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rfmcdonaldAlan Riding's New York Times article French Strive to Be Diverse Without Being Less French" seems to be based on a false assumption, evident in its very first paragraph:
The false assumption, of course, is that France hasn't changed as the result of previous waves of mass immigration, that somehow there exists a direct lineal connection between the France of (say) 1904, or 1804, or 1704, and the present. This connection was disrupted in the generation after the Second World War by mass immigration from the Maghreb--not by the pieds noirs, of course, but rather by the immigration of Muslims.
This overloooks the fact that most notably in the period of the Third Republic (181 through to 1940), but also in the regimes before (the Bourbon and Orleans kingdoms, the Second Empire) and the regimes after (Vichy and Nazi occupation, the Fourth and Fifth Republics), France has undergone a fairly thorough process of modernization and internal homogenization. Once upon a time, in 1871, France was an overwhelmingly rural and agricultural country, nascent industry in Ile-de-France and the Lyonnais and the Nord and its booming cities aside. Once upon a time, in 1871, France was an overwhelmingly Catholic country, the growth of freethinking in the provinces and various radicalisms in Paris aside. Once upon a time--yes, as late as 1871--much of France still wasn't properly Francophone, between the strongholds of the Breton language in Lower Brittany and the Basque language in the French Basque Provinces and the Flemish language in rural French Flanders, the survival of fragmented Occitan dialects throughout the southern third of the country, and dialects of the langue d'oïl in the rest of the state.
Modernization has changed all this. France is urban and post-industrial, with a negligible and declining agrarian population; France is overwhelmingly secular, islands of Catholic and Huguenot and Muslim and Jewish piety aside; France is overwhlemingly Francophone, with almost all of the old minority languages approaching death and the languages of the 20th century's immigrants following on the same path. Internal differences within France have diminished very sharply. It's modernization's curse; or, perhaps, modernization's benefit.
Oddly enough, the millions of immigrants who came to France in the period of the Third Republic--incidentally including, in addition to the groups identified by Riding, a very substantial contingent of Belgians in the last quarter of the 19th century--played a very major role in this homogenization. Consider that France's indigenous rural population was relatively reluctant to leave the countryside, thanks to the relative unattractiveness of urban industry to peasants. Foreign immigration played a substantial role in providing France with the urban-industrial workforce that it desperately needed, reaching an apogee in the 1920s. These immigrants, more-or-less detached from their homelands (most of which, like Italy and Belgium and Spain, hadn't managed to create modern and homogeneous national identities of their own), were unattached to the traditions of the peasants living in the countrysides surrounding their new homes. The peasants themselves, once they came within the cultural and economic orbits of the cities, found it very difficult to maintain their traditions in their integrity. One major result of this foreign immigration, then, was to radically change French national identity.
And no, the French weren't happy. The anti-immigration rhetoric and policies of the 1930s are a matter of public note; so, too, was the Vichy regime's campaigns against the métèques contaminating a pure France, stemming from a variety of nasty clerico-nationalist movements of the worrisome modernity of the Third Republic. (And so, too, were the unsuccessful attempts of Fascist Italy to mobilize its immigrants in France behind irredentist campaigns, in Nice and Savoy and Corsica and even farther afield.)
The modern concerns of Europeans with the effects of immigration on national identities have appeared before. The details certainly differ, but even so we've been here before.
I repeat: We need journalists and writers who have a sense of history.
After 15 years of soul-searching, France has decided to create a Museum of Immigration. Why now? For generations, France successfully absorbed waves of Poles, Russians, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese — and remained French. Then over the past 30 years millions of migrants flooded in from the third world, and it was France that changed.
The false assumption, of course, is that France hasn't changed as the result of previous waves of mass immigration, that somehow there exists a direct lineal connection between the France of (say) 1904, or 1804, or 1704, and the present. This connection was disrupted in the generation after the Second World War by mass immigration from the Maghreb--not by the pieds noirs, of course, but rather by the immigration of Muslims.
This overloooks the fact that most notably in the period of the Third Republic (181 through to 1940), but also in the regimes before (the Bourbon and Orleans kingdoms, the Second Empire) and the regimes after (Vichy and Nazi occupation, the Fourth and Fifth Republics), France has undergone a fairly thorough process of modernization and internal homogenization. Once upon a time, in 1871, France was an overwhelmingly rural and agricultural country, nascent industry in Ile-de-France and the Lyonnais and the Nord and its booming cities aside. Once upon a time, in 1871, France was an overwhelmingly Catholic country, the growth of freethinking in the provinces and various radicalisms in Paris aside. Once upon a time--yes, as late as 1871--much of France still wasn't properly Francophone, between the strongholds of the Breton language in Lower Brittany and the Basque language in the French Basque Provinces and the Flemish language in rural French Flanders, the survival of fragmented Occitan dialects throughout the southern third of the country, and dialects of the langue d'oïl in the rest of the state.
Modernization has changed all this. France is urban and post-industrial, with a negligible and declining agrarian population; France is overwhelmingly secular, islands of Catholic and Huguenot and Muslim and Jewish piety aside; France is overwhlemingly Francophone, with almost all of the old minority languages approaching death and the languages of the 20th century's immigrants following on the same path. Internal differences within France have diminished very sharply. It's modernization's curse; or, perhaps, modernization's benefit.
Oddly enough, the millions of immigrants who came to France in the period of the Third Republic--incidentally including, in addition to the groups identified by Riding, a very substantial contingent of Belgians in the last quarter of the 19th century--played a very major role in this homogenization. Consider that France's indigenous rural population was relatively reluctant to leave the countryside, thanks to the relative unattractiveness of urban industry to peasants. Foreign immigration played a substantial role in providing France with the urban-industrial workforce that it desperately needed, reaching an apogee in the 1920s. These immigrants, more-or-less detached from their homelands (most of which, like Italy and Belgium and Spain, hadn't managed to create modern and homogeneous national identities of their own), were unattached to the traditions of the peasants living in the countrysides surrounding their new homes. The peasants themselves, once they came within the cultural and economic orbits of the cities, found it very difficult to maintain their traditions in their integrity. One major result of this foreign immigration, then, was to radically change French national identity.
And no, the French weren't happy. The anti-immigration rhetoric and policies of the 1930s are a matter of public note; so, too, was the Vichy regime's campaigns against the métèques contaminating a pure France, stemming from a variety of nasty clerico-nationalist movements of the worrisome modernity of the Third Republic. (And so, too, were the unsuccessful attempts of Fascist Italy to mobilize its immigrants in France behind irredentist campaigns, in Nice and Savoy and Corsica and even farther afield.)
The modern concerns of Europeans with the effects of immigration on national identities have appeared before. The details certainly differ, but even so we've been here before.
I repeat: We need journalists and writers who have a sense of history.
