the founding of the school and the construction of its building as well as the names of prominent colonial figures from Colbert to Faidherbe and Bugeaud. Several busts of colonial luminaries decorated the vestibule, which also eventually contained the honour roll of former students killed in the line of duty. The entry was decorated with Paul Merwart’s ceiling painting of ‘La France envoyant la civilisation aux colonies’. An allegorical France, wearing a helmet and holding a flag, introduces ‘civilisation’, symbolised by a virginal young woman carrying an open book, to four other females, a kneeling

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Photo 2 This statue of Francis Garnier, standing near the former Ecole Coloniale, commemorates a French explorer of Indochina with a decided touch of eroticism.

African, a Tahitian, an American Creole and a Vietnamese. The background is a scene of luxuriant tropical flowers.25 A grand stairway, with a Buddha on the landing, led to the school’s library, decorated with fourteen scenes, painted by Georges Fraipont for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, of the Congo, Soudan, Madagascar and other

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colonies. An impressively large room with a gallery running around a mezzanine, it boasts a fifty-four-square-metre ceiling fresco by Claude-Charles Bourgonnier called ‘La France fait flotter le drapeau tricolore sur le monde’. The commission for the work specified the theme: ‘La France entourée de ses colonies et tenant d’une main le flambeau de la vertu fait flotter le drapeau tricolore sur le monde’ (France, surrounded by its colonies and brandishing the torch of virtue, unfurls the Tricolour over the world). L’Illustration described Bourgonnier’s work: ‘La figure d’une femme qui se détache fièrement sur un drapeau aux trois couleurs dont les plis se déroulent sur le ciel, la France voit s’incliner devant elle les représentants des races qui peuplent son empire colonial, rendant hommage à son génie: Arabes aux burnous d’éclatante blancheur, Noirs d’ébène de nos possessions africaines, Asiatiques aux yeux bridés de l’Extrême-Orient. A droite, l’Histoire écrit sous la dictée de la Vérité’26 (The figure of a woman stands proudly before a tricolour flag unfolded against the sky. France watches the representatives of her colonial empire bow before her, paying tribute to her genius: Arabs in immaculate burnouses, ebony-coloured blacks from our African possessions, Asians with the narrow eyes of the Far East. On the right-hand side, History records the chronicle of Truth). In a corner appear the founders and directors of the Ecole Coloniale, Eugène Etienne and Paul Dislère, as well as President Armand Fallières, Lucient Hubert, the president of the association of former students, and the architect himself. A smaller panel in the library, also by Bourgonnier, was commissioned in 1913, but not completed until 1918 and unveiled after the end of the Great War. It represents ‘La Gloire et la Renommée suivant les Coloniaux’. Twenty-four-square-metres in size, it recalls the war in a frieze of soldiers including tirailleurs sénégalais alongside the steeple of Notre-Dame and an angel blowing the trumpet of victory. The Ecole Coloniale became a temple to French expansion, an example of the influence of North African architecture on European buildings, a museum of Orientalist painting, and a sculpture gallery of colonial worthies. In Gwendolyn Wright’s words, architects and decorators chose the style to aid ‘in promoting colonial careers, a joining of aesthetics and administrative policy. In architecture as in the classrooms, a move to integrate aesthetics and administrative policy in the colonies was underway.’27 The end of empire, however, made such ornamentation an embarrassment to the French, especially as the building metamorphosed into a school for Third World students and as France tried to put the imperial age behind. In an extraordinary act of architectural revisionism, officials in the 1970s simply tried to wipe away some of the colonialist traces in the building. The names of most of the colonial heroes were sand-blasted off the outside. A false ceiling was erected in the foyer to hide the colonialist ceiling, and the roll of honour of alumni morts pour la France was removed. The busts of colonials moved to the Rue Oudinot, and the wall panels of colonial scenes in the library disappeared. (The ceiling painting was too large

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to hide.) The attempt to ‘decolonise’ the Ecole Coloniale represents an effort to erase the monumental and decorative vestiges of France’s colonial past, an indication of a more general desire to forget the country’s history of imperialism.

The Porte Dorée and the MAAO The greatest concentration of colonial sites in Paris is in and around the Bois de Vincennes. To the east of the immense park is the Château de Vincennes, which incorporates the military archives. The wing housing the navy archives has a few reminders of the colonies with flags of campaigns and miniature obelisks carved with the names of naval battles. Other museums in the chateau contain banners and weaponry from colonial troops. Also on the east of the Bois de Vincennes is the Jardin Tropical de Paris, the former colonial botanical gardens, where greenhouses, pavilions from colonial exhibitions and monuments aux morts to colonial soldiers from Indochina and black Africa remain in the midst of a research centre.28 The single most important vestige of the colonial age in Paris is the Palais de la Porte Dorée, formerly the Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (MAAO), and before that, the Musée Colonial. Indeed, the museum and the area around it, at the western edge of the Bois de Vincennes, are arguably the greatest haut-lieu of colonial history in France, for here was held the Exposition Coloniale Internationale of 1931.29 From the 1855 Paris exhibition, the vogue for fairs and expositions universelles, and interest in showing off foreign countries and cultures, developed together. Colonial displays covered an increasing area at each of the Paris fairs in 1867, 1878, 1889, 1900 and 1937 and at similar exhibitions in the provinces. Marseille hosted major colonial fairs in 1906 and 1922, and a smaller one was held in the Jardin Colonial in Paris in 1907. Anniversaries – the centenary of the conquest of Algeria in 1930, the tercentenary of the takeover of the Antilles – also provided the occasion for exhibitions.30 The grandest exhibition of empire was the Exposition Coloniale Internationale of 1931, like earlier displays designed to show off the colonies to the French and to visitors from around the world, to promote the benefits of colonialism and to inspire support for France’s remote outposts. Organised by Marshal Lyautey, the exhibition was meant as a consecration of the colonial idea in France. From May to November 1931, eight million visitors toured a full-size replica of the temples of Angkor Wat, a reproduction of the West African city of Djenné and pavilions of all of the French colonies. Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United States (though not Britain) also had pavilions, as did private organisations, missionary groups and government agencies. Visitors attended performances by ‘natives’ brought to Paris for the fair, lectures, demonstrations and parades. Never before or afterwards did the French empire have such a visible presence in

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Photo 3 In the old colonial botanical garden, among various monuments to colonial soldiers, this one pays tribute to black soldiers who fought for France.

Paris, nor was it so easy to have a ‘tour du monde en un jour’(a tour of the world in one day), as publicity materials proclaimed. Much has been written on the 1931 exhibition, the marriage of modernism and exoticism in the architecture of its buildings, the colonialist message

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Photo 4 The entrance to the Palais de la Porte Dorée, built for the 1931 exhibition as a colonial museum – the bas-reliefs depict production of colonial products.

broadcast by its displays, the place of indigenous cultures in the extravaganza, and the role of the fair in incarnating and developing France’s interwar identity.31 The site of the fair was itself important, as Patricia Morton has shown. Lyautey drew an analogy between the poor working-class areas of

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eastern Paris and overseas outposts both needing to be ‘colonised’ with the benefits of civilisation. Stimulating a colonial spirit in this zone would also advance the struggle against Communism and national decline, and promote urban renewal and social reform. Lyautey also hoped that the site might become a quartier colonial, with a Maison des Colonies to bring together public and private agencies scattered around Paris: a dream never realised.32 The exhibition, in more or less subtle ways, proclaimed the colonialist gospel and reflected attitudes to ‘native’ life. Tourists enjoyed the mise-en-scène of French achievements and foreign exoticism, and the ‘colonial lobby’ revelled in the attention the fair attracted to their cause. Anti-colonialists called for a boycott of the Vincennes show and organised a counter-exhibition that highlighted forced labour, economic exploitation and the other evils of imperialism. ‘Natives’ brought to Paris later sometimes recalled the excitement of the capital, but also remembered the unpleasant dépaysement of the big city, the bad weather and the regulations that controlled their activities. Memoirs of administrators recalled how their interest in the colonies had been awakened by visits to the exhibition as children or young men. After the close of the exhibition, many display materials were returned to their owners or vanished from public view, and almost all of the buildings were disassembled. However, colonialist paintings from the fair, long kept in storage, now hang in the Musée des Années Trente in Boulogne-Billancourt, and four landscapes of Algiers, the Sahara, Africa and Oceania by Louis-Jean Beaupuy and Auguste Durieux hang in the city hall of the douzième arrondissement of Paris.33 The pavilion of the Missions Catholiques was reconstructed as a church in the suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine.34 Of the others, only those of Togo and Cameroun remain standing in the Bois de Vincennes. They now form part – rather ironically, given their original use and architecture – of the Centre bouddhique international. From 1933 to 1971, these two pavilions (designed by Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, the architect of the Hôtel Lutétia, and Léon Carrère) housed the Musée des Industries de bois, whose xylothèque of tropical woods was afterwards moved to the Jardin Colonial, then to Montpellier. The Togo pavilion was subsequently transformed into a Buddhist shrine: inaugurated in 1977, it houses the largest Buddha in Europe. The Cameroun pavilion, in a poor state of conservation, is at present disused. African motifs decorate the buildings; the twenty-metre-tall conical shape of the Togo pavilion and its thatched roof were inspired by chiefly houses of the Bamoun, Bamiléké and Fonschanda peoples. The external decoration now includes a Buddhist Wheel of the Law and Sanskrit inscriptions. Also enclosed in the Buddhist centre is a more recently built Tibetan-style temple. Just outside is a Japanese sculpture of Buddhist sages, adding to the Asian flavour of the shore of Lac Daumesnil, where reproductions of African houses stood during the exhibition of 1931.35 Back at the Porte Dorée there remain ample reminders of the colonial age and the distant world, including a zoo built after the 1931 fair. Along the

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Photo 5 Notre-Dame des Missions, built for the 1931 colonial exhibition in the Bois de Vincennes, was reconstructed in the Paris suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine.

Boulevard Poniatowski and the Avenue Dausmesnil are streets named after Cardinal Lavigerie and Père de Foucauld, explorers and conquerors such as Louis Gentil, General Lapperine and General Dodds, and the colonial promoters Louis Chailley and General Archinard. Nearby are the Rue Picpus, with the motherhouse of an important missionary order, and the Rue de la NouvelleCalédonie. At the entrance to the park, the Square Von Vollenhoven is named after a young colonial governor who died heroically in the First World War. Adjacent is the Place des Combattants en Indochine with a fountain (designed

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in 1935 by Louis Médeline) and a large gilded bronze statue that in 1931 stood on the porch of the Musée Colonial. The work of Léon Drivier, it was then called ‘La France colonisatrice’.36 Behind the statue, opposite the entry to the museum, stands another colonial relic, a monument to the expedition from the Congo to Fashoda led by Jean-Baptiste Marchand in 1897–1898.

Photo 6 Outside the former colonial museum, the golden allegory by Léon Drivier was originally called La France colonisatrice.

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The Musée Colonial was the only building of the 1931 exhibition designed to outlive the fair as a permanent exhibition of French colonialism.37 It was also, as Morton remarks, ‘less a colonial pavilion than a national monument to France’s colonizing history’,38 a structure meant to embody both France and the colonies. Lyautey commissioned the building from Léon Jaussely and Albert Laprade. Since Jaussely fell ill, almost all of the work was done by Laprade, an architect who had worked with Lyautey in Morocco and designed colonial pavilions for earlier exhibitions.39 Laprade, with Lyautey’s approval, determined to avoid an Orientalist pastiche that might have been expected for such an edifice (and that Jaussely had originally wanted), and chose instead to construct a resolutely modernist structure with classical influences, which would reflect the modernism of the French imperialist venture. It remains, along with the Palais de Chaillot, one of the finest examples of the Paris School of 1930s modernist architecture. With a budget that finally totalled 22.5 million francs, Laprade designed a large rectangular building with a front façade of 89 metres and a lateral façade of 64 metres; the building measures 18.5 metres high at the cornice. It is built in reinforced concrete faced with granite, although quarryingstone taken from the old Paris fortifications fills the cavities of the exterior walls. Fourteen-metre unadorned pillars – fancifully described at the time as having ‘chapiteaux ioniques primitifs employés autrefois par les Berbères’40 (primitive Iconic capitals traditionally favoured by the Berbers) – support a porch along the front from which a broad stairway descends to a courtyard. The roof is surmounted by coupolas and, at the centre, a tiered pyramidal structure atop the Salle des Fêtes. A five-metre reflecting pool enclosing the building recalls the waters that surround the French island colonies. For good tropical measure, several palm trees are planted alongside. The decoration on a partially exposed basement includes elongated stone triangles said to be inspired by ‘art nègre’. On top of the gate posts on the fence are lions sculpted by Henri-Edouard Navarre.41 One of the lateral walls of the museum carries an inscription intentionally reminiscent of that on the Panthéon: ‘A ses fils qui ont étendu l’Empire de son Génie et fait aimer son nom au-delà des Mers, la France reconnaissante’ (A grateful France to the sons who covered the Empire with her Genius and made her name loved beyond the Seas). An honour-roll of colonialists follows. Underlining the view current in the 1930s that contemporary colonies represented the culmination of France’s centuries-long expansion, the list begins with ‘Godefroy de Bouillon, 1061–1100, chef traditionnel de la première Croisade et premier souverain du Royaume de Jérusalem’ (Godefroy de Bouillon, 1061–1100, by tradition, the leader of the First Crusade and the first sovereign of the Kingdom of Jerusalem), St Louis and the Crusaders and the Lusignan kings of Cyprus. Then come early modern explorers in the South Seas and New World – Jean de Béthancourt, Paulmier de Gonneville, Jacques Cartier. Administrators such as Colbert, Dupleix among other soldiers,

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scientists, including Pierre Poivre, Louis Bougainville and other sea-farers – all have their place in 150-odd names. Nineteenth-century conquerors are well represented – Bugeaud, the Duc d’Aumale, Régnault de Gentilly, Brazza, Flatters, Lamy and so on. The last name – no others were added after the museum opened – is Paul Dislère, who died in 1926 after serving as head of the Ecole Coloniale. The most striking exterior feature is a gigantic bas-relief which covers the front façade and parts of the lateral façades: at 1128 square metres, the largest in the world. Sculpted by Adolphe Janniot (1889–1969) from 1928 to 1931, the myriad figures and scenes of the stone mural represent the contribution the colonies made to France. Above the main entrance is enthroned a barebreasted female allegory of Abundance, attended by the goddesses Ceres and Pomona, representing Peace and Liberty, and the chariot of the Sun. On either side of the door are carvings of France’s major ports, neatly labelled and given their attributes – a mermaid and the basilica of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde symbolise Marseille, a muscular stevedore and a ship evoke Le Havre; an aeroplane and Le Bourget make a reference to air travel. To the left and right of these metropolitan images are carved scenes of ‘typical’ colonial production: Africa on one side, Asia and the rest of the colonies on the other. Interspersed with lions, elephants and other tropical animals are scenes of daily work; lettering identifies the precious tropical products in each scene. In the Soudan–Senegal section, for instance, a lion attacks gazelles while peasants cultivate cacao, ground-nuts and cotton, and women milk a goat and grind grain. Dahomey is figured with women making palm oil; for the Ivory Coast, men fell trees and gather kola nuts. In a large panel on North Africa, with a Maghrebin city and dromedary in the background, ‘natives’ till the soil, harvest grapes and weave carpets. The Antilles – complete with a Venus emerging from the ocean, a sailing ship and a dolphin – shows the harvesting of sugar cane. The Malagasy panels depict peasants in rice-fields, accompanied by a bullock and water birds. The Indochinese scenes similarly show peasants working in paddies as well as fishing, mining coal and collecting sap from rubber trees. Angkor Wat figures in the scene of Cambodia. A Tahitian man picks bananas, while a vahiné plays with tropical birds. Janniot’s bas-relief constitutes an impressive artistic achievement for the complexity of the composition and the technical skill with which it is executed. The work is also a statement of colonial ideology, though with no reference to colonial conquest. Clad in ‘typical’ attire, here are happy ‘natives’ – no allusion, it goes without saying, is made to slavery or forced labour – producing a bounty for the enrichment and enjoyment of France. Women are lithe and beautiful, men athletic and handsome: the very picture of honest and healthy labourers. Animals and birds add exoticism despite the avowedly economic theme. The great frieze brings together far-flung colonies and vastly different cultures into the imperial family. Carvings of

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Asian temples and African cities serve as reminders of an architectural patrimony safeguarded by French overlordship. The first vision visitors to the museum perceived was this convincing panorama of the benefits of colonialism, the extent of French domains and the idealised beauty of the tropics.42 The porch opens into a ‘grande galerie d’honneur’, running across the front of the museum. At either end is a gracious reception room, the Salle d’Asie or Salle Lyautey, since he used it as an office during the exhibition, and the Salle d’Afrique, Salle du Ministre, or Salle Paul Reynaud since it functioned as the reception room for the Minister of Colonies. Stairways lead to the mezzanine and other floors, which house the exhibition areas, and an aquarium occupies much of the lower ground floor. Themes introduced on the outside of the building continue on the inside, where every detail, down to the floors, was designed to show off the colonies’ resources. Berber rugs inspired the design of the mosaic floor in the foyer. Tiles at the entry to the Salle des Fêtes are decorated with Polynesian motifs, and the auditorium floor forms a mosaic fantasy: a pre-Buddhist Laotian god, warriors from the Ramayana, dragons and serpents traditional in Annamese rugs, white and golden peacocks, Chinese signs of longevity. In the reception rooms tropical woods are used for decoration and furniture created by some of the most acclaimed designers of the time. In Printz’s Salon d’Asie, the parquet and doors are made of ebony and other African woods, and most of the furniture is made of palm wood from Gabon. The Salon d’Afrique, decorated by Ruhlmann, has floors and furniture of mahogany, ebony and macassar.43 The most striking decorative features of the interior, in 1931 and now, are the paintings that ornament the reception rooms, the Salle des Fêtes and the entry. In the ‘grande galerie’ hang lacquer paintings by Jean Dunand (1877–1944) of ‘Les Peuples d’Afrique’, and of a lion and a tiger.44 The reception rooms are covered with huge murals that also develop colonial themes. In the Salon d’Afrique, Louis Bouquet (1885–1952) evokes the life of European settlers in North Africa in one panel. Another is an allegory of Islam: an angel spreads its wing around the Prophet, while a dragon lies defeated. Yet another set portrays black Africa, although in a curious fashion. In a forest filled with wild animals – the city of Djenné shines on the horizon – a white-skinned Apollo plays a lyre as Africans, mostly women, dance. The Salon d’Asie, decorated by André-Hubert and Ivanna Lemaître, features Buddha sitting in contemplation, Confucius teaching his disciples, and Krishna playing music for a crowd. Another scene depicts a caravan piled with products destined for the West. A third portrays a festival. Also pictured through various gods are Asian myths of water and fire and the cultivation of land. Above reigns the mother goddess of humanity. These were intended to provide a view of the spiritual life of the colonised world to complement Janniot’s economic statement on the exterior bas-relief.45

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The mural of the Salle des Fêtes is even more remarkable for its size, the intricacy of its design and the colonial message that it proclaims. The work of Pierre Ducos de la Haille (1889–1972),46 the 600 square-metre mural presents ‘L’Apport de la France à l’Outre-Mer’. In another example of the building’s symmetry, Ducos’s mural shows what France provides its colonies, just as Janniot’s bas-relief illustrates what the colonies provide France. Amid more scenes of daily life, a merchant weighs a sack of gold, a priest removes chains from kneeling slaves, farmers harvest olives and wheat, a doctor administers a vaccination, a charitable person looks after an orphan and an archaeologist examines a relic of ancient civilisation. Allegorical figures of Work, Peace, Art, Science, Justice and Liberty – each armed with the appropriate attributes – march along the wall taking their gifts to primitive lands. The immense central panel, focussing attention on the stage where ceremonies were held during the exhibition, is ‘La France et les Cinq Continents’. Under spreading trees and a backdrop of sailing ships, an allegorical France looks out on the world towards an enthroned Asia, an African in a dense forest, a voluptuous islander riding the waves and a figure from America, somewhat incongruously holding a skyscraper in the otherwise tropical landscape. In this pictorial statement of the rayonnement of France, a victorious goddess thus extends the benefits of civilisation not just to her own colonies but throughout the world.47 These murals illustrate one artistic style of the 1930s and the ideology of French colonialism that was enshrined at the exposition; since restoration in the 1980s, the works again dazzle visitors. But there are still other reminders of the colonial exhibition and the colonial age. In the entry hall is a scale-model of the 1931 exhibition showing the layout of pavilions and displays. Near the aquarium is a map charting overseas outposts in the age of exploration, and another of French colonies in the 1930s. In architecture, murals and interior design – and in the displays that were shown there and the aquarium – the building is a summary of the imperial adventure as seen in the inter-war years. Yet Patricia Morton notices a certain ambiguity in the building: a French modern architecture, the metropolitan side of empire, versus a sculptural and decorative style that portrayed the colonies; the cleavage, while affirming the policy of ‘association’ that would allow the maintenance of indigenous cultures within a plus grande France, also reinforced colonial and Beaux-Arts hierarchies. ‘The split was intended to further the Exposition’s program of fixing people and things in their proper places within colonial power hierarchies.’48 She concedes that the 1931 fair ‘was one of those places where colonized and colonizer danced in a fascinating, ambivalent embrace’.49 The ‘cool sophistication’ of the decorative elements clashed with the ‘writhing, sinuous forms’ in the frescoes: ‘The contrast between the refinement of modern furnishings (however much they were influenced by l’art nègre) and the primitive and enigmatic riot of colonial life in the frescoes evoked the difference between France and her colonies

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and the distance between them.’50 The genius of the building, however, was that it connected metropolitan and colonial, traditional and modern, ethnographic and European art, under the aegis of the colonial programme of the Republic. It is now also a monument to the colonial age and a colonial perspective that have passed into history. When it was opened, the Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer was not only a vestige of the grand exhibition of 1931 but a record of French imperial achievements and a catalogue of native cultures. The evolution of those displays from the planning stages of the Musée Colonial down to the closing of the Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie in 2003 traces changes in curatorial policy and political views about France’s relationship with the rest of the world. As a colonial exhibition was planned in the 1920s, the government also decided to create a permanent colonial museum,51 a rather tardy acknowledgement of the need for a museum similar to those in London, Brussels and Amsterdam.52 Gaston Palewski, appointed the first director, acquired a collection of art and artefacts that joined works borrowed from other museums in the displays during the 1931 fair. Afterwards, the museum closed for reorganisation, fully reopening in 1935 as the Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer. The new director, Marius-Ary Leblond, a novelist from La Réunion, reoriented the displays away from Palewski’s focus on politics and economics towards fine arts, and he included a large selection of colonial paintings.53 The content and style of exhibition remained much the same throughout Leblond’s long tenure and that of his successor, Marcel Lucain. In the mid-1950s, the museum counted eight departments. ‘L’Exotisme dans l’art et la littérature français’ featured books and paintings associated with Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie. A ‘Galerie historique’ provided an overview of expansion, and a ‘Section économique et sociale’ presented colonial products. Another gallery displayed ‘Arts indigènes’. The remaining departments were a ‘Salle des dioramas’, the ‘Aquarium exotique’, a film-projection section and a library.54 The museum held lectures, film series and temporary exhibitions. For instance, ‘Brazza et ses compagnons’ in 1952 contained maps, manuscripts, photographs, medals, letters, portraits and memorabilia documenting the life of the explorer ‘qui fut tenu, par ces Noirs qu’il aima, comme une sorte de bienfaisant magicien’ (who was considered by the blacks whom he loved as a sort of beneficient magician). The items on display, the catalogue told visitors, would ‘feront revivre . . . l’épopée pacifique du fondateur de notre Afrique équatoriale; ils affirmeront, dans toute sa continuité, la longue tradition de générosité humaine qui est à l’origine de l’Union française’55 (bring back to life . . . the peaceful saga of the founder of our equatorial Africa; they will affirm the continuous and long tradition of human generosity that lies at the base of the Union Française). Even while imperialism was under attack, therefore, the museum remained an organ of colonial propaganda.56 In the decade after the Brazza exhibition, the museum seemed increasingly anachronistic, and the building and the collections were suffering a

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continuing degradation that, as Dominique Taffin remarks, was ‘une métaphore bien involontaire de la désagrégation de l’empire colonial français’57 (an involuntary metaphor for the break-up of the French colonial empire). In 1959 a proposal to turn the colonial museum into a museum of African art (and transfer the ethnographic collections of the Musée de l’Homme to the site) came to nought. At the behest of the Minister of Culture, André Malraux, administrative control of the museum in 1960 passed from the Ministère de la France d’OutreMer (as the colonial ministry had been restyled) to Malraux’s own ministry. The name also changed from the Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer to the Musée des Arts africains et océaniens, a sign of international political changes and of a new museographical vocation. Malraux specified that the museum should not limit its collections or activities to (former) French colonies. The mission statement also said that the museum should concentrate on works of art, while more ethnographic items remained the province of the Musée de l’Homme – a vague division that perennially caused conflict and confusion between the two institutions. As part of the reorganisation, Malraux provided a generous budget that enabled the museum to acquire the bulk of its later collections, and thus to move away from a collection focussing on the colonies and items donated by soldiers, administrators and colonial agencies. These changes gave new life to the museum, but its future remained unclear in the cultural and political context of the 1960s. In 1969 the idea of turning it into a museum of Francophonie was floated. With the end of empire, France promoted Francophonie as an international cultural movement. The Francophone countries, most of which were former colonies, although Algeria and Vietnam for many years refused to join, met regularly, distributed aid and promoted international cooperation in a way similar to the British Commonwealth. Several members of Malraux’s cabinet, which included prominent former colonial bureaucrats, favoured the proposal for a museum of the (French) Community, an organisation established in 1958 by the constitution of the Fifth Republic but which never really got off the ground. One official, E. Biasini, commented: ‘Il est exclu q’uil cesse d’être aussi le musée historique qui présentera l’épopée coloniale de la France. Pour être clos, ce chapitre ne doit pas pour autant être oublié’58 (There is no question that this will cease to be an historical museum presenting France’s colonial saga. Though that chapter [in our history] is concluded, nevertheless it must not be forgotten). The Directeur des Musées de France, however, scuppered the project for a Francophone museum, remarking acidly, if pertinently, ‘C’est finalement à coups de fusil qu’on a développé l’usage du français’59 (After all, French was spread through gunfire). Clearly, in the wake of the Algerian War and the upheavals of 1968, the time was not ripe to establish a museum of either colonialism or of a Francophone movement that some branded neo-colonialist. Indeed in the 1970s the museum directors tried to efface the more blatantly colonialist aspects of the museum and its collection. Certain murals were

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covered and the Salle d’Asie, considered too colonialist, was closed; the Salle des Fêtes was used as a storeroom.60 The collection of paintings was packed away. At the same time, the museum continued to increase its ethnographic holdings. The public meanwhile developed a renewed interest in ‘primitive’ art, partly because of exhibitions that borrowed works from the museum even when – perhaps not coincidentally – they were not held at the Porte Dorée building so marked by its colonial past. These included an exhibition of Oceanic art at the Grand Palais in 1965, a Festival des Arts Nègres in 1966, and one of African sculptures at the Orangerie in 1972. By this time, the Vincennes museum was revamping displays drawn from its own permanent collections. A major collection of Aboriginal art was acquired. New galleries of Muslim art were created in 1966. Two years later the African collections were reorganised. In 1973 a gallery of ‘masterpieces’ was inaugurated, followed in the following year by a gallery dedicated to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), at that time still a Franco-British condominium. A dedicated space for Muslim rugs and ceramics was set up in 1977, then displays of Maghrebin rural arts were renewed. In 1984 came the first temporary exhibition in many years, ‘Le Musée imaginaire des arts de l’Océanie’, with costumes, jewellery, sculpture and photographs. This was a signal event in the museum’s history, an indication of a more activist approach to exhibitions and a greater desire to contextualise objects with increased ethnographical and historical background.61 Opened by Jack Lang, the Socialist Minister of Culture, and Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the nationalist Kanak leader from New Caledonia, the exhibition also intended to send a message about the political stance of the Mitterrand government. Exhibits by such artists as Ousmane Sow brought contemporary Third World Art into the Porte Dorée, and the museum was used for an AIDS benefit and one of Yves Saint Laurent’s fashion shows. Despite these efforts, by the 1980s critics charged that the museum remained out-of-date in presentation and lamented the declining number of visitors (although the aquarium remained popular with schoolchildren). Museum specialists sometimes called the museum the ‘Cayenne des musées de France’ with a reference both to the tropical climate of the aquarium and the prison colony in French Guyane – ‘être envoyé aux crocodiles’ (‘being sent to the crocodiles’) was applied jokingly to staff sent to work in a museum that lacked the glamour of the Louvre and other institutions.62 Demoralised staff complained about poor conditions. Questions were raised about the competency of its administration.63 One director was accused of putting profitability before other priorities.64 Rivalries simmered between the Porte Dorée and the Musée de l’Homme. Restricted funding limited initiatives. The opening of such new institutions as the Centre Pompidou, and plans for the creation of the Musée d’Orsay, the enlargement of the Louvre, and other grands projets – a new national library, a new opera house, the ‘Grande Arche’ – made the Porte Dorée museum seem even more fusty and dusty.

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Little was immediately done to overhaul the museum until the end of the 1980s. In 1990 administrative control again changed as it became the twelfth department of the Musées de France, the peak body that controls the Louvre. The name was slightly altered – from the Musée des Arts africains et océaniens to the Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie. This heralded greater efforts to display the works of contemporary non-European artists, to attract a broader spectrum of visitors including immigrants, and to organise special exhibitions, such as the successful ‘La Révolution sous les tropiques’ for the bicentenary commemorations in 1989.65 From the early 1990s the museum regained some lost ground, but soon its future again came under a cloud with long-debated and controversial plans for a grand Musée des Arts Premiers to bring together the collections of the Porte Dorée and the Musée de l’Homme.66 With President Chirac’s decision to build a new museum of African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian arts on the Quai Branly, the death knell sounded for the museum. At the end of January 2003, after seventy years of a troubled history – from the highpoint of colonialism through decolonisation and post-colonial reassessments – the collections closed, though the aquarium and historic reception rooms remain open in what is now called the Palais de la Porte Dorée. The building also hosts temporary exhibitions, for instance, one in 2003 on urbanism in Algiers – a reminder of the building’s past. A suggestion for a museum of colonial history did not advance, and a proposal for a museum of decorative arts taking advantage of the 1930s décor remains under discussion though without obvious enthusiasm.67 The building, a classified historical site since 1987, must be preserved, and offers excellent exhibition space. It remains marked by a history that occasionally can still take on symbolic value – as when in April 2002, in the midst of the French presidential campaign, a group of sans-papiers, primarily migrants from the developing world without proper residency permits, briefly occupied the museum in protest against France’s immigration policies.68 Colonialism haunted the Porte Dorée museum, and even the employees sometimes had difficulty with this legacy: ‘Vu de l’intérieur, l’héritage colonial n’est toujours pas liquidé. Il est comme un traumatisme de naissance qu’une vie entière ne suffit pas à éliminer . . . On s’interdit de parler de société coloniale . . . qui est un tabou ici. Tout est bon pour entretenir la culpabilité’ (Seen from inside, the colonial inheritance is still not liquidated. It is like a birth trauma that an entire life does not suffice to efface. . . . We forbid ourselves talking about colonial society . . . which is a taboo here. Everything helps sustain guilt). Some worried about Africans coming to reclaim artefacts, but others noticed French grandfathers who had visited the 1931 fair bringing their grandchildren for a visit. The closing of the museum evoked an interest that had not always been manifest – including a volume of black-and-white images of the building empty of visitors, exhibits in the afternoon shadows, cartons in the storeroom, mothballed busts of a colonial priest and an

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Indochinese woman, details of the parquet and doorhandles, and disused labels in stored-away vitrines. Germain Viatte, director of the museum, wondered if the interest represented ‘nostalgies surannées, mondanités incongrues, inquiétudes pusillanimes sur l’avenir, renversement surprenant des perspectives historiques’69 (superannuated nostalgia, incongruous social niceties and pusillanimous discomfort about the future, a surprising reversal in historical perspectives). One donor recalled that ‘ce musée-là c’était l’Afrique parmis nous!’70 (this museum was Africa in our midst). Visitors in the closing days could still note, despite the renewal of displays, a few labels identifying the provenance of a work as a gift from the ‘GouvernementGénéral de l’Algérie’ or another colonial institution, a soldier or missionary or a Frenchman who settled in the colonies.71 The probable disappearance of such signs in the Musée des Arts Premiers, and the evacuation of the collections from the Porte Dorée, may have the unfortunate effect of divorcing the history of the collections from that of imperialism, and leave the Vincennes building a shell echoing with the resonances of a colonialism that remains difficult to incorporate into the landscape of French museums.

The Cité Universitaire and Parc Montsouris Another precinct where colonialism, exoticism, and the daily life of presentday residents mix is found in the quatorzième arrondissement on either side of the Boulevard Jourdan. On one side of a busy street is the Parc Montsouris, and many Parisians remember a North African building that stood in the park before its destruction by fire (from apparently accidental causes) in 1991. The Bardo, a replica of the palace of the bey of Tunis, was built for the Paris international exhibition in 1867. Afterwards, it was purchased by the Suez Canal engineer, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who sold it to the city of Paris, which moved it to the Parc Montsouris and operated a meteorological service in the building from 1869 to 1974. The Bardo then fell into a state of disrepair until the signing of a convention between the city of Paris and the Tunisian Ministry of Culture in the 1980s. The city agreed to rent the building to the Tunisian government, for a nominal sum, as a cultural centre. Restoration work had begun only six months before fire destroyed the edifice.72 There nevertheless remain colonial mementos. A monument was erected in 1882 in memory of Paul Flatters and members of his expedition who were lost in Africa. Nearby is the statue of a slain lion carried away by African porters. On the other side of the Boulevard Jourdan, the Cité Universitaire has many colonial connections. Begun in the 1920s, residence halls were constructed for various national groups, often with architecture alluding to the countries. Several were built for colonial students.73 The Maison de la France d’Outre-Mer, now the Résidence Lucien Paye – a professor, diplomat and minister – was opened in 1951 to house both indigenous students and French students whose parents lived in the outre-mer. A ninety-metre-long

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building of six stories containing two hundred bedrooms, the hall was designed by a team led by Albert Laprade, architect of the Musée Colonial. The façade is richly decorated (by R. Meauze and Anna Quinqaud, the latter a well-known colonialist sculptor) in bas-reliefs of African scences, including renditions of ‘Tradition’ and ‘Legend’. The salle des fêtes contains Aubusson tapestries (designed by Roger Bezombes), also illustrating African themes, and an ebony and mahogany parquet. The Maison de la Tunisie was funded in 1948 by the government of the protectorate but built in a thoroughly modern style eschewing Orientalist ornamentation. Laprade’s Moroccan residence, opened in 1953, by contrast, includes an elaborate Mauresque entrance and patio. An architecturally modern Maison du Liban, planned in 1937 when Lebanon was administered by the French under a League of Nations mandate, was not opened until 1961. A Maison de l’Indochine74 was built in 1930 at the initiative of a committee headed by an industrialist in Indochina, Raphaël Fontaine, which explained that it was ‘poussé par le très net désir des chefs de familles annamites qui nous avaient confié leurs enfants pour les rendre plus savants sans doute et mieux armés pour la vie, mais qui voulaient que leurs fils conservassent, parmi nous, les qualités et les traditions de leurs ancêtres et de leur civilisation propre’ (inspired by the very real desire of the heads of Annamite families who entrusted their children to us in order to make them more learned and better prepared for life, but who wanted their sons, while they lived among us, to preserve the traditions of their ancestors and their own civilisation). Indigenous and French residents of the Asian colonies contributed to construct the hall, and the cornerstone was laid by the Vietnamese emperor Bao-Daï. Pierre Martin and Maurice Vien’s five-story building of one hundred student rooms features upturned overhanging roofs, red-tile trimming, and other Asian motifs of animals and flowers. A bas-relief dragon inspired by a pagoda in Huang-Lung crowns the building, another dragon ornaments the entry, and an interior stairway was copied from an imperial palace in Hué. According to an architectural magazine in 1933, the edifice would ‘donner aux étudiants indigènes l’illusion de vivre dans une atmosphère orientale de leur pays, à la lisière de ce Paris où ils viennent s’instruire et se vivifier de notre sève civilisatrice’75 (give indigenous students the illusion of living in the Oriental atmosphere of their [own] countries, here on the outskirts of Paris where they come to be educated and to revivify themselves with our civilising sap). (One might wonder why, if the students were to immerse themselves in Paris life, they would want to live in an imitation Indochinese palace.) For Gwendolyn Wright, the student residence ‘represents a French perception of Indochinese aesthetics, evoking an exotic distant world for the Parisians, articulating a complex cultural milieu of power and history of the Maison’s residents and their French neighbours’.76 Despite the fine sentiments of its promoters, the Cité Universitaire provides an example of how indigènes and anticolonialists sometimes saw things in

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a different perspective. The Maison de l’Indochine was opened just after the repression of the Vietnamese rebellion at Yen Bay in 1930. When he arrived for the ceremony, President Gaston Doumergue was greeted with cries of ‘Libérez les prisonniers de Yen Bay’ (Free the Yen Bay prisoners!) Tracts were distributed by demonstrators: ‘Vous ne vous laisserez pas fasciner par la somptuosité de la maison indochinoise. Vous vous méfierez de cette philanthropie coloniale . . . Vous n’accepterez rien de ceux qui nous exploitent. . . . Dénonçons toutes les amitiés hypocrites. . . . Combattons toutes les tentatives de corruption! Adoptons pour mot d’ordre le boycottage de la Maison de l’Indochine’77 (Don’t let yourselves be taken in by the sumptuousness of the Indochinese residence. Beware of colonial philanthropy . . . Take nothing from those who exploit you . . . Denounce hypocritical friendship. . . . Fight attempts at corruption! Make our goal the boycotting of the Maison des étudiants de l’Indochine). A Maison du Cambodge, with a Khmer façade and sculptures, was opened after the end of the Indochinese empire, in 1957, but it too testifies to the vagaries of politics. In the early 1970s, during the civil war and Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, serious disputes between students allied to the various factions broke out, and one student was killed in the building. The residence has been closed since 1973 and stands behind a metal fence in a state of disrepair. Thus even a complex of student residences intended to promote international cooperation and the inculcation of French culture could reflect the divisive effects of colonialism and the tragic histories of the post-independence era.

The Jardin des Plantes and the Paris mosque From the 1890s onwards Muslim officials in French North Africa had expressed a desire for the construction of a mosque in Paris, but suggestions came to nought until after the First World War. In the light of the sacrifices made by the 500,000 Muslim soldiers who fought for the French, 100,000 of whom were killed, the government decided to allow the private Société des Habous et Lieux-Saints to build a mosque. A comité de patronage included the French president, the presidents of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, four marshals and two former presidents of the Republic. Parliament granted a substantial subsidy to the Institut Musulman in 1920; the city donated land adjacent to the Jardin des Plantes two years later. On 1 March 1922, the chamberlain of the sultan of Morocco laid the cornerstone of the mosque in the presence of representatives of the president, government and parliament, the residents-general of Morocco and Tunisia, the governors-general of the AOF, AEF, Madagascar and Indochina, Marshal Foch, the Ministre de la Plume of the bey of Tunis and the cadi of Tizi-Ouzou. The prefect of the Seine, remarking on how appropriately the mosque would be situated near the Panthéon and the Museum of Natural History, added: ‘Félicitons que I’Institut musulman doive être édifié non pas dans quelque quartier nouvellement bâti du Paris

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moderne, comme si l’Islam était pour nous une découverte toute récente, mais sur le plus vieux sol de notre histoire, à côté des arènes de l’ancienne Lutèce . . .’ (Let us rejoice that the Institut Musulman is being constructed not in a newly built district of modern Paris, as if Islam were for us a recent discovery, but on the oldest soil in our history, next to the arenas of classical Lutetia). An official brochure echoed the sentiments: ‘Le Gouvernement français s’inspirant à l’égard des Musulmans d’une politique d’amitié plusieurs fois séculaire a voulu ajouter un témoignage matériel et durable de ses sentiments, en participant à Paris à l’édification d’une mosquée’78 (Moved by a centurieslong policy of friendship with regards to Muslims, the French Government has wanted to provide material and lasting testimony to its sentiments by participating in the construction of a mosque in Paris). The 7500-square-metre Hispano-Mauresque style Institut Musulman contained the mosque proper, correctly oriented to face Mecca, wash-rooms for ritual ablutions, a twenty-six-metre-tall minaret, a hammam, lodgings for the mufti, iman and general manager, gardens, market stalls, a restaurant and a ‘café maure’. The colonial governments, particularly Lyautey’s administration in Morocco, paid much of the cost for the building and provided furnishings – the sultan presented a giant copper and iron chandelier and carpets, and the bey of Tunis gave the pulpit.79 The Moroccan sultan and the French president opened the mosque on 15 July 1926, and the bey of Tunis inaugurated the institute’s lecture room three months later. Ceremonies at the ground-breaking and the opening of the mosque provided an opportunity to commemorate Muslim soldiers. A junior minister paid tribute when the cornerstone was laid: ‘Quand il s’érigera au-dessus des toits de la ville, le minaret . . . ne montera vers le beau ciel nuancé de l’Ile-de-France qu’une prière de plus, dont les tours catholiques de Notre-Dame ne seront point jalouses. Mais tous les Français qui le verront . . . se souviendront des bataillons africains de Charleroi et de Mondement, d’Artois et de Champagne, des soldats en chéchia de Verdun, au coeur de bronze, des Sénégalais sur l’Yser, des goumiers dans les polders de Flandres, et de ces croyants magnifiques, couverts de blessures et de gloire, qui, sur le Chemin des Dames reconquis, an milieu d’un océan de mitraille, s’arrêtaient un instant pour remercier Allah’80 (When it rises above the rooftops of the city, the minaret will just carry towards the beautiful sky of the Ile-de-France one more prayer, one of which the Catholic towers of Notre-Dame will not at all be jealous. But all of the French people who see it . . . will recall the African battalions at Charleroi and Mondemort, in Artois and Champagne, the stout-hearted fez-wearing soldiers of Verdun, the Senegalese on the Yser, the goumiers in the polders of Flanders, and those magnificent believers who, covered in wounds and in glory, in the midst of gunfire at the liberated Chemin des Dames, stopped for a moment to thank Allah). Yet the mosque inauguration celebration followed soon after the defeat of Abd el-Krim’s rebellion in Morocco. Behind noble words about long-lasting and amicable ties between the French and Muslims, speeches obliquely

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Photo 7 The minaret of the Paris mosque, built in the 1920s in honour of Muslim soldiers who fought for France in the Great War.

reaffirmed imperial control over Afrique Française du Nord and, at least for the moment, Muslim acquiescence to French rule. Si Kaddour ben Ghabrit, vizir of the sultan and first director of the Institut Musulman, proclaimed of the facilities: ‘Ils seront, dans la pierre, l’édifice durable de l’amitié de la France pour l’Islam, et pour l’Islam ils perpétueront son attachement à la grande

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patrie française, la patrie universelle’81 (Built in stone, these edifices will be the enduring sign of France’s friendship for Islam, and they will perpetuate Islam’s attachment to the great French patrie, the universal patrie). Neil MacMaster also identifies social issues in the construction of a mosque and, a decade later, the opening of a Franco-Muslim hospital. The Institut Musulman targeted the Islamic elite in Paris: war veterans, visiting dignitaries, Koranic scholars, and caïds and bachagas whose favour and collaboration authorities sought. Many of the 60,000 North Africans, mostly manual labourers, who lived in Paris did not frequent the mosque, and some were even turned away because of their shabby clothing. This ambivalent attitude can also be seen in a later institution created for Muslims. In the working-class suburb of Bobigny, the state in 1935 opened a Franco-Muslim hospital. Although fitted with the latest medical equipment, it was located unhygenically next to a plant that treated nightsoil in an ugly neighbourhood difficult to reach by public transport. Muslims were regularly sent here for treatment rather than being admitted to central hospitals, a conscious segregation of patients. The first director of the hospital was the former head of the Service de Surveillance et d’Assistance des Indigènes Nord-Africains, ostensibly a welfare organisation but whose secret mission included collection of intelligence on Muslims, especially members of the budding nationalist movement.82 Recognition of Muslim culture and the needs of Muslim Parisians had political subtexts. The faithful still come to the mosque, and the building and courtyard are particularly busy during Friday prayers. The café is a popular spot for mint tea and pastries, and is frequented by many non-Muslims, who also use the restaurant and hammam. The building thus now fulfills a dual function: a religious site for Muslims, a tourist spot for others. Probably few reflect on the links between the mosque and colonial history. Because of complaints about noise, the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer from the interior courtyard rather than the minaret. In recent years, the Institut Musulman has felt the tremors of post-colonial conflicts, particularly in disputes about the influence of various countries on its leaders, and of different currents of Islam in its activities. The rector of the mosque is the head of a national Islamic committee established in 2003 and the quasi-official head of France’s Muslim community. In a period of tension about Islam – the strength of Islamism, France’s involvement in Middle Eastern politics, the debate on Muslim girls wearing a scarf in public schools, the general issue of communitarianism versus republicanism – the mosque has become a symbol of the Muslim presence in France and a site for contested beliefs and practices. Neither the building nor these issues are divorced from the legacy of imperialism.

The empire of natural history in Paris Across the street from the mosque is the Jardin des Plantes and the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, another important ‘colonial’ lieu de mémoire.

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Exploration, science and empire advanced together in overseas ventures. Scientists studied with excitement the new worlds charted and conquered by explorers, soldiers and sailors. Then their services were called upon to develop the resources that the colonies offered, to participate in the mise en valeur of the domains over which France claimed control. Scientists were also meant to play their part in the spread of French civilisation. As E. de Martonne wrote in 1930: ‘Les savants coloniaux sont les agents de propagation de la culture française’ (Colonial savants are agents for the propagation of French culture), who provide ‘la démonstration de notre supériorité scientifique’ (the demonstration of our scientific superiority). New organisations and government agencies were established at the instigation of the colonial lobby to fulfill these duties: an Association des scientifiques coloniaux in 1912, an Académie des sciences coloniales in 1922 and an Office de la recherche scientifique coloniale in 1943.83 Such institutions, however, represented the culmination of a long history of links between science and empire, the traces of which are visible in several notable sites in Paris. Scientific discovery was a key incentive to voyages of discovery, and colonies provided ideal terrain for finding new plants, animals and minerals. European museums were eager to exhibit marvels brought back from afar to spectators with insatiable curiosity about unknown, beautiful and strange creatures from distant places, including human ‘specimens’. ‘Cabinets of curiosities’ packed with naturalia, botanical and zoological gardens and research laboratories collected, investigated and displayed the fruits of imperial expansion. Though perhaps few visitors to the botanical garden and the natural history museum in the fifth arrondissement, the Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, and the zoos in the Jardin des Plantes and the Bois de Vincennes immediately apprehend the connection, all of these institutions owe much to colonialism. Interest in natural history did not begin with the colonial era; every trip to a distant country promised chances for discovery, and international trade and diplomatic relations provided an opportunity for bringing exotic specimens to France. Saint Louis, for instance, returned from the Holy Lands in 1254 – his crusade an early example of French expansion – with an elephant. Louis XVI created a menagerie at Versailles for such animals as the tigress offered by Moroccan ambassadors, and the East India Company did a thriving business providing wild animals to kings and noblemen. In 1770, for instance, it shipped two tigers from Chandernagore to Lorient (embarking three hundred sheep for their nourishment en route), and Louis XV purchased a rhinoceros for the equivalent of four years of a sea-captain’s salary.84 Such beasts were curiosities in France, trophies for men with luxurious tastes. However, as France charted unknown regions and built an empire, animals – and plants and minerals as well – became the object of more systematic interest. Scientific concern took shape in the Jardin des Plantes and Muséum d’histoire naturelle, whose quiet gardens, massive collections from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms and menagerie of animals

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have provided material for over two centuries of research, delighted generations of visitors, and inspired the writings of Hugo, Rilke and the essayist Léon-Paul Fargue.85 The Jardin des Plantes and the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle Few scientific institutions have enjoyed quite the same history and influence as what are now called the Jardin des Plantes and the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, linked institutions which house a research centre, botanical gardens, zoo and galleries of zoology, mineralogy and palaeontology. They also were involved in 1860 in the establishment of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, designed to domesticate foreign species to France, and took part in setting up the Jardin Botanique Colonial in 1899. In 1878 the Muséum played a crucial role in the founding of the Musée ethnographique du Trocadéro, predecessor of the Musée de l’Homme. Studying both natural history and human societies, housing one of the richest and most diverse collections in France, and employing a who’s who of outstanding scholars from Buffon and Larmarck to Théodore Monod, the Jardin des Plantes and Muséum have few rivals worldwide in scientific achievements and influence. Throughout their long history, they have been closely linked to overseas exploration, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century counted among the premier institutions of colonial research. The Jardin des Plantes traces its origins to 1635, when Louis XIII founded the Jardin Royal des Plantes Médicinales to grow plants useful for pharmacological purposes and to dispense courses on botany, chemistry and anatomy. Wherever Frenchmen went, the institution benefitted to expand its collections. Charles Plumier collected for the gardens in the French Antilles during expeditions from 1689 to 1697, and another priest, Louis Feillée, went on scientific expeditions to Chile and Peru in the early 1700s. Joseph Pitton de Tournefort travelled in the Greek islands, Turkey and Armenia from 1702 to 1704 to carry out botanical, mineralogical and medical research. Augustin de Lippi put together a herbarium of 1400 specimens from Egypt for the gardens in the early eighteenth century. In 1714 the king obtained France’s first Arabica coffee plant from the Dutch, the gardens constructed a special glasshouse for the precious shrub and sent the first coffee-plants to the French West Indies in 1721 – the start of coffee cultivation in the French Caribbean. Later the gardens imported quinquina from South America and developed quinine, essential for European survival in the tropics. These expeditions and collections made the Jardin Royal the centre of natural history in France and beyond. The Comte de Buffon, director from 1739 to 1788 and author of an authoritative thirty-six-volume Histoire naturelle, was a leading figure of the Enlightenment and under his leadership French exploration reached new extents. Philippe Commerson sailed around the world with Bougainville in the late 1760s, then botanised in Madagascar and the Mascarenes, while Pierre Poivre went to the Isle de

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France (Mauritius) in 1770 to acclimatise spices he obtained in the East Indies. From the 1770s to 1805, Poivre’s cousin Pierre Sonnerat, also under the auspices of the Jardin des Plantes, journeyed to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. In 1760, meanwhile, Michel Adanson’s pioneering collection of ethnographic artefacts from Senegal entered the collections of the Jardin des Plantes, an important addition to a growing store of man-made products from ‘primitive’ countries. Within a few years, the naturalia also included the body of the Khoisan woman from southern Africa, Saartje Baartman, who during her life had been exhibited throughout Europe as the ‘Hottentot Venus’.86 During the revolutionary years, the Jardin des Plantes (as it was renamed) was nurtured by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, author of Voyage à l’Isle de France and the classic tale Paul et Virginie. The king’s cabinet de curiosités, expropriated by the new regime, joined objects gathered by the gardens’s botanists and zoologists to form the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in 1793. Overseas expeditions continued despite revolution and war. Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a Muséum scientist – the first of several generations of Muséum scientists and officials in his family – accompanied Napoleon to Egypt in 1798. Scientists from the Jardin des Plantes joined the expedition to the South Seas, commissioned by Napoleon and commanded by Baudin between 1800 and 1804, that returned with no fewer than 100,000 specimens for the Jardin and Muséum. Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland went to South America for the museum, and donated a collection of 5800 specimens (including 3600 ones new to Europeans) in 1804. So popular was natural history travel that the Muséum opened an école des voyageurs in 1819, and five years later published a handbook for collecting expeditions. Scientists gained unparalleled fame and honours, though sometimes suffering in the cause. One Muséum scientist was killed by a crocodile in Abysinnia at mid-century, and Victor Jacquemont died of exhaustion in India in 1832 after travels in Bengal, the Himalayas, Tibet and Kashmir – he was paid a signal honour when his body, repatriated in 1881, was interred in the Muséum.87 The years from the 1790s to the 1840s were the golden age of the Muséum. For the next decades, competition from the science faculty of the University of Paris and other centres, loss of direction in scientific aims, a declining role for naturalists in the world of science, reduced funding and lessened prestige led to stagnation. By the late 1800s, the museum was searching for a new vocation to revivify its activities, restore the status of naturalists among physicists, chemists and other men of science, and regain prestige among scientific institutions. The Muséum thus revamped itself as the scientific centre of colonialism. In the words of Camille Limoges, ‘the colonial mission of the Muséum was invented as a panacea for internal and external problems’.88 With the swelling of France’s overseas empire, the Muséum became an avowedly colonial institution. Several scientists in particular reoriented the

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institution towards imperialism. The anthropologists Armand de Quatrefages and Théodore Hamy were keen on expansion because of their interest in distant human societies. They hoped for scientific discoveries and new research opportunities in areas conquered by France, and also saw in support for colonialism a way to revive the fortunes of their home institution. Hamy had begun an anthropology course for explorers in 1876 – one auditor was Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza – and became the leading figure in the Tocadéro ethnographic museum two years later. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, professor of mammal and bird zoology from 1866 and director of the Muséum for a decade after 1890, also headed the committee that lobbied for French annexation of Madagascar. He organised temporary exhibitions, including one on Madagascar in 1895 which drew 300,000 visitors, designed to show off the unique ecology of the Grande Ile, but also to build support for a French takeover of Madagascar. Milne-Edwards geared his own laboratory to colonial research – it was formally dedicated to colonial studies after his death in 1900. He formed links with such colonialist organisations as the powerful Union Coloniale Française, which was invited to hold its lectures at the Muséum, and with the Ministère des Colonies. New facilities were built to display the enlarged European and overseas collections: a tropical greenhouse in 1889, a palaeontology gallery nine years later, a new zoology gallery in 1899. In 1893 Milne-Edwards established a scientific course – free and open to the public – for budding explorers, telling students at the inaugural lecture: ‘Il s’agit . . . de tirer parti de ces possessions nouvelles et, pour cela, il faut savoir ce qu’elles produisent, par quelles races d’hommes elles sont habitées, quelle est leur faune, quelle est leur flore, quels sont les métaux que leur sol renferme, etc. C’est seulement à cette condition qu’on peut commencer l’exploitation fructueuse’89 (The point is to take advantage of these new possessions and, to do so, we must know what they produce, what races of men inhabit them, what their flora and fauna are, what minerals lie in their soil, etc. Only thus can we really begin their profitable exploitation). By the turn of the century, the Muséum’s colonial vocation was firmly established, though it never reconquered the central place in French science that it occupied in its early 1800s.90 From the mid-1800s to the early twentieth century, the herbarium increased from one to three million specimens, its zoological collections from 650,000 to 8.5 million items and its ethnographic collection from 4000 to 49,000 pieces.91 In 1920, it established a chair of ‘Production coloniale d’origine animale’, followed by a professorship of ‘Production coloniale végétale’ in 1929; the Muséum in 1942 inaugurated a short-lived chair of colonial entomology. In the same year, a chair in colonial fisheries was set up. It took part in the Croisière Jaune in Asia and the Dakarto-Djibouti ethnographic expedition in the 1930s. The Muséum guided the transformation of the Trocadéro ethnographic museum into the Musée de l’Homme in 1937.92 Through the 1950s, though no longer a bastion of colonialist sentiments, the Jardin des Plantes and the Muséum continued

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involvement with research on and in France’s possessions with such distinguished scholars as Théodore Monod, ichthyologist and specialist of the Sahara, and Jean Guiart, a leading anthropologist of Melanesia.93 The Jardin des Plantes and the Muséum were at the heart of France’s encounter with the world. In Christophe Bonneuil’s words, ‘L’histoire naturelle est donc partie intégrante de la culture et des moyens d’action de l’élite coloniale. Cet engoûment des acteurs de l’expansion pour l’inventaire naturaliste des colonies témoigne du succès du Muséum et des sociétés savantes de la métropole dans la constitution d’un champ d’émulation intellectuelle dans les milieux coloniaux et de leur contribution à la formation d’une culture coloniale de la curiosité’94 (Natural history was thus an integral part of the culture and the strategy of the colonial elite. The obsession of the actors of expansion for the natural history inventory of the colonies witnessed to the success of the Muséum and metropolitan learned societies in constructing a field of intellectual emulation in colonial milieux, and to their contribution to the formation of a culture coloniale de la curiosité [colonial culture of inquiry]). These combined the benefits of exploration and colonisation, advanced scientific study of natural history inside and beyond France, and played a vital role in colonial propaganda and the creation of a popular culture of imperialism. This colonial background has now faded into the general domain of the Jardin des Plantes and the Muséum. Reminders are nevertheless apparent. Throughout the gardens stand statues, busts and medallions of scientists with colonial collections: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Guy Crescent Fagon (who commissioned expeditions to the Antilles and promoted the production of coffee in the West Indies) and Michel Adanson (who worked for the East Indies Company in Senegal). On the palaeontology gallery are bas-reliefs of ‘Crocodiles attaquant des Nubiens’ and a ‘Chasseur d’ours’. An 1836 greenhouse grows desert plants from around the world, and the Jardin Alpin includes specimens from Morocco.95 The collections reveal their origins: stuffed animals from the African savanna that form the centrepiece of the renovated Grande Galerie de l’Evolution opened in the mid-1990s, and the plant and geological specimens from far and wide in other galleries. If the colonial provenance is not underlined, the history and collections of the Jardin and the Muséum remain deeply imbedded in the history of French expansion. The Jardin d’Acclimatation Associated with the Jardin des Plantes (though not always congenially) was the Société d’Acclimatation and the Jardin d’Acclimatation that it opened in 1860, still an attraction for children in Paris. The society was set up in 1854, according to its charter, for the ‘introduction, acclimatisation and domestication of useful or ornamental animal species’ into France.96 Foreign species, the founders hoped, would provide earnings and raw materials,

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including food, for the public. The founding president, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805–1861), was, like his father, a professor at the Muséum. (His son Albert succeeded as director of the Jardin d’Acclimatation in 1865.) Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire recruited support from fellow scientists, aristocrats with hobby farms and colonial promoters. Napoleon III gave his blessing, and invested financially in the gardens. Frenchmen overseas were a boon for the society’s collections. The French consul in Cairo, M. Delaporte, obtained Egyptian and African animals. Charles de Montigny, who negotiated a treaty between France and China in 1844, then represented France for a decade in Shanghai, obtained yaks from Tibet through the good offices of a bishop. Napoleon’s brother-in-law, the Duc de Morny, a member of the society, underwrote the cost of sending them to France. It took seven months to get two pairs of yaks from Tibet to Shanghai, two more years to send the animals – who had multiplied to eleven – to France, where some stayed in Paris and others were rusticated to the Alps. Profiting from a diplomatic mission, Montigny persuaded the King of Siam to join the acclimatisation society and to donate Southeast Asian animals. He himself sent bamboo seedlings, silkworms and so many other specimens that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked him to refrain from unsolicited deliveries.97 Other colonial officers too provided animals, and the society attracted increasing numbers of colonialists as members; one president in the 1890s was a former governor of Cochinchina and French Resident in Madagascar. Scientists and landowners experimented with the new breeds, hoping to adapt them to France and commercialise them on the market. Society members, meanwhile, convened at banquets to eat exotic dishes. One 1891 menu offered as entrées grilled gingko seeds, sea turtle foie gras and American and Mauritanian fish; the main courses included grilled shark, brochettes of Malagasy deer and Mauritanian langoustines. Desserts were soja cookies, ‘colonial’ ice cream and maple-syrup popcorn. Some dishes – Patagonian guinea-pig curry, Indian python and ostrich-egg omelettes – enjoyed as little success as most of the breeding programmes. The Jardin d’Acclimatation was a popular leisure park in the 1860s. Curious animals provided one attraction: Montigny’s yaks, Algerian goats given by Abd el-Kader, quadrupeds from Sudan and Senegal, three hundred species in all. The park also boasted the first large aquarium in continental Europe. Since the Jardin d’Acclimatation was intended to show the uses of animals rather than their purely scientific interest, it sold animals to the public, either live as pets or as choice cuts in a butchery. Visitors could also buy milk, eggs, plumes, fleece, flowers and plants. During the Franco-Prussian War, hungry Parisians ate most of the animals, but the collection was rebuilt afterwards thanks partly to colonial donations. Short of funding, the Jardin d’Acclimatation tried to attract visitors with concerts and similar entertainments, including a miniature tramway built in 1880 and a winter garden

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with a giant palm room erected in 1893. In 1877 it had began ethnographic displays with fourteen Africans, accompanied by animals from Somalia and the Sudan. Sri Lankans, Eskimos, Argentinian gauchos, Lapplanders, Kanaks – and dwarfs – followed in later human exhibitions, many organised by Carl Hagenbeck, owner of a Hamburg circus and zoo. Some of these activities incurred the disapproval of serious scholars at the Jardin des Plantes, and the Jardin d’Acclimatation’s dubious scientific profile was not unconnected with the establishment of the Jardin Botanique Colonial in 1899. Even the Société d’Acclimatation had by then moved away from the gardens, which by the 1880s were a separate organisation. However, in their heyday, the society and the gardens exercised considerable influence, and sparked the setting up of acclimatisation gardens in Nancy, Grenoble and elsewhere. The society survived decolonisation – it was the forebear of the Société Nationale de Protection de la Nature et de l’Acclimatation de France – as did the gardens. However, today’s Jardin d’Acclimatation, with circus, merry-go-rounds and children’s recreation, retains few traces of its colonial heritage except for the presence of ‘wild’ animals and the miniature train, its colonialist animal exhibitions and its human displays largely unsuspected by visitors. Auguste Hardy, an early twentieth-century director of the Jardin d’Essai in Algiers and a prominent member of the metropolitan acclimatisation society, argued: ‘It may be said that the whole of colonization is a vast deed of acclimatisation.’98 The adaptation of French settlers and their daily lives to colonial environments, and the adaptation of colonial peoples and products to French uses, indeed formed a major task. In that sense, the Jardin d’Acclimatation – though today devoid of ostentatious mementos of the colonial era – remains a colonial lieux de mémoire in Paris. Other ‘acclimatised’ plants – such as the bamboo thickets and windrows of the Rhône Valley that originated from stocks provided by Montigny and first cultivated in the Jardin d’Essai in Algiers99 – still testify to the society’s international and colonial networks through which exotic plants found their way to France.

The Jardin Colonial One of the most important colonial sites in Paris is an institution connected in its origins with the Jardin des Plantes, the former colonial botanical garden.100 From the early age of expansion – beginning with the Pamplemousses gardens in the Isle de France in 1735 – Frenchmen established botanical gardens overseas to study plants of scientific and commercial value. As France conquered new colonies, several dozen gardens were set up around Africa, Madagascar and Asia. However, an 1898 commission of enquiry headed by Alphonse Milne-Edwards, director of the Muséum, concluded that the jardins d’acclimatation and jardins d’essai were not living up to the expectations

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by developing new products and methods of cultivation. Furthermore, France had fallen behind the Netherlands and Britain in research on tropical agriculture. Meanwhile, the new Union Coloniale Française lobbied for greater efforts to expand colonial agriculture. In response, the Ministry of Colonies in 1899 founded a metropolitan Jardin d’Essai Colonial on land belonging to the Muséum at the eastern end of the Bois de Vincennes.101 Modelled loosely on Kew Gardens outside London, the Paris gardens were intended to improve the quality, productivity and profits of colonial agriculture. Initial funding covered the construction of a greenhouse, a laboratory and storage facilities, and the planting of trees and other plant specimens. Further funding came from colonial administrations, but French businessmen, aware of the benefits of acclimatisation, also contributed to the gardens – one greenhouse was named for the head of the Meunier chocolate company in thanks for his donation, and another was sponsored by a coffee company. The gardens thus brought together research science and its practical application, government and industry, the state and private lobby groups, and metropolitan and colonial authorities. Jean Dybowski (1856–1928) was chosen as first director of the gardens. A member of the Milne-Edwards committee, he had served as head of the department of agriculture in Tunisia and was professor of tropical agriculture at the national agronomy institute. Dybowski, the author of a Traité pratique des cultures tropicales, was interested not so much in the nomenclature and classification of new species – as scientists in the Jardin des Plantes were thought to be – but in their utility for the colonies. Partly for this reason, Dybowski did not wish his institute to be controlled by the Muséum, and by 1905 secured its independence.102 In 1902 the gardens in Nogent-sur-Marne had become the home of the newly created Ecole nationale supérieure d’agronomie coloniale, which in two decades produced over two hundred graduates who had studied agriculture, plant cultivation, botany, rural engineering, economics, colonial health and administration. Special courses were offered for colonial officials on leave in France. A journal promoted colonial endeavours and published results of the Jardin Colonial’s research on such products as cotton, silk, coffee, rubber, tobacco, gutta-percha and fruits. Catalogues listed 250 plant specimens available to colonial agriculturists, and each year the Jardin Colonial sent to the colonies more than 10,000 living plants and 40,000 seed samples. These included specimens that might be usefully introduced from France or foreign countries, and ones acclimatised from one French possession to another – the gardens, for instance, were the intermediary for introducing coffee from the Congo into Madagascar. Research also covered soil chemistry and fertilisers, entomology and agricultural machinery. The Paris gardens coordinated the activities of botanical gardens throughout the empire, and its administrators, scientists and graduates formed an ‘old boys’ network’ of agronomists. To promote a colonial spirit around France, even in remote

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villages, the gardens sent to thousands of schools neatly mounted collections of little sachets containing fifty samples of colonial agricultural products. It also participated in French and international colonial fairs.103 The Jardin Colonial thereby played an important role in research, the mise en valeur of the colonies and stimulation of support for the empire. In 1907 the Jardin Colonial hosted the Exposition coloniale nationale, an opportunity for visitors ‘de trouver aux portes mêmes de Paris la plus vive impression d’exotisme’ (to find at the very gateway to Paris the most lively impression of exoticism). Some pavilions in ‘typical’ style were specially commissioned to house displays. Others that had already served for the Marseille colonial exhibition in 1906 were brought to Paris and ‘recycled’, and the small building that housed the Réunion display was one constructed for the 1900 world’s fair. Spectators entered the fair under a Chinese arch and discovered a world of tropical products and colonial peoples. Vietnamese and Laotians had been brought to Paris for a village indochinois – one of five native villages – complete with a rice paddy, a watch-tower and a Tonkinese bridge alongside a ‘Maison de repos cochinchinoise’ overlooking a duck pond. The Indochinese pavilion’s displays of silks and tea showed the success of agriculture under French auspices. A diorama pictured a junk in Halong Bay, the port of Saigon, Hoan Kiem lake in Hanoi and the famous Pont Doumer. Melanesian natives served New Caledonian coffee in the pavilion dedicated to that colony, and chocolate was available in the village congolais. The Congo pavilion, in the form of a trading post, included a reconstructed office and shop on the ground floor. The upper story contained vitrines on the history of French expansion in equatorial Africa, mementos of Brazza, a collection of drawings by Crampel’s native guide, panoplies of weapons and agricultural products. The AOF pavilion showed off groundnuts, palm oil, hardwoods and rubber next to what a contemporary description called ‘curieux spécimens de l’art indigène, fétiches de forme bizarre grossièrement sculptés dans des troncs d’arbres, animaux apocalyptiques aux attitudes au moins imprévues’ (curious examples of indigenous art, bizarrely shaped fetishes crudely carved from tree trunks, and apocalyptic animals in improbable poses). In the Tunisian pavilion a mosaic provided a reminder of North Africa’s Roman rule, to which French colonialists sometimes claimed to be successors. Rugs, pottery and ceramics represented local arts and crafts; samples of olive oil, honey and grain underlined the economic utility of the protectorate. Ten elephants, guided by mahouts brought from the Indian comptoirs, to the great delight of visitors and admiring journalists, demonstrated how they felled trees. Malagasy musicians played in a kiosk. The pavilion of the Société des Orientalistes français exhibited paintings, and one sponsored by industrialists contained an automobile showroom. A general pavilion presented products from around the empire and offered such diversions as a diorama of Tahitian fishers.104

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The colonial fair was meant to be educative, entertaining and edifying, and the Revue coloniale did not miss a chance to note how ‘peuples hier barbares et sanguinaires, primitives encore aujourd’hui . . . ne s’éléveront que peu à peu sous notre protection vigilante sur l’échelle des races’ (peoples that only yesterday were barbarous and blood-thirsty and, still primitive today, will only raise themselves up little by little on the ladder of the races through our vigilant protection). The Tuaregs on display ‘sont bien les frères et les fils des assassins de Flatters . . . nos vieux ennemis du Sahara sont maintenant en exhibition aux portes de Paris’ (are indeed the sons of Flatters’s assassins . . . our old enemies from the Sahara are now exhibited at the gates of Paris). A cinema brought other colonies to life, and postcards, foodstuffs and ‘curios’ allowed visitors to take colonial souvenirs home. Night-time illumination provided a moral: ‘C’était comme la civilisation se manifestera d’une façon brusque au sein des peuples primitifs et au milieu d’une nature exhubérante’ (It is as if civilisation appeared like a flash in the midst of primitive peoples and luxuriant nature). The four-month fair was, according to one journal, a ‘véritable apothéose’ (real apotheosis) of colonialism in Paris.105 Different from most colonial exhibitions, before or after, the buildings constructed for the 1907 fair were intended to remain for use by the Jardin Colonial and its agronomy school. During the First World War, pavilions

Photo 8 Dilapidated pavilions in the former colonial botanical gardens, used in a 1907 exhibition, testify to the neglect of Paris’s colonial heritage.

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were turned into hospitals for colonial troops, then returned to scientific purposes. Most are still standing in Nogent, though a number are unused and in great disrepair. The veranda of the wooden Congolese house has all but fallen in, and supports have had to be installed to keep the roof up. In better shape is the whitewashed brick pavilion of Indochina, the name of the colony emblazoned above the doorway. An Islamic crescent continues to rise over the otherwise plain, and now empty, Tunisian pavilion. The building put up for the agronomy school, designed in Sudano-Sahelian or southern Moroccan style, is dilapidated but retains much of its beauty. The little Creole house used as the Guyane pavilion seems a bit lost in the forest. The Nogent gardens are arguably the most poignant colonial lieu de mémoire in France, their empty buildings the shells of empire. They testify to the work of scientists and educators who studied the tropical world in hope of making the colonies profitable. They recollect the mania for exhibition of goods and native people, and the propaganda disseminated by lobbyists in hope of sparking colonialist fervour. In one leafy corner of the gardens there stands a statue of a now largely forgotten man once a leading figure in French expansion, Eugène Etienne (1844–1921). Born in Oran in Algeria, a city he later represented in the French parliament, Etienne was president of the Groupe Colonial in the Chambre des Députés, president of the Comité de l’Asie française and the Comité du Maroc français, and an occasional minister. The statue that the Ligue Coloniale et Maritime commissioned keeps company with other left-over monuments consigned to the gardens: an outdoor sculptural gallery of exoticism and the ideology that drove the empire. A coq gaulois salutes a bounteous flag-draped France. Nearby is a stone West Indian elegantly outfitted in flowing skirt and madras headdress, and a languorously reclining Indochinese woman adorned with little but a pearl necklace. Another Asian figure holds an effigy of the Buddha, now beheaded. Down a path and over the surviving Tonkinese bridge, a plaque marks the site of a mosque built for Muslim hospital patients. Scattered around are war monuments erected in 1921 in honour of colonial soldiers – a mock stupa for Cambodians, an eagle-topped stele for Malagasy, a bas-relief for Africans, an obelisk for Christian Vietnamese, as well as – in the midst of a stand of bamboo – a red-lacquered temple built in memory of Buddhist Vietnamese.106 A large chunk of Tonkinese anthracite stands on a lawn. The main building still holds the 30,000 volumes of the old Jardin Colonial’s library. A few of the original greenhouses have just weathered the ravages of disuse, neglect and the storms that wreaked great damage in 1999. (Squatters who occupied several pavilions until a fence was erected around the site did further damage.) Research and teaching continued at the Jardin Colonial even after the end of the French empire, though institutions were periodically reorganised and given new names and missions. Some closed down, and others moved

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away – the last of the colonial-era research centres, specialising in the study of tropical woods, moved (with its xylothèque of 11,000 wood specimens) to Montpellier in 1996.107 By that time plans were already in place to transform the site into what is now the Jardin Tropical de Paris, a consortium of eight research centres and teaching institutions studying sustainable development, inaugurated in 1997. However, after French withdrawal from most of the colonies in the early 1960s, and particularly from the 1970s, the Jardin Colonial had become an anachronism as old research centres lost their raison d’être. Pavilions from colonial fairs were something of an embarrassment in postcolonial France, and monuments to colonial troops who served under the French flag in the First World War seemed out of date and out of place in the new order. Despite need for renovation, a site memorialising a defunct empire was hardly a priority for planners and politicians mindful of tight budgets and political sensitivities, and it was not clear which government authority even held responsibility for its upkeep.108 Decay set in, and one of the most striking edifices, a Vietnamese community house, burned. In 1994, many of the remaining buildings were placed on the national register of historic monuments. Only when the ‘campus’ of the Jardin Tropical come into being did the site attract greater attention. The new administration commissioned an architectural and urbanistic study that suggested a major programme of plantings to turn the former Jardin Colonial into a proper botanical garden of exotic species. In this scheme the 1907 pavilions and later buildings would be renovated for exhibitions and colloquia on globalisation, biodiversity and France’s relations with developing countries.109 The plan has not been executed, but the research centres provide facilities for scientists and students in the midst of the still neglected colonial vestiges. A journalist from La Dépêche coloniale who visited the gardens in 1909 wrote: ‘Pendant que vous traverserez la forêt de Vincennes, dont la flore et l’aspect sont uniquement ceux de la forêt française, vous serez en terre de France; vous vous sentirez bien chez vous. Dès que vous aurez tourné à l’avenue, dès que vous apercevrez l’enclos du Jardin Colonial, immédiatement l’impression vous frappera que vous entrez dans une autre partie de l’univers, que vous abordez des pays nouveaux. Le paysage n’est plus le même. On y voit les grands bambous, les pins impériaux, toutes sortes de verdures qui ne sont point d’ici, et toutes sortes de constructions qui n’en sont pas non plus. C’est l’Afrique. C’est l’Asie. C’est l’exotisme. On est aux colonies’110 (While you cross the Vincennes woods, whose flora and sights are solely those of the French forest, you will indeed be on French soil. You will feel at home. But when you turn the corner, as soon as you see the Jardin Colonial, immediately the impression will strike you that you are entering a different part of the universe, that you are reaching new lands. The landscape is no longer the same. You see giant bamboos, tall pines, all sorts of greenery that are not from here, all sorts of buildings that are not from here either. This is

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Africa. This is Asia. This is exoticism. You are in the colonies). A visitor to the Jardin Tropical today sees in the relics of the empire reminders of multiple colonial experiences – research and teaching, exhibitions, the use of overseas troops in French wars, the continuing work of scientific organisations. Yet the neglect of this colonial patrimony – by both authorities who have done little for the gardens’ upkeep and by Parisians, most of whom hardly know of its existence – suggests not just different memories of empire but a certain forgetfulness about the colonial past.

The Jardin des Plantes menagerie and the Vincennes zoo Zoos, as well as botanical gardens, owe much to colonialism. Indeed, ‘zoo’ as shorthand for jardin zoologique gained currency because of the popularity of the one built for the 1931 colonial exhibition. Displays of exotic animals have a long history, as kings and princes kept wild beasts and colourful birds. However, as Eric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier suggest, the practice is intimately linked with attitudes about the wild and savage, whether animals, people or places. Menageries have traditionally functioned as exhibitions of booty captured from defeated opponents. They represent the triumph of civilisation over barbarity, the success of exploration and conquest, the ‘colonisation’ of the animal world. Therefore zoos join the list of colonial lieux de mémoire.111 The history of European zoos can be charted alongside exploration, conquest, commerce and imperial rule. In 1755 one commentator wrote of the French royal menagerie: ‘On dirait que l’Afrique a payé un tribut de ce qu’elle produit, et que les autres parties du monde ont fait hommage au roi de ce qu’elles ont de plus rare et de plus singulier en animaux et en oiseaux’ (One could say that Africa has paid a tax of all that it produces, and the rest of the world pays homage to the king with the rarest and most singular animals and birds). Almost two centuries later, little had changed. The zoo built in the Bois de Vincennes in 1931 – the project director was Henry Thétard, ex-soldier, journalist and friend of Lyautey, who witnessed his efforts as an amateur lion-tamer – testified to the might of the empire. There were 51 animals from North Africa, 365 from sub-Saharan colonies, 48 from Madagascar, 106 from Indochina and 68 from Guyane. Lyautey remarked that the zoo revealed ‘aux Parisiens les splendeurs de la faune de leurs colonies pour la première fois présentée dans un cadre évoquant les pays exotiques’ (to Parisians the splendours of the fauna of their colonies, which for the first time are presented in an environment that evokes these exotic countries). An agronomist named Boulireau added: ‘La fauve captive apporte à l’homme roi le tribut de sa sujétion’ (The caged beast pays to the man-king the tribute of its subjection). The brochure of the anti-colonial exhibition, however, chastened that ‘le fait d’enfermer dans une cage des animaux libres et fiers’ (the act of confining in a cage these free and proud animals) was ‘l’un des procédés les

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plus abominables de la colonisation’112 (one of the most abominable acts of colonialism). The zoo, like the Musée Colonial, was maintained as a permanent institution after the exhibition and is today the national zoo. Charles Letrosne designed a permanent facility, officially opened on 2 June 1934, that was supposed to be more humane to animals and provide more natural environments than earlier menageries. Inspired by Hagenbeck’s zoo near Hamburg, it represented the latest style in animal exhibits. At the centre was a seventyseven-metre-high concrete and steel rock that not only gave a place for goats to caper, but provided a visual monument for the zoo and the Bois de Vincennes: an ‘Eiffel Tower of the Paris East’. The first public zoo in Paris was located in the Jardin des Plantes, where animals in the royal collection that survived the first years of the Revolution were transferred in 1793 and 1794. Many died in the winter of 1795, but other ‘expropriated’ animals helped reconstitute the menagerie. Purpose-built enclosures were erected in the early 1800s. Zoos were meant to make a contribution to science and to the acclimatisation of foreign species for commercial purposes. They exemplified the growing interest in nature promoted by the Muséum and the popularisation of scientific knowledge among the public: edification as well as entertainment. Not coincidentally, they already bespoke the domination of men over animals – and of Europeans over wild beasts of whatever species.113 The Jardin des Plantes zoo received regular donations of exotic specimens. Empress Joséphine was enamoured of animals and flowers, especially ones from the newly ‘discovered’ Australia. Baudin’s 1802 expedition to the South Pacific was instructed to collect specimens for both Napoleon and Joséphine’s residence at Malmaison and the Jardin des Plantes. Baudin’s ships returned to France (minus the captain, who died en route) with thousands of botanical, animal and mineralogical items including seventy live animals. Joséphine planted Australian flowers and trees, and black swans and kangaroos roamed the gardens of Malmaison; other specimens from the South Seas went to the Jardin des Plantes.114 Several decades later, the Jardin des Plantes became home to a giraffe given to Charles X by the ruler of Egypt, brought to France by ship and then walked from the Mediterranean coast to Paris to the amazement and delight of the public. The celebrated animal, which inspired a vogue for giraffe motifs in clothing and design, lived peacefully in the gardens until its death in the 1840s.115 Travellers and colonials returned to France with living specimens for zoos, though Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier estimate that half of the animals died during the voyages to Europe. Because young animals could generally be captured in the nineteenth century only by killing their mothers (and often other members of a herd), perhaps ten animals died for each one eventually deposited into a European zoo.116 Bringing animals back was arduous and expensive; shipping an elephant from India meant provisions of

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1000 kilograms of hay, 1200 kilograms of bananas, 500 kilograms of sugar cane and 400 kilograms of green vegetables. Nevertheless, many colonials succeeded in transporting animals to Europe; Governor-General Randon and General Jusuf from Algeria and Governor William Ponty of Senegal numbered among luminaries who donated animals. Commissioned expeditions later went in search of animals for exhibition, such as ones sent by the Muséum to Shanghai in 1926 and to Madagascar in 1939–1940, and seven expeditions dispatched to Indochina between 1932 and 1940. Trade in animals – live animals for zoos, preserved specimens for natural history museums, animal parts, from furs to feathers, for decoration – was also a profitable commercial activity. Zoos served both scientific needs and the more materialist exigencies of colonialism: ‘Jusqu’au XXe siècle, le zoo reflète franchement la volonté classificatrice et dominatrice de l’Europe triomphante. Il contribue au pillage-gaspillage de la faune et, voué à l’exhibition des animaux exotiques, s’incrit dans l’épisode colonial commencé au XVe siècle’117 (Down until the twentieth century, the zoo frankly represented triumphant Europe’s desire to classify and dominate. It contributed to the pillage and depletion of fauna, and since it was dedicated to the exhibition of exotic animals, it is inscribed in the colonial effort begun in the fifteenth century). Politically, commercially and culturally, zoos such as the ones in the Jardin des Plantes and the Bois de Vincennes became the ‘vitrine de l’impéralisme triomphant’118 (showcase for triumphant imperialism). Colonialism ended, but zoos endured. Exhibition policies have changed, with increasingly appropriate environments replacing cages, and a more sensitive presentation taking the place of the spine-tingling shows of ferocious beasts and natural oddities. Animals have been liberated from behind bars for enclosure by glass walls or water-filled moats. Contemporary zoos are ‘de moins en moins un laboratoire de domestication du sauvage et de plus en plus la vitrine avancée d’une nature qu’on voudrait côtoyer’119 (are less often a laboratory for the domestication of the savage and increasingly the showcase for a nature that we wish to frequent). Questions about the practice of capturing animals and about dubious trade in rare creatures nevertheless continue to raise concerns. Zoos promote conservation, ecological awareness and appreciation of foreign cultures and environments – ideas that paradoxically originated in the colonial era though they seem a contradiction of colonialists’ pillaging of the natural world and display of the living booty of conquest. For Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier, the modern evolution of zoos parallels decolonisation and neo-colonialism.120 The Jardin des Plantes and Muséum and their fellow institutions, the Musée de l’Homme, Jardin d’acclimatation and former Jardin Colonial, as well as the Vincennes zoo, are legacies of the links between science and empire, natural history and expansion. Evident in their histories are evolving perspectives on exotic species of flora, fauna, humans: the desire to classify and study, to collect and exhibit, to dominate and domesticate foreign

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creatures. Ironically, these sites, now less evidently marked as vestiges of the colonial era than many others, constitute some of the most vivid reminders of the ideologies and practices of imperialism.

Colonial flâneries in the French capital In addition to these ‘colonial’ quartiers, a flâneur can discover many other colonial vestiges in Paris. At 184 Boulevard Saint-Germain, for instance, is the Société de Géographie, an institution closely associated with expansion. Founded in 1821 to sponsor expeditions and diffuse geographical knowledge, by the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was closely involved with colonialism through expedition subsidies, lectures and publications. Such prominent colonialists as Paul Crampel, Auguste Pavie, Louis Gentil, Lyautey and the writer Charles Lemire received its coveted awards. The society inaugurated its current building – the façade appropriately ornamented with a globe and two caryatids representing the earth and the oceans – during the Exposition Universelle of 1878. The ground floor contained meeting and reception rooms; the president’s office and boardroom occupied the first floor; on the second and third were the library. As books, maps and other documents multiplied with the boom in geography, the society acquired an adjacent building but it proved too expensive to maintain. The society then rented the townhouse of Prince Roland Bonaparte, who left his own large library to the geographers in 1924. When the townhouse’s new owner, the Suez canal company – whose founder, Ferdinand de Lesseps, had once been president of the geographical society – ungraciously ended the lease in the 1940s, the society’s library moved to the Bibliothèque Nationale.121 The society has stayed in its Saint-Germain location, though by the 1980s it rented floors to a business school and a bookshop. The floor that the society still occupies contains memorabilia ranging from Bougainville’s sedan-chair and a pair of Livingstone’s eyeglasses to pictures of René Caillié and Brazza. Behind another neo-classical façade, this one in the Rue La Pérouse, is the Académie des sciences d’Outre-Mer, founded in 1922 as the Académie coloniale. As its name indicates, the academy promoted research and interest in the empire, and election as members rewarded those who had rendered service to the colonies, making the academy a colonialist equivalent of the Institut de France. Since 1923, the academy has published a journal, Mondes et cultures; among other publications are biographical dictionaries of colonial administrators. In 1943 the academy bought its present home near the Arc de Triomphe. The decor of the eighteenth-century building is neither colonial nor Orientalist, but the foyer contains a bust of Pavie, watercolours of former colonies decorate the stairway and the assembly room features busts of Brazza and other colonial dignitaries. The academy contains a library of 60,000 volumes

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and 1000 journals as well as photographs, postcards and manuscripts, a depository of colonial documentation in an institution that continues to promote study of the former French domains in a post-colonial world. The academy members, many of them former administrators in the empire, constitute a living, if aging, memory of the colonial era. Religious edifices – which will be discussed in more detail in a later chapter – also bear colonial traces, none more so than the Notre-Dame des Missions church, created in a blend of Indochinese and Moorish style for the 1931 exhibition and reconstructed in the suburbs. The Société des Missions Etrangères in the Rue du Bac contains the seminary, church and archives of a missionary society founded in the 1600s, while a salle des martyrs preserves relics of martyrs. Paintings commemorate missionary work in the churches of Saint-Sulpice and Saint-François-Xavier, and a chapel is dedicated to Père de Foucauld in Saint-Augustin. ‘Mission des Iles’ is emblazoned on the Marist order’s Paris headquarters in the Rue de Vaugirard. The church of Notre-Dame du Liban in the Rue d’Ulm was built in the 1880s as part of a Foyer Franco-libanais, and parishioners of the Melkite Saint-Julienle-Pauvre in the Latin Quarter descend from migrants from French-mandated Syria. In the Boulevard Arago is the Protestant Société des Missions Evangéliques. Museums will also be the subject of later chapters in this study. Suffice it to say that Paris’s museums great and small present a panorama of colonial history. Orientalist paintings and other works inspired by the colonies – from Ingres and Delacroix to Matisse and Gauguin – hang in the Musée du Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay. The Musée de l’Homme has vast collections from former colonies now destined, like the collections of the Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, to enter the planned Quai Branly museum. The Musée des Années Trente in suburban Boulogne-Billancourt contains an unparalleled collection of colonialist art. Masterpieces of Asian art, many from Indochina, are displayed at the recently renovated Musée Guimet. The Institut du Monde Arabe has hosted exhibitions on French painters in North Africa. Indeed few museums lack some trace of colonial history: a painting of a distant landscape, a trophy brought back from an expedition, a collection put together during the imperial heyday or a display on someone with a colonial career. Museums also illustrate the intertwined history of metropole and colonies. A case in point is the one in Montparnasse dedicated to the Liberation of Paris and to Marshal Leclerc de Hauteclocque, which traces the career of one of France’s military heroes. Leclerc had many colonial connections. He was a military instructor in Morocco in the late 1920s, played a key role in rallying troops to the Free French in Cameroon and Gabon in 1940, and recaptured the Fezzan region of Libya from Mussolini’s troops. The armoured division Leclerc formed in Morocco liberated Paris and Strasbourg. Leclerc was subsequently appointed head of the force dispatched to re-establish

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control over Indochina, though authorities undermined his efforts because of disapproval of Leclerc’s conciliatory approach to Vietnamese nationalists. Appointed inspector of French forces in North Africa, Leclerc died there in an aircraft accident in 1947. A state funeral in Paris followed, and the museum-memorial in Montaparnasse was opened on the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation of Paris. Administration, military and missionary activities, and colonial-inspired art and science have left numerous traces on Paris. The world of colonial business is not so visible, perhaps because of the fission and fusion of companies or their closure with decolonisation. Business played a considerable role – some argue the essential role – in the colonies yet has left few evident vestiges in the capital of the empire. In 1907, the Compagnie générale transatlantique, one of the largest shipping lines serving the colonies, constructed a six-storey building at the corner of the Rue Auber and the Rue des Mathurins. The building had two separate ticket offices, a prominent one for regular passengers, a more discreet one for migrants. The former was decorated with bronze figures of Mercury and a helmeted woman, a map of the world, and a large model ship in the window. Atop the façade were advertising signs such as ‘Passez l’hiver en Algérie’ (Spend the winter in Algeria).122 The building now bears no trace of the company. Another major shipping firm, the Compagnie des Messageries maritimes, built headquarters at the corner of the Rue de Sèze and the Rue Vignon; the name figured in a shield with a mermaid and Nepture.123 The building, however, similarly shows no signs of its previous occupant. The best-known colonial financial institution, the Banque de l’Indochine, had its headquarters at 26 Boulevard Hussmann in the early 1920s.124 Its name is engraved above the main entry to the 1920s building, still a bank; a statue of Buddha surmounts the door into the main hall. Finally, famous and less well-known colonials lie at rest in Paris, from Lyautey and Eboué grandly entombed, respectively, in the Invalides and Panthéon to others buried more modestly in the various cemeteries around the city. The most famous, Père Lachaise, also has a ‘carré musulman’, a small precinct set aside for Muslim graves; the tiny Islamic chapel built there in 1856 has since disappeared. Other places silently and invisibly recall the colonies: the halls of universities where they studied, the former premises of colonial institutes and lobby groups, the Académie Française whose members included Loti, Lyautey and other colonials. In the Palais Bourbon and the Palais du Luxembourg, parliamentarians debated on colonial policy. In the Rue Fresnel is the apartment where the exiled Vietnamese Emperor Bao-Daï lived until his death in 1997. The Esplanade des Invalides was the site of the state funeral in 1935 of Governor-General and Madame Renard, killed when their aeroplane crashed in the Congo. The Mabillon and Old Navy cafés in the Boulevard Saint-Germain provided rallying-points for French supporters of Algerian

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independence. Colonial troops marched along the Champs-Elysées at national celebrations, just as the Foreign Legion troops still do on Bastille Day. The presence of African, West Indian and American blacks haunts Paris noir. Black performers created a vogue for art nègre in the 1920s at the Moulin Rouge and the Folies-Bergère, the Lido and the Théâtre des ChampsElysées, jazz musicians popularised the Club du Vieux Colombier, and the ‘Bal Nègre’ attracted dancers to the Boulevard Blanqui. Black boxers fought at the Cirque d’Hiver and athletes trained at the Etoile Noire gym. The first Congrès des écrivains et artistes noirs convened at the Sorbonne in 1956. Black intellectuals gathered at the Rose Rouge cabaret in the Rue de la Harpe in the 1950s. The Présence Africaine bookshop and publisher, located in the Rue des Ecoles since 1960, has been a centre of black culture since its founding in 1947. Immigrant hostels were opened in the 1950s to house workers from countries that were still colonies. Without plaques or monuments, such sites memorialise the presence of Africans throughout the city.125

Vestiges of anticolonialism Traces of anticolonialism and colonial nationalism are less numerous and visible than heroic vestiges of colonialism. The only anticolonial nationalist leaders commemorated in street names are South Americans, such as Simón Bolívar, a figure from the Greek War of independence against the Turks, Botzaris, and Mahatma Gandhi; those who battled French colonialism remain to be honoured. The journalist Albert Londres is the only real French anticolonialist remembered in Paris street nomenclature (and only since 1984), though André Gide, who was highly critical of colonialism, also has his street. Ho Chi Minh lived in the Impasse (now Villa) Compoint in the dix-septième arrondissement in the 1920s, but no plaque recalls his residency. The 1931 anticolonial exhibition took place in the former Soviet pavilion of the 1925 Exposition des Arts décoratifs – now the site of the Communist Party headquarters in the Place du Colonel-Fabien – but there is no marker. There are, however, a few explicitly commemorated sites of anticolonialism. In the Charonne métro station, a plaque reads: ‘Ici le 8 février 1962, au cours d’une manifestation pour la paix en Algérie, 9 travailleuses et travailleurs, des Communistes, des militants de la C.G.T., dont le plus jeune avait 16 ans, sont morts vicitimes de la répression’ (Here, on 8 February 1962, during a demonstration for peace in Algeria, died nine workers, women and men, Communists, CGT activists, the youngest sixteen years old, the victims of repression). The names of those who died follow. In 1962 a large group of protesters had gathered outside the Charonne station to protest against the OAS in Algeria; police opened fire and protestors were killed by bullets or crushed against the closed métro entry. The plaque at Charonne was placed not by government authorities but by the Confédération Générale du Travail and the Communist Party.

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There is also a plaque placed in 2000 on the Quai du Marché-Neuf overlooking the Seine in memory of a demonstration against the war in Algeria: ‘A la mémoire des nombreux Algériens tués lors de la sanglante répression de la manifestation pacifique du 17 octobre 1961.’ The plaque was erected by the Paris municipal government of the Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë in the midst of great controversy. Gaullists voted against the commemoration in the conseil municipal, and many veterans who served in Algeria branded it as an insult. Another anticolonial memorial was unveiled by the Socialist Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, in December 2001. A meeting-room in the Ministry of Education in the Rue de Grenelle was dedicated to Max Marchand and Mouloud Ferraoun, two of six teachers and social workers – three metropolitan Frenchmen, three Algerians – killed by the OAS in Algiers on 15 March 1962 shortly before the ceasefire at the end of the war. The plaque dedicates the room to the men ‘assassinés dans l’exercice de leurs fonctions . . . victimes de leurs engagements pour les valeurs de la République et l’indépendance de l’Algérie dans une relation fraternelle avec la France’ (Assassinated in the performance of their duties . . . victims of their engagement for the values of the Republic and for the independence of Algeria in a fraternal relationship with France). Lang explained that ‘c’est pour nous une façon d’affirmer que cet événement tragique est une authentique page d’histoire. . . . Il ne s’agit pas ici de rouvrir le dossier de la guerre

Photo 9 ‘To the memory of the numerous Algerians killed during the bloody repression of a peaceful demonstration on 17 October 1961’.

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d’Algérie, ni de raviver les conflits et les antagonismes’ (this is a way for us to state that this tragic event formed an authentic page of our history. . . . It is not a question of re-opening the files on the Algerian War or of resurrecting conflicts and antagonisms). He added that the name of the room recalled those who, on both sides of the Mediterranean, worked for the maintenance of cultural links between Europe and North Africa.126 The plaques at the Quai du Marché-Neuf and the Rue de Grenelle may be seen as first steps in a more official – although recent and timid – integration of anti-colonial history into the commemorative landscape. They also indicate a somewhat greater willingness of a few Socialist politicians (compared to those from conservative parties) to address difficult issues and tragic occurrences connected with the colonial past, as seen too in the renaming of the Rue Richepanse and the dedication of the Place Mohammed V and the Place Maurice Audin. However, in the great wealth of street names, plaques, monuments and statues in Paris, these total small change: a sign of continued unease and, in terms of public monuments, a one-sided presentation of the history of overseas expansion. In a variety of architectural, toponymic, monumental and other commemorative ways, the colonies have left indelible traces on the Paris landscape. The vestiges have themselves evolved, just as have attitudes to empire. Erection of triumphalist monuments in the heyday of imperialism symbolised and stimulated imperial fervour; efforts to hide traces of colonialism in the 1960s and 1970s bespoke a bad conscience about the imperialist project. Recent gestures in Paris – the unveiling of plaques to anti-colonial demonstrators, and also to Algerian War veterans – hint at efforts to reflect on and memorialise very different colonial experiences. Present-day issues, such as the future of the Porte Dorée museum, suggest challenges in coming to terms with the legacies of colonialism and in finding appropriate uses for some sites in the patrimony left by imperialism. After the colonies have come and gone, however, the observant flâneur can glimpse the imperial ghosts that still spook the capital of the old French empire.

2 The Colonies in the Provinces

Cities and regions of France were linked to the colonial world in a variety of ways, and national authorities made efforts to promote colonialist sentiment throughout the provinces. As Odile Goerg points out, ‘each province developed its own specific relationship with the empire and communicated its own image of the colonies according to local particularities. The presence of garrisons, special commercial links with lands overseas, the role of political figures, the establishment of missionary societies, local individuals who in some way left their mark on the history of the Empire, the existence of a geographical society: all of these could be the basis for a link with Empire.’1 Exhibitions were one way in which the colonies came home to the provinces, and such exhibitions were held in Lyon in 1894, in Rouen in 1896, in Marseille in 1906 and 1922, in Bordeaux in 1923 and in Strasbourg in 1924. From 1941 to 1944, under the Vichy regime, a special ‘exhibition train’ with displays on the colonial military and colonial careers, agriculture and commerce, art and other themes visited seventy-four cities and towns. Colonial exhibits also appeared at fairs, and throughout the colonial period ‘villages noirs’ – reconstructions of ‘typical’ African villages, complete with imported Africans – drew crowds of spectators to gawk at ‘primitive’ people. One count lists well over fifty exhibitions, ‘villages noirs’ and similar shows held in provincial France from the 1870s to the 1930s.2 Exhibitions, however, were episodic and short-lived, and few material traces remain: temporary buildings were pulled down and displays were disbursed. Many surviving provincial traces will be mentioned in later chapters of this book – museums devoted to famous colonial figures, monuments aux morts, collections of art and artefacts donated to local galleries. Artists often presented their works, and men who had served in the colonies bequeathed collections to hometown museums. Although some war memorials are often predictably erected on battlefields, the location of many other colonial sites is fortuitous, for instance, statues or monuments in the birthplaces of men connected with the colonies, or museum collections in towns where they resided. Reminders of the outre-mer are scattered around France. 76

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They range from the commemorative, such as war memorials, to the commercial, such as a shop in Toulouse called ‘Le Comptoir des colonies’ which sells teak furniture manufactured in Indonesia, and a coffee-house in Colmar called ‘Les Cafés du Bon Nègre’. Museums of fine art and ethnography – to be discussed in later chapters – are packed with colonial memorabilia, but gardens, houses and streetscapes are full of vestiges of the colonial epoch. The mixture of exotic, colonial and foreign is sometimes explicit, at other times only implied. In Menton, the Jardin Tropical de Val Rameh was established in the colonial era as a garden of plants from Africa and other continents. In the Gard, Eugène Mazel, who had made a fortune in trade with Asia, planted a thirty-four-hectare garden of bamboos (and reconstructed Laotian houses) in 1855. He spent so much money, however, that he was ruined, and the Crédit Foncier took over the property. Gaston Nègre acquired the gardens in 1902, and his heirs maintained the bambouseraie, which is still open to the public.3 An ‘Ecovillage Centre Africain Reconstitué’ with huts, canoes, musical instruments, artisanal works and hunting trophies exists in the village of Magny-Cours (Nièvre). A similar African village is located in Blangy-sur-Bresle (Seine-Maritime), reminiscent of the town in Togo with which the commune is twinned. Such sites provided dépaysement for creators and visitors, inevitably recalling the villages noirs constructed for colonial exhibitions. Throughout provincial France, houses and, occasionally, public buildings display exotic styles, often Moorish or Chinese influences. They satisfied the whims of owners, as well as fads for chinoiserie and Orientalism, but the follies sometimes have more specific colonial links. In 1855, Charles Cournault built a Maghrebin-influenced house near Nancy after a meeting with Delacroix inspired a trip to Algeria, where he collected decorations. Cournault sometimes donned a gandourah to read the Koran in his appropriately outfitted rooms. In the Yvelines, Alexandre Dumas in 1847 had a Tunisian artisan fit out a room in his chateau in North African style. One of the engineers on the Suez Canal built a ‘villa mauresque’ in Dieppe, and an ammunitions manufacturer who lived briefly in Morocco constructed a Moorish house in the Oise. Pierre Loti, novelist and navy officer, reconstructed his house in Rochefort to encompass an Islamic ‘mosque’ and Chinese and Japanese rooms, and Marshal Lyautey created similar rooms in his chateau at Thorey: only two of the numerous colonials who added exotic touches to their French residences. Holidays could also inspire exotic architectural or decorative flourishes. Proust’s uncle by marriage, Jules Amiot, erected an Islamic-style pavilion in his garden at Iliers-Combray after visiting his brother and son-in-law in Algeria and also added a hammam and an Oriental salon to his house.4 The Tarascon house of the novelist Alphonse Daudet, author of the colonial satire Tartarin de Tarascon, is a veritable reconstruction of the novel, much of which is set in North Africa. Exhibition buildings could even be recycled – the grand-daughter of one of Napoleon III’s

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finance ministers presented to Courbevoie a Moghul pavilion from the 1878 Paris exhibition.5 Naming streets after colonial heroes and erecting statues honouring them were common ways the landscape was marked in the provinces, just as in the capital. Hometown heroes were particularly remembered – an affirmation of local pride but also of the widespread connection between small communes and the wider colonial world. The colonial great and good were not forgotten. Many towns have streets named Gallieni and Lyautey, and some also commemorate particular colonies or battles. The example of Rouen will suffice. Rouen’s streets form a colonial geography: Alger, Antilles, Canada, Constantine, Madagascar, Mogador, Nouveau Monde, Québec, Tanger and Tunis. There are streets named for Brazza, Camus, Cartier, Cavelier de la Salle (who was born in Rouen), Champlain, Dumont d’Urville, Gallieni, de Lattre de Tassigny and de Lesseps – a lengthy, if somewhat eclectic, colonial roster with an inflection towards the first overseas empire, with which Rouen was closely associated. Other communes in the Rouen conglomeration have streets named for the Duc d’Aumale, Canadiens, Lyautey, La Pérouse, Paul Bert (a leading colonial lobbyist) and Albert Schweitzer. A similar pattern of nomenclature appears in many cities. Street naming often has both political intentions and political implications. For instance, in 1995, Bourges inaugurated the Rue Jean-Marie Tjibaou, named after the assassinated leader of the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, the Melanesian-dominated independence movement in New Caledonia. During his life, Tjibaou was castigated as a dangerous revolutionary by ardent defenders of ‘Calédonie française’. The city’s gesture – with a ceremony attended by Kanak students from Paris – symbolised recognition of the cultural and political leader of what is sometimes considered as one of France’s ‘last colonies’.6 In 2000, the Alsatian village of Timbach named a street after General Bigeard, an officer who served during the Algerian War. Bigeard later admitted to having condoned and practised torture of Algerians, arguing that ‘torturer était nécessaire’ (torture was necessary) and making light of using electric shocks to obtain confessions. The street-naming ceremony, attended by Bigeard, and the favourable coverage given to it by local newspapers prompted a letter of denunciation in Le Monde from academics at the university in Strasbourg. The ‘Rue de la torture’, they said, was ‘une insulte faite à tous les habitants de notre région, à tous les citoyens de ce pays, et plus généralement, une atteinte insupportable à la dignité humaine’7 (an insult to all residents of our region and to the citizens of this country and, in a general sense, an unacceptable attack to human dignity). The gestures of commemoration were similar in Bourges and Timbach, though the interpretations of colonialism were radically different.


All around France are sites specifically connected with the colonies, such as the Maison du Missionnaire established in Vichy in 1922. Henry Watthé, for eleven years a Lazarist priest in China, set up the institution to provide free accommodation for clerics who returned from the missionary field to take a cure in Vichy, whose spas were considered particularly beneficial for treating the ill effects of long residency in the tropics. Watthé affiliated the Maison du Missionnaire with other colonialist organisations and organised regular lectures on the empire – three a week during the season in Vichy. Each missionary hosted by the establishment presented a talk on his work, usually illustrated with photographs or sometimes a film, and Watthé published his autobiographical account of La belle vie du missionaire en Chine. In 1924, he opened a museum in the Maison du Missionnaire. Originally formed of his personal collection, the holdings expanded with gifts from fellow missionaries and included ethnographic art and missionary relics – for instance, a saddle owned by Charles de Foucauld. Three rooms were devoted to the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, and in the 1930s the museum added a reading room. Watthé hoped the Maison du Missionnaire would be an incubator of missionary vocations and a promoter of the colonial message through its museum and lectures: what he called an ‘université coloniale’.8 The Maison du Missionnaire still exists in Vichy and, after several years of closure for reorganisation, in 2002 reopened its museums. On display in eight rooms is a selection of 2700 items, divided into three parts: missionary work in the 1920s and 1930s, and the ethnography of Africa and of Asia; since 2003, the museum has also displayed a collection of musical instruments from around the world. The Maison du Missionnaire remains a reminder of the importance of missionary activities, the missionaries’ practice of collecting ‘native’ objects, and the ways in which the colonies were brought home to and displayed in the provinces. Some regions of France had a pronounced colonial vocation. Several examples will be explored here, though individual sites will be examined in other chapters. The illustrations are the Atlantic seaboard of France, the Mediterranean coastal region and Lyon, with a postscript on a little town in the Vosges and its memorial to the abolition of slavery.

