Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
Julio Godoy
11 September 2006
Paris — A meaning of colonialism offered in the new edition of a French dictionary has stirred another debate on how France views its past.
In its edition that appeared this month, the widely consulted French dictionary Le Petit Robert defines colonialism as "valuing, enhancing, exploiting the natural resources" of foreign territories.
This definition has provoked angry reactions from groups representing the French black population and associations against racism. "This definition aims at justifying colonialism," the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples (MRAP, after its French name) said in a statement.
"Le Petit Robert's choice of words conveys a racist view of history and contempt towards the former colonies," MRAP president Mouloud Aounit told IPS.
"We consider this definition a new attempt to glorify colonialism," Aounit said. Other French dictionaries, he said, "offer a technical, non-controversial definition of colonialism."
In a letter addressed to the dictionary's editor Alain Rey, president of the newly founded Council of French Black Organisations (CRAN) Pascal Lozès said: "With this choice of words, (you are) granting bail to colonialism. Such a definition aims at comforting those who profess racism."
The dictionary editors have turned down demands to revise the offered meaning. "Nothing in the definition justifies the attacks" made by CRAN and MRAP, the editors said in a statement.
"I share the general views of these associations on racism," Rey told media representatives. "But I am surprised by the lack of economic culture their complaints express. If we are not allowed to speak of the positive aspects of a globally negative phenomenon, then we are facing a form of revisionism."
Official authorities have stayed away from the dispute following their own role in stirring a debate on colonialism in early 2005.
The ruling party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), unanimously approved a law in February last year urging historians, textbook authors and professors to emphasise "the positive role (played by) France overseas, especially in the Maghreb region."
The French government amended the law earlier this year under pressure from intellectuals, immigrants associations and governments of former colonies, but the controversy that it provoked has not died down. At a meeting in July this year Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika condemned French colonialism as one of the "most barbarian" expressions of colonial exploitation.
Arguing that the French law was offensive, Bouteflika refused to approve a partnership treaty with France that was scheduled to be signed in December 2005.
Algeria, which was a French colony from 1830 until 1962, only obtained its independence after a bloody liberation war, during which France made systematic use of torture, summary executions and random killings.
Many artists and writers have been critical of the French law of February 2005. In his documentary film Le Malentendu Colonial (The Colonial Misunderstanding) released in September 2005, Cameroon-born historian Jean Marie Teno argues that "westerners might have built schools, hospitals and institutions (in the colonies). But they also took away our freedom, our dignity and our lives."
Many French historians have also rejected the tenor of the French law. Historian Pascal Blanchard, author of several books on the French colonial past, described the demand to emphasise the "positive aspects" of colonialism as "an accounting notion based on an ideological view of history."
France is one of the very few former colonial powers "unable to come to terms with its own history," Blanchard told IPS.
Blanchard said that France is trapped in the contradiction expressed on the one hand by the ideals of the French revolution -- liberty, equality, fraternity -- which still constitute the official founding principles of French politics, and on the other, by its own colonial conduct.
"To question the French colonial history is also to question the French republic's behaviour in the two centuries that have passed since the Revolution," Blanchard said.
The French debate on the colonial past is mostly focused on the Maghreb region, Blanchard said. It overlooks French actions in its former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Caribbean and in South-East Asian countries such as Vietnam, he said.
"Historians have been studying these aspects of French colonialism, but the public at large and the institutions, including publishing houses, have so far ignored this research," he said.
Following strong criticism of the law, the ruling party agreed to drop the controversial clause to encourage a positive view of France's colonial past.
"It is not the duty of a parliament to write history," Prime minister Dominique de Villepin said. "This is the task of historians."
In January this year, 11 months after the parliament passed the law, President Jacques Chirac ordered withdrawal of the controversial paragraph. But the debate has not gone away, and Algeria has still not signed the partnership treaty.
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