“The French people solemnly proclaim their attachment to the Rights of Man and the principles of national sovereignty as defined by the Declaration of 1789, confirmed and complemented by the Preamble to the Constitution of 1946, and to the rights and duties as defined in the Charter for the Environment of 2004 [then a future year] … By virtue of these principles and that of the self-determination of peoples, the Republic offers to the overseas territories which have expressed the will to adhere to them new institutions founded on the common ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity and conceived for the purpose of their democratic development.”
– Preamble to the current Constitution of France (adopted 4 October 1958)
This book is skewed towards modern history (but is still good)
I’ve been trying to learn the French language since 2002. When I started learning the language, I was still in my sophomore year of high school. Thus, I’ve been interested in France for at least that long. My interest in the French language had something to do with Canada as well, but it’s hard to understand French Canada (or any other Francophone country) without some understanding of where the language has come from. This is part of what motivated me to get a copy of this book – I wanted to understand the culture of the French language. In this, I was not disappointed, and learned much about the history and culture of France – including the political history. (Although there is much art history in this book as well, for people who are interested in this.)
Prehistory of France, followed by ancient French history
But this book is skewed towards modern history, as will be evident to anyone who reads even the table of contents for this book. Some might actually find this a bonus, if they’d prefer greater discussion of France since the French Revolution. But personally, I would have preferred it if the author had covered Ancient France and Medieval France in more detail. The only chapter to cover Ancient France is the very first chapter, and that is as much about prehistory as it is about history. It is simply entitled “Cro-Magnon Man, Roman Gaul and the Feudal Kingdom.” By the end of the first chapter, the reader is already in the Middle Ages, so even the first chapter is not entirely focused on antiquity.
Baptism of Clovis I, a sixth-century French king
Medieval France and Renaissance France
The second chapter is entitled “A Nation Born in Blood,” and it goes through most of the rest of the Middle Ages. The third chapter starts at the beginning of the Renaissance, which overlaps somewhat with the Late Middle Ages. That third chapter is entitled “Renaissance, Reformation and the Wars of Religion.” By the time it’s over, the reader is not only past the Middle Ages, but past the Renaissance and Reformation as well – as you would expect in a chapter of that title. (They also, of course, cover the “Wars of Religion,” the other subject mentioned in that title.) The reader is not even a quarter of the way through the book when the next chapter begins, which is entitled “The Grand Century of the Sun King.” This “Grand Century” starts in the seventeenth century – evidence of just how fast this book goes through the early stuff.
Charlemagne
The Sun King through the Storming of the Bastille
But the coverage gets more detailed as the book gets closer to the present. In some ways, this actually is helpful when you get to these periods. Even the BBC’s television history of Britain skips over things before 1,000 years ago. Incidentally, I would have preferred to get this kind of history from a television series. But I can’t find any television histories of France in any language, let alone English. This is part of why I went to this book – to get some quick and light coverage of this subject. I plan to cover “The Grand Century of the Sun King” in another blog post, so I won’t say much about it here. But suffice it to say that the name “Sun King” (or “Le roi soleil”) is another name for Louis the Fourteenth. He is definitely one of the most influential kings in French history. Some consider him the longest-reigning absolute monarch in all of world history. (He reigned for over 72 years.) The next chapter is called “The Enlightenment and the Fall of the Monarchy.” It first covers the administration of the Sun King’s great-grandson – namely, Louis the Fifteenth. Then it covers the administration of the more notorious Louis the Sixteenth. It was the latter king, along with his wife Marie Antoinette, who would later be executed during the French Revolution. Thus, there is much to talk about for the years leading up to the Revolution. But this chapter ends with the Storming of the Bastille in 1789, possibly the best-known year in French history. This is the moment in which the Revolution began.
Storming of the Bastille, 1789
French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte (among other things)
The next chapter covers the Revolution itself, including the aforementioned executions of Marie Antoinette and her husband (which happened after it had already begun). This chapter is entitled “From the Revolution to Napoleon.” It also covers the French Revolutionary Wars, and the even more costly Napoleonic Wars. These periods are intimately connected, so it probably makes sense to cover them together here as they do. The next chapter is called “Revolutionary Aftershocks and Another Napoleon.” The reader is not even halfway through the book, and finds themselves already in the nineteenth century. I actually appreciated the in-depth coverage of the nineteenth century, since this was a period in French history that I didn’t know much about before this. As with other chapters, the discussion is as much about art history as it is about political history. Nonetheless, there is enough discussion of political history to satisfy fans of this subject as well.
