“If you want to become French, you speak French, you live like the French. We will no longer settle for integration that does not work, we will require assimilation.” These were the words of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy this week. He went on: “Once you become French, your ancestors are the Gauls. ‘I love France, I learned the history of France, I see myself as French,’ is what you must say.”
This week, personalities from both sides of the political spectrum expressed their concern over this statement, made by Sarkozy on Monday night during a meeting in Franconville, a north Paris suburb. Curiously, the part that stirred up most controversy was the idea that, once you become French, the Gauls are your ancestors. This declaration is historically incorrect: Gaul is actually a geographical construct conceptualised by the Romans to refer to a territory bringing people of varied origins together. This notion was later used by Napoleon III, after defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, to rally the French around symbols such as courage and strength. [...]
Colonial nostalgia is making a comeback in France. It never left completely, but the approaching presidential election seems to have unleashed something. Two weeks ago, it was François Fillon, the ex-prime minister, publicly stating that “colonisation was merely a sharing of culture”. This is historical revisionism, nothing more. What about the rape, murder, forced work, not to mention the “fear, inferiority complex, tremor, kneeling (and) despair”, as Aimé Césaire described. And remember Nadine Morano’s comments last year? The former secretary of state for family said on television that France was a country of “white race”.
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