National, first, imperial, then ? What if we had thought the history of France backwards ? A detour through the colonial margins reveals how national identity was constructed and clarified in a constant work of taxonomy aimed at including some, and excluding others, over a long period ranging from the Ancien Régime to the contemporary.
What does it mean to be French ? Who can claim this national identity and, conversely, who must be excluded ? On what criteria should a distinction be made between nationals and citizens? ? How to contain the identity and cultural unity of the nation ? Because these questions which attempt to circumscribe French identity and citizenship in the face of cultural diversity are as much of interest to our imperial history as to our national present, we cannot highly recommend reading the work edited by the historian Cécile Vidal, whose the major interest is to restore the complexity and historical depth of the debate on Frenchness as it unfolded between the colonies and the metropolis of XVIe At XIXe century.
By inviting the reader to relive this dialogue between the metropolis and its colonial margins (Canada, Santo Domingo, Louisiana, Mascarenes, Senegalese trading posts of Saint-Louis and Gorée), the eight contributions collected here restore, in small successive touches and in the concern for writing history “ from below », the social construction of the nation and national identity. A first part, more focused on the XVIe And XVIIe centuries, describes the difficulty experienced by royal power in defining and delimiting national identity within the imperial space, fragmented and multi-ethnic by nature (Paul Cohen, Thomas Wien, Cécile Vidal). The answer that emerges during the XVIIIe century (2e part) results in a racialization of Frenchness based on a white identity, which makes it possible to bring together around the national identity (metropolitans and white settlers) what is separated in the imperial space (metropolis and colonies) (Gilles Havard, Guillaume Aubert, John D. Garrius). A third part, focused on the post-revolutionary period, questions precisely the effects of the advent of popular sovereignty and the dissociation then made between nationality and citizenship, on the construction and claim of Frenchness (Vanessa Mongey, Sue Peabody) .
Nation and Frenchness: the contributions of a situated history
One of the first interests of the work undoubtedly lies in its methodological bias: that of a situated history, of a history “ from below » or – to put it another way in the imperial framework that interests us here – of a history of the (colonial) margins, conversely of an often overlooking reading of the simultaneous construction of the nation and national identity. While “ The process of nationalization, the process by which national identity becomes meaningful, is frequently considered to be a top-down phenomenon, from the state to the civil society », (…) it seems on the contrary necessary to show how the “ civil society » as a whole participates just as much as the State in the collective discussion on the nation, which takes place at different levels, both national and local » (p. 16). From this postulate, two new avenues of investigation open up on the dual construction of the nation and national identity. The first, following the work of David Bell in particular, consists of questioning and rethinking the historicization of this double construction by focusing more on the period preceding the French Revolution, considered in classical history as the founding moment of the political birth of nation-states, nationality and citizenship. The second line of investigation aims, in turn, to broaden the focus, but this time on a spatial scale. In the colonies of the First Empire, claims to Frenchness were indeed numerous and polymorphous. The debates, the registers of arguments and the legal battles that these claims cause participate, little by little, in the definition and delimitation of Frenchness within the extended framework of the Empire (XVIe–XIXe century). This detour through the colonial margins is particularly useful to show how national identity was constructed and clarified in a constant work of taxonomy aimed at including some and excluding others, over a long period ranging from Ancien Régime in contemporary times.
A construction of the nation as a counterpoint to the Empire
From a methodological postulate, the use of situated history becomes, over the course of the eight contributions, a theoretical postulate leading to a certain rewriting of the history of the French nation, understood here “ like a element (and) not as a container of imperial history » (p. 12). The extent and protean character of the Empire – plurality of territories (provinces and colonies), modes of governance (centralized or remote absolutism), languages, races (Europeans, Amerindians, Africans), legal statuses ( legislation on the Exclusive and on slavery in the colonies) – and this in a context of strong imperial rivalries, will lead the French authorities to further define the nation and its criteria of belonging. By then creating legal inequalities between residents of the colonies and metropolitan residents, France will gradually define the national according to and in counterpoint to the colonial. “ From this perspective, the colonial is not defined as a relationship of dependence between a center and a periphery, but in terms of law, inclusion or exclusion » (p. 19). The colonial character of the Empire and the otherness of the subjects residing in the overseas territories are thus outlined and reinforced.