Propaganda painting of Napoleon Bonaparte
France in the Great War (a.k.a. “World War One”)
The next chapter is called “The Third Republic: Semaine Sanglante to the First World War.” I had never heard of the “Semaine Sanglante” (or “Bloody Week”) before I read this chapter. Thus, I was glad that they gave some comparatively in-depth coverage of it. They also briefly discuss World War One. But to those who lived through it, it was the “Great War” (or “Grande Guerre” in French). The United States lost less than one percent of its population in this war (far less), so we don’t remember it as being “one of the big ones.” But the casualties were much higher in France, and amounted to 4% of the population there. In part, this was because so much of the war took place in France, on the infamous “Western Front.” Thus, civilians were a significant part of the French death toll, although they also had a fair number of soldiers die in the maelstrom of the trenches – and had some die in naval warfare against the German U-boats. When you understand how much France suffered in the First World War, you begin to understand why they were so reluctant to fight again in the Second World War, at least after things went south for them near the beginning of it.
Battle of the Somme – France, 1916
France before, during, and after World War Two
But the next chapter is mainly about the interim period. It is simply entitled “1919-1940: Defeat Out of Victory.” This chapter covers only the first part of World War Two, shortly after Britain and France declared war on Germany over the issue of Poland. But everything changed for France when it surrendered to the Nazis in 1940, after it had been overrun by their troops. This sets the stage for the next chapter, which is entitled “The Second World War: Collaboration and Resistance.” This is one of the most dramatic chapters of the book, and I cannot possibly do it justice here. But suffice it to say that they cover both the collaborationist Vichy regime and the dramas of the French Resistance. They also cover the Free French troops fighting abroad (under General Charles de Gaulle), the bombing of occupied France by the various Western Allies, and its eventual liberation by these same Western Allies. But the book gets more biased as it enters the post-World-War-II period. Sadly, this is the norm with epic histories, whether they are designed for television viewers or readers of books. He overuses such terms as “far right,” and portrays the Socialists in glowing terms. This bias pervades the next three chapters. The next chapter is entitled “The Fourth Republic in Cold War and Colonial Crisis.” They briefly cover the French war in Indochina, and (from the French point of view) the even bigger war in Algeria. As expected, this chapter covers them both negatively. Both of them were massive blows to French colonialism. The next chapter is called “De Gaulle’s Golden Decade Ends in Tragi-Comedy.” There are some fair criticisms to be made of de Gaulle, but the author is clearly covering him from a left-wing perspective. The author also briefly mentions how under de Gaulle, France became the fourth nation to get nuclear weapons in 1960. This is one of the most important facts to know about modern France.
Charles de Gaulle
Bias in the last few chapters (with some contradictory passages to illustrate it)
The next chapter is called “Mutations of the ‘Republican Monarchy’: Pompidou to Chirac.” To give you a flavor for how biased this chapter is, allow me to quote from two brief passages in it. The chapter says that “In a changing world, constitutions and institutional arrangements are never going to be perfect – Britain has taken a century over reforming its medieval House of Lords, while the US can suffer a stalemate between the president and Congress, and is tied to maintaining the right to bear arms in what is now an urban rather than a frontier society.” (Source: Pages 260-261) But two pages later, he says that the “scandals” under Chirac (as he calls them) were due to “this way of exercising power and to the absence of adequate institutional, political, social – and above all moral – checks and balances.” (Source: Page 263) One wonders how a society is supposed to have all these “checks and balances” without occasional gridlock – or “stalemate,” as he calls it. Such gridlock seems to be a necessary (and even unavoidable) part of democracy. Indeed, preventing certain kinds of government action is the whole reason that we have these kinds of “checks and balances” in the first place. His opinions seem to be poorly thought out, betraying an ignorance of both separation of powers and democracy in general. In these and other ways, the last several chapters of the book seem to be compromised by political bias, which mar its quality in a number of ways.
The Suez Crisis (which involved the French), 1956
Conclusion: Overall a good book, albeit somewhat biased near the end
This bias also pervades the next chapter, entitled “The ‘French Exception’: Reality or Illusion?” This is actually the second-to-last chapter in the book. The author has some positive things to say about France, but he also has some very negative things to say. This might be surprising, coming from a British liberal like Cecil Jenkins, the author of this book. But apparently, liberals are willing to extend “white guilt” even to their fellow liberals in Europe. No one, it seems, is too left-wing to be spared this treatment. And the last chapter is entitled “France in the New Global Order.” As expected, this chapter was also quite biased. Sadly, this is the norm with epic histories (as mentioned earlier), and this book is no exception to the rule. Nonetheless, the pre-World-War-II parts of the book are actually quite good – very good, in fact. They are well-written, entertaining, and interesting – although they move through the early history a bit too fast for my tastes, as mentioned earlier. I would have preferred something that covered these periods a bit more evenly in terms of time span. But for a reading project that is both light and short, this is among the best coverage that you’ll see of French history, and that’s saying something. Just take the later chapters with a grain of salt, if (like me) you have the stomach to get through them in the first place.
“France shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic. It shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race or religion. It shall respect all beliefs. It shall be organised on a decentralised basis. Statutes shall promote equal access by women and men to elective offices and posts as well as to position of professional and social responsibility … The language of the Republic shall be French.”
– Articles 1 and 2 of the current Constitution of France (adopted 4 October 1958)
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