Atlantic port cities Geographically, the Atlantic port cities of western France, such as Le Havre, Honfleur, Nantes, Lorient, La Rochelle and Bordeaux, and cities with river links to the Atlantic, such as Rouen, were favoured for commerce in the Atlantic. Although monumental vestiges of the colonial era were destroyed during the Second World War in several cities, many traces remain. The departmental museum in Rouen has two sculpted panels – inspired by tableaux vivants performed in Rouen for François I in 1527 – illustrating early French trade in Brazil and the logging of Amazon forests. Stonemasons

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added American Indian masks to the decorations of the Rouen cathedral, and similar masks in other Norman churches recall French discovery of ‘redskins’. In Dieppe, a church frieze features three groups of Indians – representing Brazil, Guyana and the West Indies – almost nude except for their feather headdresses, musical instruments and weapons; the Indians move in a procession past a European navigator or ship-builder holding a printed document.9 These cities became the centres for the ‘triangular trade’ linking Europe to Africa and the West Indies and the Americas. Trans-Atlantic and African trade, including the slave trade, enriched the ship-builders and merchants, as evidenced by mansions and public edifices that they constructed, especially during the golden age of trade in the eighteenth century. The slave trade came to an end in the early 1800s, and slavery was definitively abolished in the French empire in 1848, over the opposition of local businessmen who feared for the prosperity of their cities. Several ports renewed their colonial vocation in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Le Havre, for example, a Société de géographie commerciale was established in 1884 to promote international trade; its secretary-general from 1919 to 1922, René-Emile Boissière, joined his brother in an ill-fated effort to develop the desolate Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. A Société d’aide et de protection aux colons was created in 1898, and an Ecole pratique coloniale in 1908. In 1930, the city sent an exhibition on ‘Le Havre, grand port colonial’ to the Grand Palais in Paris, and it was represented at the Paris colonial exhibition the next year. Several prominent colonials, notably General Archinard, hailed from Le Havre, and France’s greatest geographer, André Siegfried, was the son of an Havrais ship-builder. A collection of ethnographical artefacts entered the local museum, relics of voyaging by native sons.10 In Nantes magnificent eighteenth-century townhouses testify to the profits of colonial trade in the 1700s, and keystone carvings of American Indian, African and Asian faces on buildings in the Ile Feydeau show the extent of the city’s trade. The imposing townhouse of Guillaume Grou was built by a slave-trader responsible for one in ten of the slave ships that sailed from Nantes. A church contains the grand tomb of General Lamoricière, one of the conquerors of Algeria – a marble effigy of the officer lies under a baldaquin, his achievements recorded in a Latin inscription. A museum honours Jules Verne, who spent his childhood in the city, and whose works, perhaps more than any other, inspired nineteenth-century dreams of voyages, terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Even with those signs of renewed colonialist fervour, however, the heritage of the slave trade left the heaviest weight, and the darkest stigma, on Nantes. Forty-five per cent of French slave-trading voyages in the eighteenth century were the work of Nantais shippers, making the city France’s most important entrepôt for the slave trade, whose profits provided fortunes for Nantes’s elite.11 Yet, according to Didier Guyvarc’h, the city tried to erase


the shameful past of slave-trading from its collective memory. The threehundredth anniversary of the attachment of the Antilles to France in 1936 contained nothing on slavery. Even the centenary of the abolition of slavery in 1948 produced little discussion of the city’s role in slave-trading, though a visiting minister dared make a public reference to Nantes’s slave-traders. Only a few items in local museums hinted at the slave trade, and a 1951 book on the city, written by a former Governor-General of Indochina, excused slave-trading as ‘anodine’ by comparison with the Soviet transportation of political dissidents to Siberia. Fascination with Nantes’s economic achievements, adds Guyvarc’h, overcame any moral reprobation about the historical bases of its wealth. In 1981, Serge Daget, investigating the history of Nantes and its activities in the slave trade, called on the city to face up to its past with seminars, exhibitions and commemorations, but a change in political parties at the head of the municipal government stanched efforts. Three years later an association formed to commemorate the anniversary of the Code Noir (which, in theory, provided ‘humane’ guidelines for slavers). The municipality refused support, but UNESCO provided funding for a colloquium. Debate became intense in the next several years, partly in connection with council resolutions about naming a street in memory of the Algerian ceasefire of 19 March 1962, with one Communist councillor accusing the mayor, who was opposed, of behaving like his political ancestors the slave-traders. His charges that the government was more interested in protecting its links with apartheid South Africa, and defending economic liberalism, than in re-examining the heritage of slavery were seconded by a local newspaper. In 1984, a new association, ‘Le Triangle d’ébène: Code Noir, esclavage et mémoire nantaise’ was formed; it organised lectures on Africa, published a brochure on slavery and took part in a small public commemoration of emancipation in 1987. Another organisation, Mémoire d’outre-mer, composed of Nantais of West Indian origin, was set up in 1989. From the same year dated the origins of Les Anneaux de la Mémoire – the name an allusion to the shackles that bound slaves. The association spearheaded a major exhibition on slavery that opened in December 1992 and, because of its popularity, was prolonged until May 1994.12 Les Anneaux de la Mémoire confronted Nantais; one chapter of the exhibition catalogue asked ‘Nantes: mémoire ou amnésie autour de la traite?’ (Nantes and the slave trade: memory or amnesia?) Jean-Louis Bodinier emphasised how slave trade ‘impregnated’ all areas of Nantes’s economy and society in the eighteenth century and how, except for a few dissidents, traders justified slavery for both commercial and moral reasons, arguing that slavery was an acceptable price for Africans to pay in exchange for Christianity. Even after the slave trade was outlawed in 1817, Nantes continued to engage in the clandestine shipping and selling of Africans until the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet in this period, ‘la mauvaise

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conscience apparaît, ce qui amène non à nier ce passé . . . mais le plus souvent à l’occulter, plus ou moins complètement, à le refouler dans l’insconcient individuel et collectif’ (a guilty conscience emerged, which caused people not so much to deny this [aspect of] the past . . . but generally and more or less completely to avoid it, and to repress it in their individual and collective unconsciousness). Taking account of this history, however, is ‘un enjeu majeur de la mémoire’13 (a major challenge for [Nantes’s] memory). The exhibition traced the history of slave-trading in Nantes through maps, diagrams, paintings, textiles, art works and documents. Chains and whips used to punish slaves underlined the brutality of slavery. The exhibition featured African objects, including items such as the throne of the West African king Gléglé, brought back as war booty. Household objects, for instance, wardrobes and cabinets made from African or American hardwoods, showed the domestic use of ‘exotic’ materials, while an ebony statuette of an African holding a tray for cigars recalled the vogue in Europe for representations of Africans, generally in quaint or servile fashion. The catalogue highlighted the long-standing commercial and cultural influence of Africa on Europe, and also the heritage of slavery around the world – as evidenced by photographs of tirailleurs sénégalais parading on the ChampsElysées in 1939, of Gaston Monnerville (the black Guyanais president of the French Senate in 1958), and also of the American Black Panther Party. Essays focused on the role of Europeans, including Nantais, in the slave trade, the goods they bought in their triangular expeditions to Africa and America, and the campaign for abolition of slavery. The député and mayor of Nantes, Jean-Marc Ayrault, summarised the aim of the exhibition: ‘Nantes se devait, parce que’elle fut un des principaux ports français du commerce colonial transatlantique, de rappeler la part de l’Afrique et du peuple noir dans la création de la richesse de l’Europe et dans la construction du Nouveau Monde’ (Because it was one of the major transatlantic trading ports in France, Nantes has a duty to remember the place of Africa and of black people in the creation of the wealth of Europe and in the building of the New World). Pierre Combes, the curator of the exhibition, added that the aim was not ‘to accuse or to excuse’ but to document an often ignored aspect of Nantes’s history, and the president of the association that sponsored the exhibition hoped that from this voyage into the memory of the city, Nantes would ‘revienne libérée de ses fantômes’14 (return freed from its ghosts). The exhibition did not avoid controversy, as some members of the Mémoire d’Outre-Mer commented on the use of the exhibition to promote the city’s tourist and economic interests. Disagreements between the two public associations, and with a third group, Regards croisés, illustrated varying European, West Indian and African approaches to slave history and the difficult moral questions it involved, including recognition of ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘genocide’.15 However, the exhibition represented the first significant effort by a municipality and a large museum to confront


the history of slavery. Mémoires d’Outre-Mer maintains a library, including a collection on the history of slavery, publishes an annual journal, commemorates the abolition of slavery, and undertakes aid projects in Senegal.16 Les Anneaux de la Mémoire has promoted the design of displays on slavery for the revamped Musée du Château des Ducs de Bretagne. Its current president, Jean Breteau, estimates that schools, museums and other public institutions still devote too little attention to slavery. He laments that plaques in Nantes, including the one on the Grou mansion, make no reference to slavery and, indeed, ‘rien à Nantes ne rappelle l’histoire de l’esclavage de manière explicite’ (nothing in Nantes explicitly marks the history of slavery). The 1992 exhibition, however, he judges, represents a step forward, especially since ‘certaines villes en sont encore au stade de l’amnésie ou de la censure’17 (certain cities are still at the stage of amnesia or censorship). Other Atlantic cities also have a troubled history of involvement in the slave trade.18 Among them is Bordeaux, another port with a long history of overseas trade, where the attitude towards the slave-trading past, according to Jean-Jacques Quesada, is ‘le déni de quatre siècles d’histoire’19 (the denial of four centuries of history). Christine Chivallon, who has compared the memory of slavery in Bordeaux and Bristol, finds that Bordeaux covered its slaving past in silence and continues to suffer from historical ‘amnesia’. The publication of a book on Bordeaux, port négrier in 1995 did not create a true public prise de conscience. An exhibition, ‘Regards sur les Antilles’, held at the Musée d’Aquitaine in 1999, featured six hundred items collected by a doctor who had worked in Guadeloupe and Guyane, and presented a panorama of West Indian society. One room evoked the slave trade, the first time an exhibition had raised the issue. In a similar situation to Nantes, showing the difficulty of consensus on commemoration of slavery, three public interest groups have lobbied for greater recognition of Bordeaux’s role in slave trade, but the groups divide on aims, clienteles and politics. One group, however, succeeded in 2000 in having a plaque placed on the Bordeaux grave of Toussaint Louverture’s wife and child, and another organised an annual ‘Mémorial de la Traite’ demonstration, rare public acknowledgements of the role of slavery in Bordeaux’s history.20 Traces of the colonial era are visible in several Bordeaux museums (and the contemporary art museum is a former warehouse for products from the colonies). The Musée d’Aquitaine’s exhibition on Aquitaine and the Antilles points out that the city’s trade with the West Indies produced over 40 per cent of the taxes France earned from colonial commerce in the decade before the Revolution. Samples of cotton, spices, coffee, sugar and textiles, and objects associated with these products illustrate the range of commodities. An engraving of Europeans in Africa shows traders unloading alcohol in exchange for ivory and parrots; others picture slaves being traded on Gorée island and corporal punishment inflicted on slaves. The journal of a slavetrader, arms and shackles point to Bordeaux’s role in the slave trade, while

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the drawing of a mask designed to keep slaves from committing suicide by eating dirt comes from the anti-slavery campaign. Another section in the museum focuses on Bordeaux’s links with other overseas places, and displays a selection of the three thousand ethnographic items donated to the museum mostly in the late 1800s: Melanesian masks and sculptures, Polynesia tapa cloth and weapons, African musical instruments and carvings. Yet another room looks at trade in the Mediterranean and Orientalism. It includes the cabinet of curiosities of Edouard Bonie, a Bordelais shipper who also served for twelve years as a magistrate in Algeria. Tea chests, jade and porcelain show Bordeaux’s links with Asia. Paintings throughout the museum portray both ‘native’ scenes and Bordeaux’s colonial trade. A set of colonialist paintings on zinc completed by Robert Cami, a professor at Bordeaux’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts, was first shown at the Paris exhibition of 1937: Asians harvest rice, a helmeted African rides a horse, nubile Africans present themselves to the viewer. Another painting is Frédéric Marius de Buzon’s huge scene of the port of Bordeaux, its docks peopled with hieratic figures representing Africa, Asia and Oceania, and ‘natives’ bearing birds, fruits and jars. A curious electric automat, made for a Bordeaux soap factory, shows a black figure washing with Savon La Perdrix. Works in other city museums trace Bordeaux’s varied colonial ties. At the Musée des Beaux-Arts, visitors see Louis-Théodore Devilly’s picture of the battle of Sidi-Brahim in 1859, where French soldiers fought against Abd el-Kader, and Stanislas Gorin’s work showing the defeated Abd el-Kader and his retinue, escorted by French officers, embarking at Bordeaux, probably headed for exile in Syria. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs contains various objects of chinoiserie or Orientalism, and in 2002 held an exhibition on Delacroix and Moroccan decorative arts, including several works painted by Delacroix held by Bordeaux museums and objects from Bonie’s collection. The Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, like many other such museums, has a wealth of now rather moth-eaten stuffed animals from around the world, including an African elephant destined for Paris, but which died on board a ship in Bordeaux in 1879. Museums in Bordeaux thus preserve a scattered record of colonialism and the role played by the city in international trade. Though several give relatively sparse historical context for natural history collections or Orientalist art, the Musée d’Aquitaine provides an overview of Bordeaux’s colonial links. In these museums the emphasis lies on the history of Bordeaux and its region and the patrimony left by colonial interests, a reminder of the axis binding particular regions and colonies and of the role of the empire in municipal development.

Lyon Lyon historically has some of the longest and closest ties with the non-Western world of any provincial city, especially in trade and missionary activity – the


classic ‘commerce and Christianity’ of European expansion. From the late 1500s the Jesuit College in Lyon provided the main force for Catholic evangelisation in the Far East, and for the subsequent influence of Asia on the Rhône capital. In 1571 one of the first major European works on Asia was published in Lyon, followed by pioneering books on China, Japan and Vietnam, including Alexandre de Rhodes’s Histoire du Tonkin – the French missionary in Vietnam had family connections in Lyon. In the early 1800s a Lyonnais, Pauline Jaricot, promoted post-Revolutionary renewal of Catholicism, leading to the establishment of the Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi (Propaganda Fide), which until its transfer to Rome in 1922, made Lyon the centre of the missionary movement. In 1836 a Lyonnais priest, Joseph Colin, set up the Société de Marie to proselytise the ‘heathen’. Missionaries soon left for Oceania, and the Marists would become one of the most active missionary orders. Twenty years later, Bishop de Marion Brésillac established the Société des Missions Africaines (SMA) to evangelise black Africa. Other orders based in Lyon were also important in Asia, Africa and Oceania, and from 1800 until 1962, over a thousand missionaries departed from Lyon for the wider world. Such fervour was celebrated in a congress and exhibition in 1932.21 The missionary groups vaunted their achievements in several museums – in 1863 the Société des Missions Africaines inaugurated a display on Africa, and the Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi opened a two-in-one museum in 1888, one room dedicated to missionary relics, the other to ethnographic items.22 Lyonnais also boasted commercial achievements, especially with the development of the silk industry. Lyon from the eighteenth century was the centre of French silk production, but by the mid-1800s manufacturers felt the need to travel to the East to gather information and technical skills and to establish trading networks. Delegations were dispatched to Asia regularly from the 1840s, and by the 1860s Lyonnais had obtained concessions in China and Japan. Ulysse Pila (1837–1909), a leader of the silk industry, travelled to Shanghai and Yokohama and made the Lyon Chamber of Commerce one of the major advocates for French expansion in Asia. He and the Chamber of Commerce supported missions by Captain Bonnevay to Indochina in 1865 and Paul Brunat to Tonkin in 1884–1885, important steps to the acquisition of colonies in Indochina and penetration of southern China. Though London eventually replaced Lyon as the centre of the European silk trade with the Far East, Lyon retained substantial interests, especially with the new French possessions in Indochina.23 By the late nineteenth century, Lyon displayed the colonies in various venues, including the missionary museums. A particularly well-stocked natural history museum traced its origins to a cabinet of curiosities set up by Baltasar de Monconys, who travelled to Egypt and the Middle East in the early 1600s. Eventually the collection became the property of the city, complete in the 1770s with four crocodiles, snakeskins, elephant bones and the

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tooth of a ‘monster’. A century later, despite the addition of thousands of articles each year, the museum was in a state of dilapidation until new directors undertook renovation. In 1879, the natural history museum meanwhile had created an anthropology section, with items from Oceania, Africa and Asia Minor, including ones collected by Emile Guimet, as well as dioramas and human remains.24 Emile Guimet (1836–1918) developed an abiding interest in the East and with a fortune made from production of a blue dye developed by his father, he had the means to indulge his passion. He travelled in Egypt and the Mediterranean, then in 1876 journeyed to Japan, China and India, where he became enamoured of Asian cultures. In 1878 Guimet organised a Congrès régional des Orientalistes, exhibited objects he had brought back from Asia, organised lectures by visiting Japanese and published a book of Promenades japonaises. Guimet then established a museum of Asian art, inaugurated in 1879 by Jules Ferry, a key figure in French imperialism in Asia. Townspeople disappointed Guimet with lack of enthusiasm for his museum: Lyonnais were perhaps more interested in trading with and evangelising Asians than studying their culture. In 1885 Guimet moved most of his collection to Paris, where the Musée Guimet now counts among the world’s foremost museums of Asian art.25 If Lyon did not respond with ardour to Guimet’s collections in the 1880s, in the next decade the city developed a more decided colonial vocation. In 1894 Lyon hosted one of the first colonial exhibitions in France with the participation of the missionary orders, the Chamber of Commerce, silk merchants and the local geographical society. Set up in 1873 the Lyon geographical society joined similar societies in lobbying for overseas expansion and in 1900, it began offering courses on China. The initiative resulted in the establishment in Lyon of an Ecole Coloniale, primarily to train agents for Asia. The same year, the Chamber of Commerce turned over a wing of its building to an exhibition of colonial products, commodities that Europeans sold in Asia and Africa, and ethnographic art. In 1922, the Chamber of Commerce decided to open a larger, permanent colonial museum, which was inaugurated by Edouard Daladier two years later in the Hôtel des Monnaies, next door to the Ecole Coloniale. The museum and school were meant to be symbiotic, displays stimulating young people to enroll in classes. The new museum soon had competition. Edouard Herriot, the mayor of Lyon, inspired by his visit to the 1922 colonial fair in Marseille and disappointed by what he judged as the lack of ambition and success of the Chamber of Commerce museum, planned a municipal colonial museum. The project was duly agreed by the city council and the museum opened near the old Guimet museum in 1927 with a collection based on items from the 1922 exhibition. Although the two museums displayed the same sort of materials, they maintained a different focus. The Chamber of Commerce’s museum (which closed in 1946) stressed


Lyon’s links with the wider world, while the municipal museum (which remained open until 1968) took a more national French perspective.26 Further international interest in Lyon was shown by an Institut Franco-Chinois, opened in 1921 with support from Herriot and from a Lyon député and future Colonial Minister, Marius Moutet; down to 1946, it provided bridging courses for 473 Chinese students who then entered French universities. What remains of these colonial activities in Lyon? The Muséum d’histoire naturelle retains part of Guimet’s collection and other items gathered during the colonial period in a small exhibition on ‘Hommes du monde’. An Asian section includes a reconstructed Chinese room with statues of lions and goddesses as well as carved screens made for a 1910 Anglo-Japanese exhibition, shown in the Guimet museum in Paris in 1911, and transferred to Lyon the following year. Among other Asian pieces are Ching dynasty ivory, a carved naga from Vietnam, a Thai Buddha, Cambodian sculptures in the style of Angkor Wat and Champa art. A model of the Baion temple at Angkor Thom was made by a French soldier, Captain Filoz. Buddhist busts from Afghanistan were collected by a French expedition in the 1920s. Indian miniatures come from the collection of the Oeuvre pour la Propagation de la Foi. Another section displays African masks and statues collected in the 1930s. An Oceanic vitrine contains a Kanak necklace made of human teeth, though a label notes that a tattooed human head from New Zealand has been removed, and there is a display of artefacts from Madagascar. One Malagasy musical instrument, a valiha, was first displayed at a Marseille colonial exhibition in 1906, and a zither from Indochina was shown at an exhibition in Hanoi in 1902 – indications of the ways in which items are recycled from one exhibition and museum to another. The ‘colonial’ exhibition in the Muséum d’histoire naturelle is reminiscent of an old-fashioned cabinet of curiosities with an assortment of items collected during the imperial heyday: a mini-museum of the spirit of colonial collecting.27 The Société des Missions Africaines, in 1863, set up an exhibition in its mother-house of ethnographic objects brought back from overseas as well as photographs and publications documenting the missionaries’ activities. One room was devoted to Egypt and Africa, a second to natural history, another to African ‘fetishism’ (contrasted with the ‘true faith’), and a final one to the relics of missionaries. The exhibition won medals during an 1894 colonial exhibition and again in 1900. With the conflict surrounding the separation of church and state in the first years of the twentieth century, the museum was temporarily closed but reopened in 1920. Several priests took a particular interest in the museum, among them Jean-Marie Chabert, for whom ‘les collections exposées sont destinées à faire connaître nos missions et les peuples chez lesquels nous travaillons. Elles rendront plus tard de réels services à ceux qui s’occupent de sciences missiologiques. L’intérêt scientifique de ce musée ne peut nous échapper, car il peut donner à notre Société la notoriété dont elle a besoin en Europe’ (the collections on display are

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intended to make known our missions and the people among whom we work. In due course, they will be of real service to those who study the missiological sciences. The scientific interest of this museum does not elude us because it may give to our society the reputation that it needs in Europe). Another priest, Francis Aupiais, a missionary in Dahomey (Benin), returned to France in 1926 with thirty cases of objects for the museum. Aupiais’s focus differed slightly from that of his colleague: ‘Notre programme est de faire connaître les religions traditionelles, les coutumes du pays, tout ce qui se rapporte à l’histoire locale, de prouver que les indigènes possèdent un grand fond de sentiments et d’idéaux élevés’28 (Our brief is to make known the traditional religions, the customs of the country and everything that relates to local history, and to prove that the indigenous people possess a store of elevated feelings and ideals). In 1927, when the SMA moved into different premises, a larger museum was established with displays of both non-Western art and missionary mementos. The focus remained evangelical accomplishments, despite Aupiais’s anthropological interests. For instance, a diorama of fetish serpents from Ouida, Benin: ‘Tandis que celui-ci baigne dans l’ombre vénéneuse d’un ficus gigantesque, [la cathédrale à côté] dresse dans l’azur d’un ciel clair sa façade inondée de soleil. Image symbolique dont le sens éclate: à ceux qui dormaient dans les ténèbres de la mort, l’Eglise, mère de vérité, apporte la lumière’29 (While they lie in the venomous shade of a giant fig-tree, [the near-by cathedral] raises its sun-bathed façade into the clear blue sky. The meaning of this symbolic image is striking: to those sleeping in the shadows of death, the Church, mother of truth, brings light). As the years passed, the presentation seemed increasingly dated. From 1975 to 1979, the Musée Africain was closed, to reopen with exhibitions emphasising cultures in their environments modelled on the then innovative Musée national des arts et traditions populaires in Paris. (Zoological collections and an Egyptian gallery were removed.) It closed once more at the millenium, reopening in 2001 after a ‘restructuration complète, avec un nouveau concept’ (complete restructuring with new concepts) of 138 vitrines displaying 2126 objects. The metamorphosis from a hagiographical display of missionary endeavours to African culture seems almost complete. The current aims are outlined in the SMA’s magazine: ‘donner à l’Afrique une vitrine pour mieux se faire connaître et apprécier dans le monde multiculturel, donner aux Lyonnais... de découvrir les richesses culturelles de l’Afrique, offrir aux chercheurs et aux étudiants un instrument de travail de qualité pour poursuivre leurs investigations, offrir enfin aux personnes issues de l’immigration un espace où elles pourront facilement retrouver et transmettre quelque chose de leurs origines’30 (to give Africa a showcase so that it may be better known and appreciated in a multicultural world, to allow Lyonnais to discover the cultural wealth of Africa, and to offer to those who are a product of immigration a space where they can readily rediscover and pass on something of their origins). The extension of the museum’s mandate to descendents of


migrants is a sign of the times for both missionaries and curators, and a reflection of Lyon’s multi-culturalism. The first level of the museum is devoted to ‘la vie quotidienne’ of Africans, particularly in western Africa: the roles of men, women and children, and the activities of ironmongers, weavers, sculptors and other artisans. The second level is given over to ‘la vie sociale’, trade, politics, cultural activities (especially music) and foreign contacts. The third level focuses on religious life, both indigenous beliefs and Christianity. Exhibition labels and the guidebook commentary emphasise the variety and richness of African cultures, and the complexity of its political and commercial networks. African culture, it stresses, is changing and vibrant. Masks, sculptures and other items, says the guide, are all invested with functional, cultural and often religious meanings. Before the arrival of Christianity, Africans believed in a single god, it affirms, although devotions were directed towards various spirits and carried out in diverse ceremonies. The impact of the outside world reaches far back into African history, and if certain influences from Islam and the West ‘ont été bien assimilées, d’autres ont provoqué des bouleversements et des traumatismes indélébiles . . . L’occupation coloniale modifia profondément la carte du continent et provoqua la déstabilisation, semble-t-il définitive, des sociétés traditionnelles’ (were easily assimilated, others provoked indelible shocks and traumas. . . . Colonial occupation profoundly changed the map of the world and brought about a seemingly definitive destabilisation of traditional societies). ‘Les missions chrétiennes’, adds the commentary, ‘prirent leur essor dans le cadre de l’entreprise coloniale: leur situation n’était donc pas sans ambiguïté’31 (Christian missions developed in the context of the colonial enterprise; their position was thus not without ambiguity). The SMA museum concentrates on African culture, though vitrines provide only summary details of the geographical location or provenance of the objects displayed. A remarkable variety is on exhibit – agricultural implements, arms, works in iron, bronze and gold, leather goods, coins and weights, masks and statues, textiles, pottery and ceremonial items. The history of European involvement with Africa is also evoked. In the entry to the museum building stands a statue of Monseigneur de Marion Brésillac, the SMA’s founder, and of Father Augustin Planque, its first superiorgeneral, a map of SMA missions in western Africa, and several pieces of African furniture. A carved wooden door depicts a pith-helmeted colonist going on a hunt, accompanied by African porters. In the museum, one vitrine is devoted to the ‘imaginaire colonial’ with a picture of another tropically attired Frenchman and fez-wearing porters. A vitrine on ‘art colonial’ displays an ivory chalice, and a chessboard, rosary and porte-couteaux carved by Africans; liturgical vestments and utensils are decorated with African designs. A Fon sculpture shows an African bishop and African priests in a boat, an ‘allégorie de l’Eglise’ (allegory of the Church). Brass sculptures

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include several representing Senegalese soldiers. An engraved ostrich egg is labelled a ‘souvenir affectueux des Chrétiens de Porto-Novo’ (a beloved souvenir from Porto-Novo), and a carved coconut shell is dedicated to Father Aupiais. Wooden Yoruba sculptures portray colonists, and a carved door shows a horseman, probably General Marchand, who conquered the Baoulé region of the Ivory Coast. In the remnants of the Musée Guimet and the renovated Musée Africain, Lyon retains a colonial memory. Elsewhere in the city survive other recollections of the colonial age. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs contains silks from Asia and Egypt, and textiles with Chinese motifs; one vitrine displays a report on an 1885 Lyon silk manufacturers’ delegation to Yunnan. In the Montée Balmont a plaque commemorates twenty-seven African soldiers killed by Germans on 20 June 1940. Nearby stands a monument aux morts erected in 1927 in Algeria, in memory of the 12,500 soldiers from the Oran département killed in the First World War – a sculpture by Albert Pommier of two French poilus and a North African wearing a fez. After the independence of Algeria, the monument was ‘repatriated’ to Lyon, which Herriot, whose parents were buried in Oran, had twinned with the North African city; the ‘repatriated’ monument was re-erected in 1968 in the Duchère quartier in a ceremony attended by French military officials, veterans and pieds-noirs. To the original inscription of ‘La Ville d’Oran à ses enfants morts pour la France (The City of Oran to its children who died for France). 1914–1918, 1939–1945’ was added: ‘En souvenir de leur terre natale, la ville de Lyon à ses enfants d’Afrique du Nord qu’elle a accueillis’ (In memory of their native land, the city of Lyon to those from North Africa whom it welcomed). Several months later, another ceremony heralded the Journée du Souvenir et de la Fidélité, attended by General Jouhaud and the Bachaga Boualem, a pro-French Algerian who served in the late 1950s as vice-president of the French Assemblée Nationale.32 Elsewhere in Lyon is a statue, also ‘repatriated’ from North Africa, of Sergeant Blandan, a Lyonnais who gained fame in Algeria in 1842.33 Throughout the city, street names also pay tribute to colonies and colonials – streets named Algérie, Amériques, Canada, Constantine and Oran, Hanoi, Isly, Martinique, others that bear the names of Albert Camus, Admiral Courbet, Bugeaud, the novelist Claude Farrère, Colonel Lamy, the African explorers Marchand and Gentil and the South Pacific explorer Dumont d’Urville, Marshals de Lattre de Tassigny and Lyautey, Generals Gallieni, Giraud, Gouraud and Faidherbe, the corsaire Jean Bart, the naturalist Pierre Poivre – an eighteenth-century Lyonnais who botanised in the Indian Ocean – and Victor Schoelcher. A bridge, in a gesture of Anglo-French rapprochement, is named for Kitchener and Marchand in remembrance of their encounter at Fashoda in 1898. Other street names pay tribute to the Combattants d’Indochine, the Combattants d’Afrique Française du Nord, the 14e Régiment de Zouaves and Bachaga Boualem.34 Such markers of the colonial epoch are perhaps not particularly noticed by most Lyonnais. However, an exhibition entitled ‘Quand les Lyonnais


découvraient l’Extrême-Orient’, held at the municipal library in 1995, and an exhibition on the international spread of Catholicism from Lyon, held the following year, provided pertinent reminders of Lyon’s colonial connections.

The colonial Midi Southern France, particularly areas close to the Mediterranean coast, always had close connections with the French empire, developed through proximity to French North Africa, trade between such ports as Marseille and colonial capitals and the garrisoning of troops at Toulon and Fréjus, the coming and going of traders and administrators, and the movement of migrants to and from Europe. Authorities were proud of their self-appointed colonial vocation, pointing out real or constructed similarities between southern France and North Africa, and using colonial expansion as a source for developing local economies and gaining political clout. With decolonisation, many rapatriés from North Africa settled in the Midi, as did large numbers of travailleurs immigrés from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. Parts of the Midi have subsequently witnessed many of the problems associated with France’s adaptation to communities of overseas origin – violence, discrimination and the rise of extremist and xenophobic political groups. Southern cities and towns contain some of the most obvious mementos of France’s colonial past, and perhaps in the Midi colonial memory is most nourished. For instance, in Théoule-sur-Mer, an association of pieds-noirs, forty years after the French left Algeria, have erected a twelve-metre-high statue of Notre-Dame d’Afrique next to a bell-tower containing an urn of soil from cemeteries in Algeria and a bell ‘repatriated’ from North Africa. Described as a ‘hommage à Marie, Notre Dame d’Afrique rendu par tous ses enfants, Chrétiens ou non d’Afrique du Nord et particulièrement ceux d’Algérie’ (a homage to Mary, Our Lady of Africa, given by her children, whether Christian or not, from North Africa and especially from Algeria), the monument, according to the association responsible, was constructed ‘par une communauté déracinée et dispersée’ (by a deracinated and scattered community). Donors are now invited to subscribe for plaques on which can be inscribed the name of anyone who wishes to ‘marquer son appartenance à cette longue cohorte de pionniers qui ont participé à l’oeuvre civilisatrice de la France dans ses territoires et départements d’Outre-mer’ (signify their belonging to this large cohort of pioneers who took part in the exemplary civilising work of France in its overseas territories and départements). Over a thousand names have been recorded.35 The memory of ‘lost’ colonies has not disappeared and with such gestures has been preserved and revivified. An affiliated organisation, which commemorates the Français d’Algérie killed by French troops in a demonstration in Algiers after the ceasefire of 19 March 1962, expresses pride in being allowed to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Paris in 2002. The abiding resentments of some pieds-noirs about their departure from Algeria and reception in

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France – including lack of state support for their commemorative efforts such as the Théoule site – is expressed in a message on the website: ‘Il ne sert à rien de se lamenter et attendre de ceux qui ont provoqué ou participé à notre déracinement un regret ou une aide quelconque.’36 (It serves no purpose to bewail and to expect any sort of regret or aid from those who provoked or participated in our uprooting [from Algeria]). The Mediterranean port of Marseille considered itself the ‘porte de l’Orient’(gateway to the East); such, indeed, is the title of an 1869 painting by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes in a local museum. The Marseille Chamber of Commerce, established in the 1500s, avidly pursued trade across the Mediterranean long before France took control of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. In the nineteenth century, Marseille was the great entrepôt for colonial products, especially those from North Africa: its Vieux Port busy with ships unloading exotic wares, and teeming with Arabs, Africans and Asians along the famous Canebière. Marseille organised a major colonial exhibition in 1906, and another in 1922, shows that did much to stimulate the colonial spirit, and the Chamber of Commerce set up a museum to enshrine the city’s and the country’s colonial mission.37 No city indeed was so connected with the colonies as was Marseille and, as elsewhere in France, street names point to the colonial connections; the dates at which they were given give an indication of particular moments of imperialist fervour or commemoration. Soon after the French entry into North Africa, Marseille created a Rue d’Alger in 1833, and other Algerian place-names followed conquests: Blidah in 1843, Isly (one of Bugeaud’s battles) and Oran in 1855, Bône in 1899. Around the turn of the century, Asian colonies appeared in the nomenclature, and the establishment of a protectorate in Morocco was saluted with a street name in 1912. In 1926, soon after the Marseille colonial exhibition and at the apogee of colonial promotion, there was a whole list of new names: Aboukir, Annam, Beyrouth, Biskra, Casablanca, Dahomey, Haiphong, Haiti, Hanoi and on to Soudan and Tonkin. Eventually streets commemorated a raft of explorers, officials such as Lyautey and Eboué, and Provencal figures, including Etienne Marchand – a La Ciotat sailor who was the first Frenchman in the Marquesas Islands. After the Second World War, Marseille honoured the Goumiers, the Spahis and the Septième-Tirailleurs-Algériens who took part in the liberation of the city. In the 1960s settlement of rapatriés in the SaintThyn quartier gave the names Notre-Dame d’Afrique, Corps Expéditionnaire Français, Général-Weygand and Cardinal-Lavigerie to streets, and a military group promoted the naming of the Rue Sidi-Brahim in 1963. More recently, others have been added, showing the revival of colonial memories and the endurance of street-naming as a political and commemorative action. The opening of the Phap Hou Buddhist temple, with a pagoda that originally stood in a camp for colonial soldiers in Fréjus, led to the naming of the Rue de la Pagode in 1980. In 1994 a street was named for the Bachaga Saïd Boualem, a hero for pieds-noirs and harkis, and in the same year a


street memorialised the emancipationist Victor Schoelcher. A Rond-Point France-Indochine was created in 1995 at the instigation of an association of Indochinese War veterans.38 Monumental vestiges of the colonial epoch are relatively numerous in Marseille. The most dramatic statuary reminders are two sculptures of Asia and Africa, dating from the 1920s, located at the base of the grand stairway to the city’s railway station. The city’s colonial museums have long been closed, but part of their collections are displayed in the Palais de la Bourse, headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce. On the seafront on the outskirts of the city stands a monument aux morts to metropolitan and colonial soldiers who fell in the First World War, updated to commemorate those killed in the Second World War, Indochina and Algeria. Nearby is an abstract memorial to the pieds-noirs who left North Africa.39 Less dramatic colonial memorabilia are scattered around the city. Among the statues and other items brought to France after the independence of Algeria, an organ from a church in Mascara is in the Chapelle de l’Oeuvre hospitalière, and in the Hôpital Militaire Laveran there are mementos of Alphonse Laveran, an army doctor active in the colonies and winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.40 These vestiges of history provide a tour of colonial history in Marseille: colourful and triumphalist colonial exhibition posters from the early twentieth century and paintings of the bustling port, the tribute to ‘great men’ associated with colonialism, to soldiers who died on the champs d’honneur and pieds-noirs who ‘returned’ to France in 1962. However, memories and monuments are often not straightforward. Marseille was the port of entry of two-thirds of the 1.2 million Français d’Afrique du Nord who left Morocco and Tunisia after the independence of those protectorates and who flooded out of Algeria in 1962. Only with great difficulty did the city manage the exodus of rapatriés from Algeria, who landed in overcrowded ships and packed planes for months on end, beginning before the ceasefire of 19 March and continuing through the summer of 1962, when conditions became chaotic. Many arrived with few belongings and little money, disoriented, frightened and resentful at leaving Algeria, deprived of land and livelihood and, in their eyes, abandoned by the French government. The Marseillais, seeing the strain put on urban services by the influx of 800,000 people – though most would settle in other parts of France – did not always provide a warm welcome for their compatriots. Many imagined the rapatriés wealthy and suspected them of racism; the pieds-noirs complained that local shop-keepers exploited them, that authorities provided little for their welfare and that ‘on se moquait de nous’ (people made fun of us). Tensions led to conflict, and the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône had to deploy extra administrators and paramilitary police, and even ban the sounding of car horns in the five beeps signifying the syllables of Algérie française. Rapatriés thus had mixed memories of the arrival in metropolitan France – for some, the first time that they had crossed the Mediterranean. Certain places in Marseille stuck particularly in the minds of the deracinated French

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settlers. Jean-Jacques Jordi identifies as sites of memory the Quai de la Joliette, where many rapatriés landed, the Rue Breteuil where the government established a processing centre and the Gare Saint-Charles, also a processing centre and the departure point for those who were spread through France, and the Hôtel Bompard and other buildings commandeered to house refugees. Marseille in general for the pieds-noirs was the city where part of their life came to a traumatic end, the ‘ville de la brisure, de l’arrêt de la mémoire’ (city of the cleavage and the halting of memory) and of ‘mémoires écorchées’ (raw memories). In later years, rapatriés filled apartments in the public housing complex of Saint-Thyn in Marseille. The establishment of dozens of associations of pieds-noirs provided sociability and solidarity, but it took almost a decade for the rapatriés to find a physical monument to their exodus.41 On the seafront in Marseille, a monument unveiled on 14 February 1971 pays tribute to those who left North Africa. The Monument aux Rapatriés is an eight-metre-tall sculpture taking the shape of a blade of a ship’s propeller – a reference to the rapatriés traversing the Mediterranean – by the Marseilleborn sculptor César. The prominent inscription reads: ‘La Ville de Marseille / aux rapatriés d’Afrique du Nord et d’Outre-Mer / à tous ceux qui ont pour dernière demeure un sol / maintenant étranger, sur lequel ils ont vécu, travaillé et qu’ils ont aimé / Salut à vous qui êtes revenus / Notre ville est la vôtre’ (The City of Marseille to the North African and overseas rapatriés / [and] to all those whose final resting place is the now foreign soil where they lived and worked, and which they loved. Hail to you who have returned. Our city is your city). Careful wording evokes both the pieds-noirs who came to France after independence and those who are buried in a now foreign land; tribute is paid to their lives and work, and their love of their homelands, but without reference to the fight they waged to preserve Algérie française. The monument was unveiled, in the presence of 3000 pieds-noirs, by Gaston Deferre, the Socialist mayor of Marseille, who declared: ‘Vous êtes Marseillais, mais vous êtes restés des rapatriés. Des Marseillais, oui, parce qu’à l’instant de votre retour, notre ville vous a ouvert les bras et depuis le coeur des Marseillais a battu avec le vôtre’ (You are Marseillais, but you are still rapatriés – Marseillais indeed because at the time of your return, our city opened its arms to you and since that time, the hearts of the Marseillais beat as one with yours). For some, the monument may also be bittersweet given the discomfort many experienced in Marseille; in 1962, Defferre told a newspaper, ‘Qu’ils [les rapatriés] quittent Marseille en vitesse, qu’ils essaient de se réadapter ailleurs et tout ira pour le mieux’ (It will be for the better if they [the rapatriés] leave Marseille in a hurry and try to readapt somewhere else). He was rumoured to have said, more crudely, ‘Il faut jeter les Pieds-Noirs à la mer’ (The pieds-noirs should be thrown into the sea). Not all pieds-noirs have taken to heart a monument that many see as too abstract in form and with an inscription that is too terse, although others regard it as a belated recognition by the city to which they fled.42


Another southern city with a prominent colonial past, and a great concentration of sites of memory, is Fréjus in the Var département. In the first Roman city in Gaul, the remains of an amphitheatre recall to its classical past, and a medieval cloister with a ceiling painted with fantastic creatures provides the main tourist attraction. In the nineteenth century, Fréjus became the headquarters of the troupes coloniales, French and ‘native’ soldiers in the service of the French navy. The troupes coloniales, as their name suggests, played a vital role in the conquest and rule of the French empire in Africa and Asia. With the end of the empire, the force was rebadged the troupes de marine, reviving a name used in the early 1800s, and integrated into the regular army. Their major base remains Fréjus, where a museum recounts their exploits from the seventeenth century to the present – one of the most comprehensive collections on the history of the colonial military.43 During the First World War, Fréjus served as a transit camp for colonial soldiers on the way to the front. Many came from Indochina, and in 1917, on the initiative of Lieutenant-Colonel Lamé, commander of Camp Gallieni, a Buddhist pagoda was built near the cemetery in which Indochinese were buried. The pagoda was restored in 1972 and 1978 (when a second temple was added) and is under the care of an association of Franco-Vietnamese Buddhists. Located on a hillside just outside the centre-city, the Hong-Hien Pagoda strikes a suprising note in the Mediterranean countryside with brightly coloured Asian buildings and statues. An imposing red gate opens onto a stairway flanked by ceremonial carved figures. In the landscaped garden stand four monuments recalling the Buddha’s birth, spiritual awakening, first sermon and attainment of nirvana. Around the garden are statues of sacred and symbolic animals, including a buffalo, a tiger and an elephant. Before the main Vietnamese-style temple lies a circular pool. A plaque indicates the colonial connection: ‘Pagodu du culte bouddhique édifiée par les Indo-Chinois du camp de Fréjus sous le patronage du Comité d’Assistance aux troupes noires et du Comité du Souvenir Indo-Chinois’ (Pagoda of the Buddhist religion erected by the Indochinese of the Fréjus camp under the patronage of the Comité d’assistance aux troupes noires and the Comité du Souvenir Indo-Chinois). A modest obelisk, ornamented with a palm frond, recalls the war monuments found throughout France, and outside a tiny chapel a sign reads ‘Culte des anciens combattants (Veneration of old soldiers) 1914–1918 – 1939–1945.’ Neighbouring the pagoda is the national Mémorial des Guerres en Indochine with a necropolis, monument aux morts and a small museum.44 The Indochinese were not the only colonial soldiers stationed in Fréjus; the last contingent of African soldiers left only in the 1960s. Near the base of the troupes de marine is a mosque built at the instigation of Captain Abdel Kader Mademba, the highest-ranking African soldier in the French army during the Great War. Begun in 1928 and completed two years later, it is modelled on the grand Missiri mosque in Djenné, Mali, one of the architectural

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treasures of western Africa. (A reconstruction was displayed at the Paris Colonial Exhibition in 1931.) A two-storey foursquare building, topped by five towers, encloses a courtyard entered through horseshoe archways typical of Sudano-Sahelian architecture. Two decorative medallions, recently restored by a corporal from the Senegalese army, depict a tirailleur and a camel. The Djenné mosque is made of clay bricks, while the Fréjus one was constructed in reinforced concrete painted in brick colour. The mosque, the property of the Ministry of Defense, in 1987 was listed on the inventory of French historic sites.45 In the 1990s Fréjus paid homage to African soldiers, erecting a monument to the armée noire along the waterfront. Inspired by black troops’s capture of Douaumont from the Germans in the First World War, the site adds to the cultural patrimony of a city long connected with the colonies.46 Elsewhere near the Mediterranean are reminders of colonial history, especially the French presence in North Africa. These include monuments – war memorials, plaques, statues – brought back and re-erected in France after the independence of Algeria. They often stand in communes from which famous colonial figures originated, garrison towns where colonial troops were stationed, or places where rapatriés settled. One church, the Eglise du Sacré-Coeur, consecrated in Antibes in 1972, is largely made up of items from North Africa. The initiative of a former canon from Constantine, the church received funding from the Nice diocese and pieds-noirs who settled in southern France. Chanoine d’Agon de Lacontrie had brought twelve tons of ecclesiastical objects from Algeria. The Antibes church has four bells from the Bône cathedral, including one on which are engraved the names of 452 residents who died in the First World War; fourteen stained-glass windows from Sétif; an onyx altar from the Constantine cathedral; another altar and a baptismal font from El-Arrouch; and stations of the cross, statues and Algerian objects from various other churches. In the chapel crypt, dedicated to the rapatriés, is a statue of the Virgin Mary and stained-glass windows brought from Algeria. The floor is covered with plaques inscribed with the names of families buried in North Africa.47 Engraved in gold on the walls are names of cities and villages in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco ‘où tant de nos frères ont donné leur vie, victimes innocentes du barbarisme’ (where many of our brothers gave their lives, innocent victims of barbarity). Around d’Agon’s sepulchre are urns containing soil from North Africa, which is pictured on a map behind the altar.48 The church in its foundation, its design and its very materials is thus a shrine to the ‘Français d’Afrique du Nord’. Another religious site dear to some fractions of the pied-noir community is a chapel near Nîmes. Notre-Dame-de-Santa-Cruz was a particular object of veneration to settlers in Oran, where the Virgin was credited with saving the town from a cholera plague in 1849; two years later, grateful Catholics built a chapel in her honour. Pieds-noirs from Oran decided to repeat the homage


in Nîmes with a monument aux morts, commemorative plaques and a chapel furnished with stained-glass windows, baptismal fonts, stations of the cross, a processional cross and a church bell all brought back from Algeria. The chapel draws 100,000 people on a yearly pilgrimage. One town in the Midi, Carnoux-en-Provence, owes its existence to rapatriés. When Morocco became independent in 1956, Emilien Prophète, a French industrialist in Casablanca, spearheaded a project for the resettlement of French Moroccans. The Coopérative Immobilière Française examined several sites and decided on a 300-hectare property straddling the communes of Aubagne and Roquefort-la-Bedoule. The only buildings on the land were an eighteenth-century manor house and its out-buildings, once the summer residence of a noble family, then a relay-post between Aubagne and Cassis, and there was no other infrastructure. The population in 1954 was nine. However, according to a brochure issued by the city of Carnoux, the ‘défricheurs intrépides’ (intrepid groundbreakers) were not daunted, ‘s’inspirant de l’exemple du Maréchal Lyautey, de son esprit d’entreprise, de son intrépidité et de ses réalisations hardies . . . La véritable épopée de Carnoux commence et apparaît, à certains comme utopique’ (inspired by the example of Marshal Lyautey, his entrepreneurial sprit, his courage and his bold projects . . . The true saga of Carnoux thus commenced, though it appeared utopian to some). The five-member cooperative, which benefitted from no state subsidy, obtained approval from the prefecture for their new town and broke soil in 1959. An architect who had worked in colonial Marrakesh designed buildings. By 1962, Carnoux boasted 334 houses for which running water, gas, electricity and sewerage were provided, and there was a school and twelve kilometres of sealed roads. Carnoux grew and was recognised as a separate commune in 1966 – the first time a new city has been created by private initiative.49 Carnoux pays tribute in a variety of ways to the French presence in North Africa. The coat of arms (designed by a rapatrié in 1972) is a crest surmounted by a crenellated crown; on one side a palm frond symbolises North Africa, on the other, an olive branch represents Provence. The red shield itself bears three crescents – for Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia – in the upper left, and a fleur-de-lys surmounted with an heraldic label in the lower right hand for Provence; between the two symbols is a blue band for the Mediterranean that the rapatriés crossed. Several street names – Bougainville, Cartier, Dumont d’Urville, La Pérouse, Savorgnan de Brazza – commemorate explorers, while others recall military figures associated with North Africa, such as de Lattre de Tassigny, Gallieni, Gouraud, Juin, Leclerc and Lyautey, or other colonial figures, among them Laveran and Lavigerie. Several particular sites in Carnoux preserve the memory of North Africa. A parish church was consecrated in 1965 and took the name Notre-Dame d’Afrique. According to the commune’s brochure, the church serves a ‘rôle de réminiscence’ (role of recollection) for the rapatriés, ‘cependant qu’elle reste le témoignage vivant du chirstianisme africain de la patrie de Saint Augustin’

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(all the while remaining a living witness to African Christianity of the country of St Augustine). The high altar was returned to France from Bizerte, Tunisia, and the four bells in the tower come from a church in the Oran region of Algeria. A banner of St Augustine was brought from a church near the place of his death. A black statue of the Virgin Mary is a replica of one in the cathedral of Algiers, and another was ‘repatriated’ from Algeria.50 Having taken as their inspiration Lyautey, known for his urban development programmes in colonial Morocco, Carnuciens decorated a square with a bust of the marshal brought from the port named after him (now called Kénitra) in Morocco. The monument was unveiled with great ceremony in 1965: a mass in the church followed by a procession, the playing of the ‘Aux morts’ music and a moment of silence, the national anthem. Gilbert Cabanieu, one of the founders of Carnoux, paid tribute to ‘le Héros de l’épopée coloniale française, le Chevalier et le Croisé des Temps Modernes, qui s’est donné corps et âme à . . . l’oeuvre coloniale humanitaire, la politique française hors d’Europe’ (the Hero of the French colonial saga, the Knight and Crusader of Modern Times, who gave himself body and soul to . . . humanitarian colonial work and to French policy outside Europe). However, as Roger-Pierre Raoult notes, ‘le premier buste...fut malheureusement l’objet d’inéqualifiables actes de vandalisme’ (the first bust . . . was unfortunately the object of unspeakable acts of vandalism) and was replaced by another bust, taken from an ocean liner named for Lyautey. On the base are carved quotations from Lyautey about his joy in a life of action and achievement.51 The cemetery of Carnoux, opened in 1967, is another poignant site of memory and contains a Mémorial aux morts d’outre-mer, designed by an architect who had practiced in Algiers. The central arch is based on a Roman forum in Djemila, and in the base are urns with soil from twenty-three cemeteries in North Africa, Chad, Madagascar and Cambodia. The arch is ornamented with a statue of a young woman in classical garb, placing incense on an altar, the reproduction of an antique funerary stele. On the base is inscribed: ‘Ubicumque imperium tenuit Francia, mentis et animi monumenta reliquit; vulnerata est; manet invicta’ (Wherever she has reigned, France has left the monuments of her spirit and her heart – she is wounded – she remained undefeated). A plaque adds: ‘Ce monument est dédié, par le peuple de Carnoux, à la mémoire des soldats, des défricheurs, des ingénieurs, des ouvriers, des administrateurs, des magistrats, des chercheurs, des ensignants, des membres du corps médical, des pionniers de tous métiers, de toutes origines, de toutes opinions, hommes, femmes qui ont porté haut les couleurs de la France en Afrique, en Asie, en Amérique, en Océanie où ils sont morts au service de la patrie’ (The people of Carnoux dedicate this monument to the memory of soldiers, ground breakers, engineers, workers, administrators, judges, researchers, teachers, members of the medical service and pioneers from all professions, all origins and all


religions, men and women who carried high France’s banner in Africa, Asia, America and Oceania, where they died in service to the patrie). A quotation from Victor Hugo follows: ‘Ceux qui pieusement sont morts pour la patrie ont droit qu’à leur cercueil la foule vienne et prie’ (Those who died dutifully for the patrie have a right to the presence and prayers of the crowds). The base of an eternal flame (which, however, does not always burn) is inscribed: ‘Aux héros – aux martyrs – aux pionniers de la civilisation’ (To the heros – to the martyrs – to the pioneers of civilisation). The cemetery held great value for a population who had left behind the graves of their ancestors and relatives in North Africa, where visits to tombs played a particularly important role in pied-noir observances. ‘Les Carnuciens eurent le sentiment’ (Carnuciens had the feeling) on the day of the consecration of the cemetery, according to Carnoux’s municipal bulletin, ‘que Carnoux s’enracinait dans le terroir, que la communauté allait connaître une vie nouvelle’ (that Carnoux was taking root in this soil, that their community was going to know a new life). This was then the only cemetery in France where those who did not live in the commune in which it was situated could be buried, so long as the dead were rapatriés. Between 1968 and 1980 two-thirds of those laid to rest in Carnoux came from outside the town.53 Most of those buried in the cemetery were born in North Africa between 1880 and 1910. The grave of General Raymond Tissier is one of the few of a notable; many gravestones bear names of Italian, Spanish or Maltese origin – migrants from countries who formed a large portion of the European community in Algeria. One has an inscription in Corsican, another marks the grave of a Vietnamese. Several plaques commemorate family members interred in North Africa – ‘à la mémoire de tous nos morts laissé en Algérie’ (to the memory of our dead left behind in Algeria), or ‘à mes grands-parents et à la famille restés là-bas sous le chaud soleil de Sousse – Tunisie’ (to my grandparents and my family who lie there under the hot sun of Sousse, Tunisia). One grave has a tricolour badge and the words ‘Algérie Française’. Another is engraved: ‘En tout lieu de l’empire où s’est tenu l’esprit français il reste dans l’âme un souvenir blessé mais jamais vaincu’ (Of every place in the empire where the French spirit was present, there remains in the soul a wounded but never vanquished memory). Yet another reads: ‘Ici reponse l’esprit de l’empire français’ (Here lies the spirit of the French empire). The tone is both triumphant and elegiac in the commemoration of the aged veterans of French colonisation in North Africa who finished their days in a Provençal town. A final reminder of the history of Carnoux is a 1984 bas-relief in the city hall showing a man and a woman standing before the sea with the bell-tower of Carnoux; on the other side of the water is a North African building. Inscriptions record the dates of 1956 – ‘La Provence accueille les Français pionniers du Maroc. Ils bâtissent leur Cité’ (Provence welcomes the Français d’Algérie. [Here] they are building their City) – and 1962 – ‘Carnoux accueille

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les Français d’Algérie’ (Carnoux welcomes the Français d’Algérie). These signs underline the importance of Carnoux to pied-noir memory. With the difficult departure from North Africa, and the ambivalent reception in metropolitan France, rapatriés were proud of building a city of their own, according to Jean-Jacques Jordi, a pied-noir fief for some, a refuge for others, and ‘Carnoux n’en finit pas d’exalter le mythe de la terre perdue’ (Carnoux never stops extolling the myth of the lost land). Testimonials and poems made of Carnoux a myth, ‘le symbole de l’Afrique toute entière perdue et dans le même temps reconstruite’ (the symbol of Africa lost and yet reconstructed). However, the coming of the Algerian rapatriés in 1962 did not occur in absolute harmony with the ‘Moroccans’ already settled there, some of whom feared the takeover of their town by the new arrivals. The Carnoux church, cemetery and memorial embody a memory of North Africa: the idea of the abandoned patrie, Catholic religiosity, the fantasy of a trans-Mediterranean civilisation symbolised by the Djemila arch, an uncritical pride in colonists’ heroic achievements, the cult of the ancestors. The population – only a dozen in 1959, 242 in 1962, 948 two years later – has grown to over 7000. Carnoux is a modern, sunny place with the shops of a typical provincial town, though without the old buildings and winding streets that draw tourists to other Provençal villages.54 As time passes, the rapatriés become fewer, and it is in the private spheres of family life among the Carnuciens that memories of North Africa will be preserved. In the Midi, more than anywhere else in France, the memory of overseas France, particularly the French territories in North Africa, remain most alive. In the Provence-Alpes-Côtes-d’Azur region, with monuments and museums, the presence of the largest population of pieds-noirs in France and the large numbers of Maghrebin and black African migrants, colonial and post-colonial ties are still most visible. Yet memories of overseas France are highly contested. The rapatriés preserve their memories – pride, nostalgia, solidarity, occasionally resentment – in the maisons des rapatriés that exist in various towns, and new ones have been opened in the last decade. The religious sites in Carnoux, Nîmes, Théoule and Antibes, the cemetery in Carnoux and a memorial in Aix preserve the memories of the Français d’Algérie, yet do not necessarily touch the hearts of other French men and women who share neither the pied-noir heritage nor their interpretation of the history of France in North Africa. The harkis who supported the French, and followed them into exile, may consider other sites sacred, such as the camps – Bourg-Lastic, Rivesaltes, La Loubière, Roussillon-en-Morvan, Mouans-Sartoux, Bias, many of which are in the Midi – in which they languished, sometimes for years. Algerian nationalists may have yet other historical sites of memory, such as Sainte-Marguerite island, near Cannes, where the bodies of three hundred Kabyle prisoners transported to France after the Algerian rebellion of 1870 were interred.55 For those of North African citizenship or descent who live in the region, including 200,000 in Marseille, there are still other sites. The Cours


Belsunce and the area around the Gare Saint-Charles house concentrations of migrants from former colonies with shops and restaurants giving the quartier the feel of a souk. For Muslim residents and merchants, and Maghrebins from France and from North Africa, this quartier is a rallying-point for commerce, sociability and exchanges of all sorts. The faithful go to the En-Nasr, Ar-Rahmaniya and El-Islah mosques to pray – the choice of mosque linked to particular ideological, social and geographical affiliations. Even among the Islamic population, there is no unity of memory or identity, and the variety of venues linked to pieds-noirs, harkis, Algerian nationalists and present-day Maghrebins and Beurs testify to the multiplicities of memories and sites of commemoration.56

The Maison de la Négritude The Atlantic ports, Lyon and the Midi retain vestiges of France’s colonial past but other, more isolated sites signpost aspects of the colonial heritage. One of the most pointed provincial commemorations of the colonial age is in Champagney (Haute-Saône), a town of 3000 inhabitants in the Vosges Mountains: the Maison de la Négritude et des Droits de l’Homme. The centre commemorates the emancipation of slaves, Léopold Sedar Senghor and the literary movement of négritude as well as the abolitionist stand taken by Champagney’s residents during the Revolution. In 1789, Champagney was a village of two hundred households – farmers, loggers, miners – struggling against harsh climate and economic hardship. The villagers had no contacts with Africans, and the only visible black figure was a representation of one of the three wise men in the local church. However, a nobleman from Champagney, member of Louis XVI’s bodyguards, had become connected with the Société des Amis des Noirs in Paris. He talked to the villagers about the plight of Africans transported into slavery. The Champagnerots gathered on the eve of the Revolution, as did villagers throughout France, to put together a list of grievances for presentation to the king, Article 29 of the Champagney cahier read: ‘Les habitants et communauté de Champagney ne peuvent penser aux maux que souffrent les nègres dans les colonies, sans avoir le coeur pénétré de la plus vive douleur, en se représentant leurs semblables, unis encore à eux par les liens de la religion, être traités plus durement que ne le sont les bêtes de somme. Ils ne peuvent se persuader qu’on puisse faire usage des productions des dites colonies si l’on faisait réflexion qu’elles ont été arrosées du sang de leurs semblables: il craignent avec raison que les générations futures, plus éclairées et plus philosophes, n’accusent les Français de ce siècle d’avoir été anthropophages, ce qui contraste avec le nom de français et encore plus celui de chrétien. C’est pourquoi, leur religion leur dicte de supplier très humblement Sa Majesté de concerter les moyens pour, de ces esclaves, faire des sujets utiles au royaume et à la patrie’ (The inhabitants and community of Champagney

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cannot think of the evils suffered by negros in the colonies without feeling the most searing pain in their hearts, and in seeing others like themselves, linked to them by the bonds of religion, treated more harshly than are beasts of burden. They cannot be convinced that people can use the products of the said colonies if they reflect that they [these products] are soaked in the blood of those like themselves. They fear that future generations, more enlightened and philosophical, will accuse the French of this century of being cannibals [a word] which conflicts with the name of a Frenchman and even more with that of a Christian. This is why their religion demands that they most humbly supplicate His Majesty to use all means so that slaves are made useful subjects of the realm and the patrie). Champagney’s cahier de doléances was one of only twenty-one (among two thousand) to plead for emancipation of slaves; twenty-eight called for an end to slave trade. Champagney’s resolution, however, was more clearly and forcefully expressed than in any other cahier. In 1971 a local historian, René Simonin, organised a commemoration of the Champagney declaration with Senghor’s patronage.57 Simonin also set up a small museum in the Champagney city hall; in 1995 the collection was moved into a refurbished building opposite to the square where the 1789 cahier de doléances was written. The Maison de la Négritude has three rooms, the first devoted to the history of the commune and its cahier de doléances. The second traces the history of slavery, the campaign for abolition, and the definitive emancipation of slaves in 1848. Two reconstructions of ship hulls show, on the one hand, the chained bodies of suffering slaves during the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World, and on the other, the products brought back to Europe from the colonies. The third room presents the history of colonisation and decolonisation, the fate of Africans in the diaspora, American civil rights movements and contemporary Third World problems. Displays comprise documents, statues, paintings, African artwork, and slave chains and manacles. In 1975 Champagney named a street in honour of Senghor, and a decade later gave to a local school the name of Victor Schoelcher, key figure in the 1848 emancipation. The Maison de la Négritude has become a site for visits by French and African delegations. During the bicentenary of the Revolution, the first day of issue of a stamp in honour of ‘Fraternité’ was held in Champagney, and a monument to the abolition of slavery was unveiled. For the sesquicentenary of the abolition of slavery in 1998, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin gave a speech in Champagney, and the city hosted the launch of a stamp marking the anniversary. A commemorative bulletin included messages from the prime minister, several ministers and députés and other personalities such as the Martiniquais novelist Patrick Chamoiseau. For the twentieth anniversary of the inauguration of the Maison de la Négritude in 1991, there had been exhibitions of African and Haitian artwork, a mass was celebrated and the President of the Assemblée Nationale, Raymond Forni, presided at a ceremony. Forni


acknowledged France’s role in slaving: ‘La France, à travers l’esclavage et la traite des noirs, a . . . arraché de leur terre et de leurs familles des hommes, des femmes et des enfants, les a jetés comme du bétail dans des navires, les a marqués au fer, les a contraint au travail forcé, a humilié leur corps et asservi leur esprit. La patrie dite des droits de l’homme a donc été aussi en son temps un Etat qui transformait des êtres humains en bêtes de somme, en créatures privées de toutes libertés jusqu’à celle d’avoir même une identité. Pour respecter l’Histoire, il faut le dire, il faut en avoir le Souvenir et le repentir’ (Through slavery and the slave trade, France . . . uprooted from their lands and their families men, women and children. They threw them like livestock into ships, branded them, forced them to work, humiliated their bodies and broke their spirits. The so-called country of human rights was thus also, at this time, a state that turned humans into beasts of burden and into creatures deprived of all their freedoms, even that of having their own identity. Out of respect for History, this must be said, and we must preserve the Memory and repent). He added that the abolition of slavery in 1848 ‘fut effectivement une victoire du peuple de France tout entier car l’esclavage était non seulement une abomination pour les victimes mais aussi une honte pour les bourreaux’ (was indeed a victory of all of the people of France because slavery was not only an abomination for its victims but also a shame for its henchmen). The task of emancipating the oppressed, and maintaining ‘vigilance’ about intolerance and inhumane policies, presented a continuing challenge – Forni cited the abolition of the death penalty by François Mitterrand, a way of attaching the achievements of his own Socialist government to the historic events recalled in Champagney. Nicéphore Soglo, former president of Benin, an ex-colony of France, then spoke of slavery and the slave-trade as a ‘crime contre l’humanité’ (crime against humanity), and castigated European colonialism, ‘une nouvelle servitude’ (a new form of servitude), which followed the epoch of slave-trading. He went on to outline the problems of present-day African countries, which he linked to the heritage of colonialism and inequitable international economic relations as well as to the failures of African governments. However, Soglo added, ‘En mettant tous ces éléments en lumière, il ne saurait être question, pour nous Africains, de nous enfermer dans un passéisme stérile, encore moins de nous complaire dans le discours facile de la récrimination’ (In bringing to light all these facts, we Africans must not shut ourselves up in a sterile passéisme, and even less so content ourselves with the facile discourse of recrimination). He concluded by suggesting a new Marshall Plan for the developing world – a ‘véritable partenariat’ (true partnership) between Europe and Africa – that could herald an African renaissance.58 The texts of Forni’s and Soglo’s speeches provide a nuanced view of colonial history. Forni’s recognition of French slaving did not proffer an apology, though it called for repentance. Soglo’s comments linked slaving with later colonialism and voiced a new cahier de doléances about contemporary

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African problems. His labelling of slavery as a crime against humanity preceded by several years parliament’s adoption of a resolution using the same terms. The Maison de la Négritude et des Droits de l’Homme thus provided a forum for the recollection of France’s slave-holding past and an enunciation of present-day concerns. Somewhat ironically, a small, isolated town has thus erected one of the most explicit sites of memory connected to colonialism. Yet all of the traces of the colonial enterprise that remain throughout the country are reminders of how and where regional France was infused with a colonial spirit, of the profits earned from colonial activities – from trading to evangelising – and the imprint of imperialism on municipal life. From big cities such as Marseille and Lyon to hamlets like Champagney, colonialism to a greater or lesser extent impregnated France: the history of the provinces cannot be completely understood without some reference to the place of the colonies in their past. A century and a half after the end of slavery, more than a generation after the decolonisation of Algeria, la France profonde still bears a colonial legacy.

3 Colonial War Memorials

Among the most ubiquitous of monuments are war memorials. Although commemorations of both battlefield victories and defeats have long figured in the European monumental landscape, the First World War led to an explosion of memorials. Rare is the town or village without at least a simple stela engraved with the names of native sons who died. From the most modest plaque to the most grandiose statuary group, these omnipresent reminders testify to the extraordinary losses experienced in the war, and serve as sites for public ceremonies and private grieving. Much has been written on memorials to the Great War: their design and iconography, placement and significance in collective memory, and the rituals carried out in their shadows.1 The tradition of First World War memorials continued with the monumental recollection of the Second World War. However, France’s subsequent military engagements – notably the wars in Indochina and Algeria – are less often represented, an indication of uncertain memories about controversial conflicts and the defeat of the French by Asian and North African nationalists. This chapter concerns the ways in which the colonies appear on monuments aux morts. After consideration of memorialisation of early colonial wars, it looks at the remembrance of colonial soldiers who fought in the First World War, focusing on monuments in the Jardin Tropical de Paris. Finally, it examines the wars of decolonisation, in particular, the Indochinese memorial in Fréjus and the Algerian memorial in Paris.

Wars of conquest in monuments Imperialism almost inevitably involved military campaigns, with consequent loss of soldiers through fighting or illness – indeed, in many campaigns (such as the conquest of Madagascar), more men died from disease than in battle. Most lieux de mémoire of the period of conquest contain some reference to warfare and soldiers’ deaths. Streets were named after those killed in overseas campaigns and honour rolls record their names; military museums preserve armaments and relics. Nevertheless, relatively few monuments are 105

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dedicated solely to wars of conquest, which may be explained by several circumstances. Most of France’s overseas territories were taken over during the nineteenth century, before the vogue in memorials following the First World War. Battles and the deaths of colonial troops were so much a part of initial conquest, the extension of possessions and the continuing pacification of rebels and defence of acquisitions that monuments singling out particular actions might have been deemed unnecessary. Yet there were deeper reasons for the lack of more monuments to conquest. Public opinion remained persistently divided on the benefits of empire, despite the colonial lobby’s efforts to persuade reluctant compatriots of the value of expending the ‘blood and gold’ of France to annex Asian jungles, the Saharan desert and remote Pacific islands. Erecting ostentatious memorials to soldiers killed in distant domains would have only underlined the price paid for taking possession of outposts of sometimes unproven worth. Moreover, war memorials generally accord the enemy the status of a national fighting force, but the French did not acknowledge those who battled in ‘primitive’ countries on a par with armies in Europe. In the usual view, African or Asian forces represented tribes, not nations; clashes between the French and the foreigners were not ‘wars’ in the European sense but campaigns or skirmishes against inferiors outside the bounds of conventional warfare. Warriors might fight bravely and die heroically, but the diminished status of the enemy denied them the respect accorded to those who fought on European soil. Colonialists endeavoured to convince fellow citizens of the merits of imperialism – the mandate of the 1931 exhibition – but displays highlighted commercial rewards, the mission civilisatrice, the exoticism of picturesque countries, not French or foreign lives lost in taking them. Sacrificing French soldiers to empire hardly galvanised support at home, at least in the early years of expansion. In addition, if Frenchmen fell on foreign fields, so did tirailleurs sénégalais and other natives who played a crucial role in conquering and garrisoning colonies. However, erecting monuments styled in an heroic mode to African or Asian troops in French service, no matter their contributions to the extension of empire, would have been an awkward admission of Africans’ and Asians’ prowess and valour. Colonial wars are nevertheless implicitly recalled in statues of such men as General Mangin (1866–1925) in the Place d’El-Salvador in Paris. Mangin, who saw action in several colonial theatres, was the great promoter of the use of native troops, the force noire. The inscription records: ‘Trois fois blessé à Diena Souda 1889–1892, Compagnon de Marchand – Fachoda 1898, Entreprend la création de l’armée noire – Dakar 1906, Délivre Marrakesh 1912’ (Thrice wounded at Diena Souda 1889–1892 – Companion of Marchand at Fashoda 1898 – Undertook the creation of the armée noire in Dakar 1906 – Liberated Marrakesh 1912). That list details service in the Maghreb and western and eastern Africa but places emphasis on Mangin rather than the battles. A second incription, ‘La France est une nation de 100 millions d’habitants’

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(France is a nation of 100 million inhabitants), stresses the results of imperial actions. By their nature, statues of other officers active in the colonies, including Gouraud and Gallieni, to take Paris examples, honour the soldier rather than the war.2 A few plaques do commemorate colonial conquest. For example, in the Invalides is a plaque dedicated ‘à la mémoire des officiers et légionnaires qui, sous les ordres du capitaine Danjou, luttèrent un contre quarante pendant dix heures le 30 avril 1863 à Camerone – La Vie plutôt que le courage abandonna ces soldats français’ (To the memory of the officers and Legionnaires who, under the command of Captain Danjou, fought one against forty, for ten hours, on 30 April 1863 at Camerone – Life rather than courage abandoned these French soldiers). It commemorates the Foreign Legion’s defeat at Camerone – the key experience in the Legion’s mythology – while trying to establish the French-backed Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. Another plaque, erected by the Association des anciens militaires des troupes de la Marine et du Maroc, pays homage to civilians and soldiers who took part in a 1907–1908 campaign that paved the way for French takeover of Morocco. A tablet dedicated ‘à la mémoire de tous ceux qui sont morts pour la France en Indochine 1858–1955’ (To the memory of all those who died for France in Indochina, 1858–1955) encompasses the century from the landing at Saigon to defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Yet another reads ‘Aux Sahariens, par leur action et leur sacrifice, ils ont pacifié et humanisé le désert’ (To the Saharan troops – through their action and sacrifice, they humanised the desert) – the wording voices a colonialist perspective and generalises soldiers’ actions away from particular officers, units or battles to the entire history of conquest of the desert.

Morts pour la France The real entry of colonial troops into contemporary monuments came with the First World War. At the Invalides, plaques honour Moroccans who served in the First World War, the 4300 goumiers who fought in France, spahis who died in battle, tirailleurs nords-africains and zouaves. During four years of warfare, over half a million colonial soldiers (not counting Europeans from Algeria) fought for France and 78,166 died. A quarter of a million soldiers came from the Maghreb, along with 200,000 from sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar, 49,000 from Indochina, 37,000 from the vieilles colonies, and a thousand from the tiny Pacific islands. Metropolitan French for the first time witnessed Asians, Arabs, black Africans and islanders in large numbers fighting under the French flag in Europe: living and dying testimony to the importance of the force noire. The war was won, commemoration of colonial troops seemed a legitimate expression of gratitude, and an affirmation of success in winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of foreign populations ready to shed blood for France. This too would express determination to keep and develop the empire.

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Photo 10 This plaque at the Invalides honours French soldiers who ‘pacified and humanised’ the Sahara.

William Kidd, examining monuments aux morts in France and overseas, notes how representations of colonial troops always insist on the national contribution they made. An ‘elision of difference’ often diminishes the gap, geographical and ethnic, between metropole and colonies. Metropolitan architects frequently designed overseas memorials cast in French foundries, and the iconography generally replicates those dedicated to European troops (sometimes with allusions to European Antiquity).3 War monuments to colonial soldiers thereby bear witness to victories in war but simultaneously to perceived victories of colonisation. Campaigns outside Europe during the world wars and wars of decolonisation are sometimes jointly commemorated. Indeed, on many First World War monuments aux morts, additional words have been engraved to memorialise the Second World War, the Indochinese War, the Algerian War and other operations. One example, located on the Mediterranean seafront of Marseille, is a grandiose monument unveiled by President Gaston Doumergue on 24 April 1927.4 A national subscription and subventions from the state, the Bouches-du-Rhône département and the city of Marseille financed construction – collaboration of private donors with government at all levels – spearheaded by the Fédération nationale des poilus d’Orient. The monument has the form of a massive triumphal arch with allegorical figures of war and the sea on the pillars; a majestic statue of Victory with raised arms stands underneath. The dedication reads ‘Aux Héros de l’Orient et des terres


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lointaines’ (To the Heroes of the East and distant lands). One side of the arch enumerates military theatres outside the empire – Orient, Dardanelles, Salonique, Macédoine, Serbie, Monastir, Albanie and Danube – while on the facing side are listed territories that France ruled – Maroc, Levant, Syrie, Ciligie and Cameroun. Other words – ‘A nos morts et à nos héros, 1915–1921’ (To our dead and our heroes, 1915–1921) – shift the years of the First World War slightly to include operations in such Mediterranean islands as Castellorizo. In ‘Aux Poilus d’Orient’, the choice of a colloquial term (in preference to the formal ‘soldats’) reinforces the image of war heroes as ordinary men. A bas-relief underlines the international nature of France’s fighting force: soldiers, sailors and an airman, one trooper with a pith helmet and another wearing a fez. Yet another dedicatory inscription is specifically colonial: ‘Aux Fils de la plus grande France’ (To the Sons of Greater France). (At present the word ‘grande’ is partially rubbed out, perhaps in vandal-enacted monumental revisionism.) Plaques under the Marseille arch carry two additions to the First World War commemoration. ‘A la mémoire des militaires et supplétifs de toutes confessions “Morts pour la France” en Afrique du Nord’ (To the memory of the soldiers and auxiliaries of all religions who died for France in North Africa) avoids the word ‘war’; it broadens the area of military action to the whole of Afrique Française du Nord, and includes Christians, Muslims and servicemen of other faiths. Even in that short phrase, the wording has been carefully formulated. A second plaque is more expansive but no less considered: ‘France-Indochine / 1624–1956 / Trois siècles de présence française ont scellé par le sang versé un pacte solennel entre la France et les peuples de l’Union indochinoise’ (France-Indochina – 1624–1956 – Three centuries of French presence, through the blood that was shed, sealed a solemn pact between France and the peoples of the Union indochinoise). The dates cover three hundred years, from the first French mission to Southeast Asia to the final withdrawal. Here it is a question of ‘presence’, not conquest or imperialism. ‘Union Indochinoise’ was the official designation for the Government-General of Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos, an administrative convenience created in 1887. The blood shed by Indochinese and French in wars of conquest, world wars and the war of independence has sealed a link which, the wording implies, not even decolonisation can rip asunder. The Marseille memorial alludes to traditional classical and Napoleonic monuments with the triumphal arch and allegorical statues, but it is ‘exoticised’ with foreign soldiers, a crescent and star, and the inscription invoking ‘la plus grande France’. The addition of plaques commemorating Algeria and Indochina shows how addenda could be inscribed onto a monument even when, as in the case of Indochina here, the original monument was of little relevance to the forces commemorated. Updating monuments in this fashion intentionally minimises differences between disparate conflicts, and melds specific campaigns into lengthy sequences of sacrifice and glory – three centuries for Indochina, though French ‘presence’ there ended in defeat.

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Wars of conquest and wars against independence are conflated with world wars to promote the sacrifices of soldiers in earlier and later colonial theatres to the status of the First World War dead. Yet, paradoxically, by being inscribed on a monument designed for the Great War, imperialist wars are also denied more explicit acknowledgement. Adding on references to Indochina, Algeria or indeed the Second World War nevertheless represented a convenient and economical way to extend the function of monuments and join together soldiers of different conflicts into the national pantheon.

Memorials of colonials in the world wars Relatively few war monuments articulate homage to colonial troops. Statues on monuments aux morts almost always portray Europeans, and the iconography (with reference, for instance, to classical imagery) remains European. (Such Eurocentrism is hardly surprising in monuments designed for metropolitan towns and villages hemorrhaged by the war, but even monuments erected in the colonies followed similar conventions.) A few dedicated memorials have been erected to African and Maghrebin troops. A monument in Vimy is dedicated ‘aux morts de la division marocaine’ (To the dead of the Moroccan division) who fought there in May 1915, and at Mondement (Marne), a plaque honours Moroccans who took part in a September 1914 battle. Monuments at Douaumont recall the force noire and Muslims morts pour la France. In Reims an austere monument – two square towers atop a rectangular tablet – commemorates ‘soldats africains tombés pour la défense de la liberté, 1914–1918’ (African soldiers fallen in the defense of liberty). Another monument to the armée noire, a figurative group of five soldiers erected in 1924, was destroyed by the German army in 1940 – Nazi propaganda focussed on the ignominy of the French using Africans to fight Germans in the Great War and then in occupating regions of Germany during the 1920s. In a more tardy recognition, a plaque was unveiled in Cerny-en-Laonnois (Aisne) in 1983 ‘à la mémoire des frères du Président Léopold Sedar Senghor et des tirailleurs sénégalais morts pour la France sur le Chemin des Dames en 1914–1918’ (To the memory of the brothers of President Léopold Sedar Senghor and the tirailleurs sénégalais who died for France on the Chemin des Dames, 1914–1918), and a Monument à l’Armée noire, engraved with a line from one of Senghor’s poems, was erected in Fréjus in the 1990s.5 One particular type of commemoration, meant to solidify ties between metropole and colonies, was twinning a colony or colonial city with a commune in the war-devastated area of France. Residents of the overseas locale contributed funds for reconstruction of the metropolitan commune, and in gratitude a street or square was named in its honour and sometimes a monument was constructed. Guadeloupe, for instance, ‘adopted’ the village of Neuvilly-en-Argonne (Meuse) in 1918, sent a thousand francs in aid, and raised a public subscription to finance a war monument, inscribed as a gift


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from the Caribbean island and set in the newly named Place de la Guadeloupe. President Poincaré declared that the relationship bespoke Guadeloupe’s great contribution to the war effort and ‘the indissoluble attachment of the Antilles, and of Guadeloupe in particular, to France’.6 Numerous cemeteries contain graves of colonial soldiers killed in France. Ministerial instructions published in December 1914 prescribed the proper burial of Muslims: a soldier’s remains should be washed and wrapped in a white cotton shroud, then the ritual affirmation of faith should be recited, and the tomb should be marked by a stela facing Mecca. After the war ended, scattered temporary graves were regrouped into military cemeteries – the one in Douaumont has 592 Muslim graves alongside 14,263 Christian ones – and cement stelae replaced provisional wooden markers. The star and crescent, traditional Muslim symbols, and the words ‘here lies . . .’ in Arabic as well as French, were engraved on the stelae next to the soldier’s name, rank and unit, the date of death and ‘mort pour la France’.7 In 1917 the Souvenir Indochinois8 was founded to tend the war graves of Vietnamese, for whom carrying out appropriate funerary rituals and tending ancestors’ tombs were especially important: ‘Il n’est de pire destin pour un homme que de mourir sans avoir donné la vie au fils qui assurera à ses ascendants et à lui-meme la pérennité du culte [des ancêtres]’9 (There is no worse fate for a man than to die without having given life to a son who can assure to his forebearers and to himself the perpetuity of ancestor worship). The Indochinese Service d’Architecture designed four mausoleums (in Marseille, Bergerac, Aix-en-Provence and Montpellier) for the remains of 1061 Southeast Asian soldiers killed in France, with a fifth, the work of a metropolitan architect, in Tarbes. A further 1180 Indochinese were buried in designated precincts of other cemeteries.10 The one in Toulouse has a statue of a ‘Soldat annamite victorieux’ holding a gun and a wreath dedicated ‘à la mémoire des soldats et travailleurs morts au service de la France 1914–1918’11 (To the memory of the soldiers and workers who died for France, 1914–1918) In Nogent-surMarne, Indochinese graves surround a column with similar inscriptions. Colonial soldiers thus were not forgotten in French commemorations, even if monumental recognisation is not especially prominent. Such remembrance helped to honour and recall men who died fighting for France. But Eric Jennings has made a pertinent observation about the Indochinese that can be extended throughout the empire. Monuments aux morts also ‘served the cause of legitimizing French colonial rule, and indeed of expressing Indochinese fidelity toward the colonizer through a scripted discourse of sacrifice’.12 At home and in the colonies, war monuments were markers of colonial dominion and the military efforts required of colonial subjects, just as mention of colonial soldiers on metropolitan memorials provided a reminder of the contributions the empire could and should make to national defense. In Paris there exists a sort of national memorial to overseas soldiers, or rather a seet of monuments aux morts to the various colonial forces. They

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are situated in the former Jardin Botanique Colonial,13 where several of the buildings were used as hospitals for colonial soldiers during the First World War (and a small mosque was opened for Muslims). These associations with colonialism and to the war thus made the gardens an ideal commemorative site. The centrepiece of the monuments scattered about the gardens is a Vietnamese shrine honouring Buddhist soldiers, and Jennings has shown the ways it both commemorated colonial soldiers and reflected colonial ideologies and power relations. A dinh is a Vietnamese communal house, built without nails or bolts, erected to honour a tutelary spirit, person or group. For the 1906 colonial exhibition in Marseille, residents of Thudaumôt province in Cochinchina financed and commissioned a dinh from local artisans and shipped it to France. The state acquired the structure at the end of the fair and transferred it to the botanical gardens in Nogent-sur-Marne, where it was used as a tea-house at the 1907 colonial fair and then commandeered as a hospital ward during the war. With moves to construct monuments aux morts to Indochinese soldiers, in 1920 it was turned into the Temple du Souvenir Indochinois in memory of Vietnamese Buddhist troops. (Cambodian and Laotian troops, as well as Christians from Indochina, had other monuments in the gardens.) Committees in Indochina and France sought contributions, most of which came from Indochinese donors, to acquire suitable

Photo 11 The Vietnamese ‘temple’ in the Jardin Tropical, the former colonial botanical garden.


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furnishings including altars, lacquer panels, incense burners, bronze bells, flags and regimental banners from units that had served in France. Outside stood a monumental portal with a large bronze funerary urn copied from the imperial palace in Hué, a Khmer-style basin and symbolic animals set in an area landscaped with a pond, a bridge and a stand of bamboo. Albert Sarraut, Minister of Colonies and former Governor-General of Indochina, presided at a dramatic ceremony where an envoy of the Annamese emperor Khai Dinh dedicated the building and placed an imperial rescript on the central altar. The emperor himself visited two years later, and it became a tradition for Governors-General of Indochina to pay their respects before sailing to take up their posts.14 After 1945 the building served for annual ceremonies to commemorate soldiers in both world wars. Veterans of the Indochinese War also adopted the dinh as a site of remembrance. The general who headed a newly constituted Association Nationale des Anciens d’Indochine et du Souvenir Indochinois in the early 1980s hoped that the association and the monument could provide a common place of observance for both French and Vietnamese, even for those who had fought against the French, and that it would also promote knowledge about the former Indochina. Such a perspective created a particular version of colonial history, one to which the Marseille monument also hints. According to Jennings, ‘This meta-narrative presented a single history for France and Indochina, perceived in this way as eternally bound by colonial ties. Here, colonial nostalgia, settler fantasies of indissoluble links between France and its former colonial empire, were reflected in the commemorative configuration of Nogent-sur-Marne, where by the 1980s November remembrance ceremonies featured more French paratroopers, “colonial” units, or marines, than they did Vietnamese, Laotian or Cambodian mourners or veterans.’15 With the passage of time, French veterans of Indochina were replacing Vietnamese veterans of European wars at this quintessentially colonial lieu de mémoire in Paris. The little building weighted with symbolic meaning was listed on the French register of historic sites in 1965, but nevertheless fell into increasing disrepair, partly because of confusion about which agency held responsiblity for its upkeep. The dinh initially came under the purview of the Colonial Ministry, whose duties passed to the Ministère des Départements et Territoires d’Outre-Mer (DOM-TOM). Continued use of the gardens as an agricultural research centre gave the Ministry of Agriculture a stake in its future. The Ministry of Culture agreed to finance necessary renovations so long as work was carried out by the DOM-TOM ministry, and the city of Paris (which has proprietorial rights to the Bois de Vincennes) and the Ministry of Veterans Affairs agreed in principle to cooperate. However, for twenty years, the DOMTOM ministry did not undertake repairs. The dinh deteriorated further, and ornamental urns and other decorations disappeared. Despite an approach from the Director of Cultural Affairs of yet another public authority, the

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Ile-de-France region, in 1981, no renovation was begun. A commentator in the DOM-TOM ministry’s house magazine has wondered whether inattention had not represented a ‘désaveu d’un passé et d’une ascendance inavouables ou guerre intestine et épuisante’ (disavowal of a past and an ancestry that cannot be acknowledged or rather a fractious and exhausting administrative quarrel) of the various agencies.16 In April 1984 a fire completely destroyed the dinh. It is not known whether the fire was a case of arson, but it is possible that it was deliberately lit to cover the theft of valuable ritual objects and antiques inside the temple. The Association des Anciens d’Indochine submitted a request to the Paris prefecture to rebuild a memorial, but pointed out that a Western-style monument aux morts would not adhere to Buddhist tradition. The new memorial structure, smaller than the original dinh, is a small, elevated temple entered by doors bearing the sign of longevity; inside is an altar for offerings and incense. Red paint and the upturned green tiled roof present an ‘Oriental’ aspect.17 The new monument was dedicated on 4 April 1992, and veterans still gather yearly for a remembrance ceremony. A plaque recalls the history of the site and the imperial dedication of the dinh. Another dedicates the present temple ‘à la mémoire des Vietnamiens morts pour la France’ (To the memory of the Vietnamese [who] died for France), and lists the conflicts in which they served: the world wars, campaigns in Syria and Morocco in the 1920s, the Indochinese and Algerian wars, and actions in ‘territoires d’outre-mer’. Five other war monuments in the Jardin Tropical were erected in the 1920s. A ‘Monument aux soldats coloniaux’ is a spare concrete obelisk with no other decoration than the inscription. One to Christian Indochinese soldiers resembles many French War memorials: a stela, rounded at the top and resembling a gravestone, carries a carved wreath and branch of leaves. The monument dedicated to Laotians and Cambodians, by contrast, is Asian in design: a terraced phnom or stupa with Buddhist symbols and bas-reliefs in Khmer style. A large stone tablet bearing an almost life-size bas-relief of a young woman looking at a grave on which sits a soldier’s helmet, against the background of a ruined city, commemorates the ‘soldats noirs morts pour la France’. The Malagasy are honoured by a grand brick and stone monument topped by a traditionally designed eagle, a symbol of the former royal house of Madagascar. The colonial forces are thus recalled in the Jardin Tropical in varied styles, though with curious anomalies. Cambodians and Laotians are commemorated together, conflating their different cultures.18 The image of a bereaved woman looking at a helmet on a French grave, seen in other monuments in France, is improbable since most African soldiers left their families behind in Africa. There are no monuments to troops from North Africa, the Pacific islands, the vieilles colonies or other minor outposts. However appropriate it might have been to place the colonial monuments in the Jardin Colonial, the site is removed from the main commemorative


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centres of the capital, and relegated to a peripheral if beautiful part of Paris. As the Jardin Tropical is now enclosed by a security fence and can be visited only by arrangement, the memorials have restricted access: a contradiction of the public remembrance that war monuments were meant to serve. Of the numerous First World War monuments erected around the empire, many still stand, especially in the DOM-TOMs and in countries where decolonisation was relatively amicable. They remain reminders of the former colonial ties, memories of military service and Francophile sympathies. Some still serve as sites for wreath-laying by French authorities or local associations of veterans on remembrance days. This has not been the case in Algeria. With a large settler population and particularly close ties to metropolitan France, Algeria saw the erection of at least one hundred monuments aux morts, including several grandiose memorials. As the French military pulled out and most pieds-noirs fled in 1962, there was concern that the new Algerian government would not safeguard the statues, bust and memorials with which colonialists had ornamented Algerian cities. Indeed Algerians did efface commemorative traces of French colonialism by pulling down or defacing remaining statues – or in one case, encasing a monument in concrete – while building memorials to the heroes and martyrs of the struggle for independence. In the midst of imperial retreat, Paris presciently decided to ‘repatriate’ certain monumental remains of the French presence, including monuments aux morts: an indication of the value placed on such ‘sacred’ memorials and fear of their desecration. The Navy transported about fifteen substantial monuments back to France as well as an uncounted number of smaller statues, plaques and sculptural elements from public sites. Metropolitan communes that wished to take a monument from a particular Algerian town could put in a request, and many were re-erected in towns where substantial groups of pieds-noirs settled. Other war monuments were ‘repatriated’ to the headquarters of military units or similar institutions to those where they had been located in Algeria. The monument aux morts from the Légion Etrangère in Sidi-bel-Abbès was thus placed at the Legion’s new home base in Aubagne. Similarly the monument from the Cherchell Ecole Militaire ended up at the Montpellier infantry school, and the one from the Institut Agricole of Maison-Carrée was put up at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Agronomie in Grignon (Yvelines). Among other returned soldiers’ statues were a poilu from Aïn-El-Turk sent to Cournonterral (Hérault), a trooper from Mascara relocated to Saint-Raphaël (Var), and a marble statue from Hammam-Bou-Hadjar now at the aeronaval base in Fréjus. A bronze Liberty holding a wounded soldier was sent from Marengo to Les Avirons in La Réunion. An allegory of France sculpted by Antoine Bourdelle, dedicated in 1948 to the Free French, left the forecourt of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Algiers for an army museum in Coëtquidan.

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Other war memorials, including several massive monuments, were taken to France. A naval battery in Toulon has a stela from Algiers. Plaques from Bougie bearing the names of three hundred fallen soldiers were ceremoniously unveiled in Bougie’s twin-city in 1968 by Jacques Chaban-Delmas, the mayor of Bordeaux, and Jacques Augarde, the last French mayor of Bougie. The same year Albert Pommier’s statuary group of three soldiers from Oran – dedicated to the 12,500 soldiers from the Oran département who died for France – was re-erected in Oran’s sister city, Lyon. Joseph Ebstein’s marble-winged Victory posed with two soldiers, from Tlemcen, is in Saint-Aygulf (Var). Camille Alaphilippe’s eight-by-three-metre bronze relief from Philippeville stands in a cemetery in Toulouse. Maurice Favre’s sculpture of two native soldiers was shifted from Mostaganem to Montpellier. At least one war monument was also ‘repatriated’ from Morocco, Paul Landowski’s tribute to Franco-Moroccan fraternity, which Lyautey unveiled in Casablanca in 1924.19 The sculpture of two mounted horsemen shaking hands – a French poilu and a Moroccan spahi – was slated for demolition in 1961 when a veterans’s association convinced the Navy to recover it for Senlis, the spahis’ garrison.20 Sometimes simply pieces of monuments in Algeria, rather than the whole memorials, were ‘recycled’ into metropolitan memorials. The statue of a soldier from Mondovi was incorporated into one in Eragny-sur-Oise (Val-d’Oise). A stela from Philippeville commemorating the first victims in bombing by a German ship in 1914 was integrated into a North African War monument inaugurated in 1979 in Versailles. A coq gaulois from El-Achour became part of a monument in Besançon to the ‘Civils et Militaires morts pour la France sur les territoires d’Outre-Mer’.21 Alain Amato has inventoried a long list of ‘repatriated’ works which he calls ‘monuments in exile’. Many that commemorate soldiers ended up in cities with a military tradition – Fréjus, Montpellier, Senlis – or in communes in the Midi where pieds-noirs congregated.22 They stand as many-layered reminders of the French overseas presence: military men morts pour la France in the world wars, the repatriation of citizens from Algérie Française and other outposts, and the loss of the French empire. By bringing the monuments to France, authorities and veterans and pieds-noirs wished to preserve and safeguard memoirs of a treasured past and ‘rescue’ memorials from a society that wished to overcome the colonial past that they embodied. Pieds-noirs hoped too to mark France with monumental souvenirs from the French dominions they left, the ‘repatriated’ monuments signifiers of what they perceived as their own exile.

Colonial monuments from the Second World War The state and private organisations also erected memorials to soldiers from the Second World War, and to French men and women who died at German hands during the German invasion and Occupation. However, memorialisation


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of the Second World War – in which France played a lesser and less glorious role – did not take on the amplitude of commemoration of the Great War. Memorials with colonial references to the 1939–1945 war are generally simple ones in communes where colonial soldiers died while defending France in 1940, working in the Resistance or taking part in the Liberation.23 Some examples give an idea of the style and location. Among colonial troops, African soldiers were especially prominent in the Second World War, as in the Great War. A stone tablet recalls the deaths of Senegalese soldiers during enemy action on 13 June 1940 in Tilloy-et-Bellay (Marne). Two collective graves contain the remains of Senegalese killed at Jeugny (Aube) in the same month. In Airaines (Somme), a monument was erected in 1965 on the initiative of an association of soldiers and former colonials to commemorate Captain N’Tchoréré, commander of a Senegalese company defending the village. N’Tchoréré was shot after he was captured and refused to cross his hands above his head, as only Africans, not European soldiers, were required to do by the Germans. The inscription reads: ‘Au capitaine N’Tchoréré / mort héroiquement le 7 juin 1940 et à tous les combattants d’Afrique noire / qui ont versé leur sang / pour la France’ (To Captain N’Tchoréré, who died heroically on 7 June 1940, and to all the African combatants who shed their blood for France). At Harréville-les-Chanteurs (Haute-Marne), the Souvenir Français erected a monument with the names of nine soldiers (and mention of two tirailleurs whose names were unknown): ‘Aux coloniaux qui remplirent ici totalement les 18 et 19 juin 1940 une ultime et lourde mission de sacrifices et à leurs camarades du 12e régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais morts pour la France’ (To the colonials who took part in a final and costly mission of sacrifice here on 18–19 June 1940, and to their comrades in the twelfth regiment of tirailleurs sénégalais who died for France). At Clamecy (Nièvre), a 1948 monument funded by the municipal government commemorates the shooting in 1943 of forty-three African soldiers taken prisoner three years earlier. An African in uniform, helmet at his feet, sits atop a pedestal, holding a totemic sculpture – a rare articulated reference to the cultures from which the soldiers came. Also in the Nièvre, at La Machine, a stela erected in 1947 marks the spot where Germans shot four Senegalese. At Cressonsacq (Oise), a 1992 stela commemorates French and Guinean soldiers massacred on 10 June 1940. On one of the plaques is engraved a poem written by Jean Sauvageol on the day their bodies were discovered in 1941: ‘Pax / A l’orée du grand bois, sous les frondaisons calmes / Ils sont dormi un an, côte à côte ignorés / Et la houle des blés, par les vents balancés / Chaque soir les berçait d’une feuille de palme / Au grand soleil de juin, ils nous ont revenus / Ils ont cessé enfin d’être des inconnus / Et soudain les voici, plus purs, plus familiers’ (Pax / On the edge of this great woods, under the calm branches / For a year, they lay next to each other, unknown, / and the swaying of the wheat, blown by the wind, / Each evening like a palm frond, lulled their sleep. / In the bright sunlight of June, they have returned to us. / They have at last

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ceased being the unknown / and suddenly, here they are, more pure, more familiar). Such words remarking on the discovery of the remains of the ‘unknown’ soldiers allude, intentionally or not, to belated acknowledgement of colonial troops, now adopted into the family of heroes. Soldiers from other possessions who died in 1940 are also commemorated. In Burgundy a cemetery monument recalls ‘18 soldats indochinois mort en défendant la ville de Beaune’ (eighteen Indochinese soldiers killed defending Beaune). At Laxou (Meurthe-et-Moselle), a simple stone pays tribute to eleven Malagasy killed by the Germans, and soldiers from Madagascar who died defending the Meuse on 13 May 1940 are honoured on a marble plaque in Monthermé (Ardennes). A more elaborate monument to Algerian and Moroccan spahis, commissioned by the ‘Burnous’ veterans association, was unveiled in 1950 at La Horgne (Ardennes) by President Vincent Auriol and the president of the Union Française assembly. On a fifteen-metrehigh concrete wall ornamented with Arabic-style horseshoe arches, the dedication in French and Arabic reads: ‘A la gloire des spahis morts au champ d’honneur’ (To the glory of the spahis fallen on the field of honour); the pedestal lists other theatres where the corps fought, from Algeria to Crimea to China, covering the years 1830 to 1945. A stone tablet with the Moroccan pentagram, unveiled in 1971, commemorates thirty-two Moroccan soldiers shot by Germans on 30 May 1940 at Febvin-Palfart (Pas-de-Calais) and buried in the local cemetery. Colonials who fought in the Resistance are recalled as well. A stela in La Vacheresse-et-la-Rouillie (Vosges) commemorates Adjutant Addi Ba, a tirailleur sénégalais, ‘Résistant de première heure’, who was arrested, tortured and killed on 18 December 1943. At Lavau (Yonne), one honours maquisards, including four Indochinese, who died during the Occupation. A more iconographically complex monument, including a bas-relief of a soldier falling backwards after being shot, commemorates colonial soldiers who died in the Liberation of Saint-Maurice-Colombier (Doubs). At Cerisiers (Yonne), a stela marks the spot where a Vietnamese fell in 1944. And there are yet other colonial reminders, for instance at Maillé (Indre-et-Loire), which was almost entirely destroyed by Germans. General de Gaulle sought rebuilding funds from the colonies – a similar twinning to that which occurred in the First World War – and schoolroom plaques record greetings in 1944 from children in Bangui, Pointe-à-Pitre and Brazzaville.24 Colonial soldiers served the Free French throughout the war and contributed to the Liberation. At Barbaggio (Haute-Corse), a monument and a canon at the Col de Teghime honour Moroccan tabors killed in 1943 and 1944: ‘Remplis du souvenir d’une lumière unique, leurs yeux se sont fermés aux brumes d’Occident. Seigneur[,] Permettez que les durs guerriers de Berbérie qui ont libéré nos foyers et apporté à nos enfants le réconfort de leur sourire se tiennent contre nous, épaule contre épaule, et qu’ils sachent, ô qu’ils sachent, Seigneur[,] combien nous les avons aimés’ (Filled with the memory of a


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unique light, they closed their eyes in the mist of the Occident. Lord, may these hardened warriors of the Barbary lands who liberated our homes and brought to our children the comfort of their smiles, still lean on us, shoulder to shoulder, and may they know, oh may they know, Lord, how much we loved them). The inscription sends a complex message, written as a Christian prayer with reference to the Barbary lands and warrior traditions. More simply, a stela at Montvalezan (Savoie) marks the spot where Algerian soldiers died fighting in September 1944. An engraved granite boulder stands in Marseille in honour of a regiment of the tirailleurs algériens, which took part in the liberation of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde basilica on 25 August 1944. Another stela, at Scheibenhard (Bas-Rhin), commemorates the 4th Regiment of Tunisian tirailleurs, the first French army unit to march into Nazi Germany (on 19 March 1945).25 Graves of colonial soldiers who died in France recall the role of tirailleurs, goums and other corps.26 In Rougement (Doubs) are 1251 tombs of Muslims killed in battle in Franche-Comté in 1944. The military cemetery of Airvault (Deux-Sèvres) contains the graves, each surmounted by a star and crescent, of twenty-six North Africans who died in a German prison camp, as well as a monument ‘aux Français d’outre-mer morts pour la patrie’ (To the overseas Frenchman who died for the patrie). Moroccans also lie in the cemetery at Saint-Florent (Haute-Corse). At Chasselay (Rhône), 188 West Africans killed in combat or summarily executed by Germans in 1940 were hurriedly buried two days after the massacre. In 1942 the secretary-general of the local war veterans’ administration, a M. Marchiani, used his own money to purchase a property, have the remains identified, and create a permanent cemetery inaugurated three days after Germans marched into the unoccupied part of France. Brick walls, a tower and carved gate recall a West African burial-ground. Areas where colonial soldiers were most numerous, such as eastern France, have the greatest concentration of monuments. In the Rhône, twenty-eight tirailleurs sénégalais were massacred on 20 June 1940. A plaque in Lyon’s Montée Balmont put up by residents and veterans ‘pour perpétuer le souvenir / de cette tragique journée’ (to perpetuate the memory of that tragic day) commemorates the Senegalese ‘qui / avaient résisté courageusement / à l’avance des hordes nazies’ (who bravely resisted the advance of the Nazi horders) and provides an example of a private commemorative initiative. In Latignié, also in the Rhône, a 1947 stela recalls eighteen other massacred Senegalese, and at Neuville-sur-Saône, six North Africans are honoured. Monuments erected in places where colonial troops took part in battle or were massacred underline the presence of Arab and African soldiers throughout France and recall their sometimes overlooked contributions to the war effort. A monument in Coulmiers-le-Sec – a tall pillar decorated with an anchor and a cross – is a rare one dedicated to all Second World War soldiers from the colonies. In general, ‘colonial’ monuments aux morts are

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iconographically simple, often a classical stela or tablet with a brief Arabic inscription, a Moroccan star or similar sign serving as a visual reminder of the troops’ origin. The inscription in Barbaggio is unusual in acknowledging in more florid style the background of the ‘guerriers de Berbérie’ and in affirming solidarity between metropolitan and colonial comrades. A particular place for Second World War memorialisation is Mont-Valérien (Hauts-de-Seine), site of the massacre of nearly a thousand Frenchmen between 1941 and 1944. On 11 November 1945 the remains of fifteen soldiers, chosen to represent different corps and battle theatres, were solemnly interred in the Mémorial de la France Combattante. The colonial connections of several are underscored by ornamental carvings in the shrine. A bas-relief by Georges Saupiqué represents the French navy in Casablanca while Aimé BizetteLindet’s allegory depicts an injured but defiant lion attacking the enemy in the Fezzan, and Raymond Martin’s work portrays the North African battle of Bir-Hakeim. Seven soldiers buried at Mont-Valérien are colonials. Boutie Diasso Kal was born in 1918 near Ougadougou and killed at the Somme in 1940. Edmond Gréthen, born in 1898 in the Moselle, was killed by the Japanese in Laos in 1945. Malboukédé (one only name is given) was a North African killed by Germans in the Var in 1944. Allal Ould M’hamed Ben Semers, a Moroccan, died in Briançon in 1944. Hedhili Ben Salem Ben Jah Mohammed Amar, born around 1913 in Sousse, Tunisia, fell in the Eure-et-Loir in 1940. Marius Elie Dupont, a Provençal born in 1919, was killed in Algeria in 1944. Antoine Mourgues, born in Lorient in 1919, served with the Bataillon du Pacifique and died in Libya in 1942.27 The prominence given to men who came from or fought in the empire is clearly meant to signal the importance of the colonial soldiery and the ralliement of the colonies. The inauguration of the Mont-Valérien monument occurred just as France was reasserting its authority over overseas domains, and soon after the Brazzaville speech in which de Gaulle ruled out the possibility of their gaining independence. The interments therefore also signified France’s continuing imperial resolve at a particularly crucial moment. Several years later, in the midst of the Indochinese War, the state entombed one other body at the memorial, that of an Asian soldier who died in Indochinese resistance against the Japanese. The gesture was a powerful reminder of another military theatre and of a colony France was unsuccessfully trying to retain. The tombs suggest the links between commemoration of earlier wars and contemporary political objectives, and the ways that a monument or necropolis could be subtly marshalled to the service of official policy. Some memorials commemorating the colonial dead were erected only belatedly, as suggested by the dates of several of the monuments discussed here. After the Mont-Valérien memorial was completed, only in the 1980s did the state again make a concerted effort to recognise colonial and other foreign soldiers. For instance, in 1989 the Ministry of Culture arranged for artists to work with students in the working class and ethnically mixed


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twentieth arrondissement of Paris on a study of foreigners’ contribution to the war effort. President Mitterrand unveiled Jorge Soler’s sculpture at the Arche de la Défense in Paris – it later entered the collections of the Musée de la Résistance in Besançon – as part of an exhibition on foreigners in the Resistance. The five-metre-high work depicts two bronze faces emerging from a stone, ‘sentinelles de la mémoire’ (sentinels of memory) honouring central European Jews, Italians, Spaniards, North Africans and black Africans who served in the French army. According to Soler, ‘Ce monument rend hommage à leur courage et vient témoigner du rôle déterminant qu’ils ont joué pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour qu’enfin la place qui leur revient dans notre histoire soit reconnue à leur juste valeur’28 (This monument pays tribute to their courage and bears witness to the crucial role they played in the Second World War, so that, at last, the place that is due to them in our history will be fully accorded). A second recent memorial, this one specifically to colonial soldiers, is located in Fréjus, a city with many colonial connections. It stands on the seafront at the intersection of the Boulevard d’Algérie and the Rue Roland Garros, named for a Réunion-born aviator who made the first aeroplane crossing of the Mediterranean – from Fréjus to Bizerte – on 23 September 1913. Finance for the project came from an association of friends of the Musée des Troupes de Marine in Fréjus, the Ministry of Defense and the municipal council. Yvon Guidez’s monument, dedicated ‘à toutes les troupes noires qui ont vaillamment servi le drapeau français pendant plus d’un siècle et dont Fréjus était la plus importante garnison’ (To the black soldiers who valiantly served the French flag over more than a century and for whom Fréjus was the most important garrison), was inaugurated on 1 September 1994. An inscription quotes from Léopold Sedar Senghor’s ‘Hosties noires’, a poem honouring African troops: ‘Passant, / ils sont tombés / fraternellement unis / pour que tu restes / Français’ (Passer-by, / they fell / fraternally united / so that you may remain / French). Five soldiers comprise the sculpture. One who appears European holds a flag, while a black soldier looks up with respect; another African raises a hand towards heaven for aid or comfort or simply to scan for signs of battle. Two men are posed in front, one helping a disconsolate or wounded comrade. Two of the figures wear fezzes and the others, helmets; the flag-bearer is dressed in a formal uniform with medals and a sheathed sword, while the others are in combat gear. The scene comes from a First World War battle: the recapture of the Fort de Douaumont on 24 October 1916 by General Mangin and Senegalese, Somalian and Moroccan troops. The Fréjus monument captures a heroic moment in battle. The flag-bearer takes pride of place, but the Africans are portrayed in a dignified fashion as brave troopers and loyal comrades. The quotation from Senghor, an emblematic figure of France’s engagement with Africa, underlines the ideal of a ‘fraternal’ relationship – the word echoes both soldierly camaraderie and revolutionary fraternité – but pointedly reminds the French of the debt owed to

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colonial soldiers. William Kidd also idenifies some present-day resonances. The monument stands in a region with numerous pieds-noirs, and the Front National gains some of its highest vote tallies in the Provence-AlpesCôte-d’Azur. The leading political figure in Fréjus, François Léotard, Minister of Defense in the 1990s, is a Gaullist opponent of the Front National who has strongly denounced racism and xenophobia. Léotard’s ‘patronage of this unequivocal homage to the “Black Army” ’ may be seen in that political context.29 In the neighbouring commune, Saint-Raphaël, stands a monument to the Armée d’Afrique near the spot where French soldiers landed from North Africa on 15 August 1944, a fifteen-metre-tall obelisk unveiled by the Minister of the Interior on 15 August 1975. On the base are carved ‘Algérie – Sahara – Tunisie – Maroc’ (Algeria – Sahara – Tunisia – Morocco) and the dedication: ‘A l’Armée d’Afrique – La France reconnaissante’ (To the Armée d’Afrique [from] a grateful France). The two sculptures, their creation separted by twenty years, provide complementary reminders of the colonial forces in the world wars. Memorials to colonial soldiers thus include plaques, ‘kit-model’ stelae and tablets, and monuments with archetypal motifs and figurative statuary that draw attention to the soldiers’ overseas background. Following convention, they represent soldiers as loyal to France, courageous in battle, solicitous of wounded comrades, noble in sacrifice. Racialist assumptions of officers such as Mangin who promoted the force noire are occluded. Mangin had stated that Africans were especially fit for military service: capable of living in harsh conditions and accustomed by years of porterage and manual labour to carry heavy loads. He hypothesised that Africans’ nervous system gave them a greater resistance to pain than whites, that hierarchical traditions accustomed them to discipline, and that some tribes inherited an innate aggressiveness that could be harnessed.30 Memorials do not allude to such pseudo-scientific views that underpinned the use of black troops. There is no hint that pressure on Africans and other colonials to sign up caused much resentment and provoked rebellions from western Africa to New Caledonia. Monuments do not detail the particularly high death rate of colonial soldiers that led some anti-colonialists to accuse the military command of using them as cannon fodder in particularly dangerous engagements. If North African soldiers are occasionally recognised by their home country – ‘tirailleurs algériens’ or ‘tabors marocains’ – those from sub-Saharan Africa are grouped together as the ‘armée noire’ or as ‘tirailleurs sénégalais’ (though tirailleurs were recruited from various possessions) without mention of individual colonies or cultural groups. Captain N’Tchoréré and the soldiers interred at Mont-Valérien count among the few commemorated by name. Figurative statues of colonial troopers are rare, although French poilus appear on innumerable monuments. The particular conditions of colonial troops sometimes recruited under duress and assigned to subaltern status far from home is not evoked. Monuments cannot evoke the considerable concern expressed during the war years


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about black soldiers’ off-duty activities, particularly liaisons with French women. The role of the wars in politicising colonised peoples, often promoting nationalist sentiments, is left for the passer-by to discover elsewhere. Colonial war monuments in France, while recalling sacrifices on the champs d’honneur, remain silent on less presentable effects of war on empire. Monuments to colonial soldiers fulfilled functions that war memorials in general were intended to perform. Lasting tributes to war service and sacrifice, they immortalise soldiers, battles and the corps involved. They serve as sites of remembrance ceremonies. However, they could not fulfill another role: places for neighbours, friends and families of the fallen to grieve and recall loved ones. Few of the colonial soldiers’ kith and kin would ever see French monuments erected in their honour. The memorials could not record a hometown’s dedication ‘à ses enfants morts pour la patrie’, which helps explain the absence of detailed inscriptions in non-European languages. Rather, as part of the national cult of war remembrance, they left a lasting record of links between France and its colonies, a reminder that Senegalese and Vietnamese fought alongside Gascons and Burgundians in defense of France. Especially at the time of the First World War, a French population with only a passing acquaintance with the ‘natives’ over whom their flag waved witnessed African, Asian and Oceanic soldiers as allies and auxiliaries. Africans traditionally portrayed as bloodthirsty and primitive warriors or rebels resisting French dominion now became heroic comrades – the affable if paternalistically portrayed tirailleur of ‘Banania’ advertisements.31 The First World War battles consecrated imperial unity in the eyes of colonial promoters, but it could not solder the unbreakable link between the colonised people to France that they hoped. The Rif Wars in Morocco and the Druze rebellion in Lebanon and Syria in the inter-war years showed that ‘natives’ were not always so docile and patriotic as war propaganda had proclaimed, and many nationalist leaders (such as Pouvana’a a Oopa in Polynesia) were veterans of the Great War. Memorials to Second World War soldiers were erected just as contestatory movements spurred insurrection in Madagascar, Indochina and Algeria. Once again the image of colonial soldiers altered as heroic poilus and Résistants became that of rebels and guerrilla fighters. Even though many colonisés continued to serve in French forces, and were championed for their loyalty, they were now called upon to fight against compatriots struggling for independence. Old comrades-in-arms divided into enemy camps during wars of independence. Wars of decolonisation followed world wars, and France would later memorialise the colonial soldiers who battled alongside metropolitan troopers to maintain the empire. Despite the multiplicity of war memorials, and the various monuments that recall colonial soldiers who fought in Europe, only the rare monument collectively commemorates French soldiers who served in the colonies. In the monuments to the colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria, as David L. Schalk has eloquently shown, can be seen many of the commemorative,

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historical and ideological issues connected with collective memories of the imperialist past.32

Monuments to the Indochinese War Although less divisive than the later North African conflict, and less costly in lives lost, the war in Indochina from 1946 to 1954 was unpopular in a France still recovering from the Occupation and the Second World War and uncertain about the worth of defending dominions far away. Eight years of battle from the bombing of Haiphong to the siege of Dien Bien Phu ended in defeat and French withdrawal from Southeast Asia. The Indochinese conflict was not a war to repel the invader or defend the homeland but one to maintain imperial control. France could not claim victory as in 1918 or liberation as in 1944. A decade after de Gaulle marched triumphantly through Paris, battered French troops evacuated Indochina. General de Lattre had kept his promise to see the Tricolour again fly over Strasbourg, but the French flag had been lowered in Hanoi. The relative scarcity of monuments to the Indochinese War suggests the difficulty of erecting monuments to colonial defeat in combat which, far from galvanising French support, fails to fire up nationalism. Commemoration of the Indochinese War remained neglected in the midst of the fratricidal Algerian War, an unhappy reminder of failure to hold an imperial outpost on the other side of the world. With the events in North Africa, those of Indochina quickly faded into the past. Rapatriés from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos who might have lobbied for commemoration did not form a large or influential community. By the 1960s the American War in Vietnam overshadowed the earlier French War. In a climate of widening opposition to neo-colonialism, the sympathies of many lay with Ho Chi Minh’s forces. ‘Monumentalisation’ of French efforts to retain imperial control of Indochina decades earlier was improbable. When receding memories of Indochina revived, they produced romanticised visions redolent of nostalgia for the colonial age, not images of the colonial war.33 In Paris there is no specific monuments aux morts to those who died in Indochina, who are nevertheless mentioned at such sites as a plaque at the sixth arrondissement city hall and the memorial at the Jardin Tropical. Indochina also appears, curiously, in a memorial to French soldiers in Korea located on the banks of the Seine. The unremarkable monument is shaped as a map of the Koreas, but ‘Indochine’ is also inscribed. In the Invalides’s church a memorial tablet hangs behind the pulpit, and a plaque in the gallery is dedicated ‘à la mémoire de tous ceux qui sont morts pour la France en Indochine 1858–1955’ (To the memory of all those who died for France in Indochina, 1858–1955), the dates encompassing the long-term French presence in Southeast Asia.34 Several low-key memorials outside Paris have appeared in recent years as public consciousness about the colonial past and interest in contemporary


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Vietnam grow stronger. Perhaps, too, aging veterans or families have sought to secure soldiers’ memory. For instance, the village of Lauzach (Morbihan), which lost three native sons in Indochina, in 1996 put up a granite stela with a map marked with the cities where the young men died.35 Another example of provincial commemoration is Véronique Dollfus’s monument to soldiers from Dinan, a pediment of Breton granite, inspired by Vietnamese memorial iconography, with a tortoise surmounted by a stela. Artisans from Bac Ninh province in Vietnam constructed the tiered canopy over the sculpture.36 The national memorial to the Indochinese War – one of France’s most significant colonial monuments – is located in Fréjus. This lieu de mémoire – a monument aux morts, necropolis and museum next door to a First World War-era Buddhist pagoda – is especially interesting, not only because of the large group of complementary edifices, but also because of the mixed messages they present. Colonial soldiers, including most of the Indochinese, were stationed in Fréjus while awaiting transfer to the front during the First World War.37 In 1917, Lieutenant-Colonel Lamé, commandant of Camp Gallieni,38 initiated the building of a pagoda near the burial-ground, on a hillside just outside the city, that eventually contained graves of two hundred Indochinese soldiers who died in France. Next to the pagoda, in 1983 a veterans’ association erected a monument aux morts d’Indochine engraved with the dates 1939–1956. These dates bring together very different experiences: the beginning of the Second World War, collusion between the Vichy-aligned regime in Indochina and the Japanese, the brief Franco-Thai War of 1940–1941, resistance to the Axis throughout the war and liberation, the 1946–1954 war of decolonisation, and the residual French military presence in South Vietnam for two years after Dien Bien Phu. The bas-relief carving on the monument, by an artist called Luccerini, shows two figures, a Frenchman in combat gear and an Indochinese in peasant clothing, depicted as allies rather than combattants defending the integrity of Vietnam. They hold a map of Indochina embossed with a traditional dragon, a succinct iconography with no attempt to reproduce the realities of war and no high-minded inscription. From the end of the war until 1975, the remains of 11,747 soldiers were brought back from Vietnam, and those of other soldiers were regrouped at cemeteries at Tan Son Nhut and Vung Tau in South Vietnam and Ba Huyen in North Vietnam. With the changed political conditions following Vietnamese reunification in 1975, and the difficulties of maintaining foreign graveyards, the French government decided in 1980 to repatriate all soldiers’ remains. Paris and Hanoi reached an agreement in 1986, and the first coffins soon arrived to be saluted by Prime Minister Chirac at the Roissy airport and by President Mitterrand in the courtyard of the Invalides. By the end of 1987, the remains of 27,239 Frenchmen had been returned, including 3630 civilians buried at Ba Huyen.39

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Repatriation of the ashes necessitated the building of a necropolis, initially to be located in central France, well suited to access from all regions. However, Fréjus’s mayor, François Léotard – with avowed interest in the outre-mer but also his city’s tourist potential – offered to the Ministère des Anciens Combattants a 23,403-square-metre property next to the pagoda and monument aux morts. Jacques Chirac laid the cornerstone of the Mémorial des Guerres en Indochine in 1988, and François Mitterrand inaugurated the necropolis and museum on 16 February 1993. Bernard Desmoulins’s necropolis takes the form of two levels of urns along a walkway stretching behind the war monument with other burial niches in a circular wall. The circle, according to a brochure published by the ministry of veterans’ affairs, ‘symbolise à la fois le périple et l’enceinte militaire héritière du cercle spirituel des tribus’ (symbolises both the periplus and the military enceinte that developed from ancient religious circles). The highest point faces the port from where troops sailed to Indochina. The remains of over 17,000 named soldiers are interred in the necropolis, and the crypt contains a grave with the remains of 3152 soldiers who could not be identified. As well, 3618 civilians are interred in a columbarium, which is unusual since military cemeteries are generally reserved for soldiers morts pour la France during wartime. (The repatriated remains of 3165 soldiers who died in Indochina in peacetime are buried at La Lègue.) Affixed to the walkway in 1996, a plexiglass ‘mur du souvenir’ (memorial wall) – ornamented with a bronze map of French Indochina – lists soldiers killed in Indochina during the world wars and down until 1957 whose bodies disappeared in Southeast Asia or were returned to France for private burial elsewhere. As is traditional, names are listed in alphabetical order, divided chronologically by year of death and without indication of military rank. Some Maghrebin, black African and Vietnamese are identified by only one name – Ali or Amar or Saïd – presumably as their full names were not known or recorded. There is also a list of disparus présumés morts pour la France (the missing, presumed morts pour la France). On the memorial’s lower level, wooden tablets recall the cemeteries in Vietnam from which the soldiers’ remains were repatriated. Various organisations, with the Ministry of Defence’s authorisation, have put up small plaques in honour of comrades, indicators of collective memories of the war and of the diverse colonial groups in Indochina. Aux planteurs d’hévéas morts pour la France pays tribute to rubber-planters. Among corps of veterans commemorated are parachutists, the gendarmerie (in memory of 682 dead), the spahis, the Légion Etrangère (12,602 men killed in Indochina), the telegraphy corps, survivors of the battles of Dien Bien Phu and Langson, the navy, the engineering corps and fighter-pilots. There is a reminder of the Second World War in the plaque of the Fédération des réseaux de la résistance en Indochine, and of a later Asian War in that of the French battalion in the Korean War. One tablet is dedicated ‘aux martyrs disparus dans les camps du Viet Minh’ (To the martyrs who disappeared in Viet Minh camps). Plaques sponsored by


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the Algerian Ecole d’élèves aspirants de Cherchell 1942–1945 and the Souvenir de l’armée d’Afrique association recall French soldiers from Africa who fought in the Indochinese War. Plaques put up by the Fédération nationale des fils des tués, an association of parents of the war dead, the Fédération nationale des combattants de moins de vingt ans, and Les Anciens Enfants de troupe eurasiens de Dalat are particularly poignant. The mood of quiet recollection induced by the graves and plaques continues in four small and interlocking open-air chapels – uncommon at war memorials in France, where separation of church and state is rigorously enforced. Each of the four – Buddhist, Muslim, Christian and Jewish – contains a symbol of the faith and a quotation from scriptures on a wall in front of a simple wooden bench. Each year between 16,000 and 17,000 visitors come to the Mémorial des Guerres en Indochine, a substantial drop from the 50,000 who visited when it first opened. The occasional flower or wreath marks a personal tribute, and regular remembrance ceremonies are held. The memorial is clearly intended for commemoration and reflection – there is no café or shop, and only a few postcards are for sale. Political symbols, except for the Tricolour, are absent, and the site is, at least on the surface, ideologically neutral, though the plaques, iconography and the dates inscribed on the monument signify an inflected interpretation of Franco-Vietnamese history. A brochure about the little museum signals the mood. The visitor – ‘frère d’armes en recherche de ton Passé, Epouse ou Fiancée, Parent ou Enfant en quête d’une certitude consolatrice, Fille ou Fils de notre Indochine d’autrefois, au regard interrogateur, Homme ou Femme d’un Pays de Liberté, soucieux de ton Histoire, Passant, Etranger ou Touriste poussé par la curiosité’ (comrade-in-arms in search of your Past; Spouse or Fiancée, Parent or Child, looking for a certain consolation; Daughter or Son of our old Indochina, with a questioning regard; Man or Woman from a Country of Liberty concerned about your History; Passer-by, Foreigner or Tourist motivated by curiosity) – is cautioned that here is a site ‘de la MEMOIRE de SACRIFICES méconnus, d’HEROISMES ignorés, de SOUFFRANCES oubliées’ (of the MEMORY of neglected SACRIFICES, unrecorded ACTS OF HEROISM and forgotten SUFFERINGS). The ‘salle-mémorial’ (memorial hall) aims to make reparation for lack of recognition of Indochina veterans: it ‘n’a pas la prétention d’écrire l’Histoire. Elle se veut, seulement et simplement, LIEU D’EVOCATION pour que demeure le SOUVENIR de ceux qui sont ici et ceux qui n’y sont pas, pour que soient comprises et respectées les raisons de leur Sacrifice[,] pour que Hommage soit rendu à ceux qui furent Frères dans un même Combat’ (does not claim to write History. It intends, solely and simply, to be a PLACE OF EVOCATION so that the MEMORY of those who are still with us and those who are not will remain, so that their sacrifice will be understood and respected, so that Homage can be paid to those who were Brothers in a common struggle). Though disavowing a historical presentation, the museum perhaps inevitably has a marked slant on the French in Indochina.

