On France in the World

I have a lot of thoughts about this book. First of all, I’m not sure how an American audience will receive it. In France, this piece was an instant hit and much has been written about it—both in favor and against—in the French media. Yet, one of the weaknesses of the book is that it requires a solid sense of French history to make sense of it. This is not a “global history” as a cohesive product, but a number of episodes that illustrate France’s role in the world, and the world’s role in France. This theme is what links this book together, rather than any given narrative. Although the introduction to each section highlights major themes within, it still requires better knowledge of French history to discern how these episodes fit into the broader picture. Frankly, Americans don’t have a strong sense of French history. Generally, the only aspect that is reasonably well known in the States is the French Revolution, and even that is not as strong as it should be. With this in mind, the use of the text may not appeal to a popular audience in the same way that it did in France. This is a problem because one of the explicit goals of the book is to appeal to a general audience. At the Society of French Historical Studies’s annual meeting earlier this month, the importance of “pubic history” to the book was emphasized, but I do seriously question its utility to an American audience.

Nevertheless, from an academic perspective, this is an excellent book. Although some chapters are weaker than others, and the first episodes (beginning in 34,000 BCE) had me scratching my head, the book gains speed as the chapters enter late antiquity and become truly powerful starting in the early 19th century. One frequent criticism from nationalists is that it shirks major historical events—the Battle of Tours (or Poitiers), the story of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), or General de Gaulle’s call to continue the Second World War. This complaint is overstated. The Battle of Tours, the story of Joan of Arc, and De Gaulle’s call have been written about extensively elsewhere. Instead, this work comes at the same themes from a different angle. For Muslim-Christian relations in the 8th century, for example, François-Xavier Fauvelle examines the relationship between Muslim North Africa and European Christendom in more broad terms, especially paying attention to Narbonne as a focal point. Yann Poitin examines the Hundred Years War through the Treaty of Troyes, which he finds was an attempt to find lasting peace between France and England, rather than a “betrayal of the nation.” Eric Jennings looks at the role of Free France in Equatorial Africa, arguing the General de Gaulle’s call to continue the war was ignored in Europe (this is something he is absolutely right about), and going on to point out that the real beating heart of Free France was in Equatorial Africa and the Pacific until D-Day and the Free French invasion of Provence. The average Free French fighter, he explains, was not a simple farmer from Brittany.

Some other fascinating chapters were Eugénie Briot’s piece on Coco Chanel, which she connects to transnational aristocratic life and culture (one thing I did not know what that Chanel was the mistress of the Romanov who murdered Grigori Rasputin); the chapter on the global spread of the cult of Louis IX after his death in Carthage; Patrick Boucheron’s chapter arguing that Charles VIII’s Italian Wars made France less competitive in the race for colonial empires that was primarily between Portugal and Spain at the end of the 15th century; and, of course, the bicentenary of the French Revolution, which Patrick Garcia uses to examine the way that the French Revolution has been received globally since its outbreak.

There is great work on race here, but one of the most glaring issues is the lack of close attention to gender. Women are discussed at times (take Marie-Céline Isaia’s discussion of Empress Irene in the chapter on the coronation of Charlemagne, for instance), but there is a lack of sustained attention to it. In addition, Jewish history is mentioned at times (Juliette Sibon’s chapter on medieval Troyes does an especially good job of this), but little attention is paid to it beyond the chapter on the Holocaust.

Overall, this is an excellent work. The title—both in French and English—is a bit misleading, but this book is something that historians of France and Francophiles must spend some time on. It is not meant to be read cover-to-cover, as I did, but something to digest slowly over time while being supplemented with other materials.