A racialization of Frenchness
The multiple demands for Frenchness which followed – carried mainly by local elites, mulattoes and settlers – were to succeed, from the XVIIIe century, to a white racialization of French identity, which then makes it possible to “ the link between the external and internal dimensions of colonial domination » (p. 23). Even if the racial dimension cannot be sufficient to determine the criteria of belonging to the nation (certain white settlers could, for example, be considered undesirable), it nevertheless becomes a very effective property, making it possible to distance black groups in particular. and Native Americans. A sign of difference that is all the more important to mark as the latter could be suspected of acculturating the white settlers of New France (via mixed unions in particular) more than of being acculturated themselves. The failures of cultural assimilation will, in turn, contribute to reinforcing the idea of a natural Frenchness built around French customs and, above all, the white race.
Also the conflicting and changing debate on Frenchness is linked to a broader political reflection on the relationships between nation, empire and race. A debate with particularly clear-cut positions during the Revolution with, on the one hand, a desire to grant French citizenship to as many people as possible (“ free of color » and slaves) and, on the other, a desire to maintain the distinction between subjects and citizens. The procrastination of power regarding the abolition of slavery – recorded at the end of the XVIIIe century in Santo Domingo and the Caribbean to be finally defeated by Napoleon at the beginning of the XIXe century – attest to the difficulty of thinking about national identity outside of racial property. Likewise, in the plantation societies of the Caribbean and the Mascarenes, the question of citizenship directly meets the racial question: how free of color “, owners of land and slaves in the same way as white planters, could they still be their equals? ?
A long debate… topical
This historical dive into the colonial laboratory observed under the Monarchy, the Empire and the Republic, attests – as Frederick Cooper underlines in the afterword of the work – to a long debate on Frenchness, conflicting, discontinuous and polymorphous. A long debate which will interest historians of the colonial as well as sociologists of postcolonial, immigration and politics because “ one thing is clear: the meaning of Frenchness was no more fixed in 1946 than in 1763, 1789 or 1848. It is still debated in 2014 » (p. 221). The public debate on national identity » launched under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy or the commercial success of some recent essays concluding the decline of the French nation and identity, are there to attest to this. If the debate on national identity is today mainly carried by elites and other opinion leaders of the “ center » (metropolis), it also continues to operate in the “ margins » postcolonial. This is the case, for example, in Mayotte, a Muslim society traditionally governed according to Islamic customary law, which has become 101e French department in 2011. The assimilationist policy thus engaged challenges civil society which takes stock of what national integration covers, experienced here in the conflictual form of a choice between Frenchness And majority.
And it is in this sense that this work of history seems to us to be a crucial piece to nourish and decompartmentalize the contemporary debate on national identity. If the latter was constructed and defined as a counterpoint to an imperial history which, from the XVIIIe century, will gradually racialize the criteria of inclusion and exclusion of the nation, it is clear that this line of racial divide continues, in part, to operate in the contemporary debate on French identity. By pleading, in 1946, for citizenship open to the peoples of the Empire, Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor opened a breach in the racial conception of national identity. In the name of equalization and legal assimilation (which did not, or not completely, cover cultural assimilation), the French nation was thus preparing to welcome within it the cultural diversity representative of its imperial conquests, and more particularly here of the four old colonies » (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, Réunion) which became French departments at the same time. Nearly 70 years later, in a France marked by the rise of nationalism (perhaps less marked in electoral behavior than in speeches publicly held by a few opinion leaders: politicians, polemicists, essayists), the idea of ‘a “ identity of origin » resurfaces to discuss, if not contest, Frenchness against, this time, populations from immigrant backgrounds, accused of refusing republican assimilation in favor of communitarian logic. Their demographic weight, supposedly growing, would in turn endanger the cultural and identity unity of the nation.
Ultimately, from yesterday to today, the connection is striking in that the debate on national identity comes up against this same question – a priori sensitive – of the integration of “ Other cultural “. If this debate is not outdated to date, we can regret that some of the arguments put forward are, for their part, largely outdated. There are those, in particular, which actually lead to a certain reification of the historically racial and culturalist nature of French identity.