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Displays in the one-hundred-square-metre room, prepared by the Centre d’histoire militaire et d’études de la défense nationale in Montpellier, intend to ‘éclairer le sens [of the site], pour respecter les motivations des acteurs du conflit et sensibiliser les autres catégories de visiteurs’ (shed light on the meaning [of the site] in respecting the motives of the actors in this conflict and in sensitising other categories of visitors). Focussing on the ordinary soldier, they make no mention of particular units or commanders, even the most famous, and there are no ‘relics’ such as blood-stained flags or uniforms. Nine themes are treated: ‘La Terre et les Hommes’, ‘Un long passé commun’, ‘La solitude dans la tourmente de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale’, ‘L’Adversaire’, ‘Un combat de tous les instants’, ‘Un long conflit de neuf années’, ‘Frères d’armes’, ‘La Captivité’ and ‘Le Sacrifice’ (‘The Land and its People’, ‘A Long Shared Past’, ‘Isolation in the Turmoil of the Second World War’, ‘The Adversary’, ‘A Full-Time Combat’, ‘A Nine-Year-Long Conflict’, ‘Comradesin-Arms’, ‘Captivity’, ‘Sacrifice’). Relief maps depict the battle of Koh Chang, the geography of southern Indochina, the famous Route Coloniale No. 4 and Dien Bien Phu. Captions preserve the literary styles of an earlier age: ‘L’Indochine: Des paysages sévères d’une grande beauté, Des Terres ingrates d’une grande richesse, Des hommes rudes d’une grande sensibilité’ (Indochina: Austere landscapes of great beauty, unfruitful soils of great wealth, crude people of great refinement). A large relief map of Indochina retains French names (e.g. Tourane), but attached to the wall a photocopied letterhead of Vietnam Airlines gives current names. Most of the exhibition consists of large photograph albums; the first in classic textbook style introduces ‘la terre et les hommes’ (land and people). Descriptions of Indochinese populations use imperialist-age language to present black-and-white photographs that date from the colonial years. ‘Le peuple cambodgien, profondément marqué par le brahmanisme et le bouddhisme, paisible et individualiste, religieux et sensible’ (The Cambodian people – deeply marked by Brahmanism and Buddhism, peaceful and individualistic, religious and refined). ‘Le peuple lao plein de douceur et de gaïté; insouciant mais affable et hospitalier’ (The Lao people – full of gentleness and gaiety, insouciant but affable and hospitable). ‘Le peuple vietnamien, conquérant venu du nord, homme de la plaine et des deltas, ingénieux et actif, organisé et indépendant’ (The Vietnamese people – conquerors come from the North, men of the plain and the deltas, clever and active, balanced and independent). (One notes characterisation of the Vietnamese as conquerors.) The text evokes the ‘long passé commun’ (long shared past) of the Indochinese and French in Asia, ‘frères d’armes’ (comrades-in-arms) tragically separated by the ‘embrasement final’ (final conflagration) of 1954. A history lesson contrasts the French and other imperialists: Succédant à la Chine conquérante et dominatrice, au Japon navigateur et commerçant, à l’Espagne et au Portugal aventuriers et négociants, à la


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Hollande et à l’Angleterre mercantiles et vites déçues, la France à partir du XVIIe siècle aborde les rivages de la future Indochine avec ses missionnaires pour apporter la foi chrétienne, avec ses envoyés du roi pour établir des relations diplomatiques, avec ses commerçants pour développer les échanges, puis au milieu du XIXe siècle, avec ses marins et soldats pour protéger les missions persécutées, pour maintenir la paix intérieure, pour assurer la sécurité des frontières, avec ses explorateurs pour remonter les fleuves, pour découvrir les terres intérieures, pour prendre contact avec les peuples, avec ses administrateurs pour aider et moderniser ces territoires divisés, pour organiser et fédérer ces états protégés, avec tout un peuple de colons, planteurs et forestiers, prospecteurs et négociants, ingénieurs et savants, chercheurs et enseignants, chez lesquels le pur désintéressement de l’immense majorité l’emporte sur l’attitude de quelques-uns. (Succeeding conquering and domineering China, sea-faring and trading Japan, adventurous and business-minded Spain and Portugal, mercantilist and quickly disappointed Holland and Britain, France from the seventeenth century sailed into the waters of the future Indochina. Her missionaries brought the Christian faith; her royal envoys came to establish diplomatic relations, and her merchants to develop trade. Then in the mid-nineteenth century sailors and soldiers landed to protect the persecuted missions, to maintain peace in the country and to assure the security of the frontiers. Explorers arrived to navigate the rivers, administrators to aid and modernise these divided territories and to organise and federate these states under [French] protection. So, too, came a whole host of settlers, planters and foresters, prospectors and traders, engineers and scientists, researchers and teachers, the disinterestedness of the great majority winning out over the [self-interested] attitude of a few.) The hagiography continues: ‘A l’issue de campagnes éprouvantes et difficiles contre les nationalistes intransigeants, contre l’armée de Chine enfin refoulée dans ses frontières, contre des bandes d’irréguliers et de pirates’ (At the conclusion of testing and difficult campaigns against intransigent nationalists, against a Chinese army finally driven back to its borders and against bands of irregular soldiers and pirates), France succeeded in creating the Union Indochinoise in 1887. A list of achievements is detailed, illustrated by photographs of 3400 kilometres of railway and 35,000 kilometres of roads, electricity, dams, medicine, education, secure borders and scientific research. France is portrayed as the liberator of Indochina, entrepreneur of good works and apostle of the mission civilisatrice in an account of colonial history that emphasises the peaceful nature of French occupation and the benefits it brought, and underlines the heroic efforts of Frenchmen from Alexandre de Rhodes onwards. About such issues as forced labour, despoliation of land, suppression of dissent, or attacks on Confucian and Buddhist culture, nothing is said, and only the slightest acknowledgement is made of the self-interest of

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some Frenchmen in Asia. However, and with no explanation of the reasons, French administration ‘suscite néamoins les réactions de la fierté nationale, l’exigence d’une identité reconnue’ (nevertheless provoked reactions of national pride and a claim for recognition of a [national] identity). The good old colonial days gave way to ‘le temps des revendications et celui du durcissement’ (the time of demands and hardened positions). Though 43,000 Indochinese fought in the First World War (with 1123 deaths), and 49,000 workers engaged in war labour (with 1976 casualties),40 the Franco-Vietnamese relationship began to suffer. ‘Incompréhensions récriproques et poids des intérêts, aspirations légitimes et débordements incontrôlés, s’exprimeront dans des épisodes douleureux et violents, révoltes des lettrés et mouvements populaires, agisssements d’une émigration révolutionnaire et entreprises clandestines, mettent en péril le cheminement paisible vers une indépendence à venir, dans l’harmonie d’une coopération bénéfique’ (Mutual incomprehension and the weight of [partisan] interests, legitimate aspirations and uncontrolled excesses, painful and violent incidents, mandarin revolts and peasant movements, the agitation of migrant revolutionaries and clandestine societies – these endangered the peaceful path of eventual independence and harmonious and beneficial cooperation). Texts do not chronicle Vietnamese nationalism or sketch the history of the Communists. Ho Chi Minh is never named, and a single photograph shows the emblem of the Indochinese Communist Party. The account talks about a ‘guerre révolutionnaire et nationale . . . longue et totale, populaire et patriotique, une guerre menée sous conduite du parti qui monopolise l’état, la nation et la patrie’ (revolutionary and nationalist war . . . a long and total war, a patriotic people’s war, one carried out under the leadership of the party that monopolised the state, the nation and the patrie). The French return in 1945, an effort ‘de restaurer sa légitime souveraineté, abolie par Tokyo, de rétablir l’ordre et la paix dans un pays désorganisé, de définir des rapports nouveaux avec les peuples qui aspirent à l’indépendance’ (to restore her legitimate sovereignty, which had been overturned by Tokyo, to re-establish order and peace in a chaotic country, and to define a new relationship with peoples who aspired to independence), came up against furious opposition. The Viet Minh’s attacks on French garrisons scuppered the chance for a peaceful arrangement under the provisions of the Fourth Republic’s constitution and began a long and bloody war. The text pays a succinct tribute to the Vietnamese soldier, ‘un paysan attaché à sa terre, un homme proche du peuple, un militant pur et dur, un soldat endurant et valeureux’ (a peasant attached to his land, a man close to the people, a true patriot, a long-suffering and courageous soldier). But it castigates the nationalist enemy, an ‘adversaire [qui] refuse le combat et demeure insaissisable’ (an adversary [who] could not be engaged and could not be caught), who unleashed ‘terrorisme urbain implacable’ (implacable urban terrorism). By contrast, heroic French soldiers, sailors


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and aviators defended the Tricolour shoulder to shoulder with the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian allies as well as men from near and far in the French empire, ‘Français par le sang versé’ (French through shed blood). They battled a guerrilla army and suffered ‘re-education’ and brainwashing in the concentration camps which ‘sont la règle dans la recherche d’une vérité unilatérale et infaillible d’un monde d’illusion’ (are the rule in this world of illusions searching for a one-sided and infallible truth). Pictures of survivors of the camps – 37,000 prisoners, of whom the fate of some 21,000 remained unknown according to the account – illustrate French sacrifices. French women too did their part. Photos showing women operating telex machines, folding parachutes and nursing the wounded illustrate ‘des qualités féminines de coeur et de dévouement, de conscience et de compétence’ (feminine qualities of nurture and devotion, conscientiousness and competence). The brave defenders of French Indochina fought on, compromised at home ‘des pouvoirs politiques instables et sans volonté, une nation lasse et divisée, des populations indifférentes ou versatiles, des efforts de guerre mesurés et insuffisants, des combats interminables et sans décision’ (unstable and uncommitted political powers, a fatigued and divided nation, an indifferent and manipulable population, measured and insufficient military means and interminable but indecisive battles). The 1954 ceasefire left 38,000 soldiers dead – 10,000 metropolitan Frenchmen, 19,000 Indochinese, 4000 North Africans, 1000 black Africans, 4000 Legionnaires – plus 89,000 wounded and 40,000 missing in action. The war terminated ‘l’influence de France dans l’Asie du Sud-Est’ (the influence of France in Southeast Asia). It left bitter memories for returned soldiers whose service was misunderstood, states one caption next to a newspaper with a headline calling for peace. The troops’s efforts were ridiculed, it adds, quoting an anti-war song. Their sacrifices were disavowed, says a label juxtaposed with the front page of the Communist newspaper L’Humanité announcing celebrations of the ceasefire. A picture of valiant but suffering French soldiers is captioned: ‘Une grande amertume, une honte inavouée, peut-être une rage contenue, puis, las et désabusés, un retour sans gloire et sans joie, auprès d’une nation inconsciente et ingrate’ (A great bitterness, an unspoken shame, perhaps a repressed rage, then, exhausted and undeceived, a return with neither glory nor joy to an unaware and ungrateful nation). What awaited those loyal to the French in independent Vietnam was ‘un cortège de haine et de délation, avec ses cachots et ses camps’ (a fate of hate and denunciation, prison-cells and camps). This rendition may well resonate with the former soldier who visits the Mémorial and feels bitterness about a lost war and an unacknowledged sacrifice. But it presents the war in simplistic terms of benevolent Frenchmen and willing allies facing nameless enemies who refused to obey the rules of war or honour the conventions of peace. It suggests that French poilus were defeated by lack of commitment at home and the work of outside agitators

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in Asia, not by the strength of nationalism, military errors or the illegitimacy of the campaign. The Indochinese in North Vietnam exchanged the benefits of French rule for Communist dictatorship. Little is said of South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975, by implication an interlude before it too succumbed to Communist rule. A French point of view is not out of place, of course, in a French War memorial – museums in Vietnam present a different but even more one-sided view of the conflict.41 However, the language in Fréjus is anachronistic to say the least. Biases subtle, and not so subtle, abound. Despite considerable scholarly research on the war since the 1950s, there appears no critical self-appraisal of colonialism. The absence of discussion of the less noble aspects of French rule amounts to denial of the ill effects of imperialism. Anti-colonial grievances are accorded no legitimacy. The breakdown of an amicable settlement immediately after the Second World War years is ascribed solely to ungrateful nationalists, a view with which most present-day historians disagree. French sufferings in Viet Minh camps are rightly highlighted, but there is nothing on French use of torture and other extra-legal measures. French tactical misjudgements are ignored. Although the role of Asian, Maghrebin and African soldiers is recognised, the plight of metropolitan Frenchmen is emphasised. Women are treated somewhat cursorily. Criticism of the French attempt to hold on to Vietnam is seen as the work of a fifth column. Post-colonial Vietnam is mentioned disparagingly without acknowledgement of the generally cordial relations that have developed between Vietnam and France over the past quarter of a century. The iconography – photographs of fresh-faced but war-weary soldiers – reinforce a nationalistic view. One or two oddly chosen items, notably a picture of French prisoners in a Viet Minh camp which the caption admits comes from a Soviet film reconstruction, compromise the documentary nature of the exhibit. A more balanced account of colonialism and the war might well disorient or anger some French visitors to the Fréjus memorial, though one wonders what Vietnamese visitors think about the current display. (And no doubt different sentiments would be felt by those who left Indochina in 1954, boat people who fled in 1975 and Vietnamese who now come to France for study or business.) It is proper to have the service, sufferings and sacrifice of French veterans and their allies recognised and commemorated, and old soldiers are no doubt touched by the memorial complex for which they waited for forty years. Yet the texts in the museum perpetuate an historically blinkered view of the history of Franco-Vietnamese encounters and the war. The lack of fuller documentation – a library, a bookshop, a lecture programme, audiovisual displays or interactive computer terminals – limits fuller understanding of the difficult history of France in Indochina and its costly disengagement. The more neutral aspect of the necropolis and monument aux morts is skewed by the museum’s presentation. Separation between the Mémorial and the neigbouring pagoda – French warfare and Indochinese


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culture – appears to contradict the ‘passé commun’ (shared past). In sum, there seems a clear need to ‘decolonise’ the memorial – or at least the museum that provides the introduction to the site – with a more up to date and balanced view of colonial history. The Mémorial remains a moving lieu de mémoire with words and photographs documenting the horrors soldiers experienced in war but also examples of courage and solidarity, the thousands of graves of young men who died painfully far from home, the poignant plaques testifying to the indelibly sad memories of comrades and families. Yet it embodies some of the French discomfort about the colonial past. Commemoration takes precedence over comprehension. A memorial is divorced from institutions carrying out research on the event recollected. French memories are not complemented by those of adversaries. Stress is laid on wars and the military sacrifices, with nostalgia for the colonial mission and overseas achievements that ignores the darker side of colonialism. The personal and individual memories implicit in a memorial and cemetery combine uneasily with the structured, opinionated presentation of the displays. History is mixed up with memory, and an official memory of the war is confused with group memories of those who fought and those who survived. The Mémorial des Guerres en Indochine illustrates the paradoxes of ‘monumentalisation’, especially in relation to colonial affairs. The monument aux morts, necropolis and museum (and adjacent Buddhist site) serve separate functions with little effort to make them coherent. The Indochinese memorial is a place of remembrance, not primarily a museum or archive. It addresses itself to heterodox pilgrims making a voyage of recollection, schoolchildren marshalled by teachers and tourists. By including a museum it takes on laudable educative, curatorial and historical functions, yet those responsible for it have missed a chance to promote a more considered reflexion on the war and its legacy. Not entirely a triumphalist monument to colonialism, it is certainly not a ‘counter-monument’ to an unpopular war and a signal defeat. The monuments aux morts and war graves embody the ideals of loyalty and service to France, yet other republican ideals – at least in present-day if not colonial-era views – are difficult to reconcile with imperialism. The Fréjus memorial, in sending mixed signals, sums up French ambivalence about colonial history, and demonstrates the hazards of casting colonial memories in colonial monuments.42 The difficulties are even more apparent in memorials to the far more traumatic war that the French fought in North Africa.

Memorialisation and the ‘Algerian Syndrome’ The Algerian War from 1954 to 1962 almost provoked civil war in France, and ended in the flight of a million French citizens from Algeria. Controversy about use of conscripted soldiers, the types of military strategy employed, censorship at home, torture in Algeria and violent repression of anti-war demonstrations

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tore France apart at the time. Painful memories and divided opinions have been the heritage of a war and a defeat that the French preferred to forget. The legacy of the war was particularly bitter for veterans who served in North Africa, pieds-noirs and harkis. As Martin Evans has shown, servicemen found it impossible to face up to memories of a war that had no clear beginning and end, and no recognisable battlefields of the sort familiar from the world wars. Discord in France about the effort to retain Algeria meant that soldiers were not welcomed home as heroes or accorded the honours – including memorials for fallen comrades – that earlier generations of military forces had received. Anciens combattants felt that they had fought in vain for a country which treated their actions with indifference, embarrassment or (in some quarters) repudiation. Individual amnesia mirrored official non-recognition.43 The failure until 1974 to extend full veterans’ benefits to returned soldiers seemed indicative of official neglect. Harkis, even more marginalised and less honoured than their metropolitan comrades-in-arms, languished in resettlement camps, remained near the bottom of the social pyramid, and joined other Maghrebin immigrants as targets of increasing hostility. Pieds-noirs, however, despite the difficult circumstances of their arrival in France, often became successful. Many integrated the French mainstream, hardly distinguishable from other compatriots, and Algérie française became little more than a lingering and nostalgic recollection or a tradition of certain foods, music and customs. For others, memories festered in resentment at dispossession, pain at displacement and anger at ‘abandonment’ by the political elite. Some rapatriés drifted towards far right-wing movements and anti-immigration and anti-Arabic ideologies. Though pieds-noirs remained divided by origin, status and politics, identification with the ‘old country’ continued to be animated by voluntary associations, specialised periodicals, rallies and reoccuring debates on the war.44 Old soldiers, pieds-noirs and harkis all tried, in their own ways, to promote commemoration for services that they prided themselves on having rendered to France. However, a post-colonial age in which Paris sought cordial (and profitable) relations with its former possessions was hardly congenial to recollection of the colonial oeuvre, much less to celebration of imperialist achievements. Politicians were more eager to preserve central unifying myths, such as anti-German Resistance during the Second World War, than to delve into the complex and troubled realities of the fratricidal war in Algeria that ended in defeat.45 In the ideological context of protest against American intervention in Vietnam, the rise of the New Left, the prominence of ‘Third Worldism’ and the rebellions of 1968, commemoration of Algeria was awkward at best. Developments in the 1970s and afterwards, from moves to European unity to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the post-war boom and the beginnings of globalisation, similarly disfavoured official remembrance of Algeria. Neither political leaders nor the general public saw a reason to resurrect the history and dredge up memories of the Algerian War.


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Commemoration of defenders of Algérie française became mainly the action of pieds-noirs, harkis and veterans directly implicated. Certainly those groups nurtured the memory of Algeria, but their efforts – tainted in opponents’ eyes with nostalgia, unrepentant colonialism and racism – hardly summoned widespread sympathy. Since the 1990s, however, the Algerian War has forced itself anew into French consciousness. Bejamin Stora’s path-breaking 1991 television series, ‘Les Années Algériennes’, brought images of the war into French homes. An exhibition at the French army museum the following year provided new perspectives to those who lived through the events and those born afterwards, and Bertrand Tavernier’s film ‘La Guerre Sans Nom’ screened searing interviews with soldiers who had served in Algeria. Larger numbers of historical works, memoirs and photograph albums were published. But the French were not faced with the war only on television, in the cinema and in bookshops. In 1997 when Maurice Papon went on trial for crimes during the Second World War, attention also focussed on his actions as Paris police chief in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Under his aegis, as many as 11,000 Algerians were arrested after an anti-war demonstration in October 1961, and an undetermined number died in police custody. Papon’s trial proved a step in France’s coming to terms with the chequered past of the Vichy regime, opening the way for reconsideration of the Algerian War – and also underlining the extra-legal measures that had been undertaken in the 1950s and the 1960s by officials such as Papon. Another step in consideration of the Algerian War, this one a legislative act, came two years after Papon’s trial began. Until that time, the military campaigns in Algeria had been officially referred to only through such euphemisms as the ‘events’, the ‘conflict’ or ‘operations for the maintenance of order’. The parliament in 1999 declared that the Algerian conflict was indeed a ‘war’, the label an acceptance both of common usage and recognition that France had in fact been engaged in a war against an organised enemy not just police actions and pacification of rebels. Most significantly, since 2000, public debate has taken place about the widespread (and, according to some, systematic) use of torture by French troops in Algeria. During the war, it was widely known, though officially denied, that policemen and soldiers used extraordinary means to extract information from nationalist suspects, including various types of mental and physical torture; there were also charges of summary executions of prisoners. Henri Alleg’s La Question, an indictment of such practices written in the late 1950s, was banned, and the government made every effort possible to hush discussion of measures considered necessary to prevent terrorism and win the war. After 1962 occasional publications returned to the issue of torture though without provoking a great debate. In 2000 Le Monde published new revelations by an Algerian militant, Louisette Ighilahriz, about French torture. Even more shockingly, General Paul Aussaresses gave an interview and subsequently published a book in which he confessed – but admitted

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no remorse for having done so – to having taken part in torture and summary execution.46 The admissions sparked a frenzy of articles, polemical statements and court cases, though many questions have been left unanswered. Collective experiences and memories of the Algerian War thus present a complicated scenario. Profound discord marked the war years, followed for many by desire to forget the war: indifference, denial or amnesia. Others more directly affected by the war suffered traumatic memories of war service that they preferred to repress. Pieds-noirs and harkis preserved memories of what they considered betrayal and exile. The memories of more recently arrived Algerians in France were not even considered. The public could remain unconcerned and content to avoid the history of colonialism, war and defeat. New images in exhibitions, books and documentaries in the 1990s gradually brought the war back to life. Then new revelations indicted individuals of criminal behaviour, pointed at the collusion of authorities from the highest levels and suggested the acquiescence of citizens to such acts.

Monuments to the Algerian War It is thus not surprising that erection of monuments and other commemorations of soldiers in Algeria were less than straightforward. Since 1962 veterans’ and pieds-noirs’ organisations unfailingly commemorate the dead, hold rallies and campaign for recognition, gestures of collective memory that have often remained private initiatives incapable of sparking widespread support. Even among these groups there is no unanimity about war experiences or memories of Algeria. Ex-servicemen’s organisations express divergent perspectives and ideologies, ranging across the political spectrum and reflecting a diversity of views about colonial history and such burning present-day issues as the place of Muslims in French society. The most detailed list of Algerian War monuments has been compiled by the Fédération nationale des anciens combattants en Algérie, Maroc et Tunisie (FNACA). Although it does not claim to be exhaustive and highlights memorials erected through FNACA’s own efforts, the inventory nevertheless provides some idea of memorialisation of the war.47 FNACA was founded in 1958 as the Fédération nationale des anciens d’Algérie – it took the current name in 1963 – and opposed continuation of the war. It criticised the growing influence of the military during the last years of the war and denounced an attempted coup d’é tat by generals in Algiers in 1961. Such positions – extraordinary stances for a veterans’ association during the war – incurred the wrath of diehard defenders of Algérie française, and FNACA’s offices were bombed by the OAS in 1962. The association denied accusations that it had links with the Communist Party. FNACA has remained apolitical although some veterans’ and pieds-noirs’ organisations have more or less intimate ties to political parties. With 300,000 members by 1990, FNACA is the largest


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organisation of Algerian veterans and, indeed, the largest organisation of old soldiers in France. Its major activity after the war was to lobby for veterans to be recognised officially as anciens combattants and therefore be eligible for such benefits as concession cards and pensions. The campaign succeeded in 1974 and further lobbying secured additional benefits in 1982.48 Among issues of particular interest to the organisation have been the psychological effects that continue to plague veterans, and it has promoted research and treatment of traumatic syndromes linked to war experiences. FNACA has also been actively involved in commemoration of the war. In 1971 it launched a campaign to name streets ‘19 March 1962’, the date that the Algerian ceasefire came into effect. The date represents for FNACA the formal end of the war, and in 1964 was adopted for its anniversary commemoration at the Arc de Triomphe. However, it is not unanimously accepted as appropriate. De Gaulle opposed the choice, and the initiative to make the date into a street name was condemned by the Gaullist députés Charles Pasqua and Alain Griotteray. Rival veterans’ associations protested at FNACA’s anniversary ceremony, once disrupting commemorations at the Arc de Triomphe. In their view, 19 March represents a defeat for the Français d’Algérie and the abandonment of Algeria. After the ceasefire, they point out, 10,000 pieds-noirs and 150,000 harki supporters (according to disputed estimates) were killed. The Evian accords that mandated the ceasefire, they add, forced the flight of rapatriés who lost land, homes and livelihood in independent Algeria. Presidential opposition to the 19 March commemoration persisted with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who declined to send military detachments to the Arc de Triomphe. The election of François Mitterrand in 1981 bolstered FNACA’s hopes that the date would at last be officially countenanced. The very possibility sparked anger among arch-conservative veterans’ groups, including those affiliated with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National, which created an ‘anti-19 March’ committee. Ceremonies organised by FNACA on 19 March 1981 were again disrupted, leading to several arrests, and episodic violence continued on later anniversaries. Mitterrand backed away from recognition of the date but nevertheless sent a representative to the Arc de Triomphe ceremony.49 Alternative dates have meanwhile been proposed. One was 16 October, when Giscard had presided in 1977 at the interment of an unknown soldier from the Algerian War at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette; the date, chosen simply to fit into the president’s schedule, struck no chord as an anniversary. In 1987 Prime Minister Jacques Chirac opted for the third Sunday in June, another date without special significance and little support. Others suggested that 11 November, the anniversary of the First World War armistice, become a day of commemoration for all war dead. Debates dragged on without resolution and in 2002, the French parliament after heated debate declined to endorse 19 March or any other date for commemoration.

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The controversy about the date says much about still contested memories of the Algerian War, the bitterness of old soldiers and rapatriés, and the difficulty of choosing a way to remember an unpopular war. The controversy also puts into perspective FNACA’s efforts to name streets, erect monuments and organise ceremonies, as even the seemingly innocuous ‘19 mars 1962’ on a sign or monument represented a highly charged interpretation. It also indicates how competing veterans’ organisations, pieds-noirs of disparate views, and different political leaders can use the issue of commemoration to stake out ideological positions and to recruit public support. Nevertheless, perhaps suggesting a certain accord on the date for commemoration, according to FNACA, 1700 streets, squares, parks and bridges had been given the name of 19 March 1962 by the end of the 1980s. (William Cohen estimates that 2500 communes had a site so named by 1996.)50 Several variants also occur – ‘Rue de la Paix’ with the date added, or the triple dates of 8 May, 11 November and 19 March combined in a sign to represent the world wars as well as Algeria. A number of the streets provide locations for monuments to the war dead. Naming a street represents a desire to commemorate and remember. The accompanying ceremony provides an opportunity for grief and catharsis for those who experienced the war, and a chance to remind others of the history of the war and the deaths of soldiers fighting under the French flag. The député Michel Fromet, commenting on the naming of the ‘Rue du 19 mars, fin de la guerre d’Algérie’ in Blois, remarked: ‘Donner un nom est toujours une chose importante. Dane une cité, ce nom a valeur de symbole, il témoigne de la volonté de laisser une trace. Aujourd’hui, c’est un fait historique que nous devons rappeler: le 19 mars 1962, la paix et la fraternité retrouvée . . . Le silence des armes, cet instant de bonheur, c’est un symbole de paix que nous voulons graver aujourd’hui’51 (Giving a name is always something important. In a city, a name has symbolic value, and testifies to the desire to leave a trace. Today, we must remember an historic fact: 19 March 1962, peace and fraternity regained . . . The silence of the guns, that instant of happiness – that is the symbol that we want to inscribe today). The street signs are not just a miniature history lesson, in this view, but an implicitly conciliatory statement about Franco-Algerian relations. In addition to those carrying the date of 19 March, almost one hundred streets in the FNACA inventory have names of individual soldiers killed in the war. Some communes indeed have more than one: seven in Martigues, six in Arles, four in Quimper. Small towns and villages appear to have given names in memory of each native son killed in battle, sometimes where the soldier’s family lived. These are thus both a general commemoration of the war and a personalised tribute. Individuals have also been memorialised in the names of a school, community centres, sports stadiums, a military barracks and a gendarmerie. A common way of remembrance comes by adding soldiers’ names onto First World War memorials. This associated what was sometimes


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known as the ‘troisième génération du feu’ (‘the third generation who took up arms’, following the soldiers of the world wars) from a colonial war with their predecessors in the world wars, but also simply saved the expense of a new monument and avoided awkward decisions about the appropriate iconography for the Algerian War. Monuments specifically dedicated to soldiers killed in Algeria, however, exist around France. Commemorative plaques became increasingly common in the 1990s at the instigation of FNACA, beginning with the canton of Vielmursur-Agout (Tarn). The FNACA inventory pictures over fifty such plaques, probably a fraction of the total. Some communes have larger memorials; seventy are included in FNACA’s publication. They vary in size, placement and iconography. Curiously, none takes the form of an obelisk, the most widespread First World War monument. More common is a standing slab, recalling a menhir, occasionally engraved with soldiers’ names or a collective inscription, such as ‘Aux Combattants d’Afrique du Nord’. Often a stela or boulder is irregularly shaped, the rough-hewn form perhaps chosen as more natural, and as a reflection of less than neat memories of the war. Photographs suggest that most are relatively small – half a man’s height – and rather discreetly sited. A tall stela in Savigny-sur-Orge (Essonne) is remarkable in being rent into two large jagged blocks between which is wedged a soldier’s helmet. A particularly elaborate memorial stands in the Haut-Languedoc. A granite menhir more than five metres in height and twenty-one tons in weight narrows at the top to form a flame. It stands atop a pyramidal base of ten steps, one for each year of the North African conflicts, made of thirty thousand stones gathered from around France to symbolise the number of French soldiers killed.52 The significance is explained by the FNACA: ‘L’esprit humain est ainsi fait qui s’accroche au vécu, à la symbolisation de l’idée, et à la mémoire des aînés. Le vécu, ce sont dix années de guerre meutrière et fratricide. L’idée, ce sont la Solidarité, le Souvenir, la Mémoire . . . Ce monument résume une telle distanciation. Nous distinguons l’énorme bloc de granit mais une flamme s’élève à travers: la vie. Nous transformons inconsciemment l’espace matériel des marches en une durée longue de dix années. Les 30,000 pierres et l’urne centrale redeviennent des êtres humains’53 (The human spirit is so formed that it attaches itself to lived experiences, to the symbolisation of an idea and to the memory of forebears. The idea is Solidarity, Remembrance and Memory. . . . This monument sums up this action. We see an enormous block of granite, but also a flame that rises above it: life. We unconsciously transform the material space of the steps into the ten long years [of the conflict]. The 30,000 stones of the central urn become human beings). For the unveiling on 14 May 1989, attended by the prefect, the mayor and military authorities, a flame from the tomb of the unknown soldier was relayed from Paris by athletes. A plaque reminds visitors: ‘Ce site est un lieu de recueillement pour la paix [-] que chacun se souvienne’ (This site is a place of recollection for peace – let each one remember).

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Another monument inspired by the stela tradition but with contemporary iconography is the Bouches-du-Rhône départemental memorial inaugurated in 1995 at an aeronaval base in Berre-L’Etang. The red and white painted structure, twelve metres in height, resembles the prow of a ship and faces towards North Africa. In a pool at the base are two carved blue half-circles – the colour representing the sea, and the shape for waves – which add the third colour of the flag. Low walls around the space have plaques recording names of 323 soldiers killed in North Africa; a bronze tablet bears a dedicatory inscription and a quotation from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Built at a cost of 1.3 million francs donated by the municipality of Berre l’Etang, the départemental and regional councils, seventy-five communes, associations of returned soldiers and personal gifts, this site forms one of the most iconographically dramatic Algerian memorials. Most monuments, however, are simpler, sometimes ornamented only with a carving (such as a stylised map of North Africa) or a small emblematic figure. Atop one stela in the Aube a dove of peace perchs on a branch.54 At Le Château-d’Oléron, two pillars are joined by crossbeams, one marked ‘Fin de la Guerre d’Algérie’ (End of the Algerian War), the other a bas-relief of two entwined hands. A variation on the stela is found in the Drôme: three columns fronted by a stone triangle. The Gard départemental memorial in Aigremont has a taller pillar for France and a shorter one for North Africa; between them jagged red stone cladding stands for blood and wounds, and at the base a blueish rock represents the sea separating Europe from Africa. Four smaller, truncated pillars are carved with the names of the dead.55 Another variant is the memorial arch. One 1995 example in La Garde-Freinet (Var), standing on land donated by a returned soldier, is carved with the dates of 1952 and 1962 as well as the names of the three French North African territories. It shelters plaques naming soldiers from the département killed in North Africa. The monument in Mont-Saint-Martin (Meurthe-et-Moselle) also recalls the traditional arch, though it avoids being triumphal with an uneven crossbar; the inscription includes an admonition: ‘La Paix est un Devoir – La Guerre est un Crime’ (Peace is a Duty – War is a Crime). One monument in Val-de-Marne transforms the arch into a triangular losange with a round opening. Several monuments take the form of a flame, such as the départemental monument for the Haut-Rhin in Colmar, which is dedicated to French soldiers and ‘leurs frères d’armes harkis et supplétifs’ (their brothers in arms the harkis and auxiliaries). Almost none of the memorials inventoried by the FNACA are figurative, perhaps because by the 1990s monumental realism was not in fashion. Statues of soldiers are rare in a difference from the First World War memorials. However, in one in the Charentes-Maritime, a bas-relief depicts a soldier supporting his wounded comrade, an image recalling iconography of the Great War. Very unusually, the memorial in Vitrolles (Bouches-du-Rhône) features a nude soldier holding a gun.


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War monuments primarily commemorate those who died in action, officially classified as morts pour la France. Several sites extend commemoration to other groups, particularly to civilian victims. A plaque in Tours reads: ‘Les Rapatriés à la mémoire de leurs morts abandonnés dans les cimetières d’outre-mer’ (The Rapatriés in memory of their dead abandoned in cemeteries overseas). The Martigues memorial, in addition to soldiers and civilians, includes a tribute ‘à tous nos parents qui ont vécu, qui ont aimé, qui sont morts et ensevelis dans cette terre africaine’ (To all of our relatives who lived in, loved, died and were buried in African soil). In Vannes, ‘les Français rapatriés et les Français musulmans’ (repatriated Frenchmen and Muslim Frenchmen) erected a stela ‘à la mémoire de tous leurs morts civils et militaires de toutes confessions qui reposent en terre d’Afrique’ (To the memory of all their civilian and military dead of all faiths who sleep in the soil of Africa), adding ‘pendant 132 ans la France fut leur patrie’ (for 132 years France was their patrie). One of the few women specifically honoured has a plaque in Coulanges. Colette de Lauriston, an air force nurse who volunteered to distribute Christmas presents to soldiers in Algeria in 1955, died in a plane crash while returning to France. Several particular military corps are commemorated, including helicopter pilots in Pau, chasseurs alpins in Annecy, Legionnaires in Aubagne and other units in their regimental headquarters. The Bercy forest has a site dedicated to the personnel of the French forestry and water department killed in Algeria. In Sète a monument was erected in 1990 ‘à la mémoire de tous les enseignants d’Algérie, notamment les milliers d’instituteurs et instructeurs qui consacrèrent leur vie et souvent la sacrifièrent au service de la France’ (To the memory of all of the teachers in Algeria and in particular to the thousands of men and women primary teachers and instructors who dedicated and often sacrificed their lives in service to France). A dog is even mentioned in a plaque in Gramat (Lot) honouring a gendarme killed in an ambush in Mondovi in 1958. Gilbert Godefroid’s badly wounded police dog, Gamin, was found guarding his master’s body. The dog recovered and received an honorary Médaille de la Gendarmerie Nationale; when Gamin died, his ashes were buried at the base of the monument erected to Godefroid. Ceremonies for the unveiling of monuments, as for street naming, provided opportunities for individual and collective memories to be expressed. An iconographically complex monument in Pavie comprises a low wall enclosing a pyramid ornamented with eighty-six stars for the fallen soldiers from the Gers département; ten steps at the base represent the decade of the North African conflicts. Bronze statues depict two women, a seated mother and a financée standing behind, both veiled in mourning – a sculptural quotation of the grieving women from many First World War memorials. The inauguration on 21 September 1997 was attended by two thousand people, including relatives of soldiers killed in North Africa. The Secrétaire d’Etat aux Anciens Combattants lit an eternal flame after tricolour draperies

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were removed from the monument. The names of the dead were read aloud as a child placed a carnation in memory of each man. Catholic priests and an imam prayed at a separate religious service. The reaction of one soldier’s daughter was, ‘Ils ne sont pas oubliés, cela fait plaisir. Ce mémorial, nous l’attendions depuis longtemps’ (They are not forgotten – that gives us pleasure. We have been waiting for this memorial for a long time). The mother of another added, ‘Cette journée ravive notre douleur mais, d’un autre côté, elle nous touche beaucoup’ (This day has brought back our sorrow but, on the other hand, it has very much touched us). An Oran-born veteran remarked: ‘Pour moi, dont les grands-parents et les parents sont enterrés là-bas, c’est douloureux mais ce mémorial, il fallait le construire et le faire pour tout le monde’56 (For me, with grandparents and parents buried over there, it’s sad, but it was necessary to build this memorial for everyone’s sake). In such a ceremony, personal recollections and family grief joined official recognition of the war dead. The participation of children was a pedagogical attempt to promote knowledge and stimulate patriotism. Civilian, military and religious figures came together at an occasion rich in reminders of local sacrifices and enduring sorrow. The ceremonies thus served manifold purposes: grief and catharsis, an expression of nationalism, a duty of commemoration, the renewal of solidarity among returned soldiers and their families. A special memorial is the grave of the unknown soldier from the Algerian War at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (Pas-de-Calais), the site of a First World War battle where 100,000 men were killed and a similar number wounded during twelve months of fighting. After the Great War, a cemetery was created for 20,000 individual graves and eight ossuaries containing the remains of 23,000 soldiers, including Muslims. The site also includes a chapel, a tower with a symbolic lantern illuminated each evening, and a shrine containing thirty-two sarcophagi of soldiers from France’s twentieth-century wars. An unknown soldier from the Second World War was interred on 16 July 1950, and five years later, an urn with ashes of deportees and soil from concentration camps was placed in the shrine. An unknown soldier from the Algerian War was interred on 16 October 1977, and one from the Indochinese War followed on 8 June 1980. The Algerian War soldier was a trooper killed in Oran who was first buried in a cemetery for unidentified or unclaimed remains in Luynes. In 1977 his coffin was transported to Arras, where military honours were presented at the monument aux morts and the Pas-de-Calais prefect used a flame relayed from the Arc de Triomphe to reignite the city’s eternal flame in honour of the fallen. The following day, after a religious ceremony, the soldier’s remains were carried to Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and interred to the sounds of a funeral march played by the Garde Républicaine. President Giscard d’Estaing gave the oration: ‘Que le soldat inconnu d’Afrique du Nord, notre jeune frère dont le nom s’est perdu, reste toujours dans notre souvenir comme un exemple et une leçon’57 (May this unknown soldier from North


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Africa, our young brother whose name has been lost, remain always in our memory as an example and a lesson). The interment marked a significant step in official commemoration of the Algerian War fifteen years after the end of the conflict. Provincial monuments to soldiers killed in North Africa are relatively numerous and varied, and almost every year sees the inauguration of new memorials.58 Iconographically they borrow from earlier traditions with arches, obelisks, the occasional soldier or grieving woman and lists of those morts pour la France. However, conventions inherited from the post-First World War have been modernised in less figurative constructions. Symbolism continues to weigh heavily – a stair for each year of the war, soil from an Algerian cemetery, the colours of the flag or such emblems as a soldier’s helmet. Unveilings and remembrance ceremonies perpetuate hallowed customs. The very desire to put up plaques or memorials continues the monumental tradition as a gesture of collective memory, a recognition of war service and a style of public art. The monuments nevertheless reveal an incomplete and belated recollection of the Algerian War. The FNACA inventory documents départemental memorials in only a dozen of France’s one hundred départements. Even if several hundred commemorative plaques and two thousand street names exist, it should be remembered that France has over thirty thousand communes (though some are too small even for street names). The commemoration is most obvious in municipalities that lost native sons and in areas, such as the Midi, with traditionally close connections to North Africa. Most sites were created only in recent years – thirty and more years after the end of the war – generally through veterans’ efforts. The passage of time may have made it easier to erect monuments to an unpopular war, and the aging of soldiers no doubt inspired determination to see memorials dedicated. The new wave of commemoration, however, corresponds to renewed interest in French colonial history in general and particularly to the Algerian War. The recollection is not uncoloured by nostalgia for the pieds-noirs’ ‘lost’ country, recriminations at perceived neglect of soldiers and rapatriés, and even a retrospective justification for imperialist endeavours. The simplicity, even austerity, of most memorials speaks of commemoration rather than glorification, partly because there was no victory to celebrate, but also because a triumphalist view of colonialism is acceptable only to extremist groups. Some veterans and pieds-noirs undoubtedly harbour residual colonialist sentiments. Le Pen, who served in North Africa and has been accused of participating in torture, espouses explicitly anti-Arab positions, and the Front National has attracted support from pieds-noirs and veterans. Yet advertising overtly political sentiments through monuments would invite denunciation and legal action, and probably provoke defacement of monuments. Many veterans and rapatriés do not share the sentiments expressed by the Front National and other reactionary organisations. War

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memorials were meant to unite rather than divide, and to provide ‘closure’ rather than reopening old wounds. They cannot, however, address all constituencies: those who opposed the war have different memories from those who fought, and Beurs have different memories from pieds-noirs. Over half of France’s population was born after the end of the war, and schoolchildren marshalled for unveiling ceremonies have only vague notions of the history of Algérie française. In the context of current debates, even ‘neutral’ commemorations of Algeria have the potential to become provocative by paying tribute to military forces again accused of heinous acts, recalling in an often simplified fashion the history of colonialist domination and violence. No matter the iconography or inscription, a monument presents, in general, a single version of history for an age now accustomed to multiple interpretations of the past.

Algerian memorials in Paris The date, location, iconography and inscriptions of memorials say much about attitudes towards the events commemorated, as does the list of those who participated in the creation and inauguration. The apex of commemoration is a gesture performed by the President of the Republic unveiling a plaque or monument, officiating at a ceremony or making a speech. The absence of the president, though not indicating official disavowal, nevertheless suggests a distance from the occasion. In 1973 the president did not preside, for instance, when a plaque bearing a succinct (and politically neutral) inscription, ‘To the soldiers who died for France in North Africa’, was placed on the Arc de Triomphe. The bland wording and lack of greater fanfare perhaps betrayed uncertainty about the appropriate sort of commemoration. Four years later, Giscard took part in the burial of an unknown soldier at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. There followed a long hiatus in similar gestures during a period of limited public debate about the Algerian War and its legacy. François Mitterrand, president from 1981 to 1995, took a stance of international solidarity with the Third World and domestic solidarity with France’s ethnic communities. As a minister in the mid-1950s, Mitterrand defended France’s overlordship in Algeria, but as president he was not eager to confront his own or France’s record on North Africa. His administration confronted a tense situation in New Caledonia, where nationalists accused France of maintaining colonial control, while anti-independence activists denounced the Socialist government for what it branded willingness to abandon New Caledonia. Violence verged on civil war in France’s Pacific territoire d’outre-mer, and supporters of Kanak nationalists charged Paris with using military and political tactics copied from the Algerian experience. Nuclear testing in French Polynesia, and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in the Auckland harbour, added fuel to critics’ allegations of neo-colonialism. The


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1980s also saw the difficult years of cohabitation between Mitterrand and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, whose sympathies lay with the anti-independence factions in New Caledonia and whose determined policies and muscular intervention aimed at safeguarding the DOM-TOM. With the ‘events’ in New Caledonia, and the difference of views between cohabiting leaders in France, the context was hardly propitious for commemoration of the Algerian War. Mitterrand’s symbolic gestures – such as laying a rose on the grave of Victor Schoelcher on the day of his inauguration as president or taking part in the reburial of Abbé Grégoire’s remains in the Panthéon several years later – celebrated a critique of colonialism (or at least of slavery). In more recent years, several new monuments have been unveiled, not coincidentally at a time when the French have begun to revisit the Algerian War and its legacy. Four memorials have been unveiled in Paris since the election of Jacques Chirac as president in 1995.59 For Chirac, who served as a lieutenant in Algeria, these monuments represented personal and political as well as commemorative statements. Throughout his long political life, Chirac has remained dedicated to preservation of French grandeur in international affairs, a key principle in his Gaullist philosophy. Opposition to independence in New Caledonia was an example of this strategy when he was prime minister. Resumption of nuclear testing in the South Pacific soon after he became president – ending Mitterrand’s moratorium – so inflamed international opinion that Chirac eventually diminished the number before calling a permanent halt. Chirac has nevertheless signalled his support for the French nuclear arsenal and for an independent French approach to foreign affairs. In the current debate about the Algerian War, Chirac has regularly evoked the sacrifices of French soldiers but has refused to delve into the issue of torture: ‘I will never do anything that can damage the image of French soldiers who fought in the Algerian War or besmirch their honour.’ In domestic politics, while denouncing racism and the anti-immigration stance of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Chirac and his ministers have attempted to control clandestine immigration and crack down on illegal activities that are associated in many voters’ minds with Arabs and Africans in France. Some supporters have flirted with ideas propounded by the Front National, either from real sympathy or as an attempt to woo conservative voters away from the far right, although Chirac rallied voters from across the political spectrum in opposition to Le Pen in the 2002 presidential election.60 Chirac has attempted to improve the often difficult relations between France and Algeria that have come under increased strain during the last decade of virtual civil war there and heightened tension about France’s migrant communities and France’s relations with the Arab world in general. He welcomed President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to France in 2000 and made a return state visit to Algiers – the first official visit by a French president since 1962 – in January 2003. He talked about the intertwined history of France and Algeria ‘gravée dans la mémoire de nos deux peuples’ (engraved in the

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memory of our two peoples), a history that was ‘heurtée, parfois cruelle, tragique, douloureuse’ (conflicted, sometimes cruel, tragic and painful). Chirac returned the ceremonial seal of the dey of Algiers taken as booty in 1830, a gesture he hoped would ‘sceller, dans l’esprit, les retrouvailles entre nos deux pays’ (seal, in our spirit, the renewed meeting of our two countries). However, ‘nous ne devons pas pour autant oublier le passé’ (we must not forget the past for all that). He visited the Saint-Eugène cemetery – one of many French cemeteries that have occasionally been desecrated – and signed an agreement for the upkeep of graveyards in Algeria that remain a lieu de mémoire for many in France. He spoke, in oblique terms, of the harkis, but also paid his respects at the monument of a nationalist figure, Naâme Saïd, and met several of the ‘historic leaders’ of the FLN who led the war against France.61 The Algerian and French presidents served as joint patrons for the ‘Année de l’Algérie’ in France in 2003 with a busy calendar of exhibitions, performances and other events meant to promote Franco-Algerian reconciliation. Many conflicts – including resignations of members of the organising committee – bedevilled preparations for the festivities. Some artists and writers in the Algerian diaspora decided to boycott activities which they saw as providing legitimation to the military-dominated government in Algiers.62 However, the French organiser has pronounced the Année de l’Algérie a great success that exceeded expectations.63 France’s relations with Algeria remain extraordinarily delicate. France provides substantial aid, and the countries are important trading partners. Algerians are the single largest Muslim group in France. Issues of assimilation and multiculturalism, unemployment and delinquency, Islamism and secularism, and others that touch on the Algerian community and on French– Algerian relations regularly trouble France. Chirac has seemed to opponents to be not altogether sympathetic to ethnic and cultural minorities despite the overtures to Algeria typified by the state visit, the Année de l’Algérie and the establishment of a national Muslim committee, but his opposition to American intervention in Iraq nevertheless dramatically increased his respect among Arabs and Muslims. In trying to manage international political and economic relations, and address domestic issues with particular reference to Muslims in France, Chirac has pursued a complex strategy that, successfully or not, attempts to satisfy different constituents. His commemorative gestures can be seen in the context of both France’s recollection of the Algerian War and Chirac’s political priorities. In 1996, Chirac unveiled a monument ‘to victims of the conflicts in North Africa’ in the Square de la Butte du Chapeau-Rouge, near Paris’s Boulevard d’Algérie. Two stylised human figures, covered by what might be veils or shrouds, stand on a low plinth. The figures seen to be contorted or struggling to emerge from the stone or the coverings – perhaps an allegory of memories of the war. At the inauguration, Chirac said: ‘We are here to recall and to honour these combatants who gave their life for France, as well as the men and


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women who died for a French land that was enriched for 130 years by the work of their ancestors.’64 The following year, Chirac sent a representative to the unveiling of a ‘Mémorial national aux combattants d’Outre-Mer’ on the outskirts of Avignon. Others who attended included General Challe (who had served in Algeria), Bachaga Boualem (a pro-French Algerian dignitary and former vice-president of the National Assembly), anciens combattants and harkis. The memorial, the work of a pied-noir (from Oran) named Martinez, represents a larger than life-size warrior. He holds a broken sword and a shield on which figure the Southern Cross and ocean waves – easily read symbols – with the inscription: ‘A la mémoire des soldats, des marins, des aviateurs et des civils de l’Outre-Mer morts pour la France’65 (To the memory of the soldiers, sailors, aviators and civilians of the outre-mer who died for France). The wording marks the Avignon monument as a rare commemoration of all civilians and military personnel who died in the empire, the lack of dates or battles making it the most inclusive of all war memorials. This memorial was foreshadowed by an earlier one erected in Besançon in 1976: a monument in the form of menhir-like columns with a similar dedication to ‘Civils et Militaires morts pour la France sur les territoires d’Outre-Mer’ (Civilians and Military Personnel who died for France in the overseas territories). The Avignon memorial, like the Besançon one twenty years earlier, seems to have attracted little attention, perhaps because of the rather uncontroversial dedication and iconography as well as the provincial location. Meanwhile, in Paris, an initiative in the late 1990s to recast the Arc de Triomphe plaque paying tribute to French soldiers in North Africa came up against the issue of what wording was to be used as parliament debated whether the Algerian conflict should officially be called a ‘war’. The question resolved, a new plaque employing the word was affixed (through without great ceremony or Chirac’s participation) in 1999. Chirac’s next personal gesture was directed towards the harkis. Since the end of the war, the harkis have felt continued resentment at their fate. Tens of thousands were killed in Algeria after the 1962 ceasefire, and in 1994 the report of an official working party on the ‘Français musulmans rapatriés’ (Repatriated Muslim Frenchmen) acknowledged the ‘abandon sur le territoire algérien des supplétifs et de leurs familles suite aux directives officielles du Gouvernement de l’époque’ (abandonment on the Algerian territory of the auxiliaries and their families following official directives of the Government of the day). Harkis have suffered in France, where many spent years in camps and the harki population remains underprivileged. Harkis have undertaken various public actions to call attention to their plight, as when a group mounted a hunger strike in 1997. Even more dramatically, in 2001 the Comité national de liaison des harkis filed suit in a Paris court against the French state for crimes against humanity in having allowed the massacres after the Algerian ceasefire.

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Lack of public tributes in the harkis’ view reflected the neglect both of their war service and of their unhappy destiny in France. The Muslim soldiers were commemorated only episodically, and tardily, in war memorials. One is an ‘Allée des anciens combattants français harkis’ in a Vannes cemetery dating from 1993. In Amboise, a 1997 memorial commemorates Muslims, especially the harkis, of the commune mixte of Arris in the Aurès region, which was twinned with the French town. A slate ambulatory surrounds a plot of soil brought from the villages, while plaques and a symbolic flame represent each of its sixteen douars. In 1992 an association of harkis unveiled a plaque at the Saint-Maurice l’Ardoise camp where several hundred harki families – of a total of 30,000 housed in camps – lived from 1962 until 1976. Poor conditions in the camp, first used for German prisoners of war, led to a riot in 1975 and closure of the facility the following year. Despite some suggestions that it be turned into a museum, most of the buildings were razed. Inscriptions on the plaque read: ‘Hommage aux harkis 1954–1962 – morts pour la France’ (Homage to the harkis, 1954–1962 – morts pour la France) and ‘Rappelez-vous de ces hommes. Ils n’étaient pas un mythe: la France les a vus, les a acclamés. Ces hommes, la France les a appelés nos frères, nos compatriotes’66 (Remember these men. They were not a myth: France saw them and acclaimed them. France called these men our brothers and our compatriots). Several other plaques have also been placed in the former camps, as at Bias (Haute-Garonne), and a stela was erected at the former camp in Rivesaltes (Pyrénées-Orientales). If the harkis feel hard done by in France, they also feel rejected in Algeria, where they were considered traitors to the nationalist cause. In his visit to France in 2000, President Bouteflika made a passing reference to harkis as ‘collaborators’ – a highly emotional word for Frenchmen with memories of the Second World War. Thierry Mariani, a Gaullist député, brought up the incident in the National Assembly in a debate with Martine Aubry, Minister of Labour and Solidarity in the Socialist government. The still controversial nature of the Algerian War was obvious from interjections by other parliamentarians, notably an ironic shout of ‘Algérie française’ from the Communist Maxime Gremetz when Mariani spoke in grateful terms of the service of French soldiers, harkis and pieds-noirs. Referring to lack of recognition of veterans, Mariani declared: ‘On ne peut pas honorer les combattants de la Première Guerre mondiale morts à Verdun et, dans le même temps, insulter ceux qui, en 1962, ont continué à choisir notre pays, refusant de renier leur engagement pour la France’ (One cannot honour the combatants of the First World War who died in Verdun and, in the same breath, insult those who in 1962 still chose our country and refused to renounce their engagement on the side of France). Aubry promised, among other measures, to place plaques on twenty-odd war memorials ‘repatriated’ from Algeria to honour the harkis: ‘Ce n’est qu’un symbole mais les symboles sont importants’67 (This is only a symbol, but symbols are important).


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The Gaullist president agreed with the sentiments of his Socialist minister in the cohabitation government, but decided to go further in the tribute and declared 25 September 2001 a ‘journée nationale d’hommage aux harkis’ in acknowledgement of the harkis and their descendants. On the day, Elizabeth Guigou, a minister, ceremoniously relit the eternal flame at the Arc de Triomphe in honour of harkis, and similar commemorations were held in each départemental capital. In Paris the state deployed republican pageantry in a ceremony at the Invalides attended by the President, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence, as well as an honour guard from old colonial corps including tirailleurs, zouaves, spahis and the artillery. President Chirac unveiled a plaque at the Hôtel des Invalides, an ‘haut lieu de la mémoire de la France’ (sacred site of French memory) in his words, that reads: ‘La République française témoigne sa reconnaissance envers les rapatriés anciens membres des formations supplétives et assimilées ou victimes de la captivité en Algérie pour les sacrifices qu’ils ont consentis’ (The French Republic expresses its gratitude to the repatriated members of auxiliary and assimilated forces or victims of captivity in Algeria for the sacrifices that they willingly made). The words repeated on twenty-six other plaques installed around France come from a law recognising the harkis’ service unanimously approved by parliament and promulgated on 11 June 1994. Chirac added that the time had come to ‘porter un regard de vérité sur une histoire méconnue, une histoire déformée, une histoire effacée’ (look honestly at an unacknowledged history, a distorted history, an erased history) and that ‘la France veut rendre hommage, un hommage solennel à ceux de ses enfants qui ont été si cruellement meutris’ (France wishes to pay homage, a solemn homage, to those of its children who were so cruelly battered). He paid tribute to the ‘combattants fiers et courageux’ (proud and courageous combatants), some of whose grandfathers had fought with the French in earlier wars. Their descendants had served loyally in Algeria but afterwards ‘ont vu leur destin basculer dans la tragédie’ (saw their destiny slide into tragedy): ‘Séparés de la terre qui les a vus naître, ils n’ont trouvé de refuge que dans leur fidélité à cette France qu’ils avaient rêvée avant de la connaître, mais qui ne leur a pas fait la place qui leur était due. Aujourd’hui encore, la blessure reste vive’ (Separated from the land in which they were born, they found refuge only in their loyalty to this France of which they had dreamed before they knew it, but which did not give them the place that was their due. Still today, the wound is raw). He then decorated 150 Muslim veterans. In a reception for delegations of harkis at the Elysée Palace, Chirac recalled his own war service in Algeria during ‘les années tragiques au cours desquelles la France et l’Algérie se sont séparées’ (The Tragic years during which France and Algeria separated), and evoked the unhealed wounds the war left. The gratitude he now expressed in the name of France, Chirac added, was ‘une question de dignité et de fidélité’ (a question of dignity and faithfulness). Moreover, he assumed ‘le devoir moral que notre pays conserve à l’égard de ceux qui l’ont

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servi’ (the moral duty that our country has towards those who served it). Admitting failures by successive governments to address harkis’ current problems, he hinted at material efforts in favour of war widows, former prisoners of war and harkis in general.68 Chirac’s words were critical of former oversight and generous in tribute. They were nevertheless carefully phrased. He did not use the word ‘war’ to refer to the Algerian conflict. His speeches were couched more in terms of French honour and duty than as repentance for past omissions, and he offered no apology for the fate of the harkis. He betrayed no questioning of the history of more than a century of French colonialism in Algeria or specific actions during the Algerian War of independence. He ‘partage votre amertume devant certaines attitudes et certain propos’ (share[s] your bitterness in relation to certain attitudes and certain comments), an allusion to Bouteflika’s comments, and perhaps as well a rather vague reference to racist views in France, but did not speak about discrimination against Muslims. Several references to ‘les enfants’ (the children) of France and to France as ‘une communauté de destin’ (a community of destiny) were intended rebukes to those with racist views, though he did not articulate his position. The words on the plaque the president unveiled were a similarly measured, even austere recognition of ‘sacrifices’, not heroism; old-style canonical words about the champs d’honneur and morts pour la patrie are absent. The phrase about those who died in ‘captivité’ (captivity) in Algeria is an awkward acknowledgement of harkis killed by the FLN after 19 March 1962.69 The journée nationale d’hommage scored a warm welcome among most harki organisations. Co-ordination harkie called it ‘une bonne journée’ (a good day), and the Conseil national des Français musulmans pronounced it ‘excellent’. Mohammed Haddouche, secretary of Justice pour les harkis, nevertheless warned: ‘Cette journée est bienvenue à la condition expresse qu’il y ait une reconnaissance de l’abandon, du désarmement et du massacre de harkis, commis avec la complicité de la France’ (This commemoration is welcome on condition that it represents an explicit recognition of the abandonment, disarming and massacre of harkis with the complicity of France). The conservative député Alain Madelin called on the government to recognise the state’s responsibility in a ‘abandon criminel’ in 1962, and the socialist François Loncle agreed that harkis would only be satisfied when the government admitted that a ‘crime d’Etat’ (state crime) had been committed.70 None of the major political parties seemed inclined to take up those demands. Chirac’s tribute to the harkis was followed by a national memorial to servicemen who died in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia which he unveiled in Paris on 5 December 2002. Coming after the ‘Aussaresses affair’, the inauguration became both a gesture of commemoration and a comment on the debate about the war. As part of a series of presidential gestures including the Chapeau-Rouge monument and the Invalides plaque, it reaffirmed Chirac’s


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policy of commemoration in a way unparalleled by his predecessors. In a different sense, this can also be seen in connection with Chirac’s other efforts to make peace with the past, for instance, his acknowledgement – the first time a president has done so – of responsibility of the state for deportation of Jews during the Second World War.71 The monument thus carries the weight of personal, political, historical and memorial signification at a key moment in France’s confrontation with the heritage of its wars. The monument on the Quai Branly comprises three aligned square columns (5.85 metres high and 0.60 metres on each side) made of concrete tinted to match the stone traditionally used in Paris buildings. The front of each column has a vertical alphanumeric computer screen with words that scroll along continuously. Those on the central column read: A la mémoire des combattants morts pour la France lors de la guerre d’Algérie et des combats du Maroc et de la Tunisie, et à celle de tous les membres des forces supplétives, tués après le cessez-le-feu en Algérie, dont beaucoup n’ont pas été identifiés. 1 343 000 appelés au rappelés, 405 000 militaires de carrière ou engagés, près de 200 000 supplétifs ont servi sur les différents théâtres d’opération d’Afrique du Nord: Algerie: du 1er novembre 1954 au 2 juillet 1962, Maroc: du 1er juin 1953 au 2 mars 1956, Tunisie: du 1er janvier 1952 au 20 mars 1956.

Photo 12 The North African War memorial unveiled by President Chirac in December 2002.

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(To the memory of the soldiers who died for France in the Algerian war and the conflicts in Morocco and Tunisia and to that of all of the members of the auxiliary forces killed after the ceasefire [of 19 March 1962] in Algeria, many of whom have not been identified. 1,343,000 conscripted soldiers or recalled reservists, 405,000 professional soldiers or volunteers [and] almost 200,000 [Muslim] auxiliaries served in the different theatres of operations in North Africa: Algeria: 1 November 1954 to 2 July 1962, Morocco: 1 July 1953 to 2 March 1956, Tunisia: 1 January 1952 to 20 March 1956.) On the other columns, the names of 22,959 soldiers (including 3010 harkis) scroll past in alphabetical order, separated by year of death. The third column stands next to a small computer terminal, at which visitors can type a soldier’s name; the sequence on this column recommences with the name requested. The writing on the screens of the columns is, respectively, blue, white and red. At the base an inscription repeats the central text but there is no other ornamentation.72 The memorial’s architect, Gérard Collin-Thiébaut, has explained his design as a new type of memorial for the third millennium. It refers to traditional war monuments in the stela or column-like shape but in a modernised fashion intended to ‘provoke an emotion’ among passers-by and tourists, as well as those more familiar with the conflict. The site on the Seine recalls quais from which soldiers departed for the battlefields. Visitors reading the inscriptions face southwards in the direction of Algeria with the columns symbolically aligned from east to west, sunrise to sunset, the passage from birth to death. The scrolling of names is from the bottom, the earth, to the top, towards the sky. Collin-Thiébaut concludes: ‘My intention was to create a discreet, almost silent, work in the midst of a noisy and agitated world.’73 The inscription is factual rather than emotional. The ‘memory’ of soldiers is recorded rather than the ‘glory’ or ‘honour’ that they won on the battlefield or the ‘sacrifices’ they made. ‘War’ is used in a way impossible before 1999. The harkis are remembered, including ones killed after the ceasefire, with the admission that it was impossible to identify or give a proper burial to all of them. Detailing the totals of those who served, uncommon in war memorials, presents an idea of the vast numbers of professional soldiers and recruits sent to North Africa. The memorial includes commemoration of conflicts in the protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco, so it is not solely an Algerian memorial. The memorial is iconographically striking, a remarkable updating of the traditional monument aux morts. The Quai Branly structure functions as did earlier memorials by providing a place for commemoration, presenting a précis of the event remembered and listing soldiers who died. However, it also adds a very contemporary monument to a city known for bold modern architecture from the Arche de la Défence to the Opéra de la Bastille. As a non-representational memorial, it follows the pattern since the 1970s of increasingly abstract design in public art. The monument is more accessible that many earlier war memorials, located on a footpath that serves as a promenade, rather than isolated in a square or at a crossroads. Unlike


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many First World War memorials, fences do not close off the site, nor is the monumental precinct elevated above the surrounding space. Passers-by can walk directly to the monument, circle it and touch it. To those who pause for recollection, this may be hallowed ground, but it is not architecturally constructed as a shrine. The use of alphanumeric displays (perhaps for the first time on a public monument) is intentionally in phase with the era of information technology and the familiarity of most of the French – although perhaps less commonly in the older generation, including Algerian veterans – with computers. The scrolling images capture the attention of those who would not necessarily pause before the countless statues, monuments and plaques that cover Paris. The interactive terminal is an invitation to anyone accustomed to using a Minitel, typing on a keyboard or surfing the web, and the ability to ‘bring up’ an individual name personalises the monument. This constitutes a gesture of remembrance, similar to making a rubbing of a name on an engraved wall or wedging a poppy into a plaque near a name, as is common at traditional memorials. The monument avoids being triumphalist and is only discreetly nationalist with the tricolour writing – there is no flag. Though the location has no particular connection to the war, it is integrated into the Paris landscape and linked spatially with two icons: from one side, visitors look over the Seine to the Palais de Chaillot, from another they see the Eiffel Tower in the background.74 Yet the memorial remains unobtrusive, minimalist and almost diffident, despite a solemn inauguration ceremony. The monument was unveiled by the President in the presence of the Prime Minister and other ministers, 500 anciens combattants, families of war victims, a military band and a ceremonial honour guard. Recalling the words he had used at the Invalides, Chirac began by saying that time had come for recognition of the North African war dead, who ‘comme leurs aînés de 1914 et de 1940 [occupent] la place qui leur revient dans la mémoire de notre patrie’ (like their elders in [the wars of] 1914 and 1940, now finally have the place that is their due in our country’s memory). He spoke of the battlefield sufferings of professional soldiers, conscripts and Algerian auxiliaries, but also evoked their discovery during tours of duty of the landscapes and colours of Algeria. ‘De retour en France, beaucoup, qui avaient servi avec honneur, ont porté seuls le poids de cette guerre dont on ne parlait pas, et qui a laissé de profonds stigmates dans notre mémoire nationale’ (When they returned to France, many who had served with honour were alone in carrying a burden of the war which was never talked about, and which left such deep stigmata on our national memory). He singled out for particular mention the harkis and ‘leurs enfants qui doivent trouver toute leur place dans notre pays’ (their children, who must find their place in our country), and specifically mentioned those killed after 19 March. Unveiling the memorial, Chirac declared, provided a time for commemoration, ‘loin des polémiques et des passions’ (away from polemics and passion). All of the soldiers who served and died ‘ont leur place dans le cortége glorieux des fils de France qui se sont illustrés

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sur tous les continents et ont servi notre pays aux heures les plus tragiques de son histoire’ (have their place in the glorious cortege of the sons of France who distinguished themselves on every continent and who served our country in the most tragic hours of its history). Chirac also recalled civilian victims, ‘ces femmes et . . . ces hommes qui ont tant contribué à l’oeuvre de la France outre-mer’ (these women and . . . these men who gave so much to France’s actions overseas). After an exclamation of ‘Honneur à leur courage et à leur sacrifice! Honneur aux soldats d’Algérie, du Maroc et de Tunisie!’ (Honour to their courage and their sacrifice! Honour to the soldiers of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia!), Chirac ended with the ritual ‘Vive la République! Et vive la France!’. Chirac’s speech was masterly and irenical. But in the sibylline utterances favoured by French leaders, he expostulated an interpretation of the conflicts in a vocabulary traditionally associated with commemorations that is conspicuously absent on the monument itself. Moreover, he did not use the word ‘war’, and spoke only of the ‘separation’ (not independence) of Algeria, thus avoiding a statement about war, defeat, withdrawal and decolonisation. An emphasis on recollection, not passion and polemics, was Chirac’s attempt to distance himself from the debate about torture and, by implication, to ask others to refrain from discussion of such divisive issues. Reference to France’s ‘oevure outre-mer’ (overseas action) – a phrase popular in the colonial period that encompassed economic development, settlement, humanitarian work and other activities – provided a subtle acknowledgement of the Français d’Algérie, although Chirac did not refer to pieds-noirs or rapatriés. The allusion to harkis showed once again Chirac’s particular attention for this group. The speech did not vaunt the exploits of the military, although soldiers were joined to the ‘glorious’ gallery of war martyrs. Chirac gave no hint of exactions committed through French rule, and offered no explanation or re-examination, much less an apology, for colonialism in North Africa. Press accounts of the unveiling showed differences of perspective. The conservative Le Figaro reported the ceremony in a straightforward way, accompanying its article with a picture, but made no comment on current debates. The left-wing Libération, however, noted that some soldiers whose names are recorded on the monument might well have engaged in extra-legal activities including torture. It mentioned Captain Jean Graziani, killed at the head of a parachute troop in 1959: ‘His name has its place on the digital rollcall. But this officer, two years earlier in the Battle of Algiers, is accused of having been an executioner.’ It quoted Louisette Ighilahriz, who charged that Graziaini ‘was unspeakable, he was a pervert who took pleasure in carrying out torture’. Le Monde, the authoritative but left-of-centre newspaper of record, mentioned both Graziani and Ighilahriz, and referred to the Aussaresses affair, but also quoted veterans present at the ceremony. One sixty-three-year-old harki told Le Monde: ‘For us, this is recognition. In Algeria, quite simply, we did our duty, and those who remained behind died for France and for the republic.’ On a France 3 television programme, the historian Benjamin Stora spoke of the Algerians, including the nationalist opponents of France, who had


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been killed during the war – estimates range from 150,000 to one million – and to whom no reference was made at the ceremony or on the monument.75 The reports highlighted divergent memories left by the war and underlined the limits of monumental commemoration.76 The Algerian War memorial is too recently constructed for its role in French life to be judged. Tourists with cameras, Parisians walking dogs and young people on skateboards pass it with greater or lesser attention. Many stop for a few seconds, some longer, although the initial attraction is this still unfamiliar structure on the street and the lure of the alphanumeric screens rather than the memorial’s subject: curiosity rather than reverence. Some foreigners, perhaps unable to read the inscriptions, look puzzled. Occasionally someone types a name into the terminal; few leave flowers or appear to engage in any other commemorative or prayerful act. All around the busy life of the city continues. Time will tell how significant the memorial will become: whether it is capable of serving as a rallying point for any group – officials at a yearly ceremony, anciens combattants, possibly political factions – and whether it is defaced in protest against memorialisation of the war, or simply by those who ‘tag’ buildings and monuments. The government announced in 2003 that the date on which the monument was unveiled the previous year will be annually observed as a ‘Journée nationale d’hommage aux morts des combattants d’Afrique du Nord’. The move attempted to resolve disagreement on an appropriate date, by choosing 5 December over 19 March, 16 October (when the unknown soldier was entombed at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette) or some alternative. The FNACA condemned the decision, arguing that the date has no historical significance, particularly for war veterans. A date meant to be consensual and neutral immediately proved conflictual, and FNACA said that it would not participate in ceremonies on the anniversary.77 The controversy illustrated the contested nature of memories of the war, but – if it eventually wins support – provides a perhaps unique example of a commemorative date agreed because of a particular monument rather than one connected to an original event. Wars have different meanings for supporters and opponents, and to winners and losers – and varied significance to different groups within these camps – especially when moral lines are not clear-cut, and public opinion is far from unanimous. The interpretation of the war and the experiences remembered by the Quai Branly memorial honouring soldiers are different from plaques in the Charonne Métro station and on the Quai du Marché-Neuf commemorating those killed protesting against the war. There is no memorial in France to Algerian nationalists who fought for independence. Individual army corps are remembered in plaques in the Invalides, while some mairies, as in the sixième arrondissement, have plaques with inscriptions that encompass all who died. Building a monument that could satisfy all the commemorative ‘clienteles’ would be impossible, especially with a war such as Algeria. Families and friends grieve for individual loved ones and want to see them publicly commemorated, even if their actions attract renewed scrutiny. Pieds-noirs

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and harkis ascribe many levels of meaning to monuments that recall battles lost, a country left behind and issues still current. The military – veterans and serving officers – see commemoration as public recognition of service and affirmation of national pride in and commitment to the defense forces. For the nation as a whole, commemoration of the Franco-Algerian War is complicated since it ended in defeat (politically, if not strictly militarily) rather than victory. To some, it was a misguided effort to preserve an outdated colonialism now judged unjust and immoral. To other citizens, imperial retreat meant betrayal by compatriots. Younger people may barely know why the war was fought, but an older generation still bears the scars. One wonders what the memorial means to those Algerian in France with personal memories of the war years, or Beur children and grandchildren for whom the tangled relationship between France and Algeria remains a legacy.

Colonial monuments aux morts and French memory The Indochinese and North African memorials, each erected several decades after the war ended, and in the latter case, a very recent addition to the monumental landscape, show abiding but contested and ambivalent memories of wars of decolonisation. They suggest how public perspectives on colonialism have evolved along with France’s changing relationship with the wider world. Soldiers were once ‘statuified’ for conquering distant domains and bringing civilisation to savage countries. Then monuments paid tribute to natives of those colonies who came to the aid (though not always willingly) of a ‘motherland’ invaded and endangered during world wars. In the last stage of monumentalisation, French troops and their auxiliaries were memorialised for fighting to preserve the empire. Soldiers of conquest were viewed as dashing and heroic adventurers; troopers who fought in the Great War, the defense of 1940 and the Liberation of 1944 were celebrated as heroes and martyrs. Those sent to Indochina and Algeria returned defeated and largely unhonoured. The monuments aux morts with colonial connections reveal a certain unease with the colonial experience. The grandest monuments from the First World War are locked away in the Jardin Tropical, where the Vietnamese dinh was allowed to fall into disrepair when France hardly cared to remember its colonial heritage. Many memorials to Indochina or Algeria were erected at the behest of veterans’ associations or on the initiative of communes with direct connnections to the outre-mer or rapatriés. Their monuments represent group or local memories. Only in recent years – with the Fréjus monument in the 1980s and the necropolis that followed in the 1990s, the ‘mémorial national’ to the Algerian soldiers in 1996, the entombment of unknown soldiers from the Indochinese and Algerian wars at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the Invalides plaque and the 2002 memorial in Paris – has the state, as custodian of the national memory, begun to come to terms with the colonial epoch in monuments and memorials.78

4 Of Men and Monuments

In the late nineteenth century, which saw the ‘scramble’ of imperial powers to consolidate and extend overseas empires, belief in the ‘great man in history’ was the rule. Even if some historians argued that impersonal forces, such as economic trends, explained historical developments, there was widespread conviction that individuals – explorers, politicians, entrepreneurs – made history. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to pay tribute to great men – seldom were great women, except queens, candidates for such heroic treatment – in statues and other memorials. Representations of the great and good aimed to remind the public of the men and their deeds, to embody the gratitude of the nation and to encourage the patriotic fervour, pioneering cultural or scientific achievements, or selfless commitment exemplified by the figures. What Maurice Agulhon has called ‘statuomania’ particularly marked the Third Republic, which was also the high age of imperialism. Men were commemorated in a number of concrete and public ways. The simplest perhaps was a graveyard monument. All tombstones are memorials to those who lie beneath them, even if inscriptions record only names and the dates of birth and death. More detailed inscriptions, urns, statues and funerary chapels ornament the graves of grander (or wealthier) men and women. Those considered particularly worthy are buried with great pomp in national cemeteries or shrines (such as the Panthéon in Paris). The naming of streets after dead figures (and, more rarely, living ones) is a second and common way of commemorating someone’s life and work. Many streets simply record a geographical direction or feature, a property-owner or a traditional name whose origins are lost in the past, while others bear the names of places, ideas or institutions – ‘liberty’, ‘nation’, ‘republic’. Still others memorialise a figure of local or national merit. A further, and again simple, way of recalling the great dead is through a plaque affixed to the house where they were born, lived or died. In some cases, the house itself becomes a museum, often when the building is left to the state or commune. Museums and similar institutions commemorate the famous through exhibits, characteristically with carefully preserved artefacts and explanations of their 157

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accomplishments. Finally public authorities and private donors erect statues or memorials, usually life-like in form, often decorated with words and motifs recording the great man’s works, and sometimes placed at a venue associated with his actions. Colonial figures are commemorated in all of these ways. The monumental landscape provides an indication of which figures captured public attention and gained official consecration, as well as which aspects of the colonial enterprise most successfully marked themselves in the national patrimony. This chapter will look at the different fashions in which colonial figures appear in public commemoration, from modest plaques and gravestones to elaborate monuments and statues. Although an exhaustive inventory, if possible, would be fastidious, the examples chosen illustrate the figures commemorated and the way in which they are remembered. Besides providing an overview of great colonial figures in French monuments, concentrating on Paris, it will focus on several selected cases: colonials in the Panthéon, the martyrology of missionaries and saints, and the ‘monumentalisation’ of several colonials in museums.

Colonial statues in Paris Statues and monuments dedicated to figures whose achievements occurred entirely in the colonies are less obvious than those devoted to statesmen of more general national import. This scarcity suggests that, despite the propaganda of colonial lobbyists, the empire never engaged the wholehearted attention or enthusiasm of the French in the way in which promoters hoped. Moreover, many statues of famous Frenchmen who were involved in the colonies make no reference to their colonial endeavours when they were overshadowed by other accomplishments.1 Paris’s statues make the point. For instance, the statue of Jules Ferry in the Tuileries Gardens does not hint at his colonial interests – perhaps not surprisingly since ‘Ferry le Tonkinois’ was forced to resign as prime minister because of opposition to his expansion in Indochina, though he was later lauded as a founder of France’s new empire. The statue and others of Ferry pay homage to his establishment of a system of obligatory, free and lay education. Similarly, a recent statue of Charles de Gaulle, striding down the Champs-Elysées, commemorates the Liberation at the end of the Second World War with no reference to de Gaulle’s role in the decolonisation of Algeria and black Africa. The statue of Louis Pasteur in the Avenue de Breteuil honours the scientist and epidemiologist without a reminder of the role of the Pasteur Institutes around the world. One of Admiral Coligny, in front of a Protestant church in the Rue de Rivoli, recalls his death in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre rather than his attempts to establish settlements in the New World. Neither of the two abstract statues commemorating Arthur Rimbaud (Place du Père-Teilhard-de-Chardin) and Albert Camus (Place du Colonel-Fabien) point to their colonial connections,

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perhaps unsurprisingly for Rimbaud, who abandoned poetry for commerce on the horn of Africa, though less so in the case of Camus, whose Algerian origins played a decisive role in his work and his political stance. The sculptor also deemed colonial links not important enough to include for the monument to Eugène Delacroix in the Jardin du Luxembourg; his Moroccan paintings did represent only part of his oeuvre. A 1988 bust of Saint-Exupéry (Square Santiagodu-Chili) similarly ignores his African connections. Lack of references serves, intentionally or not, to downplay the significance of imperialism in the French past as well as the connections that bound many famous figures to the empire. By contrast some monumentalised colonial figures are now little remembered, for instance, the Réunionnais poet Léon Dierx, whose bust was erected in the Square des Batignolles in 1930, a year more attuned to colonial themes. Statuary reminders of the empire are nevertheless legion in Paris. Those who look carefully among the myriads of figures on the façades of the Hôtel de Ville may discover the Pacific explorer Antoine de Bougainville. Passersby might spy the allegorical statue by Louis Carpeaux placed in 1866 outside the Pavillon de Flore wing of the Louvre: ‘La France portant la lumière dans le monde’ (France carrying light to the world), or those by Jouffroy of ‘La Marine de Guerre’ (Navy) and ‘La Marine Marchande’ (merchant marine) on the western wall of the Grande Galerie. In the Jardin des Plantes, flâneurs can more easily notice a large statue, erected in 1907, of one of its directors, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; he sits high above Paul and Virginie, the heroes of his colonial classic set in the Ile de France (Mauritius), who nestle beneath a sculpted banana tree. Perhaps the best known, and most affectionately considered, statue with a tangential reference to the empire is the zouave on the Pont de l’Alma. The zouaves were an infantry corps of North African soldiers set up in 1830, named after a Kabyle tribe that had furnished troops to the Ottoman rulers of Algeria. From the 1840s until 1962, however, the zouaves, by then formed of European rather than native soldiers, earned a heroic reputation battling in the Maghreb, Crimea, Indochina and other theatres – the Paris zouave was dedicated to those who battled the Russians at Alma in 1854. The bridge originally had statues of soldiers from the four forces that fought in Crimea, but a light infantryman, artillery gunner and grenadier have disappeared. The zouave survived reconstruction of the bridge in 1974 to remain a popular gauge of the water level in the Seine. Explorers counted among the heroes of colonial France, advancing science, reconnoitering uncharted lands, advancing French claims. Relatively few of the early explorers are remembered with statues in Paris – there is none of Champlain or La Pérouse, though they have statues elsewhere in France. One who is commemorated in Paris is Francis Garnier, who died in 1872 trying to take Tonkin for the French and was heralded as the pioneer of the French conquest of Indochina. In the Avenue de l’Observatoire (near the old colonial training school), on a monument erected in 1898, Garnier’s bust tops a pedestal, at whose base several figures of Indochinese women

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recline. After Garnier’s remains were exhumed and cremated in Vietnam in 1983 – when Vietnamese authorities were divesting themselves of remains of colonials buried there – his ashes were interred in the monument in 1987 in a ceremony attended by his descendants and the representatives of Prime Minister Chirac, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the mayor of Paris and the navy. The statue occasionally attracts protests, whether by happenstance or not, as when in 2003 an anti-globalisation banner was flown from Garnier’s monument. One explicitly colonial monument found in the Parc Montsouris commemorates Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-François Flatters (1832–1881). An explorer in the Sahara, Flatters also promoted a long-discussed but never realised trans-Sahara railway. Along with most of his men, he was killed by Tuaregs in Africa. Flatters’s wife beseeched municipal authorities to erect a monument to the expedition, but since his remains were not recovered, a memorial could not appropriately be placed in a cemetery. Authorities thus decided to erect the memorial in a Paris park – which, incidentally, later contained a copy of a Tunisian palace – although some municipal councillors protested at such a grand tribute to a relatively obscure man, and the precedent it would set.2 In the classical form of an obelisk, it includes a cartouche with a portrait of Flatters and a lengthy inscription paying tribute to the officer and his comrades, eight of whom are mentioned by name. There follows a reference to members of the indigenous ‘escorte massacrés en Afrique . . . après avoir accompli leur mission’ (escort massacred in Africa . . . after having carried out their mission). Also inscribed are ‘Honneur – Patrie – Science – Civilisation’ (Honour – Patrie – Science – Civilisation), a resounding summation of the imperial mandate as perceived when the monument was inaugurated in 1882. Another monument to an African expedition stands outside the former colonial museum in the Bois de Vincennes. It commemorates Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand (1863–1934), who led an expedition from western to eastern Africa across what is now Chad and the Sudan, heading from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. In 1898 Marchand came face to face with another expedition, led by the future Lord Kitchener, at Fashoda, as the British were marching from north to south, hoping to stop the French. Sabres rattled in Paris and London, rumours of a war circulated and the French backed down. Marchand was greeted as a hero on his return home, receiving the signal honour of having a Paris street named for him during his lifetime. A monument to the expedition, commissioned from Léon Baudry in 1936, was meant to be unveiled in 1939, five years after Marchand’s death, but delays in completion and the war intervened, and the inauguration came only in 1949. The monument is an haut-relief in marble, at the top of which the itinerary is charted from Loango to Fashoda. Marchand and his men are represented in profile, modelled on the style of the Trajan column in Rome. In the central group, five Frenchmen in uniform and pith helmet


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stride resolutely forwards, accompanied by two rifle-carrying native soldiers and three African porters, the latter naked except for loin-cloths and head-coverings. Slightly behind, a French doctor sits on a stool, tending to an African’s injured leg. Bringing up the rear, an officer stands akimbo surveying the scene. At the front of the monument was placed Marchand, behind which a round bronze plaque dedicates the monument to the Mission Congo-Nil, naming the French soldiers, though only giving the number of the 152 tirailleurs sénégalais. The monument was clearly intended to be a realistic panorama, with the mise-en-scène of the doctor and patient a reminder of the mission civilisatrice. The Africans and Europeans are shown as comrades. The direct gaze and tidy uniforms emphasise the discipline of the soldiers, while the muscular bodies of the porters verge on stereotypes of natives in subaltern but invaluable positions. Already when the Marchand memorial was inaugurated, French views of empire were changing, and winds of nationalism had begun to buffet the colonies. After the end of empire, the monument testified to a bygone age. In 1978 and in 1982, it was defaced with paint. In 1983, some unknown person or group blew away the statue of Marchand with dyamite, and it has not been restored. The truncated monument thus stands as a poignant reminder of imperial pride and post-colonial anger.

Photo 13 On this monument to the Marchand Mission – which came face to face with the British at Fashoda in 1898 – the statue of Marchand was dynamited away in the 1980s.

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Another monument with colonial connections which suffered an attack, though in different circumstances, honoured General Mangin (1866–1925), the officer who in 1910 published a book promoting the use of colonial troops to defend France. The monument showed Mangin reviewing three First World War soldiers, one of them wearing a fez. In 1923 Mangin led the French occupation of the Ruhr, the use of African soldiers regarded by Germans as particularly heinous: many found occupation by black soldiers an unforgiveable insult, especially when they associated with German women. Soon after it entered Paris in the Second World War, the German army destroyed the monument to Mangin. A plaque on the spot in the Avenue de Breteuil recalls: ‘Ici s’élevait la statue du Géneral Mangin, détruite par Hitler, le 18 juin 1940’3 (Here stood a statue of General Mangin, destroyed by Hitler, 18 June 1940). In 1974, a replacement statue of Mangin was erected in the Place El Salvador. Mangin is one of several colonial officers whose statues stand near the Invalides. A bust of General Henri Gouraud (1867–1946), erected in the late 1980s, is the most recent, and commemorates an officer who gained fame in Syria and Lebanon in the 1940s. One of the most dramatic statues honours General Joseph Gallieni (1849–1916), who fought in the Franco-Prussian War, served in La Réunion and the Soudan, ‘pacified’ Tonkin in the 1890s, then became military commander and Governor-General of Madagascar. Posthumously, Gallieni was made a Marshal in 1921; the following year, a colonial lobby group, the Ligue Coloniale et Maritime, raised 300,000 francs to erect a monument to him. The first statue that it commissioned was found too modest, but a second version, executed by a different sculptor, was unveiled in 1926; it suffered some damage from vandalism, probably by pacifists, in 1927.4 Atop the tall pedestal stands an equestrian statue of Gallieni in full uniform; at its base caryatids represent Gallieni’s victories in Paris (during the 1870–1871 war), the Soudan, Tonkin and Madagascar: a grandiose group uniting a heroic representation of the man with allegorical symbols of his historical achievements at home and abroad, the very model of a Third Republic commemoration. Nearby is a statue of Marshal Lyautey, a life-size portrayal of Lyautey wearing full dress uniform and the burnous that became his signature garment. Sculpted in 1935, the year after Lyautey’s death, it was erected near the Invalides in 1985. In the way of many military statues, it lists postings: ‘Tonkin 1894–1897, Madagascar 1897–1902, Confins AlgéroMarocains 1903–1910, Maroc 1912–1925’ (Tonkin 1894–1897 – Madagascar 1897–1902 – Algerian-Moroccan Frontier 1903–1910 – Morocco 1912– 1925). Two quotations are inscribed, one reflecting Lyautey’s Lorraine background: ‘Le Patriotisme lorrain est inséparable du patriotisme français’ (Lorraine patriotism is inseparable from French patriotism). The other encapsulates his philosophy: ‘La Joie de l’âme est dans l’action’ (The soul


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takes joy in action). The ligne bleue des Vosges is thus joined with the far horizons of empire, patriotism with imperial effort. Many other well-known soldiers completed some service in the colonies, as is sometimes noted on their memorials. A bust of General Edouard de Trentinian (1851–1942) rather euphemistically describes him as ‘Organisateur du Soudan Français’ (Organiser of the French Sudan). A 1981 bust of General de Lattre de Tassigny, accidentally killed in the 1950s, remains discreet about his work in Indochina and North Africa, although it figures among episodes in his life portrayed in the memorial located in the square that bears his name. A statue of Marshal Juin in the Place d’Italie emphasises his role in North African campaigns during the Second World War: ‘Tunisie – Armée d’Afrique – Novembre 1942–Mai 1943’ (Tunisia – Armée d’Afrique – November 1942–May 1943) reads the inscription next to a map showing the battles. Below a grand statue of Marshal Leclerc at the Porte d’Orléans is engraved on a massive plaque, ornamented with the Croix de Lorraine, the ‘Serment de Koufra’ (‘Koufra oath’) that he pronounced after a signal victory in Tunisia – the first since the French defeat in 1940: ‘Jurez de ne déposer les armes que le jour où nos couleurs, nos belles couleurs, flotteront sur la cathédrale de Strasbourg’ (Swear not to lay down arms until the day when our flag, our beautiful flag, flies over the cathedral of Strasbourg). In these last two cases, therefore, the colonies are recalled as locales of Second World War battles rather than as sites of imperial conquest. Paris’s statues dating from the colonial period, including those commemorating such figures as Flatters, Marchand, Gallieni and Lyautey, are brazenly celebratory and, predictably, broadcast colonialist sentiments such as the colonial virtues inscribed on the Flatters monument. Later statues of military figures memorialise Second World War figures only part of whose career was spent in the colonies. Military men account for the lion’s share of dedicated ‘colonial’ statues in the capital, with a concentration on North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Given the chronological and geographical extent of the empire, however, the number of statues of colonial figures, nevertheless, is relatively small, though the most famous colonial figures are ‘statuified’. Statues were put in place from the 1880s to the 1940s not only as testimonials to ‘great men’, but in order to stimulate colonial sentiment and French nationalism. They reminded passers-by of the exploits (even when doomed) of men such as Flatters and Marchand. The monuments underlined the heroic position in the national narrative of Gallieni and Lyautey. Statues emphasised the joined fates of France and its empire in the ideas and actions of Mangin and Gouraud. They recalled the role of the colonies in the Liberation through the victories of Juin, de Lattre and Leclerc. Perhaps less intentionally, they stressed the military side of colonialism, not its economic, political or cultural aspects. Yet several incidents – the destruction of Mangin’s statue by the Germans, the attack on Gallieni’s monument, the

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dynamiting of Marchand, presumably by anti-colonialists – hinted at other views espoused by those unconvinced by the colonialist promotion.

