Alain Finkielkraut, a conservative philosopher and member of the Académie française, damned the book in an equally savage review: “The authors of Histoire mondiale de la France are the gravediggers of the great French heritage.” Other commentators on the right have echoed the same theme. Michael Jeaubelaux, a blogger who supports the conservative presidential candidate François Fillon, wrote: “When the Collège de France buries France and the French, it is urgent for the people to seize power against those who are paid to destroy our country, its history, its heritage, its culture!”
Why such outrage? In choosing a president, the French will be voting, at least in part, for an interpretation of French history. When Fillon launched his campaign last August, he proclaimed that he would change the way history is taught in primary schools: “If I am elected president of the Republic, I will ask three academics to seek the best advice in order to rewrite history programs around the idea of a national story [récit national].” He described his view of France’s past as “a history made of men and women, of symbols, of places, of monuments, of events that derive their meaning and significance from the progressive construction of France’s distinct civilization.” [...]
What makes Histoire mondiale de la France “global” in contrast to other histories is its emphasis on the non-French elements that have always saturated French life and that come from all over the world. There are entries, for instance, on the first translation of the Koran into Latin in 1143 under Pierre le Vénérable; the acquisition of the Catalan Atlas—an immense illuminated map of the world produced by a Jewish Majorcan cartographer—by the royal library of Charles V in 1380; and the reception of the opulent Persian embassy to Louis XIV at Versailles in 1715. The book rejects the notion of a French identity that has existed from the beginning—a beginning associated with the cliché “our ancestors the Gauls”—and that has been refined over the centuries to constitute a distinct and particularly rich civilization.
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