‘Great men’ in the provinces Outside Paris, an uncountable number of statues commemorate colonials. The first group comprises those in communes from which prominent figures issued, erected as memorials to native sons who did well. There are also statues of figures placed in institutions with which they were connected, for instance, statues of soldiers in military bases or officers’ training schools. A third category, which sometimes overlaps with the others, includes statues ‘repatriated’ from Algeria after 1962. Finally, there are allegorical statues where the boundaries between exoticism and colonialism blur. Several examples provide case studies of regional monumentalisation, and the ways that overseas ventures were anchored in French provinces. One the most legendary French heroes – honoured in café and street names, books and monuments – is Jean Bart (1650–1702). Although not strictly a colonial figure, Bart could be recruited to the colonialist cause. Born in Dunkirk, he gained fame as a corsair attacking British and Dutch shipping during Louis XIV’s wars and, in 1694, famously returned home with a fleet loaded with bread, credited with saving the nation from famine. In 1845 Dunkirk erected a large bronze statue of Bart (by David d’Angers) dressed in old regime finery and brandishing his sword. During the fin-de-siècle, Dunkirk promoted a cult of Bart as an element of revivified nationalism in a context of imperialist rivalries between France and Britain leading to confrontation at Fashoda in 1898. Five years later, during a conciliatory visit to Paris by King Edward VI, a newspaper cartoon showed Dunkirk’s statue of Bart coming to life to prick John Bull with his sword. A commentator wrote ironically on France’s vocation for colonial conquest: ‘Si on laisse fumer nos marins près d’un baril de poudre. c’est de l’opium du bon opium, britannique, qui endort, et, les soirs de gala à l’Elysée, si Jean Bart se présentait, on le traiterait d’aventurier. A ce jeu-là, du reste, nous avons perdu le Canada, les Indes, Maurice et Fachoda’ (If our sailors are smoking near a powder-barrel, it is probably opium, good British opium that dopes them, and if Jean Bart showed up at the Elysée gala evening, he would be labelled an adventurer. That’s how we lost Canada, the Indies, Mauritius and Fashoda).5 If Bart is honoured for his pirate panache, Auguste Pavie (1847–1925) is commemorated in his home town as a benign coloniser: the explorer of Indochina, and the man who brought Laos under French control. The Breton city of Dinan named a street after Pavie in 1931. On the centenary of his birth – when exhibitions on Pavie were held in Paris, Phnom Penh, Luang Prabang and Saigon – Dinan unveiled a statue executed by one of the leading sculptors specialising in colonial subjects, Anna Quinquaud. A Laotian princess and the secretary-general of the Cambodian government made speeches during the ceremony. In 1984 the town placed a commemorative plaque on


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Pavie’s house, and the following year an auditorium was named in his honour.6 An exhibition in Dinan in 1997 contained personal items of Pavie and documentation on his career.7 Another provincial who helped carve out the French empire in Indochina, but whose monument has fared less well, is Ernest Doudart de Lagrée (1823–1868): an explorer killed while exploring the Mekong. His heart was returned to France and buried at the church in Saint-Vincent-de-Mercuze (Isère), where he was born. The ministries of the colonies, arts and education, the king of Cambodia, and, through subscriptions, the public provided funds for a statue of Doudart de Lagrée to be erected in Grenoble in 1894. A député and former governor of Indochina headed the committee behind the initiative, and the design competition specified that the monument should contain some reminder of classical Khmer art.8 On the monument erected a bust of Doudart de Lagrée tops a pyramidal three-tiered structure with Cambodian-style roofs. It remained in Grenoble until 1961, then was moved to the village of SaintVincent-de-Mercuze, where it stands in a neglected state; and the panels around the base, which depict scenes from the explorer’s life, have been defaced.9 In 1983 Doudart de Lagrée’s remains were exhumed in Vietnam – along with those of Garnier and three other ‘historical Frenchmen’ – and cremated. His ashes were given to French authorities and buried in the monument. An earlier explorer commemorated in the provinces is Count Jean-François Galaup de La Pérouse (1741–1788). La Pérouse served in the Indian Ocean from 1772 to 1777, then joined the French fleet fighting in the American War of Independence against Britain. Louis XVI chose La Pérouse to lead an expedition to the Pacific, which was attracting both scientific and political interest that would see the establishment of a British penal colony on the eastern coast of Australia. La Pérouse’s voyage carried out valuable work in exploration, cartography and political intelligence before his ship disappeared in 1788. The loss created such concern in Paris that the government dispatched another expedition, commanded by Dumont d’Urville, on an unsuccessful search for La Pérouse. His home town of Albi (in a square named for La Pérouse) erected a statue of the ill-fated hero in 1848. At its base are anchors and cannon taken from Dumont d’Urville’s ship, memorabilia from an 1883 expedition to the South Seas and the bones of an unknown sailor recovered in 1986 among the remains of La Pérouse’s wrecked ship in Vanikoro (Solomon Islands). Albi also recalls La Pérouse with a municipal museum and two schools named after him. French schools are similarly named for La Pérouse in San Francisco and Nouméa. In Sydney, there is a La Pérouse Museum, and commemorative plaques have been placed at ports where La Pérouse called in California, Canada, Hawaii, Alaska, Japan, Samoa, Australia and the Solomon Islands, making him one of the most commemorated of French explorers.10 His native Condé-sur-Noireau unveiled a statue of Dumont d’Urville, honoured for his explorations. Four bas-reliefs recounted an earlier exploit, finding the classical statue of Venus de Milo now in the Louvre, his search for La Pérouse, the establishment of a French claim in Antarctica and

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the accident near Paris at which Dumont d’Urville perished in a train crash in 1842. The statue was destroyed during the Second World War, but a replacement had since been erected. The local parish church uses as a baptismal font an enormous clam shell presented by the admiral only a few months before his death.11 Landrecies honours Admiral Joseph-François Dupleix (1697–1763), a hometown boy who became director of the East India Company in Chandernagor, then Governor-General of French India, with a monument unveiled in 1888. Dupleix, dressed as a marquis, takes possession of Hindustan, his right hand pointing to the ground of the new French outpost, his left holding a flag. Following the convention of bas-reliefs depicting events from the life of the figure who is memorialised, panels show Dupleix and his wife tending wounded French soldiers at the siege of Pondicherry, and his accepting a province ceded by the Mughal emperor. Somewhat ironically, in 1954, the year Pondicherry was retroceded to India, a large model of an elephant was paraded around the streets of Landrecies in memory of Dupleix.12 Not all native sons attained the power or fame of a La Pérouse, Dumont d’Urville or Dupleix, but even more modest achievers are fondly remembered. Lacalm (Aveyron) has a statue of Guillaume Rolland, who was born there in 1821 and worked as a sawyer before conscription into the infantry in 1842. He first saw action at the Battle of Isly in Algeria, two years later, and rode with the Chasseurs d’Orléans in an engagement with Abd el-Kader at Sidi-Brahim. Wounded and captured, Rolland was taken to Abd el-Kader, who noticed a bugle he carried and told him to sound a retreat for the French, whom the Arab leader pronounced defeated. Rolland, with élan, took up his bugle but instead of a retreat, played the notes for a military charge. He subsequently escaped captivity and, according to legend, survived being sold into slavery, from which he was ransomed by his regiment. Rolland then took part in another assault on the Arabs which earned him the Legion of Honour. Back at home after seven years of service, he worked as a postman and ranger, though such was his reputation that on his promotion to the rank of officer in the Legion of Honour in 1913, 28,000 infantrymen each contributed a centime to pay for his decoration. Rolland’s famous bugle is displayed near his statue in the parish church of Lacalm.13 Statues and monuments commemorated heroes and could inspire others to follow in their footsteps. In Colmar there is a grand fountain honouring Admiral Armand-Joseph Bruat (1796–1855), a Colmar native who sailed in the Atlantic and Pacific, established a French protectorate over Tahiti, served as a governor in the Antilles, then commanded the French fleet in the Crimean War. It was executed in bronze by Auguste Bartholdi, another man from Colmar, who designed the Statue of Liberty in New York. Batholdi himself had developed a taste for travel and the exotic after a trip to Egypt and Yemen in the 1850s in the company of the Orientalist painter Jacques-Louis Gérôme. He made a bronze sculpture of ‘La Lyre des Berbères’ shown in


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1857 and had a project, never realised, to design a lighthouse for the entry to the Suez Canal. Bartholdi’s fountain in Colmar presented a statue of Bruat surrounded by allegorical figures of four continents.14 The fountain was largely destroyed in 1940, but restored in 1958, with new figures of an African, Indochinese, American and Polynesian. (The last resembles Yves Saint-Laurent, a friend of the sculptor.) The original fountain played an important role in developing the colonial vocation of Albert Schweitzer, who lived near Colmar: ‘C’était à Colmar que j’avais fait connaissance avec le grand monde . . . Le monument de Bruat m’avait de tout temps intéressé par les statues qui représentaient les populations lointaines. Je m’attachais particulièrement à celle du Noir d’Afrique. Je découvris une mélancolie dans la pose et les traits de cet Hercule qui éveilla ma compassion et qui me fit réfléchir sur le sort des Noirs. Chaque fois qu’on passait au Champs de Mars, je demandais qu’on fît le détour ou qu’on me permît de le faire pour être un instant devant le monument’15 (It was in Colmar that I learned about the wider world . . . Bruat’s monument had always interested me because of the statues that represented distant peoples. I was particularly attached to the one of a black man from Africa. I found a certain melancholy in his pose and in the features of this Hercules that evoked my compassion and made me think about the fate of the blacks. Each time that we were near the Champs de Mars, I asked that we pass by it, or if I could stop for a moment before the monument). Schweitzer later acquired the head of the damaged African statue for his study in Gunsbach. The list of others important in colonialism honoured in the provinces is long, illustrative of the connections between local pride, notable exploits and the ‘great man’ view of history. For instance, Rouen has dedicated a plaque to Robert Cavelier de La Salle near the spot where he was born in 1643: ‘Explorateur et conquérant pacifique, il donna la Louisiane à la France’ (Explorer and pacific conqueror, he gave Louisiana to France) reads the inscription decorated with a bas-relief of La Salle with two American Indians. A bronze medallion of La Salle has also been affixed to the Saint-Romain tower of the city’s famous cathedral. Saint-Malo has a statue of La Bourdonnais, governor of the Ile de France. In Fréjus there is a statue of Marshal Gallieni, where his former house has been acquired by the municipality and other mementos are displayed in the Musée des Troupes coloniales; another statue stands in Saint-Béat (Haute-Garonne), where he was born. A grandiose equestrian statue of Faidherbe (1818–1889) was erected in 1896 in Lille, where the future governor of Senegal was born. He is commemorated as well in Bapaume (Pas-de-Calais): a statue put up in 1891, pulled down by German troops in 1916, and rebuilt in 1929. (Another, unveiled in 1934, commemorating his role in the Franco-Prussian War, stands on the Neuville escarpment near Saint-Quentin.) Among other statues of colonial military greats are one in Fresnes-en-Woëvre honouring a pied-noir from Algeria, Auguste Margueritte, who was injured in the war against the Prussians in

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1870 – he is depicted being supported by an Arab trooper. (Like several other statues, that of Margueritte suffered damage during the war – decapitated in 1914, and remodelled around 1930.) The statue of Margueritte in Floing (Ardennes) was one of the statues ‘repatriated’ from independent Algeria. Margueritte also appears on the outer wall of the Pavillon Marsan at the Louvre palace. Périgueux has a copy of a statue of Marshal Bugeaud made for Algiers. Admiral Courbet, who participated in the conquest of Indochina, is ‘statuified’ in Abbeville. Statues were not the only way of paying tribute to favourite figures, and some are honoured in multiple fashion. One example is the novelist Claude Farrère, whose Fumée d’opium (1904) and Les Civilisés (1905) provided mordant portraits of colonial life in Indochina. Farrère travelled to Turkey and the Far East as a Navy officer before becoming a full-time writer. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1935, but his reputation was tarnished because of pro-Vichy sympathies in the Second World War. Farrère was nevertheless honoured in many ways. Lyon named a street after him and put up a plaque (in 1959) on the house where he was born in 1876. Suburban Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, where Farrère and his wife are buried, named a street for him too and affixed a plaque on the house where he lived as an adult. Yet another plaque ornaments a house that he built in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Paris named a street after him in 1970, and there is a bust of him in the Musée de la Marine. To round off the honours, a street is named after him in Istanbul.16 One of the more curious sets of colonial statues are thirty of them brought back from Algeria after independence. Colonial North Africa was decorated with statues of many French generals and marshals, erected to honour those who created Algérie française and in imitation of the metropolitan fad for ‘statuifying’ great men, a combination of local homage and urban design. The monuments affirmed the links of Algeria with metropolitan France: a united country with the same heroes. They were meant to reinforce French nationalism and, after 1870, to inculcate republican virtues. Such statues were also meant to make French rule clear to Muslims who passed them: constant reminders of France’s imperium. Yet such statues violated the Islamic interdiction on representation of humans, transgression another manner of reinforcing French authority. These monuments were thus ‘in danger’ after the independence of Algeria, and many were ‘repatriated’ to France and re-erected at the request of local political authorities, recycling the statues to commemorate those whom they depicted and to serve as souvenirs of former French Algeria. Sometimes placement of statues after ‘repatriation’ was unpredicted. One of Marshal Jourdan, a Napoleonic officer with no colonial experience, was re-erected in Obernai (Bas-Rhin), a village with which Jourdan also had no links, because a group of pieds-noirs who had settled there wanted a monument from their old homeland. Statues of two soldiers from a monument to General Lamoricière, who took part in the conquest of Algeria,


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were brought back from Tiaret and placed in Mauberge (Nord) after the commune’s mayor noticed them in the storehouse of ‘remaindered’ statues and decided that they would suitably ornament his town. Generally, however, statues and busts ended up in communes with some association with the figures portrayed.17 For instance, Marshal MacMahon, most often remembered as second president of the Third Republic, began his career as a young officer participating in the conquest of Algeria in the 1830s. He served in North Africa again in the early 1850s and was governor-general of Algeria from 1864 to 1870. A statue of MacMahon was taken down in Algiers the day before the country’s declaration of independence and later placed in the gardens of the Château de Sully (Saône-et-Loire), MacMahon’s birthplace. Also from Algiers, a bust of General Lamoricière, who accepted the surrender of Abd el-Kader, ended up in the Paris suburbs at the Ecole Polytechnique, from which he graduated. Constantine boasted a grand monument to Lamoricière, the officer standing atop a cliff, sporting a fez and waving his sword during battle, while beneath him, a zouave sounds a trumpet call, and a bare-breasted ‘France’ shelters a crouching female ‘Algeria’, who offers to her a basket of fruit. The statue finished up in Saint-Philbert-deGrand-Leu (Loire-Atlantique), two kilometres from Lamoricière’s birthplace and grave, unveiled in 1969 before two thousand spectators including Lamoricière’s descendants, a contingent from the Saint-Cyr military academy and rapatriés.18 Many statues of the conquerors of Algérie française went to places where they were born: Marshal Vallée to Brienne-le-Château (Aube) and Marshal Clauzel to Mirepoix (Ariège), for example, while two statues of General Chanzy were removed to Charleville-Mézières and Vouziers in his native Ardennes. A statue of General de Lourmel replaced one in Pontivy (Morbihan) which had been melted down by the Germans during the Second World War. One of Bugeaud went to Exideuil (Dordogne), from which his family came; local residents recalled that Bugeaud had used money given to him by Abd el-Kader, during a temporary truce in 1837, for road improvements in Exideuil. A statue of General Faidherbe, best known in connection with French expansion in West Africa, went to the caserne (named after him) of the regiment with which he had served in Oissel (Seine-Maritime). One of the rare subalterns who is monumentalised in France is Jean-Pierre Blandan, hero of an Algerian campaign in 1842. Blandan’s statue from Boufarik (near the place he was killed) was re-erected in Nancy in 1963, and his ashes placed in the pedestal. There is another statue of Blandan in Lyon, where he was born.19 Statues of non-military figures were also ‘repatriated’. Not always did consensus accompany initiatives to bring statues out of storage. For instance, one of Adolphe Thiers, first president of the Third Republic, was erected in Bône (another casting was made for Nancy) in 1879 – the first statue put up in the Algerian city. Returned to France after 1962, it was mothballed until a politician from Saint-Savin (Vienne) requested it for his village. His fellow

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conseillers-généraux did not all support the move – Thiers, responsible for the repression of the Paris Commune, remains a controversial figure – but the statue was placed in the village in 1967.20 Among other politicians commemorated is René Viviani, the only Prime Minister born in a French colony. Born in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, Viviani worked as a journalist before moving to the metropole, where he was first elected a socialist député from Paris, held several ministerial portfolios, was Prime Minister at the outbreak of the First World War and then Minister of Justice in a government of national unity. The statue, originally in Algiers, is now in Bourganeuf (Creuse), which he represented in the Assemblée Nationale from 1910 until 1921. A bust of Jean Bulliod, a medical doctor and mayor of Bône, is now on a private property at Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), and that of another mayor of Bône, Jérôme Bertagna, has been re-erected at a house in the Rhône region. A statue of Monsignor Affre, archbishop of Paris, killed during the Revolution of 1848, which had stood in an Algerian town named in his memory, was sent to his birthplace, Saint-Rome-de-Tarn (Aveyron).21 A petite histoire, illustrative of how even statues became involved in the difficult French disengagement from North Africa, attaches to each ‘repatriated’ monument. For instance, a rubbish bin was placed on the head of Viviani’s statue in Algiers as independence day dawned, but the statue was nevertheless toppled from its pedestal – which bore the inscription ‘Vive la France notre mère’ (Long live France, our mother) – and decapitated. The head was stuck on a fence spike outside the Air France office. A Frenchman who lived across the street stole out by night and recovered the head, which he took with him to Besançon. Later the mayor of Bourganeuf learned that a statue of Viviani had been ‘repatriated’ and requested it for his commune, but when the statue arrived in 1963, it was headless (to the merriment of the satirical Le Canard enchaîné). Through various contacts, the head was located and the man who had ‘souvenired’ it from Algeria presented it to Bourganeuf in 1970.22 Several statues transported back to France already had a complex history showing the vagaries of monuments and political regimes. The grandest statue in Algiers was an equestrian representation of the Duc d’Orléans, oldest son of King Louis-Philippe. As a young man, he had served in the 1830s in Algeria, where he proved a popular officer and distinguished himself in battle. After the duke was killed in an accident in France in 1842, colonial authorities decided to erect a monument in his memory. An enormous bronze statue was produced from melted-down Ottoman cannon – a neat re-use of imperial booty – and set up in the Place du Gouvernement in Algiers, the first French statue erected there. Plaques recorded the duke’s participation in the 1832 taking of Antwerp as well as the capture of Mouzaïa eight years later: metropolitan and colonial victories. After the fall of Louis-Philippe in 1848, the new governor of Algeria vetoed an attempt to pull down the


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monument, which assumed iconic status – painted by artists, commemorated in verse, reproduced on a 1949 postage-stamp, evoked in the writings of Albert Camus. On the day of Algerian independence, protesters placed an Algerian flag in the duke’s hands and painted ‘FLN’ on his horse’s flanks. The following day, French officers removed the statue and sent it to Paris in 1963 with the intention of placing it in the courtyard of the Château de Vincennes (where the duke had established an infantry corps). However, it was too big to move across the draw-bridges into the fortress and too risky to lower by helicopter, so the chateau had to be content with a small-scale bust. The duke cooled his monumental heels until the late 1970s, when the statue was re-erected in Neuilly-sur-Seine, where the Duc d’Orléans had died. (A double of the statue had been erected in the courtyard of the Louvre in the 1840s. Napoleon III, who looked back with little favour on the regime of Louis-Philippe, dispatched the statue to Versailles, where it remained until 1976, when it was moved to a chateau that had belonged to Louis-Philippe in Eu.)23 Most of the ‘repatriated’ statues were unveiled in the mid- to late-1960s, within a few years after both monuments and pieds-noirs returned to France. Often intended to honour native sons, they became implicit monuments to the Français d’Algérie and colonialism in North Africa. On one or two occasions, statues provoked controversy. When a statue of General Poëymirau, from Meknès, was unveiled in Pau in 1973, six demonstrators unfurled a banner reading ‘Hier Poëymirau, Aujourd’hui Bigeard’ (Yesterday Poëymirau, today Bigeard) – implying that if an early colonialist such as Poëymirau might be rehabilitated, so too could a French general who had fought in the Algerian War. In general, ‘repatriated’ statues now stand, uncontroversially, in small and out-of-the-way villages where their Algerian provenance is not always indicated. Passers-by do not necessarily know – much left reflect on – the lives of those represented. Though heroes in their own day, some figures might be seen in a different light today. A case in point is the statue of Sergeant Blandan. In 1842, the twenty-three-year-old officer led a detachment of twenty-two men on a mail run across the Algerian desert, where they were ambushed by three hundred Algerians. Blandan refused to surrender, and he and a number of his men were killed. Their deaths were regarded as an act of loyalty and heroism at the time – 125,000 people subscribed to erect a statue of Blandan in Algeria in 1887 – but in the twenty-first century, his last stand might seem either foolhardy or simply another act of colonial bravado. Another soldier who has appeared in ‘repatriated’ busts and statues is General Pélissier. A soldier in the Oran region in 1834, he fought at Isly in 1845 and continued service in Algeria as an officer, then acting governor, until 1851. In 1855 Pélissier was one of the commanders in the Crimean War, for which he was made a duke and a marshal. Then in 1860 he returned to Algeria as governor, a post he still held at his death four years later. One of Pélissier’s

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colonial exploits caused much criticism in the French parliament and press, and led to self-examination by Pélissier himself. In 1845, at Necmaria (near Mostaganem), a ‘rebel’ tribe had taken refuge in a cave. Pélissier lit a fire at the entrance, and the smoke and flames killed five hundred Algerians hiding inside. Pélissier wrote to Bugeaud: ‘Ce sont là, Monsieur le Maréchal, de ces opérations que l’on entreprend quand on y est forcé, mais que l’on prie Dieu de n’avoir à recommencer jamais’24 (This was one of the operations, Monsieur le Maréchal, which one undertakes when one is forced to do so, but that one prays to God never to have to do again). The ‘monuments en exil’ (monuments in exile) form one of the most vivid and poignant monumental mementos of French rule in Algeria. Statues of imperial conquerors and courageous soldiers had been erected to honour expansion and to mark possession. One speaker at the unveiling of the statue of the Duc d’Orléans in Algiers proclaimed: ‘Ce monument, aux yeux du peuple conquérant comme aux yeux du peuple conquis, c’est le sceau de la prise de possession définitive du sol’25 (This monument, in the eyes of both the conquerors and the conquered, seals the definitive takeover of this land). Ironically, their displacement from Algeria to France is testimony to the ‘loss’ of the empire. If monuments en exil to the world wars are now also monuments to pieds-noirs, explicit memorials to French settlers are rare. Almost no individual statue commemorates a Frenchman overseas who is not a soldier, sailor, missionary or explorer – ‘ordinary’ settlers are not statuified. Relatively few French men and women moved to the colonies, partly because a low birthrate in France avoided the ‘excess’ population that, for example, moved people overseas to the British empire. Since a larger proportion of the French enjoyed access to land than did inhabitants of the British Isles, Germany or Italy, there was less incentive to expatriation. Indeed colonial promoters lamented the unwillingness of the French to settle in the colonies. The largest French colonie de peuplement, Algeria, attracted more settlers from Spain, Italy and Malta than from France in the nineteenth century, and the only other real settler colony, New Caledonia, was populated with transported convicts and indentured Asian labourers. The French who settled in North America in the 1600s might be regarded in heroic light, but those who moved to North Africa or the South Pacific were seldom memorialised. There are, however, a few specific monuments to rapatriés and the generations of French who lived in Algeria. Civilians are occasionally recalled in inscriptions on monuments commemorating soldiers who died in the Algerian War, and reference is made to settlers at such sites as the Algerian memorial in Carnoux-en-Provence. One monument stands in the Saint-Pierre cemetery in Aix-en-Provence, where a long stone wall, labelled a ‘Mémorial national’ (national memorial), bears two inscriptions: ‘Français d’Algérie’ and ‘Rapatriés d’Outre-Mer’. At one end a vertical section contains the figure of a woman wearing a long hooded cape, a grieved or


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reflective-looking mother figure before which stands an eternal flame. A bas-relief pictures stylised birds flying over waves, symbol of the migration of pieds-noirs. The memorial is perhaps unique in joining a tribute to settlers in North Africa with a homage to rapatriés. The wording includes any French citizen who ‘returned’ from a colony, but the clear intention is to commemorate those ‘repatriated’ from the Maghreb, and this emphasis is apparent in other monuments. A Mémorial aux Rapatriés d’Outre-Mer, the work of a French Algerian sculptor, André Greck, stands in the Square Alsace-Lorraine in Nice. In Port-Vendres (Pyrénées-Orientales), a Mémorial de l’Algérie Française was originally a monument originally erected in Sidi-Ferruch to mark the centenary of French conquest. Relocated to France, it is complemented by a small exhibition space with documents and souvenirs of the Armée d’Afrique, photographs, maps and other items relating to pieds-noirs. French Algerians are recalled on the Marseille seafront in the Monument aux Rapatriés, the major such memorial in France. Many other pied-noir sites join together various types of commemoration. One example is in the Provençal town of Le Grau-du-Roi. A stone monument erected in 1973 is inscribed ‘A nos morts d’Afrique du Nord’ (To our North African dead). That the wording is intended to include both military and civilian dead and to encompass all of the French who died over a century of colonisation is confirmed by a further inscription: ‘Dans cette urne est déposée de la terre des cimetières d’Afrique du Nord’ (This urn contains soil from the cemeteries of North Africa). The front of the monument bears carvings of the sun and a stylised palm tree, while on the rear is a map of Europe and North Africa. On one side is a méhari, a camel and rider, and on the other, a sailing ship. The monument thus iconographically represents both North Africa and the ‘repatriation’ of pieds-noirs. Also in Le Grau-du-Roi is a stela with a picture of a church, atop which a stone stands: ‘Cette pierre relique vient de l’église de Djidjelli, Algérie, construite en 1873 par les Français et détruite en 1990 . . .’ (This reliquary stone comes from the church of Djidjelli, Algeria, constructed in 1873 by the French and destroyed in 1990 . . . [sic]). The ellipsis implicates Algerians in the destruction during the civil war in that country, but also shows the endurance of pieds-noirs’ memories and sad resentment at the loss of a patrimony left behind. In addition to statues of individuals or the new or ‘repatriated’ memorials commemorating pieds-noirs, civilians and soldiers, another category is allegorical or generic statues that connect more or less directly with France’s colonial enterprises. Among these are sphinxes and fellahs, remnants of the vogue for Egyptomania, and a reminder of Napoleon’s exploits on the Nile.26 Pharaonic figures are not the only ones with a colonial resonance. Lions, common in the monumental pantheon, may be heraldic or, when accompanied by Africans or exotic prey, take on colonial overtones. Among the statues in the Jardin Tropical de Paris is an Antaillaise, a stately West Indian woman wearing petticoats and madras skirt and headdress, joined by a group of

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Asiatic figures, including a softly eroticised woman and an Indochinese carrying a basket. The provenance of these statues is unknown, and they remain neglected in their sylvan setting, but they serve as a reminder of decorative modes for allegories of the continents, far-away countries or exotic flora, fauna or humans: vogues far from unconnected with European expansion.27 The most famous allegorical statues of the colonies are probably the figures of Asia and Africa at the base of the grand stairway of the SaintCharles railway station in Marseille. The Mediterranean city, proud to call itself the gateway to the colonies, decided to construct the stairway in 1911, although it was dedicated by the French president only sixteen years later. Statues of Marseille as ‘ville d’industrie’ (city of industry) and ‘porte de l’Orient’ (gateway to the East) stand on a landing midway up the stone staircase, with Asia and Africa at the base. The exotic statues were commissioned from Louis Bottinely, who had already executed a bust of a Khmer goddess in 1916. He depicted Asia as a reclining figure of a princess or perhaps a goddess, bare-breasted but chaste. She is accompanied by a lion and an adolescent who was possibly inspired by a youth in Puvis de Chavannes’s fresco of ‘Marseille, ville grecque’ (Marseille, Greek city) of 1867. Africa, based on a model who posed for Bottinely, is also represented as a nude woman, though somewhat more sexily with heaving breasts and muscular thighs. A child, a monkey and the head of a buffalo reinforce the African ‘animality’. These female representations of Africa and Asia are shown semi-reclining, rather than sitting or standing, as allegorical figures of France, cities or the Republic are generally posed: ‘Non pas assises comme “Marseille” du palier supérieur, mais à demi couchées en position d’offrance. Et cette position allongée suggère moins la fécondité que la disponibilité passive des corps. Femmes colonisées, femmes offertes et livrées au regard des métropolitains’28 (Not seated, like the ‘Marseille’ on the first landing, but half-reclining and offering themselves. This supine position suggests less fecundity than the passive availability of their bodies. Colonised women, women offered and given up to the gaze of métropolitains). The ‘sample’ of colonial statues is perhaps too limited for generalisations, but colonial monuments do appear gendered. Statues of men portray soldiers, often generals or marshals, outfitted in uniforms; native men occasionally appear in war memorials, also as soldiers, but are inevitably subalterns, sometimes iconographically placed in subordinate positions. The few women who appear – the Antillaise and Indochinoise in Paris, the Asian and African in Marseille, allegorical images of the continents – are non-European women (with the exception of ‘France’) often with a degree of nudity. Non-eroticised women in statuary are a ‘typical’ West Indian, a grieving African in a colonial war monument in the Jardin Tropical and an Algerian offering the fruits of her country in the ‘repatriated’ monument in Saint-Philbert. In monuments, as in ‘real life’, gender roles, and colonial stereotypes, held fast.


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Plaques and tombstones Plaques affixed to houses are a simple, but habitual, way of recording history and paying tribute to individuals. They commemorate a wider range of figures than in the world of statues dominated by soldiers and statesmen. But, as with statues, those who bother to notice plaques may still be unaware of the colonial episodes in men’s lives. In Paris, for example, plaques are affixed to the houses of various writers with colonial relations, but few who read them know that Francis Carco was born in New Caledonia or that the diplomat and Nobel laureate Saint-John Perse came from Guadeloupe. They may recall Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s aviation exploits in French West Africa, though more likely they think simply of Le petit prince or Vol de nuit. They could possibly connect Alphonse Daudet to his satire of overseas travels in Tartarin de Tarascon, or remember André Malraux’s travels in Indochina and China when reading the plaque on the house where he wrote La condition humaine. Plaques on the houses of Marshals Lyautey and de Lattre de Tassigny or Governor-General Félix Eboué are more liable to strike a colonial chord in public memory. Signs give only brief clues to men’s careers. An exception in the Avenue du Général-Lemonnier is a plaque explaining that on 10 March 1945, when captured by the Japanese at Langson in northern Indochina, Lemonnier ‘a refusé par deux fois de signer une capitulation totale, [et] a préféré avoir la tête tranchée plutôt que de forfaire à l’honneur’ (twice refused to sign a capitulation [and] preferred to be decapitated to losing his honour). Cemeteries contain markers about figures from all walks of life. No colonial grave in Paris, however, has the stylistic prominence or attraction – such as those of Oscar Wilde or Edith Piaf – that make cemeteries popular tourist sites. Yet the careful observer can find many reminders of France’s imperial efforts. In the Montparnasse cemetery is buried the Pacific explorer Dumont d’Urville under a large monument erected by the Société de Géographie, similar to the one at Condé-sur-Noireau. The stela pictures his circumnavigations of the globe, search for La Pérouse, exploration of Antarctica, and finding of the Venus de Milo. Inscriptions – ‘navigation – géographie – histoire naturelle – philologie – débris du naufrage de La Pérouse rapportés’ (Navigation – Geography – Natural History – Philology – Recovery of the remains of La Pérouse’s shipwreck) – list his accomplishments. Also buried in Montparnasse is Adolphe Crémieux, whose laws granted citizenship to Jews in Algeria: his monument was erected by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which he served as president. Two others interred there are Paul Deschanel, who before becoming President of the Republic wrote two seminal works promoting colonisation in the South Pacific, and General Mangin. A number of missionaries are buried together in Montparnasse underneath a small votive chapel labelled ‘Missions étrangères’ (Foreign Missions). The grandest of Paris cemeteries, Père-Lachaise, contains the graves of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; Admiral Dupetit-Thouars, who established French

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control over Tahiti; Melchior de Vogüé, a now forgotten colonialist novelist; and Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the Suez Canal. Also connected with the colonies are Eugène Burnouf, an Orientalist scholar, the Egyptologist Champollion, the navy minister Chasseloup-Laubat, and the painters Géricault and Delacroix. The tomb of General Gobert, by Pierre-Jean David d’Angers, is an 1847 marble sculpture showing the officer who put down a slave rebellion in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, in 1802. A host of other colonials rest in peace in other cemeteries in Paris and the suburbs. The Orientalist painter Théodore Chassériau (born in the Antilles) is buried in the Montmartre cemetery, as is a fellow Orientalist painter and writer, Gustave Guillaumet (1840–1887). The latter’s grave is decorated with a medallion containing his portrait, a carved palette and inkwell, a representation of his Tableaux algériens and a list of some of his works such as ‘La Prière du soir’, ‘Rue de Laghouat’, ‘Marché arabe’ and ‘Fileuses à Bou-Saada’. Atop the tombstone sits a statue of a pensive Berber girl. Léon Dierx is in the Batignolles cemetery and Carco in Bagneux, Roland Dorgelès (several of whose novels are set in Indochina) lies in Saint-Vincent. The colonial historian Gabriel Hanotaux and Georges Mandel, once Minister of the Colonies, are buried in Passy. The heart of the explorer Bougainville is interred in the Cimetière du Calvaire; the remainder of his body lies in the Panthéon.29 There are few greater honours that France can pay to its glorious dead than burial in the Panthéon or, as is usually the case for soldiers, in the Invalides. Coffins are often only removed to these sites – where commemorative services accompany solemn interments – long after the death of national heroes, once controversies have passed and historical accomplishments have been assessed. Governments also use reburial of favourite figures in the Panthéon or Invalides to signify their current policies and attitudes. The Panthéon, with its classical allusions and the weighty slogan of ‘Aux grands hommes, la France reconnaissante’ (A grateful France to its great men) emblazoned on the pediment, forms one of the most sacred sites in France. The quiet and somewhat gloomy feeling of a deconsecrated church is mixed with a very official and intentional evocation of collective national memories. Some great Frenchmen, such as General de Gaulle, have preferred to be buried elsewhere, but the Panthéon nevertheless contains a ‘who’s who’ of official heroes. Several ministers who had a connection with overseas exploration and colonisation, such as the ancien régime Duc de Praslin, are buried in the Panthéon, and there are one or two other figures, such as Malraux, who had significant colonial experience.30 Bougainville was buried in the Panthéon in honour of the South Pacific. However, the number of those whose careers were primarily colonial is very limited. The two most important figures connected with the colonies buried in the Panthéon are Victor Schoelcher and Félix Eboué. Schoelcher (1804–1893) was the architect of the emancipation of slaves in the French empire,


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Photo 14 In the Montmartre cemetery, a statue of a North African girl ornaments the grave of the Orientalist painter Gustave Guillaumet.

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definitively decreed by the parliament in 1848. Treated as a villain by slave-owners and their conservative supporters, Schoelcher became a hero for the slaves (though his contribution to the anti-slavery movement has been reassessed by historians who emphasise the role of slave rebellions in securing emancipation). He was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery along with, following his wishes, the remains of his father. (The large tombstone for Schoelcher’s former grave remains in Père-Lachaise.) Félix Eboué (1884– 1944) was a black Frenchman from Guyane, a public servant in the colonial administration. As governor of Chad, he was one of the first high-ranking colonial officials to rally to General de Gaulle after the defeat of France in 1940. He was appointed Governor-General of French Equatorial Africa, where he helped to prepare the Brazzaville Conference convened to discuss the future of the empire, although he died before the conference convened. The bodies of Schoelcher and Eboué were transferred to the Panthéon in 1949, making Eboué the first (and to date, only) black man buried there.31 The reinterment was intended to mark (indeed, to join together) the centenary of slave emancipation and the decisive ralliement of Eboué and Résistants during the Second World War. Before the reburial ceremony, Gaston Monnerville, president of the Senate, and himself a black Guyanais, commented: ‘Dans quelques semaines, réalisant l’une des aspirations les plus anciennes des hommes de couleur, synthétisant en un geste émouvant ces cent années d’histoire de la liberté, la Patrie reconnaissante unira, sous le dôme du Panthéon, . . . et un fils de cette Alsace dont les hommes de 1793 disaient déjà que là commence le pays de la liberté, et un fils de ces affranchis dont la foi et la volonté ont puissamment aidé à sauver le pays’32 (Fulfilling one of the oldest aspirations of people of colour, summing up by this gesture a hundred years of the history of liberty, a grateful country will unite under the dome of the Panthéon . . . a son of Alsace, the place where the men of 1793 said that the land of freedom began, and a son of freed slaves, whose faith and strong will aided in the salvation of the nation). The gesture of reinterring Schoelcher and Eboué among other grands hommes, at a time of great metamorphosis for the French colonies – after the départementalisation of the vieilles colonies in 1946, a revolt in Madagascar in 1947, the Indochinese War – was meant to underline connections between metropole and colonies, between black and white Frenchmen, between a France that liberated slaves and a France that combatted Nazism. The most recent figure linked to the empire to be buried in the Panthéon is the Abbé Henri Grégoire, who led the campaign in the late 1700s for the emancipation of slaves. (Slavery was indeed abolished by the Convention, only to be re-established by Napoleon.) Grégoire’s remains were reinterred in the Panthéon, with pomp and pageantry, on 12 December 1989, during the presidency of François Mitterrand. The Socialist president was keenly aware


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of the symbolic importance of the Panthéon – on the day of his investiture in 1981, he walked around the Panthéon, alone except for cameras, placing roses on the graves of Schoelcher, Jean Jaurès, the Socialist leader assassinated in 1914, and Jean Moulin, a hero of the Resistance. The ‘pantheonisation’ of Grégoire was similarly choreographed with honour guards and dignitaries waiting outside, as Mitterrand accompanied Grégoire’s coffin into the interior of the Panthéon. Placing the remains of Grégoire in the Panthéon in the year of the centenary of the French Revolution was meant to affirm French humanitarianism, and to represent a homage to France’s black citizens, especially the West Indians and Réunionnais, mostly descendants of slaves, as well as to acknowledge the multicultural nature of contemporary French society. As the case of Grégoire shows, new graves and plaques continue to be added to the Panthéon, reflecting changing views of France’s past and of its national identity. In 1998 a plaque was unveiled to Toussaint Louverture, who spurred the anti-colonial and anti-slavery movement in Saint-Domingue that led to Haitian independence. Another was unveiled to Louis Delgrès, a free man of African descent from Martinique who fought for the Republic in the early 1790s and was captured by the British. When released, he joined the Bataillon des Antilles, only to be again captured and released. In 1800 Delgrès, now an officer, arrived in Guadeloupe. Two years later, he joined a group of blacks and coloured residents in a last stand against the re-establishment of slavery, under Napoleon’s orders, by General Richepanse. At Matouba, Delgrès and his band mined the fort that served as their redoubt, committing suicide. Since Delgrès’s remains were unrecoverable, and Toussaint’s presumed remains (after his death in France) are not authenticated, plaques provided the only possible reminder of the rebels for the Panthéon. As Laurent Dubois remarks: ‘Given that Louverture and Delgrès were both killed by the French state in the process of fighting against its policies, their inclusion among the ranks of Republican heroes was an official acknowledgement that they had chosen the side of right in taking up arms against France. The process of bringing them into the Pantheon, then, reflected a broader process of re-interpreting history, of re-thinking France’s history of colonialism and slavery.’ This further signifies a recognition of Caribbean struggles against slavery, a departure from traditional historiography that saw emancipation as graciously granted by the metropole. In dedicating the plaque to the ‘hero of the struggle against the reestablishment of slavery in Guadeloupe’, the Socialist Minister of Justice, Elisabeth Guigou, declared: ‘The French Republic wishes to honour these heroes of the Republic who faithfully and zealously defended justice and the equality of rights and fought against discrimination and inhumanity.’ She hailed Delgrès and Toussaint as ‘precursors of decolonization’. Dubois remarks that visitors wishing to see the graves of Schoelcher or Eboué must pass by the plaques erected to Toussaint and Delgrès. ‘The historical claim symbolically made in the Pantheon is a radical one that goes beyond the role granted to

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Caribbean peoples by most historians of France and the abolition of slavery’, though he warns that ‘the placement of Delgrès and Louverture in the Pantheon can be seen as an appropriation of these two figures into a broader official French project’.33 Their ‘entry’ into the sanctum can also be interpreted as part of a nascent effort to address France’s recording of colonial history in monuments, as evidenced in the renaming of the Paris street that honoured Richepanse, the general against whom Delgrès fought. Coincidentally or not, no great colonials were interred in the Panthéon during the heyday of the colonialism. Ironically, Schoelcher, Eboué and Grégoire, the three figures particularly linked with the colonies who now lie there (and Toussaint and Delgrès, commemorated by plaques) were critical of French colonialism: slavery for the first three, and in the case of Eboué, the allegiance of many administrators to Vichy. They represent what was considered a more progressive French rule overseas, the humane face of French expansion. The burial of Schoelcher and Eboué in the late 1940s signalled a recasting of imperial relations, while that of the others serves a postscript for empire and suggests a consecration of anti-colonialism as itself worthy of commemoration. Military figures with colonial connections are entombed in the crypt of the Hôtel des Invalides, though they are often honoured more for service in European rather than colonial wars. Several with colonial connections lie in the crypt, and in the chapel there is a monument to de Lattre de Tassigny. Another memorial pays tribute to soldiers ‘qui ont fait pour la France le sacrifice de leur vie en Indochine dont les corps n’ont pas été retrouvés et demeureront à jamais mêlés à cette terre sur laquelle ils ont versé leur sang’ (who sacrificed their lives for France in Indochina, and whose remains were not recovered and so forever will remain mixed with the soil on which they shed their blood). In the main necropolis of the Invalides (where Napoleon is entombed) is buried Marshal Lyautey. Lyautey, who died in 1934, had first been temporarily buried in Nancy until his ashes were transferred to Morocco with great ceremony the following year: accompanied by his widow, escorted across the Mediterranean by a fleet of French and British ships, received by the French Resident–General and the Grand Vizir of the sultanate. Crowds filed past the urn to pay their respects at the Algiers’s Hôtel de Ville after a mass at the city’s cathedral, and a special train took the remains to Rabat, where Lyautey was laid to rest with full military honours in the presence of the sultan and colonial authorities.34 In 1961, five years after the independence of Morocco and in the midst of the Algerian War, King Hassan suggested that it was appropriate for his remains to be repatriated, and the French government agreed and decided to place Lyautey’s ashes in the Invalides.35 President de Gaulle, an admirer of Lyautey, perhaps saw re-entombment of the marshal in the Invalides as a gesture to those fearing that Algérie


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Française, like the other French colonies, would be ‘lost’ (even though de Gaulle had already decided that Algeria would become independent). He also probably intended the reburial to be a reaffirmation of France’s international vocation. As with the ‘pantheonisation’ of Schoelcher and Eboué, this represented as well an attempt to honour a humanitarian sort of colonialism, as Lyautey was still held in high regard for his respect of North African culture, as well as personal integrity and a keen sense of duty. As the Algerian War concluded, though the wounds were still raw, the ceremony – the last great ceremony in honour of French colonialism – became an epitaph on France’s imperial age. President de Gaulle remarked: ‘Le Maréchal n’a pas fini de servir la France’ (The marshal has not yet completed his service to France).36 The urn with Lyautey’s ashes was removed from Morocco, in the presence of French and Moroccan ministers and a detachment of Moroccan soldiers presenting arms, and carried to Paris. As a signal honour, a rare tribute, the coffin was placed under the Arc de Triomphe, lit by torches and surrounded by an honour guard during the night preceding the interment; 50,000 filed past to pay their respects. On 22 March 1961, a requiem mass was celebrated in Saint-Louis des Invalides in the presence of the old associates of Lyautey, his nephew and heir, members of the government – Louis Jacquinot represented de Gaulle, who did not attend – and the ambassadors of Morocco, Madagascar and Vietnam, three countries in which Lyautey had served. (Among others in attendance were the Count of Paris, pretender to the French throne: Lyautey, though a devoted servant of the Republic, was sympathetic to monarchism.) In his homily, Canon Thorel, chaplain of the Invalides, said that Lyautey’s remains would now join those of Napoleon, Turenne and Vauban. ‘Par sa présence, il rappellera aux hommes qui viendront se recueillir . . . l’oeuvre extérieure de la France et les anciens “d’outre-mer” et tous ceux qui y ont perdu un être cher se retrouveront chez eux . . . Si la France est encore ce qu’elle est, si tant de vocations sont nées dans la gratuité et le désintéressement pour faire rayonner la grandeur de notre civilisation, porter aux peuples d’Asie et d’Afrique le meilleur de nous-même, les aider à saisir leur personnalité, les aimer et leur permettre de prendre le départ, de se retrouver et de s’unir, c’est parce que nous avons eu la chance, parce que ces peuples ont eu la grâce, d’avoir un Lyautey et son équipe’ (By his presence, he will recall to those who come to pay their respects here . . . the international action of France, and the veterans of the outre-mer and all those who have lost a loved one there will gather together here . . . If France is still what it is, if so many vocations, born in free will and disinterest, inspired the spread of the greatness of our civilisation, carried the best of ourselves to the peoples of Asia and Africa and allowed us to understand their personalities, to love them and then to take leave, to gather and to unite together, it is because we had the luck, it is because these peoples had the blessing, of having a Lyautey and his men).

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At the end of the service, eight soldiers from the Foreign Legion carried Lyautey’s casket into the Chapelle Royale. While drums beat, and the ‘Last Post’ was played, his remains were placed in a large bronze sarcophagus mounted on a marble base. The pedestal was the work of Albert Laprade, a friend of Lyautey, who had been responsible for the marshal’s programme of urban renewal in Morocco in the 1920s and who designed the Musée Colonial for the exhibition of 1931.37 Lyautey’s name and dates are engraved on one end of the sarcophagus, a cross and a marshal’s baton on the other. On the sides is inscribed a quotation from Lyautey, in French and Arabic, summing up his vision of his vocation and achievements: ‘Etre de ceux auxqeuls les hommes croient / dans les yeux desquels des milliers d’yeux cherchent l’ordre / à la voix desquels des routes s’ouvrent / des pays se peuplent / des villes surgissent’ (To be among those in whom men believe / in the eyes of whom thousands of eyes search for order / at whose voice pathways open / countries are peopled / cities spring up). Evoking his programme of public works and urban renewal, the establishment of ‘order’ in law and administration, and the growth of colonial populations (although, in fact, Lyautey was less than enthusiastic about French settlers in Morocco), the sentence speaks of Lyautey’s ambitions and France’s imperial brief. A contemporary commentator remarked: ‘Le Maréchal repose en terre de France. Les Invalides deviennent, à un nouveau titre, un haut-lieu: celui où des Français qui contibuèrent, eux-mêmes ou par les leurs, à la gloire de ce pays, où des ressortissants de nations dont des hommes comme Lyautey hâtèrent le développement, pourront désormais venir en pèlerinage’38 (The marshal lies in the land of France. The Invalides, once again, becomes a sacred site where Frenchmen, themselves or through their near and dear, who contributed to the glory of the country, and where the nationals of states of which men like Lyautey hastened the development, can all now come on pilgrimage).

Missionaries and martyrs Lyautey in death was thus consecrated as the best exemplar of colonialism. Another category of Frenchmen whose work overseas earned recognition and devotion were the missionaries who accompanied, and often preceded, soldiers, administrators, traders and settlers, sometimes suffering martyrdom for their efforts. Commemoration of martyrs – statues and paintings, preservation of relics, prayers and festivals, hagiographies and canonisations – forms an important part of Catholic rites, and the church has paid tribute to the priests and members of religious orders who laboured overseas. Figurations of evangelisation, conversion and martyrdom appear in many churches, as examples from Paris show. At St François-Xavier, near the Invalides, bas-reliefs depict the saint presenting the nations he converted to Christ and baptising Indians and Japanese. Saint-Sulpice, in the sixth arrondissement, also has a chapel dedicated to Francis Xavier, with paintings of


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him reviving a dead man in India, and of the transfer of his own body to Goa. In Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a 1923 plaque honours François de MontmorencyLaval (1623–1708), apostolic vicar in New France, who was consecrated bishop in the church in 1658; ‘Le Canada français reconnaissant’ (A grateful French Canada), reads the inscription. In Saint-Augustin, an entire chapel is devoted to Charles de Foucauld, perhaps the most famous of French missionaries. Born in Strasbourg in 1858, Foucauld led a rambunctious early life as appropriate for a viscount. He served in the army, but left the military in 1882 to travel to Morocco. In 1890, Foucauld entered monastic life and was ordained to the priesthood. He became a hermit in the Sahara in 1901, later establishing a missionary outpost in Tamanrasset, where he was killed by Tuaregs in 1916. A descriptive panel in Saint-Augustin explains how he received spiritual enlightenment. In 1886, after ‘une jeunesse tumultueuse [l’]a détourné de Dieu, il rencontre dans ce quartier, où il demeure, l’abbé Huvelin, vicaire de Saint-Augustin, se confesse a lui (deuxième chapelle à droite), retrouve le chemin de la foi’ (after a tumultuous youth turned him away from God, here in this neighbourhood where he lived, he met Father Huvelin, the parish priest of Saint-Augustin, made his confession (in the second chapel on the right) and once again found the path of faith) and found his vocation. The chapel contains photographs of Foucauld and his family, a model of the fortress at Tamanrasset where he died, a picture of the Sahara mountains captioned with a poem by Foucauld and other documentation on his life.39 A more discreet commemoration, for less famous people, is contained in votive plaques. For example, in the Paris church of La Trinité, a plaque commemorates Ernest Psichari, a colonialist novelist from Algeria who worshipped there after he moved to Paris, and who lost his life in the First World War. At Notre-Dame des Victoires, across town, plaques provide a sample of Catholics active overseas. One gives thanks on behalf of the Bishop of Médéa and Apostolic Vicar of Jaffna (Ceylon), head of a mission ‘sortie victorieuse de ses épreuves’ (that ‘victoriously weathered its tests’). ‘L’oeuvre des Ecoles d’Orient à Notre-Dame des Victoires (Monseigneur Lavigerie) 1860–64’ recalls missionary activities in Lebanon, while plaques reading ‘Heureux retour de la campagne du Mexique, 11/9/1866’ (A happy return from the Mexican campaign, 11/9/1866) and ‘Hommage de reconnaissance – Guerre du Mexique’ (In grateful homage – the Mexican War) recall France’s involvement in setting up a short-lived imperial regime in Mexico. ‘Voeu – Missionaire sauvé du choléra – Hong-Kong’ (An intention [from] a missionary saved from cholera – Hong-Kong) adds Asia to the list of areas of activity. (An English-language plaque reads: ‘I thank thee my mother [Notre-Dame] for having preserved my wife’s life. – V.E.L. – Madras, India, March 1868.’) Another plaque is movingly inscribed: ‘Reconnaissance à Notre-Dame des Victoires et à SaintJoseph – Vous avez protégé notre fils dans sa longue et périlleuse exploration du Meï-kong [sic], années 1866–1867 et 1868’ (With thanks to Notre-Dame des Victoires and to St Joseph – You protected our son during his long and

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perilous exploration of the Mekong, 1866–1867 and 1868). Such private memories testify both to faith and the desire to express thanks at home for graces rendered abroad. The most comprehensive representation of colonial evangelisation is Notre-Dame des Missions in Epinay-sur-Seine. The church, which housed the Catholic pavilion at the Colonial Exhibition of 1931, was subsequently taken down and reconstructed – concrete, a still unusual medium for a church, replacing the original wood – in the Paris suburb. Monseigneur Verdier, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris, speaking in 1932, called the reconstruction the ‘résurrection du Pavillon des Missions’ (resurrection of the missionary pavilion), a ‘Monument-Mémorial de l’épopée missionnaire et coloniale de la France’ (memorial monument to the missionary and colonial saga of France). Notre-Dame, he added, would become the ‘sanctuaire national de la prière pour nos missionnaires, nos marins et nos coloniaux’ (national sanctuary for prayers for our missionaries, our sailors and our colonials). The church displays a motley of exotic styles. The bell-tower, topped by four monumental figures representing four human races, a globe and a cross, intentionally resembles an African tower – an embodiment of ‘les pays de religions fétichistes’ (countries of fetish religions) according to an article from a 1933 parish bulletin quoted on a descriptive panel in the church. The façade was designed in Oriental style, covered with blue and white ceramic tiles, and has a Vietnamese-style portico with three stepped red roofs upturned at the corners in the manner of a pagoda. The building itself recalls a Moroccan mosque. A stained-glass rose window and a statue of the Virgin strike a more traditional European note. Paul Tournon, the architect, Carlos Sarrabezolles, the chief sculptor, and painters from the atelier of Maurice Denis were chosen for their efforts to renew ecclesiastical art. Many paintings were done by Raymond Virac (1892–1946), who had briefly taught drawing and painting at the fine-arts academy in Hanoi in the 1920s. Twelve paintings on the vaults of the church illustrate the spread, in chronological order, of Christianity around the world. The first shows evangelisation of the Middle East, and the Greek and Roman worlds, in the first century. Next comes the conversion of Gaulle, followed by the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, England, Germany and the Slavic lands. In the seventh painting, on fourteenth-century missions, appears the first archbishop of Beijing, the Franciscan Johannes de Montecorvino. The next panel portrays St Francis Xavier and the Jesuits in India and Japan. The ninth painting is dedicated to a seventeenth-century missionary in Japan, followed by the evangelisation of the Americas. The last two paintings depict the ‘new’ empire. Figuring in a scene of the martyrdom of Théophane Vénard, a French priest in Indochina, are a map of the Indochinese peninsula, sampans, elephants, a Buddha, a Tonkinese pagoda and the imperial palace at Hué. Vénard is twice portrayed: being decapitated and standing on a lotus-shaped pedestal triumphantly holding a cross and the martyr’s palm. The last painting,


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focussing on Africa, includes Père de Foucauld and Cardinal Lavigerie. The iconography uses indigenous motifs and scenes throughout to picture missionaries and converts: an African priest giving communion to kneeling parishioners, brothers brandishing a cross to Canadian Indian tribes, and an Indian (sporting a turban and an earring) receiving a blessing from a haloed friar against a background of peacocks, palm trees, elephants and the sea. Stained-glass windows showing Christ sending out his apostles reiterate the idea of evangelisation. In one panel, St Joseph, protector of the church, folds his cloak around Pope Pius XI, who embraces three Christians who suffered martyrdom: Rose de Lima, an Indian métisse, Michael Guébré, an Ethiopian, and Paul Le Bao-Thirn, a Vietnamese priest. In other scenes are four figures representing the different parts of the world: St Pierre Chanel, a French priest martyred on Futuna Island in the South Pacific; St Jean-Gabriel Perboyre, a Lazarist priest tortured in China; Charles Lwanga and a child martyr, Kisito, from Uganda; and two North American saints, Marie de l’Incarnation, the first missionary in Canada, and Katari Tangakwita, the ‘sainte sauvagesse’ (savage saint). In the predellas are further representations of Asia, Oceania, Africa and the Americas – one of Lavigerie’s Pères Blancs, nuns in Oceania, Foucauld in the Maghreb, and missionaries in Guyane, Madagascar, the Soudan and the Congo. Near the doors, tablets mention 373 religious orders of women around the world and an unspecified number of male religious orders. On either side of the altar, plaques are engraved with a list of French missionary orders established from 1800 to 1877. Another pays tribute to 270 French missionaries killed during the First World War.40 Notre-Dame des Missions is thus a virtual visual catalogue of evangelisation in the French empire, the places French missionaries were active reflected in the paintings, plaques and very architecture of the church. However, such a building was not meant to function solely as a museum of conversion, but also as a place where masses could be said for the repose of missionaries, the intercession of martyrs could be invoked, the link between evangelisation and colonisation could be preached, and vocations could be nurtured. The period of colonial missionary activity is inserted into the long term of Christianisation, calling the faithful to pursue the work of the Christian God even after the end of empire. Like other edifices from the colonial period, Notre-Dame des Missions was intended not only to celebrate overseas endeavours but to inspire them as well. Another major reminder of the French missionary effort in Paris is the Société des Missions Etrangères (SME) in the Rue du Bac, the buildings into which the SME moved four years after its founding in 1659. The gracious complex contains a seminary for training missionaries, offices, gardens and a large chapel, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1683. In 1691, in this chapel, Bossuet baptised several Guinean princes, with King Louis XIV serving as godfather for the son of the ‘King of Assinie’. The SME buildings were

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ravaged and the society disestablished during the Revolution, but it was re-established and returned to its old quarters by 1805. In the 1600s the SME sent missionaries to Cochinchina, Tonkin, Cambodia, Siam and Burma; by the mid-1800s, missionaries worked in Malaysia, Tibet, Laos, Formosa, India and other parts of Asia as well. With SME priests at present in east and Southeast Asia, India, the Indian Ocean region and Brazil, it remains one of the largest and most widespread of French orders.41 The buildings in the Rue du Bac contain many mementos of the missionaries’ work. An oratory in the garden lists the names of beatified missionaries killed overseas. The stairway has a map of SME stations around the world. The reading room of the archives displays portraits of missionary bishops in Canada, a bilingual funeral elegy published by the Annamese emperor Gia Long at the death of the Bishop of Adran, head of the SME’s mission in Vietnam, in 1799, and a painting of the martyrdom of St Augustin Schoeffler at Son-Tay in 1851. Large-scale 1960s paintings in the chapel commemorate the martyrdom of SME members in Indochina, Pope Alexander VII presenting missionary instructions to SME bishops in 1659, and young priests departing for their work overseas. In the crypt are the tombs of thirteen priests and brothers killed in Indochina and China, as well as the grave of the founder of the SME. Bishop François Pallu de la Barrière died in 1684, and his remains were transferred to Paris in 1954 when France left Indochina. The SME’s ‘Salle des Martyrs’ (Martyrs’ Hall) chronicles its missionary activity in Japan, Korea and Indochina, a region with which its history is closely tied. The SME counted its first martyr there when Pierre Borie was killed on 1838; on the sesquicentenary of his death, Borie, Théophane Vénard and eight other members of the SME were among 117 martyrs in Vietnam canonised by Pope John Paul II. Contemporary Vietnamese paintings in the Salle des Martyrs depict their torture, beheading and mutilation. In the Salle des Martyrs are also preserved relics of the martyrs in Indochina: chalices and missels, crucifixes and rosaries, vestments, St Augustin Schoeffler’s Vietnamese pyjamas, tea-pot and betel-nut box, St Jean-Louis Bonnard’s chopsticks, mosquito-net and blood-stained clothing, the bloodied altar-cloth on which Borie was executed, the chain used to bind Vénard after his arrest and the last letter he wrote from prison to his father, and wooden pieces of the cangue, a ladder-like torture device fixed around prisoners’ necks. Vénard’s bones are divided between a reliquary in the Salle des Martyrs and another in the chapel; his head remains interred in Vietnam.42 The SME commemorates hundreds of years of missionary activity in Asia and the deaths of more than one hundred thousand Christians in Indochina. It is a reminder of the crucial role played by Catholic missionaries, going back to Alexandre de Rhodes in the early 1600s, a presence that helped pave the way for later French colonisation. The presentation of materials is hagiographical, as is perhaps appropriate for a missionary society. Bones and other relics are encased in gilded reliquaries and arranged in vitrines. A 1930 painting, by


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Edgard Maxence, of St Théophane Vénard shows a devoted young man, the fact of his future decapitation inscribed on his halo, his hands folded in prayer and a prisoner’s chain hanging down his cassock – a treatment intended to make the portrait an object of veneration as well as documentation. Other churches and monasteries in France commemorate colonial evangelisation. For example, the church of Sainte-Catherine in Honfleur contains a plaque honouring Pierre Berthelot, a Norman born in 1600 and baptised in the church. Having earned qualifications as a ship’s pilot, at the age of nineteen, Berthelot sailed for Asia to distinguish himself as a navigator and cartographer. From Macassar and Malacca, he went to Goa, where he spent six years working for the Portuguese and became a Carmelite friar. Ordained in 1638, he and a fellow priest were dispatched by the Portuguese viceroy to Aceh, on the island of Sumatra. Taken captive by Muslims, Berthelot and his comrade were executed when they refused to commit apostasy. Pope Leo XIII beatified the two Frenchmen in 1900, and in 1926 a rather fanciful painting of their martyrdom mixing Asian and European motifs was hung in Sainte-Catherine.43 Missionaries are also recalled in other religious centres around France. The Maison du Missionnaire in Vichy and the Musée Africain in Lyon have already been mentioned. The Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur, established by Jules Chevalier in 1854, sent priests and religious to the Caribbean, South America, Africa, India, eastern Asia and Melanesia. The mother-house at Issoudun has a small museum highlighting missionary activities around the world. A tiny museum at Montrevel-en-Bresse (Ain) is devoted largely to St Pierre Chanel, the martyr in Oceania. Not all missionaries were Catholic, however, and the Protestant missionary society headquarters in Paris also has documents, photographs and memorabilia pertaining to the work of its ministers. Religious items were also ‘repatriated’ from Algeria, just as were the secular statues discussed earlier. As the French Navy was transporting civil memorials back to France, the Secours Catholique brought ecclesiastical objects from churches fated to lose most of their parishioners in the 1962 exodus. Alain Amato has counted seventeen sets of church bells, nine carillons, a dozen statues, an altar, stations of the cross and organ parts ‘repatriated’ and installed in French parish churches.44 For parishioners these furnishing testify to the continuity of the church’s work, and also to the now severed links with North Africa. Statues of Joan of Arc, a canonical figure in French history, were also brought from Algeria. Such statues – like those of conquerors of Algeria – were intended to mark North Africa with the French presence and to help forge a French identity among a disparate population. Such ‘repatriated’ statues may take on a political as well as a religious connotation. Already in 1964, political concerns arose at the erection in Caen of a statue of Joan from the cathedral in Oran. An organisation of pieds-noirs, suspected of extremist anti-government views, called for a major public rally of rapatriés at the

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unveiling of the statue; invitations to figures from the OAS provoked a reaction by other pied-noir associations with less extremist views. The prefect announced that he would not take part in the ceremony, and the army said that it would not send an honour guard or military band. The mayor of Caen then issued a statement stating that he, not the pieds-noir organisations, had scheduled the ceremony, but he forbade any public demonstration of a political nature. The ceremony attracted between two and three thousand pieds-noirs from all over France. The mayor unveiled the equestrian statue of St Joan and declared: ‘Il faut que grâce à cette statue, un grand vent de fraternité souffle sur la France et que s’éteigent les querelles; que vienne enfin l’heure de l’apaisement et de la réconciliation’ (Thanks to this statue, may a great wind of fraternity blow over France and cool our quarrels; may at last the time of calm and reconciliation be ours). This was taken by many pieds-noirs as an allusion to an amnesty for those implicated in OAS violence in Algeria, and the word ‘amnesty’ was chanted by part of the crowd, but there was no incident.45 In this instance, a religious symbol became a rallying-point for pied-noir anger and notalgia, underlining the ways in which religion could continue to be used as a political instrument. In the post-colonial period, as in the age of colonialism, religion cannot be separated from politics.

Three houses, three men Soldiers are often memorialised in barracks and military camps; monuments to missionaries appear in religious edifices. However, individuals can ensure their posthumous commemoration by leaving their houses to public authorities as museums filled with their personal possessions. Relatives and friends also donate houses and belongings for museums in honour of loved ones. Among such museums are those of writers and explorers connected with the ‘exotic’ world. The house of Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969), who explored Tibet and central Asia, is preserved as a museum in Digneles-Bains (Alpes de Haute-Provence), with the reconstruction of a Buddhist temple sitting alongside. Ingrandes (Indre) has a small museum in the former residence of Henri de Monfreid (1879–1974), an adventurer on the Red Sea who wrote on such topics as pirates and hashish. The house where Marshal Gallieni was born in Saint-Béat (Haute-Garonne) contains exhibits on his career. The houses of three others – Pierre Loti, Marshal Lyautey and Albert Schweitzer – are museums of very different men associated with overseas expansion.46 Julien Viaud (1850–1923) was born in Rochefort, an Atlantic city with a long naval and colonial tradition. A royal arsenal operated there in the ancien régime, La Rochelle was one of the most important ports for the triangular trade in slaves and American goods, and René Caillié sailed from its harbour for his African explorations in the early 1800s. Viaud followed in the footsteps of his brother, a naval officer, and served in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and


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Pacific. While in Tahiti, he took the name of Loti, from a local plant, in honour of his brother, who had been there earlier, before being lost at sea, and whose affair with a Tahitian woman Loti transformed into the book that made his reputation, Le mariage de Loti (1880). Foreign places and travels provided the setting for Loti’s popular novels which secured his election to the Académie Française. A visit to Turkey had inspired a novel about an affair with a Circassian woman in Istanbul, Aziyadé (1879), after service in Senegal, he wrote Roman d’un spahi (1881), sailings in the North Atlantic were incorporated into Pêcheur d’Islande (1886), and after going to Japan he published Madame Chrysanthème (1887). He meanwhile continued his naval career, taking part in French incursions in Tonkin and participating in the European sack of Beijing in 1900. Loti turned his childhood house in Rochefort into a fantasy of travel and adventures. From his first trips, he began to fill the residence with souvenirs from Tahiti and Senegal, then remodelled the house itself. He built two Gothic rooms, complete with medieval tapestries, a ‘peasant’ room of folkloric decorations, as well as – acceding to his wife’s request – a French neo-classical reception room. The real attraction of the house was exotic rooms: an Arabic room, a Turkish room and a ‘mosque’. The style was eclectic with treasures from Turkey, Persia and North Africa displayed in luxuriant style suiting a dandy. The ‘mosque’ was given elegant ceramic tiling and graced with a mirhab (prayer niche), a fountain and two cenotaphs, as well as the stela from the Istanbul grave of the real-life Aziyadé. Cushions, carpets, brass lamps and coffee-services completed the effect in a setting of Moorish arches, fluted columns and a miniature minaret. In this Orientalist décor, Loti gave costume parties, such as a fête arabe organised on his return from Morocco in 1889. Loti enjoyed dressing up in ‘native’ costumes; the house has a collection of striking paintings and photographs of him as a Turkish warrior and in other guises. Servants donned African costumes, incense smoked, a retainer called the ‘faithful’ to ‘prayer’ from the minaret. Loti organised similar soirées to inaugurate a Chinese room, also decorated in overwrought style with Asian wares, including booty from the siege of Beijing.47 Loti’s house fitted into a general trend of European fascination with Orientalism in architecture and design.48 It reproduced the exoticism that filled his novels, an image of the Levant and the Far East based on his own experiences in the navy. It embodied nostalgia for places he had visited and fantasies he had entertained. The ‘camp’ style suited the sailor who was a writer, a married man who kept mistresses but whose most significant intimate relationships were with men, a renowned French man of letters obsessed by foreign lands. In 1969 Loti’s only legitimate son, Samuel, sold the house to the city of Rochefort, which decided to create a museum. Samuel, who had continued to live there, had already sold some of the Chinese and Japanese collections. A Japanese pagoda, damaged in a storm, was disassembled in 1950. Several

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other rooms were in a state of disrepair, but the Arab and Turkish rooms and ‘mosque’ retained the original furnishings. The museum opened to the public in 1973. Loti’s works are less read nowadays than during his lifetime, but the house is a popular tourist site, its theatrical decorations creating dépaysement for visitors and a reminder of the lure of Orientalism in the fin-de-siècle and Belle Epoque. Artwork from various traditions is jumbled in Loti’s house. The ‘mosque’ is hardly a real place of prayer – the mirhab is on the north side, rather than properly oriented facing Mecca, and the fountain for ablutions is inside rather than outside. Some of Loti’s objects were acquired by dubious means; he admitted that the cedar roof of the ‘mosque’ was brought from Damascus by ‘honnêtes contrebandiers’ (honest bandits), and Aziyadé’s stela was spirited away without authorisation. The architecture and decoration are intended to create an effect rather than provide a museum of foreign antiquities. Loti’s house thus gives insight into the cultural perspectives that both created and were produced by imperialism, as well as showing off the eclectic tastes of one collector. A not dissimilar collection of art and curios appears in the house of Hubert Lyautey, who shared certain traits with Loti: a military career, love of the exotic, wide-ranging colonial experience, sexual ambivalence, yearning for spiritual transcendence in foreign places, comradeship and performance of his duty. Lyautey inherited from his aunt a manor house in the one-street village of Thorey, near Nancy. In 1922, while still in Morocco, he engaged his old friend and collaborator, the architect Albert Laprade, to construct a new and imposing façade, tower and arcade as well as landscaped gardens. Lyautey himself designed a library and a mezzanine to accommodate his souvenirs. Work was completed three years later for his return to France. Added after his death was a museum of scouting, as the marshal was honorary president of the French scouting movement. The entry hall, filled with Moroccan saddles, leads to a library – decorated with portraits of Lyautey’s ancestors and heroes – of 16,000 books including historic Korans. Also hanging there is a fabric from the holy Kaaba in Mecca presented by Muslim officials as a symbol of Franco-Islamic friendship. North African weapons and a tapestry embroidered with Arabic calligraphy ornament the stairway. Lyautey’s study contains a portrait of his imperial mentor, General Gallieni, and drawings that recall his monarchical inclinations and Lorraine heritage; a ‘Salle Lorraine’ continues the regionalist theme. Included too are military regalia: a cassowary-plumed hat from Lyautey’s student days, his hussar’s shako and the first képi he wore as a general. The ‘camp room’ holds the luggage that Lyautey took on his campaigns, and a banner and a spear presented by a Malagasy chief. In the ‘Salle Marocaine’ Lyautey placed a moucharabieh screen, North African powder horns, a Ramadan trumpet, chiefs’ sabres and sultans’ portraits. Using Moroccan artisans to fit out the room, he created what a tourist description


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calls ‘une pièce unique en France et une véritable vitrine pour l’artisanat d’art marocain, son authenticité créant un véritable dépaysement pour les visiteurs brusquement transportés au pays des mille et une nuits et leur émerveillement’ (a unique room in France and a veritable showcase for Moroccan artisan work, its authenticity created a true dépaysement for visitors suddenly transported to the marvellous land of a Thousand and One Nights). In this salon Lyautey received such distinguished visitors as the Sultan of Morocco.49 Lyautey’s home was kept much as he left it at his death, although the house was commandeered by German officers on several occasions during the Second World War. Since 1954, the centenary of Lyautey’s birth, the chateau has been open to the pubic, according to a tourist brochure, ‘afin de permettre aux pèlerins de se recueillir’ (so that pilgrims may meditate). Among the celebrities who made the journey in the early years were King Hassan of Morocco, President Hamani Diori of Niger and Lyautey’s fellow marshals Juin and de Lattre. In 1966 the bicentenary of the unification of Lorraine and France was celebrated at the chateau. Three years later 2000 persons attended the inauguration of the Mémorial du Maréchal Lyautey, erected by the Souvenir Français. The columns and marble portal of Lyautey’s former tomb in Rabat were installed in Thorey as a miniature acropolis, a ‘symbole dans l’Est de la France de l’amitié et de l’affection que portaient les populations des pays d’outre-mer au Maréchal et à la France’ (a symbol in the east of France of the friendship and the affection that the marshal and France had for the overseas peoples). On the memorial is carved the same quotation from Lyautey that appears on his tomb at the Invalides and the memorial in Carnoux-en-Provence. The brochure published the following year recapitulated the hagiography and presented a certain idea of Lorraine, the colonies and France: ‘Ainsi, Thorey fortifie l’ame: les gloires de l’armée, l’idéal humain de notre pays, le sens de l’action sociale y exaltent les visiteurs et le pèlerin qui méditent l’une des pensées du Maréchal’50 (Thus Thorey fortifies the soul: the glories of the army, the humanitarian ideal of our country and the sense of social action exalt visitors and the pilgrim who meditate on the marshal’s thoughts). In 1980, Lyautey’s house and contents were advertised for sale, but an association and foundation were able to acquire the property. It reopened to the public in 1984, though restoration continued for another decade. In 1988, 60,000 people attended a Moroccan fantasia at the property, which is now also hired out for conferences and receptions. Lyautey was the most celebrated imperialist at the time the empire was at its apogee. Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) was one of the best known and most honoured men in the last years of empire – medical doctor, writer, theologian, musicologist and winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. Born in Alsace – which was annexed by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War and not reincorporated into France until the end of the First World War – he studied in Strasbourg, Paris and Berlin. Schweitzer famously decided that he

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would devote himself to arts and sciences until the age of thirty then dedicate himself to humanitarian work. Just before the First World War, he and his new wife arrived at Lambaréné in Gabon, French Equatorial Africa, where he established a hospital to treat leprosy and sleeping sickness. Schweitzer remained for the rest of his life, over forty years, staying on in Gabon after the country gained independence. Schweitzer grew up in Gunsbach, where his father was pastor. In 1928 he built a house there with the money from a prize awarded by the city of Frankfurt. Schweitzer stayed in the house on his trips back to France, and his daughter turned it into a museum after his death. The bedroom remains as it was on Schweitzer’s final visit to Gunsbach in 1959, and contains the African head from the Colmar fountain that inspired his interest in Africa. Other mementos include photographs of organs on which he played, his Nobel Prize diploma and other awards, a family tree, a piano given to him by a Paris musical society and photographs of the Lambaréné hospital. In 1969 a statue of Schweitzer, executed by Fritz Behn, a disciple of Rodin, was erected on a rocky outcrop a few minutes from the house, a favourite site for Schweitzer to sit and meditate. The stone sculpture shows a mustachioed Schweitzer bent over a book, one hand holding a pen, the other propped against his forehead. In the local church – unusual in serving for both Catholic and Protestant services – Schweitzer developed the love for the organ that made him a noted musical scholar and performer. He gave instructions for the building of a new church organ in 1961, his ‘last work’, as he called it. Nearby is his brother’s house, where family archives preserve 10,000 letters written by Schweitzer, 70,000 letters that he received, recordings of his concerts and other documentation. The presbytery in which Schweitzer’s father lived is used for conferences. On the first floor of the Gunsbach town hall, which formerly housed the primary school Schweitzer attended, his associate Emma Hussknecht created a museum of African art and artefacts. A signposted walkway links the former presbytery to the Rue du DocteurAlbert-Schweitzer, the museum and the monument, making the village itself a lieu de mémoire. Museums created from personal houses remain shrines to their owners, and are not meant by donors or curators as critical presentations of the figures they commemorate. The perspective is a characteristic that provides the very charm and value of sites preserved after the deaths of those who lived there. They offer the visitor the feeling of drawing close to the person memorialised, to see his personal belongings, to appreciate the conditions in which he worked, the ways in which he organised his life and left his legacy. For many tourists, a visit to the house of a famous person, such as a well-known author, a powerful statesman or a famous humanitarian, becomes a pilgrimage. More critical appraisals – of colonialism in the case of Loti, Lyautey and Schweitzer – are left at the door.


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Yet visitors to these houses might well depart with a rather positive view of colonialism: the picturesque exoticism displayed in Loti’s ‘mosque’ and Lyautey’s Moroccan, Malagasy and Indochinese rooms, the achievements of great men celebrated by awards and medals, the dedication of a career officer and writer, a long-serving administrator and colonial spokesman, and a selfless doctor and intellectual. The other side of the argument is not presented – criticism of Loti for his eroticisation of foreign women, of Lyautey for bloody ‘pacification’ and iron-fisted rule, even of Schweitzer as a collaborator in the imperialist project and perpetuator of racialist ideas. Visitors must look elsewhere for revisionist views. The houses, dedicated to three imperial lives covering almost a century of history, nevertheless represent varying perspectives on the colonial past and the men who made the empire. A different sort of ‘house’ is being turned into a museum dedicated to the Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803). A freed slave, Toussaint joined the revolutionary armies (rising to become commander-in-chief in Saint-Domingue) and welcomed the Convention’s abolition of slavery in the colonies in 1794. In 1802, when Toussaint opposed Napoleon’s re-establishment of slavery in the West Indies, he was arrested and transported to France. He was incarcerated at the Fort de Joux, where he was kept behind four locked doors in a damp dungeon cell containing rudimentary furniture. Although relatively well treated, his health deteriorated and Toussaint died in the cell a few months before the declaration of independence of Haiti. He was buried in the chateau’s chapel but when it was torn down in 1879, his bones were thrown into the new fortifications. (In 1982 a shovelful of soil from Joux was entombed in Haiti.) For the bicentenary of his death, and with the patronage of President Jacques Chirac, Joux hosted plays, lectures, African and Haitian festivals, films and displays, and now has a permanent exhibition in the fort about his life. The historic ‘sites de la route des abolitions de l’esclavage’ (sites on the slave abolition trail) include the Fort de Joux, the houses of Abbé Grégoire in Embermenil (Meurthe-et-Moselle) and of Victor Schoelcher in Fessenheim (Haut-Rhin), and the Maison de la Négritude in Champagney (Haute-Saône): examples of a different experience of colonialism from that of Loti, Lyautey and Schweitzer.

Great men and colonial history On discreet plaques, through imposing statues and in their own houses, imperial heroes are remembered in France. Military men take pride of place, followed by explorers and, confined largely to ecclesiastical sites, missionaries. Few statues and other commemorations are stylistically adventurous or could be judged as artistic masterworks. Several, such as the Paris statues of Gallieni and Garnier, include auxiliary representations of ‘natives’ which give a contextual, if exoticised, and idealised touch. Most fit within the norms of

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Third Republic commemorative works: staid, formal portrayals of figures in triumphalist poses. Inscriptions provide succinct details, occasionally couched into anachronistic words – Trentinian as ‘organiser’ of the Soudan. They recall ‘great men’ and articulate an interpretation of colonial history based on the achievements of pioneers and defenders of the empire. Many statues stand in provincial towns or villages, testimony to local pride in ‘native sons’ more than to national celebration, but also evidence of ‘grassroots’ interest in overseas exploits. As street names and museum collections suggest, the provinces were not divorced from the empire. Erecting statues of famous locals reinforced local identity and also indicated the contributions made to national endeavours, just as museums provide tourist potential for communes off the beaten track. Retrieving statues from North Africa gave an opportunity to honour national heroes, add to the monumental patrimony of the places that received them, and signal an acknowledgement of the presence of pieds-noirs resettled there. Perhaps underlining some of the provincial base of colonialism, relatively few figures other than generals and marshals have ‘made it’ into the monumental landscape of Paris. The exceptions are generally explorers such as Garnier and Flatters, killed in the line of duty, or Marchand, whose encounter with the British at Fashoda represented a clash of European imperial ventures. Yet many of those given statues in the capital had substantial connections with colonial history and culture that were overshadowed by other achievements. Delacroix is monumentalised as a painter tout court, Ferry is remembered for education reforms not colonial expansion, de Gaulle as the leader who rallied the French in 1940 not as the decoloniser of French possessions in Africa. Several colonial figures buried in Paris were only belatedly entombed in the sacred sites of the Panthéon and the Invalides. Schoelcher’s remains were laid to rest in the Panthéon fifty-five years after he died, and Lyautey was interred in the Invalides only after – perhaps because – his remains were returned to France from independent Morocco. Recognition in the Panthéon has come to Delgrès and Toussaint only in recent years, though that gesture – and the bicentenary of Toussaint – represent a greater acknowledgement of the history of slavery seen as well in the Nantes exhibition of 1992 and the commemoration of the sesquicentenary of the abolition of slavery six years later. Absences from the statuary ranks are notable. There are no women, other than a statue of the Empress Joséphine at Malmaison, an allegorical France, or generic African, Asian or Maghrebin women. Eboué is the only black man buried in the Panthéon. The only celebratory statues of non-Europeans are almost entirely of soldiers who fought for France in the world wars and the occasional porters who appear on monuments to explorers. Most of the military figures come from the upper echelons of officers, though a brave sergeant might also be cast in bronze. Statues of colonials from the clear left


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of the political spectrum, other than the socialist Viviani, are not to be seen. Few Frenchmen born in the colonies – Blandan, Viviani, Camus, Dierx are exceptions – are memorialised in plaques and monuments. Despite the important place of commerce in imperialism, no statue or plaque honours a trader, shipper or industrialist. ‘Common men’, not surprisingly, do not appear: statues were erected for the great, not the ordinary citizen. Statues and similar commemorations thus provide a limited view of empire in forms where the hierarchies and divisions in colonial and national life are reproduced.

5 The Colonies in Museums

Government officials and colonial promoters were eager to hold exhibitions and set up displays to show off overseas possessions, convince the public of the merits of empire and vaunt the accomplishments of French rule. Many were temporary shows, though the Musée des Colonies in Paris and colonial museums in other cities were intended as permanent museums to an empire that was also considered permanent. Neither proved to last – the Palais de la Porte Dorée, after years of hiding its colonial heritage, has been emptied of its collections just as that colonial legacy was being appreciated, discussed and displayed anew. The establishment of colonial museums had aimed to provide vitrines of the empire around France; their evolution showed the ebb and flow of colonialist sentiment. Their fate reveals the difficulties of engaging with the colonial legacy in a post-colonial age. Marseille provides an example. The Mediterranean port, ‘porte de l’Orient’ (gateway to the East) and ‘siège officiel des expositions où doit s’affirmer le génie colonial français’ (official exhibition headquarters where the French colonial genius ought to be affirmed), according to one 1935 writer, hosted successful colonial exhibitions in 1906 and 1922. The following year, colonial collections were stored until a purpose-built museum was constructed under the auspicies of the Chamber of Commerce. In 1935 in a grand edifice of marble, granite and tropical hardwoods, the Marseille museum opened. Statues of ‘natives’ and decorative paintings greeted visitors in an entry foyer where four vitrines displayed art indigène. One room presented the West Indies, another focussed on Africa, yet another displayed the Asian and Oceanic colonies, all with trade products, historical engravings, maps, photographs, arms, medals and memorabilia. The Minister of Colonies and the president of the Chambre des Députés, himself a député from the Bouches-du-Rhône département, presided at the gala opening. The head of the Chamber of Commerce heralded Marseille as the ‘métropole 196

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coloniale de la France’ (French colonial metropolis). Félix Prat prophesied that the museum ‘représentera un élément d’information de premier ordre à l’usage des négociants et des industriels. Il sera une attraction très moderne et très vivante pour les visiteurs français et étrangers. Il sera surtout un instrument d’éducation, d’enseignement, pour les jeunes générations que les choses coloniales passionnent au lus haut point’1 (will be a leading information centre for the use of traders and manufacturers. It will be a modern and very lively attraction for French and foreign visitors. Above all, it will be a means of training and teaching for the young generations for whom things colonial are a real passion). Marseille’s museum trumpeted the city’s role as an entrepôt for colonial wares, shipping hub and transit point for colonial voyagers: a city with an indubitable colonial vocation. It allowed Marseille to recoup some of the prestige it had lost when Paris held the grandest of all colonial exhibitions in 1931. Some items from that manifestation of muncipal pride and colonial passion are now displayed in a much smaller exhibition at the Chamber of Commerce museum in the Palais de la Bourse; others are on show at the Musée des Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens at the Vieille-Charité. These vestiges of the old colonial museum now provide displays on the history of trade in Marseille and on the ethnography of ‘primitive’ societies. At the Chamber of Commerce museum, display panels recount the history of the Chamber from its origins in 1599. Paintings of an Ottoman vizir’s reception of a seventeenth-century French delegation, and of European and Arab merchants on Marseille’s quay, illustrate the multi-directional nature of the city’s trade. Colourful posters recall colonial exhibitions: a 1906 affiche pictures passengers on a ship with Marseille in the background, while one from a small 1916 show depicts Asian dancers, Arab men and barebreasted African women, plus elephants and a palanquin with a Buddha, on the Marseille wharf. In the 1922 poster three women – African, Asian, Arab – stand under a triumphantly billowing Tricolour. The museum contains a painting of dockers unloading cargo, models of Messageries Maritimes ships and advertisements for Martinican rum and other tropical products – one company advertised absinthe in 1907 with caricatures of the Ottoman sultan, an African prince, the French president and the German kaiser. In the entry hall of the Chamber of Commerce, paintings chronicle the longue durée of French expansion: acquisition of Levantine trading posts by François I and the conquest of Algiers under Charles X. In a more modern rendition of cross-cultural trade, Arabs and Indochinese pose next to steamships and automobiles. Plaster bas-reliefs by Louis Bottinely – who sculpted the allegories at the Marseille railway station – show Asia and Africa with the bounteous products they provided to France. Wall medallions represent the various colonies. The colonial era thus remains on display in the interior decoration and collections of an institution that counted among the most active promoters of imperialism.

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Displaying empire Recollections of the colonies appear in many museums, including some unlikely places.2 In Paris the Nissim de Camondo museum – the collection of a Jewish banker whose family came from Constantinople – has at least one ‘colonial’ allusion: a nineteenth-century bronze bust of a bare-breasted ‘Négresse’. A museum in Boulogne-Billancourt devoted to Paul Landowski contains a model of the monument aux morts he sculpted for Algiers; the monument itself was destroyed after independence. The Gobelins museum shows a wool and silk tapestry of ‘La Conquête de l’Afrique’ (The Conquest of Africa) from 1895–1900.3 One diorama in the Musée Grévin, Paris’s wax museum, recreates the death of Colonel Rivière in an ambush in Tonkin, and another shows Savorgnan de Brazza with an African servant.4 The Hermès museum in Asnières preserves a steamer trunk cum camp bed made for Brazza to take to the Congo. The Musée des Arts et Métiers has the model of an iron bridge from Hué in Vietnam first displayed at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. The Musée Carnavelet, the museum of the history of Paris, holds artwork showing how the ‘exotic’ appeared in Paris. Jean-Jacques Forty’s ‘Les Peuples du monde rendant hommage à l’Etre suprême’ (The Peoples of the World Paying Tribute to the Supreme Being) (1793) includes black men and women; a spahi and a turbaned African appear in Louis Béroud’s ‘Le Dôme central de la Galerie de Machines durant l’exposition de 1889’ (The Central Dome of the Machine Gallery at the 1889 Exhibition). A nineteenth-century furniture-maker called ‘A La Tête Noire’ advertised with a carved African head, and a Restoration seller of cashmere used a Persian as his symbol. Colonial references are more extensive in some other museums. The Musée de la Poste shows documents pertaining to mail routes across the Mediterranean and in the colonies – Horace Vernet’s ‘The Post of the Desert’ depicts a rider on a camel. Wherever the French settled, they set up postal services; a portrait of Auguste Conte pays homage to the official who initiated the post in Algeria in the years immediately following conquest. Telegraph cables, shipping lines, telephone connections and air services provided vital communication links to far-flung outposts, as suggested by posters of the Messageries Maritimes shipping company and the Aéropostale airlines. On one poster a plane drops a packet of letters to a pith-helmeted colonial; others trace routes from France across the Maghreb into black Africa. The museum also contains a large collection of Algerian stamps donated in 1988 by Philippe Zoummeroff; it includes a letter posted from Algiers on the day of French conquest – a soldier described to a Marseille correspondent what he called an easy victory. Colonial events, such as the centenary of Algeria in 1930 and the colonial exhibition the following year, were marked by stamp issues. More recent ones suggest commemoration of a handful of colonial figures or events: a 1984 stamp honouring Jacques Cartier and the


French in Canada, a 2002 stamp for the bicentenary of Baudin’s voyage to the South Pacific. Stamps from the territoires d’outre-mer – unlike the départements d’outre-mer, each has its own issues – testify to the endurance of France’s presence in the ‘confetti’ of empire. The postal museum, illustrating an aspect of colonial history known to few other than philatelists, thus shows that stamps themselves are a lieu de mémoire of colonialism. Also located in Paris is the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, founded in 1967 by François Sommer, pilot, hunter and author of Chasses et Gibiers d’Afrique. In 1934 Sommer crossed Africa at the helm of a tourist aeroplane. Two decades later, he and his wife founded the Association Sportive de la Chasse Photographique and set up a game reserve in Chad; the museum displays their photos from the Congo, Gabon and other parts of Africa. Among other items are artefacts from the Guerzé tribe in Guinea presented by Governor Roland Pré. In addition, it has indigenous and European weapons, African masks, animal skins and a stuffed gorilla. Captions capture the romance of a 1939 safari in Oubangui: ‘On quittait à pied un village, en pénétrant en brousse pour de longs jours avec des porteurs: longue file bariolée, jasseuse et trotinnante avec tous les bagages, les caisses, les cantines, les tentes juchées sur les têtes de ces marcheurs infatigables’ (We left the village on foot, for days moving into the bush with the porters: a long multicoloured procession, chattering and jogging along underneath the baggage, the trunks, the kit-cases and the tents piled on the heads of these indefatigable walkers). For the historian Nélia Dias, ‘le musée est, par son mode e’exposition, le choix des objets, le type d’informations transmises et les termes utilisés pour caractériser les objets, un musée qu’on pourrait qualifier de colonial, dans la mesure où il partage des conventions de présentation et de représentation propres à la culture du colonialisme’5 (The museum, in its style of display, choice of objects, type of information provided and terms chosen to identify the objects, can be called colonial to the extent that it shares in the conventions of presentation and representation of colonialist culture). The Musée Albert Kahn in the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt provides insight into a personal ideal, an interest in overseas areas and the establishment of a unique visual archives in the age of colonialism. Albert Kahn (1860–1940) was born in Alsace and migrated to Paris, where he completed a law degree while working as a bank employee. In 1892 he became a partner in the Banque Goudhaux and was soon a wealthy man, partly (it was said) because of his initiative in introducing South African stock of the De Beers company in France and his own successful investments and speculation in gold. On four hectares in Boulogne-Billancourt, he created gardens in Japanese, English and French styles, and built a grand palmarium. Kahn counted among his friends the philosopher Henri Bergson, the historian Ernest Lavisse and the geographer Jean Brunhes, and hoped to use his wealth and his acquaintances to further world peace. Much attracted by the

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universalist ideas of his age – the International Peace Conferences in The Hague in 1899 and 1907, the establishment of the Red Cross – Kahn also supported colonialism as a modernising and civilising regime.6 In 1898 Kahn established ‘Autour du Monde’ scholarships to provide young academics and other researchers a chance to visit foreign countries, especially in the colonised world. The boursiers wrote a report on their travels, and from 1906 recipients of the bursaries give Sunday-afternoon talks in a centre Kahn built on his property. Over fifteen years, the audience at 450 presentations counted luminaries such as Paul Valéry, Albert Einstein, Sir Austen Chamberlain, the kings of Serbia and Rumania and the queen of Belgium. Kahn set up a Comité national d’études sociales et politiques to undertake research; associates included the future President Vincent Auriol, Marshals Foch and Lyautey, Generals Weygand and Gouraud, the heads of the Banque de France and the Institut Pasteur. Kahn also personally financed Brunhes’s chair in geography at the Collège de France, and set up a Centre de documentation sociale at the Ecole normale supérieure. When Kahn had travelled to China and Japan (where he had banking interests) in 1909, he became interested in the Orient and in photography, and he had his chauffeur and travelling companion take pictures of daily life. On his return to France, Kahn engaged Brunhes to direct a major project: to send professional photographers to Africa and Asia to record traditional life and customs. By 1931 Kahn had amassed archives of 72,000 ‘autochrones’ – using the pioneering process of colour photography – and 183,000 metres of film footage. In early 1930s the Depression destroyed Kahn’s wealth. He had to auction off some of his possessions but then suffered the ignominy of seeing his other assets seized by his creditors. Four years before he died in much reduced circumstances, the département of the Seine acquired his house, gardens and Autour du Monde centre with its collections. The property was turned into a museum in 1986, and Kahn’s Archives de la Planète – which can be consulted on high-tech equipment – provide one of the best collections of colonial-age photography of countries from western Africa to eastern Asia. Sequences include African funeral services and voodoo ceremonies, documentary footage on Vietnamese trade, artisanal life, rice cultivation, fishing and marriage ceremonies. In addition to ethnographic works, other films on specifically colonial topics include General Gouraud’s arrival in Beirut and his activities as French Resident in Syria, the reception of the colonial governor and troops in Dahomey and Mussolini’s visit to Libya. The museum holds temporary exhibitions and publishes work based on Kahn’s archives. Outside the capital, collections big and small point to France’s colonial heritage, again sometimes in unexpected venues. The Musée de la Résistance in Besançon has material on the Free French movement in the colonies, while the Musée de la Mémoire des Combattants et Victimes de Guerre, opened in Louhan (Seine-et-Loire) in 1995, has displays on troops in


Indochina and Africa. In Bordeaux, the Musée National des Douanes covers the customs service in the overseas outposts. The Pères Oblats in Pontmain (Mayenne), and the Congrégation des Pères de Bétharram in Lestelle-Bétharram (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) are among missionary orders whose museums present ethnographic works and missionary relics. The museum in Alençon contains five hundred objects – arms, jewellery, clothing, masks, coins, musical instruments, photographs – collected in Cambodia by Adhémar Leclère, a typographer and journalist who served as French Resident there from 1890 to 1911.7 In Montpellier, the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) has a xylothèque of tropical woods. Objects with a colonial provenance, in short, are ubiquitous in French collections. Perhaps traces of exploration and collections put together in the colonies are most evident in museums of natural history and ethnography. In 1900, France had three hundred natural history museums, established by learned societies, local scientists and amateurs who liked collecting flora, fauna or minerals.8 Every town of consequence aspired to have a natural history museum for the education and edification of its populace. Not all specialised in overseas collections – many concentrated on the local environment – but few lacked exotic treasures. In the large cities, extensive natural history collections were carefully organised, studied and displayed. Museums in Strasbourg boast 18,000 preserved birds, 30,000 mollusks and 80,000 species of insects, as well as 30,000 mineralogical samples. France’s most important cities – Lyon, Marseille, La Rochelle, Dijon, Besançon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Grenoble, Angers, Rouen, Lille, Perpignan, Cherbourg – all have major collections. Smaller museums have their share: five hundred stuffed birds in Mèze (Hérault), eight hundred ‘exotic’ birds in the little town of La Chaize-le-Vicomte (Vendée), the hippopotamus and crocodile displayed in Blois. Saint-Quentin (Aisne) has 60,000 insects, and Saint-Michel (Gers) has 8000 butterflies. Hunting museums in La Chapelle-Glain (Loire-Atlantique) and Gien (Loiret) have trophies from wild-game safaris. Specimens of flora, fauna and minerals, and ethnographic items that traditionally formed part of natural history holdings frequently – and not surprisingly – came from colonies where authorities would help in collection, and French rule facilitated acquisitions and their shipment back to France. Toulouse has a rich store of material from Oceania and black Africa, Grenoble a collection from the Sahara and Chartres an Oceanic collection donated by a colonial administrator. Provincial natural history museums also contain scientific documents on the natural history of the wider world, such as Le Havre’s collection of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur’s drawings made during his voyage with Baudin to the South Pacific. Expansion provided opportunities to obtain new items, fill out extant collections and inspire public interest.9

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The colonies in provincial museums The nineteenth-century vogue for establishing natural history, fine arts and historical museums in provincial towns expressed municipal pride and dedication to science and the arts, just as did the building of libraries and concert halls. These were the centres of the new secular creeds of culture and nationalism, and (from the 1870s) republican ideals, that needed institutions and monuments to rival the cathedrals and convents of an earlier religious age. Museums were meant to be edifying as well as entertaining, educating young and old, the cultured bourgeois and untutored peasants and proletarians. Museums reminded the French about regional cultures under threat from modernisation – languages, traditions, clothes, household furnishings. They were intended to inculcate nationalism by teaching visitors about France’s history and showing off its natural resources and artistic achievements. They also aimed to introduce the French to the wider world. Increasingly in the late 1800s and through the early 1900s, engagement with the wider world implied colonialism. Museums provided an excellent vector for colonial propaganda: the reason musées coloniaux were created in a dozen cities. But in almost all museums, colonialism appeared in one way or another: an ‘exotic’ natural specimen, a painting of a colonial scene, a relic of missionary activity, a uniform or weapon from a battle of conquest. For colonialists, the more the reminders of France’s imperialism the better. For curators, attention to colonialism was inevitable and necessary with the vogue for Orientalist art, the booty brought home by colonial collectors and the gradual conversion of the public to the gospel of expansion. Conquest and collecting, exhibition and education, colonialism and nationalism were inextricably intertwined. Touring the ‘colonial exhibitions’ that became a staple of municipal cultural life from the 1890s through the 1930s, visitors could ‘visit the world in a day’ and, promoters hoped, subscribe to the colonialist doctrine. But even when these extravaganzas closed, museum-goers could perceive the colonies in permanent collections in their hometowns. Going to the museum became a regular outing for schoolchildren on an excursion, cultivated townsfolk enjoying leisure time, culture-hungry men and women flocking to exhibitions and lectures, country-dwellers coming to the city, socialclimbers aspring to gentility. Most of the old collections survive, though sometimes in mothballs. An ever larger number of museums have changed radically, with curators eager to attract new visitors and provide innovative high-tech displays to those no longer attracted by old-fashioned galleries of dusty objects in glass cases or long corridors of worthy paintings and sculptures. Museums of various styles, and particularly those that have retained a more traditional presentation, show how Parisians and provincials apprehended the colonies. Today they also conserve the material vestiges of the colonial age, reminders of the role of overseas expansion in French life.


Nantes and La Rochelle, both cities closely connected to international trade and colonialism, provide examples of how provincials of yesterday and today have been able to see the colonies in museums. The museum of natural history in Nantes has extensive permanent exhibits of flora, fauna and ethnography from around the world. Vitrines of precious stones and rocks provide a geological compendium, and on the museum’s stair landings is a huge collection of wood samples. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stuffed animals include a chimpanzee and a gorilla from the Congo presented to the museum in 1882, and an African elephant donated in 1934. An Egyptian mummy was brought back to France by an early nineteenth-century explorer. The museum in 1970 acquired the cabinet of curiosities of Marquis René d’Abadie (1895–1971), described as one of the last great amateur scientists to put together a private collection of birds, eggs, rocks, reptiles, plants and other naturalia. A small gallery devoted to ethnography displays fifty or so items in vitrines on Oceania, Asia and Africa. Objects ranging from a woven sack from New Caledonia to Indochinese coins and weapons, from a Senegalese stool to a scepter from the Soudan testify to overseas voyages, the mania for collecting, a developing colonial vocation and museum-goers’ fascination with strange and wonderful things from distant places. Across town, the fine arts museum also reminded Nantais of foreign domains. Emmanuel Frémiet’s 1887 painting of a gorilla holding a woman prisoner in its paws may have prefigured King Kong and sent a shiver down visitors’ spines at the thought of wild beasts and mortal dangers in the African jungle. Excitement continued with Jules Lecomte du Nouy’s 1888 ‘L’Esclave blanche’ (The White Slave), depicting a semi-nude European in a harem attended by black servants, though the main character, with cigarette, wine and fruit to hand, looks more bored than horrified by her condition. Eugène Girardet’s ‘Les Dunes dans le désert’ (Desert Dunes) presents a calmer, but no less exotic, pastoral image (despite its title) of women washing clothes in a stream. A later work pictures camel caravans in Bou-Saada, and there are desert paintings by the famous Jean-Léon Gérôme and the less well-known Paul Lazerges. In 1861 Princess Mathilde Bonaparte presented to the museum her painting of ‘Une Fellah’ (A Fellah), a veiled woman. Rodolphe Ernst’s ‘La Partie de dames’ (Board-Game) shows two blacks playing a game under the gaze of a patriarchal elder. Other pictures in the collection include ‘Egyptian’ works by Gérôme, Girardet’s painting of a caravan by night, views of Constantinople by Brest and Pasini, an African chieftain by Delacroix and a gazelle hunt by Fromentin. Sculptures too evoke faraway places – Henri Jacquemart’s 1869 bronze of a cameleer and Herbart Ward’s 1902 loin cloth-clad dancing man called ‘Le Sorcier noir’ (The Black Sorcerer). Visitors throughout the colonial period might thus connect such exotic scenes and characters with France’s overseas enterprises, and draw links between their own city and distant domains.

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In La Rochelle, colonialism is visible in public art even before entering museums. On the port stands an 1869 statue of Baron Duperré, a native son who became an admiral. During the Napoleonic Wars, he fought the British in the West Indies and Indian Ocean, though failing to avoid the loss of the Ile de France. Duperré then commanded the naval forces that sailed to Algiers in 1830, even if he was initially opposed to this new colonial venture. Nearby is a statue of an Arab cavalier brandishing a weapon, which honours Eugène Fromentin, a La Rochelle-born painter and author whose Un été au Sahara and Une année au Sahel excited French curiosity about North Africa in the 1850s. Museums in La Rochelle provide rich collections relating to colonialism. The Musée du Nouveau Monde, which will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter, is a notable example, one of the few French museums specifically on exploration and colonisation. The Musée d’Orbigny-Bernon, established by a family of naturalists, has mementos that provide an eclectic panorama of colonial themes. There is the medicine chest belonging to a doctor who voyaged with Freycinet in the South Pacific in the 1820s. A coconut shell decorated by a prisoner in the Rochefort bagne represents Duperré’s capture of Algiers, and on display too is the Masonic ring that Duperré wore during the blockade of Algiers. Chinese furniture, lacquer and porcelain – and Meissen porcelain created using Chinese techniques but, in one case, decorated with a richly dressed African wearing an elephant-head mask and sitting astride a lion – illustrate the international exchange of goods, manufacturing and cultures. Musical instruments from Indochina, sculptures from India and other ethnographic materials show the world brought home to the Charente-Maritime. A 1945 photograph of a black African soldier escorting German prisoners of war provides a different view of the links between La Rochelle and the colonies. Visitors to the Musée des Beaux-Arts are treated to several paintings by Fromentin: an attack on a caravan, an Arabian stallion, a trek through a mountain pass in Algeria, the interior of a North African tailor’s shop, and a fine portrait of an Arab sitting crosslegged on a wall. There is also Gustave Guillaumet’s goumiers’ camp in Morocco and Louis Mouchof’s painting of Arabs saying their evening prayers on the outskirts of a city. In historical displays, at the Tour de la Lanterne (one of the two towers guarding the entrance to La Rochelle’s port), visitors are informed that 2350 people left for the colonies from La Rochelle in the eighteenth century, including the ‘filles du Roi’, young women sent abroad to marry husbands chosen by colonial authorities. (They gave rise to a ditty: ‘Ce sont les filles du Roi / Qu’ont armé un bâtiment / Pour aller faire la course / Aux Echelles du Levant’ [These are the filles du Roi / Loaded onto a ship / Out to do business / in the ports of the Levant].) Admiral Coligny, who married in La Rochelle, is remembered partly for his unsuccessful attempts to found Protestant colonies in Florida in the 1560s.


These ‘souvenirs’ of the colonial world, from the 1500s through the 1900s, and from New World settlement to North African conquest and Levantine trade, mix with other reminders of La Rochelle’s past as an international port and Protestant stronghold. Visitors to museums may not focus in particular on the works reminiscent of colonies – Orientalist paintings, natural science specimens or curios such as the personal effects of colonial figures. Such vestiges of empire are nevertheless in evidence for those who look, embedded in the history of the city and in the collections where they are preserved and displayed. Even if colonialism is not in the foreground, which it cannot fail to be in cities such as Nantes and La Rochelle, it hovers in the background of museums, local and national history, and collective memories of France overseas. These regional examples give an idea of the ways in which colonialism enriched collections and how museums display the colonial project. An examination of two different types of museums – fine arts museums and military museums – provides further insight into how the colonies appear in French collections. The aim is not to compile an inventory of institutions or works, but to suggest how widespread was the effect of colonialism and how various institutions preserve colonial mementos and memories. This provides a look at what is on display, and as well a consideration of certain aspects of colonialism that are not on show.

Art from the colonies The world overseas had a long-lasting and diverse influence on French art. Since the Middle Ages, black men and women have appeared in European art, often as servants,10 joined by turbaned Turks or Moors as well as the generically Middle Eastern ‘types’ of Biblical paintings.11 Discovery of the New World inaugurated a fad for exotic design – allegories of the four continents, fanciful representations of beplumed ‘savages’, strange flora and fauna. A vogue for chinoiserie followed in the Enlightenment, and Chinese (and, later, Japanese) motifs showed up regularly thereafter. Exploration of the South Seas also provided a boon for artists, and illustrations of antipodean landscapes, plants, animals and natives comprise a major legacy of these expeditions.12 Napoleon’s invasion of the land of the pyramids created a mania for things Egyptian in art and architecture, literature and design.13 From the early nineteenth century appear new trends more closely connected with imperialism. These can be divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into four currents. Orientalist art was the work of ‘Western painters of the Eastern world’, which for the French, primarily meant the Ottoman empire, Middle East and North Africa. Lynn Thornton argues that ‘l’Orientalisme ne fut pas une école, car le lien entre les oeuvres se trouvait dans l’iconographie plutôt que dans le style’ (Orientalism was not a school because the links between works are to be found in the iconography rather

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than the style). Style, indeed, evolved dramatically from the work of Ingres and Delacroix in the early 1800s through the foundation of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes in 1893 and on to the waning of Orientalism after the First World War.14 In a loose way, painters of black Africa, Asia and Oceania can be attached to the Orientalists. Their works emphasise the picturesque, the exotic and often the titillating. ‘Traditional’ cultures are pictured more often than ‘modernity’; natives rather than Europeans people the paintings. A second category comprises more explicitly ‘colonial’ art produced by metropolitans who travelled in the colonies and by French artists who lived overseas. This reached an apogee in the 1930s after the establishment of fine arts museums and Ecoles des Beaux-Arts around the empire, notably the Villa Abd el-Tif in Algeria, which hosted boursiers from France. Much colonial art is colonialist in the depictions of a peaceful world of colourful people enjoying the benefits of French dominion. Colonial authorities commissioned artworks for public buildings and exhibitions, colonial promoters encouraged artists morally and financially, and some colonialist art was intentionally created as propaganda. However, artists in the colonies felt that they were creating authentically new styles, often by the integration of local motifs and traditions, thus achieving a synthesis of Western and non-Western themes (and, sometimes, styles). Particularly popular among present-day audiences is the work of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. Experimental painters in Paris, such as Picasso and the other Cubists, marvelled at ‘primitive’ art brought from Africa, Oceania and Amerindian cultures. They incorporated influences from non-European artistic traditions (for instance, African masks) into paintings and sculptures, seeking thereby to revolutionise European art. Meanwhile Gauguin’s work became almost synonymous with Tahiti. Fellow artists applied postimpressionist, Fauvist, expressionist and other techniques to portrayals of overseas places, often inspired by their tours. In short, the light, the colours and the landscapes of the colonial world continued to inspire metropolitan artists through the last decades of the empire. A final category – which will receive less attention here – includes works produced by native artists influenced by European techniques and themes. Non-Western artists have for centuries borrowed from European styles – Africans who carved images of Portuguese sailors in the sixteenth century, Chinese who created ‘export porcelain’ for Western tastes. In the colonial period, art academies taught European techniques of painting and sculpture, and many local artists became familiar with the European great masters and more contemporary artists. In the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts in Algiers, Hanoi and other colonial capitals, new syncretic styles emerged. The colonial administration supported aspiring artists with scholarships and prizes, and their works were displayed locally and in France as illustrations of the cultural vitality of the French dominions. However, almost none of these works is now to be seen in French museums. Most artists never achieved great renown,


their styles now seem old-fashioned, and their subjects are considered banal: perhaps overly hasty evaluations mirroring a certain discomfort with works produced under colonial auspices. Only a few artists from the colonies who combined European and non-European styles, such as the Algerian miniaturist Mohammed Racim, now gain much attention, though there have been efforts – as in a temporary exhibition of colonial-era Vietnamese artists – to bring them back into view. In addition to paintings and sculpture, the colonies provided an extraordinary opportunity for photographers. From the very invention of photography in the nineteenth century, cameras followed colonisation. Photographs complemented (then largely replaced) hand-drawn illustrations and paintings as records of exploration. Administrators, military officers and an increasing number of tourists took snapshots. Photographers set up shop in colonial capitals to produce much prized portraits of Europeans and natives and to make the picture postcards that by the end of the nineteenth century had become one of the most omnipresent souvenirs of empire. Moving pictures provided another medium to record colonial experiences – ethnographers captured native cultures on film, documentary film-makers made newsreels to inform the French who stayed at home (and, it was hoped, to promote interest in the empire), and feature films with colonial plots became a genre of movie-making. Colonial art of all sorts has attracted much attention from scholars in the past twenty-five years. Lynn Thornton’s work did much to rescue Orientalist art from oblivion and make such works popular for curators, museum goers and art dealers.15 Raoul Girardet’s 1979 study pioneered serious consideration of colonial photographs, and the 1990s saw an impressive number of works, including those co-authored by scholars connected with the Association Culturelle pour l’Histoire de l’Afrique Contemporaine,16 which focussed on amateur and professional photographs from the colonies. Jacques Marseille and Eric and Gabrielle Deroo, meanwhile, have unearthed many other artefacts of empire – pith helmets and uniforms, suitcases and furniture and other paraphernalia.17 These objects are examples of ‘decorative arts’ and styles of design linked to the colonies, and provide further vestiges of the colonial era preserved in museums, examined by scholars and sold (for increasingly high prices) at auctions. From masterpieces of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European painting to the modest design of colonial-era baubles, art thus provides one of the most significant traces of colonialism visible in France. Orientalist art Orientalist art has prompted great debate. Edward Said provocatively argued that Western portrayals of the Arabic and Islamic world were part and parcel of the imperial enterprise, disseminating and perpetuating stereotypes with at best paternalist and at worst racist overtones. John Mackenzie, however,

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has suggested that many representations show a respectful regard for Arabs, Turks, Persians and other Muslims. It is a reductionist mistake in his view to indict all Orientalist painters as collaborators in imperial conquest and rule.18 Roger Benjamin has suggested that French art of North Africa indeed testified to ‘intellectual curiosity and moral sympathy’ for the Maghreb. Benjamin has also argued that far from being a phenomenon, limited in time, styles and themes, of nineteenth-century academism, art influenced by North Africa played a major role in expanding artists’ technical and cultural horizons well afterwards. A revised view of Orientalist art, he adds, provides a way of ‘recontextualising modernism from the periphery’. Orientalist artists, both European painters like Renoir and such Maghrebins as Racim, served as ‘cultural brokers’ between the two shores of the Mediterranean.19 Orientalist art can thus be seen from different historical and theoretical perspectives, but it should be remembered that in the century after 1830, Orientalist art was proudly displayed as proof of French cultural and political interests outside the hexagone. The point to be made here is that nineteenthand early twentieth-century portrayals of colonies are omnipresent in French collections. They do differ greatly from one another. Some artists never set foot in the places that they painted – Ingres’s evocations of a harem and a Turkish bath are prime examples. Delacroix, by contrast, carried out ‘fieldwork’ during his 1832 trip to Morocco that inspired his works for decades afterwards, and it was increasingly common for artists to travel overseas. Some works are heroic panoramas of imperial valour such as colonial battles, while others capture the landscape, people and daily life of far-away places. Some fit into any catalogue of great art; others are mediocre efforts by artists of limited talent. Variety is the key, but the presence of Orientalist paintings in almost every museum of consequence is a reminder of the attraction of the colonial world to artists and the public. Depending on the museum, these works hang randomly amidst other paintings, are placed within the chronological sequence of art history, or are grouped with non-Orientalist works by the same artist. Occasionally, they are gathered together in an exhibition room dedicated to Orientalism, for instance, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, which owns Delacroix’s ‘Femmes d’Alger dans leur intérieur’20 (Women of Algiers in their Quarters). Other works in the Orientalist gallery include Georges Clairin’s ‘Le Massacre des Abencérages’ (The Massacre of the Abencerages) (1874) – featuring a basket of decapitated heads and African figures in a Moorish décor – Henri Regnault’s ‘Tête de nègre’ (Negro Head), and several ‘scènes arabes’ (Arab Scenes) by V.-P. Huguet, G.A. Guillaumet and J.-J. Veyrassat. Algeria is on display with Huguet’s ‘Restes d’aqueduc romain aux environs de Cherchell’ (Remains of the Roman Aqueduct near Cherchell) and Guillaumet’s ‘Cardeuse de laine à Bou-Saada’ (Wool-comber in Bou-Saada). The Orientalist rooms illustrate the breadth of exotic themes from both overseas and Europe’s


borderlands: from Théodore Valerio’s ‘Soldats bulgares’ (Bulgarian Soldiers) and Félix Ziem’s ‘Marine vénitienne’ (The Venetian Navy) to two paintings with Persian settings, Jules Laurens’s ‘Jardins abandonnés d’Aschref’ (The Abandoned Gardens of Aschref) and Félix Ziem’s ‘Stamboul, soleil couchant’ (Instanbul at Sunset). From farther away and an earlier period comes J.J.F. Le Barbier’s ‘Un Canadien et sa femme pleurant sur le tombeau de leur enfant’ (A Canadian and his Wife Grieving at the Tomb of their Child) (1781). In another gallery hangs Jacques-Emile Blanche’s painting of André Gide, his friends and a young Algerian protégé at the ‘Café Maure’ (Moorish Café) of the 1900 International Exhibition in Paris. A few museums boast substantial holdings of paintings linked to overseas ventures. The Versailles museum has numerous paintings and engravings – including ones by Guérin, Girodet-Trioson and Tardieu – of Napoleon’s campaigns in Egypt (as well as works by two Orientalist masters, Horace Vernet and Théodore Chassériau). The Musée Condé at Chantilly has many Orientalist works, as the chateau belonged to the Duc d’Aumale (1822–1897), son of King Louis-Philippe, who was a soldier in Algeria in the 1840s. He brought back items from North Africa and collected Orientalist paintings; among those in the museum are Fromentin’s picture of heron-hunting, Marilhat’s depiction of Syrians on a journey, paintings by Decamps of Moorish bodyguards and Turkish children, and various battle scenes. Even much smaller collections sometimes have remarkable selections – the city hall of Hercy (Seine-et-Marne) has eight paintings by the Orientalist Etienne Dinet. Most public collections are rather mixed. The fine arts museum in Toulouse, a city with relatively few colonial connections, nevertheless has Delacroix’s splendid ‘Moulay Abd Er-Rahman, sultan du Maroc’ (1845). Edouard Debat-Ponsan’s ‘Le Massage’ (The Massage) (1883) provides a softly erotic scene, while fanciful portrayals of Levantine history appear in JeanAndré Rixens’s ‘La Mort de Cléopâtre’ (The Death of Cleopatra) (1875) and Benjamin Constant’s ‘Entrée de Mahomet à Constantinope, le 29 mai 1453’ (The Entry of the Muslims into Constantinopole, 29 May 1453) (1876).21 The fine arts museum in Nice shows Trouillebart’s 1874 picture of a barebreasted ‘Servante de harem’ (Harem Servant) holding a tray with a waterpipe and Félix-Auguste Clément’s 1872 ‘Marchandes d’oranges égyptiennes’ (Egyptian Orange-sellers). Alexandre Cabanel’s ‘Thamar’ (1875) shows a strong Arabic chieftain with a white-skinned woman languishing or fainted across his lap, and Adrien Tanoux’s ‘Thaïs’ (1920), also portraying an odalisque and her lover. The Niçoise Marie Bakhshireff’s ‘L’Orientale’ (The Easterner), from the 1880s, provides another rendition of the exotic woman. The fine arts museum in Marseille has extensive samples of art inspired by overseas places. For the opening of the museum in the Palais Longchamps in 1869, Puvis de Chavannes painted two murals to sum up the city’s history. ‘Marseille, colonie grecque’ (Marseille, Greek Colony) shows improbably dressed ancients on the site of the Mediterranean port. ‘Marseille, porte de

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l’Orient’ (Marseille, Gateway to the East) depicts Marseille as a colonial city: a group of Arabs and other Orientals’ mingle with French sailors – chatting, offering wares for sale – on board a ship headed to the harbour, the landmarks of Fort Saint-Jean and Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde on the horizon. Two immense paintings hark back to an earlier empire. An Indian hunter and fisher, dating from 1740, provide a fanciful interpretation of the New World with flocks of coloured birds, iguanas and lizards, piles of fruits de mer, a Westernised Indian and a near nude dark-skinned woman. Théodore Chassériau’s ‘Esclave de Cléopâtre’ (Cleopatra’s Slave) alludes to ancient history and typifies Orientalist style, while Jean-Jules Frère’s marble ‘Chanteur oriental’ (Eastern Singer) represents an androgynously seductive boy performer. In one gallery hang sixteen Orientalist works mostly by Provençal painters: an Ethiopian in lavishly decorated robes, a smiling Arab wearing a tattoo on his temple, earrings and a bright red hat, a dramatic African with a sword on his shoulder on which perch four parrots. There are scenes of an Indian elephant hunt and North African women carrying water jugs on their heads, a portrait of a woman carding wool and a modern Turk sitting in front of an antique ruin. Fabius Brest provides a realist’s portrayal of Constantinople, and Paul Signac gives a pointillist treatment to Hagia Sophia. The paintings provide a summary of the styles and themes of Orientalist art. Not surprisingly, national collections, especially Paris museums, contain the largest number of Orientalist works. The Louvre has a range of paintings inspired by overseas themes reaching back to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, with major paintings of Napoleon in Egypt by Gros and Cogniet. Ingres is represented by the Turkish bath and several odalisques. The Louvre owns the most outstanding collection of Orientalist works by Delacroix, including a massacre at Chios and the death of Sardanapalus, landscapes of Tangiers and Fez, a Jewish wedding in North Africa and military camps in Morocco, and paintings of Barbary corsairs. Among later Orientalist works are Chassériau’s depictions of Jewesses, bathing women and dancers, and Fromentin’s depiction of a Moroccan burial. The Musée d’Orsay has a wealth of works inspired by the Orient and the colonies. On view at present are Dehodencq’s ‘Boabdil’s Farewell’, Regnault’s ‘Execution without a Trial’, Guillaumet’s ‘The Seguia’, ‘Weavers at Bou-Saada’, ‘Evening Prayer’, ‘Laghouat’ and ‘Sahara’, Dinet’s ‘Street in Laghouat’, Chassériau’s ‘Arab Chiefs’, and Fromentin’s ‘View of the Nile’, ‘Land of Thirst’, ‘Hawking in Algeria’ and ‘Arab Horsemen’. In keeping with the museum’s chronological arrangement, mixing academic and avant-garde works, these paintings are integrated into the general galleries. In the grand entry hall at the Orsay are displayed Charles Cordier’s 1860 busts of a ‘Nègre du Soudan’ (Sudanese Negro), ‘Capresse des colonies’ (Colonial Métisse) and ‘Arabe d’El Aghouat en burnous’ (Arab from El Aghouat Wearing a Burnous). On an upper level, visitors see more experimental paintings in Gauguin’s


Polynesian works and Matisse’s paintings inspired by trips to North Africa and the South Pacific. Some museums dedicated to particular artists exemplify long-lived interest in the world overseas. Delacroix’s Paris atelier contains many of his Orientalist sketches and the carpets, weapons, slippers and burnouses that he brought home from Morocco and Algeria. Also in Paris, the Gustave Moreau museum displays his fantasies of the East, especially great Symbolist paintings of India – Moreau never visited India, but based his works on the writings of Eugène Burnouf, a specialist on the French outpost of Pondichéry. Museums elsewhere in France are also repositories for works of native sons or local residents tempted overseas. The Félix Ziem museum in Martigues contains works inspired by his trips to Turkey and Algeria, and the museum in Langres has the native son Charles-Jules Duvent’s paintings of bathing Arab women, a mosque in Fez, Moroccan landscapes, a fantasia and a sultan.22 Sometimes these collections are highlighted during special exhibitions, such as ‘Henri Rousseau, peintre orientaliste’ at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse in 1997. Rousseau (1875–1933), born in Cairo and educated in Paris, travelled widely before settling in Toulouse. He complained about the Orientalist vogue common in his lifetime, remarking during a stay in Tunisia: ‘Les Orientalistes ont presque tous vu ce pays grandiose par le petit côté . . ., avec l’oeil d’une demoiselle’ (The Orientalists have almost all looked at this grandiose country in a petty fashion . . . with the eyes of a young lady). Rousseau’s own portraits and scenes of falcon-hunting and horse-riding are recognised for accomplished treatment of light.23 Such exhibitions as that on Rousseau showcase local collections, cater to the popularity of Orientalist art and, whether intentionally or not, provide reminders of France’s colonial heritage.

Colonial art The vogue for ‘classical’ Orientalist art declined in the early years of the twentieth century. However, new schools of colonialist art emerged in the artistic circles and beaux-arts academies of colonial cities, and in the work of metropolitan artists who journeyed overseas, aided by easier transportation, government grants and bursaries, and the protection of the colonial state. Local colonial artists were eager to show the cultural vigour of French possessions, metropolitans sought inspiration from jungles and deserts, colonialist spokesmen welcomed works that reinforced France’s colonial mission, and musées coloniaux avidly collected the paintings and sculptures that were produced. With decolonisation, however, most colonial works were packed away in storage rooms. Artists were forgotten, as colonial (and particularly colonialist) works were condemned to near oblivion in the immediate postcolonial age, and even the great Orientalist works fell temporarily out of favour. Colonialist works were seldom shown from the 1960s through the

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1980s – a major exhibition on ‘L’Orient des Provençaux’ in Marseille in 1982 was an exception. The Porte Dorée museum, which had the largest collection of colonial art, found it impolitic to display works vaunting imperialism and presenting a stereotypical view of former possessions. Works that smacked too much of a colonial epoch castigated for racism, economic exploitation, political disenfranchisement and bloody wars of decolonisation were banished in an effort to forget the colonial past and hide the vestiges of colonial culture. Many works were ceded to a small municipal museum in Boulogne-Billancourt. They remained in storage until dusted off for an exhibition in 1989 entitled ‘Coloniales, 1920–1940’.24 For the first time in a quarter-century many colonial-era works came out of the closet: 140 paintings, 20 drawings and 14 sculptures including portraits of Savorgnan de Brazza and Marshal Lyautey, and pictures of natives and colonial life in the Maghreb, black Africa, Madagascar and Indochina. Several still well-known artists, such as Etienne Dinet, went on show, but many were forgotten painters who had nevertheless enjoyed a certain celebrity in the inter-war years.25 At the end of the 1990s, Boulogne-Billancourt opened a Musée des Années Trente, and it now provides the most considered and comprehensive display of early twentieth-century colonial art in France. The museum’s aim is to present representative 1930s works, especially outside the avant-garde tradition: industrial design (drawing on the history of Boulogne-Billancourt, home of Renault’s automobile works and other heavy industry), religious art and portraiture, as well as colonial art. Explanatory panels in the colonial gallery give an overview of Orientalist art, the apogee of colonial art at the 1931 fair, and continued interest in the 1940s. ‘Puis vint la décolonisation . . . L’idéologie disparue, restent les oeuvres. Longtemps laissées dans l’oubli comme des témoins honteux d’une époque révolue, elles sont souvent le fruit d’un sincère éblouissement des artistes par les pays d’outre-mer. De formation généralement classique, ces artistes n’ont pas rénové le langage des formes, mais le regard curieux et sympathisant qu’ils portaient sur ces contrées exhubérantes, la lumière exceptionnelle qui baignaient les paysages, les scènes anecdotiques spectaculaires ont donné lieu à un art spécifique, limité dans le temps et l’espace. Cet art dit “colonial”, parce que témoignage d’une talentueuse figuration, parce qu’il fut une image de notre Histoire, mérite d’être apprécié comme création importante des “années 30”’ (Then came decolonisation . . . The ideology was gone, but the artworks remained. Long forgotten as shameful emblems of an age that had passed, they are often the fruit of artists’ sincere bedazzlement by overseas countries. With a generally academic background, these artists did not renew the stylistic vocabulary. However, the inquiring and sympathetic gaze that they directed to these exuberant lands and their spectacular anecdotal scenes gave rise to a specific type of art, one bounded by time and space. This ‘colonial’ art, because it embodied a talented figurative style and because it provides an


image of our history, is worthy of appreciation as an important creation of the Thirties). Works by thirty artists are presented. They include portraits of colonials – Paul Merwart’s white-suited, pith-helmeted André Lebon, the Minister of Colonies, on board a ship – and the colonised. Fernand Lantoine’s ‘Fatou la Sénégalaise’ (Fatou the Senegalese) (c. 1936) is a dignified black woman wearing beads and bracelets. Suzanne Castille’s ‘Femme mangbétou’ (Mangbetu Woman) (c. 1925–1930) provides a more stylised portrayal of someone from a group known for their extraordinarily complicated coiffure. Another exotic coiffure figures in Emile Monier’s sculpted ‘Tête de Gombélé’ (Gombele Head) (1930). Evariste Jonchère’s bronze bust of a young African, ‘Habib Benglia’ (1934), is mounted on a wooden plinth carved with four masks. There is another almost life-size and rather erotic sculpture of an African drummer. Elegant portraits by the society painter Bernard Boutet de Monvel show the Maharajah of Indore dressed both in Indian costume and as a Westernised dandy in evening clothes. Other paintings depict colonial life. In Charles Dufresne’s ‘Le Port’ (The Port), a sailor disports with a naked woman, while H.R. Moncassin represents the arrival and departure of Frenchmen at colonial outposts. Paul Jouve’s ‘Le Tigre’ (The Tiger) and ‘L’Eléphant sacré au temple d’Angkor Vat’ (The Sacred Elephant of the Temple of Angkor Wat) (1922) suggest the continued popularity of wild animals as themes. Women were often favourite subjects. Jean Bouchard’s brightly coloured ‘Autour d’un puits au Dahomey’ (At a Well in Dahomey) (1933) shows women carrying out their daily chores, Jeanne Thil’s ‘Oasis’ (c. 1930) poses women alongside camels, and Léon Cauvy’s ‘Les Ouled-Naïls’ (The Ouled-Naïls) (1932) features richly dressed Algerian courtesans in a market. Two women toil more sombrely in Jean-Charles Duval’s ‘La Ville morte, Djebel Druze (Syrie)’ (The Dead City, Djebel Druze [Syria]) (1924). Cement and terracotta bas-reliefs by Ernesto Canto Da Maya, who decorated the Portuguese pavilion at the 1931 colonial exhibition, allegories of Africa and Oceania, illustrate another genre of colonial art.26 Alexandre Iacovleff’s works are some of the most engaging in the BoulogneBillancourt museum and have been the subject of a special exhibition. Iacovleff took part in the Croisière Noire, a 3500-kilometre, twenty-one day journey from Tougghourt to Timbuktu in 1922, then went on a 27,000kilometre eight-month expedition from Colomb-Béchar in the Algerian desert to Madagascar two years later. Iacovleff returned with six thousand photographs, and hundreds of drawings, and made still more ethnographically sensitive and artistically impressive drawings and watercolours when he accompanied the Croisière Jaune across Central Asia in the 1930s.27 Another travelling Frenchman whose sketches figure in the museum’s collection – his daughter donated 140 works – is André Maire. After serving in the First World War, Maire was in Indochina from 1917 to 1922; he returned to live in Cambodia and Vietnam from 1948 to 1958. Maire sketched temples,

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jungles and statues, the Mekong river, elephant processions; the peaceful landscapes, however, show no hint of the Indochinese War. On other journeys, Maire portrayed black Africa, Madagascar and the Antilles, though his works, like many of colonial artists, avoid depictions of the effects of European imperialism.28 The Boulogne-Billancourt museum has played a key role in the rediscovery of colonial art and the rehabilitation of an artistic tradition. Certain observers might find the works stereotypical, modern variations on nineteenth-century scènes et types images with a predictable emphasis on the picturesque and the exotic. However, they reveal the way in which the colonies perennially fertilised French art: the inspiration provided by the colonies, the role of art in the colonial project, the ‘museumification’ of colonial culture. Placing colonial paintings and sculpture with other art from the 1930s provides contextualisation in style and theme. The colonial gallery allows viewers to appreciate the works for both aesthetic and historical value, reminds them of the important place of colonialism in inter-war French life, and invites them to reflect on the colonial epoch from which they issued. The avant-garde Orientalist and colonialist artists generally painted in a figurative and traditional style, and seldom borrowed from non-European traditions. Their art is resolutely European in form even when exotic in content. Experimental artists, however, were often interested in those non-European art forms, the plasticity of masks and sculptures, the use of colours, the combination of different media and materials, the shamanistic function of artwork. The influence of non-European art and of sojourns in the colonial world on the early twentieth-century avant-garde hardly needs lengthy discussion. The arrival in Europe of African art – and its recognition as art rather than artefact – had a profound impact on the avant-garde. The Picasso Museum in Paris displays some of the African artwork that Picasso owned, alongside his paintings showing the impact of African masks. ‘Primitivism’ was a great discovery for artists (as well as writers and composers) in the first years of the twentieth century, as evidenced in most collections of modern art.29 Among artists who (unlike Picasso) travelled to the colonies, Gauguin has a special place. After spending part of his childhood in Peru, then living briefly in Martinique and Britanny, in 1891 Gauguin sailed for Tahiti, where he spent the rest of his life (except for one trip back to France); he died in the Marquesas Islands in 1903. Gauguin’s paintings of Tahiti combine bright colours with enigmatic forms, luxuriant sensuality with a melancholy reflection on the fate of Oceanic culture and society: they are, paradoxically, colonial, anti-colonial and post-colonial. Another artist with formative colonial experiences was Matisse, who travelled in North Africa in 1912 and 1913, then to Oceania in 1930. Matisse’s paintings of Morocco break stylistically with the conventions of nineteenth-century art and the academism of


Orientalist painting. Matisse was more interested in distilling the essence of scenes or people – Moorish architecture, cafés – than in recreating ‘real’ life. Swathes of colour and simplified backgrounds in landscapes, brilliant iconic portraits, sketches of local scenes reduced to a few telling brushstrokes show Matisse’s very personal appreciation of North Africa. Similarly, paper cutouts of Oceania, from the 1940s and 1950s, focus on shapes and colours rather than on mises-en-scène of tropical life. Paintings by avant-garde masters are on display in many museums – a Matisse odalisque at the Pompidou Centre, for instance, or several from Polynesia by Gauguin at the Orsay museum. The Musée d’Art Moderne at the Pompidou Centre has a painting of an Arab town by Wassily Kandinsky and a Moroccan interior by Raoul Dufy. The municipal modern art museum at the Palais de Tokyo has another Matisse odalisque, though curiously not other works showing ‘colonial’ influences. But it does display two vitrines of masks and statues and notes ‘le goût des amateurs 1930 dans les relations avec les artistes fauves et cubistes’ (the taste of 1930s arts-lovers in relation to Fauve and Cubist works). The avant-garde exoticism of other artists is apparent elsewhere in Paris – the Fondation Dubuffet, for example, has paintings of the desert inspired by Jean Dubuffet’s visit to North Africa in the 1940s. Such works provide reminders of the persistence of colonial influences throughout the life of the French empire. Avant-garde paintings are not primarily colonialist in theme or ideology. Gauguin after all was a bitter critic of the effects of French rule, and Picasso’s Communism militated against colonialism. Nevertheless, these works are a product of the interchange between France and the wider world facilitated by colonialism. French artists journeyed overseas, and art from the empire was imported into France. Non-Western art and sculpture stimulated those abandoning conventions of European artistic style, as well as composers, jazz musicians and others drawn to African culture.30 The presence of overseas art in France, and of men and women from the colonies, brought non-Western culture home to the French. Travels in the colonies prompted new motifs, scenes and ways of treating light and colour. The works nevertheless sometimes perpetuated old stereotypes: Gauguin’s image of sensual licence and ‘paradise lost’. But they also challenged condescending views: Cubists’ appreciation of African works as more than crude fetishes and curios. These works thus offer to the present-day museum-visitor a compendium of ideas about the world outside Europe and their impact in France: the colonies as confirmation of and also challenge to received French ideas and styles.

Colonials in French museums Fine arts museums provide one view of the colonial period. Others focus on different aspects of France’s international engagement. Several museums take exploration as a theme, and sea-faring is a popular attraction. The

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house of Jacques Cartier, explorer of North America, is a museum in Rothéneuf. In Honfleur, the Musée Maritime, a former church, retains plaques recording expeditions to Canada, and nearby is a bust of Samuel de Champlain. The natural history museum in Le Havre displays material on French voyages to the South Pacific. Albi (Tarn) has a museum dedicated to La Pérouse. The house of d’Entrecasteaux, another Pacific explorer, is a museum in the commune from which his family took their name. Saint-Pourçain has a display on Kerguelen, who also sailed the southern seas. The natural history museum in La Rochelle has a display on Dumont d’Urville’s expedition to Terre Adélie. At Prémanon the Musée Européen de l’Exploration Polaire shows exhibits on such latter-day Arctic explorers as Paul-Emile Victor. An explorer of Antarctica, Jean Charcot, lost with his ship in 1936, is commemorated in the family home, turned into a museum in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Among other colonial Frenchmen commemorated with museums are missionaries. Pierre Chanel has a small exhibition at the Musée Océanien in Montrevel-en-Bresse, and Théophane Vénard (in the house in which he was born) in Saint-Loup-Lamaire. The house of Bishop Pigneau de Béhaine is a museum in Origny-en-Therache. (After the First World War Origny was twinned with Saigon, which as its marraine de guerre donated funds for reconstruction of the village.) There is a display on Charles de Foucauld at the monastery of Notre-Dames-des-Neiges in Saint-Laurent-les-Bains, and another priest, the Abbé Grégoire, is commemorated in his house in Embermenil. Several marshals also have museums, including Lyautey in his chateau in Thorey, and Leclerc in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. De Lattre de Tassigny is remembered at his house in Mouillerons-en-Pareds, where the Musée National des Deux Victoires pays tribute both to de Lattre and to another native son, Georges Clemenceau. Another museum devoted to de Lattre is in Mazières-sur-Béronne. Loti’s house is a museum in Rochefort, and the Saint-Jean-Perse foundation in Aix-en-Provence preserves letters, manuscripts, photographs, personal objects and the library of the Guadeloupe-born poet. Albert Schweitzer’s house in Gunsbach is a museum.31 In Laval, the Espace Alain Gerbault honours the early twentieth-century Pacific voyager and writer. Several small museums are dedicated to colonists from France’s first overseas empire. Archigny (Vienne) preserves a farm constructed in 1773 for Acadians. In La Chaussée there is also a small museum on Acadia, opened in 1984, and Belle-Ile, where seventy-eight families who left North America were resettled, plans a museum. Yet another small exhibition, on Burgundians who migrated to Canada, is in Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine, and in Tourouvre (Orne) is a Musée de l’histoire de l’émigration percheronne au Canada. Most of these museums are private institutions, generally small collections located in communes from which colonial figures hailed. They present various aspects of French enterprise overseas, through a somewhat eccentric set of


colonial heroes and actions. There is clear bias in favour of the first empire and exploration of oceans rather than continental expanses. Two larger museums, however, are devoted specifically to exploration, trade and settlement in the early modern age, the Musée du Nouveau Monde in La Rochelle and the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes in Lorient.

The New World and the Indies The French East India Company was established in 1664 and maintained a monopoly on trade in the East (except from 1769 to 1784) until 1791. Similarly to the older English and Dutch East India Companies, it enjoyed extraordinary privileges, collecting taxes, administering justice and maintaining an army. The company traded in Senegal and elsewhere in western Africa, but most of its work took place further east. The Ile de France (present-day Mauritius) and the neighbouring Ile Bourbon (La Réunion) served as bases in the western Indian Ocean. The company established trading posts at Mahé on the western coast of the Indian subcontinent, and at Pondichéry and other locations in the east – comptoirs on the subcontinent that France maintained until the 1950s. It traded for Chinese goods from Guangzhou (Canton). Coffee, tea, porcelain, fabrics, tropical hardwoods, gums and resins filled its ships on the lucrative trade routes from Asia. Two years after its foundation, the East India Company established headquarters at the small Breton town of Port-Louis, which consequently became a major centre for building, repairing and arming ships. In 1734 the sale of the company’s imports was transferred from Nantes to the town that had grown up near Port-Louis. Trade with the East provided the name for the new town, and L’Orient eventually became Lorient. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Lorient counted a population of 18,000 and bustled with warehouses, docks and merchants’ offices, plus housing for traders, sailors and labourers, and dozens of cabarets and brothels. Most company employees came from Brittany, moving from the countryside to the city that branded itself the ‘Porte des Indes’32 (Gateway to the Indies). Lorient and Port-Louis’s fortunes declined after the East India Company lost its monopoly and eventually collapsed, though shipping nonetheless remained an important activity. Much of the architectural heritage was destroyed during the Second World War, including some of the collections in Lorient’s museums. In connection with the tercentenary of the founding of Lorient, an exhibition on ‘Lorient et la mer’ was held. This led to the creation of the present Musée de la Compagnie des Indes. Funding was appropriated in 1973, and the Paris Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie served as ‘godfather’ to the institution. With items drawn from reserves of the old colonial museum and other collections, the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes opened in 1984 in the seventeenth-century citadel which also houses the Musée de la Marine.

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Fifteen rooms provide space for engravings, lithographs, paintings and maps. There are artefacts ranging from hourglasses and cutlery to medical instruments and cooking utensils, china and silver, textiles and ship models. The museum has documents relating to the East India Company: registers of ships’ crews and cargo, embarcation orders, government decrees and advertisements for sales of East Indian wares. The first four rooms detail the history of the company and of Lorient. The next four present posts where the company traded: the Mascarene islands, French India, China and Africa. The remaining rooms are organised thematically around naval construction, navigation, crews, shipboard life, the company’s soldiers, voyages to the East and trade goods. The museum has a publication series as well as an annual journal with articles on such themes as Pondichéry architecture, coins and medals minted by the company, furniture from the East, Indian fabrics, shipboard surgery, engineers and surveyors, the life of Mahé de la Bourdonnais, East India Company objects in other European museums, and Freemasonry in Lorient. Among temporary exhibitions have been ones on exotic motifs in French textiles and on paintings by Gustave Moreau. The museum is thus both a research institution and a repository for items relating to the history of France in the Indian Ocean and Africa.33 The Musée du Nouveau Monde is located in La Rochelle, a city with a long history of exploration and trade: ‘la ville la plus américaine de France’ (the most American city in France), according to the museum’s guidebook.34 A ship from La Rochelle travelled to Canada as early as 1524, the city became a major transfer point for fish and fur from North America and tropical products from the Antilles, and settlers embarked there for New France, Louisiana and the West Indies. Some of the city streets were paved with stones used as ballast on the trans-Atlantic crossing. La Rochelle was also one of the major slave-trading cities, accounting for 14 per cent of French slave trade: 140,000 slaves transported to the New World aboard four hundred ships. The municipal government in the 1970s bought the Hôtel Fleuriau to house a museum of the ‘new world’. An exhibition on ‘Mémoire d’une Amérique’ was held in 1980,35 and the museum opened in 1982. Dating from the mid-1700s, the grand townhouse was acquired in 1772 by the Comte de Fleuriau, whose family fortunes came from sugar plantations worked by slave labour in Saint-Domingue (Haiti). The architecture is neo-classical, but panelling, in gaiac (lignum vitae) and mahagony, comes from American hardwoods. The Musée du Nouveau Monde has a rich and varied collection in twentythree rooms. Most items are French, but there are also works by British, German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss and American artists and artisans. The period covered begins with the first French explorations in the early 1500s, and continues through the 1800s, though the focus is the pre-Revolutionary age. Displays examine all of the areas of French colonial


interest in the Americas with some artwork and documents concerning other New World empires. Various objects relate particularly to La Rochelle’s commercial ties with the Americas, and a reconstructed ship-builder’s sitting-room – elegant furniture, plush upholstery, paintings and silver – suggest the wealth produced by trading and slaving. The major theme is representations of the New World in European and particularly French culture of the ancien régime. The newly discovered western hemisphere had a major impact on painting, sculpture and design. American Indians and black African slaves appear in European paintings, often in stylised apparitions, as do New World flora and fauna. For instance, an enormous tapestry from 1700 features an allegorical America as a buxom woman bedecked in pearls and plumes, brandishing a bow and arrows, and leading an alligator on a leash. Another painting depicts ‘L’Amérique portant ses richesses à l’Europe’ (America bringing its wealth to Europe): another bare-breasted woman surrounded by Indians (though their dress looks more East Indian than American Indian) presenting an enormous Chinese-looking porcelain urn. Proof of the endurance of such idealised views of America is revealed in fourteen wallpaper panels with Inca themes, executed in 1826 in Paris. Perhaps a reminder that fascination with Amerindian civilisations was not limited to the colonial era comes in displays on the museum’s top floor, a collection of Edward Curtis’s early twentieth-century photographs of Indians. Part of the museum is devoted to New France. Prints show Niagara Falls and other landscapes discovered by Europeans, even if eighteenth-century drawings still make Amerindians look like ancient Greeks. Various documents and objects provide a critical overview of the idea of noble savages. Others reveal ethnographic interest in Native American cultures with collections of canoes, tomahawks and fishing nets. Still other objects show how North American Indians entered European art and design, down to signs advertising vendors of tobacco. Bons sauvages and Africans were omnipresent in French decorative arts, even in such manifestations as designs of clocks. An 1808 bronze and gilt clock features a bare-chested African seaman waiting to unload a ship; he props against a bale of cotton next to which lie a rum barrel and an anchor. A purse and coins signify the labourer’s salary, and bas-reliefs depict other figures unloading a ship, delivering merchandise and writing out a bill. Another clock is inspired by Chateaubriand’s popular Atala: on one side of the clock face, Atala perches on the knees of a dark beplumed Chactas, while two dogs and a palm tree stand on the other; carvings illustrate other scenes from the novel. An engraving of a dance in Saint-Domingue is clearly a figure of the artist’s imagination, but works could occasionally be more realistic. A portrayal of a fight between an English and a French slave shows careful attention to cotton clothing and headdresses, huts and palm-trees.

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Objects show the different ways in which artists perceived the New World. In some cases, Indians and slaves are only added decorations in luxuriant landscapes drawn with little concern for natural or social realities. Blacks could be portrayed sympathetically in European art – Gerbrand van den Eeckhout’s seventeenth-century portrait of a handsome African is a notable example – though others concentrated on picturesque ‘bamboula’ dances and ‘negro’ festivities, and some portrayed Africans as cannibals and animals. An emotional response is clearly invited in a gruesome seventeenth-century Dutch painting of ‘Scène de cannibalisme’ (Cannibal Scene): natives hack apart a corpse, while one man prepares a severed head for the fire being kindled. A gentler image, a 1795 French terracotta, shows two American Indians at the grave of their child. The husband holds his head in sad meditation, bow and quiver at his feet, while the mother follows a funerary custom and squeezes her breast to release a few drops of milk onto the tomb. The museum does not avoid the issue of slavery and on the sesquicentenary of abolition published a booklet on representations of slavery in its collections. The preface by the then député and mayor, Michel Crépeau, acknowledges La Rochelle’s history as a slave-trading port, ‘une histoire qu’il faut savoir assumer pour le meilleur et pour le pire afin d’en tirer les leçons qui s’imposent’36 (a history that we must learn how to take on board, for better and worse, in order to learn the lessons that it teaches). The museum’s ‘Salon de l’Esclavage’ presents items such as a plantation inventory listing slaves that documents the wealth of slave-owners. There is an illustration of slave traders on Gorée island, diagrams of slave ships and models of sugar mills. A painting of two happy figures (in this case, Indians rather than Africans) in a beneficent setting provides a romanticisation of plantation life showing how artists could hide the horrors of slavery. A nineteenth-century book illustration, however, has Africans chained in a transport ship, and vitrines with iron chains and an overseer’s whip emphasise the violence to which the enslaved were subjected. A 1785 porcelain salad bowl is decorated with slaves working in cane fields and in their huts, but also shows an overseer flogging a slave. The ambivalent inscription on the bowl is ‘Vive le beau travalle [sic] des Illes [sic] de l’Amérique’ (Long Live the Fine Work of the American Islands), though it is difficult to know whether the words are meant ironically. The imprecise spelling at least indicates the imperfect education of the artisan and his sympathy with the slaves. One engraving pictures an Englishman in Barbados selling his mistress, while another shows a white man and his black mistress entwined in a hammock. In an 1824 painting, a French officer dies in his West Indian house, mourned only by the black woman crying at his bedside. A Sèvres porcelain statue commemorates the liberation of slaves in 1794 with a freed couple who sit next to each other, the man wearing a Phrygian bonnet. The Creole inscription reads ‘Moi égale à toi, moi libre aussi’ (Me Equal to You, Me Free Too). In an 1800 representation, a slave mother tells


her baby: ‘Toi enfin sera [sic] heureux’ (You Will Finally Be Happy). However, Napoleon re-established slavery only two years later, and several objects record the reaction: a portrait of Toussaint Louverture and an 1833 painting of a rebellion aboard a slave ship – a robust bare-chested African wields a club, his broken leg-iron lying at his feet. Charles Cordier’s sculpture commemorating the definitive abolition of slavery in 1848 shows a white and black youth embracing. Such objects suggest that slavery provoked criticism among French opponents and led to rebellions among the enslaved, perhaps emphasising the anti-slavery campaign more than the slavery that existed in the French empire for two centuries. The La Rochelle museum nevertheless underlines the brutality of slavery and the divided views about the history of slavery in France. It deals straightforwardly with slavery, though with relatively succinct textual details about slave life or the plantation economy. It speaks about La Rochelle’s slave-trading past, but does not ‘name names’ of local familes whose ancestors were enriched by the trade or try to estimate the exact impact of slaving on the city’s fortunes. The presentation, though damning of enslavement, is presented largely from a European point of view; there are, for instance, no quotations from African or West Indian authors. The story of France’s West Indian colonies comes to an end in the displays in 1848, though Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyane remain overseas départements.37 Certain colonial topics receive little attention: bloody battles of conquest and inter-colonial war in the Americas, massacres of Native Americans and the struggles of settlers against Indian attacks, famine, disease and poverty, as well as the continuing misery of Africans after emancipation. The Musée de la Compagnie des Indes and the Musée du Nouveau Monde are different sorts of museums, together forming complementary presentations of early modern French expansion – the first overseas empire viewed from the provincial bases from which France expanded eastwards and westwards. One focuses on a trading company and its outposts, the other looks at relations between European societies and the Americas. One covers little more than a hundred-year period, while the other’s collections span four centuries. The Lorient museum is filled with trade goods from the East, while that in La Rochelle has collections embodying European visions of the new western worlds. The East India Company museum emphasises sea-faring and trading, while the New World museum – reflecting different imperial aims in the Americas and Asia – highlights settlement and plantation life. Neither is explicitly a museum of colonialism. Each is more of a museum of art and artefacts than an historical museum presenting a comprehensive and pedagogically oriented account of exploration and colonisation. The perspective is the European experience of the wider world. While not celebrating French expansion, only on the issue of slavery does one of the the museums dwell on the nefarious effects of European intervention. Issues of racism and violence are somewhat elided. Links to present-day issues – for

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instance, the legacy of France in Asia or the problems of multi-cultural societies in the Antilles – are not discussed. Themes now popular among colonial historians, such as the environmental history of imperialism and the question of gender, were not current when the collections were established and displays arranged, and thus are absent. The museums were opened before audiovisual presentations, interactive computers and other present-day museum gadgets became common. Their presentations remain traditional, with a stress on material objects, texts that provide a unified narrative of the history, and a sens de la visite that follows a clear geographical, chronological and thematic scheme. Caveats about exhibition style or content, however, do not detract from the curatorial achievements of the two institutions, which more than any other museums in France explicitly examine overseas ventures. They are both lieux de mémoire of La Rochelle’s and Lorient’s links with colonialism, but also key repositories of France’s colonial history.

The ‘new imperialism’ and museums: Algeria French colonisation in the Americas and trade in the Indian Ocean and China are now distant enough that, except for the question of slavery, exhibitions create little controversy and excite few political passions – which may say something about lack of greater concern for the colonial past. The renewed expansion that began in 1830 and lasted until withdrawal from Algeria in 1962, however, has left more recent memories and more painful scars in the national psyche. Until the opening of a Mémorial National d’Outre-Mer in 2006 or 2007, no museum is dedicated explicitly to the second overseas empire. The exceptions are two small museums on Algérie française set up by the Cercle Algérianiste, formed in 1973 by ‘une dizaine de jeunes Pieds-Noirs désireux de faire survivre une province française disparue géographiquement mais toujours vivante dans un peuple d’un million d’âmes’ (a dozen young pieds-noirs who want to assure the survival of a French province that has disappeared geographically but that remains alive in the souls of a million people). (‘Algérianiste’, the word coined in 1920 by Jean Pomier and Robert Randau, ‘apparaît comme un qualitatif de militantisme, de volonté et d’autonomisme culturel’ (appears as a qualifier of militancy, will and cultural autonomy).) Their manifesto affirms members’ love for an Algeria ‘dont elle [France] ne voulait plus maintenant’ (which France no longer wants to hear about), and evokes ‘combats triomphants’ (triumphant battles) as well as ‘revers, l’exil et les prisons’ (reverses, exile and prison). One aim is to ‘protester contre l’histoire officielle de la présence française en Algérie telle que la présente ceux-là même qui nous ont acculés à l’exil’ (protest against the official history of the French presence in Algeria as it is portrayed by the very people who booted us into exile) – a clearly revisionist stance. Another is to ‘redonner une vigueur nouvelle à la communauté “Algérie française”,


pour retremper notre foi’ (give renewed vigour to the ‘Algérie française’ community and to strengthen our faith). The Cercle Algérianiste publishes history books and a quarterly journal, L’Algérianiste. In 1992 it started a biannual Festival International du Film Algérianiste in Nîmes (at which a ‘Palmier d’or’ is awarded). A theatre group, literary prizes and exhibitions count among other activities, and the Cercle Algérianiste boasts of having sponsored four thousand lectures and several conferences. A Comité de Vigilance et de Riposte ‘réagit avec promptitude, talent et précision aux attaques injustifiées, graves, calomnieuses, dont la communauté Pied-Noir en général et la famille algérianiste en particulier sont les cibles’ (react with speed, talent and precision to the unjustified, grave and slanderous attacks for which the pied-noir community in general and the Algerianist family in particular are the targets). The work is carried out through thirty-three branches with ‘milliers d’adhérents’ (thousands of members). A tiny Cercle Algérianiste museum in the Redoute Béart, in Port-Vendres, ‘rappelle les relations de la Catalogne, et en particulier de Pont-Vendres, avec l’Algérie’ (recalls the relations of Catalonia, and notably Pont-Vendres, with Algeria). It stands next to a monument erected in Sidi-Ferruch for the centenary of the French conquest in 1930, brought to France in 1963 and re-erected in 1988 to be ‘le symbole de l’oeuvre française en Algérie’ (the symbol of the French work in Algeria). The Perpignan branch of the Cercle Algérianiste created a three-room museum which displays books, postcards, paintings, crests of Algerian cities, medals and flags. According to the museum’s brochure, these items testify to ‘l’oeuvre civilisatrice de la France’ (the civilising accomplishment of France). The Salle Camille Brière, named for an Oran-born philanthropist and author, covers the history of Algeria: drawings of pottery and copies of Tassili cave paintings, pictures of mosques and a Spanish description of seventeenthcentury Oran. Paintings and stamps recount the arrival of the French in Algeria. A second room, named in honour of Mourad Kaouah, an Aumaleborn athlete who served as a député and died in Perpignan, covers the army, religion, schools, medicine, sport and literature. Finally, the Salle Fernand Arnaudies – named for a railwayman and journalist, ‘un des premiers Algérianistes’ (one of the first Algerianists) – is filled with postcards, artisanry and copies of colonial paintings. The museum is an amateur effort, a collection of treasured bric-a-brac associated with Frenchmen who lived in Algeria, many of whom died in Perpignan. The goal is to preserve these souvenirs and to reaffirm the heritage of pieds-noirs. A critical appraisal of colonialism is not to be expected. The little collection is a shrine dedicated by rapatriés to compatriots and the homeland they left behind: ‘museumification’ of the collective memory of those who feel slighted by curators, political authorities and historians. A somewhat different view appears in a travelling exhibition developed by the youth group, the ‘Guerre d’Algérie – Jeunesse – Enseignement’ (GAJE), of FNACA, the large veterans’ associations that promoted the construction

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of war memorials and the naming of streets for 19 March 1962. In 1982 GAJE produced thirty-six display panels (accompanied by an eighty-page brochure) which were lent to schools, libraries, military establishments and other institutions. In 2002, for the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Algerian War, FNACA collaborated with the Ministry of Defence on a new touring exhibition: twenty panels on the chronology of the war and fourteen on particular themes. According to its website, FNACA ‘peut en être fière à aborder certains sujets considérés comme tabous ou souvent dénaturés, sortis de leur contexte par quelque média ignare ou mal intentionné: violences et tortures, femmes dans la guerre, enfants dans la guerre, prisonniers et disparus, missions humanitaires, mémoire, messages d’espoirs. Elle est fidèle à sa mission: rechercher la vérité et la dire, car si la guerre d’Algérie s’est faite avec du sang et des larmes, elle doit s’écrire avec une plume et non une gomme’ (is proud to examine subjects that were considered taboo or that are often distorted or taken out of context by ignorant and ill-informed media: violence and torture, women in the war, children in the war, prisoners and the missing in action, humanitarian missions, memory, messages of hope. It is loyal to its own mission: to seek and speak truth, because if the Algerian War was fought with blood and tears, its history must be written with the pen and not with an eraser). The mission is symbolised by GAJE’s logo of two doves with the words ‘histoire’ (history) and ‘mémoire’ (memory). It presents the touring exhibition as ‘un message de réconciliation et de paix [et] une condamnation de la guerre’38 (a message of reconcilation and peace, and a condemnation of war). These exhibitions testify to renewed interest, persistant debates and unsettled memories of the French experience in Algeria. The divergent perspectives of the Musée de l’Algérie Française and GAJE’s roving exhibitions illustrate varying museographical styles, the generation gap between older pieds-noirs and their descendants, varying political stances, and different interpretations of decolonisation. They show a discordance between the preservation of relics of the colonial ‘action’ and a more critical examination of French Algeria, including the most difficult issues surrounding the conflict. Even among those who are legatees of colonialism in North Africa, there is no unitary canon of memory or history.

Military museums Outside art museums, the colonies are most frequently remembered in military museums. The army was the major agent for imperial conquest, ‘pacification’ and, especially in the early years, administration of overseas outposts. The army promised careers of adventure, accomplishment and honour to French peasants and proletarians, and some of the leading figures in colonial history – Bugeaud, Faidherbe, Gallieni, Lyautey – were officers. Vast numbers of recruited natives served valorously in the two world wars.


Metropolitan and indigenous troopers conquered new territories for France and waged battles against colonial independence. The navy too played its role in exploration and colonialism even if its commanders – such as Dupetit-Thouars and Rigault de Gentilly – are less well known than their army comrades. Military museums are legion. Almost every military corps preserves its sacred objects in a salle d’honneur – historical uniforms and weapons, flags captured in battle, personal effects of famed commanders, medals and citations, photographs and other archives. Most have the atmosphere of sanctuaries, where relics and memories are treasured. The military ambiance is underlined by the presence of men and women in uniform, flags flying and even martial music playing. Many have a dusty air with fading labels on artefacts locked in old-fashioned vitrines. The aim is to celebrate individual soldiers and units, not to provide a critical or comprehensive presentation of the military’s activities on and off the battlefield. Despite the proliferation of museums devoted to the world wars, and a smaller number on the Franco-Prussian War, there are no war museums in France dedicated solely to colonial campaigns or to the Indochinese or Algerian wars (with the exception of the one-room museum at the Fréjus memorial). Veterans’ associations were successful in setting up a number of Second World War museums, though their goals did not always coincide with the aims of local authorities, the state or other ‘stakeholders’ in the museums, and certain topics remained controversial.39 The ‘little’ wars of empire, though numerous, extensive and bloody, were fought far from home and did not apparently merit museums. The wars of decolonisation, especially the Algerian War, more painful and costly conflicts that resulted in defeat, did not perhaps seem appropriate for ‘museumification’. However, many military museums have galleries devoted to colonial theatres of action and the participation of particular units. These museums remain the most important examples of conservation of history and collective memories of the colonial age, both in the items they display and the particular readings they give to colonial history. Two museums provide examples for more detailed discussion, the Musée des Troupes de Marine in Fréjus and the Musée de la Légion Etrangère in Aubagne. This is followed by consideration of colonialism in other military museums. The Musée des Troupes de Marine The troupes coloniales – renamed troupes de Marine after decolonisation – were soldiers in the service of the Navy. Their museum and the attached Centre d’histoire et d’études des Troupes d’outre-mer (CHETOM) form part of a working military base in Fréjus, and through a fence the visitor can observe soldiers in training. In the courtyard stand stelae dedicated to Africans and Malagasy in the troupes coloniales; the plaque bears a tribute from Marshal Foch: ‘J’ai admiré leur merveilleux courage, leur indomptable ténacité, leur

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élan fougueux . . . J’ai apprécié leur profonde loyauté et leur absolu dévoument’ (I admired their marvellous courage, their indomitable tenacity, their ardent élan . . . I appreciated their profound loyalty and their absolute devotion). Another plaque is engraved: ‘Les troupes coloniales à leurs morts’ (The Colonial Troops to their Dead); the date given is 1956, and the theatres listed are Africa, France and Indochina. Yet another one, ornamented with the Navy emblem and the caduceus to represent the medical corps, is dedicated ‘A ceux du service de santé des troupes françaises en Indochine du Nord morts pour la France’ (To the Members of the Medical Corps of the French Troops in Northern Indochina Who Died for France). Directly in front of the museum are several colonial relics: a 1920s boat from Oubangui-Chari, a nineteenth-century canon from Mayotte and a military cart used in Madagascar and the Soudan from the 1880s to 1904.40 With a collection of five thousand items, the museum was opened in 1981 by the Minister of Defence Georges Lemoine, as ‘tout à la fois un musée d’histoire, des traditions et du souvenir’ (a museum of history, tradition and remembrance). The main floor and mezzanine contain vitrines presenting the corps’ history in roughly chronological order. On the walls hang paintings, posters and maps. Several large items dominate the centre of the exhibition space, the most impressive, the first automobile used by Gallieni in Madagascar in 1900; the Panhard-Lavassor carried three passengers, travelled at twenty-five kilometres an hour and had primus lamp headlights. The museum presents an overview of colonialism seen through a military lens, beginning with objects from New France and the East Indies Company, but focussing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A silk banner was presented to their general by the expeditionary force in China during the Boxer Rebellion. A corner devoted to Indochina includes a silk colonial map, a wooden table inlaid with a mother-of-pearl map of Hanoi and concert programmes from the Hanoi philharmonic orchestra. A portrait pays tribute to Auguste Pavie, who ‘contribua à étendre pacifiquement la presence française dans ces régions [de l’Indochine]’ (contributed to the peaceful spread of French presence in these regions [of Indochina]). A vitrine preserves the explorer Francis Garnier’s hat and an urn presented to the Governor-General of Indochina in 1898. Nearby stands a mannequin of a Tonkinese soldier. Similarly diverse objects cover colonialism in Africa. Documents and a captured standard recount the defeat of Samory. A picture commemorates Roger Descemet, the first Senegalese graduate (in the mid-1800s) from the Saint-Cyr military academy. Binoculars, a bedcloth and a picture recall Julien Ennily, a member of Marchand’s party at Fashoda. Photographs of soldiers, stock certificates from trading companies, a portrait of Faidherbe, a statue of Gallieni and a painting of Lyautey entering Marrakesh are complemented by display cases of African masks and textiles: a juxtaposition of native arts and crafts with French military might.


European wars receive due attention, emphasising the use of colonial soldiers in the Franco-Prussian War and the world wars. One display focuses on troupes coloniales at Bazeilles in the 1870–1871 war. There is considerable memorabilia from the First World War, including Marchand’s death mask and a photograph of Lord Kitchener greeting General Bartier, whom he had not seen since the then rival British and French met at Fashoda. Items from the Second World War in France and the colonies include the flag sewn by Solange Panalver that was raised over the Hanoi citadel at the end of Japanese occupation of Indochina. Colonial wars are presented as further occasions for the troupes coloniales to distinguish themselves. Displays recall the ‘troubles’ in Madagascar in 1947. A Viet Minh banner is on show among other artefacts from Indochina: shells and guns, a model junk, a train ticket, a cigarette packet, and a commemorative poster of Dien Bien Phu depicting a gun-bearing soldier slumped over a cross with the inscription ‘Ils se sont sacrifiés pour la liberté’ (They sacrified themselves for liberty). The museum notes that 80,000 soldiers from the troupes coloniales served in Algeria from 1954 to 1962 – one-fifth of French forces there. One vitrine containing the uniform and Legion of Honour decoration of General Salan mentions the putsch by generals opposed to Algerian independence – ‘Salan ‘n’admet pas l’orientation donnée à l’evolution politique algérienne’ (Salan did not accept the orientation given to Algerian political evolution) – as well as the amnesty subsequently granted to the rebels. Later military campaigns also figure in exhibits. There is a photograph of the monument erected by Korean authorities in 1986 in honour of Commandant Jean-Louis, a doctor in the Korean War, and items on the troupes de Marine in Chad in the early 1970s, in Cambodia and Lebanon, in the 1991 Gulf War and in Kossovo in 1999. The military chronology from the time of New France to the colonial age is thus brought up to date. Exhibits on the main floor evoke specific events and particular themes. Model soldiers in a diorama represent the troupes coloniales from 1625 to 1985. As in many military museums, uniforms, képis and epaulettes are prominently displayed. A vitrine is dedicated to the officers’ training school; amidst photographs, textbooks and a set of arms (the last presented by the President of Gabon) is a picture of one of the corps’ most famous soldiers, the rock singer Johnny Halliday. The role of the medical training school opened in Marseille in 1907 is highlighted. Photographs of hospitals, doctors and surgeries are captioned by a tribute from the Nobel laureate François Jacob: ‘Il faut rendre hommage à ces hommes dont l’histoire ne retiendra pas le nom alors qu’ils ont fait l’histoire dans ce qu’elle a de meilleur: la recherche du mieux-être et la sauvegarde de la dignité de l’Homme’ (Homage must be paid to the men whose name history has forgotten though they gave their best to history: the quest for well-being and the safeguarding of the rights of man). Particular homage is paid to Alexandre Yersin (1862–1943), a Swiss doctor who worked for the Messageries Maritimes before enlisting in the troupes coloniales in 1890; Yersin discovered the bacillus thought to cause the plague,

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and established a medical school in Hanoi. One photograph shows a monument to French medical officers on the island of Gorée. Paintings of a camel-riding Tuareg and of nomads and soldiers in an oasis recount the conquest of the Sahara. Proud language tells of the méharistes’ accomplishments: ‘La pacification du Sahara fut achevée peu après la Première Guerre Mondiale mais longtemps encore les méharistes coloniaux eurent à intervenir contre les pillards et des fanatiques que la “paix française” dérangeait’ (The pacification of the Sahara was achieved shortly after the First World War, but for long afterwards the colonial méharistes continued to take action against plunderers and fanatics who refused to accept the ‘French peace’). Through ‘pousuites mémorables et des combat épiques . . . jusqu’en 1965 les méharistes . . . jouèrent un rôle de premier plan pour maintenir le calme dans les régions traditionnelles troublées, peuplées de groupements humains ayant des modes de vie et des traditions souvent peu compatibles’ (memorable pursuits and epic combats...until 1965 the méharistes played a leading role in maintaining calm in traditionally troubled regions peopled by human groups with often incompatible lifestyles and traditions). One vitrine treats French colonial aviation, and another is devoted to communication. The museum crypt contains a shrine to fallen soldiers. A marble plaque lists the ‘noms des batailles inscrites sur nos emblèmes’ (names of battles inscribed on our banners) from 1813 to the 1956 Suez War. Lyautey’s homage is engraved: ‘L’arme de tous les héroismes et de toutes les abnégations j’ai nommé l’infanterie de marine’ (The weapon for every act of heroism and every sacrifice: the Navy infantry). A tablet enumerates ‘nos glorieux régiments’ (our glorious regiments) and heralds: ‘Nos 400,000 morts impérissables exemples sont entrés vivants dans la légende’ (Our 400,000 dead – undying examples – entered into living legend). Malagasy, Indochinese and Senegalese soldiers, artillery-officers, engineers and tank-drivers are particularly mentioned. A case contains relics from the Régiment d’Infanterie du Maroc, the most decorated regiment in the French army, and an urn preserves the ashes of ‘héros inconnus de la division bleue’ (unknown heros of the ‘blue’ division) who died at Bazeilles. One panel provides a triumphalist résumé of colonial history: ‘Il est un titre de gloire inséparable de la légende héroique des troupes de marine, c’est d’avoir été au premier rang dans l’oeuvre pacificatrice et civilisatrice de la France au-delà des mers. Là où régnaient esclavage, violence, discorde, misère, elles ont apporté liberté, sécurité, paix, bien-être. Aux populations décimées par la maladie, elles ont donné la santé, elles ont contribué d’éminente façon au développement social, culturel, économique des peuples qui ont constitué l’empire et cette oeuvre se poursuit aujourd’hui dans les états de la Communauté d’expression française pour que . . . la France soit partout l’évangile de la fraternité des races et de l’égalité des chances, pour qu’elle présente au monde un visage de lumière et de liberté’ (One claim to glory inseparable from the heroic legend of the


Navy troops is having stood in the first line in the pacifying and civilising work of France overseas. There where slavery, violence, discord and misery reigned, they brought freedom, security, peace and well-being. To peoples decimated by disease, they gave health. They contributed in a notable fashion to the social, cultural and economic development of the peoples who made up the empire. This work continues today in the states of the Francophone community so that . . . France will everywhere be the prophet of the fraternity of races and the equality of opportunities, so that she will present to the world an image of light and liberty). Individual metropolitan and colonial soldiers receive tribute throughout the museum. A monument photographed in Livron (Pyrénées-Orientales), dedicated to Sergeant François Bernez-Canbot, who was killed in the Rif wars leading forty tirailleurs sénégalais against 2000 ‘rebels’ in the 1920s, shows the officer standing defiantly, waving a pistol, backed by two black soldiers. A photograph of Captain Do-Huu Vi, killed on 9 July 1916, is captioned with a quotation from the Indochinese officer: ‘J’ai le droit de me battre et de payer d’exemple. Je suis Français et Annamite. Je me dois deux fois plus que vous’ (I have the right to fight and to serve as an example. I am a Frenchman and an Annamite. I owe myself twice as much as you) A soldier from the Second World War is singled out: ‘N’oublions jamais l’héroisme sublime du cannonier cochinchinois Jules Nguyen’ (Let us never forget the sublime heroism of the Cochinchinese cannoneer Jules Nguyen). Taken prisoner by the Japanese at Langson on 11 March 1945, he was confined with other Vietnamese soldiers, but twice broke out of the Vietnamese camp to join French prisoners-of-war: ‘J’ai toujours vécu avec les Français, je mourrai avec eux’ (I have always lived with the French, and I will die with them). After his third escape, the Japanese executed Nguyen, who sang the ‘Marseillaise’ with his dying breath. Displays on Algeria affirm the ‘souci constant dans les troupes de Marine de ne pas vivre en marge de la population et de lui apporter toute l’aide humanitaire possible’ (constant concern of the Navy troops not to live on the margin of the population but to bring them all possible humanitarian aid). Soldiers’ duties included ‘rassurer les populations, les soigner, permettre le maintien des activités normales . . . combattre les bandes rebelles sur le terrain, boucler les frontières, garder les points sensibles, protéger les fermes, lutter contre le terrorisme urbain, pallier les insuffisances en devenant bâtisseurs . . . instituteurs . . . infirmiers, administrateurs’ (to reassure people, care for them and allow them to carry out their normal activities . . . combat rebel bands in the field, secure the frontiers, hold sensitive outposts, protect farms, fight against urban terrorism, and attend to locals’ needs by becoming builders . . . teachers . . . nurses and adminstrators). (Nothing is said about less noble activities.) One description concludes that French ‘désengagement en 1954–55 [in Indochina] et entre 1956 et 1962 en Afrique a eu des conséquences déstabilisantes’ (disengagement in 1954–1955 [in Indochina]

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and between 1956 and 1962 in Africa had destabilising consequences) of anarchy, dictatorships and famine. In language that could be misread as a Front National broadside, the text warns: ‘Si l’on n’y prend garde nous serons submergés par les populations francophones qui vivent si misérablement chez elles’ (If we are not careful, we will be submerged by Francophone populations who live so wretchedly in their own countries). Thus must France follow the noble path of Colbert, Ferry, Gallieni, Lyautey and de Gaulle in coming to the aid of overseas populations. As predictable in military museums, the tone is tribute to heroic services and selfless sacrifice, and to the humanitarian actions – rather than actual warfare – of the corps. The ambiance is decidedly military, with flags, uniforms and campaign maps reinforced by martial music on the sound system. The bookstall sells pins, badges, books and postcards of paintings and posters: ‘La Coloniale au Sahara’ (The Colonial Army in the Sahara), a 1913 portrait of a tirailleur sénégalais, colonial recruiting posters depicting camels and oases. A rather more alarming postcard reads ‘Parachutistes coloniaux – Ma Fortune la Gloire, Mon Domaine la Bagarre’ (Colonial Parachutists – Glory my Forture, a Fight my Mission). Temporary exhibitions – ‘Les Méharistes coloniaux’ (The Colonial Méharistes), ‘Les Travailleurs sénégalais de la Grande Guerre 1914–1918’ (Senegalese Workers during the Great War, 1914–1918) – reveal various aspects of the Fréjus collection and of colonial history. An annual salon de peinture invites works on such themes as ‘L’Afrique blanche, l’Afrique du nord, et le Sahara’ (White Africa, North Africa and the Sahara), ‘Femmes d’Outre-Mer’ (Overseas Women), ‘L’Eau’ (Water) and ‘Présence de l’outre-mer en France métropolitaine’ (The Presence of the Outre-Mer in Mainland France). Colonialism in the Fréjus museum is shown, perhaps naturally enough in a military establishment, in a restricted sense of martial accomplishments. Imperialism is not viewed in a critical light, and there is no discussion about the shadowy side of military service. The mood is celebratory and elegiac in a museum that stands as a proud tribute to a particular corps, a memorial to a lost empire and an undecolonised version of colonial history.

The Musée de la Légion Etrangère A similar approach can be seen in the museum of the French Foreign Legion. The Légion Etrangère, created in 1831 as a corps of foreigners hired to defend French interests outside continental France, was the most legendary of all colonial forces, celebrated in novels, films and songs. Its headquarters was Sidi-bel-Abbès in Algeria, and when the Legionnaires left for the last time in October 1962, they took with them their relics. (The exceptions were banners an officer had taken from the Chinese in 1885; he had specified that they were never to leave Sidi-bel-Abbès, so the flags were ceremoniously burned.) The treasures were transferred to the Legion’s new headquarters in


Aubagne, the Caserne Viénot (which incidentally bore the same name as the camp in Algeria). Among these relics is a monument aux morts executed by Charles Pourquet for the centenary of the Legion. A huge bronze globe rests on an onyx pedestal; the countries where the Legion served are coloured in gold, and a star marks Camerone, Mexico, an iconic battle fought by sixty-three Legionnaires under the command of Captain Danjou in 1863. Around the base stand four life-size soldiers, one representing the conquest of Algeria, a Legionnaire from the Second Empire, a soldier from the colonial wars of the Third Republic, and a First World War Legionnaire. The inscription reads simply: ‘La Légion à ses morts, 1831–1931’ (The Legion to its Dead, 1831–1931). In 1966 the Legion opened the Musée du Souvenir. The brochure explains that here ‘les légionnaires conservent précieusement leurs souvenirs, trophées et reliques, pour puiser aux sources la force morale qui les anime. Témoignage tangible des sacrifices, des mérites et de la gloire de ces étrangers qui ont servi et servent la France, les salles du musée évoquent l’éthique légionniare autant que l’histoire des campagnes de leurs régiments. Par la vertu de l’exemple, elles fortifient la vocation des légionnaires d’aujourd’hui’ (The Legionnaires preserve their precious souvenirs, trophies and relics, drawing from them the moral force that inspires them. Tangible witness to the sacrifices, merits and glory of the foreigners who served and serve France, the museum galleries evoke the Legionnaire ethic as well as the stories of its regiments’ campaigns. With the virtue of example, they fortify the vocation of today’s Legionnaires). This ethical code, it adds, comprises ‘le caractère sacré de la mission, la rigueur de l’exécution, la solidarité, le culte du souvenir’ (the sacred character of our mission, rigour in its execution, solidarity, the cult of remembrance) – commemoration is thus a key tenet in the Legion’s creed. Among monuments in the museum gardens, one is a ‘monument en exil’, the three-ton Colonne Randon that memorialises the 1841 construction of a roadway west of Bône (Annaba) through the Edough hills. There is also a figure holding a palm frond, a plaque dedicated ‘Aux Sahariens qui ont passés ici et dont le souvenir vit encore’ (To the Saharan troops who passed through this place and whose memory lives on) – another ‘repatriated’ memento – and weapons such as a cannon and a tank. The museum itself includes an elegant salle d’honneur lined with portraits of Legionnaire officers killed in the line of duty. In this room new recruits receive their contracts and are assigned to regiments, and Legionnaires are awarded certificates at the end of their service. Displays recall the origins of the Legion and the career of General Rollet, the ‘Père de la Légion’ (Father of the Legion). In the crypt, the names of 903 officers killed in combat (of the total of 35,000 Legionnaire officers and troopers who lost their lives in battle) are engraved in gold. The standards of disbanded regiments stand guard. On display is the Legion’s most precious relic, the wooden hand of

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Captain Danjou, the martyred hero of Camerone. The ‘Salles des campagnes’ (Campaign Galleries), on the first floor, recount the Legion’s actions in Algeria, black Africa and Indochina from the age of conquest through the world wars and decolonisation and, more recently, in Zaire in 1978 and Kuwait in 1991. Banners, arms, maps, paintings, photographs, uniforms, decorations, a model of the fortress of Sidi-bel-Abbès, a vial of soil from Dien Bien Phu and other memorabilia trace the Legion’s history. Texts explain in laudatory terms the exploits of ‘héros’ (heros), and the ‘glorieuse épopées’ (glorious sagas) of different regiments. Captions suggest an unrevised view of colonial history. In Madagascar, for instance, the Legion in 1896 put down a ‘violente insurrection dans l’île, qu’il faut reconquérir et pacifier’ (violent insurrection on the island that it was necessary to reconquer and pacify), and in 1947, ‘la 4e demi-brigade soumet les bandes rebelles et ramène l’ordre’ (the fourth half-brigade put down the rebel band and restored order). At the Battle of Algiers in 1957, the Legion attempted to ‘mettre un terme au terrorisme du FLN dans la capitale’ (bring an end to FLN terrorism in the capital). As for the independence of Algeria: ‘L’abandon de l’Algérie porte en lui le déchirement et l’amertume de quitter cette terre fertilisée du sang et de la sueur des Légionnaires depuis 1831’ (The abandonment of Algeria created torment and bitterness at leaving this soil nourished by the blood and the sweat of Legionnaires since 1831). The Foreign Legion retains an aura that attracts large numbers of visitors to Aubagne. After seeing the museum, they can buy postcard portraits of Legionnaires, and contemporary photographs of soldiers wearing their distinctive white képis at parades and other ceremonies. Also on sale are the Legion’s magazine, Képi blanc, and caps and satchels embossed with the Legion’s emblem: the ‘culte du souvenir’ (cult of remembrance) turned to commercial as well as commemorative purposes. The Legion has another commemorative site at Puyloubiers in Provence, where the Invalides de la Légion Etrangère houses 120 retired or invalid veterans. Acquired in 1953, the Château du domaine de Capitaine Danjou stands in forty hectares of land. Each year 200,000 bottles of an awardwinning wine are marketed with labels picturing heroic Legionnaires.41 The chateau also contains a museum of two hundred Legion uniforms. At Auriol the Maison du Légionnaire, another retirement home, in 1999 inaugurated a ‘carré légionnaire’ (Legionnaires’ cemetery) in which members may be buried. Wall plaques list the names of those interred, a bas-relief depicts five soldiers, and another plaque bears the Legion’s slogan: ‘Legio Patria Nostra’. Other military corps, other museums and memories Other military museums in France are located at training schools, in regimental headquarters and in cities with a strong military tradition. Many have collections of ‘native’ armaments from the former colonies.42 Almost all have displays, large or small, devoted to colonialism – a reminder of the close


attachment of the armed forces to colonies throughout French history. Often ‘repatriated’ items from Algeria are on show, including those formerly housed in the Musée de l’Oeuvre du Centenaire, opened in the Algiers casbah in 1930.43 These museums give further evidence of the way in which the empire is displayed and colonial exploits are remembered by the military. The Musée national des Parachutistes in Pau has displays on the paras from the Indochinese War and the Algerian War (and in action in Bizerte, Tunisia, in 1961).44 In Saumur, at the Musée de la Cavalerie opened in 1936, ‘le rôle important de la cavalerie dans l’armée d’Afrique où servirent notamment des hommes aussi prestigieux que Charles de Foucauld et Henry de Lespinasse de Bournazel y est . . . souligné’45 (the important role of the cavalry in the Armée d’Afrique in which such prestigious men as Charles de Foucauld and Henry de Lespinasse de Bournazel served is underlined). The Musée de l’Infanterie, opened in 1999 in Montpellier, has five exhibition rooms on the colonies. One concerns the wars of decolonisation: ‘Dans les rizières, une guerre inconnue; dans le djebel, une guerre sans nom’ (In the rice paddies [of Indochina], an incomprehensible war; in the mountains [of Algeria], a nameless war). Another traces the history of the Europeans in the Armée d’Afrique from 1830 to 1965, yet another examines native soldiers in North Africa. Rooms are devoted to goumiers (Moroccan volunteers in the infantry and cavalry from 1908 to 1956) and sahariens (a corps of indigenous soldiers created in 1902). The exhibit highlights the benefits of reconnoitering the desert: ‘Des oeuvres de santé, d’enseignement sont rendues possibles. En retour, une intense production littéraire, artistiques, archéologique, religieuse (Charles de Foucauld) naît de cette rencontre avec le Sahara’46 (Campaigns of health and education were made possible. In return, an intense literary, artistic, archaeological and religious activity (Charles de Foucauld) emerged from this encounter with the Sahara). The town of Montsoreau also has a small museum on the goums marocains. The Musée Militaire des Gloires et Souvenirs du Périgord in Périgueux includes displays on Bugeaud and on overseas troops. The Musée de l’Empéri in Salon-de-Provence contains items from the conquest of Algeria. At Fontainebleau, the Musée Napoléonien has exhibits on Algeria and on the Armée d’Afrique. The Musée du Souvenir des Ecoles de Coëtquidan (which include the Saint-Cyr academy) preserves mementos of its graduates, among them Lyautey and Foucauld.47 It holds many other reminders of colonial actions – including the bicycle that Captain Marchand pedalled across North Africa. On the grounds monumental items returned from North Africa were re-erected, including a statue of Marshal Leclerc from Casablanca, church bells from Meknès, a bas-relief of Foucauld and General Laperrine from Ouargla, a bust of Marshal Franchet d’Esperey from Mostaganem (where the officer was born), a coq gaulois from Condé-Smendou. At the museum entrance stands a bronze allegory of France from the Musée des Beaux-Arts

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in Algiers, a statue with a complex history. Antoine Bourdelle portrayed France as Pallas Athena, holding a lance in one hand, the other shading her eyes as she looks towards the horizon. His statue, commissioned for the city of Bordeaux around 1922, was meant to commemorate the arrival of American troops during the First World War, hence the gesture of the goddess scouting the horizon. That statue was never executed because of lack of funding, but a three-metre-tall version, cast for the visit of King George V to Paris in 1925, was erected at the Porte Maillot Métro station, then moved to Briançon. A smaller copy was incorporated into a monument aux morts in Montauban (Bourdelle’s hometown) in 1932. The third version was erected in Algiers in 1948 with a plaque reading: ‘Mère voici vos fils qui se sont tant battus – Aux volontaires des Forces Françaises Libres morts pour l’honneur et la liberté de la France – 18.6.1940–9.5.1945’ (Mother, these are your sons who fought so hard. To the volunteers of the Free French forces who died for the honour and freedom of France – 18.6.1940–9.5.1945). The statue thus became a monument to the Resistance against the Axis and Occupation, and was considered a Gaullist commemoration. In 1961, in opposition to de Gaulle’s disengagement from Algeria, the OAS bombed the statue, destroying the plinth (on which were sculpted snakes, representing wisdom, and olive leaves) and damaging the statue itself; ‘OAS’ was daubed on the monument. A soldier in Algiers, by happenstance the son of an employee of the Bourdelle Museum in Paris, rescued the remains and alerted the Bourdelle family. After debate about whether the army or the museum should pay the cost, a military vessel returned the statue to France, where it was repaired and installed at Coëtquidan. Backed by regimental banners, it receives a salute from soldiers coming into the building.48 Few statues could have had such a circuitous route to the place they stand, but Bourdelle’s is a vivid reminder to France’s officer elite of the two world wars, France’s presence in Algeria and the controversial withdrawal from North Africa. At Senlis a museum is dedicated to another colonial corps. The spahis were originally Turkish soldiers in the employ of the dey of Algiers. After the 1830 conquest, Colonel Yusuf – a converted Frenchman who worked first for the dey, then the French – reorganised the spahis as a French force. In colourful red and blue uniforms modelled on North African attire, the spahis fought in Crimea, in the Franco-Prussian War, and in the Tonkin campaign of 1885. In the First World War, the spahis served in the Middle East and eastern Europe. Algerian and Moroccan spahis fought in the Second World War, then in Indochina and Algeria. The disbanding of the 7th Spahi Regiment in 1962 marked the disappearance of the last cavalry corps in the army. In 1982 a museum of the corps that had included Lyautey, Laperrine and Franchet d’Esperey opened in the city where a spahi garrison was based for thirty years. Senlis also has a monument to Franco-Moroccan friendship brought from Casablanca and erected in the town in 1978,49 one of many transferred to military sites.50


There is a second spahi museum, opened in 1988, in Valence, the base of the last surviving unit of spahis – who still don North African burnouses as part of their dress uniform. One room contains mannequins with uniforms worn by spahis since the 1840s, the others recount regimental histories and soldiers’ daily life. The museum says that its objectives are to ‘sauvegarder le précieux patrimoine des régiments de spahis . . ., conserver la mémoire des anciens et transmettre aux jeunes le panache et le souci de la gloire de ces “cavaliers” de légende, intéresser un large public à l’histoire et contribuer notamment à l’éducation des jeunes générations’ (safeguard the precious heritage of the spahi regiments . . ., to preserve the memory of veterans and pass on to youth the panche and the pride in glory of these ‘knights’ of legend, to create an interest in history among the public and especially to contribute to the education of the young generation). It adds proudly that ‘le musée est un lieu privilégié où souffle l’esprit spahi, vecteur de générosité, de dynamisme et de disponibilité au service des armes de la France’51 (the museum is a privileged site where the spahi spirit lives on, a vector of generosity, dynamism and willingness to bear arms in service to France). The Musée de l’Armée, part of the Invalides site in Paris, is the national army museum.52 A Salle d’Egypte is a reminder of Napoleon’s expedition in 1798. The Salle Bugeaud is devoted to France in North Africa and displays mementos of Bugeaud (1784–1849), military commander of Oran in the 1830s, then Governor-General of Algeria. There are souvenirs of other colonial soldiers as well: Yusuf’s sword, and personal effects of the Duc de Reichstadt, the Duc d’Orléans (the son of Louis-Philippe, who served in Algeria in the 1830s), and the Duc d’Aumale, Governor-General in 1847–1848. The cap, cane, burnous, writing table and trunk of the Duc de Montpensier, who served in Algeria in the 1840s, are arrayed in the reconstruction of camp quarters. Maps and paintings – such as Horace Vernet’s ‘Attaque du col de la Mouzaïa’ (Attack on the Mouzaia Pass) (1833) and Eugène Flandrin’s rendition of the assault on Constantine in 1837 – detail battles. Uniforms and weapons introduce Legionnaires and zouaves. A ring, pen, gun and Koran were the property of Abd el-Kader: ‘Chef musulman de la région Mascara, intelligent, entreprenant et courageux, il fut notre adversaire le plus dangereux de 1832 à 1847’ (The Muslim chief of the Mascara region, intelligent, entrepreneurial and courageous, he was our most dangerous adversary from 1832 to 1847). The defeated Abd el-Kader was exiled to Syria, where he ‘s’y comporte en ami de la France lors des massacres [in Syria] de 1860 et à nouveau en 1870 et 1871’ (acted as a friend to France during the massacres [of Christians in Syria] in 1860 and again in 1870 and 1871). The museum also shows North African weaponry, harnesses and pipes, though captioning is somewhat cavalier: one document is identified only as a ‘manuscrit en langue arabe’ (manuscript in the Arab language). Many objects are shown as relics of campaigns: the regimental flag which at Constantine on 13 October 1837 ‘est resté exposé deux heures sous le feu jusqu’à le reddition de

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l’ennemi’ (for two hours withstood fire until the surrender of the enemy). (Another relic suffered misadventure – only fragments of the Moroccan sultan’s parasol, captured by Bugeaud at Isly, survived a fire at the Invalides in 1851.) The Musée de l’Armée’s colonial exhibits are restricted, curiously, to Algeria and to the early period of conquest. They present a straightforward interpretation of French heroism and adventure, along with the resistance, but sometimes ultimately collaboration, of Arab chieftains. Fancy uniforms, banners and weaponry suggest a swashbuckling version of warfare. But colonial reminders are not restricted to the museum proper. Statues of Gallieni, Lyautey and Gouraud stand in the vicinity. Lyautey is buried in the Invalides, and the crypt of the church there contains the tombs of other figures associated with imperialism. On the walls of the Invalides plaques honour tirailleurs africains, zouaves, spahis and sahariens, goumiers marocains and Legionnaires, ‘tous ceux qui sont morts pour la France en Indochine 1858–1955’ (all those who died for France in Indochina, 1858–1955), fallen graduates of the Ecole Coloniale, and civilians and soldiers who took part in attacks on Casablanca in 1907 and 1908. Army medical officers have placed a plaque in homage to Lyautey and to their comrades; a lengthy inscription concludes with a stentorian quotation from Lyautey. The doctors ‘ont mérité par leurs luttes contre les génies épidémiques, par leur ardeur à découvrir, à démontrer et à instruire, par leurs sacrifices sur les champs de bataille de la plus grande France disséminés sur les cinq continent, les îles et les océans limitrophes, l’amour des populations indigènes, l’honneur de diffuser la pensée française, la confiance de leurs chefs et camarades combattants, l’hommage de ce conquérant pacifique qui révéla son secret en déclarant, “Un médecin vaut un bataillon” ’ (by their struggles against epidemic diseases, their ardour in researching, demonstrating and instructing, their sacrifices on the battlefields of Greater France spread over five continents, islands and oceans, their love of indigenous peoples, the honour they had in spreading French thought, and the trust of their superiors and combatant comrades, they were worthy of the accolade of that peaceful conqueror who revealed his secret when he declared, ‘One doctor is worth a whole batallion’). Across town, in the Val-de-Grâce military hospital, is the Musée du Service de santé des Armées. A panel explains that ‘depuis le XVIIe siècle, le Service de santé des Armées est toujours intervenu dans les parties les plus reculées du monde. Dès les conquêtes coloniales, il a su mériter la reconnaissance et la confiance des populations des pays étrangers par ses actions humanitaires, consultations et soins aux populations civiles, luttes contre les grandes endémies et les épidémies, enseignement grâce à l’ouverture d’écoles de médecine, recherches dans les Instituts Pasteur’ (ever since the seventeenth siècle, the Service de santé des Armées has intervened in the most distant parts of the world. From the time of colonial conquests onwards, it has merited the recognition and trust of the peoples of foreign countries through


its humanitarian actions, consultations and care for civilians, campaigns against endemic and epidemic diseases, and education thanks to the opening of medical schools, research in the Instituts Pasteur) and so on. The colonies provided many opportunities for medical research, as doctors were kept busy treating tropical diseases afflicting troops and natives. Several doctors are singled out as worthy examples. Medical personnel accompanying Dumont d’Urville and Duperré to the South Pacific carried out research on pharmacology and natural science. François-Clément Maillot developed quinine treatment for the expeditionary corps in Algeria in 1832. Alphonse Laveran (1845–1922) (for whom the square outside the Val-de-Grâce is named), while working in Constantine in 1880, discovered the vector of malaria, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. A certificate from the Institut de France gives him the accolade of being a ‘pionnier de la plus grande France’ (pioneer of Greater France). Also on display are a bust of Laveran, his microscope and surgery kit. Pasteur institutes were among the most notable and noble colonial creations, and photographs show institutes in Bamarko, Saigon, Dakar, Antananarivo and Pondicherry. The museum honours Alexandre Yersin, who set up Instituts Pasteur in Hanoi and directed the Ecole de Médecine in Indochina. Paul-Louis Simion, director of the Institut Pasteur in Saigon, demonstrated the role of lice in the transmission of plague, and Georges Robic-Tane developed a vaccination against the disease. Doctors were involved in overseas territories through the entire history and expanse of the empire. The museum exhibits a painting of wounded soldiers in Algeria in the 1840s; another is an allegory of a pith-helmeted man dying in the desert, gripped in the claws of a terrifying beast, as doctors arrive just in time to save him. There is a photograph of the monument on Gorée island honouring doctors and pharmacists who died in an epidemic of yellow fever in 1878. Collections contain the model of the first aeroplane used for medical evacuations (in Morocco in 1921), the uniform of a doctor from the troupes coloniales in 1930, and – a tribute to the large number of native medical auxiliaries – a small statue of an African stretcher bearer. There are photographs of military hospitals for colonial soldiers in France during the First World War. A drawing of a doctor and nurses in combat gear in Indochina in the early 1950s, and a print of a first-aid post at Dien Bien Phu in March 1954, recall the casualties of wars of decolonisation. The Val-de-Grâce museum is one of the most fascinating small museums in Paris with exhibitions on the métropole as well as the colonies. The emphasis is on the achievements of medical personnel and on the humanitarian nature of the army’s work. However, there is no particular consideration of the problems of imperial medicine: woeful lack of sufficient medical care in many regions, new diseases introduced by Europeans, the crippling effects of tropical diseases on the French forces. The limited training, salaries and status of indigenous medical personnel is not discussed, nor is the

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differential treatment available to natives versus colonials. The museum presents medicine as one of the most successful aspects of France’s mission civilisatrice. It also shows how, after colonies gained independence, colonial clinics continued to function, often with French personnel. In discussing French medical activities overseas after the end of empire – the work of the Pasteur institutes, humanitarian aid in natural disasters, the efforts of Médecins sans Frontières – colonial medicine is inscribed within a longer history of research, prophylaxis and treatment of the ill and injured. While the colonial history of the army is recorded in regimental museums, those at officers’ training academies and the museum of the Service de Santé, the navy’s colonial service is less extensively recalled in museums. Paris’s Musée de la Marine, unlike the army museums, pays relatively little attention to colonies, perhaps partly because of its exiguous premises in the Palais de Chaillot. With collections dating back to 1748, this is one of the oldest museums in France, and one of the two oldest maritime museums in the world. During its long history, the navy museum has regularly mounted exhibits relating to the colonies. In 1843, for instance, it opened a gallery popularly called the ‘Salle des Sauvages’ (Gallery of Savages) for relics from the wreck of La Pérouse’s ship – presented to the French king in 1828 by Dumont d’Urville – and objects ‘à l’usage des sauvages’ (used by savages). Under a director who had sailed with Dumont d’Urville, the museum’s workshops made models of Asian and Oceanic sailing craft. Ethnographic objects were displayed until they became too cumbersome and were distributed to other museums.53 The present-day galleries include a large vitrine devoted to La Pérouse, and another on the voyages sent to search for the ill-fated explorer. Dumont d’Urville is remembered by an astrolabe, books and engravings, an extract from his logbook, a map of Terre Adélie, a portrait and the explorer’s telescope and cane. There is also a bust of Bougainville, another Pacific explorer. One exhibit centres on the transport of the Luxor column – a gift from Mehmet Ali to the French king – from Egypt to France in the 1830s. Though not strictly a colonial ‘memento’, the column erected in the Place de la Corcorde in 1836 links Napoleon’s earlier expedition to Egypt and the ‘Egyptomania’ that followed with later French building of the Suez Canal, opened by Empress Eugénie in 1869. There are recollections of other French enterprises in the maritime museum as well, such as paintings of the capture of Algiers and Saigon. Military museums embody the collective memory of old soldiers. Veterans of particular regiments and campaigns have formed associations to maintain contacts, keep abreast of their units’ actions, and preserve the esprit de corps developed in barracks and on battlefields. ‘Le Burnous’, the Association Amicale des Spahis, celebrated its centenary in 1995 with a three-day festival in Senlis, including concerts, a conference on Yusuf (‘premier spahi de


France’ [the first French spahi]), a mass and remembrance day ceremonies. Observances on 11 November, 14 July and other military anniversaries bring together anciens combattants. Magazines such as the Foreign Legion’s Képi blanc and L’Ancre d’or, published by the troupes de Marine, recount the history and preserve regimental memories. It is thus perhaps in army and navy museums, associations, anniversary observances and periodicals that the greatest efforts are made to safeguard and nuture group memories of the colonies. These memories are ones of comradeship, aventure and battle, and also ones of regret at the retreat from empire and grief over fallen colleagues. The museums that serve as the repository of military memories are full of colourful flags and regimental banners, guns and swords, mannequins modelling brilliant uniforms, panoramas of battles and portraits of heroes. These often present a cleaned-up image of the blood and gore of battle, a triumphal representation of soldiers each braver and more loyal than the other, the pageantry of parades and commemorations, the mystique of military life. The social background of soldiers, their personal lives and careers after tours of duty ended receive little attention. The reasons behind imperial expansion are seldom explored – theirs was not to reason why, as Tennyson’s line on the soldier’s fate runs. The less glamourous side of military life, as well as off-duty behaviour – drinking, whoring, carousing – are covered with discreet silence. Insubordination, mutiny and desertion are not mentioned, nor are the pillage, torture and summary executions sometimes carried out by soldiers in wars of colonial conquest and decolonisation. Military museums thus illustrate the inherent conflict between memory and history. These exhibitions reinforce veterans’ solidarity, honour their courage and sacrifice and, in general, legitimise the causes for which they fought. As the Foreign Legion museum is called, each is a ‘musée du souvenir’ (museum of remembrance). Soldiers who visit regimental museums relive old battles, mourn departed comrades, perhaps indulge in passions for weaponry, uniforms and the intricacies of battlefield strategy. Those who do not share these memories may have different experiences: children for whom war may seem only a game, those on the losing side of conflicts in which their own actions are portrayed in unfavourable terms, pacifists and other opponents of war who do not rejoice in laudatory portrayals, historians who seek a more analytical interpretation of the ideology of warfare. Reconciling various approaches and satisfying different ‘clienteles’ is the major challenge for special-interest museums, such as the military museums that are generally funded and operated by the military and which are located on military premises. Museums at the Invalides or Val-de-Grâce, and those of the Troupes de Marine in Fréjus and the Légion Etrangère in Aubagne, are not just exhibitions, but are also shrines and sanctuaries: the ‘mission statements’ are not always compatible.

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Colonialism and museums Museums such as the ones in La Rochelle and Lorient aim to present exploration, trade and colonisation in an historiographically astute fashion. They combine art and objects, old accounts and more contemporary reflections. They choose the items on display not entirely for either aesthetic appeal or because the objects have the sacred character of relics, but above all because they illustrate the history being recounted. They thus have perhaps the widest latitude in styles of display and necessity of interpretation. They may hope to be comprehensive, but as both the Musée du Nouveau Monde and the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes suggest, the selection of objects, the wording of captions, the periods and themes emphasised – as well as the ‘practical’ questions such as space, funding and curatorship – inevitably inflect the impression of colonialism that they leave. Though historical in orientation, fine arts museums and military museums are rather different institutions from such museums of history. They provide two further perspectives on colonial memories and colonial history. There is nevertheless much overlap: there exists a long tradition of maritime and military art recording campaigns, and civilian artists found in battles and soldiers attractive subjects. For art museums, however, the approach remains primarily aesthetic; for military ones, more specifically commemorative. For the former, culture (in the more restricted sense of the word) is foremost; in the latter, the life of action is privileged. Paintings and sculptures in art museums sometimes represent colonials, but focus particularly on natives. Military museums contain objects and portraits of the natives – many considered enemies of France in the time of conquest and again during decolonisation, but valued comrades when they fought on the French side – but the emphasis is on French soldiers and sailors. Visitors in colonial times faced two complementary visions of the empire: the picturesque regions to which France ventured, the incorporated domains over which Frenchmen ruled by force of arms. Artists and soldiers were both feted as heroes – Bugeaud and Delacroix, the Orientalist painters and the spahis and goumiers, Gauguin and Lyautey – and, by colonial promoters, treated as agents in France’s international mission. Present-day visitors see in museums many of the same traces of the empire as did their forebears. In newer museums, as at Boulogne-Billancourt, these appear in a renovated mise en scène. Some displays make reference to earlier exhibitions: the samples labelled ‘Musée Colonial’ at the Nantes natural history museum, or posters of the 1906 and 1922 exhibitions at the Marseille Chamber of Commerce. In still others, they endure in a fashion (and sometimes in a language) almost unmediated by changing interpretations of the colonial age; even some relatively recent museums, such as the one in Fréjus, are surprising for their traditional style and vocabulary. Both fine arts


museums and military museums amassed collections, opened galleries and designed presentations in the late 1800s and early 1900s – just as did specifically colonial museums and ethnographic museums – to show off the empire and, in a more or less explicit way, to vaunt France’s colonial vocation. Permanent displays of colonial-era art in institutions such as the Musée des Années Trente now offer a more contextualised appreciation of colonialism, though in many museums Orientalist and colonial art simply hang alongside portrayals of Paris and the provinces, the ruins of antiquity and the wonders of Europe. The phenomenon of colonialism is often implicitly subsumed to a long-term artistic interest in far-away places, or slotted into the chronology of evolving artistic styles. Army and navy museums are less successful or less inclined to contextualise colonialist militarism, perhaps because they serve as the guardians of the corporate memories of the corps and regiments whose exploits they record. In such venues, battlefield victories and sacrifices, ‘doing one’s duty’, aggression and the shedding of blood are viewed as part of the army’s mission, even when humanitarian efforts are emphasised. Conquest of territory is viewed as a glorious triumph; retreat from empire can but be seen as an heroic defeat. The most modern (and, not coincidentally, the most recently established) of the army museums at the Val-de-Grâce constitutes an exception in its more reflective and interpretive evocation of one aspect of the army’s history. History museums, fine arts museums and military museums provided three venues in which colonialism could be impressed on the minds and hearts of the French public. They remain three of the repositories in which collective memories are preserved, and three vectors along which the history of colonialism is presented to present-day audiences. The wealth of these institutions reflects the role colonialism occupied in French life. The varying interpretations that they now offer can be seen, for instance, in the different language used at the Musée des Années Trente, on the one hand, and the Musée des Troupes de Marine or, even more pointedly, at the Musée de l’Algérie Française, on the other. This reflects the clash of memories about the colonial age, and the challenge of reconciling memory with history.

Anti-colonial art And what of anti-colonial art and artefacts? Paintings (though perhaps less obviously photographs) in museums suggest, explicitly or implicitly, a generally positive attitude towards colonialism with scenes of battles, Orientalist depictions of exoticism, heroic portraits of imperial rulers, peaceful scenes of ‘typical’ native life. An iconography of anti-colonialism certainly exists – newspaper cartoons caricaturing colonial leaders and their ambitions, photographs showing the horrors of forced labour, arbitrary punishment and miserable conditions to which many natives were subjected, posters

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advertising anti-colonial demonstrations. Many are preserved in archives, though relatively few are displayed in museums. The anti-slavery campaign engendered representations of suffering slaves and of rebels breaking their chains in emancipation – some are displayed at the Musée du Nouveau Monde in La Rochelle – but these examples of opposition to empire provide an exception to less negative views contained in most collections. Museums in former colonies, however, are filled with engagé art recounting liberation struggles. In Hanoi, for example, the fine arts museum has pictures of guerrilla fighters, portraits of Ho Chi Minh and of heroic peasants and proletarians, and triumphalist depictions of the French defeat. Many non-European artists (and some European ones) have exhibited works that provide a critical commentary on colonialism; some of their works are occasionally put on show at special exhibitions in France, and a few works end up in permanent collections.54 In the metropole, anti-colonialist works do not form a large component of permanent collections.55 By the time anti-colonialist movements hit their stride in the 1950s, abstract expressionism and other experimental schools were not conducive to figurative representations of political opinions. The Algerian War did influence some artists in an oblique fashion: Picassco began his interpretation of Delacroix’s ‘Les Femmes d’Alger’ (The Women of Algiers) just after the insurrection began. Other artists expressed their anti-colonial sentiments in avant-garde works that are not easily read except by the artistically initiated or produced arowedly militant art that now appears agitprop. Some works were censored. Before he could exhibit one of his paintings, the Communist André Fougeron had to change the title of ‘Nords-Africains aux portes de la ville’ (North Africans at the Gates of the City) – a 1954 work representing two Algerian men huddling under a sheet of corrugated iron on the outskirts of a metropolis – to ‘La Zone’ (The ‘Zone’). Fougeron’s painting of earthquake victims in Orléansville in 1954 was rejected for the Salon d’Automne the following year, the vision of suffering Algerians considered too controversial given the political circumstances. Fougeron nevertheless persisted four years later with ‘Massacre de Sakhiet Sidi Youssef’ (Massacre of Sakhiet Sidi Youssef ) – a pile of women’s and men’s dead bodies behind which appear the boots and gunstocks of soldiers – painted after the French bombing of a Tunisian village. In ‘Manifestation du 13 février’ (13 February Demonstration), Fougeron commemorated a demonstration held after the killing of anti-war protesters at the Charonne Métro station in 1962. Fougeron was not the only artist whose works engaged with anti-colonialism. Boris Taslitzky’s ‘Le Père algérien’ (The Algerian Father), in its depiction of a poor Maghrebin holding his child, revealed the artist’s sympathies with the colonised, and the ‘affichiste’ artists incorporated political slogans into their paintings, as with Raymond Hains’s ‘Paix en Algérie’ (Peace in Algeria) and the ironic ‘L’Algérie perdue ce serait Sedan’ (If Algeria’s Lost – It’s Sedan All Over) (1956).56 Museum visitors have to search, however, to find such blatant examples of anti-colonialist art.


An exception is a painting recently given pride of place in a Strasbourg museum, the ‘Grand Tableau Antifasciste’ (Great Antifacist Painting), painted in 1960 by the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Lebel, the Italians Enrico Baj, Gianni Dova, Antonio Recalcati and Roberto Crippa, and the Icelander Erro (also known as Ferro). The moving force was Lebel, an artist in his mid-twenties who professed himself an anarchist, and who had been active in anti-colonial and avant-garde causes since the mid-1950s. In 1960 and 1961 he organised three ‘Anti-Procès’ ‘happenings’ mixing jazz and painting, in Paris, Venice and Milan, and the collective painting was shown at the last of these exhibitions. Lebel gathered his Italian and Icelandic colleagues in Crippa’s studio in Milan to paint the work in protest at the Algerian War. Opposition to the war in France and internationally was growing, as were attempts to suppress dissent. Early that year began the trial of Francis Jeanson, accused of masterminding a network of sympathisers who directed money and arms to the Algerian nationalists. Later in 1960 a group of intellectuals signed a ‘Manifeste des 121’, a subversive statement proclaiming the right of French conscripts to refuse service in Algeria. The ‘Grand Tableau Antifasciste’ was intended as a further contribution to anti-war efforts. According to Lebel, ‘Nous nous trouvons de l’autre côté de la barricade. Traîtres à la Patrie? Oui, nous le sommes. Rien ne nous répugne davantage que la “France”, son prétendu génie et ses “traditions libérales”. Nous nous opposons de toutes nos forces à la politique patriotarde, escalavagiste qui se cache derrière le torchon tricolore’57 (We found ourselves on the other side of the barricades. Traitors to the patrie? Yes, we were. Nothing disgusted us more than ‘France’, its so-called genius and its ‘liberal traditions’. We were totally opposed to this sort of chauvinistic and pro-slavery politics that hid behind a tricoloured rag). The artists painted a four-by-five-metre canvas in an intentionally spontaneous and disparate fashion, an attempt, Lebel said, to break with the tradition of individual styles. The work shows the influence of Dadaism and of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, as well as the 1950s’ experimental art. Several figures dominate the painting. The most arresting is a stylised body of a woman with spread legs who is symbolically penetrated from above and below; the image alludes to Djamila Boupacha’s revelations about her rape and torture by French soldiers. Elsewhere are figures representing religious and political power. One is a bemedelled general wearing a sash with the words ‘La Morale’ (Morality), a picture of Pope John XXIII on his chest and a Holy Family drawn in his open mouth. Near a figure labelled ‘La Patrie’ are the words ‘La Mort’ (Death). Eviscerated corpses, a swastika, screaming mouths, skulls and other horrific images appear, as do the names of the Algerian cities Sétif and Constantine. A copy of the ‘Manifeste des 121’ was pasted onto the work. With lurid colours, violent imagery and stark caricatures, the ‘Grand Tableau Antifasciste’ proved politically and aesthetically shocking. Fourteen

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days after the exhibition opening, Italian police confiscated the painting, removing it since a judge decreed that the image of the pope was an offense to religion and the church. They unceremoniously stripped the painting from its frame, folded it and carried the canvas to the prefecture of police. Lebel was placed under arrest for two days. An outcry by intellectuals and artists failed to secure the release of the painting, and it remained sequestered in the Milan questura until 1986, which lawyers finally secured its return (in a damaged state) to Baj. The ‘Grand Tableau Antifasciste’ was first shown in France in the 1992 Invalides exhibition on the Algerian War. In 1996 it again came to public view in a show on art and politics held at the Pompidou Centre, which nevertheless declined to accept the work as a gift from the artists. They subsequently decided to donate the painting to a Marseille museum, whose directors formally agreed to accept and display the work. After eight years, specific arrangements had not been worked out; meanwhile, the longtime Socialist government had lost its majority in the Marseille city council, and the new conservative administration which had oversight of city museums showed no enthusiasm for the work. In 1999 the new Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain in Strasbourg took the painting, restored it and displayed it as a centrepiece of its permanent collection.58 The itinerary of the painting from 1960 to 2000, when it was rehung in Strasbourg, is perhaps indicative of museums’ reluctance to showcase anti-colonial works that evoke divisive and painful memories.

6 The Colonial Legacy of Non-Western Art in French Museums

French museums, in common with many in Europe, contain countless artworks and everyday objects from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the pre-Columbian Americas. Many come from France’s old colonies and were collected during the imperial age by explorers, administrators, missionaries and soldiers, private individuals and official expeditions. Collections include pieces brought home as curios and souvenirs, as well as works carefully selected by art experts and anthropologists. Indigenous people made free will gifts of some objects and sold others. Europeans commissioned works, and local artisans produced some specifically for trade. Occasionally Europeans simply recovered objects discarded when their ritual functions came to an end. Other items, however, were pilfered from areas of conquest. Museums have continued collecting non-Western art since the end of the colonial era, mostly at art sales and auctions, though with episodic controversies about provenance, authenticity and price. Not all non-Western art in France can be considered in even a remote sense as colonial ‘booty’, and art-lovers from the Third World have acknowledged the role played by European institutions in preservation of cultural artefacts.1 Yet collections currently curated and exhibited owe much to colonial perspectives and collecting practices. Furthermore, most of the museums in which they are displayed – including the Musée de l’Homme, the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques-Musée Guimet and the recently closed Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (MAAO) – date from the colonial period. They were established when France ruled an empire, and when collectors, social scientists, dealers and spectators, as well as European avant-garde painters, sculptors and designers fascinated by primitive art, carried out their activities in the context of imperialism. In this sense, much non-Western art on show is connected to the history of expansion and the diverse ideologies that underpinned it, took issue with it, or were engendered by the ‘culture contact’ it created. Collections of non-Western art, and the institutions that house them, are more directly colonial lieux de mémoire than often realised.2 Current debates and projects concerning the ethnographic 245

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museums reflect efforts to ‘decolonise’ exhibition of primitive arts and crafts.3 Connections between museums and colonialism are particularly blatant with art from black Africa and the Pacific islands: works variously called ‘primitive arts’, ‘tribal arts’, ‘savage art’, ‘Negro art’ (art nègre), art from distant places (arts lointains), or – an increasingly popular designation – arts premiers (generally translated as ‘primal arts’). The very names suggest changing views about works from very different cultures grouped together but contrasted with the arts of Europe and Asia.4 One straightforward trait that evidences connections between colonialism and museums appears in the strengths of French collections, which to a great degree coincide with areas of colonisation. Sub-Saharan African art in France, for example, is concentrated on countries of the former AOF, AEF and Madagascar. Collections on eastern and southern Africa – regions of British, Portuguese and German penetration – were historically less extensive, although acquisitions in recent decades have filled gaps. French Polynesia and New Caledonia are well represented for Oceania. Similarly, collections of Asian art are strong in Khmer and Cham works from Indochina, sparked by fascination for the temples of Cambodia and by the collecting efforts of colonials and the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient. French museums have far fewer works of Indian art than do British institutions, and there is much less Indonesian art than in the Netherlands. Non-Western collections in European museums constitute multiple lieux de mémoire. They form part of the heritage of the societies that created the works, embodying particular artistic skills and codes, and the cultural, religious, social and political functions that objects performed. They represent the collective identity of cultural groups, though it should be remembered that they also show the vision of an individual sculptor, painter or artisan, as well as the specific period when they were produced. Despite what many colonial-era observers thought, ‘traditional’ design was not immutable. Secondly, many works are a legacy of colonialism, the ideologies that patterned French views of people overseas, the circumstances in which collections were assembled, the ‘discovery’ of Asian and primitive art, and the vogue for founding museums in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Finally, these collections are now part of the French artistic patrimony. For generations, they have inspired artists and writers (such as Cubists and Surrealists), entertained gallery visitors enthralled by marvels from darkest Africa or mythical Oceania, stimulated the vocations of travellers and colonialists (as well as anti-colonialists), and provided research materials for scholars. Some of the most famous artworks in France are not French – the Winged Victory of Samothrace, for instance – but they are now essential parts of the French cultural heritage. So too are the Dogon masks, Khmer sculptures and Polynesian weapons housed in French museums.

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This chapter will explore non-Western art collections in France, the connections between them and the colonial enterprise, and how changes in exhibition policies reveal the evolution of colonial and post-colonial attitudes. It begins with an overview of collecting since the ancien régime, then looks at the Musée de l’Homme and the project for a museum of arts premiers foreshadowed by the opening of ethnographic galleries in the Louvre. Next comes an examination of African and Oceanic art in other museums in Paris and the provinces, which provides an opportunity for discussion about how best to exhibit primitive art. The chapter concludes with consideration of Asian and Arabo-Islamic art in France.5

Collecting and colonialism The history of ethnographic collections and exhibitions relates to the development of both museums and scientific knowledge, mirroring the evolution of France’s engagement with the wider world. In the ancien régime, noble or bourgeois amateurs and sometimes institutions put together cabinets de curiosités. As the name indicates, they were generally eclectic and sometimes random assortments of oddities from around the world. They included naturalia, such as flora and fauna, and artificialia (or mirabilia) of man-made artefacts, kept for novelty value, aesthetic appeal or rarity. The cabinet of curiosities created at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris in 1662, one of the best known in pre-Revolutionary France, included stuffed birds from India and rare fish preserved in spirits, Levantine shoes, Japanese armour, the mummified body of an Arab and antique medals. Such cabinets testified to unsystematic interest in overseas areas that remained unfamiliar, and to a desire to possess strange and wondrous objects. Ethnographic items, natural history specimens, archeological relics and even human remains were more or less indiscriminately collected and exhibited side by side.6 Serious study of non-Western societies gained momentum from Enlightenment ideas and voyages of exploration. In 1749 the Comte de Buffon published an Histoire naturelle de l’homme, generally considered the first systematic treatise on man in his environment, and in 1799, the idéologues set up the Société des Observateurs de l’homme, forerunner of the disciplines of ethnography, ethnology and anthropology. The Oceanic voyages of Bougainville, La Pérouse and Bruni d’Entrecasteaux from the 1760s to the 1790s created interest in distant countries, sparked debates in philosophy and natural science, and stimulated collection of rare objects from newly discovered worlds and primitive societies. With the Revolution, the Jardin du Roi became the Muséum d’histoire naturelle, a repository for natural specimens and ethnographic objects.7 Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt not only helped create the science of Egyptology, and a fad for things pharaonic, but provided a bounty of objects for display.

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As Napoleon prepared to send another voyage to the South Seas in 1800, this one commanded by Nicolas Baudin, Joseph-Marie de Gérando published Considérations sur les diverses méthodes à suivre dans l’observation des peuples sauvages, the first manual of ethnographic methodology. Gérando advocated research methods – fieldwork and participant–observer analysis – that only later became standard for social scientists: ‘Le premier moyen pour bien connaître les Sauvages est de devenir en quelques sorte l’un d’entre eux’8 (The first rule for getting to know savages well is, after a fashion, to become one of them). For those who could not travel, objects from the wider world provided materials for study and entertainment at home. At the end of the 1700s, and particularly during the nineteenth century, museums were set up to display treasures and curiosities. They also acquired items from the aristocratic cabinets of curiosities seized during the Revolution. Yet already questions arose of how and where to display these works, and whether they should be treated as art or as artefacts, placed alongside European works or quarantined in special collections. In 1827 the Musée du Louvre created a Musée Egyptien, galleries devoted largely to objects bought back by Napoleon. Plans for a navy museum had been discussed from the mid-1820s, and a further incentive came with the donation of Dumont d’Urville’s collection to the Louvre in 1829. A Musée de la Marine, officially created that year, opened to the public in the Louvre palace in 1837. The Salle La Pérouse displayed an obelisk carved to honour the lost explorer of Oceania, and such relics as cannon, clocks, chains and hooks, as well as ethnographic artefacts from the South Pacific. Further exotic displays were put on show with the opening in 1847 of a gallery of Babylonian works, and a ‘Galerie d’Alger’ was set up for the twentieth anniversary of the conquest of Algiers. Also in 1850, the Louvre inaugurated a ‘Musée Ethnographique’: artefacts from around the world including four rooms of Japanese and Chinese collections. Non-European works were increasingly attracting museum visitors and donors – the French consul in Shanghai presented 385 objects to the Louvre, the consul in Cairo gave 650 largely Sudanese items, other gifts came from Siam and America.9 During the nineteenth century and for some time afterwards, divisions between non-European and early European societies remained vague in study and exhibitions. Archaeology, prehistory, natural history and the emerging fields of ethnology, ethnography and anthropology were not yet separate. Overseas human cultures were shown alongside flora and fauna, displays on ‘savages’ or ‘primitives’ an adjunct to natural history. With evolutionary theories gaining currency, primitive societies were often considered early stages in human evolution, useful to investigate for evidence about the cultural ancestry of contemporary people, part of the chronology from the stone age to the modern age. Imperialism produced other imperatives for study of foreign parts: a desire to find out about people and places that Europeans were colonising, to demonstrate the benefits of the mission


civilisatrice, and to recruit support for empire on the home front. Many African and Oceanic sculptures, for instance, ended up in French collections because of missionaries’ desire to preserve and display a few fetishes and idols – many others were destroyed – that the ‘heathen’ worshipped before the blessed arrival of Christianity; winning converts abroad and stimulating religious vocations in France went together. Ethnography and exhibitions accompanied empire. As the French imperium expanded from the mid-1800s, works from newly claimed colonies and spheres of influence arrived in growing quantity and diversity. The expositions universelles in 1867 and afterwards provided forums for showing off artefacts. Scientists investigating foreign societies, who generally privileged study of material objects, gathered in new associations. Paul Broca founded the Société ethnologique de Paris in 1839, the first international congress of anthropology and archaeology was held in 1866, a Revue d’anthropologie began in 1872, and the Ecole anthropologique de Paris opened four years later. Only in the Third Republic, when these disciplines and colonialism became more advanced, did circumstances favour the establishment of an ethnographic museum. As early as 1831, Edme-François Jomard, director of the Bibliothèque Royale (as the national library was then called), head of the Société de Géographie, and a veteran of Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, had called for the creation of a proper ethnographical museum. Now developments in science and imperialism, along with a need to find new exhibition space for the crowded Louvre collections, led in 1878 to the founding of a separate ethnographic museum. The move came relatively late in France. The East India Company had opened a museum of Indian art and artefacts in Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a Dutch ethnographic museum already existed in Rotterdam, and the Godeffroy trading company sponsored a museum in Hamburg. Nélia Dias explains this tardiness by France’s rather indecisive colonial policy during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, as well as the relatively slow emergence of anthropological interest in overseas places.10 It was necessary, agrees Serge Tornay, to await the colonial expansion of the last decades of the 1800s for France to get a dedicated ethnographic museum.11 In 1878 the Ministry of the Navy (which still held responsibility for the colonies) sponsored a three-month exhibition of colonial art and artefacts in the Palais de l’Industrie in Paris’s Champs-Elysées. Panopolies of arms, mannequins, maps, costumes and similar objects proved popular with visitors. The display was then transferred to the world’s fair at the Palais du Trocadéro, where its success confirmed public interest in different cultures and validated creation of an ethnographic museum. The museum benefitted greatly from the lobbying of its foundation director, Thédore Hamy. Editor of the Revue d’ethnographie, Hamy proved a key figure in the study of overseas societies and display of ethnographic art. Born in

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1842 in Boulogne, he studied archaeology, palaeontology, natural history and geography. He became interested in ethnology through his friends Paul Broca and Armand de Quatrefages, the latter Professor of Anthropology at the natural history museum; Hamy worked as Quatrefages’s assistant and succeeded to his chair in 1892. Specialising in pre-Columbian civilisations, Hamy attempted to prove, in accordance with a monogenetic view of human origins, the influence of Buddhism on native American cultures and the possible Oriental ancestry of Saharan populations. Works on Cambodia, Oceania, North Africa, the West Indies and sub-Antarctic islands, and also on the writer Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, counted among his publications. He promoted overseas expeditions and, once elected president of the Société de Géographie in 1903, was able to provide support for voyages combining science and colonialism. In a eulogy delivered in 1908, Baron Hulot summed up Hamy’s worldview: ‘Animé par le patriotisme le plus élevé, il se plaisait à ressusciter les grands explorateurs d’autrefois, trop souvent ignorés, enrichissant par ses trouvailles le patrimoine de gloire de la France, suivant avec passion le travail de reconstitution de notre empire colonial, suscitant des vocations, appuyant de son influence les voyageurs, les guidant dans leurs recherches et ne les abandonnant jamais’ (Motivated by the highest sort of patriotism, he took pleasure in bringing back to life the too often forgotten great explorers of yesteryear. By his findings he enriched the glorious heritage of France. He passionately followed the effort to rebuild our colonial empire by inspiring vocations and supporting travellers through his influence, guiding their research and never abandoning them). Hamy himself affirmed in an 1894 lecture on the fabled city of Timbuktu: ‘J’étais depuis de longues années un ardent défenseur de notre expansion coloniale. Mon dévouement à cette cause s’est peut-être augmenté encore lorsque les inconstances m’ont mis ainsi en contact plus intime avec les choses et les hommes du Niger. L’étude attentive et prolongée des événements qui se sont si rapidement succédés sur les bords du grand fleuve me montrait, dans ces lointains parages, nos compatriotes, soldats, missionnaires, explorateurs, toujours à la hauteur de la tâche admirable de pacification et de progrès qui leur était dévolue, et je m’en réjouissais patriotiquement’12 (For many years I have been an ardent defender of our colonial expansion. My devotion to this cause perhaps even grew stronger when fate brought me into the closest contacts with the objects and people of the Niger [region]. Attentive and sustained study of the events that rapidly followed each other on the shores of this great river made me aware of our compatriots in these distant parts – soldiers, missionaries, explorers – who never failed to live up to the admirable work of pacification and progress that was given to them, and which filled me with patriotic joy). The Musée Ethnographique du Trocadéro, founded in 1878 on the site of the international exhibition (some of whose exhibits it acquired), remained open until 1935. Ethnographical objects from the Louvre were transferred to


the Trocadéro, which also took over the pre-Revolutionary royal cabinet of curiosities and other collections from the Bibliothèque nationale and the Musée national des Antiquités. The Ministry of the Navy and the GovernmentGeneral of Algeria were among colonial administrations that lent support. African and pre-Columbian displays opened to the public in 1882, the Asian exhibitions the following year; ones on Madagascar, Algeria and Oceania, as well as on Europe, followed. Hamy was little concerned with the aesthetic aspect of items in his museum, seeing them more as valuable relics from doomed primitive societies rather than as works of art. His major concern was the use value of pieces (as shown by the usual label: ‘objet servant à . . .’ [object used for . . .]). The Trocadéro collections expanded rapidly. Ten thousand pre-Columbian artefacts were donated in 1882, to which were added American items from the Louvre, including the collection of the emancipationist Victor Schoelcher. Brazza’s collection from equatorial Africa was divided between the Muséum d’histoire naturelle and the Trocadéro in 1886. Also from sub-Saharan Africa came items donated by Alfred Marche, an explorer on the Ogouée river in the mid-1870s, and by Paul Soleillet from the French Soudan. General Dodds presented booty secured by soldiers who took the palace of the king of Dahomey in 1892–1893, including the throne of the defeated King Béhanzin, and dynastic statues of Guézo, Guelélé (Gléglé) and Béhanzin. Numerous objects from North Africa and Oceania also entered the museum. For example, John Higginson, an Irishman who spearheaded French expansion in the New Hebrides, presented a collection of Melanesian artefacts in 1884. ‘Le développement des collections’, concludes Dias, ‘se fait donc au rhythme de la conquête coloniale’13 (‘The development of the collections echoed the rhythm of colonial conquest’). Space devoted to pre-Columbian, African and Oceanic collections filled so rapidly that Asian artefacts were transferred to the new Guimet Museum. The Trocadéro museum was a popular attraction for as many as four thousand visitors a day at the end of the nineteenth century, even though lack of staff restricted opening hours. Visitors came from a public sensitised to overseas cultures by the colonial lobby, press accounts of the exploits of intrepid adventurers and missionaries, and the world’s fairs that took place in 1889 and 1900. The museum proved a boon to future explorers and colonialists, whose imagination was stimulated by the Trocadéro. The collection also worked its effect on artists. Famously, Picasso recalled a visit in 1906, one of his first encounters with the African art linked to Cubism and the avant-garde.14 This Belle Epoque saw growing interest in primitive works among artists and dealers, attracted not because of the objects’ function or indeed the social contexts in which they were created. What appealed to the artists was the aesthetic novelty, the different approach to form, shape and colour, the combination of materials and the non-representational aspect (at least in

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Western canonical perspective) of these creations. Artists also began to collect primitive art, Maurice de Vlaminck the first in France, around 1905, to put together a substantial collection; by 1908, Matisse owned twenty African works, and Picasso amassed a larger collection from Africa and Oceania. Guillaume Apollinaire, poet and art critic, both popularised and purchased African art. Paul Guillaume started trading in art nègre in 1912, founded a Société des Mélanophiles (lovers of ‘black’ art) and proposed the creation of a museum of primitive art. In 1918 he established a journal to showcase non-European works, and the following year started exhibitions of art sauvage that continued until 1927. Meanwhile, the Louvre mounted a show of ‘art indigène des colonies françaises’ (indigenous art of the French colonies) in 1923, and one of pre-Columbian art six years later. By this time, Surrealists such as Man Ray, Yves Tanguy and André Breton had discovered the Inuit and Pacific islands art that exercised great influence on their own work, both artistic and literary.15 In the roaring twenties, Josephine Baker created a vogue for African and African-American cultures in Paris; music-hall performances and countless songs conjured up primitive folk. The 1924–1925 Citroën-sponsored Croisière noire crossing of the Sahara and black Africa scored a great success, intriguing Frenchmen with the possibilities of automobile travel and, thanks to the film of the trek, with the landscapes and peoples of Africa. ‘Primitivism’, in short, was in full swing in the 1920s and 1930s, coinciding with the heyday of imperialism, and crystallised at the 1931 colonial exhibition.16 Crowds flocked to the Bois de Vincennes exhibition, and continued to patronise the ‘permanent’ Musée Colonial. However, the Trocadéro, despite its attraction to artists, budding colonialists and tourists, began to suffer from overcrowded displays, an old-fashioned exhibition style, insufficient budgets, and such practical problems as the lack of guidebooks, heating and other conveniences. There was almost no space for research or conservation. Collections were damaged by dust, humidity and insects. Already at the time of Hamy’s death in 1908, the anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep had stated that the condition of the museum was an ‘honte nationale’ (national disgrace), for which he blamed the government and a stagnation in ethnographical research.17 The revival in scholarly studies of ‘exotic’ societies – Paul Rivet, Marcel Mauss and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, who set up the Institut d’ethnographie in 1925, placed great emphasis on systematic collecting – only underlined the sorry state. When Marcel Griaule and the Dakar-to-Djibouti expedition returned in 1933 with 3600 objects, 3000 photographs, 200 sound recordings and 300 manuscripts, there was hardly room for the materials to be displayed. The Trocadéro museum soon closed, but the government decided to create a cutting-edge ethnographic museum, the Musée de l’Homme, which they hoped would be a modern scientific museum rather than the remodelled cabinet of curiosities the Trocadéro now seemed. It was located near the old museum in the modernist Palais de Chaillot, constructed for the 1937 world’s fair, in a wing shared with the Musée de la Marine; the other


housed the Cinémathèque and the Musée des Monuments français.18 (The juxtaposition of models of famous French monuments in one museum and of real primitive artefacts in another is evident.) The Musée de l’Homme opened in 1938 under the direction of Rivet and Georges-Henri Rivière, with Michel Leiris, another veteran of the Dakar-to-Djibouti expedition, as director of the African department. The museum’s mandate was to house both exhibitions and research centres. The focus was on civilisations in their natural environment; by including displays on Europe as well as overseas countries, it offered a comparative exploration of mankind. Displays were arranged by geographical region in glass vitrines; both unique pieces and, more generally, series of generic items (such as different utensils) were shown. The Musée de l’Homme presented a functionalist interpretation of artefacts that documented distant cultures in line with up-to-date anthropological theory. Whereas the Trocadéro museum had offered little explanation about the objects on display, photographs, texts and maps here provided context. Museum directors, imbued with the progressive ideas circulating at the time of the Popular Front, felt that displays inventoried the diversity of human societies, illustrating the complex organising principles, aesthetic achievements and moral value of each in the ‘family of man’. In the conception of the scholars who directed it, the museum was not as such a colonialist institution – promotion of the empire was the explicit brief of the Musée Colonial. An ethnographic museum, like research, should be objective and scientific. A present-day scholar is more critical. For James D. Herbert, the museum pursued an unreachable goal: ‘to bring the authentic cultures of non-modern societies to life in the heart of the modern metropolis’. The mode of presentation was the product of the scientific rationality of French ethnographers, rather than the worldview of indigenous peoples. ‘The Musée de l’Homme is . . . a fine intellectual manifestation of modern France’, wrote a contemporary, and Herbert emphasises the ‘abstraction’ of objects from their source cultures that was not disconnected from a colonialist view of modernity versus traditionalism, art versus artefact, and civilised versus primitive.19 Another museum with an interest in non-Western cultures, the Musée Colonial, was avowedly and proudly colonialist. By the time the Musée de l’Homme opened, the museum created for the 1931 exhibition had been revamped with displays on colonial history, economic products from the empire, European art inspired by the colonies and native artwork. The two museums were thought complementary. The daily life, social structures and cultures of indigenous societies, displayed through artefacts, were the province of the Musée de l’Homme. The Musée Colonial, renamed the Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer, showed indigenous and European art and exhibited French colonialism. At the Palais de Chaillot, visitors could see the ‘before’ – primitive societies in their natural state – while at the Porte

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Dorée they saw the ‘after’ – the beneficial efforts of imperialism on France and on the colonies. The division of labour between the two museums continued through the colonial era, and endured after decolonisation, when the Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer turned itself into a Musée National d’Arts africains et océaniens. The separation between art and ethnography was an uneasy divide – many considered it theoretically unnatural, and in practice it resulted in duplication of exhibits and institutional rivalries. Decolonisation robbed the former Musée Colonial of its initial vocation, and with changing anthropological theory, the Musée de l’Homme moved away from a sole concern with traditional societies. As the MAAO struggled into the post-colonial era, so the Musée de l’Homme felt the winds of intellectual and museographical change. By the 1980s, critics charged that the Musée de l’Homme’s presentation was anachronistic, its exhibits old-fashioned and its ambiance dusty and musty. The declining number of visitors seemed to confirm an increasingly parlous state. The Trocadéro museum had reached its use-by date in the 1930s, and it seemed that the Musée de l’Homme was now approaching the end of its shelf life. A 1990 report by Françoise Héritier-Augé, an anthropologist and professor at the Collège de France, underlined the need for major change at the Palais de Chaillot.20 Plans were soon set afloat for new exhibitions of non-Western art. Jacques Kerchache, a well-known dealer and specialist in African art, spearheaded a proposal for a museum of non-European arts et civilisations and for the opening of galleries of what it was no longer fashionable to call ‘primitive arts’ in the Louvre.21 The initiatives were seen as ways of modernising presentations, providing yet more art attractions to the burgeoning number in Paris, and at least implicitly ‘decolonising’ institutions. The ideas, especially for display of primitive art in the Louvre, were not new. As far back as 1909, Apollinaire had called for ‘certain chefs-d’oeuvres exotiques’ (certain exotic masterpieces) to be placed in such establishments as the Louvre. In 1920 the collector Félix Fénéon surveyed well-known personalities in Paris art circles about whether primitive works should be exhibited there: ‘Iront-ils au Louvre?’22 (Will they go to the Louvre?) Seventy years later, Kerchache took up the campaign with a manifesto whose title paraphrased the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. ‘Les chefs-d’oeuvre du monde entier naissent libres et égaux’ (The masterpieces of the whole world are born free and equal), signed by three hundred public figures, was published in the national press. The proposal for a museum of arts premiers was intertwined with politics, urbanism and two decades of change to the Paris museum landscape. The ‘stock’ of museums had altered considerably since the late 1970s, when the Pompidou Centre provided an architecturally striking (if controversial) and immensely popular museum for twentieth-century art and design. A disused nineteenth-century train station was turned into the Musée d’Orsay


for nineteenth-century art. The Picasso Museum and Jewish museum opened in the Marais. When the ministry of finance moved out of the Louvre palace, more space became available for artwork in the ‘Grand Louvre’ – newly graced with I.M. Pei’s entrance pyramid. The Musée Guimet of Asian art was entirely remodelled. African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian art seemed left behind in the overhaul, a lacuna Kerchache wished to fill. Several of these projects had counted among the grands travaux associated with François Mitterrand, president from 1981 to 1995. Jacques Chirac, longtime mayor of Paris, occasional Prime Minister (in an unhappy cohabitation with Mitterrand in the mid-1980s) and successful candidate for the presidency in 1995, was no doubt also interested in a great project by which he could leave his mark on the capital. A museum of arts premiers seemed a suitable undertaking for a president with an abiding interest in non-Western art. It also held political significance as France continued to position itself as a privileged conduit between Europe and the ‘developing world’. In the words of the Musée du Quai Branly website, for the project to get off the ground, ‘il aura fallu aussi la volonté politique du chef de l’Etat qui a voulu engager la France, à l’aube du troisième millénaire, dans un nouveau type de relations avec les pays héritiers de ces civilisations trop longtemps méconnues’23 (what was necessary was the political will of the head of state, who wanted to engage France, at the dawn of the third millennium, in a new type of relationship with those countries which are heirs to civilisations that have for too long remained badly known). Chirac’s Gaullist vision of a France that honoured its colonial past – as seen in his later inauguration of the Algerian War memorial – yet reaffirmed its international vocation could easily focus on such a project. In 1995 Chirac’s Minister of Culture, Philippe Douste-Blazy, Kerchache and senior museum officials agreed on a plan. Galleries of African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian art indeed would be opened in the Louvre. A major museum of arts premiers would be built in Paris to house non-European ethnographic collections from the Musée de l’Homme, the collections of the MAAO and new acquisitions. In 1996, Prime Minister Alain Juppé appointed a ‘mission de préfiguration’ (working group) under the chairmanship of Jacques Friedmann, former director of the UAP insurance company. The Minister of Culture appointed Germain Viatte, previously head of Marseille’s museums and director of the modern arts museum at the Centre Pompidou, to take charge of the museographical aspects of the programme. After parliamentary elections, the new (Socialist) Minister of Education named as scientific director Maurice Godelier, an anthropologist with admitted left-wing political sympathies, who nevertheless rallied to Chirac’s plan. The head of the MAAO, Stéphane Martin, was appointed head of the planned museum. Kerchache remained an adviser until his death in 2001. The project thus brought together specialists and curators from different institutions and varying political positions.

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Scholars, curators and librarians in the Musée de l’Homme and MAAO were less attracted to fusion of their institutions into a new museum than were the president’s men. Staff at the Palais de Chaillot argued that amalgamation would betray the history and mandate of the Musée de l’Homme, especially if a combined institution were primarily an art museum rather than one centring on anthropology. They expressed concerns about the future of the Musée de l’Homme’s library and affiliated research organisations. They questioned the separation between non-European collections and those concerning Europe, the latter slated to be combined with the collections of the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris and transferred to Marseille for a new Musée des Cultures de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. (The prehistory and other collections were to be retained in a remodelled museum at the Palais de Chaillot.) So exercised were the Musée de l’Homme staff and sympathisers that they circulated petitions, held public meetings, hung protest banners at the museum entry, and on occasion went on strike, though to little avail. Many of the MAAO’s employees were also opposed to the project. Although long aggrieved that the MAAO had been treated as a poor relation among Paris museums, they were proud of recent exhibitions that had reinvigorated the museum and boosted visitor numbers. They were reluctant to leave their historic building in the Bois de Vincennes, and angered by the dismantling of a seventy-year-old museum. Various alternatives were suggested to solve problems faced by the two museums scheduled to be remodelled or closed. Those attached to the venerable institution in the Palais de Chaillot called for a wholesale renovation of the Musée de l’Homme at its current location. Others suggested that the Musée de la Marine be moved out of the building; perhaps the navy museum might exchange premises with the MAAO. This would provide much needed space for expansion, or even amalgamation of the Musée de l’Homme and the MAAO at the Palais de Chaillot. The Porte Dorée building would provide a not inappropriate home for the Musée de la Marine given the navy’s involvement with colonialism. Officials of the navy museum, however, objected strongly to such a move; with support mobilised from the ministry and maritime afficianados, that option ran aground. Debate about the new museum – its name, mandate, exhibition style, collections – was aired in scholarly journals and the press while planning continued. For instance, André Langaney, a professor of anthropology at the University of Geneva, lambasted the plan for a ‘musée d’arts exotiques issu d’un caprice présidentiel, à vocation esthétisante, sinon commerciale’24 (museum of exotic arts inspired by a president’s caprice, and with an aestheticising, even commercial, vocation) With proposals for combining some collections from the Musée de l’Homme with those of the MAAO, closing down the MAAO in its current form, and building a new museum, controversy was inevitable and touched on political issues as well as administrative, curatorial and intellectual questions.


One primary question, never really answered, echoed with the history of colonialism. What was the rationale for including in one museum works from widely separated geographical regions and in entirely disparate artistic style? The implicit response was that the unified collections are all examples of arts premiers, but to what extent is that simply primitive art by another name? If the plan for the museum created discord, so was there debate about the entry of arts premiers to the Louvre. In the mid-1990s, many Louvre curators signed a petition arguing that such an exhibition did not fit into the museum’s profile: displaying antiquities and European art from the Middle Ages through the early nineteenth century. Others maintained that the Louvre is not a ‘universalist’ collection, as it does not include later European art or most styles of Asian art, although it does have ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and some Islamic art. A small selection of arts premiers, they said, could only be a tokenistic display.25 The objections carried little weight with administrative and political authorities who made final decisions. In 1998 a site for the new arts premiers museum was chosen, a two-and-ahalf hectare state-owned property on the Quai Branly in the seventh arrondissement, land that had been used in 1937 for part of the world’s fair. In 1999 an architectural design competition was held. A jury selected three projects for submission to President Chirac, who personally chose a low-rise building surrounded by gardens submitted by Jean Nouvel, architect of the much appreciated Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and an opera house in Lyon. Construction started in 2001 on the building that will house the museum, a photograph and film collection, research centres and the usual amenities of shops and cafés. In addition to building costs, the government allocated a substantial budget for acquisitions to supplement the estimated 250,000–400,000 items transferred from the MAAO and the Musée de l’Homme. The plan for the Quai Branly museum sounded the death knell for the two museums opened during the 1930s to display the cultures over which France ruled and to vaunt the merits of the colonial entreprise. By the 1960s neither the Porte Dorée museum nor the Musée de l’Homme could be considered a colonial museum in the way that they were a generation earlier. The colonial era had passed, and both made great efforts to remould themselves for a post-colonial age, effacing blatant reminders of colonialism (though leaving some more subtle ones). Innovative exhibition styles, broader themes and new art and anthropological approaches were marshalled in the campaign. Despite these efforts, however, both museums were taxed with being anachronistic, old-fashioned, untrendy; they seemed relics of a by-gone age. Whether the new institution of arts premiers marks a definitive break with that age, whether it attempts to do so, and indeed, whether it should erase the colonial heritage of ethnographic collections will be clear after the Quai Branly museum opens.

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Ethnology at the Musée de l’Homme Before looking at the arts premiers galleries in the Louvre – a new exhibition and a revised style of ethnographic display – it is worthwhile ‘visiting’ the Musée de l’Homme, now in its last years of existence. The museum has been altered in many ways since 1937 – building renovations, rotation of items from storerooms to public view, restructured exhibitions, revised labelling – but the Palais de Chaillot museum still provides reminders of the way that ethnographic materials were shown for many decades. The juxtaposition of more recently renovated galleries with ones that seem largely unchanged since the colonial era also illustrates the ways that ethnographic museums have tried to recast their collections, broaden their appeal and ‘decolonise’ their presentations. The more traditional vestiges will no doubt disappear when these materials are shifted to the Quai Branly, just as the closure of the Porte Dorée galleries has removed evidence of an older fashion of showing primitive art. At the entrance to the Musée de l’Homme stands an Easter Island statue, one of the immense and enigmatic Polynesian sculptures that made the island famous. The French navy frigate Le Flore removed the statue from Rapa Nui (as islanders call their country) in 1872, apparently without the formal consent of the inhabitants. The scene was witnessed by a young midshipman, Julien Viaud, destined to become a famous novelist under the name of Pierre Loti; his Easter island sketches were reproduced as lithographs, and he published a book about his visit.26 Also in the foyer is an Indian totem pole from British Columbia, placed there in 1939, an example of interest in native American art. The two dramatic pieces thus signal the expanse of the museum’s collections and the aesthetic appeal of non-Western cultures. The museum’s first major gallery, ‘Tous parents, tous différents’, is resolutely modern and inclusive in showing the development of humanity, underlining both the common genetic origins of the human race and the diversity of men and women around the world. A focus on the contemporary world is also evident in ‘Six milliards d’hommes’: present-day global demography presented complete with interactive computer terminals linked to UN data bases. The usual sens de la visite then leads to ‘La Nuit des temps’ galleries, renovated in 1990, on prehistory, palaeontology and human evolution. Visitors are thus introduced to traditional ethnographic objects by an itinerary that leads one through the modern world and prehistory. These galleries present a composite picture of human existence, suggesting that the cultures that visitors discover are variations on a common theme. They combat the idea of biological or racial difference, and a notion of the development of humanity from primitive cultures to contemporary society: an approach greatly different from ‘classical’ colonialist views. The other galleries, which have changed less over the past decades, are divided by geography and cultural group. Sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar,


North Africa and the Middle East are on one floor, Inuit cultures, Turkey, Tibet, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Oceania, Europe and the Americas on another level. (The American gallery, however, was completely renovated in 1992 for the quincentenary of Columbus’s first voyage.) The final galleries are devoted to art and technology and to ethnomusicology. There are also thematic displays, for instance, on African weaving, metalwork, architecture and furniture. Vitrines contain objects of daily life as well as ceremonial items, labels explaining origins and uses from a largely functionalist and culturally relativistic perspective. There are no dioramas and few mannequins – which would have been common in colonial-era museums – but there is a Turkish wooden house with displays of women’s wedding clothing and the masculine world of the bazaar; a Marquesan house is also reconstructed. Complementing objects throughout the museum are numerous photographs and maps. French colonials’ passion for collecting is apparent to visitors who look closely. Many African items were donated from the 1880s to the 1930s by well-known or now forgotten Frenchmen, including Prince Bonaparte, Abbé Breuil, Lieutenant-Colonel Monteil (who gave a Baoulé drum), Captain Fonssagrives (an iron statue), ‘administrateur’ (administrator) Blanc and the art-dealer Kahnweiler. Brazza presented a drum from central Africa in 1896. General Dodds in 1893 donated a palace door from Dahomey, as well as a statue of King Béhanzin, who is represented with the traits of a shark: an allusion to his unfulfilled hope of chasing away or destroying French troops who disembarked at Cotonou. Several North African objects are labelled as gifts of the Government-General of Algeria, and photos are credited to the Service intercolonial d’information et de documentation. Throughout the museum, ranks of cases exemplify scientists’ desire to collect, catalogue and classify non-Western societies – the Enlightenment vision pursued into the twentieth century. With an emphasis on the daily life of indigenous peoples, objects (perhaps inevitably) suggest different and exotic cultural practices far removed from Europe, often appealing, sometimes repulsive, always fascinating: the attraction of distant places and peoples that excited explorers, colonialists and present-day travellers. In most galleries, the focus is on traditional life and objects – intricately carved wooden spoons rather than aluminium cutlery, woven baskets rather than plastic tubs. The impact of colonisation and Westernisation is not always evident, even when cross-cultural contacts date back to earlier centuries. When many of these objects entered French collections and were put on display at the Musée de l’Homme, they were in common use in source societies, but now ethnographic displays are more often exhibitions of history than documentation of contemporary daily life. Such galleries are therefore displays not just of cultures from around the world but of those cultures at some particular moments in their history; they are also exhibitions of the way that Western ethnographers and

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curators perceived foreign countries. An older institution such as the Musée de l’Homme, particularly in ‘unreconstructed’ galleries, is itself an object on display, and occasionally temporary exhibitions have lucidly reflected on the museum’s own history.27 In this sense, the collection is vestigially and subliminally an exhibition of the colonial age, a lieu de mémoire of colonial assumptions, collecting practices, research agendas and curatorial styles. The Musée de l’Homme remains one of the greatest repositories of colonial-era and post-colonial materials on non-Western societies. Its library contains 260,000 works, 5000 periodicals and the archives of early anthropologists such as Broca, Lévy-Bruhl, Mauss and Rivet, as well as the explorers Brazza, Alexandra David-Néel and Paul-Emile Victor. The phototheque’s 350,000 negatives and proofs constitute the largest collection of ‘exotic’ photographs in France.28 These will take on a new life at the Quai Branly, though the transfer will separate them from the building and context in which they were acquired and initially studied.

The Pavillon des Sessions and the Quai Branly If the Musée de l’Homme has the aura of a venerable collection and, in certain galleries, an antiquated exhibition style, the arts premiers galleries at the Louvre are meant to suggest an innovative approach prefiguring the Quai Branly museum. The entrance to the galleries is labelled only with the geographical designations of Africa, Oceania, the Americas and Insulindia (the islands of Southeast Asia). Such phrases as arts et civilisations are avoided, and ‘primitive arts’ and similar appelations banished. One hundred and twenty works are displayed in the Pavillon des Sessions, built in the late 1860s and early 1870s, and completely renovated by Jean-Michel Wilmotte for the galleries. The exhibition space, divided over three connected levels, is quiet, discreet, almost minimalist, brightly lit, and with arches and windows allowing visitors to see from one section to another: simple design intended not only to enhance viewing, but to avoid folklorisation or ‘exoticisation’. The colonialist décor of the MAAO is, of course, absent in the Louvre, as are the ranks of vitrines of the Musée de l’Homme. The ambiance at the Louvre is ‘aestheticising’, giving visitors the sense of viewing masterpieces carefully selected for their technical accomplishment and artistic style, rather than to provide comprehensive overviews of the cultures from which they came. Kerchache selected the works from the collections of the Musée de l’Homme, the MAAO, the natural history museums in Paris and Lyon and the specially purchased acquisitions for the Quai Branly museum, rounded out with a few overseas loans. Kerchache stated that ‘cette présentation n’est ni un palmarès, ni un parcours encyclopédique, pas plus qu’un appartement privé de collectionneur ou une galerie de marchand ou encore une exposition temporaire. Il s’agit d’une approche contemporaine des arts premiers qui s’adresse avant tout à des visiteurs non


spécialisés’29 (This presentation is neither a pantheon nor an encyclopedia, no more than it is a collector’s private apartment or a dealer’s gallery or a special exhibition. It is rather a contemporary approach to arts premiers intended above all for lay visitors). The exhibition nevertheless does give the impression of a ‘best of . . .’ compilation, the works counting among the most artistically significant and beautiful in French collections. Kerchache decided to limit the Pavillon des Sessions to sculptures in order to maintain coherency, so that there are neither paintings nor everyday objects of the sort that form the basis of the Musée de l’Homme’s collection. He clearly wanted to avoid some absolutely predictable works, such as African masks – indeed there is only one, though masks were among the most appreciated of arts primitifs. The galleries present a mini-tour of what an older generation would have called primitive cultures. There is an Easter Island moai and bronze plaques from Benin, wooden statues from Vanuatu and stone ones from pre-Columbian Central America. A sculpture from fourth or fifth century B.C. Egypt marks the inclusion of a civilisation not always displayed with those of America, Oceania and Africa. There are several early twentieth-century items, including a three-metre-tall Taiwanese doorpost and a filiform fifty-seven-millimetre Zulu spoon, though not more recent works. (The Louvre also does not exhibit contemporary European works.) Labels provide brief explanations of their origins and use, but relatively little on their provenance. General panels provide some further ethnographic background. Maurice Godelier has commented that the exhibition in the Louvre ‘est d’abord un grand geste symbolique. Il vient témoigner aux yeux du public qui fréquente l’un des plus grands musées du monde de la créativité artistique de sociétés et de cultures qui se sont développées souvent loin des grands courants des civilisations d’Occident et d’Orient. Par ce geste, tous les chefs-d’oeuvre de l’humanité se retrouvent à égalité et, avec eux, les sociétés qui les ont créés’30 (is, first of all, a significant symbolic gesture. It shows to the public who come to one of the greatest museums in the world the artistic creativity of societies and cultures that often developed far from the currents of the civilisations of the West and the East. Through this action, all of the masterpieces of humanity are placed on an equal footing, and so then are the societies that produced them). In the Louvre, the veritable French temple of art, are displayed the Venus de Milo, old masters and now a selection of art from non-European societies, an attempt to place Western and non-Western art on the same level and to provide a global survey of art consecrated as great. The Pavillon des Sessions foreshadows the Quai Branly museum, where some 4000 works will be on display in 7000 square metres divided into four geographical and cultural areas: the Americas, Oceania, Asia and Africa. There will also be a central gallery for thematic, cross-cultural exhibitions (including European works) on such themes as spirituality, institutions of

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power, life-cycles and relations between men and nature. Integrated into the permanent galleries, a series of ‘expositions dossiers’, changed every six months, will highlight specific topics. The museum will have the capacity to host two major temporary exhibitions at any one time. Computer terminals and audiovisual displays will be part of the high-tech approach.31 Germain Viatte has emphasised that displays at the Quai Branly will combine several approaches. ‘Il faut d’abord connaître l’histoire de l’objet, ses conditions d’entrée dans le monde occidental par les voies les plus diverses et son cheminement jusqu’à la vitrine où le voit le visiteur; il faut faire comprendre la valeur esthétique de l’object . . . Il faut définir précisément l’usage que chaque objet avait dans sa société d’origine . . .; et il faudra résumer pour les visiteurs l’histoire, les structures, la langue, le territoire, l’environnement et, bien entendu, les croyances et donc les modes de pensée’ (One must first appreciate the history of an object, the conditions in which it entered the Western world by the most diverse fashions, and its itinerary right down to the vitrine where the visitor sees it. It is necessary to make its aesthetic value comprehensible . . . The precise use of each object in its society of origin must be defined . . . and the history, social structures, language, geography, environment and, of course, beliefs and systems of thought [of the source society] must be explained). However, he also says that ‘il faut surtout éviter de mettre tout cela dans la même vitrine’ (we must absolutely avoid trying to cram all those [explanations] into the same showcase). A museum, adds Viatte, is not a book or an illustration; it offers an immediate contact between the visitor and material objects, and must avoid overburdening its displays with didactic and explanatory details.32 Viatte’s words suggest that galleries at the Quai Branly will pay significant attention to the itinerary of objects from their original societies to the museum, an indication that discussion of colonial methods of acquisition will be unavoidable. The museum organisers aim to resolve the issue of whether to display non-Western works as art or ethnographic objects. They want to leave behind references to exoticism and Orientalism, as well as reduction of overseas works to primitivist influences on avant-garde European art. They hope to avoid the occasional navel-gazing and hand-wringing that characterise some discussions about arts premiers. According to Stéphane Martin, the museum ‘envisage rien de moins que de concrétiser une nouvelle pratique, digne et génereuse, de l’échange entre les cultures aussi éloignées de l’arrogance européo-centrée que de la démagogie du “politiquement correct” ’33 (envisages nothing less than to put into practice a new, dignified and generous cultural exchange, far removed from both Eurocentric arrogance and ‘politically correct’ demagogy). The institution intends to be ‘un musée de la réconciliation et du partage’34 (a museum of reconciliation and sharing). At least implicitly, the Quai Branly project is an attempt to distance the exhibition of primitive art from the colonial heritage of the Musée de


l’Homme and the MAAO. Godelier has remarked that ‘le musée de l’Homme a en effet gardé jusqu’à nos jours beaucoup de traits d’un musée colonial’ (the Musée de l’Homme indeed has retained until the present many traits of a colonial museum). The Quai Branly, he adds, ‘sera un musée résolument post-colonial, c’est-à-dire présentant une analyse critique du processus historique de domination des sociétés non-occidentales par l’Ocident et d’appropriation de leurs objets’35 (will be a resolutely post-colonial museum, that is, one that presents a critical analysis of the historical process through which the West dominated non-Western societies and appropriated their objects). Dodging criticisms of colonialism or neo-colonialism, avoiding facile or guilt-ridden anti-colonialism, and manoeuvring through the labyrinth of post-colonialism will necessitate careful strategy, but the explicit need to face up to these -isms is a reminder of how much ethnographic art is situated within the context of colonial experiences. A site of ‘reconciliation’, the museum will display cultures profoundly and sometimes violently remoulded by European exploration and colonialism. It will thus provide a perspective on the historical process of imperial expansion, culture contact and colonial change. It will inevitably make a political statement about contemporary France as a country where people of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds cohabit, not always harmoniously. Not all public figures happily view France in multicultural terms. Front National candidates, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, have admitted their lack of knowledge or interest concerning arts premiers, and demanded that preference for museum acquisitions and exhibitions be given to ‘French’ artists.36 Those responsible for the museum envisage it as a monumental retort to xenophobic stances. For Godelier, ‘Dans un pays multiculturel comme la France où le racisme est présent, un tel musée assumera donc une fonction politique, pédagogique et symbolique’37 (In a multi-cultural society such as France, where racism is present, such a museum takes on political, pedagogical and symbolic functions). These functions, in the context of present-day concerns, will certainly be among the most important of the Quai Branly. The museum will be a lieu de mémoire for those whose ancestral cultures are displayed. It will also be one for the French in general, whose history is so intertwined with the countries from which arts premiers come, and who are now striving to articulate a post-colonial national identity.

African art and colonial beneficiaries The Musée de l’Homme and the MAAO were the major colonial-era repositories of African and Oceanic works in Paris. However, the wealth of collections elsewhere in the capital and in the provinces testifies to a passion for acquiring art and artefacts from distant countries that reached unparalleled heights in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It also shows how benefactors

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throughout France, many with colonial ties, brought home the wider world to museums big and little. Several small ethnographic museums were the work of individual collectors. The Musée Africain on the Ile d’Aix near La Rochelle was established in 1933 by Baron Gourgaud, who had set up the neighbouring Musée Napoléon five years earlier.38 Gourgaud, an explorer, big-game hunter and art patron, made three expeditions to Africa from 1913 to 1931 in the company of a friend, the mayor of Ile d’Aix. Gourgaud was also an acquaintance of Vlamink, Derain, Picasso and other painters interested in art nègre. Gourgaud created the museum for his own collection, and others in his circle, such as Barons Henry and Maurice de Rothschild and André Citroën, also donated works.39 The Ile d’Aix museum remains a testament to a collector and the ideas of his time. The first room contains mementos of Gourgaud’s expeditions, including photos and excerpts from a film he made on the Masai, evocatively titled ‘Le Vrai visage de l’Afrique, ou les Buveurs de sang’ (The True Face of Africa, or the Blood-Drinkers). Another gallery contains a drum from the Cameroon Grasslands first shown in the 1931 colonial exhibition, dioramas of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and the White Nile, and stuffed African animals, including a rhinoceros shot by Gourgaud. In the middle stands a dromedary that Napoleon is said to have ridden in Egypt, and that was given to the Ile d’Aix museum by the Paris natural history museum. There are Kota, Tsongho, Yoruba and Baoulé sculptures, including one that belonged to Vlaminck, as well as African furniture, jewellery, arms and musical instruments. The northern gallery has a model of a dodo and dioramas of okapi and lions, and of birds from St Helena, as well as parts of an elephant Gourgaud bagged in Kenya. Among other watercolours and drawings are three by Alexandre Iakovleff, the Croisière noire’s artist. Gourgaud’s museum is not unlike a cabinet of curiosities. Its brochure admits: ‘Sa présentation, que d’aucuns jugeront peut-être désuète, est le fidèle reflet d’une époque, d’une mentalité et d’un stade dans l’approche et la connaissance du continent noir, aujourd’hui comme hier source de tant de passion et de rêves’ (Its displays, which some may judge superannuated, are the faithful reflection of a certain epoch, a mentality and a stage in the [evolution of] views about and knowledge of the dark continent, which now as in the past has been the source of so much passion and so many dreams). In preserving it, as Gourgaud intended, authorities have provided a valuable site that is a museum of a particular museographical style, collecting passion and early twentieth-century ideology.40 Some collectors dispersed to various institutions the items they acquired when they worked in the colonies. An example is Raymond Decary (1891– 1973); trained as a lawyer, he was posted to Madagascar as a lieutenant in 1916, and decided to become a colonial public servant after his demobilisation. He first took a diploma at the Ecole Coloniale, then returned to


Photo 15 Moroccan style architecture was used for the Ecole Coloniale, the colonial training school built in the 1890s.

Madagascar, where he remained until 1967. In 1929 Decary began sending Malagasy objects to the Trocadéro museum, which at the time had no collections from the island, and he eventually gave almost 800 ethnographic items to the Musée de l’Homme. Appointed Directeur de la Recherche Scientifique in Madagascar in 1937, he set up an ethnographic museum in Antananarivo. In the late 1930s Decary started making sound and cinematic recordings. He carried out fieldwork research on various topics, for instance, through a survey that he had district officers conduct on tattoos, a subject on which Decary compiled fifteen albums with a thousand designs. He collected a herbarium of 19,390 plant specimens for the Musée d’histoire naturelle. He wrote twenty books and four hundred articles on Madagascar, mostly in his retirement, and left his library of 4300 books and 2500 photographs to the Académie des Sciences d’Outre-Mer.41 Decary personifies the paradoxes of colonial collecting. He was a naturalist, but also a colonial official. He contributed significantly to European knowledge of Madagascar, yet worked in an administration that enforced a severe imperial rule in the island and that bloodily repressed a revolt in 1947. Decary’s collecting and donations meant that valuable objects were taken away from Madagascar, but his actions preserved works that might otherwise have been destroyed, and they enriched French museums and libraries. When Decary arrived in Madagascar, it had been a colony for less than twenty years; when he left, the country had been independent for seven years.42

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Organisations as well as individuals collected and displayed ethnographic art. A prime case is missionary societies. During the colonial era, they were eager to show pagan practices combatted by Christianity, but now take a more sympathetic attitude to African and Oceanic cultures. The evolution of the Lyon museum of the Société des Missions Africaines has been discussed in a previous chapter, and others too have revamped and expanded exhibitions. The Hospice Saint-Roch in Issoudun, for instance, opened new galleries in 2002 to display objects collected by the Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur in Melanesia, Micronesia and Africa.43 Another example is the missionary museum at the Abbaye Notre-Dame in Langonnet (Morbihan). ‘Ce Musée d’arts africains’, says its brochure, ‘a été réalisé en mémoire de tous les Missionaires Spiritains qui ont travaillé pendant de nombreuses années en Afrique et qui ont rapporté une grande partie des objets exposés dans le musée’ (This Musée d’Arts Africains was set up in memory of all the Holy Spirit missionaries who worked for many years in Africa and who brought back a large number of the objects displayed here). (The display-cases were made in 1930 by Holy Spirit brothers for the colonial exhibition the following year.) The first gallery presents masks from the Congo and Ivory Coast, and a Bambara statue of a mother figure from Mali. A gallery on daily life has basketry from Cameroon, kitchen utensils from Angola, Gabon and the Congo, and farming implements, textiles and pipes from central Africa. On the wall hang Senegalese sand and bark paintings. The section on rituals and festivities includes clothing, jewellery and musical instruments such as a harp, balafon and drums. In displays on ‘la société hiérarchisée’ (an hierarchical society), most of the weapons were collected by Auguste Pouplier, who travelled with Brazza in central Africa, commanded gunboats on the Congo, Oubangui and Sangha rivers in the 1880s, then joined Jean Dybowski’s mission to Bangui in 1891. A Holy Spirit priest purchased Pouplier’s collection from his heirs around 1928.44 Religious life takes pride of place in the Langonnet museum, which adopts an anthropologically open-minded perspective on African practices. Its brochure explains that before missionaries arrived, Africans already believed in a distant but benign god as well as powerful spirits; the pamphlet provides some ethnographic background, largely from a functionalist perspective, and quotes African writers such as Léopold Sedar Senghor and Ahmadou Hampathé Ba. Fang, Bakota and Sangho reliquaries from Gabon, and Chockwe statues from Angola, illustrate African religion. Others represent beliefs concerning fecundity and fertility. Still others evoke ancestral cults. A rosewood Madonna and child from Madagascar and crucifixes from the Congo are reminders of Christianity in Africa. Several modern paintings from France and Cameroon depict central Africa; Christ makes an appearance in one scene of rural life. These smaller museums encompass a range of colonial collectors – a wealthy aristocrat who enjoyed big-game hunting and primitive art, a colonial


official who was a savant and donor, and missionary orders that gathered indigenous objects as they replaced old ‘fetishes’ with Christian symbols. Several museums and libraries known for their colonial interests were the beneficiaries of Decary’s collections. Gourgaud used private wealth to establish his own museum. Missionary orders devoted galleries in their motherhouses to exhibitions. The Ile d’Aix museum has retained its old-fashioned presentation, while the museums in Langonnet and Lyon have modernised theirs in both the way objects are displayed and the interpretation given to them. It is worthwhile remembering how striking dioramas of exotic flora and fauna or exhibitions of primitive objects must have appeared in the colonial era, especially to residents of small towns and villages with limited contact with the wider world. Wild animals and ‘savage’ people were still marvels at a time when many provincials did not travel far from the place of their birth. Tales of explorers and missionaries, travellers to distant places and colonials on home leave provided much excitement. Politicians and the press trumpeted the wonders and benefits of la plus grande France. Exhibitions illustrated the beauties (and horrors) of foreign places, comforting cultural and racial stereotypes, confirming for some the rightness of the imperial cause, inspiring patriotism and nationalism, perhaps suggesting colonial vocations. Gourgaud’s dioramas now appear quaint to those who watch travel programmes on cable television, easily purchase foreign fruits and flowers at local markets, and go to Africa on charter flights; the killing of elephants or rhinoceroses is more likely regarded with revulsion than admiration, and stuffed trophy animals may excite squeamishness and pity. In a secularised society, African ‘fetishes’ may attract more attention than Christian religious relics, and ethnographic objects seem a silent protest against globalisation. The same statue or mask means very different things to various viewers and successive generations. Not all collections of ethnographic art date from the colonial period, though even in more recently established institutions, allusions to the era of imperialism – if only in the provenance of objects – are seldom altogether absent. An example is a museum that specialises in the art of sub-Saharan Africa, the Musée Dapper, named after a seventeenth-century Dutch writer on the ‘Dark Continent’. The parent foundation, set up in Amsterdam in 1983, opened a museum in Paris in 1986. Gallery labels reveal that the collection contains historic pieces that often changed hands over many decades. A Fon brass statue of a man with two swords, perhaps an idealised portrait of King Gléglé of Benin, is dated ‘before 1889’. The work belonged to Gléglé’s son, Béhanzin, and was taken to Europe by a contemporary Frenchman, then acquired by the Paris dealer Charles Ratton in 1926. A Senufo mask is labelled as having belonged to a French priest. A Kota reliquary was collected before 1890 by a colonial administrator named Guy, then entered the collection of the critic Paul Guillaume, was acquired by the

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photographer Alfred Stieglitz and ended up in the Musée Dapper. A Fang piece once belonged to the British sculptor Jacob Epstein, and a Chokwe sculpture collected around 1904 was formerly in a natural history museum at the University of Porto.45 Even a new museum of African art has a colonial history. The Musée Dapper has established a reputation for beautifully produced thematic exhibitions, shown in the fashion of modern art museums with a focus on the aesthetic value of objects. Labels provide judicious commentary on geography and culture, but with little indication of the colonial history of Africa or of the ‘pedigree’ of items on display. Individual works are singled out, often placed on plinths and illuminated with spot-lighting. The method of display, different from the large vitrines, ranks of generic objects and didactic explanations of older museums, especially ethnographic ones, has struck some observers as elegant and innovative, while others have found displays too chic and decontextualised. In 2000 the Musée Dapper moved to larger premises, but has retained its exhibition style. Ochre-and-brown-coloured walls are meant to provide a more African background than the stark white walls of the first premises – or those of Wilmotte’s Pavillon des Sessions. The main architectural feature, a bridge from the entrance to the major exhibition space, represents the link between the European culture outside and the African works inside. The museum has broadened its mandate to cover the African diaspora (heralded by an exhibition on the Cuban métis painter Wilfredo Lam), a domain in which the history of colonialism is inescapable: the subject continues to haunt exhibitions.

Non-Western art in the provinces In the great nineteenth-century programme of museum-building, ethnographic objects provided appealing exhibitions, especially in the context of overseas expansion.46 Many provincial museums therefore house collections, often small but sometimes substantial, of African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian art. Lack of space and funding means that most are not fully displayed, although generally at least a few pieces are on public view. Collections are unsurprisingly eclectic, donated by local notables with colonial experience or ethnographic interests, rather than built up by systematic acquisitions. Indeed, the history of the collections provides examples of the manifold ways in which non-Western art came into local museums, and how primitive societies appeared in the provinces. In several cases, museums came into possession of ancien régime cabinets of curiosities. The fine arts museum in Rennes acquired African and Oceanic artefacts that belonged to Christophe-Paul de Robien, president of the Breton parlement. His collection, seized during the Revolution, includes 255 ‘sauvageries’ from Africa, Asia and America, and the museum expanded on


this assortment with acquisition of three hundred other lots of ethnographic items.47 Another old regime cabinet of curiosities, which belonged to the painter Larcy de Barde, ended up in the Musée du Château in Boulognesur-Mer, which solicited donations from navy officers and also received a collection from the native son Théodore Hamy, founder of the Trocadéro museum. Navy officers, including men who had voyaged to the South Seas in the late 1700s and early 1800s, proved particularly generous donors. Lieutenant Daniel Rohr, captain of one of the ships of Admiral Dupetit-Thouars, who claimed the Marquesas islands for France in 1842, gave his Oceanic works to the museum of natural history and ethnography in his hometown of Colmar. Another officer in the Marquesas, Louis Victor Jolly, left two hundred Polynesian works to the museum in Dunkerque. The museum there also obtained items collected by a seaman from Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s voyages to the Pacific in the 1790s, and yet another collection from a lieutenant who served with Dumont d’Urville in the 1830s. Captain Tardy de Montravel, who conquered New Caledonia for the French, collected items now in the museum in Grenoble. A navy surgeon who served in New Caledonia in the late 1850s gave his Melanesian artefacts to the Alençon museum, and a doctor who worked in Dahomey from 1899 to 1901 left 150 African items to a museum in Le Mans. Navy men were not the only benefactors. Some of the most famous imperial figures left ethnographic collections to museums. Captain Binger’s African objects are in Périgueux, and ones owned by René Caillié (the first Frenchman to reach Timbuktu) are in Rochefort. Malagasy items that belonged to Marshal Gallieni are in the natural history museum in Toulouse; African items and stuffed animals from General Faidherbe are in his native city of Lille. Less well-known figures provided donations too. One head of the French postal services in Madagascar gave his collection to Nîmes. The family of Louis Petit, who travelled in Senegal and the Congo, left his collections to Caen. Not all collectors were travellers, however: the Charentais Jules Lhomme, a medical doctor who did not venture overseas, bequeathed his primitive art to Angoulême. Some present-day collections were assembled when older ones were disbursed: primitive objects from the Nancy zoological museum were given in 1967 to one in Bar-le-Duc.48 Several lucky museums acquired particularly rich collections. The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Chartres holds fifteen African works that belonged to Maurice de Vlaminck, and Polynesian works collected in the nineteenth century by the Marquis de Tarragon. It boasts a large collection of Oceanic and African artworks collected by Louis-Joseph Bouge, a twentieth-century colonial governor, who also left the museum 500 ethnographic books, maps, photographs and 300 drawings made by artists in Dumont d’Urville’s expedition. The museum in Perpignan benefitted from the largesse of a Roussillon wine merchant and republican journalist who was deported to New Caledonia – Albert Lavigne, who in 1878 sent back a collection of

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Melansian objects. Perpignan in 1898 was also given the Oceanic collection of Jean Pla, an administrator in New Caledonia and Cochinchina. Eightyeight years later the Vila-born Jacques Laurent donated his collection from Vanuatu. The La Rochelle natural history and ethnographic museum possesses 5500 items, many acquired from soldiers and sailors who lived in the port city. The museum, set up in 1832, inherited a cabinet of curiosities from an eighteenth-century naturalist and public servant, Clément de Lafaille. Etienne Loppé, a doctor and long-time curator, purchased other items and secured donations from missionaries and from officers based at the Ecole de Santé navale in nearby Rochefort. Oceanic works include statues collected by Dumont d’Urville in the Gambier islands, and an Easter island statue owned by Pierre Loti. Commander Briaud, born near the city, gave objects from Mauritania, Cameroon and the Congo.49 Another city rich in ethnographic collections is Bordeaux. In 1894 the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy set up a museum to complement its courses in ethnography – Bordeaux was the only university at which the subject was taught before 1914, partly because of the presence of the renowned Emile Durkheim on the teaching staff. Bordeaux profited from its long connections with the outre-mer. Several ministers of the navy, including Portal and Ducos, came from the city, one of the major French shipping lines, the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, had its headquarters there, and local firms such as Prom et Maurel carried out profitable trade with Africa. In 1890 a school of tropical medicine had been established in Bordeaux, and many of its professors forwarded collections to what, by 1914, would be called the Musée d’Ethnographie et d’Etudes coloniales. One professor obtained photographs of the French Soudan taken by an artillery captain; another wangled a collection from the head of the militia in the Congo. The museum director raced to Paris to buy African items left over from the international exhibition of 1900, and persuaded the Guimet museum to deposit some Asian items in the Bordeaux museum. He returned from the shopping trip with twenty specially constructed trunks filled with new acquisitions. With the growing reputation of the museum, donors presented objects from Indochina, Central Asia, Siberia and the Arctic, and Korea, making the museum one of the richest in exotic art and artefacts.50 Marseille has the only museum devoted fully to arts premiers outside Paris, the Musée des Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens (MAAOA), opened in 1992. Its holdings include the cinematographer François Reichenbach’s collection of pre-Columbian art. Dozens of shrunken heads, and moulded and decorated skulls, from New Guinea, the Amazon and elsewhere belonged to Henri Gastaut, an eminent brain specialist and president of the University of Aix-Marseille. Most of the African works donated by another local art-lover and scholar, Pierre Guerre, came from former French colonies, for instance, three Kissi statues bought in 1927 from a former governor of Guinea. A silver


pipe was owned by the King Gléglé – the defeat of his son Béhanzin provided a horde of objects for French collections. Items from Marseille’s colonial museums provided another source of the MAAO’s holdings. Already in 1860, the chateau in the Parc Borély housed a Galerie des Chinois and a Galerie des Sauvages. In 1893 a Dr Heckel, a professor of science and head of Marseille’s botanical gardens, set up a Musée colonial, including ethnographic objects meant for scientific study. Most came from the colonies, such as a Dyola mask obtained by a doctor in Senegal in 1894, and Kanak doorposts brought from New Caledonia by a colonel in 1906. The growing museum moved to a new location in the Faculty of Science in 1924 and remained open until 1958; when it was closed, the Chamber of Commerce recovered the collection for its own Musée de la Marine. A second museum, the Musée des Colonies, was opened in 1936 in the Parc Chanot, site of the 1906 and 1922 colonial exhibitions, with the aim of stimulating colonialist fervour in Marseille. It too received objects from French colonies right to the end of the empire. In 1950, for instance, Daniel Deligny, a copra trader in Oceania, sold to the museum the New Hebridean art he had assembled around 1910. In 1957 Pierre Anthonioz, French Resident in the New Hebrides, donated island masks. In the same year, the Ministère de l’Outre-Mer set a circular to colonial officials in Africa asking them, in view of moves towards decolonisation, to send art and artefacts to France. Thus did the Marseille museum acquire, for example, a set of Yoruba masks from the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire. When the Musée des Colonies closed, the Chamber of Commerce also took over its collections, and transferred works from the two museums to the MAAOA.51 The new museum thus inherited works from colonial institutions, objects often collected through the efforts of administrators and traders, and under the authority of the colonial ministry. Changes in perspective have stimulated reorganisation of exhibits in provincial museums as in Paris. A visitor described the Bordeaux museum in 1914: ‘Dans une long galerie d’une quarantaine de mètres, affectée plus spécialement à l’ethnographie de l’Afrique, de l’Amérique et de l’Océanie, nous admirons successivement une superbe collection d’armes de toutes sortes: lances, sagaies, couteaux, boucliers, arcs, flèches à pointe d’os ou de métal, massues, casse-têtes de l’Afrique centrale et occidentale; armes ciselées, burnous, selles et harnachements arabes; longues lances en bois dur, à poignée curieusement sculptée ou ornée de peau et d’étoffe des indigènes d’Océanie; sabres, poignards, kriss malais, lassos mexicains, etc. Puis des instruments de musique à formes bizarres, tam-tams, tambourins, instruments à cordes; plus loin un banc d’accouchement tunisien, que l’usure nous indique avoir beaucoup servi, excite la curiosité de tous et n’est pas sans provoquer de nombreux commentaires . . .’ (In a forty-metre-long gallery devoted to the ethnography of Africa, the Americas and Oceania, we admire in turn a superb collection of all sorts of armaments from central

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and western Africa: lances, spears, knives, shields, bows, bone- and metaltipped arrows and clubs; carved Arabic weapons, burnouses, saddles and harnesses; long hard wooden lances from Oceania, their hand-grips curiously sculpted or ornamented with pieces of indigenous cloth; sabres, daggers, Malay krisses, Mexican lassos, etc. Then come musical instruments in bizarre shapes, tom-toms, tambourines and string instruments. Further along is a Tunisian ‘birthing table’, whose marks of wear indicate that it has been much used – it excites everyone’s curiosity and does not fail to inspire numerous comments). So the visit continued through an Alladin’s cave that also resembled a cabinet of curiosities.52 Later, as in the Musée de l’Homme, collections were more systematically and pedagogically displayed in line with current ethnographic theories. The MAAO illustrates present-day exhibition practices. A pared-down, simplified display of far fewer pieces, grouped thematically, is arranged and lighted with more attention to aesthetics; audio-visual materials complement objects. Explanatory panels provide information on historical and social contexts and comment on artistic styles. Such museums as those in Bordeaux and Marseille directly or indirectly witness French colonials’ interest in ethnographic art, the way in which colonial connections facilitated collecting, and the inheritance that they bequeathed. The number of works collected in the colonial period now in museums is impossible to estimate – even the relatively miscellaneous collection in Rouen, according to Tribal Arts, totals 2500 items, and the Lille museum of natural history counts 6000 objects. (Some collections are, of course, far smaller, such as Admiral Bruat’s thirty-four tapa cloths in the Musée des impressions et des étoffes in Mulhouse.) In some cases, much remains packed away unseen because of lack of space or funding, different curatorial priorites, or the limited interest of relatively generic objects. A small number are incorporated into general permanent exhibitions in many art or natural history museums. In other cases, special galleries have been set aside or, as in Marseille, old collections have provided the basis for a new museum. From ancien régime cabinets of curiosities through colonial (and colonialist) collections to more recent acquisitions, France has amassed a stock of nonEuropean works, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania, paralleled in few other countries.53 European collections are indeed often more extensive and of higher quality than collections remaining in the source societies. However, debate about how to show these objects, and even about the very aims of ethnographic museums, has exercised curators, scholars, and those whose heritage is on display.

Debating exhibitions The arrival in France, by various means and over several centuries, of overseas art and artefacts has regularly posed a question that will probably never


find a definitive answer. How should non-Western objects be displayed? Issues were canvassed in the late 1990s, prompted by plans for the Quai Branly museum, when four academic journals published special issues on ethnographic collections and exhibitions. Another set of papers constituted the first comparative analysis of colonial museums. Many contributions reveal lingering discomfort about the ‘colonial’ patrimony of arts premiers. In Gradhiva, a ‘revue d’histoire et d’archives de l’anthropologie’ (journal of the history and archives of anthropology), Jean Jamin provocatively, and rhetorically, asked: ‘Faut-il brûler les musées d’ethographie?’ (Should we burn down ethnography museums?). Ethnographical museums no longer serve the purposes for which they were primarily established: to facilitate scientific study. Though they played an important role in the emergence of anthropology, later social scientists turned away from study of objects to consideration of social relations, kinship networks, rituals and belief systems. Existing museums now serve largely the purpose of conservation. New museums must go beyond expressions of colonial guilt, he concluded, but free themselves as well from many post-colonial and post-modern preoccupations.54 Ethnographers and anthropologists are particularly concerned about the role of objects in source societies, and indeed in societies to which they have been brought, according to authors in the Journal des Africanistes, where several (pace Jamin) heralded a return of anthropological interest in objects. Ute Röschenthaler wrote of the need to understand the ‘biographies’ of particular objects moved from one country to another, many of which have now spent more time in museum collections than in their societies of origin. ‘Objects are no longer representative of one culture or one ethnic group. Nor does their history end with the act of being collected, that is of being removed from their “original” context. It continues with each journey and further exhibition and the additional meanings that events add to it. Thus objects acquired singularity, a unique biography.’ This biography ought to be detailed to visitors.55 Brigitte Delon suggested multiple ‘scénographies’ to show different aspects of an item such as an Oceanic totem: its initial function and symbolism, how it was made and reproduced, how it was imagined and pictured in the West. All contribute to the signification of the object. Other writers emphasised the need to identify (when possible) the particular creator of works, individual styles and aesthetic priorities, rather than reducing objects to ‘typical’ examples of an amorphous and unchanging native culture, or labelling works simply as ‘objects used for . . .’.56 Present-day authors have also pointed out that most objects now in museums are no longer in current use in the societies from which they came. For Michèle Coquet, they belong more to the history and culture of collectors than to their originators. She echoes Claude Lévi-Strauss, who wrote to Jacques Friedmann about the Quai Branly project in 1996: ‘Un musée d’ethnographie ne peut plus, comme à cette époque [the foundation

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of the Musée de l’Homme], offrir une image authentique de la vie des sociétés les plus différentes de la nôtre. A quelques exceptions près qui ne dureront pas, ces sociétés sont progressivement intégrées à la politique et à l’économie mondiales. Quand je revois les objets que j’ai recueillis sur le terrain entre 1935 et 1938 (et c’est aussi vrai des autres), je sais bien que leur intérêt est devenu soit documentaire, soit aussi ou surtout esthétique’57 (An ethnography museum can no longer offer, as was the case at the time [of the foundation of the Musée de l’Homme], an authentic image of the life of societies that were so different from our own. With only a few exceptions – which will not last – these societies have been gradually integrated into world politics and commerce. When I see the objects that I collected in the field between 1935 and 1938 (and this is also true for others), I know their interest has become documentary and, perhaps above all, aesthetic). Pieter ter Keurs thus called for continued collection of contemporary objects not only to complement old, now disused pieces, but to combat the perception of non-Western societies as static and isolated. Curators have discarded veteran exhibition styles and the ideas that underpinned them, searching for new ways to display works. Objects are no longer muddled indiscriminately as in cabinets of curiosities, except when curators intentionally want to illustrate outmoded exhibition practices. Popular in the late nineteenth century were realistic panoramas and dioramas; when they have survived, they are preserved as relics of a vision of social science and exhibitions rather than as ‘genuine’ experiences of foreign societies.58 Curators are skeptical about use of representative objects to convey the entirety of a social practice or culture. One object can hardly sum up a whole sociocultural system; each is the creation of a particular artist, showing local or regional styles at a particular moment.59 Some participants in the museographical debate were nevertheless dubious about exhibitions altogether, arguing either that ‘museumifying’ objects betrays the cultures that created them, or that exhibitions cannot divorce themselves from colonial-era theories and practices. Jacques Galinier and Antoinette Molinié charged that ‘la mise en vitrine est une affaire de Blancs ou du moins largement inspirée par les Blancs’ (placing things in showcases is white folks’ business or at least largely inspired by whites), and many present-day museums feature well-meaning ‘clichés coloniaux revus et corrigés par des intellectuels bien-pensants’ (colonial clichés revised by right-thinking intellectuals).60 Underlying the debate is the question of the audience for which exhibitions are intended, though French journals in the late 1990s paid relatively little attention to the issue. Visitors with specialised knowledge, educated lay people and the general public arrive with different expectations, and enter museums with varying levels of interest, expertise and time. Some want to be challenged, others simply entertained. The French may have different reactions, especially when displays reflect on the country’s colonial past, than do foreigners. Visitors from Africa or Africans in France certainly


will view exhibitions in a different light. Reactions are not predictable. For instance, an exhibition of contemporary African artworks made from tin cans, packaging and other discarded materials was praised in Canada as showing the inventiveness of African artists. The same exhibition shown in Africa was regarded with indifference at the banality of the art and even with embarrassment at the material poverty of artists forced to resort to such media.61 A Congolese student remarked after visiting the Musée Dapper: ‘En voyant ces objets, je me suis senti drôle et amusé à la fois: drôle parce que je n’ai jamais vu autant de “choses traditionnelles de chez nous”, et amusé parce que chez moi, au village, je ne les aurais pas du tout vus si librement car je ne suis pas initié! Enfin, je remercie le musée Dapper de m’avoir donné cette occasion unique de les voir ensemble. C’est formidable un musée! Ça fait tout voir . . ., mais est-ce vraiment l’endroit autorisé pour cela? Je ne sais pas’62 (Looking at these objects, I felt odd and amused all at once – odd because I had never seen so many ‘traditional objects’ from home, and amused because, in my village, I would never have been able to see them so freely because I have not been initiated [into secret societies]. When all is said and done, I thank the Musée Dapper for having given me this unique chance to see them all together. A museum is a fantastic thing! You can see everything . . ., but is this really the right place for it? I don’t know). A basic problem – which reappeared in debates on the partial closure of the MAAO and the Musée de l’Homme, and the opening of the Quai Branly museum – has been whether primitive things should be displayed as art or as artefacts. Should they be exhibited primarily as beautiful objects or objects with particular uses? Few items, of course, are devoid of some practical use, and even the most utilitarian object is endowed with some aesthetic interest in terms of the material used, style, shape and colour. Connoisseurs particularly championed aesthetic consideration, emphasising the beauty of items they call masterpieces, although those wishing to valorise the accomplishments of non-Western artists shared this perspective. Art historians, especially interested in the techniques of creation (the style of painting or carving, for instance), promoted a more structuralist approach: the design of works, the media used, variations among artists and regions, provenance, the history of collections. The anthropological or ethnographical approach favoured a functionalist analysis: the use to which objects were put, their place in daily life and social rituals, the cultural and religious beliefs to which they testified. These perspectives are not necessarily exclusive, but they have patterned differing ways of viewing and displaying nonWestern art. The old displays in the Musée de l’Homme embodied an anthropological perspective, whereas those in the Musée Dapper and the Pavillon des Sessions tend to an art historical and aesthetic approach, and the MAAOA in Marseille tries to combine different perspectives. The organisers of the Quai

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Branly, too, intend to move forward from the cleavage between art versus ethnography, but decisions about presentation are not simple and will inevitably inflect viewers’ reactions. Differences of opinion have also arisen about precisely how to arrange collections. Random assemblages in cabinets of curiosities gave way to attempts to categorise and classify items. This produced its own set of questions: whether to group objects by country or region of origin, by the ethnic group that created them (and, concomitantly, how to divide and name various ethnic groups), by chronological period, by the material from which they were made, by the use to which they were put. Should a vitrine, for example, contain various types of art from the Bambara group, should it be labelled as an exhibit from Mali, should it display diverse objects all made from wood but from different cultures, or should it compare initiation masks from other places alongside the famous Bambara initiation masks? Should a mask be displayed alone or accompanied by the raphia costume worn with it? Should it be isolated in a separate vitrine, included in a display-case with other objects, or even be incorporated into a reconstruction of the ceremony at which it was used? Should a label say simply ‘Mask, Bambara’, or should it provide more detailed information about the initiation ritual, the Bambara people, the artist whose work it is? (If some of these details are not known, for instance, the identity of the artist, should that also be acknowledged?) Should there be information on how it came into the collection and the historical circumstances in which it was collected? Should labels be written by curators or anthropologists? Should they contain observations by Western experts or by people from source societies? Will gallery-visitors bother to read lengthy labels at all? Display styles are thus full of significance and fraught with difficulties. Arrangement of objects – even whether they are placed in glass cases or left free standing – is not without meaning. Lighting is not neutral: softer, more focussed lighting privileges the aesthetic appreciation of an object, whereas brighter classroom or laboratory lighting suggests objects of study. Curators must consider such other issues as signage, design of publicity, admission costs, the production of catalogues, and auxiliary activities, from lectures and film to the selection of objects on sale at museum shops. Such concerns occur for all exhibitions, but they become especially delicate when ethnographic art is at issue. New styles of display, incorporating audiovisual materials and interactive computer stations, have broadened the choices but complicated the task of revivifying old collections and restructuring venerable museums. At each juncture, the legacy of colonialism resurfaces: the provenance of collections, the history of exhibitions, evolving attitudes to non-Western cultures, the sensitivity of visitors from former colonies or the colonial diaspora. Among the many issues confronting curators is whether a museum of ethnography or arts premiers should display only ‘traditional’ art. (This itself, of


course, begs the question of what is ‘traditional’.) Should exhibits include art influenced by colonialism and contemporary items? Should an outrigger canoe be displayed next to an outrigger motor boat? Should wooden masks and sculptures be placed next to recent paintings in acrylics or oil? How much contemporary work can be displayed without devaluing older items, creating a modern cabinet of curiosities, or producing complete confusion? A particularly awkward question is how to treat cultural practices now considered unacceptable. Cannibalism, widow-burning, foot-binding, brutal rites of initiation, dangerous bodily mutilation (including female circumcision), the use of torture and summary punishments, slavery and slave-trading, and authoritarian political rule were the norm, or at least widespread, in some societies (including, in some examples, European ones). How are they to be treated in museum displays? Too much attention risks sensationalising practices now generally outmoded or rejected in those societies – though this is not always true, as with female genital mutilation – and recapitulating colonialist stereotypes of barbarity and savagery. Too little attention means elision of less attractive sides of foreign cultures. Ignoring practices now branded inhumane and unacceptable may lead to what has been called ‘Designer Tribalism’ or romantic primitivism.63 Moral issues increasingly concern museums of arts premiers, and the decision about what objects can and should be put on display has necessarily been contentious. Many museums refuse to display objects considered secret to source societies, particularly sacred or ritual objects only meant to be seen by initiates or only by either men or women. (When museums do put them on show – as illustrated earlier – some visitors appreciate seeing works normally off bounds.) Until recent decades, museums displayed human remains. Though many have been removed, some institutions still display skulls, skeletons and other body parts. In the case of the Gastaut collection in Marseille, the MAAOA learned from the International Council of Museums that only North American Indians and Maoris had officially deposited with the United Nations demands that human skulls of ancestors not be displayed. The museum on that basis decided not to put a Maori skull on view.64 The question of human remains was particularly at issue in the case of one exhibit at the Musée de l’Homme. Saartje Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’, was a Khoisan woman born in southern Africa around 1789. She was taken to London in 1810 and repeatedly displayed to a public that marvelled at her steatophygous body and what Europeans found oddly shaped genitalia. Baartman was then exhibited on the continent, and she died in Paris in 1815. A plaster cast of her body was taken before it was dissected by the famous scientist Georges Cuvier, and her brain and genitals were preserved in formaldehyde. The plaster cast and Baartman’s skeleton were displayed in the Musée de l’Homme until 1975. The post-apartheid government in 1995 asked for her remains to be returned to South Africa, and the museum

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acceded to the request in 2001. Baartman’s dignified burial brought to an end one of the most shocking episodes of colonial and racial voyeurism.65 The Baartman case raises perhaps the most difficult question facing museum authorities: restitution of objects considered part of inalienable cultural heritage.66 That issue opens a host of others, for instance, about which objects are candidates for restitution, to whom exactly they might be returned, who are the appropriate customary guardians of cultural treasures, and the conditions under which they would be preserved and displayed if they were repatriated. Authorities admit that the issue is a legal, moral and curatorial nightmare.67 Except for a few symbolic restitutions – Baartman’s skeleton and the seal of the dey of Algiers, for instance – French museums have been reluctant to return objects to source countries, other than in negotiated exchanges, although there have been few specific requests for items to be sent back. As museums continue to enrich collections, post-colonial acquisition has created problems. It has been estimated that 70 per cent of African art objects now in Western collections were exported from Africa after 1960, that is, since the majority of colonies gained independence. Although major museums claim to be scrupulous in obtaining artwork legally, Dominique Blanc judges that ‘most’ of the works taken from Africa since the 1960s have left the continent illegally. War, failure of proper conservation because of lack of money and expertise, difficult climatic conditions that are particularly deleterious to works made of fibre and wood, corruption and pillage have all wreaked great damage on African museums. The museum in Dakar, Senegal, for instance, contained between 15,000 and 20,000 objects in 1934; by 1993, it counted fewer than five thousand.68 In Mali, the number of objects in the national museum dropped from 15,000 to 5000 from 1964 to 1975 because of theft and termites; after several years of closure, during which new collections were sought, the museum reopened in 1982 with 6000 objects.69 Pillage is widespread in Asia as well as Africa, and cultural terrorism (notably the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan) even represents to some a ‘crime contre le patrimoine’ (crime against heritage).70 Demand for arts premiers has driven up prices and created an incentive to clandestine trading and political machinations. The generous acquisitions budget for the Quai Branly museum is particularly said to have inflated prices, and the Musée Dapper is also able to afford large sums. The Dapper, for instance, has a Bangwa statue from Cameroon that Charles Ratton first sold to Helena Rubinstein; it was bought by a dealer in 1966 for $US 29,000 and sold to the museum in 1990 for $US 3.1 million.71 Provenance as well as price is an issue, and the Louvre has not been exempt. In 1999 two twothousand year-old terracotta Nok sculptures intended for the planned Pavillon des Sessions galleries were purchased from a Belgian dealer for $US 400,000. Coming from the Jos plateau in Nigeria, the works had been shown on loan at the Vallées du Niger exhibition in Paris and the ‘Africa:


The Art of a Continent’ show in London and New York in the mid-1990s. They nevertheless figured on the International Council of Museums’s ‘red list’ of objects absolutely banned from sale. The Lagos government had formerly refused President Chirac’s request for a waiver on the ban, but a new Nigerian president agreed to authorise the Belgian’s sale in return for French aid to Nigerian museums. Several art experts damned the sale, but Viatte defended the transaction, saying that purchasing works from private dealers and placing them in public collections served a higher purpose.72 Questions of authenticity, the legality of acquisitions and conditions of sale have not been resolved despite international conventions,73 and fraud remains another problem for dealers and curators.74 Finally, there is the question of how the history of colonialism should be included in ethnographic displays. Should consideration of colonialism be reserved for history museums, or feature in museums of fine arts and ethnography? Should ethnographic exhibits include information not only on acquisition of works during the colonial age, but also on the economic, social, political and cultural structures that imperialism produced? Does an object decontextualised from the history of colonialism lose part of its ‘pedigree’? Are ethnographic museums the proper forum for a debate on colonialism? Can such a discussion be carried out within the bounds of an exhibition? Such theoretical and methodological concerns intersect with practical issues. The eclectic nature of many collections opens possibilities for display, but can make exhibition and storage difficult. Space constraints and lack of funding severely hamper museums. Rivalries between different institutions inevitably occur. The necessity to please professional colleagues, political figures – since the state generally remains the major source of funding – and a diverse public creates demands. There is increased pressure to earn money from sales at shops, to avoid elitism, to appease interest groups, to provide useful information without overloading exhibitions with didactic tedium, to incorporate new technologies without reducing them to multi-media entertainment, to build collections at a time of intense market speculation and significant fraudulence and pilferage.75 Such formidable issues have faced organisers of new museums, such as the Quai Branly, and echo the centuriesold problems of collecting and exhibiting non-Western works.

Art from Asia and the Arabo-Islamic world This chapter has so far focussed largely on ethnographic collections from Africa and Oceania because primitive art most clearly shows connections between colonialism, social science and the evolution of museums. Moreover, transformations in perceptions of arts premiers clearly inform recent debates. However, many similar museographical and historical issues occur as well in relation to art from the Islamic world and from Asia.

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Colonial-era Europeans often considered these traditions degenerate and sometimes barbarous, but generally not primitive, except in the case of nomadic or minority cultures in the East. After all, Asia and the Islamic world had written alphabets and codified law, monumental buildings, finely crafted artwork and complex religions. Europeans marvelled at sultans’ and maharajahs’ palaces, and admired Islamic mosques and Hindu and Buddhist temples. Maghrebin tiles and brasswork, Japanese painting, and Chinese silk, lacquer and porcelain so appealed that they imported such craftwork into Europe. They excavated archaeological sites and studied ruins all the way from castles in Syria to temples in Angkor. They translated and studied the classics of Islam and of Oriental religions. Meanwhile, Europeans carved out spheres of commercial, political and cultural influence throughout Asia: the French comptoirs in India, the enclave of Gouangzhouwan and other ‘concessions’ in China, and the huge territory of Indochina. In the Levant and in Asia, Europeans were as avid collectors as in Africa, and many of their treasures came back to museums and to private galleries. Asian works were shown in the Louvre and other art museums, and as well they entered the holdings of natural history and ethnographic museums, though often segregated from the primitive African and Oceanic objects. Certainly there were many bizarre relics and pagan idols, but Oriental goods were seen in a different perspective from those of ‘savage’ countries. Such works were more often the province of connoisseurs, archaeologists and art historians than of ethnographers and anthropologists. Yet accumulation and exhibition of Asian objects also connected to imperialism. Political designs accompanied cultural interests. Colonial soldiers, bureaucrats and traders collected for themselves and for museums at home. Collections were sometimes put together in dubious circumstances – André Malraux was briefly gaoled for ‘souveniring’ Cambodian antiquities. The exotic and picturesque particularly fascinated Europeans, from statues of Khmer dancers to betel-nut boxes and opium pipes. Many items in present-day collections have a colonial provenance. Several privately formed collections in Paris and Toulouse, followed by the larger Musée Guimet and the Institut du Monde Arabe, show the links between Asian art and European colonialism.

Bringing home Asian art One example of an Asian collection in France is the ‘Chinese museum’ of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, a ruler much interested in overseas expansion. He sponsored an ill-fated attempt to set up an empire in Mexico, hoped to establish a ‘royaume arabe’ in North Africa (with himself as king), and promoted French commerce and political intervention in Southeast Asia. In 1860, eight thousand of Napoleon III’s troops joined a British force in a military campaign in China. Led by General Cousin-Montauban, the


French secured a crucial bridge on the march to Beijing that opened the way for the capture and pillage of the Chinese emperor’s summer palace. For his conquest, Cousin-Montauban was made Comte de Palikao, and the French soldiers returned with booty taken from Beijing. Seven cartloads of Chinese art and artefacts were displayed for three months in Napoleon’s Tuileries palace. Most of the arms were then sent to the artillery museum, but Eugénie decided to create a Chinese gallery in the imperial palace at Fontainebleau. The collection was enriched by forty-eight cases of treasures acquired by a diplomatic mission to China, and by presents from the King of Siam. Eugénie’s Chinese collection was installed on the ground floor of the eighteenth-century Gros Pavillon, specially renovated for the purpose. The empress personally arranged the objects and inaugurated her ‘Musée chinois’ for friends and courtiers in 1863. The suite of rooms included some extraneous items – Charles Cordier’s bust of an Arab woman and two billiard tables, for example – but culminated in a gallery with walls of lacquer panel and floors carpeted with Chinese rugs. Four hundred objects, including porcelain and tapestries, temple vessels and statues, and a few curious items that struck the empress’s fantasy, were set out in the crowded, cluttered style favoured in the nineteenth century. Particular highlights were a Siamese painting of the Emerald Buddha, a replica of the royal Thai crown decorated with two thousand rubies, and a palanquin chair. When the court was not in residence, the exhibition was sometimes opened to the public. After the fall of the Second Empire, Eugénie’s museum was kept in place – the aged ex-empress visited it again in 1914 – and remained open until 1975. The Chinese museum was renovated in the late 1980s, and is again open to the public.76 Two other collections of Asian art assembled by private collectors, and housed in the Paris mansions where their owners lived, are the Cernuschi and d’Ennery museums. Henri Cernuschi was a Milan-born financier and political figure who returned to Europe after an 1871–1873 voyage to Asia, in the company of an art critic, with a collection of objects for which he built a house overlooking the posh Parc Monceau. The Musée Cernuschi opened two years after his death. Among the 5000 objects – the collection had continued to expand – are antique Japanese books, porcelain, funerary statues, and Chinese and Japanese bronzes. Adolphe d’Ennery (the pen name of Eugène Philippe) was a popular playwright, author of three hundred works, and friend of such luminaries as the Goncourt brothers and Jules Verne. He was also much taken with Asian art, though as an arm-chair traveller, and bought 6000 objects, largely Chinese and Japanese, from Paris dealers. D’Ennery constructed a building for his collection in the Bois de Boulogne, and left it to the state as a museum. It is one of the few intact collections of chinoiseries and japonaiseries from the late nineteenth century.77

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Neither Cernuschi nor d’Ennery was connected directly with imperialism, and neither of their museums can strictly be considered colonial. However, they do point, like Eugénie’s Chinese gallery, to the vogue for Asian art and antiquities at a time of increasing European political and commercial incursions on the Japanese and Chinese empires. In the case of the Fontainebleau museum, however, the collection is composed partly of treasures and ‘curios’ pillaged from Asia. One of the more curious collections – of Asian objects and much else – is that founded in Toulouse by Georges Labit. Born in 1862, Labit’s father founded the Bazar Universel, a successful department store cum grocery. Labit studied commerce, then worked episodically for several companies, but lived largely on the inheritance he received from his mother. Labit’s life has retained several secrets. A practicing Catholic, he was possibly of Jewish background. Although rumoured to be homosexual, he fathered a daughter. He died at the age of thirty-seven, only days before his marriage to a woman chosen by his family (who was not the mother of his child). His father said that Labit was killed with a poisoned arrow from his own ethnographical collection stolen by the brother of his mistress. There was also a rumour that Labit’s mistress, knowing of his intended marriage, had castrated him in the ‘chambre arabe’ of his house (leading, inevitably, to puns on the victim’s name and fate), and she subsequently became a nun. Her family maintained that Labit had committed suicide. Labit had been an active member of the Toulouse geographical society, for which he went to Lapland in 1888. He travelled widely throughout Europe and in North Africa and Turkey, as well as to Japan, collecting art, books and particularly clothing. He posted articles to French newspapers, enthusing in good Orientalist fashion about the places he visited. He also made a plea for European colonisation of North Africa: ‘Il faut noyer la partie indigène dans une population européenne, plus dense et plus compacte’ (The indigenous part of the population must be drowned in a denser and more compact European population). In 1893, Labit built a combination house and museum decorated with a hybrid tower inspired by Moorish architecture in Grenada and Tlemcen, Arabic arches and a moucharabieh. Here the man whom Odile Laulhère and Sylviane Leprun call an ‘ethnoesthète’ showed off free to the public his eclectic collection: Tuareg weapons, sarongs from Ceylon, opium pipes from China, an Indochinese table, an easy-chair decorated with yak horns, Japanese screens and other bric-a-brac. After Labit’s death, his father gave the museum to the city of Toulouse, although it remained closed until 1935. Several years later, it was in a lamentable state because of damage from rats, rain and sun. A retired colonial doctor was given charge, and he transformed Labit’s collection into a museum of Far Eastern folklore. After several later reorganisations, it is now a museum of Asian arts and Egyptian antiquities. Though with few surviving traces of the founder’s wide-ranging ethnographic interests, it remains a monument to the pro-colonial Asian fascination and fantasies of people like


Labit, Empress Eugénie, Cernuschi and d’Ennery, as well as the passion of another collector, Emile Guimet.78

The Musée Guimet The national museum of Asian art is the Musée Guimet. Emile Guimet (1836–1918) was a wealthy Lyonnais industrialist, son of the inventor of blue outremer paint and himself head of the Péchiney chemical company which provided his enormous fortune. Guimet’s attraction to overseas areas was sparked by an 1865 trip to Egypt, which also inspired an interest in religions. In 1876 Guimet journeyed to the United States to present his factories’ products at a centenary exhibition in Philadelphia. He had solicited a commission from the Ministry of Education to study Asian religions, so in the company of Félix Régamey, an artist and illustrator who worked in Britain and the United States, he travelled on from America to Japan, China, Indochina, Ceylon and India. The pair published several books about their ten months of travel, and Guimet returned with a trove of treasures, including nine hundred objects and a thousand books from Japan alone. A selection was displayed with Régamey’s paintings at the 1878 world’s fair in Paris; in the same year, Guimet organised a conference of Orientalists in Lyon, and he began construction of a ‘museum of religions’. Although he did not practice any religion and was a supporter of the république laïque, Guimet was drawn to Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism, and saw his museum as a way of educating and enlightening the public about Asian civilisations. The museum, to which Guimet attached a library and a language school, was opened by the Minister of Education, Jules Ferry, in 1879. However, it attracted relatively few visitors. Concluding that his townspeople did not share the passion for comparative religion, Guimet transferred his museum to Paris, donating his collection to the state in return for sponsorship and subsidies for the museum he constructed in the Place d’Iéna. Guimet was appointed director for life of the museum that was opened by the French president in 1889. The museum was a success in Paris, not only for the striking building and its rich collections, but also for the grand Buddhist ceremonies carried out there in 1891, 1893 and 1898. Guimet brought priests from Japan on the first two occasions, and Tibetan priests for the third, attended by le tout Paris, including prominent politicians such as Ferry and Georges Clemenceau. (In 1905 spectators came to see a different incarnation of the Orient: the would-be Indonesian dancer Mata Hari.) Guimet encouraged research, and his own writings and presentations at scientific gatherings won praise. His protean publications included books on Japan, and pieces on Germany, Scandinavia, Egypt and eastern Asia, articles on Arabs, Mexico, Chinese art and theatre, Middle Eastern archaeology and lyrical music. He had a keen interest in music, composing for bands (especially the workers’ bands he set up) and

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writing oratorios; his opera about a seventh-century Chinese emperor was performed in Marseille in 1894.79 Guimet remained an amateur collector and savant with wide-ranging interests. He was not politically active, but espoused reformist views. Opposed to socialism, he nevertheless expressed admiration for the tenacity of workers who went on strike. He set up schools, recreational facilities and mutual aid societies for his employees, and said that his manufacturing, music and museum were all intended to bring benefits to the workers. ‘Ma vie, qui semble un peu éparpillée, a, je crois, une grande unité. Mon existence n’a eu qu’un but: aimer et servir les prolétaires’80 (My life, which seems a bit fragmented, does have, I believe, a great unity. My existence has had only one aim: to love and serve the workers). Guimet’s position on colonialism is not entirely clear. His interest in the overseas world was cultural rather than political or commercial; his business and intellectual activities seem to have remained separated. Guimet criticised certain Western influences in Asia, but sometimes spoke in typically colonialist terms about foreign countries. Among his friends were such colonial promoters as Ferry and Paul Bert, and after his death in 1918, Albert Sarraut, former Governor-General of Indochina and Minister of Colonies, was appointed to the museum’s board. Guimet’s enthusiasm for Asian religions formed part of a general European fascination with foreign cultures in the first decades of the Third Republic, and such attraction joined easily to the colonialist creed. In the 1920s Guimet’s successors oriented the museum towards Asian art rather than religion. In the late 1920s the ‘Musée Indochinois’, the Southeast Asian collection of the Trocadéro ethnography museum, was transferred to the Musée Guimet. In 1945 its Egyptian works were exchanged for Asian works housed in the Louvre. The museum was renovated in the 1930s and 1970s, but nevertheless the exhibitions appeared increasingly anachronistic and anarchic. Works were locked in glass vitrines with fading labels, masterpieces juxtaposed with generic items. Objects from the same geographical area were spread over several floors. The atmosphere was musty and gloomy. The Musée Guimet, in short, had some of the same problems that plagued others surviving from the colonial age, such as the Musée de l’Homme and the MAAO. In the early 1990s, the state museum authorities decided on a complete overhaul, and commissioned Henri and Bruno Gaudin to renovate the museum, which reopened to the public in 2001. The grand old library with its balcony supported by caryatids was retained, but the remainder of the building was reconfigured. Collections from one region were mostly brought together in the dedicated exhibition spaces. Southeast Asian and Indian works divide the ground floor, Chinese, central Asian and Tibetan works (plus Indian decorative arts) are exhibited in galleries on the first floor, and Korean and Japanese works take the top floor. Although a geographical rather than a chronological or thematic arrangement was favoured, the architects created connecting


areas, balconies and internal openings – as Wilmotte also did in the Pavillon des Sessions – to facilitate comparisons between different countries and styles, and to suggest cross-cultural influences. Visitors can stand in the central atrium, or on the grand double stairway, for example, and see various statues of Buddha from different artistic traditions. But they can also see a panorama of art from the same region. On the main floor, in addition to the large Vietnamese and Cambodian sections, there are displays on Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma and Laos, proximity suggesting links between those countries’ art. The Musée Guimet has been said to have the most important collection of Asian art in the world, and approximately 3500 of the 45,000 works it holds are on display at any one time.81 The Guimet collections were largely assembled during the colonial era from individual objects collected as far back as the early nineteenth century. Some Nepalese and Tibetan items came from the collection of B.H. Hodgson, British Resident in Kathmandu from 1824 to 1843, which was acquired by the Institut de France. The collection of Greco-Buddhist Gandhara art from Afghanistan (a collection shifted to the Musée Guimet from the Louvre), one of the most comprehensive in the world and particularly precious since the Taliban’s iconoclasm, was put together during an expedition led by Alfred Foucher in 1896 and 1897.82 The Indochinese collections, because of French colonisation of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos – and endless fascination for Angkor Wat – are especially rich. A large number of the Khmer works were collected by Louis Delaporte and Etienne Aymonier. Delaporte, after studying at the Ecole Navale in Lorient and serving on French ships in the Atlantic and Caribbean, took part as an artist and topographer in Doudart de Lagrée’s pioneering exploration of the Mekong River in 1866. In 1873 he joined an expedition sponsored by the navy and culture ministries to study and procure artworks from Angkor Wat. Delaporte took casts of statues, completed drawings, made maps and returned home laden with sculptures of human and animal figures, stelae, pediments and pilastres. The Louvre refused to accept the artwork for its collection, and the items were deposited in the Château de Compiègne, at a temporary Indochinese gallery established in 1874, then shifted to the Trocadéro after the opening of the ethnographic museum. Delaporte went on another expedition in 1881, by which time he was curator of the Khmer collections at the Trocadéro. He directed the Trocadéro’s Musée Indochinois until the year before his death. Aymonier was a navy officer in Cochinchina in the 1870s, and also taught Cambodian to colonial administrators. Along with Delaporte and Jules Harmand, he took part in the first serious European research on Angkor Wat, and was a member of the 1881 archeological and epigraphical team there. He also worked with Auguste Pavie, the consul who brought Laos under French control.83

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Other Indochinese works were acquired for the Guimet museum in the 1930s by the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO). Established in 1898, the EFEO’s mandate was research on Asia, and it played a central role in the wider French presence in the Far East. The EFEO ran the Musée Albert Sarraut in Phnom-Penh, and helped set up other museums. It held a government-granted monopoly on the conservation and use of Indochinese historical monuments and the furnishing to museums of artworks from France’s Southeastern Asian possessions. Especially during the 1930s, the EFEO shipped Indochinese works to the Guimet museum. It also sold antiquities to foreign museums; always short of funding, this provided a way of raising money for research projects. Some $US 77,000 was raised from sale of sculptures from 1927 to 1946 – the average work sold for $US 83. Half of the buyers were French, evenly divided between métropolitains and colonials. Others who benefitted were the Metropolitan Museum in New York (which purchased six Khmer sculptures in 1936), and institutions in Amsterdam, Boston, Stockholm and Tokyo. The EFEO maintained that channeling sales to museums helped reduce theft of antiquities, and that exhibition of Asian works in overseas collections promoted tourism to Indochina. Nevertheless, residents of Siem Reap, in Cambodia, signed a petition against such sales in 1949. Various Indochinese works in the Guimet museum are labelled as having been acquired through the EFEO.84 Asian art in European collections, and at international and colonial exhibitions, inspired many French artists, much as did African and Oceanic art, though a bit earlier and perhaps to a lesser degree. Gauguin, for instance, was much interested in Japanese prints, which he saw at the 1889 international exhibition. Rodin was a fervent admirer of Cambodian art, and the Cambodian dances that he saw performed at world’s fairs in France. Several Orientalists also took inspiration from Indochina. Jean Bouchard – who also studied in Algeria and travelled in Morocco and French West Africa – illustrated Lyautey’s Lettres du Tonkin. He painted works with Asian themes for the press centre at the 1931 colonial fair (the drawings are now in the fine arts museum in Nantes), and did decorations for such oceanliners as the famous Normandie (for which he painted ‘Les Fruits de la Colonie’). Jean Launois, son of the Minister of Colonies’s chief of staff, also studied in Algiers (and died there). He was particularly inspired by a visit to Luang Prabang, Laos, and produced gouaches of local figures.85 Not all works in the Musée Guimet were acquired during the colonial period or solely from areas over which France established imperial control. However, the impulse to put together collections and open museums related to the interest in overseas cultures that characterised the colonial age, and to the facilities afforded to collectors and curators by the colonial administration. The Guimet museum, like the Musée de l’Homme, MAAO and others specialising in non-Western art, was not devoid of colonialist perspectives. The recent overhaul has been prompted not only by necessary


renovation of an antiquated museum, but intends to provide a new, modernistic and post-colonialist approach to the arts of Asia. Although only labels indicating the provenance of works refer explicitly to the colonial past, the museum in its history and collection constitutes a lieu de mémoire of France’s engagement with Asia.

The Institut du Monde Arabe Despite centuries of close ties between France and North Africa and the Middle East, and widespread admiration for the art and architecture of these regions, Islamic art has traditionally had a relatively low profile in French museums. Ethnographic museums, and the old collections of the MAAO, had representative holdings of clothing, domestic utensils, rugs and other craftware, and the Louvre displayed a few antiquities, but there was no museum of Islamic art. General Bugeaud’s nineteenth-century plans to establish an Algerian museum in Paris – largely for the display of Roman antiquities that would prove a European claim to North Africa – came to nought.86 The service of Islamic soldiers in French armies during the First World War prompted the building of a mosque, but not a museum, in the capital. Colonial exhibitions (and one for the centenary of French conquest of Algiers in 1930) always included a selection of Maghrebin arts and crafts along with re-creations of souks and cafés maures, but did not inspire the creation of a museum devoted to Muslim culture. Musées coloniaux included Arabic, Berber and other Muslim works, and those with Orientalist penchants such as Loti and Lyautey took pleasure in creating ‘Arabic’ rooms in their houses. The post-1945 years were hardly propitious for establishment of a Muslim museum in the context of the Algerian War, and the decades immediately following were even less congenial, given the bitter memories of that conflict. Paris had to wait for twenty-five years after the end of the war for an Islamic museum. The Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA), established and funded by France and a consortium of Arabic and other Islamic countries, opened in 1987 during the Mitterrand presidency. Despite the scars of the Algerian War, France has since the 1960s positioned itself as an intermediary between the West and the Arabic world, maintaining particularly strong ties with such countries as Morocco. Paris is a centre for scholarship on Islam, and also for the popular culture of the Maghreb – the raï music popular among second-generation migrants, the Beurs, as well as those interested in world music. France’s support for Palestine has won widespread support among Arabs, though Paris is often criticised for what are perceived as neo-colonialist attitudes both abroad and to Arabs in France. The IMA was one of Mitterrand’s grands travaux, conceived as a gesture towards the Arab world, which also staked a claim to France’s role in the diffusion of Arabic culture.

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The IMA is located on the Left Bank not far from the mosque, the Jardin des Plantes and the university quarter, facing a place named for King Mohammed V of Morocco. The large and striking building, the work of the architect Jean Nouvel, is covered with exterior shutters reminiscent of a moucharabieh, the carved panel that often closes Arabic windows or surrounds balconies. There are no other Arabic motifs, though the café and restaurant have appropriate decorations and serve North African food; a more or less permanent marquis opposite the building sells Arabic books, artefacts, art and food, often from countries whose culture is being highlighted at special exhibitions. The institute houses a permanent art collection, a library, and a large bookshop, and it publishes exhibition catalogues and a journal. The IMA is meant to be a showcase for Arabo-Islamic cultures in France, a centre for exhibitions, lectures, films and other activities. Its founding was a daring initiative, given the need to coordinate concerns of various countries and different interpretations of Islamic culture. It was also intended to foster France’s close but sometimes strained relationships with Islamic countries, and to acknowledge the cultural heritage of as many as five million Muslims in France.87 Temporary exhibitions have looked at significant periods of Arabo-Islamic history; aspects of Arabic culture, such as the role of the horse in the Arabic world; particular countries and regions, including Lebanon, Yemen and Nubia; and perceptions of Arabic culture in Western art. The strong point of the IMA is its special exhibitions of classic and contemporary art and photography from the Arabic world, and it has played an extraordinary role in popularising Arabic art and culture to the French and to foreign visitors. The IMA museum shows works specifically acquired for the permanent collection or on loan from French and overseas institutions, including many from Arabic and Islamic countries. Syria and Tunisia, both states administered by France during the colonial period, were the first to lend works, ranging from prehistory to the eighteenth century. Objects are arranged in a basically chronological sequence. Tiles, ceramics and manuscripts are prominent, and the focus is on art and art history rather than ethnography. Neither the IMA’s collections nor its building is colonial. In the first years of its existence, the institute gave limited attention to colonialism, except for art inspired by the Arabic world, perhaps in order to establish its legitimacy in focussing on Arab cultures. An exhibition on Mohammed Racim in 1992 showed French influences on a twentieth-century Algerian artist, and ones on Delacroix and Matisse highlighted the inspiration provided by North Africa for French painters. Other special exhibits, with increasing frequency, have focussed more explicitly on the colonial era with, for instance, shows of colonial-era photographs and architecture. In 1999 the IMA organised an exhibition on literary and artistic visitors to Morocco, from Delacroix to Paul Bowles.88 The IMA participated in the 2003 Année de


l’Algérie with a range of exhibitions from Algerian prehistory to 1950s photographs. Such exhibitions represent part of general efforts in France to come to terms with the colonial past, especially the French experience in North Africa. In a broader sense, the IMA’s programmes provide an image of the dynamic, diverse and complex nature of Arabo-Islamic societies: a different perspective than the negative one that sometimes circulates among the public and is promoted by racist and xenophobic politicians.

French museums and overseas arts and civilisations Several initiatives testify to sustained interest in non-Western and ethnographic art: the creation of the private Musée Dapper in 1986, the opening of the new publically funded museums – the IMA in 1987 and the MAAOA in 1992 – and the more recent reopening of the renovated Musée Guimet in 2001. The closing of the MAAO’s collections in 2003 and the imminent closing of the Musée de l’Homme’s ethnographic galleries will make way for the arts premiers museum. Other private and public undertakings – including renovation of the Musée Africain in Lyon and the Maison du Missionnaire in Vichy, and plans for a Musée des Confluences in Lyon – confirm the appeal of art from Africa and Oceania, as well as the popularity of Asian art. From the 1950s to the 1980s ethnographic museums attracted less attention than did other collections that benefitted from state support for acquisitions, expansion and creation of new facilities.89 Vitrines gathered dust, labels yellowed, and direct or indirect reminders of the colonial age put some visitors and curators ill at ease. Since the 1980s, however, there has been what Françoise Cachin calls a ‘réveil’ (awakening) in these museums and collections.90 This has amounted to a simple rediscovery of huge and varied collections assembled over several hundred years. However, the timing of renewed interest in non-Western art since the 1990s relates to other developments as well. Sustained and more broadly based French contact with the wider world – in business and tourism, films and books, political and sometimes military actions – has fuelled fascination with foreign cultures. Back-packers armed with the Guide du routard have replaced pith-helmeted colonials on expedition, but the lure of the distant and different remains strong. Paradoxically, globalisation has drawn attention to the plurality of cultures that existed before supersonic jets, fast food and trans-national corporations. ‘Ethnic’ art, ‘tribal’ design, ‘world’ music and even ‘alternative’ medicine privilege imports from non-Western cultures, often linked to ecological consciousness and altermondialisation. Such interest is tinged with yearning or nostalgia for ‘authentic’ and ‘traditional’ societies represented by art and artefacts from Africa, Asia or the Pacific islands. But the revived interest of museum-goers and museum curators, as well as state authorities who create and fund museums, implies a greater French willingness, forty years after decolonisation, to view the colonial past with a clearer and calmer regard.

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Therein lies the paradox. Of all the cultural institutions specifically linked to the imperial endeavour – geographical societies, colonial institutes and museums, the Académie des sciences coloniales, countless interest groups and voluntary associations – museums housing ethnographic art have been among the longest-lived. Their function in the colonial age was, in part, to galvanise support for France’s empire by showing off and studying conquered cultures. The end of the colonial epoch necessitated a sea-change in function and ideology, and for several decades museums such as the MAAO, the Musée de l’Homme and even the Musée Guimet struggled to ‘reinvent’ themselves. Provincial museums, such as the Musée Labit in Toulouse and the tens of natural history and ethnographic museums scattered around France, struggled too to find new vocations. Lack of wherewithal forced some to retain unrevised displays, while others seemed content to avoid change. Several, such as the Ile d’Aix museum, decided to preserve themselves as they were in order to display the old exhibition practices. In each case, the colonial legacy of ethnographic art was inescapable – after all, the colonial era had bequeathed these collections to a post-colonial age – but the way that the colonial past was recalled, explained and displayed differed. In some places, it was still present in the very exhibits, unaltered for decades, leaving a disconcertingly unreconstructed view of imperialism. In other cases, it was largely ignored – conditions of collecting and the provenance of works were pushed out of sight and out of mind. The danger here is that in modernising exhibitions, wiping away the colonial patina means erasing memories of the phenomenon of colonialism that provided the context for collecting. The challenge for new museums is to situate objects fully in the context of the source societies yet, as well, to track their itineraries from distant times and places to today’s galleries, to remember the cultures which created them, but not to forget how they were brought to Europe.

7 Temporary Exhibitions: Changing Perspectives

Museums devoted to fine arts, ethnography, the military or other themes are repositories of art, artefacts and objects considered sacred by groups that wish to commemorate their history and culture. However, museums alter dramatically as old institutions close and new ones open, acquisitions are made and occasionally objects are ‘deaccessioned’, collections rotate from storage rooms to galleries, and curatorial policies change. The metamorphosis reflects evolving attitudes towards the themes and items on display, as well as the form of presentation: the result is regular rearrangement of ‘permanent’ exhibitions. Almost all museums mount special temporary exhibitions to highlight the strengths of their collections and to focus on particular topics. Earlier chapters mentioned several such exhibitions. A more detailed survey suggests how, since the end of the 1980s, museums have been increasingly concerned with colonial issues. From the 1960s through the 1970s, colonies rarely provided subjects for exhibitions – the immediate post-colonial era was a time to move away from displays of Orientalist art and primitive artefacts,1 and the phenomenon of colonialism was all but taboo. In the 1980s curators and museum-goers began to rediscover the empire, first in the art inspired by the ‘exotic’ world; a host of exhibitions in Marseille in 1982 marked a turning-point. This view was primarily aesthetic – deserts and casbahs, ports and jungles as themes for painters – although some curators and scholars were already critically examining the Western ‘gaze’ on the Orient. Not until the early 1990s, however, did major exhibitions examine some of the more difficult questions of colonial history. One on the Algerian War, held at the Invalides in 1992, and one on slavery, organised in Nantes, represented a new effort by museums to come to terms with the colonial past. 291

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Colonial subtexts Just as occurs in permanent collections, colonies often show up in temporary exhibitions, sometimes in unexpected places, further proof of the widespread presence of the overseas empire in French life. For instance, in 2002, at the Bibliothèque Forney in Paris, an exhibition on labels of commercial wares showed multiple colonial traces. Tropical products have long been labelled with images evoking the countries from which they come: camels on packets of dates, dark-skinned temptresses in madras headdresses on bottles of rum. Labelling and advertising with colonial allusions proliferated in the early twentieth century. The exhibition included a hair oil called ‘eau congolaise’ (Congolese toilet-water) made by the Savonnerie et Parfumerie du Congo, and a ‘savon au musc tonkin’ (Tonkin musk soap) manufactured in Paris. A portrait of Brazza decorated a ‘savon des explorateurs’ (an ‘explorers’ soap’), which competed for sales with the ‘savon des princes du Congo’ (soap of the Congo princes). A lemon cordial from Constantine was advertised with the face of a fez-wearing black man positioned between two halves of a lemon. A sphinx was used for Arabic gum. Bottles of encre de Chine, patented in 1847 and used in schools until the end of the Second World War, were predictably decorated with Chinese characters; the first purely ornamental calligraphy was rewritten, in line with the factory owner’s Catholic beliefs, to render a New Testament verse. The very names of products could evoke distant places – perfumes called Maharani and Le Réveil d’Egypte. Names and iconography are not accidental, but the result of careful marketing strategies chosen to stimulate consumer interest. A 1986 exhibition on ‘Négripub’, also held at the Bibliothèque Forney, had shown how images of blacks in advertising were closely bound up with racial stereotypes and enduring colonialist propaganda.2 Designs ranged from whimsical portrayals of exoticism to blatant racism – in the latter case, for instance, ads for soaps so strong that they could even turn a black into a white. The more recent exhibition confirmed that the colonial era provided a fine opportunity to sell wares by drawing on colonial images, but that product design could also reinforce imperialist ideologies. Putting the old labels on show perhaps suggested that consumers look more carefully at the products lining current shelves, where rum bottles still have smiling Creole ladies and perfumes with such names as Opium and Samsara leave behind a whiff of colonial-era fascination with exotic and erotic foreign places. Other exhibitions, without focussing explicitly on colonialism, provide insight into France’s overseas ventures. ‘Images des Sciences’, held at the natural history museum in Nantes in 2002–2003, traced the French encounter with the wider world forwards from the eighteenth-century Pacific voyages and Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition. A reproduced ‘cabinet of curiosities’ with stuffed animals, reptiles in formaldehyde and an elephant foot showed how collectors hoarded bric-a-brac, as well as such oddities as

Temporary Exhibitions

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a six-legged sheep and a cat with two tails: the cabinet of curiosities as both scientific compendium and freak show. Drawings, engravings and books illustrated how amateur and professional naturalists studied flora and fauna. The natural history museum’s collection provided a treasure trove of specimens – plaster casts of exotic fruits, bottles of seeds, nuts, sugar and spices – that once belonged, as fading labels indicate, to the Musée colonial de Nantes. Bringing them out of storage provided a chance to demonstrate the ways in which museums collected, catalogued and displayed such objects. Commercial wares assembled to show off the bounty of the French empire, and to boost support for an empire that was alive and well, now memorialise collecting and commerce in an empire relegated to the past. Although it is impossible to examine each of the special exhibitions that has touched on colonialism since the 1980s, discussion of a substantial sample evidences the rediscovery and re-examination of colonialism that has occurred. In these temporary exhibitions, museums have been in the vanguard in France’s efforts to come to terms with its colonial past. Temporary exhibitions, by their nature, attract publicity for their timeliness and novelty. They often commemorate anniversaries, connect with current issues, and respond to the political priorities of the government in office. Curators can treat subjects, including controversial questions, that cannot be addressed so easily in displays that are designed to remain in place for years or even decades. They more readily mirror changing social and cultural perspectives than do permanent collections. With a limited lifespan, there is little time for labels to yellow and dust to settle. Although special exhibitions require major commitments, years of planning and large budgets, putting on such shows is less demanding than reorganising an entire permanent collection or building a new museum. Special exhibitions, by definition, are short-lived. They differ from permanent exhibitions, and from the monuments, statues and memorials that are meant to be eternal. Yet they too are lieux de mémoire, evoking personal and collective memories, inciting reactions, challenging views and provoking debate. For the space of several months, the average time in which a temporary exhibition is open, they command attention, and a few have sparked longerterm projects. A 1980 exhibition on the Americas in La Rochelle, for instance, led to the opening of the Musée du Nouveau Monde, a display of colonial art at Boulogne-Billancourt became one of the foundation collections for a museum dedicated to the 1930s, an exhibition on slavery in Nantes was part of the Anneaux de mémoire association’s continuing project on history and memory, and the Year of Algeria in 2003 has prompted the foundation of cultural exchange organisations in France and Algeria. Temporary exhibitions thus capture collective memories, curatorial practices and historical interpretations at a particular moment. They also chronicle the change in perspectives over time, and sometimes foreshadow future memorial or commemorative gestures. They display history and memories, but also create them.

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Rediscovering Orientalist art Several exhibitions in the 1980s provided avatars of renewed interest in the empire. The most significant manifestation was ‘L’Orient des Provençaux’, a series of seventeen exhibitions held concurrently in Marseille in late 1982 and early 1983 under the patronage of the French and Algerian ministries of culture. The time and place were hardly coincidental given the role of Marseille in colonial trade and the domination of local politics by Gaston Defferre, Marseille’s longtime mayor and député, and Minister of the Interior in the new government of François Mitterrand. Defferre wrote the preface to the catalogue of the central exhibition, praising the tradition of entrepreneurship and risk-taking demonstrated by his townsmen since their first commercial contacts with North Africa and the Levant. He singled out the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and ‘sa volonté de se comporter sur le plan économique, financier et diplomatique comme le véritable responsable des relations et des intérêts de la France au Proche-Orient’ (its will to act on economic, financial and diplomatic levels veritably as the agent responsible for French relations and interests in the Near East): diplomatic, commercial and cultural achievements of benefit to Marseille. Defferre noted the decline of Marseille’s influence during the Ottoman rule in North Africa, but then the revival produced by colonialism. The new situation, however, was different from the symbiotic links of earlier periods: ‘Il n’y a pas d’échanges équilibrés entre colonisateur et colonisé: il y a exploitation à sens unique . . . Il n’y avait plus enrichissement réciproque, mais enrichissement des uns au détriment des autres’ (There was no equal exchange between the coloniser and the colonised: exploitation took place in a one-way direction . . . There was no mutual enrichment, but the enrichment of one side at the expense of the other). Such critical words were unusual from a leader of Defferre’s stature and generation, but he balanced the judgement: ‘Il ne faudrait pas, pour autant, laisser entendre que tout fut condamnable de colonisation, loin de là’ (Yet we should not for all that let it be thought that everything about colonisation was condemnable – far from it). The competence of administrators and the humanitarian work of the army medical officers counted among praiseworthy achievements. Defferre concluded that ‘le défaut était dans le système, celui de l’exploitation économique et de la domination politique et intellectuelle’ (the defect lay in the system – that of economic exploitation and political and intellectual domination). Marseillais seized opportunities offered by colonialism, though ‘l’aveuglement était grand’ (blindness prevailed) when it came to the evils of the system. After decades of colonial action, France had ultimately lost the empire, and Defferre acknowledged the bitterness that many still felt at the imperial retreat. The page of decolonisation turned, now new opportunities awaited for France and for Marseille: ‘Saurons-nous tisser des liens qui, cette fois, seront des liens pacifiques et durables?’3 (Will we know how to establish links that, this


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time, will be peaceful and enduring links?) Defferre’s succinct statements implied a more critical, though not wholly negative, reassessment of empire in the early 1980s, when the Mitterrand government undertook bold (if not always successful) initiatives to remould French life. Colonialism, in his view, was a legacy that could build a foundation for future entrepreneurial and cultural advantages for France’s second largest city and biggest port. Almost all of Marseille’s museums, libraries and archives participated in ‘L’Orient des Provençaux’. The Musée des Beaux-Arts presented three hundred paintings from the 1800s to the early 1900s, and the Musée GrobetLabadié showed eighty Orientalist drawings collected by a local art patron. At the Musée Borély were paintings and objects around the theme of ‘Orient réel et mythique’, including such curiosities as a gold and diamond cigarette case that the Ottoman sultan presented to Pierre Loti. The Musée Cantini exhibited paintings by French artists, from Géricault and Delacroix through to post-Impressionists and Fauves, held by the fine arts museum in Algiers – the first time most had been seen in France since they were deposited in the newly established Algerian museum in the 1930s. (The museum also organised a retrospective of Baya, a present-day Algerian painter and sculptor.) At the Bibliothèque Municipale, visitors could see the papers of Marseillais who travelled to the Levant from the 1500s through the 1800s, while the Archives Départementales presented ‘Sept siècles d’échanges avec l’Orient’, and the municipal archives focussed on relations with Egypt. The Ecole d’Art et d’Architecture looked at the influence of Islamic design on Provençal architecture. The Vieille-Charité had a display on the Marseille colonial exhibitions of 1906 and 1922, and the Institut de Médecine Tropicale held one on colonial medicine. The Musée du Vieux Marseille featured the history of the city’s port, and the Musée de la Marine took as its subject the Echelles du Levant and Echelles de Barbarie, early modern French trading posts around the Mediterranean. The natural history museum covered the Sahara, both eighteenth-century French voyagers and present-day Tuaregs; and a ‘Muséobus’ took an exhibit on the desert around schools. These displays catalogued the panoply of exchanges between Marseille and the ‘Orient’, and underlined Marseille’s role as ‘porte d’Orient’ (gateway to the East) through centuries-long commercial, social and cultural intercourse with North Africa and the Middle East. Despite the multiplicity of exhibits, however, relatively little attention was given to the period after the First World War. There were notably no exhibitions explicitly on French domination of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, or on the mandated territories of Syria and Lebanon. There was nothing on the Algerian War or the ‘repatriation’ of pieds-noirs, despite their prominence in Marseille. Nor were there exhibitions on contemporary Algeria (except the Baya retrospective) or on Muslim residents of Provence. Such subjects as the war were still taboo in the early 1980s. Emphasis on the longue durée tended to dissolve the colonial period – and the mechanisms of colonial rule – into hundreds of years of

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commercial exchange and culture contact. The exhibitions nevertheless represented a landmark, only two decades after the end of the Algerian War, in the reappraisal of trans-Mediterranean links, even if the central fact of French colonial presence in North Africa and the Middle East was relegated to the sidelines. Six years later another important exhibition, similar to the one at Marseille’s Musée des Beaux-Arts in 1982, took place at the small municipal museum in Boulogne-Billancourt. The show brought out works from the collection of the former Musée Colonial, paintings and sculptures later incorporated into the Musée des Années Trente. It brought to light colonial artists – Iakovleff, Jouve, Maire, Quinqaud, among others – whose work had been largely forgotten since the 1930s, providing a vision of empire stylistically if not always thematically different from that of earlier Orientalists. Boulogne-Billancourt showed off artists who were blatantly, proudly colonialist, whose works were sometimes commissioned by colonial authorities, shown in colonial museums, and used as testimony of the burgeoning cultural life in France’s outposts. A few could be considered explicitly propagandistic, but almost all were imbued with the ethos and ideology of the colonial era: picturesque natives, scenic landscapes, attractive French-style towns and harbours. In this exhibition, the art – whether mediocre or accomplished, traditional or (less often) experimental – and not colonial questions was central. It resurrected a creative tradition, but engaged little with the historical context in which the artists and sculptors practiced. The exhibitions in the 1980s in Marseille and Boulogne-Billancourt nevertheless revived an interest in colonial iconography, which has subsequently seen publication of numerous volumes on colonial-era art, photography and advertising: the works of a virtual school of scholars who have deconstructed colonial-era imagery.

The Orientalist vogue Since the time of the Boulogne-Billancourt show, exhibitions on artists who worked in the colonies have remained popular with curators and the public. For instance, in 1988 the Troyes museum devoted a retrospective to Charles Dufresne, a modernist who drew inspiration from Algeria. In 1997 the museum in Langres held a retrospective of Moroccan paintings by the native son Charles-Jules Duvent. The Musée des Augustins in Toulouse showed Moroccan works by Henri Rousseau, and a museum in Les Sables-d’Olonne in 1998 displayed the Indochinese paintings of locally born André Launois.4 In 1993 the Delacroix museum (housed in the artist’s Paris atelier) had an exhibition on his 1832 trip to Morocco, complete with sketches and paintings and the souvenirs he brought back.5 The vogue for Orientalist art also inspired museums to assemble shows from regional collections, as when ‘Parfums d’Orient: La Peinture orientaliste dans les collections publiques


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audoises’ was shown in Narbonne and Carcassone, and when the Musée de la Faïence in 1996 presented ‘Quimper à l’Exposition Coloniale’.6 Touring exhibitions also took advantage of the fashion; one focussed on the voyage of the painters Jean-Louis Gérôme and Louis Bonnat (and the Dutchman Willem de Fammars Testas), and the photographer Albert Goupil, who visited the Levant in 1868.7 Exhibitions on artists connected with the colonies are now a staple, such as the André Maire retrospective in BoulogneBillancourt in 2001.8 Block-buster exhibitions in larger Paris museums have also provided retrospectives on painters with overseas associations. The Institut du Monde Arabe held a large show on Delacroix and Morocco in 1994, and one on Matisse and Morocco in 1999–2000. The Grand Palais in 2002 hosted a retrospective on Théodore Chassériau, and devoted a show to Gauguin and Tahiti in 2003. Colonialism was inescapable in such exhibitions, even if the focus was art, not political history. To different degrees, catalogues engaged with colonialism as represented by these artists in their works and experienced in their overseas sojourns and personal connections. The Chassériau exhibition provides a case in point. Chassériau counted several women from West Indian planters’ families among his ancestors. His father served in Napoleon’s armies in Egypt and in the colonial administration of Saint-Domingue, where the artist was born. He initially specialised in portraits (the son of a governor of Cochinchina among his subjects) and such scenes as ‘Le Commerce rapproche les peuples’ (Commerce Brings People Together), a picture of Arabic merchants visiting Europe. A trip to Algeria in 1846 pushed him further into the Orientalist camp, and he won fame for renditions of Arabic horsemen and chieftains, Moorish women and hammams. If many of Chassériau’s subjects were Orientalist, some were more explicitly colonialist. The portrait of himself that Ali Ben-Hamet commissioned depicted an Arab who sided with General Bugeaud against Abd el-Kader at the time of the French conquest of Algeria. When Ben-Hamet visited France in 1844, L’Illustration trumpeted: ‘Nous avons . . . la satisfaction de posséder en ce moment à Paris des chefs arabes, nos alliés, qui sont venus contempler cette civilisation qu’il est de notre devoir de naturaliser en Afrique’ (We have the satisfaction at the moment of possessing in Paris Arab chiefs, our allies, who have come to contemplate this civilisation which it is our duty to implant in Africa). Hosted by the government and decorated with the Legion of Honour, Ben-Hamet was briefly a celebrity. L’Artiste exulted about ‘Ali Hamet, que tout le monde a pu voir à l’Opéra . . . les yeux terribles et doux, mornes et flamboyants . . . ces yeux de gazelle et de lion qui ont fait frisonner et rougir tant de belles Parisiennes au fond de leur loge’ (Ali Hamet, whom everyone could see at the Opéra . . . [with] his eyes that are fierce and soft, mournful and blazing . . . these eyes of a gazelle or a lion that have made so many Parisian ladies shiver and blush in their seats). Chassériau’s fine painting is thus contextualised in

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the history of colonialism and of nineteenth-century stereotypes about North Africans.9 The arts continue to inspire diverse exhibitions with colonial references. In 2002 the Musée de la Poste featured Marcel Leguay, a painter who lived in Laos and designed many of the postage stamps of Indochina. An example of a sculptor drawn to colonialism is Charles Cordier. In 1847 he met a former slave in the atelier of a fellow sculptor, François Rude, and his bust of the black man was presented the following year. This launched Cordier towards the creation of a ‘Galerie anthropologique et ethnographique pour servir à l’histoire des races’ (an ‘Anthropological and Ethnographical Gallery of the History of Races’), polychrome marble sculptures of Chinese, North Africans, black Africans and Europeans which he exhibited in 1860. Several are on permanent display at the Musée d’Orsay, which in 2004 organised a full-scale exhibition on the artist whose work represents the intersection of artistic and ethnographic interests at the beginning of the ‘new’ imperialism. The history of Hanoi provided the theme in 2001 for an Institut Français d’Architecture exhibition, in which photographs documented how the French had profoundly remodelled the urban infrastructure of the Indochinese capital. In 2001–2002 the Bibliothèque Nationale de France exhibited nineteenth-century photographs of Levantine cities; though not strictly colonial, they demonstrated how development of photography coincided with overseas travel and colonialism, and how photographs of Constantinople, Cairo, Jersusalem and Beirut helped create a certain idea of the East in France. Painting, sculpture, architecture and photography thereby chronicled the advance of colonialism, and now put the colonial era back on view.

Colonialism and cross-cultural influences While most exhibitions concentrated on the European ‘gaze’ on the colonial world, several examined cross-cultural influences in the imperial age. For example, the IMA in 1992 devoted an exhibition to the Algerian artist Mohammed Racim. Though he received French training, Racim also borrowed from Arabic and Persian pictorial traditions. The pioneer of modern painting in Algeria, Racim was heralded by colonial authorities as proof of beneficial cultural nurture, and he was awarded the Legion of Honour and the medal of the society of Orientalist painters. In 1960 the Government-General, in the midst of the war of independence, published a luxurious book promoting Racim as a native success story. Later Algerian scholars and many contemporary Western art historians reinterpreted Racim as an exemplar of Algerian nationalism in the way his choice of subjects reaffirmed indigenous identity and subverted colonial domination.10 The IMA show was the first exhibition of Racim’s work in France since 1936, a reinterpretation of a ‘colonial’ artist in post-colonial perspective.11


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In 1997 ‘Paris-Hanoi-Saigon’, at the Pavillon des Arts, provided an example of cross-fertilisation from Asia. The politics of doi moi in Vietnam had in recent years produced greater openings to the outside world, and Hanoi had even convened an international Francophone summit. The exhibition, along with other activities that were part of a ‘Printemps vietnamien’ in Paris, was meant to promote Franco-Vietnamese links, as well as to present little-known works produced by colonial-era French and Vietnamese artists. It looked at French artists who visited Indochina, largely funded by bursaries created in 1910, and traced the history of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts established in Hanoi in 1925. Westerners were inspired by Asian scenes, and Indochinese artists borrowed from Western techniques to create ‘modern’ Asian painting and also to renew traditional silk-painting and lacquer work.12 Colonialism was here viewed not as mandating cultural imitation, but as engendering artistic métissage.

Photographs of colonialism: the Kahn museum Colonial period photographs as well as paintings and sculptures have attracted renewed attention. The ‘Archives de la Planète’ that Alfred Kahn commissioned comprises a photographic record of many regions where Frenchmen were active, and selections are regularly put on view. Exhibitions at the Kahn museum have indeed offered some of the best recent opportunities to see colonial photographs. In 1992 the museum showed photos of Cambodia taken in the 1920s by Léon Busy, a Polytechnician and army officer who lived for several decades in Southeast Asia and served as photographic adviser to the Governor-General of Indochina. Cambodia, especially Angkor Wat, had exercised French curiosity since the late 1800s, and Busy photographed both the real temples and (during a visit home) the reconstruction erected for the 1931 colonial exhibition. His pictures of ‘typical’ houses, monasteries and the coronation of the Cambodian king in 1928 suggest a peaceful and unchanging country, but shots of a colonial bureaucrat and soldiers in white tunics provide reminders of colonialism. Two years later, another exhibition at the Kahn museum, ‘Commerces d’Asie’, again drew on the thousand autochrome plates and film footage shot by Busy. Views of Tonkinese villages, rice-sellers and artisans were juxtaposed with photographs of French businesses. Some pictures reproduce well-rehearsed images of opium dens and sampans on the Red River, but Busy also photographed roads and railways constructed by the French, the 1682-metre-long Pont Doumer opened in 1902, and the coal and zinc mines that were the pride of colonial industrialists. Rickshaws standing outside the Métropole Hotel and signs advertising Peugot and Michelin appear in a photo of the Rue Paul Bert. An exhibition on Dahomey (Benin) focussed on the Société des Missions Africaines. The head of this order, which maintained the Musée Africain at

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its mother-house in Lyon, was Père Aupiais, an aquaintance of Kahn. Aupiais and Kahn shared an interest in indigenous cultures and in humanitarian colonialism – in 1929 Aupiais gave a talk on ‘L’Idéal colonial de la France’ in Kahn’s lecture series. Photographs included a young African woman dressed as Joan of Arc for a 1930 religious festival, and a black Madonna in a Nativity tableau, but also depicted colonial buildings in Cotonou and workers on the railway the French constructed. Several showed African chiefs in full regalia at home, and dressed in Western attire when they visited Kahn in Boulogne-Billancourt.13 Visitors to these exhibitions saw both native society and French colonialism, but were left largely on their own to interpret the period photographs. For a 1999 show on Morocco, the Kahn museum took a novel approach. The Archives de la Planète contain five hundred colour photographs and 1200 metres of film taken by a cameraman sent by Kahn to Morocco in 1912, shortly after the declaration of a French protectorate. He worked in difficult conditions because of festering resentment against the takeover, but benefited from the support of General Gouraud, one of Kahn’s friends. In 1926, three weeks after the surrender of Abd el-Krim in the Rif War, two other cameramen dispatched by Kahn arrived to film and photograph. Seventy years later, the museum invited eighty-two schoolchildren aged thirteen to fifteen, pupils from Rabat, Salé and Marrakesh, to revisit the sites pictured in the colonial-era photographs. The children were given copies of the old pictures (including original captions) and asked to discuss the works, correct errors – of which they pointed out a few – and take photographs themselves. They mused on the conditions of travel in the early twentieth century and noted urban changes since the colonial period – for instance, the construction of an eighteen-storey building on the site of a small shop. They were shocked that a prison had been transformed into a museum, and remarked regretfully that a place where a bridge was under construction in 1926 had turned into a rubbish tip next to a polluted river. They pointed out that the Koutoubia tower in Marrakesh had been restored, and that ramps for the handicapped had been installed in a Rabat garden. They noticed changes of street names: the Place de France was now called the Place Mohammed VI. One photograph captioned ‘Le Marchand d’eau’ (The Water-Seller) puzzled students from Fès, who argued that water is a gift from God in Muslim tradition and should not be sold. They identified as the most important building in Rabat the colonial Palais de Justice, now the Moroccan parliament. The photographs prompted students to debate tourism, the status of women and the environment, and gave them a chance to vaunt Morocco’s beauty and hope that more French tourists would visit the country.14 The Kahn museum evidences the potential of photographic archives to stimulate investigations of colonialism and prompt contemporary responses. Inviting Moroccan children to revisit places and review photographs from


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the colonial period suggests how veteran resources can be used in innovative ways. Juxtaposing images and reactions helps revivify these documents and ‘decolonise’ representations of the ‘good old days’. Such initiatives nevertheless seem rare in French exhibitions.

Colonial history in French exhibitions, 1992–2003 Not all exhibitions with colonial themes are restricted to art or photography, though these have proved abidingly popular. Since the early 1990s, museums have looked at other topics – every year or two brings a relatively substantial exhibition with an explicitly colonial theme. They may be interpreted in various ways. Special exhibitions provide occasions to select from reserves that gathered dust in museum storerooms for several decades after the end of the empire, allowing curators to draw on huge stocks accumulated during the colonial era. They certainly respond to a renewed general interest in colonialism and the public’s fascination with all things ethnic and exotic. These shows may indicate a certain nostalgia for the days of adventurous expeditions, heroic stands, noble deeds and what is still sometimes imagined to be the idyllic life of colonists in the tropics, as well as curiosity about less pleasant situations, like the penal colony in Guyane. However, the exhibitions also contribute to efforts at coming to terms with the colonial past. Museums increasingly disabuse visitors of blurred images of colonial power and pleasure. This does not mean that they have been militantly anti-colonial (and a few even leave a sympathetic impression of colonialism). But the perspective represents a radical departure from the colonialist apologias current down until the 1950s, and from the silence about colonialism that prevailed from the 1960s until the 1990s. A catalogue of selected exhibitions reveals themes and styles of display, and sketches in this new museographical approach to colonial history. Two exhibitions, at the beginning and end of the decade after 1992, illustrate differing approaches. In a small exhibition on the Croisière Jaune, organised under the auspices of the Société de Géographie and held at the city hall of the sixth arrondissement of Paris in 2002–2003, action and adventure in distant countries continued to exercise seductive appeal. Photos, paintings and personal effects chronicled the scientific and cultural expedition, sponsored by the automobile manufacturer André Citroën, which travelled across central Asia from Beirut to Saigon in 1931 and 1932. The artist Alexandre Iakovleff and the anthropologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin joined Georges-Marie Haardt and Louis Audoin-Dubreuil and several dozen others to brave bad weather, impassable routes, the hostility of Chinese authorities and local revolts. Such expeditions always had a colonial import – reconnaissance of unknown areas, collecting of artefacts, production of films and books that maintained interest in overseas

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ventures, and promotion of ‘boy scout’ virtues of hardiness and curiosity. The observant visitor could thus see the Croisière Jaune as both a saga of survival and discovery, and as an illustration of ideologies and attitudes current at the high point of empire. However, the emphasis was on the excitement and danger in this exhibition that might not have been presented in a different fashion had it been held soon after the expeditioners returned home. Ten years earlier, the Archives d’Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence had already explored a new area, and taken a more questioning attitude towards the colonial past, in an exhibition devoted to sport in the colonies. The archives asked whether physical education and sport constituted an ‘instrument de colonisation’ (instrument of colonisation) or an ‘outil de subversion’ (means of subversion).15 The establishment of colonial sporting teams was part of the mission civilisatrice, but awkward occasions arose when French teams opposed native teams. By the 1950s, sport could serve as a rallying-point for nationalism, crystallising support for and opposition against decolonisation. Yet such sports as football (soccer) provided an enduring legacy in former colonies, just as African and Maghrebin players who are the products of migration from old possessions to France – notably Zinedine Zidane – are now heroes on both sides of the Mediterranean. Daring expeditions and crowd-pleasing sports constitute older and newer themes for exhibitions. One was sponsored by the venerable geographical society that in the 1800s and early 1900s was a major actor in exploration and colonialism, the other by the department of the national archives that covers the former colonies. Both exhibitions were attractively presented, interesting and thoughtful, yet provided differences in focus, choice of objects and levels of complexity. Two 1990s exhibitions on colonial soldiers – one on the spahis, the other on colonial troops in the First World War – similarly proposed different styles of display and subtly divergent interpretations about the colonial military. In the first case, a military museum retained a traditional approach showcasing soldierly valour, while in the second, a newly established history museum presented an historiographically more complex perspective. The exhibition on the spahis was held in 1997 at the Musée de l’Armée in Paris. The catalogue states that simply presenting the corps ‘dans tous ses fastes et ses particularismes qui réjouissent les amateurs d’uniformologie, voire d’exotisme, ne saurait satisfaire un musée d’histoire’ (in all its annals and its particularities that warm the hearts of lovers of ‘uniformology’ or exoticism cannot be satisfactory for an historical museum). Although the exhibition indeed displayed numerous uniforms, flags and arms, the intention was to trace the history of the spahis from the 1830s through the Gulf War. Discussion of decolonisation was nevertheless understated, and the vocabulary was somewhat old-fashioned: in the 1950s ‘campagne d’Indochine’ (Indochinese campaign), for instance, the battle at Xuan Bo was described


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as an engagement in which spahis killed two hundred ‘rebelles’ (rebels). In Cochinchina they undertook efforts at ‘pacification’. Spahis later fought in Algeria. The troops included Muslim cavalry units but ‘peu enthousiastes et manquant en général de jeunes cadres ayant une certaine expérience du cheval, des Nord-Africains (on ne dit plus indigènes!), du service en campagne . . . n’ont en général pu jouer qu’un rôle de quadrillage et de “pacification” dans les secteurs de l’intérieur’ (lacking in enthusiasm and also, in general, without young soldiers having equestrian experience, the North Africans (one no longer said ‘indigenes’!) on campaign . . . could usually only play a role in staking out and ‘pacifying’ hinterland districts). There were no battle citations for the spahis in Algeria ‘pour des opération dites de “maintien de l’ordre” dans ces départements perdus qui pendant plus d’un siècle avaient fait partie de la France’ (in operations ‘for maintenance of order’ in these départements that are now lost but that for more than a century formed part of France). The pointed use of inverted commas and choice of words acknowledge controversies about the Indochinese and Algerian conflicts without compromising what was nevertheless called the ‘glorious’ history of the spahis.16 The show, held at the Paris army museum and based on the collection of the spahi corps itself, thus attempted to reconcile a critical historical appraisal of colonial military activities with a celebration of the efforts and sacrifices of the military force. A thoughtful catalogue was on sale; so, too, were badges and medals from the corps. The juxtaposition showed competing and complementary demands on museum curators, as well as the differences between critical history and commemorative memory. Another exhibition concerned the role of colonial soldiers in the First World War. It was held in 1996 at the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne, a museum and research centre, opened four years earlier, that has tried to distinguish itself from military museums. Its approach comes from social history, and its displays are presented in a simplified, comparative and sometimes symbolic rather than neo-realist fashion.17 According to its director, Thomas Compère-Morel, Péronne ‘est tout sauf un quelconque musée militaire; en présentant notamment les objets quotidiens de la guerre, il cerne le conflit, son horreur et son absurdité par les points de vue civils aussi bien que militaires, allemands et anglo-saxons aussi bien que français’ (is everything but a run-of-the-mill military museum; in particular, by presenting daily objects used in the war, it shades in the conflict, its horror and its absurdity seem from both civilian and military perspectives, and from German and Anglo-Saxon as well as French standpoints). Véronique Harel, who organised the exhibition, acknowledged that war museums had neglected the contribution of colonial soldiers, and introduced the Péronne exhibit, in line with the museum’s vocation, as both history and tribute.18 She spoke of the ‘dettes de sang, dettes d’argent, dettes d’honneur’ (debts of blood, money and honour) that France owed to its colonial soldiers, and the ‘peu de reconnaissance de la métropole’ (relative lack of recognition in the

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métropole): ‘C’est pourquoi nous avons voulu leur rendre hommage’ (That is why we wanted to pay tribute to them). Posters, statues, photographs, personal effects and other artefacts documented the experiences of 600,000 tirailleurs sénégalais, goumiers marocains, spahis and other colonial soldiers. The exhibition underlined the wide-ranging effects of the war: a poignant photograph of a blinded North African soldier with a leg and both forearms amputated was but one example. It showed how colonial soldiers and ‘ordinary’ Frenchmen came into contact with each other, often for the first time, and what efforts were made – such as the setting up of ‘cafés maures’ for North Africans – to accommodate soldiers far from home. The exhibition pointed out how the war changed the way the colonised, especially Africans, were portrayed, no longer as colourful savages but as brave heroes. On display were sympathetic paintings of African and Indochinese soldiers, yet also a German medal of ‘Black Shame’: a caricatured black soldier on one side, and on the other a naked European woman lashed to an enormous phallic pole topped by a military helmet. French images as well showed continued racism despite the Africans’ war service: a drawing of a Frenchwoman bestowing a kiss on a fez-wearing soldier bore the caption, ‘Tu verras, mon Othello, qu’il n’y a pas qu’en musique qu’une blanche vaut deux noires!’19 (You’ll see, my Othello, that it’s not just in music that a white is worth two blacks). The Historial departed from traditional war museums in showing objects that reflect negatively on French attitudes. Similarly, it parted company from the usual military exhibition by talking about colonial revolts against conscription during the war. It also discussed the way that the war contributed to the politicisation of soldiers, laying the seeds for nationalism and anticolonialism. That such issues surrounding the colonial military were given extensive treatment in Péronne marked a change from the triumphalist images – common after the Great War – that celebrated colonial soldiers only for their contribution in securing victory for France. An exhibition at the museum of the Service de santé des armées in 2001 presented non-combatant military activity by focussing on ‘Les Hôpitaux coloniaux, 1890–1960’. The army medical service was created in 1669, and in 1763 the government established an Inspection de santé des ports et colonies. By the late 1800s, a network of medical establishments existed, with clinics, hospitals and mobile first-aid posts set up wherever the French ventured. Particular disease environments led to the establishment of specialised services for sleeping sickness, leprosy and other diseases widespread in the colonies. From a few hundred thousand consultations with French doctors in 1920, colonial visits to medical personnel rose to ten million by 1935. The number of doctors and nurses grew dramatically, medical schools were opened from Dakar to Hanoi, and fifteen Pasteur Institutes carried out research and treatment. Photographs, models and documents detailed the history of the medical corps, especially in Indochina. The exhibition


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celebrated doctors’ work, and a plaque from the American Centres for Disease Control paid tribute to military doctors ‘for their contributions to the eradication of smallpox and control of measles in West and Central Africa’. Doctors present the humane faces of imperialism, but museums also now seem ready to tackle less saintly colonial groups. The Paris police museum in 2003 held an exhibition on one of the more mythical outposts of overseas France, the penal colony in Guyane to which 67,000 prisoners were shipped until the establishments were closed after the Second World War. Opening the display, present-day photos of Devil’s Island evoked the ruins of the penal colony to which common criminals and political prisoners – revolutionaries, royalists or republicans, depending on the regime – were transported. Documents introduced individual prisoners sent to South America. One naval officer, for example, became addicted to opium and was convicted when he tried to sell secret documents to support his habit. Another was sentenced for stealing money and pearls, but escaped to California to write an account of the Dry Guillotine and Hell on Trial. Prisoners’ letters, sketchbooks, maps, the sheet music for ‘Le Bagnard’, uniforms of an administrator and a convict, coconut and tortoise shells decorated by prisoners, even a model guillotine made by one of them: such relics recalled life in the ‘green hell’ of Cayenne. During the colonial era, it is difficult to imagine that a museum would have mounted an exhibition on the penal colonies in Guyane or New Caledonia: France wanted to show its settlers as honest pioneers, not malefactors. The penal colonies were often criticised as ineffective and inhumane; they hardly supplied a source of imperial pride. The passing of time, and the fame of such prisoners as Dreyfus, ‘Papillon’ and Guillaume Seznec, have turned Devil’s Island into an object of quaint if slightly macabre interest. A different picture of a colonial destination, from an earlier period, appeared in 2003 on the centenary of Napoleon’s sale of two million square kilometres of territory to the United States. Like Guyane, Louisiana retains a mythical resonance in France, and the sale of an area four times the size of France was far enough removed that some newspaper articles allowed a touch of nostalgia; Le Figaro titled its lead article ‘Faut-il regretter la Louisiane?’ (Should we Grieve for Louisiana?) Present-day politics, however, were not absent from commemorations of what Americans call the Louisiana Purchase. Coming soon after profound disagreements between Paris and Washington over the Iraqi War, with episodes of ‘French-bashing’ in the United States – even a half-serious proposal to rename the ‘French Quarter’ of New Orleans the ‘Freedom Quarter’ – neither the French nor the American president took part in ceremonies in Louisiana.20 In Paris the Foundation Mona Bismarck, in cooperation with the Historic New Orleans Collection, held an exhibition that traced European discovery of the Mississippi river and the slow development of the French settlement on the delta. Fanciful maps and drawings indicated the vague ideas that

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Europeans had about the American wilderness in the early 1700s. Printed documents showed how the French nevertheless laid out a neat city with a Place Royale, a citadel, cathedral and convent. A copy of the Code Noir and illustrations of the life of blacks provided reminders of slavery. Three portraits – a Creole woman of colour who migrated from the Caribbean, a Jewess from Curaçao and a Frenchwoman who fled to Louisiana after the revolution in Haiti – emphasised the history of New Orleans as a city of cultural encounters. Among cotton traders in a painting by Degas was the artist’s brother, who worked in New Orleans. The exhibition thus illustrated the persistence of French culture – architecture, language, religion – after 1803. Displays on the emergence of jazz touched on a local tradition that was exported to France. Even with the difficulties faced by settlers, the horrors of slave life, and France’s sale of Louisiana, colonialism seemed a success in establishing a lasting French presence in America. While the exhibitions on Guyane and Louisiana examined colonial destinations, another looked at a region from which colonists came: ‘Corse, colonies’, held at the Musée de la Corse in 2002–2003. Anne Meistersheim noted in the catalogue that the subject of colonialism had for long been a taboo subject in Corsica despite the large-scale presence of Corsicans in the empire. In the 1930s, when the island accounted for only 0.75 per cent of the population of metropolitan France, Corsicans made up 22 per cent of the colonial army and a similar proportion of the colonial administration. Fifty thousand Corsicans lived in the empire, two-thirds in Algeria, but also 20,000 in Indochina. By 1950, 150,000 people of Corsican descent lived in North Africa, and relative to its population, Corsica later absorbed one of the largest groups of rapatriés. The exhibition in Corte emphasised that Corsicans, especially during the nineteenth century, saw colonies as lands of opportunity compared to their small and impoverished island, battered by agricultural crises and devoid of industrial development. However, most who left – the majority of them young rural men – hoped not only to better their fortunes but to see the world: adventure as well as need was an incentive. Corsicans were ubiquitous. Islanders established the settlement of Sidi-Mérouan in Algeria, a Corsican oversaw the finances of Lyautey’s Morocco, and another ran the leading hotel in Saigon. The exhibition illustrated the role of Corsicans of different backgrounds and diverging politics. Jean-Luc Carbuccia was a pioneer officer in the conquest of Algeria, and the administrator Xavier Coppolani was credited for French takeover of Mauritania. However, the lawyer Charles Cancellieri defended Vietnamese nationalists in the 1930s, and the Communist activist François Vittori was gaoled for supporting dissidents in Madagascar. The exhibition was noteworthy in examining the effects of colonial experiences on Corsica itself. Contributors to the catalogue suggested that for most Corsicans, even a prolonged stint in the empire was considered temporary


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absence not permanent migration. Corsicans remained soldered together when abroad through a network of voluntary associations, newspapers and festivities. However, Mettersheim argued that it was the empire which in great measure made Corsicans French, mixing them with French compatriots and imbuing them with a sense of national destiny. Sylvain Gregori agreed that military and settler migration provided impetus for the integration of Corsicans into the French nation. Yet paradoxically, for Gabriel-Xavier Culioli, the end of empire sparked the renewal of island nationalism. The colonies had offered great promise for Corsicans, but when colonial opportunities no longer existed, Corsicans tried to forestall decolonisation – for instance, through support for the 1961 putsch in Algiers. Some then turned against Paris, seeing the domination of Corsica by the mainland French administration and business as a case of domestic colonisation that, for militants in the Front de Libération Nationale Corse, demanded an insurrectionary response, even a war of independence.21 The exhibition at the Musée de la Corse revealed a sometimes neglected story of links between the provinces and the colonies, but provided a nuanced perspective on the effects wrought by expansion and decolonisation on a region closely bound to empire. The curatorial approach did not differ greatly from standard exhibitions. Maps and paintings, photographs and personal effects illustrated Corsicans’ lives overseas, and there were such topics as Corsicans in colonial art, cinema and literature. Little attention was paid to activities that might have disconcerted visitors; issues such as colonial violence were glossed over. ‘Corse, colonies’ nevertheless provided a new perspective by relating colonialism to specifically regional issues of the past and the present, and in untangling the complex legacy of the empire on the Mediterranean island which many judge both colonialist and colonised. One other show is worth mentioning here. In 1996 the Ministère de l’Outre-Mer presented twenty-two posters from French colonial exhibitions from 1894 to 1942. This represented one of the first times since decolonisation that the premises of the former colonial ministry in the Rue Oudinot in Paris were used for a display on France’s colonial past. The catalogue emphasised how expositions coloniales served as vehicles, with greater or less success, to promote expansion. It pointed out that on posters ‘l’indigène, figurant d’un spectacle folklorique en sons et lumières, est souvent perçu au travers de la vision stéréotypée de l’imagination européenne’ (the indigene, playing a walk-on part in a folkloric son et lumiere performance, was often seen through the stereotyping lens of the European imagination). The preface, written by Jean-Jacques de Peretti, Ministre de l’Outre-Mer, stated that the exhibition testified to ‘une certaine façon d’imaginer la place de nos concitoyens d’outre-mer’ (a certain way of imagining the place of our fellow citizens of the outre-mer), but it would also help ‘pour mieux affirmer l’identité spécifique du ministère de l’outre-mer’ (better to affirm the specific identity of the Ministère de l’Outre-Mer). De Peretti explained:

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‘Aujourd’hui les polémiques se sont apaisées. Si nous pouvons considérer l’oeuvre accomplie sans naïveté ni complaisance, l’esprit plus serein, l’effort de mémoire reste nécessaire’22 (Today the polemics have quietened. If we have been able to consider the work that was done without either naivety or complacency, but with a serene spirit, what remains necessary is a effort at memory). Early twentieth-century exhibition posters provided a ‘safe’ subject, and attention could be drawn to the evolution in graphic design that they illustrated as much as to the ideology behind the iconography. De Peretti acknowledged the role of the event in defining his department’s identity as the heir of the colonial ministry and the institution in charge of France’s ten DOM and TOM stretching from the North Atlantic to the South Pole. The show reflected the Chirac administration’s interest in overseas territories and signalled a desire to review and rehabilitate the colonial heritage. It thus related to other gestures by the president and his administration commemorating the Algerian War, reaffirming the role of the DOM and TOM in the Republic, and planning for the exhibition of arts premiers in Paris. These exhibitions reveal diverse aspects of France’s colonial history. They illustrate different ways of organising exhibitions – by theme, around a particular region, in commemoration of an anniversary. The very fact that they were held, even in the former colonial ministry buildings, after decades of silence on the subject of colonial history, is noteworthy. They point to traditional and new areas in the revivified area of colonial study, from sport to medicine. In general they offered a more critical and contextualised view of colonialism than is sometimes seen in permanent exhibitions and in older displays. Colonialism in the 1990s, however, could hardly be championed as a glorious and triumphant national vocation, as was suggested in exhibitions from the 1880s through the 1940s. Recent ones have presented a shaded picture, and even a display of posters from colonial fairs had to acknowledge the stereotypes that they promoted. Intrepid adventures, fair-playing athletes, colourful prisoners, brave soldiers, dedicated doctors and resourceful migrants might still be given pride of place. Negative sides of imperialism could receive less attention: the colonialist behaviour of expeditions, violence perpetrated by spahis on colonised people, insufficiencies of medical care, the use of colonial soldiers as ‘cannon fodder’, diehard opposition to decolonisation. Yet throughout these exhibitions, images suggested a less than roseate picture of empire: soldiers suffering in battle, victims struck down by topical illness, convicts shipped to infernal prisons, peasants fleeing poverty to try their luck overseas. The underlying tensions of colonialism were also apparent even when not underlined: anti-colonial nationalism expressed in sport competitions and in protests against military recruitment, the sympathies of some Frenchmen with dissidents and ‘rebels’, and the way that anti-colonial discourse could be exported to the colonies and then occasionally re-imported for use at home.


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Photo 16 The former colonial ministry, which still oversees France’s ten remaining overseas outposts.

Slavery and the vieilles colonies These exhibitions traversed the chronological and geographical extent of the empire, casting light on new and old colonial subjects, most of them

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uncontroversial, although only relatively so. Museums in the 1990s also delved into deeper issues, and in these exhibitions differences of interpretation, competing collective memories and varying political positions can most easily be discerned. Three areas offer insight into the still controversial and contested legacy of colonialism: special exhibitions on slavery and the old plantation colonies, on indigenous politics and culture in the South Pacific territories, and on the Algerian War. In 1992–1994, the ‘Anneaux de mémoire’ exhibition at the Nantes museum, which has been discussed in Chapter 2, was a landmark in the way museums have confronted the public with the colonial past. As has been seen, the organisation of the exhibition provoked discord not unrelated to political considerations, yet the show represented a belated prise de conscience about the city’s history as a slave-trading port. Parliament’s recognition of slavery as a ‘crime against humanity’ in 1999 provided an official and national recognition of the moral blight of an institution that was a mainstay of French colonialism over two centuries. In 1996, the same year as the Ministère de l’Outre-Mer hosted the exhibition of posters from colonial fairs, ‘Les Départements d’outre-mer, quatre siècles d’histoire commune’ celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the 1946 law that transformed the vieilles colonies into full-fledged départements. This measure, which in theory made the four départements d’outre-mer the equal of metropolitan ones, was promoted by left-wing parliamentarians. The status of the DOM has since achieved some consensus, and conservatives are staunch supporters of the status quo, seeing any move towards autonomy as a dangerous fraying of bonds between the outre-mer and the métropole.23 Therefore, the anniversary allowed an explicit affirmation of a process of ‘decolonisation without independence’ and a confirmation of organic ties between the DOM and other parts of France. A commemorative stamp designed by a Guadeloupean artist was issued. A medal showed a ‘Marianne créole’ on the obverse; on the reverse, the entry to the ministry in charge of the DOM and TOM ‘laisse entrevoir un sillage figurant l’ouverture vers l’Outre-mer’24 (reveals a sea-way representing an opening to the outre-mer). A commemorative exhibition, put together by the ministry and shown in the Palais de Chaillot, consisted of thirty-two panels tracing, in chronological order, the ‘quatre grandes étapes de l’assimilation politique des “vieilles colonies” ’ (four major stages in the political assimilation of the ‘vieilles colonies’). In his preface to an accompanying brochure, President Chirac wrote that ‘le colonialisme, c’est . . . une situation de fait, un certain mode de production, un certain régime économique, un retard considérable en matière d’équipements éducatifs, sociaux et culturels. Tout cela ne pouvait immédiatement disparaître par la seule vertu de la réforme administrative. La départementalisation n’était qu’un préalable au nécessaire rattrapage’ (colonialism . . . was an historical fact, a certain type of production, a particular economic regime, considerable retardation in educational, social and


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cultural infrastructure. All of that could not disappear immediately simply by virtue of administrative reform. Départementalisation was only a precondition to the necessary catching up). The president saluted this ‘autre décolonisation’ (other decolonisation), presented as a linear history of political ‘assimilation’ – a strong word in French colonial history – that in Chirac’s estimation was an ‘indéniable réussite’ (undeniable success). He claimed credit for completing the process through a law that established ‘égalité sociale’ (social equality) in minimum wages and social security payments for the DOM with the métropole. The exhibition thus expressed a political message from the Gaullist president who had come to power in the previous year. The 1996 exhibition, intentionally or not, was reminiscent of old colonial exhibitions, with presidential imprimatur, book, medal, stamp and brochure. Somewhat surprisingly, the sixteen-page brochure included seven pages of advertisements placed by the Musée du Rhum in Martinique, the French post office, and by private companies, including Air France and freight and tourist agencies. These advertisements graphically played on the ambiance of the outre-mer. A small advertisement for a foundry was illustrated by a statue of a cane-cutter, ‘Planteur du cinquaintenaire des DOM’ (FiftiethAnniversary Planter in the DOM), and a travel agency asked ‘Un peit coup de blues? Une soudaine envie d’évasion?’ (An attack of the blues? A sudden desire to run away?) The cover was a detail from a painting of a black woman wearing a red-white-and-blue headcloth – unattributed in the brochure, the work is ‘Portrait d’une négresse’ by Marie-Guillemine Benois (in the collections of the Louvre) and represents a woman presumably celebrating the Convention’s emancipation of slaves. (The painting was cropped to show only her head and shoulders but not her bare bosom, a concession that acknowledged how often colonialist propaganda had employed eroticised images.) During the exhibition, the tourism authorities of the DOM operated stands and handed out glossy advertisements. Four vitrines sponsored by the tourist offices, Air France, the city government of Le Lamentin (Martinique) and a jewellery company showed ‘objets et maquettes représentatifs de l’artisanat domien’ (objects and scale-models representative of artisanry in the DOM). Others represented companies (mostly ones that advertised in the brochure) promoting investment and trade. The restaurant of the Palais de Chaillot had menus featuring tropical cuisines and rum-based cocktails, with appropriate West Indian music as accompaniment. A visitor to one of the 1930s colonial exhibitions would hardly have been dépaysé by the celebration of fifty years of départementalisation. A different sort of exhibition on the plantation colonies, ‘Tropiques métis’, was held two years later at the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires (MATP) on the sesquicentenary of the definitive abolition of slavery. The museum was a noteworthy site for such an exhibition. Despite its

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displays on ‘traditional’ peasant culture around France, it had not organised an exhibition on the DOM or TOM, and not until 1997 did the MATP begin seriously to collect items from the remaining French overseas outposts. The subtitle of the exhibition, ‘Mémoires et cultures de Guadeloupe, Guyane, Martinique, Réunion’, underlined connections between the slave past and the developing ‘métis’ cultures of the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. The catalogue introduction by Catherine Trautmann, the Socialist Minister of Culture and Communication, did not mince words. Her language indeed marks one of the most critical appraisals of colonialism voiced by a minister: ‘La France a tiré profit de l’esclavage pendant des siècles. Nous nous devons de rappeler les horreurs de ce crime contre l’humain [sic] en quoi ont consisté le génocide amérindien, la saignée de l’Afrique, la traite, la déportation et le système esclavagiste imposé par l’Europe en Amérique’ (For centuries, France profited from slavery. We owe it to ourselves to recall the horrors of this crime against human beings that consisted of Amerindian genocide, the haemorrhaging of Africa, the slave-trade, deportation and the slave system imposed by Europe on the Americas). Trautmann linked these historical situations with a duty to confront the past: ‘Seules la mémoire et la réflexion sur les conditions historiques de cette tragédie peuvent fonder notre engagement de citoyen contre les barbaries du passé et d’aujourd’hui’ (Only a remembering of and reflection on the historical conditions of this tragedy can serve as a basis for our commitment as citizens against the barbarities of the past and of today). She focussed not on the work of such emancipationists as Scheolcher, a hero of the Third Republic, but on the slaves themselves: ‘Nous nous devons de célébrer la lutte exemplaire des esclaves qui, de la mort jusqu’à la victoire, du suicide au marronage, de désespoirs en révoltes, ont sans relâche combattu pour la conquête de la liberté et de l’égalité’ (We owe it to ourselves to celebrate the exemplary struggle of slaves who – from death to victory, from suicide to flight, from despair to revolt – tirelessly fought for the conquest of liberty and equality). After quoting Frantz Fanon, she spoke of the ‘marronage culturel’ (cultural flight) bequeathed to present-day West Indians and Réunionnais, part of a ‘mémoire de résistance’ (memory of resistance). Finally Trautmann made a pointed comparison between the 1998 exhibition and earlier colonial shows: ‘ “Tropiques métis” prend le contrepied des anciennes “expositions coloniales”, qui masquaient la sauvagerie occidentale pour la visite organisée de débris présentables arrachés aux “bons sauvages” et aux “civilisations exotiques” ’25 (‘Tropique metis’ provides a counterweight to the old ‘colonial exhibitions’ which masked Western savagery through group visits to the presentable debris taken from ‘noble savages’ and ‘exotic civilisations’). Trautmann’s words suggested a particularly negative interpretation of slave history, and also underlined the function of exhibitions as vectors for preserving memory but also for revising historical views.


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The 1998 exhibition itself reflected on earlier depictions by including items from the 1935 exhibition organised for the tricentenary of French conquest of the Antilles. One statue of a nude male figure surrounded by dancers, black women in madras and French provincial maidens, illustrated how colonies were portrayed as distant provinces of Greater France. Other objects were more brutal relics of the past – slave shackles, an ex-voto of a slave ship, photos of slave huts – and reminders that the West Indies was not just madras, rum and the biguine. Carnival performances, voodoo ceremonies, and beliefs and rituals adapted from Africa were presented not as picturesque superstitions, but as ‘stratégies identitaires’ (identitarian strategies) in the context of slavery and its legacy. The 1996 and 1998 exhibitions were different in presentation: display panels versus ‘real’ objects, an exhibition prepared by the government versus one curated by an anthropological museum, commemoration of départementalisation versus the abolition of slavery, one extended into more broadly based entertainment compared with more narrowly scholarly treatment. Differences of interpretation are also apparent. The exhibition on départementalisation under Chirac’s patronage stressed the ‘common past’ of the metropole and the DOM, while the one opened under Socialist auspices highlighted the specificity of ‘métis’ cultures. The former underlined successful integration of the vieilles colonies, while the latter focussed on a ‘memory of resistance’. Music was an accompaniment to one exhibition, whereas composition and performance became part of identity formation in the other. Chirac’s message recognised the fact of colonialism, but Trautmann went further when she dared to use such words as ‘genocide’ and paraphrased the infamous ‘crime against humanity’. Trautmann’s comment that the 1998 exhibition was different from colonial exhibitions implicitly demarcated ‘Tropiques métis’ not only from those colonial jamborees but from the 1996 anniversary display. Anniversaries, such as the sesquicentenary of the emancipation of slaves, provide opportunities for special observances. The year 2003 provided another anniversary. The centenary of the death of Toussaint Louverture prompted an exhibition at the Fort de Joux, where the imprisoned Haitian revolutionary died. Accompanying the exhibitions, designed as the nucleus of a small museum, were lectures on the slave trade and the emancipation movement, a dramatisation of Eduard Glissant’s novel about the black leader, and shows of contemporary Haitian art. An historical exhibition commemorated Toussaint Louverture’s struggle against Napoleon’s re-establishment of slavery. The activities, similar to the placing of a plaque in honour of Delgrès in the Panthéon, represented acknowledgement of France’s role not just in emancipation – celebrated even during the colonial era – but also France’s history of enslavement of Africans. From the Nantes exhibition in 1992–1994, through the commemorations of départementalisation in 1996 and the sesquicentenary of abolition in 1998, to

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the Fort de Joux anniversary in 2003, the decade saw unparalleled attention to slavery and the plantation colonies. The parliamentary resolution of 1999 punctuated the calendar of displays. The style of exhibitions and their political context varied, depending on the exact theme, the host institution and the political sponsor. Consensus does not reign on the slave heritage – demands for compensation for slavery are heard, and indépendantiste leaders in the DOM argue that only separation from France can overcome enduring discrimination and exploitation. Exhibitions that provided lieux de mémoire also served as forums for historical and political interrogation.

Reviewing ethnography: the case of Oceania Exhibitions of non-Western arts are particularly inflected by current social theories and political considerations – even the concepts and names of ‘primitive arts’ and arts premiers are closely linked to contemporary contexts. Ethnography museums have been taxed with perpetuating, if only indirectly, classifications and perspectives inherited from the colonial era. Therefore, it is interesting when such a museum examines its own history, as did the Musée de l’Homme in a 1998 display on the pioneering Africanist Marcel Griaule. His initial speciality was Ethiopia, and in the 1920s, Griaule published two key studies of Africa, La Mentalité primitive and Mythologie primitive. Griaule frequented Surrealist circles, where writers were attracted to primitive art, and there he met Michel Leiris, a young poet whom Griaule hired as his assistant and who become a renowned anthropologist in turn. From 1931 to 1933, Griaule led the Dakar to Djibouti expedition sent to study African cultures and collect objects for the then Musée Ethnographique du Trocadéro. Griaule carried a ‘permis de capture scientifique valable pour l’ensemble des colonies de l’Afrique occidentale française’ (permit for scientific capture valid for the entirety of the colonies of Afrique occidentale française). Leiris wrote to a fellow expedition member that most of the items acquired were purchased or commissioned. He admitted that a few were simply taken – what others might regard as theft – but even so, ‘C’était l’époque coloniale . . . . Il faut se reporter à l’époque, les Blancs étaient les gens qui étaient les patrons. Pour l’époque ce n’est pas choquant’26 (That was the colonial epoch . . . . It is necessary to recall the time period, when whites were the people who were the bosses. At the time that was not shocking). Thanks to his explorations – and because Ethiopia, conquered by Mussolini, was off limits to French researchers – Griaule began to study the Dogon people of Mali, on whom he published Les Masques dogons in 1938. Such works earned his appointment four years later to the first chair of ethnography at the Sorbonne. Griaule also became a counsellor in the parliament of the Union Française set up in 1946. From his many expeditions, he brought back 5000 objects, as well as 15,000 cards of fieldwork notes and 6000 photographs. (He was a leader in the use of photographs and film- and


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sound-recording.) Griaule’s encyclopedic collecting and emphasis on material objects would later become unfashionable among social scientists. The Musée de l’Homme’s exhibition was an effort to rehabilitate Griaule on the centenary of his birth. It also recalled the ideas and collecting practices associated with the institution: a salutary example of a museum and of anthropologists and ethnographers examining the colonial background of their disciplines.27 Exhibitions on the Pacific are as insightful as ones on Africa concerning old and new attitudes towards distant cultures. In 2002, the Musée de l’Homme recalled another expedition. In 1934, fourteen French men and women – mostly friends and relatives, led by a graduate of the Ecole navale – embarked for the South Seas on a converted fishing-boat they named the Korrigane (in honour of Breton spirits). For two years, they sailed around the Pacific, visiting the Marquesas islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon and Admiralty islands, and New Guinea in an excursion that was not just a holiday cruise nor a systematic scientific expedition. The Korrigane team took pleasure in acquiring Oceanic art and artefacts from both dealers and natives, and through purchase or trade – they had taken tobacco, cloth, mirrors, watches and knives to exchange. They returned to Europe with 2500 objects and thousands of photos, a selection of which were shown at the Musée de l’Homme in 1938, and remained on loan to the museum until the death of the principal owner in 1956. His heirs took back most of the objects; of the eight hundred sold at auction in 1961, the museum acquired three hundred. The others were disbursed, and three are in the Pavillon des Sessions at the Louvre. The 2002 show, according to the museum, ‘est l’occasion de réfléchir à la légitimité des collectes ethnographiques en Océanie, et de rendre compte de l’évolution du regard porté par les Occidentaux sur les sociétés océaniennes’ (is an opportunity to reflect on the legitimacy of ethnographic collecting in Oceania and to give an account of the evolution of the Western gaze on Oceanic societies). The narrative carefully noted when possible the exact provenance of each item – tikis, penis sheaths, masks, tapa cloths, etc. – as well as the name of the person from whom it was acquired and the price paid. In detailing the activities of the expedition, it produced some revelatory quotations from the expedition’s members. One remarked with surprising candour of a shark god sculpture now in the Louvre: ‘Je tenais un objet très curieux et d’un intérêt ethnographique considérable; mais, au fond de moi-même, je pensais avec mélancolie à l’étagère désormais vide, devant laquelle avaient veillé neuf générations de gardiens . . . Je n’étais qu’un vandale’ (I held [in my possession] a very curious object, and one of considerable ethnographic interest, but deep down inside, I thought sadly about the shelf [on which it had stood,] before which nine generations of guardians had kept watch and that was now empty . . . I was only a vandal). A presentation of both Oceanic cultures and 1930s collecting practices, the display on the Korrigane recapitulated an exhibition held more

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than fifty years earlier. It concluded with an open question about whether museum objects should be retained or restituted, and wondered, ‘Collecter aujourd’hui est-il encore indispensable pour l’étude des Autres?’ (Today, is collecting indispensable in order to study others?).28 Exhibitions on the South Pacific, which inspired European fantasies of noble savages and fierce stone-age tribes, but also excited an imperialist ‘scramble’ for Oceania, are particularly instructive about changing attitudes. Among the many significant exhibitions mounted by the MAAO in the 1990s – proof of its continued vitality, the richness of its collection and its metamorphosis from a colonial museum – one of the most important was ‘De Jade et de nacre, patrimoine artistique kanak’, shown in 1990 and 1991.29 Prepared jointly by the MAAO and the territorial museum of New Caledonia, and shown in Paris and Nouméa, the exhibition was held after a period of intense conflict in New Caledonia. An anti-independent party led by descendants of French settlers contested a pro-independence coalition that recruited most of its support from Melanesians. Since the mid-1980s, episodes of violence, including hostage-taking and assassination, verged on civil war in the territory. In the métropole, conservative political parties supported the loyalistes, while the Socialists were considered sympathetic to the indépendantistes. In 1988, the pro- and anti-independence leaders reluctantly signed the Socialist government sponsored accords mandating a ten-year moratorium on debate and a halt to violence. A disaffected Melanesian soon shot and killed Jean-Marie Tjibaou, leader of the pro-independence FLNKS coalition, but the peace process continued. The New Caledonian Melanesians, or Kanaks, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been viewed in Europe as among the most primitive of Oceanic peoples. New Caledonia constituted, along with Algeria, one of two real settler colonies established by the French. Kanaks suffered extreme land despoliation, economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement that deprived most of the vote until the late 1950s. Yet their society and culture had provided fertile ground for study by such anthropologists as Maurice Leenhardt and Jean Guiart, both associated with the Musée de l’Homme, and both highly critical of French colonisation. Independence groups and sympathisers considered New Caledonia a relic of colonialism, maintained under French control because of pressure from the settler elite, metropolitan geopolitical considerations linked to nuclear testing, and the profits accrued from the nickel mining that was the basis of the territory’s export economy. One aim of the MAAO exhibition was to show the cultural diversity and richness of the indigenous population of New Caledonia, and thus counter surviving perceptions of primitivism and violence. Kanak culture was displayed in pottery, sculptures, masks, engraved bamboo, woven baskets, ornamentation carved for houses, and jade-incrusted ceremonial staffs. The catalogue contained a prose poem by Aimé Césaire in memory of Tjibaou, and


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a preface by his widow.30 Though not a demonstration of support for the FLNKS, the exhibition was meant to encourage the still tenuous rapprochement between factions in New Caledonia. By making a strong statement about the achievements of Melanesians, it valorised Kanak culture and society both for metropolitan and New Caledonian audiences. The association of Tjibaou’s memory with the exhibition signified a remarkable recognition for the man treated by anti-independence opponents as traitor, revolutionary and terrorist. The MAAO, and the Socialist authorities under whom the exhibition was held, thus provided a positive appraisal of indigenous society, acknowledged the deleterious effects of colonialism, and took a position in support of an increased Kanak role in a rapidly evolving French territory. A decade later, another exhibition at the MAAO, ‘Kannibales [sic] et vahinés’, held in 2001–2002, addressed European perceptions of Oceania. It was installed, not without irony, in the Salle des Fêtes, the walls of which are covered in celebratory murals about the benefits of colonialism. The crowd-pleasing multi-media show of books and paintings, drawings and advertisements, tourist brochures and T-shirts, videos and music, spanned the entire history of European contact with Oceania. It evaluated stereotypical images of luxuriant islands, lost or found paradises, seductive women and savage cannibals. Documents ranged from the shocking – 1800s posters for European performances by troupes of ‘savages’ – to the humorous, such as excerpts from the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ television series about castaways. On display was a phantasmagoria of Oceanic ‘Orientalism’ held up to a critical post-colonialist deconstruction.31 A smaller exhibition, also held at the MAAO in 2001, turned more specifically to the colonial past. ‘Tahiti, 1842–1848’, drawings by Charles Giraud, illustrated traditional Polynesian society and, as well, French intervention in Polynesia. Giraud was a member of the expedition that established a protectorate over the Society Islands, France’s first colonial acquisition in Oceania. His sketches depict landscapes and people, but also the FrancoTahitian wars – a newly built fort with Tricolour flying, sailors posed with weapons and a pitched battle in a valley. The exhibition brochure described colonialism in words improbable a decade or so earlier. ‘En dessinant au jour le jour les événements de la conquête, les batailles franco-tahitiennes et l’occupation militaire de l’île, Charles Giraud a laissé un témoignage significatif de ce qui est généralement sommairement présenté comme un épisode de l’expansion coloniale française du XIXe siècle’ (In providing a day-by-day chronicle of the events of the conquest, Franco-Tahitian battles and the military occupation of the island, Charles Giraud left a significant account of what is generally and summarily presented as an episode in nineteenthcentury French colonial expansion). ‘Confiscation de terres’ (Confiscation of land), ‘une politique de blocus . . . économique et militaire’ (a policy of . . . economic and military blockades), and alliances and negotiations marked three years of fighting. The ‘Petit journal des grandes expositions’

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evoked this ‘confrontation de deux logiques culturelles antagonistes’32 (confrontation of two antagonistic cultural principles). Giraud’s drawings chronicled what colonialists saw as heroic conquest and pacification of bloodthirsty and primitive rebels. In the MAAO’s presentation, they could be viewed anew as documenting the unequal contest between two military forces and the clash between two cultures. In these exhibitions, among the final ones before the MAAO’s permanent collection was closed, the former Musée colonial provided retrospective examinations of the theory and practice of colonialism: the imagery created around the South Pacific, and the way France conquered an empire in Oceania. While recalling the circumstances in which France took control of Pacific possessions in the mid-nineteenth century, the exhibitions reminded visitors of the enduring nature of stereotypes about these countries, and pointed to the political and social legacy that colonialism bequeathed to present-day Melanesia and Polynesia.

Algeria: 1962–1992–2003 The most sensitive of all colonial episodes in French history is the Algerian War. For many years after the end of the war, most museums avoided exhibitions that would reopen wounds left by war, defeat and retreat. As has been seen, the Marseille exhibitions of 1982, despite the breadth of themes treated, steered clear. In museums, just as in monuments, the war was taboo. In 1992, on the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the war, ‘La France en Guerre d’Algérie’, organised by a research and documentation centre for contemporary history and staged at the Invalides, provided the first major exhibition on the conflict and indeed initiated a new examination of the decolonisation of North Africa. The catalogue, written by France’s leading historians of the war, admitted that the theme ‘n’est pas un de ces grands sujets d’histoire contemporaine qu’on peut exposer avec la sérénité de l’âge et la tranquillité du savoir établi. Trois décennies après la signature des accords d’Evian, qui oserait soutenir que la douleur n’est pas vivace, que le débat ternit, que le silence s’ébruite, que les mémoires ont baissé les armes?’ (is not one of those major subjects in modern history that can be discussed with the serenity of distance and the tranquillity of received views. Three decades after the signature of the Evian Accords, who would dare argue that the pain is not searing, that the debate has ended, that silence reigns or that memory has laid down its arms?). They spoke of a ‘guerre mal enterrée’ (badly burried war) and of wounds ‘toujours béante[s]’ (still gaping), but promised that the display ‘n’oublie rien, mais ni n’accuse ni n’encense personne’ (neglects nothing, but neither accuses nor lauds anyone).33 The exhibition included such incendiary documents as the Manifeste des 121 and the ‘Grand trableau antifasciste collectif’. It covered controversial anti-war demonstrations, including the 17 October 1961 protest in Paris that attracted between 20,000 and 30,000 participants but left several hundreds


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of Algerians dead, probably killed by police. The exhibition and catalogue also looked at the neglected pro-French harkis, discussed the ways in which veterans had repressed memories of wartime experiences, and how Algérie française remained alive in the memories of pieds-noirs. In addition to looking at the war itself, the exhibition examined the way it was recorded in the press, film and television, and even reflected in popular music. This was an historical analysis of the war, not a commemoration of those who had participated. The exhibition did not hide bitterly divided opinions on the pursuit of the war, the horrors of the fighting, and the atrocities committed by both sides. In the same year as the Invalides exhibition, a group of pieds-noirs organised in Versailles an exhibition of art from the 1920s to the 1950s entitled ‘Visages de l’Algérie heureuse’. The words revealed unabashed nostalgia for the ‘happy Algeria’ of settlers illustrated by paintings of picturesque deserts and busy ports, colourfully dressed Arabs and scenes of untroubled daily life. Most of the works came from private collections, treasured souvenirs of a lost country and what was remembered as an idyllic life. But the title signalled defiance as well: for many pieds-noirs, French Algeria had not been a colony and the Français d’Algérie were not brutal and exploitative colonisers, but hard-working citizens who had developed a new country, only to be betrayed in 1962. In Versailles, romanticised, idealised views contrasted with the searing images of battles and protests shown in Paris. The opposing views of Algeria could not be more apparent, nor could the differences between an exhibition that embodied the collective memory that a particular group wished to preserve, and one whose broadly based and critical historical approach reawakened national memories that many preferred to forget. At issue was not just the ‘facts’ about colonial Algeria and the war of decolonisation, but the question of how memory and history intersected. War veterans, pieds-noirs, harkis, Algerian nationalists, war protestors, those who supported and fought in the war and those who fought against it: all ‘owned’ individual and collective memories. But historians, archivists and curators were also guardians of memory and interpreters of the past. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Invalides exhibition led the way for a new examination of the Algerian War, but museums did not rush to mount shows on the conflict or on colonial Algeria in general. Not only were memories still sensitive, but Algeria was in the midst of extreme civil strife between the military government and the proponents of Islamism. Armed attacks, assassinations and massacres led to the deaths of 100,000 people – a conservative estimate – during the decade. Newspapers were filled with daily reports of fresh atrocities. Fundamentalists targeted supporters of the FLN government, intellectuals and those who lived Westernised lifestyles. They also attacked French men and women still in Algeria, even massacring a group of monks at Tiberherine. The government too was accused of atrocities carried out to intimidate opponents and retain its grip on power. Accounts of the murder of women and children, burning of villages, and

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mutilation of corpses brought back the most horrific images of the war of independence. A number of Algerian dissidents took refuge in Europe, the remaining French residents fled, and Algeria became a no-go zone for tourists. Many Algerian museums were forced to lock their doors, and some were pillaged. Cultural exchanges between France and Algeria – such as archaeological excavations by French scholars, or the lending of works from Algerian museums – became impossible. Only after the turn of the century did the situation improve, though festering problems of massive unemployment, dissatisfaction with the strongarmed government, regional conflict (especially in Kabyle areas) and the power of an unquelled Islamist resurgence continued to trouble the country. Violence was always latent and often not contained, and Algeria teetered on the edge of political, economic and social crisis. Nevertheless, by the early 2000s, it seemed to have moved past the worst years. Relations between Algeria and France became noticeably warmer, symbolised by an exchange of visits between the two countries’ presidents. Meanwhile, debate on the 1954–1962 Algerian War raged more intensely than ever, fired by new revelations on torture. In this context France dedicated 2003 as the ‘Année de l’Algérie’: an effort to show off Algerian culture in France, to recall the French presence in North Africa, and to revisit both harmonious and conflictual moments in the entwined histories of the two nations. The programme produced some discord. Several members of the organising committee resigned. Some artists and writers refused to participate. A few individuals and groups called for a boycott of events seen as the validation of a virtual dictatorship responsible for poor economic conditions, attacks on the Kabyle minority and lack of attention to urgent grievances. The ‘Year of Algeria’, or ‘Djazaïr’, under the joint sponsorship of the French and Algerian governments, offered exhibitions, lectures, publications, forums and conferences throughout France. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dominique de Villepin, acknowledged in launching the festivities that ‘au regard de l’Histoire, la France et l’Algérie ont manqué plus d’un rendez-vous’ (in the eyes of History, France and Algeria have missed more than one rendez-vous). He spoke too about the ‘brassage humain et culturel’ (human and cultural mixing) between the two countries, and the need to ‘sortir d’un temps de silence et de méfiance’ (leave behind a time of silence and suspicion) that followed decolonisation. His Algerian counterpart was similarly discreet about the colonial past, and remarked simply on ‘la spécificité de la relation algéro-française que caractérise, entre autres éléments historiques, une extaordinaire imbrication aux plans humain, social et culturel’34 (the special nature of the Algerian–French relationship that, among other historical aspects, is characterised by an extraordinary interleaving on the human, social and cultural levels). The Année de l’Algérie produced a formidable list of exhibitions on pre-colonial and colonial Algeria, and on Algeria since independence, that


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would be difficult to summarise or analyse without having seen a substantial number.35 It is worthwhile noting several, however, with particular relevance to colonial history. A few, for instance, re-examined historical figures. The Archives Nationales organised an exhibition on Abd el-Kader, the opponent of colonialism who later became a French ally – a figure characterised as ‘un héros des deux rives’ (a hero on two shores). The Musée d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux looked at the North African-born St Augustine, who also provided the subject of a scholarly conference in Algeria, which since 1962 has not often showcased its Christian heritage. Again the title provided an insight into interpretation: ‘Saint Augustin, entre africanité et universalité’ (St Augustine, between Africanness and universality). Exhibitions looked at cultural figures from the colonial period, especially those who drew on both European and North African cultural traditions, such as the novelist Kateb Yacine and the painter Mohammed Racim. They focussed on the pre-colonial Maghreb – the rock paintings at Tassili, ancient mosaics, traditional jewellery – or presented such natural history subjects such as the Sahara desert. Museums found Algerian themes within their own collections: the Musée de la Poste had a exhibition on Algerian stamps. The war appeared in various exhibitions, and the Hôtel de Sully in Paris presented a collection of photographs, including ones taken by French soldiers and those of an American photographer who recorded the fighting from the FLN side. Exhibitions also featured such present-day subjects as Algerian women and contemporary artists. Colonial history featured in many of the Year of Algeria shows. The subject for the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine’s exhibition was urbanism in Algiers.36 Tracing the history of the city from the Ottoman era to the present, the display necessarily devoted much attention to the colonial period with drawings, maps, photographs and building models which ‘témoignent de la rencontre entre desseins politiques et idées d’architecture’ (testify to the meeting of political designs and architectural ideas). The arrival of the French led to takeover of land and destruction of historic buildings in Algiers, against which Muslim authorities protested in vain. Auguste Perret, Le Corbusier and Fernand Pouillon remodelled the pre-colonial city. Administrative buildings, churches and housing turned Algiers into a French provincial capital – the second largest city in Greater France. ‘Haussmannisation’ borrowed from Paris created grand boulevards; statues and monuments marked the city with the imperial presence, though Arabs were economically and politically marginalised in ‘Alger la blanche’. Until the 1930 centenary, officials did little to preserve the city’s pre-colonial heritage. The Institut du Monde Arabe played a major role in the Year of Algeria, with shows ranging from old photographs of Algiers to the works of the modern artist Abdallah Benanteur. ‘L’Algérie en héritage’ provided an historical panorama of art in Algeria from prehistoric times to the twentiethcentury, including Roman mosaics, Islamic calligraphy, Ottoman furniture

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and Berber decorative arts. The curator, Eric Delpont, remarked that for a generation after the 1960s, Algerian art and antiquities were very seldom displayed in France. Even in Algeria certain subjects were politically suspect – the Roman period, often claimed by colonialists as an antecedent for later European conquest and settlement, not surprisingly, received little attention.37 This IMA exhibition not only presented a long chronology of Algerian art but, by showing works from different periods and styles, suggested how indigenous Algerian cultures had responded to outside influences. A major retrospective at the IMA recalled how French artists had responded to Algeria. Works by Delacroix, Chassériau and Fromentin, among many others, again brought Orientalism into view, and the exhibition featured Renoir, whose paintings inspired by Algeria remain less well known. Other unfamiliar works on display included large topographical paintings that military artists made for use in intelligence and reconnaissance. Triumphalist paintings showed battles, at times with a hint of soldiers’ antics – in 1839 Adrien Dauzats’s depiction of the Portes de Fer, conquered by the Duc d’Orléans, included in the corner a soldier standing on the bent back of two comrades so that he could scratch graffiti onto a rock. Others portrayed the daily life of Arabs. Scenes of rural life and harvests in Algeria, the exhibition narrative recalled, mirrored the vogue for provincial scenes at home, but also illustrated Napoleon III’s hopes that Algeria would become a granary for France. A painting of Abd el-Kader, made just after he rallied to the French, showed a distinguished and worthy Arab leader. The importance of the new medium of photography was underlined by shots of the ruins of Djemila and a portrait of a Muslim official decorated with the Legion of Honour. Such details pointed to links between art and politics, the conquest of Algeria and representations of North Africa in France. Yet another show at the IMA presented 150 photographs taken in Algeria in the 1950s by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Algeria provided an important ‘social laboratory’ for Bourdieu’s theories, but he was also a resolute adversary of French colonialism and an opponent of the war against independence. Bourdieu’s photographs often show the paradoxes of tradition and modernity, and of the Muslim and French presence in the country. A little Arab girl carries a baguette, four women wearing the haik covering their head and faces stand drinking coffee in a European-style café, an old man wearing a burnous is posed with his Western-dressed son and grandson. Crowds gather in front of a radio shop; another shopwindow, filled with mannequins in robes and veils, is illuminated with neon lights. In front of a statue of French soldiers, Algerian youths prop on their motorbikes. Pro- and antiindependence graffiti decorate barricades.38 The Orientalist artists portrayed North Africa in the process of being colonised, and Bourdieu witnessed the struggle for decolonisation. As some of the Year of Algeria exhibits revealed, the colonial epoch continues to stimulate reactions from artists in today’s France and Algeria. An exhibition


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of contemporary works at the Fondation Electra, in particular, showed how several have engaged with current issues as well as the colonial past. Hallal Zoubir’s imaginary maps transposed Algiers’s street names to Paris, and Paris’s street names to Algiers. Ernest Pignon-Ernest’s work provided a direct allusion to the war, taking as his subject Maurice Audin, a mathematician in Algiers who was killed (almost certainly by French police) because of support for the independence movement. Pignon-Ernest posed a life-size cutout figure of Audin in various sites in Algiers, including the places where he was arrested and killed; the cut-out served as background for photographs of Algerians going about their daily business. Jacques Villeglé, recalling his experiences in Paris during the war, created a collage of posters including commemorations of the Vietnamese New Year and the anniversary of the Algerian ceasefire. Sedjel Mustafa Sadek, an Oran-born artist who lives in Paris, offered a multi-media presentation. Film footage of soldiers during the war, speeches by Mitterrand when he was minister in the 1950s, and piedsnoirs leaving North Africa were projected with modern photos and film of the ferries that sail between France and Algeria. Joining history to the present, a caption projected on the film noted that in the decade after 1993, two thousand boat people died in the Straits of Gibraltar trying to reach Europe. Placed around Sadek’s installation, paper boats, maps, a garbage bag of sand and paintings of stylised ships alluded to passage across the Mediterranean in this representation of ‘Histoires – à travers la mémoire’39 (Histories [or stories] – through [or across] memory). ‘Parlez-moi d’Alger: Marseille-Alger au miroir des mémoires’ also centred on memories of North Africa. The exhibition examined connections and similarities between Marseille and Algiers. It began with photos and film footage showing the two cityscapes and their similar topography and architecture, a ‘gémellité’ (twinness) already apparent in historical Ottoman drawings. A 1949 documentary, ‘Une Balade dans la Casbah’ (A Stroll in the Casbah), compared with footage of the working-class quarter of Marseille, Le Panier. The exhibition then traced historical links between southern France and northern Africa, from the time of Thomas Lenche, a Corsican who settled in Marseille in 1533, gained a monopoly from Ottoman authorities to harvest coral from Algerian waters and established the first ‘Bastion de France’ in North Africa. Other featured ‘passeurs de cultures’ (culture brokers) were Jews who traded on both shores of the Mediterranean, slaves taken by Barbary corsairs, and Maghrebin migrants to France. Algerian artefacts, such as the saddle and spurs of Dey Hussein, illustrated North African craftsmanship but also the conquerors’ acquisitiveness; a photograph recalled that another item, the dey’s seal, was returned to Algeria by President Chirac in 2003. Other documents showed French efforts to mark Algeria with the European presence and to accomplish a ‘sacralisation de la terre’ (consecration of the land): an 1840s painting of a Corpus Christi festival with altars set up next to the equestrian statue of the Duc d’Orléans outside an historic mosque in Algiers.

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The emergence of Saint-Simonian dreams of a trans-Mediterranean civilisation and manifestos of the algérianiste school witnessed to cultural aspirations among the settler population. Yet captions did not shy away from discussion of the ‘dominante/dominée’ (dominating/dominated) dichotomy of the two cities, and the political and economic contexts of ‘Alger la blanche’ (Algiers-thewhite) and ‘Marseille la coloniale’ (Marseille-the-colonial). Another part of the exhibition covered the war: footage of the departure of French troops for Algeria, the uniform of a conscript, and a manual of ‘Instructions contre la guerrilla dans le cadre du maintien de l’ordre en Afrique Française du Nord’. There was also a copy of a Le Monde article on torture carried out by French forces, and another describing the experiences of an Algerian woman saved from torture by a Frenchman. Photos of harkis and of French cemeteries in North Africa spoke of departures and exile. Pictures of Carnoux-en-Provence, and mementos of Arabic and Kabyle footballers on the Olympique Marseille football team, provided insight into the construction of new lives. Interspersed throughout the exhibition were ‘listening stations’ with dramatised short pieces or reminiscences written by both French and Algerian authors.40 Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Marseille-Algiers exhibition, however, was found in the visitors’ book. Many comments are in Arabic, but those in French spoke, often movingly, with mixed sentiments. ‘Une Algéroise’ (a woman from Algiers), manifestly a pied-noir, wondered whether one day she might again be able to visit the graves of her grandparents (‘même saccagés’ [even if they have been desecrated]), see her family home or experience the odours and colours of Algiers. ‘Mon Dieu, donnez-moi la possibilité de revoir le pays que nous avons créé, pas en “coupables, ni en pardonnés”, mais en êtres humains libres de voyager’ (Dear God, give me the chance to see again this country that we created, not as ‘guilty ones’ or ‘forgiven ones’, but as human beings who are free to travel). Several wrote about their childhood in Algeria. ‘Une amie de Bône’ (a friend from Bône), confessing ‘beaucoup de rancoeur’ (much rancour), felt that there was not enough in the display on the ‘travail remarquable’ (remarkable work) of the colonists. The exhibition ‘m’a rappelé des souvenirs anciens et douloureux. Mais quels regrets?’ (brought back old and painful memories. But what regrets?). One visitor penned a poem and a drawing of contemporary Algiers. A Frenchman who had worked in post-independence Algeria remarked how much it differed from the stereotypes common in the European press. A Périgourdin said the exhibition made him want to visit Algeria. A Marseillais recalled the arrival of pieds-noirs in 1962. ‘Namel d’Alger’ (Namel from Algiers) found the exhibition ‘magnifique’ (magnificent), and Nacer said that it had taught him much about Algerian culture, which he bemoaned was being lost among Algerians in Marseille. Someone also wrote simply: ‘Je suis fier d’être Algérien’ (I am proud to be Algerian). A thirty-four-year-old Lyonnais, the son of a French father and an Algerian mother, talked about going to Algeria, where ‘j’ai décovert un pays merveilleux, des musulmans avertis et


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généreux’ (I discovered a marvellous country, well-informed and generous Muslims). His story continued: ‘Ma famille m’a accueilli les bras ouverts. L’année dernière, je suis tombé amoureux de ma cousine, “ma princesse arabe”, nous allons nous mariés [sic] cet été’ (My family welcomed me with open arms. Last year I fell in love with my cousin, ‘my Arab princess’, and we are going to be married this summer). Yet another visitor commented: ‘Vouz donnez une conscience aux Algériens et aux Français’ (You are raising consciousness for the Algerians and for the French). Someone from Constantine prayed: ‘Que la paix soit entre les Français de tous bords et les Algériens’ (May there be peace between French people of all views and the Algerians), and another wrote ‘thank you’ in French and Arabic: ‘Merci – Choukran’.41 The visitors’ book at the Marseille exhibition – along with a selection of one thousand letters sent to the magazine Télérama when it published a dossier on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the war – provide very personal memories of Algeria. They also suggest people’s interest in learning about a now unfamiliar country, in remembering a place with which they maintain various links, whether of kinship or only of recollection. Though museum-visitors are a self-selecting group, perhaps the sentiments expressed in Marseille provide an invitation to curators to look more closely at the tangled history of France and its colonies, and to invite comments from the public that add another element to the displays of objects and images. The French commissioner of the Année de l’Algérie, Hervé Bourges, judged the year of activities a success that exceeded expectations. He admitted that many obstacles had presented themselves to the programme: the political situation in Algeria, festering wounds in Franco-Algerian history, concerns about the ‘récupération’ (recuperation) of activities by the French and Algerian governments. Bourges said that the organisers had nevertheless been able to work without censure or taboo to organise activities in 350 cities and towns in France. These included the presentation of two thousand art works and artefacts from Algeria, the publication of 450 books, and the visits to France of 3500 Algerian artists, writers and other cultural figures. This undertaking ‘nous a permis de dépasser les polémiques, du côté algérien comme du côté français’ (allowed us to go beyond polemics, on the Algerian side as on the French side). Issues such as the war had been treated, he said, in a scholarly and tranquil fashion. Bourges added that not only did the exhibitions underline Franco-Algerian contacts, but had helped the French public to discover ‘une histoire algérienne phénoménale . . . Une histoire à la fois numide, romaine, berbère, arabe, puis turque et française, et qui est aujourd’hui algérienne’ (a phenomenal Algerian history . . . a history that is Numidian, Roman, Berber, Arabic, then Turkish and French, and that is today Algerian). The year led to the creation of permanent organisations in Algeria and France to promote cultural activities.42 Such a positive evaluation of the Year of Algeria is perhaps not surprising from the man in charge. The views of others who participated – organisers

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of events, artists represented and particularly members of the public – may in due course allow a more comprehensive understanding of the programme and its impact. However, in the general context of a re-examination of the history of France’s relations with North Africa, it represents a timely overture to a region and a history with which France has not entirely made its peace. The exhibitions on Algeria were far from devoid of political considerations: Franco-Algerian rapprochement, French promotion of an inclusive, modernising and peaceful Algeria where currents of political and religious fundamentalism are kept at bay, and attention to the cultural sensibilities of France’s Maghrebin population. For its part, Algeria’s government wanted to shore up its political support, cultural credibility and international reputation. The Année de l’Algérie marked the end to a decade of episodic, often timid and sometimes difficult efforts to confront the tangled history of the two countries. Whether it marked a beginning to a new relationship between Algeria and France, and a renewed and more piercing look at their colonial past, remains to be seen.

A decade of exhibitions of colonialism The ‘Orient des Provençaux’ exhibition of 1982 had signalled a re-examination of France’s colonial culture, but only with the Invalides exhibition on the Algerian War in 1992 had museums begun to organise regular exhibitions on colonial history. The Year of Algeria, with its array of exhibitions and other activities, came at the conclusion of a decade in which museums at last took a broader and deeper view of colonialism. Some special exhibitions were nostalgic, as with ‘Visages de l’Algérie heureuse’ or the display marking the fiftieth anniversary of départementalisation. Others, such as the one on spahis, drew on familiar themes. Increasingly, however, museums looked at new topics, for instance, sport and health. They were also more willing to delve deeper into difficult and controversial colonial subjects – for instance, the MAAO’s show on stereotypes of the South Pacific. Exhibitions ranging from French and Vietnamese inter-war art to post-independence Algerian art showed cross-cultural influences in the colonial era and today. Some exhibitions were unafraid to touch on sensitive contemporary topics – the MATP’s ‘Tropiques métis’ and the MAAO’s ‘De Jade et de nacre’ showed links between the colonial past and present-day concerns in the DOM and TOM. In Nantes in 1992–1994, and in Paris in 1992 and again in 2003, the most difficult issues – slavery and the Algerian War – were canvassed. These temporary exhibitions suggest several observations about presentation of colonialism in French museum. One simple conclusion is the increasing interest shown in colonial history over the last ten to fifteen years, part of a rediscovery of the colonial past reflected in public debates, academic works, creative literature and film, and the inauguration of


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monuments. Furthermore, this interest has expanded from a focus on aesthetically pleasing Orientalist and colonialist art – as evidenced in the 1980s exhibitions in Marseille and Boulogne-Billancourt – to more complex investigations of colonial history. Previously taboo themes are now aired, and museums offer a more critical examination of imperialism. The items exhibited, and the narrative of display panels and catalogue essays, urge visitors to reflect on the complicated nature of colonialism, including its most ignoble sides, and to connect developments of the colonial era with current affairs. Interpretations differ from the implicit or explicit apologias seen in a handful of exhibitions to far more critical stances. Most exhibitions, however, avoid either completely laudatory or condemnatory positions: a change from the colonial period when, in 1931, an uncompromisingly ‘anti-colonial’ exhibition was organised in direct opposition to the triumphalist Exposition Coloniale.

Conclusion: The Future of the Colonial Past

France has many colonial sites, but no museum of colonial history. Throughout the 1990s, there was discussion about creating some sort of edifice to recall colonial France. Committees were constituted, meetings held, and disputes aired, but for years nothing came of the proposal. The nature of the project and the very name of the site were unclear. Would it be a memorial, monument, museum or ‘historial’? Who would play the deciding role in the design and plan – curators, historians, political authorities or particular interest groups? What would be the role of pieds-noirs, descendants of colonial migrants and other stakeholders with particular links to the empire? Would the site be celebratory, commemorative or critical of colonialism? Where would the institution be located, and who would oversee its programme? The Socialist President François Mitterrand had spoken in favour of the project, but neither his government, nor that of the conservative President Chirac, despite vague support, made great strides in resolving the delicate issues centring around commemoration of the colonies or in working out concrete details for a future institution. One site was suggested, the beautiful fourteenth-century Fort Saint-Jean at the entry to the Vieux Port of Marseille. However, national museum authorities decided to make the fort part of a new Musée des Cultures de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. Just as the idea for an outre-mer institution seemed moribund, the Marseille city government seized the initiative and announced plans to build a museum devoted to the history of colonialism. The conservative mayor, Jean-Claude Gaudin (also a senator from the Bouches-du-Rhône département), no doubt saw an opportunity to broaden the cultural heritage of his city, to attract tourists and to appeal to the numerous pied-noir voters in his constituencies. With other colonial lieux de mémoire – the monument aux morts to the Armée d’Orient, the Monument aux rapatriés, the historic collections of the Chambre de Commerce and the MAAOA, Orientalist paintings in the Musée des Beaux-Arts and Musée Cantini, the Ecole de Médecine Tropicale – Marseille already had a large ‘stock’ of commemorative links to the overseas empire. Taking the lead for a new institution also reclaimed Marseille’s centrality as 328

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the French city with privileged connections to the outre-mer, part of a quarrel between Marseille and Paris that stretched back to the colonial exhibitions of the early twentieth century. The initiative of the Marseille city council prompted renewed interest from the national government. Negotiations between local and national authorities secured arrangements for a jointly sponsored and funded Mémorial National de l’Outre-Mer. Jean-Jacques Jordi, a Marseille historian who has written extensively on colonial Algeria and on the arrival of rapatriés in France, was put in charge of the project. The committee he heads includes curators, historians and representatives of government bodies, but not associations of pieds-noirs, former colonials or special interest groups with personal links to the former empire. The composition indicates a desire that the Mémorial be objective and historical, not partisan and celebratory, despite a name that retains a commemorative ring. An architectural competition was held for the design of a purpose-built facility, and the city agreed to provide land in the Parc Chanot in central Marseille. The site for the new Mémorial, conveniently located near other attractions, such as the city’s convention centre and football stadium, has colonial connections, as the 1906 and 1922 colonial exhibitions were held there. From April to November 1906, 1.8 million visitors came to the Parc Chanot to visit fifty reconstructions of palaces, temples, mosques and other pavilions exalting France overseas. After the exhibition the city bought the twenty-one-hectare site from the army, which had used the property as a military training ground before the fair. In the park that was created, however, the only trace of the exhibitions is the ornate fence built in 1922.1 A position paper written by Jordi explores the paradoxes of the colonial legacy that the Mémorial will need to address: a history of conquest and rule championed during the colonial period but which ended with divisiveness, violence and the flight of French settlers and many of their supporters. The French then tried to forget their empire. After decades of imperialist promotion, ‘tout ce qui peut rappeler cette culture coloniale, cette présence française, est rejeté dans l’oubli, honni, parfois haï, et tabou’ (everything that was a reminder of this colonial culture and this French presence was consigned to oblivion, treated with shame and sometimes hatred, and made a taboo). Since 1962, ‘La colonisation qui avait droit de cité dans l’histoire de France des années 1930 n’a désormais plus sa place’ (colonisation, which took pride of place in French history in the 1930s, no longer had any place). The new museum, however, ‘se situe . . . dans cette volonté de réactivation permanente et critique d’une histoire collective et d’une actualité plus présente que jamais’ (is situated . . . in this desire for a permanent and critical reactivation of a collective history and an interest that is more contemporary than ever). It is seen ‘non pas dans une optique passéiste mais dans la volonté d’aller de l’avant, d’ê tre un lieu de mémoire et d’histoire tourné vers les jeunes générations sans pour autant oublier les mémoires et les histoires des

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rapatriements’2 (not though a passéiste perspective but with a willingness to go forward and to be a site of memory and history turned towards the younger generations without forgetting the memories and histories of the rapatriés). The organisation of the museum is still underway, and the opening of the Mémorial de l’Outre-Mer will take place, at the earliest, in 2006. The 3800square-metre contemporary building will cover three floors. An entry level will provide, in addition to ticket windows, a café and a shop, an introduction to French overseas activities and to the empires of other European powers, illustrated by maps and representative objects. The lower level will be given over to temporary exhibitions on specific topics, beginning with shipping. Others foreshadowed include colonial medicine, education, literature, the colonial army and rapatriements. The upper level of the museum will house the permanent or long-term displays on the history of French overseas outposts. Displays will be organised in a series of vitrines or stands with syntheses of the physical and human geography, economics and culture of individual colonies or groups of colonies (such as the AOF, AEF or Antilles) during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A ‘cadre historique’ (historical scene-setting) will provide background for each region. Then three themes will be isolated, chosen because of the particular profile of each area, so that the whole exhibition will provide insight into complementary aspects of colonial history. Thus, for instance, the themes chosen for Algeria are ‘light’, the experience and expression of the North African light and the response to the landscape; ‘peace and violence’, including the violence of conquest, colonial rule, the war of independence and also the dispossession experienced by pieds-noirs; and ‘the land and the dead’, cemeteries, memorials and commemoration of the departed by both pieds-noirs and Muslims. Themes for New Caledonia are the penal colony, nickel mining and the political evolution of the territory; for Indochina, science and technology, arts and culture, and the battle of Dien Bien Phu; for the AEF, exploration, the activities of concessionary companies and the work of doctors and missionaries. Objects, documents and moving pictures – drawn from enormous but little known archives of colonial documentaries – will illustrate the narratives. ‘Totems’ will anchor the section on each colonial region: for instance, sugar cane plants and a copy of the declaration of the abolition of slavery for the Antilles, or a bust of Lyautey and a map of Casablanca for Morocco. Around the periphery of these stands and vitrines on the upper level will run another narrative of texts and objects on Marseille and its role in the empire. The Mémorial de l’Outre-Mer, however, is being conceived not just as a gallery, and planned activities comprise a festival of documentary films, a programme of lectures, conferences and publication, a documentation centre and international linkages with research institutions in former colonies. Even before the construction of the museum, the Mémorial


d’Outre-Mer is sponsoring exhibitions, such as photographs of pro-French Algerian troops, ‘Destins de Harkis’, held at the municipal archives in Marseille in 2004. This ambitious project will provide a comprehensive and dedicated exhibition on colonialism for the first time since the closure of the provincial colonial museums in the late 1950s, and the transformation of the Paris colonial museum into a museum of African and Oceanic arts. The task of balancing multiple themes, including diverse geographical areas, of responding to different groups – curators, historians, rapatriés, migrants, Marseillais – and of attracting audiences ranging from students and tourists to former colonials, will be difficult. Inevitably, not all will feel satisfied with the displays or the interpretations; some will find that subjects they hold dear are neglected, that the approach is either too nostalgic or condemnatory or that the whole project is contestable. However, the opening of the Mémorial de l’Outre-Mer represents a willingness by French authorities to display and discuss the colonial past to a degree unimaginable in the immediate aftermath of decolonisation or for some years later. History stands at the centre of a redefinition of French national identity, and it is therefore not surprising that museums, the repositories of history, memory and culture, are in the midst of a long-term reorganisation. In the 1980s, national collections of French art were restructured: the creation of the Musée d’Orsay and the metamorphosis of the Louvre into the Grand Louvre rearranged collections of European art. The Guimet museum of Asian art was also revamped, and a musée des arts premiers will open in the Quai Branly in 2007: renewed presentations of the art and artefacts of Africa, Asia and Oceania, many taken from countries over which France ruled. In coming years, other museums and research centres will be inaugurated. A Musée de l’Europe will be opened in Strasbourg in 2007, its exhibitions highlighting periods of European fratricidal discord and ones of common values and projects.3 There are plans for a museum of immigration, perhaps located at the Porte Dorée, the old colonial museum in Paris.4 A Marseillais neighbour of the Mémorial de l’Outre-Mer, the Musée des civilisations de l’Europe and de la Méditerranée, scheduled for opening in 2009, will join displays of French provincial culture with ones from other regions of the Mediterranean basin.5 In short, museums will display, reflect on and help define France’s place in the world: its historical relations with Europe, its interchange with cultures of Asia, Africa and the Pacific, its links to the Mediterranean, its colonial history and its absorption of migrants. This constellation of new museums will provide a new map of France in the world.6

Reviewing colonialism The Marseille memorial, however, will also cap a period in which the French, somewhat reluctantly, have re-examined their colonial past, a confrontation

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that can be seen in scholarship and creative works of literature and film, but also in museums and monuments. In the 1960s and 1970s, efforts not only to forget colonialism, but to efface the traces of the colonial era were undertaken – the ‘mothballing’ of collections of colonial art, the closing of certain rooms in the Palais de la Porte Dorée because of their colonialist iconography, and the sand-blasting of colonial heroes’ names from the walls of the former Ecole Coloniale. Even in the vast exhibitions dedicated to Marseille and North Africa held in 1982, the emphasis was placed on art, archaeology and trade, not on colonial domination, war, repatriation and immigration. In the fifteen years since the late 1980s, museums have tackled colonial subjects in diverse ways. Special exhibitions have looked at colonial science, the military, Orientalist art, health care, sport – among other subjects – and examined such controversial issues as slavery and the Algerian War. The complex colonial links between several cities and regions, such as Nantes and Corsica, have been broached. Imperial discourses and representations – for instance, views of Pacific cannibals and temptresses – have been subject to re-examination. Forgotten painters of the colonial age have been rescued from storerooms, and the vogue for ethnographic art continues. In ‘permanent’ collections, as well as in temporary exhibitions, colonial history and culture have reappeared. Older museums, for example, the Musée Africain in Lyon and the Maison du Missionnaire in Vichy, have been remodelled, while others, such as the little museum in the Ile d’Aix, have been intentionally preserved, perhaps fortunately, as examples of an older style of exhibition. Several innovative overtures – the Kahn museum’s incorporation of present-day Moroccan youths’ reactions to colonial-era photographs – suggest new ways that old materials can be put on view. Two museums focussing on the first epoch of European expansion have been established, the Musée du Nouveau Monde and the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes. The exhibition of non-Western art has been in the process of dramatic evolution. The revivified Musée Guimet provided a new and worthy home for Asian art. Marseille inaugurated the Musée des Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens. The Louvre opened a gallery of arts premiers in 2000, and in 2004 it announced the creation of new galleries for its Islamic collections. In short, presentation of Asian, Islamic and ‘primitive’ arts in Paris will have been completely renovated before 2010, and similar undertakings have occurred in the provinces, for instance, plans for exhibitions on slavery in the Château des Ducs de Bretagne in Nantes. Monuments too testify to renewed interest in colonial history, and to a desire to make peace with the colonial past. The 1983 Fréjus Mémorial des Guerres en Indochine, completed with a necropolis and museum in the early 1990s – even if the narrative of the museum appears unreconstructed in its portrayal of the war – provided recognition of French soldiers killed in action in Southeast Asia. The Paris Mémorial des Guerres en Afrique du Nord, in a more succinct and modernist design, pays tribute to those who


died in the Maghreb. Efforts to name streets for the date of the Algerian ceasefire including a Place du 19 mars 1962 inaugurated in Paris in 2004, however contested that date may be, indicate the accomplishment of a devoir de mémoire. The FNACA’s efforts to promote Algerian War memorials around France has provided monumental reminders in towns and regions of the 30,000 French soldiers killed in the war in North Africa. Gestures such as the unveiling of a plaque to the harkis at the Invalides have belatedly paid attention to indigenous comrades-in-arms of metropolitan soldiers. Gradually, those opposed to colonialism are also gaining mention: the plaque in Paris which commemorates those who died protesting against the war in North Africa, and the ‘Grand tableau antifasciste’ on display in Strasbourg. A collective prise de conscience is evident, but is not without ambiguities. Commemorations and exhibitions reveal political considerations exercised by the state through monuments and museums. The ‘Tropiques métis’ and ‘De Jade et de nacre’ exhibitions signalled the stances of François Mitterrand’s government: valorisation of indigenous and métis cultures and acknowledgement of the ill effects of colonialism. The re-interment of Abbé Grégoire and the placing of plaques in honour of Delgrès and Toussaint Louverture in the Panthéon under the Socialist government reinforced a certain view of colonial history and France’s devoir de mémoire. The Chirac administration, in sponsoring exhibitions, unveiling plaques and dedicating the North African War memorial, seems more concerned with honouring the actions of French men and women overseas, and in affirming the indefectible attachment of the remaining DOM and TOM to the Republic. Presidential patronage for the centenary of Toussaint Louverture nevertheless made a statement about the history of slavery in the French empire. The Année de l’Algérie was meant to promote Franco-Algerian reconciliation and to defuse controversial debates on the legacy of the war in France, yet it too could not avoid a degree of politicisation. If exhibitions and commemorations evidence a dramatic change in French attitudes to the colonial past, they also show the ability of such events to be ‘instrumentalised’ by political factions. They document, as well, the cohabitation of diverse, and conflicting, memories about the history of overseas expansion and rule. Different attitudes to colonial history continue to exercise various groups. Pieds-noirs rally at Notre-Dame d’Afrique or Notre-Dame de Santa-Cruz; some organised an exhibition on ‘Algérie heureuse’ to contrast with a display on the Algerian War, and a group of pieds-noirs maintain the museum of Algérie française in Perpignan. But, as witnessed by the debate on 19 March as a suitable name for streets, even among rapatriés, there is no ‘party line’ on the colonial past. Between former colonials and others the gaps are no doubt wider. Some resent exhibitions that denigrate the oeuvre of the French overseas, but others would react with surprise and disapproval to monuments, such as the one in the Carnoux-en-Provence cemetery, that speak of ‘pionniers de la civilisation’ (pioneers of civilisation) in North Africa. The dynamiting of Marchand’s

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statue in Paris may well have been a pointed commentary on the consecration of colonial expansion embodied in the monument. The Antillais descendents of enslaved Africans see reminders of slavery in a different way from their compatriots – whence the campaign for renaming a Paris street that honoured the general who re-established slavery in the West Indies in 1802. Opposition of certain North Africans to the Année de l’Algérie symbolised a protest against both the French and Algerian governments. Vietnamese who visit the Fréjus memorial, and Beurs who walk past the North African monument in Paris, do not share the same memories, or experience the same legacies, as do many other French men and women. The colonies contributed greatly to the formation of French national identity – overseas territories were a constituent part of France from the 1600s onwards, and France still claims ten overseas outposts. From the early 1600s through the mid-1900s, France’s self-image was of a country whose dominion extended around the world, proudly and defiantly colonial. Colonial authorities and their supporters used street names, statues, war memorials and museum collections to mark France with the imprint of empire. As France redefined its role after a traumatic decolonisation, these markers seemed antiquated and awkward reminders of an empire won and lost. The ‘new’ France dispensed with colonies, and wanted to do without unpleasant reminders of the colonial age. Yet many of these traces remained, some neglected, an increasing number renovated, signifiers of individual and collective memories and of a national history that extended beyond the ‘Hexagon’. These sites continue to evolve – new memorials and new museums proof of an effort, belatedly and somewhat ambiguously, to come to terms with the colonial past. France is now redefining its identity for the twentyfirst century, a country integrated into an increasingly united Europe, a nation whose people have roots in many cultures and who strive to retain their traditions within the bounds of the ‘one and indivisible’ Republic, a state prey to troubling international political and economic challenges. Perhaps the sites that refer to France’s links with the rest of the world can now play a part not only in comprehension of the past and reconciliation of diverse groups who have carried a colonial legacy into the present day, but also in the articulation of a political, social and cultural vision for a post-colonial future.

Notes

Introduction: sites of colonial memory 1. Roland Barthes, ‘The Eiffel Tower’ [1964], in Susan Sontag (ed.), A Barthes Reader (New York, 1982), pp. 236–250. 2. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt, The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom (Durham, N.C., 1997). 3. The Observer, 16 May 1999. 4. Le Monde, 3 December 1998. 5. On the history of the massacre and the site, see Sarah Farmer, Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane (Berkeley, 1999). 6. Robert Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (London, 1996). 7. Robert Aldrich and John Connell, France’s Overseas Frontier: Départements et Territoires d’Outre-Mer (Cambridge, 1992). 8. Benjamin Stora, La Gangrène et l’oubli: La Mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris, 1991). 9. Henry Rouso, Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours (Paris, 1987). 10. Mohammed Harbi and Benjamin Stora (eds), La Guerre d’Algérie: 1954–2004, la fin de l’amnésie (Paris, 2004). 11. In 2004, parliament passed a law forbidding the wearing of ‘ostentatious’ religious symbols in public schools, including large Christian crosses, Jewish skullcaps and Muslim scarves or veils. Promoters of the law saw it as a reaffirmation of the secular nature of the public education system, a doctrine enshrined in French law and republican ideology since the beginning of the twentieth century. The measure was also intended to combat rising Islamism. The law, however, provoked demonstrations by Muslims in France and abroad in protest against a measure seen as discrimination directed against the Muslim population. 12. I have not discussed archives, libraries or documentation centres. 13. This study concerns major public sites, such as monuments, memorials and museums, not individual items that remain from the colonial age or private collections. For a discussion of the ‘relics’ of colonialism and one private collection, see Eric Deroo, Gabrielle Deroo and Marie-Cécile de Taillac, Aux colonies (Paris, 1992). 14. Maurice Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective (Paris, 1997), first published in 1950. 15. Adrian Forty and Susanne Küchler (eds), The Art of Forgetting (Oxford, 1999). 16. Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? (Paris, 1882). 17. Marc Augé, Les Formes de l’oubli (Paris, 2001), pp. 119, 112. 18. Antoine Raybaud, ‘Deuil sans travail, travail sans deuil: La France a-t-elle une mémoire coloniale?’, Dédale, No. 5–6 (Spring 1997), pp. 87–104. 19. Régis Debray, ‘Le rapport Debray sur la France et Haïti’, Le Monde, 29 February 2004. 20. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978) and Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993), are key texts. 21. John M. Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, 1984), Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts 335

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22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

30.

31.

Notes (Manchester, 1995); and John M. Mackenzie (ed.), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester, 1986). Maurice Agulhon, ‘La “statuomanie” et l’histoire’, Ethnologie française, Vol. 8, No. 2–3 (1978), pp. 145–172. Maurice Agulhon’s three-volume study is Marianne au combat: L’Imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1789 à 1880 (Paris, 1979), Marianne au pouvoir: L’Imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1880 à 1914 (Paris, 1989) and Les Métamorphoses de Marianne: L’Imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1914 à nos jours (Paris, 2001). See also his De Gaulle: Histoire, symbole, mythe (Paris, 2000). Pierre Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de Mémoire (Paris, 1984–1992). Nora’s enterprise has sparked similar works elsewhere; see, e.g., Mario Isnenghi (ed.), I luoghi della memoria. Simboli e miti dell’Italia unita (Milan, 1996); and Bruno Tobia, L’Altare della patria (Bologna, 1998). Charles-Robert Ageron, ‘L’Exposition coloniale de 1931’, in Nora, op. cit. Vol. 1, pp. 561–591. Sergiusz Michalski, Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage, 1870–1997 (London, 1998). Annette Becker, Les Monuments aux morts: Mémoire de la Grande Guerre (Paris, 1988), Philippe Rive and Annette Becker (eds), Monuments de mémoire: les monuments aux morts de la Première Guerre mondiale (Paris, 1991); and Marlène Patten Henry, Monumental Accusations: The monument aux morts as Expression of Popular Resentment (New York, 1996). See also Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995); Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford, 1998); and K.S. Inglis, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Melbourne, 1998). See, e.g., Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich (London, 2002). Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monuments in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, 1997); Marcus Wood, Blind Memories: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780–1865 (Manchester, 2000). Joachim Zeller, Kolonialdenkmäler und Geschichtsbewußtsein. Eine Untersuchung der kolonialdeutschen Erinnerungskultur (Frankfurt, 1999); Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller (eds), Kolonial Metropole Berlin: Eine Spurensuche (Berlin, 2002). See also Winfried Speitkamp, ‘Kolonialherrschaft und Denkmal. Afrikanische und deutsche Erinnerungskultur im Konflikt’, in Wolfram Martini (ed.), Arkitektur und Erinnerung (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 165–190. On Portugal: Margarida Acciauoli, Exposições do Estado Novo, 1934–1949 (Lisbon, 1998); Yves Léonard, ‘Le Portugal et ses “sentinelles de pierre”: L’Exposition du monde portugais en 1940’, Vingtième siècle, No. 62 (1999), pp. 27–37. On Belgium: Maurits Wynants, Des Ducs de Brabant aux villages congolais. Tervuren et l’exposition coloniale 1897 (Tervuren, 1997); Sabine Cornelis, ‘Le Musée du Congo belge, vitrine de l’action coloniale (1910–1930)’, in Dominique Taffin (ed.), Du Musée colonial au musée des cultures du monde (Paris, 2000), pp. 71–85; Anne-Marie Bouttiaux, ‘Des mises en scène de curiosité au chefs-d’oeuvre mis en scène. Le Musée royal de l’Afrique à Tervuren. Un siècle de collections’, Cahiers d’études africaines, Vol. 39, No. 3–4 (1999), pp. 595–616. Leo Akveld and Els M. Jacobs (eds), The Colourful World of the VOC (Bussum, 2002); Kees Zandvliet, The Dutch Encounter with Asia, 1600–1750 (Zwolle, 2002); Leonard Blussé, ‘Four Hundred Years On: The Public Commemoration of the Founding of

Notes

32. 33.

34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

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the VOC in 2002’, Itinerario, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2003), pp. 79–91; Gert J. Oostindië, ‘Squaring the Circle: Commemorating the VOC after 400 Years’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, Vol. 159, No. 1 (2003), pp. 135–161. See also Vincent J.H. Houben, ‘The Unmastered Past: Decolonization and Dutch Collective Memory’, European Review, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2000), pp. 77–85; and Gert Oostindië (ed.), Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe (Kingston, 2001). Taffin (ed.), op. cit. J. Woudsma, The Royal Tropical Institute: An Amsterdam Landmark (Amsterdam, n.d.); Susan Legêne, ‘Identité nationale et “cultures autres”: le musée colonial comme monde à part aux Pays-Bas’, in Taffin (ed.), pp. 87–101. Ray Desmond, The India Museum, 1801–1879 (London, 1982); William Golant, Image of Empire: The Early History of the Imperial Institute, 1887–1925 (Exeter, 1984); MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire, Chapter 5 (on the Imperial Institute); Tim Barringer, ‘The South Kensington Museum and the Colonial Project’, in Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn (eds), Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (London, 1998); Mark Crinson, ‘Imperial Story-lands: Architecture and Display at the Imperial and Commonwealth Institute’, Art History, Vol. 22, No. 1 (March 1999), pp. 99–123. Jonathan Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven, 1999); John Mackenzie, ‘ “The Second City of Empire”: Glasgow – Imperial Municipality’, in Felix Driver and David Gilbert (eds), Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester, 1999); Christine Chivallon, ‘Bristol et la mémoire de l’esclavage. Changer et confirmer le regard sur la ville’, Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, No. 85 (1999), pp. 100–110. Ewald Vanvugt, De maagd en de soldaat: Koloniale monumenten in Amsterdam en elders (Amsterdam, 1998). Nicola Labanca (ed.), L’Africa in vetrina: Storie di musei e di esposizioni coloniali in Italia (Paese, 1992). Andrea Semplici, ‘Il fulmine di Axum’, Afriche e orienti, Vol. 42, No. 3 (2002), pp. 57–63; Alessandro Triulzi, ‘Adwa: From Monument to Document’, Modern Italy, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2003), pp. 95–108. See following chapter for references. One is a series of one-page articles on twelve ‘Lieux de mémoire ultramarines’ in Ultramarines, the magazine of the Archives d’Outre-Mer, published in the early 1990s. Most of these are discussed in more detail in the present volume. See Robert Aldrich, ‘Imperial Mise en Valeur and Mise en Scène: Recent Works on French Colonialism’, Historical Journal, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2000), pp. 917–936. Jean-Christophe Mabire, L’Exposition universelle de 1900 (Paris, 2000) and JeanClaude Daufresne, Fêtes à Paris au XXe siècle: Architectures éphémères de 1919 à 1989 (Sprimont, 2001). Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre, L’Exposition coloniale (Paris, 1991); Patricia A. Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, Mass., 2000). See also Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), Chapter 3; Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven, 1995); Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature (Durham, N.C., 1996), Chapter 1; and Robert Aldrich, ‘Le Guide de l’Exposition coloniale et l’idéologie coloniale dans l’entredeux-guerres’, in Gilles Chabaud et al. (eds), Les Guides imprimés du XVIe au XXe

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44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

Notes siècle: Villes, paysages, voyages (Paris, 2000), pp. 607–618. On exhibitions in general, see also Sylviane Leprun, Le Théâtre des colonies: Scénographies, acteurs et discours de l’imaginaire dans les expositions, 1855–1937 (Paris, 1986); and Zeynep Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs (Berkeley, 1992). For a comparative perspective, see Peter H. Hoffenberg, An Empire on Display: English, Indian and Australian Exhibitions from the Crystal Palace to the Great War (Berkeley, 2001). Jean-Michel Bergougniou, Rémi Clignet and Philippe David, ‘Villages noirs’ et autres visiteurs africains et malgaches en France et en Europe (1870–1940) (Paris, 2001), and Nicolas Bancel et al., Zoos humains; De la Vénus hottentote aux Reality Shows (Paris, 2002). Cf. a study on Melanesians at the exhibition: Joël Dauphiné, Canaques de la Nouvelle-Calédonie à Paris en 1931. De la case au zoo (Paris, 1998). See, among other works, Gérard-Georges Lemaire, The Orient in Western Art (Paris, 2000); and Nadine Beauthéac and François-Xavier Bouchart, L’Europe exotique (Paris, 1985). See, e.g., Daniel Sherman, Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); and Daniel Sherman and Irit Rogoss (eds), Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles (Minneapolis, 1994). See, e.g., James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (London, 1988); Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination (New Haven, 1994); and Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn (eds), Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (London, 1998). Two interesting Australian studies are Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (Cambridge, 1996); and Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory (Cambridge, 1997). Among the many books on museums in general, Donald Horne, The Great Museum: The Re-presentation of History (London, 1984), is a fine starting point. Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (London, 1994); Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory (London, 1994); David Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Cambridge, 1997). Laurence Brown, ‘Monuments to Freedom, Monuments to Nation: The Politics of Emancipation and Remembrance in the Eastern Caribbean’, Slavery and Abolition, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2002), pp. 93–116; Eric Jennings, ‘Monuments to Frenchness? The Memory of the Great War and the Politics of Guadeloupe’s Identity, 1914–1945’, French Historical Studies, Vol 21, No. 4 (1998), pp. 561–592; Christine Chivallon, ‘Mémoires antillaises de l’esclavage’, Ethnologie française, Vol. 32, No. 4 (2002), pp. 601–612; Richard Burton, ‘Trois statues: le conquistador, l’impératrice et le libérateur. Pour une sémiotique de l’histoire coloniale de la Martinique’, Carbet, No. 11 (1991), pp. 147–164. A special issue of Outre-Mers, to be published in 2006, will be devoted to this topic. Robert Solé, Le grand voyage de l’obélisque (Paris, 2004). Daniel J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (Chicago, 1999). Agulhon, De Gaulle, pp. 129–130. Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyane and La Réunion were made départements d’outre-mer in 1946, in constitutional law and in political theory as much a part of France as Burgundy or Provence. See Aldrich, Greater France, Introduction.

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56. Alain Ruscio, Que la France était belle au temps des colonies . . . Anthologie de chansons coloniales et exotiques françaises (Paris, 2001). In 1995, a two-CD compilation of ‘Chansons coloniales et exotiques, 1906–1942’ (EPM Musique 983312) also appeared. 57. La Dépéche coloniale illustrée, Vol. 9, No. 1 (15 June 1909), pp. 158–159. 58. La Dépéche coloniale illustrée, Vol. 13, No. 1 (15 January 1913), pp. 15–16. 59. Le Monde, 29 May 2004.

1

The colonies in Paris

1. ‘My sweet Georges, come take a look at a sort of menagerie / at Buffon’s, at the circus, anywhere; / Without leaving Lutetia, let’s go to Assyria, / And without quitting Paris, let’s head for Timbuktu’. Victor Hugo, ‘A George’, from a cycle of poems entitled ‘Le Poème du Jardin des Plantes’, in L’Art d’être grand-père (Paris, 1877), from Hugo’s Oeuvres complètes: Poésies III (Paris, 1985), p. 745. 2. Quotations from sections VII, IV and V of ‘Le Poème du Jardin des Plantes’, pp. 741, 748, 750. Rainer Maria Rilke, the Austrian poet who lived for a time in Paris, also wrote several poems inspired by the Jardin des Plantes, one addressed to ‘The Gazelle’, which reminded him of a lover, and another a description of ‘The Flamingos’. ‘The Panther’ poignantly describes a wild animal, caged far away from home. (Rainer Maria Rilke, Translations from his Poetry, tr. Albert Ernest Flemming (St Petersburg, Florida, 1983), pp. 62, 63, 69. 3. Claire Hancock, ‘Capitale du plaisir: The Remaking of Imperial Paris’, in Felix Driver and David Gilbert (eds), Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester, 1999), pp. 64–77. 4. Advertising brochure for La Maison coloniale – Vivre sans frontières (2002). 5. See Magali Chanteux and Jacques Barozzi, Le Bestiaire de Paris: A la découverte de l’art animalier dans les rues de la capitale (Paris, 1995). 6. The original statue was by Pierre-Nicolas Beauvallet; the present statue is a copy, made in 1844, by Théodore Gechter. 7. Musée du Louvre, Egyptomanie: L’Egypte dans l’art occidental 1730–1930 (Paris, 1994), and Jean-Marcel Humbert, L’Egypte à Paris (Paris, n.d.). 8. Bertrand Lemoine, Les Passages couverts en France (Paris, 1989). Another example of the Orient in a Paris passage from a later date is what is now the Passage Ben-Aïad. The former Passage du Saumon became fashionable for clothing when a hatmaker with a shop there created a ‘chapeau à giraffe’ after Mehmet Ali’s gift of a giraffe to King Louis-Philippe. In 1853, an Ottoman general, Mahmoud Ben-Aïad, bought the passage because it recalled Oriental bazaars to him. His son sold the little street in 1884; shops subsequently closed, and only a portion of the passage remains. 9. See Analyse historique et architecturale des bâtiments présentant des caractères ‘exotiques’ construits à Paris de 1850 à 1990: Inventaire et typologie (Paris, 1988), a study completed by the ‘2 P.H.’ firm of architects. 10. Nadine Beauthéac and François-Xavier Bouchart, L’Europe exotique (Paris, 1985); Marie-Jeanne Dumont, Paris arabesques: Architectures et décors arabes et orientalisants à Paris (Paris, 1988); and Sophie Noguès, Guide de L’Orient à Paris (Paris, 1996). See also Jérôme Coignard and Roland Beaufre, Style Colonial (Paris, 1999). 11. See Alfred Fierro, Histoire et mémoire du nom des rues de Paris (Paris, 1999). 12. Robert Aldrich, ‘Putting the Colonies on the Map: Colonial Names in Paris Streets’, in Tony Chafer and Amanda Sackur (eds), Promoting the Colonial Idea: Propaganda and Visions of Empire in France (London, 2002), pp. 211–223.

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Notes

13. Pierre Miquel, Petite histoire des stations de métro (Paris, 1993). Not all the names, however, were specifically given just for colonial exploits. Gallieni, for instance, was military governor of Paris in 1914; taxis carrying soldiers to the eastern front crossed through the Bagnolet suburb near the station which later received Gallieni’s name. Other leaders who played a major role in colonialism, but who are not thought of as primarily colonial figures, such as Jules Ferry, are also commemorated. 14. See Chapter 4. 15. http://avmaroc.com and website of the French president’s office. 16. La Construction française, in a series of articles in 1908 and 1909, delighted in a quarrel that pitted curators against bureaucrats. One issue published a satire saying that the colonial bureaucrats really preferred drawing and painting to going overseas, and the ministry ‘tient à préserver le temple consacré à l’art bureautique et colonial. Quand on pense, dit-il [the author, P. Planat], qu’à côté de pareils trésors on s’entête à laisser subsister ce foyer d’incendie qu’est le musée, où sont amoncelées des toiles italiennes, allemandes ou hollandaises, désormais hors d’usage, mais essentiellement combustibles en raison de leur vieillesse même, il s’indigne généreusement d’une pareille insouciance’ (La Construction moderne, No. 24, 13 March 1909, p. 278; see, also, the issues of 23 February 1908, 22 August 1908, and 23 January 1909). Continuing his satire and warnings about a fire – after a small fire did break out but did no damage – Planat wrote: ‘Les Colonies, qui sont généralement des pays chauds, ont chez nous besoin de se chauffer fortement, cela est bien naturel. Elles chauffent tant et si bien que les cheminées prennent feu; ce qui n’a rien d’étonnant non plus, puisque telle est leur fonction’ (No. 45, 7 August 1909, p. 531). 17. Eugène Saulnier, ‘L’Hôtel du Ministère des Colonies (Hôtel de Montmorin)’ (Paris, 1916) [offprint of the Revue de l’Histoire des Colonies françaises, 1er trimestre, 1916]. 18. Christian Hottin, ‘Le Décor de l’Ecole nationale de la France d’outre-mer et les bustes de la Salle Félix Eboué’, Outre-Mer, No. 30 (Deuxième trimestre, 1996), pp. 14–18. 19. The Invalides is discussed in more detail in later chapters. 20. Bertrand Dreyfus, Le Guide du promeneur: 6e arrondissement (Paris, 1994), p. 225. 21. Hervé Martin, Guide de l’architecture moderne à Paris, quoted in Dreyfus, op. cit. 22. Françoise Masson and Marc Gaillard, Les Fontaines de Paris (Paris, 1990), provide information on the Fontaine de l’Observatoire, as well as three other fountains with exotic motifs, the Fontaine du Fellah of the Rue de Sèvres, the sphinx fountain of the Place du Châtelet and the Fontaine de la Porte Dorée. 23. There are various other representations of the quatre parties du monde in Paris – such as statues on the front of the Quai d’Orsay and medallions on a building owned by the Société des Missions étrangères in the Rue du Bac. There are also various representations of the continents – one of the most evident is the set of statues on the terrace of the Musée d’Orsay (which does include Australia), constructed for the 1867 international exhibition. 24. Béatrice Grand, Le 2 avenue de l’Observatoire: de l’Ecole cambodgienne à l’Institut international d’administration publique (Paris, 1996), from which the following information is taken. 25. Grand’s study has a picture of the model for the painting (p. 52) and a description (p. 54). 26. L’Illustration, No. 3692 (19 November 1913), p. 410.

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27. Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago, 1991), p. 67. 28. See Chapter 3. 29. The Bois de Vincennes was then considered distant from the centre, so a new bus line was added to serve the site. Three kilometres of roadway were built in the park, and other roadways upgraded; electric cables were laid and various additional improvements made. 30. Jean-Claude Daufresne, Fêtes à Paris au XXe siècle: Architectures éphémères de 1919 à 1989 (Sprimont, 2001); on the 1900 fair, see Jean Martin, ‘La Découverte du monde . . . dans un espace restreint’, in Jean-Christophe Mabire (ed.), L’Exposition universelle de 1900 (Paris, 2000), pp. 55–80. 31. See Patricia A. Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, Mass., 2000); Charles-Robert Ageron, ‘L’Exposition coloniale de 1931’, in Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de Mémoire, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1984); Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), Chapter 3; Philippe Rivoirard, ‘L’Exposition coloniale ou l’incitation au voyage’, Musée Municipal de Boulogne-Billancourt, Coloniales 1920–1940 (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1989), pp. 83–94; Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre, L’Exposition coloniale (Paris, 1991); and such contemporary publications as the special issue of L’Illustration devoted to the exhibition. 32. Morton, Chapter 5. 33. Danielle Chadych, Le Guide du promeneur: 12e arrondissement (Paris, 1995). 34. Beauthéac and Bouchart, p. 46 (and photo, p. 56). 35. Colson and Lauroa (eds), op. cit., and Pierre Aroéanu, ‘Quatre pagodes’, Paris aux cent villages, No. 61 (March 1982), pp. 11–16, which also contains information on the Ba-ta-clan (Boulevard Voltaire), the Pagode cinema (Rue de Babylone), the Pagode rouge and the Musée Guimet. 36. On this statue, see Chapter 3. 37. On the museum and its history, see Dominique Taffin, ‘Le Musée des colonies et l’imaginaire colonial’, BDIC-ACHAC, Images et colonies: Iconographie et propagande coloniale sur l’Afrique française 1880–1962 (Paris, 1993), pp. 140–144, ‘Le Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie’, Le XIIe arrondissement, traditions et modernité (Paris, 1996), pp. 184–191, and ‘Du Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer au Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (1960–1980)’, Le Musée et les cultures du monde (Les Cahiers de l’Ecole nationale du patrimoine, No. 5) (1999), pp. 113–128. 38. Morton, p. 22. 39. Laprade (1883–1978) was born in Châteauroux and moved to Paris in 1900 to study with his uncle, a professor at the Manufacture des Gobelins, and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He was wounded in the Battle of Ypres in 1915 then went to Casablanca, where he worked with Henri Prost on a new indigenous area of the city. From 1917 to 1920 he worked with Prost in Rabat constructing Lyautey’s official lodge as Resident-General and the surrounding parks. Returning to France, he worked for private clients, built a garage for Citroën and designed buildings for the Exposition des arts décoratifs in 1925; he then returned to Morocco to build a villa for the pasha of Marrakesh’s doctor. His Moroccan pavilions at the 1931 fair were inspired by a palace in Marrakesh. Among his later accomplishments were three buildings for the Cité universitaire, the Maison de Cuba (1929), Maison du Maroc (1953) and Maison de la France d’Outre-Mer (1954). He was author of Lyautey urbaniste (Paris, 1934). (Institut français d’architecture, Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle (Liège, n.d.), pp. 181–187.)

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40. Antony Goissaud, ‘Le Musée permanent des colonies’, La Construction moderne, Vol. 47, No. 18 (31 January 1932), pp. 278–296, is the best contemporary description of the work. 41. See Bertrand Lemoine and Philippe Rivoirard, Paris: L’Architecture des années trente (Paris, 1987), pp. 159–163. 42. Le Bas-relief du Musée des colonies (Paris, 1931) contains a complete set of photographs of the work, many aspects of which are now hard to discern because of fencing or foliage. In his preface, J. Charbonneux, adjunct director of the Louvre, remarked: ‘L’évocation de nos colonies apparaît ici comme un “miroir du monde”: rien n’y rappelle la conquête; ce n’est pas une ode triomphale, mais l’épopée familière et grandiose de l’activité humaine et de la fécondité de la nature’. Responding to apparent criticism that Janniot’s bas-relief treated the colonies in solely economic terms, he added: ‘On serait tenté de croire que ce qui domine, dans ces images du monde, c’est une sorte de matérialisme sensuel, tout enivré du parfum de la doute, aux deux extrémités de la terre [the panels on the lateral walls of the museum], la volupté béatifique de Marie-Galante répond à l’amoureuse poésie de Tahiti; et tout le continent noir semble soulevé par une ardente joie de vivre. Pourtant il y a place, même an Afrique, pour la méditation du patriarche; en Asie, au-dessus de la torpeur ensoleillée des rizières, plane le prestige millénaire des architectures cambodgiennes. . . . Les grands voiliers apportent ici le souvenir et l’image des villes lointaines; et voici les figures symboliques de nos grands ports . . .’ (unpaginated). 43. Goissaud, op. cit. 44. Véronique Prat, ‘Pour une fête coloniale’, Connaissance des arts, No. 349 (March 1981), pp. 82–88, discusses Dunand’s paintings and the restoration of other works in the MAAO. See also Catherine Bouché and Henri Marchal, ‘Feux croisés sur le Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie’, La Revue du Louvre, Vol. 38, No. 3 (1988), pp. 277–278. 45. Catherine Bouché, ‘Le Décor peint du Musée national des Arts Africains et Océaniens’, La Revue du Louvre, Vol. 35, No. 5–6 (1985), pp. 402–407. 46. Ducos, who had no personal colonial connections, was born on the Ile d’Oléron and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris; he won the Prix de Rome in 1929. Several of his assistants helped with parts of the mural. 47. Ducos’s mural is discussed in detail in Catherine Bouché, L’Objet d’art, op. cit. 48. Morton, p. 310. 49. Ibid., p. 320. 50. Ibid., p. 302. 51. The former Académie coloniale has an interesting file containing responses to a questionnaire, distributed to its members in 1927, about the need for such a museum and the form it should take. (‘Correspondances manuscrites et dactylographiées sur un projet d’édification d’un Musée Colonial’, MSS 474, Académie des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, Paris.) Already in 1920 a law had provided the legal framework for a colonial museum in Paris and discussion was underway about the project. (See Gabriel Angoulvant, ‘L’Exposition coloniale interalliée de Paris en 1925’, in Colonies et marine, copy in the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.) 52. In Britain, the Imperial Institute was chartered in 1887 and Queen Victoria opened a colonial museum in 1893. In Belgium, the international exhibition of 1897 included a large separate display in Tervuren on the Congo, the origin of the grand Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale that opened in 1908. Mussolini opened a colonial museum in Rome in 1923. (See William Golant, Image of Empire: The

Notes

53.

54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

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Early History of the Imperial Institute, 1887–1925 (Exeter, 1984), and the catalogue of an exhibition to mark the centenary of the Tervuren exhibition. On Rome, see Nicola Labanca (ed.), L’Africa in vetrina: Storie di musei e di esposizioni coloniali in Italia (Paese, 1992).) André Demaison, ‘Le Musée de la France d’outre-mer’, Revue de Paris, 1 January 1937, pp. 102–112, provides details and a favourable review of the museum. A less laudatory review of the museum – ‘Il contient peu de choses. . . . Cela ne donne qu’une idée assez médiocre de l’effort colonial de la France, depuis les Croisades jusqu’à nos jours’ – appeared in ‘Musée des colonies et aquarium’, Bulletin de la Société d’études historiques, géographiques et scientifiques de la région parisienne, Vol. 9, No. 33 (April–June 1935), pp. 30–34. Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer, Guide du musée (Paris, 1956) provides details. Comité national et comité métropolitain du centenaire de Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, 1852–1952, Brazza et ses compagnons (Paris, 1952). Le Palais des colonies: Histoire du Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (Paris, 2002) provides the most detailed study. See also Catherine Bouché, ‘Un Visage de l’exotisme au XXe siècle: Du Musée des colonies au Musée de la France d’outre-mer à Paris (1931–1960)’, Palais des Beaux-Arts – Charleroi, L’Exotisme au quotidien (Charleroi, 1987), pp. 47–63, and Sylvie Carnilliet-Watelet, ‘Le Musée des colonies et le Musée de la France d’outre-mer (1931–1960)’, Musée Municipal de BoulogneBillancourt, op. cit., pp. 83–94. Taffin, ‘Du Musée . . .’, p. 113. Quoted in Taffin, ‘Du Musée . . .’, p. 115 Quoted in ibid., p. 116. J. Edelman, A. Monjaret and M. Roustan, MAAO Mémoires (Paris, 2002), p. 24. Taffin, ‘Du Musée . . .’, op. cit. Edelman, Monjaret and Roustan, p. 9. In 1990, the then director Henri Marchal responding to criticism in Le Monde that the MAAO was suffering from ‘lethargy’, argued that its vocation was misunderstood. (Henri Marchal, ‘L’Avenir d’un musée’, Histoire de l’art, No. 11 (October 1990), pp. 87–89.) Shortly thereafter, another writer nevertheless said that the museum was commonly thought of as ‘le grand vaisseau moribond de la Porte Dorée’ and added that ‘le musée et ses collections ont trop longtemps souffert d’une mauvaise conscience latente, doublée d’un net désintérêt pour l’art dit primitif’, but warned against unconsidered disposal of its ‘colonialist’ works. (Jérôme Coignard, ‘La Grande marche du MAAO’, Beaux-Arts, No. 85 (December 1990), p. 18.) Eidelman, Monjaret and Roustan, p. 72. Alain Seksig, ‘Du Musée colonial au Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie’, Hommes et migrations, No. 117 (December 1988), pp. 38–41. The debate about the new museum, and plans for what is now generally known as the Musée du Quai Branly, will be discussed in Chapter 7. Partly because the Musée des Arts Décoratifs has been opposed to moving out of the Louvre palace. www.droitsdevant.ouvaton.org; Eidelman, Monjaret and Roustan, p. 50. Introduction to Eidelman, Monjaret and Roustan, which contains the photographs of Bernard Plossu. Quoted in ibid., p. 33. See the catalogue Le Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (Paris, 1999), reprinted in 2001 when plans for closing the museum were already afoot – the catalogue itself remains a lieu de mémoire of the museum.

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72. Guide Bleu, Paris (Paris, 1995), pp. 441–442. 73. Bertrand Lemoine, La Cité universitaire de Paris (Paris, 1990), from which the following information is taken. 74. The name was changed to the Maison des Etudiants du Laos et du Vietnam in 1968; ‘et de l’Asie du Sud-Est’ was added in 1970, and two years later, the residence became the Maison des Etudiants de l’Asie du Sud-Est – the changes reflecting different clienteles and France’s view of Asia. 75. La Construction moderne, Vol. 48, No. 20 (12 February 1930), pp. 306–309. 76. Wright, p. 225. 77. Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters (Oxford, 2001), pp. 94–95. 78. Quoted in Alain Boyer, L’Institut musulman de la Mosquée de Paris (Paris, 1992), pp. 29, 38. 79. Boyer, ibid. 80. Fondation de l’Institut musulman et de la Mosquée de Paris (brochure) (Paris, 1922), p. 36. 81. Antony Goissaud, ‘L’Institut musulman et la mosquée de Paris’, Construction moderne 40, No. 5 (2 November 1924), pp. 50–55, and No. 6 (9 November 1924), pp. 65–69. 82. Neil MacMaster, ‘Imperial Façades: Muslim Institutions and Propaganda in InterWar Paris’, in Chafer and Sackur (eds), pp. 71–81. The Franco-Muslim Hospital, other than a Moorish gateway, has been demolished; the Hôpital Avicenna stands in its place, but there is still a Muslim burial ground in Bobigny. 83. Christophe Bonneuil, Des savants pour l’empire: La structuration des recherches scientifiques coloniales au temps de ‘la mise en valeur des colonies françaises’, 1917–1945 (Paris, 1991); Martonne quotation, p. 53. 84. Eric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, Zoos: Histoire des jardins zoologiques en Occident (XVIe-XXe siécles) (Paris, 1998), Chapter 1. 85. Léon-Paul Fargue evoked the ‘Jardin des Plantes – Halle aux Vins’ and ‘Le Musée des mondes perdus’ in Le Piéton de Paris (Paris, 1939), pp. 114–129. The site also features in a number of novels, from Honoré de Balzac’s Le Père Goriot (Paris, 1834–1835) to Claude Simon’s Jardin des Plantes (Paris, 1999). 86. Guy Barthélémy, Les Jardiniers du Roy: Petite histoire du Jardin des Plantes de Paris (Paris, 1979); Yves Laissus, ‘Le Jardin du Roi’, in René Taton (ed.), Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIIIe siécle (Paris, 1986), pp. 286–341; Yves Laissus, Le Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (Paris, 1995); E.C. Spary, Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago, 2000). 87. Ibid. 88. Camille Limoges, ‘The Development of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Paris, c. 1800–1914’, in Robert Fox and George Weisz (eds), The Organization of Science and Technology in France, 1808–1914 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 211–240 (quotation from p. 239). 89. See Alphonse Milne-Edwards, ‘Les Relations entre le Jardin des Plantes et les colonies françaises’, Revue des cultures coloniales, Vol. 4, No. 2 (5 January 1899), pp. 2–11. 90. Limoges, pp. 239–240, who argues that the Muséum never even developed the leading role in France’s self-appointed colonial mission that such scientists as Milne-Edwards wished it to have, a conclusion not entirely shared by Yves Laissus and Christophe Bonneuil. 91. Christophe Bonneuil, ‘Le Muséum national d’histoire naturelle et l’expansion coloniale de la Trosième République (1870–1914)’, Revue française d’histoire d’Outre-Mer, Vol. 86, No. 322–323 (1999), pp. 151–152.

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92. The Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro and the Musée de l’Homme are discussed in Chapter 6. 93. Bonneuil, ‘Le Muséum national’, op. cit. 94. Ibid., p. 165. 95. Yves Delange et al., Statues et savants du Jardin des Plantes (Paris, 1992). 96. This section is based on Michael A. Osborne’s excellent Nature, the Exotic, and the Science of French Colonialism (Bloomington, 1994); quotation from p. 1. 97. On Montigny, see Osborne, pp. 26–30. 98. Quoted in Osborne, p. 145. 99. Osborne, p. 165. 100. See Robert Aldrich, ‘Vestiges of the Colonial Empire: The Jardin Colonial in Paris’, in Robert Aldrich and Martyn Lyons (eds), The Sphinx in the Tuileries and Other Essays in Modern French History (Sydney, 1999), pp. 194–204. 101. The city of Paris, which administered the Bois de Vincennes, had set aside sixteen hectares for the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in 1860, but the museum lacked the means to develop the site. Since the land lies within the commune of Nogent-sur-Marne, the Jardin Colonial was often referred to as the ‘Nogent’ gardens. 102. Christophe Bonneuil and Mina Kleiche, Du jardin d’essais colonial à la station expérimentale, 1880–1930: Eléments pour une histoire du CIRAD (Paris, 1993); the section ‘Aux origines de la recherche agronomique tropicale: naissance des institutions’, written by Kleiche, contains an overview of the Jardin Colonial’s history. I have also drawn on JTP, 1899–1999: Des serres tropicales au développement durable, draft CD-Rom kindly provided by the director of the Jardin Tropical, and on information kindly shared by the former librarian, Madame Nicole Tranh Minh. 103. See also Bonneuil, Des savants pour l’empire, op. cit. 104. Eugène Charabot and G. Collot, ‘Organisation et description de l’Exposition coloniale nationale de 1907’, Revue coloniale, 1908, pp. 705–735, and 1909, pp. 46–65; quotations, 1908, pp. 719, 724, 733–734. 105. Ibid., 1909, pp. 53, 56, 64. 106. These monuments aux morts are discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. 107. The xylothèque had been stored upstairs in one building, but suffered considerable damage when the floor collapsed. 108. The city of Paris owns the buildings, ministries of research and cooperation control the institutions housed at the site, several universities and government research organisations carry out research. 109. Le Jardin tropical de Paris, Bois de Vincennes: Etude de définition d’un projet culturel (Paris, 2001), a copy of which was kindly supplied by the Jardin Tropical. 110. Louis Vernet, ‘Une visite au Jardin Colonial’, La Dépêche coloniale, Vol. 9, No. 12 (30 June 1909), p. 158. 111. Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier, op. cit., Introduction. 112. Quoted in Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier, pp. 69, 156. 113. Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier, p. 116. 114. Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, Napoleon, the Empress and the Artist: The Story of Napoleon, Josephine’s Garden at Malmaison, Redouté and the Australian Plants (Sydney, 1999). 115. Michael Allin, Zarafa (London, 1998). 116. Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier, p. 139. 117. Ibid., p. 291. 118. Ibid., p. 131. 119. Ibid., p. 213.

346

Notes

120. Ibid., p. 292. 121. Jean Bastié, ‘Notre patrimoine et nos activités’, Acta Geographica No. 168: La Société de Géographie 1821–1996, special 175th anniversary issue; on the building itself, see pp. 15–19. See also ‘Hôtel de la Société de Géographie’, Revue générale d’architecture et des travaux publics, No. 38 (1881), pp. 64–66. 122. A.L.R. [sic], ‘Hôtel de la Compagnie générale transatlantique, Rue Auber’, La Construction moderne, Vol. 23 (4 April 1908), p. 316. 123. Gabriel Veissière, ‘Immeuble, Rue de Sèze et Rue Vignon’, L’Architecture, Vol. 33, No. 15 (1 August 1920), pp. 175–176. 124. L’Architecture, Vol. 35, No. 10 (10 August 1922), pp. 259–263 passim. 125. Pascal Blanchard, Eric Deroo and Gilles Manceron, Le Paris noir (Paris, 2001). 126. L’Humanité, 12 December 2001.

2

The colonies in the provinces

1. Odile Goerg, ‘The French Provinces and “Greater France” ’, in Tony Chafer and Amanda Sackur (eds), Promoting the Colonial Idea: Propaganda and Visions of Empire in France (London, 2002), p. 82. 2. Jean-Michel Bergougniou, Rémi Clignet and Philippe David, ‘Villages noirs’ et autres visiteurs africains et malgaches en France et en Europe (1870–1940) (Paris, 2001), pp. 286–287. 3. www.bambouseraie.fr and www.perso.wanadoo.fr/lyceepaysagemarseille; see also Francis Chauvet, La France insolite (Paris, 2001). 4. Jean-Pierre Péroncel-Hugoz, ‘Avec Proust, du côté de l’Orient’, Le Monde, 21 May 2003. 5. Nadine Beauthéac and François-Xavier Bouchart, L’Europe exotique (Paris, 1985), passim. 6. Information on the street naming kindly supplied by Frédéric Angleviel. 7. François-Xavier Cuche et al., ‘Rue de la torture’, Le Monde, 14 July 2000, p. 13. 8. Information from material kindly supplied by Madame Marie-Line Thierre of the Maison du Missionnaire. 9. Yves Bottineau-Fuchs, ‘La Représentation des Indiens au XVIe siècle’, in Jean-Paul Hervieu, Gilles Désiré dit Gosset and Eric Barré, Les Normands et l’outre-mer (Caen, 2001), pp. 391–404. 10. Claude Malon, ‘Le Havre et l’outre-mer. Sociabilité et recherche. Les origines et le développement de l’Institut havrais. Le contexte colonial’, Etudes normandes, No. 2 (1997), pp. 75–96. 11. Of 3829 slave-trading expeditions that sailed from France in 1707–1847, 1745 (45.56 per cent) came from Nantes. The three other most important slave-trading ports, with about 12 per cent each of the trade during this period, were Bordeaux, Le Havre and La Rochelle. For an overview, see ‘L’Esclavage: Un tabou français enfin levé’, special issue of Historia, No. 80, November–December 2002. On Nantes, Armel de Wismes, Nantes et le temps des négriers (Paris, 2002). 12. Didier Guyvarc’h, ‘Les troubles de la mémoire nantaise de la traite des Noirs au 20e siècle’, Les Anneaux de la Mémoire, No. 1 (1999). 13. Les Anneaux de la Mémoire: Nantes-Europe – Afrique – Amériques (Nantes, 1992), pp. 134–136. 14. Ibid., pp. 9, 11, 155. 15. Marc Lastrucci, ‘De la difficulté de rappeler la traite à Nantes et la violence en général’, ibid., pp. 141–168.

Notes 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

347

See the organisation’s website (www.outremer44.org). ‘L’Esclavage’, Historia, pp. 74–75. On La Rochelle and its Musée du Nouveau Monde, see Chapter 5. ‘L’Esclavage’, Historia, p. 75. Christine Chivallon, ‘Construction d’une mémoire relative à l’esclavage et instrumentalisation politique: Le Cas des anciens ports négriers de Bordeaux et Bristol’, Cahiers des Anneaux de la Mémoire, No. 4 (2002), pp. 177–202. Musée Gadagne – Musée historique de la Ville de Lyon, De Fourvière au bout du monde: Le Rayonnement du catholicisme lyonnais au XIXe siècle (Lyon, 1996). See below for details of the SMA museum. Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Quand les Lyonnais découvraient l’Extrême-Orient (Lyon, 1995). Louis Davide, Histoire du Muséum de Lyon (Lyon, 1998). Bibliothèque Municipale, pp. 25 ff. Laurick Zerbini, ‘L’Outre-Mer à Lyon: Mémoire et musées coloniaux’, Cahiers d’histoire, Vol. 40, No. 3–4 (1995), pp. 271–285, and ‘Regards lyonnais sur l’Afrique noire: Musées et collections (XIXe-XXe siècles)’, in Le Musée et les cultures du monde (Les Cahiers de l’Ecole nationale du patrimoine, No. 5) (Paris, 1999), pp. 77–92, to which this account is indebted. On Lyon, see also John Laffey, ‘Roots of French Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Lyon’, French Historical Studies, Vol. 6 (1969), pp. 78–92, and ‘Municipal Imperialism in France: The Lyon Chamber of Commerce, 1900–1914’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 119 (1976), pp. 8–23. Lyon museums are currently undergoing substantial reorganisation leading to the opening of a Musée des Cultures du Monde and a Musée des Confluences; the exhibit discussed here will no doubt disappear in the form in which it was been described. André Moriceau, SMA, ‘Réouverture du Musée Africain de Lyon’, L’Appel d’Afrique, No. 204 (March 2001), p. 27. Musée Gadagne, p. 30. Moriceau, p. 28. ‘Musée Africain’ (guidebook) (Lyon, 1988). Bachaga Benaïssa Saïd Boualem (1906–1982) was a Algerian chief from the Ouarsenis region who served as a colonel in the French army. In 1958, he was elected député from Orléansville, and became vice-president of the Assemblée Nationale. After 1962, he lived near Arles. Alain Amato, Monuments en exil (Paris, 1979), pp. 113–116. From the period of the Anglo-Boer War, there are also streets named for President Kruger and the Transvaal. The major Lyon suburb of Villeurbanne has streets named for the Anciens Combattans en AFN, Bat-Yam, Canada, CommandantHenri-Rivière, 19 March 1962 (the date of the Franco-Algerian ceasefire), Hanoi, Paul Kruger, Pierre Loti, Son-Tay and Tonkin. www.perso.club-internet.fr/jserrett/presentation.htm. www.piedsnoirs-aujourdhui.com. See Yaël Simpson Fletcher, ‘ “Capital of the Colonies”: Real and Imagined Boundaries between Metropole and Empire in 1920s Marseilles’, in Felix Driver and David Gilbert (eds), Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (London, 1999), pp. 136–154. Adrien Blès, Dictionnaire historique des rues de Marseille (Marseille, 2001). These sites are discussed in later chapters of this book.

348 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

3

Notes Amato, pp. 117–121. Jean-Jacques Jordi, 1962: l’arrivée des pieds-noirs (Paris, 1995); quotation, p. 98. Jordi, pp. 56–57, 128–129. See Chapter 4 for a discussion of the museum. See Chapter 3. Information from display in the Musée des Troupes de Marine, Fréjus. See Chapter 2. Amato, pp. 33–34. Information from brochure kindly supplied by the parish. Roger-Pierre Raoult, Naissance d’une idée. . . . Création d’une cité . . . Carnouxen-Provence (n.p., 1988); Jordi, pp. 102–113. ‘Carnoux-en-Provence. Guide touristique et pratique’ (brochure). Raoult, p. 149. Quoted in Jordi, p. 110. The Michelin Guide vert has no entry on Carnoux. FNACA, Lieux et liens du souvenir, 1952–1962 (Paris, 1998), p. 36. Parlez-moi d’Alger: Marseille-Alger au miroir des mémoires (Paris, 2003). Léopold Sedar Senghor (1906–2002), a Senegalese educated in France, was a leading figure of the négritude movement in the 1930s that called for Africans to valorise their heritage and culture. A critic of colonialism, Senghor was nevertheless a minister in French governments in the 1950s. In 1960, he became the first president of independent Senegal, a post he held for twenty years. Senghor was an accomplished poet, and the only African elected to the Académie Française. Information from brochures kindly provided by the Maison de la Négritude et des Droits de l’Homme, including the centre’s bulletin, Dignité, No. 51 (December 2000) and a special issue of the Champagney municipal bulletin in 1998.

Colonial war memorials

1. See, in particular, Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995), and Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford, 1998). 2. Some of these are discussed in Chapter 2. 3. William Kidd, ‘Representation or Recuperation? The French Colonies and 1914– 1918 War Memorials’, in Tony Chafer and Amanda Sackur, Promoting the Colonial Idea: Propaganda and Visions of Empire in France (London, 2002), pp. 184–194, which discusses some of the same examples as the present section. 4. See the photographs in Jean Max Tixier, Marseille aux cent visages (Marseille, 1992), pp. 184–185. 5. Annette Becker, Les Monuments aux morts: Patrimoine et mémoire de la Grande Guerre (n.p., n.d.). 6. Eric Jennings, ‘Remembering “Other” Losses: The Temple du Souvenir Indochinois of Nogent-sur-Marne’, History and Memory, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2003), p. 56. 7. Ministère des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre (hereafter MAC), ‘1914–1918: Les Soldats nord-africains. Monuments et sépultures’ (brochure). 8. The organisation was modelled on the Souvenir Français, established after the Franco-Prussian War to care for war cemeteries and memorials. 9. Le Souvenir Indochinois, Oeuvre des tombes et du culte funéraire des Indochinois morts pour la France (Paris, 1932).

Notes

349

10. These are in Angoulême, Blagnac, Bordeaux, Castres, Castelsarrasin, Caudéran, Fréjus, Pamiers, Pau, Salies-du-Salat, Sendets and Toulouse. 11. Le Souvenir indochinois, op. cit. 12. Jennings, op. cit. 13. See Chapter 1. 14. Jennings, op. cit. 15. Jennings, p. 38. 16. Nicolas Geroges, ‘Le Jardin d’essai colonial de Nogent-sur-Marne’, Outre-mer, Deuxième trimestre 1990, p. 30. 17. Préfecture de Paris, Direction de l’urbanisme et des actions de l’Etat, Environnement et sites, Commission départementale des sites de Paris (minutes of plenary council session), 13 December 1990, pp. 10–14. 18. Jennings, op. cit., discusses the debates about commemoration of various Indochinese soldiers. 19. MAC, ‘Les Monuments aux morts d’Algérie rapatriés’ (brochure). 20. MAC, ‘1914–1918’ (brochure). 21. Alain Amato, Monuments en exil (n.p., 1979). 22. Ibid. 23. The following examples are taken from MAC, ‘Les Soldats d’outre-mer, 1939–1945. Monuments et sépultures en France’, and Serge Barcellini and Annette Wieviorka, Passant, souviens-toi: Les Lieux du souvenir de la Seconde Guerre mondiale en France (Paris, 2nd edn, 1999). 24. Barcellini and Wieviorka, pp. 355–357. 25. Colonial troops are paid tribute in other areas where they fought as well. One example: plaques in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome honouring Moroccan and Algerian troops who participated in the liberation of Italy. 26. These include Haubourdin and Zuydcotte (Nord), Floing (Ardennes), CondéFolie (Somme), Sigolsheim (Alsace), Rougemont (Franche-Comté), Cambronneles-Ribécourt (Oise), Luynes and Boulouris (Provence) and Fleury-les-Aubrais (Loiret). 27. Barcellini and Wieviorka, pp. 173–174. 28. Ibid., pp. 282–283. 29. Kidd, p. 193, who gives a somewhat different reading from my own. 30. Joe Lunn, ‘ “Les races guerrières”: Racial Preconceptions in the French Military about West African Soldiers during the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (1999), p. 521. 31. The popular breakfast drink turned the black figure on its packets and advertisements into a brave tirailleur sénégalais, though the slogan – ‘Y’a bon, Banania’ – retained the ‘petit nègre’ form of someone without full command of the French language. 32. David L. Schalk, ‘Of Memories and Monuments: Paris and Algeria, Fréjus and Indochina’, Historical Reflections, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2002), pp. 241–253, on which I have drawn. See also his earlier ‘Reflections d’outre-mer on French Colonialism’, Journal of European Studies, Vol. 28 (1998), pp. 5–23, and ‘Has France’s Marrying Her Century Cured the Algerian Syndrome?’, Historical Reflections, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1999), pp. 149–164. See also my ‘Monuments aux morts and Colonial Memories: The Mémorial des Guerres en Indochine’, in Greg Burgess (ed.), Revolution, Nation and Memory: Papers from the George Rudé Seminar in French History (Hobart, 2004), pp. 264–275, and ‘The Algerian War in France: War Memorials, Memory and Politics’, in Stephen Atzert and Andrew Bonnell (eds), Europe’s Pasts and Present: Proceedings

350

33.

34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46.

Notes of the Fourteenth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Association for European History (Unley, SA, to be published in 2004). Examples include Marguerite Duras’s novel L’Amant and the film Indochine, though some novelists and film-makers (notably Betrand Tavernier and Pierre Schoendoerffer) did confront the war. Several soldiers died after 1954 before all French troops were withdrawn. L’Ancre d’or, No. 312 (2000), p. 71. www.bretagne-online.com/telegram/htdocs/archive20 . . . /art_010A0-0000_1077077. In addition to the pagoda, the Mémorial des Guerres en Indochine and the Musée des Troupes de Marine, there is also a mosque built in the 1920s for African soldiers stationed in the city and a monument to black African soldiers, erected in 1994. Gallieni, whose wife came from Fréjus, often holidayed there. Information from a pamphlet issued by the Ministère des Anciens Combattants. Figures differ in various sources. The version, for example, in the Museum of the Revolution and the Ho Chi Minh museum in Hanoi is unquestionably nationalistic. A postscript on monuments to the Indochinese War: At Dien Bien Phu, now a popular tourist destination for French visitors, the Vietnamese government has developed several sites connected with the 1954 battle. A museum contains weaponry captured from French soldiers, as well as improvised arms used by the nationalists, a scale-model of the battlefield and photographs. Opposite is a Vietnamese cemetery; a traditional portal and marble tablets with the names of the nationalist soldiers who died were added in 1993. Nearby at one of the last French redoubts, Eliane 2 (or Hill A1), is a reconstructed bunker and Vietnamese memorials. Elsewhere is a reconstruction of General Christian de Castries’s bunker surrounded by tanks and other matériel. (Jan Dodd and Mark Lewis, Vietnam: The Rough Guide (London, 1998), p. 378.) Also at Dien Bien Phu is a small French memorial, privately erected in 1994 by Rolf Rodel, a sergeant-major in the Foreign Legion, who fought and was captured there: a white obelisk with an inscription in memory of those who died for France. The simple monument, very much in the style of provincial First World War memorials, has caused controversy, one Vietnamese stating that ‘il s’agit d’un monument construit illégalement et qui ne célèbre que la mémoire des morts français’. However, the site is respected; the French and Vietnamese government signed a convention for its upkeep in 1998, and the following year the French Secretary of State in charge of veterans’ affairs, in the presence of 250 old soldiers, laid a wreath in a ‘cérémonie du souvenir aux morts vietnamiens et français’ (www.perso.wanadoo.fr/patric.guenin/cantho/ infovn/dbphu.htm). See Martin Evans, ‘Rehabilitating the Traumatized War Veteran: The Case of French Conscripts from the Algerian War, 1954–1962’, in Martin Evans and Ken Lunn (eds), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1997), pp. 73–88. ‘Repatriated’ (rapatriés) is the standard term, although many had never before been to France. Evans, p. 75. An overview is given in William B. Cohen, ‘The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory’, Historical Reflections, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2000), pp. 219–240. Ighilahriz is an FLN activist who has testified that she was captured and tortured by French troops. In June 2000, she named General Massu and General Bigeard as responsible; Bigeard rejected her accusations, but Massu admitted to torture in Algeria. Later in 2000, General Aussaresses confessed to having executed twenty-four

Notes

47.

48.

49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61. 62. 63.

351

Algerians and stated that torture by French troops was a common practice. See Neil MacMaster, ‘The Torture Controversy (1998–2002): Towards a “New History” of the Algerian War?’, Modern and Contemporary France, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2002), pp. 449–460. FNACA, Lieux et liens du souvenir, 1952–1962 (Paris, 1999). Unless otherwise indicated, all material in this section is taken from this volume, although the interpretation is my own. The book itself is an interesting commemoration. Highly illustrated, it includes not only photographs and descriptions of monuments, street signs and other lieux de mémoire, but also facsimile reproductions of documents, biographical and historical accounts of various incidents and individuals, photos of soldiers, recollections about fallen comrades and background material on different localities where monuments were erected. The presentation, however, is unsystematic – dates for monuments are not always given and information on funding, siting and unveiling ceremonies is episodic. Frédéric Rouyaud, ‘La Bataille du 19 mars’, in Jean-Pierre Rioux (ed.), La Guerre d’Algérie et les Français (Paris, 1990), pp. 545–552, from which the following information is taken. Evans, pp. 76–78. See also Claude Liauzu, ‘Le Contingent entre silence et discours ancien combattant’, and Frédéric Rouyaud, ‘La Battaille du 19 mars’, in JeanPierre Roux (ed.), La Guerre d’Algérie et les Français (Paris, 1990), pp. 509–516 and pp. 545–552, respectively. Cohen, op. cit. FNACA, p. 262. This is the rounded number generally cited by many veterans, although the total number of identified soldiers killed in action is slightly lower. FNACA, p. 92. The monument to the twenty-one inhabitants of Chartres killed in North Africa is ornamented with a stylised map, a drawing of the city’s famous cathedral and a dove bearing an olive branch. Several other memorials have distinctive forms, for instance, a sundial in Bellegarde (Gard) and a globe supported by two guns, mounted atop a pedestal in Bolazec (Finistère). In Saint-Hernin (Finistère), the street sign for the Place du 19 mars 1962 has the particularity of being written in Breton as well as French. In the Ille-etVilaine, there is a roadside crucifix blessed in memory of the Algerian War dead in 1963, and in Rueil-Malmaison, a tree planted in 1993 ‘en hommage aux morts de la guerre d’Algérie’. FNACA, p. 81. FNACA, pp. 472–475. Some are specifically to the soldiers of the Algerian War, such as one in Montferrat (Isère) unveiled in 2001, while others honour those who died throughout the empire. Several, however, were planned before Chirac became president in 1995. In the second round of voting, Chirac faced Le Pen, who had surprisingly come out ahead of the various candidates of a fractured left (including the Socialist Party candidate) in the first round. Chirac’s speeches are available on the website of the presidency (www.elysee.fr). Azouz Begag, ‘Les relations France-Algérie vues de la diaspora algérienne’, Modern and Contemporary France, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2002), pp. 475–482. Hervé Bourges, interviewed in Histoire et patrimoine, No. 7 (2004), issue on Algeria, pp. 8–11.

352

Notes

64. Schalk, op. cit., and Cohen, op. cit. 65. Amato, p. 244. 66. Géraldine Enjelvin, ‘Les Harkis en France: carte d’identité française, identité harkie à la carte?’, Modern and Contemporary France, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2003), pp. 161–173. 67. Assemblée Nationale, 20 June 2000 (quoted by www.chez.com/harkis/questionMariani.html). 68. Speeches of Jacques Chirac, 25 September 2001 (reproduced on www.chez.com/ harkis//alaune.html). 69. Chirac’s speech is printed on www.chez.com/harkis//alaune.html. 70. Le Monde, 25 September 2001. 71. Since the Vichy regime was considered after the war as an illegal government that usurped power, the French state did not hold itself responsible for actions committed during the occupation. 72. Memorials to earlier wars, however, often have lists of battles, celebratory words declaring ‘glory’ or ‘honour’ to the dead, and symbols such as palm fronds; the most complex ones include allegorical statues or representations of soldiers. 73. www.defense.gouv.fr/actualites/publications/defactu/n130/dossier.html. 74. The Quai Branly, incidentally, is the site of the new museum dedicated to the arts premiers (from pre-Columbian America, Africa and Oceania), a grand projet of President Chirac, which is slated for opening in 2007. 75. Le Figaro, 6 December 2002, Le Monde, 7 December 2002, Libération, 7 December 2002, France 3 from www.cirtaonline.com/news/archives/00002350.htm. 76. An unidentified person tried to thwart the building of the memorial by proposing, on the internet, a petition to the prime minister asking him to rescind authorisation. He or she argued that the Algerian War had begun in 1830 with the invasion of Algeria by the French army and continued until 1962: ‘Erecting a monument commemorating the French military personnel who perpetuated this crime amounts to honouring them and honouring this crime against humanity.’ Speaking of ‘detentions, tortures, rapes, massacres and murders’, the message argued that the building of the moment represented an attitude of negationism and apology for war crimes (www.equidence.org/consetm2.htm). 77. Le Monde, 17 September 2003. 78. A curious postscript concerning monuments to overseas engagements is a monument in the cemetery of Valmy dedicated ‘à la mémoire des gendarmes d’Ouvéa et de leurs camarades’. It commemorates French policemen killed after being taken hostage by indépendantistes on the island of Ouvéa, in New Caledonia, in 1986; in response to the hostage-taking, Prime Minister Chirac ordered soldiers to storm the kidnappers’ hideout and further lives were lost. (Jacques Barozzi, Guide des cimetières parisiens (Paris, 1990).)

4

Of men and monuments

1. This section is based on Jean Colson and Marie-Christine Lauroa (eds), Dictionnaire des monuments de Paris (Paris, 1992), June Hargrove, Les Statues de Paris: La représentation des grands hommes dans les rues et sur les places de Paris (Paris, 1989); and Georges Poisson, Guides des statues de Paris (Paris, 1990), as well as my own explorations of the Paris monumental landscape. 2. Hargrove, p. 151. 3. Hargrove, p. 266. 4. Hargrove, pp. 264, 280.

Notes

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5. Nicolas Fournier, ‘Jean Bart, ce héros’, in Jean Bart, du corsaire au héros mythique (Dunkerque, 2002), p. 131. 6. Hélène Simon, Auguste Pavie: Explorateur en Indochine (Rennes, 1997), plates facing p. 184; Indochine: Auguste Pavie (1847–1925), explorateur et diplomate (Dinan, 1997). A statue of Pavie erected in Vientiane in 1933 stands in the gardens of the French embassy in Laos. 7. Indochine: Auguste Pavie op. cit. 8. La Construction moderne, 13 January 1894, p. 171. 9. Milton Osborne, The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future (Sydney, 2000), pp. 9–10 and photo, plate ii. 10. Information kindly provided by the Musée municipal La Pérouse, Albi. 11. Susan Hunt, Martin Terry and Nicholas Thomas, Lure of the Southern Seas: The Voyages of Dumont d’Urville 1826–1840 (Sydney, 2002), pp. 34–35. 12. www.landrecies.free.fr/hdvuk.html. 13. FNACA, Lieux et liens du souvenir, 1952–1962 (Paris, 1999), p. 104. 14. ‘Fontaine Bruat’, Le Patrimoine des communes du Haut-Rhin, Vol. I (Charentonle-Pont, 1998), p. 197. 15. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 884. 16. Alain Quella-Villéger, Le cas Farrère: Du Goncourt à la disgrâce (Paris, 1989). 17. Statutes or busts of the Duc des Cars in Saint-Symphorien (Sarthe), Chanzy in Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes) and Vouziers (Ardennes), Clauzel in Mirepoix (Ariège), Pélissier in Boubonne-les-Bains (Haute-Marne) and Montambert (Niève), the Duc d’Orléans in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) and Vincennes, Poëymirau in Pau, Valée in Brienne-le-Château (Aube). 18. Alain Amato, Monuments en exil (n.p. 1979), pp. 90–101, 119–120, 159, 182–188, 200–202. 19. Ibid., pp. 136–142. 20. Ibid., pp. 194–197. 21. Ibid., pp. 120–121, 174–177, 190–193. 22. Ibid., pp. 57–58. 23. Ibid., pp.142–154. 24. Ibid., pp. 136–142, 53. 25. Quoted in Amato, p. 148. 26. See Chapter 1. 27. The ‘Indochinoise’ seems to be a statue, sculpted by Eugène Aizelin in 1886, which previously stood in the Jardin des Plantes. 28. Catherine Marand-Fouguet, ‘Le Genre des colonies, sur les escaliers de la Gare Saint-Charles à Marseille’, Clio, Vol. 12 (2000), pp. 187–191; quotation from p. 191. 29. Michel Dansel, Au Père-Lachaise: Son histoire, ses secrets, ses promenades (Paris, 2nd edn, 1993); Jacques Barozzi, Guide des cimetières parisiens (Paris, 1990). 30. There is also a plaque in memory of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘disparu au cours d’une mission de reconnaissance aérienne, le 31 juillet 1944’. 31. The body of Schoelcher’s father, unusually, was also moved to lie next to his son in the Panthéon. 32. These words are engraved on a plaque in the Panthéon. 33. Laurent Dubois, ‘Haunting Delgrès’, Radical History Review, No. 78 (2000), pp. 166–177; quotations from pp. 167, 174. 34. Translation au Maroc des cendres du Maréchal Lyautey, 29–30 octobre 1935 (pamphlet published by the Résidence-Générale de France au Maroc).

354

Notes

35. Avner Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France, 1789–1996 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 231–234, who also discusses the funerals and burials of Admiral Courbet, who died in Tonkin and was interred in Abbeville, and the colonialist Paul Bert. 36. Paul Mousset, ‘Lyautey aux Invalides’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 April 1963, pp. 590–594. 37. ‘Lyautey aux Invalides’, Architecture française, No. 245–246 (January–March 1963), p. lix. 38. Ibid., p. 594. 39. There is also a memorial display dedicated to Foucauld at the basilica of Notre-Dame des Neiges in Saint-Laurent-les-Bains. 40. Brochure ‘Notre-Dame des Missions’ published by the municipality of Epinay-surSeine, and Nadine André-Pallois, L’Indochine: Un Lieu d’échange culturel? Les Peintres français et indochinois (fin XIXe–XXe siècle) (Paris, 1997). 41. Jean Guenno, Missions étrangères de Paris (Paris, 1986); Dom Guy-Marie Oury, Mgr François Pallu, ou les missions étrangères en Asie au 17e siècle (Paris, 1985); ‘Chapelle du séminaire des Missions étrangères’, Sanctuaires et pèlerinages (4e trimestre, 1959), pp. 177–183. 42. The SME has published a brochure on ‘La Salle des Martyrs’; see also La Salle des martyrs du séminaire des Missions étrangères (Paris, 1865) and Guenno, op. cit. 43. Anne Lombard-Jourdan and Denys Lombard, ‘Un tableau commémorant le martyre de Pierre Berthelot “à Achem”, dans l’église Sainte-Catherine de Honfleur (Calvados)’, Archipel, Vol. 54 (1997), pp. 27–33. 44. Amato lists bells at Artigues, Châteaudun, Colomiers, Marssac-sur-Tarn, Martignassur-Jalles, Mèze, Montpellier, Paris, La Pointe-du-Contes, Rilleux-la-Pape, Rivesaltes, Théoule-sur-Mer, Tournan-en-Brie, Tours, Vannes, Le Verdier and Le Vieux-Marché; carillons at Béziers, Brest, Carnoux-en-Provence, Colmar, Coursan, Cunault, Laval, Metz and Nice; statues at Béziers, Carnoux, La Ciotat, Nîmes, Saint-Jean-d’Illac, Toul and Toulon; an altar in Carnoux; organs in Annecy and Marseille; and a chemin de croix in Montady. 45. Amato, pp. 64–68. 46. Incidentally, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, there is the former house of the José de San Martín, who campaigned against Spanish colonialism and was lionised as the father of independence of Argentina, Chile and Peru. He lived in the house from 1848 until his death two years later. Owned by the Argentine Embassy in France, the house now contains a museum devoted to San Martín, and there is also an equestrian statue of the libertador in Boulogne. 47. Bruno Vercier, Jean-Pierre Melot and Gaby Scaon, La Maison de Loti (Paris, 1999), from which most of the information in these paragraphs is taken. 48. Nadine Beauthéac, ‘La Maison de Loti dans l’histoire des demeures exotiques’, in Loti en son temps (Rennes, 1994), pp. 231–236. 49. Information from website (www.tourisme.fr/cgi-bin/aurweb/FNOTSI/rech.txt? ville = thorey-lyautey&code_dpt + 54). 50. Thorey-Lyautey (brochure) (Nancy, 1970).

5

The colonies in museums

1. Chambre de Commerce de Marseille, Inauguration du Musée des colonies à Marseille et Commémoration du Tricentenaire des Antilles et de la Guyane (Marseille, 1935), pp. 14, 17.

Notes

355

2. Several guidebooks have been invaluable for this chapter: Pierre Cabanne, Guide des musées de France (Paris, 2nd edn, 1987); and Alain Morley and Guy Le Vavasseur, Guide Renault des 8000 musées et collections en France (Paris, 1996). 3. Anne Pingeot and Robert Hoozee (eds), Paris-Bruxelles/Bruxelles-Paris (Paris, 1997), p. 476. 4. Vanessa R. Schwartz, ‘Museums and Mass Spectacle: The Musée Grévin as a Monument to Modern Life’, French Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 7–27. 5. Nélia Dias, ‘L’Afrique naturalisée’, Cahiers d’études africaines, Vol. 39, No. 3–4 (1999), pp. 583–594; quotation from p. 592. 6. Albert Kahn, 1860–1940: Réalités d’une utopie (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1995); see also Jean Brunhes, Autour du monde: Regards d’un géographe / regards de géographie (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1993). 7. Daniel Hick, ‘Objets cambodgiens au Musée d’Alençon, Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle’, Ultramarines, No. 5 (June 1992), p. 14. 8. Christophe Bonneuil, ‘Le Muséum national d’histoire naturelle et l’expansion coloniale de la Troisième République (1870–1914)’, Revue française d’histoire d’Outre-Mer, Vol. 86, No. 322–323 (1999), p. 158. 9. The examples have been taken largely from Morley and Le Vavasseur, op. cit. 10. Hugh Honour, The Image of the Black in Western Art, Vol. IV: From the American Revolution to World War I, Part I: Slaves and Liberators and Part II: Black Models and White Myths (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). 11. See Donald A. Rosenthal, Orientalism: The Near East in French Painting, 1780–1880 (Rochester, New York, 1999). 12. See Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1786–1893 (Greenwood, Connecticut, 1976). 13. Jean-Marcel Humbert, L’Egypt à Paris (Paris, n.d.). 14. Lynn Thornton, Les Orientalistes: Peintres voyageurs (Paris, 1994), p. 4. 15. See Lynn Thornton, Les Peintres et l’Afrique noire (Pairs, 1982). See also Roger Benjamin, Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee (Sydney, 1997); and Christine Peltre, Orientalism in Art (New York, 1997). 16. Raoul Girardet, Le Temps des colonies (Paris, 1979); Pascal Blanchard and Armelle Chatelier (eds), Images et colonies (Paris, 1993); Pascal Blanchard et al., L’Autre et nous: ‘Scènes et types’ (Paris, 1995); Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard and Francis Delabarre, Images d’Empire, 1930–1960: Trente ans de photographies officielles sur l’Afrique française (Paris, 1997). See also Charles Daney, Indochine (Paris, 1992); and Guillaume Zuili, Pondichéry, Chandernagor, Karikal, Mahé, Yanaon, les anciens comptoirs français de l’Inde (Paris, 1993), among other albums. 17. Jacques Marseille, L’Age d’or de la France coloniale (Paris, 1986); Eric and Gabrielle Deroo and Marie-Cécile de Taillac, Aux colonies, où l’on découvre les vestiges d’un empire englouti (Paris, 1992). 18. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1976); John Mackenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester, 1995). 19. Roger Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880–1930 (Berkeley, 2003), pp. 2–3; see also his Renoir and Algeria (New Haven, 2003). 20. Elsewhere in the museum, visitors are reminded that the city had substantial international trade links – indeed, in 1896, Rouen organised one of the first colonial exhibitions in France. David d’Angers’s 1837 sculptures for the city’s customs house allegorise Rouen’s vocation. ‘La Navigation’ is a woman with globe and

356

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

Notes anchor – the names of Columbus, da Gama and La Pérouse are carved on a tablet – while ‘Le Commerce’ includes foreigners bringing the products of far-away places to Europe. Gérard-Georges Lemaire, L’Univers des Orientalistes (Paris, 2000) provides other examples. Le Maroc de Charles-Jules Duvent: Un Regard d’artiste entre Orientalisme et idées coloniales (Langres, 1997). Eric Vidal, Henri Rousseau: Peintre orientaliste, 1875–1933 (Toulouse, 1997). Musée Municipal de Boulogne-Billancourt, Coloniales, 1920–1940 (BoulogneBillancourt, 1989). Two years later, a selection of the paintings was shown at the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne, part of ‘Expression des horizons lointains’. Most of these works are reproduced in Emmanuel Bréon and Michèle Lefrançois, Le Musée des Années 30 (Paris, 1998). See Carole Haardt de la Baume, Alexandre Iacovleff, l’artiste voyageur (Paris, 2000). Musée des Années Trente, André Maire, dessins d’Afrique et d’Asie (Paris, 2001) and André Maire, peintre-voyageur (Paris, 2001). Anne Baldassari, ‘Le rôle des artistes dans la constitution des collections Picasso et les cultures “primitives”’, Le musée et les cultures du monde (Les Cahiers de l’Ecole nationale du patrimoine, No. 5) (1999), pp. 199–208. Petrine Archer-Straw, Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (London, 2000). There are also several museums devoted to famous men in the DOM-TOM: the family home of Saint-John Perse in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, and that of Félix Eboué in Cayenne, Guyane. In Pointe-à-Pitre, there is also a Schoelcher museum, and a Schoelcher library in Fort-de-France, Martinique. There is a Gauguin museum in Le Carbet, Martinique, and in Tahiti, and a museum named for Léon Dierx in Saint-Denis, La Réunion. Philippe Haudère and Gérard Le Bouëdic, Les Compagnies des Indes (Rennes, 2001). Information taken from the museum guidebook and website; I regret that it has not been possible for me to visit the museum. Thierry Lefrançois, Musée du Nouveau Monde (La Rochelle, 1998), p. 10. The guidebook has been invaluable for the present section on the museum. Mémoires d’une Amérique (La Rochelle, 1980). Thierry Lefrançois, L’Esclavage dans les collections du Musée du Nouveau Monde (La Rochelle, 1998). There is, incidentally, little on another French North American outpost, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. www.fnaca.org The publications are Témoignages: Lieux et liens du souvenir, 1952–1962; Algérie 1954–1962 and the magazine L’ancien d’Algérie. Marie-Hélène Joly, ‘War Museums in France’, in Sarah Blowen, Marion Demossier and Jeanine Picard (eds), Recollections of France: Memories, Identities and Heritage in Contemporary France (Oxford, 2002), pp. 33–51. For a brief overview, see ‘Musée des Troupes de Marine à Fréjus’, Ultramarines, No. 1 (1990), p. 5. Harry de Quetteville, ‘Former Legionnaires the Wild Bunch of Winemaking’, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 June 2002, p. 22. (Reprinted from The Telegraph (London).) See Jean-Marcel Humbert and Lionel Dumarche, Guide des musées d’histoire militaire (Paris, 1982), and a pamphlet on ‘Les Musées de la défense’ published by the Ministère de la Défense.

Notes 43. 44. 45. 46.

357

57. 58.

Alain Amato, Les Monuments en exil (n.p., 1979), p. 76. Website (http://anampara.chez.tiscali.fr/cadre/cadre_droit.htm). Website (http://defense.gouv.fr/terre/orga/orga_gds/serv/rattaches/delpat/musee). Website (http://person.club-internet.fr/museeinf/page_internet_musee.htm) – Bournazel (1898–1933) was a cavalry officer in the First World War, then fought against the ‘rebel’ Abd el-Krim in Morocco in the 1920s. Appointed adminstrator of Tafilalet in 1932, he was killed in a skirmish in Morocco. Alain Bernède, Le Musée du Souvenir des Ecoles de Coëtquidan (Rennes, 1985). Amato, pp. 73–80. Other reminders of the spahis include a plaque in the Invalides (unveiled in 1939), a memorial at La Horgne (Ardennes) to spahis killed in 1940 (unveiled in 1950), and a plaque at the Indochinese War memorial in Fréjus. Amato inventories such items in Angers, Aubagne, Besançon, Bonifacio, Bourges, Castelsarrasin, Coëtquidan, Dax, Draguignan, Marseille, Meudon, Montpellier, Montsoreau, Nancy, Oissel, Paris, Rennes, Saint-Maixent, Saumur, Toul, Tour, Verdun and Vincennes. Website (www.defense.gouv.fr/terre/ortga/orgagds_serv/rattaches/delpat/musées). The museum is slated for a major overhaul in coming years. A. Chatelle, Le Musée de la Marine (Paris, 1943). One example: the works of Ousmane Sow. For example, the Invalides’ exhibition on ‘La France en Guerre d’Algérie’ in 1992. Raymond Perrot, De la tâche à la figure: La Guerre d’Algérie et les artistes 1954–1962 (Ailly-sur-Somme, 2002). Quoted in Enrico Baj et al., Grand tableau antifasciste collectif (Paris, 2000), p. 86. Ibid. and Le Monde, 25 November 2000.

6

The colonial legacy of non-western art in French museums

47. 48. 49.

50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

1. Writing specifically of objects from Vanuatu in French collections, Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter states: ‘Far from deploring the joint actions of museum curators and collectors, the Ni-Vanuatu have expressed their gratitude to the “white men” who have preserved thousands of objects that would otherwise have been destroyed once their ritual function had been fulfilled.’ (Bérénice GeoffroySchneiter, Primal Arts: Africa, Oceania, and the Southeast Asian Islands (London, 1999), p. 361.) 2. This chapter draws on several collections of articles on primitive art and contemporary debates on French and other museums. For convenience, abbreviations of the journal titles are given, without repetition of volume and issue numbers and dates. These are Cahiers d’études africaines, Vol. 39, No. 3–4 (1999) (‘Prélever, exhiber: La mise en musées’), abbreviated as CEA; Les Cahiers de l’Ecole nationale du patrimoine, No. 5 (1999) (‘Le musée et les cultures du monde’), abbreviated as CENP; Journal des Africanistes, Vol. 69, No. 1 (1999) (‘Des objets et leurs musées’), abbreviated as JA; Outre-Mers: Revue d’histoire (the former Revue française d’histoire d’Outre-Mer), No. 332–333 (2001) (‘Collectes et collections ethnologiques: Une histoire d’hommes et d’institutions’), abbreviated as OM; and a dossier in Gradhiva: Revue d’histoire et d’archives de l’anthropologie, No. 24 (1998) (‘Musées d’ici et d’ailleurs’), cited as Gradhiva. 3. A reminder: ‘primitive art’ is used as a convenient, if old-fashioned, term and implies no subscription to notions of cultural or social primitivism in the source societies.

358

Notes

4. For an overview, see Gefforoy-Schneiter, op. cit., and Marine Degli and Marie Mauzé, Arts Premiers: Le Temps de la reconnaissance (Paris, 2000). Geoffroy-Schneiter pertinently remarks that ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ were used interchangeably and indiscriminately (along with ‘Negro’) to describe much non-Western art, but that these were ‘epithets that were by no means pejorative, but were intended rather to stress the non-academic character of styles that owed nothing to canons of classicism inherited from the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome’ (p. 23). 5. This chapter does not discuss pre-Columbian American art in French collections. 6. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in 16th and 17th Century Europe (Oxford, 1985); A. Schnapper, Le Géant, la licorne et la tulipe. Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1988); Josette Rivallain, ‘Cabinets de curiosité, aux origines des musées’, OM, pp. 17–36; and François Zehnacker and Nicolas Petit, Le Cabinet de curiosités de la Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (Paris, 1989). 7. See the discussion of the Muséum in Chapter 2. 8. Serge Tornay, ‘Histoire brève du Musée de l’Homme’, part of a dossier on ‘Musée de l’Homme. Enjeux d’une rénovation’ on the museum’s website (www.mnhn.fr/ mnhm/mdh/Mhom1.htm). 9. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, ‘Les Musées du Louvre au XIXe siècle: Les Collections archéologiques et ethnologiques dans le conservatoire de l’art classique’, CENP, pp. 53–70. 10. Nélia Dias, Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro (1878–1908): Anthropologie et muséologie en France (Paris, 1991), pp. 94–95. This section is based largely on Dias’s work. See also Francine Ndiaye, ‘Le Musée de l’Homme: De l’objet exotique à l’objet de civilisation’, L’Oeil, No. 442 (June 1992), pp. 30–39; and Elise Dubuc, ‘Le Futur antérieur du Musée de l’Homme’, Gradhiva, pp. 71–92. 11. Tornay, op. cit. 12. Quoted in Dias, pp. 234, 235, respectively. 13. Dias, p. 199. 14. Anne Baldassari, ‘Le rôle des artistes dans la constitution des collections Picasso et les cultures “primitives” ’, CENP, pp. 199–208. 15. William Rubin (ed.), ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art (New York, 2 vols, 1984). 16. See Petrine Archer-Straw, Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (London, 2000); and Pascal Blanchard, Eric Deroo and Gilles Manceron, Le Paris noir (Paris, 2001). 17. Quoted in Dias, p. 253. 18. At the same time that the Musée de l’Homme was established to display ethnographic works from primitive societies, the Musée des Arts et traditions populaires was created to display and study French peasant culture and society. It moved into a purpose-built facility in the Bois de Boulogne in 1972. 19. James D. Herbert, Paris 1937: Worlds on Exhibition (Ithaca, NY, 1998); quotations from pp. 54, 56. 20. Hervé Legros, ‘La dérive du Musée de l’Homme’, Beaux-Arts, No. 84 (November 1990), p. 20. 21. Kerchache was the author, with Jean-Louis Paudrat and Lucien Stephen, of L’Art africain (Paris, 1988). 22. Félix Fénéon, Iront-ils au Louvre? Enquête sur des arts lointains (Toulouse, 2000). 23. Website (www.quaibranly.fr/01/statique/fr). 24. André Langaney, ‘Musées et patrimoines scientifiques en danger’, Pour la science, No. 283 (May 2001), pp. 8–9.

Notes

359

25. Jacques Kerchache responded to such criticisms, and the debates on the Quai Branly project, in an interview in Connaissance des arts, No. 539 (May 1997), pp. 56–61. 26. Geoffroy-Schneiter, pp. 285, 294. 27. The following chapter will provide examples: an exhibition on Marcel Griaule and one on the Korrigane expedition. 28. See Michel Guerrin, ‘Les Merveilles délaissées de la photothèque du Musée de l’homme’, Le Monde, 16 April 1997, p. 22. 29. Quoted in a special issue of Connaissance des arts on ‘Les arts premiers au Louvre’, H.S. No. 149 (2000), p. 30. 30. Quoted in ibid., p. 54. 31. Maurice Godelier, ‘Créer de nouveaux musées des arts et civilisations à l’aube du IIIe millénaire’, CENP, pp. 299–304; and Germain Viatte, ‘Le musée du Quai Branly: processus et perspectives’, CENP, pp. 305–313. 32. Quoted in Degli and Mazé, pp. 147, 146. 33. In ibid., p. 27. 34. Musée du Quai Branly website. 35. Godelier, CENP, pp. 299, 301. 36. Martine Le Pen, quoted in Le Monde, 16 March 2004. 37. Godelier, CENP, p. 302. 38. Gourgaud was the great-grandson of an aide-de-camp to the emperor, and Napoleon had spent his last days before being exiled to Elba in the house now containing memorabilia of his reign. 39. Etienne Féau, Musée national-Fondation Gourgaud: Musée Africain (Paris, 1987). 40. The endurance of a passion for collecting and displaying foreign cultures can be seen in a museum not unlike that of Gourgaud’s, Suzy Céro Razafindramady’s Musée des Arts et des Traditions de Madagascar in Chabeuil (Drôme). Five hundred square metres of exhibition space display Malagasy artisanship, from sculpture to embroidery, pottery to woven baskets, mounted on walls or arranged in vitrines alongside such curios as an eight-litre oepyornis egg. Furniture and mannequins add to the Malagasy atmosphere of an institution that, says its brochure, is ‘unique in Europe’. (Information from brochure kindly supplied by the museum and ‘Un Musée malgache en campagne drômoise’, Ultramarines, No. 2 (January 1991), p. 18.) 41. Martine Balard and Edmond Maestri, ‘Raymond Decary (1891–1973) ou Madagascar mis en collections’, OM, pp. 207–230. 42. It might be noted that not all works collected by Frenchmen ended up in French museums – the origin of the African collections in the ethnography museum in St Petersburg began with the collection of a nineteenth-century French navy captain. (Vladimir Arseniev, ‘Le Musée d’Anthropologie et d’Ethnographie Pierre-leGrand à Saint-Pétersbourg’, CEA, pp. 681–700.) 43. Gilles Bounours, ‘Issoudun: Deux donations au Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch’, Arts d’Afrique noire (Arts premiers), No. 124 (Winter 2002), pp. 8–11. 44. Information from brochure kindly supplied by the museum. 45. Examples of works displayed at an exhibition from the museum’s collection in 2001. 46. See Chantal Georgel, ‘Heritages’, CENP, pp.27–30. 47. X. Cadet, ‘Lille: Aventures et mésaventures de la collection ethnographique’, OM, pp. 55–76; and Bertrand Radigeois, ‘Au Musée d’histoire naturelle de Lille et dans les musées du Nord-Pas-de-Calais’, CENP, pp. 71–76. 48. Tribal Arts Resource Guide (supplement to Tribal Arts) (Paris, 2001).

360

Notes

49. E. Patole-Edoumba and E. Desramaut, ‘La ville de La Rochelle et ses collections ethnographiques: Le Cas du Muséum d’histoire naturelle’, OM, pp. 77–94. 50. C. Mériot, ‘Les collections du Musée d’ethnographie de l’Université de Bordeaux II’, OM, pp. 95–112. 51. Danièle Giraudy (ed.), Le Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens de Marseille (Paris, 2002), especially Marianne Sourrieu, ‘Les objets de la Chambre de commerce et d’industrie’, pp. 95–106. 52. Quoted in Mériot, pp. 103–104, footnote 14. 53. On the history of the Oceanic collections, see Sylviane Jacquemin, ‘Histoire des collections océaniennes dans les musées et établissements parisiens’ (Mémoire, Ecole du Louvre, 1991); Philippe Peltier, ‘From Oceania’ (in the section on ‘The Arrival of Tribal Objects in the West’), in Rubin, pp. 99–124; and Frédéric Angleviel, ‘Collectes, collectionneurs et collections néo-calédoniennes en France: 1774–1911’, in OM, pp. 113–128. On African works, Jean-Louis Paudrat, ‘From Africa’, in Rubin, pp. 125–175. OM also includes studies of Ethiopian, Senegalese and Ashanti collections as well as a collection of models of Indian and Sri Lankan boats. 54. Jean Jamin, ‘Faut-il brûler les musées d’ethnographie?’, Gradhiva, No. 24 (1988), pp. 65–69. 55. Ute Röschentaler, ‘Of Objects and Contexts: Biographies of Ethnographica’, pp. 81–104; Brigitte Derlon, ‘Vitrine, miroirs et jeux d’images: réflexions à propos du futur musée des Arts et des Civilisations’, pp. 53–64; Michèle Coquet, ‘Des objets et leurs musée: en guise d’introduction’, pp. 9–28; Pieter ter Keurs, ‘Things of the Past? Museums and Ethnographic Objects’, pp. 67–80, all from JA. 56. Lorenz Homberger, ‘Un nouveau statut de l’objet?’, CENP, pp. 209–214. 57. Quoted in Degli and Mauzé, reverse of cover. 58. Franck Beuvier, ‘Le Musée en trompe-l’oeil: représentation et authenticité’, JA, pp. 105–132. 59. Coquet, op. cit. 60. Jacques Galinier and Antoinette Molinié, ‘Le crépuscule des lieux’, Gradhiva, pp. 96, 102. 61. Tshikala Kayembe Biaya, ‘Les Ambiguïtés d’une expérience privée: Réflexions libres sur le musée en Afrique’, in CEA. 62. Quoted in Jean-Luc Aka-Evy, ‘De l’art primitif à l’art premier’, CEA, p. 580. 63. See Roger Sandall, The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays (Oxford, 2002). 64. Giraudy (ed.), p. 71. 65. François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar, ‘Des murs d’Augsbourg aux vitrines du Cap: Cinq siècles d’histoire du regard sur le corps des Khoisan’, CEA, pp. 539–562. 66. This question, of course, is not restricted to non-Western objects, as evidenced by the debate on the return of the Elgin or Parthenon marbles from the British Museum to Greece, or the restitution of artworks seized by Nazis from Jewish owners. 67. Giraudy (ed.), p. 71. 68. Biaya, p. 750. 69. Salia Malé, ‘La présentation des objets de cultures vivantes: Le Cas du Musée national du Mali’, JA, pp. 29–52. 70. Nicolas Martin-Granel, ‘Malaise dans le Patrimoine’, CEA, pp. 487–510. 71. Le Monde, 20 March 2001. 72. ‘Endangered Art’, Time, 18 June 2001. 73. UNESCO in 1970 adopted a convention concerning illegally traded or exported artworks (though only 91 of 183 member countries signed the agreement).

Notes

361

90.

Another convention, called ‘Unidoit’, negotiated in 1995, concerned the return of stolen or illicitly exported objects, although only a handful of countries (including France) have ratified the accord. It stipulates that all artworks should be provided with an ‘identity card’ showing the legality of sale and export, and a country can ask for the restitution of a work that cannot prove its bona fides. A dealer who has acted in good faith, however, may expect an indemnity if it is restituted. The convention is not retroactive for works acquired before it comes into force. Enforcement, however, is almost impossible because of questions about provenance and ownership, the need for self-policing by vendors and purchasers and sheer cost. (Dominique Blanc, ‘Le second souffle des arts premiers’, Art Enchères, No. 7 (June 2001).) There has also been the problem of fraud – one estimate is that 80 per cent of terracotta works exported from Mali as antiquities in the 1980s were fakes, though often sometimes of higher quality than the originals and almost impossible to differentiate. (Blanc, p. 34.) Some of these topics are cogently discussed by Josette Rivallain, ‘Collectes et collections ethnologiques: Une histoire d’hommes et d’institutions: Introduction’, OM, pp. 1–15. Colombe Samoyault-Verlet, Jean-Paul Desroches, Gilles Béguin and Albert Le Bonheur, Le Musée chinois de l’impératrice Eugénie (Paris, 1994). Lucie Prost and Chantal Valluy, ‘Histoire d’une collection: Le Musée d’Ennery’, Revue du Louvre, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1977), pp. 12–16. Geneviève Lefèvre, Georges Labit, Un globe-trotter toulousain (1862–1899) (Toulouse, 1994); Odile Laulhère and Sylviane Leprun, De terres en terres: Georges Labit (février 1862–février 1899) (Toulouse, 1996). Françoise Chappuis and Francis Macouin (eds), D’outremer et d’Orient mystique . . . Les itinéraires d’Emile Guimet (Paris, 2001). Quoted in ibid., p. 28. According to Newsweek, quoted in Le Figaro Magazine, 6 January 2001. Musée Guimet, special issue of Connaissance des Arts, H.S. No. 159 (2001). Nadine André-Pallois, L’Indochine: Un Lieu d’échanges culturel? Les Peintres français et indochinois (fin XIXe – XXe siècle) (Paris, 1997). Pierre Singaravélou, L’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, ou l’institution des marges (1898–1956): Essai d’histoire sociologique et politique de la science coloniale (Paris, 1999). André-Pallois, pp. 128–134. Patricia M.E. Lorcin, ‘Rome and France in Africa: Recovering Colonial Algeria’s Latin Past’, French Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2002), pp. 295–329. Since the French census bureau is not allowed to ask questions about religion, and since a considerable number of Muslims are temporary residents (including clandestine migrants), the exact number of Muslims in France is unknown. See the catalogue, Daniel Rondeau (ed.), L’Appel du Maroc (Paris, 1999). Emilia Vaillant, ‘Le Musée héritier: Entre être et avoir. Pour une pertinence contemporaine des cultures du monde dans les musées’, CENP, pp. 129–146. Françoise Cachin, ‘L’Ouverture aux cultures du monde’, CENP, pp. 14–15.

7

Temporary exhibitions: changing perspectives

74.

75.

76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89.

1. Interest in the Third World politics nevertheless produced an interest in nonWestern art, but curators were on guard against displays that might be labelled ‘neo-colonialist’.

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2. Bibliothèque Forney, Négripub: L’Image des Noirs dans la publicité depuis un siècle (Paris, 1986). 3. L’Orient des Provençaux (Marseille, 1982), Introduction. 4. Charles Dufresne, 1876–1938: Rétrospective (Troyes, 1988); L’Indochine de Launois (Les Sables d’Olonne, 1998) (Cahiers de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, No. 85). 5. Delacroix’s North African links regularly inspire exhibitions, such as ‘Couleurs Maroc – Delacroix et les arts décoratifs marocains des XVIIIe et XXe siècle’ at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Bordeaux in 2002–2003. 6. See Centre des archives d’outre-mer, L’Empire du sport: Les sports dans les anciennes colonies françaises (Aix-en-Provence, 1992). 7. L’Album de voyage: Des Peintres en expédition au pays du Levant (Paris, 1995); the exhibition was shown in Tel Aviv, Bayonne and Paris. 8. Maire, who worked in Indochina, the East Indies, Madagascar and Africa from 1919 to the late 1950s, was also the subject of an exhibition and catalogue at the Galerie Raymonde Duval in 2003. 9. Stéphane Guégan, Vincent Pomarède and Louis-Antoine Prat, Chassériau, un autre romantisme (Paris, 2002), pp. 234–238. 10. See Roger Benjamin, Renoir and Algeria (New Haven, 2003). 11. Mohammed Racim (1896–1975), Miniaturiste Algérien (Paris, 1992). 12. Paris–Hanoi–Saigon: L’aventure de l’art moderne au Viet Nam (Paris, 1998). 13. A l’ombre d’Angkor: Le Cambodge, années vingt (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1992), Gilles Baud Berthier, Commerce d’Asie: Autochromes et noir et blanc, 1908–1927 (BoulogneBillancourt, 1994); Pour une reconnaissance africaine – Dahomey, 1930: Des images au service d’une idée, Albert Kahn, 1860–1940, et le père Aupiais, 1877–1945 (BoulogneBillancourt, 1996). 14. Maroc, mémoire d’avenir, 1912, 1926 . . . 1999 (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1999). 15. Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer, L’Empire du sport (Aix-en-Provence, 1992). 16. Raymond Noulens (ed.), Les Spahis, cavaliers de l’armée d’Afrique (Paris, 1997), pp. 9, 82–84. 17. Jay Winter, ‘Public History and the “Historial” Project, 1986–1998’, in Sarah Blowen, Marion Demossier and Jeanine Picard (eds), Recollections of France: Memories, Identities and Heritage in Contemporary France (Oxford, 2000), pp. 52–67. 18. The neologism ‘Historial’ is a combination of ‘histoire’ and ‘mémorial’. 19. Historial de la Grande Guerre, Mémoires d’outre-mer: Les colonies et la Première guerre mondiale (Péronne, 1996); quotations from pp. 4, 5, 64. 20. Le Figaro, 20–21 December 2003. 21. Musée de la Corse, Corse, colonies (n.p., 2002). 22. Ministère de l’Outre-Mer, Les Affiches des Expositions coloniales françaises, 1894–1944 (Paris, 1996), quotations from pp. 7 (Pierre-Michel Antuoro), 3 (Jean-Jacques de Peretti). 23. See Robert Aldrich and John Connell, France’s Overseas Frontier: Départements et Territoires d’Outre-Mer (Cambridge, 1992). 24. Robert Deville and Nicolas Georges, Les Départements d’Outre-Mer: L’Autre décolonisation (Paris, 1996). 25. Catherine Trautmann, ‘Introduction’, Tropiques métis: Mémoires et cultures de Guadeloupe, Guyane, Martinique, Réunion (Paris, 1998), pp. 13–14. 26. Quoted in Anne Dupuis, ‘A propos de souvenirs inédits de Denise Paulme et Michel Leiris sur la création du musée de l’Homme en 1936’, CEA, p. 515, which provides good first-hand details of ethnographic collecting and museums. Leiris’s recollections, L’Afrique fantôme (1934), became a classic, though criticised by

Notes

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

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some anthropologists, who also were disatisfied with Griaule’s own somewhat romanticised version of the expedition. Emmanuel de Roux, ‘Marcel Griaule, inlassable limier du fait ethnologique’, Le Monde, 4 December 1998, p. 27. Musée de l’Homme website (www.mnhm.fr/oceanist/fr/infosociete/expokoor.htm). Among others: ‘Les Rois sculpteurs’ (the inauguration exhibition of the Harter donation in 1993), ‘Vallées du Niger’ (1993–1994), ‘Arts du Nigeria’ (1997), ‘Vanuatu, Océanie – Arts des iles de centre et de corail’ (1997–1998) and ‘Batéké: Peintres et sculpteurs de l’Afrique centrale’ (1999–2000). Henri Marchal, Roger Boulay and Emmanuel Kasarhérou (eds), De Jade et de nacre. Patrimoine artistique kanak (Paris, 1990). Kannibals et vahinés: Imagerie des mers du Sud (Paris, 2001), the exhibition catalogue; and Roger Boulay, Kannibals et vahinés (Paris, 2000). ‘Tahiti 1842–1848’, Le Petit journal des grandes expositions, No. 328 (1 April–25 June 2001) (brochure). Laurent Gervereau, Jean-Pierre Rioux and Benjamin Stora (eds), La France en Guerre d’Algérie, Novembre 1954–Juillet 1962 (Paris, 1992). Quoted on the website of the Année de l’Algérie. To give an example, exhibitions on view in November and December 2003 included ones on St Augustine, Abd el-Kader, Mohammed Racim, others on such writers and artists as Rachid Boudjedra, Kateb Yacine, Aksouh and Etienne Dinet, the Tuaregs, Saint-Saëns and Algeria, the architect Roland Simounet, Algiers and Marseille, Algerian archives, Algerian art from prehistoric times to the present, sculptures and drawings from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Algiers, French paintings of Algeria, the city of Tlemcen, Algerian churches, Algerian comic strips, cinema, postage stamps, Algerians in Lyon, Algerians and workers’ housing in Lille, even the automobile in Algeria. This was, incidentally, the first special exhibition shown at the Palais de la Porte Dorée since the closure of the MAAO. Quoted in the Figaroscope pamphlet distributed at the exhibition. Pierre Bourdieu, Images d’Algérie: Une affinité élective (Paris, 2003). Voyages d’artistes – Algérie 2003 (Paris, 2003). Parlez-moi d’Alger: Marseille-Alger au miroir des mémoires (Paris, 2003). These represent some of the comments to be read in the visitors’ book in February 2004; I regret that I was unable to understand the Arabic-language comments. Hervé Bourges, interviewed in Histoire et patrimoine, No. 7 (2004).

Conclusion: the future of the colonial past 1. Isabelle Langlade and Sylvie Masson, Marseille et ses quartiers (Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, 2002), p. 98. 2. ‘Le Mémorial de l’Outre-Mer de Marseille’, unpublished memorandum by Jean-Jacques Jordi, who kindly provided me with a copy and shared other information on the project. 3. The opening will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which set up the then European Economic Community. Exhibitions will show two periods of European disunity: the wars of religion from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the start of the eighteenth century, and the ‘war of ideologies’ from 1914 to 1990. Juxtaposed with these periods of conflict will be exhibitions marking three efforts at unity: unity through the Christian faith, from the tenth to the

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sixteenth century, unity through the universalism of the Enlightenment from the second half of the seventeenth century to the start of the twentieth century, and the ‘project’ of unity that began after the Second World War (Le Monde, 18 February 2004). 4. Hommes et migrations, No. 1247 (January–February 2004), issue on ‘Vers un lieu de mémoire de l’immigration’. 5. The museum will be organised according to the themes of the heavens (‘figures of paradise’), war, the city, pathways (‘chemins’), and masculine and feminine. It will integrate the 2,500,000 objects from the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires with the European ethnographic collections of the Musée de l’Homme. (Brochure published by the Mission pour le musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée.) 6. Also worth mentioning is the construction of a ‘Cité des archives’, a new repository for France’s archives, to be located in Saint-Denis and opened around 2010.

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Index

Abd el-Kader, 14, 60, 84, 166, 169, 235, 297, 321, 322 Académie des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, 28, 70–1, 265 Agulhon, Maurice, 9, 15, 157 Algeria, 16, 35, 172, 295, 306, 316 Algérie française, 4, 13, 93–4, 99, 134–6, 144, 148, 168–9, 180–1, 222, 319, 321, 333 ‘Année de l’Algérie’, 17, 146, 288–9, 293, 320–6, 333, 334 exhibition on, 318–19, 326, 330, 333 Franco-Algerian post-independence relations, 145–6, 287–8, 319–20, 326, 333–4 French cemeteries in, 146, 324 French narrative on the Algerian war, 153–4, 303, 318–20 French soldiers in, 15, 324 French use of torture, 4, 20, 78, 135–6, 145, 154, 320, 324 memorials to the Algerian war, 2–3, 136–56, 172–3, 255, 330–1, 333, 334, 352n76 in museums, 236, 318–19, 321 repatriation of religious items from, 187 war of independence, 2–3, 15, 17–18, 28, 31, 72, 73, 90, 96, 100, 105, 108–10, 114, 124, 133–8, 144–8, 170–2, 181, 224, 242–4, 287, 291, 303, 308, 318, 324, 332, 333 Alleg, Henri, 20, 135 anti-colonial memorial, 10, 20, 73–5, 101–4, 155, 179, 333 anti-colonialism, 8, 13, 14, 29, 38, 51, 67–8, 73, 132, 161, 163–4, 171, 241–4, 308, 312–14, 318, 322, 327 Archives d’Outre-Mer (Aix-en-Provence), 302 armée noire, see force noire art indigène, see non-Western art Asia, fascination for, 14, 280–6, 289

Audin, Maurice, 20, 323 Aussaresses, Paul, General, 4, 135–6, 150 Bart, Jean, 23, 90, 164 Bartholdi, Auguste, 166–7 Baudin, Nicolas, 14, 199, 201 Belloc, Jean-Baptiste, 20 Bert, Paul, 30, 78, 284 Berthelot, Pierre, 187 Blandan, Jean-Pierre, Sergeant, 169, 171 botanical gardens Jardin Botanique Colonial, 16, 35, 56, 61–7, 112, 114–15, 124, 173 Jardin d’Acclimatation, 59–61 Jardin des Plantes, 21, 55–9 Jardin Tropical de Paris, see Jardin Botanique Colonial Bougainville, Louis-Antoine, 13, 14, 42, 97, 159, 176, 238, 247 Bourgonnier, Claude-Charles, 34 Bruat, Armand-Joseph, Admiral, 166–7 Bugeaud, Thomas Robert, marshal, 32, 42, 90, 224, 240, 287, 297 Busy, Léon, 299 Camus, Albert, 16, 27, 71, 90, 158–9, 171 Canada, 215–16, 218–19 Carco, Francis, 175 Carpeaux, Jean-Baptiste, 32 Cercle Algérianiste, 223–4 Césaire, Aimé, 316 Chassériau, Théodore, 176, 209, 210, 297–8, 322 Chirac, Jacques, 2–3, 17, 29, 48, 125, 126, 145–51, 153–4, 160, 193, 255, 279, 308, 310–11, 313, 323, 328, 333 Chivallon, Christine, 10, 12 Cité Universitaire (Paris), 49–51 Citroën, André, 301 colonial art, 206–7, 211–14, 214, 327 women in, 213 see also orientalism 377

378

Index

colonial heritage and exoticism, 23–6, 77 and immigration, 5, 22–3, 91, 93–4 in Lyon, 87, 90 and national identity, 2–3, 5–6, 8, 15, 134–5, 263, 331, 334 and public interest, 16–18, 48–9, 124–5, 134–6, 143–4, 148, 158, 202, 211–12, 219, 222, 224, 232, 274, 289, 296, 300–1, 326–7 in the Atlantic ports, 79–84 colonial history, 16, 17, 113, 127–33 of Corsica, 306–7, 332 of Lyon, 84–6 and museums, 279, 285, 303–4, 313, 326–7 and politics, 15–16, 333 reinterpretation of, 179–80, 193–4, 221–2, 224, 236–7, 304, 308, 312, 326–7, 332–3 and slavery, 179–80, 312–14, 333 of southern France, 91–2, 95, 100–1, 196–7, 294–5, 323–4, 328–9, 330 of the Atlantic ports, 79–84, 188, 217–18, 310, 332 colonial soldiers in exhibitions, 302–4, 308 in France, 95, 107, 111, 114, 117–22, 123, 125 see also harkis; spahis; tirailleurs sénégalais; zouaves colonialism Africans’ view on, 103–4 and art, 205–8, 214–15, 294, 296, 298–9, 322 and business, 72, 80–3, 85, 92, 195, 197, 292–3 exhibitions on, 17, 90–1, 102–3, 135, 212–13, 238, 291–9, 301–14, 326, 332 iconography of, 24–6, 31–4, 41–5, 49–50, 112–13, 197, 313 and literature, 16, 189 and memory, 8, 18, 48–9, 133, 238–9, 241, 263, 290, 293, 312–13, 329–31, 331–3 and museums, 13, 79–81, 128–33, 196–7, 200–2, 240–1, 245–6, 248–54, 257, 263, 268, 276, 280–1,

285–6, 290, 291, 296, 301, 305–10, 314–18, 326–8, 330–2 and public opinion, 106, 124, 156, 251, 291 and religion, 182–8 and science, 54–9, 159–60, 165, 201, 227–8, 236–8, 248–50, 264–5 Cordier, Charles, 210, 221, 281, 298 Cournault, Charles, 77 Crampel, Paul, 70 Crémieux, Adolphe, 175 Daudet, Alphonse, 175 David-Néel, Alexandra, 16, 188, 260 de Gaulle, Charles, 1, 2, 16, 29, 118, 120, 137, 158, 176, 178, 180–1, 194 de Lattre de Tassigny, Jean, General, 14, 78, 90, 97, 163, 175, 180, 191, 216 Debray, Régis, 7 Decary, Raymond, 264–5 Delacroix, Eugène, 15, 31, 71, 159, 194, 203, 208, 209, 210, 211, 240, 242, 288, 295, 296, 297, 322 Delanoë, Bertrand, 20, 29, 74, 160 Delaporte, Louis, 285 Delgrès, Louis, 179–80, 194, 313, 333 d’Entrecasteaux, Antoine-Raymond-Joseph de Bruni, Admiral, 14, 247, 269 départements d’Outre-Mer’ (DOM), 17, 115, 333–4 exhibitions on, 310–14, 326 see also West Indies Deschanel, Paul, 175 devoir de mémoire, 7 Dien Bien Phu, 107, 125, 126, 232, 330, 350n42 Dinet, Etienne, 209, 212 Dislère, Paul, 34, 42 Druze rebellion, 123 Duc d’Orléans, Ferdinand Philippe, 170, 172, 322, 323 Dumont d’Urville, Jules, 78, 90, 97, 165–6, 175, 216, 237, 238, 248, 270 Dupleix, Joseph-François, Admiral, 28, 30, 41, 166 East India Company, 166, 217, 226 Eboué, Félix, 2, 14, 28, 31, 72, 92, 175, 176, 178, 180, 194

Index Ecole Coloniale, 16, 30–5, 236, 332 Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient, 286 Ecole Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer, see Ecole Coloniale Egyptian campaign, 14, 25, 27, 173, 205, 235, 238, 292, 297 Egyptology, 14, 25, 247–8 ethnography, 247–9 see also museums–ethnography; individual names Etienne, Eugène, 19–20, 30, 34, 65 expositions coloniales, 6, 11, 15, 22, 35–8, 63–4, 76, 86–7, 92, 112, 196, 198, 202, 249, 271, 286–7, 299, 307, 311–12, 327, 329 Faidherbe, Louis, 3, 13, 30, 32, 90, 169, 224, 226, 269 Fanon, Frantz, 312 Farrère, Claude, 16, 90, 168 Fédération Nationale des Anciens Combattants en Algérie, Maroc et Tunisie (FNACA), 136–40, 143, 155, 223–4, 333, 351n47 Ferry, Jules, 158, 194, 284 first empire, 14, 27, 41–2, 79–80, 83, 215–18, 221, 305–6, 332 Flatters, Paul-François, lieutenant-colonel, 27, 160, 163, 194 Foch, Ferdinand, marshal, 200, 225–6 force noire, 96, 106–7, 110, 121–3 racialist assumptions on, 122–3 Foreign Legion, see Légion Etrangère forgetting, art of, 4, 7, 12, 15, 81–3, 134–6, 212, 308, 329, 332 Foucauld, Charles de, 27, 183 Fougeron, André, 242 Francophonie, 5, 46 Gallieni, Joseph, General, 3, 13, 19, 31, 78, 90, 97, 107, 162, 163, 167, 188, 190, 193, 224, 226, 236, 269 Garnier, Francis, 19, 30, 32, 159–60, 193, 194, 226 Gauguin, Paul, 71, 210, 214, 240, 286, 297 genocide, 82 Gentil, Louis, 27, 70 Giraud, Charles, 90, 317–18 Gouraud, Henri, General, 31, 90, 97, 107, 162, 163, 200, 236, 300

379

great men commemoration of, 157–72, 356n31 exhibitions on, 164 missionaries and saints, 182–7, 216 in museums, 165, 167, 188–93, 216 in Paris, 158–63, 175–6 in the Invalides, 180–2 in the Panthéon, 176, 178–80 Greater France, 3, 9, 12, 19–20, 267, 313 Grégoire, Abbé Henri, 178–80, 216, 333 Griaule, Marcel, 252, 314–15 Guyane, 28, 47, 83, 305–6 Halbwachs, Maurice, 6 Hamy, Théodore, 249–50, 269 harkis, 2, 17, 31, 92, 100, 134–7, 140–1, 146–56, 319, 324, 331, 333 Hassan of Morocco, King, 191 Ho Chi Minh, 14, 73, 124, 130, 242 Hôtel de Montmorin, see ministère des Colonies Iacovleff, Alexandre, 213, 264, 296, 301 imperial commemoration of colonial troops, 15, 92, 95–6, 107–9, 110–13, 117–23, 125, 225–6, 236, 304; see also harkis of colonial wars, 105–7 and display of ‘natives’, 14, 35, 42, 63, 76, 82, 89, 161, 167, 174, 194, 198, 203–5, 228, 304 end of, 15 and national identity, 15 representation of women in, 14, 141, 157, 159–60, 173–4, 194, 198, 203, 205, 219 and settlers, 172–3, 195 of the Arabo-Islamic world, 15, 51–4, 287 imperial medicine, 236–8, 304–5, 308, 330 imperialism, 8, 120 see also colonialism Indochina, 13, 71, 95, 164–5, 180, 226, 299, 304, 330 French narrative on Indochina, 113, 128–32, 303, 332 Indochinese War, 11, 28, 92–3, 105, 107–10, 120, 124–32, 302–3 repatriation of Indochinese soldiers, 125 Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 71, 208

380

Index

Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA), 29, 71, 280, 287–9, 297–8, 321–2 Institut Musulman, 51–3 see also mosque Invalides, 13, 31, 72, 107, 149, 155, 162, 180–2, 236, 244, 291, 318–19, 326, 333 Jardin Botanique Colonial, 16, 35, 56, 61–7, 112, 114–15, 124, 173 Jaurès, Jean, 2, 179 Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre, 17 Juin, Alphonse, marshal, 97, 163, 191 La Bourdonnais, Bernard François Mahé de, 167, 218 La Pérouse, Jean-François Galaup de, 13, 14, 23, 78, 97, 159, 166, 175, 216, 238, 247 La Salle, Robert Cavelier de, 27, 31, 71, 167 Lamoricière, Christophe Juchault de, general, 80, 168–9 Laprade, Albert, 41, 182, 190, 341n39 Lebanon, 123 Lebel, Jean-Jacques, 243–4 Leclerc de Hauteclocque, Philippe, marshal, 71–2, 97, 163, 216 Légion Etrangère, 4, 27, 31, 107, 115, 126, 230–2, 239 lieux de mémoire, 9, 12, 14, 105–6, 246, 293 Ligue Maritime et Coloniale, 18 Loti, Pierre, 16, 27, 72, 77, 188–9, 192, 193, 216, 258, 270, 287, 295 Louisiana, 305–6 Louverture, Toussaint, 83, 179–80, 193–4, 221, 313, 333 Lyautey, Hubert, marshal, 3, 13, 27, 31, 35–8, 41, 43, 52, 67, 70, 72, 77, 78, 90, 92, 97, 98, 116, 162, 163, 175, 180–2, 188, 190–1, 193, 194, 200, 212, 216, 224, 226, 228, 236, 240, 286, 287, 330 MacMahon, Patrice, marshal, 169 Madagascar, 13, 27, 28, 56, 58, 60, 105, 114, 118, 306, 359n40 Maire, André, 213–14 Maison de la Négritude, 101–4 Malraux, André, 175, 176, 280

Mangin, Charles, general, 106, 122, 162, 163, 175 Marchand, Jean-Baptiste, captain, 40, 90, 160–1, 163, 194, 333–4 Margueritte, Auguste, 167–8 Matisse, Henri, 71, 214–15, 252, 288, 297 Mémorial des Guerres en Indochine (Fréjus), 17, 95, 125–33, 332, 334 Mémorial National aux Combattants d’Outre-Mer (Avignon), 147 Mémorial National de l’Outre-Mer (Marseille), 18, 329–31 Mémorial National des Guerres en Afrique du Nord (Quai Branly, Paris), 3, 17, 150–5, 332, 334 ministère des Colonies, 18, 30–1, 43, 58, 62, 113, 196, 340n16 ministry of colonies, see ministère des Colonies missionaries, 13, 27, 79, 84–5, 86, 175, 182–7, 299, 330 Mitterrand, François, 2, 17, 121, 125, 126, 137, 144, 178–9, 255, 287, 323, 328, 333 Mohammed V., 29, 288 Monfreid, Henri de, 188 monuments aux morts, 2, 3, 9, 10, 12, 16, 35, 76, 90, 93–6, 98, 107–9, 120, 123, 231 Carnoux-en-Provence, 97–100, 172, 324 First World War, 107–15, 121, 123, 125 Fréjus, 17, 95, 121–2, 125–33, 228, 332 iconography, 109, 121–2, 125, 132, 139–41, 143, 151–3, 172–3 limits to monumental commemoration, 127–33, 154–6 Mont-Valérien (Hauts-de-Seine), 120, 122 repatriation of, 96–7, 115–16, 168–72 Second World War, 110, 113, 116–21, 123 to African and Maghrebin soldiers, 17, 35, 110, 114, 117–23, 228, 328 to Indochinese soldiers, 35, 118, 120, 228–9 to rapatriés, 94, 172–3

Index to the Algerian War, 2–3, 139–51, 333, 352n76 to the Indochinese War, 17, 109, 111–14, 124–33 to women, 141 see also individual names Morand, Paul, 16 Moreau, Gustave, 218 Morocco, 3, 13, 16, 52, 107, 123, 152, 180–1, 287, 288, 297, 300, 330, 332 mosque, 51–3, 95–6, 101, 112, 287–8 Musée Africain (Lyon), 17, 87–90, 187, 299–300, 332 Musée Albert Kahn (Boulogne-Billancourt), 199–200, 299–1, 332 Musée Colonial, see Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie Musée Dapper (Paris), 267–8, 275, 278, 289 Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Paris), 199 Musée de la Compagnie des Indes (Lorient), 217–18, 221, 240, 249, 332 Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer, see Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie Musée de la Poste (Paris), 198–9, 298, 321 Musée de l’Homme (Paris), 15, 46, 47, 56, 58, 71, 245, 249–54, 256, 258–60, 263, 265, 272, 277–8, 284–6, 289–90, 314–16 Musée des Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens (Marseille), 17, 197, 270–2, 277, 332 Musées des Arts Premiers (Paris), 18, 48, 71, 254–5, 261–2, 278, 331 Musée d’Orsay (Paris), 47, 71, 210, 215, 298, 331 Musée du Louvre (Paris), 25, 30, 31, 47, 71, 210, 248, 250, 251, 252, 254–5, 260–1, 278, 280, 285, 287, 315, 331, 332 Musée du Nouveau Monde (La Rochelle), 204, 218–21, 240, 242, 293, 332 Musée Ethnographique du Trocadéro, see Musée de l’Homme Musée Guimet (Paris), 17, 71, 85–7, 245, 251, 255, 270, 280, 283–5, 289–90, 331, 332 Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (MAAO, Paris), 15, 16, 35,

381

71, 196, 212, 217, 245, 253–4, 256, 263, 286, 289–90, 296, 316–18, 326, 328, 331, 332, 342n42 exhibitions, 47, 48 history, 41, 45–8 iconography, 41–5 museums–Asian art, 280–3, 332 see also individual names museums–Chamber of Commerce, 13 Marseille, 92, 197, 271, 328 museums–ethnography, 18, 79, 197–01, 248, 269, 272–3, 277–8, 314 Alençon, 201 Bordeaux, 201, 270–2 Boulogne-Billancourt, 199–200, 212–14, 240 Chartres, 269 and display of non-Western productions, 260–2, 268, 272–9 Ile d’Aix, 264, 267 La Rochelle, 204, 270 Marseille, 197, 270–2 Paris, 267–8 Rennes, 268–9 see also individual names museums–fine arts, 13, 19, 240–1 Bordeaux, 83–4, 321 Boulogne-Billancourt, 293, 296 Chantilly, 209 La Rochelle, 204 Marseille, 209–10, 295–6, 328 Nantes, 203, 286 Nice, 209 Rouen, 79, 208 Toulouse, 209, 211 Versailles, 209 see also individual names museums–military history, 13, 95, 224–5, 233, 238, 240–1 Aubagne, 230–2, 239 Coëtquidan, 233–4 Fréjus, 127–33, 225–30, 239, 240, 332 Paris, 31, 235–9, 302–3 Péronne, 303–4 Senlis, 234 Valence, 235 museums–missionary history, 79, 85, 87, 201, 266–7, 332

382

Index

museums–natural history, 201 La Rochelle, 216 Le Havre, 216 Lyon, 85–7 Marseille, 295 Nantes, 203, 292–3 Paris, 56–9 see also individual names Muslims, imperial control on, 52–4, 120, 168 Napoleon, 14, 25–6, 31, 209, 210, 247–8, 264, 305, 313 national identity and empire, 307, 313, 334 and museums, 202, 263 sites of, 9, 15 neo-colonialism, 103, 124, 144, 279, 311 New Caledonia conflict in, 17, 78, 144–5, 316, 352n78 exhibitions on, 17, 316–17, 330 New World, 219–20, 226 non-Western art, 11, 15, 47, 73, 196, 206–7, 246–8, 251–2, 259, 264, 266, 298, 332 see also museums–ethnography Nora, Pierre, 9 Notre-Dame des Missions, church, 184–5 Observatoire quartier (Paris), 31–2 Oecumenic commemorations, 95, 109, 112–14, 121, 142 Oradour-sur-Glane Centre de la Mémoire, 2 massacre, 2 orientalism, 11, 15, 16, 25–6, 31, 32, 63, 71, 77, 173, 176, 189–90, 205–11, 241, 262, 280–3, 286, 291, 294, 296–7, 322, 327 Palais de la Porte Dorée, see Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie Parc Montsouris, 25, 49 Pavie, Auguste, 30, 70, 164, 226, 285 Pavillon des Sessions, see Musée du Louvre Pélissier, Aimable Jean-Jacques, general, 171–2 penal colonies, 172, 305

Picasso, Pablo, 15, 214–15, 242–3, 251, 264 pieds-noirs, 4, 5, 13, 17, 90, 91–4, 96–100, 115, 116, 134–8, 143, 147, 155, 167–73, 187–8, 222–4, 295, 319, 323, 324, 328–31, 333 post-colonialism and museums, 18–19, 263, 273, 278–9, 289, 332 and national identity, 5, 263, 333–4 and politics, 187–8, 305, 314, 333 primitivism, 251–2, 262, 277, 289 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre de, 92, 209–10 Quai Branly museum, see Musées des Arts Premiers Quinquaud, Anna, 164 Racim, Mohammed, 208, 298, 321 racism, 91, 93, 122, 134–5, 143, 145, 150, 263, 292, 304 rapatriés, see pieds-noirs Renan, Ernest, 7 Rolland, Guillaume, 166 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de, 175 Saint-John Perse, 175, 216, 356n31 Schoelcher, Victor, 2, 14, 90, 93, 102, 145, 176–81, 191, 194, 251, 312, 356n31 Schweitzer, Albert, 14, 78, 167, 188, 191–2, 216 Sedar Senghor, Léopold, 14, 101, 102, 110, 121, 266, 348n56 Segalen, Victor, 16 sites of memory buildings, 79–80, 95–8, 100, 112–14 Carnoux-en-Provence, 97–100, 172, 324, 333 cemeteries, 98–9, 111, 119, 120, 126, 142, 175–6, 332 métro stations, 28 museums, see museums; see also individual names plaques, 73–5, 83, 90, 107–10, 114–15, 117, 124, 126–7, 139, 141, 143, 148–9, 157, 163–4, 168, 170, 175, 179, 183–4, 187, 225, 236, 305, 313, 333

Index statues, 106–7, 115, 121–2, 157–72, 236 street names, 27–30, 39, 73, 75, 78, 90, 92, 137–8, 143, 157, 164, 168, 333, 334 slavery, 2, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 29, 80, 101–4, 176–80, 193–4, 311, 330, 333 exhibitions on, 17, 81–4, 220–1, 242, 291, 293, 306, 310–13, 326, 332 slave-trading ports, 80–4, 332, 346n11 Société des Missions Africaines, 85, 87–9 Société des Missions Etrangères, 18, 71, 185–7 South Pacific, fascination with, 14, 315–18, 326, 332 spahis, 31, 92, 107, 116, 118–19, 126, 198, 234, 235, 238, 240, 302–4, 308 exhibitions on, 302–3, 326 statues of colonial figures, 158–72 political purpose of, 157–8, 163, 167–8, 172 see also great men; sites of memory Stora, Benjamin, 4, 135, 154 Syria, 123 Taslitzky, Boris, 242 tiers-mondisme, 15, 18

383

tirailleurs sénégalais, 4, 31, 34, 82, 106, 110, 117–19, 161, 229, 230, 304 Tjibaou, Jean-Marie, 17, 47, 78, 316–17 Tunisia, 3, 16, 152 UNESCO, 81, 360–1n73 Vichy regime, 76, 135, 168 Vietnam, 13, 17, 124–6, 130, 132, 160, 242, 298, 326 see also Indochina villages noirs, 76–7 war monuments, see monuments aux morts West Indies, 3, 5, 13, 17, 23, 28, 29, 35, 80–1, 83, 110–11 Yacine, Kateb, 321 Yvon, Maurice, 32 Zoos, 18 and colonialism, 21–2, 67–70 Jardin des Plantes menagerie, 68 Vincennes Zoo, 38, 67–8 zouaves, 4, 31, 107, 159, 169, 235

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